Tag Archives: crazy

Trunky Want A Bun?

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A peculiar email from our old nosy neighbours snooping Susan and deflated Dick landed in my inbox today.

Our favourite curtain twitchers (details here) may have moved out six months ago but it’s reassuring/ slightly frightening to know that they’re still keeping tabs on the comings and goings of our apartment block – from their new abode several miles away!

Hi Katy,

Thought I would send best wishes for 2015, particularly for happy relationships with your neighbours.

I had a brief phone conversation with Bea (Apt 2) recently, who told me about the party in our old apartment: held by son of new owners, with police being called, she thought. She also thought the police had been back looking for the previous woman tenant of no. 4, but she was a bit vague about it.

Here in new apartment: all quiet, reliable and pleasant neighbours, all owner-occupiers with one exception – and that tenant sleeps here during the week only, and we have never seen him since our arrival in July!

Best wishes,

Susan and Dick

I re-read the email and am still completely baffled as to its purpose.

Is it that they merely want to boast about the serenity of their new domicile?

Do they want me to tell them how hellish it is living here, in order to justify their move?

Or are they simply hoping I will provide them with insider information about their erstwhile neighbours – to feed their insatiable appetite for gossip?

Answers on a postcard please…

* Trunky want a bun? – possibly my favourite-ever phrase to describe a nosy person (trunky being an elephant sniffing out a bun).

My Mother… Bosses The Students

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Now that my blog star mother is on the road to recovery after her soap opera-style stint in hospital, I thought I would share some previously unseen footage of her doing what she does best: namely bossing students around.

As landlady of a house she rents out to students, my mother is convinced that all of them are utterly simple (see previous blog here) and so every year they get her Simpletons’ Guide To Independent Living.

Back in September, she gave one poor, beleaguered student the full house induction, including (in no particular order): which cupboard they should store their tinned beans in, which washing machine cycle to wash their togs on, how not to set the house alarm (whatever you do, don’t press ‘yes’!) and – bizarrely – where to find a starter motor for the fluorescent tube light in the kitchen.

Here she is at her most brilliant, bonkers best.

<p><a href=”http://vimeo.com/113854597″>My Mother… And The Students</a> from <a href=”http://vimeo.com/user33278695″>Palmersan</a&gt; on <a href=”https://vimeo.com”>Vimeo</a&gt;.</p>

My Mother… and The British Gas Debacle Part II

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It seems that my mother has become an unwitting video star after waxing lyrical about her fiasco with her British Gas bill (here) and chewing the fat with my uncle Stephen over his pyromaniac neighbour (here).

So here’s an update on my mother’s British Gas saga (amongst other trivialities!):

<p><a href=”http://vimeo.com/109387621″>My Mother… And The British Gas Debacle Part II</a> from <a href=”http://vimeo.com/user33278695″>Palmersan</a&gt; on <a href=”https://vimeo.com”>Vimeo</a&gt;.</p>

 

Everybody Needs Good Neighbours

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I never thought I’d type these words but I miss our nosy neighbours Susan and Dick. Every time I pass their apartment, I have a little pang of sadness that I won’t be able to feast on their moans and groans any more.

In a small tribute to Dick, I trotted across the road and half-heartedly picked a few blackberries off the neighbouring property. Dour Dick loved that bramble bush. He even carried his step-ladder down the road to reach the higher branches.

Although Dick’s long gone, I’m half-expecting to see him back at the blackberries in the next few weeks. He was never one to miss out on some free fruit.

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I’d like to say that SuDick’s departure was a ceremonial affair but in reality they just kind of sloped off quietly. Susan sent me a final email with her special ‘Welcome Pack’ attached (DON’T make any noise after 11pm but DO close the gate to the bin compound), should I wish to continue her tradition of passing it on to any new neighbours. (I think she saw me as a potential protege. I can’t think why!).

She gave me a final round-up of local goings on: ‘Apartment 6 is laying down new carpets as I write,’ she said. ‘Apartment 5 has a new owner; I think they might be retired.’ etc etc.

