saturday 14th march – Charm School

Oscar has a sore throat.  He sounds like his voice is breaking, which is rather funny in someone who comes up to your kneecaps.  He is husky and squealy in turns.  He doesn’t seem to be bothered by it in the slightest.  An entertaining illness. It may be a first.  He only mentions it when he thinks he might get more cake or sweets, or if he thinks he’s going to get told off.  He is rather clever that way. Unfortunately so am I.  It hasn’t worked, but ten out of ten for effort.

Tallulah went to a High School Musical bowling party today.  What will they come up with next? Ludo with Hannah Montana? Curling with Sponge Bob Square Pants? It is all too baffling.  It was also at ten thirty this morning, which is a ludicrous time of day to have a children’s party in my opinion.  At ten thirty on a Saturday morning we are usually still slugging about in our pyjamas growling and throwing shreddies at the ceiling.  The levels of activity we had to achieve this morning were frankly frightening.  Even Tallulah was a bit put out and it was for her sake.

Jason took her into the bowling alley.  He came out ten minutes later, got into the car and said sombrely: ‘I’m just putting this on record. We are NEVER doing a party like that for our children. NEVER.’ Luckily I agree with him.  Once, back in the cobwebbed past when I was still married to UE, we had a party at a Whacky Warehouse for Tilly. It was hideous and vile, vile and hideous.  It cost several hundred pounds and was insane.  It was too hot.  We hired a face painter. After twenty minutes playing in the ball pool of death the paint was running down their faces all over their party frocks and they all looked like something out of a horror movie.  The food was vile.  The entertainments were half witted and half assed and the parents who stayed were in the main rude, surly and spent most of the time they should have been supervising their children, nipping through into the bar and drinking pints.  Half the kids never said thank you, which is something that pisses me off beyond almost anything else.  Especially when each little darling is costing me about twenty quid.

Then there was the fact that Tilly was wildly over excited, totally unprepared to deal with the hysteria and kept bursting into tears because all her circuits were fried.  She got so many presents she had no idea what to do with them all and stashed them in a corner of the room where they were roundly ignored, and the whole thing was a giant bust.

I cannot imagine what trying to organise twenty six year olds to perform miracles of ten pin bowling whilst hopped up on Fruit Shoots and deep fried chicken’s eyebrows is like, but it can’t be good, can it?

While Tallulah was bowling we went to try and buy her Rainbows uniform.  It turns out that John Lewis has now stopped stocking them and the Guiding shop doesn’t open on a weekend. Brilliant.  I will have to go for plan Z, which is ignore it all until next week and think about it then.  It’s working very well so far.

We went and had a little lie down in Carluccios amongst the cakes while we regrouped.  Oscar charmed all the Italian waitresses who plied him with free breadsticks and colouring pencils.  This was great because we had the best service in the whole restaurant.  Nothing was too much bother.  We are thinking of hiring Oscar out for such occasions, that and for men who can’t pull women.  Jason said that if I want to leave him can I do it soon whilst Oscar is still in his ‘cute’ phase, so he stands more of a chance with the girls.  I smiled sweetly and stabbed his knee with my pastry fork.

Tilly was out all day.  She went to help granny and grandad at an antique fair.  They give her her own stall and apron full of change and she sells things.  Because she is cute people give her money even when they don’t want to buy anything, or buy things because they like her and she is nice to them.  She charmed a man who had a stall across the way who apparently loved her so much he gave her half his stock to sell.  She made about eight quid, which given most of the things on her table were priced at about twenty pence, was exceptional.  I do worry about the charm thing though. It’s fine now that she is nine and unworldly (i.e. she still thinks boys are purely ornamental), but when she gets older it may be a problem.  I may have to put hormones in her food to ensure she grows a thick moustache or something.

Friday 13th March – In Which It Turns Out That I Am Quite Lucky

Firstly. I have won a blogging award from my lovely bloggy friend Welsh Girl.  It looks like this:

Here is the explanation:

These blogs are exceedingly charming. These kind bloggers aim to find and be friends. They are not interested in self-aggrandizement. Our hope is that when the ribbons of these prizes are cut, even more friendships are propagated. Please give more attention to these writers. Deliver this award to eight bloggers who must choose eight more and include this cleverly-written text into the body of their award.”

I feel very blessed.  Thank you very, very much.

I have to think of eight people to send it to now.  I do not think I can manage eight right now.  Eight is too hard, mainly because lots of the people  I would choose have already been chosen by my other blogging friends.  It is a small, but wonderfully formed world in which I move.

