You’re squishing my head

I woke up this morning with a stiff neck.  It’s not terrible, like the one I had last year.  It’s just sore and means that if I whip my head round quickly, forgetting that I have a stiff neck, it makes me go ‘ooyah!’ quite loudly.  I am typing this with a hot water bottle balanced in the crook of my neck.  It is not a look I recommend for this season.

Tallulah has the day off  of school today.  It is a teacher training day.  This is the second one this term.  It’s most annoying.  I am probably being wildly unfair to teachers here, and am willing to be shown the error of my ways, but I wonder why teacher days cannot be arranged in the school holidays? Teachers get more holidays than virtually any other profession, and they are paid for them.  They are expected to do work during them, sure, like lesson planning and marking and the like, so why can’t they have their training days then?  Am I just being stupid and missing something blindingly obvious?

Oscar has a serious case of the grouches today.  He slept very badly last night and woke up several times moaning and wailing for one tedious reason after another.  He is full of cold, and has been since last week, but as he seems to be getting physically better, his mood seems worse.  The broken sleep of last night is not contributing to household harmony today.

Tallulah likes being in charge, all the time.  She has to be the boss.  Not only does she have to be the boss, but if she can sow a little disharmony amongst the troops while she is being the boss, so much the better.  Oscar’s fuse is currently shorter than a dwarf’s temper.  He is not in the mood to be challenged, at all, ever.

My plan is to finish up here and then keep them on the move all day until bed time, with me physically wedged between them for as much of that time as possible.  I think it is the only thing that will get us through to the end of the day without blood being spilled.  With my neck like this, mostly I would like to be lying on the sofa, watching rubbish t.v. and moaning, but the neck must be sacrificed if I am to raise these children to adulthood.  It is my bounden duty to stop them killing each other, and anyone who gets in their path.

I have bought some bags of those small but delicious Lindt Lindor chocolate eggs.  I shall be using these as bribes.  I think it will work. It works for me.  I would walk over hot coals for a Lindor egg.  I do, and I say this in a whisper because it seems quite sacreligious, actually prefer them to Cadbury’s Mini Eggs.  There isn’t much in it though to  be truthful.

I did not blog yesterday because I sat compulsively watching multiple episodes of The Killing with my husband, and working out ever more complex theories about whodunnit.  Goodness it is a fine programme.  I have been meaning to watch it for ages. It is right up my street, as you, my commenters and four hundred of my other friends keep mailing me to tell me.  I have dutifully recorded all the episodes on Sky Plus, and been pestering Jason to watch them with me.  He is not very keen on things with subtitles, but I have gradually worn away his resistance until he gave in.  We are hooked.  I am hoping he will not be too late home from work tonight, so that we can watch even more.

For those of you who have not yet been privy to the information, it is a detective serial.  It is Danish, and very noir and complex.  It is, as I believe the very wise Mrs. Jones said to me, like a cross between Wallander and 24.  I think the 24 reference is due to the frenetic pace and the race against time, rather than it having someone like Kiefer Sutherland grunting through his teeth while padlocked to a burning oil tanker.  This is good, because I hate 24.  The first season was just about tolerable, but surely after that you would know that Jack Bauer was just an accident waiting to happen? As my friend says: ‘I wouldn’t go to the end of our road and back with him.’  Quite.

I am quite glad we have saved The Killing until now to be honest. I am not good at living with suspense. I like to know what is happening immediately.  I am one of the instant gratification generation after all.  We have eighteen episodes recorded, and the final two are on Saturday. This means that I will have caught up just in time to neatly watch the last two episodes without having to twist myself up in knots, waiting.   I would like to say that I planned this.  It would be a big fat lie though.

Apart from indulging myself in my fetish for dark, crime thrillers under the pretense that I was hoping to polish up my (non-existent) Danish, yesterday was spent taking the kids and my brother to Oxford.  We made our annual pilgrimage to the Pitt Rivers museum, which I have blogged about before on numerous occasions, as being one of my favourite places on earth.

