I wanted to write a piece about books. I penned something yesterday and when I came to read it back just now it was not really that great. My writing has let me down just as I want to write about, well, the written word. Ironically.
And so I am going to try again. Deep breath.
I suppose it is true that it is impossible to be a writer, even one as amateurish as me, without having a love for reading.
In today’s world many, many things get in the way of book reading. The TV with its myriad delights, the internet, social media, work, too many children doing too many things, blogging and the like.
It is also true that the reading many of us do has changed. From lengthy novels to snappy titbits on social media pages, magazine articles, blog entries. The modern world is displayed to us in short, easy to digest slices.
I am currently reading a Hilary Mantel. Not the Tudor ones- which I read in hard back as soon as they came to my attention because that part of history is one of my secret passions, my shelves groan with such tomes- no a piece of contemporary fiction. I am enjoying it. But I only seem to find time to read in bed before dropping off to sleep and so I spend an in-ordinate amount of that short period of time flicking back through the pages to remember what has just happened.
Some novels are like that. They need concerted effort. And the only time I seem to have available for such effort is on holiday. Well that is not totally true. I could turn off the TV. Stop writing. Give up Face book. But I don’t.
It wasn’t always like this. As a child I would curl up on my bed and read for hours at a time. Especially in the school holidays when kids’ TV finished at 12 noon and there was no such thing as the internet.
Middlest has the bug too. Despite all those distractions he spends a lot of time reading. He is a complete book worm. When we can’t find him he is usually on his bed in a position very familiar to me. And I am envious of the time he has to be so engrossed in his books. When I go to his room to bring him down for dinner he looks up almost dazed as he drags himself back from Middle Earth or Sendaria or Hogwarts.
My others read too. But much more in the vein of ‘just before bed’. Middlest reads with a single minded dedication and tenacity that I admire. He gets fully immersed. It is something I remember fondly.
And the thing is it shows in his writing, which is amazingly eloquent for a ten year old, and his verbal language, and his vocabulary.
And so I think I need to rediscover my reading mojo.
So here goes. Some random stuff I have discovered today.
It is possible to drive to my kids’ school and back in under 15 minutes when on a games kit/ cello induced mercy dash.
If you turn up 15 minutes late to an exercise class you just miss the boring warm up and only semi important station explanation. Although I may discover tomorrow how vital that warm up is.
Deleting about 18 months worth of text messages will turn your phone back into a relatively responsive tool.
The shops are no longer full of orange hued home accessories now I have decided that orange is to be the accent colour for our newly decorated lounge.
It is apparently Christmas already.
Allowing the kids off music practice in the morning so they can get more sleep after a school induced late night will see us all falling out.
It is quite pleasant to write blogs in Costa.
Belgian chocolate tea cakes make that even pleasanterer.
My phone’s predictive text will predict good when I want home and home when I want good. Which makes that sentence really hard to get right.
One should keep an eye on boiling potatoes rather than ignoring them to write.
It is best to wait for the ceramic hob to cool down before clearing up boiled over water. Unless you like the smell of burnt J cloth.
Allowing Eldest to have a phone not only heads off games kit/ cello induced emergencies but also allows him to text me cute messages which make me feel better about the tiredness induced morning arguments.
I enjoy employing deliberate grammatical errors in my writing. Not sure why. Probably so I can claim any actual errors are supposed to be there. And to annoy pedants.
My reverse parking sensors are wildly over cautious. And I actually need gate post sensors.
Asking Middlest to be quick out of school will make us late for football training.
People are still wearing leggings that are see through enough to be correctly categorised as tights.
It is impossible to watch the final of the Bake Off a day late and not discover who the winner is during that day. And I don’t mind that much.
As much as I love Billy Joel he doesn’t cut it driving music wise. And I still prefer soft rock.
If I would like Youngest to practise her times tables I must threaten the removal of football training.
I can’t do bullets on my phone and will have to add them at home later before the scheduled publishing time. Home more to do at good I mean good more to do at home.
