You’re a great man

A very quick book recommendation, mainly to take away the self pitying grumpiness of the last post.

The children and I have just finished reading the marvellous: ‘You’re A Bad Man, Mr. Gum’ by Andy Stanton.

It is a work of unmitigated genius, if you like silly jokes, colloquial writing and pure bizarre stream of consciousness it is the book for you.

It is very short. Had I been reading it on my own, I would have finished it in an hour, to an hour and a half tops.  You could easily fit it into your busy schedule if you try.

It is so funny it actually made me laugh out loud this evening, Given that I have lost my temper with the children to a shame making level this evening, and am feeling like a bear with a sore head, you will appreciate the genius.

The story, very simply is about a horrible, horrible man, called Mr. Gum.  He is like a more wily and cunning version of Mr. Twit.  Mr. Gum has a terrifically neat garden, not because he likes gardening, but because he has a garden proud fairy living in his neighbourhood, and if his garden gets messy, she comes over to his house and repeatedly bashes him on the head with a frying pan until he has cleaned it up.

All is well in Mr. Gum’s horrible world, until the biggest dog in the world, Jake, comes round and takes a shine to Mr. Gum’s garden, which he then persists in digging up.  Mr. Gum has had quite enough of being smashed about the head with kitchen implements and decides to take his revenge on Jake.

It is all very, very silly, but hugely funny and irreverent and written in this wonderfully dynamic and energetic style that I loved.  There are lots in the series and we have been to the library to get more.  We are developing a Mr. Gum habit.

We think you should too.

Just another mundane Monday

It’s Monday, it’s not five to five, and it’s not Crackerjack.

It’s the first day back at school.  It’s the first day of the new school run, and it’s the first day of attempting to establish some kind of workable routine in this house which does not involve cardboard boxes and takeaway food.

I am totally knackered.

I slept appallingly.  Terrible, heart rending dreams that had me sitting bolt upright in bed, gasping and tearful.  Lots of them.

One good thing is that I was able to get up at my regular school time (ten to seven, for those masochists out there), despite living out here in the sticks.  This was alright. The not alright bit was that I used to get me and Tilly up at ten to seven and would stagger downstairs for half an hour of solace with the cafetiere before Tilly actually got to the breakfasting stage.  I wouldn’t wake the others up until eight at the earliest.

Now I can’t do that.  We all have to get up at ten to seven, and be motivated and organised and functioning.

We leave the house at ten to eight, and that gives us time to get everybody where they need to be without tears and shrieking.

It’s not too bad really.  Apart from the whole having to lose my half an hour of silence.  I know I could set the alarm to wake me up just after six and solve the problem that way, if I were really that attached to it.

I’m not.

I just like a good moan.

Oscar and I eschewed crawling back to bed and setting the alarm for home time.  We were both quite keen on the way to school, but he started to perk up on the way home.  I was still quite committed to the bed idea, but I could see it being eroded as the miles flew by.

We went into Broughton Astley village to suss out the facilities.  We rated the local Co-op as average due to smaller size, lack of rhubarb, lack of trans gendered work staff (although that could change), and the fact that it was freezing.  The butcher’s was shut until tomorrow so we could not survey his sausages.  The bakers does a damn fine cottage loaf and excellent shortbread biscuits, and the library was good.

All the other shops were either shut, or just not exciting enough for us to care.

We spent the afternoon making Play Doh models of the entire  cast of Postman Pat, which Oscar then solemnly dissected with a pair of tweezers.  I have thrown away a lot of our Play Doh, as it has gone the colour of the universe (breen), and is rather hairy.  I have ordered some non hairy, non breen Play Doh as a treat.  Call me crazy, but I cannot forge alliances with Mrs. Goggins if she is bilious and bearded.  I dislike Postman Pat at the best of times. Until they gave him a wife and small child (Julian), I was convinced he shopped round the corner (not that it was a factor in my dislike. Mostly I disliked him because he was a boring prig).  It may, of course, be a marriage of convenience, to give the job of Postman more gravitas.  I note he now has a helicopter too.

The recorded delivery wielding fool.

The home time school run was lengthened by bad traffic, bickering  children, parking issues and the ongoing quest for rhubarb (Tilly is making crumble tomorrow at school).

