Saturday 26 September 2015

Broken heart






Broken heart

I had barely walked through the door after a long day at work, when I was pulled into the lounge and the door shut behind me.  DeeQ urgently needed to speak to me and it clearly couldn’t wait.
As soon as the door was shut behind me, I was hit with the news – he had broken up with his girlfriend. At that point I needed to sit down. Only a couple of days before we were talking about his adorable girlfriend and planning a trip to the cinema. And now they were no longer together.
Turns out somebody started a rumour in school that DeeQ was chatting to another girl. As soon as he found out about the rumour, we had an emergency conference at home and agreed a strategy on preserving his relationship.
So DeeQ spoke to his girlfriend and assured her that those were lies and that there was nobody else other than her. She took it well, they made up and lived happily ever after for the whole day after that.
The following day at school DeeQ caught her with another boy. Without hesitation he broke up with her there and then.
I was shocked and really didn’t know what to say. Obviously catching your girlfriend talking to another boy is bad enough to break up with her.
Did I get it? Absolutely not, but I had to support DeeQ. After all, I knew what it felt like to break up with somebody when you are 15.
In October 1999, just after half term, I started dating this cute boy who was in the same class as me. We used to skive PE together, and after school he would walk me home and carry my bag for me. Which was oh-so-adorable and thinking of it now, rather chivalrous.
Our undying love lasted for the whole month. Until one day he came over ‘to help me with my homework’ – code for ‘snogging in my room’.
It was raining that day and I took his wet coat into the kitchen to let it dry out, leaving him in the hallway to take his boots off.
When I came back, they were already off. I looked down at his feet and froze, a look of sheer horror on my face. The undying love that I had been nurturing for the whole month, died on the spot. No, his feet weren’t smelly. His socks were clean and didn’t have holes in them. The problem was that his socks were orange.
They say there is a thin line between love and hate. It turns out for me at 15 that line was orange socks – I hated them so much that I broke up with my boyfriend. I figured I couldn’t risk being seen with somebody wearing something as embarrassing as orange socks.
For the rest of the night DeeQ was glued to his iPad. He was constantly checking his Instagram and Snapchat and eventually announced that she had changed her status to ‘Single’.
He tried to be blasé about it, but I could see he was hurting. Even though he broke up the relationship because he knew he couldn’t be with her after what she had done, he still liked her.
So to show my support, I opened my emergency box of chocolates. We then changed into onesies, climbed under a blanket and put ‘Sex and the City’ on; because nothing cures a broken heart like sugar and a movie. 


Friday 18 September 2015

Teach them young

Teach them young


“You do it Tash”, whined Little Dude. “You do it so much better. And look, I’ve just created another crease.”
I started teaching Little Dude how to iron but he had been martyring himself over his school shirts for 40 minutes now. He started off cheerfully enough but towards his fourth shirt he lost all the interest in the lesson, along with his jumper and some of the skin off his fingers. He claimed to have burnt himself with steam at least five times. I wistfully looked at the bottle of Malbec, patiently waiting for me on the counter.
At regular intervals he kept reminding me that it was unfair he had to iron his school uniform when there was ‘an important England game’ on (if I had a penny for every time I heard the adjective ‘important’ in relation to a football game).
A couple of times I was close to snatching the iron off him and finishing the job myself, but I knew it would achieve nothing. After all I was on a mission.
It all started a week before when I was having a lunch with Jenny. She recently joined a new company in the City which meant we now were only one tube stop apart and could lunch whenever we wanted to.
Over a bowl of delicious pasta, Jenny confided that her boyfriend does absolutely nothing to help around the house. He doesn’t know how to hoover, dust, mop the floor and it would never in a million years even occur to him that the chores should be shared. No, in his world house work is a woman’s domain and should never be imposed on a man.
“And you know what”, Jenny was seething, waving her fork with a meatball stuck on it in front of me, “I blame his mother! She taught him absolutely nothing! The man is over 40 years of age and he can’t hoover, for goodness sake!”
I stopped with my own fork mid-air, the spaghetti I carefully wound on it unravelling and splatting me with spicy tomato sauce. Slowly I put my fork down and stared at Jenny as if she had just told me she was an alien.
His mother taught him nothing and in his early 40s not only he didn’t know how to hoover and dust, but didn’t think he should be doing those jobs either. I have two boys of my own growing up, who hide and put their headphones on as soon as I turn a hoover on, only vaguely know how an iron works and whose rooms look like the aftermath of an exploding bomb.
I couldn’t help but wonder, in ten years from now, what will my boys’ girls have to say about them? Will they be helpful and handy or will the girls quietly condemn me as a parent? What does it take to bring up a successful man?
Suddenly a penny dropped and I realised that my job was not only to teach my boys everything there was to know about taking care of themselves, but also that splitting chores is a perfectly normal arrangement in a 21st century family.
As I looked at Little Dude huffing and puffing over his last shirt, I knew that the 40 minutes of ironing were a great investment into his future.
He finally finished his shirt, put it on a hanger and exhaled. “I’m really not good at this, Tash”, he gave a theatrical sign.
“It takes practice, darling. By the end of your school year you will be a pro. Well done today and I will see you next Sunday”, I chimed, unfazed by his performance.
Unimpressed, he made a quick escape towards the lounge and the noise of yet another ‘important’ game. I poured myself a glass of Malbec immediately.


