In which I inform the school that tie shredding boy needs a break
The lettuce protest
He’s a bit of a wag is The Dude. Not in a bad way. Oh no, I’m far too scary a parent to allow anything like that. I do, however, feel that we shouldn’t crush every bit of individuality and personality out of our children. I want my children to be respectful, kind and considerate, but we do have a bit of a giggle at home, and sometimes there’s a bit of banter and the odd swear, but that’s fine by me too. On the left, I present his recent protest at being asked to eat lettuce. He hates lettuce.
Since returning to school after half term, Charlie’s been on ‘lockdown’. This is basically because this particular school moves the kids up into their new school years after the May half term. So Chas is now in year 11. This year is special because it’s their GCSE year. They wear a different coloured shirt and tie and are allowed more freedom, including the right to leave the school at lunchtime. Unfortunately, since the now infamous ‘tie shredding incident‘, his punishment, along with his friends, was to have this freedom rescinded for two whole weeks. It’s actually a pretty great punishment. Allow the whole of the school year to leave the premises at lunchtime, leaving the ‘naughty’ ones behind to earn their freedom again? I get that. I totally do.
Trouble is, the policing of this ‘lockdown’ is all wrong. On the first day he came back looking less than happy. I assumed it was the enforced loss of freedom and didn’t say too much. Actions have consequences, etc and I fully support the school’s right to give punishment where it’s due. On the second day, I actually asked what was up, and it turned out that the lockdown is being enforced by them having to report to their house office EVERY TEN MINUTES. Yup, you read that right. Wherever they are and whatever they’re doing, they have to walk all the way back to a specific office to report every ten minutes.
This is all wrong. Removing a privilege if they misbehave? Totally fine. Removing their freedom and their right to a break at lunchtime, when they’re studying hard for GCSEs and working hard in class? Wrong. Ten minutes is not even enough time to queue up in the canteen and eat. Had he eaten? No. I was fuming.
I sent one of my emails. I kept it firm. I expect Charlie to be allowed a proper break to go eat, drink, read a book, revise, muck about, play football… whatever. Just as you, as a teacher, are allowed one.
The reply was a bit sarky: ‘if Charlie’s that keen on revising, he can always go to the library, where the staff there will record his presence’. Oh I didn’t like that. I didn’t like that one bit.
My reply, I feel, was firm but fair: ‘it’s not about revision. It’s about giving the kid a break, not making him perform like a trained chimp for the entire lunch period.’
That’s me off the school Christmas list, then.
A triple layer chocolate mousse cake for the Dude’s birthday
Triple layer chocolate mousse cake
I know I’m always complaining about being old but blimey, my youngest was 15 yesterday. The Dude is mahoosive and has turned into a handsome, kind and funny teenager who is American Football mad and a bit of a gym obsessive. We’re all immensely proud of him.
As is the tradition at English Towers, he’s been allowed to choose the birthday cakeage. Usually this means they choose the most difficult thing they possibly can and today is no exception. Flicking through my cakey Pinterest pins, the birthday boy opted for a bloody enormous triple layer chocolate mousse cake, but without the white chocolate layer. A mousse cake should be soft and melty, so I decided on a lovely soft flourless chocolate cake as a base layer, then topped with a dark chocolate mousse and then a milk chocolate one. Simples.
One word of warning: sometimes mousse takes a while to set. If you need this cake in the evening, make it in the morning or the night before. If desperation sets in, a blast in the freezer for a half hour will help it along. As you can see from mine, the top layer wasn’t quite set and started to collapse – by the time we’d lit the candles, the Maltesers were sliding down the side of the cake. No matter, we just scoffed it really quick.
For the flourless chocolate cake
This is an easy cake to make and makes a great pudding served with whipped cream. It WILL sink in the middle, but when topped with the mousses of course this doesn’t matter.
As I was trying to build up height I used a smallish (8”) high sided loose-bottomed tin, with the sides lined with cut-to-fit silicone baking sheet. Remember you’re going to add the mousse layers so line the sides quite high. Preheat the oven to 160/gas 3.
125g dark chocolate
60g butter
3 large free range eggs, separated
125g soft brown sugar
So melt the chocolate and butter in a heatproof bowl over some hot water. As soon as the water starts to bubble, turn it off and let the butter and chocolate melt gently together.
Meanwhile, whisk the egg whites until they’re really firm.
When the butter and chocolate are melted, stir in the brown sugar, the vanilla extract and the egg yolks, then gently fold in the whisked egg whites.
Pour into the prepared cake tin and bake for about half an hour or until a knife inserted into the centre comes out clean.
Leave to cool.
Weighing out the chocolate
Just thought I’d slip in a pic of my new scales here – I love them. You can find them on Amazon – they’re called Epicurean by Ozeri. Rather lush aren’t they?
For the mousse layers
You only need a thin (ish) layer of mousse. I made my first layer far too thick, so I’ve halved the quantities here.
125ml double cream
150g dark chocolate
2 eggs, separated
So just pop the double cream in a saucepan and break in the chocolate. Put it on a low heat and as soon as the cream is warm enough to melt the chocolate, turn the heat off, continuing to stir until the chocolate is melted and the mixture is smooth.
Leave to cool a little while you whisk the egg whites. Do check that the cream/chocolate mixture is cool enough (it needs to be lukewarm otherwise it will scramble the eggs) before mixing in the egg yolk.
Then just fold in the whites, again take your time and wait until everything is a uniform colour. Pour the mousse on top of the chocolate cake layer and return to the fridge.
When this layer is set, make another batch of mousse with milk chocolate. Pour VERY gently over the first mousse and allow to set.
To serve, you need to be VERY careful – firstly make sure it’s properly set (ahem) and then balance it on something solid and slowly push the tin down. Decorate if you want, or just ram it into your face.
Happy birthday, Chas. We love you loads xx
Charlie with his cake
The Disreputable One’s wedding: speeches, dancing and the cupcake challenge
Yesterday was my Disreputable Dad’s wedding. It started badly, with me still running around covered in icing an hour before we were supposed to leave (I stupidly offered to make them cupcake towers) and Dad arriving to pick the boys up for the church with not one, but both boys still in their pants.
In the ensuing panic, people were jabbed with buttonhole pins, ties were tied and retied, tempers were lost, handkerchiefs were jammed into suit pockets willy nilly and everyone piled into the car still pink faced and sweary. Luckily, by the time we all got to the church, we’d calmed down a bit.
I was really pleased with my dress from Monsoon. AND after a bit of faffing, I went with the red lipstick in the end (this decision was not helped by my sons who, when I tried it on, cried with laughter), but actually I felt quite glamorous, although I’m not sure how people wear lipstick every day. It’s kind of like walking around knowing you’ve got jam spread around your lips and you’re not allowed to lick it off. Here’s a little car selfie:
The service was very nice. My niece wasn’t feeling well so I had to step in and do a reading (my reading included the term ‘brothers and sisters’ – I was tempted to do it in an evangelical style: BRUTHAS AND SISTAS!’, but decided against it) and after a small discussion about who had the ring, the Best Man did his duties admirably, even after still being up at midnight the night before swearing over his speech!
