Melodious discord and the generation gap.

Life without music is as difficult to imagine as fish without chips, a bath without bubbles or Die Hard without Bruce Willis. Music is my equivalent of Mary Poppin’s spoonful of sugar, and I can often be seen using my broom as a guitar as I do the housework, singing myself hoarse along with Billy Idol on my headphones. So it was par for the course that I was chirping along loudly to 1980’s classics on my way down the motorway to pick up Bigfoot and his chosen counterpart from the lycée last week (more about Bigfoot here).

On the return trip, I flipped the radio back on just in time for Bananarama’s “Venus”. “Yeah!!!” I enthused as I turned the volume up. “Have you heard any Bananarama before, guys?” I was greeted by an uncomfortable silence, and glanced into the rearview mirror. Concerned glances were being exchanged between sixteen-year-old Bigfoot and his chosen counterpart, who then flashed an embarrassed smile at the gear stick and said “Urrr, no….” before they both collapsed into giggles. “Don’t laugh, or I’ll start singing. And I know all the words,” I threatened. They obviously took me seriously, as they then asked for NRJ – a radio station for brainless French teens in need of a lobotomy. I know, I’m a bad loser.

As Bigfoot and his chosen counterpart guffawed on the back seat, I got thinking about my music idols when I was their age. The Cure, The Rolling Stones, Roxy Music, the Eurythmics. Go on, admit it, you’re nodding your head in recognition, aren’t you? My parents must have found it difficult not to smile at my conviction that any group called The Psychedelic Furs, Adam and the Ants or Fanny could produce anything even remotely interesting, let alone be able to take Robert Smith seriously with his pointed boots, powdered white face and sullen pout, his blackened eyes glaring out from beneath his back-combed bush of jet-black hair.

Robert Smith, the dreamboy I would never have dared take home to mum. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I realised that like my parents, I suffer from musical and cultural angst when I listen to the rubbish that spews out of Bigfoot’s headphones, and despair that my children may never discover real music. I clutched my steering wheel in horror as it dawned on me that the wheel of life had turned and I had become my parents. They had always said it would happen. Those famous last words rang in my head: “You’ll understand when you have your own”.

When we got home, the boys were keen to show me how wrong I am about modern-day music. They pulled out my laptop and within seconds, an example of something they considered “cool” was on the screen. What I can only qualify as electronic noise was accompanied by a video of tattooed men who were making an admirable effort to dance in unlaced boots and trousers that were at least three sizes too big for them.

Obviously suspicious of Newton’s conclusions on gravity, they were carefully weighed down with heavy chains that made them look more like abandoned pit bulls lifting their legs against fire hydrants in the Bronx than singers. Shuffling around the screen, they shook their arms like overexcited primates and stared threateningly into the camera through white sunglasses with empty frames as big as manhole covers. One by one, they all took turns at stabbing accusing fingers at the camera lens as they did their best to fit as much bad language as they could into one sentence.

A modern-day rapper ready for YouTube glory (Photo credit: Gregory Jordan).

Just when I was about to do a runner for the kettle, a pop star mother of two gyrated into sight. My jaw hit the kitchen work surface. Her hair has been bleached since her relatively innocent teenaged debut, and was scraped into a yellow poney-tail on top of her head. She started shaking her booty with the tattooed lads, and I must say she did a very good job of staying upright in her high-heeled, studded sandals. I was, however, a little nonplussed by the rest of her outfit: my resident teenaged Fashion Police would never let me go out in a jacket that didn’t cover the important bits, to say nothing of a leather skirt that apparently had a dual personality and took itself for a curtain pelmet.

The torture session drew to a close. “So, Mum, what do you think?” I stared into my offspring’s enthusiastic eyes, and put down my mug of tea to give my verdict. “Firstly, I don’t call that music, it’s noise. Now let’s see. The lyrics. Ummm…” I dug out the few words I’d scribbled on the back of a supermarket receipt. “Molly’s here, we don’t fight fair/My buzz big, like Lightyear/ Get a grip shorty, you can’t stand here. Well, kids, I’d say the song’s about as deep as the author’s belly button, and has as much impact as a strategically placed Smartie on the great railway track of life. Now, would you like my opinion on mothers of small children parading on internet, wearing nothing more than leather underwear, a pair of tights and high-heeled sandals? If I picked you up at school like that, I’d get arrested before I had the fun of seeing your faces!”

