The Tattooed Lady

My nine year old daughter has recently taken to covering her arms with tattoos. Not the inky-blue prison varieties, but sparkly iridescent butterflies and flowers. They are like the old fashioned ‘transfer’ tattoos I loved as a child – but better. There is none of that ritual disappointment when you lift the paper off too soon to reveal only half of the pattern.

I suppose the tattoos are a step up from the lurid felt-tip body art she used to enjoy as a toddler, which was always completely indelible, despite over twenty minutes of feverish scrubbing in the bath.

Therefore, I can see that it is only a matter of time before she wants to decorate her lower back with some vast black Celtic cross, or cover her shoulders with the Chinese symbols for ‘fried rice.’

I don’t have any tattoos. I very nearly got one in my twenties, but as with everything else in those days, I just couldn’t make the commitment. I was living in Paris at the time, and along with two close friends, thought it would be ‘hilarious’ if we each got a French cockerel (symbol of French sporting excellence) tattooed at the top of one thigh. We thought the tattoos would give us all sorts of conversational opportunities (‘Would you like to see my coq?’ or ‘People say I’ve got balls, but I’ve got a coq as well!’) although I’m not sure they would have been the most successful chat-up lines.

We went so far as making an appointment at a tattoo parlour, and turning up on the night. But when we got there, the tattoo artist was so far behind with his appointments, there were still three people waiting ahead of us. We were due at a party that evening, and since we were all getting a bit thirsty, we decided to just forget it and go to the party instead. My friends wanted to re-book the appointment, but secretly I felt it was a lucky escape. I had actually spent the previous night lying in bed staring at the ceiling, in a futile attempt to imagine the rest of my life, and whether or not the cockerel tattoo would fit in with it. How ridiculous that I never suffered any such concerns over the decision to have children.

I remember my American friend was particularly unforgiving about my gutless ducking out. ‘Whaddya gonna do?’ she demanded ‘Start dating Senators, or something?’ I am embarrassed to admit that with the arrogance of youth, I replied that I just might. What I didn't realise at the time, was that I should have just gone ahead and had 'Put Your Shoes On' tattooed on my forehead - it would have saved me no end of grief twenty years later.

Another trip down memory lane comes in the form of this glass of Lindeman’s Bin 65 Chardonnay (I think it’s on offer at Tesco at £4.78). I doubt there’s anyone in the country between the ages of 20 and 50 who hasn’t tried this melon-tasting stalwart. I think it’s very pleasant, but it does remind me of dire ‘dinner parties’ in the 80s when young people sat around doing their best to emulate their pompous middle-aged parents. Maybe if I had gone ahead with the cockerel tattoo, I could have livened up the dinner party conversation. As it is, I’m not sure how I will react when my daughter decides she wants a genuine tattoo – I suppose compared to a cockerel, a gothic skull or red devil won’t seem quite so bad.

Press 'Pause'

I am beginning to suspect that H may be on the verge of a mid-life crisis.

He would not be the only male I know to succumb. For starters, I have lost count of the depressing tales of family men being caught with their pants down recently. It seems they are frequently drawn to someone who looks remarkably like their own wife, but without the slippers or the post-pregnancy paunch.

Then, at a party this weekend, a lawyer friend announced that he needed to ‘find his true identity’ and was therefore about to chuck in his lucrative but soul-destroying job for something more fulfilling. As everyone clustered around to applaud his brave decision, I couldn’t help noticing his shell-shocked wife in the background, nodding enthusiastically and smiling through gritted teeth. For her 45^th birthday present, she had been handed the role of sole breadwinner, rather than the pedicure voucher she was hoping for.

I suppose with drastic behaviour like this, I should be relieved that H’s particular obsession is fairly benign. Our finances preclude the purchase of that typical symbol of mid-life crisis - a ‘male meno-Porsche’ so instead he has bought a pair of in-line skates.

