Thick.

Now I’ve always suspected that I wasn’t particularly bright, but there’s a far cry from veiled assumption to stark certainty. I was horrified then at the end of last week to discover that I was even dafter than at first alleged.
After last week’s events I’d gone over to Mags’s house for a reviving cup of tea. “Coo-ee” I sang as I entered Mags’s kitchen. She was sipping her Green tea and chatting to her mother-in-law. As I poured boiling water over my own bog standard tea bag I tried to make out what they were talking about.
“I’m thrilled my brain age is only 32 now” said her mother-in-law.
“32? Blimey I can’t get mine down beyond 34”, replied Mags.
“What on earth are you two on about”? I asked heaving my bum cheeks onto one of her kitchen stools.
“Brain training Alice. It’s a must. It keeps you on your toes and exercises areas of your brain that, how shall I put it, are perhaps hibernating”.
I was still in the dark. “I don’t get you”, I replied, “How do you exercise your brain? It’s not as though you can take it down the gym”, I laughed at my own wittiness.
They however were deadly serious. “It’s like that actually Alice. It’s exactly like taking your brain for its own workout.”
“Well I still don’t know what you’re both talking about. What is like taking your brain for a workout? How do you know how old your brain is? Isn’t it the same as your body?”
Mags, slipped effortlessly and elegantly off her stool. “Come into the sitting room and I’ll show you”, she said. Where she was elegant, I was clumsy and her mother-in-law had to lend me a hand as I struggled to get off the stool, my thighs now settled, were resolutely stubborn to be moved again in a hurry.
“Sit on the sofa and have a go at this”. Mags handed me, what I now recognise as a Nintendo DS Lite. She opened it up, pulled out a stylus and touched the screen a few times.
“Here we are. Quick Brain AgeTest. Have a bash”. Before I could protest the numbers on the screen counted down from 3 and I was off. Simple arithmetic flashed up on the left hand of the screen and with stylus in my right I had to write the answers down, very, very quickly. I felt as though I were once again back in school, in remedial maths. Finally the sums and I ran out of time and I handed the machine back to Mags.
“Bloody hell Alice! You’re worse than I thought! You’ve got a brain age of 80!” The two of them fell about on the sofa laughing, much like those Smash Aliens from the 70’s.
“80? Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. That’s only six years older than me?”, roared the mother-in-law.
“It’s all those kids she’s had. They’ve genuinely turned her brain to mwsh. He-he-he. Mwah-ha-ha ha.” I was most put out. Was I really that thick these days? Had my lifestyle of day to day child rearing, domesticity and morning coffee genuinely atrophied my grey matter? It wouldn’t be that surprising, hell the most profound conversations I had these days were on the lines of “What do you want for dinner?”, or if I was lucky, discussing the issues raised in my older children’s RE lessons. Hubby has long since excluded me from what is happening at work, especially since he is now also studying for his masters’ degree and won’t even share assignment titles with me. Well really, does, Simulation & Synthetic Environments sound that sexy? I rest my case.
I barely touched my tea before making my excuses and returning home. I turfed my son, who had just got up and was still in his dressing gown, off my computer – we are now in phase two of the Easter Hols, whereby my youngest have returned to school and my eldest are loping around the house for another fortnight.
“Aw ma. I was just msn-ing Laura/Becky/Hannah/Sarah/Charlotte” or whichever it was of the myriad girls he regularly communicates with but who, oddly, never actually materialise in the flesh. One wonders at times whether they are actually living girls, or whether they are figments of the virtual, electronic world teenagers exist in.
“Tough luck matey. I need to look up something”. He sloped off into the kitchen muttering unpleasantries under his breath, whilst I Googled eBay, then searched for a Nintendo DS Lite.
Immediately a choice of thousands were returned, the first one a snip at £70, especially as it came with the much desired Dr Kawashima’s Brain Training game. I wondered what the highest bid was and typed in £90, then, like some ghastly game of Countdown gone wrong, the time ticked away from me and before you could say Richard Whiteley the auction time had run out and you-know-who had won the item.
“Oh my God”, I groaned, “No, no. Why didn’t anyone else put in a higher bid?” In the past, whenever I’ve had my eye on something I really want, like a Boden coat, I’m always pipped to the post in my bidding at the last second. Now I’d won something that I could ill afford. My curiosity had certainly killed the cat or surely my marriage. Hubby would go spare.
By now my 12 year old daughter and her sleepover friend had wandered in to see what was for lunch and were astounded by my folly.
“Mu-um you idiot!”
“We can’t keep it”, I wailed as though one of them had returned home with a puppy. “Daddy will be so cross. Oh God, our overdraught”. I put my head in my hands. Hubby’s response was icy if resigned. “I fear it will take more than an electronic game to have any impact on your intellect Alice. It is just far too blonde”.

