Katyboo1’s Weblog

It’s so easy to remember the date at the moment isn’t it?  It’s the only good thing about December so far, which has turned out to be a bit dismal to say the least.  Nits are just not festive now are they?  Although if I knitted them some nice John Craven jumpers and got some bells for their ankles (like tiny yuletide Morris dancers)I expect we could make do.

Normally I’m hard pressed to know what day it is, let alone what day of the month it is.  As the girls spend so much time arguing over whose advent calendar is whose and what day it is, and how many more days there are to Christmas, it is however, indelibly branded on my brainial synapses.

I don’t know why they fight over the calendars because they’re both the same, and both have the same things inside them.  Apparently, I have just been reliably informed that it does matter, because daddy sat on Tilly’s and it has a big crease right across Barbie’s foot.  Tallulah is not impressed and wants an unsullied Barbie.  Me, I wouldn’t care, as long as the chocolate was still intact, which it is.  I just have different aesthetic values.

This is actually true because I find myself turning into a really grumpy old fart when it comes to advent calendars.  I really don’t approve of chocolate advent calendars, which took me and everyone else by surprise as I generally approve of every application that can be found for chocolate products.  My basic operating procedure is that there usually aren’t enough things made of chocolate in life, and something must be done about it immediately.  Chocolate advent calendars are however, ‘a bad thing’.

I think it must be because advent calendars have that horrible, waxy chocolate that is just wrong, wrong, wrong.  It reminds me of those chocolate mis-shapes that you used to be able to buy from the sweet shop that just tasted like dog drops (Now don’t make me feel guilty here.  Everyone has tried a dog chocolate in their life, surely?).  Even worse, it begins to verge on sharing the same taste with the dreaded chocolate substitute, carob.

Now carob is an evil thing.  I remember my first encounter with it distinctly.  I was round at a friend’s house whose mother was heavily into healthy eating.  They ate brown rice, they ate brown pasta, they ate what tasted like yards of hessian (naturally it was brown).  In fact everything they ate was generally brown.  I felt that when her mother offered me some chocolate that surely it must be the real thing, because clearly, as a brown food stuff, it must be alright.  How wrong I was.

It slithered about in my mouth and refused to melt properly.  It was disgustingly smooth and yet grainy at the same time.  It tasted like candle wax with sand in it, but sweet.  I gagged.  I leapt about.  I had been brought up by my mother not to spit (although it didn’t stop her teaching Tilly, who nearly got us thrown off a bus for gobbing out a wine gum on Finchley High Road into a man’s lap), so I manfully avoided the almost overwhelming temptation to disgorge it into her yucca plant (from which hung some interesting macramé basket work), and heaved it down my gullet.  It was truly one of the most horrible taste sensations I’ve ever had, and I’ve eaten garlic snails and Linda McCartney lasagne (not together, that would have been too much to bear). 

I turned on her with wounded eyes. I had been betrayed.  There was no way on God’s green earth that that had been chocolate.  It was the Anti Christ of chocolate products.  It was pure evil, painted brown (a bit like a Ford Fiesta).  She smiled sweetly and announced that it was in fact called ‘carob’, and she was amazed that I could tell the difference because her children loved it.  Apparently they preferred it to chocolate.  I looked round at their miserable little faces as they determinedly chewed their way through the carob delight, and thought: ‘Liar, liar, pants on fire!’  I didn’t say it though.  My mother would have battered me. 

She offered me another bit and I patted my tummy with one hand, whilst raising my palm towards her with the other, puffing my cheeks out as I did so.  This is the international gesture for: ‘Thanks for that, but unfortunately I am so stuffed with all the delicious food that you have already spoiled me with that I could not eat another morsel, despite how wonderful it tastes.’  This is actually code which translated means: ‘There are no words to express the hideous suffering that you have put me through.  Take your hairy brown dishes and shove them up your arse, you chocolate murdering liar!’ 

