Chocolate santa

In a fit of helpfulness I wrapped 40 selection boxes for the school PTA last weekend. I am very sad and love wrapping and I enjoyed it! It's for the Santa's grotto at the school fair. Littl'un wants to go to the fair and I said "yeah but we don't need to go and see Santa do we?" as they want £1.50 per kid! "Oh yes we do," said Littl'un, "I want my chocolate". The boy ain't silly!

Sparkly!

A new phenomenon has appeared in Celebrity World. Crystal white sparkling straight as you like teeth. It is quite disconcerting. It totally takes your attention away from whatever they are trying to sell you as all you can do is gaze at the lovely sparkly things. Cee Lo Green was the latest I noticed, he started singing and that was it. Never heard a note. But his teeth are lovely. I think it's going over the top now, it totally takes any personality away, what's wrong with slightly off white a bit wonky teeth I ask you? And they are SOOO perfect,  it's like the very expensive celebrity dentist actually got a spirit level in there while he was at it. As soon as any wannabe makes it (ie they have enough dosh to sort them out or the management insist on it) it's out with the normal teeth and in with the SPARKLY teeth. How long till they start sticking things on them again? Diamantes or teeth tattoos? You watch, they'll be advertising their latest single/book/film on their gnashers before long so all they actually have to do is open their mouths...

Ruining the joys of childhood

Littlewoods has a lot to answer for. As does Littl'un's teacher. Firstly, Littlewoods. Someone who is probably being paid an extortionate amount of money for making ads thought that re-enacting a school play where the premise is "mum buys all the Christmas presents" was a great idea. And to show it at all times of the day would be a marvellous idea. Is there no respect for anything anymore? Small children deserve to believe in Father Christmas without the massive corporations treading all over the magic to make a bit more money. It is really shocking to me, is nothing sacred anymore?

But apparently it's not just the big money making firms who like to spoil the dreams of the young. Littl'un told me his teacher told them Father Christmas wasn't real. He is 4. Luckily he believed me when I told him his teacher was basically a big fat liar.

Oh the irony...

The other day I noticed an NHS van being driven erratically down the road. This was what drew my attention. Plastered all over the side was "Smoking Kills" and other scary messages. The driver was driving erratically as he was trying to light a fag.

Gatecrashing and fireworks

Bonfire night round our way is taken very seriously. Friday night the local scouts at the bottom of our garden had their "do" which was very noisy and at one point I thought they were blowing up gas canisters from the noise of the explosions, the windows were even shaking! Then when they finished a pub up the road started off which were even bigger, if possible. Saturday night carried on much the same, fireworks everywhere you looked, which is good if you don't want to pay to go to a display! Littl'un #1 seems to have got over his fear, the past 3 years he has screamed every time a rocket went off. Littl'un #2 seems to be made of stronger stuff, he didn't even flinch. And we got to gatecrash the neighbours' fireworks party as he saw us standing at the back door and invited us over. This included a big vodka and 2 very tired little boys by the end of it, so it was marvellous! And the next day we got to play "how many bits of firework are in our garden" which is quite entertaining, though the wind must have been going the other way this year, last year they were all by the back door and some had even gone over the house! This is no mean feat as our garden is 100ft, those scouts sure know how to throw a mean firework display!

Car journeys with kids

One of the most challenging things you can do as a parent is go on a long car journey with your children. By the end of it they are extremely fractious, grizzled, hungry, thirsty, and there is a good chance one of them will have wet themselves. You will be lucky to have retained your sanity.

On our last trip to visit the olds, it was about 5 hours each way. This involved the following incidents.

1) An hour into the trip Littl'un #1 pipes up with the usual "I need a wee!!!". Queue stop off at next service station for toilet break.

2) Five minutes later down the motorway Littl'un #1 pipes up with "I need a poo!!!" Queue stop off at next service station for yet another toilet break amid furious mutterings of "couldn't you go last time we stopped?" "But I didn't NEED to go then"...

3) Littl'un #2 then clearly feels that he has been left out of the equation for too long and starts whining. Luckily he is still in nappies so that is one problem avoided. (We did consider putting a nappy on his brother after point 2 but there you go). So then we start the great Feeding of Children to Keep Them Quiet part of the journey. Sandwiches, biscuits and crisps are passed to the back of the car and now the car looks like it needs a good hoover. Littl'un #2 is covered in jam and just out of reach, but he can still reach to smear jam all over the interior of the car. Littl'un #1 moans that he didn't want jam and complains mightily for at least 20 minutes.

4) Kids are sated for a little while. Mum decides to put some music on to keep them happy. Littl'un #1 has developed a taste for Meatloaf and after listening to "I would do anything for love but I won't do that" five times in a row, mum is ready to bail and hitch a lift for the rest of the journey. What started off as cute, Littl'un #1 singing along to Meatloaf, is now very annoying and when we try and put something else on he complains loudly that it is rubbish and "can we put Meatloaf on" over and over and over and over...

