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...
Your Starter for Ten… — September 22, 2015

Your Starter for Ten…

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  quiz shows

Here is a little secret. I like watching TV quiz shows.

My current favourites are Pointless and Only Connect. But quite honestly I will watch almost any quiz show. Except celebrity Family Fortunes. Even the comedy ‘Uh-ah’ klaxon cannot make up for the cringey host (whose name I forget) and the awful relatives of those who are vaguely famous.

In my view there are several ingredients for a successful quiz show. Firstly a great host or hosts. Here is where Pointless has it for me. The combo of Alexander and Richard, the comedian and the nerd made famous, is killer.

But I also like stern hosts, like Jesser Paxman, avuncular hosts, such as him off Countdown and t’other one from Mastermind, funny hosts (see Pointless above), genial hosts, good old Dale, he of the orange fake tan (I know he is a plastic surgery car crash but I have fond student memories of watching Supermarket Sweep) and finally hosts who are easy on the eye.

Mmmmm, Nick Knowles, my secret, slightly worrying crush. I like to see him turned out in a suit on that Lottery list show (lists are soooo yummy). It makes a refreshing and slightly erotic change from his builder gear in DIY SOS. I often think Sky should have a ‘personality record’ function to run alongside its series record function. Then I would never miss anything with Nick Knowles in….Lists and Nick Knowles….life doesn’t really get much better.

Sorry I slipped off into a bit of a reverie there. Back on track now.

Back to quizzes (slightly reluctantly). There needs to be a good format. Recently there seems to have been a proliferation of really quite clever games shows. Back to Pointless again. To my mind the idea is simply, well simple, but ingenious.

In case you are one of a very few people left in the Western World who is not familiar with my favourite game show the general idea is to think of correct yet obscure answers to a wide range of different questions. Beforehand the show has asked 100 members of the public to answer the same questions. The idea is to try to get a pointless answer. That is a correct answer that none of those 100 people responded with.

So for instance imagine a question such as ‘Provide the name of any Muppet’. Kermit would be right but score highly. Swedish Chef less so. Etc. I would urge you to watch the show if you are still unsure. Or maybe you like being in a very small club…

Anything that involves asking members of the public anything is always a winner. It never ceases to amaze me that if you ask 100 members of the great British public a question such as ‘Name a famous French landmark’ the answer Eiffel Tower will not glean a score of 100. It would probably get 89. I always wonder what those 11 other people were thinking. Or if they were thinking at all. Scary.

There are other clever quiz shows out there. I like Tipping Point and Only Connect. Both new (well to me) and quite interesting.

One involves a giant shove tuppenny amusement arcade machine. With ridiculously easy and almost incidental questions. The fun is in whether the tokens will ‘ride’ and how many will fall off the edge. Many more than in all the seaside arcades I have ever been in.

The other is quite high brow with teams of physics graduates finding obscure connections whilst looking like they have strayed from the set of The IT Crowd. The hostess is buxom which probably appeals to those perpetual student types. Tonight I did appallingly on ‘Novels by Thomas Pynchon’ but much better on ‘BBC shows that have run for more than 25 years’. Probably signifying my level, intelligence wise, but also demonstrating the show’s wide appeal.

And so it helps a programme’s appeal if the questions are do-able, at least in part, at home. So really I shouldn’t like University Challenge (personal record 7 right answers in an episode….yep an episode) but I do in a kind of jaw dropping, awe inspired way. And anyway I love the scorn of Paxman. And get my fix of it there without having to sit through Question Time.

Similarly the first half of Mastermind is a dull view unless one of the contestants’ specialist subjects is something one knows anything about. The general knowledge round however sparks my interest (personal best 10 per round….per round). And a certain amount of competition between husband and I. I just cough loudly if any chemistry questions come up. My degree in the subject was a very, very long time ago.

And that brings me to celebrity versions of such shows. Well it doesn’t bring me to there really but hey I want to talk about them.

