Hallowe'en Hexing

For some strange reason, my hand looks a bit abnormal on this photo. I can guarantee, it is not a penis at the side of my head...

Considering this blog was originally started to Hex my Ex and cast all sorts of curses and incantations on those who have thwarted me over the years, I'm not doing very well on the Hallowe'en front, bearing in mind it's the one night of the year that evil witches like me can get on their broomsticks and legitimately hex all and sundry.

So, out of respect for this day, I am going to provide a top ten list of those people and things which I would (still) hex with impunity. Although my conscience is generally quite alert, today, it can bugger off while I flex my talons, search inside the knife drawer for the sharpest tools, and rip forth with the most barbed remarks I can possibly make about the following damnèd irritations of which I have/had the misfortune to experience.

10. Lisa Tickle. The Head Girl at our High School. She beat me to it by one vote and so I never got to take home the plastic shield all Head Girls were offered for a grand total of eight months. She also claimed that being size 14 was enormous (that was my size at the time), yet when I peeked into the skirt she had taken off before PE, I saw that the label read size 16. AND she snogged Paul Speed after I did and ended up going out with him for six months. I think that is what makes me want to hex her the most. I snogged him first, he told me my brown eyes were as beautiful as a Jersey Cow's (was that a compliment, do you think?) and that he wouldn't mind getting into my pants. I declined that offer, I must admit. Knowing her, though, I bet she didn't...

9. Mrs Brown, our 4th year Junior school mistress. She sported a bosom upon which you could have set a row of pint pots with whiskey chasers and wore a conical bra long before Gaultier even thought of bedecking Madonna in his gold creation. One day, I snuck my maths text book home to ask my brother to give me a hand with some complicated work (this was punishable by death in Mrs Brown's book) and intended to surreptitiously slide it back into my desk the following day. Unfortunately for me, I fell ill with tonsilitis that night and couldn't return to the school for a few days. Mrs Brown decided to do a spot check for desk tidiness during my absence, and thus noticed the concomitant absence of my Alpha-Beta book. Upon my return to school, I was warned that I was 'in for it'. Sure enough, I was hauled up to the front of the class, bawled out and then the hand went back for an almighty wallop across the back of the legs.

I moved out of the way, just in time, and she clattered her arm right across the hard metal corner of her desk. I legged it, the Headmaster entered to speak to her, and I was saved...for once!

8. Mindy Hammond. This just says it all.

7. Mario, my former boss. What a lech. This egocentric, rotund, smelly South African decided that whenever his skeletal, equally smelly wife (who picked her ear wax and ate it) was out of the office, he would try it on with me. It got to the stage where I used to simply laugh at him. But he didn't like that at all. It was when he clicked that I was winding him up, asking him to regale us all with tales of his days in a band, when women threw their underwear at him, and I asked if they also threw their white sticks, that I got the sack. I can't stand people without a sense of humour...

6. Another boss, Bernard. Just a little upstart, really. Told me that I was desperate for him but he would have to fend me off, 'unfortunately' for me. Used to sneak up behind me and tickle me hard in the ribs, getting me screaming abuse loudly, at which he would then take umbrage and interrupt me constantly when I was trying to get work done. Never used to pay me on time, either, so that one Bank Holiday weekend, once again without a monthly salary, I had no money to buy cigs, fill my car up with petrol or buy any food. It was the lack of cigarettes which grated the most...

5. Trinny and Susannah. These self-appointed TV fashionistas are obsessed by boobs. On men or women. They grope, analyse, critique and denegrate every breast which comes into their line of vision (they would have had a field day with Mrs Brown, above). They are rude, obnoxious, sport the most dreadful dress sense (the picture aside is the only one I could find which makes them look well-dressed, actually) and purport to be able to tell us peasants how to dress our best. I have had the misfortune to watch their programme, Undress the Nation, once, and vowed, Never Again. Banal, puerile tripe for people who don't know how to make an appointment for a hair-cut; don't realise that Charity Shops sell the best designer gear for a fraction of the prices you pay in the High Street, and are generally gormless, slavering morons. 'Nuff said.

