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...