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...
Middle Class Pitfalls… — July 25, 2017

Middle Class Pitfalls…

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So here is a thing about me. I hate ironing. I think I may have mentioned this before. Several times.

It is odd really as my mother quite likes ironing. And taught me to iron well. It is also true that quite a lot of my friends and acquaintances will list ironing quite near the top of their least despised chores list. It is at the bottom of mine. Down there with cleaning the kids’ bedrooms. Even below cleaning shit stains off teenage boys’ toilets.

I am not sure why really. I know some take satisfaction from the transformation of creased articles into uncreased ones. Some people like to do it whilst watching TV or listening to the radio. Others like to stick a flag in their ironing mountain. Maybe some like the mini sauna involved.

Me? I don’t get it. It makes my arm ache. It never ends. And it seems utterly pointless.

Cleaning, which I also hate, has a point. A hygienic point. Laundry has a point. Cooking and shopping have a point. Ironing in my view doesn’t. And so I don’t do it. At all.

My husband has an unfortunate preference for expensive work shirts. And I have found that the more expensive the garment the more ironing it needs. For instance my kids’ school shirts come in a pack of 2 for a tenner, they don’t need ironing, his cost a lot and do.

I like laundry and have a great routine which never sees non iron shirts crease up too badly as they move from washer to line and straight onto hangers. I actually believe a lot of creasing comes from clothes sitting at the bottom of that ironing mountain.

So the only things that get ironed in this house are those ridiculously expensive work shirts.

When the kids were young my husband therefore spent a large proportion of his Sunday afternoons ironing rigid creases into the sleeves of his work shirts. I used to get perversely annoyed as it took him away from helping me with the kids for a good two hours. I was at that stage when I had three kids under 4 at home with me all day every day and wanted any opportunity to off load them onto someone else. I couldn’t do that to a man in charge of a hot electrical item.

So it was a sore point. I look back now and think ‘you unreasonable bitch’. But then that unreasonable bitch was a sleep deprived nutter clinging onto the edges of her sanity.

To sort this sore point out we decided to send out his shirts to an ironing lady.

That was probably ten years ago. And since then on a fortnightly basis his shirts have been collected and returned neatly pressed for a small fee. It is my main indulgence. When I am feeling extremely decadent I will bung in a pair or two of my linen trousers (only in the summer months) which probably do need ironing but mostly don’t get it.

This system works well. I leave his shirts and an appropriate number of hangers in a green and white striped laundry bag on my doorstep on a Tuesday every other week and on the Thursday they are returned on hangers. The lady has a key so she can let herself in and hang them off my cupboards if I am out. It is bliss. They smell great. She does a better job than me and aside from remembering to wash and dry them all in time it saves me a whole heap of pain (in the arm).

The only thing that has gone wrong in those ten years was when I forgot to not set the house alarm on delivery day and I got a panicked phone call during my exercise class during which I could hardly hear my ironing lady over the racket of my house alarm going off. We sorted that one.

Very occasionally I get someone else’s shirts back and they get mine. But again that is easily sorted. Especially as I am friends with her other ironing client. So nothing has really gone wrong. Until today.

Today I put my bag on the step as usual.

My children and I went out to meet a friend and her son for a coffee and catch up.

I got back and the bag was gone. All good it had been collected.

During lunch there was a knock on the door. It was my ironing lady asking for the whereabouts of my ironing.

So the bag had gone. But not to the right person.

My immediate reaction was that I hadn’t actually put the ironing out. Despite being sure I had. We searched the house futilely. We stood around wondering who in their right mind would steal a bag of someone else’s clothes and coat hangers.

My ironing lady left. I searched around futilely a bit more.

I then considered that maybe a charity clothing collector had taken it by mistake. I posted on Facebook. I drove to the Parish Council to see if they had a schedule of approved doorstep collectors. I drove round the village hunting charity vans and bags left on others’ doorsteps to provide a clue. I got mildly excited when I spotted one such van and nearly caused an accident screeching to a halt to investigate. They were merely out collecting a specific piece of furniture. I glanced futilely in their van just in case.

I emptied the contents of my kitchen bin searching for a discarded collection bag. That was fun. Not.

Someone suggested I call my household insurer. That phone call would be up there with the one I made to my car insurer when I ran into my own gate post. Humiliating. And I suspect ultimately pointless in this case. I imagine I am not covered for items left unattended in an insecure area. And anyway I have no receipts. I am just not going there. I am not.

In the end I gave up.

I told my husband who wasn’t as pissed off as he could have been. I closed my brain off to the cost of replacing the shirts. And the two pairs of linen trousers I had extravagantly bunged in last night that I need for my imminent holiday. They are so old they don’t owe me anything anyway. The shirts on the other hand. Ouch.

I am trying not to think about the possibility that the bag was stolen. In broad daylight in my lovely middle class village across my noisy gravel drive with both sets of neighbours in. It makes me feel slightly sick.

But mostly I am trying to fight that niggling sense that this is all my own fault for being quite so bourgeoisie as to send out my ironing.

Lesson learned.

 

 

 

 

Fun Free Tuesdays…. — July 13, 2017

Fun Free Tuesdays….

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Hello everyone. I am back. Did you miss me? Well of course not. Sorry I have probably lost you. Let me explain.

Yesterday was Tuesday. The first Tuesday of my children’s 8 week summer holiday. Still none the wiser? I will continue.

Now I love having my kids at home. Mostly. But there are some things about having my kids at home that I find really difficult. And one of those things is the constant battle to get them off electronic devices.

Childrens usage of electronic devices is one of those subjects which divides parents. A bit like breast v bottle and letting them cry it out or not.

I am of the camp that believes that electronic devices are inherently ‘evil’. This view is founded on no real evidence at all and is just something my gut tells me. It is probably because my childhood was in the era before computers smaller than the size of a room were invented.

I envy my mother. She had it much easier with us. The TV was our electronic device. We had one in the house. During this fortnight it was permanently tuned to the Wimbledon Championships. My mother ruled the air wave choices.

