TEETH II

It doesn’t have quite the same ring about it does it?  Jaws?…teeth?…big difference.  As a quick adendum I was just thinking about losing teeth.  Has there ever been any research done that makes a direct correlation between how a child deals with a wobbly tooth and their future personality?  Along the lines of “show me the child at 7 and I’ll give you the man”.  In my opinion, you can tell a lot by the attitude a child has to a vaguely wobbly tooth. 

Type 1

The tiniest hint of a wobble prompts a flurry of activity involving furious twisting and pushing and pulling preferably in front of a mirror.  The tooth has to go.  Simple as that.  Bang.  It’s gone.  This, in my opinion is a sign of somebody who wants to take control.  Who wants to live for the moment.  Carpe Diem.

 Type 2

The wobbly tooth hangs around, literally by a thread in the gum for months.  Nothing will entice the child to pull it out.  It has to come out of it’s own accord.  This suggests somebody who is not prepared to take the bull by the horns.  Somebody who prefers to let things happen.  Laid back, but with a propensity to let life pass you by.

 Possibly, I’m talking bollocks, but in my family, I think the character traits that wobbly teeth present are significant. 

TEETH

Teeth are dropping like flies in our house (luckily not mine yet).  My six year old has lost four of his front teeth in the last few weeks and I almost mourn for those tiny perfect milk teeth.  There is something rather strange about how children look when their permanent front teeth emerge.  Not only because more often than not, they emerge from pink gums at completely the wrong angle but because they are HUUUUGE!.  These teeth have to last them a lifetime.  We have to grow into our teeth, but for the next 10 years my poor child has to look ridiculous as the rest of his body slowly catches up with his teeth.

 My 11 year old is also losing teeth – canines? Pointy ones on the sides.  This is a relief because I was getting worried that she was turning into a shark, with layer upon layer of new enamel waiting patiently for the milk teeth to finally give up their will to live.  She is also teething.  I thought that was something in the dim and distant past of childrearing, but no, she is in pain.  Her wisdom teeth are coming through.  “Did your’s hurt when they came through?” she asks as I rub Bonjela on her gums.  “I don’t have any, I had one removed because it was impacted and the others aren’t there – not even under the gums”.  “That doesn’t suprise me – it explains why you’re not very good at maths”, she says.  “No, not at all”  I attempt to argue, “it’s a sign of a particularly advanced human being – it’s a bit like losing our tail, we no longer need wisdom teeth to survive, so it’s just evolution at it’s best”.  She is clearly not convinced.  Why are they called wisdom teeth anyway?

 The Tooth Fairy has been extremely unreliable of late.  She forgot twice to deliver the dosh and consequently caused mass havoc the next morning.  In addition my daughter was incensed because my six year old pretended he had received £7.00 from her.  She charged up the stairs, completely puce with rage – “how could the tooth fairy have been so unfair?  How come he get’s £7.00 when I only get £2?  I spend the rest of the morning trying to persuade my son to admit that he is lieing without giving away the fact that I so know that he is lieing.  I also seem to have to spend an inordinate amount of time explaining why the Tooth Fairy only leaves £2.00 for him, but £20.00 for his friend Ella.  £20.00!!!  How ridiculous.  Her parents must be divorced.  I think there should be some sort of parent charter that we all sign agreeing not to show each other up and while we’re at it we might as well do the same for Father bloody Christmas.  How come my kids only get a few crappy presents, an orange and some chocolate in a smelly sock whilst other people’s children get a Lear Jet?  And don’t even get me started on the Easter Bunny. 

The strangest thing that has happened is that my 6 year old’s lisp has all but disappeared along with his front milk teeth.  I suppose it has meant he has finally worked out where to put his tongue to make an “sssss” sound.  “Mum, listen my lisp has gone – ever since my toos fell out, I can speak – isn’t sat great?   Go on ask me thumsing”  “Brilliant”, I say, mentally calculating how much money I will now save in Speech Therapy classes, now only need to work on getting him over his confusion as to where to use the correct sounds.  

