Wiggle It Just a Little Bit

Well this blog post WAS going to be backed up with a photo of me semi-dressed but  those of you hoping for flesh shots will be disappointed to hear  that the phone the photo was on was stolen last night by some £*$&£ in a nightclub  in Weston-Super-Mare.  

This says a lot about nightclubs in Weston-Super-Mare but it also means that I am somewhat massively gutted  today and have lost over a 1,000 photos, mainly of my children, that my laptop refused to back up. 

However, lets not dwell on this matter and move on to the lighter topic of how I came to posses the photo in the first place. 

On Friday I went to Asda to buy bread, milk and cheese and, of course, came out about £80 poorer with 3  pointless nighties, a bottle of vodka and no bread.   

Whilst browsing the clothing I spotted a really cute blue summer dress with white hearts on it and a pencil skirt. Quite retro.  I think they call them wiggle dresses - but that makes me feel slightly unsettled for some reason so I will just call it 'the dress'.  

So I took the dress  into the changing room and put it on.

Or tried to.  

The top half slipped on easily but the bottom part was totally and utterly wedged on my hips.  I checked the label concerned I'd picked up some kind of micro size. 

Nope.  

Right size.  

OK so  that means I HAVE to get it on or my self-esteem for the day will be destroyed by the knowledge my thighs are 4 sizes bigger than my bust (which would be going some) and I am officially, in the eyes of Asda pattern cutters, a mutant.  

15 minutes of grunting, heaving, panting and yeah, wriggling, later the dress was on.  

Yipee!  Ok the skirt was so tight I couldn't move - let alone walk - but I had made the point that I was that size and the dress was actually really nice.  Although for anyone to see this you'd need to be mounted on wheels and pushed about the place like a one of those toy dogs.  

What I couldn't work out was why there was an extra flap of material hanging from the waist.  A kind of loop with an open  end which if you held it up you could see right down to my knickers.  I figured it was some kind of wrap part that should be under the top part of the dress round the bust area but couldn't make it worked it out so shuffled, with 2mm footsteps, out to the changing room assistant......

Me: Excuse me - you don't know where this part of this dress is meant to be do you? 

Changing room assistant (woman in her 50's with a weatherworn expression clearly thinking 'What Fresh Nut is This?'): Yes love - it's for your other leg.  

Bravo - I'd spent 15 minutes of  my life inserting my entire body into the right hand leg of a playsuit.  

And then I had to get the bugger off again.........

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I Gotta Little Something For Ya.......

Ok Ok you need to know what happened to the ladybird. 

Well - after much deliberation it was decided (by the look of it's legs - allegedly) that it was the BAD ladybird. 

The dreaded Harlequin (if, as is probable, you haven't got a chuffing clue what I'm on about Google Harlequin Ladybird and I'm sure all will be revealed - I'd do it and post you a pic but I'm 'that' tired I can't be arsed).  

Anyway so they were pretty sure it was the bad one (but bear in mind at this point they didn't realise there was a very incredibly rare 'breaking the laws of extinction' variant potentially out there) but they still couldn't kill it - even via the total immersion method. So what did they do? 

They laid it's brightly coloured body on the bird table and 'left  it in the hands of nature'. 

Or beak of nature presumably. 

And what happened then people? We will never know.  

Gulp.

I, on the other hand, have been wondering at what age you become just like 'totally and utterly OVER' to your children.  You know, at  what point do they stop hanging off your thigh screeching 'but MUMMEEEE it was MY packet of Hula Hoops' and keep sticking their head up your skirt and start walking 20 steps behind you in town with their hood up and fringe over their eyes (a look I still specialise in on days I just don't want to be here). 

The idea of this seems currently impossible to me.  But, then again, once upon a time in the mists of early motherhood, it seemed to me impossible I'd be able to walk down a street without holding myself upright via a pram and guess what folks, it finally happened!

My neighbour's have a 13 year old son and I think I can safely say HE wouldn't walk down the street with me. In fact,when I go  to the door to collect parcels he visibly quakes.  

This 'may' have something to do with the fact that every night at around 7pm he  hears me scream 'IF YOU ARE NOT NAKED BY THE TIME I COUNT TO THREE THEN YOU WON'T GET ANY PYJAMA TIME' (anyone with small riotous  children will empathise with just how hard it is to get them dressed for bed) but there have been several other occasions where I have caused him considerable fear.  

Just last week, as Spring crept  ever closer and the hint of the sun's warmth edged across my face and a surge of wild ecstatic 'woo hoo' coursed through my veins, I went out  to feed the guinea pigs - a carrot in each hand.  

Standing by their hutch, carrots aloft, I suddenly (and to my own surprise) launched into a rousing rendition of MN8's 1990's classic 'I gotta little something for you'....

