God what a weekend. I don't know who invented them but after a week of working and heaving kids around London like a regular skivvy I like the idea of sitting on the sofa drinking Lapsang Souchong (some people say its actually cat-pee, but I like to beg to differ) reading the magazine of the Guardian (its the only part that makes sense to my brain-cell-deprived head). Instead what happens at weekends is that it's suddenly really really really really majorly important to fill every waking moment with activities cooking friends car journeys shopping trips swimming golf theatre meeting new babysitters stressing out the toddler getting to D after making stops at A-B-C arguments about taking public or private transport... and the thing is everything is really good fun and really wholesome and refreshing from the norm of the week previous or following but it doesn't permit for sitting on the sofa drinking cats pee and looking at bonny photos arranged elegantly by the Guardian staff. So its Monday night and I just want to run through a few of the highlights and low-lights of the weekend.
Saturday started with a hangover (low) - (4 people 5 bottles of wine strange carb-free supper = painful head in the morning) but hangover was soaked a bit by (high) croissants and toast supplied by MotherInLaw.
Then there was cooking (soup / cake) and friends for lunch (high). That's nice friends for lunch. Sit around chatting and controlling kids and not allowing them cakes (high) until they're near breaking with frustration (they all know which cupcake they HAVE to have... and little dirty fingers keep prodding them and putting stick and ugsome marks on them... OK! please! take! stuff in face! don't choke! and if you do, please choke the crumbs onto your parent not my table or floor...).
Then there was walk in park (avoid dog poo don't fall over on skin-grating pavement, if you do please put snotty crying face on appropriate parents leg). Parking ticket (low).
Rain (low). Cold (low). Tidying house (low). Appreciating clean house (high).
Argument with neighbour about lift to Sadlers Wells (low). Trip to Sadlers Wells (extremely high). Admiring Akram Kahn (very extremely hot and therefore major high).
Sleeping badly because of rain (low). Needing loo in the night (low). Being car-less on Sunday whilst Husband plays golf in the rain in near-hurricane conditions (low). Taking kids swimming (low for me, high for them).
Tea with friends who have a fresh baby which has a very sweet head of black soft fuzzy hair and smells very fresh (high).
I watched a bit of X-factor last night (about 30 seconds before Husband rants "not this shit...") and during the first 20 seconds I realised that a friend of ours has a Simon Cowell Hair Cut (SCHC). I find this alarming. Was it intentional to have an SC? Fair enough that many older men have SC waistbands, but that's generally not intentional and just the hand of fate... but to go to a hair dresser and actually come out with a SC... I wonder how sane said friend is and whether he (at least it wasn't a woman coming out the hair dresser with an SCHC) needs to stop watching the programme. Or maybe he just needs to buy a wig. Anyway. The good thing about blokes hair is that it seems to grow quickly so maybe next time I see him he'll have a Louis Walsh or a Dermot O-Leary or a Gordon Brown. Strange though. Could be a new wave (ha ha) of do's. Thank goodness Sianiad O'Connor (click on this one all fans of 90's music...) isn't a major celebrity any more.
And so now I'm wondering if I can take my weekend early? Like, tomorrow and Wednesday? Anyone want to join me? It could be the new Simon Cowell Weekend In the Week trend.
hm.
Must go eat some food my brain cells clearly need some food.

things that are flat

Being a small person, relatively, in this day and age that is (maybe 600 years ago I'd've been considered freakily gigantic and people would've put me in the ducking chair and I'd've survived (I'm good at holding my breath) and then I'd've been hung drawn and quartered and burned at the steak for being a witch...(I can't say I'm burn proof - not if the burns on my hand from the oven are anything to go by) I like to wear shoes which give me a bit of extra elevation... And when I'm out on the razz, which I less and less frequently am, I slip my feet into a pair of high heels and I strut around for a few hours ignoring the strange dead-toe sensations that get more and more dead-toe-like as the night progresses (which is also why I like to quaff a few bottles of wine or beer or absinthe...).

