life

Christmas shopping is here again – woohoo!

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It seems like yesterday that I was making lists, fighting my way through hordes of anxious shoppers and filling my Amazon basket to groaning point, but somehow Christmas shopping has come around again.  Each year I vow that I will be incredibly organised and buy presents throughout the year so that when the week before Christmas arrives I am not running around like a headless chicken, but as usual I am seriously behind.  In fact the only thing I have done so far is write this, which doesn’t really count.

One of my friends buys all her presents and wraps them by mid September and keeps them locked in a cupboard until she puts up her Christmas tree and “hey presto” they are all ready to be set out.  Apart from the fact that I am still reeling from getting people ready for the beginning of a new school/uni year in September,  that would never work in my house.  Teenage Daughter and Son would quickly pick the cupboard lock and proceed to shake and count all the packages with their names on them.  There is also the problem that something which was a “must have” item in September might have gone out of fashion or favour by December.

I generally end up asking family members for ideas at the last minute, choose something from the list and pray that it hasn’t sold out on Black Friday or even worse, the Amazon last day for delivery before Christmas hasn’t passed.  Canvassing the family this year at dinner met with mixed results, a few years ago Teenage Daughter might have asked for a pink plastic unicorn castle but this year she said succinctly “money”, no doubt to fund her newly wild life at uni,  while Teenage Son has requested polaroid film (who knew that the ancient polaroid camera stuffed at the back of the coat cupboard would make a comeback).  Husband on the other hand said  helpfully “why don´t we not do presents this year?” which was met with howls of outrage.  This is all very well but there was always something wonderfully exciting about having huge, badly wrapped boxes of plastic toys under the tree,  not to mention the squeals of delight as they were ripped open.  This year looks like it might be an envelope and a few small boxes.

My other seasonal job is to take on the mantle of Father Christmas as the procurer of items for Christmas stockings.  The tradition of stockings in our house is sacrosanct and my feeble attempts to suggest that TD and TS are too old for stockings are firmly squashed each year.  This means many visits to quirky, out of the way shops or Urban Outfitters, to buy amusing, small items which will both fit in the stockings, not get the recipient expelled from school (Cards Against Humanity was a close call) and make a satisfying clanking noise when unpacked on Christmas morning on our bed.

Along with planning food and entertainment, it all seems an insurmountable task,  but I am going to start making lists, head for Oxford Street, spend hours on Amazon and who knows, I might actually get everything done before Christmas.

 

 

 

Different travelling styles

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As I sit, poised on the edge of my seat, my left eye twitching, clutching my wheely and passport ready to bolt for  the gate where our plane is now boarding, I realise that travelling with Husband is probably not good for my blood pressure.

There are two types of travellers, those who like to arrive at the airport in plenty of time, to perhaps browse in duty free or visit Starbucks and keep stress to a minimum, and those who are quite happy to draw up outside the terminal in a taxi as their flight starts to board, saunter through security and dawdle to the gate as their name is being called over the tannoy.

Now I am not saying that one way is better than the other, but as a member of the first group, and Husband a fully paid up member of the second more, devil may care community, things can get rather tense when we travel together, as we frequently do.

I like to leave home with plenty of time built in for traffic jams, late taxis or just Acts of God.  Husband will frequently ring to say he is leaving the office for the airport when I have already cleared security.  Luckily I always make sure that I have all my documents with me so that if he misses the plane, I can still travel.  In fairness he has only missed two flights, one due to the fact we had forgotten the clocks moved forward an hour that day and the other because he got lost on the Japanese train system somewhere between Kyoto and Osaka  (easy to do when you don’t speak Japanese).

Part of the problem is the fact that we hardly ever travel with check-in baggage but carry our lives with us in carry on bags.  With the low cost airlines, once the overhead lockers are full, anything left over is put in the hold which adds to the journey time at the other end as you are forced to hang around the baggage carousel waiting anxiously for your suitcase to appear.  So getting your wheely on board is vital to ensuring that you go straight from the plane jetty onto a train or into a taxi.  As stowing the luggage is done on a first come, first served basis, sitting in the lounge finishing an email or wandering blindly away from the gate while on the phone can be the difference between a breezing onto the plane and having the luxury of placing your bag in the bin above your head or frantically forcing your way down the aisle looking for a non existent space to cram your possessions into, at least 19 rows away from where you are sitting.  Teenage Son and Daughter now insist on carrying their own documentation if they are flying with us, so they can board when they like and not wait anxiously for Husband to appear after he has vanished in a puff of smoke while taking a call.

