Atomic
This was the slightly disturbing view through the passenger window driving home from France recently:
The picture I first saw was far more alarming than this as the big chimberly producing the mushroom cloud was obliterated by a roadside bush- the photo was taken several seconds later after I had scrabbled to find the camera.
I didn’t think it was appropriate to ask Husband, who was driving at the time, to do a U-turn.
What is it with cupcakes?
How did they come to be so fashionable? How on earth did that happen, and who is responsible?
Don’t get me wrong, I love cupcakes. I love the look and how they taste and frankly the more icing the better but why have they suddenly become so popular amongst adults? Surely they’re a children’s item, usually made by cooks shorter in stature than your average kitchen demon, and most of their charm is due to the fact that they end up looking as though they were made by someone who hasn’t yet achieved full manual dexterity.
The guilty pleasure of eating cupcakes has always been assuaged somewhat by the fact that Little Darling cooked them and it would be churlish and rude to refuse one when offered.
All of which goes some way to explaining my stupefaction at their newly acquired designer status. Isn’t it just a teensy bit ridiculous that cupcakes can even be fashionable?
I find I’m humming ‘It Wasn’t Me’ by Shaggy now, all due to the fact that a certain little girl I know used to think the lyrics went thus: ‘Picture this we were both cup-caking, banging on the kitchen floor…’
This got me thinking about ridiculous fads and fashion items – you know, upside down Christmas trees, poo catcher pants, gold-laminated teeth, drinking urine, eating placenta, 4×4 cars here in the flatlands with their beautifully smooth roads, colonic irrigation and the Atkins diet. Oh yes, and reality TV, but that doesn’t really count because it’s everywhere and you don’t have to part with your hard-earned cash to get it – not directly, anyway. I mean, hands up all of you out there who actually saw an upside down Christmas tree on display and thought “Ooh yes, very stylish. Must get one,” and then handed over a wad that would have been much better spent on 3 bottles of bubbly for breakfast on the big day.
So, in a bid to increase my comment statistics, I am hoping to elicit suggestions from you, dear reader, as to what you think should appear on the all-time list of ridiculous things that a good many of us have bought that we really shouldn’t have.
Oh, and by the way, if you bought and actually wore any poo catchers, please please please post a photo… I challenge anyone to look good in them.
The Seismic Shift
This week it’s back to school for Fourteen and Eleven.
Oh lordy, now we’re talking. All the other parents of school-aged children will appreciate what that means. Gone is the idyllically late getting-up time of 7.30 in order to make it into work for 8.45. There will be things to do and prepare and this includes helping Eleven along with his morning ritual. By that I mean chivvy him along when he stops to redesign one of his Geomags creations 2 minutes before the bus is due and he hasn’t even got his shoes on or cleaned his teeth, let alone walked to the bus stop.
On top of that, there are things like lunch box preparations, clothes needing to be ironed, the store cupboard to be stocked with mini apple juice boxes and a plentiful supply of individually wrapped waffles and part-baked rolls to be ever-present. Not only that, but I must, I mean really must buy some new clothes for Eleven. His current wardrobe extends to too-short trousers and T-shirts that he has had for two years or so. The shoe situation is even worse. School requires two pairs of sports shoes – one for indoor activities and for one outside activities (keep them separate so as not to sully the beautiful floors in their two enormous sports halls with something as unsavoury as mud or wet stuff ). During the school holidays when his (totally inadequate and overpriced) canvas shoes of a certain stellar brand were discarded for being too small, his two pairs of trainers have become his regular footwear of choice whenever we are going anywhere that requires a lot of walking or bike riding. Not only has the indoor pair become totally sullied but he informed me last week that all four shoes are too small.
A bigger shock for me, though, is the fact that Eleven is going to be starting Big School. Not such a big deal, I would have thought, going by our experience with Fourteen but then she is a girl and the elder of the two and well, just more mature, sensible and sorted. When she started secondary, the transition was barely noticeable, in that I never had any doubts about her ability to cope or get herself home or deal with anything that may come her way. A false sense of security perhaps, created by her apparent cool-headedness and practical approach. We were blissfully unaware, however, that she would turn into a young woman overnight. She went to bed on that first evening the little girl who had grown up with us and woke up the following morning a totally independent teenager. Luckily for us, three years down the line she still has not acquired the concomitant attitude. Frankly, I cannot see this happening in quite such a heart-stoppingly sudden way with Eleven. I don’t even trust him to cross the main road on his own yet, let alone not accept lifts from strangers or be lured somewhere awful by the offer of some sticky sweets.
