Bofe your houses

It is all go here at the house of plague.

Oscar spent last night wringing wet with fever, but sleeping soundly throughout, even when I changed his bedclothes around him.  This was an absolute blessing, as an over hot, itchy child is never, ever a good thing unless they are asleep.

This morning he crawled into bed with me, commando stylie, snaking his way up the duvet, and kicked me restfully in the back as a ‘surprise’.  He was cool to touch, albeit still smothered in spots.  His skin is remarkably bumpy. One could possibly read War and Peace simply by running ones fingers over his small, braille filled torso.

He spent the morning itchy and disgruntled until the piriton kicked in.  Then he was just disgruntled.  His dis was gruntled due to the fact that the trip to the Cotswold Wildlife Park with picnic that was supposed to be happening today with friends he loves dearly, got binned.  This news was broken along with the similar news that tomorrow’s picnic with other lovely friends, plus the Spanish Easter party and the swimming lesson had all gone for a burton.

He was not impressed.  The poor girls took it better, merely being wearily resigned.

Bless them.

After cogitating for a while I came up with a back up plan.  This involves taking all our picnic food to granny’s tomorrow, and stopping en route to buy Easter eggs for an Easter egg hunt in her garden.

This soothed their agitated hearts and peace reigned once more.

We spent most of the afternoon making cardboard robots.  I have been promising Oscar this great treat for several weeks now, and have been saving the recycling furiously.  It turns out that I am pretty shit hot at making cardboard robots.  Both Tallulah and Oscar who wanted me to make them for them were impressed, as was Jason when he got home.  I am thinking that maybe I should start an Etsy shop selling my cardboard creations.

By the time I had done several, run out of cardboard, and then done running repairs on the robots we had, I was quite bored though.  I think it may be only a fleeting thing. I cannot sustain interest in robots long enough to make sufficient stock to make my fortune.  Tilly spent her time falling off her bicycle and making cardboard owls.

We also branched out into cardboard Romans.  Not content with making a cardboard colosseum last week, we made writing tablets, complete with sharpened twigs and holders made from egg cartons.  I was not as thrilled with these.  I was bored after approximately two minutes.  I don’t think they will catch on.

The rest of the day has been spent with me trying desperately to catch up on my reading back log, some of which is due to be reviewed this week, and falling asleep in between making sure the children have enough drinks, snacks, sympathy, discipline and health and safety.

By eight o’clock, an entire Mr. Gum novel read, two hot meals cooked, the kitchen floor swept fourteen times, three loads of washing and a lot of shards of cardboard swept up, I was in need of a drink.

Andrea bought me a bottle of my very best favourite, yellow label, Veuve Cliquot for my birthday.  I decided to break glass in case of emergency.  I invented a cocktail which involves lots of champagne, some raspberry chambord liqueur, half a passion fruit, and some frozen raspberries.

It has been an exciting evening.  I have now decided that I am better than Tom Cruise in Cocktail, and possibly deserve some kind of award.  After two hours and less than half a bottle of bubbly I am half cut, and mostly on the way to bed.  I am a complete lightweight.

Jason’s ear is much less horrible today, so I am celebrating that, and the fact that Oscar, after not wanting to eat for two days, wolfed down his tea like a boy possessed.  He is clearly on the mend, although still as spotty as hell.

Please dear cheezus, do not let the girls succumb to the plague too.  I promise to be good, after this glass of wine.

Where to Start?

It has been a busy twenty four hours since I was last here.

I finally made it to bed at around two o’clock.  My alarm was set for seven thirty.  Andrea and I planned to leave at eight to try and give ourselves a fighting chance against the vagaries of the London traffic.

At three o’clock Oscar woke up with raging night terrors.  It meant that he ended up in our bed in  a lather of sweat, while Jason, whose ear was killing him, meaning it was difficult for him to get back to sleep, went downstairs to snooze on the sofa.

At four o’clock I was utterly cheesed off by being kicked in the back by my small, yet determined son, who was burrowing under the bed clothes and huffing and puffing and turning like a dervish in his sleep.

I got up, manoeuvred him as far away from me as I could get, and went back to sleep.

By the time I got up I had had about three hours unbroken sleep.  I was not feeling my best.

