Recycled Post from my old Blog...

Today I was showing mums best friend my blog and ended up visiting my old blog, http://invisiblewomanukblogspot.uk and reading through some of my old posts. 

This is a funny one about how uncool I was at school... thought you might like a laugh at my expense.

 

Wednesday, 16 March 2011

Too Cool For School?...

There’s a photo of me, aged 11/12, first year senior school, in the snowy playground, sort of ‘running’ towards the camera in a pathetic attempt to make the camera operator think I was gonna get them with the snowball (flake) that’s stuck to my cheap red gloved hand.  

I would’ve definitely missed, had I had the nerve to have thrown it.  

That photo, taken by my cool, confident friend Sarah, sort of summed me up at that age. 

A bit of a prat but nice enough in an annoying, groovy way.

Some people are just cool aren’t they? Some people have a swagger, or an aura that seems to draw other lesser folk to them. Some people would never have a photo that bad in their entire back catalogue.  Thank goodness for digital cameras eh?

It’s got to be confidence that makes these people stand out from the crowd but how do they become confident? What made them so self assured?

It’s not money necessarily, as there are a lot of seemingly cock-sure people who live in poor housing estates, just as there are sappy, unconfident kids attending our private schools.

So what is it?

I’ve done ok considering I was often one of the last to be picked during PE at school.

I remember at aged 7, standing in the playground, staring nervously at the basket of big orange net balls, thinking, “surely they’re gonna pick me before her, she stinks”… I remember being shocked and feeling like I’d been prodded in the solar plexus the one time I was second to last and all the ‘boffins’ had been picked before me! 

I was never a bully and I hate all that bitchiness but there is a definite hierarchy at school and you can’t help but think like that sometimes.

Actually, I hate to admit it but there were occasions when I stood by and laughed while others were bullied.  Not physical stuff but name calling.  And I participated in name calling and poking fun at one particular girl who I am ‘Facebook friends’ with now and has done very well for herself.  Sorry K!

Oh and I also shouted out ‘Jodie’s a wanker’!  in the queue for the tuck shop, as a dare.  She wasn’t a wanker at all actually.  Well, there was never any evidence to suggest she was.

I wonder what would have happened if I had been confident enough to say something to the bullies.

Until I was 12, my Mum chose my clothes.  I wasn’t sporty either and so Mum dressing me as a nerd, (before nerds were ironically cool), with a pageboy haircut and ‘pear collars’ on my shirts was where I was at.  

I was also only allowed two pairs of Clarks, or Startrite shoes a year - navy T bar flats in the summer and brown T bar flats in the winter. 

I once spent an entire day demanding that my poor Mum, ‘get me some open toed shoes’!  It must’ve been a Friday for that afternoon, my Dad Stanley-knifed the front of my shoes off and made me wear them all weekend!  I was mortified.

I thought open toed shoes would make me cool. 

Another thing that 7 year old me thought would aid my rise to the rank of ‘trendy and popular’ was getting my ears pierced. 

I remember crying and screaming, again at my poor Mum, that, “everyone in my school had their ears pierced…at least twice”! But my Dad used to come home from work and bark, “You can do what you like when you’re 18”! And, “stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about”!

Do-gooders be calm!  My Dad is a fantastic father and there is no cause for concern. ;)

So, it wasn’t til I was 12 years old that my Mum actually decided that a pair of ‘small gold studs’ might actually look rather sweet and I remember posing in a photo booth with her afterwards…modelling a Lady Diana flick and a denim waistcoat, beaming like a Cheshire cat.

It didn’t make me cool though.  I am just not like that.  It has to be inbuilt.

I loved watching Sandra Dee’s transformation into Sandy, in Grease.  I loved it so much I watched that film right from Betamax, through VHS and again later on DVD.

There are things that I think help you to be cool, accepted and popular.

