It's been a long time coming…..

….but a blog post is gonna' come….

I thought I hadn't blogged for over a year but, lo, it turns out it's more like 11 months so I feel positively virtuous now.

How are things with me?  Well much like they were 11 months ago - only kind of on steroids.  Or psychotropic drugs.  Or both.

The giant dog is even bigger and ate my mother's Chesterfield sofa.  We threw a blanket over the gaping wound and kind of pretend it never happened.

The cats now number 3 but this number is subject to rapid change at any one point pending road accidents, kidney disorders or children finding kittens they simply MUST adopt.

The guinea pigs now number zero (sad times) following a massive accidental population explosion followed by a mass escape (they would regularly pop up on local news feeds on my Facebook page under titles like 'FOUND in the taxi rank' or 'this guinea pig was in our recycling bin this morning - anyone know it?' and I'd have to go and reclaim them but often people adopted them so that was kind of a novel way to rehome them) followed by my penning in all the remaining critters only for a stoat to get in one night….. The rest as they say is history.  As are the guinea pigs.   First time I've been without any in living memory and every time I take the leaves off a cauliflower and have nowhere useful to put them I get a little pang.

Eldest child knows even more about trains than he did last time I blogged and had a lovely holiday sat by the pool in his socks reading 'Railways Illustrated' before befriending a large cat which sadly resided in a bar called 'Striptease Discotech!' which ever more sadly was next to 'Beverly Hills Swingers Club!'.  This led to some interesting conversations about appropriate places to hang out with cats.  Or not.

Younger child is still so loud he breaks windows (well actually he broke a window at a Stately Home with a stone rather than his voice but we won't dwell on that mainly due to my highly mature response of 'holy fuck, RUN!!!  EVERYBODY RUN TO THE WOODS…..').   He's draped his socks over my tele in the hope of luring out Santa early and has taken to role playing a 'bee on fire that is crashing to earth and dying'.   Restful it is not.

My mum is an ongoing crisis - I'll will demonstrate this in a moment when I tell you the tale of the Stella and Mr Woody.

I'm single - by choice.  I could tell you many an entertaining story involving plants of love, golliwog gifts (I kid yeee not) and anal love beads (unopened but non-returnable) but that would be cruel so lets just leave it that I don't have time to be involved with anyone in a manner that involves any kind of energy.

My life is one going blur of 12.5 hour shifts, commuting, children, pets, logistical childcare nightmares and laughing so I don't cry.

And with that let me get back to my mother.

So on my birthday we went on a coach trip to the Sea Life Centre through a local charity.  It wasn't my actual birthday dream to return to the scene of Beaver Creek (see previous blog post) or in fact stare once again at various fish (although I do rather like the Garden Eels) but it was on, it filled a hole in the summer holidays and it happened to be on my birthday.

Things didn't get off to the best of starts.  Mother turned up late and we almost missed the coach.  She was shaking hard and appeared in the grip of terror.  God knows why - if anyone should have been shaking it was me as my  youngest child was in a hyperactive frenzy, had put a straw bag over his head and for reasons known only to him was shouting about Afghanistan.  Eldest child had a face like thunder and was repeatedly informing me that he hated sea creatures, it was windy (which he hates), there would be queues (intolerable), there would be no trains or in fact heavy industry of any type and the coach wasn't even going on the motorway so this was basically THE WORST DAY OF HIS LIFE.

Happy Bloody Birthday.

About half way there I asked mother if she had actually bought me a birthday present?  Oh she said appearing startled 'Happy Birthday darling!' and with that she whipped out a can of Strongbow from the bottom of her picnic hamper.

A can of Strongbow.
On coach trip for children with special needs.
At 10.30am.
As a birthday present.

Much as I was tempted to down it there and then I decided the day was probably going to get worse before it got better and I'd save it as long as I could.  Like a kind of watered down cyanide pill.

By lunchtime eldest child was kind of banging his head repeatedly against hard objects in abject distress over the endless parade of aquatic lifeforms so I decided we should all sit down in the Toddler Splashpool area and have lunch.

With this Mother, to my complete dismay, cracked open a can of Stella and without warning or explanation bellowed across the frisking semi-naked toddlers 'why HELLO MY WOODY!'.

The children, startled, looked to me for reassurance that I just could not give.

I'm sure my dad spun in his grave.

'Mother!' I demanded 'what ARE you doing!'.

'Talking to that Wood Pigeon darling! Look he's just over there with his fine lady wife!'.

And with that she shouted 'MY TOE HURTS BETTY!'.

People who had been nervously glancing after the Woody explosion were openly staring now.  Really staring.  Eldest child was just about self combusting with shame.

'MOTHER!!!' I demanded 'WHAT IS THIS!?'.

'It's the cry of the Wood Pigeon darling! MY TOE HURTS BETTY MY TOE HURTS BETTY MY TOE HURTS BETTY!'. (I've since googled this and it's recognised bird thing but still, that doesn't make it any better, or appropriate).

'Grandma!' exclaimed my eldest 'never in my life have I heard a bird say that!'.

'MY TOE HURTS BETTY!' Mother continued to yell 'waving her can of Stella aloft in rare moment of seemingly unbridled joy.

And with that I decided it was time to crack open my birthday can.

If you can't beat them then at least meet them half way.



Argh it's good to be back and debrief this shit.

Tomorrow I'll tell you all about the Naked Pedalo Incident.

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Notes from a Small Foggy Island

Erm hello (wanders shyly onto Internet blog-stage, staring at the footlights and hoping my skirt isn't tucked into my knickers). 

How are you all? 

Glad I came back - it appears I have 288 blog comments that need authorising.   No really.  Here's a typical example: 

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Did you get that Internet People? If you want to get 'matted up a fiddling to a greater extent' then you need PENIS ADVANTAGE PENIS ADVANTAGE PENIS ADVANTAGE.  And a 'manlike mate'.   Wow - not actually a man then, 'man like' will do......

Just imagine If I'd never come and shared that with you? You're lives would have been all the poorer.  

Amen. 

No really I'm glad I came back because it makes me sad when I don't blog - it makes me feel like something is missing, some weird connection, some part of who I am is gone and I'm failing.    So why don't I do it more often? If it feels good and it's free and it doesn't hurt you why don't you do it more? 

I can't really tell you - I can give you reasons, I can tell you that I'm so busy, so tired, that very often as soon as my children are upstairs I go to bed myself.  I can tell you that for a large chunk of my life I work for the NHS and talking about anything to do with that on a public forum could easily get me struck off - and quite rightly so - which makes me paranoid about everything less I slip up and end up in Daily Mail.  I can tell you that I feel oddly vulnerable and disjointed and like I just don't want to come out and play a lot of the time.  That I swing between fear and loathing, ecstasy and joy and very often just inhabit the safe ground of the island of exhaustion between the two.  

But all of those things are only part of the picture.  I think the bigger picture is that, like all general nutcases out there, I'm a failed perfectionist and thus my thinking goes along the lines of: 'must blog that - what a crazy day' (too tired to blog....) 'oh god I failed, I didn't blog, well there's no point carrying on now, everything is ruined, people will have given up me anyway.......'.... and so on into a spiral of self-defeated hatred repeating the same thought pattern day after day because you don't have the energy to do anything else.  

