Confused dot com

I have several questions buzzing around my tired little head today.

Firstly, where did all the Praying Mantises come from? I don't remember having seen a Praying Mantis in the flesh before even though they have been quite popular in kiddy films lately. And then last week my housekeeper was trying to explain this large green insect she'd found in the basement which had freaked her out. She didn't know the English for it though so I assumed it was a grasshopper or a locust and I've seen plenty of those; we did experiments on locusts for my Biology 'A' Level so they are, like, soooo last year for me.

But it wasn't until we saw the dog go into stealth mode down the basement stairs - head down, ears up, head, back and tail all in a straight line and creeping forward like something off One Man And His Dog - and we went to investigate that we realised 'Ah! It was a Praying Mantis!' (Life is like a game of Charades round here.) It was big and green and funny-looking. Even more so on the funny-looking front once the dog had played with it for a bit... Then a couple of days later I opened the front door and bam! there on the porch is a Praying Mantis, a brown one this time, calm as you please like a boy scout on Bob-A-Job week. I was going to invite it in to do the washing up but I'm not sure it would have reached the sink.

Secondly, this is one from Pickle and I am now curious myself, is Jerry a girl or a boy? I am talking about the mouse in Tom and Jerry, for which the children have a big passion at the moment, especially 5 seconds after the words 'right, it's time for bed' leave my mouth. They watched it all the way back from England last month and I find it very hard not to sit and join them guffawing at all the slapstick cat and mouse humour. Thankfully they haven't tried to re-enact any of the chases yet or hit each other with hammers or blown each other up with dynamite and it's proving a useful bribery-and-corruption tool at bedtime: 'Get into your PJs and brush your teeth and you can watch one more before we go up.' Works like a charm.

But, is Jerry a girl or a boy? When Jerry obliterates Tom's opera performance and takes over the 'Figaro' him/herself it's wearing a tuxedo. Yet when they're battling at the beach Jerry dons a Southern Belle dress and minces along holding a flowery parasol. Then there's the tennis tournament and Jerry is only sporting a pair of red shorts... Poppet and Pickle are convinced that the long eye lashes make Jerry a girl. I always believed it's a boy. Very confusing.

OK this question has only just popped up. Why isn't my computer keeping up with my typing any more? I'm hardly Miss Moneypenny tapping away at 100 words a minute but in the last couple of days I've had to go back and fill in the blanks where the stupid thing has been missing letters and spaces, dragging its feet like a petulant child being hauled to the supermarket. 'Dn't wana goto th sprmarkt ummy!'

This is the laptop by the way, maybe it's trying to tell me the honeymoon is over now. Blimey that was short. Meanwhile my desktop seems to have finally breathed it's last unfortunately. I tried to turn it on just now and clearly I've lost my touch (!) because I didn't even get a blue screen, it's black and blank and lifeless. Rest In Peace old thing.

Fourthly, finally and actually very seriously, the most important question of the day is why hasn't Pickle's head healed up despite a week in steri-strip stitches, two days off school and careful care from yours truly? We went to the hospital this morning hoping to rid him of the huge bandage and itchy surgical tape but somehow the sides of the cut haven't stayed together and it had started to heal from the bottom up in a nice leaf shape rather than the small unobtrusive scar I had been hoping for. Poor little chap writhed in pain as the doctor opened it all up, cleaned it all out and basically started all over again. I haven't felt so guilty since I watched three nurses hold my daughter down while they set her broken leg.

So here's another question: should I be getting a second opinion on this? My guts say 'yes' and as luck would have it Nobby is at a conference in Vienna stuffed full of medical practioners who are married to or well acquainted with other medical practioners and he's got the numbers of a couple of specialists I can take him to this week. I am well aware of the power of 'it's not what you know it's who you know' but I never dreamed that this adage would apply to health care. But in Eastern Europe, oh yes.

So I will keep you up to date on the progress of the boys continuing trauma. For now he is spending the rest of Sunday on the sofa with Nintendo DS, Jetix TV, Dr Seuss books, McFly CDs, pizza and iced tea all within easy reach. I am going to join him before my head explodes.

Hoping to have good news soon. On the other matters, anwers on a postcard please.

How's the patient?