Being good at a sport for example.  Not table tennis or chess.  These don’t become cool until you’re a parent, or an auntie/uncle and can show off exaggerated below-average skills to young relatives who have just found out about these past times.  Random memory alert - an old, eccentric Dutch guy called Herman taught me how to play chess, on his speed boat in the Canary Islands.  No… just chess!

Some kids used to just naturally make cool choices even with something as trivial as crisps.…  how they reacted when asked for one.  I remember most kids used to grimace when asked to share a ‘Ringo’ and they’d separate just half a crisp at the top of the packet and grip the bag tightly so there’d be no chance any more would be taken.  Sarah was too cool for that sort of nonsense and probably had a mountain of crisps anyway, so, as long as you had clean fingernails, she’d just casually offer them.  You could even have a second one!

Bags were another area to show how cool you were.  Which carrier bag would you be carrying your school books in?  Benetton, or Next were good.  Iceland, or Bejam were not and DEFINITELY NO ‘FASHION HOUSE’ BAGS!

A year or two after the carrier bag trend had really taken off, Sarah came in with a proper draw string bag with a clock on it! Well, you just couldn’t compete with that kind of style could you?

Although I did well by becoming friends with someone so cool, it also showed up just how un-cool I was in comparison.  Like the time we walked to her home from school and I fell over.  She laughed a lot but nowhere near as much as I’d have laughed had it been the other way around.  Anyway, I picked myself up and scurried behind her confident strides, resembling Baldrick & Black Adder.

Sarahs parents home is beautiful and was very trendy, the kitchen in particular was like something out of a magazine.  Pristine and crisp.  I walked in and politely said ‘Hello’ to her Mum and threw my bag on the white kitchen work top.

A few seconds passed and Sarah’s mum sniffed and turned her nose up, “ooh yuk can you smell something girls”?  We all sniffed the air and agreed there was a nasty pooey pong.  “Oh what’s that!?!!” cried her Mum, looking at my bag.  Sure enough, when I’d fallen, my bag had landed in dog shit, which I’d then flung over my shoulder and up my coat and then all over their lovely clean surfaces.

It wasn’t long after that episode that their pet Doberman attacked me, ripping my one pair of royal blue, Benetton cords.  Maybe she could still smell the shit and thought I was trying to mark her territory!

Anyway, I think I got on alright coz I wasn’t particularly nasty.  I was clean, (B.O is definite bully bait) and I read quite a bit so I was fairly articulate which helped when I was trying to make the cooler kids laugh.  Laughter is a passport to anywhere.

Aww, I will chat more on school days as there’s such a lot to be said about them.  I hope yours weren’t too uncomfortable and I hope they make you smile when you think back to them.

 

The Squirts.

Unfortunately I'm not referring to my kids here, no, I have had a dreadful bout of the Trotsky's. 

On day one I joked about how diarrhoea will finally help me to lose weight but oh dear, by day three I thought I'd never get better.  Just awful,

I was advised by docs to avoid dairy,(obvious) but also meat, fish and eggs.  She said to stick to uncomplicated food, like rice, porridge oats, dry toast etc.  I lived like Howard Hughes for a week. A reclusive, shrunken, manic wreckage of my former self, covering everything I touched or breathed near with disinfectant.   Anyway, it's finally gone now and I had sausage, mash and veg for dinner, mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmnnnn

Me and S had a shared day off today which is unusual during the week.  It felt like a mini weekend which is bloody lovely as it'll really break the working week up. 

We had the home visit from our son's teachers this morning. I think it's a new thing for reception class age, (just starting school), and I think it's a fantastic idea,  seeing as the likes of Social Services miss so much due to being short staffed, desensitised, managed wrong, whatever... I reckon all teachers should make regular visits...three times a year or something.  J loved it and seemed really proud of his home & family which was lovely to see.  Both kids came across as articulate, sociable, bright, interested little angels.

They fought as soon as the teachers had left though so we went out.

