Katyboo1’s Weblog

Well, you’ll no doubt be pleased to know that the girls returned in once piece from their ice skating.  This is indeed good news, because if I didn’t have them to write about this blog would be a very dull affair indeed.  It is true to say that I have no life of my own any more, and I fully admit to living vicariously through the experiences of my children and my more organised and disciplined friends, who have somehow managed to retain some dignity and space in their own lives. 

I promise on my honour however, that I will not cling to my children’s legs crying on the day they announce that they’re leaving home to a) backpack round the world, b) move in with Geoffrey or c) live under a bridge in a squalid ghetto environment.  I would mention d) go to university, but it is so bloody expensive now I expect by the time they are ready to think about it there will only be four people in the entire country who can afford to go any more and the rest of them will be re-opening Victorian style charity schools and Dr. Barnardos. 

My life is in effect on hold until the children move out. I keep up with the times via the magic of the interweb and the television.  Occasionally I am even allowed to listen to Radio 4, but only when everyone else is out, because they all think it’s pretentious.  Oscar doesn’t know what pretentious means, but gets very restless when I turn on; ‘I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue’.  He bounds about merrily in his high chair wiggling his hands like a hyperactive starfish when we put on Mark Ronson and Kate Nash (I’m just hoping he doesn’t learn the words to the song ‘Dickhead’ or Nana will no doubt have some choice words for mummy), so the trendy popstrels win out.  As Tilly used to say when she was smaller: ‘Mama! Turn that off.  I hate those radio mens.  They make me sick!’ 

I have a list of all the things that I am going to do, the places I’m going to visit and the hobbies I’m going to take up when the kids desert me.  I am counting the days, scratching them off on the wall like a prisoner.  The list is now in several chapters, and by the time I get round to doing any of them I’m fairly sure I will be able to cross a load of them off as either unfeasibly athletic or too tiring, which will probably leave bingo, owning a guinea pig and learning to give a crap about Sudoku.

I have always wanted to learn to play the drums, ever since I was a very small girl.  My gran used to live near the Premier Drum factory and we would drive past it every weekend on our way to visit her.  They had a big showcase tower which had a different sparkly drum kit in it every week, and I would choose my favourite and imagine myself sitting up there hitting things.  I still do, and I believe it is now a pie factory.  Hitting a steak and kidney pie is not quite as satisfying as hitting a big snare drum, but I bet it would still be quite fun, and involve less arm ache.  Short crust pastry is quite giving.

I do have the promise of a drum lesson from Jason’s friend Guy.  I have been meaning to take it for two years now, but having more children intervened slightly.  There was a time when there was no way I would be able to wedge my increased girth behind a drum kit and still hit the drums.  If only they’d have invented extendable drum sticks I would have been fine.  Now I’m just too tired for all that nonsense.  I expect by the time I’m sixty odd, and finally in a position to take him up on his offer I will have osteoperosis and give one good whack just as my arm shatters in thirty places.  What a way to go though…

Having children  does make you focus in detail on the minutiae of every day life whether you like it or not.  Maybe it’s because they’re only two feet tall, and you just have to get down to their level if you’re ever going to survive.  You suddenly find yourself recognising people by their knee caps for the first time in twenty odd years.  It’s very disconcerting. 

When Tilly was a toddler I was walking her round the corner to nursery when she started running her hand down the neighbours brick wall as we were walking along.  I was just about to tell her to stop when I realised that I knew just how it felt (that rough, burny, tingling sensation which is oddly pleasant, despite the fact that it sounds like cystitis), and that I knew what warm bricks taste like.  It was a very odd moment.  It took me right back to being a child myself and a sense of how much more tactile and exploratory the world was then. 

