the voms are in town

So. Usually when a child says they have a sore tummy, their mum or dad or granny or uncle will say, hm, when did you last poo? Maybe you should go sit on the loo for a bit? And the child will go and sit on the loo for a bit and the stomach issue is 'resolved' with a little plopperoo.

Last night this trick didn't work so well. Poor Mol. Grey face. She comes downstairs just as Jack is discovered in the boot of Max's car - on his wedding day NO LESS - to say, muuuuuuuuum, my tummy hurts. So, only looking at the TV, I wave her off with the standard, ah, bad luck, go sit on the loo for a while and see how you do. I'll come up in - oh, just after 8pm?

So, just as the titles role and Roxy's anxious face is frozen for the night, I hear this awful clonking and gargling and screamy-choking from upstairs. Hm. That doesn't sound like a successful trip to the loo I think, and for the first time in 30 minutes I look away from the TV and make a move for the door.

Upstairs.
Carnage.
That's the only word to describe it.
Utter Carnage. Well, that's two words now I realise.
Lumpy utter carnage. Yes, OK, maths not a strong point.
Mol had managed to not recognise that the pain in her stomach was actually her feeling dreadfully sick. And because I'd not seen her grey pallor when she came to check out East Enders, I hadn't linked sore stomach with obliterating her room 15minutes later.
Poor wee thing.
There is something desperately sad (I just deleted 'and funny' because I could be hauled in for child-cruelty) about seeing a small person surrounded by a sea of chunks. So helpless and SO covered. It was a minefield. Where to start I just don't know.
I put on my Professional Cleaner Head and assessed the damage.
1.) Get Mol to a sink and get her pj's off.
2.) This is difficult. Do I strip the bed or do I try to scoop the lumps of (what?) stuff off the linen first? In which case do I leave Mol on her own shivering and grey whilst I fetch bucket disinfectant re-inforced rubber gloves gas mask and plastic sacks?
3.) In fact I went for a bit of all of the above at the same time which may explain why it took nearly 35 minutes to clean up.
Mols bear and a seal and oodles of bed-linen all went into the washing machine. Whack up the heat to about 400-degrees. Sorry Bear.
All cosy in bed, 35minutes later, a bin beside her head, a towel on her pillow, a glass of water, all the home comforts - Mol drifted off back to sleep.
2hours later. Choke COUGH gurgle MUUUUUM.
Replay the above scene, but with a tireder greyer child, a mum who's run out of bed linen, and a washing machine who is aching to be left alone.
This time at least Mol got 2/3rds of the vom into the bin beside her bed. Bin now in Bin. (It was made of cardboard... not sure it'd work if I cleaned it... the room would be at risk of being on perma-smell.)
Thankfully the voms ran their course after that. And we all slept happily ever after.

war zone

Harringay is like a war zone on bonfire night. Anarchy.
All night the blasts go off, near and far, and at times uncomfortably sounding like something is about to come popping straight through my bedroom window and join me as I read my unsavoury academic mulch each night.
There is a crescendo at about 9pm - I guess as people have finished their dinners and have drunk their 6-packs of Tescos lager or bottles of acidic Blossom Hill - and they pile in to their gardens, drunkenly waving rockets about and planting them in the turf at dodgy lopsided angles (after a bottle of Blossom Hill the average person is probably feeling pretty lopsided too) and drunkenly trying to attach a match flame to the short fuse... with comedy moments of "oh no, its gone out! oh, no don't go back! no no! leave it! at least 2 hours I read... it could go off any time..! oh god, don't... oh. well done. you re-lit it!") and slightly pathetic oohs and aahs as the fizzings and squeakings don't live up to what the packet tells you they're going to do...
I took Mol and Liz to fireworks last night in a friends garden and it was everything a garden firework party ought to be. BBQ hotdogs, nuts, cupcakes, Shrek, children spreading mud all over the kitchen floor, sparklers, adults trying to have conversations in between scraping ketchup off their kids clothes and cheeks, and the host, hovering outside over a pile of demon-looking rockets and wondering what the safest distance from his house is, but not making it too obvious that he doesn't care an awful lot for his neighbours' windows... OK kids. Its time. A grand statement and a hoop of excitement from 15 over-tired-end-of-week-its-friday-night (do kids have the same sense of Friday-night-itus as adults? Do they get out of school and all they're thinking of is heading straight to the sweet shop for an overload of sugar and then fall into bed having watched some crap CBBC with their eyes half closed, thinking, its ok, I don't have to get up in the morning...) kiddy winks who are so unjudgemental that anything that goes WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE and SQQQQQQUUUUUOOOOOOOOOO and FFFFFZZZZZZZZZ with different sparkly colours is, well, pretty awesome. So nice to be the host of a fireworks party for 7 year olds! So rewarding! So powerful!
Now kids! For the grand finale!
And with some quick twizzles to the Catherine Wheel (the one before had managed one full rotation but was kind of a bit on strike generally) the thing went off like a, um, y'know? Well, I was going to say Rocket but that'd be inappropriate. It went off like a dingbat.
Many oohs and ahhhhs, and I was surprised to find that I was in fact making more noise than Mol and Liz, and most of the gang, put together. Quick glances behind them at their weird overly-vocal mum... Oh dear I foresee 'embarrassed child' moments in the playground coming up (no, mum, just GO AWAY and please stop doing that to my friends its NOT COOL...). In fact the other day Mol I think had a bit of a moment as I started singing a little rhyme at her class-mate - who had just told me he was in the choir, so I enthusiastically said, Oh brilliant, sing us a song? To which he said, No! To which I said, OK! I'll sing one instead! and made up a little (and pretty brilliant) ditty - to which Mol started to nudge me and sidle away from the weird-woman with toothpaste all over her mouth.
But that's a bit of an aside.
Anyway. A top night of homegrown organic yumminess.
And some genius woman who had a three week old baby clamped to her breast had somehow managed between sleep deprivation and exhaustion-hallucinations to make the most delicious chocolate cheesecake that had real exploding fairy-dust in the base. Too good. I was probably getting odd looks from my children because I was oohing and ahhing with a brown chocolate smeared mouth and looking a bit like a hangover from Halloween.
The girls were in bed by 8.30pm, with the blasts continuing outside their windows - and by 8.35pm - they were all fast asleep, despite them lying bang in the middle of a war zone.

its the end... continued...

Oh god. X-factor is on.
The screaming contestants. The screaming audience. The celebrity-ification of dreadful people on TV for less than a few minutes. Oh, please. Spare me.
Get me to BBC 1 for some spangles and D-listers tripping about the glittery dancefloor in floating dresses...

It is the end of summer that's for sure. All the autumn-to-winter-extended shows have all just kicked off: X factor, Strictly, Spooks, Apprentice... There's simply not enough time! And that doesn't include the old fave... E.Enders.

It worries me that Mol, who has never, as far as I'm aware, seen more than 30 seconds of X-factor, did an impression of Simon Cowell two nights ago, whilst wearing nothing but a pair of pj-trousers. She pulled them up to her little boobies and said to me: Mum! (cracking up because it was actually really funny she did look VERY stupid) Mum! who am I? guess! who am I (more hilarity and cackles...)?
Mol, I said. Are you Humpty Dumpty? (Have you seen the nursery rhyme story books? He has high waisted eggy-trouser-clothing-garment things.)
Shrieks of stomach-crunching-laughter.
NOOOoooooo! Who AM I? She says, hauling the pj's up higher still, (I'm thinking, ouch? wedgy doesn't even get close to what's going on down there...)
Um, Obelix? (Another round person with flattering high waisted cover-all-body-shapes trousers...)
NOOOOOOOooooooooo. Mol on her back on the floor howling like a baby ware-wolf.
Liz meanwhile is just laughing - no idea what the hell is going on but its way too funny whatever it is so she's shrieking too. I'm thinking. Fuck get me out of here these kids have finally turned.
Anyway.
Then Mol goes: SIMON COWL!
I'm stunned into goldfish gasping.
Mol, I say. How do you know who this man is?
Oh, Miss Emma (their teacher) did an impression of him in PE with her tracksuit. It was sooooo funny.
More hysteria.
I creep out, slowly, backwards, of the bedroom, and leave them there cackling like a pair of demented witches.

Mothers Ruin: its the end... definitely

Mothers Ruin: its the end... definitely

its the end... definitely

... of summer, that is. not necessarily the world. yet.

autumn is on the way.
I can tell this by being very perceptive about seasonal changes. I don't imagine that anyone else has yet noticed that the change is upon us. (that's all of us, not just for women of a certain age...)

the smell of bonfire smoke - even in london - is all around, burning leaves, hedge cuttings and lawn mowings and old apples - all dropped on the fire, huge plumes of white smoke going into the atmosphere for some smokey corruption.
the leaves, the leaves. down they come. their colours have turned... no longer are they lush green edible looking appendages on the chestnut trees. no, they're now withered brown burnt-toast-like crinkly forms rejected from their little twigs... down they fall. getting slippery on the wet pavements and hiding treacherous dog poo from unseeing pedestrians (much  more poo-stepping-accidents at this time of year. must be a scientifically proven fact by now); it'll be 'leaves on the track' comedy moments fast and furious, soon.
the squirrels! they're mad. there is a squirrel in my garden who is literally squirreling. busy as a pret-a-manger-barrista on the morning shift, this squirrel has squirrelled away so many chestnuts - somewhere in the garden - that my 'lawn' (ha, such as it is) is now covered in the spiky cases that the shiny brown nuts come in. where though are the damned nuts? I'll find out next year when 400 chestnut tree saplings start poking through the ground...
other signs of the change in season which I observantly observe?
children walking round with dishevelled bits of tissue rubbing the end of their pink noses (if you're lucky, otherwise if your children are like mine, its the sleeve or the collar of a t-shirt, or your leg, or the tea-towel, or the top of the duvet cover...) as colds take on their first-round-opponents for the season.
bring on the snot.
bring on the olbas oil.
other signs of the times. well. its cooler. its darker. tea time now takes place as the sun is going down behind the local tower block on the hill, and breakfast time takes place as the sun (if its not covered by cloud) is coming up behind the local tower block on the hill opposite the other hill, to the east.
and sainsburys. oh dear.
not only did it have halloween consumer goods which are really consumer-useless-nesses on its shelves before term even started, but it now has an aisle with christmas puddings, mince pies and crackers. save us!

I'm trying to think of the nice parts of autumn and winter and spring, but all I can think of right now is thermal underwear, cold rain, and finding the time to do the bloody christmas shopping.

so. summer is way out. long gone. au-revoir, cheree! come back soon.
PS who has a house that is completely surrounded by fat oversized macdonald-eating spiders? each morning we open the front door to a barricade of web. its too disgusting.

