Childrens Personalised Books

A story to tell for Halloween/All Hollows Eve. This story is not scary but strange and perfect for the season.

Let me set the stage.

We moved into our house 5 years ago this month. When we moved in our house our belongings were still in MI so the people we brought the house from left all the things they did not want behind. One of the things they left us was a console TV. How cool or so we thought. The TV had a mind of its own or was controlled by something other then us. For the 3 yrs and 2 months (yes, I remember how long) the TV would come on and shut off as it pleased. You would turn it on and it would shut off at some point. It could be minute from the time you turned it on or an hour. Whenever you would turned it back on and it would shut off again. This could happen many times, just once or not at all while you were watching TV it all depended on what ‘mood’ the TV was in. Yet other times the TV would just come on all by itself. We joshed around about our TV saying it was possessed. We got rid of the TV 2 years ago this Christmas. The new TV has not had these issues, BUT……….

Our Microwave took over. Yes, indeed it did! Our microwave is possessed. Right when we got rid of the TV the microwave started. It comes on as it pleases. You shut kitchen cabinet door or the microwave door and the microwave comes on. ( so you know there is no time on the microwave and its off) My favorite is when you hit the “0″ button and the number “6″ comes up. The buttons on the microwave will work when they want to. We laugh and joke about it. At times we say we need to have a priest come and bless our house.

Yes, there has been people who have been here when these odd things happen. Needless to say they are just amazed and entertained by our strange happenings. We are not scared, I’m sure there is some logical explanation or NOT. For now we will continue to be amused by our strange Microwave.

Summer holidays

Like everyone else this Summer I was blinded by our heatwave in June and booked the Devon holiday park summer break. Not realising August would turn into typhoon season, we packed our raincoats and suncream, wellies and swimming costumes and set off for our week away.

Leaving the Old man at home who had work commitments, meant that the 3 hour drive was solely mine. Due to the torrential rain the 3 hour drive turned into a 6 hour journey, with us veering off the motorway to find ‘ an idyllic lunch spot’. A deserted pub on a deserted seafront, serving up rough looking chicken goujons wasn’t what I had in mind!!

On arrival at the holiday park we managed to get all our luggage into the chalet before the thunder and lightening struck. So worn out from the drive, we spent the first night in the entertainment bar with Loopy and his disco. The 7yr old loved it- up on the dance floor, doing the Macarena like an old pro! The 12 yr old spent the majority of his holiday money in the arcade in the first 10 minutes. This left me to sit in the bar and sing along with hits from the last 3 decades- whether I knew them or not. Safe to say I had a headache in the morning.

The following days were spent on the beach, where the kids spent 3 hours digging a hole, cycling for 11 miles round fantastic scenery- won’t tell you what ached after that- and a rainy day in Torquay shopping centre finding things to buy in the pound shop.

So although it wasn’t quite the sunshine holiday I’d envisaged- the kids got on great, we had lots of great meals together, lots of great family chats and now I know all the words to Ketchup Song.

Highlight of the trip- bingo in the arcade and the 12 yr old sweating over one number- you wouldn’t get that in the Maldives!!

Stopped off at a chinese herbalists  whilst out with with an old friend. Finally had enough of the back ache, the shoulder pain, the hair loss and the inability to sleep for longer than 20 mins I thought , what the heck!!

Led into a calm soothing room filled with aromatic candles and soothing music my defences were down. The herbalist proceeded to wedge her knuckkles into various sensitive parts of my body- whilst asking “does it hurt”?. Able to understand my grunts and groans she told me my body organs were poorly functioning and my circulation was quite frankly rubbish. So distraught am I that I don’t utter a word when she slaps on a sticky pad to each sole and tells me the toxins will be out by morning. As I managed to move my illfunctioning body from the room I was greeted with a conveyor belt of pills, potions and powders. Asking to see my tongue she humphed, and replaced two bottles with two others ( I can only assume she’d discovered more bad news). her hands moved like lightening back and fore to the bottles and the caluclator. The words ” that will be £198″, didn’t sink in the first time, good job there’s stuff there for my failing brain function too then !!
As I looked at her I uttered the desperate words- “after all of this will I feel better”. Well what do you think she said??