I am therefore just going to choose two people for my award giving.

Firstly Ali over at Callapippertree.  Ali wrote me a dedicated blog post recently in which she selflessly broke into an Australian supermarket and filmed an entire biscuit aisle just to show me how many biscuits the Australians have.  Let me tell you, there are a lot of biscuits in Oz. A lot.  This selfless dedication to me and my rabid interest in biscuits is worth the award all by itself.  Then there’s the fact that she’s a damn fine blogger and I love reading her posts.

Secondly to Cassandra over at Jacob Wrestling.  She is lovely, she is funny.  She blogs a lot when she is drunk, which is always excellent value for money.  She reads excellent books and she likes to shop.  Tick, tick, tick.  She has thrown all her toys out of the pram and filled it with TNT today, but that’s cool.  We like that in a blogger, danger and consumer therapy all in one heady dose.  Hurrah.

Now I have to fulfil a meme that Cassandra set me yesterday.  I have to come up with five reasons why my life is grand and I am happy with my lot.  It may be tricky but I’ll give it a go.

Actually I am a very lucky woman. I do not work. I have help with my children. There is some money somewhere which allows me to go to the theatre, buy books and eat out regularly. I get to eat cake a lot.  If you ask me what the perfect life is like it is pretty much like the one I have already except there is more sleep, lots more money and better weather. Not bad though eh?

My children, irritating though they may be, are actually really funny, very cool and clever.  They are also rather gorgeous.  They do not look like bulldogs licking piss off thistles.  They can be wildly charming.  They have wicked senses of humour and are capable of talking to people in an interesting and reasonably intelligent way when they want to.  I am proud to take them out in public most of the time.

I have a wonderful husband who indulges me and my crazy ways.  He allows me to blog, to have an active and independent social life and loves me because I am me. He never tries to change me or make me better. He is unfailingly supportive and he also thinks I am sexy just the way I am.  He is convinced I am going to be wildly successful and responsible for the upswing in our fortunes which will make us independently wealthy. Unfortunately he does not know how this is going to happen, but I like his faith.

I am much better at things than I ever thought I would be, which is fantastic.  It turns out that I can cook and not just basic things, but really cook, when I want to. I can also sew (wow!). I am not bad at gardening. I can write and am an excellent reader.  My parenting skills are haphazard but they work for me so far and I have not yet killed anyone through my incompetence, which I was almost certain would have happened by now. I am crap at maths, but that’s o.k. It’s a strength at the moment because it’s stopping me from worrying about not having any money.  It’s easy when you never have any money and you’re not sure how much you haven’t got.

It turns out that I can function on between three and five hours sleep a night. I don’t think this is great, but it is necessary and it is something I’m trying to code as positive being as how things on the sleep front are not exactly improving at the moment.  I get a lot of reading done and am becoming a genius at Pathwords on Facebook. 

That’s it really.  I will think of people to nominate later. Join in in the meantime if you want. I must go now. I am just cremating some garlic bread.

Polish my mineral water

Tallulah went to her second meeting of Rainbows this evening.

She loves it.

This is very, very good.

She has been on the waiting list for a year and a half and things were getting tense and excitable.  A lot was riding on Rainbows being brilliant.  Particularly because she has to have something that is hers and not Tilly’s and that is better than best.  Tilly never went to Rainbows.  Before I moved to Glenfield I was not one of the joining in type mothers.  I’m still not really, but I try more now.

Anyway.  All was well and all manner of things were well.

We have a hot date to go and buy uniform for next week when probation time is over and subs are due.  This will duly be done, shortly after which she will develop an allergic reaction to Rainbows and want to join the junior fascist league or something.

Bah!

Oscar is also very excited about rainbows.  He has been watching a lot of The Wizard of Oz with Tallulah recently.  It is one of her new ‘things’ that she is mad about.  I wonder whether Oscar thinks Tallulah is going to Oz when she bravely steps out into the night air.

Anyhow. He wanted to know why he was not allowed to go to Rainbows with ‘Tula’.  I explained that Rainbows is just for girls, and tha when he is bigger he can go to Beavers.  He got very, very excited about this and has run about telling everyone that ‘My Oscar is going to Divas’.

I think this is wonderful. It delights my heart to think of him going to Divas.  I have half a mind to set up a group myself.

It will be like Brownies.  Each group of six children will have a name, but rather than Elves and Sprites they will be Mariah and Whitney and Jenny from the Block.  Subs will be paid by Platinum credit card only.  Uniforms will be elaborate and change in the Spring and Autumn.  All hats will be from Philip Treacey.

