Our daily bread (Big Brother, days 79-82) by Grace Dent
It’s been an exhausting weekend. Firstly, I’ve had to watch Big Brother on behalf of almost the entire British Isles, who can’t be arsed any more.
Secondly, after a series of powerful nightmares about pestilence and plague, I finally snapped and broke into Carole’s house in Leytonstone and gave her net curtains a good boil wash, then Mr Muscled her fridge.
Meanwhile, Carole is still in Elstree mopping and sloshing and grumbling about crumbs. She’s standing there in her mole-coloured baggy tracksuit ensemble, like an am-dram Wind in the Willows Mr Mole, crying scalding tears of betrayal each time Liam spreads an extra milligram of cooking margarine onto his long-life bread without her consent.
Carole has been extra-ordinarily stab-able-in-the-forehead-with-a-fork-able over the past week as she’s been forbidden from doing any household duties. This was as Kara-Louise, Jonty and Gerry were being punished for a rule-break incident involving a piece of paper, some pencils and a secret symbol, aka Pascal’s triangle.
Basically the three biggest nerds in the house were given access to pencils, paper and privacy. Instead of whipping up an evil plot to forge their brains, ruthlessly conquer, then split the winnings, the nerds opted to teach each other about a complex geometric arrangement of binomial coefficients, which dates back to tenth-century Sanskrit.
Sigh. This is why governments aren’t particularly worried about people like Sir Clive Sinclair, Stelios from easyJet and Bill Gates being friends. It doesn’t matter how many millions of dollars they make, it’s not like they’re going to buy bloody plutonium with it. They’re more likely to sit around at Clive’s house drinking weak lemon cordial, swapping Ood stickers and talking about Pythagoras.
So Kara-Louise was supposed to be cooking, and in fairness, she has proven herself as an able cook in the past. Sadly Kara-Louise’s nimbleness in the kitchen was sort of impeded by a 14-stone woman from Leytonstone in a Primark tracksuit quacking her “advice”.
“Noooo! You whisk eggs like THIS, Kara-Louise!” Carole nagged, grabbing the fork. Oh, my gosh, this would be a flash point for me if she’d tried to teach me to whisk eggs. “Errrrrm, Carole!” said Jonty, amiably. Bumbling amiability is the only voice Jonty can do. “I don’t think you’re supposed to be cooking, Carole!” “I’m not cooking! I’m just demonstrating,” grunted Carole, elbow-deep in yolk, drunk on power once again.
Hours later the entire house is being punished on Carole’s behalf. Their week’s shopping budget is £78. More long-life bread, which they can obsess about day and night. Carole’s worst crime was harbouring a packet of contraband biscuits. They were chocolate digestives, apparently, although it was clear when we saw them that they weren’t good brand digestives, with the thick chocolate and crunchy biscuit, of which it’s impossible to eat just one, so you eat ten then think, “Oh, well, never mind, may as well finish the packet” and the next thing you know you’re in a changing room trying to get a pair of jeans higher than your knees, blaming glandular problems for your bum, which looks like Big Daddy’s. Or maybe that’s just me.
Anyway, they weren’t good digestive biscuits, they were bad, cheap, supermarket-brand chocolate “flavour” digestives, where the chocolate-flavour coating is just icing sugar and cocoa and the biscuit is made of old floor sweepings, and they don’t taste of much aside from Carole’s 24-hour girdle, as she’s had them in her pant drawer since just before Shabnam left.
“I hope the biscuits were worth it, Carole,” chided Big Brother. “Yes, they were, actually,” said Carole, before going out and telling the gang that she’d messed up their task.
The gang responded by arguing for a while and then evicting Gerry. Poor Gerry. I’m sad to see him go but I know he’s in a better place. Even Gerry had a hand in his own downfall.
“Let Carole stay, she neeeeeds the money!” said Gerry, kindly, “She needs the money more than me!” Of course she needs the money, Gerry, she doesn’t have a job.
She’s an unemployed sexual-health worker, which is bizarre as she’s from a district of London so riddled with chlamydia that you could probably pick it up on the rush hour 155 bus to Walthamstow if you got wedged in too close to a teen with particularly baggy low-slung underpants (of which there are LOTS).
Why doesn’t Carole work? She’s clearly physically able as she’s always on the go in the house. I’d love to earwig in on the Social Security meeting when they hand her a list of vacancies for knicker-manglers and cleaners in east London. Personally, I think she’d be good working for Rentokil. There is no-one more obsessed with uninvited creepy-crawly things than Carole.
Carole thinks the Disney film A Bug’s Life is actually a true-life documentary. She believes that at any given time a bunch of anthropomorphised sugar-obsessed ants are in their secret war cabinet meeting pointing at maps and discussing the whereabouts of that box of Tunnock’s caramel teacakes you bought from Lidl.
So anyway, Gerry left the Big Brother house. Most people were sad to see him go. Especially Liam, who’ll miss taking the mick out of Gerry’s manhood. Liam had seen it once in the shower and had great glee announcing to everyone that it wasn’t huge. In fact, as far as I can gather, it resembled a malady-tormented slug peering over two Bitesize Shredded Wheat.
Gerry’s biggest mistake was to take on Carole over the past fortnight over food control issues. When Gerry remarked that he wanted to eat bread as he was “starving”, Carole wept, “Starving? You don’t know what starving is! When I was a child we were glad if we got bread and sugar! Starving! Hah!”
Then Carole cried for half an hour remembering her childhood where she lived on gravel sandwiches and walked 42 miles to school each day with a stone in her second-hand Hush Puppies and a smile on her grateful face.
But no-one told her to shut up and stop emotionally blackmailing them. They chucked Gerry out and let her stay. I’ve got the live feed on now. She’s in her tracksuit, scowling, her hold is as rock solid as ever.
In other news, Brian has finally got the message about Amanda. It’s only taken him a week of her baulking when he touches her to work it out.
When Brian swoops in, Amanda acts a lot like one of my cats does whenever I pick him up. Rock solid limbs, pulling face away, tolerating it with an expression that seems to say, “I’m only putting up with this as I pity you, you lolloping great shovel-handed fool. Make it stop quickly.”
Amanda is free now to concentrate on more important things. Hopefully including her Social Work studies, as my anxiety about Britain’s dysfunctional families grows ever deeper as I watch her gormless, blank face every day.
Jonty tried to teach the twins geography the other day. “Which country’s population is predominantly made up of Jewish people?” he asked. The twins didn’t know. “I’ll give you a clue,” says Jonty, “It begins with I!” “Ireland!” hoot the twinnies, “Erm, no….OK, I.S…” “Isle….of…Island!? Isle of Man?”
Jonty sighs, “No…OK, another letter…I.S.R…?” “Israq!” shout the twins. “Is it Israq?!”
Israq? Where is Israq? How are these two going to be in charge of some sort of social care?
Actually, I hope they put them in charge of asylum claims. I’m going to pack in writing this column and say I need some money as I’m a political refugee on the run from YugoSpania.
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