Monday…..The Buck Stops Here

Rows: 2 (but low level)
Coffee: 2
Wine: Nil…but took willpower of Aung San Suu Kyi
Decibels: 30 (Like Black Adder reasoning with the troops before they go ‘over the top’)

Today looks set to be one of negotiation. Battle lines are already being drawn up and it's only 830am. Monday normally means my diplomatic skills are somewhere between Attila the Hun and Cruella DeVille but today it's time to ditch the dalmatian coat, put on a mask of the Dalai Lama and try and get the week off to a good start.

As much as I love my kids and enjoy them as friends, I regularly have to pull the Mum card. You know, the ‘do your room, no you’re not going out until 11pm on a school night and unload the dishwasher NOW’ card. Because as much as I like them, as much as we get on like a house on fire, I am Mummy Dearest before anything else.

Same goes for The Office. Running my own business I mostly get to choose the people I work with. Arguably I spend more time with the Employees than I do with The Family so it’s nice that we are friendly. But before anything else, I am Managing Director. And I regularly have to pull the ‘where are the reports, I think you’ll find that’s in your job description and why are you late’ card.

As MD’s, the skill we have is to see all the pieces of the jigsaw. Individual decisions, taken in isolation, may not make sense to the person they are communicated to. And we don’t have time (nor inclination) to explain the why’s and where fors. Family and Employees have to trust that your judgement is fair and understand these decisions are made as part of a bigger picture. Of course, this is how I see it. The Teenagers think I have the volatility of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano and the Employees think I have the temperament of Stalin on a benevolent day. Although that may be something to do with my new moustache.

So when Daughter is told that, no, Boyf can’t stay over midweek, she riles at the injustice. But I see no sleep for her, then two days of knackered Teenager before she limps to her weekend lie in, which impacts on her college work, the general ambience of the home etc, etc.

Similarly, when Controller changes his work mobile phone number due to his stalker ex-girlfriend, he is somewhat perturbed when I take him to task. He sees the phone number as the issue – I see the new business cards we have just had printed, the 24 hour divert which is programmed to his old number and the 20 clients that have his number if our rural phone lines go down.

My job is to see the bigger picture. I do try to lead by co-alition and negotiation but in the end I am a bit like David Cameron (minus the Eton upbringing and smug expression on his noticeably hairless chin). We have to work together but the buck stops with me, a decisive hirsute leader. That also means it’s my fault if it all goes tits up. Be warned, David. Luckily 90% of the time I get it right. The other 10% is fuel for this column!

Thursday…..TFIF…nearly

Rows: nil…can’t be bothered…
Coffee: None, zilch, nadda
Wine: Lemsip and Rose cocktails.
Voice Decibels: 20 (a husky whisper)
Genius Levels: Patient post ECT

Are we nearly there yet? Can I make it all the way to the weekend? I am not so sure. Losing it this morning at 0730 was a sure way to define that my tolerance is reaching an end.

I was simultaneously trying to work out with Personal Trainer – whilst dictating a shopping list to Husband, whilst children are asking me for lunch money and wondering where their PE kits is plus work is on the phone with an urgent problem. Don’t ask me why my Husband isn’t able to spot what we need from Waitrose – he and das kinder still seem to think a flipping fairy fills the fridge. Anyway I am working out – being interrupted every 2 minutes – simultaneously trying to be Super Mum, Wifelet, lithe MILF and Captain-ess of Industry when I simply can’t take it anymore. Then they all looked surprised when I explode like an egg in a microwave – everyone getting splattered by a boiling fragment. I send PT on his way, told kids to bloody well find their own gym kits, instructed Husband he was as able as me to see if we had bread, milk and food and told work to use their bloody initiative.

I guess I am less than tolerant today because I have a cold. A cold would be okay if a) I could stop, b) someone else could take care of my Things To Do List and c) it was sufficiently mild so I could catch up with some home stuff if I actually conceded to taking a day off. Typical MD – using a sick day to catch up on the cleaning. Mind you, as I decried Husbands suffering for the last week with taunts of ‘Manflu, is it?’, with about as much sympathy as Margaret Thatcher had for the miners, I should not be surprised that he is now positively gleaming with smug satisfaction as I continuously blow my nose. And I have always made such a fuss over sick days at work the Employees are fit for an Intensive Care Unit before they take a day off so on principle we all crawl in to The Office regardless of whether we have the plague or not. Madness.

Anyhow I veered strongly off my W rule (for the second time this week….bad MD…must do better) and decided to commiserate over a glass of wine and Grazia. I may be MD but I like a bit of trivia as much as the next girl. 2 hours later I have drunk the whole bottle and ordered my new summer wardrobe online. Small problem, in waking up this morning is that, in the optimistic glow of my Lemsip and Rose fuelled benevolence, I may have ordered a wardrobe that means, this season, I will mostly look like Peaches Geldof. Really a woman of my age should give up pretensions of trying to look like Kate Moss at a festival and concede that M and S knows best. At least Daughter will receive ample bounty!