Things are not helped by the fact that I am extremely impatient today.  I am tired, in that gravelly eyed way.  I am utterly sick of the children and their constant neediness, and I want a day off so I can lie in bed under the duvet and pretend to be single and childless.  I wouldn’t swap them for the world, but I would quite like to put them in stasis for twenty four hours.

I think it’s the combination of half term and moving house.  It has wiped me out completely.  I am a hollow eyed shadow of my former self.

What I would like to be doing now is drinking red wine and staring moronically at the television until I fall asleep.  What I am doing is blogging so that my hands have something to do while I am ‘helping’ Tallulah with her homework.  This is so that I do not actually throttle her.

She forgot to bring her homework folder home over the holidays.  This caused great consternation on her part in the middle of last week when I had finally cleared enough space to sit and do some with her.  She wobbled and wailed and shrieked.  I pointed out that there was absolutely nothing that she could do about it, nor indeed anything I could do about it.  She seemed to find this truth rather unpalatable, and continued wailing until I asked her what she was trying to achieve, other than rendering me deaf and homicidal.

She has brought it home tonight, and it all needs doing by Wednesday.  She is now doing the old one two manoeuvre on me, to see how much of it she can get away with either not doing, not doing herself, or doing to such a standard of indolent crapness that any time spent on it would have been better spent letting mum’s cat crap on a piece of paper and handing that in instead.

I have lost my temper once.  There is an ultimatum on the table now.  Either she does it right, without making a fuss, or if she can’t do it, asks for help without a) making a fuss and b) totally ignoring whatever comes out of your mouth, or it gets put away until Wednesday and then she can reap the whirlwind when she hands it in.

It has focused her mind rather wonderfully.

 

The Middle Ages

Last night I was dithering over at the Emma Bridgewater crockery site.  I cannot help myself. I have a fatal weakness for her pots, and have had for several years.  I actually am sad enough to have an account with the site, and needed to go in and update all my details.  Then I made the fatal mistake of having a little browse.

I tried to avoid buying something. I really did.

I even posted a plea for intervention on Facebook.  Many friends were kind enough to try to help, with supportive messages.

It did not do the trick. 

The fatal thing is that there is an ‘outlet’ page on the Bridgewater site, where they sell their seconds at reduced prices.  They had the saucer for the gravy boat that I wanted.  It was a fiver.

I bought it.

Postage costs a fiver, which effectively doubles it.  I decided that it would be stupid not to buy something else to make the postage seem more reasonable.  By the time I had added in two non outlet priced pasta bowls and four French bowls, the price had gone into orbit, and I came to my senses.

Not enough to not buy the gravy saucer though.

I was ridiculously pleased with it.

I am so middle aged.

In one of the intervention messages, Antonia over at Whoopee, said that although Bridgewater didn’t do it for her (she doesn’t like the stuff with the words on.  I do.) she is currently having a thing about retro Seventies pottery.  She agrees it is probably a middle aged thing.

I think it must be.  I used to loathe pottery with words on it.  I remember having a snit the year I wanted a non standard bread bin, and being pissed off because why would anyone want to have a bread bin that said the word ‘bread’ on it? It’s not like you’d be using it to store coal in, or anything.

Now though, now, I love the Bridgewater pattern with words on it (Black Toast).  I collect it.  The fact that I collect it is in itself a middle aged thing.  I always used to pride myself on having mis matched, non-coordinated crockery, and not selling out to some big designer name charging stupid prices for what was essentially a pragmatic item.

Serves me bloody right doesn’t it?

All this led me to wonder what else about me has changed, probably due to being middle aged.

Here is my list so far:

• Not caring about what the current popular music is, and having to ask my children who these people are.
• Being more interested in reading my book than watching television, and not being that bothered if I miss an episode of a television programme even if I really like it.
• Not being arsed about going to the cinema overmuch. I like films, but prefer to watch them at home with a kettle and a pause button to hand.
• Actively getting up and going and doing something else if a film is boring me.
• The whole crockery thing.
• Thinking with excitement last night that when the children were in bed I could eat Greek yogurt with cherry compote in it.  What happened to drinking creme de menthe out of my sling backs.
• Having a love affair with my UGGS, solely because they are comfy.
• Having a love affair with my underfloor heating, and actually bragging about it.
• Looking forward to my Ocado order/Waitrose shop.
• Thinking bars and restaurants are too noisy and that what is the point of going out to spend time with people if I can’t hear what the bloody hell they are saying?
• Thinking that most shop assistants look to be about ten years old.
• Falling asleep in the middle of doing other things.

