I never thought the time would come when I would be posting my excrement through a mailbox - but the other day that’s exactly what I did. And I suspect a few of you have done so too…
The reason being (other than fantasising that the person at the receiving end could be Jacob Rees-Mogg) I had a certain milestone birthday earlier this month
and thus a couple of days later received an extra little birthday present from our lovely NHS
– so thoughtful of them! You probably know
where I’m going with this: it was the bowel cancer screening kit in its neat card envelope, a cute little sample
tube, complete with clear, illustrated instructions. (I would quite like to have been commissioned
for that artwork – it’s not every day you’d get to draw a job like that get a job to draw like that.)
Well, I think it’s brilliant that we have the opportunity here
to do these tests for free and at our own convenience so I was quite strangely
excited to have a go. And this post is just
about writing itself with all its double entendre...
Anyway, it does take a little bit of what you might call ‘forward
planning’ but honestly it’s no hardship, and then when it's all done, dated and ready to despatch, you can say you’ve pushed your excrement through a mailbox too, and write a blog post about it.
All of this brings to mind a song I particularly loved when I was 15 and first heard as the B-side of a much treasured and brilliant Buzzcocks single, ‘What Do I Get’… I know it’s not about the actual, erm, ‘substance’ (are there any songs out there that are?!) but as a swear word ‘shit’ is pretty excellent. My poor mum and dad just kept shtum when I insisted on playing it at full volume on the family stereogram. They did the right thing, of course, making a fuss would have just given me cause to rebel against them but instead they accepted it all with good grace. In fact my mum probably secretly liked it; I'm pretty sure that 'shit' (along with 'bugger') was her favourite swear word - she didn't hold back - and it has become one of mine too; it's the perfect response to stepping barefoot on an upturned plug, or when a handle on your Tesco 'Bag For Life' gives way and deposits your Maris Pipers all over the pavement, or if you have to answer the door to the postman wearing a freshly applied exfoliating clay face pack. We've all been there.
The lovely Susie Dent explains more about it here (I thoroughly recommend her videos on all our favourite profanities):
And of course the song.
