Saturday Night at the Moovies: Milk in Film

Milk: cow’s gift to humanity. As well as their delicious flesh, of course. Plus their leather, come to think of it. Not to mention those giant horns Texan oil barons attach to the hoods of their cars. Blimey, those grazing, cud-chewing chumps have served us humans pretty well over the centuries. I could rip a cow to pieces just thinking about it.

So, sit back, pour yourself a tall glass of semi-skimmed (or gold top if you’ve basically let yourself go), and read on, as I take you through this not-at-all arbitrary rundown of milk in film.

23. Psycho (1960)

Congenial host Norman Bates, always offering his motel guests a giant pitcher of milk and a plate of sandwiches. If only he hadn’t followed it up with slicing them to ribbons in the shower whilst wearing the dress of his dead mother he’d probably be remembered a little more fondly.

22. Ghost World (2001)

Spiteful, self-absorbed bitches mock Steve Buscemi’s downtrodden Seymour for buying a “giant glass of milk”, whereas it’s actually a vanilla milkshake. Ha! In your face spiteful bitches!

21. Grease (1978)

The cast swallow lots of milkshakes. We swallow the fact that they’re thirty-somethings playing at being teenagers.

20. Bridge to Terabithia (2007)

Spilt milk! Don’t cry about it though. Cry about all the much sadder stuff that comes later.

19. Inglourious Basterds (2009)

Here’s Colonel Hans Landa. As well as hunting Jewish people, he likes to smoke a pipe and drink a glass of milk. My Uncle Quentin is also a milk-drinking pipe-smoker, but is categorically not a Nazi. He does, however, hold some pretty strong views on women in the workplace. Just kidding Quentin! I hope.

18. Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (1989)

The person-to-milk ratio of this film is off the bloody scale really, considering this shrunken bastard nearly drowns in the stuff. He’s then nearly eaten by his Dad, Rick Moranis. Terrible really. I mean, imagine Rick Moranis as your Father.

17. The 400 Blows (1959)     

The French, eh? Always doing something symptomatic of the stereotypical values assigned to their country by racists, eh? Anyway, this child has stolen a bottle of milk, the petit merde.

16. Trainspotting (1996)

Even smackheads occasionally take time out from injecting “shit” into their veins to enjoy a sugary strawberry-milk concoction. They then return to heroin. They’re addicts, see?

15. There Will Be Blood (2007)

Daniel Day-Lewis’ booze-soaked Plainview bellows proprietary claims concerning a non-existent milkshake at the quivering Eli. Just think: if he truly did love milkshakes more than alcohol, he probably wouldn’t be acting this crazy in the first place.

14 Pulp Fiction (1994)

Mia's five dollar shake elicits the spittle-lipped attention of John Travolta's rubber mouth. Bet he did give her cooties.

13. Back to the Future (1985)

George McFly: his milkshake brings all the courage to the bar.

12. The Big Lebowski (1998)

The Dude might hate the fuckin' Eagles man, but he sure loves milk-derived alcohol beverages, as in his ubiquitous White Russian. He also loves bowling, cannabis, and Donny.

11. Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004)

News anchor Ron Burgundy knocks back a carton of full fat, only to declare it, “a bad choice!” No it wasn’t Ron; it was bloody lovely and you know it.

10. Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

Quite possibly the worst thing that can happen to you whilst you guzzle milk. No respect, those bloody T-1000s.

9. Leon: The Professional (1994)

Our third film in a row with a colon in the title (milk must gravitate naturally towards the colon). This is a film all about a paid assassin who drinks only milk. Some consider this a slur on milk’s good name. I say if it’s implying that milk sharpens the senses, improves your aim, and deadens the soul to cold-blooded murder, then that’s fine by me.

8. A Clockwork Orange (1971)

Is Kubrick’s futuristic masterpiece another cinematic knock at the bovine brew, given its use as “rape fuel” for anti-hero Alex and his band of vicious droogs? No, because the milk they drink is packed to the centilitre with mind-curdling drugs. Normal milk would never arouse sexually deviant urges, probably.

