Save our lollipop lady, now!

On Friday, the parents at Kirkhill primary, East Renfrewshire received this cryptic message:

'Please note, due to personnel changes in the authority, there will be a new School Crossing Patroller at Kirkvale Drive/Kirkvale Court in the New Year.

This seems to be admin speak for 'we're moving your lollipop lady elsewhere'.

Well, we, the parents at Kirkhill, are not happy about this and we won't be going down without a fight.

I have been a parent at that school (continuously) since 2002, which possibly makes me the most 'senior' parent at the school. I've been through quite a number of crossing patrollers over the years, all pleasant enough; they give you a nod as they cross your child over but Stephanie, our Stephanie, is not like that. She is made from another mould entirely. Stephanie has been at our back gate for a number of years and is right there at the heart of our school community. She has amazingly learnt the name, not only of every child using the back entrance, but their nursery and high school siblings too. She has learnt the parents' names and jobs too. She asks after everyone as you cross the road, she wishes you a lovely day doing whatever you are off to do in the office. Every morning we are greeted with a huge smile, no matter the weather, she remarks to the kids about changes of hair style, new shoes and all the rest. She notices everything and makes every one of us and our kids feel like we are the most important people in the universe.

On snowy days, she turns up early and grits the paths, she helps drivers as their car wheels spin in the snow. She comes along to all the school shows and cheers on each kid as if they were her own - probably because to her, they are. As a parent, you know that if you're running late, your child will be taken under her wing and cared for. That level of trust matters a lot. 

She deals with the dangerous and abusive drivers in a calm and authoritative manner too, which can't be easy.

Moving Stephanie to another school simply to meet some administrative criterion is the most infuriating thing I have heard for a long time. Someone who had invested so much of her own time and energy into being part of our community deserves her place. To us parents, she is the first school face of the morning and last in the evening. Stephanie is Kirkhill Primary and we call for the authority to reconsider their decision. It would take years for anyone to be able to come close to filling her shoes...

So let's all get writing to ER, our councillors and similar. We can do this! 

56 days

The nightmare started on September 26. September 26 is the anniversary of the day I moved in with Thomas many, many moons ago, so we'd been looking forward to celebrating our semi-anniversary until the world came crashing down unexpectedly...

For many years, I'd say most of my 40s, I've had health issues - digestion issues, prolapse issues, general gynaecological aches and pains that eventually got put down to IBS with a wee bit prolapse. By the middle of last summer I was signed up for prolapse surgery until, when I went in for the pre-op assessment, the consultant took one look at my age and tried her best to warn me against it. A last-ditched attempt to fix me was made - this time through pelvic physio. That began this February and went on till September. Still I had terrible bloating, constipation, a bladder that needed emptying too often but would never fully empty, back pain, an inability to wear any clothing round my waist (for all those who thought I thought I actually looked good in those leggings - it was that or my nightie!) and the fatigue linked to always being in pain. So yet again they started going on about irritable bowel syndrome and how I needed just to get on with it. I asked if they could check where things were sitting because I felt crap, to put it nicely.

On September 25 I got a phone call in the car out of the blue asking if I'd like an ultrasound at the Victoria Infirmary the following day. Hallelujah! I thought. I picked up the kids and threw them off at home then zoomed in, not sure I would make it by my 3-45 deadline. If not I was just going to have to miss it. (Imagine I had...) A doctor came out and took me in to a dark room, asked me to empty my bladder then started looking around inside with a wand. I should have noticed it sooner but wasn't really concentrating. I've only had that kind of scan before when pregnant. She was silent, her nurse was also completely silent. The machines were facing away from me so I couldn't see what they were seeing. She was printing photos and I could hear her measuring something, the way they do to date a foetus. It went on way too long and way too quietly. There was no general chitchat about what I did or my kids etc. When she finally put on the lights, I caught the look in her eyes. I turned to her nurse who also looked at me in a strange pitying way but said nothing. And then it struck me. The look in the radiographer's eyes was the same look as I had seen back in 2004 when I had gone for a scan, 8 weeks pregnant, unsuspecting and they had had to tell me there was no heartbeat and I was about to miscarry.

