January 2010

American Pie on the South Pacific

31 January 2010

I’m excited about this meme that dear slummysinglemummy has tagged me for. (By the way Slummy, I think of you as one of the cool blog-kids so I’m thrilled y’all chose me! ;-) It calls for a picture/song that brings back powerful childhood memories. It’s cold, and grey outside in England. Like dishwater. January usually means breakers and sunburn and sand in inconvenient places, to me. So this meme has given me the chance to trot down memory lane to that wonderful South Pacific idyll where I ‘grew up’.  Read more... (786 words, 2 images, estimated 3:09 mins reading time)

16 comments Read the full article →

You think that I’m strong…

27 January 2010
For all his failings, I love this song from Robbie Williams. It encapsulates my exact feelings sometimes. You see, if you had looked over a classroom of kids in 1979 you would have picked me out in an instant. 
Small, curly haired and very loud. Confident, chatty, out-going. You would have heard me before you saw me. You would think I was strong. And you’d be wrong. I’ve always had this quiet secret. Everyone I know thinks that I am a confident, outgoing, strong woman and that is true, it’s just not the whole truth. Which is….
I worry.
I’ll give you a little example;
When I was fourteen I went into hospital to have a routine tonsillectomy. After doing all the pre-op tests and changing into the surgical gown a huge fluster developed around me. Nurses buzzed to and fro. Doctors hmmmed and shook their heads. I sat there most concerned that my newly grown boobs didn’t hang out of the surgical gown. Hours later they sent me home. No operation for Vix today! Of course I was thrilled but my excitement turned into extreme anxiety as my family started talking in hushed whispers around me. I caught snippets of conversation ‘Shall we tell Vix’, then a mumbled reply and something about ‘dying’.
Of course I started planning my funeral. The flowers, the music (quite possibly ‘Send me an Angel’), even what my friends would do (Smile and be happy at a life well-led, or cry and rip their school uniform to shreds?)
I had myself six feet under by the end of the week – which is when I found out that it was my beloved budgie who was dying. I merely had a bleeding problem that was sorted with some magic drugs, and I had my tonsils lopped out the following week.
Worry isn’t something I’ve grown out of sadly, nor can it be as easily cut out of your life as fetid tonsils. You could argue (and I do) that some things you need to worry about, and anxiety is a safety mechanism. Beneficial worry could inspire you to sort out a will, plan for your financial future, even keep your health in good order.
But I don’t just worry about being healthy, wealthy and wise. Oh no. I worry about everything. I worry about the food we eat, about the kids (Are they happy  What will they do with their lives?, Did they put clean undies on? Will dust mites eat holes in their backsides as they lie in their beds at night?).

I worry about the Englishman, and our marriage (Not helped by woeful second marriage divorce statistics!Will he still love me when I’m 64?)   Read more... (926 words, estimated 3:42 mins reading time)

