I don't bake...

Bookworm costume

... but I do make costumes. The children know that they can ask to be anything and I will huff and puff and grumble about time and then usually I will do it. But, if I can't, my Mum or my Dad can and will. That is one reason why my parents are so fantastic.

This is Son as 'Bookworm' for World Book Day 2004.

That year, I rather surpassed myself. Both Son and Daughter looked spectacular, (Daughter tomorrow) and another mother passed me in the playground, and said: 'You've got too much time on your hands...'

I was devastated; I could've cried. She was a solicitor - I am impressed because she had a real, grown up career and she baked her daughter's birthday cakes, while I didn't have a job, I just went to art college. I could make costumes but not cakes and so I bought mine from Tesco or M&S. I reckoned we were pretty even on the making front but she'd reached the finished line on careers before I'd even heard the starter pistol.

Anyway, sorry for the 'me me me, aren't I clever' post but I'm writing you know, and can't think of anything else to post.

My Mum

Now it's my Mum's turn. I rather think that I maligned her in my post here. She doesn't tell me I should come home nor does she give me a hard time about it. She recognises that it's my life and I'm living it, but I know how much she misses me and wants us to come back to the UK.

My Mum:

• Is obsessed by Shakespeare. (And is a bit of a lovie; okay quite a lot of a lovie.)
  Applied, without her parent’s knowledge, by audition to RADA (Royal Academy of Dramatic Art) when she was a young. She was offered a place but because she didn’t get a scholarship and her parents weren’t interested she couldn’t go.
• Started Marden Theatre Group because there wasn’t a group, and she wanted to continue with her hobby of drama. She’s never viewed her hobby as amateur.
• Is passionate about costumes. She has an enormous theatrical wardrobe in the attic. She has an encyclopaedic knowledge of period costumes but can’t remember if she took her tablets that morning.
• Husband says that when he goes to their house she always asks him to move boxes, say from the attic to the dining room. Six months later she’ll ask him to take boxes somewhere else, maybe from the dining room to the attic. He has no idea if they are the same boxes or if anything has happened to them between his visits. They are nearly always full of costumes.
• Hates cooking.
• Is forever falling over the cats and dog, and shouting ‘Oh my God’ or ‘Jesus’ or ‘Bloody Hell’ in a completely over the top manner.
• Once wrote a history essay for me because I was overwhelmed with work due at school the next day. My teacher marked it in class and then called out loud: “Jenny! This is excellent; wonderful.” I expect she was bitterly disappointed by any future essay I handed in.
• Is the kindest, most generous person. Every week for months she drove a woman she knew to see her husband in a care home because the woman had no transport and the buses took all day. She waited and then brought the woman back again. She met another woman she knew in the village whose husband had weekly treatment at the hospital 10 miles away. She took them up to the hospital each time they needed to go for several months.
• She has several friends, on their own now, who are referred to as the Sunday lunch club. They come every week for Sunday lunch to my parents’ house.
• Has written/adapted several plays which she has produced and directed at a local men’s prison.
• Has written a play that Radio 4 rejected.
• Thinks technology is ridiculous. Thinks she has kept up with progress by learning to send faxes. Would rather use her old manual typewriter than the laptop my Dad and Brother bought her.