Mainly because if I had carried on, dust is all I could have eaten to stay within my daily calorie allowance, well that and belly button fluff.
Firstly apologies for my time away, if you have all been missing me terribly. I had a slight tech-NO-logy (not an entersomethingfunnyhere original, unfortunately) issue, the issue being I managed to break 2 laptops, a blackberry and a digital camera in a month period. Still my dad has been to the rescue so I am back up and running and my laptops have had a nip and tuck and are working perfectly.
Unfortunately the diet is not, I lasted a whole 3 weeks, which may be something of a record I think. Rosemary never did come and see us personally, which for the money I was paying to go to said fat club I would have expected her to come and cook my dinner each night. Still, instead we got a lovely, again lycra-clad lady, unfortunately she seemed more interested in flogging her home knitted scarves each week. Unless you knitted them with strands of cheese covered spaghetti then frankly love, I’m not that interested.
So first meeting went not bad considering (the considering part being I weighed considerably more than I thought I did!) We were giving our Week 1 & 2 pamphlet…”This is the killer,” scarf lady told us, “you can only eat 1,200 calories a day and you can eat anything that has more than 5% fat in it.” I thought actually this sounded pretty easy, I think this was mainly at my ignorance at the calorific value of any food substance….Still she carried on: “its worth it, I lost 12 stone in a year.” At which point mum nodded at me smiling broadly and giving me and encouraging look. “What are you looking at me like that for?” I hissed. “Well, you know” she replied, eyeing up my tummy…I was tempted to burn some initial calories by giving her a right hook, but I resisted.
So I had a look through the pamphlet when I got home and it all looked very yummy…spaghetti Bolognese, salmon and new potatoes, steak and oven chips…easy as pie (all be it a very low fat pie). What I neglected to look at was the quantities allowed for the dinners. First night me and Monkey Boy got started on salmon with new potatoes. All goes well until weighing out my allotted amount of food. “100g of new potatoes please, monkey boy” I asked shoving him the overflowing pan…2 potatoes sat miserably on my plate…In fact I lie, 2 halves of a new potato sat on my plate. “Are you taking the proverbial?!?” I shouted, glaring at him. Like a rabbit caught in the headlights he muttered something about not being brave enough and proceeded to show me the scales to get himself out of the firing line. This started something of a pattern for the rest of the week, eating less than even Goggle Boy and Mini-Diva. I even downsized my dinner plate to a side plate to make my pitiful dinners seem bigger, and then changed that into a saucer to try and reach the desired effect of having a full plate. Still I would try and mutter cheerfully “Dieting is penalty for exceeding the feed limit.” As I stated, as I was imaging Monkey Boy as a giant hamburger and the kids as little barbeque drumsticks.
This carried on for the 2 weeks and I was very pleased that actually my efforts paid off and I lost 10lbs, although this was mainly due to the fact I was so hungry I rushed to grill my chicken and ended up with food poisoning which meant I was not able to eat anything for 3 days solid. It was after this that I started doubting my sanity from lack of food. I kept eyeing up raw chicken with the thought of licking it to make myself ill and therefore not be able to eat. “Maybe I could call it the Salmon-ella diet?” I suggested to Monkey Boy. I recall him mentioning something about sectioning……
By week 3, I was somewhat of a mess. Weeks 1 & 2 that turned out to be the killer was then followed by Week 3 & 4 pamphlet which gave us the joys of 1,400 calories a day. Wow Rosemary, thank you so much, I am so grateful to be having an extra carrot with my dinner each night(!) Maybe I can look to my Scarf Lady leader for inspiration, I may have misjudged her, maybe knitting is my clue to not eating, maybe that’s why she’s trying to sell all them scarves, she’s got so many from 12 stones weight-loss worth of knitting.
At that exact moment I got a text message, like a sign from God himself:
Hi entersomethingfunnyhere its Scarf Lady. We’ve still got tickets left to sell for our Christmas gala dinner. Six courses and a free bar all for £35. Let me know if you fancy coming! x x x
I think Rosemary can shove her extra carrot up her……….!
* In case any of you are worried please don’t be, I shall continue with my weight-loss by myself, I am perfectly capable of doing it alone…for example I have cut down on food by only adding 2 slices of bacon to my homemade cheese and bacon burgers, instead of my usual 3 AND I have increased my daily exercise by towel drying myself when I come out of the shower instead of my usual trick of blasting myself with the hair dryer 😉
Exercise is a dirty word…every time I say it I wash my mouth out with chocolate.
