Stay, little valentine, stay!

Sender: adultery@gmail.com. To: [dullniece] b.miller@hotmail.co.uk. Subject: V Day.

Oysters, roses, shampoo, yada yada. Obv choccies no good viz. Dukan diet. I’ve tried it all, Niecey. Left-field ideas, please.

Sender: b.miller@hotmail.co.uk. To: adultery@gmail.com. Subject: Re. V Day.

Fine Uncle, thanks for asking, and how are you?

Sender: adultery@gmail.com. To: [dullniece] b.miller@hotmail.co.uk. Subject: Re.re. V Day.

Was rather hoping we could skip the social niceties. I’m *desperate* for original Valentine’s gift for E and you occasionally come up with bizarre ideas that might just work.

Sender: b.miller@hotmail.co.uk. To: adultery@gmail.com.

You do know I can see your ‘cute’ bracketed nickname for me, don’t you? Why did you give her shampoo? Bit weird. Initial ideas off top of head: lingerie, shoes, diamond collar for that strange dog she carries about.

Sender: adultery@gmail.com. To: [lovelyhelpfulniece]

Shampoo = champagne, pleb. Strange dog = Bonsai the chihuahua. Your ideas = zzzz. Whither thine imagination? I’m thinking of taking her somewhere interesting. Suggestions?

Sender: b.miller@hotmail.co.uk. To: [annoyinguncle]

Ok. Marrakesh? Hindu Kush? Legoland? Rights of Man?

Sender: adultery@gmail.com. To: [lovelyhelpfulniece]

Done, done, done, the what?

Sender: b.miller@hotmail.co.uk. To: [annoyinguncle]

Just chucked in the last one to wake you after all the zzz’s. It’s a new pub here.

Sender: adultery@gmail.com. To: [lovelyhelpfulniece]

Now actually you might be onto something, O child of my brother. Emmanuelle surprisingly keen on Lewes last visit.

Sender: b.miller@hotmail.co.uk. To: [annoyinguncle]

I am meant to be working, dear Unckie. The only thing she liked was Mimi clothes shop. That won’t keep her occupied for long; what, about three hours? You’d have time to take in your favourite event, Seedy Saturday.

Sender: adultery@gmail.com. To: [cleverniece]

Now we’re cooking with gas Niecey! I’ve always had a very special time at that surprisingly-wholesome-given-its-name affair, LOL. It certainly would be left-field. And low-cost, appeasing my turbulent stock portfolio. Sweeten it with a stay in a welcoming yet cheap apartment and perhaps a trifling gee-gaw from one of your many jewellers, and Bob’s your Uncle. Well, no he’s not, I’m your Uncle. Well done, my fine ping-pong ball. Now, may I ask, what is your manfriend is getting YOU for Lover’s Day?

Sender: b.miller@hotmail.co.uk. To: [annoyinguncle]

We don’t do Valentine’s. We’re married.

Sender: adultery@gmail.com. To: [sadpatheticniece]

What a dreadful indictment of today’s youth.

Sender: b.miller@hotmail.co.uk. To: [infuriatinguncle]

I’m ploughing through a rather dense report, Unc, and I’ve read the same sentence six times. Can I go now?

Sender: adultery@gmail.com. To: [sadpatheticniece]

Certainly. I’d just like to return the favour, so ping over hubby’s email address and I’ll give him some ideas to spice up your stagnant romance.

Sender: b.miller@hotmail.co.uk. To: [infuriatinguncle]

I like all the things you dismissed at the start, esp chocolates and ‘shampoo.’

Sender: adultery@gmail.com. To: [niecehusband] j.miller@hotmail.co.uk

Excuse the intrusion, old thing, but heads up, as the youngies say: I just know that B’s PRAYING for family trip to Legoland for Valentine’s. And while you’re there, E and I are only too happy to housesit.

