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Proper Crimbo

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Am I right in thinking it’s only the 1st of December tomorrow? Even with Christmas almost a month away, the mass of toy adverts have been on the TV since September, reducing my children into miniature Andy’s from Little Britain stating ‘I want that one’, to every toy advert that’s shown. Don’t get me wrong, I’m no Grinch, I like Christmas, especially now I’m a Mum, but I just wish that it would start and finish in December and not before.

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There is a lot of excitement on the run up to Christmas, my kids are huge fans of the festive period. But with decorations going up mid-November in some houses, it just means the children have to wait longer for the big day to come. The rule in our house is that the decorations don’t go up until the advent calendar arrives. Every year ‘Santa’ delivers the same advent calendar to us, complete with chocolate coins, when he comes to collect their Christmas wish lists. Earlier today the children were putting the finishing touches to their (very long) Christmas letters, while hubby was searching the loft for the advent calendar that tends to go missing after the chaos of Christmas is over.

My eldest son is 9 on Christmas Eve, it is an exciting time of year for him, but also a crazy time for all of us. I always want to make sure he feels like it is his birthday and not the day before Christmas. To ensure this it often means a party, a time that he can claim as his own. Last year, he invited his closest 4 friends or “The Inbetweenies” as me and hubby renamed them following a hilarious dinner at the local American diner. After they had eaten their body weight in chips, ribs and ice-cream, 3 of the boys came back for a sleepover. The twins were relocated to their grandparents house, the boys were chatting and laughing in my son’s bedroom in their side by side beds. Me and hubby kicked back and relaxed with a bottle of red and after a few ‘no more noise’ warnings, the boys settled down. Until about 2am that is, when 2 of them became caught up in a vomit relay between my son’s bedroom and the bathroom. While I stripped vomit covered bedding, hubby sorted out vomit covered children. As soon as it was light out, I rang the parents. They came one by one to collect their sons as I passed over a party bag along with the bag of vomit covered clothes and waved them off with a cheery ‘thanks for coming!’. This year we have decided to swerve the sleepover and instead we will be chauffeuring my son and his mates to a laser tag day, hopefully vomit free.

xmas psychiatry

I am so pleased that my eldest son still believes in Father Christmas as he came home from school a little sad last week. When I asked what was wrong, he explained that his friend had told him how ‘Santa isn’t real, it’s just your Mum and Dad getting the presents’. I did my best Uncle Albert style shocked reaction, assuring him that ‘your friend is wrong, how could I possibly afford all of the presents you and your brother and sister get?’. I do still wonder at that question myself actually. After much persuasion and some excellent fake Santa spotting clips on YouTube, he came back round to the idea that Father Christmas is real. However, it brings home the reality that this year could be the last year. That next year he won’t want to meet with the beardy man in the red suit at the garden centre and I will have to massively bribe him to not tell his siblings. I hope he still believes next year but just in case I will have to make as many mental pictures of his excitement in the next couple of weeks. And I will definitely have to up my game, ready for the onslaught of inquiring questions. When he was on page 2 of his Christmas wish list yesterday I pointed out that ‘Father Christmas won’t be able to give you everything on the list’. He said ‘It’s OK Mum, the elves make them so it doesn’t matter how much it costs’. I replied, ‘Well they might still have to buy parts’. He just smiled at me and carried on filling the space on the page. Actuallly, perhaps he does know….

The Unexpected Hits You Between The Eyes

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I am really looking forward to this weekend, I haven’t much planned, but after the stress of last Saturday I am looking forward to a sense of calm returning to my life. Last Saturday was my older brothers surprise 40th birthday party, a surprise party that had been my brainchild back in January. I was warned that it might be tricky to organise, impossible to keep secret and receive an unwelcome response from the birthday boy, oh well 2 out of 3 ain’t bad!

Even though his birthday wasn’t until November I wanted to get the ball rolling early on as I figured a lot of his friends would also be doing the same celebrations for their 40th’s. I recruited the help of my sister-in-law and his two closest friends as my co-conspirators for the guest list. I scoured his Facebook friend list for clues of who he was in contact with from school, then looked at my Facebook friends list and reasoned that you probably wouldn’t want to invite half the people on there, as the last time you spoke was in Chemistry class and that was a vague memory. Luckily, my co-conspirators were able to advise me on who would be welcome and who would be just a bit random. As one of them pointed out, the last thing my brother would want would be a rubbish school reunion by resurrecting the ex-school friends who he was glad to see the back of. After much deliberation we had a guest list; a chosen few school friends, a group of lads from Basingstoke he hadn’t seen for a long time but were greatly missed in his life and our close friends and family. My parents were providing their mental/physical/financial help with the organising and we decided on our local football club as a venue to go with the ruse of ‘my son’s football fundraising party’ that would be our cover. Things were shaping up, invitations were sent with a heavily stated ‘keep quiet’ approach and we were receiving lots of keen acceptances.

The venue with a bar was booked, guest list sorted, next was decor, catering and music. I would be lying if I didn’t admit how much I was enjoying the organisation of it all, I hadn’t yet resorted to wearing a hands free phone kit on my ear and carrying a clipboard, but I was quite tempted to. The venue had a speaker system that would give us the option of bringing in our own music to save on a DJ. The moment I found this out I could feel my inner control freak stretching its hand out screaming ‘me, me!’. This was what all those years of mixed tapes had been leading up to, the hours spent recording the top 40 on my cassette deck my finger poised over the pause button, timing it just right to avoid any speaking between the delectable sounds of Bros and Wham!

Perfecting the mixed tape

Obviously recording music is a bit more straightforward these days with IPods and downloads, but I still became a bit too obsessed with the task of creating my playlist. I figured I needed 4 hours of music, so I divided each hour into how I thought the music would be received; first hour would be guests arriving/my brothers ta-da surprise, second hour would be mingling/chatting/catching up, third hour would be eating/drinking/getting merry, with the fourth and final hour bringing dancing round handbags/tearful goodbyes. I refused any help and when hubby assisted me with some of the downloads, I was incensed when he inserted a few of his own suggestions such as Dennis Waterman ‘I could be so good to you’, apparently this ‘sing the theme tune’ is a classic sing-a-long for lads, I wasn’t convinced but let it go with the promise he would own up to it on the night if questioned.

