Delilah Explains... Bonfire Night

We usually go to the local park on Bonfire Night but, due to cutbacks, the annual bonfire and fireworks display had been cancelled.

'Never mind,' Mum said. She isn't a big fan of the park's bonfire festivities as she spends the whole evening clutching her handbag in case the local feral youths snatch her purse (I'm always telling her that they'll only toss it back when they realise it holds nothing more than a couple of quid in shrapnel).

'Never mind?' Dad had roared. 'Never mind? That isn't the attitude a member of the James family!'

It's exactly Mum's attitude, actually. The toaster is on the blink - never mind. The cat from across the road has scratched a chunk out of the doorframe - never mind. The wifi has gone down - never mind. Mum just doesn't get irate like the rest of us (unless she misses an episode of Coronation Street or we forget to pick towels up off the bathroom floor and then she throws a hissy fit party for one).

'Never mind? We can't miss out. It's Bonfire Night, for heaven's sake.' I'm not sure when Dad became so passionate about the day. He usually huddles into his coat, moaning that he's cold and his feet are aching whenever we go to the bonfire at the park. But passionate he was. 'We'll have our own. In the back garden. Dougie from across the road has just put a new fence up. I'll see if he still has the old panels. He owes after that damn cat destroyed the bloody front door.'

So Dad went on a mission and filled the garden with neighbours' bits of crappy old wood. I'd never seen him as happy as they day he strode into the house brandishing a pair of battered dining chairs.

'There's a skip around the corner. I'm going back for more. Give us a hand, Delilah.'

I'd declined of course but Dad managed to rope my little brother into helping (I suspect money was exchanged). Mum worried that he'd collected far too much wood that we'd never be able to burn it off and we'd end up having to hire a skip of our own, which Dad said was nonsense.

With the bonfire going and an assortment of fireworks waiting in an old biscuit tin, our little Bonfire Night Party began.



My little brother Justin had invited a few of his mates, I'd coerced Lauren and Ryan into joining me and my sister Clara and her boring boyfriend Graham had been talked into coming too. The bonfire had taken up most of the garden but we managed to squeeze around the edges at a reasonably safe distance from the flames.

'Does your Ryan want another jacket potato?' Mum asked me as she edged crab-like around the perimeter of the bonfire with a plate of luke-warm potatoes and congealed cheese. 'I've made far too many.'

'I think he's had enough. And I keep telling you he's not "my Ryan". We're not together.'

'I don't know why not. He's a handsome chap.'

Ryan, who had nipped inside to the loo, was making his way back out of the kitchen door. I thought about grabbing one of the potatoes and shoving it into Mum's gob but settled on a hiss to keep it quiet.

'I'm only saying.' Mum gave a sniff before she shuffled away, pointing her plate of potatoes in boring Graham's direction.

'That's bad for the environment, you know.'


Ryan groaned as his mother appeared at the garden fence, wrinkling her nose at the sight of the blazing bonfire.

'Excuse me?' Mum shoved the plate of potatoes into Graham's boring hands and leapt across the garden, disregarding any thoughts of fire safety in her haste to reach the fence.

'That.' Ryan's mother thrust a finger towards the bonfire. 'It's bad for the environment.'

Despite Ryan and I being best friends, our mothers had never got along. It all started when Ryan and his family moved in twenty-odd years ago and Ryan's mother snubbed us.

'How many cars do you have?' Mum knew the answer to this. Ryan's mother and father owned a car each.

'Two.' Ryan's mother was incredibly proud of the fact that she and her husband could afford to run a car each.

'And don't you think they're bad for the environment?' Mum didn't wait for an answer as she knew she was triumphant on this one. 'Well, Ken and I don't own a car between us so we're entitled to have one bonfire a year without having our ears chewed off about the environment, don't you think?'

Ryan's mother didn't bother to answer (again). She simply pursed her lips, stuck her chin in the air and flounced back inside.

'Right.' Mum clapped her hands together as she turned away from the fence. 'Who's going to finish off these potatoes?'

