Level 2 Chi Kung.

A beautiful, dry, sunny autumn day, so, as soon as Sherlock and I got home from dropping Katie at school, I changed into gardening clothes and got to work sweeping up leaves. Filled four huge black bags with leaves, then weeded the rose bed and underneath the feijoas. It is a pleasure weeding under the feijoas now as the half-dead corsican mint plants I stuck in as ground cover have resurrected themselves and spread enthusiastically. This has not only suppressed weed growth, but every time you pull up a weed there is a wonderful waft of mint. Kept working, deadheading the roses and planting some gentiana septemfida that I picked up for a £1 a plant in the rejects rack outside the plant shop a couple of weeks ago. Those who know my gardening habits from Christchurch days will be unsurprised to hear that it took me a couple of weeks to get them into the ground. I have always had a bad habit of buying plants without being totally sure where I can going to plant them! By the time I finally stopped, I barely had time to clean up my tools and have a shower before I had to go and get Katie.

Level 2 Chi Kung.

Jack is still saying that he is too ill to go to school, so I got an appointment for Nick to take him to the GP while I was off having my knee X-rayed. I had a slight snag getting to Lewisham Hospital for the X-ray. I had to wait 17 minutes for a bus, so I was pleased I had left home really early. Unfortunately I then fell asleep on the bus and woke up halfway to Elmer’s End – many many stops past Lewisham Hospital. I had to hop off and get a bus back in the other direction and, by the time I had found radiology, I was about 15 minutes late. The staff on reception were lovely, said not to worry, everyone was late on account of the terrible traffic, and I said ‘Yeah, the traffic is terrible and then of course it doesn’t help if you fall asleep on the bus and wake up half way to Elmer’s End.’ They both cracked up and the guy said ‘I come the other way and I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve been trying to get to work and ended up in bloody Blackheath!’. Had the X-rays – sadly they don’t give you the results, so I will have to wait a week or so until the results get back to the GP.

Stopped on the way home to make a start on the Christmas shopping and, all important, to buy the children’s Christmas jumpers. Had chosen the jumpers and a pair of PJs for Katie and queued for ages to pay, when I realised that I had obeyed the hospital’s instructions to leave all valuables at home and didn’t have my wallet. I left the bag of shopping behind the counter and whipped home (crucially remembering to get off the bus!) and returned with my wallet. Having picked up the trolley as well, I took the opportunity to stock up on fruit and veg at the market: lovely pears, plums, capsicums, broccoli, huge bag of carrots, a big bunch of coriander and the most beautiful aubergines. It reminded me of an interview on NZ TV years ago with a greengrocer who was trying to get people to buy a wider variety of vegetables. They had been stocking aubergines for a while but didn’t really know what to advise when customers asked how to cook them. But she had noticed that one regular customer came every week and carefully scrutinised the aubergines before selecting two to buy along with her other fruit and veg. Assuming that, since she bought them every week, the woman must have some wonderful aubergine recipes, she decided that the next time the woman came in, she would ask her how she cooked them. The woman, looking embarrassed, admitted that she didn’t actually eat the aubergines, she just left them looking beautiful in the fruit bowl until they shrivelled up and then threw them away!

Picked Katie up from school and decided to make her dreams come true. Yes, we made eclairs! Well, cream puffs, anyway. My previous attempt at choux pastry – Delia’s Smith’s giant parmesan puffs made for Kay Redmayne-Porter et al, before Jack was born – were an abject failure (totally flat), so it has taken me a long time to pluck up courage for another try. This time I stuck to the gospel according to Edmunds and they puffed up beautifully. We even piped the mixture onto the tray. Edmunds says ‘teaspoonfuls’ but Katie is fascinated with piping on account of it featuring so heavily on Great British Bake Off, so I thought I would make all her Christmasses come at once.

Level 2 Chi Kung. Microcosmic orbit.

A wonderful sleep in followed by a mellow afternoon in which I wandered around in the rosy glow of actually having had enough sleep. Katie was keen for me to make eclairs but I wasn’t in the mood to try anything challenging, so I made Sue Wood‘s microwave chocolate cake, only with butter instead of oil. First microwave cake I have ever made (as far as I can remember – there might have been a pineapple upside down cake in 1988) and I had to make it in a silicon loaf tin as it was the only suitable tin for the microwave. It wasn’t quite chocolatey enough for my taste but, topped with mint-choc icing, Nick and the kids yummed it down. And it was so quick and easy – very useful recipe to have on hand. Thank you Sue.

Level 2 Chi Kung.

A cruisy relaxed morning with no Stagecoach – makes me wish I could persuade Katie to move to the afternoon class and then every Saturday could be like this. Dash worked really hard at guitar. Mr Baulch told us a funny story about the lady who taught him to play. Apparently she used to hold up an old photograph of a primary school class all sitting cross-legged on the mat and ask her students to say which child was her. They never could, so she would eventually point to her younger self and then say, ‘But what about that little boy beside me, do you recognise him? You know him. You’ve definitely heard of him.’ Finally, after making her hapless students guess for several minutes, she would beam ‘That’s Adolf Hitler’. She apparently had a rather strict, draconian teaching style, or as Mr Baulch and his fellow students inevitably put it, ‘She went to the same school as Hitler – and it shows’!

