Help Wanted

This is an appeal on behalf of MadameSG's cushions:    Cruelly neglected,   these soft victims of abuse have only days to live.    Possibly hours.    They are stained,  ripped,  clogged with dust,  regularly found discarded onto the hard filthy floors and,  when they do get selected for human interaction,  farted on.


Just £3 a month could save these squares of comfort.    If we could raise a significant sum of money  MadameSG's tyrannical regime of arsiness could be tackled and,  in time,  erased completely.

Slowly fade to colour and perkier music...

For if enough ordinary kind people donated just £3 a month MadameSG could be persuaded to shift her lardy backside and pick the bloody things up and even change the covers.   

We know flumping them daily is still a long way off but with small steps we can change the world.

Thank you for your generosity.  

Together we can make the living room a comfier and less gravyfied place.       

Woolly Libertines

Ok so can we take the bunting down now?    And throw it in the gutters along with all the St George flags.    Wot a load of bollox.

And where was the punk barge this year eh?    Radio6Music have been doing their bit,  and BBC4.    Wheeling lots of the old spitters and safety-pinned ones out for a second airing.    Some nice jumpers there tho'.    First time around ones or did we whizz off to Kensington market (if indeed that still exists) to look good on telly?    I don't care  -  still better than the old girl surrounded by stiffs in medals pointing at things.   'Oh look ma'am... common people.'    Funny how Mr Queen suddenly had a bladder problem for that awful concert.    I would have too.    Meanwhile Siouxie Sioux plays lots of disco on the radio.    Nice to knit to.

But no new punks then?    Sadly lacking.

Us scruffy lot (or should I say SEHE  -  South East Home Educators for our full kennel name) were spreading ourselves about in Woodbury Park Cemetery Arts and Crafts Fair in Royal Tunbridge Wells last Saturday.    Supposed to be just the one stall but we managed to commandeer several tables in the end with knitted things,  baked things,   sticky things,   stolen things probably....    All pretty much on the cemetery theme.    I had personally provided a smattering of very small colourful woolly bats,  spiders,  skulls,  snakes and goth girls and dug out a few papier mache grotesques from my stash of previous creations.    We also had knitty ghosties,  crocheted flowers,   gravestone cards and skull-stamped paper pads....    Make your own spiders webs were also available.   Very available....    Not especially popular but certainly available.    Trouble was,  we only found out at fairly short notice that this was in fact a Jubilee Arts and Crafts Fair.    Ooops.    In true British style we soldiered on with our deathly theme,  hoping we wouldn't be tried for treason by the end of the afternoon.    In fact we made £75 which is now on it's way to Great Ormond Street Hospital.    So there.

We were the punk barge!!

Knitting is the new punk!!

Oh it really is.    I've been addicted to my two new knitting bibles  -  Knit the City and Yarn Bombing,   both extolling the delights of knitti graffitti.    Move over Banksy,  you're too.... smooth.    We love to feel up our graffitti these days.    Check out the garter stitch on that lamp-post missus.    We've been checking out likely spots around Tunbridge Wells to tag.    (Oh yeah I even know the lingo..)    If I ever do learn to download pictures I'll definitely post up my first woolly subversive message to society.)    Gotta be dun.

Anyway wot else have we been up to?

The annual End of Seasons ice skating competition  -  managed to get a dress made,  fitted and picked up just in time AND Madame Tin Hat blinged it for us from her mighty stock of Swarovskies.    She's a blinging star that woman.    MinxyBabes was still slightly jellified from the measlies but when her music started she really pulled it out of the bag.    She was elegant,  strong,   beautiful and then plop  -  oh yes  -  bum skating again.    Gosh darn it....    Was a bit wobbly from then on but did well to catch up with the music again... almost.    Realising she didn't quite have time to get up from the knee spin for the finishing pose she flung her arms up dramatically still on one knee.    Fabulous.    The music stopped.    She didn't.    The crashing into the barriers into the end I thought was a show-stopper.    Her friends watching from that end of the rink thought the clambering clawing fingers wiggling into view above the barrier a few seconds later was the clincher.    Mass applause.    Lots of stuff thrown onto the ice (including a floppy carnation saying 'Well done - Love Minx'  -  mah baaad).    My baby's a star.    SOOO wish I'd filmed it now.    She wants to do the artisitic section too now  - where you get to interpret music WITH words.    I asked her coach if she had any good ideas for a routine with lots of sitting down.    Minx didn't think it was very funny.    But hey   -  she still staggered onto the podium for a third place trophy  -  not bad eh?

And then I get a text from Roving Blade  - this year on duty for my favourite event of the year  -  the Fathers Day Football Club Family Fun Prizegiving Day in Forest Fucking Row.    Oh how I love this day.    Oh how I love that phrase Family Fun Day.    Oh how I laughed when I realised that this was the SAME day as End of Seasons.    I'm STILL laughing.    For once he couldn't pull a swift one and wriggle out of it....   mwa ha ha ha haaaa -  oh sorry back to the text:  Chicken Boy has won Player of the Year!!    OH yeah.    And Little Rock Godling was beaming from sticky-out ear to sticky-out ear (new haircut) with his Well Done For Showing Up trophy that they all got.    It's a trophy.    It's HIS trophy.    He has a new haircut and a trophy.    And thanks to the new haircut we can see how happy his little face was.

Wot else....?

Minx and me both survived our birthdays.    For her special day Minx got measles.    I got blue nail varnish,  a Mama Cass CD,  a knitting book and chocolate biscuits.    I won.

And I've taken to wearing scarves on my head to cover up my hair-don't.    I'm sick of short hair cuts but longer hair looks crap on me so the obvious answer is to swathe my stoopid head in skull-patterned scarves.    Mutton dressed as EMO.    I can live with that.

We saw/sang alonga Oliver up big at the Electric Palace Cinema in 'Astings the other day,  begging Nancy not to stay wiv that Bill Sykes we woz,   and then we bombed dahn the beach wiv chips and cricket bats.    Wind,  rain  -  museum....    Kids thought the rain was preferrable.    The musEEEEum??!!    Ok back to the beach.    Despite singing I'd Do Anything all afternoon,    I didn't mean it.    Headin' back down that way at the end of the week.    Better not be museum weather again....    I'd get a cricket bat wrapped round me 'ead instead of a day-glo scarf.

Sadly some recent badness  -   stresses and traumas with troublesome members of our Home Ed group resulting in an expulsion!!    Not nice at all that.    But lines had been crossed.    Nasty business.    Funny how I've managed to squeeze weeks/months (years?) of time-sucking into a couple of sentences there.    Best left.

More eye-liner.    More skulls.    More knitting.


Oh and apparently we're getting chickens.


Definitely more knitting.....    And omelettes obviously.    (Or goblets as they're known in this house.    We also eat alot of sodages I'll have you know...)    There'll be plenty of unusual language if we gets a cockerel.    Maybe not so unusual.    My language is deteriorating further....    But it's the only vice I have left.    Let's have more swearing I say.        

Plenty swearing required today.    Oh bloody buggery bollocky bum.    I did do go and see my mum.     I didn't scream or hit noone.    But it ain't fair and it ain't fun.    Poetry innit?    Fink I've earned myself some more knitty time.    Strange how tying my fingers up in knots soothes my tangled mind....    Random phrase of the day:  'At least you're not like that awful Victoria Beckham.    I can't STAND that woman.'    Uh - huh....    Soon followed by finger-licking page-turning through the Radio Times...  'Wimbledon... or Jamie's 30-Minute Wonders?'    'Oh tennis or cooking.    Please shoot me now.'    My cheerful response was however drowned out by the goggle-box's leap into life.    The kids started mouthing 'It's a bit loud!' at me.    'Would you like to watch a ghost story?'    'Oooh well we've really got to be going now...'    'Oh no have you?    Ohhh Last of the Summer Wine...'    'Yes shoot me now.    Now I said.    In the head....'    'Oh Jeremy Kyle.. I can't STAND him!'    'Bye!!'

Get me my needle therapy!!!!    Needle and the damage done or some such....    It's the only way out!!!    Self yarning?    Give me my fix!!!!    Before I make any more heinous puns.....   Help me........

Think I can predict a bladder infection for my next 'free' day.    Some might call it taking the piss.    If it's good enough for bloody royalty....    Otherwise I've got to grow up and we've discussed this.    Not on the agenda.    I'm not wearing shiny red boots with purple laces and a childish sneer for nothing you know.    Crank up the 70's disco,   slap on the green eye-glitter,    I have a mission.  


O come all ye clicker-clackers  -   rally round and poke yer pointy needle ends into the up-turned noses that surround us.    The streets of Britian need you.    Push me boat out mister I've got something to say!    With my winding threads  -  be it cashmere,  acrylic or plastic bags.....  and my magic wands  -   of bamboo,   slinky metal  or  old pencils.    The bunting is dead.    Long live the railing sock.....




.....Here come the hotstitcher  (Muuurdera!!)    Hexcuse me mister hofficer   (Muuurdera!!)     

WHAT'S THAT????

She's back.

