BLAME IT ON THE BOOGIE

I thought I woke up to the strains of Piti this morning but it turned out to be the wails of Michael Jackson's mourners. None of them knew him of course but being a fan and young does strange things to you. I remember being about 14 and finding out I wasn't the only weirdo who fancied Rowan Atkinson. Never has my gusto for something or someone been massacred as much as the discovery that day that there were others.

Getting back to the dog upstairs, I did see a programme about the RSPCA who were having words with a man back in Britain who looked like an extra in Little Britain and his mute wife who sat around all day in her dressing gown and curlers. Common practice here too I note. Anyway, this bloke had two dogs and one bullied the other so he kept it outside in a shit hole basically. Even when he was told to clean it up he kept repeating 'what do you mean?' as if it was a lovely place for man's best friend to hang out in all day. To skip most of the horrid story, it wasn't a dog's life. The woman from the RSPCA said she would take the dog from him if he didn't sort it out. Compared to the life of Piti I think he had it OK. I found myself shouting at the tele again and telling the RSPCA woman to come over here and have a butcher's.

Later I had to go to the offices of my new employment which involves working in a summer camp. Without giving too much away in one go it looks as though Monday is six hours of 'good manners', etiquette, or, as it is known here, protocol. They want me to teach the kids table manners, how to peel an orange (?!) and the rest. I suggested as a joke that maybe I could do a finishing school and put books on their heads etc and both bosses agreed this was 'genial'. I have decided that I might just go the whole hog and put on a garden party where I get to dress up as the Queen Mother or Princess Margaret and end up under a tree with a gin, a packet of Marlboro and a box of Ritz crackers. I'm a dab hand at these 'campo veranos' and might even put in a few stories this way in the next few days of past soujourns of sitting in corridors trying to wield power at four in the morning while keeping a watchful eye on any Lotharios who thought it might be a good idea to nip into the girl's dorm for the night. Or the time I nearly throttled the 'director' of the concentration camp which masqueraded as a summer one a few years back. Thinking about the 'how to peel an orange' class, the only time I have ever come up against this was when a friend was admitted into a mental hospital circa 1990, on account of her not being able to among many things, peel a plastic orange, say the year backwards or say who the Prime Minister was. Perhaps I should just use this version in my 'decorum classes'.