It’s one of the great joys of having children that you are constantly butting up against your own, forgotten, childhood experiences and emotions.  Sometimes it’s a good thing and it really helps me to connect with beings that for the most part I view as tiny aliens sent to torture me from another planet.  Sometimes it’s a shameful thing and I find I spend much more time on the phone apologising to my mother than is seemly in a woman of my age and maturity. Although death before dishonour, she’s made so much fuss over me fringing those bloody landing curtains I’ll be damned if I’m going to say sorry now!

It’s also strange how much you cling to the small things to orient and make sense of your life now that hang gliding down the Amazon is suddenly out of the question (like I was ever going to do that in a million years, but you know what I mean).  I’m happy if I get an extra half an hour in bed, or if I get through a day without Oscar colouring in another one of the kitchen table legs. 

I do admire (as in the sense of smiling at them, but standing well back just in case they get you to a) join in or, b) they’re the psychopaths you secretly think they are), these people who pack up their children in tiny rucksacks and travel about with them on far flung adventures.  It’s incredibly brave of them, and I’m sure it adds to life’s rich tapestry.  But my blood pressure rises when I walk five minutes down the road to the Co-op with my kids, so I dread to think what would happen in the Foothills of the Andes when one of them announces that they’re bored and they hate me.  It’s not like I can run off to the nearest Starbucks and fortify myself with a cup cake and a frappuccino.  We’ll have to make do with life’s rich ant’s napkin I think.  It’s much easier to cope with.

I’m waiting for my silver surfer years before I venture back into the world of travel and excitement.  By this I don’t mean that I’m joining the X-Men.  I’ve never been granted super powers, and if I did, knowing my luck they’d probably be bloody useless ones. Great, so I can detect the presence of bronze underwater from four miles away, that’s brilliant, thanks very much.  Now why don’t you just stab me in the eye with a fork and have done with it?  No apparently that’s what elderly people who are with it and tinterweb conscious are now called.  I suppose it’s slightly better than pensioner, but not much.  I do hope they come up with something better by the time I reach that hallowed age, if indeed I am allowed to get there by Tallulah, who is already booking me a room in Shady Pines and a spot in the local graveyard, box included.

There’s so much that I don’t have time for now, but which I totally took for granted when I was swanning about being terribly grown up and single.  I seem to recall having no time to spare whatsoever back then, and rushing about like a maniac being busy, busy, busy.  What with totally escapes me.  I mean I know I had a job and everything, but really.  Nowadays I would look on a job rather like a holiday, albeit a package holiday to Marbella with a lot of people I don’t much care for and some very chewy squid rings, but a holiday nevertheless. 

In those heady days, I seem to remember being more worried about where to go out to dinner and whether I could afford yet another pair of new shoes.  This was very exciting to me at the time, but unless I wanted to be a restaurant critic or fashion writer not very handy for everyone else.  Unfortunately it’s rare to be able to combine the two, and I like my dinners rather too much to make a very good fashion writer.   

I’m never going to be able to squeeze into the sample size dresses, and much as I think I’d like to, I also know that the lure of the last piece of Yule log is always going to be that much stronger than the lure of being able to squeeze into a size six Versace number.  It’s actually a blessing in disguise, as Oscar would probably only vomit on the designer togs, and I expect none of them go in the washer at 40 degrees with some Fairy washing tablets.  My dry cleaning bills would eat into whatever revenue I earned as a writer and we would end up as very well dressed guttersnipes. 

Take today as a case in point.  I woke this morning to Oscar chuntering his new word over the baby alarm: ‘Hiya! Hiya! Hiya!’  I was very relieved that he sounded so cheerful and went in with open arms, only to be hit by a wall of stench.  He had very thoughtfully done his morning pooh, and so much of it that he was covered from head to foot.  In short order I too was covered, and we both stank to high heaven.  What would have happened if I’d been wearing a dry clean only night ensemble, goodness only knows.  When you’re wearing an old vest and half a Banana Republic tracksuit that shrank in the wash you don’t have to worry about such things.  I’ve got enough stress in my life as it is.   

