musingsponderingsandrants

Parenting, profundities and humour

Author: sarahsmale

Hmm... about me...well three kids, a husband (not acquired in that order)... and a love of punctuation...
House Poetry anyone? — June 17, 2016

House Poetry anyone?

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So Eldest is in his first year at Senior School. That is First Form in old money and Year 7 in today’s new-fangled counting system.

The school has a very active House System. There are 6 houses named after Old Boys of the school. Eldest was very happy to be placed in Bell. Not because of the accomplishments of its namesake, of which Eldest can tell me very little, but because their house colour is purple. His favourite. And so his tie has a purple stripe. And if he makes Head of House in Year 12 he will get a blazer with purple trim. This is now his aim. Purely for fashion reasons.

All his form are in Bell. He was elected Year 7 House Captain and gets a , yes you guessed it, purple lapel badge.

There are numerous House Events. The usual sport, music, drama, debating. But also some more unusual ones. So far this year he has been House Ten Pin Bowling, House Water Sporting and other such fun activities. He gets to mix with the older years and generally have a ball.

Bell have been ahead all year. According to Eldest this is very unusual. They have not won for five years at least. I like to think their Year 7s are particularly strong. But I may be biased. At the end of every term the leading house has its house colours suspended from the flag pole. Photos have been acquired.

So over all we are fans of the House system. And then Eldest came home with an instruction to write an entry for House Poetry. He wasn’t best pleased. The poem had to start with one of three Shakespearean lines. And had to be between 12 and 30 lines long. He stormed and riled against it. It hung over us all through half term. And then on the last day he dashed off the poem below. I think it is quite good for a 12 year old. Again biased.

I had written one for him to ‘pretend’ with in a worst case scenario. But his is better to my mind.

So there you are. Sometimes it is good to be forced to do things that one finds difficult. You might just surprise yourself.

By Eldest

When I consider everything that grows

I think of the smallest of creatures to the largest

I think of the loudest to the quietest

The predator to the prey

The oldest to the young

 

The different places with life

Africa to Antarctica

The varieties of animals

The difference in types

Prehistoric to the modern day

 

When I think of life

I think of myself

How I have grown up

Mentally and physically

All the memories I have embraced.

 

 

Piggy in the Middle — June 12, 2016

Piggy in the Middle

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middle child

You often hear about ‘Middle Child Syndrome’. Well maybe you don’t but I have read a bit about it. As I have a middle child. He is very precious to me, as much as the other two, but Middle Child Syndrome suggests he won’t feel that unless I make a special effort. He will feel invisible. More prone to depression. Have nothing special to call his own.

I have a tendency to believe all such ‘syndromes’ are, frankly, bollocks. We make out of life what we can. But still I occasionally ponder it. As I am now.

And here is why. This weekend I have been able to spend a bit of time alone with Middlest. This hardly ever happens. When he was born I already had Eldest, a demanding toddler at the time. He hasn’t really got much less demanding over the years. He is a deep thinker prone to over-analysing and over stressing. He sucks up attention. And that is not at all his fault. It is partly because he does everything first and so such events as starting Senior School seem a big deal to me as a parent doing something new as well as a big deal to him. When the other two do it I am blasé. And expect them to be so too.

By the time Middlest was himself a toddler Youngest had come along and turned our lives upside down. She is my only daughter and so my relationship with her is different. She gravitates towards me and always has. I can remember a period when she was about two when she would not let anyone else do anything for her except me. Flattering but exhausting. She had me all to herself for two years once Eldest and Middlest had started school. And those two years were amazing. We both had a lovely time.

And then there are three of them and two of us. Naturally Middlest is often in a pair if we split them up. That is because he is great mates with both Eldest and Youngest. They have hobbies in common. Middlest has never been left ‘home alone’ whilst the other two go away camping for instance. He is always one of those doing the camping with one or other of the other two. If you catch my drift.

When Middlest was little he had numerous outpatient clinics for various minor medical issues; eyes, diet, asthma. We loved those afternoons with appointments. I would pick him up from school and we would go off alone and sit in a waiting room together chatting away. He still fondly remembers making a dodecahedron out of plastic hexagons that slotted together whilst waiting in the Moorfield’s eye clinic waiting room. That must be five years ago.

Being able to have time alone with him this weekend is happening mostly because Youngest is at Cub camp and we are down to two children. We can divide and conquer.

So yesterday we walked to his football tournament alone whilst Eldest and husband went running. The walk lasted about ten minutes. They were a good ten minutes though. Of all my children Middlest is the easiest to have a conversation with. I am  not saying I do not enjoy time alone with the other two but Middlest has this way about him. He is intelligent, perceptive and gently amusing. He listens well and makes thoughtful observations. He is eloquent. He is still young enough at 10, nearly 11, to care about what I say.

So in those few short minutes we discussed the EU Referendum and some of his friends’ frankly bizarre opinions on the same.  We came to some conclusions. Namely you shouldn’t believe everything you read and hear. Unless I tell him something, obviously.

Today husband went cycling with his mates as is his wont on a Sunday morning. Eldest had some language revision to do so I took Middlest to town to collect his new glasses and buy a birthday present for his Grandma.

It was lovely. Truly lovely. We chewed the cud. About all sorts. Marijuana. Balconies. School. Scouts. Girls. The EU again. And our lack of time together.

I would love to spend more time with him alone. With all of them actually. Life gets in the way. It is hectic and full on. I must try harder.

