Cut It Out

I’ve got a thing about labels. I don’t mean buying expensive ones as there wouldn’t be much point. My clothes could be from Dolce & Gabbana and Karen Millen, but they may just as well be from Dodgy Old Pullovers and Millets. I have no way of proving the source of any item in my wardrobe as I have a terrible phobia of scratchy, itchy, sensitive skin-enemy, hive-inducing, information-imparting… labels.

Every tag must be cut out before I can even contemplate putting a new purchase on; even those loops that help to keep clothes on hangers have to be snipped within minutes of getting them home. You recognise me now? I’m that strange woman with the hanger marks in all her shoulders. I know you laugh at me behind my puckered back but I just can’t help it. Washing instructions must be guessed at and I’ve had more than my fair share of laundry disasters. That lovely white silk blouse, which should really have gone to the dry cleaners, is now part of Baby Teeny Tiny Doll’s extensive wardrobe. I’ve ruined most things that require hand washing and please don’t get me started on grey bras and colour runs.

I sincerely hoped to avoid passing this foible onto my children but it seems the little sponges pick up things even when we don’t want them to, especially the things we have some sort of OCD about. Sharks in the sea, spiders in the bath, egg shells in the scramble. I have a friend in the UK who’ll never be able to visit me as she’s terrified of getting on a plane. Her 13-year-old daughter has never even tried. I recently took a load of excited kids to an adventure park and spent the day consoling one child who refused to go on any of the rides – even the baby ones. ‘Oh she gets that from me’ said her mum, cheerfully, when I returned the traumatised child to her at the end of the day. ‘I’m afraid of heights, speed, merry-go-rounds and water’. If she’d only told me that before, I would have understood. After all, everyone can be a bit neurotic at times. Or am I labelling again? Pass me the scissors – I need to cut it out.

Groundhog Day

Is it time to go back to school again? Where did those two months go? They slipped by in a haze of jim-jamma laziness, late nights and sleep-ins. I was full of good intentions to forcibly adjust their nocturnal body clocks, thereby easing them back into that 5.45am alarm shock, but sadly, it never happened.

With the beginning of term looming, my kids are more likely to still be wide-awake and full of beans while I’m yawning away and sloping off to sleep before them. I had meant to start chasing them up the stairs at around 8pm at least a fortnight ago in preparation, but after weeks of burning the midnight oil, they look at me now as if I’m crazy. Of course they’re not tired at 8pm. Not yet, anyway! After a week of those painfully early mornings though, they will be begging me on their jamma bended knees to tuck them into bed-ee-byes at a decent time. It’s just a shame every year that before the status quo is established once more, we have to go through all the mood-swings, tears and tantrums. And that’s usually just from me.

We get up ridiculously early here in order to get our kids into school for the 7.30am start, and for what reason? It can’t be for the purpose of avoiding the heat of the day, as us parents will wait patiently in the playground surrounded by a pool of our own sweat for at least the next couple of months. All I want is one extra hour before that dreaded alarm goes off, it’s not too much to ask, is it? Even if your kids were enrolled in a summer camp course over the holidays, and were still ruled by the alarm clock, it feels like a lie-in to get up at 7am. That’s why I love the holidays as late nights and lazy mornings are a luxury. It’s another challenge, however, to keep their brains active for the duration of the long vacation.

Many a sworn oath of mine is broken on an annual basis when it comes to keeping my broods’ brains ticking over the endless summer break. Tell me I’m not the only mother who doesn’t keep up the book reading, the handwriting practice or the mental maths repetitions. I always remember to do it towards the end of the holidays, but it’s not easy shouting out times tables when you’re fighting in the queues for schools shoes, especially as I’m embarrassingly fuzzy on the answers myself these days. (Curse those tricky sevens!) I’m sorry to say the only vaguely educational activity my kids did all summer was swap watchingHannah Montana for Horrible Histories.

Is it worth investing in those shop-bought exercise books, only for them to be found, at the end of the holiday, languishing unloved and empty at the bottom of a suitcase? Or is it better for my kids to try and beat Granny and her cronies at cards, which involves equal amounts of numerical dexterity as pages one to 76 can impart. Granny and her gang are all wicked card sharks, Scrabble and Trivial Pursuit players who hold no stock in making allowances for tender ages. Charades contains many beneficial educational qualities plus interactive skills, and there’s a whole heap of fun to be had getting Uncle Albert to act outCamp Rock in his cardie and slippers. Perhaps I should get Uncle A to test them on their seven times tables too, as he’s got a sharper memory than me, judging by his recollections of historical significance. Or maybe it’s better to just play sometimes and catch up with family and friends.