I’m sure there are lots more things.

Anyone care to suggest anything?

I defect

My p.c., as you may know, is not entirely well.

Jason did a super duper virus scan session with frills on top.  We de ginger syruped the keyboard.  He got a fancy piece of kit which monitors all extraneous non virus stuff and tells you what may be slowing things down (or in my case, freezing the screen until things need rebooting, five or six times a day).  He has taken my desktop down to the bare essentials.

Basically, short of totally rebuilding it, this little bugger has had the works.  Is it grateful?

Is it buggery?

It is just poorly. Poorly, poorly, poorly.  It works, for a bit, and then spectacularly keels over.

This is not ideal.  I am getting to the point where I may actually be able to resume some of my more literary projects, and I would like to do it without feeling like  the whole lot could disappear down the tech toilet every ten minutes.

I love my p.c.  It has been a stalwart friend for the last two years, and has done sterling service.  It seemed criminal to be looking to replace it.  But as Jason says, two years is a long time in technology terms, and it may just be dying a natural death.  Not helped by the fact that it fell onto mum’s kitchen floor last week.

Today we went to P.C. World to look at new ones.

I’m not really into techy stuff.  I don’t get excited about iPhones, or nano technology.  I do not own an MP3 player. I wouldn’t even know where to start.  I usually let Jason make all those kinds of buying decisions, because those are the things that matter to him.  Plus, he is paid an extraordinary amount of money to be good at this stuff, so it seems a shame not to let him shine.  I wouldn’t expect him to tell me about James Joyce.  He doesn’t expect me to know how much RAM I need, or what a dongle is.

Anyway.  Mostly the laptops were boring.  You can now get them in different colours, but even these were mostly boring, and cost about £100 extra to get them in pink or blue.  Gah.

I just bobbed around, nodding, and smiling and saying; ‘You choose. As long as I can blog, buy books and stick photos on it, I don’t care.’  Which is generally very true.

Then I was seduced.

It happened out of the blue.

They have a small section within P.C. World entirely dedicated to Apple.  This is staffed by a really lovely lady (Carly, in the Leicester branch), who is both technologically savvy, and yet does not melt your mind, nor patronise you to death when she asks you why you like that model and you say: ‘Well. It’s just really, really pretty, and rather shiny, isn’t it?’  She just nods sagely and keeps all her thoughts about sad, middle aged women who know bugger all to herself.  She is wise.

They are gorgeous those Appley things.  Really beautiful.  They are slim and elegant and they feel lovely.  They are neat and tidy and do not whir and sprawl, and tick and chirr.  They are needful.

I wanted one.

Actually, I wanted them all.

So did the children.  Carly was also very patient with children (I told you she was clever).  When she wasn’t selling vastly over priced technology to punters like me, she took the time to show the kids how to do things, and was extremely alright with them basically running amok on the bits of kit.  They had the time of their lives.

We have come home with an iMac.

I wanted it because it was lovely and shiny and desirable.  Jason was muttering into his beard until he had a proper play with it.  Then he kept calling me over to say things like: ‘Look at this.’ and ‘How cool is that?’ and ‘You can do this you know?’ and words to that effect.

He needs a new laptop.  I predict that in less than six weeks, he will be buying a Macbook Pro.

Tilly wanted an iPad.

We may turn out to be the ideal Apple family.

How sad are we?

I am rather in awe of this beautiful thing we have bought.  I have no idea how to use it.  I have never been a Mac user.  Once, about eighteen years ago during the dark days of my temping career, I was sent to work at a scientific publisher’s out on a half built industrial estate in the wilds of Oxford.  They wanted me to make a whole load of slides about liver cancer to be sent immediately to a company rep in Geneva who was due to deliver a lecture on their latest wonder drug.

They sat me in front of a Mac.

It was one of the longest days of my working life.  I had never used one before and had absolutely no idea what I was doing.  The temping agency had neglected to tell me about the need for Mac proficiency, or the company about my Mac inefficiency.  It was not a happy marriage.