The producers would deny it but I am sure they dumb down the questions for those who are famous.  Certainly I get more questions right on such shows. I do have trouble recognising most of the ‘celebrities’ though. Not always however. Geoffrey from Rainbow was on the other night. He was instantly recognisable even without Zippy and George. He had to sit down between rounds. Bless. Proper kids’ TV royalty though.

My favourite ever celebrity version of a show was one where Keith Harris and Orville formed a team on Pointless. The kids could not understand why they were at a massive disadvantage to the other couples taking part. They thought I was being ‘duckist’. I think as a team they got as far as the Head to Head round. Again incredibly funny.

So there you have it. I like quiz shows. What a lot of nonsense.

NK3 nickknowles-2 nickknowles suit

Sorry felt I had to put in some photos….

No Pain No Gain — September 20, 2015

No Pain No Gain

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exercise

On Thursday I went to an exercise class.

My good friend had hunted high and low for a class we could attend together. It isn’t easy. All evenings are basically a no go. We can’t go too near school pick up or on Saturdays.

We don’t really want to commit to a gym and then never make it to any classes. The gym itself holds no appeal. We are not tread-millers or weight lifters.

After searching diligently she finally found a class on a Thursday morning called Sculpt Mix.

To my mind that sounded promising. The word Sculpt held great connotations. Mix sounded as if it wouldn’t get dull.

So last week we turned up on a bright autumnal morning. Once I had got over the shock of being told we were going to do the class outside- in full view of the wet suited men using the water skiing lake, and amongst the duck and rabbit poo- the actual class was OK. It was quite fun. Once I stopped trying to compete with the pregnant lady who was out squatting me despite her large bump. In fact I made quite a play of my lack of any form of exercise over the last six months.

The instructor, very annoyingly svelte despite having two kids much younger than mine, did warn us that we would ache. And she wasn’t wrong. My quads were on fire until at least Sunday evening.

Of course this week rolled around and, in the manner of childbirth and house moving, I had conveniently forgotten the pain.

This week I began aching during circuit 4.

I didn’t think it was going to be as bad as last week so I decided to spend quite a bit of Friday gardening. And it wasn’t ‘pottering around with a small fork and deadheading’ type gardening it was ‘digging away at the largest, deepest rooted weeds ever seen’ gardening. The sort that spending exactly zero time since May out there engenders.

And today I literally cannot move. Changing level is agony. I am thinking twice, possible three times, before bending over. This makes laundry quite hard. And going for a wee. And don’t get me started on stair climbing. I had to crawl up here earlier.

Nurofen is not helping at all.

Somewhere inside me a few muscles are more sculpted than before. They are not visible yet. I am probably at least 5 pounds and a year of classes away from that.

I have signed up for two more sessions. And then half term hits and I will have two weeks off.

Goodness knows how it will go when I return. At least the pregnant lady will have had to leave. To actually give birth. She will probably be back a couple of weeks later.

I don’t think exercise is good for me. Not really.

Old(er) Friends… — September 17, 2015

Old(er) Friends…

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IMG_20150824_0003

Recently I went to the 50th birthday party of a very dear, and clearly quite old, friend.

His partner, another very good friend, had had posters made up of him at various stages of his life. As I looked at these pictures, a couple of which I had supplied, I struggled to understand how we had all found ourselves in this room celebrating this particular milestone.

It seemed like yesterday when I was in my second year at Uni and he was a regular Sunday morning (OK afternoon, well certainly after the Waltons, we were students after all) visitor to our shared house, helping me with the crossword. Until he told me the answer to a clue was ‘Spabcharge’ and I, gullible as ever, believed him. I have never lived that down. Or let him help me with a crossword since.

I took Eldest and Youngest (Middlest was at the Cub Scout B(ring) A G(rown up) camp with Daddy (he was the nearest we had to a grown up)). And before we went to the venue I sat them down and explained that they might hear rude words. Or things about mummy that shouldn’t be repeated. To paraphrase the famous film ‘what happens at the 50th birthday party stays at the 50th birthday party’. I think they got the gist.