I know people in the UK who complain that their holidays are too short at just five weeks, and their kids have barely mastered the art of doing nothing before they’re whipped back to lessons again, kicking and screaming. There’s no moaning about short holidays over here though, as by the time September has rolled around our kids are so sick of slobbing around in their jammas, they can’t wait to see their friends and get back to some kind of regimented order. I feel a pang of conscience that I should have spent more time honing their skills at long division, but my girls return relaxed and rejuvenated. At least they are looking forward to finally going back to school after so long. Well, apart from those early mornings of course.

Time For Tea

My youngest daughter invites her new best friend round for tea. She’s a sweet little thing with angelic curls, a lovely smile and good manners. It’s all going well and they disappear upstairs giggling, leaving older sister in peace to do her homework and me free to prepare their supper. I like my kids to have a good diet. I cook fresh, homemade delights whenever the mood takes me, and even when it doesn’t, and I always make sure their play-date pals leave my kitchen having devoured something vaguely nutritious and healthy.

So after an hour of banging my pots and pans, I turn around to find the little cherub staring at my back as I stir away at the stove. ‘What are you cooking?’ she intones in her cute little sing-song voice. From this moment on it all goes downhill rapidly. I’m not dealing with just any kid here. I have before me ‘Fussy Child’.

‘Fussy Child’ does not like my painstakingly prepared offering, so I improvise, and thinking on the spot, offer her the greying fish fingers that I discover in the back of the freezer. She doesn’t like fish. She doesn’t like potatoes or pizza either, but we finally settle on something she will eat: pasta. It has to be plain pasta with no sauce, mind you, as ‘Fussy Child’ does not like sauces, or cheese, or butter, or anything else apparently.

By now, I am banging around the pots and pans just for the sake of it, and also because it offers some minor relief from my culinary frustrations.

My kids, sensing that it’s mum, and not the pasta, that’s about to boil over at any minute, are very quiet, exchanging worried glances, and tucking into their supper with over-enthusiastic vigour.

The pasta is eaten, plainly, and they happily trot off to play once more, leaving me with the dirty dishes and a welcome silence. I’ll know the next time she comes over that before she can say ‘I don’t like that’ I’ll slap that plain pasta down on the table quick as a flash, and all will be well.

We know that all kids can be awkward at times, but somehow I feel a new sense of empathy, or possibly sympathy, with ‘Mother of Fussy Child’.

Perhaps it might be an idea to ask her round for dinner.....................? Maybe not. 

Winter Wonderland- No Thanks

If you’re dreaming of a white Christmas then you’re not going to find it here in Dubai. Well not unless you fancy lashing out a handful of dirhams to stand in the snow dome in a blue boiler suit surrounded by the stuff. If that floats your festive boat then fill your plastic boots, I say. Or get on a plane and go chase the chill. I know there are some of you out there who believe that you don’t get the same Christmassy feeling if it’s not freezing cold, but personally, I think cold is over-rated. I’ve never been a fan of the polo neck sweater or similarly throat restricting garments, which I imagine as a throw-back to my previous life when I was hung, drawn and quartered for illegally roasting chestnuts. Do we really need dramatic drops in temperature, a three-month promotional build up and the constant crooning of Bing Crosby to remind us of what is to come? The sunshine still manages to lull me into a false sense of security, which results in another year of panic present buying, but there’s something refreshing about how December creeps up on us unawares.

What we do get are blue skies, beautiful temperatures and the chance to emerge from the closeted air-conditioned gloom of the long sweaty summer months. We get to throw open our doors and let the warm breeze blow through the cobwebs. So what if this frivolity means dust settles on all the furniture? We get a light sprinkling of sand as opposed to a heavy flurry of snow and I can live with that. The kids may gaze wistfully at pictures of friends overseas frolicking in their winter woollies, but you know the reality of dealing with that type of extreme weather. After the initial excitement of waking up to a white winter wonderland, and after the first day of sledging, building snowmen and snowball fights, all you’re left with are dangerous driving conditions, mushy slush and chilblains.