Just as we pulled back into the driveway Middlest asserted that in our average week of chaos the only time he gets me to himself is on the drive from home to piano lesson and later back. That drive lasts about three minutes.

As he put it “It’s not a very long time, mummy, but I really enjoy it!'”

Me too, son, me too.

 

Round and Round — June 10, 2016

Round and Round

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(For the avoidance of doubt this entry is not a homage to Spandau Ballet. Although I do love Spandau. So if that is what you are after jog on.)

So I may have mentioned before that my daughter is sporty. That is a massive understatement to be honest. She loves football and hockey and netball and running. She is quite good at swimming and apparently cricket. But currently we are in the rounders season at school.

Rounders is not her favourite. She is a good catch and has a huge throw. She can also run like the wind and so fields deep. But her batting is a bit hit and miss, often miss. I sympathise. At school I was not great at batting. And I couldn’t catch or throw either. Or run.

This year I managed to miss the annual ritual humiliation that is the Cub Scout Family Rounders Evening. I can’t remember why. Some fortuitous Governing Body meeting or ferrying task.

And so I didn’t have to go through those few seconds standing in front of a bowler wondering how not to make a fool of myself. Watching as hairy men slog the ball 100 meters into the bushes. And trying to field on the right of the batter to avoid having to make a crucial throw or, shudder, catch. Result.

Of course nothing is ever that simple. Just as I was basking in this narrow escape an e mail came through from school advertising Women in Sport Week. The Sports’ Department had decided to host a number of events for mums to attend. And one of those was a Year 4 Mums and Daughters Rounder’s match.

Of course there was no way Youngest was going to let me get out of this one. The temptation to humiliate her mother was too strong. A fortuitous emergency Governing Body meeting failed to materialise. And so today I rolled up at school to face the bowler. The fact that the bowler was only 3 feet tall should have made me feel better. It didn’t.

In anticipation of this event Youngest and I had been up the field with our rubberised baseball bat and a tennis ball to have a practice. We were both quite good at it, slogging them into the undergrowth. She reminded me that a rounder’s bat is much smaller and a rounder’s ball much harder and again smaller. Cheers love.

On holiday in Devon I roped everyone in to a match on the beach. With the aforementioned baseball bat and tennis ball. It went quite well until husband managed to hit a strolling man in the nadgers with a well placed slog. He was carrying a bucket of water at the time (the strolling man not my husband, although it might have been a good idea to handicap him in such a way before letting him loose with a bat) which cascaded all down his front. Woops.

So we had got a bit of practice in. I still wasn’t confident. That wasn’t helped by Youngest repeating repeatedly that her team were going to ‘thrash’ us. Competitive much?

Have you ever been ten pin bowling? I know this seems a bit off piste but bear with, bear with. I used to go quite a lot as a student. And here is the thing. Some games I could get strike after strike after strike. And some games I struggled to get above fifty pins. Often such games would be in the same session consecutively. And I have no idea why.

Well clearly rounders is like that for me too. Today after an entire life of never hitting a rounders ball I managed to score two and a half rounders off 3 balls. Astounding. I did run Youngest out whilst achieving the half. Woops. But it was a genuine mistake.

The mums were beaten 6 to 5 but for a bunch of ladies who haven’t played for twenty to thirty years (some of them are disgustingly young) we did OK. In the mixed teams Youngest and I also lost out again but only by the one rounder.

So credit due I think. Of course the only thing Youngest focussed on was me running her out. Not on my 2 and a half rounders. Which nearly killed me. The pitch is bigger than it looks.

I tried to explain to the offspring that in the scheme of things this feels like a major achievement to me. And perhaps with a bit of practise I might have been better as a child. Although it was probably just a ‘ten pin bowling’ moment.

Let’s hope the fixture doesn’t get repeated next year. People will expect things. Which is gently worrying.

And I already ache.

 

 

 

Health Kick — May 26, 2016

Health Kick

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So you may remember a while back I mentioned the snugness of my black choir concert trousers and my desire to shed a few pounds. Well since then  I have been on a bit of a health drive.

To start with I base-lined myself using my Fitbit which you may recall was purchased by my husband for my birthday in January. Quite pleasingly I was usually able to hit the government recommended guidelines of ten thousand steps a day quite easily.

Although the more I thought about it the more depressing that fact became. The snugness of my concert trousers had occurred, therefore, despite my hitting this step goal, albeit unknown to me, and as such it was clear the number of steps in question was not sufficient to allow for the amount of Doritos in my diet.

Thus I was faced with two options. One, cut out the Doritos or, two, up my exercise game. Doritos are a non negotiable. I am not bothered what flavour. Plain, chilli heat wave, barbecue…..hmmm…barbecue…. So suffice to say only option two appealed. I use the word ‘appealed’ here advisedly.

A friend and I started a weekly exercise class. Once I got over the shock of turning up to our first session and being made to exercise outside I got into it. It is mainly strength based though and I felt a bit of sweat may be in order.

So I girded my loins and dusted off my Jillian Michaels DVDs. I had a fairly prolonged flirtation with Jillian about five years ago when I had finally packed Youngest off to school and decided I needed to get to grips with myself. A bit like now. But without the concert trouser snugness.

