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 ;-)

Tweet

Decks the Hall with Boughs of Sorrow

Well that's that over and done with.

It's Boxing Day and I'm still here.  The children had a lovely time trying not choke on Ferraro Roche and tattooing me with stegosaurus ink stamps (they want me to get a large one tattooed across my butt.   Well that would certainly be a talking point wouldn't it? But presumably only amongst those who ever saw me naked from behind which, lets be honest here, is currently somewhere around the 'zero' mark.  Still- it could potentially put a whole new spin on the grand unveiling next time I go for a smear test).

Anyway Father Christmas came and he even found a tree under which he could put the presents (more on that next blog).

He also found some stockings but maybe the less said about those the better......  Oh ok I confess.  I realised late on Christmas Eve - when I say late I mean at the point the children needed to hang them up - that I didn't actually have any stockings for Santa to fill.  Gulp. I think in previous years I used a big woolly pair of over the knee walking socks but in the 'post break up I am going to throw most my life in a skip and start again' insanity, I think I must have looked at them, thought 'huh? When do I ever go on some kind of walk that involves actual WALKING SOCKS!?' and given them to the charity shop - forgetting they were actually my children's Christmas stockings.

Clearly this has 'parenting fail' written all over it BUT all was not lost! Having dismissed my son's offer of a school ankle sock (kind of limiting in terms of present volume) and my lace hold ups (they'd get laddered and cost more than a fiver) I stumbled upon.......... a pair of thick cable knit tights from Next.  Luckily I'd drunk circa 3 litres of wine by this point so it instantly occurred to me to slash through the gusset with a pair of kitchen scissors and present each child with a severed tight leg.   The tights were unfortunately a sort of flesh colour (thus why I never wore them - they were an ill judged purchase to go with a tea dress and look 'wholesome'.  It didn't work).   So basically on Christmas Eve it looked as if two withered limbs were hanging from my fire place and the children did keep asking 'but why are they torn?' but hey Santa still filled them! And anyway - surely that's what Christmas is all about? The memories? Even if they are of your mother's torn tights.

Hang on in there people - we are on the cusp of a New Year and I have no idea what it will be other than never ever dull.....

Tweet

Christmas: the report

A few individuals have inquired how my Christmas went - clearly fearful that my father may have spontaneously combusted when the gravy was late to the table or had a seizure over the use of the wrong type of parsnip.

Well the marvelous news is that he was on best behavior. The whole day passed with no over the top shouting, no threatening to strangle anybody because they put a log on the fire using the wrong lifting method, no tirades over cutlery. Nothing - nadda. Just a whole lotta love in the air and a very good meal indeed.

Wow.

I almost thought he'd turned over a new leaf but then it was Boxing Day.....

We were all invited to a drinks party at some friends of theirs and so off we trotted. Well me and mine walked - he went in the car.

The drinks party passed reasonably well (at one point he dragged my husband backwards by the neck of his jumper for 'standing in the wrong place' which had the potential to turn 'interesting' but luckily my husband is a mellow man.....). There were various other slightly disturbing scenes including a cocker spaniel on the table licking a game pie as someone carved it and a man below the age of 35 in mustard coloured cords and braces - but all in all it was 'fine' and the kids were suprisingly well behaved ( although I do confess to feeding them both trifle which I hadn't tasted - I LOATHE trifle, any food involving soaked foam should be banned - anyway it turned out the trifle contained something like 3 bottles of sherry and a slug of port so maybe that the secret?).

The afternoon wore on and my dad got to the point where he suddenly wanted to go home (he feels safest at home - he has complete control of the cutlery for a start) and, like a Roman Emperor moving his army, everyone had to pack up and go NOW.

I pointed out that I was just starting on a cup of tea (yeah - how rock and roll am I?) and as we were walking we would follow on in 20 minutes or so.

Ohhhh that set him off. Red rag to a bull.

He has a 'thing' about people walking once dusk nears. He is convinced they will (even if totally sober, very alert and very sensible) stray into the path of a passing boy racer and that will be that.

'IT WILL BE DARK IN HALF AN HOUR' he bellowed'.

'HALF AN HOUR!!! YOU HAVE 10 MINUTES TO FINISH THAT CUP OF TEA AND LEAVE! UNDERSTAND!?'.

Yeah - I understand. If we don't leave within 10 minutes you will come back and find us with a fistful of Asda bags and make us wear them home.

