Katyboo1’s Weblog

I wasn’t going to write a blog today, which is why I wrote extra ones yesterday, but then I seem to have been badly bitten by the blogging bug (nice alliteration there), and have now written two more today, which is a bit bizarre, but that’s the way the willy wobbles, as my friend Sian used to say.  I’m just going to keep going until I run out of things to say, or when dinner’s ready, whichever comes first.  You know it will be dinner, because I never run out of things to say.

 

Tallulah got a party bag last week which had a Bratz, colour it yourself mug inside.  It’s an odd little thing, a plastic mug inside a plastic mug, and between the two walls, some colouring pictures that you hook out, colour in and reinsert in between the walls, creating yourself a fabulous plastic monstrosity.  I think it’s one of the ugliest things I’ve ever seen.  Naturally Tallulah loves it passionately.  She coloured it in last night.  By coloured I mean randomly scribbled on it, avoiding any sense of what the picture was about, thus rendering it highly artistic and in fact unique in the history of Bratz, as she has at one stage coloured over one of the Bratz’ head in yellow pen so violently it looks like she’s been caught in a yellow blizzard.

 

Since this artistic endeavour she has been behaving in much the same way as if we had suddenly discovered that she was the heir to Leonardo Da Vinci himself.  She has shown all of us the cup about twenty times, and keeps using it as a method of bribery; i.e. ‘Tilly? I might let you use my Bratz cup on your birthday if you will let me play with all your presents.’ And ‘Mama? If I let you have a drink out of my Bratz cup will you let me stay up until midnight?’ kind of thing.  She is somewhat non-plussed by our refusal to fall in dizzy gratitude at her small but artistic feet, and has so far gotten absolutely nowhere with her offers of Bratz drinking delights.

 

This morning she and I were up early and she demanded apple juice in her Bratz cup.  While the toast was toasting she sipped thoughtfully at her beaker of delights and then got very excited, announcing: ‘This is the third first time I’ve had a drink out of this cup, which means it’s very, very special doesn’t it?’ I found it hard to know what to say really, but as it was early and the coffee was still brewing I managed a non-committal grunt of agreement.

 

This was our conversation during the length of breakfast.  Tallulah perched like an alert squirrel on her chair (golden rule number one: never let your buttocks actually hit the seat of the chair for more than thirty seconds. One would not actually want to eat a meal using any kind of stable seating arrangements. That would be too boring), nibbling away at her toast and sipping apple juice as if it were the nectar of the gods.  Me, staring morosely into a coffee cup trying to make headway with Leonardo’s treatise on painting and wondering why I was bothering.  He didn’t finish the bloody thing, so why should I?

 

Tallulah: ‘Mama? Aren’t you excited that this is my third first drink from this cup?’

 

Me: ‘Tallulah. We’ve discussed this already.  It’s brilliant, but you can only have one first, so it’s actually your third drink.’

 

Tallulah: ‘Oh! Well, it’s still brilliant though mama isn’t it?’

 

Me: ‘Yes. I’m overjoyed for you.’

 

Silence while we nibble and slurp and I wonder if the person who translated this book was on drugs.  It’s all very theretofore and howsoever.  I examine the back. It was translated in 1877.  God help me.

 

Tallulah: ‘Mama? Do you really,really love Bratz?’

 

Me: ‘Not really Tallulah. Sorry about that?’

 

Tallulah: ‘But why not.  They’re brilliant.’

 

Me: ‘I’m sure they are if you’re four. I think I’m just too old for Bratz Tallulah.’ (Not saying: ‘they’re plastic tarts that make Barbie look like Julie Andrews’, which is what I actually think.)

 

Tallulah: ‘Hmmm.’ Thinks a bit, ‘Yes, you are rather old aren’t you?’

 

Me: ‘Hmmmm…’ cursing under breath about Leonardo again

 

Infinitesimal moment of silence (what never to be repeated bliss)

 

Tallulah: ‘Mama?’

 

Me: ‘Yes, Tallulah?’

 

Tallulah: ‘Do you really love my Bratz cup?’

 

Me: ‘Yes Tallulah, I think it’s brilliant.’ (as I have already said you persistent little beast)

 

Tallulah: ‘Yes. That’s because I’m really good at colouring.  Which bit do you like the best?’

 

Me: Now wrenching myself away from the cafetiere reluctantly and randomly pointing at a bit of scribble. ‘I love that bit best really.’

 

Tallulah: ‘Mama?’

 

Me: ‘Yes, Tallulah?’

 

Tallulah: ‘Is that because it’s purple and purple is your favourite colour?’

 

Me: Now having to look at it properly. ‘What? I mean yes! That’s why.  It’s very, very purple isn’t it?’

