As the leaves began to turn and the back-to-school rituals successfully negotiated, we decided to dump the kids on gorgeous grandparents and spend a week away becoming a couple again. More precisely, I accompanied Husband on his business trip to Ringuard-sur-Mer in a nasty part of France. But it wasn’t about the location, it was about being together. The plan was to share much spontaneous laughter and lashings of rich food away from the routines and responsibilities of home.
As anticipated, there had been hand holding through cobble-stoned cutie pie villages nesting in clay hills beyond the grotesque seaside resort. There had been the gentle wafting of lavender and the heavy pendulousness of harvest time grapes. Oh, how the cicadas had deafeningly rubbed their cicada bits.
One afternoon we managed to duck Husband’s clients and hide out by our hotel pool. I was well into a book while he contemplated a swim. Into this atmosphere of easy bonhomie entered the thought (his) that it might be time for a cup of tea.
It was at this point that I shouldda skulked back to the room claiming the acute onset of female trouble of some kind.
For I knew what was to follow. In the depths of my being, I knew because I have been to this dark side of my Husband before. No sooner had he ordered a pot of tea than a subtle change came over the aura of the entire hotel complex.
It wasn’t the spotty waitress’ fault that her approach laden with a faux silver tray was regarded with scepticism and flaring of nostril. As she moved towards us I could feel Husband transform into a pith helmet, riding crop wielding Colonial Governor. I glanced over to see his fine pair of legs encased in a pair of those khaki distended hipped jodhpurs. His normally smooth upper lip suddenly sported a splendid moustache below which could be heard the first grumblings “humphlrrrr…grk…Damn your eyes, Woman.”
Zit-girl placed a teapot before him. He glared through his monocle barking at her “do you REEEEEAAALLY expect me to taste the poor excuse for ants piss?” “And what are these?” pointing to the cane sugar lump,”abattoir scrapings”??? I am exaggerating the Colonial Governor thing to make a point but the next bit is true…He sniffily raised the cover of the teapot revealing a single flaccid teabag marked “TISANE DRAINAGE FEMININ” at which point he almost choked before raising himself to his full height and marching directly to the kitchen.
Our courtship had been punctuated with these scenes and I should have been inured to the drama unfolding. I continued to read while Husband returned from the kitchen, vexed at the unsatisfactory collection of tea on offer. Spotty girl returned, this time with a stale mothball eaten sac floating in tepid water. Briefly raising my eyes from my uninspiring novel, I once again suggested that when not in a tea-drinking culture, perhaps an espresso would suffice.
Enraged to the extreme, he barked “this f-ing country and its f-ing people can all go to hell”, grabbed his keys and screeched out of the gravel parking lot to find tea from a local shop. Approximately 7 minutes later, he returned swinging our rent-a-car into the rosebush of the circular driveway and yelled down the hall to the spotty waitress, “boiling water, dammit woman”.
The crisis passed shortly after he’d had his pot of tea fix. Mamzelle Acne was terrified for months after and felt not at all compensated by Husband’s largess having offered her the entire packet of tea for her troubles. To this day, if you order tea by the pool, she immediately retreats to the kitchen where she rolls herself into the foetal position to regroup. Husband still adores France but I refuse to accompany him there unless he brings own travel kettle and stash of Tetley along.
Friday 22 January 2010
Thursday 14 January 2010
Self Checkout
In so many ways, working from home is the ideal scenario for a professional mum. Time saved commuting can be spent hyper-efficiently at my desk. While the rest of you are cramped on smelly tubes, gleaning current events from a newspaper partly viewed through the armpit hairs of your strap hanging neighbour, I am smugly sipping a latte and ticking items off my to-do list.
Lest I sound up my own butt, the flip side is that when I do show up at work for an office day, I am overdressed with vamp makeup and bouffant hair that is so not in line with my trendy 20-something colleagues. I silently muse that I was around for the first Flashdance craze (WHADDAFEEEELING!!!) and thus fully processed the double-belt, leg-warmer look before they were born.
Equally, I acknowledge that pulling my pre-maternity leave wardrobe out of mothballs for our recent corporate retreat was a colossal mistake. The herringbone power suit, oversized pearls and artfully knotted flight attendant foulard were bad enough but the frosted lipstick and scrunched hair were the final straw. Imagine a Dynasty befrocked Joan Collins in the Carrington boardroom, clinging to her diamante clutch for dear life and flanked by Kate Moss and Kate Hudson sniggering into their iphones.
I then regroup in my home office for a few days of trackysuit bottoms and bunny slippers. My way of managing is to keep work and home life separate. That means that I don’t leave my desk to transfer the laundry into the dryer, I don’t do personal emails or Amazon orders on office time. Strictly no googling “perimenopause symptoms” or plucking. I like to think that I am compartmentalising and therefore reaching new heights of efficacy.
A friend came to supper last Saturday and asked me why I was doing this blog. I was completely gobsmacked after all the affirming emails of encouragement and support from friends who have been after me to do this for ages. The answer is that I am desperately lonely and miss the camaraderie of the water cooler. As she is a big deal in HR, I should have perhaps shared this insight with her but I was a bit tipsy from post-Christmas retoxing at that exact moment. Drinking isn’t the answer and admitting my loneliness to myself is a solid first step.