Delilah Explains... Clara's Halloween Party

I have done a very stupid thing. Extremely stupid and I can only assume there was a full moon this Halloween.

It all started when my sister Clara hosted a Halloween party. I usually avoid Clara's parties (they're usually dinner parties of the pretentious kind) but this one sounded fun, especially as it was fancy dress. I roped my best friends, Lauren and Ryan into coming with me (safety in numbers and all that) and off we went.

I was dressed as a vampire (and a rather sexy one at that, if I may say so), Lauren dressed up as a witch (a v. sexy witch) and Ryan went as a Frankenstein (no sexiness involved here. It'd be like describing my brother as sexy. Bleugh). All was going well. The three of us stuck together as planned and worked away at the booze and the nibbles (I have to say, Clara knows how to shop for canapés) and we even had a little boogie to The Monster Mash. It was proving to be quite fun.

And then disaster struck.

Patrick arrived.

Patrick is a friend of my sister. We've met on a couple of occasions when I haven't been able to wriggle out of Clara's dinner party invites and he's a complete sleaze. He has the personality of a chewed up tennis ball and he has a whiff of onions about him. And he doesn't even have good looks to help him out, the poor bastard.

Anyway, Patrick arrived so I obviously made a dash to the kitchen, hoping to find a convenient yet comfortable hiding place. There wasn't one. My sister lives in a flat with a kitchen the size of an unusually small postage stamp.

'Hide me,' I hissed at Lauren and Ryan, who were busily munching on mini spiced chicken skewers. 'Patrick's here.'

'Who?' Ryan didn't have a clue and so didn't react in time. Lauren had heard all about Patrick and his wandering hands and slobbery ways (so had Ryan but Lauren had actually had the grace to pay attention) so she jumped heroically in front of me, shielding me from the nasty onion-aroma-man.

Unfortunately, Lauren is a tiny woman who couldn't hide much more than a twig.

'Ah, Lilah! There you are!'

Nobody had ever called me Lilah before (it not being my name and everything) but Patrick had taken it upon himself to shorten my name upon our initial meeting. I'd told him not to but listening was clearly not his strong point.

'Yes, here I am. With my boyfriend.' I pulled a startled Ryan towards me, clinging onto his arm with a vice-like grip. If he attempted to dismiss my little white lie, I would snap his arm in two.

'Boyfriend? Clara never mentioned a boyfriend.' Patrick gave a little laugh. If Clara hadn't supplied him with the information, it couldn't be true.

'That's because Clara doesn't know. About us. Yet.' Bless Ryan. He was playing along! I wouldn't have to injure the boy! 'It's been a secret.'

'A secret?' There was Patrick's laugh again. 'Why would you keep it a secret?'

I looked at Ryan. Why would we keep it a secret? Was I going to have to hurt him after all? And I was so fond of him too.

'Because he was my boyfriend.' Lauren jumped to our rescue, dramatically whizzing around to face Ryan before slapping him across the chops. 'You complete shit! You've been cheating on me with my best friend? How could you?' With a sob, Lauren flounced from the room, pausing at the doorway to grin at me and Ryan behind Patrick's back.

'Well, Lilah. Who knew you were such a little minx, eh?'

So now Patrick thinks I'm seeing Ryan. And of course he had to tell Clara, who couldn't keep her gob shut and told the whole world. Including Mum, who thinks it's the best news since they brought back Family Fortunes (she has a bit of a thing for Vernon Kay). I've tried telling her it was nothing but a great big steaming lie but she won't have it. She's thrilled. Over the sodding moon.

'I couldn't ask for a better son-in-law,' she tells anybody who will listen. She thinks Ryan is the bee's pyjamas or whatever. He's lived next door to us for nearly 30 years but she's suddenly taken to calling him 'your Ryan'.

So now it looks like I've got a pretend boyfriend, which wouldn't be quite so sad if it wasn't Ryan.

Help!

