Back to Life......

She wanted the sewing machine.

At our Hall meeting yesterday we made wheat bags (with oats actually) and while I sat, head bowed, and sewed mine up by hand, Minx collared the clever lady who'd brought her sewing machine. 'It looks real!' So today she wanted my needlesome beast to be dug out.

Sewing machines are instruments of mental destruction. They suck hours of your life without ever giving anything in return. Except knot galaxies and scary humming.

But we travel under the firmament of Autonomous Education. She wants the sewing machine. I must make it so.

I knew it was a bad idea. I think she's done. She's busy making a small boy squeak, (well he was just 'there'), ignoring the nest of purple thread, broken needles and the dead spiders we'd brushed off the now abandoned bastard. And I've stomped off over to the computer to make an adulty phone call. 'Cept I couldn't. Had notions of gathering a group educational discount thingie from some on-line 'fun' reading organisation. Failed. Changed my mind. But the sewing machine's still out so I'm staying over here. It'll take me another half an hour to shove that bloody thing back in a suitable nook in my 'utility room' (big cupboard). This place is known as My Hole. It's where I spend most of my time. There's enough space for me to turn around - and maybe squat while I look for/hide things. Things that once suggested I had a creative streak. Now are obviously obsolete as I have no business trying to make anything. My purpose in life now is to pick up crap that others drop. Either to wash or stuff in the bin. Sometimes to slide into a bursting bag that I call My Scrapbook. Potentially it is. Potentially my house is a home. But reality shows it is simply a ear-melting example of what some clever scientist was explaining on telly last night - something about the universe's natural state is chaos. We try to order it but buildings fall down when left alone - they don't build themselves, and gardens go wild when ignored - they don't weed themselves, and children try to kill each other...... Well they do here. I think there is also a theory that children, if left, will educate themsleves. Mine have doctorates in violence. I'm with the scientisty man. Here, King Chaos ever surely reigns.

I made a stab at cool orderliness yesterday at the Hall. I attempted to make some bread. Been given a selection of flours by an emigrating friend. Ridiculous idea to keep in my house. Me and cooking don't go. But after not quite finishing my wheat bag, (a bit big), I had the urge to appear grown-up and enthusiastic. Even coralled some willing young helpers but I misread the instructions and added stuff when stuff didn't need adding, and then tried to rectify this by adding different stuff to get it back to the state it had been in before. Sigh..... One of the girls, I think she's about 10, decided to take control. I was sidelined. Shamed. Washed up - in both senses. But still game, just as we had got all used to the smoke and smell, I opened the oven to see a beautiful golden loaf. Redemption. Pride. Fall. For the other side of this beauty was a blackened rock. Not to despair I cut into the object and smiled ever harder as it out oozed a slow creeping pale viscous vomity goop. I still didn't give up. I ate the bits that were in between meteorite and porridge and said 'Mmmmnnn!' convincingly. But I had lost my audience. I am an embarrassment to my children. Hey - always a silver lining eh?

Later on I thought I'd be all strikey-while-the-iron-is..... what's an iron again? Never mind - I resolved to finish the wheat bag that very day. Used a whole 1kg pack of oats. Still room for more. Topped up with an expensive bag of Fairtrade wholegrain organic brown basmati rice (the emigrating friend's supply again - obviously). Still a bit floppy but sod it - gotta save something to eat. Sew it up while the going's good for gods' sake. But my needles have gone missing. Nowhere. Needles! Loose! Unearthed Minx's sewing box. Her needles also missing. What's with the Needle Goblins? Needles man! Like sharp and pointy. At large! Eughhhhh....... Maybe they've just gone the same way as my marbles. Wheat bag closure denied. Back to the kitchen then. Oaty rice mountain on the floor. My floor. My filthy floor. 'FOR FUCK'S SAKE WHAT LITTLE SHIT DID THIS?!!' 'I'm - on - the - phone!' hissed Mr R Blade. '....Oh she's fine. Yes you just say when's good for you and we'll just fit right in. We'll be no trouble.....' That's our invitation to Arizona buggered then.

Back to My Hole.

.......But wouldn't it be great if when they're ready to fly the kids could cook and sew and hammer and fish and drive and weed and build and ............. be all useful and practical and self-sufficient and ...........

They're good at racing games on the computer.

I'm not. And I can't cook. Can't sew. Can't speak mechanical. Can't really do much that's very useful. That's a grammar school education for you then. Finished off with art college. Possibly the most undovetaily combination. Going from 'Do what we say the way we say it when we say it and don't argue' to 'So.......? Ok! I'm very interested in what you...... Yeah.... I don't like it.... ' My squashed-up rebelliousnes was patted on the head and then flicked away and has been ricocheting off the mountains ever since. Let me know when it hits a target. I'll come out My Hole and celebrate with a chocolate digestive.

Mr R Blade keeps 'offering' to send me on a nice cookery course. Grounds for divorce. I don't threaten him with latin dance training. And meanwhile the small dirty things keep asking me when I'm gonna finish on the computer. Can't they see I'm clinging to the keyboard for dear life? I'd really like to to hide away with a scribbling book and my knotted wheat bag all heated up round my poor broken shoulders. But it's not time to think silly creative thoughts. That sewing machine needs putting in its place. And so, it seems, do I.

We foolishly create the castles and the sea just sweeps them away.

It's the natural order of things.


Gotta laugh!