I have had my first run-in with the local fire department here in Hungary. As opposed to my visits from les pompiers in France, this time there were no stray dogs or broken limbs involved - they were putting up the Christmas tree in front of the opera house in downtown Budapest. K and I had been out for a girly dinner and saw all the flashing blue lights as we walked down the road looking for a taxi afterwards so we decided to stay and watch. Did you know there is a custom built hole in the pavement outside the opera house especially for the Christmas tree? Now the guidebooks don’t tell you about that one, I expect the rest of the year it just looks like an ordinary man hole. Unfortunately the massive tree they unloaded with an industrial crane had a far bigger trunk than the hole so we were treated to a display of amateur chain-saw tree surgery by torch-light. It was K who pointed out the universal phenomenon we were witnessing – like queue jumping and football - when there’s a hole in the road and work to be done there’ll be 2 guys doing the work and about ten standing around watching. Not that I’m complaining about having a dozen firemen to gawp at after half a bottle of wine, mercifully there was a distinct absence of arse cleavage given that it was sub zero temperatures at that time of night. d I have to say I much preferred the firemen’s uniforms to the usually workman’s jeans showing a crack that you could park your bike in.

I have also had another run-in with the postal service. Well, technically I haven’t actually torn anyone off a strip given my language handicap but if our postman dares to come by in the near future expecting a Christmas tip he’ll be getting the tip of my Christmas tree up his nose after his latest stunt. On Wednesday I decided to pop home in between a Hungarian lesson and fetching the kids from swimming as it was pelting down rain and Tiggy had been outdoors for a couple of hours. She’s not using her shiny new kennel yet despite all my efforts to coax her in there – comfy blankets, tasty treats, my favourite cardigan… at the weekend I even squeezed in there myself to try and persuade her it was better option than freezing to death in the wind and rain but all I succeeded in doing was laddering my tights and cricking my neck –so being a bit of a softy I wanted to get her out of the rain and into the basement instead. I noticed something wet and droopy sticking out of the mailbox so I hurried out to fetch it trying to think what I might be expecting other than the newspaper and another pile of bills. (To quote Blackadder, ‘I feel like a pelican; everywhere I turn there’s an enormous bill in front of me.’) It turned out to be the batch of photos and personalised Christmas cards I had ordered from Kodak, beautifully packaged in a cardboard envelope. Which was by then water logged and starting to disintegrate. I threw open the mailbox itself expecting to find something extra special filling it up, and there was the weekly newspaper, all wrapped in cellophane, impermeable to water even if he’d chucked it on the floor. Oh, and a couple of bills.

Anyway, I am pleased to say that my Christmas spirit returned by the weekend and we put up our tree and lots of fairy lights and a crate-load of accumulated Christmassy objects the children have crafted at school over the years – a cardboard fir tree here, a paper-plate ‘bauble’ there, and the all time classic painted gingerbread cookies which Tiggy sneaked off the tree and into her bed while I wasn’t looking. We are now proudly displaying the customary fake tree (no pine needles for me, I have enough to moan about) whose upper branches look as though they’ve had tinsel vomited all over them while the bottom third is completely bare. But the kids had a lovely time and didn’t lum for a whole hour.

Now all I have to do is work out how to pack all the presents into 2 suitcases without the kids seeing and without the baggage handlers destroying them. Any pointers would be gratefully received.

Verbal diarrhoea

Poppet woke up with a bad dose of it this morning, My ears are still ringing now from the 15 minute drive to school during which I don’t think she even paused for breath. She was adamant she had to relate every detail of her very elaborate dream about cyclones and spinning houses to Pickle and me. Then afterwards she says ‘That was a long dream wasn’t it? Can you write it all down for me when you get home?’ Hmm, I’m not sure about that, but I will definitely hide the Wizard of Oz CD. Of course once she’d finished, Pickle was bursting with a hundred suppressed stories of his own which he then couldn’t pause even when his teacher needed to talk to me. I don’t know where Poppet gets it from (I can feel my Mum smiling at that one!) but she passed it on to Pickle in spades, and did you know these small people don’t come equipped with an off-switch?

Still, at least dream-stories and observations about how many fellow classmates wear Crocs at school means they stop lumming for five minutes. ‘Lumming’ is an expression created by Rose’s own Poppet when she had just attained kitchen work-top height at toddling age and spent her days up her mother’s bum giving it ‘Lum [love] some!’ to whatever Rose was touching. Now it is fully integrated into our motherly vocabulary because the little buggers still do and at much louder volumes. And with all the Christmas adverts on the TV at the moment the lumming is reaching critical mass and the next ‘Mummeeee, please can I have… oh pleeeeease’ may well make my head explode.

Now whilst the kids are getting more vocal and demanding, by contrast the dog has lately become more skittish and nervous. What with her super-sensitive doggy hearing I imagine her head exploded several days ago from all the noise, although it could be an after-effect of all the injections she’s been having (which are now finished, thank goodness). We already knew she’s a sensitive soul after the peeing incident during the move. But now every loud noise is setting her off, to the point where she won’t come into the garage to get in the car for the school run until the kids are already installed with the doors shut so she can’t hear them. (Yeah, I know how she feels!) Plus in the woods this morning there were a lot of crumblies out on a ramble in the rain and one old chap opened his umbrella as we approached. It was one of those lazee-boy automatic brollies where you just press a button and it shoots up all on its own with a whoosh and a click – I had one back in my school days which used to shoot off the end of the stick so I could use it as a missile but that’s another story. Anyway poor Tiggy was so spooked she turned and ran back in the direction of the car leaving me looking like a right spoon trying to call her to me in amongst all these rain-caped and brollied senior citizens. Eventually she responded to my whistling and thigh slapping and came over but giving the oldies such a wide berth she went right across to the other side of the road and nearly got flattened by the poo lorry (sewage truck, another another-story.)

Hey but the onset of Christmas has one huge plus – the Advent Calendar. This is the one month in the year when for 24 days straight the little darlings will get themselves out of bed and down the stairs unaided instead of having to be kicked out and carried. We bought one of those Playmobil ones which makes up a little scene piece by piece and Pickle is really excited about who is going to open the box with Santa in it. There is the additional advantage of helping them with some maths as they are doing alternating days and learning their odd and even numbers on the sly and not eating chocolate before school as with the conventional calendars. Ha! I still know a trick or two.

Addendum: In between writing this and publishing, Poppet has had another accident and needed another set of x-rays. She got hit by a hard football in the playground so we’ve been testing out our new medical contract, which I am pleased to say seems to be working fine. And the arm is NOT broken this time so thankfully I don’t need to call my future sister-in-law and break the news that her photographer had better devise a way to hide the attractive plaster cast on the wedding photos… I can picture the head explosion from here. Phew!

So the dog has pathogenic e-coli… Yes, that’s what I said: ‘Do what?!’. Just when I thought we were reaching the end of the daily pre-school vet visits, schlepping over to the surgery with two kids, one dog and a bag of sh*te (he’s been growing poo cultures), the vet calls me up to break the news. And how does ones dog pick up pathogenic e-coli? From eating other dog’s poo. Lovely. I always knew Tiggy was a dog of very little brain but I did like to think she had enough common sense to disregard her own or any other faeces. Apparently not. . So now I am administering daily pro-biotic tablets hidden in a lump of cheese as well as everything else which means I can’t go near the fridge now without her following me with her tongue out and a pleading look on her face. Yes, the dog likes cheese. Still I shouldn’t complain, it’s healthier than poo,

Meanwhile it is a winter wonderland here in Budapest. I am so miffed I don’t have my own skis because the park where Tiggy and I walk each morning is knee deep in snow with some cool looking slopes. A couple of joggers have swapped their Nikes for skis and it looks like lots of fun. Still, I have found other ways to amuse myself; I built two snowmen yesterday. While the kids were at school. Do you think I have too much time on my hands or what? I did achieve something useful at the same time, namely clearing the driveway and patio of snow, but I confess that was a bi-product of the snowman building. I’m not sure what came over me but I just had to have one! Tiggy thought I had gone completely mad, rolling huge balls of snow around the place, but she’s getting quite adept at catching snowballs in her mouth now. Pity she still can’t give a stick back when she’s fetched it or walk past doggy do without snacking but you can’t have it all can you?

