Claude the Cucaracha

Last night we had one of those moments where I REALLY WISH I HAD FILMED THE WHOLE THING.

After catching up on The X Factor, I head into my bedroom, turn the light on and am involuntarily greeted by the biggest cockroach perched on the wall about 3 inches from my face. 

"Mummy mummy mummy mummy MUMMY...!!"

"What, darling?"

"There's a ... thin- ... a thing... a cockroach... here... on my... wall... here... HELP! It's HUGE OMG it's the biggest thing I've ever seen oh my GOD get rid of it!!"

At this point, Mother comes in with force, ready to exterminate. However, as I point out the intruder, Mother takes note of the size of him....

"Oh. OH MY GOD. Okay okay okay it's okay, okay. So.... ok. OK. OH MY GOD. ....."

Now, we are both standing there like lemons.

Suddenly, with NO warning at all (rude), the cockroach leaps off the wall and flies very quickly into my bathroom!

I can provide 100% honesty in saying that neither Mother nor I have screamed so loudly in all my life. Mother, for once, had her brain in gear and quickly closed the bathroom door to trap him, whilst I ran around the house (mostly hopping on the furniture to avoid more creepy insects on the floor.... obviously) screaming and partially laughing.

Mother then instructs me;

"Darling! Call security! Quickly, call the men to come and help us!"

After explaining to the Spanish security guard on the phone that we have a HUGE cockroach in our apartment and will he come and rescue us please, Mother - who is grasping the door handle of the bathroom to keep the cockroach from prising open the door, against the force of a human, with his giant muscle-arms - calls to me;

"Honey, come and guard the door while I go and put my lipstick on! I can't be seen like this."

(She has her pyjamas tucked into her wellies and yet it is the lipstick that is prioritised).

We then swap guard duty again while I fix my hair.

Two minutes later, the security guards arrive. Two men equipped with guns and truncheons.... and insect repellent.

"OH! GRACIAS! Gracias! Please help us... is in there... grande... GRANDE!" Mother attempts more communication. Embarrassing.

The two guards do not speak English, so I have to translate to Mother what they are doing / saying. This is extremely difficult when Mother is constantly flapping her arms and yelling; "DON'T KILL HIM DON'T KILL HIM DON'T KILL HIM DON'T LET THEM KILL HIM OH GOD ARE THEY GOING TO KILL HIM!?"

The guards are now in my bathroom with their flash lights, looking for the 'cucaracha'.

A few minutes later they spray what looks like insecticide all over my bathroom and close the door.

"Do not worry, all it is under control, we have under control now. We have sprayed this... the cucaracha will die, is ok now".

Jolly good, dead cucaracha. I'm not bothered (Mother is close to tears) so long as it's not sharing the same space as me.

The guards leave and I'm ready to head to bed, content with the thought that the necessary action has taken place and I will not be eaten alive by a cockroach.

Mother has a different view.

"You do know it's not dead, don't you?"

"What?"

"It's not dead, I'll bet you. It's still in there.... somewhere."

"I'm sure the guards have dealt with it..."

"No. I don't think we're safe. Do you want to risk being killed by a cockroach tonight? DO YOU? Because, let me tell you, he will come for you tonight, little Claude. While you're sleeping, his antennae will poke up your nose. He will bite off your eyelashes, did you know that??"

Great. So, there's no way I'll be sleeping tonight, whatever happens. We better find this cockroach and see that he is dead with our own eyes.

Mother assumes the position of hero once again.

Thirty seconds later, Mother is slowly opening the bathroom door to locate the cockroach.

"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH AHHHH AHHHHHHHHHH OH MY GODDD!!!!"

Ok, so Claude is alive. Very much so, in fact. His wings are definitely intact. We both spend the next five minutes screaming and running around the house with various capturing-objects. We are hysterically laughing each time we find the cockroach and are both too afraid to get any closer, so it's a consistent pattern of opening the door, seeing the cockroach, feeling relief that he is in view before screaming and running away. This cycle repeats for five more minutes until Mother's bravery kicks in;

"Right, that's it, I've had enough. You're getting out, we're setting you free. Don't worry, Claude, we won't hurt you... come HERE!"

& with a frantic, squealing swoop, Mother captures Claude in a glass and carries him away to freedom (while I stand on my bed, squealing).

Living with Mother has its perks.

