Christmas is Over - It's Official!

Just been over to Tesco's and you'll be pleased to know that EASTER BUNNIES ARE NOW IN STOCK!
Well go on then! Quickly before they sell out!

Resolutions.

This New Years Eve we shall be pushing the boat out as usual. We will park ourselves in front of Jools Holland’s Annual Hootenanny, occasionally poking each other in the sides to keep awake, before clinking our glasses at midnight and going to bed.
Traditionally today is also the day for compiling endless resolution lists and because I am nice like that, I have saved the whole family the bother, and made them myself.
In keeping with our environmental awareness, I have recycled most of them from last year. No filling up those landfills with unwanted resolutions. Oh no not us.
Here goes;
Mummy’s Resolutions
1. Unless a special occasion (eg. NaNoWriMo 2005 etc) I will cut down to only ONE cup of coffee per day. This may seem a little hard on myself but you haven’t seen how much coffee I can cram into one mug. Last year I tried the ‘Coffee not so strong’ resolution. Now I’ll try it this way round.
2. Linked to the above, I will drink more WATER. I am terribly bad at this, I find it so boring but when I make the effort I do feel much better.
3. I will edit that novel. I had a flick though it yesterday and re-wrote one of the chapters. It felt good to be working on it, without the pressure of churning the words out. I just played around with a couple of thousand words until they sounded right. I’m not making any promises about seeing my name in print this year; it’s more about gathering confidence and finding my voice.
4. Every Sunday the whole family will go out for a walk somewhere nice. This isn’t a fitness resolution, we don’t have a car so we walk to school, into town a couple of times a week and to
to Tumble Tots, but these are all incredibly dull and urban walks. This resolution is about getting out and appreciating the world without making that ‘I’ve got too much to do’ excuse.
5. Improve my exam / revision technique. The OU may do extra classes, if not I will find some books. (If anyone has any tips on this, they will be much appreciated)
6. After forgetting to nominate, I will at least vote in the BOB Awards.

Littleone’s Resolutions.

1. I will be in bed by 8pm. If I am not yet tired I will sit and read by myself until I am.
2. I will stay there all night.
3. When I have finished playing with a toy I will put it away before I start on something else.
4. Mummy’s resolutions look good. I will drink (more) water too, yum! And I will always eat every scrap of my dinner.
5. When Mummy is writing / studying/ reading, I will play quietly by myself in a corner. No need to bribe me with a DVD anymore.
6. When I am asked not to do something, I will not retort with ‘Go away!’ or ‘I don’t like you!’ however much the above might be said in a comedy fashion.
7. I will no longer insist on wearing my clothes on back to front. That fashion was so 2004.

Mr Purple Elephant’s Resolutions.
I am being easy on him because (delete as appropriate) I know how difficult he finds it / He is almost Goddamn perfect anyway.
1. I will give up smoking. He actually tried this on 23rd Dec, by Christmas night he was scaling the streets of Cambridge looking for somewhere, anywhere selling cigarettes.
2. See Littleone’s resolutions. No. 5.

Control freak? Moi?

New design

What do we think? It may need some tweaking. Let me know if it is not working on your screen. Don’t be too hard on me it is my first technophobic attempt to fiddle with a basic blogger template.
I decided yesterday that really, considering the name, I should have a purple blog. So I messed around with the colours before deciding that I much prefer to read black on white. Purple is great but it has its place. So I scrapped that one.
Today we have a cute little Elephant (altogether now ah!) with a soft background and some purpley titles.
Anyone who did manage to see it yesterday I hope you agree that this is more pleasing on the eye, whilst still managing to keep with the themes.

Doing whatever we can.

We aimed to have a very low key Christmas (and birthday) this year, and having heard the stories of other family and friends, it seems we did very well. I’m hoping that we can continue in this fashion as Littleone gets older and the pressures to conform and buy, buy buy become more difficult to avoid.
Even so it just seems wrong to go into any detail about our humble celebration after what happened in Asia this Christmas. I woke up this morning to the news that the death toll has reached 68,000. I don’t know about anyone else but I find this figure awfully difficult to comprehend. All those mothers, fathers, daughters and sons, wiped out just like that.
I saw this British couple on the local news who had managed to get one of the first planes out of there. They were sobbing and crying and telling of how awful it was to watch their ‘possessions’ (ie their suitcase) be washed away. I know it was incredibly awful of me but I couldn’t help thinking that they got of lightly, they still had each other and a fully intact home to which they could return.
Geeky Mom has already written a pefectly good post with some comprehensive links regarding the pittance the west is offering in aid. So I direct you there rather than attempting to do the subject justice myself.
Google has set up a links page with information and sites accepting donations. I suggest we put our governments to shame and reach into our own pockets.
If not then I am sure Oxfam will be doing all they can, they have a shop in nearly every town in the UK. Have that clear out you intended to have before Christmas, gather together any unwanted Christmas presents, take them down to be resold. It will all help, I promise.

The cat ate my twenties

It is my birthday today and it has just occurred to me that one year from today I will no longer be able to say that I am in my twenties. Where did it go? I’ve watched the cat suck up a whole piece of string as if it was a piece of spaghetti, did he do the same with the past decade I wonder, because I have no idea where it went. I didn’t have nearly enough time to do all the things I was supposed to do.
As for today, I am hoping that this morning I will get the chance to prize my child away from the TV long enough to listen to the Seize the Day CD I got for Christmas. You never know I might also get some reading in before the family descends upon us at lunchtime.

There’s no place like home.

Forget the presents, the food etc
Christmas is sitting down with your nearest and dearest to watch The Wizard of Oz.
And while I’m on the subject of Christmas TV, if I ever to get the opportunity to extend my family just don’t take me to Holby City Hospital to give birth. Their infant/ parent mortality rate is akin to the dark ages. Why is nobody investigating this?
(Note to Purple Elephant: Because it is only a story, please drag yourself away from that box in the corner before you do yourself some serious damage)

Thought for the Day; Radio 4

I didn't hear this but have been directed to the transcript of Thought for the Day, on Monday. I was going to edit it here but because I wish that Chistians would cover these issues more often, I am going to reproduce the whole thing.

