The Truth About Twilight

Sylvia Plath wrote that every woman loves a fascist. Maybe an exaggeration, but there's a lot of evidence that every teenage girl fantasises about a stalker. Sorry, romantic lover. There is no difference. Look at Edward Collin. Indeed, look at him for some time, for he is quite beautiful, having the look of a young Brando at times, and the most sympathetic of Gothick lighting - at least in Twiglet sorry Twilight - all the time. Feast your mincers. Then worry about the character he is playing.

Judging by the teen scream queen team reaction, Edward Collin is every girl's dream. As beautiful as he is repellent, he wanders about, chalky complexioned and designer clad, sporting reddened lips and so much hairspray his scalp must snow flakes of fixative. He pouts and sulks and is stupefyingly rude for the first part of their acquaintance. When I was a teenage girl I found it is hard to like somebody who is apparently going to upchuck on me, but I am out of date. Perhaps this is why so many girls fare so much better in the pursuit of boys than I did. It doesn't seem a recommendation.

Things really don't improve when he declares his Undying Love for her as of course he must. He comes out to her as a vampire, and she skips after him hooting "I'm not afraid". Well of course not, he is a voluntary vegetarian vampire. He doesn't drink human blood. How crap is this? If blood-sucking is a metaphor for sex, this makes the Collins a celibate community. How disappointing to find yourself involved with the only undead anti-necrophilia society possibly ever to exist. Edward is so right; liking disappointment for this heroine is key. Worse is yet to come. Because it would also seem that, if bloodsucking stands for sex, the monkish Collins clan are no better than fawn fuckers. Surely there are places no girl wants to go - possibly where Bambi has been before her. Whether being eaten by the Collins was a let-down for Bambi history does not record.

It isn't just the milk-and-water vampires who don't drink human blood (who are therefore NOT VAMPIRES, but just weirdos), though. Edward - even while being stunningly rude to her - follows her about in his car and lurks about in her room when she is asleep, watching her. The word for this in modern times is stalking. Or being Father Christmas, but since he is an employee of the Coca Cola Corporation one hardly expects a high standard of behaviour from him. Edward Cullen has no such excuse. He is an idle slackademic, retaking his High School Cert for the umpteenth time, so without any need to be the puppet of a evil corporation. Particularly after he has passed up the chance to be a handmaidenboy of the Ultimate Evil.

Edward is unable to control his fascination with Our Heroine, partly because he cannot read her mind, thus reducing him to the horrors of conversation. He proves a bit of a blunderer at this, soon running out of things to say and falling back on telling her of his mind-reading abilities. Which she buys, in spite of the fact that his line is "I can read every mind in this room except yours." Does she respond like a normal person, "How suspiciously convenient"? No, she swallows it whole - even when he gives a brilliant demo of his Mind-Reading Talent, by telling her that everyone in the restaurant is thinking about sex and money. Not only unable to read minds, a normal sentient life-form would conclude, but REALLY UNIMAGINATIVE. Does she think this? No, for she is too besotted. Or, indeed, stupid, which suggests an alternative reason for his inability to read her - there is nothing in her cranium to read. He wouldn't be the first man to fall for the illusion of depth created by mental vacuity.

It is a great puzzle. Clearly they are both hopelessly daft, but in terms of Uselessness the Vegetarian Vampire or the Wannabe Undead? Go figure. It's what every girl longs to be.

INTOLERABLE

Amy Winehouse's husband has been granted a divorce on the grounds that she is intolerable to live with.

This points to lots of stuff rotten in the state of Everything. In the first place, I take strong exception to the implication that anybody is less of a picnic to live with than a drug-soupified psycho-thugster such as his imprisonments indicate Mr Fielder-Civil to be. And anyway, how does he even know? Can he even remember that far back, given that he has spent the last year banged up? And even if he can, is it possible that she is more intolerable to live with than the kind of people he must have had to share a cell with in Wormwood Scrubs? People he didn't even choose. The idea that you choose somebody less congenial than cellmates for a soulmate indicates that you are probably too much of an idiot to make a big decision like getting married. Perhaps you need to be stuck in an Institution for your own safety. I doubt anyone would miss ex-Mr-Winehouse.