Funnily enough I can see that our offspring are following in our footsteps.  Teenage Daughter has always been slightly dippy when it comes to travelling, although we recently discovered that she needed glasses.  This may explain why she couldn´t get to grips with the London Tube system as she was completely oblivious to maps on the wall or directions to the various platforms.  ¨Wow, is this what everyone sees?¨she asked as she put on her new glasses for the first time and the world swam into focus.  She, like her father is very relaxed about timings and thinks nothing of popping into Lush to buy a few bath bombs while she only has 20 minutes to get across London to catch a train.  Teenage Son on the other hand is a whizz at getting around and can plan and execute a journey using multiple modes of transport and like me, prefers to travel with plenty of time in hand.

The slightly annoying thing is that both Husband and Daughter always seem to arrive in the knick of time while I have been gnawing my fingers to the bone waiting for them.  I think the only solution is to  take Teenage Daughter´s advice.   ¨Chill Mother¨ she says as I am spluttering about timings.  So henceforth I will ¨chill¨ and travel in splendid imaginary isolation and board the plane while still in my comfort zone and let the more relaxed members of the family waft on board when the mood takes them.

 

 

 

 

 

Comparing Vices

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The sales are here again and with them comes the temptation that faces me every winter.  The seductive pull of a new coat or jacket.  Some people can´t help buying shoes, others are addicted to jewellery but my vice is coats.

I have to admit to owning two whole wardrobes full of coats and jackets.  The coat cupboard in the hall is full to bursting point and guests have to leave their outer garments on the chair in the entrance as no more can be shoehorned in.  Every so often Husband flings open the cupboard door and loudly counts the number of coats squeezed along the rail.  ¨Do you really need all these?¨ he asks, and I am forced to defend the fact that I wear every one of them, I have a coat or jacket for every conceivable situation or weather event and anyway two of them are his.

Of course this doesn´t mean that when I am out shopping my eye doesn´t still stray to the coat rails.  I even enjoy buying coats for other people.  Teenage Daughter and I spent a wonderful morning on Oxford street buying her a new jacket  which was the perfect excuse for me to browse through acres of temptation and indulge my habit although vicariously.  At least I am aware of my addiction, I now think very carefully before giving in to the siren call of a new coat and any new addition to the cupboard has to fulfill the strict criteria of being something completely different to anything I already have or replace a threadbare or moth eaten veteran.

Husband actually doesn´t have a leg to stand on when it comes to commenting on my coat habit.  He is in the grips of a far stronger addiction – buying kit.  By kit I mean anything that can be worn, ridden or layered while training for a triathlon.  He has more running tights, swimming goggles and road bikes than Emelda Marcos had shoes.  Not only that but huge piles of kit is packed into everyone else´s suitcases whenever the family travel together.  Teenage Son and Daughter are now used to unpacking at our destination and finding a pairs of cleated bike shoes, the odd wetsuit and some running shirts squeezed into their bags.  Walking past the Asics or Adidas shops in London is fraught with the danger that he will nip inside and emerge clutching bags full of running gear.  When challenged he will admit his kit habit is at least as bad as my coat vice but his goes on all year while mine is restricted to the winter months.

At the moment there is no hope in sight as his ironman isn´t taking place until June and I fear that the whole house will disappear long before that under drifts of manmade fibres and spare cleats.  I on the other hand have my eye on a very snappy little jacket which will complement my collection perfectly and after all, what is one more coat?

 

 

When Cake Porn Disappoints

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After the excitement of the the summer final of the Great British Bake off, a very English TV programme a bit like Masterchef but with the contestants having to produce amazing, gravity defying, mouthwatering confections, my enthusiasm for baking has been reignited.  This is potentially a disaster for my ongoing weightloss strategy but I keep telling myself that I am only going to bake the cakes, not actually eat them…

We already have an established baker in the family.  The first thing that Teenage Daughter asks when she returns home for the school holidays is not what plans there are for the coming weeks but whether there is any self raising flour and icing sugar in the house.  She then proceeds to sift, knead and ice on a daily basis until every shelf in the kitchen is groaning with baked goods and the whole family has to fight appalling temptation every time they go in there to get a glass of water.  She normally makes cupcakes, brownies and sometimes banana loaf  which are always beautifully decorated and professional looking, but occasionally the recipe books are dug out and some extraordinary new cake is attempted.  We have munched our way through rainbow cake which was delicious but resembled a badly knitted hat and a few sponge cakes which frankly were more like intermediate ski slopes.   So here´s a question.  Why do our more ambitious baking attempts never look like the pictures in the book?

