The Hunt for the Christmas Tree

To keep the festive spirit going strong into the new year (and Christmas Tree Death Day), Kate in the Countryside brings you a happy tale of Christmas Tree hunting in urban sprawl. 

BOF and I have been excited about acquiring our tree since last Christmas. Back then, pre-Pad, it seemed a little bold to acquire a festive shrub when we had nowhere to house it. So I spent my time wandering the snowy streets of London gazing jealously at window dressing to a soundtrack of James Blunt through frostbitten homeless ears.

This year all has changed. Firstly, no snow. Secondly, I am housed. Thirdly, I am in the process of becoming a grown up. Symptoms of this include (but are not limited to): negotiating rent with landlord; fixing internet so it no longer dies every time BOF and I youtube a song; wrapping presents in advance of Christmas day. And achieving The Christmas Tree before Christmas.

Friendly Giant
looked nothing like this

So, on the day allotted Tree Day, defying torrential rain, BOF and I met to hunt a Tree. This could not wait. Never mind that, post walk from work, I was already as drowned as a rat at swimming class. On the Titanic.

Rousing ourselves with carols, we scurried to Battersea Park to find (thanks Twitter) a charmingly ramshackle tree operation in the car park. Staffed by two men in kilts, one of whom was jumper-less and giant, the shop looked like an example of amateur entrepreneurship from a worthy Battersea resident. The tree chaperone was more rained on than I, this Friendly Giant, and looked positively gleeful. Only a true tree enthusiast could muster that much cheer in the face of such soggy adversity.

Poor BOF didn't know what he was getting himself into on the tree decision.

KITC: 'I want this one.'

Other Tree Man (OTM): 'That one is 52 pounds.'

KITC: 'What?? (teary) But I love it! And we can't afford that much. It's Christmas! How about … ten pounds?

OTM: This isn't really a bartering situation. We're a franchise.

BOF: Fifty-two pounds you say? Fine! Good! OK. Actually that is a lot why don't we find another tree? Maybe a shorter one? They might be cheaper you know.

KITC (lip wobbling): NO! I want this tree. It's the best tree by far. Can't you tell it's the best BOF?

BOF: We could get a littler one and put it on the table? Maybe?

OTM (gently - concerned I may be a child): OK how about I throw in some holly? And a stand?

Tree! Also Wellies. 

Finally everything was organised to our (my) satisfaction. A marginally smaller tree at a deeply superior price was purchased. And dead holly into the bargain! I was delighted. 

I carried the holly, BOF carried the tree. As we passed other soggy folk on the bridge I called 'Merry Christmas' to them all with levels of cheer that bordered on the hysterical. It was bloody brilliant. 

But, dear readers, next year I resolve to get the bigger one.

NB. It should be recorded that BOF carried the tree by himself all the way to the Pimlico Pad. From Battersea. Fan-mail should be directed to his agent (KITC in this instance) by postcard. Or in comment form below. Or Twitter (@kvlmason). Thanks.

The Bog Controller

For those here in anticipation of an update on the BOF and Pretty Neighbour saga, do not fret. There have been developments. But until they can be revealed in full, please distract yourself with today's trip to the pictures:

My ambient cellist friend Pegson (for details of former adventures see here) is a media darling, so evenings spent with him always seem to contain people who introduce themselves as being 'in the arts'. What can this mean? They seem sure it is impressive. Connected to something that occasionally produces 'art'. I digress.

For this week's jaunt, we (Pal, Pegson and I) ambled to the launch of a worthy new venture which was celebrated with the screening of a very non-worthy (though hilarious) new film.

Afterwards, there was a drinks thing on. Pegson and Pal said 'no let's not, it'll be dry,' but I, attired in BOF's cloak of belligerence, argued that we really should go rather than dashing in for the free film and sodding off. It was at a members club somewhere about. It was packed. Also it was for charity so there was no free booze. The signs should have been obvious.

In we went - Pegson and Pal mumbling aggressively to one another behind me. Secretly I was also keen because the club was near and I was bursting for the loo.

'You can't go up here.'

This I announced before negotiating the crowds to the most likely area for a loo-venue. There, by a flight of stairs, stood a tall surly waiter-ish man dressed in black.

'Excuse me, where would I find the loo?' I asked him, politely.

Chap: 'You can't go up here.'

KitC: 'That's fine, I just want to go to the loo.'

Chap: 'Up here is members only.'

KitC: 'OK great. Where's the bathroom please?'

Chap (getting hostile): Look. You can't go up here, it's for members.'