They will learn useful things like:

• Never carrying cash so that one doesn’t have to worry about being mugged.
• Demands and how to make them (basic Rider format included in handbook)
• How to fit your entourage into a Lear jet without treading on someone’s heels.
• Tantrums and when to have them.
• Basic diamond care.
• Sashaying
• Partaying
• Demanding
• Care of small pets that fit into handbags
• Petulance
• Air kissing for beginners

It will be fabulous. I may write to Paris Hilton and get her to come up with a logo and some badge designs.

Red Nosed Bastards

It is, in case you hadn’t noticed, Red Nose Day tomorrow.  For those of my readers who are from foreign parts I will elaborate.  It is a day on which endless streams of people raise money for charity by doing things such as wearing red noses and rattling buckets.  It has been going on now for about a million years.  Cave paintings at Lascaux actually depict a small figure with a spear hunting a ‘comedy’ buffalo wearing a giant red nose.  Forensic breakdown of the paint shows it to have been made with small children’s life blood.  Ha bloody ha.

I applaud the sentiment, I really do.  Raising money to help people less well off than ourselves is never a bad thing.  You never know when you yourself might be in need of such funds.  There but for the grace of Cheezus go I, etc, etc.

But as you know, I am a miserable old gittess.  There are many things I object too about this kind of thing.  I include Children in Need in this camp.  In fact more so than Red Nose Day.  Red Nose Day only happens every few years.  Children in Need has been rotating the nineteenth circle of hell on a yearly basis since I was but a twink in the milkman’s eye.

Here are some of the things I object to about such days:

The relentless need to make everyone join in.  I don’t want to wear a comedy wig and orthopaedic support tights over my trousers just for a laugh.  I don’t want to dress up like a giant penguin and flap through the streets of Glenfield tripping over my flippers.  I never, ever, ever want to do such things.  I eschew sitting in baths of baked beans wearing transparent t-shirts, unicycling whilst having all my hair shaved off or losing four stone for charidee.  I hate all that kind of thing. Hate. Hate. Hate.  Hate is not too strong a word in this context.  I would rather be dragged over broken bottles while someone sticks red hot needles in my eyes than go to a fancy dress shop thanks.

The relentless need to make everyone have fun, or make people watch other people having fun.  It sucks. It’s like New Year’s Eve but without the alcohol to deaden the hideosity of it all.  I do not want to go to the bank to check on my ever dwindling resources only to be approached by a man called Dave dressed as a nun, giggling and sticking a bucket under my nose.  I want to shout: ‘Dave mate! Take your fucking wimple and fuck off back to the mortgage rejection pile so that ordinary, morose citizens can get on with their atrociously dull lives in peace.’  I don’t do this because a) I am British and have hang ups about going postal in public, b) My mother would kill me and she knows where I live, and c) I know that for Dave this is probably the best thing that has happened to him since New Year’s Eve when he dressed up as John Travolta and vomited into his own chest hair.  But still.  Can’t they do it more quietly and somewhere else where I can’t see them?

The need to get your children to do these things even if you don’t.  My children are so excited about Red Nose Day you would think that Father Christmas himself was going to rotate out of the sky in a gyrocopter spreading gold bars, Pokemon and largesse wherever he goes. Oh yes. It is that exciting.  The problem is that Tallulah has no idea what is going on.  None at all.  I have tried to explain it to her.  It makes absolutely no difference to her total and utter incomprehension of the entire state of affairs.  Witness:

Tallulah: ‘Mama! I have to make up a competition and get people to do it to make some money.’

Me: ‘Oh yes? And what is your idea for a competition Tallulah?’

Tallulah: ‘I’m going to get everyone to draw a picture of a house and give me £2 and I will say which one is the best.’

Me: ‘Tallulah you can’t make everyone pay £2.  That’s a lot of money.  Everyone else is doing competitions for 10pence.’

Tallulah: ‘Oh! Alright then.  But it would be better to get £2. Mine is a very good competition.’

Me: ‘ Nobody is disputing this fact.’

Tallulah: ‘Right. I need to draw twenty three houses.’

Me: ‘Why?’

Tallulah: ‘So that people can give them to me for the competition.’

Me: ‘AAARRRGHHHHHHHH!’

People. It took an hour.  A WHOLE HOUR OF MY LIFE, to explain the rules of the competition and remind her repeatedly that as she is in charge of the competition that she is not allowed to win it.

