LIKE THE TASTE OF TIZER NOTHING STAYS THE SAME AS IT USED TO BE

HAVE RAIDED MY OLD BLOGS FOR POSTS IVE DONE IN THE PAST , i wrote this one about visiting my granddad and reminiscing . a few months later he passed away so its quite a special one for me.








Watched this short film that accompanies Vic Templars latest book 'taking candy from a dog ' with a little nostalgic tear in my eye as it brings back memories of my own seventies / eighties childhood. my granddad Sid was a keen cine film maker and made loads of films of me and my family as we grew up , he also loved to take his camera everywhere and document every special occasion , day trip etc. . He's in his nineties now and not as sprightly as he used to be but through his passion for film we have an everlasting view into our past . he keeps finding more photos he's put away and I have many a happy time going through the sweetie tins full of them finding out who the people are and with my love for vintage there is plenty of inspiration . but mostly it reminds me of a happy time when all my grandparents were still alive and we all used to get together for Christmases , birthdays etc. for a celebratory glass of Tizer and watch these little films of our golden years.

SCHOOLS OUT FOR SOME

found this , a piece I did for my column but didn't use in the end , enjoy

BY NINA PAGE

THE pupils have long since gone home. Thank you teacher gifts have been carefully packed away (some dare i say, even ruthlessly winging their way to the charity shop as we speak).

But the building won’t be silent for long.

For now is the time that the unsung heroes of the school team work their magic.

So while the children take a well earned break on these lovely sunshine days, spare a thought for those who will work tirelessly for a couple of weeks this summer to make sure the chaos of the last day of term will be a distant memory and in its place will stand a sparkling clean haven of learning.

Like a scene from a Disney film though perhaps not quite as glamorous (and with slightly less help from cartoon animals and spoonfuls of sugar)  they will move,stack,hoover,buff and polish so our kids can have a spick and span school to return to in September.

Washing down worktops, tables and chairs, it’s all part of the service and they will do it without moaning (not so you could hear them anyway!).

They’ll even be scrubbing and shampooing those grimy toilet floors and walls to remove all the stains a lesser deep clean would leave behind.

Getting covered in dust and spiders on a daily basis it’s a job that’s not for the fainthearted and they will leave the building most days looking like Miss Havishams twin sibling.  Add to the repertoire  , a talent for finding mysteriously disappeared lost property , a waitress service recovering all those bits of crockery/cutlery that haven’t made it back to the staffroom this year.

So let’s hear it for the cleaners, dinner ladies, kitchen staff and behind the scenes staff who don’t always get the thanks they deserve because without them school life would be a chore.

My Grandad Jim - The Len Price 3

You've read my stories about my granddad jim , lets see how another member of the family remembers him ....see that lead singer that's my brother that is .


he wrote a song about me once but that's a whole other blog post .....

Doctor YOU

New Years day 2010, David Tennant’s dashing 10^th doctor has regenerated into Matt Smiths quirky 11^th and somewhere in a galaxy far; far away a woman in her mid 30s takes on the post of cleaner at her children’s school in a bid to make ends meet as the recession bites.

It’s not the career she’d been dreaming of during those years as a stay at home mum but she’s willing to do it to make sure her kids don’t go without.

A year or so down the line though, scrubbing other peoples skid marks off toilets as she watches various friends succeed in their chosen fields of interest, the job that she was quite happy to take at the time started to lose a little of its sheen . The loss of her granddad in the summer of that first year , the man who had always told her how brilliant she was and how she could do anything if she really put her mind to it, hit her hard as she realised she’d never been able to make him really proud of her while he was still around .

Not one for x factor style sob stories instead she bottles up how bad she feels about herself until one night fed up of being everyone’s favourite laughing stock she erupts into a basil fawlty meltdown and breaks down into a sobbing mess in front of her own mother, making a a vow to prove to everyone who’s ever made her feel like a failure or a nobody that she’s not some big joke.