7. Barnyard (2006)

I’ve not seen this, but there is a cow in it. Chances are that milk is also in it then, even if only tangentially.

6. The Calcium Kid (2004)

A much better role model than poxy old Leon here, with puberty’s very own poster boy Orlando Bloom pretending to be a boxer. A boxer whose strength is derived from necking vats of creamy white. This film has a 0% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. But what would they know, eh?

5. John Wayne

“Get off your horse and drink your milk” he said once, apparently, though no one where seems to know from where it originates. Even the internet isn’t much help and I hate Westerns so am not about to check so let’s just say that he definitely said it and move on.

4. Breastmilk: The Movie (2013)

I don’t know the first thing about this, because I am not interested in tit-soup. I sometimes hear the phrase, “breast is best.” Frankly, that’s bollocks: I’m an arse man myself.

3. Kingpin (1996)

Woody Harrelson's Roy Munson was startled to discover that his delicious milky treat wasn't squeezed from a cow’s udder at all: it was spunk wanked from a bull’s cock.

2. The Living Daylights (1987)

Timothy Dalton’s debut and penultimate Bond movie features a murderous milkman by the name of Necros, a geezer what lobs exploding milk bottles, and strangles victims with his hi-tech Walkman headphones. Real milkmen don’t do this, of course. They merely whistle, deliver top quality dairy products, and on occasion, shag your missus.

1. Milk (2008)

A film starring the only twice Academy Award winner whose head is the shape of an inverted Toblerone chunk. Disappointingly, Milk isn’t a rattling narrative about the nutritious delights of liquid lactose at all: it’s about a man who was gay for a bit. Oh, pull the udder* one Hollywood! Let’s hope that one day, Tinsel Town sees sense and the wonderful drink of milk is given the proper cinema adaption we all deserve. Especially me.

BYE

*other

Saturday Night at the Whovies: Time Lords Vs. Tinsel Town

As the very best popular culture has to offer, it’s no surprise that Doctor Who often bears eerie or even intentional similarity to its silver-screened sibling…

The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) Vs. The Brain of Morbius (1976)

Hammer

Horror

FILM

Over-zealous scientist crackpot stitches together a pathetic mockery of humanity using illegally-obtained body parts and the accidentally damaged brain of a genius. Hilarity ensues. No, hang on, terrible events ensue.

TV

Dumbo assistant stitches together a pathetic mockery of life using dubiously-obtained body parts, the accidentally damaged brain of a criminal genius, and a bloody great goldfish bowl. Bad shit goes down.

VERDICT

Yes, we’ve gone for Hammer’s inaugural horror effort rather than James Whale’s peerless 1931 classic; the lush Eastmancolor and liberal splashes of Crayola gore compare more favourably with Who’s lurid claret-spilling than it does Universal’s expressionistic monochrome. So - The Doctor and Sarah-Jane at the height of their friendship, romping through blood-soaked carnage? Or, a mayhem-imbued, delicious melodrama with a lanky, rampaging pasty-faced fiend? Peter Cushing or Philip Madoc? Tom B or Christopher Lee? We’re going to wuss out and call this one a draw.

Sunshine (2007) Vs. 42 (2007)

"Brr, I'm freezing"

"He's behind you!" etc

FILM

Spaceship crew on a mission to give the sun a kick up the arse. Once in close proximity to the flaming orb, however, they get a bit bonkers and burny.

TV

Spaceship crew on a mission to mine the crap out of a sun. Once in close proximity to the flaming orb, however, they get a bit bonkers and burny.

VERDICT

42’s breakneck speed and thumping tone doesn’t compare easily to Sunshine’s slow-burner, the latter opting for a more incremental build in tension than Who’s wham-bam-you’re-fried-spam approach to condensed story-telling. As a snack-sized thrill ride, 42 is never unwelcome. Ultimately though, whilst it’s got great direction, it’s inoffensive, generic Doctor Who. Sunshine, on the other hand, is captivating, character-driven cinema, with Danny Boyle direction and Cillian Murphy. That’s a big win for film.