Thought for the Day, 20 December 2004
The Rev. Dr Colin Morris
Apparently 10 million turkeys will be slaughtered this Christmas. But The Guardian reported the other day on the incredible luck of Bert, a 15lb turkey who was a prize in a church raffle, intended to be delivered, plucked and ready for the festive table of the winner. But Bert happened to be won by a couple who are strict vegetarians, so he is now a family pet.

Several weeks ago the House of Commons voted to ban fox-hunting. I was glad because I don't believe it's right for us to get pleasure from the violent death of any creature. But any self-righteousness I might have felt was wiped out when I saw the picture of Bert and contemplated the fate of those 10 million birds. Is it morally consistent to damn fox hunting and tuck into my Christmas menu?

Now, I don't think there is an exact parallel with foxhunting, but the principle is too close for comfort. It is the notion that the rest of God's creatures exist at our will and pleasure. And we are not just talking about foxes or turkeys. Sooner rather than later we shall have to face up to a whole raft of ethical dilemmas to do with fishing, shooting, vivisection, wild-life habitats being built on, and, of course, global warming. Resolving them will be very costly.

Religiously, my views on these issues were formed by that verse in the Book of Genesis about our having been given dominion over every living creature that moves upon the earth. I always recognised that having dominion implied a duty of care for God's creatures as well as domination of them, but nevertheless the assumption is that there's a God-ordained hierarchy, and we are at its crown. But do we deserve to be? - we homicidal predators, ravaging our own species through war, genocide and the sort of gratuitous cruelty no animal would commit, but we are also busy wiping out other living

The traditional message of Christmas is about the arrival of the Prince of Peace and we understandably think of human conflicts, but Christians also regard Christ as the Lord of Creation. His Spirit surely incites us to work for a truce in that other undeclared war against our fellow creatures. It's a war we might win by sheer weight of numbers an technological superiority, but we'll leave a very bleak planet for future generations.

It wouldn’t be Christmas without the mishaps.

I have never been able to do the homemade swiss roll thing, so can you imagine my excitement a couple of months ago when I found this recipe which uses a loaf tin instead of all that tea towel kafuffle. So yesterday stomach rumbling with excitement I set about getting all the ingredients ready, but where is the loaf tin? I know we had two but for some reason BOTH have disappeared off the face of the earth. We have had the whole kitchen out and they are nowhere to be seen. Do they have legs I wonder?
Apart from that our tree lights failed us, I blame the cat, he was trying to eat them.
Oh and to top it all off during midnight mass Mr Purple Elephant set light to the TV! That may sound quite funny but we were actually very very lucky because seconds earlier he was upstairs bringing the presents down and I was in the kitchen making a drink. As it happened, because we were in the room at the time we managed to rescue the whole thing just in time, a couple of seconds later and it could have been a nasty inferno.
Thankfully we seem to have got our bad luck out of the way and today seems to be going smoothly. I have found a small square cake tin and I am gathering that if I bake the cake and cut it in half is may just resemble a loaf. We shall see!
So after all that I wish you all a disaster free Christmas!

The curse of the ‘pretend’ Sellotape

I do it every year.
I exceed the Christmas present budget and a few days before Christmas I begin to panic about how I am going to make what we have got left last until next payday in January. About the same time I realise that we are short on sticky tape. So what do I do? I walk into the cheap shop and discover two rolls for 75p, and as I queue to pay for my treasured purchases I feel so happy with myself because if I had bought what my daughter would call ‘real’ Sellotape I would have paid a whole pound for just one roll. As I walk out of the shop, ‘pretend’ Sellotape in hand, I feel that this saving of £1.25 might just redeem our financial situation.
I have spent more time scratching around with my fingernail, trying to find the end of the stuff than I have choosing the present in the first place. The amount I’ve wasted while it pisses about splitting down the middle is beyond a joke. If by some huge mistake I get both ends of a cut piece in the same vicinity then they will act like magnets to each other and to anything else in the room that doesn’t wish to be encased in ‘pretend’ Sellotape. Except the actual wrapping paper of course, that would be too much to ask. I’ve got presents popping open and vagrant gift tags all over the place.
I’ve just placed the unused roll by the front door in the hope that its magnetic powers might attract some stray money though the cat flap.
It has got to have some use surely?

My daughter is a snob

Don’t ask! You don’t want to know!
In fact I was kind of hoping that, as I have not missed a day blogging, I could write some throw away post about something half funny my daughter said and we could pretend that the last day or so didn’t just happen. I was here all the time, right?
Here goes...
So she is sitting there on the Mother in law’s sofa and the biscuit barrel gets handed round Littleone helps herself to one of her favourites (a Bourbon) has a nibble and even finishes her mouthful (yes it appears that I did something right) before turning to her Grandmother and saying;
‘I like coming here Nanny because you have REAL biscuits.’
‘What do you mean?’ I ask while everyone else is laughing ‘I get your Bourbon biscuits!’
‘No Mummy you get PRETEND Bourbons, Nanny gets REAL ones.’
What she means is that I try and fob her off with the Value rubbish, whereas Nanny gets the Tesco’s own brand.
Until that moment I thought I’d got away with it.

This is it!

It cannot be put off any longer, we really have to go and visit is family any second now. Would you believe it, I seemed to have picked up something nasty (from Kate or Amy maybe grrrr) I used to be one of those people who got ill once a year for about 24 hours and that was it. Since I wrote this post however I have been ill twice in a few months and both times have involved a visit to the parents in law. I’ve got a friend who is into Spiritual Healing and Reiki etc, she always says that sore throats are a manifestation of suppressed words, of not speaking what you think.
Deduce what you will.
I’m also going to have to think about my nominations for the Best of Blog Awards, as it closes on 24th. I would like to support this idea for giving recognition to the little, bloggers with only a few readers like you and I but I have been thinking about this for nearly a month and I just can’t come to any decision. I love dearly each and every person on my blogroll in her (or his but mainly her) own special and unique way. You all deserve something. I can’t cope with the categories either, many of my favourite reads are parents but I feel to define them as a ‘mommy’ or ‘daddy’ blog would be a bit of an insult as we are all so much more than this.
I might just vote for you all under 'inspirational' and be done with it!