In the summer holidays once the morning television programming for children ended at around 10am there was nothing else worth watching until around 4pm. Even then the offerings in the morning weren’t great. Has anyone ever in the history of ‘Why Don’t You (switch of your television set and go and do something less boring instead)’ ever done that? I know I didn’t. Mostly because the activities they portrayed as more fun than watching them portray them were either; games involving the whole gang of circa 20 kids which me and my sole brother could not hope to replicate; or craft activities using sticky back plastic. Which wasn’t allowed in the house.

So my mother had no worries that for the vast majority of each day my brother and I would be doing wholesome activities mainly outside. Activities such as playing  under the embankment of the bypass avoiding the local flasher or running each other over on bikes. Simpler times.

Computers made an appearance in my teenage years but the time taken to load Killer Gorilla or Frogger into the computer from the tape player (don’t touch the volume at all) was so long and often unreliable that the pay off was not really great enough for me to bother.

I tired to think what I did all summer when I was Eldest’s age. My mother asserted that I still played out in the street. She reminded me of the American exchange children who came over which was probably the summer I had turned 14. She remembers me rushing outside after every meal to ‘play out’. That wasn’t really what I was up to but I didn’t want to burst her ‘wholesome activities’ bubble….

In other teenage summers I read a lot of trashy fiction. And stole my brother’s afterburner and met my mates up the woods to drink weak beer from tins.

So it is more than likely that my inherent hatred of my kids spending all day on small screens derives from my desire to see them undertaking wholesome activities such as these. Rather than watching other people open Kinder eggs or packets of Pokemon cards. It is highly likely my 13 year old has moved on from this somewhat. I don’t ask.

The upshot is that I spend a lot of time policing electronic usage and falling out with them about it. Setting time limits never really works. The time elapses and then they ‘just want to finish this video’ or ‘if they leave the game now they will be penalised and lose a legendary something or other’ or ‘oh mum everyone else plays solidly all day you know’. Etc etc. I once heard Middlest comment through his headphones that he had to leave a game and in response to his friend’s reply he said ‘I know she is sooo annoying’….

And so during my run up to this eight weeks holiday a thought had been ruminating. The thought that we should have one day a week completely free of electronic devices. Myself included. Thus cutting all time limits and arguments off at the pass.

I decided in their last week of term to float the idea. I was slightly trepidatious if I am honest.

Youngest was very much up for it. This was not really a surprise. Youngest is 9 and has just finished Year 5. As such in the Harrison household she has achieved the age of  i-pod ownership. The i-pod she possess is obviously third hand. And as such is glitchy and of limited use. Whatever. She manages to play a few games such as Word Cookies and an advanced form of that 1980s one with a ball and a wall to knock through. And she can message her friends but only at home when she is on the internet.

As such she is still the one trying to get her brothers away from You Tube for long enough to play in the garden.

Middlest went white. He asked me what on earth he was going to do. I pointed out that this time last year he did not have a phone or an X Box. That didn’t help. Apparently last summer was a desert of boredom punctuated by small oases of fun which had usually cost me over £100.

Eldest was surprisingly very much up for it too. Eldest is old enough to understand that he struggles to moderate his phone usage. And needs help to do so. Of course on a day when I do ‘help him to manage his usage’ by telling him to ‘put the damn thing away for five minutes’ he does not see it quite like that. And we usually fight.

So to him a day totally without his phone would be a day of moderate usage without the arguments. Hopefully.

And me. What about me? To be honest I wasn’t too worried. The kids had reluctantly agreed to me having my phone for calls and essential texts only. I believed I could resist face book and twitter for a day. My main concern was not being able to open the on line version of The Times newspaper Polygon puzzle, which my father had got me addicted to on our recent visit. But I consoled myself with the thought of a ‘double polygon Wednesday’.

So on Monday evening I hoovered up phones and deposited them in my bedroom along with my I pad. All completely turned off.

I came down at 8 am having overslept to find Middlest booting up the X Box. He had conveniently forgotten that ‘no electronic devices’ included his games console. We had a small contratend.

Over the day on which I had deliberately planned no activities which would have set me back £100 certain things happened.

We all overslept.

They all came to my exercise class with me and ran around the field a few times before joining in (at one point we were all doing press ups in a row much to everyone’s amusement) and declaring it ‘quite hard’.

We went to Sainsbury’s for a snack to undo all our hard work and had actual conversations.

Youngest got her adult colouring book out and did an amazing page of colouring.

Middlest survived. He helped me cook the lunch. And enjoyed chopping and peeling carrots. He read an entire book. He tried to argue that I couldn’t afford phone free Tuesday (or fun free Tuesday as he had rechristened it) as I was going to have to buy a book a week. I pointed out that we have a perfectly decent library.

He helped me cook as he was avoiding Eldest and Youngest who, to a plan of Eldest’s devising, were setting up a hot wheels car track out of his bedroom window. This involved much arguing but once they got it sorted much fun. The fun was somewhat curtailed by the window cleaner turning up.

Eldest got out his sketch pad and new ‘How to Draw’ book purchased with the book token he got for winning the Year 8 Art prize and tackled eyes and then did a decent portrait. Even if the ears are too high.

We got our haircut and they all read wholsomely in the waiting area. Youngest regaled me with animal facts from her encyclopaedia during my cut and blow dry.

They went to a friend’s house whilst hubby and I went out briefly and had fun playing nerf gun wars. Youngest and I watched an episode of the Crystal Maze circa 1990 which apparently looked ‘so old’.

They all went to bed happy,

Middlest extracted his phone from my bedroom before retiring to ensure it was charged and ready for an intense catch up as Wednesday dawned.

The others want to add another day.

 

 

Elly (or maybe Elee, or Ellie or even Ely…) — July 4, 2017

Elly (or maybe Elee, or Ellie or even Ely…)

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May I introduce Elly (or Elee or Ellie or possibly Ely…I haven’t written his/ her name down before weird huh? We’ll settle for Elly I think).

