ODD BEHAVIOUR

I have just got back from a dinner party with my married friends (best option by far on a Saturday night when your "virtual" boyfriend is with his children) and we didn't talk about congestion charges or schools at all....

My 15 year old son and a mate were in the kitchen on my return. Is it just me or am I experiencing odd behaviour from teenage boys at the moment. Last week, when I was chatting with my son and his mate in the kitchen after a party his mate asked me a) if I had a boyfriend and b) if it was OK if he drew a rude picture.....

Tonight, my son's mate (a different one) was standing in his underpants as I walked in to the kitchen - he made a pathetically vain attempt to put his jeans back on in a slightly wobbly way. He grinned inanely at me and my son said by way of explanation "sorry mum, but he had itchy nuts", like it was completely normal. Odd behaviour.

INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF SOME CRYSTAL BOLLOCKS

I have just been to see the new Indiana Jones film and what a joy to behold it was. I have fallen in love AGAIN, for the second time this week, this time with someone more my own age. Harrison Ford has definitely "still got it" (as Roy Stride, my toyboy object of desire would say) and whilst the story line was a little more far fetched than usual, it didn't seem to matter. All the kids loved it, Kate Blanchett made a fabulously sinister KGB agent, the special effects were amazing with a very exiting battle that raged through the Amazon jungle and there were even some good jokes. The best bit about it (for me, obviously) was the happy ending for old birds....

My 7 year old's review is as follows:

"It was good because the floor was covered with termites and Indi pushed the baddie over and termites went in his mouth and carried him into their hole and ate him".

Well done to George Lucas and Stephen Spielberg. It had everything we wanted in an action film. This, his fourth film is set in 1957 during the Cold War and has apparently unleashed the fury of the Communist Party of St Petersburg who have objected to the fact that the film appears to be promoting crude, anti-communist propoganda. Harrison Ford has been told him that if he tries to go to Russia he will be "beaten and despised".

APOLOGIES X

Apologies to you all for not having the time to comment on your blogs for a while. I am missing knowing what everybody is up to and will try and make amends some time over the weekend. It is really not good when I don't comment for a while because guess what happens? I don't get comments back. My comment cupboard is bare...and I don't like it. I love comments so I must try harder. It's like anything in this world. Comments need to be nurtured and cared for, otherwise they will simply shrivel up and die. It is however a very important part of the "reasons why I blog" so I promise to do better.

It is my weekend with the children, but because they have 25 million different things to do I have asked their father to help. But he can't. He's busy. So I'm rushing around like a blue arse fly.

In the meantime, it seems that a special thanks is due to a relatively new reader, Janelle, who I believe lives in Tanzania. Check out her site - she writes beautifully - I don't have the link, but its called Ngorobob House: Life From The Hill - or you could find her in my comments section of my last post. She appears to have single handedly put Tanzania into the top 10 list of places in the world that are reading my blog most! It's sitting neatly after UK, USA, Canada, France, Belgium (thanks Zoe) and New Zealand and before Finland and Hong Kong. I am still puzzled though. I know Claire in Finland assures me that she reads my blog for more than 0.13 of a second, but in Hong Kong the average time on my site is 00:00:07 - which makes for exceptionally speedy reading.

Suddenly it appears to be half term and I have done nothing about it. I received an email this morning from "super-dad" in my 7 year olds class suggesting a vast array of "things to do with the children for half term" - bowling, Thorpe Park, Legoland...all my idea of hell. I emailed him back thanking him for his suggestions but pointing out that I was more from the school of "bloody hell, what are you doing at home? What do you mean you're on holiday? Oh". I did try quite hard to go away with a girlfriend and one of her children (yes, and my children..) We looked at lots of options, but it just didn't seem to quite come together. Teenage son only has two days holiday anyway and then he's got exams and to be honest, sometimes, it's quite nice to just stay at home feeling pleased that you don't have to get up early and make packed lunches and that you haven't spent lots of money getting ungrateful children somewhere else.

