How many sleeps left till the holidays?

Nobby sent me for a loop this morning. He decided to get all his clothes ready for packing last night so I woke up this morning in a total panic convinced that I needed to get everything packed today. I’d been locked in suitcase hell for most of the morning, punctuated by wild demands from the restless children who I really think I going to kill each other at some point. Pickle was chasing after Poppet with a very noisy ray gun and she was teasing him mercilessly by making up nursery rhymes about him and singing them in a mocking voice. He then hits her and she screams but doesn’t hit back. I wonder if one day she will lose it and give him an almighty thump and things might calm down for a bit. If I don’t knock their heads together first. Or end up in the Funny Farm, because, of course, we are not leaving until the day after tomorrow so I actually had another 24 hours to decide how much junk to take this time. So I did in fact have time to move all the furniture round in Poppet’s bedroom as she requested and I did have time to add more cardboard furniture to Boo-Boos little house for Pickle. So far since I last reported on the junk-modelling project we have added a turbo-boosted rocket bike for the two pet monkeys complete with a luggage compartment full of miniature rolls of sticky tape which they apparently sell door-to-door. Poppet made a convincing articulated lorry to transport her life-sized guinea-pig soft toy around in and I have been working on an elevator so that Boo-Boo can get up to the upstairs bedroom more easily.

I am thinking of putting in my application to Blue Peter quite soon.

Or I might join the ‘How Clean Is Your House’ team instead after bowing to pressure and reorganising Poppet’s room for her. Egad! it was filthy down behind all the furniture. And I discovered upon moving the bed that the snot painting went a lot further down the wall than I previously realised. How exactly do you get hardened mucus off the walls? The children were quite a help with the removals at first. Pickle is a dab hand with the duster and vacuum but he had to give up when he fell off the bed inside the princess tent which was temporarily resting on top of it. He didn’t damage himself too much, just a scratch on his cheek but he sat there sobbing ‘I hope I can still eat, otherwise I’ll just have to die’. (I’m not sure where the current morbid streak comes from but they are both at it lately. Poppet completely freaked her brother while they were sharing a room on holiday by recanting some dream of hers where a dog bit his hand off. I came in to check on them to find him weeping inconsolably lamenting ‘You shouldn’t tell me things like that. I’m only 5, I’m just a child.’) Poppet was reasonably helpful at clearing the floor but she gets easily side-tracked and spent a lot of the time nursing her Baby Annabelle doll who she claimed was upset by all the dust. It’s really sweet to watch her playing Mummies. I wish she didn’t have to do all the sound effects though, especially the high-pitched crying every 10 minutes. I just hope she doesn’t insist on bringing Annabelle and all her paraphernalia on holiday with us. She filled the back seat of the car earlier with the pushchair, feeding kit and change bag when we went to visit Nobby at his office. When he invited her to come in and see where he spends his working day I don’t think he was banking on carrying a pink buggy and a life-sized dolly past all his colleagues. Luckily she was persuaded to leave it all in the car and just took the guinea pig instead.

And I went shopping, hee hee! I was treated to both ends of the French ‘Customer Service’ spectrum while I was there. (sorry, I feel a mini-rant coming on, bear with me.) I was in the sports shop looking for UV suits for the kids in case we actually get some sun next week. I couldn’t find the size I wanted so I took a suit up to the Inquiries desk and asked if they had a pink one in size 8. I was informed that I had to find a member of staff on the shop floor for stock inquiries. (So what’s the desk for then??) The person I found was most unhappy at being dragged away from the young hunk she was helping to put up new shelves and marched round to the UV-suit section, took a quick glance in the empty Size 8 bin and told me ‘Non’. Er, I’m only English, not blind or stupid, I could see that for myself. I asked if there were any in stock, she told me all stock was out on the shelves. So why didn’t the other bl**dy women on the desk tell me that in the first place?! Gah! It’s enough to give you total trolley rage.

So I went along to the lingerie shop feeling I owed myself a treat after that performance, plus given my current waistline crisis I felt I ought to get some extra boost so the tummy can look flatter. (Trinny and Susannah swear by getting the right fitting boulder-holder so it’s worth a try). I was pounced on as soon as I got in the door by a lady, clearly on commission, who wanted to know what I was looking for. Unfortunately I had a mental blank at that point completely forgetting the French for ‘lift and separate’. She was a tacit professional though and soon sorted me out with a good selection without shouting my size too loudly round the store and even left me alone to try them on (for which I was profoundly grateful; I’m not up for the full Trinny & Susannah chummy tit-grabbing experience yet). So after that faultless piece of service I don’t know why the sports shop woman had to be so grumpy. Even the security guard there had said ‘Bonjour’ to me as I walked in, it’s sort of customary in most French shops to greet the shoppers and say goodbye when they leave. It was very noticeably absent when I went back to the UK. Maybe that’s her problem, she knew I was a Brit and wanted to make me feel at home. Thanks but the weather is already doing that.

Anyway, I am sapped of all energy now as it’s been a bit of a madhouse this evening what with picking Nobby and Poppet up from work, crow-barring Pickle out of his friend’s house, getting everyone fed and fixing the boiler which was throwing it’s monthly hissy fit and refusing to heat any water for the children’s bath. I swear that thing is female; I bet these breakdowns are on a lunar cycle. I feel the need to park it for a little bit, and maybe chomp a few biscuits which are only going to go off if I leave them in the cupboard while we’re gone. Rude not to really.