The day drew nearer, my parents and sister-in-law had the hardest job of getting my brother to the fake event without him finding out the truth. My sister-in-law explained that whenever he discussed the night she made a cup of tea and only spoke from the kitchen so he couldn’t read her expression. There were some minor hiccups on the run-up, bizarrely there was a shortage of helium in our local area so I had to source a balloon creator from out of the area to come and decorate our venue. I’m not sure if our local youths have been using our helium up as I can’t say I’ve heard highly pitched youngsters hanging around the high street lately.

The night arrived, all the guests were in place, it now felt like a military operation with my sister-in-law sending me coded messages while we all stood in the dark waiting their arrival. Finally, the door opened, the light came on and my brother, although visually shocked, casually removed his jacket and waved at the room as if it happened every week. But thankfully he was pleased, he was definitely surprised but he was happy to have the party thrown in his honour.

Film themed birthday cake

The party was a success, everyone was pleased to mingle, lots of drink and food was consumed. My music list was, as expected, not appreciated and I had to physically stop myself from asking people to pay attention to the smooth links of each hand-picked track. Even Dennis Waterman received a good, as well as confused, reaction. The night ended with my brother and his mates with arms around shoulders shouting along to Chas N Dave, with my brother looking happy. Mission accomplished. I am now available for hire; weddings, birthdays, bar mitzvahs, I’m very reasonable and I do a wicked playlist!

Bloggers Day Out

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This may be my 48th post but I still regard myself as a relative newcomer to the world of blogging. So, when the opportunity came to attend the Mumsnet Blogfest last Saturday, I happily filled out my credit card details hoping this event would benefit my future prose! I emerged out of Westminster station and headed to the Millbank Tower where the event was taking place. As I wrestled with my broken umbrella amongst the tourists lining up to have their picture taken by Big Ben, I cursed at my unruly tear ducts that tend to stream tears at the mere suggestion of a gust of wind. When I arrived at Millbank Tower there was a huge throng of women with a few sparse men and as we made our way inside I desperately tried to remove the Alice Cooper look that I was now sporting.

A posh version of the Eastenders credits

I was, I suppose, a tad naive at how tough the competition is on ‘Mum’ style blogs, but when I entered into the ground floor lounge of the Tower I was quite startled by the enormous crowd of ladies that were gathered round sipping their complimentary coffee. I smiled at a few unable to catch a friendly eye, everyone did seem ‘on alert’ at the competition but there was a still a buzzy atmosphere. We were led through to an auditorium for our first round of speakers. First up was Mrs Nick Clegg, the über glam Miriam Gonzalez. With her soothing Penelope Cruz sounding voice, she talked about her own ‘normal Mum existence’ which was very engaging. She told us about her charity work and how our role as bloggers was an essential one. This ‘blogging is an essential role’ comment was used over the course of the day by various speakers, some fellow bloggers, authors and columnists, all championing our role in the literary hemisphere. However, there were other literary experts such as Publishers, Newspaper Editors and Liz Jones, who were less than supportive at our blogging commitment, who were a little bit patronising and quite sneery in places. We were told to pursue our blogging ambitions on one hand and then also assured not to get our hopes up if wanting to publish a book as 50 Shades Of Grey was a bit lucky really. I personally think 3,000 bloggers (Mumsnet blogger numbers alone) can’t be wrong and that some bloggers seem to make quite a healthy living from it.

The Mumsnet organisers went above and beyond with the venue and catering and they were on hand with their cheery approachable manner. Whilst we sashayed around the sky high bar, there were a number of sponsors bidding for our attention. The impressive line-up included Google, Skoda, Boden and even The Portland Hospital, all keen to pass on a bit of merchandise in return for a bit of a chat. The one sponsor that caught my eye were the discount shopping people Savoo.co.uk and not just because of the man-sized glass cube with real notes inside it, but because they seemed a good opportunity for bloggers. This online savings website have created a community of bloggers called DealPro’s who have become their own Del-Boys of the discount voucher website world. By promoting money-off scoops on their blogs, Savoo will promote their blog on their website in a win-win situation, exposure for Savoo, bit more traffic for your blog and certain perks to be gained along the way.

A room with a view

Following a packed day of interesting panel discussions and a packed itinerary of different lectures I found myself in the lecture for Blogging Beautiful. I suppose the clue was in the title but this was later in the day so was on a sugar low from my earlier 3 complimentary cupcakes. Anyway, as most people would suspect Blogging Beautiful is aimed at bloggers who cover the subject of beauty. And although it was interesting to hear a different slant on blogs, I decided to nip out discreetly and head back to the bar with the sponsors to take advantage of The Blog Clinic and a bit of one-to-one expert advice. I waited until the panel were in deep discussion and conducted a pathetic bit of sign language to the ladies sat next to me, motioning that I needed to leave. I then proceeded to do that walking bent over to avoid blocking the view of people behind thing, but instead managed to block the view of everyone in my row. The loud floor tiles were another thing to combat so had to do this sort of walking on toes like an ostrich to avoid my heels clunking loudly as I left.

In The Blog Clinic, things were a lot more relaxed. I met a fab creative team from Digital Bungalow who gave me some much needed advice on the appearance of my blog, ahem, please notice my ‘clean lines’ and use of images. I was also extremely eager to meet with Commando Dad, Neil Sinclair, the blogger Dad, ex-army/house husband who turned his blog into a bestselling book. I found him casually sipping a coffee by the bar till I slightly stalked him asking ‘If I could possibly bend his ear on his book publishing experiences’. Despite his initial look of fear, he was very obliging and gave me some excellent advice on my upcoming novel, which is currently an empty box file titled ‘My Novel’.

Funny lady

The day came to a close with the always funny and massively entertaining Caitlin Moran who gave us her unique take and sought after advice on being a writer. Basically cheeky afternoon whisky in your cuppa, be joyful, don’t over describe and if in doubt cut and paste your second paragraph to give your piece a better ending.

Money’s Too Tight To Mention

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In these tough economic times money is a bit thin on the ground, with a lot of families all striving to avoid their overdraft. I start the month a bit flush having the shopping delivered with a few extra treats, by the end of the month I’m gently moving Grannies out of the way to get to the ‘Oops’ shelf for near sell-by-date bargains. My parents tell me how it was harder for them when we were kids, that their parents had to make-do-and-mend in wartime, so not being able to stretch to decent wine and olives this week is not really a comparison to the days of ration books. However, it is important to remember we are not alone in the realms of family budgeting and important lessons about the value of money should be passed onto our children.