KitC (desperate now): I don't want to! I just want to find a loo!

Chap: Well you can't, you...

Happily, at this point, another similarly attired gent arrived, looking surly too, but slightly more helpful.

KitC (relieved): Oh hi. Excuse me, where's the loo?

Chap 2: ¿Que? [OK, that's made up. But it was something similarly blank. He continued:] I only just start work here.

At last, I found the lavatory. Unisex. Isn't that everyone's favourite loo genre? It lends itself so well to the inevitable moment when that man in the queue before you decides that your loo is the loo for him. In this case the chap after me was so emphatic in his belief that my locked loo was in fact free, that he managed to push the door open, while I was in there in flagrante.

I returned to Pal and Pegson. 'That's it. We've got to leave. Now.'

The gits (delighted at being proven right) insisted we stay. Lesson learned.

A Valuable Lesson

Enough said.

Learning to drive when you're twenty-three is a fairly humiliating experience all round. As Pimlico Chap pointed out the other day [not to be confused with Pimlico Guru - they don't get on. It's a smaller place than you'd think, London]: 'You have to learn to drive soon Kate, otherwise imagine it - you'll end up like one of those chavvy birds in council houses who are kept at home by their husbands because they can't go anywhere by themselves.' An odd and terrifying thought - but compelling.

So I took my Theory Test (again - turns out these things expire) and acquired a driving instructor (again - as above). And what an instructor old Baz turned out to be.

Driving in London is terrifying enough let me tell you, without the addition of a libidinous middle-aged sleazeball beside you providing a running commentary about 'the women' and his astonishing hit rate with them.

'Wow Baz, amazing,' I'd contribute, at half-hour intervals.

And, while I don't think I'm a bad driver (not in comparison with the others in Central London anyway), it is pretty off-putting when the man responsible for your safety spends half of your 90-minute slot playing Angry Birds in the passenger seat, and the other half expletively wondering how you managed to get lost / kill that granny.

He also seems to have some offensively strong addictions.

Baz: Let's stop for coffee then.

Kate in the Countryside: No thanks.

B: I'll buy you one.

KitC: No thanks.

B: Oh go on, we've been going for ages. O look - there's a Starbucks!

(KitC silent)

B (leaping from car): I need to smoke OK!

So I follow him across to Starbs where he makes an extended charade of his generosity in buying me my own personal latte. I am grateful. Or I would be - except I don't really want one. I want to learn to drive. I have friends for the latte thing.

Baz engages in some prolonged banterous repartee with the Starbucks ladies. I can't tell if this is for my benefit or theirs. No one seems to be enjoying it much. Except Baz.

As we leave, Baz explains. 'Those girls! What are they like?! They think I have so many girlfriends! (Modestly) Yes - I know. And I tell them "No girls, I'm a driving instructor" but they just won't believe me!'
 

Conversation like that money just can't buy. Oh wait.

Sporting Season Mark 2 (Holiday Kate in the Countryside)

As ever, staying with Daddy Mason is an action-packed sporting occasion. Though DM is keen to show me something of the cultural side of the Bahamas, I've already been to the National Art Gallery and the oldest church on the island, so the options are limited. 

Much golf is being played instead, and last night we went down to the Bahamas Squash Club where I was offered a game by a lady named Brenda. Brenda runs the bar there and used to be a schoolteacher. The combination is as unlikely as it sounds.

So we head on court for a gentle game. A holiday boozing and pootling may have taken its toll, but I'm looking forward to a bit of exercise, despite that cocktail at lunch. Outside, the temperature is 30℃ and the humidity, I learn later from the BBC, is 90%. It is warm.

Brenda makes small talk as we warm up. Within a minute the sweat's so bad I can hardly hold my racquet, let alone speak.

'Shall we start then?' she suggests brightly, passing me the ball. I drop it. The rising heat mist that was Kate in the Countryside struggles to co-ordinate itself. Slime doesn't catch well. The warmth radiating from the walls makes it hard to see.

Kate in the Countryside on squash court

When we finish at last, forty-five minutes later, Brenda has the healthy glow of one returning from a mildly strenuous dog walk and I've got the death sweats. I look like someone who made the mistake of accidentally challenging Rafael Nadal to a fitness contest. During a heat wave. In Hell. 

As we leave the court, Brenda prances up the stairs in front of me, looking as if she might be off for a jog. She stops for a moment. 'Actually - better put the aircon on in our court. The guys playing after us like it to be cooler. But I prefer playing in proper heat don't you? Don't want to get too cold!'

