Feeling the love

Thank you to the lovely Dulwich Divorcee for passing this honour on to me.....it's come at the right time because David has arranged for his "IT guys" to come and install SAGE and some other gizmos onto our home PC and his laptop so he can "work from home more often". He is quite pleased about this. I, on the other hand, remember his rageous rant of last week when the IT guys completely - and here I am repeating his words exactly - "ballsed up the entire office system which ensured that all of our outgoing emails were copied to everyone in our address book and norsed up our internet connection and did something nasty to our firewall". I remember it well. David's cheeky email to me, along the lines of "am feeling fruity today, must be the weather" was catapulted to several people in several companies in the City and beyond - I believe as far as Canada. He only narrowly avoided major disaster (and a written warning) because the Second Big Boss' email to a company specialising in Thai brides (advising he would consider "no-one over 25") was far higher up on the gossip/disciplinary scale. Said Second Big Boss is now looking for a Thai bride during what I believe is called "gardening leave".

Anyway. Where was I? Oh yes! Thank you again Dulwich Divorcee......I shall wear my award with pride and, before the IT guys arrive on Monday "any time between 9am and 6pm", would like to pass this award onto The Dotterel, Elsie Button, Millennium Housewife, Nappy Valley, Working Mum and Potty Diaries.

A tale of two pregnancies

Lydia is not entirely sure she’s done the right thing in allowing Matthew to a) impregnate her, b) move into her house and c) put her beloved sports car into Exchange and Mart and make suggestions about a “family car”. In my humble opinion it’s all too late to be thinking about this, she gives birth in about seven weeks.

“I mean, what was I thinking?” she demanded yesterday morning as she dug into an Ayres strawberry gateau without the aid of a fork. “He farts like a dray horse, he thinks Blackadder is wet-yourself funny, he eats cold baked beans from the tin and has started to call me Mummy Bunny. What am I doing?”

Wrecking a perfectly good cake, was my initial thought but I knew what she really meant. “Isn’t Matt the guy who saved you when you were at your lowest ebb, gave you the chance to be a mother and makes you laugh until you think you’re going to choke?” I said, wildly paraphrasing several conversations we’ve previously had on the subject. Just because I’m Matt’s sort of step-mother she thinks I want to hear the ins and outs of their relationship. I don’t.

“I know, I know, but he’s 26 and I’m……a lot older than that and I’m just worried that at the first sign of a pert bottomed blonde he’s going to take one look at the hag he’s saddled with and do a disappearing act.” Half the cake had been demolished now and she was swirling the cream all over the place.

I could see her point. Matt announced on their first date that he doesn’t really “do brunettes”. Lydia has burnished brown hair. On their second date he informed her that he’s got a “thing about pert bots, the perfect handful”. According to Lyds she hooted with laughter but then spent the next three weeks wondering what the hell he was doing with her as her bottom “was spreading as fast as melted butter”.

“Still” I said, rescuing a slice of cake from her grasp “He’s still with you and really looking forward to becoming a dad”. “Really? Has he told you that?” she demanded. Not really, I said, but he’d told David he was “dead keen on being a dad and you know, like everything”. For Matthew that’s over-excitement on a grand scale. Lydia didn’t look convinced. Apparently the cot had arrived on Saturday morning and she had to practically force him to put it together. “He said we had ages! Ages! I haven’t even started painting the nursery yet!”. More cake was mangled. “He doesn’t want to engage with anything relating to the baby – it kicked last night and he refused to put his hand on my stomach because it was too weird for words. He’s talking about going to Mexico next summer – how the hell can I take a baby to Mexico?”. I reassured her that Matt had been talking about going to Mexico for as long as I had known him and that it would never happen.

“Could you talk to him? Find out what he’s really thinking and feeling?” she pleaded. I laughed out loud at this. Matt and I don’t converse, we chat. Matt and I don’t talk about our feelings – I ask if he’s okay and he grunts. Needless to say he never asks how I am. I did the next best thing and told her I’d ask David to ask him.

