Living with Ebay

Earlier this week as I scrolled my way through Facetube to see what my friends had eaten for lunch, a suggested post popped up. It was from Ebay of all people, offering me 5 tips for getting the kids ready for school in the morning. (Clearly they haven’t read my blog post about the school run or they wouldn’t have felt the need to write it.) Firstly, what in the name of bloody hell is Ebay doing telling me how to be better organised? Shouldn’t they just stick to letting dubious individuals sell tat to people who’ve drunk too much wine and have a Paypal account? Curiosity is a powerful thing and before I knew it, I had tapped the screen and was reading about how to organise the morning bedlam in a more “streamlined” manner. I thought the article would just say “Drink less wine and go to bed earlier. The End” but no, there were indeed 5 real tips for me to implement. So here goes, I am going to share these tips with you because after all, we are mates.

1) Take Baths and Showers at Night

Crikey, is that not an obvious one? Who has the time to bath or shower during the hours of daylight? This is a rubbish tip.

2) Pick out clothes once a week for the entire week

And put them where Ebay? Oh wait, it is suggested that I “keep them organised in a hanging closet organiser”. Isn’t that just another name for a wardrobe? I think Ebay is tactfully telling me to put all clothes away instead of leaving them in a towering heap in the airing cupboard.

3) Prep lunch box items ahead of time

Now, I was totally with this one until Ebay suggested that I “wash and prepare vegetables and fruits into single serve containers and divide snacks into individual servings” before placing them in a snack bin. Then I must “label each bin and allow the kids to pick something from each bin and build their own lunch”. What the hell? I can just see Britney (not her real name) having the mother of all tantrums when she can’t choose between a packet of Skips and a packet of Monster Munch at 20 past 8 in the morning.

4) Choose easy and fast breakfasts

Absolutely. I wasn’t convinced by Ebay’s suggested “freezer breakfast sandwiches that can be reheated and eaten on the go”. Surely Lidl’s breakfast biscuits are a more nutritious and tasty alternative? The very thought of a frozen sandwich makes me want to develop an eating disorder, who on earth would want a defrosted sandwich first thing in the morning? It’s hard enough to get Britney to eat a Pop Tart; if I offered her a reheated sandwich she would be ringing Childline in seconds. Ebay finishes this tip by telling me to “Plan ahead so you aren’t scrambling in the morning over the stove trying to cook a full meal for your kids”. Believe me Ebay, scrambling over my stove cooking a full meal for anyone in the morning is never, ever, going to happen. To be fair it hardly ever happens in the evening so the chances of it happening before 8.30am are absolutely nil.

5) Keep the television turned off

Finally; a great tip. It’s much easier for Britney to get dressed when she isn’t being hypnotised by the child narcotic that we call CBBC. Unfortunately Newsround is on CBBC in the morning and it’s a fabulous programme. It tells Britney what is going on in the world and she is then able to brief me during the school run. This in turn makes me look as though I actually pay attention to current affairs when I’m chatting with the other Mummies at the school gate.

I think my “Drink less wine and go to bed earlier” is far better advice and Ebay should stick to what they do best. And allowing many traders to offer their wares for sale on their website is indeed what they do best. I love the whole idea of bidding on an item. It’s a way of satisfying your gambling addiction with the added bonus that you won’t lose any money if you don’t get the thing that you want. How clever. And another amazing benefit is if you have a few glasses of wine before going on Ebay, you also get a nice surprise when the item lands on your doormat. Because you have absolutely no recollection of purchasing it.

Pedal Power

My friend Alex Polizzi, is a keen cyclist and proceeds to cycle miles and miles clad in Lycra. When I first met her I naturally thought that she hadn’t got a car, or if she had one, I assumed it must be broken. I would often see her and her other half, cycling along the road, smiling as though they were enjoying themselves, giving a cheery wave, eyes bright behind those bonkers sunglasses that cyclists wear.

It was quite a shock to find that Alex has a fully functioning vehicle and she simply chooses to cycle to keep fit and enjoy the scenery.