Elly is a very, very important personage Chez Harrison.

Elly was purchased for Middlest by Eldest (well by daddy but chosen by Eldest) the day after Middlest was born. And he/she (we never did determine the sex of Elly it has remained a fluid thing to this day) has been a constant and well loved fixture in Middlest’s life ever since.

He has been everywhere with us. Florida, Norfolk, Spain, France etc. Elly is not allowed out of the house except to make these holiday trips for Elly is a ‘bed elephant’. He was not carried around when Middlest was a baby but until recently Middlest had not spent a night without him.

That only changed this year when Middlest announced he was not going to take Elly on Scout camp. A bit of me died. Middlest has always been a strong character not prone to caring what others think and so I saw this caving in to peer pressure as a sad turn of events. But no actually Middlest had decided not to take Elly:-

“For his own safety. People throw cuddlies around mum! I can’t risk that with Elly” all delivered in a shocked tone.

Generally Elly is packed last. He is on my ‘pack in the morning list’ along with Oo Oo (Youngest’s monkey) and deodorant and toothbrushes. He goes in hand luggage as Middlest does not want to risk turning up at a hotel without him.

Elly is nearly 12 years old. And he looks it. His fluff disappeared a long time ago. His eyes are scratched. His ears flop and his seams sag. To my mind this makes him even more adorable. I empathise with Elly. He looks how I often feel. Tired, slightly put upon but well, well loved.

To say he is precious is an understatement. I cannot contemplate what would happen if we ever lost Elly or he fell apart. It does not bear thinking about.

The fact then that, as we speak, Elly is whizzing around in my washing machine is more than a little worrying. He is ‘safely’ encased in a pillow case. But even still. I am awaiting the end of the cycle in a state of trepidation.

In the early days when Elly was often sicked on or worse he was no stranger to the washing machine. And I didn’t bother with a pillow case. But now he looks like he might not survive the ordeal.

Part of what makes Elly so special to Middlest is this lack of washing for Middlest is a very sensual person. He has an incredible sense of smell. In fact it is quite possible he may grow up to be a ‘nose’ or a perfumier. (He also has a way with words so I guess he would be quite good at the sort of pretentiousness often displayed by those wine tasters on the 1980s show ‘Food and Drink’).

Middlest likes to build up a good scent on things. Like a dog. In fact there are only two sorts of smell tolerated by Middlest when it comes to bedding. One- line dried sheets and Two- his own scent. If I dry his sheets indoors he complains until a few days have gone by and he can smell himself on the sheets again. Luckily for him I am quite slovenly housework wise, especially in the winter when drying the normal day to day laundry is a challenge never mind sheets as well, and so he gets ample opportunity to smell himself. Weirdo.

So for all these reasons Elly has not been washed for …a long time…

Today, as the sun is out and I can produce that other allowed smell- line dried sheets, I stripped Middlest’s bed. Elly was there as always curled up under the covers where he had recently been left by Middlest when he finally managed to pull himself out of the duvet.

Elly was crusty. Yep crusty. Middlest has a very specific way of hugging Elly which comes from his thumb sucking days when Elly was an intimate part of that ritual. (Eldest swears blind those thumb sucking days are not actually over and sneaks in a lot to try to catch Middlest on camera in the act). Elly spends a lot of time around Middlest’s nose and mouth and I can only assume that is where the ‘crust’ emanates from… It’s best not to think too hard…

Wherever the crust comes from Elly smells like extremely concentrated Middlest.

Despite my slovenly housekeeping even I had reached the limit of Elly crustiness.

And so I have risked a wash.

Middlest is going to be furious. I will try to line dry Elly but I know that won’t come close to compensating for those years of ‘me-ness’ he has built up.

I can only hope Elly survives the ordeal. For if a lack of ‘me-ness’ is bad a lack of Elly at all would see me permanently ostracised.

47 minutes to go. Wish Elly and me luck…

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What Fresh Hell Is This…. — June 11, 2017

What Fresh Hell Is This….

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Don’t worry dear readers. This entry is not about the UK elections. We aren’t talking about them here. It causes friction. So if deep political insight is what you are after please jog on. Watch Newsnight. Read the Daily Mail…or something.

A few weeks before half term Youngest came home and mumbled something about joining a school club. Youngest is quite savvy when it comes to requesting things and she usually asks very quietly at some key pinch point in a busy evening and takes my ‘sorry dear’ as assent.

In any event the club was at lunchtime and so had no direct impact on me. I was feeling slightly guilty as her club levels always drop in the summer term as the football season limps to a close in a flurry of tournaments and presentation events. Additionally this term, for some reason, school had dispensed with after school training for rounders/ football (this term’s sports of choice) for her year group. Why still remains a mystery. But the upshot was she was coming home every night on time and only venturing out again on Mondays (yep that football was continuing) and Wednesdays, oh and Fridays. So I was feeling under clubbed.

Anyway she went to her club. She seemed to enjoy it. I asked her about what she was doing and then got distracted by something else (probably Latin revision or a French aural exam or prising a teenager off an electronic device or suddenly remembering Eldest’s piano lesson with 3 minutes to spare) and forgot to listen to the answer.

I caught ‘posters’ and ‘may not get through to next half term’ and gleaned that there was some sort of competitive element to the club whilst still involving felt tip pens.

I did catch ‘it will be after school after half term’ which increased that impact on yours truly whilst simultaneously assuaging my ‘lack of clubs’ guilt. I decided to let this go. I was clearly missing my boomeranging backwards and forwards to school of an evening.

Half term came and went in a pleasant blur of those football death throws, a lovely trip to the seaside to visit my dad, some hockey, some successful shopping and a migraine. That wasn’t so pleasant.

I only had Youngest for most of last week (please read Sorry if you want to know why) and so I was able to listen more fully to her when I picked her up from this club on Wednesday night.

