A Colobus Monkey

Usually when I’m feeling a bit anxious I have the spider dream.

Due to the pre-move stress I expected to be leaping across the bedroom, in the middle of the night, to escape the spiders.

This did not happen.  Not to me anyway.

The night before we moved there was a disturbance.

I woke in the night and instantly knew something wasn’t right. I stretched out to discover The Husband missing.

Suddenly the bedroom light was flicked on and there in the corner of the room was The Husband in his pants looking befuddled.

He was befuddled, and I was blind … at 3.04am.

The following morning he told me that he dreamt he was being chased round our bedroom by Colobus Monkeys.  He was very precise about the species.

Can you imagine what would happen if the Driver family’s nocturnal behaviour was synchronised … there would be the 4 year old snoring like an old man, the 6 year old screaming like she’s having her leg removed with a rusty butter knife, The Husband being chased by Colobus Monkeys and me scrabbling around on the bed shooing the 100 or so spiders away.

Picture by \\Hayley// on Flickr

Before he even walked into the bar I was in love with him.

We’d met four weeks before on the Internet.  By the time we met we knew virtually everything about each other.  He may have left out that he’ll watch absolutely every sport possible apart from synchronised swimming.  I may have omitted to tell him about my fear of housework and that occasionally I talk/sleepwalk/laugh and leap about in my sleep.

One week into our online banter he sent me a photo of himself.  Today, I can still remember opening that email and looking at him for the first time.  My legs turned to jelly and I knew instantly that he would be my husband.  Who’d have thought that a handsome man sporting an INXS t-shirt with a small child on his knee could have evoked such a reaction.

Three months after our first date we were living together.  In two weeks we’ll be celebrating four years of marriage.  Who knows, we might celebrate by finally picking up our proper wedding photos.  *COUGH*

The last ten years have been the most entertaining, stressful, joyous and personally challenging years of my life.  I can’t think of anyone I would have rather inflicted them on.

Tonight we’ll raise a glass to another ten years.

I used this picture of our wedding day because we looked so very happy, however. I am also a tad shiny.  Great Grandma Driver, approaching her mid eighties, had asked the nice man at the hotel to turn off the air conditioning during our wedding meal.  It was one of the hottest days of the year and she was a bit chilly.  This photo was taken around the moment we realised what she’d done, as everyone started to melt.

So out of chronological order I give you the night and morning following the 6 year old’s birthday party.

We left Gramps in charge on Saturday night.  He is officially THE best babysitter ever; Encouraging us to stay over and come back late morning the following day!

We went to My Sister’s housewarming.  It was a really good do.  Her new house is lovely and it already looks like they’ve lived there for years … in a good way!

I was told to bring one of our camping lamps because the light had broken in the downstairs loo.  I could only locate a wind up one, that only actually seems to work as you are winding it.  Unfortunately, after only one drink and only 15 minutes into the party, I told someone, in a new relationship, not to waste his wrist action in the downstairs toilet.  The Husband was horrified.

It was OK though, because later, when The Husband couldn’t focus he made several verbal faux pas, tried to break some fire wood for the fire bucket with some kung fu moves and then passed out on the spare bed.  Later in the night I had to stop him from wandering to the toilet naked.  He opted to wear My Sister’s faux, floor length, fur coat which was hanging on the back of the spare rooms door.  Think Cruella De Vil. When I imparted this information the following day My Sister couldn’t work out whether she was mortified or amused.

I imagine that coat will be in the dry cleaners quicker than you can say ‘All fur coat, no underpants’.

When we arrived home the following day, it sounded like the kids had thoroughly enjoyed themselves.  The 4 year old woke Gramps very early.  They went to the local nature reserve and then played in the street until we got home.

I don’t think I will ever forget arriving home to find Gramps playing tennis, in the street, with the 4 year old … his face painted, by the 6 year old.

Those of you who read My Sister’s blog will want to know if ‘Ole twinkly Eyes’ showed up.  Well he didn’t, and I was actually quite glad.  The merrier I got the more people became aware of the review I did of ‘my sister’s man friend’.  it could have been a tad embarrassing.