Perhaps I’m an over-anxious mother looking forlornly at my last baby who is about to take his first steps out of the house and into his own independent world. No doubt he will excel and I will wonder how I could ever have doubted that he would be hot on his sister’s heels. It’s just that from this side of the school holidays, I cannot see it. Ask me in a month.
The other enormous culture shock will be Fourteen’s return to a normal sleeping schedule. At the the moment she is semi-nocturnal, rising around mid-day and going to bed around 1.00 a.m. Her bedroom, dubbed The Lair, is in a constant twilight state, with the curtains drawn and the bed unmade. She would rather have the light on than throw open the curtains and let the sunshine stream in. Not that we’ve had much of that this month anyway…. No longer will she have breakfast at lunchtime, followed by dinner at 7.00 p.m. and a bedtime snack at midnight. Thank goodness. The quantity of sugary breakfast cereal eaten at all sorts of odd times of day has increased ten-fold these holidays. Terribly unhealthy. I’m saddened that the summer holidays are nearly over and at the same time I am anticipating the return to some sort of normal routine. Although the summer seems to have been exceptionally short this time around, the school holidays seem to have been interminable.
Today I took eleven to Glowgolf at the beach, an indoor mini-golf played in the semi darkness where all accessories are neon-coloured and glow under the UV lighting. Perfect for today’s crappy grey weather, although it was extremely humid and warm today, which led to a suffocating indoor second round. We were given glo-bracelets and allowed to choose the colour of our balls. It was surprisingly good fun. It’s amazing really, when you think about it, the activities in which we will participate in order to entertain our offspring when the weather is bad and all of their friends are away.
All of this fun, though, is not sufficiently distracting to camouflage a certain churning I feel deep in my stomach where pre-interview nerves reside and it’s all to do with the start of term. I know that we are coming to the very end of something and the whole dynamic of our family is on the verge of big change. Something intangible and a little nebulous but nevertheless very definite is hovering just out of sight over the horizon.
Fireworks
Last week our beach hosted an international fireworks festival, a competition between six different nations.
On Saturday night we decided to go and watch it and, as it had been a beautifully warm and sunny day, we took a blanket (for sitting on the sand) and two bottles of beer (to slake our thirst.) Saturday was the turn of Germany to slug it out against the Netherlands; the first at 10.00 p.m. and the second, the host nation, at 11.00 p.m. Each display lasted 15 minutes. For various reasons that I won’t bother boring you with, we only managed to make it to the 11.00 showing, so parked up the bicycles and found ourselves a suitably romantic space on the sand. The display was somewhat underwhelming in nature but I totally enjoyed the whole experience.
We have recently acquired a novel semi-independence which means that we can go out without planning and paying for the services of a baby sitter, all thanks to the fact that Fourteen-and-Three-Quarters has attained a suitable (and legal) maturity and is now tasked as resident child-carer.
It was wonderful to sit on the warm sand with the sounds of the sea beside us and the black sky all around us. The fireworks were beautiful, though some would and did say, not spectacular but I found them quite magical all the same. Some even burst outwards into heart-shaped cascades of red sparks. Now that’s clever – how do you make an explosion heart-shaped?
The whole experience was lovely, mostly because it was an hour of Us-Time spent sitting on the beach together, chatting late into the evening, enjoying each other’s company. That’s something we haven’t really done since pre-children days.
I’ve always dreaded the thought of our baby birds flying the coop and leaving us with a quiet, empty house.
Now I can appreciate that there might be a positive aspect.
A Jaded View
This is the view that greeted me each time I went running on holiday.
Nary a dog to be seen nor Dutch phlegm attack to be heard, and certainly no brown, steaming curls to step in and then trample around the house!
One day a car passed me.
By the end of our fortnight, the sunflowers had started to wither and lose their exuberance. They must have known we were leaving.
Alien
Something we all enjoy for lunch in the summer is moules marinieres but for the first time this year we noticed that a lot of them seemed to have been invaded. Was the crab the mussel’s lunch or vice versa?
No matter, they all ended up on our plates, although the mussels harbouring guests were gingerly put to one side.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder
Today’s post has for its theme the letter ‘B’.
This is because I have a bountiful supply of photo’s for you, all of which feature subjects beginning with that very letter.
First on the agenda is our sweet little Bat, who flew into our gite on the first night of our holiday. Once we had managed to flap him out of the door, a second one appeared. He was dispatched in much the same way as the first, after which, a third appeared. Perhaps they were all one and the same Bat, because this one was very tired and landed on the stairs in a perfect Batman logo shape, where he remained motionless. I had a large glass ready to place over him in order to catch him but couldn’t do that whilst his wings were spread so wide so instead went to look for the camera.
