Episode 4: In Praise of Plastic Flowers

By the time you read this blog episode, I may be dead. Before I start the latest instalment of a saga that I know has at least two of you gripped – although it could just be trapped wind – I’m under strict instructions from my hubby to put in the following disclaimer:  I, Mark Fell, being of reasonably sound mind and clean underwear, love my mother-in-law unconditionally and would say nothing to harm or discredit her. You see, what follows is a whimsical and pictorial journey through a time that taste forgot and while based on truth, may have been tweaked here and there, which could unintentionally portray her to be less of a deity than she really, truly is. The fact that she speaks not one word of English is on my side. The other fact that some of the family do and could translate this and tell her is not on my side. Eighty-two years old or not, she packs a mean knockout punch.

Gorgeous

If there were a Spanish award for keeping tat, my sainted ma-in-law would win it. As I write this, the kitchen has been ripped out and we’re well on the way to the new one being put in. Naturally, before we started, the one requirement we had of the old kitchen was that it should be totally empty.......but this was no mean feat. Those of you that have visited the flat will know that the kitchen was full of little idiosyncratic touches; by that, I mean that nothing has been thrown away since 1959 and if Maria has her way, nothing ever will be. Each emptied cupboard has resulted in raised voices between her and José and what could be called ‘lively discussions’ about what should stay (nothing) and what will go (everything). That’s not to say that we hate everything and want only our stuff around, but dotted around this little blog are examples of the trinkets and foo-foo’s that she loves so much and which have (so far) survived the cull.

The sweet smell of a thousand
Tesco carrier bags

Why am I writing this rubbish?

I’m going to start with plastic flowers. When I arrived on these shores in 2001, a Galician virgin, the first thing that greeted me at the flat was a plethora of flowers. My delight at the obvious expense that had been sacrificed in my honour soon turned to bemusement, when I realised there was not a single living bloom amongst them. My bemusement eventually gave way to stifled hilarity when I realised that nothing was safe from the curse of the plastic flower. I swear that if I’d sat to watch something on the TV for any considerable amount of time without moving, there would have been a doily placed on my head with a synthetic display of daffodils bursting pleasingly from my crown. You see, that’s the other thing here, if it doesn’t move, it gets something plonked on it and nothing gets put down without a crocheted or cloth doily underneath it. Even the small chest freezer has a doily on it with a lamp, a rather sinister looking doll and a photo frame on top, all of which have to be moved each time I want a Magnum, which is about 4 times a day when I’m stressed and comfort eating.

Maria's cock.; now crowing
about his freedom

Gradually, over a protracted period of time, the plastic flowers have disappeared one by one. Some have been negotiated over and some may have inadvertently found themselves in a plastic bin bag whilst dusting this surface or that unit. My memory isn’t what it used to be and if I forgot they were there and put the bags out for the rubbish, well, it’s an unfortunate side effect of years of heavy substance misuse (José seems to think that Dandelion & Burdock counts as a lethal substance).

Of course, it's not all plastic flowers. She's got a lovely little cock that also sits near to Deirdre on the bathroom shelf, which I can't bring myself to throw out. Ah, who am I kidding - it went in the bin three days ago!

Then there’s Deidre.

Deirdre, earlier today.
Unable to think 'outside the box'

Maria & my father-in-law were visiting us for Christmas around 2005 and one bleak winter’s day, we trudged along to the Lakeland sale where she bought a little squirrel in a plastic box for about a pound. The reason it was about a pound was because it was shite. It’s not a real squirrel you understand. I know that Lakeland sell some odd things, but selling real squirrels in plastic boxes would be overstepping the mark even for them. Anyway, along the way she’s been christened Deidre, although I’ve no recollection now as to why. I don’t even know if she’s a she; how does one sex an inanimate squirrel in a plastic box? Good grief.........I actually stopped typing this for a moment there to consider that question.  It’s made me wonder what I have become since leaving the NHS a couple of months ago..........Ah, who cares? I left the NHS!!!!

Back to Deirdre! Deirdre has been everywhere. She started out life in the bathroom, but when we replaced it last year with a lovely shiny new one, she got moved to the second bathroom. There was a tense moment when we saw her back in the new bathroom and José threatened to implode when he discovered her, but it was just his mother’s little joke and Deirdre was soon restored to her rightful place in the second class loo. Spanish humour, huh!?!? When we came to live here in early July, she had been promoted to the top of a kitchen cupboard. Poor Deirdre! She’s got the same taste in living surroundings as Fergie does with financial advisors. She just seems to choose wrong, because as I said earlier, we’re now having the kitchen ripped out and a lovely new one put in. Will she coming back to the lovely new kitchen once it’s completed? You bet your bottom euro she won’t! It’s back to the second bathroom again for her. Perhaps it’s a homing instinct?

Flowers bloom all year round
in our flat

José has asked his mother on many occasions why she keeps Deirdre and the response is always an incredulous “well I bought her in England” (although she obviously says that in Spanish!). It seems that because he lived there and I was born there, buying Deirdre there makes her automatically wonderful. I pointed out to Maria that we also have Katie Price, Kerry Katona and Ann Widdecombe – she soon got the message.

The other argument for not throwing anything away is the “I paid good money for that” statement. The kitchen here is of average size, with a small annexed washroom (originally for handwashing clothes & hanging them indoors), which we’re turning into a nice storage area and to paraphrase Mrs. Bucket, ‘with room for a large fridge freezer’. In the old kitchen was a table, small enough to fit in there, but large enough to leave little more than about a foot on each side of it to squeeze by. Granted, the kitchen layout didn’t help, so we’re moving doors and creating a larger space, but this table was far too big for the space we had. When we told my suegra or ‘mother-in-law’ (you see, it’s not just a blog, it’s a small Spanish lesson too!) that the table was not going in the new kitchen, there was nearly a riot. I stood well back – I told you earlier that she can still pack a punch. That table was bought in 1973 with the money earned from sewing, by hand, 6 million sequins on the frocks of the participants of the Argentinian “Come Dancing” TV show and no-one, no-one was going to get rid of it. Of course we have got rid of it; when José puts his mind to it, nothing is safe, despite his mother’s pugilistic traits. He’s very single minded on this and I’m waiting for the inevitable day when I become too old for him to have around and he trades me in for something newer. I’ll tell you something though, my legs are not and never were, as sturdy as that old Argentinian table. I’ve never moved anything that small that weighed that much! Not even José! We were not allowed to throw the table out, just in case it will ever be useful again. It won’t be, but the compromise is that it’s gone to a better place........the storage space we have here on the top floor. I did think that both me and José may need oxygen after dragging it up three flights of stairs, but we were revived with a tequila beer and some crisps. I’m a cheap and easy date!

Demis Roussos: Denies
knowing my mother-in-law

The loft storage space is crammed with things that may be useful again in the future. Duvets! Handbags! Demis Roussos! Who knows, the next time I write a blog post, I may be writing from up there with only Deirdre for company and surrounded by a host of artificial chrysanthemums. Now, I wonder if it’s possible to put a filter on this page so that only people in the UK are able to read it..........?