VISUAL IMAGE

I think I am supposed to know how to copy the picture and use it in the posting.  Well, I don’t.  So now I am supposed to describe a picture you can’t see.  There’s not much too it.  A concrete wall, a CCTV camera, a printed message saying “What are you looking at?” and a bit of aerosol can graffitti that makes no sense.  To sum it up:  Big Brother is watching you…catch me if you can.

 Hooray – done it!  Now you can see what I’m talking about.

THREE THINGS I LOVE ABOUT:

LONDON ESTATE AGENTS

 I love London Estate Agents because….well, check out my 101 post and all will be revealed.

 TRAFFIC WARDENS

These are just people doing their job.  I don’t understand at what point they choose to make the career decision, you would have to be fairly thick skinned to take on the world and their cars.  Maybe it’s just a uniform thing….

 THE TUBE

Actually I really do love the tube.  It is the place where I can indulge in my most favourite occupation without fear of reprisal.  I can people watch to my hearts content and I can listen.  I was accused of staring too much at somebody once, so now I try to be a bit more subtle, but what a diverse section of humanity.  If I wasn’t concerned about catching some hideous disease, I’d spend days going up and down lines on the tube.  I am going to become a danger soon.  I am of the age where I don’t care if I talk to strangers.  Random strangers.  In fact I love it.  So, it won’t be long before I become a well-known entity and nobody will want to sit next to me or opposite me.

ROOM 101

What or who do I think London could live without?  What about if we were to ask all the Estate Agents to leave the city immediately?  What would happen?  I suspect, in the current climate that houses would carry on virtually selling themselves. There is the simple problem of supply and demand. There are about half the amount of houses for sale as at the same time last year and about 20% more buyers. 

It is clear then that Estate Agents don’t have to do a great deal at the moment to sell a house and consequently claim a ridiculously large commission.  Why hasn’t the commission been reduced as the house prices increase tenfold?  Why hasn’t there been a people’s revolution about this?  It is simply not acceptable.  They don’t even have to provide details anymore.   Estate Agents are fuelling the unpleasant practice of sealed bids, making people compete against each other.   All they have to do at the moment is make six phonecalls, allocate a two hour slot, wind everybody up and watch the offers roll in. 

It seems that I have found myself in the unenviable position of needing to buy a house for my children during the fastest growth rate since 1979.  Therefore, for the last six months I have developed an unhealthy obsession with my local estate agents, so I realise I might be being a little unreasonable and biased.  I ought to be in a strong position, given that I have nothing to sell, but of course, since we sold the family house, prices have escalated massively and I am not sure whether to ride the storm and wait for the possible crash or panic buy before I can no longer afford to live in the area.  There may not be a crash – the super-rich foreign buyers are cashing in on a tax loophole, city bonuses are fuelling the rise and the Olympic Games loom.  I don’t really mind renting, but my children need a home.

If I was a bitter person, I might blame my husband for putting me in this position.  He insisted that we sell our house, even though I had made it clear that I wanted to wait 3 more months until our daughter had got into a school before I decided where to buy.  He refused.  Had we done this, our house would have sold for significantly more and I would have still been able to afford something reasonable.  Now things have changed.  He is living in a four bedroom house in the same area and I am renting.

 My Top 10 list of reasons as to why I could live without Estate Agents:-

1. My ex-husband is shagging one (I told you it was personal).

2. If they are trying to sell me a house, they lie:-

“Oh, that green box in the garden?  I have no idea what it is, but I’m sure it’s fine”. 

“Oh, that green box in the garden is an electrical sub-station?  Good grief, I had no idea.  But, I’m sure it’s fine, I haven’t ever heard of one being a problem before.  In fact, I nearly bought a house with one in the garden”

“It gives off EMF’s?  Gosh, that’s news to me.  The surveyor told you not to buy it and said “unknown medical controversy?  That is very interesting and thank you so much for letting us know.  Yes, do drop some information round.

 3.  If they are not selling me a house, they tell the truth:-

“You’re planning to buy a house with an Electrical Sub-station in the garden?  Well, obviously it’s not my place to say, but are you mad?  Anyone who says that they don’t know what they are is lieing.  We all know the risks and prices are significantly reduced accordingly.  I would advise you not to touch it with a bargepole”.

