Cutting down the Christmas list

Frequent flyers with Air I Miss 1985 will know that I like a band called My Life Story. A lot. If I had to recommend a song to introduce the uninitiated to the band it would be 'Penthouse in the Basement'. In fact, if I'd had the wit I might have named this blog after it too as it is about the ending of a relationship.

My favourite lyrics are: 'And in the wasteland of our bed / where you lay your head / on seven different stale perfumes / on my pillowcase'. This has nothing to do with the rest of this post, it's just I love those lines, even though they don't represent my current lack of love life at all (just in case my parents or my ex's solicitor is reading this...)

The lines that do chime are: 'I'm gone, do you hear? / I'm cutting down my Christmas list this year' because with the approach of the festive period I'm horribly aware of how limited my Christmas list has become. Firstly, my beloved Nan died last weekend and so I won't be visiting BHS to buy her traditional Christmas Cardi this year nor choosing cards with pictures of poinsettias on the front and long verses inside (because she liked the sentiments). I'm going to miss her at Christmas, a lot.

Furthermore, I don't know where I stand with my ex's son (my ex-step son?). I used to go out to buy his main present as my ex wasn't arsed with that job. Or at least he would buy it, as long as he could buy a Leeds United team shirt and hand it over, unwrapped, in a carrier bag. I have to say it hurt like hell the other week when my ex's son was taken out for his birthday meal by my ex and the new girlfriend. I've also idly toyed with being 'Bitchy by Kindness' with said new girlfriend. Maybe I could really, really embarrass and fluster her by sending a card or a present. What about a DVD of 'The First Wives Club' or maybe something more literary like, say, the play script of 'Tis Pity She's a Whore'?.

Also, I don't have a husband to buy for. It seems weird not to be thinking about him in terms of a Christmas present. He was always hard to buy for but I think I did OK (and significantly better than some of the random stuff he bought me. Like brown walking boots. I ask you). This also means I won't get a main present. I know it's better to give than to receive but the idea that, aged 37, pretty much every present I get will be from my Mum, irrespective of whose name is on the 'from' tag, makes me feel like a bit of a loser. Don't get me wrong - I love and appreciate my Mum and all the effort she puts in - but at my age there ought to be someone else in my life to buy my main Christmas present and there isn't.

What do I want for Christmas? Maybe not seven different stale perfumes on my pillowcase. But one new aftershave might be nice...

Tuesday Night is Curry Night - The Seventh Seal

After a difficult couple of days Rio was very lazy and ordered a veritable pile of Indian takeaway from the local emporium. It was yummy.

Tonight's blog is going to be a tribute and the topic is: The Best Things about Grandparents.

1. They take you shopping and you always come back with the same amount of money you went out with but loads of treats.
2. They bung you a hundred euros when you are going on holiday.
3. They have a special soap smell that nobody else has.
4. They send you food parcels even after you have left University and have famillies of your own.
5. They treat your parents like children.
6. They always take your side against your parents, even when they know that (a) this is something they shouldn't do (b) you are in the wrong.
7. Their cupboards are full of far better biscuits and cakes than anyone else's.
8. They can do 37 cards at once at bingo.
9. They know more about everything than anyone else and anyone who questions it is wrong.
10. They have fridge magnets about their grandchildren saying things like 'I love my grandchildren so much that I should have had them first'.
11. They go to jumble sales and even run stalls there.
12. Aprons and novelty tea trays.

RIP Nan. xxxxx

Tuesday Night is Curry night - the 6ixth

Tonight, Velouria and Rio have had jalfrezi and lentil makhani (that tasted like refried beans, but in a good way). Before the flatulence kicks in we wish to share tonight's topic:

Velouria and Rio's Literacy Hour

These are our favourite words in an A-Z styleeee:

1. Ampersand
2. Balderdash
3. Catharsis
4. Driech
5. Encapsulate
6. Flatulence
7. Gringo
8. Hirsute
9. Icthyosaur
10. Jaffa
11. Kindergarten
12. Luscious
13. Moribund
14. Nincompoop
15. Orifice
16. Priapic
17. Quim
18. Rebarbative
19. Shenanigans
20. Turgid
21. Ululate
22. Voluminous
23. Waggle
24. Xerox
25. Yiddish
26. Zanzibar

This is from 'The Glass Slipper' and is a good instruction manual on how to properly relish words that you like (at about 2 minutes in)

Your turn: which words do you absolutely love?

Climb ev'ry mountain

Oddly, for someone who is completely terrified of heights, I am obsessed by mountaineering. I have an online repertoire which goes Facebook > personal email > here > work email > MountEverest.net. I know vast amounts of ridiculous knowledge about Everest and if allowed to could bore your bollocks off with rabbiting on about the Khumbu icefall, the Lhotse face, the Hillary steps, the South Col, the yellow band and theories about whether Mallory could have free climbed the Second Step or not. And I swear I typed all that without looking it up. I know Everest is variously called Sagarmatha and Chomolungma by the peoples surrounding it and that it's significantly easier to climb than K2. Indeed, my mountain geekiness extends to knowing the names of a lot of the other twelve 8000+ metre mountains (Annapurna, Gasherbrun I&II, Kangchenjunga, Nuptse, Lhotse, Ama Dablam, Makalu, Cho Oyu, Nanga Parbat, Pumori). Ok, I'll stop now.

