So, it’s my birthday

A bit of a strange one this year, it snuck up on me as I’ve had other things on my mind.

To recap - I went to Bristol with Tim while my nanny family were on holiday. I took loads of photos which can be found on Facebook, if you’re my friend there. We visited some castles, a stone circle or 3, had dinner with Aled and Anna, stalked all of Tim’s Bristolian acquaintances *quite* by accident… failed to buy anything from the exciting haberdasher, nearly got hit in the side while I was driving (I really should learn to stop at junctions) walked through Cheddar Gorge, bought Mead and Cider, drank lots of beer, fretted about the junkies outside our apartment.

I went to New York for Easter… which was just lovely on so many levels.

I have been about poor Angel Boy finding it hard to adjust to having me back when he’s spent 10 days on holiday with Mummy and Daddy. He wasn’t a happy boy, and being off school didn’t help - I’ve noticed this last week he’s been back, he’s more cheerful. He needed the routine to make things better. He’s still adorable, and I’ve been bonding with Sensible Eldest over Terry Pratchett books and accordion jams. He watched my fingers, listened to a song I’ve been working on, then played the damned thing right back to me, singing and all. We have a talent on our hands here! Cuddly Middle has been a little quieter than normal, absolutely obsessed with dogs lately.

THE BAND! is a whole different post. Excting things. Big Venues. Challenges! Opportunities!
http://www.openplanrecords.com/store

The band has really come together over the past month. Since I met Martyn we’ve been playing his songs acoustically, with us taking turns, or singing in sweet sweet harmony. However, there’s something missing as some of the songs don’t even seem to need bass in their stripped down version. He met Wez through work who was keen to come and play with us for a while. And then…..

Where to start? Ok. Since the acoustic gigs were going…. reasonably well, but with something missing, we decided to get another guitarist. We advertised on Gumtree and put a link to our myspace. Encountered a couple of strange people and two promising ones - a lad who I got on really well with (crawling home at 2am having been kicked out of Wetherspoons when all the lights were put on and the staff were sweeping round our feet!) and Lisa, who was full of cold, bless her, and who I thought seemed a bit shy. We arranged jam nights with both of them and although I’d presumed the lad would be able to walk in and play over the top of our stuff he was pretty cautious. We had our first rehearsal with Wez on drums, ran through the songs once and then Lisa joined us - she’d written parts and just sat down and played them off the bat. Within 8 bars, Martyn and I just looked at each other and knew - they fit perfectly, her guitar (a gold gibson) sounded lovely……………… and thankfully she was up for it too! From zero to band in 2 hours.

Jump back a couple of months, Claire and Martyn are playing the Good Ship in Kilburn at one of their acoustic nights. I’ve stayed on drinking and flirting and making a nuisance of myself and wound up at the bus stop for the no.31 way after said route has ceased it’s daily trundle through North West London. There’s a cab firm next to the bus stop and I ask how much to Shepherds Bush. A fellow would-be bus passenger is also going to Shepherds Bush and we share - turns out she works at the venue a few doors up and we chat about music, I was tipsily enthusiastic about our music. A couple of days later she looked me up on myspace… a couple of months later she’s landed her own night at the Half Moon in Putney…. and invited us to play. So, we’re booked in for the 24th of March.

Back to the studio. 3 weeks to go til our first gig, and we manage 7 rehearsals including the first jam session. I’m amazed at how well it’s come together, we’re playing different songs, we’re playing fast, we’re jumping up and down, we’re still playing soft harmony led songs but now we are able to rock out a bit too. Lisa grew up listening to Radiohead and Suede… and her guitar playing rocks my world. Martyn’s getting rhythms we only dreamed of before - drumming helps. Wez’s drumming is creative and sympathetic and just a bit more upbeat than anything I imagined - a new level! It’s just so weird to think that we’ve gone from a slightly shakey start to what sounds to me like a REAL band in just a couple of weeks…

