When We Were Very Young...

I was originally going to call this post, 'If Carlsberg made weekends...' as it has been so fabulous but I feel that is rather over used, although not as much as the bloody 'Keep Calm and...' which tends to throw me into a very un-calm state whenever I see it.

I went racing at Newmarket on Friday night.  Dad had a couple of horses running, neither of which won, but coming in third and fourth they didn't disgrace themselves.  Kate, Aly and I decided we were born to the lifestyle of sitting in the owners enclosure drinking champagne bought by other people.  Aly suggested that we pool our winnings at the start of the evening.  She's a clever girl as I won on the first race and then Kate on the third! Luckily she pulled it out of the bag on 'Tax Free' and we came away splitting a very respectable £115.  Unfortunately, we had the taste for champagne by then and 115 quid doesn't last very long when Bar 62 have sold out of everything apart from vintage champagne and so it is unthinkable that you wouldn't buy that and would lower your class of drink later on in the evening...

According to my dear husband, I don't make enough of an effort to come in quietly when I've had a shandy or three so he offered to sleep in the spare room on Friday night so that I wouldn't wake him up.  I'd already changed the bed for my ladies who were arriving on Saturday so he wasn't allowed to and I headed out the door at 5pm promising to come home late and loudly.  Lucky chap.  His main complaint is that I turn on every light in the house so I dutifully stumbled around the in dark instead probably making twice as much noise.  He should be grateful I wasn't giggling, hiccuping or vomiting however, as all of the above have been known to happen on occasion.

Saturday morning I packed my husband and children off to Redditch and indulged in a couple of glasses of medicinal wine over lunch as I waited for my five best friends from Uni to arrive.  We haven't been together for 9 years, as the last time was Lynsey's 30th. She was delighted to keep being reminded of this as we each individually clocked on to the fact that she must therefore be approaching 40.  Poor old Clare is gestating a sproglet at the moment so I can imagine that we were suitably shouty and dull by about 9pm.  All credit to her though she was up until nearly 2am when she firmly packed everybody off to bed.

We dined in 'The Cock' and were waited on some of the time by someone  I used to teach GCSE drama to.  This caused much hilarity at our table because although my St. Albans friends are pretty used to me falling (drunk) over ex-pupils, (and in fact Shelley is particularly adept at removing me from those sorts of situations if I'm a little too merry), my Uni friends still struggle I think with the concept of Nikki Stocker being a proper actual teacher, (don't really blame them).  There was therefore a little bit of interrogation of this girl who then pointed out to me that a boy who used to be in my form and also worked there was seriously trying to hide from me.  I left the poor chap alone, for a while anyway; after the third tequila rose I think there might have been a little bit of name-shouting and waving.  Ugh.

It wouldn't be a night out with these girls without laughing till you cried (and for some I think, till you did a little wee-wee) and crying until you laughed.  I stuck my foot right in it by drunkenly announcing that a girl we went to Uni with had died a few years ago (I'm available for hire to ruin all your parties).  We all knew this, or so I thought, but apparently we all actually didn't.  One of our table ended up in floods of tears and was beside herself for about 15 minutes until we thought it would be cathartic for her to look at a picture of the dead person in happier times on Facebook.  At that point she realised it wasn't actually who she was thinking of and the tears dried up.  Honestly, we are bad and nasty people.

My kids will be back in a few minutes now and it is time for me to stop pretending I'm 21 again and grow back into Mummy.  Regression every once in a while keeps me sane though I think.

A Frosty Reception

We've just had Sebi's induction morning at Reception.  I don't remember doing this with Zak and I just figured that it was a new thing that they had brought in during the last couple of years.  No, apparently not.  It seems as though I may have just 'missed' it last time. That seems relatively slack, even for me.  I know that I deliberately always skip the new parents' talks nowadays as I can't bear all the hot air that tends to be spouted there but surely I would've taken poor old Zak in to see his new classroom?  Maybe not.

