Nope. That'd be me! Hee hee hee! Blow any dwarves today Jamie?
Jamie and Laura @NewmanWriters Jul 12
Not yet... I don't have many tech skills, but you know what I do have?
Rudyard Stripling @Rudyardbutgentle Jul 12
What's that, you midget molesting maniac?
Jamie and Laura @NewmanWriters Jul 12
Fans.
Rudyard Stripling @Rudyardbutgentle Jul 12
So fucking what?
Jamie and Laura @NewmanWriters Jul 12
A lot of them DO have tech skills Rudyard. Way more than me... or you. And so now I have something else.
Rudyard Stripling @Rudyardbutgentle Jul 12
What?
Jamie and Laura @NewmanWriters Jul 12
Your IP address.
Rudyard Stripling @Rudyardbutgentle Jul 12
No you fucking don't!!!
Jamie and Laura @NewmanWriters Jul 12
Is that THREE exclamation marks I see there, Rudyard? ...Or should I say, Dave Pinder from Cleethorpes???!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Rudyard Stripling @Rudyardbutgentle Jul 12
Oh shit! Please don't tell my mum!
Dan Jones @DannyTwoTone Jul 12
@Rudyardbutgentle Ha! Fucking owned!
Minch @MinchieMoo92 Jul 12
Woo hoo! Well done Jamie!! :)
Jamie and Laura @NewmanWriters Jul 12
#revengeissweet
When venturing into the thorny world of social media, it's vital to have one thing.
Back up.
Laura's Diary
Wednesday, July 21st
Dear Mum,
I fear I may have created a monster. Said monster is in the shape of a seven-year-old girl, but is a monster nonetheless.
Last night was the occasion of Middle Park Infant School's annual summer play, which shall hereafter be known as 'the night of the Newman creature'. If I was embarrassed when I had to fish my sunburned husband out of the Indian Ocean, then I felt triple the degree of shamefacedness by the end of yesterday evening, thanks to my lovely daughter Poppy, and her newfound aspirations towards stardom.
You would imagine that a school play is an innocuous thing at the best of times. An event trotted out by the weary teaching staff on an annual basis, to provide them with something to entertain the children with in the run up to the school holidays - and an opportunity for proud parents to come to school and see where all those hard earned taxes are going.
In Middle Park Infant School's case, those tax pounds are going into a slavish recreation of the story of Noah And His Ark. It's the ideal play to stage for seven year olds, given that it features a large amount of colourful animal costumes that they can be stuffed into, and is a story everyone knows - and is therefore easy to follow - even when the stars of the show inevitably forget their lines, or pee themselves before the end of the first act.
For most children, being a part of Noah And His Ark would just be a chance to run around making farmyard noises in front of two hundred adults, but for Poppy Helen Newman, it represents the opportunity for her to firmly set out her store as a future star of stage and screen.
At least it would be if she hadn't been cast as a chicken.
This news of dreadful import was delivered to me with a scowl about two weeks ago, upon Poppy's return from school with her father.
'I don't want to be a chicken!' she snaps, throwing her backpack down onto one of the kitchen chairs in disgust.
'But that's the part Mrs Carmoody has given you Pops,' Jamie tells her, sitting himself down at the breakfast bar.
Poppy crosses her arms and twists her perfect little mouth. 'Mrs Carmoody is a poo head,' she declares in tones that brook no argument.
I gasp in horror. 'Poppy Helen Newman! You do not say that kind of thing about your teacher!'
'No Poppy, Mum is right,' Jamie agrees, but you can quite clearly see he's not that bothered about his daughter's choice of words, given that there's a distinct smile playing across his lips, and a twinkle of veiled parental approval in his eyes.
'But I should have been Noah's wife!' Poppy counters. 'I was the best at her, and I looked the best in the sheet thing, and I made Briony Peters laugh so much that she snotted a bit.'
Not being a Christian, I don't know whether Noah's better half displayed the ability to make snot come out of people's noses in The Bible, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say probably not.
'Well Mrs Carmoody obviously decided that you were also very good at being a chicken,' I say, trying my hardest to make her feel better. I doubt that anyone since the beginning of time has comforted somebody effectively by comparing them to a chicken, so I'm not all that surprised when Poppy's eyes start to well up.
'Mrs Carmoody doesn't like me,' Poppy intones.
'What makes you say that, sweetheart?' Jamie asks.
'Coz I trod on her foot at playtime two weeks ago. The one she always has in that funny bandage thing.'
Now, I've met Mrs Carmoody a couple of times, and while she does look a trifle stern and authoritative, she doesn't come across as the kind of person who'd hold a grudge based on a little girl's clumsiness. 'Did you say sorry?' I ask Poppy.
'Yes.'
'Well I'm sure it played no part in your casting as a chicken then.'
To be honest, I can well believe that Mrs Carmoody put Poppy in such a lowly role to teach her a bit of humility. My daughter is not one for being humble or self-deprecating. She tears through the world like a whirlwind in a Hello Kitty t-shirt, and tends to get what she wants 99% of the time.
