"Ugly goes clean to the bone"

 No object is so beautiful that, under certain conditions, it will not look ugly. Oscar Wilde


I am spitting proverbial chips.


We have in our little friendly town a  healthclub.  The constant push for new members displayed on banners outside is testament to the fact that healthclubs and recessions are not the best bedfellows; indeed, it seems to have met the economic downturn in the fashion of Oops-We're-Getting-A-Bit-Grotty. Still, the posters insist all is, apparently, Better Now.  The swimming pool has had a lick of paint. They've removed the lacerating tiles from the showers.  That sort of thing. Lovely.

However.

I was given, for my birthday, a voucher to use in the spa.  Now, it is not the useful kind of spa, where you can have fun in mud and plunge daringly into icy pools, but a beauty spa.  Where they paint your nails and rip your hair out and stuff. I am not really a beauty spa kind of person, surprising at that might seem to those of you who know me for my dedication to glamorous grooming (lets be clear - I write this in jeans and welly socks, with compost streaks across my hands and no doubt under my nails too and it genuinely doesn't bother me that much, really). And my beauty-spa-reluctance is not not just for financial reasons (how MUCH to rub salt into me?) but also because I find it somewhat eerie to spend an hour to the soundtrack of something panpipey. On top of that, you know, they actually do scare me a bit, these places. So I find I approach them with the same trepidation that I approach mechanics; knowing with dread that they are going to ask me something I absolutely don't understand  and roll their eyes, ever so faintly, at my ignorance.

But finally, (I shouldn't say it, I know, but I can't resist) in the case of this particular spa, I baulk somewhat at putting my appearance into the hands of "experts" who squint blankly at you from behind orangey skintones and clumpy eyelashes and tappy nails.  As a composite whole, it does not, I feel, bode well. A bit akin to a restaurant trying to attract custom by advertising rotten food. Or me trying to encourage my students by speaking to them in, say, Turkish. Miaow, I know, and, before anyone says it,  since my nails are now having a gleeful and unexpected outing,  it's almost a shame they are not manicured. But, anyway,  I digress.

I received a voucher for my birthday for said spa and I DID have every intention of using it.  After all, it would be something a bit different and for every panpipe moment you are in there, it is a moment you are not being shrieked upon and that, in itself, should make for a rather super hour.

I dug out said voucher today and noticed, horror of horrors, that it expired yesterday.  I thought it was 6 months from my birthday but no.  Yesterday.  "Don't worry," R said "You're a member who's spent a small fortune in there over the past 6 years.  They'll understand. It's only a day."

Of course they would, I thought, sensibly and gave them a call.

I got a receptionist.  She sighed.  "It's past its date, " she said.  "It's expired, like."

I was polite.  "It only expired yesterday and to be honest, we've had a few tricky months. And I am a member.  Is there anything you can do?"

I got sighed at again.  And then silence. I waited.

She eventually said, after another sigh, that she'd Ask the Spa Directly.  She Asked the Spa Directly and came back to tell me the Spa Said No, Directly.  I said, still politely, that I'd rather like to Ask the Spa Directly too, and received my 4th sigh. 

But she did at least put me through.  Where I got puffing sigh number 5.

"It's past its date," said Spa Manager, after I'd explained that it was, er, past its date.

"I understand that, but I thought it was six months from my birthday so..."

"It's past its date." (How does one write accent in Roman?  "Spast its dai'"  Like that, anyhow)

"Well only by a day. Is there nothing you can do?"


Sigh.  Tut.

"What's the reference number?"


I checked.  "There isn't one.  It's been left blank."

"SO 'ow do I know when it's been bought then?  If you 'aven't got a reference?"

"Sorry, do you mean it's ME that should have written a reference on this voucher when I, er, received it as a present?  A reference for your records?"

Tut.  And huff.  And another sigh



Patient Voice.  "Look. It's past its date.  If you take a voucher up Tescos and its past its date, you wouldn't get anyfink so why should we give you it?"

I pointed out that I do not actually pay Tesco 50 pounds a month; that I have not spent a small fortune over the past 6 years on creche and coffees, personal training and swimming lessons.  I have not recommended friends to spend THEIR money in Tesco and I am not someone Tesco should be keen to hang on to, while they sweat out a period of time when people really have no cash for their particular luxury.