Every time I have attempted to take the children there something has happened to cut our visit short, or in some way spoil it.  For the last two years, only the stones and bones (dinosaurs and geology) bit has been open.  Now, finally, the anthropological rooms are open to the public again, after an extensive overhaul.  It was worth the wait.

The building is magnificent.  The hall that houses the stones and bones is a gigantic, Victorian edifice with pillars of different types of stone, soaring into the sky, supporting the most beautiful and intricate glass and iron work roof.  All the stone work is carved with different specimens of leaves and trees and natural history type stuff.  There are exhibits which have the most unusual and highly welcome signage that says: ‘Please touch’.  There is always something new to do or see, and I have been a regular visitor there for the past fifteen years.  It is a delight.

My favourite rooms however, are the anthropology rooms.  You go through some double doors, and into a completely different space.  The stones and bones room is light and airy.  This one is dark and moody with subdued lighting and no windows.  The exhibits are so fragile they cannot see the light of day, and you creep round, peering into the glass cases in the stygian gloom, but oh, it is worth looking.

They have the most fascinating collection of objects, from Netsukes to Noh masks, from tribal costumes made from the most magnificently coloured feathers, to rain coats made of seal innards. They have full sized sailing boats gliding across the sky above you, suspended from the rafters.  There are ritual head dresses, glorious jewellery from the Romans to the tiniest tribes you have never even heard of.  There are puppets and weapons and musical instruments, and amulets and magical objects, and just about everything.  Where the cases cannot show everything there are racks of drawers under the cases which have special, glassed in tops, so you can pull them out and look at more treasure.

It is glorious.

What I really wanted to show the children, and what stopped Oscar whinging for the first time that day however, was the case of shrunken heads.  Oh yes! There is a whole cabinet of ‘war trophies’ from tribes which employ the bodies of their vanquished foes to give them strength in future battles.  There was even the recipe for how to shrink a head, should you ever be required to do so.

It was awesome.

That and the trip to George and Davis’ ice cream parlour on Little Clarendon Street, made our day.

I have just had a brainwave.  If the children behave too badly today I shall spend a few hours shrinking their heads and then take myself out for ice cream.  If it worked yesterday, I don’t see why it won’t work today.

 

Hamlet: The Clown Prince

Last night I drove Andrea and Tilly to Warwick Arts Centre where we went to see a play called; ‘Hamlet: The Clown Prince.’  Put on by The Theatre Company of Mumbai, the play has won prestigious awards in India, and is now on an international tour.

I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect.  Cheek by Jowl’s Russian Tempest was not the finest theatrical experience I have ever had, and as we drove to the venue I wondered what I had signed us up for, and hoped there would be an interval in case we needed to escape.

As it transpired, there was no interval, so it was a good job that all three of us loved it.

It is a, thankfully, brutally edited version of the story of Hamlet, performed by a group of clowns in full fig.  There is enough English dialogue for you to work out what is going on, and the rest is a kind of gibberish, which sounds fluent and real, and with enough physical clowning, actually makes sense.

It was very funny indeed, but there were moments where you were totally brought up short by tiny but intense hits of seriousness.  Ophelia’s madness was particularly affecting, as was their version of the ‘to be or not to be’ soliloquy.

The play lasts an hour and a half, and if you have any interest in Hamlet at all, but like your theatre accessible and not four hours long, you will love it.

We did.

It will be at the Hackney Empire in London from Wednesday 23rd to Saturday 26th March.

The Fame Game

I was thinking about the nature of fame today.

I was in quite a philosophical mood.  Everyone else has gone out for the day except Oscar and I.  It was my duty to entertain him in the morning and stop him exploding with excitement before lunch time.  He was going to a friend’s party this afternoon and naturally, not having any concept whatsoever of time, he has been ready to go to this party since seven o’clock this morning.

By the time we got to the party I was somewhat worn out, thanks to the constant discussions on the nature of time and its arcane doings:

‘Is it time for the party yet, mama?’

‘No, Oscar. It is eight o’clock in the morning.  The party is at two o’clock in the afternoon.’

‘OK. So I can go after breakfast then?’

‘Umm. Yes. Sort of.’

‘Well. I will skip breakfast because there will be food at the party.  Can we go now?’

