Packing for the Holocaust

So right now I should be packing. I'm going away for a week in Cornwall and in the true British style I am having to pack everything I own to allow for the vagaries of the British Summer Weather.

So - here is a quick run down. Is there anything I have forgotten?

• My galoshes have been scrubbed clean,
• My striped bathing suit with exhausted elastic has been shaken free of anorexic moths along with my flower adorned bathing hat...
• I have casual clothes, smart clothes, in between clothes and not much to them clothes.
• Should I pack for snow? Just in case? I mean, this is the British summer so there is a far greater chance of a sudden snowfall than there is in the winter. OK - gloves, scarf and skiing trousers it is.
• I have deliberately forgotten my suncream in the hope that this will guarantee scorching days that I can't venture out into for fear of burning to a crisp and being mistaken by Rick Stein for a cornish lobster.
• I have packed an entire separate case of books in case nobody sells books in Cornwall.
• The loyal hound has a towel, his bowl and his favourite rubber chicken (I do wish he wouldn't sit on it when I am driving though as, out of the blue, it gives out this long and pained squealing which frightens the living daylights out of me)
• Naturally I have a tin opener and some tins of sardine paste. I didn't waste my time reading all those Famous Five novels for nothing.
• I have emptied the contents of my bathroom cupboard into a suitcase in the hope of actually using some of the products that I keep buying because they promise that they will make my hair so shiny I can be used as a solar panel / my eyelashes so long I'll trip over them/ my skin so soft that puppies will be envious.

At least if there is a holocaust while I am on holiday I will be able to last the whole thing out.

Ok - that's it then. I'm off. I'll be back in a week with my tales of sun, surf, expensive ice creams and hot men that I was too nervous to go up and talk to ....... That is assuming that the pixies don't get me.

Brief Encounter with a Butterfly

So, as official doting aunt I thought it would be nice to take my nephews on an outing. How lovely am I? Consequently I gave my OCD sister three months warning that I planned on taking them to the 'Butterfly Jungle' in Conwy. Now, this is close by Welsh standards. Only 31 miles away and I had this thought that we might be there for an hour or so and then we could go round the castle since the oldest nephew is obsessesed by being a soldier (he can frequently be found with a bucket on his head (sterilised first of course), pretending he is on parade.

So lunch was prepared for them (you can't expect them to eat food from a strange kitchen for goodness sake) and we met at 10.00 o'clock this morning just outside the butterfly house. My sister already had the look of a martyr being sent to the burning pyre but both boys looked pretty excited at the prospect of being allowed outside their bubbles and there was much reiterating of the fact that we were going to see 'Butter and flies'. Come to think of it, maybe that was why my sister looked so martyred. She does hate those flies.......

First appearances of the butterfly jungle are not very preposessing. Imagine a greenhouse that is more suited for mass illegal growth of dope and you are about there. Inside it was warm (it's a greenhouse so that's not really a surprise) but there were butterflies of all shapes and sizes. Huge electric blue ones, jagged winged black and white ones, beautiful multicoloured ones with intricate patterns. They flew around our heads, they came and landed on the boys coats, they ate nectarines, they drank water off the floor at our feet. They disguised themselves as leaves and fluttered up as you walked by. The boys were entranced. Not a swoon in sight they wandered round going 'ooh' and 'aah' and 'look - a butter fly'. They hunted for caterpillars and they studied the goldfish in the pond with great intensity.

After twenty minutes the youngest was sleepy (isn't that a good thing?) and the oldest was hot so we said we would go outside for five minutes and have something to drink and then come back in to have another look. Well, that was the plan I knew about anyway.

As soon as we emerged both boys perked up and started shouting about which butterfly was best. Before we even got near the drinks, my sister started marching us all back to the car. The oldest nephew asked in a tone that Oliver would be proud of 'can we go back in now?' and was promptly told that he was too tired and didn't want to. Actually, I wanted to go back, my father (who had come along to defend us from unknown butterfly perils and show willing as a grandfather) wanted to go back, and of course the non sleepy nephew wanted to go back. But no. What did we know? Apparently this was more than enough stimulation for the month and having been inside for a whole 25 minutes the boys could not possibly stand anymore entertainment without being thoroughly overcome.