"All right, Debenhams then."

I'm sorry?

I could go on here, but there's no point - the rest of the conversation continued in the same vein, with Spa lady being rigidly unhelpful and me scratching my head trying to understand WHY anyone would treat any customer with such blatant, basic derision.

Because it WASN'T the words she used or her bizarre comparisons to Tesco/Debenhams that made me so spikey under the collar.

It was the tone of sneering boredom. The agressive choice of "Look" as a sentence adverbial.  The tuts.  The sighs.  The slowing of speech in implication of my thickness. The fact that she made no apology for inflexibility and not one jot of effort to be friendly.  And, with my own tone of somewhat dumbstruck politeness maintained throughout, I hadn't even been rude.  Grrr to the woman.  Really.



I know we are not, as a nation, famed for our customer service, although granted, that depends on where you come from: I have American friends who despair of our unhelpfulness and Turkmen friends who profess themselves delighted by our eagerness to please. (Note to self - ask Turkmen friends where on earth they go shopping and go there myself)  But on a personal level at least, shouldn't one be ashamed to be so, well, bloody horrible?

"If we did it for you, we 'ave to do it for everyone" was her final unconsidered response.

Dear girl. I urge you.  DO, please do.  Do to everyone what you did to me.  Speak to all your customers like that. Treat them all as committed cretins on the scrounge for a free deal.  Huff and puff and tut and sigh at them, as you have just done to me.

Because there's a lovely little place in Virginia Water called TOTAL BLISS.  (2 The Parade
Trumpsgreen Rd, Virginia Water GU25 4EH 01344 842643) They are terribly nice in there, they don't sigh at you and I've never yet heard a panpipe.

You would, I'm sure, be doing them a great favour. And it's good to be kind to people.  ISN'T it?

Afterthought
GOOD Golly.  Fancy ME recommending a Beauty Salon.  Who'd have thought.

Manslaughter, mental damage, slovenliness and hypocrisy...all before bedtime.

All hell broke loose in the bathroom tonight.  I had nipped out of the bathroom oh-so-briefly to hang school uniform on the radiator in a newly aquired smug-habit of Readiness for Tomorrow, when my ears were split by a  hollerscreech of fear, closely followed by the sound of scrabbling and splashing and the arrival of two wet, terrifed children, and one wet, astonished dog.

It turns out that there had been a spider in the bath.  But, as the two battled desperately for sanctuary space on my lap, I was made to understand -  NO ordinary spider had he been.  He had, apparently, been a spider of "the very worst sort, Mummy", a spider who used our skiing break last week to go on exercise in our bathtub, with the sole intention of the perfect attack. How it had lurked, sniggering, behind the shower head and waited until they were both engrossed with their rubber shark game and how it had dropped, "cackling a witch laugh" into the water where it had "torpedoed, Mummy,torpedoed along the bottom of the bath", - yes, there's more - "with jaws snapping and fangs gnashing and arms waving like a wild beasty thing" (this was all coming from the 5 year old - the 3 year old merely hiccuped and sobbed and nodded insistently along, with saucer-eyes of doom).  It had then leapt with a roar onto to knee of the older one, "dug in its nails to heave itself out of the water to chomp them in THEIR THROATS..."

I stopped it here, and went to rescue the poor little creature. And while it wriggled resignedly and drew its final spider breath in the shampoo cap lifeboat that had arrived too late, I explained that, here, in England, we don't have to be scared of spiders.  That, I told them, is for people like J and B, in Australia.  Here, spiders are Our Friends.

The dog sighed at me.  She always thinks she knows better in these situations.

"But Mummy, " came the response "it WASN'T an English spider.  It must have been SENT, Mummy, by the Taliban, or North Korea or Germany."

It's an interesting point.  How on earth does my 5 year old know enough about this big bad world to  have registered  the Taliban and the North Koreans as a vague threat to his safety, and why, WHY, lob them in with the poor Germans?

