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Oooooh I love a lie in…………… never feckin happens, I am menopausal after all, but the one day it does I have, as always, left everything I was supposed to do until the last bloody minute. 

Before actually checking that I have feeling in all my limbs prior to departing the bed, I threw the covers back with some serious gusto and in one amazing, ninja type movement managed to punch the beloved in the face (the bonus) AND get up with one dead leg and face plant the pant draw (the drawback………….. did you get that? Even with a head injury I am on fire!) 

So with his royal highness shouting obsenities at me, I limp as fast as I can out of the bedroom with no plans to return anytime soon as he can be positively murderous when woken on a Sunday morning, especially with a good ol’ right hook in the temple. 

So, let the tasks commence! 

I figure, with the amount of stuff I have to get through in a short space of time I would begin by hoovering the house totally naked. Hear me out. My thought process was that it might speed me up a bit being feckin freezing ‘en all. 

Ah feck it, who am I kidding I had left our bedroom so bloody fast that I had forgotten to bring clothes with me and I could hear the fecker upstairs still taking my name in vain on this the holy day. 

So, as I was whizzing around with me Miele, I caught sight of the landing mirror and right behind me was an enormous ghostly apparition in a fat suit right. I’m not sure if it was the sound of my own screaming or the sudden realisation that said apparition was actually a 51 year old me that sent me flying backwards landing with 100% precision into the laundry basket. This would not have been an issue, except having stuck to my new plan of staying on top of things, I HAD actually done all the washing which left my sizeable rear end full access into said laundry basket and there I stayed, stuck for several minutes utterly wedged in the space that would have normally held 2 weeks worth of dirty laundry.

Lesson numero un! 

Prize myself out of the laundry basket. El duce has now been woken up again by the commotion and is screaming at me

“Christ on a bike woman, let me SLEEP!”

Oh sod him. Miserable git. The feeling is now returning to my left leg which is handy because with all the bare flesh on show I was a little bit too much of a dead ringer of the ol Hunchback of Notre Dame. Poor chap. 

The ring at the doorbell was the last thing I needed, especially as I was waiting for the delivery of my new iron (other new year’s resolution – don’t just iron hair, do clothes too). I shouted down to Mr Fed Ex that I would be down in a flash. But there is trouble afoot. No way can I re-enter our bedroom, so I grab the largest coat I can find which just happens to be one of the kids old parkers. 

The look of horror on the poor man’s face as I answered the door was truly breathtaking. So much so that I turned to my left where the beloved has now installed a mirror so I can actually check what condition I am in when I meet these poor delivery drivers, and to my utter horror I am wearing a pair of pants on my head (excellent for sleeping in I can assure you), last night’s make up half way down my cheeks and the coat wasn’t QUITE as long as I had hoped and to finish the whole look off, I was wearing ankle socks……………………….

I am leaving the country.

Oh the trolls are up already! It’s starting to feel like sport now 🤪. Look, I had a bad day yesterday. Husband is away all week and I drove him to the station feckin early Monday morning with my PJ’s on so wasn’t really with it. So, yesterday, in order to save on diesel in my car, I decided to use his (it’s faster and nicer and full of fuel, just as a car should be). Ok, Emma, where the feck did you put his keys??? Check key basket, that’ll be a no then. Check all pockets in coats, even ones you haven’t worn in years, including ones you’ve never worn at all (the coats of others). Small panic starting to set in. Keys not only for the car, but for his office and the house and we are all going to die………………… 

Coffee, coffee will sort this. Come on Emma, think! Ok, so you walked the dog after dropping the fecker off and you wore………………………… you wore…………….. yes yes yes, you wore the massive long sleeping bag looking coat because you still had your pyjamas on!!! Oh fuck, Emma, you are a bloody genius……………………… where’s that coat?! One of the feckin kids has worn it to school. You can’t ring them, not allowed to have their phones on in lessons, so you do the next best thing, you ring their head of house who you are well known to, for a whole menagerie of fuck ups. Mr S is brilliant, as always, and goes off to find my two long suffering children. Indeed, one of them wore the coat to school, but there are no keys in the pockets. Shit fuck bollocks! 