At that time Jillian was a presenter on one of my favourite shows; Biggest Loser USA. Well when I say presenter what I actually mean is torturer. I am sure you know the concept. A group of seriously large, in a way that really only Americans seem to be able to achieve, people go to a ‘camp’ to lose drastic amounts of weight. A lot of it is diet, no Doritos in sight, but another large part is the exercise regime put together by the competing team leaders. Of which Jillian was my favourite. The exercise regime is brutal. It consists of lots of shouting, bullying, sweating, collapsing and quite often vomiting.

Quite why, then, I thought buying her home DVDs was a good idea is slightly beyond me.

At the time there were many threads on Mumsnet about her 30 Day Shred DVD. See even the name is scary. The upsides. Each session is only 20 minutes long. That is the main selling point. It is apparently easy to fit in to your day. Of course in reality it isn’t really 20 minutes long. Once you have rearranged the lounge, extracted your trainers from the kids dressing up box, discovered the cans of beans you were going to use as weights have been eaten, warmed up, cooled down and showered. But still shorter than the average DVD.

Another upside. It seemed to work if the mums on Mumsnet were anything to go by.  Some had even posted headless ‘before and after’ selfies. They were probably following the specially designed diet plan as well though. I took a cursory glance at that part of the DVD. There was no mention of Doritos so I decided it wasn’t for me.

The downsides. You need to do it at least 5 days out of seven. Great the weekend off.

So it seemed perfect. I removed the complete works of Trumpton from the DVD player and inserted the disc.

Clearly I had expected pain. And possibly vomiting. But I knew things were going to be bad when there were jumping jacks in the warm up. To me a jumping jack is a cardio move and has no place in a warm up. The other thing a jumping jack is is a strain on my pelvic floor. I need a warning before attempting jumping jacks. To clench.

Warm up accomplished I staggered through the rest of Level 1. Jillian introduced me to muscles I never knew I had and not really in a good way.

By the end of the (27 minute) session I was a spent, red faced, gibbering wreck. With only one thing on my mind. That I would have to do it all over again the next day.

The next day dawned and I could not move. Seriously. My children learnt some new words as I attempted to get downstairs, sit, put on my socks, etc.

I returned to Mumsnet and sure enough the threads contained many, many references to being unable to walk for a week. How had I missed that? The cure? To keep going.

So I struggled slightly less enthusiastically through day 2. Trying not to ‘phone it in’ or ‘cheat myself’ and ‘remembering all the reasons you bought this DVD’. The reason I bought this DVD was because of some loons on a parenting forum. And because I was wearing my ‘bad news’ filtering goggles.

I grew to love and loath Jillian. I finished the Shred and progressed to other scary sounding DVDs such as Ripped in 30 (!), Killer Buns and Thighs and, my personal bete noir, Banish Fat Boost Metabolism. Which is basically an hour of being so out of breath you feel like your lungs are coming up through your throat. In fact at one point the lovely Jillian even says ‘I want you gargling your own heart by the time this work out is over’. She isn’t joking.

Anyway I stuck at it for quite a while. And then I stopped. I am not sure why. Probably the long summer holidays.  The children find me doing exercise hysterical. I find their hysteria contagious. And I find it hard to laugh, clench and do jumping jacks all at the same time. Stopping, however, is a very bad idea as when you start up again the aches come back. Big time.

The other reason I stopped was that I  got slightly disheartened by all the uber mums on Mumsnet upping the anti and doing more than one DVD session back to back or pressing 8kgs. I don’t even possess 8kg weights. I can’t even begin to contemplate pressing them. My shoulders would literally seize up. My weights are a set of 1, 2 and 3s and the 3s are permanently used as bookends. It put me off to be honest.

So anyway 5 years on and it is still as horrible. I still don’t need the 3kgs. Which is a good job, tidy bookshelf wise. I ached for the customary week. I am on Level 3 currently which seems to be designed to make me swear out loud at the television. Between gasping for air like a drowning fish. Each session nets me a disappointingly low amount of steps on my Fitbit which seem totally out of proportion to the level of effort required. A gentle stroll to Budgens to buy Doritos is ‘worth’ so much more…

And of course I haven’t lost any weight. I like to kid myself it is because muscle weighs more than fat. But really it is because I get so hungry after shouting at Jillian that I eat more Doritos. But my thighs are more toned and I feel better about myself. And I get to tick it off my to do list. Always a bonus.

Soon it will be half term and I will stop to avoid being the butt of pre teenage jokes, which are never funny. And then I will have to go through that week long pain again. The burning question is whether I will be bothered.

Lost in Translation — May 19, 2016

Lost in Translation

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Here is a thing about me. I am not a natural linguist. I struggled through my obligatory language O level and achieved a B in French. Basically by learning what I needed to know off by heart.

My name is, I live in, I am x years old, I have two brothers etc etc.

I did a lot of verb conjugation (J’ai, tu as, il a, nous avons, vous avez, ils ont (or is it sont? I never was sure)) and dealing in really strange tenses; pluperfect, imperfect future or some such guff.

I hated it. I particularly hated the speaking tests. Partly because I was very shy. Partly because if the examiner veered off course I had no idea what they were saying, however it was conjugated or whatever tense it was in.

In recent years we have been to France a few times and I was able to speak a bit to the locals. As long as I had prepared properly before hand with my phrase book. Luckily my accent is so terrible that none of the people I attempted to converse with tried to widen the conversation beyond:

‘That will be 10 euros please’ in response to my request for two scoops of chocolate ice-cream in a tub not a cone. I was quite pleased with that sentence. If not the price. If they had tried to respond conversationally I would have been lost. I need some one to listen for me and stall them whilst I think up a suitable reply. Unfortunately my husband is even worse at languages than me.