Wonderful quote from Shirley Conran (of ‘Life’s too short to stuff a mushroom’ fame) on Radio 4 this morning: ‘They wanted to know, at what age do women stop having orgasms. I said “Why are you asking me? How would I know, I’m only 80.” ‘

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At 17:18, I looked in the mirror and realised that I have had my jumper on inside out all day (a day which has included Dashi’s guitar lesson and lunch at a fairly posh local restaurant). The seams are quite neat, so not terribly obvious, but the laundry instructions sewn into the righthand side seam are a bit of a give-away.

And because I come from a superstitious family, I will now have to leave it like this until I go to bed, because it is bad luck to change it.

 

Level 2 Chi Kung. Microcosmic orbit.

Woken up 15 minutes before the alarm by Katie yelling ‘Mum, Dad’ at her (rather impressive!) top volume. Staggered through to see what was up and she announced that her tummy hurt and she felt too sick to go to school. Given that she normally struggles to wake in the morning, I thought it must be genuine and agreed that she could stay home. Nick was already intending to work from home to keep an eye on Jack while I went to an appointment at Dashi’s school. The paediatrician was impressed with Dash, who chatted happily with her. Asked what he liked doing at home, Dash gave eating my gingerbread pancakes top billing. When the paediatrician looked surprised, he said emphatically: “They’re really very good pancakes!’. I beamed – couldn’t help it, tried to keep it unobtrusive.

Level 2 Chi Kung. Microcosmic orbit.

The day started badly and went downhill! Dash’s bus arrived 30 minutes late – this made for a stressful start to the day as one has to be ready to go at a moment’s notice. As they are often up to 15 minutes early, this means that we were effectively on alert for 45 minutes – very tense-making, not least because it scuppered my chance of doing Chi Kung before the school run. Then, just as the bus finally arrived – and I’m not sure what she was trying to do: hug me, dance with me, the hokey kokey? – Katie stuck her left leg out, I caught my right foot on it and tripped, wrenching the injured knee and sending weeks of recovery straight down the gurgler. Then she got upset (possibly on account of the stream of unusual language issuing from her mother) and Sherlock got paranoid that he was going to be left behind again and started barking his little furry head off…

Got home from the (painfully slow) walk to school, and was in the middle of a particularly disgusting task (in consideration of anyone who might be cruising FB on a laptop while eating, I won’t go into the gruesome details) when I realised that I was standing, in stockinged feet (I don’t usually wear shoes in the house) in the middle of a sea of broken glass. Jack had apparently broken a small ship-in-a-bottle type toy and the fine splinters of glass were all over the carpet.

I thought I had better get control of things, so, by noon, I had done Chi Kung, boil-washed my clothes and taken a long hot shower. I thought I needed to focus on tasks with high job satisfaction, so I sorted some of the children’s outgrown clothes into piles for recycling, charity and storage, then packed the ones for storage with plenty of conkers to deter moths and set them aside ready to go up to the attic.

In the evening, watching Heroes with Dash in the wind-down towards bed-time, we had this conversation:

Dash: I’m really thirsty.
J: Well sweetie, feel free to help yourself to a drink.
Dash: [on sofa, under quilt, with footrest extended] Actually, I’ve just got comfy.
J: So, were you wanting me to fetch a drink for you?
Dash: [smelling a rat] Weeeeelllll …
J: Come over here sweetie and snuggle up beside me. Let me tell you about my day. So this morning I got up and got you all dressed and made sure you and Katie brushed your teeth and washed your face, and fed everyone breakfast and cleaned the kitchen and emptied the dishwasher and fed the dog and put you on the bus, and walked Katie and Sherlock to school and brought Sherlock home. Then I did [disgusting task – not sparing him the details] and realised I was standing in my socks, in a sea of broken glass. I vacuumed up the glass, washed my hands many times, boil-washed all the clothes I was wearing, did Chi Kung, had a shower, gave Jack lunch, sorted out clothes for recycling, to give away and to go in the attic, did some urgent paperwork, fed Jack some more. You got home, we went to collect Katie from film club. We got home, I fed everyone and gave Daddy some soup, then I walked Katie to Elias’ house, picked him up, went to trampoline, waited for an hour, took Elias home, brought Katie home, made a cup of coffee and a slice of toast and sat down to watch Heroes with you.
Dash: So maybe I should get my own drink?
J: That would be nice.

