In which the Shah emerges victorious

The Shah is a man who has certain strong likes and dislikes in life.  He is nothing if not decisive in his opinion of right and wrong.  And one of his major bugbears is those people who insist on driving in the middle lane of the motorway when the slow lane is empty. 

Returning from the Midlands on Saturday, he came across one such. The Shah  is in the slow lane and so he pulls out into the middle and then into the fast lane in order to pass Lord Twattington, sailing along in the middle, and flashes his headlights as he does so.  His Lordship becomes enraged at this slight upon his road sense, or lack of.  As the Shah pulls back over, Lord Twattington puts his foot down and shoots past, his face contorted with rage, making a series of digital gestures which suggest that the Shah might like to become intimate with himself with a view to reproduction.  The Shah is entertained by having inspired such ire and laughs at the good Lord as he accelerates into the distance.  

Unfortunately for Lord Twattington, waiting round the bend was a car containing a couple of members of Her Majesty's Constabulary who, having nothing else to do, set off in hot pursuit.

As the Shah sailed past a little further down the road, doing a sedate 70mph, he smiled and waved at his Lordship.  Sadly, his greeting went unanswered as the good Lord was busy explaining himself to PC Plod at the time.

It was one of those small victories that just delights the heart and it absolutely made the Shah's day.

The Rover's Return

No, this is not some Coronation Street themed post featuring the travails of Rita, Gail and the comatose Nick (how can they tell the difference?)

No - the rover I am referring to is the darling daughter who returned home for the weekend no more than 2 weeks after we last said goodbye.  Of course, she came home for a party, not to see her aged parents or her (now gainfully employed)  brother - don't be daft.  Still, it was remarkable the change that a scant fortnight of living away from home had wrought.

On the first night, I found her in the kitchen stroking the dishwasher and crooning.  Slightly perturbed, I asked what she was up to.  "It's just that I miss the dishwasher so much," she replied wistfully.  "I never appreciated it until now!  And mum, the house is so CLEAN!"

Later on, she admitted that I was right about one aspect of domesticity.  And that is that there is a distinct difference between cleaning and tidying.  I am in the habit of tidying up the night before the cleaners come.  The children have always derided me loudly - "Why are you cleaning when the cleaners are coming tomorrow?  You're so old/dumb/mad/loony," (perm any one from 4). Fruitlessly, I tried to explain that I want the cleaners to clean not tidy up, but the howls of derision drowned me out.

Now, lo and behold!  She is transformed and proudly demonstrated to her brother that this area is untidy, while this is dirty.  He looked so interested.

The bit that really made me laugh was her disgust that her flatmates can't tell the difference between a tea towel and a hand towel.  "It's revolting!" she cried indignantly.  "They dry their dishes on the hand towel and they dry their hands on the tea towel.  I had to sit them all down and explain it to them!" 

I bet she was popular.  I don't care.  Somewhere along the line, some of my incessant nagging went in and stuck.  I can die happy!

Unification part 2

Some years ago, the alert amongst you will recall that I wrote about the great joy of seeing elder child off to Uni.  Somehow, three years have flashed past and it is the turn of not-so-tiny daughter to fly the nest.

If I thought he was bad at getting himself organised, she was so, so much worse.  Her idea of preparation was to a) spend most of the summer either nipping from Festival to Festival or b) island-hopping in Greece or c) spend what little time she stayed at home, out clubbing till 5am.  Every night.

24 hours before leaving, she had still not packed and was asking questions like "Am I getting a student loan?"  Me: "you applied for one, didn't you?"  Her (disinterested voice) "Dunno.  Can't remember."

On the day, I sent the Shah out to top up the tyres on the car, seeing has how it was going to be carrying an extra 3cwt of crap several hundred miles. He came back to glumly announce that one of the tyres had a "dimple" in it. Several minutes of stressful shrieking followed, mainly from moi and mainly along the lines of "what the fuck does that mean?  Speak English FFS!"  What it turned out to mean was that we needed a new tyre pronto but there was no way to get one on a Sunday morning.  We had a v-e-r-y s-l-o-w drive to Uni.
Daughter posed nicely for a picture in the car before we left, putting on her best smile for blogging purposes, comme ca:-

With Marmite Toast in hand..

