Not Quite According to Plan

I love Christmas! I do, I love it! And when I am in the early stages of anticipation, I think it's going to be perfect and then somehow it always seems to get derailed. Perhaps that's the joy of it - the fact that it isn't 'just so'.

This year derailment came early. Last Monday, after a brilliant weekend of carousing with our friends and a canter round a tennis court with Wimbledon Men's Doubles Champion, Jonny Marray, my beloved announced he was ill. He is never ill. He didn't want fuss, he just wanted to be left alone with his poorly tum.

On Tuesday evening, after a school run that involved home to school, school to tennis centre, tennis centre to school, school to home, home to tennis centre, tennis centre to home, home to school and back twice (phew!), child number 4 (the small and beautiful one) announced she was also ill. Both father and daughter had a bad case of Vomiting Veronica (neat reference to Four Weddings in case you plan to watch it over Christmas).

I am bound to get it, I think to myself. But on Wednesday I am fine and having tea with a lovely girlfriend who is very Bah Humbug about Christmas which obviously I am not and then another cup of tea with daughter 2 who is as Christmas-enthused as I am. On Thursday I am feeling fine and anticipating (now that my beloved and number 4 are on the mend) going to see The Hobbit on Thursday night en famille. I love those little guys with hairy feet so a first night cinema trip was a must. On the way to the cinema, minus number 4 who wasn't quite up to it, I started to feel a bit sick...

I never made it to the film, nor indeed all the way home without having to stop. And none of us made it to the supper party at the singing, dancing doctors on Friday which we had so been looking forward to. Of course, number 3 was fine throughout and he claims that we were ruining his social life by being the house of sickness all weekend and if we ate two dinners every night like he did, we'd have been fine all along.

Anyway we are all better now that it's Monday and I am off to career round a tennis court with my chums except that whilst I have been ill, my beloved has been busy - draft-proofing the front door. Brilliant, warmer house, except that now as I am dashing off to cheer myself up after a weekend to forget, the front door won't lock. Cue me ripping draft excluder off the front door frame like a thing possessed but still it won't lock.

Eventually I decide the only thing to do is to lock the inside front door and go out of the conservatory door except ... that won't unlock! Feeling more than a little stressed I decide that really the only thing to do is climb out of the window. Which is what I did and on the way to tennis, I left an expletive-filled message for my beloved who is away on business this week.

On my return, I climb back through the window as the phone rings. It is he. He calmly explains which bit of draft excluder I need to remove and that actually I could have gone out of my office door. I had forgotten that my office has an outside door which opens and closes, locks and unlocks and does all those things which doors generally do. I can only admit that sometimes I miss the obvious.

So Christmas is already not quite going to plan with preparations running somewhat behind schedule but it will be all the lovelier for it and now I am busy sticking draft excluder back on the front door frame - well, most of it anyway.

Happy Christmas!

I can't explain why I missed the fact that my office has a door but here's a picture of my new best friend, Jonny Marray.

Three Dog Night

Three Dog Night - now there was a band... but you had to be alive in the 1970s to remember them.

Anyway back to the present ...  we have had two three dog nights this week as we currently have Milton, or Milty Pig as my number 2 daughter calls him, in residence. Yes, in addition to Molly the grumpy mongrel and Bobbie the under-achieving cocker spaniel with an impressive pedigree and an IQ score in single digits, Milton, the very big chocolate brown spaniel, has been joining the canine gang at the little house on the prairie so it's been an interesting few days.

Milton normally lives in 'the mosque' or rather the house that number 2 daughter and her partner have recently bought in Harrogate. It's a lovely terrace house, handy for shops, bars and restaurants and, more importantly where Milton is concerned, the Valley Gardens. The reason why we call it the mosque is of course that it is carpeted throughout the downstairs in cream and therefore any visit is heralded with "Take your shoes off!" before you get past the doorstep. Anyway it is a perfect first proper home for number 2 and we are unreasonably proud to have a home-owning child and it feels like she has really really left home for good this time in a way that renting doesn't seem to.

Number 2 and her partner have both been away on business this week so rather than putting Milton into kennels, I rashly offered to have him here as he knows us pretty well now and I thought he'd feel at home. However, he spent the first two hours after number 2 had dropped him off looking for his mistress and prowling round the house and garden in the hope that she was hiding. No chance mate, she's gone to Kidderminster.