I can only think that Victoria Beckham only holds her children for photo shoots or has had them laminated so they wipe down more easily.  I do note that Angeline Jolie wears a lot of leather.  Now the magazines say that this is because it is fashionable. I contend that it is more to do with its spongeable qualities and the fact that she has four children.  I might write to her one day and enquire (envious of Glenfield). 

Even though we have now firmly established that I shall not be challenging Kate Moss for the skinniest woman in the world title, I have been trying over the last few days to cut the amount of rubbish I eat.  This is more for practical than vain purposes.  I have never been a huge fan of diets, as we have established in an earlier blog, but my clothes are beginning to take the strain and it’s not even Christmas yet.  The Christmas budget has been long spent and there is no wiggle room for a whole new wardrobe because I have indulged in one too many malted milk biscuits.  I have thrown away all my old maternity gear (on the grounds that I loathed the sight of it and would rather be jabbed in the eye with a blunt needle than have another child), so I have no choice but to lose a few pounds.

I had to buy some new bras last month as my old ones were so shameful that even I couldn’t stand the thought of what my mother would say if she had to come and identify my body if I had a terrible accident.  She would probably be forced to disown me, and who could blame her?  The washing machine ate one of my underwires, one had a strap held together with red silk thread (all I had in my excuse for a needlework box), and one was an interesting shade of grey which can only be achieved by about three years of repeated washing with socks belonging to your husband. The others had survived the escalating boob crisis of my pregnancy (I went up to a 38ff cup from a 36c) and had lost all structural integrity.  They were merely token bras, and of no practical use any more except as fishing nets to catch sticklebacks from the stream in.

Consequently I could put off the evil day no longer, and went out to purchae bras.  I went to Marks & Spencers (I would like to say that I went to somewhere glamorous like Agent Provocateur, but I am a middle aged housewife with no disposable income and I live in the Midlands. Hardly likely now is it? Plus, Jason would have had a heart attack, over the price, not the risque nature of the undergarments.) and suffered the indignity of having a woman old enough to be my granny, and who only came up to my armpits, measure me and manhandle me in a very Trinny and Susannah type way. 

It was so traumatic that I bought four bras just to get away from her and in teh hope that they would last me so long that when I have to go back she will either be dead or have retired and all embarrassment can be avoided.  This cost a small fortune and I now have to live with them for several years. Given that I bought them in a panic I am now beginning to regret some of my more random choices (and in fact, haven’t brought myself to wear the brown one yet.  I see it lying in the drawer looking like the skin on a cup of coffee and want to weep), but can’t face going again.

Because I have put on several pounds in the last few weeks my boobs are beginning to spill out of these new bras and create that terrible cow udder type look where I seem to have four boobs, two stacked on top of the other two.  It’s terrible.  People keep adjusting their glasses and I have to reassure them that they don’t need Specsavers at all, it’s all down to me and my incredible expanding bosom.  Jason is quite happy that my boobs are growing bigger, although even he finds the stack of boobs somewhat alarming, and has agreed that rather than give me a hundred quid to go and find sheltered housing for my new boobs, it would just be easier if I ate less cake.

I am sad to say that I have to agree with him.  It is killing me though and I have been really, really grumpy for the last two days.  I have been eating a lot of bananas, which has caused no end of grief from the small librarian in the camp (ook), and trying to pretend I like them.  I chose bananas because they’re very filling, and apparently release their energy slowly into your blood stream so you’re less likely to get hungry.

It’s a bloody lie.  They taste like wadded up blotting paper and they’re only edible when covered in cream, custard, ice-cream or all three.  I eat one and I’m starving again four minutes later.  I walk past the bread bin, drooling like a fiend, and last night I cracked and ate some of the kids Christmas chocolate which I had stashed in a secret hiding place.  The shame!  I have the willpower of Bernard Manning faced with pie and chips.  I may either have to start a charity to save for a new bra or resort to getting the kids to make one as their Christmas project after they break up tomorrow.  How utterly depressing!