Mondays are………for multi tasking

Rows: Nil (V.Good)
Coffee: 1 (on recommendation of blood pressure nurse!)
Wine: none (as yet but day is young)
Voice Decibels: 40 (subdued yet persuasive) with small peak (after breath freshner incident – see below)
Genius Levels: Dumb and Dumber

Feeling benevolent today I decided to give Teenage Daughter a lift to college. This was my first mistake, adding this to an already unconquerable ‘Things To Do List’. My TTD List’ has 4 columns – work, kids, home and me. I’ll let you guess which one of the 4 doesn’t ever get done. Put it this way, I have had pedicure and eyebrow wax on the list for 2 months now and my feet still resemble a yaks and Dennis Healey would be proud of my mono brow.

However, still I do not learn and over commit myself daily – denying the undeniable fact that there are a mere 24 hours in a day, 7 days in a week and 52 weeks in a year. And in this absolutely finite time frame I have to be Super Mom, Wonder Director, Daughter to loving parents and Friend to many. So in order to fit it all in I multitask.

Multitasking has its perils. My normal morning routine is shortened by 15 minutes (by agreeing to aforementioned lift for Daughter) leaving me feeling less than fresh mouthed - my penchant for red wine leaving my breath this morning not unreminiscent of a camels. Whilst listening to Daughter do her 'OMG I so totally can't believe you just said that' routine, I forage in my MD handbag for my breath freshener – by-passing all the normal Mummy Dearest detritus – tissues, baby wipes, a cereal bar – plus Managing Director detritus – calculator, latest tax briefing from my accountant, my Dictaphone, Iphone - to find the small bottle of minty loveliness in the form of breath freshner. Recent additions to counter my mild hypochondria in the face of the flu epidemic include a small bottle of antibacterial hand cleanser. The bottles are spookily similar. Same shape. Similar smell with lid removed, same pump actions. Different consistency – but good ole me always gives a pump a second go just in case the first one was just a bit clogged up so I consequently had not one, but two mouthfuls of antibacterial hand cleanser as I sped Daughter towards college.

Nevertheless do I take heed, delete half of my TTD List and sort it all out? Of course not. Instead I head to The Office where the job of MD has a more detailed version of the TTD List – with four more columns – which would be fine if it’s just this weeks list – but it’s perpetual, never ending.

I used to get enormous satisfaction when faced with a completed a list – striking masterfully through each onerous task as it was done. But every Monday – regardless of how clear I am by Friday – there’s a new, fresh list. It starts to be over whelming. So I multi task. Whilst speaking on phone, I utter instructions to awaiting staff member and read through my email. Consequently I managed to send an erotic email to a similarly named work colleague when it should have gone to my husband, have baffled my new staff member by calling them someone else’s name for 2 days and have tried to order stationary from my osteopath. Must do better.

Buddhists call it mindfulness – I call it just doing one thing at a time. Eat and only concentrate on eating, organise and only concentrate on organising, drive and concentrate only on that. But then, I hear you say, what happens to the to do list??

No solutions I’m afraid – or I’d be a very rich woman. Now...how long to Wednesday?????

Wednesday – Radical Interventions

Rows Nil (V.Good)
Coffee: 6 (Bad, very bad)
Wine: 3 large glasses (hence no rows)
Voice Decibels: 30 (like a perfect harp strumming in the background)
Acting ability: Meryl Streep at Oscar winning best
Genius Levels: Einstein would be proud

I love Wednesdays. Since my new W regime (Wine only on days with a W in it – Wednesday and Weekends) it is a day to look forward to. Son is in impeccable mood as he spends day doing Art and PE, his favourite subjects, and we are spared the normal Daughter stampede as she gets a lie in. I look forward to an evening where I get to have a glass of wine whilst cooking something yummy - and the anaesthesia of my Burgundy makes Husband considerably less irritating. However, today, all is not good in the hood. An Intervention has to occur to keep the Teenagers on the straight and narrow. The Crime. Back doors are being left unlocked.

I stagger to bed, exhausted, at 10pm. My nocturnal offspring rarely concede before midnight. As they often have mates round, they are asked to lock up before they retire. Inevitably, I get up at 0500 and the back door is unlocked, once literally agape. I have asked, told, threatened and bollocked to no avail. They leave their laptops, Playstation and phones strewn around the living room – a self-service display for a would be thief. This Wednesday I’d had enough, and fuelled by my second espresso of the morning, I collected the laptops, phones and Playstation, shoving them in the under stairs cupboard before screaming in mock panic, ‘We’ve been robbed!’

I have never seen the kids move so fast. They raced down the stairs, viewing the neat but very bare lounge, with a look of abject horror.

