Emerald Bile

Secrets are tedious. I don't hate the deceit, I really couldn't care less, nor do I hate the fact that they are exclusive and make people feel left out. I just hate the pomposity secrets inspire in their keepers, that viscous smugness. Just look at your local Priest. Does he have a fucking smug-arsed expression on him? Well, that won't just be because of the Masses and holiness. The main reason will be because of the Sacrament of Reconciliation. All those secrets he carries beneath his habit, making the face on him all lordly and sly.

Of all secrets, the ones I hate the most are secret recipes. Like anyone could give a flying fuck about them! "Oh no, Philomena, I can't give you the recipe for my fudge, it's a family secret". It is not a secret though, is it? A secret would be if you could make fudge out of hay. The fact is, that Philomena's recipe will be a minor variation on sugar, butter, condensed milk, syrup and vanilla. Yawny, cunty, hole.

But I can almost forgive those old crones making the song and dance about their cooking. It's something to do, while their spines crumble and the grave approaches. What I can't fucking forgive is companies, who have a lot of money and make boring things, being all secretive about what it is that they make. Heinz, for example only allow a handful of people to know their recipes for the various tinned and bottled things that they make. What happens to the indoctrinated people if they tell anyone? Do they get shot? Jesus!

Having secret recipes does not even deter competitors - there are millions of other companies making baked beans and ketchup and selling masses of the stuff, without needing to bleat on "secret" this and "secret" that, and they taste enough like the real thing to be OK enough that you'd buy them, but not so good that they can charge quite as much as the original. Heinz should just think to themselves: "Imitation is the highest flattery", and then just get on with inventing more things to put inside metal tubes. And if the competitors did get hold of the recipe, what would actually happen? Would Heinz go bust? I don't think so. People like the Heinz labels and the thought of the beans, or whatever, just as much as the taste - they'd still buy their stuff.


On a more personal level, as someone who loves Heinz baked beans, I can tell you for free, that if one of the Keepers of the Heinz Secret sidled up to me and said "Noreen, this, this recipe here, this is how you make Heinz baked beans. Do you see? It's got a pinch of cinnamon in it, a fucking pinch of cinnamon and that, that, Noreen, that is the difference between the Heinz baked bean and the Tesco's value one". Do you know what I would say? I would say: "I really can't imagine ever being arsed to boil dried white beans and piss around with all those sugars and tomatoes and whatnot, in order to recreate what I can just go out and buy and get from a green can, or a close approximation in a different coloured can. Thank you for the secret recipe, but I won't be making it myself". So just stop having secrets and carry on boiling pulses and pounding tomatoes and whipping eggs. Thank you.
Noreen

I hate open letters. I know it's all the rage on the blogs these days to write out a post, seemingly addressed to someone famous, or about something that is a bit witty, or a bit "out there", or a bit serious, but it makes me want to shit.


I cannot think of anyone at all that I even want to write a closed letter to. The only possible candidate, would be the man with the massive poodle that attacked me today. If I were to write to him, it would be a very closed letter, made with letters cut out of a newspaper and it would say: "Your dog is a sub standard cunt with wool instead of hair. Now fuck off and get it put down". So more of a threat than a letter really, and I wouldn't bother signing it, like you would an ordinary closed letter, and I'd probably get one of the children to put it in an envelope and lick it shut, to avoid my DNA getting on it and leaving myself open for identification and conviction for a criminal offence.

So really, to sum it up, all letters are for cunts. But I've been put under a lot of pressure from my fans to expand my repertoire into the epistolary genre. So here it is. My first open letter.