4. Steve Wright. A BBC Radio 2 DJ who is the most sycophantic little tosser one could ever have the misfortune to listen to. He invites guests onto his 2-5pm show, purports to have read their books/listened to their latest CDs/had them over for dinner and positively gushes over their every word. His laughter is that of a gurgling drain, belching over raw sewage: stinking, foetid and not pleasant to witness. He refers to celebrities as his 'great mates' (even if he has never met them previously...or perhaps they asked him directions to the toilet at some BBC awards ceremony) and his nose is so dark from 'brown-nosing' that you might suspect he has severe circulation problems in his extremities.

3. Air musicians. Anybody who plays the air-guitar, air drums, air-saxophone, air-sackbut. I don't care. Whatever they 'air-play' deserves a very extreme hexing in my book. Now, I am a classically trained organist (no jokes, please) and will, in deep reverie, mildly tap out tunes on the arm of the settee, or atop my leg - with only one hand, I will have you note - but I DO NOT close my eyes as I am doing it, I DO NOT simulate orgasms while I am doing it, I DO NOT pout and jut my head back and forth in a manner reminiscent of Mick Jagger,  and I DO NOT think I look cool. It is a very private affair between me and the sofa. People, (and particularly men) who decide that virtual scratching of their privates, whilst pretending to pluck a bass guitar are just sad. Sad, lonely and need to get some outside interests such as toad-sexing. Anything but air-playing...

2. Sunday League Cyclists. If you live in a rural, or semi-rural area as I do, every Sunday the country lanes are plagued by these be-lycra'ed human-insects. They don all sorts of bright colours to stand out (and thus make fair sport for me to attempt to knock them down if I am out and about in my car), ride two or three abreast, gob everywhere as they are cycling and basically look abnormal. They also slow me down. And I only want to be slowed down in my car if I choose. Last time Sunday League cyclists slowed me down, I crawled behind them for about 200 metres then blasted on my horn so loudly that they wobbled dangerously, hit the kerb and I overtook, shouting the Highway Code at them (ergo: Thou shalt not cycle more than one abreast on a road. Particularly if Agnes Mildew is abroad).

1. Yes, it's the one you've all been waiting for. Well, possibly two of you have been, if you haven't dozed off yet. It's the Pick of the Pops (and you really ought to listen to this music, as it is seminal for us 30-somethings in the UK who listened to the Radio 1 charts!).

The Ex!

How could I write a blog called HexMyEx without mentioning that little malodorous junket of crap? Big Nose; Tosser; Knob-end...ah, my terms of endearment go ever on. If you want to know why I hex him, read the blog. If it's a case of TL;DR, well, your loss. Don't come crying to me when you can't follow what's going on...

Happy Hallowe'en, Hexers!

How to be a Celebrity...So it Would Seem...

It recently came to my attention that despite being quite well read - Turgenev, Ibsen, Dostoyevsky, Enid Blyton etc. - I appear to be reading the wrong stuff and am thus so far in the dark ages, that I haven’t got a clue about pop culture and its ‘celebrity’ denizens. My children frequently tell me about Xtina, J-Lo, Mary-Kate & Ashley, Britney, Justin amongst others, who seem to share a similarity in that none of them possess surnames. (Is this a new religion or something?). I rarely turn on the idiot’s lantern which glowers in the corner of my living room for fear of accidentally stumbling across “I’m A Big Brother, Get My X-Factor In The Jungle” and feeling my IQ drain into negative figures. So, I have no idea of Who’s Who in the 21st century.

To remedy this, I decided to do some hefty research and ‘get with it’, as my ageing mother would say. To this end, I popped over the back to the chippy and asked R Donna if I could pinch her old glossy magazines as I fancied reading something which I didn’t have to think hard about and had lots of colourful pictures. She didn’t skimp and sent me home armed with about ten OK! magazines, which must account for at least an eighth of the Amazonian rainforest.