Then:

Tallulah: ‘I like this competition.  It’s going to be great.’

Me: ‘That’s good’. (In a weary, ‘no it’s absolutely not’, kind of voice)

Tallulah: ‘Yes. I’m going to make loads of money.’

Me: ‘Hmmm’

Tallulah: ‘Mama.  Why do I have to give the money to the teachers? It’s my money.’

Me: ‘AAAARRRRGGGGGHHHHHH!’

Another half an hour passes while I explain to a mutinous five year old the concept of charity. It did not go well.

The cost.  Now this might seem churlish, but bear with me here. Here’s the thing.  Both my children are doing Red Nose Day Competitions at school.  Each of them needs prizes.  They have decided to give first and second prizes for some reason I do not understand.  Nevertheless, they have committed to this, and this is what must happen.  I was despatched to buy them.  Two chocolate bunny lollipops and two bags of small, foil wrapped rabbits later I was down four quid.  It costs ten pence for each entry into their competition.  They’ll be lucky if they make a quid between them.  It would have been more economic for me to give the £4 straight to the charity and keep them home from school for the day.

It was exactly the same when Jason dressed as a naughty school girl for Children in Need.  By the time I’d sourced his costume and we had run hither and yon buying it it would have been cheaper to donate a day’s wages and get him to work from home. It is ludicrous what lengths people go to to donate tiny, piddling amounts to the charity of their choice.  Sometimes it just does not make economic sense.  And don’t tell me about the fun and sense of community.  See points one and two above.  Plus, I hate being part of the community.  I live in a den of crack addicts and gym slip mothers.  I spend a lot of time indoors or in other counties.  Moving on.

The telethons. Need I say more? Actually it is not too bad since the advent of Sky Plus and four hundred channels, but in the olden days, when we only have four channels to choose from and they were infested with hilarious people doing hilarious things for charity, there would be no option but to go out drinking just to avoid having to watch newsreaders get carried away in a pair of fishnets thinking they’re bloody Madonna. I bet osteopaths reap the rewards in the weeks that follow. Fourteen hours of mediocre sketches by fat, middle class actors stuck together with genuinely upsetting film footage of orphaned AIDS victims with insufficient medical care can seriously do your mental health some damage there.

Feeling like a criminal.  If like me, you would just rather give them fifty quid to shut the fuck up and bugger off and leave you alone, you can feel a bit like a leper.  If you stay in, you have to watch S Club Seven prancing around with starving orphans who haven’t got a clue who the bloody hell they are, knowing full well that smiling like a loon now doesn’t mean they’re not all moaning about chemical toilets and dysentry during every commercial break.  If you go out you spend your evening in the pub with the entire cast of St Trinians, some X Men and a transvestite nun, all of whom will be rattling buckets at you every five minutes.  There is nowhere to hide.

I’m just saying.

Thursday 12th March – In Which I Catch The Bus – Again

I rushed out last night to get Tallulah provisions for her packed lunch and was impressed with myself that I had remembered everything.  Last night at about midnight I was still wandering the halls and felt peckish. I decided that toast would do.  I went into the kitchen to find no bread.  Luckily there was some in the freezer.  I did get down on my knees and thank God that this little moment happened in the middle of the night rather than in the morning with a frantic child at my elbow, crying because she would be the only person on the school trip having either frozen or toasted sandwiches.

I woke up with a headache, probably tension induced due to fretting about trips, dreaming of coaches made of frozen bread collapsing when they drive through too many puddles and all the kids drowning in soupy bread crumbs.  That kind of thing.  I was going to dash into town this morning to do a couple of jobs sans kids.  When my headache announced itself by making my eye feel like it was bouncing on the side of my skull, I thought I’d not bother with town and spend the morning in bed.  Thursday trips to town are often rather hasty due to me having to be back here for 12.30 to pick up Oscar. I was pleased with my decision. A hot bath, some painkillers, lots of cups of tea.  Tick and a smiley face.

Then at breakfast the kids announced they needed chocolates to give away as prizes for the competitions they have set up for Red Nose Day at school.  Tallulah followed this with saying: ‘You haven’t forgotten it’s Jimbobbusherby’s birthday on Saturday and I need to get her a present and a card have you?’  To which I hastily replied, ‘No!’ Thinking, shit, shit, shit. Of course I have.

I deposited them at school, stood for twenty minutes in the cold waiting for the bus, spent twenty minutes on the bus listening to two women discuss how fucking disgraceful it is that social workers pick on you by demanding to come and look in your cupboards to make sure you’re feeding your kids and not spending the money on drugs.  They then followed this up with a complex discussion about where to get the best drugs and how come two bags for a tenner each is better value than one large bag for £25.  No wonder they have to shop at Iceland.