So there is a three dog walk morning and evening and we must be an entertaining sight making our way down the bridle path to the stream with two of the three dogs on leads and usually entangled and me hanging on as best I can. Of course, we stop for a gambol in the stream - them, not me - and once off the lead, with a stick in his mouth, Milton is trying to decide whether to go for a full-on swimming experience or just a paddle. Molly likes a bit of a swim but the water is running rather fast just now and she doesn't fancy it whereas Bobbie is not prepared to get wet, dirty or anything unladylike at all.

The other thing about Milton is that he owns a sweater. Yes, half an hour on Saturday morning was spent with daughter 2, reluctantly accompanied by yours truly, in the pet shop trying to decide between a Father Christmas suit, a reindeer outfit or the aforementioned sweater. This sweater has to be removed before any kind of dog walking because I am NOT prepared to be seen out with the doggy version of Colin Firth!

So Milton has now settled down with us, licked the floor clean under my office chair (why?), consumed one of number 4's Father Christmas slippers (perhaps we should have bought the suit to match after all) and moved all the dirty socks which are just about to go in the washing machine from the kitchen floor to various other places for us to find. And now he's working through the contents of my office bin in case there's anything edible in there.

One other thing: in Milton's world, settees are for sitting on and stairs for climbing. Yes, in my world, but not for dogs. Yesterday, Milton had licked the floor under my office chair clean (again) and then disappeared. He had discovered that I had lit the fire in the sitting room and was basking on the settee looking for the remote control in case there was some good daytime television to catch up on.

Just in case you remember Three Dog Night, here's their classic from 1970: Mama told me not to come: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKaQzQAlNn4. Mama might have told me not to come but she failed to offer any advice on large brown hairy house guests.









http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKaQzQAlNn4

Striking Parent or House Elf?

A couple of weeks ago, I read an article about some parents who were so fed up with doing 'everything' for their offspring that they went on strike. The parents continued to cook, wash up and do their own laundry etc whilst they did none of those things for their children. The house quickly turned into a health hazard and after a matter of a week or so, a rapprochement (such a great word, don't you think?) was reached between parents and children whereby the children cleaned the whole house to their parents' satisfaction and a more equal division of duties in future was agreed.

In the little house on the prairie, things are not in quite such a calamitous state but there's a lot of things that go on to which the majority of the residents are seemingly oblivious. And straight away, I want to point out that this is not because I am a hero, I am just a mum.

Most days start with me waking about half an hour before the alarm goes off. I have no idea why this happens but even at the weekends when a small lie-in of half an hour or so could be achieved, I wake up. And once I am conscious, my brain starts lining up the things that need doing. So most days, with very few exceptions, I hop out of bed (actually that's attaching more agility than I have in all honesty so let me just say heave myself out of bed) and start the day. And in that half hour or so, I usually manage to let the dogs out, feed them if it's daylight (our shed where the dog food lives is probably rodent-infested so I'm not doing that one in the dark with bare feet), clean out the grate and lay the fire, make tea and wash up. No, it's not that I don't wash up after supper the night before but number 3 gets peckish about 9 o'clock in the evening and makes himself another meal. And plump the cushions. I could write at length about cushion-plumping because I love cushions and my children don't see the point of them but I must have my small pleasures in life and cushions are one of them!

Sometimes all this makes me feel like Dobby, JK Rowling's house elf. We have friends whose two older children spend a lot of time playing tennis with ours. Their youngest son is not old enough to partake in sport at such a high level (!) and sits at the side of the court until one of the older ones hits a ball on to the cricket pitch, car park, playground etc. The cry goes up: "Dobby!" and off he goes to get the ball and throw it back on to the court. One day, someone will give him a sock (you need to read Harry Potter to understand the significance) and he will rebel!

At this time of year, the Dobby-type activity at the little house on the prairie is drawing towards its seasonal high. Already, in addition to the usual stuff, there is the whole pre-Christmas organisation going on: presents bought and wrapped (last year's wrapping paper has ironed up wonderfully for another turn), cards bought and anyone whose surname begins with an A or B is likely to be a lucky recipient. I can't at this point promise to complete the whole alphabet from the address book but it usually gets done - just in time. And I am about to write an enormous cheque for stamps at the post office because I have decided that although stamps are obscenely expensive, I like Christmas cards too much to be bah humbug about it.