It usually starts the same way, with Teenage Daughter pouring over a Nigella Lawson tome or something more traditional such as Delia.   A picture of what can only be a heavily photoshopped cake is chosen and the work begins. The huge array of ingredients are assembled, substitutions are made (when vital things such as essence of Himalayan violet just can´t be found on the shelf of a spanish supermarket), hands are scrupulously washed, the oven turned on and the dog is turfed out of the kitchen to stop him from licking any surface that might be used for rolling or kneading (or anything that is in the process of being rolled or kneaded).   I am normally called in to act as sous chef to perform the more boring and menial tasks such as greasing and lining the cake tin and finely chopping any ingredients which the baker doesn´t have the patience to attempt.  We both keep checking the recipe book to make sure we follow the instructions to the letter and after what seems to be the equivalent of assembling one of Professor Snape´s more demanding potions, the cake tin and its precious contents are slid into the oven.

At this point high fives are exchanged and optimism runs high.  We both peer through the rather murky oven window nervously to assess the progress of our creation and after about 30 minutes Teenage Daughter declares it time to test the cake to see if it is done.  The oven door is ceremoniously opened and the cake tin is extracted.  This is normally followed by stunned silence as the six inch high masterpiece we are expecting is nowhere to be seen.  In its place is a rather uneven two inch imposter which bears absolutely no relation to the photograph next to the recipe.  ¨Never mind¨ I always chirp, ¨I am sure it will taste delicious¨.  The wizened offering is then taken away to be lovingly decorated and then devoured by the rest of the family.  For a while we were convinced that our failures were due to the oven (too hot, too cold, too strong a fan), then due to the altitude (Madrid is at 700 metres).  My Mother even came up with the ingenious idea of using smaller cake tins so the rising mixture would have nowhere to go but up, but even that trick was doomed to failure.  The truth of the matter is that we are either rubbish bakers or the recipes were never going to turn out like the pictures.

After many such disappointments I feel that there should be a law passed which would force the writers of cake recipe books to attach a warning next to their totally unrealistic photographs.  ¨The cake in this photo may appear larger, taller and more even, than it will in real life¨.  That way a large proportion of the baking population will not be cast down when their lovingly prepared creations do not resemble the skyscraperlike cakes in their cookbooks. Teenage Daughter always takes such setbacks philosophically and returns to producing her tried and tested recipes.  But there are only so many scones and cupcakes one can make without the temptation to start leafing through the cook books again…

 

 

Photo sourced from the internet for illustration purposes only.

 

 

 

How to get rid of mice

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There is nothing quite like arriving at one´s holiday home, dropping the suitcases in the hall, opening the curtains, filling the kettle for a cup of tea and opening the cutlery drawer to be faced with a sprinkling of mouse droppings.   After an outraged squawk I opened the other kitchen drawers to find that the mouse, and what appeared to be its entire extended family (there were a lot of droppings) had decided to use the all the drawers as a selection of bathrooms.  Under the sink they had cunningly constructed the equivalent of a substantial self build property out of dishwasher tablet boxes and a pile of old dusters.  The strange thing was that there was no one in residence and all the droppings were extremely shrivelled and dry.  After a massive clear out and an inordinate number of dishwasher cycles to make sure everything was suitable for use in a kitchen again, I announced that we needed to buy a mousetrap.

There was a stunned silence from the family followed by shrieks of outrage from Teenage Daughter and Son.  “Don´t be so cruel, the mouse isn´t doing anyone any harm!”  It was only when I pointed out that they might not enjoy spaghetti bolognese seasoned with mouse droppings, that they were prepared to consider a trap.  “But it has to be a humane one”.

Anyone who has spent any time in rural France will know that humane mousetraps are like hens teeth.  All the ironmongers stock the good old fashioned Tom and Jerry mousetraps but ask for a humane trap and you will be met either by a gallic shrug or hoots of laughter and some rather choice comments about mad englishwomen.  After a few fruitless and embarrassing shopping trips, I finally tracked down a suitable trap.  It was a small steel box with a door on a spring.  The idea was that we would bait the spring with some cheddar and the mouse would march in, help himself and the door would clang shut behind him.  We would then carry him into the woods and release him wherebye he would swiftly return to the house, which let´s face it, is much more comfortable than a windy, damp forest.

