The roar of the greasepaint

No blogging yesterday. Andrea is back from Chile and we went on what was supposed to be a celebratory theatre trip to Kingston upon Thames to see Alan Ayckbourne’s ‘Bedroom Farce,’ at the Rose Theatre.

It was a bloody long way to go (and back) for what was a ‘meh’ performance frankly.  We got there with only an hour to spare and all nearby restaurants heaving thanks to Christmas shoppers.  We queued for twenty minutes in the theatre bar for a sandwich, except that they had run out of everything except cheese.  In the end we plumped for two bowls of very dubious deep brown onion soup, which was the only other option, and then had to share a table with two middle class ladies of a certain age who seemed to take it as a personal affront that us riff raff might need to eat soup at a table instead of through a straw in the gutter where we belonged. 

Despite the mediocre soup it was a bloody good job we grabbed it when we did, because the queue after us was about a mile long and full of starving and pissed off people who didn’t want wilted lettuce and cheese sandwiches either.  Given the fact that they had ticket numbers available to see how busy the theatre might be, I did think they might be a little more organised on the catering front.

The next disappointment was our seats.  I booked seats in the front row of the stalls.  As regular readers will know, this is necessary because otherwise Andrea cannot see.  In every theatre I have ever been to (and I’ve been to a lot) the stalls is the very front of the theatre.  Except at the Rose.  Yes.  They have four rows in front of the front row of the stalls and then a large ‘pit’ space where people can sit on cushions. 

Disaster.

I went to the box office. They were singularly unhelpful.  The basic gist being, ‘hard luck’, you should have checked.  And in principle I sort of agree, but on the other hand,  they were very rude about it, and poor Andrea had to squint to make out what was going on.  AND I have tickets for Judi Dench in Midsummer Night’s Dream there next March, which cost a fortune and are also for the front row of the stalls.  I shall have to ring up on Monday and see if I can sort it out.  I feel that the experience will be singularly frustrating.  I am stocking up on Rescue Remedy.

The audience was full of upper middle class, over fifties, except for two children who sat next to me.  Argh! 

The over fifties rustled sweets, coughed, commented and generally carried on as if they were at home.  One man interjecting with little asides like ‘hear hear!’, in a whisper that could be heard for thirty miles around.  One woman rustled her sweetie bag so much that even the woman she was with told her off and actually forcibly removed her hand from the bag, which nearly caused a fight in itself.  The boys next to me were both mentally disabled and therefore I felt totally powerless to ask them to be quiet despite the fact that they were a bit loud and the man they were with was explaining certain bits of the play to them.  I felt that if I said anything it would be akin to punching a kitten in the face, in public. 

Then there was the seat issue.  For some reason all the seats are double seats and so you are forced to share.  Our tickets meant that Andrea shared with an old lady, who luckily was very well behaved, and I shared with one of the boys.  He had this habit of kind of running on the spot repeatedly, which was nice for me, as it guaranteed a vibrating seat for the entire two hours of the performance.

All in all it was a bit pants, and the performances were mediocre.  Ayckbourn is only good when the timing and delivery are spot on, because it’s so nuanced, and it just wasn’t that sharp.  Jane Asher was good, it has to be said.  Which was surprising to me.  Fancy being good at cakes and acting.  The woman is a genius.

We treated ourselves to a nice dinner in Wagamamas to make up for the show and then proceeded to get hideously lost in Kingston town centre in the torrential rain amid the last dregs of the Christmas shoppers.  We got trapped amongst a load of market stalls and Andrea had to reverse out backwards amongst a load of suicidal pedestrians.  She was so busy avoiding killing people she scraped the car on the side of an empty stall.  Oh! It was such fun.

Then we had a two and a half hour drive home via the M25 in the pouring rain to calm our fevered nerves.

It was probably easier to go to Chile.

Still, it was lovely to see her again, and once we had decided that the events were more entertaining than the theatre we cheered up immensely.  One must take one’s pleasure where one finds it.

I am Scrooge McBastard of the Stinge Clan

I am now at that frenzied stage of Christmas planning I think they call ’the red mist’.  It’s very appropriate and festive sounding isn’t it?

I went into town today to try and finish the shopping because frankly I’ve had enough of it.  I do not want to think any more about small bits of overpriced plastic tat that are going to embed themselves in the flesh of my foot soles at four in the morning.  I do not want to buy forty quids worth of batteries for toys that whoosh and bleep and say things in a speeded up nasal whine, usually accompanied by music that wouldn’t seem out of place coming from an ice cream van.  I have three children and a husband who likes to play Guitar Hero on the Wii.  Haven’t I suffered enough?

Sportacus can kiss my stinky arse. 

And as for Hannah Montana and the whole cast of High School Musical, a lightning napalm raid seems the only way forward at this time of festive cheer.

I have tried to be sensible. I ordered gigantic amounts of things on the internet, and am now spending the bits of my life where I’m not scrubbing toilets or children or pans, hovering by the postbox waiting for people who want me to sign things in exchange for boxes of things.  I am then attempting to stack them tetris like in layers where they won’t be noticed by the children.  This is, of course, a futile exercise.  They are now hyper excited by the giant wall of brown cardboard that is currently bisecting the study and blocking any natural light that had managed to squeeze its way through the bookshelves.

