Gail’s Gossip is the new alternate week feature on the blog page starting in October. Gail is something of all of us. She is a normal woman doing normal things. Who is Gail? well, that’s the twist. She regards it as a woman’s prerogative to remain incognito. Gail’s Gossip will take on all kinds of topics, from the big picture stuff to the mundane. We hope you will come to love Gail and Gail’s Gossip as much as we do.
So, without further ado, we give you a little taster of Gail’s Gossip
‘Gail, don’t let your mum get to you. You aren’t fat: she’s a rake.’
‘Meg, mum said I looked six month’s pregnant! And that my boobs are bovine. I can only talk for a minute I’m driving and about to hit dual carriageway hell.’
‘That’s why your mum has zero friends and your dad spends his life on the allotment and in his shed,’ said Meg. One thing about Meg is she makes me feel better by the second.
Alas, Meg is also on a mission. ‘I’m going to a new exercise class tonight. Come with me and we can balance energy-output with a glass of vino in The Plough. Did you know a small Sauvignon Blanc has less than 100 calories with soda and ice?’
‘There is a God, but I don’t own a single piece of Lycra, the dog’s been home for hours plus there’s half-a-box set I was going to catch up on.’
‘No excuses. I’ll walk Fudge while you drive home and I’ve got a pair of elasticated Indian-trousers you can borrow. You’ve got to stop watching other people’s lives go by on TV – it’ll only make you fatter.’
‘OK …just this once. Fudge will whine for extra dinner but he’s on a strict diet. Like me, apart from this yummy lemon sherbet.’ Meg laughed and said goodbye.
Thank goodness she’s my best friend, ever since we met across a supermarket aisle when the kids were toddlers and stealing sweets at the checkout. We’ve walked, talked, drunk, laughed and cried across 25 years. Meg’s been by my side through thick and thin. Thin in terms of our divorces and thick for waist size.
Abba belted out ‘Money, money, money, It’s a rich mans’ world’ on Radio 2.
‘It certainly is. What I’d give to ditch in work and rattling on to clients about how vital it is to be fully insured against all that life throws at you. I’d love to forget about paying bills, the lack of a decent pension, or the remote chance of finding an indecent, solvent, man with his own teeth and hair. I just want to be a potter. All these worries crowding around my bed at 3 am every night.
Damn just caught the red light. Potting’s a dream and I must stop dreaming and sighing, I sound like a deflating bagpipe. ‘Nobody likes a sigher’ as mum points out, or bitten fingernails and laddered tights.
‘Money, money, money, it’s a rich mans’ world’. I’d like to be Demi-Moore with Patrick Swayze in ‘Ghost’ only in my script he doesn’t die and we make pots together forever in a lovely Brooklyn apartment.
‘Stop beeping at me!’ It’s easy to miss the green light with Patrick Swayze in my head. Speed on my faithful Fiat 500 chariot, and slow for that speed camera that’s slapped three points on my licence and day of shame on the speed awareness course. Another sherbet lemon or three, I think and I hope those Indian trousers are forgiving.