That looks ridiculous written down but I know there will be loads of you nodding along because you do it with other things - diaries and fitness plans and diets and keeping your house tidy and all the other best intentions which aren't really grounded in a reality suited to the real you.   If you aim for perfection all you will ever do is fail HARDER. 

So anyway I felt a bit crap and then yesterday I read something which kicked me up the arse.  

Ages and ages ago on the amazing blog that is Hyperbole and a Half there was an, in my opinion, timeless piece about depression: 

Best blog ever on depression

And then she never came back.  And I often wondered what happened next and it generally made me feel rather anxious and sad.  

And then 18 months or so later she came back with this (yes that was in May, but I've been under a rock since May so I only just noticed): 

The next bit

And I read that last night. Then I re-read it 4 times this morning and it's just genius.  The bit about the dead fish.  Genius.   Sad but genius.  

And I thought if she can come back after 18 months of hell then why am I letting this little gap stop me forever?  Just because my mum used the May Bank Holiday to watch the snooker without my (dead) dad and drink so many Rusty Nails she fell down the stairs to be found a day later and escorted by me to hospital where she cried and wailed to a rather alarmed Triage Nurse..... 'it was Ronnie....Ronnie O'Sullivan! It was because of him! I fell........the snooker, my husband is dead, bloody good match, waaaaaaa, Ronnie, waaaaa'....  Well you can't let these little events stop you can you? Even if they do rather unsettle you.  

Once upon a time I wrote that grief is like a moth.  It waits on the wall in the corner of your peripheral vision, almost part of the furnishings but you do know the moth is there, even when you don't acknowledge it.  And then suddenly, now and again, it rises up, clattering and flapping into the light and right into your line of vision and there is no putting the moth to the back of your mind until the lights go out and it settles back to the corner where it came from.  

Well I think for some people the grief has never retreated to the moth stage.  They are stuck in it still being a fog. A thick dense black fog. It's never retreated to their peripheral vision.  It's what they wake up to BANG every morning and then try to grasp, but can't, as they struggle through the day, as it slips through their fingers and leaves them disorientated, scared and very often lost.  

And it's what they go to sleep to - what they breathe in and breathe out and what lies up against them in bed when there is no one else.  

I think for some people living like that is pretty much intolerable and the only way they get even a moment's respite is to drink.  But then all to soon the fog comes back denser and thicker and even more choking and the days merge into one long hopeless field of nightmares.   

And I think that's what my mother's grief is - between the days when the fog lifts a little and the warmth of the sun can briefly be felt - in the main that is what she lives with - a swirling sea of thick dark fog, lost and confused and utterly exhausted. 

And it is exasperating and infuriating and frightening to be amidst it - to be expected to step into the fog when all you've ever craved is sunshine and be there for the other person and it's easy to get lost in a world where you just sort of survive (again) and forget to take time to do things you enjoy, like blogging.  Or your fear that you have nothing worth saying and doubt you could ever write a decent blog again.   But then one day - like yesterday - something jolts you out of it and you find the strength to do it differently - to pick up and carry on........

So even though I've very tired and even though I'm rather irrational and even though I often find myself moribund with panic as my brain does this: 

'get dressed do hair boil kettle feed animals feed children clean up dog wee load car find those forms find some shoes charge phone remember to turn washing machine on  find bank card remember I need petrol what is the point of life what if someone else dies when is this going to get easier what if it never gets easier now what's the dog eaten why does the fridge smell when will I be able to buy a freezer have the kids spent too long on Minecraft did ALL the escaped  Guinea Pigs get eaten by that escaped ferret or are some still living wild is my mum lying at the bottom of her stairs what is my bank balance what shit have I bought off ebay how will my guttering ever get fixed we have no food but if I go to the supermarket I will have a panic attack, fuck it we can all life of brioche and apples... AGAIN WHY ARE THERE SO MANY BIGOTED IDIOTIC PEOPLE IN THE WORLD AND SO MUCH INEQUALITY AND WILL ANYONE EVER SORT IT OUT if I water the plants will it rain today thus making my actions pointless if I just drink tea all day and don't eat will that mean I'm back in control and that everything will turn out fine and everyone will be happy try not shout try not to damage anyone or anything breathe and breathe again'

about every 30 seconds, on repeat until I go to work and when I get back from work my brain does this

'ffffffzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz BED'

Even though I constantly get told I move mountains but only ever feel like I'm under them, even though I can't save anyone but feel like I at least have to try, even though all of these things, I need to get over the mental blocks and just write shit down. Because let me tell you - despite everything there is some bloody hilarious shit that goes down here.   And I have a duty to share it.  

And anyway, here comes the summer holidays........(raises mug of tea and prays for salvation or failing that PENIS ADVANTAGE).  

Love ya, 

x

  

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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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The Voices

Not long ago I was standing out the back of Badger Girl's shop, which happens to be a rather beautiful church yard (if you can see past the over flowing bins, people hanging around waiting for their methadone scrips and rats as big as, err, badgers) while she smoked a roll up (I'm painting a none too beautiful picture here but bear with me) and the sun was beating down, the sky was blue and I just felt this deep sense of inner peace. It was a wonderful feeling. A sea of calm amidst a raging storm of emotions. I took it to be a sign. Perhaps only of the powers of passive nicotine inhalation but a good sign all the same.

Anyhow - feeling rather jolly about it - I told my mum.

'Ohh' she said 'that's interesting'.

'Yes!' I said enthusiastically 'I think it's a sign that I'm at peace with myself'.

'Ohh well perhaps but maybe it was the Lord. You know 'speaking' to you!'.

Stunned silence.

'What?'.

'Well you were in a church yard. It could have been a sign. You know from The Lord'.

'Mum, have you been on the Jacobs Creek already?'.

'Well stranger things have happened'.

'Mum I think me finding God amidst the bins out the back of a Rave shop would probably be just about the strangest thing EVER to have happened. Even too strange for me. OK?'.

And I left wondering just what was going on in my mum's head. I mean don't get me wrong -she loves the Harvest Festival as much as the next person and like a good old rendition of Lord of the Dance but she's never been one to believe in dramatic convertions. Or miracles.

Two weeks later I was back in the same church yard.

As I walked through the sunshine dappling the ancient path I heard a noise.

It started as a low moan and then started to rise.

Glancing around me I saw no one.

The moaning built in tempo and took on a sort of beautiful resonance.

Om ah ah om. Om ah ah om. Aaaa haaaa. Ommmmm. Ommmm......

Ok there was no denying this. I really could hear some kind of voice and it sounded sort of heavenly.

I shudder of alarm ran through me.

My mum's words rang in my head.... 'The Lord is speaking to you'.....

I mean even during the worst of times I never actually heard full on mysterious voices or felt like I was ascending to heaven or being 'touched'. And now this?

Shit.


Panic began to rise within me as logical explanations fell away.

No one else seemed to be able to hear the noise and it was clearly very local to me.

So local that it seemed to be coming from the bum pocket of my jeans.....

Pulling my phone out of my pocket I realised that my butt cheek had activated the You Tube button on the screen and replayed the last video I watched..... Some Tibetan chanting I'd downloaded to see if lying on the bed listening to it would help transform me into a tranquil being (I'll let you judge as to whether it worked....).

So it wasn't God reaching out to me at all. I was just talking out of my arse....

