Sunday 30 September 2012

I wonder...


Today, while in B&Q buying a set of paint pads, I suddenly thought about how human ears are the only part of the body aside from hair and nails) that carry on growing through adulthood and through your twilight years. But simultaneously, some people shrink in height as they get older. So, does this mean that - if combined with the average life expectancy increasing - in a centuries time there will be some sprightly but shrunken 150 year olds shambling around like pixies with ears the size of dinner plates?

Over the years there have been so many unanswered questions that have kept me awake at night and kept me pondering during the day. My head is full of odd thoughts, here are just a few...

Why is your funny bone so called? You hit that bugger, the last thing you want to do is laugh because the buzzing feeling makes you feel queasy. Why is a papercut more painful than a huge wound? Do hairdressers/dentists/doctors/podiatrists etc do their own? And why does my dentist have bad breath?  Why do hospital gowns fasten at the back - is it deemed more acceptable to flash your bum at nurses than it is your frontal bits? What is the point of decaff tea and coffee? Why do I order a large Big Mac meal (other fast food outlets are available) with a diet Coke? Why does cucumber make me windy when it's 99.9% water? Why does it always rain for the brief period I am out of the house for the school run? Why is it not possible for me to have just one drink? And why do hangovers last for 3 days when you get to over 30? Why do Michael Winner/Ainsley Harriott/Melanie Sykes/Peter Andre get on my norks so much? Why do my kids insist they don't need the toilet but the second we sit down to eat or leave the house, one will urgently need a poo? Why do I even bother tidying up? At what age should I stop shopping in Topshop and wearing cartoon t-shirts? A bird is 20m up in the air and has the choice of several gardens to poop in, so why does it always land on one of my nearly-dry bedsheets?

Answers on a postcard please. I'm off to measure my ears!

Thursday 27 September 2012

Forgive me Father (and Mother), for I have sinned.

The Daughter is going through a bit of a phase of fibbing and taking things (sweets mainly, poor deprived little bean that she is). Nothing serious, and I know it's all perfectly normal. But I take a lot of stock in the truth, having been told a million lies by some people I've been unfortunate enough to meet along life's winding roads, so I am trying to teach her the value of honesty.  Of course, I'm merely human and have fallen foul of my principles on occasion (mainly while I was an impressionable youngster) and am seizing this opportunity to unburden my conscience.

Many lies are borne out of fear - of embarrassment, of getting into trouble, of having your pocket money stopped to pay for a replacement glass coffee table... Yes Mum. When I said I'd tripped over the cat and fallen onto the glass topped coffee table, I actually sat on it whilst drunk and broke it. And yes, I know I was lucky not to rip my bumcheeks to shreds. Sorry.

I'm also sorry for smoking out of my bedroom window and using a glass to keep my fag-ends in behind the curtain. And for throwing the glass onto the flat roof of the kitchen in a panic when I thought I was going to get caught. And for having to climb out of my window, onto the flat roof and picking up all the fag butts when there was no-one in the house.

I'm sorry for stealing a pound, buying some microwave popcorn and Smash Hits, and storing it in the outside toilet. (Not actually IN the outside toilet, that would have rendered both rather unuseable). Similarly, I'm sorry for stealing a Caramac from the newsagents, and smuggling it out in the sleeve of my coat. That was the extent of my light-fingeredness, so please don't have me down as nowt but a common feef.

I'm sorry for using my friend Jessica as an excuse for being out all night at a 'barbecue' when I was actually downtown drinking, or at house parties (also drinking). And I apologise for saying I had food poisoning from said 'barbecues' when I was, in fact, talking to God on the big white telephone courtesy of a bottle of Mad Dog 20/20.

I'm sorry to my friends older brother, for drawing a tiny smiley face on the corner of his GCSE English homework while I was in their dining room getting changed after an afternoon in the paddling pool. I am also sorry to another friends younger brother, for making him dress in girls clothes and walk down to the shops. And for spraying his mums perfume all of the clothes in his wardrobe. Although his sister must share some of the blame - you know who you are!

