I'm the invisible woman

Well, it seems I have disappeared. I was standing outside school with the other mums and dads, all the children came out - except mine - and the school doors closed.

I could see my children and they could see me. But the teachers couldn't. I hastened to the door, raising a fist, ready to yell:"Give me back my children you blighters!" But Hannah and Rosie popped out with "Where have you been?" and "Why are you so late?" looks on their faces.

But I wasn't late, I lamented. I had been there for ten minutes, waiting patiently, while teachers flitted in and out, passing children to respective collecting people, plonking others onto buses and strapping them down. The teachers had even looked at me and smiled. I had obediently stood in the usual place, with the usual people, watching the usual hustle and bustle. They did not see me. I did not exist.

It's to easy to feel invisible as a stay at home mum. You can so easily get overlooked. You don't get any 'water cooler chat'. Nobody makes you a cup of tea so you can gossip round the kettle about the new girl in accounts. Days are highlighted with nuggets of human contact. The postman gets such a warm welcome he's beginning to look warily out of his van, throw the post into the battered old bread bin and reverse away as fast as his van can. I adore the nice man from Parcelforce too, and Graham who delivers all too infrequent Boden parcels.

Then there are the snatched conversations outside school. Lifebelts of adult contact in a sea of Playdoh and Tiny Tears. We talk about the weather, about getting to school on time and "Isn't it cold." We look up at the rain and say, ruefully, "Lovely day." Then we part and disappear from thought and from view.

I chat happily to the dog, who grins back, tongue lolling. He's a little taciturn for a conversationalist, but he never disagrees.

I don't mind it that much. Some days one wants more companionship than others, but becoming invisible was not something I had bargained for. When the school doors closed with my children still inside and the last parent left clutching theirs, throwing a pitying look in my direction, it really was the last straw.

"What about ME? ME? ME?" I wanted to yell, childishly. Why couldn't they see me?

I'm going shopping tomorrow. What I need is a high vis jacket. Or a flashing light for my head. Or perhaps something orange. Loud shoes. A noisily patterned jacket. Pink hair? Large earrings? Megaphone? "Hand over my children please and nobody will get hurt." Well, I won't anyway.

Something simple after all!

It's strange isn't it, how small children's minds work and how parent's minds can then work overtime in response!

Thank you to everyone who left lovely comments on my "Something Spooky" blog yesterday. Of course I had another opportunity to see what was happening with them and their room this morning, while helping Rosie to get dressed. Hannah, who was sitting on the top bunk had a bird's eye view, of course.

Rosie wouldn't stand on the rug again, so I gently questioned her as to why not. She was facing the window again and she said: "I don't know." Then she turned around, facing in the opposite direction and said: "It's the no door."

Ah ha! Since we had a bit of building work on the house we haven't got round to putting the door back on the bedroom.

Hannah then piped up from the top of the bunk about the door they had on their bedroom when they stayed at Auntie Laura's and slept in the bunkbeds there. It seems they accepted the "no door" while in two seperate beds, but had assumed a new door would arrive with the new bunk beds.

Rosie seems to be worried about somebody suddenly popping around the corner on the landing and suprising her while she is concentrating on getting dressed or playing.

Hannah says she wants the room to be more like a tent and, of course, the tent had a door to their sleeping part and to the outside. So we are going to pin up a pair of muslin curtains to give the doorway a tent-like feel and see how it goes.

Parenting is confusing sometimes. It seems I was just looking in the wrong direction!

Something spooky...

This is something that has been vexing me for a while. My children, Hannah, aged five and Rosie, aged four, are scared of something in their bedroom.

It isn't there at night or when they are in their beds, only during the day. Hannah will not go up to the room on her own and Rosie, although happy to go up to the room on her own, is frightened of a particular spot on the floor. The don't really play in their room very often, preferring instead to fetch toys downstairs to play with.

The particular spot is in the corner of the green rug, about where the bedtime story books are sitting in the photograph.

I thought the problem had gone away; that the pair of them had grown out of whatever it was, save for Hannah's absolute refusal to be in the room on her own, but it has become a problem again.

I was just helping Rosie to change into her school uniform and was trying to get her to stand in front of me on the green rug, but she was completely freaked out about 'something' and insisted on sitting on her bed, which is the lower of the bunk beds (just seen in the right of the photograph). She was shaking, her eyes looked truly scared, and she had goose bumps.

