Bad Mother is Back!

Ok, I've tried to ignore this thing, but since I stopped writing in the summer when I suffered a complete sense of humour meltdown, I can't stop myself from thinking about things I could write about if I could be arsed. It turns out I'm depressed. I prefer to think of myself as bi-polar, but with a distinct lack of manic episodes. It sounds so much more glamorous than depressed. Depression is just so damn common. When I've shared this terrible secret with close friends, they've invariably said that they've been popping anti-depressants for years. So I've decided to get over myself, and return to writing therapy. I doubt there are any readers left out there, but this is my blog and I'll write if I want to.

In the last hour I've experienced one of the worst bad mother moments: a public one. I had to face my aversion public transport and take the Little Darlings home from school on the bus. Did you know that buses do not ordinarily have a first class section??? Spouse needed the car for an out of town meeting, and I am still carless. I knew it would be painful since they are unable to sit still for at least an hour after they finish school, and can only communicate at a rate of decibels that would rival a 1970s Iron Maiden concert. We climbed to the upper deck and as they ran to the back of the bus, I chose a seat at the front, putting as much distance between us as possible. Before we had got a hundred yards they invented the game of bus-surfing. This involved trying unsuccessfully to balance on the seats as the bus careered round corners on the county lanes. I immediately sensed that they were irritating everyone, so I summoned my most scathing - can't you control your children- look at a woman approximately the same age as me, on the other side of the aisle. Sadly my attempt to disclaim them failed, and I was forced to try to chastise them. That failed too.

The next tactic was to try my hand at diversion. Pointing out interesting cows or trees in the landscape around us never worked with my Little Darlings, who would respond with "and, what's your point?". All I had to hand was my ipod. I gave it to Jack since he's the circus leader, and turned on his favourite song. Some years ago during a tortuously long car journey to the South of France, when Boychild (Latin name, jackus satanicus) misbehaved (approximately every 4.6 minutes) Spouse put on I Can't Decide by the Scissor Sisters, with the refreshing lyric "I can decide whether you should live or die; Oh you'll probably go to heaven; Don't you hang your head and cry..." He loved it of course. I smiled smugly at the bus load of Primark bag carrying, Croydon face-lift wearing mums in control of their little darlings who had to suffer the anguish that is the tone deaf Boychild screeching along to the ipod.

I believe that Boychild derives his ability to invent new games like bus-surfing from his father. During the course of our relationship Spouse has invented a delicious new drink by mixing champagne with orange juice, and was devastated to learn that bucks fizz already existed. Before we were married and on holiday, again in France, in a house infested with mice that insisted on eating everything and crapping everywhere, he invented a mouse-trap like no other. It involved a mouse sized walkway fashioned out of a french stick that the vermin had helpfully hollowed out, leading to the open top of one of those plastic barrels of surrender monkey urine that the French palm off on stupid English visitors that should know that you get what you pay for. He placed a lump of cheese at the opening of the barrel, with the intent that Michelle Mouse would fall into the undrinkable substance and promptly drown, or possibly disintegrate in the fumes. To ensure that none of the critters missed out on the fun, he placed a sign "Fromage this way" at the bottom of the walkway. It didn't work of course, and we ended up with a conventional poisoning, but the mouse-trap made an interesting centre-piece on the kitchen table. In fact Spouse probably missed out on the Turner Prize. On reflection though, I'm surprised that he didn't suggest converting it into a fun game for children that involved compiling a heath robinson mouse-trap...

You really couldn't make it up

There is one good thing to come out of the MP's expense claim scandal: lawyers are, for the time being at least, not the most hated and least trusted profession in the country. Don't worry, I'm not going to carry on bleating on about that subject, and I promise not to mention that Alister Darling also put his dirty fingers in the public purse to pay his accountant's bill for preparing his tax return because "it was in the public interest that he paid the right amount of tax". He said this in answer to a question posed during a tv interview. No doubt the Nation were, like me, screaming don't we all, but we have to pay our accountants out of our earnings. The interviewer gave him a refreshingly hard time, and the only additional question I would have put to him is, how the fuck can you sleep at night you dishonest bastard. Sorry, I appear to be bleating on again.

