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.