Random Outpourings

Today there was more driving. It was disastrous.  I tried to build on yesterday’s success with the drugs, and convince myself that the calmness I achieved could be accessed by the power of my mind alone.  This turned out to be blatant rubbish. Hence me snivelling in Waitrose car park while Jason and the children went in and bought Green and Black’s dark chocolate ice  cream to tempt me back into the driving seat and home where bowls and spoons awaited us.  I shall just have to accept that the drugs are a useful crutch, albeit a temporary one, and get on with it.

In the mean time I am creeping forward with my studies, despite the fact that my heart, and head, are just not in it.  I have been disciplined and chipped away at a little each day. I will start the actual essay writing tomorrow, and I hope that forcing myself to focus on this stress it will take my mind off all the other stresses.  I want it in by Saturday at the latest.  I then have plans to research and write the next essay in a fortnight.  It may sound unrealistic, but the next essay is about picture books. I have already read and studied both of the books before and so it is not beyond the realms of possibility.  If I can do that I have then given myself three weeks to write the next essay.  After that the plan goes a bit pear shaped.  I have a four thousand word assignment instead of an exam. It has to be in by May 28th.  I am going on holiday from 25th March to 29th April. I cannot see how I am going to get it written before I go away.  But I figure if I can get the reading and planning done before I go away, I can still go on holiday with no academic books to read, and get it written and in in the month left after I get back.  This is feasible, no?  This is what I am telling myself anyway.

Amidst all this personal angst, Jason has developed the world’s most grotesque man cold and is trailing about in his dressing gown leaving clumps of snot encrusted tissue hither and yon in the manner of a particularly vile ticker tape parade.  He has the trots from drinking fourteen gallons of orange juice, and can only sleep propped up on pillows, which then give him a cricked neck.  Despite this he has helped Tallulah to learn how to count in twenty five’s, which is not half as easy as this sentence makes out.  He should definitely be awarded some kind of medal for patience above and beyond the call of duty.  Just listening to it was excruciating.  He has also nursed me through my driving hysteria and put up with me weeping all over his dressing gown.

I have helped Oscar with his nursery homework, which consists of recognising and drawing oval shapes.  He was particularly taken with the idea of chocolate eggs and had to be persuaded, after having drawn fifty seven of them, that there may well be other things in the world which are also oval shaped, although admittedly, not half so exciting.

We have played with the flash cards which I demonstrated in an earlier post.  We derived much satisfaction from creating surreal storylines and seeing who could make the others laugh the most.  Oscar’s approach is novel.  If he doesn’t like your sentence, he sweeps all before him, shouting ‘Nooooo!’ and scattering the cards to the winds.  If he does like it, he grabs the juiciest words, holding them clasped to his bosom and refuses to relinquish them.  It is quite trying, and I can see why most novelists do not use the cut and paste approach to writing, nor have a small, fierce boy as their editor.  Eventually we were left with the words ‘fish, apple’, which he didn’t care two hoots about one way or the other.  I feel that publishers are unlikely to be starting a bidding war over it.  And my career as a top flight novelist stalls in the starting blocks once more.

In other news, I have discovered a Simon Schama audio CD which is actually read by Simon Schama.  It is something to do with slavery and America. I don’t really know. I don’t really care.  I renewed my search for audio Simon after having fallen asleep to two different episodes of A History of Britain on the telly only the night before last, and thinking that it was worth doing a little more digging, given his magical somnolent tones.  I failed to learn anything about the English Civil War or The Great Fire of London in spectacular snore-o-vision.  He is a genius. A true genius.  I await his delectable tones with marked impatience.

I am getting on particularly well with reading  for pleasure recently.  I just finished ‘Greenery Street’ by Denis MacKail, which is utterly delightful.  Another winner from Persephone Books.  It’s sort of like reading the fluff on the top of a cappuccino, delicious and untaxing.  It’s the story of Ian and Felicity Foster, upper middle class newly weds and their first year of married life in a house on London’s Greenery Street.  It is funny, charming and totally of its time.  Imagine Evelyn Waugh or Nancy Mitford, but without the sarcasm and all the wonderful social nuances left in.

And now I’m half way through Ian Rankin’s Exit Music.  It is very good, and I am very sad.  I have had this book for over two years now, and have been putting off reading it because it is the last ever Inspector Rebus book and I don’t want them to end. I love Rebus and have read him from the very beginning.  I don’t feel I can put the end off any longer because there is new Rankin afoot.  I am hoping that it will be as good.  My heart tells me it won’t be.  I am hoping that reading my first Henning Mankell which is on my bedside table, might take the sting away a little. I hope so.

