Erotica cream and other stories

That got your attention eh?!  I assure you, dear readers, that headline is not just some spurious attempt to bump up my hits (although every cloud and all that – geddit?) and there will be more of that later.

This week, I am back on the theme of the vagaries of parenthood.  There comes a time in every parent’s life when the dreaded words “Mum, can I have a party?” assault your ears.  And so it came to pass.  After endless weeks and months of nagging, and whining and “like EVERYONE else has had one,” the Shah and I were finally worn down and agreed to a Gathering* rather than a full-blown party.  This was to take the form of a belated 17^th birthday celebration for our daughter and (more nagging, whining etc) numbers were set at “around 35 people”.  We weren't stupid enough to think that this would be the case, but hoped we might get away with 40...and some of them had to leave early anyway as, like all good social butterflies, they had other parties to go on to.

Now God knows the British teenager has a terrible reputation and we did not intend to see any of this:

  

Or this:

going on in our kitchen, so certain ground rules were laid.

• Limited alcohol would be supplied and none of the hard stuff.
• Certain areas of the house would be off limits
• The Shah and I would be present but would confine ourselves to our  bedroom and would be out like rats up a drainpipe at the first sound of any breaking glass, violence or other impropriety.
•  She was to warn the immediate neighbours – she did and they were both fine about it – even psycho woman who lives over the back.
• Yes, some of them could stay but I wasn’t having the house turned into a knocking shop.
•  No drugs.  At all.

We removed all our own alcohol from downstairs and stashed it in our room (slightly worrying to see just how much we have, lol).  Breakables and precious items were likewise put away.  And then it was all systems go.  We hoped we had thought of everything and lay nervously on the bed, trying to watch Graham Norton on a tiny, crappy TV that kept buzzing and had a rubbish picture whilst keeping one ear open for trouble.

The Shah unhelpfully put his earphones in while I sprang up to peer anxiously out of the window every time the doorbell went and boy, did it go.  It is fair to say that we both learned certain things from the experience. 

• When the sounds of slurpy kissing were heard on the landing outside our door, followed by a boy’s voice saying, “hey, shall we find somewhere....?”  it turned out that a loud cough can come in very handy.  Footsteps receded downstairs rather rapidly.
• It’s not terribly comforting when one of your daughter’s best friends sticks her head round the door to say hello and thank you and adds “I think you guys are really brave...”
• It’s also not comforting to hear someone calling your daughter and shrieking “we need toilet roll!  NOW!”
•  Your blood runs cold when your (slightly the worse for wear) daughter stumbles into the  bedroom at 11.30pm to announce that the Police are at the front door and would like to speak to us. 

It turns out that Psycho woman (who really is monumentally odd) had complained that there were people “singing in the garden”.  So rather than come round and knock on the door and ask us to keep in down a bit, she called the Rozzers.  We had the classic good cop/bad cop scenario – hulking, unsmiling male and warm, fuzzy female.  We registered our disgust and agreed to get everyone indoors.  And frankly, if that’s all they were doing, then I am damn grateful!

About 12.45, we called a halt and the remnants shuffled off amidst a chorus of “Thanks for having us!” – really, it was all so well-behaved it was embarrassing.  The clean up the next morning was humungous.  It’s amazing how much mess an extra 40 people tramping through your house can make.  I had to wash the kitchen floor SIX times.  Yes SIX.  After the fifth wash, the water looked like this:-

Along with the butts of a thousand fags, we also found a large number of these

dotted around the garden.   We were puzzled.  “What are they?” we asked the ragged remnants who had slept over.  “Oh, they’re for filling balloons,” they chorused – and there were plenty of flaccid balloons lying around.  And then we found the box they came in.

I'm a woman of the world.  I haven't led a particularly sheltered life.  But you know the really shocking this about this?  It was the realisation that they had actually been using the little gas capsules to blow up balloons, not to discharge whipped cream all over one another.  Teenagers of today!  I ask you....
*A Gathering is a smaller venture than a party.  But do not be fooled; there are sub-divisions to Gatherings and you can have small, medium and large.  Guess which we got lumbered with?

It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to

So.  It is Saturday, early afternoon and the Shah and I are out in the front garden discussing its train wreck rurally idyllic properties.  I am laughing at the Shah because he has got his Lopper out and is attempting to lop high branches off some very overgrown (for which read tree-like) shrubs.  He is most proud of his huge tool and refers to it as “Mr Lopper-Lopper” in the style of the Shaggy song, whilst gyrating indelicately.  Unfortunately, he brings to mind Mr Bean more readily than Shaggy...viz:-

So while he is shimmying, we slowly become aware that the sound of huffing and puffing is coming from next door’s front garden - the sort of huffing and puffing that denotes a man trying to achieve something but being buggered if he’s going to ask for help because that would mean he has a 2 inch penis.