What's all this white stuff?

Don’t mention the ‘C’ word. You know the one I mean. The one on every child’s lips as soon as the Halloween costumes have gone been packed away for another year. The one on every Grandma’s lips from the moment the grandkids go back to school in September - ‘I just want to plan ahead, darling…’ The one that ruins your weekly shopping because Tescos has to rearrange the entire store to accommodate the ‘seasonal fayre’ it wants to flog you and can’t possibly continue to stock Weetabix when there are chocolate Santas to accomodate.

NO! I said don’t say it! I am doing my best to get organised and catch all the last posting dates and work out how to smuggle the usual sleigh-full of presents to my mum’s house with a baggage allowance of only 20kg per person but I fear my C*******s spirit is still in the bottle at the moment. And I hadn’t counted on the dog getting sick this week and needing injections at 8am each morning, then pulling a ligament whilst romping round the forest yesterday so she also requires ointment applied to her foot 4 times a day ‘and please stop her from licking it off for at least 5 minutes afterwards.’ You what?

So to top off the week with a big fat cherry I have been snowed on 4 times today. It has been very weird because the snow cloud was caught on top of the Buda hills for most of the day so while it was semi-blizzard when we took Pickle to football practice right up in the hills this morning it was just cold and sunny with ominous looking clouds in the distance down in town at Nobby’s football tournament. Our house is halfway between the two and the snow finally reached us in swirling gusts at about lunchtime so I dug out the snow chains for Sharan just in case as we set off to watch Daddy and his mates kicking a ball about (ooh, I’m going to get hell for that one – I have been told time and again, no, it’s NOT just a game…) However by the time we reached the bottom of Gazdagret hill it was sunny again, with an ominous cloud in my rear-view mirror. Weird.

Have you picked up yet it’s been a football kind of a day? Nobby’s company had their annual inter-departmental tournament and despite the fact that this time last week he couldn’t stand upright having put his back out with a particularly violent sneeze (?!) Nobby insisted on playing. These tournaments have come up several times before in the past; after all I have been a football widow for the better part of twelve years now. And although I used to enjoy standing on the touchline for hours on end yelling encouragement, these days it’s not quite the same when you have two little monkeys pulling on your trouser leg moaning ‘Mummmeeeee, I’m booooooored!’ two minutes after kick-off. I had to boycott most of the French competitions after the first one over-ran by about 3 hours and I had to make my way home alone on the train with two small, tired, hungry kids and leave the car for Nobby so he could follow on when it eventually ended. In the old days I'd just have met him in the pub. But I have to say I was very impressed today; these guys could teach the French a thing or two about running to time and they laid on lunch too. Needless to say my two stuffed themselves with free chocolate bars all afternoon then ran around like loonies whenever the pitch was empty. HoweverI am pleased to report that Nobby’s back held out and his team came second out of seven.

Then as we all exited the dome we discovered the world had turned white. That cheeky cloud had followed me down the ruddy hill and dumped all over us while we weren’t looking. Poppet and Pickle were very excited and immediately set off to make their mark on the pristine layer of white in the car park. And now all they want to do is cut out paper snowflakes to decorate their rooms. Plus of course, what does snow mean when you’re 7 years old? What question have I already heard ten times since we got home?
‘How many sleeps till Christmas?’
Aargh!

Wedding wear

There is a wedding in the offing. My big bruv is getting hitched at Christmas. In their wisdom he and his intended have assigned bridesmaid and pageboy roles to my offspring and Nobby is an usher so at least it’s up to the happy couple to sort out the monkey suits for all of them. My sister’s husband is also an usher so she and I have assigned ourselves the roles of Chief Champagne Testers and Bar-Props while everyone else is busy doing their thang. However I still need a suitable outfit for myself, and this has been causing me some problems.

Nobby and I took a stroll round a few party-dress type shops at the weekend while the children were on a play date to the cinema. There were some interesting, imaginative outfits on offer, and we met some enthusiastic if slightly unhelpful assistants – I guess it’s my own fault for not looking up the Hungarian for ‘classy yet comfortable and suitable for a wedding at one o’clock in the afternoon’ that I found myself being shown all things satin and taffeta and tied up with bows. After two of them poured me into some purple cat-suit style thing which clung to every curve that I decided I’d rather be up to my neck in popcorn and cola in front of Madagascar II with Poppet and Pickle. I mean I’m all for figure-hugging and I am willing to employ industrial strength lycra support to be able to pull it off, but my bruv hasn’t shouted me dinner in a long time and I want to be able to enjoy the wedding feast without risk of taking out some elderly uncle’s eye out with my popping buttons.

So the search continues. Although the only store I will be visiting tomorrow is the ski-wear shop because we are due snow here this weekend and last year’s gear is halfway up the kids’ arms so we are risking serious loss of appendage if I don’t get them some new jackets pronto. I wonder if I they’ve invented the wedding shell-suit yet?

Bombs in Budapest

Nobby took the day off on Friday so we pootled off to town for a bit of culture – Bodies The Exhibition . The children were horrified that we wanted to go look at preserved human bodies with their insides exposed (“Were there any eyeballs? Did you see a brain?” “Yes we did.” “Eeuuurgh!!”) Don’t get me wrong, it was all very educational and took me right back to my Biology A Level studies, but I couldn’t get over the feeling that the exposed femur on the skinless chap with the football bore more than a fleeting resemblance to the thing I gave Tiggy to chew on before we left.

Anyway, on the journey into town we passed a line of police cars outside a building site which had been cordoned off. ‘Ooh, it must be a body!’ we decided; clearly our modern diet of CSI and Waking The Dead makes us bypass more benign explanations such as a protest against the construction, or a gas leak and leads us straight to murder and mayhem. But I did wonder why the army had just turned up as well... On our way home we were heading past the same building site, only to be re-directed to a safe distance because they had since blocked all the neighbouring roads and created a traffic jam to rival France’s finest. We were very nearly late for the school family assembly where Pickle put in a memorable performance of ‘Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes’ along with the rest of his class.

As it turns out the bulldozers at the site had uncovered an unexploded World War II bomb. Not quite the murder mystery we had imagined, which wasn’t so bad as we were rather over dead bodies after the exhibition (the parma ham pizza was not the best lunch choice in hindsight) but still pretty exciting. Nobby called the office which is located within the ‘blast radius’ (we watch ‘24’ as well, see how easily the terminology comes?) to find out that had he been at work he would have been on stand-by for evacuation! We shared the gossip with the other expat parents at the school who were very excited too. But the Hungarian Mums were somewhat blasé about it, apparently unexploded bombs turn up on construction sites fairly routinely here given the bombardment during the war. I guess we sometimes forget where we are now.

Well, I notice it has been about a month since I last Blogged, how does the time pass so quickly? I have a couple of valid excuses for my slackness. One being that I had to turn the study into a bedroom for a week while my sister and parents were here and I didn’t think my Sis would want to find me tapping away into the small hours while she was trying to get some sleep. Another excuse is the weekend I just lost to a migraine that completely floored me from Thursday night to Sunday morning. Big thanks to Nobby and K for rescuing me from the school runs and general childcare while I lay in my darkened room.

It’s been quite hectic recently though, with the half term holidays, a lovely week with my rellies, meeting up with Rose who was also in town staying with her Mum… and a Halloween party for all the kids in both my children’s classes at school. I have to say that throwing a bash for 22 children and a dozen adults wasn’t the nightmare you might imagine, thanks to a tonne of face-paints, a table full of goodies and a cleverly constructed witches cave with spooky music. Oh, and an unseasonably glorious sunny November day really helped – I wonder what the neighbours thought of all the witches and vampires jumping on our trampoline and swinging off the climbing frame all afternoon. I was oddly serene afterwards as I took down the spiders and pumpkins which festooned the house.

