22 things I love about the number 22

The number 22 bus from Edinburgh's Princes Street to Ocean Terminal in Leith has to be one of the great journeys of the world. From elegant Georgian architecture to delightful junkies smacking their kids, it's a smorgasbord of human triumph and human faeces. Before it gets replaced by a new-fangled tram, here's are 22 things I love about the 22 bus and its route.

1. It's pink!

2. The blind man who stops every bus yelling 'Are you the 22?' (Note to blind man: it would maybe help if you took off your ipod - are you a glutton for punishment or what?)

3. The 'clientele': ranging from Scottish government workers and urban professionals to fragrant homeless people.

4. It's gay friendly: the 22 passes Priscilla's drag bar and Number Eighteen, a gay massage parlour. I love Priscilla's. Sadly I've never been in there, but yesterday, scrawled on the window in semi-literate luminous marker pen was the legend: 'TONIGHT - Miss Kitty Litter'. Genius. And if you're a fan of that little known drag act 'E.Coli', on St Patrick's day they offer free Irish Stew. Unless 'irish stew' some kind of niche gay euphemism?

5. Unexpected pathos: In the sheltered wheelchair ramp at the side of Majestic Wine lives an old man with a white beard and dreads - dodgily but quite accurately known to the locals as 'Black Santa'. Or at least he did live there until the powers-that-be at Majestic cruelly boarded up his house. Santa, if by chance you've got a laptop and you're sitting in Starbucks using the free Wi-fi, I wish you good luck in your new home in a cardboard box on the motorway.

6. The joy of overhearing the conversations of stupid people: 'God, there's no worse feeling than missing a bus is there? It's awful. It just feels worse than anything.' I heard a girl say to her friend yesterday. (You sure about that? How about waterboarding? Losing your entire family in a fire? Having your fingernails ripped out by Triads? No. Apparently nothing. Duh.)

7. Edinburgh bus rules. In Glasgow, everyone piles on, fists flying. In Edinburgh you have to wait for people to get off before you get on. V. civilised.

8. The CCTV. Check your hair in the bus telly as you get off.

9. The amusing shop names of Leith Walk. The Yummy House, The Spicy Pot, The Cat's Miaou, Lolo's Gemstone, and Chimei, which I can't go past without internally yelling 'CHIMAAAAI' in the voice of Timmy from South Park. Not forgetting Borland's Darts and Television (because throwing darts at the television is FUN!)

10. The S&M Hotdog: on the way to Leith shore, the 22 goes past a snack bar with an enormous fibreglass hotdog standing outside it. With a deranged expression on its sausage face, it stands there gleefully slathering itself with mustard and ketchup, waiting to be devoured. Weird.

11. Watching the inevitable slide down the social scale from the bottom to the top of Leith Walk. Bottom of Leith Walk - Italian delis, theatregoers, groups of well-heeled Spanish children on school trips. Top of Leith Walk - lepers with nae teeth.

12. The silvery glistening delights of Leith Shore. The water of Leith is really quite beautiful on a clear morning, even with dead ducks and Farmfoods carrier bags floating in it.

13. God, finding 22 good things about a frigging bus is hard.

14. The bus stop is right outside the Disney store, which means I can watch Tom and Jerry cartoons through the shop window while I wait.

15. It's never late. Or early. If you miss it, there's always another one along. It's just always there. In fact, it's so reliable that you could probably phone it at 3 am and cry about getting dumped and it'd be all like 'oh, don't worry, he was a bastard anyway.'

16. You can play ned bingo.

17. I've never had to stand up on it, ever.

18. Once this total loony got on and started singing the complete works of Gilbert and Sullivan under his breath at super fast speed. It was a virtuoso performance.

19. It deposits you at Ocean Terminal, where you can eat and go shopping - providing you only want a helium balloon from Birthdays and a M&S sandwich.

20. It stops outside an aquarium shop which has a sign on the door saying 'No Dogs. We have a cat.' (WHAT ABOUT THE FISH??)

21. It goes past Gayfield Square *giggles like an idiotic 9 year old*

22. Er, that's it.

wind and pish

If I've got a hangover and a child to entertain, (a rare occurrence I hasten to add- ahem) I feel a sense of terrible desperation - to cover up the fact that Amstel is coming out of my pores by overcompensating on the Fun Mum front. With a lightweight giggly hangover it works a treat, and it's a seamless transition from drunk and disorderly to 'hilarious woman rolling around in the soft play area with her knickers on her head'. However, when I've been out til 1 am and the bloody woman upstairs has her washing machine on ALL NIGHT directly above our bed, and Louis gets up at seven saying 'want Malties want Eatabix want Snap Crackle Pop' Fun Mum is replaced by Mentally Unstable Alkie Bipolar Mum who acts like Mr Tumble one minute and Ed Gein the next and says stupid, guilt-ridden things like 'I know, let's go on a family day out to a wind farm!'

