End of term madness, meets BritMums Live!, meets Good Enough Mothering...

I am all for giving children the opportunity to make their voices heard within the school environment.  One of the worst things I remember about being a child was the feeling that your voice didn't really count for anything; adults got to make all the decisions, big and small, so the fact that the Boys' school has a Student Council seems like a Good Thing to me.  No, really, it does.  Just as long as my sons realise that they live in a benevolently authoritative establishment at home.

That means, by the way, that I will listen to their points of view and accommodate them where possible but - when all is said and done - what I / Husband says goes.  Especially on the big issues.  Like, rice or pasta for dinner.  Or whether that crust is going to be eaten up or not (we can discuss 'not' - but then there won't be dessert afterwards...)

Anyway.  The Student Council.  It had decreed that today was Celebrity Day.  (We won't get into a discussion of whether celebrity is something to be applauded here, I think.  I mean, obviously it's not, not really, but when everyone else is participating it seems to be more than a little curmudgeonly to lecture your children on why you are not going to help them pull together a costume when all their friends are dressing up as famous football players or pop princesses).

But let's put Celebrity Day in context.  We are in the last week of term here (do I hear a sharp intake of breath from UK based readers?).  So, you know, I have a question. Whose bright* idea was it to schedule it for this week? (*Add expletives as you see fit).  Because yes, come next Monday my two little darlings will be home all day, every day, until the end of August.

*sighs deeply*

*pulls self together*

Yippee.

So, bearing that in mind, much as I love my sons and am looking forward to spending un-timetabled weeks with them in the very near future, I have to admit that there are just one or two teensy little things I would like to get sorted before that happens.

• Like, finish the copy-editing job I was just sent.  
• Like, finish my novel - a ridiculous dream which is close enough to touch, but not quite - or, in the absence of that, re-read it and come up with an elevator pitch on it's theme.  You know; 'Oh, my novel?  Well, it's sort of Tolkien meets Chekhov meets Maggie O'Farrell...' (It's not, by the way.  Totally different, in fact.  But you get what I'm talking about).  
• Like, gird my loins (as in, work out what the hell to wear) for BritMums Live! this weekend, prepare myself for the workshop and the keynote reading I'll be doing at it, remember to pack my glasses for the opticians appointment I'm squeezing in during my 60 hour whirlwind visit to London, write a shopping list for the same (sleep?  Who needs sleep?), and also batten down the hatches here so that Husband has sufficient supplies (aka pizza and crisps) during my absence.

It's not surprising then that Celebrity Day slipped my mind until Boys #1 and #2 reminded me of it just before their bedtime yesterday evening.  Cue mild panic followed by frantic thinking and creative problem solving.

But, we triumphed.  Well - sort of.  Boy #1 strode into school complete with long brown shorts, white shirt, blue sweater and comma-quiff (courtesy of my Aveda wax) as TinTin, and Boy #2 negotiated the corridors in a dark blue t-shirt tucked into slightly-too short but suitably snug tracksuit bottoms, and wearing his brother's black ski helmet bearing the legend 'Hamilton' written in felt-tip pen on a sticky label across the front of it.

I did spend a few moments last night considering the possibility of covering Boy #2 all over with sponsorship labels so he could look a little closer to the real thing but once I googled a few images and realised that a) we didn't have a yellow flame-retardent jumpsuit to stick them on and b) I would be up all night printing them, it would be much simpler to tell him he was wearing Lewis Hamilton's training kit instead.  (They keep the many-labelled racing kit for race occasions only, didn't you know?)

At the end of term, there was a limit, I decided.  In this instance, Good Enough mothering would have to be good enough...

On conspicuous consumption and turning into your parents

Husband and I are in London - without the kids - for a couple of 'days off' before we fly back to Moscow as a family.  I love London.  It's home (I believe I may have said that on here before...) and I hope that once we've finished our time in Russia, we return to it, but I must say that the extreme levels of conspicuous consumption that I see all around are slightly worrying.

The number of people who assumed that we were heading back here for the sales to buy more 'stuff' before we go back home surprised me;  for a start, we have two young sons who have just spent Christmas with their extended families.  How much more 'stuff' does one family need than the amount we already have to cram into our luggage allowance? (Admittedly, Husband and I are responsible for the purchase of much of the 'stuff', but I still reserve the right to mutter to myself about plastic crap when we try to pack it all away in a few days time.  It's my right as a mother, surely?)

And whilst we're on the subject of consumption, we went to the cinema last night, to see 'Skyfall'.  We don't tend to go to the movies in Russia - in fact, apart from the odd time that I take the Boys over the summer break, we don't really go at all, and certainly not just the two of us; by the time you factor in getting to and from the cinema, childcare, and then the cost of getting the babysitter home again, we might as well go out for dinner, so it's been a while since we did this.  We enjoyed the film (although Husband did wonder where all the blondes in James Bond films have disappeared to recently - to which I responded that there was only one blond who mattered and he was in the title role), but the experience left me with this question:

When did I turn into my parents?

It wasn't the sex, the violence, or the occasional bad language that makes me ask this (in fact, now I come to think of it, there was very little of two out of three of those - comparatively speaking).  It wasn't even the girl seated behind us, clearly on a first date, who was loudly sharing WAY more than was probably wise with a potential boyfriend (Mystery, ladies - where's the Mystery?).   No, what causes me to ask this question is my reaction to the constant - incessant - crunching and munching going on around me.  Sitting in that cinema was like being in the middle of a field, surrounded by cows chewing their cud.

Now, I've lived outside the UK for 3 years now, so I suppose I might have missed it.  When was the law stating that no movie experience is complete without a family-sized bucket of popcorn on your lap actually passed?

Silent Sunday