I asked him, casually, what he thought the Taliban, and North Korea were.  North Korea, he told me, is a horrible place where you can't get away and it has a (hushed voice) SECRET police.  Pretty spot on, and probably my fault.  (Blog Critic has already accused me of an "unhealthy interest" in the DPRK and I may well have talked about it in the range of small twitching ears, especially with the delicious arrival of my new Barbara Demick book on the same, just this morning, but more on that later).  The Taliban, he said after a while, are baddies from...he wasn't sure.

France,  insisted the 3 year old, the Taliban are from France and France has some good people like her nursery teacher but the rest are Taliban.  They sing a song about it at nursery; that's how she knows.* 

*NB I probably won't follow this up.  She told me once she'd learnt  an"Engleesh pig dogs" song from nursery school, but it turned out, thankfully, to be the influence of Horrible Histories instead)

The 5 year old scoffed.  The Taliban do not live in France, he was sure of that - they live in Talibanistan and they are bad because they want to steal all the flowers.

Hmm.  Poppy fields?  I don't know.  But I was worried.  They surely shouldn't be fretting about such things at their age - at THEIR age, they should be stressing about ghouls behind the bedroom door, and monsters under the bed.

Stupidly, I said as much.  They stared.

"There are m-m-m-m-monsters?  Under my BED?!" the eldest wailed before dissolving again.  "And GHOSTS-behind my DOOR?" the youngest followed suit and clung to the dog, who gave me a Look to say she would not have been so daft herself.

It took a  long time to settle them tonight.  And I had to crawl under both beds, twice, with the French policeman's truncheon that we have lying around, for precisely these monster-hunting moments, it now seems.

And HECK, there's a lot of dust under those beds.  So today, I have once again failed gloriously on all fronts, it seems: motherhood, housekeeping and spider rescue.

And I didn't even get to ask them about Germany.

AFTERTHOUGHT

I have also been a bit of a fraud.  Because as I insisted, somewhat impatiently, that to be scared of spiders was actually rather silly, and that they would just have to learn to deal with it, (I know, I know, but they had swung the lead way past their bedtime and my serenity had expired along with the faceful of dust) I had to remember how, only yesterday, I had practically sumo-wrestled a valium tablet from A on the tarmac at Innsbruck airport.  If anyone had told me then that my fear was a bit "silly" and I should just learn to deal with it, I probably would have punched them.

Oh well, they may know about the Taliban but it'll be a long time till they'll understand the word hypocrite. One hopes.

Yes, but what IS shabby chic?

"Will it be the same in the future? Will the prized treasures of to-day always be the cheap trifles of the day before? Will rows of our willow- pattern dinner-plates be ranged above the chimneypieces of the great in the years 2000 and odd? Will the white cups with the gold rim and the beautiful gold flower inside (species unknown), that our Sarah Janes now break in sheer light-heartedness of spirit, be carefully mended, and stood upon a bracket, and dusted only by the lady of the house?"

Jerome K Jerome, Three Men in a Boat (1889)

I'm far too tired to think much today but I was slightly diverted by driving past a Posh Shop in a Posh Village nearby which had a blackboard loitering casually outside with the words "We Can Make Your Furniture Shabby".

Really? And for how much?  Some questions burn into your brain if they go unasked, so at the risk of Being Late For Everything today, I popped in.

The woman behind the counter appraised me, decided, rightfully, that I was not an Interiors' Savante with a Hedgefund Hubby and went back to reading Psychologies.

So I looked around the shop.  The emphasis was delightfully odd.  "Vintage Jelly Mould - Once Owned!" shrieked one sign. "Genuine 1970 tea-towels" gushed another, sitting above a pile of white tea-towels emblazoned with the word GLASSCLOTH, just like they used in the church hall when I was a kid.  But oh, very prettily tied up with a ribbon, and, er equally prettily priced.  And then, my absolute FAVOURITE - "Vintage garden string!".  Which was a ball of, yes, string in a dusty looking wooden box, labelled (sit down) £15.00.

Now.  What's going on?  What DOES "Vintage Jelly Mould - Once owned!" actually mean?  Because to my un-designer ears, it sounds rather akin to "Second Hand."  Which is fine.  But when the price tag has been increased five-fold due to its terribly fashionable "Once Owned" status, I rather feel that, somewhere around, there struts a rather chilly and gullible Emperor.