We were put down as Headliners for our first ever gig but as it’s going to be nerve wracking, and as it’s Martyn’s birthday celebration and we want to be able to drink, we managed to swap to first. We’ll be on at 8pm which doesn’t give us enough time to get nervous particularly and then we can kick back afterwards. If this goes well, hopefully word will spread. We are going to record the show so we have something worth sending to people as the minidisc recorder we’ve been using in the studio doesn’t really work (Tim leant it to someone, it’s come back bashed and keeps turning itself off…). Then we’re doing the Good Ship again a week after, and then I guess we’ll concentrate on sending out demos and working on new songs. It’s thrilling. It really is so cool. Being in a reasonably successful band has been on my “to do” list for years now and I don’t see why we can’t actually do well. I would go see us. I have always had a feeling that I’m blessed in some way - for example, I get fired from a particularly stressful job where I hate the people and they seem to feel the same way… the next morning my grandmother died. Horrible time, but gave me a little money and breathing space, it was as effective as being signed off work with stress. I followed Radiohead on tour instead of looking for work and had a fantastic time. Or, I get work in a DVD company my ex started for 4 months, decide it’s time to strike out on my own and get offered all 3 jobs that I go for. Or, I walk into a bar in Kilburn, stick some music on the jukebox and the barman offers me free credits if I stay - we get chatting and he’s a promoter for a venue, who I’m to drop a CD round to when we have something. Things just fall in my lap, it feels, and I’m very grateful.

Let’s see how Tuesday goes before I get all excitable. We might suck. But I’m excited. I don’t think we will…..

I read a blog by a lady called Lori in America, she lives in a neighbourhood with a few problems. At the moment they’re trying to get a part of the local park cleaned up. There are lots of homeless people who congregate there, no families with children will go there because people are drinking, taking drugs and being generally unsavoury there. Broken glass, urine, etc etc. We all know an area like that, right?

Thankfully London has a lot of nice parks, but there are areas where you wouldn’t want to go. In Newcastle, I used to live in one - Cruddas Park. (No evidence of an ACTUAL park…)

I’m sure I’ve told the story about the weekend a bad batch of heroin was being sold and 3 addicts in a tower block opposite died and every time I looked out of the window I saw another ambulance carting off a corpse. Or… although we had porters in the ground floor to check who came and went, it didn’t stop the alcoholic punk pinning me in the lift one day trying to touch me and telling me exactly what he wanted to do to me. Or, the schizophrenic guy on the end of my corridor sitting outside his flat night after night yelling down the hall at 1am.

I was 18 when I lived there - I’d been thrown out of a house by the landlord, had a day’s notice and nowhere else to go. I was given a flat on the spot, admittedly I was a teenage girl, classed as vulnerable, and taking advantage of the many many mental health services that’d been offered to me to help get life back on track… It could’ve gone wrong for me, and I could’ve wound up in all sorts of trouble. But I didn’t. I was living in a reasonably secure flat in the block - not the most savoury of areas, but once I got inside my apartment, I had a cooker, a little furniture, and I was living on benefits, the equivalent of Welfare, to the tune of £40 a week. Out of that I paid my electricity bills, did food shopping, and resisted the urge to use the credit card my thoughtful bank had provided me with.

(Interesting that while I was living on the bare minimum income, with no past history of credit I had no trouble getting a credit card, but now as a solvent never-been-in-debt young adult earning good money, I get turned down for an application. I wonder who they’d make more off in interest payments?)

Anyway. People have made sarcastic comments on Lori’s blog. Also, If only they had homes, they wouldn’t resort to hanging out in the park. Well, when I lived up there, there was a churchyard near Central Station that always had a large group of people hanging out there, drinking cider by the 2 litre bottle, shouting abuse at people, peeing up against the wall, etc etc. Time after time I would see the same people hanging around, no sleeping bags, no possessions with them, so even if they have a place in a hostel it means they have a roof over their head. They have SOMEWHERE to go. But they choose to go and cause a nuisance of themselves. Yes it’s sad and some obviously have mental health problems. But there was me dutifully tripping up to the hospital three times a week trying not to let mine get the better of me. The services are available, and free.

One day I was approached by a woman who I recognised as a regular hanger-outter. She asked me for money and I apologised and said I had none spare. Bearing in mind, even if she’s in a hostel she’s probably claiming benefits and is over 21, so on a higher rate than me.
“You fat cow, stupid bitch, look at the size of you, you’ve probably had more to eat today than I’ve had all week…” she said. It’s stayed with me all these years. I was slightly amazed that she could afford all that vodka and cider, but not food. If you’re hungry, try buying food once in a while instead of £8 bottles of Vodka. I get a lot of food for £8. It’s about all I have to spend on food each week, ACTUALLY.

The guy in Hammersmith who’s always asking for 30p? It’s not for a cup of tea. 30p is the minimum bet you’re allowed to place in the Betting Shop Tim sees him running into when someone gives him money. Tim’s worked in Hammersmith for 10 years and sees it happen regularly.

