American Idiom

“Love, do I talk entirely in obscure English idioms?” asked The Mushroom after a day at playgroup.

My Dad was sitting on the sofa, clearly trying to think of an obscure English idiom to use in reply, but was far too tired from spending the day trying to persuade his pupils that saying ‘Hitler was a great leader’ is not the same as saying, ‘I love, Hitler, me. I think he was great.’

My Dad has a bit of a problem with some of his pupils insomuch as they take everything he says literally, and pretty much everything my Dad says is sarcastic. So far, the main beliefs held about him by his pupils are:

1. That he wants to be a table.

2. That the character of ‘Maverick’ in ‘Top Gun’ was based on him.

3. That the character of Hans Solo was also based on him.

4. That when he has a load of essays due in, he gets so excited he can’t sleep.

5. That he loves Adolf Hitler.

Now, not even Kev From The Haworth, who collects Nazi memorabilia, has some suspect tattoos and probably votes BNP actually loves Adolf Hitler. Okay, maybe Kev From The Haworth isn’t the best example as on second thoughts perhaps he does love him a bit, but in general, as a rule, people think Adolf Hitler was a bit nasty. Wikipedia is certainly quite harsh about him.

“Yeah.” he sighed. “Why?”

“Because people kept looking at me blankly, and then asking me what I meant.”

“What did you say?”

“Much of a muchness.”

“And?”

“Swings and roundabouts.”

“Anything else?”

“I think I referred to someone as ’spitting feathers’. Oh, and a little boy was being silly and I said he would be hoisted by his own petard. And I think I might have used ‘all talk and no trousers’. And ‘plain as a pikestaff’. Oh, and the use of Lysol spray to clean the playroom was good cos an ounce of prevention was worth a pound of cure.”

“Love, were you auditioning for a role as a teacher on ‘Grange Hill’? Did you refer to anyone as ‘my boy’?”

If the people at playgroup are anything like my Dad’s pupils, they will, thus, think The Mushroom was talking about someone who likes to eat birds whilst going on fairground rides, half naked, talking a lot. The other idioms she used would just have sounded like nonsense. Seriously, what does ‘much of a muchness’ even mean? And who uses it? If it doesn’t mean anything, why say it? Is it just a filler, like talking about the weather (a short conversation here. ‘It’s frigging freezing.’, ’Yes, yes it is.’  The End)?  The thing is, The Mushroom uses them all the time. In fact, she uses bits of idioms, often followed by ‘et cetera’, (‘Oooh, well, when the scales fall, et cetera…’, ‘OOh, you know, beard the lion, etc…’, ‘Ooh, well, run it up the flagpole et cetera, eh?’ – and these are all taken from one overheard Skype conversation between The Mushroom and her mother, who possibly uses even more idioms than she does. It’s like a secret code which only the two of them understand. I’ve also just realised that perhaps The Mushroom is also excessive in her use of the sound ‘Oooh!’, but she doesn’t get out much, so I’m not going to judge). I’m sure speaking like this would be grand if you were, shall we say, a minor character in ‘Far From the Madding Crowd’, like one of those country wenches or something but, if you’re a Canadian playgroup supervisor, it might leave you stumped.

Whilst my Dad’s pupils may commit the crime of being too literal, The Mushroom commits the crime of never, ever simply saying what she means. I don’t know if this is a human thing, or an English thing, or a lady human thing, or an English lady human thing or, indeed, if it is just The Mushroom.

“Can I get away with this?” she asks my Dad, emerging from the bedroom wearing a pair of leggings purchased via the wonder that is Ebay.

My Dad looks trapped. “In what way, ‘get away with’?”

She glares.

“It’s a simple enough question. Can I get away with this?”

My Dad takes a deep breath. “If you mean, ‘Can I get away with this, or do I look fat?’, then the answer is yes, you can get away with it and no, you do not look fat. If you, however, mean, ‘Can I get away with this, or do I look like Max Wall?’, then the answer is no, you cannot get away with it, and yes, you do look like Max Wall.” He breathes out. “Okay?”

Women are odd. The Mushroom is totally okay with this, even though, in a wonderfully English, roundabout way, my Dad just said that the new leggings make her look like a tit. He didn’t, however, say she looked fat, so that’s all fine then.

Can I just add that, from a furry mammal’s perspective, leggings are one of the oddest sartorial choices a person can make. The only thing odder is high heels. I have noticed that The Mushroom hasn’t put on a pair of high heels since she got here, and I suspect this is because she, too, checked Wikipedia and is wearing flat shoes so she can run when she sees a cougar. High heels make the person wearing them stick their bottom out at an unatural angle and then totter. It makes them look a bit like they want a poo. Perhaps this is the point, and I have missed this aspect of the human mating ritual.

On an entirely different note, Fluffy Usurper has double jointed back legs. Freak.

Live or Let Drive

The Mushroom is learning to drive.

I mean this in the loosest possible sense.

It would probably be more accurate to say that The Mushroom has promised she will learn to drive, has been offered driving lessons by no less than three people, and has yet to actually look at, let alone take, the theory test necessary in order for her legally to sit behind the wheel of a car in Canada.

I think The Mushroom might be scared of driving. I don’t entirely blame her; cars are useful for sitting on when it’s warm, sitting under when it’s wet, and avoiding when they’re in motion, but otherwise, I’m not a massive fan myself.

“Have you looked at the theory test yet?” asked my Dad, again.

The Mushroom looked about her for a diversion. The Baby was building a tower. Fluffy Usurper was eating my food. There was nothing else. It’s a very small flat.

“There really isn’t any point.” she eventually said.

“Why? “

“Because I can’t see over the steering wheel of the Jeep so we’d have to get another car first.”

“Or I could buy you a cushion.”

The Mushroom looked a bit panicky. “I don’t really think a new driver could drive confidently on a cushion. What if I needed to reach the pedals really quickly? I’d be further up if I were on a cushion. I might not be able to reach the pedals at all. See?”