The telly's ear-splitting but she still cannot STAND this woman,  that presenter,  these ridiculous comedians....    Nobody speaks properly.    They say aks instead of ask and momentarily instead of in a moment and yous instead of you.    Civilisation is collapsing.    No standards at all.    Even at full blast.

She's definitely back.

Apparently there's absolutely nothing on.    Very loudly.    Who'd've thought absolutely nothing could be so deafening?

But it's all been at a distance lately  (although I can still hear THE NEWS from her house which is a whole HOUR away from my house.)    We've been in quarantine for a month.    The four children of the apocalypse decided to take turns to have measles.    No we didn't have the MMR thank you so much for aksing.    But we will now.    And anything else going.    Wheel that dessert trolleyful of drugs our way and we'll have the lot.

Meanwhile her next-door-neighbour died  -  but she still doesn't know if it was him or her.    'I didn't see The Living One.'    They who must not be named.    Just spotted the hearse outside.    And turned the telly up a bit more.    I SAID she TURNED the TELLY UP a bit MORE.    No there's NOTHING smelly on the FLOOR.  
'Could you see who it is?'
'Where?'
'You said there was someone at the door.'
'No I said.....   never mind....'
'Oh that silly door.    Don't know what's the matter with it.'

Yes she's back in town.    The Enablement Team never started at 4 visits as first thought necessary.    'What's the point of the putting to bed visit when they just get out again after we've gone?' the nice lady smiled.    Good point.    Then they dropped the getting up visit as she was always dressed and waiting anyway.    Show off.    Then another one went.    And as from Friday,  they ain't a-comin' no more.    But she's got her little bell round her neck.    Well,  that button thing if she starts mis-timing her beam dismounts.    Big bruv sends Tesco's round once a week.    The District Nurse comes and sucks blood in the comfort of the BOOMING pale green living room.    Funny phrase that  -  Living Room.    Probably a better place to enjoy your tea than the Gasping For Breath Room.    The Physio still tips up and does her thang.    Although she's gawn an' dropped her hand-squidgey exercisey putty down the side of the chair.    That silly chair.    And there's always the phone....  

Apparently the volume button on that silly phone doesn't work properly.    Up!   UP!!    Never look down in our world.    Down is out.    Up is all.

'I'll go in the other room....'    pant shuffle bang clonk....   '...that's better.    I can hear you now...'
'Wouldn't it have been easier to have turned the volume on the telly down?'
Pant click whirr....  '....well... oh that silly thing.    Absolutely nothing on...'

Odd how my eyes automatically squint shut when I ring her.    Strange scientific fact:  if I screw up my face I am able to communicate more clearly.    Stabbing something repeatedly also helps.    In the Losing The Will To Survive Room.

Well we might be getting back to normal next week.    (Yes I did have the audacity to say that.)    Our threat to public health is over.    And I shall be returning to the house of misbehaving volume controls very soon.    I might stab them.    Alot.    It might not help them very much but I'd feel fucking great.      

          

    

  

  

Wha???

She's being delivered back to her house tomorrow.    That's tomorrow.

I won't sign for her.

Why???

She juggled a couple of magazines,  shook one and began the journey.    She licked her finger and flapped the page,  licked her finger and flapped the page,  licked her finger and flapped the page.... several times.    Many several times.    Then she tried another magazine.    Licked her finger and flapped the page,  licked her finger and flapped the page,   licked her finger and ah!!    There it is.    The Holy Grail.    'Dartmoor.   Sleeps 6.    Available May-August.  Ring blah blah...'

'Uh-huh?????'
'You've been to Devon haven't you?'
'Yes mum.    Lived there for 3 years.'
'I know Sir Gawain likes holidays in big houses with everyone.    I'll give it to him.'
'Yes.    (WTF??)   More of a Cornwall girl myself.'    (But like Thelma,  or was it Louise?,   I ain't goin' through Devon...)
'Ah Cornwall.    I was thinking that would be nice.    I've gone off the idea of Norfolk you'll be pleased to know.    I'd like to move to Cornwall now.'

Blink blink.... 


There would be a punchline but I'd be arrested.

Mammoths Can't Fly

I was still kinda hanging on to my new-found peace after the monster tree burning ceremony.    We skipped around the beast that took over a year to make,  lost it's shelter when we switched halls,  mouldered under black sacks for a further 8 months and now was to make it's final Elephant-Man stand in the middle of the woods to have wishes and demons tied to it and be danced around by idiots in the sputtering rain and set fire to....    I hung lots of demons on it's sad saggy branches  -  and I must say I felt buckets better afterwards.    Madame All-Back-To-Mine suggested a minute's silence,  which was followed by Madame It'll-Be-Fine's initiation of the Okey-Cokey.    Then we sent all the loony-minors off to find the hidden eggs (only 2 weeks late) before we revelled in the sugar-fest,  stamping out the now demonic-looking ashes....   A perfect Friday.

Then we bathed in a fabulous Monday.    It did however mean missing the local paper coming up to the gang in the park for an article on how Home Ed numbers have gone up -  but hey....  I was a passenger in a car that didn't smell of football boots and bananas listening to a CD I don't despise without the backbeat of medieval battle-cries.    Pure joy.    Roving Blade and I skipped off to the London Palladium and had child-free grown-up fun.    We sat in lush darkness and lapped up Ryan Adams singing his slow heart-breaking mournful songs  -  one after another after another of desolate longing.    Interjecting each with 'Here's another basket of fucking sunshine.'    Or  'I thought I'd up the tempo by singing about someone wanting to go out to try and touch someone's boobs.... of course the rest of the set is about the torment of that rejection....'    We love 'im.    I especially loved his 10 minute whispered laudation of his cat as he tinkled the piano,  his back towards us....   'I love you Mr Cat..'    The boys a twisted genius.    I wore my beaten up old PVC trousers that now stick together but I felt funky and free-from.      

But the price of fun is high.    2 flat tyres when I get back ain't cheap.    Relentless reminding of the real world with kids in it is very costly.... to my soul.   The  rest of the week was torture as the harmony of demon-busting and soulful earfuls began to ebb.    Roving Blade can't find our Will.    Corn Snake Boy wants a .... corn snake.    Minx says she'll leave home if he gets one.    Little Rock Godling is Ninjago (ninja-lego) obsessed - zealously creating lots of snake warriors to introduce me to,   and Thuglet is still fitting his name perfectly.    My head hurts.....    but another week dawns.....   If I can just get past that big woolly mammoth on the dirty linen basket we'll surely crack it.....      

SAT  -  All invited to a gig at The Forum in Tunbridge Wells.    Only half an hour away.    That's good - for us.    Special concessions from Madame RocknRoll with the 'big' kids welcome.    I didn't want to bring Corn Snake Boy (despite pleas).    Got all mumsy and decided he was too young for skidding in and out of men's toilets in a music venue and couldn't afford his Coke habit anyway.    Pretended it was 12-and-up.    Was also post-Friday eve meltdown after my joy had turned to pain.    Anyway  -  what would be the cost of 2 gigs in one week?    I didn't think the parent gods would allow it.    Roving Blade did all but take my car keys away and forbad me to even sniff the outside air.    So the plan was hatched for RB to simply drive Minx there for about 8.00,  meet Monsieur Bongoes and Lulu-Cheeese at the entrance,  and then pick up the two wee raverlettes after and drag 'em back here by the eye-lashes.

'I'll forward M Bongoes' number to your phone so you can interact and stuff.'
'Make sure you give me M Bongoes' number.'
'Yes dear....'   sigh..  'Oh I'll just check with Madame It'll-Be-Fine I've got his up-to-date one'......
'AOK.   I've sent the number to you.   At the entrance about 8.15.    Bob's yer unc.'
'Have you got M Bongoes' number?    Miiiiiiinx!!!!    It's gone 8!!!   I'm not coming up there again!!!   What ARE you doing!!!    Bark bark..........'
'It's alright' I interject  'M Bongoes is still doing his hair I hear.'
'It's NOT alright!!   We'll be late!!   I'm not taking her!!   Miiiinnxxx!!!!!    Bark bark......'
'Welcome to my woooorrllllddd.....'
'God calm down dad...   I'm ready right.'
'Where's The Forum?'
'For fuck's sake.....    Entrance!!    About 8.30!!    They'll wait!!   You've got his number.    GO!!!!!'

'Hey hun - everything alright then?'
'Yeah.    Kettle on?'

'Ooh I'll just slurp this and get the boys up.    So were M Bongoes and Lulu-Cheeese waiting long?'
'Oh I couldn't park so I let her out on the main road.'
'What?'
'Oh we saw Mme I've-Lost-My-Phone and Pull-Yer-Trousers-Up so she caught up with them and went in.'
'So you texted M Bongoes?'
'No.    I haven't got his number.'

The mammoth is at the bottom of our stairs.    Looks like its parachute failed.