But I'm not here to write about those sort of flat(or not) things. Or the flatness of my wash-board stomach. Or the flatness of Suffolk. Or the flatness of a lake with no wind. Or the flatness of those televisions called flat-screens. They're really flat, I've been led to believe.
None of that.
Today I write of the flatness of my tyre on Wednesday afternoon when I went to climb on board my trusty tank of a bike (my brother kindly told me that "its the worst bike I've EVER ridden on in my life you should leave it in the street and see if a bus can run it over") which I love and its served me well for the 4 years I've owned. Anyway. On Wednesday I had one of those mad dash horrors of an afternoon where I had to leave work a little bit early to get to Liz's nursery which was shutting early (so the staff could go bitch about our bratty kids for an hour or so) and then rush like a mad haggered over-wrinkled-35-year-old up to school to get Mol before she starts to believe she's been abandoned by her family and is off to the Annie-style-home... So step one was to get home from work. Which was smashed to small biscuit-crumbs used on cheesecake bases when I saw the extent to which my back wheel was punctured. Holy shit. And a lot of other obscenities came out of my mouth as I threw my now not trusty tank of a bike (hate you you bastard crap thing of all the days to get a puncture you're out for the rust... etc.; bike gives me sad look of rejection). So then I run for the bus like aforementioned mad haggered over wrinkled 35 year old and get the bus and get to nursery just in time, panting, and then sling Liz over my shoulders like a bag of spuds, and limp my way, panting like a half dead haggered over wrinkled unfit 35 year old and get to school just as the Orphan Minders are about to load Mol up into their van and take her off to some Victorian Institution. Or do I mean after school club? Anyway. I made it. Just.
And that night it rained and rained and all I could think of was, oh, poor bike, out in the exposed open air, rusting and crying with pain. And I did feel a bit bad.
So the next morning as I walked to school (that means pushing Liz on her scooter that has no brake whilst carrying her bag and Mol's bags) trying to maintain a bit of cool, when I mention in passing to the local bike guru (LBG) that my bike is trashed at work and I'm wondering because I'm a pathetic girl how I'm going to get it home with its puncture. And then we talked about a friends daughters' "bring a pony party" and the subject was dropped.
At work, 1hour later: said LBG rocked up at the garden centre in his fluorescent bike gear, clasping an inner tube, a spanner and a very pumping pump.
And now I have a new hero.
Thank you LBG. My bike is snug under its rug like a bug and I feel no more guilt and don't have to spend any more money on overpriced London buses.
Beer courtesy of me next time we're in a public house at the same time... (Xmas drinks...?).

hanging on...

I was walking back to my car after work today (Sorry. I drove. I know I shouldn't. But. Too dark. Too wet. Too wintery. Too tiring. Carbon Footprint goes up one more size...) and I heard the sound of birds chirping cheerily in the trees, probably just tucking themselves up for the night as the sun (somewhere behind the greyness) was setting and the sky getting dark. But as I looked at the trees I noticed that they were not swaying in a nice calming to-and-fro sort of way. They were way-jerking around, flapping almost, with wind whistling through them cruelly tearing the last crackly leaves off the branches and all I could think was: shit I'm glad I'm not a bird right now. And then when I was lying in my bath tonight with my book (hey. Because no one ever asks me to join their book club - I'm too stupid / get drunk / inarticulate / wouldn't complete the homework / would just want to talk about Politics and Tax rather than the sex lives of the fictional characters in the book being studied - its ok, I've accepted my isolation: I've decided to start my very own Mothers Ruin Book Club. I can only read and assess my books in the bath, after a round of East Enders and 1/3 a bar of Sainsburys Own Brand Belgian Milk Chocolate; and if I get distracted its OK! No one there to tell me to get back to the point! I can just bark on at the steamy walls, the towels and the kids' rubber ducks: they won't mind!) which is still really good and really readable (Zadie Smith On Beauty), the sash windows in the bathroom were totally clattering (and still are as I type) and I wondered to myself: I know that the whole of Cumbria is underwater, but how many birds actually get blown off their perch in this wind?
Their little gnarled claws clinging onto twiggys for dear life. Their feathers ruffling and their eyes blinking in the hard wind. I felt a bit sorry for them, personally.
Talking of hard wind. OMG. Who got caught in the bad weather yesterday? Oh fuck the birds falling off their perches in this instance. What about ME? and Liz? And my mum who made her annual pilgrimmage to N8 to "see you darling" and stupidly I decided to go-green and walk to Liz's Fun Fit Gym Class with Granny Darling and Liz. And within 10 minutes, in the most exposed part of Hornsey, a major howling roaring like a Caterpilla-Digger sheet of hail & rain & wind whipping in circles came at us like an animal from HELL.
And this bastard in his people carrier laughed at us as we cowered (I know! Call myself a sturdy country gal? We were so completely cowering) behind a skimpy hedge that did nothing more than, well, nothing frankly. Liz had total-humour-failure; Granny Darling gritted her teeth and muttered something about 'never seen anything like it in all my life' and I think I just swore a lot at the fucker in his silver car flashing his great white teeth in the luxury of dryness.
Mol just told me she's got a part in her Christmas sorry, WINTER (no religious words allowed, ever, in the multicultural North Harringay Schools...) Play. I'm going to brain wash her to go on the stage and start singing Hark the Herald Angels Sing! Glory to the new born King! just to see how many members of staff faint with shock. Such audacity.
So. I've done birds. I've done book club (sorry guys, its for me only). I've done weather. I've done smug bastards. And I've done Christmas, no, WINTER, Play.
Think that's all for now.
Oh - no - Spooks. They killed Jo. Husband very upset. No more bottom to watch. She had a good one. Although he claims to never have noticed it.