Talking of things, I was in some kind of ‘gifte shoppe’ today, driven there purely out of desperation, when I saw a kind of laminated tile on a stick, bearing the legend: ‘The Best Things in Life are not Things,’ picked out in carved, Romanesque lettering and tasteful gold leaf. I thought this was kind of ironic, as I am sure there is no other way to describe a laminated tile on a stick, other than as a ‘thing’.

By this morning I had got to those last people on the list where I simply couldn’t imagine what they would want for Christmas, but I knew they would be sending things to me, and therefore I must reciprocate in some way.

The previous few years I have insisted that we not swap presents with friends and their children.  I am happy to do birthdays but Christmas is just overwhelming in every conceivable way, and I couldn’t imagine that children with rooms fulls of presents were going to be lying awake at nights weeping over my failure to buy them something I had intuited wrongly that they might like.  This year a number of my friends have gotten ahead of me and announced the impending arrival of gifts/treats while we are still in the wrong month, and now I feel obligated to return the favour.  I am not thrilled.  I have rung round remaining lazy friends and like the Scrooge McBastard I truly am, announced that I am not doing presents and if they feel bad about it, that’s too bad.  Mainly I think they felt relieved.  I hope so.

The fact that I was buying  grudge presents did not lighten my mood this morning.  Nor did the crowds, or the cold or the fact that I have stomach cramps.  Or the fact that my mum was supposed to be coming with me so that we could chat and then run away for lunch at Carluccios, but then she ended up falling over thanks to an ear infection and the game was scratched at the last moment.  I was all alone and wildly fed up.

I rotated round several shops for what seemed like days, putting things in baskets and taking them out of baskets and pulling my hair out and bleeding five pound notes out of every orifice.  By twelve I had absolutely had enough of buying meaningless gifts that will undoubtedly be either lost, broken or given to a charity shop/someone else.  I bailed out and treated myself to a taxi home.

There are still a few people unpresented, hovering around at the bottom of the list.  These poor people are actually mostly in Jason’s family, so I do not feel that it is unreasonable to suggest that he buys them.  Yep. He can do it.  I cannot go on.  I have lost the will to be festive, and it wasn’t terribly strong in the first place.  I fear enforced jollity at the best of times, and this is not the best of times.

Testing, testing…

Apologies for my failure to post yesterday. I was in temporary meltdown thanks to driving related trauma.

I went to see the hypnotherapist on Wednesday night. I actually allowed myself to be hypnotised, which is impressive in itself, as it is something I have been borderline phobic about for years.  It was fine, but it obviously stirred a lot of stuff up as I came home and had one of the worst night’s sleep I’ve had in a long, long time.  Consequently my driving lesson on Thursday morning was fairly disastrous, mainly because I was sleep deprived.  It wasn’t anything major that I did wrong, it was just tens of small things, repeatedly.  I drove like an idiot.

In retrospect I should have cancelled the lesson and gone back to bed, but I am so paranoid about not doing the lessons and people thinking I’m wimping out, or just simply never doing another lesson again because I’ve let myself off the hook and started a trend, I did it.

Then in the afternoon I booked my theory test.  For next Friday.  NEXT FRIDAY.

I was going to do it after Christmas.  But the hypnotherapist suggested I just get it out of the way.  I knew that once I’d booked it and paid for it I would do the work, so I did as she suggested. 

Readers, it was tragic.  It was tragic how much effort I had to put in to book that test.  If I were Superman, the keyboard would have been kryptonite.  My hands were shaking so much filling in the form, I had to retype my own name because I spelled it wrong.  Then when it had confirmed the test and payment, I burst into floods of tears. Then I calmed down.  Then when Jason rang half an hour later, I burst into floods of tears again.

It’s not that I’m frightened of doing the test.  I don’t mind exams for some reason.  And I usually do well in them.  It’s what the test means that is freaking the living crap out of me.  What it means is that I am one step nearer having to drive around in a car, alone, or worse, with the children.

I got so distressed about this last night that I convinced myself that I will never be free of this.  I decided that I clearly have such major issues with it that it is never going to go away, no matter what I do, and that I’m just torturing myself for no reason.

I do not like to fail.  When I have made my mind up to do something I generally do it.  I should be able to do this.  I CAN actually do this. I am perfectly competent at it.  Everyone agrees.  Unfortunately my screaming, miserable fear that paralyses me, does not.

I decided that the hypnotherapy wasn’t working.  It was making me worse. I was wildly unhappy, because not only is it costing lots of money to do all this driving and therapy and shit, but it’s upsetting me while it’s costing me.