First we went to the shop to buy J's first ever school trousers, then we went to a great charitable organisation who go and collect decent furniture that people are throwing out and they sell it from this big warehouse for such a cheap price and it's for charity which is great. 

We went there hoping to find a table and chairs that'd fit in the small kitchen, to enable us to eat together as a family for once.  Well, we found a large round pine table that can extend to a huge oval and then we rummaged a bit more and I found four really classic solid wooden chairs.  The great thing is, the chairs need the dark old varnish sanding off them and maybe some light wax on them, so they should go well with the table.  Plus, the seats are the old fashioned type that just lift out, so I am looking forward to finding some groovy material and recovering them.  In total, the four chairs and large table cost us £30.  Fantastic!

When we got home, I cooked dinner and we all watched Diary of a Wimpy Kid.   What a great film! It's about two young boys who start 'middle school' (American term that I think means like Junior school, so for about 9/10 yr olds?)  Just a simple little story about how when you're at school, the most pathetic things mean the world and how the minutest action can effect your popularity for your entire school life but in the end, being yourself and being a good friend is the most important thing.  Sounds cliched and dull but it really was laugh out loud funny in a lot of places; the whole, 'cheese touch' storyline in particular.

Anyhoo, I'm only posting when I feel like it now.  I was trying to post every day but it began to feel like a chore as inside my head is not that interesting at the moment!

I'm enjoying reading others blogs and am trying to get into the book, One Day, that's just been made into a film.  Ho hum, hope you're all very well ;)

Self Fulfilling Prophecy

You know how some shops are nicer than others and have a better,classier type of clientele? Well, on my way home tonight I stopped off in ASDA to get some bits. 

• A dummy shaped teething chew for a puppy
• Some exclusive travel brochures
• Pizza & Potato Salad
• Two jars of red jalapenos
• a DVD called Super

I always feel repulsed when walking around ASDA because a lot of the customers are what I would describe as dregs.  Leeches.  Inbred, ignorant, unhealthy, baby making, needy, aggressive, ill mannered dregs.

They do fuq all, all day.  Tell a lie, they wake around 9.30, light a fag from their bed, shout "KYLEEE, SHERULL, REEEE-ANNAH, BRITTNEEE, LOUWEE, SYMUN, FERRAREEE"(their kids are usually named after current 'stars' or cars but spelt differently), just to make sure all their kids have got themselves ready, fed themselves a breakfast of dry Sugarpuffs & coca cola and left to walk themselves to school.  Then, they'll slump infront of the telly with another fag, to watch Jeremy Kyle.  Whatever goes on in the show they repeat to their mates LOUDLY on their up to date ifones... whilst smoking more fags and flicking through the catalogue to buy more leggings, stripper shoes and sexy undies, for when one of their childrens fathers drops in to sleep over on the way back from the pub.

They might get washed, they'll get dressed to the nines!!! A lot of make up, severe eyebrows, plucked and dyed black.  Hair scraped to within an inch of it's life up into a tight high ponytail.  Massive earrings, pierced moustache and eyebrow, chewing gum in, fag lit and away they go.  Slop scuff swear spit shout all the way to ASDA.

In ASDA, I walked past the books, looking for Alan Whickers Journey of a Lifetime, (I bet it wasn't to ASDA) and there were literally rows of 'books' with sad looking children on the front entitled things like "Mummys little secret" and "I just want to be loved" and "Please Daddy Stop"..... absolutely unbelievable sickening tales of nastiness, turned into a genre, especially to entertain these layabouts.  These books were peppered with books on serial killers, thugs and other crimimals.

It made me wonder about what would happen if all this sh!t was just stopped. Taken off the shelves and replaced with books about positive, happy, aspirational people and places and events.  What if the likes of Eastenders and Tabloid papers were just halted? 

S said that it was 'self fulfilling prophecy'.  If you hear it enough, you'll believe it.  If someone tells you you're useless all your life, you become useless.  If you watch enough sh!t, you believe it and go on X Factor and make a right t!t of yourself.

