'fun' and 'sports competition' are kind of mutually exclusive

Hi again, how was today? I spent this morning ignoring the washing up and pretending to be Gustav Flaubert. We had to write a scene from another character's point of view in Madame Bovary, and I chose Emma Bovary's mother-in-law, who doesn't get nearly enough space in the book, and by golly she was glad of the chance she got this morning - she's been waiting one hundred and fifty years to tell the world what a useless harpy her daughter-in-law is -  I wrote fifteen hundred words and then suddenly it was time to go to scary circuit training. I really didn't want to go. What I really wanted to do was go to bed for a cat nap, but I thought about my wobbly thighs and decided that I really ought to go...but then when I arrived the very nice young PTI said that we would be having a 'fun' session today as we were going to have a 'sports competition'. For me the words 'fun' and 'sports competition' are kind of mutually exclusive and a vision passed through my head of PE lessons of yore, full of fat welsh PE teachers with moustaches, shouting. So I said, "Sorry I don't want to do anything competitive - I don't want to be shouted at," and left. I went for a little run, had lunch and then a lovely sleep in my nice warm bed until school pick up time. Don't worry, on the way to school I stopped off to apologise to the nice PTI man. It's not his fault I have a competitive sports phobia, after all. Its scary Miss Davies' fault, in fact (she of the welsh ancestry, fat bottom and facial hair).
Right, I now have to read some more critiques of Madame Bovary and plan the next chapter of my book, and it's already 10pm and I still haven't washed up the supper dishes.
I have no idea what to write about. Here comes another looming deadline, a blank page, and, worse, a totally empty brain...
Right then, better get on with it! xxx

I'm jolly well well, thanks.

Hi, how are you? I'm jolly well well, thanks. I can't hardly believe I managed to get thirty thousand words submitted in time, but I did, hurrah, which meant that Friday night I could have some nice wine and a curry with the lovely R family and not worry about a thing. Of course, once they left, I had to get stuck into Madame Bovary (is she a superficial tart, or a victim of misplaced romanticism? I'm not sure, but I'm guessing there's an essay in there somewhere), and lots of academic essays on the history of 'the novel' and what a 'novel' actually is (yes, I also thought it's just a long story without any pictures, but apparently it's way more complicated...which I look forward to being asked about in my workshop tomorrow). I have one essay left to read, and I'm going to read it in the bath, yes I am. I'm going to set Bertha to work on the kitchen floor and call it a day because all that reading has made me quite tired. Oh, and also the scary circuit training session I went to at lunch time. We did skipping (not at all how I remembered it from my playground days) and boxing. The boxing was done with a partner, and we were trying to think of punching someone we loathed in order to punch harder. My partner, a colonel's wife, said she was imagining the pads were 'Les Dawson'. I was a little confused, because I can't quite imagine what heinous crime the late star of Blankety Bland and Opportunity Knocks had done to her. After a bit of her thrashing out and saying how he was ruining the country and thumping the pads so hard that I nearly fell over, she suddenly paused, frowned and said 'Oh, no, not him, it's the other one I mean, the politician'. Turns out she meant George Osborne. I guess they're easily confused, what with one being a Tory MP and the other being a dead comedian...
I'm feeling quite perky, despite the scary amounts of reading and writing I've got to get through over the next couple of months (they say it's a year-long masters course, but it strikes me that they fit the 'year' into the space of about four months, and it is a bit full-on). However, the perkiness is making me feel mistrust, as I know it can only be a matter of time until I degenerate into a hormonal old witch again.
Right oh, I'd better get the robotic hoover out and get cracking.
TTFN xxxx

the gherkins worked...

I used a combination of gherkins and pickled onions to get me through my marathon coursework session, and they worked (I'm not going to say that they worked 'remarkably well' because I don't know what marks I'm going to get). Hurrah. So I hope to be able to write a bit more over the weekend, in between reading almost all of Madame Bovary (I have neglected her a bit this week) and lots of critical essays about novel writing, which will no doubt tell me that I have been doing it all wrong these past few years...
xxx

ps

In case you were wondering, Dog used his turn to vomit in his bed, wee all over the kitchen floor and wake me up at five in the morning.