“Love,” said my Dad, beginning to look a little bit strained, “Short people do drive. Short people even drive Jeeps.”

She was beginning to babble now. “But I’m really really short.  Almost freakishly, some might say. I’m sure when Jeep were designing their Jeeps they didn’t think about how short some people could be and the whole, do I see over the steering wheel or do I reach the pedals dilemma that being very short can result in. In a Jeep.”

My Dad looked down and shook his head. “You promised.”

The Mushroom gave a little grunt of defeat. “Alright, I’ll look at it tonight.”

“And then I’ll take you out on the road.”

He had won up to that point. The Mushroom will never allow my Dad to teach her to drive. She nearly killed him when he tried to teach her to make an omelette (“Are you patronising me?”, “No, all I’m saying is that egg shell doesn’t go in an omelette.”, “Don’t frigging patronize me, I know what goes in an omelette.”, “Then why did you ask me to teach you how to make an omelette?”, “Are you patronising me?” etc), and it was a very frightening time the week he tried to be her running coach (“Why did you laugh when I was sick? What’s funny about being sick?”, “Everything’s funny about being sick”, “And why did you have to run up the hill backwards when I was being sick?”, “I was being supportive, by watching you being sick.”, “And laughing.”, “And laughing a bit.”, “I hate you.”, “I know.”), so teaching her to drive, a much bigger thing with many more ramifications than omelets or running, would be a nightmare.

“Or maybe not. Maybe Tracy will.” he added in a moment of wisdom.

I have some serious concerns regarding The Mushroom learning to drive. I am at a loss as to why my Dad is encouraging her.

1. The Mushroom cannot concentrate on more than one thing at any given time. This is probably why she can’t cook. She focuses so hard on one aspect of the meal, let’s say, what’s in the oven (you’d think it wouldn’t need concentration. It doesn’t. You put it in, it cooks, you keep an eye on the time, you take it out. I could do it, if they bought me little kitty oven gloves, and a stool, and some sort of brace for my back so I could take the weight of a baking tray. But The Mushroom seems to believe that the cooking is an act of will, so stares through the glass panel at whatever is in the oven, magicking the meat brown with her eyes) that she entirely forgets to put any water in the pan to steam vegetables, burns the pan and sets off the smoke alarm. As driving seems to require you to concentrate on at least two things (what’s behind you and what’s in front of you, and probably some other things that I am simply unaware as, whenever I’ve been in a car, I’ve never paid that much attention knowing, as I do, that the likelihood of any Ford Dealership ever handing over to me the keys to a vehicle is slim), she’s buggered.

2. The Mushroom is the clumsiest person I know. She has broken her toes, so far, seven times. Six of those times, it was by walking into furniture. Once, it was by dropping a tin of Heinz ‘Big Soup’ on her foot, thus causing a hairline fracture on her big toe. Her phone call to work was brilliant.

“So I won’t be in today, cos I’ve got to go to hospital. Yeah, yeah, no, I’m okay, I’ve broken my toe. My big toe. Yeah, yeah, it does hurt. Erm, well, I dropped something on it. Sorry? Oh, erm, a tin of soup. Heinz Big Soup. [Pause.] Yeah, they are heavy. [Pause.] Yes, yes, must be all the potato chunks.”

3. She has no spatial awareness. At all. See number 2.

Now, if The Mushroom cannot safely negotiate her way around a basement, or round a tin of Heinz ‘Big Soup’, I would hazard a guess getting a 4×4 out of the driveway and onto Route 16 to Lloydminster would be a tad tricky. At least here the roads are straight, I can’t even begin to imagine the trauma she’d go through trying to negotiate a mini-roundabout.

She hasn’t started looking at the theory test yet, anyhoo. She was last seen nibbling a Hershey bar and browsing the Topshop website, mumbling something about jumpers. The roads are Mushroom free for a while yet.

Long Winter Nights

“Right, baby, let’s go for a bath!” announces The Mushroom.

“Baaa!” shouts The Baby in response.

“She said ‘bath’!” exclaims The Mushroom.

My Dad looks up from his game of ‘Big Tanks In Some Battle Loosely Connected To The Second World War’. “No, my sunbeam, she said, ‘Baaa’. She’s impersonating a sheep. She did not say ‘bath’.”

The Mushroom looked as if she had just been slapped. My Dad prepared himself for getting actually slapped. “She says ‘bath’ better than you do.”

Aah, yes. What a childish retort, you may be thinking. Of course my Dad, a 39 year old man, can say ‘Bath’ better than his one year old daughter. Hmm. In theory, absolutely. But here, The Mushroom was mentioning the elephant in the room. The fact – and this can only be said as a whisper – that she is not really a Northerner. And my Dad very, very, very much is.

The Mushroom is, in the world of accents, a big fat fake. She is, in fact, Canadian. She is, specifically, Québécois. She lived for a bit in London, in the Midlands, in Liverpool, in Ireland and her parents moved to Hull when she was 14, so she can, just, maybe, claim to be from Hull. Her accent is completely screwed. Most of the time, she speaks like she is a Southerner. In truth, she should sound like Celine Dion, via East Yorkshire. When she talks to Northern Friends, her accent morphs; she has a friend from Cleethorpes who, within about three minutes, seems to turn The Mushroom into some sort of Pigeon Fancier with a whippet. ‘Oh, hello, how lovely to speak to you’, the conversation will begin, and within seconds it is, ‘Aye, aye, ay oop luv, lemme pud kettle on’ etc. Fraud.

Anyhoo, The Mushroom says ‘barth’. My Dad says ‘Baff’. The Baby says ‘Baa’. So they’re all wrong. End of.

The advent of full conversation from The Baby has made me feel betrayed. I thought I had a little partner there. The Baby and me, in our speechless world, against Fluffy Usurper The Anti-Christ. When we want something, she cries, I miaow. I thought that maybe, over time, we’d develop our own rudimentary sign language; two tail twitches, for example, would mean ‘Please pick up Fluffy Usurper and throw him out of the window’. But this is not to be. She is joining the ranks of the other humans, and I am left to stalk within the confines of my Basement Suite, Fluffy Usurper hanging round my neck like some sort of furry shrug, attached to my skin by his claws. The little shit.