There was just a small party in the evening. My sons monopolised the dance floor with some very odd co-ordinated dancing (even Sam’s poor girlfriend was enlisted), and later, there was a resurrection of the ‘cupcake challenge’, first seen at our very own wedding blessing a few years ago.
He’s got his mother’s gob, bless him:
The birthday with NO CAKE!
Aw I had such a fab day yesterday. Despite their Dad’s absence the brevren rallied well – no cards (‘what, you have to buy presents AND cards?’) but they did get me a voucher for a lovely Clarins facial – will look forward to that. Mahoosive brownie points go to Mr English for the gift of THIS little beauty:
My birthday pressie
Isn’t it beautiful? After pressies it was off to The Akeman in Tring, Hertfordshire which is really lovely: all squishy leather, dark wood and roaring fires. The kitchen area is open so you can see the chefs at work, and the staff were so friendly. I had lunch with my gorgeous friend Glam C . We had Prosecco to celebrate, plus a delicious Mediterranean salad with Halloumi, roasted vegetables, couscous and chickpeas. Nomnomnom. The grin on my face says it all, I feel (and look, there’s The Claw – well, I couldn’t leave it at home on my birthday now, could I?):
Birthday Prosecco
The reason for the salad (I know, right? Not like me at all) was our evening trip to a local pizza place. We were accompanied by The Prof’s new girlfriend, who I’m proud to say is utterly lovely – very sweet and enormously good fun – we cackled like loons and, after we’d dropped her off, The Dude was heard to utter ‘wow, there is NOTHING wrong with her’. High praise indeed. However, it was only as we were getting out of the car that I realised I’d forgotten the cake. Ah well. We’ll scoff it today: think of it as unbirthday cake.
Thank you for all your birthday wishes on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. What a perfect day.
The Photo Gallery: Boys
One of my best buddies, the lovely Tara, runs an online photo gallery every week over at Sticky Fingers. People from all over the world enter photos into the gallery every week to a specific theme. This week, the theme is ‘boys’. Well, I had to, didn’t I?
They make me laugh until I cry (at a recent parents’ evening, one of Charlie’s teachers said: ‘I love him. I could strangle him occasionally, but I love him’), give fabulous hugs, eat vast amounts of food, use vast amounts of hot water, send me tweets that say ‘you are a poo’, make me worry about them constantly (you have to let them go…) and always, always make me proud. They’re kind, thoughtful, frustrating, messy, always late (Sam!), weirdly nocturnal but always fabulous.
Ladies and gentlespoons, I give you: my boys (with their long-suffering Dad):
A cunning plan: the Death Wish Dude’s strategy for parents’ evening
During a recent shopping trip to find him a suit for my Disreputable Dad’s upcoming wedding (the girl in the shop was rather taken with my handsome boy and I was laughing as she practically climbed into the changing room with him), we were discussing parents’ evening, which is fast approaching. And while he’s doing well at school, I’m under no illusion that my youngest enormous offspring is any sort of an angel. I did ask him, somewhat nervously, what I was to expect at parents’ evening.
He’s obviously been giving it considerable thought: ‘well I’m going to skip the RE teacher completely, then start you with my biology teacher, Miss C, who hates us all… then I’m going to make sure the appointments are in the order of how well I’m doing and ending at my drama teacher Mr G, who is a legend and who absolutely loves me. By the time he’s finished, you’ll waft out of the door and won’t even remember the others.
Then I thought we could go to Tesco and buy you some wine’.
Gorgeous nutty golden syrup flapjack
Ahhhh golden syrup. Is there a nicer smell? I wondered aloud recently (well, on Instagram) why someone had never created a perfume based on the sweet scent of it. I mean, come on! Someone’s already done a gin perfume..
Talking of gin, alcohol free January is miserable. Last year, I said never again, and yet this year here I am nursing a sad, lukewarm glass of squash every night, instead of a sparklingly refreshing glass of mother’s ruin. It’s no life, dearest reader.
Anyhoo, to keep me company on my alcohol free quest, Charlie, the Death Wish Dude has vowed to give up crap. As long as I stay off the gin, he’s promised to stay off the crisps and chocolate. A noble deed, but one which leaves him sadly lacking in snackage when he gets home from school hungry enough to look at the Ninja Cat of Death in a whole new light. So I decided to make him some healthy-ish snackage until he’s back on the Frazzles. Flapjack: gorgeous golden syrupy, crispy on the outside, soft in the middle nutty flapjack…
Nutty Golden Syrup Flapjack
So this is another one of those recipes that, as long as you stick to the basic proportions, you can fiddle with endlessly… Add nuts, sultanas, dried cranberries, chocolate chips… whatever you fancy. Don’t like golden syrup (what’s WRONG with you?) use honey. Like it plain? Covered in chocolate? That’s fine too.
For the basic recipe, you’ll need:
170g butter
115g brown sugar
4 tablespoons golden syrup
400g rolled oats
Melt the butter, brown sugar and golden syrup in a saucepan on a low heat until it’s all runny and combined, then take it off the heat and stir in the oats. And that’s it. This is the time to add your extras: dried fruit/nuts/chocolate chips/whatever. I used a large handful of almonds, roughly chopped, but whatever you use, a good handful will probably be enough.
Now press the mixture into a buttered cake tin and bake at gas 4/gas 180 and bake for 15-20 minutes. Cool completely before removing from the tin or it’ll fall apart. Fab for lunchboxes, rushed breakfasts and after school snackage.
Mind you, I’m tempted just to buy him a six pack of Walker’s crisps and a Double Decker and be done with it. Gin o’clock, you say?
Happy New Year! And another alcohol free January.
We had a such a lovely new year. Turtle, my gorgeous niece, made the most amazing cocktails, we had a scrummy dinner cooked by my very clever sister in law (the sweet potato and chorizo was a revelation), and then Sam, Charlie, Jackson and even, hilariously, my brother IJ and I had a mad dancing competition on the Wii. A fab time. It ended with champagne and cuddles with velvet nosed doggies on squishy sofas watching the New Year fireworks on the telly. I couldn’t have been happier.
Last year at this time I vowed to be completely alcohol free in January. I’ve got to be honest, it was tough, but I DID end January feeling amazing (and a whole 8lb lighter – without even trying!). I also said I’d never do it again (and I got a special edition bottle of Bombay Sapphire for Christmas – sob…), but here we are again after two back to back holidays during which I overindulged in both the food AND the booze, and then Christmas and its associated gluttony. And frankly, after my disgusting behaviour on Christmas Eve (there was singing. And I don’t even remember going to bed), I probably owe it to my liver to give it a holiday.
If you’d like to join me – and my friends Laura, Dellers, NotSupermum and, I think Rachael (yes Rach?) – doing alcohol-free January, do let me know (or tweet me @englishmum).
Bring it on, then, 2013, I’m ready and raring to go!
A 2012 roundup – with no resolutions, but a few lessons learned and some good intentions.
Meeting Flo from Cars at Disney’s Art of Animation resort, Florida.
