A Guest Post by Hester Made (up)*

When Marc invited me to write for his blog, five days ago, I was intrigued by the invitation.  I’ve never appeared on the internet proper.  Of course I’ve appeared on the website of the newspaper I write for, The Late-Afternoon Push, but I’ve never appeared on a blog before, I had to ask my daughters what they were.  “What the hell,” I thought, “you only live once.”

I agreed to write a guest piece and began to consider the numerous subtle and important differences between writing for a blog and writing my regular column for The Push.  Having brainstormed for an hour, and having disregarded many spurious and silly notions, I realised that I had two main areas of concern.

Firstly, the blog’s logo is large, contains pseudo-Soviet imagery and is red.  Would it clash with my hair?  I soon realised that this was beyond my control.

Secondly, the page colour is grey.  On Loose Women this week they stated that grey is unflattering so I knew that I would have to choose my writing-outfit carefully.  I went through my wardrobe.  Disregarding a pink floral dress, a blue trouser suit, a green wizard’s-hat and a bust of W.G. Grace, I settled on an old pair of  jeans.

Now these jeans have seen better days.  Push readers will know that they’re a bit frayed, but their fit is like no other jean.  I was concerned that they might not last for the five days until I began writing and knew I would have to take measures to ensure that they would.

I put my best foot forward and began to pace up and down in the garden.  It was then that I had a flash of inspiration.  I knew, having considered frozen food at great length – I may even have written about it – that freezing things preserves them, so I headed off to the garage.

As regular readers of my Late-Afternoon Push column will recall, our freezer is kept in the garage.  This does not cause any problems though, as the car is kept on the patio, the garden furniture in the attic, the random loft-boxes in the dining room, the dining table in the conservatory, the hat-stand, pot plant and welcome-mat in the living room and my husband in the shed, which is locked (from the inside).

I put the jeans in a watertight plastic bag (not daft, me) and placed them in the freezer on top of the frozen broccoli, between the Findus Crispy Pancakes and Arctic Roll.

It was there that they lay, until five minutes ago, when the time came to write my 400-500 word post.  I went into the garage, opened the freezer, and there they were.  It took a couple of minutes to put them on and they feel a bit chilly, but I’m sure you’ll agree they’re lovely.  Same time next week?

*Hester Made (up) is a fictional character and in no way represents any columnist from the York Evening Press, especially not Julian Cole, as he is quite good.