5) Finally we get to our destination. Kids get out of the car, and immediately say "can we go home now?". We have yet to face the journey home, and are considering ways to drug the kids to sleep on the return journey. 

Clocks

The clocks went back an hour today. In his wisdom Littl'un #2 decided to wake up at 6.15 yesterday's time which is very early for him. This means we have been awake since 5.15. I am refusing to change the clock's yet in a futile attempt to pretend it is still yesterday. Whoever invented the time change was a sadist or didn't have kids.

Strictly

So who WAS that bloke who got voted off Strictly at the weekend? I literally have no idea. Is he like that Andrew Castle who was famous for tennis or something then just famous for being annoying?

Spiderman

We went to the tip over the weekend to get rid of all the bags of garden waste I normally leave in my shed for about 6 months. The boys were in the back seats, the rubbish in the boot. Ten minutes into the trip the youngest started moaning. Me and Mr Babs ignored him for a while, it's quite common, but then when it got louder Mr Babs turned round to look at him. In that short period of time a cunning spider had come out of the boot and spun a web all over his face!! Ha ha. It was funny! Littl'un was not impressed. If we'd left him any longer he'd have probably been woven into a cocoon!

School stress

Littl'un is in Reception now full time. He's only done 2 full weeks and I am so stressed about it! Firstly I have no idea what they do all day, the odd crumbs he mentions when he gets home may or may not be true, for example, "we went to the park and climbed a tree and got stuck and had to get the firemen out". Oh righty. Then he has been on the "time out" spot at least 3 times, well these are the ones he has told me about. He said it was for fighting. There is another boy in his class who is a little shit, to put it politely. So I asked the teacher who claimed to know nothing as she "wasn't there" but it was "probably something to do with not doing what he was told". Gee thanks, if the teacher has no idea what is going on, who does?!

And this is Reception! Wait till he's in secondary school! I really want to get involved and make sure the boy behaves and doesn't start getting in bad habits, but the teachers' don't really seem to care. The only thing that made me feel better is that apparently most of the kids ended up on time out. I think they are just really harsh with their punishment. "You didn't put your chair in correctly, time out for you!" - maybe it gives the teachers a rest if 27 kids are all sat on the time out spot!

Strictly bye bye

Ha I was right! Edwina was the first to go, poor Vincent, I think he knew that when they got put together. I am still on Team Jason, he is so cool! Can I start a petition for next year? I want Dermot O'Leary and Greg off Masterchef please? And Philip Glenister, ooh, imagine him doing a foxtrot!

Strictly Come Dancing

But I am loving Strictly! They managed to make Holly Valance look quite ordinary and a bit chubby, and Jason Donovan rocked! Yeah for men who are "getting on a bit"! But that Edwina has to go, politicians and dancing really don't mix, especially when in your head you've got her getting it on with John Major every time you see her. It's putting me off my wine!

X factor again

Against my better judgment I've been watching the latest X Factor. It's more interesting now with different judges, though Gary Barlow obviously has the Simon Cowell hat on. But what's bugging me is all the messing around they are doing with the groups. The judges keep taking one person out of one group and then putting them in another, and most of the groups that actually auditioned as groups are sent home. Why bother auditioning as a group? You might as well audition individually and then if you don't get through on your own merits they may well call  you back and put you in a group with 4 other strangers and then flog you to the media. Doesn't matter that you don't know each other or even like each other. Well if it worked for the Spice Girls...

A 4 year old expert blackmailer

So Littl'un has been trying to get me to play Monopoly with him for ages. I keep saying "no", mostly as when he asks I am making tea or something, but I do feel bad! Anyway, yesterday I had just sat down after hours of gardening, ready to just sit and do nothing with a cuppa. He asked again, and automatically I said "no". "Right," he says all dramatically, "if you don't play with me I am NOT your boy anymore and I am going to go and live somewhere else".

Well, if you put it like that I suppose I'd better play!

Men and money

You know when you have a certain amount to spend every week and it is all accounted for? Mostly on food and a ridiculous percentage of it on beer. So you get the beer, and then the other half drinks it in 2 days and then goes out and buys some more. And has also developed a nicotine habit that is getting worse and more expensive! How can I be expected to keep to the budget?! But why do I feel guilty when we don't?!

And the depressing thing is, he would happily have us all live on frozen sausages every night as long as he has beer and fags in.

Doing two things at once...

