(aka Bike) Part 1413 by Angharad Copyright © 2011 Angharad
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Enquiries about the football school at Danny’s school, meant it coincided with the week Jenny would be away, if I took the four girls and the baby, would Stella cope with keeping an eye on Danny in the evenings, making sure he washed his kit and his neck and got a meal?
Si would be home eventually in the evenings and he could help supervise Danny, except with him in charge it would be all fast food or going out to eat. Could they live on pizzas and chips for a week–I don’t see why not–it might be good training for his stomach if ever he goes away to uni, as half the students live on chips or other junk food for several years.
I felt guilty, though why should I wait for another week or two to take the girls away? If Danny wants to attend this soccer school thing, he’ll have to show some maturity in helping to look after himself. If necessary, I’ll get some ready meals in, which they can just microwave — all the big supermarkets do them and so do Marks & Sparks.
I casually mentioned to Stella that I was thinking of taking the girls away for a few days and she nearly became apoplectic. I won’t be able to cope on my own with two babies and Simon and Tom.
“Julie will be home in the evenings and Simon isn’t disabled, just clueless. Besides you used to cope when you and he lived together, and you held down a full time job.”
“Why can’t we come with you?” She asked–she wasn’t going to like the answer.
“Where’s Gareth–he hasn’t been here for a few days?”
“He’s off on a course–they’re making loads redundant–so he’s been lucky to keep his job.”
“How long is his course?”
“Until Friday.”
“So he’ll be home at weekends and evenings as well as the others. He seems a capable type–I’ll bet he can cook a bit.”
“Yeah, but why should he–that’s yours or Jenny’s job, and why can’t she do it–we pay her enough?”
“Stella, I pay Jenny.,” Okay, I use Simon’s money, “So she works for me, the fact that she helps you is a bonus, but I still pay her. She has an entitlement to take holidays, she’s chosen the same week I’m going to be away.”
“Huh, abandoning me–I get it.”
“Stella, it’s hardly abandoning you–okay, you have two small children to care for, but that’s all. You’ll have up to four other adults in the house while I’m away and catering for them isn’t exclusively my job anyway. I am trying to help Tom with his survey as well.”
“You wouldn’t need a holiday if you hadn’t done that play thing–that’s what has exhausted you–playing Lady Macbeth.”
“No it hasn’t, besides am I not allowed to do one or two things as well? I haven’t actually been away on holiday since I met you, and certainly not since I married Simon.”
“You went up to Scotland, and stayed at the hotel in Southsea–that would count as holidays in anyone’s book.”
“The trip to Scotland was trying to hide from some serious criminals if you remember, and using the hotel in Southsea is usually avoiding someone somewhere else as well–hardly holidays are they?”
“You didn’t cook, clean or do anything else, so I’d call it a holiday.”
I was tempted to respond detailing the little she does regularly, but it would only antagonise her. She seems to think I’ve replaced the role of housekeeper and mother to her, the babies and children and all the other adults as well. It ain’t necessarily so, and I’m just warming to the idea of telling her so in explicit detail.
Just then Jenny walked in, “Why the long faces, ladies?”
“Cathy told me you’re going away the week after next and so is she.”
“Yeah, so?”
“Who’s going to look after the house and feed everybody?” moaned Stella.
“As you’re the only one not working, Stella–looks like it’s you. That’ll make a nice change for you, won’t it?”
“I’ve got two babies to look after.”
“They don’t take all day, do they? In Africa, mothers only stop doing heavy physical jobs when they start going into labour,”
“I don’t see what politics has to do with anything.”
“Politics?”
“Yes, Labour.”
“I meant labour as the effort of expelling a child from your womb.”
“Oh, that makes a little more sense, but it’s mainly nonsense.”
“Well, if you were working in Africa, you’d have been back ploughing fields and so on a few hours after giving birth.”
“There is no way I could sit on a hard tractor seat for even a couple of hours.”
“Tractor? Who said anything about a tractor?”
“Well, I assumed they’d be using tractors.”