I know my self-imposed sequestration is the crux of the matter because when I do force my colossal shoulder pads through the revolving doors of our corporate headquarters things get bad. I babble like a hysterical teenager to my less than amused colleagues, make pathetic jokes about hot-desking, inappropriate observations about my line manager’s nose hair and find any pretext to monologue on a diverse range of subjects from paper clip chains to Ikea meatballs.
The fall-out of my home-office isolation was further driven home when I found myself audibly musing to a packet of ethically somethinged free range organic salmon fillets in my shopping basket while queuing for the self-checkout at my local supermarket. I politely extricated myself from banter with the dead fish to address the touch screen and bar-code reader. No I hadn’t had a chance to swipe my loyalty card, yes I had brought 2 of my own bags, (where else would I put them if not in the bagging area?), that’ll be cash and you are most welcome, I WILL come again. The sum and total of my verbal interaction for the best part of 6 hours.
Lest I sound up my own butt, the flip side is that when I do show up at work for an office day, I am overdressed with vamp makeup and bouffant hair that is so not in line with my trendy 20-something colleagues. I silently muse that I was around for the first Flashdance craze (WHADDAFEEEELING!!!) and thus fully processed the double-belt, leg-warmer look before they were born.
Equally, I acknowledge that pulling my pre-maternity leave wardrobe out of mothballs for our recent corporate retreat was a colossal mistake. The herringbone power suit, oversized pearls and artfully knotted flight attendant foulard were bad enough but the frosted lipstick and scrunched hair were the final straw. Imagine a Dynasty befrocked Joan Collins in the Carrington boardroom, clinging to her diamante clutch for dear life and flanked by Kate Moss and Kate Hudson sniggering into their iphones.
I then regroup in my home office for a few days of trackysuit bottoms and bunny slippers. My way of managing is to keep work and home life separate. That means that I don’t leave my desk to transfer the laundry into the dryer, I don’t do personal emails or Amazon orders on office time. Strictly no googling “perimenopause symptoms” or plucking. I like to think that I am compartmentalising and therefore reaching new heights of efficacy.
A friend came to supper last Saturday and asked me why I was doing this blog. I was completely gobsmacked after all the affirming emails of encouragement and support from friends who have been after me to do this for ages. The answer is that I am desperately lonely and miss the camaraderie of the water cooler. As she is a big deal in HR, I should have perhaps shared this insight with her but I was a bit tipsy from post-Christmas retoxing at that exact moment. Drinking isn’t the answer and admitting my loneliness to myself is a solid first step.
I know my self-imposed sequestration is the crux of the matter because when I do force my colossal shoulder pads through the revolving doors of our corporate headquarters things get bad. I babble like a hysterical teenager to my less than amused colleagues, make pathetic jokes about hot-desking, inappropriate observations about my line manager’s nose hair and find any pretext to monologue on a diverse range of subjects from paper clip chains to Ikea meatballs.
The fall-out of my home-office isolation was further driven home when I found myself audibly musing to a packet of ethically somethinged free range organic salmon fillets in my shopping basket while queuing for the self-checkout at my local supermarket. I politely extricated myself from banter with the dead fish to address the touch screen and bar-code reader. No I hadn’t had a chance to swipe my loyalty card, yes I had brought 2 of my own bags, (where else would I put them if not in the bagging area?), that’ll be cash and you are most welcome, I WILL come again. The sum and total of my verbal interaction for the best part of 6 hours.
Thursday 7 January 2010
Snow days are rubbish
I know that when schools announce the possibility of a snow day, legions of mums start comparing notes on the perfect hot cocoa recipe, which park to best be seen frolicking with children and other wintery pastimes.
My reality is slightly clouded by work commitments, childcare realities and the searing memory of the great snow of 2009. This resulted in not just one but, I kid you not, 2 consecutive snow days. Day one was spent squidging play-do, potato printing, musical statues and by 10:27 am of that first morning, I was flat out of ideas on how to keep my darlings suitably entertained. Somehow the day passed thanks to a protracted session with Cebeebies and setting cocktail hour slightly earlier than strictly necessary.
I distinctly remember clinging on to my husband at around 6am on day 2. Part of me wanted to encourage him to leave the nuptial bed to report back on the weather but my heart wasn’t truly in it. In a bid not to wake the kids, I found myself stage whispering in a terrified, doe-in-headlights way “don’t-leave-me-at-home-with-them-please-promise-you-won’t-leave-me…..”…and then he did. For eight hours. Its not like we had to toss a coin as he was nearing a deadline and it was not one of my work days. So I girded my loins, bundled the kids up and took them to the park. We too would have that perfect Boden catalogue snowball fight. It was terrific fun for a while until both kids yelled “Uncle” (that’s American for “I give up”) and I stopped grinding their little faces into random snowmen….of course I didn’t but I did think about it when my son, church candles of snot dripping down his little face said “I wanna go home, its cold and you are a big fat tw%t.”
