The Power of the Dog

I see, to my shame, that I have not written anything here for far too long. Although I regularly sell my life to gazillions of Daily Mail readers, I find myself surprisingly bad at sharing personal anecdotes in a blog read by two and a half people. Hmm.

However, I did write a blog post some while ago about dogs. And today, we went to visit the puppy that we will be bringing home in three weeks’ time…

The Power of the Dog
by 
Rudyard Kipling

There is sorrow enough in the natural way 
From men and women to fill our day; 
And when we are certain of sorrow in store, 
Why do we always arrange for more? 
Brothers and sisters, I bid you beware 
Of giving your heart to a dog to tear.

Buy a pup and your money will buy 
Love unflinching that cannot lie– 
Perfect passsion and worship fed 
By a kick in the ribs or a pat on the head. 
Nevertheless it is hardly fair 
To risk your heart to a dog to tear.

When the fourteen years which Nature permits 
Are closing in asthma, or tumour, or fits, 
And the vet’s unspoken prescription runs 
To lethal chambers or loaded guns, 
Then you will find–it’s your own affair– 
But … you’ve given your heart to a dog to tear. 

When the body that lived at your single will, 
With its whimper of welcome, is stilled (how still!) 
When the spirit that answered your every mood 
Is gone–wherever it goes–for good, 
You will discover how much you care, 
And will give your heart to a dog to tear. 

We’ve sorrow enough in the natural way, 
When it comes to burying Christian clay. 
Our loves are not given, but only lent, 
At compound interest of cent per cent. 
Though it is not always the case, I believe, 
That the longer we’ve kept ‘em, the more do we grieve: 
For, when debts are payable, right or wrong, 
A short-term loan is as bad as a long– 
So why in–Heaven (before we are there) 
Should we give our hearts to a dog to tear?

You Couldn’t Make It Up

Well, strike me down with a msacara wand.

According to a new survey (don’t you love them? This one’s by a beauty retailer, so it has to be true), the average value of a woman’s make-up bag is £172.

This, apparently, means that the contents of our make-up bag are more valuable than our mobile phones, watches and bags – and should be adequately insured.

All I can say to that is: I am evidently not a woman.

My make-up bag is a M&S plastic bag (one of the free green ones that they offer to put sandwiches in).

Value: £0.00

My make-up consists of one lipstick, one eyeliner and one pot of eyeshadow. Said items were bought for a newspaper photo shoot before Christmas, not for personal use. Though my 8-year-old did enjoy using it for the school Christmas play.

Value: £3 (thanks to Poundland)

As for the other items…

Ho hum. My bag (actually my son’s old school rucksack) is worth less than the average woman’s £5 eyebrow pencil (what on earth is an eyebrow pencil, anyway?). One pot of £27 foundation could buy me three mobile phones (my £9 Tesco Value phone conveniently doubles as a watch).

I somehow don’t think I will be needing to take out insurance.

An Inspector Calls

My daughter’s school has been blessed by a visit from the Inspectors this week. I hope they were suitably impressed with the floor…

What A To-Do About Nothing

Marie Claire magazine happened to catch my eye when I was (ahem) working this morning.

To-do lists! it said. What does your relationship with your list say about you?

The Marie Claire staff are all evidently very exciting people. Their to-do lists involve waxing, gyms, spray tans, pedicures, holidays and Oyster cards (I know what most of these things are, because I’ve read about them in newspapers).

Hmm, I think. I have a feeling that I don’t quite measure up to Marie Claire standards. Here is my current list:

Find lost train tickets.

Uncancel accidentally cancelled direct debit.

Post card that I wrote a month ago.

Return overdue library books (still in pile from the start of the school summer holidays, crowned by the council’s letter warning me that I will be locked up if I don’t return said books ASAP).

Sell old stuff on eBay (so I do have something in common with the Marie Claire crew after all!)

Watch daughter at cross country on 21st September (um … methinks I might have missed that one).

I suspect that my to-do list says simply that I need to write fewer lists and be more organised (and that I have an unspeakably dull life).

But what does your to-do list say about you?

 

Let Them Eat Cake (from M&S)

I am always slightly behind the times. But even I can’t fail to notice that baking has suddenly become the height of fashion.

I know this because it was not only on the cover of my Daily Telegraph, but also on the cover of my secret vice, The Lady. Yes, I was hoping to read another nice interview with Gareth Malone with my morning coffee – and instead I find yet another person generously sharing their secrets for creating the perfect Victoria Sponge.

It did not inspire me to get my mixing bowl out.

I blame my mother, of course. Every year, we had to take a home-baked cake to Guide Camp. Every year, she would send me off with a supermarket version that she hadn’t even tried to disguise in Bacofoil.

One despairing Girl Guide friend did try to teach me to bake a cake. I fear I was not a natural, as I didn’t try to bake another one until my son’s first birthday, around 18 years later. Annabel Karmel said the recipe was foolproof. It wasn’t.

But even if it had been: why on earth would I want to bake anything? Maybe in another universe, I would have smiley children who took turns and waited to lick the proverbial spoon. But in real life, baking means:

Drawing up battle-lines in the kitchen and counting out grains of flour, lest one child feel that the other has had preferential flour-treatment.

Mess. Two children plus one hand-mixer equals yet another thing for me to clean up. If the children try to clean up, I then have to clean up their cleaning attempts.

Washing up. Why does baking always require 35 bowls and 150 spoons?

Attempted manslaughter. When my son was obsessed with Chemistry, his baking powder (contaminated by copper sulphate) somehow got muddled up with the one we use for baking. Our guests found the blue flecks inside the scones somewhat unappetising.

