Dotty

We are going on holiday. This in itself is a Big Thing. At the risk of sounding pitiable and needy (which we emphatically are not!) we do not have the money to spend on holidays. However, a combination of factors led us to take the decision that a break away is just what this family needs.
My brief was to find somewhere cheap, that we would all enjoy and that wasn’t too far away – long journeys and Wees just aren’t the best combination. I also wanted to find somewhere that would give us a taste of real camping before we started thinking about how we could buy our own tent, just in case it was an unmitigated never-to-be-repeated disaster.
I had heard that Eurocamp, famous for their pre-erected and furnished tents in France had come over to the UK, but their sites seemed somehow dreary and half-hearted. They are also jolly steep. However, I now had the bit between my teeth and I marched on with Google by my side… and then I came across THIS
Who could possible resist? To further cement the deal (which was SO done by now anyway), the site is one mile from Scarborough – one mile from winkles, crab claws, fish & chips, bucket & spades, donkey rides, sea, sand, soggy sandwiches: everything! There is a little wood-burning stove in the tipi, the charges are the same all year round (these are ethical people!), children are free, dogs are free, you can rent a gas stove from them, they have a green philosophy – I could go on… but you know the best thing of all: they are SO friendly and I just know we are going to have the best 3 nights of our lives… and Wee2 can just roll around the tipi – he won’t even have to get up to bed-hop!

Anyway – here is the link to the lovely Pinewood Holiday Park (which sounds horribly like a Haven Holiday Park – but is quite very much not!)

http://www.pinewood-holiday-park.co.uk/1173.html

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So, I mentioned earlier in Beauty Regimes – the beginning, that I was looking into the Oil Cleansing Method: www.theoilcleansingmethod.com.
I went out (OK – I searched on eBay, and ordered!) and bought my castor oil, which seemed innocuous enough – thick, gloopy and not as smelly as I anticipated… in fact not smelly at all. Because I am an impatient naughty little rabbit sometimes, I didn’t go back to the oil cleansing site, but did my usual: I’ve read it once so now I know what to do… and you know – this works! What a fantastic start.
The oil cleansing method according to Dottymummy goes something like this:
Take an attractive small ramekin-sized container (I have a particularly fetching yoghurt pot) and glug in some castor oil, then stroll over to the cooker, pick up your olive oil (extra-virgin, of course) and glug some of that in. Now tootle off upstairs to your bedroom or bathroom and sprinkle in a drop or two or lavender oil. While you are up there, you might as well get started. Hair away from face, wiggle fingers in pot to mix up and then just massage into your face and neck. You can either clean it off now, or chat to a pal for a while or have a cup of tea and then do it. Best not to leave it too long in case you forget and go out to pick up the kids… then people will talk (and not in a kind way). OK, now you need a flannel (don’t go and get organic muslin, unless you feel you absolutely must: I use 19p ones) and it needs to be put in hot hot water, then ring it out and lay it over your face so you get that lovely end of curry feeling. Wipe, do the hot hot thing again and rub the rest of the oil off. Almost it.
Your skin will feel as though it has just had a very expensive facial, but there is one step remaining. Moisturise and you know what? Chuck out the pots and tubes and serums – get a £1.50 bottle of coconut oil, run it under the hot tap and pour a tupenny-sized puddle into your palms. Smooth this over your face and neck, then rub into your hands. Real moisture, no grease, some sun protection and not ONE chemical. How can this not be good?

If I was not quite so shy and retiring and devoid of any vanity I would take a photo of my skin right now, two weeks in. I am blemish-free, my pores have disappeared, blackheads – what are they?, and even those nasty time-of-the-month flare-ups… gone.

Try it: it will cost you less than a new lipstick – less than a bottle of cleanser – less than a nail polish, and you will look and feel beautiful.

Oh – and if you are still not convinced: you don’t need to do this twice a day! This is Dottymummy slut heaven. Wiggle in the evening and in the morning all you need is a quick flannel rub in the shower and a spot of coconut oil when you do your teeth.

Next stop: shampoo. I gaily switched to the Tesco B-Natural line, happy to be paraben-free… but it is still laden with Sodium Laurel Sulphate: boo! I’ll keep you updated: bad hair days and all!