‘Who was last to bed last night? I asked
‘We both went to bed at midnight’ they replied in unison, still scanning the room like anxious meercats.
‘Did you not lock up?’ I said, my face a perfect mask
‘No!’ they wailed and sat, head in hands mortified at their loss.

Utilising skills not used since I played Mary in a pre school nativity, I sped round the house anxiously to check what else had been stolen. Sure enough the passports were safe, the TV was still there….it’s was just their stuff that had gone. They looked shell shocked. I could keep up the pretence no longer.

‘And that…das kinder ….is what will happen if there really is a burglar’ I gleamed triumphantly, and opened the under stairs cupboard to reveal my stash.

‘Oh Mum!’ wasn’t quite what they exclaimed, once they realised my performance was indeed Act One in ‘How to Persuade Teenagers to Lock the Rear Door’. After expressions of disgust at the time of day, however, there was grudging admiration for my acting skills. And relief that their precious things were still in situ. We agreed the lesson had been learnt.

My early start meant I headed to The Office for 0600. In a rural area Employees have known to be lax on security. Alarm always on. Lock has been left occasionally. New Controller was left to lock up the night previous. I instinctively tried the door – guess what? Knowing New Controller was the first number security would be calling when the alarm went off, I simply pushed the door open and waited. 30 minutes later New Controller screams up to the Office to see me waiting in the car park.

‘Was there a break in?’ he said, a look of panic I’d had already seen once that morning, on his face.

‘Did you lock up last night?’ I asked him, blankly. He confessed, having left his leys at home, he set the alarm hoping it wouldn’t matter, just this once. I explained very calmly that if he wanted to avoid 0600 alarm calls in future he might want to remember his key.

‘Fair play’ he said, taking his jacket off, deciding to save face by starting the day early, 'Fancy a coffee?’

Funnily enough, I haven’t found the back door open recently, and the office is always locked. And instead of being pissed off, both Teenagers and New Controller have dined off the story for weeks. My stance has become the stuff of Facebook legend – the day the MD staged a break in. Genius!

Tuesday - Cat Poo on the Stairs

Rows: 2
Coffees: 1 (V.Good)
Voice Decibel Level: 125 (not good harpy level reached…must do better)
IQ Level: Dr Tanya Bryan

One day, when Teenagers have gone off to University and I have sold the business and moved down to the south coast to write for a living (cue dream sequence), life will have no angst. My life won’t be a series of negotiations to try and get people round to my way of thinking (which is, of course, the only way we should all work, rest and play). The bins will not be so full the effluent spews over to the kitchen floors, the recycling will be done by fairies, towels will not accumulate in mouldy bathrooms, milk will be bought, Kid (of the non goat variety) and Employee droppings will not be scattered over Office or Home, and life will be one great exercise in calm and contentment. I wish.

Last week, as I trudged up the garden steps at seven pm, laden with my traditional post work Waitrose top up, I noticed a perfect cat poo gleaming in the moonlight. With hands full and not wanting to soil my shoes I left it as an experiment to see how long it would take for someone else in my household to remove the offending excrement. A week later it’s still there. With half a foot print on it. I presume the rest is trodden into a carpet inside. Sighing, I concede and wash the cat poo off with a saucepan of hot water. I stomp back to the house, having once again been the only person to notice. Or so I thought. Husband, Daughter and Son are seated at the breakfast bar – looking querulously at my saucepan.

‘What’s the saucepan for Mum?’ says Son.
‘I was rinsing a cat poo off the stairs.’ I reply.
‘Yeah I saw that.’ said Son.
‘Me too.’ says Daughter.
‘Me three’ said Husband.

In the explosion that followed, I explained in no uncertain terms, that as bacon winner, keeping the family in the manner to which it had become all too accustomed, demi-Delia, provider of all evening meals AND social worker in chief, it would be appreciated, thank you-very-bloody-much, if there is a cat poo on the stairs that some other bugger would clean the bloody thing off without waiting for muggins here to do it! Before taking my next breath the whole family headed for cover whilst I clashed saucepans like a percussionist to underline my furore.

Next day in The Office we’d run out of print cartridges on the main printer.
‘Yeah I noticed that.’ said Office Manager.
‘Me too.’ says Controller.
‘Me three.’ said Marketing Assistant.

I entitled my email tirade to all staff ‘Cat Poo on the Stairs’.

MD’s are do-ers. Doing a lot means your associates whether family or work based tend to rely on that fact. Plus we like things to be done our way. And isn’t it easier sometimes, just to do a task than ask three times to have something botched? Particularly when Work or Home seems to function on a ‘There’s a hole in my bucket, dear Liza’ basis. And we wonder why we potter along in a state of borderline exhaustion.

However, out of every outburst I tend to have a stroke of genius (if I do say do say so myself).