As a parent I am aware of the responsibility of being a role model to my three children and although it is virtually impossible to keep up the sunny disposition of Mary Poppins, I try to nurture my children’s compassion, manners, consideration, bravery and sense of responsibility to make them better adults one day. Obviously, advising my three protegé’s about certain things can be tricky, I don’t think they always see my point of view on healthy eating or appreciate how much things cost. But every now and then there is a glimmer of hope. My eldest son, who is 9 next month, this week used his tuck money to buy 3 poppies at school for remembrance day to share amongst him and his siblings. I give him 50p a day for the tuck shop at school where he can buy healthy snacks and drinks for break time, so for him to forgo snacks for this donation to charity totally floored. Similarly, when my fussy eating 5-year-old daughter refused to eat her ‘yucky chicken’ at dinnertime, my eldest pointed out that ‘chicken is protein and you need to eat it to make you big and strong’. I do often feel I spend a lot of my time ranting at my children who give that glazed eye response where I know only half of my words are actually registering. When I talk about how wasteful not eating your dinner is and children that are starving in poor countries would do anything to swap places with them, I am certain they hear ‘eat dinner, children in countries’, explaining the confused look I often receive.

As with a lot of parenting issues, we as parents use the tried and tested method of playground or football pitch conversations to drop subjects into the mix to see what other Mums and Dads are doing. My current subject for debate, which was a hot topic at ballet class last week (subtly started by me), was the issue of pocket-money. I soon realised many parents are as unsure as I am and was left with more questions than I had before.

At what age do we give it? My twins are just 5 and any money my daughter is given by relatives as ‘pocket-money’ she uses in her imagination play with Barbie going ‘shopping’ and most of the donated £1 pound coins ending up down the back of the bed or wedged between the floorboards. My twin son expects a £1 coin to afford him every toy advert on the TV begging me to take him to the toy shop to buy the latest Spiderman toy with his money.

How much do we give? The tooth fairy has gone up with inflation. Bottom teeth are now £1, with the Front top ones worth £2. All three of my kids believe in Father Christmas and believe that Xmas lists can contain quite extravagant gifts as Santa’s elves make the toys and it doesn’t matter how much they cost? As part of the compulsive liar side of parenting, I tried to argue the point that Santa’s elves might have to pay for parts so we need to keep their costs down too!

Should they earn it? I don’t think we should be getting all Dickensian with the kids and sending them up chimneys but a bit of ‘helping out’ for cash could be useful. My parents tell me I was encouraged to tidy my bedroom for extra money and that wedging everything under my bed didn’t count. Perhaps by teaching children to ‘earn their money’ we can show them how their parents have to work for theirs? But what chores can I give my 5 year old twins? They can’t exactly do the washing up without causing a mini tsunami in my kitchen.

How do they know what to spend it on? A few years ago my eldest was given quite a bit of money for his birthday and wanted to get a Nintendo DS. At the time we had sticker charts running for the twins potty training so we started a sticker chart for my eldest too with the incentive that after a week of helpful and good behaviour he could earn £2. Eventually, with a few bonuses from his Grandparents, he had enough cash and was overjoyed he had paid for his DS (mostly) all by himself.

Should they always save it or are they allowed to ‘waste’ it on vending machine key rings in Sainsburys each week? I had a short-lived stab at pocket-money earlier this year by resurrecting the sticker charts and after earning 5 stars for a week of good behaviour and eaten dinners, my twins were given a £1 each and my eldest £2. My eldest having saved before was back in saving mode, intent on getting the book set of The Diary of The Wimpy Kid, it was a proud moment for me and hubby that our son had learned this valuable saving lesson. However, youngest son following a nasty bug a few months earlier we had allowed him a £1 coin to put in the vending machine at Sainsburys to get a toy to cheer him up. With the return of the £1 coin in his hand from his first week of pocket-money, back to the vending machine was the only place he wanted to go. I tried to persuade him to save it like his big brother but he wasn’t interested and was just repeating the mantra of vending machine over and over. It was his money which he should be able to choose what to do with, but I couldn’t get my head round the waste of a weekly deposit into a machine for a tiny bit of plastic in return.

Me and hubby set up savings accounts for our children as soon as they were born. Our eldest was given the £500 government savings grant to kick-start a savings account for him but that was stopped in time for the twins. We have a direct debit set up every month into their savings so we have become used to not having that money, like national insurance or council tax, it goes out on pay-day and we are none the wiser. But unlike council tax and national insurance, our children will reap the rewards one day from it. I think it is essential that parents put money away each month for their children, no matter how small the amount is. You don’t know what the future holds and it is always sensible to have a safety blanket for them. In the meantime, pocket-money is still a confusing issue for us. My eldest did save up and bought his Diary Of The Wimpy Kid book set, my daughter has spirited enough cash into her secret Barbie shopping places and in a bid to keep the vending machine profits down in Sainsburys, I have temporarily stopped the pocket money in the run up to Christmas. But I’m sure it is something I will probably re-start in the New Year along with dieting and detox.

Fatigued To Meet You

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When I talk to my closest friends, actually in conversation with words and mannerisms and not by text or Facebook messaging but in real life or on the phone, it is not uncommon for the conversation to result in a moan about how shattered we both feel. It’s not that we are all manic depressive but that we are quite often very tired and have waves of feeling a bit peeved from the hamster wheel of everyday life. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t wish to sound ‘Poor Me’ as I know how fortunate I am compared to others who live in desperate situations, but our lives are all relative to our own situations so we are allowed to indulge in a bit of a moan about things sometimes.