Honestly, Mother has trumped the security guard's ability once again and I feel very lucky today. My voice is lost but my eyelashes are still here and what's more important? Exactly.

 xoxo

Giant Claude

 

Security to the rescue

In which Mother invades personal space

I enlisted Mother to join me on a bikini-hunt. Now, I am quite a savvy shopper and rarely encounter the typical female-shopper problems. However, when it comes to bathing suit shopping, I find it highly-stressful and mostly disappointing. Purely because, for some obscure reason, Spain only design 'bandeau' style tops (which are not for me) with no other options. Also, it is rather lucky to find any bikini tops at all, considering the majority of women over here sunbathe topless. I will not be adjusting to this carefree way of bathing. Some things simply must remain British and reserved.

Anyway, on our final leg of the quest, I begrudgingly took whatever Mother was handing me to try on and walked to the changing rooms.

The shop is rather small, with two fabric-curtained little changing cubicles situated in the centre of the shop just before the main changing rooms. The two curtained cubicles were occupied but I chose the more private, main section and wandered inside. Within a minute of grumpily changing I heard a vibrant, familiarly shrill holler;

"DARLING!!!!!!"

"DARLING!"

Ah. There she is. Bringing me more unsuitable bathing suit choices for me to prance around in. I peer out of the door, expecting to see Mother shaking items at me. Instead I see nobody within a few feet, so I look further... beyond the changing room entrance and into the store.

"Darrrrrlinggg! Sweetie! Are you ready?? LET ME SEEEEE!"

Oh dear. There she is. There she really is. Standing closely outside one of the curtained changing cubicles with her nose submerged in the joining of the curtains, muffling something about sizing.

I alert her to my whereabouts;

"Mother, I'm here... I'M HERE!"

"YES DARLING I KNOW..." *Mother replies into the curtained cubicle*

"No, no... HERE!" *my head has now poked outside of my door, trying to attract Mother's attention without attracting the whole store*

"I'm not quite ready yet.... what have you got in your hands?!"  I say, as my eyes fall upon an assortment of interesting colours and shapes spilling out of Mother's arms. However, Mother's vision is clearly deteriorating and she has not spotted my head. Also, her ears have not detected the location from which my voice is coming. 

"Darling!!! Look what I've f---"....

At this point, I witness Mother transferring her collection of items into the opening of the curtained cubicle she is still standing beside. As her hand grasps the curtain, her head immediately disappears inside the cubicle.

I hear a gasp and a shriek.

"Oh! OH DARLING YOU'RE NOT... DARLING? DARLING? WHAT? Oh I'm so sorry! Oh dear, I'm sorry, excuse me... PARDONNNAAA! PERDONNNAA! PARDON... A... "

Excellent.

Finally, Mother spots me as she bursts back out of the poor girl's changing cubicle. She bounds her way over to me as I try quickly to shuffle back inside my door but Mother has already attracted the attention of the store and now, as she trots over towards me, everyone knows that she is my responsibility and I have mistakenly let her loose.

xoxo

Language barriers are of minor importance (Part 2)

A few more language barriers that are still too high for Mother to conquer. This time, Mother tries her hand at French. Believe it or not, I actually had high hopes for the French, considering when I test Mother on her Spanish, she frequently comes out with the correct word in French (such as voiture, etc). We were having drinks with a group of Belgians who spoke only French and the party grew as the night went on, meaning even more confusion for me (and more exciting challenges for Mother). Personally, I was struggling as, even after taking French A-Level, my brain only holds the capacity for one foreign language at one time and therefore I ended up speaking Spanish to them or just hand motions and nodding and laughing when I thought it was appropriate. Mother took on the French challenge with great enthusiasm as she insists that French people, food, clothes, language etc is the best. 

Adopting the same method as usual, Mother simply created her own language by putting on an extremely-strong French accent but still using the English language. 

Examples include;

"Oui, oui, hahaha, how boo-tee-fuhl!"

"my job, urrh, oooh, welllllll, oui, urhhhh, oooorh, oui, si, uh, is like, poo-blik .... relah-theon-é-."

"can I get you another ... " *resorts to hand gesturing 'drink'*

"ahhh, je t'aime Pah-reee!" (from my fading school memories, I'm pretty sure she just told someone "I love you")

*N.B. the throaty French rolled-'R' thing was a favourite for Mother and she readily used it on every possible word she could*

So, we may very well have another evening with this group and I very much doubt that, by the time we do, the Belgian's won't have learnt any English and Mother won't have learnt any French. 

xoxo

Language barriers are of minor importance (Part 1)

The rate at which Mother is picking up the Spanish language has been concerning me for a while. Friends here are also alarmed when I tell them that, despite having been in Spain for 2 and a 1/2 years, she still pretty much only knows the words for 'shoes' and 'orange'. The other day we had a typical example of how Mother communicates to foreign people. As Mother was stepping out of the pool after her morning swim (N.B. this is not to say she swims every morning...) she witnessed two young boys playing by the steps. Engage Super-Stephanie Mode.