4.  They make me feel as if my entire future happiness is in their hands.  Most houses are not even making it onto the market.  They decide who to call first, offering a one off viewing.  How do I make it to the top of that list, whilst still maintaining my principles? 

5.  They make me forget who is in control.  Because vendors have become greedy, I have become just another desperate buyer.  I had an offer on a house for 2 months.  They then came back to me and said that unless I was prepared to pay another £125K they would re-market it.    Here are the two most recent texts I received this week from an agent, regarding a house I was thinking about.  I had made an asking price offer on the Tuesday, heard nothing all day on Wednesday and on Thursday morning was receiving frantic texts asking me to increase my offer immediately by 10K:-

“Need you to take a flyer here.  I have to resolve this today or I’m afraid this is going to go west.  You know and i know that this is a good house and as I said to you this afternoon this is not fantasy land prices also you know that with my relationship with you i would not push you to do this unless i was convinced it was the right thing to do”

 ”I understand and am not pressing you from an agency point of view, that in my opinion would be insufferable i am pressing you because i know it is the right thing for you to do”

 Even my father doesn’t speak to me like that anymore.

6.  Clearly I am not playing the game.  They make me feel vulnerable.  I am buying a house on my own with my three children.  Having to move out of the family house and into a rented property has been extremely traumatic.  It seems to me that if anybody out there is looking for a stream of battered and needy people to have sex with, it is the perfect job.  Like bees to a honeypot (more like rats to a sewer) we crawl in with our broken dreams and shattered lives and get men (mostly) on white chargers (aka mini coopers) to show us around our new reality and our new beginning.  Our very much smaller, on-the-railway or in-need-of-substantial-re-decoration reality.  I have been asked out for a drink several times.  I have been invited to a Country House hotel for the weekend.  I have been told that I will definitely be in a better position to find out about new properties if I go along this route.  My husband succumbed.  He is now actually in a relationship with an Estate Agent.  What a bloody cliche.  Where else though, if you think about it, would you meet such a constant stream of newly separated individuals?  Maybe if you were a divorce lawyer or a counseller, but that takes a bit of time.  You need to have some brain cells and a qualification.  Talk about a good place to pull.  However, I will not stoop this low.  I’d rather live in a cardboard box.

7.  The market needs urgently updating.  The Home Improvement Packs (HIP’s) the government are supposed to be introducing, but keep delaying won’t make any difference.  More structures need to be put in place.  How many jobs can you do these days that don’t require qualifications or a licence?  Even with the warm breath of government regulations being felt on the back of their perfectly groomed necks, it really is a cushy number.

8.  Since January I have become a well-known, probably dreaded fixture in their office, but they pretend to be my friend.  “Wow, you look fantastic, I love your new haircut – do you feel like a new woman?” “No” I say, “I feel like I’ve just had a new haircut” .

9. They are ever present in my life, millions of them at the moment.  I can’t seem to get away from them.  The same one’s that are trying to sell me a house have also persuaded my landlord that now is the time to sell.  This is not good.  They are in my house all the time showing it to people.  Obviously I don’t want it to sell.  I will be evicted.  But they’re trying hard nevertheless and make comments like, “well obviously we wouldn’t dream of showing anyone the boiler cupboard in your bedroom, that would put people off”. 

10.  One of them rang the other day and my six year old answered “sorry, mummy can’t come to the phone, she’s doing a poo”. 

 How to deprive a person of their dignity in 10 easy steps.

  

BUTTERFLY HOUSE

 This picture reminded me of Hong Kong.  Where I was brought up.  It suggests heat and humidity. Tropical.   This is so not a London image.  You don’t find humidity and wet, warm air unless you’re in a Butterfly House.  Which funnily enough I was in recently.  There’s one in Regent’s Park Zoo.    I love it in there, but my children seem to get claustrophobic.  If you’re lucky a butterfly will land on you.  If the butterfly is unlucky, you will land on it.   I think I know that butterflies generally only live for 24 hours.  In that time they have to find a mate, reproduce and die.  24 hours!!!  I suppose they at least spend some time as a chrysalis and presumably they get on with life as an ugly beast, transforming into a beautiful specimen and swanning around fluttering their proverbial eyelids.  So, what’s different then?  Does their 24 hours seem like a lifetime?   Is that all we are put on this earth for?  To find a mate, reproduce and die.  How depressing.  Still if I looked like the attached butterfly, perhaps my 24 hours would be worth it.

