Water egress points

All around the world people have formed a desire to collect things. Stamps, butterflies, coins, African novels - somewhere someone is collecting either the actual thing or a photographic record. I was on holiday when suddenly it came over me what I should collect. Well, actually this happened twice. Once, so long ago that digital cameras had not been invented (I know, I know. Imagine at that time mobile phones were still 'rabbits' - you have to be my age to understand , and believe me you don't want that - well, not until you are...) and I collected images of my feet on differently textured surfaces. I have a stunning picture of this venture, hanging currently behind the door in the bathroom (it has a limited appeal), but then I came upon the concept of fire hydrants which quickly transmuted into water egress points. (I have to confess this has been no better received by certain people...)

How was this? Well, chance really (yes really, I know that is hard to believe, surely it must have been some sort of out-of-body experience, or even at least an announcement made to me by some shining being from another world............but no, I must confess, it was actually chance),I was in the USA on holiday with my family and my camera. I saw my first hydrant. What can I say? It was a red two headed hydrant sheltering in a leafy green bush. There was something so shy about it, so retiring and yet there it was, a modest life saver just waiting to be called upon. I snapped it. The next one I noticed, although still red, was a completely different shape - it was tall and thin with only one aperture (I'm trying to keep out of any kind of double entendre, so bear with the vocabulary) and outstripped the leafy green bush by which it was standing. Then yet another, much more complicated with capped heads, and seemingly loitering with intent upon a stairway. The next employed different colours, different twists and bends. My passion was borne! As I travel about I cannot help but be aware of these esoteric saviours, built by man to save mankind from the horror of fire. Romantic, often demure, but sometimes outrageously large and complex, in such cases caged in by municipal authorities (these were in San Francisco, one can hardly be surprised) they just beg to be chronicled. In Austria I have seen them dripping with icicles; in Venice, city of dreams they are just small plump objects incongrously placed by Renaissance buildings; in the English countryside I found one pressed in amongst the cowpats and blackberry bushes that form so much of our green and pleasant land.

Everyone should look out for them. It is a harmless obsession (I think) and rewarding since they are everywhere, and they are so various! Every country has need of them, and it is my (sad) dream to get selections worldwide, purely for the visual effect. Some will nestle, some will stand proud of their environment, some are designed to burst out of the background in outrageous blues, oranges and yellows, whilst others are simply adorned in grey or suburban brown.

Look out for them. Snap them. Once you have started noticing them, they turn up everywhere. I promise. Go forth and enjoy the everyday beauty in life. I can feel a poem coming up, perhaps a Haiku................

Eyebrows - are they a window on the soul?

Recently I have become very aware of eyebrows. This will sound strange to anyone who has dark/bushy/beetling/caterpillar-like/mono eyebrows for whom looking in a mirror has always had to take into account these hairy forms that edge your eye socket. For me, however, and other fair haired people, eyebrows have never been a defining feature, far less something which needs to be taken into account in your personal face map. It is only now as age has become a somewhat significant factor in my appearance that I have become aware of the role they can play if managed correctly. Yes, age, that hideous gremlin in the bottom of the box of life that we all loathe and yet have to be grateful for since the alternative is worse.........

What age does to the eyebrows is to either thicken or thin them (whatever you would least like), coarsen them, and horror of horrors introduce the element of grey. Yes, your eyebrows can go grey. This immediately adds easily 10 years to your wrinkles.

As a person challenged by this gremlin, and moreover suffering from the invisibility that gender creates as time wears on (except where access to your bank account is required when you are all too visible) , I was horrified to realise that this might happen to me. A friend told me there were various answers - dying (oops! spelt that wrong, I mean dyeing), threading or tattooing. Yes! You could put yourself in the hands of a friendly tattooist and have not only new eyebrows but a whole new expression. Of course over time that expression would change. As your skin slowly drooped down into your eyelids so your expression would become more dour. But fair enough! You would probably feel that way, anyway, so what if your face shows it!

I have not yet decided what action I should take and am still considering it, but what I have become aware of is other people's eyebrows. Just take a look around you - there are poems written on Robert Pattinsons eyebrows (well, not quite, but definitely youtube films); could you stomach Jeremy Clarkson without his horrible bushy growths wriggling about on his forehead adding irony to his oh-so-witty words? and what about Tony Blair, surely we responded as a nation to his furrowed brow with those beautifully arched, sympathetic brows calling on us to just understand what a brilliant job he was doing for us despite our ingratitude. Gordon Brown simply cannot compete - look how wild his are, grey and sort of unkempt. If a man cannot control his eyebrows, can he control the country? Tom Cruise should inspire him with his delicately shaped eyebrows, reflecting the refined nature of his handsome face - he is a man who can save the planet and make millions in the process. And what of Mr Spock? Surely when his creators came up with those upwardly pointing, excitingly exuberant eyebrows they were suggesting the hidden passions of a being who would always come up with surprises no matter how pointy his ears. Nations of middle aged women immediately fell in love..........