Then Jason pointed out:

• Up to this point the hypnotherapy has clearly been having a positive effect on the driving
• That I have been hanging on to this fear for so long, that even with the hypnotherapy it’s probably not going to magically disappear overnight.
• That it’s always darkest before the dawn, and that it’s probably a sign that things are going to start to improve, very soon.
• That I have been threatening to book my theory test for months now and finding ways to put it off, and yet I book my test the day after a major session of hypnosis, even if it did stress me out to the point where I nearly swallowed a filling.
• That it’s going to be fine.

I said: ‘Yes, but, well…..’ and dissolved into a giant heap of snot and floods of tears (again, againety gain)

At which point he said: ‘Ah, babes,’

And gave me a cuddle, and let me wipe my nose on my sleeve because going to the bathroom was too far.

And he’s right about all those things as well.

And that is why I love him.

We Don’t Have to be Sheep

Oscar: ‘Mama! There is a concert at nursery.’

Me: ‘Is there? That’s nice. Are you going to be in it?’

Oscar: (looking crestfallen) ‘Yes.’

Me: ‘What are you going to be?’

Oscar: (looking mutinous) ‘I DON’T WANT TO BE A SHEEP’

Me: ‘Oh! What do you want to be?’

Oscar: ‘I told them. I told them I wanted to be a CHEF and they said NO! They said I would LIKE being a SHEEP.  BUT I DON’T WANT TO BE A SHEEP.’

Me: (slightly puzzled) ‘Did you mean that you wanted to be a shepherd?’

Oscar: (Incredulous at how utterly stupid I am. Possibly as stupid as the people at nursery) NO! I WANT TO BE A CHEF. But they won’t let me.’

Me: ‘Ah! But I don’t think there is a chef in that Christmas story Oscar, which is probably why they made you be a sheep.’

Oscar: ‘I don’t CARE. I don’t like sheep.  I like CHEFS.’

I can’t say I blame him.  And the mutiny continues.

He hates dressing up at the best of times.  I’d like to see them wrestle him into a sheep costume when he has his heart set on Chef’s whites.  That could be a play all on its own.

A Cautionary Tale: With Gnomes

We must first take an important lesson from that venerable folk tale: ‘The Three Little Pigs’.  That lesson is not: ‘Never trust anything with a hairy snout,’ or ‘Pigs should stay firmly in their sty or in a packet of Danish bacon where they belong.’  No.  It is that more fundamental truth: ‘Never trust a shonky builder.’

Then I shall tell you a new tale.  A variation on the old chestnut, but with the same moral.

You may recall that I have mentioned in previous posts about the children’s grandmother encouraging them to believe that her garden is being slowly but surely infested by real, live, honest to goodness gnomes? 

Well, in my last post I informed you that winter had been thrust upon us by the sure and certain date of the gnome’s yearly hibernation, as laid down by Tilly, who claims to be an expert in all things gnome.

The gnome hibernation house was duly built with more forethought than the Big Brother house, but considerably less skill.  Gnome food was made in copious quantities and the children gathered round to bid the gnomes farewell until the spring.

Unfortunately, when we visited granny’s house a couple of weekends ago we found this sight:

Gnome devastation.

Some particularly ruthless weather had blown the house over and beaten it to a mostly sodden pulp.  There were large sections of house all over the garden. 

The gnomes had been forced to awaken from their winter repose and leg it to the shelter of the verandah, where they were patiently waiting, along with their guardian eagles, Leera and Sissy, to be rehomed:

There was a great deal of lamentation followed by heated debate.  Tallulah opined that Tilly’s house had been shoddy and a bit rubbish and refused to have anything to do with building a new house along the same lines as the old one.  I have to say that I agree with her, although I didn’t mention it at the time.  It has long been my contention that along with straw and sticks, cardboard is a particularly poor building material for constructing dwellings in this climate.  I have suggested this in earlier years, only to be brutally rebuffed for being negative. 

This year I did not say anything. I merely looked, ‘in that way’, I expect this was why bubble wrap was employed, as a sop to the idiot parent.  Much good it did her.

Eventually the Gnomean People’s Front split from the Peoples Front for the Gnomes and they agreed to separate off and create their own, separate dwelling places.

So there.

Here is Tallulah’s preferred way of keeping her gnomes:

It is even less ideal than a cardboard box wrapped in bubble wrap as a protection against the vagaries of the weather.  It does however, prevent the gnomes escaping and going to employ some more competent builders.  Fair play.

Tilly is still hankering after cardboard.  She can think of no finer building material in the universe, despite years worth of evidence to the contrary. 

Unfortunately for her, even granny refused to supply her with more cardboard and suggested that the gnomes remain huddled on the verandah while Tilly has a major rethink over the housing project.

And this is where they remain.  Under Leera’s beady gaze:

And Sissy’s baleful glare:

Until such time as Tilly sees fit to relinquish her dreams of cardboard cities in the sky and learns how to mix concrete.

In the meantime I am thinking of starting a ‘Save The Gnomes’ charity in order to fund the purchase of a teepee and some toasting forks. 

All donations gratefully received.  Blanket squares, Red Cross Parcels, tiny life rafts in case of flooding.