Health and Safety

please note: there are many typos in this copy because I'm being very modern and writing this on my phone. But it makes for pretty poor grammar and sorry if it offends the more discerning readers.

I'd like to think I'm not an overly protective mother. I mean there are boundaries it's wise to keep within for the whole family's sanity and safety: like making sure sharp knives are out of reach of small hands or making sure hot pan handles are turned in from the kitchen or testing the bath water before small toes dip in for the nightly ritual. I suppose I'm a bit cautious when it comes to crossing roads: don't cross the road without me EVER even if it's a deserted country lane in Wales with no access to motorised Vehicles...
Child safety is pretty important and knowing my children are safe in their activities and environment and with their friends is pretty much the safest way for me to not turn into a messy insane mother. And it's relatively simple at this point in our life of being a family to uphold the standards of safety. Although small people are a bit idiotic and a bit prone to falling over and a bit prone to maybe walloping each other with hula-hoops or trying to accidentally on purpose push each other down the stairs, or whoops- did I really just knock the paint over and ruin your billionth picture of a flower, hey don't thump me I HATE you, etc - all this sort of activity requires is domestic vigilance and a certain level of maternal (or paternal) authority to ensure health and safety boundaries are not over stepped.

What is so hard to control though and here comes the crux of my story, is when the lives of ones children lie in the hands of others. Such as teachers. Or dinner ladies. Or after school club managers. Or childminders. Or grannies and aunts and uncles who generously have the 'winks for a weekend whilst slightly over worked or over stressed parents take off for 24 hours.
All the above are in theory reliable stand-INS for the absent real-deal and on the whole he safety of the child is not compromised in any way at all.
But, just sometimes a lapse in judgement can leave a parent cold withanxiety and fear for the safety of their child, as what hapened to me and Liz yesterday.

For various reasons I have recently had to take on a childminder (I've started a new course; Liz hasn't quite started school yet; there is an overlap of me needing time to study and therefore having to off load Liz onto others in order for me toget to grips with coursework etc). So. I found a childminder through an advert. She seemed perfectly fine. Chatty. Friendly with the girls. We had met up three times. She's had Liz on her own once.
Yesterday she was due tohave Liz for 3hours so I could study, and she turned up to my house 15 minutes early. Ina black mercedez Benz. With blacked outwindows. With a man I'd never seen efore driving. With a lady I'd never seen before in the backseat. Liz looked at the childminder getting out of this huge ominous vehicle with these strange alien faces peering out of the dark windows and headed straight to my legs with a vice-like grip.
Childminder said 'yeah hi we're going to get a lift back to mine in this car' I was like 'yeah hi who the he'll are those people I've never seen before and do you really think I'm letting my child get into that car with you? I don't know that man I don't know that woman and that car has blacked out windows and my daughter funnily enough is looming pretty anxious at the thought of it too.
Childminder agreed it may not have been the best plan but Liz could sit next to her in the car they'd be fine.
Childminder didn't seem to understand the concept of providing a secure environment for my child. Where is the safety in bringing 2 total strangers into the equation of this relationship?
I was overwhelmed with a strong physical reaction- shaking and felt sick - what if I had let Liz get into that mercedez. What could have happened? More likely that absolutely nothing would have happened and they'd have got to the childminders house and built a jigsaw. But something in me just balked at the whole setup and the lack of sensitivity demonstrated by the childminder. I reminded her of how it may feel to be 4 years old and to be asked to get into a car with one person she barely knows and two people she's never seen in her life. How would you feel? Safe? Secure? Happy? If you answer yes to all three then maybe you are made of stronger metal than I.
Just thinking about the potential risk I could have put Liz in yesterday had I nonchalently let her go with the childminder makes my heart actually beat faster.
Health and safety. Just can't be taken lightly.
I slept on yesterdays event and spoke to Husband and various super-intelligent friends and the conclusion is obvious. I have a phonecall to make.

stomach bug

Me Mol and Liz were on a jaunty country walk with my mum and her dog, about this time last week. Walking gayly through the village allotments admiring the beans and bulging beetroot and marigolds and rhubarb and feeling a bit envious that my garden in London is incapable of even bearing me a geranium let alone a Jerusalem Artichoke... when suddenly Mol started to choke and cough and wretch.

The noise of someone wretching is enough to make anyone wretch too. Even if you don't know the reason behind the wretching, its that hhhhhhhhhhhhhuh noise - so strong you can feel your stomach muscles clamping and your Bran Flakes on the verge of being regurgitated.

So Me Liz Mum and the Dog tried our best to ignore this dreadful noise pollution by walking on, talking loudly above the sound of air being gasped for and stomach-contents-imminent-evacuation. Although at the back of my mind, because I am after-all a responsible mother, I was thinking, hmmm, this doesn't sound too promising, I wonder why my daughter is gasping so loudly and revoltingly, I wonder if in fact she needs my help?

Eventually, after about an hour of this awful noise, Mol hadn't actually been sick but was still walking along sounding like a parrot with a pair of bellows stuck down its throat, I figured I ought to pull my finger out (of my ear) and try to solve the problem of the choking rather than ignore it.

So with nostrils shut like a camel, lest Mol vomit and the puke-fumes spark off a chain reaction in me, I made awkward loving movements to my eldest precious daughter to find out what the problem was.

At the same time, for some reason unknown to us, other than total fluky coincidence, Liz started to hum a familiar tune that we have on one of our really old nursery rhyme tapes in the car saved for traffic emergencies (these also have the effect of making people want to vomit).
"...I don't know why she swallowed..." hummed Liz;

"...yak yak yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaak... I swallowed a fly..." yakked Mol.

Ah!
There was a young lady who swallowed a fly.

We all started to laugh and Mol was most upset by our unsympathetic reaction, so I gave her a hearty pat on the back and started singing with Liz - "...she swallowed a cow to catch the dog to catch the cat to catch the bird to catch the spider that wriggled and jiggled inside her..."

I was sympathetic enough to not sing the last verse where the (stupid) old lady swallows a horse, and now she's dead, of course! Because I thought that would push the boundaries of sympathy towards that of mocking, and that's really not nice.

Mol yakked like the old winded parrot all the way home, and I gave her a jelly baby to wash away the remnants of fly - which had probably just had lunch on a cow pat before it unfortunately flew down Mols windpipe.

the age of innocence

I was just doing a rather long run in the rain over dale and down dips in t'country, and for some reason started pondering the loss of innocence of my small girls.
Yesterday I met up with an old friend who has girls aged 9 and 11 - I hadn't seen them for a long time and so I'd forgotten what older girls are like. In fact, I have no idea really anyway - because I don't know any one much older than Mol. These girls are tall and gorgeous, and behave much older (obviously) than my little gals, with uptodate technology and knowledge of popular-music and they communicate in a way I'm not familiar, and y'know, are just more grown-up.
I was quite in awe of these girls (and vainly wondered what they thought of me) and then I turned to see my little Mol, who - still in a bubble of frank-innocence, Father Christmas features big and so to does the strange fairy who collects teeth at midnight and the concept of magic is way-believable - didn't basically quite know where to look as these exotic girls gyrated (in a slightly off-hand-way) around the kitchen to tz-tz-tz-pop muzac with an air of experienced-coolness.
I wasn't sure what awed me the most.
Was it their confidence with technology that I barely understand? - non-chalently thumbing through their tunes on the ipod? Was it the skinny jeans and jeggings? Their language? Body language? That they were taller than me (not difficult I admit)?
Or was it the fact that one day, very soon, my little Mol (and following shortly on, little Liz) would be thumbing her way over her own i-whatever, bopping in time to pop tunes which I've just about heard of and feel much disdain for?
And I wondered, as I skidded over some cow-pats which decorated the bumpy Hampshire tarmac, how long exactly is it that we have, as a family, before that gorgeous innocence - the belief that magical creatures DO exist, and that Dad really CAN do magic with cards, and that £40,000 is probably not much more than £40 or £4...?
Whilst we have been staying in Hampshire this week with my parents, my two girls have been hanging out with their cousins - a boy aged 6 and another 4 year old...
And what merry times they have had. Running around the garden playing "Cheetah's" and "Lions" and "Babysitters" (Ok, so I'm 21, you're 18, Liz is 2 and Cherry is the baby... and I go out and leave you and Cherry starts to cry because her nappy is  pooey, ugh! poo! ... - I mean, these games can go on for DAYS...). And then after a healthy supper of pasta and pesto and chocolate icecream and pringles they all jump into the bath together - having first run around the upstairs unclothing themselves willy nilly room by room...
No one notices that the clothes have come off. No one comments on the bottom (unless conversation turns to farting or poos but that's not in a self conscious way - maybe Liz has done a massive fart so lots of hilarity and fake farting follows...) or the lady bits or the boy bits. They just jump in the bath and carry on with whatever game they had been playing, but naked and surrounded by water.
And as I panted my way up a very steep hill through the pretty hamlet of Ramsdean, I wondered, will Mol WANT to have a bath with her boy cousin next year? She'll be 8.5, he'll be just over 7 - will they be too old to share a bath? I'm pretty sure I didn't have baths with my brothers after they were exiled to prep-school aged 7 & 8... (me being 5 at the time...)
And then I remembered, as I rounded the corner of the steep hill, to see that I hadn't yet reached the top and had at least another 300m to go, puff puff, that when we, as a young family - me (aged 8), my two brothers (10/11-ish) went to the South of France - mum had sort of strongly encouraged me to not buy a bikini top and just wear the bottoms -and I remember feeling mortified by this and totally self conscious and wanting to hide and not go to the pool in case all the boys saw my (nothing to reveal) flat as a pancake boobs. But I did feel embarrassed, and I remember that feeling so well. Please. Don't. See. Me. (I did swim but spent a lot of time in the water as opposed to standing on the edge doing dives...)
So, as I limped my way into the last mile of my run (legs a bit leaden I must admit) I came to the conclusion that we may not have very long before our childrens' bubble of innocence is popped and Mol decides that baths with cousins aren't such a fantastically fun idea and that she'd rather spend her time gyrating around the kitchen with an electronic gadget listening to some teen-hunk-crooner.
And playing "cheetah's" is a bit last year? 
So now I feel a bit sad and wonder if we moved out of London now, to a remote coastal hut in Wales, we could extend the period of innocence till they're both about 15?
Or would that be a bit weird?

those hazy halceon days...

