Costume Drama

Boy 2 - are you sure penguins are endangered?

 Dahlings, you know how I like to give useful parenting advice from time to time?  Well here I go again.

Once you have a child
If you are expecting a baby
If you are thinking about having a baby
If there is any possibility of contact with a member of the opposite sex, then
 you need to hire a small warehouse NOW and stock it with the following items:

N.B. this is not going to be a list  of baby paraphenalia, no, that's easy, you can pick that up anywhere, what I am talking about is hardcore preparation for the horror that is School Costumes. Because from the minute your offspring hits nursery, it will be required to dress up in clothes which are not its own;  I estimate that in any given month during school term, Boys 1 and 2 spend 8 days at least not in their own clothes. I sometimes wonder if our children are being prepared for a life in pantomine. And, very important this bit, you will often get 0 days notice that a costume is required because your child will have lost the letter/you won't have got the email and you will find out by chance at the eleventh hour when your child's friend phones up to ask what national monument your child is going as, as his Mummy has just knitted him a Taj Mahal outfit but he is not sure if that is ok, and she only has the Eiffel Tower which she made out of meringues last year for his sister as back up.....

i know it does not look anything like a polar bear but it was the best I could do ok?

1. Polar bear,  brown bear, sheep, cow, mouse, dog, cat, elephant, hippo, giraffe, any other animal you can think of,  outfit
2. Bunch of grapes outfit - including purple balloons but be careful to check your child's weight against number of balloons otherwise you will have to contact Air Traffic Control
3. Mexican outfit including large fake moustache which will get lost at school and later be found under glass in the Year 8 Biology Lab
4. Greek outfit (but not soldier as schools do not like weaponry and war-like stuff as creates wrong atmosphere at playtime)
5. Celtic outfit - something mud coloured with a bit of tartan thrown in; they will go to an outdoor Celtic camp and build fires and make clay pots and return wearing something tartan with a lot of mud thrown over
6. Roman outfit (same as Greek outfit, explain to your child Romans were big thrift shoppers)
7. Tudor outfit (note, most boys do not like going as Anne Boleyn)
8. Endangered animal outfit*
9. Amusing polka dot outfit
10. Amusing pyjama outfit (need special nice pjs, cannot let the world see the normal scrotty pants and old vest, both with embarassing holes in, actually used for sleeping)
11. Footballer outfit (must be current home or away strip of team of choice)
12. Outfits in colours of all national flags worldwide (worth contacting the UN or an international affairs think tank for list of countries most likely to be fighting for democracy over next few years so you can really focus in on these)
13. There is no number 13 as I am in no way superstitious
14. Assorted Halloween outfits - they will start out as cute little ghosts before graduating to Dr Death and Freddie Kruger and having to be told they can't borrow Dad's chainsaw for the evening
15. Assorted Easter bonnets - if you can manage one with real butterflies, baby chicks and lambs on, that would be good
16. Assorted Christmas hats - start with a cute snowman and then later they get max kudos from their friends with an  "I'm with Stupid" hat
17. Nativity play outfits - Wise Man, shepherd, angel, Mary, Joseph, health visitor, camel
18. World War II evacuee outfit (and look out for the kid who has a real gas mask in its leather case left over from the war)
19. Coins of various denominations as your child will be required to pay for the privilege of dressing as a squirrel etc and the school will specify the precise coins required as they will be used to make an amusing collage before being sent to the relevant charity...it is helpful to invest a modest amount (£5000) not later than your child's first birthday to cover these costume related tariffs.

Yikes, too Hitchcock The Birds!

The above is just the bare minimum, but if you at least have these items handy, this should cut down on some costume related stress.

Boy 1 will be endangered if I catch him playing football in the kitchen again

Next week: how to make a 3 D model of a plant cell using mashed potatoe and olives.

* Endangered animal was our most recent costume drama; it may help to relieve one's feelings by stumping around the house shouting "Endangered species, endangered species, I'll show you an endangered species: a mother who is still sane and solvent after putting together all these flipping costumes...."

Cyber Sulk?

Well as cyber sullks go, that was quite exceptional. 

Except I wasn't sulking. Honest.

I just seem to have been soooo busy.

So I hired Top Management Consultant Anders Hoch  to review operations at Blighty Inc and make recommendations on how to improve productivity.

Here are excerpts from his report, with my reaction in italics.

Taking Blighty Inc. Forward  Into the 20th Century*

* Anders old chap how much wine did you have at lunch exactly?

Scope of Review

We were asked to review all domestic operations of Blighty Inc.  We observed operations at Blighty HQ and interviewed key personnel in Catering, Procurement, Staff Training, Laundry Services, Hygiene and Health Services, Transport, Policing and Judicial,  Social Activities and Sport (which in this report will be collectively referred to as MUM).
Er, that's  me I think...

