Flying the nest

What to do, what to do? My friend Rosie (mum of Mac's erstwhile Best Chum Ben when they're not falling out) has offered to take Mac camping this weekend. Just the Friday, Saturday and Sunday and home on Monday. In a tent. On a campsite in Camber Sands. He's keen, David's keen, me - not so keen.

It's the whole cutting-the-apron-strings thing for me. I know in my heart that, whilst my pride and joy is flinging random items of clothing into his rucksack and marvelling at the adventures he and Ben are going to have, he's going to get fifteen miles down the road and demand to return home to "mummy". Of course, I could be totally wrong and this could be just the thing he needs, four days (well three and bit) without me fussing, primping and generally worrying about him. Am I? He probably won't even miss me one little bit will he? Moan, mutter, grumble.....

Not that I've mollycoddled him. Much. He's like me, a homebody, happiest when he's within his own four walls. Janey is bemoaning the age of her children: "wish they could go off with their friends for a long weekend" she said as she dug into a slice of pizza (not before picking off the mushrooms with neon pink talons). Bea is encouraging me to be "brave darling, and cut the ties that bind". This was said as she packed bags for both Caitlin and Ian who are heading off to the Norfolk Broads with Flavia the Au Pair on Saturday for a whole week. "You and David can enjoy a second honeymoon" she went on and then informed me that while her "babies" were away, she and Stephen would be going Tantric. When I told David he asked me where they were flying to. There must be a book I can buy him, you know, a beginners guide or something.

Anyway. A decision has to be made tonight. Rosie will be ringing me shortly and I know that I have to say yes. My tiny boy is upstairs, lying awake with excitement as I type. The contents of his wardrobe are all over the floor and he's already packed some toys that he "might" share with Ben.

David has already offered to pop into Boots at London Bridge tomorrow and bring me back some Kalms.

Malfunction!

I'm not quite sure why - perhaps its the stormy weather and/or electrical build up in the atmosphere - but things have started to go wrong in this house. I mean, even more than usual. David's Blackberry took on a life of its own on Monday when it started ringing random entries in his address book. I hear Big Boss was rather concerned to get a phone call from David at half past nine at night, especially when all he could hear was "oikish contestants on Big Brother shouting about lentils". David is now mortified that Big Boss fears he is addicted to the reality show and has laid the blame fully at my door. I won't mention that David himself is rather keen on the new arrival Bea but, he assures me, it's only because she "reminds me of you darling". Hm.


Which reminds me....last week I told Janey that there were new housemates and chucked in those names I could remember. "BEA?" Janey boomed from Sydenham. "BEA as in OUR BEA?" she screeched. Once I'd explained the mix-up she foghorned with relief "Bloody HELL, I did wonder what the hell she would make of sleeping in a communal bedroom!". Our Bea was not impressed by even the merest slightest suggestion she would lower herself to appear on reality television as you can imagine. Anyway, I digress. Malfunctioning electrical items. Right.


Apart from David's wayward Blackberry, we've had:

• the Sky remote control that keeps informing us that we need to replace its batteries or there will be consequences. So far, since Friday evening, it's had six sets of two batteries. I'm all for leaving it as I'm convinced it's just panicking because it wants attention but David is reluctant to let that happen because he'd struggle to operate the system (and can't go half an hour without swapping channels)


• our doorbell (battery operated) that keeps ringing of its own accord. We've taken to ignoring it now even though the dogs go mad barking each time it happens - anyone who desperately wants access to our abode will know to knock on the door. I was told off this morning by a Jehovah's Witness who, when we failed to answer her ding dong, came to our open living room window and instructed me that "when someone rings your bell, you are expected to answer it". I stared at her open mouthed and spluttered an apology before realising that she had her head thrust into my house. My subsequent comment won me no favours and, no doubt, no place in Heaven.
  
• Sky Broadband that only connects when it feels like it. I can almost hear the PC saying "yah boo sucks, I don't want to upload today". This has also affected the laptop - Mac offered to let me use his but, as it's a Fisher Price one, I declined gracefully.