I don’t blame The Baby, though. Winter is going on forever, and talking must while away the time. The Mushroom has taken to baking inedible scones, which I’m sure would be edible if she just accepted that some food products do require a little bit of salt and sugar, neither of which are allowed. Fluffy Usurper likes them, however, which is handy for my Dad who daren’t say anything to The Mushroom and sneaks little handfuls of them to the little furry freak when she isn’t looking.

“So, what have you been up to?” asks The Mushroom’s mother via Skype. The Mushroom stares out of the window. Or tries to. She is, actually, too short to stare out of the window, the window being at ceiling height, so, if I were to be literal, she stares in the direction of the window.

“I have made scones.” she eventually replies.

“Were they nice?” asks The Mushroom’s mother.

“No.”

Things are looking up for The Mushroom, though, because my lovely friend Brian is now driving her the eight thousand miles to the nearest town to go to a playgroup, a thing she actively avoided whilst in Hull and now seeks out like an Exocet missile. Apparently, there are people there. The Mushroom likes this.

My Dad appears to be whiling away the long winter nights by singing to The Baby. How lovely, you may be thinking. How very ‘new man’. What is he singing? Lullabies? Nursery rhymes? Old songs from children’s programmes of yore?

“One, two, three -”

The Mushroom stops in her inedible scone endeavour with a look of abject horror on her face.

I recognised the tune too. My Dad is singing Britney. Good ol’ Britney. Even to my castrated cat ears, I can tell it’s not a song Mary Poppins would sing.

The Baby looked up at him expectantly. The Mushroom stood with a rolling pin in her hand. Fluffy Usurper sat in the corner quietly reading the Book of Revelations and getting ideas. My Dad looked momentarily panicked. Here he was, in a basement suite in the middle of Saskatchewan, with a baby, a wife who can’t cook but keeps trying to who was currently wielding a rolling pin, the Anti-Christ and me, and he was about to sing ‘3′ by Britney Spears.

“-I’m a little bit of cheese, and little bits of cheese like to bend at the knees and one, two, three, I’ve been drinking anti-freeze…”

Phewsers. He changed the lyrics just in time. Everyone resumed their activities; The Mushroom pounded her dough, The Baby danced, Fluffy Usurper turned a page. I’d be interested in finding out more about that cheese, though.

Bah Humbug

Christmas is different now. In the days before The Baby, I got left alone with a catnip treat for most of the morning whilst The Mushroom and my Dad drank bubbly alcoholic beverages after opening presents of ridiculous decadence (“What do you want for Christmas, darling?” “Myrrh.”, “Right you are!”), then I got a meaty treat whilst they cooked, slurred and ate dinner, and then I went to bed whilst they fell asleep on the sofa, alcoholic steam oozing off their bodies, watching ‘True Romance’ on DVD. Or something like that.

Not now.

“What do you want for Christmas, honey?”, my Dad asked some weeks ago.

“Creme de la Mer.”

He looked at her.

“Doesn’t that cost about a thousand dollars?”

“Yes.”

“Seriously, that’s what you want? “

“Yes. Yes, that’s what I want. “

“Even though I couldn’t afford to get you anything other than that?”

“Yes. Yes, that is what I want”, she repeated, in a disturbingly android fashion.

“It’s not magical, you know.”

Oh. Oh dear. Now, I’m a cat, but even I know what an utterly wrong thing that was to say. It is a sentence that shows the staggering difference between man humans and lady humans.

What my Dad meant by, ‘It’s not magical, you know’  is, ‘This cream is a rip off. And anyway, your face is fine.’.

What The Mushroom heard was, ‘There is no point buying this cream, because your crone like features are beyond repair. Whilst I think about it, you actually bear a startling resemblance to my Gran.’

The Mushroom’s eyes began to fill with tears. Her face contorted in a ‘do I cry, do I knee you really hard in the gonads?’ way.

“No, no, no, I meant, oh, bollocks, I didn’t mean, okay, yes, absolutely, if that’s what you want, of course. Of course. I just think it’s a rip off. And that you’re beautiful. I think you’re very beautiful. You’re very beautiful to me.”

Mistake number two. Never, ever say to a lady human that they are beautiful ‘to you’. The implication there is that to everyone else, they look like Yoda. However, The Mushroom let it fly, cos she was getting her 0.5 ounce pot of battered sea weed or whatever it is, and she was thus happy.

So, Christmas came, and The Mushroom got her box of magical cream, my Dad got some things The Mushroom ordered three months ago off the internet in a moment of foresight based on the abject lack of shops within a 100 mile radius, unless you count ‘Walmart’, ‘Canadian Tire’ (which sells more than tires, apparently) and ‘Scrapbook Cottage’, none of which would have supplied gifts my Dad would have appreciated (‘Happy Christmas! Have some bathroom scrubbers, a decorative letter ‘D’ made out of felt, and a hose!’), and The Baby got all the brightly coloured, battery-operated, noise making, singing bits of plastic left in Saskatoon. One of these is a dancing marigold, which seems to have been designed based loosely on someone’s rather dodgy acid trip.

What did you get, Mr Zeebling? Some catnip, perchance? Well, I got two things.  I got a lovely toy mouse from my lovely friend Brian. And I got some tartar control ‘treats’ from my Dad.

TARTAR CONTROL? What the frig is ‘tartar’? And maybe I don’t need my tartar controlling. Maybe I like my tartar. Maybe I am a tartar. It sounds like some kind of warrior.  Does my Dad think I’m a warrior who needs controlling?  Cos seriously, it’s me who’s getting beaten up in this house, what with Fluffy McAnti-Christ hurling himself, claws spread, at my neck. The last thing I want is to control my tartar, then, I want to build my tartar up like a prize pig.