So off we went to freeze our tits off at the Whitelee wind farm and visitor's centre. God knows what I was expecting, but fuck me, it was windy. The kind of windy that gives everyone hair like Howard Jones and grimacing faces like people from Ayrshire. The turbines started giving me the fear, with their strange swooshing and monstrous War of the Worlds dimensions - the wind chill factor was about minus 2, then Louis tripped up on a rock and cried and I had to carry him for about a mile up a hill as he whimpered at the SHEER BLOODY WINDINESS OF IT ALL. Conclusion: wind farms are too windy. Do not leave the house ever.

LOUIS SPOILS RECORD STORE DAY BY NOT UNDERSTANDING CONCEPT OF ALPHABETIZATION

Even though I know children and 25 year old indie music obsessives generally don't mix, me and my husband decided to get back in touch with the people we used to be and attend Record Store Day at Monorail, Glasgow's finest vegan vinyl hipster village. Of course, we didn't buy any records because we're skint, but it somehow felt important to stand near people who had, so we took Louis along to experience this special day. Unfortunately I'd forgotten that Louis' favourite game when in Monorail is to take all the laminated A-Z cards out and re-catalogue them in the idiosyncratic style of someone who doesn't actually know what the alphabet is. In indie record store terms this is a crime akin to wearing a Lighthouse Family t-shirt and doing a dump on Daniel Johnston. Must sit him down and teach him the error of his ways - filing Times New Viking next to Tom Tom Club = Naughty Step. Tsk tsk.

Must just be the colours and the kids

Kids these days don't half get my goat. Listening to Hot Chips and drinking pints of Meow Meow in their old skool Nike hi-tops and wanking on Chat Roulette. Get a job! Bring back National Service! The worst thing is (apart from their dewy skin, boundless optimism and technological fearlessness) is that I HAVE NO IDEA what these golden mythical people get up to any more. What music do they like? What words do they use? Do they still say 'ace'? What's cool and what makes them cringe? Sometimes being on the cusp of middle age feels like I 'm banging on a soundproofed perspex window like Dustin Hoffman in the Graduate (look it up, kids) while a Skins party goes on behind it full of girls with pert breasts and boys with emo sidesheds. I don't want to be at the party, but I would like to reject my invite knowing that - if I did go - I would recognize the tunes and understand what people are actually saying.

Not knowing what the young people get up to bothers me more than I can say, and probably more than it should. The moment I had a child popular culture slipped away from me like baby poo through my fingers. Now I'm finding that not only am I too old to get back on the horse, there is no horse any more - it's a digital viral 80s unicorn which whistles MGMT songs out of its neon arsecrack.

For inspiration on how to deal with this difficult transition between youth and middle age, I'm reading Generation A by Douglas Coupland, who manages to bypass the fact he's an old Canadian fart who watches the Simpsons all the time by making lots of references to Google and genetically modified corn. So er, hey kids, how about that Google? Quite a fast search engine you've got there...wait a minute, where are you going? Kids? Come back! I've got corn flakes! Awww...

Come get your black bin bags

As I'm a neurotic, coming a cropper on public transport is something I think about a lot - one minute you're looking out of the window, thinking about chips, the next it's all carnage, black smoke and twisted metal. But the absolute worst thing would be to die amongst THE TOTAL FANNYBAWS who live between Glasgow and Edinburgh. I'm certain there must be some fine people living in Scotland's Central Belt - fabulous Falkirkians, creative Croylets, pantingly pretty Polmonters - but I'm sorry, in the stinky microcosm of the daily commuter train, you appear to be a right rum bunch.

Take Mrs Woman, a middle aged Gollum with frazzled dyed black hair, who was engaging a (mostly silent) man in the most inane pop culture conversation I've ever heard. 'I tell you what I do like,' she grandly announced.
(Hmm, dunno. Let me guess...Giotto's depiction of the Annunciation in his frescoes at Padua?)
'I like that Phoenix Nights.'
(Ah.)
'It's so funny isn't it? Have you see Peter Kay's stand up? GARLIC BREAD? GARLIC BREAD? HA HAAAAA HAAAAA! That's what I'm like - 'is it bread?' 'No, it's GARLIC bread!'

Please, I begged the mysterious forces of the universe. Please don't let this train derail, sending my skull crashing against hers and our brains splattering against the purple Scotrail headrests. Please don't let a terrorist detonate his/her* rucksack at the very moment she starts singing 'Show Me The Way to Amarillo.' My life started flashing before me, my palms got sweaty, and when she began talking about how funny Max and Paddy were I actually thought I saw the fiery furnaces of hell itself - but it was only Grangemouth.