If you miss gathering round a real fire and staring into the flames then I suggest you nip down to the local hardware shop and get yourself a fire-pit. A cast iron semi circle on legs, it’s a marvellous, if somewhat useless invention, designed for no other purpose than appealing to all those boys who never grew up or out of the desire to burn things. Gone is the dilemma of how to get rid of those broken garden chairs. Think how much fun you’ll have by getting out your chopper and chucking another bed slat on the fire to watch it crackle. Obviously you’ll have to reign in your little (and big) pyromaniacs into using only broken wooden furniture, or alternatively you could purchase expensive imported Norwegian slow-burning logs where you can literally watch your money go up in smoke. My family looks forward excitedly to ‘fire-pit season’ every year as we warm our toes and toast marshmallows in the garden. It’s not so good for the grass though, but for hours of cosy contemplation it’s a small price to pay. (Apart from those logs of course).

Even cooking the dreaded Christmas dinner and all the trimmings is a stress-free affair in Dubai, when you can order your perfectly roasted turkey to go. This allows plenty of time for being together as a family and reflecting on the true meaning of Christmas while the kids tear into their presents, without Mum stuck in the kitchen for hours worrying over her giblets. If you’re feeling ambitious and have a natural resistance to all strains of salmonella you could have a go at embracing the Southern hemisphere way by barbequing the beast. However you prepare your feast, if you fancy eating your Christmas dinner Al Fresco, then why not gather round the table outside to enjoy it. At least you know there’s no danger of the cutlery fusing to your fingers in the cold.

If you’re the type of person who gets a warm glow of happiness by a cold front coming in from the East, then maybe Christmas in Dubai is not your cup of tea. It may not be a cold white Christmas here, but it’s a warm and welcoming one, with some fantastic tree displays, a few motorised penguins and more than enough fairy lights to warm the cockles of your heart. You can keep your white Christmas thank you very much Bing. I’d rather have a sandy one and hit the beach.

Goodwill To All Men? Humbug

Men never really grow up when it comes to Christmas, do they? Of course, they get over-excited at all the presents and cram themselves full of enough treats to make themselves sick, but that goes without saying.
No, I mean that they never really have to take responsibility for the whole occasion. They slide seamlessly between Christmases at home with their mum and dad, to spending the day at the girlfriend’s family abode and then finally at home with the wife and kids, without ever having to stuff a turkey or criss-cross a Brussels sprout.

Do you remember the precise moment when you signed the agreement stating that you would be sole representative of Yuletide Duty? No, that’s because it creeps up on you, but the list of tasks we apparently agreed to is endless. It begins with writing every card to all relatives on both sides, even the ones we only met once, briefly, at the wedding. (Who is Great Aunt Mabel anyway?) And there’s no My family/Your family divide anymore as we’re now all one big happy family.

Before we know it, we’re also responsible for purchasing presents for said happy families, on both sides, and all our mutual friends too, plus their kids when they come along. Our budgeting skills at this time of year would have the Chancellor of the Exchequer jingling his little black box in appreciation, and our ability to make giant plastic objects disappear until they are discovered under the tree should, by law, grant us immediate entry into the Magic Circle.

Then there’s the food and beverage duties, which include the ability to cater for an entire football team, while simultaneously making gravy, telling jokes and assembling a Lego monster with moving parts. Child peacekeeping skills worthy of a UN ambassador, saintly patience in dealing with relatives and intellectual dexterity at Trivial Pursuit and other games are an added bonus, although not compulsory.

Just because men are given the one duty of carving the turkey does not justify spending the afternoon dozing in front of the TV while you clean the entire kitchen. It’s enough to drive you to commit hara-kiri on them with the carving knife, but that would upset the children.

So, this year, I say let’s all relinquish our Yuletide duties and draft up a new contract. Merry Christmas everybody!

Going Out?

In the BC (Before Children) years, getting ready to go out was a wonderfully long process that included bubble baths, a meticulous music selection, and the painstakingly slow application of make-up – all accompanied by a glass of something tasty. Potential outfits were lined up like suitors, chosen at leisure and discarded before a final decision, often by a vote from the ‘posse panel’. These GNO (good/girls’ night out) preparations were a communal process, and I loved the laughing, the trading of clothes, make-up and accessories and the bubbling excitement about the forthcoming night of frivolities. Food never really paid a big part of those evenings either – like a camel in the desert, I used to go days without sustenance and remember with fondness the time when a piece of toast and an orange constituted a balanced meal.

Then everything changed. My gorgeous girls arrived and put paid to all that… time. I barely know the meaning of the word now, apart from that it marches on, there’s never enough of it in a day, it’s running out and it’s showing on my face.

