Hair-not-by-Pam

Hi, sorry I've not been in touch for a while. I have been busy zooming up and down the M1 with three kids, two rats and a dog. Actually I toyed with the idea of tossing the rats out of the car window at seventy miles an hour, but I managed not to. Oh, they deserved it. Guess what the pesky little critters did? We went to visit lovely C and her family and the rats escaped inside her sofa. Her husband had to cut open the sofa to get them out. Everyone was very lovely and diplomatic about it all, but I could sense from the general aura that really they couldn't wait to see the back of us.
Today I didn't go to Hair-by-Pam. Nice M, my hairdresser, had the day off and suggested that I get my roots done at her house instead. This was good because it was half the price of having it done in the salon (although I did miss out on earwigging old ladies' conversations). It was also good because M does have hair straighteners and serum at her home (unlike the salon, which only has curlers and setting lotion). What was not so good was having to kneel down in front of her bath and wash bleach out of my own hair. Afterwards I looked very sleek and blonde, but a little dishevelled and somewhat soggy.
I'm feeling really quite smug tonight because I'm in bed before eleven thirty, and all the housework is done. Well, all the important stuff (who really cares about dusting?). Oh, alright then, I've done the washing up and set Bertha off to sort out the living room carpet - the rest can wait (until we get posted). The point is, it's not too late to read Lolita, which I'm supposed to finish by tomorrow. I tried reading it during half term...no, I'm lying, I didn't at all. Lovely C had a big stack of Hello magazines next to my bed at her house, so I just read them instead. I did read a page or two this morning during my Hair-not-by-Pam experience, but it did seem more appropriate to drink tea and speculate on the morality of her neighbour demanding a divorce from her husband whilst he was still in Afghanistan (What do you think? After the third cup of tea, and just before the highlights had taken, we decided that it was just plain wrong - she should wait until he's home) than to read about a fictional pedophile in fifties America.
Anyway, I ought to get back to Lolita now or I will look even more ill-informed than ususal in the workshop tomorrow.
Take care xxx

Happy Valentine's

Hi, it's Valentine's Day. Twin 1 made me a nice card. Nothing from Hubby, as agreed. We never do Valentine's these days so even if he were here, he'd just be saying that it's all commercial b******s, but somehow I'm still feeling miserable about it. Boo hoo.
I ought to be happy. Got my mid-term assessments back from the course and I'm doing pretty well, despite all my assignments being written in a blind panic in between ill children and school holidays.
Anyway, what's been happening this half term? We had a lovely weekend with the R family, who let us just slob about in their house eating chocolate (perfect way to spend a Saturday night and Sunday morning). Today I had to call the baby sitter in so I could go to university. The kids were wild with excitement at the opportunity for respite from their sad and grumpy mother. Upon my return,  Twin 2 asked to go home with the baby sitter, and I told her she was welcome to. The baby sitter's eyes suddenly got very large and she quickly told Twin 2 that she couldn't possibly come home with her as she had a big dog who liked to eat six year old girls with blonde hair (do you think that a four-hour baby sitting stint was enough for her?), so poor Twin 2 had to make do with evil Mummy and her unreasonable demands to put-your-things-away-or-they-will-go-in-the-bin-and-I-am-not-joking.
Now everything is vaguely less Nagasaki than it was (although still a bit Blitz-y in places), and I'm packing our bags, because tomorrow we're off to abuse the hospitality of the lovely C and her family (not the same C who nearly copped it from sudden-onset pneumonia the other day, a different one), and I'm already looking forward to the excuse of a nice big cake and/or fry up at some service station en route.
Right, well, I should go and finish the packing. Happy Valentine's x

Woo hoo. Can you hear my excitement?

Hello, how's it going? We're just on the brink of half term, which is very exciting (if you're six or nine years old). Woo hoo. Can you hear my excitement? Can you? No, that's because I'm just thinking of all the additional washing and washing up I will have to do with kids out of uniform and at home. Also, no school for them equals no time to do coursework for me. At the moment I'm working on my next workshop piece where one of the characters gives birth. Writing it is almost as harrowing as actually giving birth, not least because I am almost guaranteed not to have it finished in time for my submission deadline.
What else is exciting? Lovely C and her daughter M are having an impromptu sleepover tonight. They didn't intend to; C is back for a visit from Nepal and only meant to pop in for a coffee in between visiting relatives. However, once she arrived, she came over all viral, so now she's trapped, poor thing, and not even well enough to watch a bit of telly and eat chocolate with me.
I know, I shouldn't be eating chocolate because I'm supposed to be on a diet. But I am so, so bored of living off quorn and noodles and things now. And, despite my tedious culinary existence, I have only lost about three pounds, which is rubbish, really (this might be due to cheating a bit this week - it's been so cold I have been having extra milk and sugar in my tea, plus the odd cereal bar...).
Anyway, I can't bear it any more, I'm off to get myself another mini bar of green and black's (if they're really small bars, they don't count, calorifically, do they?).
Night then xxx

If only Hubby were here to do the washing up...

Hello, sorry it's been a while. Work does keep piling up and I'm not very good at washing up quickly and getting on with it in the evenings. If only Hubby were here to do the washing up. He is so much more efficient at these things than me. Ah well.
At the moment I'm hiding in the office and trying not to think about the Sunday roast dishes and Son's lemon cupcake pots, and the supper plates that need attending to, not to mention the school uniforms that need ironing. Hope there's something good on the radio (please, please not 'In touch' or The Archers) to get me through it all.
Apart from the scary prospect of a whole Sunday evening given over to drudgery, I'm in quite good spirits. I think having a nice snowball fight with the kids might have helped. There is something satisfying about singing 'I am the champion!' as four (yes, four because the neighbours' kids joined in, but Twin 1 was sulking inside because Son had got her a corker with one down the neck) children run screaming down the street from you. Even the recent discovery that Twin 1 has worms (which means all the rest of us probably do as well) hasn't dented my upbeatness (I tried doing that sellotape on the anus test, which was inconclusive, so I resorted to calling out 'Are there any worms up there? Please make yourself known!' up her bottom, and lo, one poked his revolting wriggly head out. Nice.). Perhaps it's because for the first time in several weeks, I'm ahead of myself with work. I've just finished reading a set text and only have one essay to read about it before Tuesday. I know, it's a blooming miracle - and won't last because next week is half term and I'll fall right behind all over again.
It's no good, I keep on thinking about the washing up. I really do have to go and do domestic stuff or I will be ironing until the wee small hours...sorry!
Take care xxx

Honestly, I would love to write to you today, but things are truly mental at the moment. If only I could cope with less sleep! Take care xxx

'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