Seasons Greetings :s

Christmas is the one time of year that I plan for and look forward to all year round. It gets me through the depressing months when the days are getting shorter and it seems to be dark the whole damn time. Christmas is the time when I can almost understand that lovely, cosy indoors feeling that people chuck about as a reason to like winter. It's also the one day of the year that I can usually get through without having the urge to kill Stig or one of my children. There's nothing like family time at Christmas, watching their faces as they realise "He's been!" and knowing as they open their presents that a year of planning, every bit of penny pinching, every freezing shopping trip to get them that that perfect gift was worth it just to see that look on their faces.

This year however was not a beautiful day of family love and serenity. It was a scene of carnage, vomiting and Heinz tomato soup. After I'd spent a fortune, meticulously shopped for every kind of Christmas snack or drink you could possibly want, baked enough to put Gregg's out of business and wrapped presents like a woman possessed, we all got swine flu.

I was quick to realise that this is no mediocre illness, no poncy winter cold. It's a vicious, knock-you-on-your-arse bastard, which basically involves being unable to get out of bed without wanting to die. We were just moaning blobs of perspiring, shivering crud. This lasted for about a week-and-a-half leading up to Christmas, so I naively assumed we would all be OK in time for the day itself.

For those of you who have never experienced it, be warned. There comes the stage where you have convinced yourself that getting out of bed is possible. Perhaps you are stupid enough to think that you can get dressed and open presents and cook a full Christmas dinner when you have Swine Flu, but you are a delusional idiot and you have been conned by the virus.

We assembled in the living room for prezzy opening, and as the smell of the turkey beginning to cook invaded my nostrils for the first time, I entered phase two and threw up all over the clothes I had struggled so desperately to get into not half an hour earlier. The rest of the day was spent heading back and forth from the loo because the simple act of moving triggers the piggy-flu vomit reflex. Heinz tomato soup, we have discovered, is a perfectly adequate Christmas dinner in the right circumstances.

I say that we all had it; Jamie actually had it last year and managed to survive the repeated bathroom exodus of her vomiting family completely unscathed. Her immune system clearly retains information in the same manner as her brain does. She never forgets a damn thing you say to her, never misses a trick, and never succumbs to the same virus twice it seems, mutated or otherwise. The consequence of this is that Jamie is the authority on swine flu, bird flu, Hayes House flu and any other ailment remotely related. You really don't need an eleven-year-old standing in the bathroom doorway, pontificating on the severity of your symptoms while you barf your life away.

"Well of course I was only sick once or twice mummy, but it was quite severe, almost projectile" she mused "and it was really only because of that Tamaflow stuff, it wasn't very helpful you know, perhaps you would be better off taking paracetamol..."

"Thanks Jamie, that really helps. Do you mind?"

"No, not at all, would you like a bobble to tie your hair back?"

I was experiencing true mixed emotions now, between adoring her for being so lovely, and wishing that she would just piss off and let me throw up in peace.

"No thank you darling, but some privacy would be nice"

I'd have been yelling at her if my head wasn't so far down the toilet that there was no point in trying to speak. I had reached the point of no return. My tomato soup was coming back and there was nothing me, her or "Tamaflow" could do to stop it. I wasn't so sick though that I didn't briefly ponder why her version of the anti-viral drug sounded like a range of sanitary towels.

I've survived it again. I went to a place where normal people were, and conversed with them without committing some kind of catastrophic faux pas. Anyone who knows me or even reads this blog will probably know how socially inadequate I can be. Hayes House is my bubble; a turbulent bubble, granted. Nevertheless, when I'm in the thick of it I forget that there exists a whole other world beyond our front door, which at times can be far more intimidating than the abject chaos I live in.

I was invited to a presentation evening given by the lovely Ormskirk Writers and Literary Society, or OWLS, as I came third in their annual Jo Cowell writing competition with my writing about Sam. I don't doubt that if the the award on offer had been for Ingenious Ways to Make a Prat of Oneself in Polite Company, I'd have come first.

As if agreeing to attend wasn't actually a big enough feat, I was asked if I would read my entry aloud at the presentation. Of course I said yes, partially because I'm an idiot, and partially because the writing is so personal to me that I thought it would be just too weird to hear a stranger reading it. Of course when agreeing to do this I hadn't hadn't factored in my complete lack of social skills, the fact that I lose all ability to speak coherently when I am nervous, and the reality that I sound a damn sight better on paper than I do in person.

In classic Clare-style, I realised at the last minute that I had deleted the only email from the OWLS which contained the start time of the event. Unfortunately my attempts to contact them on the day of the presentation were unsuccessful. I didn't know what to wear, when to be ready for, or where the hell we were going. I gave Stig the directions and he very wisely immersed himself in them and pretended to be oblivious to my wandering in and out of the bedroom with random pairs of trousers, muttering to myself.

Over the last four weeks I had become increasingly sick with nerves, culminating in my not eating all day yesterday. This mightn't have been so bad (possibly even a good thing for the diet that I always intend to start but never do) if it hadn't been that the OWLS had wine on offer at the presentation.

I followed Stig's advice (rarely a good plan) and had a glass to calm my nerves. Soon after I noted that I'd stopped shaking and felt almost calm. I thought I was prepared to hear my name called as the time drew nearer, but by the time they did call me I was clutching my entry so tight that I'd crushed the corner of it and I was beginning to lose the feeling in my right hand. I managed to get up to the front without falling on top of anybody and took my place, ready to read.

I thought perhaps I should make some kind of eye contact with some of the room, but unfortunately the old chestnut of imagining people naked scuppered that idea; I'd have had to stare directly at Stig throughout the entire thing and given that I was a bit tipsy I'd probably have lost what semblance of composure I had left. So instead I sped-read through the whole thing in about three minutes without looking up once, and for good measure I even managed a laugh-snort in the middle.

They were very lovely about my writing, and it was so nice to meet other people who enthuse about something I love so much. I may have acquired a few extra grey hairs but I'm so glad I decided to go.

I'd like to say a huge thank you to the Ormskirk OWLS. When they first contacted me I assumed it was some new writer's magazine touting for subscribers or advertising yet another writer's course (my inbox is full of them). I couldn't believe I'd actually won something. Even more so after the presentation evening last night where some of the other entries were read out. I'm really proud that I have a place amongst such accomplished writers, who'd have thunk it? Me!

I have to add though, that any illusions of literary genius were dispelled the instant I walked back into my bedroom and saw my half written sociology essay strewn across the bed in frustration, and sat next to it was the latest example of coat hanger sculpture as crafted by Sam, just to remind me who the real star is.

Academic Flounderings

Sorry I haven't posted for a while. I started college in September and I've been in quite a weird but wonderful place since then.

Aside from the mission of recalling long since defunct brain cells into action; I've had to cope with my pitiful social interaction skills and exercise constant restraint in order not to completely embarrass myself. This of course hasn't always been as successful an endeavour as I would have liked.

On my first day I was told off for smoking on the grounds and asked to move away. An incident which was later to peeve me even more when I learned that my sixteen-year-old stepdaughter has smoking shelters at her college, but apparently we at The Adult College can't be trusted not to inflict cancer on the odd, innocent passer-by or burn the building to the ground with a wet cigarette end.

My confidence was further hindered by the computers. I can use a computer but it only takes one minor incident for me to become a dithering, flustered wreck. I tried to log on to the virtual learning environment (When I was in high school we had textbooks and a library of encyclopedias), but apparently there is another person with the same name as me who attends the same college, and I inadvertently hacked her account. I coped with the hacking situation quite well but then the computer wouldn't print, so I calmly logged out and moved to another one. As I bent below the desk to switch the computer on, the screen that the person sat next to me was using promptly went off. I had switched her off mid essay, how to make friends and influence people eh?

I had hoped that if I could excel in my essays and portfolio, it might compensate for my social and technical ineptness. But trying to write an essay on the significance of culture is not easy when you have four children reenacting a scene from this years' nativity play outside the bedroom door (Charlie isn't even in the damn thing!). I don't think rehearsals are going very well because I'm quite sure that neither Prince Caspian nor Super Mario were present at the birth of Christ.

Having yelled at Stig to guard the door and told the children that the only circumstances in which they are permitted to come within a mile radius of me is if their eyeballs are bleeding or they have misplaced a limb, I get back to my essay. But I can't concentrate because I am now feeling guilty for becoming an angry old witch and all I manage to accomplish is repetitive strain injury.

To add insult to injury, one of my assignments is to write a personal statement for an application for a place at university, in which I have to demonstrate competence and basically lie about how great I am.

I'm now six weeks in to the course and I have actually managed to occasionally converse with my fellow students. I even offered to organise the half term piss up in an ongoing quest to be sociable. We are going out tonight and though I am quite looking forward to it, I am prepared for the fact that it will inevitably backfire and I will end up pissed and friendless wandering the streets, having made a tit of myself again. Watch this space :s

How Difficult Is It To Get Into Bed?

Our bedtime routine is not a routine of choice, but a routine forced upon us by children, forgetfulness, exhaustion and conflict avoidance.

