Dressaholic

I have this thing about dresses. I keep buying them. And wearing them. You might call it an addiction. Could be worse, I suppose, could be handbags (expensive), or shoes (take up lots of room), or cocaine (don’t think I need elaborate), but with me it’s always been dresses. I have scores of them. Not quite sure why. I just found an old favourite hanging in the cellar behind a coat. Thought I must have left if behind in Paris in 2010. And, yes, there is an anecdote to go with that but it’s not nearly as exciting as it sounds.

Perhaps it’s because you don’t have to think with a dress, just put it on and you’re done… except for shoes/tights/leggings to go with it. With skirts and trousers you need something else. Well, you do if you don’t want to look pornographic while walking down the high street... And that something needs to match, or at least coordinate in some way and that’s too much thinking.

Problem is you tend to look all dressed up in a dress, like you made a special effort, which is ironic because chances are you just pulled the thing over your head. I’ve lost count of the times friends have asked me where I’m going. Oh to a lunch, I say, or, to see an old friend/brother/colleague/boyfriend…  It’s just too embarrassing to admit the sorry truth: I’m wearing this dress only to go home now, after dropping the kids at school, put the smelly bin bag out, sweep the floor, mess about on Facebook and then suddenly remember I need to put a wash on before rushing back to get the boys and panic buying something uninspiring for dinner on the way home. From Tesco Express.

But there is another reason I like dresses: jeans. They’re just too easy. Jeans masquerade as safety blankets, left unchecked they will rise up from the floor where you discarded them for the night (you see, you can do that with jeans), and smother you to death. Metaphorically speaking. At first you think you can handle them, just the one pair now and again at home with the husband or at weekends, or maybe socially, with food. Easy. Comfy. Don’t show stains. You might even kid yourself you’re going to alternate: best pair, boot pair, comfy pair. But if you're a mum at home, the day will come after a particularly bad night with the baby or when you’ve finally given up all pretence that you’re ever going back to work, when you reach for that crumpled pair, the ones lying on the floor from the night before, and never take them off. Ever. You spend the rest of your life wearing the faded ones from GAP with the slightly wider waistband, a bit baggier cut round the thighs…

And it’s the same with black. Don’t let it in. Don’t give it lifeblood. Once you allow one single ‘useful’ black cardigan or pair of ‘classic’ trousers into your wardrobe it’s like bindweed creeping across the hangers: an insidious inky crawl, choking the colour to death. Better to buy pretty dresses. They don’t have to be expensive, often cheaper than wearing two items. But not black dresses. Well, maybe just one or two for winter, to combine with coloured boots or shoes. But that’s it. Although, I have to admit, the dress I just rediscovered at the back of the cellar is black, mostly. Here it is it…

I bought it from a local independent dress shop, which, of course, has recently gone bust. It was about sixty quid and my friend Debbie says it’s not a dress: it’s a top. I wore it as a mini with black tights and green high-heeled shoes to a birthday thing two years ago then I took it to Paris, thought I’d lost it and just found it again searching high and low for raincoats to take camping. No idea how it got there and don't really care. Hooray for the soggy weather, I say.

Now, which dress shall I wear tomorrow to take the car for its M.O.T? Weather forecast says sunny. Could be that floaty fifties number with the red flower sprays (Warehouse: £55), it's my current favourite.

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Vaseline for the nuts

I’m applying vaseline to the garden so that the tits can get at the nuts. I know what you’re thinking, I’m just being crude for the sake of it but honestly I’m not. It’s the squirrels. And it’s war.

The strange thing is that when Middle One, eating his morning cereal at the breakfast table and watching me banging on the kitchen window and shaking my fist at my fluffy tailed nemeses, pondered in a tone all bemused and rational: “Mummy, why are you perfectly happy to feed one type of creature but not another?” he stopped me dead in my tracks. Because that’s exactly what I used to say to my Grandfather when he went bonkers about the squirrels stealing his bird feed.

Am I turning into my Grandfather, I wonder?

“It’s not that I mind them taking the nuts,” I replied, sounding reasonable (I had to make considerable effort). “It’s just that they’re chewing through my lovely wooden bird feeder shaped like a little house that I bought at the Chelsea Flower Show. (All true.)

So, later I googled: “poisonous to squirrels” and up popped a whole list of websites catering for people with a murderous loathing for the little critters. There really is something for everyone out there in Internet land. And that’s not what I intended. I don’t want to kill a squirrel, and certainly not in the name of feeding a few birds. I merely want to deter it/them from attacking my little wooden house with the slate roof that’s hanging prettily from the magnolia tree.

