Taking Notes:

We had Jason’s birthday tea this evening.  I made him Thai green curry with chicken.  I baked him a perfect Victoria sponge cake with acres of whipped cream and jam.  He got lots of presents.  It was good.

After tea I sent the children up to have a shower.  Tilly was in charge while I filled the dishwasher.  She shepherded them upstairs beautifully and collected towels.  I heard the hiss of the shower go on (baby monitors are a wonderful thing) and Tilly telling them to wait a moment while the water got to the right temperature.  I had my foot on the bottom step of the staircase to follow them up when I heard Tilly calling me through the baby monitor:

‘Mama! Oscar has opened one of your tampax and stuck it on the end of his willy.  I’ve put it in the bin for you.  I just thought you’d like to know.’

I laughed so hard I thought I was going to be sick.  Jason practically had to carry me upstairs I was so weak.

I can’t wait to tell his first girl/boyfriend.

Thursday 22nd January – Typical Morning Boo Household

Why is everything to do with children such a bloody ball ache?  Such a ball ache that my balls are aching like billio and I don’t even have any.  That’s how much of a ball ache they are.

Nothing, nothing is easy or straightforward or normal.

I wonder if it’s just me and my failure to make the grade as a competent adult. 

I see other mothers at school and think: ‘You look serene.  Your hair is neat, you have make up on.  You have clearly bothered to find clothes that are clean and that match.  You would never, ever be caught dead going to school wearing your pyjamas.  Does this mean that your children are good and efficient and function well in the routine you provided them with?’

On bad days I think; ‘Yes! Yes! This is the case.’  I imagine their houses as some kind of blissful minimalist zen paradise with spookily well behaved children floating around with immaculate hair and book bags full of perfect homework.’

On good days I think: ‘No! It’s just that you got up two hours before the children and worked like a dog to do all that.  Either that or you have hired help.  Possibly both.’

I’m not saying that today was shockingly bad.  Far from it.  I’ve had much worse mornings.  No today was merely a representative sample of the average day in the Boo household.  It’s sort of like one of those pond dipping exercises.  I have dropped my cardboard square over this particular morning and am holding it up to the microscope.

I set the alarm to snooze twice before I could be bothered to get out of bed this morning.  I even caught myself thinking; ‘Would it really be so bad if we were all late for school this morning? I could make up an excellent excuse, and because I’m grown up they’re so going to give me the benefit of the doubt.’  That is after all, one of the perks of being grown up, and it should be exercised regularly in my opinion.  I had just decided that we would indeed be late when I remembered that I have a hair appointment, and it is Oscar’s nursery morning.  I’m not missing that.  So I heaved myself out of bed.

I have decided that I must go back to being more adventurous with clothes.  I have a wardrobe full of lovely clothes.  I invariably wear jeans.  I flung the wardrobe doors asunder.  I stared blearily at everything.  I heard the rain hammering on the Velux skylights.  I scrambled into my jeans.

Oscar decided he did not want to go to nursery.  He popped his head over the cot bars like a demented rabbit and announced winsomely; ‘My not going to Donna’s house today.’  To which I replied: ‘There are many things in this mysterious universe that I remain ignorant of little man, but I am very sure indeed that you are going to Donna’s house today, come hell or high water.’  To which effusive speech he merely said: ‘No! My are not going. NO. NOOO. NNOOOOOO!’  I hoiked him out and wrestled him into his clothes, refusing to revisit the subject of Donna’s house any further.

Wrestling a hefty two year old into clothing is one of the parenting skills they should teach you in ante natal classes.  Hulk Hogan should run them, because you do need to learn things like how to break someone’s grip without breaking their arm, how to effect a decent half nelson, and how to make someone who is determined to be as rigid as a cat with rigor mortis bend in the middle without winding them.  You learn as you go along if left to your own devices, but a heads up would have been nice.

All this time Tallulah is in the kitchen waiting for her breakfast.  I know this because she keeps honking into the baby alarm and scaring the crap out of us.  Oscar is looking to see where the voices in the walls are coming from.  He then gets excited and wants to talk to everyone he has ever known.  I scramble downstairs with him tucked under my arm trying to explain that it is not a dial up service.  He does not get to choose who he speaks to.  He is not impressed.

He does not want breakfast.  I make Tallulah’s.  She has decided that ordinary cereal will not do.  She wants a cocktail of cereals.  I give in, because it is easier.  Oscar eyes this train of events with interest.  He now decides that he wants the same as ‘Tula’. I make his breakfast.

In the meantime Tilly slopes downstairs.  She is still being sullen teenager, despite only being nine.  She is not a huge fan of breakfasts.  She has a jelly.  I think this is probably quite bad, but it is better than nothing, I don’t have to prepare it and she does it herself.  I give in.  They are all natural, made with fruit juice, no added sugar jellies.  It could be worse.  As a teenager I insisted on drinking coffee out of cereal bowls and eating chocolate mousse for breakfast.  I do not mention this.

We are sort of all sitting at the table in vague harmony.  Tilly is trying to avoid having anything to drink.  I force her to have a glass of orange juice.  She hates me silently from across the room.  She has laser beams for eyes.  I am dust beneath her boot.  I don’t care.  The coffee has brewed.  The world is already looking like a brighter place.

Tallulah has Rice Krispies on her chin.  Oscar tells her this.  He is very impressed.  He puts Rice Krispies on his chin.  They gurn at each other across the table with cereal dripping from their chins.  I ask them to remove it.  They wipe it on sleeves before I can offer kitchen roll.  Then they play waving at each other manically with cereal flying.  I ask them to concentrate on the task in hand.  They look at me like I am an idiot.  Hours pass. Cereal is still being flung about.

Tilly throws a spanner in the works.  She has read the back of the Rice Krispie packet.  Apparently we can adopt a monkey for free.  ‘Mama? Can we adopt a monkey? It’s free.’  The small kids clamour; ‘Monkey, monkey, monkey.’  Then they start making monkey noises.  Breakfast descends into a menagerie.  I think about shrieking.  I have only had one coffee.  I say: ‘I will read it later when you get home from school.’  This means: ‘No! Never! Over my dead corpse.’  Nevertheless they are still at the stage where hope springs eternal.  This is good enough for them.