So how was your Christmas? Mine was, well, interesting. A rather over-exuberant Christmas eve, during which we stayed up singing, dancing and drinking until 2am made for a hideously hungover Christmas morning, in which I kept having to abandon my turkey duties to revisit my breakfast (thank goodness for my Mum). Still, self to blame, and I felt better by the time dinner was on the table. I got some lovely pressies: loads of scented candles, my favourite Redken shampoo and conditioner, books, DVDs, CDs (ONE DIRECTION, oh yes I did), and a pasta machine from my Mum. I feel really blessed.
So this time last year I was talking about how 2012 was going to be about building memories… snapshots, and not stuff… and I think I managed it. Oh, there was stuff as well, there’s no doubt, but my year was full of amazing experiences.. plenty of snapshots to add to my collection:
January was the month I gave up booze and took up healthy eating. For a whole month. Never again. In February, I got together with my wonderful friends for Bloggers on Tour: the West Yorkshire leg, and visited Yeo Valley’s wonderful Holt Farm too. In March, we were lucky enough to attend the opening of the new Legoland Hotel and meet one of our heroes, Tim Minchin, who turned out to be even lovelier and funnier in person. I also attended the very glam Tesco Mum of the Year Awards along with several of my friends. A fabulous day.
In April, the Death Wish Dude and I spent the weekend in Paris, celebrating the 20th Anniversary of Disneyland, and hobnobbing with the likes of, well, Mickey, obviously… and in May I jetted off to both Tenerife, where we joined in with the May festivities and were gobsmacked by the firework wars AND Florida, where my friend Laura and I toured Clearwater, St Pete’s and Florida’s gorgeous space coast, as well as visiting Universal Studios and drinking butter beer at The Wizarding World of Harry Potter.
In June, we celebrated the Jubilee in grand style, and in July I looked after my Dad’s gorgeous garden (and made some lovely raspberry sorbet too). I grew sweet peas and filled the house with scented blooms. I’ll definitely be doing it again next year. In August we went Olympic and Paralympic mad – we stayed up until silly o’clock waiting for the Paralympic flame to come through our town, and we cheered on our amazing athletes at the Olympic Stadium. Amazing memories. English Mum also turned six.
In September, we got a visit from my cousin Moon (and helped him smuggle sausages through customs), and the Mad Professor started sixth form over again. October saw us visit Guernsey and beautiful Herm Island, and in November we spent a lovely week in Gran Canaria. I also had laser eye treatment, something that’s changed my life forever. Finally in December I was back in Florida for the launch of Walt Disney World’s New Fantasyland… an experience I’ll never forget (more of this very soon) and my little kickboxing Death Wish Dude passed his grading and got his orange belt.
I’ve learned a lot this year too (proving that you’re never too old). I’ve learned that some people – people that you might have known and looked up to your whole life – are actually not worth looking up to. This was a shock. But hey – people should EARN respect, right?
I’ve continued to believe that you should really try not to judge other people. I’m often saying to the boys that there are maybe things going on behind the scenes that you don’t know about, but hey, even if it’s just as simple as people doing things differently to you, that’s fine. This goes both ways, what you do is YOUR business. Do what YOU feel right doing, and don’t listen to anyone else if you don’t want to.
I’ve also learned that it feels fabulous to pay it forward. I’ve learned that my friends, my true friends, are always there for me (you know who you are) and I’ve learned that all relationships take a bit of effort.
The nicest things this year have been really small, but very important: someone saying ‘thanks so much for that recipe’, or ‘your children are a credit to you’, so I’m definitely going to be going out of my way to give credit where it’s due in 2013.
So that’s it, then. No resolutions, but in 2013, I’ll be having fun, paying compliments, adding to those precious snapshots and looking up to people who deserve it – like, for example, my wonderful Disreputable Dad who is perpetually kind, funny, a wonderful Grandad, and a tiny bit naughty, who got engaged on Christmas Day. *cough BRIDESMAID cough*. Congratulations Dad and my soon to be stepmum (she hates that, sorry)! xx
Sad news
Last week was strange and sad.
It started relatively well, but then on Wednesday, we received news that Charlie’s martial arts school was closed for the week. Charlie was disappointed: he’s mad into kickboxing and as many of you know is very proud to have received his yellow belt quite recently.
Friday, the school emailed to tell us that the reason they’d closed was because of the death of Charlie’s Sensei, or teacher, a lovely young man named Henry. Henry was only in his early twenties. He was a huge role model to Charlie, who often jabbered on about how cool Henry was and how he was hoping to emulate him by achieving his black belt by the time he was 21. Without thinking, I rang Charlie, who was out with friends, and told him the bad news. With hindsight, I should have done it in person. He was devastated.
We’re not sure what happened, but it’s a tragedy. This young man had a huge impact on the life of my son. Kickboxing is very strict about etiquette, manners and respect. It’s changed him in lots of ways, not just physically – he’s calmer and more confident too.
As a parent, I think we’re sometimes a bit full of our own self importance, and often forget the enormous effect other people can have on the lives of our children. I’m so grateful to Henry for being such a fabulous role model, and frankly to everyone at the Martial Arts School for the care, attention and effort they put in with other people’s children.
Charlie will go on kickboxing, but I’m not sure it will ever be quite the same. Rest in peace, Henry.
Berry meringue pie for Grandma’s birthday (alternatively titled: when Freddy Mercury came for dinner’)
Yesterday was MENTAL. The mentalness started early when we woke up to find that our poor Mad Professor, Sam had had an allergic reaction overnight to the plaster on his face and now had a chin full of blisters. This caused so much hilarity ‘stop making me laugh, you bastards… OMG my chin looks like lasagne‘ that we were all late for school.
The madness continued into the evening when we realised that we’d better tidy up in readiness for our celebration for English Grandma’s birthday. Stinky socks were thrown into bedrooms, balloons were hastily inflated (‘not two pink ones, they look like… erm… well, y’know…‘) and bags containing humming sports kits were hurled into the garage. We spritzed a bit of air freshener around. It was fine, honest.
My brother, IJ, is my wine guru (he is generally cursed for our regular and massive Majestic Wine bills) and brought along a delectable bottle of Aussie Shiraz: Jim Barry The Lodge Hill 2010 (highly recommended). We then ordered the biggest Chinese takeaway known to man (the woman at the takeaway nearly passed out as she took the order). My nephew and niece, the gorgeous Jackson (who was a bit late after taking part in a Queen tribute band at his school music evening) and impossibly glamorous Turtle joined the hilarity and soon we were wrestling (well, THEY were wrestling), laughing, cracking backs (the Death Wish Dude is good at this, but it made me feel a bit faint) and generally jabbering away.
Turtle and the DWD did an impressive job of lighting about a thousand candles (luckily, Grandma wasn’t offended) and in the process managed to burn a bit of meringue and quite a lot of each other, but no matter, soon we were gathered round the table, squeezed in on random garden chairs, Sam with his lasagne chin and Freddie Mercury with his sharpie moustache, singing happy birthday.
It took a while to blow all those candles out, mind you..
Berry Meringue Pie
For the sweet shortcrust pastry, you’ll need:
200g cold butter
400g plain flour
Pinch salt
1tbsp caster sugar
1 egg
2 or 3 tbsp cold water
Firstly, preheat the oven to 180/gas 4. It’s easiest to do this in the food processor but you can do it by hand if you’re not as lazy as me.