“Sadly you’d be wrong, most of these people are too poor to afford tractors or the fuel to power them.”
“That’s lack of investment.”
“Subsistence farming isn’t a bowl of cherries.”
“I’m sure it isn’t, but that’s not my fault.”
“You enjoy eating fresh fruit and veg out of season–since this mostly comes from third world countries–it is partly your fault.”
“It most certainly isn’t–you do the shopping–I only eat what you put on my plate.”
“Oh well, Stell,” started Jenny, “now’s the chance to change all that.”
“But I don’t want to change it, do I?”
“Fine, but you could find that come the revolution, you’ll be the first into the tumbrel.”
“Which revolution are we discussing here?”
As they only used tumbrels in one revolution that I’m aware of, Stella is being deliberately obtuse in the hope that someone will save her. From the way Jenny is maintaining a hostile reception to Stella’s whining, she certainly isn’t going to rescue her anytime soon.
The circular argument went nowhere quickly, but as I refused to postpone my holiday–like I do every year–I managed to get out quickly enough to avoid being drawn into the recriminations. I went to start lunch.
I had no sooner put some jacket potatoes into the oven when the phone rang. It was the school, Danny had a suspected broken finger–he was at the QA. Just what I needed–not. If I spend much more time there, I shall ask for my own parking place.
I drove off to get him with Trish and Livvie. When we found him he had his hand swathed in bandages and was looking rather sorry for himself.
“What happened?” I asked.
“That prat Clayton hit out at a slower bowler and I was at silly mid on, I tried to catch him but the ball hit the end of my finger. I felt this intense pain–the Xrays show it’s the end bone in my index finger.”
“Terminal or distal phalange.”
“Yeah, that’s the one.”
Comments
We've got the standard Stella back
and I wouldn't expect a broken finger to be a big problem with Cathy around.
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?
... is Stella going on about? Since when did Cathy became the mother in charge of everybody, including her kids. That means also that she can't breast feed her newest while Cathy is away.
So whatever happen to that whole blue light thing and Cathy's furthering in understanding of it?
Kim
Love the last two lines
And there's me thinking that a terminal was a place where railway engines go to sleep.
S.
Danny's holiday diet
Danny'll manage perfectly well on junk food for a week or so. When we used to camp at dinghy sailing championship weeks there was little incentive to cook after stripping off cold wet suits but after several hours racing at sea we were hungry. The answer? the famous beer and chip diet :0) If we 30/40 year olds survived for a week young Danny will have no problem.
Robi
Easy As Falling Off A Bike pt 1413
Stella could take herself and her babies to the castle and get Margo, the woman whose been working on the property to look after Danny, unless his finger keeps him from the clinic.
May Your Light Forever Shine
May Your Light Forever Shine
We're talking footy, ...
not football. If you're using your hands, you're doing it wrong. ;) (Folks from the USA would call it soccer.)
(Congratulations to Japan, as an aside. They deserved it much more than the US did today.)
I'm all for Cathy up and leaving, except I know the household will go to hell in a handbasket 15 minutes after Cathy leaves. Danny would be the one keeping it together in her absence, and while Danny is a great kid, Stella would end up yelling at him about some women's issue, Simon would upbraid him for his (perceived) lack of knowledge due to his age (assuming Simon stays behind), and he wouldn't know how to turn Puddin's mouth off. :)
(Edit: OK, well, Tom could play a part in holding it together too. Tom seems to prefer his background role, though, and who knows if he wouldn't be at the college anyway most of the time.)
And you're slacking Angharad, where's a bit about Cavendish with his stage win today? :)
Problem is
Those sports clinics/camps tend to insist that participants be in perfect health. Danny is in very real danger of not being allowed to attend due to his injury.
Stella has become a self-centered, whiny POS. How about knocking her off and putting everybody out of her misery.
* * *
"Girls are like pianos, when they're not upright they're grand!" Benny Hill
Karen J.
"Life is not measured by the breaths you take, but by the moments that take your breath away.”
George Carlin
You've spent too many years in Texas, Karen
"He/she needed killn'" is no longer an acepted defence in a murder case... I hope!