Even in the midst of chaos new gnomes are flooding to the site, refugees from areas which are worst hit:

Granny informs me that she has given succour to two new inhabitants.  Apparently they’d heard about the eagles.  They’re a big draw.

We could be infested by Christmas.

Accidents will happen.

Oscar has had a couple of spectacular accidents today.  This morning as he was rushing for his third helping of breakfast fruit (have I learned anything from the pear incident of Friday? No, I haven’t) he swung the lounge door and trapped his little toe between the bottom of the door and the floor.  The howling was indescribable. 

He took a large chunk out of the side of his toe, and it swelled rather spectacularly. I did speculate at one stage that he may have broken it.  I considered rushing to A&E and then thought: ‘Meh. They don’t do anything with broken toes anyway’ (unless they are so broken you’re sweeping them up with a dustpan and brush, obv.), so I chucked some arnica down him, gave him a bath in tepid water with lavender oil in and yakked him a party ring to stop him squealing.  Half an hour later all was well.

I did, of course, take the time honoured route of parents everywhere, which was right in the middle of his wailing to announce in superior tones: ‘That’ll teach you to play with doors now won’t it?’  I just could not help myself.  It was as if I was programmed to say it.  I thought about it and was very grateful that he was in too much pain to turn around, punch me squarely on the chin and say: ‘Take that you sanctimonious old prig!’ 

Let’s face it.  We only say these things because these people are smaller than us.  We wouldn’t say it to our grandmothers or to Hulk Hogan, ‘Now that will teach you to take up fake wrestling as a career now won’t it?’ SMACK!  Just because it’s true doesn’t mean it’s o.k. to rub their noses in it, specially if their noses are squirting blood like a geyser.

Later on this evening he managed to trap the flesh on his cheek (his face cheek people. Honestly) in a toy cash register he was playing with.  Don’t ask me how? I have no idea.  I was in the same room as him and I still don’t know.  One minute he was playing beautifully with the cash register and I was congratulating myself on the fact that he was being lovely and not trying to macerate it or obliterate it, the next minute he was shrieking like a banshee and displaying an enormous red welt under his right eye.

Who could have predicted that eh?  You may think that Health and Safety officers are just disgruntled Nazi’s with no outlet or friends, but then something like this happens and you realise what a death trap your own home truly is.  Tsk.

I got into trouble this time because I had difficulty consoling him in a suitably woeful manner because I was laughing too much.  This time I nearly did get a punch in the chin.  But frankly he asked for that one.

I have undoubtedly talked about the following incidents before, but I am creatively a husk at the moment and you must either pardon me or go away until I come up with something new to say.

It made me think about some of the more bizarre injuries I have sustained or inflicted upon myself  during the long, grey  years of my childhood.  To whit:

• sticking a crayon pencil in my mouth sideways, turning it the right way up and wedging it between my tongue and my palette.  This memory was useful when I came to eyeing up a snooker ball and wondering if I could get the whole thing in my mouth because it was so satisfyingly smooth and shiny and resembled an apple, but better.  The lord really does work in mysterious ways.
• My brother giving me a manicure and jabbing one of the manicure tools down into the bed of my thumbnail.  Unfairly I was not allowed to eviscerate him, and even got into trouble for smacking him repeatedly, despite the fact that the thumb went septic.  I got my own back sticking a stick between the spokes of his front wheel as he was cycling round the drive several years later. Revenge is indeed a dish best eaten cold.  The look on his face as he sailed over the handlebars was worth every moment of pus filled agony.
• Playing shaving like daddy using a toy fire engine.  It was one of those toys which you pulled back to make it go forward on its own.  As I was merrily shaving away, the back axle went into overdrive and wound a huge clump of my hair round it, whereupon it ‘drove’ up the side of my head and embedded itself in my scalp.  My mother had to cut the hair away with a razor blade while I screamed the place down.  Then she made me go to school with a giant, jagged bald spot, as a lesson.  Nice.
• Getting a bit carried away with an entire packet of chewing gum and managing to cover myself in it to such an extent that my mother ended up having to stand me in the bath, cover me with butter, and scrape me all over with a kitchen knife.  Naturally, I screamed the place down.  I also vaguely recall having to have some more hair cut out.
• Learning to ride my bicycle and only realising when I had been round and round the drive 9,000 times and was beginning to feel really sea sick, that nobody had told me how to stop.  I eventually got so dizzy I spiralled horribly out of control and rode my bike into a Christmas tree which I then slithered down.
• Deciding that I was going to to be an archaeologist whilst out on a walk with my family.  I found a large, earthenware pot in a field (all of 3 months old), and stuck it in a carrier bag which I swung victoriously as I walked down the road.  I swung it so victoriously that the bag reared up behind me, and attacked the back of my head with the full force of a large, earthenware pot travelling at speed.  I fell over and burst into tears.  Everyone else fell over, mainly because they were laughing so much.  I believe my grandmother actually fell into a ditch because she could not see where she was going from laughing so much.
• Deciding that I didn’t like my sideburns and that nobody would notice if I shaved them off.  Nobody would have if I hadn’t actually given myself an Al Pacino style scar across one cheek in the process and got into trouble for bleeding over the towels and blunting dad’s razor.
• Using the stairs as a kind of ski run and sliding down them on a giant stuffed snake which my dad gave me for my first birthday (It was terrifying. It was still bigger than me at the time of this incident and I was eight.  What was the man thinking of?)  I wiped out at the bottom and managed to tumble headfirst down the last few steps and somehow get my foot, which wasn’t following me very well, wedged sideways in the radiator at the bottom of the stairs.
• Playing a game at school which involved using someone’s belt as a kind of swing affair. Someone would hold one end and spin the other person who was holding the other end round and round.  The person I was with let go of the belt and the belt buckle embedded itself in my forehead, where it stuck, quivering.  One of the dinner ladies had to pull it out. It made a popping sound and I had a hole in my forehead for quite a while.  I was, naturally, a minor celebrity.
• Allowing two so called ‘friends’ at school to hold me face down in the air and swing me.  They picked me up and dropped me, on purpose, to see what would happen (perhaps inadvertent revenge for the stick in the spokes thing).  What happened was my forehead split open and I ended up with bits of asphalt stuck in it.  I had some spectacular scarring.