A little more panic sets in. Ok, I did walk to the village shop and definitely didn’t wear pyjamas (did that once before and ran into the vicar who caught me retrieving all my birthday presents out of the bin on a morning after the night before – threw all the presents away and kept the wrapping paper, mildly drunk…..) – and now thinks I am part of his care in the community programme, so always try to look respectable when in “the village”. 

SO, what can be concluded from this is I wore a puffer. But I have already checked the bloody pockets of all the outer wear in the house so they can’t be in there. So, logical conclusion, they must have fallen out on the walk to the shop! Brilliant! That will be a piece of piss, retrace steps, and hey presto, keys will be found and no-one will be any the wiser. It’s an interesting one, as I discovered, trying to walk in a straight line whilst eyes fixed to pavement and surrounding shrubbery. Pavement 2 – Emma’s ankles and dignity – 0. No keys found, plenty of sightings of lovely village people mind, right at the precise time that I am wobbling around trying desperately to stay on the pavement and not die by falling into the road. It would be fair to say that I definitely looked like I’d had a skinful. Sadly, nothing could be further from the truth. 

Ok. Time to blame the kids. One of them has taken the keys as there is a front door key on them. Texts start flying backwards and forwards. Deny deny deny! What is with teenagers, every answer is no unless you are offering money or Big Macs?! 

FFS, it is nearly time to go pick the feckers up, whole day spent searching for these bastard keys. Then it happens, the phone rings, it is the beloved. Have I ever mentioned that he has several bug bears, one of them just happens to be my chaos. One of MY bug bears is that I do not have the ability to lie. So, I answer the phone and my first words, before even 
“Hello love” are 

“Right, I’ve lost your feckin carkeys, don’t know how, don’t know where, looked everywhere, walked miles, kids don’t have them, people are dying in Syria, Brexit is going break us all, I want you to find some perspective before you lose your shit………………………………….” 

The longest pause. 

“Emma, you really are extraordinary. I love you dearly, but please, please reassure me, NOW, that you haven’t spent the whole day looking for my carkeys” 

OMG! He is sympathetic!!! Oh man, everything is gonna be fine, if the car gets nicked, I am not going to have to give him my car and buy a bike. 

“Well, darling, I know how precious your car is to you, so obviously I took my foolishness and slight disorganisation seriously and felt the need to put ALL my efforts into finding your keys, I actually ran into a load of your mates from the Parish Council at one point, I’d just fallen off the pavement and they assisted me.” 

“Emma, stop, please stop.”

Oh love him, he feels really bad for me! All will be well, I can focus on Syria and Brexit again. 

“Thank you for being so understanding love, I never do these things deliberately, you know that, I am just a bit of a clutterfuck really” 

“No, Em, you are a total clutterfuck”, ah, tone changing. 

“You drove me to the station in your car and the reason you did that was because I needed my keys to get into Mum’s house in London……………………………….”

Kill. Me. Now.

Anyone gone into surgical menopause?

I did it Emma stylie

Oh dear, just been reminded about my last visit for the start of infamous journey into surgical menopause at our lovely Worthing hospital. They were essentially removing all me moving parts and turning me into a bloke which suited me fine but the beloved insisted on keeping bits of me just so you could tell us apart.

I arrived for my scheduled hysterectomy to be confronted with a plastic cup. My premature elation that they were putting me straight onto those fabulous “dancing on the ceililng” medication was somewhat subdued when I was asked to provide a “sample” to ensure that I was not infact ‘with child’ which could have been a nasty surprise for us all, child included! So in dutifully went and filled up the little cup (how do people judge these things, I needed a 2 litre coke bottle!) I put it on the bin whilst I got me draws back up. Washed my hands like a good catholic girl, then used the super hygienic pull-paper to dry off the ol’ mits and then put stepped decisively on the foot operated bin whose lid of course, as it should, flew upwards, sending my sample flying up the wall and all over my new tunic.