1. I Decide I want to go to bed.
2. I then decide I'm too tired and/or comfortable to get off my backside.
3. Have a mental argument with myself featuring going to bed vs staying where I am for the rest of the night.
4. Make a coffee whilst arguing with myself (casually disregarding the fact I have now actually got up and therefore really should go to bed.
5. Fanny around on Facebook several minutes more and play a game of spider solitaire whilst smoking a fag and finishing coffee.
6. Take cup and any other random dirty crockery to the kitchen, rinse and put in dishwasher. Check milk supplies for the inevitable twice nightly visit to Charlie.
7. Make Sam's dinner for the following school day and check all homework and schoolbooks are in correct kids bags for school.
8. Check heating timer is on and switch lights off.
9. In bedroom, check that I have glass of water, mobile phone, TV and Sky remotes in an accessible location.
10. Get into bed with appropriate girly viewing on and lamp off.
11. Finally decide that I should actually go to sleep, around 1-2am, and switch off TV.
12. Realise I need pee.
13. After some deliberation use the bathroom, Get back into bed and begin reheating process.
14. Just begin to fall asleep when Charlie starts crying.
15. Visit and pacify Charlie promising anything from a trip to the zoo to a puppy in order to get him to go back to sleep.
16. Get back into bed and hope that I can fall asleep before Stig comes in and starts snoring.
17. I'm finally asleep. Sam comes in and stands by the edge of the bed staring at me until I wake up, at which point his face is 1.5cms away from mine and I wake to the vision of a giant eyeball.
18. Shit myself and bump heads with Sam, who now forgets his original issue as his head hurts.
19. Grunt instructions to Stig, who is watching equally crap man telly in the adjoining room, to take Sam back to bed.
20. Get into bed, fall asleep for approximately three minutes before Stig enters the bedroom and begins crashing around, switching lights on and off, swearing and bumping into furniture.
21. Threaten him with violence if he doesn't quit demolishing the bedroom, before finally settling down to sleep.
21. Wake half way through a Johnny Depp dream to the sound of Charlie screaming again.

When Stig comes to bed, it's the same every night. It's not the routine he should have, but the one he's settled into because he can't remember a damn thing.

1. Enters bedroom, fully clothed, and sits on bed.
2. Takes shoes off before remembering that I will kill him if I trip over them again.
3. Exits bedroom with shoes to deposit them in the hallway.
4. Returns to bedroom and removes trousers.
5. Exit bedroom, minus pants, to get the glass of water he forgot.
6. Returns with water then takes existing empty water glass from last night back to the kitchen.
7. Enters bathroom for around 5 minutes before returning, naked with an armful of clothes to deposit on the ever growing wash pile in the corner of the bedroom (there isn't enough room in our en suite to wipe your arse, let alone get undressed, I think he was wonderwoman in a former life).
8. Gets into bed and shuffles around whilst gradually confiscating my half of the covers, which are already warm.
9. Two minutes blissful silence before he abruptly yells out into the darkness "OH SHITE-IN-HELL!", untangles himself from his self-made sausage roll and gets out of bed to take his pills.
10. Gets back into bed to find that I have reclaimed my half of the duvet.
11. Sidles over to me in search of warmth and puts his freezing cold feet over mine
12. Returns, disgruntled, to his own side of the bed after some expletive-filled verbal abuse and the odd death threat.

Mothers, Knickers and Phones.

Women and telephones are like peas and carrots, as Forrest would say. Not me though, the telephone is my arch nemesis when it comes to providing opportunities to make a prat of myself.

My parents lived abroad some years ago and it became apparent that the quality of ladies' undergarments was not quite up to my mother's usual high standards. This resulted in my having to stand in the middle of Wilkinson's, holding aloft large pairs of knickers whilst trying to describe them to my Mother on my mobile phone, which was wedged between my ear and shoulder.

The mild embarrassment of questioning looks from shoppers was topped only by Stig, who had endured enough knicker scrutinising for one afternoon. He snatched the phone from my already precarious grasp and announced to my mother "I've got a tow-rope in the back of the car, I'll make you a g-string". There followed several crackling expletives from my mother who, after threatening to murder her then future son-in-law, thankfully saw the funny side.

My mother has featured more than once in my phone humiliation. I was particularly drunk one night and had ordered a pizza. Stig had given up all hope of the takeaway arriving and taken himself off to bed. Ever the optimist when it comes to food though, an hour later I was still waiting... Still no pizza. I decided to phone the pizza place and enquire if my food was ever going to arrive. Being drunk and unable to remember which takeaway we ordered from, I picked up the phone and hit redial. It was 3am by now.

"Hello..."
"Hello, I ordered pizza a bloody hour ago and it still hasn't come"
Silence.
"Hello?" I was beginning to get that sinking feeling.
"Clare?"
"Mum?"
"You're drunk. Go to bed"
"Oh. OK. Sorry."

I had redialed on the wrong handset. She very considerately phoned me back at 8am to check if my pizza had arrived.

Then of course there was the time that I phoned my friend who seemed very confused to hear from me...

"Hi, sorry were you sleeping?"
"Clare; I'm in the Dominican Republic. It's 4am here"
"Shit, sorry."

I have to have reached a certain point in a relationship with anyone before I consider giving them my phone number. They are usually warned in advance by a sniggering Stig about what they can expect.

Having become accustomed to embarrassing phone conversations, we now have a game in Hayes House; whoever answers the phone in our house is given a word by the other people in the room that they must integrate into the conversation with the person at the other end of the phone. This is most effective when that person is a stranger such as telesales people or someone from the electric company.

Tis most hilarious getting my own back on Stig, listening to him say "shiver-me-timbers!" to the nice man from Asda home shopping, who had only phoned to tell us that he would be delivering our weekly shop in about 10 minutes. I'm amazed he actually turned up that week.

The Language Barrier

What is it with kids? When you say "No!" They rarely come up with a more convincing protest than "Aaawwwww!"

This phenomenon seems to last about 6 years, give or take. When Jamie first entered into the "Aaawwww!" phase (around two-and-a-half years old), I was just grateful that the throwing-herself-onto-the-floor-and-bashing-her-head-against-the-door-frame phase seemed to be over.

A year later though I was completely aghast that she was still doing it. It had never got her anywhere. Never once after her pleading "Aaaaaaww!" did I ever proclaim: "Well; now that you've made that very attractive sound, Go ahead, Be my guest!"

I don't even want to contemplate the impending years when it becomes "I hate you!" or "You're ruining my life!" and other such intelligent arguments. The under-breath mutterings have already begun.

Because of course, we don't understand. We were never kids ourselves. Never once felt miffed that our mother's wouldn't let us go to the best party of the year, or leave the house wearing skirts that were barely visible and badly applied make-up that was visible from two streets away.

Raising them is problematic enough but I am convinced that Hayes House has some mysterious communication scrambling device. None of us seem to glean the same meanings from anything that is said in our house.

"STOP-IT-RIGHT-NOW!", for example, is usually heard by the kids as "Don't mind me my little cherubs, you just carry on recreating the Apocalypse in the living room, that's absolutely tickety-bloody-boo".

When Stig says "I'll be home in an hour" I know that the secret formula is to double it and add half an hour for a realistic ETA.

When I yell "Girls, is your room tidy?" in the general direction of the stairs,
and they reply "Nearly"...

That means "Nope, we've been sat on our arses making more mess for the past two hours."

And when Sam is acting suspicious, and I ask him what he's done, and he says "Can't remember" whilst looking at his feet with his hands clasped behind his back, you know you're going to discover ground zero somewhere in the house.

Little Houdini

Charlie is a boy on a mission. That mission is to escape Hayes House at any cost. Maybe he was an inmate at Alcatraz in a past life, who knows? I can see the reasoning, there are days when I'd cheerfully escape from here, never to return.

We have safety gates, guards, and one of those playpens that opens up to form a long barrier of metal bars around the TV/Wii/Sky box etc. The front door and garden gate have to be kept locked at all times or he's off. Our home already resembles a high security prison.

First Charlie learnt how to open the safety gates. The solution to this was to cable-tie them shut. This means that everyone who enters Hayes House through the front door has to perform some kind of acrobatic display to get into the living room. It's OK for us but not so good when elderly relatives visit.

Then Charlie learnt to climb over the gates, hence the demise of the AV button and the regular disappearance of the Sky viewing card, along with Wii games used as Frisbees.

But the main problem with this is that Charlie can now get upstairs and into the bathroom and bedrooms. We've had Shampoo Art on the landing carpet, a recreation of a biblical flood in the bathroom, and a three-year-old in heavy drag make-up complete with hat and scarf after his latest expedition into the girls' bedrooms.

Not only this, he has figured out how to open the garden gate. Yesterday we only just caught him cycling off up the street on his little bike. When intercepted, he informed us that he was going to Johnny's Fun Factory.

After two escape attempts, a near miss with a disposable razor, and my threatening to buy a Charlie-sized cage, Stig finally decided a new approach was needed. Have you ever seen the film Labyrinth? That weird room near the end with the upside down staircases where all perspective is seriously messed up? This is fast becoming our home.

The only solution Stig could come up with so that Charlie can't escape, but the other kids can still get in and out of the living room, was to put a door handle at the top of the door. It couldn't be in the corner of the door as Charlie could stand on the windowsill and reach it so we have a brass (a-la-AV button) door handle smack bang in the middle of the top of our living room door...



Unfortunately Nicki can't reach this handle so a piece of plastic tubing now hangs from it on some very attractive orange cord. It looks like an emergency parachute toggle. It hangs down at just the right height for Nicki to reach, she merely has to yank down on it and the door will magically open.

The garden gate has had a similar treatment with more brass handles. Our house is beginning to resemble a retirement home from a parallel universe. You never know, maybe one day soon we'll have enough weird buttons and toggles that our house will rival Johnny's Fun Factory for amusement value and the little sod will choose to stay here voluntarily!

Give Me Strength!