The first edition I thumbed through was dated May 15th 2007 and its headlines shrieked: “Kerry with her girls: I won’t let the social take my kids” and “Jordan Exclusive: I can’t wait to have sex with my dead husband”. Wow! I thought. I always thought Jordan was a fairly nice-looking, fairly liberal Muslim country – surely they aren’t condoning necrophilia? And who is Kerry? She looks vaguely familiar as some gobjaw off frozen food adverts…

I flicked to the Celebrity Round-Up page, to get a crash course in who these people are and discovered that a football ‘hunk’ called John Terry thinks Frank Lampard is one of the ‘most fanciable men in the Chelsea squad.’ Gosh. That’s really enlightening, I considered. I shall sleep better for knowing that…I haven’t a clue whether Terry’s Taste is Frankly Fantastic, as I still don't know what Lampard looks like.

And then, “James Blunt gets jiggy with Lindsay Lohan”. Now I know both of these people. I know James Blunt because he sang that excruciating piece of pap, You’re Beautiful, which made me want to squirt a can of WD40 down his throat to lubricate his vocal cords. And I know of Lindsay Lohan because she appears to have been banged more times than the outside lavatory door…The last time Lindsay slept with James was on April 15th when they took a hotel room together. Well, I think we should declare that a national holiday, actually. It’s so momentously newsworthy, and us Brits could do with a few extra Bank Holidays to keep up with the rest of Europe.

Keira Knightley went on to bleat that she’s “sick of her high-profile existence and would rather be an ‘insignificant speck’”. HAHAHAHAHAHA!!! Oh Yeah! Of course we believe that, Keira. Of course you wish you were working at the local council, filing addendum reports for the end of year accounts, wearing last year’s fashions from Top Shop and New Look. My heart bleeds for you, it really does…Lying little bugger.

Why do ‘famous’ people moan about being in the spotlight? Why do they hate having to sign autographs for their adoring fans? Why do they begrudge us 'commoners' breathing in their same airspace? And why do they sell their wedding stories to glossy mags and then take other publishers to court for invasion of their privacy? There is a simple choice to make: go into acting/modelling/’showbiz’ or work as a librarian...

“Towers of London may take part-time job to fund career”. Hell’s Teeth! I thought – have the ravens deserted one of England’s most famous buildings and a biblical plague is set to ravage Great Britain as the Monarchy crumbles? Nope. “Towers of London” is a band having cash flow problems. I guess that means their music is so crap, nobody wants to buy their records and they are having to set up as painter-decorators in a white van touring the Home Counties.

It appears patently obvious to me that to be considered a celebrity in this day and age, one doesn’t distinguish oneself by having talent: one simply has to have the capacity to drink lots of vodka cocktails with fancy names, hang out in night clubs, get blonde hair extensions put in, slather over the false tan, wear as little as possible, have frequent punch-ups with one’s partner (male or female) and then vomit over the nearest paparazzo.

Utter Brilliance.

And to think, I used to do that practically every weekend in my teens (there weren’t any paparazzi, I must admit, but there are some dubious photographs of me knocking about on my friends’ walls).

So, why aren’t I famous, then? Why is my only claim to fame in having a letter read out on BBC Radio 2’s Wake Up to Wogan under the pseudonym, Betty Picksiznose?

Well, I reckon I know the secret to this.

First and foremost, I don’t speak in a pseudo-strong regional accent: my accent is pretty bland unless I get very hot under the collar and then I lapse into Posh Scouse. And it takes a lot to rile me up - generally, I am just plain normal-speaking.
Nor do I have enormous knockers (cf. link to Jordan...ahem!) which would have your eye out if I side-swiped you.
My hair is all my own, and my teeth don’t light up in the dark – too many black coffees, diet Cokes, and Lamberts to do that, I’m afraid.
I believe that sunglasses should only be worn when the sun is actually shining, and fake tan always makes me look like Judith Chalmers.
I'm definitely not a size zero, whatever that is. (Question to our one American reader, if you are thinner than a size zero, do you vanish? (Question to our one British reader - what is the UK equivalent of size zero?))
And I only vomit uncontrollably when I have to clean the cats' litter tray out...

But ultimately, I can string a sentence together using words of more than one syllable and that is my downfall. I must stop speaking and writing coherently. Right now.

“So, later, baybz! Next stop, Big Bruvva!”