24 comments Read the full article →

I wanted to be a nun

27 January 2010
My nine year old daughter cocked her head to one side and asked;
‘What do you think I should be when I grow up?’
She often comes out with these crackers whilst I’m driving.
‘Well you’re good with maths and you like science,’ I muse. ‘Of course you did really well on Miniclip, so you’re good with computers‘ (She is the Miniclip champ for her age in the UK!)
‘You’re also good at reading and maybe you’ll be good at languages, but it’s a little too early to tell.’
When I was her age I was envisaging a lifelong vocation as a Catholic nun. I remember telling my horrified mother that was my intention. She needn’t have worried at my religious passion, I just had a thing for candles. Not a lot came of that ambition, especially after I realised that nuns don’t spend a lot of time with boys, and being a real tomboy, boys were my world. (Later of course I morphed into one of those women who genuinely enjoys male company, but that’s another blog post.)
Before I was fifteen I had at various times concocted a future for myself that included being a jeweller, a geologist (I liked rocks!), a potter (and mud) an actress and singer (famous, of course! Not just a wannabe!), an airline steward (much to my father’s horror!!! ‘You want to be a trolley dolly?’) a journalist (there’s no money in it),  a social worker and a lawyer.  Inspired by Kate Adie I desperately wanted to be a foreign correspondent.
At no time did I want to be an unpaid cleaner, chauffeur, dishwasher, and cook!
For many years I wanted to be a nurse and no amount of underpaid foul-smelling slog in an old folks’ nursing home dissuaded me. It was a humble ambition. It was the 1980s and buoyed by Tears for Fears, I just wanted to save the world. Of course I wasn’t nine when I was planning the career that would see me through the rest of my life.
‘You’re nine!’ I exasperatedly said to my daughter.
‘You need to focus on what you like doing and what you’re good at, but how can you know that at this age?’
I’m not sure if my daughter’s junior school has started vocational guidance courses, but I know that some in the area have. The Department for Children, Schools and Families has started careers advice courses for children as young as seven. The department states that it’s attempting to offer children ‘career-related learning in a range of areas to raise awareness of what they can achieve.’
But seriously, don’t you think nine (let alone seven years old) is too young to be making decisions about what kids are going to do when they’re adults?
My fifteen year old is also struggling with this question as he gives some thought to what course he wants to take at college and university. I think even fifteen is too young to be locked into a vocational direction! When I was fifteen I still wanted to be a nurse, and the career I eventually followed – in Marketing and PR – I didn’t know anything about then. What’s more like many women of my generation I’ve ended up having something of a boutique career – a little of this, a lot of that. Isn’t that the modern way? It’s no longer a cradle to grave mentality out there, particularly not for women, and thankfully so because women have to chop and change their career aspirations around a plethora of other distractions in their lives. (Like children!).
I was fortunate to benefit from not getting into the nursing course I had my heart set on at 16 and had to go off to university instead, where I quickly discovered that I could make a living out of my passion for writing. My generation was so lucky. We got to swan around at university studying general degrees whilst finessing the perfect repertoire of orientation pranks. We studied some, drank lots of coffee and alcohol, and learnt how to be adults.  We were so lucky to have that freedom to take a general course, to learn for the love of it, without the pressure of huge student loans.
As I was chatting to my littlest daughter this afternoon, I realised  that she will never enjoy the ‘salad days’ of Uni especially if they’re already asking them to make decisions about what course they wish to follow, and what their career game plan is, at nine years old.
I think it’s sad.  

Are our kids really simply seen as economic widgets to be primed and trained to be eventually slotted into the nation’s economic machine? At least my stubborn daughter seems oblivious of the pressure to conform. She’s focussing on what she enjoys.

‘I think I’ll be a chef’ my daughter said firmly.
‘I like making banana cake’.   Read more... (866 words, 1 image, estimated 3:28 mins reading time)

12 comments Read the full article →

I feel silly, oh so silly….

26 January 2010

I got up at the crack of dawn to head off to a business breakfast meeting. I haven’t started the day in a suit for quite some time. It was edifying. Here’s a couple of things I learnt:  Read more... (309 words, estimated 1:14 mins reading time)

  • My eyeballs leached all moisture in shock at the earliness of the hour, and my contact lenses stuck to them. The world is an interesting, albeit smudgy place, seen-through glued-on contact lenses.

14 comments Read the full article →

My Happy Shiny People

25 January 2010

Mothering can be a bitch.

They don’t tell you that in the antenatal classes. They leave that bit out, along with stretch marks and wind pain and ruined nethers. They also leave out the hard decisions you need to make throughout your child’s life and the constant pressure to do your very best for these people who (as they sometimes remind us!) didn’t ask to be born.

They don’t warn you about the guilt. From the moment of conception until your death you will always be plagued with maternal guilt. Perpetually wondering whether you have done the right thing.  Read more... (297 words, 3 images, estimated 1:11 mins reading time)

31 comments Read the full article →

The EX Factor

21 January 2010

So there was Heather in Lapland in her sauna (as you do) dreaming about doing me in as punishment for running off with her long-lost boyfriend.  As she sipped champagne in her steamy cloud attended by a pool boy with glorious abdominal muscle tone (and a penchant for pecking on parrot!), she contemplated how she would carry-out her evil plan.

