How to fly round the world and survive

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Normally the worst thing about a holiday (apart from flying with small children) is when it comes to an end. But when you have to fly all the way back around the world just to arrive at your own front door, it’s even worse. A healthy dose of jet lag is enough to make you look and feel like you’ve never even been away.

Our epic trip began last Sunday – starting with the pleasure of a two and a half hour trip on a jam-packed National Express coach, where I passed the time pinning a hyper 3 year-old to his seat and listening to the woeful bleating of a driver who felt his job description shouldn’t actually involve any driving. Especially on a Sunday.

Next came the lipstick coated power freak at check-in, who demanded we extract 2kgs worth of stuff from one ‘too heavy for the conveyor belt’ suitcase. Have conveyor belts suddenly grown weaker over the years or are they now simply exercising their civil rights? The 2 kg was of course simply added to the already overloaded hand luggage. Right there on the floor. In front of the power freak. The logic of this blatant redistributing is lost on me.

Having already completed the lengthy flight at the start of the holiday, what now lay ahead of us was hardly much of a surprise. But, just like child-birth, the mind has a habit of erasing the true extent of the ordeal involved, just to make sure that you will ever contemplate doing it again. Quite a handy thing, when you have a return ticket to use up.

For the first 11 hours I sat wedged between 2 children – covered in the crumbs of a rock-hard bread roll and wrapped from head-to-toe in the wires of 6 headsets. Why we even had 6 I’m not sure, there were, after all, only 4 of us.

As a flying parent you are faced with 2 possible scenarios, neither of which it has to be said are particularly pleasant.

The first option is to make the most of each and every inch of your seat, and to achieve the maximum level of comfort – granted, this isn’t much, given the blood clot inducing foetal position you are now in, with your knees wedged into your rib cage and your feet tucked into the magazine holder in front. This does however allow for the possibility of a few hours sleep for yourself, if the restless and wriggling children on either side of you would allow it. Which, as a general rule, they don’t.

The second option – the more selfless and painful one – is relinquish both arm rests and allow your uncomfortable children to stretch themselves out across both your seat and your lap. So resigning yourself to the knowledge that you will get no rest at all. Like I said, neither option is designed to really appeal.

I went with the second, though more out of necessity than choice I admit. When faced with a choice between crying, whingeing children, and a mind-numbing night of pain, I opted for the lesser of 2 evils.

By the time we had located our lost stroller at Hong Kong airport, walked several kms through duty free (without even getting within sniffing distance of any shopping), gotten lost and caught the necessary train to find our connecting flight, I was quite happy to snap the head off the unhelpful ground staff who told us off for being late. If I’d had the energy or a free hand I’d have smacked him round the face. Like I said, I was tired.

Within minutes of the next plane taking off I went into self-preservation mode, pulled on the blindfold and went to sleep – until I felt the eyes of my tired husband boring into me, so resigned myself to waking up and giving him a chance to pass out.

Arriving back in Perth would have been a welcome relief, if we’d actually come back to the comfort of our own home. But we couldn’t and we didn’t.  Instead we had to stay in a hot and basic rental for a week, battling jet lag and fighting flies. With mornings starting around 2.30am, 2 over-tired kids to entertain and no car to even escape the cabin fever, I think it’s safe to say the end of the holiday was far from perfect.

Post holiday blues wouldn’t even begin to cover how I felt. I was in a completely different colour spectrum all together.

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Demon children and saintly spoodles

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Taking your child away on holiday can sometimes be a very dangerous thing to do. In only a few short weeks they can morph into a human being barely recognisable from the one you once knew. As routine, balanced diet and consistency goes out the window, everything you ever taught them seems to follow, including good manners, eating habits and general all round intelligence.

In the case of my 3 year-old, this certainly seemed to be the case. He left Perth a mild-mannered, book loving, happy eater, and arrived in England a screeching, uncontrollable terror. Who wouldn’t eat a single vegetable. Including beans. Coated in tomato sauce. Made by Heinz. Heavens above, what child refuses those?

What the hell happened up there at 33,000 feet you might ask? I’m still pondering the very same question myself – but looking back it’s easy to see where it all went so wrong.

A stranger to sugar and capable of sleeping for up to 4 hours in his afternoon nap, my son found his world being tipped upside down as he was dragged from his bed and shoe horned into the car on the way to the airport. There we were, in the middle of the night, singing to try to keep him awake. Dragging him behind us at speed, force feeding him cookies (albeit low-fat ones) to coax him on a plane he didn’t want to go on, and then telling him he must then lie down and go back to sleep, with bright lights and dinner trays clattering all around him.

