Pics, Puke and Inner Peace
2013-08-27, 5:42 p.m.
Things happened. The things that happened were that, after a bit of searching and a couple of emotional telephone conversations, somebody accessed some mental health services which seems to (fingers crossed) have put a pressure-release valve between their life and their brain, which can only be a good thing if it stops them hammering on that Self-Destruct button quite so hard. Cant it? CANT IT??? (please say yes, D�land, even if you don�t mean it!)The road trip was successful enough for me to be able to tell you all about it in a minute and Jooj and Treac have now been despatched with Shagnasty for a 10 day sojourn to Bulgaria where, I am told, the beaches are very lovely and the souvenirs very cheap (hint, hint!).
Unfortunately, we have been unable to actually say the word Bulgaria and have been referring to it in a strange, mock-French/German way as Bool-ga-REE. Mostly for comedic effect but I alsothink it just makes it sound more holiday-ish and less, well, Womble-y.
Anyway. BEFORE all the holidaying and the road tripping and the meltdown drama, there was the matter of a ginormous three-stage party, cos that just the way we roll here at The Palace of Many Sins (Lordy! I haven�t called it that for a while, have I?). I say �three-stage� because all the family units had requested a party but all wanted something different out of the occasion. In the afternoon, Treacle had her �leaving Chigley Academy to go to the posh private school� party, which involved a bouncy castle (at great expense!) and lots of hotdogs and a very wobbly human pyramid, of which I have photographic evidence
There was a 4,3,2,1 pyramid, too, but that was VERY wobbly and crashed onto the grass long before I could stop laughing long enough to hold the camera up.
At about 8 we threw out all the smaller kids and brought in some new, bigger ones for Jooj�s �its results day next week and we might not ever be allowed out of the house again� party. They wanted the bouncy castle, too, as they are not as cool and grown up as they would have you believe, but they did all bring beer which instantly upped their cool points as it meant I didn�t have to provide any for them. Oh, apart from one lad who furtively slipped Jooj a �10 note �cos I didn�t bring anything, man�. Bearing in mind that this is a 17 year old student, in the house of two proper grown ups with jobs and everything, I thought that was a sweet gesture. Hell, I have proper ADULT friends who will turn up empty-handed to a party and not feel an iota of shame/remorse/guilt. I told Jooj to give the tenner back (and I have to assume that she did).
Added into the big-kid party, was the Even Bigger Kid party, which was mine and L�s. There was also some bouncy castle action in that one and quite a lot of people hurting themselves as they are not nearly as capable of enthusiastic bouncing as they thought they though they were. Especially without back-brace/Tena lady/knee support/nebuliser!
Once it got properly dark, the very big kids came indoors and found things to make noise with. Someone is SERIOUS off the mark here, but it would be impolite of me to point out who it is *cough*far left*cough*. And anyway, you get the general idea.
Apart from sudden lapses of �ability to play a Daft Punk riff�, everyone was splendidly behaved, even my parents, who waited until the next day to furtively inquire �umm�that very thin girl in the checkered minidress?.......umm�.was that a boy?� It was. But sometimes he likes to be a girl. Whatevs.
A few days after we�d finished clearing up and L had nearly stopped tutting about how the bouncy castle had made the lawn all patchy, Jooj got her AS results, which were 3 As and a B. The B was in the subject she�s dropping so, tbh, it couldn�t have gone much better! Now she�s thinking (particularly after doing the Downton Abbey work experience) that she�d like to take a Gap Year after next year, instead of going straight to uni. Of course, this has thrown her father into a ginormous shit-fit as he doesn�t believe in gap years and also it will mean another whole year will go by before he can brag on how he has a daughter at Cambridge. Let�s not tell him she�s also considering Cardiff uni, he might spontaneously combust.
Shortly after the party and the excellent results and the general �lovely summer�ness of the whole situ, came the Big Thing, which is still too horrible to contemplate, let alone to write about, so Im not going to.
Suffice it to say, some people really fucking well needed a holiday so, despite the girls being scheduled to go to Boolgaree with their dada, I whisked them away for a few days of girly road trip and blew every last penny of my savings. I spent four days saying �yes� to all sorts of things I usually have to say �no� to (cinema, new clothes, ice cream, hotels, etc etc etc), drove around the country during the day and ate out every night. When we weren�t driving or eating or throwing wads of cash around, we were doing gymnastics:
Re-enacting scenes from The Lone Ranger with a bolster pillow and a �look, we changed your sheets� cardboard pillow tag
And taking lots of photos. Of ourselves:
The pillow tag as a pirate hat
And a centurion hat
The bridge in Southport which I don�t remember being there the last time I went
Blenheim Palace. Ooh, hang on, I think I�d better link that. See Blenheim Palace HERE
which was a lovely day although It does now mean that I have to contrive some way to marry Treacle off to George Spencer-Churchill, Earl of Sunderland as we would like to live at Blenheim Palace and that seems the simplest way by far, what with him likely to inherit the place and all. He�s only a few years older than Treacle and she�d hardly even have to change her name so it seems like a perfectly good plan all round.
This is Blenheim, too. Its pretty splendid � I didn�t take nearly as many photos as I should. Sorry about that.
The girls found a tree that they thought they could climb. As Jooj is the world�s least athletic child and Treac wasn�t wearing any shoes (there was a flip-flop incident within the first three seconds of the tree climbing, so footwear was abandoned for the duration) you can see they didn�t manage to quite reach the top.
Oh, and we went to Oxford where there are Anthony Gormley statues up on roofs if you care to look. At first I thought it might be someone about to attempt suicide but it was a sunny day and I didn�t have my glasses on. Easy mistake to make. What is slightly more shameful is that Id already taken the photos before I realised it was a statue, so I was obviously subconsciously hoping for some pavement splatter action. Yuk. I disgust myself.
In other news, L is AGAIN trying to give up smoking and is using one of those e-cig thingies again. If you�ve been here a very long time then you�ll know L�s attempts at giving up smoking are legion so Im not getting too enthusiastic about it at the moment. E-cigs seem to have come on a pace since the last time he tried them and despite the new one looking much less like a cigarette and more like some kind of hubbly bubbly science lab thingy, he says it�s a much more realistic �smoke�. I tried it and did some pretty good smoke rings but Im not certain that is its primary purpose.
And lastly, to end on a high note, I got horribly drunk last night. Really properly horribly drunk. Drunk enough to wake up at 4 this morning knowing that I was about to puke. I did puke and then felt instantly better, which is always good, but Ive had a feeling all day today that Ive somehow got a lump of puke wedged in my throat. I think I can kind of feel it when I swallow but, too be honest, that�s too gross to contemplate. Ive been trying to get rid of it by eating lots of stodgy white bread but my throat still feels kind of�.clogged up. Yuk.
Last week of the holidays and I feel I should be doing something constructive but instead I am sitting here, hungover, worrying about whether I have got puke lodged in my throat. I am tragic.
Later
S
X
PS Thank you all SO much for the cyber hugs � youre all lovely people and I am so grateful for your continuing support with the more train-wreckish aspects of my life. *smooch*�..oooh, what�s that? Is it Tim�s inappropriate boner I can feel?
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