Back to the Planet(s)

Woah - where have I been?

Gawd - I'm so sorry.  I don't really know.  I think I went into a kind of hibernation.

You know what I reckon?

Sometimes so much happens so fast in your life that you don't know where you live anymore.  But you just carry on and exist in this strange new world (like I have for the last few years).   And then one day it hits you that it wasn't all a dream or a nightmare or  a weird experiment or part of a plot - it's your actual life forever.   For better or worse and all that shit.

And whereas 'once upon a time' you had a life like THIS you now have a life like THIS.  And that might very well not be a bad thing at all.  BUT it might make you feel a bit weird and a bit vulnerable and it's winter and it's SO FREAKIN COLD DAY AFTER DAY and you never see daylight and you go out on placement in hospitals and live in the twilight world of 13 hours shifts (16 hours some days) and night shifts and then you get flu - proper flu where you lie in bed and think 'god if I was old I'd be dead by now' and then you get better and you go back to the twilight world and you life in a way where you have no time or energy for very much else but somewhere in the back of your mind is your blog and all the amazing and fantastic people who have stuck by your story for so many years and then guilt sets in ...... I need to write, I need to tell them..... but on you go falling through the days and thinking 'I'll do it tomorrow' when everything feels normal again.... but then you realise that you never actually feel normal and that's what this blog is actually about and who it's for - the people who get it - who never really feel quite 'normal'.   So you get your arse in gear and when you are supposed to be writing a 3000 essay you crank up itunes and get back to that thing you love - writing from your heart (rather than writing from 'Evidence Based Research' - excuse me while I fall into a pit of puff adders and think it more enlightening).

So here I am.....

I stuck at this blogging through thick and thin, for all those years, but I needed a break.  A break where I stopped telling a story and faced it.   And you know what? It's a wonderful story - I just hope it carries on being wonderful and uplifting and as hard and shitty and 'weep into a pillow and 5 pints of Strongbow' as it can be I hope it keeps opening doors in my mind and challenging and giving me this amazing ride. For better or worse.

So where were we were? Ah yes I think it was Christmas and I had a very long motorway built the length of my house by my eldest son.  Out of Lego you understand.  Not actual tarmac (yet).   I did manage to erect a Christmas tree around it - there were negotiations about the new route but I won my planning application.   The Christmas tree wasn't the most erect though and actually fell on my head whilst eating my dinner somewhere between Christmas and New Year.  There is a photo somewhere on Facebook to verify this - I'm seen peeking out beneath bauble lined branches and smiling grimly into a plate of turkey curry.  

And then it was Easter (as quick as that!?) and I tidied my whole goddam house (this is worth writing about as I don't think it's ever actually happened before on a real scale, only a 'sling stuff in the cupboards scale'  - let us call it the 'Innagrual tidy') yet within moments I have what is apparently 'The East Coast Mainline' built through it.  Complete with Lego constructed overhead power cables.   It even had a 'first train of the day' and 'last service to Edinburgh Waverley'.  All very marvellous but IT'S THE GROUND FLOOR OF MY GODDAM HOUSE.  

For those of you who don't quite get this, my oldest son as something called Aspergers syndrome.

 Aspergers is about being somewhere on the Autistic spectrum.   If you want to know the official line on this syndrome then Google it - I'm not sure what they say but what I say is that you are a different kind of normal.  You don't 'get' peer pressure.  You don't fall for advertising hype.  You don't give a shit about the 'latest craze'.  You still think Thomas the Tank Engine rocks at age 10 and you have huge admiration for Mr Bean.  You'd rather make something work properly or perfect a system than any kind of frivolous activity like making glitter pictures or doing crafty shit with bark rubbings (I long ago packed the 'children's craft activities' away in a cupboard marked 'fail' and let him get on with constructing the First Great Western rail network out of drinks straws whilst everyone else got pissed in the bar).

Biggest lesson of parenting I can give you?  Don't try and make a cat into a dog and vice versa.  Please.  Just don't.  

Now I've never spoken about my children's real names on this blog as I think they deserve their privacy as I write about my life so frankly it could all turn out jolly unfair (after all, they might not want their school mates knowing that mummy pissed in her jeans and that Grandma's springer spaniel ate Mummy's special rope.....) but we have a nickname for him - the Eggman  (because he had a head like an egg when he was born - obviously) and so I will now call him that from now on.  

His brother meanwhile is known (by EVERYONE) as Spuddy (can you guess why?? Yup head like a potato - good job I'm done at 2 or we'd be on to melon heads).  

Anyway back to the Eggman.

Those of you who have read this blog long and hard will know he has always occupied a somewhat other universe where he is resolutely sane and the rest of us are bonkers.  He likes structure and pylons and days out to nuclear power stations and motorways and maps and trains and is saving up to go to Hamburg.

Hamburg I hear you cry!? Yes Hamburg - home of the world's largest model railway - 'Wunderland' - oh the hours of that we have viewed on You Tube (yes the hours that cost me £89 because I had minimum data tariff... oh dear).

Other kids dream of Disneyland... maybe one day we will get to take a train to Hamburg.

The thing is I had never had a child before I had him.

