Forbidden Love

Kat the Cat has a stalker!

It’s more than a little bit disturbing. Tom Cat has been staking out our humble home for the past week, and shows no signs of losing interest, while Kat has been displaying every sign that she is, underneath her cute and furry exterior, a bit cheap. The Sister is unamused that Tom feels the need to sit in the back garden every night directly beneath her bedroom window, howling mournfully, presumably out of love, passion and lust. Kat, meanwhile, has clearly lost her mind and is spending many, many hours staring obsessively out of the window, occasionally crying pitifully.

It may be cruel of me to stand in the way of true love like this, but I cannot bring myself to encourage this relationship. Tom is, in a word, manky. In more than a word, he is manky, scruffy, smelly, scary and potentially disease-ridden.

“You can do so much better than him, Kat,” said The Sister firmly last night as we tried to reason with our lovestruck feline housemate. “You can,” I added sadly, “he’s not good enough for you.” Kat said nothing, but very deliberately turned her back on us and gazed out into the night.

It’s a little spooky to be taking the rubbish out to the bin and realise, upon your return across the back yard, that you are being intently watched by your cat’s stalker, who is perched on the gatepost, staring angrily and unflinchingly at you. I backed nervously into the house and shut the door, fumbling with the key in the lock. The Sister came in as I was pressing my face up against the window, trying to see if he was still there. “What’s going on?” she asked in surprise.

“He’s out there,” I said flatly, locked in a stare-to-stare battle with Tom Cat. “Watching. Waiting.”

“I don’t feel safe here any more,” said The Sister, sadly.

“Miaow,” said Kat the Cat.

Next door is only a few channels away…

Strewth, crikey and would you spiggin’ have it – the BBC has axed Neighbours.

I haven’t watched it for several years, mainly owing to the fact that it reaches Stiltonesque realms of cheesiness. The Beeb’s decision, therefore, fails to touch my life (and anyway, Five have bought over the rights, so you’ll still be able to watch it, if you must… it’ll just be fuzzier). There was a time, though, when Neighbours was the thing to watch. I have fond memories of post-Neighbours phone calls with my schoolfriends, sometimes to discuss the ‘plot’, but more often to obsess in that pre-teen way over one’s particular choice of Aussie dreamboat.

Mine was Dan Falzon. AKA Rick Alessi, he sent my 12-year-old heart into meltdown.

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I’ll never forget the day he replied to my starstruck fan letter. I carried that signed photo around in my schoolbag for weeks, bringing it out to swoon over with my envious friends in double maths, saying things like “…and he actually wrote my name!!”

Then there was Henry.  I was still of primary school age when Craig McLaughlin was sneaking around Ramsey Street wearing only a fern from Harold’s garden. I can’t remember how or why that happened, but it seems to be permanently etched upon my memory, for better or for worse. I think my mum actually had a crush on him and pretended the crush was mine. Somewhere along the line, I believed the lie, and have a distinct recollection of sticking a magazine clipping of Henry And The Fern on my bedroom door. Mum probably cut it out for me, come to think of it.

Neighbours was always a bonding thing for me, with my mother and sister. We’d watch it as we had lunch together in the summer holidays, crying at the weddings, laughing at the funny bits, talking about the characters as if we knew them personally. Dad hated the show, of course. He’d roll his eyes or make a derisory remark if it was mentioned; the rest of us would feel quite superior because we knew how much enjoyment was to be had in an afternoon with the Neighbours. It made it quite special – like our own little secret club.

Nowadays, I’m inclined to agree with Dad.

But Dan Falzon… I’d forgotten about Dan Falzon…

Shear Madness

Sunday lunch with the Parental Unit.

