Frankly

I think I may have mentioned this particular quirk in relation to another incident on a previous occasion, but it makes me laugh so much I am going to write about it again.

As well as delving into the world of Egyptology, Tallulah’s class are currently doing a project on diaries.

As a result we have been discussing Anne Frank.

We have a child friendly version of the book to read (I think they take out all reference to how horrible the Nazis were, and merely have Anne sailing down a Dutch canal into a hazy sunset at the end), and have been chatting about who Anne was.

Tallulah loves a good tragedy. It appeals to her never far from the surface drama queen.

She was absorbed and thoughtful as we talked about the story.  Then, as she was leaving the room she said:

‘Poor Anne.  Those Nancies were so horrible to her, weren’t they?’

Krispy Kreme Romance

Regular readers will know that Oscar is quite the daddy’s boy.  He loves me, and I will do at a pinch, but it’s daddy for the win on every occasion that counts.

I am not a precious mother who relies on the unfailing adoration of all her children at all times for a sense of worth.  This is a very good thing indeed, as if I did, I would be on a constant supply of dried frog pills, rocking purgatorially in a corner. 

No. I am made of sterner stuff.

I am also quite wily.  If your child prefers the other parent, it means that you get to spend more time sitting around idly pretending that you do not have children, while they cuddle snot riddled, wailing infants who want nothing more than to climb inside their trouser turn up for eternity.

Oscar is very kind to me about his partiality.  It is not that he spurns me with a firm hand.  He sees me more as a kind of well loved lackey.  If we were Nineteenth Century aristocrats I would probably be cast as the loving nanny, with a name like Binky or Stuffer.  I would be excellent at providing boiled egg and soldiers, magic kisses for grazed knees, and help with spellings.  I would be remembered with warm affection.  Reverence would be reserved for papa and his mutton chop whiskers.

Oscar, as you may remember, is going to marry his daddy eventually.  He was rather worried about what would happen to me when he finally did marry daddy.  He told me quite categorically that although he didn’t want to marry me himself, and he didn’t want me to live with him and daddy (I am only allowed round if I come as the char lady and meals on wheels combined.), he didn’t want me to be lonely, and he worried about who would marry me.

Again, with the whole it’s a good job I am not a sensitive flower thing, right?

We agreed that if, when he’s twenty one, he still wants to marry daddy, I will step aside and divorce him so that Oscar and daddy can be together. I have said that by then I will have had over twenty good years of daddy’s company and will probably quite enjoy a few years of my own company by then, so he’s not to worry.

It was all settled rather amicably, until now.

Now there is a fly in the ointment.

Our good friend Saj came round for tea one evening, and Oscar became rather enamoured of her.  He has known her since he was first born, and although he has loved her as a friend, he has not loved her in a passionate way until now.

This particular evening however, he did offer to marry her, and seemed rather keen on the idea.  I am not one to cast nasturtiums, so I will not say that I think it may, in large part, have been down to the box of Krispy Kreme doughnuts that she brought with her.  Far be it from me to say.

She is delighted.  She has been looking for a husband for some time, and hasn’t yet got over the shock of Prince William’s engagement (apparently he was promised to her first).  Oscar’s proposal could be just the thing to lift her out of this depression she has been enduring.

She has been quite sensible about it, and has suggested that they go on a date first to see if they are as compatible in other areas as they appear to be over the subject of Krispy Kreme doughnuts.

Oscar has concurred.  He is going to take her to the cinema on their first date.  She said that he could pick what they were going to see, which I think is a mistake.  He has put in his vote for Toy Story Three.  As I know Saj to be a woman who prefers Sex and The City and films in which Owen Wilson appears wearing no shirt, I think my initial reservations about her letting him choose are well founded, but the deed is done.

She has concurred gracefully.

Now we just have to wait another fifteen years for him to be old enough to take her.

And it looks as though Jason and I will be sharing a twin room in the Shady Pines Retirement Home for Old Fuckers after all.

Beauty comes from within

It is Sunday.  We are supposed to be fettling the house.  Jason has the bit between his teeth, now that there is a distinct possibility that we will be moving in less than three weeks.

It’s all hands on deck.

The children are not thrilled. 

They are currently at the tip with daddy, learning vital life lessons in how to sort plastics and what to do with tetrapaks.