How was I supposed to know that this wasn't 'normal'? I just thought the education system was inflexible and teachers are pushed into this shit because it presumes everyone learns in the same way and Ofsted is a pile of crap..... (oh hang on.... I might have a point there).  And I thought I was really bloody lucky because I had a kid who didn't want ££££ spent on him going to Alton Towers  - he wanted to drive down the M5 and view the 'at least 5 consecutive miles' of pylons stretching across the flat lands somewhere north of Junction 23.

I had a kid who breathed a sigh of relief at traffic jams and could stand on a bridge for 4 hours.  WAIT!!!! I HAD THE BEST KID EVER!! (Ok I'm ignoring the fact I'm often found screaming PUT YOUR SHOES ON BEFORE I KILL MYSELF or WE CAN NOT SPEND OUR WHOLE LIVES ON THIS GODDAM BRIDGE - MOVE!!!).

And then 'they' told me there was something 'wrong' with him.

'What are you doing Eggman?' said the paediatric consultant

'Building a motorway' said the Eggman from the floor (where he'd been for the whole hour long appointment)

'Where does it go?' enthused the paediatrician, filled with 'what kids like' jollity and enthusiasm

'Erm from that side of your room to the other side of your room' said the Eggman rolling his eyes and looking at the doctor like he was the one needing help.......

And I thought 'well the Eggman has a point and you know what I'm trying to cope with my whole life imploding and the fact that the rest of society finds it odd that my child can draw maps of everywhere he goes from an aerial point of view and loves pylons and trains and thinks jolly phonics is pointless frivolity and can direct you to Carlisle even though he's never been there but YET can't write a sentence you can read but GET OVER IT - on the scale of world problems this is not actually me and the Eggman's problem. Why do you hold writing higher than BEING FUCKING AWESOME?!?!'.

But as any parent of a child with different needs will tell you, the older they get, the more difference shows.  

I watch him walk into school - he hitches up his trousers so they are ALWAYS 2 inches higher than the top of his socks.  I don't actually know how he does it - it doesn't matter how long his trousers are he makes them look like crazy people's trousers (because I suppose they are 'crazy people's' trousers now..... and then he has his hood up (whatever the weather)... and then he asks a 9 year old if they want to play 'selling train tickets' and then a reception age child wrestles him to the floor and he looks up at them and raises an eyebrow and says 'just WHY would you do that? This is MOST unsatisfactory'.  

As more than one person has said to me 'he's like a smaller wilder looking version of Jack Dee'.

And let me tell you people - the world needs more smaller wilder looking versions of Jack Dee.

It could save us all.

And god I love him.  I think he's freakin brilliant.  I think he has the key to a better, less consumerist, non 'keeping up the Jones's' way of being where we aren't sold down a river of debt in the name of progress.......

But anyway back to Easter.  Where according to the Eggman Jesus was killed by an Inter-City 125 (followed by much chortling at the sheer hilarity of such a concept) and for those of you who still need to know more about Aspergers here is a real life Easter-themed practice based learning exercise provided to you courtesy of The Eggman:

A class of school children are told they will all being getting a real life chocolate egg once they have designed a box for it - they can design ANY BOX THEY LIKE!!  Think of the possibilities!! Think of the creativity!!! Think of fun you can have!!!!

So the class get to work....they make dog kennels and JCB buckets and nests and Justin Bieber's thong (ok I made that one up but you get my point....someone probably did)...

...and one boy made a box.

Just an egg sized  box.

A box with a best-before date and a weight and a bar code and ingredients list.

And when asked why he didn't do 'more' he simply stated that somebody else had already designed the perfect Easter Egg box - it fitted just right onto supermarket shelves and into lorries and complied with the law.  So what on earth were the school playing at making them waste time on this nonsense?

And I'd like to publicly thank the amazing Sian (you know who you are) who told me ages ago that I'd need to change his school and gave me the boost to actually do it and put him in a place where they GET his awesomeness.  And don't just say 'your child is like a Sloth'.  

I spent all those years unknowingly having my vision of childhood deconstructed... and I built a new one around the amazing planet Aspergers but I didn't know it had a name and I didn't know that society didn't think it was 'normal'.  I thought it was just the way it was........ which in the Eggman's case it is...... and then I got given another child...... a child who I never tried to do 'normal' stuff with.... because I thought it was all a con!! And then the other child (the one with a head like a Spud) got madder and madder and the official people told me the original child was 'different' and I thought 'ahhhh so THIS is a normal child!! The one I thought was bonkers!!!'.  But by that point the 'normal' one wasn't being quite so normal anymore.... if he ever was goddam normal......

And then the Childminder said 'have you ever considered that your Spud child has ADHD because I've never come across a child more boisterous and crazy and risk loving and bloody MOTOR MOUTHED before - he is incredibly hard work.  You do know that don't you?'.    No I thought - I didn't - I just thought that being a parent is incredibly hard work (because it is!).

And  then I thought 'oh shit, don't tell me the one I thought was bonkers and was then persuaded was normal is actually bonkers after all? Just LET ME REST!'.

