Tuesday 31st March – We’ve Got It Licked

Jason sent Tilly upstairs after tea to put the shower on.  He sent Tallulah to collect towels.  He sent Oscar up after them.  They all gathered together upstairs, supposedly to actually get into the shower.

We were downstairs sorting out the debris/tea.  We could hear them on the baby monitor.  There was a lot of squeaking.  There were no sounds of running water.  A couple more minutes passed to much the same effect.

Jason went upstairs to investigate.

Jason: ‘Tilly. Why isn’t the shower on yet?’

Tilly: ‘Because….well…..because…..I was adjusting the temperature.’

Jason: ‘You adjust the temperature when the water is actually running.  What were you actually doing?’

Tilly: ‘Well….you see….well.’

Jason: ‘Tilly! Just tell me what you were doing for God’s sake.’

Tilly mumbles something into her chest.

Jason: ‘What?’

Tilly: ‘We were licking each other.’

Huge silence.

Jason: ‘Right.  Well get into the shower then.’

He turns to leave.

Jason: ‘And no more licking each other please.’

He comes downstairs.

We sit at the kitchen table and cry with laughter.

It’s one way to keep the water bills down I suppose.  Abandon showers completely and just go for the licking method.

The Shops

When we were gallivanting about London Andrea and I saw a particularly impressive fish and chip shop.  It was hot, neon pink and was called: ‘The Fishcotheque’! I love this.  What an excellent name for a fish and chip shop.  We were going to come back and take a picture of it, but were sucked down an interesting one way system shortly thereafter and never made it back there.

At one point I used to collect shop names, rather like other people spot steam trains.  Here are a small sample of my favourites.

If you ever have the great good fortune to be on Ballard’s Lane near Finchley Central tube station, please take a moment to pay homage to ‘Cornelius Superhair’ hairdresser to the stars.  I love this shop name so much I was of a mind to call Oscar Cornelius Superhair-Wheatley.  Jason soon put a stop to that.  I expect it is where all the superheroes get their hair cut, when they’re passing through Finchley Central obviously.

If you’re a man and you need a haircut your best bet for an exhilarating hair based experience is to go to ‘Jean Climax Barbers’ on Varley Road between Hendon and Colindale.  It will probably be quite rude, but very satisfying.

There used to be a couple of fruit shops around Mill Hill in North West London with interesting names.  By the look of it they no longer exist, which is a bit of a shame, but should you ever think of opening up a fruit based boutique please think long and hard about using: ‘World of Fruit’ and ‘Fruitopia’.

I was once travelling through Halifax in Yorkshire when I came across a hairdressers called ‘Hairport’. There are now lots of these it seems, including one closer to my home, over the border in Nottingham.  I do look back on the Halifax based one with particular fondness because it was execrably bad it cheered me up for several days at the time.

My Dad and I were on holiday in Cyprus once when we saw a large sport’s shop called ‘Athlete’s Foot’.  I made my dad take a photo of it I was so impressed.  I believe there are actually more than one of these poorly named emporia.  Hooray!

My dad tells me that there is a fish and chip shop near us called The Codfather.  How lovely.

So, send in your names of shame for my collection and when we have a roll call I will read them all aloud at Cornelius Superhair.

Monday March 30th – You’ve Got to Have a System

Something has happened to my pc screen.  Everything looks different, not wrong but different.  This is very, very annoying because I can’t pinpoint what it is.  Everthing looks slightly larger, slightly nearer and slightly more blurry.  I do wonder if there is something wrong with my eyes.  But I suspect that I may have inadvertently twiddled with the laptop settings as I have been dragging it about the house.  After all, if it were my eyes everything would look like that, and I have peered about the place like Eagle Eye action man and all looks much like before.   At least the pc controls can be twiddled back.  If it is my eyes, I am fucked.  They forgot to put the zoom lens in when they made my particular model.

Today has been like the curate’s egg, good in parts.

I had to go to the hospital this morning.  I had a scan booked so they could assess what is left of the mangled remains of my inner lady workings.  I was not looking forward to it.

On the plus side they did not want me to drink eighteen gallons of liquid and then sit nervously on a plastic bucket chair for three hours weeing out of my eyebrows while they deal with the backlog of people.  I’ve always felt this was a particularly vicious form of torture that is not to be endured.

On the minus side this meant an internal scan, which isn’t what I generally look forward to with glee on a Monday morning.

On the plus side my mum and dad came over, my mum to take care of Oscar so he didn’t wreck the hospital waiting room and jump up and down on my bladder.  On the minus side this meant my dad had to drive me to the hospital.  He is very sweet, but does not really like chatting or thinking about mangled inner lady parts.  This is on the whole a good thing, but does make a trip to the hospital for said procedure quite quiet.

Then there is the fact that I was a bloody idiot. There are three hospitals in Leicester, The Glenfield General, The General and the Royal Infirmary.  I have only ever visited the Royal.  When my letter came through I just assumed that my scan would be at the Royal.  We turned up at the Royal, parked at the Royal and made our way to the information desk to find out where the ultrasound department was.  It turns out that the ultrasound department we wanted was at the General.  Not so good.