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I was brought up with a healthy respect for fire. I grew up in the depths of North Coldshire where the only source of heating came from the sitting room fire, coal was carried in from the outhouse from 1st October until 30th April (no matter how cold it was either side of those months) and by the age of 5 I could clean out and lay a fire as skilfully as the next chap. I withstood a thrashing at the age of 10 having been caught with matches in my coat pocket: so ingrained were the perils of playing with fire, I chose to be punished for smoking cigarettes rather than for my true crime: lighting a fire in my tree den. It was a tear-streaked face which promised never again to touch a filthy ciggy, while all the time looking forward to toasting barley in my carefully hidden empty battered baccy tin.
Time marched on and I found myself alone in a world of double glazing, central heating and even a tumble drier. What luxury thought I, still remembering the green metal hot water bottle, the eiderdowns so heavy you thought your ribs would break and the thick slabs of ice over the windows in the morning (how we laughed at the thought of Jack Frost leaving his delicate patterns!). One Friday evening, in a state of new-found independence, at the tender age of 23, I left my darling little flat and went off on a jolly, to return on the Sunday evening. I walked into the communal hall, smelled an odd, yet strangely comforting smell, and proceeded to open my door. The odd thing was that even in the hall I hadn’t registered that a smoke alarm was squealing, still less that it was my smoke alarm.
The flat was not large (my mother commented on first seeing it that the hall was rather small: she was looking at the sitting room), so it didn’t take too long to discover the cause of the smoke. My bed was pushed up against the storage heater – there was nowhere else for it to go (great design…), but as the little air vents at the top were still reasonable uncovered, I thought no more of it. However… at some point during the weekend the storage heater pixies had got in and done their dirty work. The storage heater had overheated and in overheating had melted its own controls to a fixed ‘furnace blast’ position. The mattress was charring and melting away quite happily, the duvet had caught fire and the feathers glowed red and flickered. I disconnected the fire alarm (it would NOT shut up), threw a pan or two of water over the bed, put the duvet outside, sat in my sitting room and cried. Now, the other problem that I had was that I was proud. I was so proud it hurts me to think of it now. I was also quite poor. The price of my independence was 1 full-time job and 2 part-time jobs, working 7 days a week: and that enabled me to have my flat and run my little white Mini. It did not afford me storage space, spare bedding, etc, etc. Pride stopped me from ringing a friend and asking to stay the night, or from borrowing a sleeping bag… and so I was left in my quite-small-for-a-hall sitting room on two cushions from the armchairs as a mattress and the curtain from the window as a blanket, feeling more than a little sorry for myself.
Of course – if I had known then what I know now (but then Wee1 and Wee2 might never have been…) I would have: called the FIRE BRIGADE! (see part 2).

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 It has been a very odd month this month – I have done very little writing but have been spending an inordinate amount of energy doing what I thought at the time was fire-fighting (not literally Bruno! NB self: get the Innocent Arsonist written). There seems to have been crisis after crisis amongst family and friends, and a vast amount of time wasted on picking over the carnage. Some of the crises affected me directly, which at the time left me feeling almost bereaved, other crises less so, but still drained my emotional resources in supporting those I love. With the benefit of hindsight I can see that what was occurring was a period of cleansing and renewal. Old negative influences are now gone from my life, and as if by magic, the void has been filled (and more) by positive, colourful, interesting and kind characters.
Wouldn’t it be simply marvellous if that happened in our parliament….? In business? In the whole big wide world? OK – I know – impossible – but if we don’t dream the impossible, what do we dream?

Anyway, back to earth. Today was one of the finest days I can honestly say I have ever enjoyed. Wee1 had a new friend over to play: all the Wees were off school for an ‘In Service Day’. I don’t know what that is – other than the school gates are locked against me no matter how hard I rattle. Anyway, WeePal came and played and scooted and roller-skated (mostly on his bottom, but my Wees think that is exactly how it is done) and ‘cycled, we all ate prodigious amounts of pizza and then went yomping through field, vale and High Street to the ultimate prize: Simply Delicious – home of the best ice-cream cone in Melrose. Once cooled and re-energised we trotted off to our final destination: the secret park and fishing in the burn… that was Dottymummy’s idea anyway. The Wees decided that peeing in the burn and stripping half naked and paddling in the burn was much more fun: and who was I to argue?