Carly however, runs Mac classes every Thursday night at P.C. World.  They are free, and she does different stuff every week.  Not only that, but as part of the purchase price I also get free one to one tuition for half an hour with Carly when I want it, and free support via free phone calls for three years.  I will probably need all of it, and possibly an extended warranty for a further two years.  Even if we finally do get to Canada, the free warranty stuff is international.

I am very impressed by this.  If Jason were ever to be killed in a freak accident, or run off with a big chested floosy and I needed to do all the tech stuff myself, I am now convinced I would spend the extra to buy Apple, just because of these kinds of things, and the fact that the sales people obviously know what they’re doing (and haven’t just had a half day course they only went on in the first place because they get a free lunch), and are actually really helpful and friendly.

I find this stuff anxiety inducing, and to have it made simple, and explained in a way I can understand, and so that at the end of it, I can actually do what I want to do, is invaluable.

I am, as you can probably tell, completely sold.

I am typing this on the dying laptop, as Jason swears in the corner, learning how to use the new operating system, and install everything he wants onto it.  He has the bit between his teeth and may be gone for some hours.

Despite his swearing, he also seems rather enamoured.  If I get a go on it before the week is out, I shall eat my hat.

I watch Television.

I watched some telly last night.

I know.

Mad isn’t it?

I haven’t watched any properly for weeks.  Mainly because I have either been head down in boxes, or building furniture, or without the means to watch anything.

I did try to watch something the week we left the MOD, but after ten minutes I was asleep, and woke up an hour later covered in dribble, with the programme I wanted to watch, well and truly over.

The telly in the kid’s room is now up and working, but I actually couldn’t be bothered to go in there last night, so I stayed in the lovely, warm bit of the kitchen that has underfloor heating (my new passion), and watched BBC iPlayer, which is a marvellous thing compared with 4OD and ITVplayer, both of which force you to watch interminable, non-fastforwardable adverts every twenty minutes.

I watched two lovely programmes, both from BBC4.  I love BBC4.  There is a strong argument against moving to Canada if I cannot get access to BBC4.  I believe BBC iPlayer is not available overseas.  Is this true? Or can some kind person relieve me of this worry and assure me that I will not have to watch North American television if I go there, because there are ways to take the Beeb with me.

Anyway, BBC 4 have just finished an excellent short season of programmes on books.  I spent a happy half hour last night catching up with the last of a three part series on physical books, rather than authors or genres etc.  It is called The Beauty of Books.  The first episode was about illuminated Bibles, the second was about Medieval books and the third one was about the rise in illustrated fiction, focusing mainly on Alice in Wonderland and Mervyn Peake’s excellently dark and macabre Gormenghast series.

The whole series is still available to watch on iPlayer, but probably only for a limited time. I do recommend it if you’re keen on books, and missed it the first time around.  It is an exquisitely filmed series that uses all the best resources of the British Library and its fourteen million volumes of needful books.  Yum.

BBC4 are also showing a season on sculpture.  I love sculpture.  I have mentioned in previous posts how if I had the money I would buy myself a Jacob Epstein, and an Anthony Gormley.  Sadly, I do not.  I just have to lust after it from afar instead.

The programme I watched was fronted by the actor David Thewlis who I know best from Mike Leigh’s films, but everyone else probably knows best from being Professor Lupin in the Harry Potter films.

It turns out that he too is intrigued by sculpture, particularly figurative sculptures.  In the programme, called How to Get A Head in Sculpture, he looks at the history of sculpting the human head, from its uses by the Romans as objects to inspire awe, as totemic objects in African art and as political propaganda.  He also gets his own head sculpted by three different artists; a chap who does realistic sculptures so you actually look like yourself, a chap who sculpts figureheads for coins and makes you look like yourself but regal, and a chap who sculpts the idea of you.

It was fascinating to see the three different sculptors at work, and the totally different things they came up with, and Thewlis’s reaction to them.  I also really enjoyed the vox pops with people like Mark Quinn, the guy who makes a sculpture of his own head every five years made from ten pints of his own, frozen blood, and the man whose name escapes me, but who made an entire collection of sculptures of his wife, because he loved her so much he couldn’t think of a better subject.  They were, quite frankly, fairly hideous, and his wife was the first to admit that.  It was very funny seeing them interact over the pieces.  She really didn’t want to say that they looked like her, except that they did a bit, and you could see that she was still really flattered that he loved her enough to make them, but slightly pissed off that he hadn’t pandered to any sense of vanity whatsoever.