Soyonara.

“Kawasaki”, said my son, nodding his head awkwardly.
“Konichiwa you idiot” said his 12 year old sister in a loud stage whisper.
“You look different to me”, added the six year old, peering at my four Japanese house guests suspiciously. “Your eyes are s...”
“So beautiful”, I added quickly, ushering them into my house. I couldn’t believe it, my guests had only just crossed my threshold and already I had a Prince Phillip situation on my hands.
I looked at Hubby and he shrugged his shoulders, which suggested, ‘this is going to be harder than we thought and I’m lucky that I’m out of it’.
True to form, no sooner had I answered a plea to host Japanese visitors on a week’s trip to Cornwall, than Hubby informed me he that it clashed with his ‘university week’ and apart from welcoming them to his house, Hubby would be absent.
Well, to all those people who run a B&B and evening meal service, I salute you. I am absolutely cream crackered. I hadn’t realised that cooking for a few more people and, more pertinently, being consistently polite would be such a strain on my more defeated, persona. Whereas I normally crash and burn once the youngest children are in bed, feet up on the sofa, large glass of wine in hand, I have found myself instead preparing dinner for the following night and laying the table for breakfast.
It’s cost me a fortune. How could I possibly say when we went out for lunch, “This is where we go Dutch”? I have also fed them well. It seemed welcoming to provide tea and stickies when they returned from their days out laden with gifts for me. Consequently I consulted Nigella’s bloody tome of domesticity and thought, I know, I’ll make some brownies, everybody loves those. It wasn’t until I had cracked the six eggs and added a whole tablespoon full of vanilla extract that I realised I needed four bars of ultra expensive 70% solid dark chocolate. At a pound a bar, these brownies were singularly the most expensive thing I’d ever cooked. And then, so scared to overcook them as Nigella ominously warns is so simple to do, I bloody well undercooked them and had about six quid’s worth of chocolate goo wallowing on a sheet of baking paper.
All was not lost however and after a little thought, I cut away the cooked brownie, reheated the goo and served it like some sort of fudge with ice-cream and fresh raspberries. It went down a storm.
It shouldn’t be surprising how much more washing up is generated by adding another four people to an already large family, but by Jove, every day has been like preparing a Christmas dinner. So many plates, glasses, mugs, side plates, cereal bowls, cutlery, saucepans, utensils and baking trays are used for every meal not to mention my Cif kitchen spray. My Marigolds torn, my hands are like those of a scullery maid.
Of course when I haven’t been in the kitchen, I am conversing. It has been great fun to try and understand and be understood. The two ten year old Japanese boys have been too shy to attempt their conversational English and the mother of one of the boys’ English is limited, so it has been down to the sterling effort of the father of the other boy and me to make illuminating and interesting chat. We have been lucky to have laughed many times because we understand the other’s effort in putting across a point and only once have I wished the floor to swallow me up. The mother and the two boys had retired; my children were all in bed, leaving me and Mr Akito to enjoy a tête-à-tête. They had been to Plymouth that day.
“What did you think of it?”, I asked.
“Mm”, he searched for the right words, “It is very modern”.
“Well, you see it was flattened during World War Two”. Bugger. Change the subject immediately.
“And Japan? You have many old building?”, I enquired.
“Some. Others also obliterated”. Oh Jesus, Mary, Holy Saint Joseph and all the saints as my Irish friend would say in times of crisis.
“Do you take many holidays?” I changed tack and so a calamitous, cultural exchange of words was avoided as he waxed lyrical about his job as an anaesthiologist where his holidays are few as he works until 10pm with only a fortnight off a year.
The following day however was met with further discomfort when I had to gently chastise one of the boys for squeezing one of my cats like a tube of toothpaste, especially given that only hours later, when I was up to my elbows in mashed potato and onion gravy, said cat gave birth to three kittens at the bottom of my wardrobe.
“Mu-um!”, squealed the 12 year old urgently, “Come quick!” I put down the potato ricer and ran upstairs, worried that perhaps we had a flood. My toilets are at best temperamental and my Japanese nowhere near good enough to explain that feminine hygiene products were not to be flushed down them.
I was as surprised as the local tom-cat will be, on finding my poor cat, atop a nest of my beige skirt and white shirt, serenely nursing three tiny mewling little kits surrounded by blood and embryonic sacs.
“Oh Jeepers”, was all I could muster before returning downstairs to address the baked sausages, spuds and gravy. Dinner was a massive hit, “Ah sausage and mash! Very English!”. They smiled and beamed and nodded and got out their cameras to take pictures of my snorkers. I was thrilled. Few people have felt it necessary to photograph my cooking but then they have photographed everything. I hate to reinforce cultural stereo-types but perhaps some are earned much like English chavs and football hooligans. Of course I cannot speak for the Welsh and sheep...