But chums, I have to tell you that this was the reality...

Mardy as...

We got there and hauled all her possessions up to the 5th floor of her Halls of Residence - thank God for lifts.  We all queued nicely and patiently while one family (who had brought mum, dad, undergrad daughter, three smaller siblings, two uncles and a Granny) took up all the space and got in everyone's way.

I shared a lift with one dad who said grimly "I reckon I need to do one more trip up there and that's it and we'll BE FREE and we can go and CELEBRATE!!"  a feeling echoed by 99% of the parents there, I'll bet.

Her brother was on holiday in Corfu with his girlfriend at the time and insisted on sending us thoroughly irritating pictures like this:-

Damn his eyes!

So I retaliated with the view from Daughter's new bedroom window in the pouring rain....

Yes - a lovely car park and, in the distance, ASDA, Halfords and Maccy D's. We went to CHAVDA to stock her up with food etc.  Somehow, we spent £183. God knows how this happened, given that everything there costs an average of 25p.  The Shah was very, very unhappy.

Still, she seems to have settled in well.  The house is much quieter and much, MUCH tidier but also much emptier without her.  Her room looked like the traditional tip when we left her and, of course, she has discovered that she's left half her life here "OMG I forgot my straighteners!  How soon can you come and visit me?!"

Nothing changes!

More ways to tell you have been married too long

Recently, I offered you an idiot's guide to assessing your marriage here. Since writing that, I have suffered excessively in the name of marriage research and come up with yet more, incontrovertible proof that I have been married far too long.

Like many people, I am not great in the mornings.  I like to haul myself out of bed and shuffle around doing the shower/hair/tea thing solo and in silence. After a hefty dose of caffeine, I may be able to manage a few words, but not before.

The Shah, by sorry contrast, is irritatingly cheerful at any ungodly hour.  He thinks it's a huge wheeze to stand in front of the mirror, blocking my view whilst I am trying to dry my hair and avoid the Lion King look, pulling faces and leaping about like a loon.  It drives me to the borders of insanity and beyond.

He also talks.  I don't do talking until I get to work, by which time I might have just about woken up and I certainly don't want to discuss the ins and outs of high finance then or ever, to be honest.

Clearly, this perturbs the Shah and, of late, he has gone to ever more extreme lengths to get my attention in the mornings.  This week, he re-enacted something he had found on YouTube.

Chums - imagine the full, pouting horror of having this dancing around your bed at 6.30 in the morning:- 

WARNING - THIS IS NOT FOR THE FAINT OF HEART OR THE WEAK OF STOMACH!

Kill me now ....

Texts and Rugs and Cinnamon Rolls

Gosh chums - where has the summer gone?  Not having been away (saving ourselves for a big holiday in October) I seem to have had very little R 'n R and a great deal of driving miles and miles and doing things for others and not much for myself.  There's been lots going on - we celebrated son's graduation with a very creditable 2:1 and his new job which he will start at the end of this month.  My mum turned 90. NINETY!  Amazing - especially considering some of her lifestyle choices. Ahem.

I have had a birthday (although not a significant one) and daughter has turned feral and has hardly been seen.  I wrote about her Ayia Napa activities here, following which she was home for a week before taking off again - back to Greece for a spot of island hopping with her two best friends. Nice to be rich, huh?  She got back at midnight the day before her A level results came out.  Having heard all about the holiday, we got to sleep at 2am and I was woken by her jumping on my bed at 7.30 shrieking "I got in! I got in!"  so, although we had no idea of her grades at that point, we knew that her first choice Uni had pushed the 'yes' button and she is onto her chosen Journalism course. Of course we're thrilled for her.  And for ourselves.  There's no doubt that we will miss her madly but, to be frank dear reader, if she stayed at home, one of us would die.  And anyone else who has lived with a teenage girl will know what I mean by that!

Which leads me on to the topic of this post.  Ah yes - a visit to Ikea was deemed necessary to stock her up with requisites for the great departure in a couple of weeks' time.  Naturally, she had been out the night before and was a wraith at 10am when I woke her.  It took almost 2 hours to get her out of the house, via some "like, really urgent" phone calls to a friend and friend's mother which involved a degree of arse covering on behalf of the friend and which I chose not to ask too closely about.