 

Tallulah: With extreme pride: ‘Yes! Yes it is.  I did that on purpose.  Of course I don’t ‘aspose’ it’s meant to be that scribbly really, but I’ve always got another one I can do a bit neater haven’t I?’ Looks penitent and slightly crestfallen: ‘I’m sorry I did it scribbly mama…’

 

Me: ‘That’s alright Tallulah. It’s your cup and as long as you’re happy with it, that’s absolutely fine isn’t it? Some people love scribbly Bratz cups.’ (and some don’t…Thinks wistfully of a dustbin with a scribbly Bratz cup at the bottom covered in mouldering crap, thus rendering it irretrievable)

 

Tallulah: Perking up immensely: ‘Yes they do! And I can do another one all neat for another time in case I ruin this one.  I might ruin this one mightn’t I mama?’

 

Me: ‘Yes, you might.  That is a possibility.  But never mind.  Why don’t you just eat your breakfast now?’

 

Tallulah: ‘O.K. mama.  That’s a good idea.’

 

Chews thoughtfully for all of a minute, then…

 

Tallulah: ‘Mama?’

 

Me: An infinity of weariness sweeping over me and it’s only 7.30 a.m. ‘Yes Tallulah.’

 

Tallulah: ‘My Bratz cup is brilliant isn’t it?’

 

Me: Sighs: ‘Yes Tallulah.  It’s brilliant.’

 

Tallulah: ‘That’s good because I might lend it to Tilly on her birthday you know? And it doesn’t have to be all scribbly because there are lots of pictures they gave me that I can put in it, so I can do a neat one for Tilly can’t I?’

 

Me: ‘Yes, you can.  I know this because we have discussed it recently already.’

 

Tallulah: ‘Have we mama?’

 

Me: ‘Yes. Yes we have actually.’ Now weeping into the bottom of a mug and thinking about killing myself with the Bratz cup which can then be confiscated by the police and taken away, never to be seen again.

 

Tallulah: blithely continuing her train of thought: ‘Yes, because I am a really good artist and this Bratz cup is just brilliant.’

 

Me: ‘Yes.’ Internally screaming that I am in fact stuck in the seventh circle of Dante’s hell with a load of Bratz and a child with a voice like a woodpecker repeatedly striking paydirt with its extremely sharp beak.

 

And so it went on…

 

We must move swiftly on before you learn to hate Bratz as much as I do. Another tragic tale this morning was when I happily received some parcels of books from the postman, only to find that the people I had ordered my copy of Fahrenheit 451 from, had sent me a wonderful, pristine copy of the book, which was unfortunately for me, in Italian.  I am waiting to hear if they can send me a copy in English or whether I will have to purchase an entire set of Linguaphone records.  And, and, and…Why did the postman, who usually saunters by at any time between 11.00 a.m. and 3.00 p.m. on a normal day, suddenly decide to hammer repeatedly on the front door at 7.20 this morning? I have him to blame for the fact that Tallulah got up with me, and by 7.30 I was not only mourning my failure to be able to speak fluent Italian, but my engagement with the world of Bratz and the plastic cups they inhabit.  Curse him.  The post office is just going from bad to worse.  I may write a letter, except who do you write to in the Post Office? And by using their own system are you not tacitly supporting the very thing you are hoping to undermine? It’s a thorny problem.

 

Today has been hellishly hot and the children are vile.  We trogged out to buy a hose pipe attachment and some sand for the sand pit so they could play in the garden, and you’d think we were taking them to Belsen the amount of fuss they made.  Oscar sat on the floor in Wickes and had a massive tantrum because I refused to let him quaff several litres of weedkiller, which I admit was quite unreasonable.  When I finally made him get up he turned round and pinched Tallulah hard on the arm.  Not just a regular pinch, one of those twisty, fingernail type pinches.  He just did it because he needed to reassert his masculinity, naughty little toe rag that he is. 

 

Then Tallulah, who had gone out wearing ridiculous shoes and refusing to wear socks, developed a blister on each heel and howled like a banshee for the next twenty minutes until we got to the car.  We were only out for an hour and went in three shops. By the time we were sat in the car to come home Jason and I looked like we’d been in the blast zone of some terrible nuclear accident and the children were pulsating with heat and sobbing their socks off.

 

When we got home I spent twenty minutes with my arse in the hall cupboard looking for the paddling pool, and another twenty minutes feeling dizzy from when you blow up the paddling pool that you’ve just found in the hall cupboard.  Jason fixed the hose pipe and I staggered backwards and forwards from the kitchen sink with several buckets of warm water to take the chill off.  I then spent ten minutes changing my jeans and mopping the lounge floor where I threw several pints of warm water on my travels.  It was at this point that the girls went to play on the trampolene and Oscar threw himself on the sofa covered in sun cream, did a wee on one of my best cushions and demanded the telly.  They all ignored the paddling pool completely and none of them are playing in the sand pit either, despite the fact that staggering about with three bags of play sand nearly gave me a hernia.  That’s why I’ve come upstairs to write this, because it’s much better for me than slaughtering the children wholesale.