Iestyn Edwards Wonders...is it Lumpy or Runny?

  Max held me at right angles to the ground and un-prised my fingers from the railings.  I must have looked like one of the nannies blown out as Mary Poppins blows in. Merrin Peeble's hooking email said, 'Hi, I'm all the way from TV land...'   She named the company. I mustn't.  When we facetimed, I saw I'd been spot on imagining Merrin as fourteen, slum-fed, with an absinthe green buzzcut. She continuously hoicked a shapeless crocheted black sweater up to her ears. 'We've had quite the laughs in the office looking at your footage,' she said, waving.   I waved back.   She waved bigger; so did I.   She frowned and gave her wave a steely quality - a wave to stop any further waving, thanks.   'And we thought you'd be totally right for something up our sleeve since this morning's production meeting.'   In her excitement she had pulled her sweater right over her head.  She screeched until she found the neck; sounding like a lion cub, wankin

These interviews come my book   Where Babies Come From  — a collection where I asked people: 1 How did you learn the facts of life? 2 What facts were they? The setting was a Piers Luxon Bespoke party in the Cotswolds.  Bertie and Lionel were waiters.  I was the floor show, as Madame Galina Ballet Star Galactica. Bertie, 20, was sporty, gorgeous of jaw, wearing black jeans so tight his balls were easily visible squished one or either side of the great divide. Bertie ‘Aged eleven, biology, we were sat down two to a desk to watch a video of a family of nudists, all coming out of their bedrooms one at a time. The film would pause itself for you to see all their bits with a voice-over elaborating. The real actors faded to cartoon characters for the, What went where… details, including helpful cross-sections of thrusting. The teacher, Mr Simmons, later distributed condoms for us to fit correctly over cucumbers and carrots. He gave detentions to anyone who made a water balloon. He so didn’t w

  I would never have written a book if I hadn't dealt with my chronic inability to be alone.   My Proper Nan Silcox would use that Kipling quote when any of her grandchildren complained of being lonely.  'Lonely indeed!  Have you lost your library card?  Lonely having tea with Miss Bates?  Lonely on wanders with the Pickwick Club?  Lonely winning the Horse of the Year Show with Rupert Campbell-Black?  And furthermore, let's remember that the banding together mentality is all lovely when it leads to The Huddersfield Choral, or the Massed Bands of the Coldstream Guards or those monkeys with the typewriters who are one day going to finish Timon of Athens - but not when it means the Gestapo, Big Brother or the Bethesda WI.' She would draw herself up by the handbag.  'You make the best of your solitary circumstances, now, Iestyn.  Better to live by choice in a bedsit than by force in a leper colony.' 

  Along the lakeside came a  woman, at the back end of middle age, with wiry, flicked hair, wearing a pink vinyl mac and gingham pedal pushers.  With her was a Jack Russell, off the lead.  They passed three pairs of nesting swans, then the Egyptian geese supervising their gosling's teatime feed.   The woman turned her head as day-trippers remonstrated with her, then stood in a bevelled pose, like the central figure in The Three Graces statue.   'He's fine!' she drawled, clearly delighted for her Jack Russell to run to and fro barking by the water's edge.   Meanwhile the goose nosed the gosling into a pond and jumped in after it followed by the gander.  The swans stood absolutely still, feathers up all around, in front of their cygnets.  The woman stayed in her daft pose, smirking indulgently at the Jack Russell. Then a man picked the dog up by the collar, walked over to her and thrust it into her arms. 'Take this back to wherever it is you're from!' he t

Haberdashery Girls... An excerpt from my forthcoming book of interviews:   Where Babies Come From. I asked people, ‘How were you told the facts of life?’ And, ‘What information were you given?’ Here is Belinda, who used to be an escort.  She is now in her eighties. My sister read about Dutch caps.  We looked at Old Masters paintings and wondered how having those funny big white hats on their heads would stop women getting pregnant. In British Guiana, we had native servants who would do the deed al fresco au natural.  From the age of five, I was playing 'sex' with my dolls.  They’d have their dolls’ tea party, a recitation lesson, then I’d have them mount each other. When we came back to England, I had a nanny.   Katrin was fresh from the convent. She was all mummy could get for me.  I expect it was a time of general strikes.  Mummy would send Katrin for breaks back to the convent meanwhile sending me for remedial elocution.  This would happen when I’d said one too many ‘tinks’,