Now if I’m going out, I have to eat a jacket potato at 5pm as my blood sugar levels dip precariously low if I’m forced to wait until 8pm before I look at a menu. If I have time to have a shower after I’ve supervised homework, fed the kids, made the sandwiches (a task I enjoy on a nightly basis as much as I enjoy having my un-varnished toenails individually ripped from un-pedicured feet) then I definitely do not have time to ponder what to wear and tend to waste precious time staring at my wardrobe before bursting into tears with the wailing cry of, ‘I’ve got nothing to wear!’ I’ve no time for the luxury of applying one coat of mascara and waiting... waiting... waiting for it to dry before applying layer two. The whole shebang is applied in 10 seconds flat, particularly if the taxi is already outside with the metre running.

But, on the plus-side, I have discovered a really raunchy smudged rock-chick look just by accidentally sticking the wand in my eye. And anyway, who needs hours to get ready? When you’re a mum you get your gear on, get your slap on and you go girl.

By Time Out Dubai Kids staff
Time Out Dubai, 29 December 2009

The Magic Inflatable Woman

I know all about the Dubai stone. Been there, done that, got the two-sizes-larger-than-when-I-arrived T-shirt. At certain times during the day, I look like I’m well into my second trimester. I accept the loose, wobbly skin, and I happily sign up for stretch marks, but I strongly object to this inflatable bag that has hijacked my middle region, swelling up steadily during the course of the day. Call it water retention, call it swelly jelly belly, call it what you like. I call it nasty.

So, I finally decided to do something about it. I tried jogging, and would start off down the road with all good intentions, only to get to the corner and collapse in a wheezing heap. There was also this nagging feeling that people would see through my fashion shorts and blister-inducing trainers and recognise me for the jogging fraud that I am. ‘That woman’s not a REAL jogger!,’ I’d hear them taunt as I turned up my nose and my iPod and took a swig of my latte.

I contemplated a spinning class, but quickly ditched that idea after it rekindled memories of a rather unfortunate incident with a mountain bike when, as a student, I foolishly pedalled up and down a few Welsh hills and promptly lost all use of my legs.

Yoga sounded ideal. Good enough for Madonna, good enough for me. So off I trotted to the romantic-sounding ‘moonlight’ yoga session. Unfortunately, so did thousands of mosquitoes and other creepy crawlies, obviously on their way to the Ugly Bug Ball and deciding to stop off for a snack on the way. Apparently the sweat from my exertions was just too delicious to resist, and I spent most of the class frantically swiping them away which, by the way, is not easy when you’re trying to do a headstand.

Not one to give up easily, I moved on to power yoga, only to discover the class had been infiltrated by a rogue group of contortionists escaped from the circus. I gave it my best shot but, frankly, power yoga is like childbirth: way too much huffing and puffing, quite sore and the only reason you’d ever return would be because you’d forgotten how awful it was and decided to have another bash.

So, I’ve decided just to accept who I am and exploit those new-found circus contacts. Roll up, roll up everyone, and marvel at the magical inflatable woman!

Scared in the school yard

Leaving our precious offspring for the first time in the care of someone else is enough to bring us out in a mammoth rash – a symptom of that medical condition known as ‘Mother-Guilt’. But it’s not the teachers, the strange, shiny new classrooms or the smell of cabbage in the dinner hall that will cause our little angels the most anguish. It’s that huge wasteland of too much time, too many other kids and not enough friends that is… the playground.

Moving from England to Wales at the tender, corruptible age of nine gave me my first encounter of playground humiliation, when the whole school followed me for the entire tortuous lunch hour, taunting me into repeating ‘Ay up me duck’ to raucous nightmare-inducing laughter. (I must confess, though, the survival instinct soon kicked in and I was to be found in the loos, learning a whole new vocabulary with the ring-leaders just a week later.)

What about the parents, though? The journey into the school grounds to wait for our kids to emerge brings all those latent insecurities spiralling to the surface. Dubai mums are a different breed of parent, the ‘old timers’ especially. Those cliques form an impenetrable barrier between them and anyone new and, boy, are they a force to be reckoned with. The inappropriate footwear, the over-sized sunglasses, the immaculate make-up and carefully tousled hair – combined with a healthy dose of Dubai attitude – all conspire to turn the new mum into a quaking shadow of her former self, unable to string a sentence together, even if given the eye contact and opportunity to do so.