It's no wonder that the summer holidays are peak season for parental nervous breakdowns. Picture the scene:

Sam and Nicki are sat in their imaginary car in our living room. They're going for a drive, presumably somewhere in America because they are talking to each other in that fake whiny American accent that only British kids of a certain age can produce.

Nicki: "Sam, I'm driving"
Sam: (whilst wrenching the non-existent steering wheel over to his side of the non-existent vehicle) "No, I'm driving"

The same line was repeated back and forth whilst I watched in disbelief at the wrangling over the steering wheel. Despite myself I am being dragged into this fantasy and am visualising the steering wheel being pulled from side to side as they fight over it.

Sam could argue forever whereas huffiness always gets the better of Nicki...

"Fine then, I'll walk!" She slams the car door (by now I can actually see the imaginary car) and then reaches through the car window with a grabbing motion towards Sam.

Nicki: "And that twenty bucks is mine!"
Sam: "No, give it back, it's mine!"
Nicki: No it's mine, you want it, you'll have to catch me"

Nicki runs off waving her twenty bucks aloft as if this will prevent Sam from reclaiming it. Sam hurriedly gets back into the car, fastens his seat belt and "Drives" after her whilst wailing about the twenty bucks.

It's not often that I am lost for words. My usual course of action would be to confiscate whatever it is they are arguing over (hence the reason there is a growing pile of random children's crap in my bedroom) but how does one even begin to settle an argument over an imaginary twenty bucks or give a lecture on why it is wrong to run your sister over in your imaginary car?

I'm thinking maybe a travelling circus might take them as trainee mime artists?

Going Underground

There was a death in Hayes House last summer. We had two guinea pigs; Holly and Willow, and unfortunately Willow fell victim to some mysterious guinea pig illness. She was poorly for a day or so when she very suddenly deteriorated. I was pretty sure that she would have to be put down so we sat the girls down and explained that we didn't think Willow was going to get better and that we thought the vet would probably have to put her to sleep. We explained to two very tearful girls that it was the kindest thing to do as Willow was very sick.

They each held her wrapped in her towel and said their goodbyes. There's nothing worse than seeing your children hurting like this and feeling powerless to take the pain away, but when I gently took Willow from them and placed her in a box the girls they threw their arms around each other in the most dramatic fashion and wailed like a pair of bereft animals. A split-second enquiring glance passed between Stig and I.

Stig took Willow to the vet and as expected he came back with her little body in her cardboard box, which caused even more trauma to the already emotional girls. Again they wanted to stroke Willow in the box and say goodbye. By this point Willow was starting to feel a little firm as rigor set in. Another look passed between Stig and I and I knew that despite myself my initial wave of sympathy at the girl's distress was beginning to be tinged with amusement, which I did my best to ignore. Have you ever been in a situation where the most inappropriate thing to do is laugh, but it only makes the urge to do it worse?

Despite the trauma Willow's death was rather timely as we were just about to lay some flags in the garden. The girls made a cross with messages of love and "Rest in Peace" written on it. Stig and I dutifully oversaw proceedings with the required sombriety. Stig dug a hole and both of the girls wanted to lay Willow to rest so they decided to lower her into the ground together.

Except they weren't exactly in sync and they dropped a now rock-solid Willow, who obligingly landed face down, ass up in the bottom of the hole. At which point the flinging of arms and wailing commenced once more, and it was all I could do to stifle a laugh-snort. I was barely holding it together when I made the mistake of looking at Stig, he had turned his back and I could see definite shaking of the shoulders as he made a deliberate coughing noise.

We struggled through the next ten minutes or so of the girls taking turns to step to the "graveside" to throw in a handful of earth over poor Willow's presented arse. Further sporadic wailing followed as stig filled the hole in and placed the cross at the "head" of the hole in the ground. There followed a further period of graveside reflection during which Stig and I struggled not to succumb to the giggles.

Funerals are not an occasion of mirth but to have the most serious of proceedings for a guinea pig who will forever rest with her little furry butt in the air was too much to take seriously. When it was finally all over I had to spend a good ten minutes in my room with my face firmly wedged in a pillow to absorb the sound of my laughter before I could compose myself.

I can only conclude that we'd be no good in a pet cemetery, probably be banned for life in fact.

Does My Bum Look Big In This?

I may have mentioned before that I have a total lack of sense when it comes to fashion. It is like a foreign language to me. When I was a small child, about that age when you think anything is possible, before the harsh realities of life and one's own shortcomings are realised, I had delusions of becoming a fashion designer extraordinaire.

One day in the summer holidays when my parents were at work I found an old pillowcase that had been thrown to one side for my dad to use as rags (Why do all men need oily rags? Even the ones that aren't conversant with car engines or large machinery. Why does looking at the washing machine whilst scratching your arse and pretending you know what the problem is require an oily rag?).

Anyway I decided that my Dad had enough oily rags to supply a Formula One pit crew so I commandeered the threadbare pillowcase and my mother's sewing box. What I came up with was a crop top affair and matching skirt made from pink flannelet. I couldn't sew so there was no attempt at hemming, I just roughly hacked it into shape with a pair of blunt scissors, cut holes in the "top" for my arms and head and tied the "skirt" at the side over my hip. Remember the cave women in the Lynx adverts a few years ago? Imagine the urchin child of one such women and you'd be pretty close to what I looked like.

Pleased with my attempt at fashion design, off I went out to find my mates. After an afternoon of farting about in the park, I returned home to find my fire-breathing mother, who was already miffed that I'd "borrowed" the sewing box. This, however, was soon put into perspective when the vision of me in all my frayed, pastel glory finally registered.

"Please tell me you haven't been out wearing THAT!"

My memory of the events that followed is merely a blur. I suspect my subconscious has repressed the whole business from my mind as it would be too traumatic to recall. I do remember that I was watched closely when given clean sheets to change my bed, and pillowcases were counted in and out of my room much like a surgeon's instruments during an operation.

Jamie has now taken to asking for the sewing kit. I recently found an old pair of her stripey punk socks that she had attempted to turn into fingerless gloves. I have hidden the sewing box and begun taking a weekly inventory of the bedding.

Stig'll Fix It

Over the years we have lived in many dilapidated houses. During Stig's years as a student we rented houses that were in need of a lot of TLC in return for reduced rent.

Stig fancies himself as a bit of DIY whizz. He can turn his hand to anything; electrics, plumbing, wallpapering, shelving etc. He's a bit of a Jack-of-all-trades; knows a little about everything but an expert on nothing, except maybe farting, fixing aeroplanes, and making scrambled egg in the microwave.

When my friend arrived for her annual summer visit, dragging behind her the biggest suitcase I've ever seen - complete with broken wheel - Stig was called to action. He briefly pondered the wheel conundrum before inspiration struck and he dragged the offending suitcase off down our cellar. When he reappeared the suitcase had a shiny, new wooden wheel, yes that's right; a wheel made from a piece of wood.

Now my poor friend has to drag it around on her travels, drawing attention to herself and her freaky suitcase because it makes such a terrible racket as the wooden wheel rumbles along, creaking under the weight of the suitcase and its contents. My friend, despite the embarrassment, is quite chuffed with her suitcase and it apparently now has miles left in it.

The thing is, however bizarre Stig's methods are, he won't be beaten and he usually wins in the end. Hence the reason that our house may look like a DIY disaster zone, but everything works. Stig is always very quick to point this out when I bemoan the state of the curtain hooks made from key rings or the baby monitors that now look like they were used to bring Frankenstein to life. What he considers to be creative genius, the rest of us find bordering on the insane.

The kids broke the AV button on our TV recently. Not a problem to Stig, he carted the huge TV into the garage, dismantled it and commenced an intricate gluing masterclass. Unfortunately the glue was no match for Charlie's stabbing little fingers and it lasted all of five minutes before the AV button retreated into the innards of the vast TV once again.

Ever defiant at the prospect of defeat, Stig dragged the TV back to the garage. He coaxed the terrorised AV button out from hiding, and again glued it into place. It was left for several hours to set properly before being reintroduced the hell that is Hayes House living room. One shriek from Charlie and the AV button promptly cacked itself and fell off.

It was me who had to deliver the news to Stig. Expecting spontaneous combustion, I had the Argos catalogue to hand and had picked out a stonking new flat screen in preparation.

Of course the threat of my parting with a significant amount of cash horrified Stig even more than the demise of the AV button, and he left the house with an Arnie-like "I'll be back" (roughly translated as "Don't spend any bloody money while I'm gone").

I knew better than to expect him to return with a new telly, or any telly, but what he came back with was quite perplexing...

A brass doorbell.

Our living room TV is now in full working order. When you switch on the TV, you merely need to ring the doorbell that is fitted to the side of it, and presto, we're on the AV channel. I'm NOT kidding!

Woohooooo!

I can't beleive it! I wrote "Where I Write" (below) for a competition and it's received a comendation and will appear in Leaf Books writing magazine. It's not a winner but a mention will do me. Sooooooooo chuffed!
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If you want to write you need a writing desk, right?

My desk is coffee stained, filled with stuff (a-la-offspring) that has nothing to do with me or my writing, and is slightly compressed around the edges where I regularly cling to it in desperation, praying for sanity to restore itself just long enough to finish this next paragraph.

It was "donated" to me by a seven-year-old Nicki when she and Jamie first embarked on room-sharing and had to sacrifice one of their respective desks. Hence my desk is from the Argos plywood-in-drag range; beech-effect with pink panels on the drawer fronts.