Where is it all going to lead?  Riots, unemployment, crime, teenage pregnancies, messed up immigration, neighbourood harrassment, less Police. Hmmmm. Something's got to give eh?

Long Time No Post & Pooey Bins.

Hello.

Sorry I've not posted in a while.  Not sure why really.  I didn't feel like sharing my thoughts as my thoughts were a bit grey & miserable. 

Today I left work early to go to the gym and as I parked outside my home, I watched the neighbour chuck a black sack of rubbish into his shared bin and just leave it outside on the pavement, instead of dragging it back into the front garden like most people would.  He'd also just ignored another bin that had been knocked over on the pavement.

I slammed my car door, walked up to the bin behind him and loudly muttering, "FOR FUQ SAKE" lifted the bin and straightened in myself.  His bin.  Lazy horrible bar$tard! 

Then, feeling annoyed at the state of society nowadays but also strangely pleased with my own superiority, I dragged my bin up the path and into our garden.  As I turned, facing the bin, to close the garden gate, I got the most awful whiff of sickly, rancid sh!t.

I dropped MY SHOPPING bags, and opened the lid.

The stench was putrid, rotting poo & waste and I am embarrassed to say so but maggots were wriggling around happily in the mush.

So, feeling not quite so superior anymore, I boiled pan after pan and kettle's full and bleached and Dettol'd and scrubbed the inside & outside of the bin until it smelt ONLY of cleanliness.

In the process, as I'm so obviously not used to the cleaning bin process, I splashed boiling hot water up both shins, (luckily I had opaque tights on which saved me a bit) and got through all but one ofthe scouring sponges. 

I'm sure there are levels of cleanliness and after today, I'm not sure where I fit it anymore.  If level 10 was OCD and level 1 was a tramp, then i'd have said I was a good 6.8/ 7 until the sh!t & maggot infested bin debacle but now, hmmmmn, maybe I'd scrape a 4 !!! 

I blame my daughter.  She is one of just three left at nursery in her group still in nappies.  She really can't be ar$ed with the whole toilet ritual and enjoys the freedom a nappy allows her exploring schedule.  Unlike the rest of us, she doesn't have to miss a second of the action, be it watching television, playing hide & seek or sand castle building.  I was much more uptight when it came to my son and nappies.  With daughter, she is so sure of herself and really couldn't give a hoot what others think and I kind of like that attitude. 

I will still blame her pooey ar$e for dragging me down in the cleanliness stakes though!

Just beautiful - watch & listen - Lana Del Rey - Video Games

Let it all Out

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahJ6Kh8klM4

I'm feeling a bit fragile.

I've had the worst moods for the last 7 days and thought it would ease off but today I feel really, really sad.

I went to Docs last night regarding the trapped nerve/numb arm and it was good.  He gave me loads of stronger anti inflammatory tablets and has referred me for physiotherapy and an MRI scan, as the neck/shoulder problems have been coming back for years, even though this is the first time I've felt numbness. 

Whilst in the doctors waiting room, I was flicking through an old Good Housekeeping magazine that had Lulu on the cover.  I actually took a photo of two recipes out of the mag, Ginger & Thyme Chicken Meatballs and Smoked trout Jacket Potato (with sweet potato).  I will attempt to make these at some point in my life but last night we opted for cheap n easy lambs liver, bacon, mash, cabbage n leeks and onion gravy.

I met my new team leader at work a couple of days ago and it's left me feeling a bit uneasy.

She's probably very nice but I just didn't feel an instant rapour.  I felt on edge and like the whole meeting was a bit corporate and guarded.  Probably more on my side than anything.  It's all so unsettled at the moment.  It's hard for all involved in any sort of restructure that involves cutting costs.  I hope she saw through my awkwardness and didn't feel it was personal.  I do miss my old boss though. 