I swallowed this blow manfully and brightly suggested that we go to the castle instead as the smallest boy would think it was just a walk, and the oldest would love it. I could have bought him a brand new bucket as a helmet and he could have marched up and down the ramparts defending us from all comers. This suggestion was also squashed as being entirely unsuitable for such delicate flowers. Instead they went to Tesco, which apparently would be more than enough entertainment for them, and then they went home.

My whole grand outing took three months of persuasion, two hours of driving and a total of 25 minutes actually spent with the butterflies. I think I might swoon with frustration.

Grilled like a Dover Sole

Three cheers for the bravery of me. I have rung one of the cybermen! Not the pilot or duck fetish man but a brand new one who is apparently frightened of e mail and thinks that 'a phone call is worth a thousand e mails'. Shakespeare would roll in his grave.

So, I promised to call him at 5.00 o'clock and promptly forgot all about it and got distracted. It was only at 6.00 o'clock when the loyal hound started pretending that he was too weak with hunger to make it to the door that I realised what the time was and that I was late for my very first cyber date. Now, having leapt with gay abandon into the deep end of the cyber dating pool I didn't know what to expect from this first phone call business. Had somebody warned me that questionaires would be involved I might have just stuck a toe in and complained that it was a bit chilly and I was going back in. Here are some of the questions I faced:

Cyber man: "What are your hobbies?"
Me: "Errr, umm, Macrame and birdwatching? (never done either but they sound like proper hobbies to me)"
Cyber man: "Do you want children? I want lots and soon"
Me: "Isn't that a little bit forward? We haven't even met yet....."
Cyber man: "Where exactly have you lived?"
Me: "what? a detailed list with addresses and stuff? Why do you care?"
Cyber man: "Do you like lawns. I love mine and find mowing it very relaxing."
Me: "Why? do you want to mow mine? Isn't that a bit random as a follow up question? Are we really talking about lawns or is this all a euphemism and I am too thick to have noticed?"

You get the gist. I feel expertly grilled, Dover sole at a michelin restaurant would have nothing on me. Frighteningly he wants to talk again, he may want to mow my lawn. What have I got myself into. Doctor - help - the Cybermen are here........................

Game, Set and Match with slobber on.......

The blessed peace, the quiet, the sheer heaven of being home alone. The world is my oyster. I can hear nothing other than the occasional sigh from the Loyal Hound as he enjoys life without being in trouble and the bliss of solitude once more.

He has suffered greatly over the weekend. In an eager effort to please he has carefully gone around gathering up the various articles of clothing, toys, beakers, snotty tissues that have been abandoned in a trail behind the swooning nephews, and has carried them all back to me. What can I say. He has a tidy nature. Unfortunately my sister has an excessive awareness of hygiene. No ten second rule for her. Despite having grown up surrounded by dogs, cats and various other bits of wildlife dragged into the house (usually by me and my brother), she has decided that wildlife is 'unsanitary' and the loyal hound definitely counts as wildlife.

I tried explaining that a dog's mouth was more sanitary than a persons mouth, but she rather unkindly pointed out that she didn't see any people carrying her children's abandoned belongings round in their mouths. Picky or what.

She then heaves a long suffering sigh as he appears with another abandoned T shirt carefully scrunched up in his mouth, tail wagging with pleasure at being able to help. As I hand it to her she ostentatiously puts it in the 'wash pile'.

What happened to her? She used to be a normal, fun, amusing person who laughed and didn't secretly wipe down counters with antiseptic wipes when she thought nobody was looking. Then she got married and had children. Now I'm not saying that it is the fate of all women to become dull, paranoid and disapproving when they procreate but there are days when I think it was hers. What really confuses me is how she can now so thoroughly disapprove of her own childhood? Everything that we loved about growing up - being allowed to run outside on our own, refusing to wear our shoes for months on end, lying fast asleep in a heap of dogs, waging war on each other with pillows, sticks, hand grenades (depended on the level of war as to the weapons used), refusing to change our clothes when they were covered in grass stains, cake and river weed. These are all things that frighten her to death for her own children.