today was warm and balmy and very gardeny and ice-creamy and the wasps were out a bit and the clouds were high in the sky and liz kept remarking upon how much she'd really like to eat the clouds and mol remarked back how she would probably now only eat cloud when she was in an airplane and then i dug up some of my dad's beetroot and cooked up some of his fine green shiny courgettes and warm tomatoes from the greenhouse (if that smell of tomatoes in a warm greenhouse could be bottled...) - (top-banana courgette & tomato pie I wizzed up by the way - recipe will be released with my book... - ha! fooled you! as if! like, er, never? I have one friend who each time I see him, maybe once every other year, he says, SO, MothersRuin, when is the big novel coming out? and I'm a bit like, uh, quoi? bless you, you fool! I have no imagination bar what goes into my brain [which is mostly inactive anyway, dulled by wine and chocolate] via my eyes and out through my fingers on the keyboard - no epic or sordid or thrilling or animal or kid stories stored up in this grey matter Mr RHS, no, but thanks for the encouragement...) - (so the courgette and tomato pie recipe is safe with me and goes with me to the incinerator) and lots of children under the age of 7 sat around my parents dining room table and ate their herb sausages and mash and beetroots and sweetcorns and courgette pie and then skipped out of the dining room merry and full in the belly and happy to "I'm just going to digest my food mum, in the garden" go do running races directly after eating meat and 2 veg (no one vommed although if they had the dog would've happily cleaned it up) and then 6 children under the age of 7 sat under the bulging tulip tree and melted icecream in bowls to make icecream-soup whilst making polite conversation with each other (what do they talk about? Russian politics? the state of the economy? why don't brits holiday in UK? what does the tooth fairy really do with old blood-encrusted-teeth?) whilst two grandparents and two mothers sat in the august sun drinking black coffee and talking about Russians and politics and holidaying in Europe whilst occasionally being interrupted by small people requiring understated attention such as a bottom wipe or a nose wipe or a tonka-truk or a quick escape from a dog on the hunt for bowls of icecream...

just one of those good english summers days where the hours are long but not hard and the sun is high but not burning and the kids are happy to idle and the wrinklies get some time to finish their sentences and enjoy watching their children being sweet and happy and child-like without knowing that they are the centre of attention as the wrinklies sit exclaming how sweet they look and how happy and how good it is for children to be outside sitting under a bulging tulip tree.

sparkles and cake

is it possible to have a birthday with no tantrums or tears or fights?
(I ask that in reference to children aged between 1-7... rather than as an adult 36(give or take a decade...)

back to life

Here I am back again.
Life as I know it.
No more crystal clear warm agean sea to splash about in with Liz & Mol.
No more Amstel beer to neck after a long slog on the beach.
No more over-sized tomatoes that ooze Mediterranean-delights.
No more factor 50.
No more hot nights listening to mosquitoes honing in on my legs for their supper.
No more hunts for the goggles - the biggest stress of the day.
No more skies as high as can be filled with stars that twinkle in such a cliched way its almost not real.
No more skies filled with bright azure blue and bright blazing sun.
No more no-skimmed-milk.
No more hot tip-toed-runs across slippery sand.
No more wondering whether to have coffee or 7-up or beer for 11-enz-ees.
How do holidays go by so incredibly quickly?
You book the flights and before you can blink its like a dream and already you're back at home doing the washing hanging up the washing ferrying grumpy kids around rummaging in the freezer for fishfingers again listening to the sirens blaring up and down Green Lanes endlessly buying skimmed milk because its there in the Tesco cold-box under bright lights all sterile and impersonal.
The photos come back and I think to myself was I really there? I can just about smell the sea and feel the texture of the white bread in my mouth and the warm tiles of the veranda under my toes, but it doesn't feel real any more. Did Liz really swim with no arm-bands? Did Mol really spend 4hours a day laughing and splashing in the sea as though the sea was her home not the land? Did Husband really not have a single conversation with work for a whole 8 days? Could it really have been possible.
Apparently so.
The problem with really brilliant holidays is that you have to come home. And however lovely it is to come back to your own bed and sleep really well again, the grime of the streets, the constant having-to-do-things, the computers, the work, the phones - all the clutter comes back so quickly - and that is the bad thing about brilliant holidays. There is no clutter on holiday. You need only fret about which beach you're walking to and which bikini to wear.
Right now all I can think of is Shirley Valentine.

I am not the fastest

I may not be The fastest girl in the room, but I sure as heck got around that 10k in (my own) record breaking heel-smokin' speed.
And after a refreshing drink of gatoraid (pink, not orange, flavour? not sure) I was pretty much restored to Mother, Ruined - not by kilometres, but by Husband forgetting to bring my spare change of dry, fresh, clean, non-sweaty clothing. And after a small domesetic with Husband (whilst Brother tried to calm the situation, tragically with no real effect) amid 22,000 sweaty over-achievers, it was clear that it wasn't a practical joke that I had no non-sweaty clothes to change into - and that yes, I would have to spend 25mins getting home clad in salty-stinky-sweaty-sodden-shorts and feet with toes covered in pulsating callouses with no flip flops to slip into, and that it was, yes, still, likely that all the people on the Piccadilly Line would look at me like I had just wee'd all over myself, my vest, my shorts, my legs, my shoulders and my hair - and not see the great glorious medal that was swinging between my ancient-sagging-post-natally-abused-flop-mungous-boobs and realise that in fact I hadn't wee'd myself and that in fact I was, too, a victorious over achieving 10k-runner, fresh off the field glazed in real hard-earned LEGAL sweat.
So the run was superb.
And the after-run could've scored higher.
But the best thing about it all was that I had a ball, and I raised lots of money for P2B (about £8000, which means 76 children can go get counselling next year, for a whole year). And that was what I'd put myself through all this for in the first place. yeah?

Every cloud I realise has a silver lining. Like seeing Husband, liz & mol on the Embankment when I ran up it and then 6km later when I ran back down it; like standing on the underground in soggy running gear and thinking how very lucky I was that Husband Liz & Mol even wanted to come watch me doing something which really if you think about it is quite boring (mum, running?); and like, Husband making me just the best cup of coffee I could ever have had after possibly the nicest most comforting and cleansing shower I had ever had, and my feet, slipping into their £3 flip flops - ah, warm and fluffy feelings of glowing halo and family yum.

But next year, I'll put my non-sweaty clothes ON husband so that he can't forget to bring them down for post-race-urgent-change-requirements...

thank you all very much for supporting me on this run. you're all just brilliant.
x (see, you even get a kiss, and that doesn't come about very often...)

count down

Only a few more days before The Big Run.
I have been practising, as promised, but possibly I could have been doing more.
But it's very hard to do more when my days have consisted of school runs (not running to school literally, I'm slow but even my kids wouldn't be able to keep up with me) going to work, coming back from work, doing the school run in reverse (I mean not like walking backwards because that would be weird and would embarrass my children and I'd probably fall down in the poo on Poo Passage) and domestic chores (there seems to have been a lot of cake baking lately, I'm a bit caked out) and shopping and doing baths and ballet rehearsals and more school runs and sleeping a bit lightly in this delightfully hot weather.
You know, there's always a little excuse around the corner for NOT donning the old Addidas and setting fire to the pavement with my speediness.
But, I'm quietly confident that given a good headwind and healthy elbow tactics, I'll probably win. There are only about 20,000 other people "racing" too, so, piece of piss really I should think. I'll probably be back home before Husband has managed to get Liz into a pair of pants without the world thinking a nuclear bomb is attacking. (Screams of terror if Husband attempts to dress Liz...)
Do your nearly-4-year-olds have strange selective memory issues?
Every day in our house is like groundhog day. We wake up. Liz has a tantrum and refuses to talk to Husband. Then about 40minutes later, just as he's off out the door to work, she suddenly remembers that he's a GOOD MAN and can be approached - without caution, even - and suddenly, screaming with excitement she launches herself at full speed at the front door, manically hoping to get a kiss off this man who overnight she forgot was in fact her Dad.
It is a bit odd.
Every night I go into her room and sometimes she's hanging off her bed, or is completely off her bed, and I wonder if she bangs certain bits of memory out of it upon landing? Specifically the bit about The Man who comes into her room each morning and says MORNING BETH and linking it with the bit that notes That Man is DAD - not to be feared unless caught with fag / absinthe in hand.
Hm. Food for thought perhaps.
Talking of food, that reminds me, I have a new cheesecake recipe I need to test out, I wonder if cheesecake is good pre-10k-run-fodder?
Hm.
Cheesecake really is the dogs bollocks.
So. Tomorrow. Wednesday. Again.
Then its Thursday, and I guess I should do a run.
And then its Friday and Saturday. And then Sunday.
So that gives me 4 more nights of "training" (I am fiercely competitive, I will win! I will lead! Conquer! Bow to me you slugs of slowness!) and strange dreams about not being able to tie my trainers laces, or get to a portaloo, or in fact move my legs at all (have been having anxiety dreams about a non-competitive 10k, Oh Dear, get out more Mother)...
Watch this space.
I'm going to smash records on Sunday. After Cheesecake.

oooh. home grown.

I have strawberries
I have tomatoes
I have basil
I have parsley
I have marjoram (not sure what to do with it mind you)
I have peppers
I have apples
I have lillies
I have sunflowers (hm not very sunny or flowery, yet there is hope).

N8 and the Good Life? I think so.

what's warm and gushes?

Well, for all you sordid mamas out there, go wash your mouth out.
If you want to know the answer to the above question, read on.

And because this blog is all about ME and ME and ME, you may find that the answer to the above question is in fact...

ME!

Yes, I am warm and gushy.

And still you raise your eyebrows in mock-oooh-er-missus-surprise.
And again, I say, go wash your mouths out you filthy bag of retrogrades.

I am warm because, well, it is really warm out there. So, for once, my finger tips aren't a bit blue and sort of wrinkled and damp, and I'm not wearing socks whilst I type up here in my study, and the heating is properly off and I have 10 open windows to prove it.

Isn't it just so nice to be warm though?
And not only am I warm but so too am I gushy.
Why so, I hear you ask, in mock-interest? Why is mothersruin declaring herself gushy? Isn't she on a perma-gush most of the time anyway? Gushing away about nonsense that no one comprehends? All that rubbish about dog poo and children who think Heaven is called Devon and that green food is dangerous and obsessing about East Enders (so good, Stacy had a baby and I reckon a massive round of postnatal depression is about to spark up in the plot...- get the kleenex mums)... Why is she more gushy than usual? (Apart from the fact that its taken 7 paragraphs to get to this point.)

