Emerald Bile

Passion. The word itself make me feel tired. I accept the word when we are talking about the Passion of Christ, because that is about suffering, and as an expert in the Classical Languages, I know that the noun 'passion' comes from the latin verb 'to suffer'. I get that gay, tedious, hormonally charged literature could encourage people to think that passion means love. But passion is a strong word. It's not about a cup of tea with your lover after a grand session in the bed -that's just fun. It's about murdering your own children, jumping off a building and writing the name of your lover in your own blood, as you expire in a pool of your own vomit and excreta. And don't be thinking I have some hidden depths here, that I am waiting for some man to turn up and whisk me off and show me the passion - fuck that. If some man were so sure of himself to think he could 'unlock the passion' in me, I hope he enjoys listening to me talk about work, my friends' relationships and the latest television shows I am watching. Because that is all he would be getting. Passion in a romantic sense tends to end badly, if the films are anything to go by or that show 'Jeremy Kyle' and the middle pages of celebrity magazines. It's a Holy Show. These days, the word passion is everywhere, and I don't see twenty foot wooden crosses planted in the earth, with bloody-handed, droopy-headed martyrs dangling from their wrists from splintering, rough-hewn wood, experiencing the real passion. People are simply using the word to make themselves sound interesting. 'I'm passionate about grouting' said my plumber. He fucking wasn't, the lazy little shite, unless passion means handing all the work over to a bunch of cretinous, cack-handed morons, whose idea of passion is skiving off and sitting about like lumps.Passion, fuck off. Noreen

People who are ruled by their hormones, Creationists and Communists get very excited about history and pre history. The rest of us don't really give much of a fuck about it. I, for example, don't think it matters who used to be King, whether we were once fish, or how we coped before we had knives. Do I have a knife? Yes I do - a fantastic penknife and, what is more, a large range of Sabatier knives in my kitchen. If someone asked me to use a flint to cut stuff with, I would simply use it to cut them.

So when I find myself in the company of any of the above group of people and we end up, say, looking at cave paintings or rock carvings done by our ancestors thousands of years ago, I find it very hard to look interested. Why? Because the paintings and carvings are pure shite. It is worse than when someone shows you the awful scrawls their children produce at nursery, as, judging from the height of the paintings up the wall, they must have been done by a human adult, and adults should be able to draw better than children. I suppose it is just possible, that the paintings and carvings that exist in the world are actually evidence of prehistoric 'special schools', but I doubt it. I don't think there was much difference between normal and special back then, if Stig of the Dump and the Flintstones, with that cretinous great man, are anything to go by.

There is always some wanker who pipes up with a theory about how the paintings are stylised, or they are symbolising some great event, or a way of asking the prehistoric gods for a favour. What a load of old shite. How come these cunt cavemen only ever paint cows? What's that about? I'm not having David Attenborough and nature programmes giving out: '90 percent of the worlds species have disappeared from the planet', and then excusing the cavemen for only ever painting one sort of creature. And if I were a caveman and for whatever barking reason, were only allowed to paint one sort of animal, would I paint a cow? No I fucking well would not. I would paint a Przewalski's horse, racing some other Przewalski's horses. That is all.
Noreen

My mother is in a decline. It is because of me, again. I left my husband, again. Actually, I am not one of those sap women that goes running off to her mother every time there is a marital row. I left him ten years ago, because he was a big cunt, then I forgave him, because I have an enormous heart and a generosity of spirit that knows no bounds, and then I left him this time because I was dying inside and he wasn't over the moon either.

I didn't tell her for a while, Himself did, in an email, but Merciful Jesus prevented her from receiving it, because she is old, has got a new car that she keeps locking herself into and could not get herself out of the car and in to the library to look at a computer.

My brother Francis eventually broke the news to them, after treating me to a lecture about the sin of divorce, and she then settled in to an enormous state of worry, which was relayed to me via skype, email, text and increasingly threatening phone calls from my siblings.