‘No. It will be a long time after breakfast, so it is important that you have your breakfast, and then your lunch, and then you can go to the party.’

‘OK. What time is it now, mama?’

‘It’s ten past eight in the morning Oscar.’

‘Great. I’m going to go and get ready for the party…’

The party was at a Wacky Warehouse.

I hate the Wacky Warehouse.  It is the seventh circle of hell rendered in brightly coloured plastic balls and the smell of a thousand children emptying their sweat glands.

The Wacky Warehouse we had to go to was a long way from our house.  I did not have time to drive him there, dump him with a friendly face, and come home.  I contemplated sitting in the car park, but within two minutes of entering the building he had given me his shoes, his coat and anything else he could rip off, and demanded drinks, snacks and someone to watch him have his face painted while he dangled from the monkey bars.

Resistance was futile.

I holed up in a corner with all the belongings, and tried to think cheering thoughts about things other than being trapped in an echoing warehouse with forty toddlers hopped up on Fruit Shoots and sugar.

Hence my thoughts on fame.

My delightful blogging friend Emma over at Belgian Waffle, has an article in this month’s Red Magazine.  I was reading it one evening this week when Tilly asked me what it was I was reading.  I explained about the article and that my friend had written it.

She said: ‘That’s so cool.  It must be excellent to have famous friends.’

Bless her. I think Emma would probably be the last person in the world to think of herself as famous, but she is certainly becoming well known, and who knows, one day she may well be featured in OK magazine lounging on taupe sofas with the weepette.

It is cool to be her friend though.  Not because she is a bit famous.  Just because she is funny, and kind, and she makes me laugh.

I thought about whether I would like to be famous.

When I was a child I was desperate to be famous.  I thought it would be very exciting and glamorous.  Since those days, everything I have seen and read, and  the reports of the few reasonably well known people I have ever chanced to speak to about it, has undermined this view.  My current belief is that fame looks exciting and glamorous, but actually it is ball breakingly hard work, often quite miserable and lonely and massively intrusive, if you want to have any kind of real life of your own whatsoever.

I do not want to be permanently jet lagged. I am already bloody exhausted and I only have to travel within the confines of Leicestershire on a daily basis.  God knows what I would be like if I had to jet from Las Vegas to Kuala Lumpur every Tuesday.

I do not want to be constantly nagged about losing weight, so that I can be size zero.  I like cakes.  I like chips. I love carbohydrates.  I get a headache if I miss elevenses.  I cannot cope with diets that make my breath smell like pooh or fainting with desire every time I see a piece of Battenburg cake.  I do not want to have to lie and say that just because my ribs are sticking out of the top of my head it does not mean I have an eating disorder, it just means I have a really fast metabolism. Nor do I want to tell people that I am not fat, I am just having trouble with my glands.

I do not want to have to make pleasant chit chat with people I don’t know.  I can barely cope with fraternising at the school gate.  What am I going to say to Robert De Niro, other than ‘nice tie’? I either talk too much, too fast, or dry up completely. I invariably prattle on about myself, mainly because I think it is too rude to ask other people about themselves in case they think I am prying, even though I am dying to know everything about them, from their inside leg measurement up.  I always say the wrong thing.  I am totally irreverent and usually make hugely inappropriate jokes about things people think are critically important.  I am a social nightmare.

I do not want to develop a drink or drug habit.  I am too old for that kind of crap. I barely managed it when I was just the right age.  I have a nasty tendency to vomit  copiously when ingesting substances best left uningested.

I cannot cope without sleep.  At the moment, thanks to stress and bad dreams, I am averaging four hours per night again.  This is terrible.  I am incoherent, barely functional and have brain activity that would only be considered normal in a comatose tortoise.  I do not thrive on less sleep. I wither.  I cannot be witty and sparkling and charming in these circumstances.  I just get cranky and shout a lot, usually before weeping uncontrollably.

