Just checking in.
And checking out.
Not a good day. Not a truly terrible day, but I am finding it very hard to be positive and cannot be bothered to try and make sense/light/paper planes out of stuff. I’m just feeling a little overwhelmed by it all.
I’m going to play with the television and the chocolate supply.
I hope I will be back tomorrow with all typing fingers blazing.
I’m sure you can manage without me for a little while.
Posted in Uncategorized
I’m starting to hallucinate slightly, but in a good way! I am very, very tired. I’ve just got back from a spree to Northampton where I’ve been to see the very wonderful Alan Ayckbourn’s ‘Man of the Moment’. When I tell you that a rather large girl in a wet suit tries to drown herself in a swimming pool in Act II you will understand that I have enjoyed myself immensely. It’s not every day you get to see that sort of thing.
I have laughed a lot. This is good. I needed to laugh a lot.
I have also found someone on the family tree who I really needed, and who, when I slotted him into place, clicked a lot of stuff open and meant I could trace another line of people back to the fifteen hundreds by glomming on to lots of other people’s work. Yay me!
On top of that I have actually managed to learn some useful Highway Code facts and come up with some strategies that might help me feel less hysterical next time I am in the driver’s seat. I am too tired to explain them now. Plus they are quite boring (not that it has ever stopped me before), but trust me when I say that I am certain that they will help a bit. And a bit is way more than I have at the moment.
My dad may also have found me a car. He and Jason are going to look at it on Monday. They are kind of quietly convinced that this is the one. Let us pray.
These are good things, along with the wonderful parcels of chocolate that Bevchen over at Confuzzledom sent me last week, and that Sharon sent me all the way from Australia this week, and which I have been too stressed and rude to acknowledge properly till now. So thank you guys for being rather brilliant in a chocolatey way.
Other good things include:
A dry day for Tallulah and minimal tantrums.
A house with only our children in for the first time all week.
The thought that in the morning Oscar is going to nursery and that because I have promised to take the children out in the afternoon that this is my get out of jail free card for arsing about on the internet all morning tomorrow.
On the negative side:
Tilly is still being petulant teen queen, although much more subdued by tea time. It’s hard work being petulant apparently. I wouldn’t know. I’m too busy being hysterical.
Oscar is still hitting and being horrible. One naughty step and one very public sending to bed with a house full of children watching were the remedies for that.
It is still rainy. My back garden is knee high in grass, clover and dock leaves and the ground squelches. No fun.
We had a swarm of flying ants today. Luckily outside, but still horrible. I hate them. Still, the children had great fun watching a very athletic spider catch some in a web and then cocoon it. Lovely.
And on that bombshell, I’m going to bed.
Posted in Uncategorized
I’ve started this blog post four times already.
I’d like to be more cheery. I really would, but here’s the thing. Well, things:
Oscar has spent all day hitting, pinching and smacking people over the head with mops. Much telling off and the liberal use of the naughty step, which is about as much use as a snorkel to a librarian.
I put a film on this afternoon. He decided he did not like it. He kept turning the television off and hitting people who tried to turn it back on. I took him away to calm down because it was either that or shoot him.
Matilda is being petulant teenager. We did crafts this morning. I emptied boxes of stuff onto the table, bead making kits, electronic pens that blow sparkly ink all over the kitchen with gay abandon, dream catcher maker kits, and Hama beads galore. All the things we get as gifts and I put away thinking, ‘God! The mess.’ I suggested that rather than each having what they had been given they embrace the idea of sharing and doing stuff together. Tallulah, who I was expecting to kick off, was all for it. Tilly was petulant and sulky and said that she didn’t want to share her Hama beads, etc, etc. It took the wind out of her sails a bit when she found that they were actually Tallulah’s. You get the drift. ALL BLOODY DAY.
Tallulah wet her pants and hid the wet pants in her pants drawer. She was caught red handed by Jason. She then denied it outright and exploded in a tearing tantrum for about an hour. It turns out that this is not the first time she has done this. I am at my wits end. We weren’t cross because she peed her pants. We were cross because she lied and decieved us. And we’re really worried. I thought this was getting better. She has practically stopped wetting at nights and has been so much more cheery lately. And now this. I don’t know what to do. So am doing nothing. As yet.
On top of that, it has been grey, rainy and humid all day long.
I have also cleaned the house.
I have also cooked two hot meals, prepared breakfast and helped the children make a cheesecake.
I have done another two hour driving lesson in which I nearly abandoned ship and demanded to go home. This was before I stalled at an enormous junction trying to turn right, right in the middle of the junction, surrounded by eight lanes of revving cars. Oh crap. Every time I come home from a lesson I am wringing with sweat.
The only book I have read today was the Highway Code.
