Get Back Boris!

We have discovered in our house, that we know when a spider has crossed a line.

We possibly could not define this moment to the satisfaction of London Zoo or the  British  Association of Spiders, Tarantulas, Arachnids and Related Diplopod Species (BASTARDS for short) but, we could definitely show them a spider who has crossed this line.
Oh yes we could.

He's in our porch.

With the door shut.

Now, I am usually a bit brave with that sort of stuff. Well, I wasn't but then I went to Australia and I was cos I had to be.

Then I came home and after a couple of years I wasn't again.

Then I got married and had a husband.

But it turned out he was terrified.

So, we'd get one of the neighbours in
Or I'd suck it up using the hoover nozzle.

Then I left him and I wasn't scared again because I had no time for nonsense or fear.



6 years passed and I remained unfazed. I have an old cotton bud box that I catch them in and then release them back into the... wild? ...The hedge in any case.

Spring followed autumn and despite that being very confusing, my son was trained in the ways of the spider trapping. He learned all that I knew, at my knee. After many moons, he too could operate the box until one day, he asked for a box of his own...The following day, he came down to breakfast with a full moustache and side burns.

But, even together, we are no match for Boris, who would need a box extension with an awning to begin to contain his girth. Maybe even a tent!
He really is a huge fucker.



My son is a scholarship boy and so I knew that between us, this problem was surmountable.

So, after much stroking of the sideburns and fiddling with the Rubik's Cube, we are in complete agreement.

We hardly ever used the porch anyway.   

Not Just Anybody..He-e-elp!

Pamalots!
Yesterday did not shape up to be the day that I hoped it would be for me.
It was to be the day that my youngest -my 3rd - child started secondary school, and the day that my own life was to  begin to reclaim me; to slowly woo me with time and independence.

Instead, my faerie child clung to the door of the car, panic in her elfin eyes as she pleaded with me to take her home. 

I was so brave; I soothed and cajoled and finally just insisted that she entered this new world alone. I opened the car door and gently but firmly pushed her out.

Half way home, my own emotions flung open the door of my moving car and insisted upon being felt. They climbed inside me and screamed their way out.   Fuckers!

Once home, I found the man that I had employed to finally 'sort out' my garden sitting in my drive. He informed me that 2 rats had dropped down the fence, flicked him the 'V's', stuck their tongues out and pissed on his boots. 

He can't work in these conditions, he's scared.

I wanted to scoop up my children and run away from this diseased house.

The gardener looked uncomfortable as tears for my daughter, my youth, my garden and my role started a journey that took them the day to complete and another to recover from. "I thought they had gone. He promised they had gone" I managed to mumble through horrified lips.

The rats have been a recurring problem since my neighbours moved in 18 months ago.  I am terrified of them  and sick to death of paying exterminators who cannot exterminate because my neighbours -who are kind and clean and  reasonable people- have a
compost heap, 

a pond 

and a bird feeder.

They own rat nirvana!

They also have 4 dogs and tasty dog food. 

What they don't have though are rats because they are scared of
the dogs.

  So the evil little bastards live with us and pop next door for food when the coast is clear. I have had words with my neighbours who think I am scapegoating because they don't have rats living with them and yet 4 exterminators tell me that the problem is not one of my making. But it's me who gets anxious and pays money I can ill afford and can't let the kids in -what used to be -a beautiful garden, and me who can't use my garage. My neighbours enjoy their garden, birds and dogs and pond.

Someone scoop me up.

Update
The elf bounced out of the school gates and chattered incessantly all night about how amazing her day had been. I'm not allowed anywhere near the school gates now!

Any tales of triumph over rodentity would be fallen up gratefully with copious weeping and probably - gifts!

Pammy

Help! Not Just Anybody. HELP!

I have wanted to tell you this for so long, Pamelots
I have been

The Thing That I Like...

The thing that I like about my home town is that if you throw a vol au vent in any direction, it will always hit someone you know.  

This of course, has its ups and downs. You may not want to be noticed yourself with a head like a burst cushion, but who amongst isn’t  secretly rather pleased to see a normally enviable hairstyle looking  as though someone had recently set fire to it?