It is widely reported that Modern Life is a fast paced experience for most people with our 24/7 lifestyles. Many of us are guilty of relaxing on the sofa for our evening downtime with one hand on the remote control and the other on our mobiles refreshing our inbox or checking Facebook. Those of us that are employed are working way over our contracted hours, lunch hours on the go and a constant juggling act with home life and work. I work from home but feel like I have to find my inner Derren Brown to balance my week of school runs, kids activities, dogs demands and other things that get thrust into the daily chaos. Our fast paced existence can mean that we miss out on the finer things in life; the appreciation of what we have, noticing the simpler things and relishing the pleasurable things in life. I took my daughter on a nature day today at our local country park, we had a group of very enthusiastic ramblers who were ‘in charge’ of the activities. They were intent on opening up the children’s eyes to all things nature by encouraging us to collect nature’s materials to make a scary Halloween artwork. So we decided on a spider, arranged our leaves and twigs to create a sculpture that Tracey Emin would be proud of and despite Rambler helper pointing out that spiders don’t have red eyes, the kids were massively enthused by the activity.

It is my third nature activity this half term in my bid to ‘get the children out in the fresh air for an educational experience’ and even though we are starting to sprout webbed feet from the constant damp conditions, I feel good that we are taking part in something worthwhile. Every day of the half term I have crammed full of ‘experiences’ and play dates until my Mum pointed out that ‘I could just stay home with my children as that is what I used to do with you and your brother.’ Good idea I said, ‘I’ll buy some paints and glueing stuff to make art installations or bake cakes?’, she wearily shook her head explaining, ‘you can do simple things like read books, play board games or just cuddle up and watch a film?’. Hmmmm that sounds far too relaxing and easy, must cram something else stressful into my day surely?

But no matter how you try to slow life down it never seems to feel that way. And apart from whingeing to my nearest and dearest, the rest of the time I will happily paste on my air hostess smile to anyone else who asks how things are, replying with a bright and breezy ‘great thanks’, even though inside I am secretly Ebenezer Scrooge grumbling incoherently under my breath. I am definitely no stranger to tiredness and I think this is the reason behind the expert moaning me and my friends enjoy as our extra curricular activity. Parenting is a great introduction to exhaustion, I didn’t sleep a full night for the first 5 years of my daughter’s life, I spent many days with the dull ache headache of exhaustion, feeling a little bit sick, a fit of tears minutes away, unable to have intelligible conversation, eating too much chocolate and barely capable of keeping up with the storylines of Scooby Doo.

Life is definitely easier now I’m off the baby Groundhog Days, I loved the nurturing years and wouldn’t have missed raising my little ones for anything but there is that point when they start school for you to return home that first day, look in the mirror and think ‘Christ!’ at the gaunt mad haired woman looking back at you. I adore my children, appreciate my husbands long hours at financing our lifestyle but find myself in part-time writer, part-time child-rearer, part-time domestic goddess and still feeling a little bit in part-time limbo land. My friends and I used to discuss films, politics, new bars and restaurants, recent clothes purchases and weekend plans. Our main topic of conversation now is whinge whinge, feel tired, what is my role now? What diet are you on? What vitamins are you on? Shall I take Probiotics? So when we’re not moaning we are quite often taking part in another hobby of ours, worrying. Worrying about our children’s ability at school, their daily consumption of fruit and veg, their friendship groups. Or we worry about our relationships, money, post-babies figures and our current favourite topic; our future health and future beauty regime, discussing how many wrinkles or grey hairs we are sprouting, what ailments are starting to take hold of us. I doubt very much that James Bond worries about his daily alcohol units when swigging his martinis in the afternoon. What we need to do is stop worrying, stop moaning and appreciate what we have. Me and my friends moan a lot but we do occasionally remember to make each other laugh in our stupid shared sense of humours, to still talk about ambitions we still have and to know that there is someone always less fortunate than ourselves. For sometimes the only way to move forward past the blues is to slap on that mad grin and remember how lucky we really are.

Open Wide Here Comes The Train!

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As a Mum of three I have lived through many peace talks with my children at the dinner table. Fussy eating is a common gripe amongst parents and unless you have Supernanny on speed dial, it is something you and your little ones have to solve together. My eldest son is now 8, he is a brilliant eater and will pretty much eat anything I put in front of him other than mashed potato and scrambled egg, I think it’s a consistency issue. However, he wasn’t always a willing eater and I am happy to say it does get easier in most cases. He was an enthusiastic student through the weaning stage, other than the wallpaper paste baby rice, he would happily allow me to spoon feed him fish, meat, vegetables and fruit in any shape or combination with lip smacking pleasure.

Just before his 2nd birthday he had been a bit poorly so was off his food, the doctor informed me that this was the age that they showed their independence about food, no longer enamoured by the high chair and the discovery of food I should expect a bit of fussy eating. I smiled smugly thinking ‘not this child Doc, he ate Coley last week in a cheese sauce with spinach, no fussy eater here my friend’. And as if my Doctor was some weird gypsy casting a curse, within a few days of that appointment my little boy turned into tight-lipped child when the spoon of food headed towards him. When I asked him what was wrong, he replied ‘not like it’. Oh dear. The next week was spent with me cooking dinners and modelling them into some sort of animal to entice my son’s interest. It didn’t work, so I set about liquidising his 5 a day into a pasta sauce to hide any incriminating vegetable but somehow he knew. My son could spot a green vegetable at 50 paces and wasn’t about to give in. Eventually, I returned to the clinic where ‘evil doctor’ had tempted fate to be met with ‘its normal for his age’ or ‘he might be teething, stick with soft foods he likes’. But I didn’t know what he liked anymore, apart from fairy cakes and dried apple rings which didn’t seem to cover his food groups, I was at a loose end.

But we persevered, I kept up my forest scene dinners, ate our dinner at the same time with lots of ‘Mmmmm’s’, determined not to be broken down. Shortly after his 3rd birthday in December, we found out that we were expecting our twins the following August. At the same time, we were also planning our wedding. We had a hell of a year ahead of us so it was time to get our boy eating enthusiastically again. I’m not really sure how it happened but it did, with a bit of persuavive pressure to help Mummy grow the babies, he found his love for food again. I’m not saying it was easy but my son starting school helped. I can clearly remember the day I let him have his first school dinner, it must have been the peer pressure in the canteen but he bounded out of his classroom telling me that he now liked ‘that meaty spaghetti’. I was almost moved to tears, he likes Spaghetti Bolognese again and with my little boy beaming up at me with his red stained mouth I knew I had turned that corner.