And prove it to them she does, having made a new year’s resolution to actually do something about her life, she signs up during the summer of 2012 for an adult education course on journalism. She nearly doesn’t attend when some suggest that she won’t be any good at it but then dismisses the people who think she’s just “the bird with the big boobs”, the girl with no opinion and the person least likely to achieve anything, to work really hard at something she had discovered a real passion for.

In the words of Katy Perry, she went from zero to her own hero and her personal regeneration is there for all to see in that 4 year old photo that still hangs round her neck on her school cleaner badge to the image you see at the top of this page (I am a happy person really, I just don’t tend to look like one in photos!)

 So if you’ve made New Year’s resolutions to  change  your life but are already thinking about giving up because why bother , nothing  will ever come from it just remember that with a little bit of effort and hard work it just might.

And if by any chance your excuse is “I’m too old to change my life” just remember those words of the 10^th doctor back in series 2 episode 7 in a nod to the lyrics of Kylie .

It’s not too late, it’s never too late

And he should know

He’s recently changed his life yet again and he’s over 900 years old...

MEDWAY MESSENGER - GIRL FROM THE NECK DOWN COLUMN 13TH JAN 2014

I'm an emergency services vehicle , get me out of here

When my mum back in 1975 decided to name her newborn daughter after her father’s favourite female singer she could only see it as the beautiful name it was.

Nina, a name meaning little girl in Hebrew, strong and mighty in Native American, mother in Swahili and beautiful eyes in Hindi .

It’s a lovely list of things for a name to mean and almost worth the years of being teased by people doing emergency services vehicle impressions , not to mention asking where my 99 red balloons were ,for the sake of having a name that’s a little bit different to everyone else’s.

However, after reading that due his popularity in various reality shows last year that some parents are not only naming their children after Joey Essex but also some of his dubious vocabulary I do wonder if little Reem or Creepysick are really going to thank mum and dad some 18 years or so down the line as they fill in job application forms with their “of the moment “moniker.

 MEDWAY MESSENGER GIRL FROM THE NECK DOWN COLUMN 13TH JAN 2014

GREEN CROSS DOH

The buggy hangs off the kerb as mum gossips idly on her phone ,Baby inches himself further down his pushchair , laughing and kicking his feet  in the cool morning air as the cars come speeding past missing his toes with just millimetres to spare.

The couple wander across the road, eyes transfixed on their mobiles as their toddler ambles behind them unaware of the large stream of traffic heading straight towards him.

“C’mon hurry up, we’re going to be late” shouts the parent to the dawdling child as they drag them across the pelican crossing before the green man has a chance to arrive.

Our children, we’d do anything to keep them safe, right? So what’s with the basic lack of road and common sense that would have Tufty and the Green Cross Code man turning the air blue.

Are our mobiles or time really so important that we’ll risk everything for them including ours or our children’s lives?

GIRL FROM THE NECK DOWN - MEDWAY MESSENGER COLUMN

HELL HATH NO FURY LIKE A MILLIONAIRE SCORNED

I still adore Nigella says Charles Saatchi but if that’s the way he goes about adoration then if i was her I’d  be glad I got out .

For someone who proclaims to still have much compassion for his ex wife I find it amazing that he’s prepared to drag her so roughly through the dirt.

They say hell hath no fury like a woman scorned but they didn’t take into account the poor “diddums” hurt feelings of a millionaire businessman , a man so devastated at losing his wife that he moved on to the next available female showing  interest within months of them splitting.

(Trinny Woodall, I’d love to know how you feel about your beau’s revelation that he still worships the ex Mrs.)

So  as this charming man mopes his miserable face about town revealing that the marriage breakdown was everyone else’s  fault but his ,perhaps it’d be worth him remembering that no man no matter how much he says loves her has the right to grab a woman by the throat.

WOMEN BE PROUD OF WHO YOU ARE

Sometimes it’s hard to be a woman as Tammy Wynette once told us and nowadays even more so.

If you’re not a vision of airbrushed perfection with the look of thousands of other identikit Barbie dolls you’re made to feel like you’re not worth much regardless of whether you’re an university graduate , big corporate boss or Olympic medal winner.