I'm just relieved I didn't actually go for help and arrive at A&E asking for help. There are things you really don't need on your medical records and the belief you are being haunted by Buddhist mantras is one of them.

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You Gotta Roll with It....

Wow - sorry about the rather large blogging gap there people. Don't worry I haven't been to rehab (yet), sectioned (yet) or in fact even had my hernia fixed. No I was busy picking up the crumbs of my disintegrating marriage and feeding them to the birds. It's kind of all encompassing taking apart 15 years and putting it back together in a different way. And sad (very sad) and funny (in a bittersweet 'aren't human beings odd' kind of way) and heartbreaking and mundane and tragic and crazy and boring and exhilarating and unreal and real and, yes, it needs a book all of it's own.

Hey at this rate, by the time I get round to even writing the first book I'm going to have the complete box set waiting in the wings.

But anyway, lets not look at the bigger picture, or all our heads might explode.

Lets just look at the last 24 hours. Just so you know, you get a bit of the picture.....

5pm - finish work, race out the door...

5.20pm - whilst walking home see a familiar figure crossing the road. Automatic thought - yipee it's my husband! He's off to catch the train to London, how lucky I caught him! Slam. About turn. Damn. It's my (ex) husband. He's off to London and I didn't want to see him go..... (there then ensues a brief slightly awkward conversation basically saying 'hello, goodbye, ho ho ho' but drowned out by traffic noise and the stench of pigeon shit coming from the road bridge. Brief Encounter it ain't....).

5.30pm - get into house and rapidly pack for a night at my mum's house. Take off work shoes and wonder how I ever wore such things 5 days a week without going permanently lame. Stuff various Iggle Piggles, socks and toothbrushes in a bag and get in car.

5.40pm - swing round corner on Dual Carriageway only to find a barefooted man who looks like ZZ Topp walking towards me swinging a bamboo cane. Narrowly miss squashing him flat. Briefly marvel at the diversity of life.

5.50pm - get to my mums to be greeted by ecstatic children. Well no actually. One is on the lap top watching freight trains on You Tube and barely acknowledges me. The other is lying underneath a coffee table covered in tomato ketchup making a small groaning noise.

6pm - accept a glass of wine and announce the children are going in the bath.

6.15pm - accept another glass of wine and announce the children are going in the bath.

6.30pm - accept another glass of wine and announce the children are going in the bath....

7pm - get children in bath. Watch a fight break out over a Pyrex Jug and the insides of a food processor. Get another glass of wine.

7.15pm - try to end bathtime but just end up dripping wet and shouting. Again.

7.20pm - have to get physical. Bathroom now looks like an Ibiza foam party where I'm the only one dressed and not crying.

7.30pm - break up fight over alleged difference in the size of toothbrushes.

7.31pm - allow brief demonstration of what shaving foam looks like if you squirt it down the toilet.

7.32pm - realise shaving foam must have been my dads..... Weird.

7.35pm - read pointless book about trucks. Well I'm sure it's not pointless if you're a small boy but it doesn't really do it for me.

7.40pm - (thankfully it's a very short book) say goodnight. Receive requests for: a drink, a wee, a torch, a stuffed dog and a honey sandwich. There is no honey in bed. Rules is rules.

7.45pm - stave of a dozen concerned questions about the volcanic ash cloud (no it won't make the world go dark, no it's not over our heads, no it's not going in our insides, yes it is over Scotland, no it doesn't affect trains running, only planes.....)

8pm - give up and go downstairs. Both kids in bed but one is off on a rant because apparently his Scooby Doo colouring book doesn't containing any 'rupturing volcanoes' and this omission is entirely my fault and entirely in my control....... just like everything else that's wrong in the world....and the other one is throwing a fit because he wants me to sit with him and study the ENTIRE road map of the British Isles (as in follow every road to every destination) and I'm sat downstairs with a glass of wine trying to tax the car.

8.05pm - both kids still going off on one. Glass empty. Glass refilled.

8.06pm - turns out I can't tax the car as it hasn't got an MOT. Computer says no. Oh. Make this my Facebook status (see, it really is a thrill a minute). My friend whose husband very nearly went to jail over something to do with a dodgy MOT reassures me that if I go down she'll teach me a few Restraint Holds she uses at work so I can defend myself against my cell mates.

8.07pm - kids threatened with something hideous if they don't go to sleep.

8.08pm - my mum is off on one about the joys of the Chelsea Flower Show but too much Alan Titchmarsh sends me into such a pit of despair that I start playing 'post apocalyptic hardcore metal' on the computer in an attempt to balance him out.

8.09pm - my mum and Alan Titchmarsh carry on oblivious.

8.10pm - my mum starts cooing over someone's Alliums. I give up, turn off the din and submiss to Alan, purple flowers and stroking small children's hair until they fall asleep. Sometimes it's best to give up the fight.

9pm - drunk at least a bottle of wine but no food has appeared yet.

9.30pm - ah here comes some aspagarus.

9.35pm...and some carrots....

9.45pm...and something 'Extra Special' from Asda. Bingo!

10pm - say I'm going to bed as I feel that tired.

10.10pm - start on massive rant about what the f'ck has happened to my life, where it's going and what I'm going to do about it.

11.55pm - go to bed.

12am - try to calm down with a gentle book about a couple with teenage kids having a bit of a marriage crisis whilst trying to cope with elderly relatives..... Decide that at least I'll never have to get divorced AND cope with teenage kids all at the same time, and my dad's already dead so when it comes to aging relatives I'm one short of the full load already. See how lucky I am!

12.05am - decide I must sleep.

12.10am - MY.MIND.IS.FLIPPING.OUT. I am having whole conversations with people who aren't even in the room. People who aren't even in the county. In some cases people that aren't even on this planet.

I re-write history and a hundred different futures over the next two hours.

It hasn't been like this for months.

Why now?

Why here?

Why me?

Why us?

WHY? WHY? WHY? WHY? WHY?

Somewhere round 2.15am fall asleep.

Somewhere round 2.30am a child falls out of bed.

Somewhere round 3am fall asleep.

Somewhere round 3.30am aforementioned child starts demanding someone draws him a 'rupturing volcano'... a scene then ensues which, if I was being filmed as part of a Super Nanny type programme, would be used as the 'bait' during advert breaks on Channel 4 to make sure that all the mother's of the nation tuned in to see just how much better they were doing than they through they were....

Somewhere around 4am fall asleep again.

5.40am - 'MUMMY - THERE IS NO RUPTURING VOLCANOES IN THIS SCOOBY DOO BOOK' WAAAAAA.

WAAAA indeed.


Next two hours - I'm not really sure. I know I drank a lot of tea and eventually had a shower and at some point my eldest son was forced to read another 4 pages of a 1978 'Ginn Reading' book about a tortoise ( (a 20 odd page book which could have been para-phrased with the sentence 'tortoises are small and like to hide') whilst the youngest one made a freight train out of the recycling my mum seems to endlessly accumulate.

8am - start phoning garages trying to get an MOT.

8.40am - find one that will do it. Cheer.

8.50am - take kids to school. It's raining hard.

9.30am - race into own home to grab car details.

9.40am - drop car off for MOT and walk home in rain.