Friday 11 September 2015

Baking bread

Baking bread


I love baking bread. There is something comforting about the whole process – kneading, proving and watching the dough double in size, knocking it back, shaping, proving again and finally putting it into the oven.
But however captivating the process might be, baking bread is a complex exercise as so many things can go wrong.  I’ve learnt that simple things like using water at the right temperature or fresh yeast can make all the difference.
But the best advice I’ve ever received was from my grandma years ago. Before I started school I used to spend a lot of time with her, watching her cook and bake. ‘Dough is alive, it has a mind of its own’, she used to say. ‘You must only make bread if you are happy, it feeds on positivity. If you are not happy while you are making bread, the dough won’t rise for you.’
And that advice became my own lucky charm, superstition and one of the fondest memories of my grandma. I have never made bread while I was unhappy. I couldn’t risk it.
Linda was leaning on the breakfast bar in my kitchen and enjoying her third glass of Prosecco, while I was getting the ingredients ready for sundried tomatoes and olive wholemeal loaf. ‘Exactly what is he waiting for?’, she slurred. ‘We’ve been together for four years – we got a mortgage and a dog together. I’m not getting younger and my biological clock is ticking. Why isn’t he proposing?’
The reason Chris wasn’t proposing was because he didn’t have the slightest interest in marrying Linda and was regularly caught with the trousers around his ankles by Linda herself. And each time she forgave him and took him back.
Meanwhile, I had a dilemma of my own – I had all the ingredients for my loaf but I wasn’t sure about the yeast. It was still in date but I know from experience that date on the yeast means nothing. If it’s been open long enough, it won’t work.
‘I do everything for him – I clean, cook, wash, iron and shop. He doesn’t have to do anything,’ – the bottle was almost empty and Linda was now struggling to sit upright and was half-laying on the breakfast bar. ‘Am I that undesirable? What is wrong with me? Why won’t he marry me’, - she wailed.
I replaced the flute in her hand with a glass of water and pondered if I should take her to the lounge and settle her on the sofa. On the other hand I wanted to prepare bread dough and leave it to prove. But looking at the sorry state of Linda I decided to leave the bread making until later and took her to the lounge.
‘Tash, what if he will never marry me? What if he finds somebody better than me and leaves me?’, - suddenly sober and her eyes were gleaming, as if she had just discovered Penicillin. I knew that my response wasn’t required, Linda was merely voicing her thoughts and talking to herself – I just happened to be sitting next to her.
As I listened to her stream of consciousness, I couldn’t help but wonder, when it comes to relationships and baking, is it worth starting something if you don’t have the right ingredients? And if you are already half way through, do you keep going and hope for the best or do you bin it and start from scratch with the right ingredients?  At what point do you whisk away?
I didn’t make bread that day – didn’t want to start it with bad yeast and an upset girlfriend. But Linda didn’t follow my suit.
She came to a conclusion that she should leave Chris before he left her. Two days later she called and said that Chris proposed. There was no ring as he ‘is saving up’ for a special one, Linda ate that right out of his hand.