"Hola! HOLA! HOLAAAAA!"

The two children stop playing immediately and stare up at the lady standing at the side of the pool.

"Are you Spanish? Spanish? Español??"

At this point, the young Spanish man in the pool lightly gets Mother's attention to inform her that they are neither Spanish nor English. Mother gratefully acknowledges the man and his help, however proceeds to speak in a very interesting combination of accents.

"Darling! Your head ... " 

*Mother smacks her hand against her own head to indicate that if these young boys continue to play close to the metal handrails it will definitely cause a fatal accident* 

"Dah-leeng, dahr-LING! Por favor! No, no you must move away..." *waves hands like a hula girl, indicating the children need to swim away from the handrails* 

"because... your head... boom, bang!"

 *another great gesture of head-smacking-onto-rail-blood-everywhere-event*

"You undah-stand? Is very dangerous, oof!".... "Where is your madre?"

At this point Mother looks frantically around and her eyes land on a gentleman of about 45, laying on a sun lounger, reading a magazine about cars. She has identified the problem. These boys have been left under the charge of a man. In my opinion, this is just as useful as leaving your child under the protection of a radish. The man peers over his magazine, as Mother's behaviour (outcry) has attracted the attention of the entire pool community at this point. As she is heading away from the pool, the man laughs and says;

"yes, I know - they do that ten times a day, haha!" 

- Of which Mother replies, under her breath; 

"what's going to happen on the eleventh?!"

xoxo

Memory Lane (1)

Very often I will have vivid flashbacks to my childhood, of which some revolve around Mother's behaviour. You may have been under the impression that somehow Mother has developed her unique sense of self in the past few years, however this is untrue. It concerns me that you are not as well educated as you could be, regarding Mother and therefore I would like to include little trips down memory lane throughout this blog. I do hope you enjoy them and then, possibly, contact your own parents and thank them for their more customary existence. 

....

Around the age of ... 10 (I think) Mother dated a guy (we'll call him M). I never got attached to the various gentlemen (or, on occasion, teenage boys) she associated herself with. However, M just so happened to be the father of my best friend during primary school - to the delight of my friend and I. Obviously we were practically sisters at this point. Even more exciting was that we had all planned a vacation to stay in my Auntie and Uncle's villa in Spain. My friend (we'll call her G) and I spent every single break time at school for the months preceding the holiday acting out activities we had planned to do on the trip. Right down to the outfits we would choose.

Now, here we reach the box labelled 'Things my friends could do but I couldn't'. Not in a sob-story, medical condition way. Not in a passive-aggressive way either.

Being a 90's kid, I recall those white baseball-style t-shirts; the ones with the bubblegum girl printed on the front, with the 3/4 length sleeves in red or blue or pink etc. (I have tried searching for this style of pre-teen fashion statement but to no avail. To help you; think back to chunky sneakers, elastic fake-tattoo chokers, roll-on body glitter, stick on earrings etc).

I had wanted one of these shirts for about three years. 'G' had about five (and piles of roll-on body glitter. She also had her ears already pierced and was basically 2 cool 4 skl). I begged Mother to buy me one of these tops but, every year, I was put back in my place with these words;

"No! I've told you, those are not for you, darling. They are common! They are for the common girls at school! You are NOT common and I do not buy your clothes from Tammy Girl!! Tiffany's mother may well want her daughter to look like that but I do NOT! Look at your cardigan, darling! Do you think that was from the high street? It most certainly was NOT. That's lilac cashmere, don't you know? It's from Monsoon! It was very expensive darling. Those sequined slippers you're wearing were imported from Thailand so if you think I'm going to let you wear some hideous tomboy polyester rubbish then you've got another think coming.  We'll go to Harvey Nichols this weekend and find you something nice from Kenzo."

So, there we have it. A 90's kid - very much able to submerge myself into the era only by trying on all of G's clothes at sleepovers.

xoxo

Mother's QOTD

*scene: At a bar watching the band set up on stage.*

Me: "I see you two, you and the drummer, you know"

Mother: "what? what?"

Me: "I can see you two making eyes at each other!"

Mother: *fluster* "Those were his eyes, not mine!"