A Humdrum Mum

I thought Ben was finally feeling motivated to clean his boots. No. He's cleaning his old ones so he can sell them. 

His shoes lay strewn near the front door. ACDC riffs belt out from the amp in the front room. My head throbs. Peace reigned for five days. Five long, lazy days. Now that peace is shattered. The boy is back. But - prepare yourself for the shock - I didn't miss him! The school parents' Facebook chat page buzzed while they were away at their Year 5 residential. I started a thread asking if any other parents had received their postcard. We were asked to pack a stamped addressed card. I had but some other parents didn't, making them feel totally rejected! One mum forgot and felt awful. It was on this thread that it appeared I was the only parent who didn't miss their little bundle of joy! Other mums described tears at bedtime the night before. Tears when they were pulling away on the coach. And this was boys, actually, not girls. I jokingly said I was certainly going to win the Worst Parent Award for this half-term. One mum replied that I'd raised an independent boy ra...

ACDC Queen Elizabeth Park, London 4.6.16 Last December, I was quite hungover, the night before having fallen asleep in a curry house after a long school term. I booked ACDC tickets with trembling hands. My son has recently got into them and has started playing the electric guitar, so it seemed like the right thing to do. Take him to an ACDC gig for his first one. We booked with our friends, also having two boys well into ACDC and a dad who'd seen them before.

(Photo taken from Duran Duran's official Facebook page) Six months ago, my Durannie friend asks if I want to go to this festival in Southampton to see Duran Duran. It's just before my birthday, what a great idea. And let's upgrade to VIP tickets! Together, we've seen them three times. The first - no John sadly, but still good. The second - in Birmingham, fantastic to see JT at last (he's always been my fav, my friend preferring SLB). The third - extremely special in St Andrews football ground. We were so close and I was pregnant with Ben, dreaming JT was the father! 

Having heard about the Dirk Wears White Sox tour, we knew we had to buy tickets for the Kings of the Wild Frontier tour. Thirty five years since its release, it has remained a firm favourite in our house. We were 11. It was the first "proper" album that I got into. Glynn's parents wouldn't let him have a copy, instead buying him a Shakin' Stevens album - which he now can't jibe them about as they bought him an expensive watch to shut him up. I had a copy taped for me by one of my parents' friends.

We live on the edge of a busy town, but right by the shore and with lots of green space around us. There is a little park behind Ben's old infant school in a nice estate. I've been desperate to get Ben "playing out" for ages now. "Just go up the park after school, see who's there," I'd say.  Occasionally he would, but he said "I'm more of a homeboy!" No you're bloody well not, not if I have anything to do with it. You will not come home after school and fester in your bedroom playing the X Box. So he did start to go up to the park. There are a few kids who are in his year (5) who live nearby. I don't know all of them. The first day he came back and said everyone rode off and left him after he "accidentally" kicked his mate in the bits n bobs whilst on the swing. They had an argument on Instagram about it afterwards, but made up the next day. Then someone else kicked his ball into the hedge and wouldn't get it out, ...

This started out as a post to Ben on my family blog but has ended up here. This year, the passing of some of our best celebrities has affected us all in different ways. On the one hand I'm fed up with the name dropping (David Walliams actually thanked Bryan Ferry for inviting him for dinner with Prince -yuck) but I'm more fed up with people telling me how I should feel! I'll feel how I bloody well like about it. "But you didn't know him!", "You value his life more than migrants dying on boats!" No and no. Of course I didn't know him, I know I didn't particularly want him to be tainted with the same kind of death as Michael Jackson (he's far better than that) but no, I don't know him.  But I do know how I feel now when I hear his music. From 1982's 1999 album, through Purple Rain, Around the World in a Day, Parade, Sign 'o the Times, Lovesexy, to 1989's Batman soundtrack, then dipping back to 1980's Dirty Mind and the f...