I suspect she should just be grateful she wasn’t Picasso’s muse.

Book News

Sometimes you covet books.  You worry after them, lust after them, write lists with them on, and have irrational fears that they will have run out of them by the time you get to Waterstones or save up enough moolah for Amazon to deliver.  Or at least that’s what you do if you’re me.

Then, when you get them, these carefully planned purchases (rather than the tide of impulse buys that fill the house on a weekly basis), you kind of nurse them until a special time that you have saved, solely for the enjoyment of that book.

If it does not live up to expectation, this can be a dreadful blow.  I find myself feeling depressed and somehow cheated, that this person, this author, who I have invested so much time, energy and money in, has let me down.  This, I know, is very unfair.  I do realize, deep down in my rational brain that they are not writing just for me.  That there are other things on the agenda than my approbation.

Nevertheless, it can be absolutely gutting.

I still have not quite forgiven Audrey Niffenegger for ‘Her Fearful Symmetry.’

I was then, extremely apprehensive when it came to reading two of the books on my latest, self-imposed reading list; ‘The Hare With Amber Eyes’ by Edmund de Waal, and ‘My Name is Mina,’ by David Almond.

Luckily for me, I did not have to feel gutted, or cheated or disappointed.  In fact; ‘The Hare With Amber Eyes’ totally exceeded all my expectations and is one of the most lovely, haunting books I have read in a very, very long time.

I did a post on it a few months back, when I still hadn’t read it, and was merely lusting after it.  It is the true story of ceramicist Edmund de Waal, who inherits a collection of 264 Japanese netsukes from his great uncle.  Intrigued by the objects, he decides to trace his family history through discovering the history of the netsukes.

If I am teaching my grandmother, you can skip this bit, but just in case you don’t know, netsukes (pronounced netskis) are decorative beads, about the size of a walnut.  They were used to help secure boxes known as inro, to cords around the wearer’s waist.  The inro was used as a kind of purse/handbag, and the netsuke along with smaller beads called ojime, were used to keep the inro and the belt in place.  Most netsukes are made of either ivory or wood.  They are, if they are good ones, beautifully carved, and depict all kind of things from tigers to beggars.

You can read about and see pictures of de Waal’s netsukes here.

I have a fake one that UE once bought me from the British Museum shop. It is in the shape of an octopus.  I love it dearly.

I cannot afford real ones. They are far too expensive, but they are very, very needful.

Not only is de Waal’s book interesting because of the art history aspects, detailing the rise of the fashion for Japonisme in the 19th Century, but it also tells the story of three generations of his remarkable and fascinating family against some of the most turbulent events of the last 200 years.

I love the way he writes.  I really haven’t ever come across anyone who writes with such texture before. I think it is his training as a potter, but he is interested in how things feel, how they are placed in a room, how tangible they are to him.  When he visits Odessa to find the house of of the earliest forefathers he traces in the book, he is devastated to find that the house has been mostly gutted of its original features, because he cannot find anything to hold on to, to make it all real for him.  His sense of relief when he realises that the balustrading on the stairs is original, and that he can feel it with his hands is palpable.

The juxtaposition of the history of these tiny objects, just small enough to be held comfortably in the palm of your hand, and the rise of fascism and two world wars which reduced de Waal’s family to penury and exile, is beautifully balanced and exquisitely wrought.

You should read this book.

‘My Name is Mina,’ is another tour de force by the writer, David Almond.  If you have read Skellig, you should read this.  It is the prequel to the events that are mapped out in Skellig, but taking up the story of Mina, the girl who Michael befriends in Skellig.

It is written as if the book were Mina’s diary.  Almond’s brilliance is illustrated by the fact that you never, ever think that this is a book authored by a middle aged man, and not a young girl.  It reads like a truly authentic experience, and yet, despite the simplicity of language and the youthfulness of the protagonist, Almond still infuses the book with a maturity and layers of meaning which make it worth reading, whatever age you are.

