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Sixth Degrees of Separation from a Rolling Stone

Instagram ,  love it or hate it, a fantastic forum for selfies and wannabes. A platform for could have beens and full of beans. I love Instagram. I follow friends, family and old celebrities, and their offspring. I follow pastimes, past loves and old students. I am a  greedy gobbler of all things grammy. My sons hate it. I love it. So there. Suck on the selfie
sunshine!
However, when instastalkie affects reality, your own reality, you have to suck it up and  suck it in. And this is my instagramanory.
One evening, late at night, the early hours nearing dawn, I instastalk. For an instant, I instacomment, on a son of a well known Stone. Why? Because his uncle was an old friend of my father. I do not think for a moment, an Instagram of a moment, that said instaceleb,would instacomment, and he doesn't. However, said uncle's son, cousin of instaceleb,  does in an instamoment. And the friendship of my father and his father's is ignited once more, in an instamoment.
So never leave a stone unturned, and rolling stones do gather moss, the moss of lost friendships of yesteryears.  And whether it be three or sixth degrees of separation,  your instaillierate parents could be instantly in touch with the youth of the rolling era.  One instacomment  made to a son of well known stone, a  husband of a  radio fern, has led to a instant renewal of a friendship between my father and his uncle - a man, I can remember in an instant -  who sang  to me as a child " save all your kisses for me" Whilst he was not a member of the Brotherhood of Man, I can remember him singing that to me in an instance.  Instagram is a stone that must keep rolling, because it's a "gas, gas, gas".

Tight as a Rat's ....

September, most flew the nest to uni but not mine - oh no, I have  to wait until the beginning of October.thanks Warwick, thank you so much.
So, IKEA run for all things studentesque. Wouldn't you think that, as an eighteen year old boy, you would want to eat, shoot and leave? Well, not mine. The pain, the absolute pain of having to decide what vegetable peeler or duvet cover to buy. There I stand, saying bag it and run and he is questioning the quality and economic value - for Pete's sake, I am screaming in my head, just bloody bag it so we can escape this hell hole. It's my money that's funding this so run boy, run and buy like the wind!
No, we have to enter every department and weigh up the financial decision of each frigging item. Have the youth lost their way? All I can think is I am funding this and if I want to do super trolley sweep, what is stopping him?!  How can you question whether you need one wooden spoon or two? You play rugby and smash without thinking and you are worried about cutlery! I yawn and roll my eyes.
Then the debate on wine glasses occurs and I practically lose the will to live. He wants to buy one. I question his decision and place four in the blue and yellow bag. He takes three out. I raise an eyebrow.

"I haven't come to uni to be a host, Mum, if I wanted a degree in events management or hospitality, I would have tried a little less at school and tried a little harder at being "fun and nice""
I sigh. God help Warwick and anyone foolish enough to be entertained by him. His glass does not runneth over! The only one glass he has is firmly in his tight fist!

Duffers5 meets Obama

I enter a class to teach. Everything is deathly silent. This is unusual. One soul looks at me from beneath his long curtains and mutters something vaguely intelligible - now I am on familiar ground.
"Do you have something to say?" I ask. One of them swivels round on his chair and stares at me.
"Anything the matter?" I ask.
"Maybe," he replies.
I wait. My eyes are now squinting and my eyebrows raise as I cross my arms in a defensive manner, expecting the normal moans and groans about "effort" and "I don't get it" which has long featured in my job as an educator.
He is now silent and I am intrigued as all eyes are now upon me but strangely in a look of slight awe. Bloody hell. I do believe these youths have got it. By Jove. They've got it. The woman speaks too soon.
"Miss, do you use Twitter?" The loam wolf asks.
I am baffled. Well, I have used Twitter in the past but only really to deliver a stream of consciousness - or bullshite as my husband would say. I follow friends, because they ask and want to promote things. I follow Catlin Moran, because she makes me laugh. I rarely comment. I haven't even mastered retweet. My sons have blocked me because I used to stalk them so my Twitter account is redundant. I failed to even fathom how to attach my blog to it.
" Why." I ask.
The six foot wolf spins round on his chair and looks me straight in the face. The rest of the class also stare.
" Ok, I have a Twitter account and it's boring. I haven't a clue how to use it. Why would it be of any interest to you and how is it relevant? Plus, I am slightly concerned as to why you are bothering to find me."
The wolf leans forward. " It's not us that you should be worried about Miss. It's Obama."
Now, I am interested. "Who?"
"The President!" his tongue drips with patronisation.
I am now baffled. Obama? What are they going on about. I shake my head and return to task and they slink back to their lairs.
That evening, I log on and blow me down with a feather - I am a friend of Obama. He is following me and it's the real deal. I'm not following him but he clearly likes me. So either Michelle and BO think my rare and random tweets are legendary (completely unlikely) or as one student announced under her breath as she left my room, "probably a threat to national security" .  Alas, again no chance, I'm in bed by eight thirty on a good day and my days of protest are gone, worn down by bearing sons. Therefore, Obama just must have stumbled across this blog on Facebook and finds his daughters as frustrating as I find my sons! Mr President I feel your pain.

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!