How NOT to stop kids having sex

I haven’t had much time to write recently – work and migraines have been getting in the way – but today I saw a headline flash past my eyes and I had to have my say.

So what caught my attention? Condom’s for 12-year-old boys, that’s what. Yes, you read right. 12-year-old boys.

12-year-old boys who will, I guess, then be on the hunt for 12-year-old (or God forbid, younger) girls to test them out on. For many reasons, this has to be so, so wrong.

The ‘Hotshot’ condom, which has been ‘downsized to fit its 12-14 year old customer base’, is already available in Switzerland, and, if the manufacturers have their way, will be heading for the British high street and your kids wallet soon.

Lamprecht AG, the condom manufacturer behind this controversial contraception for kids, claim they set off down this path in response to a study conducted on behalf of the Federal Commission for Children and Youth. A study which showed that  not only were more 12 to 14-year-olds now having sex, but that an alarming number of them didn’t use any form of protection.

While as a parent, the idea of children so young having sex is a deeply disturbing one, and quite difficult to get my head around, it is hardly shocking news. It seems that every time you open a paper these days, there’s yet another pair of gormless babies staring back at you, sat there dressed head-to-toe in Mothercare’s finest and clutching their very own ‘hasn’t got a hope in hell’ baby.

When you see such a case of under-aged stupidity, it’s hard to know who you want to slap round the face first. The naive idiots apparently vying for the title of ‘World’s Youngest Parents’, or their own parents sat besides them, insisting that of course little Tracey and Dwain will make great parents – if they ever look up from their respective DS’s for long enough to notice what’s just popped out of Tracey and slid off the sofa.

So yes, there’s no getting away from the fact that (some) kids these days obviously have no fear of getting down and dirty with the person sat next to them in class. Nor that – judging by the sheer volume of pram-pushing girls in their Hannah Montana t-shirts – these kids ever think for a millisecond about the possible consequences of their actions.

England is now the teenage pregnancy capital of Europe, so I guess, on paper at least, arming kids with protection is a good idea. Or it would be if it wasn’t so wrong.

No child – boy or girl – could possibly be emotionally, physically or mentally ready to have sex at this young age. And  no 12-year-old boy is (or should need to be) emotionally mature enough to be trusted with something as important as preventing pregnancy or the spreading of a life threatening disease.

Most boys of this age aren’t even responsible enough to be left alone in a house with a box of matches. Some would probably forget to wash, eat or sleep if their parents didn’t remind them too. So who really believes that a randy pint-sized  man would ever want to make the effort, or for that matter feel comfortable enough to walk into a chemist and be asked – ‘Something for the schoolyard Sir?’

Of course there’s no disputing that such studies are needed to highlight how big a problem there is. Or that young boys must to be taught why they should be keeping it tucked away in their Ben 10 underpants until they are..  well until they are old enough not to be wearing Ben 10 underpants at least.

But that said, I think governments and Family Planning organisations are giving 12-year-old boys a little more credit than they actually deserve.

These kids in question aren’t having sex at ridiculous ages because they are maturing earlier than every decade that went before. Or because they are making an informed and intelligent choice about what they are ready to do. They are having sex because they see ‘Sex’ every which way they turn, and they think it’s cool to do it – and very uncool to have to admit they don’t. They aren’t going to suddenly get all responsible and grown-up just because they’ve got their own section at the condom counter.

So short of giving a free pack of 6 away with every computer game, or sticking them in with the fries when they up-size their Happy Meal, I really don’t see how providing  XS Junior condoms is the answer. If anything it gives out the worst possible message to horny young boys everywhere – that actually it’s OK to convince the girl who sits next to you in class to drop her High School Musical knickers, and hop onto the bean bag for some ‘recess’ action.

Really it comes to this. If you put aside every argument about whether selling condoms to and for kids is morally or ethically right, what about it being legally right? It’s bad enough that school nurses are allowed to hand out contraception at all, and that under-age girls can get the pill without their parent’s knowledge. But making condoms specifically for kids? The last time I looked the age of consent was 16 – and for very good reason.

Of course SWAT teams aren’t ever going to swoop in and arrest every person under that age for doing something they legally shouldn’t, but if you actually provide young kids with the means to have sex, surely it’s the same as encouraging them to break the law?

What’s next? School vending machine’s selling alcopops in pink plastic bottles endorsed by Brittany Spears? Or ‘extra light’ cigarettes, with packets that feature the latest Disney film.  After all, everyone knows that kids drink and smoke before they should, so why not make it more accessible and fun?

While we’re at it, why not go the whole hog and just let kids drive cars. I’m sure Toyota or Ford could design a ‘downsized’ car with booster seats and bigger peddles, so that their feet could actually reach the brake.

That would be crazy you cry, they’d end up killing themselves or someone else. Of course it’s crazy, and yes they surely would. Legitimising anything that kids are neither physically equipped to do or old enough to handle is a bloody stupid idea.

Yes, something needs to be done to stop young kids getting into bed and up the duff, but I fail to see how the solution will be found in a small, square packet labelled ‘Hotshot’.

