blue skies

I am looking out onto a two acres of grass, orchards, wood shed, sprinkler system, swooping swallows, a swimming pool shaped like a blue almond, crickets and cicada's are chirruping and LO! on either side of my line of vision are two gigantic mountains. One has a name which is Canigou where people ski and climb and do athletic things and it even had a sliver of snow on it right now as I type and the other is I don't know what but is quite high. Apparently there are bears and wolves and chamoix (thought that was something you cleaned a car with?) and just when Mol & Liz were eating their saussison a large eagle-like bird lazily flew over our heads kind of just y'know, soaring. Et Voila! In't France BRILLIANT?!
Ryan Air is not so brilliant but it was brilliant enough to get us from Stansted to Perpignan without us dying (although I was reduced to anxiety-attack-like-tears at the end of the flight when great gusts of happy Pyrenees wind blew us up and down like a goddamn paper airplane - this is it I thought, clutching onto Liz's little chubby hand for what I really thought would be the last time, as a conscious Human Being - mummy get off my hand she said to me, oooh, bumpy! - meanwhile I'm sitting there clutching my chair with my legs and bottom in a sort of 'if I hold on really tight to everything it won't happen' way, and my head in my other hand my heart in my mouth and snot streaming down my face, this is no exaggeration either, I really did have snot streaming down my face and nothing to wipe it with and Ryan Air, bless them, only have plastic wipe down seats so I couldn't even bury my nose in the back of the chair in front... Anyway. Lengthy divert... Here I am. Safe. Sound. Sane.)
And we had that gorgeous moment when you step out of a plane onto hot tarmac. Remember that feeling? Stifling air? The smell of petrol and rubber and heat? Oh, my jeans - WAY too hot! But right now I'm so happy to be on the ground alive I don't care how many gallons of sweat are dripping down my thighs. Honest! Mol! France! Brilliant! Heat! Awesome!
And then the grumpy French passport Garcon! Bonjour, je t'ador! And then the first supermarket shop! Ou est le bier et vin! Ou sont les fromages...?
So far we've had a lot of fantastique French sun. I've got through two bottles of rose. Husband has drunk his way through many petit biers and Mol and Liz are 1/2 a litre each into their preferred chocolate & vanilla flavoured icecream.
The sun has gone down now, and the garden is dark, the mountains are burning hot, but their pink tan has vanished. Its just the buzz of the cicada's, the squeal of a distant French scooter and thoughts of what tomorrow will bring, other than baguette, more cheese, another 50 laps of the pool and my dear brother who is flying over to spend some time in the Pyrenees with us. Joy.

get the suncream...

We're all going on a summer holiday, doo-be-doo-be-doo-be-doo-be-dooooooo. Ah, Cliff, m'ol'mucker. You are the beginning of every persons voyage to that perfect summer abode...
This time tomorrow I hope I'll be dusting down my sunhat, squeezing into one of two really old scrappy bikinis and supping on some trez-tasty French wine.
But don't worry trusted readers: all 2 of you will be kept posted of my French antics because despite the house location being ultimate Pyrenees rurality - there is internet! hurrah. So, I will be updating Mothers Ruin with tales of woe as I finish of the 5th camembert of the morning, after a couple of bottles of Boujolais, and checking that my children haven't turned into real-live-human-prunes in the swimming pool.
Now. What is the French for just-one-more-chocolate-croissant, oh, and what the heck, chuck in one of those Vouvray's too..?
Au revoir petit choux as they say sur la continent!
(Although, before we get to France we have to do the whole RyanAir shite on a bike will we be sane this time tomorrow? I probably will be pissed on my 8th bottle of Bier Blondes, nursing wounds gathered in London Stansted... But all shall be revealed my pretty, all shall be revealed...)
Boff Boff! Bon Soir!