The woman who has replaced SuDick is very peculiar indeed. She’s straight out of Hollywood Housewives: heavily made-up, with big anxious eyes, hair permanently in rollers and constantly spring cleaning in a pair of marigolds. Her name is Diane. She looks like a Diane.

I had to knock on her door the other night to see if she’d taken collection of a parcel I was waiting for. Knowing that she spends most of her days dusting her apartment by the entrance gate, I told the parcel people to deliver it her flat.

I knocked on the door and waited.

There was a lot of clattering and eventually the door creaked open. Two huge doleful eyes peered back at me, marigolds donned and feather duster poised.

‘I was just wondering if you happened to take delivery of a parcel for me,’ I said, cheerfully.

‘Oh, I’m in a terrible mess here,’ she cried. ‘I did see a parcel man at the gate but I don’t think he could get in so he just drove off.’

Knowing that my parcel was only a few feet from her but she did nothing to help was very annoying indeed.

I decided ‘Marigolds’ was clinically unhinged so I left her to her dusting. On their second attempt, I asked the delivery people to try Apartment 8 instead.

Apartment 8 houses an inert tenant, who claims to be a solicitor but actually spends most of her days sitting on her balcony, chewing the fat. She seemed the perfect candidate for a daytime parcel delivery.

When I got back the following evening there was a message from the courier saying that Apartment 8 HAD taken collection of my parcel. Bingo!

I expected the woman at Apartment 8 to sign for the parcel and then leave it outside our front door. But there was no sign of it and she appeared to be out for the night.

When I got back the following evening, there was still no parcel. I found this weird.

‘Wouldn’t you sign for the parcel and then go and put it outside our flat?’ I said to the husband. ‘It’s odd that she just took it with no further communication.

‘In fact, how does SHE know that WE know that she’s even got it?

‘She’s effectively taken our parcel hostage!’

I went round and knocked on her door.

‘Do you have a parcel for me?’ I said.

She looked blankly for a moment, despite the fact my huge parcel was taking up most of her entrance hall.

‘Oh, that parcel,’ she said breezily. ‘Yes, it’s here.’

‘Thank you,’ I said.

The reason that I wanted the parcel fairly urgently is that it housed a new bathroom cabinet for my old rental flat down the road.

My latest tenant has moved out so I’ve been busy sorting the flat out. This loosely involves: the bi-annual chore of re-oiling my real wood worktops (note to anyone thinking about getting real wood worktops – DON’T DO IT), lovingly touching up my Farrow and Ball walls, ordering a new Brabantia bin (along with the aforementioned bathroom cabinet), and having all the carpets shampooed.

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I even went as far as buying a vase, a big bunch of flowers, and leaving a ‘welcome to your new home’ card for my new tenants.

They moved in last Saturday and I’ve heard nothing since.

‘Don’t you think it’s weird that they just moved in and never acknowledged the flowers and the card?’ I said to the husband.

‘Aren’t people strange?!’

A couple of days later, I drove round with the husband and sent him into the communal entrance to the flat to leave the bathroom cabinet outside the door (ready for the handyman to fix it to the wall at some point this week, the husband being unfortunately incapable of such high-level manual tasks).

While the husband was lugging the parcel up the stairs, I peered up at the window trying to work out whether my flowers were still in the cellophane in the vase, as I had left them – or not. I toyed with getting the binoculars out of the glove compartment – SuDick-style – but decided that might be a bit much.

The husband re-appeared and climbed in the passenger seat.

‘All done,’ he said.

‘Did you put your ear to the door to see if they’re actually in there?’ I said.

‘Why would I do that?’ said the husband. ‘That would be the behaviour of a mental person.’

‘To check that they’re in there!’ I said. ‘TO CHECK THEY GOT THE FLOWERS.’

Twisted Fire Starter

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Drama at my Uncle Stephen’s house this week after his neighbour set fire to his runner beans!