That is until I stepped into the post office the following day – now THAT is what I call stress. Let me explain. A Hungarian lady we know sent us a parcel. I wasn’t home when the Postie came so I got a slip in Hungarian which I sussed was something to do with a delivery but couldn’t fathom where I was supposed to go with it. I asked a semi-bi-lingual lady at the Tescos post office, who sent me to another local post office, where I had to resort to calling K to translate over the mobile as even my pals the Berlitz phrasebook and sign-language were falling flat. Eventually we confirmed I need to go to the big sorting office in downtown Budapest, so off I trotted, slip in hand, putting 15 minutes on the parking meter as this shouldn’t be too hard now, and after all we’re not in France any more, right? Wrong.

All the signs in the sorting office are illegible to me of course, so I stood in the wrong queue for the first 10 minutes until someone showed me the way. In the new queue the person in front of me handed over a similar looking slip to mine, the man went in back for a moment, returned after 30 seconds with a parcel, gave it to the person and it was my turn. I handed over my slip, the man went in back, returned with a parcel about 5 minutes later, put it on the floor next to him, tapped on the computer for a bit then started to talk to me in Hungarian, shaking his head ominously.

The only phrase I know in Hungarian is ‘I don’t speak Hungarian’. Luckily a nice old man in the queue behind me spoke English and stepped in to give me a hand. And then he started to have an argument with the post-chappie while I stood there staring longingly at my long-awaited parcel. It turned out that although my parcel was *physically* still at the sorting office, it had *officially* already been returned to the sender because they only keep them for 10 days and I had shown up on day 10. Some official notification had already been sent to someone that it was going back so I wasn’t allowed to have it, even though it was right there in front of me! The old chap was getting very cross on my behalf because it seemed they were all for telling me to go away empty handed and letting them return it, even when I had him explain that the sender had moved away from Budapest 2 days after posting the parcel so it was going to come straight back to the sorting office when she didn’t answer the door. At this they decided it would be ok if the sender could telephone the sorting office to confirm that I could have the parcel. ?? Isn’t that what she was doing by mailing it to me in the first place? Argh!!

Anyway, I am risk of ranting here and I had been so enjoying leaving the French bureaucracy behind. I don’t know how it followed me. Since that incident, which was indeed resolved by a phone call from the sender when I eventually tracked her down in Dublin, although in theory I could have had anyone make the call, how on earth did the post office know it was her who sent it? I have entered a twilight zone of triplicate forms, successive help-desk visiting and standing in line like I’m at back at Disney but without the thrill-ride at the end of it, and this was just to return a £1.50 battery. So I have a feeling there is more yet to come.

Breaking the rules

After giving Nobby such a hard time for breaking the rules of ‘What Is Acceptable To Say To Your Wife (if you want to keep the family jewels intact)’, I have now shamefully broken a rule myself. And this set was written down so there’s no excuse.

In fact, it seems we are all at it at the moment. Pickle has also joined in the rule breaking fun, although I am struggling to admonish him because I am not sure how to explain to a six-year-old the reasons why you can’t French-kiss your Mummy. I told him I’ll remind him about it when he’s 16 but he really didn’t get it, as he squirmed about on my lap and tried to snog my face off while I attempted to chuck him off. I only invited him to give me a hug and he tried to slip me the tongue, what is he like?

But I know he for one approves of my own contravention, though. Because what I did was cut his hair myself. Now this was quite high on my list of ‘Things I Will And Won’t Do To My Children’ which I compiled shortly before Poppet was born. Somehow I got it into my head that there were things I remember from my childhood which I deemed unsuitable to do with my own offspring. Just shows what I know though, doesn’t it? I mean, just how fast does hair grow? Pickle needs a trim about every 6 weeks and while we had a brilliant kids salon in France with comfy chairs, pretty hairdressers and best of all, individual television screens which guaranteed he’d sit still and not risk losing his ears to the scissors, I have not yet found an equivalent here in Budapest. I don’t even know how to say ‘haircut’ let alone ‘watch out he’s a wriggler’.

However, after 2 months without a cut the poor lamb resembled a choirboy with a bowl-cut and drastic action was required. And besides, he asked me to do it after catching sight of himself in the bathroom mirror one night and wailing ‘I look like a girl!’ I didn’t comply straight away though and this is where Poppet jumped on the band wagon and broke the rules – by going at his fringe with her craft scissors. You know when the kids go all quiet upstairs and you’re not sure whether to panic or send up a silent thank you and put the kettle on? Well I discovered them a little bit too late to save any more than a centimetre of his fringe but at least I had a place to start for the rest. So I confess, dear reader, I attacked him with the electric trimmers again (remembering to put the guard on this time so I didn’t shear him like a sheep) while he sat on a high stool watching Thomas The Tank Engine. It wasn’t too bad a job in the end, I am happy to say, and his ears are now visible once more. Although Nobby did have to send him back to get rid of the rats tail down his back that the towel had been covering.

Well nobody’s perfect. That’s my only excuse and I’m sticking to it.

ZZZZZZZZzzzzzz…

Nobby’s missus: a woman barely awake. But we can revive her, we have the technology…

Yeah, well, I’m not sure we do. Two intravenous coffees and a large bowl of sugary cereal was still not enough to get my eyes sufficiently open to squeeze my contact lenses into them before the school run this morning. Sure we may be able to fuse honey and nuts to dried and flattened pieces of corn but today I needed something more. Luckily nature had the answer, although not in the form I expected. I tried the lavender oil and the half hour yomp round the park with the dog but I was still pretty much a zombie as I trailed back to the car. What did it was the pervading smell of dog-poo throughout the vehicle from the turd I somehow stepped in on the way. I doubt it will catch on but it kept me unavoidably alert the whole way home trying not to breathe through my nose.

So can you tell that Nobby is still away then? My late nights are a combination of taking advantage of having the TV clicker all to myself, being able to surf the web without being chastised for keeping him awake with the tippy-tapping, and the irrational conviction that every sound the house makes after 11pm is a knife wielding murderer sneaking through the kitchen window for a wee stab-athon. Couple that with an early morning visit from Poppet who had had a nightmare about one of her classmates and voila! Zombie Central. The only good thing was that Poppet could just climb in Nobby’s side of the bed instead of me having to get up and take her back to hers, but then I had to suffer the relentless ‘is it time to get up yet?’ ‘how many minutes till we have to get up, Mummy?’ interrogation until she fell back to sleep.

Anyway, here I am back in front of the computer having stopped myself from parking it on the couch by deciding to launder all the loose covers. I may have created another job for myself there because it wasn’t until one load was in and I was stripping off the next batch of cushions that I saw the label saying ‘dry clean only’. Since when did ‘washable covers’ mean dry cleaning them? Does dry cleaning actually count as washing? I can’t wait to see how this one turns out. But after 8 years without a wash other than the occasional ‘spot cleaning’ I think any result will be better than their current look. I didn’t really notice it all that much until we were getting ready for company on Sunday. It’s the first time any new friends had been round to the house and suddenly my couch just seemed really scruffy to me. (Not sure what kind of signals that admission must send to any family members reading this, it never bothered me when you’ve been round!) Oh, incidentally, I have a new strategy for dealing with weekends with small children without the aid of a husband. You arrange a tea party for a bunch of little friends late on the Sunday afternoon. The kids are thus angels all weekend in anticipation as they know you might cancel it if they mess about! Of course you have to put up with the constant ‘are they coming yet?’ from the moment they wake up on Sunday morning but it’s a small price to pay for them actually helping with the shopping, bringing things in from the car, tidying their rooms and spending a blissful hour in the kitchen together making biscuits. Why on earth didn’t I think of this before? And by rights you gain every excuse NOT to clean all weekend because it’ll be a wreck by the time 8 additional skunks have been through there. But of course if it’s the first time some people have been there you may see your furniture in a whole new light. I think I feel a shopping trip coming on…

Less bored...

