Grrrrr Monday I Spit on Your Dog

Today I am mostly being cross.

It is nothing in particular, and everything all at once.

Firstly it is Monday, which is never great.  It is also the first Monday back at school after half term.  And it was dark when we got up.

Not funny.

It is also the first official day when Winter uniforms have to be worn at primary school.  This involved Oscar and a tie at 6.45 this morning.  I don’t really need to go into any more detail do I?

Tallulah came downstairs wearing grey.  I said: ‘Why are you wearing grey?’  She said: ‘The only other uniform I have is navy.’  I said: ‘That is because navy is your uniform.’

I know this because I had thought she had to wear grey, and then had to go out and buy navy the week before half term because it turned out to be navy.  I sent her back upstairs to get changed.

She came downstairs looking like someone had used her hair in a controlled explosion.  I suggested she might want to brush it.  She looked utterly affronted.

I gave up.

It is not worth it.  What do I care if she goes around looking like a bird’s nest? She is eight.  That’s what children used to look like in the Seventies before they became all pre teensy about things.

At least she’s wearing navy, right?

Jason is off work today.  He was supposed to get up and come with me so that he could go out with my dad and buy a new car.  He has sold his super, shiny best beloved Audi and it is being picked up on Friday.  He is buying an old heap so that we can begin to be frugal.  It has to be bought today.

I predict disaster.

Especially as he fell back to sleep and conveniently ignored the strangling of the ties, and the birds nesting of the hair and the editing of Oscar’s p.e. kit which had to occur before we went to school.

When I got home from the school run he was just having a leisurely cup of tea.

Gah.

and also Bah.

He has now gone off to look at cars.  If he is back before midnight I will eat my hat.

I need him to be back  at tea time, because I am going to cheer myself up this evening by going to the Belgrade Theatre in Coventry to watch Journey’s End, with Andrea.

This is why I am cooking beef stew at ten in the morning and am already on my second lot of laundry.   There will be no time after school, especially because Tilly has her first ever appointment at the opticians.

She confessed a couple of weeks ago that she could not see the white board very well at school and was borrowing her friend’s glasses to read it.  I wondered why she did not mention this before.  She said she had forgotten.

I wondered if this was to do with the fact that she didn’t really want to wear glasses.  It turns out that she is mad keen to wear glasses and she desperately doesn’t want contact lenses.  She made me promise that she could have glasses.

Strange child.

Not that there is anything wrong with glasses mind you, it’s just that it’s not usually the top of twelve year old girl’s wish lists.

Unless you’re Tilly.

We have a four o’clock appointment.  If Jason is not there, we have a four o’clock appointment with Tilly and two small children who find everything that she does an endless source of fascination and anthropological discussion.  It will be hell.

Specsavers will be a shivering ruin by half past four.

And so will I.

I did think that writing all this down would make me feel better about things in a cathartic sort of way.  It hasn’t.

I am going to finish the stew, find the theatre tickets and then I’m going to abandon the house in favour of hunting round my favourite charity shop.  It might soothe my fevered soul.

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