To be fair, as well as being an all round Boy Scout, H has always been a good skater – a sort of Ray Mears on wheels. He used to rollerblade to work when he was young and carefree, and was therefore a frequent recipient of abuse from motorists, cyclists and pedestrians alike.

However this weekend, he returned from a skating trip with more of a glow than usual. Apparently, a car full of teenage girls had beeped their car horn and waved at him as he skated along. All fairly innocent, you might think, but no - he has been down at the gym this morning, clearly convinced that his body is now a temple at which young women will come and worship. Bless!

More worryingly, he has declared his intention to abstain from drinking wine. Surely such self-delusion has its limits? Clearly some action needs to be taken to avoid irreparable damage to our marriage. Therefore, in an attempt to lure him once again with my oenophile charms, I have uncorked a Tesco Finest Beyers Truter Pinotage (£7.99). I am certain that the spicy blackberry flavour will convince him of the error of his ways. How could he fail to realise that a lithe limbed lovely offering him a swig of her alcopop cannot compare with the delights of drinking decent red wine? Even if it does mean sharing it with a woman whose teeth are gradually turning blue.

It's Cosmic, Man

I am being driven to the end of my extremely short tether by the amount of school paraphernalia my kids have lost recently. They now have a record of ‘disappearances’ that would put a military dictatorship to shame. The list includes a pair of trainers, two cardigans, two pairs of football socks, a waterproof jacket, P.E. shorts and vest, 3 pairs of swimming goggles, and two pencil cases.

When I was young, my school uniform was treated with the sort of reverence that is given to a priest’s ceremonial robes. Each item was supposed to last for about three years, regardless of how quickly I was growing. As a result, in some school photos, my uniform is so short and tight that I look like I am dressed for one of those adult ‘School Disco’ nights.

Losing an item of uniform not only incurred the considerable wrath of my mother, but it also meant that I had to wait for the next three year buying period before it was replaced. Some children love to flout the restrictions of school uniform, but as a card-carrying conformist, such unintentional rebellion caused me endless anxiety. I vowed, therefore, that if I ever had children, I would calmly accept that sometimes they just lose things, and then quietly get a replacement.

So where did it all go wrong?

This morning, my daughter was as unconcerned as ever about the mysterious and repeated disappearance of her school cardigan. I tried to explain why it was important to find it, but there wasn’t even a flicker of acceptance of any personal responsibility. I started on the gentle interrogation, but this appeared to have no effect either. By the time we were at the school gates, I had gone completely over the top, and was dispensing acrimonious threats. Her bright optimism about the cardigan’s prodigal return had now evaporated completely, and as she turned to go into school, her little face was pale with misery. Walking away, I tried to justify to myself that she needed to learn some accountability, but needless to say, I felt like a complete sadist for the rest of the day.

This afternoon, when I picked her up from school, the detox period away from her mother’s verbal venom had worked a treat, and she was her usual ebullient self – and still without her cardigan. With uncharacteristic restraint, I pretended not to notice, choosing to seethe inwardly instead.

Now that they are all in bed, the chance to wash away the lingering taste of vitriol comes in the form of an Ackerman Laurence Sparking Saumur (£5.99 Ocado).

Friday night is always Cheap Fizz night chez Drunk Mummy, and I really wanted to like this, as an alternative to my beloved prosecco. But although it is light and yeasty, it doesn’t have a great finish – a bit like that sensation when you have just missed out on a sneeze, or an orgasm (delete as appropriate, depending on your sex life, or your hayfever symptoms).

It seems that I will either have to believe in the existence of a ‘school uniform black hole’ somewhere in the cosmos that is sucking these items in, with apparently no hope of their return, or resign myself to another ten years of shrewish scolding.

Strangely enough, the more I have of this Saumur, the more I am starting to feel an affinity with the theories of Professor Stephen Hawking. If I finish the bottle, I may need to borrow the great man's wheelchair.

All Present and Correct

I went out today to buy some presents for yet another round of birthday parties that the kids will be attending in the next few weeks. I once added up how much I spent in a year on birthday presents for other people’s children. It is not an exercise I would recommend. I couldn’t stop myself from equating the cost with the number of cases of champagne that I could have bought instead – I was miserable for days.