I am not proud of my inability to ‘get’ languages. I feel inadequate when visiting any other country where it seems most of the inhabitants can speak more than passable English. Although this does serve as a massive disincentive to bother. I am not embarrassed enough to try again though. I am good at a great many things. I feel I am allowed to be weak at this. So there.

At school I also flirted briefly with German and gave that up as soon as humanly possible. Capital letters for improper nouns. Why just why?

So foreign language is not my strong point. Eldest has inherited that trait. He is in Year 7 and currently studies three languages. French, Spanish and German. He finds none of them easy.

Soon he has exams in all three. Speaking, listening, reading and writing. I really feel for him.

Tonight we have been grappling with preparation for his Spanish written test. I have no idea. The text book seems to contain no English at all. He doesn’t know the verbs ‘to have’ or ‘to be’. They do not seem to use pronouns except when they do. The accents are all different to French. And I never really remembered them in French either. Punctuation is just weird.

I know I should just ‘let him get on with it’ but that is hard to do when he is sitting at the table at a complete loss. I need to mount that white charger and ride to the rescue. So I do.

My mother did the same for me on occasion. Although not in French. Mostly in maths. Which she liked and was good at. I can still remember the day she tried to help me with fractions. She had a complete inability to understand how I did not understand them. At least I ‘get’ Eldest’s issue with Spanish. As I do not ‘get’ it either.

Any way we seem to have cobbled together a few paragraphs which when entered into Google translate appear to make some sense, in patches.

He just has to learn it now including the spellings. And he doesn’t like spelling much even in English.

Then at some point we need to do the same thing in French, at least I know what I am doing, sort of.

We are not even going to bother with German which he is dropping for good next year. I never usually advocate not giving one’s all to a subject but in this case I feel some sympathy. Let him fail it.

Like me he has to do one language at GCSE. One will be enough. More than enough.

No me gusta el espanol porque es dificil. Or something.

Weather… — May 15, 2016

Weather…

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The British are known for many things, not all of them that complimentary, and one of those things is our preoccupation with the weather.

It is true that a lot of small talk on our small island revolves around the weather.
We are obsessed with TV weather forecasts. Weather forecasting apps. The shipping forecast. The Countryfile extended forecast. Even those of us disinterested in rare breeds of sheep or rustic cheese making in the Cotswolds will tune in to Countryfile for that last ten minutes just to catch the extended forecast. I tune in partly because John Craven reminds me of my youth and Matt Baker makes me feel all youthful, in my dreams. But mostly I tune in for that forecast. With the weatherman in casual clothes. They dress it up as if it is for farmers but they know and we know that that slot probably gets higher ratings than Game of Thrones.

I am sure many of our European partners scoff into their chocolat chauds or flaming schnapps about this seemingly inane obsession.

But here is why we are so obsessed. British weather is totally unfathomable. Unpredictable. A right royal pain in the arse.

Take this week as an example. On Friday last week I was still wearing a thermal vest and duvet jacket on the school run. Now it is fair to say that I am nesh. In case you do not know what that means, and many of you may not, it is a term that refers to the fact that I am always cold. Well colder than the average person anyway. I blame my extraordinarily low blood pressure. Once in hospital, I think it was on the second of my two bouts of pneumonia, the nurse had to recheck it because she thought she had made an error with her pressure cuff, that or I was clinically dead, but no, it was just very very low…anyway suffice to say I feel the cold. But even so most of the parents at pick up were in jackets of some description.

I rolled up to Youngest’s football match on the Saturday morning in jeans and the afore mentioned vest and duvet jacket. Obviously I had other stuff on as well, for the sake of decency. By about 10 o’clock I had divested myself of much of it. I had not divested myself of the vest because that would have involved flashing the referee or doing a complicated manoeuvre with sleeves. But most of my other garments were in a pile on the floor. It was damn hot. The sun on the back of my legs was burning through my jeans in a severely uncomfortable way.

When we retuned home I felt as if I had been bitten by some insect on the backs of both knees. But, no, in fact it was just a severe case of heat rash.

So there we have it I went straight from thermal vest to shorts, well ok not straight as I had an unpleasant couple of hours on a football pitch in far too much clothing, but you get my drift.

Sunday was the same. It hit 28 degrees. We went hiking. I had to apply sunscreen. We left the house with no waterproofs but copious bottles of water. We still ran out.

Monday was similar. I worried about Middlest playing long hours of cricket. Luckily they wear long trousers and for some bizarre reason he had his cricket jumper on over his shirt. So only his face caught the sun and thus began that annual process of the freckles on his cheeks and nose joining together. In that really rather endearing fashion that happens every summer. He will hate his inability to tan in a few years, it is all his father’s fault.  I also got five loads of laundry washed and line dried. And thank god I did.

Because then Tuesday arrived. Wet. The sort of persistent, mizzly wet we get sometimes in this country. It rained here all day. Steadily but gently. We are not really given to short sharp bursts of intense and impressive rain. No ours likes to linger ensuring it is unavoidable. Even a brolly doesn’t really help as the rain seems to come in from all directions. It was still warm though. And so there was water vapour coming up from the pavements too creating a sort of mist to meet the drizzle coming down.

Wednesday had promised brighter weather. Well my weather app had anyway. My weather app is often wrong. My husband loves weather apps. He has several. One is called optimistic weather app. We tend to use this when lieing in bed on the first morning of a UK based holiday trying to decide how to spend the day.

