Dismissed

"Did he stab her on the doorstep? Did he immediately follow her upstairs and stab her? No. He did what all murderers do and made her a meal." I can imagine the looks which passed between my journalist friend and the Detective Inspector as the turkey-necked defence barrister made a last ditch attempt to persuade the jury of his client's innocence. The 65 year old with thinning white hair, lung cancer and diabetes stabbed his young Filipino wife six times in the back. The trial wasn't about whether or not he had inflicted the wounds which left her fighting for her life. It wasn't about the scar all the way down her chest where surgeons opened her up to save her. It was about his intention. He pleaded guilty to wounding with intent to do grievous bodily harm, but he told the court he didn't want to kill her. He plunged the knife in the first time after she made a flippant remark about going into town "to find men to make babies with". The five other wounds were to "shut her up" and "teach her a lesson". Her affair with the salsa dance teacher had humiliated him. The tumultuous relationship, strained by the 36 year age gap, had fallen spectacularly apart and she told her husband she wanted a separation. Now it was up to 12 randomly selected strangers to decide if he would live out the rest of his years behind bars. The prosecution barrister, young and good looking, painted a different picture to his learned friend. He wasn't the spectacled, coughing, cuckolded pensioner, but an enraged jealous man who didn't want anyone else to have his wife. The barrister played the 999 call in court. At first the defendant lied to the woman in the ambulance control room. He told her there had been a bad accident and his wife had fallen on a knife. When the woman in the ambulance control room asked the caller exactly what had happened, the truth came out. The jury heard the young wife's emotional evidence and watched as the confused looking older man, who'd also sworn on the Bible, repeatedly said he hadn't intended to kill her. Four and a half hours later the jury were asked to return a majority verdict in the attempted murder trial. Two hours later the jury was reconvened having failed to come to a decision. The judge dismissed them. Now 12 more strangers will sit and watch the young Filipino wife and the 65 year old with thinning white hair, lung cancer and diabetes and try to decide what his intention was.

The Red Paperclip

A fish pen, a door knob, a stove, a skidoo. One year and fourteen trades later, a tiny fairly insignificant piece of stationery has morphed into a house. Fast forward three years and the Canadian tourist attraction in the town of Kipling is being traded again. All offers are on the table but the owners would prefer several 1990 Burgundy Dodge Caravans with low mileage. So far seventy four people have offered everything from an ex husband with the children thrown in, to a pair of inline skates, a church pew, and two rib eye steaks. Personally I wouldn't go for the steaks - after 10 years of being a vegetarian it could have a worse effect on my constitution than travelling through India – but what an idea. With cash becoming increasingly tight and no voice or musical talent for busking, relying on my bartering skills is the more reasonable and less embarrassing option. So far this month, I have bartered my writing skills for Joan (who, by the way, is now hanging on the dining room wall and has already provoked comment from every house guest), a spa day, a hair cut and I'm working on a weekend in the Cotswolds. So what's sparked the resurgence in bartering? None of my friends are actually suffering because of the recession, but it's given everyone a free pass to barter like crazy. Okay, so I don't fancy being hit over the head with a newspaper again – an unfortunate yet comedy moment in Cambodia where I pushed the price too low in a Valium induced haze – but bartering is definitely the way forward.
My friends, the stoner and the investigative journalist, are lining up a trip to Bulgaria under the guise of looking for a house. No doubt they'll be greeted by an attractive lady dressed in heels and a poorly cut suit with lipstick seeping beyond the confines of her mouth. She'll think she has the upper hand. It will be a few drinks, lunch and a hard sale. But as the stoner pointed out, “If we haven't got any money, then we can't buy a house.” “Simple,” I said. “Get yourself a red paperclip.”

Embrace

I'm sharing my living room with a 94 year old. I spent hundreds of pounds for the privilege. She sits on a white wicker chair with red rose heads tumbling down her black skirt. In her gnarled hands she embraces an alabaster plaster cast of Ione Rucquoi's head. Her name is Joan. Until tonight she didn't have a name. Now she's a sculptor's grandmother. "Careful it's heavy," Ione says, tired and at the point in her pregnancy where she's close to bursting. I carry the bubble-wrapped image inside and set it down by the table. Ione follows me in and as we take off the cloudy covering we chat again about the picture, who the lady is and the shoot. The background to the image replays in my head - the untimely death of Ione's sister, the old lady she never became, her youth captured in the cast. It's a striking image but one you can live with. PJ's image of two sisters picking over an ox heart, blood smeared around their mouths, is still wrapped up and hidden behind the sideboard banned from causing offence. The women in the house don't like it. Some of Ione's images are stronger and uncomfortable, but Embrace has a sadness to it and a complex beauty. "Oh my god that scared the hell out of me," my housmate exclaims when he walks though the door and is faced with Joan.

Tupperware

They all sat there pretending to be ladettes passing tacky underwear around the circle. The chubby blonde girl with too much enthusiasm was hosting the party - the one who sold me my house. Robs invited me to make up the numbers and I went despite knowing I would hate it. With the risk of sounding like a chastity belt wearing prude, the only people I can conceivably see wearing any of the Ann Summers' range have limited acting abilities and get filmed whilst waiting for a mysterious Norwegian plumber to call by. I mean to say most of their thongs would look like a piece of plastic stuck round a bloated bird half drowning in sea water. We sat drinking red wine out of plastic cups and eating inexplicable amounts of crisps so that when the vibrators got passed to you, your hands were already too busy to hold it against your nose. If it wasn't for the neon pink and flashing lights (apparently they guide you in the dark), some of them could be mistaken for weapons used by sexually suppressed redneck police to rough up criminals. As soon as one person got up to leave the awkward gathering of strangers, we dived for the exit. “I felt like I couldn't breathe in there,” Robs said as we ran for the safety of the car.
“So you don't try things on then?” my house mate asked when he returned from work to find me turning the lounge into a jungle of randomly selected and recently purchased plants. “No, not at this party thank god,” I said. It was the sort of evening where you wish you could get back that two hours of your life and put it to better use. “Oh,” he said visibly disappointed at my description of the girly meet. “Sounds more like a Tupperware party.”

A shaky start

"Just don't write anything which could get you sacked," he mumbled through a mouthful of toast. "Oh, come on" I said looking for a sign of reassurance, the confidence notably dropping out of my voice and my finger already erasing the first traces of my blog, "What could I write which would get me sacked?"
It all started with the comment "You could rest a pint of Guinness on that behind." It was the sort of remark, made in jest, which added weight to my brother's childhood insistence that I was in fact adopted. With wiry, Afro blonde hair, skin that soaks up the sun and a sizable African woman's bum he had a point. "Thanks uncle Nicholas, it's almost as big as yours," I grinned. Then came the dreaded question. I don't mean the one which seeks to prise open the doors to your love life and invite frank comment on the suitability of various men to be welcomed into the family. I mean the one, which all people who write for a living are asked, "When are you going to write a book?". Let me be clear, coming from my dear uncle, who once told my brother's ex girlfriend she dressed like a Romanian refugee, this comment was not innocuous. So I decided after much deliberation to start little by little, so hopefully each sentence will roll into a paragraph and finally I'll have a jumble of words knitted together through wit, humour and empathy; a mixture of me, people I've met, stories I've covered and all in the public eye.