Happy New Year to my reader. 

We went to our friends G & A round the corner last Saturday for a soiree.  Their friends S & J were also in attendance.  The kids had their tea first while the grown-ups drank lashings and lashings of beer and wine.  Then, as the grown-ups sat down for their meat-free lasagne, the children (all 7 of 'em) proceeded to run riot through the house, performing kung fu kicks on each other, screaming their lungs up, doing dance routines to "Wannabe" by the Spice Girls (hot new girl group all the tweenies are into at the moment!) and generally being hyper and hysterical.

The only solution for the adults was to drink more until the noise became tolerable through the warm fuzz of alcohol.  When dinner had been eaten, and chairs pushed away from tables, G got up to spin a few 7" singles from his youth.  This soon turned into a game of "Beat The Intro".  K and I first of all impressed, then right royally pissed off G, as every  7" he tersely threw on to the turntable we guessed in approximately one second.  Record after record, G muttering "You'll never get this one", we were able not only to identify correctly but also give year of release and other assorted bits of trivial information.   S & J looked on in bemused near silence.  The coup de grace (that I like to think will go down in Chesterfield folklore for years to come) was when I got "Echo Beach" by Martha & The Muffins from the first millisecond of the slow fade intro (yes I know it has one of the most recognizable intros of any pop tune ever but I am talking about the bit at the very, very beginning, before the guitar riff, the synth line before it gets even barely audible).  Oh, the applause, the gasps of amazement, the high fives and the huge sense of personal achievement.   Actually I think the truth of it is that the locals will now talk about us behind our backs as those weirdos from down south who have an autistic-like ability to identify Top 40 hits from the late 70s early 80s just from the opening note.  I think we actually scared them a bit. 

We finally got stumped by a Basia non-hit which despite me identifying it as Matt Bianco and therefore being nearly right brought that little game to an anti-climactic ending.  Then someone decided to get Operation out - what a rubbish game that is!  It went on for about 4 hours, and despite hundreds of attempts to pick up the tiny little bits of plastic with the crappy tweezers without making the buzzer sound, noone managed a successful operation (well, except me that is - 3 bits out despite all the wine - two fine wins in an evening, what a night to remember!!!)

By which time the kids had resorted to stabbing each other in the eye with a sonic screwdriver and using the spinny office chair as a fairground ride whilst simultaneously trying to scale the venetian blinds.  Oh, and one of the guests produced some 70% proof, slightly dodgy whisky which was our cue to leave before any further damage was done to our collective person.  Fab evening!

Why is that every time I go to the hairdressers I always expect to come out looking like this:

But I always come out looking like this:

I'm conscious of the fact that it's been a month since my last entry.  There is a simple reason for this: nothing of note or interest has occured chez nous for a whole month.  Life has been steady, dull, monotonous, routine, uneventful.  Just the way I like it! 

Anyway, today the postman brought me a letter from my parents which contained an article from the Telegraph a few weeks ago  which contained a load of amusing signs from around the world, sample:

from a small hotel in Cornwall "Will any guest wishing to take a bath please make arrangements to have one with Mrs Harvey"

and from a hotel in Munich "In your room you will find a minibar filled with alcoholics"

and (my personal fave) from a restaurant in China: "Dumplings stuffed with the ovary and digestive glands of a crab".

This reminded me of the single most funny thing I have ever read.  It came out years ago and I remember at the time laughing until tears rolled down my nose.  I wondered if I would be able to find it using Google and I got it straight away (the wonders on the internet).  I googled: "Madonna Interview Translation Funny" and here it is below.  Yes, it is very, very old and you've probably seen it before.  Having said that when I re-read it just now I howled again, particularly at the "Slut Book" comment by the reporter.  I don't know why, it just really REALLY amuses me:

An Interview with Madonna which was translated from Budapest’s Blikk Newspaper:

When the Evita production company came to Budapest, Madonna,had an interview with the Budapest newspaper Blikk. The questions were posed in Hungarian, then translated into English for Madonna, whose replies were then translated back into Hungarian for the paper’s exclusive.