The doctor asked me into her room and told me she had found some concerning 'masses' growing on my ovaries and that she wanted me to go for an urgent CT scan. I asked how worried I should be and she said she couldn't answer my question, and therefore in doing so did basically answer it indirectly with the word 'extremely'. She said she wanted a scan of my entire torso to see if there were any other 'masses' in there. If she had actually said the words 'I think you have advanced ovarian cancer and I want to check if it has spread to your kidneys, liver and lungs' she wouldn't have been any more clear. They did blood tests at that point and told me my CA125 markers were extremely elevated. I was told I'd have a scan within the fortnight. 

I drove home in shock and parked in front of my house (I've no idea how) and phoned Thomas inside to come out. I relayed what had happened.

The next fortnight, which included poor Léon's birthday was spent in a daze of phoning and getting no info and googling and concluding I wouldn't see Christmas. I had every ache and pain listed as I always do because of all my health issues. I had to turn down two jobs as I couldn't sleep so couldn't concentrate. I could barely speak to the people I met on the school run or in the supermarket. I would  hyperventilate in Aldi and find myself unable to buy dinner. We spent most evenings in tears, trying not to freak Anna and Amaia out too much. Charlotte sussed it immediately and also went into a meltdown, not great two weeks into uni. Léon sussed it too, but as an optimist who remembered less of his grandfather's cancer years, assumed I'd be fixable.

After two weeks (which felt like 20) my scan came through. I went in and afterwards, asked what would happen next. They actually replied - 'we've no idea, we only scan, we don't deal with results'. Another two days meltdown ensued. I tried ringing the original consultant at the Vicky but got nowhere. Eventually on the first morning of the October week, I cracked. I phoned my GP in tears and asked if there was anything she could do. Five hours later the Vicky consultant phoned to say she thought, looking at my scan, that it hadn't spread though couldn't be sure but she'd arrange for a full hysterectomy within two weeks. She stressed over and over the need for haste.

The next day I flew to Italy. I needed to be away from all this as they weren't going to see me that week anyway (I'd double-checked). I sat in the sun and contemplated the fact that I was now 'only' looking at a contained cancer. Still I knew how many years I'd been unwell so it was hard to fully believe until they opened me up but at least for the first time in three weeks I could actually breathe, sleep and eat. Before I had started having crazy thoughts - my granny - Phyllis Buchanan - had died of cancer at 50 so I was going to die because I was called Phyllis Buchanan and I was 50. Every comment from the kids, even as small as 'will you do my hair for prom mummy?' was enough to send me into waves of panic and hysteria. I wondered if this would be my last flight, my last visit to my in-laws. My mother-in-law kindly offered to take me to her hairdresser one afternoon to cheer me up and I couldn't get past the thought that I'd be losing my hair six weeks later, so it was lovely but pointless. That's how unstable I'd become and Thomas was exhausted both from being both parents and my personal psychologist, while scared witless himself!

When we got back, we saw the original consultant who said I'd be done and dusted within a fortnight. If it hadn't spread yet, they didn't want to risk it spreading by holding off. Two weeks passed however and I heard nothing. I rang her again and was told my case was now with the oncology team at the Royal Infirmary. I rang them and after much passing from pillar to post, I was told they hadn't even put me on their system yet and they hoped they could fit me in by the end of November or early December! It would be a minimum of five weeks despite my being told I needed it to be two, max. The only thing worse than being told you have a cancer which has spread, is being told you have one that hasn't and then being left so long it does. Mental torture doesn't come close...

We started to melt again. Suddenly though, a consultant from a third hospital phoned and asked to see me ten days ago. He examined me and asked if I couldn't feel the tumours given they were already grapefruit-sized (>10cm each). This was the first time anyone had mentioned size and I was shocked. He told me I was carrying the equivalent of a twin pregnancy of 16-18 weeks. That would explain why my clothes felt a tad tight and none of my recent dieting had worked. He explained that often when they go in they find things not on the CT scan like it having spread to the lymph nodes and generally terrified me again... I was given some scary odds: 60% of people with my scan turn out to have cancer, only 15% of ovarian tumours are found at the pre-cancer stage and these are almost exclusively in women aged 20-40...