Once I had watched 20 minutes of Heroes with Dash, 20 minutes of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang with Katie, and 20 minutes of The Moomins with Jack, the children all trailed off to bed. Nick came in and we agreed to watch Bones – though watch is something of a euphemism in my case. Unless we are watching something very gripping, I tend to fall asleep in the first five minutes and wake up just in time for the denouement. Nick then briefly explains who killed whom and why, and we go upstairs to bed. My tendency to fall asleep whenever I am warm, relaxed and reasonably comfortable is a source of friction between Katie and I. She disapproves and, sadly, she is not alone. I recall in the run-up to my wedding, hugely jet-lagged, being driven somewhere by my father, who was horrified that I kept falling asleep and was quite ruthless about waking me up each time I drifted off. More recently, when one of my sisters came to stay with us in London, if she called out ‘goodnight’ on her way to bed and I, comatose with my head on Nick’s shoulder, didn’t respond, she would yell ‘goodnight’ louder and louder until I, startled awake, said ‘goodnight’ back. It is as if falling asleep anywhere other than bed is somehow morally reprehensible.

I have an aversion to people unexpectedly touching my face and especially my mouth (years of children with less-than-scrupulous hand-washing habits have no doubt made me paranoid) and, because it gets such a spectacular negative reaction, Katie will often choose this method to wake me up. So tonight, having fallen asleep five minutes into the episode of Bones as usual, when I felt something tickling my lips, my first thought was that Katie had sneaked back downstairs. But no, too wet, too hairy … Sherlock, who had been lying quietly in his dog-bed when I lay down, had seized the opportunity presented by an unguarded mummy on the sofa and was attempting to French-kiss me. Disgusting!

Looking back, my worst falling asleep experience was in the first week of a new job. We were running a big learning event up north somewhere. It had been a long day of training and I hadn’t slept well the night before because my room was a small smelly single beside the hotel’s noisy air-conditioning plant. My new boss, when he discovered that we would be on the same train back to London, decided that we could have the post-conference wash-up AND my orientation meeting on the train. He was a lovely man – one of the nicest people I have ever worked for – but even his best friend would admit that he could be a bit soporific. So there I was, knackered, being gently rocked in the warm, comfortable first class carriage … Next thing I remember was him saying, with uncharacteristic sharpness, “Am I boring you?”. I had fallen asleep just as he was outlining my objectives for the next six months!

Later I found out that the team responsible for booking venues and rooms always gave the training team the crappiest rooms. I, and others, took them to task on this many times, but their leader (a woman with the rather apt email address of DramaPalmer@…) was a law unto herself. I only once got a nice room. We were training in Canary Wharf in September 2001, about a week after 9/11. The trains were all crazy and I arrived on the first day with just enough time to dump my bag at reception and get into the training room for the first plenary. It was about 7 by the time I finally got a chance to get my bag and go up to my room. I opened the door and there it was – the whole of London spread out before me. I had been given the penthouse suite. In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, it was widely rumoured that Canary Wharf would be the next target, and no one else had been prepared to sleep on the upper floors!

Level 2 Chi Kung. Microcosmic orbit.

Received a text just as we were about to leave for school: Siniqua, the mother of Katie’s little Finnish friend Elias, asking if we could take him to school as she has a bad cold and is trying to stay under the covers. I was happy to help out, but it did mean that poor Sherlock had to stay home, as Elias is nervous of dogs. Got home and played with the distraught Sherlock for a bit, then wandered down the back to check on the pungas. They are all looking really healthy, though slightly submerged in autumn leaves off the big horse chestnut trees. I am unsure whether to clear the leaves away or leave them as protection during the cold weather. Any ideas?

Level 2 Chi Kung. Microcosmic orbit.

A happy day for young Sherlock, as he not only got to accompany us on the morning school run but he then got another walk in the afternoon when we took Katie to cello. He seems to have got over his antipathy to rain – which is just as well considering where we live! In between these two high points, I decided to let him come upstairs with me. We have gradually been giving him a little more freedom to wander the house, a process that hasn’t always gone smoothly. Notably, about a week ago, Nick and I had just got to a particularly exciting bit in Breaking Bad (because we don’t have a television we tend to get to the good stuff a couple of years after it’s finished!) when the screen suddenly went blank. We thought we might have struck a scratch on the DVD or something, but no, investigation revealed that young Sherlock had chewed through the network cable. This briefly put me in mind of a university friend (an avowed pacifist and vegetarian) who, cross that his little brother’s pet rabbits had chewed through the sound cables on his expensive stereo, taped all the sound cables up out of bunny-reach, but left the power cables temptingly on the floor…

Level 2 Chi Kung. Microcosmic orbit.

Everyone back to school and I was looking forward to making progress on a bunch of stuff. Jack was a bit reluctant to go – saying he was ill – but Nick and I were of the view that he has just got a bit fond of staying home with mummy and being pampered. We sent him off and I phoned the school to warn them that he might be a bit reluctant and perhaps they could make sure he got to do something he enjoyed in order to remind him that school can be fun. Got a call back from the school around 11am to say that Jack had a temperature of 102! He eventually arrived home, looking completely normal, and devoured 4 slices of wholemeal toast, an apple and a plate of cheese and crackers. It seems to me that there are three possibilities: