Laurie’s Neighborhood

I'll send you on your festive way with a top Christmas tip courtesy of Take a Break:

one of the top tips of 2009, apparently

[Overheard]

- Hey!  Lets make everything really messy!

Engage:  Freakish Supersonic Mum Hearing

Activate:  Fun Spoiling App

- NO!

- What?  We didn't!

- Do not make everything messy please.

- Why?

- Because... just play nicely with your toys.  Don't be little savages.

[Pause]

- Yeh Wilfie.  Don't be such a sandwich.

Sitting on the sofa in the corner of a wonderfully chaotic 4th birthday party yesterday, my eyes scanned the room for my 5-minutely head count of children belonging to me.

One... hmm, where's the other one?

And bugger, the front door is open.

"Mr Splog!  MR SPLOG??!"

Mr Splog can't hear me across the noise of 20 children on a chupa-chup treasure hunt.

"MR SPLOGGGGG!!!!??"

Nope.  Can't hear me.

I spotted the teenage daughter of a friend.

"TARA?"

I waved my arms frantically, really quite worried about the open front door by this stage.

"TARA??  CAN YOU SEE WILFIE ANYWHERE?" I bellow across the room from my spot on the sofa.

Tara looks perplexed.

"WILFIE???" I squark, miming that I can't see him anywhere.  "WILFIE??  CAN YOU SEE HIM??"

Tara points at me.

"NO, WILFIE!  I CAN'T SEE HIM!"

Tara points at me again.

And I realise that the reason I can't see Wilfie is because he is lying on my lap, breastfeeding.

And of course, on some level I knew that because that was the reason I was sitting bellowing across the room, pinned to the sofa, instead of getting up to look for him.

Next up is Mrs Dolittle's column. As you can probably guess from her pseudonym, Mrs Dolittle talks to the animals. Not for her, however, the time-honoured tradition of talking to an animal by vocalising speech sounds, waiting for it to meow, bark or squeak, and then cooing "oh, he thinks he's people!" No, Mrs Dolittle communicates with animals psychically. She meditates quietly and tunes into what animals are thinking. She goes into a trance to tap into your pet’s thought processes. She brain-rapes them, essentially. Let's not sugarcoat this.

This month, Mrs Dolittle is forcibly inserting her mind into a hen.

Mrs Dolittle

Or rather, several hens, starting with Henry who tells Mrs D about how wonderful it is to submit to her partner, the cockerel Bertie (who , Mrs D notes with with stunning insight, 'is rather cocky'). 'The hens accepted that their cockerel was the boss,' she says admiringly.

She moves on to a broody hen, Francine, sitting on a clutch of eggs, who has a 'feeling of relaxed purpose’. Mrs Dolittle asks her if she’s bored and gets the reply ‘Not boring at all. Youngster to hatch, very important.’ So charmed is Mrs D by this ‘wonderful experience’, she tells us she will communicate with her whenever she is stressed.

Through Mrs Dolittle, C:IF is promoting its sly anti-feminist agenda that women should submit to their men and will never be happier than when fulfilling their maternal duties. C:IF wants us barefoot and pregnant and chained to the wall of the barn.

Ignoring this misogyny, I pressed on. There is a lack of chickens in south London so I chose to commune with an animal more commonly found here: a squirrel. Specifically, Ceiling Squirrel, who lives in our loft and likes to scrabble around noisily in the evenings.

Earlier this evening, I sat back on the sofa, closed my eyes, and waited. Sure enough, within minutes there was a tell-tale pattering and thumping overhead. 'Hello?' I thought very hard. 'HELLO?' Nothing. I wondered if Ceiling Squirrel had heard me and was translating my thoughts into Squirrelese and forming a response. This could be slow. This could be like using chat rooms on a dial-up connection in 1995. From up above, nothing but the sound of tiny paws scuttling around. Thump. Bang. Clamber, scramble, tumble, CRASH.

'I wish you would be quiet, Ceiling Squirrel!' I thought loudly.

And suddenly, Ceiling Squirrel came though. 'No, you don't,' he psychically replied, 'because that would mean I was dead. Then you'd have to deal with my stinking rotten corpse. FUCK YOU. I’m going to fuck shit up in here until the end of your tenancy.'

I ended the connection. No-one needs a squirrel cursing directly into their brain. Some people may see this exchange as me projecting my thoughts about our loft-dwelling pest. I assure you, it is not. Ceiling Squirrel spoke to me. There is no real evidence for this, but it is a fact.

CONCLUSIONS

I need to tell the landlord about the You Know What in the You Know Where. (Shh. He can hear you.)

What's your guilty television pleasure?

My television is innocent until proven otherwise.

I just wrote a paragraph about how rubbish I am at blogging, but it was so rubbish that I deleted it. 

You'll thank me when you're older.

I choose the man who, in a nearly empty carriage, came and took the seat next to me. I was so enraged by this clear breach of the unwritten rules of carriage seating (everybody knows you always take the position diagonally opposite first. Everybody!) that I had to pretend to get off at Putney just so I could move to another seat.

Now I'm going to have to make myself some toast just to calm myself down.

Wednesday 2nd December marked 38 years since the founding of The United Arab Emirates.  This was celebrated in a big way, mostly with flags, fancy dress and decorating your car.