We also spoke to the Chief Executive Officer and Finance Director.  So Mr B gets the fancy job title, typical

We had a brief interview with the junior members of the Blighty Inc. team but they were very busy watching telly and were unwilling to fully enter into a dialogue  you mean they ignored you completely as they were watching re-runs of Top Gear on Dave TV


Scope of Activities

The breakdown of MUM activities during a typical working day are:

23%  reading gossip on the Daily Mail website
27% drinking tea, reading fashion blogs
2% furiously carrying out domestic tasks in state of guilt and quiet frenzy
12% looking for reading glasses
5% reading thrillers and detective novels
5% answering cold calls on telephone from insurance companies and acting delightfully dizzy and charming while telling them to get lost
4% ringing Grandma Whacker back and apologising for being so rude under misapprehension that she was selling car insurance and of course you don't mean her to do that with her insurance policy

5% watching X Factor with Mr B and putting on silly Northern accent and exclaiming "oooh Gary has such kind eyes, I really feel he understands me and my journey" and falling off sofa with laughter inventing sob stories for contestants: "It would mean the world to me to win X Factor as I have a conjoined twin who is currently in prison  and a granny confined to a wheelchair by terminal flatulence..."
77% watching junior executives playing rugby in a light drizzle
86% watching junior executives playing football in a light drizzle
34% attending to sports related injuries
36%  sports psychology counselling
7%  cobbling together costumes for school theme days (" I know it's a fitted sheet but well- to- do Romans would definitely have worn fitted sheets, honest!")

10% watching The Killing, exciting Danish police thriller
45% providing taxi services to Blighty junior executives
42% struggling to help with Maths homework


Key Recommendations

• MUM is a very inefficient member of the Blighty team; her role needs to be more focused, and preferably carried out by someone else with better motivation and better skills re work product delivery do you mean get a cleaner?  Yay!
• MUM to attend management training course and be reprogrammed
• MUM must be denied access to the Internet
• MUM to give up tea and novels
• MUM to stop watching X Factor But Gary is the only man who really understands me
• junior executives to give up rugby and football and instead take up needlework at home
• MUM to accept that never going to get through 100 hours of The Killing so return the DVD the library NOW
• junior executives to learn to drive They are only 9 and 10 so this might be a bit tricky

So there we have it.  I am going to be re-programmed.  I  will be dynamic, efficient and focused. 

Just as soon as I've had a cup of tea and a little sit down.. and a look at the Daily Mail website...

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.

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....

Slap Update, Other Books and Channelling Our Inner Picasso

Dahlings, please forgive my lack of posting.  Boys1 and 2 are on half-term.  Shocking, as it seems just the other day that they went back after Christmas. 

Evidence of half term:

Spider suspension.

Small boy writing practice. I don't dare tell him that "jealousy" is misspelled. Else there may be "irritation" and  "kicking".

The weather has been lousy so we decided to do some Art.  Grandma Whacker gave Boy 1 paints for Christmas.  Thank you Grandma!!

When we started it, it looked like this.

But pretty soon it looked like this.

Then a hairdryer got involved.  Boy 1 said it was standard practice for arty types.

Boy 2 produced a picture of an evil apple.  He called it "Evil Apple".

Boy 1 did something very clever with interlocking doves.

Afterwards I hosed down the kitchen, the boys and myself, and then had a restoring cup of tea. We'll do art again soon - some time next year.


Thank you to Linda in Chile and to Kate B who recommended this book.

I got it through our library. For free.  Amazon wanted to charge me £62 for a copy, on the basis that it is an exotic Australian import.  £62, has the world gone mad?  I am looking forward to this and may even let Boy 2 read it as well.

In exciting literary news, I have finished The Slap. WARNING: THIS NEXT BIT CONTAINS SPOILERS SO SKIP IT YOU HAVE NOT READ THE BOOK AND WANT TO!