Still as you all know from my previous post no longer can I lounge about on the sofa all day, I am on a diet and a health kick (the kick being up my backside!) to get into shape. So we have the diet class sorted – Rosemary Conley is going to meet me on Wednesday evening (and I bet she cant wait!), meaning now all is needed is to increase my movement. This has been somewhat of a task and my usual stance on exercise is “if God had wanted me to touch my toes, he would have put them higher up my body.”
I realised quite early on that I had to submerge myself into the world of exercising slowly and carefully, as up until now the most exercise I’ve ever had is jumping to conclusions. So with my newly found motivation (!) I recorded a few programmes from “Fitness TV”, (It’s amazing what you can find on Sky when you look hard enough!). There were various different programmes to choose from and quite quickly I ruled out a fair few:
- Hemalayaa Bollywood Dance – Sorry, last time I checked my Sari was at the drycleaners.
- Ballet Fitness – The idea of me in a tutu conjures up images that would require a lifetimes psychiatrist visit’s to cure.
- Fit into your jeans by Friday – I already fit into my jeans perfectly well it’s the size that they are that worries me.
- Kettle bell Cardio Shred – My lounge is quite small and I’m pretty certain if I start throwing my kettle around I’ll either brake something or burn myself with the scolding water.
- Ripped in 30 – This just sounds scary and painful and I’m really not sure if there is any part of my body I want to rip, this also applied to “The Crunch”.
I was tempted to join in with the “Chairobics” but even I felt embarrassed at doing such a pitiful amount so I finally settled on “Low impact aerobics.” I mean how hard can it be?!?
“Grab a bottle of water and a towel, you never know when you might need it.” The lycra clad figure beamed out at us. Water and towel, fine. Should I also ring the structural engineers at the housing trust to let them know I’m attempting star jumps at two floors up?
She started out with a few easy moves, marching on the spot, a couple of side steps and some shoulder rolls. Nothing to it, I thought, following along easily with her and the other two lycra clad participants behind her (neither of which, I might add, looked like they needed low impact aerobics) – maybe thin people get a discount on lycra, like old people get a discount on hearing aids?
My thoughts were interrupted by some new moves, that made me work a little harder – “the grapevine” – a mixture between the things footballers do up and down the pitch when warming up before a game, mixed with my mum dancing and “the easy walk” – which, quite frankly, should be sued under trades descriptions act as it is not easy at all, nor is it walking. It is more like the first bit of the Macarena, only without putting your arms behind your head, and to be honest, I’ve been walking for the last 25 years and I think I’ve got it down to a pretty fine art, but hand on heart I think I can say I don’t think I’ve ever attempted to walk to the shops, or anywhere actually, by taking two steps forward and two steps back.
Fast forward another 10 minutes of side steps, heel digs, grapevines and leg curls and I was well and truly spent, it was not a pretty sight, sweat coming out of places I didn’t even think it was possible to sweat from, my face redder than a lobster with sunburn and breathing harder than an asthmatic at high altitude….
“Well that’s the warm up done with, join us in part two where we’ll get properly stuck into the work-out…”
Brought to you by the makers of: HELP….My cat is suicidal.
I love animals, not in a dodgy way obviously. But I do, I much prefer the company of my cat, Daisy, than to the plebs I have to come into contact on a daily basis. I’m not fussy either about what kind of animal it is, for example, Monkey Boy and I are still getting on famously after 5 years.
The thing annoys me though is other pet owners, the one’s that think their pets are outstandingly intelligent. No animal is outstandingly intelligent, except maybe the skateboarding dogs that are on YouTube. But even then, they are in no way outstanding in their intelligence. Outstanding intelligence would be them driving to the shops, choosing a skateboard, paying for it, carrying the carrier bag back to the car in their little mouths, driving themselves to the park and then skateboarding around it. Only then I would be suitably impressed.
Going back to Daisy-kins, after last months escapades of jumping of the balcony (again proof animals are not intelligent), Daisy has now decided what she needs is a nice little Tom Cat to err…*coughs*…you know, bump fuzzies with. Well I’m guessing that’s what she wants, as my dad quite rightly said “Poor little thing doesn’t even know what it is she wants, as she’s never had it.” Looking at me as if I should be putting an advert in the casual daters section of the local newspaper for her?!
