Getting creative

Sign me up for my Blue Peter badge right now. By gum I've earned it this week. Its Teacher's Weeks at my new school, where we all go in to prepare our classrooms for the invasion on Monday. My class is now up to 13 five-year-olds... and I can't wait to meet them all!

Did I really say that? Hmm, there are several signs of madness coming through at the moment. 'Can't wait to take on the educational and social development of 13 potentially exhausting five year olds' and, wait for it, 'this is just the BEST job in the world - last night I got to cut out massive numbers from coloured card and today I'm up on a chair firing a staple gun at the wall like a demon.' I think my journey to the Funny Farm is complete.

But needs must you know, I have been forced into this flurry of creativity. The new school has just moved premises, my year group is brand new AND the resources delivery was very late so there were no art materials or display board coverings available to decorate my rather clinical classroom. Even if I had materials, the furniture delivery is also very late and I have nowhere to put anything. Welcome once again to far flung Eastern Europe; anyone would think we're on the moon with the trouble involved in getting anything done.

So I clicked into Lesley Judd mode (oops, showing my age there) and went about raiding bits of sticky backed plastic and empty boxes from around the building and managed to construct a ten foot tree, complete with leaves and branches which stretch into the room, a 'clocking-in' style registration system, an alphabet display, and a multicoloured 'Welcome' board from, basically, rubbish I found lying about and the odd bit of paint and staples I nicked while other teachers weren't looking.

It's been a lot of fun, especially the look on my Teaching Assistant's face each time I come up with another wacky creative idea. 'Let's have an owl-hole in the tree to keep soft toys in!' (She managed to talk me out of that one and we have a mouse-hole in the bottom instead, hopefully too small for any students to crawl into. )

Then the resources delivery arrived this morning and I realised it isn't just me as the other Primary Teachers ran like greyhounds to greet the white van and started rooting around in the humungous boxes of paper, staples, pencils, toys and books that were dumped in the front driveway. Like bees round honey it was, or rather bargain hunters at the Boxing Day sales; I swear I felt an elbow as I reached for the pack of gold card.

Pickle happened to be with me too and get this: he abandoned his DS and the Club Penguin website in favour of helping unload all the stuff. Amazing. It's just like him to get a name for himself amongst the staff but this time it's for climbing into boxes and handing reams of paper over to he adults who couldn't bend that far over the side. Mummy is so proud.

You can tell the holidays are drawing to a close; I think both the kids are looking forward to getting back into a school routine, and goodness knows they could use a break from each other. It has been all out war between them on occasion this last week, they are thoroughly fed up with each other now that the camps are all over. Pickle survived a whole week of football camp and Poppet came back from hers unscathed, enjoying a few Mummy dates while the boy was out kicking leather. But since Sunday they've put on an impressive display of crabby behaviour for Nana, who kindly flew all the way out here to babysit them while Nobby and I are both at work. It's the first time in almost ten years that we've both been employed and certainly the first time with two children to juggle. Ten gold stars to Nana for stepping into the breach. And twenty to Nobby for coping with the tables turning where his Missus works late and rocks up just in time to miss all the cooking and washing up.

Luckily Nana has a good sense of humour - she's sitting downstairs watching Little Miss Sunshine at the moment if any further proof was needed. However my offer to take one brat away with me to school to help me set up my room has proved very popular with all involved, though they are now fighting to be the chosen one on my final Teacher's Day tomorrow. Poppet is now good friends with the music teacher after taking the Brasso to all the cymbals in the music room. He let her try out the new Baby Grand as a treat. They've also been very excited about the uniform, which arrived in the post this week and which Poppet insisted on wearing for her morning at the school. Pity poor Mummy having to sew on two dozen name labels, sheesh.

So back to school we go. Think of me on Monday morning when I get to meet my brood. Who know what horrors and treats lie ahead. Thank goodness for my Blog to blow off some steam.
I promise to change all names to protect the little monsters...

Noisy

There have been some strange noises round the house since we arrived home from holiday, and not just the poor washing machine groaning under the strain of all the laundry.

Lately each night is punctuated by a persistant rattling, whirring sound coming from Pickle's bedside table. It started on Saturday night after the new hamster, Lucky Hamper, suddenly discovered his hamster wheel and decided to get busy with his own nightly hamster marathon. Yes, we got the hamster. No sooner had the plane landed in Hungary than the 'when are we going to the Pet Shop?' mantra started, so Lucky joined our family the very next day.

