Category: Stuff that just happens

Jennifer Aniston is 47, in case you were wondering, and the secret to staying in shape is, according to her: keeping your body confused (as well as: getting up at 4.30am, drinking hot water and lemon plus other healthy shit, hooking up with your personal trainer and exercising for the rest of the day). But, as all that is completely unrealistic, I am just going to focus on the best bit: keep your body confused. Yes, Jennifer my love, this is exactly my mantra.

I am 45 years old and am a guru at confusing my body. Mild-ish abuse at uni, popped out a baby then another then another, which meant fat, slightly less fat X 3, then thin in order to reach a fighting weight of under 52 kilos (haha – funny to think I cracked that one, but I did have pre-school mum’s coming up to me saying they were worried), then popped out another sprog. Since then I’ve confused it with summer body/winter body and alcohol only at a weekend…oh no it’s Wednesday and I’ve had a glass of wine – confusion!!

So, according to the Aniston way, I am perfectly on course to crack on to 50, confused but happy. I won’t be doing the early starts or the all day exercise routine, but I will merrily confuse the hell out of this baby until she collapses in a heap, gasping for air and saying: I did it!

Back home from camping and we had sensibly organised a shower rota during the journey home. With 5 girls to shower plus partner, a rota was the only fair way to go. We weren’t sure what to expect in terms of storm damage and in fact, there was none. Fat cat was waiting for us and everything was as we had left it.

Looking in the fridge, we were down to a jar of pesto. As I was stirring it into the pasta for lunch, I remembered reading about how middle class pesto is. It made me grin. How funny that food has its own class system. Yesterday, I was googling the company: Rocket Post and as I was scrolling down my google search, I came across this letter written in the Guardian: My wife and one of my kids think that rocket just tastes like a slightly stronger lettuce but I and the other kids think that it’s the vilest, bitterest, most astringent evil ever given salad-leaf form. Is she just more middle-class than the rest of us (even though I make my own sourdough bread and wear sandals in winter)?

Sourdough bread and rocket join the heady heights of the middle class food system. From where, presumably they can sneer down at chips and burgers – unless the burgers are made of lamb and infused with fresh rosemary – and look up to beluga caviar with envy, scoffed by the green welly and tweed brigade, as they quaff their champagne.

I seem to remember a similar class system for baby foods, when I was weaning mine – at 16 weeks max as it was back then, I can’t imagine having to wait 6 months. Baby Organix – how middle class. Mini breadsticks and rice cakes. I expect it’s a similar story now? Put the hand held blender on the baby shower list. Watch out babies, there’s a middle class allergy coming to get you. Yes, the food class system starts early. I wonder what the royals wean their babies on? One of my baby friends produced neat little Tupperware pots filled with homemade delights whenever we were out. I would plonk my jar of HIPP (organic) carrot and lamb shite onto the table, that stained everything orange – the stain of shame.

Anyway, I had dispatched partner off to Waitrose to replenish our supplies with middle class foodstuffs, such as free coffee and instead he returned brandishing a Lindt bunny, wrapped in gold foil with a bell around its neck. Happy Easter, he said as he handed it over. Bollocks, I thought. I’ve been with you all over Easter and got fuck all. This is a scam. I received it with thanks and a dubious look on my face.

After teaching last night I felt I deserved to break into that bunny with a cup of tea. It was gone. I knew it, I said to partner. You bought that bunny for yourself and you’ve eaten it! He looked sheepish. He’d been rumbled. But all I could find to eat was edamame beans and quinoa and I wouldn’t know where to start with making something out of those two things, he protested. I checked his feet: no sandals and I forgave him.

Middle Class Problems

I hate technology. Mainly because it makes me feel old, but I’m also a control freak and I feel out of control. Partner consults me on updating some piece of equipment or other and I just nod and say a vague ok. Next thing I know it’s another thing that I cannot work, usually black and box shaped and it intimidates me. I try not to let it. I’m a fifth degree black belt. I teach my three year old students how not to be intimidated: shoulders back, look it straight in the eye. C’mon, I can do this. But I can’t and I end up shouting to a daughter for help and using the word fuck a lot while I’m waiting for her to appear. 

