A return to the spa
Well once we’d dumped the very sulky #1 and perky #2 off at school, we had a leisurely breakfast before heading off to the spa. The lovely ladies there remembered us and we had a good old chat about our naked Indian massage experience before heading to our respective therapy rooms. We’d booked a manicure and pedicure each and these are both right up my alley as you complete the whole process lying down with a lavender face mask on – bliss. I had my pedicure first, starting with a nice gritty scrub (Mum reckoned the lady said it was tomato and cucumber but that doesn’t sound very Thai – and her hearing’s a bit dodgy too), then a rub down with hot flannel mitts before another, more runny gritty scrub, then a very thick application of some kind of moisturising mask thing which went right up to my knees, before being wrapped in what Mum described as ‘fish and chip paper’ and left to marinate while listening to that strange music they play in spas – is it whale song or something? Then it was more hot flannels, a nice massage and finally a heavenly pedicure finishing with a nice coat of pale pink varnish.
This whole process was then repeated with my hands and arms: gritty scrub, hot flannels, runnier gritty scrub, hot flannels, moisturising mask, fish and chip paper, marinating, more hot flannels, massage and then manicure. When we finally met up, blinking in the low lights of the ‘chill out’ room, we were presented with Thai tea and invited to help ourselves to the magazines, fruit and water (although as Mum pointed out, it would be a bit difficult to help ourselves to the pineapples, unless we were going to nick the whole thing and take it home in our handbag).
After our chill and herbal tea we once again felt ready to face the world, feeling like we were walking on air. I love that place. We’ve both decided that we’re going to opt out of everyday life and just move into the spa. Bliss.
Verbosity and Airport Security
Well, I’ve packed poor old #1 back off to school this morning. He seemed to perk up considerably yesterday and quite happily accompanied me in the car down to the airport to pick up Mum. #1 has a sort of random, stream of consciousness style of narrative, so by the time we’d reached Dublin he’d managed to talk continuously for the entire hour. He’s interested in everything and anything (I’ve had to explain before that asking people if they believe in God and how much they earn is generally not PC). During the journey we covered topics as diverse as what he would change if he were King of Ireland (shorter school hours, mandatory PlayStation lessons, the banning of haircuts, the right to choose over bathing, etc), right through the spectrum to what he dreams about (giants spiders, being Lord Voldemort, flying…) and lots more besides. One of his classic random statements as we arrived at the airport was ‘that security fence doesn’t look very good – you could probably climb over that’ (break for several minutes) ‘unless you were in a wheelchair’. I was about to explain that terrorists generally would tend to be able bodied, but I thought it was safer to let him mull that one over. I was so grateful to see my Mum I could have cried. Not only because I haven’t seen her since Christmas, but also because there was someone to break up the verbal vomit that was emanating from the back seat.
Anyhoo, my decision to send him back to school prompted a relapse of epic proportions. He hung his head limply over his bowl of Cheerios and seemed quiet and wan once again. I was almost regretting my decision when I heard him mention to #2 that he wished he’d been ill last Wednesday, Thursday and Friday instead of Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, as today is science, which he’s not keen on. That made my mind up and he was jollied along into the bathroom by a very brisk Grandma who has no truck with either soap dodgers or malingerers. All this culminated in a somewhat quiet and sulky ride to school, but finally there is peace. We’re off to the Spa to be manicured and pedicured and we’re thoroughly looking forward to it. The only thing is, I’ve got this tickly feeling in my throat, and my head feels a bit hot….
Happy Valentine’s Day!
Happy Valentine’s Day! Hubby and I were obviously separated at birth (oh, that’s worrying – maybe not then) because we both bought each other Champagne. I got pink Moet which is my absolute favourite (lots of brownie points there) and I also got some white lilies (extra extra points for remembering that I prefer those to the pink Stargazer ones). In return he got a bottle of Piper, a pack of Green and Black’s dark chocolate covered cookies (my favourite too) and the new James Patterson novel. We then proceeded to have a very snotty row about something very insignificant (boo), but made up later (yey!) so it’s all hunky dory again now.