Thankfully, my kids have now got to an age where birthdays no longer involve a party for the whole class. This means we now have the occasional weekend where H and I are not on permanent chauffeur duty, and our annual birthday present expenditure has dropped from ‘obscene’ to merely ‘uncomfortable.’

Unfortunately though, the birthday children are no longer at an age where they all want a day-glo pony with a tangled nylon tail, or a double-jointed superhero - regardless of how many they already own.

Despite the obvious practicality, giving money to the 7-10 age group seems to be frowned upon. Maybe there is a suspicion that feckless parents will fritter it all away on booze rather than invest in something ‘educational’ for their little darling – which is not a bad idea when you think about it. The only solution I can think of, that allows the children to choose something they actually want, is vouchers.

Now, I know my sons and their friends would prefer a voucher for the local video game shop, so they can continue to fry their brains with high definition graphics. My daughter and her friends would rather have a voucher for ‘Claire’s Accessories’ so they can deck themselves out with fluffy headbands, bracelets and body glitter. I would rather have Majestic Wine vouchers, for obvious reasons, or failing that, book tokens, but that’s because I am a forty-something mother of three (and I already have enough body glitter).

In the end, I was so fed up trying to decide, that I got several book tokens, and several vouchers from the other shops as well.

I’ve now got my feet up, enjoying the spicy cherry flavour of a glass of Tesco Finest Corbières Reserve (£4.99) and trying to match up each voucher with the appropriate child. It’s a bit like a card game, but with the added complication of having to consider which parents consider video games to be the work of Satan, and which would have their feminist principles offended if their daughter bought some sparkly hairslides.

Thankfully, there are always the book tokens, but I can’t help wondering if the recipients of these will just end up wanting to swap them for cash from their parents, and then blowing the lot on the Pic ‘n’ Mix sweetie section of Woolworth’s.

On that basis, I should have just bought Majestic Wine vouchers all round.

If Music Be the Food of Love, I’m On a Diet

I went to my son’s school Music Evening tonight. It was scheduled early enough in the evening to be a logistical nightmare for anyone with younger children, but not late enough to make it easy for working parents to get to.

The result was that all the front rows of seats in the hall were taken up by a coterie of glossy, fragrant mums, freshly dressed in cool white linen separates, relaxing their perfect posture only sporadically in order to share a few conspiratorial laughs at other people’s expense. Shoe-horned in at the back with laptop bags the size of rucksacks, were the creased sweaty suits and creased sweaty brows of the working parents. As several of them tiptoed in during the head teacher’s opening address, the area at the back of the hall began to resemble a refugee camp. When the loud electronic beeping of a mobile started to emanate from the jacket of one poor sod, there was a collective swishing noise from the front rows, as manes of salon-straightened hair revolved in unison to register the owners’ tight-faced disapproval.

After the jolly music teacher had arranged the choir on stage, and persuaded all the small boys to remove their hands from their crotches, the music evening began.

There is something really lovely about hearing children sing together. Any little mistakes make the performance even better, somehow. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of children playing musical instruments. As one nervous child after another made his way up to the stage, the assembled parents were treated to a form of aural torture that ensured nobody would nod off.

After about half an hour I started wondering why music teachers always insist on putting a few popular tunes in the repertoire. I can guarantee that if any child played whole sections of Bach or Beethoven incorrectly, the majority of the audience (myself included) would remain blissfully unaware of his mistakes. Pity then, the little boy who had to play ‘Itsy bitsy teeny weeny yellow polka dot bikini’ on the violin. Perhaps it’s my fault, for just wanting to sit and tap my feet like a pensioner at a day centre, but as he valiantly see-sawed through the piece, each member of the audience started leaning slightly forward, willing the next screechy note to emerge on time, and not flat.

Back in the relative peace and quiet of my kitchen, I am relishing a cold glass of flinty, lemony Les Ruettes Sancerre (M&S about £9 a bottle, I think).

