Pussy Riot - Scenes from Christmas

Hello chums and a very happy New Year to you all.  I hope you've all had a wonderful time over Christmas, clasped to the bosoms of your respective families.  I'm afraid that I am once again in need of catharsis and so, I am taking the liberty of sharing some scenes from Christmas at Crap Cottage with you:-

Christmas Eve

Mama’s flat.  I have arrived to collect her so that she can come and spend Christmas with us.  She has had a short power cut due to the massive storms we have been having here in the UK over the past week. 

Mama:  Well, we had a power cut and I can’t bear waste.  Points to a pile of carrier bags.  I investigate.

Moi:  Erm, what’s this lot?

Mama:  Just a few bits from the fridge and the freezer.  I can’t bear waste.

Moi: OMG.

Mama:  Yes, well...I can’t bear waste.  Did I say?

I investigate further.  The bags contain a mountain of epicurean delights amongst which I count two lettuce leaves, 5 baby new potatoes and a pint and a half of milk.  Oh and let’s not forget the quarter bottle of Sainsbury’s medium white wine.  No siree.

Christmas Day 
The day passes relatively uneventfully.  The only tiny fly in the ointment comes courtesy of mama’s love for our cat.  A love which is reciprocated. 

This is Paddy:-

As you can see, he is a fairly unremarkable (and pretty stupid) ginger and white moggy.  Despite his lack of neurons and fairly grumpy nature, he is much adored by us all.

Mama spends many happy hours mauling  stroking the cat and he is very happy with the attention.  However, mama’s failing memory means that she cannot, for the life of her, remember Paddy's name.  Consequently, she refers to him as ‘pussy’ most of the time.  This causes my vile and feral children to snigger wildly and me to cast them evil glances which they (naturally) ignore.

So we had the usual round of “ooh – look at this lovely pussy” (smirk from children), “What a pretty pussy!” (mild sniggering from children) and so on and so on.  However, on Christmas Day it all came to a head.  Like this:-

It is the evening.  We have eaten and drunk well and given and received lots of lovely presents.  Even Paddy has had a gift – a glittery gold collar to go with his ginger fur.  He is fairly unimpressed by this as he would have much preferred a leg of turkey but he is sanguine.  And here is the evidence:-

The whole family is lolling around in the living room, including Mama who is on cat watch.

Enter Paddy.  Mama, who is stone deaf much of the time can, bizarrely, hear the bell on his collar from the next street.  She tries to attract his attention.

Mama: Pussy!  Pussy!  (gesticulates wildly.  Children snigger loudly).

Paddy knows which side his Whiskas is buttered and jumps up onto her lap.

Mama:  Ah!  Good boy!  Look – I've got a lovely, sparkly pussy!

I hear strangulated guffawing noises coming from the children.  Son is lying on the floor in the foetal position sobbing with laughter and attempting to shove a cushion into his mouth.  Daughter is hanging upside down off the sofa, trying to turn her face away whilst mouthing the word “vajazzle” at her brother.  Even I can’t hold back the laughter.  It falls to the Shah (uncharacteristically) to behave like a grown up and admire Mama’s lovely, sparkly pussy in the way she intended.

Missing - one cat

I've been a bit quiet on the blogging front this week.  One of our cats has disappeared and I've put quite a lot of time and effort into trying to track him down.  In the process, I've discovered a website called Animal Search which has so far been incredibly helpful.  They will liaise with your insurance company directly, add your missing pet to a database and supply you with posters and flyers to display and distribute.  Insurance companies will often fund a reward as well and Animal search provides an 0800 number for people to ring in confidence.  Handy as I guess they often don't want to be the bearers of bad news.  However, any news is better than none.


Sadly for us, it's been a week since Jim just didn't come home one night. There have been no phone calls so far and we are slowly becoming resigned to not seeing him again.


Very sad.  He is hugely missed.

Home again

There is no better description of the family holiday than that given by David Nicholls in his wonderful book ‘One Day’ ...”a sort of harsh experiment in the limits of human proximity.”

As far as holidaying with teenagers goes, never a truer word was spoken or written.  It is for this reason that I only booked the holiday for one week this year.  I knew full well that, by the end of 7 days, we would all be heartily sick of one another.  The trouble starts when someone – well let’s not lie – it’s me - tries to book a holiday.  I go around the family and ask them to tell me where they would like to go and what sort of place they would like to stay in.  The reply is big fat silence.  After several weeks of this, I get bored and book the kind of holiday I like – ie one that is basically pretty antisocial – a villa with a pool.  This year’s offering was on the Algarve – close to various lovely beaches (I believe – we are not keen beach people and didn’t visit one of them).  I chose it on the basis that a) it had the biggest pool of any of the ones that were available in our price bracket and b) it was suitably remote from any vestiges of night life (ha ha!) as I don’t need to spend my holiday worrying about the whereabouts and safety of drunken teenagers.  I can do that at home, thanks very much.  Consequently, the teens spent a little time whingeing bitterly about the lack of wi-fi and then actually settled down to playing with the resident cat population and (whisper it) reading books in between mucking about in the pool, playing cricket and generally trying to drown or otherwise kill each other in poolside games.