illiterate

It was pointed out to me that I left out "e" in my last blog. Not a conscious choice and I guess I was just so excited I even had a list that went as far as "e" that in my excitement i forgot all about it. I'll have an "e" please Bob. Remember those heady days as a student watching Going for Gold?
Do you remember going out and getting drunk (triple vodka for £1!) and coming home after the pubs closed and making about 25 rounds of cheese on toast?
And then sitting around the tiny TV scoffing the cheese on toast which didn't do much other than make the house smell not-damp and perhaps delay the going-to-bed-with-a-spinny-head moment after stabbing your (well, mine, really) eyes in a desperate attempt to get the over-used-under-cleaned-contact lenses out of the eyes before falling into comatose sleep?
I don't understand how any student every really learns anything given that 4/5ths of the time spent at University or College is generally spent being pissed or high or asleep or drinking tea in a fuzzy state of morning-after-the-night-before-recovery at 1pm. How I scraped my degree - given that I wasn't even interested (at the time) in more than 2 of my courses, and for one of the courses I didn't attend a single seminar (god forbid - the idea of 'talking about my idea's on the topic' just made me want to hurl the 25 rounds of cheese on toast from the night before... - I had no idea's on any topic other than 'how much is that cheese sandwich?' 'can I afford a whole bottle of wine?' 'does To-Be-Husband fancy me or his flatmate Rosie who is small and has a square head and a northern accent?'... I basically was shitting myself permanently that they'd find out that actually I didn't have much more than 2 brain cells to rub together...) well, its beyond me.
I didn't get busted by the academics.
A bit like at school - I think I was the only one of the gang not to get busted for being utterly pissed most weekends of the 6th form - although I think my tutor once turned a blind eye as he saw me and a bunch of retrogrades quaffing Somerfield Cider and chugging Silk Cut in a field of long grass one lazy summer afternoon. I seem to have always just scraped by... not quite catching the eye of anyone in a position to whup my arse and tell me to pull my socks up. Go read the goddamned chapter in the book what you are meant to have read for this weeks seminar.
And it's funny how now that I am a responsible adult with a Husband, children and a house and a green Volvo with flat tyres and even a credit card, the idea of Education and learning actually interests me. Although I wouldn't necessarily want to do an exam. I still have anxiety dreams about Exams. Always my maths gcse... (which actually came into use this afternoon as I had to COUNT a lot of Christmas Trees that came into the Garden Centre freshly cut from Denmark... - I got up as high as 140! I think that was stretching my record by a few digits.)
Anyway. All enthused about students and that. Not sure why but it's something to do with that "e" from before.
Cheese on toast anyone?

small things kids say

If you know what a "bless-you-fart" is hands up? Only a finely tuned mother or father could answer that one. Answers on a postcard.
And here's another one: what is your reaction to your child singing Annie at the top of her voice at supper time with a mouthful of fish-fingers and chips, who then bites her tongue?
A.) laugh in her face;
B.) tell her she's disgusting for spitting fish fingers on your clean floor;
C.) wipe the part-masticated food off the floor and pretend that it's normal to bite your tongue whilst singing TOMORROWWWWWWW and act as though nothing happened, whilst more chewed up chip falls out of her crying mouth;
D.) tell her she'll be in the orphanage if she carries on singing that shit any more - we'll both be dead from ear-strain;
F.) hug her and get the food all over your shoulder and a free sample of green snot chucked in for good measure.