Thinking about tonight’s performance, I am wondering whether it was actually the audience that might have put the children off. Not only did the poor kids have to contend with the glare of laser-whitened teeth from the front row’s rictus grins, but they also had to block out the antics of the camcorder-wielding dads, who were busy reversing centuries of male competition by trying to see who had the smallest.

Guten Tag

I have only just realised that Nunhead Mum Of One tagged me while I was away camping. I was doing some catching-up on all the blog news last night, so I’m a bit late. I don’t know if there’s supposed to be a ‘blog by: date’ on these tags, but here we go:

1. I once ate 36 oysters in one sitting at an ‘oyster appreciation’ event. I don’t think the organisers realised quite how much I appreciate these little bivalves. I washed them down with copious quantities of Chablis (goes really well), champagne (goes less well, but what’s not to like about champagne?) and Black Velvet (Guinness and champagne, which doesn’t go very well at all, but by then I was just showing off).
2. My name is not really Rusty Burke, despite the article 'Ten Reasons Why I Could Never Be an Eco-Mother' which I wrote for the Bad Mothers Club website. (Nothing like a bit of self-publicity, eh?)
3. I was once sunbathing topless with a friend on the beach at the Cannes Film Festival (she yawned) when we were surrounded by about 200 men with cameras, all clicking away furiously (some of them even had film in them). My friend grabbed her bikini top to protect her modesty, but I just grabbed my sunglasses to protect my anonymity. Needless to say, this was all in the pre-children years. It still remains my one and only paparazzi moment.
4. My favourite book is a collection of short stories by Helen Simpson called ‘Hey, yeah right, get a life.’ I think it should be handed out to all new mothers, instead of the usual tracts of finger-wagging ‘information.’
5. I used to row for Great Britain Under 23s. That’s ‘row’ as in boats – not ‘row’ as in argue, although I daresay H might suggest I was equally well qualified for the latter. Obviously, it’s a long time since I was ‘Under 23.’
6. When I was in labour with my son, I was on all fours when his head emerged out of my nether regions. He stayed like this for about 30 seconds, and even opened his eyes and started to cry, before the rest of his body was born. H admitted that it was one of the more bizarre sights he had seen in his life. I imagine it must have looked like Dr Doolittle’s Push-me-pull-you.
7. I was Head Girl of my Catholic convent school – and yes, they are always the worst. The experience left me with a strong commitment to atheism and a bizarrely feminist love of wine (from enviously watching the priest guzzle all the communion vino, while we girls had to make do with a 'host' wafer which had the consistency of school toilet paper).
8. I used to be the Women’s Sport editor on a student newspaper, which had Jeremy Vine as its editor. I sometimes think I should call one of his phone-ins and say ‘Hi Jeremy, remember me-eee?’ but I doubt I could take the public humiliation of his reply.

It seems that lots of my blog buddies have already been tagged, so I’m going to nominate a few bloggers whom I have met only recently. Apologies for this if you have already been tagged before, and if you don’t want to join in then, speaking as a lifelong breaker of chain letters, that’s fine by me.

So, over to you:

Vanessar- The Fidra Blog

Akelamalu

Elsie Button

Cybil, aka Wife, Mom, Drunk

Natural Blonde

I have been sipping a few glasses of Ernest and Julio Gallo White Zinfandel (Ocado £4.99) this evening whilst drawing up my list. Despite the name, it is a rosé, or ‘blush’ as it is known in the States. It is fruity and extremely sweet – probably too sweet for me if it wasn’t really chilled (that doesn’t mean I won’t drink it). I notice that it’s only 9.5% which would make it a good wine for a picnic, or for when you don’t want to fall asleep and start snoring after a couple of glasses (at breakfast, maybe?).

Going Wild In the Country

We are back from camping in the rugged terrain of the Lake District, and I have finally released my matted hair from the Croydon facelift I have been sporting all week. Oh, the joy of soaking in a fragrant, hot bath! The delight of sleeping in a comfortable insect-free bed! The relief at the absence of ripe Camembert smell when I wave to someone!

