Wednesday 28 September 2011

multiple personality disorder

Hi, sorry I've been away spending time with the unpacking fairy. It's all nearly done now and I've been channelling my inner Hausfrau (Bertha) to try to keep it looking nice. Bertha is just the latest in a growing list of alter egos to help me keep my life together. Clearly there's Amy Waif, the army wife, and also Rebecca Bryan the fearless novelist, and now there's Bertha, too. My problem is that none of them really get on. Rebecca thinks Amy is a bit flaky. Bertha thinks Rebecca should do a little less thinking and a little more hoovering. Amy is a bit scared of Rebecca and Bertha and would rather avoid challenges of the intellectual or cleanliness variety and go out for a nice latte and bit of chocolate tiffin.
Frankly, it's all getting a bit confusing.
This morning Amy leafed through the Avon catalogue and ordered a new lipgloss, only to be elbowed aside by Rebecca, eager to get on with university induction, but by the time Rebecca got home, Bertha was ready with the Mr Muscle and the cleaning rota. I have to admit that by eight o'clock Rebecca and Amy had patched up their differences and decided on a bath and a glass of wine instead of the hoovering...
(I'm holding out until next month to buy my robotic hoover - but next month is now just days away, hurrah. Can't blooming wait.)
So, yes, multiple personality disorder aside, everything's fine. I'm now a mature student, single parent (almost) and reluctant housewife.
The other people on the course are far too young to be let out of the house without parental supervision. One of them asked me if I had always written, and I said no, only since I had kids, ten years ago. A look of befuddlement flitted across her eager young brow and I realised that ten years ago she was probably still in primary school. I tried to be friendly with them all, but I am quite probably as old as their mums, so there wasn't much point. There is one other mature student (who was wearing a very nice green jumper, must ask her where she got it from), but she's poetry, not fiction, so I won't see too much of her. So I'll have nobody to moan about homework and school trips with. I'm quite sure the others on my course will be far better writers than me (I am a bit downmarket, stylewise - more Lidl than Waitrose), but luckily they won't dare criticise my work because it will feel like they are insulting their mothers, so I think I'll get an easy ride.
Tomorrow I have to go in and show someone my first degree certificate. It's nearly twenty years old...

Monday 12 September 2011

real food, pul-ease!

Hugh Fearnly-Whittingstall (spell check is confused by this and so am I) is doing something yummy with a rabbit on telly and I'm still resentful of the fact that the hotel's restaurant was closed for a private function this evening, so we had to traipse across to McDonald's yet again for supper. Hugh is eating tasty potted rabbit. I had a crispy chicken wrap followed by a Mc Flurry. It's not fair. I want some real food, now!
Oh well, homelessness is due to end tomorrow morning when I finally take over our quarter....

Thursday 8 September 2011

My new friend Mrs Starbucks hot chocolate

I've been hunched over the laptop in the darkened bedroom for a bit (really couldn't face the loo again), but I think everyone's asleep now, so I'll turn the lights back on - not that it would matter if the lights were still out as I can touch type, you know. Yes, if I fail to make it as a novelist, a successful career as an audio typist beckons. In fact, when we first lived here, way back in 1998, just after I became an army wife, I was an audio typist, briefly. At the time, I was trying to break into freelance journalism, having just spent lots of time and money on a postgrad  journalism course (oh, there is a bit of a pattern to my life emerging, no?), but at the time all I'd managed was a short feature on a heroic pooch for Dog's Today and something about drugs for a youthwork magazine, which meant I was a bit skint, so I had to put my Pitman certificates to good use by typing death letters for the Boots pensions department. I would spend hours typing letters asking people to send in their spouse's death certificate and letting them know that in future their pension would halve. What a cheery time that was.
Today has been a bit emotional. Kids all looked very spiffy in their uniforms, and I sent them off with a hug and a smile, and then as soon as I walked out of the school gates I burst into tears. However, a caramel latte and a dip in the hotel pool revived me a bit. Oh, and I'm a couple of pounds lighter on the scales in the hotel changing rooms, so it was nice to be under ten stone again - so nice, in fact, that I had to celebrate later with a hot chocolate with whipped cream (discovered that as Starbucks is in the hotel I can simply charge the cost of my beverage to my room, which is psychologically the same as getting a freebie). I did also do a bit of admin - I spent about a million hours filling in forms to register with the local GP, and I bought PE bags and things - but I'm finding it a bit hard to whip up the energy for stuff as I secretly just want to sit in the room with my new friend Mrs Starbucks hot chocolate and watch old movies on Film 4.
Right, I think I'm safe to turn on the TV now without waking anyone up.
Do you think it's possible to get a Starbucks delivered to my room?

