Cracking Roulade Janet

It is that time of day when we must talk about baking.

The Great British Bake Off in particular.

That is because if I don’t talk to you about baking I must deal with the monstrous pile of washing in the corner, and I don’t want to.  It will only be replaced by another monstrous pile of washing and so on, into infinity and beyond, as any Buzz Lightyear kno.

Chiz.

The Great British Bake Off this week was all about the world of desserts. I am very interested in the way they classify the different skills that sit under the umbrella term ‘baking’.  I want to know why the chocolate roulade they had to make this week is a dessert and not a cake, and why the profiteroles they had to make did not come under the title pastry?  This issue of defining and labelling things is one that has been troubling me for some time. Not only in the world of baking, it has to be said. We had a heated debate in the Boo household this week as to whether a mattress is actually furniture or not.  I suggested that technically it was more likely to come under the title of ‘soft furnishings’.  Jason disagreed.

So, I ask any furniture experts out there, which of us is right?

I accept in advance the idea that both of us may be wrong.  This has happened before.

Moving back to baking. The first challenge this week was to make a cheesecake. As the weeks go by I note that they are being even less formal about their instructions regarding the first challenge. This week the only criteria for the cheesecake was that it had to be baked. This clearly needed saying so they didn’t cheat a la Nigella and just stick a load of flavoured cream cheese on a biscuit base, wang it in the fridge and then spend the next two hours getting high and playing Happy Families with Mary and Paul.

Paul is Mr. Bun the Baker.

Next week, if this laxness continues they will probably be asked just to ‘knock something edible together using the contents of the fridge.’  I am not sure I like this new laissez faire attitude to the first round.  Perhaps I am just being surly because they have totally put the mockers on my theory about signature dishes. I can go no further without added input.

It all smacks of Ready Steady Cook a bit. Which is never a good thing.

That’s all I’m saying.

Now. With the world of cheesecake the key thing, according to Mary, is not to let your crust split.  I never knew this.  I have made cheesecake on numerous occasions. I have just embraced the fissures as a kind of rugged, outdoorsy thing that give my cheesecake character. I did not realise it was verboten.

Having said that, I discussed this with my mum earlier and we agreed that it is a good job that we have baked many of the items show cased on the Bake Off without prior knowledge of how difficult they seem to be or how many things are not allowed, otherwise we would never have made them at all.  Ignorance is bliss.  This certainly seems to hold true in the world of baking.

And for most things in my world if I am being honest. The older I get, the more I listen to Radio 4, the more ineffectual I feel, the more the idea of a lobotomy is a comfort to me.

Each of the five ladies left on the Bake Off had a very different take on  cheesecake. This is one of the things I love about the programme. It makes you think about possibilities you may like to eat/have a go at yourself later on.  Holly made a Father Christmas cheesecake.  Apparently in her house they give Santa cheesecake instead of mince pies on Christmas Eve.  I love this idea.  Mainly because I hate Mince Pies and being closely affiliated to Santa, as I am, I sometimes have to help out with the late night scoffage if he has overdosed on pies at other houses in the vicinity.  Cheesecake would be a nice  change.

If only Rudolph could be persuaded to embrace chocolate cornflake cakes instead of carrots, my life would be complete.

Holly’s cheesecake did not rock my world though, sadly. Firstly it had semolina in it (bleurgh)  Even in its non school dessert form I do not like semolina. I have used it in various dishes, savoury and sweet, and it tastes a lot like grit from the bottom of a budgie’s cage.  Secondly she had nuts and Christmassy spices in the cheesecake.  Which is just wrong.  I do not like Christmas spices. I am not a fan of cinnamon, or orange (except in the Terry’s Chocolate form), and I am not big on nuts.

Paul pronounced it too stodgy.  Mary made that face. The one where you realise when you wake up in the morning that that last Flaming Sambucca was one too many and you were definitely wearing your wrong decision trousers at that point. Possibly on your head.

Mary Anne made something complex with a pastry rather than a biscuit base and did things with flavours that she labelled as tutti frutti.  Again I was disappointed. I am coming to love Mary Anne, and I appreciate that she is a rogue trader in the world of baking, which is no bad thing, but tutti frutti just reminds me of bizarre Nineteen Seventies ice cream flavours with too much candied peel in.

No. I say.

Jo of the tiny voice made a rum and raisin cheesecake, to continue the theme of Seventies ice cream parlour world that we had unwittingly entered.

Yasmin started off brilliantly, making her own Amaretti biscuits for the base of her cheesecake. This was above and beyond.  She was really trying to pull out all the stops this week. You could tell things were getting serious when she smacked Paul round the knuckles with her spatula as he was trying to inspect her biscuits. He looked shocked. I looked shocked. Yasmin looked a bit shocked herself.

I applaud her audacity, but I think it did her no favours. She was playing with fire. One does not rough up The Hollywood with a kitchen implement and live to tell the tale.

My favourite was Janet’s.  Janet made a rhubarb cheesecake.  Apart from the fact that it had an enormous crack down the middle, it was amazing.  Janet, as usual, was amazed.  Her continuing success on this week’s show only adds further fuel to my contention that she has been snatched by alien craft, probed with a giant icing bag and replaced by an intergalactic version of Delia Smith.

The second round was the technical challenge. Mary set the agenda, as she so frequently does.  Paul, I have noticed, gets very little say in the world of technical challenges.  It is the one round where he consistently has to play second fiddle to Mary.  He is her technical challenge beehatch.