Me, S and the kids were sitting in the garden on Sunday evening with radio 6 playing on the PC and me & S were squashed into the corner of the patio, desperately craving the last square metre of sunshine before it set behind our home, watching the kids giggling and wrestling on the lawn.  Nightswimming by REM came on and S turned to me and said, "if I ever suffer a bump on the head or something and lose my memory and don't know who you and the kids are, please just know that I have had the best time of my life since I've met you Deb".

REM are definitely a band to play when you fancy 'letting it all out'.  Personally, Day Sleeper makes me cry but I have stuck the link for Nightswimming at the top of this post for you to play, because it really is a simple and beautiful song.

I read a friends blog post about her son being a bit off and her suggesting he step away from the computer and choose a board game for them to play.  He chose Monopoly and his mood lifted.  Even reading that made me emotional. 

The whole Amy Winehouse thing has had a weird effect on me, as has the waste of young innocent lives in Norway by that kunt who needs to be destroyed instantly. What the hell they're wasting time and money on him for beggars belief. Get rid!

I bought the Mail on Sunday, (because the advert tricked me into believing there was a £5 off voucher for TESCO inside but actually, you have to join the Daily Mails website and give your details first)... I would not under normal circumstances buy the Mail. 

I was reading an article in one of it's supplements by a middle aged woman who had gone out of her comfort zone, to a festival as her very new boyfriend was playing in a band there.  He'd invited her to camp with him, (in a posh tent).  The article was good at first but after a while, it was full of cliches about how some young leggy blonde hippy chick checked her in and how she had not a scrap of make up on blah de blah de blah.

Sometimes, it'd be nice to read a whole magazine that was packed full of women my age who were positive and confident and who didn't give a toss about what others thought.  No wonder we're all crippled with anxiety about our appearance, sexual prowess, talents, parenting skills etc etc

This morning, I played Adele singing 'Someone Like You', live at The Brits, (watch it on You Tube) and as her powerful, vulnerable, emotive, crowd silencing performance ended, my four year old son remarked, "she's got a bit of a fat face though hasn't she Mummy"?  That really p*ssed me off and got me questioning the sort of influence I am on my kids and how I must moan about my weight too much in front of them.  Why did he even notice fat, or thin?

It's summer holidays here and all the schools have broken up for 6 weeks.  The summer holidays always felt weird when I was younger as Mum didn't let me just go out and play as she was a huge worrier, so I rarely went to others to play, or had friends over and just wasn't allowed to walk round the corner to my friends house so I always felt cut off.  All these years later and I feel like that today.  My friends are miles away, or at work.  I still have no one to play with!

I'm getting my kids into sports and activities from an early age because from my experience, S has a lot more confidence than me and his childhood was completely the opposite to mine.  According to him, his Mum being very young, wasn't really ready to be a mum and hence, he was often playing out at four years old,  and even overnight, he reckons as early as eleven years!

As a result, he seems relaxed, adaptable and streetwise, where as I am cautious and guarded.  He panics and fusses over our kids though and I tend to push them and want them to toughen up.  We both cuddle them and encourage them a lot though, so it works.  It works really well.

It's one of those nothing days.  The sky is grey and just so still.  I'm off today with the kids and have been making stuff out of Lego but they now want to watch CBBC.  The days where you have nothing to do, nowhere to be and no one telling you to hurry up are very rare.  Me and the kids are enjoying slothing about, unbrushed, unwashed and still in our PJ's.

Things are changing.  Work, family, relationships, friendships, age, health.... things that we have not much control over. 

Colleagues who I class as real friends have been moved to other areas, under the new structure. 

I am trying to potty train my daughter and my son is starting school soon.

On Sunday, my son ran into the kitchen crying uncontrollably.  He'd been playing in the garden and something had happened.  Both S and I thought he'd been stung and ran to where he'd been playing and asked him to calmly tell us what had happened.  He pointed to a hole in the fence and forced the word, "HAMBO" out, before crying again. 

