Results Day

Five o' clock.  All is quiet. Five minutes past five. I toss and turn and fire up my computer. Facebook is asleep and all my Australianian friends are clearly surfing or having a tinnie or five, so I pace, gurn, pace and gurn again. Six o ' clock I make a coffee. Two minutes past six, I am hyperventilating. Three minutes past six, I collapse.

Surely my son's results shouldn't cause this much anxiety but they do. Why? Coz the little bleeders are elsewhere, out of the country. Meanwhile, I am left to collect their passport to a better life.

Seven o'clock, I start to bleach the bathroom - now I know I am slowly loosing the plot. Bleach and I usually have a funny way of missing each other. However, refusing to logon onto the BBC website to analyse results for this year,  I scrub religiously at a dubious month old stain in the toilet bowl. After a good few minutes of hard labour and knowing that this feat is nigh on impossible to achieve, I resorted to gazing into the bathroom mirror to see the latest effects of my new anti-ageing cream. Bloody waste of money that was. I defy you age! No you don't it smirks back from the looking glass.

Eight o'clock the first texts arrive from friends and family wondering how my sons have done in their GCSEs and ASs. I have no idea as the school does not deign to open its doors until nine. Eight thirty and I am wondering why sending my eldest to Papua New Guinea to work in a village and learn empathy was such a good idea and why agreeing to my twins to go to Spain was a wise decision either. Now I am going through the pain of their results and they are sunning it. The few telephone calls I have had from any of them have involved monosyllabic replies of joy such as - "sick" or "peng" or "cool". My monosyllabic replies,to the few telephone calls I have received this morning, have involved profanity  such as -"f&*k" or "SH1&" or "f$%k".

Nine o'clock, I am queuing with most normal students,who are not bronzing it elsewhere, and I feel their pain. All banter has gone as the line approaches the desk. Some are white-faced huddled in corners; some are openly sobbing and others are rasping for breath. Apparently, they are the students who have achieved their grades!

My turn arrives and a poe-faced individual hands me three white envelopes without meeting eye contact. I try to make light of the situation and ask her if she would like to see my passport as I clearly look far too young to be picking up results for 17 and 16 year olds. Her answer is curt and to the point. Clearly, I need my money back from that cream!

The moment of truth is here. I start to rip open the first envelope of three.

A hole in the Wall

There is a hole in our wall. The creator of this hole is a mystery.  Apparently, not one of my sons is to blame. Every rodent in the house has shirked responsibility. Yet, a hole has appeared on the wall on my staircase.
"Why do you always blame us for everything!" muttered the twins belligerently - first suspects, as they cannot meet my eyes.
"You are just wrong on every level!" claimed the eldest. The boy protest too much. Second suspect.
Third suspect. "Mummy, I love you. I would never do that." states my youngest. No one likes a suck up!
The household furry rodents are silent. So who is to blame?
This hole is quite substantial.
The hole could be an escape route.
Who needs to escape in this house?
Eldest? Working for A S levels and hitting great results so much so that I am driving him to, this weekend, a university of renowned worldwide acclaim. Could he be bothered to attack the wall? No. Effort would be involved and since he has put little effort into anything other than the gym, diet and rugby, he is off my list of suspects.
The twins. Too busy revising, watching "The Game of Thrones" to put any energy into breaking free. Perhaps in a couple of months but right now they are revising and, the Tourette's of yesterday, is only a vague whisper.
So the finger points to my youngest. It may be you! Aka "I'm a Celebrity get me out of here !" However, he is far too busy crafting a mine of beauty online. So who?
Well, could this hole be the secret service? Are me and my boys being monitored because we are hiding the secrets of the country? God help us if we are, because our country  would be based on a series of grunts, shoulder raisers and body flatulence.
So James Bond, if you are watching us through this hole, the stains on the boys' underpants are a concern of national security; the rotting and festering bowels in their rooms are toxic and their bed sheets could be used in chemical warfare!
Other than that rodents are taking over my house! So what's new!

Caught Red Handed

My boys arrived back from their father's house tonight, reticent and belligerent as usual. One twin had a cauliflower ear from playing football with the other twin - expletives were silently mouthed at each other, with relevant hand gestures to signal war once Daddy had said farewell. My eldest ushered his father out of the building with a patronising hand scoop towards the front door.

Once father had left the building, the twins dived into a scrum of feet, fists and frantic need to batter each other,  my eldest son, however, ushered me towards the kitchen.

Shutting out the frackar, he turned to me placing his six foot two bulk against the door and asked if I had anything I wanted to discuss with him.

"Don't think so" I replied. "Ok, university applications. Yes, and further reading." 

"Nope, not what I had in mind," he replied, looking at me square in the face. "I was more thinking on the lines of a blog," he continued.

"Great, right about your love of pure maths. That would be great to talk at interview. If you write a blog, I am sure that universities would readily receive it as a form of research," I responded.

He narrowed his eyes, " Really, would they? "

I raised an eyebrow quizzically.

"Would you like to explain your blog to me, Mum?"

I roared with laughter. He narrowed his eyes further. 

"How is your blog funny at all?"

As I explained to him, if I had written "Fifty Shades" and earns zillions of dollars would there be a complaint. His retort was that I had not written the book and that reference to "crusty sheets" was wrong on every level!

Every level maybe but you and I have still been caught red handed boy!