As with all things that look straightforward, like plastering or milking a cow, roulade is a nightmare.  The difficulty is in the rolling. Not only was it the week of retro ice cream flavours. It was the week of cracks. You are allowed to have cracks in the carapace of your roulade, but you are only allowed to have artisanal, artistic ones.  You are not allowed to have ruddy great fissures that people can fall down and drown in whipped cream in.

Which is a shame, because intergalactic Delia went off line during the roulade episode, and old Janet was allowed to inhabit her own body once more. It did not go well.  Slathering together some crazy paving with whipped cream would have been better, frankly.

The final challenge was a behemoth. It was the monster truck of baking challenges.  They had to make a croquembouche.  This, for the uninitiated is a cone shaped mountain of profiteroles, glued together with caramel and decorated with spun sugar.  It is to baking what the Bugatti Veyron is to the world of cars.  It makes the macaroon challenge look like a walk in the park. Truly it was terrifying.

Apparently it usually takes a couple of days to make a croquembouche.  The contestants had a mere five hours.

There are so many difficulties with this challenge. Firstly making choux pastry.  Then using it to make over 100 profiteroles. Then heating sugar to 180 degrees to make the caramel. Then using it while it is still molten to stick your profiteroles together. etc, etc.

These difficulties were compounded by the fact that all the ladies had their dander up and were out to impress the judges big time. They all tried to add individual touches that made what was already complicated, so stressful and complex that even a giant brain like Stephen Hawking would have had a hard time keeping up.

Janet, who was back to channeling Delia, and Mary Anne both went for a separate nougatine style base to prop up their towers of pastry joy.  Janet scaled back, probably worried that Delia would leave her again at any moment.  Mary Anne went all out, with elaborate spun sugar and individually decorated profiteroles.

Holly was clearly still in festive mode and not only made an entire gingerbread city, complete with hard landscaping and wildlife to sit under her croquembouche, she also glued the entire thing together with chocolate instead of caramel.  This was a tad risky, due to the fact that where caramel sets like superglue, chocolate does not. Realising the error of her ways about half way through, she added more chocolate and ended up with something that resembled a melting witches hat.  It was not a good look.

Jo decided that she didn’t need to fill her profiteroles with straightforward creme patissiere, so she mixed it with whipped cream and limoncello.  Very yum, but very unstable as she found two minutes before judging commenced when her tower of profiteroles folded gracefully in the middle as if Jackie Chan had delivered a mild karate chop to it in passing.

The worst however, was poor Yasmin, who was being karmically punished for her rough handling of La Hollywood earlier in the episode.  Not only did she burn three lots of caramel, she also melted half her hand by dipping it into the molten sugar, meaning that a St. John’s Ambulance man got his fifteen seconds of fame rushing to her aid.  On top of that, Mary was not impressed by her pink filling for the profiteroles.

Mary is wonderful.  Paul is very forthright in what he says.  He calls an icing bag an icing  bag, but Mary is much more diplomatic, except when it comes to pulling faces.  She has a whole range of interesting facial expressions which pretty much give you the sub text to what she is saying.  When she said the words: ‘Pink filling’ her face screwed up much like Derek’s when forced to sniff something she considers to be the feline equivalent of stale old lady wee mixed with the cloying aftertaste of Yardley sandalwood talcum powder.

And that look was the signal that Yasmin’s career on the Great British Bake Off was well and truly over.

Next week’s semi final is all about the patisserie and I predict there will be much agonising over the Danish pastries.

Bring it on.

cartastrophe

What a day.

This morning I had to take my car in for a service.

For many people this is normal and entirely unscary. For me it is rather like running the gauntlet. I am terrified of the whole process.  I can just about manage my own car, as long as I don’t think about it too deeply. I am at a loss when it comes to hopping into another vehicle and driving smoothly away.

That is on top of the fact that I have no idea what the man/woman at the garage is saying to me.  They look at me kindly and say things like:

‘Your left side throttle axle sprong looks like it needs regrouting. Do you use fng or pxgww?’

I hear: ‘RAHRAHRAHRAHRAHRAHRAH’

I weep.

I was late dropping the two smallest of the tribe to school due to displacement activity.

When I got to the garage it all went rather smoothly up to a point.  While they were talking about the flange resistors etc I just played nice, lift music in my head and nodded.  I reckoned as long as I agreed to pay whatever they asked they would not care.

This turned out to be a reasonably accurate assumption.

I was just congratulating myself on getting out of it relatively unscathed when the moment of total trauma came.

The chap handed me the keys to my courtesy car and said: ‘You’ll love the car. You’ve got a VW Sharan.’  He smiled at me expectantly. I looked at him in that blank way.  He realised I had no idea what a VW Sharan was. He might has well have said: ‘I am going to let you ride a camelopard down the high street.’

He elaborated.  He said: ‘It’s a 7 seater people carrier.’

I said: ‘Fucking hell.’ I said it quite loudly and then went even whiter than the sheet I already resemble.

He said: ‘No. It’s great. Really.’

I said: ‘For you perhaps.  I drive a teeny, weeny car, and I hate driving anything, let alone a brand new, seven seater people carrier.’

He would not swap it for me. They did not have anything else.

At this point I would have been happy with a unicycle.

I considered either a) staying in the VW garage until it was finished or b) running for the hills.  I considered these options seriously.

Then I decided that I am not a big girl’s blouse. I decided that I could do this.  I let the man take me out to the car park to where the Sharan was waiting for me.

It was wedged super tight between a large, orange TNT van and a small other car.  There was no way in God’s green earth I was getting it out of that parking spot.  It was massive.