Anyway, Sebi and I hit Reception today for an hour, (oh yes, that's a long, long, time to meander around a relatively small classroom with too many children in it), and then lunch. Anyone who knows my 'fuck off I've got enough mates' face from seeing it around school before, would, I think, have been surprised at the new heights it hit today.  Don't get me wrong, I didn't stomp around in silence for an hour but I carefully chose the people I was willing to talk to and those I definitely wasn't.  A mother of a child I have referred to as an abbreviation 'HM' in previous posts was obviously top of this list, but luckily she seems to have got the message, and it fills my heart with joy to report that our loathing seems completely mutual nowadays.  Job done.  There was another lady however, who was desperately following me around and trying to make eye contact for most of the session. I'm sure if you asked ten people who knew her if she was a nice person then all ten would agree that she is, but having observed her from a distance during nursery pick-ups/drop-offs I just know that she would do my head in, immediately, and so we are best not becoming acquainted.  What's wrong with her?  Not a lot.  The fault most definitely lies in my personality, but I cannot cope with over-zealous-highly-competitive-my-perfect-middle-class-life-is-actually-such-hard-work-but-nobody-else-possibly-understands mothers who talk too much.  Ahhhhh, that's better.

She will get the message soon enough in September I'm sure.  I was out to lunch with one of my BFFs Kate the other day and we were frankly discussing the playground politics.  Kate's children are at a different school and she visibly cringes when we talk about how differently we behave in the playground.  Kate is a very friendly, open person and she has come across more difficult personalities like myself in her own playground. She now keeps her distance from those scary witches.

So, back to today.  Over lunch, the Headmaster came and sat next to Sebi for a few minutes.  Seb studiously ignored him and carried on eating his bread and butter.  After a little prompting and a poke from his mother in the ribs he deigned to answer one of the Head's earnest questions with a small nod; avoiding all eye contact however.  He hasn't managed to hone his antisocial skills effectively enough yet to realise that whilst cheerfully discounting the masses we can't be bothered with, it is important to always make time for the big cheeses in life.  We'll get there in time.

Busy Bee

Hello.  I'm aware it's been a while.  I am slowly coming up to the surface after moderation month.  Last year was the first time I had done it and I wasn't prepared for the fact it would be a month of absolutely no fun, drowning in a sea of paper and videos and mopping up the mess of other drama teachers.  This year I was more prepared but I was not ready for the fact that my school plonked report deadline day on exactly the same day as the moderation deadline.  How the hell did that happen?  My feet haven't touched the ground.  I have been saving time by prepping reports in my dreams (yes really) and then just typing them up when I woke up and with five days to go I have half a centre left for moderating and 38 reports left to write.  Believe me, considering where I was this time last week, that is a happy place to be.

I'm not whinging I promise.  There have been times in the last month when I have thought if I watch one more video of one more class exploring 'Blood Brothers' I may do myself or my TV some harm.  I do love it though, otherwise I wouldn't do it.  However, I have been hanging out for it to be over and for me to get my life back.

So I went out last night.  My BFF and I wandered up to a local pub for dinner.  We made a strategic decision not to go into town so that there was no late night option.  Over the years we have learnt that it is important to plan against drunken foolish decisions before one is drunken and foolish.  How then did I end up head first in a bush somewhere around the Ridgeway at 1.30am this morning?  I blame the council.  All the bloody streetlights were out and what with the Ridgeway being a bit of a curly road it is easy to get disorientated and stray from the path, over a wall and into someone's front garden. Thank the Lord that (a) it was dark and (b) I don't teach in St. Albans anymore so can revel in this dreadful behaviour without the risk of being caught by pupils or worse still parents of pupils that you then have to try and convince you are actually a civilised professional instead of a drunken scumbag at the next parents' evening.

I had a moment of clarity as I realised I was too drunk to pull myself straight out of the flowerbed last night and instead had to drag myself back over the wall.  If I have a lot more free time now that examinations and moderation have finished I may find myself stuck in a bush (stop it you filthy minded lot) more often.  That's not necessarily a good thing.  I'm going to give myself the benefit of the doubt and assume that my quiet-night-out turning into raucous debauchery last night was just a release of the stress I have been under for the last few weeks.  Just in case though, I've decided to keep myself busy for another couple of years and today have signed up to do an MA starting in September.  It could be a slightly knee-jerk hangover reaction but I think it is better for my family and the residents of Marshalswick in general if I keep myself busy and out of trouble.

Surely with two degrees I am bound to then be grown up and sensible.  We live in hope.  I will keep you posted.

Home Alone

A beautiful sunny evening at the beginning of an bank holiday weekend and I am sitting in alone in my lounge whilst my husband gallavants on a roof terrace of a pub in London. Jealous?  Much?  Actually, no.  I'm revelling in the company of a bottle of pink Lanson and a Corrie/Stenders sarnie.

Stu is due back at lunchtime tomorrow.  He is therefore able to have a pretty large night out and is staying in the darkest depths of South-East London with his bezzie.  I'm happier with him staying away so that I can lock the door and not worry about being woken up by a snoring/farting/stumbling intruder in the early hours.