That was about 2 weeks into his elite Church of England education. That was what my precious 4 year old was picking up from the other kids---the kids we wanted him to associate with at the nice villagey school with the caring parents and the softly-softly teachers.
As I quickly scanned over my mental list of strategies, I decided to ignore rather than inflame the situation. This, I felt at the time, was what a seasoned Lieutenant Commander would do when faced with insurgency from a unit comprised of overtired 4 year old recruits. Once decided on this path, I stuck to it all the way home ignoring snotboy’s singsongy taunts of “mummy is a tw%t-a-tw%t-a-tw%%%%%t”. Passersby gave me those pitying looks, those snorts of disapproval for not being in a controlled situation with my offspring, those smug “Gina Ford wouldn’t brook this nonsense glances”, those “Thank God we are sending ours to private school” mutterings. Oh the shame of it burns even today.
So you can take your “yippyhurrah, we may get a snow day, just think of it, some unexpected quality time that wasn’t timetabled into today’s schedule” and stick it where the snow don’t freeze!!!
My reality is slightly clouded by work commitments, childcare realities and the searing memory of the great snow of 2009. This resulted in not just one but, I kid you not, 2 consecutive snow days. Day one was spent squidging play-do, potato printing, musical statues and by 10:27 am of that first morning, I was flat out of ideas on how to keep my darlings suitably entertained. Somehow the day passed thanks to a protracted session with Cebeebies and setting cocktail hour slightly earlier than strictly necessary.
I distinctly remember clinging on to my husband at around 6am on day 2. Part of me wanted to encourage him to leave the nuptial bed to report back on the weather but my heart wasn’t truly in it. In a bid not to wake the kids, I found myself stage whispering in a terrified, doe-in-headlights way “don’t-leave-me-at-home-with-them-please-promise-you-won’t-leave-me…..”…and then he did. For eight hours. Its not like we had to toss a coin as he was nearing a deadline and it was not one of my work days. So I girded my loins, bundled the kids up and took them to the park. We too would have that perfect Boden catalogue snowball fight. It was terrific fun for a while until both kids yelled “Uncle” (that’s American for “I give up”) and I stopped grinding their little faces into random snowmen….of course I didn’t but I did think about it when my son, church candles of snot dripping down his little face said “I wanna go home, its cold and you are a big fat tw%t.”
That was about 2 weeks into his elite Church of England education. That was what my precious 4 year old was picking up from the other kids---the kids we wanted him to associate with at the nice villagey school with the caring parents and the softly-softly teachers.
As I quickly scanned over my mental list of strategies, I decided to ignore rather than inflame the situation. This, I felt at the time, was what a seasoned Lieutenant Commander would do when faced with insurgency from a unit comprised of overtired 4 year old recruits. Once decided on this path, I stuck to it all the way home ignoring snotboy’s singsongy taunts of “mummy is a tw%t-a-tw%t-a-tw%%%%%t”. Passersby gave me those pitying looks, those snorts of disapproval for not being in a controlled situation with my offspring, those smug “Gina Ford wouldn’t brook this nonsense glances”, those “Thank God we are sending ours to private school” mutterings. Oh the shame of it burns even today.
So you can take your “yippyhurrah, we may get a snow day, just think of it, some unexpected quality time that wasn’t timetabled into today’s schedule” and stick it where the snow don’t freeze!!!
Monday 4 January 2010
Post Christmas blues
So can we talk about the people who draw & professionally print their own Christmas cards and pass them off as their kids’ handiwork? I mean puhleeze, a detailed rendition of the Nativity by Oskar 2 ¾ or the perfect outline of Santa sleighing through the Manhattan skyline with Rudolph at the fore by Persephone, 3. My kids are still shoving crayolas up their nostrils and chewing on play-do at 4 and 5 years of age so either mine are retreads or they just aren’t the arts ‘n crafts type.
I only dwell on this because I can’t even face recycling these cards into next year’s gift tags. The only vaguely smug homemakerish thing I do is snip at cards to turn them into smaller versions thus satisfying my cheap-skate urges and doing my bit for the environment. This year, we didn’t wait for ephiphany to de-Christmas the living room as I couldn’t live with the red and green madness any longer. I was being stifled by our self-imposed and demented interpretation of Kris Kringle meets West London middle-class aspirations. No New Year’s resolutions this year, only a clean slate---a Tabula Rasa from which to launch myself into 2010.
My great misfortune was in watching that Kirstie Allsopp show on Christmas craftiness. I am a London based half-American and fled the US to get as far away from Martha Stewart as possible. Here I am sucked back into that vortex of smug coziness as Kirstie dangles her knucklebuster of an aquamarine ring over the homemade project Du jour. She invites craftspeople to her Devon retreat implying that you too can lure master cheese makers or candle artisans or chocolate chefs to your 2 up 2 down for a masterclass that will result in delightful homemade pressies costing thrupence. I hate her I hate her I hate her and yet I can't take my eyes off the screen. Is there a 12 step programme out there for me?
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