Cayenne pepper! It said further down, just below all the support groups for squirrel haters. Exactly the sort of top tip I was looking for. Squirrels can’t abide it apparently and birds don’t give a fig. Perfect. So I shook some liberally all over the peanuts… and the bird feeder. Job done. Or so I thought. But the wretched furry rats were back at it, gnawing the wooden corners, the very next morning.

More banging on the window…

What I need is something to stick the cayenne pepper to the corners of the feeder, I thought to myself, taking up the challenge with a worrying sort of geriatric tenacity. And that’s where the vaseline comes in. I mixed up a marvellous paste of the stuff: petroleum jelly infused with cayenne pepper. Yum. And now it’s working a treat. The garden is squirrel free … and full of tits (no sniggering at the back).

Okay, so it may seem a touch eccentric, not to say a little desperate, but it must run in the family because now I come to think of it I remember what my Grandfather resorted to in his frenzied quest to stop the squirrels climbing up the rather grand bird feeder that stood in the middle of his immaculate lawn: he greased the pole with engine oil - and I don’t even think it worked.

You just can’t fight that sort of genetic destiny.

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Spooky

23.50. Yawning. Sitting on the sofa. Crap on TV, desperate to go to bed. Saturday night. Watching the clock. Taxi booked to bring Eldest home from a party at midnight. What time can I expect him at the door? Quarter past? Twenty past? Then I can go to sleep… I could go now, husband already up there. Slip between cool silky sheets. Keep the phone beside me. Listen for the door...

No. I’ll nod off. Won’t know if he’s back. Will awake suddenly, hours or minutes or possibly days later. Stiff neck. Silent house. Not knowing. So I carry on watching the crap.

00.00. At least the taxi driver has his number. Not ours. Learnt from that mistake last week. Phone rang in the bedroom. Husband grabbed it. Not fully awake. Listened to the voice on the other end. Leapt out of bed, stark naked. (Don’t tell him I said. Invading his privacy). Rushed to the window. Peered out between curtains into the dark where only foxes and low life roam at such hours in south London. Tells me there’s a taxi out there waiting... somewhere.

It’s booked to pick up Eldest in Clapham, I say, exasperation seeping through the cracks in my patience. The taxi company has got it wrong. I told them the car was for our son. Told them to phone him when outside the party. Gave them his number. They have phoned us instead. Obviously. Predictably. There is no taxi outside our house. Husband goes back to bed, huffing and puffing.

00.05. That was last week. This week I get Eldest to ring and book it himself, for midnight. That’s five minutes ago. Great! He should be in the car. I text: are you in the car? No reply.

00.10. I get a text: just getting in the taxi now. 


Great!

00.15. Yawn. Watch the clock. Turn off TV. Plump sofa cushions. Sit back down. Stare at goldfish… that bowl needs cleaning.

00.20. Pick up paper. Read a bit. Put it down. Yawn. Watch the clock. Text again. No reply. Get up. Walk to door. Listen… foxes in the street.

00.25. I get a text: just leaving the party now. 


What! How can he be just leaving the party now when he said he was getting in the taxi five minutes ago? I text back: what!

00.30. I get a text: sorry, someone is being sick. I’m the only sober one to look after her. 


Great.

00.35. Phone the taxi company. Are you waiting for my son, outside the party? No. He sent us away. Said he wasn’t ready yet, to come back in ten. There is no taxi waiting outside the party. I re-book it, I apologise. I tell them to go back. Please. If they wouldn’t mind. Thank you. Very much.

Not yawning anymore. Very cross. Very tired. Want to go to bed.

00.40. Text Eldest: I have re-booked taxi. Get someone else to help girl. An adult?!!! Get in the taxi I am sending back for you. You are behaving like a spoilt brat!

Good. Feel better. Vented my spleen.

00.45. Look down at the text. It is flying into the ether on its way to Eldest. Predictive setting has reworked it. It does not say spoilt brat anymore. It says spooky brat. “You are behaving like a spooky brat!”

Kind of spoils the effect.

00.50. Smiling. Laughing. Not yawing. Saying spooky brat out loud to myself again and again in the hall.

01.05. A knock at the door. Quiet. Nervous. I kiss him. I embrace him. He embraces back. He smiles. I smile. He goes to bed. I go to bed.

01.15. I yawn. I lie awake in the dark. Look at the clock. Not sleepy. Not sleeping. Listen to foxes outside in the street. Screaming.