They were both tired but Youngest went to sleep in the corner on a sofa (much to the hilarity of my old friends who gleefully remarked that she must take after me) and Eldest was determined to carry on and allow me time with these people, some of whom I hadn’t seen for years.

I was grateful to them. It was really fabulous to catch up with my old house mates and role playing mates and sailing mates.

And it was good for the kids to see me for an evening not as their mum but as a person with history and a life before they appeared in the world.

And I guess it is true that although we all look older, with greyer hair and more wrinkles, none of us have changed all that much. It is so so easy to slip back into those habits of 25 plus years ago. The stock phrases. The nick names. The idiosychronicities we were famous for. The mickey taking. Inside we are all still 20.

These friends were with me at a pivotal moment in my life, when I was living independently for the first time, really finding out about myself.

And I am glad they are still in my life.

Although I wish the birthday boy hadn’t tipped an entire pint of beer over my jeans….. Still it will be a talking point at his 60th….

Ennui… — September 15, 2015

Ennui…

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ennui

Today Middlest is ill.

I am of the ‘If you haven’t been physically sick/ emptied your colon in spectacular and explosive fashion/ hit 40 on the thermometer/ lost a limb then you are going to school’ brigade.

Middlest has not done any of those things. But he is doubling up with stomach cramps on a regular basis. And hasn’t eaten anything substantial all day. And he was so white when he got up that I wondered where all his blood had gone.

I consulted his timetable which is stuck to the fridge. He has his double Rugby lesson today. And it was raining when we got up. And so I relented. And once I reluctantly said he could stay home he took himself back to bed and went to sleep.

So not faking I don’t think.

Anyway to be sure I have made the day as boring as possible. Lots of sleeping in his bedroom. That usually does the trick.

Unfortunately that has also meant I have had a very boring day too. I got through my chores whilst he was sleeping. We have caught up with Bake Off. I have filled in my Neighbourhood Planning Survey. There are other boring jobs I could be doing. But they are, well, boring.

It is ironic (in the proper sense of the word (a state of affairs or an event that seems deliberately contrary to what one expects and is often wryly amusing as a result) not in the American ‘rain on your wedding day’ sense of the word) that when I have an ’empty’ day I find it harder to get on with stuff. Although now I think on it, it isn’t that wryly amusing. But it is true that the more time I have to do stuff the less I actually do.

I should have thought up a few more good blog subjects but that isn’t something I can do to order.

This is the best I came up with.

Pretty dull.

Like my day.

Ennui sucks….

You Have Memories to Look Back on Today…. — September 13, 2015

You Have Memories to Look Back on Today….

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image

I quite like Facebook. I used to use it for shorter versions of these blog entries. I post less nowadays as a result of musingsponderingsandrants but I still get pleasure from hearing other’s news.

It is also my main platform for sharing this Blog and so I could not really do without it. Well I could but then no one would read anything I wrote except for my handful of loyal followers (thanks to you lovely lot), and those stumbling upon me accidentally.

I have a lot of family and friends who I see too infrequently and I feel closer to them than I would if FB didn’t exist.

I have found handymen and wasp nest killers and cooker repairers from heart felt pleas on its walls.

Others I know successfully sell second hand items through it.

And actually the most lovely thing about it is the snap shot it gives one of one’s life. Nearly daily, because I was such an avid poster, I get a notification that I have ‘Memories to look back on’. In fact I am such a prolific poster that when I tried recently to order one of those ‘My Social Books’ for my time on the site I could not get it under the 500 page limit.

I always look back on those memories. I don’t usually share them because who else is interested. But I gain immense pleasure from them.

Today I was reminded that last year Middlest and Eldest were both away overnight (I have no idea where!) and husband and I took Youngest for her first Chinese restaurant meal. And had a ball.

