Toilet training

When tensions are running high between siblings due to exceptionally hot weather, teenage sensitivities and hunger (the responsible adult in the house only just realised it's 5pm and there's no plan for dinner yet), don't waste the bad feeling they have for each other. Use the time constructively to deliver a short object lesson in cleaning the toilet bowl.

If you are very, very lucky, the stars will align at this moment and when you nip to the toilet before dashing to Lidl, you will discover that toilet user or users unknown have once again left skid marks and pretended not to notice.

Decide that your strategy must change as neither cleaning it up without comment nor cornering spawn one at a time and sensitively broaching the subject to be met with shocked expressions and claims of 'That definitely wasn't me' are clearly not long term solutions.

Instead, gain the attention of all present and temporarily remove screen privileges. Distract with dinner-related tasks and explain what is about to happen. Prepare for resistance, but power through and point out that the pizza will be ready in 7 short minutes, by which time the unpleasantness will be over.

Assemble in the bathroom. Explain to the spawn that they can determine the order they clean in, but that everyone will get a turn. In fact, everyone will get more than one turn if that's what the job demands. Hand out the toilet roll and bleach and supervise the queue.

Be surprised at how efficiently the job can be done. Supervise the squirting of the bleach and the final flush. Congratulate your team as they wash their hands and file out the bathroom.

Da-daaah!

Job done. Not only is the toilet bowl perfectly clean and ocean fresh, but tensions between the spawn will have melted away. They will have bonded with each other during this team building exercise and now be united in their annoyance with you. Luckily you are an adult and your sense of self worth does not depend on their approval.

Eat pizza together 7 minutes later and discuss the best bits and worst bits of your day. The worst bit will be likened to class detentions which apparently 'never work'. I disagree. The object lesson was clearly effective because we're still talking about it and the toilet is clean. 

Life begins...

They say life begins at 40. I'm not sure that's true, but I have experienced some recent revelations in this new(ish) decade so it will be interesting to see how things pan out. OK- So far we have:

1: Cooking is less painful when planned and shopped for in advance. (See more details here).

2: Parenting a teenager is very different to parenting a toddler. Toddlers can do your head in, but they're easily distracted by bubbles or twigs or Milky Way stars and they sleep for half their lives anyway, leaving much respite time to drink wine and watch trashy TV. Teenagers have far more clever arguments at their disposal and are unbelievably stubborn and less prone to the allure of twigs. And they need less sleep - even if you give them wine. Teenagers can also make a parent behave like a toddler, which is annoying.

3: If you like things clean and organised and share a home with other people who are old enough to make things clean and organised but don't, just ask them. Then ask them again. And again. (thanking them in between times when stuff gets done). They are not ignoring the mess and disorder that is so apparent to you - they just don't see it. In the same way I have a mental block in finding Bristol airport and rely on the sat nav EVERY SINGLE TIME, so it is with some people and mess. Clean up together then watch Obsessive Compulsive Cleaners and marvel at how mentally unhinged everyone else is.

4: If your evening could involve either running a bath while putting the kids to bed then soaking in it for 2 hours with a book and a cup of tea until your pulse is pounding in your head and all the hot water runs out, OR having a 5 minute shower before climbing into bed before 11pm to a strategically placed hot water bottle or the prospect of intimate relations- choose the latter. Always. Time is money, people.

5: Care must be taken while multi-tasking - or it just becomes multi failing at different things. Like cooking the meal you planned then writing this blog during the simmering phase with no timer. See?

Annoying. The pan has only just recovered from the last distraction disaster.

(To be continued)

Cooking issues (ongoing)

Our Cookiemoon is definitely fading. There's less enthusiasm for picking menus. Shopping is still fun and educational, but I only get willing volunteers if the alternative involves homework or getting ready for bed. After 20 years of meandering up and down the aisles in a carefree manner, I falter and panic without a list. The putting away of stuff on return home is getting old with K and me doing rock paper scissors to see who gets the fridge, and that's before the cooking part has even happened yet.

Hmm.

I can scrutinise our lifestyle and analyse it to death, but I think my basic problem is I like the kitchen to look like this:

But it often looks like this.

It also involves me spending much time doing this.

When I'd much rather be spending time with them (plus the 

biggest one who has refused photography permission).

Doing things like this.

And making things like this.

Then arguing over this.

Can someone please hurry up and invent this?

That would be great. 

Keep on sweeping sweeping sweeping

As Street Pastors, we spend our duty nights meandering through the town centre from 11pm onwards, chatting to whoever is around and giving out lollies, flip flops, cups of water and spikies. We also pick up abandoned pint glasses and bottles and sweep up any broken glass. 

It's fun. Most people we meet love that we are out there looking out for them and we generally summarise the busyness of the shift with a breakdown of:

• bottles and glasses binned
• consumables distributed
• requests for photos 
• hugs received

Once a bloke even dropped his trousers for me to let me wobble his dodgy kneecap, the result of a rugby tackle gone bad. We also get the occasional request for sexual favours, for which we have neither insurance or training, so these are gracefully declined.

One night during the Summer just gone there was a massive amount of broken glass, far more than we've ever seen in our little town. There's usually at least one breakage per night, sometimes none at all, but on this particular night there were about 8 different areas of bottle, pint glass and ash tray debris at various points over a 1/4 mile stretch through town. 