Contintental.

“Come the hell on Alice!”, Hubby roared at me from the car, “We have to get going”.
“Just one minute”, I trilled back. The gas man, who I’d completely forgotten about, had arrived minutes before to service our boiler. This was particularly bad timing given that five children and it – it being Hubby, were squished in the car ready to embark on our mammoth drive to Brussels.
“So what you’re saying is that this boiler and flue are kaput? I scratched my head. This was bad news.
“That’s about the measure of it Mrs Band. This is an old one, there is no ventilation, I’m surprised to be honest, that you haven’t all died from carbon monoxide poisoning.”
I blushed, “Well since you mention it. I do have an alarm and every time it goes off, which is only when it’s freezing, we drag the kids out of bed, run into the street, turn of the central heating and ventilate the house”. I think the gas man thought I was joking.
“Shall I send someone around to give you a quote for a new system?”
“I think that would be most expedient”. Hubby held his hand down on the car horn, the gas man packed up his brief case.
“I’m sorry”, I said, apologising for my husband’s impatience and guiding him out of my hallway, “But we have a long drive to Dover to catch the ferry to Dunkerque.” I looked at the steaming windows and the expectant faces of five children peered through the mist. My son and his friend, sitting in the back of the Espace facing backwards smirked at me through some rather vulgar steamed-up window graffiti.
“Rub that out at once”, I barked. The gas man looked at me with pity, “It’s going to be a long day Mrs Band. Good luck”. I locked up and in silence, took up my position in the passenger seat.
Many, many hours later we arrived in Dover and drove on board the Norfolk line to Dunkerque. My nerves were in tatters. The youngest children had been hell all the way, bickering constantly, “I had it first”, “No, I had it first”, “No me”, “No me”.
When reprimanded and asked to pipe down, they met this with a ricochet of “Told you”, “No, told you”, “No told you”.
Not even Charlie and his Bloody Chocolate factory on CD appeased them.
“Put Mika on mum” demanded the 6 year old.
“Yeah Mika”, reinforced the Red-Head parrot. It was with much relief then when we unfurled our legs on the ship and climbed the stairs to the cafe area where there was a rumpus room for the young children.
Hubby got himself a beer and a paper and sat himself near the kids. The teenagers sloped off to see what delights the ship had in store for them and I just gazed out of the window at the, mercifully calm sea. I sat back and relaxed.
Within two hours the ship docked and we drove off in darkness in appalling weather. Hubby had taking up position of navigator and I was behind the wheel. I was very nervous and my neck muscles were taught within minutes of driving. There were few cars on the road but hundreds of trucks and lorries and the rain was sluicing off them and onto me. I drove at 55mph.
“Speed up a little Alice, or we’ll never get there”. Hubby was cross with me for being a wuss.
“Look I don’t know of any of my female friends who would do this, so don’t give me a hard time. I cannot see the road, I am getting used to the French road signs and the driving on the left. Give me a break.”
Now I am fairly proficient in day to day French – at least I understand what ‘Autres Directions’ and ‘Prochaine sortie’ mean but ‘Volgende uitgang’ and ‘alle richtingen’, were lost on me. So let’s recap. The weather is atrocious, it is pitch dark, I am tired, the children are tired, my husband it tired, we cannot understand the language, we have to find some suburb of Brussels and Charlie has yet to find the golden ticket. If my nerves were in tatters before, now they were in ribbons.
Finally, when Hubby screeched out “For God’s sake Alice, get in the outside lane, we need to get off here”, I was able to park up, be embraced by my friends and finally relax with a much deserved glass of wine.
The following morning our friends left to go on their own holiday, leaving us to navigate ourselves once more. We eventually found the centre of Brussels only to remember, on hearing a sickening scraping sound that we had the roof box on top of the car and were thus excluded from all multi story car parks.
“Watch out!” yelled Hubby as I was about to pull out and find a parking space, somewhere, anywhere. “I have to pull out a bit”, I yelled back, “I’m on the other side don’t forget, I can’t see”.
The weather was not good. It snowed. I drove in all conditions. I only almost killed us once, on entering a No Entry road and only to see six lanes of traffic came towards us. It was a talking point for days.
It was a lovely city but the weather was not conducive to meandering with several children in tow. And expensive? Unbelievable. It’s not much fun when you have to share a coffee and a sandwich and the children have to make a coke go between three but when it costs €18 for a Quick Burger for two little children and one adult then what can you do? The ketchup sachets were 45 pence each and a pee? 30 pence. The journey home was without incident. Matilda went down better than Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. It wasn’t until we’d unpacked and Hubby had a beer that I mentioned the boiler..