"Erm, your sign" I asked frosty shop lady who didn't answer.  I dared further; "What do you MEAN exactly?"
She breathed audibly at me.  "We re-allocate style to a piece of furniture in line with the recent trends" she said.
"Which are...?" I ventured
"Glorious," she replied, and added "IF you understand style", while writing £25 in beautiful itallics on a creased brownpaper package label, probably destined for a genuine 1970s retro HB pencil, Used By A Real Child...

Glorious indeed.  And since I have recently found myself rather more in need of cash than before, I think I too should, shall we say, make more of an effort to, well, understand style.

And with this in mind, I've come over all entreprenneurial. Firstly, I plan to speak to my Dad about starting a shop in his loft.  There is plenty of Genuinely Used Vintage stuff up there, and in REAL 1970's dust too. And secondly, I will be painting my own sign, offering to "Make Your Furniture Shabby".  Trust me, this is going to be cracking deal: you won't even have to do any moving.  All I will do is lend you my children, my dog and their friends for a weekend, and Bob's Your Uncle:  genuine shabbiness, for a price we can decide when I've worked out your household income.

She was right, you know, the woman in her shop.  It IS glorious, WHEN you understand.

And it IS odd to find yourself re-living something originally written by Harry Enfield...

PS If I HAVE offended anyone with my ignorance of interior design fashions, may I apologise and smooth the waters by pointing you to these 12 "weathered terracotta pots" sold on the Jamie Oliver site.  They are DOWN from 75 whole pounds to only 37.50! That's HALF price!!!  But if you get there too late, don't be overly disappointed; they do also sell them in the antique shop around the corner from here for 50p a pop...

Blog Critic, welcome back to you...

My Blog Critic has been quiet for a while but today he was back, with the air of one falsely aghast.  "I've been avoiding your blog since you were talking about dead chickens," he lied (and correction: hypnotised chickens, not dead - the proof is here) "but yesterday I braved myself, yes, BRAVED myself, to come back on and what do I get?  Shrunken heads. Horrific.  I was eating tea; a jacket potato actually.  About the size of a shrunken head.  So I couldn't eat it.  YOU spoiled my tea."

Blog Critic does enjoy his tea so I was momentarily apologetic.  I explained I wanted to write about something completely different to the weirdness of recent circumstance.

He launched into his well-rehearsed impersonation of Blog Critic, Outraged.

"YES, and about that!  All that wiffling about being tired and things being strange. I was bored! Get over it!  Blogs shouldn't be for sharing your soul - they should be informative, educational and exciting. I TOLD you that at the beginning. What on earth could be happening that would warrant other people wanting to read about your life?  Moan, moan, moan - that's what everyone does on a blog. I TOLD you" he added, with gleeful triumph "I TOLD you that you'd slide down the slippery slope into self-obsession..."

So I cut in and explained, briefly, what has happened over the past few days.  At the end of it, his phone got cut off.  Blog Critic has a busy life: he needs to watch his fish, and potter about a bit, and complain about my blog and he doesn't have time for charging mobiles.  But I did get a text.

"Bloody hell!" it read. "You should blog that..."

NOT in need of a shrink after all...

I just read that Knut Haugland had died and so in today's dog-walking reverie I was thrown back to the Kontiki and Thor Heyerdahl's absorbing account of the entire adventure.  I love the Kontiki Expedition,  although you know the outcome before you even start to read, and I always pretend that I would have jumped at the chance to be on board (this is a sham-thought, because even an Easyjet hop scares me into drink).

But there was one passage which particularly stays with me, and that is the brief reference, before they set off, to the jungle head shrinkers.  Thor and Herman are in Ecuaduor, looking for balsa for the raft, if I recall correctly; their Spanish guide warns them of the headshrinkers still lurking in the jungles they want to pass through, and tells them how his own friend had had his head shrunk.  I know it's a grisly subject but can you really not smile at this bit?

