STREETS LIKE A JUMBLE ......

The street is a wasteland littered with the battered carcasses and discarded leftovers of the weekend roast.

Tin cans roll like tumbleweed down this quiet cul-de-sac  as the heart of the black bin liner is ripped open and Mr Fox and arch rival Kitty Cat drag their loot from this bountiful swag bag leaving its innards and guts strewn all around like a scene from a horror movie.

By way of payment for your magnificent hospitality, a generous deposit will be left in the middle of your driveway or path as a tip albeit less of a monetary, more of a squishy kind.

And as the sun rises our party guests will vanish quietly to whence they came and pedestrians will  pick their way through the debris of the banquet that raged just hours before , cursing those who couldn’t leave putting their rubbish bags out till bin collection day dawned .

GIRL FROM THE NECK DOWN - MEDWAY MESSENGER COLUMN

FOR WE MAY NOT BE THE YOUNG ONES VERY LONG .....R.I.P RIK MAYALL

Back before mortgages, budgets and bills were of any interest in my life, the family I was part of could have read like the cast of The Young Ones.

The cool older brother who I looked up to and yearned to be like, the peaceful chilled out middle one who liked calm and serenity and the slightly anarchic youngest of the brood who had a penchant for doing his own thing no matter what trouble it got him into.

And then there was me the person who tried so hard to fit in and be popular whilst only ever succeeding in making myself look like even more of a prat than I already did.

Yet unlike the inhabitants of that houseshare back in the 1980s we got on harmoniously and whenever we watched the works of someone  who was well acquainted with those dysfunctional students of Scumbag College ,any differences we had would fall from us like a Double Decker bus hurtling  through a Cliff Richard poster  before plunging headlong  into the ravine beneath.

And the creator of those shows and characters that bought us so close together was Rik Mayall.

Through characters like The Young Ones would be anarchist Rick we glimpsed a comedy version of ourselves and our struggle to be taken seriously as we made the giant leap from teenager into adult hood. His desire to be seen as different and weird , going over people’s heads “ like an aeroplane , Mike “ reminds us of how hard we sometimes try to be someone other than ourselves whilst not realising everyone sees through that fake hip facade to the as square as a four sided quadrilateral could be person he's so desperately trying to disguise underneath .

In bottoms hapless losers Richie and Eddie we encountered the sad cases we could become if we didn’t get our lives sorted and the dashing Lord FlashHeart in Blackadder reminded us that if we want something badly enough we should damn well make sure we take it....within reason, of course.

And I’m pretty sure no-one could deny they wish they’d had an imaginary friend as fun as drop dead Fred. Fred’s influence on my life even stretches so far to me knowing I’d made a friend for life even before I’d had a conversation with somebody when i saw they had that DVD in their collection

Maybe it’s that childlike humour and almost youthful exuberance of rik that endeared us to him and made us all take a gasp of disbelief when we heard of his sudden death at 56.

His jokey take on life even making fun nearly losing his in the quad bike accident in 93 saying ” I was dead for 5 days , Jesus was only dead for 3, so i beat Jesus 5-3” makes you realise how too serious about life we can all be sometimes and that we forget to have fun once we turn into boring grown up adults. And he must have been onto something good because he got another 16 years out of his life with that positive outlook on mortality.

So let’s remember Rik not with sadness but with joy and laughter at all the ways he made us happy. Made us realise life is not just about how much money we have in the bank or what car we’ve got its about the fun, the comedy and the slapstick that goes on around us everyday .Not forgetting he provided us with some of the best catchphrases with which to live a fulfilled life with or at best wind people up with as you recite them word for word over anything they are watching.

So rest in peace Rik, thank you for making me laugh and teaching me you don’t have to take life too seriously, this girl from the neck down and her family and friends will miss you .

MEDWAY MESSENGER COLUMN -GIRL FROM THE NECK DOWN

TIME FOR A CHANGE

(APOLOGIES THESE AREN'T IN ORDER, HAVE GOT A BIT BEHIND IN UPLOADING THEM ! HERES A MEDWAY MESSENGER COLUMN FROM JULY )

As my boys return to school this Monday, it’s hard to believe that this is their final term at junior school.

It doesn’t seem like 5 minutes ago that I was dropping them off at nursery with their little lunch bags and picking them up at the end of the session proudly carrying their latest finger painting.

 A couple of years later it was off to “big school “as they joined reception class at our local primary . There were more than a few tears shed that day by parents as they walked out of their little offspring’s class so they could start their first day of education.