It would probably seem odd to a bystander that a short, slightly pudgy thirty something mum would have any advice to offer to the likes of the above but please just give me a chance to prove you wrong.

The girl in the photo there once thought she was odd and awkward. Some of her actions probably did little to dispel that, I mean you try telling a class of fellow teenage girls that your perfect man would be  Dirk Bogarde in the doctor in the house films when their idols are Bros and New Kids on the Block, it’s a real tumbleweed blowing across the scene moment, believe me.

That girl at the time got it into her head that she was fat because fashion dictated in the early 90s that the super waif/heroin chic look was where it was at. She failed to see how amazing her hourglass figure looked in that frock as she was more occupied with not being able to fit her frankly fairly impressive chest into the tight fitting shirts her skinnier pals liked to sport. She is also unaware in that photo that in 8 years from now she will be wishing she had that figure back that she yearns for the days when she had just the one chin and no overhanging ex baby belly that could double up as Santa’s sack.

She will spend so many of her years thinking if only she was more prettier, less fat and not quite so weird that maybe more people would accept her , changing the way she is for others to fit in while never feeling like she is quite herself.

Then she will hit her late thirties and think “you know what, stuff it “(or slightly more ruder words to that effect) and flicks the proverbial two fingered salute at any thoughts like that.

She embraces the woman she’s become and lays to rest the girl that she used to be and no more lets anyone or anything dictate to her what perfection looks like.

She uses the contents of her slightly awkward and odd head to get herself noticed and people sit up and start to listen, which sure beats worrying about the size of her bum.

So I say to the likes of Rebecca Adlington and those of you (including all the fella’s as well) who despite whatever achievements you’ve made in life look into the mirror and don’t like what they see...

Be proud of yourself just the way you are.

Nobody is perfect, nobody needs to be.

 GIRL FROM THE NECK DOWN -MEDWAY MESSENGER COLUMN

THE BALLAD OF THE CHRISTMAS CLEANING FAIRIES

AN ODE TO MY OTHER LESS GLAMOUROUS JOB

BY SPAM FLARES ( GIRL FROM THE NECK DOWNS POETESS ALTER EGO )

Welcome readers of my column to this my last entry of 2013, I’d like to dedicate this piece to some of the unsung heroes of this joyous time of year.

So, to my fellow hygiene operatives, this one’s for you

Are we all sitting comfortably?

 Then I shall begin, with the ballad of the Christmas cleaning fairies and all their brethren.

T’was the week before Christmas, and all through the school, the atmosphere was festive; there was no need for rules.

Homemade decorations hung from ceilings with care and the teachers prayed holidays soon would be there.

As parents and children nestled snug in their beds, thoughts of parties and pressies danced round in their heads.

The cleaners from their beds had got up, and proceeded to classrooms with bucket and mop.

When out of the silence there arose such a clatter, what’s up? Call their colleagues, what is the matter?

“Look at this” one cries “look at the litter, someone’s covered this classroom in a layer of glitter!”

Cheese footballs kicked aimlessly, have missed their target, now ground all to bits making mess on the carpet.

Biscuit crumbs on the floor like new fallen snow, while crisps scatter in places they aren’t meant to go.

There’s paper and pencils and shavings galore intertwined with the weaving of the carpeted floor, bin bags by the dozen, full to the brim with excess decorations and Christmassy trim.

The staff room is next where grownups do linger, though you’d be forgiven for doubting when you see the crushed chocolate fingers.

 Toilets sparkling, glittery with wee, paper strewn like tinsel round this porcelain tree.

Sinks covered in paint and desks smeared with glue gum, classes start in two hours, what can be done?

On Hoover , on duster , on hot tap for water , fill bucket with bubbles and this mess they’ll slaughter.

They’ll stack chairs, move tables and scrub at the mess, at the end of their shift this room will back at its best.

Pick up all the sports bags, mislaid coats, gloves and hats, books from book corner even stuffed cats. They’ll replace everything back how it once was with care; you’d never know of the bombsite that once lay right there.

So remember as you mess and trash the work place those housekeeping saviours that save you from disgrace.

Who slip away quietly like the tailor shop mice, they don’t expect thanks although it might have been nice.

