Elf poo and other educational things

I suppose you always thought that your children were safe in a holiday club. Nice safe activities with nice safe staff. Oh dear.

With the run up to Samhain (Halloween) at the end of the week this holiday club has been more than educational. The kids have excelled themselves this year and along with jars of Coffin Larvae, Toenail Jam, Spider Ear Wax and Leaking Boils they have taught me the art of making Elf Poo...



In case Ofsted pop in I can safely say that setting up our 'Good Witch Company' has covered all aspects of the curriculum. Making our own labels, printing them and staining them with strong coffee to age them had English, IT, design and technology covered and our careful scientific experiments with a number of household ingredients took science to a new level.



The results were ghastly, stinky and mostly revolting (cooking oil, Angel Delight and handwash do not mix very well) - but our witchy kitchen is full and I am just wondering if we can get away with boiling a few kids tomorrow!

Wave yer knickers in the air (or not)

I went shopping yesterday. I was just debating over the twenty items that I had tried on when a woman came into the changing room (it was one of those communal thingies). On the outside she looked more than smart but as she got down to the last layer it became apparent that she did not worship at the altar of respectable underwear.

Eeeeeek!

The revolting black bra looked as if it had been chewed by the cat, the hamster, and the budgie and was only marginally better than the knickers that had turned from original white to washing machine baggy bummed yurk.
I am not given to staring at womens underwear in public but my mother is responsible for my OCD about underwear. Her rules were simple...

a) Underwear should match.
b) It should not contain safety pins - ever.
c) Jeans and t-shirt are not an excuse to dress down underneath.
d) Clean knickers are essential - you may get run over by a bus (I spent a lot of my youth looking out for rogue buses).

So, I am holding the hope that women still want to look like women underneath....


...until the day that I find someone to share these with...

pee ess - the rules apply to men as well. Don't think you can get away with those revolting items just because they are comfortable!

Oh, and in case you were wondering I was buying more underwear!

Caption me

"They said we had to look retired"

Your turn...

Life of Pie

I spent some time last week working with a young womens group in my local community. These nearly women are streetsmart and mouthwise and have probably lived more of life on the edge than I care to imagine.
In a conversation that wove in and out of their teenage pregnancies, violent fathers, drinking problems and the joys of vodka and red bull, we got around to talking about what they wanted out of life.

"It's all right for you, Kate, you're always fuckin' happy." Louise said.

"Yeah, when you're fucking sorted you can be fucking happy." Tasha added.

I said that I wasn't always sorted, or happy, and that I'd had quite a bad year so far, but trying to explain the breakup of a twenty-six year year relationship when the girls around you can't keep a boyfriend for more than twenty-six hours was more than a little difficult!

"You need to put good things in your life pie." I said.

"Wassat?" they asked.

I told them that their life should be like a really good pie but it can only be good if the things that go into it are good.

"So if you use crap ingredients then your pie will be fucking horrible?" Tia said.

"Exactly!"

After discussing the more unsavoury items in their pies they then went on to compile a recipe for a good life pie...

1lb of happy
1 lb of love
8oz of joy
4oz of money
1oz of fucking lovely sex (thanks for that one, Louise)

These women will probably turn out to be better cooks than me!

.

BLOG ACTION DAY - POVERTY

The Happy Meal

I watched a documentary a while ago - it was about a morbidly obese family who were living off takeaways. A steady diet of processed meat, too much salt, an abundance of fat, enhanced flour, refined sugar had eventually led to the father being cut out out his house and carted off for a gastric bypass to try and stop him dying before his time.
Thousands of dollars were ploughed into this family to try and educate them that overeating was possibly dangerous to their health. In the meantime they were still feeding burgers to the four-month-old baby.
When it was announced that it was cheaper to feed a family on takeouts than it was to prepare the mega abundance of local fresh food I was nearly physically sick.

What kind of twisted world am I living in where poverty can kill you with overeating, or kill you with undereating?

Isn't it about time we looked at the difference and started to redress the balance? Aren't we all entitled to a well balanced happy meal that isn't going to kill us?
Somehow I don't think the mother of the child below would understand that concept either.


Today is BLOG ACTION DAY - POVERTY (see the link on the top right for more details).
Over 11 million people are going to read blog posts on the subject of poverty - please read some of them because it applies to all of us.

Marble musing

These photos for Phoctober (HERE) brought to mind a poem by fellow blogger, John Ahearn, from his book Pomes, Younger and Older.
Hope you don't mind, John.

Marble muse

Carver loved her before she’d shed the last
eighth-inch of measured marble, when she
was still a blurred cousin of the plaster
posed in quarter-scale beside her knee.

Her left hand offered him the skylight,
her right the rubble scattered on the floor;
her gaze, declining from heroic height,
became an invitation to adore.

Smoke streaked the pointed frost-gray
as the edge searched out her real skin,
chirping the last layer of gauze away
to reveal the flawless being poised within.

Smoothed, she gloried in her Belgian black,
gleamed under the circular slow strokes
of pumice and oil, stood in herself, exact,
monumental, realized. And spoke:

“Get rid of that one there. Impertinent scut.”
Carver, mute, understood stone
for the first time as his heart slammed shut.
The creature didn’t know it was alone.