I guess I should be grateful that it was only a cheek in a cash register really.

Meh with a hint of Meh – I’m all out of amusing

Weirdly, despite my predictions of plague and pestilence regarding Oscar yesterday, apart from me having to administer Calpol at one this morning, he slept the rest of the night through and woke up looking pale, but otherwise fine.  No temperature, no spots, no vomiting.  No green skin and mysterious head swivelling.  It never does to dismiss possession out of hand until one has gathered all the evidence.

He is still off his food, which is not like him, but he has been full of beans and bounce otherwise.  I don’t really understand it.  It’s like he started to get sick and then thought: ‘Nah! Just can’t be bothered.  I think I’ll watch Ben Ten instead.’ Children remain a complete and utter mystery to me.  The more time I spend with them, the more I find myself doing that staring at the ceiling in amazement while shaking my head in puzzlement thing.  The international language of ‘What the fuck was that about then, eh?’

Still.  Hooray for lack of vomit.  We love lack of vomit.  We dream of vomit free days in the sun.

I had been all geared up for more Casualty and screaming and it was all a bit bang and whimperish.  This meant that by half ten I was still in my pyjamas and hadn’t quite gotten round to finishing my breakfast.  I was too concerned about where the illness had gone.  Is it in the cupboard under the stairs? No!  Is it lurking in the U-bend? No idea, and I’m not looking.  It was all very mystifying, so I kept lurking about staring at Oscar and asking him how he felt, and prodding him.  He was heartily sick of the sight of me after half an hour or so of this bizarre behaviour.  Mummy dressed as a giant bush, creeping up on him and poking him with boiled sticks.  So when my friend texted me to say she was utterly miserable and hated everything and life was pooh, and I suggested we go round to cheer her up, she and Oscar jumped at the chance.  Oscar in the hope of the crowd effect taking some of the pressure off him, and her because even me and Oscar were better than sitting weeping into the bottom of a tea cup.  Not much admittedly, but expectations were low.

It was her birthday bless her.  I arrived late and presentless (having not known it was her birthday, in my defence), having got lost, and also realising that it would not be appropriate to turn up in my pyjamas and that I really ought to get changed.  Plus, Oscar was investigating.   While we were sorting out his toys yesterday we found his magnifying glass.  So naturally he has been doing quite a lot of investigating.  On the way to my friend’s house he spent quite a lot of time looking for the gang of vampires he swore had scribbled some graffitti on a wall.  I explained that vampires didn’t come out in the day time because they burst into flames and disappeared into a heap of greasy ash on the floor.  He thought this was brilliant, but remained determined that he was going to find one anyway.  Presumably a retarded one that hadn’t read the memo and would appear just in time for Oscar to spot him looking evil with his spray can before he went up with a whoosh.

This is why a ten minute walk ended up taking over half an hour.  We do know how to fanny about.  We could probably turn it into some kind of olympic event.

We had a nice time eating biscuits and Oscar was delighted that he could evade my evil doctoring ways and get on with being a small boy on a mission.  In fact we had such a nice time, we forgot to go home and ended up getting a lift to school.  Hooray for our side.  Especially hooray because yet again the weather has been vile and by this time it was bucketing it down.

When we got home I was buoyed by the success of getting Oscar’s toys all sorted, so I explained to the girls about my plan of tidying and sorting their things so that Santa would have room for their new presents. Like Oscar they were very enthusiastic. I sent them away to do it.  The enthusiasm waned almost instantly.  I cooked tea, fed them and went for a driving lesson, and when I got back at 7.30 p.m. they were still tidying, sullenly. Ah well, at least I got an hour away from it all.  Jason was pulling his beard out by the time I got back. 

