Too many people are posting onto facebook "I have done my christmas shopping, and I've wrapped it up, and my bank account just texted me to say that I've got £15,000 left in my current account...and our holiday in Barbados is booked... and my children just got a letter from Mandela asking them for drinks on Christmas eve..."
It's not right. Stop these postings. In this time of cut backs and hard times, joblessness and frost, please, I beg, can you stop your smug postings?
Even if your life sucks in all other areas, just please. Spare a thought for those of us who haven't started Christmas shopping, and those of us who don't even know what their husband wants for Christmas (other than for no purchases to be bought on Amazon or coffee breaks during shopping to be taken at Starbucks).
It's not big and it's not clever.

So I was going to say something really important, and I had it all mapped out in my head. You'd be rolling off your chairs with laughter. And I'd have a surge of new followers... But now I've forgotten what my hilarious story was, there'll be no surge and no falling off of chairs. But I was hugely distracted by these postings of smugness on facebook. Would it make me feel better to whip out my sharp tongue and 'comment' on said smug postings, to put these smugnesses into their place? Probably, but  I'll leave it there. I would let it lie. Vic and Bob wouldn't let it lie. But I do.

Last week was a momentous week down here in the country.
Husband received an early Christmas present from my parents. Can you guess what all new (male) country dwellers need to go in their shed? Oh yes! Nothing less than a chain saw. Vrrrrrrooom. Chainsaw massacres. 
So, on Sunday we tore the village peace and quiet up as Husband sliced through log after log, sawdust flying with careless abandon in the waning afternoon light. I was half waiting (half hoping...) for a nice concerned elderly resident to come round and lodge a polite complaint but no one did. In Germany it is against the law to use chainsaws on Sunday's. But as we all know, Hampshire isn't Germany.

Log after log after log, 'Keep em coming!' yells husband, who has a demonic look on his face... I keep em coming to avoid him mistaking my legs for tree stumps... At the end of 20minutes solid sawing, there is a heap of sawdust on one side (and all down the inside of my wellies, and all over Husbands clothes - he resembles a sawdust-man-hybrid) and on the other side, logs. Logs. LOGS.
Husband draws in a big proud breath, 'For t'fire' he says with a rough voice. His accent has suddenly become rural, and I notice that there is a checked shirt tail hanging out from under his Barbour  and in another moment a golden labrador leaps out from behind him, with a pheasant hanging from it's mouth, My girls appear from a nearby tree on ponies, they have blond plaits in their hair, and Hunter wellingtons on and the ponies are whinnying softly to each other; and before I can say, agh, what the fucks happening, I realise I am holding a huge steak and kidney pie and a piece of straw falls from my hair which is tied back loosely with a length of floral ribbon.


I wake up to the sound of John Humphreys, it's dark outside. And I realise it's all just a dream, until I walk downstairs to make some tea and see this almighty red machine, covered in sawdust, sitting happily on the floor of the hall...

Life in the valley.

I wondered whether I should describe the new house?

Well, for starters there is nothing new about it. It's ooooooold. Like 400 years old.
Old and beamy. As beamy as the Mary Rose. Every room has a beam in it somewhere. If there was ever a wood crisis (notwithstanding the poor Ash) we'd have to watch out for looting chez nous. Maybe that's why the villagers kindly enquire when we're getting a dog?

It's a house made for little country hobbits with big hairy feet and short bodies. My children are ok
(maybe not such big hairy feet). Husband has good feet for the house, but possibly too much height. I take the medium.
Husband has banged his head a few times. Less now that he's developed the Bumpkin Stoop.
Above the bath there is a beam which holds the sloping ceiling - for the taller members of the family it becomes a feat of engineering and gravity to get in and out without smacking the top of the head on this beam.
The back door comes at an extra-low height. Perhaps to make other hobbits who visit feel at home.
Probably once or twice a month there is a sharp OOOW followed by a muttering of fucks shits and wanks from one of the responsible adults in the house, and vigourous head-rubbing.
Liz has a room that overlooks the hill and the church. She can lie in her (really annoying why did we ever buy it?) cabin bed and gaze up at the hill counting the cows or imagining James' Giant Peach falling squarely onto the church spire.
Mols room looks out over the garden and the road. After breakfast each morning, she goes up to her room to brush her teeth (yes, a sink in her bedroom! luxury). After breakfast each morning as she brushes her teeth, from the kitchen (whilst I fend off wood-looters with my fake dog) I hear these bubbled toothpasty shouts of "PURPLE BUS, PURPLE BUS, ZAP PURPLE BUS". Like a minor form of tourettes, Mol & Liz play this game where if they see a mini, a yellow mini, a yellow car, and now, The Purple Double Decker that passes through the village at 8am each morning to pick up the kids to go to The Petersfield School - they have to scream out loud what they have seen, and 'tap' (define 'tap', Mol, Liz?) each other. If they can't 'tap' each other they have to shout ZAP.
Driving to swimming, trying to have a conversation...
"So, Mol, how was your day at school?"
"Fine."
"Did you..."
"ZAP! mini"
"...did you manage to hand in your..."
"yellow car"
"... homework?"
"yes I did and then Harriet mini & I got the skipping ropes purple bus out of the box and raced mini across the playground but yellow car Liz was in my way and I mini kicked her mini accidentally"
"?"
"Can't we just have a normal conversation girls?"
"no mini"
"mini" (liz joins in)
"but I just said mini"
"mini zap"
"but I did that one"
both: "MINI"
At which point I put the radio on.
Loud.