SUN  -  The re-run of the ice show cometh.    Mme Cosmic drops Smoulderita at ours and we talk trumpets,  Vikings and dodgy hips.    (Smoulderita had a roaring time last night.    Lulu-Cheeese and Minx enrol her into the 12-and-up lie.    Smoulderita heard that everyone had a roaring time....)  
'Thanks for dropping her round.'
'Oh it kept the dog happy.    She thinks she's having a walk.'
'Well I hope she enjoyed her drive.'
'Well I must get back to this film I started and find out if the boy gets out the wardrobe.    Good luck with the show.'
'Mum I'm definitely doing the axel in the show.'
'OK  let's go.'

'I didn't do the axel.'
'Never mind babe.    Meet you in the bar in a minute.'
'There's no sandwichy things.    Can I have a drink?'
'We COULD just get home!    Remember home?'
'Can I have a Coke.    I want to play pool.'
(This is why I didn't take YOU along last night damned boy thing....)     No come on let's just go'
Bbrrrrringgg.....  'Ooh Mme SG are you still at the rink?    I've left my make-up box in the changing room tunnel  -  can you see it?'
'Thanks Mme Tin-Hat I am now surrounded by huge burly dead-eyed hockey players and I ain't goin' in there.'
'Is it by the mats?'
'No'
'Is it in reception already?'
(25 mins later) 'No.    I've left them your number - I'm off.'
(Rrrrroom Rrrooom zooooom...... rattle... splutter... )
Beep beep  'Mum it's Mme Tin-Hat.    She's found the box.'
'Joy.'

'Aah Mme Cosmic sorry we're late -  but here's that Ronnie Laine DVD I promised you 6 months ago.    It's a spare.    I gave this to my brother for his birthday 3 years in a row.....  He sent it back.    I found it the other day when we were looking for our Will.
'Did you find it?'
'No.    I found Ronnie Laine.'
'We'd better update ours....  Smoulderita isn't even on it.'
(Forgot to ask about the boy in the wardrobe...)

Why won't that mammoth ever stay on the stair I throw it at?    Wump wump wump back down it comes every bloody time.

MON -  All up for football  -  including Lulu-Cheeese in gathered-together shin-pads,  footie boots,  trackies....    Just waiting for Minx.........
'Have you got your Arts Award stuff,  your shoes and your other clobber?'
'Yes'
'Fab... Miiiiinnxx!!!!!'

'Ooh Mme all-Back-To-Mine  -  are you getting excited about that BBC interview?'
'They've cancelled.    Apparently Home Ed numbers have gone down!'
(Mass guffaws!!!)

'Can we have chips?'
'Wait til I've got the blinkin' tables out damned child...'
'Can I have chips too?'
'I don't want chips.    Can I have a jacket potatoe and beans?  No.. chips and beans.'
'Mme SG I've forgotten my shoes!'
'You don't say Lulu-Cheeese?    Hey Eyebrow-To-Your-Will  -  how was footie this morning with those shin-pads we gave you last week?'
'Oh I left them behind at the Trin.'
'Of course you did.'
'Mme SG  -  Thuglet's just broken the clock'
'Such joy.'

Fucking mammoth.    Just dropped all the bloody washing now.  

TUES  -  'I can pick up Little Rock Godling for you if you like after golf.'
'Ooh thanks RB  -  that would be brilliant.    And I'll get Corn Snake Boy on the way back from the hosp.'
'Hey Mme Sweet-Demand-Avoidance -  RB will pick up the mad professor between 3-4.    Thanks for having him again.'
'OK Thuglet we just need to get a couple of bits of Nanny's jewellery from under the bed and we'll set off.'
'Mum.... is it 'upposed to be all over the floor?'
'Fuck fuck fuck I'd put it away upside down...  help me pair up all these earrings!!   Where the fuck is her bloody wedding bloody ring??!!'

'We'll just stop here and get some Jelly Babies and The Courier so I can show her the picture of Minx with the gang.    WHERE are the local papers?    I DON'T bloody believe it!!   I only CAME in this SHOP for the BLOODY oh -  a whole stand of them...    sshhh....    Ooh I'll get 2.   One for me and one for Minx.    Yes I've got a clubcard somewhere....  fuck I forgot the Jelly Babies.    'Scuse me I just need to.... sorry.... no bloody Jelly Babies.... Jelly Berries?    Sorry thanks thanks sorry thank you sorry..... '

'Here we are Ma.... sorry we're late..  um...  can't find the Jelly Bellies....    Our gang's in the paper  -  look there's Minx..'
'Ooh I'll keep this as a memento'
'Oh.   What about these books I picked up from your house?'
'Yes you might like them.'
'I meant for you to...      Can only find 3 of your squeezey sponge balls.'
'Yes the other one's outside.'
'Of course it is.    Got to pick up Corn Snake Boy now.    Sorry about the Beri-Beris...'

'Sorry we're late... lost your house.    Oh they've rescued a slow worm?    How darling....   Tail's hanging off?    Well we really must be going....    What's that in my bloody pocket?    Oh -  mum's jewellery.'
'Hang on Mum I've forgotten my magazine...'
'Where did you leave it?'
'2 weeks ago.'
'Get in the car....'

'Hey Roving Blade!'
'Daddeeeee!!'   (thump)
'Hello - oomph .... How was yer mother?    Where's Little Rock Godling?'
'What?    It's 7 O'clock.'
'Hi Mme Sweet-Demand-Avoidance......    Monsieur Fuckwit is on his way.'
'Oh Minx Daddy's dunnit again.    It's supposed to be Nanny that lost part of her brain....    And I've just found a dirty car scraper in the kitchen utensil drawer.'
'Did you remember to get the shower hose this time mum?'
'Err....'
'If it helps I did just squirt nail varnish remover into my eye.'
'Thanks hun but that didn't really help no..'
'Mu-um... where's my glass of WATER!!??'
'Oh Corn Snake Boy I just GAVE it to -   oh ... you mean this one?'

'It says "Pampered Chef" on it.'
'It's my bloody best ice-scraper I lent to you and it's covered in filth.'
'Says pampered chef......'

'You know what they've gone and DONE?!!!!!'
'Oh gods what?'
'They've only stabbed a fucking dart into a 4-grand album I've got to give to a client in 10 days!!!    It's a bloody good job they're asleep or I'd stab a fucking dart in their fucking heads!!!!    Yeaaaaaghhhhh!!!'    (Hurls plastic bottle into the sink.)    'EEuuuuuuhhhh... ughhh.....YEAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!'    (Smashes coffee cup across the floor..... )
The bathroom is the furthestmost point in the house.    The toothpaste tube shares my pain.    Even the mammoth has run for cover.

WED  -  'I can't do it.'
'You've been doing the axel for about 2 years.    Why have you gone all daft now?'
(Mme VodkaOnIce,  Minx's coach,  offers her support)  'Listen 'ere.    I don't mind you losing End of Seasons if you try and fall but not if you lose 'cos you wimped out.'
'Right'  (adding my full sympathy)
'Hhiieghh.....'  (the sound of a large child deflating...  )

'I'll drop you in Tunbridge Wells for Study Group and we'll go home for a lovely change.'  
'Can't we stay and play with everyone at Trin?'
'No damned boy thing NOONE will be there unless they're inside DOING the Arts Award stuff so NO!    We're going HOME!'
(After I just pop into about 7 shops,  get stuffed behind a transporter,  trick it by signalling late so it doesn't go the same way as me after 20 mins of torture,  get stuck in roadworks,  double back and fail in the shower hose shop.... get home and die.    At least Minx is going back to Lulu-Cheeese's house after Arts Award tonight.    A Wednesday night off!!)
Beep Beep  'Hey mum I've forgotten a very important page for my Arts Award and it HAS to be all in tonight.'
'I'll get Mme It'll-Be-Fine to beat you up later.'
'Oops I appeared to have sent you the text I meant to send Minx.... but thanks for agreeing to beat her up anyway!'
'Hey slag I'm at the shops what do we need?'
'This has happened and now that happened and I'm knackered and everyone's stoopid and I'm not moving until it stops bloody raining.'
'Vanish spray' oh -  'You're home!'
'I'll drop her page to her for you.'
'I'm coming too dad!'
'Your friends will NOT be at the damned Trin tonight!'
'Bye mum!'
Beep beep 'Hello it's Lulu-Cheese on mum's phone.  Can you bring my shoes please?'
'Hold it Roving Blade!'
'Have searched but can't find them anywhere hun'
'Hello Lulu-C is on the bus now I'll ring her.'
'Hello Lulu-C we can't see them.    Where were they?'
'I can't see 'em I'm going now.'
'I think they were by the door.'
'Are you sure they're not squashed at the bottom of your bag?'
'Hello she says they were by the door.'
'Maybe they're squashed at the bottom of her bag?'
'Minx dad's left but couldn't find Lulu-C's shoes can you tell her when she gets there.'
'I've got them.'
'You remembered someone else's shoes but you didn't remember your missing page?'
'It's OK Minx had them all along'
'Hello Minx has them'
'You dopey daughter has them already.    Slap her for me would you?'
'Corn Snake Boy!!!  Dinner!!!'
'He went with Dad Mum  -  don't you remember?'
'Are you dead in a ditch?   You've been 2 hours?'  oh  -  'You're home!'
'He was playing with his mates.'
'Hissssssssssssssss'....
'Hoooohhhh!!!    That lemon squash is.....!    We got any more fizzy water?   Try some of that?'
'I'm not that stoopid!'    (Spplatttttphhhhzzzzzzplashhhh!!!!!!!  .... fizzy water.... all over me.... )
 I'm right ready for that mammoth now.    Where's he bloody gone?