I am not interested enough in my appearance to be famous.  I would like to be well turned out and have glamorous clothes.  I would love to be able to walk in heels.  I can’t.  If I have glamorous clothes I chuck my dinner down them, or catch them on a nail, or tuck my skirt into my pants on the way out of the loo.  I spend most of my days looking like a hobo.  I rarely brush my hair. I pick my spots. I chew my lips. I let my eyebrow hair get out of control and take over my entire face.  I could rectify all of these things.  I can’t be arsed.

I hate seeing photos of myself, or being photographed or filmed.

I have decided that fame is not for me.  Which is a good thing, because I have done absolutely nothing whatsoever to be famous for.  But at least it has crossed ‘being famous’, off the list of things I am going to do when I grow up.

I shall have to be a rock drummer after all.  I will be a session drummer. I don’t want to go on stage in front of lots of people. I will only drop my sticks, and probably wee myself with nerves.

I would however, like to be friends with someone famous.  That would be cool.  I wouldn’t particularly like to go out on the tiles with them.  That would be weird.  But I would like to be able to pop round for tea, so they could regale me with tales of their life, and let my try on their new shoes, and just borrow their life for a while by filching all their stories and mentally wandering about in them, like an extra in a film.

That would be alright.

So. If you’re thinking of becoming ridiculously famous and want a down to earth friend who doesn’t want any freebies or to be in your next film/novel/song, and won’t get ridiculously jealous of the fact that you are flying to the shops in your own Lear jet, I’d quite like to apply.  I demand the right to eat cake without you getting narky, and I will only accept invitations from those people who are willing to swear on a stack of bibles that they aren’t going to turn into Michael Jackson or JLo.  I can’t be doing with that sort of nonsense.  Britney, that means you love, I’m afraid.

The Crocodile in the Room

I forgot to tell you about my wonderful trip out with mum and dad a couple of days ago.  They took Oscar and I to one of their favourite antique hidey holes, an innovatively named antique shop in Heanor (Nottinghamshire), called Heanor Antiques.

I love foraging round junk shops, charity shops, flea markets and the like.  I think I must have been a pirate in a previous life, because I’m never happier than when I’m fossicking about looking for treasures.

Heanor Antiques is perfect for this.  It has five floors of stuff and things.  It is absolutely rammed to the rafters.  In some places, stuff and things hang from the rafters.  There is no order, no tidiness.  You find Dresden china sitting happily next to Typhoo tea mugs, Dan Brown novels next to the Gutenberg Bible.  You get the drift.  If you like a good rummage, it’s the place for you.

We had a fantastic time, and I resisted the urge to buy many things.  Coming home only with a modern figurine of an enormous fat lady with hair like a pooh.  She is ridiculous, but I love her, and every time I look at her on the shelf, she makes me smile.  I will provide pictures, eventually.

While we were there, we stumbled across a middle aged man, showing a rather old lady around. I presume they were mother and son, but I cannot be sure.  For the sake of narrative flow, I will continue with my assumption.

He was trying to point out various wonders to her, with great enthusiasm on his part, and very little to show for it on hers.  As I was listening he pointed to a stuffed crocodile, perched atop a classic G Plan dresser.  He said:

‘Look at that!’

‘What?’

‘That!’

‘The dresser? That’s not very good is it?’

‘No! Not the dresser. What’s on top of the dresser.’

‘What is on top of the dresser?’

‘Look!’

‘I can’t see what it is you’re talking about.’

The crocodile was about three feet long.  It drooped off each end of the dresser.  Even for someone short sighted it was fairly unmissable.

‘It’s a crocodile, isn’t it?’

‘Is it?’

‘Well. Yes. It is.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes. It is a crocodile.’

‘Why?’

‘Why, what?’

‘Why is it?’

‘Because it is.’

‘I don’t know.’

‘What?’

‘What you’re talking about.’

‘Look. It’s a crocodile, on top of the dresser.’

‘Is it real?’

‘What?’

‘The crocodile.’

‘Yes. It’s real.’

‘What’s it doing there, then?’

‘It’s stuffed, isn’t it?’

‘What?’

‘It’s stuffed!’

‘Why is it?’

‘Because it  just is.  It’s a stuffed crocodile.’

You could tell by this stage that he wished he had just never gone there in the first place.

