The 'Take a Break' Vote

It may have just happened upon your radar that there is going to be an election.

Soon.

I could have told you this news considerably earlier than the National Press because we had a letter from the pre-school some time ago informing us that the village hall would be shut on a certain date in May due to a 'matter of National Importance'. I very much doubted the Queen was coming down to have a go with the skittles and as it's unlikely they would be using it for any kind of secret meeting of the Super Powers (despite the new toilets, smoking shelter and fully working microwave) that left the General Election.

During my travels this week (and I've done about 800 miles - thus the lack of blogging and extreme exhaustion) I drove past a sign for a candidate with unfortunate surname of 'Butt'. His first name was in very tiny writing and his last name was in very big writing and above it all was the word 'Vote.

Poor old Butt.

Anyway, other than voting Butt, the most disturbing thing I've heard about this election so far is that Gordon Brown hopes to swing it on stealing the 'Take a Break' vote.

Yup - that's right - he wants Take a Break readers to take the reins of power in their mighty hands (once they've put down their Superking Extra and torn themselves away from turning Lambrini bottles into garden ornaments).

This worries me (slightly), despite my self-confessed Take a Break addiction .

The last time I looked inside the hallowed pages (actually whilst staying with my Mother in Law) someone had written in to suggest crafting your very own 'unique' mirror frame using (brace yourself) ROLLED UP PAGES OF TAKE A BREAK. They radiated out from the central reflective core like some kind of evil sun.

Wow - talk about crafting things from the words you love.

There is a reason that that such a mirror frame is unique. No other fool would, surely to god, EVER imagine that surrounding a mirror with, what look like giant multi-coloured spliffs emblazoned with headlines like 'My Lover Froze my Pussy and then ate the Hamster' could possibly be a good idea.

There was also a beautiful photograph of someone's 'unique' staircase which they had adorned with pieces of (badly cut) stick on mirror. Apparently it was cheap AND beautiful (two words that don't usually sit well together). A stairway to heaven it was not. It looked like something they'd make on Blue Peter if they ever did a sticky-back-plastic Nevada Whore House.

Do we really REALLY want the Rulers of our country making decisions on the basis of pleasing people who can't actually figure out that:

a) Making used toothpicks into a mug-tree/jewellery holder is NOT.A.GOOD.THING.

b) That if you are 78, 34 stone, answer to the name of Ethel and an 18 year old Turkish 'Adonis' tells you you are 'sexy lady' and 'he love you more than world and make all your dreams come true, sexy sexy laydeeee' then it is not, I repeat NOT, a good idea to 'lend' him £120,000 so he can buy you both the house of your dreams. Even if you will be photographed for Take a Break, peaking out from beneath your sun-visor in a garden somewhere near Pontefract, it isn't worth the pain. Honest.

and

c) That the mark that has appeared on your sofa is not the image of your dead Nan 'Coming Through', it's a sign the dog has stress incontinence.

On second thoughts, policies catering for all of the above could put an interesting spin on things and I can't see the others offering any more interesting alternatives.

Hmm, maybe I need to go into politics.

(NOT!)

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"Quality Time"

One of the things I was looking forward to about my eldest starting school, was having 'quality time' with The Toddler and getting the chance to take him to toddler groups and things and then watch proudly as he blossomed into a marvelous example of his species - able to craft woodland creatures out of Play Doh and act out all the moves to Wind the Bobbin Up.

Only it hasn't quite worked out like this.

The chaos of the house move has left very little time for any toddler related activities and, anyway, The Toddler is (as yet) to resistant to such attempts to tame him. My husband has described him as 'A Spirited Child'. I could think of other phrases but I shall hold my tongue (for now).

I recently tried taking him to a local toddler group but it's not the same as the groups I used to take my eldest son to where basically the kids all got high on custard creams and ran around in circles whilst the parents drank tea and gained 2 hours respite. No this is a toddler group held at a Government Sure Start centre and thus needs to have rules and regulations which ensure that it gives toddlers 'Positive Beginnings' and taxpayers money isn't squandered on producing the next generation of Young Offenders (who probably all went to the wrong sorts of toddler groups where they indulged in Malted Milks and ran around with with buckets on their heads......).