As the months on the calendar have passed we’ve watched them go from wearing uniforms that they could “ grow into “ to cursing having to buy new trousers after a growth spurt when there’s only 3 weeks left of the school year so that they aren’t wearing “ ankle swingers “.

And as a succession of school photos and the height chart on the kitchen door frame reveals they have gone from baby faced cherubs clinging to my legs to lovely polite young boys who have started to tower over my 5ft frame at the age of 11.

As this year’s summer holidays approach though it’ll be a time for change for them and their friends for when that last day of term arrives in July this year they won’t just be saying goodbye for a couple of weeks for some of them it will be the last time they ever see each other again.

The little red uniforms will be thrown away or passed onto a younger sibling and taking its place will be the blazer and school tie that represents a whole new beginning as they start secondary education.

There’ll be a trip to the school uniform shop to make sure we have all the correct required clothing which reminds me of my own visit to Eric Thomas school outfitters to purchase hockey boots that gave off a perturbing whiff of fish and a green science overall that when I started at grammar school came down to my ankles and by the end of my time there was somewhere near my knees.

There’ll be new pencils, pens and maths equipment to buy as well as P.E kit and we’ll be doing trial runs at the walk to the new school to see how long it will take to do so we know what time we are going to need to get up in the morning.

We’ll have as much fun as we can this school holiday because mum knows this is probably one of the last few years they will want to do anything with her and she wants to cherish that moment while it’s still here.

And she’ll be right there for them after the gates open in September if they need her but she’ll keep a low profile so their new mates don’t take the Mickey as the time for hard work and new adventures to begin and as they go from being mummy and daddy’s little boys to amazing  brilliant young men.

SUMMER HOLIDAYS

The met office issues a severe weather warning that can mean only one thing, the bad holiday weather jinx has struck the family of Page / Coleman once again.

Not that I’m complaining but it does seem to have become somewhat of a tradition that while others pack sun cream and swimming costumes for their summer hols, ours seem to require cagoules and wellies .

That’s the hazard I suppose of holidaying almost exclusively within the United Kingdom and it might seem like I’m exaggerating but we do seem to cop for that one week of the year when “phew what a scorcher “descends into torrential down pours and gale force winds.

In fact one  year on a trip to Butlins, it rained so heavily that we awoke the next day to find ducks paddling in the massive puddles that lay outside our chalet door.

So as we prepare for a weekend that bares a strange similarity to Perkin Flump under his cloud on a bad day, I’ve been reminiscing about the holiday memories of my childhood to brighten my day.

Now we may be about to spend a weekend in a luxury gold rated caravan in Romney but back when I was still in knee high socks, it was a much simpler affair.

Every summer holiday the brown and white Eccles caravan would be hitched up to my granddads wine coloured Austin maxi and he and my Nan would take my brothers and I down to Swalecliffe for a fortnight to give my mum and dad a break from parenthood .

Days were spent at the park on the campsite or learning to swim on the nearby beach, bobbing up and down on the water in our yellow and brown dinghy or raiding the camp shop for sweets.

Evenings would be dinner prepared over the little gas stove in the caravan or maybe fish and chips for a treat. Then we’d play the James Bond game where you had to shake the right numbers on the dice to spell out the nations favourite spy’s name or draw pictures with the pack of Paddington bear crayons on the back of old computer paper my grandparents( recyclers ,way before it became the thing to do ) used to bring home from G.E.C  Avionics.

And when it was time for bed a transformation of epic proportions would take place as the small dining area was turned into a bed for us kids and nanna, while granddad and anyone who could fall into a deep sleep despite his snoring set up camp beds in the awning .

In the morning you’d visit the toilet block where you’d pay 2p for a bucket of hot water and go into one of the curtained cubicles to do your ablutions.

Then it’d be back to the caravan for breakfast. Toast with butter or cereals in brightly coloured Tupperware bowls. Granddad one day makes the mistake of mixing up which bowl is the sugar and which is the salt and much hilarity ensues and makes me happy even now to think how something so simple could make so many people smile.

So despite being immersed in a world of electronic gizmo and gadgetry, I hope I have instilled at least a few lovely holiday memories into my kids that they can recall like mine.

And if that means i have to get up on the stage and gargling water to the tune of Gangnam style like I did last year then so be it. 

 

 MEDWAY MESSENGER COLUMN 25/08/14

WHAT WOULD YOU DO ?