It was a recipe for disaster from the start, and the rest of the holiday carried on in much the same vein. Erratic bed times, long stretches in the car, sporadic mealtimes containing all the wrong foods and a difference set of people every time he woke up. To say he was a fish out of water was an understatement. More like a little boy in a parallel universe.

As a direct result of this holiday madness, and so not really his fault at all, his behaviour often veered on the side of manic. Energy levels went through the roof, ears sealed off to reasoning and his mouth went into screeching overdrive. And all in a country where you are no longer allowed to ‘discipline’ your child in public … tricky.

He now saw eating – unless the food in question came under the food group ‘treat’ – as an unncessary inconvenience, and as mentioned before, anything that had once grown up from, across or dropped to the ground was now met with a pursed mouth and muffled cries of “Don’t like it”. A tad frustrating, especially as the week before he’d happily opened up for aubergine and olives.

The ‘highlight’ of this out-of-control behaviour came however, at perhaps the very worst time possible of our entire holiday. I’d go as far as to say, that in the collective 12 years my offspring have been alive, never have I wanted to hang my head so low in shame.

While visiting a potential school for my daughter, my son reached deep into his inner demon and pulled out quite possibly the worst behaviour that the inside of the headmasters office has ever seen. He spread crumbs far and wide (from a biscuit off the tea-tray he’d launched himself at), squeezed his juice box across the polished table and pulled himself back and forwards across the floor like the member of a crack commando team. He climbed on the window seats, threw cushions on the floor and very nearly pulled down the curtains – 4 times. He struggled when I picked him up, pulled at me when I put him down and slithered to the ground when I put him back in his seat. The entire time he screeched and shrieked and laughed like a nutter possessed.

It was pretty toe-curling stuff, as any parent could well imagine.

There we were, talking about school reports and untapped potential and trying to give a good impression. And there was  my little monster – who would also be eligible to go there in a years time – bouncing off the walls like Tiger on a mixture of crack cocaine and speed.

The only saving grace in this whole embarrassing ordeal was that the headmaster knew better than to judge the entire family based off of the actions of its smallest member. As well as being a parent,  he was also my old English teacher – the teacher who had in fact inspired me to start writing in the first place, many light years ago.

Should this worrying tale of holiday woe begin to put off any parent thinking of taking a break, then fear not, it does have a happy ending.

After the episode at the school, sugar was abruptly cut out of his diet (which was unfortunate for him as this happened before Christmas). Within days he started to ease off his high and calm down again – apparently it takes at least 2 weeks for somebody to go cold turkey where the sweet stuff is involved. Now back in Perth, my son is already back to his old self, and get this, better than before. His manners are perfect, he’s calm and controllable and best of all, he’s eating vegetables faster than I can get them on his plate.

Not that I’d ever recommend killing your child’s routine and dragging them round the world to help knock them into shape, but on this occasion, it seems to have done the job.

Incidentally, the same also seems to be true of Charlie. He went into the kennels as a naughty, barking, escape artist, and come out a changed dog. He is now well-behaved, quiet and far more obedient than the 2 year-old Spoodle that went in. He didn’t even make a run for it the other day, when I accidently opened the garage door without shutting him inside first.

Now, if my daughter had gone in the same direction as my son and the dog, I could have said I had a hat trick on my hands. Unfortunately the excellent behaviour she showed when away (which was enough to get her offered a place at the school) has worn off some, and been replaced with the somewhat emotional and pouting little girl of before.

Still, can’t win them all, and 2 out of 3 ain’t bad.

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Taxing the fat to pay the thin

So, finally a doctor in the UK has been brave enough to speak out and voice what many people already think  – that instead of pandering to the needs of the morbidly and super morbidly obese with free mobility scooters and Disability Living Allowance, they should be made to contribute towards the massive strain they are placing on the health system, by paying more tax. And in turn, those who work hard to remain fit and healthy should be financially rewarded for their effort.

With obesity related issues draining every last penny out of the already overstretched NHS budget and £6.3 billion being spent fighting fat, this scheme sounds about on the mark to me. No doubt it’ll be met with cries of “You can’t say that”, but it has nothing to do with being judgmental or ‘fattist’, it’s just common sense. As is Dr Chand’s proposal to add tax to the type of fattening food that offers little or no nutritional value, yet guarantees maximum ‘junk in your trunk’.