"BLOGGERS DROOP"

Before I begin, I would just like to thank you all from the bottom of my heart for taking the time to vote for me in the 2007 "Best Mommy Blog" competition. I really appreciate your efforts but just thought I might point out that IT IS NOT WORKING. I AM NOT WINNING. YOU HAVE TO TRY HARDER AND VOTE MORE. Not that it's about winning. Obviously. However, I am completely open to bribes and won't publish your suggestions if you don't want me to. I am setting up an account in Nigeria as we speak.

In addition, it appears that my attempts to Amercianise my posts in order to increase readership across the water and consequently gain more votes is not working and instead, it has been suggested that I swing the other way completely and go for the stereotypical British terminology instead. This is unlikely to work but I might have to try. During my crisis meeting this morning (aka coffee with two friends) about what could be done, one of them suggested using desperate measures..she thought I should set up a webcam and take all my clothes off in order to increase votes. SO not funny...

Consequently I am not having a good day. I took my dodgy spine to a physiotherapist today and he is a bit worried. He thinks I am "flogging" certain parts of it to death during my classes. I suspect that certain exercises are putting too much strain on key vertebrae. It is hard to avoid adverse stress on the body when you have to demonstrate the moves 50 million times a day and have to pretend to be super-fit and pain free at all times - I can't exactly turn up in a plaster body cast and leap about in front of my class promoting my particular form of exercise. It would not be a good look.

In addition, it has come to my attention that my stomach has gone all wobbly. I have developed "Bloggers Droop". I seem to spend an inordinate amount of time trying to tuck vast folds of flesh into the front of my jeans, like men in suits tuck their shirts in. To compound my concerns, earlier today I found my old "Etch A Sketch" in a box that had been in storage. When I was young I loved this toy. This may have had more to do with the fact that it was my only toy, rather than my top toy of choice. I would spend hours trying to write my name or draw a house in that ridiculous jagged way that made you feel as if you had something wrong with your motor skills. It became an overnight sensation when it was launched in 1960, appealing to a generation of children who'd been raised on television. It is bright red and shaped like a TV screen with two big dials that can be controlled using both hands and has become a bit of an icon. I got hugely exited and sat down to show my children. All they kept doing was tapping the screen expecting something to happen, which spoilt the whole thing because it meant they were hugely disappointed that there was NO touch sensitive screen..."what do you mean you have to twiddle these dials? Why would you do that?" You can imagine that trying to encourage them to design a jagged house or write their name in the style of somebody who was extremely drunk didn't work very well either. It was a bit like trying to persuade them that "Pacman" was a really fun game or that we actually used record players.

ANYWAY, even worse than all of that was when I showed them how to erase the picture..."NO OF COURSE THERE'S NOT A DELETE BUTTON, IT'S MUCH COOLER AND MORE ICONIC THAN THAT" I told them..."all right, mum, calm down, relax, it's only a game..." I couldn't quite bring myself to explain that the reason that I was shouting was that when I had just had a revelation and it wasn't good. I am no longer youthful. I can no longer shake an "Etch A Sketch" without my stomach wobbling in a hideous uncontrollable manner.

The kids are right. Rubbish toy.

THEN, to make everything a little worse, I hurt my neck when I tried to flick my hair in manner of small child with ridiculous flicky fringe. It is a sad state of affairs when you are so old that in order to do a joke hair flick move you have to do several warm up neck exercises.

I am feeling very old. Arse. Sod. Bugger. (Blame Expat Mum again for rude English swear words).

Ps. Because it is late and I am having a bad day I have been childish, unreasonable and selfish about winning an award. Tomorrow I will make amends and tell you to vote for everybody else instead because I am not worthy. So best just to ignore me entirely.

HOLY GUACAMOLE!!

"Expat Mum" in Chicago has given me top tips on what to say to attract more American readers to my blog, in order to vote, so I am now going to try and integrate the words effortlessly during a brief breakdown of "exiting things that have happened today:-"

"Holy Murgatroyd" (is that a joke? What on earth is that?) - when I picked my daughter up from school today she couldn't stop laughing. She said that her Mandarin teacher had found somebody's cricket box* on top of his desk and didn't know what it was. She said, he looked at it for ages and then put it to his face like a face mask and breathed in heavily like he was wearing a gas mask. Not good.