Cue rolling teenage eyeballs. “Now, kids. Let’s talk business. About that CD we’re burning for the car trip. We’re going to start with Queen, The Rolling Stones, the Police and Billy Idol, then if you’ve survived the shock of listening to real music we’ll move on to The Cure, Blondie, The Who and Madness”. I didn’t tell them that if they put up a fight, I’ll let P.F out of his cage with his complete collection of Beethoven. So there.

Photo challenge: Forward.

Today’s photo challenge asks bloggers to post a photo that inspires the word “Forward”. This is a favourite photo showing Little My taking a leap forward into life, 100% confident in her big brother’s promise that he wouldn’t let her down. He didn’t.

Forward to discovery, forward to self-confidence, forward to trust, forward to overcoming your fears and growing up. Forward.

copyright Multifarious meanderings 2013/

Ode to a birth scene scriptwriter.

Thirteen years ago, I was sitting in my bed eating bananas and vanilla ice cream and soaking up my three-year-old’s delight at discovering that his baby brother had shifted from my stomach to his cot whilst he was asleep.

Luckily, mini-Bigfoot was unaware of the collateral damage that Rugby-boy had left behind him in his haste to check out the world: a bleak, perineal Hiroshima, roped off below the sheets with crime scene tape and plastic cones. Rugby-boy is a kid who decides and acts without further ado. His birth was no exception, and he achieved an average cruising speed of one kilogram per hour to be on time for his first scrum with life.

The aftermath below the sheets….. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

For those of you who are worrying about getting a tear-jerking, blow-by-blow account of the sad demise of my pelvic floor, fear not. I have no desire to put anyone off having children, as there is so much more to discover after birth. The delights of an overnight transformation into a cross between Lolo Ferrari and a Friesian cow, for example. Discovering that you too can be a night owl, albeit a reluctant one. Learning how to single-handedly unfold a stroller in the rain with one hand, screaming child under your arm and Tesco’s shopping bag clenched between your teeth. Dealing with toddlers who have no issues with incontinence in public. The list is endless.

However, I do have one small request for any scriptwriters who could be reading this: Can you get a real woman to write the birth bits in your films and TV series, please? You know, someone who has actually been through the reproductive equivalent of crapping a watermelon at least once in her life without the help of gas, epidurals or being hit over the head with a heavy object?

The image you give of childbirth is far from the reality of things. In films, the episode begins with our pregnant heroine walking across the tidy room without a whining two-year-old clamped to her leg. She serves herself a glass of San Pelligrino, then dramatically clutches her perfectly round stomach, tastefully encased in designer maternity clothes. There are no visible stretch marks, and no extra weight is to be seen anywhere on her delicate frame. She isn’t wearing an engineering feat of a bra designed to transport two fully-grown elephants under a Chinook helicopter, and her ankles show no signs of containing enough water to top up the local council’s swimming pool. Her toe nails are both cut and varnished – schoolboy error, Mr Scriptwriter. Everyone knows that from six months onwards, pregnant women cannot reach their feet without having previous training in either yoga or contortion. So excuse me guys, but your scenario is already a bit shaky.

Ship ahoy….. breaking waters. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“Oh, honey, my waters have broken!” she bleats to a husband who is not at work, not painting the garden shed and not surgically attached to his pillow with drool at one in the morning.  Whilst all she had to do was think about giving birth for the flood gates to blow like the Hoover Dam, my amniotic sacs were all so resistant that they could have been patented by Pirelli.

“Honey”, alias SSOH (Seriously Significant Other Half) immediately carries his wimpering wife (henceforth referred to as “WW”) into the car – mysteriously devoid of plastic toys, DIY material and food wrappings – and takes her to the maternity ward.  Compare this with my three successive gems for each birth: “Just let me have a shave and a shower first”, “Are you kidding? I’ve only just got into bed….”, or “Great! I’m so excited! Home births are cool. Want a cup of tea?”