Well, here comes the gush.
It was my birthday on Friday. Yes. Another year, another claw on the crows foot, another few million brain cells never to return and 30? Well, here we are slightly on the other side.
So typical of life. This growing old business. Such an arse.
But, to counteract all that depressing I-wish-I-was-21-again, why-doesn't-any-one-id-me-in- offies-any-more, am-I-literally-just-a-laundry-come-cook-come-chaperone-who-enjoys-64-zoo-lane?thoughts, I found myself surrounded by A Lot Of The Worlds Nicest People on Saturday night down the local N8 public house. And oh, how comforted I was in my time of need by these loves.
Greeting me with eyes full of sympathy (and empathy too I noted from some of the more elderly friends who ventured out on their zimmers to celebrate with me - and yes, I know, totally out-late-nighted-me) and cotton-wool-hugs, they felt my pain and knew what I was going through. And by throwing beautifully wrapped parcels in my direction, accompanied with a glass of prosecco (alternating with water - god, see how old and sensible you become when you reach the end of your 20's?? I mean reach your mid-30's, sorry, forgetful too - it's all water/wine/water/wine and a pint of water before bed with 2 paracetamol... don't want a hangover in the morning now, or an excuse for extra wrinkles now...etc etc) well, I was distracted from said pain and learned to enjoy myself again.

What a lovely party and so good to see the gang in outstanding gladrags and killer shoes and jewels and funky shirts and mascara and - well, etc. So, gushing on I just wanted to end my rambly gush (flood gates are opening...) with a little thank you to everyone who came and got a babysitter and drank a few glasses and endured the heat after a long day of more heat (and for some after also a long day in a playground shouting at children and parents at the school fete) and like some dreadful acceptance speech at the Oscars, I just wanted to say I love you guys. Thank you - without you, I wouldn't have got where I was today, and if my arms could stretch around you all at once, you know? Feel the lurve.

With that, I will wipe my nose on my hairy forearm and head for the bath where I'm about to start Huxley's Brave New World. Only apt as I venture forth in to the next phase of life.
As a 36 year old.

running woman

I'm running 10km in July.
Ouch.
I did it last year at the Croosh Ond 10k, in lashings of rain and being pumelled by the running crazies that attend these sorts of events.
As I accepted the challenge (which came from the charity I currently work for) by enthusiastically pressing SEND on a chirpy upbeat - yeah, I can do it - sort of email, as the email disappeared into the ether and my computer made that noise of a distant airplane going somewhere even faster than usual, I suddenly thought shit why have I just done that? Is it because I've been sitting at my desk for longer than I can remember and my arse has melted into my grandmothers old leather chair and the 10 bars of cadburys keeping me alive have now run out?
Probably.
So. For the last few weeks I have been in "training".
I am actually a bit like the man in the film Run Fat Boy Run as I stagger over the pavements in a pair of grim shorts grim shoes and some sort of grim vest thing, panting heavily and hoping that I don't give the sweet lady who I always pass on Poo Passage a cardiac arrest because I always seem to run so close to her without her hearing my approach (she's old, presume deaf? - how can she not hear my puffing?) - that as I pass her she sort of waves her shopping bag in the air in vague self-defence/terror/surprise/horror (what is that red puffing creature that resembles a female human?)...
In the film Fat Boy (Simon Pegg) is a loser who leaves his pregnant wife jilted at the Alter and to win her back he decides to run a marathon. With 4 weeks to train in.
So I have a bit longer to train and not for a 26mile race and also I'm not trying to win anyones' hand back. Luckily. Watching the film gave me hope that I could at least get around the course and I've been reassured by my friends in the charity that 'you can walk it in just under 2 hours' (cheers for the support).
(I think Fat Boy gets his not-wife back in the end by the way, so any aspiring love-in-the-making, this could be a really top way to win the hand of your fair lady or man... yeah, like so romantic... you can show off your blisters and cracked nipples post-race, and your inner-thigh-chaffings. And for extra romance: get her nose under your pits. A real love-inducer.)
So, any local readers, watch out! I'm going all runner on yo' ass as of a couple of weeks ago! If you see a flash of discombobulated human limbs accompanied with strange sound effects: no its not a local Labour Councilor canvassing for the next election, its most likely me, chugging round Finsbury Park swearing a lot and wishing to god I wasn't doing it.
Get me the cadburys I'm having a panic attack.

foxes

God and damned and curse those vile skanky bin lovin' shit-givin' garden-killin' creatures. The urban fox. 'Twas a mere 10 days ago when 2 small babies were attacked by the ghost-eyed demons of the streets, causing wounds to the vulnerable babies which left them in hospital for longer than a casual trip to casuality after a night on the tiles.
So this morning, husband having got up at sparrows fart and domestic harmony prevailing on such a sunny Monday, spirits lifted and strawberries gleaming in the light, you could hear the tinkle of bliss in our house on the hill. Cereal had been eaten with no 'but mum I'm full' 'but mum I wanted toast' 'but mum I have to go and poo' 'but mum I actually don't like rice-pops any more don't you know' 'but mum I do need to have more sugar' you get the jist. Mols packed lunch (ham and cream cheese bagel, banana fairy cake, cheese string, yoghurt 'health' drink) had been constructed, washing up done and all that remained to be done was hair and a bit of pre-school-chillaxing.
I was in the sitting room fiddling with the mop of hair (remind me to get it cut) on Lizs head as she pointlessly cut up a piece of paper into minute pieces for me to pick up off the floor after I returned from my run.
When...
From outside there was a very loud high pitched Mol-like "agh", and then a pounding of feet (more like rugby player than possible Grade 1 ballet dancer) through the kitchen and a sort of panting like some creature with not enough air in the lungs... Mol leapt in to the sitting room gulping and very pink and sort of with a crazed look in her eyes and then she burst into tears and said "fox, garden, close, ugh, on the fence, bumble bees, fox, flowers, talking to..." ? quoi?
And so to unravel this alien shpeel...
Mol had been talking to our collection of bumbles who like to congregate on my (outstanding) lupins in the morning sun. And as she talked to them (not sure what about, I'll find out, I'm interested to know where the common ground lies between a 7 year old and bumble) she heard a rustle from next door neighbours garden (tony) and she just presumed that it was Tony coming out to enjoy the morning rays (but given that he never rises from his den until after noon...) - so she turned around to say morning to our usually comatose neighbour and lo, it wasn't Tony, but scene from a horror movie, an URBAN FOX, with ghost eyes mangy fur and fangs was balancing on the fence not more than 1.5m away. Hence the scream.
Brazen fucking creature.
We had to switch on Timmy Time to calm the nerves.
I went out with my shotgun and blasted a few rounds off into the air.

Pain is...

Pain is when ones not very old computer dies on one, leaving one to go through the process of technological cold turkey. I am writing this brief entry to reassure you all that I haven't been murdered by my parents or drowned in vintage Harringay dog turds or fallen into an alcoholic induced coma. No no it's all very straight forward: no computer. Husband, who I secretly admire for this but god forbid my British ways permit me to tell him, is a total wizard on computers and promises to set me up again soon, once he's nicked the equipment from work. So in the meantime I suggest to you all, in sympathy for me, because let's face it this IS all about moi, for you to take a technology holiday too. Let's share this experience... Together we will grow stronger from experiencing mutual pain... Do I sound like a total loon now?
Mothers ruined.
Again. And this time amazingly it's not self induced. Apologies for any typos. I'm not very dab on the iPhone. Until next time ...

nesting season & the nose trick...

oh there is a nice yummy feeling in the air this morning. warm air. clear sky. I hung the washing out on the line, and as I was hanging, I could hear this cosy cooing noise coming from a bush in the garden. oh, whats this I think? and then I hear some flappy flapping, and out flaps a pigeon... who promptly flies up to a neighbours roof and does the biggest shit in the world. I carry on hanging the washing in the bright sun. I think there is a pigeons nest... so maybe in a few weeks time we'll have little fluffy chicks hopping around the garden? (or being maimed by the skanky foxes...)
the chestnut trees are in full candle-tastic-bloom.
the honeysuckle is about to pop.
the strawberries are flowering left right and centre.
the tomatoes are growing rapidly.
and the grass groweth long long long.

ah. I love May.

(although I feel a bit sorry for the hayfever sufferers...)

oh and I just love it when a kid does something they've never done before. so, tonight, as the girls were munching their chicken nuggets (well, at least they were home made...) liz starting singing something completely random which made mol have an attack of snorty giggles. at the same time as said attack took place, mol had also just sucked in a large quantity of pink-milk (a la lola).
end result: Mols first ever go at The Nose Trick.
laugh or cry - she knew not what to do, but pink milk was snorted across the table, via her nozzies, and as I heard this weird assortment of noises (gloopy raspy sludgy poppy choky kind of noises) and turned my head away from my calming cup of Lapsan Souchong tea, Mol was sitting there with two great lines of pink milk dripping from her poor nostrils.
mean mum that I am my first reaction was to laugh out loud and congratulate her through this momentous rights of passage - I nearly put on a pot of spaghetti so we could try it with another genre of food.
but then I realised that mol is only 7, and this had come as a bit of a surprise and shock. so instead I reached for the tissues and assumed maternal concern, whilst Liz continued to sing her random song of nothing oblivious to her sisters mastication malfunction.
bliss.

how clean...

Domestic bliss!
The dishwasher is whirring away downstairs in the dark kitchen, cleaning and polishing and drying...
The washing machine has had a cycle with sheets pillow cases duvet covers and pyjamas.
The wind and the sun has dried aforementioned on my clothes line. No birds flew by and pooed on the white cotton.
The girls rooms are tidy (ish).
I've folded the laundry and put it into neat piles, and on my way to bed, I shall drop the folded clothes at the door of the appropriate room, a bit like father christmas dropping his toys into the stockings of the good sleeping children... I deliver clean clothes at the door of clean sleeping children...
The spare room has clean bedlinen on the bed and my desk isn't too horrendously messy - ready for the arrival of mum tomorrow afternoon.
My bed has clean sheets and duvet cover and for a special treat - ironed pillow cases. I have on clean pyjamas. And. I have just had a bath.
So - how much am I looking forward to slipping into bed, in approximately 5minutes after I've brushed my teeth? The cool sheets. The slightly crisp almost feel of ironed cotton on my cheek. I can't wait. I just love nights like this.
(ooh, crumbs: just watched two episodes of Dr Who on re-run - god? scary? hide behind the sofa stuff? and what, 8 year olds watch this? I'm forbidding any child of mine access to Dr Who until they're legal to vote or marry - whichever comes first...)
And to top it off, there is a fresh batch of fairy cakes in the tin downstairs.
A triumphant day in the life of Domestic Goddessness - especially given that I had the hangover from hell most of the day. Wine. Don't you just love it? (But right now, I love my clean sheets better.)

U-Turns are illegal. Or are they?

Depending on the sort of U-Turn you are committing... I'm not talking about a U-turn between junction 17 and 18 on the M25. That's a quick way to kill yourself and probably 2/3rds of the commuter population.
No, I'm talking about other sorts of U-turns. Like, when you change your mind about something. I think politicians maybe do it quite a lot. I think maybe some animals do U-turns quite a lot, like slugs: today I'm a man-slug. and tomorrow I will be a woman-slug. and have slug-babies. and then maybe i'll be a man-slug again. Politicians, slugs... you know. they're all at it. And so too are errant daughters, and sons-in-laws.
A week last Thursday we experienced the biggest U-turn of our married life (no no, don't be Melodramatic! Nothing silly like realising we're both gay and feeling the need to go explore our true sexuality in Brazil - nothing so exciting as that, don't worry!).
No, a week last Thursday the buyers of our beautiful, much cherished, loved, polished, nurtured N8 house, withdrew their offer. Now that was a catch-the-breath-moment, I can tell you.
Initial reaction: fuckers? what? why? This was at 10.30am - Husband was in his busy technologically flamboyant Soho office; I was in my technologically challenged but very flagrant Garden Centre, so we both continued with our duties in the work-place. Meanwhile, our subconscious heads were whirring like a propellor on a spitfire going full throttle. What were we going to do? My parents are expecting us to be in Hampshire in less than 3 months - paying them rent - and its almost impossible to put a house on the market (even one as desirable as ours!), catch a buyer and clinch the deal in under 6months! Shit a brick as mum would say.
so, that night, after I got home from my ballet class (I haven't told you about that yet - oh, SO good - but for another bloggette, later), I sat down, buttocks wobbling from the plies I'd just been bending and stretching in and out of (ouuuwww), with Husband, and we had probably the Most Mature Conversation of our lives. Ever.
And in this conversation we outlined what we could do, our options, sell or rent or... dot dot dot. This 'dot dot dot' became a big 'dot dot dot' and we realised that our buyers pulling out was our last opportunity to speak-now-or-forever-hold-our-peace-and-move-to-the-country (i.e. put the house back on the market and crack on...).
And so, we started on the black-hole of the dot-dot-dot. I think I went first, and saying something a bit whispery like "I think my biggest regret for moving away from London would be that I couldn't do..." (fulfill my dream training and actually chase a small ambition i've been working at of late...). And then I said to Husband, what's your biggest anxiety about moving? To which the response was "I'm dreading it", at which point I think our fate was sealed.
How could we move away if Husband was dreading it (there is a specific aspect of the move which the 'dread' encompasses - not the whole thing, I think...) and if I were to be full of regrets?
Recipe for disaster.
And at that point in the conversation we both looked at each other and there was a dramatic Pinter Pause where our brains both went CLICK at the same time, as we realised that maybe the country dream would have to be postponed for a while, whilst we worked out our life courses just a little more.
Talk about a U-turn! I could make a bloody brilliant slug I reckon (I have the right skin tone for it too.. a bit bumpy, prone to slimy-episodes [especially after a night out] a bit slow off the mark... etc.).
So after sleeping on it - we Maturely decided to sleep on it, so no rash or rushed decision was made only to be unmade 12hours later... - we (actually, I) had to break the news to my parents (awful awful, horrid, hard conversation) and gradually, over the last week, we have been undoing the doing of the last 6months. Which is an awful awful horrid hard thing on one hand, but on the other hand, I am experiencing a massive wave of relief, as I realise how dangerous a situation we could have been in had we gone through with the move.
So. Slug on. We have u-turned indeed. Mammoth.
And I've applied to do some more training (although not guaranteed a place - fingers crossed huh) and Husband can now spend the £4k we've saved on not commuting - on, oh, how about ME! Hurrah all round!

end of an era...

I feel like I'm a giant alarm clock right now.
tick tock.
If I look and act a bit crazed a lot of the time at the moment its because, well, I am a bit crazed. I have a lot going on in my head and a lot going on in my household.
So. To be blunt. We are leaving London. At some point. In the near future. Near being defined as within a few months. Possibly. Dare I say it, hopefully.
People may say:
It's been a long time coming, we knew, we knew, we could tell you'd move eventually (don't the majority of people move at some point in their lives?)
Or
Yes yes, I could tell, you were never a real Londoner (why's that, I ask nervously? because, well, you know, I mean, well, look at your clothes for starters... - yes, this has been actually said that to me - even though we all shop from the same barrow - Sainsbury's, Primark, H&M, New Look, Peacocks, Tesco...), to the countryside with you, and your strange non-London clothing!
Or (from non-Londoners)
Yes, I can imagine the schools in Harringay are pretty tough places for a child (? what? does my child give the impression of enduring a 'tough' schooling? By this do you mean, oh person from a place of homogenous race and culture, that the schools in Harringay are diverse and full of people not converging with the traditional meat and two veg Brit? In fact our schools are a wonderful cultural cauldron of fabulous children... So, no this is not why...)
Or
Has the dog shit driven you mad? (very possibly)
Or
Is it the danger of stepping out of your front door every morning with two small girls who don't know how to cross a road that has frenzied commuters rat-running down the steep hill as though Terminator himself was chasing them? (Or perhaps a desperate politician...) Yes this is a definite factor in our lives. The element of containment that is life in London. Or at least in this part of London. Or perhaps more localised to our road?
Or
Its the black snot that you get after being on the tube for a few stops isn't it? (yes, absolutely - there you have it! the key to leaving London. Black snot! Bingo!)
And actually, here's another mad idea:
To try out a new life for our family.
It means leaving so much behind and each day I wake up and look out from my loft window across the London roofs at Canary Wharf flashing away like a lighthouse, and I know that just down the road is Yassa Hallim and all his delicious baked breads and olives; and that if I throw a stone in one direction it will pass 6 houses of people I know and love, and if I throw a stone in the opposite direction, the same thing - more friends, perhaps a brother or a sister in law or an uber-granny, the fabric of this mad community which my roots, my children, my husband- are embedded in (and hopefully the stone won't smash someone elses loft window...).
So my alarm clock is counting down (date yet unknown) and my roots are feeling like they're not sure about this uprooting thing, and my heart is doing flip flops left right and centre and my mind is all over the place and frankly if you get a sane sentence out of me in the next few months then congratulations.
I think Tesco and Sainsburys will get a lot of business from me, particularly in the wine and kleenex department (I can't write kleenex without thinking of teenage boys, really sorry but its true) - in this case for my sniffly nose and drippy eyes. Nothing icky! Promise!
I shall keep you posted of family trivia but thought I should break even with the whole thing.
Adios for now cheekos. (? what ? see. nonsense)

afternoon cinema trip

SO! today i took the kidlings to see Nanny McPhee and The Big Bang. It was so good! I loved it. Les Kiddies loved it. We landed at the stinky shopping city cinema at 4pm - we were the only people in the cinema (ooh, possibly a bit creepy...) - and had a ball. Liz liked all the references to poo (loads of them especially at the beginning) Mol liked the small kid called Vincent he was a dude they both loved the 7 synchronised swimming piglets and i cried. twice. Oh dear. what is happening to me? i can't cry, surely, at a Nanny McPhee film? But I did. (Husband away at war; mother left poor and being heckled by horrid brother-in-law, then told husband killed, sob sob sob; then right at the end the husband is seen walking towards them over the hill - Ewan Mcgregor cameo! - oh, no, amazing happy ending, father survives 2nd world war! children are no longer fatherless - sob sob sob...)
And the best bit about being in an empty cinema was that there were no over-cheesed over-sugared over-fizzy-popped smelly people and we were able to eat our cream-cheese-and-cucumber sandwiches without feeling like the weirdos that we probably are (or that I am for forbidding to allow over-cheesed-natchos to eat into my purse).
And it was fine when Liz shouted loudly at the gigantic CHEERIO advert - "mummy that's my cereal look cheerios on the wall they're so big" and it was fine when Mol stated the Peugot 206 advert was "really cool mum" (the driver straps the car up in a giant harness and 'swings' the car in an empty dock-yard) and for me, no one noticed my sniffling runny nose episodes each time the films topic turned to fatherless children...
In fact I maybe see this as becoming a regular post-school haunt. I mean, its kind of educational (in a school of life sort of way), keeps us out the house, means no Cbeebies one afternoon a week, and I get to sit down for a whole 90 minutes.
Result. Next time i'm going to smuggle a bottle of chardonnay in too...

back to school

(Volcanic Ash Victims)
I wonder if I will in fact be a VAV?
I've just hung my clothes up outside (first time this year! hurrah! its the real deal! dare I say it? whisper it? type it even... could summer be officially on the way? I've even turned my heating off) and even though the sky is clear, I am wondering if, when I return from collecting my children from school, my whites will have turned a darker shade of grey and will be covered in ASH?

Back to school today. Mol seemed ok with this, although she spent a while longer in the bathroom this morning than perhaps she usually does (I think she was on the loo rather than applying mascara and eye shadow...). Her slightly gothic teacher with a bit too black teeth was waiting for her class when we got into the playground, Mol and her friends compared the plaits in their hair and then meandered carelessly into school, with a little peck on the cheek; clean gym clothes in her games bag (these gym clothes get cleaned once a term...) and the first ham sandwich of the summer term in her lunchbox.

Liz amazingly seemed totally happy to skip back into her crazy manic classroom of 30 4year olds. Reunited with her two best friends - they stood in a little circle exchanging important-to-4-year-old-news ("look, I'm wearing a pink t-shirt", "I've got a new pink ribbon in my hair", "have you seen my new pink bear I keep it in my trouser pocket" etc.) and barely waved goodbye to the wrinkled old mother who felt like she'd been up all night, although the alarm had only gone off 2 hours prior to school drop off.

