So he’s gone and it is horrendously quiet here. In fact I didn’t realise how much space Bog Boy took up in my life until he went.
And now I am at a loose end and feel as though there is something I have forgotten to do – it isn’t a pleasant feeling.
And I am wondering about whether I should call or not.
To see if he’s OK.
To check that the family who are having him to stay haven’t actually changed their minds. If it is eerily silent here how much noisier must it be over there. Maybe they need rescuing?
There again it IS blissfully peaceful here - and that doesn’t happen often.
Not in the holidays.
The Boy has a mate over to stay but they don’t need me so I have all this unexpected time to do stuff and I don’t know what to do.
I am being drawn to the telephone.
I am hovering.
Should I just check?
A quick call.
Or would that just create a ruckus at that end.
Would that just be too humiliating for him – his mother checking his every move? A helicopeter mum permanently hovering over his head.
He’s only six so maybe he wouldn’t mind.
But what if - horrors of horrors - he’s been hating it and desperately wants to come home?
What if he is kicking up a fuss and they can’t wait to get rid of him given any excuse?
Tick Tock
Tick Tock
Think I’d better leave it until later, just after bedtime, then call to check. Can’t possibly be made to go and fetch him if he has been a monster and if he was really hating it I am sure they’d have called before now.
Sometimes it’s better, I suppose, to do too little than to hover about too much.
OK, maybe not quite murder, but they do take the food from my children’s mouths given half a chance.
Take yesterday for example.
In the few brief hours of sunshine afforded we all trotted outside to eat supper al-fresco and so did the dogs milling around us like sharks under a lifeboat - eventually one is likely to drop. And they are waiting for just such a moment.
But nothing showing…
Now whippets are not blessed with big brains. I mean, come off it, have you seen how big their eyes are in comparison to their heads? There isn’t enough room for both optical nerves and brain in there. But what they may not have in IQ they certainly have in sheer effrontery and native cunning.
Tattie - her that has cost me a minor fortune in Vet bills this year after nearly dying on me a couple of months ago - takes it into her noggin to leap upon the table and make a bid for youngest son’s food.
This, of course, causes much hysteria and screams of laughter, then just screams and guess what? She achieves her aim.
And I let her.
In fact I do more than that - I actually photograph her doing it.
Tattie Whippet On The Table Sharking It...
Somewhere along the line our lives have become slightly skewed and the dogs are getting downright spoilt.
Maybe it is because they are whippets; for I can tell you having a Labrador on the table would really have pissed me off. For starters, Labradors tend to be clumsier than whippets especially on tables, they wag their tails and glasses go tumbling, crockery crashing and cutlery clattering. Whippets delicately negotiate their way around such obstacles like cats. And when whippets leap up they do it cleanly without any unnecessary scrabbling and hefting.
And they don’t drool.
I hasten to add I have nothing against Labradors; I’m just stating that I very much doubt that any Labrador owner would ever condone such behaviour from their dog for the reasons stated and the fact that a Labrador is just too intelligent and well-behaved to even consider such appalling conduct in the first place.
But as I have said a whippet doesn’t have much of a brain so I suppose that is why I tend to indulge them and any show of cleverness even if it is purely driven by its instinct for scavenging rather than any premeditated planning of its own.
Not quite sure what my boys think – but it’s good for them to realise that it’s a dog eat dog world out there and that if you don’t get on with your food there is always someone else who’ll snatch it from your plate when you aren’t looking…
Tattie Whippet On The Table Going In For The Kill...
The shape of things to come – rain, rain and more rain!
It’s the first day of the holidays for me and it has been raining solidly for the past six hours. The prognosis for a happy outdoor summer (the only one at all possible for two overly active boys) is vanishing fast and their mother has retreated back to bed to view it all with a jaundiced eye, muttering darkly the words: “It was never like THIS when I was a child…”
As I lie here warm and dry in bed, I scamper lightly over the Internet searching vainly for a glimmer of sunshine, but however hard I peer, all I see is forecasts for rain.
The Met Office confirms my own thoughts about June - the wettest since records began in 1910.
No shit Sherlock!
But however much I read about it, however much I hear about it; there is a perverseness in the character of my countrymen that I hold true to; I don’t believe a word of it.
Come off it, if we really believed that all we’d be getting is grey skies, cold and rain, do you think, for one minute, that we’d carry on living here?
No, the sheer joy of being British, of living on this rain sodden island, is the fact that it MAY NOT rain in our little patch of England despite what the forecasters say.
I put it to you that the British are eternal optimists. A nation full of hope over adversity
We buy BBQs, strappy tops and flip flops bang on the dot of British Summer Time and dare the summer not to be as good as our memories make it, flying in the face of unpalatable truths.
(I feel a rousing British Anthem emerging from the background now: pomp and glory…)
Resolute we stand soaked to the skin as we eat our strawberries and cream, joyfully revelling in OUR summer and woe betide the Johnny Foreigner who says to us: “Gee is it always this wet?” as they huddle pathetically in the doorway at Harrods peering out into the interminable grey
We’ll drip quietly and look scornfully at them and their temerity.