Beth Miller, published in Viva Lewes handbook, February 2013

Something's cookin' in the kitchen

Aww, they looked so sweet, the two of them, little faces glimmering with pride as they clutched their shiny trophies. Why no! Not the children; they haven’t won anything. I am referring to Man of the House and Grange Girl, who came joint first in last weekend’s muffin competition at Seedy Saturday. It was incredibly lucky they both won; it would’ve been pretty awkward for the next few decades if only one had triumphed. It did mean enduring an afternoon of them forcing baked goods down my neck with the entreaty, “Have another AWARD-WINNING MUFFIN!”
Back home, Man strutted round the house holding his trophy, which sounds more Julian Clary than I intend. Uncle Adultery, who was inexplicably still staying with us, admired Man’s win. “How lucky you are, Niecey, to have a life-partner who can cut it in the kitchen.”
Man preened in the mirror, using the trophy as a pretend Fonz comb.
“Life-partner, Uncle?”
“Isn’t that what the young people say? It’s unisex, you see.”
“The word unisex fell out of fashion when the last hairdressing salon dropped it in 1976.”
We watched Man running victory laps round the living room, trophy in one hand, small child in the other.
“Do I detect domestic jealousy dear Niece?”
“No. NO! What an outrage! No, no and thrice no.”
Yes. I went into the kitchen and kicked a cupboard. There are no prizes, are there, for the run-of-the-mill day-in-day-out fish fingers and macaroni cheese business of cooking? The oh-god-why-do-the-children-have-to-eat-again-I-just-gave-them-breakfast-it’s-six-pm-is-it-oh-all-right-then kind of cooking? Well there blimming ought to be. For such awesomely consistent and repetitive meal-serving there should be medals, certificates, huge boxes of chocolates and fireworks.
It being Lewes, a firework went off just as I had that thought, and I pretended it was for me and my pesto pasta, raising my arms in the air like an athlete who’s just broken through the tape at the end of a gruelling Ironman event. Which, cooking wise, I am.
Man came in and said, “You all right?”
I put my arms down hastily. “Can’t a woman have a little stretch in her own kitchen?”
“Ah,” he laughed, “But now I’m joint Muffin Master 2012…”
“Oh are you, I had no idea.”
“…perhaps we should refer to this as MY kitchen.”
I could hear the children starting to make those needing-feeding noises, like small dinosaurs.
“What a good idea.” I handed over my pinny. “Think I’ll head upstairs with a cuppa and a nice beetroot muffin.”
The children burst in as if shot from a cannon and hurled themselves into their seats, banging cutlery in the style of Henry VIII.
I sidled out as Man said, “Right kids, who fancies supper made by an award-winning chef?” And their bellowed replies followed me up the stairs. “WE WANT PIZZA FROM THE FREEZER.”

Beth Miller, 9th February 2012. Published in VivaLewes.com. Photo by Alex Leith.

Now we all know the muffin man

When Grange Girl requires your immediate attendance you don’t open your diary to find a more convenient time, nor bother her with extraneous trivia such as being in the bath. So I hurtled round, not even stopping to put on mascara, and did she thank me? Did she heck as like. She glared at her watch, told me not to let my wet hair drip on the sofa, and said, “Your eyes look piggy.”

“What’s the emergency?”

“I hope you’re hungry.”

“An eating emergency – my favourite kind!”

“I’d like you to taste test some muffins.”

“This gets better and better. Worth leaping out of a fluffy bubble bath for…” My nostrils did that outraged widening thing patented by Kenneth Williams. “What’s that smell?”

Grange Girl opened the oven and the room was filled with noxious smoke. “Yes, I did wonder if sprouts would work.”

“Brussels sprouts muffins?”

“I thought they’d be a pretty colour.” Grangey removed a tray of huge round bogies.

“I prefer chocolate muffins.”

“The point of the competition is to use vegetables which can be grown or foraged at this time of year. Like sprouts.”

“What kind of cockamamie competition is this? Don’t tell me!” I slapped my forehead. “This has to be something to do with Seedy Saturday.” I’ve got previous with Seedy Saturday. Last year I got so rained on during raffia bird feeder-making that the resulting bronchitis nearly did for me. And at the fateful Seedy Saturday three years ago I first introduced Grangey to Uncle Adultery, setting off a chain of events that began with her abandoning her marriage and ended with her creating mutant muffins.

“Yes, it’s their Muffin Master comp. ‘Show off your skills and maybe win a trophy!’” She frowned. “I don’t like that maybe.” She lined up four misshapen and whiffy monstrosities on the table, beauty pageant style. “So here we have kale and cheddar, nettle and raisin, rosehip and star anise, Brussels sprouts.”

“Because Brussels sprouts are a super-food that stand alone?” I thought longingly of my bath, and of nice food with chocolate in.

“Ok, eat up. I need an objective opinion.”

“Tasting doesn’t get much tougher than this.”

“Stop stalling.”

I reached reluctantly for the first one, and the phone rang. Grangey looked at me suspiciously. “How did you do that?”

“Me? I’m sat right here.”