The only nice thing to happen was that I got some more clues for my genealogy addiction. Lovely!
There is nothing else nice to say, so I shall tell you about one of the ‘stories’ from my family that I would dearly like to find out about. I so hope it is true.
My maternal great grandfather was called Walter, Walter Sturman. He had many brothers and sisters, and all of them were naughty to some degree or other. The family legend has it that one of the brothers got very drunk one night (unsurprising. Walter actually died sneezing into his pint of beer one night!) and had a fight with a chap somewhere along the railway line. He picked up a handy shovel and bashed this bloke’s brains out. After which he had to assume an alias and go on the run. Someone told me he was known as ‘Mad Jack, Shovel, Murderer.’ Not much of an alias really. The name does give it away. But hey, nobody said he was bright.
When I asked where he ran away to my gran said; ‘Oh! Loughborough!’
Now if you know anything about the Midlands, and let’s face it, why should you? You will know that Loughborough is a whole twelve miles away from Leicester at most. I was expecting a more Ronnie Biggs answer like Rio or something.
Still, in looking at the family tree for that branch of the family which someone else has researched, if their facts are right, even in 1600 we were still only in Claybrooke Magna, which is only five miles from where my parents live now. We aren’t known for our travelling genes. More like our stupidity genes. Remind me, if I ever have to assume an alias that ‘Karen Car Crash’ is probably just not going to cut it.
We have small house guests, which is fine but noisy, messy and persistent.
We have been out today doing parks and picnics with other small friends. Altogether there were eight children ranging from two through to ten, and two very weary adults. Doing the simplest thing seemed to take hours. Literally hours. My friend and I managed to say to each other in three hours what normal people without children say to each other within the first five minutes of meeting. A bit frustrating. It is good that we e-mail each other every day, or by the time we had caught up with the gossip, five years would have passed and everyone involved would probably be in old people’s homes.
I got home and Jason swept the children up and took them to granny’s and then to look at a possible car for me which was all the way over in exotic Kettering. I couldn’t go with them because I had a driving lesson and wouldn’t be back in time. Shame.
I should have either had a sleep or cleaned the kitchen or eaten some tea in the time they were gone. I did none of those things. I picked away at the fatal addiction that is genealogy, until I looked at the time and realized I had ten minutes before a double driving lesson and I had had nothing to eat.
Trying to prepare a nourishing crisp based sandwich in a hurry, I stood up under the kitchen shelf and cracked my temple right on the corner.
I cried. I swore. I felt sick. I thought I might pass out. I thought; ‘How humiliating. They will find me covered in crisps and blood.’
I revived.
I forced down the sandwich even though I had gone off the whole thing, because I didn’t want to faint at the wheel.
The driving instructor came and I paid forty pounds for two hours of sweating and terror.
I came home. Jason gave me a pep talk. It made me cry.
The car in Kettering was a washout.
I would say that on the whole the day was purgatorial with spots of brightness to remind me how utterly awful the rest of the day was.
Now I’m going to add insult to injury and read The Highway Code in the bath. What cheer.
I promise to be more optimistic tomorrow, should the good Lord spare me.
I have spent all day in between having visitors and fielding children running off to play at my new hobby. I am somewhat obsessed. This is, I have to say, way more fun than learning to drive.
I flogged about on the internet for about three hours yesterday, sticking in random details about my family and hoping to hit on a treasure trove of interesting information including film footage and offers to purchase hanks of hair etc. Sadly this did not happen.
I had almost given up when I had a bit of a brainwave. I decided that instead of doing what I thought was best I should start at the very beginning. This should tell you something about the way I approach most tasks in my life, ‘arse about face,’ as my mother would say. I decided that as I was having absolutely zero luck looking up my family tree my way, I would grab Google by the neck and type in ‘How the fuck do I search for my family tree? I am a bit of a spanner.’ and see what happened.
It took me to the Who Do You Think You Are? BBC website. As it is their fault I have been bitten by the bug in the first place I decided to investigate.
In a nutshell it said: ‘Katy love, you are absolutely bonkers if you think you’re going to get anywhere with that ridiculous scattergun approach. You need cash and contacts. Stat!’
It recommended several genealogy sites that were reputable and said ‘take your pick.’ I chose one called Ancestry.co.uk because it had pretty green leaves on, and I liked the look of it. I stumped up for a year’s basic membership and stuck my grandad’s name in. Instant hit! How exciting.
It turns out that he is merely a featurette in my maternal gran’s family tree, which someone else has researched extensively and has traced back in places to the 1600′s. How cool is that? I spent several hours getting sore eyes, and going ‘Ohhh!’ and ‘Ahhhh!’ and other things.