I used to be a lot less chilled about Stu's nights out.  It's funny, but when I was thinner and younger with no baby scars and I serviced my man on a near-daily basis, I was a lot more paranoid about what he was going to get up to when I wasn't with him.  Maybe our seven-year marriage has produced less of an itch and more of a security blanket?  There is the school of thought that says why would you have a burger out when you can have a steak at home...  I'm sure that the way men are made they would take both if they thought they could get away with it!  I reckon Stuart would be more excited about the idea of an ACTUAL burger followed by an ACTUAL steak on the side than the analogy however.  I think at 36 I've just realised that worrying about these things unnecessarily won't actually change the likelihood of them happening!

Even the thought of a solo Saturday morning doesn't fill me with dread anymore.  Zak will creep downstairs, (he knows how to keep on the best side of his mother), and amuse himself on the IPad, and Seb stays in bed till you go and get him, so my day shouldn't get going until 8 or 9.  The days of 5.30am on a Saturday morning staring through tear-filled bleary eyes at the playroom wall with a baby and a toddler are luckily a far-distant memory.  I'm sorry if I sound irritatingly smug.  Actually, I'm not sorry; I did my time.

There is also the beautiful concept of a Super-King size bed for one.  It's funny how I sleep quite happily and neatly on my side of the bed the majority of the time but the moment I'm given the whole caboodle I spread and cover the entire thing like an enormous snoring starfish.  Happy days.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder in my marriage.  I will welcome my (slightly stinking) hubby back with open arms tomorrow and revel in his witty and scintillating tales of his misdemeanours for a good half an hour, before I vanish off to the beauticians for the rest of the afternoon, leaving him with his hangover and his boys. Well, I'm sure he will have missed them.

Raising Little Martians

I've always been slightly obsessive about raising nice children.  I'm currently wondering if I have overdone it somewhat.  Take this morning, for instance, Zak started a new swimming lesson and in one of the widths he was slightly ahead of the boy next to him. The boy next to him grabbed Zak's float and tried to pull him under the water.  Little shite. Zak didn't say or do anything but moved himself to a different position so that the next time they did a width that boy was nowhere near him.  This is exactly what I would've told him to do if he could hear me and I told him afterwards that I was very proud of him.  Why then, when it was happening, did quite a large part of me want Zak to shove the Little Shite's head under the water and hold it there for a while?

The boys know that being kind to other children is of paramount importance to Mummy.  I can't stand mean kids but part of me feels like I'm putting them on the back foot in their day-to-day lives.  Kids aren't kind as a rule.  Boys of all ages seem to live in a perpetual state of competition.  At this age it tends to be who is the fastest/strongest/cleverest.  In ten years time it will be who's the best looking/best at pulling the ladies/has the biggest willy.  As grown men the biggest willy race seems to merge into who has the biggest car and for many the competition seems to be all about who has the most money.

Zak does walk away from trouble and is always keen to report back to me that he has done that and tried his best to be kind.  All well and good but does this mean I'm raising a child who is going to come a cropper in a few years when someone repays his 'kindness' with a slap?  I think my husband secretly thinks so.  Stu seems to have a different view on childhood to me having grown up in a different atmosphere and also as a male.  When I suggested we might enroll Zak in a local Beavers group Stu pissed himself laughing and said he used to throw things at cubs when he was a lad!

I remember when I was pregnant with Zak one of my colleagues saying to me that if my baby looked like Stu and had my attitude nobody was ever going to mess with him. Luckily Zak seems to be going the way of a brick shithouse so I don't think he will ever be a real victim.

I think Sebi may be the one to watch.  Although it doesn't look as if he will be as big as Zak, he has perfected his mother's fuck-off-and-die stare beautifully at the tender age of three.  I think Zak may have his work cut out as they grow up bailing his little brother out of all the trouble he will get himself into.  Probably quite a similar experience to Stuart being married to me really.

Tied onto the Wagon

How the mighty have fallen.  All my showing-off birthday shenanigans last week on top of not-properly-treated cystitis led to a little bit of an internal crisis for me last weekend.  Now I can nearly laugh at myself doing rigorous pilates accompanied by a glass of champagne on Saturday night, thinking I had put my back out dancing on the table the night before, when actually my kidneys were being ravaged by e-coli.  Oops.