‘He’d been nurturing those beans for months,’ said my mother, recounting news of this terrible incident. ‘He’d grown them since they were little seedlings.’

It emerged that Uncle Stephen – quite the eccentric himself – was tucked up in bed when his pyromaniac neighbour decided to strike.

But having taken out his hearing aid, Uncle Stephen was oblivious to the fact his prized vegetables had gone up in flames.

‘I was in me jim jams snoring my snout off, when I heard lots of banging,’ recounted Uncle Stephen.

‘I peered out of the window and the whole street was full of people.

‘They all waved back at me!’

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This isn’t the first time Uncle Stephen’s crazy neighbour has started a fire. On five separate occasions, she’s burnt down her garage, her back wall, wheelie bins, compost bins, and a row of conifers.

With his runner beans and bins reduced to ash, Uncle Stephen now fears for his onions and Brussel sprouts.

‘She’s a tiny woman but she does a lot of damage,’ said Uncle Stephen.

‘And when you tell her off, she just shrugs. She’s barmy!’

Living next door to a pyromaniac is real worry, mused my mother.

‘Mrs Smith, the neighbour, wants to remove those other conifers,’ she advised. ‘They’re too tempting for a local arsonist.’  (see video clip below!)

‘You’d think her husband would come round and apologise,’ my father chipped in.

‘For emotional damage as much as anything else!’

‘Her husband’s ugly as sin,’ said Uncle Stephen. ‘He’s the ugliest man I’ve ever seen.’

Broken Flowers

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Who needs Coronation Street when you can enjoy a real-life soap opera at Caffè Nero?

Last week, I popped in for my usual latte to find Nero’s perma-fixture Porridge-Loving Pensioner remonstrating angrily with a scantily-clad woman, before throwing a bunch of flowers at her and stomping off.

Let me backtrack slightly.

Porridge-Loving Pensioner first appeared on the Nero scene about a year ago, pitching up at 7.30am, scoffing mounds of porridge all day and gazing mournfully out of the window, before departing at closing time by taxi.

He oscillates between being a curmudgeonly octogenarian, who guards his seat in the corner like a rattle snake, to acting out a scene from Wether’s Originals, handing out sweets to the kids and generously splashing out on coffees and milkshakes to all and sundry.

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More recently though, he’s regressed to being a bit of an awkward old bugger. Fellow Nero stalwart and Mallorca-mad retiree Malcolm recently brought him a suit and told him he needed to ‘smarten himself up’. I’m not sure he liked it.

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And when I chatted to another retiree-at-large, Peter, he told me he’s been giving Porridge-Loving Pensioner a wide berth.

“I’ve got enough dependents as it is,’ said Peter, who was recently widowed from his sweetheart Brenda but still takes care of his mother. ‘Take it from me once you open the door, it just opens wider.’

‘Legs always talks to him,’ he went on.

“Who’s ‘Legs’?’ I asked.

‘You don’t know Legs?’ exclaimed Peter. ‘She’s always in here. Beautiful girl, got a degree in sport or something. ALWAYS wears shorts.’

‘Of course, Malcolm always makes a beeline for her!’

‘I bet!’ I said.

I’d never come across Legs before but when I walked in and saw Porridge-Loving Pensioner in a heated debate with a girl in very short shorts, I just knew it had to be Legs.

I’ve had to remove her face for reasons of anonymity (but you can see how she gets her namesake).

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It transpired that Legs had got Too Involved with Porridge-Loving Pensioner – to the point of actually driving him to his hospital appointment the day before. Porridge-Loving Pensioner then wanted her to drive him more places.

When she said she couldn’t, Porridge-Loving Pensioner got very angry indeed.

Peter was right: when you open the door, it does get wider.

The argument ended with Legs giving the flowers back to Porridge-Loving Pensioner and marching out.

When Malcolm and Peter arrived for their morning coffee, I quickly filled them in. Porridge-Loving Pensioner was stomping around furiously in the background.