So, as a direct result  of that early childhood trauma, I feel distinctly cheated when I have to shell out for crappy calendars every year.  The worst year was when Tilly had a Simpsons’ calendar in which the same repulsive chocolate turned out to be luminous yellow, and added the heinous sin of being chock full of disgusting petroleum derived colourings to its already long list of defects. Luckily this year someone else (thank you Louise) bought them their calendars, so I was saved the usual sulking.

The other thing I hate is that the pictures that they desultorily stash behind the chocolate are rubbish.  I could do better, even with Oscar helping me.  They’ve got some gorgeous advent calendars in Borders this year, some great Quentin Blake ones and some that, dare I say it, even have religious scenes on them (remember: ‘the little, tiny child, the tiny, tiny child, that’s Jesus that is mama.’  Thanks Tallulah.) which are passable.  Tallulah asked the classic Christmas question this morning: ‘Mama?  If it’s Jesus’s birthday on Christmas day, did he get a birthday present and a Christmas present as well?’ Now there’s a theological poser for you at eight o’clock on a Tuesday morning.  I thought about it.  Thought about the discussion we could have, looked her in the eye and said: ‘Yes.’  Job done!  There’s plenty of time for all that next year and every single year after that no doubt. 

Needless to say, when I broached the subject of having an advent calendar with just pictures in it they looked at me in horror, as if I’d just announced that we were fattening granny up for Christmas and were going to roast her with an apple in her mouth.  Actually, if I’d have said that, I think they would have been slightly less appalled.  It was a terrible, terrible idea, and we must never mention it again.  I thought about buying my own advent calendar to make a point.  I decided I had better things to spend £6 on and swallowed my dignity. 

The children are amazed that I don’t like the chocolate in their calendars.  I suppose it must be a bit of a shock to see their mother refusing chocolate.  It only happens once a year after all (and when I’m pregnant.  Another reason I’m glad I’m not having any more).  Bless them, they try very hard to tempt me, and I am extremely impressed that they are willing to share their sweeties with me at all.  My brother and I would have fought each other to the death using our own bloody stumps of arms as weapons rather than share our sweets with anyone at all.  It’s at times like these when I think that some of the raucous shouting that I label as parenting, must be having an effect.

The other thing of course is that they like to have their opinions endorsed by adults.  Matilda in particular is absolutely horrified if we don’t approve of or like something that she does.  She has no conception whatsoever of what a twenty seven year age gap will do to your taste buds, both aesthetic and otherwise.  She spends ages trying to get us to understand the appeal of Jacqueline Wilson (loathsome children’s author, responsible for the evil that is Tracy Beaker) or High School Musical (The Kids from Fame but with better teeth), and of course, the ubiquitous chicken nugget.She cannot understand how the world can keep turning if we don’t all like the same thing.

I remember doing exactly the same with my parents.  I spent several weeks wearing them down to the point where they allowed me to watch ‘Top of the Pops’ every week.  I told them I would be a pariah at school and that nobody would ever be my friend again.  How could they do that to me, their only daughter?  They gave in, but I think it was only because my dad secretly liked watching the scantily clad dance combo, ‘Legs and Co.’ every week (yes, you can tell yourself it was for my sake, but I know better!). 

I also remember having pitched battles to be allowed to watch ‘The Kids from Fame’.  Sadly, the same argument no longer worked (I expect they had too many clothes on), and I was forced to watch it on the black and white portable in the dining room, alone.  It wouldn’t have been so bad except for the fact that it was a) in black and white, which as any fule no, always makes the programme terrible, whatever it is and b) the portable wasn’t very reliable so it used to snow a lot on Fame, particularly during the crucial bits.

I don’t know why they didn’t throw that television out.  It wasn’t great when it started.  It had one of those little wire halo aerials, which were never very useful at the best of times, and as we lived in the middle of nowhere (we cheered when we had an extra streetlight installed.  We could see 50% more countryside. Wow!), it was ten times worse.  It didn’t help that we had a pet cleaning lady who killed it quite severely.