Eight days later he pulled me in. I was unconscious for six hours and he removed my uterus, tubes, ovaries, the tumours, and my cervix. When I was still barely conscious the surgeon also explained he'd found some worrying cells on my bowel so had brought in a third surgeon while I was unconscious to perform a bowel resection and send that off to pathology too. My dad died of bowel cancer in 2012. This frightened me witless. Nothing had spread to the lymphs however, which was something.

Pathology took six days and they rang yesterday:

Bowel: severe diverticular disease - painful but it won't kill me.

Uterus: ok

Tubes: ok

Cervix: ok

Ovaries: Pre-cancerous tumours that had not yet turned dangerous despite their size.

Bloody hell! I have aged ten years in the last 56 days but it looks like I might get to see my son graduate next summer, see my daughter through her time at uni, listen to my son's orchestra some more, see my little girl leave primary next summer and my littlest girl might even have me around long enough to remember me. In the last 56 days I have learnt that nothing matters in life beyond health, not really, because without it, you have nothing. If you have any aches and pains jump up and down till someone looks inside you. A little later for me would have left Thomas a widower with five kids in his 40s, would quite frankly have killed my mother and would have changed all the kids forever.

So apologies to friends who I've seemed a bit standoffish with recently, especially on a certain bus trip to Edinburgh in October when I couldn't really speak, let alone chat - my mind was elsewhere. Putting one foot in front of the other and not falling over took all my concentration. Thanks to those who have helped with my kids at Halloween etc, no questions asked. Thanks to teachers who've hugged away the girls' worries over the last few weeks when they confided their cancer fears in them.

And now I only have to deal with getting back to full strength with no sick pay, with Thomas trying to do all my school runs on top of his own full-time job, while contending, of course with having taken 6 hours to go through menopause rather than the usual 5+ years - that's going to be fun!

Going awol

I'm going to be disappearing from all my usual haunts (the school run, Aldi, Blogger and Facebook) later in the week and I am not yet sure when I'll be back. After being hit by a few health issues over the last six weeks (yes, that's why we've been acting a bit odd), I'm going in for a big op on Thursday, so I'll let you know how that went once I'm out of the woods. Thomas is going to be demented playing both mum and dad, doing all the school runs while running both halves of our business, and worrying about me at the same time, so please bear with us if things slip a little. See you on the other side. Phyl x

More Titanic homework

So, Amaia's researching the Titanic and spent this evening making tickets for all the different classes. When she looked up the third-class tickets she was more than impressed that you could get to the USA for just a fiver, especially given she has more than a fiver in her piggy bank.

Then she came out with the sweet but daft statement: If only I had a time machine, I'd go back to 1912 with my fiver and buy a ticket for the Titanic. It's such good value!

I can see a wee flaw with that plan!

Titanic homework

Me: What are you doing, Amaia?Amaia: I'm making a model of the Titanic out of a kitchen sponge!Well that's innovative!... silly me! Should I point out those sponges float or would that just be cruel? 😜

Sunflower extravaganza...

        

Over the years, I have grown my fair share of sunflowers in the garden. I usually plant around 30 and end up with about a dozen (thanks to the weather and the slugs). Granted, they don't turn up till about October given the climate, but we get there.

This year we had the hottest and most prolonged summer since we've been in this house. I knew this year I could end up with something rivalling my trips to the South of France or Italy (almost...)

So, I coaxed fifty little seeds till they were about 15cm tall in my greenhouse, and then I planted them all round the garden in June as always. I sat back, camera ready and waited, and waited... 

And believe it or not, this is what Scotland's best summer of the new millennium yielded from those fifty little plants. Seriously? Is that the best you can do?! I give up!

The youth of today

Charlotte was talking about uni this morning on the school run. Maybe I should start calling it the educational establishment run now she's left school but the others haven't... (I have to drop her at Mearns road to catch the No.4 bus to Glasgow uni as First have stopped its coming to Harvie avenue - it's not like anyone needs a bus from half of Newton Mearns that goes to Glasgow uni, is it?! Grrrr)

So, she was saying something about having a lecture in the McIntyre building and I commented that the John Smith bookshop was in there when I was a student so we had never used it for classes.

I then remembered it was where you went for NUS meetings and all our protest marches had set out from there. I then fondly told her of our great protests - the RIP free education marches of '86 and '89 when student grants were scrapped in favour of loans and where we'd carried a coffin from the McIntyre down to town picking up the Glasgow School of Art, Glasgow Tech and Strathclyde uni students en route before holding a rally in George square and marching out to Queens Park.

