Trouble

You know you're in trouble when....

.... you watch Black Swan on DVD and you then find yourself skipping about the kitchen, pointing your toes, and humming that music (Tum, tum  ti tum ti tum, ti tum, ti tum, ti tum ti tum ti tum..) and shouting, " I'm a prima ballerina and I'm absolutely bonkers..."

and you are growing feathers and stuff...

(you also know you are in trouble when you spend time trying to fashion a tutu out of paper tissue for a small stuffed animal...)

..............small boys dress up  Mad for a school charity thing and you can't tell the difference from their normal off duty attire..

.... you find a card to send Louise of InTownsville (Louise has just had a big operation on her back, wishing you Up and About soon Louise) and you are convinced this card is just the thing, telling yourself it depicts, left to right, you, Linda in Chile and Louise (you have a very jolly email playgroup going with these two ladies), and you are able completely to overlook the fact that it is, ahem, quite some time, since you were school girls...

.....you start your holiday packing* and put in 4 towels and an educational game which no one will play and then your suitcase is full and you are so done with packing and need a cup of tea...

......you reinstate the Wii which has been banned for 6 months and now Boy 2 has his mitts clasped to the controls EVEN WHEN IT IS NOT ON...

.....Mr Blighty discovers an ant infestation in the cupboard and spends the weekend in there dealing with it...

(by the way, those red boots do not have anyone in them, despite appearances - I have not, for example, been overcome by the sight of my spouse being all manly and fainted....they do look odd though...)

......................this is the scene after you have, in a weak moment, bought Boy 1 a new grip for his cricket bat*; and he has come home and ripped the old one off, and you hear wailing and after 10 minutes of panting and puffing you realise it is impossible to get the new grip on...

*why the bl**dy hell did they not warn me in the shop, do I look like the sort of woman who knows what she is doing? Of course not!

   If only I had paid attention to those saucy articles in Cosmopolitan about how to . .....never mind..with your teeth...no, that's enough

This particular spot of bother was resolved by a visit to yet another sports shop, it turns out you need a wooden thing to roll the new grip onto, inside out and then you roll it onto the bat....*

* Some of you really have filthy minds.  I like that.

Major This and That and We're All Going to the Zoo

Boys 1 and 2 have been on hols for just one day, and already I am in this sort of state:

Also a couple of Major things:

I made a Major Omission from my last post about meeting up with the lovely S.  Here is a pic of S to remind you.

What I forgot to say was, S is a HUGE FAN of Faux Fuchsia, she cannot get through the day without checking on her latest post.  While we were chatting for England and shopping, S spotted this decoration and declared it would be just the thing for FF and her Christmas tree, so she purchased it.

FF, it will be on its way to you, once I get to the Post Office.

Second Major Thing: Daphnes4Boy$ had their Speech Day on Saturday and the guest speaker was an Army Major in dress uniform with a CV that read like a James Bond novel. Just too, too exciting for a woman at my time of life.  He had those trousers on with a red stripe down the side, so so flattering and dashing.  Never have I been so interested in Speech Day!

Luckily, a really lovely mum I know reminded me that
a) I am married
b) dribbling is not attractive
c) she herself had in fact been a Major in the Army so there! ( in fact recently I went on a bicycle ride with her, she is super fit and I was terrified in case she shot me for lagging behind/desertion...)

So today, the official first day of the Summer Hols, I took Boys 1 and 2 to London Zoo.

Look, you would think this was somewhere deep in the countryside, but it's Regents Park, which we stomped through on the way to the Zoo.

And here is the Regents Canal, also very picturesque.

I must admit to reservations about zoos, do we need them when we have all this great video footage of the animals in the wild?  But London Zoo take great pains to stress all the conservation work they do, funded by the zoo entry fees. Boy 1, though, who is a very kind chap when not bashing his brother, remarked constantly on the smallness of the cages.  I imagined that some of the animals looked a bit depressed, like the tigers:

But some of them looked quite chipper, like the penguins and the meerkats.

The ardvark just looked weird.

But my favourite was the sloth; this is how I would like to spend the holidays!

The boys were also less than amused when I told them we were going because of the Chimp Adoption Programme - I hoped they would be eligible.  They countered with a Feed Mummy to the Snakes Initiative, which shut me up ( I had to stay outside the Reptile House, such is my serpent phobia).

And just look who we saw in the Zoo Shop (where we spent a disproportionate amount of time lusting after the furry toys, I had no idea Before Children that boys could love those things with such fervour..)

Not Just Cricket

Here I am watching Boy 1 play cricket in the glorious English sunshine.

I thought the match would be abandoned when the downpour really got going, but no, these people are hardcore, they just waited till it subsided to a brisk drizzle and back onto the pitch they went.

  But it's not all cricket.  The other day I hopped up to London, to my old stamping ground of High Street Kensington. You can see the spire of St Mary Abbotts; the school of the same name is next door and is very sought after at the moment, as Mr Cameron's daughter goes there.