Young feline seeks furry companion for friendship and maybe more. Must like sleeping, flicking cat litter across the kitchen and cleaning your bits in public.
Which on that lovely note, brings me to my reasoning behind why animals aren’t intelligent. If they were, in any way, expanding the old grey matter, they would realise that self-cleaning certain area’s of their anatomy, in front of people, really isn’t socially acceptable. They would also realise that when looking for a mate, humans aren’t fair game, so writhing around the rug on your back, meowing constantly and then trying to “present” yourself to me when X-Factor is on, isn’t going to get you some action.
Now their lack of intelligence doesn’t affect my love for them in the slightest. I find it endearing that Daisy really believes that the furry mouse that’s suspended from the door frame by a piece of elastic, is actually real, just because it squeaks every time she whacks it. That really, if she was remotely intelligent she would work out that at no point in Darwin’s theories of evolution have mice ever suspended themselves from anything. So there is really no need for her to hide behind the sofa, because no matter how much she wiggles her bum until she feels the optimum point to pounce, it’s always going to be there and really all it is in essence is a five pound piece of toot I managed to persuade Monkey Boy into buying for her, when we were at the pet shop (the same statement can also be applied to the “catnip bubbles’” I also got him to purchase.)
Still, it could be worse, she could be a dog.
My Body is a temple…with ample parking in the rear. Or so I have been saying for the last few years. But I have bitten the lard-coated bullet and decided to go back to a dieting group. Well actually I am being cajoled by my mother, but to save Goggle Boy and The Mini-Diva the embarrassment of any “Yo Mama” jokes (My favourite being: Yo Mama’s so fat, she has more Chins than a Chinese phonebook) I have decided to waddle along with her.Like any “Bubbly” person will tell you, deciding which group to go to has been the biggest challenge, get it right and hello bikini :-)… Get it wrong and hello coronary(!).
I have had been to “fat club” before, when the The Mini-Diva was a Baby-Diva, I went to Weight Watchers for 6 months. I did very well and lost 2 and a half stone during my time there (unfortunately I have found it since then). The problem I had with the meeting, aside from the smugness from people that had lost more than you, and quite clearly didn’t need to be there, but craved the reassurance that there was nothing wrong with them every time they told people they went to said fat club, (apart from that!!) was the discussions we had every week whilst we were there…
“Do you realise how many points are in this macaroni cheese?” The stick-figure leader would shout at us, whilst jumping around in her tight little lycra sweat-gear. No I’m afraid I haven’t, but I do know I’ve starved myself for the last 48 hours, worn linen trousers in the middle of December, just to get my silver seven sticker…I’m ravenous to the point of exhaustion and close the the point of hypothermia and now all I can think about is that hot, creamy, cheesy, stodgy pile of deliciousness you are waving about in my face….I soooo want to go home now and nibble on a celery stick(!)
Weight Watchers being a no-go area, I maybe thought Slimming World maybe a possibility for “operation banish thigh-rub” I mean you always see lots of skinny people from there on GMTV with a pair of their “before” trousers or life sized cut out of their former selves. Showing the world how far they have come in their quest to stop their BMI being recorded in acres, it obviously has proven results…or maybe not. You see you go on their website and their tagline is “The club with the big heart”. Now does this mean their hearts are enlarged from the amount of cholesterol engulfing them? Are they only interested in people with fatty hearts, will they consider me with my chubby diaphragm? Or will they take anyone who has put a strain on any of their vital organs from their serious scoffing? Scolding myself for not having more faith in these groups I decided to ask someone who had been to Slimming World before, in search of other fatty organs this group might be open to.
“Yeah it was really good, you got to eat as much food as you wanted, you didn’t have to weigh anything…As long as you stayed within your “Weekly Sins Allowance” you’re fine.”
Sins, you say? So as long as I only commit one murder a week and resist from coveting my neighbour, whatever that may mean? The weight will drop of me as quick as I can say: who ate all the pies?
“No, sins are things like alcohol, oil, butter, cheese, chocolate, biscuits, sweets – anything that tastes half decent really.”
Oh right, funnily enough I don’t remember cheddar even being mentioned in the 10 commandments. I think even as a relatively non Christian person even I shall struggle with the concept of sinning every time I nibble on a digestive. Plus wine is the body of Christ, so surely drinking that is a good thing??
