Day 100: ‘Speak up’

IS there nothing worse than hearing yourself leaving a voicemail?

Being married to someone who works on the wireless means I get no sympathy in this department. Mark knows what he sounds like on air, so he knows what he sounds like on a phone or a voicemail - and it doesn’t bother him.

I on the other hand can’t stand the sound of my own voice on my answer phone. So when I have to leave a message on someone else’s, I turn into a babbling mess.

I spend a lot of my working day on the phone, always have. I would rather pick up the phone, than send an email if I can get away with it. That, I have no problem with. 

But when I hear a voicemail message click in, I generally avoid leaving my weird sounding dulcet tones on their answer phone - nobody needs to hear that! For some reason when I do leave a message I stumble over my words, leave the wrong phone number, develop a momentary lisp, or even just say completely the wrong thing!

If I have this problem - someone who prefers a phone call over an email - how on earth does the new generation coming into the workplace cope? This is a generalisation of course, as I know a couple of great under-25s who never have a problem picking up the phone and talking to someone. 

But I have been in some workplaces, where young people will choose to email you, rather than walk across the office and have a conversation. They would rather have an hour’s worth of to-ing and fro-ing with emails than a five minute chat on the phone.

I’ve heard that some offices can go almost a whole morning without making a noise - no talking to each other, no phone calls. Nothing but the sound of keyboards tapping and mobiles beeping with text messages. 

With the younger generations being glued to texting, Facebook, Twitter, BBM, Whas app, Snapchat - and any other young cool things that I don’t know about - there’s almost no surprise that they’re far more comfortable with an electronic message than the spoken word.

I don’t think I’ll ever get over my voicemail phobia, but I hope one day there’ll be a line written in a job description: ‘Must be able to hold a phone conversation competently’.

Maybe using the phone should become part of the curriculum for sixteen-year-olds. Send them into the world with some real life skills please, before they become robotic typing machines, operating in silence, keeping everything to 140 characters!

Day 99: ‘Pink and blue jobs’

I’M guessing most of couples out there are like us - you have our own jobs in the house, that you either consciously assigned when deciding to live together, or just fell into cause it’s your natural position in the household.

Mark and I have always had what we like to call ‘pink and blue jobs’. Just in case you need clarification, I’m pink and Mark’s blue.

Most of the jobs were quite obvious and naturally fell to either one of us. I had the majority of the indoor jobs: cooking, cleaning, washing and ironing, I have also adopted the mantel of official card and present buyer - with the exception of presents for Mark’s dad and his best friend Guy, he is always in charge of those.

With it being Guy’s birthday today, and his dad’s tomorrow - gents, please remember this fact as you open your gifts.

Mark’s key blue jobs have always been to be in charge of the garden, DIY, washing the cars and anything remotely technical, inside or out.

However, when you have a baby, the lines become a little more blurred. The clear divide between pink and blue is no more. We often share jobs, and I think in some ways we enjoy swapping colours. 

The more clear-cut ‘never going to change as long as we both shall live’ sort of jobs like ironing (pink) and mowing the lawn (blue), have of course remained the same. 

But cooking has become Mark’s domain, I will do a lot of the planting in the garden, we both use the hand car wash at The Swinger in Bulwell and we have our lovely cleaning lady, Joy, who comes twice a month for the ‘big clean’.

It’s amazing how one very small person can throw the whole universe out of balance, but I have to say as with all things Erin, it’s been an excellent change! Perhaps having such definitive roles wasn’t the best thing for us, the variation keeps you on your toes!

Day 97: ‘Dear Disney…’

THERE’S not many of these ‘like and share’ Facebook posts that I enjoy. I normally see them as a chain letter in modern form, or the content is a strange way to encourage people to pray or think about someone in unfortunate circumstances, suggesting “you don’t care if you don’t like or share”. 

Whenever I see something like that, I say a little prayer for whoever appears in the photograph rather than sharing or liking the image. You can only hope that if there is someone up there listening, that they may do something to help those less fortunate than ourselves - I know Facebook has mastered most things, but I don’t believe divine intervention is quite one of them.

However, over the past few days my timeline has been full of pictures of Disney characters. A simple, harmless concept that has put a smile on my face every time. 

There is no Disney film that can fail to make me smile, laugh and sometimes even cry. So being reminded of some of the greats has been a delight..and thinking up who fits with what character, has also been fun.

It has made me think though about which Disney character I would like to be, and I have to say it’s a tough one. As much as there’s always a happy ending, a lot of the characters have some issues.

Let’s look at Ariel in the Little Mermaid..she’s beautiful, has a lovely singing voice, has found a rathe handsome prince, understands what a fork does as much as my daughter does, and has some excellent friends. But she is still a mermaid, and if she’s not a mermaid, she’s either cursed, or forced to live on land without her family. Too troubling.