Oh FFS Emma, why you?! Why is it always you?! So I go to flush the loo again to try and get the ol’ juices going so I can produce another sample and very quickly discover that I have infact pulled the panic alarm and within seconds I was surrounded by nurses, porters, one junior doctor and my husband. Not in any true distress just staring aimlessly at my somewhat tasteless artwork all over the loo wall and desperately trying to pretend that I was soaked because of an over vigorous tap. Totally convinced I had got away with my latest misdemeanour, I threw back my pee covered hair and waltzed off to my bed with my sizeable derriere on full display as Ed had forgotten to tie the back up.

Let me tell you, glamour and dignity are overrated…………………………….

This was 7 years ago. Some of the nursing staff are still recovering 😩

A memory has just cropped up on my Facebook page. Welcome to the world of Emma parenting………………………

So I have just spent the day with my youngest who has had a series of medical disasters which we thought we would bundle into one day and get them all over and done with. Being a total clutter feck can be 
dead handy if you need to be more efficient with your time. As we were between hospitals, I asked her what it was like having a mother like me. The silence was just a TAD too long for comfort. But, I realised that she needed to give me a measured response as I was indeed driving and am definitely prone to “menopausal over reacting” at the moment. She reassured me that her childhood was not one of ‘I’m-going-to-need-pyschiatric-help-forever’ but then went on to say that that may not be the case for some of her friends that have crossed my path so to speak. I asked her what on earth she could possibly be talking about. Kids have the darndest memories, who knew?!

“Do you remember, Mum, when you had your big op and you came into our Year 6 classroom with your trousers on inside out?”

“Well yes, but surely that didn’t affect anyone too personally?”

“The reality is, Mum, no, they were used to it, you had done it several times before.”

“Ah”

“So what was the problem then?”

“Well I had told them that you had been in hospital having a hysterectomy but none of us really knew what that meant, so when you came in, Jake put his hand up and asked you what you had had done.”

“And?”

“Mum, you told him that you had basically been spayed. No-one talked to me for a week”.

Ok, I can see how that could be tricky.

Then she continued. Do you remember that Friday evening at the pub with the dog? Getting mildly panicked here, I realised that there were quite a few Fridays to choose from.

“Would that be the one when Spencer ate a live rabbit in front of everyone having their dinner and I managed to pull its back legs out, tried to luzz it over the fence, slightly miscalculated my underarm throw and it ended up actually flying behind me?”

“No, Mum, it was the one where you took back 7 kids and tried to get turn the spare room into a massive sleepover den by taking all the mattresses off all the beds and trying to fit them all in the spare room. You were struggling with getting two of them to lie down flat so you tried bouncing on them with what you kept describing as your “sizeable arse” but it wouldn’t go flat so you started yelling for me to come and help you.”

“So? I was being a great Mum, loads of kids, bit too much vino but hey, you were having a great time”

“Well not really.”

“Why?”

“We were all a bit frightened”

“What on earth were you frightened of?!”

“You were bouncing quite high at one point, Mum, and I was actually under the mattress………………….”

Note to self, when spending the day with teenage daughter, don’t ask too many questions.

I am doing something today that has NEVER gone well for me : I am taking a Southern Rail train up to London. I am going to talk menopause with a very important man who has never met me before. One can only wish the poor man well, he may never be the same again.

The last time I ventured up to the big smoke I was wearing a dress that was 2 sizes too small and two of my larger assets spent the entire journey attempting to leave the dress much to the amusement of a whole group of teenagers who have evidently never seen a woman who doesn’t get out much. It was only when I got off the train that I realised that perhaps it was the fact that I was wearing odd shoes that might have been the focus of their attention, or possibly they witnessed that ghastly moment when I decided to take the brave decision to use the loo on the train and did not lock the door. To be revealed on the throne with enormous pants around the ankles like a prize you win on a feckin game show is NO fun, I can assure you.