Wednesday 7 September 2011

hiding in the loo

I'm hiding in the loo (can't say toilet because my husband is a major now, so must use the posh word) with the laptop, which sounds as if I ought to be doing something illicit, but the truth is I'm waiting for the kids to go to sleep. We're sharing a room, as you know, and I'm desperate for them to get some sleep because it's the first day at school tomorrow, hence the hiding, to keep the bedroom dark.
Yes, so, Twin 2 is going to start school with the others. I took her into school to meet everyone and they agreed that she's a big faker (I think I heard the head mutter 'disability my arse' under his breath) and she will be starting school along with everyone else. Hurrah.
I have plenty of things I ought to be doing tomorrow (registering with doctor, getting a car pass, etc.) but I'm planning also on spending just a teeny bit of time in the jacuzzi...oh and Starbucks....and I may also pop into TK Maxx...(although can't actually afford to buy anything as I have just written an enormous cheque for the whole term's school dinners - if I hear reports that the roast turkey followed by apple crumble tomorrow wasn't snaffled right up then there will be more than one Bumsaw in the family, that's all I can say).
Feeling a bit overwrought today (good word, never thought I'd use it to describe myself, but there we are - I'm an overwrought middle aged lady, how blooming depressing is that?), which I'm putting down mainly to lack of sleep, because any other reason sounds a bit pathetic.
Right, I think everyone is asleep now. I did give them some 'sleeping potion' (oh, the power of the placebo - it was of course Bach Rescue Remedy) so I think it's safe to go back in and do some important form-filling for school.
Haven't heard from Bumsaw/Hubby today at all. Maybe he's socialising with new friends (Major Look, Major Stare and Major Loseyourunderwear, perhaps?)
Take care xx

Tuesday 6 September 2011

The Smacked Bottom by Major Bumsaw

Hello. Still suffering mild post traumatic stress attack from camping trip. It hasn't, in fact, put me off camping per se, but it has put me off being homeless with three kids. Next time there's a gap between Hubby's posting date and our quarter becoming available I'm going to think long and hard about whether I actually want to hang about with no fixed abode for weeks on end.
At the moment I'm still camping, but a little more luxuriously in the Village Hotel in Nottingham. I'm sharing a room with the kids - it's about the same size as the tent, but mercifully about ten degrees warmer. I have drawn the very short straw by getting to share the sofa bed with Twin 2, who has a cough and a runny nose, lucky me.
We're in one room at the moment, because we're paying the bill ourselves this week, and Hubby is somewhere else, learning about important operational things (don't ask, I don't know the details and secretly I'm not sure he does either). Incidentally, he's a major now. I've decided to rename him Bumsaw (Major Bumsaw - get it? Oh, say it out loud) not for any sordid or smutty reason, but just because it reminds me of a spoof book title I saw once: The Smacked Bottom by Major Bumsaw, which made me laugh (and still does). On Friday, when Bumsaw returns, the army will pick up the tab for the final three nights, and he and I shall move into the extravagant splendour of the interconnecting suite (exactly the same as this room, but without Twin 2 snoring and snuffling).
Talking of books (The Smacked Bottom by Major Bumsaw, specifically), it seems as if I'm going to be the last person in my whole family to get a book published. I still have not heard from the agents I contacted so I'm guessing that in this case no news is, well, bad news. However, my Dad has published a book about the history of farms in the South Hams and my Mum has published a history of their local village and my Uncle has published a book about archaelogical dowsing. Oh, yes, and of course Major Bumsaw published that one about the smacked bottom. Me? Diddly squat. Bummer.