Dear My Hole,

Just a quick note to say thank you for being so accommodating, in every sense of the word. Special thanks for enduring the indignities of travel that I sometimes subject you to. You are very long suffering, since you have no control whatsoever over what is fed into you, you just have to fucking well get on with it. I really appreciate the fact that you did not get piles when I was pregnant, so I could be a really smug bitch in the labour ward, harping on about my immaculate starfish. I promise never to get you bleached, that would be gross, and I'm worried about the stinging, to be honest with you, as I would feel that as well. Anyway - you're a great hole, and I thought it was about time I let you know that.
Noreen

I'm so bored by people who see oversized, or exotic animals, wandering around in incredibly ordinary places in Britain. I blame that boring Victorian Sherlock Holmes story "The Hound, of the Baskevilles", or stories about Yetis, or that fucking appalling television show "Bigfoot and the Hendersons". What a load of shit that was.

In England, now they are not allowed to go hunting, more and more people have free time to spot large cats, or great big fucking tigers, or misshapen beasts, lumbering around moors and streets and fens: "It is a creature that has escaped from a zoo or a private menagerie", they say. Or :"In the early twentieth century there was a secret lion breeding programme in North Hertfordshire. The anti-viivsectionists got in and let all the lion foetuses out into the wild and now they are all grown up and roaming the place", "Yes, little Ethan's rabbit was ripped apart by something with jaws at least as big as a crocodile and it only ate the spleen". Jesus Christ!

I have a special face I do for people talking about oversized zoo creatures, pit pattering around large fields. I put my tongue down towards my chin, behind my lower lip, then I screw my whole face up and make flapping, fliddy, mong movements with my hands, and then I make a low, intermittent moaning spazzy sound with my mouth, to just show how fucking stupid this sort of nonsense is. I would rather have those charlatans that film themselves in black and white, screaming and pretending to see ghosts in country pubs, than people exaggerating, about their pets going out at night for a shite. Just fucking stop it, please, now. That is all.

Noreen

WH Smith rules the high streets and railway stations of Britain, peddling newspapers and magazines, stationery supplies to school children and selling popular books. It carries a few stuffed toys, an aisle of sweets, and some board games and jigsaws in larger stores. There's no need for it really, as hundreds of corner shops sell newspapers and magazines, I'd rather buy toys and games at a toy shop and most people nowadays are foreign, or illiterate, or buy their fiction on Amazon.

I generally ignore WH Smith and think of it as a kind of dustbin of a shop, that has taken up where Woolworths left off, until I am at a station or an airport, in which case WH Smith or Boots the Chemists are the only places you can buy a bottle of water for the journey. Airport WH Smiths are hideous places, with enormous coiled queues and staff who have been briefed to flog the most mindless objects, to the customers.

"Would you like a five pack of Twix bars? They are on special"


Let me think, there. I'm about to go on an aeroplane. What would I like least to sit on my lap, in a hot metal tube, for an hour? That's right, a multipack of chocolate. Oh, and I'm flying to Paris, where they make very nice chocolate indeed, so a five pack of chavvy cocoa fat, gluey caramel and low quality biscuit, wouldn't really be what I was after.

Once or twice I have been offered a kilo bar of Cadbury's Dairy milk on a special offer. A kilo. Of the most quick- melting chocolate known to man, in a dirty great big, shitty, old box, the size of a painting. They aren't keen on extra weight in the old cabin baggage. If I had a kilo to spare in my case, and I never, ever do, I'd be as likely to stuff it with diamonds or heroin as Dairy Milk.

What people do want on a plane, is something to read. Very often there'll be a film or whatnot as an entertainment for plane passengers, most people have some kind of an iThing to listen to and drinks and food etc are generally provided unless you are fucking cheap and flying on a trashline. But reading matter - you'd need to bring it yourself, and a plane ride is a good time to try out a new book. Those terrible inflight magazines are moronic as fuck and there's only so many paeans to terrible seafood restaurants and pictures of turtles, one can take during a flight. I'm not a great reader myself, but even I am tempted by the idea of a good old murder book to read or anything off the best seller list really.