   I found it absorbing and thought provoking but found most of the characters grotesque, almost caricatures, particularly Hector, Harry and Gary. In fact Hector and Harry seemed very much the same.  And I found it all very unrealistic: most parents I know, male and female are busy working, working and working, juggling appointments, doing the school run, making Tudor costumes, taking the car to the garage, cleaning paint off small boys, going to the supermarket, our time and minds filled with the minutiae of everyday living.  The book's characters seemed concerned mostly with sex, both marital and extra marital, drinking and pill popping.  I guess they have superior time management skills and the constitutions of an ox. I also found Aisha and Sandy and even Rosie surprisingly subservient to their husbands.  And it was so over the top, the writer just had to push it with everything e.g. Rosie has to still be breast feeding a 4 year old; teenage Richie celebrates graduating high school by shooting up speed for the first time, Aisha just has to have fab one night stand sex at a conference....enough already!  So I agree with Nik and Kate, I can't believe this represents middle class families living in Melbourne.  Kylie/Mouse directed me to an excellent review that a friend of hers did, please look once you have read the book.  http://inside.org.au/suburban-mayhem

As an antidote to all this torrid stuff, I have turned to this.  I want something gentle and quietly observed.  With no bonking.  What's the betting I get to page 42 and all sorts of shenanigans breaks loose!

I am also planning on reading this, I have heard good things about it.

While on the subject of reading, do you find blogging and reading blogs means you read fewer novels?  I do, which I find a shame. I am intrigued by this lady who for a year read a book a day, and still continues to read at an amazing pace.

http://www.readallday.org/

  How does she do it?  Of course she must read very quickly but does she only sleep 4 hours a night?  Do her family get annoyed that she always has her head in a book?  Does she ever get headaches which stop her reading?  Has her eyesight got worst?   Whatever, she is a great source of interesting books to read.

 Finally, look what a very kind and thoughtful friend gave me.  She had read me going on in the blog about Clock Failure.  Thank you S. so nice of you.  The cutest little clock ever.



A Complete Clock Up And A Costume Drama - Chocolate Required Urgently

Hello Dahlings!  So much to tell, so little time!  (Ha, so little time, in fact no time at all, I crack myself up!)

Blighty HQ has been struck down by Systematic Clock Failure.

This clock does not work.

This clock does not work.

This clock does not work.  (Yes Mr B, I have tried putting in new batteries)

Even Mr B's trusty hi-tech Casio which updates using satellite signals beamed  down by little men on Mars (oh yes, I read the user manual  - see p.175. section 4a)  is Not Performing Properly.  This is his arrangement to top up its solar power panels.  Er, Mr B, that's the teabag jar you have used for propping up   - can I risk a cup of tea or will it jeopardize the important work of the European Space Agency (Buckinghamshire branch)?

AND - Boy 2 cheerfully informed me that he had lost his watch at school
BUT - his friend Clifton Perkins ( not his real name) found it for him on the astroturf

BUT THEN - watch later crunched in freak classroom collision scenario and now hands (of watch not of Boy 2) free floating so possibly time keeping not 100% accurate..

AND - my old Omega watch which I bought 100 years ago has also stopped working
AND - I took it to Omega shop in Regents Street Lundun
AND - they phoned and told me it needed "servicing" which would cost £250 - I kid you not - £250, has the world gone mad?  They could not tell me what wrong with watch but yes, 250 big ones would be needed.  I am going to contact Scotland Yard as I feel this is a watch hostage extortion type situation.  I want a SWAT team to storm that building and get my watch back.  I can always paint the hands to the correct time using my handy laundry marker pen.

But I think the Universe (the one that directs Faux Fuchsia to bake and me to buy nail polish) is trying to send a sign:

A Rolex is the answer.  Everything will continue to be Out of Alignment till I get a Rolex.
(Mr Blighty, how am I doing? Is this convincing? Oh well. it was worth a try).

As if I didn't already have enough of a crisis on my hands, Daphnes4Boyz, that excellent country club (with school attached) to which Boys 1 and 2 belong, has thrown me a curved ball re Boy 1's costume for the Tudor play.

I had already cobbled together this.

Then my lovely neighbour M ( hello M!) lent me this brilliant doublet - her grandmother used to organise pageants years ago and she has the most fabulous range of costumes - matador outfit anyone?

But then Daphnes4Boy$ (not a typo, they have just rebranded to make it clear that they are happy to be paid in US dollars, they have an Equal Opportunities Policy where hard currency is concerned) - sent me these instructions!

 Has the world gone mad?  Do they think I am some sort of 1950s housewife with nothing better to do than drink cocktails  tea and eye up the tennis instructor  Rolex website?   My clock calendar clearly says 1982 ( oh sh*t, not another clock gone!).  I have not got the skills to do advanced origami type dressmaking.

Plus, I have already got my outfit prepared BUT

it's a 1537 one, not 1538!  Oh the shame!  All the other boys will be in the latest fashion for 1538, Boy 1 will stand out like a sore thumb and be scarred for life.  The horror! Total crisis!

To take my mind off these trying events, I have now taken complaining letters to an all time low.

I'll leave you to read this.  And yes,  I did actually send it.

Must go now, might be time to get the boys from school. Or to get them to school. Whatever.