Tilly goes upstairs to brush her teeth.  Tallulah demands more cereal to flick about.  I think about saying no.  I wrestle with my conscience. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, blah.  What if she genuinely is hungry and because I say no she falls over at school and breaks a limb due to malnourishment blah? I get the extra cereal.  Oscar is now excavating something under the table.  Hours pass.

Tilly has still not come downstairs.  It has been weeks since she went to brush her teeth.  She has a timer.  She is supposed to brush them for two minutes.  She never does.  I wonder what she is doing.  I call up the stairs.  A world weary voice floats down: ‘I am, ‘sigh’, just, ‘sigh’, putting on some lip balm, ‘pfhfffffhhh’  My lips are cracked.’ Huge tut like; ‘What do you care anyway? You wish me dead. You wish that my lips would just peel off and fall on the floor and I would bleed to death.  Would you care? No. No you would not.  By the way.  Did I tell you? I hate you.’  I suggest that she might like to carry on getting ready for school now.  She wearily descends as if every step were agony.

Tallulah goes to brush her teeth.  Oscar trails behind her to ‘help Tula’.  I know I should stop him, they are an unholy alliance together. I cannot be bothered.  I need more coffee.

Tilly puts her shoes on.  She sits on the bottom step in the hall.  I enquire as to whether she is going to brush her hair today.  She thinks about it; ‘Oh! Alright then.’  Like it is a massive favour to me.  Thanks for that.

Tilly has gloriously thick honey coloured hair which is waist length.  It needs quite a lot of care.  It does not get it.  She has huge tangles in the back and bottom of her hair.  I say: ‘Please brush the tangles out carefully.’  She looks at me as if I were a total drivelling imbecile for even suggesting that she might not do it.  ‘Yeah. Alright! Urgh!’

Oscar is holding Tallulah hostage in the bathroom.  She is wailing that she is trapped.  I point out that she is three years older than him, much more cunning and for now, a bit taller.  Surely she can effect an escape.  She does.  Oscar is not impressed.

Tallulah disappears into the shoe cupboard. I can see a bottom, a pair of heels and a lot of footwear flying around.  She is muttering and wailing about boots.  Apparently we are responsible for the fact that she can only find one boot, despite the fact that there is only one shoe cupboard and all shoes live in it, and there is nowhere else to put shoes.  We may have taken a boot and stolen it in the night, just to be spiteful.  Probably I have widdled in it as well, or maybe burned it, or given it to next door’s dog.  Because that’s the type of horrible parent I am.

I go upstairs to see what Oscar is doing and avoid the recriminations. He is covering his hands in a fine layer of toothpaste.  He has only been up there on his own for two minutes.  I scrub his hands.  He tells me about his plans for the day.  These do not include going to Donna’s house.  They do include watching Wonderpets and going to granny’s to hang out with her.  He is sadly disappointed.  We go downstairs to put his shoes on.

Tallulah has two boots on.  Who knew that they would both be exactly where she left them?  Amazing.

Tilly has ‘finished’ her hair.  I look at it.  She has done the front beautifully.  The back looks like an exploded rat’s nest.  She has done the Linus shining shoes classic.  ‘I only shine the front of my shoes. I want people to like me when I come into the room.  I don’t care what they think of me when I leave.’  I plonk her down.  I brush all the tangles out of her hair.  She cries and wails and shrieks.  I deliver a lecture along the lines of: ‘I did tell you to do it yourself.  You know it hurts more if I do it for you.  You had the choice to do it yourself.  If you don’t stop shrieking I will take you to the hairdressers and make them cut it all off.’

I command Tallulah to start brushing her hair, which is a riot of curls like a giant nimbus this morning.  I chase Oscar around trying to get him to put his coat on.  This is difficult.  He does not want to put his ‘measure tape’ down.  He has important stuff to measure.  Things like the letter box and the stairs.  I finally get his coat on.

I wander into the kitchen to see how Tallulah is doing.  Her hair remains the same.  She is staring into the nozzle of the spray in conditioner, just about to squirt it into her eye.  I run forward in slow motion shouting ‘Nooooooo!’ just like in a disaster movie.  I imagine the horror if she squirts it into her eyeball.  I reach her just in time.  I start to brush her hair delivering another lecture; ‘What do you think will happen if you stare into the nozzle of the spray whilst pressing the button down Tallulah? Do you really want to go to casualty this morning Tallulah? We have had this discussion before Tallulah.’

We finally get out the door.  It is Thursday, Tallulah’s p.e. morning.  I discuss with her her need to get a move on this morning, not to sit on the wet floor in the corridor in her cream tights, and the fact that she has to get herself organised so I can help her with her p.e. things or I am leaving.  ‘Yes mummy! Yes!’ she says obediently.  Hmmmm.

We deposit Oscar in nursery.  He sulks.  At least he doesn’t cry like last week.  He wanted to take his measure tape.  I wouldn’t let him.  He hates me.

Tilly wanders about in the mud in her suede boots.  I shout at her.  She does this every day.  She hates me.  She peels off and heads for her classroom.

Tallulah stands in the corridor failing to take her boots off, staring into the middle distance.  I am chivvying her along.  She puts her hand on the zip of her boots and then freezes for no apparent reason.  I am scooping up p.e. kit when the head of year comes out to announce that p.e. will take place later in the day because there is a substitute teacher today and she can’t handle thirty naked five year olds at this time in the morning.  I thank God.  I turn to Tallulah.  She is still clasping her boots.

I force them off her feet.  She loses her plimsolls.  We find them eventually.  I have lost all patience.  All the parents hate me. Tallulah hates me.

I go home and throw myself into the cafetiere.

I have until three o’clock this afternoon and then we have to do it in reverse.  What joy.

Embarrassing Events in My Life Part Gazillion

The honesty meme yesterday has brought up a whole series of idiotically stupid times in my life, which have been haunting me ever since like Nam quaalude induced flashbacks.  So thanks to Welsh Girl for that

As a result I thought I ought to shovel them out of my brain so I can fill it up with the usual hideous traumas that I like to mull over late at nights.

I’m sure I’ve blogged about this before.  Let’s face it, I’ve blogged about most things before.  My real life stopped about ten years ago when parenthood took its place and I have been dining out on recycled reminiscences ever since.  My life is like an episode of The Good Old Days, but without the ‘Good’ and less of the cheeky Cockney charm.