I know it’s sad, and I know we should all be a bit more charitable towards our fellow man, but call my cynical, my sympathy only goes so far. I played the game, I got my crappy flat, worked hard at therapy and eventually found a job, scraped a living on low wages (a bit more than benefit payments, but HEY I did have to work a 40 hour week… who wants to work a 40 hour week when you can sit on your arse drinking cider?) and these days I think I’m seen as pretty successful. I have a nice apartment. I’ve got a good job and get paid good money. I have creative hobbies, buy myself guitars and books. But things could’ve turned out so differently, and I know they do for a lot of people. I don’t know why. I just know they don’t HAVE to. So part of me finds it hard not to be cynical. I don’t give money to beggars.

www.shelter.org.uk
www.addaction.org.uk
www.mind.org.uk

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TIM DON’T LOOK! DRESS!

What a strange weekend, and to think! it’s not over yet.

I’m glad I do things like this while I’m still young and when I have kids and am 40, I can look back and go, “Well, I had loads of fun in my youth.”

It started off with a band practise on Thursday night where we got to grips with moving choruses and verses around between us, and shortened a song that was dragging a bit when we played it live before. It’s called “House Raid” and is on our Myspace page in it’s old incarnation. As it was written as a dialogue between a girl and her lover who was going to fight in a war, we’ve split the verses - I sing the first and third, Martyn sings the second and we’ve removed the chorus in between verses 2 and 3. It feels incredibly short now but I think it will work better, we’re playing in last in tonight’s set.

Lucy arrived and bedded down on our filthy floor, and then Friday we met up with a gang of people and went off to Sketch, which has possibly the most surreal toilets I’ve ever seen… it’s like being in Mork and Mindy, on LSD:

Started off in the cornish pub having pasties and pints, then split into couples. I went and put makeup and stuff on with the lovely K, swapped clothes and tried on earring and necklace combinations, discussed the merits of a certain Maybelline mascara which only comes off with it’s own remover. I still have plastic dolly lashes now, two days later. I don’t know what to do! But it looked pretty cool on Friday night, let me tell you.

Met up with the rest of the cult gang just off Oxford Street in a pub which had very few chairs, and the ones that were there were only available to women who fluttered their eyelashes and asked, “You’re not using that, are you?” in the most winsome of ways. Headed over to Sketch and was pleasantly surprised to discover I’d gone through the looking glass and into a world where the walls rotate in front of your eyes, people scream “NATASHA! DARLING! COME IN HERE NOW AND BE FABULOUS!” at each other, Swedish journalism students offer to take you to even more expensive and ludicrously poseur bars and Gareth Gates stands next to you at the bar, horrified that the record label launch night he’s at is not in fact populated by other C list pop puppets but, in fact, fabulous fake French Chanteuses (she was great!), atonal string quartets and members of the audience clambering on stage to pretend they’re the headline act who didn’t show up while his songs were played in the background. I overheard him saying, in a cut glass accent: “Juliette! DARLING! Let’s get out of here… A. S. A. P.”

The stutter’s cleared up, then.

I could not drag myself away from the toilets, to be honest, and kept returning just to run between the egg pods and pretend I was in a Goldfrapp video or something. I think I only peed in there once, but must’ve spent a good 45 minutes up on that level. Walking through the restaurant made me feel slightly sorry for the diners, but they’re probably all anorexic PR girls and photograpers assistants being shagged silly by their bosses, or soemthing, so the food part of the night isn’t what they’re there for.

Back in the front bar where it was incredibly hot, the drinks were astronomically expensive but the bar staff let you play with the huge belfast sink at the end of the counter to pour yourself more water…. everyone was stalking the label boss but he was being quite chatty and debonair with it. Marion and I had leg wrestling contests (she won), the DJ began spinning some cool reggae/ska skanking music (shake that booty!) and James, Prav, Marcel and Gabi left. We continued for a short while but swiftly began to realise that we were way too drunk and confused to stay out much longer. We headed back up Oxford Street, put K in a cab and Lucy & I caught the infamous N207 home (obvioulsy we’re not in Gareth Gates’ league or we’d've had a driver, but I like to think the atmosphere on the night bus is incomparable). Lots of Love, although Lucy started talking about Gavin and Stacey which always makes me cry because of the last episode of series 1 where she gets a letter her Dad’s written her for her wedding day before he died. So I was crying, Lucy was asleep on my shoulder, and we made just THE PERFECT pair of pissed quasi lesbians you’re ever likely to see. THAT’S what London’s all about, baby. This is the W12 version of Swingers, right here.