She’s a warrior woman and she knows the right side of a weapon, as I understand it. What’s more she knows the terrain. She used to live down the road in this quiet little town so she knows it very well. Three years ago she lived here with the ex. Not any old ex but the one that meant something. The first one that will forever make you go just a little bit mushy at the thought of him. We all have one of those and hers lived here, and quite possibly still does although now with ‘the other woman’.
The other woman she thought might be me. But really isn’t.
You can read all about it here in anotefromlapland where she left us with that echo of a thought…
Have you ever had to face a long forgotten love suddenly being thrust back into your life?  I can’t imagine how hard it must be if it were all real rather than the result of a very over-active imagination.
Actually I have been in both situations a) worrying about bumping into an ex, b) bumping into an ex (my ex-husband was a regular ‘uh-oh’ grit your teeth and smile moment).
I’ve even had an ex come back into my life, in a spooky kind of way.
Many years ago at University I fell in love with a guy we’ll call Rob. It wasn’t his name, but it’s close enough.  He was my first proper love. We held hands – me in my tie-dyed pinafore with hippie silver earrings and he in his adidas tracksuit pants – as we walked around campus. He knew my timetable and waited for me when my lectures finished. He wrote me poetry (some of which I still have), and love letters, and even a song or two. One claimed ‘you are the rain on a rain pecked roof’  …. not sure if he meant I was a drip, or a house…..
We went out together for three years until finally the sexual tension became insufferable and we decided to get engaged.  As head of the Christian Fellowship we had to get married to ‘do the dirty deed’. Needless to say we’d done everything BUT… Funny how you change in life. He bought me a diamond ring with a speck for a stone. It wasn’t a carrot, it was the size of a speck of dirt on a carrot. But I loved it. We sang ‘I’ve got you babe’ at the top of our lungs down Auckland’s waterfront on summer days in his Dad’s ancient car, in deference to the reality that we didn’t have money, or anything else. I had to hold onto the car door to stop it from peeling off the car, when he drove a little fast.
Our first time together was inspired by a lace petticoat and a desire to get warm as it snowed outside. I don’t remember angels falling from heaven, or choruses singing, and the Shaky Isles didn’t shake. In fact it was a bit of a let-down if I remember rightly, but it didn’t matter because I was besotted.
Inevitably enough the relationship fizzled out and heart-broken I fled from Dunedin and started travelling the world.   I decided in that very 80s clichéd way ‘if you love something set it free’, and backpacked through Oz and Asia for over a year on my own, growing up. He didn’t come back to me (well not then). Instead I started my career, met another man, married, made children and all that other stuff you do.
Four days before Christmas in 1995 the telephone rang in our little Auckland home and my (now ex) husband answered and handed it to me.
It was him. Rob. On the phone. After eight years! He wanted to ‘catch up’.
I will be eternally grateful that I didn’t tell him to ‘f—k off and die’.
Because he did.
After Christmas I was reading the newspaper looking at who had given birth as I was pregnant with the Dark Princess, and my eye slipped columns to the Death notices and there it was. I later found out he had been killed on Christmas Eve driving home from Northland. He didn’t even make 30 years old.
Of course this was all a huge shock to me and took me some years to get over properly. I had so many questions – Did he know he was going to die? Did he want to get back together? Why did he call after eight years?
In the end this experience became the catalyst for a novel manuscript called Life After  Death.  It’s not an autobiographical story at all but it was cathartic writing it.
So Heather, in response to your question. Yes I have come across an ex. I’m certain it wasn’t yours. Please don’t put a contract out on me.

14 comments Read the full article →

The Early Bird Catches the Worm……and quite possibly, the chicken drumstick.

20 January 2010
‘Twas an hour before wake-up
And all through the house
Nothing was stirring

Not even a mouse.

Or so we thought, until the sleepy Englishman banged his way downstairs to see who was in the kitchen, and discovered the missing chicken drumstick.
After pork-gate yesterday, my Englishman and I had a wee chat with the Dark Princess. We reconfirmed that we are a team that cannot be divided, and we set down some ground rules. Amongst all the parent-y stuff like ‘thou shalt not play one off against the other’, and ‘thou shalt not eat all the resources that need to be divided fairly amongst the family’, and ‘thou mayest go with Jade to the movies later in the week if thou promises to be good..for ever!’; amongst all of this we set down some new operational rules.
One of these rules is that the children (hereafter known as ‘the kids’) shall not be admitted into the kitchen before the adults (hereafter known as ‘the long-suffering parents’) in the mornings. This rule is to try and stop food going missing. Until now, we have stumbled downstairs, bleary-eyed and wild-tongued to find no milk for breakfast, no bread for sandwiches, indeed Mother Hubbard’s cupboard completely emptied. It’s not the best way to start the day.
We explained patiently that I had roasted a chicken which would be the food du jour for the rest of the week’s packed lunches, and that under no circumstances, is the DP or anyone else to touch it. Hands Off!
Imagine our surprise when we were awoken at 6am with the cheerful sounds of Dark Princess getting ready for the day. (At least she’s pleased to be up and alive, I suppose). My Englishman patiently told her to go back to bed 3x. I (like a wuss) hid under the duvet.  Finally he got up at 6.45 muttering that there was only 15 minutes until the alarm anyway. When I made my way to sacrifice an ese coffee pod at the machine, my Englishman pointed out the hobbled chicken.
‘It appears to have something missing’ he glowered.
‘Hmmm.’
Looking up I noticed the gaping hole where the chickens fine thigh and leg once was. I know it was there, I cooked it. But it appeared to have been surgically removed.
‘DP says Bailey did it’
Bailey, the 40kg eating machine, wagged her tail at the mention of her name.
I raised an eyebrow.
‘Funny that she neatly ate only the drum. She typically eats all of the bird and leaves only bones half-split open on the carpet.’
‘Isn’t it’, he sighed.
We must have the cleverest dog on the planet.