Two years ago my friendly dashboard spider gave me a fright.

There were pictures of Eldest in Year 4 dressed as a Celtic warrior. It backed up my recent musings that he was by far the most grown up of all my children at that stage in school. Youngest has now just started Year 4 and has no where near the same knowing look in her eye.

Four years ago I had finished knitting Jesus.

And five years ago I was bemoaning how hard it was to cook a curry whilst doing reading with Eldest, avoiding Middlest’s toy cars whizzing by, dressing a dollie for Youngest and avoiding a balloon pig occasionally floating over the hob.

I can remember that moment very clearly- although I have no idea why we had a balloon pig- beacuse I had been reminded of it. I would probably never have thought about it again with out that timely reminder from good old FB.

And so I am glad I was a prolific poster. I am glad I wrestled my inner demons, who worried I was boring everyone to death, and just wrote anyway. I am glad I wrote about the every day, the mundane, the humorous, the annoying and the heartfelt.

For now I have this record of my day to day life since 2009. A most welcome, almost daily, little package of memories which make me go ‘Oh yes I remember that’. It is an on line version of a diary but with pictures.

And it makes me think that I still need to post some little snippets, despite the longer record of current life contained in these blogs. For else I will lose that lovely package of history.

FB has its detractors but for me it has definitely got this right. Thanks.

Enough Already… — September 11, 2015

Enough Already…

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Ahhhh just Ahhhh

I want summer back.

No, I mean seriously, I do.

We are one week in and already I have had enough. Of it all.

Of the getting up at stupid o’clock. Of dragging curled bodies damp with sleep into consciousness. Of watching them stumble blearily downstairs with sandy eyes. It is cold and dark. Already. And it is only September.

I am fed up with the morning routine. I am fed up with badgering and cajoling and nagging in order to have them fed and dressed and vaguely clean before leaving the house with the proper books and snacks and water bottles and sports gear and musical instruments.

I am fed up with the school run. It took me 15 minutes to get out of the car park tonight. Fifteen minutes. I have to say I lost my rag with the poor parkers and the slow drivers and those taking too long at roundabouts as I fought against yet more time to get Youngest to her piano lesson. We were late. A bit. But I hate being late.

I hate the logistics. I hate trying to work out what to cook when so we can all eat something vaguely hot and nutritious. At a time that fits in with our various clubs or returns form work. Well when I say ‘our’ I mean their. And that they will all eat without pulling up their noses.

I had a man out to mend my oven today. I was ridiculously excited as I hoped to get my automatic timer function back. To ease the pressure of those logistics a bit. But no. He just came out looked at it and ordered a ‘bit’. And needs to come back next week and waste another day of my diminishing life. And I will spend the most part of another week trying to work round it.

I hate the homework. Tonight Youngest had to fill in a timeline of her entire life. Writing ‘at least’ a sentence for each year. But she wants to get onto the ‘Wow’ wall and so ‘needed’ to write more and add pictures. And of course as she can’t remember most of those years it wasn’t really a solo job. And Middlest was badgering me about pH scales and Eldest needed to do a poster about the number 10. Really. Yep really. He is eleven. Not sure what the aim of that was.

Tea was late. Clearing up even later. And so Youngest was late to bed. And she hasn’t read to me enough. Apparently. So we had to do that too.

And tomorrow they all have fixtures. Both husband and I need to drive miles around the countryside delivering children. And we still need to get up at stupid o’clock to deliver Eldest to school for 8.30am.

I am very, very close to just saying. You know what? Give it all up. Drop it all. So we can just slob around.

I won’t do that of course.

But I am tempted.

5 weeks to half term.

Hair… — September 8, 2015

Hair…

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grey hair

Today I spent twenty quid on hair products.

Most of you may know that I am not a particularly ‘girly’ person. And so may be a little surprised.

Having thought about it you may not know that I am not very ‘girly’ but if you have ever seen me walking to school, or football training or round the local supermarket with wet hair you will have gleaned that I am not the sort to spend long on my coiffure.