Have a grand solstice everyone!

I have good news and bad news, I’ll leave you to work out which is which.
1) Mr Purple Elephant couldn’t finish his work yesterday. (Due in Christmas Eve)
2) The plan was that he was going to hand it in this morning on the way down to spend the solstice with his family.
3) Family visit postponed until tomorrow.
4) I have a commitment Thursday afternoon, which means we cannot extend our visit the other end.
5) Mr PE announced late last night that he had only just remembered that his mum has given him £20.00 with which he was supposed to go into Borders and buy my Christmas present from them.
6) Of course he is far too busy to do it himself, so guess where I am going this afternoon?!
7) When I was in Borders yesterday I almost shed tears over the sheer volume of books I need to read but cannot afford. What to choose? What to choose?
8) Mr Purple Elephant thinks he will finish his work by teatime, which means we can spend the Solstice evening together as a nuclear family.
9) This means that he will suggest that we open the Christmas wine.
10) There are only two bottles left.
11) He thinks there are six.

Favourite Christmas Lyrics.

I began thinking about this when I was a teenager (with too much time on my hands obviously) and the ‘first’ Gulf War was looming. It was then that I decided in all my youth and innocence that the award should go to John and Yoko for the awe inspiring ‘War is over. If you want it.’ It had never occurred to me before that all I had to do was ‘Want it’ and nobody would have to die. It all sounded so simple, so I started ‘wanting it’ right there and then. So the war began wrecking havoc all over the Middle East and still my naivety would not budge, I just wasn’t ‘wanting it’ enough. So it was then that I began ‘imagining’, yes I imagined that there was no heaven, no hell, no possesions and even no countries and John was right you know, it wasn’t hard at all. In fact it was quite nice where I was living for a while.
I’m not quite sure when it was that I came back down to earth with a painful thud, all I know is that while I was busy dreaming of a better world, it seems that over 100,000 civilians had died in Iraq. The war was not over at all. Thanks John.
Yet despite my bitter cynicism I cannot bring myself to throw my idealist tendencies down the rubbish chute, so for now they sit under the stairs, with all my John Lennon records while I work out what the hell else I can do to end these continuing atrocities.
My new favourite Christmas Lyrics? Straight in at number one is The Pogues and Kirsty MacColl with the very last lines of Fairytale of New York. A heart rendering love song that never fails to bring a tear to my eye. The pathos of failed hopes and dreams can only be understood in the context of the whole song. So here it is:

HIM; It was Christmas Eve babe
In the drunk tank
An old man said to me, won't see another one
And then he sang a song
The Rare Old Mountain Dew
I turned my face away
And dreamed about you
Got on a lucky one
Came in eighteen to one
I've got a feeling
This year's for me and you
So happy Christmas
I love you baby
I can see a better time
When all our dreams come true

HER; They've got cars big as bars
They've got rivers of gold
But the wind goes right through you
It's no place for the old
When you first took my hand
On a cold Christmas Eve
You promised me
Broadway was waiting for me
You were handsome

HIM: You were pretty
Queen of New York City

BOTH: When the band finished playing
They howled out for more
Sinatra was swinging,
All the drunks they were singing
We kissed on a corner
Then danced through the night

The boys of the NYPD choir
Were singing "Galway Bay"
And the bells were ringing out
For Christmas day

HER: You're a bum
You're a punk

HIM: You're an old slut on junk
Lying there almost dead on a drip in that bed

HER: You scumbag, you maggot
You cheap lousy faggot
Happy Christmas your arse
I pray God it's our last

BOTH: The boys of the NYPD choir
Still singing "Galway Bay"
And the bells are ringing out
For Christmas day

HIM: I could have been someone

HER: Well so could anyone
You took my dreams from me
When I first found you

HIM: I kept them with me babe
I put them with my own
Can't make it all alone
I've built my dreams around you.

Shane MacGowan goes down in my book as one of the great poets of our time. Did I mention that I was going to see the Pogues on Wednesday?…

Some questions to which Purple Elephant needs the answers and is too embarrassed to ask

1) What is ‘Trackback’ and what does one do with it?
2) How might one go about adding categories to one’s blog if one was using simple old blogger?
3) Its it normal for a 3 ½ year old child to have an aversion to wearing clothes the right way round?
4) Is there anyone else in the world who when faced with a particular over used and dull journey home, enters so far into their own thoughts that suddenly they find themselves on their own doorstep with no memories of having got there.
5) If answer to above question is ‘Yes’ then would the author be the only person who as she fumbles for her keys, panics that as she was walking home she had been speaking those thoughts out loud ?
6) What is the UK law regarding children and car seats? In short, would a child aged, ooh shall we say, 3 ½ be allowed to sit in the back of a car wearing just an adult seat belt (ie NO car seat and NO booster seat)
7) Irrespective to the above answer, if hypothetically speaking, there was this mother, who had this hypothetical child who was, ooh shall we say 3 ½ and the mother was reluctantly about to trust the child in the care of someone else for a few hours. If this mother was to then deduce that her pride and joy was going to be taken on an unnecessary (but with an altogether pleasant destination) journey for (ooh shall we say) 45 minutes, with just an adult seat belt for protection. If that mother, despite feeling a little hurt that she had not been consulted on the matter, very politely suggested that irrespective of the law, she was not happy with the situation and unless a car seat or booster could be procured then the child would not be going. If no seat was found and the child was kept home then would that mother be;
a) A killjoy intent on ruining everyone’s Christmas, including that of her own child.
b) An overanxious mother who just needs to lighten up and get a grip.
c) A bit weird but hey, it’s her prerogative and her child. Whatever she says goes.
d) Normal, (almost) any other mother would do the same in her situation.

A laptop of one’s own..