THURS  -  'Mu-um...  what's that stuff all down the walls that looks like coffee?'
'Coffee probably.    You should see the cup-shaped slice out of the lino.    It's a bit bigger than a dart hole.....  isn't it Mr RB?'
'Still not funny.'
'Let's go kids.'
'Where?'
'A nice midge-rich swamp by a pond in the rain of course.'

'Sorry we're late.    Couldn't be arsed to move quicker.    Now where's dem midges?    I fancy getting munched until I look like a pizza.'
Brrriiiinggg  'Hey bruv... how d'it go?   U-huh.... u-huh... oh fuck.'
'What's up?'
'Hmmmn..... Mum had her Home Assessment thing today and apparently bombed straight up the stairs with no thought to how to come down,  she didn't put the kettle on even tho' she thought she had and clasped her hands around it to check,   left a head-height cupboard door open,  took no notice of the phone or the post and forgot the bread in the toaster.'
'Oh I do that.'
'Me too.'
'Yeah she sounds fine.'
'That's the problem.    They'll probably release her back into the wild next week.'
'Ah...'
'We'll come back in June when these tadpoles will be jewel-like little frogs.    I wonder how many will survive to adulthood this year....  the sound of a grass snake munching on a frog is really rather disturbing.    Their screams are surprisingly human-like when they're being eaten alive backwards....'

I think I can hear it now.... or is that just my inner voice...?    There's a large furry snake on the stairs now.    Joy joy joy.....  

FRI  -  'Hey Ma.    Enjoy yesterday?'
'I was very pleased with how it went.    They're letting me out next Tuesday or Wednesday.    I've got to have PEOPLE coming round apparently.    I'm not having some char-woman in my house.    I can't wait to get back in the car.'
'Like fuck you will!    Did I say that out loud?    Here's your Jiggy Boobbies.... found 'em under me clutch.    No thanks I think they taste like frogs.'


Yes we've all taken turns on the Fuckwit Step this week.    Except the mammoth.    He just falls off.    I might ask him if he knows where our Will is.    Got a feeling I may need to know sooner rather than later.    Meanwhile Roving Blade and I are plotting another night off.    Can we possibly afford another basket of fucking sunshine?





Hey newsflash  -  today we hear that The Forum has won the NME award for Best Small Venue in the country so Yay Madame RocknRoll!!    Proper joy!  

God Gives You Your Family....

Much like my godmother getting up from her perch on a footstool,   exclaiming 'give me a minute... I've got 'knees'...'    it seems that everybody these days has got 'mothers'.    It's the nation's new hot pass-time,  having a bit of a 'mother'.

These tales of other's mother's bothers are a salve for my sore mind.    Just like noone likes a perfect baby,  everyone loves a difficult mother.    The deepest friendships are set upon the rock of them having a worse family than you.    But better than that,   the hint that your friend is crueller about their mother than you is fanfuckingtastic.

Bedtime natterings with Roving Blade expose my true nature.    He was wondering if he should visit mum in the hosp.
'Are you feeling OK?'          
'Are you saying I lack compassion?'
'No I think I do.'
.............................
'I think you do too.'

Hmmmmnn.....     Where indeed is my compassion eh?    I've got no major childhood angst.    Not 'til about 10.    Then comes the frowning.    Nutshell  -  Big brothers were BIG.    And out.    Allowed.    I wasn't.    Moved house  -  old house has all the good stuff.    Chose the same school as big bruvs.    Stoopid.    They left before I started  -  thought we'd have a common bond......    Nah  -  just an inherited reputation.      Time ticks slowly for those teen years.....   Brothers = have lives.    Parents = embarrassment.    Friends  =  MINE.    Family and school  =  prison so decide to get out of both.    Only applied to colleges in another part of the country.    'Bye!    NOW I'm out!!!

A very non-co-dependent family member me.    I did move back for a year after college - a base to get a job,  get a flat and get a life.    Are you seriously trying to tell me when to go to bed?    'Bye!    Again.

More nutshells....  my Nan dies  -  big shock,   big upset,   leaving my Grandad lost.    My Dad says  'Shoot me before I get like that'.    Dad dies  -  big shock,   big upset.    Mum moves to this house.    Grandad leaves my uncle's place and goes into a old folks' home.    None of his 5 children can deal with him.    Seems very sad but I get it.    Wonder if the Sidcup saints are muttering about such a terrible family.    Grandad dies.    Seems a relief.    Is that bad?      


Back to Roving Blade's startling musings......   'Nah you're doing a good job of hanging onto small boys instead for me'.    (Both a compliment and a sneaky plea for it to continue.)    Truth be told  -  it's all a bit embarrassing and I'd rather he kept out of it.

I'd been banging about in her house earlier  -  doing the plants,   swearing at the prehistoric videos to keep the savages from trashing the joint,   tutting at the amount of STUFF....   I peered out the kitchen window to stare at the curvy flower-beddy decorative-rocksy child-unfriendly garden.    Why have I got no cosy feelings for this place?    I'd even moved there with her for a bit when I tipped all my eggs out of the basket at about 28 years old and she put up with my STUFF and moods for about ... gods... way longer than the original plan of a month.    Was probably about 18 months.    Where is gods' names is my gratitude?    Think I'm getting colder....    I've never actually LIKED this house.    It was supposed to be a  handy stop-gap.    It became another prison.    This chap we knew who had lost his job and was going thro' a divorce had decorated it for her.    Pale blues and institution greens.    Insipid floral border papers.    His depression filtered into mine.    Corner-fitting furniture.    Shelves of Christal D'Arques....    Tablecloths.    Coffin nails.    To me.    We weren't speaking to each other for much of this time.    Brothers say things like  'Oh come on you know what she's like...'    This is when the penny dropped that we were from separate planets and had had entirely different upbringings.    Mothers and daughters eh?    I escape - again.    Pop out a Minx.    Ever so slightly panic about history repeating itself.    Mum and me are on speaking terms again.    She seems all sentimental about the daughter thing.    Yuck.    

The window....     I tried to think up something to kick-start some sentiment of my own.    I came up with a day in this garden  -  nearly nine months pregnant with Cheetah Boy,   too hot to be sociable,   I'd driven over to mum's to plop two year old Minx in her paddling pool under the gazebo and sit there with my feet in it with mum keeping a steady flow of drinks and cake.    OK.    That's good.    The dining room table.... many a big ol' family nosh-up?    Rude noises with the first spoon in the jelly?    Interminable snakes and ladders tournaments with my boys?    Getting warmer?    Not really.    The piano?    Covered in family photos....    Lots of smiles there....    My hair looks crap in every one.    Xmas?    No.    Way.    Too much fuss and fluster.    Come on....   is that it?    Gods I hate pale green.

Where oh where is my humanity?    Well.... at least Grandad's example is in my favour....    If they put him in a home then surely that's the template now?    I've done with family co-habiting experiments.    It don't work.    We all get along alot better at a distance.    Think I'd better choose my bungalow now before Minx shoves me off a cliff.    Let's be practical here....  what's her template?


I am toying with going to see a hypnotherapist.    Wondering if he could make me nicer.    In the meantime,    tell me about your mad mother.....    Oh wow....  how COULD you?    You're my new best friend....

And we'll have fun fun fun....

...til daddy takes the sharp things away....

I am not only a terrible parent (about which I'm not remotely apologetic),  but I am also an abysmal daughter.   I can do the practical stuff like taking in a Puzzler Compendium and bringing home the washing (despite two pairs of mum's pants constituting a full load),  but I'm rubbish at the 'you look well can I flump your pillows let's brush your hair' bit.    I'm the opposite of nursieness.    I'm always sneakily looking at the clock.    And I think my sigh as I walk out the hospital will probably cause a tsunami in parts of Asia.    How does one learn to be a grown-up?    And how will my own kids ever work it out with a mother like wot they've been stuck wiv?

Siiiggghhhhhhh.......

At least her sense of humour returned.   For a week or so it wasn't evident and this made conversation very very hard work.    Two truculent children staring at each other.    'Your family doesn't communicate without your funnies does it?'  observes Roving Blade.     We most certainly do not.    This induces panic.    We never greet each other with 'How are you (kiss kiss) you look nice (holdy hand) how are those lovely .........'  fill in the blank (ie kids, cats, inlaws,  ailments..)    Jesus we'd run like buggery.    We are more likely to creep up behind someone's back,  poke 'em hard and say 'What kind of Care in the Community programme allowed you out dressed like that?'    And then dodge the reply with a well-chosen hand gesture.

In my family we are all separate towers.    With those narrow slits for sending out our arrows.    And plenty of solid stonework for dodging others'.    This is how we survive.    It's served me perfectly well and I don't intend to dismantle a single rock.