When a fellow parent telephoned me earlier to check the homework for Poppet's class, he apologised several times for disturbing my evening. From the racket at his end of the phone I imagine it was Bedlam Central over there. Thank goodness video phones are not the norm, 1) so I didn't have to witness someone else's evening kiddy-carnage and 2) so that he didn't see what I was actually doing, which was building 'The Ultimate Thomas the Tank Engine Railway Track' whilst sporting a Sportacus hat on my noggin (he's a character in Lazy Town, don't go there). I had blithely volunteered to rake out the blue plastic train track in a final bid to get Pickle off the DS and back into the real world while he recuperates from bouncing his face off the asphalt. The hat was his personal touch. Pickle said it made me look like an elf so I must be an Elf Worker. I tried to explain I want to be a teacher not a nurse, ha ha, but the irony was lost on him... possibly because he's only seven ('ealth worker? boom boom! My Dad would be proud of that one).

Speaking of 'ealth, Mr Pickle had a checkup at the hospital today on the hole in his head. Despite it looking rather gooey to my untrained eyes the doctor was satisfied that it's healing nicely and he can go back to school. Hallelujah! I might actually get some studying done now without the pinging and beeping and repetitive annoying tunes of his DS and having to rack my brains for other ways to keep him from being bored. Trust my luck to get my lovely back-to-school celebration kyboshed within the first seven days. But pity the poor office staff who will have to put up with his verbal diarreah all break time while he's signed off physical activities.

More 'elf' - I've also taken the pair of them to the dentist this week. Poppet had a panoramic xray to check if the two teeth we've been waiting for for over a year are actually somewhere in her head. They are, of course, and she looked so tiny standing in the xray machine in a massive lead apron that I hope they make an appearance soon and she won't have to do it again. Pickle, on the other hand, hasn't lost a single tooth yet and none of them are wobbly (which is fine by me because wobbly teeth make me cringe). However he is growing two new ones behind the baby ones.

Now that's just showing off.

Stop the world, I wanna get off

I don't think I can take any more excitement this weekend. Can someone please make all the madness go away?!


It all started last night at the Hungary vs Sweden World Cup Qualifier. I have been a football widow for more than ten years, but I decided early on I should show willing and join in a bit. I could probably manage a reasonable explanation of the off-side rule these days and I know one or two colourful songs. Nobby's and my second 'date' was on the footie field - I went to watch him play for the company team on a pitch just spitting distance from my house and very nearly blew my chances by having to make a mercy dash to the bar for hot coffee before the final whistle because I feared all my extremities were going to drop off. I had dressed for a date and completely ignored the fact that it was December and blowing an icy gale. I soon learned - by February I was in full ski gear with a flask in my pocket and a hot water bottle up my jumper and before long I was in charge of half-time oranges and the bucket and sponge for being such a regular on the touchline.


Anyway, Nobby took me to the match last night and I witnessed first hand Hungary coming down with a nasty case of Sweden. They were all over them, and scored after just nine minutes. I didn't get to sing 'You're Sh*t And You Know You Are' or 'It's All Gone Quiet Over There' at all during the first half, because they weren't and it didn't. Not that anyone else would have had a Scooby Doo what I was saying of course. The game picked up a lot in the second half and Hungary scored a penalty in the 79th minute, at which point the entire crowd of forty-two thousand people was on its feet yelling and screaming 'Ria! Ria! Hun-ga-ria!'. A draw was a great result and they only had to hold onto the ball for eleven more minutes of play and three minutes of injury time. They almost managed it as well.


However, the goalkeeper who frankly had been riding his luck the whole game in my professional opinion (!) somehow cocked it up two minutes and fifty seconds into injury time. He kicked the ball away, it rebounded off a Swede, and trundled into the back of the net. Forty thousand fans were suddenly deathly quiet, standing still with their mouths open, trying to work out what had just happened. Meanwhile the ref blew the final whistle and two thousand Swedes went bezerk. The Hungarian team sat down on the pitch as if they'd just lost the Cup itself and the fans continued to just stand there in silence. We all filed out like zombies. Nobby and me felt compelled to drown our sorrows in beer and curry before heading home in the wee small hours, little knowing the drama we'd face this morning...