bunting bunting bunting

Hoist the bunting!
Reserve a cake!
Scone and jam?
oooh, here's the brass band!
oooh, here's the vicar come to open the fete!
hurrah hurrah hurrah!
So today is The Village Fete. Not the village of Harringay, no, I'm talking genuine ye-olde-Hampshire-village fete. I'm down at my parents house enjoying the chaos as 50 or so of the well bred helpful village folk heave tressle tables around Mum's garden which Dad has spent hours and hours fine-tuning over the last few weeks (the nettles have been tamed, but SHOCKER, a wasps nest has just been discovered by the coconut shy and stings have been stung... do I sniff a village sized law suit?). Upon said tressle tables are piled cakes jams cheap jewellary old toys bottles of dusty Blue Nun for the tombola and a few old copies of Gilly Cooper and a couple of out of date Lonely Planet Istanbul. Anything goes on sale at a village fete. Some things are recycled and have made appearances for the last couple of decades. There is a particular broach I recognise for the 3rd year running. Poor broach. Does it get laughed at by the other more glossy numbers? It sits there like a teenage wall flower at its first disco, never asked to dance, not even glanced at, just left - thoughtlessly, callously - alone, untouched... It sits on its little cushion sniffing quietly proudly to itself, it doesn't matter. it doesn't matter. It really doesn't matter. I like my marbled pink plastic montage. I do and my self esteem is OK. It really is.
But enough about the self-pitying recycled mad talking broach.
What Mol is really up for is a bit of traditional Punch & Judy. Where Judy really does get the shit beaten out of her for about 1/2 hour none-stop, whilst the baby gets chucked over the side of the mini-theatre (a la Michael Jackson & Blanket - I find it hard to write Blanket in the context of being a name without heaving, how could anyone call their child that? That in itself is tantamount to some sort of child-abuse, surely?) and a crocodile that eats a lot of sausages and chases Punch. It's so violent but apparently it's also OK this sort of domestic violence is acceptable because, um, oh, I've forgotten the reason why. Oh, maybe because it's really old and traditional and it's like an institution so it's fine to watch a man whack his wife with a truncheon and the kids, honestly, won't realise that it's mirroring a grizzly reality of normality for many women and families.
I wonder why Mol is so up for it? For someone who is so not interested in banging about with a sword or play-fighting or guns or even thumb-war, it surprises me that she'd be into this cracking-yarn of puppetry-battle. I think the worst violence she's seen in her family was when I was very hormonal at the end of my pregnancy with Liz and I chucked a bowl of cheerios over Husband's head. With milk in it. Its funny now (sort of) but at the time it caused a big uproar and a lot of toe-curling-humiliation. God knows what got me in such a rage. Probably something entirely trivial and unimportant. But that is the joy of hormones and pregnancy.
So. Punch & Judy. Cakes. Splat the Rat. Coconuts. Brass band & bunting. Maybe some sack-races, and a pony-ride.
As the moment of the grand opening comes closer all the village folk are turning up in their plastic macs and their eyes trained on the sky, "oh lord, look at that black cloud", "will the heavens open?" "god give us mercy on this day of fund raising" are just a few of the phrases I can hear being chewed over as the scones are being eyed up by the pensioners at the front of the tea-queue.
Ah. I just love a good fete me I do.
And the best bit is friendly-jossling at the junk-stall where the optimists think they'll find that gem from the attic that is worth a tidy fortune and will transform their close-circuit village life and take them to ST Tropez and sparkling wine ad-infinitum.
For me, I just like to make sure I win the raffle. Even if I have to buy all the damned tickets.
Now. Where's that bloody crocodile got to?

Can I just jack it in?

