Heartiest felicitations people. Sunny Suffolk and I welcome you. Half Term is all but over and I for one would like another week off. It seems all too soon I have to pack us up and get back to the big smoke and the school run. Even though some of the meals have been decidedly alternative and there hasn't always been a cold diet coke in the fridge and I have watched Lewis (Poirot is temporarily unavailable) every night for about five days in a row, it has been a jolly nice week and the children are as happy as pigs in muck.
I have had quite a rest in comparison to my usual day to day life and have even had the chance to frequent my favourite clothes shop, (Asda - the glamour!) and am now the proud owner of something called the 'jegging'. They have been around for a number of years but I have always thought they were a slippery slope. The legging is a fat girls best friend after all - they are cheap, comfortable, make dresses possible and most importantly they are extremely stretchy - which is why they are such a problem. No one ever grows out of a pair of leggings or bemoans their weight gain because they can no longer fit in to their favourite pair. They simply buy some more. So I was extremely wary of owning something that could be worn as a jean but is as comfortable as a legging. I was right to worry - they are extremely comfortable and give you the mistaken belief that you are not 'that' fat. The last time I was hideously fat I remember eyeing up my 80+ year old neighbour's 'house dress' in all its polyester glory and marvelling at how comfy it must be and thinking to ask her where she bought them. It was at that point that I realised that I absolutely must lose the weight. I am hoping a similar thing will happen now that I have given in and am effectively cavorting around in what Joey would refer to as 'Thanksgiving pants' or maternity jeans by any other name. They are as hideously unflattering as leggings at the top end and give me what I call an 'American tummy bum' (I think it is also rock bottom for me as far as looks go). I hope that all of these things combined will MAKE me take serious action against the forces of evil who have clearly invaded my body and are making me continue to over eat much against my will. I had my tarot cards read today at a village fete and the tarot reader was extremely convinced that Now was the time to start on a life change as there is a significant shift in my emotional state, so I shall trust in the cards and hope this really is as bad as it gets weight wise. I am getting incredibly bored with a. complaining about it b. lugging it around everywhere c. the bad back it is giving me and d. having so little choice when it comes to clothing. Not that I go anywhere that requires nice clothing but it would still be nice to know that they were there.
Although before we left for the half term I WAS treated to my third night out sans enfants in ten months. Third night out and second school quiz but this time it was the turn of the Junior School and a change of main meal - fish and chips not curry - so a dramatically different night out for me. Another key change in pace was the relative ease of the quiz questions, which I had assumed would be better, but it actually wasn't as much fun. Random guessing and trying to work out answers 'bonds' a team together whereas everyone knew what Y.O.L.O stood for (how topical my last post was..) so there wasn't a need for heated discussion or personal anecdotes. There was an hilarious exchange between me and one woman on our team who had no knowledge of the Kardashians and assumed I was talking about Doctor Who when I mentioned them (I am not really a sci fi person in the slightest so I didn't understand that we were talking at cross purposes for quite a while and had no idea that a person can go about life without knowing of The Kardashians in even the most vaguest of ways so it never occurred to me that we weren't 'on the same page'). Still, I know better than to be judgemental on a person's general knowledge. I watched Eurovision with The Replacement and K and it turns out that my general knowledge surrounding the European countries is ridiculously low - they were quite shocked to discover that I had no idea that The Netherlands and Holland are in fact, one in the same. Who knew? I have spent my 30 odd years believing they were two separate countries. I also referred to the Swedish hosts as The Swiss (I did realise my mistake but it was too late by then - they had heard me and wouldn't let me take it back). I also innocently suggested that Ikea might be sponsoring the entire pre-results show/extravaganza because it was all branded in Ikea colours, that particular blue and yellow. K paused for comedic effect before calmly informing me that that particular blue and yellow were the colours of the Swedish flag and therefore that is why the show/extravaganza were all based upon them. I blame Geography lessons at school. It was in a very boring classroom and one of the teachers was a total mad woman so I never bothered to listen or learn anything about countries. I do remember ox bow lakes, why rivers have bends in them and about volcanoes and earthquakes - all the interesting stuff. I think extremely early on I realised there was a huge number of countries in the world and I shut down my brain to anything concerning them. It has only recently become solid knowledge to me that Vietnam is not in South America. I have NO IDEA how/why I managed to place it there but somewhere many moons ago my brain managed to connect the dots that it was the Americans who went to war with Vietnam and therefore I placed this country in a convenient continent south of them - I suppose I assumed it was near Colombia if I was pressed on the precise location. I have even watched a number of Vietnam films (back in the days when I 'studied' film as part of my English degree and didn't just watch The Proposal and 50 First Dates over and over again) and I never twigged/computed that my mental world map was incredibly flawed. Still, I now know the error of my ways so I shan't be passing on my mistakes to the children and I shall ensure that I am incredibly circumspect about answering any future geographical questions they might ask. I'm not sure it is entirely down to stupidity/laziness though - Bea watched a programme today about something called Face Blindness - a horrid sounding thing where your brain fails to recognise faces so you can't pick your own mother out of a line up without help - and I can't help but think that I have Geographical blindness - even though I have looked at various globes, maps, films over the years absolutely none of it has sunk in. Although I have an excellent sense of direction and am very capable at map reading too but clearly one can't be perfect at everything. A propensity to obesity and geographical blindness are pretty small fry in the grand scheme of things.
Other than that there is very little to report. Aside from a hideous tooth extraction in the dentist's chair (G), a Hip Hop dance exam (Bea) and nettle sting and a new Spiderman outfit (Ted) life has remained fairly unchanged. I shan't bore you with yet more tales of illness but there has inevitably been those too. And that is pretty much that. The mother who doesn't want me to live next door to her has had a small change of heart after the hideous events that unfurled in Woolwich before we arrived. Woolwich isn't especially close to our SE23 idyll but it does share the SE part of our post code and is where the ingenious powers-that-be want to send us to receive emergency health care and maternity services after they shut our excellent local hospital services so it would inevitably become somewhere we see more of as time goes on. This information has worried her sufficiently so that she now thinks it might be a good idea for us to move to the sticks after all. Although K is still a massive stumbling block so it is sadly unlikely to happen any time soon so I shall still need my country holiday home for a while to come.
Toodlepip mis amigos. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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