Then there’s Cinderella. Well we all know she doesn’t start out with the best lot. I mean don’t get me wrong, she gets to clean and tidy all day, which for a woman with OCD is a nice thought. Plus she always has the help of lots of little animals who sing to her and dress up like people (which let’s face it is the dream isn’t it?!) 

But then there’s the dodgy step mum and annoying stepsisters and the fact that if she misses her tram home, everything turns into pumpkins! She does meet her prince in the end, but this is someone who is prepared to gamble his future on someone with the same size foot as that flippin' glass slipper - too risky to marry a gambler?!

I know, I’m crazy, and that is why I’ve decided to choose Dory from Finding Nemo. This gal is a fruit loop, forgets things a lot (me) is reasonably clumsy (me) but is lucky to have fantastic people around her to help her wend her way through life (me). 

All in all, I believe I must continue in life with the mantra to: “Just keep swimming, just keep swimming, just keep swimming, swimming, swimming.”

Day 97: ‘Always end with a smile’

YOU know when you just have one of those days? Today was one of those days.

Well that’s not fair to say actually, in fact it’s a gross exaggeration. It’s amazing how hard it is to see things from a positive perspective purely based on a couple of seemingly small incidences, that can so quickly snowball and determine your mood.  

In reality, I had around an hour’s worth of bad day, much outweighed by the remaining afternoon and early evening. 

The first two hours were standard, but perfectly pleasant (if you discount the smell that emanated at one point from Erin’s nappy). My beautiful little lady woke up at 8am, full of the joys of spring, and twice as hungry. We ate, played, and then she sat and watched CBeebies in her pram, while I sorted the washing and had a shower. Reasonably standard to this point.

As my sister has now returned from her travels, and found herself with a final day off, we had arranged to go out with her and the dogs. I told Erin this news, to which she was most excited, happily having her shoe buckles fastened and putting her hoodie on as she raced for the door.

Then, that fateful hour began. I couldn’t find my keys - car, house, other houses, nursery fob etc. Vaguely recollecting a 5am conversation with Mark about which car had the car seat in, and which he should take to work, I wondered whether he had taken both sets of keys accidentally.

Now ten minutes late for Katy already, I was starting to get a bit agitated, not least when I spoke to Mark and discovered he only had his keys. There’s nothing more annoying than knowing your keys are in the house, but you can’t find them!

All plans were cancelled, and with the unfortunate deluge of the monsoon preventing any outdoor fun, we were forced to make the most of the indoor toys (while I continued to search for the damn keys!)

While playing with Erin on the bed, I made that classic parenting error, I got up and turned my back for a couple of seconds. Next thing I know…THUD! Yep, Erin had rolled herself straight off the bed (which is one of those ridiculously high Princess and the Pea type affairs). 

Following a reasonably inconsolable minute or two, and then twenty minutes of ‘I feel guilty for letting you fall’ Peppa Pig episodes, I was now bored, shaken, and none the wiser about the keys.

As Erin began her lunch of egg, tomatoes, ham and toast (I know random, but she likes it), I opened the bin to deposit the egg box, and there they were. The flippin keys! 

Why on God’s great earth I put them there, I have no idea, but they were found, I felt better, and our planned day could begin again..just an hour or so later than expected.

To further remind me that my bad days are rare and pass by quickly, the sun came out later this afternoon to offer up a beautiful evening, and end it with a smile and a little giggle at my own expense.

Day 96: ‘Tosh pot’

LAST night Erin travelled to Gloucestershire to spend a night at Mark’s parents. 

We’re very lucky to have almost every Saturday night to ourselves thanks to mine and Mark’s parents. If we’re not opting for a quiet one, the cinema and a curry always sounds the most sensible route!

Last night’s film of choice was Noah, Russell Crowe’s latest blockbuster, based on the biblical story of a man with a boat, lots of animals, and a pretty rainy month or so.

Despite having spent years going to church and in Sunday school this rather brief summation was, until last night, the best detail I could offer for Noah’s story, with the exception of some ‘animals went in two by two’ facts, and a vague recollection of a dove finding a leaf on dry land at the end.

So, aside from being an impressive cinematic experience, with cracking acting, great special effects, lots of lovely animals, and Russel Crowe, I was also enlightened to the actual story of Noah.