Back to our model couple. SSOH drives to hospital whilst WW moans  “It’s coming! It’s coming!” At no point does she burst into hysterical tears, insult him, or underline the fact that giving birth is the only time in your life when you understand that biologically speaking,  you really are an animal. Mother Nature takes over, and there is nothing you can do about it except step back and let her get on with the show. I never thought I had a real muscle in my body until my uterus came out of the closet and showed me what it was made of. If my biceps could work as efficiently, I’d be a force to be reckoned with. It’s the Arnold Schwarzenegger of M.M’s organ mafia. A lean, mean muscle machine so efficient that after Rugby Boy’s birth I asked the midwife to check that it was really just a placenta and not my entire innards that had followed him out backstage.

What a uterus really looks like (photo credit: Wikipedia)

Back to our perfect couple, who arrive in hospital and get immediate service from doting staff. WW gets a wheelchair and a private lift, and does not have to stand in the public lift like M.M, muttering obscenities in English as bewildered French strangers clutching bunches of flowers look on.

Now comes the bit I love in films. Cue sappy music. WW dons sexy gown with delicate black print that ties up at the back then exchanges romantic niceties with SSOH, confirming their everlasting love and underlining what wonderful parents they are going to be. (Easy: they know full well that we will never see the episode thirteen years later when a teenaged John Junior sniffs glue with his pregnant girlfriend behind the garden shed.)

The nurse gently interrupts their poetic pukesome pre-parental prelude and reminds WW that she has to push. Obviously, this is something you do on command in films. Personally, when the midwife had the bad idea to tell me not to push, I told her to push off: One of the few joys of childbirth is that it is the only time you can not only insult complete strangers and lacerate your husband’s palms with your fingernails, but you get away with it too. I informed her that my body had been taken over by alien forces and would be doing what it bloody well wanted to do until further notice. Maintaining that a birthing mother can switch pushing on and off on demand is as ridiculous as saying that you can stop a runaway steamroller rolling down an embankment using no more than optimism and a tooth pick.

WW pushes twice on demand, accompanied by unconvincing and dramatic moaning, and Perfect Offspring is born. PO is suspiciously clean, has dry hair and appears to be rather oversized for a newborn, although WW no doubt has a luxury womb stretching up to her tonsils and equipped with fridge, wide-screen T.V and politically correct toys to get him in the starting blocks for Montessori schooling. WW clutches her offspring and beams gormlessly at her tearful, emotional husband. She is perfectly made up, has beautiful hair, is not dripping with sweat and is not threatening to alleviate her child’s genitor of his reproductive appendages with the obstetrician’s torture kit in a bid to avoid making the same mistake again.

So sorry, guys, but there are a few major discrepancies with real life that need seeing to before you have a watertight birthing scenario. Let me know if you need a scriptwriter. In the meanwhile, I’d happily go back ten years in time and sign to do it all again. But my way, not yours.

Daily Prompts: When nightmares echo reality.

Daily Prompt: Nightmares

by michelle w. on February 19, 2013

Describe the last nightmare you remember having. What do you think it meant?

I have had the same nightmare for the last nearly 24 years. I have never written about this.  It  is distressing and not the kind of thing I felt I should share until today – maybe speaking about it will help.

In my nightmare, I am a few feet from a young boy, lying alone on the turf of the football pitch. His face is tinged blue, his eyes and mouth are open. I push past the people in front of me to the fence separating me from him, but it is too high. The exit gate is locked, I can’t get to him. I talk to him, but don’t know if he can hear me.

More stretchers arrive. More victims. I have to stand there, an unwilling observer of human suffering like the people around me. A man walks slowly down the pitch, trousers soaked with fear, tears running down his face. A drunken supporter screams abuse at injured people.  I hug a sobbing stranger on a step. Later, much later, we get on the bus home. The only sound was that of grown adults weeping.

I always wake up feeling that I have been punched in the stomach by the concentrated dose of human compassion, courage, grief, terror, anger, stupidity, cruelty and inadequacy I experienced that day. I awaken with the guilt of having survived, and the anger that 96 people died on the day they were supposed to enjoy a football match.

