World Book Day number eleventy-million
Hi all. Remember me? (waves madly). I know, I know. I’ve been absent for a while. But there was something about World Book Day that made me want to put fingers to keyboard. Maybe it was all those pictures on my social media feeds of mums with littluns dressed up as Thing 1 and Thing 2. It stirred the memory banks of all those desperate World Book Days past.
My kids are older now. DD is practically an adult and DS is deep enough into secondary school for me to be able to relax my hold a little. Suffice to say, World Book Day didn’t even cross my radar this year.
And then we got an email from DS’s school: the entire school – from kids still in nappies to 18-year-olds – was to dress up.
I can only deduce that the schoolteachers hate us. Really hate us.
I have a theory about dress-up days. I think mums come preloaded with only so many they can do before they give up. Ten years’ worth, maybe. And my bank is exhausted (not just my bank that’s exhausted, but that’s another blog). I just don’t have it in me anymore. I also think that, at 12 years old, DS needs to take some responsibility for this type of thing himself because, let’s face it, if it was up to me I’d dress him up as Angelina Ballerina and be done with it (I’ve just realised that was 10 years ago – see? It’s 10 years, I’m telling you).
So I asked DS who he wanted to go as and he said it was next week not this week, and disappeared back upstairs to play Fortnite.
Last night I realised from the flurry of #worldbookday posts by better-organised mothers who’d already produced brilliant costumes (where do you find the enthusiasm, ladies? Is it HRT?) that it was in fact this week. DS was duly summoned.
‘I’ll go as myself, from the school yearbook,’ he said with a shrug. ‘I love that book.’
And I sat there thinking: why the hell didn’t I think of that all those years ago?
COVID-19 Distance-learning: Day 12
I haven’t written anything new because it’s all a bit Groundhog Day around here these days. Just like that strange week between Christmas and New Year, only with cake rather than cheese.
But today I feel like I won the Golden Ticket in Willy Wonkerland: I’ve got a government permit to go to the grocery shop at three o’clock tomorrow. I might even pick an outfit tonight and wash my hair! Whoo-hoo! Party like it’s 2020!
Meanwhile, in other news: I know everything there is to know about Shakespeare (37 plays; allegedly died on his birthday. Thank God that project’s finished), I can do ratios in my sleep, even the lockdown’s locked down, and home-schooling’s going to continue 10 days a week till 2065.
How are you getting on?
Phrase of the day:
‘Mummy, I know you’re working, but can I just…?’
At the moment we’re reading:
Land of Stories (Book 2) – The Enchantress Returns by Chris Colfer
I Am The Messenger by Markus Zusak (only, I think I’ve read it before?!)
COVID-19 Distance-learning: Day 6
I suppose it was inevitable. There was always going to be a bad day – and today was it.
DS and I got through last week powered by the novelty of home-schooling, the joy of technologies newly discovered, the exhilarating freedom of video-chats and the excitement of swimming in our own pool after ‘school’ – not to mention the stern figure of DH working from home for the first time in his life.
But today it all went to pot. DH disappeared upstairs to work, and DS had to reach inside himself and yank out enough 11-year-old enthusiasm to get dressed, brush his teeth and start his maths lesson alone.
It didn’t help that DD’s now on Easter holidays and prancing about in silk pyjamas eating waffles and making Tik Toks… DS, on the other hand, had to begin his day with a two-day maths project that he claimed not to know how to do, followed without a break by the continuation of the Shakespeare project. I mean… poor guy. The closest I get to liking Shakespeare is watching Upstart Crow.
So, I helped. But apparently not very well. We did the maths project: so far, so good but, during English, there may have been tears. There may have been a stand-off that led to sulking on the sofa. There may even have been both of the above – but, eventually, DS sidled back up to me and wrote three really rather good paragraphs straight off the cuff without any input. So, what on earth was that drama all about? Was your day any better?
Phrase of the day: ‘I just want to go back to school!’
At the moment we’re reading:
Land of Stories (Book 2) – The Enchantress Returns by Chris Colfer (DH is in charge of that)
Daisy Jones and The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid (different to anything I’ve read in a while)
Save The Cat by Blake Snyder (‘the last book on screen-writing you’ll ever need’ – let’s hope!)
The Christmas wish-list of a 6-year-old boy
I try to bring my children up not to be materialistic.
Yes, in Dubai.
We do public beaches and pools, not malls. But still, the materialism permeates like soggy rain: the children want things their friends have. They want things they see on TV.
(I’m a child of wartime parents. My children don’t often get what they want.)
So DS today writes a Christmas wish list.
‘There’s only six things on it,’ he tells me.
Wow.
I read the list:
Guinness Book of World Records – 2016.
Guinness Book of World Records – 2015 (why?).
Lego City Police sets (‘But DS, you have the police station?’ ‘I know, but there’s loads more I could still get!’)
Laptop (he is six).
Phone (I repeat: he is six).
Toy-maker.