It was hot, it was sunny, the tourists were happy, children were playing in the parks, new tenderly-fussing mummies and fidgeting mummies-to-be had picnics together, the municipal flowerbeds were newly raked ready for their summer rebirth, retired couples held hands on benches and looked on as the world waltzed by.
It has been a perfect day – again, at last…

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A very special guest review by my lovely friend Bruno (he is SO grown-up!)

Love makes the world go round – it’s a nice thought. And when contemplating such a notion it’s also nice to have a book in front of you that reinforces the idea. However, in the case of one character from Love in the Time of Cholera it could almost be ‘sex makes the world go round’. But I’m jumping ahead of myself a bit now. Backtrack.

Love in the Time of Cholera tells the story of Fermina Daza and Florentino Ariza. And in case you’re worried, there’s more love in the tale than cholera, so it’s perhaps not as morbid as the title suggests. Fermina and Florentino live on an unnamed Caribbean island at the turn of the century. She’s a feisty though somewhat unsure vision of gorgeousness, and he’s a slow but steady unassuming type. Outward appearances could suggest the hare and the tortoise, but in many ways the book is about what happens behind closed doors, and metaphorically speaking that includes perception versus reality when it comes to the characters and their private lives.

The title of the book could almost be Unrequited Love in the Time of Cholera, for the majority of the tale sees Florentino carrying a torch for Fermina that she blatantly refuses to acknowledge. She doesn’t try to put the torch out, because to her it doesn’t even exist. We follow their lives for fifty years, or thereabouts, and because the story see-saws between these two characters and their very different experiences, it remains constantly engaging.

Written in a ‘warts ‘n all’ style, we often see the people and the places at their most base. However, this is contrasted with flowery, almost poetic prose that gives even the most unpleasant of events a sort of fatal romanticism. The book also feels older than it really is. First published in 1985, it harks back to the style of the classic romance novels, though there’s also enough spice to keep the modern audience engaged. There is sex in the world of Fermina and Florentino, and in the case of the latter it’s numerous and all out of wedlock. But it’s not gratuitous. On Dotty’s Doris Day-o-meter (zero being the sort of thing that would even put Ms Day’s feet to sleep, and ten blowing the dial off the o-meter in a super-saucy, super-cloud of super-sex steam) the book scores a solid five. It’s neither overly racy nor boringly prudish.

However, having spent the last four hundred words heaping praise on the novel, I must say the end left me a bit cold. As the story unfolds there are times when unpleasant things happen to the characters, establishing that unpleasant things happen in the world of the novel and applying a sense of mortality. I thought this was going to be carried through to the end and provide the finales’ dramatic climax. I was wrong. Though this isn’t enough to taint the story as a whole, and I’d still recommend the book if you want your world to spin a little bit faster on the axis of love.

Wow – don’t you just want to go out and buy that book? I’m getting my order in now … I’ll let you know if it does reach #5 on the Doris Day-o-meter

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What a jolly film: it’s him, no it’s him, no him, no her, HER?, oh no, him (bang!), noooo… its the dog!, it’s the cat! (What cat?), it’s the statue (no not that one, silly…). It’s the communion wafer… what? Whoa – ouchy ouchy……..! When did it finish? Do you think they’ll get married? Oh I do hope so. Maybe there will be a sequel? Shall we go out again one day? Oh YES!