Such a tax would of course cause outrage amongst the loyal Happy Meal brigade, all of whom would shriek loudly that it’s unfair to target those on lower incomes, who consider fast food a cheaper alternative. Quite frankly, tough. Tobacco and alcohol are already taxed in an effort to target smoking related illnesses and binge drinking, so why shouldn’t unhealthy food be too?

And as for the argument that junk food is the cheaper alternative, what a load of rubbish. It’s the easier alternative. With every supermarket offering cut prices bargains and more BOGOF offers than you can shake a stick at, it’s far cheaper to cook simple healthy food that it is to buy in a round of up-sized burgers, chips and coke. Even if you do have limited funds and an army of hungry mouths at home to feed. People who choose takeaways every night over cooking are just lazy, and parents who feed their kid’s junk for breakfast, lunch and tea should be done for child abuse. (see related post).

Strangely enough, many of these parents who claim they can’t afford to buy healthy food for their kids just so happen to smoke and drink. They think nothing of puffing £5 into thin air or pouring it down their throat, but they can’t stretch the family budget enough to incorporate something that hasn’t been regurgitated out of a deep fat fryer and into a styrofoam box. For £5 you can buy an entire chicken. So do you spend your money on 20 cigarettes, or a whole birds worth of protein to feed the kids? There’s the difficult decision of the week.

The argument that fast food is even fast is the biggest myth of all. At tea time it takes less time to scramble an egg, microwave a potato or even cook some pasta than it does to climb into the car, drive to the nearest nugget dispensing outlet, queue up, order, collect and scoff. Of course most children would probably prefer the nugget option, and as such be more likely to eat it up without a moan or a struggle, but since when was feeding them meant to be about taking the path of least resistance?

Children are just that, children. They should be eating what’s right for them, not what’s easiest for the parent, no matter how much money they have, how brain dead they are in the kitchen or whether by the end of the day they’ve simply lost the will to live. God knows I could well do without the constant battles about how many vegetables are lurking on my kid’s dinner plates, but I’d rather deal with the fuss they sometimes make than watch them both turn into Weebles, and wobble right off their Trip Trap chairs.

So is the idea of taxing the morbidly obese ever going to work? Nope, not a chance in hell. Why? Because many of those who fall into this category probably aren’t able to work in the first place. Their size, and the associated health problems that comes along with it, prevent them from carrying out even the simplest day-to-day tasks, never mind holding down paid employment. So if they were forced to pay more tax, they would no doubt need to be awarded more disability allowance to afford it.

Obesity is a problem that will carry on for many, many years to come. In part this is because many of those individuals who are contributing to the problem, simply refuse to accept any responsibility for their own actions. Instead they prefer to blame the government for its lack of support in helping them to lose weight. They complain about the shortage of free local sports centres and wide open spaces in which to jog. They claim that a bunch of carrots are exorbitantly priced and no one ever taught them how to cook.

In answer to that. It’s not up to the government (who lets face it can’t even run the country properly never mind a weight loss club) to prise the fork out of each and every chubby little hand across the land. There are 1000′s of miles of free pavements in the UK, go walk on them. If you can afford to upsize your £4.50 McDonalds meal you can afford a bunch of carrots. Go buy a cook book, or cheaper still, turn on the TV and listen to Jamie Oliver.

It seems incredible that so many people simply refuse to put two and two together and start addressing the problem, instead of comfort feeding and making it even worse. Even with all the fat fighting campaigns, health lectures and awareness raising TV programmes out there, all trying to ram the obvious message home, it’s hard to see what the solution will be.

Perhaps if those who need to shed the weight actually climbed out of their complimentary buggies and used their feet, they might be surprised to find the weight starting to drop off. Obviously there’s no miracle cure to losing this amount of weight, unless you see stomach stapling as a viable option, but it has been done, and is therefore not impossible.

I’m not even going to pretend to have a clue about the horrible vicious circle of a situation that you’d find yourself in, when you reach this sort of size. Or how demoralising and depressing it  could be to live with everyday.

I’m pretty sure that getting the weight loss ball rolling would indeed be painful, and a tremendous struggle of mind over matter to say the least. But any type of exercise was never designed to be easy, it was designed to be exercise. And anyone who’s ever tried a step class (and failed miserably) will know that exercise can be painful, complicated and downright humiliating whatever size you are.