So. Waking up wasn’t as traumatic as it should’ve been, thankfully the hugely inflated cocktail prices meant that I’d stopped drinking once I reached the bar and switched to water, scarfed 2 veggie burgers when I got home and was pleasantly surprised to find that I still had all my motor skills and also, still had home made bread with which to make Edam and Red Onion Toasties (yes, it deserves Capitals), and a Brown Betty just waiting to be filled with deicious, restorative, hot hot tea. Borough Market beckoned for EVEN MORE restorative grease healthy food, so we shuffled onto the tube and met up with the crowd once more. Within two minutes we’d lost Prav, James and Marcel in the throng, but found them an hour or so later in a fantastic pub called The Rake, which is the sister bar to Utobeer, which has the widest selection of beers I’ve encountered in London. I’m not going to say it IS the best beer seller, but it’s certainly the only one I would go to if I was after some obscure American/Belgian/Carribbean/Welsh beer. I drank Kriek. I was weird to poor K, who went home to sleep it off and met a guy then slept some more, from what I can tell. I almost got Lewis in trouble at work cos of drunk. But hey.

Back home, I cleaned my flat’s front room - hoovered, polished tables, shoved wires and important letters into wire cupboards and important letter folders (yes, we have both!) and then started roasting the veg I bought from Shepherds Bush Market for a fraction of the price a Butternut Squash would’ve cost me in Borough. I made a vegan meal - even omitting honey from the tagine and replacing it with soft brown sugar to good effect. Tim thought it was too sweet, but the tomatoes and cinnamon need something, otherwise it’s just a REALLY strange flavour, and the sweetness makes the tomatoes richer, the cinnamon calmer, and the chilli warmer. Cous Cous, pink champagne, cheap rose wine that was ACTUALLY REALLY NICE! and a jam session with the brilliant Johnny from the 70s… ended up with me agreeing to play a solo gig at the Boogaloo this month, no, next month, no, wait, let’s check when we’re sober that there’s actually a slot free on the March bill as the lady who organises it is drunk texting too. But anyway, that should be fun, as we ran through my songs Romeo and The Night Bus Song, I think we can cobble together another 2 between then and now, we’ll probably only need a couple of rehearsals. Oh, how i’m looking forward to that Nervous? I will be.

This morning, I am still happy that my flat looks cleaner than it has in ages, Julia’s told me there is lots of slutty lingerie on sale in Hammersmith, Lucy’s coming up to the Megalith Mall so I’m going to throw some clothes on and meet Martyn for a rehearsal in a couple of hours. I still have to decide what to wear tonight, but I have the gold shoes for my wedding, a nice gold sequinned belt and a little gold sequinned fascinator that I could team up with my little black woolen dress… K gave me a wonderful pheasant fascinator too, so I guess they’re now officially my “thing”! How fun. I might do my eye make up like I did in Belgium now I’ve found a brand of eyeliner that doesn’t go flaky or peel off when you paint big goth cat eyes on yourself. I have the gold glitter to go on over that as well… so all in all I’m looking forward to one more night of weekend before I go back to my other persona and wipe bottoms and be calm and responsible and sweet to small people.

So, my day began earlier than expected as I got an SMS from my boss at 9.30pm last night asking if I could start at 7.30am this morning. A lot of Nannies work 7am - 7pm so I know I’m fortunate to have a job that has reasonable hours, but it still was a challenge to drag myself out of bed this morning, especially after the discovery of Guinness Red at the local Irish Pub - the only place locally to watch football matches. Sadly, as it was Australia day the place seemed to be filled with arseholes stereotypes in flags and fancy dress, yelling obsceneties at each other and going outside every now and then to throw up. Still, even though I was the least Brazen Sheila in there, I managed to get some attention (”Aah Jeeeezus! Oi LOOOOVE that dress!”)- nice to know even drunken Ulster boys appreciate a bit of retro kitsch :

…and to think I was “competing” with hotpant and bikini clad antipodeans (Do they realise that in this country, December is winter?). There’s no accounting for taste.