• my mobile that only sends texts when I urge it to do so. For example, the text I sent to Charlie only went after I waved the handset in the air and said "send, you git, SEND!"
  

Still. It's not that bad. At the moment the blackberry is silent, as is the doorbell. David has just selected the Poseiden Adventure on Channel 4+1 on Sky and, as you can see I'm broadbanding.

Although I keep hearing what sounds like an air raid siren. Can anyone in the environs of Nunhead hear it too? Should we be worried?

Fit Flops

This is fast turning into a once a week blog isn't it.......I must remedy that!

I'm currently aching all over (no, not swine flu - or as Mac calls it "swing flu") but because of a present from my beloved husband. When he presented me with a pair of Fit Flops as a reward for getting - ahem, drum roll please - 97% on my First Aid course I wasn't sure whether to hit him or not. What was he suggesting? I know that I could do with losing a few (!!!) pounds and toning up a tad but, quite frankly, I was a tidge insulted.

Not any longer. They are fabulous. I can't praise them highly enough. They tone you up whilst you are walking, making your leg and bum muscles work harder. They're ergonomic. And that's the extent of my knowledge on the subject. Apart from knowing that, after wearing them last Friday for half an hour whilst I walked Mac to school and back, I came back home, kicked them off and felt the buuuurn. And I mean buuuurn.....my buttocks (excuse my French) ached as if I'd done an extensive work out. And I'd stopped off at Ayres on the way back for a doughnut!

Bea, naturally, is horrified and is beseeching me to "get rid of them darling, its practically porn for your feet, it's ugly, offensive and......eurgh!". She's forbidden me to wear them in Dulwich (and therefore anywhere near her house) and resembled Davina McCall even more than she usually does (in tone and actions) when she came face to face with the offending items this evening. "Aaargh, how COULD you come to the DOOR wearing them? Eeeeeshk!" she squealed before running down the path and leaping into her chauffeur driven Mercedes.

I dread to think what she'd say now: I'm wearing my Fit Flops and my Slanket.

Could do better

Well. I'm pretty sure that the results of Mac's first parents evening matched mine. His art work was displayed on the wall, examples of his Numbers and Words were blu-tacked to his table and his teacher, by the time we got to him, was suffering from a rictus grin and a bad hair day.

The general gist was "Mackenzie is a likeable, friendly student who gets on well with his classmates" which I naturally took to mean "class clown" - just like me. Also "Mackenzie needs to listen to instructions carefully and sometimes finds his natural exuberance a little difficult to quell" which David took to mean "unable to focus and rowdy". Again, just like me!

However, we were charmed when a number of other parents were dragged over to meet Mac who was suffering from a rare case of shyness surrounded, as he was, by so many adults proclaiming "So, you're Mac!". We headed out of school and onto Pizza Hut as a treat and our pride and joy kept us entertained with tales of school and informed us that "Melissa eats chalk mummy" which is nothing to laugh at but the face he pulled when he informed us of this fact made me choke on my stuffed crust.

My First Aid course is not a barrel of laughs. I'm on day two and it's hard going.....I came over faint at one point when I had to set a "dislocated arm", the dummy was very realistic (and was called Kevin). Day three tomorrow is Burns and Scalds and Dressings in the morning with Resus Annie putting in an appearance in the afternoon......Thursday morning is a quick recap and then a written test in the afternoon. There's six others on the course and the instructor (Malcolm) has an alarming habit of leaping from one subject to another which isn't wildly helpful.

Still, Liz from Physio and I are having a good old giggle, especially when we were given four rolled up bandages each and told to "deal with the angled object" on two of our male colleagues. They blushed, we snorted with laughter and set to our task with gusto. Liz successfully managed to secure the angled object "sticking out" of Bill the Porter's leg whereas Gavin the Security Guard and I got sidetracked as we looked out of the window at a woman attempted to reverse a BMW into a parking space big enough only for a Mini Cooper.