8 comments Read the full article →

Piggy In the Middle

19 January 2010
All hell was breaking loose downstairs.
My Englishman is a mild mannered Clark Kent character, who rarely raises his voice, but I could hear him, very clearly, so he must have been speaking loudly. As for the Dark Princess she was screaming the words, like a banshee.
And it was all about the pork!
“Why can’t I just have the pork?”
“Because there’s two meals there, we can use them for tea tonight. Dinner’s half done then. Have some cheese in your sandwiches.”
“But I don’t LIKE cheese!” (News to me, eavesdropping on the stairs)
“I just want the pork”
“How many siblings do you have?”
Bewildered look. You mean there’s other people in the house who need packed lunches?
“Three. Um no two. I just want the pork! I DONT WANT CHEESE! Stop making fun of me!”
I put in my 3p.
“Why don’t you slice the pork and share it amongst all four of you.”
I am clearly dying. I’m barking like a seal with bronchitis and it’s only seven o’clock in the morning! I cough, cough, cough into the coffee machine. It’s hot as I cough it up and singe my nostril hairs.
Meanwhile the immovable object has met the immeasurable force. Or some such cliché. I couldn’t remember the cliché as I was too busy trying to think through how I was going to explain my burnt nose to the doctor, and fending off youngest daughter who had thrown herself slavishly into my arms exclaiming;
“I love you Mummy! Thank you for sponsoring me and my athletics today. I love you Daddy and I love cheese.”
“Stop being sycophantic” I say too sharply.
“What’s sycophantic?” everyone asks at once.
“Greasing” says the Englishman.  “And thanks a lot,” he says as a grumpy aside to me. “I thought we were going to stick together?”
“ I just think we should use the leftover pork to slice between the lunches and I’ll get something else for dinner,” I try to explain.
He’s not happy, and I understand why. I’ve let the unit down. (My Englishman’s good with military analogies) Dark Princess is puce, and she’s crying and indignant. She does not want cheese in her boring sandwiches. She wants the old days when we weren’t so tight on grocery budget. She does not want to consider other people; not her Mum who has to go out in the cold with the dodgy chest to get more food, not her siblings who are her mortal enemies when it comes to provisions, especially not her Stepfather.
This is not great behaviour on her part. I know she’s really tired and jet lagged. I’m trying to cut her some slack and soothe the situation. I’m not winning. I long for the old days too – when she was a troublesome toddler and I could just remove her from the situation and put her in Time Out. She’s almost taller than me now. Dark Princess opens the fridge and scornfully mutters ;
“Why is it so empty anyway?”
Uh Oh.  She’s started waving the red flag and the bull in the room charges……
There’s much angry discussion about how easy it is to parent when you only parent for four weeks out of 52. How easy it is to provide lavish dinners out and theme park trips and all the food you can eat, when you’re not providing for your children. DP cries. Stepfather looks unhappy as I cry angrily. Son and littlest daughter choose sides. I stand in the middle trying to catch the ball that’s flying to and fro above my head, and failing miserably.
Piggy in the middle.
I want to support my Englishman. I know how hard it is providing for a half grown family. I know that there’s a stark difference between his careful North Yorkshire upbringing and my kids’ more consumerist old lifestyle in New Zealand. I feel guilty that I haven’t stood by my man and supported his point of view. I feel guilty that my kids are so demanding. I feel guilty that my ex doesn’t pay what he should, that I’m not earning what I should, that I have three kids, and whilst I’m at it that I haven’t done the housework, or finished the website, or cleaned the fridge out or a million and one other things! But most of all, I feel  guilty that I didn’t buy enough toppings for lunches … oh and yes, that I can’t stop coughing.
But then Dark Princess though being a brat is tired and she’s so damned dramatic (like her mother) She’s only 13 soon to be 14 which is prime time for selfish teenage behaviour, isn’t it?
Then I feel guilty that she might like her father’s place better where there’s the equivalent of a cow in the back yard, all the cheese and pork you could want and a veritable goose who lays the golden egg! I feel guilty that she might feel that I’m not being a good mother (a low blow that gets me every time!)
The dog starts barking for her breakfast, and the cat jumps onto the bench to locate her bowl, and the littlest daughter keeps hugging everyone and saying ‘I love you’. (She’ll be a great hippie in a few years time). I take a slug of Ventolin which inspires yet more coughing.
Son comes downstairs and tries to calm the situation. He’s tall and serious now, at almost 16 years old. He takes the cheese sandwiches to keep the peace, and slopes back upstairs to locate his other shoe, his tie, his head (which fell off whilst sleeping). He has this incredible ability to float through space and the time continuum. It’s a flexible understanding of time that his school doesn’t endorse. He only visits this planet occasionally. I slump onto the couch in guilty tears.
Where is that bloody manual for step-parenting teenagers?
I’m not good at being Piggy In the Middle. I just want everyone to be happy and like Capt Kirk on the Enterprise, I try to make it so! The Englishman sadly heads off to work, littlest daughter plonks herself down in front of Cartoon Network (dressed in short sleeved school shirt, beanies, scarf and fingerless mittens. (I know not why!) What of the Dark Princess?
She walks out, with the pork. All of it. (You loose).