Delilah Explains... Best Friends Part 3

So I've told you about how I met my best friends, Lauren and Ryan. I've known Ryan since I was a toddler and Lauren since I was eleven but the three of us didn't become a threesome (not that in that sense, I hasten to add. I love my friends dearly but I wouldn't want to see either of them naked) until I was 14. Lauren and Ryan had met a few times (usually over the garden fence) but they'd never spent any real time together. I hung out with either Lauren or Ryan but never both - until my sister's 18th birthday party.

Clara was having a party in the function room above our local pub and Mum said I could invite a friend or two to keep me company (I think even Mum knew that Clara's friends were a bunch of up-their-own-arses stuck-up cows but she'd never say it out loud). So I invited Lauren and Ryan and the rest, as they say, is history. From then, the three of us would hang out together all the time, which was much easier for me as I no longer had to juggle my time between the two.

So the three of us are great friends but I'm still sort of in the middle. We all hang out or go to the pub or in town together and we regularly meet up at the café on the main road for breakfast, but I'm the glue that keeps us all together. I'll spend time alone with Lauren or with Ryan but they never spend time alone together. I would never walk into my local pub and find them chatting in a corner or phone Lauren and hear Ryan in the background. They might text each other or even talk on the phone to make plans for the evening but I don't think the two of them have ever met up without me.

I don't mind being in the middle. It's quite a nice place to be.



There are some things I only do with Lauren: our twice-weekly walks on the treadmill so Lauren can flutter her eyelashes at one of the fitness instructors, girly nights in watching Bridget Jones's Diary or Dirty Dancing or You've Got Mail (or all three) and shopping trips in town.

And there are things I only do with Ryan: hanging out in Ryan's bedroom, pretending we're 15 again by listening to early 2000s music and complaining about our mums (Ryan thinks mine is the best mum you could possibly wish for. We both think his mum is a nightmare), babysitting his niece (Ryan's little sister had a child before either of us. I'm not sure how to feel about this fact) and watching Ryan's students run around on a muddy field with a ball and a bunch of students from a rival school (Lauren has never been excluded from this activity - quite the opposite - but she refuses to stand in the cold on a Saturday morning watching a field full of spotty boys. She left those days behind when we left school, apparently).

And there are things that the three of us do together: the pub quiz on a Sunday (we never win. Not even close), other non-quiz nights in the pub, nights out in town and breakfast at the café on the main road. The café breakfast usually follows a heavy pub or town session. You can't beat a belly-buster breakfast when you're hungover.

Delilah Explains... Best Friends: Part One

I have two best friends (greedy, I know), Lauren and Ryan. I've known Ryan forever. He's lived next door to me for as long as I can remember. According to Mum, Ryan and his family moved in on a sunny Saturday in June, 1989 (she remembers it was sunny because she was wearing a pair of cut-off denim shorts and a bikini top. It was definitely June because it was about a month before my birthday - she'd been discussing having a pool party to celebrate my turning 2. We don't have a pool, Dad had pointed out, what with us being a very working class family from Manchester. We'll get one of those blow-up pools and dangle our feet in, Mum said. Which we did. Thankfully I don't remember it).

Anyway, little Ryan (because he was little back then, being two-and-a-half) and his family moved into the house next door. It had once belonged to an elderly couple who banged on the wall if you dared to sneeze, so Mum was delighted to see a young family replacing them. She thought they'd be able to chat over the garden wall and invite each other round for dinner parties and the young chap could come to my birthday party.

It didn't happen. Ryan's mum is a snob. She took one look at Mum's shorts and bikini top, stuck her nose in the air and scarpered into the house. She declined Mum's offer of a casserole (That's very kind of you, but no thank you. We're very picky about what we eat), Ryan couldn't come to my 'pool' party (My Ryan is a very chesty child. I don't want him getting a chill) and the dinner invites never materialised.

Mum said she wasn't going to mention the fact that the elderly neighbours had died in the house - the old man in his chair in the living room and the old girl in the front bedroom. They'd been dead for at least three weeks before they were discovered (and only then because Mum had alerted the police twice over the lack of banging on the walls. When she'd played Dad's T-Rex at top volume as a test and received nothing in return, she badgered the local coppers until they checked on them). But she accidentally dropped all of this into conversation as she and Ryan's mum hung their washing out. I do hope the smell hasn't lingered, Mum had said before she took her basket back inside.