I have now learned that there are two different types of drug taker, the down and out and the woman who just wants to take drugs but shouldn’t have her civil liberties infringed by people checking her cupboards and demanding to know where she got the money for doing up her new house when she’s on benefits.  The cheek.

These liberty infringed people are the salt of the earth and should be allowed to get on with their lives without interference (except of the monetary handout nature) because everyone knows the most important thing is to make sure that nobody is fiddling with your kids.  As long as they’re not being fiddled with they’re fine.  It’s also not fair that the father of one of the children is not allowed to see his kid because he’s on bail for aggravated robbery, which means that she has to pick the kid up from school herself now. Damnation.

My head was a bit fried by the time I got off the bus.  I really, really need to move house and/or learn to drive.  As there is no money for either of these things now, I am merely taking notes for a novel and keeping my head down.

I was going to treat myself to a cup of coffee, some cake and some shiny painkillers as a reward for doing all my jobs.  By the time I’d done them all it was time to come home.  I never got my treat.  Instead I ate an M&S sandwich waiting for the drug bus as I like to call it, while an old woman quizzed me on why they don’t run the Number 25 from Mowacre anymore and a man with a clipboard wanted me to tick boxes about my travelling habits.  I was very weary at this point because Mrs Mowacre decided that she liked me, so she kept talking to me and asking me questions, but in that way that shows that she’s not listening to a word you’re actually saying, but I was too polite to tell her to shut up.  As I was actually reading my book and eating a sandwich you think this would have been message enough.  Apparently not. 

She did make me smile when she tutted about the man with the clipboard interrupting me; ‘Couldn’t he see you were reading your book?’  Apparently it doesn’t mean the same thing for old ladies without clipboards, and they can ask you irrelevant questions till the cows come home, even if you’re at home in bed, having sex with your husband.  They just loom over your shoulder and ask you to solve imponderably complex problems about bus routes you’ve never been on until you give up and put the kettle on.

Mrs M.: That’s a big handbag you’ve got.  Is it heavy?’

Me: Smiles politely: ‘Yes.  It’s full of body parts.  That’s o.k. though. They’re just a smoke screen to stop them looking for the drugs underneath.  I’m going to sell them on the Number 94 bus because it’s a travelling crack den.’

Mrs M: ‘That’s nice dear.  I shall never understand why they stopped the Number 25 though.’

Me: Probably all the dead, heroin addicted babies blocking the aisles, just like in that film Trainspotting.  I expect they thought it was cheaper and less macabre just to bury the bus with everyone on it.

Mrs M: ‘Mmmmm! It was so handy though. It stopped right outside my door.  I haven’t got a car you see.  What would someone like me want with a car?’

Me: ‘To stop you having to travel with a bunch of drug addicted, criminal paedophiles maybe? Or perhaps you like a bit of local charm?  Maybe you are the general of a drugs cartel, just posing as an old lady with a funny eye and a tartan shopping trolley.  Inside your shopping trolley under fifteen pink toilet rolls for a pound are probably some dead kittens and a 9mm Glock.  Mwahahahahahahaaaa!’

Mrs M: ‘Do you think it would do any good to write them a letter?’

Me: ‘Yes! In blood and sweat and tears from your years of sacrifice at the hands of bourgeoise scum.  Up the revolution!’

Mrs M: ‘Still, at least it’s not raining…’

I run off sobbing into Argos and slice my wrists open with a laminated catalogue page, simultaneously falling forward onto two small blue biros, straight through they eye sockets and into the brain.

Goodbye cruel world

Wednesday March 11th – New Improved Alan, With Extra Measles

He is finished. Alan Measles II, the revenge, is now done and will be sitting on a high shelf near me, a la Bagpuss, waiting for the day that Grayson Perry may or may not decide that what he needs more than life itself is a small, felt bag in the shape of a bear in which it is almost impossible to put anything at all, and which is very, very hand made.  You never know. The day may come.

Jason is going to take a photo of the finished article for me eventually, but in the meantime here are the photos my mum took for me at the weekend so you can get the general idea.

The colours are not very true. He looks more red here, but he is in fact a shocking, hot pink colour.

This is Alan with his pipi dangling. You will note that I have gone with the spring theme and given him a tulip this time. I think it’s quite subtle and very effective.