I told her about the Mandela protests and our small part in the fight to overthrow the Apartheid regime in South Africa during my student days and our campaign to make Winnie Mandela rector and give Mandela the freedom of the city of Glasgow, then I explained Apartheid to the three wee ones as I drove. Charlotte was listening quite intently, then came out with a comment that blew me away...

'But that was before social media! You did all that and the only people who saw you were doing it were the ones you actually marched past? How did you motivate people to protest if you couldn't get your message out to the wider public?' I explained that it would have made it into the papers or on to the BBC back then and everyone would have known. She found it hard to imagine mainstream media actually reporting anti-establishment news. Her generation assumes that if you protest you need to livestream it on Twitter or Facebook as it won't show up in the newspapers or the TV news. Interesting, if a tad Orwellian.

My sweet, innocent little friend

Charlotte's sitting watching Friends on Netflix. She's back at the beginning when Ross and Rachel first get together. Amaia, who's never seen it before is sitting with her. The happy couple are canoodling in the hallway. Ross comes out with something like: I really want to make it up to you for last night. Maybe we could go to a fancy restaurant? Rachel smiles at him sexily and replies: Oh yes, and maybe afterwards we can go back to my place for some... dessert! Ross's eyeballs fall out his head and immediately Amaia pipes up indignantly: Well, that's the stupidest thing I ever heard! It's obvious that dessert is going to be much nicer in the fancy restaurant rather than them going home and making like Angel Delight or something at Rachel's flat!

Léon is currently trying desperately not to point and laugh. Sweet! He then suggested I note it down here so he can show her it in a couple of years once she's more worldly-wise!

Happy families

It's a bit of stressful time at the moment.

First there's Marcel - my number one and usually very capable child. At 21, he's been living in Edinburgh for over three years. This summer, however, he managed to get himself not one but two jobs and his eight hours a day, seven days a week have resulted in him having run out of time on the flat-hunting front. Instead of lining up his next flat which he needed to get from Sept 1, he left that to his slightly more laid-back flatmate, who has enough money for hotels and who also has a girlfriend round the corner. Marcel has now moved back home and is booking flat viewings by the dozen from across the country at ten a week while shouting expletives, punching the air and muttering under his breath about never leaving a job to someone else if you can do it yourself. Of course, he's also having to commute to Edinburgh three days a week for his Apple job and uni starts next Monday! He's contemplating sleeping in the library from then!

Then there's number two. She's no longer stressing me but I couldn't say the same last weekend: I got a text from Spain saying the single mum she had been au pairing for had decided to give her ex husband the kids three days early and had disappeared off to visit her new boyfriend three hundred miles away, leaving Charlotte homeless, but I wasn't to worry because she'd moved in with the mum's (single, forty year old, lives alone) brother and they were having a lovely time getting to know each other over wine!!!! Do you trust him? I asked in the calmest of voices, trying not to shriek or squeak! Turned out he was a lovely guy who paid for her food, lent her his travel cards and drew her maps to the beach and tourist sites of Valencia, worked on a work presentation all weekend, and waved her off on the tube to the airport on Monday morning but that doesn't mean I slept a wink till she got off the plane on Monday afternoon!

Number three is usually happy to have his brother home, probably because he only comes during holidays and they sit and watch movies or play play station together, but this time he's gammoning away: Marcel is taking over my room with his bags, and I can't sit on my spare bed to get dressed in the morning because Marcel is asleep in it, and I have to get dressed in the dark because he isn't up yet and when are you going to convert the spare bathroom into a guestroom like you've always said  you would mum, so I can get my room back NOW!!!

Number four isn't overly annoyed though First's decision to terminate the number 4 (ie Glasgow uni) bus at ASDA now means that school run has been moved to ten minutes earlier to let Charlotte jump out at Mearns Castle where she can catch the bus to uni and this is worth a rant or two in the morning.

Number five is still in full packed lunch meltdown. Apparently packed lunches are worse than smallpox and syphilis rolled into one and if I just whine another week, maybe they'll give in and start buying me school lunches again! (Maybe I should take up lotto to see if I can win a year's subscription to canteen lunches at Kirkhill primary)

Reminds me a bit of my first (German) mother-in-law - she also had five kids and used to say to me: Kleine Kinder, kleine Sorgen, große Kinder... I was meant to fill in the blanks myself, I think I get it now!