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‘I can’t believe Legs actually drove him to the hospital,’ I said.

‘She’s a very pretty girl but I wished she’d get dressed when she came in,’ muttered Peter.

‘If you’ve got it flaunt it by all means, but there is a stopping point.’

Suddenly, Porridge-Loving Pensioner appeared, brandishing the wilting flowers.

‘These are for you,’ he said, looming over me and grabbing my cheek. ‘I wondered if you’d take me to the hospital.’

I looked at the hand-me-down flowers and then took a look at his letter. The appointment was for September 1.

That was quite a while off. But my experience of old people is they gradually become obsessed by hospital appointments. Their lives revolve around them.

‘I can’t take you because I’m at work that day,’ I said, quite truthfully. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘The best thing to do,’ I added firmly. ‘Is to call the hospital and ask them to send a car for you. They often do a chaperone service.’

Porridge-Loving Pensioner threw the flowers down and shuffled off.

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Malcolm and Peter looked aghast.

‘You handled that very well,’ said Peter.

It was only after the furore had settled down that we noticed Porridge-Loving Pensioner was finally wearing Malcolm’s suit! Malcolm confessed he’d been giving him a selection of shirts too.

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‘What he really wants is company,’ I said.

‘We all do,’ said Peter. ‘We all want someone to talk to. The Italians have a name for it.’

‘Enjoy life while you can,’ added Malcolm. ‘One day, all you’ll have is memories.’

‘It’s true,’ said Peter sadly. ‘But when you’ve lost someone, the wound is so great that even memories can’t fill it.’

Chasing Papers

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Saturday mornings are about sipping extra-hot lattes, the occasional trip to the gym, and chewing the fat with the husband. But more than anything, Saturday mornings are about reading the Guardian Weekend magazine.

I love the Guardian Weekend magazine. I love the fashion pages; I love the weekly photograph competition; I love Sali Hughes’s beauty advice; I love the Let’s Move To… section; I used to LOVE Jon Ronson’s column (before he was succeeded by the dour Tim Dowling); I’m less interested in the gardening pages but you can’t have it all. I never miss a copy.

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This Saturday morning, I went to buy my Guardian as usual from the Co-Op and they didn’t have any! While I was in there, a woman came in and said she’d been to two shops in the area and no-one had the Guardian.

What was this? A national shortage of the Guardian? I decided not to panic at this point. We were going into town that afternoon and I figured I’d be able to secure a copy from there.

We parked up and on a whim decided to go to Everyman (‘posh’ cinema where you can recline on sofas, neck bottles of wine and tuck into the stingiest box of over-priced popcorn you’ll ever see). We watched Blue Ruin (gruesome, pointless plot, the husband loved it).

‘I must get the Guardian on the way home,’ I said to the husband, as we headed for a bite to eat (Nandos, natch).

I’d read somewhere that there was an interview with Diane Kruger in this week’s Guardian. I’m a bit obsessed with Diane Kruger. She’s just very, very cool and also dates Joshua Jackson, my favourite ever Dawson Creek character (who I once met at a film premiere when I had a cool job but then acted very, very uncool in asking for a photo with him. Sigh.).

Pulling up at home at 10pm, I suddenly realised I’d forgotten to track down a copy of the Guardian.

It was late and I was worried that the already depleted national supplies might make the mission almost impossible. But it made me even more determined.

‘I’m going to look for a Guardian,’ I said to the husband, grabbing the car keys off him and jumping in the car seat.

The husband simply shook his head in a ‘my-wife-is-deranged’ manner.

I drove to Tesco petrol station. No Guardian. Another Co-Op. No Guardian. Sainsburys Local. No Guardian but wait… What was that behind the counter? A great big bundle of the buggers. Bingo!

‘Please can I have one of those Guardians?’ I said to the shop assistant, pointing to them.

The officious shop guy shook his head.

‘I’m afraid it’s too late,’ he said. ‘They’ve been counted and tied up to be sent back.’