All of which has made me think that I ought to do a book post on crime fiction.  So I might.

Testing Testing

Today was the day for testing my Beta Blockers in readiness for Thursday. 

They were sorely needed. Things have not gone well on the driving front in the past forty eight hours. In fact it was safe to say that until this morning I have been hurtling down the greasy pole of ‘fucking hell’ faster than a pig in a lycra all in one.

Yesterday I had another double lesson, in which my instructor solemnly informed me that he thought we had run a red light on my Thursday morning lesson and that if the police  camera was working there would be a fine and points on my licence.  What joy. I have not even taken the test yet and already I am a criminal.  As it is, it isn’t even an exciting crime, because I have absolutely no memory of doing it at all, and the instructor never mentioned it at the end of Thursday’s lesson.  He has said that as he didn’t stop me from doing it, and thought I would make it across before the lights changed, that he will pay the fine, but I will have to take the points.

This is bad. New drivers can only get six points on their licence before they are forced to take their theory and practical driving test all over again. I am plucking my feathers out with despair.

Not only that, but he told me at the beginning of the two hour lesson. My urge to burst into hysterical tears and immolate myself with the cigarette lighter  had to be reined in for two hours while I drove round on my eyebrows in utter misery.

Then I came home and took to my new Chaise Longue. The Chaise Longue of Despair.

Did I mention how much I hate driving? I think I did somewhere, repeatedly.

So, this morning dawned bright and early, and not only did I have to go out again for more driving practice, but I had to do it in my car, with the children.

I blew the dust off the beta blockers and read the side effects, to whit:

• hallucinations
• shortness of breath
• loss of feeling in the extremities
• significantly decreased heart rate leading to possible collapse
• Agitation
• Depression

To name but a few of the jollier ones.  I could not wait.

I took them.  I sat, maudlin’, waiting for my head to explode, blood to come spurting out of my ears and the ghost of my grandfather to come looming out of the broom cupboard.

Luckily, none of these things happened.

We went driving.  We drove and drove and drove.

It was o.k. 

It was weird.

It reminded me a lot of having an anaesthetic when you go to the dentist.  You feel them tugging away at your tooth with a pair of pliers and a monkey wrench, and you know it should hurt like buggery, but it doesn’t.  Nevertheless your brain insists on running about inside your head shouting: ‘Ow! Ow! Urgh! Argh!’ and then ‘Oh! That’s odd.  Ewwww!’ and then both things simultaneously until, if you think about it too much, your head, like sage old Aunty Squirrel says, plunges into the wok of doom.

I could feel the clammy tendrils of panic swirling around in my lower portion, but then it was like a large cement block was plunged firmly on top of them so they could not transmit any more information to the rest of me.  It was mildly unnerving.

Nevertheless it worked.  And I didn’t feel tired, and I didn’t see my grandfather’s ghost, and I did not drop dead.  All of these things are jolly good.

I cannot say it was a pleasure, because that would be an utter lie.  And I cannot say that I would like to use them regularly, because it is clear that they merely create a kind of panic blockade rather than do anything whatsoever to address the root cause of my need to run round the house banging a brass gong and screaming: ‘We’re all going to die!’ in people’s faces, but for the purposes of getting me through the next week without me trying to hang myself from the steering wheel of a VW Polo, it is good.

I have a new toy

This week, when Oscar and I were out and about I came across a tatty box of Ladybird Key Words Reading Scheme Flash Cards from when I were a wee nipper.  Those of you who go back that far with me into the mists of time may remember the bourgeois upper middle class delights of Peter and Jane and their pedigree, red setter, Pat, frisking off into an endless sunset of Mary Janes, cardigans buttoned up to eleven, and shopping with mother, stopping only to chat with the local Bobby on the beat:

I loved them, so I bought them.  And ever since I have been wondering what to do with them, other than the blindingly obvious, i.e. teaching Oscar to read.

I wanted to show them to you and I wasn’t sure how best to do it. 

Today I was mucking around with the scanner and made some flash card posters, which amused me.  I shall show you:

and:

Which is like an illiterate anonymous letter to a farmer from a ‘Well Wisher’

and:

Which every man should read and inwardly digest.

Finally there is:

Which is so true it can hardly be called fiction.