So, on with the ritual humiliation.

One one of my first dates with UHTB (unsuitable husband to be), we went to see a film at the local art house cinema in Jericho (Oxford, not Biblical Jericho, although that would have been way more exciting and possibly time travellish).  It was/is a lovely place.  It has a wine bar upstairs and a cool shop downstairs where not only can you buy popcorn and family sized bags of sweets, but lumps of cake and cups of coffee as well.

We got there early and decided to go for a drink in the wine bar.  I ordered a glass of red.  I was being sophisticated. Ha ha!

At this time I had quite long hair which I had taken to wearing in a kind of messy, windswept updo with lots of wisps and straggly bits.  Basically a kind of bird’s nest.  The kind of bird’s nest built by a totally shambolic piss artist of a bird who is half blind and feels that they are very creative and artistic.  All the other birds humour her but talk about her behind her beak.  What they say is: ‘That bird is crap, and her nest is going to fall apart in the first strong wind.  Do not let her look after the eggs when we go to the Barn Dance next Friday.  Pass it on.’  That was my ‘look’ that season.

I was very nervous that evening. Uhtb was way out of my league.  He had a flash job.  He had flash cash.  He lived in a totally chic uber flat on Gloucester Green, right in the middle of town.  He knew everyone.  He spent half the week jet setting for business and would often pop away for mini breaks in glamorous European locations.  He was lead guitarist in a band whose singer was drop dead gorgeous and who were actually quite good. His best friend was the landlord of two Oxford pubs and owned a trendy cafe in Jericho, and a comedy club. His ex girlfriend (who all new girlfriends automatically measure themselves up against) was very successful.  Before they split up they had owned a Grade Two listed cottage in a pretty Oxford village.  She drove a Porsche and wore head to toe designer labels.

Then there was me, birdsnest girl.  I had my second hand vintage pea jacket on.  I had my own unique style of dressing, which was so unique and ahead of its time I had gone round the fashion clock from chic to freak.  I earned about tenpence a week.  I had a room in a shared house.  I not only shared the house with other humans I shared it with a deaf dalmation, a hearing but mental dalmation, two giant cats, copious amounts of animal fleas and hair, some slugs that lived in a kitchen cupboard and a mad landlord who would moodily play the saxaphone on the landing when he was feeling the urge to share.  The bloke whose room was next to mine was a dope fiend who had a magic mushroom induced fear of power tools despite working in B&Q.  He also had a hideously complex love life, proving irresistible to young women who would literally shin up the drain pipe to break in and see him.  Unfortunately the first room they got to was mine.

I had just come out of a disastrous relationship with a man who used to keep Branston pickle sandwiches in his briefcase and whose prize possessions were some home made numchucks and a macrame pot holder sans pot that he had made in 1983.  My best friend lived in York and was doing an MA in Medieval Poetry.  I liked cakes, he liked drink and drugs.  He knew which fork to use at dinner parties and how to make small talk.  I could make a mean cheese sandwich and could babble on insanely for hours without letting anyone else get a word in edgewise.

You can easily see that the only thing running through my head at the time was the litany; ‘Why me? Why is he going out with me? Is he doing it for a bet? Oh my God!’ On a kind of perpetual loop.

I was sitting at the bar, half facing him, clutching the stem of my wine glass like a drowning woman clutching a life raft.  He asked me a question.  I was too busy listening to my hysterical inner monologue.  I heard noises and smiled like a mentalist in his direction.  He asked me again.  It was something totally innocuous like; ‘What did you have for dinner?’  It was an easy one.  I could answer.  I knew this.  Wait a minute.  I went into total meltdown.  My grin went sort of rictusish.  I went to speak, made a kind of gurgling noise and threw my hands up in the universal gesture for ‘What the fuck am I talking about? Excuse me for being a total muppet.’ 

I had forgotten I was clutching the wine glass.  Everything went up in the air.  The wine came out of the glass and landed in my elaborate coiffeur.  Because it was so labyrinthine it didn’t douse me all at once.  It was more of a trickle down effect over a series of some of the most excruciatingly humiliatingly long minutes of my life.

He just watched in rapt fascination.

I froze.

Once the last drips had sauntered their way lazily down my face he burst out laughing.  He laughed so hard I thought he was going to die.

I knew I was going to die.

I mopped myself gently with a napkin provided by a thoughtful and entertained barman.

I decided to weather the storm.  I wanted to see the film.  I didn’t see the point of running away until afterwards.  Then I could do the walk of shame.

We went downstairs.  He bought the tickets.  I said I would buy the supplies.  I asked him what he wanted.  He asked for a coffee.  I looked at him in total horror.  I said that I would buy it but he would have to carry it.  He said; ‘No way! I’m hoping you do that throwing it up in the air thing again.  That was brilliant.’  Nightmare.

Luckily I managed to get it to him without giving myself a shower or throwing it into his groinal area.

We were married less than a year later.

I don’t recommend it for everyone’s courtship, but it worked for us.

Fool For Love

I was blethering away to an old friend on the phone a few weeks back.  He told me that he has started a blog about romance.  I thought he meant Romanticism like Keats and Shelley and Bryon and all that jazz.  An easy mistake to make.  He and I were at university together both doing literaychure.  He is now writing books. I am now writing blogs.  It turns out though that he is actually interested in the idea of what makes something romantic, not just in the literary sense, i.e. Byron dragging his club foot across the Greek peninsula and offering to show it to the ladies for a shilling and a grope in the olive groves.

His blog is here if you want to take a peek at some of the things he considers romantic.

 

He said that he would be really interested to pin down what it is that makes something like the film Before Sunrise with Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke, heart breakingly romantic, so that it gives you that fantastic tearful, welling up in your chest sense of perfection and compare it to something like Love Actually which manipulates all your romance buttons in a much more Helen Steiner Rice type way.

 

It got me thinking.  I too happen to agree that Before Sunrise is a wonderful film and truly romantic.  My ex-husband and I went to see it when we were in the first throes of swooning courtship.  We came out of the cinema and were both emotionally raw and tearful and I remember falling in love with him just that little bit harder because he had got ‘it’ and we had shared ‘it’, and who couldn’t fall for a man who truly understood romance?