Later DM, spying my suffering, suggests I go and have a massage from a lady called Glenda. I'm a bit suspicious of massages since I once got severely beaten up by an unassuming lady in Pimlico. But I'm told it won't be like that. It'll be relaxing. So I go.

Glenda is a veritable mine of Bahamian information. She tells me about moving over to Paradise Island (the 'big city') from a swamp island near by. She has twelve brothers and sisters, and they're all doing well, though it was a bit of a struggle all living together when they were younger. Also she thinks my father is 'sexy'.

'Sorry?'

'Yeah it was a struggle - the fifteen of us! Crazy...'

'No - my dad?'

'Yeah! He's sexy your dad. One day I'm gonna tell him, I'm gonna say…'

I think I might pass out from horror. My squash game seems relaxing by comparison with this. I distract myself by thinking about the swimming pigs. I suggest you do the same.

Women's Institute

Even putting a glass of wine in front 
doesn't make it look good.

When I was smaller, MD would frequent the Women's Institute Cake Sale down the road from my now-deceased Childhood Home. [The coffee cake was best by miles, but there was definitely some sort of cake quota at work. Why else would there have been as many summer puddings as coffee cakes? Who wants a scraggy mound with fruit in instead of succulent cakey goodness?]


These cake sales were terrifying. Half an hour before they opened, hordes of kindly-looking old ladies thronged the village hall doors chatting contentedly. Once inside, however, these old dears would think nothing of trampling each other into the ground over a medium-sized carrot cake. 


As the smallest, I was employed by MD to sneak through the mob and grab the best-looking cake, before retreating to the CH.


It was at orchestra last week that I was reminded of the terror I'd felt around the countryside's mobster grannies. Here, instead of cake, it was artistic recognition for which they fought.

So, hours before the concert, my friend and I realised we couldn't find our usual seats. We'd been ejected from our mildly prominent stand to seats at the back, out of sight, behind a pillar. The sweetly-smiling violinist ladies had manoeuvred themselves forwards with dastardly cunning.

Mabel

You'd think this would be enough Machiavellian activity for one evening of classical music, but no. Next to us (behind the pillar), sat Mabel.


Mabel can no longer hear very well, but continues to play with atonal confidence. Beside her sits Lin-May. She's in fact rather good, but she can't speak much English, and Mabel finds the language barrier a useful excuse to offer Lin-May advice on her playing. Shouting over the quiet solemn passages and whispering in the loud, Mabel confuses and embarrasses Lin-May equally, but communicates little.


At the interval, Mabel shuffled about onstage, moving people's music (to conform to her own mysterious system), and causing chaos.

As the start of the second half approaches Lin-May and Mabel are nowhere to be seen. Privately, I fear Mabel's locked her friend in a cupboard, though it might be somewhere more sinister. Mabel appears - tutting and fretting and shouting over the tuning, 'Where's the silly girl got to now?' in best beleaguered schoolteacher fashion.


At last, Lin-May appears with moments to spare and in complete disarray:

'Where did you get to this time?' Mabel demands, delighted.

'I can't find my glasses! They're my only pair!' 

'You can't have lost them again? For goodness' sake!' 

'I can't play now,' mumbles Lin-May, close to tears.

'Are they these?' Mabel enquires innocently, plucking Lin-May's distinctive glasses from her bag with a flourish. 'You'd better put them on then - they might come in useful helping you find the notes. Or maybe not...' And, with an air of great generosity, looking as though she'd just beaten her to the last coffee cake, she handed the glasses to Lin-May.

Spring Cleaning at Buckingham Palace

In the run up to the most discreet nuptials ever conducted, I'm seriously concerned that this curious bash will stir the Met into decisive action over my work walk short cut by the palace. Every morning I fear today will be the day. 



Buck Pal Fountain: Subtle Imperial Iconography

It was when I first observed the pre-wedding buffing of the (already clean) bronze sculptures outside Buckingham Palace that I realised my fence gap's days were numbered.

You see, BOF and I had a dinner party the other night. As we prepared, I realised I'd absorbed MD’s attitude to entertaining. [Yes, dear reader, I'm about to contrive a comparison of MD to the Queen: bear with me.] Back in the countryside if guests were coming I would be enlisted to help with polishing, table-laying, hoovering, pot-plant-reorganisation - that sort of thing. No matter that the upstairs cupboard would have no part in the proceedings (unless confused guests got lost perhaps), no corner was left unmolested.


