Windy City! I fixed my mind by having raves in my colon. Part One
A three part story told over three days about the Joy and Pain of Jerusalem Artichokes, and further misadventures in the pursuit of a lively and vibrant microbial community
A little prewomble
A lonely end is pre-ordained for me by that 20th Century spinster archetype which prescribes your barren whisky-soaked corpse be found at the bottom of the stairs and partially devoured by cats. When I write things about being sans kids, the Twitterverse and Mail Online hate merchants like to remind me of this.
There is a cheery upside to being a maiden aunt, though. You never need give up the lavatorial humour. My age is advancing, I cannot pretend it is not. I am less likely to go to a sex club or succumb to uncontrollable giggles on a regular basis, instead I make homemade hummus talk about ‘young people’. When speaking to aforementioned ‘young people’ I develop this fusty way of speaking that horrifies me as it emerges
from my mouth. I no longer speak a language I was once fluent in. It looks faintly ironic written down but saying “aforementioned young people” out loud just sounds like you’re possessed by Jacob Rees Mogg. I wisheth to recover mine own young self, verily, for I misseth her so. It’s not me imagining it, I used to be a cool aunt. These days, though, my boyfriend laughs out loud when he hears me trying to discuss Jungle and Drum & Bass with my nephew. I have become an old fart. Except that is, when it comes to toilet talk. Sit me down with a toddler fifty years my junior and I’ve still got the old poo poo, bums, willy, wee wee, magic - still speak fluent potty, still do a good blow off sound effect.
Fart noises are funny. They were funny when I was three, and they are funny now 50 years later.
When my cousin Christopher was two or so, my Aunt caught me teaching her first born to say things like poo, fart and bum. She was cross with me and I’ve never understood why. Are farts, poos and bums bad? Surely, they are crucial assets to health that no person would want to be without. It’s like when a human chides a dog for sniffing another dogs bum. There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s healthy.
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