Good Elf

In between having my head squeezed on the CLD ™ and planning how to assassinate medical receptionists I have been receiving the last, few, vital Christmas gifts  I need to make the children’s Christmas go with a bang and not a whimper.

There was much trauma last week when it turned out that someone at the Post Office had nicked off with Tallulah’s Hannah Montana scooter on the pretext that it had been ‘lost’ in the chaos caused by the snow, and not nicked, so that he could get on his rounds more quickly, more efficiently and with Miley Cyrus’s grinning faced clamped between his post masterly thighs. 

As there is no way of tracking parcels sent through Royal Mail by first class post, we were comprehensively screwed.  Luckily, the company I ordered it from were very nice when I burst into tears to the man on their helpline after I had been on hold for thirty minutes while they played me Marc Almond singing torch songs. Thank God they connected me before we got into the Jacques Brel years.  I love Marc Almond and his guttersnipey little ways, but there is only so much of him I can take at nine in the morning.  He is best imbibed with cognac and a fat, Cuban cigar, rolled on the thighs of dusky maidens, at about three in the morning in a smoky bar.

Anyway, the very sympathetic man on the other end of the phone correctly interpreted my honkings, sniffings and bleatings, and sent me a new scooter, at the company’s expense, via a trackable courier.

Hoorah. Tallulah will still love me.

It is a dubious honour I know, but I cannot resist her evil ways.

Then there were the elf ears.

Tilly wanted elf ears for Christmas she confided to me, one day last week as we were chatting of this and that, and sealing wax and ships and stuff.  I was determined to get them for her.  I want to be the sort of mother who produces elf ears at short notice.

I found some on Amazon, believe it or not.  They will soon be selling every single thing in the entire world.  This is very true.  I should be scared by this fact, but a woman searching feverishly for stick on, latex elf ears at short notice is not in a position to worry about global domination by evil corporations.  She is just in a position to shout: ‘Thank you Cheezus!’ and kiss the keyboard in relief.

The elf ears were ordered and would be with me before Christmas.  I was happy.  I was, in fact, elated.

Then I received the ears with remarkable speed.  Clearly no postmen are interested in looking like elves. They just want speed, pure, crazy, Hannah Montana, foot to the pedal, speed.

Yeah.

So, the elf ears came. All good.  I stashed them away on top of the mounting pile of weird and wonderful items that make up my gift pile. I forgot about them.

Then I received an e-mail.  It was from Amazon, but it was in German.

Despite having lived in Germany for four months, my grasp of German is pitiful.  I used to be able to buy stamps, hold my own in a queue in Norma, and order four hundred flavours of ice cream.  I can now say, ‘excuse me’ and remember that zimt is German for cinnamon. That is all.

I was extremely nervous of this e-mail, which went on alarmingly for some considerable time.

I thought about sticking it in one of those translation websites but was afraid it would come out something like this:

‘Dear Mrs. Wheatley

Thank you for having the order of our pikelet toasting fork monkey.

I am glad that the sun is shining on your bilious headwear.  Granny is a lemon.

Love

Germany.

I was no further forward.

There was an attachment.

I did not want to open it in case it had a picture of someone with an eighteen foot long penis rogering a donkey, and Jason murdered me for infecting the laptop with porn viruses.

I clicked onto Amazon’s site and found that the message was legitimately sitting in my account.  I opened the attachment. It was an invoice for my elf ears. 

Phew.

I gather that the e-mail said in a very efficient and always long winded German way.

‘Dear Mrs. Wheatley

Thank you for ordering our elf ears.  Aren’t they lovely?  I bet you are really glad you ordered them from us, and not those people who lost your Hannah Montana Scooter?  We are, of course, German, and therefore highly efficient and very good at everything we do, even when we are making and delivering latex elf ears to you in England.

Enjoy being an elf.

Love

Germany.’

So that’s alright then.

I have decided against replying to them, given the fact that it would say:

Mein leibe Deutschevolks,

Danke schon fur mein ‘elf ears’

Enschuldigen fur mein schlecht Deutsche.