Anyhoo, Christmas revolves a lot less around bubbly booze and much more around plastic. I think this is called evolution. Some traditions, however, stay the same. Christmas dinner. The pulling of crackers. The donning of Christmas hats from aforementioned crackers. The reading of Christmas cracker jokes.

“What does your joke say?”, asked The Mushroom.

My Dad studied it. “Oiste el cuento del perro que se fue al circo de pulgas?”

The Mushroom stared at him, fork hovering above a potato. My Dad continued to look at his joke.

“No, que paso? Se llevo todos los artistas.”

The Mushroom took a bite of potato. “Excellent. Love, why is there pink fluid dripping down your face?”

My Dad looked in the mirror. “It appears my party hat is leaking.”

“Where in the name of arse did you get these crackers?”

My Dad looked sheepish. “Walmart.”

“I think next year, get them from M&S and ship them over. What’s your toy?”

My Dad studied a cardboard square. “A mystery calculator. Yours?”

“A plastic deer.”

So, did the small number of gifts for The Mushroom and my Dad, the lack of booze, the shite and perhaps toxic crackers ruin Christmas? Oddly, they seemed to have a great time. The Baby squealed and clapped and ran and did all sorts of things which continue to prove her status as the Messiah, and my Dad and The Mushroom just kind of stared and cuddled and smiled and muttered things about her being the Messiah.

My Christmas treat, even better than the toy mouse, was Fluffy Usurper’s little mishap. If you’re going to jump around the bathroom, little fur ball, check the toilet lid is down. He spent the day trying to lick the pine fresh smell off his fur. This was an absolute result. If I could laugh, I think I might have had a little mishap. As it is, I spent the day reclining and accidentally nibbling the tartar control treats left on the edge of the sofa for me.

These tartar control things are delicious. Maybe I can allow my tartar to be controlled a little bit then.

Milestones

Chicken goujons are The Mushroom’s Everest.

It seems such a simple meal. Get some chicken. Cut said chicken into finger size strips. Coat them in breadcrumbs, cook at 180 degrees for 20 minutes, and job done. And I’m sure that had The Mushroom done this, they would have turned out fine. Instead, she:

1. Coated them in a strange cheesy breadcrumb mixture to which she added cinnamon. She did not mean to add cinnamon, she meant to add cumin, but they, and I quote, ‘look the same’. They don’t smell the same, though, do they? Or have the same name on the jar? No. No matter, she still tried to make them again, this time:

2. She mixed apple and pear in with the chicken, which this time was minced, then coated them in a non-cheesy breadcrumb mixture with about 250g of cumin. She didn’t mean to add cumin. She meant to add cinnamon. See above.

3. This didn’t stop her trying to make them again. This time she didn’t add any cumin or cinnamon. She did, however, just like the first two times, cook them for fifty minutes instead of twenty because ‘chicken makes her nervous’. So there were not so much chicken goujons, as chicken rocks.

On all three occasions my Dad ate them. By the third, though, the writing was on the wall.

“Why have you got so much salsa on your plate?” The Mushroom asked my Dad, who had coated the chickeny-spears with a mixture of HP sauce and salsa dip.

He swallowed. ” I really like salsa.”

“Do you not like your dinner?”, The Mushroom stared, wide-eyed, unable to believe that she might have cocked up chicken frigging goujons. Again.

My Dad quickly ate a couple more goujons. Well, quickly-ish. They really did seem to be very hard.

“It’s lovely.”

The Mushroom bit into one. She put it down.

“They’re shit again.”

My Dad put down his knife and fork.

“Yes, love. Yes, they are shit. But it’s the effort that counts and I think that’s lovely. Here, do you want some salsa?”

The Mushroom looked close to tears. This had been a record for attempting something new, apart from the knitting adventure she went on, which is, strictly speaking, still in progress as she has to finish the scarf for her friend that she promised her 18 months ago. It’s not so much an adventure, then, as she can only knit in lines, hence can only make scarves. However, she has never cried about the knitting, she just got a bit bored of knitting lines.

“I can’t cook. I hate cooking. It’s shit.  I hate doing housework and I hate doing laundry and I hate cooking and it’s shit.”

“But you said you liked making dinner!”

“When did I say that?”

My Dad paused to think.

“Maybe last March.”

“Well, maybe I liked it then. I don’t like it now.”

“Can I cook, then? I like cooking.”

The Mushroom looked at him with a kind of raw adoration.

“I love you. You make really nice food. Can I throw this shite away now, and can you make us fajitas?”

My Dad smiled the smile of a man who is appreciated. The Baby continued to drum what sounded very much like the beat of ‘I feel love’ by Bronski Beat with her chicken goujon. The natural order of things began to be resumed.

“I still have to do the housework and the laundry though?”, asked The Mushroom.

“Erm, well, that would be nice, as I’m at work.”

The Mushroom looked downcast.

“Hey, that sounds like ‘I feel love’ by Bronski Beat! Wow!”, said my Dad, in a bid to distract The Mushroom.

Yes, my Dad has joined The Mushroom in her ‘My Baby is the Messiah!’ approach to parenthood. I can’t put my paw on when this happened, but one day, he was saying no, The Baby had not said ‘Bath’, she had said ‘Baa!’ and was clearly impersonating a sheep, to saying yes, yes indeedy, The Baby had said ‘Bath’ and this was clearly a sign that she was Christ. How this ties in with my Dad’s atheism I don’t know. Does this make him God? I don’t think he’d be very good at being God. I think he drinks too much beer. I simply can’t imagine that God is a big drinker, or all Friday and Saturday night prayers would be redundant and, traditionally, weekends are big prayer days.

I’m amazed they haven’t yet seen the down side of the talking business. You can bet any money you like that in any social situation like, for example, the school Christmas carol concert, it won’t be ‘Bath’, or ‘Book’  The Baby will be shouting out in the pause between verses of ‘Hark the Herald Angels Sing’. Nope. It will be ‘Boobie!’, said whilst trying to hoist one out of The Mushroom’s jumper.

No good comes from being a hippy.