We are still in the death throes now.  I wish we had never started.  I have about three broken toys in a box for the charity shop.  Tallulah, to be fair to her, was most diligent and worked really hard.  Tilly has been Kevin and Perry personified.  On the other hand, they swapped roles at dinner time, which is how come Tallulah got so much more done than Tilly because she didn’t have the inconvenience of eating her tea to get in the way.  She started to kick up a fuss about the quality of her dinner so I asked her to get down and sent her away.  It was so liberating.  No fuss, no tantrums, no fighting.  No dinner.  Hooray.

And that’s it folks. I know I still owe you gnome update with pictures.  I will get around to it, I promise.  It will be much more interesting than this Archers style entry, but this is all I have today.  And now I must go and be philosophical about children’s poetry.

I’m going to put the kettle on and break out more biscuits.  One can always be much more philosophical with a biscuit.  Or a pipe.  I don’t smoke, so it’s biscuits all the way.

The Beauty of Boventry

I couldn’t sleep last night and I didn’t have my usual tolerance for reading.  I kept reading a page of one book and then putting it down, picking up another and then putting it down. I was feeling twitchy.  In those circumstances the best thing to do is get up and watch some mindless television. 

Usually this is what I do.  Unfortunately, despite having access to hundreds of channels of dreadful television, there was nothing that I could stomach.  I have very strict rules about just how dreadful a dreadful television show can be and whether I can actually face watching it.  Nothing matched up to my exacting criteria and I found myself watching something I had Sky Plussed from about a fortnight ago.  It was a Timewatch special about the bombing of Coventry during the Second World War.

I love a good war.  I’m not interested in modern warfare. It’s too antiseptic and has far too much to do with flash technology and showing off four thousand ways to make someone’s life miserable using sand.  I’m particularly interested in the First and Second World Wars, and have been known to sidestep into Vietnam on occasion. 

I’m not sure why I find them so fascinating, because I would hate to fight in one and generally believe that they are ludicrous, pointless, and could all have been solved with a little less chest beating and testosterone and a lot more tea and cakes.   Anyway, I do, and as Coventry is only about twenty miles away and I’ve been there countless times, I was particularly interested in this programme.

Coventry, for those of you who have not had the great misfortune to go there, is one of the ugliest cities in Britain.  It didn’t used to be.  It started life as a prosperous Medieval town, thanks to a thriving wool trade, and many of the original and extraordinarily beautiful buildings were still standing until the Germans smashed them into teeny, tiny bits and then set them on fire. 

So much of Coventry was destroyed during the bombing, over 50% of its civilian housing and 25% of its industry, and so many people were left with nowhere to live, that something had to be done pronto once the war had ended.  Hence the appalling public toilet municipal architecture which sprawls greyly over the city like a permanent fog.

It has one of the worst ring roads in the world, with the possible exception of Swindon and Milton Keynes, and not even a jolly statue of Lady Godiva with her kit off on the back of a horse can do much to cheer it up. It is just horrible, and even though it has an Ikea in the city centre, I still cannot bring myself to go there very often.

There is one exceptional thing that makes it worth going to though, and that is the cathedral.

On the night of 14th November 1940 the Luftwaffe started their blitzkrieg on Coventry.  The reason they picked Coventry, by the way, is that it was a centre for automotive production and most of the factories had been given over to the war effort, producing hundreds of planes for the RAF. It was a prime military target.  Unfortunately most of the factories were mixed in amongst the regular houses in the city, which was why the damage that night was so extensive.

First they dropped tons of incendiary bombs.  These were dropped in order to set fires all over the city and put such a strain on the fire brigade that they would not be able to put them out quickly enough to be effective.  The bombs they used exploded in a shower of bits of molten metal which were white hot and scattered out like dandelion clocks, setting fire to everything they landed on.  The city started to burn, which meant that its visibility as a target was much clearer for the enemy planes overhead.  The narrow Medieval streets, particularly in the middle of the city, meant that the fire could spread across the street as well as from building to building. One of the eyewitnesses spoke about a man who had two shops, one on each side of the road.  As she watched, they both caught fire simultaneously and within minutes the flames were so high they arched over and met in the middle of the street.

After the initial incendiary bombs came the bomb, bombs.  As well as on the industrial targets these were also dropped on places like water works, gas works, etc, so that the emergency services were hampered doing their jobs.  Bombs were also deliberately dropped on the roads to make them impassable.  Over five hundred tons of explosives were dropped in one night, on one city.  Amazingly the figures suggest only about 560 people died.

Apparently the sky glowed red and the city could be seen burning from the South coast.  Coventry is in the East Midlands.  We are the farthest point from the sea in the whole country.  To get to the South coast from Coventry is about 150 miles. 

When I was a child I lived in a small village, about eight miles away from Leicester.  One school project involved us researching the history of the place we lived.  I interviewed an old lady who had lived in our village all her life.  I asked her about her most vivid memories of living there and she told me about standing in the field at the back of her house on the night of 14 November and watching Coventry burn.  I cannot even begin to imagine what it was like.

The cathedral was five hundred years old.  It was hit several times during the night and all but the outside walls were destroyed.  Someone told me that the lead on the roof was so hot it liquified and ran onto the ground.  One eyewitness on the programme had been absolutely fine talking about her experiences until she spoke about the cathedral burning and then she just broke down. It was immensely moving.