My dad was unimpressed.  The receptionist was unimpressed.  I was mortified.  I only had fifteen minutes until my appointment.  The receptionist got over her snootiness and turned into quite a helpful lady, helpful in the same way as those programmed to care for the mentally deficient.  She helped me ring the right department at the General.  They said that they couldn’t fit me in at any other time.  I pretended to be even more mentally deficient than I really am, which is quite hard because I’m already quite near the top of the chart.

In the end they rescheduled my appointment to take place in the hospital I was actually in.  They sent me upstairs and the woman very patiently took all my details.  I said; ‘Ridiculous really, because the General is only round the corner from my house.’  At this point my dad pointed out that this was the Glenfield General, not The General.  The General is in a totally different part of the city.  So, I still would have turned up at the wrong hospital even if I hadn’t gone to the Royal.

Sometimes they let me out by myself, but not often.

It is worrying that I can successfully navigate my way across London for two days, but that once I get to my home city I go completely to pieces.

Anyway. They took me in for the scan and then things took a turn for the better when the lovely, lovely lady said: ‘Oh! We won’t need to do an internal scan because you’re skinny enough for us to see what we need to see normally.’  Hoorah! I could have kissed her.  This is one of the benefits of having a wobbling fat pelmet rather than a solid, worked upon mass of fat.  It simply drapes itself round either side of my hips when I lie down.  Yay me.

I have now decided that all further photographs of me must be taken in the dark with me lying down and then I will always look slim, beautiful and full of vitality. 

So, she scanned me. 

There is nothing wrong.  All is tickety boo and wonderful and shiny and clean, apart from the scar tissue and the knots and the missing bit of tube.  Luckily we knew all about those bits already, so as long as you navigate round them all is well.  This is good.  It ticks more things off the list.  I must now go back and discuss this and the whole falling over/ falling asleep thing with the doctor.  Lucky me.

Despite the detour we were in and out of the hospital in under half an hour.  I have never in all my long and chequered history of hospital going, been seen to with such ruthless efficiency.  I have since hatched a cunning plan.  My theory is that as long as you play by the rules and turn up in the right place at the right time with the right things you will be sitting around until doomsday waiting to be seen and weeping into your urine sample.  If you turn up with the wrong bits of paper in the wrong hospital and act like a mental they will see you right away and you will be done and dusted and home for the lunchtime showing of Neighbours.  This is what I will do from now on.  I knew there had to be a system somewhere.

When we got back Oscar and Mum were tidying up the toys.  The lounge looked like a bomb had hit it, there were small plastic objects everywhere and lumps of biscuit crumb.  They had been having a wonderful time.  It will take me a week to clear up, specially if I keep having to have a tiny nap, but at least he didn’t do that to an NHS waiting room.  It is clear that they are applying my logic to the tidying, the more messy you make it, the cleaner it will become later.  I am not so sure it works this way.

Gratuitous Shots of Alan Measles Parts II and III

These will probably be the last blog shots of Alan.  I have three more to make, but these are for the children.  It stands to reason that these will take months and be made with bad grace.  I am already fed up because I wanted to make Tallulah a bright red one with ladybirds on but she is so taken with Alan III she wants a replica.  Grrrrr! Plus I am now cogitating patchwork and am way more interested in that.

Consequently you must make hay while the small felt bear shines.  Here is the finished Alan II complete with handle:

He is now tucked away safely waiting to see if Grayson Perry ever wants to take him for a walk.

Here is Justme’s Alan.  Alan III.  My names are not original I am afraid.  Tallulah’s will be called Tabitha apparently, which makes a refreshing change.

Here is his back:

You will be pleased to know that his zizi as I prefer to think of his bear genitalia, is also a pink duck, to match his skirt.  It’s an homage to Easter, and also because I’d run out of tulips.

Fin

Sunday 29th March – The Weary Traveller Returns

I am back. Begrimed, weary and footsore, but having had a very lovely time indeed.

Timings were a bit tight, it has to be said.  Our matinee was at two thirty.  We had planned to set off around nine thirty to give ourselves plenty of time. We do not like to rush.  We are old dodderers now.  We like to creep along with plenty of stops for toilet usage and cake buyage and things.  We wanted civilised lunch, to have a wee somewhere that wasn’t a theatre toilet and to saunter in rested and relaxed just as the curtain rose. This was the plan.

Then there was what really happened.  Andrea had to feed cows and go into work at the last minute.  This meant she didn’t turn up until nearly ten.  When she did turn up I wasn’t nearly ready due to the fact that I had pottered about in my pyjamas reading the paper and staring into space.  Oh yes, and there was the three loads of laundry, the delivery of the Ocado order and the breakfasting with a small, fierce boy to fit in as well.

When we finally set off it dawned on us that London was the site of the G20 summit thingy and that delays were likely, nay inevitable.  Instead of going to see Graham Norton shaking his booty in lycra and feathers we were likely to be held up somewhere near Westminster Bridge with a load of anarchists and the flying squad.

We stopped at the service station and stocked up on M&S sandwiches and cakes in case of the worst.