It transpires that the club is called the ‘Fiver Challenge’ club. Members have, you guessed it, a fiver to spend on set up costs and need to make as much profit for charity as possible. By selling stuff. Which must not be edible. Youngest and her mate had got through to the final four with the idea of making emoji cushions.

Now in common with most 9 year olds Youngest has no concept of money. And so she had not costed out this plan. At all. My head, of course, started working overtime pondering how to buy all the materials required to make enough emoji cushions to make any profit at all for five pounds. I asked Youngest to come up with a list of requirements. This is what she came up with; yellow, red, black and white felt. I added to this stuffing, sewing cotton in various hues, black embroidery thread, a glue gun with glue and labour.

As even a reel of cotton is about £1.85 I was quite unsure how all this was going to pan out. I have stuffing (from my previous knitting escapades. I have a really rather fetching knitted Christmas crib scene in my loft complete with sheep (well a sheep I got fed up after three kings, Mary, Joseph, a shepherd, a manger and of course the baby himself and so the shepherd has quite an easy job herding one sheep)) and also some left over embroidery thread from my cross stitching days (although not really in very useful colours, they will have to make do) some cotton from general sewing (although no yellow) and Eldest had offered to be the sweat shop labour as long as he only got to make turd, devil or (bizarrely) heart emojis. That left all the actual fabric. And yellow cotton.

So after a morning driving her on a 2 hour round trip for a one hour football thing we decided we had better go out and see what could be done. I had a brain wave. Charity shops. We cruised into town to go on the Charity Shop Crawl which I usually only undertake when a ‘dressing up’ day has been announced at school. Tudors, Victorians, elves, Florence Nightingale etc. I thought maybe we could source some old bed sheets or cheap T shirts in the right hues.

I think it is fair to say that Charity shops have gone up market. I could easily find a prom dress or fair trade chocolates or next years Christmas cards but only one of my usual haunts had bed sheets. And then the yellow sheet I found (reasonably priced and would have made umpteen cushions) was too pale for Youngest. Not emoji enough. I couldn’t find a T shirt under four quid. I can buy them new for that. From actual sweat shops.

We left empty handed. And decided to try Hobbycraft. They came up trumps with cheapish felt and we bought as much as we could for that fiver. I also bought that yellow cotton and decided to pretend I had had ‘it in’. I only actually ‘have in’ black and white (for name label sewing) and colours that match scouting uniforms, that is bright blue and green. Plus weirdly red. Not sure why I have red. That will be good for sewing on tongues though.

Then the children decided to raid their T shirt drawers. I put back all the T shirts they still actually wear and ones I have bought this year but that still gave us a number in the right colours. Brown for turds, purple for hearts and devils (I challenged them on this, purple hearts? but then Eldest sent me one so I relented), green for a sick emoji and 2 yellow T shirts from when the boys had had house events in the Junior school. I had kept them so Youngest (in the same house) could wear them and then the school brought out a house branded shirt only sold at the school appointed uniform shop and those T shirts became redundant. Thanks god I had not got rid of them. The white T shirt (ghosts) that Youngest found in her drawer is size 6 -7 and has Eldest’s name in it so I can only assume he wore it in PE in Year 1. He is Year 8 now. Mental note to self- must go through the T shirt drawers more often.

So then the fun of turning this mountain of fabric into items children may actually wish to purchase could really begin. We spent several more precious hours making templates, drawing round them and cutting felt before we could even begin to sew. And then I was merely required to try to remember how to do blanket stitch (which I can never remember how to do, go on try I bet you can’t either) to thread needles non stop for two hours, start them off and finish them off (after having unpicked at least 5 stitches to allow me enough thread to actually finish off even after telling them repeatedly how much thread I need to finish off) and sooth Youngest when she drew blood. Oh and cut out sunglasses. In those 2 long hours Youngest and Eldest sewed precisely one cushion each.

And just so you know hand sewing T shirt material is really really difficult.

The pop up shop is in 2 weeks. I may have died of over needle threading/ knot undoing /finishing/starting offing by then.

Oh well I haven’t got the glue gun out yet. I like the glue gun. That will be a highlight. As long as I can find it. Preliminary searches have not gone well. Is it possible to lose a glue gun? I’ll let you know.

Cheers school. Again.

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Cushion number one.

 

 

 

Being Brave…revisited… — June 8, 2017

Being Brave…revisited…

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Some of you may remember my previous entry Being Brave…

I was brave in a particular way that I hoped might be a small inspiration to my kids.

Well today it paid off.

I have introduced you to my daughter before. In case you are new, or inattentive, here is a bit about Youngest.

Ever since she sailed into the world Youngest has been a determined and hard working individual. At age 18 months she was insisting on dressing herself and doing up her shoes. This was a shock after two boys who would probably still let me lace their shoes for them now, in some sort of slightly weird servant fashion, given half the chance.

Youngest is perhaps the least academic of all my children. School work has never come as easily for her as for Middlest and I have had less time to spend with her than I did with Eldest. But what she lacks in natural ability she more than makes up for in effort. She is the hardest working of all my children. And that is saying something as Eldest has an amazing work ethic.

Since she was three years old she has been athletic. Taking to every sport put in front of her with aplomb. I remember her coming home from her first taste of football at preschool literally bouncing off the walls. She did it in a pinafore and wellies but already the love for the sport was there. She had done well. Even for a three year old. In wellies. So yes she has bucket loads of natural ability.

But this is not to belittle the effort she also makes in all her sports. I often worry that teachers or coaches will believe she just relies on her natural skill when nothing could be further from the truth. If she is not at training for one sport or another (in the football season twice a week plus matches and then once a week after school for whatever other sport is being played in that term) she is in the garden or up the local field practicing.

If the weather is bad she boots her baby ball around on the landing, driving me mad with the bell inside….

Nearly every Saturday she either plays for school or her football team. In fact in the hockey season there were at least two occasions when she played a league football match in the morning and a school hockey fixture in the afternoon.