Soon after, at the request of USA Today, Madonna’s comments were then retranslated from Hungarian back into English for the benefit of that paper’s readers.

The end result is far from the original but much funnier. “I am a woman and not a test-mouse!” The translations have Madonna exclaim.

This is a complete transcript, verbatim.

Blikk: Madonna, Budapest says hello with arms that are spread-eagled. Did you have a visit here that was agreeable? Are you in good odor? You are the
biggest fan of our young people who hear your musical productions and like to move their bodies in response.

Madonna: Thank you for saying these compliments [holds up hands]. Please stop with taking sensationalist photographs until I have removed my garments
for all to see [laughs]. This is a joke I have made.

Blikk: Madonna, let’s cut toward the hunt: Are you a bold hussy-woman that feasts on men who are tops?

Madonna: Yes, yes, this is certainly something that brings to the surface my longings. In America it is not considered to be mentally ill when a woman
advances on her prey in a discothèque setting with hardy cocktails present. And there is a more normal attitude toward leather play-toys that also makes
my day.

Blikk: Is this how you met Carlos, your love-servant who is reputed? Did you know he was heaven-sent right off the stick? Or were you dating many other
people in your bed at the same time?

Madonna: No, he was the only one I was dating in my bed then, so it is a scientific fact that the baby was made in my womb us­ing him. But as regards
these questions, enough! I am a woman and not a test-mouse! Carlos is an everyday person who is in the orbit of a star who is being muscle-trained by
him, not a sex machine.

Blikk: May we talk about your other “baby”, your movie, then? Please do not be denying that the similarities between you and the real Evita are grounded in basis. Power, money, tasty food, Grammys – all these elements are afoot.

Madonna: What is up in the air with you? Evita never was winning a Grammy!

Blikk: Perhaps not. But as to your film, in trying to bring your reputation along a rocky road, can you make people forget the bad explosions of Who’s
That Girl? and Shanghai Surprise?

Madonna: I am a tip-top starlet. That is my job that I am paid to do.

Blikk: O.K., here’s a question from left space: What was your book Slut
about?

Madonna: It was called Sex, my book.

Blikk: Not in Hungary. Here it was called Slut. How did it come to publish?
Were you lovemaking with a man-about-town printer? Do you prefer making
suggestive literature to fast-selling CDs?

Madonna: These are different facets to my career highway. I am preferring
only to become respected all over the map as a 100% artist.

Blikk: There is much interest in you from this geographic region, so I must ask this final questions: How many Hungarian men have you dated in bed? Are they No. 1? How are they comparing to Argentine men, who are famous for being tip-top as well?

Madonna: Well, to avoid aggravating global tension, I would say it’s a tie [laughs]. No, no, I am serious now. See here, I am working like a canine all
the way around the clock! I have been too busy even to try the goulash that makes your country one for the record books.

Blikk: Thank you for your candid chitchat.

Madonna: No problem, friend who is a girl

                                                                  $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$


Ahhh...*wipes away tears*... it still cracks me up, hope you enjoyed it too!

Right, I must go out and make something interesting happen so that I can share it with you here.  Later...

OK, I may possibly be the last person in the world to have seen it (we are currently in the process of catching up with all the cinema releases we have missed in the last few years) but I just had to try and express how very amazing this film is.  If you have not seen it either I urge you to do so, although if it ruins your evening (as it did mine) that please don't hold it against me.

I knew it wasn't going to be easy viewing when we sat down to watch it last night.  After all, it is a film about the fourth plane to be hijacked on September 11th 2001, the one that never hit its target but which crashed just short of Washington DC.  It is rare for a Hollywood movie to deal with such subject matter in such a chillingly matter-of-fact way: it was filmed in a documentary-style, using many of the actual air traffic control people to represent themselves, the other actors are all unknowns and much of the acting was ad-libbed to add to a very naturalistic portrayal of the horrific events on that day.  In fact, it was so realistic that I actually had to keep on reminding myself that it wasn't a documentary. 