So far he has been very lucky to avoid becoming Tiggy's morning snack. The poor dog is overcome with interest in the little creature and sits shivering and licking her chops whenever Lucky is dragged out of his cage for a cuddle. And he's dragged out quite often, considering all he wants to do is kip all day long after his nightly runs. But Pickle has other ideas, keen as he is to stimulate the animal with interesting sights and activities. Lucky has variously been seen exploring a sprawling, custom-built Lego fortress, the inside of Pickle's trouser leg and the underside of his wardrobe. When tired he is perambulated about the bedroom in a miniature shopping trolley by Action Man and Barbie. It's really very sweet.

Poppet's room, on the other hand, has been emitting an eerie silence for almost a week. She's been at Kangaroo Kamp by the lake with a dozen friends from school. It's been really weird without her, though we've talked a LOT on the phone after I decided to get a new simcard for the spare mobile and let her borrow it. I think that was almost as big a treat as being staying away from home for five nights and she's getting through £10-worth of credit pretty rapidly. She's also convinced I gave it to her for keeps... Hmmm.

She arrived home yesterday laden down with armfuls of arts and crafts -shortly afterwards I was sporting four necklaces, three bracelets and a couple of woolly plaits in the my hair. I then had to undergo a masterclass in plait-making and then try to untangle the additional twenty or so necklaces she produced from her pockets. By all accounts she's had a wonderful time; the teachers presented a slide show of photos from the week including shots of Poppet digging in the mud in her bikini, Poppet collecting baby frogs and Poppet's team of snails.

At the weekend while all was relatively quiet in the house, I heard music coming from the basement. That's where we keep the Wii and I happened to know that Pickle was in his room exercising his hamster at the time so I tiptoed down the stairs to see what was going on. There was Nobby, Nun-chucks in hand, drumming along to Britney Spear's 'Toxic' while whacky 'Raving Rabids' rabbits cavorted across the screen.

He was pretty good actually.

One sound we haven't heard much while Poppet's been away is the TV. Though we've lost all our 'free' channels via the dodgy Digibox over the summer as the rogue Romanian satellite has finally been switched off. We're going to have to go legit. Personally I have had a new toy or two to play with. Firstly my midnight blue Ford Focus, bought for a song from Nobby's company's ex-salesman stock. We finally tired of playing musical cars whenever Nobby has to visit the out-of-town site or drive out to meetings and I know Nobby will prefer driving from garage to garage in the Volvo during the winter than trudging through the snow to the tram.

We've also all played with the 'bong' / hookah pipe that Rose bought for me years ago, after picking up some apple-flavoured, nictotine-free bong-tobacco during our Turkish holiday. It really works! You never saw anything so funny as Nobby, Pickle and me sitting round the dining room, playing cards and passing round the hookah pipe. We also bought some Turkish coffee which works quite well in the percolator. Nobby even dug out a very old tape of Turkish music which we had blaring out of the stereo at the weekend to relive our fortnight in the sun.

Actually, Turkey was so hot we could have really been holidaying on the sun. That's what you get for not doing your homework when you book a holiday. We knew that Hungary would sweltering during July and we'd need to get away. But we didn't check that Turkey would be 15 degrees HOTTER. One afternoon there I left a bottle of water in the sun beside my pool-lounger. By the time I retrieved it the water was hot enough to make a cup of tea. Still, we all came back with super suntans, despite using factor 50 and staying in the shade as much as possible. And I learned how to belly dance (nuff said).

This week I am setting up my new classroom, which finally has desks and chairs in it but very little else. Poppet is going to help me decorate a bit to make it more colourful while Pickle is at football camp all week. You know, on Monday both camps overlapped for one magical day. I had NO kids all day long.

It was very quiet.

Children and Animals

Actors say 'Never work with children or animals.'
Here is a newsflash: children are animals.
I should know, I have become the zookeeper at my own private wild beast reserve and the inmates are pretty savage.

No sooner did I boast on Facebook that my adorable offspring had mastered the idea of letting Mummy and Daddy sleep in on a Sunday morning - possibly something to do with Mummy growing horns and a tail if she is rowsed before 9am on an official 'day off' - than Small Person number two takes it upon himself to get up at 5.30am on a Friday morning and require the rest of the household to do the same.

Little bugger.