Don't expect to hear from me for a bit. I've just discovered that both of my short stories are four thousand words short of their word count, and the submission deadline is 23rd Jan. Yikes indeedy. No idea how I'm going to pull of writing eight thousand words worth of short stories plus editing the twelve thousand words of novel plus the two thousand word essay in less than ten days. If only the kids could go to school at the weekend...

a time of tears and high emotion

It has recently been a time of tears and high emotion (if you're a six-year-old girl). Here's what happened: First, yesterday, Twin 1 had a huge hissy fit as we left school because we weren't walking home the same way as her best friend. She threw her favourite hairband on the floor and then was utterly distraught when it snapped in half. I managed not to laugh and suggested that we go to Tesco where she could purchase a new hairband with her pocket money. This caused more tears when she realised she'd have to replace the broken hairband from her own funds. So we all stumbled into Tesco, with me trying not to notice the other customers staring aghast at my wailing brat (clearly believing that I'd just given her a good beating). Eventually she managed to stop snivelling for long enough to choose not one, but two, identical hairbands. Her logic was that the next time she has a huff, she'll have a spare. I felt this showed wisdom and self-awareness beyond her years, and I was just telling her this as we left Tesco... when she walked into a bollard, and we all laughed at her and then she started crying all over again. So that was the first evening of drama.

Then today after school we all went to Twin 2's friend's home, because when I go back to uni in a couple of weeks the kids will be going there for an hour or so after school once a week. Twin 2 really likes this little girl and, having visited her house, now likes her even more because she has a pink television in her room. I think, if you're six, this must be the height of luxury. We couldn't stay long, though, because I'd promised Son that I'd only have a cup of tea and then we'd get him home to his rats. So, when I mentioned that we had to go, Twin 2 began to get upset, saying that she wanted to stay behind. She became increasingly agitated until she told me that she wanted to divorce me and go to live with her friend (lets call her A). She then howled all the way home, insisting that she wanted a divorce from me right now and that she wanted to go back and live with A. Eventually we made it home, where the wailing continued, culminating with her deciding to walk back to A's house on her own. Luckily, I'd forseen this, and put the burgler chains on. So I said, off you go, then, and waited for the sirens of despair as she couldn't actually escape...Throughout the entire episode I managed to remain calm and retain my sense of humour, but sadly I then lost it later on when she decided to jump off the bed...she told me she was going to do it and I said, no, don't because you've just had...[THUMP]...eye surgery - WHAT HAVE YOU DONE, YOU STUPID GIRL DO YOU WANT TO END UP BACK IN HOSPITAL?!

So bang goes my resolution to be less shouty with the kids, then.

I would have a large gin to recover from the palaver, but sadly I only have enough 'sins' left to have a small gin (although I did go to circuits today, so maybe I've burned off enough extra calories to have a large gin?), and the Tesco van hasn't arrived with the tonic water yet.

I told Son that it's his turn to get irrationally upset about something tomorrow, but he declined saying that he'd give his turn to the dog.

So I look forward to the dog running under a bus or biting the postman tomorrow.

"Going to the toilet and being a princess"

This morning I struggled to consciousness with a bed full of kids (Twin 1 had a nightmare, so there was some nocturnal bed sharing, and then at quarter to six the other two piled in) I listened to a conversation between the twins and it proves, once and for all, that they may be genetically identical, but they come from different planets. Twin 1 announced importantly that her hobbies were reading and writing. She then asked Twin 2 what hers were, to which Twin 2 replied, "Going to the toilet and being a princess". I would have laughed, but it was far too early in the morning to even crack a smile.
Twin 2 was off school yet again today. She still claims to be seeing double, but I'm sending her back into school tomorrow regardless. Double vision or no, that girl needs an audience, and me, the dog and the rats simply aren't enough.
I tried to start my coursework again today. I'm working on a short story about a woman whose husband is due back from Afghanistan. It's not autobiographical at all, honest! Anyway, I didn't get very far as I kept getting interrupted by requests for water/apples/bananas/cheese/crisps and monologues explaining the minutiae of whatever programme happened to be on CBBC at the time. I now know that Dick and Dom are both funny, but one of them is funnier (I think it's the one who looks like Nicholas Sarkosy - hmmm, how do you spell his name? You know who I mean, the French president - and nice for him to know that when he gets booted out of office, a career beckons in British kids' TV...or maybe it's him already, and the reason he's making such a hash of his French premiership is that he's simply spending too much time making TV shows about burping and not enough time attending to his foreign policy. Wonder if Angela Merkel also moonlights on CBBC - perhaps she's the genius behind Hacker T Dog?).
I've decided to give up TV and Amazon shopping, which are draining far too much time and money respectively (after all, how many pairs of red pants and egg poachers does a woman need?). However, as I have also given up fat, sugar and processed food, my life is quite devoid of small pleasures right now. Luckily the TV ban doesn't apply to kids' TV as I think it's quite nice to sit and watch a bit of after-school telly with the little tackers. I think I might be spoiling it a bit for them though, as I insist on absolute silence when Horrible Histories comes on as it's my favourite, and really, really funny. No honestly, it is - watch it and I defy you not to laugh out loud.
Right, I should probably go and get some sensible sleep now.
Goodnight x