The next day kids were presented with a Meal Rota – Son to cook Monday, Daughter Tuesday, Husband Thursday, MD rest of week. Finally, after seventeen years of trying to be Supermum, I conceded that by doing everything I was creating a family that was doing little. They could start by helping with the evening meals.

‘But we can’t cook!’ they chorused.

With that, I lobbed them a copy of Delia’s Bible and slunk into the study. Thirty minutes later there was a meal of sorts, a just about edible offering. Teenagers and Husband were pleased with their contribution, as was I, and although the pasta leaned on the sushi side of al dente, we sat and munched through their creation with pleasure.

In The Office the next day, a functioning printer and a plethora of emails from all the staff saying ‘point taken’ greeted me. In twenty-four hours, I had masterfully negotiated, illuminated and resolved the Family and Employee apathy. Parking my car on the drive at home that night I felt smug at my management mastery. I stepped out of the car triumphantly, placing my Jaeger heels squarely on another perfect cat poo.

I hate Mondays

Rows:1
Coffees 3
Voice Decibel Level: 90 (Level of Passing Trains)
IQ Level: Plankton

I face the start of the week with a Boomtown Rats perspective. Over the weekend, Teenagers and I have slipped out of our working week rhythm. Apparently it should take three weeks to change a habit. My Teenagers switch from functioning nine to fivers, Monday to Friday, to the human equivalent of draft excluders by Saturday, permanently horizontal. Certainly not out of bed before noon. Monday is, therefore, a rude awakening.

Daughter’s alarm goes off religiously at six. Summarily ignored by her, it wakes everyone else. Son, dragged from his sleep by the melodic yet unwelcome Jason Marz, is incensed. The upside? We are spared his alarm choice. Present retro music fad dictates this week’s alarm is Sigue Sigue Sputnik. Deep joy.
Established morning etiquette dictates its best not to converse with Son and me until we have coffee. Husband (and step-dad) is gratingly cheerful. Ignoring protocol, he is reminded that comment’s like ‘aren’t we grumpy this morning' may result in my stabbing him with my stiletto. Son glares malevolently at him from under his unfeasibly long fringe. Husband goes off to work at 0730 and a morose calm settles. Son and I – devoted breakfasters - circle around each other, like apathetic hyenas, in our ergonomically designed kitchen. We mumble more amicably as the caffeine kicks in. Ahead we hear thunder.

It certainly sounds like thunder. It’s actually the furious feet of Daughter charging from bedroom to bathroom to spare room with preparations for college akin to Kate Winslet grooming for the Oscars. Daughter charges downstairs at pace, looking like she’s just walked out of a salon; more make up than Toyah Wilcox and the third outfit of the morning. Late as usual, I scream 'Breakfast!' at her as she grabs a banana and apple from the bowl, strategically placed for just this purpose.

Son and I then have fifteen minutes of calm. We chew our breakfast in front of the news before he makes his pilgrimage to the ‘Altar of Hair Care’. Found in the ‘Communal Grooming Zone’ - home to all instruments required for our transformation into acceptable looking beings - this neutral area ensures we don’t venture in to the trepidatious boundaries of each other’s rooms. Teenager’s rooms are phenomena of Attenborough-esque fascination. The Teenager, to the uninitiated, appears clean and fragrant, yet they inhabit fetid, pungent bombsites. I decided years ago that ‘Bedrooms’ wasn’t a battle I was prepared to have. Instead, I stick a cursory head round to inspect once a week, negotiating waste reduction plans to ensure Teenagers inhabit council dump equivalents as opposed to Nagasaki. Unless there is an infestation of flies (old lunch box once forgotten), or if I am on a requisition to find an item of my clothing.

My belongings are desirable acquisitions for the Teenager. Daughter nicks suits for interviews, Son steals waterproof jacket for running. Noisy hysterics are induced when Daughter pilfers shampoo from my ensuite – a fact routinely discovered only once I have immersed myself under the lukewarm trickle of the asthmatic power shower. I dash, dripping, over the landing to retrieve aforementioned shampoo – a breach of Communal Area protocol causing looks of revulsion from Teenagers. Not dissimilar to the expression on my face when I last peered in to their bedrooms.

Eight o’clock, the house is calm and I have thirty minutes to suit, boot and go off to run my other mini empire – The Office. By nine I have my feet tucked under my desk where I parent a collection of elderly children otherwise known as Employees. Luckily eighteen years of familiarity and an employment contract, as opposed to blood ties, means there’s a civility in the office not necessarily applied at home. But the issues are all the same – someone’s desk looks like a bomb has hit it, another has an alarm going off on his PC, driving his fellow workers mad. Office Manager is best left to ease in to his day, rather than interacting before his caffeine reaches optimum level, and Marketing Assistant has cordoned off the bathroom whilst she applies another layer of foundation. I think I’ll have another coffee.