So, once MumBoss and DadBoss had left this morning, I ran around like a headless chicken trying to cover everything in the kitchen with old sheets and curtains and whatever else came to hand. The boys did me really proud by getting themselves dressed and ready, Cuddly Middle even helped Angel Boy choose appropriately warm shirts. I dropped them both at school and went round the house tidying up after the weekend. They’d had a really busy one by the look of things - adult clothes adandoned in the hall, kitchen utensils hidden under the sofa… I managed to get everything straight and neat before I had to collect Little’un. I decided that rather than try and make a sandwich in a centimetre of brick dust, we would head over to the huge park near Sensible Eldest’s school and visit a cafe I know nearby which has a whole room downstairs full of toys, low squishy sofas, organic roasted vegetable pizza… and so on! We spent an hour or so there, in the warm, in the CLEAN, having a lovely lunch and feeling not a jot guilty about the expense as I’d chanced upon a lost £5 note in the tube station. I feel bad when I find money, because someone’s lost it, but at the same time…. YAY.

From there we took a stroll in the pushchair to allow Angel Boy’s lunch to settle properly and, said Hi to Tim in his shop. The ongoing car saga was discussed (It is being towed to a garage tomorrow for unknown repairs and an MOT… fingers crossed) and Angel Boy was quite impressed by the iPhone’s “The Force Unleashed” app which uses the motion senser to provide light sabre sound effects when you swish it from side to side. Angel Boy talks about Tim a LOT when we’re alone, asks questions, tells me this, that and the other… but goes quite shy when faced with the man himself.

To the park afterwards, and a good hour in the climbing frame, Angel Boy insisting I take a turn on the zip-line slide and then cackling madly when I reached the middle and stopped. Those things used to be my FAVOURITE playground equipment EVER when I was growing up, so I was happy to oblige. We did some monkey bars, and got followed around by a little girl who seemed to be convinced that whatever Angel Boy was using had to be THE piece of equipment to use… it was quite funny, watching him dash from see-saw to slide to swing with her pounding after him breathlessly.

Collecting Sensible Eldest was a breeze, as Cuddly Middle was on a playdate with a friend. Angel Boy was beginning to show signs of tiredness and began whining and crying… I gave him a cuddle on the way home and put him to relax in front of the TV. He’s supposed to get 30 mins TV per day after dinner, but frankly if he’d stayed mobile and curious for that “I’m just putting dinner on” time, he would’ve gone into meltdown. I know MumBoss likes reading stories to him instead of letting him watch TV, so I’m sure they had a fine evening anyway as by the time she arrived home I’d liberated the kitchen from dust-sheet hell, wiped down all the surfaces, cooked some pasta with sauteed veg and parmesan, checked one page of Sensible Eldest’s homework and seen him progress with more, gotten Angel Boy into the bath and… failed to find the switch for the fuse that had blown, leaving the downstairs in complete darkness! Oh well. Can’t be Super Nanny every time.

I finally got Tim his long awaited Christmas/Engagement present:

He is one happy bunny. I am tempted to get one myself, but I’m paying £25 a month for a BLECH service from 3 and I’m tied into a contract until May. I didn’t receive any text messages over New Year - even though I was sending them, the replies all arrived at once on the 2nd Jan. They were really unapologetic about it when I called them - “Sorry Madam but that’s just mobile networks for you. All mobile networks are subject to disruption at busy times…” - Yes, but THREE DAYS? I missed out on meeting an old friend as I didn’t get the message saying which pub he was in. I had to work on good, old fashioned, “being where you said you would be at 4pm” style social life organisation. I could still make calls, of course, but no one thinks to call someone when we all send text messages as par for the course these days.

So, my options are:

[o] Reduce my monthly fee to the minimum tarriff (£9 a month) and use the iPhone with a different number, increasing my overall monthly spend by £20

[o] Buy myself out of my contract for £90, which works out even more expensive than paying £9 a month so isn’t really practical

[o] Put up and shut up

I don’t need an iPhone THAT much. The only thing I’ll ever use it for is checking facebook while I’m at work, and letting the boys use the Lightsabre app - which is just begging for another broken screen.

This weekend we’d planned on going to Brighton but did our usual “Oops this is WAY too late for normal people to still be in bed” routine and didn’t go. The car is still broken and Tim spent a fair chunk of time messing with wires under the bonnet. Now the battery’s flat. There’s no guarantee that when it does start up, the fuse won’t just blow again… so I guess we’ll wait and see. I think he’s going to get it towed to a garage for an MOT on Monday morning, and get them to repair anything that needs to be done. So hopefully I’ll be able to drive next week, just in time for my next lesson on 31st. I might cancel that and put it back by a week, so I have some time to get to grips with driving again… practising, practising, so that the foot actions become second nature and so on. It feels like a waste to be given so much information before I’ve processed the basics.