Anyway.
3 months to go...
More on the biggest count down of my life (except perhaps the countdown to birth, I guess) at another time.

in honor of malcolm maclaren

I came downstairs this evening having just hung up the wet bath towels belonging to liz & mol - to find mol dressed in a white floaty skirt which she'd turned into a shoulderless dress, tied with a purple ribbon around her waist and a red ribbon in her crinkly mol-like ever-knotted hair. she looked really pretty and sort of etherial. i admired her secretly and thought how imaginative to turn a skirt into a shoulderless dress and tie a ribbon around it for shape and control.
she then said, shh. sit down on the sofa. I'm going to do a show for you.
so me and liz sat on the sofa and wondered what the show was this time. she'd murmured something about cinderella earlier in the bath.
i said, what's it about?
she said: it's a dance mum.
i said, ok. cool.
i like it when Mol puts on her 7 year old innocent dance shows. its kind of endless and she gets all whimsicle and is usually the dying swan, in lots of agony and am-dram-pain, taking hours to sink to the floor and flutter her eyelids to a final close.
she went over to the cd player and pressed play.
liz and I waited.
and then RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHOAR.
it was only the mother-fuckin'-SEX-PISTOLS!
and mol, dying swan cast flippently aside, started poge-oh-ing (?sp?) around the sitting room, in her now gothic rather than whimsically balletic frock, flinging her head from side to side, flailing her arms around madly and with strange crinkled up scrunchy eyes (occasionally winking badly) face, in a mock-whoah- sort of shouty way.
WHAT?
How?
when did she learn to dance mod-like? she then started hopping like a rabbit on a massive dose of coke. (was she on coke? - I dont think so although she did have chocolate at supper.)
occasionally her dress would slip down and her little pale torso would be flung around careless of its clotheless state - and then she'd laugh hysterically when I pointed out that we could see everything - and whilst jumping up and down on the spot like the over-dosed-easter-rabbit she'd sort of shift her frock upwards only for it to fall down again as she continued with her mad mod rock punk dance.
anyway. I thought it was pretty bloody cool despite the foul language (luckily she was so in the moment i don't think she actually heard the lyrics) and made quite a change from the dreadful swan which she keeps trying to kill off.
(but shit. god knows what she'll be doing this time in 10 years when she's 17 and really off her head in a nightclub. its probably not good for my mental health to think about it too much.)

pastie, anyone?

Cornwall. Land of the cream (it comes in many different formats... all with the same net result: fat. fuckin' thighs). Home of the beach (which also comes in many different formats with the same net results: wet. tired. screechy children).
Love it or hate it, there is something magic about a holiday in Cornwall. Maybe its because its like being abroad but everyone speaks English? Maybe its just not being in London that does it for me. Maybe the magic is something to do with the fact that we were down there just as the land was bursting open with life (new lambs in the fields, a day old calf in the local farm, blossom just opening from its buds, and the grass couldn't have been greener if Liz had coloured it with her fluorescent green marker pen).
Maybe its also because 'one' packs thinking, oh well, its going to be sodding cold and wet and it'll probably rain every day, snow even, because this is England and the weather is so unpredictable, that when you get landed with 6 days in a row of golden sunshine and a sun-licked cheek at the end of each boldly-rayed-up day - well, that's pretty darned magic in my book.
The four of us set out last Wednesday morning, with our suitcases bulging with all our grey thermal underwear, our middle layer of long sleeved t-shirts, our 3rd layer of 'thin' jumpers and a fourth layer of thick winter woollies. Tights by the bucket. Hats stuffed into every spare pocket our bags had. Wellies. Winter walking boots (not that I have summer ones mind you). Winter anoracs. And when we arrived, 5hours later, at our small house named Corncockle (must have been put together by a drunken holiday maker with an untreated STD) we stripped off our outer layers, revealing our unsightly thermals to the pretty smart beaches of Rock (its all brassy glamour down there, even in April). 6 days later we were still in our string-vests and thermal shorts, sweating it out on the beaches as schools of dolphins leapt in the bay and mackerel hooked themselves onto our fishing rods over the side of a pirate-fishing-boat.
If that's not magic, well, tell me what is (apart from Paul Daniels).
Anyway. Liz and Mol enjoyed the Cornish Magic and their hair has got blonder and for the time we spent there, they actually didn't fight all that much, and they did sweet things like collect shells and make sandcastles and we built a spectacular dam across a stream on the beach turning upstream into a very cold paddling pool, and they ate ice-creams, and played with their cousins, and made my parents love them a little bit more than usual, and after they'd flaked out in their funny fishy-smelling-beds at night, we'd sit around the table and talk about their childish ways and the grandparents would make considered observations about each one in turn. (Mol is good at being on her own; Liz is just awful; Alice is very good at rock climbing; Jake is a great hugger - etc.)
And I got to drink a lot of wine. And because it was the holidays I also ate too much cheese, too much chocolate and didn't do enough exercise.
So, if anyone can recommend a good lippo-suction-surgeon on Green Lanes please pass on the contact.
Magic. (ooh, I feel a Queen moment...)

stomach unrest

For nearly 7 weeks I didn't glimpse the cheese cabinet in Sainsburys. No brie for me! Oh no, thank you! I passed on the chocolate mousse on Good Friday. I didn't flinch when the macaroni cheese was bought steaming and golden from the oven by my mum 2 weeks ago (Oh, darling, there's some salad you can have instead), and I waved off the left over Christmas Quality Street (and it wasn't just the coffee ones left at the bottom, I spotted two caramel drums and a toffee penny) at post-cheese-post-pudding-lets-wrap-the-meal-up-with-a-waifer-thin-chocolate time.

Then. On Sunday. April 4th. All hell broke loose. We laid the table on Saturday night so the children would be amazed at the deliveries from the notorious bringer of Eggs, the Easter Bunny (for gods sake - why does a Rabbit deliver chocolate eggs on easter day? surely it should at least be something that lays eggs? A platipus or duck perhaps? - I have no recollection from my minimal religious up-bringing of cute lop-eared-rabbits dropping by the houses of sweet well behaved children [ONLY WELL BEHAVED CHILDREN GET CHOCOLATES. IF YOU WANT THE EASTER BUNNY TO COME BY TOMORROW THEN EAT YOUR BLOODY BROCCOLLI - so went the mantra in our house for the last 2 weeks or so...] whilst Jesus rose from the dead to save our souls? Maybe that was the day I was off with alcohol poisoning from Religious Studies, such as they were at my school...) - and my eyes goggled at the tons of dark luscious chocolates laid on the table all ready for the big off on Sunday morning (after some branflakes to line the stomach).
And in the fridge, I knew already, I'd sniffed it out, was a large slice of delicious Emmental cheese. Chewy and yellow and holy. (holy! ha, gettit?)
And so, that night, I dreamt it was breakfast time and lunch time and it was great. my taste ducts getting ready.
And then, in the morning, dreams over, after my bowl of branflakes, and a round of hymns at the church, I finally got to dive in to my cheese and chocolates.
Hmmmmmmmmmmm.
Long pause while I think back to the divine moment of chocolateness and total cheese-fest.
How good it was to feel it slipping down my osophagus? How happy was my head to know that I'd abstained, and my halo was glowing and now my time was up I could lap it up like a pig in the shit. Hurrah.
After about 2hours of constant scoffing, I realised that I was last at the table, (the kids well bored by now of their chocolate and more into running around on that scary choc-high kids get) the front of my easter-dress splattered with crumbs of chocolate and yellow rubbery cheese, my mouth covered in the same, my finger-tips brown from licking and re-licking, my plate surrounded by wrappers and the tough skin off the cheese, and I also realised that my stomach had fallen out of its normal shape and taken on the shape of a large easter-egg. And that in fact my eyes had started to spin in opposite directions.
And that in fact I was now feeling a bit less holy and a bit revolting and totally. in fact. sick.
So. I put down that last bit of chocolate (the really good thick bits you find at the base of the egg...).
And went for a long walk and wondered if I would make it through the year without suffering cardiac problems or just drowning in my own chocolate/cheese vomit later on that night.
Well, I didn't drown. Here I am. Writing about my stomach and over indulgent behaviour. But dare I say it, I'm quite looking forward to the next round of Lent because there is something rather fantastic about abstaining from something that 'one' really loves. And the gigantic hit I had from my first bites of chocolate & cheese on Easter day. Really. Super. Duper.
However, my skin is now all covered in zits.
Now that's not quite so tasty.

general total failure

please excuse current "blog" entry.
mothers ruin has fallen off her not even very high perch and finds herself like an overturned lady bug, unable to clamber back on top of things, and unfortunately unable to engage brain. brain... hello? are you out there brain? come back! I need you!
its the kids.
the kids.
i blame the kids.
they've sucked my brain out, digested it over the last 7 years, and now, the last remnants have been flushed down to the N8 sewers, never to be seen again as they wash out down the Thames towards the Channel and the big ships which will swill whatever brain cell was left into the final nothingness of its existence.

or it could just be that I went to a very good wedding on the w/end and am now a bit tired and my liver is probably saying OK, enough already! and my brain has shut itself down in an act of sensible self protection.

but its better to blame the kids. afterall, in about 10 years time (or less...) they will blame me and Husband for every damn thing that goes wrong in their life. from broken nail to failed A levels.
so, whilst they lie cute and sleepy in their beds, I will say to you, that my current status quo is entirely the fault of the children, and not me.
just off to get another glass of red...

spare pants required

I don't think I ever went to a school disco before the age of 9. But in London -everything starts decades earlier. Dancing lessons take place for babes-in-vitro. New borns have raves down the drop-in. Toddlers do 4-day-festivals. So 7 year olds get school discos in their school halls with bad ecoustics (?sp) bad light slippery floors cheap tat for sale at the door and the joy of seeing their teachers "mum, I saw Paul, he was DRINKING BEER in the school hall that is sooooo weird" (7 year old puts on what I'd only describe as sooooo weird American accent from her one-ever-viewing of Hannah(eugh-give-me-the-vom-bucket)Montana) what was I saying, oh yes, teachers being off-duty drinking beer in the lunch-hall.
I'm really referring to Mols school disco that took place last Friday.
Possibly the worst day of the week for a disco to take place?
Children: way too tired (therefore prone to tears and general-malfunction)
Parents: way too tired (as above)
Teachers: way too tired (as above but probably magnified 10x)
Music: way too loud (I should think the music is directly responsible for Liz's ear-drum-explosion yesterday afternoon where she spent 5hours with my hand clutched like a vice to her head as she yelled "OOOOOOHHHHAAAAAAAH" like a scene from One Born Every Minute - listen to the sound effects on this link)
The intentions I know, are valid: fun, community spirited - and it may be that I wasn't feeling very community spirited on Friday as I was recovering from a day of violent vomming (and I hadn't even watched Hannah Montana) and I felt weak - too weak to endure the base of the kiddy-muzac booming out full blast - but gawd...
I remember school discos with a trembly tummy sort of - oh god, I've got to dance in front of all these people and my brothers-hand-me-down-jumper is just so un-cool and I'm not allowed to wear eye-liner but all the girls are and now I'm just a wall-flower and I don't know what to do.Some kids can dance. Some kids can't. Some kids have flashing shoes. Some kids don't. Some kids have cool parents. Some... well. Y'know. And I went to the disco on Friday actually carrying the same anxiety for Mol: will she be ok?
But now I realise that 7 year olds don't have quite the same levels of self-conscious-anxiety as perhaps a 9 year old (or just me), so actually the school disco on Friday was really quite a happy place (bar Mol getting whacked in the eye with one of those day-glow-necklaces, and Liz peeing in her pants and all over her tights, and therefore going commando, and then deciding to do rolie-polies on the dance floor - I'll get my coat) and it was actually quite sweet, if I stuck my fingers down my ear-holes and ignored the teachers "dancing", to see the little people hopping about in a totally carefree way.
No wallflowers at this disco.
No pre-teen-angst in the hall last Friday night.
So that was nice. Yes. Indeed. Happy faces all round.
Oh but how old do I feel now? My girls go to discos and I moan about how loud the muzac is? (Call this music? Its just a thumping noise! I'll show you music!)
The lesson to be learned from Friday night: take ear plugs; smile at anything anyone says even if you can't hear them, and most definitely bring a spare pair of pants.

