Attendance Notes

New SpaceCorps Directive at work - we are to account for every 15 minute increment of our time and fill in attendance notes, to be compiled monthly, and submitted at the end of every month. Aiee.

Some few teething issues, including a whole load of grollocks surrounding the formatting of the excel spreadsheet being used… and so forth

This sort of thing can either be a huge help to a company or a massive hindrance. I dunno which this will be, save to note that it’s already caused some dissension in the ranks!

From my point of view, I’m amazed how much I can pack into one day. So, a sort of smugness confirmation!

Somerset - Perfect

Drove down to Somerset to see dear friends S & K, at their lovely new house. And to go to a lecture! A perfect day; I left Hereford in a right grump and feeling very unsettled and by the time I got to Somerset I was chilled out, calm and happy.

The acid test for visiting friends is; did you want to leave? I didn’t. Luckily for me, I’m seeing them again at the end of April, and this time for a whole weekend! Joy!!

Raining today…

… but that’s ok, because I dried my first load of washing outside this year yesterday; one more piece of evidence to support my theory that yesterday was the REAL first day of spring.

I’m glad for the rain; I slept better last night than I have in ages, which is always the case when it rains. I love the sound on the roof and it soothes and cossets me. It is a bit of a drag walking to the car but that’s the only downside.

I cancelled my private healthcare last night - freeing, and virtuous as it saves me £50 a month! That’s Mouse’s nursery lunches paid for. And really, apart from protecting myself against some future half-expected medical tragedy, I can’t see the point of insurance. We have a perfectly adequate free healthcare system in this country. And my life is extremely well insured so if I die (morbidly put) the mortgage gets paid off and there’s a lump sum in it for the survivors. So here’s to not wasting money on inconsequentialities.

Caketastic!

… flowers have just been delivered! By a bloke who appeared from behind the bouquet to announce that he didn’t sing. Lovely! And a balloon. These from Mr P, who is languishing somewhere on Salisbury Plain (and how very plain it looks) getting soaked by muddy splashback from the enormous army vehicle he’s filming.

And I won my birthday Scrabble. Hooray!

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My delightful colleague H brought in the most enormous, the most wodgy, the most chocolatey and jammy cake for my birthday. So full of icing and jam that the top had slid sideways and had to be coaxed back on! She is actually on holiday at the moment, but thought of me and brought me this lovely present. Even better, three-quarters of the office are out on ops so it was just me, the boss and one of my other colleagues who got the lion’s share. Burpo!

Diary Nostalgia

I was clearing away some books that had accreted around the foot of my bed, and returning them to the bookcases in the spare bedroom, I came across an old, flower-covered hardbacked notebook which contains the diary of my time in Australia in 1991 - 92.

Off I went to bed to read it; what a hoot. It brought back all sorts of memories. Actually, quite a lot of the memories weren’t so good; I remembered quite strongly that Australia was a mixed blessing for me at that time in my life; I was desperately homesick, and the boy I had gone all that way for wasn’t particularly available for me. His parents had a huge influence on his life, if I remember correctly; they kept him as far out of my way as they could. So I ended up having a great time, but not with him!

Very interesting to look back on your earlier adult life and see your imperfections, wishes, actions revealed by your words. Of course, you wouldn’t know that was what you were revealing when you wrote it; it’s only after years of living and looking at and with yourself that these things become clear (er).

It got me thinking about this diary, which is just as candid and just as tinged with the ghosts of the present and those of the past; it got me thinking about the diary of my schooldays, stolen out of my car when I was at university and lost forever.

I have written journals in one form or another since I was very young; I have volumes of paper correspondence lying around unfiled and unsorted. Paper’s where I live the most clearly; now with the advent of the blog, the paper stays neat and unsullied, the edges are crisp and there is no need for crossings-out and caveats. People say you need to have lived a life before you can write about it; I’d say that that is only true  if you’re expecting the reader to pay. If you do it for your own future edification, there’s no reason required. Hooray for that.

Post Chocolate Self-Hatred

Ok, maybe a bit strong. But I mindlessly demolished a whole Thorntons Easter egg last night while watching Addams Family Values. This was bad, but the worst thing was that I’d dropped the whole shooting match on the floor prior to eating it so what I was actually eating was floor-soiled shards of Thorntons Easter egg plus sundry dust mice and grut. The grut, it will be noted, didn’t stop me stuffing my face.