He also decided to whisper in my ear for permission to play on the DS, knowing full well he was banned from it yesterday. When I answered in the negative he decided to ask again, in case the previous answer was some aberration, possibly due to the fact that I had been deeply asleep the second before he opened his mouth. It's understandable logic, I should think: small brat demanding attention at some ungodly hour or delightful dreamworld most probably featuring a fit bloke serving me margueritas under a palm tree beside a sun drenched ocean? Hmm.

I mumbled the second 'No!' a little clearer and louder, yet still he persisted. A third 'NO!' prompted a slightly longer 'Pleeeeease' out of him for the next round until I was compelled to sit up and order him back to bed and to sleep for at least another hour, to which he gave me his own 'NO!' Aaaargh! By this point Nobby was grinding his teeth in frustration as the time remaining for us to shake off the savage beast, relax enough to drop back off and get in some reasonable sleep before the alarm sounded at 7am got shorter and shorter.

Eventually, as Pickle decided that shouting and throwing a pillow across the room might help me change my mind and relent, I dragged myself out of my pit to chase him back to his room. As I pursued him out onto the landing what did I see? A vision in pink PJs standing sleepily outside her room with a big frown on her face, and then asking 'Can we go swimming now?'

You know, I blame whoever's clever idea it was to keep Hungary in a time-zone such that the sun comes up at 5am and sets at 8pm. Clearly whoever it was did not have much of a social life and could not appreciate the beauty of sitting on your (or someone else's) terrace until ten o'clock at night without having to resort to floodlighting to see your glass of wine or fifteen litres of mosquito repellent to retain the ability pick up your glass of wine without needing to promptly drop it to slap fruitlessly at your arms and legs. Jeez I wish I could spend five minutes with that person... wielding a wet kipper.

In case you think I have been having any better luck with animals, Ha! think again. The dog is perpetually on the boil at the moment, fairly inevitable really when you're covered in black fur in 95 degree temperatures. She does love a good swim though, so since the nearest body of dog-swimming water is a good drive away I invested in a plastic paddling pool for her. But do you think I can persuade her to take a dip in it? She's deigned to dip her paws in, drink some of, then exit across the barren, dusty lawn to accumulate a good amount of mud on her feet then leave a trail of prints into the house before flopping in her favourite cool place - the downstairs loo. I've tried getting in with her, dragging, pushing, persuading, ordering her in but no. For now we are stuck with a hot dog.

And the children are after MORE pets when we get back from our holiday. We did agree that Pickle could have a hamster for his birthday but of course that didn't sit well with Poppet's Fairness Gauge and she now wants a rabbit. Not just any rabbit: a dwarf ginger-coloured rabbit. Because all pet stores have them don't they? Well, let me tell you about rabbits. Whilst we were in France we visited some friends who own rabbits and I generously rescued one of them from the clutches of my daughter and her friend after watching them push it round the garden in a pram, bounce it on the trampoline and dress it up in ribbons all afternoon. Coming over all Mother Earth I popped the poor creature on my lap for some respite and let it curl up for a nap while I chatted to my friend.

Half an hour went by before I decided we ought to be making tracks and I finally allowed Poppet to take the rabbit back. As she picked it up off my lap I felt a kind of damp sensation on my knees, then a trickling down my leg. Meanwhile Poppet shrieked with surprise as she realised there was something trickling down her leg too - and coming from the rabbit - so she quickly dropped it. Back into my lap. I had not realised until that moment just how much a rabbit can pee.

One other revelation, whilst at the same house, was that Nobby's lament that dogs only ever do 'silent-but-violent' farts is not entirely true. As I was reaching for a cloth to wipe up the rabbit pee, a very rude trumping noise echoed round the kitchen. The only other person in the room was a golden labrador called Nelson, who looked at me with that dumb expression that only dogs can muster which said 'So?' It's the same look I get from Tiggy each evening when she's let out a huge belch after wolfing down her dinner.

Yup, I am definitely gonna need a zoo license before long. Either that or become an actor.

Holidays, ha!

So you think teachers get the whole of the summer holidays on the beach with hot and cold running waiters bringing them margueritas all day long? Well, I can tell you its not true. I had to 'go into work' yesterday - now there's a phrase I haven't used in, oh, nearly ten years.

