Thursday 19 July 2007

Ranting (but not about packing)

I need a rant. I am seething. I’m not sure what is making me more cross, perhaps writing it down will help me decide. Here goes.

We’ve been waiting for the new company car for months and we were finally notified that we could have it the day before our holiday - that’s today – provided the old one was in good shape for exchange. The new one has double the boot space so Nobby in particular was delighted that he would be able to bring his golf clubs along on holiday without having to leave one of the children behind to fit them in the car. So first we had to get the dents on the Volvo fixed following our minor incidents with those gates (ahem). So that was all done last week and we have been driving extra carefully ever since. I mean, I have honestly never had such bad luck with any other car - gateposts and gates seem to jump out at it, other cars are almost magnetically attracted to it, it’s even been hit by a cyclist. And I always thought Volvos were meant to be tough but even the bike managed to smash a hole in a rear light and you only have brush it against something to crumple in the bodywork and make the paint fall off. Perhaps it’s jinxed, although judging by the state of everyone else’s car in and around Paris it could be something to do with the quality of driving in France, I dunno, I’d hate to bitch about the French (!) (Mind you, Rose had to park her car on the street for a few hours while they were digging up the road the other week and when her hubby came home from work the first thing he asked is ‘what have you done to the car?’, having spotted the family vehicle on the road sporting a huge fresh dent on the boot that wasn’t there when she parked it. Nice.)

With only 2 journeys to go before handover I carefully parked the Volvo yesterday morning in a little side road off a quiet village road opposite a friend’s house while we had lunch with her. And when we returned to the car after lunch – ta-da!! There was a dirty great gouge on the corner of the front bumper and a huge scratch on the wheel arch where some moron who clearly thought they were driving a tank had just ploughed on through. I mean, how hard is it to get your car down a road without touching the sides? Does this person also have trouble getting themselves through doorways without stripping off the paint with their shoulders? Do they walk down the street bouncing off the sides like a pin-ball? Maybe it was a woman who’s been brainwashed by their man into believing that 4 inches is actually 8. Or a man who’s been convinced that 32AA is 38DD. All I know is that I was stomping mad and this is not a place where someone who dings your car will feel enough remorse to stop and put their details on your windscreen (although I doubt that happens so much in England either). So it now hangs in the balance as to whether we will be able to exchange the car today so I am going to have to spend the day with my fingers and toes crossed that the bureaucrat they send to examine it isn’t a total jobs-worth or at least appreciates the male need for golf whilst on holiday.

Phew, I feel a bit better for getting that off my chest. I should have done it last night so I wasn’t stewing in my bed till 3 in the morning but there was the small matter of the children not settling until about 11 o’clock. Like many a small person, they have taken umbridge at the fact that they are currently expected to go to bed before the sun. And all the black-out curtains in the world aren’t going to fool them because they only have to get up to the loo or pop in to check if their sibling has gone to sleep yet (and be sure and wake them up if they have) to see that it’s still light outside at 10pm. I guess my clever idea to acclimatise them to sleeping in the same room together in preparation for their holiday hasn’t really helped either. It’s quite amazing how many personal possessions they suddenly need with them when you tell them they are sleeping somewhere else when they only need one favourite teddy in their own bed. It’s like some primal territory-marking. I set up the futon in the spare room and suddenly half the toys out of each bedroom had been transported in there to form an entourage around it. And then the messing about starts as each toy needs to be tucked in and read to. I just had to give up and leave them to it or I’d never sit down all evening. Me and my big ideas.

Oh and I’m in trouble with Nobby again. After he got miffed about me not making it clear that he took a day off work to take me out, he then got miffed that my addendum described him as a critic, when all he’s done up to that point is complement my writings. So please may I point out that I meant ‘critic’ in the sense of reviewer rather than detractor and publicly thank him for being so supportive of my exposing the intimate details of our lives on the World Wide Web (!). He’s not so encouraging about the time of day I generally get round to writing, though, as it tends to be very late at night when I have the house - and the computer - to myself. I’ve woken him up several times by crawling into bed at 1am. But what he probably doesn’t realise is that I only ever get full uninterrupted use of my Mummy-brain when all other family members are asleep. It isn’t even that they aren’t begging me to let them on the computer (Pickle) or telling me to draw princesses for them (Poppet) or asking me whether the car was really damaged by a third party and not my dodgy driving (Nobby, cheeky beggar). During daylight my head is not my own, what with constantly wondering what the kids are doing, especially if they’re out of sight and I can’t hear them, planning when to try and get some food inside them, deciding whether to draw the princess with long or short hair, working out how to get Sonic to level 3, etc, etc to say nothing of getting through the daily list of cooking, tidying, cleaning, mending, fetching, carrying, reading, wiping, playing, praising, berating, yelling… See, it’s only after bedtime I can switch off from everyone else and think about my own stuff. Just for a change I got up before the kids today to try to get my rant done in peace because I was updating my I-Pod until 1am instead last night. Unfortunately the brats got up about half an hour ago so my progress has slowed significantly while I get them breakfast and try to ignore the Tweenies finding out how cheese is made on the TV. Ugh. Sorry Nobby, it just can’t be done!

But I will take this opportunity to apologise to him for leaving the car running on fumes for its final journey to the office. Well you did say to send it back empty given that it’s been nothing but trouble these past 3 years. Perhaps I should have left a tiny bit in so that you didn’t have to stop off at the garage on the way in to ensure that the bloke who collects it can get back. The bloke we are now hoping will ignore the new dent and actually take it away. Oops. Sorry! (grovel). I think I’ll stop typing now and get on with crossing my fingers and toes. Wish us luck!

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