Number six, aka my dearly beloved, has manged to do all sort of damage to himself over the weekend. He slipped on the wet kitchen floor at 1am on Saturday morning and it was after two before the adrenaline shakes had worn off enough for me to get him into bed. Saturday morning I was up again before nine and got Charlotte to take 3, 4, and 5 to their Williamwood music lessons while I got six x-rayed: nothing broken - just a twisted knee and a strained Achilles tendon. Now, he would probably deserve sympathy if he'd been running a marathon but given he slipped on an ice cube he was putting in his white wine because he hadn't chilled the bottle enough, I'm not so sure!😂

Even the hamster has been so awol this weekend, I was beginning to wonder if she'd kicked the bucket until I heard her drinking this morning.

I'm fine... well as fine as someone can be this close to the Tory party conference announcing whether or not my husband is an illegal alien who needs to be booted back to where he came from.

I'm seriously considering remortgaging the house before the pound collapses anyway and pissing off to somewhere Mediterranean for the October week where I can recharge my batteries in the sun far from all the madness, only question is whether to go alone or take this bunch with me!

A dramatic loathing of sandwiches

We spotted the issue when Amaia was about two... no matter how much coaxing and cajoling, the girl who happily downs the spiciest Mexican or Indian food, any amount of pasta or other more boring offerings, just reacts to sandwiches in the way most family pets do to the sight of the local vet's surgery!

All through nursery we tried to break her and got as far as jam or honey, but that was about it. It isn't that she doesn't like bread, it is that she thinks savoury food ought to be hot and therefore ought not to be on bread! So as I said last month, packed lunches have begun.

Charlotte returned from Spain on Monday. Charlotte is Amaia's bestie and confidant. At bed time, she showed up in Lot's room with tears rolling down her face. 'It's not that I haven't tried, Charlotte, I have but I just hate everything about school lunches now', she wailed dramatically. 'I've tried them for three weeks now and I'm just soooo depressed!'

Sigh! It's going to be a long ten years!

Hair today, gone tomorrow

Anna can be impulsive and determined at times. Only Sunday, she suddenly came out with the notion that she ought to cut off all her hair and donate it to the Little Princess Trust. Her friend Inishka had done that last year, but at the time she hadn't really considered it, she was simply very proud of her (and her sister Ameya) for doing so. I'm not sure why the notion suddenly came to her now.

On Monday, she reiterated the idea but again, I figured she'd give it up after a day or two. But on Tuesday, she went over to the hairdresser and asked for an appointment, and when they said they actually had one free immediately, she simply sat down on the first seat and got on with it.

She certainly has balls!

Charlotte's school leaver's certificate

I thought I'd sneak out a wee post about this while she's in Spain, on the beach at a wifi-free zone, because she'd probably be mortified at my public celebration of her hard work and dedication! 

What can I say? It speaks for itself, and I'm sure she will continue to devote her incredible work ethic to her future uni studies too! It's a shame they don't put the bands on in Scotland as they do in England, as she got a band one in everything she has ever sat other than Higher History, which she missed by 1%! Not being home, she hasn't found out this year's bands yet, but they were all ones at the prelim stage too. I guess she can go and see school once she comes home.

This is one proud mummy. I must have done something ok over the years.

Distraction tactics

Today is the day I have been semi-dreading since Amaia started nursery in 2013! At nursery she was home by lunch time and for the past three years she has had school lunches provided by the Scottish government, but today was pay day! Either I start coughing up £2 approx per day for lunch, or she needs to take sandwiches. A tenner a week isn't dire, of course, but when you multiply it by the number of kids I have, it is a non-starter, and I can't exactly be seen to be giving Amaia preferential treatment simply because she is better at stubborn stand-offs, so it is all or none.

The problem is Amaia hates sandwiches. For years I thought she was just being annoying and fussy until it suddenly occurred to me that there was actually a logic to her whole standpoint. In Amaia's head savoury food is hot, sweet food is cold. She'll eat a gammon steak or a slice of bacon but a gammon or ham sandwich is entirely unacceptable. Salami, chorizo or serrano ham is something you get hot on a pizza, not a cold sandwich filler, and until recently cheese had to be melted on toast or on a pizza. Our one saving grace is her huge love of salad. 