Why on earth am I fascinated by the fourteen 8000+ metre mountains? I will never actually be able to visit even the base of any of them because even the trek to Everest base camp is too frightening for someone who had screaming ab-dabs on Hadrian's Wall. No, really, I did. I'm fascinated by them because I'm frightened of them. Anyone who has the guts to take on an 8000+ is a brave soul, especially as the statistics aren't great. Over 200 people have died on Everest and the mortality rate is dreadfully high on K2 and Annapurna. But people still do it just, for a fleeting five minutes, to be the highest person stood on earth. To be able to see the curvature of the earth. To know that the coming back down is more fatal than the climbing up. It's fascinating.

I've climbed some mini-mountains this year. I've learnt to deal with being a single person; I've started going out and having a life; I've even ended up being better friends with my ex than I've been for many years. I'm not ready to be in a relationship yet and I don't really want a boyfriend.

Dud sparklers

This blog is my brave face. From it smiles out a happy, confident woman who can deal with every vagary of single motherhood with a finely polished pun. It suggests that my life revolves around nights out and eating curry.

Sometimes that's not true. Tonight is one of those times. I've had a wearisome couple of days and tonight I don't have my brave face on. Yesterday I ran at full pelt all day and was thoroughly exhausted by the time that I came home. That didn't stop me from trying to be RoboMum and organising a home fireworks display for my son and his friends. To cut a long story short:

1. As I don't have a garden we did the fireworks in the alley at the front of my house. It's very dark. I trod in a huge dog shit and then, brilliantly, walked it over the rugs in my hallway. Leading to me having to throw away my favourite trainers and two rugs.
2. The lighter fuel ran out before I could light the sparklers so three sobbing kids and I had to traipse round the neighbours asking for matches; then after I managed to borrow a lighter
3. inevitably, the sparklers were dud and wouldn't light. More crying from the kids.
4. After all the delays and disappointments I got home to find the dinner I had timed to be ready for the end of the fireworks now fairly comprehensively burnt.

So much for RoboMum. I went to see a band afterwards with Velouria but we hated the venue and felt unsafe so we came home early.

Today was more of the same. Frustrations at work. Complications to do with a house purchase. Finding out that a hen weekend I'm due to go on will cost me triple what I expected. Rain. Rude kids at school. Burning the dinner again for the second night running.

The only highlight was speaking to a lovely friend who is in a similar situation to me. Despite the fact that the conversation was about how it is hard to cope with a marriage splitting up and all the attendant emotions. Because it reminded me that it's ok to be down sometimes. It's ok to be angry and frustrated and bloody awkward. It's even ok to argue with your ex down the 'phone for three hours (as I've done tonight). Right now I feel that all my sparklers are duds and that there's a dog shit lurking on every pavement. But that might not be how I feel tomorrow and by Saturday night I might even outshine a thousand sparklers. And not one a dud.

Tuesday Night is Curry Night - V

Last week Velouria and I had to disapppoint our avid fans, of whom we have none, as we were attempting to break Europe. Velouria was in Paris and Rio was in Portugal.

Unfortunately tonight's topic will have a macabre and scatalogical bent as Vee has unwisely poisoned herself with sodium nitrate. Or copper oxide. Either way science teachers should know better than to lick their fingers during chem practicals.

Tonight's topic: Too much information, frankly.

For reasons of anonymity we are not going to admit which of Velouria or Rio the following pieces of information relate to.

1. One of us followed through after eating a egg mayo sandwich. On her honeymoon. Then had to leg it across a train station to find the only public convenience was a nasty hole in the ground.
2. On being with a new chap for a mere matter of weeks one of us spent the whole night having explosive diarrhoea after consuming an entire punnet of cherries, one of strawberries and a full tub of Cherry Garcia ice cream.
3. One of us has just done a silent and deadly fart.
4. One of us had a very, very, very loud and prolonged fanny fart whilst doing a plough headstand during a yoga session. It was probably audible from space.
5. One is mortified that the other one has admitted to that online when clearly not drunk.
6. One of us habitually falls asleep in public conveniences when pissed.
7. One of us has done rude nasties in the same room as a major Hollywood film star (but not with said film star).
8. One of us has done nastiness in the top of a bunk bed whilst there was some other poor soul in the bunk below.
9. One of us went to see Bucks Fizz. Twice.
10. One of us went on a coach trip to Whitley Bay ice-rink to watch Torville and Dean.
11. One of us ate tonnes of curry and drank lots of red wine and then threw up in somebody else's shower cubicle. The chunks blocked the drain.
12. One of us passed out on the stairs at Uni with alcohol poisoning but was cleverly revived by a barrister chum who poured red wine down her.
13. One of us told a previous boss to shove his job up his arse. N.b. she did not call him a c u next Tuesday as the urban legend surrounding this incident relates.
14. One of us lost her nose ring on the floor next to her boss's desk when on the premises illicitly late at night on Easter weekend because she thought it would be really, really funny to get off with someone in his office. Two years later she was horrified to be put in the same team as the person who assisted in the losing of said nose ring.
15. One of us was bought a drink and chatted up by a random midlander in a club, only to have his sister to visit the staffroom on Monday morning to say 'hello', and then for him to turn out to be her new gym instructor a year later, starting the session by asking innocently: 'don't I know you from somewhere?'.

That was, as we are certain you will agree, FAR too much information.

Your turn: anonymously post something that really ought never to be disclosed.