Find your level...

I haven’t blogged for an absolute age – probably since the day after I got the fantastic advice that I should write something every day to develop my writing style…hmmm.

For those of you who know me well, you will know that Jolly Spoon has been busy in other creative ways, but more about that another time.

I have various notepads dotted around my house, mainly due to my unfortunate tendency, (courtesy of my mother), towards obsession.  I see a notebook I like and I HAVE to have it.  I then can’t bring myself to write in it because it is too beautiful to sully with my scribblings.  After the requisite amount of time has passed, or I have bought a more covetable notebook which bumps it down the list, I can add a neat (to start with) reminder, note or good doodle (usually heart related) to the first, fresh page.

Notebooks are a little bit like clothes for me – obviously not because I wear them, I am not that bonkers – but because they have a similar grading system to each other.  Finding a “Perfect Top” and finding a “Perfect Notebook” cause almost identical chemical reactions in my brain.

You see a top.  You like it.  You try it on. It fits.  You look good in it and you scurry off to the till to make it officially yours! You then need to find the perfect occasion to wear your new top – you can’t just pop it on the next morning for goodness sake!

It starts life as a “Going Out” top.  After a few wears, you feel like it isn’t as special as when you first bought it.  Everyone looks at you like “She’s got that top on again…” and the pictures on Facebook begin to be indistinguishable from one party to the next.

The poor top is downgraded to “Day Wear”.  Depending on who you are, what you do and how often you work, it might become a “Work” top.  For some people, this is the level immediately below “Going Out” and for others it is only just above “Gardening and DIY”.  I know someone who has organised her levels unlike anyone else in the universe, but for fear of death or at the very least maiming, I cannot share the absolute hilarity with you I am afraid.

Some of the sub–levels worth a mention, but not to be worried about in any detail are:

“Weekend Daytime Going Out” – inclusive of, but not limited to:  Jeans (not boyfriend style), Chiffon tops (not low cut) and Dresses (not short – unless it’s sunny and then NEVER with heels)

“Cruise Wear” – always with sequins, has to have at least 4 matching items (including 3 pairs of shoes and 4 handbags)

“Exercise Wear” – I won’t grace this disgusting sub-level with detail.

“Lounge Wear” – a relatively new sub-level.  At one point, it was completely unacceptable for your friends to ever see you in your dressing gown. Now it is positively encouraged.  This new level includes: cartoon character inspired t-shirts, pj sets and the dreaded onesie.  You can tell an awful lot about someone from their lounge wear style…mostly things that you didn’t want to know.  

Some of you will be predicting that I will launch into my usual Pants vs Pyjamas debate at this point.  I WILL NOT.

Anyway, I digress.  The “Going Out” top has fallen through all of the levels and has eventually reached the bottom.  It has fallen apart, or just doesn’t go with any of your current selection of jeans and leggings.  It languishes in the back of your wardrobe or airing cupboard, occasionally popping out for you to sneer at it and shove it back into oblivion.  If it is lucky, it might end up in a charity shop – to be discovered and reloved by a new owner, but more often or not, it will end up as a rag or in the bin.

The notebook equivalent of this is the “Pit of Despair”, also known as being given to my children to scribble in.  The poor pad has been through the “Christmas List” and “Handbag Jotter” sub-levels already and wishes it hadn’t skipped past the “Lost in a Storage Box” level.  

Its last hours are spent as a canvas for an Angry Bird drawing or a Hello Kitty painting.  The final nail in the coffin comes from a felt tip pen, held in one place for too long, whilst the child is distracted by a passing cat or an episode of Phineas and Ferb.  All remaining pages have now been ruined as the ink soaks through each layer and spreads like a disease to the back cover.  No fresh, blank pages remain and the recycling bin beckons.

This blog entry was supposed to be about ‘Things that annoy me on a regular basis’, which have been collated over the last few weeks in my “Kitchen Side” notepad, which exists also for notes to my husband and things that I need from the Coop. That will now have to be my next blog entry I think. 

I will leave you with the image of the first page in a current notepad of mine, followed by the most recently written on one.  It is the perfect pictorial representation of the “levels” in action…

Hotels - like home, but more uncomfortable and expensive...