I kid you not.

One of the most excruciating moments of my adolescence was when a group of friends came to stay at my house so that we could attend a local beer festival.

Just as we were about to leave my dad appeared in the driveway informing us that if we set foot outside the gate without some kind of Hi-Vis gear on we would all be roadkill. He now owns a fine set of reflective clothing that wouldn't look out of place landing planes at Stanstead but this was in the era before that arrived so - having scared us all half to death - he went back into the house and emerged with.....


....a selection of Asda bags.

He then informed a gaggle of teenage girls, all done up to the nines and wearing their finest frocks (a Beer Festival was about as exotic as it got in our local vicinity) that they would make a hole in the bottom of the bags and wear them like tabards over their heads because the white plastic would 'save our lives - and ensure drivers had several seconds less thinking time before they braked'.

I''m not sure if that's totally true - I would think that seeing a selection of teenage girls dressed in supermarket plastic bags and high heels may well slow the braking of some drivers but hey, I doubt anyone's run trials.

I need not say anymore. I never lived it down. Social suicide in one easy fix.

God knows what he'd do now in the days of 'Bags for Life' - I don't think a hessian weave number with ladybirds on from Tesco has quite the same reflective powers.

Anyway (I'll get back to Boxing Day now) his agitation at the imminence of dusk was a sign that his mood was on the turn and as we arrived home, sure enough, he was throwing a tantrum because he'd asked for a cup of tea 10 minutes earlier and it hadn't arrived proving his theory that he's the least important person in the house and now EVERYTHING WAS RUINED AND IT WAS TOO LATE.

At this point we left. Fast. And thus preserved our memories of a very lovely Christmas.

I hope you all had a good one - nice and chilled out and nobody was forced to go out wearing an Asda bag......

Tweet

'Tis the Season to....

....deliver your child to school stinking of booze.

The child that is, not you (although if I didn't have to drive it would be a distinct possibility).

Oh. Dear. God.

Let me start at the beginning (I think).

Last night was my eldest's Nativity Play.

Now Nativity Plays are (sadly) not what they used to be (a few old tea towels and a 15 minute slot on a damp Thursday afternoon).

No.

They are now full on 'stage-productions' involving ticket allocations, lighting, stage-school like theatricals (and that's just the parents), evening shows that go on for HOURS and DVD sales.

This is all very well if you've got, for example, a 7 year old who loves to sing and dance and you want to have a 'night out'. It's not so good if you've got a very tired 5 year old who thinks the very concept of 'dressing up' belongs only in Japan (along with earthquakes, ball lightening, deadly jelly fish invasions and anything else which could signpost the end of the world - like choirs......and Nativity Plays).

He had to be the world's saddest looking cow sat beside that manger (mind you I'd be pretty sad if I had to wear a costume made out of an Asda Smartprice Black towel.......).

Anyway - it was a late night and I also had to drag the toddler along.....

Now the toddler was actually very very good. With the help of copious crisps he did no crying or running around but he did talk a little bit. He kept saying 'my brudder! MY BRUDDER! HE GOT EARS! HE GOT HEAD!' and at the end when Santa came on he yelled YEEE HAAA! - which made everyone laugh.

Everyone that is except perhaps the world's snootiest mother who was (of course) sat right in front of me. With a flick of her glossy bob and a pout of her red shiny mouth she shot me a look of pure evil, put her finger to her lips and went 'SSSSSHHHHHH' in a really rather aggressive manner. She then tutted, rolled her eyes and went back to watching a load of 5 year olds in bits of tinsel and a 'donkey' that was actually dressed as a bear sing words nobody could understand.....

I was, to be frank, rather annoyed by this - it was a children's show, siblings were INVITED (it said so on the letter) and there were plenty of other kids there, including older ones fighting with each other. The lad behind me was playing with a beeping games console and a mad old bloke at the back was going 'get on then, I've a pint a cider waiting back 'ome' while one of his relatives kept yelling at him to 'get in Jim! GET IN!' (as if he was actually some form of stray sheep wandering too close to a busy road).

If the toddler had done anything heinous like thrown a tantrum I would have carried him out of there before you could say 'pass me the gin' - but he didn't.

Much as I wanted to put her in a headlock and give her a good kicking I just sat there and seethed.

Anyway roll forward several hours and we all over-slept so this morning was even more chaos than usual.