“Don’t move.” She went into the living room to answer the phone and I hastily crumbled the muffins into the earth of Grangey’s weeping fig.

“No-one there. Idiots. Good god, where have all the muffins gone?”

“Long time passing,” I sang, as I reached under the table and clicked my mobile off. “They were all scrummy. The nettle one was best.” This guesstimate was based on it containing raisins, a bona fide ingredient.

“Thanks,” said Grange Girl, opening a cake tin full of blackened warty muffins. “Here’s some more experiments from yesterday for you to try.”

Beth Miller, 31^st January 2012. Published in VivaLewes.com

And I love you till my fountain pen runs dry

Last weekend I bumped into Honesty Girl, and asked if she too was going to Seedy Saturday.

She looked down her nose at me in a manner reminiscent of the great Edith Evans dismissing the very idea of a handbag (or for a more modern reference, the look on a Mexican’s face when discussing Jeremy Clarkson).

‘Good gracious no. It’s bad enough when the weather’s nice, but today…’ she gestured to the windy rain swirling round us. ‘No, today I’m going to buy up the remaining stock in Sussex Stationers.’

‘It’s such a shame, isn’t it?’

‘I’m gutted. It’s another blow; I was in a state for weeks when Pen to Paper closed. It’s a conspiracy, you know.’

‘Is it?’

She pulled me into a huddle and hissed, ‘They don’t want us to have the means of communication. Slowly they’re removing all pens, paper and chalk from the town.’

‘Chalk?’

‘Then they’ll have us just where they want us.’

‘But we’ll still have email and texts and the internet, won’t we? Who are “they” anyway?’

‘Ssssh!’ She looked round wildly, and I thought significantly, in the direction of the parking shop.

‘The NCP? But why would they…’

‘Not them. Heavens! Say no more. Walls have ears.’

She straightened up and said in her normal voice, ‘Well, better go. I want twenty tubes of Pritt. Enjoy your… seeds.’ You sad little person, she didn’t quite add.

I never worry too much about the state of my friends’ emotional wellbeing. It’s their little foibles that make them interesting. So off I went in the rain to be seedy. But after a few swaps and some merry banter in the Grange my mind started to wander, becoming preoccupied with thoughts of nice crisp pastel-coloured card, fresh packs of Berol felt-tips and multi-coloured drawing pins.

Stationery unites people. You’ll find that if you confess a deep love of paper-based items, many others will reveal the same passion. My first job was in a stationery shop, applied for as a foot fetish might seek work in Russell & Bromley. I was not only allowed but positively encouraged to rifle through rainbow post-it pads and align packs of envelopes by size. I became something of an expert on posh pens, and once sold a solid gold Mont Blanc to a rich gentleman with no taste. I had to take it out of the safe, which remains the highlight of my working life.

News that WH Smiths have bought up Sussex Stationers brings some cheer, though we don’t yet know if they’re going to Smith it up, close it, or turn it into something un-stationery. Just in case it becomes a boutique, I went to the sale and bought a pile of notepads and a packet of chalk.

‘Look!’ I showed Honesty Girl at the checkout. ‘Now they won’t be able to stop me communicating.’

She gave me that Evans/Clarkson look again. ‘It wouldn’t hurt you, actually, to communicate a bit less,’ she said.

Beth Miller, 9th February 2011. Published in VivaLewes.com

We will find it, we will bind it, we will stick it with glue, glue, glue

I didn’t go to Seedy Saturday. I was haunted by last year’s debacle, when Grange Girl arrived a married woman and left arm-in-arm with my Uncle Adultery, an application form for his dating agency tucked into her Bag for Life. She claims to be considerably happier since freed from the yoke of patriarchy, and perkily recounted all the seedy stuff I’d missed. I faded out to the sound of ‘homemade chutney’ and ‘insect homes’, and only regained consciousness when she mentioned Marguerite Patten.

Lucky I wasn’t there. I would have found it hard not to question Marguerite resentfully about her cashew nut risotto. My mother was so strangely enamoured of it, we ate nothing else during the long summer of ’76.

‘She was terrific’, said Grangey sternly. ‘She talked about the return of make do and mend.’

This phrase sends chills down my brand new cardigan. Make do and mend is dusters, fashioned from gaffer-taped Y-fronts, and home-crocheted swimming costumes that sag embarrassingly when one is thirteen and trying to impress boys at Pontin’s Holiday camp. Still, that was years ago, not that it happened (cough), so I dutifully examine the advice from Lewes District Council.