We can still name all the characters on In the Night Garden. And Makka Pakka is still our favourite. Isn’t that a pip?
I still don’t know when to use practice and when to use practise. So I looked it up. C for noun, s for verb. So I need to practise and get some practice in.
I care about accent colours.
That last discovery worries me most.
So there you have it. Just a normal day. One is always learning.
If you are my husband then obviously the Costa is not part of my normal day. Honest gov.
We have a saying in our family. And it goes like this.
“Have you used your Lady Eyes?”
There are a lot of us in this house. Sometimes it feels like there are far too many of us. But the number of children I decided to have is maybe an issue for another day.
So there are a lot of us. And so we have a lot of stuff.
And it appears that it is my job to keep tabs on it all.
I spend a fair amount of my day mentally logging the position of many useful objects, most of which do not belong to me.
For instance my husband finds it really hard to keep track of his spectacles. They appear to be a mobile object despite having arms and not legs. Whenever he is home and I walk past them I make that mental note so that when the inevitable enquiry is made I can respond with a GPS location. Arm of sofa, window sill in bathroom, atop the laundry basket, on the patio furniture, beside the toaster. And such like.
Last Christmas I stumbled upon a fantastic stand for him to use. That is a picture of it up there. It is positioned on the window sill next to the front door. (And incidentally whilst we are there that is the place everyone should look first for any missing item. Just saying). And the stand helps slightly. He uses it when arriving home. Or when swapping from sunglasses to indoor glasses. But it hasn’t eradicated the whole problem. I believe a string around the neck is the only sure fire way. Or he could just wear them all the time…
And then we move on to my children. I suppose we must. The current items which cause the most issues are Eldest’s phone and Middlest’s I pod. In the case of the former we could ring it to find it’s location but unfortunately it is set by default to silent so he does not fall foul of the ‘no phone use in or between lessons’ rule at school. And Middlest’s is not ringable. We lost both yesterday. And then I found them almost entirely camouflaged on the black granite fire surround in the family room. I have suggested that putting their entirely black electronics on the hearth is maybe not such a good idea moving forwards. Especially when we begin lighting the fire.
When things are actually leaving the house the pressure ramps up. I seem to be the only person who does a mental check list when leaving a sports field. This weekend I had a ‘Lady Eyes’ fail. We discovered this at 7.45am this morning when their school lift was revving on the driveway and Eldest decided he had better check his Games kit and found his Ripstop was missing.
The Ripstop is a compulsory item. A sort of semi-waterproof, pull over the head tracksuit top. There are three in this house. People scoff at my diligent name label sewing which I undertake annually each Autumn. They say I should use a laundry pen on the care label. They don’t have three sets of everything in very similar sizes to out sort from the laundry. A name in the collar is actually as useful for me, the laundress, as it is for keeping the kit ‘safe’. I do not want to waste time hunting for initials on a care label on a side seam.
They all have red and black stripy games socks. I decided not to bother labelling them as it is quite hard to sew a name label onto something as stretchy as a sock. What a mistake. I often have 6 socks that look almost identical but are actually slightly different sizes hanging from my airer. I am sure I am probably ruining Eldest’s feet in the manner of Chinese babies and it probably explains the blisters Youngest sometimes gets after football training.
So anyway Eldest must have taken his Ripstop onto the field for his (very sunny) Rugby match on Saturday. And left it there. At the end of the match I did send him off for his water bottle which was clearly missing but as I hadn’t seen the Ripstop come onto the field and it was about 20 degrees it slipped my mind.
It will serve him right if he gets into trouble at Rugby training today. When heavy rain is forecast. I would laugh but it really isn’t that funny at £20 a pop.
Generally my kids do quite well at not losing their stuff. That is because I get very cross when they do. And I have a rule that if they lose something they will pay to replace it. I am training them early to do their own mental checklist. Obviously there is still someway to go.