I wouldn't like to see my report, I tell you that much although I suspect Malcolm would like to suspend me with immediate effect.

Five out of ten for effort

We're going to Mac's first ever "proper" Parents Evening on Friday. I'm dreading it. David is already puffing up with pride. Mac is completely unbothered by the whole thing. When Bea asked him yesterday if he's going to get a good report, he shrugged and pulled his "whatever" face.

"Darling" said Bea as she swilled Pimms around in her glass "When I got Ian's first report I had to be prised off the ceiling with pride. When we got Caitlin's first report I had to be shovelled off the floor with mortification."

This hasn't helped.

Coupled with this is the news from my boss that she's very kindly put me on a First Aid training course because I "filled her quota and ticked all the boxes". There's a test at the end of the course which I'm not looking forward to, especially as David told Mac that if his report is "excellent" he'll buy him a skateboard and that if it's "better than mummy's" then he'll get an extra little present (which I'm hoping is protectice clothing).

He hasn't told me yet what I'll get if my report is excellent but Bea suggests that I point him in the direction of Tiffany's.

A lazy summer day

What does that mean to you? If somebody said "Hey, have a lazy summers day, just you, all by yourself, go for it!" Would you take off to the nearest beach, lay flat out on the shore and bake? Would you meander through a sunlit meadow sniffing buttercups? Would you take yourself off to the nearest shopping centre and buy buy buy suntan lotion, bikinis and sarongs? I'm not just asking for effect by the way, I'm genuinely interested.

Back in the days when I only had myself and a rather mangy looking goldfish to think about (my parents brought us up to be independent from an early age: I thrown into the deep end of a swimming pool as my first "swimming lesson". I learnt bloody fast I can tell you) a lazy summers day meant a variety of things, depending on my age.

At six it was Screwball ice-creams from the ice cream van and staying out late in the street (Bea never did this and called me an urchin) playing Knock Down Ginger and 40/40. At thirteen it meant trying to wangle an invitation to one of Bea's Super Summer Sizzlers (a gaggle of late teens cavorting around Peckham Rye Park, each with their own Walkman playing their own tunes and trying to be cool with a capital C). At sixteen it was avoiding all contact with stupid boys whilst trying to tan myself to a gorgeous brown armed with a bottle of Ambre Solaire Factor 40 forced upon me by my mother. At twenty five (and with my first serious boyfriend, what can I say, I was a late starter) my ideal lazy summers day was to waft romantically around in all manner of white broderie anglaise eating strawberries whilst watching my Then Beloved play cricket manfully. It never worked. The strawberries attracted the wasps and, as I wasn't exactly waiflike, I looked like an exploded sofa lolling around under an umbrella.

My first summer with David was interesting to say the least. He only has to get an inkling of sunshine and turns a lovely mahogany brown. I go pink, then red, then sort of teak coloured. This was wonderfully demonstrated with our first lazy summers day together: we went sailing. Me, on a boat. My first time no less. I doused myself in Ambre Solaire, pooh-poohed the offer of a life jacket and lay out on the deck in what I thought was an alluring post. I have pictorial evidence to show that I looked like a rapidly pinkening beached whale. After a couple of hours surfing the high seas (okay, the bit off Southampton) we returned to shore.......him gorgeously brown, me pink, shuffling and distinctly overheated and sunstruck.

Summers after that, and before Mac, were spent, I seem to remember either watching cricket with the curtains pulled or me finding wonderfully inventive ways of soothing my sunburn.

Our first summer with Mac was traumatic. He was a very fair baby and, during our first week away with him in August, him aged not even six months, David the well seasoned and well weathered father and me a 32 year still in search of a perfect tan we all aged considerably. Firstly, babies don't understand that the sun is hot. I placed him in a cotton all in one outfit, plonked a hat on his head and perched a parasol over him for our first lazy summer day as a family. Within twenty feet of our walk he had wrenched off his hat, screamed until we removed the parasol and was sick all over his cotton outfit. Newquay residents got used to seeing us only venture out after sundown.

