flossing the cat

When I was a little girl, I used to dream of writing an epic novel. The kind of novel that spans three generations of the same family, three continents, three tumultuous events in history; the kind of novel that addresses (with subtle eloquence) universal themes like the indomitable nature of the human spirit, or the enduring power of love, etcetera etcetera . But then, when I grew up, I realised I was much better suited to swearing, ranting, and writing a whole load of deranged hormonal drivel. Like 'The Extremely Over-Protective Mummy's Handbook: An A-Z of Neurotic Mummy Shit' . Ta dah! Yes, this genre-bending debut of mine will probably hit the shelves in about, oh, let me see, a gazillion fucking lightyears, largely because I am unable to write during a) PMS episodes; b) whilst looking for keys or mobile phones; or c) whilst collapsed under the weight of adrenal fatigue, which leaves me with a writing 'window' of twenty minutes a month. In the meantime, I do h...

This week, I’ve been mostly asking the question, “Does anyone know how this fucking thing works?” For instance: i) The open and close buttons in lifts. I mean. What the fuck? What's with the runes? I don’t know runes. I have never known runes. In short, I am utterly shit at runes and at any other kind of ancient alphabet system. So here's for a madcap hare-brained idea. Why not get someone to write  OPEN and CLOSE on the lift buttons, eh, eh ,  EH  ? That way there would be no risk of anyone wringing the living shit out of anyone else whilst trying to enter a lift. Ii) Also, what’s with those hot water catering urns you get at kids parties? Does anyone know how you get water out of those bastards? Anyone? Cuppa anyone? Mwa ha ha ha mwa ha ha ha ha!!  I know it looks like the water should come out of the little tap thing at the bottom, but the problem is that the little tap thing at the bottom NEVER has a functioning lever, ...

Kids say the cutest things, don’t they? Only last week, my two-year-old daughter said, “Mami, has the moon got a mummy and daddy?” A few weeks earlier, my five year old son asked, “Do wasps eat cheese or people?” At other times, of course, they're total bastards.  Take last week, on the school run, when my seven-year-old daughter said, “My best friend Annie thinks you’re ugly.” “That’s not very nice is it?” I said, lamely. Now, everyone who knows me knows how much I hate the school run.  Doing the school run is the psychological equivalent of trekking hundreds of miles without food or water across enemy terrain, on your knees, whilst hallucinating. (Even Bear Grylls and Ranulph Fiennes go fucking MENTAL if anyone asks them to do the school run. It's true.) So, as you can imagine, the absolute last thing I need to hear – when I’m up against the limits of my endurance – is that I look like a hatful of arseholes. “It’s ok because Annie thinks her...

Flies are total bastards. On the spectrum of bastardry, flies sit somewhere between President Assad of Syria, Michael Gove (a perfect example of a cunt), those low low fuckers at News Corp,  and Karren Brady. (Bring back Margaret!!)   But the absolute worst thing about flies is that they love my house. It’s almost as if there’s a gigantic neon-lit sign above my back door that says, “Hey, we’re shooting a remake of The Amityville Horror in THIS house. If you and your extended family of houseflies are looking for parts as extras, please do come on in, please, it's no bother”. In addition to the second neon-lit sign above my front door that says, "Now recruiting for the Fourth Plague of Egypt."  Which there isn't.  Oh, how I long for flies to become extinct. How I long for them to stop puking their guts up all over the banana cake or the brioche rolls I accidentally forgot to wrap in a million billion layers of super-thick anti-bacterial...

Last week, my seven-year-old daughter seemed troubled. “Mummy, why are you the only mummy on the street with fur sticking out of your arms?” she said. She was looking at my armpits in a hurt, disgusted way, as if I had Tufty the Squirrel in a headlock. I was too knackered to explain to her that contrary to public opinion, all sexually mature women grow hair on their bodies, and that many of them have more hair growing from their armpits and minges than Sasquatch. I was also too knackered to explain to her that the pressure on women to shave, pluck, tweeze, wax, and zap every single hair on their body until they look like pre-pubescent girls is just sinister sexist bullshit dreamed up in the 1920s by those absolute motherfuckers at Gilllete. But the main reason I didn’t challenge her was that I’m sensitive enough to realise that to a small hairless child, a thousand colossal tufts of armpit hair probably looks like the kind of place where witches meet.   “I’ll shav...

I haven’t blogged in a while. These are the reasons: The Summer Holidays:   We’re all going on a summer holiday, tra la la la la la la tra la la … Oh, hang on a minute, what I actually meant to say was we’re NOT going on a summer holiday. Duh! Thing is, my partner is working 12-hour days for the duration of the summer holidays, so I’m staying right here, in the house, for six and a half weeks, with a gazillion children.   Yeah, don’t worry, I’ve got enough food in! Sure I’ll keep the windows open so that there’s enough air n’all! And best of all, my mum’s coming up for a couple of days so no worries! It’ll be nonstop fun I’m telling ya!! Lack of stimuli:   Hey, even if I did have a minute to write a blog in between all the crazy fun times, I wouldn’t know what to write. You see, during the summer holidays, the children operate Amish-style house rules that forbid me from consuming news or current affairs programmes, surfing the Internet, reading books, or excha...

OK. Here’s the problem. Every time I come back from a holiday, the house stinks. The porch and hallway smell like The Elephant House in high summer. The rest of the house also smells like The Elephant House in high summer, except one of the elephants has VAG ROT, and all the other elephants have died. The situation has gotten so bad I dread coming back. “Please god let the cats not have shit everywhere”, I whisper to my partner on the journey home from our most recent holiday. “I don’t think I can take it.” “Just relax”, says my partner. `’If they have, I’ll clear it up straightaway.” My partner doesn’t know me. If he did, he wouldn’t bandy around inflammatory words like ‘relax’. Conversely, I know him well enough to know that the very first thing he will do on arriving home will be to scroll through the list of recorded programmes on the Sky Plus Planner. He would do this even if he needed to pick the zapper out of a buzzing, twitching heap of cat shit as big...