 

I however, also love Love Actually.  I don’t care that it’s manipulatively romantic because there are nuggets of rawness in there that really do it for me.  I love the Keira Knightly/Andrew Lincoln unrequited love sub plot because it fails, because it is doomed, because he loves her anyway and it is kind of chivalrous and heart breaking and he looks so destroyed whenever he looks at her. I love the Colin Firth/Portuguese woman sub plot because, well mainly because it’s got Colin Firth in it and he jumps in the water and gets wet, just like he does when he’s Mr. Darcy and he’s really good at playing crap Englishmen who are rubbish at being in love but just look at women in that puppyish, melting way.

 

When I was a teenager my best friend Rachel and I would obsessively hire out the film Lady Jane starring Helena Bonham Carter and Cary Elwes as the star crossed lovers.  We would stock up on a box of man sized tissues and just indulge ourselves in a festival of weeping and high romance.  It was agony and it was brilliant and fabulous.  The film, I am now convinced, was total and utter dross, and even though my memories of wallowing in romantica are fond ones I will never, ever see it again in case my rose coloured spectacles are cruelly smashed under a mock Tudor boot and all is doomed.

 

I am a sucker for a good romance whether it be in song or poem or telly or anything really.  I expect it’s all subjective, this ineffable thing that makes something romantic romantic, but here are some stellar romance moments from my hit list, apart from the three above, obviously.

 

Truly Madly Deeply – I snivel like a fool every single time I see this film.  It ruins me for a good hour afterwards.  Alan Rickman is a god and why she falls for that hop scotching pillock when she could still have mouldering Alan stinking up her living room is beyond me.

 

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens – I remember reading the ending on a train backpacking through France with my gran and crying my eyes out whilst a load of curious French people looked on and muttered ‘zut alors’ at the crazy English girl.

 

Captain Corelli’s Mandolin by Louis de Bernieres – I love the fact that it didn’t have a neat, traditional ending and yet it was so utterly, utterly romantic, despite her being eighty and having a beard moustache combo.

 

Doctor Who – That bit in Doctor Who where Rose leaves the series.  You know, the bit where she has to stay stranded in a parallel universe and the Doctor has only seconds before the space time continuum divides them for eternity to wrap it all up. She tells him she loves him, and he is just about to say it when they are ripped asunder, leaving her sobbing wildly on a wet sand dune. My God! I was a total wreck.  The children were all staring at me as if I had just turned into a Cyberman before their very eyes and all I could do was stutter out some gibberish about the suffering of true love before retiring to my boudoir with some nourishing Hob Nobs and a hot water bottle.

 

China Doll by Julian Cope – This song just makes my hair prickle and my heart beat faster and I have that kind of swelling feeling where I want to cry but in a really, really good way. I feel rather similar when I listen to The Verve, Bittersweet Symphony.  It’s not the words, it’s the string arrangement.  The bit they nicked from The Rolling Stones and had to pay a fortune in royalties for. It’s a real heart sweller that one, despite the cheery lyrics.

 

Four Weddings and a Funeral – Not all of it, just that bit in the church where John Hannah reads the W.H. Auden poem for his dead lover, the walrus like and yet still lovable, Simon Callow.  I know it’s a bit of a cliché now, but it is fabulous.

 

Her Song by Brian Patten – a gorgeous poem which goes like this, or it does until Brian finds out that I’ve posted it and asks me to take it down or pay him a hundred pahnd for the privilege of sharing it with you:

 

For no other reason than I love him wholly

I am here; for this one night at least

The world has shrunk to a boyish breast

On which my head, brilliant and exhausted, rests,

And can know of nothing more complete.

 

Let the dawn assemble all its guilts, its worries

And small doubts, that, but for love, would infect

This perfect heart.

I am as far beyond doubt as the sun.

I am as far beyond doubt as is possible.

 

The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje – The film and the book are both magnificent, romantic and doomed. The prose is liquid and gorgeous. What strikes me about the book is more the romance of the writing about the desert and the Bedouin than the doomed romance of the protagonists.  Doomed romance it seems is rather important to me.  That’s quite troubling.  I won’t mention it to Jason.

 

Derek Jarman’s Garden – Jarman was a film maker and painter who died of AIDS and was one of the very first ‘celebrities’ to acknowledge his condition. He is one of my heroes. His diaries: ‘Smiling in Slow Motion’ are a romance for me, not in a conventional sense but more about his love for life and his passion for engaging intensely with the world. He created the most amazing garden near Dungeness, right in the shadow of the nuclear power station. He took the barren shingle and created this thing of immense beauty and passion and life. It is breath taking. Howard Sooley the photographer made a book called; ‘Derek Jarman’s Garden’ which shows the most glorious photographs of his work with writings from ‘Smiling in Slow Motion’. I love it. It makes me fall in love with life all over again in times when I am feeling a bit pointless.

 

The Time Traveller’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger – The romantic version of Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut.  Time travelling with kissing and girls rather than Tralfalmadorians and zoos.

 

I could also mention the relentlessly joyful feeling I get from reading Georgette Heyer but I’ve already blogged quite enough about her this week.  Or the wonderful film ‘The Scent of Green Papaya’ in which a man plays the piano in the rain and a girl falls in love with him and it’s all very gentle and sweet and nothing really happens but it’s still swoonsome.  Then there’s the dreadful film Green Card with Andy thingy and Gerard Depardieu in which they pretend to be in love and then only realise they are in love when he’s about to be deported and it’s shit and I think I’m more in love with her wonderful roof garden and Gerard’s nose than the film, but I can’t help loving it anyway.

 

Or there’s that little bit in the wonderfully silly film ‘The Princess Bride’ in which the slave boy Wesley falls in love with Buttercup and will only answer ‘As you wish’.  And one day when she’s in the slough of despond and everything is falling to crap and she thinks Wesley, the love of her life is gone forever, she hears the words: ‘As you wish’, and all the colour and hope come back into her being again.

 

Or there’s that bit in Pride and Prejudice on telly where Colin/Darcy comes out of the lake in his very tight nankeen britches and his billowing white shirt and… Actually that’s not romance, that’s just lust, but you know what I mean…

 

So what is it that makes these things romantic? I don’t really know.  Part of it is the vulnerability of it all. It’s that openness and willingness of people to suffer for and to show themselves up for love that will get me every time.  Then there’s the whole doomed thing which I think is best left under wraps for now.  There has to be that aching sweetness in the connection between the lovers, whether they be human and Time Lord or man and plant or whatever, that touch of childlike glee that makes everything sparkle like Christmas really should be.  A bit of glitter and some tears in a big furry bundle that just socks you splat, right in the chest every single time.