Chop your cold butter into squares and add it to the flour, salt and sugar. Process it until it looks like breadcrumbs.
Now plop in the egg and pulse slowly, adding a tablespoonful or two of water until it just comes together.
Flour the work surface and squish the mixture together into a ball. Wrap in clingfilm and let it rest in the fridge for about 20 mins.
When it’s rested, flour the work surface, and your rolling pin, and roll it out to about 5-6mm thick, then roll it onto your rolling pin and unroll over your flan dish or baking tin (about 24cm should do it). When it all breaks apart, swear a bit and kind of patch it together. Nobody will notice. Push it in to the edges and trim the top.
Now to bake it blind: scrunch up a bit of greaseproof paper, then smooth it over the pastry and pour in some baking beans – you can use ceramic or whatever. I’ve got some old dried beans – for about 15 minutes.
Then, take the baking beans out and pop it back in the oven for another 5 minutes, just to crisp up the base.
For the berry curd:
Couple of handfuls of berries (fresh or frozen)
100g butter
150g caster sugar
2 eggs, plus 1 yolk (save for the meringue)
For this curd recipe, you need roughly 6 tablespoons of concentrated, sharp juice. I had a small bag of mixed berries left over from fruit picking during the summer, but you can use lemon juice, lime juice, whatever… For the pie to work well, the juice needs to be acidic, so if you’re using fresh, sweet fruit, add a little lemon juice. Just keep the quantities the same.
It’s easiest to extract the juice by heating the berries up in a pan. Once they’re going squishy, let them sit in a sieve over a bowl so you can catch the juice.
Take a saucepan and bung in the butter, juice, zest (if using citrus fruits) and caster sugar. Melt it all together slowly until the sugar is all dissolved.
Meanwhile, in a bowl, whisk the eggs and yolk until well combined. Now, take your warm juice/butter mixture and gently pour a little bit into the egg, whisking all the time, then a bit more, then a bit more, until you’ve combined about half of it with the eggs. Now bung that lot back into the saucepan and keep whisking and simmering until the mixture thickens. As usual, make sure there’s someone behind you at this point shouting ‘WHISK! WHISK FASTER!’ – I’m SO going to record myself doing this so you can play it as you whisk.
Turn off the heat and leave to cool. Remember to just stir it occasionally to keep it from getting a skin on. When it’s about room temperature, pour it into the pastry case and pop into the fridge to cool.
For the meringue:
4 egg whites
225g caster sugar
Pinch of cream of tartar if you have it
Whisk the eggs in a very clean bowl until they form firm peaks, then keep whisking while you add the sugar, spoon by spoon, until it’s all incorporated and the meringue is thick and glossy. Give it a pinch between your fingers – it shouldn’t feel gritty. Now pipe (or just spoon) it all on top of the pie.
Bake in the very low oven (gas 2/150 degrees) for about 40 to 50 minutes, depending on how squelchy you like your meringue. If it’s a Special Birthday Meringue Pie, you can decorate it (we frosted some berries in granulated sugar) and add candles.
Review: Tesco’s barcode scanning and the Gatwick virtual store
So you know the feeling, you return from holiday, suffer the Gatwick Express, then the tube, then possibly a taxi too, finally open the front door and the first thing you can think of is a nice cup of tea. But the problem is that the milk you left in the fridge two weeks ago now resembles furry blue yoghurt.
During the summer, Tesco tested out a brilliant service at Gatwick Airport’s north terminal: the Gatwick ‘virtual store’. Customers could view a range of products by whizzing through some very flashy moving screens on large virtual ‘fridges’. They could then scan the barcodes (iPhone or Android) to put goods into their online baskets, then book a home delivery and pay. With hour slots, you could practically predict that your shopping would arrive home at the same time as you. Here’s a link to the video of the ‘virtual store’ in action:
Tesco let me have a dabble with their online app, available here, so I could see the technology in action. I’m not massively techno-fabulous so I enlisted the help of the Death Wish Dude (my first mistake). After an easy (and free) download, he set about roaming the house, randomly scanning barcodes, to see whether we could arrange an entire shop using just the barcode scanning.
The technology, though fabulous for when you get back from holiday, is also fabulous when you’re stuck at home. Someone on Twitter asked me if you could scan goods as they run out throughout the week, and yes, you can. It remembers the goods in your online basket, ready for you to ‘check out’ at the end of the week. No more shopping lists stuck on the fridge.
The dude’s verdict? Generally positive although it didn’t recognise the barcode on Nutella and we noticed random things like if you want to re-order a box of Bud, you can’t do it unless you kept the box as there are no barcodes on the bottles. Still, easily searched for on the search engine.
The delivery: spot on time, VERY friendly and helpful, took away all my plastic bags for recycling, gave me loads of tips about busy/quieter delivery times, and my order was perfect, not a single replacement.
A massive thank you to Tesco for letting me have a go with the app, and huge apologies for the randomness of my order which, thanks to my youngest son, included such delights as two massive jars of coffee (‘what? It was buy one get one free.’) a large amount of Double Deckers, and some David Beckham aftershave. I vote to make the service permanent at Gatwick too. I, for one, could do without furry blue tea after a week away.
George at Asda’s new schoolwear gets put through the wringer… and the tunnels… and over the combat wire…
Recently, Charlie, our very own Death Wish Dude, was invited by Asda to come and test out their new school uniforms on an army assault course: the best casting ever, as far as we were concerned. Asda have put their new uniforms through 3000 days of testing with 100 kids, and this assault course day was going to put it to the test in the worst conditions possible.
Sadly, the boy and his skates did their usual thing and after a front flip gone wrong, he ended up laid on the sofa with ice packs on his knees instead. Still, some other kids tested the uniform and here’s the result. I think: ‘chosen by mums, tested by kids and guaranteed by George’ just about sums it up, don’t you?
Hugs
Him: ‘Alright ma?’
Me: ‘Yeah you?’
Him: ‘Yeah I’m cool. Gissa hug.’
Him: ‘Laters then ma.’
Him (as he walks off): ‘Good talk.’
My Dad’s gorgeous garden, and The Icecreamists’ raspberry sorbet
My Disreputable Dad and his other half have been away on holiday this week (to the same place in the South of France that they go every year, to eat at the same restaurant every night – he’s a man who knows what he likes)…. I was left in charge of the garden, which basically meant I had free rein to go in and nick all the strawberries and raspberries. While I was in there pilfering I took some pictures. It really is an extraordinarily beautiful garden, and he has a skill with roses that I’m sad I haven’t quite inherited. There are entire beds of the same coloured, ruffled peach roses, and deep scarlet ones too… and around every corner a surprise – a trellised gate wound with delicate pink climbing roses that leads on to a hidden part of the garden with apple trees already groaning with baby fruit (I’ll be back for those)…. and, of course, those raspberry canes – protected with fake birds of prey, painful when you’re collecting raspberries and one bashes you on the back of the head, but they do the trick.
Charlie and I crept in one lovely evening and gathered an enormous punnet of raspberries. Back at home with our spoils, we decided to make raspberry sorbet. The recipe is adapted from The Icecreamists (out now priced £16.99, published by Octopus Books) - a wonderful book which, when you look past the ‘I’m mad, I am’ over the topness (breast milk ice cream, anyone?) contains some amazingly clever and easy to follow recipes.
