Roaringly Random

I think my day starting sliding sideways first thing when I tried to tip my tea bag onto the remains of my now defunct Poinsettia - I've heard teabags make good fertiliser and I would be interested to see if this one can come back from the dead - but the teabag decided to fall onto the windowsill with a squelch instead. It took me mere moments to put down the teaspoon and grab a cloth but before you could say 'monkey' there was already a light brown splat-shaped stain on the snow-white windowsill. Continued rubbing with ever coarser cleaning implements only served to take off the paint. Bugger. Still at least the splat's gone. Hmm, white Dulux immulsion on a kitchen windowsill, who said the previous owners spared no expense doing this place up?

There followed a major tantrum from Poppet who I generously allowed to lie-in through the school run after none of us slept until 2 this morning on account of her uncontrollable night-coughs. Actually, I lie: Pickle slept. That boy could probably sleep through an earthquake once he's off, unless the earthquake hits at 7am on a non-school day in which case he'd already be half an hour into his first game of Minecraft :-)

Apparently my generosity was all wrong, though, and I ended up with a door-slamming, arm waving, Mother-hating, 'It's not fair' Kevin the Teenager soundalike instead. The joy... was deep.

So I took her to school.

One rather dull day of housewifing later - I think I lost the will to live on aisle 5 in my local Tesco midway through the afternoon. Not sure why I bothered when Nobby's staying out at a two-day meeting tonight. But it was handy parking for the post office, another energy-sapping mind-numbing dreadful place where I always seem to be only person actually wanting to *post* something. All too soon the brats were back and that's when the bewildering string of randomness continued.

Apparently Poppet is now 'back on' CocoPops. She declared herself 'off' them just after she opened the last packet some weeks ago but I kept the box for some brave and optimistic vision of future family Crispy Cake making which naturally never materialised since my kids only enter the kitchen when the sound of their grumbling tummies is drowning out the television. When she finally tired of waiting for me to serve her food and drinks on the sofa (what did her last slave die of? Oh, I remember - disobedience) she actually hauled her butt of the sofa, pretty random in itself, and went and looked in a cupboard. She found the CocoPops, poured out a large bowl, and happily troughed away.

Pickle came to chat to me in the study later on and spied my stack of Billy Connolly videos. (They emerged from the same box as the Star Trek collection; I'm sure Billy is happy to boldly go where no-one has gone before...)

'That's that Bob Connolly from Garfield,' Pickle exclaimed, 'he's Scottish isn't he?' He then stunned me by putting on an impressive Scots brogue and shouting,

'My bottom's incredibly itchy!!!'.

I was so taken aback he had to do it again. Now I'm using it as my ringtone.

So then came one of those not so random moments, like those ones in French shops when the whole aisle is deserted until you stop to examine something that catches your eye and suddenly three professionally-sharpened French elbows are in your ribs to beat you to the treasure. It may seem random but it is actually a measurable phenomenon; try it. I was on the Skype to Rose, who is in Paris funnily enough and could keep you entertained for hours with the elbow thing, when simultaeously someone knocked at the front door, the phone rang, a text beeped and Poppet announced she was still hungry.

Poppet helpfully picked up the phone in spite of my dramatic and I thought rather convincing mime of drawing a finger across my throat to warn her to leave it. No-one who knows me uses that number and sure enough, when she handed over the receiver and headed off to answer the door some random Indian voice on the end of the line asked me,

'Have there been any accidents in the last three years?'
'Excuse me?' I said, 'what accidents? Who is this?'
'Have there been any accidents in the last three years?'
'Er, I have no idea what you're on about but hang on a minute there's someone at my door' I said as I flung the phone onto the table and chased after Poppet before she started serving tea and biscuits to any Jehovah's Witnesses.

Luckily it was Pickle's guitar teacher and in another totally out of character act for him, he came right off the computer unbidden and bounded into the front room for his lesson. My gob was well and truly smacked.

After I'd picked my chin up off the floor and returned to the phone I was greeted by a dial tone. Finally a cold caller who knows when she's flogging a dead horse. I wonder if she believed me about there being someone at the door?

So I returned to the kitchen and merely Skype-texted with Rose whilst at the same time cooking a sausage casserole, burning a cheese sauce and mopping up a puddle of water that randomly weeshted out of one end of my hand mixer and onto my new Ugg boot.

Consequently I had to quickly wipe off my Ugg boot and check the hand mixer was still working. Of course it wasn't working. Well, not until I switched on the plug at the wall. Der. Though I reckon I can be forgiven for slipping out of the habit while I've been residing outside of the Nanny state. I'm still adjusting to the good old British belt-and-braces approach to safety. In France and Hungary they are quite happy for you to operate all things electrical without the aid of a wall switch and I suppose I grew accustomed to it. After all, neither child managed to fritz themselves by inserting a knitting needle into a socket - you may think they'd be hard pushed to find a knitting needle in my house but trust me, they're capable.

All the while my newly updated i-pod was blaring tunes out of the stereo I've had for ten years without realising I could hook an i-pod up to it until last week. The final random act before I reached for the gin bottle was some song coming on called 'Cowboy Dreams' which I have no memory of ever buying. Interesting song though, with a random 'Yippy-ki-yay' chucked in about halfway, to which my spontaneous, pavlovian response was something obscene that rhymes with 'brother-pucker.' After that I had an overwhelming urge to settle down with a Gordon's and watch Die Hard.

Maybe lack of sleep is to blame for such a wacky day. Tonight's plan is kids down by 8, bum on sofa by 8.30. Surely, bar the dog offering to scratch my back for a change, no more strangeness will follow??? Hope springs eternal.