Sliding Doors (1998) Vs. Turn Left (2008)

"Does your head come in a box?"
"Pardon?"

"Rose, I think I've got a shit special effect on my back"

FILM

Gwyneth Paltrow catches a train, gets home to find a floozy on the wrong end of her boyfriend’s dick, falls in love with John Hannah and dies. In the alternative timeline, that more or less still happens, but without the death and a different haircut. The moral of the story seems to be: don’t be too hasty to get your train - you’ll end up at the same destination regardless. Sort of.

TV

The concurrent parallel timeline story in which Donna Noble turns right, doesn’t meet the Doctor (who promptly dies), plunges the earth into chaos, and then dies herself anyway, forcing her original self to turn left and correct the timeline. The moral of the story seems to be: it doesn’t matter which way you turn - you’ll end up at the same destination regardless. Sort of.

VERDICT

Do you want Catherine Tate and Billie Piper emoting heady exchanges over the fate of the universe in an episode with allusions to Nazi-occupied Germany? Or would you rather soapy-faced Paltrow and Hannah cooing smug and nauseating Monty Python references to one another? Not to mention the fact that it’s directed by Peter “Joey ‘Greetings’ Boswell” Hewitt. No contest then, Who smashes its sliding doors right bloody in.

The Dalek Invasion of Earth (1964) Vs. Daleks – Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D. (1966)

"Fuck you monochrome!"

"Well Susan, they might have colour but at least you've got pubes, eh?"

TV

Hartnell and his homies rock up to post-apocalyptic earth (well, the Home Counties) to find it strewn with Skaro’s schemiest. The crew open up a polite but firm can of Whup-Ass on the deadly dustbins, before dumping Susan for a quick tête-à-tedium with local dullard David.

FILM

Peter Cushing’s human “Dr. Who” TARDIS-rockets his niece and granddaughter to London’s grim future as a Dalek-controlled wasteland. Thwarting their nefarious plans by organising a rebellion against the alien oppressors, he also takes some time out to casually stroll past some conveniently-placed Sugar Puffs posters. Bernard Cribbins tags along for loveable, though often tiresome, hi-jinx.

VERDICT

Of course, the Cushing movies are unique in being literal film adaptations of existing television adventures. With a glorious kaleidoscope of bauble-tinted Daleks, all the rattling action crammed into a slender running time a third the length of the original, and Bernard brilliant Cribbins, the big screen version is an improvement on its televisual predecessor in just about every single aspect.

Titanic (1997) Vs. Voyage of the Damned (2007)

"I've like, totally seen your tits"

Gaudy shit 

FILM

Aesthetically-pleasing couple pursue class-divided relationship on voyage aboard doomed ship Titanic. As the liner goes down, tragedy befalls both passengers and pair whilst the audience cry enough water to sink an entire fleet of the non-floating fuckers.

TV

Aesthetically-pleasing alien couple pursue species-divided friendship on voyage aboard doomed starship Titanic. As the liner goes down, tragedy befalls both passengers and pair whilst the audience immediately turns to Gallifrey Base to post hyperbole-imbued bitter rants, or intolerable squees of inanity.

VERDICT

Is Titanic a needlessly saccharine yawn of over-wrought sentimentality, or a master craftsman weaving an emotionally-manipulative love story from human tragedy? The truth lies somewhere in the middle. Voyage of the Damned, meanwhile, is a patchwork quilt of disaster movies, broad ‘n’ bonkers science-fantasy concepts, and colourful RTD character moments. Neither product shows their respective artists at their best, but given its bearable length, exuberance, and merciful lack of Celine Dion, we’ll take a slice of below-par, shouty Who over “Oiceberg! Roight ahead!” any day.