But what do WH Smith try and force on to their pre flight customer? Hard Backed Books. Hard Backed Books. On a fucking plane. I'm at a loss to know who buys the fuckers on dry land - they cost seven times as much as normal books, and take up loads of space, but on a plane? Jesus. No, I don't want half a stone of reinforced literature. Where will I put it? It won't fucking fit in that flap pocket thing on the back of the seat in front, will it? And if it does, where am I to put my legs? And actually, I don't really ever want to read an overweight version of Valentine Warner's tedious, sloany musings about how to use seasonal produce, or a book about Austrian Churches, or an awful chicklit novel called "The day Mr Right Fell Down the Chimney" with squiggly writing and pictures of cartoon shoes all over it. Just fuck away off WH Smith, and stick your massive bars of chocolate and enormous heavy books up your hole.

Noreen

I have just come back from Reading Festival, it was a horrible, horrible place. Rock music is a dreadful racket ranging from a walloping, thudding, fingers-in-ears, thud-thud-thud, to a whingy old drone-on. I hate Rock Music, but I hate Rock Stars even more. The new Rock Stars at the top of my shit-list are the Kings of Leon. Despite playing to a stage, cram-packed with screaming teenagers, fainting and moshing away and fighting with each other and singing along "I was coming around la la la la whatever" to their miserable, lugubrious tunes, the main one from the Kings of Leon got the arse with the crowd, halfway through his set. He shouted to the children watching: "You are fucking crap - if you don't like the music why don't you fuck off". And at the end of his performance he crushed up his guitar and flicked the V sign and shouted "Fuck off Reading" to all the bewildered kids in the crowd.

I don't understand. If the man doesn't like singing on a stage in front of children, then he should get another job, I don't sing on a stage for a living, because I would not enjoy it. I don't like singing much and I would find it tedious hopping about like I had ferrets in my drawers, and I am not interested in drugs at all, so really, it's not the career for me. Equally, if, like the King of Leon there, I appeared to dislike crowds and had a very highly strung personality, I would consider a job as a librarian, or I might think about working in the back of Argos, fetching the boxes down, where human interaction would be at a minimum, or if it really were more noise I was after, then I would seriously consider operating a large drill, working on the roads.

Noreen

I updated the stations of the cross a bit. I did it while I was at a boring wedding, sitting at the back, not listening.

1.Jesus is condemned to death
2.Jesus is given his cross, which is pretty heavy.
3.Jesus falls the first time
4.Jesus meets His Mother, who tells Jesus to mind his back carrying that heavy cross.
5.Simon of Cyrene carries the cross, just to see how heavy it is.
6.Veronica wipes the face of Jesus
7.Jesus falls the second time, and this time grazes his knee really badly
8.Jesus asks for some Savlon
9.Jesus meets the daughters of Jerusalem
10.Jesus falls the third time
11.Jesus is stripped of His garments
12.Crucifixion: Jesus is nailed to the cross
13.Jesus asks for Savlon for a second time
14.Jesus dies on the cross
15.Jesus literally shits himself
16.Jesus' body is removed from the cross and cleaned up a bit.
17.Jesus is laid in the tomb and covered in incense, largely to hide the smell.

Ball Bag

I lived in China for several years during the late nineties. It was a pretty interesting place, I was often, utterly fascinated by my surroundings, and then there were times, when I just wanted the billions of people gawping at me and asking me for visas, and rabbiting on about cultural imperialism, to just fuck away off.

My low tolerance levels for chiselling behaviour were a bit of hindrance, as I found the Chinese people monumentally pushy. They would ring at six o'clock in the morning and ask to visit. They were consistently, hours early for social appointments and expected the same wacko punctuality from their guests. They ate breakfast at dawn, washing down foetid beancurd and fried breadsticks with heavily garlicked cold spinach and rank, millet porridge. They ate lunch at 11 and dinner at four. Their concept of distance was generous spirited, many people I knew thought nothing of driving eight hours across a province, just to have lunch in a mediocre restaurant, or to take a photograph of themselves in front of a sign. I found the Chinese entirely knackering to be with - well intentioned, but absolutely fucking exhausting.

