Lynyrd Skynyrd: Free Bird didn't put a spring in her step
Ach, what a week. I’ve lost my mojo. This state of lost mojo-ness has seemingly extended to the making of the traditional Wednesday night macaroni and cheese. My cheese sauce had the audacity to go lumpy, and the macaroni stuck to the bottom of the pot. We still ate it.
My mojo started to stray on Sunday. I’ve never managed to embrace a Sunday. I stare dolefully into the middle distance, unable to as much as take a brush to my hair, listening to ballads and dirges. (This Sunday’s tune du jour was Free Bird by Lynyrd Skynyrd - all 13 minutes and 41 seconds of it - inducing 33-year-old memories of me at 15 pretending to be drunk on Pomagne and snogging the face off some unfortunate fellow spotty youth at the school disco until our lips were frayed and/or the teacher threw a bucket of cold water over us.)
I suspect my inability to tolerate Sundays is a result of nurture rather than nature. We were never a particularly religious family (I’m the daughter of a council estate fish and chip purveyor, gambler, smoker and drinker for goodness' sake - low morals), but at home (above the shop) Sundays were treated with some reverence. We were never allowed, for example, to use scissors on a Sunday. My sister insists I’ve either dreamt this, or made it up to make my childhood sound marginally more interesting than it was. To be fair, when I think back, I don’t recall spending Mondays cutting all the stuff that was in the “stuff to be cut” pile from Sundays.
Sundays were definitely dull days. This Sunday loathing has stayed with me all my life; I humph around the house in a melancholy fug with a face like a well skelped arse, as my granny was wont to say. (The well skelped arse bit, not the melancholy fug. She would have been baffled by words like melancholy; she signed her name in capital letters, God rest her bearded soul. Yes she had a bit of a beard. What of it? Although I have no room to talk; I’ve become increasingly dependent on the magnifying mirror and tweezers of a Sunday evening myself of late.)
As the week progressed my mojo became more and more estranged from me. I lost my ability to write a sentence. I couldn’t even write an agenda for a forthcoming meeting and inadvertently left out some fairly vital information like the time, date and venue. This wasn’t a disaster because I forgot to actually send the agenda to the meeting attendees anyway, and woke up in a cold sweat on Tuesday night, dreaming about brakes not working on cars and missed trains. I did eventually get round to sending out the agenda - only I forgot to actually attach the document to the email. This modern-day malady is commonly known (by me anyway) as the curse of the 21st-century numpty office worker. The second I press “send” I realise I haven’t attached the document and hurriedly type up a second email in order to rectify the situation and recover my credibility (HAH!) before a smarty-pants recipient fires back a snarky email immediately pointing out my omission. Gits.
It’s Thursday now and there’s no sign of the prodigal mojo. Last night, after a particularly demanding day, I remembered a speaker at an awards dinner I attended a couple of years ago who urged us all to embrace the day “Carpe Diem!” quoth she, perkily “Carpe Diem! Be the master of your own destiny!” while I sat with arms folded, sniggering and scoffing at the back muttering “I’ll be embracing hee haw, hen.” So I decided last night, although admittedly a bit late in the day, to give Carpe-ing the Diem a shot and flamboyantly tossed my pants off the end of my foot whilst changing into my comfy claes. Unfortunately during this manoeuvre I kicked the leg of the bed with the foot I broke earlier this year. I knew the pain would reach my brain and yes siree Bob it did. I couldn’t breathe.
I limped, whimpering, to the freezer for some ice to wrap in a tea towel and apply to the throbbing foot. I was distracted by a forgotten Viennetta (retro innit?) which I garnished with a family bag of Maltesers, and forgot about the pain.
If you see my mojo, skelp its arse and send it back to me please.