Furthermore a glance at any portraits of the past or present will demonstrate how artists have engrossed themselves in the rendering of the eyebrow as a true indicator of personality. Dame Judy Dench, all dressed in white on a white background, manages to suggest all sorts of archness through the refinement of those carefully delineated and possibly tattooed (ok, ok, but she is quite old, can they be real?) speaking, lines of finely plucked hair. They act alone. I haven't looked at Joanna Lumley - but surely they played a part in getting all those gurkha's what they wanted? Gordon, confronted with her, must have felt a certain humility at someone so in control, so able to master the technicalities of the eyebrow.

So, I still haven't decided what to do about mine but I would recommend everyone to look in the mirror objectively and just take note of the subliminal message that your eyebrows are sending out into an unsuspecting world - you didn't get that job? Go home and pluck those brows. That salesman was rude to you? Darken up your brows, use them to enhance your authority. The bank manager refused you the loan? Practice the eyebrow wrinkle, it works every time. Well, unless you are of a certain age and gender. Then you could say, what's the point if they don't see me they're hardly going to see my eyebrows. But never, say never. The eyebrow is here to stay.

Men - aren't they adorable?

Men, don't we just adore them? There are so many ways in which they are so fantastic. They can carry heavy things, for example, and are perfectly happy to carry said heavy things to the dump on a Saturday afternoon (providing there is no sport to watch). If you are on holiday they just love to get a map and guide you around the place, and carry that map in a crumpled wadge in their back pocket. They are also good at kicking a football around with the kids on a sunny day, or even taking them cycling on a rainy day. Men are also delightful when it comes to fetching an extra chair when you are having a drink (coffee or alcohol) with friends and there are not quite enough seats - usually of course having had it politely pointed out to them by their adoring partner first. And what about paying for and carrying the shopping? Some of them will even push a trolley - with a child in it! Yes there are many, many things that make men totally adorable.

But what is it about their tunnel vision? Is it a coping strategy for living with women and children? Is it a hangover from their neanderthal past, and genuinely (as they claim) not their fault? Is it simply laziness? Why can men not see what is in a fridge (apart from beer)? Why are they unable to find that favourite shirt hanging up in their own wardrobe without assistance from a female? Why, oh why, are they able to sit goggle eyed at a computer/television whilst you with your clicky stiletto heels are stomping past, to and fro, to and fro, with all the recycling in its different bags hanging off your frail form as though you are some kind of bag-lady? Then, when they finally do notice that something is afoot (the computer/television screen has steamed up with your laboured breathing) they say something truly irritating like 'what are you doing?'

Is every man on the planet like this? Are they born like it or is it an acquired skill? If it is acquired how have mothers allowed it to happen? Could they not have introduced some sort of instruction procedure which would give them better peripheral vision? Or is it an age thing which is acquired with puberty?

Whatever it is I would like to see an A level course in how to view widescreen. They do A levels in all sorts of other subjects, many of them useless, whilst this would be of supreme usefulness because it would promote harmony in the home. Think of all the shouting that would no longer be necessary. No yells of 'Where is my.........", no accusations of 'I put my ..........in the wash and now I can't find it?' No responses of, ' for gods sake have you no eyes? Here it is", and 'here it is' and 'here it is' and 'grrrrrr!' And above all no exasperated shriek of, 'Didn't you see me struggling to and fro with the recycling!' Really, so many people would benefit.

So I put it to the government or the education authority or whoever, please please address this important issue. Of course i will be wasting my time if they are men who make the decisions on such things since, with the application of tunnel vision, they will not have got beyond the first two sentences.

My horrible dream

Last night I had the most horrible dream. It was so horrible that I actually had to wake myself up from it. I dreamed that I was in a small terraced house with Bear Grylls (this is not the horrible part but it could have been). Why you may ask was I with Bear Grylls - it was a dream, and I do not know what he looks like but I do know that he has been asked to recruit more adults to run the scout movement. Even though this is of absolutely no interest to me - I know what scouts are like, to a boy they are snotty, dirty and no longer do bob-a-job but more give-us-your-bank-account-details- it obviously lodged in my brain. So, it was a perfectly ordinary house and we were in the sitting room. Bear Grylls said to me, 'you must now open your mind to all the horrors that have taken place in this room.' I said I couldn't. He said I could (he's that kind of a man, he will have no trouble recruiting those adults, maybe even me). I said I would. Sure enough as I gazed at a spot on the grey carpet I became aware that a gruesome murder had been carried out there - knives and blood and screams, the lot - and then I looked at another point over by the window and I realised that another hideous death had occurred, and then I realised that the whole room was redolent with disgusting visions of death and I was going to have to go through every single one! It was at this point I managed to wake myself up. For three quarters of an hour I could not sleep again. Then I had a coughing fit (I have recently been suffering with a tickly throat), a disgusting lozenge, and dozed off again.

I woke up at four am for a while just to congratulate myself on not dreaming and was awake for half an hour.

The truly horrible part is I now have such dark rings under my eyes my son says it looks as though someone has punched me and I have two shiny black eyes. Bear Grylls why did you enter my life and make it bad?