Paparazzi.

“Alice?” It was my gay friend Ian on the phone. My fabulous old school friend, who works in ‘showbiz’ in London and who is my connection to the bright lights of the Big Smoke. The one who, when I am feeling at my most provincial, provides me with salacious gossip regarding the goings on in the West End.
“It’s the Premiere of Jersey Boys on Tuesday night. Story of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. It’s a big do. Lots of celebs. Big party afterwards at the Natural History Museum”.
“Wow!”, I said, “You’ll have to tell me all about it”.
“Thing is Alice”, he said, “I’ll be working on the show that night but I’ve got two VIP tickets going spare. Just wondered if you fancied one? My friend Lizzie is taking the other”.
“Oh. My. God”, I answered just a little excitedly, “I’d really love to. Can you hang onto the ticket until this evening? I’ve a lot of childcare logistics to sort out?”
“No sweat”, he said, “The ticket’s yours”.
Hubby - cross that I’d let our daughter’s passport lapse, although I had no idea that passport upkeep was ‘my department’, but as we are going across the Channel for Easter and it thus cost £94 for their one day passport service -would need cajoling. Later that night I said rather coyly,
“I know I’m not your favourite person at the moment but I‘ve got a big ask”.
Four days later then, having roped my mother-in-law into the domestic melee that is Chez Band, I was on a train to London. I’d like to say that I was catapulted at great speed to the Capital city, but as is often the case with First Great Western, no sooner had we embarked on the journey than we were all turfed off at Taunton, due to unbelievably, a faulty horn.
Eventually I arrived at the Theatre six hours after leaving Plymouth, mightily cheesed off that my few precious hours of freedom had been eaten into by a bloody defective horn but within minutes of dropping off my overnight bag with Ian at his theatre, I was strolling around the streets of Soho. Sitting outside an impossibly cool bar, watching the world go by, I couldn’t believe the world of difference a few hours travelling makes to one’s vista. My goodness, people don’t look like that in Plymouth and let me tell you, they don’t sell the same things either. Mercy no.
Sinking my sauvignon blanc I watched with growing excitement the hullabaloo going on outside the Prince Edward Theatre. Police had arrived in droves as had the paparazzi and celebrity spotters. Barricades were erected and a red carpet laid. I went to the stage door to get ready. Ian met me and showed me to a toilet within the theatre, “Get dressed in there darling. Theatre is all a facade. There ain’t nothing glamorous backstage”. Luckily no-one interrupted me whilst I undressed, and Ian soon led me in my glad rags to another little room full of sweaty dancers limbering up.
“Budge up darling”, he said to one hoofer, “Let my friend get her face on”. Minutes later he led me out of the stage door, around the front and onto the red carpet. Immediately the papparazzi’s flash bulbs went pop, pop, pop. I put on my most dazzling smile until I heard them all call “Cilla! Cilla! Over here Cilla!”
They were all there, Babs Windsor, Ronnie Corbett, Brian May, Hale and Pace bloke, Mr Blair – Lionel not Tony. I was totally star struck. Ian introduced me to his friend Lizzy and together we spent ages whispering, “To your right Russ Abbott”, “Look left right now, Alan Sugar”. Unfortunately we were just as silly during the performance. Before it started Lizzy owned up that she knew no Fankie Valli numbers. “Neither do I”, I confided. It was a revelation to us then when song after song was instantly recognisable. We couldn’t believe how many other groups had covered the tracks.
When the performers launched into ‘Bye Bye Baby’, Lizzy and I looked at each other in disbelief. “I thought this was the Bay City Rollers”, then another number was met with “Bloody hell thought this was Wet Wet Wet”, I said. “Any minute now and they’ll be doing an Arctic Monkeys one”. For some inexplicable reason we found this funny beyond words and had to be hushed by people around us, I choking on my programme to try and shut me up. During the interval we did a bit more, “Look who’s over there”, aided and abetted by all the free champagne we could drink. After the show- which was truly fantastic especially as Frankie Valli made a personal appearance on the stage - we all clambered onto coaches which took us to the Museum.
I was like a child in Wonderland. It was so spectacular – a lavish bash, what with the television cameras, the ever present paparazzi, another red carpet and all the booze you could drink, I didn’t think it could get better until we walked into the main hall, where the biggest dinosaur was flood lit in red light - given the age of some of the celebs though, the dinosaur wasn’t the only fossil in the room. A swing band played, everyone was dressed to the 9’s, the food was stunning and the flower arrangements were works of art.
Queuing to get some much needed food, Lizzy and I were most put out as the estimable King of the Jungle, Mr Christopher Biggins jumped the queue in front of us. It was all I could do, buoyed as I was by far too much champagne, not to shout out, “Get back to chewing your kangaroo anus” but I didn’t. All to soon it was 2am and like Cinderella and Eliza Dollittle before me, the party was over, our glad rags dispensed with and the cold, harsh light of reality woke us cruelly only hours later.