I am also a name labelling maniac. I put sticky labels on everything. Including Eldest’s phone. Which he is surprisingly sanguine about. I put a sticky label on every one of the fine liners in the pack of 10 I bought Middlest this weekend. They cost nearly £1 a pen. I felt justified. A lot of stationary gets ‘borrowed’ at school. If stuff is labelled some other child cannot claim it is ‘their’s’. Middlest explained that actually each pen cost 99.90p. I retorted that I would allow him to merely pay 99p for the last pen he lost but £1 per mislaid pen up to that point. I think he got the message.
Compared to their school mates, and possibly because of my mercenary approach, they do OK. Already this term there have been impassioned e mails from other parents pleading for the return of black jumpers, entire Games bags with contents, mouth guards, blazers (yikes £75 a go) and odd shoes. The latter really worries me. How did they get home? Hopping?
When they come out from sports clubs in kit my Lady Eyes checklist follows a certain order:- Blazer, school shoes, mouth guard, other branded items, generic clothing of which I have a spare pair at home, generic items of which I have 5 others at home, black socks. I also try to remember to mentally note any lack of musical instruments but to be fair it is quite hard to miss that a cello is missing. If you see what I mean. The absence of a violin my slip through the net however.
And so I am chief ‘finder/ retainer of all things’. Here are my maxims:-
Always put stuff in the same place.
Always label everything.
Ensure kids are on board by employing a mix of ‘mummy is very disappointed’ and financial penalties.
It helps. It hasn’t really dealt with the husband problem though. I guess he will get so short sighted at some point it will solve itself.
I think I may have introduced you to Youngest before. If you have somehow missed this please see I Know I Play Like Girl and Youngest.
We are very much alike in many ways. Except she can run 5k in under 30 minutes, score goals in football and throw a ball a long way. And I cannot.
In other ways though we are very similar. She is not at all girly. She does not want to wear jewelry. She is not interested in painting her nails. She doesn’t want to read about unicorns having sparkling adventures. She will not tolerate hair drying.
Although now I ponder on it she is probably this way because I am. But any way there it is.
Today we went on our annual clothes shopping trip. Every autumn she puts on a pair of trousers and they are somewhere around mid calf. And we realise that after a summer in shorts she needs new winter clothes.
When she was a baby and small toddler I loved clothes shopping for her. Before she could voice an opinion she did wear quite traditionally female clothes. Although not many were pink. I preferred red, white and blue. And she looked great in dark and bold colours.
And then once she got to Year 1 she decided she would call the shots attire wise. She refused a pinafore for school. It inhibited her running madly around the playground. So into trousers she went. She took it one step further in Year 2 eschewing the polo top and going for collared shirt and school tie. Not even many boys bothered with that.
And so clothes for leisure wear had to change too. She will not wear skirts. At all. Ever. I was slightly worried when she started her new Junior School because they insist on skirts until Year 6. She has been remarkably sanguine about that. But her line has hardened out of school.
She will wear a pretty frock. But only on holiday to a dinner and disco. I bought her a load for Greece, indulging my secret pretty dress fetish, she wore each one twice and then one of them again to a wedding. But now we cannot persuade her into one for, say, a night out. Without histrionics.
Historically we have relied on a certain large department store to come up with the goods winter clothes wise. She has had a capsule wardrobe of dark purple velour jeans, skinny denims, dark blue and purple tops, the occasional cream roll neck and a selection of fleeces. She was happy with this.
This year their selection was frankly awful. We are not interested in tops with ponies on or unicorns. We want long sleeves not short they are for WINTER. She is a rake and so has to have adjustable waists and the only pair of dark jeans she liked (bottle green) where elasticated. They fitted her legs but had about 5 inches spare round the waist. I am not sure who these clothes are made for. Very skinny legged children with fat tummies. Weird.
And so we trawled everywhere else. It was depressing.