The book is, at its heart, a quest for Mina to come to terms with the early death of her father.  It poses the big questions about life and death, what we are here for, what we go on to, and how we manage the tricky bits in the middle, with grace, humour and tenderness.  It is at times, heartbreakingly sad. I read with a permanent catch in my throat, but it is also light and funny and full of joy, and ultimately hope.

If you have never read Skellig I recommend that you start with My Name is Mina and then immediately read Skellig, as the stories link together seamlessly, and you will get much more from them if you read them as a pair.

Men are from P.C. World, women are from W.H. Smiths

Jason is still measuring stereo speakers and positioning television type things in the lounge, festooned in bits of wire.  He seems quite happy with this.  This is one of the major differences between us.  Spending my morning this way would just drive me round the bend.

I have spent my morning crouched on the underfloor heating, snuggling up to my coffee cup reading furiously.

Much more the thing, I think you’ll agree.

And I’m considerably less likely to get electrocuted than him.

Last night Jason decided to clear out some of the drawers in his desk, as we are currently season ticket holders for the local tip.  He confessed he had not looked in any of these drawers for several years.  I think he was hoping for treasure.

What he discovered merely highlighted further the differences between us.  His desk drawers consisted mainly of:

• Random pieces of wire with various sized plug, usb port, dongle things attached to the ends of them.
• Old mobile phones.
• Old headphones.
• Hundreds of half used lighters (I think they breed).
• Random loose change in every denomination under the sun.
• Bits of socket sets, allan keys, screws, nails.
• Business cards dating back to about 1873, most of which have cryptic notes attached to them.
• Dice, poker dice, craps dice, dungeons and dragons nerd dice.
• Circuit boards.
• USB sticks.

etc.

It was terrifying.  In all of this he got most excited about finding a miniature replica of Darth Vader and Baba Fet.

Yippee.

Me, I’d have just slid the whole drawer into a bin bag and tied the top.

But no. He sat patiently and sorted through all the stuff and put them into important heaps of things and stuff.

Yuk.

My drawers, when I get around to sorting them out, usually have an assortment of the following:

• Pencil sharpeners and rubbers (erasers to the non English speakers). These are in short supply and always getting lost. I think the  children eat them.  Therefore, when I find some, I hoard them like Silas Marner with his gold coins.
• Greetings cards and postcards that I have bought to send in case of emergency birthdays and the like.  I could open my own branch of Paper Chase with the number of cards I have stashed away, just in case.
• Lots and lots of images and articles, and leaflets, and things I have cut out of magazines that I have decided are very nice, or important, or pretty, or crucial to my well being in some way.
• Expensive packets of coloured pens.  Again. I hide these from the children.  They are terrible, pen stealing jackdaw creatures from Hades.
• Small things that the children have gifted me.  These can range from an artfully decorated napkin to a Barbie shoe, to something I have previously asked them to put away nicely but they can’t be bothered to actually do, so have gifted to me, knowing that the parental guilt will cause me to put them away nicely, even though I do not want the things at all.
• Hair bobbles.  The hair bobble situation is very similar to the pencil sharpener situation in our house. We operate on a scarcity principle.
• Notebooks.  I buy them like addicts buy crack.  I do not write in them. Mostly they are too nice to write in.  I just buy them and save them. IN CASE OF NOTEBOOK ARMAGEDDON.  Then they’ll be sorry. Oh yes.

Is this a good way to work out the differences between the sexes I wonder? What do you hoard in your drawers, missis/mister?

Ooh er.

You are beautiful, no matter what they say

I bought a load of glossy magazines while we were out shopping this morning.

I wanted something mind numbing to read.  I love trashy magazines. Absolutely. Love. Them.

I am unashamed of this.

I have read Proust. I have read Joyce.  I have read Cervantes.  I continue to read the classics.  I see no reason why I cannot have down time reading Grazia, and O.K. and Heat.

They are kind of wasted on me in truth. I cannot afford to follow the fashion I like best (£350 red and navy striped D&G Mary Janes for a start), I do not watch soap operas or reality television and do not know who half the people featured in these pages are, but I do love glossy pages filled with glossy frocks and silly people pouting on taupe sofas declaring how ‘like totally honest’ they are going to be in this interview ‘yeah?’

