Month: July 2024

Take 2: The Romantic Version

Ocean Bream The Story of Lenny Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , 4 Comments

For a few moments the sun beamed through some stormy clouds, and while that happened a beautiful bride with an array of white lillies made her way from the old church doors towards a limosine the length of a lorry. And then the heavy grey clouds above knitted together like a frown and the rain began to pour. We waited ten minutes in the bakery for some cheese and onion pasties and the people behind the counter asked me five times if I had been served and the lady who had served us kept making a funny about how me and my littles were waiting for the nanny pasties to bake.

They did wait so well, their noses pressed against the glass behind which all the fineries the bakery had to offer were displayed. Vanilla slices with pink icing, chocolate cupcakes iced with fine up-do’s, large fat danish pastries with generous helpings of custard yolk nestled in their middles, giant scones you just know were shaped by a pair of skilled old hands, eccles cakes, battenburg slices, giant gingerbread men and chocolate chip shortbread biscuits the size of my three year old’s face.

Then once they each had their pasties and my son his vanilla slice that he insisted proudly on buying with a little bit of pocket money he had, we braved the rain and ran as fast as we could to the library, where we read and played and work for an hour and a half, and then back home for the rest of the day. Pottered about gardening, watched and named some birds who visited our birdfeeder today, they cuddled with their father once he got home from work late that evening and my son read a Paddington Bear story to him. I came in a little later and found them all sleeping together with the book across my son’s chest.

Small blessings, folks, ought to be counted. They are numerous and yet still precious.

Take 1: Dull

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For the romantic version, here is Take 2.

It was a dull day.

Dull morning. I took some time for myself and had a facial I couldn’t afford. Then came home to a husband who said something disrespectful to me before taking himself off to work. Something to do with me taking advantage and taking my time. Which I did NOT, actually. I went straight to my appointment and came straight home. After having confirmed it with him two weeks prior. And putting a reminder in his calendar.

Nevermind I am with his children 24/7 and never ever get time to myself. Ever. So just this once for something for me for once in sodding years. Anyway I did not tolerate it. I sent him a text about how that was really disrespectful to say. And if he was upset about me supposedly taking my time he could look me in the eye and tell me so. Not say disrespectful things and slam the door to show his disapproval.

I then fed and bathed my children, took them for a hair cut, took them to the library where we returned old books and did the five year old’s daily reading. We did maths and read a chapter of Charlotte’s Web. I bought my son a vanilla slice. Well he bought it. Using the £5 note my mother gave him last week. He felt very proud of himself as he took a big bite.

I then took them home and did the laundry, did the hoovering, dusted the blinds, got my kids to do some chores, planted the petunias that have been wilting for a week in their little pots. I submitted some coursework, I cooked dinner, I read a library book to my three year old, I washed bottoms, I did an hour of WORK, I also supervised while my kids snipped dandelions in the garden with their scissors and I called my mother in law.

I now sit here feeling like I would very much like a cup of tea and yearning for those cream buns I saw in a shop window that I did not buy. Work is slow. Finances are drying up. I find myself thinking a lot about what to do about finances, and where to put my kids if I get more work, since they are homeschooled. I love having so much time with them, I do, but I also am keenly aware that in order to have the life I envision for them, I do need to be away from them to actually earn the living to create that life.

Tough nuts folks, are hard to cracketty crack.

We watched three weddings take place at the church in the local town. And a funeral. Bells and bells galore. Drizzling rain, followed by a downpour. The sun poked out for a moment and my son took his jacket off in jubilation.

Image Credit: Svetlana Wittmann

Romance

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Folks I ought to be at the gym right now, it’s the only window of time I have while the kids are just about waking up from their night’s sleep and my husband isn’t rushing off to work. But here I sit sipping coffee and watching birds on a bird-feeder outside my window and wondering why life ought always to be such a rush and where is the romance in life anymore?

Plenty of romance still, I suppose.

Romance in the back of my garden. The neighbour behind is elderly and poorly and had been transferred into a care home two years ago, but his house remains empty. I don’t think he has a wife anymore, but thirty odd years ago they planted two evergreens and a hazelnut tree at the bottom of their garden, which borders the bottom of ours. And when we first moved in said trees were the height of our house, and blocked the May sunset. Today they stand taller than all the houses. Ivy has taken over and carpeted the floor at the back of their garden, and made its sure and confident way up the thickening trunks, snaking here, snaking there, but let me tell you it makes for a luscious summer of various shades of glorious green. The hazelnut tree darkens from an already dark green into almost burgundy towards the end of the summer, and the abundance of foliage is so soothing to the eyes.

And in the winter there is romance too, for the evergreens are ever green… and the ivy does not shed her leaves as most other climbing plants do, and we have replaced the back panels of the fence that separates our gardens with trellises, so that we can better control the ivy, and on the trellises I have allowed my own climbing plants to grow.

I have a ginger syllabub, folks, that takes over and spreads her thorny stalks as far as she can reach, releasing buds which bloom into fistfuls of peachy rose petals, sending out the most delicious lemony-sweet scent, and providing nature’s perfect paintbrush pinkish-yellow tints to the kaleidoscope of greens at the bottom of my garden.

Now how’s that for romance.

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Negative Nancy

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I sigh. All the time I sigh.

Everytime I open this blog to type something I just sigh and all I can think of are things a Negative Nancy would say.

Oohhhh, she would sigh and mutter as her knitting needles clacked together, ohhhh I did shout so at my kids today. They tried my patience and I did lose my temper with them.

Oh dearie me, she would say as she spooned out some honey from a jar and let it drizzle over some toast, I didn’t do half the things on my to-do list and did not pay half as much attention to my kids as I would have liked.

Cluck cluck, she would cluck to herself as she hanged out the washing at gone past midnight because the sky was starry and glorious sunshine was forecast for the following day and she didn’t want to waste a moment of it, I really ought to have sorted out the laundry like I meant to, and submitted my coursework last month, and why oh why did I waste my time on irrelevant things and not do what I meant to do!?

But there is Positive Posie and she is pretty positive, I have to say, if rather meek and soft-spoken.

Now, she would say something very different!

She would toss her golden curls (for it seems only those who are good and kind and sweet in the old novels have the glossy golden curls), turn her little nose to the air, and spread some fresh linen on a bed and she would say, not a cluck in sight, well, we got halfway through Charlotte’s Web this week and the little Halfling loved it. The littlest one listened really well for a three year old too and asked interesting questions. And little Sir was taught chess and plays it remarkably considering he has only had six games, and yes yes you have not played chess with him but he has had no shortage of aunties and uncles, grandparents and a father to play chess with him, as well as his happy and willing little sister. He has come along nicely in his maths this week and we had a wonderful weekend spotting various kinds of butterflies. They both played with their cousins on Monday and yes you nagged but they both got dressed and made their beds fairly quickly this morning!

I am a Negative Nancy though. I do not have the golden curls. I can happily (or miserably) sit downstairs after the kids have fallen asleep and for a good two hours (and longer) I can dissect each ‘terrible’ thing that happened that day and paint it to be even more terrible and a testimony to what an awful mother I am.
But at least I am self aware.
I know I am doing it, I don’t want to do it, I don’t know how to stop it, but writing about the good bits sure does take the edge of the negative bits!

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