B, on the other hand is fairly disgruntled. She emailed me this morning to say that she got a big fat f*** all (sorry Mum) so far. Even after giving her other half his card, CD and chocolates last night so he could at least nip to the shop next door while she was at work. But no…nothing. Not so much as a crème egg or a packet of Wotsits. He’s in big trouble.
I will be cooking something yummy tonight as Mum is arriving on the 5.30 flight. It can only be better than last night’s efforts. I had a bit of a culinary disaster. Still, I tell you about all the successes so it’s only fair to give you the failures as well.
I decided to cook Thai prawn cakes with spicy peanut sauce and a Thai dipping sauce as well, along with some stir fried vegetables with cashews. It was Rachel Allen’s recipe and there was a great deal of grating garlic and faffing around which is what I like best, but then it all went downhill. I thought I’d blanch the pieces of broccoli first as sometimes they can be a bit too raw in the stir fry. Then the prawn cake mixture seemed very wet, and when it went into the hot oil it just kind of hung there limply and I couldn’t turn them over because they fell apart. In the end I had to nuke them to get them to stay together so they were somewhat crispy. Then when I served them up the Thai dipping sauce was so evil that we all felt like we were breathing fire, and the peanut sauce looked like…er…well, it didn’t look very nice – but it tasted okay. Lastly, because of all the hassle I had cooking the prawn cakes I forgot all about the broccoli and it was like green sludge in the pan. The rest of the vegetable stir-fry was okay and to give them their due, the boys tried valiantly to eat it (not #2, obviously). There was plenty of polite ‘this is nice’ and pushing it all around the plate, but we eventually all gave up and fed it to the bin. Ah well. Whatever you end up eating, I hope your Valentine’s day is full of lurve xx
Sleepless
I’m very tired. No, I’m not expecting any sympathy (nor likely to get any to be honest). This is mainly due to two things: firstly, poor #1 has the cough to end all coughs and hacked, constantly through the night. Secondly, I happened to mention in passing to the plumber yesterday that Hubby was away for the night and that I would be alone in the house (duh). Being a bit of a worrier, I then spent the entire night worrying that he might have gone down the pub, had a few beers, and mentioned to the local burglar/robber/crack addict (delete as applicable) who happened to be sitting next to him that the ravishingly attractive (okay, he might not have said that) but rather cowardly inside-dog-keeping English woman in the cottage down from the farm happened to be spending the night all alone in her dark, isolated house. I therefore spent the night alternately jumping out of my skin at every tiny click and crack that the house made and being blown half out of my bed every time #1 had another coughing fit of epic proportions next door. When I finally nodded off, I dreamt of being burgled and calling the Gards only for them to find that they got lost and had to call me back on my mobile while I was being tied to a kitchen chair by said robber to ask directions.
It could be lack of sleep, then, or third-degree madness, that saw me standing in front of the pharmacist at Boots this morning asking #1 if he wouldn’t mind coughing for the lady so that she could determine the correct medicine to suit his particular needs. Of course, having hacked, coughed and gagged through the entire night, he’d used them all up and couldn’t conjure up a single teensy ‘ahem’ until the moment we’d walked back out of Boots and were heading for the car. Now happily parked back in front of the telly with a warm mug of honey and lemon, a packet of biscuits and the remote control, he can once again cough for Ireland and has just asked me if I’d mind ‘putting the fire out’ (how?) because he’s a bit warm and doesn’t really want to come out from under his blanket because it’s comfy. I’m in the process of counting backwards from ten just in case I get the desire to beat him to death with a bottle of Calpol before Hubby gets home.
