On The Town

I have been nominated by Mopsa and MYA for a Blogging Community Involvement Award for Services to Schmoozing! I am truly flattered, as I believe that schmoozing is a seriously under-rated skill (along with sponging – but we’ll come to that later). It is supposed to involve the gift of ‘conversing casually in order to make a social connection.’ After a few bevvies, my conversation can become so ‘casual’ that it is positively slurred, but never mind. Thank you Mopsa and MYA, I am delighted to accept, and would like to pass the nomination on to Jenny at Mountain Mama, who has such a warm, conversational style, you feel that you are sitting right next to her, at the kitchen table of her lovely mountain home.
Download the shiny badge, Jenny, and enjoy!

Anyway, enough of the red carpet - we are off on holiday! Some friends in New York have very generously given us the use of their beach house on the Jersey Shore, followed by the use of their Manhattan apartment. What a sponger’s paradise! Even the horror of taking three children on an eight hour flight wasn’t enough to make me pass up this opportunity. Also, as I have mentioned before, I am unfashionably fond of the USA, and can’t wait to get back there again.
The kids are very excited about seeing the Statue of Liberty, and I am very excited about pouring gallons of American wine down my neck. The favourable exchange rate means that I really should sample as much as I can, don’t you think?
While we are away, my brother and his family are coming to stay in our house. This has caused me considerable anxiety. When you take a look at your own house and try and see it through someone else’s eyes, it can be truly alarming. I’m not just talking about the level of squalor we tolerate at home, compared to normal people. It’s more to do with the vagaries of the house and its contents.
It started when we handed the keys over. I had to give my brother and his wife details about how the front door was ‘really easy’ to open, as long as you pull it towards you, before turning the key. Then I moved on to explain how opening the back door was ‘really easy’, as it was the reverse procedure to the front door, but required an additional shoulder barge. ‘Never mind’ they said, ‘we won’t open the back door – how do we open the windows?’ Well, it’s ‘really easy’, there’s a key, but it only works on some of the windows. ‘Never mind’ they said, ‘we won’t open the windows.’ By this point, they were exchanging claustrophobic glances, so I didn’t dare describe how you have to twist the shower control right round to the left if you want any hot water, or stand on one leg to ignite the ring on the gas cooker. It is turning into a nightmare scenario of having to attach explanatory Post-it notes to every idiosyncratic control and appliance we own. I have even bought a new kettle and iron, since the risk of electrocution from our old ones was dangerously high, unless you were wearing Wellington boots.
As I am in holiday mood, I have cracked open a bottle of Ca’Rosa Prosecco (Oddbins £7.49) which is dry, with a light and delicate apple flavour. I don’t like it quite as much as my favourite La Marca (Ocado £5.99), but it is a very strong contender for second place. Highly recommended!
Just one more glass, then I will carry on packing the suitcases. Despite all the preparation, I am really looking forward to this holiday. The chance to spend time together as a family will enable us to discover what it is that we really can’t stand about each other.

I will be back in August – I’m missing you already!