But then as several people have pointed out..... he's not got a 'disorder' love, it's just that YOU'RE his mother. Whether he does or not he's who he is and he is also frikkin awesome (at this point I'll leave aside the bit where I said to my mum 'Jesus - for the way this whole child raising shebang is going I may as well have kept on drinking and taken up Crack for the way these two have turned out).

And Amen to that.

And all the people who don't fit the box.

And to all the people who embrace the way of being we have inside our head as good enough.  

And to all the people that challenge society with regards to it's values of what is 'a good life' or what 'adds value'.

The world would be a far poorer place without people who gain pleasure in staring at rows of pylons.

If you don't believe me then you are missing out.

Life would be freakin dull if they didn't exist.

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Welcome Back to My Life

Which is as normal as ever.  (Laughs bitterly but wouldn't have it any other way. Probably).

Sorry I've been gone so long - I'm fine, I've just had loads and loads on, been very exhausted, had to have the MMR vaccine which, joy of joys, made my arm swell up like I'd been bitten by a venomous snake and made me feel awful.  The kind of awful where you have to sleep on the sofa because if you roll over in bed and the duvet touches your arm, you cry..... Needless to say I wasn't allowed the next instalment, with medical opinion being it would probably result in my arm dropping off (maybe), so that particular whole exercise of pain was somewhat pointless. And... well and I've just felt quite odd.  I don't mean like depressed or anything - far from it (I say as someone with an all too up close and personal relationship with depression) but just kind of 'weird'.  Like even more in a parallel universe that normal.  Like my life was/is so kind of surreal I couldn't find the energy to talk about it.  As someone who normally loves to share it this was quite odd and not very welcome.

But last night, again, my kids had me roaring with laughter and shaking my head at the same time and I thought 'get back in the ring girl, you gotta share this insanity!'.

So here is the last 17 or so hours in my life for your digestion:

So yesterday I broke up for Christmas (well I didn't really but today I've made the 'informed decision' not to attend what I'm supposed to attend today).  I'd been struggling with a migraine all day and was kindly dealt some prescription strength codeine by a fellow sufferer.

If I felt other worldly and somewhat messed up before I took the codeine....Well afterwards I was flying.  My eyes were kind of half shut and I kept forgetting what I saying half way through words.

And it was in this state I rocked up to collect my little darlings.

As we emerged from the school gates, me clutching a Darth Vader lunch box and screeching 'carry your own coat if you're not gonna wear it' I noticed that, bad timing or what, a funeral was taking place in the church right next door.   They were in fact, right at that moment, unloading the coffin.

Right on cue, eldest child (the train nut Aspergers one) stops and announces...


'Oh wow LOOK - one of those extraordinary vehicles they use to carry those special wardrobes they put dead people in'.

GROUND. SWALLOW ME NOW (and what's with the wardrobe analogy son??).

'It's called a hearse, a hearse, now COME ON' (dragging his curious brain away from scene of mourning).

Youngest child (lunatic, doesn't have Aspergers, does have obsession with dead things/death etc etc) pipes up...

 'WHAT!?  WHAT!? There is a REAL LIFE DEAD PERSON in there!? For like actual real life!? DEAD!!?'.

Me:  MOVE, NOW (drag children down street in an un-gentle manner).

Get home.  Answer a lot of questions about death and wardrobes.  Go to my friend's house for 'Sausage Wednesday' (this is what happens when it's Wednesday and we all have sausages).  Eat enough almond thins to kill a man.  She burns chips and desiccates sausages.  We laugh. Children describe food as gross (well my eldest describes it as 'somewhat over-done') and sate their nutritional needs with icecream and Haribo (well it's nearly Christmas - apparently).

Get home from friend's house.  On journey purchase a scratch card (I don't know why - blame the codeine giving me a feeling of being intensely blessed)  and win £5. Spend £4 of this on a 4 pack of Stella.

Truly believe I AM intensely blessed.

Get home and decide  that as it's the end of term (for me) and I've feeling jolly to crack open the Stella.

Find out that if codeine messes you up, codeine and Stella is a whole new planetary plane.

Have row with eldest about TV viewing.  I do not want to spend my evening watching 'The Great Trains of Europe' or indeed a documentary about the history of lawnmower development.

Youngest child announces I have to take chocolate cakes to school tomorrow for their party day, as my name is on a list somewhere, but whatever I do I mustn't put nuts in them or 'somebody will die' (this is ever since my kids joined the school after everyone else and the school forgot to inform me they have a serious nut allergy problem.....  I sent the younger one in with peanut butter sandwiches causing a mass panic and exclusion zone situation.  What can I say - you live and learn).

I get kids to bed (somehow) and end up making (non-nutty) Rocky Road whilst dancing round the kitchen to old-skool Prodigy wearing fluffy boots and flying on a codeine-Stella Christmas trip.

The cakes turn out surprisingly well.

Decide to take today off to recover from migraine (and, erm, Stella) as it will do me the power of good....

Wake up to find....

1. 5 year old asleep next to me having somehow entered my domain and stolen an entire King-size duvet

2. A 3 foot stuffed Iggle Piggle staring into my eyes.  If you've never experienced this - it will shit you right up.

3. A cat ON MY ARSE kneading it as if it's its furry cat mother's milky bosom (this says rather too much about the pillow like qualities of my arse, although I can assure you it is NOT furry).