The chap with the key looked at the car. He looked back at me.  I was, by now, a light shade of green.

He wisely said: ‘I will get the car out of the parking space for you.’

By this time I was feeling very sweary.  I said: ‘Too fucking right matey.’

It was either swear or cry.  I hate crying in front of people who work in VW garages, so swearing was all I had left.

It took him five goes to get out of the space.  He then parked it in the road, which didn’t help me much, as I was hoping for a quiet space to have a practice.

I noted that the car had a set of golf  clubs in the back.  A glimmer of hope appeared.  I pointed it out to the chap and suggested that he might actually have given me the wrong car after all.

He cheerfully said: ‘No. It’s the manager’s car. We’ve run out of regular courtesy cars, so you’ve got his.’

No pressure.

I swore some more.

He handed me the keys and ushered me into the driver’s seat.  I asked him if you had to put the clutch down before the ignition would work (I was caught out by this with the last courtesy car).  He said: ‘Oh yes.’

Then, as an afterthought he casually announced: ‘And it’s got an electric handbrake as well.’

I looked at him.  I had no idea. None at all.

He pointed to a small paddle shaped switch in the well between the two front seats and announced that this was my hand brake.  He said: “It works just like a regular handbrake except that you press it like a button to put it on, and lift it like a flap to turn it off.’

So. Not like a regular handbrake at all then in fact?

No.

I was now sweating.  I had run out of swear words and the urge to vomit was rising in me like a tidal wave.

It took me a year and a half of intensive lessons, hypnotherapy and beta blockers to learn to use a regular handbrake. Thirty seconds while the car was idling in the middle of the road was not going to cut it with electric handbrakes.

Nevertheless I shut the door and set off.

I was meeting a friend in town for coffee.  The car park I needed to be in was only a five minute drive away.

During that drive, which took twenty minutes, I stalled the car five times, three times at major traffic lights. I got sworn at three times and beeped at twice.  The last hundred yards of road before I got to the car park was executed with my legs wobbling so much I could barely press the pedals down.

I was, by this time, weeping.

By now, driving has become a fairly automatic experience, which is all to the good.  The problem comes when something changes and I am required to learn something new to replace the now automatic processes I have learned.  My brain just does not want to comply and my body is trying to complete the processes it knows how to do.  The conflict between the new learning and the old, learned response causes meltdown.

Every time I needed to put the hand brake on, my hand automatically reached down to pull the handle that wasn’t there.  I then had to look down to locate the ridiculously low and small button/flap.  By then my foot had forgotten that it needed to be on the brake.  By then the lights would have changed, but I would not be able to remember whether I had to press the button down, or hold the flap up. Plus my brake foot was also completely confused.

Eventually, after being beeped and sworn at, I would find the right combination of new actions and then move forward too quickly, promptly stalling the car and requiring me to then remember that in order to get the keys to turn in the ignition, my foot had to be on the clutch.

Fuck.

It seemed to take hours to get to the car park.  When I got there I was an absolute mess.

I sat in the car parking bay and cried and cried for forty five minutes.

I felt like such an idiot.

People do this every day. It is not rocket science. I am not that stupid a woman, despite all evidence to the contrary.

Nevertheless I felt totally defeated by this process. All my fears of driving that I had successfully buried came flooding back and I felt totally helpless.

Eventually I pulled myself together, went and bought some Bridgewater (therapy), went and had coffee with my friend, and bought a new pen (Derek is eating my other ones).  The garage rang me at twelve to tell me my car was ready. It took me another hour to pluck up the courage to go back to the car park and get in the Sharan.

I then lost the car, but only after paying for the parking ticket.  Finding it, I felt rather like Annika Rice on Treasure Hunt.  Some car park tickets expire if you do not leave the car park within a set time of paying. I had no idea if this was the case here.

Usually the car registration is on the key fob, but because this was the manager’s own car, it wasn’t.  I searched two floors of the car park before I found it by spying the golf clubs in the back.

It was much easier getting back thanks to Leicester’s peculiar one way system and the fact that I gave up on the handbrake altogether and just rode the brake instead.

By the time I fell with gratitude into my own, small, dented car, but which had a proper handbrake, I was £300 down, had just enough petrol left to get me to the nearest pumps (another £50. I thank you), and had a crashing headache.

I had had no lunch (felt too churned up to eat), and had half an hour left before having to pick up the children from school.

I then had to drop them off at my mum’s and leave immediately to get to Andrea’s.  We were off to Stratford with her mum and her mum’s best friend to celebrate her mum’s birthday.

Luckily everyone agreed I didn’t have to drive.  This was when the day really started to pick up.

We had a very nice meal at the new RST restaurant on the third floor of the main theatre, and watched a very funny performance of Midsummer Night’s Dream, which cheered me up no end.  It was perfectly silly, and exactly what I needed.

I got home an hour ago, after having left the house at half seven this morning.  My brain was still turning, turning, turning, so I have emptied it a bit in the hope that I will fall into bed in a coma and not dream of driving all night long.

Write on…and on…and on…

I am full of words at the moment. Absolutely spilling, brimming, twirling over with them.

I thought Twitter would help.

It just seems to have unleashed more of them.

There is a quiet desperation humming away in the background as I struggle to shove all these things, trivial and serious, down on the page. It is troubling me rather.  I have never been quiet, wordless, mute. I am always the one over talking, over thinking, over writing. Going on…

I am the one people think: ‘Just shut the fuck up now.’ about. I am used to that. But even I am finding myself and my need to document, write, collate and collect my experiences and thoughts exhausting.