‘Wife!!!’ pleaded husband from behind the sofa, ‘Please, just catch him and get the shot later.’ So I did and here it is.
Note the bubbly cork clearly visible through the glass!
The second ‘B’ item is another unusual creature: a Bloody Big Beetle. This guy was out for an evening constitutional, actually just crossing the road, veritably strolling along. He was very handsome and shiny. A few nights later, whilst sitting outside enjoying the warm evening, another one of these carefree creatures suddenly landed with a kerthunk behind me on the ground and then proceeded to rear up onto his hind legs, spread his glossy carapace and fly upwards and forwards directly into the wall. With a loud crash he tumbled to earth like the clumsy and ungainly beast he was and spent the next half hour repeating the whole process. He must have had such a headache.
We decided he was flying for the light on the wall beside the door but couldn’t make the steep angle of the incline. He ended up scrabbling along the base of the wall until the found the door and spent the rest of the evening knocking into that trying to get in – all to no avail, thank you very much. Just like with our friend the Bat, I don’t much fancy getting one of those caught in my hair!!!
The third ‘B’ on today’s agenda is Boat.
There’s not much explaining required for this one, just that those knees belong to Eleven and I love the water in this photo. I thought something soothing might be a good idea for those of you with a low tolerance of the two previous pictures’ subjects!
Trees
They were a slightly recurrent theme during our French holiday which, I am afraid to say, means that I want to share their beauty with you!
I spotted this one on the way to Saintes, a pretty town not far from Cognac, which we were visiting for the day. It caught my eye, alone and resplendent as it stood in the middle of a field, and on the way home I asked Husband if he would stop for me. The sun was so bright that I actually could not see whether the tree was in the photo or not.
This amazing canopy of spider-like parachute trees is to be found in the centre of Saintes, in the park that flanks the river. Standing straight and proud, like soldiers ready for inspection, they were obviously planted to provide shade f0r happy park perambulators.
Do you know what species they are?
And this is the road leading to the two donkey village that leads to the one donkey hamlet that was our home for the duration of our holiday. Doesn’t it look magical? This photo makes me think that at the bottom of the road, around the corner just out of the picture, is an enchanted castle.
My mother would call this Fairy Lane.
My World
Making vinaigrette recently, I had put all the ingredients in the bowl ready to mix when I suddenly noticed what a beautiful arrangement they made.
The recipe was passed down from my French grandma and comprises: red wine vinegar, peanut or sunflower oil, finely chopped spring onion, Dijon mustard, salt and freshly ground pepper. It’s the real deal. Delicious.
It looks other worldly, don’t you think?!
Stuff ‘n Nonsense
Wow, have you seen this? None of my holiday vids can match it.
It’s really time to post again, despite the recent lack of creative inspiration on my part. I want to move on from the last post. Not because of the subject matter per se – I do feel really strongly about it which is why I was irked enough to post in the first place but because I usually avoid making observations that could be classed as political or militant. This is generally a politics and religion-free zone, as am I…
Now then, since we have been Dutchside, I have hardly ever taken a book out of the library although it has been known once or twice. Something I have been pondering recently is why there was nearly always a pubic hair secreted somewhere between the pages of practically every library book I ever borrowed – especially noticeable in the university library. Does that happen to you? It makes one wonder what people get up to when they’re dipping into a bit of literature.
Something else I have been mulling over is why StellaCat loves to lick the sweat from my skin when I come back from a run. My thoughts have turned running-wards recently probably because I haven’t actually been running for the last 6 weeks or so due to a boring old injury that decided to resurface. She likes the taste of the salt, I suppose – the cat, that is. That’s pretty disgusting, wouldn’t you say? Just have a sanitary drink of water out of your bowl, schtoopid. Mind you, Fourteen had an observation that topped my feline one in the gross-out stakes. She said that her drama teacher sweats semi-circles under his man-boobs!! Eee-uw – that’s wrong on so many levels.
Oh yes, I nearly forgot, bad mother that I am. Ten has officially left the building, folks. Eleven has moved in to replace him. Goodness me – you lose concentration for 5 minutes and suddenly your children have grown up and moved out. It is scary how quickly time races by these days. Where have my babies gone? Eleven is a little string bean – all sinewy and somehow lanky without being tall with, as my sister put it, these great long feet on the end of his legs. It’s true – he’s only two sizes smaller than me at 36. That’s his shoe size by the way, not my age.
Wake up to the 21st century
If you listen to, watch or read the UK news, you cannot fail to have heard the report that has surfaced recently about the murders that have taken place in Yorkshire of three women.