Poppet and Pickle each stayed at a friend's house last night so we could head out nice and early to the game and appreciate the full experience of the packed underground train, singing and chanting and beering all the way. I took Tiggy with me to collect Pickle this morning because his best friend only lives about 200 metres away. I managed to extract him from the house without too much fuss and we were just heading off down the road when disaster struck... in the form of a speeding dog with no sense of direction. She pelted towards me seemingly oblivious to the small boy who was standing in the way and so took him out at the backs of his knees, sending him flying up in the air and crashing down to the ground. At first I thought he'd just grazed his side until the screaming started and we noticed the blood... he'd gashed his face and I'm convinced I could see bone. Yuck. How I refrained from joining in the screaming I really don't know but I scooped him up, ran him home, scared the crap out of Nobby with our entrance and shortly headed off back into the land of Hungarian National Health Care. Not quite how I wanted to spend my Sunday morning, but them's the breaks.

Long story short, he is sporting a neat row of steri-strip stitches and an impressive head-bandage and the x-rays showed nothing is broken, phew. He's now on the sofa with a DVD and a bucket of popcorn with the promise of two days off school and frequent 'How are you feeling?' from the rest of us. I never knew having kids could be so frightening. Still, I am hoping we've had our three catastophes now - my knee, Poppet's chin and Pickles head seems a fair score for this year. I want to publicly thank my lovely hubby for keeping for putting me back together this morning, perhaps his presence at the next Hungary game on Wednesday will help them too!

Ria! Ria! Hun-Ga-Ria!!

School Days

The big day has arrived! Last night the shoes were polished, the pencils were sharpened and the school books were retrieved from behind the sofa... the alarm went off disgustingly early this morning and we all piled off to the first day of school, with Mummy hip-hip-hooraying all the way.

Trouble is, there were a lot of changes in our school over the summer so we parents were expected to stick around all morning to hear about it, so no sloping off to Ikea for me. But since I had already met the kids' new teachers I was able to relax a bit and catch up with some other mummies and swap summer stories: 'Yes, we had a great time, wasn't the weather wonderful? What? you spent a month in the south of France with hot and cold running Nannies? How lovely! Then your parents took the kids for a fortnight and you finished off your tan in the Seychelles? Super!' Ugh. I soon tired of that as the painted-on grin started to slip. So I crept off to the car, where I had cleverly stashed a flask of real coffee because the stuff they serve from the school canteen is pretty grim, and texted Rose to let her know what I spiffing time I was having. It's occasions like this I really miss my double-espresso-with-a-lesbian-tea-chaser buddy to giggle in the corner with over the dad who was blatantly talking to my chest and how Pickle heckled the Principal during the assembly.

Pickle, as it happened, didn't stop with heckling. It seems ten weeks of do-as-you-please, or close enough, has turned my Gorgeous Boy into a Grumpy Bugger. His new teacher asked all the children to sit and draw a picture and write about their holiday while she held a meeting with the parents. My boy lay on the carpet with his head under the sofa declaring that he didn't want to, 'It's boooooring.' Hmm. Mummy meanwhile is looking for the nearest hole to climb into, or at least to throw all the copies of Horrid Henry into - sorry Francesca Simon, personally I think the stories are a great bed-time read but my son seems to have adopted them as a life philosophy and I'm not sure I can take it. Not when Poppet has Moody Margaret down to a 'T' as well. She's been throwing stroppy tantrums all week, although I must say she was terribly polite and diligent for her new male teacher. I'm not sure what he made of her affected American accent which became stronger as the morning progressed; seeing as he's from Pennsylvania I hope he doesn't think she's taking the piss.

So my son ended up the only boy in the entire school, I expect, to get homework on the first day back.

Later on, after a meeting where my new role as Student Teacher was announced to all the other Mummies and Daddies, much to my glowing pride, it became clear that Pickle was still in a bit of a funny one when he pushed through the crowds to me and told me, loudly of course, that some 'pooey girls' had come to sit at his lunch table and he didn't want to sit with pooey girls so I needed to go tell them to get lost. Hmm. Shortly afterwards we were all released early and some mug offered to take him for a playdate. I nearly bit their hand off. However Poppet then demanded that, to be fair, she needed some friends over as well. So having lost one boy I brought two more home then Boy-Next-Door came round to join in as well. It wasn't actually too bad, at least they left the TV and electronic games alone and made up a game in the garden. I'm not sure how much they all liked being bossed about by my daughter; she may only be eight but she already knows how to get boys by the bollocks (metaphorically only... so far).