One evening, I found myself out for dinner in a small town some ridiculous distance from where I lived. There was one street with a few stalls, doing their trade to the warbling reverb sounds of bad karaoke, drifting from an open kiosk. A woman was sitting on the ground with a blanket in front of her, piled with round fruits each about five inches in diameter. I was grabbed sharply on the upper arm, by one of my party, who thrust me towards the blanket in great excitement:

"You must buy one of these melons. They are a great, great speciality. Melons that you punch"

"Melons what?"

"That you punch" (she made a punching movement with her fist) "hit with hand, then break open and eat. Very good flavour"

Now - the Chinese word for both melons AND gourds is "gua" which means "a melon or gourd like thing". In order to establish whether you are dealing with something fruit-like and suitable to eat raw, or something watery and like a glorified vegetable marrow, one must look at the prefix to the word gua. For example, xi gua is watermelon and nan gua is a pumpkin and a huang gua is a cucumber. Being aware of these delicate linguistic differences, I checked with the woman what type of a gua this thing was

"The flavour of this melon - is it like a watermelon. Can you eat raw, or must you cook like a nan gua"

"Eat raw. Hit it with your fist, break then eat. But flavour very special, not like watermelon. Unique"


I bought a bag of these things, to oil the choppy tide of jabbering excitement from my companions and to boost the melon woman's profits. I duly took a melon and punched it. It didn't give.

"Punch harder. Like man" said my companion, helpfully

I walloped the thing with a full downward blow from my fist. It split enough that I could break off a piece the size of my hand. The whole shopping street of people, by now, had entirely given up wandering around aimlessly and were instead, frozen in
their tracks, watching me closely. Silence issued from the karaoke parlour, as three faces popped around the door.

"Now eat", said my friend. "Not skin"


I was quite used to eating in front of an audience. I had recently eaten a packet of salt and vinegar crisps in Tian'an men square, to a crowd of about two hundred peasants. I felt famous, to be honest, famous and important, just for eating stuff. This time, with the melon, was a small, provincial show and I was quite comfortable with the situation.

The fruit did not look particularly exciting. Its flesh was a very pale, grey-green and seemed to be slightly cushioned. I had been prepared for a generous douche of melon juice to issue from the slit side of the fruit, as I thumped it, but it was menopausally dry. I brought the piece of fractured melon to my lips and gnawed and the flesh with my incisors. It gave a little, and was quite difficult to separate from the toughened skin. It took some detaching, but I got a mouthful and chewed. It tasted of nothing at all. Absolutely nothing. Less flavour than a raw courgette (which, if you have never eaten one, is of minimal excitement). It was just leathery enough that it did not dissolve immediately in the mouth, the outer membrane required a little chewing, but once perforated, the inner matter was squashy and vanished without making a great impact. I dished out the rest of the melon to people standing about, hoping to see what they made of it. Each person gnawed and slavered at the melon appreciatively.

"Very good" one of them said

"Very good flavour. Excellent taste"

I just didn't get it. It was the most boring melon in the world. It wasn't even fun punching it open - I hurt my knuckles the first time and the heel of my hand the second and I got stringy bits stuck between my teeth and it was a big yawny thing. I wondered briefly if it might have been a wind up, but if it was, it was a very mild and rather pointless practical joke. I never saw another punching melon while I was in China and I have not seen one since. It was the vegetable equivalent of someone who likes watching birds, going on about a new colour variety of chaffinch, or someone who likes whittling things, discovering a new, sized blade for a knife which turns out to be a bit blunt and not a very helpful size for getting a point on things, or someone who likes swearing discovering that "Hell's bells" is a synonym for "damn". I want to say "I hate punching melons" but I don't. I just think they are a little bit gay.

Noreen