And I know that all my fellow Dobbies will be doing the same. All the ones with high-powered, stressful jobs, all the ones who work tirelessly for charities and give their time for free enabling our cash-strapped economy to limp on, all the ones with small children who require even more time, care and attention than the hulking teenagers in this house - yes, we're all at it. And the ones who are dear to my heart will be coming here for our annual girls' Christmas lunch (I may decide to rename it after this in honour of Dobby) in a couple of weeks before we throw ourselves into giving everyone (and all our relatives) a wonderful Christmas.

So, no, we won't be striking - we will be doing it for love.

Dobby - I think we share the same knees!

The Big List (part 2)

As I suspected from the off, the Big List has to be a two part blog so here is the concluding segment. A friend of mine told me a while ago that she enjoyed my blog but that there was a little too much sport in it. Having just read part one, I think there was very little in that, but I am about to redress the balance!

6    All Gone to Look for America*

As soon as exams were done, we headed off to the States for our fabulous tour of Chicago, San Francisco, the West Coast and Las Vegas. Of all the amazing sights and sounds of that trip with children 3 and 4, the one that stays with me is the spectacular fountain outside the Bellagio in Las Vegas playing Viva Las Vegas sung by Elvis. Utterly brilliant!

7   Sporting Heroes

Well, you knew it was coming... The Olympics were, without doubt, the best ever held - ever. We loved every tear-jerking minute of it (except perhaps Russell Brand - could someone explain to me why?... no, don't bother.) Anyway Jessica, Mo, Andy, Bradley, Sir Chris, the Brownlee boys, the beautiful dressage horses and all the rest, right down to Ripon's Jack Laugher who had the worst day ever, we salute you.

8    I name this house...

Number 3's cricket obsession took an unlikely turn when he (and his delighted family) were invited to Guernsey to name a house after a fielding position in cricket. Cow Corner became Couin de Vacque (in Guernsey patois) and we joined in the naming celebration led by number 3 (unveiling the sign below with a Guernsey flag) who had come up with the name in the first place.

9    The C word

We've become accustomed in this house to summers dominated by cricket. Playing his way up the age groups as well as infiltrating adult cricket at the earliest opportunity, number 3's obsession (see above!) knows no bounds. If he's not playing it, he's watching it. But I never expected to see my beloved and child 4 (she of the big hair and too cool for school) don the whites to play village cricket. They did and they were absolutely marvellous, cumulatively scoring 13 runs at their first attempt. A repeat performance in 2013 is, however, very unlikely!

10    The T word

Scarcely a single mention of tennis. There must be something wrong with me! We played all summer (and I played all winter, come to that) but my best tennis moment, right up there with Andy Murray winning the US Open, was watching our junior tennis team retain their Black Sheep Trophy. For years, we (my fellow tennis club players and I) have coached and encouraged our juniors and last year we entered a junior team in a local league just for experience. To our amazement they won. And despite a slight changing of the guard as some players were too old this year, they won again. And throughout the whole process, they were an absolute delight.

*in the words of Simon and Garfunkel

The Big List

Every year or so, I trawl through all the photographs we have taken over that time and choose a selection to create a montage which hangs on the kitchen wall. For me, it's a way of reminding myself of all the fun we've had and how much the children have grown. Also our wonderful friends and wider family get their places too and it's so lovely to see these pictures every day rather than when I remember to open an album. The wall is now fairly packed but I've worked out that there's room for one more before I have to reconfigure, so last week I chose and ordered the prints and reminded myself that the last twelve months have been fairly epic.

Last week, I also discussed with a client the value of lists as a way of encouraging people to read articles. People love a list - top ten of this and that, worst places to go for dinner, best dishwashers, and so on. Lists are a brilliant shorthand for imparting information. Anyway, the combination of the list conversation and the selection of this year's photographs (yes, I know the year isn't over but it just feels like the right time) caused me to try my hand at the top ten bits of the year so far. Now there has been some cheating, or rather, some grouping because otherwise I can't find the discipline to make the cut at ten but here are (and already I am realising that this might be a two-part blog...), in chronological order rather than top to bottom, some of the top things from this year and a few pics for illustrative purposes!