This is a selection of things the Driver’s are enjoying this month.  Some have been sent to us courtesy of the blog, some haven’t.

Jo Thorpe Mosaic – When I met up with the lovely Kerry in Florida she had a fabulous scrabble piece pendant.  Turns out her friend, Jo, is rather clever and makes them, amongst other fabulous things. Check out her decorative work … just beautiful.  I bought myself and my Facebook Wife one too (£8 each).  Our love of scrabble helped us through some tough times.  Jo Thorpe offers mosaic course across East London. (The pendant site is here).

Alice in Wonderland (On Blue-ray) -  This arrived whilst we were on holiday in Italy and was the perfect distraction from the holiday blues when we got back.  Completely whacky, very funny and Helena Bonham Carter is superb once again.  Definitely worth a watch, the kids certainly thought so.

Sigg Aluminium Bottles – Hardwearing, eco-friendly and great designs that go in the dishwasher.  The 4 year old launched across the room to have first dibs on the large Spongebob Square Pants bottle.  This left the 5 year old with the 2 smaller ones … and no arguments, which makes a change.  Unlike the plastic, cheaper versions we’ve had over the years, they don’t leak.

A Lightsaber – Before I left for my Seaworld trip the 4 year old told me that all he wanted me to bring back was a lightsaber.  Cue to me racing round the Florida Mall like a demented loon.  I came across a small Toys R Us, ran up to one of the staff and asked if she had a lightsaber.  She took me to them, I told her I could hug her.  After the look she gave me I then added a disclaimer of “… but I won’t”.  I was crowned mother of the year when I returned and he still sleeps with it.

Clan Covers from Twisted Twee.  Romance isn’t dead.  The Husband bought me one for Mother’s Day and I bought him one for Father’s Day.  Egyptian cotton don’t you know.  They do loads of other fab stuff too. Check out the party bunting, ’tis genius.

For the past year I have been training to be a Driving Instructor. Like many people who are not public servants or Ministers of Parliament, my dreams of retirement are exactly that. Just dreams. So I am now, aged 60, a Trainee Driving Instructor waiting to pass the dreaded part 3 exam which, worryingly, has only a 30% pass rate.

Working as a trainee instructor I have a diary filled with pupils of all nationalities or who have some connection with countries other than the United Kingdom. Some examples; Elfreta, British born but with Nigerian parents and, for a reason I forget, a German forename. Chloe, a Parisian, whose father is American and mother Scottish. Petra, Czech not Czechoslovakian, I am corrected with the hard look of a Scot mistaken for an Englishman. Carlos has a Mexican mother and English father and Suresh an Indian who relates colourful stories of driving in Delhi. Other pupils have connections with South Africa, Uganda, Wales and my latest pupil, judging by the name is probably Turkish – German. 

 This experience, late in my life, has unearthed a memory of teaching your sister and, years later you to drive.

When your sister reached the appropriate age I readily agreed to teach her to drive. Now, as a trained driving instructor I can, within the first two hours lesson, have even the most useless pupil driving around with some confidence. Looking back it seemed to take a long time and endless patience to get both of you beyond the kangaroo hopping stage.

My only clear memory of teaching your sister was of being pestered into taking her out one evening. Despite having had a very stressful day I reluctantly gave in, forgetting entirely that I had taken a couple of Kalm pills, pills that claimed to reduce stress along with any other vital signs of life. Your Sister was fairly competent at this point but still needed occasional prompting. Of course, inevitably, a crisis developed. Hurtling towards a line of parked cars with a car coming towards her she asked in an increasingly shrill voice for advice. Eventually, her shrieking penetrated my Kalm pill induced coma and I famously told her to ‘do what you like’ nowadays encapsulated in the phrase ‘whatever’. Surprisingly, despite a noisy clattering of door mirrors your sister and the car survived.