The Mummy (1959) Vs. Pyramids of Mars (1975)

"No, seriously, that really hurts. Stop it"

"FUCKING COME ON THEN YOU CAAANTS!"

FILM

English archaeologists ill-advisedly excavate tomb of mummified Egyptian god Karnak. Worshipper of said bandaged badass follows him to England to raise his crusty cadaver in order to wreak terrible revenge.

TV

English archaeologist ill-advisedly excavates ancient Egyptian artefacts. Namin, Egyptian worshipper of jackal-faced Orisan, Sutekh, uses robot Mummies to enable his master escape from permanent incarceration. Well, actually, the reanimated corpse of the English archaeologist does a lot of that too. Plus, the Doctor’s in it – did we mention that? Oh, you should just watch it – it really is very good.

VERDICT

Given that Pyramids of Mars has been scientifically tested by Professor Stephen Hawkings (probably) as being improbably brilliant, and all Mummy movies are essentially a bit samey and dull, forgive us if we side with the fella with the curly hair and blue box on this occasion. Plus, Mr Bronson’s in it. So there. Class dismissed.

Horror of Fang Frock: Who's Worst Dressed

It’s Doctor Who’s Bad Taste Bingo, and I’m calling “house!” on these sartorial scoundrels. 

Capaldi, please take note...

10. Jo Grant in The Claws of Axos

Hate your kids? Buy them these.

No one comes out of this psychedelic slop with much aesthetic credence: the UNIT boys’ green flannel tunics crumple baggily around their midriffs, The Doctor’s a confusing mix of Jimi Hendrix and Blacula (only far less cool than that sounds), and the Axons’ body-stockinged trouser bulge is matched only by their absurd ocular protrusion. It’s Jo, however, who gets to walk the catwalk of shame. Well, I say walk, but she’ll more likely tumble clumsily down it - legs splayed, arms flailing madly - affording us all yet another protracted gander at her lilac cotton undercrackers. For whilst her plum-kissed get-up is - hey - actually pretty groovy, it’s the cynicism of the ensemble that earns its place here.

“Lots of running about? Falling all over the place? Low camera angles? Yeah, we got just the thing…”

9. Robin Stewart in Arc of Infinity

 

Robin: rosy.

How rosy-cheeked Robin managed to bewilder his way about Amsterdam  - Europe’s most illicitly-thrilling destination – with such disinterest is beyond me. Even being part of an adventure as pedestrian as this should elicit a modicum of expression. But hell, what else can we expect from someone whose wardrobe has all the raw sex appeal of a bowl of strained cabbage that a binman just spat in? With a flannel shirt over ruby tee, tucked into brown chords and polished off with a ¾ length orange-lined green anorak, he’s every inch the bassist fired from The Housemartins for being just too damn boring even for them.

8. Peri in Trial of a Time Lord Parts 1 – 4

 

"Did someone say Dallas?"

Throughout her run, Nicola Bryant suffers clothing only the erratic mid-1980’s could have thrown at her; croptops weaved from deckchairs, knee-length salmon shorts, and guest star-distracting tit-tight leotards. With the opener to season 23’s The Mysterious Planet, Peri has clearly started to be influenced by the clot in the coat, wearing a lemon blazer seemingly stitched from off-cuts of the Doctor’s cuffs. Bad choice, girlfriend. Combined with a perm that wouldn’t look out of place in Dallas and a pair of trousers hoisted up somewhere around her nipples, it manages to smother the character under a gaudy gauze of Punch ‘n’ Judy Man and supply teacher.

7. Midge in Survival

Trust Midge. Trust him to dress like a douche.

Nothing says “gone evil” like a mauve shirt, zebra-striped tie, single earring, dark glasses and a single breasted cotton blazer with black UPVC arms. No wonder the guys at the community centre stare at him, open-mouthed in disbelief; they’re almost certainly thinking, “What a cunt.”

6. The Movellans in Destiny of the Daleks

 

"Does my bum look shit in this?"