Oh I'm tired. Talk to me about fretful new borns and I'll talk to you about ill children. Talk to me about 3am feeds and I'll talk to you about injured husbands. Talk to me about leaking nappies and vomit on the shoulder, I'll talk to you about being a mother considering jacking in the job. Tell me you've been made redundant and I'll congratulate you. Can a mother just jack it all in? Is it actually possible? I know that Katie Price can jack it in for a week and go partying in a bikini in Ibiza. But she has lots of money. I know some mothers that can jack it in for 24hours and go on a nice weekend somewhere without the little snotbags tugging at the ankle. But that is not really jacking it in. I'm talking, like, chucking in the towel, admitting defeat and getting a new job in Macdonalds. Is that possible?
I'm talking, like, a year's sabatical? Me, I'd go off on a fast ship to somewhere quite far away. Maybe without mobile phone arials either.
Maybe that is what boarding school is actually really for. It is for legal escape. I do recall that many of my teenage years were spent in a leafy Hampshire boarding school whilst my parents were "working abroad" - probably what they were doing was avoiding their moody furrowed browed children and their door slamming antics (well, mine, anyway). Can husbands and children under the age of 6 be sent to boarding school for a year, or even a term, just so that the mangled mother can pump herself up with a new lease of life - commonly known as energy - ready to face another round of swine flu and cricket injuries?
The reason for my rant - and here's yet ANOTHER reason to dislike cricket, intensely - is that Husband returned many hours earlier than expected (no, he didn't disturb me having a tupperwear party) from a 20-20 cricket game he was playing down in Eltham, when he twisted his knee and popped/clicked/royally-fucked something inside. This is unfortunately the third time in as many years that he has had this injury - always the same reason the same game the same leg - and my sympathy goes to him in huge waves, but, I'm also thinking, this is the selfish part of me please note, oh for god sake can I just have a rest from looking after people? I know it's not all about me. And I know life isn't all about me. But sometimes I feel a bit like the one constantly spinning around the kitchen and the bathroom cabinet, throwing out an uneaten plate of pasta and pesto, administering hugs to a child with a raging fever and puss-y tonsils whilst trying to get the Husband to neck a packet of nurofen-express to get the sodding swelling down on the poor disabled red spongy painful looking knee.
But as a Mother. The Mother of this house has the responsibility to nuture the chicks in her nest; as my dear parents would so empathetically suggest: "Darling, that is just life."
So, I don't think I can jack it all in, and I don't think I'll be booking a bikini-infested-Ibiza-girly-week (don't think I have any friends who could do that with me anyway), but what I can do is imagine it all. So. The lights may be on, but there is definitely, this week at least, no one at home.

Ruined Mother

Last night was another long one. Its been 7 days now that Mol has been ill with suspected Swine Flu. And a very long 7 days it has been. Yesterday STUPID mother that I am I sent Mol off to school and Liz off to nursery - under the naive assumption that they were clear and healthy. Only to receive a phone call from nursery at 2pm saying please come and collect your dripping sweaty sad toddler, and then when Mol got back from school she sort of went a paler shade of white and almost passed out on the sofa as her temperature and headache came roaring back into her body.
Evil nasty swine flu. Be gone! Get ye orf to hell!
So, since Sunday night there has not been a sleep yet that has been un-interrupted by one or t'other of the girls - sweating falling out of bed waking up with parched mouths medicine being administered here, cold flannels being administered there - me or Husband clomping messily down and up our stairs to our loft bedroom. I managed to pour half a bottle of white nurofen all over the floor in Mols room as I didn't have my glasses on and couldn't see how much stuff was going into the 5ml teaspoon and then I heard a sort of sticky trickling drip noise and managed to stick my toe into the pretty disgusting mixture before realising what was going on.
And now, to top it off. Its the Ashes. And damned and botheration Channel 5 has decided to show the cricket "highlights" (nothing high about cricket re-runs...) at the exact same time as East Enders. Husband, because he so kindly abandoned his client lunch yesterday to scrape dripping Liz off her nursery floor, was obviously going to get to watch the Cricket Highlights yesterday whilst I twitched and fidgeted next to him eating blue cheese and listening to Mol upstairs coughing and groaning. In the end I had to leave the sitting room - the highlights were so dreary. And there's some strange kind of man-love-thing going on between Husband and the men on the screen as they rub balls in their nether-regions and skip about the Cardiff pitch. He gazed adoringly at the screen and if one of the men, lets say, Flintoff because that's the only name I can remember (and its weird, again, because he's called Andrew, but actually called Freddie and that's some sort of funny cricket-person's joke - ha ha ha, Freddie Flintoff, like y'know, Fred Flintstone?! ha, HILARIOUS! - honestly I nearly pee'd myself when I heard that one), dropped a catch, he curses and tut's at the screen, muttering, but I wouldn't have dropped that!
How long do the Ashes last? I think a bit longer than Swine Flu. But not as long as the insanity that having to watch weeks and weeks of "highlights" (that means England losing again, and again, and again) will fall upon my head.
Right now, on this sunny Friday, I feel rather a.) ruined by sleepless nights and b.) depressed at the thought of having a Cricket V Enders fight possibly up to 3 times a week for the entire summer.