It makes my blood boil every time a news item appears on this case because the media cannot help themselves from referring to the victims as prostitutes. Not women, just prostitutes. Here’s an example, taken from the May 31st edition of The Times Online:
Knives and hacksaws have been found in a river where police divers recovered the severed body parts of a prostitute allegedly murdered by a serial killer.
She is first and foremost a woman; someone’s daughter, sister, mother or wife. What is the obsession with the fact that she worked as a prostitute? It’s an insidious judgment, an unvoiced yet blaring insinuation that walking the streets for a living somehow made her a lesser being, perhaps even diminishes the crime a notch or two.
I feel for the families of these poor women. The media should hang their heads in shame.
Educating Rika
The scene: Sunday afternoon, Husband and I, in the video shop.
The following conversation took place in English because, although we live in Holland, we never, ever watch films with Dutch dialogue and anyway it sounds stupid if you combine the two by going up to the counter and saying “Goeden avond, hebben jullie ‘The Secret Lives of Pippa Lee’ alstublieft?”
So, where were we? Oh yes, in Videoland, standing empty-handed at the counter, waiting to be served.
Sales Girl (sitting on the back counter, eating an apple and swinging her leg, clocking that we didn’t have a DVD box in hand): Can I help you?
Me: Have you got ‘An Education?’
Sales Girl: Erm, yes, some. I mean, what? I left school at 16…
Priceless.
Captain’s Log: First Encounter with Mothership
That was the year I first met Mothership.
I gatecrashed her 18th birthday party and will never forget the torpedo dress she wore to celebrate – a hot pink, devilishly tight, torpedoed boobs, quim-skimming number. Eat your heart out, Jean-Paul Gaultier – Mothership got there first. The original That Dress.
I say I gatecrashed but was actually invited by another gatecrasher, namely Kazhaz (referred to in the The Big Apple post as APF, the one with the Aunt Sally makeover) and I don’t think she had met Mothership before either. I also remember that Kazhaz wore a sack that night. For my own attire, I had borrowed some ripped jeans from her that were probably nicked from some ex-boyfriend. They were eight sizes too big so were gathered tightly around my waist at a flatteringly high 80’s level with a thin belt. Sounds attractive, no? I wish I had a photo to show you. I think I was also sporting a John McEnroe-style perm at the time. Even more enticing. Obviously another wardrobe crisis for me if I was borrowing from friends again.
I remember being highly impressed by two things that Mothership did that night:
Firstly, she told me that her cat had died of Cat Aids, which I didn’t even know existed;
Secondly, and by far the more impressive of these two points as far as I was concerned, she offered to lend Kazhaz and me her car to take on our pending road trip north. Wow. That’s generous to a fault.
Anyway, I started this post the same night as The Big Apple, what with a whole trunk full of memories having been unlocked and hadn’t been back to it until I saw Mothership’s slightly petulant (in the nicest possible way, of course) comment. How could I further delay? But this will have to do for now. It’s just a taster, a tease. I don’t want to give it all away yet. Just like the youthful Mothership of the 80’s, I hope to leave you with your appetite whetted.
Remember: less is more – just like the pink torpedo dress.
Blog Stats
Sometimes I look at the stats connected to this blog. They show me things like how many people have visited today (12), the total number of hits (3,172 – wow!) and the busiest day, which was Tuesday, 5 January 2010 with a grand total of 177! My numbers are pretty low (I only have a small handful of faithful readers) so when I see 177 hits in one day, I have to assume it was some sort of spam, most of which seems to be filtered out very effectively.
The small handful of dedicated readers I mentioned has probably shrunk to a pinch or a teaspoonful since my complete lack of posts during the past month.
An endless source of wonder and amusement are the search terms that have brought people to my pages. Imagine going to Google and typing in ‘lump on vagina wall,’ ‘fat beauty queen,’ ‘naughty birthday cake’ or ‘Frida Kahlo eyebrows,’ for example, and ending up here on Are You Receiving Me? ! Not to mention ‘funny pubic hair’ or ‘four eyed snowman’ or ‘does giving dogs bananas help them not to….’ – very frustrating that last one as it was too long so I don’t know what giving bananas to dogs may or may not do. The dog and banana link is quite obvious to me; the lumpy vagina and the funny pubic hair are slightly more enigmatic.
The Big Apple
Way back in July 1988, I travelled to the US to work as an Au Pair.