“No, of course not, you should have been round in the Summer of 2007. Flash floods, whole towns cut off…”
Ah yes, the Summer of 2007, when Tewkesbury in Gloucestershire was totally cut off and flood waters seeped in to the Abbey for the first time in 247 years…
Maybe it’s not our stalwart stance in the face of adversity that makes us what we are, rather a collective amnesia about the weather, especially in the Summer…
Thank God! It’s the end of term, or as near as dammit for me. No more having to deal with The Boy’s form teacher.
As far as I am concerned she has been a total nightmare. You know there are just some people you are never going to meet eye to eye with, well for me she was one and right from the start.
The Boy is in Year 4 and has issues as I call them. He’s clumsy, cack handed, behind, forgetful, easily distracted and prone to being bolshie for no apparent reason. He’s also keen to please, enthusiastic, loves getting stuck in, helpful, kind and loving. In effect a boy.
But throughout the year he’s not been good enough, he still, at the end of the summer term, cannot get his act together – as far as his teacher is concerned and do you know what I don’t actually believe that it is my son’s fault at all. In fact dare I say it I lay the blame at his teacher’s feet.
For the methods she’s used over the past year quite clearly have not worked in The Boy’s case, and I don’t understand why she cannot see this. I have been into numerous meetings with her and explained the problems or tried to at least and I get the feeling that she just wasn’t listening or couldn’t be bothered.
In the Autumn term I was told that he expressed the wrong attitude to learning, that he slumped about at his desk, wouldn’t follow directions and was frankly too babyish. I listened carefully and following his appalling effort grades duly bollocked him and told him to get a grip. But I wasn’t happy and clearly nor was The Boy.
He did try, he really tried terribly hard and the second half of term with me helping him do homework we got through to the end.
In the spring term I was called in again and basically told he same things, his effort grades were still appalling and I felt that his teacher wasn’t being fair. But I went along with her plan that he fixed a contract with the school. However when the contract was written out for The Boy the teachers wouldn’t listen to me when I said I thought it was very complicated, that the language used wasn’t simple enough, and that I felt he was going along with it just to please them without really understanding.
But hey I am only his mother and I was totally overruled.
I shook my head and felt that there was no way I could carry this one through it was far too damaging and as one would expect the contract fell by the wayside. I realised I had to investigate further.
So I took The Boy to test if he had dyslexia. There were strong indications that he did have it. I went back to his form teacher. It was agreed that he could have extra help but by the summer term they withdrew the help saying I had not done a proper Educational Psychologist report despite the fact that we were awaiting one.
So the poor lad had to do his exams without any help at all and as expected did dismally.
Finally we got the Educational Psychologist report and guess what – oh only that everything I had said about my son was right.
I am at a fee paying school. I am lucky that I have enough money to force the issue in terms of getting my son tested without having to wait in a queue or argue the toss just to get a test done in the first place. But is was still bad enough for me.
I couldn't believe how his form tecaher with all her experience and expertise couldn't be flexible enough to realise what was up with my son. It wasn't as if she had a massive class to cope with. Only 16 of them for heaven's sakes!
Throughout the year I was made to feel stupid and inferior for battling for my son, for taking his side. I was told that children make up all sorts of stories that they will say anything in order to get themsleves out of trouble.
Errr yes as a Mother I know this; I am not blind to the fact that my boys will push the issue, will try to squirm out of a tricky situation. I know this but I also know how to investigate further to get at what is really going on because I keep asking questions. I don't take anyhthing at face value; no mother of boys can!
So the real problem with teachers is that they forget that just sometimes mothers know our boys way better than their teachers, we know when something is not quite right. Perhaps teachers should listen more and remember that just sometimes MOTHER KNOWS BEST!
Oh I loved Ruby Wax talking about her depression at BritMumsLive! It was funny, heart-breaking and way too close to the bone.
She said stand-up, be counted, but..oh yes there’s a but; she’s been filming people who do just that, who stand up and say they have a mental health problem in the workplace and guess what she’s having a hard time getting people to say a word.
I know that one so well…
In 1995 I was in a great job, I loved my job then one day I came in crying. I had broken up with my boyfriend and I stupidly let slip that I was on medication for depression. The fact is throughout my employment at that particular firm I had been on Prozac seems to have completely passed my employers by.
I mean only the week previously they had been talking about bonuses for the team which definitely included me. I was the account manager. I did the job standing on my head and still had time to juggle clinical depression, training for a North Pole expedition and balancing my bank account against my prediliction for Bond Street shops.
I’m a multi tasker - what can I say…
But within 24 hours I was asked to leave. Nothing was said as such about the D.E.P.R.E.S.S.I.O.N and I was too shell shocked and emotional to do anything about it at first. It was all done so very, very, nicely. I was given help to find a new job which they paid for and then I was let go. I think they told everyone that I was leaving voluntarily. As far as they were concerned they did everything right and proper. I suppose my problem was that I thought so too, that is until I took a long hard look at the legacy I was left with.
The feeling of tawdriness, uselessness, the feeling that I had done something wrong, that I was bad at my job, that I could never ever say a word about depression and my role in it to anyone. I had been gagged even before I had ever opened my mouth and suddenly it felt so fucking wrong!