In the off season she runs park runs. She managed to compete ten 5k runs last summer and earn her ’10’ T shirt. During the end of this season she has turned out to some Junior Park runs on Sundays as she had no other sport on that day so thought she may as well. She actually hates running but knows that in order to get a flying start for footie and hockey in September she needs to keep her fitness up and so off she goes.

She recently ran ten miles in under an hour and a half whilst crossing off bridges in the sponsored Cub Scout bridge walk. The determination to do that would elude most adults.

In short although my daughter clearly has natural talent in sport she also works her socks off improving her skills and stamina. She is determined. Immensely so. She wants to play football for a living, if such a thing becomes possible for women, and understands that to achieve that she has to work and work.  And she also knows her chances are slim but that doesn’t stop her determination to give it all she has.

To balance all this sport I was keen she do something else too and so along with her brothers she has learnt the piano since Year Two. I play and have since that age and still enjoy  murdering the odd bit of Chopin and it comes in handy at Christmas. I was adamant she carry on even as her sport commitments ramped up.  In fact she recently had to turn down attending swim squad training to keep learning, I couldn’t fit her lesson in on any other day.

She doesn’t have anywhere near the natural talent in it that she does in sport. And so again she works very, very hard at it practising every morning before school and as a result she is making steady progress.

Today was the school music prizes. She entered herself with one of her grade two pieces. She has practised and practised.

She finds playing in public immensely scary. I empathise. It is very hard to control one’s nerves enough to be able to physically play. Her legs turn to mush and her arms shake.

She has often had to be brave in sport. She regularly comes up against opponents much bigger then her, often male. She runs up for her Year so tomorrow she will be attending an athletics meet, running a distance she has never run before, on an athletics track, again a first, and she will be one of only two Year 5s going from her school. But although she will be nervous her natural skill and competitive streak will kick in and help her.

She can’t rely on this in music. This morning she was almost actually sick with nerves and ended up sobbing that she was going to pull out.

We had the bravery chat. That cliche of feeling the fear and doing it anyway. That even if the worst happened and she ‘went wrong’ she could still feel proud of herself for trying. That you have to be in it to win it. I told her everyone would be feeling nervous. I reminded her of me singing that solo and how proud she was of me. And how sickeningly nervous I had been. She decided to go ahead.

And then quite unexpectedly she went and won.

Bravery quite literally paid off. But even if she hadn’t won the prize she still would have won in my eyes. All those competitors today are winners as far as I am concerned. Doing such a brave thing at age 9, or indeed any age, is something to be very proud of.

Well done all.

Sorry — June 6, 2017

Sorry

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I feel I should apologise.

Not to all of you.

Some of you live abroad.

But to all my local readers I need to be humbly sorry.

For the unrelenting pissing down rain and heavy winds that we are currently experiencing in the south east of England are a direct result of my children’s school.

Eldest and Middlest are on Activities Week. Let me explain. The school has a commitment to ‘outdoor’ education which means nothing for most of the year (except for a requirement to stand on cold, muddy pitches an awful lot and having to avoid square drill marching cadets on Tuesday evenings) but for one week a year it does mean the children go off on jolly japes and adventures in the great outdoors to commune with nature, learn more about themselves and drive their parents into a tizz over the kit requirements.

Now don’t get me wrong I am all in favour of outdoor education. All my children are in the Scout movement. We camp. We bike ride and swim and hike and surf and climb and take measured calculated risks with pen knives and camp fires. In short we do a lot of outdoor stuff. I love the outdoors. So do my kids.

Middlest (in Year 7) has a week of fiendishly complicated logistics which involve him in 2 local days out at three different locations and a three day, 2 night away trip. Easy peasy? Not really. Despite filling in the comprehensive (bizarrely yellow) forms stating that I was not going to collect Middlest from either off site venue as he has, you know, siblings that I needed to collect from school contemporaneously I still got a panicked call the week before half term during an important meeting demanding to know if I was collecting Middlest from the Country Park on Thursday. I ignored the call, so they rang my husband who knows nothing about logisitics who then also interrupted my important meeting. In any event Middlest is camping in Oxfordshire on Thursday and so clearly even if he hadn’t had siblings I was not going to be collecting him from the local (ish) country park. We got that sorted. Eventually.

Yesterday he spent the day at a local lake. It was too windy to sail. He was a bit disgruntled about that claiming that surely the more wind the better. I explained about capsizing and ramming. Into each other and the bank. He relented somewhat. Not to worry he had enjoyed the kayaking (although he was frustrated at having to go slowly as he is a bit of a ‘pro’ at kayaking (his words)) and the bell boating. And the replacement sailing activity. Sliding down a piece of astro turf straight into the lake and swimming back to shore. He thought it necessary to wear his waterproof coat during this manoeveur. Not entirely sure why. Maybe I should have explained before the event that waterproof does not mean full immersion proof.  And he could have removed all manner of crap from the pockets first. Which I had to fish out and discard later. Yuck.

So a bag of wet clothes, towels, water shoes and waterproof coats awaited me. Not to worry plenty of time to get that coat dry ready for today. Not. It is at times like these that I seriously regret not having a tumble dryer. We love the outdoors remember. And would like it to stay unmolested by global warming for a little bit longer…

I hung the coat on the line outside and left to get Youngest from her footie training leaving Middlest with strict instructions to bring in the coat (and water shoes) if the black ominous clouds lived up to their appearance. Guess how well that went. I suppose I only lost an hour of drying time.

He needed that coat today as the weather forecast was even worse. He was due to spend half the day on a high ropes course which from memory when we did it a few years ago had no shelter at all and the other half in a wood orienteering. This is the wood which is one of our regular haunts in the holidays. The picture up there is what my children looked like after a wet day there last year. I was severely dreading facing the state of the waterproof coat, and indeed hike boots, when he returned.

It has rained solidly all day. And been very windy. In fact it would have been better if he had been sliding into that lake today as he got drenched to the skin anyway from the unrelenting precipitation.

His hike boots are literally waterlogged. His coat sodden. Not to worry these things dry out except that I have to pack them all later in a suitable rucksack so he can take them away camping tomorrow morning. He will be wearing both there. There is no way they are coming into contact with his sleeping bag. Which is currently dry. Looking at the forecast I doubt that will last.