We live roughly half way between two branches of the Swedish superstore so we had the enviable choice of driving to the shithole that is Wembley or the shithole that is Croydon.  Whoop, whoop.  Several hours of crawling round motorways, dual carriageways and gyratory systems later, we landed up in the gorgeous environs of Wembley. Famous for its stadium and, er, its stadium.

Naturally, Ikea was mobbed - mainly by stressed-looking women and bored-looking 18 year olds whose answer to every question was the same.

Mother: Will you need cups and plates or are they provided?
Teen: Dunno
Mother:  Shall we get some of these towels?
Teen: Dunno
Mother:  Would you like one of those nice rugs?
Teen: Dunno
and on and on and on.  My own child seemed to have mastered the art of shopping with one hand whilst texting non stop with the other, pausing only to complain that "there is like NO signal down here".

I'm certain they pump something into the air in Ikea stores.  Why else would I ALWAYS find myself unable to resist about fifty quids' worth of tat?  Why do I trot round the Marketplace grabbing fistfuls of paper napkins, yet more glasses, mugs, kitchen knives, plants, and CANDLES, sodding stinking CANDLES that I could well do without?  It drives the Shah insane and I can understand why.

Yesterday, I exited £183 lighter.  A hundred and eighty three quid! FFS! And that was spent on what?  Well, it was spent on this:-

Doesn't look like much but doesn't everyone need two sets of fairy lights and a butterfly picture?

In the queue to pay, we got chatting to another lady whose daughter crossly accused her mother of not loving her as much as I love my girl on the grounds that I had bought so much more stuff.  I glumly suggested that she should take lessons in mother-conning from my daughter and the pair of them sniggered complicitly.

To add final insult to injury, it seems that Ikea no longer sells packets of cinnamon rolls, beloved of both children for years.  It's all the excuse I need not to go back for a very long time....

Stuff my mum says...

My mum is very elderly now and, although her memory is failing, she is still as sharp as a tack in other respects.  Never try and get the better of her where money is concerned!

However, one thing that has always mystified her is technology of any sort.  Take her to an ATM and she talks herself through the whole experience, including bellowing her PIN number out loud and is then inclined to turn to the crowd patiently queuing behind us to let them know exactly why she has chosen that chain of numbers and why they are so memorable and throwing in information about her current account balance for good measure (true story). 

Try and answer a question such as "so what exactly IS the internet?" in words comprehensible to someone who has absolutely no concept of what a computer can do.  Equally tricky is "so what is a website?"  I tried explaining the internet as a giant encyclopaedia - it was the nearest analogy I could come up with at short notice but it kind of fell down when she asked how you could use an encyclopaedia to do your shopping. (I told you she was sharp).

Along with venerable age and a failing memory comes the disappearance of social filters.  She speaks as she finds.  Always. Loudly.  She has finally accepted that she has to go round the supermarket in a wheelchair.  She actually rather likes it because she no longer has to concentrate on wheeling a trolley and staying upright so she can eye up good looking men instead.  Really.

Unfortunately, eyeing up is not all she does.  She feels the need to comment on abso-bloody-lutely everyone and is relentlessly and unapologetically un-politically correct.  Consequently comments like "Phwoar - look at him - what a hunk!" and "Look at the size of her bottom!" are torrential and I have had to affect selective deafness and an innocent face.  Once I thought I could get away with an apologetic shrug and silently mouthing "Alzheimer's, poor old thing" at an affronted shopper.  After all, I was behind her pushing the wheelchair - she couldn't see or hear me, could she?   She turned on me instantly.  "I DO BLOODY NOT HAVE BLOODY ALZHEIMER'S" she roared.  "CHEEKY COW!"  And that was the last time I tried that trick.

Along with the falling away of social filters comes the fruity language.  I have written about this before here and, frankly, things haven't improved much.  Over lunch today she mused about her home situation.

Mum:  You know I have those carers in every day?
Me: Yes - why?  Is there a problem?
Mum:  No - they're very nice girls.  But every so often I just want to say "Oh just piss off!"

She still reads a broadsheet newspaper every day.  She maintains an incisive interest in the world around her.  Although popular culture confuses her, she is still keen to understand it.  Which is probably why she asked me recently "Darling - what exactly is a blow job?"

Reader - I told her....