Katy

p.s. zimt

I don’t think it will help Anglo German relations any.  I will just draw a line under it and move on, elf ears intact.

Now I just have to go and track down a Mr. Benn Dvd which I only bought my son because I wanted to watch it, and he won’t care less if it ever comes, and I will have rounded up all my errant parcels.

I am fit to be tied

Mostly I have been absent from blogging due to being poorly.  Which has been about as nice as you can imagine.  My sinusitis is flaring up, and it is affecting my balance as well as my head feeling like it is being squeezed in a vice.  It is manageable today.  Yesterday it wasn’t.

Friday was taken up mostly with Oscar being poorly.  I tried to book him an emergency appointment at what should be our new doctor’s surgery.  The woman was so utterly rude, and unhelpful that I ended up slamming the phone down on her.

It went like this:

I’ve just moved into the area, my four year old son is poorly and I need an emergency appointment for him today. I wonder if you can help me?  I know we need to come in and register with you, but this is an emergency. (at this point I describe his symptoms, which have come on suddenly and which are a little alarming. There are enough of them for me to be thinking the word meningitis).

You need to register.

Yes. I am aware of that.  But I also need an emergency appointment today, as my son is poorly.

You need to register (big pause) and anyway, we don’t have any appointments for today.

Ah. Thank you for telling me that.  I assume you do have emergency appointments however, and appointments say for people who are visitors to the area, but who need to see a doctor today?

You need to register.

I understand that I need to register, and I am happy to do that.  What I am trying to ascertain is whether I can get someone to see my son today.  There is a system whereby urgent appointments are handed out, so how do we go about getting him an urgent appointment?

You need to register.

Yes. I. Know.  But what about someone seeing my son today?

Well, we can’t see him, because you need to register.

I do get it.  But I am not asking about registering now.  What I am asking is if I can get anyone to see my son today, as an emergency?

Well. You could see another doctor’s surgery.  There’s one in Barwell.

Great.

But of course, they won’t see you if you haven’t registered.

Look. Please could you stop being rude and unhelpful and just answer my question? I am asking for some help here.

I AM NOT BEING RUDE.

I beg to differ.  Please.  I am trying to find out how I  can get my son seen by a doctor today.  It seems from what you are saying, that even if I bring him to your surgery, and register with you, that there are still no appointments available.

Well. Of course we see emergency patients.  (said in a tone which clearly implies that this is not an emergency and that hell will freeze over before she lets me see anyone).

Great.

But you need to register, and we have no appointments today.

Yes. Ok, but he is four.  He has sore eyes, is complaining that the light his hurting his eyes, his temperature is up, and he has swollen glands.  I don’t want to leave it until you might be able to fit him in.  I need someone to see him today.

You need to register.

Right.  But I don’t want to register with you today, and bring him out to the doctor’s surgery if nobody is going to see him.  He is poorly. I don’t want to drag him about unnecessarily.  If you can tell me that I can have an emergency appointment for him, then I will bring him in and register.

Why don’t you just leave him at home then?  You don’t HAVE to bring him with you?

Did you hear what I said?  He is four years old.  I am here with him, on my own.  There isn’t anyone else to look after him, and you are advising me to leave him at home on his own while he is ill?

Yes.

You are the rudest, most unhelpful woman I have ever met.

I put the phone down.

 I am shaking with rage.

I call Jason.  He advises me to call our old GP’s surgery, where we are still registered, and make an appointment.  I speak to the receptionist.  She makes me an appointment.  We take Oscar to his appointment.  It turns out not to be serious, and merely a continuation of this viral thing he has had for a few days.

We apologise to the doctor for taking up her time.  She says that it is no bother, and that with small children displaying the symptoms that he had it is always better to be safe than sorry as they can deteriorate so quickly and it is very difficult to diagnose your own child.  She is charming and helpful.

We go home.