Today is the last day of school and I realised I hadn't taken the presents in for the teacher and her assistant so I (very) hastily wrapped them and off we sped.

'Mummy what are those presents?' inquired my eldest (clearly hoping they are actually for him).

'They are for your teachers'.

'But why?'

'Erm, because all the other mothers take gifts in and if I don't it marks you down as the kid from the cheapskate family who never say thank you and what with your brother as well I've got 9 more years of dealing with that school. You need all the help you can get.....'.

'What?'.

'Sorry darling, it's to say thank you and have a Happy Christmas'.

'But what IS IT?'.

'Wine'.

'But MUMMY, teachers don't drink WINE!!'.

'I can assure, they do' (well all the ones in my family do......copiously).

'Mummy you don't drink wine do you?'.

'Erm, yes' (surprised he hasn't noticed this....).

'But mummy you shouldn't'

'WHO told you that!?'

'At school'

'Let me get this straight - school told you, specifically, that mummies shouldn't drink wine!?' (I'm already penning an angry letter about indoctrination of small minds and the nanny state to the Headmaster).

'No Matthew told me. He said mummies mustn't drink wine because of his mummy and the bad things'
(Mental note: work out who Matthew his and, more importantly, who his mother is).

'Riiiiiggggght, do you have any more details on this situation?'.

'No'.

Somewhere around this point a car shot round the bend of the narrow country lane doing about twice the speed it should have been doing.

There was a screech of brakes, a scrunching of hedgerow and a loud 'TING' noise shortly followed by an overpowering scent of summer berries, mellow spice and...........oh sh1t......alcohol.

The 2 bottles of red wine that were sitting on the passenger seat were now sitting in the footwell and bleeding heavily into the carpet.

We screeched to a halt in the school car park (which ironically enough is also the pub car park....) and I leapt out, grabbed the fractured bottles (still clad in their jolly snowman wrapping paper) and started to leg it (to where I don't actually know, I was heading for some flower beds).

My path was interrupted by a bemused looking mother and her rather alarmed looking daughter.

'Are you OK? Oh my word! What a mess! Is it the children's drink bottles?' (sorry but WHAT!? You think I send my kids to school with MERLOT in their lunch boxes!? My budget doesn't run that high).

'Errr no - it's wine'.

'Oh'

'It's for the teachers, well it was for the teachers.........'

'Oh how awful. You'll have to have a valet done'.

'Errrr yeah, I guess I will' (my first thought was actually I'd need to buy some more bloody wine and what a bloody waste but clearly she values her car interior more than I do).

'Or have you got a dog?'

'No' (sorry but is she suggesting that a DOG will do the same job as a professional valet!? Do dogs have a reputation for being incredibly good at sucking wine out of carpets!? I must investigate this further.....).

'Well we (smiles across at smug looking daughter) made the teachers biscuits they can hang on their Christmas trees! Much safer! Teee heeee'

'Well f'ck you' (no I didn't really say that, but it would have been fun.....).

And it was at that point, as she and her daughter trotted off across the gravel with her glossy hair swinging in the winter sunshine, and I stood there with red wine running down my wrists and wine soaked sweet wrappers stuck to my feet, that I realised it was 'her'. The 'sssshhhhhhhhh'er from the Nativity Play.

Figures.

Anyway it wasn't just the carpet that got soaked in wine, it was also my son's book bag..... Biff, Chip and Kipper certainly are having 'Fun at the Beach' - they're absolutely sozzled.

So I delivered my wine-scented, presentless, rather late son to his class, got back in the car and wondered just how much merit there would be in sucking the carpets dry myself?

I then went to Asda and bought two Christmas Cactuses in jaunty wicker baskets.

Let's see if I can actually get them there.....

Tweet

Star of Wonder.....

Star of Light....

Keeping 5 Year Olds Up At Night.

Who would have thought it?

The Star of Bethlehem - light of life and signpost to the sweet Saviour Jesus Christ or (in fact) sinister harbinger of doom with dark and evil overtones?

Well if you are 5 it appears that the later is the case.

My eldest is in his first year of proper school (Reception) so the preparations for the Christmas Nativity are in full swing and it's the Tale of Bethlehem a Go Go.

He was quite into it all until they got to the bit with the star.......

'Mummy?'

'Yes'

'Stars only follow you around if your baby, don't they?'.

'Erm what!?'

'If you are a baby a star goes over you and shines, yes?'.