Creating a race of formidable androids out of party shop dreads, mighty white trousers and camel toes is either visionary genius or howling-at-the-medicine-bottle madness. This most camp of robotic races frankly doesn’t look menacing enough to take on the challenge of a single Adipose, let alone the might of the entire Dalek fleet. Somehow, however, the braided bellends held the Skarosian sodsters to battle stalemate for over two hundred years. Perhaps, like the rest of us, the Daleks were simply too busy staring at their arses to do anything productive?

5. The Black Guardian in Mawdryn Undead

 

"Ha ha ha, I've just wet my man-knickers!"

If The White Guardian is the man from Del Monte, then The Black Guardian’s that weird bloke who hangs around Oddbins. You know, the fella who smells like he doesn’t know how to wipe his arse properly. Rocking a collar that would strangle a giraffe and tattered black robes that make Professor Snape look positively hirsute, the crowning piss-de-resistance is, of course, the dead bird glued to his bonce, like the result of some fraternity hazing decades ago that he’s never bothered to remove. You want the Key to Time, do you mate? Try the Brush of Hair first, you lank hobo.

4. Sarah Jane Smith in The Hand of Fear

Busy Lizzy: Handy Pandy

As with everything visual of the 1970’s, Croydon’s own investigate hack was caught between the funky and the fuck-awful, making many fashion faux pas during her TARDIS tenancy. For every angular triumph like the The Ark in Space’s combat trousers, there are several designer disasters, such as the mini-Marple curiosity from Robot, or the Quo groupie denim two-piece from Planet of Evil. Unfortunately, her final regular appearance in the classic series ends on such an insult to the eyes, you’d be forgiven for thinking that your telly had squirted a bottle of Sarsons straight into your iris. More commonly known as the “Andy Pandy”, just looking at her is a task in itself, so that she elicits a genuinely emotional response at episode four’s climax stands as a remarkable testament to Sladen’s acting ability (although the dark coat largely obscuring the costume helps too). And let’s not even mention that violet PVC cagoule in The Five Doctors...

3. Vorg & Shirna in Carnival of Monsters

Aaagh! My eyes!

I know; they’re supposed to look tacky. In that respect, the wardrobe department’s sterling work serves the script masterfully. Because as empty-headed, lowbrow entertainers, the pair’s mixed palette of pastels, sequins and deely-boppers, they’re garbed to ugly perfection. Hell, they’ve more or less come dressed as ITV.

2. The Lakertyans in Time & The Rani

 

Aliens. Stupid fucking aliens.

Because when you think alien, you automatically think dayglo mullets, green pyjamas, and headbands fashioned from Laura Ashley draught excluders.

1. The Sixth Doctor

Doctor Who: Space Berk

“You were expecting someone else?”

Sorry Sixie, it’s nothing personal. But you’re a cosmic cacophony, a kaleidoscope of clown and clutter: how did you think this would go down? An exclamatory statement at best, a strobing migraine at all other times, it’s a look that insults the intelligence as well as the eyes. The basic shape is absolutely fine (but then I daresay Jimmy Nail’s silhouette is pretty bloody hot) but the clash of colours betrays the eccentric charm we’ve come to expect from the good Doctor. No longer the intergalactic wanderer, he’s now an attention-seeking pillock, and that’s all without poor Colin Baker uttering a single sentence.

Any of the costume’s disparate elements could have worked singularly as an additional flourish – even the garish frock coat might have been tempered by some charcoal chords and a sensible shirt. But no, we get a dizzying jumble of Rupert the Bear trousers, question mark collars, cat lapel badges, a fob pocket watch, orange spats, green boots, and gingham waistcoats.

As Peri sums it up so succinctly: yuk.

Nirvana – Incesticide: A Tribute

A personal appreciation of my new favourite Nirvana album

Of course, it’s not really a traditional studio album at all, in the strictest understanding of the term. As a cobbled-together mop-up of b-sides, then-rarities, covers and alt. versions, there’s little sense of a unified band entering the studio to produce a cohesive sonic narrative. On the contrary however, its ramshackle nature is its greatest asset.

