Category: Stuff that just happens

The Penny’s Dropped

Find a penny, pick it up, all day long, the person behind you who picked it up after you dropped it, will have good luck. That is how it started. It ended with a trip to minor injuries. The bit in between was fine, except that it involved buying a new bread knife, which partner cut himself with at lunchtime. 

I am upstairs and hear the dreaded exclamation of ‘ow!’ and then silence. I am mid pee – I take my pelvic floor to the limit by running downstairs. I’m not good with blood. Put it in the air, I say, helpfully. I’m a first aider, I know what to do, as long as I keep my eyes shut. I’m going through procedure: apply pressure, do you feel faint, keep it in the air – I’m like a competent, but blind nurse. Then, I spot the bagel on the side with the knife still through it. You were cutting exactly how I’ve been telling you not to for the past 5 years, weren’t you? I begin to rant, and then when you ignored me I told the kids not to copy you…I’m really upset now. So upset that I’ve forgotten about partner standing with his finger in the air, waiting patiently for me to stop. But I’m not about to stop any time soon. I’m so angry with you, I continue. How could you be so stupid, after me going on at you for so long about it. Partner is edging out of the door. I’m off to minor injuries he says, as the door shuts behind him. It’s then I remember about his finger and I feel bad that I wasn’t more sympathetic. I go back into the kitchen to wash the knife. Dog 2 is capitalising on the situation and has eaten the two bagels that were being cut. I fill up the kettle, which reminds me to finish my pee. I’m feeling rather proud of my bladder control, whilst at the same time feeling bad that I was such a terrible nurse. I decide to send partner a sympathetic text.  I scroll the emojis for something suitable, but can only find the big thumbs up sign, so that has to do. I juxtapose it with a sad face, so as not to seem heartless. I can’t find a knife emoji, so cut my losses with a few kisses and press send. 

Later that evening we are reconvening over a bottle of wine. I hope you’ve learnt your lesson from this, I say to partner. I am fully aware of the potential for this to sound patronising, but I absolutely have to say it anyway. Partner nods his head and looks extremely sheepish. I leave it at that. Today has come full circle, as the penny has finally dropped. 

Parental Boasts

Parental Boasts (overheard in a playground, anywhere)

He did that all by himself!
She is so creative!
He’s 2 years ahead of himself in Maths
She’s developing her own, mature writing style
He is already using rhyming couplets
Her junk modelling skills are well beyond her age

Parental Boasts (that you never hear)

My hat won the best Easter Bonnet competition – real turf and the mechanical egg-laying chicken probably clinched it

The science project my 5 year old had to do is on display for open day – I am particularly pleased with my erupting volcano 

I got all those fractions right 😃

‘Good use of connectives’ – another house point, go me!

My poem got published in the: Young Writers Poetry Book. We’ll get Grandma a copy for Christmas

I won: Best Harvest Festival box, for the second year running, due to the addition of my working combine harvester!

The invaluable life lesson that the children are learning is: sit back and watch the parents sweat it out and then have the last laugh by getting all the credit. 

Know Your Audience

I totally sympathise with Stephen Fry over his ‘bag lady’ comment at the BAFTA’s. Jenny Beavan is his friend and it was banter between them. The fact that it was shared with millions of viewers on tv and media, just meant that he didn’t quite get away with it. Over the past year, this has happened to me more than once. I’ve made, what I totally saw as a jokey comment with a like minded person and it has spectacularly back fired.  

Sometimes I open my mouth and say something and as I do so I am watching the person’s reaction with bated breath, crossing everything on my body that I know them well enough to be confident that they will take it the right way. Such as the other day. Danish friend’s daughter got hit by a car outside their house, as she was crossing the road to catch the early school bus. Is she ok? I enquired when I saw my friend. How awful for you to run outside and find her lying in the road and then, in the same breath, I uttered the words: were you still in your pyjamas? 

As the words left my lips, I could see partner’s horrified face out of the corner of my eye. Oh shit, I thought, there I go again. 

The moral of all this, of course, is: know your audience and on this occasion, I did. Unfortunately for Stephen Fry, he didn’t. 

Post script
Danish friend’s daughter shattered a car windscreen. After 10 X ray’s they could only discover two small marks on her entire body. A very lucky girl. She has, however, lost a shoe. If found, please send it to pyjama lady. 