Nobby made a poor start to the day by uttering one of the Forbidden Phrases from The List. You ladies will know what I mean; that unwritten, unspoken (and unfinished) list of Things One Should Never Say To Ones Wife/Girlfriend If One Wants To Retain Sexual Privileges. Of course, being male, he probably doesn’t actually know what he’s done or how much trouble he is in for violating The Rules, unless he’s decided that his work is done towards the survival of the species and he can now manage without his scrotum and its contents; standard punishment being to have these ripped off.

By rights, he should have a vague inkling of what I’m talking about, having slipped up in the past with such classics as

‘What have you been doing all day?’

‘That’s an interesting top/skirt/suit’, and

‘Oh, you’ve put your tracksuit trousers on; are you feeling fat?’

Today’s gem was ‘I’m amazed you haven’t lost a wing mirror yet’ while we were driving down the narrow track to exit our residential area. I took a deep calming breathe, after all, it is a typical scenario: instead of concentrating on my achievements – successfully swerving round a pot hole resembling the Grand Canyon and thus saving Sharan’s suspension from further injury – he points out my shortcomings i.e. narrowly avoiding a concrete lamp-post which happens to be directly opposite said chasm. I have to say, if my driving is so scary he can jolly well walk to the tram stop in future.

Still, it alleviates the boredom, dunnit? I have to say I have had some success finding other outlets than chocolate biscuits and DVDs. Tiggy is extremely pleased to be getting extra walks since I started taking her along the wooded ridge nearby where we never bump into anyone else so I have no guilt wearing my ipod while we walk. The only drawback being when I scare her by spontaneously bursting into song. I just can’t help it – music is for singing along to and I can’t be expected to remember that any unfortunate soul overhearing my performance can’t hear the music or backing vocals that I can. I completely forget that I probably don’t sound like Betty Boo outside of my own head, it’s probably more like Scooby Doo.

But anyway, I inadvertently put a stop to my performances this afternoon whilst following Roses example and taking my energy out on the garden. I was going great guns with the secateurs and the front steps were looking a lot nicer without all the ivy growing over them and the job was progressing even better accompanied by a bit of Fleetwood Mac (showing my age again, ahem). Until it all suddenly went quiet in my headphones. No, not premature deafness… I’d snipped through the wire.

Bored

I am finally admitting to it; I’m bored. I know I should be having the time of my life exploring my new environment and indeed I have found Tescos very diverting, but there is only so much excitement I can muster over being able to buy Branston Pickle and chocolate Hobnobs for the first time in four years and I think the novelty is already wearing thin. Despite my dubious title of ‘Housewife’ I do not actually feel any marital obligation to these four walls, I never promised to dust, polish and vacuum before any kind of congregation, and as my Dutch friend pointed out, is this really why I spent four years at uni getting a degree? I had high hopes for the school committee meeting yesterday but to be honest it was a slight let-down. It seems there is already a bit of a clique in place of people who helped in previous years and all I am required to do is ‘raise awareness and encourage other parents to contribute stuff to the decorations, food and activities.’ Yawn. I needn’t have even taken my clip-board.

So funnily enough I added another few quid to the phone bill afterwards with a long call to Rose. And she’s bored too. To her credit she is at least taking some of her energy out on the garden, to the point where she has very few trees left and shrubs pruned to within an inch of their lives. But like me she is also finding herself on the sofa more often than not with an episode of Friends, a coffee and a packet of something high-fat, high-carb and smothered in chocolate. Oh dear. She even admitted agreeing to an outing that I know she would never normally have considered in her right mind, which had me reaching for the wet kipper. Although I’m not sure which one of us to slap first, I am hardly in a position to criticise. I just agreed to stay in to receive the broadband internet installers tomorrow, any time between 9h30 and 15h30. That’s pretty sad, unless I am going to use my 5 hour confinement to sparkle the house up, do all the ironing, trim the hedges and lawn and generally make Anthea proud. I seriously doubt it. If Anthea turns up she’ll just have to park it on the crumb-covered sofa, help herself to a Hobnob straight from the cellophane and keep quiet during Ally McBeal.

Pickle is also bored. It’s his new favourite phrase and he uses it several times a day, especially at bedtime. At which point I say, ‘Good! You shouldn’t have a problem going to sleep then!’ But I happen to know he’s just doing that parrot thing that children do and repeating something he’s heard someone else say – I overheard him playing with Nemo’s friend Dory the fish on the Nintendo the other day. It’s one of those pointless yet strangely kid-enthralling games where you have to baby-sit the character and come up with stuff for it to do. Guess what Dory’s favourite phrase is when she’s not getting enough stimulation? ‘I’m bored.’ Unfortunately Pickle now substitutes it for ‘I’m hungry’, ‘I’m thirsty’ or ‘I’m tired’ as well so I have to guess what he really means. Maybe he knows I’m bored and he’s trying to stimulate me?! Spooky.

By the way, if you want proof at how bored and boring I am, in case this ramble hasn’t been enough, speak to my sister. The last conversation we had ended up discussing the finer points of our respective new vacuum cleaners. True, it was interesting to discover we have independently selected the same model of Dyson despite living thousands of miles apart, but I never foresaw us both getting excited over how the ‘click’ it makes when you’re extending the tool arm sounds like you’re cocking a rifle. Having said that I think the idea of taking a gun to the housework is pretty appealing whatever mood I’m in. Bam! Bam! Bam! Goodbye washing up, so long dusting, ‘asta la vista ironing.

Ups and Downs

Nobby has instructed me to find some friends here. It could have something to do with the phone bill. I didn’t think that £100 was too unreasonable, until he pointed out that was for one month… hmm, I think I see his point.

Anyway, I am working on it, and the kids are helping. They have been making little friends at school so we Mummies have been thrown together to arrange the play dates. And even the dog is chipping in – she has grown very attached to Oscar, a Labrador–cross and it turns out his owner knows where I live because the previous tenant is a friend of hers. While we were chatting on our last walk she mentioned that there are wild boars in the woods and that they have made a wallow quite near to the car park. We went to have a look and sure enough there it was – a huge muddy hole, filled with sticky, slimy goo… and my dog. Great. You never saw such a mess, and she was grinning all over her face as she came bounding over to try and cover me in it too. Never mind, I said, she’s due a shampoo anyway, I’ll just get the hose out when we get home. However, when I got home there was a piercing squealing coming from the boiler room. It’s the alarm to say that the pressure has plummeted – there was s a burst water main down the road and our water was off all day. Mr Sod has followed me to Hungary!!! Poor Tiggy was confined to the garden until her fur dried and I could brush the mud out and, dammit I couldn’t do any laundry all day either. Shame.

I might have known there would be some shenanigans to round off the roller coaster week. Monday dawned with Pickle absolutely full of the joys of spring. He was bursting with Positive Mental Attitude all the way to school as he told us he needed to get all his French homework done straight away and couldn’t wait for Jerome to come back for another lesson. He was totally in love with the world and announced which of his classmates he plans to marry. However by Friday the homework wasn’t done and Pickle didn’t even want to get dressed let alone go to school. Oh how quickly it all changes. Now he knows how Mummy felt on the Monday school run, still trying to peel back her eyelids and keep the car going in a straight line after an hour of running round getting the school bags and the PE bags and the swimming bags and the coats and the wellies and the shoes ready and into the car along with the kids and the husband and the dog.

But I have to say, we did find Little Boy Paradise the previous Sunday which may have spawned the good humour – the Hungarian Railway Museum. You can keep Didcot, even if it does have Thomas the tank engine. This place has a huge collection of steam engines from little Percy types that once chuffed around the good yards to enormous Russian monsters with red stars on the front and wheels taller than a man. There is an engine shed with 34 doors surrounding a working turntable; you can have a go at driving a modern train on the simulator, or creep along the track in a hand cranked contraption. There are several model railways indoors for the real anoraks and a mini-ride-on one for the children. Even Poppet had a great time climbing up into the steam engines and wondering how they were supposed to see where they were going when the windows are only the size of a dinner plate and covered in soot.