It's odd as she's not a fussy eater in general - she eats most things including the most exotic spicy dishes filled with hot chillis, but that savoury hot, sweet cold rule in her mind is hard to break. She won't eat cold boiled eggs though loves eggs. She waits for things like apple crumble to cool down before eating it... She also used to hate ice cream as it was too cold! If a meal cools down half way though, she stops eating altogether until we permit her to leave the table and reheat it in the microwave!

I could of course solve it by giving her only jam, honey and chocolate spread for the next ten years but I suspect my dentist friends would have something to say about that, so it's not happening!

So distracted by a cute hamster, her name in bubble writing and a compartmentalised box, she's gone in today with a buttered piece of bread, some tomatoes, cucumber and mixed stuffed olives. ***

Hopefully some time over the next year I will get the filling into the sandwich!

***Update: Well, today was a complete disaster! The juice from the olives leaked onto the bread and the custard creams (that I didn't even know she'd sneaked in 😂) so she came home and made super noodles as she'd eaten nothing at school. Tomorrow we're going to try lots of tiny Tupperware boxes 🤔

Back to school

So another year begins. s2, p4, and p7 - the magical year, or rather the one that is meant to be magical anyway. Most of p7 focuses on growing up, maturing, preparing to leave the only school you've ever known, and widening your friend group to prepare for a class full of strangers, with the odd familiar face. For Anna, this was always going to be a poignant year, as she is one of the youngest in her class and unlike her three predecessors, not quite as full of joy to venture onwards and upwards. I have no doubts that by next June Kirkhill will have worked its wonders and got her ready and excited for Mearns Castle, but she definitely isn't going into p7, desperate to rush out the other side!

With Brexit, it's going to be an even harder year for Anna. While her friends feel anxious at the thought of moving together to a school ten minutes away, Anna has at the back of her head that this could be her last year in an English-speaking school, in the only country she's ever known as home with all the friends she has in the world. With a deal already negotiated, she would have had a full year to psych herself up, even for the unthinkable to her, which would be moving abroad to a school speaking Danish, or worse still one speaking a language she doesn't know many words of, such as German, but with the government's dithering and game-playing, lives of families, adults and children alike, are up in the air. At fifty I am finding it hard to prepare myself mentally for what lies ahead, as I ride the roller coaster of  'today we probably have to leave, tomorrow we maybe don't' over and over and over with every new headline and reneged promise. What this is doing to the mental health of our ten year olds is unimaginable and also unforgivable.

Let's hope she gains some clarity soon, and hope even harder it is clarity which will allow her life to go on happily as it always has with her wonderful friends in her lovely school, following in the footsteps of her older siblings.

Les frontaliers

My French family lived 4km from the French-German border. They all lived in France and spoke French at home, but they all worked in greater Saarbrücken and spoke German at work. They were known as frontaliers - people whose lives take place equally on both sides of a border.

My Danish family, for the most part, live in Copenhagen and again have been known to work on the other side of that Bridge, in Sweden. Again they are people whose lives take place equally on either side of the border.

Had I moved to France or Denmark, there is a great chance I too would have become a frontalière. 

When the Tory government decided to exclude this type of British emigrant (I refuse to segregate them using the superior 'expat', as they are no different to people like my Danish husband or French ex-husband, who simply chose to exercise their EU treaty rights by working in a fellow member state) from the Brexit vote two years ago, they showed an outrageous lack of understanding or respect for these people.

Even if they actually bother their arses to negotiate some sort of deal, which at the moment looks slim, they have no concept of what they are doing to these people's lives. If we withdraw from the EU, British citizens living in member states will become landlocked where they live, unable to work in a different EU member state. The government is so ignorant of how people actually live that they haven't even taken into account that this is a completely normal way to live on the continent, where landmasses touch and no borders exist. The people who will be most affected by their idealistic pie-in-the-sky Brexit are those who had no say in the matter - those like my husband, those British citizens relying on work in one member state to pay for their home in another.

They are so blinded by their own insular outlook that they don't even know that this is absolutely normal abroad.