Nearly ten years later it was your turn to experience my amateur driving instruction techniques, techniques that had not progressed over the decade. You took your first tentative moves at the same place as your sister; the site, at the time occupied by the abandoned offices and factory premises of the John Collier tailoring company and now replaced by a leisure complex. After the mandatory period of hops and engine stalls you started to progress quite well and within a few weeks you were confidently motoring around the industrial site roads, which included a small roundabout. One evening, at the end of our session, impressed with your confidence I told you to drive us home. You did remarkably well until we arrived at the infamous four lane Otley roundabout.

Of course, in retrospect, the responsible and sensible thing to do was to stop you before the roundabout and take over the driving. But you seemed so calm; I completely missed the white knuckles, the beads of sweat on the brow and staring eyes. You did well and negotiated the chaos of the late rush hour traffic and amid a cacophony of car horns and squealing tyres to emerge safely on the other side. It was a while before recovered from the trauma and asked me to take you out driving again.

I often relate this story to my pupils as a ‘don’t run before you can walk’ parable. It always raises a laugh; something you certainly didn’t do at the time.

Laura

Did I read on your Sister’s blog (post entitled Slip of the Tongue) that the 5 year old had exclaimed “Oh, shit!” at your Sister’s house?

This reminds me of a caravaning holiday in, of all places Bangor, with Rosemary and Martin. Martin and I were stood in the doorway of somewhere which must have had toilet facilities. You as a six year old pushed past us saying in a loud voice. “I need a piss!”

I’m not quite sure where you picked that up from.

Love Pops

This weeks subject is Portraits.  For once I found it fairly easy and I went with the first thing I thought of.

I wrote this post almost a year ago, give or take a week, which encapsulated the many faces of my daughter, aged 4.  It’s only a small percentage of the faces she can pull.

It still makes me smile, like she does.

When you’ve read this get yourself back over to Tara’s and check out all the other Gallery Portrait posts.

In the main it’s not a problem … for me.  Sometimes my nightly disturbances can be disruptive for the husband especially when we move onto my sleepwalking.

My first episode of sleepwalking was when I was 15 and I woke up running down the stairs away from the MAHOOSIVE mechanical spider that was chasing me. It’s confusing to wake up in an upright position, more so to be moving at speed down stairs.

The second time was when I was 18 and I walked into my stepbrothers room in the middle of the night, naked.  He described it as being visited by the Elephant Man.

Other than that I have night terrors, usually about spiders.  I wake up scrabbling about in bed trying to get rid of the hundreds of spiders that are crawling about on our bed.

In more extreme moments I leap up convinced that I need to rid the room of the hundreds of spiders whilst shrieking about ‘the spiders, the spiders’.  I climb over the husband, elbowing him, waking him, switch on the bedroom light, blinding not only myself but him also.

Then I slowly wake up wondering why I am stood in our brightly lit room at 3am with the husband looking at me as if I am mad.

So after all the times I have woken the husband up with this particular spider/light/bed scenario did he do the following this morning.

I was brushing my teeth and I heard a kerfuffle in our bedroom. I went in for the children to tell me that there was a huge spider in the room.  This is not a problem during waking hours, I am not scared of spiders in my day to day life.

However he then said … “It was a great big ugly thing, it’s gone under the bed now.  That will have been crawling in and out of your mouth all night” followed by a Beavis & Butthead type “hehe” chuckle.

Cue wide eyed children looking from me to their father to the dark space under the bed where Mr Ugly Skinny Legs is hiding. I am aware that my subconscious has filed the thought of those big hairy legs sitting on my face for a 3am visitation.

So, this is just a warning to the husband … when I wake up EVERY NIGHT this week stood in the corner having blinded us both again at 3am screaming about the spiders, I just want you to know … YOU REAP WHAT YOU SOW.

Photo courtesy of Sankax on Flickr

A few weeks ago, during our regular visit to the swimming baths, my granddaughter and I discussed the plans for the day that my wife and I were to look after her and the 4 year old during the school holidays.