I cannot go to the surgery we should be registering with. I will kill that woman. Jason is going to make an official complaint about her to the practice manager next week.    I am still seething, and it has taken me this long to calm down enought to even write about it.

Know Your Onions

Everyone is home, all objectives have been achieved, nobody died and I have won several gold mama stars today.  This is officially the win.

The snow has now stopped, but the ground is freezing hard, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we don’t get more snowfall overnight.  The clouds are looking rotund and suspicious.  I am hoping there is enough snowfall for them to cancel school, but not enough for the log man not to make his excuses again.  He has actually called me this evening to say he will be round at 9.30 in the morning. The last time I had a call like that he appeared forty eight hours later looking remarkably unrepentant.  He knows I need him and his logs.

Bastard.

In other news I have discovered a new obsession.  It is not entirely new to be fair, it is more of a recurring theme.  There is a larger theme, and there is a theme subset, actually.

I have this thing about food.  It is no suprise to you, I am sure.  I am known for embracing my dinner with enthusiasm, and sometimes other people’s dinners if I am feeling snackish at the time.  As well as fitting in my three square a day I am also a constant grazer, and a voyeur in other people’s pantries. My mum has a pantry.  It is an excellent place, and at least twice during every visit, even if I am only passing through, I am drawn to the pantry to browse.

I love a good pantry.  When I have the house of my dreams it will have a pantry.  A big one, with one of those marble topped tables in the middle, and a meat safe.  I do not know why I want a meat safe, but I do.  It is the sort of thing one should have in a pantry, along with a metric tonne of biscuits.

Anyway.  My long standing food obsession is with filling my house with food.  I do not pack away tinned goods in case of an apocalypse, like my paternal grandmother used to do.  You will find no twenty year old tins of Fray Bentos steak and kidney pie lurking under the mattress in my house, along with a score of tallow candles and a thingy for picking stones out of horse’s hooves.  Bugger that.  If there’s going to be an apocalypse I’d quite like to be burned to a crisp instantly please.  I really do not want to come round having mutated into a flesh eating psycho zombie with eyes like boiled eggs, and the thought of having to go head to head with Tina Turner in a whicker colander gives me the shudders.

No. My food thing is about worrying that we might not have enough food to eat if I were suddenly called upon to whip up dinner for six the day after tomorrow.  It has something to do with feelings of social inadequacy, and that if my fridge is not bulging at the seams and I do not have jars of tamarind paste handy, when Jamie Oliver comes round, he will shout at me for having a crappy store cupboard.  That must not happen.

Consequently we spend a small fortune on food, and I rarely run out of things.  Mostly it is all good. Sometimes things go slightly awry with my internal culinary pack rat though, and it all starts to get out of hand.

Now is one of those times.  Christmas doesn’t usually bother me. It is in fact, the one time of the year, food wise, when I really don’t get too stressed.  Because what we eat at Christmas only varies slightly from what we eat during the rest of the year, and because we are curmudgeonly old bastards who rarely invite anyone round, I do not have to adjust my food shopping requirements much.

This year that has all gone out of the window and I have spent the last few weeks adding things to my weekly shop and squirrelling them away.  The utility room is now like a miniature Ocado depot, and it is getting so crowded in there that it is now beginning to spill over into the hall.  I didn’t really have a true grasp of what I was doing until today, when I realised I have so many boxes of shortbread, tins of Quality Street, boxes of chocolate biscuits and Panettone, that we will be eating them until next September.  The children are hysterical with delight over it all.  I am rather concerned.

I did wonder whether my finely tuned psychic radar might be picking up news of an impending apocalypse subconsciously, but then dismissed this idea.  If this were true I would be more likely to be investing in a hotline to Ray Mears and spending what spare time I had left digging a latrine for when the water supply goes down, than buying Carrs Water Biscuits and a case of assorted red wines.

No. I am putting it down to the extremely cold weather we have been experiencing recently.  It is probably just the next stage in my hibernation cycle.  The one I’ve never had to get to before because it’s not been this bloody cold since about 1978, the year my chillblains got so big my mum had to cut the toe out of my trainers so that I could actually have a pair of shoes to wear for the school disco.  Oh, the humiliation.

