Spectacular Spectacular!

Roll up, roll up! For I shall reveal my new venture. A venture that is pure adventure. The one and only... (drum roll, please...) Kirkus' Circus!

Devised by me and my travelling band of cohorts, around a table full of condiments in a dark trendy boozer that had spoons on display, Kirkus' Circus will be my life's work and inspiration. Not to mention source of substantial income as the punters come flocking in.

I, naturally, will be Ringmaster Supremo. Red tail coat and everything. I may also make a spotlit appearance as a sad Pierrot clown, complete with floppy velvet bow tie.
Twinkletoes Taffinder will be tightrope walker, her lycra-clad willowy frame lurching precariously as she tiptoes through the sky with elegance and grace.
Madame Pichon will be lion tamer, appropriate due to her tousled lionesque mane and penchant for growling. She shall crack her whip with gusto, and no doubt be fetishised by all.
Oddie will have a grotesque ventriloquist act, with Perry as her dapper dummy, placed stiffly on her knee. Lewd and crude one liners will be spontaneously conjured with quickfire wit.
The caged freakshow will be populated by us all. Dare not put your fingers through the bars, they will be bitten clean off!
Candyfloss of every colour will be available, as well as champagne poured over pyramids of babycham glasses. Punters will guzzle as they would at the fountain of eternal youth.

The set and costumes, and general ambiance, will be based on the trippy art house Derek Jarman film version of The Tempest. Dwarves dressed as Marie Antoinette, masked mannequins, Toyah Wilcox overacting Shakespearean verse, dancing sailors, monster-men sucking from their naked and obese mothers' nipples, flashes, crashes, flickering, disappearances, appearances, magic... that kind of thing. I shall travel the world with Kirkus' Circus and my troupe of dedicated performers! We'll probably be huge in Transylvania...

And if my vocation as Ringleader of my very own circus falls through (Heaven forbid!) then I always have the career of Literary Hostess to fall back on. If Lady Ottoline Violet Anne Morrell of Bedford Square could carve such a career path, then so can I! I may have to work on a more impressive name beforehand however. And befriend the glitterati of Bloomsbury. And be embroiled in an open marriage. And become bisexual. But it shall be ever so intellectually stimulating, yah, yah!

Amongst all the drunks, thugs, rudeboys, smokers and potheads, along with all the screaming, wailing, shouting, crying, effing and blinding (and worse...) of the homely haven that is Somerstown, the Adorable (and yes, they do warrant a capital A) are thankfully being both cultivated and fostered.

Three beautiful black bairns, barely beyond toddlerhood, lick Mr Whippy from cones. They get the sticky gloop all round their faces, and chuckle with gleeful mirth at each other's messy mouths. Their giggles are infectious. They run and stumble round my ankles, laughing and pointing and hanging on their mother's skirts with mucky paws.

And when I take the binbag out (at arms length and double-bagged, yuk) an Afro-haired tomboy in luminous leggings is sticking her legs into the slot for cardboard.
'Are you recycling yourself?', I ask.
'Well, I'm trying to' she replies good naturedly, 'but my bum's getting stuck'.
She is joined by a chatty little blond bespectacled girl who promptly asks Perry if he's Australian. They really hit it off. She has an eyepatch. Which he admires.
There is a third member of this miniature harem who is mute. He dangles from a tree in the background. Just watching.

All three pick daffodils. Bright yellow and green. Almost as vivid as the kids themselves.

Forget Somerstown. It should be called Springstown.

The Life and Passion of St Anna

I really do put the eek! into geek.

I've developed some unfortunate tics,
Spouting pretentious literary lyrics.

For my Romeo, alas, I'm still searching,
Due to resembling a Dickensian urchin.

Thank God we've moved on from Chaucer's time,
So enough with this ridiculous rhyme...!

Basically, I've been getting far too excited by my subject. It is not healthy.
I've been getting overly thrilled by monsters in Shakespeare, too enthusiastic about virgin martyrs having sex with Christ, well and truly fired up by the effect of Dickensian grotesques, and become positively feverish whilst contemplating rakes in Austen (not garden rakes - even I'm not that much of a geek - but the predatory dandy types).

And two members of this household (one being my good self, I'm not going to lie) made reference to the art-critic aesthete Walter Pater, the timid morality hater, in their status on Facebook.
Welcome to Nerdsville.

Never fear however. I am fighting the good fight: Low Culture vs. High Culture. As an attempt to combat this geeky takeover that seems to be occurring I have dedicatedly been swigging Lambrini like billio, committed myself to wearing charvy trakkie bottoms, and have got into the American, O.C-lite drama 90210 in a major way.

I just hope this is enough.

Beware a Pitchfork up your Ass

I have mostly been very good at keeping the devilish sensation at bay. That itching, bubbling, spumescent sensation that can threaten to boil over and burst forth from my very being in the most vile and violent of ways. Yes, I have mostly been very good at not thinking about the sofa cushions.

OCD predominantly under control. Phew.

It is only late at night, in the dark land of sleepless delirium, that I may feel the urge to dash home, rearrange, plump, straighten, and generally put right the cushions of our family sitting room that are so mistreated and abused. Which is progress.

(Actually, the more I dwell on this whilst typing, right here, right now, the more I can envisage an exhausted mother/red wine soaked father/lazy ass teenage boy abusing said cusions this very second. Must swiftly move on before I suffer a relapse and implode...)

Anyway, being aware of my 'little issue' shall we say, it amused me greatly to discover The Serpent at Home. This is a text referred to in The Moonstone by a downright irritating sourpuss called Drusilla, and is treated like her Bible. It shows how the Evil One lies in wait for us in the most domestic of places. To wit: 'The chapters best adapted to female perusal are 'Satan in the Hair Brush'; 'Satan behind the Looking Glass'; 'Satan under the Tea Table'...'

The creme de la creme of this nonsense, however, is as follows: 'Satan among the Sofa Cushions'.

I love it. A woman after my own heart.

Well they do say the devil (or, in this case, Satan) is in the detail, and I am a perfectionist after all.