Which means I only have one option left, Rosemary Conley, and to be honest I think she’s the kind of old school person I need. She looks a bit like the Margaret Thatcher of the slimming world, the sort of person that wouldn’t be adverse to slapping you round the face with a ryvita if you haven’t lost any weight one week. Maybe she can rid me of my chocolate and red bull lifestyle, and if nothing else the embarrassment of having a coffin-dodger in better shape than me, might spur me on to tackle the tyres. That’s if I don’t eat my willpower first….
I feel a rant coming on and I apologise…I am trying to do some research on wedding venues and I’m getting cross at Surrey prices! When reading wedding magazine’s, you see that the average wedding price is twenty two thousand pounds! “That’s ridiculous!” I hear you cry! Don’t worry I thought the same too, how can anyone spend twenty two grand on a day, who’s marrying them? Lady Gaga? I could take my whole family to Benidorm for a good six months on that kind of money, in fact, I could probably buy Wales. Anyway I was pretty sure I could have the whole thing done on a couple of grand. (I’m thrifty, and not embarrassed to barter – I got my 43 inch TV from Comet for £175 less than the asking price plus a free TV stand, Wi-Fi Adaptor and Cables…all because I refused to leave until he sold it to me for the price I wanted)
Anyway, bragging about my amazing bartering skills over, I decided to do some preliminary research on my special day (as soon as Monkey Boy proof reads this I know he is going to mutter something about it being our special day). I was quite surprised to find out that short from having our wedding reception in a field and simply foraging for our wedding breakfast if I/we want anything half decent we are going to have to sell at least one of Monkey Boy’s kidneys and possibly his liver. Even the local golf course – which attracts people from the very bottom of the gene pool – want £6,000 for the food, a couple of hundred for arrival drinks and then what puzzled me most….another £3,000 on top to use the room!! I’m sorry I don’t ever remember going to Pizza Express and paying £9.95 for my midweek special and then having to pay another tenner on top for the privilege of being able to stay at the restaurant to eat it!!
Getting back to the TV, I always have it on in the background when I’m in the lounge, mainly to drown out Goggle Boy, so today I decided to catch up on some of my stuff I have recorded, I thought a cooking programme might be a good way to get some inspiration for my other blog (www.thecouncilflatkitchen.wordpress.com – what?! it’s my blog and I will plug if I want to!). Thirty minutes passed, and quite frankly all I can say is I was appalled!!! This “Chef” – used in its loosest term – managed to waste 5 minutes of her allotted time showing us how to dip a cherry in white chocolate, 7 minutes if you count the shot of her buying the damn things in the market. There were 5 different shots of the plain cherries, 4 shots of her stirring melted white chocolate in varying speeds and another 5 shots of her dragging a cherry through the melted chocolate!! “Oh hang on love, you couldn’t go through that again could you? you lost me at the stirring stage?!” Now what exactly am I paying my whole £12.18 per month for my TV license for? The fact I’m probably the only person that pays it in our council ridden road is beside the point.
On a plus point Monkey Boy is suitably chuffed with the amount of views and likes I got on my last post….
Monkey Boy: They obviously found my comment about the German U-Boats funny.
Me: No they didn’t find you personally funny, they found the way I wrote it funny. They probably find you slightly retarded.
Monkey Boy: Yeah…well…I’m only being like this to give you material to write about.
Me: Oh really??? Well I’ve been writing this blog for a month now, what’s your excuse been for the past 5 years??
Yeah thanks, that little bit of advice is about as much use as a Durex machine in the Vatican. So as you can probably tell I’m having a little trouble at the moment having a rave in my bed with DJ Pillow and MC Duvet! I have no idea why this is, maybe I have a lot going on, maybe my head is finding it hard to slow down at night, no more gallivanting to the beach every weekend means I am no longer worn out of a night.
The trouble is, if I don’t fall asleep within a nanosecond, I then have to listen to Monkey Boy grinding his teeth on a constant basis and his occasional mutterings in his sleep about needing some more stickers?!
So I have been trying different methods this week to get myself of to the land of nod. Firstly I tried the old fail safe of counting sheep. Having somewhat of a wandering imagination, this seemly simple task posed a few problems. “Why are the sheep wanting to jump the fence?” My self-conscious asked itself. “Is there a really cool sheep party (or baaa-ty!) they are trying to get to?” “Are they running away from danger?” “Why are they even jumping?” As far as I was concerned I didn’t think sheep even could jump, like chickens can’t fly. So if I am imagining they can jump, why am I limiting my imagination to jumping white sheep? Why can’t I make them multi-coloured? Or diversify into other farmyard animals? I could continue but I think you can see where my problem with this theory lies.