 Below is what used to be the department store Barkers.  My mother remembers going there as a little girl.  A couple of years ago it turned into a huge Whole Foods.  Personally I miss the cosmetics counters and the abundance of stuff you didn't want to buy.  Oh, and the grumpy shop assistants.

I like all the plane trees in Kensington, they give much needed greenery.

I felt a bit nostalgic being in Kensington again, as this is where I  lived with Boys 1 and 2 when they were babies and toddlers; and oh the memories!  The time Boy 2 let his scooter slide into the Round Pond and our dismay as it disappeared under the murky waters ( I managed to hook it out with a long pole I begged off  a radio controlled motorboat enthusiast); Boy 1 stomping along the street trying every car door to see if they would open (and his shock when one did); riding on the top deck of the bus with two very wriggly, over-excited boys, who did not understand why they should not scooter inside the bus...  I do think London is a good place for babies, as you can walk for miles with them in their pushchairs, I could never get my head around country lanes with no footpaths..

Now, brace yourselves: here is what I look like in Real Life. (I was actually buying this for the boys as they needed to Dress Mad for Charity at school, it had been almost a week since the last charity dress up).

 And here is my lovely ex-neighbour, S.  Isn't she a doll?  She is very definitely Good In Hats.  And look at that blondey blonde hair.  S lives in the flat below our old flat. It is amazing she is still talking to us after the noise that must have been coming from our flat day-in/day-out - the crying, screaming, banging, crashing - and that was just me trying to make a cup of tea, let alone the row the Boys created.  S is American and really funny - her anecdote about seeing Hugh Grant is an All Time Classic:
Her hubs spots our Hugh sitting at a table outside a cafe in South Kensington.
He tells S to walk by, discreetly, to check him out; "But honey, be discreet ok, be cool!" 
"Of course I'll be cool!" huffs S.
 S arrives at Hugh's table.
 Suddenly alien forces overwhelm her.
She stops slapbang in front of Hugh.
 And shrieks at the top of her voice:
 "HUUUUUUGH GRAAAAAANT!"

S and I gossipped for England and the US combined, and pottered round the shops.  We had a good rummage round Accessorize, S was buying presents for her son's teachers. I liked these pretty rings - my precious..

I finished my little Kensington jaunt with a look round TK Maxx but was quite frankly overwhelmed by the sheer volume of  stuff...

Faced with a sea of sartorial flotsam, I suddenly found the idea of watching cricket much more relaxing....

Medallion (Wo)Man

Necklace from TopShop

Dahlings, how are you?  Here I am modelling my new lionhead medallion, so very 1980s Versace. Grandma Whacker, who is a Leo, is after it.  But I really think you have to be a deranged marsupial to carry off this look.

This post has been brought to you through considerable adversity. In the middle of a vital step in the artistic process (eating crisps while prodding at the computer keys), the phone rang;
"Hello" says I.
"Hello" says a male voice.
"Hello" says I again (I am good at this kind of sparkling repartee).
"I'm phoning about your steam rally" says the voice.
"Er, I think you must have the wrong number, I don't think I am having a steam rally...in fact I'm not."
(At this point I have the almost overwhelming urge to go "WooWoo" and make puffing noises but manage not to).
The caller seemed very unconvinced, as though he thought I was holding out on him and really did have some sidings and a nice steam engine hidden away in the garden, but reluctantly he agreed to go away..

During this telephonic interlude Boy 1 has been poking at the computer and has lost all the uploaded photos.

Boy 1 is now in a Witness Protection Programme ....

MD Formulations - when I used to go for facials at Harrods during an ealier, pre-children skincare phase, they were very keen on this brand..it's got some sort of alpha-hydroxy whatnots in it that resurface and fill potholes

In other news I am having a Skincare Moment.  They happen occasionally.  So I have purchased this attractively named Adult Anti-Blemish Kit.  It could be worse, they could have called it "Spots and Wrinkles Aren't You The Lucky One?"  What a loss I am to the marketing profession!

There are a lot of lotions and potions to apply and lots of steps and instructions.  And numbering and cross-referencing. I am starting to wonder if I clicked on the wrong item and popped the Build Your Own Large Hadron Collider into my internet shopping basket by mistake.


Oh well.  At least I can tell Mr B hand on heart that there is no way I can rejoin the world of work as I am busy full-time with my skincare regime...

Now, just look at this Leopardy Goodness! Yum!  When I took my decluttering into the local charity shop these winked at me - they are from TopShop and for only £8 it would be a crime not to.

I do seem to be getting more and more leopardy; if I buy a leopardy sofa and rig myself up in all my leopardy items, I would be completely camouflaged...and could read novels undetected by others at Blighty HQ..

I always take great comfort in Faux Fuchsia's maxim: leopard print is a neutral

This last photo is Shocking.  Faux Fuchsia and her followers may wish to prepare themselves emotionally (copyright FF 2010/11).  My Parlux has just spluttered into non-existence.  It is an ex- Parlux etc etc.  Here it lies in the garage, waiting to go to the Big Hair Salon in the Sky.  I have a bad track record with hairdryers.  Perhaps using them to blowtorch the creme brulees was a mistake.

Must go now dahlings.  I have some shunting to do.