I had to drag the poor skunks along of course but they were reasonably well behaved once I stuck a screen in front of each of them - DS for him, Garfield 2 on DVD for her. I could have let them run around the school letting them sort out strategies for delaying getting to lessons and where to hide other people's stuff but the place is still a bit of a building site. Actually, it's a lot of a building site given that all the furniture and materials from the old site are arriving at the weekend and term starts in five weeks.

*My* classroom (hee hee!) is still empty, although Pickle was very impressed that there is a little room to the side with a sink in it, 'You've got a sink, Mummy!' The toilets are still being renovated to replace the full sized bogs with little ones for the pint-sized pupils on my corridor but they're 'waiting for parts' so there's a lovely line-up of porcelain in the hallway and some nasty looking holes in the floor in the bathrooms.

They're 'waiting for parts' to finish the reception area as well so when the prospective family I was meeting with arrived they were greeted with a masterclass in breeze-block walling and a crash course in building-materials dodging. No, it wasn't really that bad, I am just very cynical in my old age after years of run-ins with teeth-sucking workmen either shaking their heads in defeat at the size of the task or faithfully assuring me it would all be done in a week then disappearing for a couple of months.

Still, the family were really nice and very understanding about the enormous undertaking of simultaneously moving a school and adding three year groups and I was introduced to the cutest little girl, bright as a button but too shy to utter a word to me. We made a jigsaw and read some books while all the adults discussed the grown-up business and then I decided to throw her in the deep end with the ultimate test - I took her to meet my kids.

And an extraordinary thing happened. My children were even more shy with her! I couldn't drag more than a mumbled 'hello' out of them. I wonder if she knows the power she has, or how much I'd like to borrow her to get an occasional break in the noise round at my place? Later, Pickle told me 'She was really, really cute Mummy, but I didn't fancy her.' Hmm, I am the tiniest bit suspicious about that.

Once she'd gone normal service resumed, of course; fighting, arguing, wrestling, pinching etc. All taking place, I might add, in the Prinicpal's make-shift office. It also included some particulalry lairy behaviour from my boy who decided to demonstrate to my new boss, his new headmaster, his turbo-powered super-speed running, which consists of sticking out his little bottom, farting loudly then sprinting away.

Class.

I have never been more ready for a holiday in my life. Luckily we leave on Saturday for two weeks of all-inclusive fun at a resort hotel in Turkey, with hot and cold running kids clubs and hopefully a good line in margueritas.

Bring it on.

Road rage

Argh, I need a traffic rant!!

It has just taken an hour to deliver the children to their day-camp and finally get back home again. And that does not include stopping to chat, having decided I can't take any more of Pickle jumping up and down yelling, 'Come on! stop chatting! I'll give you twenty kisses to stop chatting, Mummy!' (They don't realise how rarely Mummy gets opportunities to talk grown-up instead of pondering which Pokemon I'd rather be.)

No, this was strictly a drive-by drop-off but it still took an hour thanks to a massive traffic jam going past our house - again. I thought while school's out the traffic would be better but something obviously threw a spanner in the works where the traffic lights at the end of the road are concerned. Because that's all it was, no accidents, no arse-cleavage wielding road diggers, just dodgy traffic lights which seemed to have re-sequenced themselves to only let one road out at a time.

I swear one of these days I'm going to take matters into my own hands and make those lights mysteriously disappear overnight. The times when they've been completely kaput the traffic has flowed with ease, with most drivers being surprisingly generous and considerate. I reckon those red lights get to us when we're behind the wheel; the idea of being controlled and forced to pause our journey by some glowing three-eyed lollipop disturbs our psyche somehow and we all develop rebellious streaks, seeing how many amber lights we can jump and leaping on the horn when the chap in front won't join in the game. I swear I've developed a new condition - 'Traffic Tourettes'. When driving round Hungarian roads I just can't seem to help blurting out obseneties, 'a***hole!', 'f***wit!', 's*** for brains!', and the occasional 'You could get a b***** TANK through there!'.

No wonder the children are so well versed in rude words.

Though, thinking about it, I have an inkling that the traffic chaos might have something to do with last night. There we were, ten-thirty at night, Nobby catching up on emails, kids catching up on seeing-how-far-we-can-push-mum-and-dad-with-this-bedtime-plan-before-one-of-them-explodes, and me catching up on red wine and a good book trying to ignore the shrieking from my adorable offspring.

Then suddenly the whole house went dark. And pretty damned quiet for a change!