I know full well what this nightmare means. My brain has never processed the horror of seeing this happen in 1989, and my conscience cannot accept that I was incapable of doing anything to change the victims’ destinies. Time does nothing to take the memory away, and becoming a mother has made it more difficult.  I see the boy again and again, because I need to know if he survived. I never will.

Daily Prompt: (Not so) far from normal.

I thought I’d have a go at this daily prompt before I jump into my bed!

Many of us think of our lives as boringly normal, while others live the high life. Take a step back, and take a look at your life as an outsider might. Now, tell us at least six unique, exciting, or just plain odd things about yourself.

1. I live with five snakes. I tend to forget they’re there until I realise I’ve lost a visitor on the way to the kitchen for coffee, then return to find them hiding behind a plant, gibbering.  Nine times out of ten, they leave having spent hours playing with one of them. The remaining case drinks their coffee in the garden.

2. I am a ridiculously easy person to please. The three L’s dictate my life: Love, Laughter and Literature. I get endless pleasure out of the simple things that you just can’t buy:  things like the smell of English breakfast teabags, a luminous, blue winter sky and the sun on my face, the thrill of jumping in autumn leaves, singing my lungs out and getting into a bed made up with fresh linen and reading a book before falling asleep. My high point last week was seeing Rugby-boy’s ecstatic reaction when he found out he was going to meet his favourite team and be on the pitch when they started the match. Priceless, unique, unforgettable joy.

This is enough to get M.M firing on all six cylinders.

 

3. I often delve into my memory and think back to when I was small and didn’t even realise that the world around me isn’t always pleasant. I often yearn to regain that childhood faith and innocence. To erase anything negative from my hard disk and unlearn certain harsh realities that have turned life’s experience sour for me on occasions. As I can’t, whether it’s right or wrong, I am trying to protect my children from these realities for as long as I can.

 

4. One day I would like to invent a full range of environmentally-friendly, disposable clothing for kids and break those damned shackles with Candy the washing machine. Answers on a postcard, please.

 

5. I’m a magician. All I have to do is look at a plant and it dies. All I have to do is clap eyes on a bag of peanuts and it disappears.

 

6. I finally worked out what I want to be when I grow up when I was 43. Now I’m 44, I  just have to grow up.

Time up.

This post is very different to what I usually write. Time to try my hand at a bit of fiction with today’s Daily Prompt: The Clock. “Write about anything you’d like. Somewhere in your post, include the sentence, “I heard the car door slam, and immediately looked at the clock.”

(Photo credit: Ömer Ünlü)

I struggled in vain, my fear and anger fuelling the adrenaline coursing though my veins. I was firmly anchored to the chair, my wrists and ankles deadened by the tightness of the tape. Rubbing my face against the shoulder of my pullover in a futile attempt to remove the tape placed over my mouth, I could smell Emily’s perfume. Emily. Please don’t come home tonight. Please stay at work late, please go for a drink with the girls after work, please get stuck in a traffic jam but please, for the sweet love of Jesus, don’t come home.

It had been easy for Anna to get into the house without me hearing her. I’m always half asleep when I surface in the afternoon, and she knew it. All our married life I had worked nights, and she had gradually replaced my presence in the evening with the bottle. First a glass of wine, then two, until I regularly found her asleep on the couch on my return from night shift. Eyes closed to the fresh-faced early morning T.V presenters, she was spread across the couch with the empty bottle at her side, the glass hanging from her fingers.

The bottle comforted her, never asked her any questions, and was always there when I wasn’t. I was no competition, and she couldn’t face life without her newfound companion. The divorce had been messy, and Emily had been my saviour. Anna had never forgiven me.

She hit me hard on the back of the head as I entered the kitchen.The wine bottle smashed with the impact, and I found myself lying on the tiles in a myriad of emerald coloured shards, staring up from between her dirty trainers into her laughing, drunken face. “Don’t tell me that hurt; it was empty, you wimp!” I rubbed the back of my head. “Wouldn’t be like you to waste alcohol,” I fired back.

She crouched down beside me. “Drink this, it’s aspirin”, she said as she pulled my head backwards and forced a small glass of liquid down my throat. Shortly afterwards, everything went black.

