How to be a student

With brief thanks to the Almighty, son has returned to Uni. There are some heavy duty exams on the horizon so I spent a long time creating a ton of home cooked food for him to take back and freeze. On the wish list was "Bolognaise and soup".  I bought a heap of leeks and potatoes for that old favourite.  Son looks puzzled.  "Oh just tomato would be great, thanks."  Grr. So, many hours of slaving over a hot stove later, it was all stacked in the fridge ready to go. Then we had a chat along these lines: 


Son: actually mum, I need a bit more stuff. At chance I could borrow your credit card for a Tesco shop? 


Me: er, well okay. But can you make sure you buy own brands not branded goods? It makes a huge difference to the cost.... 


Son: er wot?  Oh yeah, suuure....(looks disinterested) 


Fast forward several hours. Son has trekked to supermarket and made several phone calls in the process among the lines of "where's the bread?" (same aisle as the eggs) and "can I get any beer?" (no).  He returns home, shoves a ton of food into the fridge and leaves the rest in bags by the back door, ready to go.  I take a little look.  Then I take a closer look.  Then I look at the till receipt.


This is son's idea of buying own-brand goods:- 

I attempt to remonstrate with him.  He looks puzzled, then bored.  I give up.


Some time later, we get an email.  He sends us a link to a video which (he says) is a hugely accurate vignette of student life.  Made us laugh - enjoy!

The Motherhood Meme

So here I am, lying on my sickbed, dying of the cold from hell whilst wheezing attractively into one of Kleenex's finest and thinking about my blog with no great love. "Bloody blog. Needs more attention than your average newborn. Got no inspiration. Hack, sniff. Wish I'd never given birth to the sodding thing..." when up pops Sarah Hague with an offer of a meme. 


Now there is the distinct possibility that Sarah has a Machiavelllian streak in her and is playing on my conscience because I realise I still owe her a meme on the theme of 'firsts' (I haven't forgotten - I'm hunting for a particularly apt photo to go with it...) but I feel sufficiently guilty to give this one a go. Buckle your seat belts...


Describe motherhood in three words:- Let's go for joy, expense and exhaustion. 


How does your experience differ from your mother's? In a word, convenience. My mother had no pre-prepared baby food, no freezer, no disposable nappies. When I had my son she asked me if I would be using traditional Terry nappies. I felt forced to inform her that the sight of her scraping the contents of my brother's nappies down the loo had scarred me for life. Why would I want to do that when the God of Pampers had been sent to answer my prayers? 


What is the hardest thing about being a mother? Very easy - the lack of sleep. Having babies has ruined my Circadian rhythms and I never seem to have regained a normal sleep pattern. When they were tiny, I was awake, fretting, with them in my arms. Now they are grown, I'm awake, fretting, with them in the King's Arms and wondering what state they will come home in.


How has motherhood changed you? See above. And below. 

20 years later...

CQ pre-children

Nuff said. 

What do you hope for your children? Health, happiness and that they make a good choice of care home for me. 


What do you fear for your children? That they can't afford to pay my care home fees. I hope you're reading this, kids. I'm packing my suitcase and I'm moving in. Huzzah! 


What makes it all worthwhile? Once all the ranting and the threats are done, e.g. "Just wash the sodding cat bowls, or your allowance stops NOW!" it's the little things that count. On day one of the cold from hell when I was languishing at home, son popped out to get me a paper and daughter came home with this....

(my fave - you can keep your 70% cacao stuff - this is the biz). 


The Shah meanwhile, sent a loving, caring text. It read 


"Home late, team mtg + drinks. wots for dinna?"  


Aah bless - all's right with the world.

Bricking it...

Poor little Samantha Brick.  How she has suffered!  For the uninitiated and the disinterested, let me just explain that Samantha Brick is a journalist who, 2 days ago, wrote an article in the Daily Mail bleating stating that her life is a nightmare just because she’s so beautiful.  Before I continue, I feel honour-bound to explain to my non-Brit readers that the Daily Mail is a comic for grown-ups which masquerades as a tabloid newspaper in the UK.

Anyway, let us not divert our eyes from the lovely Samantha a moment longer than necessary because, reader, I feel her pain.

How her life story resonates with mine!  Our daily existence seems to travel along a spookily parallel path because I too am blighted by excessive beauty.  I am beautiful within and without – let me elucidate (you see?  I even use beautiful language!)

Samantha Brick

CQ

It started right from childhood when I recall a maiden aunt comparing me to a fine watercolour with the words “she’s no oil painting, is she?”.  I was thrilled!  That was the remark that was to set the tone for the rest of my life.  All through school my utter wonderfulness meant that the other girls couldn't bear to be around me, lest they seemed bland by comparison.  In PE for example, when the sports captains were choosing teams, they would always leave me till the end – saving the best till last you see!  Then they would nobly fight over who got to have me on their team – “you have her!” – “no YOU have her!” they would cry until, at last, the teacher would shout “someone take her for God’s sake, the lesson’s nearly over.”  I was moved by their generosity of spirit.

Queuing up for lunch, the boys behind me would always want to feel the silken touch of my flowing hair.  Sometimes, their enthusiasm would overcome them and they might pull it just a teensy bit in their youthful exuberance.  But hey – no harm done and none intended, I’m sure.  The pain usually wore off after a couple of hours.

As an adult, more praise and worship was to come my way.  At work, I regularly attracted attention.   Sadly, my first boss was terribly clumsy and rather selfish because he frequently dropped things and then asked me to pick them up for him.  When I bent over, he would call to his colleagues, “fuck me, is there an eclipse today?” so blinded was he by my beauty!  Nowadays, I work in a school and the pupils often comment as I sashay down the corridors.  Of course, I am often preoccupied with work matters and am a little distracted.  The students are kind enough to notice this and I hear them whisper “she’s so sad” as I stride by.  How uncommonly perceptive!

Occasionally, people like to have a little joke with me.  Only yesterday, I was at the till in the supermarket, trying to find my purse in my handbag.  Suddenly, I heard the assistant say, “Get on with it, you stupid bitch!” but then I realised that she was talking to the blind man behind me whose Labrador was so busy humping my leg (see – even animals love me!) that it hadn’t guided its hapless owner to the conveyor belt. 

The Shah often calls me “Broad in the Beam” – obviously referring to my exquisite smile!  He also likes to celebrate my allure with a pretty nickname.  Yes, he often refers to me as Misshapen!  I think he means Miss Shapely, but English is not his first language, so I don’t want to make him feel uncomfortable by pointing out his little error.

My children also love to celebrate their pride in my good looks and all-round gorgeousness.  They have dreamt up a series of acronyms which they use as nicknames for me – these are just a small sample:-

MUG – mum’s utterly gorgeous

MOOSE - mum of outstandingly special elegance

LOSER – Lady of strikingly elegant radiance

FUGLY – Fabulous, utterly glamorous, lithe and young

Can you come up with some more, I wonder?

Yours in utter fabulosity,

CQ xx

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!

The difference between boys and girls...

And here, Ladies and Gentlemen, we have a neat illustration of the difference between boys and girls, courtesy of Mother's Day.


Here is my daughter's card.

It is hand-made and there is a beautiful, loving message inside.

Compare and contrast with this TOWIE-like* offering from number 1 son...

And here is the message inside it...

I'm afraid I've super-sized it so that you can read the scrawl.  I'm hoping to shame him into producing something better next year.

Oink oink, flap flap...

*For my non-Brit readers, TOWIE stands for 'The Only Way is Essex' which is a "dramality" show - pretty much the equivalent of Jersey Shores or The Hills and no, I have never seen a single episode of any of them...and I'm proud of it!

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?