Death by 10K

It's okay.  Don't panic.  I'm not really dead dead.  Just a little bit dying right now.  I ran 10K this morning for the third time in my life and I did not enjoy it.  I'm not sure I've ever really enjoyed it but today I found it ridiculously unpleasant.  I think I've realised that 10K is not something that you can just wake up one morning and run without being completely ready.

I did try to be ready, I really did.  Having not run properly for a while I did the Race for Life in July with some of the school mums and sitting around with two bottles of champagne in my belly afterwards I agreed to run a half marathon with them in November.  Easy, I thought to myself.  July to November is a nice long time and I put together a training plan.  I then went to France and drank every day and ate cheese for two weeks.  September came with the craziness of the beginning of term and I was struggling to fit in the running (or struggling to be arsed to do any running!)  Saturday morning runs are out due to Friday nights so that meant that it had to be one night after work.  I began running around Clarence Park after my Monday evening meeting finished at 5pm, building up by half a mile a week.  I've always liked Clarence Park - nice and flat.  This all went very well until about three weeks ago when I pulled a muscle in my calf at 4 miles and stopped.  Bum.  No worries thought I; I continued with personal training and boot camp and thought that the long-distance-running-adrenaline-fairy would carry me through today.

Just before this calf-pull incident; I drunkenly signed up my friend and personal trainer Elena to do this 10K today with me.  She panicked for about five minutes and then embraced it in true Dundjerovic style and set out to smash it for me in my target time of less than an hour.

I realised there was a problem when we started off the first kilometre at a canter when I was expecting a trot.  Jeebus.  Maybe this hour malarky wasn't doable after all.  I was trying to tell Dunders that I was about to die already, five minutes in but I couldn't manage to get the words out.  I tried all sorts of tactics: slow down, try and get stuck behind a fatty, pretend to trip over a dog; but she was taking her job very seriously and kept me going at what I had quickly realised was not at all my pace.

I had described the hill at 4K to Elena as basically the same as Mount Everest and she had told me in no uncertain terms that I was not walking up it.  About halfway up I was most definitely walking up it and no amount of cajoling, shouting and even pushing me seemed to change that.  People were beginning to stare at the obviously fitter less sweaty lady pushing the seriously angry looking more sweaty bird in the back to try and make her go faster.  'She's a bitch' I was telling everybody I could.  Nobody replied.  It is not the best hill for conversation really.

I started running again (having tried to turn around and go home a couple of times) and by the time we hit 5K I knew I would probably finish at least and didn't care how long it took. Elena was still trying to do her job, the job I had set her up for, but I was trying to pant to her that I didn't want her to do the job anymore I just wanted to wallow silently in my own sweaty misery.  She tried everything but I was decidedly grumpy.  She was laughing when I tried to stop running again at about 7K and was telling her to fuck off with one breath but then when somebody came out of their house to cheer us on I was sweetness and light itself with a smile and a wave.  Poor Elena.

I did try to convince her to run on and save herself.  She knows far too many fit PT people who will be looking up her race time after all but she is a good friend and stuck with me and my little trot until the bitter end.  Apparently we are doing it every year from now on.  I reckon I might just stick on some rollerskates next time and tie myself onto her waist.

I have already backed out of the half marathon and am hugely relieved I will not be flogging it around Clarence Park seven times tomorrow evening.  I am now drinking all of my Saturday night champagne and enjoying the simple pleasure of sitting on my sore bum... ;-)

Old Dear

I'm feeling my age today.  I don't think I have ever written that sentence or uttered those words before but I'm sure I will say them again...and again...and again...in the future!