I write in Hayes’ House, and my desk is the eye of the storm. The storm being five children and a child-like husband. The chaos theory rules here. One of the children can fart at the bottom of the garden and consequently another, who is sat on the toilet, will fall off it.

When Sam enters my writing domain for the eighth time in as many minutes to request that I put the wings back on his dragon, I resist the urge to beat him to death with it and I write about it instead. Surely someone somewhere can relate to this misery?

Writing should not be an exercise in multi-tasking and yet somewhere between cooking a roast, applying plasters to injured knees, and drinking myself into oblivion there is that blissful ten minute window of just me and a blank screen. Here I get to vent, paint my family in a particularly unfavourable light, and feel satisfied that I’ve wreaked my revenge in doing so.

I’d love to say that I write in a haven of serenity where I can hear the birds sing on spring mornings and sunlight streams in through French windows. But in reality I have the living, breathing inspiration of family life, without which my writing would be meaningless. Having said that; whoever said that we should suffer for our art needs a plastic dragon shoving where the proverbial sun doesn’t shine.

This Shepards Pie is Bollocks!

When I was pregnant with Sam, I spent the majority of my time hanging around the bathroom waiting for the next session of sporadic vomiting. The smell of absolutely anything would set me off, hence cooking was a problem.

Stig gallantly came to my rescue and offered to cook. The idea filled me with dread but having established that I couldn't enter the kitchen without wretching, I agreed. I painfully explained Hayes House Shepards Pie proceedure to Stig in step-by-step detail. I thought I had done quite well in my instructions but I double checked with a question and answer session at the end. Stig passed with flying colours and so I had little choice but to let him proceed.

However what I said, and what Stig heard were clearly two very different narratives...

1. Boil giant pan of spuds to death
2. Boil mince in nothing but water for 5 minutes and decide that this will be sufficient.
3. Pour drained mince into oven dish, who needs gravy? We don't.
4. Don't bother draining the spuds (Stig didn't) as they have absorbed most of the water anyway.
5. Mash spuds into a pulp with the consistency of wallpaper paste and "pour" the spuds over the mince.
6. Realise that you have forgotten to add onion so sprinkle some chopped onion over the top of the mixture and poke it in with a fork.
7. Put Shepard's Pie in oven.
8. Switch oven on.
9. Remove Shepard's pie from oven and add cheese, replace in oven.
10. Serve with a ladle.

I felt a wave of grief wash over me when I glimpsed it on my plate for the first time. The resulting Shepard's Pie was a pasty looking pile of slop.

I knew that I'd at least have to taste it before I could berate his efforts. It was when I encountered the first unidentifiable brown chewy bits in it that vomiting ensued.

This was followed by a tirade of abuse from me and abject disbelief at Stig, who was heartily tucking into his Shepard's Pie in order to re-enforce his point that it "wasn't that bad".

Dear Chris...

Meet Our Friend Chris...

The Energy Crisis

When Sam was a baby / toddler he used to sit in his pram being wheeled around like royalty, looking to pray on unsuspecting women. He especially liked women wearing long skirts with elasticated waistbands, because he very quickly perfected the knack of grabbing said skirt and tugging it in just the right way to expose one butt cheek's worth of knickers, all in the space of a split-second as he wheeled past. This was mostly considered acceptable, and even cute, as he was so little. Even the poor woman in front of us in a supermarket queue who got her bum groped forgave him because of his cheeky grin.

He is six now, and still cute, but I thought we were over the worst of this sort of thing.

Sam is feeling the effects of the energy crisis. I don't know if the rest of the world is still experiencing this phenomenon, but Hayes House certainly is.

You can tell when we are going somewhere that Sam isn't particularly happy about. His engine keeps stalling. He stops dead in his tracks, causing me and the other kids to screech to a halt too (as we're all interconnected via Charlie's pram and a complicated hand holding system). I glance down at him to enquire if his shoe has fallen off. He is slumped over like a drunken sloth with his arms swinging idly and his knuckles trailing on the ground. He can feel me glaring at him and, without looking up, proclaims:

"Need a power-up, Mummy"

I sigh while I wait for him to do his imaginary "power-up" which involves making two fists, sticking his thumb and little finger out on each hand in Crocodile-Dundee-fashion, and gently revving them by circling his wrists back and forth. The revving builds and he comes back to life as his body slowly rises to the upright position (think blow up doll). This is accompanied by a gentle buzzing sound which crescendo's into a loud whoosh, and he's off down the street dragging us along with him.

This only happens on the way to school, never on the return journey. His periodic refueling has been an accepted part of the school morning routine for some time now. I was just beginning to desensitise myself to the embarrassment when he discovered the power sock.

Sam likes pink, a little known fact which we'd hoped to keep to ourselves until he was at least through high school. The sock is one of Nicki's old odd socks. It is pink. If you whiz it around above your head like the rotor blades on a helicopter, it negates the need for power-ups by providing a more reliable source of energy. Hence it is the Power Sock. Unfortunately, much like me with my mobile phone, Sam cannot bear to go anywhere without it in case he runs out of power.

I can now be seen everywhere I go with a camp six-year-old spinning a pink sock above his head. We have escalated from mild embarrassment to total public humiliation. Thanks Sam.

Maybe he knows something we don't. Perhaps the oil industry and alternative energy sources are now obsolete. All we need is a power sock each and we're sorted.

Beautiful Blogger Award

As a newbie blogger I'm very honoured to receive the Beautiful Blogger Award, given to me by L'Aussie. It's given by fellow bloggers and as a recipient my duty is to pass it on to 15 other bloggers.

As I'm a newbie and so many already have received the award, this could take some time to do, but I'll keep updating the following list. If you appear on my list and have been awarded the beautiful Blogger award, please spread the joy and pass it on to 15 other blogs you love in the same way I have here.

Apologies if any of you have already received the award, feel free to pass it on to somebody else.

1. You've Got Your Hands Full
2. Magical Meditations for Kids
3. Heather Bestel
4. Hyperbole and a Half
5. Words with Jam


Thank you so much to L'Aussie for my award, I'm highly chuffed!

Hayes House Parenting

I think all parents doubt their abilities, even the ones who appear so composed and diplomatic. I like to imagine these people dishevelled and shrieking at their perfect children, feeling the same murderous tendencies that I do on a regular basis.

We do OK, sometimes we do better than OK. There are days when I have successfully navigated a potentially explosive situation and can't resist feeling a little smug. Yes! I am Mother-of-the-Year! Those days though, are rarer than rocking horse poo...

"Yes, Jamie; you can play outside but don't go further than the end of the road, and DO NOT go in anyone's garden"

Jamie reappears ten minutes later clutching a handful of peonies, which I'm pretty confident aren't native to the pavements of our street. She proudly offers them to me, her little face expectant of the great praise that she knows is about to bestowed upon her.

Instant dilemma, do I thank her for the peonies thereby encouraging her to continue to nick all the neighbours' shrubbery? Or do I tell her off and shoot her gesture down in a ball of flames?

So in true fence-sitting fashion I do both (probably the reason my kids are the most confused children I know). I'm doing OK; calmly explaining that the flowers are beautiful and that it was a lovely thought but I had just told her not to go in other people's gardens. After being met with a blank look I begin to lose my cool and I can't help going from calm mode to lecturing her with abject disbelief that she has not only gone out and done the very thing I asked her not to do, but she has stolen from the neighbours garden as well! I end with a mother-hen-like phrase such as

"I don't know why I bother!"

Hmmm, didn't handle that with the greatest of finesse, I reflect as I down a large coffee and inhale hard on my Marlborough light. Next time I'll do better I resolve.

Next is Nicki. She is hungry (because it has been more than three nanoseconds since lunch). She formally requests chocolate biscuits. I counter with an offer of fruit. Nicki has a full inventory of all the kitchen's contents that she regularly updates. Knowing full well that we don't have any melon, this is what she asks for. When I tell her what she already knows; no melon, she is forced to go back to her original request of biscuits.

"Grapes, apple, or banana" I say. I'm not showing a hint of weakness but I've already withered inside because I know what's coming.

"I don't like banana!" She protests.

"Grapes or apple" I say.

"THEY'RE BORING!"

"Not if you're hungry, Nicki"

In one deft move: folded arms, huffy face, glaring eyes, and deliberate stomping across the house. She slams her feet down on every single step on her way upstairs until she reaches her room. Two-second pause and then SLAM. There goes another set of door hinges. I boil the kettle and look for my fags.

Take incidents like this, have them five times over in a single day with five children of differing ages and personalities and you may be somewhere close to the nightmare that is parenting the Hayes offspring (or any offspring, I suspect).

However, when you chuck a Stig into the equation, this changes things. Usually not in a good way but then you can almost always guarantee that with Stig around, hilarity will ensue.

His top five telling offs of all time are funny, shameful and not particularly effective, but nevertheless deserve a mention.

1. To Nicki: "You're a Brownie, you should know better!"
2. To random squabbling children: "Quit it, you're making my voice go up and down!"
3. When Sam was running away after I'd told him off: "Run Forrest, Run!"
4. Jamie to Stig: "Dad, when will I be able to go to the shop alone?"
Stig to Jamie: "When you've climbed the hill of responsibility"
5. To all kids when bedlam ensues: "What do you think this is, Jonny's F****** Fun Factory?"

How many more parents am I going to have to apologise to for the behaviour of my wayward offspring? The embarrassment is killing me and even worse is the knowledge that this is just the beginning.

Nicki has her best friend staying over tonight. Nicki's friend has been a regular fixture in our house for some time and so I naively assumed that they were past the initial stages of showing off and making a prat of themselves, and their parents in the process.