Tallulah is furious.  She is a girl who believes that any situation in life is infinitely improved if you are wearing a floaty, tulle dress with layers of sparkles, stiff petticoats and acres of bling.  Were I an American mother she would have been a shoo in for a toddler beauty pageant.  Apart from the constant scowling and the tempestuous refusal to do anything anyone asked of her.

She is not good at wearing warm clothes.  She despises jeans, socks, sweaters of any description, and anything that isn’t encrusted with jewels.  She will wear leggings if forced, but only under a frock.  I use the word frock advisedly.  Dresses are an inadequate description of what she would wear left to her own devices.

Yesterday she went for a walk with my aunt and cousin at Bradgate Park. I think I have mentioned our sub zero temperatures, biting wind and snow flurries to you? She was forced to change twice by me, and once by my aunt before we could let her out of the house.  She went, grudgingly, sporting a face like a chicken’s arse.

Today, because we are doing outdoor things apparently, sorting the shed, picking up leaves, etc, going to the tip, she has been forced, yet again to compromise her aesthetic sensibility.

She came down this morning in a sun dress and bare feet, wearing a crocheted shrug.  Jason sent her back upstairs with a few, choice words.

She was not best pleased.

She got to the top of the stairs and then screamed down the stair well.

‘I hate you.  I hate jeans and I hate warm clothes and I’m not going to wear them because I don’t care what you say.’

So began a battle of wills which lasted half an hour and required a two parent intervention, and the threat of not being allowed to go to an antiques fair with granny next week if she doesn’t learn to dress appropriately for the conditions and the weather.

She is still mutinous.

I pointed out that Kate Moss, one of the most (arguably) beautiful women in the world, generally wears a uniform of jeans and ratty old jumpers, teamed with wellington boots.

It cut no ice.

I pointed out that beauty came from within, and that it didn’t matter how beautiful your clothes were, even John Galliano would be pushed to make you look glamorous if you had a face that could freeze a man’s innards at twenty paces thanks to all the rage coasting across its surface.

She cared not.

Eventually we won, but it was not a graceful victory.  It was grudging and painful and I feel that this is only seconds out, round three.

Still, she hasn’t staged a rebellion for quite some time, and it was long overdue.

I should thank her for all her training.  After all, our landlady’s behaviour was amateurish in comparison.  I have cut my sparring teeth with the best in the country.

It is important to count your blessings where you can.

Talking of which, I seem to have escaped the fate of the family trip to the tip, mainly due to the fact that I have already pre sorted all our rubbish into appropriate piles, and rinsed out all the things that smell. I think I have done my bit. 

Also, with the children, and all the rubbish, there was no room in the car for me.

Consequently I am alone at the MOD.

I feel I should be sorting things out and running around dutifully.

Instead, I am here.

Indulging in the guilty pleasure of blogging.

Oscar slept last night, except for one incident where he lost his drink in the wee small hours.  There was hardly any coughing, no vomiting, and no barking.

Hooray!

He is more perky.  We are more perky.

Sleep is a beautiful thing people.  It is not true that sleep is for the weak.  Sleep is delicious and there should be more of it.  It is a sybaritic pleasure.  That is what sleep is.

Anyway, here I am.

I only have a few minutes before they get back and we must all put our shoulders to the wheel again.

I’m going to eat a biscuit and loll about.

Don’t tell anyone.

Tender Sensibilities

Last week, Tallulah brought home a letter from school that informed us that they were doing ‘junk modelling’, making Egyptian artefacts, (Yes. I know. We are doing the bloody Egyptians, again.  This is what comes of moving schools.), and could they bring in some boxes and cartons in order to make these artefacts.

Schools are so pressed for space these days that they do not have craft cupboards full of cereal boxes and crepe paper, like in the old days.  Cupboards are now being used as auxiliary class rooms and breakout spaces for teachers on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

After the Christmas holidays we were required to donate newspapers so that they could cover tables with them while doing messy activities.  We were told that we were to bring in no more than three per child, as they did not have room to store any more.  Furthermore, we were supposed to vet the newspapers to make sure that they did not contain anything offensive that might upset the children.

They are too sensitive to be followed round the room by the eyes of Gail, the Page Three Stunna, anymore.  Look what it did for us, back in the unreconstructed Seventies for goodness sakes.  No wonder the world is going to hell in a hand cart.