In fact, there's every chance she might be an entitled brat.
I have no-one to blame for this but myself - and Jamie, of course. Though mostly me, because at no point have I wanted to go through the misery of pregnancy again to grant Poppy a little brother or sister. Some may see this is selfish, but they can quite clearly fuck off. I love my daughter unreservedly, but am happy with just one child, and don't see how there's anything wrong with that. Besides, there's every chance that by now Poppy would have engineered an 'accident' for her younger sibling, to make sure that they weren't getting more attention than she was. Possibly something involving a fork and the nearest electrical socket.
No, it's been best for us all that family Newman has remained a three part harmony - rather than a four or five part cacophony.
That's not to say I don't feel horrible for not supplying Poppy with a playmate. That would be far too sensible, and not at all in keeping with the uncanny ability that my brain has to completely contradict itself. I feel incredibly guilty sometimes that Poppy is an only child, even though I'm happy with my decision not to have another baby.
Now, parents who feel this way tend to do one of two things. They either feed their single child so much food that they find themselves raising a barrel with arms and legs, or they lavish money and presents on them.
This second choice requires money, of course.
I have no doubt that if I were still working in a chocolate shop and Jamie were still in a lowly marketing job, then Poppy would now be a good eight stone, and unable to see her own feet. As it stands, Pops is kept whip-thin by all that swirling around like a miniature hurricane, and has now reached the point where her levels of entitlement are becoming something of a problem.
What Poppy wants, Poppy rather inevitably gets.
Her bedroom is awash with Disney merchandise - in every colour as long as it’s pink.
I could quite cheerfully open the room up to strangers and make a tidy profit flogging all the hideously expensive plastic crap we've accumulated in there in the past couple of years.
To give you some idea of how bad it is, Poppy has no less than four Nemos. Finding the little sod would present absolutely no issue for Dory, should the little fish find herself in Poppy's bedroom. In fact, the only danger she'd be in is being crushed by the largest of the four - Poppy's enormous two foot high night light that we bought her for Christmas this year. This is what h
appens when you buy a present off the internet without looking properly at the measurements.
If it's not Finding Nemo stuff, it's Frozen merchandise. If it's not Frozen, it's The Lion King. Graven images of Simba, Nemo and Elsa fight for supremacy on almost every surface. I have to confess I occasionally get the creeps when I put Poppy to bed, as they all look at me with that dull eyed expression stuffed toys seem to suffer from.
The spoiling of Poppy Newman doesn't end there.
We generally end up cooking her something she likes every night for tea, with one of us taking on the task of preparing our own meal, while the other devotes themselves to making sure that Poppy gets her turkey dinosaurs and potato waffles just the way she likes them. Thankfully her child's palette does like to take in some vegetables alongside all the brown crap, which is a saving grace. I don't have the strength to put up with the tantrums I would have to endure should it prove necessary to force feed her broccoli or peas.
Poppy also watches what she wants on the TV. Until 8pm, it's pretty much exclusively her domain, with Jamie and I forced onto our iPads, while she stares endlessly at the Disney channel.
Pathetic, isn't it? Poppy receives little to no discipline from either of us most of the time, if I'm being honest. Jamie and I dote on her to a level that completely negates our ability to punish her for anything she does wrong - and boy is that lack of parental control coming back to bite us on the arse now.
'But I don't want to be a chicken!' she screeches and literally stamps her feet on the floor.
'Why don't you show Mum the costume Pops? Maybe if she likes it, you won't mind being a chicken quite so much?' Jamie ventures and looks at me. 'They let her bring it home to show us, as long as she takes care of it.' I get Jamie's meaning straight away. The costume will be kept away from Poppy under lock and key, so she doesn't get the chance to attack it with her plastic craft scissors.
Poppy turns slowly to regard her father with a look of distain. 'She won't Dad.'
'I might Pops!' I say, trying to sound enthusiastic. 'Let's have a look at it, shall we?'
Poppy thinks about this for a second. Her desire to continue the tantrum is weighed against her love of showing off for her parents. The showing off wins.
'Come on sweetheart, I'll help you with it,' Jamie says, and gets up from his seat. 'We'll go upstairs and Mum can wait down here.' Jamie gives me a hopeful look. 'She could make a nice cup of tea while she waits.'
I roll my eyes and pick the kettle up.
I hear Poppy's loud, stamping footsteps coming down the stairs about ten minutes later. They are the sound of pure, distilled, and unadulterated anger.
She appears in the kitchen doorway, a sullen look on her face. Jamie stands behind her with a broad grin.
'Doesn't she look fantastic!?' he says in excited joy.
This is a masterpiece of amateur dramatics, as poor old Poppy does not look fantastic. It's not her fault of course, my daughter is gorgeous; but not even her elfin good looks can make up for the fact that the costume she is jammed into is utter shit.
It consists of what looks like a faded yellow bath mat with a hole cut in the middle for Poppy to stick her head through. Somebody has attempted to draw a red chicken's wattle coming from the hole in thick marker pen. Sadly, what they have actually managed to draw is two big hanging red testicles. It doesn't help that what remains of the bathroom mat's thick shag pile looks like pubes.