Oink Oink.

What's the deal with swine flu? Most of my borough apparently has the virus - schools have shut down, the health-line is engaged permanently, the doctors waiting room is segregated between non-sufferers and icky-infected victims.
So when my Mol fell ill with "mystery" illness on Saturday and was feverish all Sunday and moaning and groaning with a sore head, and I spent 8hours with my mobile phone in my pocket on extra-loud, waiting for Cami-doc to return my call, all I could think was, oh dear, does she have it now too? According to Cami-doc her symptoms (fever, headache, sore throat, slight cough, runny nose) match the listed symptoms of swine-flu. This list however, to the layperson & mother familiar with such symptoms on a regular basis, sounds very much like a cold or tonsillitus or just, y'know, regular flu? Anyway, Cami-doc advised consultation with our GP (who is a mad woman with big hair - on head & chin - and a pretty indiscreet bedside manner... I recall her letting me know of 4 other women who had just got pregnant on my road at the time I went to register my 2nd pregnancy - oh, yes, they're all called Vanessa, how funny is that? Your road is so middle class. She squeaked at me.What the hell has that got to do with anything? She also has an unnerving tendency to tell exhausted over sensitive post natal mothers that they're way over weight and really when are they planning on going on the post natal diet? Sweet lady.)
Anyway, we sat in the segregated section of our waiting room. With a sort of green-aura around us, uggy victims, like a rotten-Ready-Break-glow. People trying not to stare through the glass window on the door.
The doctor saw us, we described the symptoms, she told us about her trip to Synagogue on the weekend, we asked her about whether Mol needed any treatment, she tried to stick a giant ear-bud down her throat for a swab, Mol groaned with her sore head, GP told us about the rules for swine flu in Brent and wondered about the rules in Harringay. And then she said, so! would you like me to treat her?
Uh? Hello? We're not doctors? Uh, hello DOCTOR surely at this point you tell us what you are planning on doing with our daughter? Oh, yes, I suppose that's a jolly good idea she laughs merrily. Ha, I'm not very with it, no mask or gloves or any idea how to open the swabbing packet! Ha ha ha. I'll just phone my colleague and ask what to do!
Me and Husband look at each other with confused raised eyebrows - thinking quietly - do we leg it out of there now in case she prescribes morphine & arsenic by mistake?
Anyway. The long and the short of it is that Mol is now on Tami-flu, as a precaution, since her symptoms match those of the dreaded lurgy - however I suspect Mol actually has a case of end-of-term-itus-Mol-flu which she gets every end of term as far as I can remember...
The tami-flu comes in a capsule. 6 year olds not very good at taking capsules. So every morning and evening I'm there on the chopping board sawing the damned capsule in half trying not to spill any of its precious contents, and then I mix it with jam or strawberry milkshake and Mol gags and chokes just to show that she KNOWS the medicine is in there.
Its all been such good fun.
Meanwhile Liz is like toddler-on-short-fuse and hating having to play fiddle to "ill" sister who makes a lot of noise about not very much.
Its SO boring.
When I asked the GP about how long it takes to pass from one person to the next, how contagious it all is, she replied "ha, oh, really, i haven't a clue!"
Which was just about what I expected to hear.
So I wonder if we'll all get it? Oink.