Brother tower said to me the other day  -  in a unusual cease-fire moment  -  'Let's just get it said right now that neither of us can have her living with us right?'    'Definitely.'

It's not that either of us is evil  -  or that mum is Satan's bitch  -  it just wouldn't work.    The rest of the world can tut away as loudly as it likes.    It ain't happening.    A nice little bungalow with buttons was what we were both thinking.    Near her friends....    (As my very dear chum C proclaimed 'Isn't that what Catholics are for?')

The other day I arrived at the hospital and mum announced  'I've decided I want to move.'   'Good.'    'To Brighton.'    'What?'    'Or Hove.'    'Uh... huh?'    'Or Norfolk or Suffolk.'    'Why?'    'We've had such lovely holidays there.'    'No we haven't.'    'I'm sick of Kent.'    'We're gonna move into Kent soon to be nearer everything we do,  and you.'    'I want to be by the sea.'    'Kent has sea.'    'Oh no no.    Can you get me a Sussex Life and a Norfolk Life and a Suffolk Life?'    'I can get you a Kent Life'.    'I like Norfolk.'

Norfolk.    She's having a right laugh.    My sense of humour has left the building.

     

A Tap on the Shoulder

It's been a bit of a week.    Swings and roundabouts some might say..    Others might say 'oh shit'.

Sunday.    Had a perfectly civilized Mothers Day  (usually this alone is worthy of many 'oh shit's),   and we even spent this one AT my mum's ('oh shit' territory for certain)  -  but this time,  noone trod on a cat,   noone hurled the contents of Connect 4 down the back of the settee,   noone said 'fuck',   noone pulled their pants down and farted in anyone's lunch....    (Yes,  for once,  my mother behaved herself.)    And she even still looked perky when we finally clambered into the embarrassment we park on her drive and screeched away.    Normally she's looking seriously close to fetching the big gun by waving goodbye time.    Maybe we're all growing up a bit.    (Like cheugh...)

Monday.    Our Home Ed tribe's football session wasn't in the rain or gale force winds and it didn't take three hours to get their boots and tracky bots off afterwards.    The hall meeting didn't implode.    We started making our flag instead of dropping chips on it.    We decorated eggs and didn't sit on them.     Nobody got locked in the toilet.    The younger Trinity Youth Theatre group's improv presentation was actually entertaining.   The older Trin Yoof's show was... less sweary and death-obsessed than expected.    None of the boys split their lip at Badgers.    High five.

Tuesday.    I got a lie-in.    I got breakfast whilst stationary.   I got a shower (eventually).    I got Lulu Cheese over to her dad's workplace four seconds before he reached his car.   I got shopping.    I got the boys into bed before 10.30pm.    I got a phone call from my brother.    I've now got to carry on reading about beheading dragons without letting on that Nanny's just had a stroke and is in the hyper-acute unit.    I've got to work out what to do.    (I've got a nagging feeling that I'm supposed to know what to do.)  

Wednesday.    Took Minx to her skating lesson (sans boys - always a bonus) and once again Robin Cousins was there - like last week.    (He's touring in Grease and this is his local rink for two weeks).    He's so amazing to watch.    And we watched.   And last week I watched wide-eyed as he floated over to Minx to give her some tips on her axel landing.    She nodded alot but took nothing in.    Just gazed at him all starstruck and then carried on doing it wrong.    Afterwards we squeaked alot.    This week not only does her coach rip my phone out of my dithering hands and ask him for a photo with Minx but follows this up with a request for a special lesson for four of her pupils  -  and he says yes.    We squeak alot more.    Then I burst the bubble with the other news and we go and see my mum in the hospital.    It isn't great.    Yin and yang is it....?    First we went to the house to meet my bro.    Picked up scattered objects and pointed at cats.    Minx was terribly grown-up.    She spotted the washing was still out and set about unpegging and folding,   watered the plants,   told me what dressing gown Nanny preferred and where the socks were and made us sandwiches.    I gawped at how big mum's bras were and nicked her cheese.    Role reversal time.    Weird.    Feel like someone invisible is trying to tap me on the shoulder.

Thursday.    Bowling  -  no fights over Doris (a favoured ball),   no warnings about eating our own food,    no chasing small children up the sirened alleys  -  and I manage to sell all the boys while I take Minx back up to the rink.    And tonight we have no bruised knees,  no walloped buttocks,   no spilt J2O all over my knitting.   I don't know I'm born.    My driving's gone a bit loopy tho'.    Lots of After Eights required.    Couldn't fit in a hospital visit without dramas this end.   Big bruv covered.    Course he did.    He's my big bruv.      

Friday.    Back at the rink,  half wondering if Robin Cousins will change his mind.    But here he is.    Expecting about 15 mins of his time - tops.    He gives them 45 mins of dedicated coaching and not a flicker of despair at the boggling camera-wielding parents squashed in the corner.    And won't accept any payment.    Signs autographs and does chat and bears the gushing thank yous  -  such a dude.    And even stays calm when the swathes of arriving Home Ed skate munsters (not my tribe) swamp him with coos and cameras.    That's some mettle.    (They're a funny bunch of buggers that North Kent lot....)    Back in the driving seat trying not to crash.    Despatch all kids into the hands of my tribe and head back to the hospital.    Still haven't lost control AND I get to wap in my choice of CD.    Take what you can get out any situation I say.    I'll take Lucinda Williams any day.    Mum's out of the strings-attached ward and up the corridor a bit.    Less tea-spillage.    Less trying to escape antics.    I'm still trying to flinch away from that tap on the shoulder tho'.    Still not listening to that voice saying 'It's time to be a grown-up now'.    Back to the tribe and the sun-burnt kids.    Oops.

Saturday.    Medieval archery shenanigans with the tribe.    Loved this.    Twanging bows and flying arrows,   quarterstaffs and shiny swords,   heavy chainmail and wobbly helmets,   muddy vegetables and funny clobber  -  and best of all fabulous sunshine and babbling chums.    Larks a-plenty.    Then child-abandonment again and back up the hosp.    She's been wheeled further up the corridor.    Assuming this is a good sign.    'Hello dear what's your name?'    Hmmmn...     Well she had just woken up.    I should say I had just woken her up.    (Well...  I've gone all that way..!!)    Is it my driving,  or is the car possessed,  or should I turn the stereo down a bit.... ?    It all feels like I'm gonna sail off the road and not have to worry about the growing-up bit after all.    (Although I do think points should be awarded for me not putting 'shiny' and 'helmets' together a minute ago.)

Sunday.    I make Roving Blade drive my car to the golf range to see if it's paranoia or garage time.    Turns out it's just paranoia.    I keep the volume down a bit there and back tonight.    Mum's still in the same pod as yesterday so for once don't have to go in search.   I still manage to get lost tho'.    (Who's the one with the brian blip?)   She thinks she's going home in a couple of days.    I don't THINK so.    That voice over my shoulder is getting a little more insistent.

What happens when they do let her out?

Tap tap.

                     

       

Good Parenting

Don't be fooled by the title.    I'm definitely not referring to myself.    So breathe a sigh of relief.    No pious preaching from this pulpit.    (Just acutely agonising alliteration.)

I don't know if this is due to approaching menopause but I keep seeing loathsome new mothers everywhere.    They look frumpy and have crap hair and no make-up.    (You didn't click on this blog by accident did you?  -   thinking you'd find open-armed PC parenting sisterhood stuff did you?)    It has been widely established that I dress like an elf,   have put on 2 stone in 3 years,   sport a self-inflicted Willy Mossop hair-don't in a faded shade of mutton-dressed-as and that my thick lashings of black eye-liner look ridiculous so this isn't a campaign for some lunchtime make-ever show.    I just hate the way they moon about,   as interesting as boiled potatoes,   not thinking that their husbands or boyfriends would possibly think any the less of them because they are so over-flowing with nature and nurture that a spot of hair gel would be somehow inappropriate.    I wish they'd all brush up or fuck off.    It just reminds me of how crap I must have looked too.    (I never did lose touch with my mascara brush tho' I'll have you know....)

I hate new mothers.   And the feeling is mutual.    I look at them and see slow-moving smug younger know-it-alls.    They look at me and my litter and see the back of the book  -  and it wasn't the ending they've imagined.   They would want to complain to someone about false advertising if only they allowed themselves to glance my way for longer than a nano-second.    Most of them manage to cut me out of their peripheral view by some primal instinct.    But I suspect it is the only primal instinct they have left.   Everything else they do or think is as directed by some nazi child-rearing-expert brain-washing virus.    Just listen to them talk to each other.    It's thinly-disguised aggression.    It looks like Stepford -  but it's way more Hyacinth Bucket at it's core.    (I do remember frumpy,   I do  -  I don't ever remember the smug bit.    I never reached smug.    Bad parent obviously....)