It was also quite a shock to find that I am now the proud owner of a bicycle. No, there’s nothing wrong with my car, but I’ve got a bike. It happened quite suddenly this shift into the world of all things Lycra. When I was bikeless, my daughter Britney (not her real name) had one of those crap pink bikes with white tyres and tassels on the handlebars. Although she loved the basket on the front of it, the bike weighed slightly more than my horse and therefore it was, in fairness a bit of a challenge to ride when you’re only 7. Looking at the corner of the shed where all Britney’s old scooters, flickas and bikes were, we realised that everything had been second hand. So with Britney’s birthday looming we headed off to Halfords to purchase her first real bike. In my day you were given your cousin’s old bike and you got on and rode it. When you grew to the point that your knees were hitting the handlebars, Dad got a spanner from his tool shed and raised the seat higher so the bike lasted you a bit longer.

Good grief, I had no idea about children’s bikes today. Apparently, girls tend to be longer in the leg and shorter in the torso and that’s why the only bike than fitted Britney cost more than our kerosene bill for the entire year. And then there was the cycling helmet to purchase. Being a horse rider I’m used to wearing my skid lid and therefore we were not leaving Halexpensivefords until Britney had a correctly fitting helmet. My riding hat has an outer shell made from glass fibre with a thick polystyrene layer, padding on the inside and a strap to fasten it that is so complicated not even Stephen Fry could work out how to unfasten it. When I was much younger and hats were nowhere near as safe as they are now, I managed to bounce along the road on my head, crack my hat and avoid concussion. So I was more than a little dubious when Britney was standing in front of me wearing a holey piece of plastic lined with polystyrene, held in place with a nylon strap.

Crikey, if my child is going to be on the public highway without a metal cage to protect her, I want her wearing a full-face crash helmet and some body protection that resembles that of an American football player. Not a plastic hat, a pair of Lycra shorts and some fingerless mitts.

Undeterred; and with my other half’s credit card glowing red we marched from Halpriceyfords with a shiny new bike in a box and a plastic colander for protection.

The next day we kitted Britney up with her colander and headed off; Victoria Pendleton Jnr on her new bike and me and the other half walking casually behind. When we returned home two hours later, red in the face and our clothes soaked in perspiration my other half declared that we too, must get bikes. It made sense, running along the road screaming “Stoppppppp!” at a madly peddling child was only going to get us arrested. Luckily, Sporty Friend had 2 bikes she wanted to sell and she kindly said we could even have his and hers colanders as well.

The first afternoon we ventured out as a family on wheels was something of a success. We cycled to my brother’s house, had a gin and tonic, cycled on to my parents’ house, had a gin and tonic and cycled home. It was lovely. The ride home was particularly lovely. So after one bike ride, I obviously had to buy all the Lycra in the world and a couple of high visibility jackets to ensure that speeding locals don’t knock us down. I also had to buy some mad sunglasses as we got sick of getting flies in our eyes and a bag to fasten onto the bike frame to put my vape stick in. One thing I have discovered is that a gel seat cover and padded leggings should be sold as standard with every bicycle purchased, in fact if I were Prime Minister I would make it law instead of worrying about Grammar schools. The padded pants do feel as though someone has stuffed a large Pampers nappy into your knickers but once you are sitting on your bike, they are wonderful.

I also took the liberty of asking our local friendly policeman if there is any law about riding your bicycle whilst under the influence of alcohol. I told him I was asking “for a friend” as I didn’t want to arouse his suspicion and here’s the best bit: there is no law regarding riding a bicycle whilst over the limit, as there is no limit. He did advise me that if I was swerving across 2 lanes on the A1 he would chuck me and my bike into the back of his police car and take me home. Well, I could think of worse ways to get home, I mean in a Skoda Yeti for a start. There is also no speed limit for cyclists although you can be done for “Pedalling Furiously”, so maybe I should make it my aim in life to get done for that. Perhaps downhill and with a following wind I might be in with a shout.

If you’re out on your bike this weekend in your plastic helmet, wear something bright and stay safe.

Country Living Vs Countryfile

The other day I found myself flicking through the September copy of Country Living magazine. I quite like Country Living, as it has lovely photographs that I can happily look at for hours and pretend my house resembles the ones in the photos. These houses either look like a beach hut or a “Country Home”. The latter always makes me laugh, as it appears that the people who design them cannot afford carpets. There are stained floorboards, bleached floorboards and my personal favourite are the reclaimed floorboards. Reclaimed floorboards obviously come from a real country house, where the occupant has realised that they are bloody freezing and has ripped them all out to install underfloor heating. For half a year we lived in a house with beautiful stained floorboards. We moved into this mansion of a house in September and marvelled at the beautiful rustic floorboards until the first evening we spent there when a bit of a breeze picked up. Being perched precariously on the top of a Moor the wind swept up from the North Sea, into the vents on the side of the building, whistled between the floorboards and up the leg of my jeans as I sat on the sofa. We sat in the lounge for the remaining 6 months with our trousers tucked into our socks and enough rugs on the floor to obscure every millimetre of floorboard. The people who lived in the house before us must have worn salopettes while they were watching Eastenders.