It seems the new trend is that you can't just do one thing at one time anymore, like watch tv or go to a party. You have to sit watching tv while posting pithy tweets at the same time, the amount of times I've gone onto Twitter and it's all about last night's Dragon's Den or Strictly. I feel left out, at the time I had a brilliantly sarcastic one liner I could have shared, but my computer doesn't load up quick enough! (It is 7 years old people, practically prehistoric) And now there is a program (the Million Pound Drop) that actively tells you to log on and play along and you might get selected to be on the show next week and win shedloads of cash. And what is developing? A nation of people watching tv while on their laptops or fancy phones and not really relaxing as they never switch off. What happened to relaxing with your feet up and a cuppa?! The most advanced technological thing I ever did was a textathon when the Eurovision was on, Mr Babs doesn't get the comments about crazy hair and weird European lyrics!

Technology is great but it is stopping people interacting in real life. Next door had a barbecue last night (get them, October 1st and all!) and I watched them over the fence sitting round drinking and all on their phones texting other people or on the internet. It was quite sad really. If me and Mr Babs ever entertain I will have a dish to put phones in, a bit like the old car key trick :)

And if you ever don't want to know the results of a program or anything important, you can NOT go on the Internet. I used to have to avoid the news channels if I hadn't seen the last episode of Masterchef or something and didn't want to know who won until I saw it. Now I'd have to avoid Twitter, probably Facebook, and the news, and email just for safety.

Maybe I'll go and live in a cave with a tin foil hat on, it's probably safer...

Breakdown cover if you want it or not

My breakdown cover for the car ran out at the beginning of the month. The AA now cannily renew it automatically, which to be honest I had forgotten about, but I got a letter telling me that as I had a new bank card this year they hadn't got my details and I would have to ring up if I wanted to renew. I was very glad about this as they doubled the price since last year, and I didn't want to pay it. Imagine my surprise when I checked the bank last week and they'd taken the money anyway! You know when you are so angry you can't speak or breathe? We didn't have the money to spend on stupid things like super expensive breakdown cover, we needed it for food. So when I could speak I rang them up. Luckily the man I got put through to in the end agreed to refund the money, but it would take up to 21 days to get it back. Then he generously said "oh and we won't charge you the £20 admin fee for cancelling". !!!!!!!

I am still really angry! Luckily it didn't take the whole 21 days to get the money back. And the other thing was that he asked at the end of the conversation if I had any breakdown cover. I said no, I was going to the RAC as they do the same thing for £28 (not £54 as the AA quoted). "Oh, we can match that!" he blithely announced, which begs the question why quote me £54?! They are banking on people not checking and just letting the renewal go through, and it's ridiculous! You can't opt out of the automatic renewal either so you have to be on top of your game in 12 months or you're in for it. I wasn't, and luckily for me they cocked up at their end.

And the cover they would have given me wasn't coming to my house if the car wouldn't start, or towing me home, it was literally coming to the car if we break down somewhere and then towing us to a garage. I only go to the shops once a week, and I think my brother-in-law would tow me home for free. Sod you breakdown cover, I'm going solo!

Books

You know when you are reading a book and you just can't get into it? Is it worth struggling on or should you just stop? I got John Irving's Last Night in Twisted River out of the library weeks ago. I have read all of his other books, and I was looking forward to it. I'm only a third of the way in and I am trying to decide if I should carry on. It's really hard work, all the characters have really complicated surnames that you can't just read, you have to actively spell them out in your head, and it is hard going. Maybe it's my baby brain that has stopped me from being able to concentrate properly but I feel I'm not giving the book the attention it deserves. Maybe I'll get a Jackie Collins instead and try this again in a couple of years...sorry John!

The state of things

I was reading the paper yesterday and got to the end and realised I was thoroughly depressed. All it had in it was bad news. Train fares going up again to pay for the bloody olympics, bills going up, the price of food going up, houses getting smaller, random murders, dead babies, parents bullied into buying expensive brand names to keep their kids happy, school standards dropping. Jeez. England is going to the dogs. The only reason I can think of right now to stay and not elope to Spain or somewhere is the NHS and free prescriptions for Mr Babs. I know we would have a better quality of life living anywhere else, living in London is becoming a luxury at the moment. And not a nice luxury really with all the crime and pollution and noise and people and cars everywhere. Maybe we could move abroad but close enough to come back for doctor's appointments?

Books and films

So after years of umming and ahhing I finally watched the Time Traveler's Wife on dvd. I loved the book, I remember bawling outside Tescos when I finished it. I was actually looking forward to the film after reading a few reviews about it online. But no. It was terrible. I'll have to read the book again so I forget the film. It totally took the heart out of the book and I have no idea how, but it lost the love between the two main characters. In the book you can understand why the woman waits so long for the Time Traveler to reappear throughout her life, it is totally believable as they are so much in love. In the film. he was angry all the time, I couldn't understand what she saw in him really, and she seemed like she didn't care either way if he was there or not. Even when he died I didn't sob buckets like I thought I would.

Mr Babs who was forced to sit through it too was not amused. Lesson learnt, no more movies of books for me!