Another thing that is rather ridiculous is that you can get a divorce just because somebody is intolerable to live with. All people are intolerable to live with in smaller or larger doses, and married people just learn to carve out a niche of insanity so repellent that it serves to throw a cordon sanitaire around their own sanity by keeping out their Significant Other for Significant Tranches of Time. If you can get divorced just because your partner is intolerable a) what is the point in marriage even existing? and b) you shouldn't have done it to yourself or them; clearly you don't understand the rules.

Older married people are saved the necessity of divorce by increasing deafness and absence of mind alone. Until that happy day, surely you are just supposed to put up with the intolerability for the sake of the society?

Now I have to return to "The Woman in White". Laura has been horribly done away with and her former lover has found her ghost at the graveyard. My curiosity must be satisfied. Wilkie Collins would say this is because I am a woman. Because he is a sexist. XXX

Tracy Update Stardate Sunday 14th June 2009

There are many, many times when waving one's legs in the air is a jolly good idea. But none of these situations are when you are standing up. Until Tracy learns this - or I unlearn it - I fear our relationship will not be one of Mutual Respect.

Teeny Weeny Tracy and the Pins of Pain

Since Ben Ben's birthday (nearly 4 weeks ago), the Good Auntie of Windmill Hill has been in the thrall of Madonna-and -Gwynnie's personal trainer. She is an American who is obsessed with the idea that anybody can have a "teeny weeny New York City Ball-ay type body", which is obviously what Tracy herself has. Tracy is five foot nothing and works out several hours a day, it should be noted, and probably has no idea what a normal run-of-the-mill chubster like me looks like - partly because I think people who look like me and venture into Kensington are probably Removed by the Police. The other feature of Tracy is that if you freeze the DVD at any point she is in mid air, making me suspect that she can fly; an unfair advantage any way you look at it.

I have had many DVDs before - some featuring skinny people acting, and some featuring Rosemary Conley and her incredible Real People Chorus. Rosemary Conley's Chorus consists of women all slightly taller and chubbier than her sylph-likeness, each one GUARANTEED to have lost TWO AND A HALF STONE. I don't know why this is the amount, but it invariably is , apart from Shimay on the "Ultimate Workout" "who has lost four and a half stone and can't believe how much energy she has". Shimay is like Tracy, in that she always seems to be in danger of taking off and floating away, whereas the dominant ethos of Rosemary's DVDs is always that of sturdy determination, like plugging up the Brecon Beacons with a map in a plastic filing wallet on a neck-string. Shimay is too enthusiastic to exactly fit in. She might do better with Tracy - whose DVD is not at all like the Brecon Beacons.

Tracy's DVD is like being on Bootcamp with Tinkerbell. She has a dulcet American accent - crooning her "ow"s into "oh"s like a proper porn princess - and looks like - well, you know how men look at women they want to shag, as if the woman at issue is a Belgian bun? She looks like a Belgian bun. But when it comes to the Workout, she is professional in every inch of her teeny weeny body right the way down to her tippy toes (yes, both those phrases are True Tracy.) She hurls proper ballet moves at you until you feel like the target in a beanbag throw. I can do none of them, and fall over my feet shrieking with hysterical laughter (for after 20 mins with Tracy, the endorphins kick in and I giggle until I stop.) Tracy skips and springs through them like a teeny tiny elf with wings full of caffeine.

Even the warm-up is brutal. It takes four and a half minutes and at the end of it your thighs hum with pain - well, okay, what really happened was I did it twice by accident, and then couldn't walk properly for 3 days. Seriously - I was Too Hurt to Tracy for Three Days following the re-moulding of my thighs. I looked it up on the internet, and found out that the pain was because I was improving my muscle tone. Hm. When shown my knees and asked what she thought of them, my sister said "Same as usual," - a bit of a let-down considering I'd been hoping for the Gwynnie encomium about "the results you never believed possible". Still better than Ben-Ben's contribution, shrieked from round the playroom corner - "Rubbish!" Little toad.