In fact Poppet was on great form on Monday too – she learned to swim! They’ve been taking lessons twice a week with their new school. Pickle was terribly proud – at first. He bounded over yelling ‘did you see her?! Did you see her?!’ then promptly burst into tears sobbing ‘I want to swim too, but I can’t!’ You just can’t win, huh.

So the rest of the week was a similar minefield of minge. I finally made it back to the furniture shop lugging the extra bedstead we somehow ended up with to customer service to ask for a refund. Not one of the four people in the little office spoke a word of English (fair enough, you know, I am the stranger here; I am not expecting everyone to be bilingual, before anyone points that out). My phrase book had the basics covered with ‘ I would like to return this’ and ‘I would like a refund’ which I read out as best I could while they all looked on cringing as I murdered their mother tongue. Sadly it was missing the translation for ‘Sorry you can’t return that bit without the mattress because it’s part of a set’ so I had to phone a friend to bail me out.

Then as I am lugging the thing back to the car the school calls and puts Poppet on the line. ‘Mummy I have a tummy ache and my throat hurts, can you come and get me?’ Knowing that she is rarely ill (she lets Pickle have all the colds and just breaks the odd limb here and there) I abandoned the rest of my shopping plan – Tescos was right next door, it was quite a wrench – I dashed off to school where she was lying down in the medical room with a glass of water and a tissue looking very sorry for herself. So I brought her home, made a bed up on the couch, stuck Mulan in the DVD player and prepared to play nurse for the next few days. Then this little voice pipes up with ‘Mummy, I’m hungry.’ And the little monkey proceeded to eat 4 rounds of toast and 3 chocolate cookies and declared herself all better.

Have I just been taken for a mug?

Things perked up this last weekend though with a free trip to the zoo with Nobbys company. It felt great waltzing past all the queues to the hospitality desk for our VIP wristbands and competition forms – we had to visit 10 tables in various locations round the zoo and complete an activity to get a stamp on the form. The first couple were nice and easy - naming shells, touching snake skins, and drawing elephants - but the children came over all shy when asked to ‘walk like a polar bear’ in the middle of the path so Mummy had to make an a*se of herself instead while people wandered past wondering why on earth eight people were lumbering round in a circle with their hands on their knees. I had my revenge though when we came to the ‘holding a cockroach’ table. No way. Luckily Pickle would rather let a nasty creepy crawly scuttle up his arm than feel a fool in front of total strangers so we were OK.

So my goal this week is to cut out the phone calls and get out and meet some people, and I am already making progress with the latter: having recently held my hand up to possibly helping out with an upcoming ‘International Day’ event at the school and I just got an email to say I am now on the organising committee and the first meeting is tomorrow morning. Oh god, what have I done? Here’s hoping this is a good thing and not the road to being stuck with some power hungry, bossy mega-mummies who will try and turn it into some major gala event so they have something new to put on their CVs. I’ll keep you posted.

Small People

The great thing about living with children is you never know what they are going to do or say next. Each day is a whole new realm of possibilities from loudly pointing out the flaws on total strangers e.g. Pickle: (looking at a hapless acne-ridden teenager in the lift at the shopping centre) ‘Look Mummy, that lady’s covered in chicken pox!’ – to unabashedly blurting out random thoughts e.g. Pickle: (on a crowded tram) ‘You know, I think I fart so much because I eat so much ketchup…’
Thankfully the language barrier here may hide a multitude of faux pas in public, although you never really know.

And then there are the indiscriminate acts of stupidity designed to get Mummy a little bit greyer.

Like sliding down a glass roof.

Yes, believe it; last weekend while Nobby was out watching a football match I let my little ones outside for a final play before bed time and smiled to myself while I washed up as I heard them laughing and giggling. I went out to call them inside to find them crawling up the sloping glass roof which covers next doors empty swimming pool and sliding down it. On scarves, to make them go faster. How I didn’t faint I have no idea. I decided not to yell at them, I had them talk through the possible consequences instead - What happens when you knock glass too hard? What happens when broken glass touches your skin? What happens when you fall 6 metres onto the tiled floor of an empty swimming pool? How does Mummy get into a locked house to rescue you? When realisation struck we all had a good cry about that one.

And then a couple of days later Pickle disappeared again. We were having a lovely walk with Tiggy while Poppet had her first Craft class after school. Usual scenario: Mummy turns her back for a second and the boy is gone. Half an hour later I am back at the school getting one of the bi-lingual teachers to write down ‘Have you seen a little boy on his own with a Scooby-Doo hat on?’ in Hungarian because I haven’t found him yet, there are hundreds of people around at after-school clubs but none of them understand a word I am saying. It comes out afterwards that he had found his way back to the school when he realised he’d lost me but when he saw the security guard he thought he was going to get in trouble for being on his own and ran off again!! We were eventually tearfully reunited after he heard me calling for him. He told me it’s a good job I get so much practice at shouting loudly. Ha! Anyway, that was one way to get introduced to the new headmistress of the school and have her remember me forever more.

See, that time when Poppet was about 10 months old and I came back into the lounge after making a cup of tea to find that the baby was missing was just a warm up. I still had all my blonde intact when I eventually found her up two flights of stairs emerging from under my bed in hot pursuit of the CD player with the cool button that makes the lid pop up. Here we are a couple of years on and I’m almost ready for my blue rinse.
.
When I told my Mum I found a grey hair last week, she was very sympathetic and told me it was totally unfair and I shouldn’t be getting greys before I am forty. Pansy, on the other hand (formally known as Peony, but she requested the change and if you know who I am talking about you’ll agree it suits her better!) laughed out loud and said ‘Good! About time too - I’ve already got about 50!’ Not quite what I wanted to hear of course, and besides I have never noticed a single grey on her head. Of course I always assumed she would be hiding a couple in there given that she has a French mother-in-law and all (!). But if greys are indeed little souvenirs from our darling children for each disaster then I reckon I am doomed to resemble my granny by the time I make it back to Blighty.

Just to add insult to injury the car has been joining in the fun recently. The new one has a sophisticated system whereby when you unlock the car it has to detect this little black box thingy that you keep on the key ring so the car knows it’s you. If it doesn’t detect the box then you get a warning beep then the alarm goes off. And when that happens ‘Skyguard’ know about it and they phone for a password. I have one password for ‘Quick, the car’s been stolen!’ and another one for ‘Sorreeeee, I set the alarm off by mistake.’

Well, it got to the point where the alarm was going off each and every time I tried to unlock the car, even though the black box was right there on the key ring. And I couldn’t turn the deafening alarm off either. I stopped having to actually say the password when Skyguard called, I just held the phone out towards the honking hunk of metal to prove that I still had it in my possession, however much I actually wanted to push it off a cliff at that moment. In the end I was leaving it unlocked with the dog inside, until someone suggested changing the battery in the little black box. How was I supposed to know it runs off a battery? But it does, so we did, and now all is calm once more, although Poppet still keeps her hands clamped over her ears until we have made it a good mile or so down the road.
It’s nice to know I can get my own back and put the willies up the kiddies every now and then.

Flashback

Mummy: How was your first day at your new school?
Pickle: Excellent thanks. Can I go back again tomorrow?

Well, it looks as though the new school is working out so far, except for the lunches from Poppets point of view. She can’t help being a fussy eater, bless her, but I had promised her it would be different from the sloppy veal casseroles she used to get in France only to find that there is an awful lot of goulash and ragout going on over here. Oops, should have thought of that. Hey, but at least they give them morning and afternoon snacks too so she’s not pouncing on the fridge as soon as she gets home any more.

They have both made some new friends already, which is great news. Pickle can’t remember anyone’s names of course but the whole class is his friend. Poppet is best pals with Dora and has already conspired with her to sneak makeup in to class so they can play with it in the corner of the playground. I’m not sure it was such a good idea to share those sorts of plans with Mummy who is somewhat expected to enforce the school rules. I am now a spoilsport of course but I fully expect she'll find a way to get past me.