Oscar was snoring, sprawled out on our bed, flat on his back with all the covers, Lord of the universe.

Jason was hunched up on the sofa wrapped in a throw pretending it wasn’t morning.

I scowled over the coffee pot and thought that the day might possibly be cursed.

This theory gained more credence when Andrea finally turned up at half nine.  Her dad had been taken ill at the farm, and she had been needed to help feed the cattle before we left.

We set off thinking we would never make it in time.  Amazingly, by going down the M40 and the M25 and the M4, and then coming in via Kew, we managed a good time and didn’t meet with any of the blocks set up because of the football or the marathon.

Just after midday we were ensconced in Wagamama’s, stuffing our faces.  All good.

Jason called me after lunch to say that Oscar had been very lethargic and not with it during his karate grading.  He did get his yellow belt, but it was more of a pity gesture than because of anything he had done.  Tilly got her orange belt with aplomb, which was good.

Then Jason called me to say that Oscar didn’t want to go to the party he had been invited to that afternoon, and that he was running a slight temperature.  Yikes.  This was not normal behaviour at all.  Apparently he didn’t eat lunch either.  My mama radar was on red alert.

Nothing to be done except instruct Jason to watch him and be ready in case of emergencies.

We sloped off to watch Frankenstein at the National.  I expected great things. Everyone I have spoken to who has seen it has been utterly blown away by it.  It is directed by Danny Boyle of Trainspotting/Slumdog Millionaire fame, and stars Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller.  Each takes it in turn to play either Frankenstein or his monster.

We got the day when Jonny Lee Miller was the monster and Cumberbatch was Victor Frankenstein.  I had already seen Benedict Cumberbatch at the National in After The Dance, and he was superb. I did not know what to expect from Jonny Lee Miller.

It was incredible. Both actors were mesmerizing.  The sets were amazing, the whole thing was amazing. I am so glad I went to see it, and wasn’t stuck in traffic on the M1 instead.  I wish I had tickets to see them in the reverse roles.  I imagine it would be equally stunning and yet totally different.

It is on for another fifteen days if you can beg a ticket from anyone. I highly recommend it.

We were not so lucky with traffic on the way home and it took nearly four hours, most of which we spent getting out of London.  I am much more conversant with the geography of Pimlico now than I ever was, which is a bonus I suppose.

When I got home I was greeted by a husband who still has an extremely miserable looking ear, and a son who was smothered in spots from head to foot and who had just been dosed with Calpol for a fever. He also has a nasty cough and a sore throat and tummy.  This might explain his lacklustre performance at karate earlier today.

It also explains why we will not be spending our week catching up with old friends as we planned.  It looks to me like he has measles, or something very like.  We were meant to be taking a picnic to the Cotswold Wildlife Park tomorrow to meet up with my best friend and her three children, and then meeting up with my very pregnant friend and her two children on Tuesday.

Spots have cancelled play on these two events at the very least.  I await with trepidation what the rest of the week unfolds.

Still, at least I got to see Jonny Lee Miller’s willy before it all went wrong.

Good, but still nothing to beat Ian McKellen’s just in case you were wondering.

I’m doing a survey.  Famous Theatrical Willies Wot I Have Known.

Crossing the Rubicon – When I’ve put the washing away

It is half past twelve.  I should be in bed.  I must get up in seven hours and navigate across London in the face of one Marathon, one closed motorway and two giant football matches.  It will not be soothing.

I am not feeling that it is time to slumber yet though.

After having spent all day at granny’s house I had to come back to a house that needed my attention.  Because I am leaving Jason with the children tomorrow, and it is a busy day for the Boo minors that meant leaving him prepared.  This involved washing and drying karate gear, sorting out paperwork and addresses for karate grading, sorting out presents for the birthday party Oscar is going to tomorrow, wrapping the presents, finding the cards, etc…

Oh, and repeated ministrations upon the ear of Jason.  Despite the meds it has not stopped swelling yet, and is in fact rather alarming to all.

Then there was the three lots of wet washing to deal with, and all the dry laundry to sort and put away.  Apparently balancing it on the edge of my desk next to the teetering pile of paperwork is not very convenient.  The dishwasher was full of clean pots, which is very frustrating when you want to fill it full of dirty pots so that you can excavate to the bottom of the sink.  The hob had the remains of yesterday’s supper on it, which Jason swore he would eat later.  If he eats it any later it will kill him quicker than his mouldy ear.  That all had to be humanely disposed of too.

