Week 40: Growing Pains

“Chunky?”

”Yes mate?”

”I haven’t got any trousers that fit”

”Eh? We only bought you new ones a couple of months ago?”

”Yeah, well the Hoodrich ones I can’t find and the Illvzn ones, Milo [the 5 month old Spaniel] tries to eat the dangling webbing so I can’t wear them. And I haven’t got enough tops. And I need new trainers to go out in”

BT (Boy Teenager) is rapidly (too bleeding rapidly) turning into a man. At age nearing 15 he is nearly as tall as me and is fast becoming broader than me. He's started to go through clothes nearly as rapidly as Gin (the Mrs, with a penchant for London Dry Distillation) canes through bottles of the divine spirit. Doesn't he know that I am “economically inactive”, trying to eek out the redundancy pay whilst maintaining Gin’s Ocado spending habits? Still, in a continuing and vaguely upbeat theme, the magic words are “to go out in”. We can’t leave our emergent male butterfly short on items to adorn himself in; it continues to be important that he gets out of the house, preferably with his mates.

Teenagers apparently are very good at losing clothing. Since I took on the Washing Duties for the house, I’ve not been able to tell the difference between GT’s (Girl Teenager) draws (knickers for the non-UK readers of this missive) and those belonging to Gin. Or so I thought. They all have “12“ written on them. GT is so slim I‘ve been assuming that she is still in knickers that a 12 year old girl would wear. Or that they are Gin’s, who might be that sort of adult size. It’s taken me 10 months to ask the question to find out.

“What?“ says Gin, “no they are mine! GT’s should say 8 on the label”.

I haven’t at any point in 10 months seen a pair of draws with “8“ on the label. Not once. Turns out neither has GT. Fortunately it doesn’t take the deductive powers of Sherlock to work out where they might be. Let me introduce you to GT’s bedroom. Upon entry you can see a mirror, make out the shape of a futon, identify a desk by the chair that sits in front of it, and can see a bed (can’t get this one wrong, GT is usually lounging on it with the cat). Every surface, including the floor, is covered in Stuff. Clothes, bags, bits of makeup scattered about, bottles, cuddly toys, shoes, coats, records ..... and if you are brave enough to root about a bit, Knickers. All over the place. I should add at this point that GT likes it this way; I think she feels sort of wrapped up in all her own stuff. Or it might just be that she can’t be bothered to put it all away. Whatever, the Case of the Missing Draws is solved and yet more washing is added to the basket.

Washing. I swear it divides and multiplies over night. Remember those bacterial experiments at school where you stuck a finger on a petri-dish and then monitored the rate at which bacteria spread? Socks are like that. We are running the heated clothes drying rack so hard it’s starting to smoke. And the pup’s new and favourite game doesn't help. When we are out walking he loves Retrieving Thrown Things. He tells you he wants to Retrieve A Thrown Thing by bashing you in the back of the legs with it, which in dry conditions would be no more than a bit irritating. However, the Good Lord has dumped many gallons of water on the hills and meadows around Coulsdon leaving the area for miles around a mud bath, populated by too many dogs and their walkers. Every day another pair of trousers is chucked in the wash, muddy brown stripes on the back of the legs where Milo has whacked a dirty stick against them.

The hound also is doing his best to bankrupt us. This week he has decided that he doesn‘t like wet food (but will happily eat Horse Poo. Go figure), leaving us with a month’s worth unopened in the cupboard (Gin suggested we donate it to a food bank, but I’m not so sure the local kids will eat it). He has also decided to grow out of his swanky overnight kennel (actually a plastic carry crate) which was brand-new but six weeks ago. I’m convinced that he and BT are in some sort of growing competition, which proportionately Milo is winning. Well they can pack it in! I’ll have to go back to work sooner than planned if we aren’t careful, and let me tell you, We Don’t Want That!

Week 40 then. Well that was it really. Quite a slow one after the previous week. But good news! The mobile phones are now transferred over to the new network and the new TV and broadband contracts have kicked in. The deals were tremendous; brand new kit, better services and about £50 a month cheaper. It was worth the hours on the phone and all the swearing two weeks ago.

And with that we enter week 41, the one in which we will find out whether our Illustrious Government is able to secure some sort of Brexit Deal. I sincerely hope so; roughly £280bn, or almost half of what we export is to the EU, and we import over £30bn of food each year. Slapping tariffs on either of those won’t benefit anyone. As Ben Elton used to say, “A little bit of politics there for you folks”.

Stay safe,

Love & elbow-grease,

Mr H X

PS Thank you to those that have sent us Christmas cards. As usual you won’t be getting one back as we will be putting a small sum in a charity pot instead (who was it that suggested its because neither of us can be arsed to write them!?).

PPS Welcome to some new and recent subscribers. Good to have you along for however long this journey runs for. If you don’t fancy looking back through 39 previous blogs, the summary is this: I gave up work and Gin went full-time (she is a teacher) in March so that I can try to help BT recover from (manage?) severe anxiety which has kept him out of school and education for nearly three years (now). BT has been steadily improving this year, which is a blessing, but isn‘t fully well yet. He is though much improved compared with his very poorly state back in 2018. Our lives had settled into some sort of semi-normal, which we decided to completely bugger about with by getting a Cocker-Spaniel/Wallaby cross breed pup in September, and he has been bouncing his way around the gaff getting rapidly bigger and more of a loveable menace.