Featuring short bursts of fuzz-washed discordance such as Beeswax and Downer thrown in amongst the angular growling of, say, Hairspray Queen, it’s certainly the grungiest album the band would produce. Not the thick sludge of Bleach’s no-frills metal, nor Nevermind’s polished sheen of chorus-laden, fraternity-friendly rawk. Just pure, distilled grunge. Hell, throw in a couple of tracks from genre contemporaries Mudhoney and you probably wouldn't notice the difference.

Nirvana live: note original drummer Chad Channing

Is that a good thing? Depends if you like grunge really. Certainly a scene on which many would pour scorn: the infectious spread of its lo-fi schtick amongst every aspiring but uninspiring facsimile college band grew real tiresome real quickly. But hell, show me a genre that hasn’t proliferated without turning into a half-baked by-product of the original dish: punk, glam, metal, prog, etc forever and ever Amen. As always, the pioneers produce the cream; the copycats just curdle it.

There was something about grunge that really grabbed me. I was an early 90’s slacker teen with a healthy disrespect for convention and a cultural eye focussed firmly towards the United States. When these dishevelled rock anti-heroes shrugged their shoulders, threw on torn jeans and low-slung their absurdly-distorted guitars, my peer group appeared ready-made for me. Grunge didn’t play guitars, it beat them up.

Kurt, Krist, and Dave. Good job he wasn't called Kirk, eh?

For years In Utero was my favourite Nirvana LP. Maybe it still is, artistically-speaking. A startling combination of fragility and balls-out bombast, it encapsulates perfectly Cobain’s wonderful, poetic rejection of rock stardom.

“You want another Lithium? Have Scentless Apprentice and Milk It,” he chuckles grimly, giggling and bellowing his way through a cochlea-shattering wall of spite. In fact, his disdain for the genre crown he never wanted to wear runs explicitly throughout that album: all bitchy liner notes and asides to the industry that made him. I know what you’re thinking: “Oh, boo fucking hoo, sad millionaire rock star can’t deal with success, idolisation and a kick-ass wife. Go cook up another bag of smack to deal with it, yeah?” And you’re probably right, but I find the art created as a result no less fascinating for it. Perhaps it’s an album best enjoyed by roadside rubberneckers – “Roll up! Roll up! Come listen to the sound of a band implode with self-loathing!”

Still rocking the grunge aesthetic half a lifetime later.
The small child is related to me, somehow.

So, to happier times then, and back to Incesticide. It’s a remarkably optimistic record: muddied and muddled it might be, but the scatter-gun scramble of tracks reflects the band’s various incarnations and influences over their formative years. A burst of bravura permeates the top-loaded selection of tunes: from Sliver’s sunshine pop to the cheery choice of Vaselines and Devo covers, there’s a notable lack of angst and weight that would later come to typify them (although The Vaselines are a band to whom Nirvana would turn again, for their distinctly funereal Unplugged session).

Why I never got to see Nirvana live...

  

Elsewhere, grunge’s sharp-edged grunt drives the snappy blasts of two minute post-punk, the soundtrack to a thousand YouTube vids of skaters snapping their shinbones. The longer, more brooding menace of Aero Zeppelin and Big Long Now then segue into the album’s climax, one of the band’s compositional career highlights: Aneurysm. It’s big, small, loud, quiet, repetitive, deceptively simple, and achingly satisfying. It quite rightly became a firm favourite of their live set that sadly, I never got to experience.