We used to have a cleaning lady from the village who wasn’t too bad.  One day she decided that she had tired of a life of cleaning and rather than tell my mum, so that she could look for a new cleaner herself, she just sent her middle aged daughter to our house one week instead, hoping we wouldn’t notice the difference.  She was a sweet lady, but somewhat challenged in almost every area you care to mention.  She once told me with great pride that she could still travel on the bus for half fare, and she was thirty-two!  I was totally unimpressed.  Every teenage girl’s dream is to grow womanly enough to get into the pub as early as possible. I couldn’t imagine the horror of being so old (practically dead!) and still being thought of as a child.  Hideous! 

Now my mum is as soft as tripe when it comes to these matters.  She didn’t want this ladygirl to clean for her, as a blind spaniel with three legs could have done a better job, and it made twice as much work for her.  Unfortunately she felt sorry for her, and it was a small village, so if she gave her the chop she would be ostracised from the Blue Peter Christmas Bring and Buy (horrors!).  Consequently she soldiered on.

She tried to rope me into helping her, but I worked out that if I squirted Mr. Sheen into my eye whilst dusting I could be out of action for several hours, and acted accordingly.  Apart from the fact that my left eye swelled up like a balloon and I looked like a gargoyle, it was well worth it.  The first week I did it on purpose, the second week I did it by accident (showing off with a duster! It will end in tears).  After that she didn’t ask me again.

Mum snapped after two incidents, the first of which involved our brand new microwave oven.  My dad had decided that we had to have one.  Now, this is a man who still can’t text, or retrieve answerphone messages from his mobile phone, despite having owned one for four years, and the fact that an inebriated toddler could do it.  What came over him regarding the microwave I really don’t know.  He is what is known in marketing as a late adopter (yes! I used to run my own marketing business. Now I clean up pooh.  Go figure.), and usually waits twenty years before rushing to purchase a piece of new technology. 

Perhaps he hoped that my mum’s cooking would improve if he bought her one.  She is a notoriously erratic cook. Some weeks she cooks everything beautifully and produces marvellous, show stopping dinners.  Some weeks we have a lot of takeaway and an acrid pall lies over the house, depressing everyone and making them cough.  People in the neighbourhood think their house is a part time crematorium.

Anyway, whatever the reason, he decided that we must have one, and we must have one immediately.  He dragged us all out to the electricity show room and forced us to look at a lot of little metal boxes, while he read all the literature.  He loves to read all the literature.  He is the only man I know who will go round a museum and read every plaque, including all the price labels in the shop.

He took my mum on honeymoon to York and spent eight hours on the first day in the York Railway Museum reading all the plaques.  My mum abandoned him after half an hour and went shopping.  I’m amazed they stayed married.  He also got lost on the way to the hotel, turning up four hours late with a crashing headache and went to bed, leaving my mum in all her finery to forage for nuts and berries.  She had been so nervous she hadn’t eaten all day.  By the time they got to the hotel she had eaten her own shoes she was so hungry she forced them to open room service (and Timpsons) just for her.

Anyway, back to the microwave.  He purchased one and arranged for it to be delivered a couple of days later.  My mum hates technology, especially if it’s to do with kitchens, house work or any kind of white goods.  She had lost the will to live after five minutes in the shop, had forgotten what we had come in for and was standing, staring mesmerised at one of the microwaves.  My dad asked her what she thought and she said she didn’t think you’d be able to tune all the channels in properly as it was a bit small for a television! 

On the day of the great delivery, mum had gone out somewhere, probably to chug down bloody mary’s in the pub while we were at school.  When she got back, the cleaning lady, her mum, her dad and their two dogs were all in our kitchen testing out the microwave!  They had managed to make scrambled eggs and heat up three cups of coffee by the time mum got back.  They offered to show her how to use it as they tucked into their eggs, but mum politely said no and asked them to leave.

She’s so good.  I’d have set up a telescope trained on their house, waited until they’d gone out and then broken in.  When they got back I’d have been having twenty of my closest friends round for mince pies and mulled wine.  That would have learned ‘em.

