Protected: You can’t have everything

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

Watch Out, Here comes a disappointed man

As you can imagine, the Mansion of Doom is not the warmest of places.  It is surprisingly not as cold as say, granny’s house, in my opinion.  This may have to do with the thickness of the walls, or the fact that I am trying to be positive towards it, in the hope that it won’t fall down and kill me.

Now we have our unique curtains up we are hoping it will not be so nippy, and next week when the chimneys have been swept I am looking forward to indulging my pyromaniac tendencies to the max.  In the meantime we are wrapping up warm.  I have my second best, emergency vest on, and am wearing Uggs at all times.

I have to say that I still think that the word Uggs is short for ugly, but I am totally impressed by their toastiness.  I have miserable circulation and always get numb fingers and toes through the winter.  Back in the bad old days I used to get chilblains on my toes, my circulation was that rubbish.  My grandad used to recommend that I thrash ‘em with holly leaves and then pee on them (the thrashed chilblains, not the holly leaves).  I never did, although at times I was tempted to give it a go.

Since I have had my Uggs my feet have been as warm as toast, and I really haven’t suffered with cold feet at all.  I love them, I truly do, and when this pair inevitably go to meet their maker, I am going to bite the bullet and cough up the exorbitant amount required for a new pair without the slightest hesitation.

Yes, dear readers. It is a genuine recommendation from me to you as a gift for all the frozen footed members of your tribe.

Jason is suffering the most.  The rest of us are used to piling on layers of clothing at this time of year, feeling the cold as we do.  He does not usually succumb until we are cracking the ice off the pipes, as he is of the hairy persuasion, and has a natural layer of insulation denied to the rest of us.  He normally swans about in a t-shirt and shorts in all weathers, blithely disregarding my bobble hat and coat made entirely of hot water bottles.

Yesterday he gave in to the demands of the MOD.  While we were in Tesco he bought himself what is quite amusingly described as a ‘Men’s Lounge Pant’.  This may not be so amusing for Americans, who are used to calling trousers pants, but in this country pants are undercrackers and trousers are trousers, and in this case, the manly lounge pant is actually a pair of pyjama bottoms.

I love marketing.

Anyway, this particular pair of lounge pants had garish comic strip print of Spiderman on, and were thus irresistible to 35 year old small boys everywhere.  He purchased them.

After we had finished dangling from the curtain hooks in Fleurs de Leurs he went to spruce up for the arrival of our guests.

He sashayed downstairs wearing his spider man pants, his summer flip flops made cunningly into winter slippers by the addition of a pair of stripey socks (mmm, one of my favourite sartorial looks for men, socks and sandals), a frayed t-shirt and his dressing gown.

I nearly choked on my tea.

Our guests, luckily for us, have known us for a very long time, and are not at all surprised by his sartorial choices, or indeed anything else he does or says.  I liked the fact that when he took our friend P out to see his new car and to buy a pint of milk from across the road, he only altered his appearance by adding a woolly hat.

We are already getting quite a reputation in the neighbourhood.  He has done nothing to allay people’s fears.  We will be news for years to come.

As we were sitting, eating our dinner he suddenly gave an outraged squawk.  After he had emptied his mouth of Shepherd’s pie it transpired that what he had said was:

‘They’ve missed the ‘S”

‘???’  came the reply.

It turns out that all the bits of comic strip on the feted lounge pants say ‘piderman’ instead of ‘Spiderman’.

He is outraged of MOD.

I said that perhaps they had saved all the ‘S’s’ to use on the Superman trousers.

This did not go down well.

In our house Superman is a wet and an uter wede.

We have decided that Piderman has amazing super powers of his own that involve him being able to widdle over tall buildings with ease.  He can also piddle in streams which he can then freeze and climb over, much in manner of shooting webs, but more unsanitary.

Jason is not impressed.

Protected: Pokety poke poke

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

Protected: The ongoing saga of the mansion of doom

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

Hai Karate

Oscar went to his first karate lesson yesterday evening.

It was hugely entertaining.  I wish you had been there, or that I had been allowed to film it.  I smiled from ear to ear for the whole hour and a half.