Happily, despite our house being further up the hill from these neighbours, our garden is sunken below theirs – don't ask – it’s all part of the shitehole  rich tapestry that constitutes Crap Cottage.  This means that it is perfectly possible for us all to ignore each other in a very English, middle class sort of a way, unless we actively want to say hello.  The Shah and I glance up and over the dividing fence and see a large bunch of helium-filled balloons and a bald patch bobbing about.  The balloons are being wrestled into several black bin liners and crammed into the car.  Mrs Neighbour appears at their front door. “Shall I give you a hand?” she enquires mildly.  “No!  I’m good, I’m done!” snaps Mr Neighbour as balloons bob frantically about his pate (see previous remarks re penis size).  Mrs N remains admirably calm.  “We need to get going,” she remarks in a totally stress-free voice.  I am filled with admiration – by now, I would have been running at the Shah with the biggest carving knife I could find.  And suddenly, I get it.  It is clearly Master Neighbour’s 2^nd birthday party today and he cannot be brought out of the house to be transported to his party until all the balloons are safely hidden in the bin bags in the car.  If he spots them, there will be the mother of all tantrums, tears and snot everywhere and the 2 year old will get quite upset as well.  Lol.  Eventually, it all works out and Master N is led from the house, excitedly shrieking “Daddy!  Daddy!”  Aah bless.  I haven’t seen him for a while and I have a soft spot for children that are not mine own, so I peer over the fence and wave at his happy little face.  Then I see Mrs Neighbour.  FUCK ME!  Always an attractive woman – lithe of limb (I have blogged previously about their personal trainer here) she is TRANSFORMED.  In a glance, I can see that she has a golden tan, her hair has been straightened, she is fully made up and dressed as if she is a walking advert for yummy mummydom – tight, tight jeans, vertiginous heels and a teeny jacket.

Cue wobbly vision and spooky music....it’s all coming back to me now.

The competitive children’s birthday party!  OMG, the number of these we have been to and held ourselves.  The amount of money we have wasted on hiring halls and entertainers, and trawling Toys R Us for suitable crud with which to fill the party bags when all the little dears really wanted was to run around as much as possible (boys) play soppy games (girls) and ultimately beat the shit out of one another fuelled by as many E numbers as they could consume in the space of a couple of hours.

I honestly think I could write a book about the various irritations and indignities we have suffered but, to save you exiting the page early, I offer below some edited highlights of the past 19 years’ worth of children’s parties:-

   

•  Years 1-4.  Dead easy – you just need to invite doting grandparents, any local cousins and few of the girls from the Ante Natal Group. 
•   Years 5-12 – somewhat more difficult.  Now you not only have to outdo yourself every year, you also have to outdo every other child in the class.  You run out of options very quickly.  To add to the complications, your son/daughter refuses to invite Harry/Lottie because they had a spat in the playground last week.  Unfortunately, the mother of Harry/Lottie is your best school gate chum.  Tricky.
•   Years 13 upwards – no problem – you can bung them a few quid to take some mates to the cinema and then for a pizza.  They would rather chew off their own leg than have you accompany them.  You hope they don’t swerve the cinema, spend the money on fags and the afternoon hanging round the shopping centre.
•  Party Bags – a minefield.  The trick is to hand them out at the door as they leave. This way, you avoid Jake/Jessica inspecting the contents and saying things like “Eugh!  This is lame.  And I hate chocolate cake.”  It also avoids Jake/Jessica receiving a clip round the ear.  Accidentally, of course.  The single best party bag toy I ever found was for the son’s 5^th birthday.  They were called “Squish Bugs” and they are no longer available from Toys R Us, sadly.  They featured a large plastic replica of a Stag Beetle which came with a tube of blood (red slime) and a tube of pus (yellow slime) and you filled up the beetle and then stamped on it.  Let joy be unconfined!  The following day, I was greeted by a phalanx of wild-eyed mothers at the school gate.  It was brill and my boy’s status in the playground rose stratospherically for a while.

Then there are these actual events that took place either at parties we have held or those of our friends:-

•           The father who dropped his brat at our daughter’s party and left with a parting shot of “You do know she’s vegetarian, don’t you?”  Sorry no – my psychic powers seem to have deserted me for today, you dick.  We spent the rest of the afternoon trying to wrench bits of cocktail sausage out of his daughter’s mouth, largely unsuccessfully.
•          Our party at the play area where a very large girl managed to pee down a slide with such volume that every child that followed her landed in a puddle at the end.  And cried and cried.
•          Our son’s party where I was newly pregnant with the daughter, hadn’t told anybody  and was feeling like shite.  I had to keep leaving the room every so often to find a quiet place and put my head between my knees.
•          Another soft-play party where we had invited the daughter of an actor who was appearing in The Bill (she was at nursery with our daughter).  She came in beautiful Buckle My Shoe shoes which were promptly stolen by some little toe rag.  We were mortified – the mother was beyond gracious, but the memory brings me out in a cold sweat even today.
•          A friend’s party for her son where a child puked in the ball pit.  Her husband was despatched into the fray and spent an unhappy half hour picking lumps of vom out of the area whilst we jeered from the sidelines.
•          The party where we hired a magician who managed to set fire to himself.  The kids thought it was great.