The television incident clinched it however as far as the demise of the cleaning lady goes.  Mum had yet again, gone out while the cleaning lady was in.  You think she’d have twigged about the going out, coming back to find the house in bits, type thing by now wouldn’t you?  I expect she had to escape for fear of battering the cleaner to death with a chair leg.  She would have regretted it later. 

When she got back CL was twittering on about needing the tool kit and how she hoped mum didn’t mind that she’d gone in the garage.  Mum’s heart sank.  She sat down before enquiring why she’d needed the tool kit.  All the other cleaning ladies made do with a yellow duster and some Flash.  It turns out that CL had been enthusiastically dusting the dining room table and had somehow, quite accidentally, dusted the portable telly off of the table and onto the stone floor underneath.  She said that she was sure that mum would understand, and how it could happen to anyone (only last week my aunt dusted a car into a ditch.  How careless!). 

She said that mum wasn’t to be too alarmed because she had given it her best shot (and the two hours she was supposed to be cleaning the rest of the house, which still looked like a midden), and she had fixed it. She led my mother, who was by now in a horror-induced state of catalepsy (probably talking to herself: ‘You fire her! No, you fire her!’), into the dining room and proudly pointed at the television.  She had found some silver gaffer tape which she had wound around the television, encasing it like a tiny, electric mummy.  For purposes of use, she had carefully trimmed round the screen, so that we could actually watch it (how kind!). 

She then plugged it in and turned it on, at which point only static was visible.  My mum pointed this out, to which CL said: ‘Ah! Now here’s the clever bit.  It took me a while to figure this bit out, but bear with me.’  At this point she produced a screw driver from out of her anorak pocket (See! I told you anoraks = madness) and stuck it in a hole at the back of the television. At this point my mum screamed and sat down on a chair that wasn’t there, waiting for the unmistakeable smell of burning flesh and hair to waft from a crackling CL.  Sadly, this didn’t happen and she got BBC 2 beautifully. 

Apparently, as long as you stood at the side of the telly, with the screw driver wedged firmly in its bowels it worked perfectly!  My brother and I were to take it in shifts I presume. So that was the end of the cleaning lady, but not sadly, the portable telly, which my dad had fixed for the same price as a new portable telly.  Waste not want not! Right?

The day progresses. Good things that have happened include the fact that this is the first morning for a fortnight where Tallulah actually got dressed for school without having a tantrum, the fact that Oscar and I raided Starbucks for ginger cake and the fact that I have done more Christmas shopping.  It was hell. 

The only entertaining thing about it was seeing a blazing municipal dustbin outside the shopping centre in the High Street.  The flames were really quite impressive. God knows what was inside it.  Anyway, I stopped to gawp because a) I was bored of looking for a Barbie that didn’t have quite such sluttish clothes and b) it was warm.  At this point a man in a high visibility jacket rushed out of nowhere with a mop bucket full of water and threw it over the bin.  Then clouds of black, chemical smoke spewed out of it and he was engulfed because he didn’t step back from it soon enough.  He reappeared, hacking up his lungs, several minutes later looking like a reject from the Black and White Minstrels.  He shouted: ‘Now that’s what you pay your Council Tax for!’ and ran off!

Fantastic entertainment.  I was pleased because the exploding chestnut lady wasn’t there today.  Perhaps she was what was burning in the bottom of the bin! 

The nit situation is getting under control.  My hair still looks like crispy seaweed (people keep asking me if I’m in a Wizard of Oz revival as the scarecrow), but at least I have some and we are all nit free and smelling healthily of tea tree oil.  Oscar is feeling left out that he hasn’t got nits, so he woke up with conjunctivitis this morning.  He now has to be dissuaded from rubbing his eyes, by me chaining his hands to the front of his pushchair.  What joy! 