This no-friend anxiety that takes us back to our early school days comes as a shock. I’ve even found myself staring forlornly at my disintegrating flip-flops, cursing myself for not wearing platforms to pick up the kids. But we had the strength to leave our comfort zones in the first place – otherwise we wouldn’t be here. We get on, get in and find a way to survive, even if that means learning a whole new vocabulary.

So to the newly arrived Dubai mums out there: That maxi-wearing mum could be your new best friend – you just don’t know it yet. And to the old-timers: remember, the playground can be a scary place, especially if you’re the new mum in town.

Memory loss

I think I’m going out of my mind. I can’t remember exactly when it started, but I do know I began acting a bit weird when I fell pregnant with my first child.

All these years later, I still haven’t recovered my sanity. The chemical reverberations of the mysterious ‘baby brain’ still make me do some pretty odd things. I’ll often make a cuppa and shuffle off to the sofa, only to discover I’m carrying the milk bottle, having left the hot tea in the fridge door.

Basically, I‘ve gone from pregnancy brain, through sleep-deprived haze, enjoyed a brief stay in toddler confusion and ended up in pre-menopausal senility. I’m over the fact I never really learnt to speak another language properly, as even words in English routinely fail me. ‘Put it in the... lid-opening rubbish thingy.’

My physiology has been altered in such a major way that I now fear I’ve been permanently damaged. I’m like that character Guy Pearce played in the film Memento. You know the one – he has short-term memory loss and tattoos key phrases over his body.

Like him, I make lists. My house is a shrine to sticky yellow notepads and yet, I still pack my kids off with their swimming kits when it’s PE, make the ‘forgotten spectacle dash’ to school at least twice a week and leave playdate friends in the playground, having driven off without them. Basically, my children are learning not to trust mum when it comes to anything these days, which is perhaps a good thing. At least they’re learning about independence.

Blind panic sets in at the supermarket if I’ve left my grocery list at home. Names are forgotten as soon as the introductions are over. And I once spent an entire evening consoling a very good friend whose mother was
extremely ill, and promptly forgot upon waking up the next morning exactly what the poor woman was suffering from.

Just recently, I drove to Abu Dhabi to see The Killers and left the tickets pinned to the fridge door. This did not go down well with my husband, who, having never suffered the joys of ‘baby brain dementia’, completely failed to see the funny side.

Personally, I blame the kids. I was perfectly normal before they messed with my mind. Now what were their names again? Does anyone know the number of a good tattooist?

Emotional Wreck

The kids are back into the swing of things at school, and the hordes of pale-faced, anxious mums, weeping into junior’s satchel are slowly recovering their composure. At least in public. What is it about us mums that makes us so emotional? In theory, I should be past that stage, but I can still turn on the waterworks at the drop of a hat. I only need to hear a moving news item on the car radio about puppies or kids, and before you know it, I’m blubbing away, dangerously trying to navigate the streets through smeared mascara. Once again, as the villains in Scooby Doo say, ‘Those pesky kids are to blame.’

The lack of sleep once a little bundle arrives may well have something to do with our overly emotional state, but what about this newly-discovered empathy with all living things? While I was sitting on my favourite rocking chair, feeding my newborn daughter and watching a heart-rending appeal on TV, I was again caught in the act of uncontrollable weeping. ‘What’s wrong now?’ my long-suffering husband sighed. ‘We need to adopt an orphan from Africa,’ I blubbed. It wasn’t greeted in the way I expected, but it’s still on my list of ‘things to do’, along side ‘Pay the DEWA bill’. 

I don’t handle confrontation well either. These days, a chance shove or queue jump by a random stranger on the wrong day in Spinneys can be enough to make me howl, and woe betide the teacher who dares to criticise my little darlings, as they run the risk of encountering a wailing wreck. It’s in our blood, I reckon. I have vivid memories of my own mother sobbing at my attempts to play violin in school concerts, despite the fact that all she could see around the music stand was my skinny legs and the bow moving up and down.

But school concerts and award ceremonies are a hot-bed of emotion, all handled in the same, shameful way, with tissues at the ready. My outbursts are not even confined to my own children. I can turn it on for little Johnny or Jenny, just because they’re cute or small, or both.

But something funny happened last year. My youngest was very pleased, and not a little surprised, that I managed to wave her off on a school camping trip to the desert without one embarrassing tear being shed. Maybe I’m coming out the other side of this sentimental soup that I’ve been swimming in for years. What a sad thought. Pass me a tissue.