A cheeky little intro implies that flooding is entirely carbon dioxide’s fault rather than, say, casually giving planners the nod to build on flood plains, but it also offers a homespun list. I already store leftover food in the fridge – best place for it, I find – but I’d never thought of using empty bottles for homemade wine. I lost a few days on that project, and resurfaced woozily to see what else I could m d and m.

Some of the ideas seemed old-fashioned – well, all of it, obviously - but some were more recently dated, such as doctors wanting toys for their waiting rooms. Err, not the swine-flu isolation zones I’ve been in lately, which are barer than the nap on a Y-front duster. Other suggestions lacked the courage of their convictions. Turning jars into candle holders seemed reasonable, if a trifle suggestive of nothing much going on in one’s life, but the instructions concluded: ‘decorate with glass paints which can be purchased quite easily.’ Why only quite easily? Either it’s easy: you hand over money in a shop and they give you paints; or it’s difficult, e.g. there’s a worldwide shortage. And if we are making do, should we really be purchasing expensive paints? We might as well buy ready-made candle holders and use the free time to drink homemade parsnip wine.

Talking of which, apparently Marguerite described how wartime kids were fobbed off with mashed parsnip sandwiches, masquerading as banana. Given the price of Waitrose’s fair-trade bananas versus the free parsnips Grangey keeps forcing on me from her veg box, I gave this a try. Thing One spat it out, and Thing Two sobbed for rice cakes. Still, waste not want not, eh? I can scrape it off the bread and use it for my next batch of Chateau Parsnip.

Beth Miller, 10th February 2010. Published in VivaLewes.com

Anything is possible when you're sowing the seeds of love

I couldn’t think what to do with Uncle Adultery when he paid us an unscheduled visit on Saturday. In desperation I suggested the Seedy thing at the Grange Gardens and to my surprise he jumped at it.
‘Why do you call him that?’, whispered Grange Girl, gazing at him in shock and awe. Uncle Adultery always cuts a bit of a dash; doubly so in this straw-strewn tent scattered with Lewes worthies in woolly hats.
His unusual moniker is not a slur on his private life but rather his professional one: he runs a dating agency for married people who want to have affairs. I know! Whatever happened to initiative?
His slogan is ‘Attached? Yet Need a Loving Friend?’ and he has made a packet from it, for those of you recession bunnies considering a change of portfolio. His pale gold Prada suit, accessorised with purple shirt, white Italian moccasins and loud Received Pronunciation caused all heads to turn as he sauntered round the stalls, looking puzzled.
‘Dearest niece’, he boomed finally, ‘I can’t see a single thing that could be granted the nomenclature ‘seedy’. Where are the burlesque ladies? Where are the gentlemen’s etchings? Where, in short, is the va-va-voom?’
Honestly, if he didn’t exist, I’d have invented him. Grange Girl pretended she wasn’t with us, and hid under a bookstall selling tomes such as ‘Apocalypse Now: Use String to Protect Your Family’ and ‘Yum! Mung Beans!’ I’d been interested to see Grangey and Uncle A together as I couldn’t imagine two more different universes, but she gestured at me to make him go away.
My Uncle gave one last hopeless sweep of the room to ensure he wasn’t missing a pole-dancing display somewhere, then allowed me to show him round.
At first he was impressed: ‘They do your garden for free here, Niecey! They charge £25 an hour in Kensington!’
I gently explained the principle behind land-share, whereby people with gardens share them with people without for mutual gain and fresh veggies, but he just nodded as though I were simple and said, ‘Yes! Free gardening!’
However, he was confused by the man giving away small packets of compost (‘Yes, dear fellow, but why would I want it if you value it so little?’) and completely mystified by the seed swapping element of the day.
‘Now let me just see if I’ve got this straight’, he harangued them. ‘I give you some SEEDS’ - pronounced as though it were a foreign word - ‘and you give me some different SEEDS?’ They nodded, uncertainly. ‘And then what?’ he cried, ‘Where will it all end?’
At this point I sidled off to spend a futile yet pleasant hour milling flour. I was rather astonished, on my return, to see Uncle and Grange Girl sitting on the window ledge in the foyer, talking intently. As I approached, I heard her say, ‘Really? That’s extremely interesting’, and she twisted her wedding ring round and round.

Beth Miller, 2nd February 2009. Published in Vivalewes.com, and in Viva Lewes magazine, February 2010. Photo taken by Alex Leith