A night away! It’s with work, but still, a night away it is!  It’s nice to have a break from routine, get away from all of the things you have to do when you’re at home.  Like washing up.  My hands currently look like they belong to an 80-year-old woman who’s been working on a North Sea fishing boat all her life.

Or like reminding people to do things.  Have you tidied that up?  Have you read that yet?  Have you wiped THAT? Don't get me wrong - it is a joy and a privilege to have children, but it’s also lovely to be called ‘Molly’ for a couple of days instead of Mum.  Or MUMMY!!!! Or Muuuuuuuuummmmmm (said with at least 3 syllables...)

When I started to write this, I was lying on one of the beds in my hotel room.  “One of the beds?”, I hear you say incredulously.  Yes, that’s right.  2 beds in my room.  Both single though and it took me 20 minutes to choose the least uncomfortable of the two to sleep in.  I luckily didn't embarrass myself (as much) like I did last time I was in a hotel for work.  I checked in, went to my room, but the lights wouldn't work.  Maybe they've had a power cut I thought to myself.  No, the telly is working.  How very strange.  I should definitely let them know about that on Reception.  I didn't know you had to put your room key in a special bit by the door to make sure you didn't leave the lights on when you left your room did I.  Really wished I had phoned Reception to tell them instead of announcing my idiocy to the queue of people waiting to check in...

Still.  I am away from the kids, away from the school run, away from the pancakes.  Arse.  I’m away from the pancakes...  Still.  I can have a few drinks and dinner.  Hmmm...could do that at home though.  Still.  I can get up later than normal.  Except I can’t, because I have to go into the office with someone else as I don’t have my car. Still.  A change is as good as a rest (see previous posts for further wisdom on that score.)

And there is the fact that I can watch tv in bed – a rare treat! (I must have a look at my expectation/excitement levels and think about readjusting them...)  But wait, there’s nothing on that I actually want to watch and NO SLEEP TIMER!  No sleep timer?!?!  Is this the 1980’s for goodness sake!

So, inevitably, I end up having an awful night’s sleep in an uncomfortable bed, waking up at 3am to the telly blaring out an infomercial for unwanted hair remover.  I am dribbling slightly, but at least there is nobody here to see it – not that my husband would be anything other than comatose if he were here...

I also have a recurring nightmare that I have accidentally (tipsily) set my phone alarm to go off on the wrong day and/or time.  This resulted in me waking up every hour or so in a complete panic, scrabbling for my phone to see how long I had overslept by.

When the dulcet tones of Sloth from The Goonies finally roused me at 7.45am (small, but not insignificant lie-in, completely wiped out by the panicked flapping episodes 4-5 times in the night), I felt like I had been  beaten up by each individual mattress spring.  (Once you go memory foam, you never go back...)

Still.  I did only have to get myself ready for the day, and I was a very good girl and got washed and dressed with the minimum amount of fuss.  I think I should get a sticker on my chart.

Was it worth the school morning trade off for such a bad night’s sleep? Too bloody right.

(But I wouldn’t want to do it every week.)

Up the duff...

I thought I would mix it up a bit with a poem or two on my blog - this one was written a long time ago now, after having my first sproglet. 

Be warned though - no romanticised references to blooming, neat little bumps...

Pregnant

In the club, up the duff, in the family way,

Phrases used by those confused who don’t know what to say,

‘With child’ is what your granny was,

Fertilised is proper,

Wherever we’re at, just don’t call us fat,

Or you might come a cropper!

Because you see, with pregnancy,

Comes more than just the bump,

There’s piles for a start, and lots of farts,

So who cares we’re a little plump?

You can’t drink wine, but juice is just fine,

As long as it’s organic,

And more than 2 cups of coffee a day,
Sends midwives into a panic!

No more brie, or stilton for me,

Cheddar is safe but so boring,

And lemsips are out without a doubt,

Leaving you bunged up and snoring.

You follow the rules and ignore all the fools,

Who tell you ‘a little won’t matter!’,

And all of the while, you sit on your piles,

Your bum getting fatter and fatter.