I recommend it. It’s a great way to waste several hours of your time and has twice stopped me going to the chip shop/reaching for gin/thinking about where I can buy smack on a Friday afternoon before the school run.

Happy days.

A Nice Thing Happens – I Must Write It Down

I am roundly ignoring the fact that today has been utterly miserable from its inception.  I am shovelling down fudge at an obscene rate of knots, and doing the whole ‘la, la, la, I can’t hear you,’ thing when my brain insists on reminding me of just how pooh ha the day has been so far.  Before I collapse on the study floor in an insulin coma I will regale you with news of a nice thing.  An exciting thing.  A thing that is going to happen to me quite soon and which I am pleased about.

We are going on holiday.

Oh yes!

You may recall, those long suffering readers amongst you, the angst of last year’s holiday plans.  We were on a budget, we were time pressured and Jason wanted five star accommodation with a swimming pool.  We found it courtesy of the amazing Tots to Travel website and the sterling help of the ever lovely, Home Office Mum.  We had a week of riotous living in France.  It was delicious, albeit tinged with sadness, due to the fact that we had just gone through hell thanks to the unexpected death of Jason’s mother.

This year we have decided to throw caution, and budget restrictions out of the window.  We are going to Canada.  We are going for a month in April.  We are going in term time.  Tilly will have SATS as soon as she gets back.  The school will hate us.  Nursery will not be pleased.  We do not care. 

We did this two years ago, and we had a wonderful time.  We desperately wanted to do it again, but there have always been issues.  This year is really our last chance.  I do not have a problem with taking primary school children out of school, but Tilly goes to high school next year, and particularly if we get her into the high school we want, which will be a bloody miracle, it seems churlish to then remove her for large periods of time.  It will not look good.  So it’s now or never.

We are going to Vancouver Island, which is where UE’s parents settled when they first emigrated when he was 3.  His dad is now dead, but the rest of his family are there, and it means that the girls can see their granny and their aunts and uncles and cousins, some of whom are shiny and new.  It will be good.  They are nice people.  They sometimes take the children away, and we get grown up time alone.  They include Oscar too, which is wonderful.

We are renting a house.  We like to do this because we are noisy, large, messy and unpredictable. Hotels are not an environment in which we thrive.  If we rent a house for a month it is better because we don’t pay tax on it, which we would if we had it for a week or two.  We are renting a big house because we  like to spread out.  We do not consider it a holiday if we are all perched on top of each other’s heads in a beige cube and wake up every time someone farts.  We are renting this house.  It will be too cold to use the pool, but I am sure we will be alright.  There are fourteen acres of garden to play in, and it is only a ten minute walk to the beach.  I worry about the piano. I hope it has a lock.  I note there are quite a lot of wipe clean floors. This is a good thing.  It is not particularly to my taste decoratively, but then the children would destroy The Hempel, so it will be fine.

We are flying in to Seattle.  It is fifteen hundred quid cheaper to fly to Seattle than to Vancouver.  It will only take marginally longer to get from Seattle to Victoria than from Vancouver to Victoria, both journeys involving cars and boats.  We have never been to Seattle before.  We are going to stay there for two days before we head out to the Island so we  can explore.  I am excited because I can drink insane amounts of coffee all in the name of tourism.  Any tips on cool things to do with kids in Seattle gratefully received.

So, it will be good.  We will relax. We will chill out.  We will eat shitloads.  We will read lots of books.  We will do cool things with the kids, who are already polishing their buckets and spades.  My goal this year is to see a raccoon.  I will not be denied.  It’s good to have plans.

Normal Service Has Been Resumed

Sorry about falling off the blog radar yesterday chaps.  Complicated does not even begin to describe how the  day panned out.

I woke with a thumping, sinus headache which made me feel sick.  Consequently Oscar and I lounged decadently on the sofa until lunch time, he watching Diego, the foolish South American midget eco warrier and his pet jaguar (which has to be pronounced jagWAH) save some inoffensive wombats who just happened to be going about their business and did not want to be rescued I am sure.  Me lounging about trying to sleep and get in a little gentle moaning but being interrupted to comment on the finer points of wombat wrangling and having the odd book hurled at my head (Read this now mama! No mama! Be quiet now. Diego has to lick this wombat back to health).  The morning passed slowly and painfully.