Wedding Etiquette

So yesterday was the day we'd all been waiting for. No not Venus V Serena. But a gorgeously gorgeous family friends' wedding. Number 3 wedding for a family with 4 children, the wedding had been much anticipated as the groom was bringing his family and folks over from mid-west-America and 99% of the family hadn't been further than the county border as far as I could tell from various chats I had with various 'doodles, so to come to Engerlaand and see Bucking-ham Castle and go on the Metro and gaad, all the guys here are so like friendly - it was going to be a lavishly British event.
London Route Master buses to take us to and from the church, gaad, is this church like really 2 million years old? And, gaad, these buses are like so bumpy? The return journey had us drinking copious amounts of well chilled champers and admiring the sunny landscape of Kent and S.London. Then back to Greenwich, gaad, its like so cute here. Where the garden was robed in a white marquee and barricaded in with tables heaving with more champagne and wine and fizzy water and waiters and waitresses hopping around with plates of amazing nibbly foody things. And then there was dinner, 3 courses of good food, tables groaning under wine and salad and vases of flowers - the marquee looking like a magazine shoot it was so perfectly delicious. Happy chat all around the tent. Then speeches and cake cutting and photos and first dance to the theme tune of Juno and then lots of twisting and rock-n-roll and strapless dresses at risk of falling to the floor as R-E-S-P-E-C-T got the dancers like, really dancing.
So amid this joy and beauty, love and devotion I had two conundrums.
Conundrum 1: the even more gorgeous people who had not exactly volunteered, but agreed to look after Mol & Liz were in fact looking after one ill Mol who developed a temperature over the course of the day and night. So I was getting very high on extremely drinkable champagne, whilst texting my friend back in the real world and wondering how irresponsible I was as I flung my shoulderless dress (and myself, in the dress - I didn't get so drunk that I ripped my own dress off and flung it around carelessly - that'd be bit of a show-stealer from the Bride...) around the sweaty (but good sweaty rather than Underground sweaty) dancefloor. I know when I feel ill all I want is my bed, my hot water bottle, my paracetamol and my pillows. So I know also that a 6 year old with possible swine flu (yes its going the rounds in our respectable neighbourhood - its true. Despite the embargo on revolting infected plague dirty victims they are still dripping in through the safety net and thus, infecting US, the clean unsuspecting...) is at risk of becoming very moany and wingy and sad if she's not in her own bed with her mummy and her bear and her pillow and the familiar sound of her parents not talking to each other downstairs. Anyway. Gorgeous angel-helper-friends reassured me that I was to enjoy myself and let them take care of the sickly 6 year old. So irresponsibly I took them literally. And forgot (mainly) all about my possible swine-flu-victim daughter.
Conundrum 2. What is the etiquette for sitting next to the most dreary conceited uninteresting/uninterested man in the room of 200? After texting (under the pretext of ill daughter) to both my sister in law and my husband to save me "oh my god I am next to the most boring man alive what do I do?" I think my drunken drivel says, I took the situation into my own charge and wrapped up my one-way-unrequited conversation with "Fred", so boring I can't even remember what it was about (something to do with taxes I fear) and got stuck into Gareth on my left, who was from Silicone Valley San-Fran and was much more interesting and engaging. Or so I told myself. Hell, nothing could've been worse than "Fred" and his round double chins, with a pink wobbly endy-chin-bit, and his sweaty (more like Underground sweaty) complexion. He was there with his wife so I didn't need too feel bad that no one would ever love him. Some one does. (I wonder what it was like sitting next to her? Maybe that explains the two people with their head stuck to their plates of mashed potato on either side of her?)
I have one final memory of possible faux-pas-behaviour - not so much of a conundrun... Which took place on the gaad-these-are-cute-and-bumpy Route Master. After a couple of glasses of champagne I was feeling confident enough to make contact with The Americans. So I got chatting to an uncle of the grooms'. Predictably the talk turn towards the fantastic awesome wow-inspiring new political situation in USA... and I naively said, well, so great, Obama?! Amazing! You guys must be so ecstatic! The curt reply indicated that the conversation was going no further "Not all of us voted for Obama". And thus ended that particular relationship with the Americans. What a loser! God, doesn't got the President he wants so is STILL sulking! So me and my brother in law hailed the waiter and got stuck into glass no.5 of champagne. Wow. The Kent country side was ravishing.

Mothers Ruin: I'm a survivor!

Mothers Ruin: I'm a survivor!

I'm a survivor!

I got through Day 1 at new job yesterday. The "office" - well, its more like an extended broom cupboard with computers & a microwave in it - was just sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo hot when I arrived at 9.50am, having made sandwiches for me & Mol, and then dropped Mol off at school and then Liz off at nursery and then catch myself a bus (by which time I felt like I'd done enough for the day without having to learn the ropes in a new and slightly scary position). I kidded myself that the glorified cupboard could not get any more baking. I wondered whether humans cook - I had visions of us workers going brown like the hog roast in a giant oven.