I have always been a little jealous of Mr. Purple Elephant as he seems to be able to write a first class essay, hold down a conversation, watch TV and cook dinner all at once. Ideally I need to concentrate so hard I need an exclusion zone around the whole house (and that’s just when I cook dinner)
The Christmas spirit abounds in the Purple Elephant house right now, as Mr PE has got a lot of work on, and get this, he has BORROWED A LAPTOP and locked himself upstairs in the bedroom to get it finished by Christmas.
Ah the luxury! Did I borrow a laptop for any of my seven essays that were due in this year? Did I borrow a laptop for that novel I had to write in a month? No I sat down here and my limited intelligence had to contend with the kid, the TV, the radio, the cat, the phone, a knackered keyboard, oh yes and the husband too. (Right at this moment I am being pestered to go and find some hair clips, and the cat is trying to eat my foot. I think you get the picture)
So I ask myself why I did not borrow a laptop and lock myself in the bedroom? Well apart from the fact that between them, the kid and the cat would probably knock the door down, it appears that I do not have acquaintances in high places, as I cannot think of one single friend who owns a laptop. (Or just a friend would do but I digress) Don’t you worry; I shall be making sure he borrows that laptop for me next year.
Talking of multitasking, what about those people who can walk down the street and read a book, without tripping or getting run over? That is definitely one of those things I want to be able to do before I die.

He is watching from the smoke alarm you know…

Am I the only one who is not up in arms over the Madame Tussaud’s celebrity nativity scene? Have we missed the point somewhere? I think they are making a harsh statement about who and what is worshipped these days. I mean George Bush as a wise man? Kylie as an Angel? From where I am standing, it doesn’t look as if they are portraying the whole situation as the way forward.
Thanks to Jenny and her little tip, I have had a relatively painless day. Now whenever Littleone starts playing up, I rub my hands together and start staring at the smoke alarm. She changes instantly into a charming little angel.
Pure brilliance, I can tell you!

Happy Christmas. . . Love from the Open University.

Shall I start with the good news?
It seems I miscalculated my coursework score. I did improve on last year by a whole, wait for it…. One percent! Making me in the top range of a 2:1. Now watch me grab on to this one piece of news with my fingernails. Oh hang on I’m slipping.
Boy am I thankful for that one percent. My exam result was so embarrassingly poor that I only managed to scrape an overall 2:1 by 0.83% . A whole 5% DOWN on last year.
(Enter a predictable student paragraph here about how exams are a poor indication of knowledge, citing as evidence the whooping 15% difference between your exam and coursework grade.)
(Enter another paragraph here whinging about being a student parent. Blame that nursery fiasco, or having to take 2 weeks out to go to your brother’s wedding, your mother in law's visit, even blame Cambridge bus drivers, if it makes you feel better.)
But at the end of the day, if I didn’t make the grade, or rather if I brought a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘by the skin of one’s teeth’ I have only one person to blame and I’m off down the bus stop right now to have it out with him.
No seriously though if the OU says I’m a dunce, at least under exam conditions, then it must be true.
Now where did Mr. Purple Elephant hide the Christmas whiskey?

Bye bye Blunkett

It’s a shame he ‘resigned’ over all that personal stuff, when really his authoritarian human rights abuses affected many more lives than one fast tracked visa. Charles Clarke sure has some sorting out to do.
I couldn’t let this go without mentioning our new Education Secretary, Ruth Kelly a 36 year old mother of four. How does she do it? Discuss. Anyone who uses the term ‘Blair’s Babe’ secures my wrath forever. Ugh!
However it is a little hard to read today’s Guardian without feeling a little sorry for the man. As if the pictures of his tears were not enough, I bring you his poem at the death of his guide dog Teddy.

He was a gentle giant of a dog,
Running magnificent through
the woods,
A huge branch clamped between
his teeth,

He was a soft, lovable lion of a dog,
Full of sniffs and a nuzzling nose,
Touching against the hand
To say thank you for the walks
And for fondling of ears.

He was a Guinness Book of Records dog,
First ever in the Chamber,
Enduring the noise and bad
behaviour
Of the 'schoolboys',
And the medieval ritual of the
Mother of Parliaments.

He was a TV star dog,
Sleeping through Question Time,
Lifting his head only when it was time to go,
And bringing a smile to millions
And joy to those who knew him well.

A child could climb upon his back
Or pull his ears without fear or threat,
For Teddy was a dog of love, you see,
Who cared for others, as he cared for me.

Guiding me, wherever I needed to be,
Full of keenness, enthusiasm and love of life,
Working to a record age
And giving of his best, wherever we might be.

Being superb - my guide dog gave his all
In those 12 years, you see
All of us who knew him
Will remember him with gratitude,
And with love and much affection.

Taken from here.

Oh my poor heart strings.
And anyway I have David Blunkett to be thankful for, he was the answer to the question that won me my mug. It came this morning incidentally and yes, the coffee tastes just fine, thank you.

A Weird Day

If Mr Purple Elephant is around, we have a ball of a lunch time as we all sit down to watch The Daily Politics. Once a week they have a competition called Six of the Best where you can win a Daily Politics mug. Now ever since I made some sarcastic comment that my life would not be complete until I owned one of those mugs, it has been a bit of a joke in this household that Mr. Purple Elephant enters my name once a week.
You’ve guessed it, yesterday after a year of trying, my name was pulled out! Yes and Andrew Neil even made a comment about me being the envy of all my friends in Cambridge. Alas what he does not realise that anyone who sits down to watch daytime TV, because lets face it, The Daily Politics is still daytime TV, obviously has no friends at all. Go on though; tell me I’m the envy of all my friends in the Blogosphere. In a couple of days time, if our postman bothers to deliver it I shall be the proud owner of a Daily Politics mug, and I bet you, dear Reader, do not own anything quite so distinguished.
I had a weird time at Tumble Tots yesterday but I do not have time to do it justice right now, so I will save that for later.
Last night we went to a New Model Army gig. I would write a review but they were so good I will just end up gushing, and sounding like I’m tying to suck up to someone. Suffice to say they rocked and if you’ll excuse my expression they defecate on any other musicians from a great height.
All this rambling is me just tying to ignore the fact that today my course results will be published. My aim was simply to do better than last year, my coursework mark ended up being exactly the same, so here’s to the hope that I improved on my exam performance.
Fingers crossed.

Who are you?