I still haven’t made any friends myself, yet, although I have chatted a little bit with Dora’s Mummy. And I did get another reply to my leaflet drop – another divorced chap at the other end of the road, this one with cats. I also had a long natter with a fellow dog-walker in the forest, also a man though. I am feeling somewhat starved of female company and as a consequence Nobby is going to get one pretty vast phone bill since I was on it for almost 2 hours yesterday.

But perhaps he can claim it on the medical insurance as psychotherapy. In particular yesterday I needed to vent my spleen to a mate after another dog incident in a car park. (Uh-oh, not again! Flashback to school car park and irate French woman.) Tiggy didn’t walk in front of any cars this time. She just did what dogs do and sauntered over to a fellow doggy, a little West Highland White on a lead next its Mummy and two other women, for a sniff and a wag. However, we must have slipped through a worm-hole on the way because all of a sudden I swear we were back in Paris when the owner, who was on the phone, went into a wide-eyed panic and tried to scoop up her precious Westie on seeing my scruffy mongrel approaching. But she didn’t want to miss her phone call or let go of her designer handbag so she ended up lifting it off the ground by its collar and lead with her spare hand and dangling it out of reach. Thankfully one of her friends grew a brain and caught hold of it before she throttled it, although she needed to hold it at arms length so it wouldn’t mark her lovely T-shirt. Whereupon the other one turned on me and said,
‘You know, what you’re doing is illegal; your dog needs to be on a leash.’

They were Americans! They were the first female English-speakers and potential expat buddies I had encountered in days! And they turned out to be clones of the total barm pots I thought I had left behind in Paris!

I tried to make light of things with:
‘Oh, she’s quite harmless, she just wants to say hello and play,’ whilst inside I was thinking, ‘I don’t bl**dy believe this, no-one else in this entire park has their dog on a lead. I bet she never said a word to the 3 male joggers and their boxer dogs.’
To which I got (again),
‘It’s illegal to have your dog off the leash.’
I was stunned. It was that afternoon at the bank in St Germain en Laye all over again, learning the hard way that in France the only way they know to handle objections is to repeat the rules over and over until the silly objector goes away. And I quote:
‘Can I see someone to explain this letter I have just received?’
‘Non, madame, you ‘ave to contact your own branch.’
‘But this is the same bank.’
‘You ‘ave to contact your own branch.’
‘Well, my branch is in the middle of Paris so can’t someone here help me instead?’
‘You ‘ave to contact your own branch. You could phone zem.’
‘My French is not good on the phone; can’t someone here help me make the call?’
‘You ‘ave to contact your own branch.’

Ah, how I missed all that since moving to this friendly, easy going country where you get congratulations if you attempt to speak the local language rather than the full-body shrug and ‘comment?’ I was used to. I really should thank those three lovely Americans for the trip down memory lane, if they hadn't made me feel about as welcome as a maggot in a Big Mac.

In the end, in good British fashion I gritted my teeth and smiled and said,
‘Gosh, I’m soooo sorry, I’m new here, just moved in last month, and I don’t know all the rules yet. Lovely to meet you. Bye.’ At which my dog obediently jumped into the car and I drove off, planning to leave them feeling ashamed at their lack of sympathy for the new girl on the block and mourning the squandered opportunity to make a new expat friend.

However my wheel-spin out of the car park was sadly spoiled by the sodding car alarm going off for the 100th time and immobilising the car in the middle of the road with the horn blaring and the lights flashing. I could hear them tutting and puffing in a familiar Paris-esque manner behind me while I wrestled to turn the damn thing off.
Bugger.

Weeeeee!

I wonder how many people can say they’ve spent the morning walking round the Budapest Aquarium with a bottle of wee in their handbag? Well, from today you can count me as one. I also wonder who builds an attraction full of fish tanks, ponds, waterfalls and fountains and doesn’t provide at least one toilet? Clearly someone with impressive bladder control, like my Poppet who can hold on all day long if needs be. But when Pickle’s gotta go, he’s gotta go. Since we were only halfway round the exhibits and I didn’t want to miss out on the chance to tickle a ray fish in the ’petting pool’ I had to resort to desperate measures and find a quiet corner where we could convert a hastily emptied Evian bottle into a potty. Of course in order to empty the bottle I had to drink the water as I didn’t think I should chuck it in with the terrapins. So whilst Pickle was nice and comfortable watching the simulated rain forest downpour in the alligator enclosure once the crisis was averted, I was distinctly distracted trying to avoid one of my own. Ah, the joys.

Anyway, isn’t it great? here I am back on line! It’s been a long time and I am now broadcasting from a different house in a different country. Yes, 300 boxes, one 2-hour flight and one medical crisis later and we are all settled in to Budapest in Hungary. We still don’t have broadband and sadly Nobby is now out of range for BBC1 (Match Of The Day) but hey, we have had blue skies and hot sunshine almost every day for the past month! I must say the transition has been surprisingly easier than moving to France, even though the local language is totally indecipherable. We are managing with sign language and a Berlitz phrase book at the moment until we start lessons but the locals are very friendly and are quite happy to have a go at helping us.

Apart from the relocation agents of course, they have been mysteriously absent since we got the keys to the house. Clearly estate agents are the same the world over. Luckily the landlord is a great chap and has taken care of most questions we have. The agents did pop up again to help us open a bank account, and they kindly directed us to the English speaking hospital when Poppet fell down the basement steps and broke her arm about 3 hours after getting into the house but that's about all. Ah yes, what is that child like? I had been far more concerned that Pickle was going to fall out of the willow tree he had taken up residence in since falling in love with it in the new garden, but she sure showed me where I should have been looking. Thankfully this was a simple fracture, and the left arm too, so she is already out of plaster but I do hope this isn't going to become an annual summer holiday event. It's not even a whole year since the 'how to break your leg on a bouncy castle' incident.

I am pleased to report that the dog has also recovered from her, ahem, ’condition’. About a week before we packed up the old house and in the middle of all the stress of having the phone line cut off too early, the agent giving me a list of things to put right in the house for the inventory and trying to keep the children busy enough not to wreck all my pre-packing tidying, I started finding little puddles on the floor around the house. Considering my son’s love of experimenting and inventing I can be forgiven for assuming at first that it was one of his projects and chastising him accordingly. Until I noticed that Tiggy was looking a bit damp round the derriere whenever the puddles appeared.. oh yeah, just what a needed, an incontinent dog. So off to the vet we went hoping it was just an infection. He did extensive tests, which included sampling her wee – I can tell you, sorting Pickle out in a corner of the Aquarium was nothing compared to trailing my dog down the road with a metal tray and trying to thrust it under her when she started to tiddle – but there was no obvious cause. So all I got was a course of antibiotics, just in case, and a regular appointment with my mop and bucket. Oh, and the humiliation of telling the Dog Transporters who were taking her for a week during the move that their new charge was now going to be wetting the bed every night and leaving presents for them all round their facility. But, you know, within a few days of arriving at the new house all the puddles stopped and she’s been right as rain. So the only conclusion we can come to is that out of all the homeless mutts in that kennels where I found her, I picked the extra sensitive telepathic one who sensed that something was up in the house and reacted as only she knew how. Oh well, all is forgiven now and our new neighbourhood is crammed full of dogs so she is well at home. The Twilight Barking in Paris is just a squeak compared to the racket around here when someone dares to walk down the street - you can actually track peoples’ progress down the lanes with the trail of barking that follows them.

But at least someone’s been making friends. We humans haven’t met many other expats yet as school is out and most people have been away for the summer. Being a little bit anal and sad I decided to do a leaflet drop in the neighbourhood to try and rustle up some company. Poppet thought it was an excellent idea and quickly took over organising the little cards we would drop in the mailboxes and ushering Pickle and me out on evening walks to deliver them. We’ve had two responses so far, I am pleased to report. So at least I have somewhere to go for a cup of sugar if we ever need one. We spent yesterday evening with a lovely chap at the other end of our street. He was very complimentary about my children, who were on their very best behaviour having been suitably primed to give a good impression before we set off. He offered them some ice cream as a welcome, and a glass of coca cola each then told them they could explore the house while he and I chatted over a glass of wine. Hmm. I can hear you fellow mummies muttering 'uh-oh...' I knew it was time to go when the sugar rush hit them and Pickle started bouncing on the sofa singing 'Ebenezer Good' at the top of his voice and Poppet decided his dogs might want to come in the house and finish off her leftover ice cream. Eek! I am hoping we will be welcome there again, but maybe I should find a babysitter first.

