School's Out!

The holidays are here! Blimey I never thought we'd make it but finally I have a morning where I can switch off the alarm, wave Nobby off to work from the comfort of my bed and not worry about occupying small people.

That is until Pickle decides he wants breakfast, Poppet needs some particular item of clothing and Tiggy's begging to go outside.

Would someone please invent a cure for little boys' backwards internal clocks? Every day of term I have to drag the little bugger out of bed, usually dressing him in the process to avoid the show-down later, but on weekends and holidays he is up at sparrow's fart wanting to get on my computer. I have a perfectly good alarm, which is OFF, did I mention, so I do not want appreciate waking up to the strains of Fred ranting away on YouTube.

It has been a busy couple of weeks at school, although I did manage to snatch a couple of days off when I caught a cold to go along with my tree allergy and couldn't make it past the bedroom door let alone the school gates. Somehow my class all managed without me thanks to my fabulous Teaching Assistant and colleagues and to make up for it we've been in full-on Blue Peter mode ever since.

I'll spare you the details but my final day at the 'office' saw me and 16 tinies up to our eyeballs in plastic eggs, glue, feathers, melted chocolate, cornflakes, tissue paper... and a live rabbit.

So far the holidays have been about as relaxed as a chimpanzees tea party, with football matches, lunches, parties - all for the kids of course. Today saw me braving the 'other side of the river' to find the Laser Quest establishment. Wow that took me back a lot of years to one certain 'team building' activity at that large company I worked in when we spent a happy evening blasting holes in our colleagues in the name of improving working relationships.

The kids played for about 2 hours and had a ball. Pickle decided after a while that stealthy hiding and creeping up on people was too much like hard work and became Rambo instead, stalking through the darkenss blasting anyone who crossed his path. Poppet was slightly more controlled and surprised herself with how much she enjoyed it.

Personally I naffed off to the local shopping mall for a sneaky burger and a mooch around Mango. We are off to Rome, daaahling, for the Easter weekend, so I wanted to get something new to pack. (Women's logic, don't try and analyse it.) The shopping centre was something of a maze though so I had to suck it up and brave the Customer Service Information point.

Rather a contradiction in terms that, could just be renamed The Point, although there is little point to it either. When faced with half a mile of mall which branches off at various places, 'downstairs on the left' holds very little meaning. Took me fifteen minutes to finally discover the toy shop where I was greeted with a vapid shrug from the assistant when I asked if she had such a thing as a frisbee.

Meanwhile I was fighting off the make-up demo stalkers left and right. Seriously, did I look THAT bad? I wasn't exactly the height of chic in my brown slacks and t-shirt, a fact that was kindly rammed home by a bunch of lads who I thought were checking me out at one point only to clock the high-heeled, tight-jeaned peroxide blonde they were really staring at. Am I bovvered? Really? (OK, a little tiny bit.)

Luckily Rose was at the other end of my texts to reassure me I looked great and translate 'eff off' into passable Hungarian for use on the slap-sellers.

The cruel truth is I should have had company today in the form of Ma and Pa but sadly they had to cancel their trip. After 2 weeks in and out of hospital with nose bleeds my Dad was finally persuaded of the logic of not hurtling through the air in a pressurised tube when just sitting on the sofa can start an episode. Poor lamb is miserable as well as somewhat sore round the nasal passages after all the stuff that's been poked up there lately. Fortunately he was OK when the kids and I Skyped him tonight so Poppet didn't have to wonder if he'd been snorting mice - apparently the weapon of choice for recurrent nosebleeds such as his is a Tampax up the schnozzer. Nice.

Get better soon Dad!