Devils and Demons

After a holiday season made scary by the conviction that I have become allergic to my own teeth, I am relieved to see Saturday night bobbing back up in the harbour of television, lifting its head above the jetsam and flotsam of Christmas programming. Look, there is a weird new show called Demons. And there is Graham Norton, hobnobbing with Andrew Lloyd Webber, who is hobnobbing with Vladimir Putin; a show just as weird without the CGI.

In terms of fanciability, Demons won hands down. It has Philip Glenister (mmm - craggy), a rent-a-hunk dweeb Van Helsing (mmm - American friendly) and that bird who acts media - is that right? who is always seeing into the Other World for ITV (presumably in this case, watching A Song for Eurovision on BBC1). Last week as a fake medium but real lesbian in "Affinity", and now a real medium but a fake person in this odd little pudding of a programme. Having resisted the craggy charms of PG - probably due to his pointless and unconvincing American accent, combined in an unlikely way with being called Rupert - the massaging of a piece of fur enabled her to see Mackenzie Crook in a False Nose. There's clairvoyance. If we could all do that there would be no more tv. At all.

Demons had hopeful moments - a convex-eyed lemur with skanky fur biting off a mop head in self defence; he wasn't allergic to his teeth, and just as well as he had two rows of needle sharpies - but some tedious half hours - such as when the toothy mini-demon was captured in a laundry bag. Also a bit depressing that they kill the demons with some kind of guns. If that's all it takes, what makes that van Helsing so special, eh? And it's not really A FIGHT, which is what I look for 5 minutes before the end of a programme; that or Rupert Penry Jones with his shirt off. I'm not picky, but I like some satisfaction. The smited demon was Mackenzie Crook, who lent the whole some thespian cred, Christian Cooke signally Not Being Up To It, and I was sorry to see him smitten in such a wrongful way, particularly when I would quite like to see him in a clinch with Zoe Tapper, preferably with his stick on nose coming adrift.

Graham Norton was more interesting. Having been cast down to the point of giving up by the outcome of the last Eurovision, I am mightily heartened by the news that in fact we are not giving up, but rather giving Eurovision our best shot. Our best shot is ALW and Graham Norton. Crucially, ALW has been on a charm offensive around the Eastern Bloc. Strangely, they do seem to find him charming, and it certainly seems a more hopeful approach than whingeing; whether the Russian popstar can really make over his "many, many fans" remains to be seen, as does whether the UK Chosen can be touted and trawled about the whole of Eastern Europe to any effect in the lead up to the Big Day. But I am glad we are not lying down and taking it. Good will prevail. Perhaps. In a bit.

Actually Not Mea Culpa

... a New Year's Reflection on the Difficulty of Throwing Things Away ...



Nearly 2009, and the Christmas Holidays make me reflect anew on the difficulty I have with property management. Don't get me wrong, I like property. As somebody who slept a lot on the floors of others more provident than myself, who lived without heating and who was down to my minimum weight when financially unequal to eating enough food to keep anywhere above it, I am partial to the security of a roof over my head, to heating and to eating (particularly, I have realised, to pink and yellow food, of which more anon). Until recently, I owned a car, and I was pretty partial to that, as well. Sadly, some of the unpropertied who live nearby were partial to pissing on my wealth and status and now I don't have one any more.


I don't do very well, you will notice, at maintaining my property. I have a constant struggle to keep up with the washing up. I have a losing struggle to keep up with the gardening. And I have a Fucking Rout going on on my ass concerning the paper. There's this hole in my front door which rains paper. Catalogues, free papers, free magazines, things that fall out of free papers, updates from charitable concerns that I give to, updates from charitable concerns that feel I should give to them, demands from charitable concerns that I give to that I should give them more, demands from weird sects that have got my name from the charitable concerns who reward my donations with attempts to piss me off more than you would imagine humanly possible, and - most off-pissingly of all - suggestions that I might like 42 new credit cards (though happily there have been significantly fewer of these of late). Picture me unable to reach my front door for the drifts of rubbishy paper that swirls and eddies round the porch under the Hole In The Door, obscuring the lovingly tiled floor and needing to be disposed of.