Well hopefully I will be a more regular poster once school starts tomorrow. I will only be making 2 school runs a day from now on because they stay for lunch, hurray! But I guess that means I have to find something meaningful to do with myself all day, gulp. How did that one sneak up on me so quickly? One minute you're shovelling food and wiping a*se all day long, in between providing taxi services to playdates and picking up all the toys, and the next minute they're both in full time school five days a week and you're wondering why the house is so quiet. Oh dear. I think I need a lie down. Excuse me a bit.

It’s the Twilight Barking outside. Have they all been reading 101 Dalmatians? Are there lost puppies to find? Why, then, are all the dogs up and down the road all barking their collective heads off? All except mine, though. Yes, Tiggy is laid out under the hedge as usual, with one ear up and one ear down, listening with disdain to all the plebby dogs and their demented woofing as if she’s miles above it all. Well, I suppose she may have been born in France but she’s in an English family now, the old stiff upper lip wot, wot, ‘barking at the moon is so common you know’. Huh, are we ever in denial. She knows as well as I do that as soon as some spotty student strolls past hoping for a quiet walk home from the station after a hard day slogging over a hot text-book she’s going to jump up and bark like a one-headed Cerberus, scaring the cheese out of him. I’ve had to put up signs warning people that the innocent looking hedge they are sauntering past is about to come alive like the gates of hell. I’ve even heard screaming out there before now. And lately she’s taken to trotting in the house afterwards with her tongue hanging out and her tail wagging as if to say ‘I got another one, Mum!!’ Bless.

Well, I am supposed to be doing the house insurance form at the moment but I really can’t be bothered. I mean, I have actually placed a value on all our worldly goods, but I did it my own way and now I have to re-format it all to fit the nightmare form I have been sent. Apparently I have until next Tuesday night to complete it so I can afford to procrastinate a bit longer. Besides, why should everyone else have all the fun? Nobby has been in Budapest since Sunday and I know he’s currently watching Angelina Jolie ‘avin’ it large in her new film and the kids are still messing about instead of sleeping, as usual. I dunno where they get the energy from frankly. Our day would have floored an elephant – swimming, dog walking, playdate and a trip to the farm – and I’m pretty wobbly myself… but not them. Pickle just found the energy to jump up and down on an up-turned washing basket. Until it broke. That’s when I found the energy to take the stairs two at a time to find out what the almighty noise was. Poor little lamb dissolved into tears at that point. I tried to comfort him by saying Mummy wasn’t too upset about the broken basket because that means she can go shopping to get a new one. At which he let out an extra loud sob wailing ‘but I HATE shopping!’ Oh well, I tried.

Speaking of shopping, I have had another run-in with the infamous French Customer Service. Our lovely Krups coffee machine - a must for the discerning espresso drinker - has been playing up lately. I dug out the receipt, convinced that we only bought it last autumn or something only to find it was last March and the damned thing is out of warranty. Blast. (May I refer you back to a prior rant about all things electrical? I love it when I’m right. ) So I took it back to Darty (French version of Dixons) in case they had any words of wisdom to help me get it fixed before we fly the coop next week. Oh, this one was a pearl.

‘Vare are you moving to, Madame?’

‘Hungary.’

‘Well, I ‘ope ze water is better in ‘ungary zen. It’s the water ‘ere in France; it eez so ‘ard eet wrecks all zees machines de café.’

‘Yes, but I have always used filtered water in the machine.’

‘Ees no matter. Filter, bottled, eets all ze same.’

They really should change the name of that Service Desk to just The Desk. He told me I could send it away for an estimate, which would take two weeks and cost 22 euros. Then if I decided I’d still like to get it repaired it would take another two weeks. The part about me leaving France in less than a fortnight was clearly lost on him. As Rose would say, it was about as much help as t*ts on a nun.

So, I think I will get back to the sofa and another episode of Friends, ‘up yours’ to the insurance form. I have sorted out the spare room, tidied the playroom and extracted my son from the wreckage of an ex- laundry basket this evening while the kids play and Nobby ogles Jolie’s jubblies; I think I deserve another episode. Unlike Rose, Nobby has never understood my obsession with Friends (a bit like me and his football, by the way) but now I have the entire set he had said he may try a few episodes, see if he can get into it. ‘After all, they’re only 22 minutes a go.’ Ever the numbers man, that’s my Nobby. Personally I think he’s missing the point and I can’t wait till the football season restarts so I can tell him ‘after all, it’s only a game.’

Dare me?!!

Quick! I have time for a mini-Blog while the kids are having a lie-in instead of lumming round my ankles. There’s a price, of course. They are lying in because they didn’t settle down until gone 11 o’clock last night. I did my best to stop them mucking about but once my bottom is on the sofa having done my story-reading duties at 8pm the last thing I want to do is keep trudging up the stairs to shout at them. So I only have myself to blame when they do the same thing again tonight having not surfaced until 10 in the morning. Don’t you just love the holidays.

But we are moving house a week on Friday! How did it come round so quick? And as things stand the whole process is in a mess. I had such plans to get every room sorted and all the junk chucked out before the packers came and until school broke up I was making excellent progress. However, since the end of term even scheduling a trip to the toilet has become a major feat with all the lumming going on plus there’s the lorry-load of books and drawings and other ‘cheese’ they brought home which has been dumped on my desk in a menacing looking mountain. Then I took a peek at the medical claim forms I have managed to accumulate since the E101 ran out in February. Bad idea. And it’s not just in the house that things are bad. Just when you think you’ve got all your ducks in a row having negotiated the removers down from a 7 day move to a more respectable 3, you find out that no-one has told the relocation agent at the Hungary end which date you are arriving and so the rental contract they’ve spent 6 weeks getting signed doesn’t start until five days afterwards. So today I either have to get the contract changed or rebook the removers, dog transporters, flights and hotels and persuade the tenants who want to follow us into this house they need to wait. ARRRRGH!! This move is driving me to drink.

There is some good news though - I found my driving license!! I have only been looking for it since our last holiday which is, oh, about 8 weeks. It turned up in my black winter handbag of course. I am on a summery brown one at the moment. Der.

Plus my parents have been over again for another life saving visit. While they were here playing Lego and Barbies with the brats I managed to motor through a couple of rooms, including the garage which was very satisfying. And with their help Pickle had a lovely birthday party for 14 of his little friends. Well, the kids had a lovely time but since it was raining yet again on the big day the rest of us found it pretty hard work keeping 14 boys out of mischief inside the house. I can tell you, it was ‘wine o’clock’ a lot earlier than usual that night.

I had my own little ‘leaving do’ party this past Saturday night. I managed to get through the whole of it without blubbing, despite a lot of Tequila and some heartfelt speeches and gifts from my closest buddies. I won’t list them all or I’ll start welling up but I must mention that Rose gave me the entire box-set of Friends DVDs. Now that nearly got me going then and there since she knows I have wanted it for years. I can’t say how much I am going to miss the wonderful friends I have made here. It’s so hard to leave them all behind despite the exciting adventure we have ahead of us. I just hope Nobby is prepared for the phone bills!

Anyway, the beasts are stirring upstairs and there are fighter planes zooming over the house so I think I need to take cover. (Its July 14^th, the planes are just on their way to the Champs Elysee for the parade but it’s still pretty unnerving!) And I have a house move to get back on track, what am I doing still sitting here?! Wish me luck.

What’s it all about?!!!

There are several things bothering me today. Not least of which is why-oh-why it takes me weeks at a time to get back to the keyboard for some therapeutic ranting on my Blog. But I am also pondering the following; perhaps you can help (answers on a postcard etc).