Anyway, please wish London luck, we are not good bedfellows. I have, on one occasion, had a mounted police escort for making a kerfuffle during the changing of the guard. I was only trying to get to the National hospital which was in totally the opposite direction and I got myself into a right royal state. Anyway, toodle-pip, will report back on any disasters that happen along the way. Happy Thursday everyone. You know what rhymes with Friday right? Wine

So I have just spent the day with my youngest who has had a series of medical disasters which we thought we would bundle into one day and get them all over and done with. Being a total clutter feck can be 
dead handy if you need to be more efficient with your time. As we were between hospitals, I asked her what it was like having a mother like me. The silence was just a TAD too long for comfort. But, I realised that she needed to give me a measured response as I was indeed driving and am definitely prone to “menopausal over reacting” at the moment. She reassured me that her childhood was not one of ‘I’m-going-to-need-pyschiatric-help-forever’ but then went on to say that that may not be the case for some of her friends that have crossed my path so to speak. I asked her what on earth she could possibly be talking about. Kids have the darndest memories, who knew?!

“Do you remember, Mum, when you had your big op and you came into our Year 6 classroom with your trousers on inside out?”

“Well yes, but surely that didn’t affect anyone too personally?”

“The reality is, Mum, no, they were used to it, you had done it several times before.”

“Ah”

“So what was the problem then?”

“Well I had told them that you had been in hospital having a hysterectomy but none of us really knew what that meant, so when you came in, Jake put his hand up and asked you what you had had done.”

“And?”

“Mum, you told him that you had basically been spayed. No-one talked to me for a week”.

Ok, I can see how that could be tricky.

Then she continued. Do you remember that Friday evening at the pub with the dog? Getting mildly panicked here, I realised that there were quite a few Fridays to choose from.

“Would that be the one when Spencer ate a live rabbit in front of everyone having their dinner and I managed to pull its back legs out, tried to luzz it over the fence, slightly miscalculated my underarm throw and it ended up actually flying behind me?”

“No, Mum, it was the one where you took back 7 kids and tried to get turn the spare room into a massive sleepover den by taking all the mattresses off all the beds and trying to fit them all in the spare room. You were struggling with getting two of them to lie down flat so you tried bouncing on them with what you kept describing as your “sizeable arse” but it wouldn’t go flat so you started yelling for me to come and help you.”

“So? I was being a great Mum, loads of kids, bit too much vino but hey, you were having a great time”

“Well not really.”

“Why?”

“We were all a bit frightened”

“What on earth were you frightened of?!”

“You were bouncing quite high at one point, Mum, and I was actually under the mattress………………….”

Note to self, when spending the day with teenage daughter, don’t ask too many questions.

A HUGE thank you to you all for the amazing support and love you gave me yesterday ♥️ That’s The thing with the menopause, it hits you when you least expect it, but having love and friendship is invaluable and I will be eternally grateful for all of yours.

I am glad to say that some sort of normality has returned to our house and I would like to share this little story with you. I hope it makes you smile as much as it did me 🤣

So sweet, the beloved has made a new friend. We are all so thrilled, because after a houseful of hormonal women yesterday, he has fuck all left in this house.

Eddie’s new friend is a hedgehog.

We also love the hedgehog. Not only because it is seriously cute, but it is also a genius.

Eddie is very busy and important, we know this because if I ask him what he wants for dinner his answer is always

“That’s your part of the arrangement, Emma, I am dealing with world poverty, international terrorism and managing parliament”

Let me just clarify. He’s a surveyor. Just can’t be arsed to make a decision between cremated sausages or pasta that tastes like cold sick. These are his options when I cook. Writing this, I realise the poor fecker might have a point……………………

I digress, back to the new friend. Let me explain.