Second Wind

There are two types of mums’ nights out. The first is a ‘going out for a meal’ night, when a load of us get together to eat and drink. The organising of such a night requires military precision planning, as we mums have busy schedules (in other words, we have children with busy social lives or visitors who require entertaining). So with dwindling numbers we converge on some unsuspecting restaurant.  The waiting staff are visibly anxious, as it’s not the nubile office party they were hoping for, but a bunch of knackered mothers who can no longer handle their tipple. More often than not, the conversation flows around the subject of kids, the food and drink make us sleepy and cabs are ordered by the relieved staff as we all sit around yawning. We can’t wait to go home, take off our restrictive under garments and curl up in our PJ’s.

But then there’s the dangerous phenomenon of ‘second wind’, which can lead to the far scarier ‘let loose and go wild’ night. Away from the demanding nippers and the responsibility of parenthood, occasionally we go crazy. We are not to blame. We lose all sense of perspective, someone suggests we ‘go on’ and the next thing we know we’re in a nightclub, dancing and screaming like a group of gyrating chimpanzees who still believe they are capable of attracting a mate. It’s now the turn of the bar staff to twitch nervously, as we start the evening at cocktail corner, stroll up sparkly close, take a brief trip down gin lane and end up in shot alley.

Some sort of strange after- midnight logic makes us come to the foolish conclusion that if we’re going to be shattered in the morning, we might as well stay out as late as possible, and we have to be dragged off the dance-floor, still throwing shapes, as the club closes in the small hours.

Unfortunately, it takes longer and longer these days to recover, but I won’t let that put me off. I’ll be ready and raring to go for the next night out when the call comes. In the meantime, you know where I’ll be…
at home in my PJ’s.

Teenage Dreams

I am now the mother of a teenage girl and therefore officially old. While my daughter is taking her teenage-hood in her cool, Khol-lined style, perfecting her new text-talk vocabulary and eye-rolling techniques, I, on the other hand, am finding this transition a little unsettling. Almost overnight, my sweet little baby girl has emerged as a young woman and, like a newly-made vampire, she’s a melting pot of uncontrollable impulses and inquisitive about when she will taste her first blood.

She has become curious about boys and keeps asking all sorts of prying questions about my past conquests. This has resulted in lots of time spent in the apparently hilarious pursuit of looking up ex-boyfriends of mine on Facebook, which serves only to make me feel even older, particularly as they have all let me down by embarrassingly turning into fat, bald, old men. Despite my protests that ‘they used to be gorgeous,’ my Mum-cred has taken a serious battering. How could they do that to me? No wonder those relationships never lasted. My husband finds this very amusing, and keeps snooping over our shoulders while we’re hunched over the PC, tutting and muttering about ‘lucky escapes’.

What morsel of credibility I had left went completely out of the window when questioned about my first kiss. No amount of protesting about there being ‘plenty of time for all that’ could deter her from her cross-examination, so I quoted the Girl Guide motto and told her to ‘Be Prepared’. An honest answer to an honest question, I say. Although maybe it was a mistake to confess that I used to practise on my toy Muppet, Kermit.

I know that we’ve got some testing teenage times to come, and I’m faced with the fact that my young vampire wants to meet other young vampires who are also raging with irrepressible urges and hormones. These are dangerous times. I must resist the urge to don my skintight Vampire Slayer costume (it’s a very unforgiving fabric and a bit snug, so she’d only roll her eyes at me if I attempted to squeeze into it) and swoop out when needed. ‘He tried to do what?! Stand back and let me stake him through the heart!’

Instead, I’ll act as the old advisor in my dressing gown and slippers and ultimately she’ll learn by herself. At least I’ve taught her that you have to kiss a frog before you find a prince.

Bug Off

I’m overrun with annoying creatures, and I’m not talking about the two-legged kind I chose to give birth to. I’m plagued by creepy crawly creatures who, given the choice, I would rather not share my abode with. I don’t want to give the wrong impression of my lovely home, as it is a place gleaming with cleanliness. Wafts of bleach permeate every nook and cranny but the multitude of insects that live with me seem to thrive on it and every other anti-bacterial spray I purchase.

Let me introduce them to you: There is the family of cockroaches who live under my youngest daughter’s loo (I’m also overrun with toilets). I think it’s a family, or else it’s one giant perennially pregnant mother who keeps spewing forth tiny replica cockroaches, perfectly proportioned to her but in miniature. In an effort to stop them scuttling all over the villa, we have positioned a ‘Roach Hotel’ with the charming catchphrase of ‘The roaches check in, but they don’t check out’ behind the offending latrine. Inspecting the previous night’s sticky seizure has become as much a part of my daughter’s morning routine as cleaning her teeth.