So you see, I'm not perfect. The gold plating on my halo is worn in patches. Some of it I can blame on being led astray, but some was just purely me growing up and learning as I went. But after this baring of my soul, my conscience is clear. So when the Daughter next tells me some fancy tale about someone at school having dolphins in their garden pond, or spirits some chocolate limes out of my handbag, I'll try to stop my imagination running away me, thinking she'll end up in Borstal or on some programme about professional tea-leafs, with camera's following her round as she proudly steals 30 handtowels from BHS. I promise to try and remember the misdemeanours of my formative years and go easy on her.  Or, I might just keep my chocolate limes in the car and put some locks on the kitchen cupboards..

Thursday 20 September 2012

I predict a riot

I hate my phone. Well, that's not strictly true as it has an awesome camera and a Where's Wally? background which I love. What I DO hate is the mess I get into when I text someone. The invention known as 'predictive text' is meant to be a real boon to communication, but my clever little phone goes one step further. It remembers previous messages you've typed out, and if your message looks similar to a previous one my phone inserts what it thinks you're going to say. Which in some cases is pure genius. But in other cases, it's downright bizarre and makes me look like I have a kind of written tourettes. For example, when talking to a friend about a problem she was having, I managed to send her the message 'Not good fingers :( Hope you get it sorted'. Unless I thoroughly proof-read all of my texts before I send them, I'm likely to send a perfectly sensible message with the word 'bum' or 'cheese' randomly inserted in the middle of them. Maybe my phone knows this, and has a really evil sense of humour. It preys upon my quick fingered haste with it's minefield of possible embarrassing errors.

And not only that, but it also tries to trip me up with it's habit of replacing my frequent swearwords with innocent alternatives. I don't swear in front of the kids, so expletives in texts is kind of a release. It doesn't have the same effect, however, when I send The Husband a message saying "Some mustard's just cut me up in Asda's carpark, I gave the arsenal a right mouthful" or "I was out when that tucking delivery came for suck's sake!".  Life was so much simpler when I had to tap out everything letter by letter. It might have taken an age, but at least the margin of error was slim. I might just get rid of my fancy handset and go retro with a Nokia 3310 off Ebay. Bigger it.

Thursday 13 September 2012

Lookielikies

Apparently there's a face I pull (although it has to be noted that I can never do this face on demand, it's usually an accident when I'm drunk) and I suddenly become Denise Van Outen. There's also, according to The Husband, one that IS Robert DeNiro. And between a 30-something blonde and a 69 year old man (some may say ruggedly handsome, but with a face a bit like a scrotum), I know which likeness I find the most flattering! When my hair was short, I used to get called Dido all the time. When it was long, I was Whigfield. So, apart from the DeNiro thing, all of my apparent lookalikes are acceptable. But I saw something today, a likeness of such magnitude that made me gasp. And, I'll be perfectly honest, it's not even remotely flattering to either parties. But hey ho - nobody said life was fair! For those who aren't au fait with kids tv, there is a presenter on CBeebies called Andy Day who has his own prgramme called Andy's Wild Adventures. Here he is....

 
...a nice fella, very good at what he does. But with an unfortunate and uncanny resemblance to....
 
 
...Fatima Whitbread! Aaagh! Look at them, they're positively interchangeable!

And now I've started, I can't stop. Take a look at these little gems...

Nicolas Cage?...

 
Or Juan Sheet from the 'Plenty' ads?...
 
 
Janice from the Muppets?...
 
 
or Donatella Versace?...
 
 
And my own personal favourite! Paul Daniels?...
 
 
Or Gollum?...
 
 
I shouldn't mock really, it's cruel of me. Especially considering that, in a few years, I could well end up looking like Robert DeNiro. Things could be worse though; I could be married to Gollum. Sorry, sorry, I mean Paul Daniels.
 
 
 

Monday 10 September 2012

I shouldn't laugh, but..

