Miracle Haircut

Today I had my hair cut. When I went to pick up at school, Biker Boy scowled and grumbled, with the tact and kindness of a breeze block: "Mum, I hate your hair when you get it cut - it looks ugly".

Moments later, one of the mums (who has had more time to learn that tact and kindness do actually get you quite far in life), gushed: "Ooooo your hair looks lovely! Very neat, it's gone a bit Mary Quant hasn't it, Ooooo!"

So I confided that I'd taken a photo of a pretty short-haired celebrity to show the hairdresser what I wanted, but she had completely ignored me and not cut it in that style at all. At this point my friend burst out laughing and spluttered: "You don't still do that, do you? A-HAHAHAHAHA! Hey that hairdresser's rubbish, I told her I wanted to look like Jennifer Aniston and look at me now ... A-HAHAHAHAHA!"

My friend is apparently of the view that a mother of 42 isn't likely to want a style makeover, and ought to be having her hair cut at home rather than in a salon because it's cheaper, and in the same plain old mumsy hairstyle that she's had for the last 10 years, that only takes 10 minutes to trim. Oh and there's probably no point in covering the grey, and come to think of it, why bother shaving your underarms either.

But it was quite a funny moment nevertheless, this "excuse me, I know I'm haggard and grey and frumpy, but please can you make me look like Victoria Beckham?" wheeze. Although slightly embarrassed, I was secretly quite proud of myself for still acting a bit like a teenager sometimes.

Blizzard Cake

So the bold bakery assumptions I made in my last post were way off the mark.

We did have my son's party on Monday, however most of the kids were more interested in the irritating, flashing, noisy rip-off games machines than our nice game of bowling ... so Birthday Boy got in a strop ... and there was nowhere to put paper plates anyway ... so I decided to take our trophy home-made birthday cake home and have it there.

After a quick lunch the 10 of us got into the cars just after 1pm and thought, "funny, it's snowing, that wasn't forecast". The traffic was unusually heavy in Reading, so I rang all the parents to say we'd be home later than 2pm, they'd better collect at 3pm. At nearly 3pm we'd hardly moved, so I asked my sister-in-law to ring again and let them know we'd be even later and we'd call when we got home.

As we crawled s-l-o-w-l-y through the city, the snow was getting heavier and my tyres started slipping, even on the flat. I was getting nervous and the boys were getting noisy. In the end it took 6 hours to get home (a journey that usually takes 30 minutes). Trucks were slipping and sliding all over the place, roads were gridlocked as snow turned to ice, roads were blocked and cars got stuck. It got dark. People were leaving their vehicles and walking home or back to work - I heard later about people sleeping in shops, getting home at 4am, and worse.

I couldn't figure out if Big G's car was ahead of us or behind and we kept losing our phone signals, so we were both pretty much alone ... for hour after miserable hour ... with 4 hungry, thirsty, wriggly, restless 8-year olds each. Eventually we slowly slipped and skidded our way into town, found each other again, abandoned the cars and walked the last mile. We got chips on the way. My brother met us with a sledge and took some of the boys home and one by one we dropped off our tired little adventurers, to the immense relief of their parents.

And what, you may wonder, became of the cake? No candles, no plates, no singing this year. We all just grabbed a big, snow-sprinkled, home-made, ludicrously over-iced wedge each as we abandoned our cars and started the long walk home ... and gosh did it taste good.

Cake

Stupid Facebook won't upload my photo of a cake from my mobile phone. What is the world coming to? Today I broke one golden rule of parenting: "Don't home bake birthday cakes when supermarkets exist". I baked, against my better judgement, and then I decorated my cake with icing, chocolate sprinkles, shop-bought icing animals and candles. The result looks like something a 12-year old might have produced in their cookery class, but hey, I made it and I'm proud of it, and my son will blow on it and we'll all sing at the bowling alley in between games.

Hoorah!

Quote of the Day

"Can monkeys have pets? Because we can, and we were monkeys once".

Mail for Julia

We went to the USA for Thanksgiving a couple of weeks ago, and on the plane I watched 'Julie and Julia'. Based on movie reviews that I hadn't properly read but just glanced over, I had been under the impression that the film was about cooking ... so what a delight to discover that the film was actually about blogging! Well okay it was about lots of wonderful things, and I loved it. So I got talking to Big G about it and discovered that his Dad used to deliver the mail to Julia Child when he was a mailman and she lived in Boston. Apparently she was a very nice lady.

Lettuce Spend a Lot

Today I was in London going to tedious meetings with a colleague. We were in South Kensington around lunchtime, so he suggested we go to the cafe in the Natural History Museum for a bite to eat. Genius, I thought, how delightful. Little did I know how EXPENSIVE it is there!!! £2.50 for a few leaves of lettuce with fancy dressing. Seriously, a few leaves of lettuce, no tomatoes, no rocket, no nothing except a few leaves of lettuce. £2.50. And as I was too hungry for lettuce on its own, I also ordered a very small scoop of potato salad which cost £4.50.

But, despite being on a tight budget at the moment, I didn't really mind the outrageous prices because (a) it was unspeakably delicious, (b) I was really happy to be in South Kensington, (c) entry is free to the museum so I guess they have to make their money somewhere, and (d) They give free tap water on the tables so at least you don't have to buy drinks.

Crablike

I've been having a marine crustacean moment. Actually, more of a month than a moment. We've moved from one rental house to another, because the house we were living in was sold. So ... after a huge amount of upheaval, effort, inconvenience and expense, we have moved ... sideways.

Crabs are very active, with complex behaviour patterns. That's me alright. Crabs have five pairs of legs, and I've been scurrying around enough lately to employ all of them. Crabs have a hard shell, and I am sad to say I've been showing my beloved (bickering) children less of my funny, cuddly, patient mummy side and more of my brisk, barky, frowny mummy side that scuttles out in front, bellowing, whenever I'm stressed.

So here I find myself blogging again. So much has happened lately that I could have - should have - written on my blog. I wish I had. Blogging was wonderful therapy for me once upon a time. I find myself in a new place for blogging, using the same computer, the same table, with a different view, drinking the same kind of wine as before. I'm the same person, with really nothing substantial to moan about, just a bit mentally bruised, physically tired and emotionally unsettled, that's all. Holy crab, I really bloody hate moving house.