So at the Pad this week, I got crazy with the hoover MD-wise, while BOF constructed deliciousness. At some point I decided a cake was necessary - then threw flour all over the place before conducting an inept floor clean and forgetting the actually visible expanses of carpet. Twenty minutes before our guests were due to arrive, I realised that the sitting room [sorry - The Dining Room today] furniture needed moving. Too worried that BOF would try and talk me out of my labour-intensive completely unnecessary new room plan, I threw sofas about by myself for fifteen minutes. 

In the end, the room looked - frankly - exactly the same. I'd had little or no impact - other than to traumatise BOF enough that he poured almost an entire extra bottle of wine into the coq au vin.

Back at the Palace (Liz's, not ours), fountain-cleansing has been going for about a month now, all sweat and comedy brow-rubbing from the workers to indicate endeavour. As I walked past last week, protective wooden crates around the statues were being removed to show that ... nothing had changed. The marble supports were perhaps a little more water-stained, but that was it.

Alas, shocker - no pics of Queenie plus
Mids Senior to be found. Nice plate-hat though

What happened was this: one day Queenie was sitting up in the palace with Mrs M observing the outrageous dullness of the bronze statues from the window. ‘Something must be done, Mids’, she doubtless said. So it was. The impact is less than marginal, but that’s not the point.

Like MD in the countryside awaiting her guests, or BOF and Kate in the Pad, having people over requires manic and obvious commitment to cleanliness. Bess knows this. She knows about dear Sarkozy's eagle eye for discoloured bronze and Princess Leitiza of Spain's disgust for gappy fences. Forget the Olympics, this Big Sloane Send-off is the Queen's house party including dinner with six courses. My poor wonky fence doesn't stand a chance.

Next Episode: Goodbye Childhood Home - The Conclusion

Fight Club

Our kitchen cupboard...

We acquired picture hooks. We decorated the flat. Economising with mood lighting, I draped fairy lights wantonly, oblivious to the passing of Christmas. BOF, meanwhile, has spent increasing amounts of time browsing the protein shakes in our local Holland and Barratt. (Odd quirk this - not sure what to make of it. Perhaps he's hoping to compete with my solo wardrobe-manoeuvring - or perhaps he's toughening up to counteract the flat's femininity. Thoughts below please.)

On the advice of a proper Pimlico local, I've joined a gym down the road. No protein shake plans yet though.

Snooping hopefully around the squash courts on my first visit, I came across a bunch of middle-aged chaps engaged in friendly Saturday morning squash. As this age-group represents that of the whole squash-playing community, I tried to look interested, middle-aged and squash competent - in hopes of finding someone to play.

And this is how I came to be there the following week. Fragile and sleep-deprived and clutching a borrowed squash racquet, chivvied on court by aged enthusiasts, I stumbled about ineptly. My first opponent - we'll call him 'The Bully' - seemed delighted. Attired in football shorts and a rugby shirt, he had the poise and charm of Silvio Berlusconi on a particularly wild night out.

Silvio on a particularly wild night out

'Heavy night ey?' he gurned, winking roguishly. 'Don't worry, I'll go easy on you.'

The following point, scurrying forward to pick up a short ball, I found myself shunted to the floor when TB flung his substantial self at me. As I stumbled wearily away, fearing my spine fractured, he laughed gleefully - 'sorry didn't see you there' - and honoured me with another wink. 

Having witnessed my defeat (-argh-) at the hands of such an oaf, the fat and decrepit immediately summoned me on court themselves.

The next, wider than he was tall, spent several minutes expressing his concern about TB's brutal and ungentlemanlike behaviour. He took the task of comforting me into his own hands - moving only so as to be close enough to pat my bottom at the end of each point. No mean feat for a man who could barely stand, let alone walk.

He was followed by an aged Aussie, who, he informed me with pride, used to smoke 120 cigarettes a day. An impractical number, I observed.

'Yes, yes mate, but you see I gave up thirty years ago - else I wouldn't be the immaculate physical specimen you see before you now....'

Feet away, things were kicking off. The Bully had been pitched against a fifty-year-old chap of delicate build ('The Scrawn'), and a tussle had ensued during a particularly tricksy point. Now muffled shouting was filtering down the corridor.

The squash court opened and out rushed The Scrawn. He sat down on the floor:

'No I won't. I'm not playing him any more. He's not being fair! He's not playing by the rules! I'm not playing.'

Withdrawing discreetly I left them to fight it out. I'll be back next week, don't worry. I can hardly wait.