Now it’s at this point that I start to get embarrassed, for I am the mum who Googled ‘toymaker’; only to realise two minutes later that there is no such thing. It is not something he’s seen on Disney Channel. It’s not something he’s seen on the ads on Channel 5; it’s something out of his imagination.
‘If I get that, Mummy, I’ll be able to make every toy I ever want and never ask you for anything again,’ he says. ‘Please?’
‘Sure,’ I say. ‘Just tell me where to buy it…’
There’s lentils in the biscuits aisle
It’s clear as soon as we reach the supermarket that something’s wrong. People are wandering around looking dazed and confused. By the kitchen roll, there’s a woman in tears, her shopping list hanging useless from her hand. A man dashes past. His eyes are panicky and his gaze sweeps left and right, searching – searching for what? Has there been an atrocity at the butcher’s counter; a cereal killer in the breakfast aisle?
I’m just about to call the children and suggest we leave, but then I realise what’s happened: the supermarket’s changed its shelves around. Not only is nothing where it used to be, but even the aisles themselves have moved, and nothing in the new regime makes sense.
You come out from cleaning products and go straight into cereal bars. There are lentils in the biscuits aisle, tinned tuna alongside breakfast cereal. It’s as if the shop staff threw everything in the air and let it fall randomly onto the shelves.
Heaven forbid they actually intended to shelve the goods like this. I can just imagine the planning meeting:
‘Where shall we put the tinned tomatoes? With the ketchup, pizza sauce and tomato paste?’
A burst of laughter. ‘Where’s the fun in that?’
I hate it. I’m a creature of habit. I write my shopping list in the order in which I’ll find the stuff around the shop; now, I just wander around feeling lost and go home with 50% of my list. But there have been benefits to the new layout: 1) My step count’s gone through the roof, and 2) It’s been three weeks and I still haven’t found the chocolate.
Bouncing boot camp
So, despite knowing better and despite trying my best not to let it happen, I managed – somehow – to put on 3kgs during the summer holidays. To be fair, the holidays were 10 weeks long and I spent four of those weeks in England eating pies, plus two weeks in the States. Yes, two weeks in the States – come to think of it, it’s actually a wonder that I only put on 3kgs.
So this September, as I do every September, I weighed myself, tried on my benchmark white skinny jeans and cried silently into my skinny black coffee, then drew up a plan to shed the extra kgs.
Classes.
I never do classes. If there’s one thing I hate more than the gym, it’s classes. I drew up a schedule. Four classes a week.
So today was the first class. Bounce Fit. Says the website: ‘The opposite of a gruelling ordeal, our classes are all about high spirits and awesome soundtracks. Most of all, it makes you smile, laugh and is great FUN!’
Sounds okay, no? Especially the bit where it says you can burn up to 1,000 calories a class!
Hahahaha.
There were five of us there today. That threw me. Having looked at the pix on the website, I’d imagined there might be 30 people and I could hide at the back, panting quietly into my baggy T-shirt and maybe even sneaking out for a doughnut half way through, but today there was no place to hide.
So we started. We bounced, we jumped, we leapt about till my heart was pounding out of my chest and my sweat was decorating the trampoline beneath my feet. I stopped for a breather.
‘Ahem,’ said the instructor, a guy who looked like he’d competed in the last Olympics. ‘We haven’t started yet. This is just the warm-up.’ I laughed. ‘We’ve been here eight minutes,’ he said. ‘The class is 60 minutes.’
Had I have been on a trampoline nearest the exit, I would have left. Really, I would.
The class then started in earnest. Bouncing boot camp is all I can say. I’ve never worked so hard in my life and the instructor took no prisoners. If someone faltered, we started the set again. There’s a fine line between feeling motivated and vowing never to go back, and I bounced that line for the whole hour (usually on the side of ‘never again’).
‘Remember! We’re aiming to burn 800 to 1,000 calories!’ shouted the instructor.
‘I think I’m going to be sick,’ I whispered to my squats partner 40 minutes in. Having bounced on our knees, our tummies and our arms, done sit-ups, press-ups, mountain runs and all sort of other nasties, we were holding hands facing each other and doing bouncing squats for 20 before dropping down to plank for 10. Three sets of each. Plus some more because someone dropped their knees in plank. My partner didn’t answer but I didn’t blame her: she looked like she was about to pass out herself.
But I did it. It was close, but I got to the end without dropping dead. The instructor high-fived me.
‘How was it?’ he asked, bouncing about on his endorphin high.
‘Great,’ I wheezed. Then I went home and had a lie-down.
This is not a sponsored post.
The lovey-dovey real estate developer
We often get messages from the property developer that originally built and now maintains our community.
Ramadan Mubarak. Eid Mubarak. Merry Christmas. Happy New Year. Happy Diwali. It’s sweet how inclusive it tries to be.
But today, for the first time in 10 years, I saw a post-summer message. And it made me smile. It’s good to be back.