polite life

Okay, I know I've gone a bit quiet lately. I've been busy. Even now, at not-quite-9 on the last Saturday morning before the clocks go back, I'm dragging furniture out to the landing and practicing the exact shade of wheedle to put in my voice when I ring our long-suffering friend of the family, the one with the estate car. And that's to say nothing of - well, the things which I'll say nothing of. Just think: team awaydays... bonding drinks (and yes, we made the jokes, it turns out we're a rather puerile team)... South London...

Well, I won't tell you what happens when you try to put a Baroque south of the river. It's like being in Australia: the water doesn't go down the plug hole the wrong way round, but it was strange suddenly to realise that the big thing at the end of the road was Tate Modern, from the back. And there's virtually no view of the Post Office Tower from anywhere down there. And the trees are smaller.

Anyway, I was drinking orange-&-soda in the pub in Southwark - the hair of that dog could have killed me - except for the last two, where they put some vodka in (but you could barely taste it). The team wrote a poem, one line each, and I brought the whole thing full circle with a killing last line. As this is a decorous, perfectly judged and always exquisite blog I can't tell you what it was about, but I made sure it had a tidy little rhyme scheme, and my colleagues did their bit with a pretty consistent iambic trimeter.

So it''s been a journey. And then, in between manky outgrown socks and what to do with all the little robots, I see that someone has broached* the halls of Baroque using a Google search on "humorous earrings."**

Oh, puh-lease.

Never, again, okay? (Except that I've just repeated the phrase, so now it will happen again. Sigh.) I learned that lesson the hard way, back in the eighties when my then sister-in-law gave me a pair of Fimo Christmas puddings on earring wire. I had to wear them on Boxing Day, and I think she may have had little parcels wrapped in real wrapping paper, with infinitesimal ribbon bows, swinging from her ears. (This would have been in Chesham, which is in Zone 152 or something; strange things happen out there at the end of the tube line.) This is not the kind of thing a girl like me forgets easily.

So, and especially with the clocks going back and numerous temptations looming in the form of Jack-o-lanterns, Christmas trees, fairy lights, little skeletons that really dance, and sweet angels in real frocks, let us just establish the ground rules. (You can see I've been on an awayday.) There is no place for humorous earrings in polite life.

Sorry. That's just how it is.

* Note: not decked

** Many apologies, incidentally, for yet another mention of these blasted Google searches. I know it looks unforgivably and inanely solipsistic, not to say showy-offy. But look at it this way: even if I were that self-regarding, what would it profit me if all I had to show for it was that my main inspiration in life came from reading my stats? You see? You're feeling more superior already, aren't you.