 

Wednesday 21st January – Dog on the roof

I have five minutes while the children are still in the shower and not killing each other too badly.  I am excessively overserved with tea.  Jason took us to Pizza Express as a treat and not only did I eat garlic bread and an entire Soho pizza (garlic, olives, fresh rocket and fresh slivers of parmesan, plus I have anchovies) I also ate some banoffee pie with mascarpone that accidentally found it’s way straight to my pudding gut.  Other people have beer bellies.  I have pudding gut.

I decided I must blog before I slip into a carb coma for the rest of the evening.  Here are the high and low lights of the day:

Highlights

• Dinner at Pizza Express which meant nice food AND I didn’t have to cook or wash up.
• Mum came round this afternoon.  We drank coffee, ate chocolate malted milk biscuits and had a good moan.  I felt so much lighter afterwards.
• Jason’s uber duvet arrived in the post.  He liked it.  He fondled it quite a lot and said in a dreamy voice; ‘It feels sooooo expensive.’  I pointed out that this was because it was ‘soooo expensive’.  Still, at least it feels like we’ve got our money’s worth.
• The uber duvet arrived packed round with tiny packets of Jelly Belly Jelly Beans.  I thought it was great marketing.  The kids were over the moon.
• The house is clean, because I cleaned it.  It smells nice and toilets are now for use by non family members.
• The box set of Six Feet Under came.  I am hoping that we can embark upon season two once the children are in bed.

Lowlights

• I had a counselling session with Raymond Bloomin Christmas.  It was o.k. but I had to force myself to go.  Walking there was like I imagine walking down to the electric chair would be like, only with more scenery.
• I have eaten far too much food and can no longer bend in the middle like a normal human being.
• I had to clean the house today.  It was very tedious, but even I couldn’t stand the fact that the kitchen floor was a bit glutinous due to both Jason and me dropping the open box of cornflour onto the floor.  Oscar solved that problem today by reaching the box off of the side and throwing it into the washing up water.  Lovely job.
• I don’t like Jelly Belly Jelly Beans.
• Jason had to go to work at two this morning.  He got back home at twelve thirty this afternoon.  He is very, very tired indeed. It is like being married to a three toed sloth at the moment.  He has to work all day Friday, all night Friday and all day Saturday too.  He is a bit fed up.
• Jason had to go to the dentist for a filling.  While he was there he chatted to the dentist about Tilly’s teeth.  She has wonky front teeth due to an extra ‘shark’ tooth that was pushing all her teeth out of line.  He estimates the cost to be somewhere in the region of four thousand pounds.  Oh MY GOOOOOD! That is quite a lot of money.  We are going for a second opinion before we remortgage the house.
• I woke up with another stinker of a headache.  Oddly after hanging upside down scrubbing floors for a couple of hours it was a lot better.  It is still not gone completely.  I have now resorted to the power of prayer as Ibuprofen seems to be doing bugger all.
• Tilly is going through a Kevin and Perry phase today.  There is a lot of sulking, shrugging, petulance and cries of ‘I just’, ‘Well you see’, ‘You don’t understand!’ and ‘It’s not fair.’  It is driving me crazy.  She hates me and keeps staring at me with her evil, beady eyes, wishing me dead or at least severely incapacitated.  I am in training for the difficult teenage years.
• The school sent home a note to say that the whole school is going to be adopting a new, nationally recognised handwriting form from this week.  They sent the note home in this handwriting, which is bloody awful, difficult to read and like nothing I’ve ever seen anyone voluntarily write ever.  Apparently it is a multisensory approach.  They did not explain what this piece of total bollocks meant.  Even the staff are going to adopt it and ‘we are all very excited about it.’  My children are in revolt about it and are not impressed, so that’s two less we for a start.  The letter jokingly adds that us parents might want to join in with the children to support them, and as a ‘fun’ thing to do.  I cannot imagine anything less ‘fun’ to do in terms of the pursuit of academic excellence.  I did think about writing a note back to the head teacher, in the correct style obviously.  It would say: ‘As a fun thing to do, why not take your stupid handwriting style and stick it up your arse this weekend.’  I thought better of it, but was sorely tempted.

Weirds

Today I saw a dobermann on the roof of a local pub.  It was prancing about and rearing.  It was most strange.  I have no idea what it was doing up there, or how it was going to get down.  Maybe it was in a fight with a giant and the giant threw it up there.  Anyway, it took my mind off going to see Raymond Bloomin’ Christmas for a bit.  Which was nice.

Honesty Is the Best Policy

Welshgirl has sent me a meme.  The idea is that you list ten honest things about yourself without fibbing (such is the invidious nature of honesty) and then you pass the meme on to ten other people.  It sounds very scary.  The only things you don’t know about me are probably far too awful for me to broadcast to the nation.  Nevertheless I will give it my best shot.  Be prepared.  It is grisly.  You probably don’t want to be eating your tea whilst reading this.