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what you can do with a pile of sand

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Here’s a little gem from youtube that’s well worth 8 minutes of your time. I’d even go so far as to say I guarantee you’ll also end up watching it more than once… and utter the word ‘Wow’ at least half a dozen times.

The video shows the winner of 2009′s ” Ukraine ‘s Got Talent “, Kseniya Simonova. Her ‘talent’ – drawing a series of pictures on an illuminated sand table – is incredibly mesmeric to watch, as the continuous flow of images tell the rather emotional story of how ordinary people were affected by the German invasion during World War II.

She begins by creating a scene showing a couple sitting holding hands on a bench under a starry sky – then war planes appear and the happy scene is obliterated.

It is replaced by a woman’s face crying – then a baby arrives and the woman smiles again. Once again war returns and Miss Simonova throws the sand into chaos, from which a young woman’s face appears.

She quickly becomes an old widow, her face wrinkled and sad, before the image turns into a monument to an Unknown Soldier.

This outdoor scene becomes framed by a window as if the viewer is looking out on the monument from within a house.

In the final scene, a mother and child appear inside and a man standing outside, with his hands pressed against the glass, saying goodbye.

During The Great Patriotic War, as it is called in Ukraine, one in four of the population was killed, with 8 to 11 million deaths out of a population of 42 million. Little wonder then, that so many in the audience were moved to tears and this incredible artist went on to win the top prize of about $ 75,000.

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Click on the picture below to watch this truly amazing performance..

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Sign your name across my skin

I’ve never really got the fascination with tattoos. It seems to me a very extreme (and permanent) way of expressing how you’re feeling at that exact moment, but doesn’t really take into account how you might feel in years to come. After all, over the course of a lifetime names come and go, ideas and trends change and something that might be considered cute and girly at 18 will probably look downright stupid at 50.

And surely the effects of gravity on skin is not a tattoos friend? That bright and delicate flower you might have on your shoulder when you’re young enough to think it’s a good idea, will surely just become a faded pile of squiggles around your mid drift when you’re old enough to know better.

I’m not sure if my aversion to being drawn on is my reluctance to have someone shoot ink into my skin with a needle, or because I have absolutely no desire to have something covering my body that in a few years I would no doubt regret. More than likely it’s probably because even at 34, my mother would still kill me.

Whatever the reason, I have managed to reach this point in my life with a completely ink free body. Not a Tweetie Pie, Celtic cross or a initialed heart is to be found on any inch, nook or crevice of my being.

It was the girl in front of me in the spinning class yesterday morning, that got me thinking about tattoos in the first place. She had children’s names (well I presume they were anyway) written in huge letters across the bottom of her back. It’s not that it looked terrible, it just seemed an odd thing to do. And a very popular thing to do, judging by the number of people walking around these days with the contents of a baby naming book etched on their skin. In fact an hour later I was in a Pilates class (yes, I was feeling particularly keen that day), and I noticed that two of the woman contorting like pretzels on the mats in front of me were also listing their offspring – this time around their ankles.

I started to wonder if I was the only one who believed having their names on a birth certificates was no longer enough.

Now of course I can completely understand the idea of celebrating your kids. But wouldn’t a t-shirt, or a photo frame do? Do you really need to wear their names on your skin for the rest of your life to show how much they mean to you? Who knows, perhaps I’m an uncaring parent, but I can categorically say I have no wish to have so much as their initials on me, let alone their annual school photos tattooed all the way down my back.

I guess that’s something they’ll just have to live with. And perhaps discuss in therapy later. That said, I do however have a set of silver dog tags with their fingerprints on. These I can wear whenever I want – and take off whenever I want. Makes perfect sense to me.

Who knows, maybe there’s something about getting a tattoo that I just don’t get. Along with multiple earings, nose rings, tongue studs and bellybutton piercings. I’ll admit it does indeed sound like I have an issue with pain, but I’ve had two kids so it can’t be that. I think it just comes down to taste, and preferring my art hung up on the wall, rather than looking back at me in the mirror.

Shut up and push

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Here are some recent ramblings of an enlightened male, that will no doubt make mothers everywhere grind their teeth in annoyance.

According to Michael Odent – a medical expert and ‘childbirth specialist’ – fathers-to-be should no longer be present at the birth of their children, and should be banned from the delivery room. Apparently they make our time in labour longer, more painful and more stressful.

Oh, what a load of crap.

I believe it’s the trying to push and pass out something the size of a bloody melon that is the cause of all the pain and stress, not having the father sat beside us in the room. Something that Mr Odent would know if he was to give it a go. Oh that’s right, he can’t, he’s a man.

Now I can only speak for myself, and the 22 hours in total I’ve spent in labour, but having my husband in the room helped, not hindered the situation. He made the time go faster by talking to me, making me laugh and occasionally laughing at me (as he winched me on and off the birthing ball). He fetched me reading material and fluids, and let me wrap my fingernails so snugly around the bones in his arm I left scars, without making so much as a whimper.

For me, high as a kite on gas and air, the time actually passed quite quickly. For him, unable to escape from my vice gripe long enough to even let the blood flow back into his fingertips, the time must have practically stood still.