4. A naked 8 year old, sat cross legged next to the bed, holding my charging i-phone and muttering sweet nothings to You Tube videos of freight trains leaving Crewe.

5. The crumbs of some Rocky Road all over the pillow.

Immediately regret deciding to take day off.

Somehow get everyone downstairs and whilst making lunch boxes, cutting up cake, putting on make up la la la etc etc etc, eldest child decides to build a frickin German Autobahn the ENTIRE WAY through the ground floor of my house.

This will be the house I need to drag a Christmas tree through as some point and, err, live in.

He solemnly declares that the road system absolutely 100% MUST still be there on Christmas Eve for Father Christmas to see.

I can assure 100% that is won't be but, for today, it lives.

You think I exaggerate?

Here it is sweeping across the lounge floor (see that bay window - that's where the sodding tree needs to be erected)....

And into the dining room (excuse the woodworm)......

And into the kitchen......

It then enters the bathroom but I don't think you need to see any more (or my dirty smalls all over the floor) to know what it looks like.  

These three pictures do quite a good job of summarising the dichotomy of my life.  The kind of chaos that comes from obsessive order.  Sigh.  

I then have to get the buggers out the house, during which youngest child drags his goddam coat, THROUGH the autobahn.    The obsessively ordered autobahn.

ARGGGGHHHH.

Eldest child can not physically leave house until it's all put back exactly as it was.

Youngest child can not physically leave house because he's been slam dunked into the shoe cupboard with a roar of primal 'you've just fucked up my motorway' rage.

I'm just standing outside trying not to beat my head off the wheelie bin by this point, shouting 'MOVE, JUST MOVE OUT OF THE FRONT DOOR, NOW, OR I WILL RUN AWAY AND LEAVE YOU ALL' (well not the last bit - don't want the neighbours to get false hope....).

Get to school wild eyed and wishing I was sat in rush hour traffic somewhere near Bristol.

Eldest child remembers it's Talent Show Day (I'm informed that in honour of Jesus's birth a number of children will be performing 'Gangman Style').

The one thing he hates more than choirs and church is talent shows.  Even though he will not even be watching the darn thing (he will be sat reading a book about trains I imagine) it sends him into a frenzied fit of anxiety.  I think the very thought of organised 'fun' is enough to finish him off.

I walk back from the school making a promise to buy all those who work with my children a bottle of wine for Christmas and to get back to blogging......

AND BREATHE ;-)

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What 30-Something Women Do in Bed

Yay - first blog post from SHINY NEW FULLY WORKING LAP TOP (from which children are banned and thus it will never be graced by endless You Tube videos of freight diesels leaving Crewe Junction or be forced to simulate a Welsh Mountain Railway climbing from a perilous valley - and for that I am sure it will be eternally grateful).

Now that I have a lap top which doesn't take most of the morning to fire up and keys which don't crunch on crisp crumbs and small fragments of custard creams, I shall be with you more frequently.  Promise.

Anyway - I need to confess something.

I need to talk to you about what I do in bed when I've had one to many drinks and have no company.

Ok here goes.

I end up on Ebay and bid on random crap essential bargains.

This habit started during a very lonely bored period quite some time ago and the realisation that with the Ebay app on a smartphone you were only 3 CLICKS AWAY from mountains of 99p tops which would smell of someone else's life and not fit arrive in the post like a gift from someone that loved you and add cheer to your day.

You can imagine my surprise when I confessed this to a close friend, who we shall call Emma (because it's her name) and found out SHE DOES EXACTLY THE SAME THING.  We'd probably been bidding on the same slightly mishapen stripy jumper from New Look, hearts racing as we topped the £2.40 mark.

I felt reassured that others shared my secret shame - I used her behaviour to normalise my addiction.

We became co-dependants.

Sucking each other down into 99p used clothing hell.

And then, when dark night I went to far and everything changed for ever.

 It was Christmas and I got extremely drunk and woke up to an Ebay alert informing me that I had been 'Outbid on the Leopard Print Velour Suit'.

The WHAT!?

WHHHHAAATTTTT!!?

I don't know what surprised me more - that I'd bid on it or that someone else had.

Imagine if I hadn't have been.

Imagine if I had just torn open a parcel one day to find myself face to face with Jonathan Ross channelling Patsy Stone crossed with velour roadkill.

It could have done permanent damage.

Anyway since 'Velour-Ville' things have calmed down and I broke the habit (you know, went so close to the Ebay edge and pulled back before things spiralled into something Peter Stringfellow might wear).

When I went to see Emma recently I asked her how habit was these days.  Under control?

Errr no she said, through a glaze of pure shame.  And then she pointed at her kitchen worktop.

There, on the kitchen worktop amongst the normal paraphernalia of a life raising 4 small boys (i.e tonnes of crap) was a large stack of silver foil catering containers.  You know - like the ones your Pork Balls come from the Chinese in.

'Huh?' I said, thinking I'd missed something.

I hadn't.

In her 'wisdom' Emma had bid on and 'won' a large amount of silver foil takeaway containers on Ebay.

Why?