Here he is from the back.  Again, the colours are a bit muddy here, but if you imagine a rather acid green, like a Granny Smith apple you’ll be there.

And here is Alan’s bum.  Nice eh?

Today I finished the handle, which I am particularly proud of. It is green with tiny pink roses studded into it all the way round, just to make everything that bit more difficult when it comes to actually using it practically as a handbag.  If and when I get a picture of the finished article I will post it.

Right now I have to run about like a maniac. I have forgotten that it is Tallulah’s school trip tomorrow and I have nothing for her packed lunch. I must write an article for a friend who is relying on me to be sensible and responsible (poor, poor, deluded woman) and I must go through a teetering mound of paperwork that is threatening to turn into compost if I don’t get to grips with it soon.

Tuesday March 10th – Ho Hum

There is nothing much to say today. I’m not sure why.  I seem to have run out of steam. It’s not terrible, in fact I am actually quite perky, I am just not writerish.

I am feeling better today.  Not brilliant, but better.  It may have something to do with Jason having the day off.  It may have something to do with my blood tests coming back normal (apart from my iron levels, but that’s easy), which means I am not pregnant. Yay! I may be other things, and on Friday I will go to find out what next, but just knowing I am not pregnant is a great,  great relief for now.

It may also be down to the fact that we went out for lunch and ate large quantities of Thai food.  Thai food is possibly my favourite food in all the world and it was lovely.  We weren’t going to get Thai food.  We were going to get a part for the computer which Jason is still trying to mend after Oscar scrooped it, but there was a Thai restaurant next door and you know how it is.  It was delicious.  It has however, severely scuppered my plan of curry for tea tonight.  So now I have about an hour to come up with something else before Andrea is knocking on the door with her knife and fork.

We are going out again tonight.  We are seeing As You Like It at our shiny new Curve theatre.  People in Leicester it seems, fear Shakespeare.  The tickets are staying resolutely at the box office and you can get tickets for seven pounds each.  If it is any good I am dragging everyone I’ve ever met there to fill some seats, so be prepared to get your diaries out.

And that’s it really. I am no further forward with Alan.  I had a book to read for Amazon which took priority last night. It was a shame it took priority because I detested it (The Post Office Girl by Stefan Zweig), but thems the breaks.  It was a miserable dirge like tale of grinding and relentless poverty in post WWI Austria.  It claimed to be a Cinderella story but I beg to differ.  There were no lizards turning into footmen, no coaches and a distinct lack of fairy godmothers.  There was a lot of bitching, mean mindedness, miserable sexual encounters gone horribly wrong and a lot of walking around the Ring Strasse in floods of tears.  It had nothing to recommend it whatsoever, and because the publisher decide to glue rather than stitch the spine I ended up half way through with a jigsaw puzzle instead of a novel.  Pah!

I have moved on and am now reading Christopher Isherwood’s Mr Norris Changes Trains.  This is much more fun.  It seems to be about a sexual deviant with snaggle teeth and a poor taste in wigs who is running wild in Berlin annoying Nazi officials and being decadent.  I have just read the bit where he goes to a party and ends up being whipped by a dominatrix, cowering in lilac silk pants having a wonderful time. And why not? That’s what I say.  Although I’ll give it a miss in favour of a slice of carrot cake and a nice lie down if that’s all right.

I may go and read a bit more while I’m wondering what the hell to do for tea.  It will help to pass the time and is better than watching Lunar Jim and making ‘pink cities’ with Oscar’s stickle bricks.  I have no idea what pink cities actually are, but he loves them and we have talked of them a fair bit today.  Even when we’ve made one I remain none the wiser.  Perhaps I am too old now.  Pink cities will be forever beyond my reach. 

Good.

Dating – Boo Stylie

I was talking to a friend over the weekend about dating.

This is not a preamble by the way. I am not going to announce that Mr. Boo and I are splitting up.  It took me over thirty years to find him and I’m certainly not going to let him go now.

No. DON’T PANIC.

It merely came up as an interesting topic of conversation.

UE is dating a lot in his own inimitable fashion.  He works hard at it to varying degrees of success, some of which he shares with me over the tea table on long afternoons when he has nobody else to confess such things to. My knowledge of the dating game is amazingly wide and varied now that I am a staid, old married lady.

He, and many other people I believe, approach dating using various techniques, theories and practices, much like someone working out which is the best horse to place a bet on at the 2.30 in Newmarket.

I find this fascinating.  I have never, ever had a system for dating. My dating experience has been, with the best will in the world, 70% accident of fate and 30% sheer bloody mindedness.