At lunch time we felt rejuvenated.  I decided that I had had enough of Diego and his warrior ways and that a brisk walk would do us good.  Five minutes into our walk it started to pelt down with rain.  We took refuge in the local charity shop where I bought a white blouse for Tilly, who is going on a ‘Be a Victorian Child’ day next week and needs to dress appropriately, and take a Victorian packed lunch.  God help me.  Apparently cheese sandwiches wrapped in a tea towel and a boiled egg are acceptable.  Mmmm! Forty children wearing pantaloons, festooned with boiled eggs on a hot coach.  I’m glad I’m not helping.  It makes you look at Dairy Lea Munchables and Sunny Delight in an entirely different light.

We got home, soaked to the skin and went back to Diego and his wombats in self defence.

Jason called.  Work had had a ‘severe incident’.  This is not quite as exciting as it seems, given that he works in IT.  He wasn’t cowering under a pit prop, shoring up acres of rock with his bare shoulders.  Although I’m sure he felt that way.  All the back ups for the entire company had gone ping.  This was not good.  He was going to be home late.

I had an appointment with the hypnotherapist.  Jason usually takes me and takes care of the kids while I am there, but obviously he was too busy unpinging the things that went ping.  I would have been stressed but remembered that my parents had said that they would help out should I need them.  I called them.

They had forgotten that they were going to help out and were doing something else.  This was a nightmare.

Eventually they called back to say that they had managed to find a way to help me and do the things they needed to do and that they would be round to mine at about five.  Fantastic.

At quarter to five my parents turned up.  My dad looked like hell.  On the way over he had started with a severe migraine.  He is on some new medication and it seems to have the unfortunate side effect of giving him these intense, lightning strike migraines.  He all but collapsed on the hall floor.  Nightmare, nightmare.

We put him to bed.  Then I started calling round taxi firms to see whether I could get to the hypnotherapist.  I was due there at six. Nobody had a car free until seven. 

Jason called.  I explained the situation.  He managed to get away from work, but would be another hour, so I would be late.

I called the hypnotherapist and told her that we would have a short session.  She was fine with that.  She had no other appointments until the week after next. My driving test is next Thursday, so a short session was better than no session.

I got there at 6.45 p.m.  I got home at half past eight.  My parents were still there. My dad was still really ill.  He was too ill to go home.  They ended up staying the night.  The spare bedroom is also the study, so I could not blog.

The children were over the moon when they got up this morning and granny and grandad were at the breakfast table. They want to know if we can do it every week! The rest of us were not so keen.  It was quite an exhausting evening all things considered.

This morning I had a driving lesson.  I was fine for the first hour, drove like a hysterical muppet for the second.  It was really not good. It made me want to cry.  I think my nerves are starting to kick in big time.  I’m going to blow the dust off the beta blockers the doctor gave me and give them a test drive.  I now have a lot invested in trying to pass first time. I don’t want to have to do this again.

I got home from my lesson full of verve and vim and other things beginning with V and promptly fell asleep on the sofa until it was time to get the children from school.  I dreamed I was trying to teach Tallulah to drive.  It did not go well. Who knew?

Happy Birthday Saj

You may be surprised to know, from the title of this post,  that today is my friend Saj’s birthday. 

She texted me this morning and asked me for a special, birthday blog.  I agreed.

Since then I have been a creative husk.  Not only that, but a creative husk who has not stopped.  I have been out all day with Oscar, I have been busy ever since we got home from school, cooking, cleaning, stripping beds, nagging, showering, nit combing, and now I get a ten minute breather before the next onslaught.

I have to study.  I have to a) because I have an essay due in three weeks and b) because I spent last week doing buggerall and am now behind and c) we have just booked a behemoth of a holiday which means I have to work my ass off if I want to go on holiday without four hundred text books.  I will tell you about the holiday properly later, but it’s still not quite sorted yet and I don’t want to tempt fate too much.

I also have to cook dinner for my husband, who left early this morning for work, and has only just got home and who looks tired and miserable and ill and like he has survived all day on a packet of fags and four hundred cups of tea, which he probably has.

So, although I have a load of things to write about, I don’t have time.  And I might not have time to blog at all later, and I didn’t want Saj to think I had forgotten her, so she has ended up with this, pathetic excuse for a blog post.  A blog post which is an extended whingeathon, and not celebratory in any way.

Sorry about that my dear.

Ummm…..Let me think.

O.k. Saj is great because she is very funny and she makes me laugh.  She quite often turns up unexpectedly with cakes.  It is better when she turns up this way, because generally when she has made plans to come, something happens which means she can’t make it, or she is four hours late, so the surprise visits are the best.