When I came around, I was firmly taped to a kitchen chair. She had swept all the objects off the table, and the floor was littered with opened mail, fruit and smashed crockery. A photograph and the kitchen wall clock had been neatly put in their place. I stared woozily at the picture of Emily and I, immortalizing our happiness after she had scraped me out of my misery and catapulted me into back into life.

Anna took a marker pen from the pen pot. She slowly and deliberately penned a moustache and beard on Emily’s face. Despite the rage in the pit of my stomach,  I feigned disinterest. “Why the clock?” I asked her. She grinned, and pulled a package from her rucksack. She thrust it in front of my nose. “See this? I made it. All by myself”.  Wires, dynamite. Oh, Christ.

She turned the strange contraption over and over in her hands, her eyes sparkling like a child who had constructed a new imaginary world. “The therapist told me I should take up a hobby, do you remember? I bet he didn’t think it would be explosives. It’s amazing what you can learn on internet these days”. She pulled up a chair and started unscrewing the back of the clock. “I’ve been practicing this every week for months. Wouldn’t want to miss the fireworks for a silly mistake, now, would we?”

As she talked, she fixed wires to her package. She admired her work with satisfaction then propped the clock up carefully against the  block of dynamite before heading over to the door, wires in hand.

“You’re not going to do that? Surely not? What would killing us do to make you happier? You’ve lost the plot, Anna, you need help. Let me help you”.  The panic was growing in me. She returned, kissed me on the forehead and stretched a piece of duct tape across my mouth. “This is part of my training,” she whispered softly in my ear. “You see, I’ve met someone. If I get this right, he’ll take me on. Remember the therapist? He wanted me to find a job to get over the alcohol, right? Well, it’s done”.

Anna held my face in her hands, her clear blue eyes boring into my soul. “She’ll be home soon. She’ll open the door, and the dynamite will blow. Time over. That’s good enough for me. If I can’t have you, neither can she”.

She grabbed her bag and stepped over the glass and debris to the stove. Slowly, deliberately, she turned all the knobs. “Oh, by the way. The clock’s not part of the equation; it’s just for you to see time go by as slowly as it did for me when you ran off with your redhead. Watch that clock!”

She climbed through the window, closing it carefully behind her. I concentrated on the sound of the gas hissing out of the hobs and the ticking of the seconds hand as it made its way slowly but surely around the clock face.

As each second passed by, Emily got closer. The hourglass was running out on us. I concentrated on the photo. Emily’s smile, her green eyes, her red hair. I twisted my arms desperately to stretch the duct tape, but it was as cold and unyielding as Anna had ever been. I heard the car on the gravel. The engine cut out. I heard the car door slam, and immediately looked at the clock. The key turned in the lock, and the door handle moved slowly downwards.

“Weekly Photo Challenge: Kiss”

I don’t usually go for photo challenges, but today’s challenge reminded me of one of my favourite photos. This was a very spontaneous offer of a kiss in fabulous mountain scenery. She tried to cow me into a kiss, but I was put off by the blade of grass in her nostril…..

Virulent valentine.

Whoopee, it’s Valentine’s day. Yahoo. Just feel that enthusiasm oozing out of MM. Tonight the cheesy numbers like engagement rings in champagne glasses will be out in force, and red roses will be clenched between the teeth of ageing “romantics” with beer guts sagging over the dangerously stretched elastic of leopard-skin G-strings, the forgotten price label hanging forlornly over drooping buttocks.  Millions of roses, chocolates and bottles of champagne are being sold all over the world for a romantic non-event, much to the satisfaction of the commercial world’s powers that be. Moi, cynical non-believer? Yes, yes and yes. I am the Valentine’s day Scrooge, and I say “Humbug!” to Valentines consumerism. Oh, yeah, baby.

Somewhere in France, however, there’s a woman who is going to have a huge surprise this evening. The French media have been spreading the word since yesterday after an indiscreet tip-off by “La Française des Jeux” (who of course have no interest whatsoever in blowing their own trumpet). Here’s the lowdown: Mr X won the lottery a few days ago, and decided to keep it secret until tonight, when he will take her to a very expensive restaurant and give her the world’s most original Valentine “gift”: the news that he’s become a multi-millionaire. “Hoooow roooomaaaaaantic!” the media are screaming.  Forget the breathtaking suspense of Charlie Bucket and the golden ticket. French women are holding their breath across the nation to know if tonight is their lucky night, and restaurants will be full of disappointed wives brandishing steak knives or sobbing into handkerchiefs after discovering that they didn’t win in the “2013 housewife discovers rich hubby” stakes.

