SKANKY PEOPLE AND THERE SKANKY DOGS!!..............

Wed Aug 30, 2000

I then realise that I'm at Lucy and Grant's place, I'm hung over and that I've dribbled or indeed at the ripe old age of 34....wet myself.

The shower is divine even though you had to squash your face against the wall for the water to actually reach the whole of your body.  So in doing this and then reaching down for the soap, I get a dizzy feeling and fall head first down into the bath (where the shower is).  I then say lots of bad words, scramble up, finish off washing oneself and fall onto the outside floor of the bath tub.... not very delicately done I must say.

I have to go and see my friend Tracey and her two adorable girls today, so I want to NOT smell quite like a brewery in front of the little ones, even though I'm sure I have before now.

I call her to arrange a time to get there, she tells me and asks if I want some lunch?  What a question, I guess when she hears me then slobbering gibberish down the phone, she realises that I'm a tad peckish.

So now I'm all ready, with overnight knickers, toothbrush etc.  I head out the door to a beautiful English day with lots of bright sunshine all around me.  I merrily, if not a wee bit unsteadily head towards the tube station (Camden Tube).  Unfortunately my lovely walk finishes just as we hit the tube station, why I hear you ask? Well, let me tell you......there's about a dozen (not kidding) beggars, homeless, drunks (well that would be me) all hanging outside the tube station as if there waiting for a fucking great big sponge to ooze out of it ready to scrub them clean.  Honest a god the smell is unbelievable and I truly believe it's not coming from the skanky dogs that they insist in England on having with them.  At least in New York they just beg for themselves, but in England they want money for them PLUS their friggin dog....cheeky blighters!!

So after stepping over numerous ugly, smelly people I enter the tube station, grab my ticket and descend the long escalators down towards the platform.  Now this is hard for me as I get slightly claustrophobic and one place you really shouldn't be in that condition is the London Tube Station.  You see unlike the ones in New York, the English ones go much deeper, you can seriously be on a downward escalator for a good 3 minutes, which is a long time going steadily downward.  At least with the ones here in New York if your walking above ground over the metal grates, you can actually feel it whooshing past you underneath, that's how near they are from the ground.

So being extremely hungover my journey to Clapham South which is a good 40 minute ride, was not a pleasant one.  The big difference though is that on London tubes there's very few nutters, which is a shame because that always passes the time away nicely...

So I arrive at Tracey's house to this fabulous excitement of little girls...Anne-Laure is nearly 4 and Constance is still only 18 months.  As always its very emotional to see them and this time wasn't any different.  Constance is bigger now than she was the first time I met her (well obviously) so it took her a little longer to get used to me, but I think a record of 5 minutes isn't that long.  I told you I was good with kids.  Anne-Laure wound me up at first and told me that she didn't recognise me, but she was just having a laugh which is scary coming from a 4 year old...very clever girl that!!
 

We had lunch then went to the park across the street where all of Anne-Laure's mates were hanging out so she was in heaven, running around with all her girl and boy mates.  Constance was quite happy sitting on some kids bike (much to the annoyance of the kid) and sloppily eating an ice-cream, while me and her mum ate huge pieces of lemon cake and drank a pot of tea.  It was all extremely civilised, until of course Anne-Laure decided to beat the crap out of this boy who had broken her necklace trying to put it on (puff), so there were some hysterics over that.

Actually it was quite funny there was this guy there with his daughter (apparently his wife was recuperating over a short stay in the hospital), so he was on dad duty.  Anyway his daughters friend was the one who snatched Anne-Laure's necklace.  The next thing we know is that this guy is sitting down and very patiently threading each little bead onto the string of this necklace, purely because Anne-Laure had made him feel so guilty that he just did it.  I told you she was smart.  He was actually a really nice guy...pretty cute as well.

By evening time Anne-Laure was really playing up, which I hadn't seen before and was quite surprised by.  She even at one point told Tracey to shut up which I couldn't believe.  Of course she thought she'd gotten away with it because at first Tracey just sat there, but then she quietly put her tea down, grabbed A-L by the arm, took her back into the kitchen and presumably gave her a bit of a slap for being so cheeky.  Now before you lot out there start writing to me, whining on about how you shouldn't hit kids, let me tell you, it never did me any harm whatsoever.  I used to give my mother some major lip, so she in return would (not very hard) slap the back of my legs, which yes, slightly stings but definitely tells you who's boss.  Kids are a lot smarter this day and age and they WILL get very cheeky and eventually completely ignore their parents totally.  I adore my little A-L, but she was very very naughty this afternoon.

The next morning I woke to A-L crawling into my bed (I was in the lounge downstairs) and putting on morning cartoons.  Jean-Philippe, her dad had gotten Constance up, fed, changed her and then gone out to work (he's a good bloke), so she came crawling in to see me which was lovely having these two little angels on my bed.  Anyway A-L decided to grab whatever was in Constance's hand, a usual big sister trick, I used to do it on my brother.  I made her give it back, so then she screamed and said she wanted to play with it, which is completely untrue, she just didn't want Constance to have it.  So after a while of me arguing that surely she wasn't interested in the cartoons anymore, so I could then watch the news couldn't I? she relented and everything was good. I did have a talk though with her as it upset me the way in which she spoke to her mum....  Of course she promised she'd be a good girl, but no doubt that little promise will indeed be forgotten.....

Still want to have them though..............EVENTUALLY!!