I met my neighbour when she left a pair of fabulous trainers standing smartly to attention alongside her rubbish 11 years ago. I took them for my young daughter, leaving her a note because  I am old enough to remember Candid Camera and my parents frequently used the possibility of it as a babysitter. She turned up on my doorstep 3 hours later with a daughter of her own and an enormous bag of beautiful clothes that the latter had grown out of. We have been firm friends ever since.
It began a number of co-operative operations which spread to the rest of the street. For instance, we launched a book club and invited a guest, who invited a guest and so on until finally we have 9 regular members of the book club, who see each other through bereavement and divorce , birth and triumph. As a couple of our members said “This group is more than the sum of its parts”. Support, skills and friendship are put into the pot and given absolutely free of charge. It only requires someone to host the club each month and to provide the essential requirements of wine and varying forms of chocolate. The book became a secondary consideration after a shamefully short period of time and we became ‘The Alcochocs’, doing  what it said on our tin. 
We were even on Radio Lincolnshire where clever editing made us sound really quite knowledgeable.

Recently, I  had to leave a note for a delivery man saying ‘Please leave this at...’ before listing a plethora of trusted neighbours almost as long as the street itself; our street now swims together from a cherished offspring’s 18^th birthday,  to a Bonfire night then a Christmas Eve bash before onto a surprise seventies- themed 40^t,h ,with devilled eggs and Spangles in hand and wearing outfits that bore into the very centre of our souls and make us feel strangely sea sick .

My post natal group are coming to help me paint my downstairs on Saturday.  We used to meet weekly when the children were preschool.   15 years on and the children’s clothes all look strangely familiar, due to the familiar route by which we pass clothes  down; it’s doubtful that anyone here has had to buy a brownie uniform since the Bejing  Olymics.   Spookily, we have reached the stage where the clothes that teenagers grow out of can be passed onto the more petite parents in a horrific echo of a life yet to come. 

But before that day arrives, we have resolved to have a rota of sober weekend parenting, so that as our children grow, there’s always one of us available to give any of our collective offspring a lift, post bail, phone a solicitor, warn off unwanted admirers and generally make sure they get home. Everyone else will be strategically placed throughout the pubs  and behind lampposts, allowing no stone to be unturned but enjoying a drink or two for authenticity purposes.

Doubtless with so many helpers this weekend, someone will step backwards into a tin of  Ferret and Flip Flop emulsion or wallpaper  their engagement ring  into the dining room recess  before we can enjoy our celebratory evening of wine and food and more laughing.  Stamford co-operatives have the ability to make chores an event on the socialising calendar. I often tell visitors to the town that we will celebrate anything at all at the drop of a hat and that given a favourable wind and a sale at the fancy dress shop, we’d celebrate the safe return of a Waitrose trolley.   

Now, what I really need is for The Community Orchard team and Community allotmenteers  to  to take control of  sections of my garden. I’ll provide the wine and chocolate.

Pam's thought for the day

I've been listening to Bob Geldof on Radio 4 in  'Meeting Myself Coming Back' . The format was to walk him back through his life, via the BBC archives. It was a hugely moving piece.
 I was struck again by what a unique man he is and the programme has made a huge impression on me. I have listened to it many times since and it pins me to the target every time. I offer up Bob for readers of Multiple Mum

Above all, his honesty is vast. He never excuses, or apologises for himself. He says what he means immediately, regardless of occasion and he supports himself  to do that. Even when listening to himself as a young man, he respects and agrees with his younger self, not once berating him for naivety, arrogance or for being misguided.
He absolutely stands four-square behind the person that he was then, giving him support and encouragement and giving weight and value to those young words. The wisdom of his age has not eradicated the wisdom of his youth.

To me, it seems absolutely clear, that even as a very young man, Bob Geldof  knew who he was. He spoke with clarity and conviction;  felt the need to please no-one, to conform to nothing but himself.

He was never held back by role or etiquette and is never intimidated by power or protocol. He absolutely uses his right as a free thinker, as a citizen of the world, to both stand up and be counted, and to bring others to account.

I so envy him his memories. Not his memories of Live Aid or punk stardom , but his memories of living as a man who is at home with himself; someone who is not afraid to be whole in public. I envy that.   

He also described the vastness of grief, it's limitless form. He talked of a destruction so complete that it ran like liquid horror through his veins. He would cry in his sleep and know this because he was still weeping when he woke.
And yet, like everything else he says, there seems to be not a trace of self pity or blame.  It was told because he was asked and that was the answer; it was how things had been.

And I am quite proud of a young Pam, who saw such a lot to admire in the young Bob. She knew quality when she saw it and could have done much worse than to use him as a role model.

 If only she had.

sanding the stairs

Jollidays