‘Is there no chance you could just sell me one?’ I said. ‘I’ll even pay double!

He shook his head in a way that said, ‘it’s-completely-out-of-my-hands-I-don’t-make-the-rules’.

I decided to go for a new tack.

‘Forget the paper itself,’ I said. ‘I just want the magazine bit.’

‘I’m not allowed to,’ said officious shop guy. ‘If there’s one missing, they will phone up tomorrow and want to know where it is.’

‘You’re not seriously telling me that the Guardian are going to call you up tomorrow, on a Bank Holiday Sunday, demanding to know where one of their missing magazines is,’ I cried, a bit hysterically.

‘The magazine bits go missing ALL THE TIME. In London, they just leave leftover papers dumped outside shops!’

Behind me in the queue, was a gaunt Scottish man, eyeing me with disdain.

‘Listen love, why didn’t you just buy one earlier?’ gaunt Scottish man said peevishly.

‘I tried! But due to unforeseen circumstances I was unable to acquire one,’ I said through gritted teeth.

He bared his teeth in an ugly smile.

‘Good luck with your newspaper,’ he sneered, scooping up his four-pack as he exited.

Officious sales guy and I had reach deadlock. We eyed each other determinedly, the huge pile of Guardians sat on the counter between us.

But I had come this far. I wasn’t going to give up.

Officious agreed to go in to the office and phone the nearby Sainsburys Local to say if they had any Guardians left and, if so, whether they had already bundled them up to be sent back – like he had.

As he begrudgingly trudged into the back room, I did something bad. In the full glare of the CCTV camera, I grabbed hold of one of the magazines sticking out of the bundle. I tugged and tugged and it came free!

Heart racing, I snatched the magazine and fled the shop, leapt into my car and bombed off at speed, half-expecting officious shop guy to give chase.

As I put some distance between us and my heart began to regain its normal rhythm, I checked my rear view mirror for flashing blue lights. The cops weren’t onto me – yet. I felt an overwhelming sense of victory.

‘This is how Winona Ryder felt,’ I thought. ‘She steals purely for the buzz’.

Back at home, I clambered into bed, turned on the light, and picked up my stolen Guardian Weekend magazine with a contented sigh.

And then I saw the front cover: ‘Diane Keaton: I Slept With A Peg On My Nose’.

Keaton?!

Not Kruger, after all.

La Dolce Vita

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It’s Friday night and the husband arrives home from work.

‘Are we going to the Thai?’ he says.

The local Thai has become a Friday night fixture. We go so often now that the woman who runs it has begun to giggle inanely when we set foot in the door. She foists free mango sorbet upon us, and throws in the occasional basket of complimentary prawn crackers. We’ve taken to bowing to her with our hands clasped as we leave.

‘We could go for a civilised meal at the Thai,’ I said.

‘Or… we could roam down to our local grubby Pizza Hut, snap up a £5 pizza each on their ‘Special 5′ deal, and eat it on a park bench.’

‘Pizza on a park bench!’ says hubby.

We’ve developed a new hobby of eating pizzas on park benches, walls – and even one of those yellow grit bins at the end of the road. It’s a lot of fun. Go and try it. There’s something reassuringly back to basics about shivering on street corners, chomping your way through a pizza that you’ve managed to procure for a mere fiver.

If it takes off, it could even be developed as some form of middle-class therapy: kind of reconnecting with your youth. And I suppose you could go the whole hog and wash it down with a bottle of Diamond White while you’re at it.

After a couple of drinks at the bar up the road (the giant dog was in situ again. It was Friday night after all; he’s almost a regular now), we wandered down to Pizza Hut to collect our pepperoni feasts.

We were greeted by a portly man of dubious hygiene, who grunted and then disappeared into the back to forage for our pizzas. He looked like Mr Twit.

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Our local Pizza Hut is basically a shed attached to the end of a row of shops, largely staffed by scruffy-looking students. It looks absolutely filthy and is probably over-run with rodents gnawing on left-over pizza crusts in the backyard. But when the pizzas only cost £5, you shouldn’t bite the hand that feeds you.