HOW TO BE A LONDONER

When I look at London through the eyes of a tourist I see a beautiful, vibrant, proud, energetic, inspirational city.  I love being in the centre of London and letting it’s beauty wash over me.  I love going to Art Galleries and Exhibitions and restaurants and absorbing all the new experiences and widening my horizons and looking forward to showing off when I next speak to someone closer to home about how amazing it all is.  But that is not really my London, that is somebody else’s big, sometimes scary London.  My London is little and safe and not very big at all.  

I live in a leafy London suburb.  With lots of other people.  Mostly I stay in this area, ferrying children to and fro and working, but generally staying within an invisible boundary, just getting on with my life.  One tiny pocket of existence amongst millions. This, I suspect is how it is for a lot of people.  A place to live.  A home.  A refuge.  In general, I have discovered that people who live in suburbs do not generally venture very far.  They may work in central London, but even that involves a well-trodden path with preferably as little diversions from the expected as possible.  Most of the time, we could be living virtually anywhere in the world, city or countryside because most of us spend quite a lot of time trapped or protected (whichever way you want to look at it) behind four walls.

Comfort zones are good.  They make us feel safe, but to really be a Londoner we need to get out of our cotton wool existence and expose ourselves (metaphorically you understand ) to a little more.  We need to challenge ourselves, open up to new possibilities and let everybody and everything in.  My most inspirational London friend is 80.  She lives fairly centrally, gets on a bus daily and goes to everything at the Albert Hall.  She is interesting and more importantly interested in life and that is what it is all about. 

So, have I solved the issue of  “How To Be A Londoner?”  No, I don’t think so.  What and who is a Londoner?  We are just people getting on with our lives, but there are lovely people out there – get out more and meet them.  If you want to be a Londoner, try  my Top 10 list of things to do this week to start the ball rolling:

1. Get on a bus

2. Talk to the person sitting next to you

3. Smile all the time (not easy)

4. Go to the Anthony Gormley exhibition, at The Hayward (on until 19th August) stand on the roof and look out at the 31 life-sized figures on rooftops and pavements and bridges around the skyline of London.  The view is stunning and it is strangely exhilerating to be scanning the horizon picking out sculptures that appear to be looking at you.  Then go back inside and make sure you venture into the “Blind Light” installation.  It’s a glass box filled with what looks like cloud.  You wander in and become immediately disorientated because you can’t see a bloody thing.  Anthony Gormley says “here light itself is the opposite of illuminatiing.  The blinding light is part of an experience of disorientation.  Adrift in the void, we are made more conscious of our own body space and the atmosphere is cold and wet, as though the weather we build shelters against has been brought indoors.”  I say “what a load of old bollocks, but go in anyway because it’s really fun – especially for the children”.

 5.  Go to The National Portrait Gallery and marvel at faces.

6. Don’t be scared, be exited.

7. Go to a market.

8.Go to a concert

9.Go to a park.

10. Walk along the river. 

But most of all, enjoy it.

THREE THINGS I LOVE AND HATE ABOUT LONDON

 ”It’s a fine line between love and hate” – who sang that?  Chrissie Hynde I think…

Sometimes I love the river Thames, it’s gracefulness, it’s power and it’s beauty.  I love the life it carries on it’s back and all that lives and breathes along it’s edges, as it courses through the city.  I love how it represents the ebb and flow of daily life, it’s ability to rise above humanity.  When I see a picture of it, it reminds me of a spine, a backbone, supporting the whole of the city.  Sometimes though, I hate it’s arrogance, it’s strength and it’s deep unforgiving refusal to slow down or stop for anything or anyone.  Sometimes it frightens me, angers me because it reminds me of how insignificant I am and gives me a sense of my own mortality.  At other times it fills me with a huge sense of life at it’s simplest level, a telling reminder that life will go on, no matter what and that when you are ready to face the world again, it can lift you up, carry you along and take you anywhere you want to go.