Wrapped up in Cobain’s own oblique artwork (defiantly free of the bold Bodoni typeface logo – another poke in the eye to label Geffen), the album is less a statement, more snapshots of intent. It’s a tangle of would-be paths the band never quite took, a few choice moments capturing their various pivotal stages. Untapped history and unexplored diversions, Incesticide is an illustrative musical trip that hinted of a future that never quite was. That’s what’s so exciting about this record – it’s a journey, not a destination. It’s the thrill of getting ready to go out, rather than the slightly disappointing night out itself. It’s the optimism of youth, rather than the world-weary cynicism of maturity. It’s Christmas Eve, not Christmas Day.

Incesticide is potential. And I love it so much it makes me sick.

My original copy, still with content-explanatory marketing sticker

Christine Janet Manley (Mum)

Today, I’d like to write about my Mum. Why? Because she’s succumbing to cancer. Eulogies are wasted on the dead, don’t you find?

Let’s be clear: all Mums are great. Each and every one. Sure, there are bad apples. Rose West, we’re looking at you. The Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe whilst we’re here – forcing your offspring to sleep in footwear, that’s just barbaric. But generally speaking, there’s a reason a child’s love for his or her Mum is expressed with such fervent, uncensored candor on the glitter-strewn charm of a homemade Mother’s Day card (years before it is neutered by the sterilised convenience of the greetings industry’s print rollers).

There’s a biological bind, sure, but the maternal bond is a much more organic affair: love sculpted from an overwhelming impulse to protect, care and nurture at sacrificial cost to the parent. These actions aren’t exclusive to Mothers and Fathers of course: there exists genuine pet adoration that far supersedes the affection some parents show their children. Yet I mention these specific traits because I associate them so readily with my Mum. Her devotion to raising four Hamers single-handedly has been something approaching a miracle, and no amount of mealy-mouthed gratitude can begin to repay the years of consistent work, stress and debt our mere existence has caused. Not to mention the subsequent litters of grandchildren.

She deserves 21-gun salutes, a concert in Hyde Park, and a Bank bloody Holiday in her name. What does she get instead? Ovarian cancer and a severely reduced lifespan. Thanks life, you DICK.

This should be happening.

Ever the optimist, this tireless little lady repels negativity. Perhaps being born towards the end of rationing (1949) did it, but she’s always sifted through life’s crap pile in search of those microscopic traces of gold dust. Even now she’s characteristically positive about her drastically shortened future. She rationalises that by having an approximate and literal deadline, she’s able to arrange her affairs with more forethought than most are afforded.

“At least I get to sort all of this out,” she chirps breezily, pointing to the legal paperwork associated with her passing. Oh, the tedious formalities of death. Then she’ll stare briefly into the middle distance, clean her glasses, and make that funny little silence-punctuating, two syllable cough she’s made all of her life.

  

Born in the 1940’s? Sounds ancient, yeah? Well, she’s only sixty four, and before her body was saturated with this miserable disease, she was what you might call a young sixty something, new hips notwithstanding (although technically, they’re the youngest part of her). Mum’s always had the astonishing energy of someone two thirds her age. A cliché perhaps, but one rooted firmly in truth. When not nursing her tits off undertaking night shifts, extra shifts and additional agency shifts, she co-ran our local swimming club with a fevered passion bordering on insanity, as anyone who ever watched her leaping on poolside with a stopwatch, barking “PB!” can attest. Because it is fair (and right) to say that my Mum has had a heavy dusting of eccentricity somewhere along the manufacturing process. This is a woman that calls to her handbag as if it’s an errant dog (“handbag - yoo hoo!”), sleeps with her arm in the air in the hope of developing pins and needles (I think), and, on a daily basis, claps along vigorously to the Archers theme tune with pure rhythmic hopelessness.

A dog. Or a handbag, possibly.

In moments like those, you’d be forgiven for thinking that my teenage self was embarrassed by such peculiar displays. And I would be lying if I declared that said feelings didn’t occur (adolescence makes tiresome cynics of us all), but for the most part, I was proud to the utmost that that funny little firecracker was my Mum. Not other Mums. God, no. They’re fine and all, and some might have even made better gravy (my Mum’s gravy managed somehow to be thinner than water itself*), but they’re not my Mum.