My daughter does not want to wear clothes stating that she is a ‘Princess’ or that ‘Prettier girls have more fun’. Yes seriously. My god. I don’t often blaspheme but for the love of all that is holy why would you put a girl in that…. She doesn’t want handkerchief hems. She doesn’t want to layer in the manner of stylish ‘ladies’. She is eight she needs a top and trousers and maybe a cardy. She doesn’t want panda print smocks or jump suits with puppies on (?). I thought we had strayed into the pyjama department when I saw them but, no, jump suits, for eight year olds, with puppies on….my life. I may have mentioned before that she doesn’t like pink, in any hue. Except for that cycling top, she likes that.
We just want fun clothes in jewel colours, that co-ordinate and fit. We will accept sequins, but not if they form a ‘kiss’ on the front of her chest in a vaguely provocative way.
In the end we cobbled a few outfits together. Our final shop of the day yielded some decent stuff. Although we had to scour the racks.
She seems happy with our purchases. And I can relax for another year.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
When we moved house recently I spent a fair bit of time getting rid of stuff. For instance I discovered a 5 disk CD player in the loft that I had not unpacked after we last moved, BC, 12 years ago, from West Yorkshire to here. I decided it was probably time, therefore, that someone else got some use out of it. As I wasn’t getting any use out of it….it being in my loft…duck taped up.
I discovered a lot of stuff we no longer needed. To mitigate the stress on land fill I used Freecycle, Gum Tree, Facebook and for the more ancient stuff that no one wanted, the Tidy Tip. Which has an impressive recycling percentage. I am hoping someone enterprising there makes something of that CD player. Or at least breaks it up for parts.
My children were so traumatised about leaving the only house they have ever lived in that I decided that they could bring everything with them. So aside from binning used tissues, green conkers and irredeemably broken stuff all their many, many possessions came to our new house.
I did actually recycle Youngest’s Blott house which she had made the previous summer holiday out of old shoe boxes and shredded paper. That was a big mistake. She was devastated. We have built another one this holiday with an outdoor pool and flume which has mollified her slightly.
But that aside it all came. As I unpacked the Lego, Hot Wheels, plastic food, doll’s prams, Playmobil pirate ships, models made at infant school, shells and special stones, two tons of plastic medals, board games, toy medical cases, cars, musical instruments (some hand made and leaking rice and pasta), scribbled drawings c 2006 I was struck again at how little of this stuff they actually ever play with… or look at… or basically use.
I have three kids and they have many relatives, including the aforementioned four sets of grandparents, and so every Christmas and birthdays we end up with loads more…stuff. It has slowed down as they have got older but certainly when they were littler the sheer volume of toys each celebration was overwhelming. As parents we certainly didn’t help.
As they have got older we have tried to moderate. I try to buy ‘events’ or large shared gifts, preferably ones that go outside. Hence the recent trampoline. Or consumables. Mine still like a bubble bath and so bath bombs go down well. As does anything edible. Or packets of tattoos, water bombs and such like. Or it is good to buy them ‘gifts’ I would have to buy anyway. Clothes, shoes, stationery etc. And clearly the gifts pre-teens desire tend to be small and electronic and expensive and so take up less room.
We are still left with a legacy of too much stuff.
And so periodically I try to apply my ‘one year rule’. If it hasn’t been played with for a year it goes. To cousins. To friends. To a better home. I often think of Toy Story 3 and how sad my children’s toys must be languishing on shelves and in boxes gathering dust.
And just as I make this decision, which I haven’t voiced to the kids, about some item or other out it comes. Saving it from the one year rule.
Today eldest decided he does still like Lego after all.
They all got dressed up as Samuri Sensays. And played with the plastic and wooden swords on the trampoline. Eldest looked quite authentic. Middlest had on a white disposable overall. Youngest had on a Halloween Cat outfit and a cape. But still that’s what they did.
They built a Hot Wheels track.
I went upstairs and Youngest had set up a Sylvanian families scene in her bedroom.
So there we have it. These toys have all passed their one year test. Maybe they heard me muttering and staged a Woody style fight back.
Whatever, they are staying. I just need to try to rein in future acquirement!
musingsponderingsandrants 
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