Also in abundance are those tiny little see-through ants that favour my kitchen work surfaces and have a penchant for certain types of wooden furniture. According to the nice man who comes and sprays his noxious fumes around every now and again, they are known in the trade as ‘Sugar Ants’. I have plenty of evidence, squished in trails along my wall, to deduce that they are also quite partial to electrical appliances too, although ‘Sugar-Wood-Plug-Or-Any-Food-Stuff-Accidentally-Left-Out-Or-Dropped-On-The-Floor-Ants’ is a bit of a mouthful. They run pretty quickly, but not fast enough for my kids’ speedy squishing fingers. No longer squeamish, it’s now a game we all enjoy.

I have a particular loathing of the small ingenious black beasts, which look like miniature beetles that invade all types of pasta. Just how they manage to get inside a closed packet of penne is a puzzle still to be solved. I have spent a fortune on glass jars with vicious suction action and yet when I open the lid – there are scores of the little suckers nestling in my rigatoni. As I say, squeamishness has no place in our hearts these days, so when I accidently boiled a bevy of the blighters in a pan a couple of weeks ago, my kids were given the important task of fishing them out with a spoon when they rose to the surface (yes, they do that when simmered to death). The dish still tasted delicious, although I did have to convince the girls that the flecks in their food really were just basil.

Nobody gets a wink of sleep when there is a mosquito buzzing round the bedroom, as it’s difficult to rest peacefully when a blood-sucking pest performs a victory roll next to your ear. They don’t stand a chance in my house though, and fall into a soporific sleep from the anti-mozzie fumes diffusing in the atmosphere, before being whacked with a hand towel and left on the wall as a chilling display of warning to other potential parasites. That’s unless the gecko that lives in the air-conditioning unit doesn’t eat them first.

I have heard the scurrilous rumours that children bought up as ex-pats are a pampered bunch of namby- pambies. Well my cockroach-catching, ant-squashing, weevil-munching, mosquito-whacking kids are testament to the fact that this is a load of nonsense. How about yours?

Ode to Jimmy

On the 26th of this month my family and I will light a candle, place it in the window and remember. This is the night, exactly a year ago, that our cat Jimmy disappeared just two months short of his eighth birthday. Now, before you go and dismiss me as one of those crazy cat ladies, let me just clarify something to you here: Jimmy was no ordinary cat. Ok, I may be crazy, but it’s not only cats that I love, having had the experience so far of four cats, Mad Max the dalmatian dog, six chickens, Ratty the rat and a couple of pervy tortoises. So all animals are welcome in my home, but only Jimmy holds a special place in my heart.

We parents know that pets teach kids important life lessons such as responsibility, commitment, love and affection but ultimately the cycle of life and death. When a pet disappears without a trace, a whole lot of other questions are thrown up and honest answers are difficult to give. It’s not a lesson I would have wanted to teach my kids. We didn’t get a chance to say goodbye, and at the risk of sounding like a line from a corny movie, it’s the not knowing that’s probably the worst.

Jimmy was trouble right from the start. We got him from a small farm in West Wales, and soon discovered he was an accident-prone hypo-chondriac who never learnt to purr but meowed the word ‘Hello’.

The first time Jimmy was let out to go exploring, when we lived in the UK, he managed to get stuck up an apple tree in our next-door neighbour’s garden. My friends still maintain it was just a cunning ploy to get the Fire Brigade boys round, but I suffered terribly from gestational vertigo and it’s never really gone away. Well that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it.

Jimmy liked a bit of night prowling and regularly got into catfights with the neighbourhood moggies. However, rather than shake off these encounters with a shrug of his tail, many of the injuries Jimmy received required overnight vet stays with expensive operations to drain infected abscesses from his wounds. I’ve lost count of the number of times he was shaved. He also developed congenital tooth decay, and had his incisors removed, and so cleaning his teeth became one of my weekly duties after that, which he thoroughly enjoyed. He developed quite a taste for poultry flavoured-toothpaste.