Mum is giving off about the amount of time Dad has spent watching Kylie Minogue on TV over the holidays. “Every time I walk into the room, there she is in another silly wee skirt and your father singing “”I just can’t get you out of my head” with a big silly grin on his face. It’s ridiculous. He’s 55 this year, you know!”. I gently remind Mum about the Bon Jovi DVD she got for Christmas, at one part of which she said “Oooohhh, now, you see… that’s the stuff…”, and she looks uncomfortable. “It’s not the same thing -” she begins, but is interrupted by Dad coming home from the pub.

“Hello, family!” he says merrily. Sister and I look at him, stricken.

“Where is your hair?!” we cry in perfect unison. Dad does a little twirly pose thing, which only serves to show us that it’s worse from the back than from the front. We look at him, our expressions demanding an explanation for the fact that he has a skinhead at the top and neatly groomed hair around the back and sides. “Your mother tried the clippers I got for Christmas,” he says cheerfully. He doesn’t seem too emotionally damaged by this. We turn to Mum for consolation, but she is smiling proudly at her handiwork. “It was quite tricky at first,” she explains, “but I got the hang of it after a while. I think it looks alright… but I might have taken a bit too much off the top, what do you think?”. She looks expectantly at us. I can’t look Sister in the eye. “Errr…” I splutter. “Errr….” splutters Sister.

To make things worse, Sister has previously asked Mum to trim her hair while she’s there, and obviously cannot back out now without appearing critical and ungrateful. And so it is that after dinner, as I am washing the dishes, I see them trooping into the back porch with scissors. I listen, half-sympathetic, half-entertained, to the snippets of conversation that float into the kitchen. By the time I hear Sister saying “Maybe you should just shave it all off and start again,” I am in pieces. There is a thoughtful pause.

“You know,” says Mum eventually, “I think it’s worse at this side than on that side.”

Tears of mirth roll silently down my face.

Never a dull moment at the Parents’ house.

Today In Numbers

Number of work-related Christmas Rush crises: 3

Number of crap drivers muttered at: 6

Number of twinkly lights purchased for work Christmas displays: 900

Number of Hall’s Soothers consumed: 10

Number of nuisance sales calls rejected: 7

Number of potatoes eaten as a result of recently discovered “eat as much as you want” diet from Slimming World: 8

Number of Christmas tunes heard: 0

Number of litres of oil put in tank: 600

Number of pounds removed from bank account: 258

Number of times started writing informed, intelligent and humorous response to mocking anti-Christian blog post but decided against it: 3

Number of YouTube videos of Robert Downey Junior viewed: 5

Number of cats discovered in house after brief journey outside to take rubbish to bin: 2

Number of cats immediately removed from house: 1

Number of lovestruck cats currently sulking at back door: 2 (on opposite sides)

Number of episodes of Ally Mcbeal watched: 3

I want one like that, please

I have developed a major crush on Robert Downey Junior. The odd thing about this is that when I googled his name to find a nice photo to put on my blog purely for your information, dear readers, I could barely find one that I liked. Add to this the fact that I’ve never actually seen one of his movies, and also the general consensus that he’s “a bit of a fool eejit,” as Kate informed me when I dreamily mentioned his name, and he might seem a strange choice of crush.

The thing is, I’ve been watching a few of my old Ally McBeal DVDs, in which he appeared as Larry Paul throughout season four. I honestly think that Larry – not Robert – is my ideal man. This is unfortunate, as he is not real. I, on the other hand, am real. You can see the logistic problems here.

Larry is tall, dark and handsome (much like Robert Downey Junior, in fact), wears sexy I Am Intelligent As Well As Gorgeous glasses, is honest, lovable and clever, and – above all – makes me laugh. One of my favourite scenes is where Ally goes off into one of her daydreams in the middle of a conversation, and when she hears him saying “Ally? Ally?” and comes back to reality, he says ”Hi!” and just continues with what he was saying, as if nothing happened. This amuses me no end. I have a weird sense of humour.

Anyway, Larry is my perfect man. Such a shame that he doesn’t exist. Here’s a gratuitous picture, because K8 always appreciates those when I post them.

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