Sometimes UE will discover a new system or indeed invent a new system/theory.  He will often road test it on me to see if it is going to fly. I keep telling him there is no point. I never did date like anyone else.  I am never going to date again unless there is an unhappy accident involving Mr. Boo and a bus, or worse, Mr. Boo and a blonde nymphette.  I have frankly bizarre tastes in real live men (my fantasy dates are fairly standard, Daniel Craig, George Clooney, Brad, Ewan McGregor) and I am not like the average female, so there is no point in using me as a guinea pig.  It is at this point that he sighs, thinks about our chequered history together and nods his head in weary agreement.

I think the things that meant I was reasonably supplied with a ready supply of men were my strange taste, which meant I had much less competition than most, and the fact that if I can be said to have a type it is, ‘naughty men’.  Naughty men are usually way easier to get than any other type because they enjoy chaos, mischief and doing naughty things. Consequently you can mostly look like a sack of hammers, and if you say; ‘Sleep with me and that woman over there will explode.’ or ‘Sleep with me and giant turnips will rain from the sky bringing death and destruction in their wake,’ they generally will.  They can’t resist a challenge.

It didn’t hurt that in the 30% bloody mindedness bits I just got hideously drunk and waltzed up to the man I wanted and told him straight. This way, if they were interested they didn’t have to faff around thinking about ways to broach the subject and fanny about.  If they weren’t interested I took the rejection reasonably well, mainly due to large quantities of Long Island Iced Tea and would sashay off and drink myself into a grief stricken stupor.  By the next day I would be nursing too large a hangover to care and by the day after that I would have gotten over things and generally moved on.

Looking back over my relationship history there are however, a few bon mots I can give to you if you’re still out there, hacking away at the coalface of dating.  As I said, it is my own personal experience, so don’t blame me if it doesn’t turn out to be a universal law.

1. The only times you consistently pull a man worth pulling is when you have made no effort whatsoever.  Your armpits stink, you still have your work clothes on, there is a ladder in your tights and you have your forty seventh best pants on.  You never meant to come out.  You were going to stay at home watching reruns of The Fall Guy and eating Doritos, whilst wondering what you ever saw in Lee Majors.  My advice therefore is go out when you least expect or want to, never shave your legs if you fancy a shag and always wear tatty pants.  Save good frilly underwear from Agent Provocateur when you actually have a relationship.  The 98th law of thermodynamics states that the more disgusting the pants, the more glorious the night of love that follows.  Sucky in fat pants don’t count.  You’re trying too hard.  Let it all hang out.

2. You never pull a real, worthy man when you are trying to be sophisticated and suave.  Give up immediately.  Talk drivel, eat like a hearty trencherwoman, preferably with your elbows on the table.  For God’s sake have pudding and if possible do or say something that makes you sound, look like a complete spanner.  Throwing red wine into your elaborate hair do for example, will pretty much work every time.

3. Make no plans whatsoever to stay out all night. Do not pack a toothbrush, an emergency condom or even clean pants.  The less prepared you are for all eventualities, the more likely it is that all eventualities will happen to you.  Pop out to the corner shop with your hair in rollers and your slippers on and three weeks later you’ll be disembarking from your cruise ship on a trip of a life time to Mexico.

Monday 9th March – A Tidy Mind

GAH! It has been a day of cleaning.  I have been too busy clutching to the Chaise Longue of Death recently to have made good headway with household cleanliness.  I have done what I believe is called maintenance, but no more.  Today however it was too horrible for maintenance to work and I really had to knuckle down and clean things.

I fucking hate cleaning things.  I hate it because it is pointless and repetitious and nobody else in the family cares if they get stuck in the hallway on a particularly tricky lump of jam or if we all die of botulism and it would be cleaner to drink water from the toilet.  If I get upset about the state of the house they all look at me in that way, and reach for the number of the basket weaving department in the local mental hosp.  Only I care, which seems so bloody unfair.

It drives me mad when I can’t have a bath without sieving fourteen different assorted hairs out of the plug hole, or wash my hands without navigating lumps of welded on toothpaste.  I hate chiselling mashed banana out of the carpets and standing on soggy Shreddies.  I can’t bear sitting on a chair only to be enveloped in a miasma of dust and toast crumbs.  It makes me mardy, mardy, mardy.  So, if I want to be reasonably contented in my domestic surroundings I must clean.  Which means I must do it myself.