Milking It

Partner and I are rattling around the house this half term, with just the two dogs for company, as step daughter is at uni, step son is in Australia and the girls are at their dad’s. 

Of course, I realise that this totally alienates me from all you poor, suffering parents who are ∗knee deep in Lego and fighting minute by minute battles over camps in bedrooms and sibling hatred/enjoying culturally fulfilling days out at museums ∗delete as appropriate and yes, it is a perk of divorce. However, let me reassure you that the two puppies and partner, as well as teaching lots of gorgeous little rugrats Taekwon-do, are keeping me busy. 

Such as this morning, when partner got locked in the loo. The washing machine is on a spin cycle and the dogs are play fighting. All I can hear are the words: come upstairs, from somewhere above me. I ignore them as I’m busy blogging. I hear the voice again. Now I’m irritated as I’m not only blogging but I’m already trying to zone out from the noise of the dogs. Just come upstairs, now! The spin cycle has finished and I am aware that the voice sounds more urgent, so I finally respond, reluctantly, to the ‘now’, muttering all the way upstairs about what an inconvenience this is. I release him from his loo prison. You took your time, he said rather grumpily. Blame the ten minute spin, I reply, stretching the truth. 

It’s a beautiful day. We’re sitting outside with the dogs as psychologist mum is heading across the Waitrose car park to claim her free coffee. Eldest son has broken his foot, she tells us. I didn’t notice for three days and now he’s milking the fact that I must be a dreadful mother. We’re off to Bluewater. I’ve ordered the wheelchair and have contacted shop mobility, so that we get to use the disabled parking, she continues gleefully and with that, she heads off into the shop. Now who’s milking it, I think to myself. It sounds as if she has her half term all wrapped up. 

Milk Tray Man ❤️

Apparently, teenagers no longer date. From my experience of step-daughter when she first found young love, she struggled to get him off the X Box. Sad times. On the flip side, my heart was warmed when my mum told me that her 82 year old partner had driven over a mile in his electric buggy to post a Valentine’s Day card through her letterbox. Isn’t that thoughtful of him, mum said to me. Yes, I replied, what have you got him?  Some fair trade dark chocolate hearts, she said. I don’t think he likes dark chocolate, but they are better for him. Better for him? I repeated in my head. This is a man, I thought to myself, who travelled over cracked pavements and pot holes to personally deliver that card. A man who battled through wind and rain, with no more protection than a plastic roof. Who risked being splashed by puddles and who negotiated his way around pedestrians, some with pushchairs and all you can think about is his health! He’s the disabled equivalent of the Milk Tray man and you are denying him a treat!

That’s not a very romantic thought, I say out loud. You may as well just give him a cereal bar. 

I’ve written him a poem too, she says. She hands me the card she has bought him:

‘Your eyes may be red,
Your veins purple and blue,
But you’re a ragged romantic
And I still love you’

‘A ragged romantic’ mum? I’m really thinking she’s got it in for him this year. Oh, I meant to put, ‘rugged’, she says with a chuckle, but I think I may just leave it how it is. 

I look at mum despairingly. What hope have the youngsters got, I think to myself, as she licks the envelope and firmly seals it shut. 

Ulterior Motive

En route to my mum’s for dinner, I get a text from my sister, asking me to pick up my niece on my way past. I think that this is a slightly odd request, but happily swing by. I park on her drive. The handbrake isn’t working properly and the garage have done all they can. If it starts moving forward, I tell daughters 1 and 4, who are left in the car, just bail out. They immediately leap out the door and join me.

After a very quick hello, my sister seems keen to get me upstairs and it is then I realise the ulterior motive. 

Do you want a desk? My sister asks, what I am soon to realise is a rhetorical question. Erm… I begin to reply. It’s from John Lewis, she continues regardless and there are only a few marks on it. I stare down at, what looks like a large scrape across the top. How much do you want for it, I ask sceptically. Oh no, you can have it…if you take it away now, she quickly adds. I look out the window at the poor, tired old Previa sitting on her drive and sigh. Ok, I say weakly. Oh and there’s a couple of bed side tables for mum, she says. 