That night, Teenage Son threaded a pungent piece of  cheese onto the trigger and carefully placed the trap in the corner of the kitchen.  We all went to bed and spent the entire night listening for the distinctive clang that would announce that the mouse had been captured.  The next day dawned but the trap was empty.  “As it is a french mouse, perhaps it prefers french cheese” suggested Teenage Daughter.  So she set the trap with Beaufort.  The next day dawned to an empty trap, and the following day.  After a week of fruitless trap setting we all forgot about the mouse and as no more droppings appeared, we assumed that it had found the kitchen rather dull and returned to the woods.

It was only at the end of our two week stay that we found out what had happened to the intruder.  Husband had run out of his very strong Nespresso capsules and went to the cupboard where further supplies are kept.  To his disgust, he found that the mouse had stumbled across the coffee stash and had nibbled its way into every single capsule.  There was coffee strewn all over the bottom of the cupboard but it was clear that a large amount had been consumed.  The poor mouse had probably had to deal with a very bad trip on a huge amount of caffeine.  I can only imagine that having munched its way through so much coffee,  it frantically ran around, suffering hallucinations and heart palpitations and eventually made its way outside, vowing never to return to our house of excessively strong coffee.  The humane mousetrap is now an ornament on the kitchen shelf as a reminder to other potential rodent intruders but personally I think coffee overdose is just as good at dealing with any mice thinking of making my kitchen their home.

Photo. Sourced from the internet for illustration purposes only

Creakiness

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One of the wonderful gifts that comes with double digit birthdays beginning with a 5 (or sometimes a 4), is the imperceptible onset of creakiness.  It is just so unfair, I have spent years going to the gym, skiing, running and trying to stay active and inspite of everything, my joints are starting to protest at what used to be perfectly normal activities.  Not so long ago, I would be very happy sitting on the floor crossed legged for hours at a time and could then leap to my feet in an instant to answer the doorbell, or stop the dog from vomiting inside the house.  Now sitting on the floor is vaguely uncomfortable and it can take quite a long time for me to stagger to my feet and return to a vaguely upright stance.  I recently rang a close school friend who answered on the ninth ring and confessed that it had taken her that long to get up from the floor where she had been wrapping a present.

Other symptoms of general decrepitude are also rearing their ugly heads.  Climbing the stairs is now accompanied by a strange clicking in my right knee, completely painless but somewhat disconcerting.   Bending over to stack the dishwasher is fraught with danger as it is quite likely that my back will seize up and I will have to hobble around like Quasimodo until I can get to a physio who will manipulate my spine into unnatural contortions and give me an eyewateringly painful massage in order to straighten me up.  And I am unable to look over my shoulder in the owl-like way that I always took for granted.

I am glad to say that I am not alone in the creaking and cracking of joints.  Husband, who has taken up Ironman triathlons in his fifties, is absurdly fit but after sitting down for more than 10 minutes, springs to his feet but then walks in a strangely neanderthal way for a few seconds until his back loosens up, and one of my best friends was told by an extortionately expensive consultant that the excruciating pain in her big toe was arthritis due to wear and tear and that she had better get used to it!  Not what you want to hear when you have shelled out the equivalent of a Prada handbag.

My physio has prescribed some exercises to try and improve things which involve me rolling around on the floor just after getting up in the morning.  All well and good in summer but I can’t really see me rolling out of bed to lie on the floor when it is minus 5 outside and the heating is struggling to warm the house.  The answer I fear, is to return to the activity that I used to attend before life and excessive travelling got in the way – yoga.  But which type?

A few years ago I signed up to a weekly Bikram yoga class with a couple of girlfriends with the intention of improving our flexibility and general well being.  The 40 degree heat and high humidity took some getting used to, but over a few months we all became far more bendy and able to contort ourselves quite convincingly enough not to have to hide at the back of the class.  The problem with Bikram is the sweat.  It is not just that you sweat buckets, but everyone else does too.  That may be just about bearable if you are next to a thirty something female who showers twice a day.  The problems begin when a shirtless, extremely hirsute, forty something man  thwaps his mat down next to yours  and starts doing deep breathing exercises before the class starts.  You just know that he is going to start pouring perspiration instantly, and not the fragrant type either.  The number of classes that I have spent breathing entirely through my mouth to avoid unpleasant whiffs was one of the reasons that I eventually gave up.