We have just moved the room around. Until last week Rosie had a cot bed by the window where the chest of drawers is now, and Hannah had a toddler bed on the opposite side of the room, where the bunk beds now are. I wonder if, by moving the furniture around, we have disturbed it, whatever 'it' is, again?

They are both intelligent, sensitive children, so I believe that they are sensing something real, not just 'putting it on', however irritating it is to be dragged up there to accompany them every time they want to change their shoes!

I would love them to feel happy and safe in their room. It would be a bigger problem if it bothered them at night, but they have both always slept soundly in there. Even Hannah is happy on her own in there at night. So it is definitely a day time problem, not a night time one.

This is a very old house, dating from the 1500s, possibly as far back as the 1300s or before. The whole farm is a very spiritual place. We have an ancient green lane and various standing stones (all Preseli blue stone as used in Stonehenge).

I just wonder if there is a solution to that small area in the girls' bedroom, so that it is a happy space during the day, as well as at night? All suggestions gratefully received!

We're off!

Well, I have started it! Day one of National Novel Writing Month. It's been a busy day, what with going shopping for the usual half-term stuff of shoes, boots, insulation for the bathroom walls etc, but I have managed to bash out my first 1,989 words. I'm not sure what I'm doing, but I've done it and that is what counts! One thing that is very enjoyable is that it is allowed to be - and positively encouraged to be - absolute rubbish. Editing is banned, the word count is what matters. Only another 48,011 words left!

Goodbye grotty bathroom!

We have a grotty bathroom. It has a corner bath, which I can't stretch out in, and how I love to stretch out in the bath! It is a horrid beige and is a 'whirlpool', which, to be honest, I find just disturbs a peaceful bath and plays havoc with my bubble bath. I once forgot about the bubble effect and disappeared under a heap of foam! The novelty of that soon wore off.

Now it looks like this! Brian has spent the morning hauling out the offending corner bath, while a lovely roll top bath from the Bathstore sits promisingly on the path outside the back door, with a new loo, wash basin and ladder style radiator.

But we have just spent a good ten minutes with me sitting on the lid of the old loo and Brian standing in the middle of the bathroom gazing with amazement at the incredible creativity of previous plumbers. The cold water supply for the whole house comes in through the middle of the wall under the window, goes round the bathroom, stops off at the loo, then out through the wall to the washing machine, back on itself to the pump and then, presumably, upstairs to the tank. It comes from the Antarctic, filtering out the icebergs on the way, so is FREEZING. The warm, moist air of the bathroom hits it and the result is gallons of condensation. Added to this, the geniuses who built the 'wheelchair path' (complete with steps) around the house put it above the cold water pipe, which is a foot higher than the bathroom floor level, hence the damp.

So, as with all jobs, what seemed to be a simple task of taking out one bathroom and replacing it with a new one has turned into a marathon of digging up concrete, relocating pipes and making good. When we finally do get our new bath in, boy are we going to deserve it!

A better day

Well the visit to the solicitor couldn't have been more satisfactory. She showed us our deeds and all the legal documents associated with them and it seems we have been right all along.

Our neighbour is not allowed to assume ownership of our side of the hedgebank and must stop his boundary in the middle, as is the local custom. He must remove the lean-to shed he has built on our side of the boundary too. The soliticor is going to write a letter to that effect.

Even more interesting, given 'C's assertion on Sunday that we 'only have right of access over the driveway', was the fact that not only do we own the driveway, there is no legal document giving them the right of way over it. They really haven't got a leg to stand on.

As I sit at my desk typing this I can hear 'B', just a few yards away, cutting the hedge. He waited until Brian went to work, presumably to avoid another altercation, which is sensible. But it is making me very tense. My mouth is dry, my heart is racing and my skin is going all clammy. It feels really uncomfortable. He's really revving the hedgetrimmer in a very aggressive and quite unnecessary manner. He has a weak heart, I hope he doesn't overdo it. And I have just survived an encounter with 'C' in the library van. No words were exchanged. At all. I can live with that.

Now we wait for the letter from the solicitor to arrive. We are going to pass on a copy of it to our neighbours, with a covering letter. It will not make them happy, but they have driven us to this point.

Brian has been talking about this problem at work, of course, and one of his uniformed colleagues has offered to come and have an advisory chat with both parties. I don't think our neighbours have noticed that Brian works at Police HQ now, they probably think he's still a journalist. That isn't going to make them very happy either, especially as 'B' already has a criminal record for dishonesty. But if it means we can step out of our house without fearing an uncomfortable confrontation, then it's a step I'm prepared to take.