'Oh I see - well yes if you were the Baby Jesus then yes, apparently so'.

'So that's not going to happen to me?'.

'Erm no. You have nothing to worry about on two counts there. 1. You are no longer a baby and 2. You are not, by any stretch of the imagination, the Son of God'.

'Who?'.

'Nevermind - but no - there will be no stars following you around'.

'Or just hovering over my bed?'.

'No'.

'Are you sure?'.

'Very sure. Look even if you were Jesus you don't sleep in a stable, you aren't in Bethleham and there is nobody hanging about on a camel. It's from the olden days. The VERY olden days'.

'Like steam trains?'.

'Kind of'

'Good'.

And then, the very next morning, he opened up his advent calendar and there, lo and behold, was a large, very pointy, star with a dagger like point facing downwards.

'Ahhhhhhhhhhhh - THE STAR!'.

'Jesus! I mean, yes for the Baby Jesus - ONLY'.

'But why? Why does he make a star come?'.

'It's, erm, magical'.

'Is it aliens?'.

'Well interesting point but allegedly no'.

'I think we need to shut this door of the advent calendar. And keep it closed'.

'OK. If that makes you feel better'.

'Yes. And I don't want to hear ANY more about it'.

And here endeth the lesson.

Could be interesting.

Tweet

Noel Here we Go

So tomorrow it's December.

GULP.

I haven't actually given much in the way of thought to Christmas yet. I do know that I put all Christmas Decorations in one box when we moved and wrote XMAS DECS on the side but I haven't seen them since. Could be interesting.....

Not to worry - my family will supply the food and the entertainment.....(if you wonder quite what type of entertainment this is, then lets just say it won't be charades).

I suppose I'd better get my finger out - we don't want want a repeat of the Great Peg Bag Debacle (also known as The Great Dining Room Curtain Massacre).

You see as a young teenager I decided to do the worthy thing and MAKE my mother's Christmas present (Ok it wasn't just worthy - it was also free - especially if you made use of fabric she owned which you pilfered from her chest of drawers and used her sewing machine. Teenagers - don't you just love 'em?).

I knew that she needed a new peg bag for her washing line (the previous one got blown into the pond and drowned) and she likes chickens so - VOILA! I would fashion her a chicken-themed peg bag! With the vast amounts of skill and crafty-creativity that I don't possess....... Now come on - you KNOW you want one.....

Of course I left it until the last minute which didn't help - especially when I opened the fabric drawer to find:

- an old pair of my dad's pyjamas in a jaunty gingham check.
- some felt.
- lots and lots of very thick embossed floral fabric in dark green and reds.

Hmmm.

Ok here goes.

I made the bag bit of the bag out of the floral fabric.
I made the strap out of one leg of the pyjama trousers.
I made a cockerel's head (not unlike the one on the front of the Kellog's cornflakes box) out of the red felt.
I stuck on some white felt for his eye (this subsequently fell off on the peg bag's virgin voyage so the cockerel ended up blind - but that was, to be frank, the least of his problems).

It looked......? Well it looked different. I would give it that at least.

It was certainly unique.

However, even through the eyes of a child, it was utterly sh1t.

I quickly wrapped it up (lest it give me nightmares) and stuck it under the tree.

Christmas day dawned and the family watched as my mother ripped off the festive wrapping paper and it's psychedelic glory was revealed........

My brother collapsed in a fit of mirth.

My father bellowed 'WHAT IS THAT!?'.

And my mother?

My mother shrieked 'IT'S MY DINING ROOM CURTAINS!'.

Oh. Dear. God.

Yes - it would appear that I had actually come across a carefully stored pair of fully lined Sanderson-print dining room curtains waiting to be hung and, erm, cut them up to make the world's most uniquely hideous peg bag.

My mother loyally hung the peg bag on the utility room door and I'm sure that every time she walked past it she felt a stab of rage but, hey, it's the thought that counts!

Right?

Tweet

Karma, Karma, Karma, Karma Christmas Tree...

..it comes and goes, it comes and goooooeees.

(That's for those of you old enough to remember Boy George in the days when he confined his notoriety to singing chart hits and taking heroin, rather than chaining rent boys to radiators and being sent to jail).