OMG – I had just landed at JFK airport. Even the name was exciting! Although I was going to be working for a family in Virginia just outside Washington DC, all of the au pairs who had rendez-vous’ed at Gatwick and then been flown en masse across the pond were taken to a hotel for three nights in hot and steamy Manhattan.
The purpose of our three day sojourn in the most exciting city on earth was to be trained in the art of child and baby management. (Three days?) After half a morning’s tuition of how to play games like ‘peek-a-boo’ with baby and a blanket, my newly-acquired-on-the-plane Au Pair Friend (APF) and I decided that we knew it all already and if we didn’t we could wing it, so skived off Babycare Class and headed out into the land of yellow cabs, steaming manhole covers and the Empire State Building.
Actually we headed straight for Bloomingdales, (it was something we had heard of) and immediately through the revolving door Au Pair Friend was persuaded into the Clinique chair at the cosmetics counter and given a real 80’s makeover, with bright blue eyeshadow and big lips and eyelashes. She looked like Aunt Sally from Worzel Gummidge by the time they had finished with her. I cracked up laughing every time I looked at her and the reaction she got when walking back in just before the end of ‘How to make mush for baby’s lunch’ was really something to see.
Browsing the cosmetics counter whilst waiting for APF, I did actually buy a deep petrol-blue eyeshadow that I still have and still occasionally use!! Hmmm, that would definitely fail the latest UK craze of going through women’s makeup bags and telling them how far past its sell by date everything is. I doubt even Clinique makeup has a 22 year shelf life. Mind you, worse than that is an Estee Lauder blusher bought in all innocence when I was or 16 or so. I had used my mum’s as an eyeshadow and decided I liked the pink-eye effect so headed out into town to purchase my own. I had never even heard of Estee Lauder at that stage, so didn’t realise the extortionate price I would be charged once I reached the cash desk. It cost about £5 and I was too embarrassed and shocked to put it back and wouldn’t use it at first (too scared) and then too worried I’d use it all up. I still have that blusher, although the hinges on the lid have broken. Not bad though for 29 year old hinges!!! I think that blusher and eyeshadow will probably outlive me.
Return travel to baby classes in a yellow cab was deemed a must, although not before a large salty pretzel had been consumed from the street vendor followed by the largest ice creams in the most amazing array of colours and flavours topped with the most amazing warm caramel sauce. The pretzel vendor actually tried to overcharge us, taking us for the gullible tourists that we were but we were onto him and felt incredibly smug not to have been caught out. The pretzels were good. Mind you, we could have licked the pavement sidewalk and thought it tasted good, we were so smitten.
That first night in New York’s Roosevelt Hotel was an eyeopener. Sorting ourselves into ‘sleeping groups’ in the very impressive lobby area, we really thought we had arrived. Once we got up to our box room on the eleventy hundredth floor however, our excitement diminished only slightly and it didn’t fade that much more during the sweltering night when we realised that the air conditioning was not working in our room, or perhaps installation didn’t reach that high up in the hotel. Being both English and naïve, I opened the window to let some cool night air in. Of course, there was none; only hot, sticky ribbons of suffocating air mixed with pollution, blaring horns (The City That Never Sleeps) and wisps of excitement.
In the morning we were all whisked off to a greasy diner (not unlike the one in Frankie and Johnnie, if memory serves, although ours was a lot dingier with nasty brown decor) and fed something called hash browns with bacon and syrup all on the same plate!!
Memories of the rest of that first visit to the Big Apple drift in and out of my hazy, ageing head. Well, we are talking 21 years ago. Just think, the two children who were the lucky recipients of my childcare skills are now 23 and 20. The younger one only entered this world one week after my arrival at her family home. Not only that but a third one came along a year or so after my departure.
It transpired that although APF was in Maryland (in a place called Chevy Chase – named after the actor, of course…), a totally separate state to Virginia where I was, we were both a 20 minute drive from each other and downtown DC. We spent a lot of our time that year discovering the US together, even taking trips to California, New England, Massachusetts and, of course, back to New York for New Year’s Eve to see the ball drop – and I don’t think I’d be ruining anything for anyone by mentioning that technically the ball is lowered (on a rope) not dropped.
That was the start of an amazing year that left me breathless. I had the best time and the most fun and met such an array of totally brilliant people. The most unexpected things would happen any old time, like the day I went down to some anonymous metro station and bumped into Muhammad Ali on the platform. He had about 6 security monkeys around him and would shakily sign a religious pamphlet and hand it to you if you asked for his autograph. And yes, I did.
Looking back, it seems as though the rate at which time passes was ratched up a notch or two and three or four years were compressed down into one. It’s true what they say about time flying…
Are You Receiving Me? 