 Of course, the trick of it all, no matter how stressful, is to appear beautifully coiffed, calm and happy at the end when the other parents come to pick up.  I never managed it, always looking red-faced and sweaty and hugely relieved to get rid of all children.  I bet my neighbour did though.  I bet you’ve all had similar party nightmares…..go on, share!

It's Office Party time!

Aah – office parties I have known....I could get quite misty-eyed about some of them – if only I could, ahem, remember them.

This year’s was a select affair – a bunch of us went out for a meal – don't get me wrong, it was highly enjoyable and really nice to sit down with colleagues and NOT talk about work for once but it was a pale and insipid creature compared with parties now lost to the mists of time and legend.

Most of the best Office Christmas Parties took place in the money-rich 80’s when the cash flowed and nothing was more important to the powers that be than to show their appreciation to their hard-working, hard-playing, high-maintenance staff.  Usually, they were held in hotels and just the change of location from home turf gave endless scope for misbehaviour.  If you could manage to remain remotely sober, you would have seen every cliché imaginable taking place in front of your eyes as senior managers skulked behind pillars with secretaries and pissed-up, predatory, high-ranking women (there were only a few, most of them ball breakers) goosed the post boy.

There would be the inevitable disco where at least one wag (usually Keith from Engineering) would feel it necessary to request ‘Staying Alive’ and then give it his best John Travolta, complete with stomach-churning pelvic thrusts.  Sadly, Keith is desperately unfit and, after a few struts and twirls the audience can  see the damp patches growing under his arms and the rivulets of sweat trickling off his brow and being caught up in his over-sized moustache which he hopes makes him look like Tom Selleck.   As if this were not attractive enough, Keith also begins to pant heavily as the physical effort takes its toll but, unable to back down now and lose face, on and on he goes, strutting like a maniac, trying desperately to keep up with the music but gradually falling a couple of beats behind. 

To distract from his distress, Keith undoes his tie, pulling it slowly and (he hopes) lasciviously from round his neck.  Even he realises that using it to mop his brow would be deeply unsexy so, instead, he ties it around his head like a bad-boy bandana.  By now, his fellow drunkards have formed a ring around him on the dance floor and are clapping to the beat and shrieking their encouragement.  The music pounds relentlessly on.  The DJ can see that Keith has done his job for him and got everyone on their feet and he is not going to let the moment go.  He segues seamlessly into ‘You Should be Dancing’.  Keith is hovering perilously close to cardiac arrest and wondering how much longer these Bee Gee eunuch bastards can warble on for.  He is really struggling now and wishing to God that, if it has to be the bloody Bee Gees, couldn't that spotty little shit behind the decks flip to ‘More Than a Woman’ so that at least he could grab Sally from Accounts and get her onto the floor to share his pain and cop a feel into the bargain. 

Meanwhile, the crowd is sensing that Keith is flagging and they are having none of it.  They redouble their efforts, whooping wildly to encourage him.  Suddenly, all Keith’s dreams come true.  Sally from Accounts joins him of her own accord, undulating across the floor towards him.  She is a little heavier than Keith recalls, large bosoms oozing out of the sides of her ambitiously low cut taffeta ball gown but what the hell?  He smiles a wolfish smile and pulls her towards him into a firm embrace.  Sally recoils slightly as several pints of Keith’s sweat are smeared from his shirt to her dress (borrowed from her best mate and she was hoping to get away with a dash of Febreze to save on the dry cleaning bills).  Sally and Keith then embark on a jive, each twirling the other and getting further and further out of time and more and more dizzy. 

The finale comes when Keith, unable to cope any longer with the physical exertion, the overload of alcohol and the dizziness, vomits copiously during a complicated spin.  It misses Sally but, as she screams in horror and tries to run, she trips and slides across the floor of the disco on a slick of chunder.

You may think the above is just the further workings of a twisted mind but, let me tell you, I went to a legendary office Christmas do where all the above happened pretty much as I have written it. Thank God this was before the era of camera phones.

At one of the best Christmas parties I have ever been to (thrown by the same company) the cabaret was Bob Monkhouse.  Oh yes, you may mock but he was the consummate professional, had clearly taken time to research the company and the individuals in it (no mean feat as there were several hundred people there) and cracked in-jokes and was generally hilariously funny.  Just about the best stand-up act I have ever seen and I’ve seen most of them before and after they became famous.

But then the recession bit and companies began to economise and ‘make do’ with a pared-down offering, usually consisting of drinks and nibbles in the office  with the lights turned off after 9.30 and someone’s tape recorder offering some crackly disco music or, if you were really unlucky, Pete from Despatch who fancied himself as a bit of a DJ and yep, Pete, you really were only a bit of a DJ.

After one such, I went to collect my coat, only to find it in use as, ahem, a shall we say “resting place” for a tired, emotional and lonely couple who were taking refuge in each other’s arms.  And elsewhere. 

Did I wrench my coat from underneath them bawling “give me my feckin’ coat back you dirty bastards and I’m sending you the dry cleaning bill?”  No, reader, I did not.  I saw who was involved and took her coat instead.  Then I wore it into work the next day and waited for her to ask me for it back.  There is sense in sobriety!