I went into town last night with a bounty of beautiful twenty-something girls from my workplace.  I had a lovely time.  Apart from the twenty minute wait at the bar every time I wanted a drink; that was not okay.  I'm ashamed to say that I was thinking of my own lovely fridge full of champagne that never, ever makes me wait when I visit it.  I was chatting to a lady in the bar-scrum who asked me how old I was.  When I told her I was 39, one of my colleagues popped up from behind my back and screeched 'THIRTY NINE!  WOW!  You look AMAZING!'  Obviously, I'm always willing to be told loudly that I look amazing but what was with the emphasis on the 39?  I wasn't aware that it was possibly NOT to look okay at 39.  This is still on the correct side of 40 right?

I had a real laugh but when at 11.15pm everybody stopped sitting down and chatting and started bobbing about behind their chairs and muttering about going dancing, I decided my time had come to exit stage left.  I was relatively sober, (due to the ridiculous wait at the bar), and happily began to wave the kids off in the direction of somewhere noisier and more dancey,  At this point however, the maybe-a-little-bit-worse-for-wear birthday boy decided that his evening couldn't possibly continue without me in it so he sent the girls off dancing and we put the world to rights over a few double gins in a variety of pubs before I dumped him with the dancing queens and legged it into a cab about 12.30.  Home at a sensible time to see my husband; but the worrying part of this story is that I sat down with him and had a chat over a cup of decaffeinated tea and a pain au chocolat.  Could I get any more middle class and middle aged?!

Let's assume that was breakfast then, as I was back on form today with the first thing to pass my lips being champagne at midday.  That's more like it.  I met my Uni pal Clare in Hammersmith for my second viewing of 'Things I Know to be True'.  Clare always looks fabulous.  She works for the London College of Fashion and I swear she knows what the next fashion is before the designers have even begun to design it.  I remember Lyns and I howling with laughter over dinner with her about three years ago, when she referred to her (perfectly nice) trousers as 'tailored joggers'.  We thought it the most hilarious oxymoron until a couple of months later we found that they were everywhere. That girl knows.  So today she turns up in a pair of amazing blue culottes.  If I put culottes on I would look about 85, or that I was back in 1985, one of the two.  However, Clare rocked the look, beautifully. So beautifully in fact that the elderly (yet very stylish) lady on the table next to us came over and told her how fabulous she looked and how amazing her style was.  How kind. The sting in the tail was that immediately afterwards she asked to move tables as we were so noisy...  When Clare, Lyns and I are together, I immediately feel 21 again.  I was thinking on the train on the way home though that the lady that paid Clare a compliment would probably have been about our age now when the three of us first met at Uni... Scary stuff.

I'm looking forward to turning 40.  If only for the amount of lovely champagne I will be given.  I'm not looking forward to turning 50 however.  That seems ridiculously scary. Would I have coped with the thought of turning 40 a few months before my 30th birthday though?  There was a poignant line in the play today where the female protagonist tells her 63 year old husband that there is less in front of them than there is behind them but that doesn't mean that they should give up on living. Unsurprisingly, that didn't seem to cheer him very much...

I pray that I never lose my sense of fun.  There was a moment last night when I slightly lost my footing and my colleague gallantly threw himself to the ground to ensure that if I was face down in the street he was most definitely going to be face down with me to make me feel better about the situation.  I was laughing so hard at this that it took me much longer than it should have done to recover my footing and return to a vertical position.

Anyway, I've been out all day today and it is nearly ten o'clock so I reckon it is time for me to head to my bed with a cup of tea and a bourbon.  Or will I?  Maybe it is time to recreate the days of getting out of pyjamas and into gladrags at 10pm instead to head out out?

Maybe not.  Night night.  :-)

Runaway

Zak left home for the first time yesterday.  It was about an ice cream.  An ice cream that he wasn't bought in the park as he had already had some popcorn and sweets at the cinema. The lack of ice cream led to some behaviour that resulted in his IPad evening slot being removed from him.  This resulted in him leaving home.