A friend recently asked what the difference is, in the UK, between solicitors and lawyers, since in the US, where she lives, there are just lawyers, and solicitors are another thing entirely. In England, solicitors are forbidden from soliciting, in every sense of the word. I would say that's ironic, but I'm far too fearful of being arrested by the Irony Police to suggest that, and receive the caution "you do not have to say something ironic, but if you do not mention, when questioned something ironic you later rely on in Court..."

In the UK "lawyer" is an umbrella term for solicitors and barristers. Barristers are allowed to solicit, providing its not the sort conducted in Kings Cross, because their professional organisation, the Bar Counsel, actually supports them. They are also allowed to wear wigs and are not allowed to shake hands with each other. The Law Society, by contrast, continually rolls over on our behalf and charges us an annual levy for doing so. It also sets up specialised Panel's that we need to join to demonstrate that we are competent in our chosen field, and charges us a levy for doing so. It also invites the public to make complaints about us, and charges us a levy for doing so.

Over the last few years the Government has been looking for ways of cutting the Legal Aid budget (presumably so there is more cash available for the MP's state of the art electrical equipment) and along came the Carter reforms. Lord Carter, in his infinite wisdom, concluded that criminal legal aid should be the first to be cut since it would be popular with the vast majority of the public, and the only people to suffer would be already the most disadvantaged section of society and the least able to protest. So they brought in fixed fees for criminal work which means that it doesn't matter how much time you spend preparing a case you get paid the same. The Law Society wrote a polite letter to the Government saying that it was jolly bad form, and could they possibly reconsider. The Government blew are raspberry back, and that was the end of the protest. Trade unions are prevented, by law, from running a closed shop, and employees are entitled to join whichever union they please. The Law Society is a closed shop, but it suits the Government so we can expect no changes there.

The Bar Counsel, by contrast said, effectively "bring it on" with your reforms, and their members agreed not to accept briefs for fixed fees. A situation arose where, in a very high profile case where an innocent young boy had been shot to death by a teenager, no barrister would accept the brief to defend him. Since the defendant is entitled to legal representation under the European Convention on Human Rights, and it looked like the defendant may be acquitted on a technicality the Government were forced make an exception, and barristers are no longer stuck with fixed fees in certain cases. Bar Counsel - 1 - Law Society - 0.

A final word: a recent President of the Law Society who is now involved with the Solicitor's Regulatory Authority, advised that all reprimands, cautions etc that solicitors are bestowed for not being as brilliant as they should be sought a gagging order to prevent Private Eye from publishing the fact that he had, in fact, been repremanded whist in private practice. Is that ironic? Possibly in the Alanis sense of the word.

President Sarkozi is now officially off Queen Elizabeth II's Christmas card list. He didn't invite her to the D-Day commemorations. President Obama was apparently pretty peeved about this, hopefully recognising that the British made far more effort on the said D-Day than the cheese eating surrender monkeys. He offered to take her as his date, but she doesn't want to play, and is going orf to the races instead. It strikes me as a bit odd that the ceremony is to be dominated by the French, who didn't actually take part in the landings, and the Americans, who probably killed more Frenchmen in friendly fire incidents than the Germans, if their recent military record is anything to go by. Obama is the new kid in town, and everyone wants to be his best friend which is no doubt why Brown swallowed his pride and asked for an invitation.

I guess Brown is also trying to summon some media attention that isn't about cabinet ministers lining their pocket's with our money. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alister-eyebrows-Darling apparently made a mistake in claiming for a mortgage that had been paid off, or was the the Home Secretary, or both. There are so many thieving politicians it's hard to keep track. In a tv interview Darling apologised for the error. That's ok then, you've paid it back, no harm done. I'm considering calling Jordieman back, and saying that, oops, I forgot to pay my taxes on time, and since I'm ever so sorry, can they kindly repay the interest they charged me.