Then there is pessimistic weather app. I use this to attire myself for pitch side supporting. Hence my overdressing error of the previous Saturday.

My husband will often look up the weather on his weather app and declare that the weather is not what should be happening. As if the weather should replicate the app and not the other way round. He really gets quite disgruntled. “It shouldn’t be raining now it isn’t four o’clock yet” and such like.

Anyway my app said Wednesday would be cloudy but mostly dry. The air was still damp from the drizzle fest of the previous day so I headed into town in my waterproof coat with my mother. She was not there for weather reasons but just along for the ride.

We went into Boots for some migraine tablets. High pressure plays havoc with both our heads. And in the ten minutes it took us to raise a member of staff we had been transported to monsoon season. The rain was hammering down in a way not often seen on these isles. As I think I have mentioned. It was raining so hard the drops were bouncing up off the pavement. We were trapped in a pharmacy. In the end we used the rear exit and headed through the undercover shopping centre to a coffee shop to allow it to pass. So there was an upside, chocolate orange tiffin tray bake.

Thursday was a non descript sort of a day.  I went out to sing in a concert in the evening with no coat. On the way back to the car it was cold.

By Friday pick up I was back in my duvet jacket. I watched my daughter turn slightly blue in a rounders match. The heating kicked in Friday evening.

And yesterday we were back to football watching. It was one of those days. Sunny in parts and cloudy in parts with a northerly wind with a bit of a bite. It was a woolly hat and sunglasses day. We all got our faces sun burned, or it might have been wind burned. But by golly I had needed that duvet jacket and on occasion gloves.

Lots of people were horribly underdressed. Making me feel cold. That is because some people have a ‘winter’ and ‘summer’ wardrobe and have to make ‘a decision’ about when to swap from one to the other. I do not possess enough clothes for that. My wardrobe is my wardrobe which makes switching from flip flops to knee high boots and back again on a daily basis much easier.

So there you have it. The weather has been weird. And actually this is quite often what it is like here in the UK. We sort of take a run up to summer. One step forward two back. Sometimes we never seem to achieve summer at all.  We all look back on that weekend in May and realise that WAS summer.

I hope this year we get more than that.

Will Power — April 27, 2016

Will Power

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Tomorrow I am going out with friends for lunch.

I do this quite a lot. To break up the tedium of housework. To compare taxi-ing schedules. To bitch about school and homework and husbands and cliques. And to discuss Game of Thrones.

But tomorrow three of us are going out specifically to celebrate a friend’s birthday.

As such I thought it might be nice to get a card. And a gift. And so yesterday, having a bit of ‘parking at school hideously early to get a spot before pick up’ time free, I walked to the supermarket and, as well as restocking the fruit bowl, I bought a card and a nice box of chocolates. There are far too many ‘nices’ in that sentence. I may edit them out later. Although editing may fall foul of the ‘nice to do’ versus ‘need to do’ rule in the frantic-ness of Cub pick up.

I often buy my friends presents based on what I would like to receive. And there is no situation, in my opinion, that is not improved with a nice box of chocolates. In this case those sea shell ones. Um, umm loverly…. (That word again sorry).

Now I like to think I am a person with quite a lot of self discipline. I am especially good if I have lists to stick to. I tend to be driven by a schedule of tasks and the satisfaction of crossing them off once accomplished. Hence my cleaning rotas. And interminable To Do lists.

I didn’t have ‘Buy card and present’ on my To Do list but still I felt good about getting those tasks accomplished two days ahead of schedule.

I felt even better about myself once I had resisted writing those tasks on my To Do list just so that I could immediately cross them off.

I went about the rest of my evening. The usual. Taxi ing. Feeding people. Clearing up pots, and sweaty kits and dirty socks. Assisting with angles revision and with drawing an exploded diagram of a sandwich (don’t ask). Brushing hair containing yoghurt. Forcing reluctant children into beds. Etc. (I feel a need to tell my angles joke…should I? Oh go on then. Here is the family of angles; a baby (acute), a mum (right) a dog (reflex) and…. a dad (obtuse)…well I like it).

Then about nine o’clock, just as husband and I settled down to watch The Tunnel, my wonderful will power gave out.

I should perhaps mention that the strength of my will power is affected by many factors. The time of the month. The thing I am trying to resist/ make myself do. My boredom/ tiredness/ hunger level. The volume the ‘little voice in my head’ is set to. Etc.

The ‘little voice in my head’ began telling me that I should reward myself for my foresight in accomplishing my unscheduled ‘Buy Birthday Present’ task in some way. I was starting to regret not allowing myself to add it to the list and cross it off…

This was unfortunate. Especially as the only thing the ‘little voice in my head’ thought would be perfect as a reward was…sea shell shaped chocolates.

I lasted until the first advert break before giving in and opening the box.

So today after my haircut I popped into Lidl and replaced the box with another, considerably cheaper yet almost identical looking, and hopefully tasting, box. I then went to a friends for coffee. And as it transpired lunch.

I had left the chocolates in the car. When I got home a couple of hours later I brought them inside.

I should explain that although it is sunny here today it feels like mid winter. This has been going on for a while. There was frost on my car this morning and I am still wearing my bobble hat. The heating is clicking on and I have yet to remove my thermal vest despite it being perilously close to May. This current weather is more than slightly worrying ahead of our camping trip/wedding to the Welsh coast in a couple of days. No doubt there will be a blog entry in that. If I thaw out enough to write it.