01.20. Won’t bother with taxis in future. Will stay up and go and get him myself. Not worth the bother. Too expensive. Too spoilt. Too spooky. Yawn.

Here Comes the Sun

Something is pulling the floating threads of my mind back together. They were wandering deliciously free only a few moments ago, doing silly and unfeasible things, like talking to field mice while spooning marshmallows from tiny egg cups into my children’s open mouths.

I’m trying to send it back again, from whence it came. I don’t want it. I like it here deep in my psyche. Go away! But this alarm is pitiless: a mother’s sixth sense, the strong arm of consciousness. It reaches right in to where I’m weak and soft and vulnerable, asleep in this cozy tent, yanking me back to reality.

A field in Sussex in the middle of the night and there’s a noise I should know. Not the deafening ferocity of rain hitting tent top - although this is the sound I register first - because that’s obviously been there all along. No, this is something new, something alarming. But for now it seems to have stopped...

Ah yes! We’ve come camping for the weekend with friends. Memory floods back in like rainwater down an overflow pipe. Youngest was keen but not still very well, with an eye infection. Middle One was grumpy because he didn’t want to go in term time. Eldest was happy-go-lucky because exams are over and his job as a runner in Soho has come to an end with all that lovely wonger in his bank account. He’s going to buy a new guitar, he says, and strummed us some lovely tunes on the old one by the campfire. Middle One can play too but not as well as his brother, yet, so he watched and sang a bit but mostly just watched. I asked for more Beatles and suggested Eldest learns Here Comes the Sun when we get home because, you never know, it might help with this shocking rain…

And now, lying here in this ridiculously narrow double sleeping bag, being jolted every time husband shifts position, I remember it all. The incredible amount of washing, shopping, packing, loading, driving. Followed by the incredible amount of unpacking, tent-erecting, bed-inflating, bickering, drinking, eating, smiling, joking. The lovely meal last night cooked on open fire, eaten in the farmer’s barn because of the rain, with the battery fairy lights I brought with us to see by, along with the candles supplied by friend, then snuggling under canvas for a lovely long sleep… And then I hear it again and realise what that noise is: vomiting.

I sit up, pencil straight on the airbed, catapulting husband a few inches into the air. “Youngest!” I exclaim with utter certainty “Being sick.” And unzip our pod for a better listen. Nothing. Husband groans, then he listens too. We’re used to this: sixteen years of this (not all the time, obviously). We even had a child vomiting the night after Youngest was born at home and had to change all his sheets, twice. That’s why this particular sound slices through even into the very depths of a wonderful drinking, eating, walking, pub-lunching, barn-dinning induced sleep: because I’ve heard it so many times before.

And then I hear it again, the unmistakable sound of retching, followed by a voice somewhere out in the rain, “are you okay?” It’s not coming from our tent. It’s not Youngest. It’s lovely friend nearby in her tent with her husband attending, having a much worse night than me. Poor thing.

So I go back to sleep and in the morning the rain briefly stops and we have the best fry up I’ve ever had the pleasure of wolfing down (except for poor friend, who only has toast), while standing in a field, and then we do more chatting and smiling in the drizzle and then an incredible amount of packing and loading and some driving, followed by an incredible amount of unloading and unpacking and washing and then some cooking and a bit more bickering, just for good measure, and Middle One goes upstairs and I hear him teaching himself to play Here Come The Sun on his guitar because, you never know, it might help with this dreadful weather and also, maybe, because I asked his brother to learn it.

Eldest's bedroom on the last day of his GCSEs: time for a tidy up now I think.

Crying over spilt syrup

There are little drips of something all down the hall. Maybe it’s water, I think to myself optimistically. I have to be optimistic: I washed that floor only yesterday because the cleaner didn’t come, because there was a seven-hour power cut, because some workman down the road accidentally cut the cable. No power, no hoover, no point paying for the cleaner, I thought. So I cleaned the house myself when the power came back on, on Friday night and then a bit more on Saturday morning, which sounds like a film - only with rather more mop action, and less sex.

I don’t have time to investigate the drips right away because I need to put Youngest to bed, a protracted affair under normal circumstances but even more so at the moment since he contracted his second ear infection in the space of three weeks. Now the bedtime routine begins with the dose of antibiotic (second round), followed by the Actimel to wash the revolting taste away before the lengthy application of verruca gel to the many verrucas on his feet (proof right there, as if any were needed, of his low immunity) and then, lastly, the inhalers, blue and brown, before finally we collapse into his bed for the story.