What the - Heck:where the bad kids go

Boychild is currently obsessed with death. This weekend he fashioned one of his toy boxes into a coffin for his, apparently departed, toy dog named Toto. He continually threatens to kill himself if I try to make him do things he doesn't want to do, and asks seemingly endless questions about what happens when one departs this motal coil. In the normal course of events I would have to refer him to Spouse to answer questions about heaven and hell since he actually listened in RE lessons, and strangely was a member of a church group in his youth. By contrast I was brought up by committed atheists, and irritated the hell (oops, bad pun) out of my RE teachers by constantly referring to religion being the opium of the people. Christ, I must have been an impossible child.

Now I have all the answers about where naughty little darlings go when they die, and I'm not afraid to share them. Forget the Bible, Dante's Inferno and Milton's Paradise Lost - Heck: Where the Bad Kids Go by Dale E. Bayse - has all the answers you need. This book is, peculiarly, an enchanting story about siblings Milton's and Marlo's post-death shenanigans in child hell after they die at the hands of a freak marshmallow explosion in a shopping mall, as you do. I'm not a fan of otherworldly fiction, but Heck is something else, and fed my addiction to satire and punnagry, and a couple of perfectly executed digs at the French made me howl.

Now Boychild believes that should be meet an untimely end he will be greeted by Bea "Elsa" Bubb, the Principle of Heck; he will undergo SATS (Soul Aptitude Tests); take Ethics lessons from Richard Nixon; and discover whether Home Economics teacher, Lizzie Borden, has an axe to grind with him. All this in a luridly evoked world of demons and, well, lashings of poo. The book works on a number of levels, from the ingenious concept to the savage humour and literary references, together with a really very touching development of the siblings relationship. The only thing that I don't get about Heck is that it seems to be marketed at children. It's far to good for them.

http://www.wherethebadkidsgo.com/

Dentistry is no laughing matter

I finally bit the bullet, or rather after biting on a chocolate bar which caused the kind of searing pain I last experienced in childbirth, in the general vicinity of my lower right wisdom tooth, I decided that after five years it was probably time to reacquaint myself with the dentist. I stopped visiting after a winged serpent creature from hell masquerading as a dental hygienist castigated me once too often for flinching when she stabbed me with a needle the size of a tooth pick, and I decided that either she had to die, or I had to neglect my molars. The alleged woman's face was incapable of breaking into a smile, and she made no secret of the fact that she found my nerve induced attempts at humour to be incredibly tedious. After considering the pros and cons of life imprisonment I concluded that, quite frankly, there are more interesting hate figures in my life that I would prefer to do time for, and therefore have ignored the check up reminders ever since.

I've been treating the pain with neurofen plus for a while but this week when I went to buy my 24 pack - the largest the nanny state allows you to purchase in one go - the pharmacist begged me to visit the dentist. Why can't we buy more than 24 painkillers in one go, it just doesn't make sense. If someone was hell bent on suicide by overdose they would clearly go to the double of visiting more than one pharmacy in order to get the job done.

During my five year break dental technology has moved on, and I was very impressed with the slide show presentation laid on my Dan - strange being on first name terms with someone that's about to do battle with your oral cavity - after he photographed and x-rayed each tooth, he explained why I'm in such pain. It was a bit like watching Peter Snow analysing election results: if you look at this pre-molar you will note the slight red shading indicating a dyxtal cavity, but the blue hint is suggestive of a resurgence of periodontal exclusion... It was about as fascinating as being shown live feed of my cervix during a biopsy a few years ago. There are just some things you can get through life quite contentedly not knowing. All I wanted him to do was extract the offending tooth. After the procedure he complemented me on my apparent lack of a gag reflex, but despite the fact that he's pretty hot as dentists go, I resisted the urge offer a quid pro quo for the costs of the treatment - you pull, I blow.