Back to the house.
So, it's beamy and has low doorways. And nice old red brick. And a big roof. Surprisingly - made of tiles. Yes a tiled roof and red bricks. How about that? In the countryside. I dare you to challenge the conception that we all live in quaint little houses.
And on the outside grows wisteria. All the way around the house, bar one side (the side closest the pub. Yes we live next door to the pub. The smell of fish on Fridays... can be good, can be too much at 9am...). I think the plant is actually holding the house together.
People, weird people, people visit the village and then in the summer they take pictures of the wisteria. It has pretty purple flowers and they dangle. But we all know what wisteria does, yeah? It dangles and is purple. Do people need to take photos of it? Shall I stand guard and charge? Or better still put my tourettes children outside the house. That'd scare them away. Zap.

So. Beams. Little doorways. Little cottage windows. Dangly Wisteria. Red Brick. Oh. Sounds a bit, um, quaint.
Quaint on the outside.
On the inside total urban minimalist chick. I mean chic. Yeah.
Not a wicker basket in sight.

So I hope this gives you a clearer picture. We have moved from a drafty Victorian terrace with endless ceilings and cornicing, to a small doored, fire hazard, with no foundations and a river prone to flooding next to it. I wonder why it was so mini cheap?

hello.
It's been over a year. I'm sorry.
I know. Slack.
People have been waiting for a comeback. But I have been waiting for Take That to regroup, for Girls Aloud to make their first appearance in 3 years, for the contestants of Strictly to get a bit more settled, for Tom Ellis to be in a show other than Miranda and for a rainy day with no other commitments in which to start writing again.

So, here I am. All mothery and a bit more ruined. Another wrinkle by the eye and some more bottles to recycle.

My my my.
So much has happened in so many months.

I have moved house!
(And so have my children and my husband. In fact, we all moved together. To the same house, even.)

We no longer live in The City.
We are now officially Country Mice. Which is nice. (I feel a poem coming on...- maybe for another day.)

It all happened shortly after my last posting in November 2011. Our house had been on the market, and was then under offer. And it was around November that our offer on a house in a small village in Hampshire was accepted. And then suddenly it was a whirlwind of estate agents, solicitors, stomach acid, confusion, arguments, driving, speculation, pizza's, hair-pulling, disbelief and finally: removal men... (Stork removals. Which I liked. Good name. Nice men).
And then by April we were fully out of London-town. Having had an endless month of goodbyes, which got more and more painful as the 'official leaving date' drew nearer, we arrived in Hampshire at my parents house wild-eyed and discombobulated. What have we done? Why have we left? Where will I be able to buy a latte from?

I was vaguely thinking I'd start a whole new blog to represent my whole new life down here. But actually, you know, I can't be bothered, and frankly, its not as if the move has somehow stopped me being a mother, or stopped me glugging through bottles of wine, so if it's ok with you, I'm sticking with mothersruin and I'm sticking with all the crap that came with it. It just comes from a greener (visually, rather than environmentally) place with less sirens.

"Oh, you will so miss the fresh coriander and turkish bread. You won't be able to buy that in your homogenous hampshire village" the affectionate parting words of one friend...
"So! When will you get your dog?" were the welcoming words of a friendly neighbour.

I would just like to say a few words about us moving from London.
Us moving from London is not a reflection that London is a 'bad' place to live. It is not a slight on life up there.
I spent, god, what, nearly 15 years living in London. I love London. Love it. We, my husband and children and I, have not been thinking what a shit-hole tarmac-laden unfriendly overloaded overrated place London is. On the contrary. London is amazing. It has people from all over the world living there. It has public transport. It has galleries and theatres and sushi-canteens. You can buy a slice of baklava and get your car MOT'd on the same street. I would never say I am leaving London because it is not a good place to be. London is a buzzing wonder place.
We left London for a change and to have a go at another way of living. A way of living which I grew up with - country life. We wake up in the morning and look out onto a church and a hill. I walk Mol & Liz to school wearing wellies and waterproof trousers (since we arrived in Hampshire it hasn't stopped raining) - such an embarrassing mother. I spend the first hour of the day (if I'm not working) walking up steep hills and surveying a view that reaches 50miles. I can see the sea. I light a fire each day in my woodburner.
I miss not having a Turkish bakery round the corner. But I love having a hill with cows eating grass, on my doorstep. 
See, it's just different. Change is good. Different experiences are good. And we are all still getting used to not having the London things (mainly our friends) and still getting used to some of the Village things (tractors, a river running down the side of the house, knowing absolutely everyone).
Embrace the change!
More to come - village life to be explored and reflected upon in due course...

I just wanted to say hello, and hopefully people will start reading this again.
(Although it is an utter waste of time, people seem quite willing to waste time. In the same way that people are willing to leave their dogs poo in the little poo bags on the pavement rather than in the poo-bin.)