1. I have hair on my big toes. I think I am actually part Hobbit.  Nobody said that regularly depilating your big toes would be part of your adult beauty routine.  I was devastated when they appeared.  I am now waiting for them to go grey, so I can be old and hairy. I blame this and the stomachs for my failure to grace the cover of Elle magazine.
2. I found grey hair in my lady garden parts.  This is why I adopt the Brazilian attitude to pruning.  Nobody wants to take their pants off and be reminded of their imminent shove off this mortal coil.  Having to look at myself with no clothes on is bad enough already thanks.  Yikes.
3. Once when we were very drunk my friend Alice and I held hands while we crouched over a gutter and had a wee because there were no available toilets and we were desperate.  It was in the Car Park at the back of the council offices in Lampeter, if you ever want to go there on pilgrimage, or simply avoid it like the plague.  It is now the site of a Co-op.  I expect where we widdled is now the deli counter or something nice like that.   We had to hold hands because we were not very steady on our pins, so squatting on our haunches dressed to kill was even worse.
4. I once had sex in a haystack during a thunderstorm.  I thought it was going to be romantic.  It was itchy, uncomfortable and bloody freezing and I had scratches from all the corn stalks on my arse for weeks afterwards.  I was very mardy and scowled a lot.  I do not envy Lady Chatterley, not at all.
5. Peppermints make me fart.  Never offer me a mint.  Just tell me I have smelly breath and let me deal with it my own way.
6. I am phobic about maggots.  I once swallowed one by accident and it has rather put me off.  Not that I thought they were particularly fabulous before the whole swallowing thing mind you.
7. I once went through a phase of eating raw Oxo cubes.  I think I must have been rather salt deficient at the time.
8. I got stood up by a boy once. He asked to to go to the cinema with him.  I was twelve.  I stood outside in the pouring rain for half an hour and he never came.  I didn’t even fancy him that much, but I was still devastated.  At that point I had National Health glasses and a curly perm.  I looked like a woman called Edna.  I was convinced that nobody would ever love me and I would die a mad old spinster who had never kissed anyone.  This merely confirmed my worst fears.
9. I once put my contact lenses in the wrong eyes.  I spent two days feeling violently ill and being very shouty.  I then went to the opticians and demanded my money back because I had nearly fallen under a bus thanks to his shoddy workmanship.  I walked out five minutes later absolutely mortified beyond belief.
10. I once drank so much alcohol I ended up snogging the girl I had gone out drinking with because she suggested it might be a good idea.  She was also very drunk.  It wasn’t great.  It confirmed my belief that I wasn’t a natural lesbian.  Her husband found out and refused to let us go out together again.  It was probably for the best.

So, there you have it.  I bet you wish you hadn’t asked now don’t you.  Nominating ten people is far too difficult.   I nominate Jaywalker, who gets landed with everything I get sent as a matter of course, and Ali over at Callapippertree because her blog is my new addiction.  Fun, fun, fun.

Why I am a bad employee

Whilst rooting through the attic of tat for photos I came across this little gem.  It’s an e-mail I was asked to send at work, back in the olden days when I had a proper job.  I got an official warning for this, which was written in 1995.  It went to all staff:

Subject: Re: Chairs

A chair amnesty has been announced by head office, starting from 0.700 hours this morning.  There will be a small box placed by Maureen’s desk where you can deposit any illicit chairs you have about your person.  Maureen has been sworn to secrecy and her copy of the official secrets act is now deposited in the vault at Barclays Bank for future reference.

Don’t feel embarrassed about the situation.  Chair fetishism is no new thing.  it is a little known fact that Winston Churchill was in reality only five stone six, his main bulk being attributed to his ‘security Queen Anne Chaise Longue’, which he had stitched into the lining of his suits to give him confidence when called to speak upon in public.

They had you see, asked me to send out a mail asking for any stray chairs to be returned.  Fatally they hadn’t thought to say that I shouldn’t try to make it entertaining.  They did not approve of being entertained.

I got a further warning later on when I was asked to write an e-mail about some visiting grandees coming to the office.  We were allowed to dress however we pleased, but on this day they wanted us smart and on our best behaviour.  I wrote something along the lines of; ‘no shooting up crack in reception because it gives a bad impression.’  They were not impressed at all.  Sadly I have lost that mail.  Such a shame.

Then there were the warnings about nipping round the corner to Sainsbury’s for a snack ten or twelve times a day.  The excessive use of Viennese Whirls was also considered problematic, as was keeping cottage cheese in the desk drawers when they should have been used for things like paperwork.

This was where I first met my friend Gina.  She started on the same day as me.  Within a week we both knew we were in the wrong job.  Our agencies persuaded us otherwise.  We banded together to persuade everyone else we were in the wrong job.  It didn’t work.  They were remarkably resilient to our persistent attempts to annoy the shit out of them.  We really did try, and even during the times we didn’t try we were just naturally trying.  I’m sure I’ve written about these things before, but I am indulging myself, so skip this post if it’s all old news.

For a while they tried to split us apart, but as we were in the same team it didn’t really work.  Then they created cells for us by using those big hessian covered boards and kind of boxing us in.  We were deprived of natural sunlight for about three days until Gina read the Health & Safety manual and pointed out that we were not supposed to be kept in cages because it was a fire hazard.  They had to take them down.  Everyone was pissed off.  We thought it was hilarious.

Then they decided to ban us from talking to each other.  We just e-mailed each other instead, which resulted in hysterical snorts of laughter every five minutes.  We also developed code so that HR couldn’t spy on us.  We adapted the Happy Monday’s song ‘Step On’ which has Sean Ryder shouting ‘Call the Cops’ in the background.  This was our theme.  Whenever someone disapproving would wander by, whoever caught sight of them first would pop up like a rabbit and shout ‘Call the Cops’ in a lovely, fake Manc accent.

Gina had a series of disastrous cars at this point.  First there was Fifi.  Fifi was a white Fiat Panda.  Her engine kept overheating which meant that we had to have the heating on all the time in the car to stop the engine exploding.  We would drive around at lunch times with our heads out of the window, sweating like pigs.

Fifi exploded after her exhaust fell off.  We decided to fix this with a pair of tights and tied it on tightly.  We then went out and were bombing along the Oxford bypass to stock up on more Viennese Whirls when the tights melted and we dragged the exhaust pipe five miles, shooting sparks and squeaking like hysterical mice.  In the end the man who shovelled trolleys around Sainsbury’s car park helped us with a temporary fix, but it was the end of Fifi, and of course we were hours late back for work, and covered in exhaust grime when we finally did arrive.

Fifi was replaced by Tommy Tomato, also a Fiat Panda.  This was terrible, as she decided to take me along to help her buy the car.  I don’t drive and despite the fact that my dad had been in the motor trade for about twenty five years, I had made it my business to know absolutely nothing about vehicles.  I was up for it because it meant taking lots of three hour lunch breaks with no permission.  Why they tolerated this I will never know.  Or the anguish when Tommy exploded at the side of the road a week later and she hired me as her heavy to go and sort this bloke out.  We were menacing but ineffectual.

We were both going through interesting times with our love lives during that period.  Gina was dating a boy called Geoffrey Shrimpton who worked as a bar man.  He was besotted with her.  Geoffrey Shrimp was not allowed to pick her up from work on Fridays unless he came with a gift.  He would ring from the phone box on the corner when he arrived.  She would go to the window.  He would hold up the gift, and if she approved she would deign to be collected.  Once he was very broke and turned up with a bag of potatoes.  When she asked him why he said: ‘So you can look at them and think; ‘At least I’m more beautiful than a bag of potatoes.”  It was true to be fair to him.  She is very beautiful indeed.