She finished with an absolute hum dinger.

‘Is it good?’

‘Is what good?’

‘The crocodile.  Is it good?’

If he’d had any hair to pull out, he’d have been tearing it out by then.

I wanted desperately to follow them round the shop by this point.  I had already spied several other things that would be worthy of their Beckettian verbal jousting, including a ventriloquist’s dummy, a life sized stuffed fox in full on hunting mode, and some very eerie dolls.

Sadly, Oscar was trying to do something evil with the stock in another corner, and I was forced to move on, never to catch up with them again.  I shall go on my own next time, although I would take bets on the fact that he’s probably murdered her with a blunt crocodile and buried her in a G Plan dresser by now.

Tales of Batman

Yesterday, when I was running some errands with mum, I noticed a Batman toy in the window of the local charity shop.  It was Batman crouched on a cool, speeder type bike, with his cape flying out behind him.  It made noises and was generally an excellent thing to buy for a small boy with a Batman fixation.

I thought it might make a good peace offering, given that we have been rather at loggerheads in the last few weeks.

I went in to buy it.

As I was paying the princely sum of £2.50 for it, a lady who was queueing behind me told me about how her son, who is now 36, used to love Batman when he was a child.

She told me a fantastic story about the Christmas he got both his Batman suit and a pair of roller skates waiting for him under the tree on Christmas morning.

As is the case with most children, he had unwrapped his presents incredibly early in a fit of Christmas exuberance.  Before breakfast he clambered into his suit, strapped his roller skates on, and headed out into the morning air.

He whizzed off down the road, cape streaming out behind him.

Coming up the road the other way was a neighbour who was just rolling home after a particularly heavy Christmas Eve/Morning drinking session.

He stopped dead in his tracks as the caped crusader flew past.  He was convinced he’d had an alcohol related hallucination until much later when someone enlightened him.

How awesome.

Funnily enough, I have not shared this story with Oscar at all.

Smell

Every place has its own smell, right?

I don’t mean in an icky way.  Nor do I mean in a Febreze or Glade room deodorizer sort of way.

It’s more of a signature scent.  For example;

• The local college where we used to do summer activities when I was a kid, smelled of plasticine.  I think it must have been the floor polish they used, or possibly a thousand teenagers making plasticine models all day.
• Barcelona is irrevocably entwined with the smell of warm storm drains in my mind.
• The landing of my gran’s house used to smell of cloves and sandalwood talcum powder.

Any hoo.

As I was standing in Ikea the day before yesterday, waiting for Oscar to finish menacing the security guard, I caught myself thinking, I wonder if Ikea is what Sweden really smells like?

Just in case you have never lingered long enough in there to catch the aroma, it is sort of like concentrated essence of pine furniture with a soupcon of hot dog.

 

The price of cuteness

On the way back from nursery, Oscar said, very seriously:

‘Mama. How do you buy a house?’

I said:

‘With a lot of money, Oscar.’

‘Good. I have a lot of money. I have a piggy bank full upstairs in my bedroom.’

‘Great. Why do you want to buy a house?’

‘Because it will be useful.’

There’s no arguing with that.

‘How much money do you think a house will cost, Oscar?’

‘I don’t really know mama.  But I have a whole piggy bank full, so I will be fine.’

‘Good.  What sort of a house would you like to buy?’

‘I would like the house we are living in now I think.’

‘Why is that?’

‘Well. It’s warm and everything works properly.’

I have trained him well.

He asked me:

‘Would you like to buy that house too mama, if you had a piggy bank full of money?’

‘Not really, Oscar.  If I had a piggy bank full I would probably buy one a little bit bigger.’

‘How much bigger? This bigger?’

He holds his hands outstretched as far as he can.

‘No. I think another three rooms would be nice, and a swimming pool.’

‘We have a pond already.’

‘I know that, but I don’t feel comfortable swimming in a pebble encrusted water feature.’

‘What do you want the extra rooms for mama?’

‘Well. I would like a library, a study, and a spare room for our friends to come round and stay.’

‘I will buy them for you.’

‘That’s very nice of you Oscar, but do you think you have enough money in your piggy bank for that?’

