Hey Hollywood, here’s a film idea for you….
It’s the school summer holidays and a giant play dough monster decides to have a fight with a bucket of jam in a carer’s home every day for six weeks. Just add Angelina Jolie in a onsie chiseling vomit off a bean bag at 11pm, then BOOM! Box office number one!
Carers are highly accomplished you know, we actually defy human evolution. One pair of eyes on the kids, another pair of eyes on the dogs who are with the kids in the garden. The eyes in the back of our head watching the tea cooking and several pairs of arms doing washing, bum wiping, cleaning and medical/DWP paperwork. I’m surprised we don’t all look like a boss eyed Dr Who extras.
It makes me sad that Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn immediately springs to mind! What has happened to Labour? The Conservatives must be laughing! There is no opposition of note at the moment. The Budget cock up on National Insurance contributions handed Labour a golden opportunity to call for resignations and shame the Tories, alas all they dished up was a half hearted slap on the wrist.
Currently the poor, disadvantaged and disabled have to rely on back bench conservatives and The Lords to hold this Government in check, does that sound balanced to you?
Greetings multiverse! Apologies for our absence.
Long months of moving house have zapped all brain resources!
But we turned ourselves on and off again and we seem to be working once more! (Although the internet here is slower than a sloth race!)
We are now even deeper in the Shire, surrounded by oak trees and wild beasties! Muntjac deer, birds, squirrels, ethereal wisps and enchanted hideaways.
Much is to do. Our house needs tender loving cash to bring it to life! New kitchen and bathroom to plan not to mention the veggie patch. The long term plan is self sufficiency and with almost 2 acres we have the potential to produce a great deal. The other part of the plan is jobs for the kids so to speak. When school days draw to a close either through ill health, age or even just the holidays, Fergus and Gwen need something to focus on. Having animals and plants to look after and nurture will offer them great therapy and boost their mental wellbeing.
So the plans have started! Notebooks and blackboards are filled with ideas. Spring beckons and there’s veggies to plant!
Thought for the day. In the wake of recent news that Buckingham Palace is to have a £369 million repair bill over the next decade, I have read & listened to much of the heated debate and would just like to add something to it. During our campaign to save 1 Ledbury Road, we asked our MPs, Jesse Norman and Bill Wiggin to help us find funding. They both felt the way forward is not from the public purse but from a wealthy donor. Sadly, as yet, no friendly philanthropist has come forward but it made me think, surely this logic could apply to Buckingham Palace.
I’m sure HRH The Queen has a veritable bulging black book of billionaires who would love to help in the restoration of Buckingham Palace.
No one wants to see historic buildings fall into decay, it would be a tragedy to see them fall down.
I don’t want to see families fall down either. I don’t want to see the tragedy of children taken into care because parent carers are broken and burnt out. I don’t want to hear again how a mother begged for respite because she couldn’t cope but was refused because there was no provision for her severely autistic child.
I want to see a fairer distribution of wealth and a fairer life for families living on the edge due to disability or poverty. People before Palaces!
One day I’ll awake and have a great shock
As I jump up from bed at the sight of my clock
It’ll be morning, not night & to my delight
We’ll all have slept right through till it’s light!
No 1am worrying or 2am twitching
..then at 3am..’was that a thumping down in the kitchen??’
…no more nodding off (after being awake since 2)
To hear a 5 am shout…’I need a poo!’
One day we’ll all sleep right the way through
All rested, contented and feeling renewed
But it’ll be Monday I’m certain to bet
And the whole family will have overslept
We’ll burn the breakfast and miss the bus
Be late for school and cause a fuss!
…but for now there’s coffee to give me some zing
I can day dream Santa will bring me some gin!
Or failing that chocolate or maybe some treat
Like a lovely, delightful full nights sleep!
160 mile round trip today to get the news that we knew was coming. There isn’t much more the medics can do for the kids feet. They have what look like pensioners feet: Covered in bunions, freezing cold and contorted from malformed bones. They work, the feet, they actually do what they are supposed to do but they are a bit ‘bargain basement’, you know…a bit rubbish with no longevity but nothing else is available (like shopping for munichies in some soulless grocery leviathan at 3am when you’re drunk), crap but you need them.
Shortly we’ll be moving to a bungalow and the tortured Hell that is a staircase shall be no more! So it’s not all bad, lovely new home on the horizon (subject to contract!!), Yuletide festivities looming and tonight we have pudding! Now, I just have to make it to Christmas Day without throwing a brick at the John Lewis orgasmic consumerist pornography advert…then all will be well!
It’s a useful life mantra. Yes the house is a mess, the kids have put jam in the toaster, there’s wasps humping every light bulb in the house and I haven’t brushed my hair in a week…but it’s ok. I have a roof over my head, I have the use of all of my limbs and there’s a tea caddy full of tea.
When the future looks bleak, grabbing any pleasure is paramount. Just to be able to say, hey I’m (surprisingly) still alive even though I’ve eaten enough butter in my life to kill a blue whale, is a good start!
My son is going blind and deaf and my daughter won’t be far behind him. They are loosing their balance, stamina and general mobility
So my focus is on them and making their life fabulous. Making every second count.
Do I care that there’s six loads of washing to do? That there’s moth holes in all my clothes? That my dog has stolen my socks? No. In fact I can safely say I don’t care. The zombie apocalypse could be in full flow and I could be merrily swatting the undead with a well chosen golf iron as long as I had a hot water bottle and a bottle of Chateaux Lefite to look forward to before bedtime (alright just a bottle of Malbec then!)
I don’t sweat the small stuff, what ever I have left in energy I just want to use to make the kids happy. Yesterday we went to Hampton Court gardens near Leominster, they put on a beautiful firework display that the kids absolutely loved. The great thing is, because the fireworks are against a black night sky, Fergus can see them! He could even see the colours! The joy on his face was awesome. Now that’s something to invest energy in!
The clocks have gone back one hour and now instead of being up at 6am, I’m now up at 5. I wouldn’t mind but the only TV on at that time is 20 channels of unfeasibly beautiful Americans selling living room contraptions for us fatties who don’t like sweating in public.
How about a bit of fuzzy feel good TV at that time of day? Top of the Pops? Bagpuss? He-man?
Then I can pretend it’s 1985 again, I’m a weird scruffy tomboy and the only things that concern me are ponies and fondant fancies.
Those were the days! I would never have imagined I’d eventually end up here, living in a strange alternate reality to the ‘normals’. 15 years of changing nappies, watching Cbeebies and never growing up. We seem to be caught in a time loop like Miss Peregrine’s peculiar poppits! In a world of the eternal toddler!
Well I suppose as long as there’s plenty of tea and the BBC don’t put on that distinctly sinister florescent pom pom vom fest, ‘The Tweenies’, I think I can just about manage to bring myself to acknowledge the morning in due course. Tea! I demand to have some tea!!
My kids are pensioners and other stories.... 