There were lots of arguments with Geoffrey Shrimp.  These would be conducted at volume eleven on company time using the company phone bill.  Then there would be the post mortem’s afterwards, usually conducted with a mountain of Viennese Whirls steadily decreasing between us.

This was the time when I was seeing UHTB every night.  He lived on the Banbury Road.  I lived on the Abingdon Road.  He wouldn’t let me keep stuff at his flat.  I stayed at his house every night.  This meant I had to go home after work, sort all my stuff out, pack my bags and take it to his house.  It was a palaver.   Then we would go out every night, sometimes all night.  I was invariably wrecked on something evil as I staggered to work the next day.  One day I was three hours late for work.  I had a killer hangover and had gone to a greasy spoon with my friend to get over it.  I told as much to my boss.  He recommended that I try not to be so honest next time.

Next time I took the day off to play hooky with Rosalind and her husband and drink warm champagne at the seaside I told them I had food poisoning.  Not very convincing when I came back as red as a beet with sunburn and exceedingly hung over.  They never said a word.  By this time I think they were hoping that someone would either sack me, or that I would drink myself to death.

Mine and Gina’s relationship was as tempestuous as our love lives.  We had a huge row over company christmas cards in the middle of the open plan office about six weeks before Christmas.  I lost the plot.  I was right.  She was right.  Neither of us were happy.  She walked out.  I walked out.  The whole office was agog.  It was spectacular.  I do not lose my temper properly very often but I think excessive drinking, drugs, sex and rock and roll over a period of months, coupled with lack of sleep and general debauchery all round had done for my tolerance levels and I exploded.

When I got back the MD asked to speak to me.  She tried to indulge in some recreational therapy.  I told her where to shove it.  This was the point at which she should have sacked me.  Instead she sent me home to calm down!  I don’t know which of us was more insane at this point.

I came into work the next day and handed in my resignation.  I had had enough.  I had had enough weeks previously.  I had pushed and pushed in the hope that someone would tell me to get knotted.  I finally realised that they just weren’t going to unless I killed the receptionist and danced in her blood.  Even I didn’t want it to go that far. 

Bless them, they even had a leaving do for me, which was hilarious as I couldn’t wait to leave and I imagine that they couldn’t wait to see the back of me.  In his leaving speech, my boss called me the Eric Cantona of the company! Praise indeed.

Gina and I got over this little contretemps, and all the successive ones and are still friends.  It must be a good one, because we do like pushing the boundaries with each other.  It’s what keeps us so youthful.

It must be said that I have never behaved so disgracefully in a job before or since, but I have had the odd moment here and there.  It seems that I do not respond well to authority figures over long periods of time, unless they happen to be brilliantly clever and fabulous all round.  This is why I think that working for myself is going to be the way forward in future.  Then I can send as many irreverent e-mails as I like.

Tuesday January 20th – A Lovely Morning. Quick! Write it Down

What started out as a terrible morning has actually morphed into a fairly fabulous one. This doesn’t happen very often, so I thought I would write about it quickly before something hideous happens.  I am essentially trapping a fly in amber.  A very pretty one.  Not one that you want to kill before it kills you.

So, we started off  badly.  I was late getting out of bed, entirely due to me not wanting to crawl out from under the very warm covers. Then Tallulah had hysterics about how her trouser legs were too long and kept trying to roll them up to her knees in the manner of someone about to embark on a rockpooling expedition.  Because she had left it so late to discover this critical fashion moment we had no time for her to change.  She was mortified when I made her roll her trousers down to acceptable levels, and wittered all the way to school.  I  caught her trying to roll them up again when she should have been changing into her plimsolls.  I know that by the time I go to pick her up they will be shorts with weird doughnuts of fabric at thigh level.  Still. I have done my best.

I was wandering into town to meet my friend Rosalind today.  Oscar and I went to wait for the bus.  It was late, very late.  It was freezing, literally.  There were huge icy lumps of ice hanging all over and Oscar was moaning because he was frozen.  He was so cold he even let me put his gloves on, and he hates wearing his gloves. In the end I got him out of the buggy and we shared body heat for a while.  Still the bus didn’t come and he began to cry.

Just then Jason rang.  He is working at home today because he has to go into work all night tonight, and was supposed to work all night last night, except someone somewhere broke something and he couldn’t.  He said to come on home and he would give us a lift into town.  By now Oscar was howling because he had decided that the only thing that would make the freezing ice acceptable was a bus ride and I was taking him away.  Then he sneezed giant streams of luminous snot all over him, me, his gloves and everything else.  I had no tissues so had to make do with a baby wipe and the sleeve of Tallulah’s cardigan that she had left in the buggy.  Nice.

When we got home Oscar kept throwing himself at Jason and announcing that he didn’t want to see Aunty Rosalind.  He wanted to stay at home and watch television with daddy.  Luckily daddy said this would be fine and a major disaster was averted.  They gave me a lift into town and I met Rosalind all alone.  She too was all alone.  Her eldest three were in school and her youngest was in pre school.  I do not remember the last time we met up when we were alone, and we have known each other for a very long time.

In fact, due to the wonder of my scanner and my new habit of scanning everything in sight you can see a picture of us.

This was a particularly memorable day. It may even have been a picture of the last day we went out together alone.  We met at University, but this was taken about eighteen months after we left.  I had just split up with unsuitable bloke who I was engaged to.  Rosalind had been hugely supportive during this time, including driving down to see me the night we split up just to make sure he didn’t kill me and eat me.

At this point I had moved out into a shared house and had just started seeing the man who would become my unsuitable husband. I was living the life of Riley. I was young, I was independent, I had money and a job.  I was seeing an older man with more money and a better job.  I lived in Oxford which was a good place to party.  We partied A LOT.  We partied EVERY NIGHT.  We partied most days as well.  The skirt that Rosalind is wearing in the photo was one I used to wear for work.  I wore it for work with thigh high socks and mary janes.  I was not really secretarial material was I?

