Hail fellows! so here we are again, this time coming to you from the heart of the West Midlands, here in dear old blightly. Today's guest on the Moatman Interviews is a connoisseur of life, a practical lady who's learned a trick or two along the way to help make the daily grind a little less grindy. A life-hacker with a gleam in her eye and dry word or two to comment on the absurdities of the modern media and consumer lifestyle. So ladies and gentleman I give you none other than Ms Loudbasket, or Hippolyta to her friends. *Hippolyta raises a mug in Boff's general direction before nabbing a hazelnut suprise*, I must say, I love the slippers madam, *Hippolyta lowers her sunglasses* don't diss the slippers mate they were a gift, ahem, no err of cause. So then to help my readers, lets begin with a little getting to know you question, I wanted to ask you if you were a character from a movie, who would you be and why?
Oh, mate. I don't really watch many movies to be honest. Everytime I go to the cinema I fall asleep and it ends up being a really expensive nap. I have seen Ferris Bueller's Day Off about twenty times though, so I think I'd like to be Ferris' girlfriend, Sloane Peterson, so that I could watch and admire as Ferris repeatedly gets away with murder, oooh or maybe Grace, headmaster Ed Rooney's secretary, so I could watch Rooney losing the plot. I'd like watch him losing the plot. Anyway, definitely someone from that film though Boff.
Boff confesses he's also something of an 80s movie fan himself, once being mistaken for Judd Nelson in his Breakfast Club hey-day. Admittedly, it was a poorly lit disco, and it was more the clobber he had on than the fizzog, but Boff still proudly tells people about his mistaken identity incident to this day. Anyway, I digress, now time for some proper questions. I know you had a fun childhood and your family are full of interesting characters, so I wanted to ask what it was like for you being a kid?
Well Boff, there are two answers to
this question, depending on my state of mind when I’m asked. I suffered from terrible
anxiety as a child (I still do) but no one realised that’s what it was. I’d
have chest pains and trouble breathing and it was written off as indigestion or
asthma, but I know now it was panic attacks. I was quite lonely and miserable
because no one understood. I don’t think I understood, to be honest, but I knew
it wasn’t indigestion. On a good day, though, I have some great memories. I had
a huge extended family and we spent a lot of time together. Someone always
seemed to be having a party at which relatives I didn’t know existed would
appear and give us sweets or money.
The adults would have a grand old time,
drinking and chatting, and we kids were allowed free to run amok until well after
midnight. My dad was a bit of a wag (still is) and was always up to some sort
of mischief. He taught us how to draw ‘cracks’ on our black hearth tiles with a
white crayon to make Mum think we’d broken them. I still maintain that’s the
only use for white crayons. Dad still plays tricks on me now. A few Christmases
ago he phoned me and said, “How long can you keep a turkey in the freezer?” and
I said, “I think it’s about six months,” and he said, “Well, that’s funny
‘cause I put one in the freezer yesterday and today it’s dead.” I can never be
sure if he’s phoning for a chat or to wind me up.
Christmas was always great fun and we were spoiled rotten. My brother and I would get up to see what Santa had left us and be blown away by how much we’d got. Then, after dinner, Dad would produce some other big present we had no idea about - one year it was a ZX Spectrum, another year we got a VCR, and another year it was cameras. My parents were by no means rich and I think Dad must have had a sideline robbing banks. I remember occasional Christmas disasters, too. Mum was a great cook, but very scatty, and one year she cooked the turkey with the giblets still inside in their plastic bag. The plastic melted and the turkey was inedible but it gave everyone a great laugh.
Ahhhh I do like your Dad, he sounds like a man after my own heart, so what nifty tricks did you learn from your parents which you still use today? perhaps your dad's approach to wrapping presents?
Well, another good Dad story is the one about the time he bought one of my cousins a tie one Christmas and rather than just fold it up and wrap it, he took it out to the garage and spent the best part of an hour cutting out a piece of wood the exact same shape as the tie. He then mounted the tie on the wood before wrapping it. I’ve never done anything so adventurous but I do like to make an effort with wrapping. Hospital corners and proper creases, not like you boys do it.
hahahahah, well I can't really argue with that one, although one year I did wrap a giant teddy bear and got through about three metres of wrapping paper. You couldn't tell what it was mind. *Boff proudly smiles to himself*. Hmmm there was something else I wanted to ask while I was here, what about the Norman Wisdom incident?
