Moving on: Just don’t think about the sex

I said good bye to my family home last week. I always thought I’d meet the people who bought the house, but it just didn’t happen. Time passed and the decision went unmade. Would they want to meet us? Become part of our story? And then it was simply too late to ask.

And so we left the bottle of wine and the card and our sad hearts on the mantelpiece and closed the door for the last time.

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A gay couple, that’s all we know.

We didn’t meet them, but that didn’t stop us inventing a really flamboyant back story.  One that would have delighted my mother.  Exquisite taste, a passion for fine wine, classical music and art, prone to flounging about in velvet dressing gowns holding enamel cigarette holders and puff puffing away as they tittle and tattle about the awkward cadences of Mussorgsky.

I can see them now, lounging about in the piano room, gesticulating wildly as they carelessly spill gin and tonic onto the authentic persian rug.  Happy, amused, carefree.

Of course they could be Dale Winton’s brash younger cousins for all I know.

But I like to believe all these things, because they comfort me.

Except for the goings on in the bedroom. My mum enjoyed the company of homosexuals but I know she didn’t like to think too much about the bum sex.

I hope she’s covering her eyes.

In the Powder Room: Pole dancing for tots: What’s the big deal?

Luckily I have to submit my posts weeks in advance, or there’d be a big fat blank space on In the Powder Room today. This past week has been difficult to say the least.

High time for some light relief then. Or do you think I’m missing the point on this one?

In the Powder Room: When good husbands go bad

I’m In the Powder Room Today talking about how I lucked out with Mr Milk.

Apart from that, things will be a bit silent for a while as I say goodbye to my family home.

M2Mx

In the Powder Room: Bedtime sucks, and not in that way!

I’m ranting again at In The Powder Room, come rant with me.

M2Mx

the long face of celebrity: SJP and those horse pics

http://sarahjessicaparkerlookslikeahorse.com/

I got told to get over myself the other day.

It all started with a tweet. A tweet about a website this person had sent out as “the funniest thing (they’d) seen in a long time”. It was your usual web fare –  a mash up of Sarah Jessica Parker and various horses, a chance to expound her equine similarities.

My issue wasn’t that these mashups were, frankly, rubbish, but that I just found the whole thing, well, a little bit mean.

What if SJP was your sister, daughter, friend – would you still laugh? Maybe you’re having the same reaction as my fellow tweeter did – “Lighten up Milk, it’s just a bit of fun!”. But is it really okay?

Of course, the “Is she fair game simply because she’s in the public eye?” debate is nothing new, but is this kind of behaviour becoming even more normalised in a virtual world where it is easy to make and distribute this stuff and where anything goes as long as it’s funny? Does this easy, laissex-faire medium turn all of us Guardian-reading liberals into digital Bernard Mannings?

I’ve done it. I’ve giggled at the lesbians that look like Justin Bieber or Female celebrities that look like men, so I’m not sure why it took SJP to make me stop and reconsider.

Maybe I am taking it too seriously but I do wonder what it teaches our society about how we should treat people? That it’s okay to criticise, take the mickey, guffaw at another person if they’re in the public eye, and especially if the medium is an intangible, virtual one? That you can rip the piss out of someone, anyone as long as it’s typed on Facebook and not said out loud in the playground?

Thankfully I’m well into my 30s now, my heat-buying-days are over,  and I honestly don’t care whether Cheryl cole is suffering from premenstrual zits or Claudia Winkleman has forgotten to wax her tash (made up, don’t sue).  So shouldn’t us Tricenerians be setting the bar for the younger ones and reminding them that while it may be attractive comedy fodder, not everything goes?

I think i’ll stick to Cats that look like Hitler and Vegetables that look like penises. It’s what the Internet does best but without the laughing at someone’s expense.

ITPR today: When Mickey met Minnie (well, almost)

What would you say to your son if he’d been asking the girls to show him their bits?

Come and find out what I think at In the Powder Room today.

Why my mum didn’t tell me she loved me

As we sat in traffic lights on the way back from my mum’s final radiotherapy session she turned to me and said “I’m scared I’ll die before I’ve told you how much I love you”.

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Love isn’t telling somebody the fact. It isn’t giving a big present or making an inflated gesture.  It’s showing it.  Over and over, year upon year, bit by bit. It’s the small things, the things that go unnoticed at the time, but that make you know that someone is there.

It’s feeling it. Constantly and consistently. Despite the arguments and the harsh words and the differences in opinion. Like a warm blanket draped across your shoulders.

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So as the traffic lights turned to green I touched my mums hand and reassured her that her job had been done a long time ago.

And when she passed and there were no final words, no declarations of love, no grand words or gestures, no tears, it didn’t matter.

I carried all I needed to know around with me in my heart.

That is love.