The Ice Man Cometh

‘So how was it?’, asked my Dad, as The Mushroom returned from her evening with The Evangelist, postponed to last Sunday due to a double booking.

The Mushroom began to unpeel herself. On Sunday, it was -33. She had eighteen layers on.

“Hang on.”, she muffled from under her ski mask.

“You look nice.”

She didn’t. She had so many coats on she was almost as wide as she is tall. She had borrowed one of The Baby’s hats, was wearing a ‘Go Canada!’ ski mask and the only indication that she was actually a human was the vague shape of legs at the bottom end of her weird square shape.

“Thuck off.”

“So”, he  asked again as the last of her coats came off, “tell all. How was it?”

“Surreal.”

“Surreal? How so?”

Apparently, it started off fairly normally. A preacher. A congregation. The preacher talking about God and Christmas. Some songs. A bit of a tambourine. Some hand waving. Much talk about salvation. All above board. And then the puppet show began.

“A what?”

A puppet show, claimed The Mushroom. Purple puppets with plastic guitars miming to a Christ-ified version of Kenny Loggins’s ‘Danger Zone’ from that classic 80’s film,  ’Top Gun’.

“‘Danger Zone’? That’s a weird choice.Doesn’t really work for church.”

“It did work, because it had been changed.It was called ‘Manger Zone’”

My Dad fell off the sofa.

“‘There were Angels at the Manger Zone. Wise Men at the Manger Zone’. But nobody else was laughing so I had to make out I was having some sort of seizure. “

“And then what happened?”

“Well, then the Evangelist started talking a lot about looking out for the enemies of God. But I kind of stopped listening then cos I was mesmerized by his beard.”

“Enemies of God? Like, who?”

“I think we’re supposed to be on the look out for the anti-Christ.”

They both turned to look at the innocent looking ball of white fur curled up on the sofa, one gimletty eye open.

Fluffy Usurper.

Evidence that Fluffy Usurper is the anti-Christ:

1. He is violent. I mean, really violent. He chases me around the flat. I am about five times his size. He either doesn’t know this, or he doesn’t care. Even when I whack him one, he chases after me again and then jumps onto my neck. Not. Keen.

2. He’s a sneaky little bastard. He chases me. He leaps onto my neck. I slap him. He rolls onto his back and cranes his neck back, and pulls his, ‘Oooh, look at me, I’m a fluffy white kitten, don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me!’ face and, just as I think, oh, bollocks to this, he’s just a fluffy white kitten, the shit jumps on my neck again.

3. He attacks inanimate objects.

4. His miaow does not sound like a cat. He sounds like a frigging wolf. The Mushroom has to lock him in the bathroom sometimes when he’s ‘getting a bit feral’, and he howls like something out of ‘Dracula’.

5. He thinks The Mushroom’s hair is his mother. I don’t think Nostradamus mentioned this specifically as a trait of the anti-christ, but it’s not normal, is it? This is where he chooses to sleep. On/in The Mushroom’s hair. If she’s sitting on the sofa the freak climbs up to nest there. I have to say, I just don’t like it. There’s something disconcerting about looking across the room at a woman with a big mane of black hair and a kitten asleep on top of it. It’s all a bit too McQueen for my liking.

6. He just is. The End.

“He’s ever so cute when he’s sleepy, though!”, attempts The Mushroom in Fluffy Usurper’s defence, as my Dad, once again,  gingerly removes him from the side of his face.

“I’m sure Pol Pot was a love when he was tired too, but I wouldn’t want him for a pet.” He puts Fluffy Usurper in the bathroom. “He’ll be better when he gets his bits clipped.” The howling begins. “I hope.”

Aha! Ahahahaha! Oh, Fluffy, I know what’s a-coming. Or, rather, I know what’s a-going. Your gonads, my friend.

Fluffy Usurper, at this point, starts to make some headway in his bid to scratch his way through the door. Perhaps he heard.

“We could always let him outside.”, my Dad joked. Half joked, anyway.

Aah, the outside. We don’t really go there anymore. My Dad has to, but he dresses up as a bear to do it. The Mushroom was driven the 15 metres or so it is to the church for her evening of anti-Christ-spotting puppetry, and it took her nearly ten minutes to get out of all the layers she had to put on just to get to the car. All we do is watch the wonderful Canadian TV phenomenon that is the Weather Network and put jumpers on. On the map of Canada today on the Weather Network, it just had a big blue bit with the word ‘COLD’ written across it for Saskatchewan. It is, currently,  -35. That is not ‘COLD’. That is ARCTIC. When my Dad got back from work today, he had an icicle hanging from one of his nostrils.

The Mushroom is transfixed by the Weather Network. She doesn’t get out much. She doesn’t really get out at all, it’s -35.

“Look! Look! It’s going to be -38 tomorrow!”, she exclaimed, excitedly.

“Sweetheart, if you’re going to tell me every time the numbers on the Weather Network change, it’s going to be a long, long winter.”, he replied.

“My beloved, we live in a frigging basement, we have five hours of daylight  that we don’t see because we only have one window, it’s colder, officially, then the North Pole and it doesn’t start to warm up until March. So yes, yes, regardless of my weather updates, it is going to be a long winter.”

My Dad picks up The Baby and strokes her head. She grins and tries to pull off his nose. He glances in the direction of The Mushroom, who is staring yearningly at the small square of glass by the ceiling that is our window.

“Oh dear.”, he mumbles.

Weight Watchers

“Blimey, Switzerland has banned minarets!”, observed my Dad, as he lounged in his recently acquired lounge pants, watching the news. It says a great deal about the social activity of the area that he has chosen to buy trousers in which to ‘lounge’, unlike the days of yore when he bought items like ‘Disco Shirts’.

The Mushroom looked perplexed. “Minarets? Why?”

“I suppose the Swiss see it as a political statement or something.”, he replied.

“I don’t get it.” The Mushroom’s brow furrowed, like the time about six weeks after The Baby was born when she ventured into the kitchen, looked at the appliances, found herself putting laundry into the fridge, cried, and had to be escorted out. “How can minarets be political? Is it a sexism thing?”

