Another stunningly embarrassing moment for the Mermaid

So I was sitting on the bus home last night.

It being a very crowded bus, the only seats left were at the top, right at the back. You know the ones I mean... they were the hard grey plastic seats opposite the row of seats that line the very back of the bus. This means that you are forced to eyeball whoever is squished into the seat opposite you.

In my case, this was two Polish builders, who were very polite and moved their bags to give me more leg room.

However, the traffic being stop and start,
the seats being very slippery
and my coat being of a non-stick material

... I found myself ending up with my head in the guy's crotch when the bus jerked suddenly and I shot forward. Putting my hand out to steady myself I ended up pushing him hard in the chest before I slid off into a kneeling position, face-first, into his groinal area.

He was shocked, to say the least; his friend was laughing so hard everyone was turning round to see what had transpired.

All I could muster, between laughter and profuse apologies, was: "Well, I've not done THAT before."

A poo story

At the risk of being labelled a public school product, which of course I am, I have to confess I do enjoy the odd poo story.

This is not exactly about poo, but I hope you enjoy it.

Last weekend, I went to visit Paddy's Mum and we spent an enjoyable weekend chillin' and chatting as women do. Saturday evening we went to the West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds to watch a comic rendition/stage adaptation of Noel Coward's film Brief Encounter.

Great film by the way, I advise you to watch it and try to understand what Celia Johnston has actually said in that fast and clipped English voice of hers.

So it's the interval, and we're being jostled by several coach-loads of upper-class Saga tourists. A young man pushes past us: "Father! Father!". It was like being stuck at Twickenham.

We went to the ladies. Clare dived in first, I found an empty cubicle at the end of the room. Plenty of posh twittering outside the doors by the sinks. I'd already flushed and was ready to leave.... when the Evil Thought arose.

Something I used to do to Clare many many years ago but have not done for several years...

I stayed in the cubicle and started to groan.

"FFFFNNNNNNYYYYEEEEEEEARGH"

the room went a little quieter, enough for me to hear clare start to laugh. She was evidently by the sinks.

A little louder: "GGGGRRRRAH! AAAAAARGGGGGGHHHH AAARRRRGGH"

By now, clare was laughing aloud and was at the hand-dryer, which was just outside my cubicle.

I prepared myself for the grand finale.


"GRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH AAAAAARRRGH AAAAAARGH NOOOOOOO FAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATHER! ARGH! OH. AH. Ahhhhhhhhhhhh."

I flushed quickly and came out, giving a really hard stare at the cubicle next to me, and looking shocked. The genteel ladies by the sink raised their eyebrows. Clare and I were laughing. I nodded my head in the general direction of the next cubicle, shook it in mock horror and left, just in time to see this behatted, unwitting old dame exit aforementioned cubicle to be met by a host of stony glares.

I've never laughed so much in public in my life.

The aftermath

Leave Heather Mills Alone

Heather Mills

I have not always been nice to Heather Mills. I have labelled her a gold-digger, a celebrity-hungry wannabe without a leg to stand on. But I am taking it all back after reading the interview stories following her appearance on GMTV.

Firstly, my friends in the media have completley misrepresented her interview, producing spurious headlines with no regard for accuracy. None seem to have actually received and read and understood the full broadcast transcript of that interview, so they are misquoting each other in a bid to out-do each other in their villification of Heather Mills.

What she actually said, if people can be bothered to look past their own preconceptions and prejudices, is that she hates the fact that ordinary people feel they have a right to come up to her in public and swear and shout abuse at her in front of her 4-year old daughter. And the reason for this is because a lot of middle-aged blokes who are afraid their wives will screw them for a lot of money, and who also grew up with The Beatles, have portrayed all her bad points in such a way that we now all believe she must be evil and therefore must be destroyed.

Furthermore, she NEVER said she was like Diana or Kate McCann. She said: "What sort of society are we living in when it becomes acceptable for the media to intrude into every part of our lives and feel they have the right to hound us and to judge us... look at what they did to Diana. Look at Kate and her husband. They've lost a daughter and it is so very sad, but on top of that they have to deal with all the media intrusion."

They have also made it acceptable for us to take the piss out of people who have a disability because, well, if we don't like the person, then it's okay to subject them to cheap jokes like the one I started this blog post with.

For 20 years Heather Mills was the media darling who had overcome a horrific accident and who had devoted her life to charitable causes. Then she married Paul and for a while all was well. The trouble is, we were't over Linda. We all loved Linda McCartney and could not forgive Paul for marrying so quickly. Suddenly we started to applaud Stella McCartney for her distaste for her father's marriage. In fact, all the kids quickly took arms against Heather.

If any of you have been a step-parent you must know how hard it is if the kids dont like you - especially so when the children are all celebrities, adults and have resonance with the press. Heather was doomed and so was the marriage. Even when she gave up all for-profit appearances and became a mother, it didn't do her any favours - she had no income of her own. If I were a wife and mother for four years and had given up my income to run a household, I would expect that, if the marriage broke down, I would be entitled to a share of that income for the duration of my stay. Her problem was that she asked for more.

MORE?

OKAY, perhaps given the sums involved it could be greedy. To people like you and me, who dont have that kind of money, it is obscene. But that does not give us the right to judge.

Also it's HER, not Paul, who wants to look after the child. Paul doesn't want to take any responsibility for the upbringing of his legal offspring. So what does that say about him? That he's more concerned about his own music than about his children. After all, he never consulted his children before he married Heather, and he doesn't seem to care about his 4-year old otherwise he would make public moves to stop all this public villification of the mother of his child.

Some more points of contention

1) Paul McCartney has had so much facial surgery that it must have taken a lot of love to wake up to that each morning. Look at his latest photos. The man draws his own eyebrows on. That is simply scary.


2) Paul McCartney was responsible for THE FROG SONG


3) John Lennon was the creative genius behind the Beatles. Paul McCartney was not brilliant without him. Look at his recent stuff. It's like watching your granddad do karaoke at a family wedding.


Oy, Granddad, NO!