 Respect them this yuletide, make them swell with delight  

Say Merry Christmas all cleaners and to all a good night.

 

So that’s it from my column for the rest of this year , girl from the neck down wishes you well and lots of good cheer.

See you back here 2014, same time and same place, hope my awful poetry hasn’t made you sick of my face!

There’s one thing left to say and that’s the end, it is clear

I wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year xxx

PUBLISHED IN MEDWAY MESSENGER 23 DEC 2013

 

 

CARD-TOON CAPERS

It’s that time of year again; time to find out if you’ve made the grade. Have you done enough to make the public love you and will others be jealous of how popular you really are.

No it’s not the x factor final, nor the strictly dance off in that great lit up ballroom of which i speak  , but the annual Christmas card giving and receiving.

Will you be a winner in the popularity stakes with walls heaving under a tonne of folded glittery cardboard depicting the jolly red suited bloke, various animals or maybe even Jesus himself .  Or are you, nobby no mates with a few thin papery jobs that refuse to stand upright.

As the workplace postie makes their rounds will you be filled with despair or gasping with delight at the mutual love being shown for one another tonight.

Quantity or quality, which one is better, there’s only one way to find out...

WRITE !

GIRL FROM THE NECK DOWN COLUMN PUBLISHED IN THE MEDWAY MESSENGER 23 DEC 2013

Slow no no

On seeing a post by the djs from one of my favourite northern soul / mod nights joking about introducing an " erection section " to the night so couples could dance with the one they love ( or not as the case may be ) it got me thinking back to the days of my youth when the slow dance was the king of the disco . 

A sure fire way of knowing just how popular you were with the opposite sex and boy I must have been pretty repellent cos I then realised I've only ever slow danced properly  a couple of times in my life.

Maybe it's the fact I'm very awkward about people touching me in general unless I really know them , maybe it's because I feel the urge to burst out into immature laughter at the thought of a man grinding his down unders against me or maybe it's because at 5ft and a fag end there's not many fella's with whom I can rest my head gently on their shoulder ( belly button perhaps but it's not quite the same ) , the slow dance has decided it's really just not for me.

The first was at a disco given after a school classmates brothers football presentation which came as quite a shock given the clothes I'd chosen to wear. Trying to dip a toe in the world of alternative indie fashion the outfit I'd decided that evening to wear was a pair of Levi 501's , a baggy white t shirt stolen from my dad topped off with the brown cardigan that my father frequently accused me of stealing .my makeupless face framed with my gold rimmed John Lennon glasses ( all the better for seeing the boys with ) and I was good to go.

( my dad must've been the only father who told his daughter you're not going out dressed like that because she was too covered up ! )

So anyway despite the fact i was clearly bringing specsy back while the classmate was busy chatting up the dj  ( supposedly she went out with him for a couple of weeks although there was a rumour she had made that up ) little mole like me got approached by a beefy older lad who asked if I wanted to dance . Having always been a bit backwards in the art of flirting this was the first time any bloke had shown any interest so I jumped at the chance. 

It's said that dance is a form of mating ritual but this had all the sexiness of two people shifting a large wardrobe , at the end there was no number swapping or much lusted after snogging nope not even a peck on the cheek , just a rain man like " thank you " as I ambled awkwardly away ...I didn't hear from him again , surprise surprise !

Making a profession out of being the worlds worst flirter / flirtee my next slow dance didn't fair much better , I was a little more accomplished at the art of dressing like a woman by then so the outfit was right but again the dance was wrong . I don't think I could have danced any further away from the chap than if I'd been doing it from the shop unit next door.

Various times after that fared much the same , it didn't even matter if I was truly attracted to that person , the slow dance had all the sex appeal of moving a comedy table with one of the chuckle brothers ....to you , to me 

  So I decided to give up my slow dance dream , no more would I be shuffled round the floor like an old ladies shopping trolley , I branched out and embraced the art of dancing like no bodies watching and I've been flying solo ever since ...

And solo is the best thing to be once those limbs of mine begin to feel the beat 

 

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