I jumped up onto the fence and peered over it.  There I caught a glimpse of white fur, disappearing behind a plant pot.  Our son had snuck his hamster, John J Hambo, out to play in the garden and he'd escaped into next doors garden through the gap, to have a nose around.

The neighbour guided Hambo back towards the hole and he crawled back to the safety of S's hands. 

It was a real eye opener for me and S and we realised then that our four yr old son had matured and developed a real nurturing, caring 'friendship' with the little hamster who til then, I'd bought on a whim and S had thought was a bad idea.  We've had him for almost 3 years now and he's just sort of there, being fed and cleaned out by me.  To our son though, he's always been there and means more to him than we gave him credit for.  It really was a lovely moment, if you know what I mean?

This post is a bit disjointed and all over the place but I suppose it is how my brain is functioning today.

I'm fed up of moaning, (although I, rather obviously from this post, will not stop) and am trying to do positives to lift my mood.  Exercise. Drinking water. Apologising.

I am attempting to write a children's book.  I am stuck on Chapter three, which in positive speak means, I have got off to a good start and written two chapters that I like, out of thin air.  My son laughed in the right places too, so that's a good sign.

Books are funny things.  I never got into Harry Potter and have never read even one of the books and until last weekend, had never even watched one of the films all the way through.  I did however, watch The Chamber of Secrets, from start to finish, curled up on the settee with both my kids and S on the other settee and thoroughly enjoyed it.  It's the only really magical, atmospheric 'kids' film I've seen in years. 

As a kid, I loved Bedknobs & Broomsticks and Wizard of Oz and Charlie & The Chocolate Factory with Gene Wilder.  Since then, there's been bugger all to really get into for kids.  In my opinion. 

A friend bought my son a few of the Horrid Henry books, for his 4th birthday and after catching a bit of the series on telly, I thought it was inappropriate, like the AWFUL Tracy Beaker.  Just a rude kid back chatting and disrespecting all grown ups, for laughs.

I decided recently to give Horrid Henry another chance and started reading the books again. 

Yeah, I would clip Horrid Henry round the ear if he were my kid but he isn't.  And Just like I used to read Burglar Bill, or My Naughty Little Sister and thoroughly enjoy reading about how disobedient she was but didn't want to act like them, my son chuckled all the way through the Horrid Henry books.  We're going to watch Horrid Henry 3D next week at the Cinema.  Can't wait!

At the end of Horrid Henry Rocks, Henry finds himself on stage at a 'babies' concert and through sheer embarrassment blurts out a horrid poem, "Granny on her crutches, push her off her chair, Shove shove shove shove, SHOVE HER DOWN THE STAIRS"!

Well, my son thought this was the funniest thing he'd ever heard and promptly rang my mum, to sing it down the phone to her!  Luckily he was laughing so much that she couldn't really get what he was saying.

I am not feeling quite as fragile after writing this.  Sometimes, you just need to let it all out eh? 

Thanks for listening.



Three



good



books

    

The kids with John J Hambo



What a Nerve

Doctors tomorrow, as I have a suspected trapped nerve somewhere near my right shoulder blade.

I felt myself getting sort of compressed, from jogging on the treadmill and kind of achy from weight lifting (small weights, high reps) and so I decided I'd pop along to Pilates. 

I thought I could do with a damn good stretch.

Well, it wasn't even that stretchy and I walked out of there feeling like I'd go again BUT Thursday morning came and I could hardly move me neck!  Well, it hurt a lot to look down and wasn't particularly comfy looking left, right & up either.  Now, after a trip to minor injuries on Saturday, due to my right arm going numb, I have been advised to go to Docs if problem persists.  Well, it has not only persisted but got progressively worse.  The Nurofen work for about 30 mins then back to sickly pins & needles feeling again.

AM I DESTINED TO BE FATTY PATTY ALL BEEF OR WHAT?

First i got shin splints, now a trapped effing nerve.

I tell you what, I deserved those two slices of cake at lunchtime.  I DESERVED THEM!