leave the kids behind

I think its been nearly a whole two years that Husband and I went away together, without the kidlings (although we've been to a wedding and had a night 'off' when the kids have stayed with Granny but we'd been under orders to be back at her house for breakfast - which sort of defies the purpose of leaving them with Granny in the first place... but mustn't grumble because we're JOLLY LUCKY to have such a lovely Granny who has them to stay at all... etc etc. don't look a gift horse in the mouth - another weird and idiotic phrase - don't look ANY horse in the mouth frankly, unless you want green spit in your eye or worse) so this weekend has been trez-spesh as the French would say. Trez spesh indeed.
Starting on Friday which was a day like that scene in the film Goodfella's when, near the end, the paranoid coke addict is cooking a tomato sauce but also trying to sort a massive drugs trade and also has to collect a granny or disabled sibling from somewhere whilst trying to deliver the coke to another venue all the while a helicopter is following his car and he's getting more and more psyched out with all the things he has to do before dinner - too much to do, too little time? I felt a bit like that on Friday. Too many things to do before I could get to where I really wanted to be: Beaulieu, with my Husband, away from it all.
8am - the plumber comes by (had already forgotten he was booked in)
8.45am - get the girls to school
Then spend 2hours packing cleaning tidying emailing administration making tea for the plumber thinking of an excuse to get Mol out of school 1/2hour earlier than normal pack the car up make sandwiches for Liz's lunch and for the girls 'tea' in the car later
11.30am collect Kid 1. Pay the plumber shit loads of cash for 20minutes work. (Make note: investigate plumbing college for girls - seems like a lucrative career...)
12pm go visit latest addition to the world in N16 (ah, sweet little baby!)
1pm go visit less recent addition but still pretty new to the world in N16 (ah, another sweet little baby!)
2pm Liz does huge poo in someone elses house - make a sharp exit and hope they don't need a plumber recommendation
3pm collect Mol
3pm hot-foot it to Hampshire
6pm and 68miles later 2 girls asleep in the back of the car after 2hours of solid fighting and Mother totally loosing her rag at 90mph on the A3 telling them the teddies will be chucked out of the window RIGHT NOW unless they SHUT UP and SHARE THE BLOODY THINGS
7pm say goodbye to suddenly extremely cherished girls breath enormous sigh of relief wish my parents best of luck with Liz and her not peeing in her bed 9 times in the night hot foot it to Winchester to collect Husband off train and then hot foot it even faster to Beaulieu - land of the free parents, home of the beer and wine, shelter to the on-verge-of-collapse-due-to-exhaustion Londoners.
We arrived eventually - sucked up most of the bar and a wheelbarrow of chips and then passed out in a coma for 10hours, waking up in that fug of 'huh? where are we? why is there no child by my bed whinging? why can I hear ducks instead of sirens? is this actually heaven?'.
Heaven indeed. And my, how time flies when one is in heaven. And oh - here's a novelty: conversation! uninterrupted conversation with the man I married 10 years ago. Fancy that? Oh yes please! None of Liz's endless drivel or Mols moody glares - just whole conversations that have a start, middle and end. It was like a miracle. But I guess when having a temporary residence in Heaven, then Miracles can be on the menu.
Anyway. its all over now. No more ducks. Tonight I go back to sleep in my less expensive bedlinen and will wake up to the sounds of the 141 breaking at the bus stop down the road and an ambulance/police/fire-engine siren belting down Green Lanes at sparrows fart. Usual noise of urban life.
But it was super-great having a wee reminder of what made me and Husband well, me and Husband, I guess - its easy to live with someone day in day out and completely lose touch. And these little snippets of time away from the every day - well, as the French absolutely don't say, trez-spesh indeed.
(PS just had a message from my mum: "love your kids. have necked a bottle of white. will survive.")

traditional sunday roasts

what is it about the words roast and sunday that go together and create sunday roast and before you can say pass the bread sauce your saliva ducts start saliva-ating and all you can think about are mounds of golden potatoes, perfect buttery peas and a huge sparkling fresh from the oven chicken with crispy bacon curling over its back, steam rising in the hot kitchen and a table with all your beloved's around it, waiting eagerly and patiently?
its like something out of the Darling Buds of May!
plates heaving with food and gravy and everyone laughing amiably as the red wine is passed from glass to glass.
today we had pheasant no less. not that i ate it being a vegetarian, but that was the sunday roast, no less! fresh from the woods in suffolk! a life of brambles and oak trees, a short stint in the freezer, and then a glorious debut on a happy kitchen table in Highbury.
but god! bloody hell! the LABOUR that goes into putting together a sodding "traditional English Sunday Roast" is just daft. bloody daft! to eat a pheasant by 1.15pm, we got to mother-in-laws at 11am and i basically didn't leave the kitchen until the last splat of breadsauce had been wiped off the plastic table cloth at 2pm. its bonkers!
roast potatoes (involves peeling and chopping and par boiling and fluffing and heating oil roasting);
roast parsnips (as with potatoes);
carrots (peeling and chopping with blunt knife steaming buttering thank goodness no parsley to chop for these ones - not enough manpower to spare);
bread sauce (sticking spices onto an onion in some milk about 4 weeks before lunch is due, then cubing some stale white bread saved especially for the event, then simmering for 15mins - after all that);
cauliflower cheese (cauliflower cheesey white sauce blah blah blah - honestly just make a small one I PROMISE the kids won't eat it);
pheasant (kill in a wood 85 miles away, pluck & sneeze each time pheasant fluff ventures north up a nozzie, scream like a girl when chopping off head and getting out stinky slimy twisty things, hang in London basement for 1 week, freaking out mother of house each time she goes to put a wash on downstairs; wonder how best to freeze then decide plastic bag & bottom drawer of freezer, defrost 3months later, cook in an oven whose door doesn't shut properly, complain bitterly that the oven is shit and the pheasant clearly wasn't defrosted);
OH! and the vegetarians & children all require separate menus SO if you don't mind the list continues with:
sausages (that's relatively easy you think! but NOT when the oven already has cauliflower cheese, pheasant, parsnips & potatoes already in it);
salmon for the pheasant-phobes (same problem as sausages - no room in the oven).
you see, its not so darned simple, is it?
but we got there in the end.
the kids ate their sausages first (where's the ketchup? - so insulting spoilt little brattoss-'s - mine, unfortunately);
then the vegetarians ate their salmon;
then about 1/2hour later the pheasant was finally produced golden crispy meaty smelling and attacked by three people who made out like they'd not eaten since it was actually 'taken' from its happy world in suffolk.
and Liz who had a massive tantrum before lunch - just as the cooks were getting hot under the collar about the lack of co-ordination between the three protein-sources - because ALL I WANT IS A HAM SANDWICH, to which the standard reply was shuddupbrat you must be joking you are eating what you are given YOUNG LADY etc etc - Liz then went on to eat SO much pheaz- I mean - "chicken" that I wonder if the really stinky farts that took place a few hours later were connected?
kind of meaty smelling? may be a bit like the smell outside macdonalds?
so we survived it. but for all the "yeah, lets do a sunday lunch! cool! fab! we can bond over the hob! " well, next weekend its PIZZA all round.
Open box
Turn on oven
Put in oven for 10 minutes
Eat
(possibly burp too)
Return to Cbeebies / newspaper - ignore each other happily for rest of day.
Sunday Roast MY ARSE!
(although it tastes a darn sight nicer than a tesco budget pizza with "real" mozzarella)

friday afternoon

Whilst my beloved children are downstairs eating pizza in front of Madagasca (I like to move it move it I like to move it move it) and currently not trying to throttle each other with ribbons or stab each other with the remote controls, I have snuck away to contemplate the sunshine and the week, which has flown by like concord going supersonic.
Is it bad that I've left them downstairs on their own with the nursery maid aka dvd? Well, I watched the first 45minutes so I reckon I'm ok at the moment.
So this week has been all a bit stomach wrenching and peculiar.
Sunday I let a North-Face-Clad-couple-from-Crouch-End in to our house to look around it. We may be selling it. But that's another blog for another day. And I proudly showed them around (Husband was at work going a bit insane on a completely insane job, and had a bucket under his nose to catch the snot which was on perma-drip); admiring my own home, which we, Husband and I, and I suppose to an extent, Mol & Liz, have put together over the last 8 years. And I am proud of it. And by showing them around I realised how much I totally love this home of ours. Our FIRST grown up home, with upstairs and downstairs, a garden, and a roof that we own 100% of. And its really, really made my stomach do flips thinking about not being here any more. How odd will it be for two small children who've only ever lived here to pack up their things and watch the house empty out into a large lorry sometime in the summer (with their drunken mother sobbing into one of Husbands oversized overused man-hankies)?
So that was weird.
And then on Wednesday night I watched a re-run of Location Location with the wordy Phil & Kirsty, who were re-living their very first couple who happen to be excellent friends of ours. And seeing them on the telly from 7 years ago was surreal. (Not a new line on their face since, which disturbed me somewhat as I climbed into my bath aftewards, my face covered in lines and indellible sleep-patterns around my eyes...) The very night their show was broadcast I went into labour with Mol, so as I was watching them again on Wednesday my tummy started going a bit flippy and I must admit I shed a tiny tear (also probably because I really wanted to jump on the first express train to Glasgow and I know I probably won't be able to do that now until 2011...). So that was weird. In a nice sort of a way.
And then weirdly a really good friend of mine, who's husband is Liz's godfather, on that very same night as Phil & Kirsty re-lived their love of our friends in Scotland, only went and got herself into labour too. Crazy huh? Maybe there is something about watching friends on TV when at a critical stage of pregnancy that triggers a hormone rush that triggers contractions? I may have found something here.
So that was weird.
And then today when I took Mol to ballet me and Liz sat in the hell like waiting room listening to the clonk-clonk of the piano in the studio and like dominoes, one by one, each toddler in the waiting room hit each other, with increasing intensity. ella hit jasper. jasper hit theo. theo came over and demolished liz and tried to remove her hair as if it were merely a wig.
so that was a bit weird.
something about the YMCA which induces crazed behaviour in small people.
anyway. I can hear "I like to move it move it, I like to move it move it" which means Madagascar is finishing, which means I better go down before the killing of siblings begins. Again.
Have a nice weekend folks. May it be free of weirdness.
(see. not even 10seconds has passed and I can hear them battling downstairs. HELL.)