We ended up eating at Julia and Johnny’s flat on Friday night, and me who’d sworn off drink downing G&T’s most of the evening. I didn’t feel hungover at all the next day so maybe I didn’t drink as much as Tim made out. Saturday night we went to Dunc & Vicki’s for dinner as we’d not made it as far as the south coast. I think I only had one full glass of wine spread over little top ups throughout the meal, which was a relief. We were all tired by 11pm and Tim and I staggered home in the cold.

Today I think we’re heading to Spitalfields for a mooch around. Another friend of ours runs the Vegan Raw Food Bus thingy, but he’s working til 6 so can’t come and watch the Liverpool match (against Everton - it’s the derby! Should make for a warm, relaxed atmosphere in the pub later… /sarcasm)

Back to work tomorrow. Nothing much of interest has been going on but a normal, sociable weekend had by all. London’s a nice place to live if you have a network of friends in postcodes nearby. It’s just so expensive, but having dinner parties does seem to be the way forward! We’re all so old these days we just want to stay in the warm anyway.

I’ve not been listening to the weight loss hypnosis CD thing for a while (until this morning!) but still seem to not be gaining any weight. Hopefully I can rack it up and get back on track as far as losing is concerned. I find myself grabbing a salad for lunch at work instead of two thick sandwiches, though I have rediscovered the Breville at home. I bought some Edam cheese on a whim a few days ago and it’s THE PERFECT cheese for toasted sandwiches - I challenge anyone to say otherwise. A load of Edam and some red onion, slap it in the Breville and it’s brilliant. I’ve got some Mozarella too and intend to buy some sun dried tomatoes. It has HAS HAS to be square white bread as well, Sun-Blest or Kingsmill if you’re feeling a bit posh. That toasted sandwich maker was a present from Nettie, who this year got me a Dustbuster. She is always puzzled by my answers when she asks what I’d like for Christmas (”Er… *laugh* OH - KAAAAAY”) but honestly? I use these things all the time and it’s great to be given them as gifts as they’re useful and save me the outlay, or save me making do without them when I think I can’t really justify spending XXX on a Dustbuster when I already have a broom and a dustpan. The toasted sandwich machine came into work with me in Soho and we had phases where we’d all eat toasties for lunch or afternoon tea… back in the days where we had our own little office and got away with murder. It has been a trusty companion.

I don’t think having a toasted cheese sandwich will be a problem, as this “diet” works completely differently to everything else. Somehow, the self hypnosis CD gets in your head and you really don’t feel like eating unless you’re genuinely hungry. Then you chew slowly, and stop before you’re full - I’ve found myself feeling full and though I still feel compelled to finish everything if I’m at home and have made it myself (I can’t stand the waste) I’m taking much much smaller portions, my whole appetite and portion sizing has changed. I’m not so bad on leaving things in restaurants as they usually serve you huge portions anyway and I don’t feel as though I can eat them all. I’m hoping that within 5 months the extra 10lb will disappear, as I have crept down another 2 in the past fortnight. Not even trying! Drinking so much in Brussels! It’s a bit eerie. You wonder what else he’s put in your head…

Still, that size 12 wedding dress is looking like it won’t have to be altered after all. That would be super cool. I will have to start doing little weight exercises for my arms though, 70lb worth of loose skin is not a flattering look whatever dress size I am. I need to tone up. I think I’ll probably go back to the gym next week…. we’ll see.

Ok, so that time, I WAS quoting random radiohead lyrics. I should probably scan through old entries to make sure I haven’t already used that as a post title, but… I fear the answer.

I’m so predictable.

Band practise tonight. I was really hard on Martyn and made him watch my swinging metronomic headstock and play in time. I was like your evil conductor stopping everyone and yelling “NO! NO! NO!”. Only a little less harsh, I hope. Only marginally, though… it just gets so frustrating playing with no rhythm. Hopefully, when the new drummer joins it will tie everything together. It’s just little things that get very very frustrating, like slowing down when there’s a chord change, or me playing an intro and him coming in at a different speed… I need to work on cutting a chorus out of a song he’s written as otherwise it’s just too, too long. We got some demo songs recorded in the roughest roughest form though, which he’s giving to the drummer. Now I have the acoustic bass it’s easier to get the main songs recorded. Up til now, all we’ve had on myspace are the sparse songs or my own songs where I play alone.

You can find it here, until I can be bothered to install the media player on Wordpress.

We also took a cute picture that I’ve put as our default picture. We barely have any of us together.

I’m exhausted today! It’s been a long week but ended on a high and a low.