This morning I started my own family tree and immediately took the short cut of sticking the other person’s hard work into mine. This makes me look very clever when I have actually done very little work at all. I also mailed the person who created it, as it appears they are actually related to me because they mention my great grandfather as their grandfather. Can you tell how close we are as a family? Hmmm.
So I have had a wonderful day. I have rung many people and said: ‘Now. Not that I am a complete moron, but when is your birthday again?’ and they have asked ‘why? are you sending me a present?’ When the answer came back, instead of killing me for being cheap they have all been utterly delighted. It turns out that I am related to a family of latent and lazy amateur genealogists who have just never gotten their shit together and they all want to play. Hooray.
I think it’s fantastic. I’m so nosy. I want to know everything. Everything and all the other things. I was hoping the children would be excited, but no. They are just bored witless. Unless it turns out that we are related to King Midas or Hannah Montana they are not in the slightest bit interested. It merely confirms what they already suspected, that I am a boring old woman who is going to annoy them beyond belief and not only write down everything they say, but then go on to write down everything everyone in the entire family has ever said. Not impressive. Possibly grounds for divorce if children can actually divorce parents. Still, that will make an interesting anecdote in the family tree.
It’s been a funny old day.
Jason had many things to do today so we decamped en masse to granny’s house for a bit of cheer and company.
I now have all three children back. It is nice to have them in my clutches again, but the unequal balance of power has been fully reinstated, hence Tallulah and Tilly sniping at each other so much they made each other cry, Oscar hitting Tallulah over the head with a tape measure and making her cry, etc, etc, etc.
Oscar also fell over playing outside in the ceaseless rain and has a huge bruise/scratch down one cheek. He is very pissed off with it and has simply refused to acknowledge its existence, insisting that it is better and that he is better and that he can’t see anything in the mirror at all. Denial at its most potent. It makes him look quite rakish, and a bit battered.
I spent the afternoon nose down in a big blanket chest full of my gran’s papers. My gran died about three years ago, but we are slow to get around to things in our family and most of her papers have remained unsorted. This morning my mum and I were talking about what my grandparents did in the war and whether it would be possible to Google them and find out a bit more, particularly about my grandad, who was posted to the Middle East before they bombed the bejeezus out of it, and spent a lot of time wandering around in the desert. I only know a few things about his time in the war:
My gran was a morse code and radio operator in the RAF and they met in 1945 apparently. Wanting to fill in the gaps got us all curious, which led to me stirring up acres of dust and sneezing a lot this afternoon. It was fascinating.
I have been through reams and reams of newspaper cuttings. My gran cut out and kept everything she could find about old Leicester. Half a bin bag full of material to be precise. I have saved it. What for I am not quite sure. Still, it may come in useful one day if the kids ever do a project at school.
Then there’s things she thought might come in handy, which seem to consist of lots of souvenir newspapers and a great deal of random information about Diana, Princess of Wales. This is quite surprising, as she despised the Royal Family and was a socialist with anarchistic leanings for most of her life. She didn’t speak to my dad for about twelve months when he once voted Conservative in a fit of excitement. She even had a Neil Kinnock key ring and a thing for Arthur Scargill. I note there weren’t any newspaper clippings about him.
After that were the ‘things’. She had squirrelled away quite a few tins in the bottom of the trunk. One of them had my mother’s name on it. We opened it with great curiosity to find it contained a small satin bow, some screws and part of an old lock. Quite why this had to be concealed for posterity is not clear. There were also some tins of buttons, a tin containing two hair pieces which made me squeal a bit when I first opened them, and a lot of belts. Oh and a squashed pillbox hat covered in black net. I expect it was terribly important.
She had also saved things that nobody else wanted, just in case we ever changed our minds it seemed. This is how come I ended up finding my GCSE art coursework, my R.E. book from form 4B and some maths books from primary school. I can see clearly now that I was never going to end up giving Tracey Emin a run for her money and that the maths stupidity goes back a very, very long way.
The most interesting stuff was the personal documents liberally larded through the entire mixture. Hers and my Grandad’s RAF pass books and documents, some kind of novel or memoir that my grandad started to write which seems to be a lot to do with his interest in spiritualism (he was a trance medium for a while), some of her diaries and lots of random cards and letters. I have bought these home with me and am going to magic up the time to transcribe them eventually.
She had also started writing down the family history and there are odd pages or notes on the back of envelopes which sound suitably intriguing. I’ve taken those as well, and am going to start writing everything down properly. She always meant to do it and never quite got around to it. I don’t know how good a job I’ll make of it, but maybe I can add a bit more to the jigsaw.
I am now absolutely covered in grime and have another little project which will happily fill in the time I should be reading the Highway Code.
Mwahahahaha!