He thinks very hard.

‘No. I think my piggy bank only has enough money for the house like it is right now.’

‘How much more do you think you will need?’

He starts counting:

‘One, two, three, four, six, seven, five, eight…eleven.’

‘Eleven pounds?’

‘No, silly.  Eleven piggy banks.’

‘OK.  How are you going to get the money to fill your eleven piggy banks?’

‘That’s easy. I will use my cuteness power on dadda.’

‘But dadda already pays for the house we have now. I don’t think he has any to spare, even for your cuteness power.’

‘I will ask Tallulah.’

‘I am almost sure that cuteness power cuts no ice with sisters.’

‘I think you are right mama actually. Who else can I ask?’

‘Well. You need to ask someone who has a lot of money to spare.’

‘I can ask grandad!’

I am highly amused.  Grandad has rather a Silas Marnerish approach to his money.

‘Do you think grandad has lots of money to spare, Oscar?’

‘Well. Maybe only a little bit.  I will use my cuteness power on him and find out.’

‘How much do you think he might have?’

‘Five pence.  Yes.  I am going to use my cuteness power to ask grandad for five pence.  I am sure I will make him give it to me with the power of my cuteness.’

‘Good luck with that, boy.’

He has come home with five pence.  Enough to buy my swimming pool perhaps.

Maybe there is something to be said for cuteness power.

Dropping the ball(s)

I have a question for all you normal mothers out there, or indeed normal fathers.

How the hell do you fit all this stuff in every day?

I do not consider myself a normal mother.  Here are some of the reasons why:

• I do not iron my children’s clothes.  I do not iron anything, at all, ever.
• I have minimal input on things like getting them dressed, sorting out kit, homework, getting clean, brushing teeth etc.
• I make my children do chores around the house and rarely wait on them.
• I only do the housework once a week whether it needs it or not, unless there are horrible stains and/or stickiness.
• I do not care about things like my children being colour co-ordinated, or having matching socks, or even if their pants are on the right way round.

Despite all this, and the fact that I do not have a job in the traditional going out of the house, earning money kind of way, I am really struggling at the moment to juggle the needs of a house, a husband, three children and me.

Lots of women I know, do all of the things I don’t do, hold down a job and still keep all the balls in the air.

How?

Do you get up at four in the morning?  Do you live off of powdered space food that you eat as you drive along, whilst practising the flute and reciting French verbs?

How is it possible to fit all this stuff into the normal twenty four hour span without going bonkers because of lack of sleep, lack of time for self, lack of time to just sit down for five bloody minutes?

What happens when it all goes off the rails? When your kids get sick, when your car explodes, when your dog needs worming and the arm falls off your glasses?

It might sound flippant, but it is a genuine question.

Tonight we got home at half past eight.  We left the house at quarter to eight this morning.

Today was supposed to be one of my days off from child rearing.  These are the days that are supposed to keep me sane.  I am lucky I get these days.  Most women I know don’t.

Actually, mostly I don’t either.

This morning wasn’t too bad, apart from another abortive attempt to speak to the dentist.  Mum wants to start up her Etsy project again.  We actually managed to spend an hour talking it through.  We also managed to get to the local church where they are having a giant book sale, where we bought some stock for an upcoming fair after being accosted by a very unpleasant woman who was shrieking about how having a book sale in the church was sacrilege and wasn’t what churches were meant to be used for.

My mum, who was in no mood to be trifled with, gave her a brief lecture on the importance of the church as a meeting place for the community since Medieval times, and then said: ‘But I suppose you would prefer to see it empty and falling down, which it would be if people didn’t raise funds like this.’  The woman snorted and went off in high dudgeon.

That told her.

That was when things started to slide.  My friend, who has recently lost her grandmother, and several other members of her very close knit family in rapid succession, texted me to ask me if I was free.  She was not doing so well.  She is the sort of person who prides herself on being able to cope. She is the sort of person everyone else turns to in a crisis.  If she asks for a favour, you know it is important.