-- grin --
Stella just being a bit stuborn, teasing Cathy or is her mental illness simmering again? I fear any extra stress will set her off. And Stela is as likely to harm herself as she is others if that should happen. But then there were those ominous words from the goddess as the how they "gave" the infant Catherine to her by killing off her family -- then gave her the ablity to nurse thus giving Cathy the "blessings" of almost motherhood, but at a high price -- and hinted at giving Stella's kids to Cathy as well if she displeased them.
The broken finger, her oldest giving Stella a hard time, Simon being a semi-prat and all that, just par for the course.
Did Stella forget Cathy had to kill several people who were trying to kill her and hers in Scotland? That was NOT a vacation by any measure and Stella knows that.
John in Wauwatosa
P.S. FOUR YEARS and a few days?
And only 1413 episodes?
Get writng... slacker!
-- snicker --
John in Wauwatosa
Now we are 4!
Any regular readers of Bike who haven't already done so might like to add their birthday wishes at: Bike: Blowing Out Four Candles.
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It's an ill wind.
Well that's cricket out for a few weeks for Danny, but a simple broken finger might not stop the football.
Sometime when I was thirteen, I played two games before the wardens accepted that I had a Bennet fracture to the first metacarpel of my right thumb and a sheer-line break of the second metacarpel in my forefinger. But that wasn't a sporting injury. When they finally took me to casualty about six days after the 'incident', the thumb had set all crooked and it had to be re-broken. I was made to say that I hadn't reported it to the wardens.
(Like my hand was swollen up like a bloody pumpkin!!!)
Finger injuries don't much affect footballers unless they are playing goalkeeper. I suppose today, health and safety would have a field day if a kid continued playing with a broken thumb.
Looks as though Danny's gonna miss the football.
Still lovin' it Angie.
Thanks.
Bev.
XZXX. OXOXOX
Growing old disgracefully.
Silly Mid-On
Perhaps the most dangerous position in all of cricket. It figures that's where Danny would be playing.
Stella... Ah, Stella. It's a pity she couldn't be trusted to survive in her own household. Otherwise, it would be a good opportunity for her to start growing up, by moving out onto her own, with Gareth of course.
___________________
If a picture is worth 1000 words, this is at least part of my story.
Holidays
So even though Danny's injury isn't serious, he may be excluded from the football tournament - but that would probably result in him being in the house on his own unless someone holds Baby C's carrycot, as the Cayenne only seats five. So Stella will only have to cope with Puddin' and Fiona on her own during the day - she'll have Julie, Simon, Tom and Gareth to help out during evenings / mornings with the possible addition of Danny. It'll do the adult males good to engage in a spot of childcare :)
If Cathy does manage to take the holiday, it'll be interesting to see the extent to which Puddin's vocabulary of expletives has expanded during the week :)
-oOo-
P.S. Happy fourth anniversary, Bike! :)
There are 10 kinds of people in the world - those who understand binary and those who don't...
As the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body, then only left-handers are in their right mind!
Let's Take a Step Back Here
There seems to be a maelstrom building here, and it all goes back to Cathy wanting to take some time off in the hinterlands with her family. Vacations/holidays are a family thing, and Cathy seems to have bypassed the whole process of involving her family in the decision making. Her whole plan was horribly not thought out. She comes up with with the idea of going off without consulting with anyone. She didn't review plans, didn't ask for inputs, etc. Now it's everyone else's fault because they are not, cannot comply with her desires. We've seen it before. In spite of her genuine love for her family, Simon included, she can really be a self centered, selfish bitch at times. She seems to lose perspective all too quickly. If she needs a time out, maybe she should go to a spa for a few days - alone!
Portia
Portia
Do i feel sorry
for Stella?..... No not really, Okay we know she has had problems in the past and no doubt this will put a little pressure on her , But there will be two more adults there as well, Surely three adults equals one Cathy!
Kirri
Danny is either going on holiday,
or getting a Blue Light special.
I also suspect Stella is coming too. I'll watch and see.