I’m sure that I ought really to like baking. All real mummies like baking. But in that case, I will remain an unreal mummy – and when my children’s birthdays roll around again, I will send up yet another prayer of thanks to Marks and Spencer.

Grunt and Boden

A new survey (oh yes) that popped into my inbox today told me some truly shocking news.

Modern mums are struggling to keep a proper eye on their children, it said.

The “hard-hitting” study (by a stair-gate manufacturer, no less) of 3,000 mothers found that seven in ten are so very busy that – shock – they are reguarly forced to  leave their children to play unsupervised while carrying out household chores.

The report also found 40 per cent of parents admit their child has been injured around the house while they themselves were busy cooking, cleaning and juggling aspects of domestic life.

And the majority of “helpless mums” say it’s impossible to keep an eye on their child permanently to prevent accidents.

The solution is obviously a stair-gate. But what I’m wondering is how many of these mothers told the truth?

The most common distraction for mothers is, apparently, cooking. Hoovering and ironing are also blamed by this virtuous cohort.

Then again, I can’t blame them. After all, who apart from me would want to admit that they let their child fall downstairs while trying to eat a coat-hanger because they were reading about Kylie’s hot-pants on the Femail website?

THE SURVEY’S TOP FIVE ACCIDENT-CAUSING MATERNAL DISTRACTIONS  (yeah, right)

1. Cooking
2. Being on the phone
3. Other children misbehaving or requiring time
4. Working from home
5. Cleaning

THE REAL TOP FIVE ACCIDENT-CAUSING MATERNAL DISTRACTIONS 

1. Boden
2. Mumsnet
3. Twitter
4. Facebook
5. Rightmove

But hang on a moment. I now see that this is all encapsulated in the Pious Mummy list. Only there it’s called ‘working from home’…

 

The Lady’s Not For Turning – Not

Thanks to last night’s news, I have been reminded that U-turns are a Very Bad Thing. Ed Balls said so, so it must be true.

To my mind, this proves only that he spends more time at work than he spends with his children.

All real parents know that U-turns are inevitable.

Dummies, toddler reins, television, computer games, Annabel Karmel, Disney … you name it, I have U-turned on it. Schools, puppies, where to live … yep, you’ve guessed it. If it weren’t for U-turns, my son would have been under a bus, and my daughter would be bottom in Horrible History.

We don’t even save our U-turns for little things like where to live, either. They even extend to McDonald’s and Pizza Hut. Mr Balls has obviously never been trapped in a Cornwall-bound car with my children for 12 hours if he thinks that  fuel duty, static caravans and Cornish pasties represent a serious change of policy.

I like to think that my U-turns demonstrate my admirable flexibility and willingness to listen and take into account the situations as they are, rather than as I imagined they might be (cue ludicrous visions of well-mannered children daintily nibbling home-made organic cous-cous). They are obviously not the result of having made rubbish decisions in the first place.

I think the only thing we haven’t U-turned on is having children. Though that’s probably only because it’s too late.

When it comes to everything else, this lady is very decidedly for turning.

Sam’s Dad, Naked

I am not good at recognising faces. In fact, I am so bad at recognising faces that I failed to recognise my own husband when I bumped into him in John Lewis.

But when we were at the local swimming pool at half term, it wasn’t a problem, as my children were perfectly able to recognise their schoolfriend Sam and his dad when we found ourselves sharing a float with them at water “fun”. And so we spent a merry hour in the pool with Sam and his dad, then went our separate ways.

This morning, I found myself standing next to a man in the playground. The fact that he was in the playground suggested that he was a parent. And the fact that he said hello to me suggested that I should know who he was.

“Hello,” I replied carefully. Hmm, I wondered. Where have I seen you before?

He was smart and well dressed, which suggested that he had a real job. But that didn’t narrow it down quite enough.

“Did the children enjoy the water fun?” he asked.

Then the proverbial penny dropped. Swimming pool. Water fun. Sam’s dad.

“Oh!” I exclaimed. “I’m so sorry – I didn’t recognise you with your clothes on.”

The playground fell silent.

It is said that the worst thing you can do when you are in a hole is to keep on digging. So that’s precisely what I did.

“Um, I mean, I don’t mean naked, I mean, swimming … trunks … oh dear.”

I think I will send my husband to do the school pick-up today.

Roaming Royalty…

Jubilee fever has hit my seven-year-old.

I’m not quite so sure that her grasp of History is all it should be, though. And I’m not sure, either, where Her Majesty has been doing her roaming. Maybe Buckingham Palace is even bigger than I thought…

Fug off!

As former university teachers, my husband and I are never ones to miss an opportunity to bore our children senseless in the name of increasing their vocabulary.

And so it was that we found ourselves in the car chatting about the word ‘fug’ (as you do on the way back from a day out in the sun).

“Nobody talks about fugs any more,” my husband mused.

“My father does,” I said helpfully. They are of a similar same vintage and similar boarding-school background.

“I know what fug off means,” our just-turned-ten-year-old son said even more helpfully.

“I know what fug is too,” our seven-year-old daughter added.

Uh-oh. Last time we had an F-word conversation, it was about ‘foot’ not being a swear word. As the word had been used in their presence by someone with a Yorkshire accent, I could see how the misunderstanding might have arisen.

“Okay,” I said carefully. “You tell me what fug means.”

Our daughter gave me a withering look.

“A fug is one of those teenage boys who gets drunk and behaves badly in the street.”

We laugh. Not least with relief.