At this point, enter the government - never good news. Because they say that getting rid of it is not somebody else's responsibility, but mine. And it cannot go off to landfill in a plastic binbag, oh no; it must be lovingly packed into mighty stack- parcels tied with string and put out for the recycling men.


Well, why? When did the possible end of the world become down to me? I didn't ask for it, I didn't want it, and I don't want to deal with it. I have enough shit to deal with what with earning enough to pay my council tax and getting up at 5am to help the police push my stolen car back up the hill so forensics can fail to find out who took it. I have lessons to prepare and a garden to neglect. I don't need the guilt and I can't find the fucking string; why does it have to make me feel so bad?

You know the answers to these questions, Mrs Crosspatch, you are thinking, and indeed I do. I have to, because nobody else will. But what I wonder about is, why does nobody try to make the litter-generators deal with their own mess, while the government - local and national - is perfectly happy to hound ME about dealing with it? Goodness - couldn't be one rule for the corporations and one for the Little People, could it?

AND AS FOR SAINSBURY'S ... well, if their values make them different, why don't they JUST STOP making and giving plastic bags. They could just switch to charging 1p a bag and USE PAPER ONES - like the US and like Sainsbury's themselves used to. Long ago, in the days when the world and I were still young. Goodness me, it's the hard life being the Only One Who Knows Best. Happy New Year.

'Tis the season ...

... to complain bitterly and without rest about the quality of TV and particularly the wickedness of phone-in shows. And so to Strictly Come Dancing. A Big Row is in train (so say) because Tom Chambers won, in spite of the fact that he wasn't the best dancer. And we say, SO WHAT?

This series of Strictly was particularly galling. In the early days, it was pleasingly naff, and the dial-up dosh used to go to Sport Aid. Now it's all got glitteringly commercial, the dancing is taken with deadly - and for a tv show, fatal - seriousness, and it has lost its Blue Peter charm.

This year there was SO MUCH NONSENSE about the dancing pig, as John Sergeant was called. He could not dance. The list of contestants who couldn't dance has been mighty, and frequently distinguished; Julian Clary couldn't, all of Holby City couldn't, all of ITV Breakfast TV couldn't. And we chortled and hooted and voted. That's how it works. This year the Fear Of The Public got so bad that the press and judges hounded somebody out, and I think this was very sad. The crapness of some of the dancers is as much part of the show as the goodness of others. Do you suppose Shakespeare spent his writing days bemoaning how he had to write slapstick dialogue for base, crude woodworkers, when all he wanted to pen was the poetry of the sublime? How one hopes not. Getting your knickers knotted over the dancing in Strictly is ignoring its pull as drama. Give us the low comedy and give it to us in sequins.

More to the point, Strictly is a fine opportunity for the public to award its favours to those it, well, favours. Did Tom Chambers win because he was more popular than the other finalists? No, he won because in the event, he had the best show dance, which actually has been the desideratum in every series so far. He got into the last two because of his popularity. And why? Because the judges had systematically kept in Lisa Snowdon week after week while the public tried desperately to kick her out. Why? Because Lisa lacks the same degree of mass appeal. She is plainly popular enough to be a model and a radio presenter - or in other words, to have successfully dodged a real hard day's work for a crap day's pay at any point in her life - but is she as popular as him? No, she's not, and why should she be? When did it get so wrong for the public to like somebody better than somebody else? Lisa Snowdon lacks Chambers' warmth, and in competition, personality is as important as dancing.

To boot, Lisa Snowdon's preservation put out two other people I enjoyed watching; Austin Healy and Cherie Lunghi. And Rachel looks lovely and dances divinely - but that's all. And who cares how well somebody does the waltz? I watch for the tangos and the American Smooths. And the Really Crap Dancing, and the sweet, patient, and funny. Stick this in your dancing preciousness pipe and smoke it.