Eventually, under pressure from Francis and even Maud (who was gettting it in the neck about why I had absconded to east africa) I rang her. You'd have heard more life in cadaver, the voice she had on her.
'Hello' *weakly
'Hello Ma, It's Noreen. I'm in Africa'
'I heard. How are the children?' (this is typical. I could be being eaten by a lion, or gang-raped by the whole of the Masai tribe while I am on the phone, and she is only interested in the grandchildren)
'I believe they are fine. Himself is looking after them very well'
'Are you still losing weight?'
'I am still skinny yes - I think it was the stress of leaving'
'Well of course I knew. I just knew that it was emotional. There was no way there was anything physical wrong with you, you've the constitution of an ox. I said to myself 'It'll be to do with her marriage. She always gets thin when there are problems'
'Why didn't you say anything to me then? I had to go and have all those fecking tests, and there you were, telling me how you are a martyr to your thyroid and it was almost certainly the appalling health that you had suffered your entire life coming to bite me on the arse in middle age. You could have just said 'are you unhappy, Noreen'
'Well of course I have been incredibly stressed these last two months as well, probably more than you, because I was thinking you had the cancer or possibly even something worse'
'I thought you said you knew it was stress? And what is worse than cancer?'
'You know perfectly well what is worse than cancer, and the way you carry on, it may yet afflict you' (I think she is talking about HIV or something 'social' like the clap)
I let her go on a bit and then she started to try to figure out the name of the country back in the dark ages, and whether she had once owned a stamp from there, and what it said on the stamp, but do you know what she did not do? She did not tell me that someone I hardly knew had died. So there you have it. If you want your Irish mother to stop harping on about the departed, leave your spouses and move to the third world. That is all.

Noreen

This morning I went for my Brazilian waxing. It is still the summer here in Hong Kong, and I am often required to parade myself on super-yachts, in a series of increasingly revealing bikinis, to ensure repeat invitations. Nothing is more likely to get you back riding the Star Ferry with all the plebs, than unsightly pubic hairs escaping from the gusset.

I have found a useful waxing woman, who just about keeps the right side of bull dyke, and seems to do an efficient and reasonably painless job. There is everything to be proud about, for being a good minge waxer. So many people are shit at it.A particularly vicious, butcher beautician, left me bleeding from my perineum, something which I consider should only happen during childbirth, or after a especially vigorous night of passion. Inept waxing has made me sore for days. I have had an allergic reaction to the wax, which caused stinging and a great reluctance to sit, for about a week. Yes, the art of bikini waxing is one which, when mastered, should be an occasion of great pride for the practitioner.

If you are good at something, there is no need to try and add other strings to the bow. One of the skills I sometimes use in my job as a therapist, is hypnosis. I can hypnotise people, but I don't feel tempted to learn how to saw them in half as well. I'm a mental health therapist, not a fucking magician, even if we do use some of the same techniques. In the same way, I don't expect my waxing lady to lose focus on the business of removing hair from my fanny and start practising clairvoyance.

"Ah, it is you" She said "You want all the hair off, right? I remember you". I was a little insulted by this, as have always thought the "Hollywood" look to be one that women wheel out for men who are closet paedos. I don't like the thought of some bloke banging me and pretending I am ten. It's just a bit hideous, and I especially don't like being mistaken for one of those idiot, paedo-shagging whores.

The other sort of women who have Hollywoods, are those ones with the grey pubes,who don't want men to notice that they are old boilers. My pubes are still untroubled by grey, and in Hong Kong, blonde pubes are rather a curiosity. I am not going to lose that edge, thank you, and I hope I do not look old enough to "need a hollywood".

"No, not all the hair off. Just leave a little"

"Ah - you want landing strip, right? I remember now".

At this point I went slightly pale. "No. I want a small triangle. Natural looking shape, but just really tiny". Landing strips are for people who need to earn their living through their vaginas, or for unimaginative chavs who think marrying a retarded sportsman is the height of success.


I disrobed and she had a good old stare at my vulva and a prod around the houses with a glorified lolly stick.

"Are you French?" She asked "French women have very strong hair. You have very strong hair. Like French woman."

I just couldn't be less French if I tried. I am tall, I am very blonde. I don't eat snails or cream. I hate coffee. I have large hips and huge feet and broad shoulders, and avoid horizontal stripes and berets. The only reason she could have for calling me french, is that I have a French minge.