So Ed’s little hedgehog friend has just done me the biggest favour EVER. It was discovered in his office (shed) at the end of the garden in one of his work bags. He was so excited that the hedgehog had chosen him that he brought it in to show us all. We all ooooo’ed and aaaaaah’ed and then told him that it chose him because he left is bastard shed door open. (We haven’t quite forgiven him for being so unsympathetic yesterday)

Anyway, so he scuttles back to his cave with his new friend and then just as quickly is back in the bloody house again.

“What now? You upset the hedgehog already? Criticised its hygiene standards or something?” ooooh, I have a devil of a tongue on me this morning and a mood to match.

“Don’t be so facetious Em, I’ve got a bit of a dilemma.”

Turns out his bag is absolutely FULL of fleas. Oh this morning is warming up to be a corker and I am not talking about the weather. Ed is the king of feckin tidiness and neurotic hygiene and his new friend has filled his brief case with fleas. I am finding it almost impossible to contain myself. The girls have been gently kicked in the shins a couple of times too to stop him from seeing our amusement.

“Ok, not a big deal, you have a spare one don’t you?”

“Well, yes but I am already running late for my meeting at the District Council so I will have to transfer everything.”

“And the problem is?”

“Well, nothing I suppose, I will just transfer everything……..” He scurries off back down to the shed with my slightly sarky words chasing him :

“Beats the hell out of bloody dog hair doesn’t it?!” Had to get that one in, the fecker is obsessed with bloody dog hair. Never got it, we have a dog, he has hair, he malts, produces dog hair, Ed is surprised. Rolls eyes. I do that a lot.

So he gets his spare one, transfers all the documents, sprays them all with fuck knows what and heads off to his very busy and important meet at the Council.

An hour later I get a phone call. A game changer when you have been feeling a bit low.

It turns out that the hedgehog was in fact Ed’s spirit animal as it really did have very high hygiene standards. It had used the spare bag that he took as its lavatory, had had a shit and then thought

“Bloody hell, it stinks in here” and then moved onto his other bag for its kip.

Ed can now confirm that hedgehog shit is (a) very very sticky (b) Stinks to high heaven and (c) almost impossible to explain to a load of District Councillors.

Proper cheered me up that has.

Here’s to a better day for us all, courtesy of Stinky Stan, our new found hedgehog friend 🤣🤣🤣

Oh how I love when Facebook reminds you of years gone by and anniversaries………………….

Of my ridiculous cock ups.

I have just been reminded, of a day several years ago, where I remember trying to get myself out of a rather awkward situation with the headmistress of my children’s village primary school. Basically, I suggested that a wonderful way to make great hords of cash for the school would be to shake a bucket at the largest gathering of the Slinfold parents ever known to man (the pub on a Friday).

The sky darkened, a large crack of lightning from above (ok, so I made that bit up, but fuck me it was scary) Mrs L pulled down her spectacles and like a scarier version of Nanny McFee she cast a dark shadow over me and said,

“We are a church of England school, Ms Gardner, and couldn’t possibly be associated with money raised in a “public house where money is made from the sale of alcohol.” (She actually spat the word alcohol).

I was not aware that the whole feckin playground had been listening whilst gossiping, but the HUSH that fell over that whole load of feckin perfect parents was bloody deafening.

Oh FFS. It’s always me. I am the fall guy, the scape goat, and in this case, the bloody mouthpiece because this was NOT my idea AT ALL – I just wanted to go to the pub after school on Friday and get battered. Someone else’ bright idea to rob the pub of its small change. Although, with all that said, with Spencer coming along for the ride, I reckon a fiver a shot for entertainment is a pretty good shout……………..

That’s not the point. Once again I was cringing and desperately trying to find that ever allusive “evaporation button”. Blood red with embarrassment and most of the mothers giggling away at my seemingly relentless ability to put my feckin size 10’s in it, they all backed off so not to be associated with the village idiot.

Apart from that one loyal friend.

