Today, finally, I turn to Take a Break. A comment on Facebook made me think that first I would like to pay tribute to this magazine. Tanya wrote movingly about how medical knowledge taken from the pages of TaB saved her lovely daughter’s life when she came down with meningitis. I’ve known Tanya’s story for years, and was pleased to read it, suitably TaB stylised, when it appeared in the hallowed pages a while ago. Unlike the glossies, there’s useful public health information to be found in the True Lifes. Instead of a steady stream of pentapeptides, you can pick up information on the first signs of serious physical and mental illness. TaB has campaigned for several issues to be taken more seriously by the medical profession: breast reduction (The Breast Reduction Alliance, no less), birth injuries, post-natal depression, SPD, and more. It looks at issues that concern mostly women, and represents a surprisingly feminist corner of the press. Although it maintains a vaguely anti-abortion editorial line (memorably, its agony aunt once recommended someone unexpectedly pregnant turn to Life for advice, and had to apologise in the next issue), the magazine in the main represents the interests of women. It runs an annual competition which looks at angles of women in business, the winner meeting the Prime Minister. It maintains a clear and constant line on domestic violence; those deaths that you hear about in the news that are normally gone and forgotten? The families of those victims are here, and the message is always zero tolerance.
Right, enough niceness. Over to Your Brainwaves, and one I would like to share in case anyone finds it genuinely useful. To get rid of scratches on a CD, dab a little smooth peanut butter on it, then wipe it off with a coffee filter paper. Afterwards your CD will be as good as new. I would love to know if this works. Thanks, John Carlos Manuel! You know I’ve just gone about health? Well, this issue is no exception. From the Heartbeat health pages: Give your cupcakes a healthy boost by sprinkling bee pollen granules on top. A natural multivitamin, Comvita Bee Pollen is collected by honeybees, and is then carefully dried and processed to preserve vital nutrients. Soil has nutrients, so I shall be saving myself £10 for 125g and chucking that on my cakes.
Liz Wilde’s Real Beauty tackles the tricky subject of fake hair. Rarely a good idea for those with less than £6m in the bank, my favourite here is the Fake Ponytail. It’s available in 11 shades, so what could go wrong?
There are some good love cheats in this edition. First up is Roberto. His ex-girlfriend Helen tells the story of his affair with a younger woman. Helen is typical of many women who tell their stories in that she manages to explain away so many signs of faithlessness that you get the impression Roberto could have arrived home with ‘cheater’ written on his face in lipstick, half his clothes missing and a wedding ring on, and she would have believed he’d come from a fancy dress party. Roberto stays out later and later, goes missing for entire nights, is being called at home by an attractive younger colleague and becomes distant before Helen decides something must be going on. After they part, in a surreal coda to the tale, Helen becomes a Goldie Hawn lookalike. In the finest traditions of lookalikes, a fair old squint is necessary before you can spot this, but she claims to be making a living.
By contrast Margaret is fairly quick to spot that Neil is cheating. After he develops an impressive-sounding habit of texting while his phone was in his pocket, he only needs to go missing for three hours for her to finger his lying collar. He has fallen for a woman called Lorraine and has been round her house six times in a week doing decorating. Given that three hours absence was noticed, presumably he’s given up his job for this one. He leaves, but is back weeks later, proclaiming undying love. They exchange saucy text messages (have you ever done anything ‘saucy’?) and spend the night together. The very next day, the Rat gets married, to Lorraine. Our Margaret finds out and heads off to the Register Office to stop the wedding but is unsuccessful. Which of us hasn’t dreamed of that sort of scene at a dull wedding? Maybe Margaret can be hired to add spice to any ceremony? The story ends When Take a Break approached Neil and Lorraine for comment, Lorraine said: ‘Tell Margaret she can get stuffed’. And so, with dignity, we draw a veil.
Once more with the health stories, we find our cover girl, Jane, 44. Very much in the manner of a Top Gun pilot, Jane sits around enjoying her grandchild. It was like having another child except that we got to have all the fun with none of the responsibility. ‘My nappy changing days are over’ I told Gary. Uh, oh. Jane puts on weight, but like many of us, is a bit of a pie fan, so ignores it. She becomes constantly tired and decides she is menopausal. While out shopping in Belper, Jane feels pain. It must be that pizza from last night she thinks. She has a cup of tea, as that heals all ills, but remains unwell. A chemist recommends ibuprofen. She sits on a bench and feels worse. Not for a Jane the bouncy ball, the warm water, the gas and air, the epidural – I suspect we have all worked out where this is heading. Finally her son-in-law decides he’s taking her home, she stands up, needs to go to the loo and bends over. Suddenly her companion is gasping. ‘Jane’ he cried. ‘There’s a baby in your jeans!’ I think we can assume Jane is not a wearer of skinny jeans. And that is that. The story has a very happy ending and the baby, named James, is wearing a nice top from Sainsburys that my daughter also owns. There is a large picture of the bench involved to illustrate the story. Andrew becomes one of a possibly vanishingly small group of men to have witnessed a baby emerging down his mother-in-law’s trousers on a Saturday afternoon in Derbyshire. In a very real way, I feel really this is HIS story.