Anyway, I duly obliged with the newspapers.  I did not bother to check the content.  We do not buy papers any more, so the only newspaper I have are the free papers that get shoved through the door once a week.  I hardly think that an article about a sponsored cycle ride to help save endangered coots, and some free ads for an Eternal Bow Hostess Trolley (buyer to collect), are going to scar the youth of Earl Shilton for life.

Last Tuesday I filled a bag with an assortment of random craft items for junk modelling.  I was quite proud of the fine collection of items I was able to include. We are on a big recycling kick at the moment, and because I hadn’t been to the tip yet, we were spoiled for choice.

As Tallulah was about to head out the door I realised I had some toilet roll tubes somewhere that I had forgotten to include.  We all know that crafting objects out of cardboard is not the same if it doesn’t include some fine toilet roll tubes somewhere.  It is obligatory.

I rushed off to get them and went to put them in the top of Tallulah’s bag for her.

She went mental:

‘No, mama! No! You can’t do that!’

‘Can’t do what?’

‘We can’t have toilet roll tubes.  We are not allowed.’

‘Why not?’

‘It’s a school rule, mama.’

‘Why?’

‘Because they are dirty.  It is to do with Health and Safety.  That’s what the teacher told us.’

I was amazed.  Nay, stunned.

It is quite the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard.

Apparently they are very unsanitary because they are stored in places where people uncover their bottoms.

The fact that you do not touch a toilet roll tube with your bottom is by the by.  The fact that it may have glimpsed your dewy, peach fuzzed posterior is enough to immediately infect it with germs of such horrific malignity you will probably go blind if you go within fifty yards of it with a Pritt Stick in your hand.

You have been warned.

She shoots…She scores

Tilly is quite sporty.

She does not get this from me.  I consider I have had a workout when I have to walk up and down stairs more than twice a day.  I detest sport, and would rather stick red hot needles in my eyes than take part in any form of exercise.  I consider lifting heavy books to be an imposition.  That is all.

My ex, UE is not sporty either.  He tells me that when he was young he used to do rock climbing.  I think he must have been very young indeed, for in all the years I have known him I have never known him indulge willingly in sporting activities.  I believe he does go to the gym now.  My feelings around this border on the cynical and involve the words ‘potential girl friends’ and ‘mid life crisis.’  I may be being unkind.

I doubt it.

So. I am not entirely sure where Tilly’s sporting propensities come from.  It is possible that she is a throw back to my maternal grandmother who was a keen hockey player at school, and such a good swimmer that she trialled for the Olympics.

It can only be that, I am sure.

Tilly went to her first after school football class last week.  At her last school she started playing football with the boys at lunch times, and got really cross because they were all so utterly sexist in their approach.  Quite often she would be forced to be in goal, or to sit on the side lines while the really exciting stuff was going on.  It seems clear that the football pitch, even in primary schools, is one of the last bastions of the unreconstructed male ego.

At this school there is now a girls football club.  It has only just started, and it was originally organised on a very informal basis.  In fact, when Tilly first asked me if she could join it was hard to find out when it was, where it was, and how long each lesson would be, it was so informal.

After a week of the idea being run up the flagpole, it seems that the school were utterly amazed at the number of girls who wanted to play.

I do not understand this.  I mean, I know I hate sports, but it’s not because I’m a girl and I think that sporting events are an expression of ultimate manhood.  It’s because I’m a lazy heifer who doesn’t want to strip down to her undies and run around doing star jumps in the freezing cold. 

Football is a national obsession.  Why should girls be exempt from it?

So, given the number of girls clamouring to join the football club, the school got their shit together and organised a bus to another local school who have a girls team, and took all the girls from Tilly’s school who were interested to play.

Tilly’s best friend went along too, and her mother offered to pick Tilly up when she picked up her daughter, and bring her home for me.  This was most welcome.  I concurred.

As she scrambled out of the car, she looked an absolute wreck.  She had mud on mud on mud.  It was hard to see her legs for the tide of mud that engulfed her.  Her boots were clarted up, and she had Indian brave stripes of mud on her cheeks.  Her hair hung round her face in dank, muddy strings.  She looked filthy and knackered.

She staggered up the drive into the house, barely able to speak.

Eventually, as she was peeling her kit off in the hallway, where I had corralled her before she could do any further damage to the house, she answered my question, which was:

‘How did you get on?’