Champers and cough medicine
Ooh I had a fab weekend. J & I (and Louis) had a wonderful evening on Saturday. J made fantastic pizzas and we popped a bottle of bubbly too. We also watched a Brad Pitt DVD (de rigeur for a girly night in…phwoar!) and spent several hours talking about everything and anything. We consumed vast quantities of popcorn, strawberries, chocolate and more fizz, and had a thoroughly nice time. To be honest, it was slightly hazy after midnight, but we lasted until well after 1am before calling it a night (a morning?). Louis, who is the biggest, softest most beautiful boy and an absolute darling to boot, helped us with the popcorn and looked pretty horrified a couple of times when we had fits of hysterics, but otherwise took it all very well considering he was the token boy. Sunday morning found us both a bit tired but surprisingly not suffering from hangovers, especially after wolfing down a large plate of gorgeously peppery scrambled egg and sautéed mushrooms on toast whipped up by J in Nigella-mode.
Back to reality yesterday, then, when I returned home to find that #1 had decided to go down with the same high temperature, sore throat and cough that kept #2 off school on Friday. Hubby and I ended up eating most of the lunch as neither child was hungry (bit of a turn up for #1, he’s always ravenous), and we ended up all falling asleep on the sofa in front of the rugby (boo) like the bunch of layabouts we really are. He’s now ensconced on the sofa watching Spongebob Squarepants and feeling very sorry for himself and I’m busy rushing round preparing for Grandma’s visit on Wednesday whilst providing endless supplies of hot chocolate, tissues and cough mixture and simultaneously trying to persuade him to wipe his nose on a tissue and not his sleeve/the back of his hand/my furniture (delete as appropriate). A multi-tasker, me.
A girly night in
Ooh, I’m very excited today. I’m going to J’s tonight for a girly sleepover. I’ve packed my zebra print pyjamas and leopard print slippers (what? clashing prints are in) and we’ve got a whole man-free night planned, filled with (in no particular order): Merlot, pizza, Green and Black’s, putting the world to rights, champagne, strawberries, gossip, chick flicks, oh and did I mention Merlot? I’m also very excited as J has currently got the gorgeous Louis staying with her and it’s about time I caught up on some serious greyhound time. Oh – that means it’s not a man-free night really but I’m sure that we can count on Louis to be the soul of discretion.
The other J is back doing the bathroom floor again today. I’ve just had to play nursemaid as he just cut his thumb on the angle grinder (‘feck!’). He also told me that he got home last night, opened his van, and nearly died when: ‘sure, if the dog from next door didn’t jump right out of my van!’ Holly, who has already irritated him intensely by putting little paddy paw prints in his cement, obviously decided that she’d become too attached to him to let him go home for the weekend on his own, so had hitched a ride. He was not impressed.
I’m also, in a weird retro way, being Christmassy today. The whole house is filled with the wondrous scent of cinnamon, spice and brandy. This is not because I’ve lost all track of time, but because I promised to make another of Nigella’s chocolate Christmas cakes for C’s Mum. And very nice it smells too. Where’s that tinsel…
Toasty
I’ve lost count of the amount of times I moan about being cold (much to Hubby’s disgust). We do have a rather knackered oil fired central heating system, but having stone floors and drafty corridors, plus being exposed to the elements on all sides means that you’d have to have it on all day to reap the benefit – not cost effective at over 600 Euro per tank. There’s an open fire in the sitting room and a wood burner in the kitchen, but they both hate me, and go out as soon as my back’s turned. Hubby, on the other hand, loves them as he gets to go out in the woods with his scary chainsaw and ‘forage’ in a manly provider kind of way. I often expect to see him limping back to the house dragging a stump – and I don’t mean a tree stump either.
I was telling J the plumber/builder/carpenter/tiler about this very problem yesterday while watching him tile the bathroom floor (more stone). He’s been working on the house for a while and we’ve grown very fond of him. He’s lived in the village all his life and has given us no end of valuable advice and information from everything to the vagaries of the village shop opening times to his take on ‘the troubles’.