The high was going on a playdate with the two youngest while the eldest was on a playdate with someone his age. The Mum and I had a good chat and the boys were angelic, had a really good time, and played nicely for hours!

The low…. well. There are school issues, Cuddly Middle isn’t going to be going to the same school as Eldest.

I’m off to Brighton this weekend with my lovely fiance. After last week’s Brussels shenanigans I need a nice long lie in and some bracing sea air to wear me out and make me sleep soundly. Will be good. I hope I finally get to visit the Royal Pavilion.
It’s 50%50 whether the car will work, though. We’ve got it narrowed down to the fuses, changed one but it blew again, so we think it will be the common fault with a lot of this kind of car, the wire to the fuse box rubs against something and the insulation wears off, shorting it out. So, Tim has a roll of insulation tape (I’ve never used it to literally insulate something before!) and we’re hoping for the best.

No, I’m not randomly quoting Radiohead lyrics, though YES I know I do tend to do that.

Unfortunately, every electrical item of importance seems to have upped and died on me. Maybe my IUD has acquired magnetic properties and is emitting EMPs at inopportune moments. So far:

OK, the first one wasn’t really unexpected, but it sucks. I was sat at the kitchen table with the boys and my phone slipped. It hit the floor as it’s done a hundred times, but this time the screen has broken somewhere and the display is a murky black mess.

Within 5 minutes, my iPod decided to freeze and stop working. When I restored it using my laptop, it wouldn’t “take”. Every time I hit restore, it would run through whichever little procedures it does, then claim it needed restoring again. The cynic in me is certain that Apple have built a shelf life into these things, which, combined with the ever changing “better” versions that come out regularly, will ensure they have a steady stream of sales. Self destruct in 10…. 9…… 8………….

Last, but most definitely not least, our CAR.
Yes, I have become one of the idiots who owns a car in London. After my boss’s huge emotional crazy lady rant at me when she told me “it’s ridiculous, someone YOUR AGE not being able to drive, it’s a life skill!” I caved in and accepted the offer of my uncles’ old car. It had been sat on the driveway at my aunt’s house for 6 months and once we’d given it a spin out and back into London the battery seemed fine and was all charged up. Last year my aunt ran it up to my mother’s house and blew the head gasket, so it’s got a new one of those. Possibly, they had the carbuerettor replaced as well, but I can’t remember. We replaced the clutch which was very very soft, the front suspension, the fly wheel and a headlight.
As we were heading out for me to get some driving practise in, we discovered that one of the fuses has blown and it won’t go anywhere. Tim’s got one ordered from the garage up the road and will have to collect it, fit it and get the car up to Acton for an MOT before 9.30 tomorrow morning. Tim is Superman. He’s out fitting the headlight glass now.

It has cost us to date, £450.
My driving license and lessons so far have cost me £250.
The insurance is £47 a month.

Since I’ve come back from holiday, things have been good at work and I’ve been trying extra hard to make sure everything is done as it should be. The school bags and PE kits are packed. We do reading, spellings, I think it’s sorted. Dinner is ready in advance so I can do homework with the boys before eating.

I love going to work and I like the way they treat me. They are GREAT employers, for real, I am onto a really good thing. But every now and again you come up against an issue where your opinions differ wildy - I’m really quite anti-driving, and they’re very pleased that I’ve started. I will be explaining my point of view in my review (probably February now?) and see what they say. If they insist that I use my car for work then I’ll have to accept that it’s out of my control unless I quit on moral grounds. I’m not TOO likely to do that as I won’t be able to afford jack shit in the way of eco laundry detergents if I’m on the dole, it’ll be tesco value and fuck the fair trade sticker (although… I’d probably be OK as The Co-op is my favourite supermarket. It’s own brand coffee, tea, chocolate etc is fair trade and cheap. Instead of shopping as Sainsbury’s which is closer to their house, I go the extra 250m and visit the store which has stronger ethical policies and I would like to think I’d pay a little over Tesco Value prices to get fair trade…)

Anyway. Getting back to the point. The car. The car. The car is dead. But shall be resurrected tomorrow! I resent driving it, but it’s actually quite fun and I appear to be good at it - my instructor seems to think I will learn very quickly. I’ve had 3 two hour lessons now, during the second he took me up the high street and main road near my house, during the third I went along the Westway and onto the North Circular. Hmm! I’ve got to practise going slowly with the clutch so I can get to grips with turning in the road, reversing round corners and so on. But I will get there - once the car is fit to practise in!