"One day this friend was killed in the jungle.  Jorge tracked down the murderer and threatened to shoot him.  Now the murderer was one of those who were suspected of selling shrunken human heads and Jorge promised to spare his life if he handed over the head at once.  The murderer at once produced the head of Jorge's friend, now as small as a man's fist.  Jorge was quite upset when he saw his friend again, for he was quite unchanged, except that he had become so very small.  Much moved, he took the little head home to his wife.  She fainted when she saw it and Jorge had to hide his friend in a trunk. But it was so damp in the jungle that clusters of green mould formed on the head so that Jorge had to take it out now and then and dry it in the sun.  It hung very nicely by the hair on a clothes line, and Jorge's wife fainted everytime she caught sight of it."

Thor Heyerdahl - The Kontiki Expedition,  (Flamingo 1992) p47

Of course, head shrinking really did go on. Heads were scraped out and filled with hot stones to reduce the fat.  Hot sand was poured into the hard-to-reach crevices, and so the head would shrink while maintaining all it's characteristics.  It really does turn you into a mini-you. Although it was originally done to ensure the soul of the enemy would remain in abyss and not be narked at you from the grave, it became quite a business once they realised tourists would pay money for these little heads of victims and take them home for, well, the mantlepiece, one assumes.

And guess what?  National Geographic have "genuine footage" of the head shrinking process, that you can watch, right now, from your kitchen table!   I'm not putting the actual film here because although I'm thinking about this today, I don't plan to think of it tomorrow, as, surely, to think about such a subject regularly would be very strange indeed.

However, back to the video, now I was beginning to worry.  I can think of someone who, currently, would quite possibly be rather partial to my head, shrunk, and it is not too comforting to see there are videos showing how to do it.   I was reassured to see, however, that they DO add a warning that this should not be tried at home. In this litigious world, I guess that is important.


If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you...

Rudyard Kipling

Oh how true.

AFTERTHOUGHT
If I do disappear and turn up, petite, in a fleamarket, please do buy me. I want pride of place on a mantlepiece somewhere.

Just when you think it's safe to go back into the water...

...you find it isn't.

It's been a long, long day.  I think I probably will get round to talking about what has just happened, at some point and in some regard, but tonight I am shattered.  A different shattered to where I was when meningitis was in full swing, I must say, because I have concentrated on the idea of keeping perspective in a wider picture, and it does actually work. We are fine.  The kids are fine. The dog is fine.

But it has been a day to teach you that things you quietly bank on having can - CAN -  suddenly be taken away by, well, shall we say Nasty-Gnomes?  That some people honestly, seriously, wish you ill.  And that the ill that they wish upon you can be completely unexplained and undeserved.  And and AND... that there is not a jot you can do about it.

And does it matter? In our case, no, probably not, actually. We are not, after all in Haiti.

Sometimes I crave the stabilising effect of a certain piece of music but tonight Jerome K Jerome has come rushing to aid.  Now if there was EVER a ghost to have a pint with in the pub, for me, it would be him.  With George and Harris and a canine-ghost of Montmorency at our feet.

We had this read at our wedding.  And today I think it has waxed more relevant than ever before.

For those of you I've bumped into today, I Am SO sorry for looking grumpy.


"George said:‘You know we are on the wrong track altogether. We must not think of the things we could do with, but only of the things that we can’t do without.’

"George comes out really quite sensible at times. You’d be surprised. I call that downright wisdom, not merely as regards the present case, but with reference to our trip up the river of life generally. How many people, on that voyage, load up the boat till it is ever in danger of swamping with a store of foolish things which they think essential to the pleasure and comfort of the trip, but which are really only useless lumber.

"How they pile the poor little craft mast-high with fine clothes and big houses; with useless servants, and a host of swell friends that do not care twopence for them, and that they do not care three ha’pence for; with expensive entertainments that nobody enjoys, with formalities and fashions, with pretence and ostentation, and with—oh, heaviest, maddest lumber of all!—the dread of what will my neighbour think, with luxuries that only cloy, with pleasures that bore, with empty show that, like the criminal’s iron crown of yore, makes to bleed and swoon the aching head that wears it!

"It is lumber, man—all lumber! Throw it overboard. It makes the boat so heavy to pull, you nearly faint at the oars. It makes it so cumbersome and dangerous to manage, you never know a moment’s freedom from anxiety and care, never gain a moment’s rest for dreamy laziness—no time to watch the windy shadows skimming lightly o’er the shallows, or the glittering sunbeams flitting in and out among the ripples, or the great trees by the margin looking down at their own image, or the woods all green and golden, or the lilies white and yellow, or the sombrewaving rushes, or the sedges, or the orchis, or the blue forget- me-nots.