She is also great because she never fails to wear inappropriate footwear.  Not only inappropriate but killer footwear.  And she has hundreds of pairs of shoes.  The children are very impressed by her extensive shoe collection, as am I.  You can rely on Saj if you need to know anything about shoes, and the psychology of the shoe wearing public.  She has an entire world view based on shoes and their wearers, which she would be happy to expound in exchange for a cup of tea and some biscuits.  It is most entertaining.

She is a natural shopper, and we make plans to shop together, which Jason fears and is always delighted when they never quite come off.  In fact we have never shopped together.  We must rectify this soon, and there is a nebulous and long standing pact to go to Bicester Village together some time in the next twelve months which must absolutely happen.

Jason can verify the fact that she has fabulous legs.  She loves him for this.  She refers to him as secret monkey, and should I ever expire in a hideous bus crash she is willing to take him on, as long as he does something about his unruly facial hair.  I feel that she would shoot him in under a week, but as I will be plucking my kazoo on a cloud I won’t really care.

So, that, along with the fact that she has just developed an obsession with fuschia pink bed sheets with an obscene thread count, is all you need to know. 

Happy birthday lovely girl.

Life’s Eternal Questions – Please Provide Answers

Why does some bread turn all chewy when it goes stale, but some bread goes all hard?

Why have I never met a man who could do a pooh in under ten minutes? What is this all about men? Surely there are times when a man needs to do a ninja pooh?

Why do I always feel inexplicably tired between four and six p.m. regardless of how much sleep I’ve had, and then wake up from six onwards no matter how tired I feel?

Why are children always starving hungry until meal times, when they can turn the eating of two fish fingers, a potato waffle and a teaspoon of baked beans into a Wagnerian epic lasting six hours?

Why, when loading and unloading the dishwasher is such an easy job, and saves hours of washing up every week, do I still put it off until the last moment and spend the whole time I’m doing it feeling sulky and resentful as if I have been forced down a coal mine to quarry a seam with my bare hands and no torch?

Why, when a child wants to confess to some dread deed do they think that explaining for forty minutes in an entirely circuitous fashion why they felt the need to embroider the dog’s ears to the ceiling will help to calm you down and somehow make things better?

Why, when having a wee is possibly one of the easiest things I will ever do in my life, and really requires minimal effort on my part, do I still put it off and put it off and put it off until I am cross eyed with agony and unsure as to whether I can make it across the hall without wetting my pants?

Why am I unable to iron a shirt without making it look worse than it did when I started, no matter how many times I try and how many different approaches I take?

Why is Russell T. Davies going to take over Coronation Street, even though I loathe Coronation Street and have never managed to sit through an entire episode without wanting to shove my head in a gas oven, and now I might have to try watching it again, because it might be really good and now I feel really conflicted and rather irritable about the whole thing?

Why are children born with the innate ability to whine on demand, at a pitch guaranteed to act on your soul like the sound of fingernails screeching down a blackboard, particularly when they say the word ‘Mu…uuuuuuuuuu…mmmmmm!’? And why even though my children call me ‘mama’, do they still whine the word ‘Mu…..uuuuuuuuuu…..mmmmmmm!’?

Why Giles Brandreth?

La La La A Day Off

I went to London today.

I haven’t been to London for ages, and I miss it terribly.  It is my spiritual home, the place I yearn to be, the place that always excites my soul no matter what else is happening.  I lived there for five years and loved it.  I cried when we moved away and I doubt we will ever go back unless I become disgustingly wealthy, so I have to get my fix in small ways.

Andrea and I went to see Every Good Boy Deserves Favour at the National.  I love that the National now puts on plays on Sundays.  It is so civilised.  It is one of the best ways I can think of to spend a Sunday, and with the sponsorship from Travelex you can get fantastic tickets for a tenner.  How cool is that?

I don’t care that the National looks like a giant nineteen seventies concrete car park and is possibly one of the most confusing buildings in the world to actually navigate round.  I have been going there regularly for some years now and I still get lost at least three or four times a year.  I once found a cafe on one of the upper floors which was secluded, quiet and served wonderful cake.  I have never found it again.  Andrea calls it the Cafe of Requirement, like the room in Harry Potter where Malfoy makes the vanishing cabinet.  It only appears when you really need cake.