So now I have around 85 pills a day along with powders and drinks. So if in 20 days I feel refreshed, and revitalised and my ying is inline with my yan- it’ll all be worth it- Just have to muster up the strength now to open all the bottles of pills-and hope that my brain is functioning well enough to remember which ones I take and when.

Picked up the 7 yr old from school on the Friday, and was greeted with the words- every parent dreads to hear, “I’m star of the week and I’ve got Buster to bring home”- OH NO!!!  As my heart quickened and sweat broke out on my forehead, I reached for the 4 yr old standing next to me’s inhaler , didn’t need it but  I thought it may help the sudden constriction in my chest. Buster the school stuffed dog is special, he’s awarded to the gifted ones, he comes with his ‘own apparel’ and he gives me the evil eye!!
So now we have the dog we have to entertain him all weekend and of course document his every move in ‘the diary!. “So let’s have look what Busters been up to with the other kids, shall we”, says the Old Man lightly.
‘Buster goes to the Star Wars premier,
Buster goes on the Eastenders set,
Buster goes to Tiffanys to choose Mummy’s birthday diamonds.’
I think the Old Man got to page 6 before he went for a lie down. As you have probably gathered by now the 7yr old’s school is filled with ‘showbiz luvvies’. No point trying to compete- so we did our thing. It was football tournament weekend, so Buster got to ride in the dilapidated mini-bus with a whole crew of 10 and 11 yr olds. Got to sit in the kit  bag, under the gazebo amongst 45 people hiding from the torrential downpour. Felt the force of the strikers boots as he shot him into the goal (we opted to leave that out of the photo gallery!!) and to top off Busters weekend with ‘the normals’, Buster with his Mcd’s Happy meal.
As we took Buster back on Monday morning,  we were confident in the knowledge that if buster could talk we know where he would rather spend his weekends- well until the next time when he was flown on the private plane to Monte Carlo to whizz round on a jet ski!!

Okay don’t ask me how it happened but I joined a gym!!!  I figured whilst I’m having to be at the gym three times a week while the 6yr old (whoops 7yr old now), does her gymnastics I may as well do something constructive- so feeling active I joined . Had to have an induction before I could start using it so off I toddle, expecting a nice stroll around the machines, being show how to use them and what to use for what ‘troubled areas’.

How wrong can an unfit 40 something be??

I’m met at the door by a cheery, cherpy slip of a girl with bundles of energy and a waist the size of my bangle. As she looks me up and down she asks me what my objectives are. “Get fit, tone up” says I feeling confident. Okay then let’s start with some cardiovascular to burn off some of that fat says the stick insect grabbing my love handles, that I thought I’d expertly hidden under my Lycra workout top.

We moved over to the cross trainer machine. “My God it’s weird”, laughed I as my legs went one way and my arms went the other. Realising I wasn’t doing it properly, in fact I was going backwards- I was shown how to do it correctly. As the instructor stopped to have a chat with her mate- another stick insect- I hiked up the speed and went full pelt into my cross trainer action. 1.30mins showed on the timer and I was sweating like a navvy and dangerously out of breath. At this point the two instructors looked over and said “mmm,”.

I decided to defer the attention and get off the machine by asking what the others did. Had a go at the exercise bikes not showing myself up too much on them, the rowing machine- showed myself up highly on that, and then we moved to the weights machines.
Sides of arms, back of arms, middle of arms and shoulders. Front of legs, back of legs, sides of legs, all over legs. Backs, boobs and buttocks- you name it we did it. I ended up flat on a mat doing three different types of ab crunches.

45 mins after I’d walked in I barely managed to hobble my way out. With my programme charted in my folder, waiting for me to start I waved to the stick insects who were chatting to a 70yr old guy on the running machine coming up to his 30th minute at top speed.

To top it all when I got home my eldest son lovingly announced, “Mum, you think you’re aching now, wait till tomorrow”. The folder’s still there in the gym waiting 5 days later. One day, one day!!!!!