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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.

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!”

Reality strikes, and it’s pretty dumb

I am a self-confessed lover of most things reality. I say most things, as even I absolutely draw the line at Australian Idol and Big Brother.

Australian Idol because it’s quite frankly a load of talentless crap, and Big Brother, because the programme is now at least 7 years past it’s ‘Sell by Date’. The first 2 series of BB in the UK were funny and captivating – due to their originality and the people who walked into the house. They had no real notion of what to expect or what wide spread coverage they would receive, and they treated each other with at least some respect.

The following series that have been thrown up on screens every year since, have however, been just plain boring. This is due to their predictability and the attention seeking w*nkers, sorry, I mean housemates, who clamber over each other to live like guinea pigs, fight like toddlers and mate like rabbits.

The audition requirements must now surely be about finding the oddest of oddballs. Those who are guaranteed to strip, clash and pash. So if you’re a blood drinking, devil worshiping, plastic surgery obsessed, brain-dead sex-o-holic, who can’t seem to make a definitive choice between girls or boys, then you’re definitely in with a shot of getting on the show.

Maybe I have just gotten very old in these past 8 years, but it seems to me that BB has spawned a whole new breed of desperate and talentless weirdos. People whose skill sets range anywhere from merely having had a boob job or a sex change, to looking like a pig, thinking they’re God’s gift or simply being the first person born without a single brain cell between their ears.

For these fame fanatics, their 16 step ‘life plan’ would go something like this:

1. Get onto Big Brother and humiliate myself on national TV.
2. Prove that my IQ really can be smaller than my shoe size.
3. Feature on the front cover of HEAT magazine.
4. Meet a fellow non-entity, and be caught in a trendy club having sex.
5. Marry and divorce the said non-entity within 3 months.
6. Turn orange, lose weight, get new boobs/haircut/wardrobe.
7. Release DVD of me lifting Gucci handbag in weight-loss programme.
8. Feature on the front cover of HEAT magazine.
9. Release a single – prove I can’t sing.
10. Date an entire Premier Division football club.
11. Apply to go on Celebrity Mastermind – get laughed off.
12. Apply to go on Dancing with the Stars – get turned down.
13. Apply to go on I’m a (Z list) Celebrity Get Me Out of Here – get accepted.
14. Humiliate myself on national TV.
15. Prove that my IQ is still smaller than my shoe size.
16. Feature on the front cover of HEAT magazine.

Of course truth be told, even if I wanted to watch Big Brother, I couldn’t. My husband only has to hear the music and he starts frothing at the mouth. And that’s not in excitement I might add.  As a rule he really doesn’t like any form of reality TV, and will generally protest for many, many weeks about what he is being forced to watch. He’ll complain about how pathetic the format is, how fake the contestants are, and declare, quite rightly, that the presenters are enough to make you want to throw up your dinner into your hands.

Over the years I have worn him down, and have somehow managed to successfully get him hooked on shows like Dancing on Ice, So You Think You Can Dance, The Apprentice, the Biggest Loser (only the Aussie version) and Masterchef. Wife Swap, I’m sad to say, is simply never going to happen.

But of all these shows, my favourite have to be those that prove that beauty really is only skin deep.

America’s/Australia’s/Britain’s Next Top Model – oh you’ve got to love them for the sheer drama and brilliant bitchiness that these girls, many of whom aren’t even old even to cross the road on their own, have already mastered at such an tender young age.  As they cry, sulk and pout over every makeover haircut, and squeal with every Tara/Sarah/Lisa Mail that appears, it seems they just can’t help themselves but to prove the theory true that models are an incredibly dumb breed. And that large groups of catty girls are infinitely more dangerous to be around than a stick of lit dynamite.

I know this stereotype of models is something of an unfair generalisation, namely because I too once shimmed my way down a catwalk, and I’d like to think I possess matter between my ears that I know how to use. But oh my God, most of the vain little prima donnas on these shows apparently fell right out of the nearest stupid tree, hitting each and every branch on the way down.

So yes, it does makes me realise that I must be aging considerably faster than I care to admit, because many of these model wannabes seem young enough to still need the placenta attached to survive. They also appear to be completely unequipped to deal with the big bad world of reality that awaits them, on the other side of the competition. A world of fashion that will gobble them up, strip the meat of their jutting hip bones and then spit them out when they’re 20, over the hill and past it.

