School’s Back!!

Was it wicked of me to dance a little jig and shout hooray after I dropped the children off at school this morning?! Not that I am complaining about having them all to myself for 2 weeks. It has had its moments but there’s only so much enthusiasm I can muster when we rock up to the same play-place for the 5th time in as many days because its pelting rain and I can’t think of anywhere else to go that doesn’t involve buying nuggets and chips or another couple of crates to store yet another pile of plastic they’ve cornered me into buying. They’ve each developed their own individual mantra to annoy me this holiday. Pickle’s is ‘Can I play on the computer?’ and Poppet’s is ‘Can I have something to eat?’ I usually get these about 10 minutes after a meal and when Pickle has already spent 2 hours on Sonic the Hedgehog. As you can see, I haven’t been able to get much time on the computer myself, but when I did I put a password on to stop him sneaking a quick go when I’m in the loo. Methinks he has a little addiction developing.

It was a relief to have Nobby with us and to go away to Center Parcs last week. We drove to the one in Belgium which wasn’t a bad journey, although you can really tell when you’ve crossed the border – the roads are in a terrible state and all the other cars speed up by about 150 mph. Is it just me or is there something going on between the Belgians and their neighbours? Frog-baiting seems to be a national sport on their highways; we either had people tailgating us so close you could smell their armpits or cutting us up with inches to spare. Then when we decided to show off our mastery of a second language in a Belgian café the waitress gave us a withering look and told us that if we couldn’t muster any Dutch or Flemish we should stick to English and not spout any French at her, thank you very much. Weird.

The only other odd thing was the toilets. We’re used to toilets with pools of water to receive your ‘evacuations’, which of course has its drawback of occasionally soaking your exposed cheeks but at least it masks any odours and you can’t see much. The Belgian ones had a ‘shelf’ with the flush hole tucked away at the front so before flushing you could take a jolly good look at what you produced, whether you wanted to or not. I prefer ‘not’ myself, although I was prepared to go along with the contraptions, until one evening Pickle had a ‘toilet situation’ which may have traumatised me. I’ll spare you the details. Let’s just say there was enough screaming to make some woman bang on the cubicle door to demand what I was doing to my son, there was a ‘manual intervention’ to relieve the painful blockage, followed by a nuclear dump that would shame an elephant. Oh, the fun of being a Mum! I am scarred for life.

Anyway, being Center Parcs veterans we know the formula pretty well although taking the dog for the first time added a new dimension. Obviously we couldn’t let her roam free outside given her tendency to escape and wander off from most secure looking garden. So we tethered her on a long bit of rope, which she wasn’t too pleased about. We found it most entertaining though given how many trees there were in the vicinity – you’d pop her outside and sit down for a coffee, then when you check on her 10 minutes later she’s sat up close to a tree trunk that she’s managed to get the rope wrapped round. It gave a whole new meaning to ‘winding up the dog’. Fortunately there were plenty of areas away from other villas where we could let her off the lead for a run. Unfortunately she developed a taste for swimming and spent a lot of time splashing about in the numerous ponds trying to catch the ducks.

We did a fair bit of splashing ourselves in the ‘swimming paradise’. Both kids finally decided that waterslides are fun which was good news in that Nobby and me could use them more ourselves, but bad news in that even 15 times is not enough for a 5 or 7 year old and we were totally knackered after an hour of tumbling down these things and begging the kids to let us go get dressed. Luckily there was always ‘Discovery Bay’ to fall back on, a sort of ship-wreck cove, complete with sand, stream, stepping stones, half a pirate galleon, a scary rope bridge and one kamikaze parrot. (It managed a very good impression of a plastic parrot until you got too close then it took off squawking around the whole place, dive bombing as may heads as possible.) Then there was the ‘Kids Wannabe Klub’ each day where our two were taken off our hands for an hour or so and transformed into pirates, magicians, painters, bakers and craftsmen, and there were ‘Pépé Tévé’ shows too where all we parents had to do was drink coffee in the background and try to work out what was going on.

On Mother’s Day Nobby treated me to a facial while he minded the kids and the dog. It was very relaxing and I’m sure the therapist didn’t mind my stomach growling throughout the session. At least I didn’t fart or snore, which I believe can sometimes happen, ahem. I was really enjoying it – cleanse, tone, exfoliate, steam - until the therapist started ‘treating’ the blackheads on my nose… by squeezing them! Then just as the tears were drying up she started ‘shaping’ my eyebrows. Plucking hell. I should have read the small print I think. At least the neck and shoulder massage was nice, although I have never had anyone massage my ears before…

So today it’s back to the routine and I have a school pickup in about 15 minutes. We’re getting some of England’s stormy weather today so I could just put up my brolly and jet off in a Mary Poppins stylie. Hmm, perhaps I’ll take the car.
By the way, I have been ‘tagged’ by Dazza to reveal 7 random things about myself on my Blog. I hope to get round to it in the next couple of days so watch this space.