Pickle deduced the obvious - 'Power Cut! everyone into my room!', he announced and I dutifully bounded up the stairs, less to obey him and more to ward off the impending melt-down from the ever-dramatic Poppet who was already saying 'Ohmygod!, Ohmygod!' despite the fact that the streetlights outside her room hadn't even gone off so she could see perfectly well and the fact that if she'd gone to sleep already like we'd told them to she'd never have known about the stupid power cut!!!

Luckily I had a torch handy so I could get the candles out without too much trouble and we spent the next two hours melting our bits off (the air-con was down of course, so we had to resort to the old-fashioned method of opening a window, shock horror) and trying to settle the kids back down in one bedroom. Ha ha. Not a chance.

Pickle came over all authoritative and broke out the glow-sticks left over from Halloween. How on earth he found them when he doesn't even know which drawer his pants are kept in I'll never fathom. He proceeded to create a double-ended nest on his bed so he and Poppet could sleep together, placing glow-sticks all round the edge to light the way to the emergency exits. Cute.

Nobby and I had fun trying to remember which lights were on when the power went out and diligently unplugged the TV and computer, reminiscing about the 70's and those heady pre-marriage-and-babies days when we spent many an evening by candlelight. Around half past midnight, just as we were dropping off slathered in mosquite repellent by the open window, we found out that we'd both forgotten to check the overhead light in our bedroom, as the place suddenly lit up like Blackpool illuminations and a swarm of mossies headed our way.

So, I can only imagine that the traffic lights had a similar experience - being up half the night to the excited children and getting woken up when someone finally got the elastic bands at the power station wound back up tight enough and hit the magic button - which explained their sluggish behaviour and the 2 mile tailback this morning.

I decided to come home from the drop-off via 'the back streets' to see if it was any quicker. It involves going over rather than round the hills, which means risking the car suspension and all my tooth fillings on the patchwork, potholed roads, not to mention my paintwork from mad drivers whipping past out of nowhere. Note to self: next time you're tempted to use the back roads, wear a sports bra and take some clean undies.

Anyway, by the time I got back to the traffic lights in question, an unavoidable bottle-neck to get to my house due the presence of yet another hill with no way over it, I was definitely shaken, not stirred and cursing my luck since I would need to leave again to pick them up in only two hours. Then, oh! Someone had switched off the traffic lights. And guess what?

There was no queue!

I rest my case. Now, where did I put my blow-torch...?

Ten weeks and counting

Oh crap. The summer holidays are only two days old and I am already knackered.

For starters, my ears and my brain are aching from the constant stream of questions from Mr Pickle. Today's corker:

'If you had to invent a human, what would it be like?'

'Hmm,' Mummy says, 'I think humans are already fairly well designed so I'd probably just get rid of stupid things like tonsils which serve no purpose other than introducing young mothers to the joys of handing their offspring over to blokes with masks and very sharp knives.'

Pickle, on the other hand, has several improvements in mind, including an extra pair of eyes which sleep during the day... I can actually see the value of it, as long as they were in the back of my head for small boy monitoring duties. He's two weeks shy of eight years old and STILL wanders off in crowded shopping centres. The bugger.

Anyway, my body is aching like I've run a marathon after football training this morning, where I joined in the game with both my kids and all their team-mates for the end-of-year party match. At first I just hung around the goal 'defending' and let the little ones go after the ball but I have to say after a short while all those Friday evenings when I used to play 5-a-side at work fifteen or more years ago came flooding back to me. And I got stuck right in and scored two goals! Nobby will be very pleased. Pickle was ecstatic and treated me to the full 'jumping on top of the goal scorer' celebration style. He scored two himself while Poppet scored her penalty after the match, it was great. I probably did run a marathon during the hour we played; I am gonna pay for it tomorrow believe me.

Nobby, incidentally, is in Cardiff playing golf with his mates. He deserved the trip after a couple of pooey weeks at work, but it would have been nice if England had been able to perform as well as his wife and kids against Algeria last night. Sounds as though there was some serious sorrow-drowning going on afterwards, judging from the croaky phonecall from him at midday.