Jason normally drops the girls at karate, leaving Oscar and I to wrestle bed time into defeat at home, but yesterday Jason had to go straight back to work after dropping Oscar home from nursery.  Work is in much the same state as the Mansion of Doom at the moment. It’s all very microcosm/macrocosm and pathetic fallacy etc.

What this means in plain English is, it’s all knackering and a bit dangerous.

This meant that the karate run was my responsibility.  I bundled everyone into the car and arrived at the church hall.  I wonder why all church halls look and smell the same, no matter which religious denomination they profess to follow, nor which part of the country you are in? Perhaps they buy ‘eau de church hall’ from the same company that make ‘fleur de leurs’?

I paid for the girls and turned to Oscar to shepherd him back to the car.  He was practising karate chopping Tallulah in the windpipe with great gusto.  He did not want to come home.  I reminded him that he was too small for karate now, but that he could come back next year.

He was devastated.

The sensei looked at him thoughtfully and asked me how old he was.  He then asked Oscar if he really wanted to stay for the lesson, to which Oscar nodded his enthusiastic assent.  The sensei said: ‘Oh! All right then.’  To which Oscar replied with whoops of delight.

I was not sure. 

Normally we drive off into the night once they are safely in class, and come back at the end to pick them up.  I did not think it was fair to leave the sensei unprotected. It was late, and the class was an hour and a half long.  I had visions of being phoned forty five minutes in, to be summoned to return, with the sounds of infant boy wailing like a car alarm in the background.

I stayed.

I marvelled.

The sensei has the patience of a saint.  Apart from being able to handle Tallulah, which is an art in itself, there are certain other small members of the class who seem to be there to address certain behavioural and attention issues.  With Oscar thrown into the mix, it was like watching him trying to tame a bag of hyperactive weasels.

Apart from the fact that his counting skills are very erratic, his grasp of Japanese is nil, and his ability to tell left from right is about the same, he did brilliantly, my small boy.  He was very enthusiastic and joined in with everything to the best of his ability.  He only got sad once when he got completely confused and realised he couldn’t do what the sensei asked.  He looked very downcast and said that he didn’t want to do it any more because it was too hard.  He looked like he would burst into tears.  His lip wobbled ominously.

I sat on my hands and waited to see what would happen. 

I was deeply impressed.  The sensei hunkered down so that he could make proper eye contact with Oscar, then he said he thought he was doing brilliantly, and if he just continued to give it his best shot for two more minutes, they would play a game, and would that be o.k.?  Oscar beamed, nodded his agreement and carried on enthusiastically sawing at the air in a karate type way.

I relaxed.

At one point, near the end of the class the sensei was describing why they performed a certain move in a certain way, and how it was an excellent and efficient way to block people who wanted to attack us.  The other members of the class were discussing it, when Oscar piped up:

‘Or we could just take a big knife and chop the top of their head off.  That will stop them!’

The shame!

Still, he is very enterprising.

A girl can dream

I am definitely in hibernation mode. 

I was in bed and asleep by half nine last night.  This is not normal for me.  I was so tired I couldn’t keep my eyes open, and had already fallen asleep on the sofa three times, smashing myself on the head with my book in the process.

When I am not falling asleep I am eating.  I have had two breakfasts and a couple of snacks already today and it’s only eleven.  I couldn’t even call the second breakfast elevenses.  I could not wait that long for it.

This then, is conclusive proof that rather than running about being active and organised and responsible, I should be tucked up in a large box, covered in straw, or in the salad crisper in the fridge, as I have learned that this is the new way to hibernate a tortoise.

No wonder life seems difficult at the moment.  I am clearly fighting an overwhelming biological imperative.

I have decided that one year, possibly when the children have left home, or when they are vile teenagers who can make their own Pot Noodles and Pop Tarts without my help, I shall test this theory.

I shall have a room dedicated to the pursuit of hibernation.  There will be many soft things, possibly made of swansdown and cashmere.  There will be good pillows that do not make your neck go funny.

There will be a constant aura of gentle, glowing warmth from underfloor heating, and items guaranteed to induce a soporific state like Radio Four, and Nineteenth Century novels. 

There will be energy snacks, but not those nasty fruit and nut ones.  No. There will be cake and things which do not crunch.  I hate having to crunch things when I am tired.  It is why I do not eat cereal in the mornings.  Cereal is only for when your jaw is awake enough to cope with crunching.