Alas, no. Tonight I have had to apologise for Jamie taking it upon herself to give her little sister and her best friend a lesson in sex education.

Jamie is in year 6 of primary school and at our school it has been decided that this is the appropriate time to put the fear of god into them. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for it; information is power, even at that age, but FFS it would have been nice to have been warned! At least I could have prepared her for what was possibly the most uncomfortable day of her childhood. I also think that other parents could have been tipped the wink because it was inevitable that the school playground has become akin to the Daily Sport newsroom over the past week. God knows what some of the younger kids have heard.

Jamie was mortified the day she came home after the first day of it. She parked herself in our bedroom and remained there until we'd had a thorough chat about it, which between making dinner and dealing with the other three kids, who were knebbing by the doorway like a pack of meerkats (Do meerkats travel in packs?), took about three hours.

I should have known that once she got over the initial shock she would feel the need to impart this wisdom on anyone who'd listen to her, and she has a captive audience in Nicki and her young and previously innocent friend. They hang on her every word in the belief that she is that one step closer to adulthood than they are. Never mind that there's only 22 months between them.

So yet another cowardly texted apology ensued. Luckily the Mum in question was lovely about the whole thing, but the fact that she hasn't had "the talk" yet with her daughter made matters worse. This poor woman has had the decision taken from her as to when to deal with this issue, and now has to sit her child down tomorrow to explain the birds and the bees, all because Jamie thinks she is the authority on everything.

I must have done something really bad in a past life, but if not, I may have to do something really bad in this life and gag Jamie till she's at least in her thirties!

Return to Sender

Charlie is having a near death experience, so bad is the bug that has befallen him. He thinks he has Foot and Mouth (it’s a cold; he’s already practising the art of man flu) so I’m now sharing my bed with a “sick” child as well as the farting circus.

Charlie sleeps the wrong way round in the crucifixion position leaving Stig and I a narrow strip each down either side of the bed. At regular intervals throughout the night I’m jolted into consciousness by a tiny hand slapping me in the face or by one of my limbs sliding off my side of the bed and threatening to take the rest of me with it. Each time this happens I circle my wrists and ankles to check for pins and needles and try to readjust my position in the within the ten inches of space I have been allocated by our son. Stig, who could sleep on a washing line in a hurricane, is snoring soundly through all of this.

After three days of coughing fits I decide that Charlie should probably see a doctor. I may even actually have a modicum of genuine concern. I prise him away from the TV and head out to the doctors. As I watch him jumping the cracks in the pavement I begin to suspect it's all a big conspiracy. My theory carries further weight when I observe the same child (who was on the verge of collapse an hour earlier) make a miraculous recovery in the doctors’ surgery waiting room. He’s now a picture of health and energy; knocking magazines off tables and spreading the contents of the toy box all over the floor. I endure disapproving looks from elderly ladies followed by a polite doctor who secretly thinks I'm one of those overprotective, paranoid mothers or worse; that I have Munchhausen’s by proxy.

Once home again, Charlie’s recovery is complete. He is incessantly pestering to be allowed to play outside. This, of course, is out of the question. All mothers instinctively know it is punishable by death to let your child play out when they are "sick".

I put cbeebies on and ignore Charlie for the next two hours while I attempt to restore some order to the house and prepare the dinner, by which time the rest of my dysfunctional family have arrived home.

I threaten Stig with starvation if he touches the vegetables again, swot him with my spatula, and begin telling him what the doctor has said about Charlie; namely that there’s nothing wrong with him. At which point my Stig disappears into thin air (or the garage), and I lose the will to live. Men complain about women’s verbal diarrhoea because they fail to understand that if we pause for breath, for so much as a millisecond, they assume we’ve finished speaking and they leave the bloody room.

I then realise that Charlie has been very quiet for some time. I look for him whilst trying to rationalise with myself that the odds of him having choked on his own vomit in the last ten minutes are slim. I locate him in our bedroom, where I had left him to watch TV and "recover" in peace.

The scene before me does not quite register at first. Sam is in there with him. They have found my ink stamp. My bedroom is randomly covered in little black rectangles with my name, address, and phone number in them. My shelves, our bedside cabinets, the walls (a new kind of trendy retro wallpaper?). I look down at two mischievous smiling faces, with a hint of uncertainty as they wait for my reaction, hoping that I'll see the funny side of this. Their faces, arms and clothes are covered in the same little black rectangles, slightly reminiscent of prison tattoos.

So this is what a fight in a stamp factory would look like, not a vision I'd ever contemplated before.

There often comes that moment when I can no longer hold my fixed smile through gritted teeth, but just when I’m about to go off like Sputnik, one of the kids gives me a look that melts my heart in an instant, or worse still; they make me laugh.

"Mummy, can you post us?" Asks Sam.

There are certain questions in life that are just too difficult to answer. Realising I can no longer be mad at the kids; I normally follow their father to the garage and give him some verbal abuse. He might as well prove useful, one way or another!

Yummy Mummies

Why is it that my bed is the warmest and comfiest place to be at 6.29am on Monday morning just before the alarm clock starts screaming its head off, whereas the night before, when I need to sleep, it’s the most hostile environment on earth? It’s cold, lumpy, hard, and it contains a duvet-hogging man who is the ringmaster of the all-snoring, all-flatulating circus.

As I lay in the darkness willing myself to sleep, the LCD display on my bedside clock taunts me. It may be the only visible thing in the room; a gentle red glow that is deceivingly comforting. Make no mistake though, the clock is evil. With every glance in its direction it gloats at me that in less than five hours it will, at a crucial moment, catapult me out of my blissful Johnny Depp dream using a sound akin to a robotic cockatiel, causing me a mild heart attack.

If I’m lucky, by 8.50am, I’ll have successfully dressed, groomed and fed our four zombie-like children and made it to the school yard without losing one of them on the way there. After very little sleep I’m scruffy, aggravated, and dragging several uncooperative children along with me. So why does every other woman in the schoolyard look as though they’ve just stepped off the cover of Vogue? A “Yummy Mummy” is the new fashionable thing to be, anyone who knows me would find that prospect hilarious.

I’m filled with admiration for these women. How do they do it? There just isn’t the time on frenzied school mornings in our house to apply make-up, do something Nicky Clarke-like to my hair, choose a knock-out outfit, and don killer boots. Between yelling at the girls, dressing Charlie, and removing toothpaste from ear holes I’m lucky if I manage to shove a banana clip through my hair, let alone brush it! I’m just not prepared to get up an hour earlier; that’s an hour’s sleep I’d lose. I’m already at the mercy of the ringmaster and the shrieking clock.

I seriously believe anyway, that no amount of make-up, no matter how expertly applied could make me look remotely human before midday. I also know that the effort would be wasted as it would inevitably slide off my face as I speed-march the kids to school, sweating profusely. Either that or my foundation, and all it supports, would be battered like the Norwegian coastline by anything from fine drizzle to torrential rain.

I once straightened my hair before leaving for school. By the time we reached the end of our street my freshly straightened hair was whipped around my head by the autumn wind creating a lovely bird's nest effect, nicely finished it with a few stray twigs and leaves. I can only conclude that the women in our school yard must use hairspray created by nuclear physicists.

Yummy Mummy my arse!

Earthquakes at Tesco

There's nothing better than a calm reassuring presence in a crisis is there? I wouldn't know. In a crisis the person I usually have to guide me through the misfortunes of life is Stig (the phrase "the blind leading the blind" springs to mind).

As I was reminiscing about the fridge palaver the other day, another buried memory surfaced. In 2002 we lived in Wrexham, where an earthquake struck. Wrexham was not the epicentre but nevertheless the effects were felt in Hayes House, and indeed across most of North Wales. It was late at night and the girls were in bed (this was pre Charlie and Sam era). Stig and I were laying on adjacent sofa's watching crap telly because we couldn't be bothered to get up and go to bed.

When the earthquake struck there was an eerie rumble and the sofas seemed to gyrate towards each other. It was quite startling and for a moment I was reluctant to put my feet down on the floor because a second ago it had looked like a sea of carpety fluid.

Stig, on the other hand, approached the whole thing from a more practical standpoint.

"The chimney!" He said

I gave him my what-the-hell-are-you-on-about? look.

"That chimney isn't stable".

Our house was a big red brick building and the wonky old chimney towered high above the roof. Stig went on to explain that the chimney could have been destabilised during the quake and that if it came down, it would crash through the roof and kill us in our beds. In fact the whole house could be unstable.

Fair enough, I could see his point about the chimney, it did look like it had been built by a drunk person. Stig went outside to look at it (in the dark) and concluded that it was more "rickety looking" than before, and that the only safe thing to do was evacuate the house.

Ah, that familiar sinking feeling. We woke the girls and bundled them, along with copious amounts of bedding and baby supplies (Nicki was only about a year old), into the car. As I glanced round from my front passenger seat and saw two pairs of wide eyes looking back at me from over the top of a large pile of duvets, I wasn't even surprised at the ridiculousness of the situation. This was typical Hayes House.

"Now what?" I asked Stig, who was deep in thought, complete with muttering.

"We need to go somewhere flat" he decided.

Was this decision based on years of earthquake training on the San Andreas fault, I wondered? Maybe in a prior life he was a secret government agent and encountered many situations like this?

Any such notions were soon dispelled however, when he drove to Tescos.

As he stopped the car in the middle of the vast car park, I felt a pang of incredulity at how impossible it was to find a space here when the shop was open. Again I asked the "Now what?" question, this time by glaring at him because saying the words out loud would have inevitably been followed by a huffy torrent of abuse on my part.