Later I delivered the boys home and went to pick up my own. His friend's dad seemed not unhappy to see the back of him. 'I tried to get them out to the park but Pickle didn't want to,' he told me. 'All he's done is play DS.' Bugger. He's turned into Cyber-Boy - is that a USB port growing on the back of his neck? Long story short the behaviour did not improve all evening and all the 'Don't be horrid, Pickle!' in the world wouldn't stop him jumping on his sister, faffing around in my kitchen and teasing the dog, or get him to do the homework. Nor did taking away his Lego, teddy bear or bedside light. And putting him to bed at six-thirty did not go down well either ('act like a baby, get treated like a baby - and they go to bed at six-thirty, matey!')

How long can you string out drawing a picture and writing three sentences? I'll tell you how long - he was given the assignment in the parent's meeting at 11h15, he finally completed it (after being threatened with a visit to the Principal's office) at 21h15. So that's ten hours. Is that a Guinness World Record on procrastination or what?

And here's me thinking that the new school term would make things better?!

Sod it. Tomorrow I'm off to IKEA.

Is it time for school yet?

Our house is bursting with new technology – I am writing this on my sparkly new laptop and Poppet is watching Tom and Jerry on the new 37inch flat screen TV (my birthday gift to Nobby, what could be better than something I can use as well?)

Our house is also echoing with angry expletives – ‘which blasted remote control do I use to turn this damn thing on?’, ‘how do I switch to the DVD?’, ‘Muuuuuuuum! It’s not WORKING!!!’.

Yes, we love those first few days after getting a new toy when no-one has a clue how to use the thing except the one who diligently read the manual (me). You’ll note that there has been no yelling about my new laptop... that’s because no-one else is allowed near it and I do all my own shouting in my head (‘where the hell is the ruddy File menu?’ ‘Why on earth did I upgrade to Vista?’)

Meanwhile the old technology is breaking down around us in protest at the spangly new machines taking over their turf. My old computer says ‘No’ most emphatically every day at the moment so I am trying to do something about it, struggling to decipher the cyber-speak on the technical websites as I go along and delving into my deepest memories of my days as an IT support specialist almost twenty years ago. This is whilst the Small People are tugging on my chair and climbing onto my lap demanding,
‘Is it fixed yet?’
‘Can I go on it first?’
‘Can I use your new computer while I wait?’
‘I wanna play Barbie!’
‘I wanna play Club Penguin!’
‘I’m first! You had a go yesterday!’
‘No, I’M first! It did a blue screen on my when I’d only being playing 5 minutes and hadn’t even done Barbie’s hair yet!’

You get the picture? Total bedlam. You can tell it’s the end of the summer holidays, they are suffering from ten weeks of close proximity and now they can’t even watch five minutes of Tom and Jerry on the same sofa without a fight ensuing. I, like many other mothers around the globe, cannot WAIT for school to start.

Actually, for me school has already started. As a trainee teacher this year I was invited to the pre-term teachers meetings last week to get me up to speed on the workings of the place before all the kids pile back in. It was very interesting crossing over from parent to teacher. I will have my own magnet on the ‘In/Out’ board and my own coffee mug in the staff room. For now, I am learning the Theory of Teaching and observing classes being taught until, shortly after half term, some brave teacher has to give up a few lessons to me and let me use their students as guinea-pigs for all I've learnt. I am quite excited about it – not sure about the others - and I guess this means I am a student again, although without the pub-crawls and vomiting, all-night studying and Pro-plus, £1-a-pint nights down the Union and student discounts. Them were the days.

It's hard to believe that we've made it through a ten week summer holiday relatively unscathed. There were only two trips to the Emergency Room and only one of those was for my own child. Poppet is now sporting an 'H' shaped scar on her chin after a run-in with the side of a swimming pool. Ouch. At least I now know where to dash when things go tits-up, although I have to say that particular learning curve was as painful for me as for my little girl. I won't write out the whole rant - I've already bored a few friends with it and watched them glaze over, even though I felt a lot better for it - all I'll say is I fully support Dave the Sausage Man's philosophy that in Budapest you need to avoid Post Offices, Chemists and Public Hospitals. After one year in the city my repertoire is unfortunately complete and I have classic rants about all three.