Luckily Middlest is made of strong stuff. Despite his small and slightly puny appearance he has a great capacity for tolerating mud and rain and immense fortitude in the face of adversity. On the Year 6 ‘Outdoor Education’ trip he fell flat on his face in the mud whilst doing a blind trail. He thought he should just dive head first straight through the tractor tyre. He just found it funny as muddy water dripped off his nose. Apparently. Today he was fortunate as he was the first on the high ropes course (he volunteered- that’s Middlest for you, loves heights and climbing and is an all round monkey) and therefore got round the course before it was abandoned due to high winds. Some children had to be rescued after only a few obstacles.

So he will probably enjoy then next three days when again unrelenting rain is forecast- except for tomorrow when they are travelling there- he won’t wash, brush his teeth or change his clothes. He has a plan. Wear his waterproofs over his clothes all the time. Simply remove them before bed. And sleep. In the middle of the tent (or shelter if they are mad enough to go for that) away from the probably muddy door and also the probably wet sides. With his mates. So they can chat.

We packed all the other stuff anyway just in case. No PJs though. No point.

As for Eldest he left for a week on the welsh coast on Sunday. It was nice when they arrived. According to the text we got and the sparse Facebook photos. I glanced at the forecast for the rest of the week, shuddered and decided not to think about it. At least they are spending part of the week in an actual building.

So again my humble apologies.

The weather will improve next week when they are back in Maths and Geography.

Promise.

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The rucksack wearing Middlest

 

 

 

Early to bed, Early to rise… — June 1, 2017

Early to bed, Early to rise…

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There are many unnerving and frankly annoying things about owning teenagers. And I speak here as a mere amateur as I currently only own one teenager who is at the very early stages to boot.

I can only imagine it will get worse. Watch this space…

But perhaps the issue I am currently finding it the most hard to adjust to is the fact that he never goes to bed. And then won’t wake up in the morning.

This is somewhat of a departure from the norm. If I had written this blog anytime up until about a year ago I would be bemoaning the fact that Eldest woke up every day at 5.30am. In fact this was the pattern of his childhood years. He always believed that morning began at this ungodly hour and could not be persuaded otherwise. Despite trying all sorts. Clocks with pop up ears. Black out blinds. Baby whispering. Lavender. Etc.

When he was in a cot we used to ignore him by means of putting pillows over our heads. But even so we had to resign ourselves to the day beginning at 6am when his clamouring became too insistent to ignore.

Once he was in a bed (shortly after Middlest was born) all hell broke loose on a daily basis as he rampaged around the house waking his brother and demanding attention. In the end I put a stair gate on his bedroom door to contain him until a time I considered to be morning. Basically anything starting with a six.

So for many years my day began at 6am. Even when he started school and got more biddable he still woke early but was able to keep himself amused until getting up time of 7am. But I was still awake because as every mother knows once the child is awake so is the mother. Even Saturday and Sundays began at this hour although husband and I would take it in turns ensuring one of us got a lie in until around 8am.

Even as an older child on holiday having been allowed to stay up late to attend the disco or karaoke he would still awaken bang on time at 5.30am. Maybe after a week of such late nights his body clock may have shifted a little bit but generally he would just get tireder and tireder until he was begging to go to bed at his usual hour.

For the flip side to this early rising was the fact that for those many years all my kids were in bed asleep by 7pm. The bedtime routine began straight after tea with bath and milk and TV (I have very fond memories of In the Night Garden; how I miss Makka Pakka and his OCD stone piling) and stories (often the same one for weeks at a time- The Little Red Train being one of them) and then straight to sleep. This gave me around 3 hours of solitude. At least two of which I could spend how I liked once chores were accomplished. And yes I had to brush their teeth and wipe their bums and dry their little bodies and tuck them in. But all that could be achieved in the knowledge of the peace and solitude that awaited me downstairs. Oh and the sole custody of the remote control. And possibly some Salt and Vinegar Kettle Chips. Once I had started on tea it felt like I was on a downwards slide towards those three hours and how I craved them.

Times have certainly changed.

So for instance tonight I am writing this on my I pad upstairs in my bedroom.

Eldest has commandeered the front ‘adult’ room to carry on with his Arrow binge watch. Youngest had on some American teen rubbish in the family room and so I had retreated to the garden to enjoy the sun. Then Middlest and Youngest decided to come outside to boot a ball around in my general vicinity, Middlest having stopped browsing for new hockey sticks for long enough to be persuaded outside by his sister. So I retreated back inside only to have the teen rubbish put back on once the ball had been booted over next door’s fence for the billionth time.

So I have come up here. For a bit of peace.

I am lucky if I have them all dispatched to bed by 9pm and then Eldest rather begrudgingly so. I know eventually he will be going up later than me. But I am still in mourning for those three hour evenings. I can’t quite let them go. And so I still force him up ‘early’ so I can have the one hour that still remains to me. Which often turns into more than that. Which is a pretty bad idea as our day still begins at 6am. For totally logistical reasons.

And now waking him up that early is almost impossible. Sigh.

So to all those parents of young ‘early risers’ and ‘early to bed’ers enjoy it while it lasts. Enjoy those evenings. For they don’t last forever.

 

Do Tell…. — May 22, 2017

Do Tell….

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There are many imponderables in the world. Such weighty issues as global warming, the general inhumaneness of human kind, the existence or otherwise of alien beings, whether there is an afterlife. Etc.

The main imponderables in my life, however, are slightly more mundane. Here is today’s list.