We were surrounded by a pack of them in the swimming pool yesterday.    They were patrolling around their button-eyed poppets like warships.    Obviously they must have been horrified a bunch of wild pirates had just dive-bombed into their peaceful harbour  - (shouldn't these children be in school?)  -  but they weren't catching anyone's eye.    Amazingly we were still invisible.    We had to negotiate all these icebergs in our adventures.    (It was getting on for 12.30  -  shouldn't they all be shovelling avocado mush down the obliging little red tunnels and getting ready for a nap?)   It could've gone all This Town Ain't Big Enough but we each managed our own realities.    We made occasional 'mind the little ones' chirrups to steer them away but it's more a case of wary circling.    Eventually the lot of us had to make way for the crocodile parade of shivering prisoners of war.    Sorry  -  school lessons.    We were roped off and glared at all the way to the baby splash puddle hellhole  -  a sure-fire way of nudging us into the showers and out of their hair.    Even after all the changing shenanigans,   while waiting for our chips in the cafe,   we could see the PoWs still shivering on the side of the action.    Except by now they were wet and shivering.    At least the new mothers were enjoying their 'what my perfect child eats' serve-and-volleys with each other in the warm.    Definitely not noticing the goose-pimpled future through the windows.

I don't think I remember a whole lot about my monsters as babies  -  it all seems such a blur.    I worry that I'll not even recognise each one if 4 baby photos were lined up before me.    It was a battle of time,  energy and unwanted advice.    It did take me some time to remember I had my own mind and my own instincts  -  and these have been challenged over and over.    I don't think I dyed my hair for a stretch of about 2 years at some point.    I'd lost me completely.    I never had my face on for school drop-off  -  (but it was always there for pick-up -  I must've had a tiny voice still squeaking away).    I used to wear brown for christssakes -  destroy all photos.    I recall I tried to limit sweets and telly.    How quaint!    I bought wooden toys.    I smiled at pregnant women.    Oh my gods.....    It was another planet.

It was a planet where people with older children DID NOT EXIST.

I hated experienced mothers.    It was like looking at the back of the book.    I stopped reading altogether.  

Recently I joined a yahoo group for Home Edders involved with exams etc.    Minx has mentioned she might like to do some GCSEs.    So I stuck my toe in new waters.    It trebled my inbox and my burdened my already oppositional mind with anti-everything.    At first I thought I'd persevere.    But I realised it was just making me worse than usual.    I can't help feeling that if I guide my feral beasts towards academia it will just stifle their genuine talents.    Some kids have a bent towards paper and pens and maths and engineering and history and astronomy etc etc....    Some already know they want to be a physicist or a vet or a geologist and can get their heads round this stuff.    I can't get my lot to  look at the back of a cereal packet.    Minx may well be happy with it  -  I will get round to sorting out a much recommended English course (as written by a Home Ed mum) and see how it goes but without any gloaty-excitement on my face or bragging to my mother.    No pressure.    It's just another 'thing' she's interested in as far as I'm concerned  -  like playing the piano or taking photos.    Both of which she's gleaned from her dad and is happily building on by herself.    But I've had to leave the yahoo group.    I was in danger of posting up something childish last night whilst in a bolshie mood.    It just seemed SO obsessive.    It was peeking at the end of another book I decided was way too hardcore.    (I'd not even bother to wait for it on DVD  -  not enough action.)  

But are these academically-wired parents sucked into a lie?    Are they living their lives through their children?    They are Good Parents.    How DARE I question the validity of qualifications?   (Well... I've got some and they never got me anywhere.... )

Or....  am I standing in the way of my kids' path to a fruitful life?    Am I living my rebellion through them?    I'll not know 'til I get to the end of the book I s'pose.

As far as I'm concerned there's no hurry to write it.  

(Gods know writing books ain't so easy eh?    Still no sign of anything on that score round here.)

I know I am a Bad Parent.    I'm fine with that.    I hate good parents.    I just wonder if my brood might prefer a good one?  

Oh well  -  shit happens.    It's best they learn this sooner rather than spend a fortune on counselling later.    See?    Always thinking of them!    Good parent after all....

                              

Further Ponderings of the Normal

I am so full of wisdom me.    Well I blog don't I?    So I must believe this crap.    I must share my intellectual insights with those who are open to my droplets of divinity.   And yet I know I must appear to some as incredibly stoopid.    Some might say that funny froggy phrase.... 'idiot savage' is it?    No 'idiot savant'.    Gods I'm seriously stoopid.    There ain't much 'savant' about me.    But I do have the occasional clarity of .... something.    Must Google that in a minute  -  clarity of....  bugger.    I'll get back to that.    I come up wiv some choice verbals now and then is wot I mean.

I once gave this advice to my cousin regarding his imminent fatherhood:   Don't take anyone's advice.

He asked:   Including that piece?

I replied:    Especially that one.

I still hold with this.    And today another little gem popped into/out of my head:  I don't approve of people who don't approve of people.

I understand myself perfectly.    Bit of a shame noone else does really.    But how could they?    I mean......   I don't make sense to normal people.    Normal people are happy to do normal stuff, normally.    I always have to stick my oar in and stir up the demons.    Take our seasonal punctuations.... (please,  take them....  ho ho ho)    Who thinks about the origins and the religious significance when there's chocolate up for grabs?    It's pick 'n' mix culture.    We'll have that Easter but can live without the Lent shit.    No brainer.    I'm always up for a good reason to buy more chocolate.    But the tick tock box is fluttering.....    Alright I'll buy the chocolate,  but not the ones YOU want me to buy.    I'll have THESE ones so I can pretend I'm not merely succumbing to marketing mind games 'cos I'm cleverer than you......    Contrary Madame.     Normal peeps just get on with it don't they?    Is it that time already?    Alright then.....    They don't sit up late at night tapping out their unwanted opinions.    But if you're still reading,  then you're not normal either are you?    So you deserve it....  You can pick out the bits you like and keep 'em,  and flick away the rest.    It's called Freedom of the West it is.    It's our right!!    OK here's the rambling rantings....  I'll wave a flag when it's over.    

As you may well already know I hate Valentine's day,   always have,   but still always put chocolates in little home-made felt hearts that I dangle off something (usually the still-unfinished pap mach tree) for the 4 monsters.    (Not shimmery Valentine's chocolates obviously.... something crap on offer.    I would have SO bought it anyway....)    I honestly don't know why I persist with this  -  I just do.    I can't help feeling I'm pricking the pinkness and bucketness of this whole spectacle by throwing goo at children  -  instead of slopping slush at a grown-up who should also know better.    The Tesco's garage shop tonight was rammed  -  I'd abandoned a couple of the sproglings in the car for a two minute sweep but was captured in the till queues for an aeon by drooping-shouldered figures clutching flowers and posh chocs.    Oh fuck off will ya.    When I got back to the car it was a howling battleground and all me windows were steamed up.    Thanks St Bloody Valentine for spreading the love.    Still,  must dig out those ratty felt things.... I must make my point.    Whatever it is....          

This is just like I hate Xmas but sweat blood making 100 Advent thingies every bleedin' year.    AND do the carrot for the Red-Nosed One and the mince pie and something liquid for The Red-Suited One (it's non-alc now of course,  but I refuse to slide down to the cute American 'milk' thing..... it was a cup of tea one year with a lid on).    AND then there's the flour in the fireplace to catch the elves' footprints ye gods.....    It's 'what you do'.    Innit?    But all that manual effort is me sticking up two fingers to Marks & Spencers I reckon.

I hate birthdays too but they always get presents.    Have mostly given up making cards now tho'.    Feel guilty if I don't but feel fucked off about having to use my brain which is already exhausted with everything else birthdayesque.    Always left to the night before (if not later) -  but again it's my 'up the little people' stance that I never buy cards.    Nothing to do with my crap memory at all no.    Or simple meanness.   Not at all....no no.    I'll grudgingly stick something on knobbly paper for the immediate descendents but everyone else gets a Facebook nudge.      

Not keen on fireworks frankly.    But love a good bonfire.    Have let the 'guy' thing drop tho'.    Still have jumbled-up feelings about all that.    Having been brought up Catholic,  I should be anti the anti-Catholicosity of it all.    But as I am pretty anti-Catholic anyway,  should I join in the larks?    But I'm not anti-Catholic exactly.    I'm anti-all of it.    Don't see the point  -  'opium of the people' and all that.    Even as a wee one I loved the idea of someone blowing up the Houses of Parliament.    So in my head the bonfire and bangy-flashy shit is me imagining the spectacular death of the jowly stiffs.    Chuck another on the pyre missus.    Still,   thinking about how real bods were burnt to death is pretty twisted.    But so are fairy tales.    And I like them.    And surely the 'guy' can just be who/whatever you want it to be.    It's only symbolic innit?    See wot I mean?    I have no idea how I really think.    Except that fireworks are too bloody expensive and I have to go out in the cold and I can't see what I'm treading in.    And I really really don't want to know how much the local council has spent on this bollocks.    But if someone I know invites us round to a home-spun shindig we're all there with our fairy cakes and sparklers.    Hoping for a good soup.    I like soup.  

I might no know wot I fink,  but I still understand it....    at least I forgive it.