At this point Janey arrived, sans Scarlett but with burgeoning bump barely covered by a T-shirt that read “Up the duff – again”. Immediately the baby discussions took on a competitive note:

Janey: I get morning sickness all day
Lydia: I get morning sickness all day and all night

Janey: I craved sardines with Scarlett and pickled eggs with this one. I had pickled eggs on toast for breakfast this morning
Lydia: I’ll eat anything and everything in weird combinations – for breakfast I had strawberry jam on cheesy Doritos

Janey: I’m peeing pretty much on the hour every hour
Lydia: I’m peeing so much now that I’m thinking of getting some TENA lady pads so I don’t even have to get up to pee.

At this point both Janey and I looked askance, Lydia squirmed uncomfortably on my cushioned kitchen chair and admitted she was pulling our legs. I don’t think she was. “I nearly threw up in the font on Sunday” Janey said, getting the conversation back on track. The gateau was fast losing its charms as Janey started wading through it with shocking pink painted nails. “Mind you, that vicar was getting right on my tits, banging on about religion”.

Quite.

Last night, over dinner, I asked David to have a word with Matthew, outlining some of Lydia’s concerns and worries. He looked at me blankly, dropped his fork and swallowed heavily. “What? I don’t need to talk to him! He’s fine! Top notch. Can’t wait to be a dad! Dead excited!” he said with a nervous laugh before proclaiming himself “absolutely full, thank you darling” and heading upstairs for one of his marathon shower sessions.

The End: Big Brother 9

For those of you who have been watching I didn't want Rachel to win, I was rooting for Rex. For those of you who haven't been watching then you probably don't care BUT.......this advert (which was nicely tied in with the song that featured for 24 hours non stop in the House) was in one of the ad breaks and I love it! Big hair and big voice akimbo!

Hello, goodbye

“I need about three quiches, at least 100 sausage rolls and some carrots cut up into poncy little sticks so we can dip ‘em in the gua….gwa….that green stuff that looks like a face mask”. This was Janey’s opening gambit when I answered my ringing mobile this afternoon. It seems we have dispensed with the usual greetings in my family: I spoke to Auntie Daisy this morning who greeted me with “Do you know of a hairdresser for a woman of my age that doesn’t do blue rinses?” and yesterday Bea responded to my “hello!” with “Do you know that that bloody girl has gone and done now?” It seems that On the Point of Anorexia Now Au Pair took Ian and Caitlin to Surrey Quays Shopping Centre and bought them a box of Krispy Kreme Doughnuts from Tescos. Each. “The poor darlings are projectile vomiting pure sugar!” Bea wailed. I quite forgot why I was ringing her.

Anyway. Janey. Scarlett’s christening is this Sunday and Janey has been let down by “Darren’s aunt Lola who can’t do the quiches or the sausage rolls now because she’s going to a bike rally now on the Saturday and won’t have time” And the carrot sticks and guacamole, I enquired. Janey paused to burp delicately “Sorry, bloody heartburn, I reckon this baby is lighting a fire in there. Right. Well. I had a chat with Bea the other day and she suggested that we go a bit upmarket with the food”. “Upmarket?” I said with a raised eyebrow, remembering almost word for word Bea’s recent email on the subject.

“Yeah, apparently, chicken nuggets, pork pies and mini eggs aren’t exactly the done thing.” Janey went on, sounding fairly miffed “So I thought we’d counter balance it with some posh nosh, soooooooooo, instead of chicken nuggets I’m going for goujons with barbecued sauce for dipping rather than ketchup. Would mini Kievs be better than mini eggs?”

I professed not to know. I really didn’t want Bea standing there with a stone cold mini Kiev and glaring at me accusingly. I’ve agreed to buy the quiches, refused point blank to have anything to do with sausage rolls and promised to buy a strawberry gateau from Ayres. Just as I was saying goodbye and about to hang up she bellowed “Oh, and can you get me some of that gwak-crap too? If I see anything gloopy at the moment I want to throw up! ”

Our farewells are going the same way as our greetings I fear.

Whopper, anyone?

Fancy a Burger King Whopper? Yes? To collect your vouchers click here!