Love money? (Photo credit: robjewitt)

Now I don’t know about you guys, but if P.F’s idea of a Valentine’s gift was to tell me he’d won a stack of dosh, I’d be a little perplexed. After all, it’s a gift that involves zero effort: you just fill in a lottery ticket, add a huge stroke of luck,  and…. pow! A ready-made Valentine’s gift. It would be a bit like P.F handing me a voucher for 20% off at King Merlin’s DIY store, but in his name. Mind you, if he grabbed my hand over a plateful of foie gras, raised his glass and told me the mortgage was paid off, I’d kiss him fore and aft, and loop the loop. If he told me he’d taken a week off work, fobbed the kids off on willing takers and organised a week en amoureux spending the day finishing off all the odds & sods in the house – just him, me and my Super Mario painting dungarees -followed by evenings curled up in front of the fire with a beer and a bowl of dry-roasted peanuts, I’d marry him all over again.

But showing me a photocopy of a huge cheque in his name would frighten the living whatnot’s out of me. What happens to couples who suddenly find themselves bestowed with so much cash? Can Mr X stay true to himself now that he has enough cash to swap the battered Twingo for a Rolls, invest in the stock market, eat caviar for breakfast every day, take up golf and give up his job to tend to a newly acquired three acre garden of rare English roses? What exactly is the gift for Mrs X: being the other half of a very rich husband? Wondering how many of the friends she makes from today onwards are sincere? Having to worry and take out extra insurance incase anyone steals all the expensive, unnecessary junk they never knew they needed and will no doubt acquire within months of cashing the cheque? Even in the unlikely event of Mr X not changing one iota through the effect of all this cash falling from the sky, if I was Mrs X I’d be well worried and tempted to do a runner whilst I still could.

Do you see this as the ultimate romantic gift? Do you venerate Valentine’s day? We’ll be eating “en amoureux” tonight, but not for Valentine’s day: it’s our anniversary. 23 years ago, P.F and I queued in a park outside a restaurant as the snow fell. It was magic, standing in the snow with a Frenchman who had walked into my life and made me feel different. We sat at the table, fought off the man selling red roses, and laughed to see all the couples eating silently around us who had answered the consumerist gong with a strange Pavlovian reflex, but were simply going through the motions. After a Disney-esque heroïne-meets-frog-kisses-frog scenario, he was so happy that he skidded into the kerb on the way home and knackered his car, and was still beaming the next day. Now that’s romantic. So whilst the world goes mad and poor Mrs X discovers her fate tonight, we have something to celebrate: staying together in a mad world that so often drives people apart.

Operation Clean-O-Patra.

The humble bathtub has bathed in glory throughout time as a religious rite and a social privilege. It was all the rage for the Greeks, Romans and Egyptians, and the Hindus still partake in ritual dips in the Ganges (although I’m not sure anyone is any cleaner after immersing themselves in something that looks like Rudyard Kipling’s “great grey-green, greasy Limpopo River, all set about with fever trees”, but with rubbish floating in it rather than nose-pulling crocodiles).

As I got ready for a well-deserved bath on Sunday evening, I was thinking more in terms of the beautiful Queen Cleopatra’s idea of ablution therapy, but was happy to settle for hot water and bubbles instead of asses milk.

Cleopatra (Photo credit: silkroader)

I had just put an end to a long and tiring Sunday. I had got up that morning to face the result of abandoning my post on the family war front for an entire week: dirty washing had partied madly in corners then gone forth and multiplied, invading the entire house with more enthusiasm and determination than a family of fleas discovering a dogs’ home. It was everywhere: piled forlornly on floors, lurking dangerously under beds, escaping Houdini-like from baskets, draping lamely across bedroom furniture and hanging despondently off chairs.