The bus was like a nightmare of heat and armpits and openly sweating calf-muscles, dripping, in the baking morning sunlight.
As the bus bumped down Green Lanes I thought to myself, and it was a bit of a Eureka moment - convertable buses! Yes. The council should buy all the tourist buses from Piccadilly and use them as normal buses and then we, the Londoners, who pay £2 a ride UBSURD, wouldn't arrive at our destination looking and smelling like we've just come out of someone elses dirty laundry basket. And then the tourists could use our normal buses, and get a REAL London experience and could take photos of themselves sniffing peoples soggy pit-hair in a mock-commute-set-up. I think it could be the making of a great tourist attraction.
So, bus dream over I got to the office and had the vision of us cooking like the hog roast in our broom cupboard office, and then to my complete horror my feet started to swell it was so hot and I had to take my offending flip-flops off and let the sponge-like toes hang out 100% al-fresco and hope that Mrs B wouldn't notice the offending specimens at the bottom of my own, now dripping calf muscles. Luckily Mrs B was busy dealing with a swollen ankle which reacts to heat/cold - she even showed me her offending limb; I felt like we were sharing quite a personal moment, maybe one that would push our relationship to the next level of mutual respect between boss & PA. We can, in the future, laugh tenderly at our hot-first day when we wiggled our rounded-body-parts at each other nervously, wondering whether we should actually be sitting in casualty rather than the 94-degree airless office.
The coolest part of the office was in fact the out door loo which made the word Dunny come to mind, as it is quite Australian this particular out door loo. I opened the door and then managed to put my head straight into a sticky spiders nest and then once I'd (without screaming at all) got the revolting web out of my damp hair I sat on the loo and found myself staring straight at Mother Spider who'd happily be the size of the palm of my hand. Without screaming I did my pee very quietly and then washed my hands - Mother Spider was actually IN the sink so I had to manouvre the soap water fingers around this Mother - still no screaming - and walked back into the huh-I-can't-breath-heat, via the remainder of the bloody web. Returned back to office with swollen feet and spiders web stuck all over my forehead.
Another pleasant shared moment between myself and new boss was shortly after she'd eaten her lunch she was chatting to me and a bit of her lunch dislodged itself from her teeth and sort of messily fell half way out of her mouth but instinct launched her tongue into action and she caught whatever food-item it was and down into her throat it went - and then she made a little joke about having spinach all over her teeth and I laughed and said, don't worry your new PA wouldn't let you have green bits all over your teeth, ha ha ha.
(ha ha ha...)
So 5-o-clock came and I tidied away my little pile of rubble which had built up over the day and said, farewell! Off I skipped into the real world which felt a little cooler and a little louder and I felt quite sort of light hearted and then I realised that I had under 2 hours to get home, get the kids from their various hiding places, do supper, have baths, stories, teeth, cuddles, I love you moments, before having to get back out there dressed up and ready for the next and final stage of the day, supper for my Mother In Laws birthday... And suddenly the spring in my step got lost and I just thought, oh, for shittings sake does it ever stop?
And on that happy declaration I shall go and sprinkle some glitter on (edible, I'm not trying to kill her) to Mother In Law's birthday cake.

Day One

Today is the first day of the rest of my life as Career PA..! I have donned my power-frock and highest heels and am off on the 141 to my new job once I have dumped the kids at their various institutions.

The big question is will I cut the mustard and make it past lunch? I have optimistically made myself a sandwich to eat in my compulsory unpaid half-hour lunch break (oh and by the way its probably better if you keep your phone OFF all day) - see, how I've reached high and gone for a really powerful position? - ... Husband just about remembered to wish me luck after I reminded him that today was my first day and that yes don't worry I've sorted the kids, but thanks for asking... Meanwhile I'll just finish off the cleaning I was doing yesterday and sorting the washing and making Mols packed lunch and sorting their hair and finding my none-existent P45 to take to the new office where lies the dragon-ess in her den, ready to eat me for her breakfast.
I must try to look forward to this new experience. Having washed my hair I feel more positive.
I shall update later...