We made ‘Glastonberry’, a seasonal berry sorbetto, and jolly nice it was too. Scoffed in the garden, watching the sun go down, and wishing my roses were as good as Dad’s. There’s always next year…
Swimming against the tide: parenting teens and other house-related waffle
Recently it seems that everything’s been ‘up in the air’. I’m not good with change, and I don’t handle chaos very well either. I like calm, with the occasional nice thing to look forward to (and cake. Lots of cake). So these have been quite difficult times.
As it turns out, after the sheer panic of being told that we’ve got to move, and several weeks of fruitless searching for something suitable, a bit of lateral thinking (and, admittedly, some begging) has meant that we can stay. I’m heaving a huge sigh of relief and doing a bit of nesting at the same time, resettling myself into this house, which I love (though, it seems it took the threat of leaving to make me realise): cleaning up, clearing out, and wandering round my little garden in the long-awaited sunshine, grass tickling my toes, smelling the roses and tending the tomatoes. But that’s for another post.
Family-wise we’re battling on. I think one of the hardest things about parenting teens is letting go. And during the letting go process, there are the inevitable crises and mistakes that need to be handled. I’m not good with that either. I’m a worrier – a ‘worst case scenario’ kind of girl.
When they were little it was about whether they had their bike helmet on tight enough, and whether they’d fall off the wall they were climbing (with Charlie, he inevitably did). Now it’s about whether they’re strong enough to follow the right path, pick the right friends and be sensible enough to make the right decisions. I have to learn that I can’t do this for them, but hope that I’ve given them the right tools along the way. We’ve provided a ‘get out of jail free’ card, which means that they can ring, anytime, anywhere, no questions asked, if they feel things are getting out of control. This has made me feel better. The waiting up until 1am never gets easier, though. Having friends really helps – sometimes just hearing someone say ‘don’t worry’ or ‘we went through that too’ is everything you need to hear. And now the holidays have started, I’m grabbing my ‘taxi’ hat and preparing myself for six weeks of duty, along with the inevitable six weeks of trade offs and bargaining ‘yes you can go, but you can’t stay late’… ‘I’ll take you but I can’t pick you up too’ type conversations.
My lovely friend Lulu recently wrote a post about her own domestic situation, and about how she’s learning to embrace the chaos and stop beating herself up about not being perfect. I think I need to do this a bit more too.
So I’m counting my blessings – something I often write about but forget to do – baking biscuits, giving big, huge hugs, putting up whacky new curtains and – for once – enjoying the sunshine.
So that’s me, then. How are you?
Ten reasons why my life is on a loop: get well cheese and crossed lines
It dawned on me today, while I was ironing a t-shirt, and dwelling upon the fact that I swear I’ve ironed the same t-shirt (black with a blue Cylon on it if you’re interested) three times already this week, that I live my life on a bit of a loop.
Week in, week out, the same things happen to me. For example:
1. I spend a ridiculous proportion of my time in the car.
I do the school run a gazillion times (okay, ten, but then there are extras because the Mad Professor never really seems to be at school that much and does things like going in at 8.30 then being finished by 11am, but mysteriously still needing lunch money), and the twice weekly trip to kickboxing, then pick up an hour later, for the Dude. Which reminds me, I need a new CD. Maroon 5′s new one is very good but I know all the lyrics now. If you’d like me to sing them to you, just give me a ring, kay?
2. We laugh at the same old jokes.
Our in jokes are recycled hundreds of times. The fact that we call Blockbusters ‘Blockbastards’ for instance, and our Volvo is called the ‘HAHA VULVA‘ after the lady with Tourettes in Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo (if you haven’t seen it, you’re missing out. Rent it at Blockbastards, quick).
3. I get this look. A lot.
This is the look that says ‘bloody biscuits? You know I hate biscuits’ and warrants the same response from me every day: ‘the vet says they’re good for your teeth, so eat up and stop giving me the face’. I then sleep fitfully and with one eye open in case she comes in the night to take her revenge.
4. I act like a bit of a tit
This week, on being asked to rinse and spit at the dentist, I spat all over the floor (in my defence, the anaesthetic had kicked in and I couldn’t feel half my mouth). To add insult to injury, I then dissolved into helpless giggles for ten minutes while he stood patiently, holding his drill (not a euphemism) waiting for me to recover.
Oh, and not forgetting the old ‘get to the top of the stairs then forget what you came up for’ routine. Several times a week.
5. I laugh like a loon
Happily, one of my favourite Groundhog Day moments is a good cackle. There’s not much in this life to make you feel better than a good belly laugh. This week there have been lots of belly laughs, from noticing that my Dad’s tractor has ‘SeaBiscuit’ sign-written on the side (for some reason, this completely floored me), or a coffee with a friend where we cackled, snorted, shared hair-raising personal secrets and basically behaved like ten year olds for a couple of hours.
6. I watch crap TV to keep myself awake
Ahhh, waiting up for partying teens to return: surely one of motherhood’s shittest jobs (and one they sneakily forget to mention at ante natal classes). I spend vast amounts of time waiting for people to come home from parties, trying to keep myself awake by watching early Kardashians episodes, texting them things like ‘don’t drink too much. You puke, you die’ and random movies like Hostel 2 (don’t bother – there’s gullible girls, evil murderers, a few bits of DIY machinery and, well, a bit more blood. You’re welcome.)
7. Something REALLY weird happens
This week it was getting a crossed line while trying to ring a travel company and being dropped into the middle of a conversation between an old lady and her doctor. Even more mortifyingly I thought she was actually telling ME about her terrible Psoriasis and had answered her several times before I realised she couldn’t hear me. Just call me Dr English.
8. My boys make me go WOW!
This week it was this amazing pic from Sam’s Biology field trip of two of his mates Mick and Brendan skimming stones on Broadhaven beach. Just beautiful:
9. I buy weird presents for people
This week it was ‘get well cheese’ for my Disreputable Dad, who is very poorly. And partial to a bit of Suffolk Blue. What? Cheese cures all ills.
10. I’m happy
Really, really stupidly happy. I have fun, don’t take myself too seriously (see number 4.) and have the best family in the world. Now what the hell did I come up the stairs for?
The Knorr recipe challenge: roast chicken with creamy tarragon sauce
The very generous and lovely people at Knorr recently sent me a parcel of goodies and challenged me to cook up something lovely using the ingredients and their new stock pots. The ingredients came beautifully packed from Forman & Field and, amongst other things, included:
1 Rhug organic chicken
2 shallots
Biddenden Ortega white wine (from Kent!)
A bunch of tarragon
A bunch of parsley
I also used a Knorr chicken stock pot and a couple of tablespoons of sour cream.
On to my recipe, then. Frankly the chicken looked so beautiful: plumptious breasted and yellow skinned that I decided to simply roast it, then make a delicious sauce to accompany it from the ingredients. There were mushrooms in there, but the Death Wish Dude is a mushroom hater, so I had to leave them out. Feel free to add them in if you like while you’re frying the shallot.