So there’s that, which is the main obsession.

The subset obsession happens quite often, and is when I get fixated on buying one particular item repeatedly.  I do not do it knowingly.  It is more like I suddenly develop an amnesia type blind spot about whatever the item is.  Once it was apricot jam for example.  By the time I woke up to what I was doing we had eight jars of apricot jam.  There were only two of us at the time, and neither of us were particularly fond of apricot jam. It took years and some cunning gifting ideas to get rid of that jam.

This time it is pickled onions.  Now I love pickled onions at any time of year, but they also remind me particularly of Christmas.  My parents always used to make their own pickled onions and pickled cabbage, and every Christmas when there was a party and we had a buffet, there would  be an awesome array of pickles to tuck into. Yum.

I went out shopping today and came back with two jars of pickles.  One was a jar of pickled shallots from the farm shop.  The other a jar of baby silverskin onions and pickled garlic from M&S to try.  When I got home I opened the fridge only to find myself confronted with pickled onions, pickled shallots, pickled silverskin onions and pickled silverskin onions in balsamic vinegar.  I looked on my Ocado order for next week. I have ordered pickled onions.

Crap!

I am the only one who eats them.

It is a good job they are a preserve, right?

I cancelled the onions from the Ocado order, despite my misgivings (I might NEED them).

Later I was chatting to my mum on the phone and telling her about my onion obsession.  Her reaction was:

‘Oh God! You’re not pregnant again are you?’

Which immediately sent me into a blind panic.  I have had cravings for pickled onions during all three of my pregnancies in the early stages.  Not only was this not good because UE and Jason did not want to kiss me, but it also gave me raging heart burn.

Still, then I remembered that I could not possibly be (I am not going to spell it out) and cheered up a lot.

I’m going to celebrate with an onion sandwich.

Because that’s not at all weird.  Not like all that other obsessive stuff.

Thursday Do Your Worst

I think Thursday has a vendetta against me.  The last few Thursdays in a row have been bloody awful, and this one is shaping up to be a doozy too.  This is such a shame.  I’ve always been a huge fan of Thursdays in the past.  In fact, if I’d have ever been forced at knifepoint to answer questions for a consumer questionnaire on which day of the week was my favourite, it would always have been Thursday, up to now.

Now though, I am rapidly going off it.

Oscar goes to nursery on Thursdays and Fridays usually, which means days off for mama.  I am very keen on this.  I have several projects on the go which run much more smoothly when there isn’t a midget assistant involved.  I treasure my Thursday and Fridays.

Last night when Jason got home at stupid o’clock he said that he would not be able to pick Oscar up from nursery after work, as he would also be working until stupid o’clock then too.  This meant I would have to do it.

This posed a problem.  This is the week of social madness as far as the children are concerned. Tallulah had a Brownies Christmas party to go to on Monday night; on Tuesday night they had their friends round for tea; on Wednesday Tallulah had her school panto and Tilly had her Christingle service; on Friday we have more friends round for tea; on Saturday Tallulah is going to the Brownie panto.  It’s busy.

Thursday is the busiest day of all.  It was to start with Tallulah’s school play, and we all know how I feel about those.  Then I had to dash off and run errands, including buying supplies because it is the last karate lesson of the year tonight, and there will be a party where the kids must supply their own food and drink.  Tilly has a half day today, something to do with a staff pantomime.  She needed picking up, then she didn’t need picking up because she was going to a friend’s birthday party.  Then it emerged she would need picking up from the birthday party but that it didn’t finish until seven.  Unfortunately karate starts at six fifteen.  Even more unfortunately, tonight is the night of Tallulah’s school disco, which starts at seven and goes on until eight fifteen.  Karate doesn’t finish until quarter to eight and is in the next village to the school, so involves a car drive to get to. 

