One of THOSE days

Actually, it’s been one of those weeks and it’s only Thursday, which is kind of worrying, specially as tomorrow I have four things squeezed onto the increasingly tiny space for me on my calendar.

Today, I managed to lock myself out, you see as usual I had the normal getting ready for school rush, not aided by me having a stinking cold and Boy Lacer not cooperating, so we were already running late by the time I had got the kids ready and I just needed to grab my bag and coat. I got my bag, “oh sh*t my wallet is not in it” and my wallet is always in my bag and because it’s always in my bag it’s where I keep my key so I don’t loose it. So the kids are already standing outside, well Boy Lacer is in his pushchair and I know any minute now my friend D will walk past and her son B will be hanging round our front gate until Girl Lacer’s ready to go and we’re already late and I didn’t want to make us and D and B any later. So I’m rummaging round my bag and I see a key and I think “Ah it’s slipped out, at least I’ve got my key now, I’ll have to ransack the flat when I get back even though I’m meant to be going round my friend S’s after I’ve dropped Boy Lacer off at playgroup. So I shut the front door, bag in hand, knowing I’ve got a key in my bag, get the key to the lock and notice the key in the wrong colour, I have the back door key. So I swear quietly and rush to join D and B who have just as predicted walked past. I get Girl Lacer to school, Boy Lacer to playgroup and then rush round to the back of my block of flats thinking I could just about climb over my back gate.

I get to the back gate, realise oh no I can’t climb over it without a) getting stuck b) breaking my neck (it seemed shorter in my recall). Our garden gate is pretty decrepit and already has a plank missing (from mmm last time I was trying to get into my back garden!), so I figure if I could just unscrew the plank next to it I could crawl through. So I go round to S’s (who luckily lives just round the corner) she’s expecting me for coffee and there’s me on the doorstep going “Can I borrow a screwdriver?”, unfortunately she didn’t have the right type but I borrow a phillips screwdriver thinking maybe I could unscrew the latch instead. I get back home, the latch bolts aren’t phillips either and I realise that the screws are sooo rusty I wouldn’t be able to unscrew them anyway. So I give the gate a kick and the bottom cross strut disintegrates under my boot, a few more good kicks later and I have a hole just about big enough to crawl through. Thing is I’m wearing my one and only work skirt, as I have nothing else clean and dry at the moment as it has been ‘one of those weeks’ and as I’m working tomorrow, now is not the time to get it grubby / get a splinter in it, but needs must, the skirt survives and I get to the back door with my key. I put the key in the lock, it doesn’t work (it’s a newly cut key), so I’m forced to sit on my back door step, ring the bank which luckily has a very memorable number and cancel the card that was in the wallet that I didn’t know where it was and then ring Mr. Lacer and do the pitiful wife act.

I then finally get round S’s (back through the hole), she feeds me much needed coffee and we have a good chat. She’s my friend with an autistic son and I was telling her about the playgroup dilemma, I very much respect her advice, as her son’s been through the exact same local route as Boy Lacer will and she reckons not to accept any special needs place purely because he’s got 2 terms before he gets into Girl Lacer’s school, where her son goes and the care there is sooo good, accepting a place at a special needs school already is risking already pigeon holing him and once in there it might be really difficult to get him out again so that he can go to Girl Lacer’s lovely mainstream but autism specialising school. So currently as I stand, if we get offered a place, I am not moving him, specially as when I took him to playgroup this morning he was honestly the child with the biggest smile walking in through those doors and they were saying how much more independent he’s getting, so he’s improving there alone.

Anyway, I picked Boy Lacer up and we then had to walk to the train station to meet Mr. Lacer who was bringing his keys during his lunch break (luckily he works ‘fairly’ locally) and then finally home. A quick lunch and Boy Lacer, obviously and desperately looking like he needed to pee but of course refusing the potty option, kept on wanting to sit on my ‘only work skirted’ lap and there I was knowing that last time he was like that the day before he’d completely soaked through his and my trousers (and you were wondering why I had no clothes to wear). Luck and a bit of play acting with his teddy bear later, he did his business fully clothed but sitting on the potty, so no wet skirt this time.

I’d realised that after all the usual doom and gloom economic talk on the news yesterday, this time concentrating on the retail figures and how shops like M&S were having 20% off days that the day they had been referring to was actually today. So even though I hadn’t had a chance to do the stuff I needed to do in the morning, due to being locked out, suddenly the issue of work skirts seemed even more pressing and as I had at some point been planning on getting another M&S Per Una skirt (the same brand as my current work skirt, which has been a very faithful ‘nice’ skirt), I thought now was the time, as the price had been putting me off. My current work skirt was actually brought for a funeral incidentally and then co-opted into further wardrobe assistance, it’s long, grey, with a black rose print and frills at the bottom. So even though I didn’t actually have much time, I made a quick dash into town and M&S was heaving, as you would expect when they go and offer 20% off. I would have actually, more money and time permitting, probably would have brought quite a lot, they had some lovely evening skirts, not too ‘for the older lady’ but not too young either, they were black or rose print (the same as on my current work skirt) and were knee length with a bit of an A-line shape to them. The rose print evening skirt was a bit ‘too evening’ to have paid for it’s upkeep in my wardrobe, lovely as it was, but there was a plainer black satiny skirt that was sorely tempting. But I stuck to the idea of work skirts and found a lovely, slightly vampish, in that it’s long but quite fitted around the legs but flaring out towards the hem, brown tweed skirt with a hint of red sparkle, perfect and doubly perfect at now with 20% off, at a very reasonable price. I do like Per Una stuff, which saying that alone makes me feel a little old because I remember being a young whipper-snapper 20 something, going shopping with my aunt, who took me round Per Una, which didn’t look much different as it does today I recall, absolutely raving about how wonderful it is and I remember thinking in my 20 something arrogance “Argh this is so middle aged” but I guess you get to a certain age where almost floor length skirts have an added attraction (principally for me it’s the joy of not having to wear tights under my boots, I predict as heating your home excessively becomes more and more of a luxury (this year we’ve turned our thermostat down from 21C to 20C and you know what, it’s not that bad), fashions will become increasingly floor length, as a method of insulation, I’ve been watching Merlin and thinking how warm all those cloaks and floor length robes look! Anyway, I’m digressing, the 20 something still in me, does chide me still, a bit, that I’ve now turned into my aunt (who is actually fairly ‘with it’) but most (not all, some of it’s garish) Per Una stuff is nice and most importantly good quality, my current work skirt has been through a lot of mistreatment this past year (like climbing through holes in gates) and it still looks good. The standard price of a Per Una skirt is about the £45 – £60 mark, which yes is expensive (but not as expensive as the three figure woolly scarf I saw in a magazine this morning, who spends three figures on a scarf!) but the quality is good and at that price hopefully the people who’ve made it have decent conditions to work in and have also been paid a fair price, I think you can trust M&S can’t you? Anyway thanks to the discount today it cost me £36

I also went into town to get some change for my book selling tomorrow but of course the change machine wasn’t working, I’ve just sent out Mr. Lacer to buy a loaf of bread with a £20 note because guarenteed the first customer I get tomorrow will be wanting to buy a £5.99 book with a £20 note themselves. Talking of book selling, I have yet to sort out my latest stock sheet for tomorrow or labelled up my new stock (guess what I was going to do this morning?) but I’m going to give that Apparations a second chance, now talk about a first episode last week not living up to how good the trailer had looked, it struck me more of a Dick Van Dyke day time TV show mixed with a rather gorey bit at the end.

So I better go now but back to my key and wallet, yep I did find it after all that, it was on the sofa!