And then I fought back.
I fought back like a vicious trapped weasel baring my teeth in a most unladylike manner. I went for them like something possessed but it pretty soon petered out, I am pretty ineffectual and a coward so even though I told my Union all about it we never fought about the dismissal in terms of them chucking me out because they had heard about my mental health issues, it was merely implied. I got £4K to shut up and got another job. The company I worked for have gone onto greater things in that dark and murky world of politcal lobbying. Bish Bosh over and done nobody the wiser and nobody hurt.
I have NEVER made the same mistake again. Paranoid, I was ever after that, about mentioning mental health issues in the workplace. Kept it quiet. That is until I finally started my polar adventures then I spoke up, big piece in The Times, stupid idea… but that’s another story for another day…
Methinks I did but dream it.
But there is evidence to the contrary still strewn around my boudoir, waiting to be put away, sorted, dealt with, filed.
As I get back to the nitty gritty of daily life I catch myself smiling as little bits of the weekend flash past in the blink of an eye.
Narrow and fat, hair, key and fill I am itching to get my camera out, looking to see if I can make it work. And my mind begins to wander instead of concentratingopn the matter at hand.
I imagine beautiful still lives a la the Dutch masters on great canvasses swamping my kitchen walls, being repinned on pintrest, admired and sought after. I could do it!
Then of course I'll hit upon a great blog theme, self host it and it will be brilliantly designed by my fair self. It will be promoted on Google Plus and Facebook, my twitter followers will be legion. I could do it!
I will become a guru and be invited to talk at BritMumsLive 2013. Oh how modest I'll be...oh complete bollocks....
Reality Check!
I've got laundry to do oodles of it because I've been away and no one else thought to even start the machine let alone get the dirty laundry downstairs.
The house needs a great big fug out, a bit of spit and polish to bring it up to standard. It didn't get done while I was away and now I am back it becomes terribly noticeable.
The weeds in my garden are actually threatening to start encroaching inside so bold they are and there is only one thing for it, I'll have to get out there and get a grip.
The end of term is fast approaching and the boys have cricket matches, concerts and sports days all of which demand my undivided attention; that and trying to round up all their lost school uniform before the school is shut for the summer.
Oh yes the summer, holidays and me in charge not just seven days a week but 24 hours a day as well as...
Is it no wonder that I think perchance I dreamt it all?
So here I sit on my bed in the hotel room listening to the cacophony of the faceless men of the City go on around me. And I am bricking it, really I am. I always get overly nervous when I have to face a huge group of people whom I don't know very well, if at all.
I feel slightly sick and there is a huge temptation not to venture forth at all. Just stay here in my little cocoon safe and sound with great wifi and a massive TV and just keep safe.
But that is not option really. That would be a cop out, a waste of effort which has got me here so far; in my hotel room, a mere 250 feet from where it will all be happening in just over an hour.
Little steps.
I'll drop by and register, take a peek in. I don't have to stay at all, I can drift off, slip away, be not there if it all gets too much.
I really should be over this by now. For Heaven's Sake I'm forty five years old and it's not school is it? These people are just like me love writing and blogging and connecting.
Maybe it's because I don't get out much?
Maybe I should just give it a go for the heck of it...
Well here goes...
See you down there!
So BritMumsLive! Conference tickets booked, train tickets
booked, hotelroom reserved. Why, oh why,
then, if I am that organised - and believe you me that is organised for me - can I not get my head round packing for this shindig?
The big problem is: What to Wear! Technically as long as I have suit, clean undies and a
toothbrush I should be just fine but it’s not that kind of conference.
It’s one where there will be lots of other women. If it had
been a normal workaday conference I wouldn’t give two hoots but because it is a
conference where most, if not all, the delegates are female I am in a flat spin.
I want to be seen as smart and savvy but not off puttee and
grand. I want to be approachable and affable and non-threatening but I want to
swagger and show off too. I want to be noticed but not too much. I don’t want to be
considered dowdy nor do I want to be mutton dressed up as lamb.
Heels or flats?
Shoes or boots?
Jeans or suits?
Mummy or business woman?
Do I need stuff for going out? Will I get that lucky and
hook up with people who want to hang out with me and therefore give me a chance
to go out in the first place or will I be Milly No Mates and land up eating a
packed supper alone in my hotel room?
Will I be brave or scared rigid?
Will I do a runner when faced with a vast throng?
Will I plunge in regardless and fall flat on my face with a
case of foot in mouth – I am so good at that game!
Lots of things get forgotten in the rush to stay still; blogs, dogs and gardens.
I trundled out today, peering like Mole into the sunlight, emerging from my office and a variety of deadlines to squint myopically at the world outside.
From a distance it looked quite pleasant then as I adjusted my senses, the enormity of the problem became apparent and I felt like hurtling right back in again.
However, I knew I had to water the tomatoes and make sure no rabbits had got into the veggie plot and so girding my loins, straightening my spine and with purposeful tread I ventured forth.
And in amongst the hordes of weeds I spied the reason why there are times I actually want to be outside rather than indoors.
It is a forgotten garden but a really rather beautiful one too...