That one, bloody bastard loyal friend whose bastard idea it was. She had the vague decency to stand stock still and see how the fuck I was going to get out of this one.

Then I had an epiphany. This is rarely a good thing. This was no exception. This fell out of my mouth, and for some reason I suddenly had a broad Yorkshire accent (bastard friend from Beverly)……………………….

“Didn’t Jesus once turn water into’t wine?……….At some point………..at some gathering, not a pub or anything…………………………… just sayin………..”

The pause indicates the density of the glare that I got. The hush amongst the perfect parents was so loud that I knew several of them had actually stopped breathing. 
“Can I see you in my office, Ms Gardner”

Oh shit feck twatty bollocks. 43 year old in detention. Fucking marvellous.

Let’s face it I was NEVER going to get this perfect parenting thing right. At this stage I was a single mother so felt that I had to try extra hard to be normal and respectable. The one thing I tried REALLY hard to do was not to embarrass or humiliate my kids, which took a fuck load of concentration and “writing things down”. Permission slips became my nemesis and weirdly the school rejected my attempt to remedy this when I went in to see the school secretary with my tail between my legs (I got that little tip from Spencer) as I had forgotten said slip #472 with a generic :

“Emma has CRAFT (Can’t Remember A Fucking Thing) disease therefore please take this document to be the permission slip of ALL permission slips, this gives you my permission, ney, my encouragement, to take my children anywhere you please at anytime. I draw the line at Australia because we all hate spiders and that would be a bit far for me to come and get them should one of them want to come home.”

The computer says no. Declined. Sent away with a flea in me ear.

There was also the wonderful moment when one of the lovely little girls, that was great friends with my youngest daughter, filed out of school at the end of a Friday with her bottom lip quivering and tears welling in her eyes. I was standing with her mother who was desperately worried as to what was wrong with little Claire.

“Sweetheart, what on earth is the matter?”
asked her mum.

“I won the cake raffle, Mummy.”

“But that’s lovely darling, we can have some for tea.”
“Someone’s Mum forgot to make a cake, Mummy”

and with that the flood gates opened and this distraught little thing crumbled. She had never won the cake raffle before and this was a huge accolade. Gasps of horror all around. 
So gob on a stick here, reaches out to her emotional Mum and says really loudly.

“Oh please don’t worry sweetheart, I am sure the Mummy will make it up to you and anyway, I can take you to the shop and get an ice cream, and you can stroke Spencer.”

I look at her mother and say in a really loud voice

“Oh god, how bloody awful, that’s the kind of thing I would do!”

With that out comes my 7 year old.

“IT WAS YOU, MUMMY.”

She just walks away shaking her head.

Oh how I miss those days of having to stand in the playground with a large coat on, bobble hat and sunglasses so as not to be recognised. It was my children who put in a formal request that Spencer and I waited outside the school gates rather than in the playground because he managed to burst so many netballs, knocked over several small reception children and I once lost my trousers chasing him around the brand new nature garden.

Things have got SO much better since then…………………………………………….

Ah Spencer you are an utter utter bastard.

Amazon delivery man comes to the door, needs to scan a couple of the packages, machine playing up so taking some time. In order to prevent the hound from racing out and jumping into his van and nicking his lunch (this has happened on more than one occasion) I have tucked him behind the door out of sight with my left knee just keeping the little shit from shooting out and causing mayhem. Sadly, this pose made me look like I had lost my horse and was not particularly ladylike to say the least, but needs must and I was adamant I wasn’t going to fork out for another bloody Big mac.

Just as he is handing me the machine to sign, the dog lets out what can only be described as the fart to end all farts. It went on for, ooooooh, 3 minutes (let’s just say it felt that long) the silence that followed was pure and utter agony, much like this divine tooth abscess I have. The man had NO idea the dog was there so naturally assumed it was me. No matter how hard I tried to get the feckin dog to reveal himself would he??? Would he buggery!

I am leaving the country.

This dog will be the feckin end of me.