I was warned.  All the way back from the park he was telling me that he was leaving home. I told him that he most definitely wasn't, whilst keeping cool, calm and collected.  I was smugly planning on just quietly double locking the door when we got inside.  I was double bluffed however as I stopped the car on the drive and Zak leapt out and legged it down the road! Still wanting to play it cool, I kept unpacking the car and Sebi monitored events from the end of the drive.  Sebi seemed a little disappointed at his progress as I think he expected something more dramatic than his big brother loitering a few houses down. When you're gone you're gone however in Seb's eyes, and as I was moving Zak's scooter from the garage to the house, Sebi enquired as to why I was bothering because Zak wouldn't need it any longer if he wasn't here.  I'm surprised he hadn't moved his stuff into Zak's room and claimed squatter's rights within minutes.  On his next recky from the end of the drive, little brother was slightly more impressed with big brother's progress and fed back that he was now out of sight.  Oh.  Oops.  I'd wrongly assumed that he would loiter down the road and head back when I wasn't looking.  Triple bluffed.

Unfortunately at this precise moment my husband decided to return home.  I thought he made the enquiry in a much more reasonable manner than I would have done had the tables been reversed, about why he had just seen his nine-year old son on his own heading away from home along Ardens Way.

I must pause here and take a minute to explain the hierarchy in our house.  Seb's in charge and the rest of us do as he says.  No, only joking, (sort of).  I am the strict, disciplinarian parent; the boys are the kids and Stuart falls somewhere in between.  I'm not doing him a disservice by saying this - he would be in complete agreement.  He spends hours being silly with the boys: wrestling, football, computer games, making up comedy rhymes about fat people etc, etc; none of which I have any interest in at all.  The boys have the most amazing fun with him but unfortunately that has led to a slightly grey area when it comes to him being able to discipline them.  Quite often he will come to me if something really needs sorting out.  Stu = fun Dad.  Nikki = fun-spoiler Mum.

I think therefore, when Stu found me on the drive with one son having lost the other one and I didn't seem in that particular moment to be doing that much about it, he relished his rapid promotion through the sensible parenting ranks...

Stu and Sebi went inside and I began backing the car out of the drive, tail between my legs, with no particular Plan B about how I was going to actually get Zak to get into the car when I found him.  Halfway out of the drive I noticed a blue cap peeking out from behind a tree.  Slowly I returned the car to the drive, went into the house and waited for the return of the fugitive.

At this point I am pleased to say that the super-early pre-teen behaviour seemed to bury itself again for another day and the rest of the afternoon was passed in a relatively amicable truce.  We're off to the park again in a bit; I reckon I might just buy some ice creams today...

Summer Lovin'

Summer holidays are odd.  As a teacher you spend the ENTIRE year hanging out for this six week break and then it seems to be over in a flash.  I almost take the fun out of the summer holidays but being obsessed by the fact I should be enjoying every single little minute of them.  I counsel myself as we go through, after a week by saying, 'well, I've still got five weeks to go' - FIVE WEEKS!  Halfway through I'm equally as buoyant, and then we get to now; two weeks to go, and you realise that you are nearer the end than the beginning.  I comfort myself at the point by saying it is basically like starting an Easter or Christmas break now and look at all the time I've had already.  Next weekend I'll be convincing myself it is like the start of a half term and all the while I have a slightly suppressed, unusual sensation that when work starts again, I might quite like it.  (Oops - I've said it aloud now.)

We really are making the most of these holidays but I think I got a little bit overexcited and may have packed too much in.  Our suitcases were unpacked last weekend from France and repacked for Suffolk with a day at Warner Bros. Studios squeezed in the middle. We're back today from Suffolk and although a lovely time was had; the constant high of excitement from the kids resulted in slightly less-than-perfect behaviour between 4am and 5.15am this morning.  (I should have stuck to my resolute guns about not letting them share a room!)  We are all officially knackered.  I wonder if this is full-time-working-mother-guilt rearing her ugly head again?  Everybody says to me that teaching is so perfect when you have small kids because you can really re-group in the holidays.  It's true!  I have spent so much quality time with my lovelies in the last four weeks that I've completely remembered why I decided to work full time! ;-)  I'm kidding.  Sort of.