I dropped everything and went to see her.  She has been a good friend to me, and is a very lovely person who is labouring under a fairly intolerable burden at the moment.  Sitting with her, drinking coffee and handing out the odd tissue seemed the least I could do.

I’m only sorry I had to leave so early, but by the time I left I was pushing it to pick Oscar up from nursery and Tallulah up from school.  Thank goodness Tilly was catching the bus to granny’s house.

We had agreed to eat tea at granny’s house.  It is near to the karate class, and saves me having to drive all the way out to our house, make a sandwich, pop the children back in the car with their sandwiches, and drive back for karate.

We got in.  I started organising the tea, with help from the rather wonderful granny, who is being a total rock at the moment.  Tallulah and Oscar proceeded to have the most spectacular fight over the ownership of half a cardboard box.  I separated them.  They unseparated themselves.  I read the riot act.  Just as I was leaving the room, things were thrown.

Tantrums ensued.  Tallulah went for a real hum dinger of over an hour, and had to be put upstairs in a bedroom to protect everyone’s ear drums.  She forfeited the right to go to karate, and if it hadn’t been for granny holding the fort in the kitchen, dinner would have been a massacre.

I finally spoke to the dentist.  My problems have now been resolved, a week after I started using the gadget I only have three weeks to play with.  We are now in debate as to whether I should have to pay for that week.  I say no.  They say, ‘erm’.  I am taking the unit in tomorrow and they will assess it, and then we will chat.  I am not pleased.

Jason called me, just as things were calming down on the domestic front.  He had an update on the car.  Everyone is still refusing to pay for it, and despite the fact they have now finally, really taken it to bits, they are still refusing to accept liability, and are now demanding  hundreds of pounds because they were forced to take it to bits for the insurers, who now won’t pay.  Either we pay them hundreds of pounds to put it back together and take it somewhere else to be fixed.  Or we pay them thousands of pounds to put it back together and fix it.  Or we creep over in the night and set fire to them.

I am in favour of the third option.  Jason not so much.  He got irritated. I got irritated.  I was already pretty irritated.  He wasn’t far behind.  It was not good.

We have now calmed down, and made up, and had time to investigate our rights, with the help of my dad. Sometimes being related to someone with forty years experience of the motor trade is a good thing.  Sadly we do not have the right to creep over in the night and set fire to them, but we do have the right to force them to make the repairs.  It will be ugly.  It will be worth it.

The saga continues.

This conversation had to take place with a time lapse due to my need to get the two remaining children I have who were not in dire disgrace, to karate.  It turns out that we have missed a month’s worth of lessons.  I am not surprised.  I am only amazed it wasn’t more time.  It seems like forever.

Tallulah and I made friends while we were waiting for karate to finish, and I managed to fit in one of the nice things I had actually set out to do at quarter to eight this morning, and help mum sort out some things to go on Etsy.

On the way home I realised we were driving on petrol fumes, and had to make a detour to the petrol station, whereupon one of the only two pumps I could use broke down, and I had to wait for fifteen minutes behind a doddering old man and a twelve year old girl, just to fill up.

Since getting home I have put the washing machine on, sorted out dry laundry, filled the dish washer and put the children to bed.

I sat down at half past nine.

I don’t know if I can get up again now.  I might just stay here until I either break the chair, or fall off it.

Tell me it’s going to get easier won’t you?

Falling Asleep on a Mockingbird

I am exhausted.

My GrindCare wonder technology has now broken.  It gave up the ghost on Monday morning.  The dentist has been unavailable for comment, and only rang me back yesterday at 5.15 p.m. as I was hurtling down the M1 in the fog, attempting to manoeuvre the courtesy car from hell away from the ditch on one side and the central reservation on the other.

I didn’t really have time to chat.

I am not impressed.

My car is still AWOL.  The mechanics are all off sick with engineoilitis or some such crap.  I am fairly desolate.  I have now got to the stage where I firmly believe I will never see my car again.  The VW garage are on the same wavelength.  They must be, because they have offered me the use of the courtesy car indefinitely.  They seem very cheered by this.

Mostly the thought of it just makes me want to weep.