Speaking of drowning, we had a freak rain storm here just before the game started last night. Pickle and I were driving home from a friend's house and nearly had to swim to get here. I have never seen anything like it. Of course when we got in the satellite signal was down and we couldn't get the game on, though we soon found out that was the least of our worries when Pickle spotted the water dripping through the spare room ceiling. We had a wonderful game of 'Spot The Puddle' roaming the house with a pile of old towels to throw in front of leaking windows and walls. Only four others thankfully, then we nipped next door to watch the game on their Portugese satellite and sent a text to the landlord to get his arse round here with a bucket at his earliest convenience.

So I am getting through my list of fun activities to keep the children amused rather rapidly. We've been the cinema twice already - Nanny McPhee and Toy Story - we've been shopping in Budapest for clothes and presents to take with us to France, and we've been to a barbecue.

Now what?

Poppet helped with today's choices by remembering that she left her (correction: my) handbag in a changing room in H&M on Thursday so we had to schlepp back to the Hungarian equivalent of Oxford Street to retrieve it. Thankfully some nice person had handed it in, probably because there was no money in it. Still the shop assistant grilled me about the appearance and contents before she would go and get it.
'It's small and black with a long strap and contains bubble gum, Tictacs, a compact mirror with Hannah Montana lipstick, a notebook and a pair of Barbie shades.'

On the way back we bumped into some sort of parade made up of different groups in traditional costumes either dancing or singing their way through town. It seemed to be a celebration of mostly Eastern European groups with lots of big skirts and headscarves, frankly we didn't have a scooby-doo what it was all about but we stopped to watch anyway. There was some very loud drumming further along from us which didn't sound very Hungarian. Sure enough a group of dancers from Martinique pranced and wiggled past, sandwiched between Slovenian Folk dancers and a small Croatian choir. Oh well, it kept the little darlings amused for ten minutes.

In an effort to be a good teacher Mummy now I'm qualified (got the final assignment mark on Tuesday, I PASSED!!) I've started a daily diary of 'What Have We Learned Today' to make sure we don't just sit in front of the TV or Wii or DS all summer long. So far we've had quite a detailed First Aid session, concentrating on choking and bleeding, though touching on CPR and how to avoid catastrophes that require it after Poppet fired up the hair dryer in the bathroom while Pickle was in the bath... If I thought I was moving fast at footie today, that night I left skid marks as I raced in to yank the cable out. We now also know for future reference that water and electricity do not mix.

We've touched on cookery with a discussion on how crepes are made, with a little side-bar on religion with the origins of Shrove Tuesday. We've examined christenings too as we are going to one in a couple of weeks.

And today we all learned something new together after looking up the word 'Degu' on the internet after seeing it written on a cageful of admittedly large-looking gerbils that Pickle has his heart set on as his birthday present. This has been a source of much discussion for some time now between Nobby and me. He's not too keen on having little pets although I am sold on the idea having owned ten gerbils when I was little myself. My Mum will probably have something to say about that when she comes next week since I remember it as a joyful experience, not at all smelly and with no nocturnal disturbance... hmmm. We not sure if the fact they only last a couple of years is a good or a bad thing given we may move again in twelve months.

Anyway, I was expecting to find Degu is the Hungarian translation for gerbil and that they just grow bigger here. But no. A Degu is more closely related to the Chinchilla and the Guinea Pig, a social, diurnal rodent (sleeps at night, hurrah!) with a penchant for chewing, burrowing, chewing, running about and chewing. They have a bubbly personality and an expected life span of 5-7 years, although some live as many as ten.

Well there's something new I learned today. I can't wait to see Nobby's face when I tell him...

Innit tho'

It's rapidly becoming like an episode of Men Behaving Badly round here. Pickle has developed a habit for asking those searching questions you'd often see Gary and Tony contemplating over beers on the sofa. Luckily he's not yet asked,

'Which do you prefer, bottoms or breasts?'

but he's certainly gaining in imagination.

On Saturday he asked his Dad,

'If you could go into the television and be part of what's showing on the programme, would you go in there?'

As it happens Dad had a ready answer since we were watching England's opening game of the World Cup so he said, 'Definitely, and the first thing I'd do is go and shake that goal keeper till his teeth rattled.'

Yes, we are also gripped with World Cup fever. The wall chart sits in pride of place on the kitchen door and the boys are diligently filling in all the scores as we go along. I've memorised the teams in our group so I can join in the banter because its all everyone's talking about at the moment. When the new headmaster of the school came up to me on Monday asking if my new favourite player was Green I was sufficiently clued in to be able to tell him to bugger off.

