BED BLOCKERS
Young people who come to help Mary and stay overnight.
CRACKLER
A log fire.
ERASERHEAD
Means a living nightmare and links to the David Lynch film.
FISH EYE
MARY: This is when Giles’s eyes mysteriously change shape from round to oval.
GILES: Mary links this to my consuming more than one pint of beer. It may also be due to some local environmental effect such as crop spraying. I am obsessed by crop spray and the effect it is having on me both mentally and physically. Never has a man had so many body burdens. On top of the lack of minerals we then have to accommodate a cocktail of different chemicals either through direct inhalation or through food.
HATROLALLIA
MARY: This is when Giles says things he does not mean, just for effect. One terrible example was when he allowed a wonderful VW beetle to – allegedly – be scrapped just because it needed new brakes. The garage man, in Devon, said such parts could not be found. It was the days before mobiles so I couldn’t ring anyone to check. ‘You shouldn’t throw good money after bad,’ the garage man said. Giles said the same phrase about thirty times, even though he couldn’t have meant it.
GILES: In my defence, I would say this. I spend so many hours on my own keeping the show on the road while Mary is gallivanting in London, I often simply enjoy the novelty of hearing my own voice and I make such remarks for want of anything else to say.
KICKOVER
A glass left on the floor so it gets kicked over and spilt or a dog’s bowl not heavyweight enough to withstand kicking.
NEGORRHOEA
MARY: Giles complaining over everything including things that are good, e.g., ‘Oh no! Don’t say it’s going to be good weather today when we could have done with it being good weather last Wednesday.’
PANDORA’S BOXING
MARY: This is when we are struggling to sort out one problem, but instead of concentrating on it, Giles tries to think of all the other problems we’ve got and mention them as well.
PETER PANNING
GILES: This is when I seize opportunities not to grow up. It was Peter Panning when I accepted an invitation to go on holiday with a couple of pensioners from the Vale of Pewsey who had a second home in La Palma on the Canary Islands. It was my last chance to sit in the back of the car and be driven to places like an overgrown child.
RATNERLALLIA
MARY: This is when Giles says something own-goalish, like when Gerald Ratner said the reason he could sell his products so cheaply was because they were basically all crap. Admirable though his honesty was, the upshot was that the Ratner jewellery empire collapsed and Gerald Ratner was deposed as chief executive. When Little, Brown wanted to commission Giles to write his first self-hinder book, Giles replied that there were already too many authors chasing too many readers.
Also ‘Speculo-Pandora’s Boxing’, where Giles looks for all the problems we may have in the future.
SEANCEART
GILES: I can remember once channelling a bad artist as I tried to do art in bad taste. One of my first mosaic commissions was for a man who was the father of a former girlfriend from Harrow School of Art. I had seen from his own home that he had bad taste so I made the mistake of spending a year trying to produce a mosaic in bad taste instead of one I would enjoy looking at myself and which would come naturally.
SEANCESPEAK
MARY: When Giles channels someone else, rather than himself, and says what that person would have said in response to a situation.
SICKENER
A full English breakfast.