Now my eldest is 8 and the twins are 5, unfortunately mealtimes are not plain sailing again. My eldest has remained a food lover but the twins have more than compensated for his enthusiasm. My twin son has a love of all things saturated and I have to ‘breadcrumb’ any type of fish or chicken so he can dunk it in ketchup, whilst my daughter could break a Guinness world record for the longest time sat at a table storing food in her cheeks without chewing. We have covered the checklist of ‘shopping together, ‘baking together’, ‘teaching them about how lucky they are’, but most mealtimes are met with one of the twins uttering that sentence that sends shivers down most parents spines, ‘I don’t like it….’.

However, we had a breakthrough recently. Much like the appeal of McDonald’s and Pizza Express have of getting your children to eat with the whole bribery of toys and treats, I found that kids microwave meals go down a treat with my little ones. It could be my cooking obviously but hubby assures me that it’s not! But my kids love it when they have an individual microwave tray purpose made for them. It’s not a full-time solution as I am always keen to cook with fresh ingredients but as a once a week treat when you have gymnastics and football to squeeze in, it is a lifesaver to have a 3 minute cooking time to deal with. We have long been devout M&S kids microwave meal fans with their Mighty Meaty Pasta becoming a household name in our family. But there is a new microwave kids meal on the market that went down a storm in my house, the No Added Salt range due to hit Tescos this month. A group of Brentwood Mums who were struggling to find organic, free range and naturally healthy food that proved cost-effective and gratefully received by their children, decided to create a new product range of frozen microwave meals.

With this range of meals made by parents for parents, my 3 children were happy guinea pigs last week when we tried out their Spaghetti and Meatballs and Sausage and Mash. The portions were generous and there were plenty of hidden vegetables. My sons devoured their spaghetti and my daughter ate her sausages and mash in an impressive 1 hour 20 minutes, which is good for her. If you’re looking for a night off without your child missing out on a healthy dinner then I would recommend you pop a couple of these in your freezer as a standby. Give yourself a break from blanching tomatoes and customising a pie to look like a hedgehog.

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Dum Dum Dum Downton

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Ever since I was a child, Sunday night TV has seemed to be the graveyard of programming. Growing up I remember the digestion of the roast dinner hours accompanied by Open All Hours, Last of the Summer Wine, Bergerac and The Antiques Roadshow. The former was fairly amusing with the stuttering Ark ark ark Arkwright played by Ronnie Barker alongside a very young pre-Delboy David Jason. The same fondness can not be said for Last of the Summer Wine which mainly consisted of irritating pensioners getting into all sorts of trouble in the countryside with far too much lusting between toothless Compo and Nora Batty with her wrinkly tights. Nowadays, The Antiques Roadshow is still going strong on BBC1 followed by one of the 2 hour whodunnits such as Inspector George Gently where Martin Shaw drives about in his nice car, normally a Jaguar or Aston Martin, solving mysteries without breaking a sweat, very reminiscent of Bergerac. In fact if you think about it, perhaps the actor in each programme serves as a bit of eye candy for the older female viewer while the car serves as eye candy for the older male viewer. I don’t think we watched ITV on a Sunday when I was a child, with my Dad’s aversion to adverts and my Mum’s diversion with John Nettles but I’m guessing the programme on was a similar sort of Midsomers of the time, perhaps Miss Marple or Inspector Morse? Or was it Boon? I remember that being on at a weekend ‘hi ho silver, you got me road ranger’, Michael Elphick as the motorbiking fireman/private investigator.

Now Sunday night TV seems to be all about Downton Abbey. BBC1 have tried to compete with it by resurrecting Upstairs Downstairs to not much success and putting on other competitive dramas such as Mr Selfridge with the trailer showing a shop assistant unplucking a lock of her hair to show how scandalous she could be in front of Mr Selfridge, which more than encouraged me to give it a swerve. I will confess that I have become a bit of a closet Downton Abbey fan though, I say closet because I do believe that Downton Abbey is a period drama soap opera, a corset wearing 1920s Eastenders with its constant dramatic far-fetched storylines and particularly in the current series, the Eastenders Dum Dum Dum shock endings, without the actual dum dum dum’s being played that is.

You can’t fault the writing talents of Julian Fellowes and the acting cast are all very impressive, particularly Dame Maggie Smith who must have stipulated in her contract that she is given enough humorous one  liners to keep her signing the dotted line. Most of the cast are well known actors but I reckon each were given special Downton acting lessons to enhance the eyebrow raising, steely gazing and constant loitering that goes on amongst the Lords and Ladies as well as the ‘staff’. This is particularly clear with the character Mrs O’Brien, the actress who is also in Benidorm and was Rita or Sue in Rita, Sue and Bob too. As O’Brien she is the maid to Countess Cora, so is in charge of the usual stuff such as getting her dressed, fetching her breakfast in bed, fixing her hair, leaving a bar of soap in the right place to trip her up and induce a miscarriage, that sort of thing. She is the biggest plotter in the house, constantly at cahoots with Thomas (the gay one but shush this is the 1920s) and is the best at loitering in the corner of rooms and not so discreetly listening in on conversations. She refolds clothes for a long period while Cora and Earl Robert discuss confidential matter, can they not see her refolding with arched eyebrows and staring eyes, why not talk about the weather until she has left the room?

And what’s with all the cousins? I have watched Downton in earnest throughout its three seasons but even I can’t work out why they all seem to call each other cousins? I obviously haven’t been paying attention (or not really caring ) as to why the Crawleys and the Granthams are related but it’s ok for Matthew and Mary to (finally) get married? My hubby warned me not to write my Downton blog as 1) not everyone watches it (I thought it was just husbands that didn’t) and might bore most people (bore!) and 2) the Downton devotees will not agree with me being mean about the drama and might deter them from ever reading my blog again (am trying not to be too harsh).