Afterwards, when the people of Coventry were picking up the pieces of their lives and rebuilding their city, a decision was made to build a new cathedral, right next door to the old one.  It is an amazing building.  If you haven’t been, you should make the time to go.  I am not a great believer in organised religion, but it is one place I think God would definitely hang out, should he exist.

When they were clearing the rubble from the original cathedral, a workman found two of the iron nails that had been in the Medieval roof beams. They were lashed together to form a cross.  This was used to form what is known as The Community of the Cross of Nails. Its role is to emphasise peace and reconciliation.  A similar cross was given to cathedrals in Kiel, Berlin and Dresden after the war when they were rebuilding their own churches and communities.

Although what happened in Coventry was horrendous, the programme was scrupulously fair in pointing out that we took a lesson from the Germans and developed their ideas of blitzkreig with such enthusiasm that in Dresden, when we did the same thing to them, we killed 55,000 people.  It puts it into perspective rather.

Anyway, back to the cathedral.

The cathedral itself, is, in my opinion, quite an ugly building from the outside:

This is the side view, which you see from the street as you come to it.  To the left, out of the picture, is the ruin of the old cathedral, which has been made safe and you can now walk around.

No, the amazing things about the new cathedral are mostly on the inside, although I have always had a soft spot for the sculpture which you can see on the outside wall.  It’s St Michael kicking the devil’s arse, (not Bishop Brennan after all) and is by Jacob Epstein, one of my favourite sculptors.

At the front of the building is the most spectacular window, which is called The Screen of Saints and Angels and is 70ft high and 45ft wide.  It is made up of panels of glass on which the most beautifully spiky angels are etched.  I cannot find a photograph to do it justice.  You really have to see it.  It’s breathtaking.  They have no colour at all and they just look like they’ve floated there, like feathers or snow flakes.

Inside, the rest of the stained glass windows are kind of fluted into the walls so that you have to stand at certain angles to catch them in the light.  Mostly abstract and just made of these impressionist panes of jewel coloured glass, the sun slants through and lays giant shafts of gleaming coloured light across the interior spaces.

The walls are full of paintings and sculptures from countries all over the world even down to tiny wooden mice that are carved into some of the chair legs.  All of these people worked together to rebuild this cathedral as a symbol of community and peace. It’s quite awe inspiring.

It just shows you what happens when you drop 500 tons of explosives on people. 

It makes me feel quietly hopeful.

A Pair of Pears

My son hasn’t had a particularly good weekend all things considered. 

He’s currently upstairs snoring and heating an entire floor of the house via the power of his body heat.  He is not well.  What it is that is not well about him, apart from his obsessive need for me to read ‘The Tale of Two Bad Mice,’ and his temperature, is unclear. Probably all will be revealed on the morrow. Not something I’m particularly looking forward to, it has to be said.  Although realistically, ‘the morrow’ will be at four in the morning and almost inevitably include vomit, should things go to the normal timetable for the sick child in the house accompanied by wearied, befuddled parents.

Then, on Friday, I poisoned him slightly.  With a pear. Yes. A pear.  Or more precisely, a pair of pears.

He came home from nursery starving hungry and demanding fruit.  He does this a lot.  He’s never going to get scurvy.  He is 40% fruit bat in his genetic makeup.  The other 60% is Jason.  I didn’t get a look in.  I was merely the receptacle.

I asked him what he wanted and he said, ‘a pear’.  I duly cut up the pear, gave it him in a bowl, and he trotted off to smear it over the furniture in the lounge.  I gave it no further thought. My friend was over for dinner and we were onto our second cup of tea.  About twenty minutes later he came in demanding another pear.  I chopped it up, gave it to him and carried on.  Two pears didn’t seem excessive to me.  I’ve seen him eat three bananas in a row to no ill effect, and he can go through a pound of grapes on the way back from the Co-op, and it’s only a ten minute walk.

Just as tea was on the table he announced that he had tummy ache.  I took him to the toilet.  He did his business.  All fine and dandy.  We went back to the table.  Two minutes later, he needed the toilet again. This time it was much speedier.  In fact his exact words were: ‘That was a fast one!’ in tones of triumph.  And so it went on, half a dozen times.  My dinner went cold. We developed OCD from washing our hands.

On about the fifth go round my friend shouted: ‘I bet it was the pears!’ 

Oscar shouted back: ‘No. It looks like pumpkin soup!’

Too much information…

Anyway.  He was fine shortly thereafter, which probably proves the point that it was indeed the pears.  And that I have no moral high ground, as I was interrupted just as I was telling my friend about how a woman in the same ward as me when I had Tallulah, ate an entire fruit basket whilst breast feeding her diabetic new born and then wondered why the child had to be taken up to special care because his sugar levels were insanely high.

Bad parent.

Mea culpa.

Still, I know what to do now should he ever be in need of a wee bit of coaxing in the bowel department. Sod prunes, pears for the win.