I think it might be related to Oscar going to school.

Obviously I miss him.  He is the only one of the three who I had full time from day one.  He was also the baby.  There are no more.  There will be no more.

I did not cry when I left him in his classroom on his first day.  I was not sad in that way. I was, quite frankly, looking forward to the peace.

I think I am sad because it marks the end of my babies altogether.  I don’t want any more, don’t get me wrong. I struggle with the three I have at the best of times, love them fiercely though I do.  I do not want to go back to broken nights and colic, and hefting a bag the size of a small town round on my aching shoulders. I love the freedom of not having to take a buggy everywhere.  I love being able to converse with my children properly. Going back to coos and gurgles is not the answer.

And then there is the thought of losing more in the quest to have another. I cannot lose any more children. I will not take that risk again.  My heart is full of lost babies. There is no room for any more.

The sadness is bigger than something that can be filled by an individual baby anyway. Even if I had another child, this particular sadness would come eventually. Every one who has children has to face the fact that one day they will stop, and that will be the end of a phase in their lives that will never return.  I knew Oscar would be the last baby as soon as he was born.  But I know it more profoundly now, in a way that matters more deeply to me.

I don’t know how to explain it really. Despite all the words. I know I am not getting it quite right.

I just know that since he has been at school I have not really been able to settle to anything with concentration. I flit from thing to thing like a gnat. Everything wears me out. I try to capture it all in words.  Every last detail.

I think I am trying to hold onto a part of me that is dying by writing myself down, and I am not yet ready to relinquish my hold over this person who I was, despite knowing that my time as her is ending, and that it is a good thing.

For what are we if we are not words made flesh, or flesh expressing our meaning in words? We are memories, thoughts, feelings, ideas, pain, anguish, love, amusement, boredom, hopes and dreams. We are all these things in a sheath of skin, making our way into the unknown, and if we cannot capture it, think about it, reflect on it and own it, what do we have?

I am trying to capture the essence, the shadows, the thoughts and meanings of my dying self, before I start on the next leg of my adventure, and it is making me sad and thoughtful and anxious and unsure.

What kind of future will I make for myself now I have more time to be me? Me that doesn’t have to wipe bottoms and blow noses all day? I don’t know.  I kid myself that I might have known pre children, and that children were a hiatus on the journey, but I know that isn’t true.

My children have been the greatest part of my journey so far. Not because I have helped create three, perfect human beings (which I have), but because by their testing of me and questioning of me, and their provoking me and loving me and demanding things of me that I never knew I was capable of, they have shaped and changed me irrevocably for the better.

I hope I am wiser now. I hope I will make better decisions now. I hope I won’t fuck things up as much now. I probably will, but I hope I learn more quickly from those mistakes.  I am worried that the children were a crutch that allowed me to be braver, and now they no longer need me in the same way, that I might go back to being more cowardly, like I was in my old life, before children.

I really have no idea what will happen.  Which is part of why I am so nervous.

But I have to accept that change is the natural order of things.  I have a new phase of my life to live now. I have to find my own meaning and my own way.  That does not mean I stop being a mum. I will never stop being a mum, but I will never be a mum in the same way again.

Which is fine.

I hope.

And I know I have expressed myself clumsily, but I am hoping that expressing myself clumsily is better than keeping it all bottled up while I gibber on about sherbet lemons and Dale Winton, and maybe I can make some quiet space in my head now.

For about five minutes.

Life and Fate

Today I cried.

I was in my car. It was three o’clock and I was sitting in a car park, sobbing my socks off.

Because of the radio.

I have been intermittently listening to the Radio 4 adaptation of Vassily Grossman’s epic book; ‘Life and Fate.’

It has been getting a lot of publicity recently.  It is a huge undertaking. Hours of radio time are being devoted to it, and there is a stellar cast: David Tennant, Samuel West, Eleanor Bron, Kenneth Branagh and a whole host of other major names.

Grossman’s book was banned during his lifetime. The Soviet authorities considered it to be too dangerous to publish because of the comparisons it draws between communism and Nazism.  It is now considered the most important book of Russian literature in 20th Century Fiction.

I have never read it.

I am also only listening to it in snatches.  I only really get quality radio time in the car, and it is on just as I am going to pick the children up from school.

The names confuse me. Grossman has that peculiarly Russian trait of giving people seventeen names where one would suffice.

It is also centred around the real events of The Battle of Stalingrad, about which I know very little.

It is however, totally absorbing. The surreal way in which I am listening to it is a bit like listening to poetry.  It is the sound it makes rather than the sense that grabs you first.

Today the episode I listened to was about a woman called Sofya, who is a Russian doctor, and also a Jew. She is captured by the Nazis during a battle and the last ten minutes of the broadcast was unutterably moving as we hear her in the cattle trucks, on her way to the concentration camp, and then her thoughts as she moves towards the gas chambers knowing that her death is awaiting her.

Her words are lyrical, and beautiful, and unutterably sad.

You can listen to them here.

Isn’t it wonderful that writing can do this to people? That words can twist your guts and open your soul and leave you wrenched with sobs in a car park on a wet Tuesday afternoon?

And that we have access to them?

We are so lucky that nobody restricts us from listening and reading and finding things out. We are so lucky that we have access to amazing, risky, esoteric radio and television.  I do not think we celebrate it enough.

And we should.