Do you think with your heart or your head?

Interesting question, huh?

And difficult to decide which is the better organ to make your decision with for the best outcome in the long run.

The head has a tendency to be sensible, think logically and listen to what those in “ authority “ have to say, taking it as gospel that it’s the right thing to do .

The heart, soppy old thing that it is, is far more likely to be reckless make choices that might not be seen as the right ones by those set in their ways but that may ultimately be for the best if given the chance to indulge.

So do you go with the sensible option because those who are experts in it must be right that that’s the only way?

Or go with the feeling inside that says something else is worth trying no matter what cost to you because ultimately it would make you happier because at least you tried everything.

Put in a situation where you have to decide with either heart or head, in the heat of the moment, do you know what you would you do?

MEDWAY MESSENGER COLUMN 8/09/14.

I was thinking about how different peoples reactions were to the Ashya King story and wondered if we really would know what we'd do if we were put in that situation

 

I LOVE BUSH ......KATE, THAT IS

There was a time when the pirouetting brunette in the red floaty dress or black cat suit warbling about her homecoming to lost love Heathcliff was known by a less than flattering name in the Page family household.

My granddad Jim, less than impressed by what he deemed her caterwauling on TV one evening proclaimed he wished to she’d go back out and lose herself on those wiley windy moors once again then promptly christened her with the moniker with which she has been referred to jokingly by my family ever since, that of  Kate “Bloody “Bush.

A name which stuck so vividly in my 3 year old memory  that it wasn’t until i was a good few years older  that I realised she didn’t actually in fact have a very interesting middle name starting with B.

So it’s fair to say through the power of family influence I probably wasn’t one of Kate’s biggest fans growing up.

In fact around my teenage years she was probably like Annie Lennox, George Michael and Simply Red, one of those artists that I constantly bemoaned got nominated for a Brit award regardless of whether they’d actually done anything.

But as the years started running up that hill and hounds of love drove away any peer pressure of who I should pledge a fans allegiance to, I started to notice that her music has a real wow quality to it.

And not only that , in reading and watching programmes about her in the run up to her sell out gigs recently I noticed just how similar in personality I am to the lovely miss B.

For on one hand you have the Kate stage persona that we all recognise that’s outgoing, over dramatic and outrageous, wildly putting on a show, acting out the characters in her songs so you can see the story that she is telling you.

Then in stark contrast you have the quiet reserved little lady talking modestly about the things she’s achieved in her life and who chose to shy away from the spotlight at the peak of her career to bring up a son who meant so much more to her than whether her latest album was number one this week.

And in some ways i can relate to that dual personality with much affinity.

In real life as just plain old Nina page I am a very shy almost timid person in some social situations, put me with people I don’t know and expect me to make conversation I go to pieces until I really get to know them or them me, ditto standing up and speaking publicly in front of a crowd .

But give me an amazing outfit, a set of d.j decks or a computer keyboard and different persona and suddenly i don’t mind being the centre of attention in a room full of people I’ve never met before.

And along with dee vinyl, my dj alter ego  who behind her amazing outfits and cracking tunes can be the first on the dance floor and last to leave , Girl from the neck down is the far more articulate and fluent version of myself that I struggle to convey as I stutter and mumble along as the real life action Nina.

Maybe one day though she’ll have the confidence to take centre stage on her own and my , what a comeback that would be. 

THE UNEDITED VERSION OF MY " GIRL FROM THE NECK DOWN " COLUMN PIECE FOR THE MEDWAY MESSENGER ON 8/09/14

 

At what price , education ?

New blazers hang smartly upon the wardrobe door, inside you’ll find shirts so white and crisp and there’s more,

Black trousers with creases so precise and so sharp, ties that once mastered, will make the wearer look smart.

New socks neatly tucked one into another, shoes buffed to perfection, all thanks to mother.

P.E bags kitted out for every sport within reason, rugby, football, athletics even the cricket season.

Pencil case bursting with writing and artistic supplies.

 Mathematical equipment for geometry, algebra and  Pi.

Science overall and apron packed in new pristine rucksack,

 To be placed in a locker and homework bought back.

All labelled by mum with much love and great care,

 With hope at the end of term, it will all still be there.

So here’s to your first day, look after your things

Be good, do your best and enjoy everything

And if you’re tempted at all to be careless with your stuff,

Just recall how much it all cost us,

Good gracious, HOW MUCH?!