It is Tallulah’s first proper Christmas play today.  We’re not going until tomorrow though.  She was so incredibly excited this morning that she ran to school.  One of the other little girls was too poorly to go, and the teacher said her mum had to take her home.  She was absolutely devastated and cried her eyes out.  She was on the same bus into town as us and her mother and I were trying to cheer her up with tales of our own Christmas plays.  I told her that being an angel was very over-rated.  I had to be an angel when I was in the infants and they made me stand at the back behind the fake palm tree because my tin foil wings kept going sideways.  Her mother said that was nothing.  She had had to be a flamingo in her school play (a progressive school, obviously) and she had so many layers of pink net it scratched her thighs to ribbons and she couldn’t sit down properly for a week.  You see.  We all have to suffer for our art… 

I am struggling on with my studies despite everything.  It is very difficult.  I am now enduring the war in Burma with a man called Jon Latimer.  Now, if you know anything at all about Burma and its occupation during World War II, you will now that it was quite an exciting place to be.  The Japanese were torturing everyone and building railways left, right and centre (I feel that Thomas the Tank Engine is a direct descendant of the Burmese railway.  He’s torturous enough all by himself, boring little bastard).  The whole country was awash with troops and people were dying like flies.

It was quite gripping. Not according to Mr. Latimer who could make the second coming of Jesus sound slightly dreary and a little bit passé ( I would have come out for it, but I was washing my hair.).  It’s a knack I’m sure, but one which guarantees that I am in a boredom induced coma after reading only ten pages.  I know this because I got Jason to monitor me, and my eyes clanged shut at the ten page mark every time.  This means I had seven power naps yesterday, as I managed to read seventy pages.  I am a good girl for persevering.

Tallulah and I were chatting together after school while she had a snack and showed me how much glitter she could shake off of her latest artistic masterpiece all over my newly swept kitchen floor.  Thankfully we were able to avoid the subject of the school play.  Although she did give me a sound telling off for missing today’s performance when I went to pick her up.  I pointed out that tickets were like gold dust, that Jason and I were coming to see her perform tomorrow, and that she was lucky we got tickets at all.  In response I got a: ‘Hmmm!  Well. I. Am. Very. Disappointed. Anyway.’ 

This afternoon’s chat was about etiquette, of sorts. 

Tallulah: ‘I know what people who come to your house are called.’ 

Katy: ‘Do you?’ 

Tallulah: ‘Yes.  They’re called guests’. 

Katy: ‘Or burglars.’ 

Tallulah: ‘No.  Guests.’ 

Katy: ‘But burglars come to your house.’ 

Tallulah: Witheringly: ‘But only at night time.’ 

Katy: ‘How do you know which ones are burglars and which ones are guests?’ 

Tallulah: With great emphasis: ‘Burglars are people we don’t know.’ 

Katy: ‘Oh.  O.k. then.’ 

Tallulah: ‘Burglars wear hats as well, you know.’ 

Katy: ‘Right.  So I only call the police if the people who come to my house in the night are hat wearing strangers?’ 

Tallulah: ‘Yep.’  

Case closed. 

Tilly had choir and drama this evening.  It was a mad dash at four o’clock, which is when choir finishes, to the drama hall.  Drama starts at four o’clock. Luckily for us, the drama hall is next door to the school, which is where choir practice is.  As usual, Tilly was late out.  Half way across the car park she stops dead and throws her hands in the air.  Cue dramatic moment (it’s a good job those drama lessons are paying for themselves): 

Matilda: ‘Oh no!  I forgot.  Mum, I have to be a Christmas decoration!’ 

Katy: ‘When for?’ 

Tilly: ‘Now! For drama. Right now.’ Looks at me appealingly.

Katy: ‘Matilda!  You’re already late for drama.  We’re in a car park.  We have no access to a dressing up box.  What do you want me to do about it?’ 

Tilly: Looks depressed: ‘Nothing really.’  Suddenly cheers up and zips up her parka.  ‘It’s alright mum, I’ve got fur round my hood.  I’ll go as an Eskimo.’ 

She skips off, happy as larry!  Who knew improvisation would turn out to be her greatest skill?