A 25 year mortgage

Twenty-five years ago today, I got the keys to my first west end flat. Top, left, 9 Havelock street. I remember it vividly... Friday 13 August 1993! There was an omen in there if I'd looked for it, I think!😉 I was never the superstitious type, but I do remember thinking it was a funny choice of day to take on a twenty-five year loan.

Our removal men dumped all our furniture (most of which we'd bought at the Barras and various other second-hand places) on the pavement as they couldn't block the single-lane one-way street. An old busy body came marching up the street and looked us up and down... Are you moving in or out? she asked, or rather demanded. In, I replied tentatively. Good! she spat back, 'cause I hated the people before you - loud, dirty, loose morals... OMG, I thought, what have we done?!

Not only did it turn out she lived in number 9, but she lived directly beneath us and having been there since 'the Clydebank blitz', she assumed the role of close-matriarch and acted as if she owned the whole block and made all the rules! She was an absolute nightmare. On numerous occasions I found her in my kitchen going through my fridge and when I learned to lock the storm doors we used to see her beady eyes peering through our waist-height letterbox at various times of the day and night! 

When we decided to sand our floorboards, I elected André to go down and ask if there was any time she was usually out so we could do it then so as not to disturb her. I won't live below sanded floors, was her ever so helpful reply! Every time I hammered in a nail to hang one of my photos, she was up like a shot screaming through our letterbox, and eventually being completely ignored by us as we hid inside giggling. 

After about two years a nephew turned up and carted her off to an old folks' home and peace returned to Havelock street!

So if things had remained as they started out in that flat - with both of us young and reasonably happy, my mortgage would have been up today. No more sending £1000 a month to the Bank of Scotland - boy would that have been nice! But it wasn't to be... we drifted apart and separated 12 years later and so my current mortgage still has twelve more years to run (assuming we get to stay here in the UK).

Would I trade my current husband for no mortgage? You bet I wouldn't! I am older and tireder now, but he and our kids are definitely worth £1000 a month!

Summer holiday 2018

We took off a week at the beginning of the holidays when Thomas's sister was here, and another last week as we had some odds and ends to get sorted. The first was a holiday in the sense that we went up north with a tent for four days in the sunshine. The second was less so as we had one day trip in the grey to celebrate Charlotte's magnificent straight A school-leaving results (she got an A in all 17 SQA exams she took in high school 🌝), but we mostly spent it getting the cooker fixed, and filling in tax forms, having meetings with the accountant, attending family birthday celebrations etc.

Neither, of course, was a holiday in the normal sense. When you work for yourself, a holiday isn't a week's paid leave. It is a week you don't work, don't get paid and which therefore results in your chasing your tail for the following month trying to fit in the five days you dared not to work. Unpaid holidays and contractual obligations are the bane of the freelance life...

As a mixed EU couple, facing mounting concern over a no-deal Brexit, what we really needed this year was to get as far away from the UK and its mind games as possible. While many of you are worrying about the financial prospects of a no-deal Brexit or which brand of baked beans to stockpile, those of us in a 'mixed' marriage face the prospect on March 29 that he loses his right to work and live in the UK, to renew his mortgage package and continue using our GP, on the very same day as I lose my right to flee to the continent with him. In the no-deal scenario, everything that has been negotiated for EU citizens hits the fan and no guidelines for their treatment will exist. We will have to rely on the unilateral goodwill of the Tory party (don't choke on your breakfast!) When we apply to renew our mortgage deal next summer, our bank will have no guidelines on whether he is eligible so I can probably work out the answer to our application already. We are hearing daily of EU citizens whose landlords are refusing to renew their leases as they do not know what their tenants' status will be. And where does that leave children like mine? UK citizens whose parent has no rights in the country in which they were born?

So, this year we could really have done with seven weeks island-hopping in the Cyclades or sitting wifi-less on some remote Mediterranean olive farm. As someone who works from home, I usually crave people on a holiday. My ideal is a city break or a busy beach just to remind myself I am not alone and isolated on this planet, but this year, I really think escaping the world would have been nice. Spending some time alone and unstressed with my husband would have been wonderful as it would have helped us to have built up some mental strength to face the terrifying seven months that lie ahead.