9.45am - find that I have locked myself out of own home. Oh. The only other person with keys is my ex and he's in London until late Friday night. Before me flashes two more nights sleeping at my mum's....... in dirty knickers......with colouring books that don't feature rupturing volcanoes.....and Alan Titchmarsh......ARGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

9.50pm - sit on back step in rain with only the cats (who hate me anyway ) for company. They stare at me like robots filled with abject disgust.. I try to play with my phone and try not to think about anything but the signal has disappeared. The rain gets harder.

9.55am - I need a wee. Badly.

10am - I need a wee REALLY badly.

10.05am - I have to wee. But my garden backs onto a major railway and busy bridge. Hmm. I will have to go in the shed (the old falling down one, not the nice new fancy one. I wouldn't wee in that!).

10.06am - open shed door. A shed-load (boom boom) of wasps fly out......ARGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

Run round the garden screeching whilst flapping at my hair. I'm not a 'girly girl' but when it comes to wasps - WAAAAAAAA......

No way am I weeing in the wasp factory. Sod it - wee on the patio and hope none of the neighbours walk past. My last neighbours got to see it all when I had my second son. This lot (might) just think I'm normal (so far). The last think I want them to witness is me urinating in my own back yard......

10.10am - cold.

10.15am - colder.

10.30am - frozen.

10.40am - go back to garage now envisaging a never-ending sea of sleeplessness, Alan Titchmarsh and having to walk around in my mother's knickers and Doreen bras until I can get back into my own home (I know about the Doreen bras because there was a time, not so long ago, where for complex reasons I had to adorn one. My boobs went like Madonnas. All cone-ified. It was an odd experience. I am sure there is a fetish market out there for women in Doreen bras, after all I once came across a pornographic magazine called 'Fireside Bottoms', but I won't be taking my Doreen experience any further).

10.42am - find I accidentally gave my house keys to one of the mechanics. And the car passed the MOT. Relief all round.

10.45am - sit in car only to realise that I'd left a pair of knickers in the glove box (this was entirely innocent - they fell out a bag when I was coming back from sleeping at my friends). Oh what fun they must have had looking for my log book...... On the brightside - it could have been worse - it could have been a Doreen. Now that WOULD have been embarrassing.

11am - race to my mums and manage to tax the car.

12pm - pick up 'I wanna rupturing volcano' child from pre-school and, for my sins, take him shopping all afternoon. Take him to Badger Girls 'ladieswear' shop where he picks out a PVC fairy outfit for me and demands I put it on. I decline this request. He stamps his feet and roars. I stick him behind the till with my phone, 30 felt tip pens and a Scooby Doo colouring book (still without volcanoes) and drink 4 cups of tea in quick succession in order to try and keep functioning..... Back it all up with 2 Diet Cokes and a pack of Hula Hoops just to make sure and hit the road.

And then off we go with school pick ups, lunch boxes, story time, fights over colouring books (apparently, now, it's all my fault there's no hot air balloons in the picture of the steam train....of course) and I'm sat here now almost nodding off thinking 'oh yipee, tomorrow I get to do it all again'.

But, please this time, with more sleep.

And no Alan Titchmarsh.

Night night.

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Fun at the, erm, Beach....

Ahh here we are again - the new dawn of Easter. A very fine time of year indeed.

Sorry for my rather scatty blogging of late - I have started yet another part-time job and have found myself so utterly exhausted by the end of the day that the thought of even plugging in the laptop (because of course it doesn't have a functioning battery...) is beyond me. So my life, workwise now looks something like this:

1. Main job - trying to stay sane whilst raising 2 boys (currently aged 3 and 6) and dealing with the daily insanity around me (and that's before we start on my mother and various others within my daily orbit).

2. Job that is actually a career and I love but doesn't pay me enough - Antenatal Teaching (basically trying to prepare people for the unpreparable without scaring them sh1tless....) Maybe I should just spend several hours drinking tea with them before directing them to this blog with the moto 'you are going to need to keep your sense of humour, or you will go mad'? Having said that I went mad twice despite keeping my sense of humour, so what do I know?

3. Part-time job - in the hospital doing admin stuff.

4. Other part-time job - for a charity doing, errr, admin stuff! If you need postcodes inputting - I'm your woman.....

Anyway this: a) doesn't leave much time for blogging let alone writing that damn book (or infact script for a sit-com which I'd secretly like to do...). b) confuses the Inland Revenue.

Greatly.

I have spent approximately an hour on the phone to them this morning, trying to stop them from taxing me like I'm an Investment Banker when I earn about the same amount of money per week as you'd pay for a round of drinks in Soho. It was a long and painful process and, as I have this old fashioned phone that's tied to a wall and doesn't let me move round the house, I firstly found this very hard on the bladder and secondly the kids had a field day....

The younger one covered his ENTIRE body (and I do mean entire, as in every single part of him...) in large green spots with a flipchart marker pen. He's still sporting them but they are at least fading. I am beyond being concerned by such minor matters these days. I just hope they fade by the time her returns to pre-school. Or starts big school for that matter.

He then covered the cat in Sudocream. You know that thick white paste intended for babies bums? The one that what with it being a barrier cream is waterproof..... Sigh.

What is more, knowing I was tied to a wall and really stressed, him and his brother kept coming in and whining and making unreasonable requests.

Man in tax office: Could you confirm your National Insurance Number?

Son 1: MUMMEEEEE, I'M HUNGRY, WAAAAA

Me: Just take some Hula Hoops out the cupboard

Man in tax office: Pardon?

Son 1: WHAT?

Me: Sorry, it.....

Son 1: MUMMMEEEEEEEEEEEE

Me: I said just EAT SOME HULA HOOPS, JUST TAKE THEM!

Man: Erm....

Me: It's JP....

Son 1: Where are they? WHERE ARE THEY!?

Me: IN THE TOILET (we have a large downstairs sort of ' utility room' and in there is a big storage cupboard where I keep the crisps - I don't actually feed my kids from the toilet bowl).

Man: Pardon?

Son 1: BUT I WANT AN EASTER NEST! I WANT AN EASTER NEST! I HAVEN'T HAD ONE ALL DAY (said in a way which indicates going 12 hours without an Easter Nest is somehow life threatening. Which I very much doubt it is).

Me: Sorry it's.....

Son 1: CAN I HAVE AN EASTER NEST INSTEAD!

Me: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. What have I said about Easter Nests? NO NO NO NO NO.

And so on.

I finally finished this farce and decided to put the kids in the car and go to my mums. Basically so I could leave them in her loving care for 30 minutes and go for a run before I punched something.

Get to my mums.

'Darling'.

'Yes?' (slightly concerned already).

'I think I'm going to have to impose a rule' (wowzers - my mum doesn't do rules. When my dad died she should have gone to live in a Peace Camp somewhere on Greenham Common instead of becoming lost in the world of SuDuko and trying to knit a jumper for my nephew - who, by the time it's finished, will have Graduated).

'Errr yes'.

'When the children take all the packets and jars out the cupboard to make freight trains, they can only take the sealed ones'.

'OK fine. Dare I ask why?'.

So she leads me through to the living room. And then asks me to look behind the television.

Ah.

It appears the children have taken several dozen sachets of my dead father's Fybogel (if you don't know what Fybogel is you are lucky - it's a this weird gritty powder made from 'husks' - allegedly of old plant bits but probably from old people, and you put it in a drink so it makes this sort of 'gloop' and then you drink it. Its texture reminds me of something but I dare not say what. Anyway, it helps you go for a poo more easily. If you haven't tried it yet a) you're not missing much b) you're lucky c) I don't think it will ever catch on as part of a cocktail and d) if you get old it WILL come your way).