My second method was courtesy of a Birthday present from my mummy last week (Damn I better change my profile page to age 26 *Insert super sad face here*) which was lavender room fragrance sticks, which according to her would make me sleep easier. Monkey Boy enquired what that weird smell was coming from the bedroom. “Lavender” I replied “I thought it would make a nice change from the usual wet dog aroma and eau de dirty linen that usually graces the bedroom.” Cue a half ok/half grunt from Monkey Boy, followed by some light grinding and something about not wanting to play.
Growing frantic in my search for sleep I downloaded a few relaxing Buddha-esque tracks onto my “BlueBerry” which worked brilliantly for the first hour of sleep, until I moved mid-slumber and woke up abruptly with my earphone digging into my right eye. So the next night spurred on with my semi-success I decided I would play the music quietly as not to disturb Monkey Boy’s sleep, but enough to drown out his personal erosion of himself. Settling myself down I selected my “Whale Song” and lay quietly waiting for sleep to wash over me. Not really being a fan of whale’s back catalogue so far I wasn’t really sure what to expect. A few beeps and squawks came on, not so calming, but give it time it might work.
“What the hell are you listening to?” Booms Monkey Boy over the silence “German U-Boats?”
“Sssshhhhh” I am concentrating on my breathing, I hissed.
He then proceeded, in a very bad German accent, to shout: “Dive,Dive,Dive” every time another squawk filled the room. Needless to say having an impromptu re-enactment of the Second World War in my bedroom didn’t really send me off to sleep either, so, I tried my final and successful theory….
Get drunk until the point of passing out. I’m not sure my liver will thank me in 10 years time but the kids seem pleased to wake up to a half-cut mummy who lets them have cake for breakfast as apposed to sleep-deprived mummy who growls if they so much as come within a 10 metre radius. Plus I’d hate to disappoint Goggle Boy by not having Malibu in my coke of an evening……chin chin 🙂
Or so I discovered last night on my twice nightly trip to spend a penny. It must have cost me thousands over the years. I don’t understand with the shins though, the furniture doesn’t move in the night, I mean obviously there is something to do with the darkness affecting our perception or visual-space awareness, some technical scientific babble I’m sure, but it still doesn’t take from the fact is bloomin’ annoying and painful.
Even more annoying is that my tiny useless bladder can’t seem to make it more than 4 hours without feeling the need to wake me up from my comfy slumber to empty its pitiful contents. Well I don’t blame myself obviously, its definitely Goggle Boy and the Mini-Diva’s fault for each taking the liberty to crush my precious bladder for 9 months each (Well 8 month’s for the Mini-Diva) as well all my other sacred organs I hold so dear. Still I suppose on the upside if it gets much worse I can resort to those Tena Lady knickers that are made to look oh-so sophisticated on the telly, crossing the Sahara on a camel looking care free and not caring less that your essentially an old lady in the middle of the desert wearing a giant nappy.
Still at least whilst the weather is nice I worry not about my ever impending incontinence and more about where I can get my next sun fix…the park was todays port of call, although as we were getting ready to leave I could hear Monkey Boy muttering to Goggle Boy about the fashion faux par of socks and sandals. Well actually his exact words were:
“Take your socks off if you’re wearing sandals, this is West Molesey, not Bethlehem.”
Although with Goggle Boy we’re not quite sure what is going in at the moment, with his glue ear his hearing has slowly been getting worse over the year, which has meant his speech has been affected as he can’t hear how we are pronouncing words to him. Current ticklers for us are not using “Square words” and watching “Stevie-D’s”. Unfortunately for us though the word for Merchant Banker comes out crystal clear!!
On the plus side you can just about hold a conversation with him. At West Wittering beach last week we had a lovely mother/son conversation that I think every mother would love to have with their 3 and a half-year old son:
Me: Goggle Boy, you look hot, would you like some of my coke?
Goggle Boy: Huh? (Told you his hearing was bad)
Me: (Shouting) WOULD YOU LIKE SOME OF MY COKE?