I have just finished.  My body is tired, but my brain is whirring, whirring, whirring.  I think I shall feed it a cup of white tea and sit and read a chapter of my book.  That sounds like a nice, civilised thing to do.

I am currently reading a book that Andrea recommended called ‘Rubicon: The Triumph and Tragedy of The Roman Republic’.  It is by a chap called Tom Holland.  I am thoroughly enjoying it.  It is, despite the title, a thoroughly absorbing read.  Holland writes history the way I like to read it.  He writes a coherent narrative which can be read much like a story, rather than a series of dreary facts.  The facts are presented in an interesting way and lead to me reading out great chunks of it to Jason, who is not in the slightest bit interested in them.

He tells me that one of my most annoying traits is my insistence on filling his brain full of random facts that he will never need, whether they be about Pompey, or Justin Bieber.  I tell him that I am training him to be the king of the pub quiz for when we retire and he needs a hobby that doesn’t involve dressing as an orc and smoking pork pies.

He is not impressed.

It does not stop me doing it.  I am nothing if not tenacious.

I have studied this period in Roman history before, which helps.  I have vague memories of having to write an essay comparing the leadership styles of Pompey and Julius Caesar including references to crossing the Rubicon, when I was at university.  Lots of things in this book jog my memory and make me think; ‘Goodness, I knew this once. I must have been quite brainy.  Now I just think about pottery and cake all day. Where did it all go wrong?’

Other things I read about are things I didn’t know before but which I am intrigued by.  Things like:

A bourgeois Roman oyster farmer who made his first fortune selling oysters to the rich Romans who lived round Naples, invented the first recorded heated swimming pool, and installed it in his villa. It was so popular that he made his second fortune by building luxury villas complete with their own heated swimming pools and flogging them to the same people he sold his oysters to.

The romans mined so much silver in Spain that there were hundreds of miles of tunnels, and the smelting works were so toxic that birds who flew into the vapour clouds they emitted dropped down dead instantly, and if it touched your skin, the skin would go white and then peel off.  Ewww.

It took something like 100,ooo tons of rock to get 1 ton of silver and the Roman mint used 50 tons of silver every year.

Strabo was a very unlucky general, who not only suffered miserable defeat at the hands of his foes, but died of the plague during one of his disastrous campaigns, and just as he was about to expire, lightning struck his tent and burned it to the ground.  Not a happy camper.

I am only about 100 pages into this book so far, but I am having an utterly wonderful time.  I highly recommend it if you are in the slightest bit interested in Roman history.

Apparently Holland has written other books about the Persians, and one about the Dark Ages. I shall be looking out for them.

My husband is mouldy, but delightful

My husband has a septic ear.  The stitch that he had put in his ear which is supposed to help him quit smoking has gone yukky.  This is the second time in four weeks this has happened and the second time in four weeks I have had to do minor surgery with nail scissors, tea tree oil and lots of looking away.

I did this last night.  Today he had to travel to Wimbledon at the crack of dawn to sit a six hour exam (more of this may possibly be revealed later.  It has to do with Canadians. I am trying not to think about it), and his ear was still sore.

This evening when he got back, his ear was on fire and extremely unpleasant.  I ministered unto him. Then I decided I didn’t want him to die of septicaemia.  I packed him off to the drop in clinic at the Royal.

He was not happy.

He has just got back with some anti inflammatories, some antibiotics and a doctor who gave him a sound telling off and told him that his nagging wife was in fact right, and he should have gone in earlier.

Vindicated.

I have banned him from having a stitch in his ear any more. I cannot be doing with it. I’d rather he smoked cigars than had to have his ear amputated.

Despite his putrid ear, I have decided to keep him.

He did a very, very lovely thing today.  I am entirely undeserving of this lovely thing, and most undoubtedly spoiled.

Last week I ordered the Emma Bridgewater crockery I wanted that I bought with the money my parents gave me for my birthday. Jason ordered it through his account because I am not to be trusted. It is the same reason why I do not have an e bay account. I have no willpower whatsoever.