“And get this place cleaned up, you filthy man.
Get a haircut. Shave. Show some spark.”
Carver lay at her feet, beyond command.
She chittered like a grackle in the dark.

What do you want to be when you grow up?

I had my Personal Development interview (interrogation) at work this week.
After establishing that I had very neatly avoided all the targets from last year we got to the bit where I start to look like a rabbit caught in a stewpot.

"Where do you see yourself in five years time?"

I am never prepared. It catches me out every time. Haven't they learned that I have enough trouble remembering to get up for work every day let alone where I should be. I rely on auto-pilot, my inner GPS system to get me there, along with a rather clever system of colour coded knickers that tell me what day it is.

I tell her that there isn't a crystal ball made that can predict what I shall be doing in five years time. I can hardly predict what I shall be having for supper this evening and even that is subject to change at the last minute.

I blame my maths teacher - she was never going to drum predictive skills into my disorganised brain even though she hit me over the head with the book that held the key to my future. Funny how I can organise a bunch of crappy words into a legible sentence but stay resolutely 'in the moment' for anything that requires more than two brain cells being rubbed together.

Anyway, I want to be a ballerina - wonder if she'll pay for the lessons and the pretty dress?





pee ess - Phoctober - "keep off the growing thingies"



and "disorganised but less moody"....

The moody cow does Phoctober

Last year, Maht, at Moon Topples, did a lovely project called Phoctober (Photo's in October). He doesn't really deserve anyone to join in because he keeps going awol but I am (usually) a nice person (see below). Click on the link for details.

Anyway, here's my first effort....

POND


.

.

..(Can you tell which way up this one is?)

I thought it might be fun to follow it up with a Phoctober Photo Diary only the trouble is my (as we like to say on that irritating social Facebook thingy) ...

My mood is - 'pissed right off'....

.

Don't

Don’t kiss me on the cheek like a maiden aunt, or

bear hug me within an inch of my life.

Don’t peck me, pat me, pet me

or give me the beer slap

Don’t hold me at arms length,

or slobber in my ear.

And please,

don’t rub me like a magic lamp

or knead me like dough

Can you learn not to chew me like a toffee,

or lick me like the dog?

Remember,

do as you would be done by.

The returns will be worth it.

I am not your mother.

Don’t turn from me

Don't negate my passion

I am am unbreakable china, so

kiss me like a lover.

Kiss me like you mean it.

Kiss me to my soul.

Honour my lips

I am worth learning

Just Lily

This is a short fiction from a while back, posted because I met another 'Lily' yesterday...

In later years Lily would say that her legs looked like two pieces of string, dangling down from a dress that was too inadequate for the weather. At the time the legs didn’t notice and continued hanging loosely from the swing that she had not quite grown into, and probably never would.

The adults were whispering again, standing in the kitchen making those large-mouthed silent words in the hopes that she wouldn’t understand. They were also drinking grainy coffee and smoking the fags that made Julie, from next door, sound like Marge Simpson’s sister. Julie only appeared when there was oh-my-God trouble.

Lily stretched out her toe with every swing, trying to reach the stone that was embedded in the middle of the worn patch of grass below her. She knew that if she caught that iceberg rock it would mean blood. Blood, a plaster and a certain hanky produced from a pocket of mentholated sweets.

“You never cry. Brave girl.” grandma said once, dabbing at the nailess horror that appeared from under the bloodied white sock.

“I am saving them.” Lily said “Someone else needs them more than me”.

“You’re an odd one.” grandma said, with a sort of smile “You need a brother or sister, you spend too much time on your own.”

Grandma was funny, but a brother, or sister, would be nice. Lily dreamed of having a 'Stella' of her own, or an 'Alice', or even a 'heaven-forbid-a-Michael'. Someone who could share her days and someone to keep her company behind the sofa when the shouting got louder than the television.

A 'Stella' would be round and plump and look like aunty Mary’s fat Louise. Mum said that fat Louise had a head that was too big for her body but that she would grow into it. Lily didn’t quite understand, but she liked Louise's biscuit stuffed cheeks and the little girl was always smiling. That would be nice.

An 'Alice' would read her stories. Lily liked stories. They took you to other places and let you play around without getting dirty. Mum fussed about the dirt, and bloody socks and messy books. Lily knew that she couldn’t have an older sister. That would be silly, but an 'Alice' would be a clever thing and she would be able to reach those books that Lily wasn’t supposed to touch. Alice would be smarter than a smart thing, unlike heaven-forbid-a-Michael, who would, in fact, be thicker than shit.

Mum said that all men were thicker than shit, but that was before dad had broken her jaw again, because up until today mum hadn’t said much at all.

“And now it will be much better.” mum said, while the kitchen gang smoked another fag.

Lily had listened to the words that removed dad, the shouting and the broken body bits from her life, but the only words that counted were the ones that had stolen the dream.
Now there was never going to be a Stella, or an Alice, or heaven-forbid-a-Michael. It would always be just her.
.

Just Lily.

.