Anyway they'd raided deceased Grandad's Fybogel, opened the lot and used it to make a 'beach' behind the tele..... The 'beach' was littered with cod liver oil tablets ('golden eggs' apparently) and several thousand Hundreds and Thousands. There was also some white powder which I'm going to have to presume was Bicarbonate of Soda.

For once word's failed me. And they still do. But hey, at least they are forcing my mum to clean out the cupboards... Which as we all know is a very rare thing indeed.

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Half a Boiled Potato Will Not Save Us

Dear Mother,

I know I've raised this issue before, but keeping that 'half a boiled potato' on the wire shelf of your fridge will not save us in the event of global lockdown, outbreak of war or famine.

Every week, after the Sunday roast, it appears.

And there is stays.

For a week.

I don't know where it goes in the end but I'm guessing it isn't anywhere exciting?

No sooner than it's gone - it's back! Our little friend.... going slightly dry and grey and beginning to crumble..... Not once have I ever been tempted to do anything with it which it involve digesting it afterwards. And neither has anyone else.

That and a mysterious tea cup with something that looks like toxic sludge in it. I think it's 'dripping' but nobody is about to start spreading it on Yorkshire Puddings and dipping them in sugar so just give up, yeah? Unless you have a plan for this dripping then I'd suggest you accept it's no longer 1952 in Chesterfield and if we want a 'sweet snack' we'll opt for a chocolate finger.

We'll leave aside the homemade coleslaw which was last seen fizzing wildly and presumably turning itself into some kind of 'cabbage wine with a mayo finish' as I don't want to embarass you too much....but..

....whilst we're on the fridge, lets be bold and move to the freezer.

Ahhhh the freezer.

In that freezer there are many many 'freezer bags' containing odd items.

These freezer bags have special label bits you can write on. The idea is that you write on what is in the bag and when it was put in there. You seem to have missed this point?

Week after week after month goes by and nobody EVER defrosts ANY of them. It's a lucky dip too far.

Do you think it's not now time to bite the bullet and accept that it's highly unlikely we are ever going to ask for any of the following for tea:

- the cockerel (who may or may not have been gay) who was like a pet but you got killed due to 'over population of cocks' and then nobody could bear to eat (or it appears throw away) so lives his life in some kind of cryogenic suspension, year after year, in the freezer. I think he's been in there a decade now. Look, even if there are big jumps forward in science and technology it's highly unlikely they will be able to ressurect him and undo your guilt. For a start he's missing his entire head. And legs. And I should imagine his innards. Let him go.... just let him go.... and NOT into a Coq au Vin.

- the 'trout' which your friend Colin caught and kindly gave to you, but with a warning that it came from a 'pond' and would therefore be 'very muddy' and possibly 'highly unpleasant'. I would hazard a guess here that you are NEVER going to be hungry enough to eat a 'muddy and highly unpleasant' ancient old frozen trout? And frankly, neither am I. Once again, let it go....

- the pheasant (which may actually be another cockerel or possibly a duck) that has been in there SO long that it probably needs carbon dating in order to work out just when it should have been thrown away..... Apparently you didn't eat it because you were worried it would be dry and a bit tough. Well I should think that's no longer a worry, more of a dead cert.

- the potted shrimps. Potted sometime shortly after the 2nd World War I think....

- the alcoholic homemade icecream that I have now eaten twice and been violently sick afterwards, errr, twice. How many more times are you going to poison house guests? You claim throwing it away will be messy. Here's an idea! Let it melt and then pour it into the hedge or something. I've cleaned up worse.


I mean I'm all for 'thrift' and 'waste not want not' but it's time to now accept I'm never going to sit down to a meal of fizzing coleslaw, dripping, muddy trout and 20 year old frozen cock with toxic ice cream.

OK?

Yours, not hungry for once,

Your Daughter

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My Socks is on Fire

I have previously likened sleeping at my mum's house to the Japanese game show 'Endurance' (the modern equivalent of which is, I suppose, I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here).

I stand by that claim.

Some of you will probably struggle with this concept so let me go back to basics here and run you through my morning:

1am - still trying to sleep but my mum is still up watching god knows what downstairs and the sub-bass is making the bedroom floor shake ('if your chest ain't rattling, then the bass ain't happening) so I give up and move into the double bed in the other room with my Original Son.

2 am - maybe get to sleep.

4am - so sick of Original Son thrashing around like a conger eel I get up believing and hoping it might be morning. It's 4am. Hmmm.

5am - have got back to sleep but now re awoken by a blinding light and inhuman noise.

It is of course my younger child (a.k.a The Beast).

The Beast is standing at the end of my bed, sweeping it's range with a torch (not just any torch but a proper farmer's flashlight with something like 10 million 'candlepower' - basically enough to blind a fox or scorch a child's eyes from its head), emitting a noise like an air-raid siren and screeching 'wooooo woooo I'm a ghost, I'm a ghost'.

Now there are, possibly, a couple of people on the entire planet who I wouldn't object to standing at the end of my bed at 5am, holding a flashlight and emitting a piercing a wail, but let me just clarify right now - he is NOT one of them.

A kind of hushed tussle ensues with me trying to shout at him in an authoritarian manner - but only in a whisper so we don't disturb his poor exhausted brother.

My whispered attempts fail. Brother arises. A full battle ensues involving a miniature toaster which originated in a second-hand dolls house which I played with during my childhood. Apparently very very tiny toast is 'the' thing to have these days amongst young chaps.

An hour later I give up lying in the middle of a ruck and pretending I am 'somehow' acheiving rest and drag the pair of them downstairs.

It is still pitch black and it's freezing, freezing cold.

I'm wearing a pair of pyjamas two sizes too big which don't stay up and don't' stay done up.

I get to the base of the stairs and flick the lights on.

The lights fuse.

So I'm still standing in the dark with my trousers round my calves and my knockers hanging out and by this point everyone, bar me, is shouting orders.

I only have two children but all at once, apparently, I need to:

- turn the lights on.
- get the TV on.
- make sure they don't miss Octonauts (which isn't even on for HOURS - it's 6am for god's sake).
- get them drinks
- get them some food because they are so hungry they are DYING.
- get rid of the dogs.
- open the curtains.
- find the golf balls my mum STUPIDLY gave them to play with the night before (and I have hidden).
- fit the wheels back on a car which has been stamped on.
- carry them into the kitchen.

ALL AT ONCE.

- and make porridge.

At the same time the dogs are barking to get let out and all I can smell is the hideous assault of 'ancient dying dog urine'.

This means that, somewhere, in the dark, there lies a pool of dark fetid dog piss. And I need to get the dogs out now but I can't see where it is and I can't flaming breath due to the acrid, bile churning, stench.

And the kids howl on.

At this point I can't contain my frustration any longer and holler 'I CAN'T DO EVERYTHING AT ONCE, THESE DOGS NEED TO DIE! I CAN'T COPE ANY MORE!', pull my trouser up and tuck my knockers back behind the buttons of my 'sleep jacket'.

This is not, I repeat NOT, a good example to set your children but, as I often hear myself singing these days, 'I am not a robot'.

