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Hayes House Pages

Sunday 26 June 2011

New BBQ IQ Test

Let me explain...

Stig is the driver in our family as I'm beyond crap at driving and gave up trying to learn after having spent a small fortune on 3 different driving instructors, who all concluded that I was pretty much unteachable. Hence, if we need bits of top up shopping though the week, Stig normally goes and gets it to avoid all seven of us having to go on a family expedition to Asda.

Stig has a very specific deficiency when it comes to reading shopping lists. If I put 'Special K' on a shopping list, I'll get 'Special K Red Berries', if I put 'Beans', I'll get 'beans', but with little mini sausages and potentially a whole load of other non-descript crud in them. This is kind of thing I'm used to by now.

I write a shopping list. It lists all the ingredients needed to feed us for several days. He returns with the sacred Netto carrier bags. For those of you who have never lowered yourselves to shop in Netto (I'm not proud), their bags are made from thick, shiny, black plastic. There's not a sniff of a clue as to what I'm getting until I expectantly tip out a Netto carrier bag, and I am greeted by a plethora of random, inedible shite which, bizarrely, won't even equate to one decent meal. I am Ainsley Harriot, starring in some king of twisted version of Can't Cook, Won't Cook. It's my own personal living hell.

Stig was once caught in the tins aisle, sticking two fingers up at Morrison's value chopped tomatoes because he couldn't find the tomato soup which was on the list. My answer to his slap-dash approach to shopping is to write very specific shopping lists; eg 'Bisto original Gravy Granules. RED TUB!'. For this I have endured much piss-taking over the years, but it's the only way to improve the odds of Stig coming back from the supermarket with anything resembling what is actually on the list.

Today we decided we're having a BBQ. I wrote a small list of some extras we need such as milk, bread etc. I put '4 Warbutons Bread Rolls' on the list. Now, I realise how that reads, but given the recent piss taking of my overly elaborate shopping lists, I didn't want to overdo it. Plus, given the fact that when shopping in Netto, these are the only bread rolls we ever buy, and the fact that we had 15 people to feed, I foolishly presumed that it was obvious that more than four bread rolls were required. With hindsight I clearly should have specified the word 'packs' because Stig, the ever-reliable UFB came back with 4 single bread rolls... to feed 15 people.

I mean does he think this like feeding the five thousand with a bucket of fish? I'm not bad at catering for large groups of people at short notice, but gimme a break, even I can't be expected to do it with a quarter of a burger each!

So, muttering to himself, and chuntering at me under his breath, he begrudgingly went back to the shop for more rolls. He came back with ONE pack of 12 rolls. So we're up to one burger each now, whoop-de-do!

It is amazing to me that I had to go back to the shop with him, Spar this time as he was too embarrassed to show his face in Netto for a third time. He was now catatonic; ranting like a mad man about my lack of clarity when it comes to fresh bakery produce.

This is the ultimate test of the uselessness of a man, ask him how many bread rolls one needs at a BBQ for 15 people. Simple, yet very revealing. My man failed miserably and finally sealed for all time, his much deserved title of world's most inept shopper ever to have set foot in Netto (and that's not easy done folks). Congratulations my darling Stig, you've finally done it! :p

Saturday 25 June 2011

My Friend Gerry Ryan

How can I describe to you my friend Gerry? I've known him half my life. There’s so much of Gerry that I could tell you about, that whatever I say could never do him justice.

Gerry has been so many things to me, the word ‘friend’ just doesn’t cover it. Very few people understood the relationship Gerry and I had. I met him when I was 16 and he was in his early sixties. We were regular fixtures down our local pub, and nightclubs for that matter. He revelled in the attention we'd attract, and the speculation over what a sixty-something man was doing in a nightclub with a load of teenagers. He was my best friend and watched me go from one teenage catastrophe to another without ever saying “I told you so". He'd let me make my own mistakes and be there to pick up the pieces when things inevitably blew up in my face. People often expect you be something you’re not in life, but Gerry didn’t think like that. He accepted people, and he either liked you, or he didn’t.

I’ve never met anyone like him. Champion ditherer and mischief maker, impatient, loyal, generous, and waging a constant battle against his own eyebrows. Master of the perfect egg and chips and falling magnificently when drunk.

There was once an incident at Loch Ness involving a bright yellow JCB, which was parked up for the night next to Urquhart Castle. It had been left with its lights on and was the only thing visible for miles in the darkness, but the dozy old sod still managed to fall over it and land in the bucket, pissing himself laughing and rubbing his sore backside.