Bringing up a child is hard enough, but when you realise they have their own minds, well ... How dare they!  When Ben was at nursery, I remember the nursery manager saying "In life, there are leaders and there are followers. Let's just say Ben won't be a follower." To a parent, this is pleasing to hear, of course. He'll end up being head boy at school and fast forwarding twenty years, he'll be the president of some society or other, management at work etc etc. (But actually I don't think anyone is ever going to say "He'll be the follower" to a parent!) We like to think we are cool as parents, as individuals, as a couple. We like indie music, we listen to 6Music and we don't watch the X-Factor or any broadcast TV for that matter. We shop in Waitrose and read The Guardian (well the free Saturday edition from Waitrose covers the guinea pig hutch nicely). We don't like popular chart music. We hope Ben will be as "rebellious" as ...

I should probably preface this by admitting I've never read a book by Ben Elton that I didn't love. And I have read them all, in case you're wondering if I only read one. From the magnificently soppy Inconceivable (and yes the film was as good as the book), to his behind-the-scenes of Chart Throb and the like, and his war books like The First Casualty. I love them. Time and Time Again is, guess what, about time travel. A bereaved army officer and adventurer is forced to go back in time to stop the onset of the Great War. I'll tell you no more of this, as you can read the blurb anywhere. This was a real page-turner for me. I'm not snobbish about books, I don't particularly like chick-lit (but have read some by a hotel pool abroad) and I try to avoid any recommended by sofa-couple's book clubs ("Oh go on, you'll love it" usually puts me right off - The Life of Pi is a good example of that). I like a page-turner, and I will read Dan Brown's bo...

This week has been a really odd one. The most awful thing was my cousin's funeral on Wednesday. She died aged 57 of cancer. Bloody unfair to her and her three daughters, all in their 20s, two of them with children, who also lost their dad a few years ago. Susan had just rekindled her relationship with her former husband and that in itself is unfair. It's all just wrong. January is a hellish month for us; of course Ben's birthday in the middle of it is a joy, but why did he have to be born three weeks after Christmas? No sooner have we got the decorations down, eaten three chocolate oranges a week and broken weak Dry January resolves than it's time to celebrate our son and heir's special day. Now it's the end of the month and I feel like my year can finally start. I know this happens every year, but I just forget! I need to put in my diary reminders for next year. "Lost your marbles?" on January 12th would help. "Find them now" on 1st February...

I realised last term that my stress point is leaving the morning to go to school and work. I work in school so being late is not an option. At all. I'm fine leaving for work, it's just Ben leaving for school that stresses me out. It's the "Mum, I need to take my footbal in today" comment five minutes before we leave. Or the "Where is your coat Ben?", "I don't know, I must've left it at school yesterday" etc.  We are not the most organised, but we are certainly not disorganised. Organised chaos mabe. My idea  was always to get ready the night before. School bag was in the right area, school clothes out, and shoes and coat should be in the right place because surely Ben would've put them there the night before? Whilst searching at T-2 minutes, it becomes apparently that he didn't put them there at all. In fact he left them at his friend Max's. Great.  I know this is not rocket science (I hate that phrase), but I really thought...

A tricky first week back for reasons too many to mention, none of which horrendous on their own, but when you have about five of them at the same time, it makes for a muddled Humdrum. I found that sorting out Ben's clothes really cleared my mind. It'd been on my to do list for ages, but like all lists, never actually being ticked off. All received by the British Heart Foundation.  So from clearing out to actually going out. Ben had a sleepover at school on Friday, so we took the chance to go out for dinner. After last week's shenanigans, I'd sort of decided to do Dry January (affect voice a la Shaun Keaveny) but bumping in to Emma in Gun Wharf put paid to that! Actually I do her an injustice, I'd already ordered a bottle of Prosecco before I spotted her and her boyfriend. The last time we'd both been to that restaurant was together for a McCloskey Christmas meal. You know, the one where I took Ben to see Father Christmas the next day and was slighlty unwell. Yes...