1    Keeping it Live!
Live music, live theatre, cinema, sport - all of it best when you're actually there. Two top nights of live music - Coldplay with the singing, dancing doctors who took us to Sunderland for a brilliant night, despite the rain, and George Michael at Manchester with Basil and Sybil (of Fawlty Towers fame). Then there was the amazing One Man, Two Guvnors at the theatre in London with the intrepid granny starring the utterly brilliant James Cordon. Conversation beforehand went "You know, Smithy from Gavin and Stacey... A League of their Own... the fat one in The History Boys... " followed by the sound of the penny dropping! The hottest ticket in town and the funniest thing I have ever seen in the theatre. We laughed till it hurt!

2     Edinburgh for the Rugby
We went, England won (somewhat unexpectedly) and we partied like teenagers. The only thing I can think of that would have made my Sunday morning hangover worse would have been if the tapas bar (where we were asked to leave so they could close up) had sold grappa. Brilliant time with wonderful friends. Going back in January to do it all again (but without the rugby).

3     Horseriding in the Lake District
A day riding heavy horses with Basil and Sybil and friends in the spectacular Lake District. Three competent female riders, three incompetent men and six massive horses. The scenery was amazing but the best sights were definitely three men in the saddle for the first time. Hilarious!

4     A Birthday in Rome
Not ours, but we were invited on a birthday trip to Rome by a friend and luckily, exams had just finished so we could leave the children with a reasonably clear conscience and head for the sun. During the winter, ie now, I sustain myself with the thought of sitting outside a cafe somewhere hot with a cappuccino or, better still, a glass of red. We did that in Rome in June and it was... well... heaven.

(Don't normally include a picture of me but here I am with my glass of red!)

5     Three Weddings (and one to come, in case you wondered...)

Three lovely weddings, though we were only at the actual ceremony for one, the other two being in the States. My gorgeous niece who looked stunning with my other gorgeous nieces as bridesmaids, then my dear tennis chum who jetted off to Las Vegas to do the whole Elvis wedding thing and who absolutely deserves to be the happiest woman on the planet. And finally little Hollie who was the prettiest bride and had the wedding to end all weddings. This is setting the bar very high for parents of three daughters - help! Here they are:

To be continued...

The Rule of Three

It's not every day you fulfil a lifetime's ambition but today I am that woman.

A very long time ago, at what would now be regarded as a very antiquated school for rather nice young ladies in Royal Leamington Spa (think St Trinians but with longer skirts and less make-up) a dwarfish, flat-chested fourteen year old dared to dream. She was utterly convinced - though no members of the English department, nor even less her friends, shared her conviction - that one day she would write a novel. Today that novel - albeit unpublished and unread - has been completed.

Funnily enough, the unpublished and unread aspects of this don't matter at this point. For me, the great act of will was to write it. For most of my adult life, I've been making up stories in my head and, for the most part, that's where they've stayed. In the early days, when I was a teenager, I would feature as the heroine - something which kept me going when other aspects of my life had less heroic qualities. As I got older, I would create stories about the strangers I would see on trains, in cafes, in their cars at traffic lights... Ask my beloved: he'll tell you how I made up a whole crime/drugs story based on the people sitting round the swimming pool at a hotel we were staying at in Bangkok nearly thirty years ago. Even now, I can entertain my youngest by telling her tales of strangers' lives that we see when we're out and about.

I've tried writing short stories for children. A couple even progressed as far as being sent to publishers but they landed with a dull thud and were heard of no more. Then about twenty years ago I started a novel really in earnest. I wrote a few thousand words which I still have, having transferred them from computer to computer as all things technical have progressed. But, although the plot is complete in my head, it's never got any further than that.

Then fast-forward to a couple of years ago when someone told me of an experience he had had as a very young child. It was arresting and, like looking at strangers and making up a whole back-story for them, I found myself germinating a complete plot based on the events leading up to this man's childhood experience. As time went on, the experience became less and less as he had described it but that was the tiny seed that set me on my way.

Then two other things occurred making the 'things happen in threes' or 'the rule of three' as it is more correctly known or even the Latin, omne trium perfectum (because I've just looked it up and I love it when we can all expand our craniums) have a satisfying ring of truth. One of these other two things was this: my blog. I write it and amazingly, people read it. Not just my friends (who are obviously very nice and polite and supportive about it) but people I've never met, in foreign countries I've never visited. And writing this has helped me to find my Voice. 