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Not a good start to the day – no sleep last night. Well, none to speak of: and it was my own fault. For a year I suffered from the most miserable insomnia and tried every drug at my lovely GP’s disposal: none worked (or not for very long) – but what did at least get me off to the land of nod for a few minutes was Happy Housewife. As the insomnia got worse, the drugs got stronger and the Happy Housewife dose increased. Then I discovered EFT (or tapping) courtesy of Magnus Huckvale: I’ll tell you more in a separate post, but if you can’t wait (and I wouldn’t) here is the link to his website:

www.tapping.com

Immediately I slept through the night: hurrah! The next night I cut out all the sedatives – not so good… nightsweats, muscle spasms (jumping out of bed!), nightmares…. then I realised that of course I was physically dependent on Happy Housewife. So I take that again and sleep through the night. I am now down to a third of my original dose and ready to go further down – but I forgot to pick up the new prescription for a lower dose pill. Hey, I thought – I’m OK, I’m strong now, my body is used to sleeping, and the dose is relatively low so it will be more cold chick than cold turkey. Wrong. Now any sensible person would have decided by 3am to turn to the solution they know works best – tapping. I wouldn’t even have to get out of bed to do it. Did I do it? Did I heck. And I am SO cross with myself. Indeed I am so cross that after my shower, I am going to ignore the carpet and the deathtrap at the bottom of the stairs and plunge down into the ironing: that will serve me right.

If there are no posts after this one, take note that it probably isn’t wise to ignore deathtraps….

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We are the proud keepers of two little boys: Wee1 who is 5 and Wee2 who is 3. They are as the proverbial chalk and cheese – but, as is nature’s cruel and evil way, equally demanding: just in very different ways. Wee1 wants to know why things are, Wee2 wants to get down dirty and find out how. Wee1 is slight and sensitive but remarkably independent and resourceful; Wee2 is squat and bold but terrified of trying anything new (and certainly without his Mummy) and lost without someone’s hand to hold.
Wee2 attends a local playgroup for 21/2 hours a day which is worth its weight in gold: the play leaders are kind and beautiful and patient and loving: just what every 3-year-old needs. Wee1 is in his first year at Primary School and is learning to read at exponential speed. He is being taught a seemingly purely Christian perspective: which is curious, as his pre-school was really switched on about the festivals of other faiths. I must ask his teacher about this: I could be wrong and have just bred a ready-made Born-Again! The problem is that we don’t really live in a particularly ethnically diverse area, so he isn’t meeting people from other cultures/religions. It is changing slowly, but what do I do – run up to the only black family in town and ask to be their friend: because they are black? To me that has the same sincerity as those ghastly girls who want to be best friends with (any) gay men purely to boost their own kudos.
Anyway – whatever he is taught gets discussed at home and an alternative (where appropriate) proffered. However he has none of it: when I mentioned Darwinism as an alternative to Creationism this morning he didn’t stop laughing until we got to school. His take on Easter was that Jesus died on the cross, then got put in a cave, then the cave was empty because he’d gone back to the cross, died on it again, got put in a cave again, went back to the cross…. and so on… He can be very astute, though. He picked up a biography of Sir Walter Raleigh that I recently bought, asked about the man on the cover, so I explained who he was. Then he asked how he died, so I told him. ‘Why?’ Well, I replied, I don’t know – so that’s why I bought the book, to find out. ‘Hmmmm’ he replied, flicking through all 600+ pages of the book, ‘that’s an awful lot of words to find out why someone had their head chopped off’.

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We also share our house with Betty the dog and Mr Pitt, a black stocky cat who lives upstairs and shouts at me. I don’t know why: he was a rescue kitten, he has been lavished with love, allowed free reign of the house (and bed), but still he marches after me shouting and demanding who-knows-what. I have Simon Tofield to thank for the video you will see, should you wish to click on the link below. He may think he has avoided huge fees by making his cat white – but he and I both know that it could only be Mr Pitt…
Is there more than one Mr Pitt?

Betty is a little Jack Russell who looks rather more like a Chihuahua. I did see her mother and father – but I think the breeder pulled a fast one on me and hid the real papa in his pocket. Anyway, she is a sweetheart: on the plus side she is brilliant with the boys, has instant recall, sits and lays down on command and fetches like no other dog I’ve seen. Her less than positive traits are that she will bark at the wind rustling through the leaves of a tree 5 miles away, hates any postman with a vengeance, will NOT come for a walk if she thinks it will involve going through Melrose, and pulls on the lead terribly. But for a dog that gives way to the cat, allows him to groom her head then bite her ears, and has never snarled at the boys, she’ll do for me.