What I really really hope is that my mum will get up and help but she's still sparko after 3 bottles of Blossom Hill and sitting up til 2am with Snoop Dog, P-Diddy and Gay Rabbit Chat.

Sigh.

Some time later (I've 'lost' the next 10 minutes - and I don't want to find it) I try to help my children get dressed. Small (well quite big) problem - one of The Beast's socks is missing. I only bring one pair of socks with me when we go to my mums (basically there are more important things in life than having a spare pair of socks - well so I thought) so a missing sock is not good.

Especially when it's snowing.

I eventually locate the lost sock.

It's floating - like a corpse - in last night's bath.

Last night's bath is 'still in' because the chain has snapped off the plug and thus no one can drain it.

So I have a very wet sock and a child with one cold bare foot throwing a fit.

Well what would you do?

I fried it.

Let me explain.

My mum has an Aga stove thing and she often puts clothes on top of it to warm up/get totally dry.

Ah ha! I thought. What I need to do is that but only TO THE MAX. So I'll lift up the hatch thing and put it on the hot plate. That way it will get really dry really quick!

Errr, yes it will. And then it will go brown, combust and start to burn.

As The Beast himself said 'Mummy, mummy, my socks is on fire!'.

At this point (of course) my mum appeared.

'Darling, what ARE you frying' (she says peering at the hotplate but seeing nothing but smoke and a vague outline of an Argyle pattern).

'A sock mum. Could I have a cup of tea and could you get the dogs humanely euthanised?'.

And then the sun (finally) came up.

And my day began.

I've said it once. I've said it twice. And I will keep on saying it. If I didn't laugh I'd spend my whole life crying!

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Every Little Heartbeat

So me and mum were sat in her front room trying to watch some kind of a crime detective programme on the BBC.

I say trying because it's hard to concetrate. As well as the moving pictures and the characters speaking, there is also the somewhat alarming presence of a well spoken lady speaking very very quickly over the top of the programme, describing EXACTLY what is happening.

'Geoff walks down a path in terraced street. He enters a red door. The wall paper is flocked and stripped. A gas fire is lit. A woman in a flannelette nightdress is seated. The woman appears pensive. Geoff rolls his eyes. A cigarette burns in an ashtray'.

For a split second a feeling of unease chills me.

Am I hearing voices in my head?

Is this what it has come to?

And if so, am I not supposed to hear someone telling me that I AM the Virgin Mary or perhaps the Second Coming (or at the very least that my soul will find redemption if go outside with no clothes on bar a pair of Argyle socks).

I never thought true aural psychosis would involve a man called Geoff and a woman in a flannelette nightie.

Hmm.

But then it clicks. It's not in my head. My mum's got the 'extra visual description' function turned on the TV. You know, the facility for blind people so they can actually follow what's happening between the dialogue.

'Mum?'.

'Yes Darling!'.

'Why have you got that mad commentary thing on the tele?'.

'Oh I know darling, it's the new thing it seems. All the programmes seem to have it these days. I'm surprised someone hasn't written into Points of View about it!'.

'Does Points of View still exist?'.

'I don't know actually, but it's very odd isn't it?'.

'Mum. It's for blind people'.

'What, Points of View?'.

'No. That crazy woman talking. It's a special thing to use if you can't see the pictures. Last time I looked you weren't blind and I don't think you've had THAT much white wine'.

'Oh (stunned). I just thought it was the trend'.

'Did you not ever stop to wonder why EVERY programme had the same woman talking, manically, over the dialogue?'.

'Erm, no'.

'Right well I'll turn it off. It's an option. Not compulsory'

(A brief tussle with the remote control later I have failed to turn it off. What I have acheived are sub-titles. So now we have moving pictures, dialogue, woman frantically describing wallpaper and facial expressions AND the written word).

We fall into a defeated silence, our senses overloaded.

Sometime later, my mum speaks.

'Would you look at that. My wine is moving to the rhythmn of my heartbeat'.

'You what!?'.

'The surface of my wine. When my heart beats. It moves. How extraordinary'.

'Erm, mum. Is your heart beating really hard or something? The wine is on the table. You are in your chair. How on earth could your heart be making the floor vibrate?'.

'I don't know. It's like we're connected'.

'Riiighhhht'.

(She watches the wine shimmer for a few more minutes).

'Oh actually, no. It's not my hearbeat. Its the dishwasher'.

'Mum, those plants by the front gate, are they still intact?'

And they think I'm the mad one.......

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Da Weed

Me: (Trying to get out of front gate and into my car) Mum?

Mum: (Emerging from home in her dressing gown) Yes darling?

Me: You appear to be growing cannabis? Around the front gate.

Mum: Oh, that'll be the birds.

Me: What the birds have started up their very own skunk factory? I never knew they had it in them.

Mum: No, it'll be from their seed. I put their seeds on the gate and they get knocked off and grow. We get all sorts!

Me: You feed the birds dope?

Mum: No but I expect it's in the mix.

Me: (thinking it's too early in the day for this kind of conversation) Commercial bird seed contains cannabis?

(I can see The Sun headline now 'Blue Tits Off Their Tits on Seedy Seed').

Mum: Well maybe. It was from Asda. Or it maybe blew in from somewhere?

Me: (glancing round at the surrounding vista of desolate, cannabis free, fields) Riiiiiiiggggghhhht. All the same, is it wise to leave it growing by the gate hear. I mean a lot of people come through here. The postie, the man who brings the oil, the, erm, vicar......

Mum: I'll get my glasses.....

Mum (again - this time sounding slightly thrilled): Ohhhhhh, you know what, it IS cannabis isn't it!

This was on Monday.

It's still there, reaching for the sky amidst the Autumn sunshine and showers.

Quite a harvest.

I'm keeping out of this but if you see a gentle looking lady in Breton stripes and M&S jeans on the local news for running a miniature cannabis farm, you know the situation has deteriorated.

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We are the Champions...

Well actually, no, I am the champion.

WAAAAAAA!!!

Yup - thanks to you lot I only went to actually won the 'Funniest Blog' section in the 2010 MADS Awards.

I honestly can't thank you enough - in this dessert of despair (and cat poo) it has brought me an immense amount of good cheer and happiness.

Sadly I couldn't even attend the awards ceremony so I didn't get to have fun, eat nice food, get wasted, do my speech and sob all over the red carpet but if I could have said something it would probably gone something like this....

'When I had my first baby my Aunt (who had 3) said 'whatever you do, keep your sense of humour, you're gonna need it!' and how right she was.

That baby is 6 today and I had NO idea just where that journey into being a mother would take me, but all things considered, so far so good. I'm still alive and I'm not currently sectioned so that's two good things.....

This is not just all about me though - there are many people who I have to thank. First and foremost, my husband, without whom I really don't think I'd be here (and if I was I'd still be in the nuthouse, trying to explain to psych nurses that owning rather too much grey knitwear is NOT a sign of mania and no, I don't want to play pingpong. Ever).

Then I'd like to thank my friends - who have been there through all the shit and held me together. I'm sure some of them can remember things I can't (and it's best I never do) about the baddest, maddest days - but I haven't scared them off for good yet....... Amongst those friends I'd like to thank the countless internet friends and blog readers who really do feel part of my life and have given me SO much encouragement and so many positive vibes over the years. Big love - seriously - you have made such a difference.