"Throw the lumber over, man! Let your boat of life be light, packed with only what you need—a homely home and simple pleasures, one or two friends, worth the name, someone to love and someone to love you, a cat, a dog, and a pipe or two, enough to eat and enough to wear, and a little more than enough to drink; for thirst is a dangerous thing.
Three Men in a Boat - Jerome K Jerome


Thirst IS a dangerous thing indeed.  Now, whose idea was it to have a dry January? Dramatic sigh. 

The hills are alive, with the sound of tutting...

See?  SEE?  Music will always ALWAYS make you feel better!

I have just stumbled on the phenomenon of the Complaints Choir. And it's a fascinating thing.  It seems that all you have to do is get together with a few tra-la-la-ing friends, a piano (or accordion if you are east of Prague), find a bit of space in a street, on a roof top, in a theatre and so on...and then you all sing heartily about things that annoy you.

I have found quite a bit of diversion this evening in looking around the performances of international complaints choirs, and discovering what's bugging them.  The Germans are annoyed by a road and complex tax calculations. The Russians about queues and salaries, the Finns about trees being chopped down for loo paper (when there STILL isn't enough loo paper, they warble) and the Chicagoans about all the single men being insane.  The Hungarians seem to me to be having the most fun with their rousing recitals about the annoyingness of Hungary (and why us foreignors use the word goulash. Well, hold on a moment here,  I thought it was Hungarian; it sounds Hungarian...maybe I'll write a song about sneaky words which sound Hungarian and aren't, and sing it right back atcha...) but that the Hungarians would have the most fun is no surprise, as I have long been of the suspicion that the Hungarians ALWAYS have a lot more fun than us (and that's another post).

Of COURSE we have one here and of course it's in Birmingham.  I wondered at first whether that might be in Alabama, but no, the first line of Sung-Brummy makes it very clear where they are... They don't seem to be enjoying themselves - Birmingham's changed, you know, and they don't get paid enough, they sing-  but I hope they are having some fun really, as the whole thing strikes me as a splendid idea.

So much is being said recently about the physical and psychological benefits of singing, and herewith a triple whammy.  You get together with a whole lot of other people (check), get to sing your head off with no real requirement for Talent Proper (check) and you get to let a few moans out into the open (check).

All I need now is for a Proper Psychologist to say it's a great thing, and I'd try and get one going myself.  Why does my milkman sometimes come at 9am when it's too late for cereal and coffee?  Why does he sometimes come at 5am and clash around and  make the dog bark?  Why do people get prosecuted for fighting off burglars in their own homes?  We didn't vote for Gordon, why is he there?  Why does the place round the corner think it can charge 4 quid for two foul tomatoes stuffed with a lump of feta and doused in tabasco?  And so on and so on...

Am off to the piano to compose.

I haven't had a minute to Blog Properly and I risk repeating myself here with this link, but I can't help it. The whole El Sistema story has rather inhabited my distracted mind of late.


Do you ever have the feeling your brain is reaching for something and you just can't quite get there? I do hope I work it out soon. This, then, is a very pointless post indeed, for after all, whoever wants to hear someone else thinking aloud in such a pithy fashion?

This film, however, looks like being the complete opposite of pointless. If I could only find somewhere that sold it.

Now you see me, now you kind of don't...

Every now and then, when everything is getting too shouty, I do hide behind the curtains in the front room in the hope of Five Seconds Peace (when you're an adult, people rarely look for you behind curtains) but now I've seen Liu Bo Lin's artwork I think I may have been getting it wrong.  What I NEED to do, actually, on occasions of necessary crypsis, is to carefully paint myself into a crafty camoflauge with my surroundings.

To be honest, from looking round me at the moment, all I'd have to do is cover myself in sketches of discarded toys, socks and dog hair, and I'd pretty much be there.

But anyway, Liu Bo Lin's utterly mind-boggling artwork had me sitting in open-mouthed wonder for a good few minutes today and surely that IS worth a post?!!

Liu Bo Lin: Beijing camouflage artist

Do do doooo check him out on google images - it's superbly diverting!