Which brings me neatly to the third thing. For my birthday last year, I thought (because if there was an Olympic event in birthday present-buying, my beloved would win it) that I would be getting tickets to either a rugby international at Twickenham or, even better,  the tennis in Rome. Nope, he had finally called my bluff. He gave me a week on a writing course in darkest West Yorkshire with a group of complete strangers (some stranger than others, let me tell you...) who could and did write. I went (because I couldn't think of any excuse not to, otherwise I would have bottled) and spent a terrifying week with these people, some of whom are now my friends. Who'd have thought it?

On the course there was a lot of talk about Voice which is, as far as I can remember, the unique style of writing prose which each of us have. This, obviously, is mine. Anyway I went on my writing course with the plots for two novels - the one I started twenty years ago and never finished and the one now very loosely based on my friend's childhood experience. The very patient and proper-published authors who were tutors that week told me to write the latter and I came home half a stone slimmer (nerves does that to me) on a mission to write it in a year. 

Well, fifteen months later it is done. As I said, unpublished and unread, and since my beloved absolutely deserves to have the final yay or nay on whether it ever sees the light of day, he will be reading it first. But I do have a slight sense of giddiness about having finished it. Perhaps I should write THE END.

Postscript: To save anyone asking later: no, you are not in it and it is not autobiographical. Hmmm... now that's given me an idea...

Harvesting Balls

This weekend there was a massive push in the garden. The various reasons for this included it being extremely overgrown, the weather being good with some diabolical weather on the horizon, the impending arrival of the intrepid granny who is coming to watch the Ryder Cup on our big telly next weekend, and the fruit needed picking. So whilst my beloved whirled round with the lawnmower and various sharp implements, I set about planting bulbs, weeding borders and picking fruit.

In previous years, we have had a shedload (literally!) of fruit with me performing as the fruit fairy to try to relieve the glut. This involved me bagging up fruit and leaving it on the doorsteps of friends who either have large numbers to feed or are keen jam-makers. For many years we had our own veg fairy - a lovely old gentleman (no longer with us, sadly) who sometimes found life at home rather too noisy and would seek sanctuary in my kitchen. He never arrived empty-handed so we always knew when he'd been if we were unlucky enough to be out because he left spinach or cauliflower or cabbages or green beans from his very impressive vegetable garden in Spofforth.

This year, there is a pitiful amount of fruit - no greengages, a few eating apples and there are cookers to come on the tree, a fair few blackberries and three plums. Three plums was a cause of great celebration amongst my children. In years gone by, we have had enough plums to feed a small African country. And, because I can't bear to waste food, as well as the fruit fairy thing, I would cook them and make plum pies and plum crumbles and other plum delicacies which I would freeze and then present to my family on a weekly basis all through the year resulting in plum-fatigue. So imagine their joy yesterday when I announced I had harvested all the plums and there were only three!

The other harvesting was the result of cutting back and weeding some of the borders which produced several golf balls - some rather good Calloway ones actually - and a good crop of tennis balls. I know there will be cricket balls as well, I just haven't got to them yet!

So the seasons have turned again and as well as the swallows leaving for warmer climes - I'm quite happy for them to fly solo unlike the Ryanair pilots - number two daughter will be leaving this week but only as far as Harrogate. Not very exciting you might think except that she will be a home-owner which is a most definite sign that she will have flown the nest. Number one, of course, lives in London and has never shown any signs of returning home apart from flying visits of which we had one last week. And she too is thinking of leaving for warmer climes but still at the planning stage so too early to say where or when.

Anyway on a positive note, as well as whirling about on the lawnmower, my beloved spent some time on Saturday sitting on the apex on the bathroom roof (not sure if apex is the correct term but you get my drift) mending the hole. So, even though it is raining today, I am no longer concerned that it is raining through the downlighters in the bathroom ceiling. It's probably still raining into the boiler room but you can't have everything...

And finally, as I mentioned, number one came home last week for a few days and it was one of those increasingly rare times when I have all four of my children under one roof. So numero uno and I did some nice things together including a trip to Malham Cove where incidentally they shot some scenes for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows prompting our idea that the next time she comes home we will go and explore another film location - perhaps Aysgarth Falls where they shot Robin Prince of Thieves. Anyway I decided it would be lovely to photograph all four children together and this is what happened...