I was out yesterday when they tried to deliver my parcel.  This morning I drove to the depot to pick it up.

It was a big box.

Too big for just the things I had ordered.

It transpires that Jason had bought me the gallon tea pot that I have been drooling over for the last few years.  You can see the image here.  I would take a photo, but I am too lazy.

I cried and cried when I unwrapped it, I was so amazed and happy and grateful and ashamed at crying over a teapot and how spoiled I am, and everything, and all the stuff.

It is currently sitting in the middle of the kitchen table, just being there, and being massive and making me smile whenever I look at it.  I keep expecting a dormouse to pop out of it.  I do not have occasion to fill it with tea over the next few days. It makes twenty cups full at a time.  I may however, fill it with lemonade and have an anarchists tea party.

That would be good, no?

Booooooooks

I realise I haven’t blogged about books recently. It’s not that I’m not reading them.  I am.  I am just reading them slowly, and then falling asleep.  I am behind with my reveiws, I am behind with my library books. I am behind with everything.

I am the proverbial donkey’s tail.

Nevertheless I have read a couple of excellent books I would recommend for older teens and people like me.

The Crowfield Curse by Pat Walsh is an exciting supernatural type thriller set in a medieval monastery.  It was recommended to me in the excellent way of blogging by Mrs. Jones, who had read about it on this blog; Diary of a Desperate Exmoor Woman.  I love how these things work, don’t you?

It is about a young man called Will who lives at a dilapidated old monastery where he works as an odd job boy since the death of his family in a fire at their mill.  He discovers a supernatural creature called a Hob, trapped in the woods, and saving its life leads him to uncover a tremendous secret about the monastery and its past that propels him headlong into adventure.

This is taut, suspenseful and historically interesting.  I thoroughly enjoyed it, and was utterly delighted when Mrs. Jones treated me to the next one in the series for my birthday.

My next recommendation is by the author John Connolly who writes frillin’ macabre fings for grown ups in his day job, but who has started to write a fantasy horror series for teens in his spare time.  I read the first one of these, called; ‘The Gates: Samuel Johnson V. The Devil, Round One,’ a few months back, and loved it.  Samuel Johnson is a teenage boy who just happens to have a dog called Boswell. Samuel is shy and unassuming, but one day finds out that a lady in his neighbourhood is channelling the power from the Hadron Collider to open the portals of Hell and become possessed by the demon Ba’al, who comes to earth intent on its destruction.  Samuel and his friends, with the help of an insignificant and rubbish hell demon called Nurd, have to save the universe, and their home town of Biddlecombe in particular.  The sequel is called ‘Hells Bells’, and I was given it to review before its release.

It is every bit as good as the first volume, funny, dark, troubling and scary.  It kind of reminds me of Neil Gaiman a little, and that’s never a bad thing is it?

The Play’s The Thing

Andrea and I went to Stratford last night, for the first time in ages.  We have been uninspired by their bill of fare for months, and last season the only thing we saw was their Christmas production of Matilda, which by the way, is now transferring to London, and a jolly good thing too.

The revamped Royal Shakespeare Theatre and its sister, The Swan, are now open for business, which means that when The Other Place, or The Courtyard as it has been known for some time now, is up and running again, Stratford will be back to having its full complement of three theatres.

This means that theatrically there is much more on offer, and because it is the fiftieth anniversary of the RSC as well as the reopening of the theatres, there is some really interesting stuff coming up.

Last night we went to see Cardenio, which is what they term a ‘reimagining’ of Shakespeare’s lost play by Greg Doran, the associate producer of the RSC.  It was on at The Swan.

The Swan is quite intimate. It has timbered galleries with a thrust stage, so you can really get up close with what is going on.  The seating was always notoriously uncomfortable in The Swan, and we had hoped that it would have improved after the refit.  Sadly, the only thing that has changed about the seats is that they are now brown corduroy.  I do not think this is particularly an improvement, and it is still a bottom numbing experience, which when you are there for about three hours, really does begin to tell on the middle aged posterior, no matter how comfortably clad in layers of fat it is.

We were hoping to eat in the RSC cafe.  It used to be rather good, with great views of the river and a nice range of light meal type things available.  Like the seating in The Swan, I can’t say this has improved for the better either.  There is less view, and considerably less food. It was either pre packed sandwiches as a savoury option or nothing.

