For a man who seemed to have his face on backwards, in keeping with the show's title, D.C. Gabriel Markham was whooping it up a storm on the womanising front with his D.I., Elaine, who seemed sexually besotted. Catching the zeitgeist with the current horrors of acid attacks, gruesome deaths were the order of the days, which constantly rewound in hectic plot bites to the start, when Gabriel had his own face but was clearly due some come uppance for shameless knee tremblers with the D.I. in the police office gents.
Turned out it was this li'l lady herself who was Mrs. Psychopants, due to her mother having been murdered in front of her infant sociopathic eyes, when she fixated for life on the young copper who found her. Yep, you guessed it, it was her very own Angel Gabriel, in a neatly turned if ultimately daft and incredible circle.
If you could follow it weekly, well done. I had to resort to back to back catch ups to try to manage that, a somewhat dizzying experience punctuated by cries of,
"Hang on. Who's that?"
"His wife."
You tended to forget about her....
Still, it got me over Dr Foster, where even functioning relationships were ludicrously disfunctional. I felt particularly for the supposed new flame, a tame kind of teacher, who JUST DIDN'T GET IT, and was liable to turn up hopefully with pain au chocolat of a morning, when his inamorata had already been seething since dawn, metaphorically grinding her ex husband's bones for her daily bread instead. The teacher always seemed surprised and disappointed to be kicked into touch yet again, as she beetled frenziedly past him on her way out to do more damage, yelling,
"This isn't working!" in the teeth of his continued attempts to ignore the supposed realities going on all around his bemused and reasonable little face. Aww Bless.
Two teddies are now
Both in my keeping,
Gifts to toddler grandchildren, us.
When new, Bruin was purple, larger,
With a deep growl.
My brother's.
Teddy was smaller, fawn,
Mine.
He lost his growl after an unfortunate fall
And a sink bath.
I loved Teddy with a depth which included emotional guilt.
I was jealous because Bruin was bigger and purple
And my own ted must never know of that.
I was the oldest but the girl.
Perhaps that played into who got which bear.
Bruin is no longer purple,
Faded after decades on my brother's windowsills,
At home and in his flat.
For a few years now, both have looked down from
The high shelf beside my daughter's childhood raised bed.
They leaned together, slightly forward,
As if wanting to come down.
I climbed up to get them the other day and soon saw why.
Both lambswool, moths have pecked their back legs into small
bald patches.
It's been a poignant time as my mother has lately died too.
I felt I had let them down, the two teds,
Neglected while cherished still.
I've dusted them off and put them on the coverlet
Of the single bed below,
Where they seem more contented, two old men together.
Better now, their worn little faces seem to say.