His one very stupid idea of offering me a Jaffa cake half way through a contraction aside, my husband was an absolute god send, and made an otherwise traumatic occasion much more bearable. The thought of having had to go through that without him there doesn’t even bear thinking about.

So I really don’t care if Mr Odent has been ‘involved for more than 50 years in childbirth’. He hasn’t been there. Or got the t-shirt, weakened bladder or stretch marks to prove it.  So with all due respect, he should butt out and stop trying to fix something that isn’t broken. Recommending that a woman should give birth with only a silent midwife in the room is like suggesting an operation should be done without the general anesthetic – just because it might speed up the recovery time. Would Mr Odent particularly like to be sliced and diced whilst awake I wonder?

Of course midwives do a great job – my last one was lovely, if my somewhat hazy memory serves me right – but they can’t give you what you need while your pelvis splits in half and your pain levels go off the Richter scale. At a time when all dignity has left the room and you’re freaked out and panicking, you don’t need polite chit-chat with a strange woman between your legs, as she grapples with a slippery crowning head. You need a familiar face and the reassurance of the person who got you into this painful bloody mess in the first place.

The other, even more laughable observation made by Mr Odent, is that watching your wife give birth can ultimately lead to divorce. I’m sorry. Is this man for real? What he’s really saying is if a man is subjected to seeing his wife laid out on a table like a birthing cow, then he will ultimately be put off having sex with her again, and as a result, have no choice but to throw in the towel and his wedding ring.

Now THAT is the saddest excuse in the history of marriages for a man being forced to leave his wife. It’s actually justifying why a man can jump ship and run off with a younger, un-stretched, child-free model. If there’s a Mrs Odent out there, you must be so proud – and so very paranoid.

Generally speaking, the man who gets you pregnant already knows (or should already know) you inside out. If, after the birth, he literally knows you inside out, then that, unfortunately, is one of the side effects of procreation.

To say that men can’t stomach the sight of their wife in labour or that they will ‘stop feeling a sexual attraction towards them’, is an insult to husbands everywhere. It’s certainly an insult to woman to say that we’re no longer seen as anything other than a piece of reproducing meat after the birth.

If woman had their way, Mr Odent, we wouldn’t be forced to watch our husbands belch, scratch, itch and fart beside us on the sofa every night. None of these manly qualities really puts us ‘in the mood’ you know, but you don’t see us all rushing to file for divorce and citing these disgusting habits on the grounds of unreasonable behaviour.

Really, fancy telling us we should be giving birth in silence and on our own. Are you recruiting for the Church of Scientology by any chance? Next you’ll be saying that pain relief is illegal and Enya is no longer a suitable birthing artist.

For a father to be made to miss out on seeing his child born would be a terrible thing. Not only because he wouldn’t get to experience the incredible rush of euphoria when meeting your 5 second old offspring for the first time, but because for the rest of his life he would be forever reminded by his wife, that not only did she have to do all of the work, but that he wasn’t even there to hold her hand at the end.

And that, Mr Odent, is the part you seem to have forgotten. Woman want their men there with them at this time. Not just to offer them support and a back rub, but so that they can see first hand just how much pain childbirth involves. This way, regardless of how many bins are put out or paychecks earned, the man will always know that he owes something to his wife that can never be repaid.

Call it an unfair advantage in the guilt stakes, but childbirth is the one bit of power we woman still hold in this world. Don’t you dare try and take that away from us.

Fags, fame and photoshop

So poor old Kerry Katona has been dropped as the ‘face’ of supermarket chain Iceland has she. Poor love, how’s she going to fuel her drug habit now? I feel another stint in The Priory is on the cards for her any day now.

Having had just 2 run-ins with the police this week, and ‘on the verge of being sectioned’ amid fears over her mental health, the surprise isn’t really that Iceland has finally kicked her to the curb, but that they ever paid her to help sell their frozen pies and chips in the first place.

It says a lot about the power of celebrity endorsement, that a company would ever feel she would actually appeal to the average customer and inspire them to flock to their aisles and fill up their freezers.

I suppose when Kerry was first signed up, she was, on paper at least, the perfect candidate for the job. Riding high on the D list celebrity train, she was cheap and cheerful and had more column inches than the PM and Posh Spice put together. A few years on however, and she’s proved to the world a 1000 times over that she is just the perfect example of the bolshy white trash that now gets paid to scream and swear on TV, and roll around drunk in the gutter. Never mind the fact she must surely have sniffed more Coke up her snout since being signed to Iceland, than all of their customers have managed to buy and drink in a year.

So who is this lovely specimen of trashy tabloid fodder? Nobody really. She’s famous for doing precisely bugger all. Or to put it another way, famous for doing nothing of any real value or importance.

She originally climbed up into the public eye as a member of Atomic Kitten – a girl band that really only made it big once she had left, and her speaking vocals (she never actually sang a note) were taken off the music they released. Not wanting to lose the fading limelight, she quickly married into boy band ‘royalty’, and then of course got divorced. Before the marital sheets could even be washed, she milked her misery for all it was worth, bleating on in a heart-wrenching autobiography about her downtrodden upbringing, broken heart and terribly tragic existence. Well she didn’t actually write it herself – anyone who ever heard her speak would soon realise that – but her picture was on the front cover.