Glossary - These celebrities are very old school British who American readers you will not have heard of apart maybe from Brian May who was in Queen. They are much loved and most very old. Christopher Biggins was in a reality celeb show called I'm a Celebrity Get me Out of Here. He and several other celebs, desperate to relaunch their careers, go to Australia and live in a camp in the bush for a few weeks where, every day, British viewers phone in a vote to get the celebs to do a hideous 'bush tucker trial'. It's fantasic TV! Anyway, Christopher Biggins had to eat, amongst other things Crocodile cock - true and Kangaroo anus. He won the show!

Do Gooder.

As Hubby battles it out with his battle ships, I, ever the earth mother, attended a conference last Saturday at Exeter University, not you might think in Sexuality and Gender In Dialogue and Discourse or indeed anything that might really capture my imagination and interest and spur my creative juices and improve my mind.
Instead, I and around one hundred others congregated to partake in a day of PTA related issues. Many were very earnest indeed, armed with a spiral notebook, a selection of pens and fluorescent highlighters and a packet of mints, which they sucked relentlessly. It goes without saying that their efforts at fundraising were far more impressive than our village school but I don’t really see the way forward being a ‘shame wall’ – which is exactly what it implies, a board hung up in the school hall with the names on it of those who did not help out at the summer fair/Christmas fair/buy raffle tickets/attend an event.
Two other mums from my six year old’s school PTA committee had travelled up to Exeter with me and we three listened in shock and awe, when in various ‘workshops’, we had to share ideas. To be honest I had gone along for the ride as I felt a day out, albeit one involving overhead projectors and flip-charts was better than no day out at all and to be honest, I’d had quite enough of entertaining various children on a wet Saturday afternoon as Hubby furiously shushed them during the rugby.
Shell-shocked after ‘Are you Legal?’ Sally met Sue and I in the hall for lunch - the best bit, as any school child would agree. Stuffing our faces on huge rolls and flapjacks and crisps, we discussed the morning’s events.
“It’s hardly worth holding a summer fete”, mumbled Sally wiping egg mayonnaise from her chin. “You wouldn’t believe the number of safety certificates we need. You’d swear a bouncy castle was the number one killer of the under 10’s”.
“And they always tell you it’s measles”, added Sue, “Honestly, had I known it was an inflatable I wouldn’t have gone through the trauma of the MMR vaccine”.
“What about the mulled wine situation?”, I asked, my mulled wine being a real winner at our outdoor nativity and Christmas fair.
“Ooch”, said Sally, sucking her teeth, “What do you think? We need so many licences that the PTA might as well open its own pub”. Mulling over this information, we finished our lunch in silence until a lady with a badge pinned to her breast informed us it was time for the afternoon’s activities.
Sue disappeared to ‘Writing Trust Appeals’ whilst Sally and I climbed down from our stools and shuffled into the ‘Effective Communication’ room. It is extraordinary how much thought has been put into this subject and once again, I felt as though we were the bottom of the class when it came to original ideas.