If I also had to fit in a trip to pick up Oscar from nursery in Glenfield, this would just make life impossible.

As it is, I have had to rescind Tallulah’s ticket for the school disco, as there is no way on God’s green earth I could get her to the disco and to karate.  Tilly has had to curtail her partying ways and is to be ready, on the doorstep of her friend’s house, wearing full karate kit at six on the dot, or we will be doomed.

Just thinking about Thursday has been giving me a headache, and meant that I have had to employ some of Jason’s project management skills coupled with ibuprofen and a strong espresso.

I thought about cancelling nursery.  Then I thought about the fact that this would mean a) taking Oscar with me to Tallulah’s nativity play, and b) not having any free time again. Neither of these things sounded very desirable.  I decided Jason could take him, but that I would pick him up at about two o’clock in the afternoon, thus giving myself at least three hours off. 

Brilliant.

Then it all went to hell in a bucket when Oscar’s temperature shot up and he just burst into tears at bed time.  This cold he has is both persistent and annoying, and we are all fed up of it now, most of all him. He is really anguished about the fact that he cannot taste anything properly and eating is now a chore, where it was previously a pleasure. He keeps asking me for food, and then crying when he tries it, because it doesn’t taste right.  Bless him.

So, the decision on nursery was taken out of my hands.  At this rate he will be lucky if he gets to the karate party as well, and I doubt if there will be any trip to nursery tomorrow either.

Bugger.

This morning he looked wan and miserable. His lip wobbled when I said he had to come with me to see Tallulah’s play.  To be honest, I did not blame him.  I was doing a lot of internal lip wobbling myself.

I had a plan. 

We rang granny, who was in, and not planning on going out.  We asked her if she wouldn’t mind having a small, limp, grey boy to sit with her for an hour.  She said she could think of nothing nicer.  She is a good granny.

Oscar perked up.

I dropped Tallulah at school, zoomed to granny’s house, dropped the boy off, made fourteen phone calls in a ten minute time span, zoomed to school and watched the play.

Actually, much to my amazement, it wasn’t bad at all.  In fact, and I whisper this, because it will definitely take the tarnish off of my grinchy reputation, I actually quite enjoyed it.  It was a nativity play, which is quite unusual these days, as they tend to go for more modern things involving break dancing and children dressed as pine air fresheners as a rule.  It was also done as a promenade performance, which stopped me reading my book, but in a good way.  We started off in the hall with all the kids singing, then Mary and Joseph took us on a tour of the school with each classroom kitted out as a way station on their journey to Bethlehem and each class singing a song to tie in with the theme of their classroom.

It was clever, and quite fun.

I was stunned. It has taken eleven years of parenting for me to go to one production that was worth the trip.  I do not ask for more. I realise I have more than most parents have in a lifetime. I will retire quietly now and relish the novelty.

Tallulah made a lovely donkey, and it’s not often I get to say that.

After that I picked the boy up, much to his horror, and it has been battle stations all day.  I have been hither and yon, yon and hither, and have just flitted home to empty shopping bags before setting off for the next lap.

Of course, because it is an insanely busy day, it has now decided that it will snow.  The sky is grey, the ground is wet and all morning it was pouring with rain, until an hour ago we had sleet, and then the sleet gave way to great, fat flakes of snow.  The temperature is falling like a stone, and despite the non appearance of the log man for the third time in as many days, I may have to actually crack and use my emergency log pile.

This will make it fun this evening when I have to navigate to Tilly’s friend’s house, which I have never been to before, and which is in the next town. I am taking the sat nav and putting tape over the children’s mouths.  I hate it when they help me find places.  They usually find places, they are just not the places I need to be.

Still, we have got this far with Thursday and I am still standing. I am made of stern stuff. It is all those vegetables my mum made me eat when I was a child I am sure.  I will survive.

Christmas Crafts

Tilly had a Christingle service at school today, for which they had to make Christingle candles.

I had never heard of Christingle until I was in my twenties.  I am sure it is a recent invention, much like Pop Tarts, whatever the Swedes say.