Last time I mentioned our two-week holiday in Croatia, although I think I hijacked my own post with the Miss Crystal Hotel story, how vain am I? Suffice to say the rest of the holiday was as relaxing as it promised to be. Nobby and me spent most of each day sitting by the pool reading while the kids were in the Kids Club falling in love with the animators so they could bawl their eyes out when we had to leave. Besides the Mr and Miss contests there was plenty of other entertainment, Pickle particularly enjoyed the Games Room which had two Playstations you could play for free in case your tight-wad Mother refused to keep coughing up a Euro-a-go for the pinball, pool and Grand Theft Auto machines. We all enjoyed the canteen meals - the kids ate pizza, chips and ice cream every day for two weeks while Nobby and I enjoyed a variety of fare, made all the more delicious by the fact that someone else bought it, prepared it and cooked it for us.

We did explore just a little bit and imagine my surprise to suddenly find myself cycling past the hotel I stayed with my own parents 25 years ago when the country was still known as Yugoslavia. That called for an instant text to my Mum. She replied straight away, reminding me how much my Grandad enjoyed the place and how we all loved Colin the 'Female Impersonator'. Hotel entertainment was a little different back then; Colin used to come on in full drag, somehow getting away with a tight, sparkly leotard with his ostrich feather head-dress, and he did a great job of clearing all the Germans out of the bar with his community singing of 'Hanging Out The Washing On The Siegfried Line' and other wartime greats.

Anyway, we came back to Budapest for a couple of weeks before Poppet, Pickle and I set off for a visit to the UK, slipping through a Time Warp on the way because I was about eighteen again when we landed at the other end. My parents laid on the full taxi service, both to and from the airport and to and from evening dinner dates so I could beer it up. Mum did all my washing, Dad loaned me the car and his route-master expertise (they have no need of a GPS, my Dad is a GPS) and I partook of all the Brit Grub I have been missing with the help of my brother and sister. Poor Nobby was well miffed to hear I had Chicken Tikka Masala and Peking Crispy Duck in the space of a week. It was a nice visit, apart from the English Summer weather (don't make me laugh) which had me reaching for the jeans and jumpers from day one and it was great to catch up with so many people. I stocked up on English books so thoroughly that I had to borrow another bag to get them all home.

Since then it has been a bit of a treadmill waiting for the old school bell to ring again. Thankfully Boy-Next Door is back in town and giving me a hand entertaining the troops. Perhaps he will also help surgically remove them from the Nintendo DSs and DVD player. I wonder if the school is giving a prize for the most hours clocked on electronic games? Somehow I doubt it but I would not have got through the full ten weeks without them. Roll on registration!

Bikini

Nobby and I are hanging out the 15th load of washing following our return from holiday when Nobby pipes up with:
'You should treat yourself to a new bikini.'
'But I've got a perfectly good bikini,' says I. 'Has the washing machine chewed it up or something?'
'No,' says Nobby, 'but you can't wear the same bikini every day for two weeks.'
'But I just did wear the same bikini every day for two weeks.'
'Yes, and that's just a bit of feedback.'

Subtle. As a slap in the face with a wet fish. Thanks Nobby! But hey, I am still proud of myself for braving *the* bikini for the first time in almost ten years. I finally felt the world could handle my jelly belly and its about time I exposed it to some sunshine before it gets any whiter. Not that I can expect a man who turns chocolate brown the minute the sun comes out to understand my English Rose's view of the world. From day one on our holiday the first language anyone tried speaking to Nobby was Italian, convinced that no way could this dark haired, dark skinned Adonis be and Englishman. Pickle has the same complexion and is also brown as a berry now. Fortunate really when the merest glimpse of the Nivea Factor 50 bottle in my hand makes him run away screaming 'I don't want cream!!!' Poppet is pure peaches and cream like me, though, requiring a thick layer of Ambre Solaire just to walk from the hotel door to the car, and thankfully she doesn't mind slapping it on.

My normal tan lines stop three quarters of the way up my arms and legs from the shorts and t-shirt, with a nasty reddish bib round the neckline. So fetching in a strappy top. Not. But not this time. Besides, Croatia was so darned hot for the whole fortnight even a bikini was positively sweltering. And I actually don't have the worst jelly belly on the beach, you know. Seriously.