Whilst having a family dinner last night, the kids started once again with the old ,old question about “what did you do when you were little Mum- with no computer games, dvds and mobile phones. They still can’t quite grasp the fact that there were only three TV channels, and nothing at all on the telly in the morning and Sunday teatime. It’s at times like that they start to question whether we had electricity!!!

As I began my usual oration about “when I was young we used to play out”, I realised that maybe it wasn’t such a good thing to tell them that- we used to play out in the streets till it was dark- only going inside for food and water, on most days we would play in the woods behind our house, roaming miles away from our street and finding all sorts of weird and wonderful things- and sometimes people!! Only coming back to inhabited land when we heard the call from one of our Mums, or the batteries in our torches were dead and our night eyes weren’t working properly.

Kids these days aren’t allowed more than two feet away from the parents, and the thought of them being in an isolated area with no supervision is enough to bring on a seizure in most parents. Certainly not able to tell them that we used to play ‘knock-a-door run’ on our long suffering neighbours doors. Kids do that nowadays and they’re most likely to be greeted with a three headed Rottweiler and then a court summons to the parents from the noise abatement society.

We would spend the whole summer holidays being taken to the river by our highly irresponsible older cousins, and return to our homes covered in doc leaves from all the nettle stings, dripping from head to toe and in the first flushes of hypothermia from the freezing river water. We would build impossibly dangerous go-karts out of old boxes and wonky wheels, set up tightrope wires from the garden trees-not a safety net in sight and best of all, get a gang together and build HQ in the garden shed- amongst the lethal array of Dads power tools.

So when my kids go on and on- and on- about how boring my childhood must have been I nod and agree and smile to myself with the memories of all the things we were allowed to get up to- and safe in the knowledge that they’ll never know.

Kids these days- don’t know they’re born!!!

While beauty is almost as subjective as love, it’s something that you can explore and discover in yourself over time.

* Even though what is considered beautiful varies from person to person, there are a few broad characteristics that most people seem to agree on:

o Health is beautiful. There’s nothing beautiful about destroying your body, even if you do it slowly by neglecting your body.
o Character is beautiful. Think of the most beautiful people you know; now imagine them spitting on a homeless person. They’re not very beautiful anymore, are they?
* Tell yourself every day when you wake up: “I am beautiful. No one can take that away from me.”

The Old Man suggested a fry up for dinner yesterday so not one to look the gift horse so to speak- come on ladies how often do the men actually offer to cook- strike while the iron’s hot!!!!

So I said I’d get the essentials- eggs, beans, bread and beef sausage- The Old man has to have beef- no he’s not a Muslim- his reasons for not eating pork are all to do with seeing a boil on a pigs leg when he was 12- yeah right!!

With no time to run down to Sainsbury’s I thought I’d try the local Halal shop. Surveying the meat counter with interest; looked nice and clean and the meat looked healthy. Two types of sausage were down in the bottom corner- one a highly suspicious looking thing that resembled a baby’s umbilical cord and a much more enticing pinkish one.

With not even a hint of a pig in the whole of the shop I confidently pointed at the pink sausage and said I’ll have some of those please. Not quite understanding what the shopkeeper said I nodded happily in my choice of sausage, and didn’t think twice when he began rolling up link after link of the fat chubby meat rolls. As the shopkeeper grinned and wrapped up the parcel he said £7.50- I nearly choked- “what” said I a bit louder than anticipated.”£7.50 for sausage”?. Too embarrassed to admit I didn’t know how much a kilo was, I happily took the £1.50 discount he offered me and hurried outside with the priceless chipolatas.

I left the Old Man cooking- brave I know- but duty called- whilst I picked up the 6yr old who sensibly ate at her friends.

On arrival home a gust of freezing cold air hit me- just before the revolting smell of old socks. There were the Old Man and the 11yr old sitting huddled under blankets back door and windows flung open to relieve the house of the smell of the richly priced sausage. Needless to say we didn’t attempt to taste them!

So if anyone out there wants a kilo minus a few beef sausage from the Halal shop- give us a ring. They’re going really cheap!!

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