We decided on a gruelling schedule, a school holiday decathlon; dog walking, swimming, bowling, and football. She was excited. I assumed with an element of self delusion that she would forget the exact details and the schedule could be diluted on the day. Someone once told me to never assume anything and sure enough she remembered the exact sequence of events including the toasted cheese sandwich at the local Subway.

Fortunately, the day was warm and gloriously sunny when I picked them up from their harassed father to set out on the dog walking element.

As always the imaginary dinosaurs (3) and imaginary Labradors (5) accompanied us and our (real) dog Millie seemed unconcerned about having to share the boot area with the additional livestock.

The walk went well apart from momentarily losing contact with my grandson followed immediately by a moment of brief anxiety when I thought he had vanished over the edge of the rock outcrop.

After the walk we went home to collect my wife and have an unscheduled breakfast. Swimming was largely enjoyable; more so because it was free and not too busy. Part of the entertainment was me, playing the role of a deranged ogre, chasing both grandchildren around the pool who then attack me, knock me over in a storm of water and shrieks; this watched by my wife, three dinosaurs, five dogs and a pool attendant with pursed lips, mentally flicking through the ‘rules of the pool’ manual.

Then the five year old whom I have taught to swim (after a fashion) decided to teach the 4 year old. The coaching technique was more SS than Dale Carnegie with failure rewarded by a clout from her, tears from him and a sharp intake of breath from the dinosaurs sat in a row on the spectator’s benches.

With the teaching methods and hurt feelings smoothed out we had a session of jumping into the pool. Normally there is only the granddaughter and involves lifting her out of the water onto the side of the pool and catching her as she jumps to shouts of ‘Again Grandpa, again!’ It is physically draining. On this day there are two children; doubly draining. We are performing this in front of a sign specifically forbidding jumping and most fun things. The pool attendant is about to lose it but the session has ended and its time to leave.

After the swimming we head towards the local bowling alley via the Subway sandwich shop. The granddaughter loves the toasted cheese open sandwiches, so on her recommendation my wife and I have the same. They taste like edible plastic carrier bags melted onto on plasterboard. The kids wash this unappetising snack down with some sort of coloured rocket fuel.

Discussions at the table remind me of watching Gorbachov and his interpreter negotiating nuclear arms reduction treaty. The 4 year old grandson, his hearing and speech affected by his grommets falling out of place ‘Я могу выпить просьба дед?

Me: ‘Eh?’ my hearing is not that much better.

My wife: ‘what did he say?’

His big sister and personal interpreter with a very serious face: ‘He says if you remove your missiles from Turkey he will move his back to the Urals’ (No, only joking he actually said ‘Can I have a drink please Grandpa?’)

The bowling alley is bijou but has all the usual electronic keyboards and screens and vending machines that dispense very small sweets for large amounts of money.

Surprisingly, the 4 year old manages not to trap his fingers between the balls as they emerge from the contraption that returns the balls. The appearance of some small friends in the aisle next to us combined the effect of the Subway rocket fuel concoction leads to a small but friendly skirmish.

Back home a pre-recorded film ‘James and the Giant Peach’ buys me a little time to have a furtive kip only to be rudely nudged awake by the four year old who wants to play football.

There is no escape.

His sister has that scrunched up serious ‘you promised’ look on her face.

Why she couldn’t just have the subject as ‘dog’, ‘child’ or ‘holiday snap’ I don’t know.

So, I spent FOREVER going through pictures only to find pictures of my children, our wedding and/or our dog which I decided were boring.

So I slept on it and the following morning dug these out and found some pictures I am very proud of.

Three pictures of a mother and child.  My mother.  I am the child.  I only had my Mum for nine years. I have difficulty with memories during those years.

Luckily I have photos, quite a few in fact. I don’t just look at the photos, I pore over them  I wonder what she was thinking, doing, wearing … just any glimpse of anything that makes me feel a bit closer to her.

Now that I am a mother they mean even more to me.

I think the would have been proud of me, as I am of her.