So I had stiffened that legendary British upper lip, pulled up my sleeves and spent my day waging battle against the evil Lord of Laundropia, a dimension that organised parents have only roamed in their worst nightmares. In the depths of Laundropia, fear clutches your entrails whilst scantily clad, zombie-like children wail and moan “I need soooocks, Muuuuuuuuum” from behind the perilously unstable mountains of filthy clothing. However, I am a fearless and experienced traveller of this particular realm, and the super intervention squad (Candy the washing machine, Desmond the drier, Ivy the iron and myself) had made a cracking job of getting the mutiny under control. I was now gunning for the ultimate reward:  a hot bath and a good book.

Once in the bathroom, however, the only thing I had in common with Cleopatra was an insatiable desire to throw P.F. to the crocodiles. My off-key rendition of The Bangles’ “Walk like an Egyptian” had ground to a halt when I clapped incredulous eyes on a teetering tower of bucket, trowel and other DIY paraphernalia dumped on the side of a bath I had cleaned in a post-flu haze less than 24 hours earlier. To add insult to injury, P.F. had left a generous, crunchy layer of dried plaster and flakes of ancient paint in the bottom of the bath. Although it would no doubt make a cheaper and very efficient alternative to Body Shop exfoliating gel and ensure a rear end smoother than the proverbial baby’s bottom,  I was peeved.

  I suddenly realised who contributed what to the waste pipes getting blocked on such a regular basis. I could, of course, have been more elegant and thanked my family for this opportunity to learn a new trade. After all, two years in a house with waste pipes the diameter of toothpicks has enabled me to evolve from what could be termed a “bog-standard” plumbing philistine to a sharp-shooting John Waynesse of the plumbing world. I can now draw my rubber plunger from its holster before you can say “Febreze”. Yes, I could have said thank you. But I didn’t. I was tired and I wanted my bath.

(Photo credit: Swiv)

I scraped the evidence of P.F’s plastering orgy out of the bath, cleaned it and filled it with hot water and fragrant bubbles. Climbing in, I grabbed my Chosen One from the bath mat (a chick lit charity shop orphan penned by the fabulous hand of Marian Keys). At last, some luxury.

Or so I thought. Any mother knows that it is impossible to have a bath without being interrupted. Within five minutes, my family had rumbled me. The bathroom door shook with what I first thought was Godzilla trying to force the door down. On checking, I established that it was Little My, hell-bent on evicting me from my haven of bubbles, heat and fragrance to give her some clean sheets. After two refusals to get the sheets herself, I said “Ok, sweetheart.  Go downstairs and look for the tall guy with dark hair and blue eyes, and ask him: he’s your father”. This was met with a stony silence from the other side of the door; as I have already discussed in an earlier post, fathers get asked one question: “Where’s Mum?” All the others, ranging from where their school bag is to why men have nipples, are generally for us.

Ten minutes later, a dull throbbing noise started up outside the door, and I swore in my usual feminine way. After finding the sheets, P.F had pulled out one of his favourite toys – a hand-held sander – and seemed intent on boring his way through the bathroom wall. I held out for five minutes, then gave up on the bath and pulled out the plug. Phase two of “Operation Clean-o-Patra” was abandoned: I was no longer in the mood.

Opening the door of the bathroom, I was greeted by a white haze. It looked strangely as if  my home had been hastily transformed into a cocaine dealer’s production line. I followed the foot prints in the generous dusting of plaster dust  on the floor, and was rewarded by the sight of P.F appearing out of the fog with a power tool clutched in his hand, blue eyes beaming out of a powdered, white face. “Had a nice bath, then?” Hmm. Now, let me see……

I’ll leave you what I think is a very original version of “Walk like an Egyptian”. This is what happens when bluegrass country music meets The Bangles, and I think it’s fabulous.

The modern-day mother’s answer to Saturday night fever.

Over the last three days, your humble scribe has experienced heatwaves ranging from thirty-nine to forty-one degrees Celsius. During that period, I closed my eyes and felt the searing heat scorching my skin. You’d love to have been there, huh? Smacks of sun, sea, sand, beach, waves, a good book and a palm tree, right? Wrong. MM was in her bed, tackling an unwanted guest who goes by the name of “Flu”.