She gave me a wobbly smile, and said in a euphoric way:

‘We lost….(I was about to interject some parently wisdom about taking part being the thing and all that, when she carried on)…IT WAS BRILLIANT!’

I forsee hours of standing by the side of muddy fields, cheering on girls in nylon tops in my future. 

I thought I would not have to do this for another few years until Oscar was bigger.

Curses.

Cosmic

Oscar is not shy at all.

He likes to leave the bathroom door open at all times, and quite often has long and protracted conversations while he is going about his business.

On Friday night he galloped up to the bathroom for a pee.

Jason was coming up the stairs with an armful of washing to put away when Oscar shouted:

‘Dadda! Dadda! Come and see.  Look, Dadda! When I do a wee I can do it so fast that it shoots out of my willy like this, (he makes a zooming noise in illustration), and goes so fast it goes up to the stars and into the comic…’

Jason, who was rather squeamish about these sort of things when we met, and he suddenly became father to a one year old and a four year old, is now immune to such situations.

He stood in the doorway and said dryly:

‘Yes, Oscar.  That’s very impressive.’

He turned to carry on up the stairs, leaving him with the parting shot:

‘I think you meant the cosmos, right?’

Oscar continued piddling at the speed of light with gay abandon, not even deigning to give him an answer.

When a boy has such super powers there is no need to put gifts of such magnitude into words really.

A Plea

So, yesterday I galloped hither and yon looking at five more houses for my collection of; ‘Leicestershire Houses 2011′.  I will be producing a glossy, coffee table book from my findings. It will be available in all good bookshops, price £99.99 from May.

The best thing to do with it will be to make a coffee table out of it.

Actually, yesterday’s viewings were not as completely and utterly horrible as the day before.  Which was good, considering I clocked up about sixty miles and spent six hours of my life getting to them.

I shall spare you the details, but one of them was not half bad, and we have put in an application this morning with the agent.  Whether it will be accepted or not is a different matter, but at least we have committed ourselves.

It is considerably less money than the MOD.  This fulfils Jason’s criteria, and means we can save more for if Canada becomes a reality rather than a possibility.

It is modern, and has up to date appliances, all of which looked in full working order.  It promises to be warm and functional and have hot water.  Given that we are currently experiencing snow flurries and sub zero temperatures throughout the day at the moment, this is extremely desirable.

It is bigger than the best one we saw the day previously, and although we will still have to put things in storage, we will have to put less in storage, and this means the cost will go down again.  The things we will have to put in storage are not important things like crockery and mops.  They are things like books and pictures, which we accepted we would probably have to do anyway, when we started looking again.  This is alright.  Not fabulous, but alright.

The only downside is the location.  It is in a village about twenty minute’s drive from both schools.  I shall be doing school runs.  There is a more direct route than the one we are currently having to take, but the road is closed due to maintenance works on the railway bridge over the road. This maintenance work was due to finish two months ago.  It is still ongoing with no end date in sight.  I hope it finishes soon, as if we get the house, it will cut my journey to school in half.

We put the application in this morning.  Now we wait.  We will know within a week.

Keep everything crossed for us please.

Croup is Poop

Oscar is still really sick.

It is so frustrating.  During the day he seems fine.  Yesterday he was well enough to go to nursery, which was good as I had a haircut and five house viewings to fit in. 

The problem is the nights.  He goes to sleep fine, and then in the early hours he wakes up coughing and barking, and it is impossible to get him settled.  He gets so distressed, and the more distressed he becomes, the more he coughs.  It is a vicious circle.

He seems to feel safer if we are there, which I totally understand, but it has meant taking him into bed with us every night, and from my previous posts you know he is not a passive sleeper.  He sleeps better. We don’t.

If we leave him in his own bed he coughs himself awake on average once an hour, so our sleep is just as broken, only we have to get out of bed in the freezing cold MOD to see to him. 

It’s a no win situation.

Last night was particularly horrible.  He woke at about half past one having coughed himself sick. 

We cleaned him up and changed him, and brought him into our bed.  He was absolutely boiling hot, so we gave him some Calpol to try and bring his temperature down. 

He coughed and coughed until he was sick all over my side of the bed, and brought up most of his meds. 

We cleaned him up and started again.

It took hours for his temperature to go down, and in the meantime he had those terrible, half waking fever dreams.  He kept sitting up in bed shouting; ‘Let’s go!’ and counting repetitively; ’1,2,3,4,’ over and over again.