In other news, my band played a disastrous gig the other night in a disastrously organised pub, the wedding plans are coming along OK and I even zipped up my wedding dress at Christmas. I have to get busy losing the last 10 lb so I don’t have to get it altered. If I do need it altered, I need to know by how much… so I will have to get busy and reach something like a nice weight a month or so before the wedding. Paul McKenna continues to work reasonably well although my body does really go haywire when I have PMT which is about 3 weeks out of every 4.

I went to Brussels with an old friend to celebrate his 30th birthday and that was good fun, though frustrating being stuck in the Grand Place for about 60% of the time with a group of people saying, “What shall we do?” “I don’t know, where do you want to go?” “I don’t mind, where do YOU want to go?” “I don’t mind. What shall we do?”. I saw the Horta Museum which is a lovely art deco house, and drank some beer. Ok, a LOT of beer. OK, waaay waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay TOO MUCH BEER. I didn’t feel like chocolates much though. I think we might go back to Bruges. When, though? is the question. I would like to go to Venice, Vienna, Prague, Dublin (again) and Bruges. Only Bruges can practically be reached by train… and here’s me banging on about being kind to the environment and considering all these flights. Hmm. MMmmph.

Still don’t know where we’re going on honeymoon.

…and back to work with a bang. Or a *flump*, whichever best describes your feelings on the matter.

I do believe I will be a better Nanny this year - I am getting on top of the homework, packing (or checking that the kids have packed) school bags correctly…. the laundry I have always been pretty good at, I think. The rooms are never what you’d call a bombsite - I think they’re pretty tidy for 3 boys who can take a clear, calm room to the “three empty toy box” stage in 15 minutes. Even when you sit down with them and try to get them to engage in one thing and tidy it up afterwards… kids operate on a short attention span. They don’t put the pens away if they see a toy car on the way back from the toilet. I also resent being compared to a nanny who had 13 years experience when she STARTED, and stayed for 4. She also had both boys at the same school once they were old enough, a LOT less homework and a baby instead of an active 3 year old. If I leave Angel Boy doing something now while I help with homework, it’s a timebomb! I can give him jigsaws or books or train tracks or cars or anything to keep him in one place, try and settle him into something before I have to dedicate myself to the older two, but he’ll move on after 15 minutes or so. Juggling, juggling. Any tips on how to distract a 3 year old while I spend 45 mins doing homework with the other two are gratefully received. Bearing in mind they’re not allowed to watch television, which is a cop out anyway. Bearing in mind that some nights, the eldest doesn’t get home until 5.10pm and I finish at 5.30 and I’m supposed to have them fed, bathed and all homework completed in that 20 minutes.

There are little niggles I have that seem too petty to mention, but I’m due a review as I’ve been there a whole year on Saturday.

I don’t know whether my mood has dipped a little, even. I woke up this morning and felt like crying because I have a driving lesson booked, and I’m meeting a friend for coffee and then have band practise… and I just want to be left alone in a dark room to sleep. It does sort of sound like depression, doesn’t it? I’ve been depressed in the past and have used antidepressants when it affects my ability to live a normal life. At the moment I’m able to get on and do things, but I just feel so down about them. I just want to avoid all responsibility, pressure and interactions.

Just before Christmas, in the same week my hitherto lovely boss had unleashed her wrath, a girl I had just started getting to know went all weird as well. I am a flirty person, but only flirty. I was exchanging banter with a guy who knew I was engaged, and I was being suggestive but we all knew it was just Blah, Blah, Blah. Only apparently I’m a traitor to my gender as I knew she had a crush on him… well… I don’t know her that well, and she was quite dismissive about it when she mentioned she’d liked him. So whatever. I thanked him for the free beer on facebook, and he made some flirty reply, but obviously I’m the one who is an evl bitch stabbing people in the back. This, people, is why I don’t have many female friends.

I am lucky that I do have some very good friends, though. I’ve had a couple of surprises, where one person called me late at night just for a chat as he saw online that I was a bit sideways. He’s very cool, though again we don’t see much of each other and I wouldn’t say we know each other THAT well, it meant a lot as it was a simple thing, but it really showed someone out there cared enough about me to give me an hour or so of their time. My other good friend is going through a tough time emotionally, but she always listens to me, even when I have no idea what to say to her when she’s drunk and upset. I hope listening to it helped, because I sure as hell don’t know how to help her. I think it helps that we’re both quite sarcastic and irreverant and make dead pan jokes instead of being brutally honest about how bleak things can seem sometimes (unless we’re drunk, that is).

Anyway.