So today was wonderful.  Andrea drove us there.  Traffic was minimal, and parking in a car park at the back of the theatre is £7 for the day on Sundays and there are always spaces.  We had a wonderful lunch at Wagamamas where I ate far too much, and then an hour pottering round Foyles where I may have accidentally purchased a few books.  Ho hum.  I’m glad Foyles has opened there now.  I love the book market which is always open on weekends along the South Bank, but on days like today it was too cold to stop and browse, and Foyles has heating.

The play was interesting.  Very complex and rather strange, and I think I need to think about it a lot more, and possibly see it once again at some point before passing comment too definitively.  It’s by Tom Stoppard with music by Andre Previn, about a man in an insane asylum in Russia who is haunted by the perpetual sound of an orchestra in his head.  He is joined by a room mate who is a dissident who has been declared insane because he wrote a letter to the government protesting at his friend’s wrongful arrest and refuses to recant for questioning the system.  The dissident refuses to accept that he is mentally ill and instead goes on hunger strike to try and force people on the outside to realise that the system is corrupt.

What makes it so strange as a play is that the orchestra, the one supposedly playing in the first inmate’s head, is actually on stage as a real orchestra, a real orchestra which also has actors in it, who interact with the other actors and play their instruments.  The music score is also an integral part of the mood of the piece and mimics the inmate’s thoughts and feelings and vice versa.  It is incredibly complicated and busy piece of theatre which at times becomes a symphony with words, or an opera or a piece of ballet, and which has these amazingly complex manoeuvres and gestures taking place all over the stage all at once.  It was quite overwhelming at times, and I kept catching glimpses of things out of the corners of my eye that I was missing.  Which was why it would definitely bear a second visit, not that I think I’ll get the chance this time around.

It was certainly attention grabbing, well for us anyway.  There was a man further back in the auditorium who started snoring really loudly about twenty minutes in.  The acoustics are very good and so he was audible through the whole room, much to quite a few people’s amusement.  It took several minutes for someone to jab him enough for him to wake up.  It was most entertaining.

After the play we found a more permanent cafe than the cafe of requirements and ate large slabs of tiffin and drank coffee while we drew up a long list of plays we think we really need to see this year.  It is a very long list and in order for me not to plunge the entire family into penury to fund my theatre habit, it probably has to be whittled down a little.  Another problem is timing. There are about six things we want to see on in February alone, and there is just not time enough, or babysitters enough.  It is exciting that there is a lot of great theatre coming up, and also frustrating.  I need another sign from the universe about my whole ‘I’m born to be a lady of leisure thing’.  The sign of an obscenely large lottery win would be best.

It was a gorgeous day.  Andrea and I did our usual non stop verbal barrage that passes for conversation.  We discussed, amongst other things; Tudor power struggles; the castles of Northumbria; rheology; what kind of seeds are in seed cake (we don’t know. Any guesses?); the unflattering nature of the Ra Ra skirt on anyone over eight stone; Wallander and whether belonging to Islam is a choice or a kind of tribal destiny.  We haven’t managed to talk that much for weeks and it was great.

When I got home the children were all on their way to bed, Tallulah waving her new book which she got as a treat for being an independent reader (believe it or not, a serious manual on how to bring up a baby. Don’t ask. She was very happy), and Oscar was darting about looking dapper in a Scooby Doo dressing gown, proclaiming that it was important to wear it only when you were very hot.  Tilly has a new diamond ring courtesy of Claire’s Accessories which will undoubtedly turn her finger green by tomorrow, and Jason bought me a pair of Miss Sixty jeans which were on sale.  He bought two pairs actually, one which fits like a dream, and the other which would fit if I had my dream figure.  As I never intend to diet or stop eating exactly what I want when I want, this is never going to happen, so I will be grateful that he managed to find one pair that fit perfectly.  He is a good boy.  Which is why I am up here writing this, and letting him watch Stargate with the sound turned up all the way to eleven.  He deserves it.

Things you might like to shout at children about

Jason is playing poker.  I am shouting at children.  There’s hardly any difference really.  It’s all a bit of a gamble.  Neither of us know if we’re going to win, except that I am not going to walk away from the table with thousands of pounds in my hands.  Actually, he probably isn’t either, so it’s about even.  At least I don’t have to wear a stupid hat.

He has gone to play poker because it is his birthday, and it is only fair that he gets to do something that he wants on his birthday.  This morning he took me driving for an hour.  That wasn’t exactly celebratory.  I spent forty five minutes in an industrial estate practicing three point turns and reversing round corners while Oscar threw Haribo at the back of my head, and then came home and cried.  Jason maintained his composure by chain smoking out of the car window and being patient in that way you do with recalcitrant eighty year olds who you find concealing kippers in their handbag in case of impending apocalypse.