I suppose the trip was a big success in that the children avoided contracting e coli, and I have only a mild case of trench foot. In fact, the weather wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be, but that could just have been the combined effects of copious wine consumption and lack of sleep. I also know that if you go on holiday in this country, then there is really no point in complaining about the weather. If the Home Office is short of questions for its ‘Britishness Test’ for citizenship, then they could do a lot worse than include the following:

Where is the best place for a picnic?

a) a shady and sheltered spot to avoid the harmful rays of the sun

b) an area where no wild animal habitats will be disturbed, or fragile eco-systems damaged

c) the car

If you answer c) then you will have captured the very essence of what it means to be British, and should instantly be issued with a passport (which means you can also go on holiday to a country with better weather).

The old-fashioned trailer tent proved to be excellent, and cut our usual tent-pitching time from over two hours to less than one, which matters a lot in the UK monsoon season. It did attract lots of interest from fellow campers, several of whom wandered over to tell H that they had ‘never seen one like that before.’ It’s a long time since anyone said that to him, and being a very friendly sort of chap, he was happy to discuss its various merits. Meanwhile I skulked around in the background, wondering when the other campers were likely to start throwing buns at us.

I had forgotten what sheer hard work camping is. People talk about the ‘slower pace of life’ that camping encourages, but I’m convinced that this is a rather skewed perception. It takes longer to do everything, so you are actually much busier. When we first took the kids camping a couple of years ago, I was surprised to see so many people on camp sites just sitting in foldaway chairs outside their tents, doing nothing. It wasn’t long before I realised that they were relishing a few precious moments of inactivity before yet another round of meal preparation or tidying up the limited floor space.

Of course, the kids loved every minute, because for them it was one long session of playing with mud and sticks, frightening the wildlife, or damaging their retinas by shining a torch directly at each other’s eyeballs.

We did do a lot of cycling, which was great fun, apart from the discovery that my waterproofs aren’t as waterproof as I thought. As with all this outdoor kit, we seem to have spent a fortune on good quality items for the kids, while H and I make do with ancient gear from the days when nylon was considered a high performance material. Being a bit of a softie, the one thing I have invested in is a gel-filled saddle cover for my bike, despite the obvious invitation for ribald commentary that my seat is already more than adequately upholstered. Frankly, neither my under-carriage nor the saddle cover proved to be well-cushioned enough, and I am still walking like a cowboy. I’m not sure how you are supposed to prevent this – it’s not as if you can apply surgical spirit to the area to toughen it up in advance.

Despite the Spartan conditions, H and I did have some quiet, relaxing evenings huddled under the awning, in the romantic glow of the citronella insect-repellant candle. As five sets of waterproofs dripped onto our heads, he would sit cradling his warming glass of Irish whisky, while I would sit cradling my warming 3 litre box of Hardy’s Stamp Shiraz-Cabernet (Sainsbury’s £14.99 down from £19.99, and definitely one of the better wine box reds).

Preparations for bed would start with me slipping (rather hurriedly) into my thermal underwear, laughably called a Superwoman set (I don’t recall Lynda Carter ever looking like this, unless she moonlighted as a mime artist on her days off from saving the world). With just the three additional layers of socks, track suit and fleece, I would be all ready for a snuggle in the double sleeping bag. However, since H was similarly dressed, the only crackle of passion we managed was the static from the bobbly brushed nylon sleeping bag. Any romantic inclinations had to be weighed up against the combustion hazard of electricity and the large quantities of methane gas issuing from the boys.

Back in the cosy confines of the kitchen, I am knocking back a couple of glasses of spicy Lindeman’s Cawarra Shiraz Cabernet (Sainsburys £4.99) in memory of our camping trip. The only problem is that a mere 750 ml wine bottle looks rather tame in comparison with a mighty 3 litre wine box. Maybe there are some benefits to camping after all.