Already yesterday Whatsapp was buzzing with the mums in Anna's class trying to arrange the p7 prom in June 2019. I had to tick that I was interested, but in reality, I have no idea if I will be there taking photos of Anna in a pretty dress, or if I'll have had to pull her from school and leave the country. I'm already a nervous wreck and term hasn't yet begun.

Yesterday Anna actually said to me - When you take this year's back to school photo mum, we should try to make it extra-special in case it is the last ever one here in my home. Ten year olds shouldn't be living with stresses like that!

I am starting the new term more exhausted and stressed than I finished the last one and that is so far from what I need right now.

Happy Birthday

One of these babies weighed in at just shy of ten pounds, starting out life in 3-6 month clothes and looking somewhat like a sumo wrestler, the other was closer to six pounds and looked tiny and dainty. One of these babies is eight years, 207 days old, the other was eight today... So of course, it goes without saying that Amaia wishes her baby cousin a very happy birthday. LOL. (The second photo is just for proof).

I didn't wake up dead

I mentioned my little hang-up back in December... But it would appear that I woke up alive yesterday and even made it all the way through to midnight. I think that might take a few days to digest. I have become the primary Phyllis, after five decades as the subsidiary Phyllis. So from here on in, I'll be winging it, I guess.

Dying yesterday would have sucked. It would have felt like no time at all. My own son is 21. Hers was 24 so there was very little difference there, though obviously she didn't also have kids all the way down to eight. I don't feel terribly different to how I felt at 25; she probably didn't either. Life can be so cruel and unfair at times. My dad never did get over it enough to talk to me in any depth. Only on the day his dad died when I was 22, did we come anywhere close. It took reading his memoirs to really get a feel for how he had dealt with his mum's early death. Everything about my childhood would have been different, had that bit of history changed. I'd have known my granda, or rather Linda would have, as Phyllis the 2nd would never have existed. Instead he was a distant, quiet man, whose façade was impossible to penetrate. Dad would have had a lighter heart too.

I'd like to have known her. Like her son (my father) after her, she died of something that is completely curable today; it was simply caught too late and that is fate's cruellest blow.

I guess from here on in, I should try living a bit for both of us. Here's to Phyllis the first. RIP.

Now you see me, now you don't!

Charlotte has been in Madrid since June living with a Spanish family with two little girls who need a daytime adult to supervise them while their parents are out at work. We've had weekly face-times lamenting the 40 degree weather, the hardships of having your own pool and the sheer trauma of being forced to the restaurant every other night as a thanks for her babysitting! Finally on Wednesday, the parents' own summer break began so she came home to Scotland, fully five days after the wonderful Scottish heatwave threw in the towel.

She turned up in shorts and looked positively frozen. It's fully six weeks till uni starts but only two till the wee ones return to school. Four whole weeks alone, twiddling her thumbs in the drizzle lay ahead.

By day two she was twitching about the weather. I, half-jokingly, said - Why don't you log on to the site where you found the first family, in case anyone else is needing help with their kids. Some people may have contacted you, if you've not been on for a while... 

She logged on for the first time since May. Several emails awaited... She opened the first - a photo of the biggest dog you've ever seen greeted her - someone needing a doggy-sitter wasn't really her cup of tea. She's never been overly fond of dogs, having proclaimed at five that the only good kind of dog is a dead one, preferably with no teeth! 

Message two was from a woman with a Russian name based in Spain. All it said was 'I need an au pair' - no when, no mention of ages, numbers, genders of kids, no info at all. Still - it was a possibility...

She opened the third one and was greeted by a woman on a carousel smiling with two kids around the age of Anna and Amaia. Her message read 'Divorcee seeks company for three week holiday to Alicante. Your duties would be to play with my girls on the beach all day and swim in the sea. I will provide you with your own room in a beach house. I also need someone to accompany me to the restaurant every night at my expense!' Start date was to be next week and finishing fully seven days before freshers' week at Glasgow. It's a hard job obviously, but someone had to make that sacrifice!

Looks like Lotsie is off to Spain again! Tickets booked already. She might just have time to wash out her bikini from last time! God, I wish I was eighteen again. I have Charles Aznavour playing on a loop in my head... Il faut boire jusqu'à l'ivresse sa jeunesse... Wonder if anyone on the internet is looking for a fifty-year-old au pair...🤔