ANYWAY - during the whole debacle of my missing ball and it's subsequent discovery, nestling amongst several million volts of electricity inside a sub-station - I alluded to it's theft being 'karma' for a very bad thing I did to a village Christmas tree during my youth. As I've moaned about my kids enough this week I shall confine tonight's post to the Tale of the Disappearing Christmas Tree.

It happened like this.

Somewere in the depths of rural Somerset a woman turned 40 in the run up to Christmas. This woman happened to be my friend's mum and thus my friend (and I, as her 'best friend') were allowed to attend the party which was held in a local village hall. The run up to the party was highly exciting and we took great thrill in being put in charge of decorating the hall - even if this did result in us arranging all the balloons in such a fashion that they represented a set of testicles with a large erect penis rising from the midst of them.

There was a huge buffet and alcohol to be got hold of so all looked promising.

Can't go to far wrong can you?

Well the thing is that everyone else was about 40 (funnily enough) and in our eyes rather dull (this was in the middle of farming-centrale so much of the conversation revolved around the price of bull calves and milking yields, not that thrilling to your average teenage girl looking for love, lust and something more appealing than the smell of cow muck). After a while we got bored - VERY bored. And bored teenagers and alcohol are a very dangerous combination (as I'm sure I will see again when my children hit that magnificent era of their lives).

After a while we de-camped to the porch area of the village hall - just so we could 'hang out' away from the 'olds' - and in this porch area was the village's Christmas Tree. A Christmas Tree obtained via charitable funds donated by the church...... So what did we decide to do with it? Leave a small gift beneath it? Add a touch of decorating brilliance? Say a prayer for world peace?

No.

We hoisted it on our backs, smuggled it across the car park and then, using our combined efforts, tossed it like a rather magnificent caber, over a very high fence and onto the very posh golf course whose land neighboured the car park.

Why?

I honestly don't know. All I can say (in a true teenage fashion) is 'I dunno, it seemed like a good idea at the time'.

Then we rolled around laughing, went home and fell into alcohol induced deep sleep.

Until circa am the following morning when my friend's mum (the birthday girl herself) came rushing into the room and woke us to inform us that she needed to talk about 'something very serious which had happened in the village'.

It appeared that the cleaner had arrived that morning to see to the hall and the tree was missing. The tree was (apparently) irreplaceable - sourced from church money of which there was no more - and Christmas was - to all intents and purposes - over for the village hall now.

All the parties and concerts and little events planned in the run up to Christmas would be stark shadows of their former glories - because the bloody Christmas Tree was missing.

Her mum - having booked the hall - was being held responsible and, by this point, threatened with having to fund a replacement (they claimed the tree had cost £300 - THREE HUNDRED QUID!? It looked like a £30 job from Wilkos but hey, who am I to argue?). Her mum was practically shaking and seemed fearful that at any moment an angry posse would arrive at the front door demanding she hand over the tree. So she begged us - and I mean BEGGED - to let on if we knew anything, anything at all about the tree's whereabouts.

Oh. Dear.

We glanced at each other nervously. We clearly both felt bad. Really bad. What had been a drunken prank with no obvious consequences (or in fact reason) had now turned into a 'really very bad thing'. As our eyes met we could almost read each other's minds and almost at once we spoke the same words....



.... 'it was Sian'.

Sian was a girl who lived round the corner from the village hall/golf course and she was a huge pain in the arse (I doubt she reads this blog - it would be beneath her). Although she hung out with us from time to time (begrudgingly - in very rural areas you sometimes don't have a lot of choice about who you share taxis with or go to parties with), she clearly viewed us all as mere peasants (on more than one occasion she declared us 'common') whilst, at the same time, she was prone to strange outbursts of violence. I once witnessed her slap a boy for offering her a stick of chewing gum and, at one point, she slammed a pizza into my face for no apparent reason whatsoever. One minute I was standing at a buffet talking, the next minute I was breathing in cheese and pineapple and she was screaming at me. Odd. Very odd.

Anyway - we didn't like her and neither did any of our mums.

"But Sian wasn't at the party!" said my friend's mum.

'Err, she crept in. She saw there was a party and came and sat in the porch with us. She was acting a bit mad and suddenly picked up the Christmas tree and ran off with it. We tried to stop her but she was obviously drunk or high or something'.

Now, quite how plausible it was that a young lady from one of the counties leading Public Schools would randomly appear at the door of a 40th birthday party before abducting the village christmas tree, is somewhat debatable - but the point is my friend's mum believed us.