I have been finding out about myself this week. I have discovered that my MBTI personality type is INFJ, the rarest of all the types, making up about 1% of the population. There are all sorts of helpful descriptions on the Net, one of the most revealing is this one, which for me is quite accurate, particularly the Female INFJ section. It explains some of the apparent contradictions in my personality, such as my desire to help others against a complete inability to communicate verbally.
Yet despite making up only 1% of the population I share my type with some very interesting people. Ghandi, Freud, Jung, Chaucer, Eleanor Roosevelt and the one who brought the biggest smile to my face, Emily Dickinson. (Oh yes!)
Anyway I’m quite interested in this now, if you haven’t done the test yet there is a 72 Question Test, or One question. (Thanks to Wildwriter for this one) Or there is a Blog orientated one .
Let me know who you are and whether you think it is accurate.

Everything back to front!

I don’t know about anyone else but our routine is completely up the wall right now. Just before this endless stream of Christmas parties, school plays, shopping, relatives etc, Littleone was beginning to drop her lunchtime nap. This was already a bit of an upheaval because she was not quite ready but if she had a sleep in the day then she would not be in bed until at least 10.00, which then made the mornings quite horrid. However if I played evil mummy and kept her awake, then the last few hours before she finally dropped were just as bad.
Overall I am very pleased with her school, but if I have one complaint it is that they have slightly overdone Christmas this year Do you remember that I took her to that after school party the other week? Well what I didn’t know was that on Thursday they are having their own Nursery party, which at least I don’t have to endure as it will be during school hours. What with the school play today, I think it’s all a little too much for a three year old, she comes home bewildered and knackered and I haven’t got the heart to keep the poor little love awake. So it seems we are back to late nights again, which means that I don’t get the evening to myself to do my reading, patchwork and not to mention the wrapping of the presents.
So yesterday Madam gets me up at 5:30 in the morning, all bright and cheery and not a hope in hell of getting her back to sleep, so she opens her advent calendar and we come downstairs. As I’m boiling the kettle for my desperately needed cup of coffee, she puts on the TV and as I cannot function until the last sip of coffee is working its way around my veins I do not protest. Well who would have thought it, my daughter’s new favourite programme is Countdown. I guess it makes sense as she is just beginning to understand the alphabet and I am trying to teach her the time. I wish you could have heard her squeals of delight at ‘the funny fast clock with only one hand.’ Who needs CBeebies?
Somewhere around 6:30 I decide that another cup of coffee will be needed if I was to make it though the day in an upright position, so by 7am I’m buzzing and ready to party but the house has gone disturbingly quiet, where is Littleone?
I’ll tell you where she is shall I? She has climbed back in to bed, cuddled up with Daddy and gone back to sleep. Yes thank you!
An hour later I am forced to wake up a very groggy child and tolerate a overabundance of abuse as I rush to get her ready.
Let me take you forward a few hours to lunchtime, we have a little accident involving some mayonnaise and her jumper, so it comes off and gets thrown in the machine. Then when I come back into the room I am awarded with the most shocking sight, my daughter is standing there with her head the wrong way round. I pull myself together and discover that thankfully it is not her head but her clothes; both her t-shirt and trousers are back to front.
‘Darling, did you have PE today?’
‘No, PE is Friday.’
For a few seconds I stood rooted to the spot with fear, if there was no PE, it could only mean one thing, I had sent her like that this morning.
I sat down slowly on the sofa, and imagined the teachers were probably phoning social services right now, well maybe not but they were at least having a very good laugh at my expense. I hung my head in shame. Then I feel a little hand on my shoulder,
‘I’m a big girl mummy.’
‘Why’s that.’
‘I tried on my Angel costume at school’
‘Ah I see, and who got you dressed afterwards?’
‘Just me. I don’t need the teachers to help me, cos I’m a big girl.’
Of course I hugged her and told her that she was a big clever girl. I didn’t have the heart to make any adjustments. Then would you believe it, she fell asleep right there on the sofa with her clothes on back to front. She did look funny.

All aboard for the Tesco’s Express

I know that some of you who know the UK reasonably well, may glance over to my ‘About Me’ section and notice that I live in Cambridge. You probably think me a lucky person as you imagine me in my (purple) tweed, wandering in and out of the beautiful colleges, occasionally breaking my stroll by the river to pick up an impromptu rendition of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. When I have done all my chores and mange to break my way through the crowds on my way in to town, I can actually do this sort of thing, and then I do thank my lucky stars, really I do.
In the meantime I reside in a suburb of Cambridge that you will not see on the picture postcards. If you look on the map you will notice it is called Arbury, for most of us it goes by the name of ‘Arsebury,’ which of course is not funny, but humour us, we live here. My street joins on with a couple of others, which together form a sort of oval with a few hairpin bends. The boy racers love this, as they seem to be under the illusion that it is Brands Hatch. Every evening you hear them revving their jumped up little Peugeot engines as they glide over the mini roundabout two storeys below my kitchen window.
About a hundred or so yards along from this Mini roundabout there is yet another mini roundabout which hosts the Tesco’s Express. There has not always been a Tesco’s Express here, only a few months ago there was a One Stop, but Tesco’s came along and obliterated the One Stop and the Café next door. Looking a little out of place hacked on to the side of Tesco’s is one little independent chip shop. I always like to patronise this little guy whenever I can as I have some romantic notion that he refused to be bought and stood his ground against the multinationals.
On the benches outside Tesco’s is a group of youths who have nothing better to do but smoke and swear and shout abuse at whoever is unfortunate enough to walk by. I wont tell you what they said the other night but suffice to say it was a personal insult. As I am walking round the shop I begin to ponder the situation, at first I do a quick philosophical assessment. What is so lacking in these children’s lives that lets them think that this sort of behaviour is all that is open to them. We can all smugly pat ourselves on the back, assuring ourselves that it is bad parenting, that our kids would never behave like this, they will spend their teenage years with their head stuck in a Dickens novel. Yet, we are not talking about one set of youths here, a disturbingly high number of teenagers, even kids, behave like this these days. In fact as I stood there in the queue, right in front of me was a child barely out of nappies herself, off on some sort of Vicky Pollard monologue about someone who had been spreading ‘shit’ about the father of her baby, ‘but don’t listen to her’ she assured her friend ‘coz she’s a slag.’ What if it wasn’t parenting, I thought what if it was something we couldn’t control? Pesticides in our food? Pollution in the air? Or perhaps just the mind numbing, soul destroying process of living in a place like this? For a sudden chilling moment I was catapulted forward ten years and it was my daughter in front of me, with a screaming baby saying ‘No but, yeah but, and I’m like shutup.’
Then I held my head high, and thought ‘I will not be intimidated by children half my age!’ All I had to do was to face up to them and they would all run home crying to their mummies. So still standing there in the queue I set about thinking of a clever and witty retort for the way out. As I paid for my provisions I had something sidesplittingly hilarious prepared about ‘homework’ and ‘God’s gift to women.’ but as I stood there about to make my way out into the night, there in the entrance was the Tesco’s doorman back from his break.
Now this is about to sound pathetic but if I am to be insulted I prefer that it is done anonymously. It is made ten times worse if someone I know witnesses the occurrence, I don’t know maybe it’s something to do with trying to pretend it didn’t happen. The Tesco’s doorman always says ‘Hello’ to me and he is lovely with the Littleone. (Thankfully she was tucked up safely in bed at this particular moment) So what did I do? I muttered ‘All right mate?’ hung my head and ducked out the other way.
On the way home I congratulated myself. How childish it would have been if I had retaliated. By putting my hood up and passing unnoticed I had proved that I was better than them, that it had all affected me so little that I had forgotten already. Yes that was it!
This lasted until I got home and I reminded myself that for all my attitude I had acted like a coward, thanks to me those kids were still there, possibly taunting some other poor victim.