lizards and sun

ooh! I have one more official follower! thank you follower! I think I may love you.

anyway. onto today's hot topics.
spring?
sun!
bulbs!
birds singing!
people smiling!
could it be could it be..? or are we sad misguided weather-nuts who see the best in a bad situation. will I wake up tomorrow and my house have slid down to Green Lanes under the weight of a new dump of Siberian Snow, fresh in off Cloud 9?
I know we're a nation of weather-nuts but is it any surprise? we've had 4months of grey drizzle vitamin-d-deprivation, combined with a recession, christmas, january, pot-holes, teenagers throwing their chicken-wings-food-wrappers all over Hornsey rail station (actually that's not seasonal, that's constant and so disgusting I want to go and shut down chicken-wings or get some fire-crackers and set them off each time a Horsney School for Girls Teenager chucks her carton nonchalently on to the wet floor; have they NO pride in their surroundings?) and Bradley being killed off in East Enders. I mean, the times have been really tough.
so when I woke up to a ray of sun beaming through my bamboo lined blinds this morning I actually jumped out of bed and felt - dare I say it - happy!
Mol and Liz, peeling their faces off their green with snot pillows, also felt the joy of the beams. they both got dressed with no fuss, they both ate breakfast without argument, they brushed their teeth and hair (different brushes) almost with merriment. they even shared the making of a jigsaw. actually that's a lie. i can't push it too far. they had a row over the jigsaw. out came the green snot again - flying in all directions as they chucked jigsaw puzzle bits at each other in rage. a bit like when a camel gets feisty and spits at the moronic tourist trying to get on its back - greenies flying galore.
BUT: can this be put down to the joy of sun?
I think I may be a lizard inside a womans clothing. And when the sun comes out my fingers start to move properly, my skin feels less vulnerable, my body wakes up. I wonder what the Xray in the new airport security would see as I saunter through? would it bleep because of the belt buckle or the large diamond ring Husband gave me for having his children (oh, wait, delete that last bit) or would it bleep because the security guard had just seen an upright lizard skeleton walk towards him and he'd vomited in shock on his machine and set off the alarm? Who knows. This could be a conversation to have with my parents.
anyway. its very nice to have the sun out, however briefly it lasts.
(even the dogshit on the passage caused humour today rather than anger... - how rare is that?)

Amateur witches

Mol looks like an adolescent witch at the moment. On her birthday she lost a tooth in the morning (top floor) and a tooth in the afternoon (top floor) which made three missing in a row, and then the next day she lost another tooth (bottom floor) and so now with 4 teeth missing she looks wholey scary. When she smiles there is this row of gum. Pink. and sort of soft. And when she crunches into a carrot its even more scary. there is no crunch. just a sort of snaky like sucking.
Anyway. So, bleeding gums aside, Mol had a truly lovely birthday surrounded by her friends and family up in Suffolk. for the first time in weeks, months, centuries - even, the sun came out and melted the frosted white ground - all the acconites came out and the yellow petals blazed with joy. birds were tweeting and twittering (not digitally, i mean like for real man, nature, brilliant) blinking in the rays, thinking about the nests they'd be making in the next few weeks, wondering if worms were on the menu yet.
One by one car by car friends arrived at the house, 7 year olds leaping from their booster seats, unchained, running into the garden and screaming a lot about not very much, comparing things which are very important to 7 year olds (like plastic jewels or wobbly teeth or shoes or pants or how low they can go with the splits). mothers happily wrapping their hands around a cup of hot tea and mouths round custard creams.
Then - on a load of hobbie horses - there was the Hobby Horse Horse Grand National (actually I wasn't outside for this - but I think there was some sort of race) which I think ended with one or two jockies going on strike because they were being criticized on their equestrian techniques. (7 year olds are fantastically honest about how rubbish their friends are...)
And then we did some pasta pesto for lunch and a load of jelly and cornflake chocolate crunchy things.
And THEN... the main event: pony riding. We jumped back in the cars, and headed over to the local stables where Tilly, Storm and Daisy-Pops were waiting, tacked up, to take their precious loads on their first ever pony rides.
Ah! Sweet! Kids in crash helmets on huge hairy beasts! how happy were these children?! Not one complaint! Just a lot of squeaks of delight and squawks of laughter as the ponies made their funny pony noises (stinky farts nose-blowing coughing tail swishing etc). No one fell off. No one got bitten. No one had a fright. It was all pure wholesome country fun.
And then we all piled back in the cars (please can we go again? please please I want to take Storm home with me, please?) back to the house for some major tea and cake... and here Mothersruin nearly RuinedDaughter by buying hilarious re-lighting-comedy-candles... Poor Mol. Got so frustrated she put her face right in the candles and blew really hard but the buggering thing relit just as her chin was by the candle: burnt chin; tears; howls; embarressment; loss of face; Mothersruin feeling soooo guilty I nearly went straight to the brandy for a large dose of dutch courage (I didn't though, Alcohol doesn't fix problems we all know that, der?) - anyway. she finally pulled herself back together and the party finished off with a whoppa treasure hunt.
and then we kicked everyone out at 5ish.
and then i realised that i hadn't sat down since I got out of bed at 8am. My legs hurt and my eyes kept wondering over to the wine rack.
All in all, I'd say Mol is one lucky little lady. Great friends. Great friends' parents. and a very strong gum.

old age creeping on

oh
my
god
I
have
a
7
year
old
child

how
did
that
happen
?

ready for another yarn about laying babies..?

So the not very shaggy or doggy story continues.
Fast forward 3.5years and I find myself, after making vows to never ever EVER have sex ever again regardless of how much fine wine or how many stems of asparagus or gloopy male-fluid-like-oysters or romantic walks along exotic beaches Husband treated me to, (don't worry, I've never eaten an oyster...) I find myself unable to tie my shoelaces or cut my toenails because there is something IN THE WAY. Yes! You guessed it! Another heir to our North London Kingdom!
Pregnancy was all pretty fine: I was my usual unpleasant self (Husband and I had a spectacular argument one morning which ended with me actually unloading a whole bowl of Rice Crispies (soaked in milk) on his head); hating my body which was getting wider than it was tall, and the inability to turn over in bed without feeling as though I had a water-balloon with a whole cow in it stuck in my stomach sloshing around and sticking hooves in to my organs. Oh those were the days!
Such a joyous positive person I must have been for those 9months. Lucky Husband.
So, as we were nearing birth time, for some reason I came into contact with a new baby (I can't even remember whose it was) and spent about 10 minutes canoodling it. Trying to remember something about how to hold small people - shit, there goes the head, shit, there goes the head AGAIN (is the mother watching? shit, yes!), shit, its vommed on my shoulder (it was the height of summer, my shoulders were covered by the straps of a spaghetti vest - hmmm, must have been a pleasant sight: heavily pregnant woman wearing a skin tight vest).
Anyway. As the old wives tale goes, and as what happened in my story with Liz, the canoodling a new baby totally revved up my hormones and a mere 24hours later I found myself in the next chapter.
Lying in my bed, having just read a few pages of a very Sainsburys chick-lit-book (all my brain could cope with) and turning out my light, I felt my body tense up as I prepared to do a sneeze.
I sneezed. What a whoppa!
I felt marvellous! What a completely fantastic sneeze! My whole body felt like it'd been cleared of all the summer dust.
When suddenly - about 5 seconds after my roaringly successful sneeze - I felt another sensation. WET WET WET! (As marty pellow may sing as his wife goes into labour...)
My waters popped - the balloon with the cow in it had finally worn thin.
GUSH-O-RAMA?
It was like the niagra falls.
(I had to throw away the rug that most of 'it' - oh, gunk - fell to.)
I got a bit excited in a silly hysterical sort of way.
And then shouted for Husband who came to assess the situation in a rather 'this isn't quite what I had in mind for my night' sort of a way.
So blah blah blah - move forward a couple more hours as contractions developed - Granny Highbury installed into the house to babysit Mol who was in heavenly-deep-sleep - we're going to the hospital and I'm in the back of the car, looking out the boot window, holding on for dear life as the niagra falls carried on falling and Husband revved through a number of Red Lights - me howling the usual pretty phrases like 'fuck fuck fuck this fucking hurts why the fuckety fuck did we do this again? oooooooooooooooow. shitcuntwankshitcuntwank...'
Get to the hospital to be greeted (its 3am) by a Spanish Male Midwife. WHAT? A man to deliver my baby?
Oh well, fuck it! I had little choice.
I did some amazing visualisation taught by my fantastic yoga teacher "take yourself to a safe place you love going and breath deeply through the contractions..." she'd say, and I'd find myself in the sea in Devon.
And about 20minutes later Husband turned green and had to be half-carried out of the delivery room, suffering from heat-exhaustion (meanwhile I was about to have his baby...). So he was in disgrace, although at that point I couldn't give a flying-cow who was in the room as long as this baby was taken OUT NOW!
And whoosh.
Out she came. Very fast. The spanish male midwife was shouting at me "don't push don't push not yet" I was like "fuck off its coming out you stupid twat and where's my fuckwit husband anyway?" (remember that feeling? like a white-hot-breeze-block-coming-out-the-fandango?)
Midwives must really love their patients.
I always meant to write to the ward to say thank you for looking after Husband so well whilst I was puffing and panting and pretending to be in the cool Devon sea. I never did.
Anyway, at about 5am, a grey-screaming-mucas-covered-Liz arrived safe and sound and me and Husband shed a few tears (oh god, another 3 years of hell to come) whilst the Spanish Male Midwife tended to my nether-regions' administration.
And voila, Liz. Snuggly. Warm. Pain-over. kiss-able. Snuffly. And ah, that overwhelming sense of yummyness all over again.
Aren't we lucky?
And 3.5years later...
(ha ha ha! Joke!)