Now I like Easter.     Yeah weird....     Last year I gave up fighting against brand 'big' eggs in muchness packaging too.    Now that's not like me.    Surely all this previous stuff is me railing against the commerciality of everything  -  especially the Xmas and Val's Day shit.    But being superior is quite exhausting.    I decided to go with the flow and be like everyone else.    Just another one of those ancient cherished standards that went by the way  -  like sweets,  telly,  computers,  coke,  Mc D's.....    I'm so flipping glad I dropped all those poncey standards and now kick about in the filth like everyone else.    So liberating not being a high-horser.    I now look down on people on high horses.    Another bonging perverse Madame statement there.    But I really do  -  I feel like they're not fully developed yet if they're still clinging on to standards of any kind.    And it's not at all contradictory to wot I just spewed about Val's Day -  really it's not.    It's for the kids!    Of course it is....   And anyway,  I eat it when they're not looking.

And it's Pancake Day next week I believe.    Not Shrove Tuesday round 'ere.    I bought some maple syrup the other day.    I bet my mother doesn't even know what that is.    She'd freak if she knew what we've slapped on pancakes over the years.    Very traditional my mother.    It's lemon and sugar (white) on lace-thin offerings,  folded,  and only after a proper dinner.    But I have inherited her 'oh the first one's always the worst one' chant.    This reminds me  -  driving back from something the other evening the horror-bags were politely discussing (like hell) the order of things,  ie why did I have to continue to produce babies after the first two etc  and who would be where and like what if my first attempt had actually been born  (they're not remotely sensitive about things like miscarriage my lot) and I think it was Cheetah Boy who likened the 'failure' (for want of a better word) of this first one to the mess of the first pancake out the pan.    Well,  I had to laugh.    They do see the world in an interesting way sometimes.    Very matter of fact -  and yet pleasingly skewed.

I have always always always loved Halloween  -  I felt like I always flew the dark flag of this hit even as a mini heathen.    Way before anyone else really got in on it bigtime.    I remember sitting in my bedroom window peering out for witches  -  eagerly hoping.    Truly believing.    Spiders,  bats,   black cats,   skulls with snakes curling out the eye sockets....  what's not to like?    Hate fucking trick or treating tho'.    Am happy to have a houseful of artificial colours and sweeteners  -  but hate knocking on someone else's door to get it.    I can go down to Morrison's and get it myself I can.    I like the idea of naughty larks and getting away with it  -  I just hate traipsing.    Never carved a pumpkin or went out after dark with a lantern or nuffink when I was a madamelet but it's 'normal' now.    I like the pumpkin and lanterns stuff.    It's just the getting in the car to civilization,   to wander around someone else's street to go begging,  do smiling,  judge how quickly  we can scarper and drag home again bit.    I have a garden for gods-sakes,  and no neighbours to suffer  -  we can go out there and find sweets and come back in before X-Factor starts.    I can turn off the lights and scare the shit out of my kids without any diesel consumption.    Peasy.

These are the punctuations of the year.... the 'normal' ones anyway  -  the ones that cost money that is.     And so these are the ones we have to take note of.    And we've added stuff over the years  -  not just the extra emphasis on Halloween and Val's that have grown bigger lately,  we've added all sorts:  Burns' Night gets a thought,   Chinese New Year is part of the annual deal,   St Patrick's Day fills a window,   Diwali is as known to kids as is/was Harvest Festival no matter what shade or flavour we are.    The Harv Fest's not so known to mine as we don't do either church or school and it doesn't get an eyebrow twitch in Clinton's.    In my memory it's handing over a sorry tin of peach slices from the back of the cupboard.    (I'm sure I'm not alone in this one.)    St George day is practically myth.    We were 'allowed' to wear our Brownies or Cubs uniforms on the national saints' days.    Woopdedoo.    Don't know how singy and shouty the Scots or the Welsh get on their ones.    The English are much better at stuff you can buy.    If I can rustle up some dragony beer-holding hats for next umm... hang on... 23rd of April (I just had to check that on Google but I WAS right I was)  -  I might be on for making a few pennies..... if there's an England footie match on around the same time.    'Cos that red cross on white flag is a football thing innit?    And that other one with the blue bits and extra red diagonal bits is a nice cushion or a tea cosy now.    Or a kid's t-shirt.    Better in more muted colours these days...  greyer or browner.    The original colours are a bit BNF.  

We've dropped a few ex-notables.    Michaelmas is just for Steiner kindergartens now.    More dragons for that one but only dry-felted.    Wholesome ones.    They do the all the things that end in 'mas'.    Martinmas,  Candlemas etc.    They pretend they're non-denominational but they ain't.    They have their seasonal list and stick to it rigidly.    Sticking rigidly is what Steiner does best.    No deviation.    And 'cos of our two year dalliance there I am now stuck with bloody St Nicholas' Day shove-a-walnut-in-their-shoe malarkey.    I don't like this one.    It's not just the embarrassment of that first morning by the pegs when I shrieked  'Who's stuck a bloody great lump in your slippers?'  It's just not me.    Despite swapping healthy bloody great lumps for proper bloody great sweeties  -  it just reminds me of that hushed dustiness of self-righteousness.    Boring.    I do enough in December.    But if I tell 'em this one's just made up,  the penny'll drop for all the other lovely lies....  like elves,  tooth fairies and the Easter Bunny etc.    And they're kinda fun.    (Not to mention useful when you want to get rid of a rabbits-heads-eating cat for example  -  our fairies did a very good job there).    But the Steiner Christian pinny folk do that pole dancing tho'.    You know.... that maypole gig.    That's alright in't it?    That used to make me laugh.    Make the little impressionables dress in white and skip around a giant willy.    Always a corker.    Kept me smirks to meself tho'.    No point trying to have a funny with the brown-clad basket carriers.    Deviation denied.    Rigid is king.      

But the 'real' world evolves and soaks up stuff like a culture sponge.    Like the ol' Chinese New Year.    Tunbridge Wells,  of all ethnically undiverse places,  does a lantern procession every year  -  with a Samba band leading.    It's pick 'n' mix.    Like our language  -  it absorbs and adapts what's on offer.    I think it's a laugh.    Didn't go this year tho' 'cos of the ol' snow business but if you're stuck up that way 'cos your kid's in some blinkin' play about a rabbit and an ox it's in for a penny wot?  

A friend of mine and her Druid chums did a Green Man kinda procession last year round there.    I have no idea how it went  (was busy moving house that day).    But I bet it wasn't met with as much enthusiasm.    We only like NEW things!!!    We can buy things with Chinese stuff on it  -  who's knockin' out the Green Man balloons?    Can't buy it - don't want it.

I don't know if it's bad that we've 'lost' the national fervour for our pagan punctuations.    I mean them Romans fiddled with some,    the Vikings flung some more in,   then those Christians thieved the lot and now look....  the shops own 'em.    For those that still hold 'the old ways' dear,   they are still unsullied and can be carried on without a plastic loot bucket.    Maybe that's much better eh?   Although I reckon a thermal 'nude suit' for those chilly sun-up gatherings would fly off the back of my Fiat.

There's a fair few of us in our Home Ed gang happy to celebrate the unpronounceables with a bit of round the fire crafty muddlings.    Cheering on a spot of Imbolc this week,  cancelled last week due to projected frostbite.    (See we even muddle about with the dates to suit ourselves  -  much easier than being outlawed for failure to spend before the 'how COULD you forget' sales.)    Doesn't take much to Google up on what's when and why for those like me who are a bit lacking in true devotion.    But I'm kind of joyed that reminders are not being flashed up inbetween chunks of Dancing On Ice.    Leaves us alone to twiddle about with leaves and sticks without being patted on the head for it.    (And gods forbid those people who make misty purple wizardy figurines or pictoral waistcoats out of dog wee and woad soaked-placentas get too above themselves.)    No let's keep it quiet yeah?    I likes me pagan stuff but know enough to keep shtumn in the company of stooped beardy types.    See I'm not ALL that stoopid after all.

Anyway,  time to hook these soppy heart-shaped pockets on my dark and spiky gothic tree.    Give with one hand and fuck 'em up with the other.    More Madamey wisdom.

Happy Whateva.....



(Sorry I forgot to wave the little flag  -  it's safe to come out now.    Be nice to yourself,  scavenge a bit of choc off your last minute present and read something more cohesive.   Won't be too hard to find.)  

                                            

Soothe or Suffocate the Savage Beast?

Dilemma:


Encourage lively child-led activities within liberal autonomous education embrace - but suffer a shitty trashed house.

Try to ease stress by finding 'me time',  such as therapeutic knitting in bedroom  -  but suffer a shitty trashed house.

Give in to 'they'll all be grown up and gone before you know it' indulgence  -  shitty trashed house...

Yell,  throw things,  shove 'em out in the garden and lock the doors,  send them to boarding school,  sell them to white slavers,   move house fast and destroy all forms of communication,  join the Foreign Legion......  -  or....   or nuffin!    I think I may have just solved my problems.    I wonder if I'd miss them?