Ryan and I probably weren't destined to be friends. Our parents certainly weren't. But Ryan was sent to an all-boys school so I was a bit of a novelty. We hung around together after school and at the weekends, either at my house (we weren't allowed in Ryan's. His mum feared we'd get the place dirty or something) or on the wasteland behind our houses (it doesn't exist anymore. There are a load of three-bedroom houses the size of shoeboxes squeezed onto there now).

Ryan is a PE teacher now (so not so chesty after all. He could have dangled his feet in my inflatable pool all those years ago). He has a passion for football and women, although the women aren't so passionate about him in return. It isn't that Ryan is ugly - he's quite cute at the right angle - but he always seems to go for the wrong sort of girl.


Bitches, he goes for bitches. There, I've said it. If they deign to date him at all, they use him for a week or two then spit him out. It's a shame because Ryan's a pretty great guy (although I call him a knobhead frequently. It's my duty as his best friend to keep him grounded and not to let his ego get away with him). He just needs to find the right girl.

In case you're wondering, I am not that girl. And no, I am not protesting too much. Ryan and I are friends. Best friends. And that's all we'll ever be.

Delilah Explains... Delilah

Hi there! This is my very first blog post, so be gentle with me.

My name is Delilah. I bet you're now singing the Tom Jones song, aren't you? Don't worry about it. I get that a lot, especially from the older generation. The younger ones usually sing the Plain White T's song at me which, let's be honest, is an improvement.

Where was I? Oh, yes. Me. I'm 27 and live in Greater Manchester (I am so not narrowing down my location - I've read the mad stalker stories in my mum's magazines). Unfortunately, I still live with my parents. I know! Sucks, right? I'm a complete saddo. I meant to move out like 9 years ago. I had plans to move into a swanky flat with my best friend, Lauren. But then she went away to university and I didn't (I thought cutting out the middle man and just getting a job was easier. I soon regretted that. Lauren had so much fun pissing about while I was stuck filing in an office).

Anyway, Lauren's back but she's too skint to move out of her parents' place so we're both stuck for the moment. I work in a biscuit factory, which isn't as exciting as it may sound. They make us pay for the wonky, broken biscuits. It's at a reduced rate, but still. Stingy or what? Thankfully I work in the office doing admin stuff (all the crap nobody else wants to touch) and not out on the shop floor. Can you imagine? You spend all day looking at nothing but biscuits! It would totally take the enjoyment out of eating them, wouldn't it? I'd never want to see a pigging biscuit again! My mate Karen (who does work on the shop floor) says she has nightmares about giant, woman-eating biscuits!

When I'm not at work (which I seem to be 99% of my life), I like going into town with Lauren and Ryan, my other best friend. My drink of choice is vodka - with pretty much anything. I also enjoy the odd glass of wine when I'm feeling sophisticated. Which isn't very often. I also workout twice a week (if you can call strolling on a treadmill for twenty minutes working out) but this is mainly because Lauren has a massive crush on one of the instructors.

I'm currently single (which has been the case for the past two years. I've been on dates but I always seem to end up with losers. Mum says I'm too picky. I say I've got a healthy self-esteem and won't settle for knobheads). I have a date tonight, actually. His name is Philippe (yes, he is French. And tres hot). I met him last week in town and gave him my number - and he phoned the next day. Very promising!

Anyway, I'd better start getting ready for my hot date soon so here are a few quick-fire things you may want to know about me:

• My middle name is Marigold (my parents don't hate me - it's a family name)


• Bees terrify me, the sting-y little fecks


• My favourite colour seems to change every week. This week it is emerald green


• I once played a tree in our school production of The Wizard of Oz. It did not go well.


• When I was little, I was desperate to be a ballerina. I went to two classes (after begging Mum for weeks) and swiftly changed my mind


• My favourite ice-cream is mint chocolate chip

Anyway, I'm off to beautify myself for Philippe. If there is anything else you'd like to know, just ask!