Don’t you just love it that all those greedy MP’s are having to pay their extortionate and often unfounded claims for expenses back? Most of them it seems have been at it left right and centre and some of them have been ‘at it’ in all senses of the word, but we are used to that kind of behaviour, are we not, from our not so honourable Members of Parliament. Now thanks for once to the media their dastardly deeds are being exposed to public scrutiny and condemnation on a daily basis and many of them are being forced to stand down. At this rate there’ll be none left  standing as most of them are in the dog house or the ‘duck house’ as in the much publicised case of the Tory MP who claimed for a floating duck house for his pond.

Pond? Lake more like! When us commoners the proletariat think pond, we think of something from Argos or B&Q where we would be lucky to float a goldfish let alone a fleet of ducks – and it wasn’t exactly a house was it, it was a pavilion, although looking at the photograph the door seemed a tad small for the average duck to squeeze its feathered bottom through. But I suppose that particular Tory MP doesn’t need to concern himself about that anymore as his Daffy’s and Donald’s will be so much thinner now that he can no longer put in a claim for extra bread rations to fatten them up.  

I wonder what Gordon Brown or the Chancellor of the Exchequer is going to do with all the money these rip off MP’s are being forced to return to the taxpayer? I wish they would put some of it into an HIV awareness raising and prevention campaign, but I suppose that is too much to ask. When you think about how much money was spent sending leaflets about the dreaded swine flu to every household in the land it does make you wonder why they don’t do something similar in relation to HIV. Their answer to that of course probably would be that swine flu has the possibility to affect anyone – but then so does HIV, but for some reason the ever rising statistics, especially amongst women and young people, are being kept constantly under wraps.

Did you know that you say HIV backwards in Spanish and its pronounced atchy-eeee-oovay, which sounds like an embarrassing female complaint, which it is of course and I should know as I’ve been living with itchyoovay now for seven years. I’m telling you this because I’m having to think half in English and half in Spanish at the moment because Luis is over here and due to his stubborn determination not to master the English Language and my laziness in relation to conquering the mysteries of the Spanish verb, we tend to speak Spanglish. For that reason, confusion might arise and all too frequently does. For example, if I ask him to pass me the pan he might well hand me a loaf of bread. It’s a good job that Tory MP doesn’t have a Spanish maid otherwise his pond would be floating with saucepans. Mind you it’s big enough to float a flotilla of pans as well as the entire contents of the Argos catalogue. I think I might have mentioned before that the word for bra in Spanish sounds very similar to saucepan, so he would have to watch his Spanish maid for that too otherwise he might end up causing more of a scandal and be in more trouble than he already is.

The Spanish word for knickers is braggers, but that doesn’t surprise me one bit, because listening to Luis, everything is so much better in Spain. According to wikipedia the word knicker originated in America and was down to a Dutch settler called Herman Knickerbockter, although I feel in view of what is currently going on with our MP’s ‘knicking’ the taxpayers money to clean their moats and buy floating pavillions for their ducks, wikipedia might be forced to update the information to include the Houses of Parliament.

Talking of things being back to front, did you know that the bubbles in a glass of Guinness float downwards instead of upwards? In order to prove this little known theory, Luis and I set off on a trip to Liverpool the closest point to Ireland we could get without taking the ferry and also with the intent of visiting Crosby beach the site of the Antony Gormley sculpture installations, aptly entitled, ‘Another Place’. I say aptly entitled because we’d tried to find them before and ended up in another place entirely. So this time we’d armed ourselves with a borrowed Tom Tom, but I fear Mrs Tom Tom must have been some distant relation of Major Tom Tom of David Bowie fame, because if her sense of navigation was anything to go by she obviously lived on another planet to us. She also had an annoying tendency to nod off when she was most needed.

“Ground control to Mrs Tom Tom,” I screamed at her at a busy intersection, shaking her by the throat and begging her to wake up and tell me which lane to take. But she ignored me and we ended up in a mega traffic jam of Everton supporters.

The Spanish are not renowned for their patience at the best of times, especially in regard to forming polite queues and Luis who was desperate for his pint of Guinness by now was starting to get decidedly agitated. The curses that issued from his Guinness starved mouth were not to be repeated and were mainly directed at Mrs Tom Tom, the traffic lights, which seemed to be constantly on red and the Everton supporters, calling them sons of prostitutes and various parts of the male anatomy, which was not a very wise thing to do, especially when the line of blue and white decked cars were at a standstill. As for Mrs Tom Tom it was all I could do to stop him from hurling her out of the window.

When we finally arrived at Crosby, a bleak run down seaside town, the weather had deteriorated, ominous black clouds hovered on the horizon and there were no pubs.

“No pubs?” Luis cried outraged, how could this be posseeeblay in the north of England.

In the end we settled for a dilapidated looking hotel called ‘The Grand’ and Guinness finally in hand he calmed down somewhat and settled back to investigate the descending bubble theory. This resulted in him downing two pints of the black stuff in a row in rapid succession. Guinness may well be good for you and beneficial for the heart as it allegedly slows down deposits of harmful cholesterol on the artery walls, but did you also know that it is treated with something called ‘isinglass’ which is made from fishes’ air bladders. Some things I feel it is preferable not to know. I am old enough to remember their original advertising campaign featuring the famous toucans and the accompanying slogan.

“Toucans in their nests agree Guinness is good for you. Try some today and see what one or toucan do.”

Well, Luis who had taken that sentiment literally found what that meant for him was he had to keep disappearing behind sand dunes for the rest of the day in order to relieve his Guinness filled bladder.

We left ‘The Grand Hotel’ and set off around the perimeters of a dismal black lake not dissimilar in itself to a huge pint of Guinness fringed as it was with a ring of sulphurous looking froth, with not a duck or a duck house in sight. But everyone else seemed to be going in the opposite direction. Where were they heading we asked ourselves. Maybe they knew where all the pubs were? Hordes of folk were descending through the gap in the sand dunes looking like something out of a Fellini movie – huge women with strange accents and enormous bosoms, tattooed men with arms like sides of beef nearly being pulled out of their sockets by snarling drug dealer type dogs. We elbowed our way through the gap in the dunes then scanned the horizon for the magnificent bronze sculptures we were so familiar with having seen them on the internet. But all we could see were some rusty looking figures in the distance lurking ominously in muddy puddles with their male appendages dangling and staring forlornly out to sea. We set off bravely across the wide expanse of dirty brown sand to get a closer look and take some photographs, although to be honest I was a bit nervous about getting stuck in some sinking sand and becoming an installation myself.

That fateful trip to ‘Another Place’ resulted in me catching some kind of bug which of course frightened the living daylights out of me in case it was swine flu. So I’ve now got a terrible toss and a bad case of constipado – Spanish for cough and cold.

Anyway for future trips and days out I don’t think we will be borrowing the Tom Tom and talking of Toms, I wrote a message to Tom Waits my musical hero on his website.

Dear Tom will you write a song about HIV?                                                                   A rap – a moan – some poetry                                                                                                For outcasts of society                                                                                                              For ‘invisible’ women the world can’t see

Or failing that just for me.

Not my best effort I have to admit but you never know, and in these current days of ‘people power’ and getting your voice heard, now is the time to speak out. Look at the wonderful Joanna Lumley and the well deserved victory she has achieved for the Gurkhas.

Maybe if we all keep speaking out about HIV someone somewhere will listen.

What do you think of my new boyfriend?

My New Boyfriend!