Your guess is as good as mine which as good as hers.

WE HAVE NO FREAKIN IDEA.

I suggested she open a 'One Night Only' takeaway before rolling around laughing and being quite mean about her container collection for the next week.

But my gloating smug laughter was misplaced.

Oh yes sireee.  

Less than a week later I received the following email:

'Your 2013 Scottish Deerhound Calendar has been dispatched'.

What?! WHAT!!!?

And, lo, so it came.  A large photographic calendar of very big dogs standing around in desolate Highland landscapes and, during some months, accompanied by big hairy men in kilts and maybe a large weapon or two.

And I will have to gaze at it for an entire year.

A constant reminder of my impulsive, spontaneous proper batshit crazy moments in the bedroom.


Sometimes I even scare myself.  

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LET'S GET COOKING!

Well it's Monday morning and it's pouring with rain and I am supposed to be doing housework as I have a day off (for this read 'I am planning to carry the laundry upstairs and then get the Hoover out and inevitably suck up about 400 Lego men's head)....therefore I am blogging.

It occurred to me earlier that we haven't talked about cake for a while. The Great British Bake Off is back on BBC2 and currently provides me with my highlight of the working week when it comes to evening entertainment.  I'm saying nothing about the fact I get over-excited about whether or not someones creme brulee resembles a pool of snot other than 'oh my god I'm turning into my Mother'.

Some of you long time followers may recall my adventures in baking Iggle Piggle - which bizarrely ended up on the first page of Google if you searched for 'how to make an Iggle Piggle cake even though it emphatically told you how NOT to make one.  Go figure.  If you need to explore this adventure in food dye, icing that resembled a placenta and Lambrini it's here: http://slightlysouthofsanity.blogspot.co.uk/2009/08/how-not-to-make-iggle-piggle-birthday.html

Anyway several birthday's have passed since then and thus several cakes.

Last year I made the younger child a cat cake - this became known as the Psychotic Pussy.  I don't have a picture (I can't think why) but I seem to remember him crying when he saw it and people looking awkward.  The cat looked angry.  VERY angry.  And it was covered in silver balls and jelly tots.  My ex was still living in the house at this point and I think the cake, in retrospect, may have kind of channelled my inner feelings. And no doubt I decorated it after drinking 4 cans of Stella.  This was the same birthday that I realised late the night before I had no wrapping paper and had to wrap his presents in wallpaper samples.  First and last jigsaw puzzle he'll ever get wrapped in Laura Ashley's 'Kimono Duck Egg'.

This year his dad made him a Russian tank.  It was far less alarming.

For the older child last year I had the idea of baking a volcano. As you do.  If you want to make a volcano cake here are your instructions:

1. Get a jug (kind of dome shaped) and cook a sponge cake in it.  By a jug I mean a Pyrex type one.  If you use a plastic one you will end up with a smell akin to the one I once experienced when a friend's younger brother put a Lego mat under the lit grill pan......

2. When the cake is cooked take it out the oven (always helps) and cut out a cone from the middle. This is to make the bit the lava rises up through and spills out of.  The 'vent'.

You will note from this photo that the part removed from the cake has an unfortunate resemblance to a sponge penis.  But this is the shape you are looking for.  You can do as you wish with it - it isn't needed for a grander plan.  I ate it.

3.  Decorate the cake so it resembles a huge pile of dog vomit after a dog ate some ball bearings and mustard and bled internally an erupting volcano (and yes that IS icing, it is NOT ketchup and mustard).

4. Realise that unless you do something bloody quick nobody is going to have a clue what the bloody thing is other than a tragedy in carbohydrate form

5. Stick a plastic Jurassic looking tree and a surprisingly camp dinosaur (tragically out of scale) on it and VOILA - A VOLCANO CAKE!! Or dinosaur standing over a fresh kill...

This year, not to wanting to turn away from a seemingly winning formula, I cooked another cake in a jug and made this......

What do you mean you don't know what it is!?!

It's a tornado.

Obviously.

There were originally more chocolate fingers 'whirling' round it to symbolise the winds but some, erm, went missing.  Down my throat.

By the time I served it there was 4 left.

The only warning I'll give you on this recipe is that if you stick small things in the cake to resemble storm damage be careful of accidentally swallowing something like a Playmobil guinea pig.  Nobody wants that coming out in their poo.  Least of all Mary Berry.

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Back to Reality

I'm baaaaack.

Sorry - as usual never a dull moment. 