We never made it to the excitement of the demonstration. We ended up being stuck on the main drag through Cricklewood and Kilburn for nearly an hour instead.  Not the most salubrious of places to be jammed, it has to be said.  Only a few miles further in and we could have been wedged in with the finer people of Maida Vale.  Such is my lot.

We were staying in Borough.  Our sat nav did us proud until we got within 1 mile of our destination when it decided to send us up several roads which were impassable because:

• They were one way streets (sat navs are not good at one way streets)
• They were being dug up (sat navs are not good at builders sitting round large holes drinking tea)
• They had bollards at the end of them (Bollards!)

After twenty minutes of travelling further and further away from the destination, including having to do an interesting U turn near Borough Market when we realised how close we were to going over the river again, we gave up and used the A-Z. 

When we got to our abode the paperwork wasn’t ready, the apartment wasn’t ready and I had to plead with them to give us our parking space early.  In the end, due to my haggard face, the lumps of beef sandwich in my hair and my threats to have a huge Violet Elizabeth style temper tantrum on the floor, we got our space.

We hurtled over the road to the tube station and made it to the theatre with a mere thirty minutes to spare.  By the time we had queued for the hideous, damp smelling subterranean toilets for ten minutes we were about ready to kill ourselves.  We decided against a drink at the bar and went for a brisk walk to the Waterstones on the corner of Trafalgar Square instead.  This may seem counterintuitive to those of you who think a stiff drink may have been just the thing at that moment.  Mostly I would agree, but here is the thing.

Usually we go and see what people think of as high brow theatre, Shakespeare, Marlowe, Beckett etc.  We don’t usually do ‘Up West’ theatre like Cabaret and Cats.  That’s not to say we don’t always enjoy them, because we sometimes do.  It’s just that we enjoy the other stuff more.  Because we don’t do ‘Up West’ very often it is easy to forget the theatre going habits of the majority of people in this country.  Here’s what happens.

Most people treat going to the theatre like a ‘big’ event.  They get dressed up.  They do ‘dinner and a show’.  They have drinks.  They have interval drinks.  They get a bit theatrical themselves.  Going to the loo is an ordeal, ordering drinks takes on the planning skills needed to co-ordinate the Normandy landings.  There are a lot of anxious people in a very small space and most of them are in heels.  This is fine.  It is an event.  They probably don’t go very often, the tickets cost a bloody fortune and they want the best.  Fair play to them.  It does however make a change from the usual calibre of theatregoer we mix with, nonchalant old hands who have their own bottle of gin with their name on it behind the bar and usually live in the props cupboard. They don’t get stressed, mainly because they are pissed, and also because they see a lot of theatre.  This makes for a fairly relaxed theatregoing experience.

West End London theatres are usually quite small.  They are ornate and have  nasty carpets, funny stair cases, lots of rococo plasterwork and inadequate toilet and bar facilities.  This makes the initial hysteria of the novice theatre goer even worse.  What generally happens is that by twenty minutes before the show you’ve got someone with their skirt tucked into their pants trying to buy six programmes and order fourteen gin and tonics in a space the size of a broom cupboard while clutching Aunty Dierdre’s hand for support, with nine hundred other people closing in on her all wanting to do the same thing.

It gets a bit oppressive.

So we left.

Then we took our seats once most people had pulled their skirts out from their pants, had a stiff gin and sat down.

It works much better that way.

We slouch in in our jeans and make sure we have the exits marked so we can make a quick getaway once everything is over.

This worked for us and we really enjoyed the show.  Graham Norton was not made to be a drag queen.  It was fascinating. He looks lithe and dapper dressed as a man, put him in a shimmering lurex gown and he looks like a brick shit house with false eyelashes.  The transformation was remarkable.  Nevertheless he was funny and witty and his timing was superb.  It was a wonderful piece of ridiculous fluff and we loved it.  We have decided not to be drag queens when we grow up. It looks exhausting, and a lot of waxing and folding must be going on that I could frankly live without.

The play was long.  By the time it finished we had just enough time to gallop back over the river, grab some dinner and then gallop to the Young Vic to see Pete doing his Lear. 

The Young Vic was a totallly different kind of experience.  Not many glammed up people, lots of artistic and dramatic types and us.  It is all very experimental and ‘built in a shed’.  I haven’t been there since a disastrous trip to see Romeo and Juliet in my fifth year on the night of the Kings Cross Railway disaster when due to the fact that people were burning to death underground we got stuck in traffic and missed the whole first half.  This was horrible enough.  Watching the second half was enough to emblazon on my brain the thought that this was probably the worst version of Romeo and Juliet I will ever half see and made me fervently wish I’d stayed at home and eaten chocolates instead.

This time they had reserved our seats in the wrong play and given me three tickets instead of two.  By the time we had sorted out the mess there was no time to have a drink should we even have wanted one.