Schools out tomorrow. Holy shit that means I have ten weeks to occupy my little darlings without going totally stir crazy. There is some light in the middle of the tunnel with our trip to Turkey - we're going all-inclusive this year, somewhere with hot and cold running childcare as well as buffets, so we both get a proper rest. Also the kids and I are off to Paris for a week, my folks are coming here for a week, then Poppet has her first trip to camp.

Meanwhile everyone with a birthday during the holidays has been trying to squeeze in a party before everone sods off to sunny climes. This weekend there were three parties, mercifully both children were invited to all of them so Nobby and me did get some free babysitting so we could wander the shops without all the 'Are we going home yet? I'm hungry! I need a wee!' following us around. But still we ask ourselves, why is it our kids have better social lives than us? Having said that, now all parties have dried up for ten weeks, as I was saying, WTF do we do all day long?!

You'll be interested to know Poppet asked me, in one of her whimsical, nostalgic moods ealier as we were leaving school for the penultimate time.

'Mummy, will you teach me during the holidays? I'm going to miss having lessons.'

Yeah, I'll let you know how that one pans out.

One thing to avoid is any stress. Doctor's orders. I have tried several times to write a post to describe what happened to me a few weeks ago (and led to this huge blogging gap), but I wasn't able to get my tongue in my cheek yet to make light of it. But now I'll have a go.

One Sunday at the end of May I found myself flat on my back at the bottom of the garden with a young man tearing off my t-shirt and bra and manhandling my chest. No, Nobby and I were not engaging in some al fresco friskiness, more's the pity. The young man was a paramedic and the clothes tearing to get the ECG electrodes stuck on me. Believe me there was nothing romantic about having to have my post-children boobs moved to the side to make way for the wires.

They say you can measure the pertness of your rack by trying to hold a pencil underneath them. Trust me, I could probably manage a small branch of WHSmiths these days.

Anyway, it was one way to survey the Hungarian emergency services and in my husband's humble opinion they are crap. I collapsed in a heap at the end of the garden after a spot of lawn mowing and weed strimming; my windpipe was closing up so I thought I was in some sort of anaphylactic reaction to the plants I'd been chopping down. Nobby and the neighbours were trying to keep me awake and calm the children down - well, trying to calm Poppet down who was in hysterics, Pickle was more fascinated about what could have caused it and how to treat me. He's got a bright, analytical future ahead of him that one.

Apparently it took a good ten minutes to get through to an ambulance then another thirty for one to show up, though this one was only a car containing paramedics to assess me, who seriously enraged a panic-stricken Nobby by strolling through the garden as if they were attending a picnic not a prostrate and barely conscious woman. Still, they called for back-up pretty sharpish when they couldn't get a reading on my blood pressure and I was whisked away with a blues-and-twos escort all the way to the hospital. And NOT the one that butchered Pickle's head I am pleased to say.

Especially because I wasn't allowed to leave for three days. Yup, apparently, although there was no single cause for my turn, it was sufficiently impressive to keep me under observation for twenty-four hours followed by bucket loads of tests. Probably nothing to do with the fact that Monday was a bank holiday and all the doctors must have been at the lake, considering I was left in my admittedly posh but still desperately boring private VIP suite for eight hours straight the next day. Not sure what they observed through the closed door. (Do you get the feeling I was climbing the walls in there? Because I was. The TV was all in German, the nurses didn't speak a word of English and I couldn't even get a coffee because I'd been bussed in wearing my gardening clothes carrying no money.) Nobby was a saint. He brought me books and mags and even my laptop and a few DVDs. The best thing was definitely the flask of PG Tips, which was extra special considering the water was off at our house that day and he used everything he could cobble together for a cuppa for me. Now that's love.

So from Tuesday I saw a cardiologist, an audiologist, a neurologist, a gynaecologist and several generalists - it was like a Maureen Lipman BT advert 'You've got an ology?' I was poked and probed and xrayed and scanned. I even had to wear a heart monitor for 24 hours to check the ol' ticker.

But thankfully there is nothing seriously wrong with me, some anaemia, some exhaustion, possibly some release of anxiety from handing in my final assignment AND being offered a full time job the previous week (!! more about that next time).

Also my potassium was low so I was prescribed bananas - I'm on at least three a day now and hope to be swinging through the forest canopy pretty soon. If I can just stop searching the children's hair for nits long enough.