We went to Carluccios.

The building is very impressive, and there are some lovely architectural touches, but certainly my experiences so far lead me to believe that it is a lot of style over substance, or ‘all fur coat and no knickers’ as my granny used to say.

The thing that irked me most, was the ladies loo.  There is always a problem with loo allocation in theatres.  My advice as a seasoned theatre goer, is that if you are a woman it is best to go somewhere before you enter the portals of the theatre and pee like a horse, and then wait until you leave the theatre to go again if you possibly can.

The Courtyard has the best ladies loos in a theatre I have ever come across. I was expecting good things of the new theatres because of this. Sadly, when I had to dash at half time, the queue for the ladies was half way round the block, and was taking ages.  This, according to a knowledgeable lady two people behind me in the queue, was due to the fact that there are now three less cubicles than there were before the revamp. Not only that but the ladies on the first floor was inaccessible during show time, and the loos round the corner on the ground floor were closed for cleaning and maintenance.

This was ridiculous. As was the fact that there was very little room in there when you finally did get to squeeze in, and the two hand driers were both by the one door, which caused a horrendous bottle neck affair.  Plus the fact that they sounded like two giant motor mowers, and because the door is permanently wedged open by someone waiting to get in, you can hear them roaring through the whole foyer.

Not impressed. Not impressed at all.

The play itself was interesting but not gripping.  I knew the story because it is retold in Cervantes Don Quixote.  It was played as one of those Shakespearean comedies that isn’t really funny because it involves things like treachery, attempted bigamy, rape and forcible abduction of nuns.  It does end in a dance though, so parts of it must have been funny.

The cast were strong with the odd exception, and there were some good moments, but not enough to make me want to watch it again.

Andrea and I have seen quite a few things that Greg Doran has been involved in and we have what we call our ‘Greg Checklist’.  In every play he puts on there always has to be:

Horns

Fake phalluses

Homo erotic undertones, preferably with partial nudity

Lots of gold.

We managed to check all these items off in the first half hour, which was quite satisfying.  I have to say that the male actor who played the evil villain Fernando, and who was required to wander around semi naked several times, was an excellent choice for the part, as he was absolutely ripped.  I am not saying that he was picked for his pecs, because he was obviously an accomplished actor, but I expect his rippling muscles didn’t hurt his chances overmuch.

So. I wouldn’t recommend it, but I wasn’t put off enough to be depressed about what the rest of the season might offer.  I’m keeping my powder dry and expecting bigger and better to come.

Jumpers for Jesus

I asked Tilly if she had a lot of homework to do over the Easter holidays.

She looked rather glum and said:

‘Yes. I’ve got to design a jumper for R.E.’

I was confused.  I said:

‘Surely you mean for textiles?’

But no:

‘I have to design an Easter themed jumper for R.E.  And when I’ve done the design and picked out what’s going to be on it I have to do an assessment paper to justify why I’ve chosen the images I have put on it, and what sort of person I think would wear it.’

By this point I was hysterical with laughter.  I cannot imagine many people who would want to wear a religiously themed Easter jumper, not even committed Christians.  The face of Jesus doesn’t really translate onto clothing very well. Those t-shirts with: ‘Jesus is my home boy’ on never really caught on that well.

No matter what suggestions we came up with I could only think of bearded men with long hair and socks and sandals potentially embracing this kind of fashion statement.

Religiously themed knitwear is even worse than car bumper stickers in my opinion.

I suggested that she do a jumper with a picture of Pontius Pilate’s face on it.  It would certainly be a talking point and very relevant to the Easter story.

She was not convinced.

Perhaps murdering despots would like it for Autumn/Winter 2011.

My other suggestion of Jesus rising out of a broken Easter egg wearing a pair of giant bunny ears and a cotton tail didn’t  go down very well either.

I expect if you made it in pink and encrusted it with Swarovski crystals, Jordan might like it.

Tilly said no again.

She’s too picky by half that child.

Suggestions gratefully received in the comments box.