It was a long play. We went in at 7.15 p.m. and came out at 11.00 p.m.  Pete was fantastic, the Fool was fantastic and Cordelia wasn’t a weedy wet milksop, which is great.  On the other hand Edgar seemed to have a speech impediment and drooled more than an elderly boxer dog and I really didn’t get the references to Irish sectarian violence and home rule.  It was terrifyingly modern, although I’d pay all over again to see Pete Postlethwaite stalking about the stage in a tea gown with a broken parasol, so all was well.

We finally checked in to our apartment at midnight.  A long, long day.

Today we got up at the crack and went on our walk round subterranean London which was very cool.  Go if you want to learn a lot about Victorian sewers, how to build your own tube station, how to stop Big Ben falling over and secret tunnels round the MOD. It was great fun, although my feet were neon, throbbing lumps of gristle by the time we had done.  It’s the most exercise I’ve had voluntarily in the last twenty years.

This afternoon we ate a late and glorious lunch at St. John in Farringdon. It was delicious.  I had pickled mackerel and potato salad followed by roasted pigeon with sauteed radish and potatoes.  Then I had the most enormous piece of chocolate cake that was so rich and moist and dark that even I couldn’t finish it.  Andrea had mussels cooked with cucumber, Gloucester Old Spot pork chops and vanilla and lemon curd ice cream.  We were stuffed and it took all our energy to stay awake on the drive home. I may never eat again, until next time.

It was worth all the anguish.  It was worth everything.  A weekend in London is better than a shot of heroin straight into the main vein. It is euphoric and wonderful and every time I go I wonder why I left and if I’m ever going to get back there and how unfair it is that I have to leave.  I love every inch of it, all the dirt and bustle and noise. It’s wonderful.  Sigh!

Friday March 27th – Trying to be Organised

Mostly I have been sleeping today.  I seem to have a rather ambivalent relationship with the iron tablets the doctor prescribed me.  According to her they should make me feel a lot better and less sleepy.  Some days this is about right. Other days I feel like I have been bitten by a tsetse fly and start shaking if I miss meal times by more than ten minutes.  Today is one of those days.  I had the day off from the c hildren, which is an excellent thing.  I have spent it nodding out like a smack addict.  I sit down to do something, manage ten minutes of activity and wake up in a pile of drool, shaking.  Which is nice.

I should go back to the doctors to rejig the dose.  I cannot be arsed. I just cannot.  I am sick to death of going to the doctors and talking about my health or lack of it.  It is boring beyond belief.   I am not one of those people who enjoys showing people their war wounds on the bus.  I do not ‘enjoy’ my ill health.  Who wants to spend time thinking about their body malfunctioning? Urgh.

In between nodding out I have been trying to be organised. This has been challenging, but I think I am sorted now.  She says with that false optimism born of enthusiasm being higher than ability.

I need to be organised because Andrea and I are buggering off to London tomorrow for two days away from cows in her case, and my famille in mine.  The trip has been planned for months and I can’t quite believe it is already upon us.  In between bouts of lethargy I am terribly excited.  I am hoping the lethargy will have worn off by tomorrow and I will just be left with the excitement.

We are staying in one of those apartments you can rent like a hotel, somewhere near London Bridge.  It has parking, so we can take a car full of crap with us.  So far I have packed a  cafetiere, a bottle of raspberry stoli and some pants.  All the important things, I think you’ll agree.

Tomorrow is theatre day.  We are going to see a matinee performance of La Cage Aux Folles.  In the evening we are having our fix of culture going to see Pete Postlethwaite in King Lear at the Young Vic.  Sunday we are doing a London walk called Subterranean London which promises to be an introduction to a ‘fascinating, freakish, disturbing world.’  I like that.  In the afternoon we are going to Smithfield to have a late lunch at Fergus Henderson’s St John.  No doubt I will be trying new and disturbing offal based dishes.  I am not keen on offal.  I am hoping that he will make me keen.  I have heard wonderful things.  I intend to be brave and push culinary boundaries.

So you see, there is quite a lot to be excited about, if I can remember crucial things like tickets, A-Z’s, Oyster cards etc.  I am not very good at this and it has taken several hours to amass a small heap of documentation, which I will then probably forget.

In between that I am reading another book for Amazon Vine, which I need to finish and review, because two more will be arriving in the post tomorrow.  I have also managed to finish Alan Measles III who will be winging his way to Justme when she sends me an address.  I will take photos later and print them along with finished photos of Alan II.  I now have to make Alan’s for all three children and then my work with bear shaped handbags will be done.  The shine is definitely wearing off now.  Far too fiddly to keep me occupied on a permanent basis.

I am hiding from the children again.  Considering that I haven’t seen them all day you think I would be rested and therefore more able to cope.  This is a lie.  In some ways, having my own space makes it a bit harder to get back into harness, for me at least. The first hour they reappear is rather like the first day back at work after a particularly delightful holiday. It just makes me more grumpy and shouty. 

It wouldn’t be so bad except that Tallulah’s homework is to design an Easter bonnet.  I know it is Friday and that technically she has all weekend to do it, but I am away for the next two days and unless I crack whips it won’t get done.  She was talking about doing some school work for fun when she got home anyway.  I thought the Easter bonnet thing was actually quite a nice assignment.  I thought she would have fun doing it.  I was a fool.