It was supposed to be easier to practice this morning because UE had the girls, so I only had one child in the back.  I can’t say I noticed it being two thirds less stressful than normal.  That’s the thing.  I am reasonably chilled on my lessons.  On the road in my car, I still gibber and cluck quite a bit.  I had hoped after another week of passable driving lessons  that this might have improved slightly.  It has not.

When I had recovered, I cooked a birthday cake, but I had help from Oscar, who turned the Kitchenaid all the way up to ten and pinged flour up the splashback, and then the girls arrived in a flurry of sugar fumes and tea tree oil.  Consequently I forgot to put baking powder in the cake mix.  I felt so bad about it I had to make another one.  There aren’t many things in life that Jason requests.  He is quite a simple soul.  But he does like a moist, light, cream and jam filled Victoria sponge on his birthday.  I felt that a sobbing, middle aged woman festooned with flour and gummi bears holding out a mockery of a sham of a cake, so thin you could post it through the letter box even when it had the cream and jam in, was no substitute.

We had just finished testing slices of the second, infinitely more satisfactory cake, when the karate chap that Justme recommended turned up to talk to us about Tallulah becoming the next Cato.  By this time we had given up all pretence of  the day being a normal birthday.  We invited him in with open arms, plied him with cake and accepted our lot.  He seemed very capable and totally unphased.  In fact I think he was disappointed that Tallulah wasn’t more antisocial.  We are going to next Saturday morning’s lesson to check it out, and if she likes it (and probably even if she doesn’t) we shall sign her up for the following week.

When Jason had made good his escape, we went to the library.  It has been shut for nearly two weeks while they installed a new self service system.  We were very curious.

Much like my first attempt at cake, it is a total waste of time and effort.  It is like those self service tills at Boots, which despite the fact that people are queueing into next week and it is hotter than Satan’s sweaty armpit, nobody will go near unless cajoled by a Irma Klebb style member of staff using a tazer. 

It is a giant box with a hole in and a computer screen above it.  You inform the machine what you wish to do.  Then you scan your library card.  After that you place the books you wish to check in our out in a huge pile in the gaping maw of the machine.  At this point bells ding, whistles whistle and light’s flash.  It counts your books, identifies them all and shows them on screen.  You then agree or disagree, print out a receipt of your transaction and go on your merry way.  It is all a matter of mere seconds of work.

Except that it isn’t.  It requires one full time member of staff to explain the machine, and to identify all the red flashing lights and klaxon noises that happen when the machine falls over.  Once a problem has been identified, i.e. every time you use the machine, you then have to take all your books and your cards to the ladies at the desk who will then sort the problems out manually for you.  In effect it takes twice as long to check books in or out, requires more staff and is a giant pain in the arse.

Still, the kids loved having a go on the machine and Oscar was entranced. I think I know what he will be asking for for Christmas now.

And it meant that I got an hour off from shouting. Which is good because I think my throat is beginning to go.  Topics I have bellowed about today include:

1. Total etiquette fail in thinking that it is o.k. to wipe your nose on soft furnishings, newly washed chair covers in particular.
2. Total hygiene fail when dropping tea down crotch area, scooping it up with fingers and then eating it.  Then wiping sticky fingers on already snotty chair covers.
3. Chewing pieces of parma ham for several minutes before pulling it out of mouth, inspecting it and then deciding it is not fit for purpose, leaving it draped all over the side of dinner plate, in full view of other, queasy diners.
4. Drinking apple juice with a spoon whilst making snorting noises like a demented pig.
5. Chewing a balloon and then handing it to siblings so they can also chew it, just to see what it is like.
6. Failure to conceive that the words ‘copy this sentence’ actually mean ‘copy this sentence’ and not ‘freestyle manicallly in a manner totally unfit for homework purposes, preferably about something entirely unrelated to the subject in hand.  It would be good if you could use the word seagull on at least eight occasions, spelling it differently every time, despite the fact that it is a key word in the homework sheet and has been used extensively there already, and you have read it, and the book about seagulls before setting off.’
7. Insistence on talking to your siblings, even though you have not managed to exchange a civil word with them for more than three minutes at any one time and have been expressly forbidden to communicate with them, except through a qualified intermediary, in order to try and save your own life, their lives and the voice of your long suffering mother.
8. Insistence on repeatedly pouring water down the cracks in the bath sealant, despite having been given a guided tour of the hall ceiling, complete with pointing at the water marks, which correspond exactly to the cracks in the bath sealant, and a vivid description of what would happen to you should you be in the bath at the time it plunges through the hall ceiling, or indeed underneath it, as it comes plunging through the hall ceiling.