The Shah and the boy played golf, TD and I spent hours just lazing around and I read four and a half books in the space of that one week.  In other words, it was great and I feel recharged and ready to go back to work sometime in the next couple of weeks (I'm not thinking about it just yet.)  The beauty of working in a school is that I managed to negotiate a contract that gave me about 9 weeks holiday a year.  It’s a beaut.  I have to be there during term time but I do get large chunks (not all) of the holidays off.  The payoff, of course, is that we can only ever take holidays at the most expensive time of year.

The cats have returned home with colds and are sneezing continually in a highly disgusting manner.  I’m intending to tough it out, well  they’re going to tough it out because we’re getting to the point where I may as well just have my salary paid directly into the bulging coffers of the sodding Vet.

However, the bin men managed to take away the maggotfest I referred to last time.  Life is good!

Radio silence

Pretty much this time last year, I wrote about 9 things not to do before you go on holiday.  I could make this the shortest post in the history of blogging by just referring you back to it now.  Why don't I learn from my mistakes?  Why do I consistently go on holiday with the Shah and our children, each year believing we are off to enjoy some bucolic, Cath Kidston-decorated idyll and everyone will skip through meadows with wild flowers adorning their hair when the reality is so bitterly different?


So....here we are again.  It is the eve of our hols and here is this year's list of things not to do once more.

1. Do not make the same mistake twice.  If you can be arsed to click on the above link and read last year's list, I refer you to no.3 which involves cats, vets and emergency appointments.  Yup - exactly the same thing happened this year.  Fab. Oh and it cost the thick end of £100.
2. Do not go on holiday on same day that your bins are collected.  This means that you cannot leave your food recycling bin out front because, if it is left out for more than one nano-second after the bin men have been, the local oiks will purloin it and chuck it into neighbours' gardens/the woods/wherever causing huge irritation to moi.
3. Do not, therefore, put all your food waste into your landfill dustbin.  In a heatwave.  If you do this, you will open your bin to put the final bag in and find it crawling with maggots.  This will mean that you have to cause your husband huge irritation by insisting that he helps you clean out said bin, re-bag everything and hope the dustmen don't notice because you will be several thousand feet above France when they come.
4. When your family show themselves to be utterly indecisive and come to you with ridiculous questions such as "shall I take some trousers?" (guess who) smile calmly and say something kind and loving, not "What a stupid feckin' question!  You can go around with your knackers hanging out for all I care."
5. Get out beach towels well before you actually have to pack them.  That way you will discover that half of them have mysteriously gone walkabout more than 2 hours before you have to leave the house and, more importantly, while the shops are still open.
6. Finally, don't book a flight which leaves at 6am, necessitating you leaving home at 3am and arriving in Portugal at 9am when the poxy villa won't be available until 4pm.  I. Just. Never. Learn.

Toodle pip!

Ok Brian - you're forgiven

I wrote recently about Amazon and how I used to work for their current MD, Brian McBride and how they've never let me down blah blah.  As I wrote it, I had this little, sneaky feeling that I was tempting fate and, sure enough, my biggest order became a victim of the recent weather and got stuck in Scotland (note to BMcB - I'm reliably informed that at least one of your distribution centres is out in the middle of Scottish nowhere - not even close to Dundee airport where nobody goes - so shift it!).  It then made it as far as Warrington where it lingered for two weeks being "processed".


Finally, having given up all hope, it arrived this morning, in the nick of time.  I was uncommonly grateful.  Paddy thought otherwise and showed his disapproval.  Like this.  


Wishing you all a very Happy Christmas from the house of madness...

Cat woman...

I came across this today...it made me laugh and it's just so true.  Any of us can be in the foulest mood, in the midst of a rancid argument with any one of our parents/children/siblings and as soon as a cat enters the equation, we are reduced to soppy, dribbling creatures.