We wandered up the road, sat on a yellow grit bin and started working our way through the two medium-sized feasts.

‘I think I’m going to have half here and then half back at home,’ I said.

‘It’s an interesting strategy,’ said the husband. ‘My only fear is that it will be too cold by the time you get home.’

‘Not if you close the lid in between each slice and contain the warmth,’ I said.

As we greedily chomped away, two police officers came strolling towards us.

‘Evening, officer,’ said the husband, in a terribly British voice.

‘Evening, officer,’ I chirped.

The policeman and policewoman didn’t return our greeting, choosing to stare at us curiously instead.

I don’t know what is about encountering a couple of bobbies on the beat that turns one into an extra from Midsomer Murders. When I see a police officer, I immediately transform into a blustering buffoon, convinced that I’ve got something to hide.

As the police officers eyed us suspiciously, I had to fight the urge to say, ‘There’s nothing to see here officers: just me and my double pepperoni pizza. We don’t want any trouble!’

The police officers moved on and we ambled home.

‘Did you know that Philip Seymour Hoffman was found with 70 bags of heroin in his apartment? 70 bags! ‘ mused the husband.

‘It’s very sad,’ I said.

‘I think he might have been my favourite actor in the last 20 years,’ added the husband.

‘Really?!’ I said. ‘In all the years I’ve known you, I’ve never heard you so much as utter the words Phillip Seymour Hoffman, let alone proclaim he’s your favourite-ever actor!’

‘If was found dead in an apartment, I’d probably be surrounded by 50 empty boxes of double pepperoni pizza,’ said the husband, sadly.

Back at the ranch, the husband chewed thoughtfully.

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‘Do you think that Pizza Hut tell people about the ‘Special 5′ deal or do you think they allow people to just stumble in and blindly order a medium-sized pizza for £9.95, knowing that they could get it for £5?’ pondered the husband.

‘I’ve no idea,’ I said. ‘But next Friday, let’s give it a go. We’ll go in pretending we don’t know about the deal and see what happens. And if hairy man keeps us in the dark about the deal, we’ll reveal all.’

‘Next Friday is Valentine’s Day,’ said the husband.

‘Even better!’ I said.

The Farrow and Ball Obsession

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Mention the words Farrow and Ball to any decorator and they will shake their head with a derisive snort, claiming it’s average-quality paint with a hefty price tag, marketed for foolish, middle-class women, with too much time on their hands.

So naturally, being a foolish woman and having too much time on my hands, I developed a craze with Farrow and Ball that very rapidly spiralled out of control.

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It began with a simple task to paint the bathroom of my rental flat; the last tenants had moved out after three years and it needed a lick of paint to smarten things up. I pottered down to Homebase, naively thinking I’d just grab a pot of any old paint and slap it on. But when I headed down the paint aisle, my eyes were inexplicably drawn to the enticing brown sample pots of… Farrow and Ball.

I’d already had a taste of F&B in the past, having painted the chimney breast of my beloved flat in the strangely-named Dead Salmon, a kind of pinky brown colour – which now I come to think of it, actually does resemble the colour of out-of-date fish.

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For the bathroom, I wanted a shade of blue. But what was it to be? Parma Grey, Lulworth Blue, Blue Grey? The choice was boggling.

After much deliberation, I plumped for Borrowed Light – a  beautiful pale blue. I loved it.

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It was at that moment that I crazily decided to paint my whole flat in Farrow and Ball – a decision that would go on to cost me several hundred pounds, many hours of labour, and untold exasperation to the long-suffering husband.

F&B connoisseurs will tell you that there’s a depth to the paint that Dulux and Crown just can’t compete with. I’m not sure this is strictly true but this is what I kept telling myself, in order to justify the paint pot splurge.