Firstly, why do I get Spam websites opening up every 2 minutes when I log on to my computer, whether I block pop-ups or cookies or not – and what is a cookie anyway? Why can’t they call these things after stuff that won’t make me hungry, like pebbles, or mothballs or something? And who out there in the ether looks at my email and Blog activities and decides that I need the latest information on internet dating and last minute flights to Dubai anyway?

And why can’t I get through my to-do list AT ALL no matter how I plan to fit it all in? I have started several tasks towards getting us ready to move house but they are now lying all over the house half finished so that I still can’t tick them off the list yet. Maybe it’s because every session at the computer takes twice as long as I close down all these extra windows offering me cheap porn and cheaper car insurance? I did say ‘sod the immigration questionnaire’ but that was only supposed to be for the night and I still haven’t done it.

Here’s another thing: why have the children chosen to adopt two scarab beetles from the forest as pets? Are they trying to motivate me into getting the rabbit they keep banging on about by sitting on the sofa letting nasty little creepy crawlies climb up their arms whilst cooing fondly to them and giving them names like Fred and George??? I’m sorry, they may be small and harmless (apart from the plethora of revolting germs they must be sporting having been rolling around in all the crap on our local forest floor) but frankly the only beetles you’ll ever find me anywhere near have four wheels and a distinctive VW engine noise. Why won’t they just accept my simple yet compelling excuse that we already have a dog and dogs eat rabbits?

Also, why don’t my childhood toys and games seem as much fun this time round? Poppet just got into ‘French skipping’, which was a favourite of all the girls in my school back when I was seven. We would raid our mums sewing boxes for every morsel of elastic we could get our hands on, tie them together into the biggest possible loop then take votes on who would be the suckers standing with it wrapped round the backs of their legs while the others all jumped in an out of it. These days of course ToysRUs have cottoned on to this line of business and the new generation will not stoop to using ordinary knicker-elastic like we did. It has to be at least five metres long, softly coated to protect those bare ankles, rainbow coloured and costing a ridiculous amount from the toy shop. Luckily Poppet got hers for her birthday and I was initially really up for giving it another go several decades on to see if I could still manage ‘kneesies’ and ‘thighsies’. Somehow it’s just not as appealing as it used to be though, but the weirdest thing is the déjà vu of having a dominant playmate who only really wants me to act as one end of the loop while they perfect their own moves to impress their friends in the playground. That is exactly what used to happen to me with one little ‘friend’ in particular who would invite me round for the whole afternoon just so I could stand opposite a wheelie bin and watch her skip. Fortunately here in France we have 2 wheelie bins so I am off the hook and Poppet can do her thing without me.

One kid ‘thing’ I am enjoying is ‘the sleepover’. Not when they come here of course – Poppet had a friend to stay on Sunday night and I swear I lost half a kilo running up and down the stairs to yell at them to shut up and go to sleep. But tonight it’s her turn to stay with her friend so I only had one kiddie to put to bed, and it was the easy one because Pickle will at least admit when he’s tired and take himself off without too much trouble.

Meanwhile, Nobby and I now have a shared obsession, and no, I haven’t suddenly ‘got’ football and he hasn’t suddenly fallen in love with ‘Friends’. Someone asked me what he would like as a leaving present from his French team before he moves on to Hungary and I suggested a Nintendo DS with the Brain Training programme. Inspired! But now I can’t wrestle it away from him to do my daily training and my brain was down to 28 years old yesterday, the selfish old thing. Pity my body is feeling slightly older, as proven by the monstrous bruises I am modelling since my final jujitsu session on Saturday which consisted of a demonstration in the village square in front of my fellow residents. I was fighting a girl young enough to be my daughter and considerably shorter than me but she nevertheless managed to splat me so hard I am still sore now. With it being the end of the year there was a little BBQ afterwards which was very pleasant. All I’ll say is we put away an impressive amount of wine, these hard-core black-belts got as mushy as drunken teenagers when it was time for me to leave and bid them adieu for the final time, and it was a good job there were no police around on the drive home.

My final rant for the day is why, why why is Dr Who about to regenerate??!! I could not believe the end of that last episode where a Darlek got him with a lucky shot and they’re going to replace David Tenant with another bloke. It just isn’t right; he’s the best Dr Who since Tom Baker (and now I am really giving away my age…) I am dreading Saturday night to see who they replace him with. If I don’t like him I may have to renounce my love affair with science fiction and go back to my knitting. Sob.

Right that's it. I have officially had enough. Stop the world, I wanna get off. If I thought yesterday was bad then it was a big mistake waking up this morning. I had to make an emergency trip to see Rose this afternoon so she could put me back together. And Nobby keeps calling from Malta all sad and homesick and I can't bring myself to share the gloom down the phone so poor Rose copped the lot.

The worst bit is my landlord, who is turning into the tight-fisted pedantic old b*stard that the agency said he would as the end of our contract approaches. He stood in my kitchen this afternoon inviting the family over for champagne on Friday night then I hear not half an hour later he was lying his arse off to my agent trying to wriggle out of 600 euros it turns out he owes us. I'll spare you the details but suffice to say I've got to pass him in the playground tomorrow on the school run and how I'm going to stop myself now from kicking him in the nuts I have no idea.

On top of that I have to babysit the new tenant while he swans off for his annual 2 month summer holiday which means that he won't be here for the changeover. He brought her round today, complete with 8 month old baby and heart-breaking story about how they are living in temporary accommodation with all their stuff in storage while they wait for us to bugger off. I wonder how honest I should be with her? She's French though so lucky for Mr Tight-arse I lack the vocab to explain how I really feel.

Meanwhile, the kids are on some sort of mission to keep me so busy that I forget about all the other cheese (see the Hungarian phrasebook for that one, 'cheese' = 'shite', I'm just toning down because my Mum's due to look in here!) . They are blazing such a trail of destruction through the house I am going to recommend the next major US hurricanes are named after them. Plus they are also doing stuff that's just downright naughty. For example, I have filled the old sandpit with water for the dog to cool off in, which she has been very grateful for while it's been so hot here this week. So Pickle decides that it would be a great place to have a quick pee while he's out playing in the garden rather than having to take his shoes off to come in the house and use the proper facilities. That's male logic for you - I'll get told off if I run inside with my shoes on but if I sneak a pee-pee out here there's a chance she'll never know. Sadly he's rumbled next time Tiggy takes a drink from her pool when Poppet falls about laughing yelling 'She's drinking your wee-wee!!!'

So off they go upstairs to get out of Mummy's way as she is rapidly growing horns and a forked tail to go with the bad mood due to trying to get the house in some order before the landlord comes round with the new tenant. Then Poppet comes down to say that she can't get off the make-up that Pickle's applied to her face.... alarm bells ring, I dash upstairs, and sure enough there's face paint all over the freshly washed towels and a bright red greasepaint stick discarded on the white carpet. Cue the frightening fangs and reverberating roar and my transformation into Monster Mummy is complete as the little darlings dive for cover back out in the garden and I pointlessly dab at the carpet with Vanish. Aaargh!

Next stop Rose's house for a coffee and a rant. How guilty do I feel sitting there off-loading while Rose looks like she's just gone a couple of rounds with Mike Tyson. But that's the beauty of it you see, sharing woes between Mummies. She's been there too, there are stories of her own to reassure me that my kids behaviour is perfectly normal and we all relax just a little bit in time for the show-down of attempting to extract my two away from her two. No mean feat when there's a Mr Incredible game on the computer and Pickle's getting his first fix for a couple of days. I can assure you that our eventual get-away went relatively smoothly, but when we found the dog wandering in the road upon our return to the house having for some inexplicable reason decided to make a bid for freedom from the garden, I may have had a tiny outburst just to ruin the moment.

Anyway, I'm hoping that sleep might help me and I'll wake up all fresh and happy in the morning. That's the yarn I spin to the smallies, maybe it really works? It's worth a try. First I need to get the blighters into bed - I tucked them in 2 hours ago and I can still hear them mucking about. Come home Nobby!