Getting the desk downstairs is stressful. The hallway has just been painted. Getting it out the door is stressful, the cat nearly gets crushed and then nearly escapes. Getting it into the Previa is not going to be easy. Firstly, I have to remove what is already in there, which includes things that I didn’t even know were in there. My sister is determined. She’s just passed her hostage negotiator course with the police, this is chicken feed. Don’t open that door, I shout at my brother in law, it’s the one that needs the screwdriver to shut it again. No, that seat is broken and doesn’t go forward anymore. Yes, I do need that bag of equipment for classes tomorrow. 

After much to-ing and fro-ing, the desk and the bedside tables are in, but we’ve forgotten about the three kids who need seats. We take it all out, put the kids in and start again, working around them.

I very gently shut the boot, as four legs are dangerously close to the glass. 

There’s also a chest of drawers, my sister says, rather too optimistically… and I speed off, no handbrake to stop me, without looking back.

Crackerjack!!

Since the 5p bag charge was introduced, I have been concerned that partner looks like a professional shoplifter, as he stuffs his large dog-walking coat pockets full of foodstuffs, because, yet again, we left the twenty bags we keep in the car…well, in the car. 

I have spent the past few months sitting outside Waitrose with the dogs, drinking my free coffee and watching, with much amusement, the towers of produce people are exiting with – because they left their bags in the car. It takes me right back to my childhood and Crackerjack* and on the odd occasion someone drops something I expect Stewpot to run over and stick a cabbage on top. I also see the smug shoppers with their hessian bags and I view them with a mixture of awe and jealousy. 

Although I think the reason behind the charge is a fine one, I’m really still not getting the hang of it. I have developed a technique, however, to get shopping out to the car without a bag – it involves laying the free paper on the counter and building up the food items on one half, then folding the other half over to form a sort of package. This works, up to a point. Obviously this technique isn’t one for the weekly family shop. 

So, I am not at all surprised to read in the paper, that in some supermarkets, thefts are up 50%. What I am surprised at, however, is the lengths I will go to and judging by my observations, I’m not the only one, to avoid paying 5p for a bag. There’s not much you can get these days for 5p, so you could say it’s a bargain, but it just grates to pay it. Then I get offered the bag for 10p and a queue forms behind me as I weigh up whether I can afford it. Double the price! Is it worth the expense? 10p bags have never been free, but I never previously bought one, because they felt like a luxury item, with their arty designs and thick, sumptuous plastic. They always seemed out of my price range and there was a free alternative for the less extravagant. It’s a ‘bag for life’ – not just for Christmas, or for one blow out shopping trip, where you were feeling flush! A bag for life, that will spend its entire life hanging behind the kitchen door. So we don’t buy any bags. We stuff coat pockets, make newspaper packages, build towers and vow to remember the bags in the boot the next time. (But we do pay for the shopping first). 

* Cultural reference to a children’s tv show I watched in the 70’s/80’s. Apologies if you are too young to remember, but for those of you who are older: “It’s Friday, it’s five to five and it’s Crackerjack”!!

Three-Way Mirror

We have given up teaching regular classes on a Sunday. Not for religious reasons, but for our sanity. 

Partner has been excited all week at the thought of having the time to try out his new pressure washer. He set it all up this morning and started on the patio. By the time he had finished, our patio was no longer green, but also a proportion of it was no longer there. It’s ever so powerful, he said, as I looked at where bits of our patio used to be and saw them strewn across the garden. 

I thought perhaps I should try to get him away from causing any more damage to our property, as he was muttering something about the conservatory windows needing a clean. I suggested a shopping trip.

I had a voucher to spend in M&S, and ended up in their changing rooms trying on a pair of jeans, not dissimilar to the ones mum bought a few weeks ago, which slightly unnerved me. She’s a glam gran, but I’m not sure I’m quite ready to field that look yet. Within minutes of entering the changing room, my nerves were shattered and my feeling of well being dismembered, by the presence of a three-way mirror. Now, I can see the point of these, but if there is one thing that is going to get you back on that January diet that has lapsed because it’s February, it’s a three-way mirror. When you are half an hour in a changing room, trying on one item of clothing and partner says when you come out, looking dejected and depressed, what’s taken you so long? You just reply: it’s because of the three-way mirror. 