And those that know me not at all will just have to take my word for it. My hairdryer was plugged in when I came up to bed and I was momentarily confused until I remembered Middlest had washed his hair earlier and used it to fashion his quiff…..I never use it. Except to dry off sports kit which is required urgently.

My only extravagance, beauty wise, is a cut and blow dry about six weekly. With my lovely hairdresser whom I have been seeing this regularly for almost exactly 13 years.

She knows me. Well. She has over the years developed a hairstyle for me which merely requires me to get up and pull a brush through. She kindly says that I need such a style because I am so busy with my three kids, all of whose hair she also cuts, rather than because I am a slob. And care nothing for my ‘presentation’. Or she may know I am a slob but is too tactful to say anything.

My hairdresser is the Queen of Tact.

So today when she tentatively raised the issue of the possibility of colour bathing my hair to avoid people remembering me with too much grey I had to listen.

Up until this visit she has been saying that I was still able to get away with it. Not today. Maybe the long summer holidays have accelerated the process.

I floated the idea of just letting it go grey but she believes me too young for this. I love her for that. I don’t care that the colour bathing will probably do her bank balance no harm and just want to believe….

But apparently before I can have the aforementioned colour bath, which sounds lovely, like a relaxing spa treatment, but without the tacky music, I need to stop using my current shampoo. Which is evidently the devil in detergent form. If cheap.

And so I spent that crisp twenty.

Tactful and canny. So she is.

Mistokes… — September 6, 2015

Mistokes…

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editing

When I write these entries I tend to do it quickly. I get an idea or some sentences form in my mind which are either humorous or profound (ish) and which I feel I can hang an entry on.

Generally these thoughts come to me at inopportune moments. When I am cooking tea. When I am driving. Etc.

So sometimes I cannot get that entry written straight away. Therefore I make a lot of effort to retain those ideas and sentences in my head until a time arises when I have some moments to actually write. That is probably why I lose my car keys. Or keep going upstairs and forgetting what I came for. Too many blog ideas taking up disk space.

Anyhoo.

When I finally do get to write I often find my PC occupied by Minecrafters and so I start on my I pad. If that is also not occupied by Dumb Way to Die-ers.

So in extremis, or when parked at my kids’ school with half an hour to kill, I use my tiny Samsung phone.

And then I splurge words and ideas and punctuation in a semi coherent fashion onto the page. With my poor typing, which is even poorer on I pad and frankly atrocious on my phone. Big fingers. Tiny keys.

As such proof reading and editing are key. I never immediately publish a post. Excepting in the early days when I didn’t understand how to delay it.

Posts often lig around for a few days, or sometimes weeks. So I have time to add photos. Refine. Think of more relevant prose. Correct spelling. And add possessive apostrophes. But not there. That would be. Bad.

Of course the software I type on auto corrects some of the more obvious words. If it can guess what they are. But still sometimes I want to write a word I speak a lot but have no idea how to spell.

As such my dictionary is my friend. My children were amazed recently to see me using my dictionary. They all believe dictionaries are a way of taking up school locker space. Not for actually looking up words. So I am a great parental role model. Shines halo.

But even with this editing and proof reading mistakes still get published.

Homophones are not my friends. I was horrified to read yesterday that I had being ‘stationary’ on my to do list in my To Do entry. Obviously that was not my intent. I actually needed to buy pencils. Luckily I can correct once the article is published and so only around 10 of you read my horrific homophone blunder.

I can only apologise to my audience for such blunders. If I were a proper ‘author’ I would have an editor. But I don’t. So things are not perfect.

I hope you can forgive me.

Balls…. — September 3, 2015

Balls….

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20150902_114647 image20150902_111927

I am writing this whilst Middlest and Youngest run amok in our local soft play centre. Of all the wondrous and exciting things I offered to take them to today whilst Eldest is at school and a friend’s house this is what they wanted to do.