The final of Australia’s Next Top of Model is on tonight, and as far as I can see there is only one obvious winner. In one corner you have Tahnee – a girl with a beautiful face and a body that looks how it should at 17. In other words, there is still some sign of the puppy fat that you are supposed to have at that age, if it hasn’t been forcibly starved off and thrown up.

In the other corner is Cassi – a chain smoking, bad mouthed brat, with bad teeth, serious anger management issues and a body that would look right at home on a 6 year old.  In a word, she’s a Bogan. An Australian word for slapper, or a common little oik who struts around wearing micro-minis, white stilettos and a chip on her bony shoulder. Think Vicky Pollard on a hunger strike.

If this girl wins it will be a sad day for mothers everywhere. For she is the worrying proof that nowadays it’s OK to be a nicotine-stained, spoilt little madam, as long as you’re stick thin and look pretty in makeup. I’d have to say she’s about neck and neck with the Pussycat Dolls, when it comes to being the best role model there is for little girls.

Having seen her act out, lash out and stomp out over the last few months on TV, I for one certainly wouldn’t buy into any brand that she was the face of, so lets hope the judges vote for the right girl to win, the one that might just prove that beauty isn’t always just skin deep…

And the result? Yeah, the right girl won. Some of the judges may have been tempted with $ signs and voted for who might make them the most cash, but thankfully the Australian public proved that poise and good manners beats trailer trash and tantrums any day of the week.

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An email from President Obama

This morning, as I do every morning, I sat at my desk, opened my email and waited to see what tripe flowed into my inbox.

I was expecting the usual of course. A chance to buy some alarming looking apparatus to improve my love life. An invitation to view photos of some ‘designer watches’ or my future mail order bride. Perhaps a heart wrenching story that I had to pass onto 10 of my closest friends within 5 seconds, or risk being struck by a falling meteorite the moment I set foot outside my front door. Even an email from a long lost Nigerian relative, letting me know that I was but only a set of bank details away from inheriting my rightful fortune.

Any of these would have been right about the norm. But this morning threw up something a little bit unexpected.

An email from the most powerful man on the planet – President Barack Obama himself.

Yes, I did do a little bit of a double take I have to say, especially when I realised the email address was legit and he wasn’t trying to sell me little blue pills – with worldwide shipping and a discount programme.

Obviously I know the President didn’t actually sent it from his own Blackberry, as he wondered through the hallowed halls of the White House. And yes, I accept that it wasn’t written specifically to me, but hey, his name is in my inbox and that’s good enough for me.

So why did I deserve the honour? Probably something to do with the email I sent him, asking what he and his administration intended to do about the growing problem of childhood obesity. A problem which, I believe, stems in part from the many fast food companies who market their products directly at the young.

The companies who use cheap plastic toys as a lure, in order to put a colourful box full of salt, sugar and trans fats in the hands of hungry young children. The sort of companies who are, for all intents and purposes, aiding and abetting those parents who slowly murder their kids everyday with an unhealthy diet.

Hopefully such an intelligent and forward thinking man, with 2 young daughters of his own, will acknowledge the issue and give it the attention that it deserves.

And now that The President is in my address book, I will certainly be keeping an eye on any new health care reforms he passes, and hope that at some point he finds a way to put some form of media gagging order on those who profit off the greed and ignorance of the young.

I’ll give him 6 months, and if I don’t see anything happening, I guess I’ll be forced to drop him another line..

For those who might be thinking that I imagined my email, here it is.

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Houston, we have a problem

I

It is a temporarily insane and somewhat delusional parent who books a holiday, takes their pint sized child on board an aeroplane and thinks that they will actually be able to sit back and enjoy their peanuts.

Air travel can be testing on the nerves at the best of times. Try to maintain an advanced yoga position for hours on end while simultaneously battling with a bagged and sealed headset and a renegade tray table, and fun will never be a word that springs to mind. Add a fractious squirming eel into the equation and you may well be wishing you’d just stayed at home and had a spray tan instead.

Traveling with children is never intended to be a pleasant experience, from the moment you drag them tired and grumpy from their beds and shoe horn them into a packed and waiting car. But it is what comes next that is as near to any military operation as found in downtown Baghdad.