I had actually forgotten how they worked, until I was half undressed and happened to glance to my left, where I was confronted with my buttocks from an angle that I never usually have to endure. Oh my god! I thought to myself. People saw that view in Spain last year! I quickly put on the jeans. I turned to the front full length view. The lighting showed up every crease from face to waist. I saw that my hair needs cutting, my eyebrows need plucking and carrying on down is still work in progress. Why don’t shops install mirrors that slim you down and lights that are kind, not harsh and real. I got dressed with my eyes shut and left. 

Let’s go and have a coffee and cake, partner said, cheerily, sensing that my mood might need lightening. Do I look as if I need cake, I snapped at him. Why not? He continued, chirpily, we’ve got a day off! Why not? I snarled at him, feeling that he just isn’t grasping the severity of the situation. Partner looked confused – I had entered that changing room full of positivity and happiness and he sensed that the mood had decidedly swung the opposite way. Because of the three-way mirror, that’s why not, I retorted, whilst zipping my coat up, as far as it could go. 

Post Script:

The mirrors in Top Shop saved the day off. If you are having a ‘fat day’ – shop in Top Shop and not in M&S.

Touché

I cannot believe that you buy mashed potato, my mum is shaking her head. But Waitrose Economy is a pound a packet and I make it go three ways, I protest, trying desperately to defend my actions. She’s having none of it and continues: it’s not the same as making it yourself, those poor daughters of yours. Images of starving, deprived refugees immediately come to my mind and I am failing to grasp her point: the occasional chicken nugget and shop-bought trifle, but I would hardly say, ‘poor‘. By the time I have bought a packet of potatoes and accounted for my time, I’m sure that it is cheaper to buy the ready made, I keep going – I’m not giving in on this one. Rubbish, mum counters. Touché.

I have a degree, have represented my country on many occasions, used to speak pretty good French and gave birth to four children, but still I disappoint my mother.

I do fear, however, that I have inherited mum’s high expectations for my daughters. In a past life, whilst on a trip around the world with four children under 8, I dipped my toes into home schooling. When we returned, daughter 4 was plonked in a reception class. I was rather nervous when I attended her first parents’ consultation, as husband and I had been the only teachers she had ever had. The report was good. But don’t you find her concentration is very poor, I enquired at the end. We found that after a couple of hours she just gave up and rested her head on the table. The severe looking teacher looked me square in the eye: Mrs Longhurst, she said. The guidelines stipulate one minutes’ teaching for each year of the child’s life and then a break. Your daughter is 5 and I can assure you that there is nothing wrong with her concentration. Touché.

Curveball

I don’t know about you, but I feel life trots along quite well when you are confident with what you are dealing with, when things aren’t new, but are routine. Then I find, just as complacency/happiness begins to set in, along comes the curveball. For me it can be illness, not serious illness but just pain in the arse illness, that keeps you/partner/daughters battling on, but seriously feeling like s**t. Change of routine is a killer too. I used to call myself spontaneous, but now I am happy to admit that I like to know what I’m dealing with and plenty of advance warning is preferable.  

As we all know, kids are the same. Which is why I grinned to myself at class today, observing a dad dealing with a change of routine, caused by a new baby. When I saw him two weeks ago, freshly on paternity leave, with back-up provided by his son”s friend’s mum, he was decidedly cocky. It’s easy this looking after the kids lark, he said jovially. I don’t think I’ll go back to work. Fast forward two weeks and today he appeared on his own with his son and son’s friend. He looked really worried. I’m on my own with them today, he told me, with a look of dread on his face. I smiled reassuringly, telling him he’ll be fine. After all, they are with me for the majority of the time. I went into the studio to prepare for the class. From here I could hear snippets of conversation: which way round does the t shirt go? Are these your trousers? No, leave your pants on. I breeze out to set up some chairs: everything ok? I ask, smiling. He gives me a withering look. I disappear back into the studio. Squeals of delight are filling the waiting area and they are not coming from the dad. I pop my head round the door, as it sounds as though he might need rescuing. His son is clinging to his back and son’s friend is actually sitting on his head – much to the amusement of the au pair who is sitting opposite him. 

As he is leaving after the class, I ask him whether this is to be the new routine. I’m ringing work tomorrow, he said. I need to feel human again.

If only that’s all it takes, I thought to myself, a phone call.