“We held a ball once”, said one woman proudly, “Ticket sales were slow and so another mum and I dressed up in our ball gowns, bling and high heels at school picking up time and walked around with flyers. It was a highly effective was of communicating the fact that the school was holding a ball and the tickets sold out immediately.”
“Oh we have a dad”, said another, “Who has been unemployed recently and is more than happy, as long as we make him a cup of tea, to wear a sandwich board promoting events and he walks up and down the playground morning and afternoon”.
Sally and I looked at each other stifling hysterical giggles.
“What about you Alice?”, asked one of the NCPTA*, pointing to my badge. On hearing my name, my giggles disappeared immediately and, chagrined, I was transported back to fourth form Physics when the teacher knew for a fact that I hadn’t been listening.
“I, well, I , we..”, I floundered.
“We have a wish list outside the school”. Sally had come to my rescue.
“It’s been hand made by one of our parents. It looks like a bean stalk and on it we have wooden leaves and on each leaf a wish of what we are fund raising for. For example, new stage lighting or a new playground”.
There was a general consensus of murmuring approval.
“Thanks Sal”, I said, “You saved my ass. We haven’t got one of those bean stalk things though have we?”
“No”, she whispered, “But it’s a bloody good idea”.
Half an hour later and we exited the room, buoyed by a list of ‘to-dos’ which were a sure-fire way of getting all the parents enthused and involved with our fundraising. We were convinced that from here on in, every concert, barn dance, beetle drive and fete would be packed to the gunwhales and we would raise thousands of pounds to enhance our little darlings’ education.
Sue, when we eventually found her, was making slime in the hall with the Mad Scientists – a group who visit schools like a theatre company but do science instead of a play. “This is fun”, she said, adding coloured paint to PVA glue and borax, “Do you come to Cornwall?”
Bristol was the closest schools they visited in the ‘South West’. Bristol the South West? Not when you live in Redruth.
“How was Writing Trust Appeals?”, I asked making our way to the car.
“One must be persistent by all accounts and possess a good vocabulary and excellent grasp of grammar and considering I never know what to do with my semi colons, that counts me out I’m afraid”. Even though we stopped at Tesco’s on the way home and I drove slowly, I was most disheartened to arrive home to find Hubby screaming abuse at the TV, my youngest two dishevelled and covered in chocolate. As the final whistle blew on a score of Scotland 15-9 England, I knew it would be a long evening.

* NCPTA - National Confederation of Parent Teacher Associations.
**Since this was written England defeated Ireland and Wales won the Grand Slam (repressed whoop of joy!)

How Much????

Yesterday I had to go and renew the 6 year old's passport - that's another story. I stopped en route at a motorway service station. To keep me awake and to fortify me during the journey I bought a coffee and a muffin from Costa Coffee (think Starbucks). It cost £4.80. Four pounds and eighty pence? For a coffee and a muffin? That's almost $9!!!!!!!!!!!! For a coffee and a muffin?

Bum.