Goggle Boy: (Shouting as he can’t hear his own volume) WHAT HAS IT NOT GOT ANY MALIBU IN IT? (With genuine surprise, I might add)
Me:No it hasn’t but thank you, Goggle Boy, for bringing my drinking habits to the attention of the whole of West Sussex, but no surprising as it may seem I can drink coke (or any other well-known brand of soft drink) without Malibu in it.
Goggle Boy: Huh?
I give up!!!! 🙂
So only 2 more sleeps until the little ankle-biters are back to school. It can be bitter-sweet. As much as you can’t wait to have a bit of time on your hands again and not having to spend hours planning structured/educational but fun day trips (We did the British Wildlife Centre in Surrey…Really worth a look). The downside is you no longer get to stay in your pajama’s until 10:30am when it’s no major deal if you go all day without brushing your hair and if you suddenly find there’s no food in the house, it’s no biggie you can just amble down to Tesco’s.
Suddenly your back to school nights, where even you have to go to bed early, if like me you struggle to get up before 7:00am, uniforms have to be laid out in order of putting on (Goggle Boy has been known to put shorts on first and pants on after if they are put in the wrong order) and packed lunches made to conform to the school’s ever-changing dietary requirements.
The worst thing, far worse than the early mornings that have to be timed with military precision is having to mill around the playground for 20 minutes before school making idle chit-chat with other human beings that really if you didn’t have the daily contact of school, you wouldn’t tiddle on if they were on fire.
Now I have to be careful here, by not remaining anonymous it means that I can shameless beg for views on Facebook to my friends and relatives. The downside is I have to be careful who I slag off to save being “duffed” up in the playground…Although saying that I’m pretty hard and can definitely say the only social housing tenant in the school’s history I think (it’s a posh school in a nice area) so the chances of being beaten to death by a Prada handbag or kicked in the face by a Jimmy Choo is highly unlikely. So, I shall soldier on.
So I stand there, every day, on my own, in the playground, desperately avoiding eye contact with anyone. Hoping that they wont notice me. But inevitably they always ferret you out, like a diligent hound, sniffing out a mangy old fox (maybe it’ll soften the blow if I slag myself of too?!). So on goes the plastic smile, cue eyes lighting up like I am genuinely interested that “Tarquin” has mastered Mandarin in 34 seconds exactly.
Now don’t get me wrong, as a parent, I know you always want the best for your children and am proud when they have mastered a new skill, or moved on in some area of their lives. I just don’t feel the need to publicly announce it to someone who I am forced to share breathing space with for the next 7 years because I somehow managed to wing it into the decent school. I also know that my children aren’t mini Einsteins (I refer to the earlier post about Goggle Boy) and if there is one thing I can’t stand is deluded parents.
“Tarquin” for example only learnt to string a sentence together in the past year, despite being 5 and has a penchant for biting and kicking other children. But according to his mother, this is because poor “Tarquin” is too bored to do anything else as he is so intelligent, the school simply can’t push him enough! As far as she is concerned he is already eligible to join MENSA and is just one punch away from a Nobel Peace Prize. I suppose your going to tell me next, that the constant snot trail he has dribbling from his grotty little nose is excess brain seeping out of his head as he simply can’t fit it all in anymore??
So right about now I should be in Malvern, going away for a few days, visiting family. But I’m not. So, I thought I would tell you about my day in Brighton yesterday with the family.
As you can see from the photo, it was a lovely sunny day. We were visiting my uncle who lives down there and as it was so nice we decided instead of spending thousands in the arcade we would take them to a little park area right on the beach that had its own paddling pool.
Great in theory and for the most part, it was great, there were a few little “oiks” who found it necessary to splash every child that came within a 10 metre radius but hey! Water is water and we’re all waterproof. What I do object to however, is the “Carrot-top” family that decided to descend on us after we had been there all of half an hour. Now do not get me wrong in no way at all am I “gingerist”, I like Chris Evans as much as the next person. What I object to is them finding it socially acceptable to let their 7-year-old child run about the paddling pool naked. Call me prudish if you like but, if that was me and like the usual last-minute rush you forget little Mick Hucknall’s swimming shorts, at least put his pants on him while he paddles. I’d much rather he went home commando, than me have to be subjected to a live version of wee-willie-winke running through the paddling pool…Plus it completely put me of my jumbo sized pack of mini party sausages I’d bought as my snack du jour to munch on.