I began carrying around a colour chart of F&B and would sit studying it several times a day, with all the intensity of a Truly Crazy Person. Friends, long since tired of my painting patter, attempted to stage an intervention. But when they snatched the paint chart off me, I began rocking in the corner, muttering ‘Elephant’s Breath, Elephant’s Breath’ repeatedly, until they reluctantly placed it back in my palm.

Remember that 90s game show called You Bet! hosted by Matthew Kelly, in which contestants had to complete unlikely challenges such as memorising all of the road signs in the UK? Well, I could easily recall all 132 Farrow and Ball colours, in order, and come away with the star prize.

Some evenings, I would roar off on a whim to the Harrogate F&B shop, to stare dreamily at the paints on display. The shop assistant there became my new best friend and I started phoning her at all hours of the day just to chat about paint: ‘Do you really think Rectory Red would go with Oval Room Blue? Really? I was thinking that too! Ha ha haaaa!’

I was clearly unstable.

The spare bedroom was painted in probably my favourite colour: Light Blue (a kind a blue-grey that changes with the light of the day), complemented by Slipper Satin on the woodwork.

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Manor House Grey framed the landing, while the main bedroom had a palette of purply Brassica and Calluna – the colour of ‘Scottish heather’.

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Finishing the walls, I was in too deep to end things there – so I began feverishly painting the furniture. Any wooden item that wasn’t nailed down was at risk of being ‘Farrowed’ in my upcycling mania.

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The worn church chairs were painted Oval Room Blue and Chappell Green respectively, and a tired, old dresser enjoyed a new lease of life with a hearty lick of Dove’s Tail.

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Even the front door didn’t escape – acquiring several coats of Blue Green and a shiny new number 5.

My irritating neighbour Greenclaws came sniffing around and was so taken with my efforts that he gaily skipped off to Homebase himself and returned clutching a tin of Middleton Pink (probably to match the garish plastic lobster that adorns his kitchen wall).

And then it was over.

The paint pots were stacked in the attic, a colour scheme was thrust in the hands of my new tenants, should they feel the need to so some touching up, and I reluctantly trundled home with my paint brush.

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For about a week, I had to go cold turkey, tossing in my sleep and chanting, ‘Mizzle… Mizzle – it’s reminiscent of a West Country evening mist…’

Two months on, I think I’ve just about recovered.

I passed a F&B shop in Marylebone last week. And even though every bone in my body wanted to rush in, ambush the woman and yell, ‘Do you really think Arsenic goes with Brassica?!’, I managed to keep on walking.

The Center Parcs Crazies

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There’s a new holiday craze emerging amongst my friends: a growing, unstoppable behemoth that goes by the name of Center Parcs. While friends once regaled me with tales of sipping Singapore slings in Sri Lanka, I’m now much more likely to hear about quad biking and sub-tropical swimming in the forest.

This new breed of Center Parcs staycationers fall into one of two camps: The Center Parcs Obsessives, who have been holidaying there since they were children and are part of a smug group who’ve ‘known the secret for years’, and relatively new Center Parc-ers, who tentatively drive into its big foresty mouth (slowing down for the red squirrels, of course) and emerge seven days later – bedazzled – and telling anyone who’ll listen, ‘I’ll never holiday anywhere else again. It even had a Starbucks!’

My own Center Parcs experience was a little less bedazzling but still high on the fun factor. Having heard so much about this enchanting place, I was excited to be finally getting a taste of huge-holiday-camp-in-a-forest as part of my friend’s hen party.

But for reasons too complicated to go into, while the rest of the hen party were cracking open the prosecco in their snazzy, modern lodges, I found myself alone in a 80s Butlins-style bedsit several miles across the lake, which faintly smelt of tobacco and had clearly had been missed off the list of any renovations this millennium (probably because only strange specimens like me would ever stay in a tiny apartment block at a holiday camp purely geared towards families).