At great expense, both emotionally and financially, we brought him out to Dubai with us when we moved. Within a couple of months, after he’d settled in and started prowling the neighbourhood, I received a rather confusing call from my next-door neighbour on our compound in Umm Suqeim 3. Apparently she was in Oud Metha and she had Jimmy with her. How strange, I thought, that she should take my cat for a sightseeing joy ride in her 4x4. It took a couple of minutes to sink in that she was an unwilling participant in his incredible journey, having driven all the way there with him clinging onto the engine. He spent four hours sedated and attached to a drip in the vet’s just to get the fluids back into him, but he lived to tell that tale. Maybe that was a life too far.

I suppose having a wandering cat is a bit like having a teenager. They’re out, you don’t know what they’re up to and there’s no guarantee they’ll be home on time, no matter how many times you call. How can you teach a cat the lessons of life? How do you tell them about crossing the road and the danger of strangers? My imagination has run riot over the last year, what with horror stories of air pelleted pets and the illegal cat trade in stolen moggies. If someone out there has taken a fat, friendly, tabby cat with some teeth missing, who meows ‘Hello’ in a Welsh accent and keeps getting into trouble, please give him back. We miss you Jimmy.

Like Mother Like Daughter

You know the old saying, ‘Like mother, like daughter?’ As I get older I see so many more similarities between me and mine, that I’d obviously been in denial about in the flush of youth. Not only am I developing similar age-related ailments, but also the likeness in face, body and mannerisms is a sure sign that I am turning into my mum. She’s not really into excessive personal grooming, as there’s not much call for it in the wilds of west Wales. Over there, one tends to get one’s body out on show once every two to three years, weather depending, as one look at her toenails will tell you.

So it’s a real treat to be able to take her along to the beauty salon whenever she arrives in our temperate climate, with instructions to the staff to start at her eyebrows and work all the way down. It’s little wonder that I’m not cut out for this pamper-perfect world of Dubai. Left to my own devices, I forget to wax before hitting the beach, my eyebrows are also unruly, my roots show, and my fingernails are appalling. Both mother and I are not averse to a bit of indulgence, but we’ve both had our fair share of previous product mishaps. My one and only facial resulted in an allergic reaction so severe that I could have made a fortune as a stand in for Freddie Kruger in A Nightmare on Umm Suqeim Street.

I developed an ingrowing toenail from an over-enthusiastic pedicure, my last head of highlights had a hint of orange under fluorescent lights and manicures leave me with nails that would make a magician’s assistant blush. They look great for about 30 seconds but as soon as I get out from under those ineffectual dryers, I manage to scrape off a layer just by paying the bill. I remember vividly the toxic aroma of nail glue while I was growing up (as well as the scary mass of fake hair that lived on its own polystyrene head on my mum’s dressing table – but that’s another story), so I couldn’t see a problem in dabbling with shop-bought, stick-on nails. Seduced by the ease, availability and price of my plastic purchases, I marvelled at such a convenient invention, which allowed me to sit at my kitchen table and transform my flaky nightmares into perfectly manicured talons. No wonder by mum used to do it. Only after they had dried did I realise I now had two useless appendages dangling on the end of each arm. I couldn’t go to the loo, scratch my nose, or pick anything up without a few pinging off. I even found one floating in a cup of tea. By then it was too late, as I’d stumbled onto the slippery slope of false nail addiction. It became a vicious cycle, as the glue deteriorated my ragged bitten stumps even further, I was forced to cover them up with more glue and more falsies. It took a long time to wean myself off them, but after attending intensive therapy I can now say I’m finally clean. Mum neglected to tell me about this but chuckled in nostalgic recognition when I finally confessed to my nail faux pas.

Dealing with my upper lip also came with its own set of problems, after one unfortunate therapist tainted the experience once and for all by setting the temperature of the wax too high. She ripped off an oblong piece of skin from under my nose and I had to go around for a fortnight with a red scabby moustache. My next depilatory disaster was attempting to laser the furry blighter into oblivion with a course of IPL. The effect on my moustache was more akin to the conditions of a greenhouse and a heat lamp. It thrived on the treatment and grew back twice as thick. Once again, I blame my mother as memories of her standing in front of the bathroom mirror, looking like Winnie the Pooh after he’s been at the honey jar, come flooding back to me.

So what will happen when my own daughters need to begin their beauty regimes? Well they can’t do anything about their troublesome genes, but I have a feeling that growing up in Dubai, they will take waxing, threading and manicures all in their perfectly pedicured stride and break with our family traditions.

So the next time you see a woman with hairy legs, orange hair, dodgy nails and a ‘tache please bear in mind that it’s probably not her fault. Don’t judge her – you don’t know what she’s been through. After all, she may just take after her mother.............