I explained it to her.  She looked totally indifferent. I suggested she design it on a loose piece of paper first so that she can go through drafts if necessary.  I explained that she would have to think about it first because she needs to list what materials she will make it from and colour it with labels etc.  She looked like I was speaking alien. 

She went away.  She came back with her homework book.  I said; ‘No! Paper first.’  She wandered off with paper. She came back with something drawn on it, which at least had rabbit ears on.  I said; ‘Is that a hat?’ She said no.  She then swore up and down she had no idea what an Easter bonnet was or what one could be made of.

This was so frustrating.  She knows full well what one is, it is just that she has decided that she doesn’t want to do one, and that if she feigns ignorance and makes a token effort, I will take over and design and make it for her.  I said as much along with a few well chosen words at very loud volume when she practically protested that she wasn’t even sure she had ever worn a hat and actually didn’t have a head.  I did get rather loud it has to be said.

Jason was home early and came upstairs and separated us.  I am now in disgrace for being shouty and she is in disgrace for being wilfully difficult.  I don’t mind too much because at least I am not sweating over the coalface of Easter bonnet making and it is quiet up here.  I expect she minds a lot.  I don’t really care.

I do think it’s stupid that they make five year old’s do homework. As my friend Jo commented the other day. It has nothing to do with making five year old’s do anything because it’s the parents who have to sweat over it, not the kids.  I don’t need to go back to school. I already escaped.  Plus I have been making Easter bonnets on and off for the past nine years and will undoubtedly be making them for nine more once Oscar starts caring about such things.  I am not Philip Treacey and I protest.  Although who knows where it will lead.  After all, I didn’t think I could make bear shaped handbags either.  A few more years of bonneteering and I could be milliner to the stars.

In the meantime I must go and cook tea, organise getting to Brownies, sort out something for a last minute birthday party Tilly has been invited to, sort out their clothes because they’re going to their father’s this evening and apologise for Jason for being a harridan.  Normally I wouldn’t bother too much with the apologies. I am nearly always a harridan and it’s too much effort slinking about on my belly on a daily basis.  I am however leaving him in charge of the kids for 48 hours, so it seems only fair for once.

Short and Curlies

I like to read books. I like to read them a lot.  I wish I had more time to read.  It is one of the only benefits of insomnia that I have found. I begrudge the time I don’t read and sometimes wish I didn’t have so many other interests, film, television, theatre, sewing felt bears, it all takes valuable time away from reading.

 

When I am alone I read while I eat.  Sometimes when the kids piss me off I read when I am eating with them as well.  I read in the bath. I read in bed.  I read in the car, even though it makes me feel violently sick.  The only place I don’t read is the toilet.  It is very uncomfortable and too draughty in my opinion.

 

My tastes are eclectic, my book buying habits are out of control and I have a mortal fear of dying before I find out what has happened in the latest book I am reading.  All these things contribute to frenzied reading on a grand scale.

 

I usually have several books on the go at once.  I have books in every room, just in case I get trapped without something to read.  I carry books in my handbag, and in fact will only buy handbags which are big enough to contain books.  My current handbag is big enough to contain small children, which is excellent because I can get several volumes in there in one go.

 

I am not a book snob. I will read everything that passes under my nose.  Proof, should it be needed, is that I have read some Jeffrey Archer, some Catherine Cookson and quite a lot of Jackie Collins.  I can’t say I enjoyed them overmuch, but I did read them.  I don’t think it’s fair to have an opinion on trashy literature unless you’ve tried it first.  Some if it even turns out to be wildly entertaining.  Jordan’s autobiographical canon for example, was a bargain in Tesco, and hilariously entertaining in all the worst ways. I am not sorry to have read her. I hope she continues to spout such unmitigated drivel until the day she dies.

 

I do however feel the need to read ‘classic’ fiction every now and again.  I like to keep my hand in.  I have read quantities of such books. I can’t always remember them, so I don’t always read them with due care and attention, but I do read them. 

 

Andrea and I were talking about this need we feel to improve ourselves, the lack of time, and the issue that most classical tomes seem to come in at several hundred pages plus.  We have agreed that it is most annoying when you wade through one of these epics only to decide that your time would have been better spent rodding the drains or watching Thomas The Tank Engine with your children.  I felt this way about Gone With The Wind which I spent a large part of December reading, and Ulysses, which took me about ten years.

 

We have come up with a cunning plan.

 

We are going to read short classics.  This way if they’re terrible we don’t feel like we’ve wasted too much time. If they’re good we feel all improved and culturally healthy, and then we don’t feel too guilty when we move on to read Georgette Heyer and eat cake.  It’s a win win situation.

 

I have made a start already.  Here are some worthy books I have read recently, all of which were engagingly short and have a fine pedigree in terms of worthiness and inclusion in the canon of all things holy in literature.

 

Mr. Norris Changes Trains by Christopher Isherwood.

 

In Mr. Norris Changes Trains, our young, debonair and subtly gay hero, prances around the louche hangouts of Berlin between the wars and shares anecdotes about his mad, slightly criminal friend who likes wearing silk pants and being beaten by dominating German prostitutes.  It’s all good fun until those pesky Nazis get in the way. Tsk and fie.