When he arrived back from lunch, he mentioned that he’d brought me some turf. Now far be it from me to look a gift horse in the mouth, I thought, but one thing we don’t need is more grass. However, when I came outside to look at my gift I was heartily surprised. What J had actually brought me was a bag of peat ‘sods’ (don’t laugh, that’s what they’re called), hand-cut and dried last summer by his own fair hand. Well, I was touched. Not only is the hand cutting of peat in serious decline here in Ireland (it’s labour intensive but the most environmentally friendly way of sustaining peat bogs), it’s also bloody hard work. What’s more, he obviously relies on his precious store to see him through the winter. And not only did he bring us an enormous bag and decline any payment, he then proceeded to build me the most beautiful, rip-roaring fire I’ve seen since we’ve been here.
I am eternally and disgustingly grateful (and warm!) and have made an enormous batch of maple syrup flapjacks in thanks. I might even take my bobble hat off.
Snow
Well, we woke up this morning to find the fields covered in…nothing! This was a big disappointment to #1 and #2, who were expecting a day off school to charge about and build snowmen, and a big disappointment to me – I was secretly anticipating a nice snowed-in day in bed. This feeling was made much worse when, turning on Sky News, we were astonished to see the weather lady standing right next to the bypass in our old town in the UK, surrounded by drifts of snow and with more fat snowflakes falling steadily all around her. We’ve been robbed.
B emailed me yesterday to tell me that the school had already closed due to a broken boiler. This was another crushing blow to #2; not only are his mates getting all the snow, they’re getting the day off to play in it.
Just to even things up, though, everyone is equally miserable about the football. Hubby is thoroughly miserable because England lost to Spain, and the Irish are miserable because of their performance against San Marino. This is apparently even though they actually won. I’ll never understand football.
One thing that is cheering me up, though, is the imminent visit of my Mum. This means that we will spend the whole week laughing, eating, drinking and having fun. We’re going to book another trip to the lovely spa here, and this time are planning on getting a nice pedicure, in the belief that although your feet don’t get to see much daylight in February, that doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t be beautiful. We’ll also be doing lots of lovely shopping, maybe even driving down to Dublin to visit some unfeasibly large shopping centre or other, oh and we’ll certainly have a glass or two (we share a Pinot Grigio gene). Actually, as I write, it’s now starting to snow. Maybe we’ll be able to create our Irish snow-person (PC, me) after all.
Food issues
I’m being all opinionated today. I think I’ve got ‘food issues’ (yes, I’ve been reading Red Magazine again). I mean, I haven’t got any important sort of issues like body image or self esteem (oh, well I might have teeny tiny ones but that’s another story). I think most of my issues about other people’s issues.
Right, where to start…my food issues aren’t the usual kind of problems that people have around food. I eat what I want when I want and think diets are bloody stupid, frankly. I try (but don’t always succeed) to eat healthily, get my 5 a day and not overdose on Green and Black’s and Merlot. I just take exception to everyone else’s ridiculous eating habits. Take Hubby, for instance (please…). He doesn’t have breakfast (rush, rush, busy, busy) so by lunchtime he’s absolutely starving. He then proceeds to venture out to the nearest retail source of total crap and stuff himself silly. When I ask him what he’s had to eat, it’ll sound something like: ‘well, I had a Meatball Marinara 6′? sub in Subway with extra jalapenos and chilli sauce, then I had a packet of salt and vinegar, a large diet coke, one of their nice cookies with the chocolate chips and… oh yes, a Mars Bar in the car on the way back to work’. Fast forward then to tea time when I’m gearing myself up to rustle up something nice to eat for everyone and the answer’s always the same: ‘nah, I’m not hungry thanks, I ate loads earlier’. This one sentence is guaranteed to get my blood boiling. I like sitting down ‘en famille’ and eating. It’s not just about food, it’s about spending time together and mulling over the day. This is especially annoying because come about 8.30pm, having run full pelt for half an hour on his ghastly running machine (thud thud whirr whirr …I’m going to burn it one day when he’s not looking) he’ll announce that he’s got the munchies and will have to have cheese and biscuits or toast or something. So there you go. His issues are my issues as it were. Don’t get me wrong – often he’ll eat a sandwich and fruit and all the right stuff, but he eats so much at one sitting (usually 3pm when he remembers he hasn’t stopped for lunch) that it practically becomes his one meal of the day. His poor blood sugar must feel like it’s on a roller coaster.