Your clothes they don’t fit, your trousers have split,

You ponder just what you are doing,

‘Cos when it comes out, all it does is just shout,

And cries whilst it’s weeing and pooing!

And then comes the day, you’ve been waiting to say,

‘I think that it’s time we go in!’

Your bag’s in the car, it’s really not far,

Then reality starts to set in…

Your legs feel like jelly and your monstrous belly,

Feels solid as a rock,

And now you’re aware, that you really don’t care,

If you’ve packed enough knickers and socks!

Lip balm – who cares? Just the gas and the air,

Make sure it’s got plenty of poke,

Pethidine? Now!  Epidural you cow!

Before I murder my bloke!

Then amidst all your fear, it becomes crystal clear,

None of it matters a jot,

A person arrives, who will change both your lives,

What a wonderful gift you have got!

The stretch marks will fade and mistakes you have made,

Will vanish along with your tum,

‘Cos now you’re complete (lots of cheeses to eat!)

A baby, a Dad and a Mum.

Home is where the heart is (as long as there is a Co-op within spitting distance...)

I love where I live.  

Do I look out of my window onto rolling fields with a babbling brook playing gently down the middle over moss covered stones?  No. I look out onto an Indian restaurant and an MOT centre.

Do I have a tastefully landscaped driveway, winding up to a double fronted, Victorian house with woodwork painted in co-ordinating shades from Fired Earth? No. I live in a mid-terrace with not enough parking and walls so thin you can hear every light switch being flicked on and every annoying, shift-working neighbour’s alarm clock at 4.30am.

Do my children run, carefree through our half an acre of thoughtfully planted trees, wildflowers and herbaceous borders (and the odd vegetable patch with vintage slate markers, designating the rows of purple sprouting broccoli and salsify)? No.  We have a shed (workshop if you’re speaking to my Screwfix-mad husband, shed if you’re talking to me); some rosebushes that were planted by the last-but-one owner, which are pretty for 2 days a year and then infested with greenfly for the rest of the summer and a cat litter “house”, affectionately known as the Poo Pagoda, which gets filled up with said poo after 3 days and is then wilfully ignored by both of our feline friends in favour of the weed filled flowerbeds.

We have 4 Chinese takeaways (one of which is constantly in the local newspaper – and I don’t mean with a half page advert or a coupon offer if you catch my drift...) and 2 Chinese restaurants – both of which are ridiculously expensive an d have the local clientele divided exactly down the middle as to which is the best.  Is it the one which has the 70’s style keyboard player after dinner, who is replaced by the even more exciting DISCO at Christmas time!?  Or is it the one with the fish tank wall outside the toilets, where they fill your glass up after every sip to make sure you are properly wankered (and broke!) after every visit?

We have 4 Indian restaurants/takeaways, but by the time I hit “publish” on this blog entry, it may have changed, so please no outraged comments about the other 2 or 3 I have forgotten.  They will have gone again by the time you finish registering your email address to Blogger so that you can add your comments...

There are copious bakers, hairdressers, cafes and butchers – far more than is necessary to service a community of our size.  On the face of things, we are the takeaway capital of Hampshire and whilst several of my fellow residents were clearly strongly opposed to the well known pizza chain that wanted to join the other 3 Italian restaurants/pizzerias (it was 4, but they had stiff competition in the in-house keyboard player department from the aforementioned overpriced Chinese and went under...) I say – bring it on!!  We are clearly a collection of lazy, cash-rich-time-poor, greedy gits who can’t cook a meal to save our lives.

Despite all of the smells (and there are many), the neon lights and the potential health hazards - you know which takeaway you are – my “village” is the only place I want to be.  

“OK Molly”, I hear you say. “Clearly once you have made your fortune and published a collection of your inane rantings in your critically acclaimed book, ‘AnthoMollogy’, you will be off to Devon in a flash, never again to shop in North Camp for a stale doughnut or heavily discounted golf club. But, and this is the truth, whilst I may purchase a delightful holiday cottage by the sea in the South West (probably next door to Kirsty Allsopp), I will NOT be leaving my beloved North Camp.  Not never.