Sprog's nursery joined in the fun with their very own InterNational Day.  They sent a letter home asking everyone to bring in something typical from your own country, and also any foods traditionally eaten, and to send your child in their National Dress.  I baked 16 scones and made a Devon Cream Tea which Sprog insisted on taking in with a Cornish flag and a London bus.

Actually, first we had to agree on a typically English food.

Her:  Can we take in Arab bread?
Me:  No, Arab bread isn't English.  It's Arab.
Her:  Are Arabic people from Arab?
Me:  No.  Arab isn't a country. 
Her:  Is Arabic a country?
Me:  No, Arabic is a language.
Her:  So where' is Arab bread from?
Me:  Erm... I think our local bakery is in Sharjah...
Her:  Shall we take croissants instead then?

In lieu of a national costume, Sprog wore a red, white and blue dress.  We arrived to find the entire garden decorated with hundreds of Emirati flags and balloons in Emirati flag colours, as well as all of the children's art work from the term.  Sprog's class had been learning about the desert, and she had contributed to a collage of a "scworkian"

There were tiny Middle Eastern boys racing around in starched white Dishdashas.  Little 3-year-old sparkly Indian princesses.  A sweet little Welsh girl in her black skirt, white lace pinnie and stovepipe hat.  Sprog's classroom assistant, an Emirati student, was doing henna tattoos for all the children, in a proper red tent.

There were trestle tables all around the garden, sectioned off into the 40 or so countries of the children of the nursery.  It was fabulous.  Everyone had made so much effort.  There were mountains of food.  Most of the English mums had baked (or steamed) something.  An Iraqi family had ordered 40 cupcakes from the most extortionate and poncy bakery in town (£6 for a cupcake anyone??) and had them all decorated with a fondant Iraqi flag.  Some countries obviously don't do much in the way of portable food, and the Filipino section was whole baked fish and whole egg stew requiring bowls and spoons and napkins.  The Australian section was dominated by Fairy Bread (white buttered bread decorated with sprinkles).  Three Canadian families had sent in a malted biscuit, condenced milk and mint chocolate pudding dish.  My favourite things were some Emirati deep fried sour dough balls in date syrup.  Sprog chose to sample some chocolate from Switzerland, some chocolate from Belgium, some chocolate from Germany, some chocolate from Lebanon and some chocolate from Palestine.

Helllo! I was reminded earlier today that I used to blog, because I got my Advent Calendar ready for tomorrow, and I remembered how once on 20six I made a naff fun blog game of guess the advent chocolate.

We went camping!

We left at camel's fart to drive up the Mussendam Peninsular and over the border into Oman.  (I texted "Good morning campers!" to the other two families going, but sadly when you camp with a Filipino, an American, a Kiwi and a Fijian, no one 'Hi-de-hi's' back at you.)

Dubai is very flat so we ooo'd and ahhed at the mountains on the way.

Stopped to buy bananas.

Stopped to buy firewood.

Stopped to buy masala chai and deep fried date syrup dohnutty things.

Stopped to buy a three foot inflatable spiderman.

Stopped to deflate tyres and then went hooning out over the dunes to find a spot to camp.

We set up camp on the beach.  This was proper camping - nothing but sand, sea and us.  There was no shade so we set up a couple of canopies.  5 tents between the 3 families.  Built a good fire.  Tried to swim in the sea but there were millions of tiny tiny jellyfish.  The sea was about 50% jelly.  So, instead we spent the afternoon sliding down dunes on our boogie boards.  Bbq, and then settle down to an evening of sitting around the campfire and... enjoying the sound of the nearby Lebanese party campers dancing and shrieking and ullulating through the night.  Fortunately they had reasonable taste in music and a bit of Abba and Bob Marley was quite fun.

On my birthday morning I crept out of the tent just before 6.  Sprog woke up, broke in to a sleepy grin and whispered "We're still at camping on the beach!"  She shuffled out after me and padded down to the sea, still in her strawberry pyjamas and clutching her blankie.  We sat side by side like the only people in the world, and chatted and watched the sun rise, all pink.

Later, we took a dhow up the coast to do a bit of snorkling and see some limestone caves.  The owner was an Indian chap and there was bloody good curry for lunch.  Got back to find (a) Lebanese party campers had gone (yay.) and (b) some bastard had stolen our firewood (bastard.).  Got a fire going with what we had in the car.  Somehow (I genuinely have no idea how) a cold bottle of champers and a beautifully iced birthday cake was produced.  Supper.  Wine.  More wine.  A bit more wine.  Go on then, one more glass.

Bed some time after midnight.

Perfect.

Until...

At about 2am, a group of Emirati IDIOTS came screaming over the dunes, revving their engines, hooning about.  They set up camp about 30 yards from my head, plugged in a bastarding noisy arsing GENERATOR to power their strip lights and TELEVISION, ffs, and shouted, revved, watched tv and were arseholes for the rest of the night.  I gave up trying to sleep at 5.  They finally turned the generator off at 6.  I hate them with a poisonous fury.  I want to kill them to death.

But then we had a lovely swim in the sea (jellies had wibbled off elsewhere) and good breakfast and lazily packed up camp and meandered back with my two filthy urchins asleep all the way home.

I was very happy to sleep in my bed last night, but I was a bit sad to wake up and have normal breakfast in my kitchen, not fun camping breakfast with my friends on the beach.