Yet still I can't seem to stop: Wicked tomorrow, Gullivers on Monday, Whipsnade on Tuesday - so much to do and it is imperative that we must all have fun at all times.  In fact, all you end up with is spoilt brats that moan when they have to fill an hour or two of their own time at home with a house and garden full of toys.  'But I'M BORED...' laments Zachary when I have dared to remove an IPad away from his trance-like gaze.

The added problem is that the no alcohol in the week situation really doesn't seem to apply to school holidays.  I'm a miserable bastard during term time so school holidays is when I get to do a huge amount of socialising.  Dinner on a Monday night?  Sure, why not?  Wine tasting on a Wednesday?  Brilliant - bring it on.  The only problem is that if you remember correctly my alcohol intake is meant to be vaguely limited at the moment and I'm currently trying to schedule in my next blood test when I will have had at least 48 hours off the sauce.  September 6th it is then!

I also reckon that I have spent approximately ten hundred million pounds in the last four weeks having so much fun.  I feel a few days of £1.50 morning cinema tickets (because who wants to eat popcorn at 10am?!) and laps of the park on scooters coming on to ensure there is enough money left in the bank to pickle my liver in cheap champers before it is head down again until half term.  Happy holidays everyone!  :-)

Half Term High Jinks

I do love a half-term.  The week started beautifully with a visit from my lovely work colleague Sophie, who is currently on maternity leave.  She has three little girls that I instructed my boys to look after.  Zak asked me their names just before they came.

'Mia is the oldest, then Orla and then... *Big fat pause* ...the baby.'  

Not to be put off by my lack of attention to detail Zak pursued this with:

'I'm sure she didn't just call her 'baby'.'

No Zak, no she didn't but Mummy has forgotten the poor child's name, okay?!  I responded with:

'I think it is something Greek, Cassandra?  No, that's not it.  Oh well never mind, I'm sure we'll find out over the course of the morning.'

Sophie hadn't even got through the door before Zak yelled from the top of the stairs:

'Mummy can't remember what you called your baby.'  Great.  Welcome.  (It's Juno by the way which is most definitely more Roman than Greek.)

That afternoon we took a trip to the cinema for them to watch 'Angry Birds the Movie' and for me to have a little nap.  This is definitely the onset of old age but ticked all boxes.  The kids were entertained, we were out of the house allowing Stu to work without chaos around him and I was indulging in my favourite past time.  Well my favourite past time when there aren't any open bottles of champers around anyway.

Wednesday I had to go to Chelsea for my eye appointment.  (All good news - meds are working - I'm back in contacts.)  I decided to combine this with a day out with the boys and booked lunch after at our favourite restaurant, Heddon Street Kitchen.  Zak was disappointed that my Professor didn't have crazy white hair and that he wasn't mad, but he warmed to him after he let them look at the back of my eyeball.  I wasn't quite as keen on them 'helping' when the Professor said to Sebi: 'Don't drop that will you?  It's worth 6 and a half grand.'  Maybe he was mad after all...

Having refused to go to the loo at the hospital, Sebi started clutching his willy at Sloane Square tube station, which I'm sure is not the done thing at all in that neck of the woods. The furious willy grabbing and hopping from one foot to another became rather frantic by Oxford Circus so I decided we needed an urgent pit stop before we got to the restaurant. Like an Oasis I saw a public pay-as-you-go portaloo on Regent Street.  I was just scrabbling for my 50p (50P4APEE!!) when I was approached by a friendly local drunk who told me I didn't need that and let me in with his key...  (Who gave him the key...?!)  I was hurriedly grateful and went in and Seb plonked himself on the toilet.  I (STUPIDLY) left Zak in charge of the electronic door and he pressed the button to shut and lock it and then pressed every other button so soon it opened again; permanently.  Apparently Sebi was not as yet finished so was now sitting in his glory in the middle of Regent Street.  I was busy bollocking Zak when my new tramp friend came back to tell me we needed to exit as the thing was about to self-disinfect.  Cue Sebi: 'But I TOLD you, I HAVEN'T FINISHED'. I'll gloss over the next few unpleasant minutes and 15 minutes later we were ensconced in the restaurant, obviously via another toilet en route.