UE popped round this afternoon.  He is decluttering his wardrobe and has offered me all his old shirts to chop up for my next great craft project.  He likes florid shirts so there are some interesting fabrics currently residing in a large bin bag near me, waiting to be chopped up.  I am thinking of making a patchwork quilt after I have made my Measles.  I’ve always wanted a real patchwork quilt and have never been able to afford one.  Now I’m thinking of having a go myself.  Of course it will be done my way, which will not be in the slightest bit traditional, but that’s not to say it won’t be interesting.  And probably, by the time I’ve made five or six, they may even begin to look like patchwork quilts other than craftastrophic abortions of a fabric nature.

So. UE came round while I was cleaning.  He looked at me like I was a mentaller because I said that this would be the one day of the week when I would be o.k. to allow random strangers in for a cup of tea.  He asked me if I was selling my house! I tried to explain the mortification of a woman who has to regularly let people into her house and then unglue them from the furniture and explain the lumps of glittering tuna.  He reached for the number of the basket weaving department.

The only person who likes helping me is Oscar.  He shows promise, but he is far too short to be a whole lot of use.  Plus he has to be watched like a hawk.  This afternoon for example, we were doing great guns until he decided to surrender his nappy to the four winds and take a huge dump on the cream carpet in the study.  This put us back by a good twenty minutes.  It is not the usual problem one faces with cleaners, generally unreliable though they may be.  Shortly after that he tried to eat a Dettol wipe and when he started using the hoover as a means of shinning up onto the higher reaches of the furniture, I had had as much help as I could take.

Still, it is done now, and the girls are at UE’s until Wednesday which means it may stay reasonably straight for the next two days as long as we don’t embark on any ambitious craft projects en famille.

This will of course be the night that Oscar does drink toilet water and spends the entire night projectile vomiting whilst running screaming from room to room.  That’ll learn me.

Sunday 8th March – Sewing in the Civil War

I couldn’t sleep last night what with one thing and another.  This is not good because my eyebags are now large craters that Patrick Moore is capable of spotting with the naked eye from four hundred miles away and getting excited about.  This is good because it meant that I got to watch The Devil’s Whore, which I’ve had on Sky Plus for about a trillion years and was saving for an evening when I felt like having a gratuitous fix of the ever wonderful John Simm, and it also meant that I have nearly finished Alan Measles II, the revenge.

John Simm was quite hard to lust after in The Devil’s Whore, largely due to the fact that he had to spend the entire four hours looking scrofulous, unwashed and pox ridden.  He is very good, so he was convincing.  I did feel, and this may be past loyalty and lust speaking, that you could still warm to him despite this.  I was however, extremely tired, and not really paying huge amounts of attention, due to my need to be staring at my needle.

I watched enough to know that I am very pleased that I am a woman now, and not during the civil war.  I’d definitely have been branded a Devil’s Whore and promptly hung or burned, or possibly even both.  It was one of those gritty adaptations where everyone got filthy and had matted hair and dragged their way through giant gouts of mud and ate mangel wurzels.  Lots of people died and had hideous facial disfigurements.  The rich visual tapestry the props people painted indicated that there would have been a lot of smells.  A lot.  Too many smells for me. 

I’d have been one of those smelly, evil looking people  because I am definitely of peasant stock.  I wouldn’t have been calling my maid to help me struggle into my corset whilst idly wondering if my new hair powder had come yet.  I’d have been hollowing out a turnip for me and my destitute family of ricket riden children while my husband got hung for stealing pigs and sleeping with his own brother. Gah.  Thank god for power showers and the internets was the moral of that piece of televisual history I think you’ll find.

I have to say that Alan Mark II was significantly easier than Alan Mark I.  It may be because I feel more confident.  It may be because I made so many mistakes the first time round that I have learned a lot.  Who knows?  I will say however, that when  I took the constituent parts to my mother’s house today so that she could take some photographs for me, even she was mildly impressed, and she can actually sew.

It’s not to say that he’s perfect by any means.  He has his flaws.  These were created mainly due to me getting side tracked by some interesting battle scenes and those fleeting moments where you could see John Simm looking reasonably clean.  Alan has a slight limp on one side due to this.  I may have to take up watching much more tedious television if I’m going to sew and watch simultaneously, possibly some Panorama and a bit of Antiques Roadshow, maybe even a bit of Songs of Praise, although I don’t want to fall into a coma and land on my needle, so perhaps not this extreme.

I will post the photos in a few days when Alan is finished and good to go, just in case something goes horribly wrong between now and then and I end up with a small, felt handkerchief that nobody wants.