I like to know what the hip young things are doing, or not doing, and what things I ought to (and singularly fail to) aspire to.

So, I tell you that in one such magazine I read today it pronounced sagely that ‘waxy’ skin is big for this coming season.

Apparently you can get this effect by shelling out large sums of money for some skin serum.

Or dying.

Or, if you are dead set on looking waxy, don’t fancy the long term implications of dying, especially if the season after you’re supposed to be looking rosy,  and can’t afford the serum, I offer you my home made beauty suggestions:

Hot candle waxed, dripped soothingly onto the skin.  This is rather pervy, so I expect someone would pay you to let them do this to you, and listen to your shrieks of agony as it is lovingly applied.  You could make money, and look hawt.  This is my top tip.  It is THE WIN.

Best beef dripping.  You can either render down your own from the Sunday joint, or buy some from a reputable local butcher or abbatoir.  You may want to perfume it before applying, as the smell of roasting cow might detract from the look you’re trying to create.

A liberal misting of Pledge or Mr. Sheen.  Try to close your eyes.  Nothing stings quite as much as furniture polish seeping its way into your retinas.  It’s no good looking lovely and waxy if you also look like you’ve got end stage myxomatosis.

A thin smear of nude shoe polish and a buffing cloth.

Turtle Wax, or a £5.00 token for the nearest car wash.

Or, you could cut out a life sized photograph of the waxiest looking person you know (say Vincent Price in early Hammer films, for example), cut out eye holes and attach it to your head with string, as a kind of high fashion mask.

I am so like, in the fashion zeitgeist, aren’t I?

Timeliness

Today I have not unpacked a single box.  This feels very, very weird.  It is like that unsettling feeling after all your exams are over and you legitimately have nothing to do, but you spend the first few days afterwards feeling like you should be running to the library, or falling asleep feverishly with your head rammed between the pages of a book.  Or staring out the window rubbing your hands together perpetually in an OCD type way thinking; ‘I really must look at that chapter on Henry James again,’ before skiving off to the Spar to purchase and eat an entire litre tub of raspberry ripple ice cream with a teaspoon, hunkered down by the radiator in case any of your friends see you and want to join in.

Just saying that that last scenario might happen.  Not that it did, you understand.

Despite the lack of boxiness in my life, it has been a strangely busy day.  I only had three or four crucial things to do, none of which should have taken any time at all, but all of which spiralled totally out of control and led to me ratcheting up the levels on the credit card of mortification, and taking hours to complete.

I went to Waitrose with the children at lunch time.  The idea was that we went in for a cucumber, some milk, some quorn (we have vegetarians coming over tomorrow and this is my emergency fall back lunch plan), and a cake each for the children’s pudding.

£83 later I came out in a feverish sweat of over purchasing and levels of starvation previously unknown.

I have not stopped eating ever since. 

It took me three attempts to buy petrol, which also ruptured the bank balance.  It turns out that the cheapest petrol station in the East Midlands is about half a mile from my house.  It also turns out it has the longest queues in the Western hemisphere.  These queues are also really, really hard to get out of once you have realised you would rather run out of petrol than sit in a queue teetering in the middle of a ferociously busy road for the rest of your life.

The second petrol station I missed, because I was practising a new route, thanks to the diversion from the first petrol station, and failed to pay attention.  By the time I got to petrol station number three we were mostly driving on fumes and prayers.

I had to go back to Earl Shilton to the library, having found a large bag of soon to be overdue library books stashed under the kitchen counter for safe keeping. Tilly had to take them into the library for me, and pay the fine for Sean the Bloody Sheep on DVD because  I had to stay in the car with the two little ones, who were trapped under the weight of the drying rack we had to borrow from granny until we got our own.

It took twenty minutes for her to take back twenty books and pay one £2.00 fine.  I did think at one point that I might have to call the mountain rescue team, she had been gone so long (we were parked two minutes walk away).  I was saved the trauma by the fact that I had lost my phone at this point.

My phone is dying.  It needs charging at least once a day, and then inevitably turns itself off in the middle of the night.  This is not good. I use it as an alarm clock.  I will not have a real alarm clock as I cannot be trusted with them.  I have a bad track record with breakages, losses and freak accidents.  I once got a fat lip when I was absentmindedly chewing on a clock which had a kind of hinge mechanism, and trapped my upper lip in it.  I no longer chew alarm clocks.  And let this be a warning to any of you who think chewing time pieces is fun. 