Appearing in as many reality shows as possible, she helped to take TV to an all new level of low, as she smoked and drunk her way through 4 pregnancies, screamed at her husband, neglected her kids and appeared as high as a kite on countless TV shows.

Did I forget to mention she was also given her own column in ‘OK’ magazine – a chance for her to air her views and opinions on her fellow celebrities. Seriously what on earth was the editor thinking? Did they really believe that any reader would really give a sh*t what this woman had to say in her 2 syllable or less weekly drivel?

I think it’s fairly obvious to say that these sort of pointless people really irritate me, but I can’t be the only person fed up with the rich and pandered getting away with bloody murder, just because they live out their life in the press and have Max Clifford on speed dial. Take the once great supermodel Kate Moss. When she is seen out with her child, she’s constantly flapping a cigarette in her face or rolling joints. And when photographed doing drugs a few years back, she merely said she was sorry, and then promptly landed new contracts and went on to double her income for the year.

I don’t think it would be so grating that some people get paid so much to do so little, if they really earned the money they got. But they don’t. With Kate Moss, it’s plain to see that it’s the guys with the airbrush who deserve the big bucks. The retouching must take longer than the original shoot.

The one thing I will say for Kate Moss is that at least she makes me feel pretty good about myself. We’re the same age, give or take a few extra months on her side, yet I don’t have a fraction of the wrinkles she does. So I guess I’m the lucky one really, not having been exposed to 20 years of partying through the night and a diet of lettuce, nicotine and narcotics.

Is it possible to parent without Prozac?

I’ve often wondered, what makes a good mother? And if I were to be marked out of 10, what would I get?

I mean these days are you considered a maternal goddess simply because you manage to keep your offspring alive, fed and watered till they’re 18, or is there more to it than just ensuring the survival of the young? Maybe it’s about teaching Junior not to knock every other child to the floor, in the stampede to get the last biscuit. Or how it’s unacceptable to spit at passing old ladies in the street, or hold up the local corner shop with a Swiss army Knife, for the sake of a pocketful of jelly beans.

Basic ground rules no longer seem to apply to kids today and it’s hard to know what will keep them from falling off the straight and narrow. Personally I concentrate on good manners, eating well, doing what they’re told – and the all important learning not to interrupt me when I’m on the phone. But who knows if this is enough.

Perhaps there should be a Parents Manual 101. A check list so we can tick off what we’ve done right, what we’ve got wrong and and what’s still to come. Actually scratch the last one. If we knew what was to come, the survival of the young would be put into jeopardy and Prozac sales would sky rocket.

I do sometimes feel that I probably fall well below the Mother’s Mark – that’s the parental version of the Plimsoll line, there to let you know when you’re about to drown in another child rearing disaster. These feelings of inadequacy are often as a result of me completely losing the plot, followed by my temper. Generally over something that is, in the grand scheme of things, really not that important at all.

Like my daughter sifting through her dinner as if I’m deliberately trying to poison her with an olive. Or my son deciding that the clean, cream wall is the perfect empty canvas on which to exercise his untapped artistic talent. The sort of stuff that I no doubt did at that age – and got a smack for.

So when one tearful child has gone to bed with no pudding, because he refused to eat any of the vegetables, or the other is glaring at me as she stomps to her room because I’ve abruptly switched the TV off – without giving a full  60 minute’s worth of warning – then I feel like crap. Well actually, lets be honest, initially I don’t feel that bad at all. I’m normally glad to have some peace and quiet at last and a chance to sit down without being talked at, tugged down to floor level or questioned over everything I say.

It’s about an hour later when I go into their rooms and see them laying there, all angelic looking with a tear still clinging onto an eyelash. Then I feel like crap.

Worse still, when looking for reassurance the next day, I ask my daughter, “So do you still love me or am I the meanest Mummy in the world?”

“Of course I do”, she says, looking horrified at the very suggestion she wouldn’t, ” you’re the very best Mummy in the world”.

And that’s when I feel REALLY crap. As I think to myself how important, on a scale of 1 to 10, was it that she ate that last piece of aubergine.

The trouble I find is that intending to be nice, loving and patience to my children every minute of the day, and actually achieving it are often about as far apart as the North and South Pole.

Sometimes it’s impossible not to be a bitch, even to them. I never mean it, but they seem to have this knack of catching me at a time when I’m especially stressed out, tired and hungry. They then  pull out all the stops and leap up and down on my very last, very frayed nerve. At that point, unfortunately for them, the most appetising looking thing to bite off just so happens to be their heads.

To make matters worse, it’s at these times that I come out with the most god awful things. Threats I have no intention of ever carrying out, character assassinations that are completely unfair and phrases that instantly morph me into my own mother. I hear the words come out, and even in mid flow think to myself ‘what the hell, shut up will you’.