Undeterred, I set off on foot to the party, begrudgingly wearing a pair of silver fairy wings (to comply with the weekend’s fairy theme) and proudly clutching a home-made coffee and walnut cake in my smart Emma Bridgewater tin (the hen party happened to coincide with my cake baking obsession – see Let Them Eat Cake) and I was looking forward to basking in a glut of cake-based compliments. It also happened to coincide with one of the hottest weekends of 2012.

No sooner had I set foot through the door, greeted the lovely hen, and placed my coffee cake in a prominent position in the buffet, I was accosted by one of the hen party’s stranger characters. Every hen has a peculiar friend. It’s usually me. But on this occasion, the girl – Christine – definitely took the crown.

Within minutes of meeting her, she was telling me all about a trail of failed relationships in an scarily-intense, monotone voice, while I attempted to nod sympathetically and wildly scan the room for any means of escape.

As her weary voice droned on, I peered over her shoulder at the buffet. My coffee cake, which had been lovingly hand-crafted only that very morning, was untouched, I noted, and – worse still – appeared to be MELTING in the heat. It made sense, I thought despondently: no one pitches up to a party and wants a slice of coffee cake with their cocktails.

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Midnight came and went and it was soon time to depart. Still no-one had eaten my increasingly sweaty cake.  Too big to fit into the hen’s fridge with all the bottles of bubbly, I had no choice but to scoop it back into its tin and tuck it under my arm, ready for the journey back.

After fielding a chorus of protests from well-meaning friends (Them: ‘you can’t walk back alone!’; Me: ‘I’ll be fine! I mean, have you ever heard of a murder in Center Parcs? I didn’t think so!’), I was dispatched back into the dark forest and began to trudge back to my bed-sit for one.

As I crept through the trees, I began to feel a little unnerved. It was extremely dark and there wasn’t a soul around. And I appeared to be lost. Had you happened to peer out of your Center Parcs lodge at around 1am that evening, you might have seen a dejected fairy wander past, with wilting wings and clutching a home-baked cake that no-one wanted. It was a sad old sight.

Eventually, I reached the lake. It might have been my imagination but the moon’s reflection seemed to cast a strange, ethereal glow upon the forest. I could see the bed-sit of doom across the water but no matter which path I took, I couldn’t seem to reach it.

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Some time later, I finally arrived back at my humble abode and wearily clambered into bed… only to be woke at 3am by the blaring screech of a fire alarm. Huddled outside with the other oddities until the fire officer gave the building the all-clear, I began to question the magic of Center Parcs.

The next day, I woke and realised I’d forgotten to bring my hairbrush. I also had a large, uneaten coffee cake languishing in the fridge. I wasn’t sure what to do.

At the spa later that day, I asked Crazy Christine if she happened to have a spare hairbrush I could borrow. She produced a handbag-sized brush – the kind that folds into itself that you can buy from Superdrug for a couple of pounds – or maybe even find in a Christmas cracker.

But while attempting to detangle my knotty locks, something bad happened: the feeble brush fell apart!  Scooping up the bits of plastic, I sheepishly went to break the news to Christine.

‘Broken?!’ She fixed me with a steely glare.

‘Yes,’ I stammered. ‘It just came apart…’

‘Where is the other bit of plastic? There’s a piece missing!’ she demanded.

I hastily foraged around in my bag; fortunately it was there.

She snatched it off me, and set about attempting to mend the flimsy brush, refusing to speak to me again for the entire evening.

But as I was about to depart, some helpful person suggested that as I was heading to see my parents in Lancashire the next day, I might be able to drop Crazy Christine off at Preston train station. Bizarrely, Crazy Christine seemed to think this was a great idea too.

Two hours in the car with Crazy Christine? After ‘hairbrushgate’, there was no-way I could possibly endure it. I found myself slowly nodding my head, in half-agreement.

The next morning, I rose early, donned my sunglasses and skulked through the forest, fearful that Crazy Christine might suddenly loom large, brandishing the broken hairbrush and demanding I drive her all the way back to London. I hastily scampered across the car park, leapt into my car and roared off.

I hoped, at least, the red squirrels liked my coffee cake.