I wanted to have a bit of a whinge about Downton as I do find it compulsive viewing and look forward to watching it each week, normally on a Monday as it does clash with Homeland on a Sunday = no contest. However, I do watch it and cringe quite a bit, tut and raise my own eyebrows, very much like O’Brien, at some of the silly and implausible plotlines. My Dad who is a male fan of Downton, see they do exist, frequently gets annoyed by Downton covering every piece of history amongst their characters. From Lady Sybil and now Lady Edith getting involved with the Suffragette movement, all of the cast going to the Great War and surviving it fairly uninjured apart from Matthew but I’ll come to that, Spanish flu, the Titanic (ep1 series 1) and many more historical storylines. If it happened in the 1920s, Downton will feature it. Dr Clarkson, the village doctor, should in fact be awarded some sort of Nobel Peace Prize for inventing so many medical miracles, he recently managed to diagnose Mrs Hughes with Breast Cancer only to send off a biopsy and get the results within a few days that she didn’t have Breast Cancer but a ‘benign growth’, that is a quicker turnaround than on the NHS. In fact, in this weeks episode he offered Lady Sybil a caesarean as he suspected that she had pre-eclampsia, Earl Robert refused Clarksons ‘reckless suggestions’ and unfortunately for Lady Sybil, Dr Clarkson hadn’t yet dreamt up resuscitation and stood idly by and watched her snuff it (1920s term I believe) in a very dramatic dum dum dum ending.

Whatever you make of Downton it is a well loved show, my parents Sunday newspaper had a pull out edition of ‘The Downton Times’ recently so you could read ‘the news’ before watching the episode – jeez…. In fact, Downton hysteria isn’t just in this country, Downton is huge in America too. Me and my brother bought a sightseeing tour for my parents for Christmas, it was to visit Highclere Castle where the filming of Downton takes place. My parents enjoyed the tour as they do like the show and were interested in seeing where it was filmed, however, they were quite stunned when they were seated behind an American couple who told my parents how they were ‘die-hard fans of the show’ and as the coach made its way to the entrance of Downton the American couple were literally hyperventilating with excitement with the woman of the couple screaming ‘oh my god!’ as they drew up outside. They should have paid the O’Brien actress to loiter beside the coach asking her usual question of “‘is there anything unseemly or untoward?”. I hope Downton carries on, it is the only soap I watch and whether the plot is Matthew learning to walk again with a broken, no bruised, no broken, no bruised spine or evil footman (gay-shush) Thomas locking the Earl’s labrador in the woodshed, it is unashamedly compelling Sunday TV.

If The Boot Fits

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I have had a bit of an OCD couple of weeks feeling intent on de-cluttering our house. Trinny and Susannah would have been proud parents watching me scale down my wardrobe with the ‘if I haven’t worn it for a year it shouldn’t be in there’ mantra, unfortunately this did mean that my ‘get rid’ pile was larger than my ‘keep’ pile. Still, it felt good to get rid of my ‘thin’ clothes, there really is no point keeping my favourite skinny jeans worn pre-children if their only purpose is for me to occasionally stroke them fondly. And I have been ruthless with regards to my ‘fat clothes’ too, many bought when pregnant that I have kept due to their ‘comfort factor’, it is not healthy to keep a black 2 sizes too big kaftan just because I can tuck my legs underneath it when vegging on the sofa, it makes me look like Mama Cass and needs to be passed on to a person who needs it.

With a slimmed down wardrobe I moved onto the kids bedrooms. I dropped them off at school and returned home feeling like a baddie from a James Bond film as I set about removing toys and games that were unloved. This is not an easy task as everything you put in the ‘chuck’ pile suddenly conjures up memories of their former pleasure of playing with it. Games that have been left unplayed with for years I suddenly see an educational benefit to them. I ended up with a bin bag containing a couple of McDonalds toys and an Alien game with a broken battery compartment. Hubby noticed my moment of nesting and decided to jump on the bandwagon with a loft clearout. Suddenly we are sat in our living room amongst a stack of baby paraphernalia such as cots, moses baskets and a playpen, or twin cage as it was known which is seriously the best bit of baby kit you need with multiple babies if you want to ever have a wee! With our room full of goods to get rid of, I decide it would be a good idea to try to make some money from our pre-loved wares. After a conversation with my best friend who is in a similar clearout mode of thinking we decide to embark on a boot sale to make some cash.

So last Sunday after a rubbish nights sleep worrying about how to cost up my stock, my alarm went off at the unfeasible time of 5am. After I double checked that I wasn’t still wearing my pyjama bottoms I made my flask of coffee looking out on a darkened street while the rest of my street snoozed away. After joining a convoy with my bestie we headed down to the designated field in the middle of nowhere, feeling like I was going to a rubbish rave where people wore Dayglo jackets and bumbags. We were shown to our plots where we parked our cars up and began the task of unpacking and setting up our stall. Now I like a bargain but we have to remember it is 6am on a Sunday and people are starting to arrive to shop! No sooner had I emerged from the boot of my car with a box full of baby cookery books when I had a torch shone in my face with a man asking me “you got any mobiles?”. I nearly threw the books at him and run in the opposite direction until I realised he was looking to buy a mobile, I quickly answered and unnecessarily told him “no, it’s mainly baby stuff”. He scuttled off to the next plot to interrogate them instead.

Once we were all set up, thankfully the sun had decided to join us too. I had a rough idea of what price I wanted to charge on my stock and had labelled up the bigger items. However, this is pointless as the boot sale is where haggling is born. No matter what price you tell people, they will persuade you to drop it and I’m not talking by a small amount but quite often by half. For instance, one of the twins cots we bought from Mamas and Papas which probably cost us somewhere in the region of few hundred pounds, I was selling it for the bargain price of £20. My first cot customer said “I’ll give you £10”, I politely explained “sorry it is £20”, he persevered “I only want to pay £10”, I negotiate “I can do it for £15?”, “I can pay £10.”, I give in “OK £10 it is”. I am weak, I need to stand my ground but then I don’t want to take the cot home and £10 is better than nothing I suppose.

It is quite funny when you find your inner salesperson though, when you attempt to sell items using any line that people will believe.  For instance, hubby gave me an old pair of salopettes that he used for ski-ing in his younger years. A punter came to my stall (wallpaper pasting table and tarpaulin) and asked me what they were for. He was an older gentleman so I figured he wasn’t looking for skiwear so I suggested “do you ride a motorbike as they are fantastic bike gear or perhaps you’re a fisherman as they’re great for fishing, bit like waders?” He eyed me suspiciously and then walked away. But I did manage to sell my travel cot as an indoor pen for rabbits with its “waterproof base which is perfect for pets”, that was a proud sale and made me think perhaps I should work on a shopping channel with these new-found skills. As lunchtime approached and all that was left was a few unwanted books, an iron headboard and the salopettes, I decided to give up. I had made £150, I had rid my house of unwanted goods and I had experienced what it felt like to be Pete Beale. So let me know if you know anyone in need of salopettes, great for ski-ing, fishing, motorbiking, you name it they cover it.