"Holy hell/moly/cow" I had emailed my teenage son's cricket coach to say that he couldn't play on Saturday because we had a family party to attend and his email came back saying "the team can't do without him, he is the most brilliant sportsman and does so much and the rest of the team are depending on him and look up to him and would be really disappointed if he's not there"..."heavens to betsey" I thought to myself, I have never known anything like it..being the sort of person that was one of the last to be chosen for the team. "Awesome".

"Lordy Lordy" (not sure this is really working is it?), I had thought that tonight we were all going to attend my teenage son's football presentation. I paid for four meals and they are now going to have to refund me the money. I had forgotten that his team are having a separate presentation next week because their manager is banned from the venue. Last year, he punched another parent in the face after the presentation and knocked out several of his teeth.

*Cricket "box" for my American readers is a hard smelly codpiece that men wear under hideous nylon white trousers whilst playing the most boring game in the world, to protect their gonads from an excessively hard cricket ball.

* Dictionary definition a little more fair "a shield for protecting a man's genitals in sport, especially cricket"

Talking of genitals...this now leads me on to some other significant, far more interesting and often embarrassing language differences between the Brits and the Americans...."beaver" springs to mind. When we lived in Australia we had some American friends who lived in "Beaver Street" and they had to move. "Fanny" is another word that if misunderstood, can cause huge confusion.

Another word out of context caused an American friend of mine to laugh and laugh - we might say "I was diddled out of a job". This is apparently not what you would say in America.

...and finally would someone in the States please explain what "pegging" is. I believe it also is quite rude. Another friend had put a whole presentation together for his bank and they had done a whole Powerpoint presentation based on what they had decided to call "The Art Of Pegging". It was not allowed to be used.

BABYSITTING DUTY

I'm exhausted. It was unfortunate that the "Scouting For Girls" concert got rearranged for the same week as the Pinter play. Normally I try and stagger my nights out in order to avoid complete collapse. My 7 year old has just asked me who's "babysitting" tonight, me or my lovely babysitter. "Me", I told him. "You? OH NO! Are you sure you haven't got book group or anything, why don't you just ring a few friends or go out for dinner...I really want Joanna to babysit - she's really really nice".

I am definitely staying in now. Be warned. If I haven't passed out, I will be blogging later.

Two minutes later, "mum, please ask her to babysit, I feel really sorry for her now, she was really looking forward to babysitting tonight and now what's she going to do tonight..."

Have just put him in bed and I guess in order to make me feel better he said to me "mum I'm really, really going to miss you". "Why" I asked, "where are you going?" "I'M GOING TO BED!!" and I've got to stay in my bed all night long and today is the twenty wunth and I am not going to see you until the twenty tooth"....

"SCOUTING FOR GIRLS" REVIEW - SHEPHERDS BUSH EMPIRE

I am now officially in love. Whilst everybody else in the country was holding their collective breath over the football, I and 1,999 other hot and sweaty people were watching "Scouting For Girls" at the Shepherds Bush Empire. The London streets were virtually empty. It was bizarre. I went with a friend who's husband is a Chelsea supporter and took my son and his mate. It was brilliant.

Having worked at EMI for years, I've seen quite a few concerts in my time and this was right up there with the best of them. The lead singer, Roy Stride was perfect. His voice is loverly, very sexy and he was really enjoying himself. He worked brilliantly with his bass guitarist, Greg Churchhouse and his drummer, Peter Ellard. They had a lead guitarist as well, but I didn't catch his name.

We know the words to all the songs because it was the only CD I took with us to France and therefore we listened to it endlessly. My 7 year old thinks it's "I Wish I Was James Blunt", rather than "James Bond", which he likes to sing in a ridiculously high voice because he thinks he's being funny, but apart from that, he too is word perfect.

They covered the whole album and the entire audience sang along to everything. He sang his ridiculous song about falling in love with Michaela Strachan and how "she broke my heart when I was 12". He then talked about her coming backstage at one of their gigs for photos and how he "accidentally managed to touch her arse". "She's still got it" he said. Which got me thinking...maybe he really likes older women...

Do you think if I write a song called "Roy Stride, you broke my heart when I was 43" it might become a huge hit and then he'd come and see me backstage and I could accidentally touch his arse?

No. I didn't think so.