'SIAN! Well I might have known it! Why didn't you say something at last night!'.

'Because we're scared of her and she was acting REALLY mad!'.

'Right I'm phoning her mother right now!'.

Oh.

Small hole in our plan there.

'Errr, let us do it, she will talk to us, we can get her to reveal the location of the tree.....PLEASE!'.

'No, I really need to talk to her mother. Does her mother even know she was out? I can't let this go'.

'Errr, I think her mum's away at the moment. Her Gran's looking after them and you know she's really old and stuff. Let us talk to her'.

And thus ensued us making a fake phone call to Sian, in front of my friend's mum, complete with fake conversation with the speaking clock about the tree's whereabouts:

'You did what?'

'The time is 8.06 precisely'.

'But why?'

'The time is 8.06 precisely'.

'Where exactly along the fence?'

'The time is 8.07 precisely'

'The golf club you say?'.

'The time is.....'.

We then had to call the golf club and explain and persuade them to retrieve the tree from the bunker into which it had fallen. To say they were none to pleased would be something of an understatement.

And after that we pretty much got away with it - although we did cringe mightily and hold our breath when my friend's mother approached Sian at a local gymkhana and, pointing angrily at her face, shouted "I know ALL about you and the Christmas tree and quite frankly I'm disgusted. I hope you realised just how much trouble you caused! Don't expect to EVER be allowed into my home, EVER again! You got that? Good!" before marching off. I think Sian was slightly confused.

Or at least I thought I got away with it - but the theft of my ball proves that what goes around really does come around - even if it waits a decade and a half to do so.

Tweet

So there goes the festivities....bring on 2009!

So here we are. The end of the 'Festive Season'. Well it is here anyway. I had enough of the children chasing each other through the lower branches of the Christmas Tree and using the beads as snakes, so it's all been thrown into the garden ready to be sawn up and put in the green waste bin (the tree that is - the children are in bed). My OH is in charge of the sawing so I expect it will take place in around March....but don't hold your breath. It might just sit there until the forces of nature take hold and turn it into compost. I'm still waiting for the skirting board in the kitchen to be stuck back on - and that fell off in about 2003, and the situation with the shower head, curtain rail, bedroom light and living room lamp got so pressing that I had to actually beg a friend to loan me her husband.

Anyway, I hope everyone liked their presents. It can be so hard to get it right but I do love being able to do nice things for people I care about and I'm very thankful for everything I got. Of course sometimes it can and does go horribly wrong (I won't even mention gifts from my Special Pasta SIL here because she doesn't even try and get them right. Or in fact doesn't even get them, as was the case this year).

I will never forget the Christmas when my Granny opened a present from her (so called) best friend only to find it was a book about Witch Craft and finding your inner witch. Bearing in mind my Granny is a woman of floral pinnies and pastry making and anti-macassars - I don't think it was quite her cup of tea. Still, the rest of us laughed until we cried and then laughed some more.

When I was about 12 the same Granny made my Christmas Day memorable for all the wrong reasons. She decided to buy me a bra. Eeeehhh - I'm cringing typing this. So RIGHT in the middle of the peek of my hormonal shame and awkward phase I sit in front of my mum, dad and brother and tear open a pink bra (which, for some reason, was decorated with boats - perhaps she hoped I'd court a sailor?). I blushed crimson and tried to stuff it down the side of the sofa but oh no, Granny wanted to make sure everybody knew what a (direct quote) 'big girl I was now' and announced to the whole room 'ooohhh look everyone, she's got a BRASSIERE! HOLD IT UP NOW. Ooooh what a BIG girl you are now!'. Gulp.

My mum has a habit of getting me make up - which is lovely because I love make up. It's just a bit 'hmm' that it nearly always has 'not for re-sale' written on the bottom of it and is a free gift with purchase.... God love her. Then there was the year she decided to 'adopt' me a dormouse as some kind of nature conservation scheme. A lovely idea, except I didn't quite 'get' it at the time and on opening the envelope got very confused and said 'mum, what's this? You've given me one of your letters by accident instead of my present. Something about bloody dormice....'. Once again - gulp.

Anyway the Festive Frenzy is over and although it was all lovely, I have to say I am looking forward to getting back into the swing of normal life. Or however normal life can be around here.

Tweet

All Wrapped Up and Ready to Go...