For all its faults, it is, quite simply, fabulous.  The people that live here are second to none.  Every time I step outside my front door, I am greeted with a smile, a wave and/or a friendly wolf whistle (and not in a horrible, sexist builder kind of way...) from the garage across the road.  My husband has developed such a wonderful friendship with the guys in the Indian across the road, I never have to buy beer for him (as long as we lend them a dining room chair every once in a while) and the manager of the Co-op is always smiling and calls me madam.  I love that.  I didn’t 2 years ago, but I do now.

My children attended the best pre-school that hardly any money/all the money in the world can buy and are now flourishing in an Outstanding school where they, and I, have made friendships that I am sure will last forever.  Or at least until one of them goes off the rails in later years and we have to make a whole new set of friends. The best bit is – I can walk them there. I can also walk to my best friend’s house, at least 4 pubs, 2 cash points and 4 charity shops.  

I know at least 30 people who would happily take my kids to school for me if I was ill or had a childcare issue and I would let at least 25 of them actually do it! Yes.  I want a bigger house so that I can buy loads more stuff from Tiger, my own driveway and a kitchen that you can walk past someone in without touching them inappropriately.  But would I sacrifice all of these things to stay in my lovely North Camp? In a heartbeat. Probably a slightly irregular heartbeat due to the build up of takeaway fats in my arteries, but you get the idea.

I only hope that everyone can find their own North Camp Village – just please don’t come to mine, because the parking is bad enough thanks...

A change is as good as a rest...

So.  Here we are.  It's the middle of January.  People are booking holidays, joining gyms to lose those few Christmas stones pounds and generally looking forward to the year ahead.  Everyone is full of good intentions, the kids have been back at school for nearly 2 weeks and we are in the "sweet spot".  This is the calm before the storm...

In approximately 12 days time it will begin.  Christmas holidays are a dim and distant memory.  Everyone has forgotten their New Year's resolutions and the takeaways have started to creep back in.  Not drinking on a school night has turned into not drinking on a Wednesday night (unless you've had a really bad day of course).  People start to look backwards, not forwards, but their memories have been altered by rose tinted filters.

The playground hosts scores of yawning parents, chatting and stamping their feet against the cold. They reminisce about how fantastic the Christmas holidays were. 

"Didn't we have such a lovely relaxing time. Isn't it horrible having to get up for the school run when it's so cold?  We need a snow day so we can all stay in bed until midday and watch movies in our pajamas, drinking hot chocolate."

Don't be fooled! It wasn't actually like that - don't you remember?!  Tantrums about having less presents than someone else; tears over advent calendars thrown in the bin with chocolate still in them; constipation from all the sweets and vast quantities of meat consumed - and don't get me started on the kids' behaviour!!!

OK. I adore Christmas, and this was one of the best we've had in years, but (and it's a big but!) by the time the first day of term rolled round I was literally skipping into the children's rooms, trilling about how wonderful it will be to see their friends again and get "back into the routine".  The point is...nothing is good forever.  I imagine being rich and thin without having to work at it might come pretty close, but apart from that...everything turns sour after while - just like Mullerlights that you haven't eaten because ice cream is much nicer.

That's why a change is as good as a rest.  I was really looking forward to going back to work in the new year.  Now it's been a couple of weeks, I spend countless hours moments thinking about all of the things I should be/want to be doing at home.  These include, but are not limited to:

• Cleaning/hoovering/tidying
• Starting my own business which allows me to work one day a week and make £50k a year
• Making a massive stash of cards for this year's birthdays so that I don't have to run around the house like a Tasmanian Devil, half dressed, leaving a trail of craft knives, embellishments and discarded "that's-the-shittest-card-I've-ever-made" pressure induced rejects, 10 minutes before a birthday party!
• Looking up that recipe on Pinterest (and then spending an hour laughing at pins about people who go onto Pinterest to look up one recipe and spend an hour on Pinterest...)
• Buying a vintage table/cabinet for 99p on Ebay and upcycling it by painting it badly with a layer of undercoat and then selling it for £100.

I could do any of the above now that it is Thursday and I am not at work.  I only did one...