If only you could hear what I'm hearing.    The kind of sounds a ceiling makes just before it gives way.    I'm sure you'd agree I'd not miss them that much.

No I'm positive I'm doing the right thing.......    you never knew me,   never saw nuffin,   wot you boggin' at?

zzzzzziiiiiiiip!!  

Pissed Off of Blogblockdom

Not sure if this will even post as my site will no longer allow me to be signed in - despite signing in 50 times. Blogspot 'help' is totally useless. Cannot get beyond half a sentence. Don't know if I'll be able to publish this as I cannot even comment on my own posts. I may just give up entirely and start again with a different name on a different forum. Just saying...

Now What's That I Call Never at Home Education Volume 87

Today I saw.....

My hand waving goodbye to BOYS clutching golf clubs as I drove awaaaaaay from the house.

Frant Railway station despite the Sat Nav telling me to turn around where possible. And chums. And a parking space. Well I never did...

Charing Cross after many many years - this used to be my personal corridor. Didn't it miss me?

The Olympic clock ticking away our innocent lives.

A Tom Hanks-a-likey Australian swallow a whole modelling balloon. Then a bemused Brazilian (with very little English) and a stately Dane (with a slightly better command) padlocked him into a straight jacket and chains and he still managed to get his hat on. (He also dislocated his shoulder and escaped in 3 minutes...yeah yeah) - but the balloon and the hat!!!

Turnaround and more chums - Happy New Year! Did you see what he did with that balloon?

The National Portrait Gallery's child-confuser - the rotating door doodahs. Always a laugh. Brings to mind a certain comedy incident at Bluewater's John Lewis some time ago involving a splat of Minx on their too-clean windows. Forever imprinted....

Lots of wonderful photographic portraits and a very attractive tiled floor. Where to look?

Willies and boobies.

The time!!

Blue sky above a bitter coffee.

The Coliseum thingy on top goes round and round - I'd never noticed before...

Look more chums!

And Johnny Depp!!

Only joking...

Lovely lovely floors... and windows... and mosaics.... and curtains.... and curly things and...... wow!!! The Coliseum!!!!

And nice toilets.

The English National Ballet - Strictly Gershwin. I dislocated my jaw. Sharpen your elbows and get a ticket. Get A Ticket. The Man I Love! An American in Paris!! The Eiffel Tower dances I tell you!!! Even the conductor shimmies.

Tears a-sparkling as dazzling as the costumes. The costumes!!

Nice toilets. Posh ice cream. (The latter down Minx's top. White top. Chocolate.)

Rhapsody in Blue.... Summertime.... Get. A. Ticket.

Nice toilets and Minx's face looking exasperated. I can't help it I'm old.

Back onto the very attractive tiled floor for the rest of those portraits.

My hand releasing lots of coins for lots of postcards.

And Tudor portraits - we dun Tudors. Minx dun Tudors. Nose right up to the canvas and gasping. Teenage Engage! THAT is cool! (Nearly teenage... I have an Olympic clock of my own counting down my sanity.)

The inside of a lift-that-don't-go-down-there.

Smiling faces of people seeing us come out again helpfully pointing to the stairs-that-do.

One more circular tour of the doors for luck.

Two more then...

A firm yank. (No. Not Johnny Depp.)

The thingy that goes round on top of the Coliseum lights up at night too.

Charing Cross. Still seemed to be getting on OK without me.

Burger King. BK said hello at least.

Frant by night.

The welcome glow of the back door through the forest of neglect. (I did say welcome and not sinister didn't I? Oh good.)

Minx's face looking exasperated - left all the postcards on the train.

Boys. Throwing darts. Mostly at the dartboard.

My feet - up.

The insides of my eyelids....




Then I saw.... that balloon.... where the squeak-pop-ouch did it go?


.....haunting...

Never At Home Education Part 23

I am not going to over-book ourselves again for the next 4 months. I am not.

Really really.

Really.

I said this in September I did.

I collapsed in December.

Now January is flaunting it's godless temptations before my still blinking-in-the-new-year-light mincies with no shame.

And February is slinking up behind that with dangerous disregard for the law.

March shouldn't even be out here yet - is that a lollypop in her pouting lips?

Be gone you flagrant sirens of certain destruction before I can form the outline of April rising to her feet with slow poison - be gone!!!

Oh may the gods of finding a clean top deliver me from this onslaught....

May they guide my weakened fingers away from the laptop keys of 'yes'.

But I fear it's already too late.... I can feel my head turning... my ears burning... my face gurning.... it's... it's.... ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhh....... farewell house - faaare theeeeee weeeellllllllll.........


......................................................

The Toilet-Floor Guide to Happiness from the Ever-Slinking World of the Grub

This is the best start to a new year ever 'cos I haven't failed at any new ambitions. This is the way to go....

And I have started my patchwork quilt - the one I've been prattling on about for about um... 30 years. And it all began 'cos I couldn't be arsed to do my setteeful of folding. So I sat on it and started sewing instead. It's my new blobby project - every month when I feel too shit to move about I'm gonna grab me patches and get inertially happy. In a year I might even have something to show for my otherwise useless grubdom. But it's not a resolution. No no no.

I've also downsized my usual A4 Day-to-a-Page diary to a humbler A5 - I could put it in my bag.... I might draw pictures in it.... I will hopefully list less humdrums and be more disciplined in my witterings. Definitely not a reso. Less is... less shit.

I'm still knitting my don't-know-what strips of randomness. I like knitting. Am rubbish at knitting. So just knit. Because I can. Can't, but can anyway kind of can. Don't know what, don't know why, don't know how kind of can. 'Tis a decent philosophy.

I may not have actually started the Stat of Lib yet but am still excited about going thro' the bag of greenness to make sure I have to go back to the wool shop. I know I will go back to the lovely shop full of lovely fluffy loveliness - I just have to waste a bit more time cataloguing shades of not-right first to justify my cape-flapping swish up their stairs rather than a guilt-ridden sneak. It won't be hard - I can always convince myself that wool is essential. Wool is essential.

But the most creative endeavour is my new song. I sing it when I'm putting shopping away in not the right place, and when I'm hurling clobber in the dryer that shouldn't be, and when I'm sticking hair gel in a mop that needs washing.... it goes like this:

..ahem....

Fuckit fuckit fuckit fuckit fuckit fuckit fuckit fuckit

Fuckit fuckit fuckit fuckit fuckit fuckit

It's very jolly and rolls off the tongue in skips and twirls. It's my new answer for everything. May you all join in when you have picked up the words - it fair speeds the day.

Come on kids...

Fuckit fuckit fuckit fuckit fuckit fuckit fuckit fuckit

Fukit fuckit fuckit fuckit fuckit fuckit fuckit

Don't you feel better?

I only wish I'd been given a glimpse of this wonderful enlightened life years ago.... but you have to work at it to get to this height of lazy. Sigh....... I might even grow a beard and wear a duvet. I could charge a fortune for this.....

The R-Word

As previously stated in relation to the popular compiling of bullshit promises, this year I am merely going to pursue my abounding badiness, smellificiency, fatiosity, bigly ungrammaticalitence, rudeorama and uncharitableables with the chuggessence I usually reserve for motorway driving. Rock on self-unimprovement. No wasting my talentlessness on ambition for me. Oh and I have just publicly announced on Facebook, I am going to knit The Statue of Liberty.

The last choice was a typically oppositional stance to my furrowed promise to never ever ever make xmas adventy calendar thingies ever ever again ever.

I unfurrowed, sighed, felt a wave of relief... and started planning next year all over again.

It started simply - paper snowflakes. Not another vein-pulsing over-ambitious attempt to create a whole miniature hanging forest of pagan delights like this year. Paper snowflakes. Not even opened out - they can do that themselves. In fact I could get them to make them by themselves. Now I'm using my noodle.

But then the noodle gets cocky and starts plotting while I'm not looking.

Then it starts bargaining with me. I do have a bulging bag of beads and bells and buttons and bollocks that I really should use up. All I need is a little more wire, string all the b's together in 96 random clumps (won't take long) and Bob's yer unc etc....

'Cept Bob is not my unc. I have 5 remaining uncs and none of them's a Bob. Neither do I have a Fanny for an aunt but I do have a twat of a brain which then led me to the wool shop to buy 3 different balls of blue wool - to make a background fringe for the beads of course. And some wire. Silver. 50p more expensive than gold. And then obviously I am going to either paint the lyrics for Fairytale of New York onto the leftover beads - or buy yet more beads with letters already imprinted - and it's still oh so simple.

But just to make it interesting I should now have the fringed lyrical bead garland spiralling in a more pleasing display.

And naturally this should be entwining a towering female figure.

So I evidently need to go back to the wool shop to get some more green wool as the accompanying bursting bag full of leftover green wool doesn't contain any of the right oxidized copper shade in order to knit an impressive Statue of Liberty around which the beady Shane words can shimmer.

So there we have it. A glimpse into the circles of my mind....

I think someone was indeed tossing in a stream.... my stream of consciousness.... Maybe I should start drinking again and regain unconscousness....

As previously stated in relation to the popular compiling of bullshit promises, this year.....