Oh, I’m
still sore about this. When I was about eight years old we went to watch a
pro-celebrity golf tournament. I was very bored and my dad gave me money to get
an ice cream. I was heading towards the ice cream van when what appeared to me
to be an old man shouted at me to get out of his way. I didn’t understand why
this man’s way was any more important than mine and I was very miffed. My dad
told me later that I had been shouted at by none other than Norman Wisdom. I
have hated that man ever since (Norman Wisdom, not my dad).
He probably had his washboard on a quick rinse cycle and had to get back, hahaha, ahhh sorry, I couldn't resist, I also wanted to ask you about consumer life-style, so, then shopping! do you have any good strategies for surviving the supermarket rush?
Well Boff, you may have heard of this amazing invention called the internet, *laughs* ahem, no really, my main strategy is to shop online. I actually quite like food shopping but the thought of doing The Big Shop in the actual supermarket gives me the fear, especially at Christmas.
Oh God, don't remind me, I get trolley rage you know, it isn't pretty, mmmm and of cause you learnt your queue strategy from your mum and aunt, care to share any good tips?
Yes, I learned
queue-hopping from my mum and Auntie Margaret. I used to go with them when they
went to M&S and they would always join the shortest queue but keep an eye
out in case other queues started moving more quickly. One particular time they
were hopping from queue to queue for several minutes before they realised that
neither of them had actually bought anything yet and they were wasting their
time.
Probably just getting in some valuable queue practice, can't have enough of that, British pastime it is. Now, I tell you what I do enjoy, is a bit of people watching, and the supermarket is the best place to see people in their natural habitat. what about you? Do you people watch in the supermarket? I always seem to get followed by the store weirdo stocking up on a years worth of loo roll? any odd encounters?
I am the store weirdo, stocking up on a year’s worth of loo roll… I don’t think I’ve had any odd encounters as such but I like having a good nosey at what people have got in their basket. That man with the tin of Lynx, the bottle of wine and two microwave lasagnes is not going to impress his date tonight… and what on earth is that woman planning to do with three celeriac?
hahahaha indeed, sounds like something you'd see on a Master Chef challenge. Talking of odd encounters, I hear you've been having a spot of bother with your bins? any cunning plans for bin management?
We went away for a week
last year and our next door neighbours must have assumed we’d be gone for a
fortnight because when we got back, they’d filled our bins with their rubbish -
they obviously thought the bins would be emptied before we got back and we’d
never know. They tried to deny it was them but their address was on one of the
boxes in the bin so I confronted them with it and they weren’t very happy.
Anyway, we recently suspected they were at it again so we took a photo of
ourselves holding a sign saying “HI, CRAIG AND SUE. USE YOUR OWN BIN!” and
taped it to the insides of our bin lids. I’d have loved to have seen their
faces when they opened the bins…
Absolutely. Sunday is ironing day and I recommend avoiding this chore by throwing the contents of the ironing basket in the bin. I did actually do this several years ago: the kids were small and very demanding, and I didn’t cope with it very well. My ironing pile was a good three feet high at one point and I took the headstaggers, as my mum would say, and chucked out the lot. Mr Loudbasket does the ironing these days…
Sounds a wise decision to me, I never really understood ironing, the clothes just get creased again don't they. Although a nicely pressed suit is a thing of beauty, so long as I don't have to be the one that does the ironing. The Wombles are quite a dab hand at chores, so I'm pretty lucky really. So then what about future ambitions, any cunning plans for world domination?
I’d settle for dominating
my own living room, to be honest… Seriously, though, I’m not massively
ambitious but I’m doing a degree at the minute so that I can get a proper job
when the children are a bit older. Hopefully then we’ll be able to afford to
install high security gates to stop the kids getting back into the house. ;)
There are so many people I’d love to meet but if I could only choose one, I’d like to ask Geoffrey Hayes if Rainbow was a hotbed of debauchery behind the scenes. A part of me rather hopes it was.
ahhh the thought of George and Zippy sharing the same pair of arms over a nice bottle of wine, does put a warm smile on my face, and with that our interview is at a close and it's Boff's turn to put the kettle on. Hippolyta, happily clip-clops her slippers as the sound of tea-spoons in mugs rattle from the kitchen.
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