There will be lagoons of hot chocolate endlessly flowing from spigots. 

There will be a non draughty, silent flushing toilet, in an adjacent room, accessed by a non-creaking door, sans draughts. Even I do not think that sleeping from November to March in a puddle of my own wee is a state devoutly to be wished.

I shall retire from the world on the first of November and re-emerge in the spring, rejuvenated, refreshed and raring to go.

I’m sure it will work.

And relax

Andrea and I went to the theatre last night.  We had booked it months ago.  Leicester’s Curve are doing a Brian Friel double bill; ‘Translations’ and ‘Molly Sweeney’.  We had never seen anything by Brian Friel before and we thought we would give it a go.

It was meant to be a relaxing treat.

My life is clearly not destined to be a relaxing treat at the moment.  I have obviously done something evil for which I must pay, so that when I die I shall float straight to heaven on my celestial cloud with no hanging about in the waiting room.

It was always going to be a bit of a rush, last night.

It was Tallulah’s parents evening after school.  I booked an early appointment and dropped all the children at granny’s house beforehand, so that they would not; a) interfere or b) tear the school apart.  I did everything I could to encourage speed and efficiency.  Unfortunately the woman in front of me had not looked at my time table, and spent quite a lot longer than her alloted span with the teachers.

I resisted the urge to shout: ‘Oh, for God’s sake! Get a bloody move on. Surely your child is not that interesting?’

For which I should be awarded a gold star.

Then it was my turn.

It was as ever, when people first meet Tallulah:

‘Isn’t she delightful? She looks like a fairy/doll/piece of thistledown.  She is so gorgeous/polite/kind to old ladies and animals.’

To which I have to say:

‘Yes. Yes she is.  But please be aware that she is also a ruthless, trained killer, and precautions must be taken.’

Generally they look at me as if I am evil personified and the appointment goes downhill from there on in until six months later when they are a bit wiser and start to appreciate my point of view.

Not that she is ever really naughty at school, to be fair to her.  She is just prone to bouts of occasional fierceness, which could spiral out of control if not policed effectively.

Luckily she had tried one of these moments earlier in the day, and what I said struck a chord with the teacher, thus meaning I was taken seriously, and that they will proceed with caution.

This is a result.

In other news, she is doing very well academically, and they are delighted with her. She is settling in, and making friends, and it is all rosy and lovely.

Hooray.

I left in a howling gale and rainstorm, battled to the car, battled to granny’s and picked up the children.

We went home, whereupon I fed everyone, did homework with Tallulah, sorted out the laundry, sorted out the dishwasher, inspected book bags for the morrow and sent them all up for an early shower, so that Jason wouldn’t have too much to do when he got in from work.

Just before he got in I managed to crack my cafetiere beyond repair, and trap my finger in the kitchen cupboard.  I was very cross, tearful and in a tearing rush.

He did not catch me at my best.

I did not catch him at his best. Something disastrous had gone wrong at work. He thought he could fix it before he came home.  He could not.  We have no internet access to allow him to dial in usefully.  He was going to attempt to work miracles with his Blackberry.  It wasn’t having any of it.

I offered to cancel my evening.

He declined.

We had a short but violent row.  I burst into tears.  We both apologised, kissed and made up.

I set off into the night, detouring to my parents to purloin their emergency cafetiere.

Andrea and I set off from the farm with an hour to spare.  We were both in desperate need of cake and coffee.  She had been trimming cow hooves and only had time for a sandwich.  I had managed half a stale baguette with Oscar’s left over tuna in it.  I had indigestion from eating it whilst trying to fill the dishwasher. 

It normally takes twenty minutes to get to the theatre, so we had plenty of time.

Well, we would have if we hadn’t got stuck in the traffic thanks to the fact that we had forgotten to appreciate that there was a Leicester versus Australia rugby match on, and our routes coincided.

We made it with one minute to spare.  I know it was one minute because they were ringing the minute bell and shouting: ‘Get in there if you want to see Translations. Or else,’  as we set foot through the door.

We did get coffee and cake at half time though.  We bolted it down in the fifteen minutes we had, and headed back into the peat bogs of Nineteenth century Ireland and unrelenting misery in a cod Dublin accent, begorrah!