"Phone the police" He said.

"WHAT?"

Well you never know, Wrexham police may well have a resident geologist, but I doubted it. So, humouring him, I phoned the police, who in turn humoured me and confirmed that Yes; there had been an earthquake, and No; they didn't know if we could expect any aftershocks, nor could they comment on the structural integrity of our house, but given that the only reported damage was the odd broken roof tile, and the fact that our one-hundred-year-old house was still in standing, they thought that it was probably safe to return to it.

We drove home, too tired to be embarrassed. Only as we pulled up outside our house did it occur to us to check that our neighbour was OK as she had a baby son the same age as Nicki. A sleepy voice answered the phone and I explained that we were just checking that they were alright after the earthquake.

I had forgotten, in the midst of our "crisis", that my neighbour had lived in LA for ten years and earthquakes of this magnitude (piddly) were a regular occurrence there. She went on to say that the quake had woken her so she had got up to get a glass of water and seen us trudging out of the house complete with bedding and children but she figured, after the fridge incident, that we were just a tad weird.

Even our neighbour's (the only person we knew with ten years of earthquake experience) reassurance wasn't enough for Stig. We spent the rest of the night "camping" in the living room.

So if you want to be embarrassed in front of your neighbours, the local police, and spend an hour or two in Tesco's car park in the middle of the night; Stig is definitely your man in a crisis situation.

Having Trouble Relaxing?

It seems there's more to relaxing than I first thought. In my quest to restore Stig with some sanity, I discovered the website of the wonderful Heather Bestel. Heather is a qualified psychotherapist and hypnotherapist. She also specialises in relaxation techniques. "Helping you move from mad dash to organised serenity" is her mantra.

I've always been sceptical of the whole positive thinking and loveliness approach, but given Stig's condition, two autistic kids, and a very short fuse, it's time I accept that Hayes House could do with some serenity. Desperate times...

I have got to know Heather a little over recent weeks and she is fantastic. She is very frank and open on her website about her past and the reasons for choosing her career. Heather's motives to pass on the wisdom that has been so helpful to her in escaping a turbulent past are clear. Not that you have to be traumatised in any way to benefit from the art of relaxation. She has a free download called More Me Time which is aimed at busy women primarily, but contains advice and know-how that most people could benefit from.

Heather has a range of CDs for sale including Just Ten Minutes; all you need for total relaxation, Deep Sleep, 7 Secrets for Quitting Smoking and she is launching a new range of CDs in July called Magical Meditations 4 Kids, for 4-7 year olds and 8-11 year olds.

Sam had the privilege of a sneak preview of the new 4-7 year olds CD, as Heather was looking for reviews from children about her material. Sam loved the recording and it definitely had the desired effect. He lay on my bed with his eyes closed and smiled all the way through the "Magical Space Adventure", one of the special relaxation stories. Never have I seen him so calm and relaxed. You can read what he had to say about it, along with reviews from other children, on Heather's new Magical Meditations 4 Kids Blog.

Heather has been nothing but friendly and helpful to me, without so much as a sales pitch. There are few like her left in the world and her material, what I know of it so far, is definitely helpful. So I'm pitching for her, and for me because I have become an affiliate. I can't wait for the full kids' CDs to come out and in the mean time I'm getting Stig her relaxation CD.

If you're on the verge of mental meltdown, struggling to find a bit of "me" time, or just looking for the proverbial warm fuzzy feeling, have a look at her stuff.

You can read about Heather or buy any of her material, as well as download her free More Me Time e-book (PDF) here

Heather is also on Twitter and Facebook.

The Perils of Supernoodles and Freon

I just read a Facebook comment (yes - even us old farts know about Facebook) by a friend of ours about the discovery of the use of a hair dryer to defrost a fridge/freezer. It reminded me of life before frost-free freezers and that very same method.

I'm not very good at maintenance. I will live in blissful denial that our fridge doesn't need defrosting until it contains more glacier than fresh produce. At this point I would normally bash chunks off the ice-stricken fridge with my best kitchen knife and a steak hammer. Resourceful, that's me.

This method, despite causing abject frustration to Stig, suited me just fine, until I was pregnant with Nicki and had taken to midnight snacking. I would sit at my kitchen table, basking in fridge light whilst I "made" Supernoodles. Given my compulsion for multi-tasking, I would chip away at the resident ice sculpture whilst I waited for the microwave to turn my noodles nuclear.

So one evening, heavily pregnant and starving, there I sat, chipping away. Then I heard a faint "puff" above the humming of the microwave. I'd got carried away with my rhythmic tapping and punctured the fridge. I mightn't have panicked if it hadn't have been for the high-pitch hissing sound that followed. If I'd have consumed the normal amount of alcohol that my non-pregnant self would have drunk on a Friday night, I would have been forgiven for thinking that there was a schizophrenic serpent overthrowing me in my own kitchen.

I contemplated going back to bed and pretending that the fridge must have had a spontaneous pneumothorax in the middle of the night, but being pregnant I thought I'd better be safe than sorry (For those of you who've never been pregnant; everything from cat poo to a north-westerly breeze to a farting tramp could maim your unborn child). I woke Stig up and explained what had happened, expecting my calm, reassuring husband to take charge and check that everything was fine.

Instead what I got was a bollocking...

"You've done WHAT?"

Followed by a scampering, desperate man. Have you ever had to travel down a flight of stairs in an urgent situation? In my experience it seldom goes well but it's amusing when you get to watch someone else doing it.

Having cannonballed himself into the kitchen, Stig forbade me to cross the kitchen doorway threshold with a Hitler-like salute. He then stood stock-still with his neck craned in the general direction of the fridge.

F****** Hell, it's leaking freon!"

I was instantly transported back to year one highschool chemistry, trying to remember what the hell Freon was.

"We'll have to get it out of the house" He said. Aw, my hero.

Actually my heart sank because it was 1am, I was seven months pregnant and I knew that I was going to have to drag a fridge down a flight of stairs in the middle of the night with him. I was also profoundly aware that my noodles were sure to be a cold, rubbery blob of stodge by now.

Stig then began rummaging wildly though the kitchen drawers.

"Tea Towels!" He shrieked at me, again in Hitler-like fashion.

I pointed at the secret tea towel drawer. He grabbed a handful of them (which instantly concerned me) and proceeded to fold one longways and wrap it round his face, covering his mouth and nose and tied it in a knot at the back of his head. Like a cross between a surgical mask and a tea towel-wearing child at a nativity play. He then folded another one in the same fashion and handed it to me. It's amazing how little verbal comunication is required in a marriage. He didn't say anything but I knew that I was expected to truss my face up like a gay ninja before he'd even consider letting me enter the kitchen. It was a moment that didn't need any words.

We then had to carry (one step at a time) the fridge down the stairs (our kitchen was on the second floor) and out of the side door into our garden. My one saving grace was that at least at this time of night, no one would see us. I really should have known better. Our neighbour later told us that we looked like desperately inept suicide bombers.

I don't know where Stig found the breath, but on the return journey up two flights of stairs to our bedroom he managed to lecture me about the advantages of regularly defrosting one's fridge, and not attacking it with a steak knife in the early hours of the morning.

So, with regard to the hairdryer solution, even thought water and electric don't mix, neither do steak knives, freon, paranoid husbands, and Supernoodles.

Marriage vs Kids

About six-and-a-half years ago, I was laying on a chair-come-bed with a bladder full of vimto, holding Stig's hand while we stared at the grainy image of our unborn child on a screen. We were expecting our third baby and I was already huge, even at sixteen weeks.

This was the first time were going to find out the sex of the baby before the birth so we were quite excited, but I knew in my heart it was going to be a boy. Sure enough Sam was happily flashing his tackle for his parents, the sonographer, and the three students in the room so we were left with little doubt of his sex. The bump was promtly renamed "Baby Sam". They gave us a due date of 1st June. Great, I thought, babies never come on their due dates so maybe our wedding anniversary (also 1st June) was safe...

Nope. I spent our second wedding anniversary in labour, trying to part with a 10lbs baby. 10lbs, 1oz to be exact, and believe me, that extra ounce is relevant. Every ounce counts when you have a baby that big. Around the time I should have been having a romantic meal with my long suffering husband, I was giving birth to a toddler.

The first of June is Sam's day and always will be. Yesterday he turned six. He got his first bike without stabilisers (that will be interesting) and he had a party with half of his classmates and other friends. This was the third wedding anniversary we have spent in Johnny's Fun Factory surrounded by shrieking children; not the most romantic of locations but ultimately, how can we top the look on his face when he saw his shiny, new big boys bike, and squealed with excitement each time another one of friends arrived?

Stig and I held hands as we watched him running about with his new toys, just like we have on all our kids' birthdays and at all of the scans when we saw them for the first time. That should be what anniversaries are about, celebrating the life and the family you have nurtured and treasured all those years (casually disregarding the many times of being on the verge of a nervous breakdown).

Finally when they were all settled in bed, we had the last few hours of the day to ourselves; flopped on the sofa, knackered but smiling, the same way we've spent our last few anniversaries. Plus, like a friend of mine once pointed out; Sam's eighteenth birthday will be our 20th wedding anniversary, and we'll have one hell of a party!

The Best Sangria Recipe

Seeing as it's summer (almost), I thought I'd share with you this recipe for Spanish Sangria. It's great for summer BBQ's. Just be warned, it's quite strong so go easy people...