So despite the sun and because of the frankly chilly outside temperature I had not given any thought to the possible downsides of leaving a box of sea shell shaped chocolates in the car for a couple of hours. This was again unfortunate.

Suffice to say the chocolates are no longer sea shell shaped. But rather have morphed into a multi hued slab of chocolate adhered to the box lid.

Therefore over the next week or so I shall be able to directly compare the ‘real thing’ to the Lidl rip off version. I will let you know about that taste thing. Although the melting and resolidifying process may provide sufficient doubt to render a direct comparison inequitable.

In upshot tomorrow, ahead of our lunch, I will be buying another present. Which in hindsight might have been a better idea all along.

Flowers I think.

 

Status Update — April 19, 2016

Status Update

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status

I have not written for a while. Why not? Not sure. Apathy. Laziness. Whatever. So to ease myself back in gently I thought a bit of an update would be in order.

For regular readers this will prove… possibly boring but at least comprehensible. For those stumbling upon me  for the first time today…good luck…you are going to need it.

My drive is once again operational. It was not yesterday and for most of today. Anglian Water finally came out to replace my lead pipe… you remember my heavy metal issues? (Please see I accuse Anglian Water with the lead piping … for any clarification required).

You may also remember their 10 working day window to replace that part of the pipe that is their responsibility. The one in the street running up to my drive. I worked it out. Anglian Water work a 3 day week. Well they must if yesterday was actually in their 10 working day window. Even allowing for Easter. At least I hadn’t bothered to chase them. It was on my to do list. Below ‘Sell cello’. I was going to get round to it. And then they turned up and banged on the door (my ‘I Came From Alabama’ doorbell is currently out of order) when I was in the shower. Ironically.

I was only without water for about 30 minutes today. Then, even better luck, the ‘re-instatement team’ did me a favour by turning up today even though I was not booked in for a ‘same day’ re-instatement. Re-instatement appears to involve back filling the hole and laying fresh tarmac. Badly.

When the operative who seemed to be in charge of my ‘job’ told me I was not booked in for same day re-instatement he made it sound like my fault. Sorry about that. And I am still to work out a collective noun for water engineers in high viz jackets (orange in case you are interested). A ponderance? There was certainly a lot of hole staring.

And the bad news is head ‘non same day re-instatement’ honcho said I definitely have lead within my boundary. Oh joy. I will add sorting that out to the list. Under ‘Sell cello’. One step forward…several back.

I was in the shower when Anglian Water called because I have started a new fitness regime in a bid to shed those 7 pounds I mentioned in A Weighty Issue. I started last Tuesday. Monday being a non working day for me as the kids were off school. Maybe Anglian Water had heard? By Friday I found walking difficult and on Saturday morning I was shouting at anything requiring me to bend my legs. Weeing for instance. It is at times like these I wish I was a man.

Anyway after a weekend of being grumpy (sorry family members) and popping ibuprofen I was OK again. I am sure by tomorrow I will be back to not being able to climb stairs. Except on my hands and knees. Annoyingly all this activity is going unnoticed by my FitBit app as my FitBit died (see You Fit Bit You). After 3 months. I wasn’t doing that many steps. Apparently the inability to hold charge is a ‘thing’ with the FitBit. I am not impressed. Anyway after exhausting the Customer Service desks suggestions to fix the issue they have graciously agreed to send me a new one. Lets see if this one can perform better, I have vowed to take it off when washing up. Which may help.

At least at my five year ‘you old git’ health check last Friday I was able to say honestly that I exercise ‘regularly’. I got a clean bill of health. My risk of developing heart disease is apparently 0.59%. Shines halo. They will see me again in five years to make sure I haven’t become an alcoholic or gained 3 stone. The way my quads feel now that might be the next time I exercise too…

The heating got fixed (see Central Bleating). My water pressure was low. The gas engineer showed me which valve to fiddle with in future if it happens again. I deliberately have not shown my husband where that valve is as he has buggered all the downstairs hallway lights trying to fix a down-light fitting back into the ceiling. ‘Call Electrician’ had moved up one place yesterday but has since slipped down behind ‘Find out about digging up drive and eliminating heavy metals from water supply’. I guess it is a question of priorities. Although one of us is likely to fall downstairs soon stumbling our way to bed. It is a fine balance between that and slow death by lead accumulation.

I seem to be on top of the laundry and have not fallen foul of Eldest’s wrath (see Best Supporting Role….) recently. Even though we are now in the cricket season. And both boys are wearing cricket ‘whites’ several times a week. The word ‘white’ is in inverted commas because their cricket ‘whites’ are mainly brown and green. I am not sure which sadist thought it was a good idea for people to wear cricket ‘whites’. But whoever he was (and by god I am quite sure it was a he) he was clearly never in charge of laundry. Sales of Vanish presumably spike in the cricket season.

I had three weeks off taxi-ing.  It was bliss. We are back to it now. See Fares Please… if you want some appreciation of what this means. My peaked chauffeur’s cap is firmly back on my head. Tips are still bad. Tomorrow has morphed into the taxi job from hell. I will be boomeranging back and fro to school more than my mean average of twice a night. One is at House Bowling (!), back 7.30pm, one has been selected for a surprise cricket match (Vanish in overdrive), back c 6pm (mental note to self to add half an hour to this which is problematic as it will then clash with Cub drop off, see below)  and one has decided to take up yet another sport… girl’s cricket, finishes c 5.15pm. And then she has Cubs too. The piano lesson has bitten the dust. As has the chicken casserole I had planned. Sarnies again then.