  1. Who left the used tissue in their pocket? Again. Thus ensuring a liberal coating of white bits all over the fresh laundry. This imponderable is a regular occurrence. Of course no one ever claims responsibility. Eldest has hay fever. Middlest has a cold. And Youngest watched a particularly sad episode of Monkey Life last evening. Thinking about it I was in tears too at the demise of Aris the 4 year old orangutan. So it could have been me. We had become very attached to Aris who had an endearing personality and so to see him being put down was tear jerking to say the least. The culprit remains at large. Of the used tissue. It’s bloody irritating. It’s not so bad when the washing goes straight outside on the line. The birds pick up all the ‘shaken off bits’ to line their nests. Unfortunately Eldest’s hayfever precludes his washing going outside so the kitchen floor also gets a liberal coating. No helpful birds there. Sigh.
  2. Why was Eldest on the second of 2 buses back from the school trip to the seaside. And why was that bus over half an hour later than the first bus. And why had they been given the same ETA. Necessitating me sitting in a baking hot car for over 45 minutes.
  3. Which annoying male member of my family has stolen from the kitchen one of the two Apple charging leads? And why has my husband started charging his Apple device there when he is in possession of at least two such charging cables in his personal charging hub in the spare room? Which must not be touched on pain of death. And why will I get it in the neck tomorrow when the boys’ phones remain uncharged?
  4. Why is going to be baking hot tomorrow when we will be spending all day on a football pitch and then ‘break’ on Sunday in time for our mini break to the coast? Actually this isn’t really an imponderable. Just Sod’s law. And normal for the UK. Of course I have packed today in 29 degree heat (again I could have done with the heat break today) and so will probably spend our mini break freezing due to inappropriate packing. I also spent a small fortune on sun cream. Should have checked that weather first….
  5. Why has Youngest been split up from her very best friend in next year’s classroom reshuffle. Total lunacy. I will be checking extra hard for used tissues tonight…
  6. Why, after extensive fruitless searches, did I today find my husband’s prescription sunglasses (£400 a pair- he has bad eyes and expensive tastes) hanging from the handle bars of Middlest’s scooter. In the garage. At least this time I found the lost item before it was replaced. Now that really would have been Sod’s law.
  7. Why do duvet covers eat other laundry in the machine but not all of it? And how do they turn inside out? I often ponder that. It must have a scientific explanation? No?
  8. Who thought up cricket whites? Just that really. Grass stains. Mud. Unidentified food or beverage based items. All these show up spectacularly and are devil to get out. Whoever did, invent them that is, never did laundry. Which I suppose when I do ponder on it makes sense. As it is a gentleman’s game. And they had servants. Middlest has me. There is a similarity there. I don’t like to ponder that. Much.

So there we have it. Today’s imponderables.

There are quite a lot of laundry related ones I note. Hum.

 

On the Slow Train to Nowhere — May 19, 2017

On the Slow Train to Nowhere

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This weekend I am escaping.

I love my family dearly. But like all jobs one occasionally needs a holiday. I think it may be getting on for two years since I last went away without any of them. It’s due.

And so I am travelling up to Sheffield, the city of my university, to spend a weekend without kids and husband. And chores. And football. And the Cub Scout bridge walk. At which it always rains.

Normally I can’t get away on these weekends (which I would like to say have been a regular fixture but really can’t as the last one was 2 years ago) until I have finished pitch side duties around Saturday lunch time. This time the football gods had given me a reprieve and Youngest had no fixture on the weekend. (She is planning to make up for it exercise wise by running the bridge walk in an attempt to cross off all 80 slots on her sponsorship form. I am somewhat regretting my 50p a bridge pledge).

As such I am leaving on Friday. Today in fact.

Last time I got away on Friday (probably about 5 years ago) I sat on the M1 for a good 4 hours. With my left leg screaming from over use of the clutch. Yes my American friends I drive a manual (or stick shift as you call it) along with the vast majority of people here in the UK under the age of 65. Except my husband, he drives an auto. It’s not beige though. Yet.

‘So’ I thought to myself ‘I will get the train’. Where I live is on the direct line to Sheffield. Couple of downloaded episodes of Being Human and a large cup of tea and the job is a good one.

Of course life is never that simple.  First off for some inexplicable reason there are only 2 direct trains all evening. One at 17.41 (much too early to be sure of a home husband and fed, piano lessoned children) or 20.09 (bit late but my friends are night owls so should still be up when I arrive c 22.30) so I plumped for that.

My first inkling that something might go amiss was when my husband sat for two hours at Luton this morning trying to get to work on the same line but in the other direction due to ‘signalling problems’.

Now I am sure there are lovely bits of Luton, although I am yet to see one, but really he didn’t need to spend 2 hours there. Stuck on an overcrowded train.

He finally got to work over 3 hours after leaving.  I spent all day following the disruption updates which stated when ‘normal’ service would be resumed.  First by 12 noon. Then by 2 and then by 4 as trains and drivers and staff got themselves back where they should be.

All good. Husband’s return journey went without incident. Everyone ate. We said our teary goodbyes. Well Youngest was teary the other 2 put their i phones down for long enough to be given a brief hug and husband dropped me at the station.  Too early. At my request. I needed to collect my tickets and buy that large cup of tea.

Of course the train was running late. Predictably.  So I sat in the platform waiting room sharing despairing looks with fellow travelers and resisting the urge to start one of those episodes of Being Human, 2 of which were no longer going to be enough to fill the time.

The train was delayed due to a ‘train fault’. What sort of fault was not specified.  The lady with the whistle and the flag  (which is no longer a flag but a sort of over sized table tennis bat) who was there to wave (bat) the train off also turned up too early. As she exclaimed to a colleague (this presumably being a 2 person job) she had been unaware of the delay. That didn’t fill me with much confidence. To be honest.

Anyway the bat lady, her eastern European colleague, my fellow passengers and I then played delayed train roulette.

In my experience of delayed trains (which after 2 years of commuting to London is quite considerable) the word ‘delayed’ after the train time means either ‘we have absolutely no idea when the train will arrive’ or ‘the train is so late it hasn’t yet left it’s starting point and we don’t want to tell you because people will get annoyed and we can’t face that’ or ‘if we don’t tell you how delayed the train is when we give you an actual eta you will feel nothing but relief at having some certainty’. All these options add up to one thing. Fuck.