I’m presuming, or rather hoping I’m not alone in all of this. Judging by some of the sad looking children and the angry, muttering mothers I’ve seen stalking around the supermarket and away from the playground, I’m guessing not.

In a perfect world I’d deal with stress better and never take it out on my kids. But the trouble is, as with most multi-tasking mums, half the time I’m too busy trying to work to play dress up with Barbies, and too busy cooking, feeding and clearing up to make necklaces out of pipe cleaners and the contents out of the ‘Bits’ draw.  By the evening I am certainly too bloody tired to discuss in detail, all those things that children find endlessly fascinating, and parents find, well, boring.

Yesterday for example, after a long day at the keyboard, my daughter informed me that for her latest school project she had to learn all about the banana. Now it’s not that I don’t care about the banana project, or wish to restrict her learning all about the cutting edge life cycle of this thoroughly nutritious fruit. But my brain just doesn’t have enough functioning cells left at the end of the day to process such an uninteresting topic.

I could let her lose on the Internet to find out more, but god only knows what would pop up if she Googled ‘ banana + picture’. I have images springing to mind, and none of them I wish to have burned into the memory bank of my 8 year old. I am tempted to just be blunt – ‘A banana grows, it’s peeled, it’s eaten – end of story’. But I suspect this just won’t cut it.

Besides that, it would be mean to crush her imagination and wish to learn. Particularly as I’m something of a witch when it comes to policing her homework and making her learn her times tables in the holidays – when all the other little girls seem to be out chatting with their friends on the street corner, wearing 2 inch silver kitten heels and eating sweets…

Juggling life and kids is an uphill battle at the best of times. Add to that a job, whether in an office or 10 feet from the kitchen table, and you may as well throw in a couple of knives and a blindfold. I wonder how many woman wish they didn’t have to do it all, or at least to be seen to be doing it all.

Given the choice, some days I think I’d rather go back to the Stone Age way of life. Sitting at home in my nicely decorated cave, with nothing to do but carving up and cooking whatever gets dragged back in through the door after the hunt. As long as there was Ebay that is, and Eastenders on the telly.

Anyway I have to say I felt slightly better about my mothering skills the other day, when I set eyes on this picture. I may bark, bite and occasionally smack my kids, but at least I’m not subjecting them to this type of beauty pageant child abuse. I ask you, what sort of self obsessed mother does this to her child? It’s freakish, warped and quite frankly creepy.

In comparison to these ‘eyes on the prize’ mothers,  I’m practically Maria Von Trap, with a little Mary Poppins thrown in for free.

When smelly children need surgery

Everyone has heard about those kids who stick something up their nose.

I’ve often thought what sort of idiot, albeit a pint sized one, does that? Images of a manky, sniveling little boy, with a crusted up, snot smeared face and unruly hair spring to mind. The sort of child who pulls wings of butterflies and feasts on worms and bugs. You know the type, they usually feature in the local paper, with a picture of the child proudly clutching the spanner set he somehow misplaced up his nasal cavity and his proud parents beaming away behind, quoted as saying “We wondered why all the magnets in the house kept sticking to his face.”

I also wondered what happened when this unfortunate event occurred. How did the child in question breath, when their nostrils were stuffed full of unidentifiable stuff? How did the parents not notice that little Jimmy had snorted his peas off his plate instead of eating them? And how on earth do they ever get the ‘foreign object’ back out again?

Last week I found out that I have one of ‘those’ children – oh what a proud parental moment that was. So off the back of that, I can now confirm the following. Yes, breathing is indeed restricted with something lodged up your nostril. It is easy to miss something different about your child, if it’s not visible to the eye. And believe it or not, it can take surgery.

The first clue that something was where it shouldn’t be was that my son smelt horrible, with a nasty whiff about his person that would come and go. The type of odour that simply refused to budge, even with much vigorous washing and twice daily teeth brushing. It’s hard to say exactly what the smell was even, somewhere between sour milk and a rotting vegetable perhaps. Fairly unpleasant in other words.

The pong went on for quite a while, until it escalated to such a point that my maternal alarm bells started clanging loudly in my ears. By this time I could no longer hug him on my lap without having to turn my head away to gasp for breath. Regardless of how much you love your child, no mother wants to sit and bury their nose into a compost heap every day.

Granted I do have a particularly sensitive nose, and could even detect a smoker walking 5 floors down and 500m away when pregnant, but this time it was more than me being fussy. So why wait till I was gagging you may ask? Well, apart from the whiff he was perfectly healthy. We checked him all over decaying flesh or rupturing boils, and like I said, he was washed and brushed regularly. Perhaps it was the fear of having a child diagnosed with halitosis that simply riddled me with fear.

So anyway, off to the doctor we went, where I told him that my son smelled horrible.

The doctor, as I expected, looked at me like I was something of a heartless cow when it came to my mothering care and concern. Then he looked into my sons mouth, and lo and behold spotted tonsils the size of walnuts. Or Brazil nuts. Or was it almonds. Anyway, regardless of the nut, apparently they were enormous and stopping all the air flowing down his throat. So the enlarged tonsils were blamed for the smell and I was referred to an ENT specialist to discuss having them removed.