And that has been our day mostly, except for a bizarre conversation on the way to the library about the nature of re-incarnation and what animal you would come back as.  The general consensus seems to be birds. They like birds.  Not emus though.  No.  Because they are rubbish.  Oscar tried to fake his own death whilst walking home from the library in the hope that he would get to turn into a bird while he was still alive so he could enjoy the process fully.  As this mainly involved putting his head on one side, poking his tongue out and squinting whilst bellowing ‘I’m DEAD now. DEAD I TELL YOU!’ I was not terribly surprised at his lack of success.

I have to go and break up another fight now.  They are playing schools.  Tallulah is Mrs. Lavender, the fiercest teacher on the planet.  She has just threatened Oscar with a trip to the Headmistress as a punishment for enjoying himself too much.  If he misbehaves again he is going to be given a Milky Way and a firm telling off.  Mixed messages much.  He’s not taking it lying down though.  He’ll damn his eyes before any woman makes him eat a Milky Way in front of the headmistress.  And who can blame him?

Things You Must Do…

It is the end of another week.  I have a whole raft of scribbled notes which I jotted down in order to turn into blog posts and then never got around to.  I shall stitch them together here in a cunning blanket of stuff, and you will never see the join. 

No. Because I am that good!

Firstly, I meant to rejoice in some good news regarding my fiercest daughter, Tallulah.  This is very important.  As regular readers will know, we have been having issues with a capital I.  Those are on the way to slowly being sorted out as I fumble about ineptly.  In the meantime her behaviour this week has been loads better, and she has also done a brilliant thing.  Tallulah has become an ‘independent reader’.  Basically this means that she has run out of books on the reading scheme and can now pick what she wants to read.  I am overjoyed, she is overjoyed, we are all doing the happy dance chez Boo.  Not only because we have a legitimate cause for celebration, praise and a very well deserved treat, but because it is something that Tallulah wanted to do herself. 

She told me at the beginning of term that she wanted to be an independent reader.  I said that the only way she was going to achieve that was to read anything and everything whenever she got the chance, but that I thought that as she was a gifted reader anyway, that it wouldn’t be too long before she would achieve her goal.  She nodded, trooped off and we never mentioned it again until this Wednesday when she came home bursting with pride to show me the note in her reading record.  I am ecstatic that there is something positive to say.  I would thank Cheezus but I think Odin is a more appropriate god in Tallulah’s pantheon.

Secondly, I have just finished reading Joanna Simmons and Jay Curtis’ ‘Can I Give Them Back Now: The Aargh to Zzzz of Parenting,‘ as recommended months ago by Tim over at Bringing Up Charlie.  I bought it when he recommended it, and have only just excavated down that far on the pile.  I have to say that in a week of blue meanies and misery it has been one of the few things to consistently make me laugh out loud.  It is very, very funny indeed.  I identified with nearly every entry and recommend it to anyone with children, thinking of having children or who want to gloat about the fact that they don’t have children.  I particularly loved the entries on Killing Time, and Swearing.

Thirdly, I have another lust object, this time a legitimate one.  Damian Lewis is delicious. I have decided this after having bought Jason the box set of the U.S. cop series Life, for Christmas and then sat and drooled over it for two nights in a row.  Mmmmmmmm.  Plus it’s a good show, funny, quirky and hugely entertaining.  I am thanking the second season for the fact that Jason now has a tolerable birthday present tomorrow. 

Fourthly, I promised Sharon a picture of my new tureen:

It’s lovely.  A pattern called Lomond by a Burslem pottery called Crownsdale.  I can’t find out anything about it.  I  don’t care. I just love it a lot.

Fifthly, Mrs Jones has opened a new Etsy shop to sell her lovely glass creations.  It is called Shards of Light and you can access it by clicking the link.  I am going there in a minute to buy some glass hearts for Valentines day. You should too.

Lastly, the woman who consistently inspires and delights my blogging life, Belgian Waffle, has been nominated for a Bloggie award.  Go to her site, click on the link and vote for her to become Bloggess of the Universe with a Waffle Diadem.  She deserves it.