So here I am watching a programme about men getting killed by logs (I kid you not - Channel 5, something to do with chainsaws and giant trees) while my OH leaps around the kitchen shouting 'GOT YA' as he attacks the bluebottle infestation with a somewhat manic vigor. The flies are the latest assault resulting from last month's rat epidemic. The rats, I am pleased to inform you, are now dead, thus the flies.... I might tell you about it one day but lets just say I don't like wearing tights anymore and I still scream when I see anything small and brown, like the label inside my husband's coat....

How marvelously festive!

No actually it is. Life is great and I've already had to go back upstairs twice to reassure my eldest son that the strange noise he can hear is actually next-door's dart board being used and not 'someone' on the roof.

It's been a lovely day - in a slightly odd kind of way.

I decided to take the train down to the nearest town this morning so I could get some food for tomorrow. It would be slightly grim to have nothing to eat but Weetabix on Christmas Day. Things were going swimmingly until A said 'oh look mummy! There's the town going past REALLY REALLY FAST'. Que me going 'OH MY GOD, WE'RE ON THE WRONG BLOODY TRAIN!' and getting lots of 'oh what a bloody ridiculous woman' dirty looks of seasoned London commuters'. Yeah I used to be one of you - and then I had kids and became one of 'them'.

So I ended up in Central London, on Christmas Eve, with two small children, a large all-terrain pram and a no appropriate ticket..... Oh well, there's nothing like an adventure to lift the spirits.

We (eventually) got to our correct destination and into the supermarket. I won't say anymore other than I actually shed real tears at one point and I needed an alcoholic drink afterwards.

I then found myself 3 miles from home, with 1 pram, 1 crying baby, 6 large heavy bags of shopping and 1 young boy who (apparently) couldn't walk another step. Tiredness then totally zapped any rationality from his little brain and he did that beserk, insane, brain rewiring mad thing only very tired small children do. Shouting that mummy wasn't walking in a straight line (I hadn't had the wine at that point), demanding to know why mummy wasn't walking in EXACTLY the same pattern as him, crying that mummy wasn't doing 'nice talking' and demanding to know every last detail about traffic light sequencing and railway timetables.

Through all of this, with every step I took the nasty plastic bag handles cut deeper into my wrists (I do have those eco-friendly big hemp bag things but, errr, I forgot them - again), my shoulders throbbed more, the traffic roared louder, the sky threatened rain more seriously, the baby cried harder, the whinging increased, my blood pressure rose and then...... all the bits of shopping I couldn't carry and were balanced on top of the pram crashed to the floor. I stopped the cavalcade and stooped to pick them up, standing there with a cucumber in one hand and half a salmon in the other while A sobbed that I had to 'carry him home'.

I forced myself to think kind thoughts, silently shouted at the sky and just about managed not to use the cucumber as an offensive weapon. Although, in hindsight, I think I may have waved it around in a slightly unusual fashion judging by the looks I got. Or maybe that was the salmon...

But now we are home. Children are bathed, cuddles have been had, baths have been bathed in, fluffy towels have wrapped small bodies, food has been safely stashed, candles are lit, presents are wrapped, magic is everywhere and wine has been poured...


... HAPPY CHRISTMAS! Have a good one.

xxx

Tweet

Changing Traditions

So here we are, the Eve of Christmas Eve and I am about to embark on my first EVER Christmas not spent with my mum and dad in the family home.

Wow - does that mean I'm actually a 'grown up'? It's only taken 31 years, several homes (one with a mortgage),1 marriage, 2 kids, 2 nervous breakdowns, a multitude of dead pets, 1 near death experience and a brief spell in a psychiatric unit and WOOO HOOOO - I've finally reached the level where you stuff your own turkey..... Only I won't be because the whole roast thing seems like a lot of work and we are going to my parent's on Boxing Day anyway. But I digress...

So this is it - we are doing it for ourselves and this makes me realise that we need to establish our very own Christmas time traditions. You know the kind of thing - carrots for old for Rudolf, mince pies for the Elves and a stiff sherry for mum, sorry Santa.

I'm not sure what traditions our family is going to build but I can, perhaps, provide an insight into the ones that it will not.

My (long suffering) OH has now done 13 (yes THIRTEEN) consecutive Christmas's with my family and, if he hadn't witnessed it himself, he probably wouldn't have believed it but he can vouch that what I am about to tell you is, unfortunatley, true.