There is structure and routine and expectations (which don't include eating the Play Doh) and there are NO custard creams and certainly no tea (hot drinks you see - lethal. Actually you can access tea if you are very determined but it has to be served in a kind of lidded thermos mug with a slit the size of a 1p piece in the top of it so that it can't maim anyone - apart from you that is. This means that a) your drink never cools down and remains at boiling point for the entire duration of the session, b) the lava-hot liquid shoot outs of the slot and burns your lips and tongue very badly every time you take a sip, however careful you are and c) all this pain is utterly pointless because the tea just tastes like molten plastic anyway) and there is absolutely, definitely, a 100% NO running around and generally hooning about.

I don't think this is the right group for The Toddler.

For a start, between the hours of 9.30am and 11.30am (the hours the group runs for) he is used to consuming around half his body weight in food and packs 90% of daily calorie intake into that morning slot. So it doesn't really work for him going to a group where the only food or drink you are allowed to bring into the room is water. Yup - just plain old water. This is obviously to stop people waltzing in with half the Happy Shopper in their handbags and poisoning their kids with 'non-government-approved' foods on the premises - but it does kind of suck that he can't even snack on a few organic rice cakes should he so wish.

The do however serve a snack. So that's Ok then......

No. It isn't.

Having got him into a total frenzy by insisting he wash his hands, pull up a chair and sit down at the neatly clothed table with all the other toddlers, they then serve him with something along the lines of......

(brace yourself).

A SLICE OF APPLE.

Oh and a glass of water......lets not forget that bit.

Now he loves apple and he's happy to drink water but, after all this hoo-har and what with it being 11am and him being ravenous, he's not exactly sated. In fact he's so un-sated that he starts raiding other kid's plates and generally causing a 'scene'. During this scene the rest of the room adopts the 'total silence and looks of horror' approach. None of this is particularly enjoyable for me so, having stolen some more apple for him, I decide to brave the 'World's Worst Tea in the World's Worst Cup' (I never learn, I keep hoping that one day it will actually taste like tea) and slink off to the kitchen.

I leave him playing with some kind of building blocks.

When I return I'm told by one of the staff that he's been throwing the blocks on the floor.

And laughing.

Whoooooaaaaaa - crime of the century. Next it bewill bricks through old ladies windows whilst torturing kittens I'm sure.....

'Oh' I say, unsure what I should really do now. I mean the moment has passed, he's not throwing them anymore. And he's 2. So in his brain it may as well have happened 2 years ago.
I move him to the other side of the (small) room where he seizes upon a tray of shapes and merrily tips them out.

'Oh he's such a boy isn't he?' says the mum of a little girl who is busy reciting the colours of the rainbow in the correct order. And then spelling them.......

'Pardon?' I say.

'He's SUCH a boy - so DESTRUCTIVE! So DIFFERENT!'.

Different as opposed to what? A statue? A hibernating tortoise? Do girls seriously not tip bricks onto the floor during their toddler years? Cos I sure as hell know some that do. But yours doesn't. Obviously.

I give her a blank look.

If she thinks tipping shapes out of a tray is 'destructive' then clearly she's got some living to do.

And then it's 'rhyme time'.

All the children sit in a nice circle doing the actions and clapping and smiling while the mummy's smile proudly on.

Except for my child who runs to the door and starts sobbing 'HOME! HOME! DOOR OPEN! HOME!' and so we got our coats (well I got mine, I couldn't actually get him in his) and left.

Such was my sense of failure that I had to buy Take a Break on the way home to remind me that my life isn't so bad after all. I wasn't disappointed. Enid from Greater Manchester has written in to advise us that a metal wine rack can be used to hold 'several small trailing plants'. Alternatively Enid you can put wine in your wine rack and put your plants in their pots. Oh and Doris from Wilmslow passes on the information that if you have mice in your house you can stuff their holes with wire wool pads as they can't chew threw it. Erm, hate to tell love but presumably they can just chew a new hole next door to the one you have just blocked up? Oh well, I'm sure it keeps her entertained - roaming round her house each evening, blocking up the new holes with scouring pads....... As opposed to, ohhhh calling in pest control or buying some traps.

Today I couldn't take anymore self-esteem battering so I avoided the toddler groups and took him to Primark and Argos instead, where nobody can hear your child scream as they're all bloody at it....;)

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Take a Break as Therapy?

I shamefully confess that I read Take a Break.

Sometimes.

If you don't know what 'Take a Break' is, it is a weekly women's magazine (although quite a few older chaps seem to write in too) of the very non-glossy sort, mainly read by ladies called things like 'Barbara' or 'Joyce' who seem to all live in Grimsby, Rotherham or Weston-Super-Mare and have sold the story of their misfortune for circa £300 and had it published in the mag.