Expensive expenses or Hogs round the trough

Mercifully the current breakfast tv obsession has moved on from swine flu and is now centred squarely on expense claims submitted by members of Parliament. I lost interest in party politics some time ago when the Labour party abandoned it's principles and started trying to out tory the Tories, the Tories consequently had an identity crisis, and the Lib Dems got drunk and played with rent boys. I do feel aggrieved that I helped the incumbent Government into power by securing Spouse's vote which would otherwise have been cast in favour of the opposition by offering him a blowie. It is, however, delightful to watch politicians of all political persuasions desperately trying to defend making the nation pay for everything from the upkeep of their tennis courts and helipads, to keeping them in toilet paper and double espressos. I would, however, like to complement the appropriately named Douglas Hogg MP for submitting a claim for the costs of dredging his moat. That is so screamingly outrageous it's fucking hilarious.

My only regret about this story is that it broke after I concluded my dealings with Geordieman. Consider the fun I could have had by asking what my tax money was going to be spent on: it wouldn't quite cover the costs of the renovations on Hazel Blears constituency home, but it would have bought several Corby trouser presses. I could have offered to settle my tax bill by sending 2272 packets of chocolate Hob Nobs directly to the House of commons thus saving Geordieman the trouble of asking me any more asinine questions. Alternatively I may have offered to clear the arrears by cleaning up a moat or two, or pruning Hazel's roses every Sunday for the next six months.

Perhaps it would have been possible to negotiate a reduction in my tax arrears by agreeing some additional expenses to off set my income. Since crashing my car during a mult-tasking meltdown I have to walk far more (I do not recommend applying lipstick, sending text messages and having a sneaky smoke while in charge of a mechanically propelled motor vehicle) . I can no longer claim mileage, so perhaps some recompense for the additional wear and tear to the Choos would be in order. It is also necessary to dress well in order to avoid being mistaken for a prisoner or probation officer, so again, an LK Bennet clothing allowance should not be too much to ask for.

Just one final thought: if I fiddled my expenses I would not only have to re-pay the money, I would be sacked and struck off. Bring back Guy Fawks - all is forgiven.

I've spent most of the weekend trying to figure out how some facts seem to become embedded in the Little Darling's psyche, and other's don't. After school on Friday they watched an episode of Dr Who, The Shakespeare Code, where the good doctor takes Martha back to Elizabethan England (I appreciate that I'm in danger of alienating my non-Anglo readership) . Boychild asked who Shakespeare is, and Twin 2 announced, with the condescension of a Cabinet Minister, don't you know anything Jack, he was a writer when Jesus lived. I didn't know where to start correcting that one, so I let it go. I'm sure most parents have experienced the dinosaur debate - did they exist when you were little, when Granny was little, and so on. Their lovely little minds simply can't comprehend the expanse of history, and they seem to dip in and out of moments in time much like Dr Who in his TARDIS.

Twin 1 has a fascination for what did and did not exist when I was her age - she was horrified to learn that I had to endure only three channels on a black and white tv, that music was emitted from a crappy old cassette player, that windows were for looking through and mice were vermin, that the closest thing to a games console was etch-a-sketch, and that cutting and pasting involved scissors and glue. I suppose the Little Darlings' inability to comprehend life before technology is understandable. How the hell did anyone get any work done before email and the Internet? My first task every morning is to check the inbox, delete the plethora of invitations to extend my penis, have sex with an unfeasibly large breasted woman from Indiana, and pay my tax bill online. What I do love about email is that it reduces the number of telephone conversations with minions from the Ministry of Justice who are definitely somewhere on the autistic spectrum, and aren't on an extended period of sick leave, strangely enough, and therefore have to suffer my particular brand of sarcasm. I know it's the lowest form of wit, but you have to admit that it is incredibly funny.