Tattoos and piercings other than ears.
Ear piercings if you’re under sixteen.
Naming children after places, and that definitely includes Jarrow and Jesmond Knight. Brooklyn Beckham is not included because Gram met David Beckham once at a charity do, and apparently he was a ‘real gentleman’. And smelt nice.
Designer dogs. Basically, anything prefixed with the word ‘designer’, so: jeans, kitchens, handbags and so on.
Most people on television.
Hanging baskets.
And if you’re thinking of rolling your eyes at the ridiculousness of this list, then know this: rolling your eyes is common as well.
I tell you, I could carry on: this list could fill the book, and I haven’t even started yet on things that are not ‘rather common’ but are instead ‘frightfully common’. Here’s today’s top three ‘frightfully common’ things:
Eating in the street.
All daytime television, and people who watch daytime television, and most things that are not on the BBC, especially Sky channels.
Football (although not David Beckham, for reasons stated above).
This ‘common’, by the way, is not common as in ‘frequent’. It’s common as in ‘lacking refinement’ and is not to be confused with ‘vulgar’, which Gram is usually OK with, although the distinction can get blurry.
The Eurovision Song Contest is vulgar, says Gram, but she loves it. The X Factor is common, and she won’t have it on.
Football, as I have said, is common. Rugby is vulgar.
Want another one? OK. Takeaway fish and chips = vulgar, and as such, acceptable, which is a huge relief because I love them. Takeaway hamburger and chips (or worse, fries) = common. And Burger King is more common than McDonald’s.
I know: it’s tricky to navigate.
‘Eructating’ is how Gram refers to burping. She says it is both vulgar and ‘frightfully common’, so heaven knows what she’d make of what’s to come. If you’re like Gram and are completely horrified by burping, then you should skip the next chapter.
Sunday morning. Sunbed-day morning.
Gram had gone off to church. Sometimes I go with her, but I told her I had a stomach ache (which was true) and she didn’t seem to mind at all. She was very keen to get to church and left me at home with Lady.
Gram would be gone most of the day. This, by the way, is a big development in our little household. About a year ago, she started trusting me to be left alone in the house, sometimes in the evenings. I was nervous at first, but I soon got to quite like it.
After church she’d be going straight to a coffee morning for a Bible study group, then she’d be having lunch at Mrs Abercrombie’s, and then it’s on to the annual general meeting of yet another of her causes. I sometimes wonder where she gets the energy.
I had been guzzling Dr Chang His Skin So Clear and I had probably overdone it, which accounted for the slightly dodgy stomach. The drink – it comes in a powder that you dilute to make a sort of cold ‘tea’ – has a mushroomy smell and tastes exactly how I imagine worms taste. It’s foul, but Dr Xi Chang (‘A highly noticed practiser of tradional Chinese Herbal Medicine’ is how the website put it) claims that it is effective against severe acne and has some pretty impressive before-and-after pictures to prove it.
The effect had been that I woke up this morning with a bloated stomach. Really, my tummy was distended like a little balloon and I flicked my middle finger against it to get a noise like a tom-tom.
Now, embarrassing though this is, I’m just going to have to tell you, so ‘forgive my indelicacy’, as Gram might say. I could use all sorts of words to get round it: words like ‘eructating’ or ‘expelling gas’, but nobody apart from adults and teachers and doctors actually says that, so here goes. Immediately after waking I let go the most enormous burp, which – if you did not know otherwise – you would swear was the stench of a rotting animal. A skunk probably, even though I’ve never smelt a skunk, what with them not being native to Britain. I just know they stink.
And the weirdest thing is, it didn’t taste of anything (thank goodness).
Look, I know we all joke about bodily gases and so on. (All apart from Gram, of course – do I need to keep saying this? Probably not. In future, just assume it, OK? I’ll mention it when relevant.) Anyway, most of us find it hilarious.
This wasn’t.
It was so foul-smelling that it was kind of … scary, I suppose. Certainly totally unlike any, um … fart I have ever smelt, and much worse than the one Cory Muscroft let off in assembly in Year Six, which people still remember. Had I known what was to come, I might even have taken it for a warning. But, of course, we never know these things until after the event.
Anyway, after another couple of smaller burps, my tummy was a lot less swollen, and I was in the garage with its smell of dust and old carpets. I was shivering a little on the concrete floor because I was in my underwear with bare feet, thinking, This is so not the tanning salon/spa treatment experience, so I went back inside the house to get my phone.
On Spotify, I found some slow trancey nineties electronica tracks that sounded like the sort of stuff they put on in salons, and I plugged in my earbuds. Naked, I lay on the sunbed, which was glowing purply white with the UV tubes. I set the timer on the side for ten minutes – better start gently – then I pulled down the lid so that it was only a few centimetres from my nose.
My eyes were shut, the music was a soft dum-dum-dum in my ears, the UV tubes were warm, and I didn’t mind drifting off a bit because the timer would wake me.
A bit later, though, I’m woken by the bright lights of the UV tubes shining thorough my invisible eyelids and Lady nudging her food bowl.
This is where we came in – remember?
‘Gram? Can you hear me? I’m invisible.’
I’m on my phone in the garage, sitting on the edge of the sunbed, and I was right. Before I had even tapped on Gram’s number, I was wondering if calling someone up and saying I was invisible would sound ridiculous.
It does. Very.
But still I try.
‘I’ve become invisible, Gram.’ Then I start sobbing again.
Long pause.
Really. Long. Pause.
There’s a buzz of conversation in the background.
‘I’m not sure I’m hearing you right, darling. I can’t really talk at the moment but I can hear that you’re upset. What’s wrong, darling?’
I take a deep breath. ‘I’m invisible. I’ve disappeared. I was on a sunbed and I fell asleep and now I’ve woken up and I can’t see myself.’
‘All right, my darling. Very funny. Thing is, it’s not a good time at the moment. Mrs Abercrombie is about to read the minutes of the last meeting so I have to go. There’s some cold ham in the