My Dad turned around to look at her.

“Well, no, I don’t think so. Why would it be sexism?”

“I don’t know, maybe cos they’re dancers, but personally I’d have thought cheerleaders would have been more offensive. Have they banned those too?”

My Dad stared at her. A ball of tumbleweed rolled past the tiny, floor level window. Literally.

“Minarets, love. MINARETS. Not Majorettes.”

The Mushroom looked down. “Oh.”

There was a silence. I could tell they were both thinking about the time she thought Maris Pipers were called ‘Morris Pipers’ and were in some way connected to Morris Dancers. Neither brought this up, though. The Mushroom wouldn’t out of embarrassment. My Dad wouldn’t out of fear of having the tupperware dish within reach of The Mushroom being hurled at him.

“Anyhoo, where’s Fatty?”, asked my Dad, in a bit to change the subject and also to distract The Mushroom from the fact that they live in a place where there is, really, tumbleweed.

Hmm. I am tiring a little of the regular asides regarding my weight. I have put weight on. A bit. I have put a bit of weight on. Well, some. Quite a lot. I now weigh the same as a basset hound. Still, nobody likes to be referred to as ‘Fatty’ by one’s father, does one?

Fluffy Usurper isn’t fat. He doesn’t get called ‘Fatty’.

“How much are you feeding him?”, asked my Dad the other day, looking at the side of my bag of Iams, after another observation of my increasing girth.

“I’m just filling his bowl.”, replied The Mushroom, bin liner in hand, going in to the spare room to change my litter tray. A clue, there, my friend. A cat’s litter tray should only really need changing once a week and even then, it shouldn’t be much to write home about. My litter tray?  It looks like The Rockies in there.

“It says here a grown cat should have a cup of this a day. Would you say a cup full is a bowl full?”

There was no answer.

“How much would you say a bowl full was, then?”

I can see smugness creep into my Dad’s face. The Mushroom is Always Right in all things food related. Salt? Bad. Saturated fats? Bad. Eating chips with every meal and claiming a potato is a vegetable so it’s okay? Bad. Can I have cake for breakfast? No you frigging can’t. Feeding your cat enough to keep a St Bernard? Very Bad.

“I would say it is about five cups’ full. “, she admits.

“So we’ve been feeding Zeebs five times as much food as he needs.”

“Yes.”

There was a pause.

“Oops.”

Oops? What are you, some kind of Feeder like those people in Ohio who tube feed their wives lard to stop them running away with the newsagent  or something? Five times the amount of food I need? This is outrageous!

“Aren’t cats supposed to self-regulate what they eat, though?”, she thought to retort. Don’t try and turn this around on me, lady.  Anyway, it was a bit late, as she’d already said ‘oops’, a universally acknowledged statement of guilt.

“I think he’s been comfort eating because he’s depressed because we got a kitten.”, says my Dad.

I like your argument, Dad. Afterall, it’s nothing new. Younger, sleeker model arrives; older, less fluffy model comfort eats meaty biscuits. I’m sure it’s been happening to the Mormons for years. It has not, however, been happening here. Cos Fluffy Usurper’s popularity is on the wane.

The only person who is allowed to disturb The Mushroom’s sleep is The Baby. If anyone else does this, the full extent of The Mushroom’s Madness is unveiled.  If my Dad has the TV on an iota too loud, say, things will be thrown from the bedroom in his direction until he either turns it down or she is forced to leave the bedroom and cut the plug off with her bare teeth. So, thus, what you categorically do not do at three o’clock in the morning is sink your jaws into The Mushroom’s arm and try and play chase with it.

“This thing is frigging feral!”, she mutters, removing his teeth from her flesh and removing him from the room.

Poor Fluffy Usurper, I thought, as I lounged in my own lounge fur, nestled into the warmth of duvet. Exiled to the bathroom for the night for biting arms. Gutted. Tomorrow, I mused, I’ll teach you how to pull hair with your teeth.

So why am I putting on weight? I’m putting on weight because they’re putting too much food in my bowl, because I can’t really go outside cos it’s frigging freezing and there’s a cat next door who is the size of a Volvo and, recently, because I’ve discovered where they keep the Baby Iams and they are lush.

And with that thought I stretched, purring mightily. Maybe having a kitten is not so bad after all.

Double Standards

One of the best things about the recent ban on swearing prompted by the fact that The Baby is making unintelligible sounds that The Mushroom thinks are words is the fact that my Dad and The Mushroom can’t swear at each other any more. My Dad and The Mushroom seem to have based their marriage on their ability to insult each other, in jest, they claim, all day long. This has led to the regular use of the word ‘turd’, as in, ‘You snivelling little turd’, which I rather liked, actually, although my Dad, who was on the receiving end of this phrase, seemed less keen.

Is ‘turd’ less offensive, I wonder, than its crasser counterpart, ’shit’? My Dad made a case for keeping ’shit’ in the family vocabulary, but he was unsuccessful.

“I was thinking, shit-”

“Stop swearing.”

“‘Shit’ isn’t a swear word.”

“Yes it is.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“Would you say it at an interview?”

My Dad pauses. “Yes.”, he answers.

The Mushroom stares at him. My Dad stares back. They want to smile. They cannot, as the first one to do so would clearly lose. “Would you say it at an interview for a job you wanted to get?”

My Dad sighs. “I like the word ’shit’.”

“Well, I like drinking Mojitos at lunchtime, but I can’t do that anymore, so shut up, turd head.”

The ban on swearing does not, however, extend to when The Mushroom is in a bad mood like, for example, when she discovered that no shop in the nearest town sold millet or, in actual fact, had heard of millet. Then, she’s allowed to say ‘Bollocks bollocks bollocks!” very loudly.

It appears that her plan was to smash some millet up and hide them in burgers because apparently millet is  a superfood. You learn something new every day. I was fairly certain that millet was chicken feed, but I’m happy to be proved wrong. The look on my Dad’s face when he was faced with his millet-free burgers was palpable.