There was a notorious summer when he fell asleep on his side in the sun, sustaining one burnt arm, one burnt leg and one burnt butt cheek. One half of him was a deep crimson and the other drip white, separated by a clear line that ran neatly down the centre of his face.

We used to drive out into the countryside in the summer. We’d put music on loud and I’d stick my feet out of the passenger window and we’d drive for miles. His hair would fly out of the open windows as we drove along and he never failed to trap it when he closed the sunroof, not realising this until he tried to get out of the car, and finding that he was stuck there. At which point he normally hurled abuse at himself in the form of “Bloody fool Ryan!”

He hasn't quite been the old Gerry I know and love over the past few years but he was still my friend and so much more than that. His mischievous side now manifested itself in the form of getting thrown out of shops for being rude to people, blaming everyone else, and his own car, for his now terrible driving and barging old ladies trolleys out of the way in Morrisons. He felt it was his right and privilege to be cantankerous in his old age, and he took full advantage of it.

Gerry died on the 7th June 2011, aged 76, with me at his side and his son and girlfriend, who are also my best friends in the world. We may not have been the most conventional of units but we are a family in our own way. We watched the paramedics drag Gerry out of his flat and work on him relentlessly all the way to the hospital, but we knew he had gone. He had phoned his son for help that morning and hung on just long enough for us to get there. In the chaos and panic and in his weak state, he managed to look each of us in the eye before he slipped away.

We said goodbye to him as he would have wanted, with a wreath that was a pint of beer, playing Waterloo Sunset by The Kinks and Imagine by John Lennon, acknowledging his scouser routes, and the final insult as the curtains closed around his coffin was Always Look on the Bright Side of Life by The Monty Python team, just as he'd always requested. A few nights later in the early hours, I took his wreath down to the beach, set fire to it and pushed it out into Gerry's beloved Morecambe Bay, which is where his ashes will be scattered.

I don’t know how my life would have turned out if it hadn’t been for Gerry. He brought so much wisdom and fun and mischief into my life and he understood me probably better than anyone back then. I still can't quite believe he's gone. He was one in a million and there’ll never be another like him, some would say that’s probably a good thing!

I love you Gerry, and I’ll miss you so much my old friend. Rest in peace x x x

Musical Beds

When I went to bed the other night, everyone was where they should be, kids all tucked up asleep. Stig was watching TV and said he’d be in shortly. I fell asleep in a house of calm, quiet order.

When I awoke at 4am though, the living room TV was blaring. As I tried to focus my eyes I realised that it wasn’t Stig who was lying next to me, but Charlie. Further investigation (stumbling around the house trying to locate my husband) revealed that Stig was asleep on Charlie’s bed and Sam and Nicki were asleep on the living room sofas with the TV on full blast.

This is not unusual in Hayes house. I love my bed and for the life of me cannot fathom why kids would rather sleep in the most uncomfortable of places, covered in nothing but a threadbare throw rung, freezing cold, than in their comfy warm beds. What possesses someone, when they wake up at 3am, to think, ‘I know, I’ll leave this dimly lit haven, wonder downstairs and catch the latest episode of the shopping channel’??? And why turn it up loud? I am waiting for them to start dreaming about cheap replica jewellery or the latest exercise gizmo.

We’ve tried all sorts, they all have bedding in their favourite colours; in Jamie and Nicki’s case this is red and pink respectively, so their bedroom, worryingly, is slightly reminiscent of a cheap brothel, complete with a reddish glow as their light shade and Nicki’s bedside lamp are a deep pink. They all have character bedding, Sam has Disney cars, rockets and Mario plastered everywhere. Charlie (much to Sam’s indignence as they also share a room) has In the Night Garden, Thomas the Tank and Tweenies bedding and stuffed toys everywhere. I’m beginning to feel like I’m being stalked by Iggle bloody Piggle, because not content to keep the entire population of the night garden in his room, Charlie leaves effigies of him all over the damn house.

Years ago I would scurry around in the wee hours, re-depositing small children in varying states of consciousness into their own beds. But having four smallish children it just became farcical. So now they get left where they are with a spare duvet chucked over them if they’re lucky. I’ve come to the conclusion that it doesn’t matter where we sleep as long as we do actually manage to get a decent night’s kip!