Another alternative is Hatha yoga.  No sweating is involved, although the worry that I might accidentally break wind when I am attempting one of the more challenging poses has certainly brought a gentle sheen to my forehead.  The Hatha classes I have attended have varied from very gentle with long periods of meditation, to what appeared to be a training course for circus contortionists.  You never quite know what a class will be like until you have tried it.  The problem with Hatha is that I very quickly get fed up.  I am so used to exercising in a way that gets me somewhere, with scenery to look at along the way, that staying inside a studio and only having my fellow sufferers to look at makes me wilt with boredom.

However, a quick Google of different types of yoga has given me a list of 20.  Some of the more unusual ones such as Kundalini which awakens the energy at the base of the spine, are probably not for me (see earlier Hatha worry) but there are still 15 or so left to try.  I will therefore be visiting various yoga studios until I find the class and teacher that can get all my  joints moving, keep me interested, not revolted and reach the holy grail of being able to touch my toes again.

 

 

 

Photo.  Sourced from the internet for illustration purposes only

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An argument for writing letters

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Over half term, Teenage Son decided to dig out my old SLR camera to marvel at the fact that it needed film and you had to wait to have the pictures developed.  He had been rummaging around in my desk for about ten minutes when he shouted downstairs saying   “Come quickly. You have to see this!”.  Naturally I was concerned that he had found something embarrassing in amongst my papers, and so I hurtled up the two flights of stairs ready to wrestle away from him whatever incriminating photo or letter he was clutching.  But as I bent double on the landing, getting my breath back, he shoved an old file under my nose.  “Have you seen this?” he asked.  Looking at it, I realised it was a file that my mother had given me a couple of years ago when she was clearing out her house.

I had obviously been distracted at the time and had put it straight into my desk without opening it.  Inside were a stack of drawings and paintings I had done as a child along with press cuttings of a competition I had won, a few swimming certificates and some letters and envelopes.   Teenage Son and I sat down together and went through them all, laughing at my early attempts to draw various animals and marvelling at some old American Jack and Jill comics from the 1930’s that my mother had kept from her own childhood.

Eventually we came to a bundle of airmail letters written by me to my parents over the years that I was at boarding school.  We read through them all,  wading through tales of unfair detentions, midnight feasts, dormitory floods and as I got older, trips to London and dances.  There was one particular letter which he particularly enjoyed which began,

” After two years of trying, we finally managed to break into the food storeroom and filled two pillowcases with pots of peanut butter, Wagon Wheels and mini cheesecakes.  There should be enough to last until the end of term.”

Teenage Son was fascinated to hear my own teenage voice coming through in the letters and more worryingly for me, to see that his mother was not the angelic teenager she often makes herself out to be.  It made me realise that so much of our communication with him and Teenage Daughter, while they are away at school, is done through Whatsapp, Skype and telephone calls.  Thirty five years ago the first two methods didn’t even exist and trying to ring Madeira where my parents were living, involved booking a reverse charge call 24 hours in advance from the school phone box. No easy feat.  So we would write letters which would take up to two weeks to arrive and whatever news they contained was old.  But they could be kept and reread by torchlight after lights out.   These letters have given my children the chance to see a little piece of my past and to read about the things that I was interested in, what my worries were, who my friends were and what my day to day life was like.  The trouble with Whatsapp and Skype is that while they are wonderful for keeping closely in touch, helping with homesickness and dealing with dramas, they cannot be kept in the same way that letters can.

After reading through all the letters, Teenage Son declared that he wanted to start writing to us from school and has asked us to write back, not just for the excitement of receiving a letter at breakfast but to keep them.  That way, some of the scrapes, mischief and dramas of his time at school can be recorded for his own children in the future and to jog his memory about old friends and teachers, as the battered old airmail letters he discovered in my desk have jogged mine.

 

 

 

When in Madrid…

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One of the slight inconveniences of living in Madrid is that you cannot leave the house without being immaculately dressed, perfectly groomed and in full makeup.  After spending 26 years here you would have thought that I might have learnt that important fact of life, but no.  This afternoon I made the rooky mistake of taking the dog for a walk in our vast local park dressed in an extremely holey T shirt which is really only fit for making dusters out of,  and a pair of old cropped jeans which snagged on something as I got out of the car leaving one bum cheek exposed.  I was wearing nice knickers but that is besides the point.  When I heard the unmistakeable sound of ripping fabric, I should have got back into the car and returned home to change into something charmingly casual but sporty, done my hair and checked my makeup, not carried on walking into the park thinking “It doesn´t matter.  I won´t see anyone I know”.