People have given me shit in the past, for showing insecurities about my vagina. Women are supposed to be proud of their clouts and and see them as powerful life giving forces, that have the potential to keep men in thrall. We are encouraged to go on that show "The Vagina Monologues", or to pay money to watch other women droning away about their clunges on it. We are expected to go to Anne Summers parties and wave enormous, cervix-eroding dildos about, whilst cackling like hags. Well, I say this to you, vagina-overconfident women. I am in solidarity with men, who have small penises. And with men who have penises with a bend in them, or uneven shaped balls, or a really gargantuan and misshapen head. I am not in solidarity with them because my pudenda is unsightly, it is not. I am being insecure about my vagina because somebody called it French.

Noreen

Today I watched a clip about UFOs, and this man was going on: "We have the technology to travel to the stars. Aliens have been sharing intelligence with us".

Having worked in mental health, I just rolled the old eyes and thought "Here we fucking go. The next sentence out of his mouth will be about the antenna he has in his brain, and he'll round it off with an announcement that he is the next Messiah with a message for us all". Loonies tend to go down the same couple of roads. They are either scared shitless of the television and how it is looking at them funny, or they think they should have a channel on it all to themselves and tell everyone important messages from on high.

Interestingly no one else seemed to think this man was a mentaller, and people got awfully excited "Alien intelligence, how interesting, and you say it is because the information carried a high level secrecy rating that that is the reason no one else knows about these Alien liaison agencies, telling us how to fly into space". I'm exhausted by the chatter about UFOs and the like. I just couldn't give a shit about aliens or their vehicles. This planet is already wearing me fucking thin and the stars, apart from the sun as I like a decent tan in the summer, can kiss my arse and fuck off while they are doing it. In the next breath, someone else was harping on about how we have never, actually been to the moon, yet the moon is incredibly close compared to even the nearest star. "Oh no" said this one "There is no way anyone has actually set foot on the moon. It was just propoganda, to poke one in the eye of the Russians".

Where were those fucking Alien Navigation Experts then, hhmm? Does anybody know the answer?

Well, I know why the Aliens did not help spacemen get to the big, dumb moon. It is because they were not interested in petty earth squabbles about who was the fastest up into space, or Communism vs Capitalism. And who can blame them? I am a human and both of those things bore me rigid. If I had one eye, and a very long forehead, and lived in a jellified crater, I can't for a second see myself getting all revved up about either of those questions. And especially if I were a one-alien-genius Universal Navigation Expert, then the idea of directing a bunch of bickering men in oversized white suits and heavy boots, to the equivalent of the corner shop, would leave my rubbery green skin, entirely cold.

Noreen

When I was a little girl, cakes were generally made by old women. These "old school" cakes were large and round - anywhere from 6 to 12 inches in diameter, got cut into slices and passed around medium sized groups of people, and then were returned to a tin, that generally had some kind of important decoration on the outside. Depending on how fancy the woman baking the cakes thought she was, you might have to eat the slice with a fork, rather than poke it into your mouth with your hands, or there might be napkins, or, God forbid, doilies, or fuck knows whatever. And women, old women, were incredibly competitive about their large, round cakes and would lie to each other about the ingredients and then laugh like witches, when their unsisterly recipes turned out shitely for their rivals.

That isn't to say, that the indidvidual cake wasn't around in those days. But small cakes - fairy cakes, we called them, were the province of children - the type of thing you made with your mother, as you could just dollop a spoonful of mixture into a paper case and it didn't matter how awful the thing tasted, or whether it was wonky-shaped, as the entire thing would go into the mouth, in one go, just like that, with no fucking around with forks or spoons, and there might be icing and those ball bearing things that broke teeth on the top of it.

By the time I was about nine - I noticed that the spoilt children who had no siblings, or the ones whose parents were getting divorced and were caught in a war of affection, started to bring these new types of cakes to school in their packed lunches. Larger than fairy cakes, there were, cased in deep silver foil, with a dark slick of greasy brown thick fatty sludge on top of them. Cupcakes. These cakes were an occasion of great envy amongst the children with more functional backgrounds, and I pleaded with my mother to be bought them too. "No, Noreen." Said my mother. "Bought cakes are wicked things - made by uneducated people with filthy hands and stuffed full of chemicals. You should feel sorry for those poor children whose mothers have no clue about the nutrition. I mean, it isn't difficult to throw a few ingredients into a bowl and just whip up a simple.... what? Don't say such wicked things. Divorce is a terrible sin, not a great deal for the kids. Jesus, what have I raised here..."