Bags Of Fun

That’s it – the third child has finally finished school for the summer. At last we can sit around in our pyjamas all day and watch junk television – which is exactly what I used to do myself at a similar age.
I have spent the last week studiously avoiding eye contact with other mothers in order to sidestep plans to meet up for educational days out or healthy picnics. Unfortunately, my daughter has accused me of stunting her social growth by refusing to plunge headlong into the morass of scheduled events and activities. She hasn’t yet discovered the boundless joys of being unsociable, which is surprising when you consider that she lives with such a great role model.
Each of my kids has come home from school on their final day laden down with at least three carrier bags. These have all been dumped unceremoniously in the corner of the kitchen. It looks as if I have had a supermarket home delivery, but instead of the usual bottles of wine and packets of frozen chips, the bulging carrier bags contain every single piece of work they have done across the school year.
What is the point of all this? Do schools think that parents need hard evidence that their children have been doing something other than picking their noses all year? Are they just pandering to the parental obsession of needing to know everything our children are doing, even when they manage to escape the full glare of our interest for a few hours a day at school?
When I was at junior school, the only thing we brought home on the final day of the school year was a pair of cheesy-smelling plimsolls which had been used for ‘music and movement.’ I vaguely remember that we did those lessons in our underwear, which seems astounding now and makes me feel ancient. I suppose it added another weapon to the armoury of the sadistic PE staff, enabling them to humiliate the weedier children even more effectively.
Anyway, the bags are piled up in the corner, and I’m not sure what to do with them. I really can’t face looking through reams of spelling tests and times table worksheets, or making appreciative noises at A3 sized pieces of artwork which drop chunks of bright red powder paint all over my dressing gown. I know for certain that I don’t want to look in the ‘My Busy Bee News’ book, which is well-known for exposing my intemperance, rather like a tabloid newspaper. Now I know what it must feel like to be a D-list celebrity whose agent has advised her against reading the gutter press. After all, there isn’t much point trying to sue an eight year old for libel.
Other parents tell me that they select a couple of pieces of artwork to keep, and a nicely written story or two. But that is going to involve sifting through the entire contents of each bag, not to mention lighting the blue touch paper of sibling rivalry.
Time to pause and enjoy a glass of Wither Hills Sauvignon Blanc from Marlborough, New Zealand (Sainsburys £8.99). This grassy, gooseberry–and-lime tasting wine is really intense, and offers everything you could ever want from a Sauvignon Blanc. Including inspiration.
I have decided to simply pour myself another glass, and revert to my default mode of ‘do nothing.’ That way, the carrier bags will become just another slag-heap in the industrial landscape of my kitchen. They can blend in with the assorted clutter until they cease to exist in their own right.
I have no doubt that the day my son asks me to retrieve the brightly coloured caterpillar with fifty pipe cleaner legs will be the day after I have finally shovelled the lot into a black bin liner.

Summer Diary Delights

It seems to be crunch time with summer holiday arrangements. All those ‘Yes, let’s get together in the summer....’ procrastinations are coming back to haunt me. I have blurred memories of several occasions this year, when, full of bonhomie (and red wine) I cheerily waved a warm, smudged glass in the air, and signed up verbally to various tin pot ideas. Now the net is closing around me, and I am being pinned down for dates. Each entry into the diary feels like a nail in the coffin of our summer freedom.

I really envy people who just clear off somewhere for the summer. ‘Sorry, we’re away for the holidays’ they say breezily, with an unconvincing attempt at disappointment. As a way of fending off the diary-toting hordes, this really is a trump card. How I would love to wave goodbye to everything back home, and just head for the hills, dragging the kids and a trolley full of wine behind me. Come to think of it, if the hilly terrain got too arduous, the kids could just return home and fend for themselves.

We are going away for a couple of weeks here and there this summer, but we seem to be the only family not taking a holiday based on topics from the National Curriculum. If I was able to go on holiday to Rome, I would want to cavort in the Trevi Fountain in a strapless evening gown, like Anita Ekberg, not haul three moaning brats around the Coliseum. If I went to France, it would be in order to drink good, cheap wine and eat smelly cheese, not to kid myself that the children are learning to speak French just because they can now order ‘un sandwich au jambon.’

I am firmly of the opinion that children don’t need holidays – their parents do. I have heard people say that it’s important to provide holiday memories for your children, but since none of mine can even remember what they had for breakfast, I have serious doubts.

My own form of escapism tonight comes in the form of a particularly luscious Diemersfontein Pinotage (Ocado £7.99). This South African beauty was recommended to me by Peter at The Pinotage Club, who describes it as ‘coffee and chocolate in a glass.’ I can’t add anything to that, it is such a good description, and makes you wonder why you would ever need to eat or drink anything else in your lifetime. There is a little quote on the label at the back of the bottle saying

‘It befriends – It converts – It seduces’

which makes it sound like a particularly sinister but racy church group (one way of expanding the congregation, I suppose).

Peter is also the author of a wonderful book, about unusual wine labels which has the extremely memorable title of ‘Marilyn Merlot and the Naked Grape.’ It will definitely be on my letter to Santa this Christmas.

As I am sipping this pinotage, I am hatching an escape plan for next year that will enable us to say that we are ‘away in the country’ for the whole summer, on an educational trip for the children, which encompasses their maths work, language skills, geography projects and plenty of exercise. It will also guarantee some indelible memories for them. The shortage of fruit-picking migrant workers in the South East could be my salvation. I haven’t decided yet whether or not I will let the kids keep any of their wages.