I headed off the path into the wilder part of the park and was walking along while the dog was snorting and bounding around in the long grass when I heard someone calling me.  To my horror I realised it was one of my neighbours.  She of course, was perfectly coiffed and made up to the nines and after casting her eye over my less than perfect outfit asked if I was alright.  What she was really saying was “what on earth are you doing out of the house looking like that”.  I decided to follow my grandmothers advice of “never explain, never apologise”,  gave her a beaming smile and said  “yes I am fine” and marched off deeper into the park with my bum cheek burning in shame.

It is sods law that in Madrid if I leave the house looking anything less than perfect I will be seen and judged.  Not so in London.  I could go outside dressed up as Jack Sparrow or even in my pajamas and nobody would bat an eyelid.  There I am quite happy to pop down to the local shop for a pint of milk with no makeup on, whereas here it would be social suicide.  Grooming is very high on any self respecting Spanish women´s  agenda including regular mani-pedis, a weekly blow dry and the most vicious waxing regime it is possible to imagine.   England is definitely more relaxed about such things.  Having been to a couple of weddings and parties in England recently, it was interesting to see many cracked heels and acres of rough skin being paraded around in summer sandals, a complete nono in any social event on the Iberian peninsular.   In the UK it is quite acceptable to stop dyeing your hair and go grey while in Spain it is unthinkable and even some men dye their hair well into their seventies.

The school run here is a sartorial minefield as well.  All the mums appear dressed to kill with Gucci and Versace being paraded around while they seem amazingly comfortable in the most vertiginous of heels.  I as a newbie, frequently used to turn up fresh from the stables in breeches and boots.  The looks of incredulity and wrinkling of noses I received were no doubt deserved as I am sure the aroma of “eau de cheval”  followed me around, but pretty quickly I realised that if I was going to make or keep any friends I had to toe the line and turn up looking vaguely put together and not as though I had been mucking out five horses and galloping hard across country.

Which way is better?  I am not sure, there is something to be said on both sides.  The spanish way forces you to maintain minimum standards of grooming which has to be a good thing and on the UK side it is lovely to think you can be a little more relaxed when leaving the house.  I have come to the conclusion that “When in Rome…”, so in Madrid I try to blend in by keeping up with all grooming appointments, getting my clothes ready for the next day and generally wearing a reasonable heel.  While in the UK I can relax a little and can be seen in Waitrose wearing flats and minimal makeup.  Today´s  encounter in the park has just reminded me not to get my countries mixed up and to chuck out any items of clothing that are better suited to being made into rags than shocking the residents of  either Madrid or London.

(Image from theglamoroushousewife.com)

 

The Correct Dose of Caffeine

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After many years of drinking coffee in the morning I have passed the point of denial and can freely admit I am addicted.  The ironic thing is that I used to loathe the taste of coffee and only started drinking it to thaw out my hands after riding outside in sub zero temperatures in winter.  One thing led to another and now 20 years later it is the first thing I crave in the morning apart from another couple of hours sleep.

There is now a well established protocol which involves me blearily checking my watch as I try to surface from the depths of slumber at what I consider an ungodly hour, while the Coffee Fairy formerly known as Husband, cheerily bustles round the bedroom and asks if I  would like a cup of coffee.  This is generally met with an affirmative grunt unless it is before 6am in which case it is met with a groan.  There is an understanding that the Coffee Fairy does his job in return for certain favours which sounds rather exciting but normally means sending anything he has forgotten to the office or taking his road bike to be serviced.

This first shot of caffeine is completely necessary to turn on the lights in my befuddled brain and get the show on the road.  It is quite a small dose as it is always instant coffee with a splash of milk.  However, once the Coffee Fairy has fluttered off to the office, I have had breakfast and walked the dog, it is time to proceed to the main event.  Every weekday at 8.50am,  I drive to the local cafe and order myself a cafe con leche (long on coffee and short on milk), sit down with one of my closest friends and discuss our children, potential business opportunities, the state of the world and the length of our to do lists. This takes about an hour and we normally get through two coffees each.