When he wasn’t doing that he was coughing, or boiling up so he needed a drink of water.

Then he would clutch my arm when he finally dozed off, clearly having terrible dreams.  Or he would reach across and stroke my face for reassurance.

All in all we probably slept for a couple of hours through the night, but only in snatches, while the fever and the coughing consumed him.

This morning, when we had to get up he was cool and calm, and sleeping like a baby.

I on the other hand, looked like the wreck of the Hesperus.  I have bags under my bags, and my lovely, new haircut, courtesy of Richard and his magic scissors, is now completely ruined thanks to the liberal application of Calpol, cough mixture and small boy’s hands.  I woke up sporting the Shock Headed Peter look.

I don’t think it will be big this season.

This is the third night in a row of totally ruined sleep for all of us.  Oscar seems to be doing remarkably well on it. Jason and I are not.

I am praying to all the gods that tonight is much less sticky and much more peaceful.

A World On Fire

My reading rate is very slow at the moment.

Actually that’s not entirely true.  My reading is as consuming as ever, and many pages are being turned on a daily basis.  The feeling I have of things slowing down book wise, has come from the sheer weight of the books I am currently reading.  It is taking me a long, long time to make any significant dent on these tomes.

After several wrist achingly punishing weeks I have finally finished Amanda Foreman’s; ‘A World On Fire’.  Coming in at over 800 close typed pages, and in hardback, it has been a very physically demanding book to read.  I had to give up trying to read it in bed, as it was causing me to get weird divots in my thighs where the book edges were gouging into them, as well as causing Jason to jump out of his skin every time I fell asleep reading it and dropped it with an enormous bang on the bedroom floor.

It is, despite its size, a fantastic book, and if you are looking for a highly readable account of the American Civil War I recommend it unreservedly.  Experts, who have not been shy in posting their opinions of it in Amazon, have criticised its errors and lack of scholarly form.  I don’t care.  It was a cracking read.

I can’t say what the errors were, because I knew very little about the American Civil War before I started reading, so most of the information was completely new to me.  I enjoyed it though, and thought that not only was it informative, and engaging from a historical perspective, but it was also fascinating in a kind of novelish way, because of the way Foreman structured her material.

She concentrates on three things:

1. Giving you a linear narrative of the key events in the war itself.
2. Focusing on the stories of individuals by including diary entries, eye witness accounts and government papers.  The individual stories help to highlight the bigger picture by giving a personal perspective.  Reading an eye witness account of a battle for example, really helped to put into perspective the loss of 25,000 men in one day of fighting.
3. Using the complex history and relationship of Britain and America as a lens by which to look at the war and how it affected both sides of the Atlantic, and how this in turn affected the balance of power in global politics.

It is very cool indeed, although if you are interested in it, it is one of the few times I would recommend buying it for Kindle rather than in the flesh.  It is physically much less punishing that way.

I am now engrossed in Don Quixote by Cervantes.  It is another wrist breaker, at nearly 1000 pages, and I am finding it much less interesting than Foreman’s book, but not as utterly dull and full of nonsense as Ulysses, which is my low water mark as far as classic reads go.

I am only on page 300.

I soldier on bravely.  Just ignore the eye strain and wrist splints.  Never let it be said that I shirked my duty.

It came off in my hand

Oscar was upstairs using the loo, when he called me in quite a panic stricken tone of voice.

I went up to investigate.

He was engaged in the tricky act of having a pee standing up.

He looked at me with a very worried frown and said:

‘Mama, when I pulled my pants down to have a wee I noticed that my willy was all crumpled up and small.’

‘Yes, Oscar. That’s normal.’

‘No mama. You don’t understand.  When I started to wee, my willy unfolded and then a bit fell off the end and went over there.’

He pointed over to the edge of the bath.

I went over and had a look.

I looked at his willy.

It all seemed present and correct to me.

I said:

‘Don’t worry Oscar.  Your willy is fine, and no bits have dropped off it at all.  Look.’

He replied impatiently:

‘Mama! No! You are an idiot.  I didn’t mean my willy fell off.  I meant that when my willy unfolded it sent some of my wee over there.’

He turned his back on me in utter disgust at my stupidity, and pulling his trousers up with gravitas,  went off to wash his hands.

Of me, I expect.