Altering My Ego

The lovely Keith from Zen Mischief has tagged me in a meme.  He has invited me (and others. It is not an exclusive deal) to share with you five humorous characters you have invented, and tell you a bit about them.

I don’t know if I can run to five, but I’ve certainly got a few up my sleeve.  Plus it ties in neatly with something else from Twitter I wanted to talk to you about. It is another Lauren Laverne tweet, in which she invited you to share your alter ego’s name and traits, if you have one.

Poor Lauren is going to get very twitchy if I keep writing blog posts about her, so I promise to move on tomorrow to a different celebrity.  I am thinking Professor Brian Cox.  This could be less successful for me, as what I know about life, the universe and everything has already been said with infinitely more grace and elegance by Douglas Adams, but beggars can’t be choosers.

Brian Cant is more in my line.  I am an expert on Trumpton and Chigley and have extensive knowledge of the life and past times of Windy Miller.  I shall find out if he tweets.

Right. Back to characters.

When I was a child I invented an imaginary sister called Lisa. She was however, extremely dull, as was my imaginary golden retriever, imaginatively named Honey, and my imaginary horse who was so irretrievably boring I have forgotten his name entirely. It says something about me that given the fact I was free to create any character I chose, I managed to come up with three of the most nondescript characters on the planet. So tedious I liquidated them shortly after inventing them.  Tilly was much more adept in this line as a child.  She had an imaginary monkey called Crackalong.  Now there’s a character to conjure with.

I have always wanted to write a detective novel with a hero called Norbert D’Entressangle.  This is actually the name of a haulage company that purport to be bringing people closer to their dreams.  If their dreams consist of being stuck in a twenty five mile tail back behind a large, red lorry eating exhaust fumes they are doing very well at it, too.

I have always loved the name. It’s a shocking name for a company, as it is incredibly hard to remember and repeat, but it would be an excellent name for either a large, shaggy, Dulux type dog, or a down at heel French detective operating out of a storm drain in Marseille.  Or possibly a Dulux dog detective.  I haven’t ironed out the wrinkles yet. But one day Norbert could be as big as Maigret or Wallander.  I do know Norbert likes bouillabaisse and is tone deaf.  He also has a problem with moths in his woollens.  He is nothing if not unfortunate.

Whilst at school I took on the persona of a super hero called Binocliar Woman.  Binocliar Woman was able to make small, glasses shapes with her fingers, put them over her eyes and see for literally inches with perfect clarity.  She also had a cape.  Her other specialised skill was beating evil villains at thumb wrestling and a superhuman ability to drink fourteen pints of hot chocolate without vomiting.  She was a good woman.

I was also The Patron Saint of Chinchillas at one stage.  I didn’t have a name. You could just call me Sainty, or Patron lady or Your Grace. I didn’t really mind.  I read an article about chinchillas which basically said what a bloody hard life a chinchilla has. Mostly they like wandering around the Andes minding their own business and counting strands of fur (they have more hairs per follicle than any other animal. FACT. Due to the fact it is bloody cold living up mountains). Then some bloke from Pets At Home comes round with a ruddy great net, scoops them up and sticks them in a corrugated iron shed in a cage.  Chinchillas are very shy and hate strong lights, and apparently lots of them die of stress.  I did have a goal to start a chinchilla sanctuary at one stage, but got slightly side tracked by real life and the Catholic Church’s unreasonable denial of my request for sainthood.  Apparently I haven’t done enough miracles.  As if being Binocliar Woman were not enough.

Regular readers may also remember my foray into the world of pop music, when my best friend Rachel and I invented a band called The Scab Sisters. Yes siree Bob. We were rocking the free world long before The Spice Girls  came along.  We did not run to individual names as I recall. Perhaps one of us was Scab and one of us was Sisters. I definitely would have been Scab if that were the case.

We did a Fox Cub (Leicester Council’s name for small buses that filled in all the gaps big buses couldn’t squeeze into) tour of Eastern Europe, the East Midlands and anywhere with the word East in it.  We had a smash hit record in Lithuania with our debut album, Prawn on a Log and our cover versions of Five Little Speckled Frogs and Cliff’s Summer Holiday were legendary in our own lunchtime.  We wore lycra body suits, rocked a mean axe, and cuddled live rabbits on stage. Our daring knew no bounds.

We broke up after the catastrophic: ‘Who Ate My Biscuit?’ tour. Never to reform.

I have since flirted with imaginary bands such as the ever popular Pocket Norman, and the grunge rock combo Liquid Weasel Pouch, but it has never been the same and I soon left to pursue other, imaginary interests. Chief among them pretending to be a writer.

Feel free to meme or dream in the same vein. Post your results in the comments box. I will come and look.

I am that nosey.

Sweets for My Sweet

My excuse for being indoors is that I am waiting for the rain to clear before I go anywhere outside the house.

This means I could be leaving the children at school until tomorrow.

In the meantime, I shall enlarge upon one of the interesting questions/ideas that Twitter has thrown my way in the last twenty four hours.

I qualify the term interesting with the words ‘to me’. You know you can’t expect hard hitting political comment on here, although I was highly entertained by the pointlessness of the chap from Essex council who had been delegated to talk to Radio 4 about the Dale Farm evictions.  He had clearly run out of things to say, but was probably told to be firm and sound like he knew what he was doing. He came out with the immortal line: ‘I’ll tell you one thing: once this job has started, IT WILL FINISH.’

Well, yes.

Back to trivia I think, after that brisk trot into current affairs.