Am I a bad mother? (My answer was a combination of A,B,C,D&F...)

weekend update

Have you seen them yet? It's the coke ad (sorry if you hate coke and despise everything it stands for) but there is something super exciting about the theme tune the holidays are coming and there are little ding dang bells to remind you that it's referring to Christmas holidays and not easter or summer...
However not only are the holidays coming but so too is a strange invasion on my skin. The Invasion of Mothers Ruin by small and large blemishes. I woke up this morning to find a smear of blood at the end of my bed - oh, gross! I realised as I stepped out of the shower this morning that I have a mysterious mini-mountain range of spot-like-erruptions on my shin. So that's pretty grim. And then on my face? Well that's a whole 'nother range from another planet, which meant an outing for the Witch Hazel in a desperate mission to blast the new features back to hence they came... Its like a horror movie. They keep coming back for more... just when you thought you were safe... the nightmare continues... down to your last cotton wool ball and the last drop of killer-spot-acid...
I should just pretend I'm actually adolescent to keep my hopes up that one day I may grow out of it.
Biology really sucks.
Another thing that really sucks apart from sitting above the engine on the 141 which is so loud and vibratory that its like being inside a giant noisy thing that vibrates (I want to say dildo, but I have never ever in all my 24 years set my eyes on one, least not one that vibrates, so I can't really speculate on what it feels like to be inside one) is that Liz has got a really snotty nose and is on calpol and because her weeing became so prolific over the last 5 days I've been forced (how many times a night do I have to change the sheets when she's in a nappy?) to re-protect her bottom with Sainsburys pull ups size 5. Shame but there you go.
Another thing that really really sucks is that Jade couldn't dance last night. Even Liz was sad that there was no Jade or Ian. Where is Jade she asked? Her knee has popped says Mol. But where is she asks Liz. She's not dancing says Mol. But WHERE IS SHE? I'm like, go check her twitter if you really want to know?
Another thing that really sucks is the state of London roads. Have you done any driving recently? Diversions, road closures, traffic jams because there is like a small hole somewhere with some bollards around it, abandoned diggers and traffic lights out of order. The Giant Meltdown - Gridlock Hell - its coming. Its just around the corner. And when it hits, I'll be ready. (By that I mean I'll have stocked up my freezer so I won't have to go to Sainsbury's until the Gridlock Hell untangles, 5 years later...)
This is all a bit bitty.
I'm wondering how my friend managed to move her entire office of 80 people and their desks and computers and potted plants and water machines and photo copiers and mixed-sex-lavs' and mail boxes and desk top lamps and twizzle orthopedic chairs and bad wall art, whilst the main road she was moving to was closed by the Lord Mayors Show yesterday. In the rain (the WORST STORM TO HIT ENGLAND THIS YEAR!! SHOCKER!! BIG WAVES HIT THE SHORE!!). Meesh, I hope you showed the Lord Mayor who the real boss was yesterday and today.
Anyway. I think the main jist of the matter is that I had a good weekend despite traffic and ate lots and watched Strictly and saw both my brothers and ate some more and cracked open a new bottle of wine (on the red now that its officially winter) and its only 10pm which means I can go to bed and read some more of Zadie Smiths' "on beauty". It's got a really pretty jacket which is a good start.
Bon soir as they say on La Continent, innit.