I have decided to work my way through my CD collection to ease the boredom of driving/ sitting around in my car. I am on Nirvana currently. My 13 year old morning liftee was quite impressed I think. The parents at cricket pick up not so much. I forgot to shut my window before driving up. Not sure I will ever cut it as a private school mum… do I care. Nah not really.

Eldest is up to his eyes in revision for his end of year tests. Shame I threw out that anatomical drawing I mentioned in Just a Quickie…. We could do with it now. Poor lad. I feel for him especially as the temperature has been hitting 18 degrees and the sun is shining. Except for Saturday when it sleeted whilst husband and I watched separate football matches. Weird. And sodding typical.

So there you have it. I little update for those that wanted it. And those that didn’t. Which is probably most of you.

Sorry.

 

 

Central Bleating — April 3, 2016

Central Bleating

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image.jpegSo today we got home from a lovely week away in Northumberland. Lots of Roman walls and plumbing. Lots of medieval walls and plumbing. A postern gate or two.  Lots of Scrabble. My kind of holiday.

The journey home was only remarkable for being unremarkable. That seven hour marathon to get there was not repeated and we arrived back home in good time.

I don’t know about you but whenever I arrive home I am always pleased to see it still standing. Not burnt to the ground. Or broken into. It is irrational, I know. Half the village would have texted me to let me know if such tragedies had befallen my abode during our time away.  Hell they may have even called. But still it’s a relief none the less.

This was especially pertinent this time as storm Katie had hit whilst we had been away. This is a new thing here in the UK. Naming storms. We seem to have hurricane envy. Anyway Katie had dislodged the BBQ cover, moved the table tennis table and inexplicably opened the locked shed doors. But otherwise she had been kind. Ta duck.

So anyway initial inspection over I marched straight upstairs to turn on the central heating and hot water. Although the day was not that cold a week of vacancy and no heat had turned the house into a fridge, it was literally warmer outside. The kids agreed and so whilst the house warmed up they went on the trampoline.

I began the task of unpacking the boot. Quite a long winded process as we seemed to have taken most of the house on holiday and returned with more Easter eggs then was healthy.

Just as husband was off to the supermarket to rustle up some tea I noticed the distinct lack of ‘heatingupness’. The day being so warm I asked him to check the thermostat to ensure the heating would indeed kick in. It showed 11.5 degrees. So, yes, the radiators should have been warm. And the hot water tank well hot. And can I just add at this juncture that my hot water tank does not have an immersion heater and non of my showers are electric. Damn and blast. I was starting to get…a….bad….feeling…

I went into the garage. Even before I had climbed over the bikes and trailer I could see a flashing red light on my boiler. Not, I thought, a good sign. I still needed to make that perilous journey as my eyes were unable to determine the meaning of the flashing red light from any distance. Using the handy warning light key on the side of my boiler I determined that I either had low pressure (of what was not specified Gas? Water? Blood?) or a defunct pump. Or possibly both.

Neither sounded great. Of course knowing what the fault(s) maybe was(were) was in no way any help to me as no where on the boiler did it explain what to do to rectify said fault(s). Nor did the installation manual- that I subsequently located in the ‘file of useful stuff’ the previous owners of the house had left for our delectation- shed any light. In fact the manual was written in a foreign language. Corgi engineer speak I believe.

Luckily I pay a small fortune to a national gas company for boiler insurance. It took me a while to locate their phone number because my own over efficient filing system meant I failed to locate the paperwork which I had possibly misfiled after ‘constantly filling up toilet-gate’ and my computer, also redundant and unloved for a week, was refusing to ‘warm up’…there’s a theme here…

Out of interest despite two call outs from the plumbing sub contractor of the aforementioned national gas company the toilet will still constantly fill up after every flush unless one depresses both the ‘poo’ and ‘wee’ buttons of the flush mechanism simultaneously. This is a fact I find myself having to remind every other occupant of my house of. Constantly. It is only I who has the knack of reaching into the freezing cold water of the cistern to rectify the issue. Sigh.

Anyhow I called them up. Eventually. Unfortunately because I have no one with medical conditions, have two log burners and a kettle I am not considered an emergency. Tomorrow was the best they could offer. 8 til 1 or 2 til 6. Um let me think as early as damn possible please.

I set to laying out my log burners. It was not a job I expected to have to do. Piles of laundry yes. But not setting two fires. Accordingly there were no logs in the house. It is April. I had gone away thinking it unlikely I would use them again this year. Doh.

Anyway I got them going. I have never lit both together before. On going outside to collect the logs I did consider leaving the doors open to let some warm air in… I spent the afternoon oscillating between grates. The front room burner is easier to tend than the family room burner. I discovered.

By the kids’ bedtime these two rooms were warm. No where else was. I dangled fairly flammable PJs off the mantles. All we needed was a tin bath to complete the Victorian Fireside look. However we had to make do with the kitchen sink and used the kettle to get some warm water for a lick and a promise. I introduced them to the joys of hot water bottles. I only have one so they have had to time share it. I will be sneaking into Eldest’s room later to purloin it back. That smell of hot wet rubber, it takes me back it does…

All in all, excepting the cold loo seat which Middlest was very shocked about, they have found it quite fun. Middlest has a new found appreciation for the Tudors. Apparently.

