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.