The ice cream bar in this restaurant has to be seen to be believed.  One small scoop of ice cream in a bowl with ten thousand jars of sprinkles and sweets for the kids to help themselves to.  I think I got to Zak each time before he put a serving spoon full of sweets straight into his gob but I'm not completely sure.  Safe to say you couldn't see any ice cream on their plates by the time they had finished loading.  Two deliriously happy, sugar high boys charged around Hamley's and then their distinctly-less-wealthy-than-the-start-of-the-day Mother decided it was time to head home.

On the second traumatic tube journey of the day, Zak decided he was about to puke within about 20 seconds.  I'm normally a big fan of anti terror measures on the tube but I really could have done with a bin that afternoon.  There was no way in the world he was puking into my Ted Baker handbag (it's all about the lining!) so he managed to hold it in.  I think he was just a bit hot and full of sweets but was still a distinctly odd colour by the time we got on the train home.  'Air' started escaping from the other end to ease his sore tummy and even with me subtly opening windows we managed to clear a whole French family and their suitcases from our carriage.  I think I've now learnt how to say 'disgusting smelly English boys' in French now, should I ever happen to need it...

I had an amazing PT session with my friend Elena in the park yesterday.  She obviously chose the bandstand to do it in so that we were literally centre stage.  All of our boys took great delight in swinging high enough so they could see me over the hedge and hurl abuse at my efforts.

'YOU...*swing*...LOOK...*swing*...LIKE...*swing*...A...*swing*...DOG' sang my eldest. Personally I haven't met a dog that can plank with its feet in stirrups but I obviously need to get out more.

Everything in moderation

Life is a little less dull than last time I posted.  The situation is not quite as dire as first thought.  I decided to canvass a third opinion on the lack of booze situation as I was becomingly rapidly very, very grumpy.  We get on very well my GP and I and were able to have a candid conversation.  He immediately told me that I would be fine with some 'sensible drinking'.  I told him that I was not, never had been, and never will be a sensible drinker.  I needed to cut to the chase and find out if there was actually any danger of death with the odd binge drinking night.  He assured me that the occasional slip off the wagon was fine.

I reinterpreted this in my own way.  I'm still quite nervous of these drugs so I have figured out if I drink within the recommended government guidelines for a week still but just narrow that down over two days instead of seven, I will probably remain with an un-pate-like liver and still have Friday and Saturday nights worth looking forward to.  I am therefore totally tee total Sunday to Thursday and am allowing myself a bottle of fizz on Friday and Saturday nights.  Win win.

I'm still refusing to drink any alcohol that is not champagne however.  It is important to retain standards and also not waste any units.  Unfortunately the cheapest bottle of champagne in the restaurant last night however was a £55 bottle of Veuve.  My husband took this with quite good grace however.  Doctor's orders and all.  Well, nearly.

A sunny Sunday BBQ with the Morgans was less of a sober challenge than I thought.  The key to me not drinking is to not chill anything worth drinking.  I was not coveting their lagers at all and even remarked to Samantha on our sun loungers that I was managing to have quite a fun day sober.  Some people would have taken that as a bit of an insult; not my mucker however.  She said she wasn't that surprised that I was having a good time it was just that I had never bothered trying it before!  It's true.  It would have never crossed my mind to not drink at a social occasion.  Maybe after this year is up I will be one of those irritating middle-aged women who looks at you like you are a piece of dog poo if you try and refill their glass.  Hmmm, maybe not.