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not just for husbands, boyfriends, straight-from-Mummy&Daddy’s, teenagers…..

Washing-up
First of all – if we cannot afford a dishwasher, and we have no space for a dishwasher, it would be lovely to have a whole day go by without bemoaning the lack of a dishwasher. Secondly – more washing-up liquid does not mean less scrubbing. More washing-up liquid means thicker suds which HIDE the grubby bits – those bits which attach and smear themselves all over the tea-towel. Also, it is not endearing to consistantly fail to wash properly a particular utensil (the pasta ladle in our case). Thirdly – it is truly easier to wash-up after every meal, straight after every meal.
Finally: there is no such thing as the washing-up fairy. I’m sorry – with hindsight I should have warned some of you to sit down for that one.

Shift dresses
Are a girl thing. They are important. They may seem an extortionate expense for three pieces of fabric sewn together in straight line. They may seem an extortionate expense for something which then requires a jacket, embellished cardi or perfectly co-ordinating pashmina. 40 shift dresses may be a little extravagent – anything less is not. Expensive shift dresses make us feel like Audrey Hepburn, or Jackie O: cheap shift dresses do not. No-one feels like a Mummy in a shift dress. They are not negotiable. They cannot be explained or justified. They just are.

Laundry
I don’t know where to start…

Socks
Please try really really hard and put these IN the laundry basket. It is such a little thing, but it means so much. Within a 2 feet radius does not count. Honestly. However, (and this is where it gets a bit complicated) if your socks have huge uncomfortable holes in (like making your toes bleed or turn black), do not put them in the laundry basket. These socks (both of them – even the one which looks perfectly serviceable) need to go in the bin. Please.

Shoes
Little pieces of paper with scribble on
Yesterday’s clothes
The lavatory
The bath/shower

The kettle
This is so easy: when you have filled the kettle up, switch it ON, then before any other thought has entered your brain, cry out in your happiest voice ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’. So easy and the long-term benefits are astounding. You might even get sex (unless you are teenage son impressing Mum – in which case I am SO sorry for grossing you out).

The breadboard
This is a designated mobile surface, usually made of wood, for cutting and spreading bread, toast, bagels, crumpets and the like. It is not for cutting tomatoes (however closely related they may be to the slice of bread sitting there waiting for the sandwich to be completed), lemons, onions OR garlic. Another point to remember should you wish to earn extra Smartie points is that is does actually need wiping down with a clean, damp (NOT wet, and not soaked in evil artificial lemon-scented kitchen degreaser spray) cloth. Bread knives, contrary to popular opinion, do not live on breadboards: they do actually need to be washed up, dried and placed at least an arm-length from wee-ones’ grasps.

Butter
Lives in a butter dish. When we have scraped the last of the butter from the butter dish, we do not skip gaily to the fridge and plonk a new block on top of the old slightly rancid remnants… OH NO: we reach into the cupboard and get the other CLEAN butter dish out and place our new block lovingly therein. That’s the main bit – now for the frills. It would be lovely if you could use a new knife to cut the butter, rather than leave tell-tale lines of marmite, peanut butter, etc, etc, etc, interspersed with toast crumbs. It would be lovely if you could move the old butter dish to the sink, rather than leaving it as a decoy on the breadboard. And – it would be lovely if you could cover the butter dish after use to avoid cat-tongue indentations and Wee2 finger gouges.

Cushions
These are decorative, useful and completely necessary. They are not there simply to be thrown on the floor, and then left there: neither are they there for one person to hoard and hogg and leave as a jumbled pile at one end of the sofa. When they have finished being useful, it would be such a treat if they could be replaced decoratively! Again – the benefits could surprise you…

The bottom of the stairs
This is not a cupboard (or a box, or a chest, or a shelf, or even a staging post)! There is quite a simple equation here to help you remember:
cluttered bottom of stairs = deathtrap
Easy!

all these, and more, will be explained (although it is taking me much longer than I thought it would… hmmmm…). I realised now that I should have done this 15 years ago… but if it means that someone else benefits I shall, of course, be utterly and selflessly delighted.

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