As I was sat there a time popped up. 20.16. Seven minutes late. Now in the scheme of things  (specifically the UK rail network scheme of things) this hardly constitutes a delay. 7 minutes. I laughed inwardly. Knowing as sure as night follows day that this would not be the whole story.  No siree!

Sure enough over the next 20 minutes the estimated time of the train oscillated between a best case scenario of that 20.16 and a worst case of 20.31. I leave you to guess at which time it actually turned up.

Anyway I then performed my ‘the sign said first class was at the front and so I needed to be at the very back of the train to find my reserved seat, which only a fool would travel without on a Friday night going north, but actually first class was at the rear requiring me to sprint almost the full length of the platform’ run. I was somewhat thankful for the delay at this point as I had already consumed all of my large tea which would have been a severe handicap during this manoeuvre.

I needn’t have bothered. Reservations had been dispensed with. Presumably because of the delay. Or maybe because the train was made up of old rolling stock  (which may have explained the earlier fault) the sort which require paper tickets to be shoved in slots on the backs of seats. I guess the people who used to slot reservation tickets into slots have been reassigned since new rolling stock which have computerised displays that can presumably be programed from a cental point came on line. Maybe they are all batting off late trains?

Luckily for me there was a seat opposite a luggage rack. The table already had 2 men seated at it but I am not the sort of lady who worries about such things. In any event the younger of the 2 seemed to be doing some coding on a lap top and the elder was reading Scuba Diving International. Which I expect to appear on Have I Got News For You any episode now. He was perusing an article dedicated to doing up a dry suit properly. Preliminary risk assessment satisfied I dumped case in rack and plopped down. Requiring dry suit man to move his legs.

Off we went.  About 500 meters outside the station we came to a halt. The tannoy man came on to explain that we were stopped at an unexpected red signal and he would update us all when he knew what the actual fuck was happening. Dry suit man sighed and got up returning with a can of Carlsberg. It looked tempting. And I am teetotal. And hate lager.

About half way down the can we started to crawl along at about 5 miles an hour. Tannoy man came back on to say we had to go slowly as we had passed the red signal. On the one hand moving was good. On the other crawling slower than the M1 felt like a lose to be honest. I risked eye contact with dry suit man. We exchanged frustrations about the state of the nation’s railways and used words like third world and bloody ridiculous and then we lapsed into that ‘fellow sufferers’ silence. Coding man (well boy really) risked a tut.

Anyway I am still here at my due into Sheffield time somewhere on the Nottinghamshire/Derbyshire border.  Dry suit man and coding boy have long since left. I miss them. I only have some Japanese tourists left. God alone knows what they must think.

If I ever get there it will have felt like the Great Escape. Or that scene in the Shawshank Redemption when you realise he has tunnelled out with a spoon.

Hope my mates have the kettle on. It’s a long time since my last brew.

A Thoughtful One(sie)… — March 21, 2017

A Thoughtful One(sie)…

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Currently I am wearing my most unflattering garment. I do not say this lightly.

Like every other lady I have a selection of unflattering garments. Period pants. A pair of pyjamas that were bought in a large supermarket chain by my husband when I was stuck without warning in hospital with pneumonia. Swimsuits with the bottoms nearly worn through from over enthusiastic aquapark participation. Sexy lingerie that  once fitted and now, doesn’t. But which I have kept in hopeful anticipation of returning at some point to my previous svelte like self. My ABBA fancy dress all in one electric blue cat suit. Fleeces without form in dubious colours. Baggy thermals for camping and pitch side viewing. And my very favourite trackie bottoms which belonged to a previous partner and which he reluctantly allowed me to take when we split (along with my bedside alarm clock, I left him a bright blue lounge and a yellow sofa still on tick) which now have paint on the bum from a decorating job early on in my marriage.

But all these garments look Dior-like next to this garment. I am referring to my onesie. My Piglet onesie.

I am not a fan of onesies. Don’t get me wrong I think my children look adorable in theirs. We replace them every Christmas. Currently Eldest is bedecked as Chewie from Star Wars, Middlest is the cutest dinosaur I have ever seen and Youngest is a tiger which anyone who knows her will know is better than apt.

So onesies on kids I like. But I am not a fan of onesies on adults. I guess in late tennagerhood or one’s early twenties the wearing of a onesie might be seen as post ironic or some other such twaddle. I vaguely get the idea of cavorting as a dalamation  at Glastonbury, or my local railway station as I saw a few years ago, when one is 22. But only just.

There is certainly an age when onesies are no longer appropriate. Whether one is on a campsite or not. I have lost track of the amount of times I have stood next to a white rabbit (really on a camp site? what were you thinking?) whilst cleaning my teeth in a communal campsite washroom. And realising the person was my age or older. And then seeing them returning to a caravan thus divesting them of the only possible excuse for adult onesie wearing- the cold.

So you may ask why I am sporting my AA Milne inspired outfit. Although to be pedantic about it the onesie has been Disneyfied and as such is not a true A A Milne Piglet which I know annoys some purists. I personally don’t mind a Disney piglet, I once shared a buffet with him in Florida and he was more than adorable.

Sorry I digress. That was it, why am I wearing this heinous pieces of clothing? That doesn’t fit. That hangs below my crotch area in an intensely unflattering way. That is so hot to wear I break out in a sweat merely looking at it. That is not in any way ‘breathable’ being woven entirely of man made fibres. That has poppers, surely only suitable for babygrows and throw back bodies that have returned inexplicably from the eighties to haunt a new round of young women. That causes all sorts of toileting issues. That is essentially hideous.

I wear it because last Christmas my children clubbed together financially and organised with my mother in law the ordering and wrapping of said onesie as my Christmas present. They got Piglet because they know I love him as a character. They got a onesie so we could all wear them as a family.

It was perhaps the most thoughtful thing they had done to date.

And it could have been so much worse.

As it was for my husband who is forever consigned to being a Minion with a dungaree pocket in a deeply unhelpful place.