Something got me started

It’s so long since I smoked I’ve given up counting. The smugness of me grows daily.

Benefit of giving up No 329: losing the grey pallor from my face. My new healthy glow has been noted and commented upon. It makes me happy ‘til the penny drops. With hindsight being a wonderful thing I can see now how they might have possibly jumped to the wrong conclusion given that a) I am not smoking b) healthy glow c) enlarged chest and stomach d) smock tops. So for the record: I am not expecting. Anything. At all. In any way, shape or form.

Believe that weight and debt have a lot in common: so easy for the numbers of both to creep up quickly without you noticing but it takes a long slow hard slog to get them down again. Trying to break the vicious cycle by moving my butt more in free activities – like cycling.

All’s not well with Gorgeous Boy’s new bike. First the flat tyre. Although we have a guarantee from toys r us, neither of us can face taking it back. Their prices are kept low by discouraging any inkling of returns or complaints, by making anything other than buying as difficult as possible. Sometimes this even extends to buying. A policy that works, as I’d rather stick pins in my eyes than face their customer services.

So, He-who-has-to-be-adored ordered an Internet inner tube. Strangely it didn’t show up. After a week He rang: they’d been busy, what with Easter n’all. Silly us, we believe Internet buying to be quicker, easier and more convenient than visiting shops…at the opposite end of the country perhaps?

Meanwhile we return to the boy riding his sister’s bike, she riding mine with me running along behind.

Hurrahs all round this morning as postie brings an inner tube that He-who-must-be-adored gallantly fits before going to save London on ‘lates’. I cycled down on the boy’s bike for after-school pick-up. More of a free wheel really as its mostly downhill with just a tad of difficulty dismounting the cross bar wearing a skirt. All so my Gorgeous Boy could enjoy his bike. He makes it to the zebra crossing outside school when the chain comes off. Not for the first time I picture myself taking a large hammer to the new bike. Instead I try, along with two other mothers, to get the chain back on. I fail. Defeated I wheel the thing up the hill.

Don’t suppose He-who-must-be-adored will want to fix that damn bike again. Secretly, without any pressure whatsoever, I hope he will so I don’t have to take it back to that damn shop. Am having a bit of a hate hate thing with the bike.

Also…have been trying the equally trying customer services at Virgin media. To close my account. Am disgusted with poor service, and loss of the Simpsons and News on the Hour, whatever the hour, since they took over from Telewest and fell out with Sky. Have now given up holding for a real person on four occasions. Shouldn’t have bothered as am certain they won’t speak to me as the account is in He-who-must-be-adored’s name. At work today Captain Chaos managed to get through and spent two hours discussing, with an extraordinary large number of people, the case of crossed wires between Virgin Media and BT. All this because he foolishly thought he could change suppliers on Friday 13th. Since then he’s had no land line and the phone number he’s had for the past 15 years has now been issued to a new customer. Think I may just leave well alone as am rather attached to my number.

It’s almost enough to make you want to leave the country. Or the city at least. But not quite. Think it’s just a reaction to having spent a blissful weekend with Supersis at her place in the country. A real green fix. Looking out on fields. Seeing children romping in the open air. Watching horses do their thing. The sight of Gorgeous Boy carrying a trophy of a dead pigeon after his first shoot was obviously the low point. But I’m told that’s what country folk do: have a more practical attitude to animals than us townies. There, animals either have a purpose ie dinner, or they are pests. I was happy when I could get away with being an over-controlling parent who banned all weapons of any type, real or toy. Mums don’t do guns.

Except water pistols. Maybe.