I'm not as thin as I should be if alcohol is full of calories and I've cut mine down by at least half...ish...and the rest...  I've had a hamstring injury for a couple of months now that has kept me from running and I've noticed that my normal regime of shoving everything I fancy food or drink wise in my mouth whenever I want it then running around the block a couple of times a week has come unstuck and I've turned into a bit of a lard arse.  I have never dieted in my life and have only been weighed when I was preggers and forced on the scales but I am currently doing the nearest thing I ever will do to a diet until I can run again. I call it the eat-like-a-health-freak-Monday-to-Thursday-and-then-shove-everything-you-can-see-down-your-throat-Friday-to-Sunday.  Catchy eh?  Look out for the cook book and DVD coming soon.  It does seem to be working a bit although the everything in moderation outlook has never really worked for me.  I've just had to eat all of these from my lovely Year 11s:

...so that they are not there tomorrow to ruin my healthy start to the week.  The hilarious part of it is that whilst I was troughing through them I was preparing my 'overnight-oats' brekkie for the morning.  Right then, how many hours is it until Friday night...? ;-)

Nil (or not much) by Mouth

There is no point beating about the bush, let's get straight to the point - I have to give up the demon drink for a year.

Well, not exactly give up, but, drink within 'the government's recommended guidelines', which is basically as bad.

My evil-eyeball-eating-itself disease seems to be resistant to every type of eyedrop known to man so instead we need to suppress my immune system with some kind of chemotherapy instead (it's not cancerous however).  It's a clinical trial, I have no fear of things like this, but the two things that it can't cope with are (a) alcohol and (b) sunshine. Seriously, talk about fucking up your summer!

It is going to be very good for me I'm sure.  2-3 units a night, rather than 2 bottles on a weekend night cannot help but reap benefits but the downside is I'm obviously going to be sober.  Sober on nights out, sober out for dinner, sober at the pub, sober after a shit day at work, sober at birthdays, sober at Christmas, sober at celebrations, sober at Sunday lunch, sober with my Dad, sober with my husband, sober with my bezzie, sober when my kids are pissing me off, sober on a Friday night, sober on a Saturday night, sober on weekends away, sober at the two summer balls I'm attending, sober on holiday (and sitting in the shade for the love of God!) - mainly quite sober!

Now, I'm not for one cotton-pickin minute insinuating that I only ever have fun when I am drinking, because that would make me a fully bonafide alcoholic, but, I have never actually tried the fun sober stuff.  I am never the designated driver and tend to be the life and soul of the party always with some champagne in my belly.

Ahhhhh, champagne.  My one true love.  This makes me especially sad.  Therefore I have decided to invest in this:

24 x individual bottles of champagne that I can keep in the fridge to ensure that I can have my 2-3 units a night, cold and fizzy.  I knew that these were invented for a reason.

It's bollocks but I appreciate that it is also karma.  If there is anyone in the world that probably needed a reality check on alcohol, it is me.  Maybe I will come out of this year a reformed character and irritate the masses with my newly emphatic evangelism on the benefits of sobriety and the evils of the demon drink.  Hmmmm, maybe not.  I think it is more likely that I sulk my way through the year, grumpily accepting only the invitations that I have to and avoiding most other social situations.  Basically spending the year as if I was pregnant but without the cute alcohol-soaked baby at the end of it.

I may become a bore on this blog, I warn you now.  I need to get my kicks from somewhere.  If you are not a proper dirty drinker like me then none of what I've said so far will be resonating with you.  If you are on my wave length then you will be feeling my pain, reaching for your favourite tipple and just having a little check that your eyeball looks as it should, thanking your lucky stars and raising a glass to my sobriety.

I think I will be probably making it 50.5 weeks instead of the required 52 so that I can celebrate my 40th in style next April.  As Samantha sympathetically pointed out to me a couple of days ago though; there is not much point spending the money I was going to on my 40th, as after a year off the booze I will definitely be the cheapest date in the room.  I could possibly be passed out on the floor by 7.30pm, but, if I am, I am sure that I will be asleep and very, very happy!

Cheers :-/ x