Brazil. Nuts?

The more I hear about Brazil, the more I want to go there; that is the purely the fault of C with her amazing stories and pots of guava paste for my cheese, and P and his superbly delectable feijoada.  Quite annoying.  A year ago I could think "Brazil" and move on, but now I think "Brazil, when oh when will I EVER get there in this life of Children and Dogs and One Salary?" and start feeling disconsolate and itchy-feetish.  I really, really want to go.


Well, this has kept me going this evening.  I don't speak Portuguese but, with some clinging to Latinate familiarity, it seems to uneducated me that the point of it might be to encourage one to, er, save water?

Come on, Brazilians.  Enlighten me, please...




Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...
I'm sure I shouldn't, in these times of global shortage, but I can't help a big EEK. Us English, hey. We are so VERY prissy.


(Oh, I know, I know.  Speak for yourself.  Etc...)

Too Early to Nowell?

I suppose one good thing about Christmas coming earlier each year is that in times of infant defiance, you get  longer to blackmail your children with Phone Calls To Santa.  I find that at this time of season, a simple "Hello Santa?" into my mobile is enough to blow any bottom-lipped mutiny into smithereens of Sudden Compliance.

But today we had one of those super magazine-mummy moments when calm reigned utterly. For one blissful half hour, no one smashed anyone with sofa cushions or accused anyone of being stinky.  They lay across the floor drawing pictures, said please and thank you to various things, and even the dog was smiling. (But note to self: did anyone pop in unannounced to witness this and be amazed at the wonders of my mothering?  No, they bleeding didn't. But when there's cacophonic chaos and things strewn, oh yes; then, in they flock...)

Anyway. Not being one to miss a choice opportunity, I asked what they might like Santa to bring them this year for being Really-Really-Good-Like-This-At-All-Times.

I don't object to children believing in Santa, and I was shocked recently when one eyes-a-flame mother unleashed an unsolicited jeremiad on me suggesting I should. But I do see that it is slightly double-edged. On the one hand, it is incredibly endearing; this wide-eyed, unsuspicious trust in an all-benevolent old man who sails through the skies to deliver real reward for all the Being Good they have done.  There is such an innocent charm to it that of course you don't want it dispelled; that would be proof that they are growing into harder, more cynical, thinking beings...and God forbid.  But on the other hand, when the Santa list includes "Long Haired Pig (real one)", "Totem pole like the one at Virginia Water", "Granny to Come Back Down From the Sky" and "Mega Mindy costume, dolls and Absolutely Everything Else" (when on earth will poor Santa find time to shop in Holland?), you do also need to find some clever way to prepare them for disappointment.

To distract them somewhat from the impossibilities of their hopes, I asked what Santa should bring Daddy and I.

The oldest was immediately adamant.  Daddy would need beer, some books, something for his bike, new rugby boots, a tool kit, and something to take his headache away. The youngest nodded in approval and that was that.

"And me?" I said, quite hopefully.

There was silence.  After a while, J looked at me.  "The thing is, Mummy, when it was your birthday you told Daddy the Only Thing You Wanted In The Whole Wide World was a Banjo".  (Ok, I admit it, I did say that) "And now you've got it. So there isn't anything else you'd want." (Damn me and my absolutes).  "But that doesn't matter Mummy, because you can enjoy watching everyone else open their presents." (Hrrmph)

The younger one looked up from her picture of Fairy Wars (yes, really - the head fairy wears a black helmet and does funny breathing).  "I know what Santa should bring for Mummy, " she said decidedly.  "What, darling?" I asked in hopeful anticipation.  She went back to a detailed sketch of Fairy, Shot By Arrow.

"Easy," she said.  "Make-up.  Lots and LOTS of make-up".

Right then.  There's one little girl who will be getting bath salts in her Christmas stocking....

I want one of those...

Because I thought I sounded moany in the last entry, here's a cheery one.  How FABULOUS is this?  All my friends are happily represented here! Someone please tell me how to justify buying it?!

BUENAVENTURA PRESS
What a super place!

AFTERTHOUGHT
Although I don't think I know any snipers.  At least, I do hope not.

Oh Lordy.  That'll be the next thing...