Daughters have been wondering why I haven’t set up my thumb print and Apple Pay on my phone. So this morning I thought, c’mon I can do this. So I just did. It’s easy. I feel smug. I go to use my phone. My thumb print doesn’t work. I swear to partner rather than at him and he quickly takes the phone and removes the thumb print password. This, for some reason known only to Apple, removes the Apple Pay. I swear at and to partner. He retreats to a hiding place. I say fuck a few times then call for a daughter. This is my life. I can’t keep up. I want to go back to cash in hand, four channels on the telly and Betamax. I want to go back to feeling in control. Shoulders back, looking technology squarely in the eye and winning.

Postscript
Thanks to daughters I now have more thumb prints on my phone than a five pound note…except my own. My own thumb still won’t work. That’s because you’ve got manky thumbs, daughter 1 said. You can use your toe, daughter 4 said helpfully. I settled for my middle finger – which is exactly what I want to stick up at technology. 

Was that ‘Apple Pay’ or ‘Apple Pie’?

So, it is possible to survive a pretty loopy storm in a tent, as long as the tent is posh. I lay awake for three hours last night, thinking it was going to blow away and working through various scenarios if it did:
1) the whole thing blows away and I will need to grab dogs, wellies and kids. Partner can sort himself out.
2) it blows away and as it does, a large piece of metal hits one of us on the head – I didn’t have any solution for this one. I just thought about how guilty I would feel, as the camping trip was my idea
3) next door’s tent blows away and we have to help with their rescue operation. I imagined that I would be useful in a panicky sort of way

All this thinking was exhausting me, so I took a break at 2am to join the kids, who were all now assembled on the sofa, for hot chocolate. They didn’t look concerned, just Famous Fiveish, but with an extra dog. I went and gave the tent mechanics a cursory look and they looked pretty solid, despite the fact that it felt like it was about to take off. I decided to do something useful, so I kept the fire going. By now it was 4am and I’d had enough of being scared that one of us/all of us may die, so I pulled dog 1 onto my head to muffle the noise and went to sleep.

I got an e mail from little sister, sent at 6.30am, subject: Welfare Check (you can tell she’s a police inspector) it read: Omg. I can’t believe you are in a tent. Let me know you’re all alive xxxxx – it’s good to know she cares.

Yes, we’re alive! We’re dirty, we probably stink like hell and you could fry an egg on our heads, but we’re alive 😃

I’m going to let you into a secret. One of those secrets where you hear other parents talk and feel that it’s a secret that no-one else shares. So I shall share it with you and see whether anyone else shares it with me: I don’t enjoy eating meals with my children. I know that I am supposed to enjoy them. In fact, I feel a huge amount of pressure to enjoy sharing mealtimes as a family, but I just don’t.

Over the years I have read numerous articles telling us to sit down to eat as a family. They have told me that this is important as it is a time when families can chat and discuss and plan. It is an important time for the children to learn how to develop the art of conversation, as well as table manners. Indeed, I can remember my Grandma having a roast with us every weekend and her constantly reprimanding me for not chewing each mouthful twenty times, among other things. I have engaged in both argument and debate around the family dining table with my own parents.

So, over the years I have made sure that we sit as a family and eat together whenever we can. I have been hot on table manners and have encouraged the art of conversation. However, the truth is, that I often end up feeling that rather than being a positive experience, it is rather a stressful one.

I have an issue with elbows and I find that the children’s are usually sticking out at a right angle, making me feel claustrophobic and unable to eat my food properly. I enjoy the interaction, until they start talking with food in their mouths and then I get cross. We get into a good debate and then it descends into the kids griping and sniping at one another and my own voice is no longer heard. Then comes the sniffing. They don’t know that they are doing it, but the steam that is rising from the hot food is making their noses run and they don’t know how to use a tissue. Finally, there is the food around their mouths, that I ask them to wipe, but they don’t immediately and it annoys me.

So now my secret is out. My guilty secret. I feel guilty because I know that these are precious times spent together and I love spending time with my girls. I feel guilty because my mum enjoys cooking and sharing food with us and always seemed to. I feel guilty because psychologists tell me how important it is to eat as a family and so I feel that I must make the effort.

The reality is that there are very few times in this Mad House that we can eat together. I feel guilty that I don’t make more time.