9 things not to do before you go on holiday

1. Do not book a transatlantic flight for your family a mere 24 hours after your teenage son returns from a lads' holiday in Ayia Napa.  This is a bad idea on many levels:-
1. He will be in a state that necessitates carrying his liver on as hand luggage
2. It will be impossible to wash and dry all his kit before holiday number 2, due to the vagaries of the British weather
3. He will whine unbearably and blame all ills on you on the basis that a mother's place is in the wrong.
2. Do not question your son on the finer details of his holiday.  You don't want to know.
3.  Do not ignore your pets before going away, thus only noticing a large sore on your cat's back one day before you fly.  Sod's law dictates that:-
1. There will be no emergency appointments available at the Vet
2. When you eventually procure an appointment by grovelling, pleading and whining, the cat in question (Jim, if you're interested.  No, I didn't think so) takes one look at the cat carrier and legs it over a six foot fence sharpish, not reappearing for a good 10 hours.
3. When you eventually get said cat to said Vet, it shows its gratitude by trying to attack the Vet, howling and hissing and, eventually, biting you twice.  Hard.
4. Do not read scaremongering newpaper articles immediately after your cat bites you.  The one I chanced upon (naturally) involved a man whose cat bite caused septicaemia and almost killed him.
5. Do not buy an insurance policy that specifically excludes cover for cat bites.
6. Do not book a decorator to come in while you are away.  This will cause you to be up until 2am the night before you travel, trying to move furniture quietly out of respect for the neighbours and their baby, while you and your husband hiss at each other in a foul temper.
7. Do not allow your husband to insist that you all get up at 5.30am to "beat the rush hour" and arrive at the airport at 7am for a midday flight.  This will cause the wrath of your children to land upon your head - see previous remarks about a mother's place.
8. If you see your husband packing up last night's left over pizza, do not assume he is consigning it to the bin.  When he produces it "for a snack" shortly after take off, do not admit that you are in any way connected to him.
9. Do not read the final chapters of Jojo  Moyes' The Last Letter from Your Lover on the flight or in any public place.  The ensuing uncontrollable blubbing will mark you out as a "spaz" (children) "weirdo" (husband) or just a liability and possibly a vague threat (airline staff).

The Killing Fields

Hello again from the killing fields of suburban England. Sorry to keep banging on about animals, but there has been a surfeit of them in my life this week. The body count round these parts makes Agatha Christie look like Enid Blyton.


Since the discovery of the morbidly obese pigeon (see previous post) the count has been as follows:


Large, adult rat (dead) 1
Small Vole (dead) 1
Small Mice - (very much alive) 2


We are currently running at an average of one unwelcome guest per day and, frankly, I could do without it. The rat was particularly unpleasant, but at least it was dead and I was grateful. I was also unimpressed by the Shah (Blue job) picking it up by the tail and offering a discourse on the size of its teeth. I should also mention that all this killing activity takes place overnight and so the discovery of the stiff little (or not so little) corpses happens before breakfast. eeeewwwww


To add insult to injury, I mentioned the rat to TS the following afternoon (he's broken up for Christmas and so doesn't emerge from his pit until gone midday).


"Oh yes", quoth he. "I heard the cats growling at each other last night so I knew they'd brought something in."
"Great", I reply. "So what did you do about it?"
"Um, I ran to bed."


STOP PRESS: One more mouse has entered the building. Shah???!!!

Cat amongst the pigeons

A former colleague (now retired and living in a quite beautiful house in Devon which cost about £3.50 - but enough about my bitterness) used to classify household tasks as either "Blue" or "Pink". Blue tasks were, not surprisingly, undertaken solely by boys and pink by girls. This is a classification system I have adopted as I find it extremely useful and, better still, I find it can be manipulated to suit my whims. For example - the sort of task that can be classed as blue is as follows:-

Anything involving poo
Anything involving puke (I can do blood, but I'm not good with vom)
Dead animals
Gizzards of dead animals
Taking rubbish out
Anything heavy
Anything that involves going outside after dark or in the rain

You get the general picture?

To be fair, Pink tasks take in practically everything else and involve a lot of loo cleaning and general drudgery, so I don't feel too guilty. This morning however, was one gigantic blue task.

Tottered downstairs, accompanied by the faithful Paddy who, instead of making for the food bowl, rushed under the dining table. Whoops! Very bad sign. This means that there is a dead mouse or something similar under there which, having ignored it since it shuffled off its mortal coil, he is now licking tenderly and guarding with a low growl. Great. Haul a couple of chairs out of the way in order to gain access and a clear view of dead rodent. Oh no. No dead rodent - just a carpet of feathers and the corpse of what looks like a morbidly obese pigeon. Thanks lads! Do not like birds at the best of times and immediately think of my late father and hear his voice in my ear, castigating me for not disembowelling and plucking it immediately - eeeeewwwwwwww.

Instead, I do the sensible, feminist thing and shriek loudly for the Shah who lumbers down muttering oaths under his breath. Approaches the scene of the crime and concurs "that's one big mother!" Once we actually get the poor thing out from under the table, we start to wonder at the cats' ingenuity at actually mananging to force a 3 stone pigeon through the catflap. Frankly, they must have hired feckin' Pickfords to get it in. "To me - to you. Left wing down a bit, mate."

This has, of course, sucked up a good twenty minutes of my morning and I get out to the car to find that not only have I not factored in enough time for de-icing but a neighbour has kindly parked me in.

Meanwhile, I have inveigled the Shah into taking TD to the local hospital for a minor Orthodontic procedure. Needless to say, we have lost the original letter but (happily) can remember the time and date of the appointment. Consequently, The Shah and TD rock up to...the wrong hospital. Oi vey! It's the other hospital in the partnership! So they hightail it over to the other hospital only to be told that, rather than have the expected procedure performed then and there, this is an appointment to make an appointment to get onto the waiting list......marvellous! For this, she has missed almost an entire morning of school?

Clearly Andy Burnham, the role of Secretary of State for Health should not be a Blue job.