“And that is why we should always go shopping together”, he said, “So you can never attempt to buy millet without my knowledge.”

Well, she can hardly go shopping without you, I thought, as she doesn’t drive and the nearest supermarket is, I would wager, about a three day’s walk away.  It would appear, though, that my Dad should also never, ever go shopping without The Mushroom.

“So, I’m going to make shepherd’s pie tomorrow”, she said, still keen on thinking she can cook. (Yesterday, she made scones. You’d have thought she’d discovered time travel. ‘Look! Look! They look like scones!’, she cried, dangerously waving her oven gloves about. My Dad looked pleased. What he didn’t know, but soon found out, is that The Mushroom had tried to hide oats in them. Oats are also, it would seem, a superfood. And she also made them with the strange combination of apple and cheese. You know who loved them? Fluffy Usurper. Weirdo). “Did you get the minced lamb?”

My Dad was unpacking the groceries from his solo shop. “Kinda.”

“Oh, did you just get lamb and we have to mince it ourselves?”

“Nope.”, he fished inside one of the bags, and, with a flourish, proudly presented her with a cellophaned packet of meat. “I got you minced BISON.”

The Baby stopped stacking her bricks. Fluffy Usurper looked up from his game of ‘hide from The Baby’. The Mushroom looked aghast. My Dad continued to grin.

“Bison? Bison? As in, Buffalo?”

“Yes!”

“Buffalo? Minced Buffalo? In a pie? With mashed potato on top?”

“It is apparently, a very lean meat.”

“It’s not a frigging shepherd’s’ pie, though, is it. It’s a cowboy pie.”

“Strictly speaking, love, that would be beef, which would be a Cottage Pie-”

“Oh shut up. Bison. Bison pie. Blimey.”

“I bought you a scarf, though!”

And a very nice scarf it is too.

Surely Bison Pie is no worse than Millet Burgers? (I remember the first time The Mushroom cooked for my Dad. They had not been together that long. She made burgers then, too. She was, however, quite drunk, and the bulb in the kitchen had gone, so when she put in ‘a pinch’ of Montreal steak seasoning, she actually put in about 250 grams. Montreal steak seasoning is made mostly of salt. My Dad really wanted to marry her, though, so he ate them. And then he was a little bit unwell.) The rules for my Dad are different from the rules for The Mushroom. If my Dad leaves his dirty shirts anywhere other than inside the washing machine, The Mushroom explodes like he’s smeared excrement around the kitchen. If my Dad mentions that it might be nice to open the laptop and not find smeared banana all over the keyboard, The Mushroom snaps something about ‘being really busy’ and ‘not having the time to do everything’, slams a few drawers and then makes a massive deal out of cleaning it. How can someone be too busy to either a) eat a banana AWAY from the laptop, b) wash their hands after eating said banana or c) just give it a quick wipe? How about this for a suggestion, Mushroom – PUT THE BABY DOWN. Just for, like, a minute. She can walk. She can entertain herself. She has all the plastic in Saskatchewan on the living room floor. Let her pick up Fluffy Usurper by the tongue or something, and just give that laptop a quick clean. This affects me, you see. It gets on my paws and the only way I can get it off is by licking them, and I frigging hate the taste of banana.

I’m going to have to think of a way of making Fluffy Usurper lick my paws clean. There have to be some benefits to having a kitten in the house. He keeps following me around, making his, ‘Look! Look at ME! I’m a kitten all fluffy and cute! Look at ME!’ face. I do look at him. I look at him, and then I slap him. And he still follows me around.

Ooh, I think I can smell bison cooking…

The Arrival of The Fluffy Usurper

Oh, for frig’s sake. I still cannot believe what has happened. Out of the blue. With no apparent warning.

The bastards have bought The Baby a frigging kitten.

This is an OUTRAGE.

Eleven years, I’ve been with my Dad. Eleven long years. Through thick and thin. Through that awful period living at That Bastard Dave’s. Through the times he lived entirely off kebabs. Through those months living with Smokey Joe. And then, just because The Baby looked mildly interested in Enthusiastic Teacher’s kitten, they get her one as ‘a belated birthday present’. And it really was mild interest. She looked at it, stroked it, then wandered off. She does that to chairs. And why, why does she need another birthday present? She has all the birthday presents. In the world. I live in a Basement Suite I simply couldn’t swing in if I were a swinging kind of cat because it’s full of crappy bits of battery operated plastic; what does she need another moving toy for? A moving toy that frigging URINATES IN CORNERS. (Incidentally, one of her crappy bits of battery operated plastic, the Tow Truck, not only shouts out that it is ‘a Tow Truck!’ in a very loud, enthusiastic voice, it also plays a variety of songs when you press buttons on the side, one of which sounds remarkably like ‘Mein Herr’ from ‘Cabaret’. What gives there?)

Anyway, it gets worse. I am black. I am proud to be black. I am a black short-haired, neutered cat. Fluffy Usurper? He’s white. He’s white and he’s fluffy and he very much still has his testicles. This smacks of racism, or, at the very least, some type of testicle-based bigotry. Am I not good enough? Do I need to be replaced by some blue-eyed, fluffy white kitty? Yes, yes maybe I have put on some weight recently. There might be a few grey hairs sprouting on my chest. But I’m still sleek. I can still climb trees. Honestly, what were they thinking? The Mushroom better watch herself.  She’s the only other dark-haired person here. Before you know it, my Dad will bring some blue-eyed, blonde, fluffy lady in and we’ll see how she feels about that. Shit. That’s how she’ll feel. There’d be no belly tickling or chin scratching then. Oh, I am LIVID.

I have spent the last twenty-four hours, thus, under the bed in the spare room. As an aside, I really wish The Mushroom would dust in here. It’s minging. If I wasn’t so very cross, I’d sulk somewhere else. And if it wasn’t so very cold and full of coyotes, I’d sulk outside and give them a scare. As it stands, though, my underbelly is now covered in fluff and bits of The Mushroom’s hair, which can be found everywhere she goes, like some sort of weird, hairy, calling card. Urghgh.