I had a lovely holiday with both kids - it can be summed up by hot, funny, amazing food and drink which means I can't  do my bra up properly....(presumably due to weight gain rather than smuggling large amounts of pastries home down my cleavage), kids acquired an inflatable boat and spent large tracts of time 'taking the bridge', met someone from the Internet in ACTUAL REAL LIFE WHO READS THIS BLOG (woah!!) and was staying in same hotel, may have ended up drunk on stage lying down and showing my knickers to a 50 year old man from Guildford (sadly they were the neon pink Anne Summers ones), small child enjoyed fresh tuna and olives, bigger child enjoyed, erm, chips and icecream, one child got heatstroke and I had to borrow a buggy from reception so we could still go the harbour and drink cider sight see - sadly the buggy was pink.  Well that was a debate I'm surprised hasn't made it onto the Trip Advisor reviews (as in 'holiday ruined by screaming child in lobby being forced into pink buggy by aggressive rough looking woman who we'd earlier seen on stage showing her vile knickers)......but I got him in it (by telling him all children in Spain have pink buggies).   Anyway all went well apart from: 

- getting locked on my own balcony whilst both kids were in the swimming pool.  I'd only nipped up there to get a towel (which stank of piss anyway as one of the children wet the bed and kindly got up and padded it all out with our beach towels.....). I know I know - I think too much Rose at lunch affected my judgement. This lead to me hanging off the balcony in my bikini shouting at my eldest 'DO YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT THE  RECEPTION IS? NO? ITS THE PLACE WITH A DESK AND A LADY.  YOU NEED TO GO THERE AND TELL THEM YOUR MUMMY IS STUCK IN ON HER BALCONY. DO YOU KNOW OUR ROOM NUMBER BECAUSE I DON'T? OH GOOD WELL DONE (thank god for amazing visual memory).  AND TAKE YOUR BROTHER AS HE CAN'T ACTUALLY SWIM'.   

- the 9 hour flight delay on the way home.  With no money left.  I have never been so relieved to get on a plane and see a steward who would accept credit  cards.  'What would you like madam?'.....'well first things first 2 cans of Magners'....(he laughed knowingly).  Youngest child promptly knocked can of Magners over himself....so  he was stinking of cider with matted accidentally dreadlocked hair and as soon as the seatbelt signs were off standing on the seat shouting at the kid behind 'you are ACTUALLY a nutter'.  To be fair he had a darn good point.  At one point this child  had been threatening to punch his mother because she wouldn't buy him a KitKat.  She looked at  me with pleading eyes and said 'I  don't know how you do this on your own'.  I smiled whilst thinking 'well maybe because my kids don't threaten to punch me over shit confectionary' but she looked somewhere past breaking point so I left my thoughts unsaid.  

This wonderful  journey peaked when I got to Luton (as it naturally would). Eldest child began to cry (as you would if it was midnight and you felt sick and found yourself in Luton) and promptly collapsed on the floor in the arrivals bit and fell asleep on a rucksack whilst clutching a stuffed guinea pig (as in a soft toy - not an actual product of taxidermy).   Of course at this point younger child began hopping from one foot to the other shouting 'I need a wee, it's coming now'.   Now I'm pretty chilled but even I baulk at leaving a small sleeping sickly child alone in the middle of the floor while I go to a toilet in a completely different part of the building. I stood there thinking 'help' when a graceful lady swept upon me and said 'I  have been watching you....'.  Oh great I thought....but she guarded the guinea pig clutcher whilst I took the other one to the toilet.  Thank you - whoever you are - thank you. 

Some time later my friend turned up and I went to try and find the bags.  Of course at  this point eldest woke up, sat up, and rained forth vomit across the guinea pig, bag and a large portion of the floor.   

Is it wrong that my first thought was 'shit - whose going to tow the other suitcase now?'.  

When we got to the taxi youngest child refused to get in due to the booster seat being pink... at this point I 'may' have screamed 'do you want me to pull down your pants right here right now and spank your butt IN FRONT OF ALL THESE PEOPLE? NO. Well GET IN THE CAR THEN' (I don't smack him - I just reached the point of being 'that' mother people glance at then go home and write outraged Internet threads about).  And he got in the car and fell asleep within 3 minutes.  

So now I'm back and it did me the power of good getting away and the very next day my children started a new school which touchwood is so far FANTASTIC and they embrace my lovely, interesting, mind blowing older son as an individual who has different learning needs to the majority and does not have (quote old teacher) 'an attitude problem' which 'makes life very hard for himself'. 

He's only been there 2 weeks and already the difference in him is amazing.  He's even broken his lifelong 'huge routine to say goodbye that if it's broken results in total panic and inability to do anything all day'.  Walks in with his amazing Support Worker smiling and laughing!!   MIRACLES DO HAPPEN PEOPLE! If you kick enough arse and befriend other arse kickers......  Don't get me wrong a lot of shit still happens but we need to celebrate the victories.  

So new start, new school and on Monday I start a new career...... wish me luck people....it's gonna be a hell of a ride.  

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My Head Hurts

Woo - blogging fail. Managed to get through the whole of July without posting.  

Sorry. 

Will do better. Promise. 

It's not a case of nothing happening - it's a case of too much happening.  I wrote it all down for someone the other day and nearly blew their mind. So I'll give you it bit by bit.  The words 'you couldn't make it up' tend to some up my daily existence. But anyway I am back and it hit me today that it's: 

a. August 

and

b. I only have a matter of days left until I hit my mid-thirties.  Gulp.  

Obviously as soon as I hit my 'mid-thirties' I will magically transform into a mature and sensible adult woman who doesn't forget she's stored the cat food in the oven and accidentally ignite it (true story - don't ever do it.  The smell is something nobody living in a world with refrigerators and far far removed from apocalyptic genocide should ever have to suffer). 