However, the inescapable fact is that the events shown in the movie did really happen: the confusion and disbelief in the air traffic control room as planes are highjacked and rammed into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, the terror in the cabin as the highjackers dispatch the pilots and take control of the plane, the heart-breaking last phone-calls to family and friends, the heroic struggle of some of the passengers to overcome the highjackers in the last few moments, as plane spirals towards the ground.  Weirdly, even though you know exactly how this story turned out, the the tension when watching the film is so intense, you find yourself hoping against hope that everything will turn out OK in the end, that the plane will land safely and when it doesn't and the screen goes black...well...I burst into tears. 

As I said, it put a real downer on the rest of the evening, but it's still a film I would throughly reccomend (unless you're about to go somewhere on a plane shortly) - so powerful, so gut-wrenching, so moving, such a fitting tribute to the ordinary, but brave people on Flight United 93 who lost their lives that day.  Best film I've seen for years!





Just to balance things out I would like to nominate "Hot Fuzz", starring Simon Pegg as my Turkey of The Week - what a load of pony! 

Now watch out for other Mazzymoo film reviews for such up-to-the-minute releases as:

This Is England
Pan's Labyrinth
Babel 
City Of God

!

Yes, the finger has well and truly slipped of the pulse.  Never mind - perhaps there is some kudos in being the very last person to review a film?  

I 'm really very cross now, having just spent an hour tonight updating my blog with more tales of our Summer Holidays, the whole thing has disappeared, despite me pressing "post to Mazzymoo" twice.  
To precis:
Saw Simpsons Movie - it was great.
Went to Disneyland Paris - it was great too.
Holdiday in France - fab.
It's all you really need to know, the rest was just padding...

In 1978 I fell in love with a woman.  Her name was Debbie.  I was only 15, she was much older, at least 30, if not more.  I was a school girl at an all-girls boarding school in Kent.  She was leading an altogether more glamorous life, thousands of miles away in the clubs and bars of New York City. For Debbie it was all about sex, drugs and rock n' roll.  For me, it was only just about the latter (if you can call ELO, the Alessi Brothers and the Osmonds rock n' roll).  Debbie came along and opened my eyes and my ears. 

The first time I saw Debbie she was in a magazine.  It was the Sunday Times Magazine which used to be available for girls to read in the drawing room after tea on a Sunday.  Maybe I had led a very sheltered life up until that point but I had never seen anyone look more cool and decadent and utterly gorgeous before.  I tore the picture out of the magazine (which was a very naughty thing to do, almost "punk rock" by our Methodist School standards) and stuck it in my diary.

Here is that picture in my 1978 diary entry for March 5th:



I had encountered Debbie before this moment without realising it - there was this foot-stomping little pop-rocket of a song that I kept hearing on the radio called "Denis" which had made some impression, but not until I put the picture above with the song on the radio did it all come together for me.  My love affair with Blondie was born.  

The affair blossomed into full-blown L-O-V-E with the purchase of "Plastic Letters" and "Parallel Lines" - two of my all-time favourite albums, and a bunch of some of the greatest 3 minute pop songs ever committed to vinyl.  Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you my Blondie Top 20:

1) Picture This
2) Rip Her To Shreds
3) Heart Of Glass
4) I Am Always Touched By Your Presence Dear
5) Poet's Problem
6) Union City BLue
7) Shayla
8) X Offender
9) Sunday Girl
10) One Way Or Another
11) Hanging On The Telephone
12) Pretty Baby
13) 11.59
14) Detroit 442
15 )In The Flesh
16) Rifle Range
17) I'm Gonna Love You Too
18) Rapture
19) Angels On The Balcony
20) Dreaming


I mention all this now because last night we went to see Blondie at the Manchester Apollo.  It was the third time I have seen them live: the first was at the Hammersmith Odeon at the beginning of 1980 on the Eat to the Beat tour.  On that occasion me and my friend Catherine had seats right at the back of the Odeon but we defied the scary bouncers and pushed our way right down to the front of the stage.  I go so close to Debbie I was able to touch her toe.  An important moment in my life, I can tell you.   The second time we saw Blondie was on their comeback tour.  We got tickets for the aftershow party and we met them all.  K (rather embarrassingly) told Debbie that I had touched her toe in 1980, to which she turned on me mock-accusingly and said "Aha!  So it was you, huh?!"  I would like to be able to claim that it was this meeting that inspired the band to write their comeback hit "Maria", but sadly that would be a lie as it had already been Number 1 by this point.