First comes the careful manoeuvring of the overloaded trolleys, out of the car park and through the revolving terminal doors (the ones that either go too slow or literally threaten to cut your family in half). Then, once you have dug out your flight details from the bottom of the bag at the bottom of the trolley, you still need to negotiate your way through the dangerous hairpin bends of the swinging red ropes at check in. And all of this to then be greeted by a member of staff, who so obviously doesn’t want to be there and is simply spoiling for a fight. Namely over the said overloaded trolleys lurking behind you.

Airport security is now incredibly strict. Not a bad thing of course, but it does have the tendency to make you feel unnecessarily guilty and doubting whether you did actually pack your own bags or not. Cuticle clippers and bottled water now come under the category ‘potential deadly weapon’, and if I had a dollar for every pair of nail scissors taken off me under silent protest, I would almost be rich enough to fly First Class.

So, what I have always wondered about is this. If an undisclosed aerosol in your carry on can be enough to have you branded a terrorist, why, when asking whether your bags contain any dangerous items, do they (thankfully) fail to notice the most obvious item of all – the angelic looking little time bomb sat in a pram by your feet?

It is after all a known fact that a child in an vacuum sealed capsule can sometimes be as annoying and potentially hazardous as a mosquito trapped in your sleeping bag.

As you settle your fifty essential bags in around you and note that the amount of leg room has obviously been reduced since you last flew, the enormity of what lies ahead can hit you like a cold hard slap in the face. Concerned neighbouring passengers will start eyeing up your child, trying to determine whether they are a screamer or a kicker, and then subtly scan the plane for any empty seats. And who can really blame them. Every child free person, whether they admit it or not, has at some point wished a hasty rubbish shoot exit on some nearby spawn of Satan who has screeched for hours and bruised the small of their spine.

By the time the novelty of the window blind has worn off, the seat covers have been re-branded with washable markers and the ink has been sucked from the in-flight magazine, (all of this before even leaving the jet way) then comes the real test of a parent’s patience and inner strength. As you start taxing towards the runway and the flight stretches out before you, you will wonder why this trip ever seemed a good idea and if you are flying half way around the world, how on earth are you going to keep a bored and restless child seated, entertained and quiet in a space barely large enough to swing a hamster.

By the time they have grown bored of their toys, lost half of their Lego and suitably irritated both the people behind and in front, it is easy for murderous thoughts to start creeping in. These thoughts are often accompanied by cold sweats, tears and a silent vow to never fly again.

While most socially conscious parents vow that they would never let their child roam the aisles like a pack of hungry wolves, when it becomes a choice between that or DVT, you may well hoist junior off your lap and turn a blind eye. You are, after all safe in the knowledge that all the doors are child locked and every route will eventually bring them back to you. The only time when this is probably not advisable is around meal times, when there is a likelihood of them being mowed down by a renegade cart of chicken and beef.

For many parents mealtimes at home can be a daily battle field, leaving physical and mental scars for all involved. When trying to enforce the same principles of a clean plate, a well balanced diet and an ‘eat not throw’ policy’ at 2am, the result can be nearer on a bloodbath. More often than not the bread roll is the only thing on offer that will grab their attention. Unfortunately the roll is also the only thing on the tray that would also kill a passerby if dropped off a two storey building.

Pre-ordering a child’s meal does mean they are served first, giving you an iota of a chance of supervising and possibly controlling the scale of the inevitable fall out. On the downside however, the meal can also be loaded down with so many sugar filled treats that you may as well just hold their head back and pour blue smarties down their throat. The administering of E numbers in such a confined space is only advisable upon leaving the plane, when you need your child to walk on their own two feet.

Newborn babies probably make the best travelling companions of all. They can be put to sleep (not literally of course) in a bassinet, or if you forget to book one, they are still small enough to be held without the fear of pulling any major back muscles. If breastfeeding is still on the menu life is much easier still. It can help to combat the changing cabin pressure and stop their small ear from popping during take off and landing. It is very tempting however to make yourself the in-flight buffet in exchange for peace and potential sleep, but be warned by one who has tried this method before. Not only will you eventually stagger off the aeroplane feeling like a deflated cow, you are also very likely to overfill their small stomach. If this happens you run the risk of having your hours of your hard work returned in force all over you, your clothes, the seat and the passenger in the chair next to you.