I will also be able to source matching bed linen and keep socks together.  And remember to send people birthday cards.  And not have a car interior that resembles the bottom of a budgerigar's cage.  

But don't hold your breath or anything.  Just in case you know, it takes another year or something to properly grow up....

Anyway, so it's August which mean school's out for the summer.  It also means I'm mainly home with my kids because I walked out one of my jobs (the very dull one involving 2000 pieces of paper a day) in order to spend 'quality time' with them before I go off on my new venture in September.  Conveniently enough for them I also acquired some kind of throat problem which limits my shouting abilities.  Which is probably how I ended up in bed with a migraine for the last two days....  

Yesterday was the pinnacle of the pain so I lay in a darkened room going in and out of sleep while they came and went informing me of gem like facts such as... 'I've done a giant poo' or 'my brother keeps looking at me'.  I was highly grateful for this information.  

No really.  I was.  

I'm not sure what they did all day other than fight over whether to watch Kung Fu Panda or 'Freight Trains Around Crewe' (a real DVD - one of many supplied by Dave's Railway Films http://railwayfilms.co.uk/ - I note his top seller is "A cab ride from Hull to Leeds". Get it while you still can.....) and recreate Narnia using rice crispies but full credit to them for not drawing blood or setting fire to anything.  

Anyway after making them suffer the kind of school holiday Monday I remember (being shut in a living room for long periods of time watching strange daytime TV which always seemed to include Saved by the Bell and something involving Jacque Cousteau's underwater world - with maybe a touch of Colombo post lunch) I  promised that today I would take them out. 

I am frankly in no fit condition to even face daylight - let alone drive a car - so the only activity I could consider needed to involve being seated and being in the dark - so that meant the cinema. 

So this morning I managed to get dressed and get them in the car.  For reasons only known to me (and actually not even known to me) I decided to forgo my standard flip flops and put on a really high pair of heels.  I can't fathom why? Maybe because I looked so shocking I thought raising myself up to the height of Lily Savage and staggering slightly would stop people clutching their children to their chests as I approached.   

Anyway, somehow we got to the Odeon and found ourselves waiting in the foyer with several dozen other families.  Only they all looked kind of 'subdued' -  my children NEVER look subdued.  Particularly in large open spaces.  They rolled up and down the disabled ramp and ran around shrieking whilst I  slumped against a pillar with bed hair and stupid shoes on pretending they weren't mine. 

Then the small one stopped and proclaimed, loudly, 'When I grow up I'm going to find David Cameron and kill him'. 

Oh.

Oh god. 

Now I need to put this into context. He's not actually plotting an assassination and I don't want to find the police at my door arresting me for 'hate blogging' or whatever.  It's like this... There's a place near here that they used to like to go and play and it's been shut and they are building houses, more bloody houses, all over  it.  Houses that will be 4 bed executive homes - so not actually do anything for the people that are trying to bring up families in tiny little flats or still having to live with their mums until they are 48 even though they work hard etc etc.  Anyway the kids were pretty peed off about this and asked why it was allowed to happen so we had this big conversation about councils and back handers and how the economy works and growth and all that kind of stuff and I said the government likes to keep houses being built as it provides jobs yadda yadda yadda and he asked who is in charge of the government. So I said David Cameron. And now he wants to kill him. 

Simple. 

He's 4. 

He might grow out of it. 

He might not.  

Up the revolution.  

But I digress.  Anyway I told him not to say that (quite so loudly) and gave him a ball of blu-tac that was in my pocket. 

He promptly stuck it on his forehead and proclaimed 'I AM IN AN INDIAN LADY'. 

I confiscated the blu-tac and turned his attention back to over-throwing the government. 

Then we went to watch the film - which for the record was The Lorax.  Which there is no point in me reviewing because: 

a) I have a severe aversion to Dr Seuss and all that sail with him.  Ever since I was a small child The Cat in the Hat et al have given me 'The Fear'.  This is no doubt a vastly unpopular school of thought but there we go. I remember hiding Green Eggs and Ham at nursery school in an attempt to remove it from my psyche.  I preferred those stories about a dirty dog called Harry who did stuff like dug holes.  He was the real deal.  

b) I have an even more severe aversion to musicals (with the exception of West Side Story - which is dramatic and involves passion, drama and people getting stabbed).  

This turned out to be a Dr Seuss musical.  

But anyway I got to sit in the dark for two hours - it was shame to have to  pay £18 to sit in the dark for two hours (EIGHTEEN QUID!!) and cringe but there you go.  At least nobody is trying to build a housing estate on me. 

And then I suffered the ironic torture of having to take both kids to Sainsbury's in order to purchase more migraine medication from the pharmacy.  

As I queued at the counter one child hung to the underside of the trolley emitting a high pitched beeping noise and the other swooped a large pack of Canesten Combi Thrush Treatment from the end-of-aisle discount display (that's right ladies! Suffering the joy of a summer time vaginal yeast explosion? Well you can pay slightly less for the joy of having soggy chalk in your knickers for the next few days if you get down to Sainsbury's!) and shouted to anyone who would listen 'LOOK THIS IS SECURITY PROTECTED! SO DON'T STEAL IT'.  He's very into security protection at the moment. Sadly.  