Last night however, the love affair came close to ending.  There was no toe-touching, no chatting to Debs at the aftershow, just me and K, several thousand other hot n' sweaties, a bunch of very plodding and middle-aged musicians going through the motions on stage, with a lady from Toto Coelo doing funny Dame Edna dancing in front of them.  Oh, hang on - that was MsHarry. 

It was a bad start.  The sound was abysmal, (I've heard better sound from bootleg tapes played on a £10 cassette player).   The sound was so bad and so quiet (I could hear people around me chatting on their mobile phones ferchrissakes!) that there was nothing for it:  we bellowed along to every song at the tops of our voices, not something I am wont to do (I know it's out of fashion and a trifle uncool), however Blondie needed all the help that we could give them.  And I have to say that after screeching the words to "Sunday Girl" and "One Way Or Another" at the very top of my lungular capacity, I did start to enjoy the experience, very much actually.  Debbie can still sing amazingly well (and some Blondie songs are incredibly difficult to sing), Clem was as gorgeous and ageless as ever, and even if he's not very good at keep the beat, he is ace at throwing his drumstick high in the air and catching it (a vitally important skill for all drummers and a real audience-pleaser, even after the 11th throw - *stifles yawn*).  Chris Stein forgot to plug his guitar in until the fourth song but as he co-wrote some of the greatest pop songs in history I forgive him. 

It will probably be the last time Debbie and I share the same breathing space, which is sad. K is going to Lovebox on Saturday where Blondie are second on the bill (I expect he will sit it out in Hospitality, he's only going for the free beer and Sly & The Family Stone!)  I had hoped to raise the £250k necessary to book Blondie for my 45th birthday / our 10th Wedding Anniversary / Kent's 40th next year, but now I don't think I'll bother - we'll just drag the dansette out into the garden and sing along loudly to the singles instead.  



Debbie, you nearly blew it last night, but I will still love you 4 ever!

The weekend just gone we went down to London for the Crabs Party - K's dad, K's sister and I are all Cancerians with birthdays within 2 weeks of each other, hence the name.  K's sis Lisa and husband Alan  hosted in their lovely new house in Putney.  We sat out in their garden (only the second time this Summer we have sat outside for any length of time without being rained on), quaffing ample quantities of champagne, followed by neverending supplies of wine, hic! and lots of lovely grub too.  Together with a good assortment of relatives and almost-relatives on hand it made for a very convivial afternoon / evening.  It needed to be, after the nightmare 5 hour journey from Chesterfield to Putney by car - an hour of which was spent crawling along the M1 and a further hour of which was spent at a virtual standstill on the North Circular - is there a place more hellish on Earth?  Probably, but not in London, I'll wager.  When you are inching along it, you absorb its grimy grimness and can't help but observe that there are people whose front doors open out onto this stretch of misery - poor them, I would have thrown myself under a passing car, but then as the average speed on the North Circular is less than 10 mph I would probably end up with cuts and bruises at worst. 

The longer we spent on the road, the tetchier K became, and at the moment when his pressure cooker valve was about ready to blow, I said "I told you we should have got the train", which was not very helpful in the circumstances.  Still, once we'd rounded the Gyratory and gathered speed through Ealing down to the Chiswick Roundabout, with a cool breeze in our hair and sunshine bouncing off the bonnet, our spirits had improved considerably and I was able to renew my wistful longings for our past life in Britian's wonderful Capital City.  Cruising down the Chis High Road, with its chi-chi boutiques and eateries, trendy young things pounding the pavement, oh it all seemed so glamorous somehow, and to think those pavements, those pubs and shops used to be my stomping ground too, once a long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. 