I got home at half past eleven.  I confess to not feeling very rested.  The play, we agreed, was at best, average.  Next week we are supposed to be seeing the other one, ‘Molly Sweeney’.  I’m not sure if I can take that much more relaxing.

Protected: Grumble, moan,

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

TARDIS

One of the standard questions we ask small children, apart from; ‘Why the hell did you have to do that?’ is ‘What are you going to be when you grow up?’

Thinking about it, it’s a bloody stupid question to ask a two year old.  They can’t even wipe their own arse properly, but we still expect them to know whether they’re going to be a barrister or a holiday rep.

I think we just do it for our own entertainment.

Tilly has always wanted to be an artist.  She has never deviated from that plan, never wanted to be a ballet dancer or a nurse or an IT consultant.  There was a brief period in history where she wanted to be a cleaning lady and an artist.  That lasted about six months.  I’m glad she’s dropped the cleaning lady aspiration.  She is one of the messiest people on God’s green earth, and stands more chance of being the next Damien Hirst than she does of being Mrs. Mop.

She wants to combine her artistry with running a tea shop now.  I am all in favour.  It’s quite a practical plan really.  She is under no illusion that she will be coining it in as an artist, and has no intentions of struggling on manfully in a garrett wearing fingerless gloves and burning junk mail to keep warm.

Plus, she is very good at cake and bread making, and may pass her leftovers to her dear mama.

Oscar wants to be a fire man and a doctor so far.  I find this a little dull and traditional, but I expect he will grow out of it. As long as he doesn’t want to be an accountant I think I will be fairly contented.  I don’t think I’ve ever met an accountant who I could say was deeply fulfilled and happy with their lot.  There’s always too many decimal points to worry about.

And the numbers.  The numbers just keep on keeping on forever…

It’s enough to give you the willies.

Tallulah announced very dramatically (as if we would expect anything different) at the age of two:

‘Mama! I JUST want to go to HOLLYWOOD and become a STAR!’

I can believe that this will be true.  She has a flair for drama and self promotion that would be shamefully wasted if she say, took up a career in middle management, or working for the local council.

As regular readers will know, I’ve always had my money on her having a career as a lone gun for hire, or possibly the head of a banana republic somewhere.

Only time will tell.

Jason is much more pragmatic than me in these matters.  At the weekend he was discussing with the children how they could ensure a path to infinite personal wealth.  They were all in favour of winning the lottery .  Tallulah issued the immortal line:

‘Dad. I would only need to win a few billion.  How hard can it be?’

He started discussing the concept of odds with them.  They looked increasingly crestfallen.

He then moved on to the idea of creating your own wealth by working hard and being a genius.  They started pulling their feathers out until he mentioned Dragon’s Den.  They are very keen on Dragon’s Den.  He pointed out that all the people on Dragon’s Den had worked very hard, and some of them had invented things and that had made them rich.

Tallulah liked this idea.  It brought out the Professor Branestawm in her.  She came up with madder and madder inventions that she could create, none of which I can sadly remember now, apart from the robot which would clean your house for you (see Professor Branestawm).  Then she moved on to things that had already been invented like toasters.  Although this would be easier for the fledgeling inventor, given that she would have a model to copy, work on, he then had to go into the legal ins and outs of copying other people’s work.

She was not impressed.

There was deep silence for a while as she thought. 

Then she came up with the winning idea.

She is going to invent a Time Machine.  She checked that nobody had invented one previously.  My cousin Tom has been working on his for the last twenty five years, but he still hasn’t cracked it.  A bit of healthy competition would do him good.

We ascertained that the Tardis, although fantastic, was in fact fictional.

This pleased her greatly.

She has since made two prototypes.  They are very pretty.  They are environmentally right on trend, being created entirely from recycled components. 

There are several things that need working on:

• They are only 30 cm tall, thus allowing only shrews and other small rodents access to time travel.  Still, animal experimentation has always been popular amongst scientists, and as these are prototypes, perhaps this is a bonus.  If anyone is going to end up in 1789 with their limbs on backwards, it better be a mouse.
• They are entirely made of cardboard.  As with previous experiments with gnome housing projects, this has not proved to be the most robust or weathertight of materials.  I fear it will be much like Bill and Ted travelling through time in a telephone box.  We may have to stick them back together with chewing gum.
• They are not built on any known scientific principles.  They are more of an aesthetic prototype.  There are many stickers of brightly coloured beetles, not many bits of actual technology.
• They don’t work.