Rosalind had not seen unsuitable husband to be at this stage.  She came down on the bus from Bedford where she was living in order to vet him.  She arrived at lunch time.  I had taken the day off work.  We went to the off licence.  We went to some fields down near one of the university buildings.  We drank a whole bottle of Absolut Lemon Vodka between us.  We went home for a light snack and drank a bottle of red wine that was as rough as a badger’s arse.  This picture was taken about half way through the bottle of red.

After this we went out to meet uhtb at the pub.  We got there.  He got there.   The first thing Rosalind said to him was: ‘Oh! You don’t look as old as I thought you would.’  Nice.  The next thing she said was: ‘Good! I thought you accent was going to be horrible, but it’s alright.’ (he is Canadian). Excellent.  Then she went green.  Then she went to the loo.

After about ten minutes she still hadn’t surfaced.  I went to look for her.  She was lying on the floor by the toilet bowl.  A concerned foreigner was standing over her desperately trying to help her using all the broken English at her command.  I got in there just as Rosalind was shouting: ‘Go away! Just go away! Your trousers are making me feel sick.’  It was a classic moment.  Seeing her being ill made me feel ill.  We staggered upstairs both green.  uhtb took one look at us and was not impressed with what he saw.  We were in disgrace.

We left in a taxi shortly after that.  It was a brief but glorious evening.

The next day our hangovers were so bad we had to buy sunglasses just to make it as far as the bus station so that she could go home.

We have shared many such bonding moments along the way.

Today we reminisced over them as we sat in a nice bar that I know and drank tea and ate scrambled eggs.  It was amazing.  We didn’t have to wipe anyone’s anything.  We weren’t interrupted.  We didn’t shout.  It was great.  We have agreed that we enjoyed it so much that we are going to find a weekend when both of our husbands are available for babysitting and go out for the whole day together, much like we used to do in the olden days.  We have also decided that in 2013 we are going back to our university for a weekend and staying in the posh hotel that nobody could afford when we were students.  It will have been twenty years since we graduated.  It made us feel old, but we are old, so we faced it bravely.

We only had an hour together, but in that hour we talked more than we usually do during the two or three hours we spend together when we have the  children with us.  It was astonishing.

Not only that, but after she had to dash for her train I had half an hour to myself before I had to get home.  I managed to get two of the books that have been on my Amazon wish list for months from the remaindered bookshop for £1.99 each, and I treated myself to the pair of hold up stockings with laced ribbons at the top that I have been coveting in Fenwicks since October.  I am giving them to Jason for his birthday with a promise that I will wear them when we go away for our night at the Pudding Club.  It will be both sexy and practical.  Sexy because he is a man who approves whole heartedly of stockings and I usually wear jeans with knee length striped socks (much to his disappointment) and practical, because if I eat seven puddings the fat from my belly will probably shift down to my thighs and all I have to do is undo the laces to get them to fit!  Voila.

And I got home to find that Oscar and Jason are having a nap, so I could have a cup of tea and blog in peace.  I am truly blessed today.

Episode Four – Reality Bites

You can tell I was not best pleased about the idea of growing up, settling down and getting a job.  Hence this particularly moody and joyous shot:

I was in the midst of a disastrous engagement that would nearly end in a disastrous marriage.  This was the worst holiday of my life, and I’ve had a few.  We had a week in Scotland with our shit car in a shit flat in the cold while we fought like banshees.  The only good thing was this navy pea jacket which I got from a cool second hand shop just down from the Turl in Oxford.  I loved that coat.

I was also working quite hard, doing a job I was singularly unsuited for.  I went a bit narcoleptic for a while:

I was blocking out the agony. That lovely sofa cost me ten quid from an advert in the Oxford Mail.  I was living the life.  The only good thing to be said here is that I was extremely stressed, so therefore very, very skinny indeed. Probably the skinniest I have ever been. I fell over a lot, but when I could stand upright I had a fantastic figure.  I really wish I had pictures of me in the see through nightie and biker jacket.  By golly!

Then, then there was the first marriage.  It was, as I’m sure you are aware, disastrous.  There were however good bits.  It’s a good job, because ten years is a long time.  Here I am on my wedding day.

I loved this outfit.  I bought the hat and made everything else match that.  The dress and shoes were from Hobbes.  The shoes fell apart after two days.  I shrank the dress because I read the dry clean only label with my eyes clothes.  The jacket was from a charity shop and was a cut down Harrods dinner jacket.  We got married at nine in the morning and had bacon and eggs on a barge floating about Port Meadow.  It was a good day on the whole.

The baby years are too hideous to show you, as was the graduation photograph and some of the more interesting fashion trends of the last thirty years.  One day I will dig out more, when we know each other better.  I will finish with my wedding to Jason, two years ago.  Hopefully the last one:

That’s all folks.

Episode Three – The Enlightenment (University)

So. Then I went to university.  I was going to show you my NUS cards.  Unfortunately the blog doesn’t like that particular set of photos, which is a shame.  Because by the third year I had purple hair.  It looked like this:

Except that when the sun shone on it I existed in my own Hendrixesque purple haze.  Please note that I was wearing a vintage German maternity smock.  I lived in Germany for four months.  At the time their fashions ran to bleached denim with teddy bears in fake rhinestone.  I could not live with this.  I found crazy old shops and bought weird Victorian birthing wear instead.  Much more satisfactory.

Then there’s the time I got very bored visiting a friend at Reading, who didn’t want to go out, spend money or get drunk.  I bought some Henna and did my hair for several hours.  It was exceedingly red:

Not that you can see much of it here, but trust me. It was RED.  I put this picture in because it may be the only one of me smiling in existence between 1987 and 1993.  It’s a rarity.

How about when I decided I wanted to look like Louise Brookes?

My friend Jo, who is in this picture with me, has pointed out that we were not drunk, or happy looking in this photo.  This must have been at the beginning of the evening.  We even had our clothes on.  Hey!

Then there’s the obligatory Rocky Horror Party:

I am second from left.  I loved this dress.  It is a vintage 1920′s Flapper dress with fringes.  It is crocheted in some silky thread and is utterly see through.  My Gran gave it to me.  I still have it.  I cannot believe the number of times I wore it out with some stout underwear and hold ups as a ‘party’ outfit.  I am just amazed it survived.  It is gorgeous.

After all this shenanigins real life came as a bit of a shock, as you will see in Episode four, if you are still awake that is…