You'll need:

Red Wine
Lemonade
Sugar
Triple Sec or Cointreau (or any orange flavoured liqueur)
Bianco Martini or Vermouth (you can use Dry if need be)
Brandy
Fresh lemons, limes and oranges, diced or sliced
A large jug, something to stir with, and some ice

Mix the Martini, Brandy, and Triple Sec in equal measures in your jug, you need about 2-3 inches of this mixture in the bottom, depending on the size of the jug.

Add a tablespoon of sugar and stir in well.

Then add the chopped fruit and give it another good stir. I use a quarter of a lemon, quarter of a lime, and half an orange per jug.

Top up the remainder of the jug with the red wine and lemonade in equal measures.

Tips:

Leave the Sangria in the fridge for a few hours before drinking it. It tastes much better when it has absorbed the juices from the fresh fruit.

Also it's better when the lemonade has gone flat. We leave the tops off the lemonade bottles off for a while first and give them the odd shake, it can get a bit messy though. Another way of taking the fizz out of lemonade is to put sugar in it, be warned though this creates a sort of lemonade fountain so sit the lemonade bottle in a large bowl if you're going to try this.

You can alter any of the quantities to your own taste but we find that these measures give it that authentic spanish flavour.

Enjoy!

Wine Sniffers

I love wine. This is not a cultured appreciation of hints of oak or fruity flavours. I don't care if my wine goes with my chicken or fish dish. I like Ernest & Julio Gallo's White Grenache from the Californian Sierra Valley. The only reason I can remember that mouthful is because it's what I've drank for the last ten years and I'm used to putting my hand up when someone asks "Anybody want anything from the shop?"

Do I have to know the significance of "good legs" or know the origin of the cork to appreciate my wine? Er, no. Should I feel the need to sniff it every time I pour a glass? All I know about corks is that Sam likes to collect them and make little people with them. Worryingly, he has enough of them to populate a small country.

The only way in which I wish I was more wine savvy is that I should have bought shares in the Gallo family business years ago. I could have bought my own damn vineyard for the money I've parted with in honour of their fine wine.

All that remains for me to know about wine is that there is plenty of it to go around!

Click here for a free download of Gallo's Rose wine summer cocktail recipes.

Stress Management!

The stress levels in this house have always been high but it's reached optimum peak recently. Stig has been off work for months now. He has had worrying symptoms for years; severe headaches, random pains, numbness, pins and needles, drowsiness, blurred vision, difficulty speaking, and what we now know (after dragging the paramedics out on more than one occasion) to be panic attacks. He has never been that well-adjusted truth be told, but this last year it has escalated to the point of taking over his entire personality.

It's amazing; when you claim to be "stressed" you can almost see what people are thinking: Just get on with it, like everybody else has to. After all; we're all stressed, aren't we? We didn't understand the extent to which a person can be affected by it until recently. Even Stig had trouble believing that all his symptoms are merely down to stress and anxiety. When you consider that he has been back and forward to various specialists and neurologists for the best part of ten years with these mysterious symptoms, it's no wonder. He has undergone a catalogue of tests including MRIs, Electrical Impulse tests, Evoked potential tests, EEGs, ECGs, the list goes on.

He can feel like he's having a heart attack, or be completely numb down one side, or have sudden, sharp shooting pains anywhere in his body without warning. He has fits and passes out when his blood pressure suddenly drops, headaches that are so severe they interfere with his vision and speech; it's both amusing and embarrassing when people think he's pissed. He constantly moans that he is "shaking like a shitting dog". It's rare that there isn't a part of him which isn't tingling, twitching, or numb. Imagine having pins and needles for ten years...

Added to this is the sleep apnoea, which makes him sit bolt upright in the middle of the night, clawing at his chest like a man possessed whilst gasping for breath. The first few times this happened I thought we were being murdered in our bed, and I have the grey hairs to show for it. I'm now used to these histrionics, but trying to hold a serious conversation with someone who's face is doing the highland fling is never straightforward.

There was constant fear in the early years. Brain tumor? MS? Parkinson's? All sorts of theories were mulled over and tested for by the experts. Finally I told him that if he had anything that serious, he'd have dropped dead by now; it's been that long. Then we met his most recent consultant, who is fabulous. Our first appointment with him was such a relief for me. He sat across the desk from us and told me all about my husband. He's impatient, highly strung, can't handle just sitting and doing nothing, remembers about 20% of what has been said to him, always fiddling, can't relax, always thinking etc, etc, it continued. For the first time in ten years, someone who knew exactly what we were dealing with.

I came out of there feeling fantastic because we finally knew what the problem was, and it wasn't going to kill him or turn him into a dribbling, quivering wreck (well actually I may have been wrong about the latter!). Stig, on the other hand, was horrified and thought the man should be struck off for malpractice. He just couldn't accept that all this was down to stress.

That was a year ago. Now he knows, and it has been rough. For a while he was a different person to the lovely, idiot man I married, and not in a good way. But things are coming good, and we're learning to handle it better, he has drugs and therapies, and I have a bit of my Stig back.

I post this not to whinge, but it has struck me that more and more people seem to be suffering in similar ways. Every other person we speak to is or knows someone who is off work, on medication, or completely burnt out. It's been said that one in four people will suffer mental health issues at some time in their life. That seemed to be most likely depression at one time. Now it seems we're all so highly strung and stretched to our limits living modern day life. Maybe we all need to learn new strategies to cope with it.

I can come and write about my family life on my blog, take the mickey out of them when they have narked me, make jokes, and feel better, maybe that's my therapy. We all need something and the journey for us at the moment, is finding out what that something is.

Never Say Goodbye

Do you have any of those "friends" who you just can't get rid of? I mean the ones who sit in your house for hours and hours, then just as you're considering self-harming they say:
"I really should get going"
Oh the relief! It's shortlived, however, because it then slowly dawns on you that this was no more than an unlikely glimmer of hope because, lets face it; they're not going anywhere for at least another two hours.

Why do people do that? I mean if you want to stay; stay, if you want to go, just leave. But why pretend that you've no idea how long you've been here, or that you haven't noticed that I'm having a nervous breakdown thinking of all the things I was supposed to get done this afternoon.

It's always the people who I don't know quite well enough to throw them out of my home. Don't get me wrong, I have tried everything short of shoe-horning this friend out of the door. I've tried running out of milk, saying I must nip to the shops (she came with me), I've tried the old:
"Yes well, I really must get on" (standard response to her "I really should get going"), but this is just met with:
"Oh don't mind us (us being her, and her dog, Jessie), you just carry on love".
Is it normal to have a friend who you feel murderous tendencies towards?

There she sits, glancing obviously at her empty coffee cup waiting to be offered another one. Three coffees later:
"Ooohh look at the time, have I really been here that long?" YES YOU HAVE!
"Well I really must get home and feed the dog"
Actually she mouths the words "feed the dog" whilst gesturing obscurely at it, because she doesn't really have any intention of leaving and she doesn't want to excite the dog with the prospect of food. The dog speaks English, you know; she understands every word.

Unfortunately the "feed the dog" comment is often followed with
"Jessie does love coming here, it's a special treat for her".
At this point I'm lucky if they leave within the next hour. Jessie might well love coming here, and I don't mind her being here either. It's a fair exchange, I think; a few dog hairs on the carpet in return for clearing some of the food debris left by the kids, but please don't stay all bloody day, and please don't think that mentioning yet another reason why you should get off your arse and leave, buys you another hour!

Eventually, somewhere in my distant future, my "friend" will address the dog directly:
"Come on Jessie, let's get you home for some dinner".
Jessie, who by now has also lost the will to live, will then cast me a "Thank-Christ-for-that" glance and drag her stagnant self to the door, hoping that this time they will actually be leaving and she may get her long-promised meal, because what her owner doesn't realise is that Jessie knows she's full of crap too.

If you recognise any of the behaviour described here, I urge you, seek help immediately, before your friends start pretending they aren't home. You know who you are!

Lord of the Flies

What the hell is going on with Charlie and Sam? I'm not used to all this fighting, it's is all new to me. I mean, the girls have their squabbles, but that's more of a sulky, whiny affair with a bit of crying thrown in, not an all out war.

The boys are two and five years old. Even at two, Charlie is a force to be reckoned with. They're the always first up in the morning (6.30am today) and this tends to be when the fighting starts. They get settled in the living room and proceed to shriek at each other over the TV channel, the amount of cereal they have, the volume of the keyboard (which resides in our living room - and yes, I knew this was a terrible idea when we put it there), who gets to open the curtains, etc, etc. Then the physical abuse starts. Charlie has no qualms about picking on his big brother, even though he's almost twice his size. This results in Sam yelping as Charlie slaps him away from his treasured keyboard and steals his toys.

Sam, to his credit, never retaliates, as he knows this would incur a bollocking of epic proportions, so instead he squeals like a pig at the top of his voice until I, or their father, stumble into the living room and play hell with the pair of them. There's absolutely no point in trying to get a lie in when Lord of the Flies is being played out in our living room.

Realising the error of their ways; ten minutes later they're the best of friends, conspiring together on the issue of how to get biscuits out of me. This usually involves a united front of brotherly solidarity, complete with hugs and kisses, lots of giggling and displays of unparallelled generosity with their toys.

Charlie: "You have the toy car Sam"
Sam: "It's OK Charlie, you have it"
Charlie: "Oh, I couldn't possibly"
Sam: "I insist"
Charlie: "Thank you ever so much"
Sam: "You're very welcome"
They then hug, making sure that I'm watching this spectacle.
In unison: "Can we have something nice?"
Me: "OK, seeing as you're being so good"
I distribute bananas and apples (well it is only 7am remember?) Then drag my backside back to bed with a brew.
Sam: "She's gone now, gimme my car back".
Charlie: "Piss off it's mine".