I'd also like to the thank the world I live in for being so bloody random - the badgers that died for me, the balls that burst for me, the "people that lie on mattresses and cry" therapy group who made me feel more normal, the cockerels that turned gay, the guinea pigs that died and left a legacy (especially Satchmo who went to space - apparently), the kids for being rather eccentric and my friends for knowing people with really bad tattoos and running kinky clothing shops. While I'm at it, I may as well thank the county of Somerset for being a brilliantly random place full of brilliantly random people and surely the most eclectic (i.e nuts) selection of adult education classes in the country?

I dedicate this award to my dad - he would have been so bloody proud, even though he'd be rather cross about my mocking of his knife obsession at a National Level and deriding of Osborne's Big Man's Catalouge.... My dad always wanted to write a book but he died before he got the chance to even retire. I took my story telling skills from him so maybe I will finally get my arse in gear, take up his mantle, and do it..... Thank you and good bye. Until tomorrow....'.

See - good job I wasn't at the ceremony - everyone would have been asleep by the end of that!

I don't know what I'll spend my vouchers on - I always said bedroom curtains but that is TOO dull. I still don't have any bedroom curtains but I have fixed a fleece blanket over the window and that will do. It's Autumn now and dark outside anyway..... I want to get something I will keep forever and will help me remember that I held it together this year, despite everything, and still managed to make people laugh.

I just did a very brave thing and told my mum about this blog. It's always been a total secret (apart from anything - does my mum REALLY need to read about the incident of the pubic hair and the chemical burns?). I was worried what she'd say but she actually cried and said she was so proud (hell, she didn't even say that when I got my degree, or got married or had a baby!) and dad would have been even happier (not that she's actually read it yet) and that they should do a book and a documentary (at this point you need to bear in mind she was rather drunk and gushing somewhat, inbetween crying at some strangers getting married on BBC3 - it's a cultural whirlwind here).

Anyway - cheers folks - chin chin and here's to the next year of (almost) sanity.

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Irritations

Well here I am on 'Hospice Watch' and if I don't talk to you lot, I've got to talk to my mum and as she is currently talking to a mosquito, it has to be you lot.

Seriously. I've just heard her say 'you're right in my ear, you bugger, you are humming in my ear, sorry, but I'm going to have to squash you, now where have you gone now? Ahhh yes.....'

So either it's a mosquito troubling her or she's taken up 'Polite Dominatrix Phone Line Sex Chat' - and I know which is most likely. And it's not the one that pays.

Actually, I'll pause now whilst I hear her shout 'BUT YOU'RE LOCAL!'.

No, it's defiantly a mosquito, the paper just came down, hard and fast. And the phone's still on the hook......

Anyway here we go folks - HAPPY HOLIDAYS! My kids broke up today and we now have 6+ week of sheer unadulterated fun FUN FUN!!

My oath not to shout and to enjoy every tiny moment of these precious days (which I do truly appreciate in case you have no sense of humour and think I don't actually realise the magic of these days) lasted until about 3.25pm (10 minutes after school was out) when I was heard to bellow 'what did I just say about not making big noises!? SHUT UP' down the corridor of the hospice - approximately 10 times louder than either of my children.

Anyway - this holidays - family tragedy and other such crap aside - if the strain of the kids doesn't get me, the poo talk will.

OH.MY.GOD.THE.POO.TALK.

Let me just say NOW you can not comprehend the depth and breadth of poo talk unless you have ever held custody of a 5 year old boy child. Or possibly a girl (depending on whether they are into Hannah Montana or poo - I'll pause on making a judgement there.....).

If you don't 'get' just how all encompassing and random and just NUTS poo-talk is here is today's bath time, the songs mentioned are actually hymns. Hymns with bespoke lyrics:

Son 1 (singing in a lovely fashion): He's got the whole world in his hands, he's got the whole wide world in his hands, he's got the plants and the poo poos in his hands, he's got the whole poo poo in his hands.

Son 2: HA HA HA HA HA.

Me: Deep exhale, what did I say about poo poo talk in front of grown ups?

Son 1: Carpenter carpenter make me a wee, that's the work or some poo poo far greater than me. Somebody greater than you and me, put the poo pants in the apple tree,the flowers in the earth and the poo in the sea, they're by somebody far greater than you or me.

Me: ENOUGH!

Son 2: COCK A DOODLE POOO!!!!

Son 1: I can't stand the rain on my poo poo pain.

Me: And breath.

Son 1: We are climbing Jesus' ladder ladder, we are climbing Jesus bladder bladder, poo poo of the LORD.

Son 2: Who is the Lord?

Son 1: What?

Me: Who IS the Lord? In your song?

Son 2: LADY GA GA.

Me: Or dear LORD ABOVE, not this again.....

Son 1: Lady Ga Ga is ........................................... boobies.

Me: BATHTIME. NOW.

(10 minutes later as I try to extricate children from bath, by this time one glass of wine and 1 pint of cider later, under the distinct impression that parents get is wrong-diddly-wrong when they crack open the booze after bedtime - DO IT BEFORE - it's the secret to being able to get excited about 'The Great Big Little Red Train' for the 350th reading. NEVER will have the coupling-up of a load of logs to a wagon of old sofas sounded so utterly, endorphin fuelled, thrillingly FANTASTIC. It's like being back on that podium punching the air and thinking you can dance the world out of depression all over again - but with a little red steam train and a quaint sketch of a forest. Maybe).

Me: Right, out of the bath now (as I swing down the Thatcher's Old Rascal with the one hand not holding up a flannel, because this isn't my house and I can't find a towel).

Son 1: Mummy, if I'm going to get out the bath you need to know this very important thing.

Me: What?

Son 1: This icecream tub, with a lid (only the best bath toys for my children) contains my PRECIOUS water. NOBODY, especially not that toddler more than anything, must EVER DESTROY my precious water.

Me: Err, fine.

(Rustling of flannel and attempted drying of children ensues).

Suddenly.

Son 1: MUMMMEEEEEE, the toddler's got my precious water!!!

Son 2 (who is NOT a toddler): This is WEE WEE!!!

Son 1: NOOOOOOOOOOOOO (and thus takes precious water and runs, yes RUNS, with a rapidly draining icecream tub of water through the upstairs floor of my mum's house).

Me: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO (and thus pursues rapidly draining ice cream tub of precious water through upstairs of mum's house).

Son 2: That water is WEE WEE.

Me (under my breath): Jesus.

Son 1: Jesus CHRIST. If that toddler doesn't stop ANNOYING ME, I'll send him back from where he came from.

Me: I think I need to open another bottle.

Son 1: The water, water of life, Jesus gives us the wee wee of life......

My mum: Darling, can you bring down the Wasp-Eze, I've been bitten......

Me: Where are those mediational singing bowels when you need them?

Son 1: Go down to the city into the street, tell the people of Jesus, let his poo poos meet.

Me: If you don't actually follow the instructions and inhale Wasp-Eze , deeply, what does it do......?

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Pink Pussies

Well the big news here is that (brace yourself) my new bedroom has reached the stage of having a carpet and my mattress has moved from the living room floor to the bedroom floor!! Whoop whoop. The kids are slightly devastated at the loss of their 'soft play centre' but I am over the moon I now have a living room you can actually walk in (rather than bound from point to point). It is slightly odd sleeping upstairs but I'm sure I'll get used to it. The next step is obtaining a bed.