Buy, Buy, Buy…

I am in the process of panic buying Christmas presents.  It’s all a bit heady.  It’s much easier panic buying Christmas presents on the internet than it is rushing about in real life.  Thank God for the power of technology.

 I think I have sort of got most of the things the girls want, except a purple cardigan for Matilda.  She is always asking for obscure cardigan related gifts.  You may recall my last fashion based present trauma where she wanted a red cardigan in June.  I am doing my best.  I think it is unhealthy for a ten year old girl to be that into cardigans.  Nevertheless I shall try, and thank my lucky stars that she doesn’t want an off the shoulder lycra body con top in neon stripes or some other thing which makes her look like a dwarf harlot.  She looks more like Anne from the Famous Five.  I keep expecting her to present me with a hard boiled egg wrapped in a handkerchief and a piece of seed cake.

I am in the process of trying to buy Oscar a rocking horse, which is what he declares he wants.  Given the drum situation, where he didn’t change his mind for the entire six months of me asking, I am expecting he is pretty firm on the rocking horse front too.  I cannot afford a real rocking horse, which is good because I don’t like them.  I don’t like the fact that they are expensive and safe. You know the ones I mean, the ones with a sort of harness style attachment that stops you going too fast? What’s the point of that?  Nope, I like the really old fashioned ones with the big, curved rockers on the bottoms.  The ones that are really dangerous and will break your neck should you become over enthusiastic. Much like the real thing. 

These ones:

Naturally, these are the most expensive, short of having an actual horse.  Although I was quite tempted by these:

There is a woman who breeds these miniature horses about ten minutes drive from our house.  She’s always advertising them on big placards at the side of the road, and you can see them through the fence. They are smaller than Shetland ponies, and even I, disliker of equines in general, think they are cute.  It’s just something about miniaturising stuff I guess.  The thing that puts me off, apart from their teeth and the fact that they undoubtedly have bad tempers (all small things do. Just look at Hitler. He was only 3 feet tall), is that they probably crap as much as a regular sized horse, and it would be yours truly shovelling pooh from dawn till dusk.

I am currently trying to buy him one of these:

Which are not only hysterically brilliant and amusing, but you can buy a base which turns them into a rocking horse.  I love them. They are made of some strange rubberised material and you can ping about on them.  I actually had a go on one, many moons ago, and thought they were fab.  They are also considerably cheaper.  The horse, plus the rocking base comes to about forty quid instead of four hundred quid.  Nice one.  He also wants a large water pistol.  He can dream on.  There are some things I do draw the line at.

We did a bit more shopping for lounge accoutrements today.  We went to my other shop of choice, T.K. Maxx.  I thought we were quite clever on the old lamp front.  We haven’t found a single standard lamp we can both live with up to this point. Not one we can afford anyway.  So we have bought a rather nice deep heather purple coloured lampshade with grey foliage on it.  It looks lovely.  I bought a throw which has the same colours in it and is made of a loose weave chenille.  I love it, but I accept the fact that it will be wrecked once the children have worked out how to poke their fingers through the weave and pull.  Jason didn’t love it, but didn’t seem to be quite so dismissive, snuggled under it with Oscar watching Indiana Jones this afternoon.  He is coming round to it.

I am very pleased with this new colour choice. It complements the bland notes of the room remarkably well and has the dramatic edge I want, but isn’t too in your face.  It’s quite a feat.

We are currently in negotiations over a rug. I like it.  He’s a bit ‘meh’.  I will win.  He just has to bring himself round to the idea.

We were going to do more, but Oscar was not well, so we came home.  He didn’t want his breakfast this morning, which is unusual.  He was fairly lively if a little pale, so we set out on our voyage of interior decoration.  Things got more serious when I asked him if he wanted to go and look at the toy department in T.K. Maxx as a reward for being so good while we stared at fabric.  He said no.

We immediately laid him on the floor and checked his vitals. I borrowed a glass from the homeware department and ran it over his stomach just in case.  He was fine, just hot.  We were so shocked by the refusal at the chance to play we took him home anyway.

He has eaten a banana, half a packet of Quavers and a square of chocolate all day.  He has spent all afternoon on the sofa half heartedly watching the television.  He went to bed without a murmur.  He says he feels fine. He is just hot. Hmmm. We shall see.

We were very mean and took advantage of his lethargy by clearing out his toys while he was too feeble to protest.  We managed to get rid of four dustbin bags full of stuff, including clothes, shoes, coats, and older baby stuff we had stored in the garage.  We have given it all to Jason’s friends who are currently expecting their first child.  They professed themselves delighted.  Not as delighted as me to have gotten rid of it.  Plus, I expect they won’t be quite so delighted when they’ve looked through it and thought: ‘What the bloody hell are we going to do with all that lot?’

Jason is out with some friends, Oscar is sleeping (for how long, is the question?), the girls are at their dad’s until tomorrow. Now should be the perfect start time for my new lot of study material.  Or I could do what I’ve done for the last two nights, and read trash instead.  I’m going away to finish paying for a rocking horse and wrestle with my conscience.