So confident was I that I blithely agreed to take part on the 'Miss Crystal Hotel' election during the first week. It didn't seem so bad - the 'Mr Crystal' election the night before had 12 blokes pretending to be Tarzan in a bid for the covetted title but I was assured that the ladies competition was 'much easier' by Kristina, the bubbly animator who roped me in.

So I duly turned up backstage at the designated time so they could take down my particulars and translate them into German, Croatian and Italian for the international audience, and I was met by a table-full of sixteen year girls and the question, 'Did you remember to bring your bikini?'

???*&!!?*!!

Yes, the reason that the ladies don't need to act like Tarzan is because there is a swim-suit round, a la Miss World. Not what I wanted to hear on the same day that I slipped and fell down on the rocks and sliced my knee. *I'm sporting the cut-off jeans for a reason here people*, and it's not because I don't have a mini-skirt because I do. So it seemed that I and a fellow Mummy were the token oldies in the group for entertainment value and you could tell by the introductions.

'Petra is sixteen years old and from Italy. She has two sisters and a fluffy kitten called Fluffy. She is studying and wants to be a vet when she grows up. In her spare time she likes swimming, horse-riding, shopping and going out with her friends.'

'Nobby's missus is 39 and from England, but lives in Hungary. She has a husband and two children and a dog called Tiggy. She works in a school and doesn't really know what she wants to be, even though she is all grown up. She likes reading and used to do jujitsu but really she has no spare time or hobbies and going out with friends requires 50 quids-worth of babysitting and taxis so she generally watches DVDs on the sofa with Nobby and a bottle and of wine instead.'

Things did not look good, although they picked up considerably when the animators brought out the free booze and only my fellow Mummy and I were old enough to drink it. We had a lovely natter over a bottle of Merlot about work and travel and child-rearing while the others compared lipstick and exam scores. Then we were paraded round the swimming pool and thrust up into the spotlight for the contest.

Round One was a 'Getting to Know You' round where we each pulled a number out of a hat which corresponded to something we had to perform. The first poor girl had to sing. The second had to mime a man getting up in the morning. It was pure Butlins really. I had to do a ballet. Yup. It could have been worse, Fellow Mummy was given a chair, a hat and Tom Jones blaring 'You Can Leave Your Hat On' and was told to do a caberet.

Next the Swimsuit Round and out came the flat, tanned tummies and belly-button rings while I dug out my one-piece and a long sarong to cover up the band-aids on my knee. While the others wiggled it the most I was prepared to do was show a bit of leg. And do you know what?

I won third prize!

So now when we play Monopoly and the Chance card says you've won a prize in a Beauty Contest I can say 'yes I have'. And the prize was an afternoon for two in the Wellness Centre Spa at the hotel and a bottle of wine, so Nobby got to reap the rewards as well, I think he was a little bit proud.

Although the Spa turned out to be of the mixed, naturist variety - I'll tell you more about that next time...

My 100th post!!!

Ouch! I ache. No, stop chuckling, I am in serious pain people. I think I pulled something in my back this morning. Funnily enough I was doing some exercise at the time which is supposed to work on my posture and alignment as well as my wobbly bits - it's called T-Tapp, although Nobby derisively calls it 'Clap-Trap' or 'Trip-Trapp' because I got it from a book. Hmm, most of my older clothes are falling off me and the last skirt I bought was a size 8 so who's laughing now, mister?

Anyway, I think I squeezed when I should have released or something technical like that, or else I am so used to being completely out of alignment that my back is screaming in protest at being fixed. Either way I'm somewhat uncomfortable here.

I don't think the two hour walk round Margaret Island with a pair of reluctant kiddies was quite what the doctor ordered for soothing it either. Oh, I tell a lie, we cycled for half an hour of that so it was only an hour and a half of dragging feet and whining 'I want a carry!' like they're still tiny tots. Pickle just turned seven and can't make it from one end of a room to the other without wanting to be picked up. What kind mother am I raising such lazy little blighters?