Skool rules

Well. Do you know, it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. Mac was up at six, ready by seven and got extremely irritated with me because he couldn’t go to school that early. The children of the Reception class were practically gagging to get into the building while parents and grandparents stood forlornly in the playground watching as their bright, bouncing chicklets bounded and bonded. Mac was very excited to see Jonathan and the two boys were comparing satchels before you could say “pencil case”. Dawn, Jonathan’s mum, was pleased to see me and informed me that Overly Hearty Mummy had just bowled up with half of the family all crowding around Her Precious Jemima all “weeping and wailing”. I felt quite calm and assured compared to some of the others. One mother was getting short shrift from her daughter – we caught up with her as we left the playground (abandoning our children to the education system) when she was telling all who would listen that her daughter “wanted a Hannah Montana lunchbox and isn’t speaking to me because I could only find a High School Musical one”.

I spent the day wondering what Mac was doing but rallied enough to stuff the chicken for dinner and make a chocolate cake for tea. Rosie rang, the sound of wine pouring into a glass in the background, and revealed that Ben had to be prised away from her that morning by a “snotty nosed teacher” who informed Rosie that he would be “far happier when he knows you’ve gone away and left him”. Surely that can’t be right?

David had promised to be home by 3pm at the latest so he could do the evening school run but he came home early to find me mooning over a pair of teeny tiny baby socks. “Please tell me they’re for either Lydia or Janey” he said, a look of trepidation on his face. “Do you remember when Mac was small enough to fit into a pair of these?” I wailed. “Hm, something’s burning” was his reply. That man can be so heartless sometimes.

My pride and joy has been home for over half an hour now and full of what he’s done today at school. He loved it. He loves his teacher Mr S, he’s sharing a desk with Jonathan and “there aren’t too many girls”. Today they learnt all about what school means and talked about all the things they can learn. His “homework” for this evening is to think about who lives in his house with him (he has declared this “easy peasy”) so that they can talk about it tomorrow. He says he can’t wait for tomorrow and wishes he could go to school every day but he doesn’t want sandwiches in his lunch box he wants “those triangle things that Smita's mum got her". Dairylea triangles? Samosas? Who knows?

However, I was somewhat thrown when he told me that he is in the Dildo Group and has got a “dildo on his coat peg and dildo stickers for my book”. Once I’d picked myself up off the floor and calmed David’s muffled protestations of “that can’t be right, Good God!” I saw the picture of an armadillo stuck to his Form Book, resumed my breathing and have vowed to spend this evening getting his pronunciation right.

Not long now.....

It seems as though we're destined not to find a weekend retreat. It was all too depressing yesterday - the house looked lovely from the outside but inside it looked most unlovely. In fact, I was so depressed about it I made David stop off at Pizza Hut in Surrey Quays and ate a small Italian meat feast on the way home.

But to matters more interesting. Mac is now beside himself with excitement at the prospect of starting Big School on Wednesday and wants it "to be Wednesday now". I, on the other hand, am weeping and wailing (silently, I don't want to scar him for life by being a Clingy Mother) and trying to swallow the great big lump that's formed in my throat. "It's not as if he hasn't been at nursery for the past year" my oh-so practical husband pointed out when he found me crying over the highly polished "proper" black school shoes yesterday. That's not the point I said in muted tones - he was at nursery, now he's at school. There's a difference.

Nursery means Story Time on the Story Mat, Colouring in with Crayons and, for those that wanted it, Afternoon Naps in the Rest Room. School means Numbers and Learning and Break Time Without Orange Juice and Rich Tea Biscuits. I'm worried he won't like it, he'll have no friends, he'll hate his teacher or he'll get bullied. David is convinced that he'll love it, he'll have loads of friends, he'll adore his teacher and that he's too nice to be bullied. David also sees the glass as half full, not half empty.

I'm distracted to the point of distraction and find myself unable to think past Wednesday morning at 8.45am. Janey rang this morning to talk about the christening "do" on Sunday and I was very snappy with her. "Oh God, you're not sending him off to war, you'll be five minutes drive away from him!" she said when I revealed my problem. Auntie Ivy's problem is more pressing - she failed her driving test earlier today and, when driving home and in mid flow of what she thought went wrong on her test, wrote off the driving school car when she mounted the pavement and smashed into a bollard. Her instructor, a "gentle man called Steve", cried like a baby. "He'd only had the car a week apparently" Ivy said when I rang to see if she was okay.

Undeterred, she's signed up with another driving school for an intensive course and has put in for her test again.