Feeling better,

Several things happened yesterday to cheer me up. Firstly I was touched by the response I received to my post, thank you everybody.
Secondly whilst surfing through my blogroll I realised that I am not the only one(and we are not even trying.)
Then I left Littleone in the capable hands of Mr PE and headed off to finish some Christmas shopping. Now I normally hate shopping but I found myself in the Humour section of Booksale and I came across some books thus putting a smile on my face for the rest of the shopping ordeal. I suggest you check these out;
Roundabouts of Great Britain (need I say any more?)
The very surreal The Timewaster Letters
And in answer to Lynne Truss’ Eats Shoots and Leaves (which incidentally I keep meaning to read) I bring you Eats Shites and Leaves.
I’m thinking of actually buying one of these for the Aged Tory for Christmas, as despite being at the opposite end of the political spectrum I do appear to have inherited the same sense of humour as my father.
Then I visited the card shop, and let me just say that I very rarely laugh at humorous cards. There are not many funny ways can you say, ‘You are Old’ or ‘We drink too much’ trust me. I did however come across one that spoke volumes. It’s a cartoon of an empty church with a forlorn vicar sitting all alone. All of a sudden this woman comes bursting in with bags of shopping and she says ‘I hope you don’t mind Vicar, but it’s the only place I can come to escape from Christmas.’
Then finally I came home and read this article in the Guardian. The ‘its-actually-all-about-oil’ website had me in stitches.

Sappy Post Alert!

*Warning this post may get very nauseating, If you have a weak stomach then stroll down to the bottom where you will find a digested post which summarises what I say but without the crappy emotion stuff*I have no figures to back up this sweeping generalisation, but I have noticed that most families have children 2-3 years apart. I always thought that this was a practical thing, having children close in age means they can play together, the eldest hasn’t had long enough being an only child for it there to be too much resentment and upheaval when the next one comes along. Also the mother’s body has had enough time to get over childbirth and breastfeeding to prepare her body for another baby.
I wonder though if there is something a little more innate in us, do we actually sit down and consider these practicalities or is 2-3 years just when we start naturally longing for another child?
Let me use myself as an example. I have always been what I would consider maternal, even from a young age, I always wanted to ‘grow up’ and have a large family. When I was much younger I would manifest this desire into pressuring my mum and dad to give me a baby brother or sister. Yet I always knew it would come, I had a patience, which meant I didn’t just go out and get pregnant at the first opportunity. This continued even after I had Littleone, for instance straight after the birth I was planning how different it would be with the next one, but I had plans which meant that it could be some time until that happened but I was satisfied with that.
Then as Littleone grew and I had to carry her, the pram and the shopping up the stairs, I swore that I would not have any more children until we had somewhere to live that had a front door opening at ground level. Not to mention that with both of us studying money is tight, we haven’t got the time or money for another baby just yet. My head (and my husband) tells me that another child is off the cards for another two years at the absolute minimum.
And my heart agreed, or at least it kept very quiet, that was until Littleone turned two. Maybe it was when all her friends started getting brothers and sisters and I would look at them and it would take me back to when Littleone was that age, it seems near enough for me to remember vividly, but far enough away for me to panic about the fact that those times are gone forever. So each time I see another bulging tummy, or one more pram appears at the school gate, I feel a terrible pull and as my daughter nears her 3.5th birthday the pain of that pull is getting harder to bear.
Yes I know I should be satisfied with the fact that I have the one beautiful, charming and (touch wood) overly healthy child and I am grateful, really I am but I can’t help the way I feel deep down. One more point, I have in my time been called anti feminist because my desire to reproduce is higher than any desire I might have for my career, I’d happily drop the latter to make sure I did the former well. I say to these people that feminism is about choices and the respect (or lack thereof) that we receive for those choices. This is my path, I have the greatest respect for women who choose differently, I just wish I had a little more respect for what I do (and money but hey that is another more political, post.)
All this was topped off by the fact that Littleone announced as she was going out the door this morning that she was going to have a baby brother like her friend. Great, now I’m depriving my daughter as well.
SUMMARY; I’ve got the hump because everyone has got more children than me.
Apologies; Normal ranting will resume tomorrow.

Parental lesson of the ... er... day

Do not under any circumstances leave your iron on name tapes on top of the microwave for three months or you might just find that when you come to clearly label your child's nativity costume the labels have clearly labelled each other.

