moronic organic me.....

Frazzled and thirsty my kids and I fall into the local health food shop on our way home, the kids are complaining of hunger and no they can’t wait the ten more minutes it would take to walk home and I don’t have the strength to spend that ten minutes listening to the whines and anyway I forgot to get tomatoes and mushrooms earlier, so here we are.....

For once the kids aren’t begging for chocolate or crisps, (they can’t read and maybe they don’t recognise the organic good stuff or they just know that parsnip and beetroot crisps are not really crisps, come on!)

‘Are the apples washed?’ I asked, seeing a sink maybe two steps behind her behind the counter.....

‘They are organic!’ the woman sneered.

‘So?!’ I thought,

 ‘So is influenza, salmonella and e-coli but I don’t fancy it on the apples I feed to my most precious boys!’

I didn’t say this of course being strangely and most annoyingly intimidated by the posh woman who had whole food on her side, this woman had never taken her kids to McDonalds for a fish finger happy meal or fed them monster munch to keep them quiet at the cinema or given them spaghetti transformers on toast when she felt too tired to cook or fed them haribo (and I don’t just mean the vegetarian ones from Holland and Barrett, I mean the full on made from crushed up pig bone type!) and so I felt she must be somehow my superior!

She made no visible attempt to leave her ladder stool tucked behind the counter in order to walk the required two steps to the sink to rinse the apples for the kids to eat and so I, like the weak spirited, feeble minded mug that I am, bought them any way and fed the potential germ bombs to my gorgeous lads.....

We walked home, them refreshed, me somewhat fuming at myself. How hard would it have been to insist she rinse the apples? I’m sometimes inexplicably thrown back to a gawky, awkward child instead of the real grown up I know I must be! I have kids, a mortgage and wrinkles round my eyes!

They lived to see another day immune systems bolstered by years of eating raisins squashed into carpets!

Political Animals

I had my (7 years old) and nephew (9 years old) to stay last week when they posed me a peculiar question,

‘Aunty Donna, Do you know Robert Murdoch?’

‘Oh hang on I mean Rupert, Do you know Rupert Murdoch Aunty Donna?’

‘I know who he is why’

‘BECAUSE HE’S STOLEN ‘GLEE’’ they both pipe up with passion.

‘Oh’, I said and let them tell me the whole story, voices full of injustice and of why,’ Glee’ (the American T.V. series not the emotion I hasten to add!)has been bought by sky and only those rich enough to have sky will be able to watch it.

They understand that football and other things are only on sky and seem to accept that as normal – I guess because that is the way it has always been in their short lives, however they feel a tremendous sense of injustice at their favourite show going – the rules changing half way through the game. I love their passion, their inherent socialist views, and their strong sense of fair play.

I love the child-like simplicity of their views things are either right or wrong – fair or unfair – good or bad...........

It got me thinking about what you get from your parents in the way of political views – I swallowed my parent’s views whole-heartedly and embarrassingly I remember with shame debating against nuclear disarming in the first year of secondary school using the argument,’ If your neighbour has a stick you need a bigger stick to stay safe’ straight from my Dad’s mouth and unsurprisingly not receiving one single vote from my class mates!

My parent’s read the daily mail but despite this they taught me by their actions to treat people fairly and equally, to help where you can, to have a strong sense of right and wrong and to protect the vulnerable.

What will I be teaching my boys? When my four year was playing spider man recently and needed me to be a ‘baddie’

I said ‘Argh! I’m David Cameron’ and I ran at him saying,’ Here I come - Cut, Cut CUT!’ and made scissor movements with my hands.

He was delighted and laughingly covered me in sticky webs till I reinstated funding for libraries, swimming pools and the schools re-building programme!

I hope we will teach them loosely to give what they can and take what they need, to try their hardest to make the world generally and their part of it specifically better for all and simply just to care.

And I hope they become doctors not bankers!!!

That's Magic!

Could It Be Magic!

We booked a children’s entertainer -  magician, clown, game organiser and rabbit owner for the eldest fifth birthday party in the scout hut.

He’s taken to doing tricks, repetitive simple tricks – I have to put a limit on them or it would send me crazy! He was half way through one of these ‘tricks’ it involved having a coin in his hand, him saying ABRACADABRA and then throwing the coin on the floor while I pretend not to see - then in mock amazement and much showmanship he opens both hands and says in a spooky voice...

’It’s disappeared!!!!’

Before picking it up and saying, ‘Magic!.’

 So we were on to around the fifteenth time he had done this when the coin rolled under the chair so at the point he was supposed to pick it up discretely (or as discretely as a four year old can!) he did a funny old double take, then another and looked at me with his giant beautiful eyes and whispered, ‘I think I really did disappear it!’

I was struck by his wonderful innocence and belief that anything can happen! I then discretely (or as discretely a 40 year old woman squatting on a child’s bedroom floor can!) picked up the coin waved it whispering, ‘Abracadabra........’

He looked at me like I was Willy Wonka, Winnie the Witch and Spiderman all rolled into one!

I loved being magic!

My partner then came upstairs doing the old chopped off thumb trick, which made the four year old so worried we had to show him the trick immediately and then taking off his nose and putting it back before he could get to a mirror!