Apart from that it is all going excellently well, and she is well on her way to making her first billion.

When she pays me the £6 she owes me for the present we had to buy for the sensei last week.

I applaud Jason’s diligence in trying to instill in them a strong work ethic.

I have yet to tell him my idea of finding treasure in the garden of the Mansion of Doom using a metal detector.

Perhaps he will twig on when I put the actual metal detector on my Christmas list.

As I am a workshy fop I cannot afford one from my own dwindling funds, and until I find the buried treasure it will have to be gifted to me.  Or perhaps I can ask the Dragons to invest in my cunning plan?

Oscar Makes Friends

Yesterday afternoon Oscar and I finally had to brave the elements in order to go and buy things like milk, and cereals.  Things we cannot live without.  When Jason is stressed he likes to eat cereals.  I encourage this behaviour as it stops him punching holes in the walls, or dying of heart attacks, or becoming a crack addict.

Fair exchange is no robbery.

While we were out, we ascertained that it was still bloody freezing, and that as crap mama supremo, I had forgotten to bring Oscar’s gloves/hat/scarf.  We had one, slightly mangled, Charlie and Lola umbrella.  This did not help us, as a howling gale was blowing, which meant that we were being propelled along Earl Shilton High Street by the power of Charlie and Lola, just before this novel mode of transportation died, by turning itself inside out.

We managed to find gloves in the Post Office of all places.  I bought several pairs.  Despite years of diligent relatives sewing mittens on elastic to various pieces of clothing, as in the good old days, my children are not good old days children.

This means that they come home with chewed bits of elastic with frayed ends and no mittens.  Sometimes they try to garotte each other with chewed bits of elastic with frayed ends.  Other times they merely wind themselves round and round in it and then shriek because they have managed to cut their own circulation off, and are going blue while I have at them with a large pair of kitchen scissors.

I have just resigned myself to the fact that every winter I will buy a large supply of cheapass gloves and mittens.  By spring there will be none left, and hedgehogs, shrews and fieldmice up and down the county will be snuggling up in an ill assorted rag bag of cheapass gloves and mittens, strewn hither and yon by my careless offspring.

Being cheapass, the gloves at the Post Office only came in one size. They purported to be magic.  i.e. one size fits all.  I do not think that is magic.  Paul Daniels sawing Debbie McGee in half while she treats us to a rictus like grin and rock solid hair.  Now, that’s magic.  As Paul himself would be the first to admit.  Having stretchy gloves is merely convenient.

I doubt they’d sell as many pairs of ‘convenient’ gloves though.  Ho, yes. I know a thing or two about marketing, lady.

Anyway, they really weren’t that magic or convenient, as the one size that fits all was clearly not made with a four year old’s tiny paws in mind.  I put a pair of black, furry gloves on Oscar, and his finger ends drooped and curled like black puddings that have been dropped down the back of the sofa where you don’t hoover as often as you should.

So, cheap gloves then. Neither magic, nor convenient.

Still, they did their glovely duty, and kept his fingers warm.

We took shelter during a particularly vicious downpour in the local library.  While we were there we may have accidentally decided to borrow a few items. 

The library is fully automated.  There is a big machine where you press buttons and get it to read bar codes, and poke things into slots.  Oscar loves it.  I let him use it to borrow the things that had accidentally fallen into my hands.

A lady next to us was patiently waiting to use the machine after we had finished.

I was putting my books into my shopping bag as she moved towards the machine and started pressing buttons.  Oscar popped up beside her and said:

‘Hello lady.  What are you doing there?’

She smiled nervously and said:

‘I’m just taking these books out.’

Oscar, unimpressed with her reply, perhaps hoping that she might be building a racing car, or working out how to travel at the speed of sound, waggled his black, drooping fingers at her, smiled winsomely and said:

‘Hey lady! Check out my black, furry fingers!’

She squeaked.

We left.