Spot the first time parent,

On Monday Littleone brought home the following letter;

Dear Parents,
Nursery will be performing their Christmas Play on Tuesday 14th December at 10am. Your child can choose whether they want to be an angel or a shepherd. Please could they bring in either a costume for:
. a shepherd: t-towel, large dark t-shirt, dark trousers and an old pair of tights
. or for an angel: large white t-shirt, white tights or trousers, silver tinsel.
Please ensure that their costume is in a bag and clearly labelled with their name. We would appreciate it if we had these as soon as possible. If you have problems getting hold of these items please let us know.

Littleone insisted she wanted to be an angel and as I have banned all white clothing (except for underwear) from the house due to the length of time that it stays that colour, I realised that I was going to have to buy everything. 'Not much notice,' I thought, 'but that’s fine I’m going into the city centre Christmas shopping with my Mum on Tuesday afternoon and to Tesco’s on Wednesday I can go in all the shops and compare prices of white clothing. How difficult can it be to find silver tinsel, and white t-shirts?' Etc etc.
Tuesday morning, yes that is less than 24 hours after the letter was sent home, half the Mums are standing there at the door with their bags ‘clearly labelled’ with their kids name. Do all these parents have older children, I wonder?
I got laughed at in practically every shop yesterday, with that knowing ‘School play Yes?’ look. The best I have come back with is a pack of two white t-shirts from Mothercare in age 8-9 because that’s the smallest size they had (well they said they wanted them big!) The tinsel, well it’s silver but it is a funny matt sort of silver as all the pretty shiny stuff has sold out. I’m hoping that this afternoon in Tesco’s I can find some white tights in my daughter’s size, that is not part of a pack of six.
They had some guy from Sainsbury’s on the radio last night saying that they have had a 300% increase in the sale of tea towels in the past week or so, a result of all the nativity play shepherds.
If I wanted to make some money I’d buy up all the tea towels and plain white t-shirts throughout next year and then sell them at hugely inflated prices at the school gates next Christmas.

Boo to the Royal Mail!

I know I was supposed to be writing about something a little more substantial today but I have been pissed off beyond belief. The culprit? Our postal service.
You remember I won a doll’s cot on Ebay, shortly before we found that bed in the parents in laws loft? Well while we were away that weekend the Royal Mail tried to deliver the cot. Fair enough I phoned up on the Monday asking them to re-deliver, also because there was no doubt what it was, and because I was worried about getting it out to the next person in time for Christmas, I stupidly re-listed it last Monday, thinking it would arrive the next day.
Now as you know we live on a flat on the third and fourth floors, which means we share a ground floor letterbox with everyone else in the block. I checked the letter box when I got home after the school run on Tuesday, empty. When I left to go and pick her up however, there was one of those ‘While you were out’ cards. Yes dear friends I had been waiting in all that time.
Our postman does this to us all the time, I had thought it was because he was a lazy arse and slinging a card through the door was easier than climbing the stairs to deliver the thing. Mr Purple Elephant had the suspicion that there was something a little more ominous going on. He thought that as no one else in the block seemed to have a problem with their post and this happened to us all the time, coupled with the fact that we have a significant amount of post that disappears without honour of a card though the door. He had the postman down as a racist BNP f*ck who didn’t like the sound of the Muslim name. I thought Mr PE was being over dramatic, I’m aware that when his parents first got married, his mum got hate mail though the door telling her that she was a traitor for marrying ‘one of them’ but that was the early sixties. We have moved on since then, right?
To cut a long story short I have phoned up three times in the past week to get a redelivery and each time we have had one of those cards through the door, I have been in every single bloody time. Now I don’t like getting shitty with people but as Ian Duncan Smith once said ‘Never underestimate the wrath of a quiet (wo) man.’ Yesterday, nine days after the first delivery attempt, the auction ended for the second time, and I find yet another one of those cards in the letter box. So I come storming straight back up here, get myself on the phone and tell them to write ‘RING DOORBELL!’ in huge friendly letters on the parcel.
Yes I know I could go and get it from the depot, but that is right the other side of town and we have no car, besides I paid £4.50 delivery on that item, so if I am going to have to lug it all the way back from the depot then I might as well have got it from the shops in the first place.
Well that did it. This morning I watched him deliver a parcel to the next block along, he walked up the stairs just fine and even had a little joke and laugh with the person who answered the door. Now I thought ‘That wasn’t difficult now was it?’ What about us? We have bills (Yes you never manage to lose those do you Mr Postman?) but no cot, and no card. I’m imagining it dumped in some ditch somewhere, payback time for me being so rude on the phone.
The thing is if you complain about it to the Post Office, they tell you that they can’t do anything unless you pay the 63p insurance, which I’m always reluctant to pay because it feels like blackmail (If you slip us 63p we’ll make sure we do our job properly wink wink, nudge nudge)
Hmm Now I don’t fancy explaining to the next owner that I sold the cot before I was actually holding it in my hands. I can give her a refund but that’s not the point, we could really do with that money right now.

Being a good parent

I find the nature nurture debate rather interesting. I fall down quite heavily on the nurture side of the argument and for this reason and the fact that I spend a considerable amount of time with my daughter, sometimes when I really sit down and think about it, the act of parenting really scares me.
In my adult life I find myself surrounded by people who in my opinion have been seriously affected by bad parenting, in most cases the parents weren’t deliberately useless, maybe at the time they thought certain choices were the right paths to take, or maybe they just didn’t think about it at all. As an example the latest dilemma in my head is how often I correct my daughter in her speech. She has come along so much in the past few weeks and I’m really proud to the extent that when she makes mistakes I don’t want to dent her confidence by correcting her too much.
A huge percentage of us from all different walks of life and with largely differing skills will go on to have children but what makes us think that we will all be so good at it? We seem to have some idea that having a child is some sort of right rather than a gift and we rush headlong into it without really thinking about the responsibility we are taking on. I know this is the argument that some people use against single, gay and lesbian parents but I happen to believe that being a good parent is not limited by your sexuality or your social position, in fact I think that being in those situations makes you think about being a parent more and sometimes the act of thinking is half the battle.
The other disturbing side to parenting is that with each child you only get one chance, when your children have fled the nest and you reminisce over their time at home and think ‘I should have done that differently…’ it is too late. That’s why I spend a lot of time philosophising over the people I know and how their parents could have improved, in the hope that I can learn from their mistakes. This was also one of my reasons for starting a blog, in the hope that I could bounce these ideas around with other parents.
There is an interesting post over at A Mamma’s Rant about how we can cultivate ambition in our children. Not just in the career sense but in their ‘general life experiences, like travelling or being involved politically, as well as academically and socially.’ In other words how can we steer them away from the idea that fame and celebrity status is the highest to which they can reach. I have no answers but I hope that in linking here I can send more people over there and the discussion will thrive.
As for me, I’m still thinking on this one, so I will post again when I have formulated my thoughts.