I love Richmond Park, the changing light, the colours, the deer, the people, the coffee, the walks.  I hate the angry cyclists though.  They race along the pedestrian path shouting abuse at anyone who dares to stand in their way.  They race in packs, like schools of fish on the road too and recently I saw a terrible accident.  I was the second car to arrive at the scene.  The cyclist was unconscious.  Someone was holding his head.  Someone else was on the phone shouting at the operator for not knowing where exactly they were in the park.  I was surprised at how ineffective I was – running about, unsure of what to do next.  I gave him my coat to keep him warm and I sat and tried to console the devastated driver until the professionals arrived.  “Are you the driver?” had never had a more ominous meaning.  He wasn’t expected to live. His name was Patrick.  He was in his 20’s.  The man who witnessed the accident said he was thrown right over the top of the car.  His bicycle lay mangled under the wheels of the car.  I phoned the police the next day to find out how he was.  They sent me a witness report.  He was in Charing Cross Hospital.  I wanted to visit him, but didn’t really understand why.  I often think about him and wonder if he survived.

 Sometimes I love the anonymity of the City.  That you can go anywhere and be anyone you like.  That it is bursting with opportunity and possibility.  Sometimes I hate that fact that nobody wants to know me, that nobody wants to talk to me, that everybody is closed.  It makes me want to strike up a conversation with a stranger.  Who knows where that might lead?  Although this is something that I need to watch because my mother talks to strangers all the time and I can tell that the strangers think she’s mad.

Hospitals

Hospitals fill me with dread, because they smell of dettol and misery and death.  However,  they are also positively bursting with hope and courage and love and new babies and concerned parents and hot clingy children and they, almost more than anywhere else I can think of offer you an extraordinary glimpse into tiny pockets of life in all it’s extraordinariness.  I suppose that is why there are so many soap operas using hospitals as a back drop to cover every storyline imaginable.  I spent most of the day looking traumatised by all the in-patients and marvelling at how so many amazing people can actually want to spend their day working in such a strange environment. 

 I received a phone call from her school at about midday.  My daughter had apparently had a “mishap” in the school playground.  Why do they say “mishap?” leaving you in this momentary A – Z of surreal scanning – from visualising your child with no head to a small scratch on the knee, with several in between.  Anyway, no big deal, she’s injured her thumb, but they feel I should take her to hospital “just in case”.  “Just in case” has to be weighed up fairly carefully in my mind.  It means rearranging my whole day and cancelling one of my classes.  I pick her up.  I know she’s fine.  Call it a mother’s instinct.  She cannot move her thumb, but there is no swelling and she’s far too delighted about life in general to have a serious injury.  I get her to wriggle her thumb, but predictably it won’t move.  Not in the slightest.  She thinks it’s broken and she definately needs a plaster cast, in her opinion.  How many parents at this point think “oh, bollocks to this, I know you’re fine and if I could leave you at school I would, but I can’t because social services will arrest me and all the mother’s will talk about me, so we’re just going to go home and you can sit on the sofa”.  My mother did that to me once.  She was called to my school because I had been sick in the loo.  On her arrival, she took one look at me, marched me into the offending cubicle and checked the surfaces.  She then decided that I was lying, (which I was, but that was hardly the point,) informed the teacher of her opinion and had me sent back to the classroom, utterly humiliated.  This traumatic flashback meant that ignoring the possibility that I could be wrong was clearly not an option.  I don’t want to humiliate her, or let her think that I don’t believe her and I certainly don’t want her to blame me for her future failure in life (which she will anyway), should she develop arthritis or a deformed thumb or worse still no thumb at all because it has dropped off owing to lack of blood circulation thanks to a negligent mother.

So we spend the entire afternoon at the hospital, having x-rays and trying not to stare at people and drinking hideous tea from polystyrene cups and eating cold ,slightly old chocolate from a machine and wishing somebody would come in and give all the surfaces a bloody good clean and generally, no doubt in the entire process of breathing and touching things, we also pick up all sorts of other hideous bacteria.  But at the end of a gruelling three hour investigation, guess what?  She was absolutely fine.