Country Living also assumes that if you live in the country you will “celebrate the season by heading outdoors to gather a sun-ripened bounty of fruits and berries”. What the? All the damsons do is attract wasps who then proceed to eat themselves drunk and become cantankerous. The birds have already made a start with the plums and the windfalls that don’t get squashed into the lawn by children’s feet, get pulped by the mower. I have so many apples I don’t know what to do with them and I have 6 sloes, so not enough to make a mouse-sized bottle of sloe gin. Country Living also advises me to “Mark the harvest with a special lunch or party showcasing an array of fresh seasonal food and drink” and that I should “decorate the table with corn stooks and vases of late summer roses with hedgerow foliage, bright hips and berries”. I am not certain how the local farmer would feel if I had ventured into his wheat field, cut myself an armful and made some corn stooks to decorate my table, although I suspect a shotgun might be a prop in Act 1, scene 1. And I’m certainly not going to “turn hay bales into simple seating by covering them with robust material tied with twine” as I’d be picking hay out of my gravel drive for months. (Should the Editor of County Living ever get around to reading this, I’ll just point out that the bales in the photo to which I refer, were in fact straw and not hay.) I know that I may sound a little grumpy about this Country ideal, but that’s because as I read about how rush matting can soften a hard floor, I noticed something else:

There is nothing north of Warwickshire.

This confused me a bit as I know that where I live is definitely north of Nuneaton so I read the magazine again. I was determined to find something, anything to prove that the north does exist. And there was nothing. Absolutely nothing. I couldn’t even burn the sodding magazine as it is too glossy, so I settled for throwing it with great force into the recycling bin.

Luckily, the same person who had passed on Country Living magazine had also supplied me with the last 6 months worth of Countryfile Magazine. Admittedly in our household we do refer to it as Tooniefile, but again it does have lovely photographs to look at when it’s too cold and wet to venture outside. I read about how to tell a wasp from a hover fly, viewed the top 10 Country Vehicles (One was a MGB Roadster, for fecksake) and read Adam Henson waxing lyrical about buying a good ram. I hadn’t even got as far as Matt Baker writing about his pedigree bantam chickens in the May copy when I found it; the results of the 2016 Best of Britain Awards.

It turns out that the Landmark of the Year is Bamburgh Castle and that my friends is most definitely not in Warwickshire, it’s right here in Northumberland. Turning to the next page the Heritage Site of the Year is Hadrian’s Wall and even John Craven commented that it was a “worthy winner”. Reassured that there is life north of Warwickshire I turned the page once more to find that the National Park of the year is Northumberland. How can a county boast such greatness and yet be invisible to the rest of the country? Yes I know that Northumberland’s Summer falls between the 12^th and the 29^th July. And yes I appreciate that there is a lot of rain in the winter and the wind from the North Sea (when its not blowing between the floorboards and up your trouser leg) would strip paint, but why on earth does the weather forecast stop at Weatherby and begin again at Edinburgh?

Some people know where Northumberland is. The older generation come here on holiday after the kids have gone back to school and they will have packed their suitcases into their Suzuki Swifts and be beating retreat back to Warwickshire in the next few weeks. The last bite at the cherry for our tourist trade is October half term, when the caravan and camping sites are full to breaking and you can’t get parked if you’ve run out of wine and need to nip to the Londis shop in the local village. After that, the campsites close, a lot of the restaurants close and the county begins to slip off to sleep in readiness for the madness that happens at Easter, when Northumberland suddenly bursts back into life.

So thank you Tooniefile Magazine for restoring my faith in the glorious place where I live. Unfortunately if you were on the shelf next to Country Living and I had to choose one of you to take home; I would choose the Warwickshire loving Country Living. Why? Because I don’t want to read about how to make a Bug Hotel or Ellie Harrison planting a woodland, I want to look at houses without carpets and bathrooms that resemble beach huts. I suppose that's escapism.