Meet The (Smug) Parents

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Becoming a Mum has been one of the greatest moments in my life. It is fulfilling, life affirming stuff crammed full of unconditional love. It is also tiring, monotonous and challenging and that is just the school playground I’m talking about! When you become a parent it forces you to re-evaluate yourself, you are now responsible for an ickle human being whose development is completely in your nervous naive hands. You are up for the challenge, you want to make them happy and fulfilled in life, but this challenge comes with its consequences. And if you haven’t been competitive before, you will feel forced to be worried when fellow parents are achieving milestones with their children before yours get there.

Me and hubby joined NCT Antenatal classes when we were expecting our firstborn. Mainly because the only parenting skills we had were with raising our Collie Barney and I had a feeling children needed more than fresh water and daily exercise. We all gathered in our Antenatal teacher’s living room with other expectant parents. Our teacher was what the word stereotype was created around in her tie-dye clothing, crazy hair and mother earth tactics. She set about explaining that childbirth was a beautiful experience that we were all going to enjoy. She led us through a series of ‘getting to know each other’ exercises as me and the fellow Mum’s bumped our bumps and were forced to talk about bodily fluids in front of our puce looking partners. She also had an eerily calm nature, when one of the Dads complained of a severe allergy to dogs she fiercely defended the fact that her dogs ‘were not allowed indoors’, even though throughout our classes her two dogs glared at us through the patio doors as if to say ‘that’s my sofa you’re sitting on!’, while allergy husband’s eyes started to swell up as he tried to control his sneezing. We did gain a lot of tips from the classes, although the pain bit was heavily dumbed downed in her ’embrace the pain’ mantra which she demonstrated by pressing the base of our spines with her thumbs!!

It was a useful experience and we gained two very dear friends amongst the parents and we have watched our children grow up together. The one thing you don’t realise at the time though, is that this is the first time you are introduced to competitive parenting. The weekly comparisons of who has bought the best buggy or best baby toys and who is planning a water, pain-free, in the forest, natural labour to maximise the child’s entry into the world. We became parents but we also became paranoid competitors as well.

Throughout my three children’s early years I attended numerous baby and toddler groups, mainly to socialise my children, but also for us to have quality time together. From the swish ‘baby gymnastics’ classes at the local sportcentre, to the warts and all church run group in a hall of well-loved toys, I went to them all. And no matter what the surroundings or the people, you will end up at some point in a competitive conversation about who has the best eaters with the best behaviour. Eventually you wheedle out the like-minded parents so you can have an honest conversation about parenting stuff. But no matter how hard you try, at some point you will meet Super-Mum and be told that ‘baby wipes are not eco-friendly, my child absolutely loves dried apricots and doesn’t even like Smarties and I like to play Mozart to my child while we create living art in our lounge rather than let them watch Peppa Pig’. These parents are to be avoided, they will make you feel inferior.

I recently read an article about celebrity parents, you know the ones who name their children after fruit or inanimate objects? Take Gwyneth Paltrow, she declared that she only allows her children to watch television in French or Spanish so it has an educational purpose. OK. Fair enough if you are French or Spanish yourself, if your children are naturally bi-lingual but is English-speaking television that damaging? I read this interview, rolled my eyes at Gwyneth thinking who does she think she is? It’s not practical for us normal parents to do that, she’s off making movies and being forced to attend Coldplay concerts (that has got to be hard on her) and doesn’t understand day-to-day parenting like the rest of us. But I also still found myself asking whether Dora the Explorer counted as Spanish-speaking. No matter if we think another parent is OTT, we as parents still have to take everything on board and analyse whether we should be doing it too, even if it is not out loud.

Madonna was also in the news recently as she was shocked at her 14-year-old daughter Lourdes (its a place-name) being caught smoking! Shock Horror! And she is such an amazing role model, how did that happen? Now, I think Madge has an impressive career, has done a lot to make women feel empowered but this is the woman who made the SEX book after all.  She believes her children should have NO access to television or ice-cream (why ice-cream), this is her right as a parent but with a woman who lives her life in the spotlight isn’t it a bit of a kettle, pot, black situation? I’m not saying one parent is better than the next, I certainly wouldn’t say I’m Mother Of The Year but we have to remember that Katie Price  and Kerry Katona have won this title the last few years even though they don’t really ‘parent’ their children. I think Mother Of The Year should go to us mere mortals who are in the playground with our broken umbrellas in the rain, shivering on the football pitch and glazing over in a ballet class. Power to the normal parent I say.

Eight Legged Freaks

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I love Autumn, it is definitely my second favourite season. The bright blue sky, sunny days with a little chill to them, the beautiful colours of the leaves, the arrival of conkers. However, there is one major problem with Autumn… massive huge spiders! It is the season for normally rational people like myself doing a weird dance when walking down the garden, flinging my arms about like a maniac after walking through a million spider webs.

I know I’m not alone with my lack of love towards the Arachnid. In my 20s my fear of spiders was at an all-time ridiculous which came to a point after a face-to-face with a spider as a tenant at my parents house. I was alone one Saturday morning and decided to run a bath, I glanced at the plug hole as I went to run the hot water, there was something dark there, I reckoned it was probably hair so left it and ran the tap. As the water splashed down and I guided the plug towards the plug hole, the ‘hair’ sprouted 8 legs and started running, in a weird sort of race I headed in the same direction to get out of the room as the spider ran to the end of the bath. I closed the door and weighed up my options. There is a massive huge spider in the bath, the hot water is running and I need to deal with it. Not brave enough to do anything about it and with no-one to help I remembered that next door had some landscapers in to redesign their front garden. So in my irrational panic I forgot that I was in my pink towelling dressing gown and sheep slippers and went outside to get help. Obligingly, one of the gardeners agreed to ‘help the little lady’ out. “Where’s the  monster then darling?’ he asked giving his co-worker a wink as I pointed at the bathroom door murmuring, “Spider, bath”, unable to speak in sentences as if I just been discovered in some wild log cabin. Mr Bravado swaggered in as I cowered behind the door, I heard him shout ‘ Jesus he’s big!’. He emerged about 5 minutes later (presumably after he calmed his nerves) balancing the spider on the end of his trowel. I responded with a strangulated whimper and then shouted ‘Thanks’ just before the door slammed. When I retold the story to my parents later, they decided it was time to take action on the basis I could crash my car if a spider popped up in it. I said I would probably pull over calmly and happily donate the car to the spider and walk back home. This was again enough reason for them to seek help for me.