Something wicked indeed.

Let’s just say that Littleone has watched Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban a couple of times since we got the DVD the other week. She has been going around singing the Hogwarts choir version of that very famous Macbeth quote. The only problem is she sings ‘Something naked this way comes.’
Well thank you Littleone, that spiced up my Gary Oldman fantasy just nicely.
And on a Sunday too.
I guess I’ll be seeing you in Hell.

Bhopal 20 years on.

This week marks the 20th anniversary of the Bhopal chemical disaster. Official estimates dictate that there were 3,000 deaths on the night of 2-3rd December 1984 and 15,000 subsequent deaths and 50,000 permanent disabilities a result of the gas leak. As if that wasn’t horrific enough, new research estimates the figures to be much higher.
If a disaster of this scale had happened in the UK or the US we’d be stamping our feet demanding justice whilst having days of mourning and two minute silences all over the place.
If you missed One Night in Bhopal on BBC1 the other night, then I suggest you go and educate yourself here. There are articles to read and you can even watch the documentary again if you so wish but be warned you will feel quite disgusted.
The then Union Carbide Chief Warren Anderson faces charges of manslaughter in India, but will not return to the country, preferring to sun himself in one of his many houses in California.

You know you are getting old and cynical when…..

You find yourself starting sentences with the words ‘I haven’t come this far in life without learning that…’
The situation; Yesterday I was just going out the door when the phone rang and the conversation goes something like this;
Woman; ‘Are you a homeowner?’
Me; ‘No.’
W. ‘Do you have a kitchen?’
Me. ’Yes’ (I now think this was a trick question because if I don’t own the house then I don’t own the kitchen do I?)
W. ‘Would you like a new kitchen for free?’
M. ‘No.’
W. Gasp of horror. ‘Why not? It’s free!’
M. ‘I haven’t come this far in life without learning that, you don’t get anything in this life for free.’
End of call.
There is that small trusting side of my nature that now wonders if I put the phone down on a genuine offer. What if the kitchen fairies have flown past my window and actually seen my pathetic excuse for a kitchen? What if Santa’s Elves have heard me complaining that my kitchen was designed (and I use the word lightly) by someone who has never cooked, washed up or done any laundry in their lifetime? And I, in not quite so many words, told them where to get off.
If I was rich I’d buy a kitchen and I would phone random numbers in the phone book announcing that I’ve got a kitchen to give away free, no catch. I’d be interested to see how many phone calls it would take before someone actually trusted me enough to accept the thing.
That would be after I’d got myself one of course.

Oh yes! Bring it on!

Thanks to Amy at Psychobabble for this one;

You Are Whiskey

You're a tough drinker, and you take it like a man That means no girly drinks for you - even if you are a girl You prefer a cold, hard drink at the end of the day Every day, in fact. And make that a few.

What alcoholic drink are you?

Just a bit of fun?

We all sit around worrying about watersheds and the TV sex and violence to which we expose our kids but recently I have been thinking about all the subliminal messages we are sending through medium specially designed for children. Two examples taken from my experience yesterday; Littleone likes to watch Milkshake (Channel Five’s equivalent to CBeebies) before she goes to school, I’m not a big fan of Five but this is the only time in the day when we watch it. As if the advertisements for fast food, non-nutritious cereal and hideous over priced toys are not enough, yesterday straight after Winnie the Pooh they showed this advert, which goes something like this. These three young girls are sitting there and curly haired one wants straight hair and straight haired one wants curls. The voice over says something along the lines of ‘Not happy with who you are? You can change it!’ I was so shocked I forgot to note the name of the company but it was for hair straightening and curling appliances for children. After a toddler’s program! Whatever happened to bringing up our kids to be happy with who they are?!
My second example is from the school Christmas party for the nursery and reception class. What makes us think that just because our children are 3, 4, or 5 years of age they are going to have a poor taste in music, and therefore we can play them any old poppy shite at the school disco? As I sat there trying to hide in the corner like a wallflower mum, I thought I’d study the lyrics to some of the songs. First up was that Kylie song ‘Can’t get you out of my Head.’ I’ve seen the way she dances during that video and there is something highly un-nerving about watching kids barely out of nappies tying to emulate it. And come on we all know what she means when she sings ‘Your love is all I think about’ Is this a healthy attitude for our kids to be exposed to?
Next up is that ‘Oooh baby, I wanna know, will you be my girl.’ Yep Littleone this is the highest accolade to which you can reach in life, being owned by a man. Consider yourself honoured that he even asked.
The Purple Elephant prize for ‘Sentiment most suitable for 3-6 year olds’ has to go to S-Club 7’s ‘Reach’ As much as the song irritates me, it is nice and catchy for the little ones. Encouraging them to follow their dreams, whilst hinting that it won’t all be plain sailing.
Just a bit of fun? I think it’s all too sinister.

You don’t like what?!!

Littleone has got one of those re-useable fabric advent calendars. This morning I explain the whole advent thing to my daughter and then excitedly let her reach inside the first pocket, she pulls out the chocolate and what does she say?
‘Mummy I don’t like chocolate anymore!’
Don’t like chocolate? Is that actually physically possible?
This is the same daughter who when presented with a roast dinner on Sunday, ate it all up and then asked for more cabbage.
I bought whole month’s worth of chocolate for that bloody calendar.
Still I’m not complaining, all the more for me to eat while I’m sitting around trying to work out how to fit a cabbage in one of the pockets in time for tomorrow.

Are you trying to diet before Christmas?

Learn to love your body instead.