Now, I know that he’s only a kitten, a baby cat, blah di blah, but it just isn’t fair. It isn’t fair that The Mushroom’s facebook page is now full of photos of Fluffy Usurper and comments about how ‘cute’ and ‘adorable’ he is. It isn’t fair that Fluffy Usurper can wee on the floor and not be told off for it. It’s not fair that Fluffy Usurper can leave a Code Brown on their bed and for them to just laughingly clear it up. And most of all, it isn’t fair that he’s IN MY HOUSE.

I can hear my Dad and The Mushroom talking about how I’ll get used to it. How Fluffy Usurper will look up to me. How I can take care of him. Bollocks to that. Fluffy Usurper is just another in a long line of contenders for my frigging Iams.

The only ray of light in this otherwise dismal, dark day is the fact that I have, in my glimpses into the living room, seen The Baby pick Fluffy Usurper up by his tail about three times, and twice by one of his ears. That must hurt. Aha. Ahahahahaha. Ha.

Bastards.

Racists.

Speaking of racists, the other day my Dad has a Parents’ Evening at school, from which he didn’t come back until 10.45 pm.

“Why in the name of cheese are you back so late?”, asked The Mushroom as she stroked my ears, in the days before the Fluffy Usurper.

My Dad sighed. “I was accused of being racist.”

“What? Why?”

My Dad sighed again and removed his tie. “Because I have a picture of Adolf Hitler in my classroom.”

The Mushroom stared at him.

“And a parent thought having a picture of Adolf Hitler up in my classroom must mean that I loved Adolf Hitler.”

“Did you try to explain”, said The Mushroom as she placed me back on the floor, “That you’re a history teacher?”

“Yes.”

“And that Hitler is quite a key figure in history?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t you also have a picture of Mussolini? And Stalin?”, The Mushroom asked.

My Dad eased himself into a chair. “Yes. I love all dictators.”

“ And, come to think of it, don’t you have a picture of Amy Johnson?”

“Yes. I love all dictators and lady pilots. Now please give me some beer.”

She did.

I sidled up to him to comfort him. That’s what I do. Or did. In the days before the Fluffy Usurper.

Humph.

Cooking Up A Storm

“Why is my brother on TV?”, The Mushroom asked, looking startled.

My Dad raised his head from his school reports to look. “Unless your brother has changed his name to ‘Jacques’ and is now presenting the Weather report for Manitoba, he isn’t, love. Anyway, what are you doing?”

The Mushroom was at the table, poised with pad and pen.

“I am writing our weekly menu.”, she said proudly. My Dad, wisely, left her to it.

The Mushroom has decided to become a cook. Not in the professional sense, you understand, because she is apparently still too busy holding The Baby to work (and this is nonsense. The Baby can walk. Surely this means The Baby can go to school now?).  No, she has decided to become a cook in the ‘Doing Something To Chicken Other Than Just Grilling It. Again’ sense. About time. Frankly, my Iams look more interesting than a lot of the meals she presents to my Dad. And I really don’t want any one else stealing my frigging Iams.

“Right!”, she exclaims proudly, brandishing her pad and pen and looking slightly like a squirrel. “I have written our shopping list. I have planned our menu for the week. I have our recipes. I am good to go!”

My Dad sits up, and puts on his supportive face. He knows that this could get messy, quickly. Every now and again, The Mushroom decides to try something new. Generally, she tries it once, realises she is crap at it, cries, and never does it again. Sometimes this reaction is reasonable, like the time she decided to trial for the England Hockey Team based on the fact that she was ‘really good at hockey at uni’, forgot to wear a sports bra, and apparently spent the entire game feeling very scared and jumping out of the way of the puck. Other times, I can’t help but feel it shows a lack of stamina, like the decision to learn Italian which stumbled at the realisation that many of the words were ‘different’.

This new venture, however, affects my Dad in an integral way. He needs her to be good at this.

“So, what’s on our list then, my beloved?”

“Chickpeas. Millet -”

“Do what?”, he interjects.

“Millet.”

“Light of my darkness”, he says, still smiling his supportive smile, “Millet?”

“Yes. Millet.”

“Why do we need millet?”

The Mushroom consults her list.

“For one of the recipes. It says millet.”

“Do you know what millet is, love?”, he queries, supportive smile fading slightly.

“Yes of course I frigging know what millet is.”, The Mushroom growls, losing most of her squirrel-ish enthusiasm and turning round. My Dad can’t see her face. I can. She has no idea what millet is.

“Right, that’s brilliant!”, my Dad says, panicking slightly, “It’ll be lovely! What else?”

“Quinoa. Flax.Kidney Beans. Lentils – “

“Is this all for the same dish?”

“No.” The Mushroom’s face filled with self-doubt. “Should it be? “

“You’re in charge, petal. I’m sure it will all be lovely.  Brilliant. Well done. It will be wonderful. Am very excited.” There is a pause. He’s overdone it slightly. They both know this. They don’t acknowledge it, as that would make it worse.

The Mushroom sighs. She was not cut out for domesticity. From what I can gather, it requires traits such as patience, forward planning, economizing and a general sense of cleanliness to be successful as a housefrau. She is, thus, pretty screwed, as she has none of these. So why, you may be pondering, is she making this zealous effort to be successful as one? I have a theory. This theory is based on the fact that yesterday she went to the post office not once, not twice, but thrice. The Mushroom, I believe, is maybe going a bit mad.

“I wonder where we can get millet from?”, she ponders out loud whilst passing a ball to The Baby who, oddly, is wearing a yellow top and red trousers and thus appears to be dressed as Spain.

“Pet shop?”, replies my Dad. The Mushroom quietly begins to cry.

“I was only joking, love! No, no, don’t get upset!”, my Dad starts to stutter. It goes against the rules for her to cry before she has even tried her new venture.

“I don’t know what millet is.”, she whispered.

My Dad puts his arms around her. The Baby happily throws her ball. I slink out of the room.