NB/ Post inspired by real events. Names have been changed to protect the guilty. Written as part of Josie’s Writing Workshop prompts. Though not a cartoon character, I do feel like there should be a Piggy in the Middle cartoon character.

22 comments Read the full article →

But do Bloggers DO Anything?

18 January 2010
My lovely Englishman (the Engineer) leaned over me as I was tweeting my latest blog post, and amazed by all the tweets coming through TweetDeck he shook his head and asked;
“But do Bloggers actually DO anything?”

What he meant was is it just fannying about all this tweeting and linking, and blogging. Is it just ego stroking? Surely anything that builds a ‘follower’ fan-base is akin to empire building.
Poor love, he’s new to this social media thingy. He’s tolerant though and doesn’t dismiss Twitter as ‘undignified’ as the extraordinarily dignified Ricky Gervais announced the other day. No, he’s just used to designing stuff and actually making it happen.
He’s using to doing stuff, not talking about it.
I’m pleased that I have the answer for him. It’s taking over Twitter right now and it’s coursing through the blogosphere this wave of support for the refugees in Haiti.

image copyright UNICEF

Check out the hashtag  #bloggersforHaiti  Read more... (281 words, 1 image, estimated 1:07 mins reading time)

4 comments Read the full article →

For Your Eyes Only

17 January 2010
The kids have arrived home from New Zealand and it’s fantastic to see them. They’re tired but tanned and full of happy chatter about places and people they’ve seen. Of course they’re also full of news about their Father, and as they talk about him I wonder how much of our life they’ve revealed to him whilst they’ve been there.
Of course they didn’t have to tell him that much as they confirmed what I’ve suspected, that he reads this blog.
He’s reading this!
 
That makes me feel uncomfortable in the extreme, like a stranger is going through my knicker drawer. Yet I have always been mindful whilst writing that anyone –even him – can read it. I don’t have anything to hide.
But why does he want to? Why?
I’m not feeling very well today and it feels as if I’m being hunted. We separated 5 years ago now and yet he’s still there in the background making me feel like shite. All these complicated emotions – embarrassment, vulnerability, and yes maybe even guilt.

I’ve moved to the other side of the world and made a new life for us. I’ve married the most wonderful man and I’m so happy, but why can’t my ex just move on and more importantly, let us move on? At every turn I hear his criticism reverberating in my head, threatening to bring me down.
When I bought the car my ex’s first words when he dropped the kids off were ‘that’s not very classy is it’. (the Vauxhall compared with my old Landrover in NZ)
When I lost my job his response was ‘see you’re not as smart as you thought you were’.
When he found out about our wedding it was ‘I feel sorry for the poor bastard’.
When we told him he needed to pay more child support (like SOME child support) his comment was ‘see you were always terrible with money’.
I’m just so over it. When does the criticism stop? Of course the simple solution would be to have nothing to do with him but……… I have three children. Am I doomed to having this negative voice pulling me down for as long as the children live with me? I envy those women who have managed to move on to a new respectful relationship with their ex husbands.  Read more... (799 words, 1 image, estimated 3:12 mins reading time)

20 comments Read the full article →

← Previous Entries