1. Checking your stats counter to find that one of your recent visitors found your blog by using the search words 'my cleavage' (thanks, sis, for this one in your recent guest post...). And then seeing that this same visitor clicked out to Millenium Housewife - which totally bears out her recent post here (hilarious, check it out). This leads me to assume that there must be a lot of people out there who have expectations of reading about things other than mummyhood, parenting, and potty training when they arrive at my blog. That'll teach me to have a named it 'The Potty Diaries', I suppose. You could say I was 'asking for it' (ooh er missus...).
2. Arriving at your mother-in-law's, spotting the Boden catalogue in her sitting room, and experiencing the cold realisation that you and she shop at the same place. And that she is currently wearing the same skirt you wore the previous day. I mean, I like my mother in law, but Oh, the Horror! So that's it, Johnny. No more weekly catalogues from you, please. It's Zara, Stella Forest, or Marilyn Moore all the way for me from now on.
3. On the same visit, watching the same mother-in-law present your sons with traditional Sinta Klaas outfits from Holland, for Saint Nick and his little helper Zwarte Piet. And realising that on the front of the packet containing the latter costume the little cherub pictured, demonstrating how it should be worn, really and truly has his face blacked up. I mean... WTF?
4. Discovering that bin men in Kensington and Chelsea are not required to collect from bins situated within 5 metres of scaffolding because, as the lady on the other end of the telephone said 'we don't supply them with hard hats, love'. It is of course fine for me to be wheeling my children in and out of our flat underneath the same scaffolding, however.
5. Noticing that the chemical toilet installed by the builders working on your house - directly in front of our only working window in the sitting room, by the way - is being used not only by the team working on your property, but by the builders working on around 3 separate properties in the same street. The stairs leading down to it look like the M25 at around 11am and half an hour after lunch each day....
And more generally...
6. 4 x 4's in London. Why? (Well, 'why?' in any big city really, but especially here with the narrow roads, rubbish parking facilities and heavy traffic...). I know. Not particularly relevant, but I just can't help myself.
So... what's made you go 'hmm' today?
What's made me go 'Hmmm'? Well I'm about to write that post - on trying to work out what I can actually cook for some dinner party guests with unfortunate allergies....
ReplyDeletePlease tell me they are actual allergies, Mud, and not just 'food intolerances'. As the mum of 2 boys with very real and dangerous allergies, I am rather intolerant myself - of people who claim that they can't eat what you've troubled yourself to make them as wheat makes them feel bloated, dairy doesn't fit with their diet, or they just don't eat red meat because they - just don't. (And yes, this is a bugbear of mine - can you tell?)
ReplyDeleteFunny you should mention bugbears - I tagged you!
ReplyDeleteBuilders in London drive me nuts. That's another post altogether though
4x4's - just 'why'? (Unless you're a Welsh hill farmer...)
ReplyDeleteI do think they're actual allergies (he isn't one to complain usually) - but I don't feel I can write back with:
ReplyDelete"I say - are those allergies or are you being precious??"
Might have to grin and bear it.
Any recipe tips?
Watching my 7 year old carry the coat that his friend left in our car last night into school, and wondering if it has much chance of reaching its owner, wondering how hard that could possibly be, but knowing the coat-transferring skills of the average 7 year old boy, and then thinking WTF why didn't I just arrange to meet his mother in the car park and do the deed myself? A different kind of Hmmm, but it was a Hmmm of sorts.
ReplyDeleteAnd 4x4s in London - yes! And when they are hurtling down a narrow country lane towards you (if they do ever leave the city), have you noticed how you are expected to tuck in and go off-road, even though they are the ones who are designed for the whole off-road thing?
Mothers who believe their children can do no wrong and one day...bam...it hits them that those children really can do wrong and are about to go to jail....
ReplyDeleteWhat?
It isn't my kid! He's only 2. A co-worker. And I've had to hear about it much of today. It's kind of sad, actually.
I've had some weird ones off the stats counter too - like 'schoolgirls in nappies'.
ReplyDeleteWith you on 4x4s (hate, hate, hate them); builders and bin men. Boden I have occasionally succumbed to, but do find it too ubiquitous, as you say. Today my bugbear is that Lambeth have blocked off the end of a perfectly good street so that you can't drive down it - all in the name of improving the traffic flow. They just can't stop fiddling.
PM, Don't get me started on 4x4s. I'm so glad you mentioned that. I had worried that your years in K&C had made you tractor blind and you wouldn't notice the X5's etc. Am off now to put on my 'Ban the 4x4' T-shirt.
ReplyDeleteRachel - I can't wait to read it! (And to check out the tag, obviously. That'll save me from having to come up with something to write myself...)
ReplyDeleteMud, it's a tricky one. Perhaps you should check out Pig in the Kitchen (link on my front page). She specialises in dealing with people who can't take wheat and dairy?
TD: with you. Totally. I have to be, because if I showed the slightest bit of weakness my Husband, the petrol-head, would be heading off to the Ranger Rover (2nd hand) showroom asap...
God, Iota, you are SO right! I must remember to mention that to my country family and see if they've noticed the same thing. Footballer's Knees; any thoughts?
J's Mommy, that's the thing, we're blind when it comes to our children's faults.
NVG - well, the councils have to justify their existence somehow. I hate it when they tinker with the sequencing on the traffic lights. A perfectly normally function junction becomes one that only lets 2 cars over before they change overnight. Gaaaah!
FK - the subject for your next post, perhaps?
Women in the gym changing room who turn coyly towards the lockers to hide their boobs, then bend right over to put their knickers on. MH
ReplyDeleteps thanks for the tag! x
Realising that to go to Fitball on Thursday I need, erm, gym clothes. I do not like shopping for things involving sports. It was quite traumatic.
ReplyDeleteDidn't go anywhere yesterday to have a(n?) hmmm moment but we did have kangaroos in the garden again both morning and evening. Think that's probably more of an ahhhh moment! Still can't get over seeing them so 'up close and personal' and we've lived in this house for more than a year now ;-)
ReplyDelete4x4s are such a pain in the city and frequently out of it too, but if you ever get bogged, a passing 4x4 is a godsend. That's the first and last time we use the unsealed road en route to visit our son!
Scaffolders who erect scaffolding at waist height around neighbouring terraced houses the day before the wheelie bins are emptied, leaving said wheelie bin stuck in back garden after the council had been on strike the previous week. That made me go more the hmmmm! x
ReplyDeleteMH - that's a good one!
ReplyDeleteJo - no idea what fitball is but am assuming the outfit is a little more forgiving than that for beach volleyball?
Hi Sharon - you are of course referring to those 4x4 drivers who actually know how to drive these things. Not so many of those in central London, however...
SLTW - sorry. missed your comment... And yes, I think the air would have been blue if that had happened here!
ReplyDeleteHmmm? Discovering a city ordinance that says I can't sweep the copious amount of leaves from the city tree onto the curbside to be collected by the street cleaner. Our city plants trees so close to houses that they end up clogging the sewwer pipes, which I then have to pay thousands for to be rodded! (If it's under my house then it's my problem.)
ReplyDeleteSince it's the city's bloody tree, I decided they could take care of the leaves, but apparently not!
I foresee you out sweeping your leaves onto the sidewalk at 3am dressed in black wearing nightvision goggles...
ReplyDelete