A few weeks later we sat in front off the consultant. “He smells” I said, bracing myself for another raised eyebrow and resisting the urge to let out a “Mooo”, like the nasty Friesian that I am. The consultant looked at my son, turned him both ways and then informed me that he probably had something stuck up his nose. OK. Didn’t see that one coming. His nose certainly didn’t look any bigger than normal, and as far as I could remember, I hadn’t noticed him foraging around in the tool box and sniffing up a spanner. Perhaps it was a piece of Lego, or one of those wretched little Polly Pocket shoes I’m always telling my daughter to clear up.

Next stop for the doctor, the mouth, and his enormous tonsils were confirmed. They were then linked to his excessive sweating, loud snoring and irregular breathing at night, the long periods of time he spends awake and chatting in the early hours of the morning and his inability to shift a cold or cough. Well that cleared up all of those annoying habit’s then. I was told they needed to be whipped out ASAP, and as luck would have it, he had a slot to do it in a weeks time.

Marvelous, that would be the same day my husband was flying to Sydney for a week. Multitasking is one thing, but multitasking with a sick child alone is a whole other ballgame. By this stage, heartless cow was now looking more dazed and confused cow.

The night before surgery arrived, and with the bags all packed and ready for hospital, I promptly threw up. And then again. By 9am the next morning my husband had turned a rather sludgy shade of green. By 9.30 my daughter had been sent home from school. Or rather brought home, there was no way I was trotting into the school office to collect her dressed in my pyjamas.

I think it would be fair to say that so far ‘Operation Tonsil’ was not going to plan. With all of us (except the patient-to-be) now rolling around clutching buckets, the surgery was postponed for a further week. My son carried on watching Thomas, completely oblivious to the lucky escape he had just had.

A week later and into hospital we all went, lugging three enormous bags of essential items with us, only one of which was half unpacked. The other two sat in the corner completely untouched. My little boy was taken away by scalpel welding men in blue coats, and two nail biting parents sat in his dismal little room and watched the minutes tick by. Time does indeed go by much slower when you’re waiting for your precious offspring to survive.

On the way to be with him in the recovery ward I heard him long before I could see him. Weighing in at only 14kg, and just minutes out of a general anesthetic, I rounded the corner to find two nurses unsuccessfully trying to pin my little boy down onto the bed. Like a child possessed, he screamed blue murder and understandably thrashed around as he tried to figure out where he was and why he felt so odd. I have to say his show of strength was pretty impressive for his size, however it meant that he somehow managed to pull the tube out of his hand, and as I laid down with him to try and calm him down, he nearly catapulted me off the bed.

That night in hospital went as well as could be expected, considering the small and depressing room, the one colour suits all food and the rails of the bed that fitted in just perfectly between each of the vertebra down my spine.

For some unknown reason, all of the nurses also saw fit to raise their voices by several decibels as they barged into the room to check his stats, every 15 minutes throughout the night. To make continuous sleep even harder, each time they left they failed to close the door properly behind them. This left me with little choice but to climb over the rails of a ridiculously high bed, close the door myself and then climb back up and over and in again – in the dark. And all without waking the small restless child sprawled across the majority of a very small bed.

Did I mention this was a private hospital? No, I wouldn’t have guessed it either, if I hadn’t spotted the price list on the way in.

So now we’re home and I’m sitting with my little ticking time bomb of pain. Apparently he’s going to get a whole lot worse before he gets better, and he runs the risk of bleeding if he doesn’t eat toast everyday. Toast? I can’t even bribe him to open his mouth for ice cream right now. As far as he knows, his throat has just been attacked with a cheese grater.

This week is all about keeping him medicated up to the eye balls and preventing the dog from bouncing all over him on the sofa. It would be so much easier if he could understand why a day out ended in all this pain, but bless him, he doesn’t have a clue. Instead his sad little face looks up at me and I can just tell he’s thinking “What the hell did you let them do to me, you cruel and heartless cow?”

Oh, I almost forgot. The smell. That, I’m pleased to say, is gone. The ‘foreign object’ is still just that, as we have no idea as to what it might be. Let’s just say that if you blew your nose and that shot out onto the tissue you’d be somewhat alarmed, and probably feeling more than a little bit sick.

It’s sitting on the dresser right now, entombed in a plastic tub. I’m not exaclty sure why I’m keeping it, maybe so when he’s older I can whip it out and say “You may not have eaten worms and bugs as a child, but you did stick this up your nose. Happy 21st!”

The JOY of marriage & the REALITY of divorce

Marriage is without doubt an incredibly tough nut to crack. If you choose well, listen to your mother and marry your perfect match it can be the best thing since Google. But even if you choose well, listen to your mother and marry your perfect match, marriage can still push all your buttons and drive you up the wall, make you question your judgement, and sometimes render you completely insane.

Unfortunately for the majority of people who pay a small fortune to merrily skip up the aisle and say ‘I Do’, a few short years later they will likely find themselves slinking into a solicitors office, handing over their life savings and 3 pints of blood, and snarling ‘What was I thinking, no I bloody well don’t’.

