Catch up...

So chums, what to tell you?  It has been a busy old time at Crap Cottage so I thought I would offer you a little vignette of the past 10 or so days - the (paltry) highs and the (plentiful) lows.


Let us begin with matters Français.  

Or should that be Française?  Yes, we have had our French Exchange girl to stay for a week.  She was absolutely delightful and very easy to have around but gawd is it hard work having someone else to think about for a whole week?  I mean someone whom you cannot routinely and affectionately hurl abuse at in the way you do with your own husband/kids.  To have to think about providing proper meals at regular heures....meh. the girls were very different.  The visitor was only 16, but had a 20 year old boyfriend which left our daughter agape.  She seemed not to be a party girl but spent hours every evening Skypeing her boyfriend and family.  Happily though, and much like Trish at Mum's Gone To ... when her son entertained "a Frenchie", the entente was pretty cordiale.  One of the other girls on the Exchange who was also 16 apparently had a 25 year old boyfriend which led to me overhearing my daughter saying earnestly, "If I wanted to go out with a 25 year old, my mum would go ballistic!"  How well she knows me.  Maybe this is a cultural thing?  My daughter and her friends viewed it as "practically child abuse" - perhaps my mate Madame Wylye Girl can help explain?


Having one extra was not that hard if I'm to be honest as the house is like a feckin' traveller camp at the best of times with sundry teenagers coming and going at all hours.  When we bought Crap Cottage, one of the overriding factors in choosing it was its central location and proximity to public transport for the kids.  What we didn't factor in was that it is just as central for every other bugger's kids as well.  Nowadays, the Shah and I have just given up and he has learned not to blench as scantily-clad 17 year old girls stroll through the kitchen, casually raiding the fridge as they go, making cups of tea and leaving a trail of tiny scraps of lace underwear, vertiginous heels and makeup wipes all over the house.


In other news, work is reaching the end-of-term crescendo.  You can tell that people are becoming slightly hysterical as we hurtle towards the apocalypse that is the End of Term Assembly.  Here are two examples:  this first one was found pinned to the staff room noticeboard...

For our second example, I offer you the coffee mug I very, very nearly gave to a candidate who had come for interview for a very senior position...

Wouldn't have minded but he looked like the back end of a bus.


Meanwhile in the great outdoors, the Shah has been minded to survey his estate in this good weather and to clear the vegetable patch in the process.  Last Autumn, I planted a whole packet of carrot seeds hoping that they would over-winter nicely and we would have a decent crop come the Spring.  Here is Mother Nature's bounty - photographed with an apple next to them to provide a sense of scale (i.e. paltry)

As the Shah came in, brandishing the fruits of his labours, he met his son who eyed the pathetic, weedy offerings and said "D'you know what Dad?  It's a good job you're not a subsistence farmer in Ethiopia - the whole family would have bloody starved by now."  He may have a point.


Toodle pip!