Sorted!

I am veering worryingly close to my 30th now. I just turned 29 having had my Birthday last weekend and now face the monthly countdown to a new era and the end to my lovely happy 20’s. All the fun and frolics of being 20 something and now I have to face up to being a grown up. I still only feel 18 so this is a bit of a problem for me. You tell people you are 30 and they have an expectation of what that should say about you, like being well into your career, a kid or 2, married, divorced, nice car, respectable house etc etc. I feel that you have to be someone when you are 30. I just don’t think I can make that happen. I don’t want to grow up, I refuse, so there!

Still, I did enjoy my Birthday. Bit peeved that with it being over the Easter holiday everyone forgot and my best friends were in France on some forced seeing the family trip so that sucked, but my husband being the great man he is (he may read this!), did try his best to make it special – in his own little odd way.

I woke up on Saturday (my Birthday) and he brought in a mountain of presents. I thought it all looked pretty exciting, loads of things to open, so I got stuck in. The first present he gave me was, wait for it… an iceberg lettuce.
“What the f**k is this”
“A gift, don’t be ungrateful, open the rest”
I hope he is f-ing joking or this leads to something great. I am not a morning person and this is not funny.
“This one better not be salad dressing. What the hell is it?”
“It’s maple syrup obviously, it says, look right there. Keep opening.”
“Okay, this is a Canadian flag, I know that coz I saw it once in a geography lesson at school! Why on Earth have you given me this? The next one better be worth a lot of money I can tell ya” Clearly I really am the most ungrateful person in the world.
“Just shut up and keep opening the presents will you.”
“Huh. Are we going to Canada,” I said with an excited revelation.
“Just shut up and open or I will do it for you.”
“Alright moody, didn’t know there was a time limit.” I continued opening.
“Hmm, Celine Dion DVD….. oh my God….. are we going to Canada? Are we going to Canada to see Celine Dion? Are we going to Las Vegas?….. What, what, what are we doing?”
“You’ll find out, just keep opening.”

By this point I was really starting to lose interest. I HATE surprises, I cannot stand not knowing things, or not being able to plan. I wished he would just tell me, I was getting tetchy. Anyway I kept opening all these little presents, a couple of other DVD’s, some jewellery, a lovely charm bracelet with a graduation hat on to signify where we first met (puke!) and a few other little things.

Finally I finished opening everything and I asked him what we were doing as opening everything else had not given me any more indication. Or worse he was winding me up and I was going to kill him. Then he said I hadn’t opened everything yet. I kept looking but there were no other presents, I was really getting fed up. Then he told me to open the Celine Dion DVD and in there he had put 2 tickets for us to go and see her play live on her word tour in May to the O2. Wicked! I love Celine Dion, as much as I love Elton John in fact. OK, not really to everyone’s taste, but I am practically 30 so that must be more acceptable now. Alright, I admit that it’s sad but I think she is great and I am huge fan so this was an amazing present. Damn, he’s going to want something for this!

Morning gifts over with, he was taking me to London for the day starting with Selfridges – great wonder if he will buy me a nice expensive bag? No chance and I would have to listen to him whine for hours so I’ll just have a quick look then we can move on. 10 mile walk in the freezing cold later (as he insisted there were no cabs despite a thousand flying past), he took me to little intimate bowling alley with a cocktail bar and everything. Slightly odd treat but you couldn’t put a price on the amount of laughs we got out of it when 2 people on either side of us went to bowl, not paying any attention as to why there is a big black foul line separating the part you step on to the part the ball rolls on and both of them fell flat on their faces. It was absolutely hilarious, and what made it even funnier was when they stood up, in amazement they both said “be careful, it’s really slippery on there…” No shit!!! I often wondered what oil on a shiny surface felt like – muppets!

After a few cocktails and jug of beer it was fair to say I was feeling a little tipsy, so we went to walk to the next place. Yeah walk. What is wrong with that man, I wonder whether he realises you can just hail a cab in London, you don’t have to book in advance. I was more than willing to flash some flesh if that would have helped but he wouldn’t let me. Probably a wise choice, it was pretty cold!

Next place was the restaurant, Dans Le Noir. What an amazing experience. As you would expect, you eat in the dark. And when I say dark, I mean you see nothing, I have never been in such darkness in my life. I have to admit that for someone who has to sleep with night lights on in the house, I did get a little bit panicked as the blind waiter separated me from my husband to seat me the other side of the table. The thoughts going through my head at this point were how will I know whose leg I am touching or whose hand I am holding? You can’t get done for sexual harassment if you have no idea you are doing anything can you?!

It was a table of 12, all couples and all strangers. The best thing about eating in the dark, other than it being totally acceptable to make slob of yourself, is that all your inhibitions are completely stripped away. Ordinarily I wouldn’t talk to random people I didn’t know nor would I be interested in starting conversations with them. I also wouldn’t lean round and tap the person next to me on their shoulder so they thought someone else did it. I wouldn’t hide their drinks just for the fun of it and take amusement at them frantically feeling their way to find it. They couldn’t see it was me, so what they hell! They wouldn’t even know it was me when got back in the light. No problem….. until we went to pay and I looked up behind the bar and there on the big screen was displayed CCTV of the restaurant in night vision cameras so everyone can have a good laugh at what’s going on. Oh God, wonder if the guy I took the piss out of is that 7 foot rugby player over there?!! Come on Mart, let’s go now!