*Al Qaeda is an equal opportunities employer

that chewing gum is coming back in style

When I was a kid, I was scared of everything. Not just my brother who hid behind doors and waited for me on the landing, or Mr Morrell the red cheeked, kiddie fiddlerish greengrocer up the road. No, I was constantly freaked out by very ordinary things, such as doors, wallpaper and chests of drawers with handles which looked like eyes. Now, unless I've been watching Most Haunted with Girls Aloud or I Believe In Ghosts with Joe Swash, I'm happy to say I'm not scared of furniture or wall coverings any more. (Apart from the weird Edvard Munch face in the woodgrain of the hall cupboard, but the less said about that the better).

When you're big enough to reach light switches and fight the forces of evil with with a rolled up newspaper, it's easy to forget how strange the world must look to a person the third of your size. I defy you to look at these unsettling photos Louis took on my phone and not experience a David Lynchian sense of disquiet. There's the big spooky monster with no face...


The cold, uncomprehending eyes of the Thomas phone...(and the murderer was on the EXTENSION!)


The malevolent stare of Upsy Daisy...


not to mention the mysterious fat bottomed ghost in the hall.



Jesus, no wonder he's scared of the Pinky Ponk.

Days of blunder

Before children, a day off was just that. I'd lie in bed dry mouthed, watching T4 Sunday and scratching myself. It was great. Some days I would be glued to the sofa like a monstrous clam attached to a rock, my eyes full of telly and my mouth full of cheese savoury Big Softee. Then I'd get restless legs at about 11pm and go to bed - job done.

Yesterday my hungover self was offered a rare chance to spend an afternoon alone, without junior monkey hanging off my legs and yelling 'watch Monsters Inc!'. The door closed. Silence. Blissful silence. I didn't have to do anything. At all.

So I:
Did the dishes
Cleaned the kitchen
Put a wash on
Reorganized the musty foul swamp I call my knicker drawer
Had a bath
Washed hair
Did the recycling
Watched the Grammys for two seconds and CRIED when Taylor Swift won Best Album (I put this down to the hangover not a latent love of shit Avril Lavigne-esque country sung by a baby seagull in a dress.)
Researched recipes for banana bread
Made banana bread
Swept the floor
Did the dishes again
hung up the washing
Compiled shopping list
Made spinach and mushroom lasagne
Did the dishes again.

By the time my child was returned I was exhausted and had to change his pooey nappies and give him his bath too. I am an idiot.

Lemon turd cake

Made a lemon curd cake yesterday, while I was supposed to be 'working from home' (whenever I think of the phrase working from home, I always think of Terri Coverley in the Thick of It getting a phone call from her boss while in the car and saying 'Yes, I'm working from home today. What am I doing? Er..I'm driving to my sister's in Hastings').

So anyway, I burnt it. Here it is, lurking brownishly next to a lemon. This is my attempt at 'food styling' (next stop, Nigella!). Unfortunately my phone seems to have disposed of the flash function altogether in favour of a murky, Bergman-esque half-light. It is an Ericsson though, so I suppose that's to be expected.




The fact that it was burnt and dry didn't stop me from stuffing pavement sized slabs of it in my gob, though. Mmm! Another culinary triumph from the kitchen of doom.

I FANCY NANCY

In the dim and distant past, roughly somewhere between decimalization and the rise of the internet, I was a TV reviewer for the Sunday Express. These days, it's a right wing old lady scare paper aimed at people who think Enoch Powell had a point, but in the late 90s it was edited by feminist Rosie Boycott who had the novel idea of employing 'women'. It also paid well which meant I spent two happy years slouching insensibly in various restaurants, slugging back wine and waving my fag in the air. Anyway, it was a brilliant job, brilliant even when the new Pauline Quirke drama dropped through the letterbox, and I long for it to this day. So I was glad to see that the Guardian managed to turn its attention away from Tim Dowling's dog for five seconds to celebrate the work of Nancy Banks-Smith, a true master of the craft. Her writing is funny, moving, graceful and more comforting than hot buttered toast. Take that Lucy Mangan, you wittering nincompoop.


LADY ISSUES

I found out today that have to go for a second operation 'down there', due to a harmless lump of tissue which doesn't bother me, but might, if left unchecked, turn into a second head and start talking to me about feminine hygiene issues. I'm not as worried as I was the last time, because I actually enjoyed the general anaesthetic (first time in ages I'd had an uninterrupted sleep) and being in hospital was quite a nice rest - a bit like being in prison with 25 magazines about Cheryl Cole and a bar of Dairy Milk. Plus, my gynecologist, Mr T ('it's an inclusion cyst you crazy fool!') is a pleasingly low key gentleman who looks like he enjoys a nice glass of brandy in his study, surrounded by leather-bound copies of the Lancet. Which is good, because you don't want some berk in a loud jumper messing around with your gusset do you? You don't want Dr Timmy Mallet or Dr N. Edmonds or Dr Steve Wright In The Afternoon diddling with your diddle. No you do not.

Anyway, here's a nice photo of the cause of all my problems in the fancy hospital waiting room today. Good job he's cute, that's all I can say.