So, I find myself five days later on the second course of kick-arse antibiotics with the potential promise of another week's worth landing on me on Monday.  I think today I must finally be starting to feel a bit better as I have started pondering the absence of alcohol in my life.  I haven't had a drink for 5 days.  Five days.  I'm not lying to you when I say that the last time I reckon that happened was 1993.  I always drink, I love drinking, I drink too much and I'm not quite sure what to do now that I'm not drinking.

On the positive side of things I've decided that this definitely proves I'm not an alcoholic.  I reckon the 'proper' alcoholics would have drunk anyway over the last few days.  It really hasn't even crossed my mind until today.  Cross my mind it has now however with the promise of a sober weekend ahead and a definite four days before I can drink again; possibly eleven.

Stu's out tonight, lucky bastard.  Although, it's probably best as I'm a miserable MF at the moment.  I welled up when he was telling me about the Mexican restaurant he's going to pre-gig and the Margaritas he was going to drink.  Tact isn't his strongest point but still I think me crying over missed cocktails on a night out I wasn't even ever going on when I don't even drink Margaritas shows that I've got some issues.

I've just been interrogating Sam over a glass of water, (oh yes, no tea or coffee for me either), about what you are meant to do to entertain yourself when you don't drink.  She claims only to drink once a week, (can't say I've ever noticed, I'm obviously always too pissed), but has definitely cut down while she has a broken arm so that she doesn't break the other one.  Cinema or Bingo was all we could come up with, neither of which set me on fire with enthusiasm.

"I drink to make other people more interesting." - Ernest Hemingway.  Possibly, I agree with him.  I also tend to surround myself with fellow-boozers.  I can only think of two people I know that are tee-total and they tend to bore the arse off me, (don't worry, they aren't blog readers.)  Maybe that's just coincidence?  I think drink makes a lot of things more interesting; certainly it makes sitting in on your own and watching tele less tedious...

Samantha, (sorry love), also suggested that if being off the booze was distressing me so much then that obviously showed I had an issue with it and that I should maybe look at that.  I beg to differ.  I'm proving it.  I'm living the miserable sober life as a temporary emergency measure but the evening I'm properly better I have a date with a beautiful bottle of pink Lanson and a straw.  See, if I was a proper alkie I wouldn't wait until the evening.

Birthday Bubbles and Bodily Bits.

It was my birthday party last night.  Needless to say I'm teetering on the edge of impending death today having drunk my body weight in champagne and not crawled into my pit until 3am.  I've decided at 36 (!) I'm getting too bloody old for these shenanigans.

The party was in my kitchen, birds only.  I had the time of my life.  It started off oh so civilised with champagne, polite introductions and Waitrose canapés.  Within an hour however I was showing off the new underwear bought by my husband, trousers round my ankles whilst I paraded on my kitchen top.  I'm not shy, never have been, but as referred to in a previous blog post I thought the days had gone of me getting my bits out to all and sundry.  Apparently not.  I obviously just need more of a concrete reason these days.

A very old friend turned up as a semi-surprise from Hastings.  That's an impressive journey in one night.  She handed me a wrapped gift and I immediately asked "is it porn?" Randomly, it was.  The next half an hour was spent very happily with me getting my kit off (again) and recreating the pose on the front of the DVD.  Haven't watched the film but from the title and the pictures I'm pretty sure it focuses on gentlemen with an impressively sized particular area of their anatomy.

I love it when you are looking around a party and seeing people getting to know each other and thinking why isn't anyone very drunk yet?  Ten minutes later and people that were perfect strangers a couple of hours ago suddenly have their arms round each other and sharing their life histories.

We were dancing on the chairs and the tables to a classy combination of Rick Astley, Bros, Madonna and Kylie.  Apparently Agadoo was a step too far however and I was told it should be relegated to a playlist for the boys' birthdays instead.

My dear husband arrived into what he described as a 'war zone' about 12.45am.  I could be wrong but I doubt he has ever had so many drunken women draped all over him at the same time.  He said he was just hit by a wall of noise.  Everyone had been congratulating me all night on how clever I was getting my kids to sleep so early and to sleep through the party.  Stu obviously noticed when he arrived home that actually Zak was shouting at us to be quiet.  Oops.  Mother of the year.

My best mate Shelley and I walked each other home with a plastic glass of instant Pinot at 2.30am reminding each other how fucking fabulous and hilarious we were.  Having had a baby eight weeks ago I was seriously impressed with her staying power.  I bet she is having a just lovely time today however...

Another year older, none the wiser, slightly more pickled, cheerfully hanging.