 It didn’t taste of much except lard; proof positive that the only type of chocolate worth eating is the type that tastes of, well, chocolate. 75% cocoa solids. I think this will have to be the standard from now on.

Mr P is away for another week this week; solitary suppers, tidy piles of laundry, quiet and ticking clocks and no telly. Peaceful, melancholic time in which I start talking to myself around about Wednesday afternoon. Waiting for payday.

It’s my 35th birthday tomorrow. Ho hum.

Where’s yer Dunkirk spirit?

Oh, shut it, already, P! Everyone goes through this and Mamatried’s right - there are always savings to be made. You pay for what’s important. This is important!

I think it’s a given that the state isn’t interested in the man in the street - that’s why we need a new team at the helm. All that man in the street can do is do the best with what he’s got now. This means you, girl!

..aaand the brutal reality is…

I just replied to a post to Jen, who was encouraging me to go for it, baby-wise. In my reply I worked out I spend about £6,000 a year on Mouse’s nursery. I get 5% discount for 2. So, maybe £11,000 a year to have them both cared for to the high standards you’d rightly expect, and what’s the point of me working again??

 This country wants an expanding middle class, and responsible people at the helm, and women at work, and mothers to be earning and not be a burden on the state; added to which I actively WANT to work, I have a career with prospects and a tertiary education, not to mention that I’m bloody good at what I do. What assistance is available for me?

Child Benefit, at £112 a month, and that’s it. Great, I can get a long way on that!

Where’s the support? Where’s the benefit in working and putting a child into good quality care? You’re practically forced to co-opt a member of your family (which is not an option for me) as an unpaid skivvy, or pack up your job and let your brain rot.

And then, don’t get me started, you’ve got a million and one useless, fag end of creation, jobless, burdensome dole bludgers who smoke fags and drink, and have the big dish for sports, and abuse their children by depriving them of love, attention and care, and they get houses, benefits and sympathy.

Where the fuck, pardon my latin, am I supposed to get the king’s ransom it’d cost me to have another child that I dearly want and who would be so dearly loved? I hate this bloody country.

Presents? I love ‘em!

I opened a groovy parcel from T yesterday, which was awaiting me on my return from work! A T-rex cookie cutter, a bronto cookie cutter and a heart cookie cutter. Fantastico! I aim to collect a language of cookie cutters so I can make gingerbread heiroglyphs and, literally, eat my words.

In fact, the best piece of the present for me was the card. T’s inimitable handwriting and turn of phrase cheered me up as much as the thought and the gifts. Thank you T, you’re an angel (shark)!

You know that feeling you get…

… when you have a fruit gum in your mouth and your gums ache and itch because you want to chew it so badly?

I wandered round the town yesterday, looking at tiny baby clothes and layettes, and miraculously, all my books about babies and baby names have jumped out of storage and back into the ‘current reading’ basket beside my bed.

And I’m not the only one. My friend L is in the same boat; and yesterday friend S cornered me in the kitchen to book a ‘girls gossip morning’ cause she’s got the same thing on her brain too. What are we all like?

It’s an amusing leap from the rabid anti-children stance I was happy to adopt in my early 20’s. I can’t pretend I don’t find my lack of consistency irritating and illogical, because I do. It gets me that I could be so sure about something and yet so, apparently, wrong! about a whole issue as important as this.

However, to all the smug f****rs who will, without doubt, smile and say ‘I told you so!’, well sorry pals, cause you didn’t.

Who could tell you how you’d be likely to feel? It’s pretty horrible actually. A longing and a yearning and an unfulfilled feeling; as though the best part of you was going to waste. Melodrama, sure.

I find my ability to forget or to ameliorate the ‘bad’ stuff both comforting and a little frightening; what about the sleepless nights, the paranoia, the loneliness, the constant unremitting grind! And what about Mouse?! How would he feel? What about my job? And how the hell would we pay for this? I don’t know the answers to any of these questions. This could be a bumpy, but interesting! ride!

My final thought is that I’m a pretty good mum. If I thought I was crap, and unlikely to do anything except mess up my children’s heads and lives with multifarious unnamable emotional problems, I wouldn’t even think about having another. I’d know when to leave well alone. But, I don’t feel as though I’m doing a bad job - in fact, I’m amazed by how pleased I am with myself. This is a new feeling for me, I don’t generally think I do anything well as a rule. Perhaps, just perhaps, I’ve found my forte at last!