 

The Outsider by Albert Camus

 

Set during a sultry summer in Algiers, Meersault the anti-hero fails to get upset about his dying mother, feels ambivalent about his girlfriend, falls in with a bad lot, ends up murdering someone at the beach because he is bored and there is no volleyball on and goes to prison. During his trial he is too bored and full of ennui to get his shit together. It all ends badly, but in a terribly atmospheric and post modern way. That’s alright then.

 

Candide by Voltaire

 

Candide is a young idiot, tutored by an old idiot who believes that all is well and all manner of things will be welll. Voltaire, despite this being his own book, takes a violent aversion to this philosophy and sets about disproving it by spending 150 pages putting Candides metaphorical gonads through a mangle, repeatedly killing all his friends by chopping their buttocks off and exploding them.  He then miraculously has them come back to life so he can do it all again. In the meantime they move about the globe in a picaresque fashion.  At one point they go to Eldorado and ride giant red sheep.  Eventually they work out that if they’d just stayed at home and grown prize winning vegetables none of this would have happened.  Terribly French, terribly Eighteenth Century and probably highly symbolic.  A veritable romp with added torture and syphilis.  Huzzah!

 

Any more suggestions for short classics I can devour will be gratefully received.

Thursday 26th March – Blue Meanies

My father has decided that I am being too mean to Tallulah.  He told me this this morning when I phoned to make sure he was the right way up.  He has a leg injury. Some people think he has trapped his sciatic nerve, some people think he has done something funny to his tendons. Some days I think he thinks he has a brain tumour from buttock to thigh. It is that serious.  Bless him, for he is indeed in agony, and why not share the pain?  I am able to say this with equanimity because I do not live with him.  If he lived with me and shared the pain, I would be prodding him into the cupboard under the stairs with a broom and forcing him to take a vow of silence. Yes, I am Florence Nightingale and I claim my five pounds.

 

Anyhow, it means that he cannot sleep properly, and on the days when mum goes to work I ring in to make sure that he has not tripped over the cat and is lying on the floor like one of those people in the adverts for home emergency callout buttons in necklace form.  I would suggest he buys a Stannah Stair Lift, mainly because I want a go.  But unfortunately they have funny shaped stairs. Damn. You try to make the best of a bad situation and everything conspires against you.  I may send him leaflets for mobility scooters.  I’d quite like a go on one of those as well.

 

When he was awake in the early hours of this morning he was obviously reading my blog. Poor, poor man.  Clearly there wasn’t anything on TCM movie channel that he hadn’t already seen a bajillion times.  He decided whilst reading about Tallulah’s special relationship with dinner, that I was doing her down. He loves all his grandchildren, but it has to be said that he has an extra specially soft spot in his heart for the naughtiest ones.  When my cousin Ruth got expelled from nursery for chopping down the Christmas tree he was the only one championing her cause.

 

He thought about commenting on Tallulah’s behalf.  He decided not to because I would work out it was him in a nanosecond.  I think there is also the tiny issue of the fact that he is one of the least computer literate people I know.  Consequently he would still be trying to post a comment now, even though he read the blog at three this morning.  It’s just not worth it in the long run.  And there is the fact that Tallulah really doesn’t need anyone to fight her corner.  She’s got more than enough fight in her to single handedly take control of a room full of corners.

 

Even though she has a streak of evil running through her that would do Damian proud, Tallulah is lovely.  The feeling of perhaps needing to redress the balance slightly has been on my mind this week after reading this article in the Times entitled ‘Letter to my Daughter.’  Three women write letters to their children to be read when they’re 21, and three women talk about the things their mothers did/said to shape who they are.  Parts of it made me cry.  Parts of it made me feel hideously guilty. I managed to identify much more with the women who said their mothers were bored by parenting than the ones who embraced it like a very expensive Pashmina that they didn’t mind if the kid threw up on.

 

I started writing my blog for two reasons.  Firstly because my memory is getting worse, despite the fact that I never embraced drug taking that much. Thank God I didn’t, or I would now make a goldfish look more like an elephant.  Secondly, because I wanted to write about my children for my children.  I get so caught up in the daily grind of parenting that it is easy to forget the things they say and do that make them uniquely funny or quirky or wonderful and I want them to know that I did notice, even if I was too busy scrubbing pooh and picking out headlice to actively comment on it at the time.  I want them to know that I did think about them and that I was a real person rather than some kind of nannybot who was very bad at laundry and very good at shouting.

 

I had made my mind up to write each of the kids a letter each as a blog entry, so that they would be impressed of me, as Tallulah would say, and they would have tangible proof that they were and are truly loved.  This might help when in later years they are paying for expensive therapy and blame it all on me.  Yes, you are probably right, but in my defence, I do love you.  That sort of thing.

 

I am now in two minds.  They were so vile to each other this morning that I had to ban them from speaking to each other at all.  They were so unpleasant that on the way to school I had to threaten them that if things did not change when they came out of school there would be no Brownies and no Rainbows due to being shut in the cellar we don’t have with bread and twigs to eat.