We conclude these incidents were related. We propose the following explanations:

a) These acts were performed by a solitary individual with boy/girlfriend discord. Upon leaving the tapas bar by the river s/he walked up the hill to the bus station, stopping en-route to randomly propel nearby glass items that fell within visual range. Individual then left the area.

b) Person or persons unknown broke the glass for us and shall report back in due course with a dossier of our corporate glass sweeping ability. We shall be graded in all areas of the task including (but not limited to) allocation of duty, length of time between smash and sweep and how much debris we leave behind. Extra marks given if we flash a bit of ankle on the way down or if the designated sweepie is of retirement age. 

c) A public spirited individual who thinks we deserve more credit than we currently get wanted to boost our public relations record with the locals, many of whom stood around us as we swept and lauded our efforts at each affected area. (If this is the case- THANK YOU whoever you are. But really- it's not necessary).

Like Pavlov's dog, we Street Pastors salivate uncontrollably at the sight of broken shards of razor sharp glass. We cannot resist cleaning it up immediately lest the next barefooted carrier of beautiful but troublesome 6" heels severs a pedal artery and bleeds to death in front of us as we have run out of flip flops (we are TWENTY FIVE MINUTES away from the nearest A&E people!)

I think of us as a kind of reverse version of The Doozers in Fraggle Rock, who spend their lives constructing elaborate crystalline structures that the Fraggles consume. 

I would be the one called Daisy.

Recycling

Everything is recycled from our front door here in S Wales. And we recycle everything we can, especially since the litter police changed their landfill policy and now refuse to pick up black bags. Like ever. Now landfill rubbish must be disposed of in council issue grey bags, a limited supply of which is given to each household. Worry ye not. We don't use that many black bags anyway because we recycle anything the council will take.

This normally occurs with such minimal intrusion into everyday life that it's not worth a thought or a blog. But we recently missed the Monday food bin collection 3 weeks in a row and things got unpleasant. Our reasons were sound yet avoidable:


Week 1: Slept in and missed it. Usually up for school but it's the holidays. Never mind- there's only 2x little bags in there- plenty of room for more.

Week 2: Off on holiday- yipee! Fridge cleaned out (which was a mank job in itself) and contents bagged and added to the food bin. It's getting full in there now. Largely due to the whole butternut squash we all forgot about and 1/2 melon which adopted the smell of salami after being in residence next to it in the fridge. Bleugh. Food-bin left in front garden for collection in 2 days time...

Week 3: ... Ah- but bin didn't cross the sacred mono-blocked line onto the tarmaced pavement and our food recycling is there to greet us when we return. Food bin people are notoriously wary of reaching 2' into a resident's private front garden and collecting anything that may be lurking in one of their own receptacles, lest they be sued for theft.

The next food collection is still 4 days away and we have a problem. The bin is 3/4 full of decomposing foodstuffs, a small colony of maggots and several dozen adult flies (who are probably babysitting).

It is rank in there. The food bin people will never take this on Monday! Even if I position it correctly on the pavement and gift wrap it.

Keith is away at a gig. In-laws will be here on Monday. I want this sorted well before then anyway. I have to man up and deal with the bin. I clean the entire house and cook a proper meal and everything. I am working towards the domestic epicentre of foulness. Tea will be ready in maybe 10 minutes. Do I deal with this now before eating and get it out the way? Or wait until after tea and maybe see everything again?

Do it now...  Do it now...  Do it now...  I summon the children and give them jobs:

M: Hold the Dettol wipes and bleach. I'll need those in a minute.
J: Stand there and hold all this brown packing paper and extra large compostable bags. Open one of them now, ready for the skanky food.
E: Bring me basin of water with bleach and a cloth that will be binned after this is all over. 

I approach the bin with marigold gloves and a certain amount of trepidation. You know how little boys are meant to be into bugs and spiders and all things a little bit gross? Not my kids. They already want to be somewhere else. Jackson looks quite pale actually. Madi is standing 10 feet away, eyes shut and holding her nose.

I take a deep breath and open the bin. Flies buzz out. Maggots are squirming among the rancid contents. The oldest bags have bio-degraded and split apart. The oldest things that used to be food have liquified. Some of the maggots have drowned in it.

How can stuff that is essentially edible and nutritious transform into something so corrupt and poisonous in less than a month? I could add a picture of maggots and rubbish right here. But that wouldn't convey the smell- It was e v i l.

I started picking out what I could using the brown paper to reinforce the fragile bags. J couldn't open the big compostable bags so E took over, holding one open for me while trying to remain as far away as possible from what I was holding. I lowered the decomposing food into the new bag as carefully as possible. But there was a certain amount of spatter. And maggots fell onto the driveway.

M and J protested loudly and ran inside. E desperately wanted to join them but I growled 'Stay where you are and hold the bag!!' in a voice that scared both of us.

Down and down I reached into the rancid soup of disintegrating food-bin filth. And slowly transferred it bit by bit into the bag Ethan was reluctantly holding.

Eww Eww Eww...

It was the singular most disgusting thing I have ever had to do in my whole life. And I have done a fair few disgusting things. I used to be a nurse- I got paid to do some of them. I have smiled and chatted with elderly patients and not gagged while dressing necrosing leg ulcers. I've had 3 babies and been involved in more than one drunken night out which ended with someone losing a night's worth of vodka in reverse. I have inserted one of my own fingers inside the body of another human being in order to deliver a prescribed medication. I have been involved in the unblocking of portable toilets at festivals which involved handling used tampons that were not my own. 

This was worse.

Once the solid contents had been evacuated, there was 4-5 inches of putrid orange water in the bottom of the bin, with dozens of maggot carcases floating in it.

This was disposed of down the nearest drain, then the bin bleached and rinsed out three times. It is still recovering in the front garden. 

I spent a lonnnggg time in the bath and am recovering on the couch with a glass of wine. And I can still smell the bin.