Late the other evening, surrounded by cannelloni tubes, wayward bits of mince, a cheese sauce with an identity crisis and armed with a frozen garlic baguette, Hubby walked through the door.
“Yoo-hoo Alice love!” He sounded most uncharacteristically chipper.
“Hello”, I answered, struggling to get the bloody baguette into the oven, “Damn it”, I continued, realising there was no alternative but to remove the thing from its foil, cut it in half and re-wrap it.
“Damn it”, said Hubby, wrapping his arms around me, “Is no welcome home for your poor, hard working husband. Meet Graham. He’s come for dinner”.
I looked up from under my messy, badly-needing-to-be-washed hair and smiled, very weakly.
“Uh, hello Graham. I’d shake your hand only it’s covered in garlic butter.”
“I didn’t want to impose and this husband of yours said we’d get a curry”, said Graham, looking slightly uncomfortable.
“Did he, did he indeed?” was all I was able to say. Well this Hubby of mine hadn’t even told me a colleague of his had been invited for dinner. If he had, take it from me I would not have gone to the immense effort of stuffing ruddy ragout sauce down the gaping mouth of a cannelloni. The sauce was everywhere, as was the cheese sauce which had caught at the bottom of the pan and which would take two days of soaking in soda crystals until the pan was once again useable. A night off by way of dipping my naan in chicken korma would have been a welcome change. As it was, the house and I were a mess and, unlike Jesus I find it a struggle to eke out a dish of pasta to feed the five thousand. “Please make yourself at home”, I smiled, “I’m afraid I’ll be stuck in this kitchen for a little while yet”.
“Yes, c’mon Graham,”, said Hubby, only too happy to have a friend to play with, “let’s leave her to it. Fancy looking at my record collection?”
I smirked. That could quite easily have been suffixed with - Matchbox cars, Pokemon or Star Wars figures. It matters not a jot, men are still boys with their toys.
Unfortunately, they didn’t get much time to play records as the youngest children were most intrigued as to whom Daddy had brought home. My children are far from shy and within minutes of Graham sitting down both were on his lap interrogating him.
When I ran into the dining room forty minutes later the pasta dish burning me through the tea towel and the garlic bread under my arm like a sword, he was still pinned to his chair being serenaded by every nursery rhyme the Red-Head could remember – to be honest her repertoire is pretty limited and so ‘Finkle Finkle Lickle Star’ was sung as though on a constant loop, although with more gusto each time. Graham looked exceedingly happy to see his dinner if only to remove a sticky, caterwauling three year old from his lap.
Witty, civilised conversation was as ever out of the question as four, feisty siblings fought for attention and their turn to be heard. Opinions and anecdotes listened to and protested over, the meal degenerated further as the youngest squabbled over the last of the garlic bread and the eldest argued over who was going to use the internet next. Hubby, oblivious to the discord at his table was more concerned in looking through a pile of 45’s for a pink, vinyl copy of Squeeze’s Cool For Cats. It was left to me to entertain our guest, who looked curiously, overwhelmed. Dinner at chez Band is, without a doubt, an intimidating experience.
Luckily for me I have spent many an evening in the company of sailors and am thus adroit at conversation with any branch of the RN be they weapons engineers, helicopter pilots or ‘supply’. Graham was more than happy to wax lyrical about grey ships, especially given the fact that he once had command of one. A few choice questions here and there about Type 23 frigates and the challenges therein and before you could say, specialist anti-submarine platforms, dinner was over and we could all excuse ourselves.
“Thanks Alice love”, said Hubby as he carried a few plates into the kitchen after me.
“What for?” I asked, scraping the remains into an adjacent bin.
“For not talking emotions. You’re really one of the lads at times”, he added, smacking me on the bottom as he left me to the Fairy Liquid.
Later, after the youngest children had been put to bed and the eldest wrestled off my computer, I finally sat down to share what was left of a fine bottle of wine. Just as I took my first sip, the Red-Head called for me. Running up the stairs two at a time, I reassured her that there were no and never would there be any, velocoraptors hiding stealthily under her bed. Running back down the stairs, a piece of Lego that had been previously hiding, took my foot from under me and I fell down the stairs like a hapless burglar in a Home Alone movie, landing in the hallway, my skirt somewhere above my chest, the infernal piece of Lego imbedded insufferably into my, not insignificant, bottom cheek.
“Oww!”, I wailed. Unfortunately being younger and fitter, Graham was the first to jump off the sofa and thus the first on the scene; consequently the first to see me, clothes awry, bottom bleeding. Hubby was fast on his heels though but his proclamation of “Dear God girl you look a right state” did little to console me.
Suffice it to say the remainder of the evening was not spent flirting in the company of two handsome men but on the kitchen table on my hands and knees. Tweezers, ice pack and Savlon* were administered with one hand, dignity, decorum and modesty taken away with the other.
* an antispectic cream.