I am following Lauren Laverne, the delightful ex pop pixie who is now a  columnist for Grazia magazine, host of Radio 6 and cultural icon on too many television programmes to mention.  I would quite like to be Lauren Laverne when I grow up.  Or possibly a cat. I can’t decide.

It doesn’t matter. It will be a long, long time before I have to choose.

Yesterday she announced that she had eaten one of Barbara Windsor‘s rhubarb and custard sweets.

I was intrigued by this. I had not put Barbara Windsor down as a rhubarb and custard sort of woman.

For those of you who are not au fait with the world of boiled sweets, although I cannot imagine anyone who isn’t, this particularly sweet is half yellow, half red and purports to taste exactly like rhubarb and custard.

Of course, this is patently untrue.  It tastes of some indescribable chemical concoction with half a ton of sugar added, and a harsh rhubarbesque aftertaste which kicks in after you have eaten it, much like the back burn of nail polish you get when you have eaten pear drops.

They are, however, in their own way, distinctly moreish. I must have eaten several pounds (in weight) of them over the years of my sweet eating career.

My motto as a child was: ‘Never knowingly refuse a sweet.’

Except from strange men in the park whose rain macs don’t button up properly. Obviously.

Musing on the world of boiled confectionary and stardom led me to think which celebrities would eat what sweets.  It is a potentially interesting study, much in line with my thinking over the pie preferences of the mass murderer.  I sense my future career unfurling before me.  I must be the food measurer.  With graphs, and foxes heads on sticks.

So far I have come up with a few celebrity sweet matches that have pleased me greatly.

Thom Yorke from Radiohead – definitely a pear drops kind of guy.

Dale Winton – probably going to side with Barbara on the Rhubarb and Custard front, although makes the odd foray into licquorice all sorts.

Billy Connolly – Got to be a lover of Curly Wurlies. He just has to.

Prince – I picture him fondly, sitting astride a Fender, chewing thoughtfully on a strawberry bootlace.

I know Gillian McKeith would rather die than eat sweets, but if she did, she would eat those weird chocolatey, shrivelly mushroom things covered in coconut.

You know it.

Any suggestions for other celebrity sweet matches? Stick em in the comments box. I’m all ears.

Ker Ching

It is cold. It is wet. It is howling a gale.  My jobs for today, should I choose to get off my arse, accept them, are to go to the bank, the post office and to the tip.

I really am not bovvered as the youth say these days.

The children’s schools want more money.  It is the way of their people.

I just do not remember my own parents having to put their hands in their pockets with such relentless monotony just so that we could be incarcerated in a place of education on a daily basis. I am probably deluding myself, but really. It’s ridiculous.

Dinner money has gone up to £1.95 per day. It galls me because the food is diabolical for the most part, and prisoners get fed better. I don’t mind paying more if they’re eating better, but they’re not.  Oscar and Tallulah’s school make a big deal about the fact that the children only get chips once a week. I would be more impressed if potato wedges weren’t available every day of the week, and you cannot tell me that they are healthy.  They’re just fat chips for God’s sake.

Then there is the  break time toast option at 20p per  child per day.  I could say no, but is it really worth the relentless whining and aggravation?

No.

You can also pay for a daily milk ration.  I draw the line at this.  Neither of the two little ones likes milk. They want it because everyone else has it, but I refuse to pay for cow juice that they will give to another child or spit out, down the uniforms I am required to wash.

This week there have been letters regarding the pantomime.  Both small children are going to different pantomimes.  Oscar can see The Tiger Who Came to Tea for £12.50.  Tallulah can go to see Mother Goose for £12.00.

And there has also been the letter about film club at £2.50 each per film.  But this does include popcorn. So that’s alright then.

And then there’s Tilly’s school where lunch money demands are variable depending on how many milk shakes/sausages/chips she ingests.  At break time she can buy bacon sandwiches, or toast, or Danish pastry.

OR HER MOTHER’S LIFE BLOOD…

I am just waiting for the demands for money for the Christmas party/Halloween disco/Bonfire night explosion fest.

And the school trips which involves staying nights away in various sub standard hostelries whilst indulging in pot holing and paragliding, and which seem to cost more than sending me to my own private villa in the Maldives for a fortnight.

I feel like I am being lectured by that woman from the opening titles of FAME:

‘School Costs. And Right Here’s Where You Start Paying…’

Through the nose.

Eyeballs in the sky

It is the fashion these days for towns to have mottos, or catch phrases or tag lines. What you will.

These are supposed to lure you into thinking the town that you are entering is interesting, vibrant, dynamic, and could be a good place to live/shop/work/twiddle your moustaches.

It is, of course, total crap.

It is not just towns, but it does seem peculiarly related to place names and/or geographical locations.

Warwickshire, for example, a mere hop, skip and a jump from here is known as: ‘Shakespeare’s County.’  As we know. This is a load of old rubbish. Shakespeare spent most of his working life in London, and when he did go on tour it was only to avoid catching the plague.  Mostly what he did in Warwickshire, Stratford in particular, was be born, go to school, and then come back to die, leaving us with the eternal dilemma of why he left his wife the second best bed in his will, and wondering what happened to the first best bed.

It’s hardly a claim to fame for an entire county.

Some towns have a really hard time finding something interesting to put on their advertising material.  In the days when I was semi respectable and still had a job I once had an interesting conversation with someone from Leicester council who confided in me that Leicester was thinking of having as its tag line:

‘Leicester. It’s not far from anywhere else.’

True as it may be (and it is), advertising how handy it is to leave the city is hardly likely to have the desired effect.  It’s much like saying:

‘Leicester. Please turn the light out when you leave.’