If your child is sick (and the laws of probability say it will happen at some point), it can be a totally and utterly mortifying experience, enough to make you want to crawl under your seat and hide. But as widespread as the destruction and overpowering smell can be, and let me tell you waves of vomit or curdled milk sweeping through economy class can be pretty horrendous, there is absolutely nothing you can do but control and contain. At this point you better be hoping you had the foresight to pack spare clothes, otherwise your already upset child may well be leaving in an aircraft pillow case.

So how do you survive a flight and have the courage to face the same again on your return journey? The answer is patience, inner calm, acceptance and above all a sense of humour. Remember that from a child’s perspective, having their parent trapped in a seat next to them is actually a dream come true. So as much as you may want to finish your book or watch the in flight movie, if you can find the inner strength and energy to give your child your undivided attention, they might just surprise you and act like an angel. Of course if none of these options work then thinly veiled threats, bribery or Benadryl usually do the trick.

Finally, a word for all those passengers who fly with nothing more than a backpack, handbag or computer in tow.

If you don’t want to help a nearby parent by picking up a runaway beaker, playing peek-a-boo with their baby or even offering a pair of arms when the mother simply can’t keep her knees crossed any longer, then at least hold off with the hostile muttering and murderous looks. What you have before you is probably a parent who, short of knocking their child over the head and stuffing them in bag, has very little control over the situation. They are no doubt all ready stressed to breaking point and covered in hives, so you making them feel worse about their child’s behaviour is really not going to help matters at all.

And if you can’t be nice – buy Business.

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Getting away with murder

Ev

Everyday around the world, millions of children are slowly dying at the hands of those meant to protect them – their parents. It’s a slow and silent abuse, carried out over many years, on view for all to see and even condoned by the society that we live in. But these children aren’t being beaten or bruised. They aren’t being kicked or shaken or burnt, they aren’t even having a hand laid on them.

The crime committed against them? They are being fattened up and killed with kindness, one chicken nugget at a time. While many of these parents fail to realise the part that they play in their own child’s terrible fate, they are quite simply, getting away with murder.

Childhood obesity has become an epidemic, spreading out from the junk food fueled west and into developing countries across the world. According to the World Health Organization, a staggering 22 million children are now estimated to be overweight. And that’s only counting those under the age of 5. With 1 billion adults worldwide now overweight, with at least 300 million of them considered obese, this isn’t exactly a problem that has crept up on us and happened overnight. Far from it, it has taken millions of burgers and many years in the eating.

Obesity is a highly serious and chronic medical condition, associated with a wide range of debilitating and life threatening conditions. These include sleep problems, early puberty, eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia, skin infections, asthma, respiratory problems, liver disease, high blood pressure, heart disease and even cancer. It can also have a severe physiological impact on those affected, particularly children. From playground taunting and teasing to vicious bullying and harassment, obesity can lead to such intense levels of discrimination that it can eventually dictate the job that you have and the life that you may lead.

Despite popular misconception, obesity is not the same as just being overweight, it is when you have too much body fat for your height and age, and is defined by many doctors as being 20% above what your normal weight should be. It can be measured by calculating your BMI (Body Mass Index).

Children all grow at very different rates, so as a parent it can be hard to know what is normal ‘baby fat’ and what is a health crisis in the making. Chubby little legs indicate a healthy and well fed baby, and lets face it, this is probably the only time in your life when having folds of fat around your knees will be considered cute. But if your child is overweight by the time they go to kindergarten, then according to a Harvard Study Team, unless you help them to lose their ‘baby fat’ as they grow, it is likely that they will stay that way and continue to gain an unhealthy amount of weight as they get older.

Ignorance in understanding the facts have up until now perhaps been the biggest hurdle in overcoming childhood obesity, but with a recent wave of media attention and TV programmes highlighting the issues, ignorance is no longer an acceptable excuse. Parents who act dumb or worse still don’t act at all, should, in my opinion, be taken out, strung up and pelted with eggs at dawn. The cause of childhood obesity is NOT rocket science and it is not, as many like to claim, down to having a snail slow metabolism or being ‘big boned’.

Obesity, in both children and adults, is down to consuming more sugar, fat and calories than your body needs and then not doing enough physical exercise to burn them all off.

Genetics do play a part, but is this down more to inherited biology or from learning bad habits? Studies have shown that while 50% of children with obese mothers and 40.1% with obese fathers do go on to become either overweight or obese themselves, a high percentage of parents with a normal body weight also have children facing the same problem.