In the foyer there is a hippo bearing the slogan ‘You must be smaller than me to play in here’.

It is not an actual hippo, you understand, but a wooden effigy of a hippo. It is obviously not real as it stands on its back legs about five foot high. Which I guess is the point. Damn it why didn’t I take a picture? Anyway. I digress. Again.

During my many, many trips here over the duration of my parenthood I have paid that hippo scant regard. Eldest has naturally outgrown the soft play experience. But today Middlest just scraped in. Luckily he already had his shoes off. Within minutes they had returned to our encampment in the café to let me know that the place is apparently ‘smaller’ than they remembered.

And so our time as a family in such places is coming to a close. There are more ‘grown up’ versions of soft play. High rope courses, trampoline centres, indoor surfing, climbing walls, death slides. But, still, I have an affection for this shed full of ball pits and slides and cargo nets.

My first experience was when my NCT antenatal group celebrated our eldest children’s first birthday here. There were no other kids in our lives. We spent the afternoon helping our crawling first borns climb up small sets of padded steps and slide safely down, well, small slides. We hovered and protected them from the ‘big’ kids, who had reached walking stage and were perhaps 3. The dads came too. It was a milestone moment. It celebrated not only their birthdays but also all of us surviving a whole year in the new uncharted territory of parenthood. And all against the backdrop of that hippo.

When my eldest two were little we came here a fair bit in school term time for the morning on wet days before rushing home for the afternoon nap. It was cheap and convenient and always quiet.  Because it was so quiet I used to take my, by then, toddling boys on the ‘main frame’, venturing out from the safe harbour of the Under 4’s area. Onto the large slides and big gym balls.

Of course this neccesitated me going on too. To push them by their nappied bottoms up the more difficult inclines. And to be honest I quite enjoyed it. Except once when I was heavily pregnant with Youngest and I got wedged in a pair of rollers. A mass of two year olds prevented an exit in reverse and anyway my two precious charges had forged on ahead into the gloom of the ‘dark pyramid’ area where large and steep unmarked tube slides awaited. I had to squeeze. And hope. She was born a few weeks later apparently unharmed.

My first ever foray into organising birthday parties for friends took place here. Eldest’s fourth. With his pre school buddies. I was over anxious and over thought everything as usual. The party was a great success and it was then I realised that hosting parties at a venue used to dealing with such events was ‘the way forward’. I believe all my children have had at least one of their parties here since.

I have had long conversations with friends in the cafe whilst periodically forcing squash into sweaty off spring and purchasing chips.

I have sat on my own reading with a cuppa grabbing a bit of ‘quiet’ and me time.

And today I am writing this. After I discovered that there has been the surprise addition of free Wifi since I last visited.

I am going now to partake before it gets too busy and parents are banned, excepting those rescuing ‘stuck’ children. It may be the last time I can. The lure of one last go in the ball pit is strong. As long as one doesn’t  think too hard about the possibility of unsavoury contents I find it quite liberating.

So, so long soft play centre. I might have the occasional pang. Onwards and upwards. Probably in harnesses.

Footnote I am not sure how Youngest managed to dress herself to provide exact camouflage in the giant gym ball area…but it was a tad un-nerving.

Good Luck… — September 2, 2015

Good Luck…

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image

It is 6.30am and today Eldest starts Senior school.

He only has three hours of it. The school runs a familiarisation ‘day’ for all its new Year 7s. So I imagine him doing a scavenger hunt through the corridors. Or some such.

He is going to a friend’s afterwards for lunch and I will pick him up at tea time.

He has driven me mad for over seven weeks with his constant whistling and sibling tormenting.

But today I will miss him.

I hope he enjoys his morning. I know he will enjoy his afternoon chatting with his mates and spending too much time on computers.

I will be thinking of him a lot. He will not think of us.

And that is how it should be.

Raising these small people to hopefully become independent and confident adults is hard bloody work.

And also a tad heart breaking.