There are other things they could choose:

‘Leicester. We make orange cheese.’

‘Leicester. Gary Lineker lived here once.’

‘Leicester. We invented Engelbert Humperdinck.’

That kind of thing.

Not very inspiring either I guess, but ‘Shakespeare’s County’ isn’t exactly setting the world alight either.

Hinckley have now got in on the act.  They have erected signs which say: ‘Hinckley: Home of the Hansom Cab.’ Which you drive past as you enter the town.

Joseph Hansom, the inventor of the Hansom Cab did indeed inhabit Hinckley. He is about the only claim to fame Hinckley has.  They had a spa for about five minutes, which is now a swampy ditch at the back of a very odd pub where an old boyfriend of mine once strode up to the barman and said: ‘I’ll have a pint of port my good man, and make it snappy.’  (we didn’t go back).  They once had some of the worst slums in the country.

That is it.

So we have ‘The home of the hansom cab.’

We drove past it today, and Tilly looked at it and said: ‘I was so disappointed when I found out it said hansom cab.’

I said: ‘Why? What did you think it said?’

To which she replied happily: ‘I thought it said ‘Handsome Crab.”

Which is much more impressive, I think you will agree.  I’d want to move to ‘Hinckley: Home of the Handsome Crab.’  I wouldn’t want to move to the home of the hansom cab.

I can just imagine him now, with his super, shiny claws, and a tiny top hat. Perhaps he wears a cravat, and a smoking jacket when he’s taking the day off from being the town’s number one attraction? He is called Maurice. He collects rare orchids and sports a monocle.

I would love to hear if your town is famous for anything?  Particularly anything to do with dapper crustaceans.

Twitter with Martha Stewart and Alvin and the Chipmunks

Monday mornings are not a good time to have a list of things as long as your arm to do.

Monday mornings are for staring with a fixed expression into the middle distance whilst taking in coffee via intravenous drip, and wondering what your life has come to, while silent tears roll down your ageing face.

The morning started badly, with Oscar and Tallulah having a fight on the landing over the ownership of an Alvin and the Chipmunks cd.

You can imagine just how much sympathy I was able to muster, as I organised book bags, filled water bottles and pondered the whereabouts of the hundreds of navy blue cardigans this family possesses, but which all seem to go awol at 7.00 a.m. on Mondays, despite me laying them out on Sunday nights.

Plus, I loathe and detest Alvin and the Chipmunks with a passion I usually reserve only for mass murderers and paedophiles.

It was not a tranquil morning in Broughton Astley today.

I should have gone straight out after dropping the kids at school and started on my marathon list.  But it was cold, and there was still coffee at home in the pot. I came home, vowing that I would get on with things like cleaning bathrooms etc, before I go and do chores.

Have I done these things?

No.

I have stared at the internets while the cat sits on my lap. I now have the excuse that the cat is sitting on me not to get up and attem.  I cannot possibly go about my business.  It is clear that she needs me.

The cat cares not whether the lavs are clean.  She is absentmindedly chewing the strings of Jason’s hoodie, which I am wearing in lieu of bothering to go and find knitwear of my own, and purring like a furry motorboat (the cat, not me).

I have been pondering over my weekend spent playing with Twitter.

It is interesting.

I have gone from complete bewilderment to sort of getting the hang of things probably, although I expect Martha Stewart has some rules of Twitter Etiquette somewhere which I have completely ignored, thus ensuring that I have ruffled the feathers of some perfectly nice people.

I would not know. I  cannot read Martha Stewart because a) she has been in prison and who is going to believe a crim? b) her opinions on almost everything from table napkin folding to the correct way to address an e-mail make me grind my teeth and think dark thoughts, c) I still feel inadequate after I have read something she has written, even though I don’t care about flower arrangements or whether you should eat pot pourri.

It is the way of my people.

Anyway, back to Twitter.

It is fun.  It is not harming anybody.  It is keeping me off the streets.  All these things are good.  When it ceases to be those things I will stop.

It also fulfils my need for inane chatter. I do not work. I do not hang round in the school playground swapping tips with other parents.  I rarely speak to anyone during the day, which is why I never shut up for the rest of the time.  It strikes me that in this age of hot desking, working from home and mass redundancy, tweeting is the new standing around the water cooler (American), kettle (Britain), whilst talking about what you watched on television last night and don’t you think Brenda from accounts has got cankles?

It seems like this, judging from the vast mountain of tweets about Downton Abbey last night.  This is one downfall for me. I clearly do not watch enough popular television to make it big in twitter, although I may well score points tomorrow on the Great British Bake Off.

One of the good things about tweeting is you can choose not to speak to the man from HR who has a funny fishy smell and an alarming taste in knitwear, whereas in real life you would have to acknowledge him, and possibly invite him to your party.

It is also good if you would like to speak to a celebrity, but you know that if you met them in real life you would drool, sweat, squeak and say something puerile like: ‘I like that advert you did for Toilet Duck’, or ‘Do you want a meat paste sandwich?’ even though you haven’t got any, and you know the person you are speaking to has been a vegan for the last twenty years.

On twitter you can write it down. This means you can think about what you are saying (in theory), before you commit it to the airwaves.  Plus, even if you do say something a bit special, they can always ignore you and just pretend they had a deluge of posts to answer and yours got missed in the rush, thus saving you both embarrassment and/or dying of boredom.