The stories tend to be one of a number of staples.

There is always a story about 'love deceived' (often a tale about some poor unfortunate who really did believe that 17 year old 'stud-like Miguel' was after their 78 year old portly frame and just could not believe it when he disappeared with the £70,000 they lent him so he could get his hair cut....).

There is a story (or 4) with a moral lesson to learned ('I glanced at an on-line Bingo ad and the next thing I knew I'd pawned my entire home and was working as a call girl to fund my habit').

There is a story involving a pregnancy ('I was told I'd never get pregnant, my dog died, 2 days later I was pregnant, I saw the image of my dead dog on the ultrasound scan, I named my baby Mitzi after the dog and Mitzi loves to sleep in the dog's old basket.....).

There is a story about a birth ('I reached into the deep freeze in Kwiksave and my baby shot out! We called him Nugget').

There is a story about a death (always a tragic tale about a child or young mum getting very ill and dying - I skip this bit).

You get the gist.

So why do I buy it?

Well sometimes I fancy a mag and I point blank refuse to fork out £3.50 on a great big glossy thing which is 40% adverts and aimed at women who appear to inhabit another universe (one with career ladders and dates and time to shape their bikini line). OK the women in Take a Break also appear to (mainly) inhabit another universe but at least I'm only charged 78p for the privilege. I'm not really into 'celebrities' so I that rules out Heat! and the like (and those mags give me flashbacks of my time living in the mental unit) and that doesn't leave much else in the 'light reading' category apart from Take a Break.

And besides - however nuts my life is - the lives of those in Take a Break are considerably more nuts. They are like 'extreme-nuts' (oh god - I shouldn't have typed that - how long before people are finding this site via Googling 'extreme nuts'? We've already had someone visit via 'KY Jelly Fun'.....).

The most nuts bit of Take a Break is the bit called 'The Brainwaves Roadshow'.

This is a page where various 'geniuses' (i.e. nutters) write in with amazing 'brainwave' ideas which will transform your life...... They get £30 if the tip gets published and SIXTY QUID if they include a photo. You can imagine this prompts some rather spurious 'brainwaves'.

I've never read this page and not laughed long and hard.

Here are 3 examples from this week's mag:

Julie from Rotherham wants to tell us all about her amazing 'brainwave'.

'I was fed up of losing my flip-flops around the house but couldn't find a small enough shoe tidy for them. I took an old cardboard bottle carrier (on closer inspection this is the cardboard wine holder you get in Asda when you buy 6 bottles - Julie clearly likes a bit of Blue Nun) and painted it with left over emulsion. It looks pretty and my shoes are always together!'.

The accompanying pic is captioned 'Toes company!'.

And I'll tell you now Julie - it does not look pretty. It looks like a cardboard box from Asda painted a dodgy shade of silver with several pairs of flip flops shoved in the top. It looks demented. Words fail me. Why not just put your flip flops in a box? ANY box?

On to Kim from Harlow:

'When you are being photographed, flatten your tongue against the roof of your mouth to minimise a double chin'.

Sadly there is no photo of Kim so we can assess her tip and her double chin but I've tried it and it makes feck all difference unless I force my tongue upwards with great effort and affect a kind of insane grimace complete with bulging eyes. My chin may be lessened but I look like a frog.

Finally we have David from Stourport-on-Severn. David really is VERY creative:

'I wanted new garden furniture but could find nothing I liked in the shops (judging from what you go on to create David - I'm not surprised). I painted my old table and chairs and covered them in bubble wrap (what?), then put a shower curtain over the top (A SHOWER CURTAIN!), held it in place with drawing pins and tape (wow, now that's what I call craftsmanship...). As well as being stylish (!!!) my seats are so much softer (do you not mean 'so much more crinkly and sweaty to sit on?)'.

David - please - if you are not deliberately taking the piss then you need to seek medical help. I wish I could describe the accompanying photograph of David's patio furniture, but there are no words. And what about the popping when someone sits down? Bubble wrap tends to do that when you apply pressure.

'Oh Joyce, DO sit down while I fetch your tea...... BANG...Joyce? Joyce? Oh my word - it's her Angina.....'.

This edition also feature someone who uses pipe lagging to protect her baby's legs and a man who makes bird boxes out of tea caddies.

I feel so much saner now.

Take a Break = Therapy.

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