Divorce is everywhere, it’s a sad fact of life. It has probably joined ‘death’ and ‘taxes’ to become the 3 things in life that are depressingly inevitable. In many countries, 1 in 3 marriages now end up in costly court battles – fighting over child custody rights, the dog and the CD collection.  On the upside, now that CD’s have all but been been outed by the MP3, this particular dilemma will become easier to solve.

It is sad that so many marriages don’t even last long enough for the dishwasher to remove the last traces of the sticky label from the new dinner service. Or for the extortionately priced wedding albums to be filled with photos from the happy day. But hey, this is the reality of it all, and, as someone who has already trodden down that particular path, I can’t say that it necessarily a bad thing to be able to get out before the ’till death’ vows have a chance to kick in.

Maybe I have a very cynical view on marriage, (though I like to see it as being realistic) but I strongly believe that if something is really not right, then nothing is going to fix it. Not even hours of counselling, or resigning yourself to a lifetime of ‘doing the right thing.’

And yes, even if children are involved, I still believe that it’s better to be out than in. Nothing interferes with happy childhood memories more than miserable parents, slamming doors and death stares across the breakfast table. I think any child would plump for smiling parents and less fighting if given half the chance.

In the run up to my wedding, and that would be the first one that didn’t work, not the second one that is ticking along just perfectly, I told my then husband-to-be that I was a great believer in divorce. Romantic? No. Honest? Probably a little too much, given the money already spent out on the hot buffet for 50. But then what’s the point in mincing words.

Coming from a family history based in divorce and bad feelings, I knew that I would never be able to stick something out if I wasn’t happy. After all, life’s just too damn short to be depressed and hating the person you wake up next to. Luckily for me my ex was a very understanding man, both then and 4 years later, when we agreed it was never meant to be, called it quits and went our separate ways. Luckily for me we also had the friendliest divorce in history, with not one ounce of bad feeling or back stabbing bitterness in sight.

Some people of course aren’t so lucky, especially when the ‘injured’ party goes hell for leather to try and make life as difficult and complicated as possible. Whether this involves cutting up clothes, hiding rotting fish around the house before leaving or just trying to suck every last bit of energy, life and money out of the person doing the leaving. Some people simply refuse to draw a line under the past and ever let it go.

Of course now that I am older, wiser and blessed with hindsight, I can now admit that I knew at the time that I should never have got married in the first place. But that’s one of those things that’s hard to voice out loud, especially when the wedding ball is rolling at breakneck speed and you’re clinging on by your fingertips for dear life. Or when you’ve already had your dress altered 5 times to accommodate your diminishing weight (through the stress of knowing it’s not a good idea) and haven’t the heart to tell the seamstress her work was all in vain.

So all that aside. Knowing how hard a marriage can be to hold together behind closed doors, where no one can witness the pointless hypothetical arguments and the bread knife whizzing through the air, what hope has anyone in the public eye got of actually lasting the distance.

None really. Celebrity marriages are pretty much doomed to fail from the start. From the young and stupid who hotfoot it Vegas, 13 hours after falling desperately in love at an MTV after-party, to the veterans of the screen, such as the once lovely Mel Gibson, who hook up with someone young enough to be their granddaughter, and then flaunt them down the red carpet.

So when Katie ‘Jordon’ Price and Peter ‘One hit wonder’ Andre announced they were separating, it was hardly much of a surprise. Yet the celebrity watching world went “Noooooo, how can this be?”

Hmnmm, now lets think. They met on screen, they fought on screen. They married on screen, they fought on screen. They had kids on screen, they fought on screen. They moved to the States, they fought on screen.

The common denominator here? Well that would be the fighting.

Add that to the fact that every day of their life together was docu-soaped. And every word, thought and insecurity they felt was no doubt taken, twisted and exaggerated, just to up the viewing figures and satisfy the drama hungry audience.

So did they stand a chance? The words hope and hell spring to mind. I would have had more chance of winning the Lotto – and I don’t even buy any tickets.

Still at least they can now both guarantee a 10 page spread in Hello magazine, to discuss, dissect and detail their marriage breakdown. And then they can both star in their own new reality shows about how to bounce back, recover from a broken heart and go on to make pot loads of money.

Cynical? Me? Never.

When BIG really isn’t beautiful

Some people might have thought that my previous post about parents murdering their kids was a little extreme. And then a story popped up on the world news that backed up everything I had said.

It’s about Leanne Salt. A 24 year old girl who is happily feeding her 8 month old triplets towards a life full of medical problems, and all but giving them a helping hand into an early grave. A girl who should be locked up for the great big helpings of child abuse that she is dishing out to her kids, along side the junk food she’s filling them up on.

Despite the fact that only a moron wouldn’t know better, this 30-stone lump sees nothing wrong with how she is bringing up her triplets. Far from it. She is actually proud of the fact that her babies became card carrying members of the Happy Meal club at just 6 months old.

Refusing to acknowledge that she is doing anything wrong, she believes that because she takes the batter off their fish and chips, she is giving them a healthy diet.