So if biology is partly to blame, is it inheriting a gene that makes a child gain weight simply by looking at a doughnut, or is it more to do with exposing and subjecting a child to their parent’s own unhealthy eating pattern and lifestyle?

Other behavioural factors have also been linked to childhood obesity, such as stress, boredom, sadness, anxiety, low self esteem and depression. Any of these, as we all know can trigger off a pattern of comfort and binge eating, which would in turn create a very vicious and potentially unbreakable circle. A lack of sleep may also be to blame, with a Harvard study carried out this year showing that for those children who do not get enough sleep, as well as having a negative impact on their emotional and social welfare and their performance in school, they also may have an increased risk of being overweight.

Childhood obesity in many ways can also be blamed on the technological, social, economic and environmental changes that have taken place in our world. A world where people are now too busy to eat anything off a plate. Where young girls would rather be drinking themselves under the table than cooking food to eat off it. Where children think a Playstation counts as exercise and that the Golden Arches are one of the natural wonders of the world.

I think childhood obesity can also be blamed in part on Ray Croc, one of the men initially responsible for bringing junk food to the masses.

Without his ‘vision’ of fueling the world on burgers and fries, there might not be 31,000 McDonald’s restaurants in 119 countries, serving more than 47 million people every day. Many of these restaurants are deliberately being built within walking distance of schools, targeting those who are not only more susceptible to the charms of the marketing ads but also those who are most at risk from the long term effects of eating too much of this type of food.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not on a personal crusade against Ronald and his chicken nuggets, or even those who eat them. Jamie Oliver has already gone down that particular path in 2006 and successfully achieved, along with the National Heart Forum, a ban in the UK on advertising unhealthy food products during children’s TV programmes.

What I personally do have an issue with is firstly that McDonalds target their trans fat and salt laden Happy Meals at children aged 3-9, and then make sure that they double or triple their sales by marketing them with promotional movie tie-in toys – none of which actually do anything or even last past the back seat of the car.

A company finally fighting back against this trend is Disney. For the last 10 years they have filled the Happy Meal boxes with little Nemos, Mr. Incredibles and 101 Dalmatians. But as they now wish to distance themselves with fast food and its links to the epidemic of childhood obesity, they have cut their ties with the chain.

Of course as they say, you can lead a person to the counter but you can’t make them eat a burger.

So yes, although companies make a fortune supplying the food, it is the parents who are letting their offspring gorge themselves silly. It is parents who take their children to fast food restaurants for their Sunday lunch, for their birthday parties and as a reward for doing well at school (myself included, slap on the hand and I won’t do it again).

There is photo of a boy at McDonalds doing the rounds on the Internet, one which I am sure McDonalds doesn’t appreciate, but this single image highlights exactly what the problem is.

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It’s not that people eat junk food some of the time, it’s that some people let their children eat junk food all of the time.

The good news is that finally, after 25 years, the levels of climbing obesity rates amongst children are starting to stall – according to the CDC and based on survey data gathered from 1999 to 2006 and published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

So the damage caused to children by this epidemic can be stopped, prevented and even reversed. If their parents help them to live a healthier life, this generation could be the one that puts an end to this problem and saves future generations from facing the same fight.

Childhood Obesity is not a Fat v Thin debate.

It is not about pointing the finger or casting blame. It is not about wearing the right dress size, being popular or even fitting in. It is simply about keeping your child healthy and giving them the best possible start to their life.

Whatever lifestyle an adult chooses to lead and the medical consequences that may come about because of it, are solely down to that individual. But a child’s diet and physical well being are an entirely different matter and are, I think, the responsibility of society as a whole. Children need to be taught what is healthy and what is not. They need to be taught to treat exercise as a way of life, and not something that stands between them and their TV schedule. They need to be taught that just because they are offered an upsize on every meal, it doesn’t make it a bargain that they can’t refuse.

Parents need to learn when to say “No” and how to enforce some serious tough love in the kitchen. It is knowing how much your child actually needs to eat and then being strong enough to tell your pleading little angel to put down that third muffin and step away from the sweetie jar. You will never starve your child with such measures, but if you keep on letting them dictate their own menu, you may as well just go out and buy a goose, pump food down its throat and sit back to wait for the Foie gras.

To slowly starve a child to death is a crime, a crime punishable with a jail sentence. So surely logic would say that to feed your child to an early grave is no different and therefore deserves to be treated the same way.

Another article I have written about obesity can be found here.