Recipe: Creamy Chicken and Mushroom

Just because it's gorgeous:

Ingredients

Olive oil
Butter
Sliced mushrooms
2 or 3 cloves of garlic
Courgette, thickly sliced then quartered
Leek, sliced
Chicken Breast Fillets (1 per person)
Sour Cream
English Mustard

Quantities are flexible so you can make it to your own taste.


Take chicken breast fillets and sprinkle them with dried thyme and minced garlic. Press the coating into the chicken breasts. Fry in a large cooking pot in a bit of butter and olive oil until browned.
Remove the chicken from the pan and put in a warm oven on a preheated tray.
Add chopped mushroom, courgette, garlic, and leek to the pan with extra oil and butter if needed. Add extra thyme and garlic to taste. Fry on a medium heat until soft.
Add sour cream, (I use about a small pot for 2-3 people), and a teaspoon of mustard and stir in.
Replace chicken fillets to the mixture with any juices and leave to simmer on a low heat until cooked. The fillets should be almost cooked through when they come out of the oven anyway.
Serve with steamed veggies and new potatoes or mustard mash. Enjoy!

Resuscitating The Brain

I have been attending college, me! The woman who never leaves the house or speaks to anyone. When I say college; it's a branch of the local college which runs basic adult numeracy and literacy courses. I didn't sit my GCSEs at school, for reasons I won't bore you with (the main one being stupidity), but I'm not completely illiterate, so I thought that I could handle a course now that the kids are older.

However my enquiries regarding an English GCSE course lead to an abrupt halt in my voyage towards further education, because in order to enrol on this particular GCSE course you need to have, of all things, a GCSE. "Grade C or above" the woman clarified over the phone. Oh well that's alright then!

So I have been attending the adult learning centre answering questions about prefixes and suffixes etc, and on Monday I sat my exam. I realise that one measly grade C GSCE is not worth getting excited about, but if I pass this it will be the first certificate I've earned since cycling proficiency in primary school. This is the first step in dragging my reluctant brain back into education. The next step is a course at the real actual college, where real students go, for a real qualification... and I'm terrified!

Bedtime never comes

FFS! Getting Sam to bed is like negotiating the Maastricht treaty! It is made far more difficult, however, when Stig is on full form. Sam couldn't find his pyjama bottoms. Stig's answer to this was "you should have gone to Specsavers".

We then had another 10 minutes rigmarole with milk and biscuits before finally manoeuvring him up the stairs. Stig's parting shot... "Go in peace and remember; Never sit on anthills with a baggy papoose".

4am

I'm crabby. Why does everything in this house happen at 4am? Car alarms, sick children, the crescendo of Stig's ninety-decibel snoring, the list is endless. Given the regular interruptions of my sleep I think my bladder has duly synchronised itself because even on the rare nights that the house is quiet, I still have to get up to pee. Even the bloody mouse decided to rearrange her furniture at four o' clock this morning.

If the answer to life, the universe, and everything is 42, then the secret to Hayes' House appears to be 4am!

NASA Pants

Leggings are "in" again. "Fat people shouldna wear leggings" says Billy Connolly. I agree with him in principle. I mean; no one wants to see elasticated, shiny material stretched to within an inch of it's life across the vast expanse of my thighs and picasso arse (NB: Picasso Arse: "The effect of a fat person wearing leggings, under which knickers that are far too tight; thus creating the effect of four buttocks").

Having corrected the knicker issue, I estimated that between the top of my knee-high, extra-wide calf boots, and the bottom of my long slouchy top; about 4.5 inches of leggings would be visible. Podgy though my knees are, I thought this might be tolerable. Especially if I only venture out in the dark.

We have a tendancy to rename things in Hayes' House. For example; those see-through mesh-type knickers have been renamed "Bee-Keepers", because they bare an uncanny resemblance to the protective material that bee keepers wear, you see? And if there was ever a thing that was crying out for a new, non-1800s name, it's those dressing gown / house coat type things. They are now known as "Shlompers", because we shlomp around in them.

Hence, in true Hayes' House fashion, leggings have become "NASA Pants", because they feel like you're wearing memory foam which, rumour has it, was invented by the lovely people at NASA. That's the only way I can describe wearing a good pair of leggings. They're fabulously comfortable, just like sinking into my memory foam bed. So any fellow thigh-fearing women, I urge you; even if you never go out in public, free yourselves, sod the cellulite, and get some NASA pants!

I'm wondering now if I dare actually try skinny jeans... Somebody stop me!

Areithi Cymraeg?

My husband has always had a bit of an obsession with foreign languages. I grew up in Wales so he constantly harasses me for translations. When a new lad started at the place where Stig works, and Stig discovered that the said man was welsh, he couldn't wait to try out his new found lingo.

The resulting conversation didn't go to plan...
What Stig tried to say was "Are you coming for a brew you c***?" Cool but friendly despite the use of the C word, and this offer of friendship may have been welcomed if it weren't for the fact that what he actually said was "I'm going for a brew with myself, you hairy caterpillar". The welshman now avoids him like the plague and has a faintly worried look whenever Stig enters the room.

This afternoon Stig has discovered a translation website. A very useful little tool where you type in what you want to say, then choose the language in which you want the phrase to be repeated back to you. I have been subjected over the last two hours to Stig's take on the German accent, shrieking phrases like "Where is the toilet, I've shit myself".

I'm taking notes for my appointment with the divorce lawyer.

The Outer Limits

I'm having trouble finding any other words apart from "weird" and "bizarre" to describe this weekend and the events leading up to it. No; aliens haven't landed in our street, nor has Robbie Williams come to his senses and dumped that pretty girl in favour of running away with me (the day will come Ayda; be warned). Something even more surreal has happened at Hayes' House. Jamie Lee met her half sister for the first time this weekend.

Up until recently, I hadn't seen my ex husband, Dan, in almost ten years. We have heard news of each other at times via friends and relatives but very little actual contact. Then we moved back to our home town three years ago. It was inevitable then that he and Jamie would meet given that Dan often visits family here.

Sure enough, when we told Jamie that Dan would likely be in town from time to time, it wasn't long before she asked if she could meet him, and there it was; the moment I have known would come since before she was born.

Dan came to see us to discuss how we would all handle it. It was very weird (that word again) sitting in our living room, reminiscing with both my current and former husband; those two have known each other a lifetime. Dan met Jamie that weekend and despite the weirdness it went very well.

Normally issues with extended families and step-kids are ironed out at the beginning of a relationship, not ten years in. Now there's this whole other family that we have a connection with. In some ways it was the most natural thing in the world to see the kids playing together this weekend. They seem to take everything in their stride, thank god!

There is a similarity between Jamie and her sister that I can't quite put my finger on. It's strange chatting to Maisie because she's a part of my little girl. She's cute and smart and the two of them are getting on brilliantly so far. The kids all seem a little confused as to who's related to who, but I guess that's to be expected and will come with time. Considering the past has kind of snuck up and bitten us on the ass; I think we're all doing a great job of being very grown up about the situation, even though my head keeps whispering; "weird! weird! weird!"

Stig of the Dump

How do I even begin to explain to you the calamity that is my husband? He is the best person I have ever met. He's so damn likable, probably because he's so laid back although he's been completely stressed out recently. No wonder really, living in our house.

I met Stig ten years ago when I was pregnant with Jamie and my first marriage was failing. He was going through a similar thing and from this grew a friendship unlike any I'd ever had. We learned the lessons of divorce together and how not to conduct a relationship, so it seemed only natural that we would end up together. If I'm truthful I knew within weeks of meeting him that there was something there, for me at least.

Stig is like a big, daft child most of the time. He can be heard moving from room-to-room in our house, shrieking oddities and laughing at the children; whistling or reciting weird old folk verses for what he thinks is comedy value, and coming from him it is. His sense of humour is bizarre and his story telling ability is legendary, in that he has none. Stig's stories never fail to draw you in. That's because he always starts with the best bit of the story and everything after that is a series of disappointing, insignificant details. His most infamous ever ending to a story is

"...and then it went dark".

That in itself has become classic Stig humour.

He loves nothing more than conspiring with my best friend on a Sunday afternoon when she and her son come for dinner.Usually the target of their mischief is me. Sometimes I take it in good humour, other times I could quite happily throw the pair of them out of the house. I love that he is so close to Kel, I often tell them that if I die first, they have to get married. Both of them seem horrified by this prospect though, and I guess her man wouldn't be too happy about that either.

Stig has broken most of the bones in his body. It'd be quicker to list the injuries he hasn't had. But in true Stig fashion he's done these things in the most creative ways. He once dislocated his hip by crashing into an unsuspecting cow whilst parachuting. He has also dislocated his jaw - whilst yawning. The image of him driving to hospital with his mouth firmly wedged open, dribbling profusely throughout the twenty mile drive, will never cease to amuse me.

Stig does posses a surprising level of brain power for a neanderthal. Five years in college to qualify as an aircraft engineer was hard going at first but he got there with flying colours in the end. Boys with toys!

He can fix almost anything and find his way to, or from, almost anywhere whereas I am lost by the time we get to the end of our street. He is the inventor of Slug Wanging (don't ask!) and a regular participant in sliding down the stairs on a duvet. Sometimes I think the kids are more mature than we are. There could be books written on the adventures of Stig, but half of them would be unpublishable.