For those of you unable to recall this pinnacle of music magnificence, here we go.....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBDb6wIEcIQ&noredirect=1 

And I'll give you just three guesses to figure out what happened next.....

Sigh.

Yup  - just as I roared.. 'Coz the gift I got ain't going back', I spun round, armed with carrots and there was next door's 13 year old standing on their patio open mouthed.  

Scarred for life I presume.

Sorry kid but you had to realise at some point that the gift I got ain't going back.......

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The Ladybird Assassins

Apart from the health aspects and increased general risk of dying, I really don't know why people worry so much about getting older.  If you are lucky enough to keep your health and mobility (and I know many don't) then I've noticed it's actually very liberating. 

I keep meeting women over 50 who are just, well, loving it.  They are freer, wilder - have a little sparkle in their eyes.  

OK I am scared about my potential menopause (lets face it - me and hormonal drops don't mix.  Current evidence has it that they result in me going 'proper batshit crazy' as I'm sure the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders doesn't phrase it....) but that aside I'm looking forward to being able to get away with ever more random and outrageous behaviour without anyone so much as rolling an eyeball.  

I have had plenty of evidence of this in recent times.

A couple of weeks ago  a friend and I met in a sophisticated 'bar restuarant' for 'absolutley two glasses of wine as we both could NOT get drunk or risk hangovers'. You know how this ends don't you? The night of course peaked with me shouting into the ear of a terrified looking DJ potentially young enough to be son that he wasn't doing a good enough job and if he gave me the decks I'd  'take the roof off' (more like create an electrocution incident and plunge the club into silence) before going home and cooking an entire bag of Quorn sausages.  Naked.  I know I was naked because the next morning I found all my clothes folded up in a pile next to the frying pan.   I can only fathom the thinking behind this was 'time saving' and I decided to get naked whilst cooking meat-free sausages.  I'm sure Freud would have something to say about that but hey it could have been worse. I could have tried to put the bins out. 

Anyway, whilst we were behaving like, erm, fools and having a lovely time we couldn't help notice that many of the young 'uns weren't.  In a pub with live music all the hipsters were sitting around looking serious or at the most nodding, while we leapt around and errr, had a good time.   In another bar young couples sat silently picking wax off candle holders (why waste the money on drinks? I wanted to shout at them 'for god's sake just go home and have sex - NOW - before you have to get up 5 times a night to clean up wee and answer questions about black holes and potential hauntings) while me and my friend laughed until we had mascara running down our respected cleavages.  

I for one am glad I'm not a 20-something again.   It's was all so, well, complicated.    

The next set of evidence for 'Life After 50' is my mum. And her friends.  They are frankly bonkers.  But in a way that you can't help admire. 

Take this genuine conversation my mum and her friend (who we shall call Pam for reasons for not wanting to name her) had today.

Phone rings....

My mum says the following: 

Hello

Oh Pam, hello

(Big Gasp)

13 spots you say? 

Hmm

13? 

I'm not sure 

I don't know. I thought the spots were more hexagonal in that case? 

Will you!

How are you going  to do that? 

(Another gasp)

Well yes, Google it first. 

To be safe, yes. 

Call me when you know. 

Oh dear. 

In France you say? 

Unfortunate 

Mum gets off phone. What's going on I ask (fearing Pam has perhaps caught some kind of rare venereal disease whilst in a tent in Brittany).

Well she says, you're not going to believe this but Pam has found a ladybird.  In her conservatory.  And it's got 13 spots! THIRTEEN!  Anyway we fear it's one of those new ones - the intruders - the Harlequins. Well of course if it is a Harlequin then Pam will need to kill it.  But she's struggling with the concept. We decided if it needs to be done she's going to wrap it in toilet paper and flush it down the loo.  So she's not actually having to kill it. Just cause it's demise, so to speak.  Anyway she's off to fire up the computer now and she's going to use Google to suss out whether or not it needs exterminating.  But it will take a while as her connection isn't very good so we shall have to wait and see. I'll update you later! 

Me: Riiiiiiight (befuddled glaze). Anything else? 

Mum: Oh yes - her daughter in law's Grandmother died.  The funeral is in France.  Unfortunate.  

I reach for my 14th cup of tea and ponder life the universe and my mum.  

Later I got home and Googled 13 spot ladybird myself and guess what? They are some ultra rare finding thought extinct, a small colony of which was found in Devon last year after 50 years of being extinct.... Great moment in the history of ecology and all that.  

Shit. 

I've called my mum but nobody is in.  I'm now panicking she's over at Pam's reading Last Right's over the toilet and flushing away an important biological specimen.  I've left a message on her answer machine telling her she could potentially have been involved in the extermination of the insect equivalent of the Sabre Tooth Tiger but she hasn't called back yet.  

So we shall just have to wait and see.

See - being over 50 - a whole new kind of fun........

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