Anyhoo.  It is a rather nice service, and a Christingle Candle is usually rather pretty.  You get an orange, stick cocktail sticks into it, onto which you spear sweeties, and then decorate it with ribbon.  You stick an candle in the top and it all looks lovely.  It should look like this:

Or even prettier.

Tilly came home with hers this afternoon after the service.  It looked like this:

I am very much afraid that when she pulled it out of the bag to show it to me, I laughed.

I am usually really very good when it comes to the children’s artistic efforts, knowing full well that they need encouragement from those they love most, and even more full well that their efforts are usually ten times better than mine would be under the same circumstances.

Unfortunately, this time, I blew it.

It is the world’s worst Christingle candle.  If there were a website called Christingle Wrecks, I would enter this for a prize on it.  As it is, it looks like it has been savaged by wolverines.

I had steeled my nerve earlier in the week when Tallulah came home from Brownies with a similar bag claiming to have made a Christmas wreath out of pasta.  I could not imagine how it was going to look that good, yet she produced this:

which is actually a thousand times better than I could have hoped for, and which I have grown very fond of in the last few days.  I cannot say that I feel the same about the candle of menace.

Sharon has sent us some wonderful craft kits to keep us occupied and in our spare time we are steadily working our way through them.  Behold the fruits of our labours:

Jason helped the kids make this at the weekend while I was cooking.  Pretty good eh? 

This afternoon, Tallulah made this:

and has managed to make him look extremely alarmed, which I like.

I helped Oscar make this:

and apart from the fact that I sewed his trousers on back to front, I am reasonably happy. 

There are more, but you cannot see them yet.  They are what we like to think of as works in progress.

You may wonder why Tilly’s projects are noticeable by their absence.  Rest assured that she was not harmed during the making of her Christingle Candle, but she had had enough of crafts when she got home and did her maths homework instead.

Poor child.

STRESS

We went to granny’s house this morning.  While we were there, she gave Oscar a stress ball in the shape of Santa.  He didn’t really know what it was, so she explained it to him:

‘When you get stressed, you squeeze the stress ball and it makes you feel better.’

Brilliantly simple.

We were leaving the house to go and run some errands, and he did not want to come with me, naturally preferring to stay behind with his granny, who lets him do cool things and eat coco pops and shoot the four year old breeze.

I said:

‘Oscar. Just get your coat on.  You are really stressing me out now.’

He ran off, came back with the stress ball and squeezed it hard in my general direction, saying:

‘There mama. Don’t you feel better now?’

Oscar’s Letter to Santa

Oscar’s handwriting has let him down a bit this year.  He is very good at O’s and S’s, and his x’s are a marvel to behold. Other than that, we are struggling.  He told me what to write, I wrote it.  Here it is, verbatim:

Dear Santa,

I have been a very good boy this year.

For Christmas I would like:

A scooter with blue handles and a green floor bit where you can play on it and I would have a black colour at the back and a suitcase, and please may the suitcase on the back of my scooter be blue?

A new teddy bear that is called Fred the teddy, and please may it be blue?

A new Christmas D.S. game with Santa in it.

Some sweets.

Oscar (written by Oscar himself, with a little help from me)

Four billion of these xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, scattered liberally throughout, also hand drawn by Oscar.

And that’s Oscar. It’s all about the detail.  Sadly he will be slightly disappointed by the scooter, as I could not afford to have one custom built this year, but hopefully it will be an acceptable substitute.  It is in the right colours, but instead of a suitcase on the back (which makes them tricky to steer anyway) it has drawers underneath the bit you put your feet on.  It is also decorated with pictures of Ben Ten and has toy aliens in the drawers. This will do, right?

Pray for me that this will do.

Tilly’s Letter to Santa

Dear Mummy, Daddy and Santa.