Everyone has their own opinion of course, not everyone will have enjoyed the film as we did. But, I wasn’t sure the rather gobby, middle aged gentleman - who’s wife is clearly looking for a younger model, but couldn’t possibly achieve that, so has attempted to find a half way house by taking her husband to Topman - agreed with our review, in fact I’m certain

His incredibly loud review on leaving the auditorium: “What a complete load of Tosh!”, closely followed by loud guffawing and some references to ‘f***in boring bible cr*p’, did make us giggle (at him, not with him).

Perhaps the title of the film didn’t make it clear enough that it may feature some reference to ‘boring bible cr*p’. Perhaps living in a Christian country, this man who has been on the earth at least 25 years longer than I have, had somehow missed the name Noah as a reference to a rather famous bible story?

I was raised as a Christian, but I haven’t read the bible from cover to cover, and now don’t attend church through choice. But there’s a few of the old classics - the Nativity, David and Goliath, Noah, Moses, the Easter story, that regardless of my time in Sunday school, I had come across in mainstream school lessons.

How this man - in the tight fitting Barbour jacket, low slung jeans, pointy shows, far too much gel in his hair, and wearing about a litre of Joop - had missed this fact is beyond me. But he had, so I feel I should offer a warning to all.

The film, appropriately named Noah, is about Noah, from the Bible. If this fact offends you to your very core, then please save yourself and don’t go.

However if you’re just interested in a great story, incredibly well portrayed, with action, romance, tragedy and Russell Crowe, then I strongly recommend you go and see Noah. 

That’s Noah, you know, the one from the Bible.

Day 95: ‘Moaning motherhood’

IN the changing room at Puddleducks yesterday I became reasonably fed up after about ten minutes.

Not because Erin was wriggling around making it virtually impossible to tug on her two sets of swimming pants and costume (they have to wear more in the pool than out of it). It was the moaning, a constant stream of it, from every single mother in there.

“I just don’t think they (the nursery) are doing enough to wear her out.” An interesting quote from mother number one (I literally have to go by my numbering process, as other than having reasonable recognition of their children’s names, I have never been aware of the mothers’ names). 

I have no idea what nursery this lady’s 11-month old goes to, but it certainly isn’t the one Erin goes to. It’s hard to keep Erin awake till bedtime when she’s had a day at Applegarth. It’s actually the perfect way to tire her out, even when she’s had a two hour nap with them after lunch. 

“God I’m totally fed up of being the only one going straight home from work on a Thursday, and not heading to the pub for karaoke night..bloody kids eh?!”

If she really thinks about it, I’m guessing mother number two, spent years before having her beautiful little girl, with hangovers on a Friday, a purse with a near-certain lack of at least £40 every week, and almost certainly the reputation for the worst rendition of ‘Livin’ on a Prayer’ ever heard (after hearing her ‘Jelly on a Plate’ during the swimming class, I’d say this was a dead cert). 

These are just two examples of the endless moaning and mindless babble. Not one of them said how proud they are of their children for saying their first word, or taking their first steps. More like a roll of the eyes at the fact that their child can now move around, or a groan at the repetitive nature of their little one’s grasp of the English language.

One week I’m going to attempt to start a positive conversation and see where it goes!

Day 94: ‘Heading out in your PJs’

IT seems to have become commonplace in supermarkets to see women walking around bizarrely shopping in their pyjamas. 

As far as I can tell, you can only execute this look if you own a pair of Ugg boots, and accompany the look with a hoody or Barbour jacket.

I would hope anyone not bedecked in Florence and Fred’s finest nightwear while perusing the cold meats and guacamole, would join me in seeing this look as reasonably ridiculous - unless you’re carrying a bucket and raising money for Children in Need of course.

However, when you’re 19 months old, it’s a different story.

This evening we were invited to join Richard Whitehead, his family and friends, for the launch of a picture book documenting his 40 Marathons in 40 Days. It being a Friday night, with our chief babysitters either in Windsor or Kuala Lumpar, we decided to take Erin for her first Friday night on the town. 

After an early bath and bottle of milk, I dressed Erin in her pyjamas, in the hope that she would be ready to go to bed when she got home. True to form, indeed she was, but that wasn’t the real benefit of her attire.

Unsurprisingly she was the only person at the book launch in her pyjamas, but that didn’t phase Erin of course, not many potentially awkward social situations do. 

Despite it being past her bedtime, and Peppa Pig being nowhere to be seen, Erin was in her element. Racing around the entire Antenna building, paying a number of visits to the receptionist, playing peekaboo with a number of innocent bystanders, and clapping at all the wrong moments during Richard’s video, speech and Q&A.

Never mind Richard’s 40 marathons, I think I’ve run at least two this evening chasing around after our little redhead in blue. But she did prove something to me. Not everyone going out in their PJs can be considered a chav, some are cute, funny and indeed ready for bed when they get home…surely two hours of running around will result in a lie in?!