Scottish Nanna Nellie used to sometimes recite a Scottish grace before a meal. I have my own version:
For what we are about to endure: elbows out, mouths open, griping, texting, snap chatting the contents of the plate,
May the Lord make us truly patient,
Amen.

Easter Sunday. A barbecue breakfast. Looks idyllic…but daughter 1 sneezed with a mouthful of scrambled egg. Get my point?!

The owner of the glamping site didn’t sugar coat it: if we don’t take your porch off, your tent will blow away. With that, she handed us a bottle of champagne and apologised for the shower not working. So we’re battening down the hatches for the imminent arrival of Storm Katie. The Boden brigade in the tent next door have already booked themselves into a hotel for the night. Lightweights. Our answer to the promised storm was to load up our wheelbarrow – cars aren’t allowed on site – with as much gin, wine, crisps, marshmallows and cake mix, as a teenager can wheel across a field. We already have masses of pasta, hot chocolate and the champagne freebie stashed away: bring it on, Katie, bring it on!

The porch being take down, ready for Storm Katie’s arrival 

So far this glamping lark has been a huge success. The tent is so posh, it resembles a house. So much so that I thought it was a house the first night, until it started flapping and then a huge shadow of partner appeared on our bedroom wall at 4am. He was trying to relight the stove, as the owner had mentioned that it is possible to keep it going all night and his competitive instinct kicked in. I woke up to what looked like the Incredible Hulk wielding a canoe, but it was just partner and his gas lamp and a log.

Captain Caveman

Dog 1 and dog 2 are having a ball. Last night they needed a wee. It was dark. Partner asked me to put dog 1’s lead on (on the dog, not on me – thin walls). I felt around and struggled for a bit. It won’t go on, I said to partner. He shined his phone in my direction. That’s because you are trying to get it around his bum, he retorted.

I now realise why I had four kids: one to cook, one to wash up, one to dry and one to put away.

Daughter 1 being mum, while her mother is getting pissed on the sofa

Meanwhile, partner and I can languish on the sofa in front of the stove, drinking free champagne and waiting for the storm to hit.

A few years ago we almost stopped giving the girls chocolate for Easter. I was so sick of the stuff. Mountains of chocolate would be left in our cupboard for weeks afterwards. I would give a huge bag of it to anyone who came round to our house looking hungry in May. Even the girls were beaten into chocolate submission. Easter eggs are like Christmas decorations: fine at the time, but by January you are sick of the sight of them. 

Maybe I am just an Easter Scrooge. We had one Easter bonnet that we made when daughter 1 was 4, that did 12 years of Easter hat parades. One year we had a problem, as two daughters were in the same parade. Just share it, I managed to convince them. You wear it up until: Chick, Chick Chicken, lay a little egg for me and then shove it on your sister’s head. That Easter bonnet never won a prize once in all those 12 years. Some of the hats I see now, proudly displayed on Facebook, with captions such as: look at what I made..erm…she made…, look amazing, but they won’t last a day, let alone 12 years. They won’t have the staying power of our…erm I mean their bonnet. 

For the past couple of years, we have offered the kids a fiver or an egg. At first, the two younger ones opted for the egg, not wanting to break with tradition. However, last year they worked out that shops pop out pretty decent eggs at a pound a go, so they took the fiver and bought themselves several eggs, thus causing our plan to spectacularly backfire. 

This Easter we are in a tent. Everyone who asks if we are going on holiday, as they wave their ski poles in our faces, says: oh no! when I mention the tent. It’s a posh tent, I add, we’re glamping. But I can see it in their eyes, they are thinking: no amount of posh can stop it pissing down. 

So, this Easter I think we will break with tradition and we shall take chocolate to the tent. I feel that we need to feed our addictions this weekend, rather than shun them. We will pack our knackered old bus full of chocolate and wine and peanut butter. Peanut butter is partner’s addiction. He drove via Waitrose last night after work, because he had none for the morning. They only had organic, he tells me. He opens it and sniffs it, like one might a fine wine. Does it taste any different? I ask him. Oh yes, he tells me, as if I have asked whether Blossom Hill tastes different to claret. It tastes like a real monkey nut. I’m not convinced, but he shall have his peanut butter and the girls shall have their chocolate. I shall sit in our tent, clutching a glass of wine, watching the rain pissing on the fire pit, feeling like a real Easter Scrooge.