I have to read the story at the moment because it’s Wind in the Willows, my favourite. I’ve got a great voice for Toad, all lisping with a soft 'r' and totally exhausting. In fact, I’ve got so carried away as the various characters that when Mole smelt his home again and Ratty didn’t notice and carried gaily on down the road, back to the river, after they’d just been to the Wild Wood and met Badger, and Mole began to quietly sob to himself, I had tears streaming down my face. Youngest was transfixed, caught somewhere between awe and horror, I think. At least, that’s what I hope he was caught between; he could well have been thinking that his mother is a lunatic, which I suppose I might be looking at the recent evidence.

You see it wasn't an isolated incident. I started sobbing while watching the BBC Proms as well. It was Mendelssohn’s violin concerto and it reminded me of my second year at university when I used to play it all the time on my old portable record player in that damp little house near the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital, when all the future was ahead of me and life still had possibilities and my heart had just been broken… But that’s another story. And it also reminded me of my Grandfather who introduced me to that piece of music and who is, of course, now long dead. I think it was played at his funeral. And we really loved each other, my Grandfather and I. So that made me cry too.

It was maple syrup, those drips on the hall floor. I realised this as I stepped in them when finally I got downstairs again after the verruca gel and the inhalers and sobbing with Mole and Ratty down on the River Bank, and it really wouldn’t have mattered much, that Eldest had obviously spilt it there while carrying his plate to the living room to eat his pancakes in front of the television before leaving the house to go to his GCSE exam, if I hadn’t left it for just that little bit longer and gone to sit down in front of the Proms.

Because then I forgot about it and later, much later, when I was carrying all the washing, after Youngest had come downstairs three times, all hot and emotional and exhausted to say he couldn’t get to sleep because Eldest was making too much noise (again), so that I had to take him back up and lie down next to him and stroke his brow and try to calm him down, lots of sand fell out of Middle One’s pocket. He’s been on a week long school trip to France, you see, and came back with a case full of the stuff, which I cleverly (or so I thought) emptied out in the garden so as not to get it all over the house, because I’d just cleaned it. But I’d neglected to turn out all the pockets.

So then there was sand stuck in the maple syrup drips all over the hall floor, which, quite frankly, just for a moment there, really made me want to cry. Again.

Building Blocks: Part 1

Middle Child is going away on a school trip to France at the end of the half term holiday. In the intervening time, nearly a week, he sits around the house all day going on Facebook or watching the telly, or doing both at the same time.

Older brother is ‘revising’. Younger brother is going up north for a couple of nights to stay with his cousins at his grandparent’s house. I have to take him on the train, a seven-hour round trip door to door in one day. And I have a stinking cold and a dodgy tummy. It would have been great if Middle One could have gone too, but they can’t manage four children with such a broad spread of ages so Middle One roams the house and tells me he’s bored and it drives me half crazy. Go and see a friend, I say. Ring someone. Go out. Walk to the park. Read your book. Go to a shop. Catch a movie. Go swimming. Come out with me. But he doesn’t want to do any of these things, his answer to everything is the same: can’t be bothered.

What he does want to do is talk about science and the universe and martial arts and the Mandarin and geography and Sherlock Holmes. He has question after question, none of which I can answer. It makes me feel inadequate. And he wants to do experiments with dangerous chemicals. All I want is an afternoon to myself to write followed by a nice sit down with a cup of tea and a read of the paper.

A few days before he’s due to go on the trip we start getting things together. Sailing shoes, a rash vest, six t-shirts, three towels… the list from school goes on and on. I leave him and Eldest at home and go shopping, ticking things off the list as I find them. Then the next day I go shopping again for the things I didn’t tick off the first time. On the Friday before he is due to go I start to label and pack. I get him to help. He says he needs a packed-tea for the twenty-hour coach journey and he wants sushi. “Only if you can be bothered to come with me to get it,” I say. So this time he comes, actually out of the house!

We choose some sushi in Waitrose, then we select some fruit and some drink and some crisps and some bread rolls, and other things I need, and he helps and he chats and I’m so glad he’s not in the house anymore. We got to Smith's to buy his magazine and after that I suggest lunch, a snack at a café, and to my surprise he agrees. He doesn’t want to just go straight home as I expect, so we sit in the café eating and chatting some more and he tells me things, about school, about the subjects he’s interested in, about the origin of martial arts, about why he is keen to learn one, and I listen. And I watch. And then suddenly I realize that I’m so happy; happy to be out with him, together, just being friends, because that’s what he is now, instead of just my child, my son. He’s my friend.