I, on the other hand, have not. Found it fun. And will be glad to have my pressure sorted tomorrow and get a warm shower. In the meantime I will chuck another log on the fire and see how many of those Easter eggs I can eat without the kids noticing.

Oh and on my way to my cold bed later I must just stop by that cistern. Cheers hubby.

 

 

I accuse Anglian Water with the lead piping … — March 24, 2016

I accuse Anglian Water with the lead piping …

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lead.png

So here is a thing.

A couple of weeks ago my new neighbours popped round to tell me that a recent water survey had shown that they had dangerous levels of lead in their water.

I am not sure what prompted them to get the water surveyed. But anyhow they had. And Anglian Water had done some scientific testing and the upshot was they were banned from drinking their tap water until the road could be dug up.

New neighbour explained that Anglian Water thought the problem might be the pipe between the main main and the house.

In a neighbourly way she thought I ought to know the lie of the land so to speak. Lay of the pipe? Obviously the road being dug up was one issue but there was also the fact that Anglian Water thought it likely my house would also be affected.

I think I may have mentioned the road being dug up in my blog Fares Please . Well I don’t think I did I know I did but, hey, links get me visits. So sue me I am a shameless reader numbers whore. Secretly all bloggers are. Numbers do matter. Sorry guys.

Here is another thing. Pipes running up to your boundary are the responsibility of the Water company (yea). Pipes on your property are not. They remain your responsibility.

We have all had those letters in the post warning us of the dire consequences of not taking up one’s Water company’s insurance for pipes on our property. We have all binned such letters. Or if super security aware, shredded them. I am one of those people. My laissez faire attitude to pipe ownership was perhaps coming back to bite me. Poison me.

Anyway our road was dug up. Neighbour’s pipe was lead. Anglian Water replaced it up to their boundary. And not an inch beyond. However they did say it looked unlikely that there was lead on their property. I am pleased for them.

Anyway in the manner of Pandora’s Box I now had to do something. I had been happily imbibing my tap water since last May with not a thought to its possible heavy metal content. Of course now there was the distinct possibility I was absorbing the old Pb I became paranoid. Not paranoid enough to switch to bottled water (too expensive and environmentally damaging) but paranoid enough to run my tap for two minutes each time I wanted a drink. I couldn’t put the thought back in the box.

I should probably add at this point that I have historically been a tap water evangelist. I have never seen the need to spend money on bottled water and pollute our local rivers with empty plastic bottles. I have always firmly believed in the benefits of tap water. And often told others so. I still believe this. Sort of. I will when all possibility of lead has left the arena anyway.

Of course I googled the effects of lead poisoning and wished I hadn’t. No really, I really wish I hadn’t.

So I called Anglian Water who, considering the circumstances, were happy to send out a scientist to test my water. And its level of toxins. I was expecting lab coats. And possibly a bespectacled gentleman.

I got a man in a van with steel toe capped boots and what looked suspiciously like four washed out coke bottles. Surely enough residual toxins in there to get my water onto the banned substance list. Anyhow he took his very scientific samples. Without labelling a single one. And nipped off to his van for a fag before drawing his last one- a 30 minute standing test.

He promised the results in writing within 10 days. That seemed an awfully long time to a person possibly building up ruinous levels of lead in their system. But then I reflected that since I had been gaily doing that for around 10 months it possibly didn’t make much difference.

In the manner of blood test results I expected a phone call should things be particularly hairy (sorry heavy). I hadn’t heard anything for 6 days and was starting to relax. I had stopped running the tap for two minutes every time I wanted a cuppa anyway.

I was just mentioning to my mother that I thought we were in for a clean bill of health when the man from Anglian Water called up. Irony or what… Leadery?

Suffice to say the level of lead in the sample taken from the street was over the safe amount of 10 mg per litre. Not much over but still over. The samples taken from my kitchen tap were lower but still showed the presence of lead. So there are lead pipes somewhere. My levels were not so bad that I was banned from drinking my water but he suggested going back to running it for two minutes before drinking to minimise the lead content in each refreshing glass full.

His suggested course of action was to dig up my road again and have a look at the pipe leading up to my boundary. If that proved to be made from lead they would replace it free of charge. Next another steel toe capped mad in a van would roll up and repeat the sampling. This time they would do a slightly more scientific test (in my view not difficult) for the ‘fag break’ one and take many more smaller samples which would help pinpoint where the lead piping remained within my property if indeed it did at all.

Quite why they didn’t do this before is unclear to me.

I asked him was it likely that the whole road (which predates the 1970s when lead piping became illegal) would be in the same predicament? He thought it likely.

That begged my next question. Why didn’t they just survey the whole street in a systematic way. Thus presumably saving time and money on hole diggers, pipe replacers and hole filler in-ers, temporary traffic lights and road closures.

His response? “That would be ideal but we have to target our resources”.

Clearly a stock response read off a card ‘to be used with difficult customers’. (I had one of those cards when I worked in a bank and had to sell loan insurance. ‘Overcoming Customer Objections’, I think it was called. If only the banks had not overcome such objections they would be a lot better off now. But hey ho that is a whole other issue and I appear to be getting side-tracked.)

His only suggestion was that I mention it to my neighbours directly. Of course I will. But a bit of proactivity on their part might have been nice. No not nice. Responsible.

It is not clear to me why shareholders in Anglian Water would come above public health but they clearly do.

Neighbour and I may do a leaflet drop. That will screw them right royally.

Serve them right.

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