The pharmacist handed me the brain-pain pills and chuckled 'and I wonder why you need these?'.  

I stared back with glassy eyes filled with echoing depths of agony. 

Another lady came over and said 'this is the hardest job in the world and nobody ever says well done - now  YOU BOYS GET OFF THE FLOOR AND LISTEN TO WHAT YOUR MUM SAYS'. 

And that's not a migraine hallucination, she really did exist and she really did say that. 

Jeez. I really must look like shit......

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We're All Going on a Summer Holiday

Hello People.

Cripes - what started as a debrief about my daily random life, for the entertainment of my local friends, has now had over 80,000 hits.  God. All those people knowing about the time I weed in the turn-ups of my jeans and my chemically burnt public hair. Gulp. But thank you  - all of you. I love that my life doesn't just make me laugh.

Anyway best I get on with the blogging show. I've been somewhat absent recently for two reasons....

1. Firstly I had to calm down a bit.  All is fine but I found myself having to restrain myself from strangling a woman in Halfords and had to go to the doctor before I ended up in local paper for assaulting someone with cheesestring in Asda.  More of this in another blog post.  But I'm fine. HONESTLY. Better than fine. It's just you don't ride this rollercoaster life without, eventually, needing to rest up and walk on mental crutches for a while.  

2. Secondly I am drowning, yes DROWNING, in paperwork.  Every hour I'm not at work I seem to be filling in forms.  I have more forms on my table than I've had hot dinners.  Granted I seem to live off slices of ham, pickled eggs and Hula Hoops but you get the idea... One of these forms is FORTY TWO PAGES LONG.  It's the MacDaddy of forms.  Every time I start it I have to open a box of chocolates or a bottle of Strongbow. And then I have to go to bed before I finish it.  Maybe I'll tell you all about it one day.  Long story.  It's not a happy form.

But anyway two of these forms were applications for my children's first ever passports.  Yes folks - MY CHILDREN ARE GOING TO LEAVE THE COUNTRY.  With me of course.  This means that, for the first time since my honeymoon, which was something like 9 years ago, I am going on a foreign holiday.  Woo hoo!

I'm going with a friend I met in a psychiatric hospital.  Seriously. She's awesome. She was in there with her twins the same time I was and we bonded over a million tears shed over not being allowed anymore little blue pills (Lorazepam not Viagra), dusty stacks of out of date copies of Heat magazine and the fact we weren't allowed hair straighteners less we tonged ourselves to death.

After my marriage breakdown she booked a holiday (not sure how that works!?) and told me to come with her.  So I said yes.  I haven't paid for this yet and at this rate probably will sometimes around retirement age but you know what, sod it.  It's time to take my children on that big old bird in the sky.  I think the original plan of hers was that I'd also experience some kind of holiday romance but there was a rather obvious flaw (or two) in this plan. Not to mention we are going to a very much 'family' complex (I have a feeling we are going to alter the tone slightly - I didn't say lower - just alter).  And anyway I don't need a holiday romance now because I'm too tired for any of that business.  And yes, for those of you wondering, still happily rolling around with a long distance lorry driver.   Never a dull moment......

The thing is, when I tell people this (the bit about taking my kids abroad, not the pashing a lorry driver thing), they frequently seem to recoil with horror 'what? You are taking them ON YOUR OWN!?'.  Well yes.   I live with the buggers ON MY OWN don't I? How much harder can it be in a hotel environment where the (pre-paid) alcohol starts being served at 10am? DURRRR'.

 'What?' they proclaim 'even the younger one!?'.  Yup - he's coming too.  'But what about the flight!?' they say with bulging eyes.   Err it's like 3 hours - I'll take huge amounts of sweets and tell him that if he makes too much noise the pilot will get distracted and the plane will fall out the sky leading to us all dying in blazing fireball.

Simple.

Like the time he threw a tantrum on an intercity train because he wanted to consume an entire multi-pack of crisps and I said no.  'Look mate'  I said 'do you actually WANT to turn into a huge obese critter that could potentially explode? No? Well there we are then. That's why you can't have 6 bags of crisps. Here have a boiled egg'.   Two business men stared in awe/horror at the little scene.  One burst out laughing. The other shook his head (though that might just have been about the presence of a boiled egg in a confined space).  I'd like to think the one laughing was the one who had children.

In reality it's actually the older one who will find it harder.  Because, it struck me the other day, I'm taking him to an island with:

- no railways

- no motorways

- no impressive industrial zones

I broke the news to him gently.  His lip quivered.  'But but but!' I interjected with my big smiley happy face on 'it's ok BECAUSE the electrics will be different! Different plugs, different sockets, even the telegraph poles will be different!'.

He contemplated this news in silence for a few moments then smiled and nodded.  And then asked a lot of questions about the electrics I couldn't actually answer.  And then proclaimed how tragic it must be for the local not to have any motorways.

So there we have it.  Most children will be looking forward to ice cream and swimming and sun and dancing in dodgy discos.  He's looking forward to examining the plug sockets.   Best I don't ever take him on a camping holiday without electrical points then.....Or anything wilderness focussed.

However to do all this I will need children's passport - and more on that farce tomorrow.  

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