So winkie-gate over we decided to drive a bit further along the coast to a little beach-front cafe for a bit of dinner. Afterwards we decided to go for one last stroll along the beach before it was time to set off home. This again gives me a chance to rant. As you will see from the picture below two swimmers decided to go for a late afternoon dip:
Now what is the problem with this I hear you ask? They have come well equipped with swimming trunks so no three-piece suite on display. Unfortunately the zoom on my blackberry being appallingly poor you are unable to see their chosen headgear . So there within lies my problem – other than my exercise-shy self thinking that you have to be completely bonkers to go swimming in the English Channel on a breezy afternoon is that you feel the need, as a man to wear a swimming hat to do it!! So basically the freezing temperature, risk of being swept out to see, hypothermia and potential jellyfish attacks don’t bother you, but, the risk of you dampening your luscious locks does?? *insert rolling-eye face here”
So my little vipers this brings me to my reason as to why I’m not in Malvern…It seems monkey boy’s beloved Audi decided to die a horrible death at 75mph, on the middle lane of the M23, somewhere near Gatwick. Luckily we managed to pull into the hard shoulder before we ground to a complete halt and scrambled down a bramble-clad bank to call the AA (thanks for paying for that mum) and await our rescue. Thankfully with 2 young children and having the world and his brother flying past us only metres away at silly-miles-per-hour we were considered a “priority” to the AA and were told we would be rescued within 45 minutes! Obviously like any concerned parent my main priority was….to check us in on facebook…ok ok maybe not the best idea when your inches away from having your femoral artery being severed by a wayward bramble, but still my thinking was maybe I’d get a bit of welcome sympathy from my unwelcome predicament.
Only some eejit (friend of monkey boy) actually LIKED my post! I’m sorry you actually like the fact that I’m stranded on the middle of a major motorway looking death head-on? Where d’ya get your kicks? Casualty?!
So long story short, the money we’ve had to fork out to resuscitate monkey boy’s beloved Audi means we have no money to go and visit my family…So I’m stuck in snobby surrey until the kids are back to school…Which can only mean one thing…(*dun dan dun*) the playground gauntlet…But more on that next time folks!
Once again a Bank Holiday weekend is upon us, which can only mean one thing: Rain…and loads of it! There’s nothing like being cooped up in a small flat with two young children to test your stress levels! We have had Poppy, my mum’s pretend Irish Jack Russell cross with us for the weekend. (By pretend I mean we pretend that she is Irish, not that we make up an imaginary dog!). This meant we had to go out as the dog needed walking. So after the “monsoon” had passed the kids, monkey boy, my dad and I ventured over to the river. This was great for the kids as they had their puddle suits and wellies on meaning they could jump in the hundred’s of puddles to their heart’s content – something which you could clearly see all the other kids around them looking on in envy! My advice to parents that don’t let their kids jump in puddles – don’t…it’s mean, I love jumping in puddles and I’m 25 🙂
So after jumping in puddles and trekking all the way up the towpath to find the cafe where we wanted to stop was closed, we headed back to the car. Obviously the movement of trundling such a long way, had an effect on Poppy’s little bowels, meaning Monkey Boy and Dad had to partake in a small game of…”Hunt the turd”….Which much to their annoyance I found hilarious to watch – so hilarious I decided to take a photo of them doing it:
Obviously I didn’t join in- as the prize for the person that finds said “turd” is picking it up with your hand inside a nappy sack….
So before I go I should explain the title I guess…the raindrops kind of explain themselves and the very expensive bed was from a conversation with my Dad.
The long and short of it was he was looking for some upholstery cleaner for his sofa as there were a couple of red wine stains on there, but he wasnt having much luck. So, he was having to wash the covers individually in the machine and they were taking a long time to dry out. I asked how old the sofa’s were and when he told me they were 13 years old I asked why he didn’t just buy new sofa’s….
Me: Dad, if they are that old why not just buy a new sofa and save yourself the time?
Dad: Because I’ve only recently paid a grand for a new bed…
Me: Well that’s ridiculous, a grand for a bed…what is it gold-plated?
Dad: No, but its top of the range…
Me: Well what does it do, iron your shirts? Cook your dinner?
Dad: No it lifts up and you can store things underneath it…
Me: Oh well that’s just brilliant…You’ve paid 500 quid more than the average price for a bed because… it has a hinge on it(!)
(I cant repeat what my dad said after this :-))
So I have worked out for my dear dad there are obviously disadvantages to being the 6’2 stature he is…..people can see him coming a mile off!!!
entersomethingfunnyhere 