Just to shut them up, and also to compensate for the fact that the goal of our mission to the island was thwarted by another random act of Hungarian-ness, we rented one of those four-seater bikes so we could go and see the dancing fountains down the other end from where we'd parked. Only trouble was, of course, that the skunks can't reach the pedals and help with the propulsion, although they were each very handy on the bell, once we'd worked out a system of sharing that wouldn't end up with one of them chucking the other one in the river.

They have been getting a little tetchy lately and rather bored with the long holiday so every new experience is way too exciting and prompts bouts of competitiveness to rival Cain and Abel. And I am proving pretty bad at coming up with ideas to get them off the sofa and off each other. Between fights there has been a lot of lumming going on too. I think it's a hangover from all the pre-holiday shopping we've been doing to make sure they have all the necessary items for a fortnight by the sea - jelly shoes, sandals, beach-tent, summer clothes. So now they want more and more. Poppet is constantly begging for more clothes (she's already going to need her own suitcase because she wears at least two outfits per day and can't be seen in anything twice... I'm not sure when it was she turned into Victoria Beckham but I must have missed it.)

And today Pickle announced he wants a pet rabbit. This is not the first time he's asked but he's clearly forgotten all the reasons we said 'no' before and he would not let it drop this morning. Which is why I offered to take them to the petting zoo I've heard about on Margaret Island so he could stroke a rabbit and get it out of his system. So after administering the crowbar and the monkey wrench required to get them away from the computer games and television and into the car, we set off through the obstacle course that has become our route to town this past week.

They are re-surfacing the road. Why they couldn't have waited another week until I was safely on holiday I do not know. And they're doing a proper job this time as well rather than the patch-work sticking plasters we're used to. So they dug up the old road one day, laid new tarmac the next couple, then dug up random holes along the length of the new stuff for reasons best known to themselves, and fiddled with all the manhole covers so they stick up half a metre above the road-surface so all the cars, lorries and buses have to weave in and out between them - it's like a giant game of 'In-and-Out-The-Dusty-Bluebells out there. I'm not sure even the French could surpass the chaos.

Incidentally we're talking about a kilometre stretch of road here, and the main route from our district to anywhere remotely interesting in the rest of Budapest. Plus there's none of this traffic-flow control over here. When Bob was here during the digging-up phase she told us that in the UK now road-works not only have traffic lights but also a bloke on a moped with the words 'Follow Me' on his back to escort you through the contra-flow. (I wonder what happens if he forgets to take his jacket off at the end of the day before he drives home...) But there's no Nanny State over here in the East, just a couple of youths with walkie-talkies and a little red-on-one-side, green-on-the-other lollipop stick each and you have to find your own way through the holes, bumps and kerb-stones littered all over the road.

Anyway, they were just laying the second layer of tarmac as we came home so perhaps there is light at the end of it all. Meanwhile the 'petting zoo' at Margaret Island is also undergoing some timely renovation, in the middle of the school holidays, so most of it was shut. There wasn't a rabbit in sight. We saw a lot of peacocks and pigeons, a couple of ducks, a horse or two, which you were allowed to pet if you had 3 metre long arms because these guys were not coming over to the fence for all the grass in the world, but nothing small and fluffy. This is the second time in a week we have schlepped to so-called 'Paradise Island' to find the main attraction shut. On Pickle's birthday we wanted to go to the swimming complex for all the slides and fountains but that was shut too because of 'water contamination due to the flooding'.

Of course when we rode past it today on our way back from the fountains on our consolation bike-ride the place was open again and only flooded with swimming-costume clad people. Grrr. Oh well, the best laid plans and all that. At least we made it there and back without serious injury to us or any of the passers by - luckily the short leg thing meant that they couldn't steer either which is a blessing as there were a lot of people meandering about in our path and who didn't seem in much of a hurry to move when faced with half a tonne of Mummy-powered metal hurtling towards them. As I got off the bike, my leg muscles now screaming as loudly as my back, and wobbled over to pay the lady, Pickle pipes up with, 'Mummy! you're sweating!' No sh*t Sherlock. It wasn't until we were headed back to the car that I spotted another rental stall where you can hire a little golf-cart vehicle for only a fraction more than the half-tonne bike.

I seriously need to do more homework before we venture anywhere again.

Anyway, that's all academic for the next fortnight as I am expecting full entertainment at the half-board, kids-clubbing, spa-treatment-providing hotel we have booked in Croatia. Fingers crossed. Happy holidays everyone.