I also have major issues about people on diets. Now I know that some people are larger than they’d like to be and I can understand them wanting to do something about it. But, come on, the ‘South Beach Diet’ and the ‘Atkins Diet’ and all those bloody stupid other ones like high this and low that…purrrlease. They’re all just crap really aren’t they. What’s wrong with three normal meals a day and a bit of exercise? I noticed on the front of my cereal packet this morning that they reckon you can ‘drop a dress size’ by substituting two normal meals a day with a bowl of cereal. Well I’m sorry, but if I wanted to eat that much cereal I’d be a hamster and not a human being. Generally, though, it seems that people who most obsessively watch their calorie intake are teeny tiny anyway. My Dad’s partner (sorry Dad, I’ll get a slap for this) is a weeny little thing, but still asks for salad instead of potatoes and things without sauces, then leaves half of it anyway. I’m fed up with all this ‘size zero’ nonsense. I mean, who actually fancies Nichole Richie? She looks like a twig with a Malteser on top. Nobody looks nice that thin. I always get an irresistible urge to kneel on their chests and force feed them with Cadbury’s Crème Eggs until they get some curves. There’s nothing wrong with a bit of flesh. I for one think curves are sexy; you can’t beat a flash of plump cleavage or a nice little hint of softly rounded hip peeking over the top of your jeans.
That’s it, I’ve found my metier: the English Mum in Ireland eating plan: breakfast, lunch, dinner, plus the odd bar of Maya Gold and a couple of glasses of Merlot, and you too can have curves like mine. Hmm..it’ll never catch on.
Dogless
Catching up on a bit of emailing this morning, I found myself lamenting to both R and B that it was unnaturally quiet here without a dog. The trouble is, once you’ve been used to that lovelorn pair of eyes following your every move, and a furry friend hopping up in the vain hope of a walk every time you so much as move a muscle, an empty house is hard to deal with.
Oh I know that there are certain advantages of being dogless: more room on the sofa for one, and being able to leave food out without it disappearing…oh and the kids’ toys having all their limbs, oh and no patches of slobber on the cushions, oh and not having to pick up poo..but APART from all these things, the advantages of having a dog are many and varied. There’s the company: a dog never complains that you’re moaning as it patiently listens to you whinge on about how much you hate changing duvet covers/ironing/cleaning the bath (delete as applicable), and then there’s the walks – I keep meaning to go for a walk, but somehow it all seems, well, pointless, without a lead in your hand and a hoppity skippity companion.
The trouble is, we were all so hopelessly and helplessly in love with B. Gentle B, who crept into our affections slowly and sneakily, who annoyed the pants off me, made me tear my hair out and curse like a trencherman, but who also insisted on sitting on our laps even if there was a spare chair, and leant against your legs so hard when you were washing up that you had to assume a ‘brace’ position so as not to fall over. Every day I remember more silly things, like the way she’d chase bunnies in her sleep, making little ‘whuff’ noises, and whose penchant for tidying up discarded items into her bed was jolly handy, even if she did murder my powder puffs.
Dizzy was lovely, but she wasn’t B. Some of her quirks, like the boundy, licky welcome we got when we came in the door, were in some ways better than B’s (who was generally rather aloof), but some things were B’s and B’s alone (like her startling passion for my friend, C, to whom she sang a rather strangled little love song which had us all in fits of laughter). And does that now mean that we’ll never find another B? And if that’s the case, should we even look? Maybe, as Hubby pointed out, we should just resign ourselves to cat ownership (or consider a tortoise, as helpfully suggested by my mate B). But then as J (who has the task of finding homes for the dogs in her kennels that currently exceed double figures) will tell you, there’ll always be another quiet/mad/gentle/happy soul just crying out for a loving home. And who are we to deny them that? Oh, I just don’t know. How much is a tortoise anyway?