 

This is the dilemma of parenting.  I spend half my life loving them so much I can hardly breathe, and the rest of it being bored, repulsed and annoyed in rapid succession.  The changeover from one state to another is so rapid that it is almost impossible to orient oneself properly.  What can be stated as a fact though is that the minute you think the fatal phrase; ‘That would be nice.’ or ‘They will like that’ or ‘Ahhh, I take it all back.’ They will invariably do or say something so eye wateringly horrible that you wish you’d never uttered it in the first place.

 

Consequently I am still undecided about the letters.  There may be letters, there may be writs.  Who knows at this point? I’m going to have another coffee and think about it.

 

Wednesday 25th March – I can’t eat that apple. It tastes of apple

I have come upstairs seeking sanctuary.

If I do not, I am likely to re-enact the Massacre of the Innocents in graphic detail complete with gouts of blood and chunks of flesh.

I love food. I adore it.  I cannot imagine thinking how much fun it would be to starve oneself.  When I miss a meal I turn into the head spinny lady in the Exorcist. For this very reason I am never, ever going to be skinny.  I am sort of reconciled to it.  Well, I am not actually. I get very grumpy about it and vow not to gorge myself and swear abstinence and flagellate myself with pictures of Kate Moss looking like an ironing board.  Then I pass a cake shop window and I can hear the eclairs calling to me: ‘Katy’ they say, ‘Katy. Just step this way.  We need to be eaten.  We are soooo lonely out here in this cold patisserie.  We need to become better acquainted with your lovely, warm tummy.  We come in coffee flavour too.’  At which point I trample over the pictures of Kate Moss looking like an ironing board in my quest to be the first one through the doors of the patisserie of delights.

My son feels rather similar about food.  This is one of the great solaces of my life.

My daughters are finicky, finicky, finicky.  They like all their food to be grouped separately on the plate it comes on.  They will not touch pasta if it has any kind of sauce on.  They would faint with shock if say a carrot and a potato actually touched each other on the plate.  They are what they call in the culinary industry, ‘pains in the arse.’

Tilly, who is nine, is improving, it has to be said.  She is being a little more adventurous recently and is coming around to the idea that flavour combinations may actually be the way forward  instead of something to be feared.

Tallulah on the other hand is a reactionary luddite.  She does not like vegetables, she does not like fruit, she used to like meat but now she is not sure unless it comes made of eyebrows and coated in breadcrumbs.  She is DIFFICULT.

We have certain rules about food in our house.  The rules have been created to prolong the children’s lives, both because they need to eat things that have nutrients in, and because if we do not have these rules their behaviour at meal times makes me want to kill them and then myself.

The rules are as follows:

• They must eat whatever is on their plate if they want pudding.
• They must eat at least one portion of fresh fruit or vegetables every day.  During Lent we have upped this to two.   What I have not told them is that this rule will not be relaxed once Lent is over.  Mwahahaaaaaah!
• They must try everything that is being served, even if it is a tiny mouthful.  This trying does not include washing whatever is offered down with a litre of juice or swallowing it.  They must ‘taste’ it.

These rules are not particularly popular it has to be said.  Some days I wonder why I bother.  It would be a damn sight easier to just feed them fromage frais and Wotsits and let the devil take the hindmost.  On the other hand I am determined that there will be no outbreaks of rickets or scurvy on my watch.  What they do when they leave home is their own business, and who knows, compulsory veg eating may well hasten them to leave home sooner, which I am all in favour of.  Consequently we persevere.

Mostly I cheat a little, because I tend to cook things that they will tolerate.  It is easier this way.  I get bored of cooking the same things over and over again though.  I lhave two entire shelves of cook books but very little time to play with them.  Cooking is difficult when you have to co-ordinate what you are doing around the demands of three children and their need to ritually disembowel each other just as you cannot leave the stove because you are whisking something crucial.  This is how come I found out that although risotto which is all thrown in the pan and left to its own devices may not pass the Gordon Ramsay test, it is certainly good enough to eat in our house. Thank God.

Today I decided I was fed up with the same old, same old.  I have been very, very good in the last fortnight and cooked hot, nourishing meals every single day.  This is contrary to my usual practice of being culinary for three or four days on the trot and then demanding that we go out for dinner because I have lost the will to live.

We had pork steaks today. Not something I would buy if I were cooking for myself.  But, they were cheap, they are made of meat (Jason eats anything if it is meat based) and they are tolerated by the rest of the family.  I was uninspired so I decided to look in a recipe book.  It’s how we ended up with pork steaks steamed in apple juice and honey, roast potatoes, fried apple slices done in butter and sugar and a sauce made of forest fruits.  It took two hours to make amidst the disembowelling, and disapproving stares of the offspring.

It tasted lovely. 

It really did.

Tallulah decided that she wasn’t having any of it.  She had one slice of apple, a teaspoon full of berries, some carrots, two roast potatoes and a piece of pork the size of a postage stamp.  It has been agony. I had to leave the room as she half heartedly licked the apple and declared that she had ‘eaten’ it.