Think on.

Although it isn’t as bad as the time I super glued my finger to a different alarm clock, and it took an hour of gnawing and an extremely ragged and bloody finger to get it off again.

You see now why I prefer to use my phone.

I have never glued myself to my phone.  Nor has my phone ever inflicted any bodily injury on me.  I can generally trust it to behave, which is why its constant death throes are worrying.

It’s not good.

We rocked up at granny’s house with the drying rack, frazzled and emotionally overwrought.  We stayed long enough for me to move half a trampoline we had unceremoniously dumped on their front lawn for safe keeping into the back garden to be reunited with the other half, and then set off again.

Lunch, which was merely pizza heated up, with fruit and Waitrose cakes for dessert, took about two hours by the time the children had finished farting about.  By the time we got to desticking hands I was ready to bang my head on the table repeatedly with frustration and boredom.

Aunty Squirrel came for tea in the afternoon, thus saving me from having to murder the children on the last day of half term.  They have been brilliant for the last fortnight, mostly patient, understanding, kind and unusually self sufficient in terms of keeping themselves entertained.  Today it all wore off in a blood bath of relentless bickering, moaning and wanting things they could not have.

I am grateful it was only for one day.  Usually this is the pattern for large parts of any holidays.

Finally, just to make the day that little bit more special, my p.c. has been on the fritz all day.  It may be down to the fact that I smashed a jar of ginger preserve over it when the kitchen cupboard shelf collapsed at the MOD a couple of weeks ago (surprised? Nope).  It may be down to the fact that I dropped it on the kitchen floor at my mum’s house last week when I was trying to put it into a bag to transport it ‘safely’ to the new house, and the handle snapped.  It may be due to the fact that I let my brother borrow it yesterday, and he is the kiss of death to all p.c.’s.  He exudes some sort of force field, which causes electrical objects to commit hara kiri.

I do not know.  I do know that it was poorly ick, and that I could do nothing at all with it for hours until Jason came home and saved me in a manly, IT related way.

He has coaxed it back to life, and hardly mentioned the ginger syrup causing the letter ‘b’ to misbehave itself perpetually, at all.  He is a good boy.

Technologically I am struggling, but at least I have enough petrol to get to the Orange shop and P.C. World if it all goes tits up, and enough food to pack sandwiches for the journey.

It could be worse.

Not around the eyes

Oscar has spent much of the morning trying to hypnotise me with the aid of his Ben 1o yo yo.

‘Mama..Look into my eyes…Now, look at this watch…I mean this yo yo…Watch it swinging about,’ ( he has no concept of back and forth. It veers wildly in ever decreasing circles. My eyes shoot about like pinballs until I feel rather nauseous.  Then I think; ‘For God’s sake. It’s a game. I don’t actually have to follow it with my eyes. Duh!’ Then I think: ‘Bloody hell! Maybe the fact that I have been following his instructions mean his hypnotism is actually working.’)

‘Mama! Mama! Pay attention to me…’

‘Now mama,’ (said in a sombre, drawn out sort of voice more suited to a funeral director), ‘pay attention to meeeeee…And mama, you must follooooowww allll my commands…’

I wait obediently for his commands.

‘Mama. You must now be a chicken.’

I oblige with a great deal of chickeny squawking. I do not know how to write this down. You must use your imagination here.

He is vastly amused by this.

He smiles slyly.  He is about to administer the coup de grace.

‘Now mama, you must give me all the sweeties in the sweetie jar, immediately.’

I follow this with a great deal more chickeny squawking.

It translates roughly as: ‘But my dear boy, I cannot reach the sweetie jar of which you speak due to my scrawny chicken legs and my puny wings, beak and lack of digits.  You are fecked, matey.  I take your hypnotic masterplan and use low avian cunning to ram an onion up its arse.’

He frowns, realising the error in his cunning plan.

‘Mama! Mama! You must pay attention to me now.  Stooooopppp being a chicken immediately and get me the sweets, pronto.’

Sadly for him, it was too late.

I was back in the room.