For Christmas please can I have:

1. A satchel (Wardrobe shop)
2. a Pokemon DS game
3. A scarf
4. An adventure book
5. And some chocolate

p.s. If it is not too much bother I would also please like  6) a teapot

Love Tilly, xxxx

Thank you

And this is Tilly. She knows she has been a good girl. She is always a good girl.  Sometimes she is dizzy, sometimes she is daft, but she is never not good.  She can charm the birds out of the trees with her goodness, can my Tilly. 

She is growing up. Note the aside re: the satchel. This is for my benefit. We are into specifics now.  I want this, not this, in this colour, not this one.  I don’t mind. In some ways it makes life easier.  In some ways.

I like the p.s. too.  That is also very Tilly.

No Tilly, I don’t think Santa will find that too much bother at all.

Tallulah’s Letter to Santa

I quote, complete with original spellings (because the original is still the best, right?)

dear Santa

Pleas can I have a stiker set, the DS game gardnig (gardening) mamma. Pleas can I have a Magic Knome, a bush baby, a music box. Pleas can I have some stamps. Pleas can I have a white board and pen, a foutain (fountain) pen, and a scooter.

Thancue

So this is Tallulah.

Note that she has dispensed with all the usual niceties of protesting that she has been a good girl (bless her. She does try), but that she is hoping Santa overlooks this by the fact that her letter is polite enough to pass muster anyway.

Yes, I know it is an odd list. No I am not sure what she means by a magic knome, nor by stamps. I have bought ink stamps. I suspect it may be first class stamps. I might dash to the post office and buy a book of festive ones just to cover my bases.

It’s all very hard.

Bless your manger

Now that Tallulah is at a Catholic school, they do a lot of religious studies homework.  A lot.

This means we talk about Cheezus quite a bit more than in the past.

I don’t mind. I have a lot of time for Cheezus and his cheesy ways. He was a top bloke and would have been welcome at my wedding any day.

It’s all the other stuff  I have issues with, the more proscriptive elements of religious belief, but as long as she is getting other viewpoints from somewhere (and in this house you can bet she is), I can live with what they teach her at school. 

Plus, let’s face it.  This is Tallulah we are talking about.  She doesn’t take crap from anybody, not even Cheezus.  She will live forever. God is too afeared of what she will do to him when she gets up there.  There will be a rota.  There will be kneeling on pencils. There will be BLESSINGS.  As regular readers will know, she is big on blessings.

They are not as benign as they seem.

Anyway.  Cheezus is big news Chez Boo, particularly at this most Cheezustastic time of year.  We have had the usual yearly debate of what exactly a manger is, and have now moved onto the idea that Cheezus, like Santa and Piderman, is some kind of rockin’ superhero, complete with beard and sandals (unlike Santa and Piderman).

Oscar is very impressed by the things that Cheezus can do.

Very.

Jason is working extraordinarily long and awful hours at the moment. He regularly leaves the house at five in the morning, and if he is home by eight at night it is a miracle.  He also works for several hours when he gets home. This is not about to change any time soon, and the week that he thought he was going to be able to take off between Christmas and New Year has now evaporated like dust in the wind (all hail Bill and Ted).

It sucks.

We are all rather pulling our feathers out about it, not least Jason himself.  Oscar has been trying to come up with some ideas as to how we can liberate Jason from the bonds of oppression.

This morning he caught me in a sentimental mood and brought a tear to my eye when he said:

‘Mama. If Cheezus was still alive and I could invite him round to my house, I would.  He would be my great friend, and because he can do anything I would ask him to do his magic stuff, and then he could magic it so that daddy could be home in the holiday, and we could spend all day with him, and he would never have to go to work again.’

You have to admit that it’s rather lovely, even if you are a cynical old cow like me, right?

Then, when I had only just finished blowing my nose, he made me howl, when he said:

‘Mama. Where does Cheezus keep his magic wand so that he can do all his magic stuff?’

I explained there was no magic wand, because some people were just so utterly magic that they could do magical things without a wand.

He was struck dumb with awe at the thought of this much magic.

It makes Harry Potter look like an uter wet and a wede, that’s for sure.