This is a lovely way to serve a roast chicken and different from my normal ‘stick a chicken up its bum’ method,( or ‘poulet avec citron au derrière’, to give it its full title – which, hilariously, Google translates to ‘chicken with lemon behind’).
First, then, roast your chicken. This one was quite small, about 1.5kg, so I just roasted it for an hour and 15 minutes (see my rule of thumb on the other post) at 190 degrees/gas 5.
By the way, if you’d rather do this with chicken breasts, just roast them in the oven for about 20-25 minutes (check they’re done by pushing on them – they should feel firm – or if you’re worried, cut them in half and have a look – you can always serve them in slices) and prepare the sauce in the same way.
On to the sauce, then. Drop a knob of butter into a heavy based saucepan and add in a finely chopped shallot. Fry gently until translucent then add in a glass of the delicious English wine (drink the rest) and about 150 ml stock. Leave it to bubble and reduce right down to at least half, if not more. Finally, add in the tarragon (don’t use too much, it’s quite strong – a level tablespoon of chopped leaves is enough), and a handful of chopped parsley, then the sour cream.
Serve with the roast chicken, a fresh green salad and maybe some baby new potatoes.
Many thanks to Knorr. By the way, if you’d like to win one of these lovely seasonal boxes, leave a comment here or pop over to my Facebook page, where you can enter too.
**************THIS COMPETITION IS NOW CLOSED – THANKS FOR YOUR ENTRIES! *****************
Imperfect parenting of teenagers. Here’s how we roll. Plus GREAT teenage parenting blogs.
I remember writing an article for Tesco Magazine once about the similarities (the smells, the lack of patience and volume control…) between toddlers and teenagers, but I know which I prefer: for me, it’s teenagers. Yes, I know that with toddlers at least you know where they are and what they’re doing all the time, but the conversation’s not all that, plus they can’t make their own breakfast. I think the biggest thing is getting over the sheer TERROR of parenting teens: the having to let go, and not always know exactly where they are. It’s the lessening of control.
A tough one for us parents, no?
So what’s it all about, this teenage parenting lark? Well, here’s my view (and for God’s sake don’t think I know what I’m doing, I’m winging it like the rest of you)…
Well, firstly, it’s about TRUST:
My own particular way of keeping sane is confidence and trust. Sometimes feigned, admittedly, but, as with a smile, sometimes just faking it is enough to make it real.
Let me elaborate. The Death Wish Dude, skater boy extraordinaire, requires larger and more complicated skate parks in order to achieve the same level of thrill/skill/injury/bruises as he gets more accomplished. This means travel to London. Initially I went with him on the train, but inevitably, he wanted to go on his own, with his mates. A chat with another skatery friend’s parent elicited the following gem: ‘he went on his own once. He survived. And now he knows the way I figure he’s safe to go again’.
And there’s the rub.
It’s trust. Not just trust in them, but trust in the fact that you’ve taught them well, equipped them for life in general. And it’s instilling that trust you feel in him. So for my part that was taking a deep breath and saying to him: ‘yes, you can go to London. I know you’re sensible and can make good decisions. I know you’ll behave, and am pretty sure that in the unlikely event of a crisis, you’d make the right choices and be able to cope. Go for it’.
The result? Teenager, head held high, who knows his Mum trusts him and is instilled with the knowledge that he is old enough and sensible enough to travel alone into the Big Smoke.
It’s about LEARNING TO LAUGH:
This big and gangly lark is hard for them to deal with too – so when your enormous teenager has kicked your drink over with his foot, and as he’s pulling the sofa out of the way so you can clear it up, knocks his own drink over too… well, you’ve just got to laugh. And grab another cloth. What else can you do?
It’s also about DEALING WITH THE CURVE BALLS:
Don’t get me wrong. Occasionally it all goes a bit hideous. There’s been drinking. And vomiting. But hopefully how we handled it: massive chats, tears on my part (being told that you’ve let your Mum down is hard to hear), promises on theirs, and lessons learned on both sides, have enabled us to move on. And there’s been sensible drinking since then (I think the vomiting and massive hangover helps to get the message across – nothing that I did, particularly). But it’s not been swept under the carpet – it’s been mentioned, and even, now a few months have passed, laughed about. It’s all about life lessons, I guess. And who can say they were the perfect teenager? Certainly not me.
It’s also about the SILLY STUFF:
We have other ways of bonding too – massive hugs, silly laughs, in jokes, mental texts (the Dude’s ‘not going to the skate park today, the fair’s in town and I don’t want to get bummed by a carny’ is a recent favourite), and we have tons of fun. Don’t get me wrong, we insist on respect, but the odd jokey ‘Mum, you’re a knob’ keeps the status quo, I find.
The other day they were teaching me to do press ups. Turns out I can do one, well, I can do a half – the down bit, but not the up bit. It left us all in fits of giggles. My upper arms still aren’t toned, but we had a laugh.
The house is often full of teenagers, which means it’s a bit noisy and I often have to retreat upstairs, but they’re a lovely bunch. And having a laugh with The Marshes (the Prof’s twin best mates) who are ADORABLE fellas, and stumping up for the odd takeaway pizza and a few bottles of cider mean that we all keep a bit of closeness, even though if I even dare LOOK at one of them while they’re texting (‘MUUUUM! Don’t be NOSY!!!’) I get reminded that they need their privacy too.
And then there’s ACCEPTING WHAT YOU CAN’T CHANGE:
Whispered chats about the hot girl in year 11? Ignore. Jokes about porn? Well, they’re teenage boys. However much you try to believe different, you know they’ve seen it. They know my view on it (which is, in case you’re interested, that I don’t particularly mind it, but you have to bear in mind that those girls aren’t all willing, big chested, well-paid, girlfriends of Charlie Sheen, you know… sometimes they don’t even want to be there). If they’re watching the Miami Dolphins Cheerleaders doing lip dub to ‘Call Me Maybe’, you know they’re not watching because they love the song. Red blooded males and all that. Deal with it.
It’s about SEEING THE GOOD IN THEM:
During half term, the doorbell rang while I was in the bath. I yelled ‘get that somebody please!’ and my 14 year old son answered the door. Hearing him chat politely to the postie ‘god I bet you’re sick of all this rain’, made my day. They might be smelly, lazy and annoying, but it’s sunk in. They know when to be polite too.
And don’t forget, sometimes the off day is yours. And if you can appreciate when you’ve bitten their head off and, ten minutes later, they appear with a nice big gin and tonic, that they’re doing their bit too, well, I think you’re doing okay.
So that’s us.
Rules to live by? Probably not.
Perfect? Nope, but coping, with sense of humour intact and dignity more or less still in place.
Want to judge me? Go ahead. In fact, pop round. I’ll show you a house full of love, laughter, trust, fun and more hugs than you an shake a stick at. Not perfect, no. But damned well good enough.
Want to read more blogs from parents of teens? Try these:
Family Affairs and Other Matters
Are We Nearly There Yet Mummy?
Diary of a Desperate Exmoor Woman
In which our hero is poo at long-distance parenting and someone misses an exam.
So when I was telling you about my recent Florida trip, I promised to tell you a bit more about the missed exam/screeching business.