*the roast chicken was a little suspect on occasion too. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear the poor bird had been punched to death just in time for the oven.

In addition to working, coaching, working and working, Mum would also consume books voraciously, take me on inexpensive but essentially pleasant European coach holidays, and worship the sun at every available opportunity (the times I would bellow hurriedly into the garden for her to put her bikini top back on immediately ‘cos a mate had just come round...). Also, during Dad’s short tenure with our family, she took up Morris Dancing, my parents presumably finding it a perfectly acceptable parental activity in which to participate and not, as it should be, a crime that carries a heavy custodial sentence.

There are better photos of my Mum out there, obviously.

Actually, I should like to briefly but sincerely apologise for the times that my self-absorbed, hormone-addled fury got the better of my poor, beleaguered Mum. Especially when she was only trying to help. During one of her well-intentioned but fairly disastrous extra-curricular French lessons in the dining room, I grabbed her pen in a rage of cause-less rebellion, and scrawled in two inch block capitals, “MR BACON IS A CUNT” at the top of the textbook page. Now, neither my Hexagon Plus or the afore-mentioned headmaster deserved such defamation (year head Mr Hocking on the other hand…), and so my poor Mum was left to repair my simple but brutal act of wanton graffiti. Realising that we had no Tip-Ex, she instead somewhat masterfully changed the insult to the far less vulgar, yet determinedly more surreal, “MR BACON IS AN OONT?” I think she was hoping to mystify my French teacher into submission. And hey, this was at least two years before “Cook Pass Babtridge”.

Of course, I should add that Mum had a whole lifetime before she became “Mum”, lest you think I’m limiting her to a role she didn’t play until her early twenties. Miss Christine Janet Moyle was a British teenager of the 1960s who partied in swinging London, saw McCartney when he was going out with Jane Asher, and watched an early Led Zeppelin performance with her Jewish boyfriend (of whom she once declared “Yes, his was like that,” to my bewildered, astonished face).

 

McCartney, Asher and the fella on the left with the pipe who isn't my Mum.

But this is all frippery, really. A lightweight character sketch arrived at by thumbing through some anecdotal evidence. I can’t just summarise my Mum any more than I can cure her diagnosis with an Elastoplast. Ascribe her a pic ‘n’ mix of traits or some choose-your-own adjectives? She’s too good for that, it wouldn't do her justice. Besides, she’s a tangle of contradictions anyway: keenly intelligent, yet indulgent of lowbrow pop culture. Flippant but serious. Whimsical but practical. Stoic but vulnerable. And so on. Describing her feels like an abstract art: an intangible, impossible attempt to conjure up one of the most important people in the world using mere, worthless words. And you could take every single one of my memories and novelise the lot if you like – they’re no substitute for her being with us, alive and well.

That’s the real fucker about death, isn’t it? The most bloody obvious yet bloody awful thing: they’re gone, and that’s your lot. No more catching up, gossiping, discussing, sharing, reminiscing, laughing, consulting, consoling, sympathising, comforting or watching the grandkids tear up the garden with anarchic glee. No more hugging. Nor even just watching shit telly together.

No making new memories. Just old memories to cherish.

The true essence of her being, her effervescence, vitality and spontaneity - they’re only ever there in the moment. Each moment she continues to exist. I will miss that more than anything.

My Mum, reacting to the world around her, and making it a better place for it.

So, Mum. Yes, you. You’re going to read this, because I will make you, like I do everything I write. And, of course, I find the written word infinitely easier, because it means I don’t have to say this stuff out loud, because I fear that if I do, I may never catch my breath again from crying. Because, although you’re right now probably more concerned with how many sentences I start with a conjunction, I need you to know this: this language fails me when I try to convey what a truly incredible person you are. You are, and that’s it. I love you, and thanks. Thank you for everything.

Mum on Googlemaps, "EX34 8EQ". She had no idea why a van was taking her photo, but waved regardless.