*****

Otherwise life is carrying on as normal. The girls are going to school as usual and they finish on Friday for half term. We have hair cuts planned for this afternoon and the school photographer is coming tomorrow for the annual 'look how they've grown!' Christmas card picture.

Brian has hacked off all the tiles in the bathroom in record time which was a real stress-buster apparently. And he has located where the damp is coming in, so the walls aren't going to look very pretty for a while until the damp is cured. Luckily we have chosen a roll top bath with feet, so it's moveable when the time comes to fix the tongue and groove to the walls. The new suite arrives tomorrow and I can't wait to have a bath in a full length bath, not a corner one. I shall get a lovely glass of wine, light a few candles and lock the door!

PS: Thanks to everyone for their lovely supportive comments. It really means a lot to me. My self confidence was rather battered after Sunday and it is nice to know that I have so many on my side. xx PM

Peace and goodwill to all men (but not neighbours, apparently).

Sunday was the first time I have been to church in ages. To my shame I haven't been there since Rosie was christened three years ago, but yesterday was the harvest service, we have a lovely new vicar and it was going to be fun.

I say 'was' because when we arrived we were pounced on by our neighbour and verbally abused. My husband and her husband had had a row in the week about the perennial problem - our adjoining boundary. They exchanged words. He called my husband 'stupid' and 'idiot', swore at him and came towards him as if to take him on. My husband called him a 'moron', but did not swear and stepped back when it looked as if a fist was heading in his direction.

So 'C', I'll call her, approached Mum, Me and my two little girls outside church and had a bit of a shout. She had been out when the row took place. I wasn't, so perhaps have a better idea of what went on. Not in her book. 'C' called my Mum a 'hypocrite' and called Brian 'evil'. She says he used four letter words, adding that she hoped he didn't swear in front of the girls (he didn't and he doesn't).

They were, obviously distressed, as was I, as was Mum. 'C' won't listen to us. She is sure she is in the right. Her husband, 'B', I'll call him, has, in the 22 years we have been living here, regularly come around to shout and to bully. He rarely approaches quietly, always arriving with a full on shout. He was so bad once that Hannah, who was then only two, had nightmares about him and was so scared of men in beards that her grandfather had to shave his off before she would stop screaming. 'C' says 'B' doesn't shout or swear. All they do is criticise and complain, never listening to our point of view. She kept saying how they had lived there for 30 years and we have 'only' been here for 22. One of the other churchgoers laughed at that.

'C' said they are a quiet couple, never bothering us. But that is not true. When the girls were babies 'B' was doing a lot of work on their house and had a concrete mixer running all morning and all afternoon. It kept my babies awake. As do his banging noises in his garage until late at night, and his pressure washer whining all day for several days each month as he washes all the concrete he has laid, and there is the constant lawn mowing, strimming and hedge trimming. After their meal they wrap their meat bones in plastic and burn them on their fire. They have a bungalow, so the smoke drifts neatly into our upstairs, meaning we cannot open our bedroom windows. They have woken us all up when arriving back late at night, slamming car doors and talking in loud voices. We have a shared driveway, which they used to regularly block or just open the gates into our farmyard and turn their vehicles around when they felt like it. That's fine, but they should ask first.

They are guilty of being thoughtless. Their thoughtless behaviour and arrogant attitude is causing us inconvenience and stress. But to them we are the 'bad' ones. Last night I couldn't sleep for worrying about this.

Tomorrow Mum and I are going to see our solicitor for advice. But this has been happening for 22 years to us. Before we moved here our predecessors were so upset by 'C' and 'B' that they dumped a trailer of manure outside their entrance. I wish we had known that before we moved here.

But I have been trying to remind myself that we are nice, popular people. Even if 'C' and 'B' don't think so. It was a lovely harvest service. We may have 'only' been here for 22 years, but whereas 'C' left straight after the service because she does not really know that many people, we were the last leaving by the time we had caught up with all our friends. We were the ones who did someone a good turn by returning a lost wallet. Presumably 'C' took her poison home to 'B' and told him how we had attacked her outside church. Since Sunday, and especially in the middle of the night, I kept thinking of all the things I should have said in reply. As it was, I headed into church with my two little children and just hoped that someone, somewhere, would provide some kind of solution, divine or otherwise.