Before I left, we all sat down and synchronised diaries. No stone was left unturned. And no teenager was scheduled to be left alone in the house for enough time to a) have a party or b) burn it down.
Picture the scene, then:
We’re all in the bloggerbus, tootling happily across Florida on our way to Cape Canaveral. My phone rings. It’s the school. This is not good. I’m in Florida, the boys’ Dad is training in Hampshire (after dropping them off at school early) and my Mum is in Venice. With a startlingly accurate sense of ‘oh shit’, I answer the phone:
‘Oh hello’, says Perky Voiced Lady, ‘it’s the school sixth form manager here’
Me: ‘Oh hello, how can I help?’
PVL: ‘Well, your son was supposed to be in a Biology exam this afternoon…’
Me: ‘WHAT?! What do you mean SUPPOSED TO?…’
PVL: ‘Ahaha well yes, that’s the problem. He hasn’t turned up, and the exam started ten minutes ago’.
Cue panic. MAJOR PANIC.
A quick mental tally of the facts brings up the following hastily-arranged pre-Florida plan: the Prof has a Biology exam Monday afternoon. He doesn’t need to go to school with the Death Wish Dude in the morning, so one of his BFFs who has just learned to drive is picking him up and taking him to the exam.
So what went wrong?
After promising to investigate, and leaving PVL to find out how long after an exam has started the candidate can still enter, I grab my phone and ring the boy. No answer. I ring again.
There’s a weird mumbled snuffling. And then, wailed, ‘Muuuuuuuuuuum… I missed my exam!’
This is bad. All sorts of hideous things rush round my head. Is he drunk? At 1pm? Has he been drugged? Been attending an all-night party?
I settle for the first thing that comes into my head: ‘WHERE THE *HELL* ARE YOU?’
Prof, still wailing: ‘I don’t knnoooooooow!’
Ah, well that explains it then. I’ve woken him up. The Prof is one of those weird, deep sleepers who talks rubbish for approximately ten minutes after you’ve woken him up. As a small child, he did lots of walking into cupboards and weeing in the laundry basket. I’m talking serious post-sleep discombobulation here, people.
The best thing, I find, in a crisis, is to shout. A lot. My shoutiness kicks in and I yell at him, while my fellow passengers stare and me and stifle small giggles: ‘GET DRESSED! GET OUTSIDE! YOU’VE GOT TO GET TO SCHOOL!’
I ring my brother, who is too far away to help. He rings my Disreputable Dad, who is nearer, and pretty good in a crisis, and mobilises him on a mercy mission to get to our house, pick the boy up and get him to school. STAT.
I ring the school back. They inform me that you can enter an exam within the first half an hour. He has about twelve minutes.
Cue Benny Hill music.
The boy rings back. He’s in the car with his friend. They’re racing to the school. And he’s really reeeeally sorry.
For the rest of the entire trip, I am teased mercilessly about my blogger bus shoutiness. This includes everyone yelling ‘WHERE ARE YOU?!’ if I fall behind while we’re walking along, and me replying ‘I don’t knooooow’ in my best Mad Prof voice.
Sooo it turns out, he got to the exam. he reckons he did okay, and, miraculously, even managed to finish. His mates had banged on the door and rung his phone (he had 20 missed calls) until they were going to miss the exam themselves, and had headed into school. Thank goodness they had the sense to tell one of the teachers.
Oh, and in all the excitement, nobody remembered to cancel my Dad, who spent twenty fruitless minutes banging on the door and shouting through the letterbox before giving up and going home. Sorry Dad.
Note to self: next time? Make better plans.
Great British Weekends
What do you do at the weekends? After our lie in (that bit’s non-negotiable – I usually have to start crashing about or hoovering at about 11am or they’d sleep all day), we generally head out. We’re big on brunch and have tried most of the establishments in the area. Other than that, the Death Wish Dude is often at a skate park, near or far, the Mad Professor likes to socialise, or there’s cricket practice, chauffeur duty from various parties, a bit of baking for me… and then the large glass of wine and some trash TV to finish it all off.
Pretty boring, I suppose, but then apparently as a nation, Brits are pretty boring, weekend-wise.
Recent research has shown that over half of us rate our weekends as ‘average’ and, more shockingly, 18% say that their weekends are, and I quote, ‘boring’.
Going through this research has been a revelation. You’d think we’d love our weekends: an opportunity to spend time with our family, have a lie in, go out t eat… visit a local beauty spot, maybe? But no, apparently we’re a nation of boring old moaners who spend their weekends at home.
Shockingly, even though 91% of us said that we’d be prepared to use our cars for the weekend, the average we’d be prepared to travel is just 58 miles. 58 miles? That wouldn’t even get me to the seaside!
And even those who enjoyed their weekends didn’t get up to very much, the top weekend activity being, well, staying in.
Happily, the chaps at Allianz have decided that this has got to change, and have launched Great British Weekends, instilling us all with a fresh sense of adventure. And who can blame them, with this, the year of the Olympics AND the Jubilee (and those extra Bank Holidays), we should be out and about, enjoying our beautiful country – especially now summer is around the corner.
First off there’s the Allianz Your Cover Find & Drive Smartphone app which helps locate essential services when on the move, plus Allianz Your Cover Insurance is running a competition for two lucky Twitter followers to win an annual family National Trust membership. Just follow them @YourCoverUK to enter and use #GBweekend to find out more.
So what’s stopping you? Join the Allianz Your Cover Insurance Great British Weekends campaign by joining their Facebook page and get more out of your weekends!
To find more out about Allianz Your Cover Insurance visit www.yourcoverinsurance.co.uk
Trolls, perverts and tagging: a parent’s guide to Facebook
Let’s face it: EVERYONE’S on Facebook. Legally, you’re supposed to be 13, but recently, when I found myself wishing my teenager a happy 22nd birthday, it dawned on me that most kids will have/want an account.
So as a parent, what can we do to allow our children a bit of freedom AND keep them safe? Here are my top tips – mostly stuff I’ve learned the hard way. But hey, even if it’s too late for me, you can still do it right!
1. Get to know Facebook yourself
I firmly believe that NO parent should be allowing their children access to something they know nothing about. If you’re not on Facebook, get on it now. Read up about it. Find out what it’s about. Help them with their privacy settings. Talk to them about it.
2. Be their friend
When our kids first wanted Facebook accounts, our rule was yes, as long as we had access to the email account that was registered, and that one parent was allowed to be their Facebook friend. Make it clear that every so often, you will be logging on to their account. Then do it: check their chat for anything untoward. This isn’t snooping, this is protecting your child.
3. Have’ The Chat’
I’m a heavy user of social media. This gives me a bit of an advantage as I know what goes on. I know people can be mean. I know people can pretend to be who they’re not (see number 4) and I know people can ‘hide’ behind their computer screens and say things there’s no way they’d say to a person’s face. Tell them about social media. Talk to them about trolls. Tell them that Facebook is a public forum… tell them that, like text messages, statuses can often be taken out of context. Something you think is funny can be hurtful to someone else. Likewise with smutty talk: they see it on the TV, but have chats about how it’s appropriate to talk to the opposite sex. We’ve had hilarious chats about this – but it all gets the message across.
