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.