For me it is also a great place to dump all those teeny, weeny thoughts.  The ones about the size of a bumble bee bat, that flit around my brain and which annoy me in much the same way as an ear worm does musical people.  If I do not write down something about how I have been thinking the lines: ‘Death, where is thy sting?’ would be way more appropriate if it were ‘Sting, where is thy death?’ for the last four days now. I might explode.

And sometimes, even for me, the thought is so bumble bee bat like it cannot be turned into a blog post.  Amazing though it may seem. Given that I can blog about almost anything, however tenuous.

The fact is that I could, but there are not enough hours in the day to write down full posts on the enormous, and I mean enormous, amounts of random shit that whizzes through my head.

I am thinking that for me, Twitter is like that nozzle on the top of a pressure cooker that whistles alarmingly and lets all the hot air out.

 

Sudbury Hall

We continue our conquering of the country’s heritage one property at a time by spending our afternoon visiting Sudbury Hall and The Museum of Childhood, which are both on the same beautiful site.  I have been before, as have the girls, but it is a first for Oscar and Jason.

It is just under an hour from our house, not far from Stoke on Trent.  Sadly there was no time to pop into Bridgewater today, but we managed to enjoy ourselves anyway.

We are nothing if not stalwart.

Jason is somewhat reluctant.  He did not have a particularly happy childhood. I wondered if he thought that when we arrived they would corral him in a corner and then set him to work for eight hours weeding strawberries (he grew up on a strawberry farm. It’s not some weird psychological hang up thing).

It did not happen.

After an enjoyable trip by pony and trap from the car park (on one side of the road) to the house (on the other):

We rushed to test out the tea room.  We have a knack of turning up at these places at lunch time, ensuring that we are able to test all the facilities thoroughly. I am secretly pleased about this, Jason less so.  He mutters about sandwiches.  I go ‘la la la’ with my fingers in my ears.  The summer holidays has cured me of picnics for at least another twelve months, whatever the weather.

And who wants sandwiches when you can eat this?

and this?

and this?

Jason was not that impressed by their offerings.  I was. You should definitely trust me on this. It was good.

After we had created enough crumbs to keep an army of disco chickens happy for a week, we rolled over to the museum.

The great thing about the Museum of Childhood, much like the Bethnal Green Museum of Childhood, is that it is very child friendly.  You would think that I would not have to mention this, particularly with regard to museums dealing with what it means to be a child, but I feel it is important.  There was a time, not so very long ago when any and all museums were considered to be suitable only for people who had children who were the genetic descendants of Stephen Hawking and Jane Austen. Quiet, brainy types who yearned to go on Ask The Family with Robert Robinson, or ask Bob Holness for a ‘p’ please.

It is only in recent years that museums have decided to be hands on, fun places where you are not clamped in leg irons if you attempt to touch anything other than a door knob.

Sudbury strikes just the right tone. There are not too many ‘interactive’ things in the modern sense of the word. i.e. things which involve technology.  This is brillaint because it means that on the whole things do not tend to be broken.  Too many buttons to press with small children around is an invitation for disaster and a total fail in my opinion.  No. There were real toys to have a go with; wooden hoops, whips and tops, skipping ropes:

hopscotch:

and other things it turns out that middle aged, bearded men really like.

Including the dressing up boxes:

although this bit did not come as a surprise.

I felt very old when I saw quite a lot of my childhood toys actually in display cases.  The Sindy bathroom set in virulent shades of sunflower yellow and brown struck me with a quiet melancholy in particular.  It was probably due to the colour.

I remember being so proud when I got that set.

I pointed it out to the children. They sniffed disdainfully and rushed off to play quoits with their father.

There are loads of toys to play with at Sudbury.  There is also a wonderful book room, with shelves of real, genuine, bona fide books you can take out and read without someone tutting at you, and a space with comfy chairs and headphones where you can listen to other people reading to you if you can’t quite work up the energy to turn the pages.

Just like at Shugborough Hall, which we visited last week, there is also a Victorian school room where you can go and be shouted at by a lady in a blouse and tight skirt. She was having her lunch while we were visiting, so we just looked through the window.  Oscar was very sad to miss her. He said she looked pleasingly strict. I am trying not to worry about this, or the implications for his future sexuality.

It was nice to see he was behaving normally in other respects.  In the section about children and work, there is a faux chimney up which children can squeeze themselves, going into one dark and sooty fire place and coming out of another.  I have always wanted to have a go, but am far too big and matronly of bosom for the small gaps you are required to get through.  Every time I have taken the girls they have bottled it.  Now Oscar bottled it in turn.

Luckily I was able to live vicariously through the girls who both went through this time, although not without some prodding by Jason and the judicious application of torch light by the curator.

After this excitement we wandered around to the Seventeenth Century Hall, where things were much more genteel.  There is a most amazing long gallery which Jason wanted to take home with him, and we met a lovely curator who was collecting all kinds of bugs and creepy crawlies in little sticky traps.  She spent a wonderful half hour showing the children all the things she had caught, and how to identify them on a National Trust bug chart.

I was most impressed to find out that silverfish eat wallpaper.  I hope I get asked about it in a pub quiz one day. It seems too marvellous a piece of knowledge not to be able to win a prize for it.

The gardens got a thumbs up from Jason for their yew topiary. Another thing I have recently discovered about my husband, apart from his love of hopscotch and tea rooms, is his love of yew topiary.  I have the National Trust to thank for this.  The annual joining fee was money well spent.

The children spent a last half hour flinging themselves round the adventure playground:

and then we all went home for tea.

Which is how all good stories should end.