The next news is that I've been poorly. The day after I tossed the badger my eyes swelled up,3 went all red and started to close. I know what your thinking, by catapulting that badger across the barn I have somehow upset the laws of Badger Karma and this is my punishment. Either that or I've got TB.

No it's not badger related, I think (pray?) it's just a virus. By Friday it had progressed to a migraine and the inability to move very far (or breathe very hard) so I had to call in my mum to do the school run (this is a huge luxury I've never had before as I've never lived near family).

While my mum was here she asked if there was anything else she could do for me and I realised that on Saturday my son had a 5 year old's birthday party to go to and I had no present. to send Could she possibly (as she was going to the supermarket anyway) pick up something for a 5 year old boy?

Yes of course she could. No problem.

Thanks mum BUT LISTEN. When you are choosing this gift can you please please please bear something in mind?

1. It's not 1982 anymore and times have moved on.

2. Even when it was 1982 you did me no favours by insisting that I wore nothing but lace up Startrite shoes or wellies 24/7 (I think they may have even been boys' Startrite shoes), dressing me in those brown corduroy dungarees with appliqued ducks on which a relative sent via the post inside an old 'Winalot' dog food bag and thus always smelt slightly of a dried meat dog biscuits.

3. My son is not like 'every other 5 year old boy'. My son may be sitting here now watching a BBC Four documentary on Indian Hill Railways and clutching a slightly battered stuffed guinea pig (a toy one, I haven't yet added taxidermy to the list of option awaiting the Dead Pets) but many other 5 year old boys are keener to open presents emblazoned with words like KABBOOMMM!!! SMASH!!!! FAST!!! and linked to some kind of commercial television programme. If you really can't face that, just get some Lego. OK?

What was I thinking!?

WHAT WAS I THINKING?

This was, after all, the woman who bought her 18 year old only daughter a men's fern green dressing gown from M&S as her 'Coming of Age' birthday present. Not to mention that in the face of 'but everyone else is going as Madonna!' sent her daughter to school dressed as an elephant...... (and don't forget the Spandex Lacewing).

She returned with.......



.......a £2.99 'Make Your Own Pom Pom Pets' set replete with photos of kittens adorned with pink sequins. PINK SEQUINS!

I toyed with the idea of crawling from my sick bed (actually as I haven't got a bed it's my sick mattress) to supplement it with a 'Death Eating Cage Wrestler' or similar but couldn't actually be arsed.

So sorry mate - and at the end of the day who knows, maybe sequined pink pussies are right up your tree? This could be the start of something beautiful.


Or maybe not.

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The Spandex Years

The previous post about my inability to to supply my son with the correct items for school made me reflect on the matter more deeply (i.e. I had a quick think about it in bed last night). You are always reading these days about parents trying to out-do each other with nativity costumes or baking for the school fete ('hey you drive a Range Rover and spend Half Term skiing in Aspen? Ha - eat my dust and look at the size of my Yule Log - that kind of thing) but I can't say I've noticed much of it myself. All I tend to see are a lot of cornflakes crispy cakes and packets of shop bought mini-rolls. Clearly my children go to the wrong type of school....

I certainly never noticed any ultra-competitive costume making from my own mother.

Hell no.

My mother has something of a dark past when it comes to supplying her offspring with costumes for school.

It all started with a 'Victorian Day' when I was about 7.

Parents were supposed to dress us in 'costume appropriate to the time', so my mum sent me in with a lampshade cover over my head, clutching a large potted Aspidistra plant.

Her main concern was the welfare of her Aspidistra.

Everybody else's main concern was 'why the f'ck are you carrying a potted plant around and what the HELL is that on your head?'.

My card as the 'class eccentric' was well and truly marked.

I'd like to say things then improved - but they didn't.

The household dressing up box somehow acquired a silver all-in-one stretchy bodysuit. The kind of thing people are sporting right now at the Winter Olympics while flying down mountains on tea trays. This was in the days prior to Lycra so I'm guessing it was Spandex? I vaguely recall it came from my father's workplace but as he worked for an engineering firm making industrial turbines, I won't question that too closely.

Anyway - my mother being pretty thrifty - ensured that the silver Spandex catsuit made its way into EVERY fancy dress outfit I ever wore from that day onwards.

First, aged about 8, there was the Brownie fancy dress party with the theme of 'things beginning with T'.

So she sewed a white toweling patch on the front, stuck some ears on my head and sent me as a cat.....

Apparently I wasn't any cat - I was Tom the cat - but it didn't stop 350 people asking me why I'd come to a T themed party dressed as a (shiny) cat.

The next fancy dress occasion, aged about 9, was for members of the 'Wildlife Watch' club (it was very rock and roll my early childhood) and the theme was 'Animals of the Night'.

What are you thinking here? A fox? A badger? Maybe a hedgehog?

Now remember - you need to make use of a silver-toned all in one Spandex catsuit and silver coloured cats are not indigenous to the British Isles and what with this being a party for 'nature mad' individuals, people will know this.....

That's it! That well loved 'Creature of the Night'......





...THE LACEWING!


A lacewing (in case you don't immerse yourself in information on flies and similar) looks like this:


Lovely. While other girls were stealing their sister's Coffee Shimmer lipstick and perfecting the moves to Kylie's Locomotion, I was morosely wandering round a village hall dressed as a fly.

You may also like to note that the fly in question is not actually silvery coloured. It's green. And the Spandex was silver...

Well don't worry - they turn a greyish colour when they are about to die.......

Mother pinned a baby blanket to my back (to act as the 'lacy wings') and off I went (to once again spend an entire evening explaining to people what the hell I was supposed to be and, once again, not winning any prizes. 'What ARE you? Some kind of moth?', 'No I'm a Lacewing', 'Are they not green?', 'I'm about to die', 'Oh').

It didn't end there.

In fact the Spandex Suit years culminated in Le Grande Humiliation when aged about 13 (note the age here - THIRTEEN) my school held an end of term fancy dress contest and I was forced into it to parade in front of my school as...


... an elephant.

Oh yes.

Let me give those of you with young daughters a piece of advice. If your daughter reaches puberty and is burgeoned with a DD bust and thighs like tree trunks, then:

a) Reassure that whilst she currently feels like a hideous freak and boys follow her round school calling her 'Oxfam legs' or throwing sticks at her, one day she will discover that it's not all bad and there are better boys out there. Men actually but we'll stop right there.

and

b) do not, I re-iterate DO NOT, dress her in aged Silver Spandex and send her to school as a mock elephant.

Other girls were Madonna or Kylie or bloody Tinkerbell.

I was Dumbo after he OD'd on the HRT tablets.

Not only was I wearing the (rather stretched Spandex) but the rest of my costume was made up as thus:

Grey school socks over my feet and hands to make 'elephant feet'.

The grey cord off an anorak pinned to my arse to make a 'tail'.

And (this is the worst bit) a pair of grey tights pulled over my head with one leg stuffed to form a trunk and the other leg cut off so my eyes are staring out of a gaping hole somewhere around where the crotch should be.

After that the Spandex suit mysteriously disappeared.

And I wonder why my son has a hysterical fear of fancy dress parties.......

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