Once per year (we can only cope with once) we try and do a nice deed for my sister-in-law, whereby we take her kids off her for the weekend, entertain them and spoil them completely.

Last weekend we did just that. It did also mean that we had to cope with the mother-in-law as well, but give her a reclining sofa and a full belly and she is pretty harmless. So we took 2 kids this time, a 9 year old (going on 65 and grumpy as hell) and the 5 (and a quarter) year old. The story of my Gloucestershire in-laws has always been an interesting one. They are a bit mental, not quite all there and really don’t have much money - they actually don’t bother trying to have much money and the sister-in-law (a qualified hairdresser don’t you know) would much rather sit on her arse, or should I say lie flat on her back, as evident with a 4th child at 16 weeks pregnant…

Yes speaking of the 4th child. This came as a bit of a shock when we found out. We thought 3 kids from 2 different fathers was enough, but no. Now it will be 4 children from 3 fathers and about the 7th father the first child has had to get used to. It’s no wonder she is a little grump, poor kid. The only stability she has is seeing us a few times every year. The least we can do when she comes over is to spoil her and her sister bit. The so called rich aunty and uncle, though we couldn’t be more skint, but that’s how they see it. Thing that gets me is the mother-in-law when here will not offer to pay for anything, even to take the kids swimming which cost £6 in total and claims she has no money. Yet she will quite happily spend £30 to top her mobile to go on the internet all evening to chat to weird blokes on ‘girls date for free’. Talk about get your priorities straight.

Anyway, these kids are really wonderful. We took them to climb big plastic things, slide down big plastic things that ‘made fireworks’ on their little arms but still they loved it. Then we went bowling, but I gave so much help to the little one with all the barriers and things that she ended up beating me – I wasn’t impressed! Then we went to Pizza Hut. Such a simple thing but they have never been, and the best thing about having a kid with me is that I could go to the ice cream factory!!! Brilliant. I lived my uni life of cheapo pizza wishing I had a kid just so as I had a real excuse to go to make my own ice cream and not feel like a complete twat!

The next morning we took them swimming. I have never found swimming a pleasure really unless on holiday or until they put a sauna at my gym and my whole outlook changed. This time though swimming was one of the biggest pleasures ever. The 5 year old had never been. Can you imagine that, never been to a pool. This is the kind of life the children live unfortunately; they just have no opportunity to do anything, OK money is tight, but come on they’re kids they deserve to have fun, there's no excuse for something so cheap. They would spend more than that in cigarettes in a day. As we walked in the little one held my hand so tightly right up to the edge of the pool. She was terrified of the water, it took at least 15 minutes of coaxing to get her to walk down the steps just to get her knees wet. Finally having watched all the other children laughing she decided to do it. As she started to walk across the pool and her confidence grew the smile on her face was so amazing. I’ve never felt like that before and in this moment I decided that I definitely want children…..

After the sobering quiet of the children having left, I’ve really missed it. I would give anything to be able to experience that myself and whilst I know they are not mine and I can hand them back after a weekend and in reality they can be such annoying pains, I am sure it is a small price to pay for everything that goes with it. I absolutely love my cuddles and always need a bit of attention, so it was great that for the weekend my attention was also being innocently craved back, all be it to someone else’s beautiful little girls. I love them loads.

Having had a great weekend I am now pleased that the working week went quickly and that the best thing other than it being Friday today of course, was when a supplier ‘strategic partner’ that no one likes or values, accidentally sent me an email instead of his colleague to talk about an interview we had to cancel next week… Whilst he totally slagged us off in this email and told me on the phone something different to his email suggested around the cancellation fee, it also highlighted in blatant admission that he overcharges us quite significantly for every piece of work he completes for us. When I say significantly I am talking thousands. Now I could have responded in a way that made him really have a brown trouser moment, or could say nothing… yet. He probably won’t notice that he sent it to me and we can use this as ammo at a later date. So I chose the latter to keep him stewing a bit. I kept the email and sent it to my boss for interesting reading on her return from holiday. What I suspect will happen is that on talking to his colleague thinking she has read the mail, she will have no clue and he will realise it didn’t get to her. He will check his mail, realise that instead of forward he pressed reply and hence it turned up in my inbox. He will then call me and be all nice and complimentary, clearly fake. In the meantime he will call his ‘friend in high places’ to smooth the waves before my boss returns from holiday and lets rip. Not sure which one of these will happen, but I can’t wait to see!!!

With a great work ending to the week I can start my Birthday weekend of drunken torture once more. Tomorrow night it is the dodgy pikey tacky Greek restaurant with plate smashing, crazy dancers, sweaty waiters and a few hundred cocktails. This will be followed by severe hangover on Sunday whilst husband finishes ruining the paintwork of our en suite which he started and didn’t finish on a decorating weekend long ago. During this time his mood will get worse, I will hear swear words I didn’t know existed and for the rest of the evening will have to contend with a miserable short fused man I now name ‘Mooby Dick’. The reason for this name is due to the little appearance of flab in his upper region he claims is not there. That will teach him for saying I have a fat arse, even if it is true!