Paddling pools feature heavily in both my childhood and Mac's - David claims he was never allowed one but Matthew suggests that they hadn't been invented then. Matthew is just bitter, David informs me, because he was never allowed another one after he attempted to drown his then best friend in one aged four.

At the moment we've got three on the go. One for Mac - "the poople one is mine" he informs
the dogs who have the other two. Yes. You read right. Mac has the purple one, Senior and Middle Dog share the yellow one (Senior is not really fussed but doesn't like to feel like he's missing out) and Junior Dog has the blue one all to himself. This came about after last year and the Great Paddling Pool Fight when all three dogs tried to squash themselves into one small plastic pool and caused a tidal wave all over the lavender.

Anyway, I digress. Which at this stage in the blog should come as no surprise to any of you.

The reason I'm asking is because I had one of my own yesterday. A lazy summers day sans husband, child and hounds. David had agreed to take everyone to see his friend who has just bought a boat in Rye. After instructing David to....

a) not let Mac out of his sight
b) not let the dogs out of his sight
c) not let Mac on the boat or in the sea
d) not let dogs on the boat or to go too far our in the sea
d) have a relaxing day

.....I was left alone. Just me. The whole day stretching promisingly ahead, just for me, all mine, a lazy summer day.

What did I do?

I put the washing on, put some washing out. Watched Friday night's repeat of Big Brother. Had a Magnum ice lolly while channel hopping. Rang Charlie for a gossip. Ate another Magnum ice lolly. Had some filo prawns for lunch. Watched a film, Shutter. Killed a wasp that had the audacity to fly in. Wondered what all my boys were doing. Ate some peanuts. Received phone call from David and Mac who grassed his father up soooo much "Mummy, I went on the boat and droved it a little way and Senior Dog fell in and Junior Dog wouldn't come back to the shore and Daddy shouted at us all a bit".

Then I had a bath with the door open whilst eating strawberries and drinking Dr Pepper with ice. Ate another Magnum ice lolly (in my defence, they were the mini ones - note past tense). Had a scone with strawberry jam and cream whilst watching Only Fools and Horses. Mused a bit about what delights are awaiting me on the Philosophy hours next weekend on QVC. Received another phone call from David to ask me if seaweed was bad for dogs. Had a chat with Marjorie Stewart as she collected the lottery money "Aw, you all alone today? You could have popped in, we've been watching old holiday home movies!". Pondered for a while if Marjorie was in fact right in suggesting that I'd wasted my Lazy Summer Day. Decided that she wasn't, rootled round in the freezer for the last of the Magnums, cranked up Only Fools and Horses on the G.O.L.D and waited the return of the travellers.

The next Lazy Summers Day I get, I'll do something summery. Apart from eating ice-cream that is.

It's official.....

.....healthy eating is bad for you. Seriously. The Healthy Mob are dropping like flies all around me - Bea was on the receiving end of a particularly dodgy nettle batch at the weekend and spent Sunday "in agony darling, I think they stung every inch of me as I digested them". Janey broke a tooth on a stick of celery on Wednesday, Scarlett caused a major scare on Friday when she broke out in a rash after eating nearly an entire punnet of strawberries - Janey "thought it was that illness, y'know, menin-wotsit, until I found the missing box of strawbs" and Matthew choked on a radish on Sunday and had to be whacked "really quite hard and over and over again" on the back Lydia reported to me this morning.

David is suffering terribly with wind after our dinner of salad last night - he insisted on having the three bean couscous with it - and my boss rang me this morning to see if I could work this Friday and apologised for lisping - "I had athparaguth latht night and it'th made all my lipth thwell up - I look like Lethlie Ath".

So I don't feel in the thlighetht, sorry, slightest bit guilty as I munch my way through my Ayres Chicken Tikka doorstep. With lettuce. Well, you've got to try haven't you?