And after all,  as she says, she does feed her babies vegetables every Sunday. Perhaps she believes that an onion ring and a pickled gherkin count towards their 5 a day? Or should that be their 5 (at a push) a month.

Now 8 months old, these poor babies are being fed around 1,249 calories a day, with a diet consisting mainly of junk food, fish and chips, crisps and microwave meals.

Seriously? Is this woman for real?

It goes without saying that such an eating machine has zero respect for her own body, or her diminishing life expectancy, but how can she be so incredibly selfish when it comes to her kids?

And there in lies the problem. As well as being selfish, the girl is obviously plain stupid. Certifiably dumb actually. Devoid of brain cells and missing any sort of solid matter between her ears. After all, anyone who seriously believes that watching what you eat and consuming healthy foods leads to anorexia is one stitch short of a lobotomy.

Her line of reasoning? “I do worry my kids could get picked on if they get fat, but I’d tell them that big is beautiful.“

Yes, that will make them feel so much better when their mother is harpooned in the school car park by Greenpeace. Or when they get diagnosed with diabetes. Or when they drop down from a fatal heart attack as they turn 21.

Of course beauty is very much in eye of the beholder, and big can be beautiful. But there are always exceptions the rule, and this has to be one of them. I don’t know when Miss Salt last looked in a mirror, I suspect it’s been a while, but beautiful is not one of the words that immediately springs to mind.

And that brings me to the question that everyone who has heard about this girl is surely asking themselves. How in God’s name did she even snare anyone mad, brave or drunk enough to impregnate her in the first place? And when she did, presumably with the aid of chloroform, how did the the deed itself (I shudder as I write that) even take place.

Now I’m certainly no physicist, but aren’t there some laws regarding mass, volume, weight and proximity that would have made this nigh on impossible? It would be like trying to mate Dumbo with Mickey Mouse.

So taking the fact that some poor bugger did somehow manage to put 3 buns in her cavernous oven, and then wake up with a hangover from hell and run screaming from the house, how did she even know she was pregnant? Did she wake up one morning and think, that’s odd, my stomach looks slightly swollen today?

Let’s face it, she could have gestated an elephant without attracting any attention. Well apart from the fact by the 9th month she had gained a further 10 stone.

And now for the bit of the story that really makes you believe that the world has gone mad. Being that she was the fattest mother of triplets that medical science had ever clamped eyes on, it took a team of 68 people to deliver her babies, at a cost of £200,000 to the NHS. This included the operating table that had to be specially-built for her Caesarean section.

Well come on, you didn’t think that she was going to have a natural birth did you? All the crow bars in the world and a forklift truck wouldn’t make that a possibility.

Now that she is back at home with her brood and securely wedged into her 5 seater sofa, she is happy to live off benefits with no future plans to ever lift a 20 kg finger and do any work again. After all the poor girl is apparently already too busy to clean, tidy up or prepare proper meals for her children. The family only get dressed to leave the house once a week – so that they can collect her benefits.

And let’s not forget that if the governments latest  hair brained scheme takes off, then one day she’ll also he paid to walk (roll) her kids to school as well.

On the upside, Miss Salt is making some plans for their future. She has decided that she now deserves to be given her own council house, and is completely ready to face the world alone.“I know how to microwave a meal and make up instant mash, so I think we’d all manage.” Stand aside Jamie, the girl’s got your job in the bag.

And what is the shocking truth about this tale of chips and child abuse? This girl is not alone.

A recent survey by the Infant and Toddler Forum found that 29 per cent of children under the age of three ate a takeaway at least once a week, while 23 per cent eat crisps and 16 per cent drink fizzy drinks almost every day.

Loving Mother’s Day

So, did the flowers, chocolates and assorted lovely Mothers Day gifts from my 2 little offspring make up for the countless painful hours that I spent in labour on their behalf? Absolutely.

Nothing makes a mother feel more loved and appreciated than the handmade offerings that are slaved over for many days by her children. Nothing beats waking up to see two faces peering at you over the duvet, demanding that you get up straight away for their ‘surprise’. And no shop bought card could ever be as special as one that is made with 100% undiluted love – and a craft cupboard load of tissue paper, glitter and glue.

I know that out of all the breakfasts eaten throughout the year, none is appreciated more than one whipped up by your child. Whether it might be a soggy piece of toast and a beaker of milk or a congealed Weetabix that has taken on the texture of setting concrete, it all tastes that much better because you didn’t have to make it yourself.

I was actually treated to smoked salmon and a poached egg this morning.  Admittedly my daughter did have some help here, but, as I was immediately informed upon entering the room, she did wear the oven mitt and was in sole charge of rolling the salmon.

With an offering such as this how could you ever possibly hold a grudge over the mind numbing pain brought on by your pelvis shifting for hours on end and your muscles contracting like bellows.

It’s funny how when you are a child you believe that Mother’s Day is all about the parent. When you grow up and become a parent, you actually realise that the day is really all about the child.

In my daughter’s case, it really was all about the child. This was the day she entered the world.