I waited in all day on Monday for the parcel Jason needed picking up to be picked up.  The one time I absolutely had to go out, when I needed to pick the children up from school, the bloke came to collect it.

Bastard.

When I got home I rang the depot in a snit.  They were most unhelpful.  They suggested I wait in for the next three days in case the driver came back.  I suggested not doing this in no uncertain terms.  As a result Oscar, grandad (who was helping me, very kindly, spurred on by the fear of me exploding with frustration) and I, wended our way to the arse end of Coventry yesterday morning, to drop the bloody parcel off ourselves.  I got there to find that they had rebranded the depot and not mentioned it, and also moved depots entirely.  I felt like Anneka Rice in Treasure Hunt, only less lycra clad and more aggravated.

The rest of the day was mostly spent in other, irritating and reasonably fruitless errands which took me hither and yon like an enraged bee.  I have however, managed to post a lot of things, deal with a lot of paperwork, enrol Tallulah in a new Brownie pack and sign up Oscar and Tallulah for six weeks of swimming lessons.

I should feel pleased about this, but mostly I am thinking about the fact that those things all kick off next week, along with choir, football practice and karate.  I am thinking of making myself a small campsite in the boot of my car where I can boil up billy cans of tea and take naps.  These things would be much more useful to me than integrated cup holders and air conditioning.

In the evening, Andrea, Tilly and I went to Nottingham to see the touring production of; ‘To Kill A Mockingbird.’  I would have enjoyed it more had the accents been less Dick Van Dyke, which was bizarre, and I hadn’t had to drive in in the fog, and then face the prospect of driving home in the pitch black, and the fog.

I confess to dozing off in the first half.

To be fair, I am managing about four hours sleep a night at the moment, and most of those hours I am either being chased by something, or squashed by something, or mown down by something.

I am not soothed.

It would be the perfect time to be using an anti-grinding device.

Ha!

 

Owned

Mrs Jones is so right. Oscar is turning into Stewie from Family Guy.  He really isn’t very keen on me at the moment.  Not only, as we already know, does he want to marry his father, but mostly he just wants me to fall under a bus and let him get on with his plans for world domination alone, and without having to say please and thank you.

This constant war of attrition between us, is reasonably wearing. Not only do I have to have the usual, maternal, eyes in the back of my head, I need eyes grafted onto my finger ends, a ceaseless fund of patience and the ability to repeat the phrases:

• Please leave that alone.
• Take your fingers out of there.
• Don’t touch that.
• Put that down.
• Stand still, for the love of God, just stand still; RIGHT NOW.
• What is the magic word? (please, thank you, excuse me, fuck you very much).

My standard warning at the moment is this:

‘Oscar. If you do that one more time I will have to kill you, and it won’t be pretty.’

This doesn’t have any discernible effect on him, despite the shocked glances of anyone passing by.

Oscar insouciantly turns to me and says:

‘How, mama? How will you kill me?’

My responses so far, over the last two days have been:

1. I will beat you to death with your own shoes.
2. I will chop your head off with a blunt spoon.
3. I will put you in a giant mincing machine.

He laughs uproariously at this, and says:

‘Nyaaaooohhh! That’s not true.  Try again!’

Then he drops whatever evil thing I have caught him doing, and goes off to try something else.

Today he was following a security guard round Ikea, and impersonating him as he stood at the tills, guarding the hot dog stand from the notorious Ikea hot dog burglar gang.

The security guard did the wisest thing, and ignored him beatifically.

As we were leaving Oscar asked me a very relevant question indeed:

‘Mama? Why would the guard be guarding the hot dogs when there are other things to guard?’

I said:

‘Clearly you have never heard of the gang of international hot dog thieves who roam about Ikea on Wednesdays.’

He was intrigued:

‘Tell me more, Mama.’

‘Well. They are usually about 3 feet tall, and generally wear striped t-shirts, and have slightly snotty noses.’

This happened to be a fairly uncanny description of a certain four year old menace who was striding forth besides me.

He stopped dead in his tracks, thought back to his face off with the guard while grandad was paying for his goods at the till, and went extremely pale and quiet.

‘It’s time to go now mama.  Come on!’