The point is, that's what life is like!  Half term is designed to give you just enough of a break from the "everyday" to realise that you aren't really that exhausted...just in need of a change. I vote that we have a week off every month instead of saving them all up for the SUMMER HOLIDAYS (a cold shiver just ran down my spine...and it wasn't to do with it being frosty outside)

So, I'm off to clean the bathroom - it will make me appreciate the cup of coffee I have afterwards much more.  I'll just look up that homemade-all-natural bath scouring paste on Pinterest and get right on with it...

Love and Marriage...but no children please!

A friend of a friend is getting married - nothing new there for August I hear you say.  My friend was telling me about how the husband and wife-to-be had decided not to invite children to the wedding and the outrage it had caused.  That's right - OUTRAGE!  Apparently, some of their invitees thought it was the height of rudeness to be invited to an event without their children and were refusing to come.

OK, for starters - who do they think they are?  Not the couple who decided not to invite children, but the OUTRAGED parents! (Just so we are clear who's side I am on...)  On the biggest day of your life, there are enough political stress points - step-families that don't get on, cousins who you see once every 2 years but demand that their 8 year old be your bridesmaid - you know the kind of thing. Why add to that pressure with hoards of screaming children running around making "confetti" out of your flower arrangements if you don't have to or want to?

If you do invite children to your wedding - good for you!  We had them at ours and I have many fond memories of them ruthlessly seeking out the (as yet) childless uncles, who happily let themselves be whacked on the head with a balloon whilst giving shoulder rides to the pack of wild animals that had formed over the course of the day. 

Parents gratefully relinquish control to these men, who have no experience in calming children down, or doing anything other than whipping them into a frenzy - and indeed, have no desire to.  Why should they?  At approximately 8.37pm, they are no longer their responsibility.  They won't have to put them to bed with sweaty hair plastered to their foreheads.  They also won't have to worry about the wet pants that are now in the bottom of their mum's handbags, because they were too excited to remember to go for a wee in time.

Even if some of the more persistent children are still demanding to be dragged along the floor, sitting on top of the uncle's foot as he walks, he is far too drunk by this stage to care.  More to the point, he can sleep off his hangover in his comfortable bed and then wander down to the local cafe at about 11ish for a coffee and a fry up.  The parents are the ones who have had to sleep in a toddler infested bed until 6.42am, when they've either got to endure the whines of their offspring through a fuggy haze of yesterday's overindulgence, or, more likely the case, knew this was likely to happen and so boringly didn't indulge in the first place.

The point is - GET A BABYSITTER - it's better for everyone!  No matter who you have to bribe, how much it is going to cost you, it is the only sane thing to do.  Having been to weddings where children were invited and having left our own kids at home, I can safely say it is the way to go. 

There are a few moments during the day where you experience a pang of remorse - usually when the sweetest little outfit is being modelled on an adorable 4-year-old, or early on in the disco when a cute child starts dancing with an elderly relative.  These moments are few and far between however and can usually be relieved my poking your tongue out cheekily at one of said children and refilling your wine glass.  They are then replaced with smug grins between you and your partner when one of the kids falls off their chair and sobs endlessly during the speeches, or a baby throws up all over it's mum's new Monsoon pashmina. You communicate silently with each other, the mere raising of an eyebrow confirming that leaving them at home was the right thing to do.

The point is, you can take a handbag with you because it matches your shoes, not because it is big enough for a muslin square, 3 tractors and several Humzingers. (People without experience of children - these are a disgusting sticky mess of semi dried fruit, shaped into a pencil and wrapped in foil, used to alleviate parental guilt at having fed the children so many sweets the day before.)

So, if you get invited to a wedding that requires you to leave your children behind, be glad of the chance for some "grown-up" time.  If you're one of the outraged parents, console yourself with the thought that the newlyweds won't have seen the carnage of an overtired, hyperactive 3-yr-old with a sugared almond stuck in their hair.  They may be fooled into thinking that married life will be blissful, with weekend coffee shop trips and Saturday night last minute dinner plans.  They may also be fooled into thinking that they can have all of that AND have children too...mwoah, mwoah, mwoahhhhhh!!!!