Consequently, they scream with fear if they trip over, they sob if they get water on themselves, they think flies are the work of the devil (this may be true but as there is little you can do about the pesky blighters I don't think it is worth pointing out their true evil nature to children), they don't like being barefoot on the grass. I could go on but it just depresses me.

What depresses me more is that there is an inviolable law that says you can't tell your sister that she has turned into a lunatic and that her children are following her down the yellow brick road to lunacy. Even worse, all this paranoia makes her life exhausting, and her exhausted and consequently even more paranoid, dull and freaked out by anything that can't be controlled.

Having got that little rant out of the way I must return briefly to the loyal hound. In between irritating my sister he managed to excel himself in a sport that all dogs should be famed for - Croquet.

There is a standing rule in our house that if the dog retrieves the croquet ball mid game then you have to play from where he drops it. Little did everyone realise that I have got his training to a peak of fabulousness and he carefully fetched my croquet ball and dropped it neatly in front of the relevant hoop each time. Game Set and Match to me and the Loyal Hound!!!!

Send in the clowns - now, please......

So. Wondering where I have been? Why I have so heartlessly abandoned you for two whole days? Did you even notice? I have been in HELL! My sister and her nephews are staying for a fortnight with the grandparents. As they (the doting grandparents who were my fairly disinterested parents) live only a mile away I am therefore considered free entertainment at all hours of the day and night.

Now, let's get a couple of things straight. I like my nephews. They are the only ones I have got and due to the fact that they live five hours away for the majority of the year I am able to feel a yearning fondness for them that I rarely have to translate into action. The problem is that they are what could be termed over indulged. They don't have miniaturised ferraris with real engines and personalised numberplates, they go one better. They have nervous dispositions.

This makes them sound like regency heroines and it isn't so far off the mark. If they knew about swooning they would take it up with a vengeance. Swoon when their mother is not in the room, swoon, when they see a dog, swoon when it turns out that you aren't going to land a jet helicopter on the lawn on Sunday (an idea they gained from what???). There is no end to the swooning possibilities. And I sort of wish they would swoon. It would be quieter. Instead they scrunch their faces up into a fleshy piece of origami that turns them from mildly cute children into candidates for 'Chucky - the plastic surgery leftovers' and they scream in unison at a pitch that kills all wildlife within a 50 yard radius. Once or twice a day this could be useful. Stand them in a patch of weeds riddled with rabbits and let them loose. The ultimate in organic control. But every 30 minutes all day and for a great deal of the night? Seriously?

Now obviously, they dote on me. Who wouldn't? OK - lots of people. But they are small and they have never actually been allowed out to meet anyone else (the nervous dispositions - remember?). Consequently yours truly exerts a fascination on them that means I have a constant set of stalkers who scream if I go out of sight, look too tall, look fractionally bored, or just look. It's exhausting. Why does anybody have children if this is what it involves? I have played every game possible. Finger Wars at breakfast, Hungry Hippos at lunch (and am I bad at that game. I think I had a hippo with ADT), tractors, Bob the Builder's phone games (oddly addictive whilst being wildly irritating), more tractors, building dens, knocking down dens, cricket, the list goes on.

There is a brief glow of satisfaction at being adored by small children which is rapidly replaced by a feeling of being hunted down by wild animals. This is the point where I am considering getting my pitiful life savings and blowing the lot on hired entertainers. Bring me your clowns, your au pairs, your balloon artists. Bring me anything to distract attention from me.

The life savings option is a real one but not accessible until Monday, so until then, I am reduced to hiding. Quite literally. This is shaming when I get discovered cowering behind curtains by my sister who has come to find out how the nervous ones are. Shaming for two reasons. One - because I am hiding from a four year old and a two year old, and two, because she gives me this really irritating look that says ' I do this all year, and you can't even manage a weekend'.

Oh god, I can hear them coming. This could be the end - help. Please, somebody. Send in the clowns, before it's too late.................