This doesn’t seem like much, but two cafe con leches packs a mean punch and over time my body has come to expect it.  If for any reason we only have time for one coffee, the morning seems perfectly normal but I don’t seem to make much headway with my usually endless list of errands and I have noticed that everything from filling up with petrol to writing emails seems to take longer.  A two coffee morning, on the other hand, seems to fly by with me manically driving from errand to errand, talking 30% faster than I would normally and zipping round the supermarket in record time.

There have been mornings when for reasons seemingly beyond my control such as meeting another friend after my usual coffee stop, I have had three cafe con leches.  This unfortunately crosses the line of what my body is prepared to put up with.  On three spanish coffees, I am unable to stop talking, I drive everywhere over the speed limit and my whole body seems to hum.  The good side is that my kilometric to do list is normally taken care of by 11am.  The downside is that anyone ringing me up to arrange to come and fix the washing machine will get my entire life story and later I am unable to get to sleep until about 2am probably because my heart rate is double what it should be.

The opposite problem to too much, is too little.  These are the times when for whatever reason I don’t get my caffeine fix in the morning.  This does happen sometimes if Coffee Fairy is away or I am in London.  Life will appear to carry on as normal but by 3pm I start to get a pain behind my right eye and by 5pm my eye is twitching and I am in the throws of the headache from hell.  It is about this point at which I realise my foolish error but by then it is too late in the day to remedy the problem with a coffee so a large ibuprofen has to suffice.

Every so often I consider going on a detox and joining the ranks of sensible people who sip herbal teas and are probably fifty times healthier than I am, but frankly I enjoy the buzz that my coffee addiction gives me and as long as I get the dose right I think it is a positive contributor to keeping the household running smoothly.  It also keeps the Coffee fairy on his toes which has got to be a good thing.

Pink Jobs vs Blue Jobs

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As I stood this morning, monkey wrench in hand, taking apart the boot of my car to gain access to the battery, I began to think about the distribution of  the jobs in our household.  It has always been a fairly traditional setup with Husband going out to bring home the bacon and me staying at home with the children, but over the years I have noticed a certain mission creep in terms of the jobs I am doing around the house.  We have always jokingly called them pink jobs and blue jobs.  For instance, taking out the rubbish has always been a blue job and chauffeuring children to parties has been a pink job and that has always worked fine.  But lately things seem to be getting a bit mixed up.

Only a couple of days ago, I found myself at the local building supply yard buying cement, sand and discussing how many bricks we were likely to need for a job we are having done in the garden. Husband meanwhile was busy at his pilates class.  Admittedly it is a special class for triathlon training but you see my point?

I am now the person who knows how the central heating works, and how to restart the boiler,  how to programme the various electrical devices such as smart TVs, the garden irrigation system and how the pool pump works, I even do the basic car maintenance.  On the other side of the equation, Husband is much more sensitive to general order and tidiness around the house while I am much more laissez faire, probably because I am either under the bonnet of a car or wrestling with a deviant sprinkler.  He is a whizz at booking flights and making travel arrangements while I would leave everything till the last minute and it would all cost twice as much if it was left up to me.  He is also always happy to walk our extremely energetic dog.  It really doesn´t make a huge difference who does what, but it did occur to me that if I dropped off the face of the earth, life at home could become a little difficult for Husband.

After years of trial and error, not to mention dealing with droves of extremely sexist Spanish builders and repair men, I can now hold my own in discussions relating to the relative efficiency of condensing boilers versus heat exchange pumps and such gems as how often to change the sand in the pool filter.  The only thing I have flatly refused to get involved with is the use of the chainsaw.  I now have years worth of accumulated knowledge of how to keep all the various pieces of machinery in our lives running smoothly.  Where and when to kick them, how to dismantle and try to fix them and when to give up and call a technician from the endless list on my phone.

I suspect that if I was not around, most of the appliances would go on strike as they are used to being gently coaxed to work on a regular basis with each machine requiring a slightly different approach, not to mention the enormous numbers of different products they all need, from specialist hoover bags to ph reducing agent.  It probably makes sense for me to start compiling some form of house crib sheet incase I am away and the automatic gate won’t open or the lawnmower overheats.  Actually I should write a book with chapters, detailed diagrams and encouraging text.  That way, if I go on a week long silent retreat or stressbusting yoga holiday, I won’t return to a post apocalyptic scene with Husband surrounded by piles of smoking machinery.  But even if I do, I know the house will be spotless, the summer and Christmas holidays will be planned and booked and the dog will have been walked off his feet.