It makes The Daughter absolutely furious when you laugh at her; you are literally putting your life in your hands sometimes. She has a great sense of humour most of the time, so long as she's not the one that's being giggled at. The problem is though, she so frequently does and says things, most often completely unwittingly, that crack us up. Today was school photo day and I managed to get her in school looking as presentable as I possibly could, having lint-rollered the fluff and cat hair off her cardigan and made her promise not to fanny about with her hair. We had the pre-picture pep talk, in which I told her to imagine she'd just seen something funny or that daddy had tickled her. Because she seems to be so aware of her face when she has her photo taken, that she ends up grimacing and closing her eyes. When she came out of school she told me that she'd got the picture in her bag and seemed confident that it was a good one. With some trepidation, I pulled out the proof and burst out laughing. Wrong move, Mummy. "What?!" she shouted, "Let me see!". It truly is one of the worst pictures we have of her, her mouth is so tighly pursed and her face carrying an expression that can only be described as though she's just caught whiff of a fart. I told her it was fine, and quickly changed the subject, but the mood had been set for the journey home as she trudged alongside me chuntering. Until we got about halfway and she was walking along whilst looking backwards, engrossed in what the people behind were doing. And she fell spectacularly over a tuft of grass and hurtled towards the floor. Now, the actual fall itself wasn't what made me laugh - I'm not a total cow! - it was what she did afterwards that had my shoulders bobbing with mirth as I tried not to make her even more furious. As she was wailing and clutching her knee (she landed on grass so I think it was more the embarrassment than the pain), I tried to give her a hug and give her knee the magic rub, but she shoved me off and cried "For goodness sake, there's nothing WRONG with me!". So I bit my lip and said "Ok, I'll leave you be then" and started on my way. But instead of following she stood in the middle of the pavement wailing "Dooooon't leeeeeeeeeave meeeeeeee!". I spent the rest of the way pretending to look at people's gardens so I could look away and laugh.

People falling over in general is funny. Apart from old people, as breaking a hip is pretty serious. But other than that, someone tripping up a kerb and doing the 'Did anyone see?' glance is fair game. In fact, they've made a successful tv programme out of it! You can get £250 for making the nation LOL with your footage of someone elses misfortune. Everyone's a winner!

I must have a strange and cruel streak because I find stuff like that absolutely hilarious. When the nursery took me to one side and told me that The Boychild had been calling everyone an idiot, bad mummy laughed, before I realised that it was apparently a serious matter. On the way to collect him today I was walking behind a trendy type wearing chino shorts and deck shoes. Deck shoes, seriously. And everytime he put his foot on the floor he made a *squeak-trump* noise. Two minutes of *squeak-trump-squeak-trump* and I had to hang back and pretend I was on the phone because I was in stitches.

So beware, good people of the Midlands. Because I'm thinking of taking a video camera out with me from now on. The next time you leave the house with toothpaste all your face, or leave a public loo with ribbons of toilet roll stuck to your shoe, or slip on some ice - there'll be £250 in it for me and a laugh for the nation!

Thursday 6 September 2012

Social etiquette

If you ask me, the rise of modern technology has a lot to answer for. And yes, I know I sound like your nan when I say that. But I'm willing to bet that, if studies were done, they would find a direct correlation between the increase in use of social media and time-saving technology, and a general moral decline. Things that were once considered bad manners or socially unacceptable are now part and parcel of daily life. Take Facebook for example. As my FaceFriends will know, I'm partial to a post or two *winkyface*. But in what Universe was it ever considered ok to repeatedly air your filthy laundry in public? Before the likes of Facebook and Twitter, did people ever used to go out into the street and shout "GRRR! My husband is a massive knobjockey!"? And when their neighbours came out and said "Everything ok?", would they have remained silent for half an hour for dramatic effect and then said "Yeah, fine thanks"? No, of course not. But on Facebook - absolutely fine. And pre-social networking sites, how on earth did people manage to communicate to their friends and family what they were having for breakfast, lunch and dinner on any given day? Now, I'm sure this is of great interest to some, but I personally couldn't give a rats ass knowing whose gotten up at 6am to put fish fingers in the slow cooker.