The following day we met up with Ruth and Hannah, Jim, Lesley and kids Dan and Madeleine in Hyde Park   The kids played in the Pirate Ship play area, while us grown-ups tried to catch up with a year's worth of news (interrupted every 14 seconds by one child or another needing the loo, wetting their pants, wanting an ice cream, needing a cuddle after a scrape, etc etc).  It was a lovely afternoon but cut short by thunder, lightning and a torrential monsoon, which hit us with full force as we scampered up Kensington High Street to the tube.  Thoroughly soaked but happy we got the train back to Chiswick, picked up the car and zoomed off North, avoiding both North Circular and the M1 and made it home in less than 3 hours.  Hurrah!  

The kids and I will be back in London for a couple of days at the end of the month to do the Tower of London and other touristy-type things so if anyone wants to meet up, let us know...

On Sunday I will be 44.  Happy Birthday to Me!  We are going to E-J and Danny's in East Yorkshire for the weekend and the sun is forecast to bless us with its presence (which will be the best present!)

So 44, not really such a grand old age, but no spring chicken either.  However I really do start to feel old when I consider the following facts about my birthdate:

1) I was born less than 20 years after the end of World War II - Less than 20 years ago from today it was 1989, which only seems like yesterday!
2) I was born 4 months before JFK was assassinated and not long after the Bay of Pigs Invasion
3) Gerry & The Pacemakers were number 1 in the singles chart with "I Like It" and the Beatles were top of the album chart with "Please Please Me"

And lots of other stuff happened too:  Christine Keeler, the birth of Beatlemania, Kim Philby and the Third Man, Rolling Stones played at the Crawdaddy in Richmond, Surrey,  birth of the CIA, Patsy Cline killed, the Great Train Robbery, and a load of other ancient history. 

The facts of my birth: I was born in the late afternoon of July 8th in a hospital called Gleneagles on the island of Singapore.  My father was not at the birth (not the done thing in the 60s!)  My mother tells me that apart from a cursory cuddle and a quick check of fingers and toes, she did not see me again for at least 24 hours after I was born, as I was whisked away to be looked after by the maternity staff while she (my mother) recovered from the ordeal.  I was a heavy baby (over 9lbs) and born with a cyst on my nose (removed before I was one year old - the cyst, not the nose!)  Apart from that I don't remember much about the day.

I was named after Natalie Wood's character in the film "West Side Story", which my mother saw a year or two before I was born.  Nice choice of name, although I have singularly failed to live up to the glamorous, dusky, Italian-American-Puerto Rican vision of loveliness the name conjures up when most people hear "Maria".

I was my parents' first child.  What was I doing being born in Singapore?  My parents had been hip, young advertising execs in London in the early Sixties, living in exciting places like St John's Wood and Onslow Gardens, Kensington.  Amongst their contemporaries were people like David Bailey (who once asked my mother out, cheeky fella!), Jean Shrimpton, Terrence Donovan, Faye Weldon (who dreamed up "Go To Work On An Egg" whilst working at the same agency as my parents).  It was all just about to get very Swinging 60s indeed, when my father was offered a job in the Far East - an exciting opportunity, which he couldn't refuse.  And so off they went, leaving behind the Beatles, long hair, mini skirts, Carnaby Street and LSD, Pot and Love-Ins to start a new life together in Singapore, and then Malaysia which is where I grew up.  I had a wonderful and privileged childhood there (44 this year also, Happy Birthday Malaysia!) and would not have wished to  live anywhere else but I sometimes wonder: what would life have been like, growing up in London in the '60s with a couple of hipsters in the world of Advertising?  Would Uncle Ringo have been round to read a bed-time story?  Would I have made friends with Julian Lennon at nursery (also 44 this year!) and would it have been "Maria In the Sky With Diamonds" instead?   Would we have lived in a big Georgian townhouse in Hampstead or Cheyne Walk, and would mother have been dragging us down to Biba to get kitted out?  Would father have been down the pub with Terence Stamp and Julie Christie of an evening?  We'll never know of course, but maybe somewhere in a parallel universe our lives were like that in the 1960s.

Here is a picture of my parents in London at the start of the 60s (my father on the far right):



I often think it is unfair that parents don't receive the accolades on a Birthday, after all it is mother who did all the hard work (and thank you too, father for your contribution!)  Perhaps I have only started to think this way since having children myself.

So anyway, thanks for having me,  M & D - here's to you!!