As I sit here I can hear them:

Jason: ‘Eat it! If you don’t, I will put it in the dustbin and that will be that.’

Tallulah: ‘But I want pudding.’

Jason: ‘Well, bloody well eat it then.’

Tallulah: ‘I can’t! It tastes of apple.’

Jason: ‘That’s because it’s a piece of apple.’

Tallulah: ‘Urghhhh!’

Jason: ‘Just pass your plate and I’ll put it in the bin then.  Then you can get down.’

Tallulah: ‘Noooooooooooooooooooooo!’

Jason: ‘Well, eat it then.’

And so it goes on, and will for some time.

Tuesday 24th March – En Vacances

Our holiday is now booked and paid for.

This is a miracle. Fish have dropped out of the sky.  Jesus came round for breakfast and I have healed three lepers already and it’s only lunch time.

We are using the miraculous powers of the Tots To Travel team, who are not only brilliant at catering to the whims of children and their need to travel everywhere with more luggage than Victoria Beckham and a bigger entourage than J-Lo, but also at calming the fragmented nerves of their highly strung parents.

My will has prevailed with the minimum amount of me pouting, sticking my lip out and giving Violet Elizabeth a run for her money.  We are staying at the house I went OH MY GOD about in my last holiday related post.  This is a miracle, because not only is it over Jason’s alloted budget, but it only has an outdoor swimming pool and is not in a ‘warm’ place. It does however tick most of our boxes and the Tots To team have made it fantastically easy for us to sort ourselves out and get organised.  And we need all the help we can get.

Jason would prefer it to be somewhere else it has to be said.  It is in La Belle France and Jason has issues with the French.  No more issues than they will probably have with him, but issues nonetheless.

His issues revolve around their stereotypical arrogance, their love of cheese, their failure to abide by the rules and their failure to speak English.  This makes him sound very xenophobic.  This is not the case.  He spent six months in Japan eating tempura coated whale blubber, time off in Switzerland for good behaviour, and two years in Germany keeping the Muller Light company afloat.  I am not sure why he feels this way about the French.  He probably had a bad experience once.  I don’t care.

I pointed out to him that as far as I’m concerned he may as well be French.  He hates playing by the rules and gets absolutely outraged when he thinks that the creeping evil of bureaucracy is trying to suck out his soul and make him do something he doesn’t want to do.  I could easily see him setting fire to a sheep carcass in Glenfield should the need arise.  He is also blessed with a fine sense of his own superiority, so apart from the cheese thing and his slightly better grasp of the English language I don’t know what he is worrying about.  He had the good grace to look slightly ashamed when I said this, and no more has been said about the ‘Cheese Eating Surrender Monkeys’ as they were termed on QI only the other week.

It is going to be an epic journey.  We have decided to take the car, because even with the spectacular amounts of child related utilities avaialable on site, we will still manage to fill the entire car with things we absolutely cannot travel without.  It is also cheaper than flying, paying for excess baggage and hiring a car.   Jason is now having a marvellous time calculating distances, sorting out Eurotunnel versus ferries and doing manly things.  I am worrying about the language.

My French is not great.  It’s not terrible.  I dropped out six months into my first year of A Level French, which is further than a lot of people get.  Nevertheless I think we will struggle.  I have bought a basic book and CD which promises to be family friendly and we are going to listen in the car for the next few weeks.  I decided to do this because:

• I am the best at French and my French is eclectic to say the least.
• Jason can only remember about three sentences, most of which are nonsense.
• Matilda has only just started French and her accent seems to be channeled via Lithuania.
• Tallulah can say: ‘Bonjour Monsieur’.  She is very proud of this and assumes that whatever else she says after this will automatically turn into French, hence this from yesterday: ‘Bonjour Monsieur blarh arghhh sablablalalaaab laaaaah!’ Fantastic.
• Oscar just giggles and says; ‘Bonjour Monsieur pooh, pooh, pooh.’

None of this is useful if we get a flat tyre or run out of petrol or need to buy an emergency bag of pasta.

Jason  can say:

• Il’ya un saucisson dans la poubelle = There is a sausage in the dustbin
• Pas du fromage = No cheese
• Jamais du fromage = Never cheese

All useful phrases I’m sure you will agree. 

Here are some of the things I can remember.  Pardon the spelling. I am remembering from about twenty years ago and am more than un peu rusty.

• J’aime bien de la planche a voile = I like windsurfing very much
• J’ai preferee du camping dans l’ombrage = I prefer camping in the shade
• Avez vous un matelas pneumatique s’il vous plait? = Have you got an air mattress please?
• J’ai dessinee un moutons dans un boite = I have drawn a picture of a sheep in a box/nightclub
• Ma mere n’aime pas du singe = My mother does not like monkeys
• Est-ce que les champignons dans la sous sol? = Are there mushrooms in the cellar?

So, as you can see.  We will be completely prepared for any surrealist moments that spring upon us, but other than that we are screwed.

Please insert useful phrases below in the comments box and I will endeavour to make use of them en vacances.