red pants and giant sushi

I have been so efficient today that I decided to reward myself with some new red pants. Hubby says a man's pants are his castle. Perhaps so, but a lady's pants are a reward for doing three years' worth of tax returns and looking after a six-year-old who's convalescing from an eye operation. I'm now wondering whether it would be extravagant of me to buy an egg poacher, too. I have been after a decent egg poacher for even longer than I've been after a nice pair of red pants, but somehow the thrill of hitting the 'buy now' button on Amazon just isn't the same for kitchenware as it is for lingerie. Not sure when I will wear the red pants though. Do you remember Movember, when all the blokes grew facial hair for charity? Well, I'm doing Fanuary (except not for charity, just because I'm not likely to be wearing a bikini any time soon), so red pants might be a bit redundant  - until there has been some serious epilation, at least.
I have just finished the fattest, hugest bit of sushi the world has ever seen. It was for sushi what the 'camberwell carrot' was to roll ups, and now it's in my tummy because, according to the Slimming World booklet, rice, vinegar and seaweed are all free foods, so don't count, so effectively I haven't eaten a sushi roll the size of a large hamster, I have eaten nothing at all!
Corononation Street is on now, so I'm off. Hope your new year is also full of red pants and sushi xxx

Happy 2012

Hello and Happy New Year! New Year's resolutions? To lose half a stone and be a nicer person...how about yours?
I know people say you shouldn't make resolutions because you just break them almost immediately but I've ordered some bathroom scales and I haven't shouted at the kids at all today, so that's a start...
How was your Christmas, anyway?
We've been down in Devon in the rain, eating chocolate and watching telly, mostly. Oh, there's also been some card playing going on. Son and I taught the grandparents a card game that I learnt when I was trekking last year. It has a bit of a rude name, so we can't actually talk about it. Son told them that the game is called 'poo' but it's actually a bit worse than that, but best not to upset them as we've been eating their food and running up their heating bill for the last ten days or so.
Christmas was great, despite the twins waking up at 11pm on Christmas Eve to open their stockings and then only getting back to sleep at about 1.30, and then Son waking up at 2am. I think I had about three hours sleep...oh, and Santa left his false teeth in the yule log (my dad's idea...a bit unsettling though, to think of Father Chritmas's falsies in the chocolate cake, but hey, it's all part of that wierd bit of fabrication we do - I realised this year that I'm always very keen to let the kids know that the nativity is 'just a nice story' but with total hypocrisy tell them that Father Christmas, Rudolph and the whole Santa paraphanalia is all totally true. Oh, how do you spell paraphernalia? Ah, that's it...)
Spent a fair amount of time with the cousins (my sisters four daughters) between xmas and new year. They have been rechristened the 'goddesses' because of the effect they have on my children. Then on New Year's Eve I went to a wedding up on Dartmoor in a little town called Chagford. It was just fantastic. The very modern vicar mentioned the 'joy and delight of sexual congress' which elicited suppressed gasps and raised eyebrows and seemed to base most of his sermon on something Steve Jobs said about Mac computers (wonder if Apple has sponsored the church roof or something?).
The wedding breakfast was in the town hall and was a right ol' laff. I don't think I have ever danced so much to so many dodgy cover versions of sixties hits, or drunk so much white wine in a night. I finally made it to bed just before three, but the rest of the village pubs were all still open, and apparently most wedding goers partied on until four or five.
The morning after was one of those great hangover breakfasts where everyone is trembling too much to be able to lift a fork and drinks their bodyweight in orange juice.
Looking forward to getting back up to Nottingham tomorrow where I have all my coursework to do and three years worth of tax returns (yes, I know, don't ask).
Take care and Happy 2012 xxxx