4. Be careful with friends
Important rule here: be clear that they can ONLY be friends with someone they know in real life. Tell them FIRMLY: if someone sends you a friend request and you don’t know them IN REAL LIFE, don’t accept it. And don’t engage in conversation with that person either. We have the standard joke about the 40 year old pervert who looks like Comic Book Guy out of the Simpsons pretending he’s a 13 year old girl. They laugh. But it happens.
5. Establish ground rules
Our rules about statuses are simple. Live as you would in real life. Don’t say anything mean. Don’t be racist, sexist or homophobic (or anything else-ist for that matter).
6. Don’t embarrass them
Don’t comment on their statuses (especially when their mates are tagged – they’ll all get a message containing your comment, remember). And never pass on information you’ve gleaned from their Facebook pages. Even something as innocuous as ‘oh, I see you’ve got a puppy’ to your kid’s friend could mark you out as a snooper. Uncool.
Got a fabulous holiday photo of them licking an ice cream? Or maybe a cute baby photo of your kid that you think they’ll love? Just remember how bloody embarrassing your Mum and Dad were when you were a kid. Ask first – ‘can I post this on your timeline?’ ’Can I tag you in this photo?’ And if the answer’s no, it’s no. Which leads me nicely onto:
7. Set a good example
So you’re friends with your kids on Facebook? Remember all these rules apply to you too. If they see you bitching or making snarky comments, why shouldn’t they do it too? Set the tone and remember that you can exclude them from certain posts if they’re a bit too ‘grown up’.
8. Maybe set up a group
A good way to do family stuff without embarrassing the kids is to have a ‘family’ Facebook group set up. That way, Grandma and Grandad can keep in touch, they can chat with aunties from abroad and everyone can share those dodgy photos and family reminiscences – all without their mates seeing.
9. Remind them you’re always here
Just as it’s important to know that you’re not going to dive in and spoil their banter, it’s important for them to understand that you’re there if they’re got a problem. Make it clear that you’re always open to dialogue and check every so often that everything’s cool. Likewise if they’re worried about someone else, reassure them that it’s not ‘snitching’, it’s being a good friend.
10. Be prepared to let them go
By the time they get to 16, the hope is that you’ve instilled them with enough knowledge to go forward without you. If they want to go it alone, then you’ve got to let them go. If they want to still be friends, happy days, but if they need their privacy, trust them to go it alone and do the right thing, knowing you’re there if you need them.
And that’s it. Now who wants to see this awesome picture of the Death Wish Dude in his birthday suit…
Jokes!
Video of our fabulous weekend at Disneyland Paris 20th birthday celebrations
So I’ve already told you about our marvellous trip to Disneyland Paris. I think one of the best things about it was spending a whole weekend just with one of my children (the other was rather happy to have some alone time with his Xbox AND without his little brother, don’t worry). The Death Wish Dude and I had an absolutely blast and really enjoyed each others’ company. And let’s face it, when they’re 14, the opportunities for ‘quality time’ are few and far between. We whizzed on rollercoasters, whooshed on rockets, oohed and ahhed at amazing sound and light shows and got all competitive zapping in Buzz’s Laser Blast, but more importantly we laughed. And laughed.
Here’s a gorgeous video that the lovely chaps at Disney made for us. I’m not ashamed to say that I cried buckets!
The ultimate chocolate cake with coconut ganache frosting for the Death Wish Dude’s birthday,
It’s been an odd weekend. First of all we watched ourselves on the telly (it’s a very weird experience, I can tell you). We took part in a Channel 5 programme being made about Disneyland Paris’ 20th birthday celebrations when were out there a couple of weeks ago – it aired yesterday. I actually managed to take a picture of the Death Wish Dude being interviewed – here he is in all his widescreen glory! Anyhoo, after all that excitement, it was straight on to the birthday cake challenge. As you might already know, it is the tradition at English Towers for the birthday boy to pick his very own choice of birthday cake. Usually they choose something hideously difficult to make (just to annoy me), but this time, the Birthday Death Wish Dude wanted nothing more than a big fat chocolate cake.
Easy peasy. The only difference is that I had a little experiment and tried making the ganache with coconut milk instead of double cream. It came out deliciously light and whipped beautifully. Highly recommended.
To make the Death Wish Dude’s Ultimate Coconut Ganache Chocolate Layer Cake, you’ll need:
175g butter (I use salted)
175g golden caster sugar
3 eggs
150g self raising flour
20g good quality cocoa powder
100g good quality dark chocolate
For the ganache:
400g tin coconut milk (I used the full fat stuff)
500g (yes, yes, I know… ) good quality dark chocolate
1 packet Maltesers
So firstly, melt the chocolate (you can do it all at the same time or in the two batches. It’s quite easy to pour the melted chocolate into the mixer bowl when it’s sat on the scale) in a bowl over a saucepan of simmering water. Don’t let the water touch the bowl (yeah you know the drill).
Beat the butter in the food processor until light, then add the sugar and whizz again until pale and fluffy. Add in the eggs (I beat them, then add them a dribble at a time – helps with the odd bits of dropped shell too), then stir in the sifted flour and cocoa. Finally, stir in the 100g melted chocolate.
Bake in two medium lined tins for about 20 minutes until just springy in the centre. Allow to cool.
For the ganache:
Warm the coconut milk in a saucepan – don’t allow it to boil, it only needs to be warm enough to melt the chocolate. Then just turn off the heat, plop all the chocolate in and stir occasionally until it’s all melted.
Transfer to a bowl and chill down completely in the fridge.
To assemble:
Carefully slice each cake into two. Pick a nice flat one as your top layer and remember which one it is!
Take the ganache out of the fridge and whip until light and fluffy (or you can just spread it).
Layer the cake slices with a thick spreading of ganache then finish with a nice layer of ganache all over the cake. If the thought of 500g of chocolate gives you a heart attack, you can halve the quantities and just layer the two cakes together.
Finish with Maltesers (beer can candles optional).
And here he is with his birthday cake of choice. Happy birthday, Charlie! xx
Review: Getting Personal with personalised presents
So with both the Death Wish Dude’s birthday and the Mad Prof’s coming up in quick succession, I was rather pleased when the chaps at gettingpersonal.co.uk asked me if I’d review their lovely website. Here are my top picks for personalised presents that are fabulous pressies for boys:
First up for the Death Wish Dude, chocoholic extraordinaire, I thought this personalised chocolate bar would be spot on:
You can’t beat a bit of chocky on your birthday, and chocky with your name on turns it into something special. He’ll love this.
Next, I thought that the photo phone covers were really cool. I was thinking that I’d suprise him by turning one of his action ‘seconds away from death’ photos into a cover for his iPhone.. maybe this one?
And now for the Prof… he loves a bit of Top Gear, so a poster revealing that he’s really The Stig would go down well:
… and this personalised superhero mug would make that morning cuppa extra special:
Oh and finally… I know this was supposed to be about the boys, but if anyone’s thinking of buying me a pressie, I’d LOVE this gorgeous slate cheeseboard:
My verdict, then? A nice looking, easy to navigate site with tons of ideas for pressies for all ages. Delivery is cheap (£2.99 and free for orders over £30.00) and checkout is quick and efficient. Highly recommended.