Bluetooth headsets are a real case in point, and something which actually enrage me. In a car, I concede that yes, they are necessary if you need to be constantly available for work. But it is NOT, I repeat NOT necessary for a fat middle aged man whose wife has sent him to Asda for bread, to be wearing his around the store. I very nearly strode up to someone today and said "Nobody is ever going to ring you! You look like a Class A knobber - take it off!". When people shout into them, oblivious to the world around them, I find it almost as rude as people tiptapping on their phones when they should be doing something else. Like packing their bags at the supermarket checkout and hurrying the frick up.

And Twitter, which is probably all the proof anyone needs that the distance and anonymity social media provides has made the uglier side of peoples characters emerge. Who would dare to run up to Gary Barlow in his local Co-Op and tell him he's a terrible husband for performing at the Olympics ceremony when he should have been at home grieving for his stillborn daughter? Precisely. But you get all sorts of weirdo's who think they can hide behind a fake name and a computer screen, and abuse total strangers.

With the exception of Bluetooth headsets, I'm not totally against of all the things I've just spent ten minutes chuntering about. Facebook has led me to friends I never would have met but for a comment on a status of a mutual friend. And Twitter - well, how amazing is it to read what celebrities, film stars and musicians are doing right at this moment? It's like having famous friends. And of course, they both satisfy our overwhelming nosiness and allow us to live our lives vicariously. We've all got people on our friends lists who seem to have either the most fascinating, or the most miserable of lives; people who make us feel wholly inadequate, and those who make us feel bloody lucky!  So while you'll never see me talking loudly into a ridiculous headset any time soon, neither will you see me give up my celebrity stalking, my Twattering (or whatever they call it) or my FaceBooking. Oh, and if anyone's interested - we had carbonara pasta bake for tea *winky face*!

Sunday 2 September 2012

When I grow up..

Ok, so I'm halfway through being halfway to seventy, and I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up.  I have an English degree, which has had the grand sum of Zero help towards any of the jobs I've done since University;  knowing how Victorian female writers represented women characters in their novels did nothing to aid me when talking customers through balance transfers and being able to recognise Iambic pentameter was chuff all help when composing responses to customer's complaints about their half-yearly sewerage bill. Unless of course I fancied writing them a little poem, which probably wouldn't have gone down all that well with OFWAT.

Don't get me wrong, I've done the career thing - it's not like I've just bummed about bouncing from one job to the next. I had a managerial position for years, and while I did enjoy the challenge at times, it was also a huge, stressful headache. People management is rather like being a nursery nurse; telling people off, telling them when they've done something well and cleaning up other people's crap. I've also done the more 'menial' type work, which actually was more enjoyable than the grown-up jobs. I spent a year in an animal rescue centre, and if it hadn't have been for several of my colleagues thinking I was up my own arse and wondering what an ex-manager was doing cleaning cat trays (I happened to like it! Well, not like it, but you know what I mean..), I would have absolutely loved that job.

So now, I'm doing the 'Mum' thing while The Childbeasts are young. For some people the words 'Stay at home mum' go in their ears as 'gormless idiot who does nothing but washing and watching Jeremy Kyle'. In a years time, however, both of them will be at school and Mummy will have some time on her hands. And what to do, what to do? I did intend to start studying towards a degree in Midwifery, but then I risk getting broody again and, after the horror of the last six weeks I would rather pull my toenails out than have to face the school holidays with 3 kids!

It was all so much clearer when I was younger. I wanted to work as a stable-hand in the My Little Pony grooming parlour first of all. Then I had designs on being an Orthodontist. i didn't really know what an orthodontist did, but it sounded really impressive. Now I can actually think of little else worse than sticking my face down near manky gobs, picking off plaque and scraping tongues.  But what could I be? I'd love to be a writer - but a decent one, not just peddling out the same old romantic pap and cringeworthy dialogue. Or a stand up comedian maybe, a female and Northern version of Micky Flanagan.  Surely I can't be the only grown up who doesn't know what they want to be when they're a grown up? I wonder if there are any vanacies going at the My Little Pony grooming parlour these days...?