One time I persuaded the most spoilt girl in the school to give me a bite of her chocolate cupcake, in return for a look at a photo of my brother having a pee, as she had never seen a mickey. It wasn't a great shot, as I had had to take the thing covertly to avoid being beaten to a pulp by Francis,and she started giving out about it: "I can't see anything. I mean there is a slight pinkness there, but I can't see "it" at all!" Under normal circumstances I would have been ready to give it right back and ask her how she came to be such an expert on the male member, when she had no brothers and her Dad looked like a fairy, but I was struck dumb by the hideousness of the mouthful of powdery, rotten cake, slathered with oily paste that I was entirely failing to swallow. It was fucking appalling. Just revolting.

That was the first incarnation of the cupcake, and now you can't move for the fuckers. They've changed a lot in appearance from the glistering, brown, factory- efforts-in-boxes of the eighties. No - now cupcakes are these revolting, garish American canonballs with two inches of blue or green lard whipped about the top of them, that cost thousands and thousands of pounds to buy. I see really gormless looking women pointing and giggling at them in Kensington shop windows, and am overwhelmed by photographs of them, all over gruesome lifestyle magazines, and people having them instead of wedding cakes, the lazy fucking cunts.

Someone bought me a modern cupcake the other day, when I was having a cup of tea, and there was this enormous performance about it: "This. This, is a Red. Velvet. Cupcake!" "Oh," I said, "How lovely!". It was six inches high of whipped yellowy butter and sugar icing, over a rather gritty, red coloured sponge. There was no flavour to the actual cake bit whatsoever, but the topping tasted like cheese, and when I pointed that out (trying to conceal the absolute horror on my face - cheese - dirty bastards)I got the "Yes - it's a cream cheese frosting" line. Fuck me, those dirty fucking American cunts. Make individual cakes, because "you are worth it", or hate sharing, or whatever your uncle sam values are - I don't fucking care. And if you must dye your cakes peculiar colours, then I suppose that is ok, especially if you are used to things like aerosol lamb and pop tarts and like everything a bit ersatz. But cheese should be kept away from bakery products. I would no more put dairylea in a fairy cake, or cheddar, or stilton, than I would toothpaste.

And they are tedious to eat, cupcakes, with all that rich, horrible cheese paste on the top, getting all over your face. I notice women taking bits off with their fingers and licking them in a faux sexy way, but I think it all looks a bit sad and like a chapter of the Women's Institute have overdone the HRT. No - cupcakes can completely and utterly fuck off, along with anything "vintage" or "retro" and those overpriced, lacquered ringpieces, Krispy Kreme doughnuts, which are just the end of a dog's cock.

Noreen

"Polite Notice. No Parking" said a sign outside a residential block near the supermarket. How is that polite? How is asking someone not to do something they absolutely want to do, remotely polite? And how about, if you have to be such a cunt and stop people from parking where they want, how about "No Parking Please". It would be more polite than just ordering people about.

But worse - even worse than a "polite notice" that actually says something rude and mean, worse still is the habit they have around here of labelling nazified instructions as a "friendly warning". Warnings, quite simply, are never friendly. I mean there is a sliding scale between a bossy street sign, a letter from a solicitor, a visit from the boys and a severed finger through the post - I get that, but warnings, by their very nature, are meant to frighten - not ooze warmth.

A group of cunts near the shops I visit, who, like the polite notice people above, are sick of people parking in their driveways, have put up a sign reading "Friendly warning - no parking". A friendly person would not put up a mean sign like that. A friendly person, upon seeing a shopper looking for a parking space, would come rushing out of their house and would gesture in an generous fashion to the space in their drive. If they were really friendly, they might offer to wash the car while the driver was shopping, or offer a cup of tea in one of those carry-cup things American mothers cart everywhere with them, for the shopper to sip while choosing a new handbag. A really friendly person might even ask for the keys, so they could give the upholstery a once over with the hoover, if time allowed. That. That is how to be friendly with regards to parking. That is all.

Noreen