“Influenza” sounds very dramatic and ominously Charles Dickens-like. It conjures up theatrical images of beautiful, thermometer-toting 1940’s nurses like my maternal grandmother as they tenderly dabbed at the foreheads of virile heroes languishing in hospital beds. Erratum. It’s actually a scary scientific name for a big bad illness that preys on innocent aspiring writers and their families.

My grandmother, Laura: The beautiful,  happy, no-nonsense Welsh nurse who beat Princess Leia to the wacky hairdo back in the 30’s.

Influenza could also be a girl’s name. You know, of the double-barrelled Mr and Mrs Tally ho-Whatnot breed. “Hi, I’m Influenza, but my friends call me “Flu” for short”, she says as she breezes into the wine bar, nonchalantly sliding her designer sunglasses over her glossy blond locks and plopping her Burberry bag ostentatiously on the table for all to admire.

If Flu really existed, I have a good idea of who she’d be. You’ve no doubt already had several run-ins with the Flu’s of this world. Flu’s the mean cow at primary school who knew that the hem of your skirt was hooked up in your knicker elastic but didn’t tell you until playtime was over. When you were older, she’s the one who stole your ideas for your creative English essay after you gullibly showed her your essay plan to help her out. (She got a better grade, whilst you learnt two new words at your own expense: “naïvety” and “plagiarism”.) A couple of years further down the line, she hunted down and relentlessly serenaded the only boy you secretly admired. You then sadistically enjoyed every minute of her demise when, in her efforts to be the most beautiful of them all, she tried to achieve a pair of well-defined Dita Van Teese eyebrows with the use of hair removal cream and ended up with no eyebrows at all, making her look more like Gollum than the sophisticated pin-up she’d been planning on. You were satisfied: for once, Flu’s one-upwomanship was her comeuppance.

Just like the female Influenza of my youth, this week’s Flu is a bad girl par excellence. She has rampaged through my body and left the building Elvis-style, leaving me feeling like Selfridges’ door mat after the first day of the Christmas sales. For three days she has possessed my body, ripping the insides of my lungs to shreds with a hacking cough that could double up as a fog horn on HMS Ark Royal.  I beat the Ready Brek kid hands down in the glow department for three days running – I was glowing so strongly that you could practically see me in the dark. My body went into automatic shut-down, and day merged into night as Flu partied and rocked inside my body like an alcohol-soaked teenager on a Project X mission.

I travelled big-style under that drenched quilt, bouncing back and forth between frozen arctic wastes, steaming swedish saunas and tropical beaches washed by heat waves then drenched by tsunamis of sweat. My body was like a slab of meat that is accidentally microwaved on “cook” instead of “defrost”: overcooked on the outside, and frozen in the middle. The horror was only alleviated by the presence of Rugby-Boy, my pyjama-clad guardian angel who appeared out of the haze with cups of tea, a thermometer and paracetamol on a reassuringly frequent basis.

The Ribena bottle of my childhood (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I am now on the mend, and am growing stronger by the hour thanks to my secret hoard of baked beans and Ribena (more about that here). I will leave you with the opening verse of “Dear Fludence”, a strange parody of “Dear Prudence”, by The Beatles. I dreamt it up in a Peggy Lee/Jessica Rabbit fever yesterday. This should be sung in Siouxsie and the Banshees manner, with an appropriately pale Gothic complexion, strange eye-rolling and dislocated arm movements.

“Dear Fludence, won’t you please go away-hey-hey?

Dear Fludence, find some fresh new prey-hey-hey-heeey-yeh….

I’ve got the flu,

I’m feeling blue,

A pile of poo,

Because of you….

Dear Fludence, won’t you please go away..……”

Disclaimers:

1)This post was written under the influence of high temperature, aspirin, English breakfast tea and hot Ribena and should therefore be taken with not just a pinch, but a lorryload of salt. 2) I have no personal issues with anyone who has a double-barrelled surname, buys Burberry’s goods, wears designer sunglasses or has blonde streaks in their hair. Please don’t hit me, I’m sick. 3) In the unlikely event that any reader is unfortunate enough to be called “Influenza”, please accept my apologies and my greatest sympathy.