things i like

I like the smell of freshly boiling coffee on the hob.
I love a clean house. I even like cleaning my house. I like watching the hoover leave a clean track on the carpet (just like in the adverts! and whoosh its gone!). I don't like so much hoovering up bits in Mol or Liz's room - like a small finger puppet and the other day a whole glove (from a witches dressing up costume) went up the metal spout - shit - am wondering if I need to do an autopsy on the hoover bag? I think a necklace went up in this bag too.
I love walking past Yassa's bakery in the morning, the smell of vanilla and baking bread overwhelming the stench of the bus fumes and white van mans fags on Green Lanes.
I love running in the rain.
I haven't tried running in the snow.
I really really like Monday and Fridays when I have Liz to myself for a few hours.
I love kissing a little bit on Liz's nose - just at the top between her eyes. Its soft and peachy.
I love watching Mol making faces at herself in the mirror and dancing to Radio One songs with a bit of sausage on a fork waving around a bit out of control (and I have to sit on my hands to stop myself from getting anal and telling her to put the fork down).
I love driving over the M25 and knowing that I am officially now in the Countryside. Here are the green fields of Surrey, see? And lo! There is not so much traffic on this side of the M25!
I like a glass of wine when I read to Mol & Liz on the sofa at the end of the day.
I like a glass of wine when I have supper with Husband after the kids have gone to bed.
I like a glass of wine and a piece of chocolate when I watch East Enders (ooh, how psycho is Lucas going to get...? A reliable source assured me in person "its only going to get better"...).
I love Queen. Truly. I miss Freddie. I miss his teeth and trouser braces. To devote a whole song to Fat Bottomed Girls, you make the rocking world go round...? I mean. That's WAY brilliant.

And finally, I really really really love getting presents.

Good Winter TV

Today was a good day.
Actually. Tonight was what I mean by a good day.
East Enders (Ronnie shags ex-evil-alcoholic-husband-of-Deneise; Peggy shacks up with double-crossing Archie and LIES no less to PAT who had extra thick blue eye shadow on tonight and Lucy is about to fancy J who mugged her but she doesn't know that and she's a cow coz she blackmailed her bi-sexual perma-tan-uncle-Christian).
Followed by a tastily baked salmon fillet. With home grown tomatoes.
Followed by the result of America's Next Top Model (cycle 11! wow. its been on that long?) - London (that's one of the models) got sacked because in the 7 weeks of the competition she's nearly doubled her weight. Uncanny viewing as her face arms legs bottom waist just get bigger and bigger.
Followed by, and now it's totally officially winter time, but that's Ok - because now we have SPOOKS. Even though the gorgeous yum yum actor Rupert was blown apart in the first episode of the last series making it nearly a boycottable offence, somehow the dark blue grading of the show, complete with about 8 different agents all double crossing each other on the brink of being horribly tortured or murdered - and a lot of whispered conversations which make no difference if you hear what they say or not - and Harry Pearce. Gawd love him. Spooks is just spooker-duper.
Preceded by Liz weeing in her bed at 4am this morning. This kind of night was most definitely called for.
Thank you bbc 1 and living. I love you equally.
And I love chocolate. And wine as well. Also I really hot baths but now its 10.10pm and that means its bed time not bath time. There are lots of other things I love but I'll talk about them another time.
Spooks. God. In't spooks bwilliant?

important things to think about

Sometimes I worry about myself.
I have been sleeping badly recently. Big thoughts have been entering my head in the dead of night and jolting me awake, demanding their attention, solving the conundrum they have bought to mind, mulling things over, rolling them about my cerebral matter... But does it have to be in the middle of the night? Can't it be during work at the Garden Centre that I think about why it is that my house smells damp? Or couldn't it be when I'm walking down Poo Passage at 8.43am each morning of the week that I wonder whether I'll get a puncture on my next long drive down a motorway without Husband? Or maybe while I bake the girls their Sainsburys chunky chips (with skin, so they're healthy) about where I should go to buy my bi-annual sock haul. And just recently a crackingly important point for nocturnal self-analysis: why, after 16 months in the loft, do I still bang my head when I get a t-shirt out of my drawers? Am I really such an old dog that I forget? Its an alarming issue.
For some reason these challenging thoughts come to the fore at approximately 2-5am, just as my subconscious reminds me that Liz probably needs a wee (its week one of no-night-time-nappies) and I, in my light sleep, prepare my body for the removal of self from warm cosy bed and the malco-ordinated journey down to her room to take her to the loo (down another set of stairs) and back to her bed ("well done, another star on your chart tomorrow, back to sleep now...").
Its all too profound for my little head to take. I wonder sometimes if I am a genius constrained by her environment?
But frankly all this sleeplessness is wringing me out.
I wish I just wasn't quite so, you know, intense about the big issues in life?