So here are some of the scenes which I am sure are indelibly engraved on his mind and which, I am sure, he will not want me to recreate for our family Christmases (although it can always be arranged):

1. My brother getting pinned to the sofa and nearly strangled by my dad for (and this is a direct quote) 'putting a log on the fire like some kind of a f***ing dick'.

Confused? We were. One minute we were all watching Christmas Day TV on the sofa and then my dad asked my brother to put a log on the fire. In any other family surely this would have resulted in, well - a log being put on the fire? But in ours it all ended with my brother underneath my dad, hands round throats and accusations of penis like log loading. Marvellous!

2. My mum being ordered to take everyone's coats to Oxfam on Christmas Eve.

Yup - one Christmas, actually I think it might have been my OH's first ever time spent with my family, my dad opened the door to the cupboard under the stairs and flipped. There were TOO MANY COATS.

To be fair there were a lot of coats but was it really necessary to rip them all from their pegs, throw them across the lounge and insist that they were all taken to Oxfam RIGHT NOW. And when she refused, did she really need dragging from the room for a 'quiet word'? Probably not but it was certainly memorable (and, for the record, the coats are all still there....).

3. The Mysterious Case of the Used Chutney Knife

You can imagine all of our surprise, when, one frosty Yuletide morning we (including my adult husband) were all lined up in front of the fireplace and grilled (at some length) about a serious incident that had taken place during the previous evening.

It would appear that someone had come in from the pub and made themselves a cheese and chutney sandwich and (here is the criminal bit so brace yourself)...... left the dirt chutney knife on the side and not put it in the dishwasher.

I told you it was shocking.

Anyway there was a grand inquisition complete with threats of Christmas being cancelled if the perpetrator wasn't found. The problem was that the perpetrator was clearly my husband and because he's a) not 12 and b) not my father's son, very little could be done about him not owning up and falling to the floor weeping and begging forgiveness for his terrible sin. An uncomfortable stalemate was drawn, with neither side backing down, and the day moved on but the scars have been left...

4. My mum shrieking 'I can't cope with all this death' and running out into the garden

OK, there must have been drink involved, but all the same I was slightly surprised by my mum's reaction to James Bond one year. During a scene where there were a lot of explosions she knocked back her drink in one, claimed she couldn't take any more death and ran into the garden to weep.

Whoooooahhhhh - uncomfortable moment all round I seem to remember.

5. The Gin and the Sick and my Poor Mum's Hen

OK, I can not complete this list completely absolved of all blame. One year it was my Granny and Grandad's Diamond Wedding the day after Boxing Day. This would involve a 400 mile round trip, a lot of time cooped up in a Volvo Estate with my entire family and a lot of sitting around making polite, yet entertaining, conversation.

The night before the Diamond Wedding my dad left us in the pub (me, my OH and my brother) for a 'quick drink' and made us promise we would only have a couple. We were like 'yeah, whatever, of course!' (we were barely past teenagerdom at the time). Of course the pub had sold out of cider so I drank gin by the pint instead (why!?) and we all got terribly, hideously, regrettably drunk.

Roll forward to 7am and my mum shrieking 'who has been sick on my chicken!?!'.

She'd gone to feed one of her hens (who, ironically enough, was sick and in its own pen in the garden) and found it splattered in vomit.

Now luckily for me it was my brother who did it. He'd got ill in the night and leant out of his bedroom window to do what needed to be done........ and did it right onto my mum's hen. She wasn't best pleased (my mum or the hen).

Unluckily, for me I have never, ever, ever, ever, ever been so hungover. I counted every mile click past on the dial as my dad drove all the way there and all the way back. 198 miles EACH WAY. While we were there I never even made it out of the car (other than to be sick). I lay, semi-conscious, spread across the back seats, as worried looking relatives tapped on the windows and mouthed 'are you OK?' at me. Are you OK?? Erm, clearly not or I wouldn't be spending my day running between a toilet bowl and the back seat of a car.

So there we are. The following will be STRICTLY PROHIBITED from our new family Christmases:

- Log fires
- Enforced trips to Oxfam
- Chutney and associated knives
- James Bond and associated explosive killings
- Chickens covered in vomit and...
- Absolutely, definitely GIN!

p.s. for all the madness there is one thing that I hope my family Christmas will be filled with, which my parent's Christmas has always had for me - and that is a deep and absolute love for your children. Even if they do drive you to drink and throw up on family pets.....

Tweet