Ivor Novello Doesn’t have to panic

Oscar’s song:

Nah nah nah nah nah nah nah nah

A lady from 1964

She sat on a horse

Who died in the war

Da da da, de dah dah da dah da dah

Now I’m done

Tallulah’s Song:

La la lah lah

Pope pope pokety pope

I wonder why the Pope wears white dresses

And what he eats for tea

And what Father Terry eats for tea

Pope pope pokety pope

Flapping Hell

We are driving along.  Someone does something in front of me that I disapprove of vehemently.  I shout: ‘Toss pot.’

Oscar says: ‘Can I say toss pot mama?’

I reply that this would not be appropriate at such a tender age.  We agree that bum face is acceptable.

He bounces along beside me shouting: ‘Bum face. Bum face. Bum face…’

We decline:

I am a bum face

You are a bum face

He/she/it is a bum face

They are bum faces

etc.

Later on whilst trying and failing to park in a straight line and being late for Brownies thanks to soup related issues and late from work husbands I shout: ‘Piss flaps.’

I see Oscar’s attention go on red alert immediately.

I say: ‘No! No! No! That is not something you can say either.’

He looks at me frowningly.  I encouragingly say: ‘Bum face. Bum face. Bum face.’

He shakes his head disparagingly.

Bum face is yesterday’s news.

He looks at me slyly as I struggle to find the kerb.  He starts to mutter under his breath, increasing in loudness…

‘flaps…Flaps…FLaps…FLAps…FLAPs, FLAPS! FLAPS! FLAPS!’

The way he says it makes it sounds worse than if he were to say ‘Fuck’.  It is because he knows it should be a naughty word, and he is imbuing it with all the innate naughtiness in his soul, of which there is quite a lot.

Possibly the only ruder word he could say right now would be; ‘Flange’.

I am trying not to laugh.  It is not working well.  Finally getting the kerb and the car aligned focuses my attention beautifully.  I say sharply: ‘You really must not say that word.  It is very bad.’

He smiles at me disarmingly and says: ‘Of course it is not mama. It is just the word FLAPS. I did not say the other word. That would be naughty, but this is an ok word.  Like in cat FLAPS right?’

I am defeated:

He continues to say ‘Flaps’ in an increasingly disturbing way until we get within listening range of Fuzzy Owl.  He takes her measure.  She will mince him.  She is immune to his wily charms.  He shuts up.

For now.

Tilly

Sometimes I despair of my children.  I always love them, but sometimes I’m just not that keen on them.  I know they feel the same way about me.  Love and like do not necessarily always coexist terribly comfortably.

Then there are the other times.  The times when I am unbelievably proud of them and feel a great sense of hope for the future and suchlike.

Tilly made me feel just that way yesterday.

She was sitting in the kitchen, chatting to me yesterday evening as I made soup in a vain attempt to balance it against the thousands of calories worth of pastry I had shovelled into my mouth earlier.

She was getting aerated about the latest reforms proposed for the National Health Service.  She seems to know more about them than I do.  I tend to skate over those articles when I come across them in the papers.  They’re never good reading, and they always cause my blood pressure to elevate violently.

She was telling me that it is absolutely ridiculous that the latest wave of reforms are going to cut jobs where they are needed most, i.e. in the front line, saving people’s lives, rather than reducing the already vast and monolithic structure that is the bureaucratic mountain of people pushing pens and processing pointless forms.

She said it was, and I quote: ‘Disgraceful.’

I agreed with her and then said quite flippantly as I was doing something deadly to a carrot; ‘So, why don’t you write to your M.P. and tell him what you think?’ thinking that would be the end of things.

This morning she dropped a letter on my lap and asked me to post it.  It is addressed to our local M.P. in Westminster, and quite articulately lays out her objections to the reforms.

I am so unbelievably proud of her.  She was mentioned in despatches at school this week for being an outstanding pupil in terms of positive attitude and helpfulness too.

In our bumbling ineptitude as parents we have, by accident and good fortune managed to raise a child who is kind, articulate, thoughtful, funny, bright and has a well developed social conscience.  She can cook, sew and knit and makes a mean film.  She is not afraid to join things, or stand up and be counted and she is absolutely true to herself no matter what.

I was always afraid that when she got to this age and hormones and peer pressure got in the way, that she would somehow change, but if anything she is becoming stronger and more individual and less afraid to do what she thinks is right.

I can ask for no more.

The other two aren’t half bad either.