So, for my 24th birthday my parents gave me a ‘Arachnophobic day’ at London Zoo. We were asked to arrive bright and early for our day course to cure our fear of spiders. It was quite a big class which was mainly female with a few embarrassed looking men. There were a lot of very nervous looking women that you could probably hiss ‘spider’ at and would reduce them to tears. But I wouldn’t do that, I was one step away from nervous wreck and was suddenly ecstatic to be there. First up was the ‘why spiders are good for the world’ lecture taken by the spider zoo keeper who informed us he was once as scared as us but now owned 3 pet tarantulas, everyone raised an eyebrow, no-one believing this statement. We were all told about how spiders are good for the environment, how they rid the world of pests such as flies and mosquitos and we would literally be over-run by bugs if we didn’t have spiders. My initial thoughts were ya da ya da ya da, I knew this, I agreed with it, I didn’t want to kill them, I just wanted to re-train them to not enter my house and if they accidentally did then to walk slower and immediately go back out the way they come in rather than run towards me. We also learned how spiders mate in September and is the reason why during this month you see bigger spiders as they are the females looking for a male. Again, is there not a way we can re-condition them to have a meeting point in the garden for their reproductive needs. We were asked individually to say how we got rid of spiders, my response was ‘phone a friend’ or not re-enter that room until someone comes home’, lame I know. The woman next to me said she wore socks on her hands while on her own and would walk in loud steps to scare any from running into the room, she was so petrified that she couldn’t eat tomatoes due to the spider-like green topping. I stared at her in disbelief starting to feel a bit less of a scaredy cat. When they asked one of the few men in the room what he did to remove spiders, he explained that he was a carpenter and would see quite a few in his work shed. The way he dealt with them was by turning on his electric sander and liquidising them, the zoo keeper looked almost tearful.

Next we were taken into a room and told to sit down, a charismatic American man introduced himself as our hypnotist who would re-train our brains to like spiders, I glanced over at the sock woman who was shaking her head. We were asked to lay down and close our eyes, keeping completely still. He then asked us to visualise 10 steps leading down to a water’s edge, we had to imagine ourselves at the top of the stairs looking out to sea. We then had to imagine a big white cloud drifting towards us, we had to focus on the cloud and walk slowly down the steps as he counted us down. As we reached the last step he informed us that we were now in hypnosis, I tried to open my eyes and they felt stuck together, my arms felt weighted down, it was a really strange feeling. He told us to look at the cloud and push all our hatred of spiders into the cloud and to turn it to grey, after which we had to blow it away and watch it drift out to sea and disappear. We then had to mentally re-climb the 10 steps and were told to open our eyes, which I could now do quite easily. And then we had to clap our hands to congratulate ourselves on our freedom of hatred to spiders. I wasn’t convinced yet and was nervous at what was next as we were led from our function room and into the zoo.

Once inside, our zoo keeper suddenly re-appeared as if we were now in an episode of Mr Benn. He led us into a room off the ‘creepy crawlies’ section where a large clear plastic box with a lid was full of house spiders scampering about. Before we had time to protest and still sleepy from our hypnosis, a plastic cup and a card was shoved in my hand and I was suddenly in a queue in front of the spider box. With a semi-forceful ‘lets see you catch a spider’ request, the zoo keeper picked up a house spider released it on the table and we were expected to put our cup over it, card underneath and then told to walk round the room and release it back into the box. Sock woman was rifling through her bag, I suppose looking for her socks and I was third in the line. Everyone seemed to be either brainwashed or cured as one-by-one they completed the exercise. My turn was up, zoo keeper smiled as he flung a spider on the table, the spider as if briefed by the zoo keeper, started to run towards me, without knowing how I did it I put my cup over it and my card underneath then circled the room the fastest I’ve ever walked and literally threw my cup at the box. I had done it, slightly still in hypnosis and a massive amount of pressure on my shoulders, but I did it. Then zoo keeper shouted over the excited/hysterical squeals the word ‘Next…’ to which the whole room went deathly quiet, there’s more?? He continued, enjoying the atmosphere he was causing, ‘Next, we meet Freda.’ Who is Freda? His colleague? his girlfriend? Wrong! It’s his pet tarantula! The hypnosis wasn’t that good! He held Freda in his hand as if it was a gerbil gently tickling it. Most of the people took a few steps back, sock woman I think was now vomiting in her handbag. ‘Who wants to hold Freda and I’ll take a picture?’. A line started to form, how were these people cured enough to do this? Suddenly, I found myself in the queue and before I knew it I was holding my hands together for the zoo keeper to place Freda on top of my grip. As he said ‘smile’ to take my picture, I looked down and actually realised I was holding a massive huge spider with fur, it felt warm, it didn’t seem scary until it moved a leg onto my wrist and I nearly threw it far enough to make a home run. Zoo keeper sensing my change of heart, unhooked (!) Freda from my hands, wasn’t till then I realised that’s how they climbed walls! He gave me my Polaroid, a photo of  me holding a tarantula with an expression that would probably warrant me an overnight stay in an asylum!

I’m sad to say it didn’t cure me. It has eased my irrational fear. I no longer run into the street in my dressing gown to find someone to help me. I can deal with smaller ones with the cup and card technique and I have allowed a spindly one to live in my conservatory. I think the hypnosis has made me love them a bit too much, I can’t bear them to be hurt and when I get a big one, which I still can’t deal with, I tend to cover it with a mixing bowl until hubby returns or my long-suffering neighbour gets called in to chuck spider outside, all the time I worry if there is enough air for the spider and if he is lonely in the bowl! We’re halfway through September, I have had 4 big spiders this week in my living room. It is true what they say, knowledge is power, I know that September they will mate, the female then kills the male, the female produces her egg sack and fills it with spider eggs, then she dies and the spider orphan babies start the cycle again. Roll on October….