On Poppy's head is a second bath mat (I can only assume somebody really liked yellow bathroom accessories in the seventies) that has been awkwardly cut and stitched into a hood shape. Protruding from the top of the hood is the end of an orange sock that I presume is meant to be the beak. There are a couple of those plastic googly eyes stuck on either side of the hood above the sock, and more red marker has been employed to colour in something of an irregular mohawk down the middle of the sewn together bathmat.
All efforts to resemble a chicken sadly stop at waist level, as Poppy has also been forced into a pair of bright yellow jogging pants that are at least four sizes too big for her.
The overall effect is not a convincing representation of barnyard fowl. Unless it had been run over by the tractor, and had a set of testicles glued to it afterwards.
'Wow Poppy!' I over compensate. 'You look brilliant!'
'Doesn't she?!' Jamie agrees, nodding his head vociferously.
Poppy is having none of it.
'I look really silly Mum!' she wails and pulls at the bathmat poncho. 'It smells funny, and it itches!'
'Don't worry! I'll give it a wash,' I assure her, intending to do no such thing. If I introduce the costume to a wash cycle, there's every chance that at the end I'll have a few tattered pieces of yellow bathmat and half an orange sock. This would suit Poppy down to the ground, but wouldn't go down well with Mrs Carmoody one little bit.
'Why don't you go take it off again and I'll make sure it gets a nice clean?' I shamefacedly lie.
Once Poppy is back out of the costume, her mood lightens... a little.
'I have to stand on stage with Jake Potter,' she tells us. 'He's the other chicken.'
'Well that doesn't sound so bad,' I say.
Poppy shakes her head slowly back and forth, regarding me with a look of black doom. 'Jake Potter picks his nose and smells of wee.'
I have to confess that I'm starting to have some sympathy for Poppy's plight. I wouldn't want to spend forty five minutes stood on a stage in a moth eaten chicken costume, while a smelly boy stands next to me picking his nose.
There's every chance that Mrs Carmoody might actually be a poo head.
Still, a seven year old's ego and temperament are very fragile, so we must do our best to put on a brave face, and show Poppy how proud we are of her.
This starts with letting her eat all the turkey dinosaurs and potato waffles she can manage for tea. I don't even complain too much when she only eats half her broccoli. Frozen goes on the TV for the seventy millionth time, and I spend an unconstructive half an hour on EBay looking for chicken costumes.
The day of the Middle Park Infant School Summer Play rolls around quickly. Poppy's mood has grown more waspish as the days have gone by, so by the morning of the show, she is so bad tempered and thoroughly pissed off with the universe that it's rather like having a miniature, fair haired Basil Fawlty in the house.
'Eat your porridge Pops,' I tell her.
She jams a spoonful of the beige gunk into her mouth and mumbles something just on the edge of my hearing. The only words I can make out around her mouthful of porridge oats are 'chicken' and 'wee'.
She remains in this black temper for the rest of breakfast, despite all our efforts to pull her out of it.
'Come on Pops!' Jamie cries cheerfully up the stairs from the front doorway. 'You don't want to be late for school!' This is greeted with more heavy and loud footsteps from Poppy's bedroom, indicating that nothing would suit her more than being late for school today.
Eventually, I manage to pack the two of them off. Jamie is visiting his mother this morning before coming back at lunchtime to pick me up, so I have a couple of hours of blissful peace to get a bit of writing done.
I'm just hitting a purple patch of prose when Jamie walks in through the front door.
'How's it going?' he asks from the doorway to the spare bedroom we've converted into a study.
'Oh, fine. Got a good two thousand more words done. This chapter is finished.'
'Brilliant! I'll get on with the next one tomorrow.'
This is generally how we like to work - taking turns to write from the two different perspectives. I do the woman's side, Jamie does the man's. So far, it's proved to be very productive, and we can motor through an entire book in two months if we've got the bit between our teeth.
'How was Poppy when you dropped her off?' I ask him.
'A little ray of bright summer sunshine.'
'Really?'
'Hell no. I had to resist the urge to sketch the sign of the cross as
I opened the car door to let her out.'
'Did she take the costume?'
'Reluctantly. I had to make her swear she wouldn't 'lose it' in the nearest dustbin.'
I stand up and go over to give Jamie a hug and kiss.
'Well that's very nice,' he says with a smile.
'Yes it is. I just thought we could both do with a bit of happy time, before we have to enter the lion's den.' I think for a second. 'Or should that be chicken's den?'
Jamie laughs. 'I'm sure it won't be that bad, baby.'
For a moment we both fall into silence as we consider how factually accurate that statement is likely to be.
Jamie then breaks the rather contemplative mood with an idea I find myself one hundred percent in agreement with. 'We don't have to leave for a couple of hours. How about we have some proper happy time?' he says, waggling his eyebrows.
My eyes light up. I hadn't even thought about that when I decided to give my hubbie a kiss and cuddle a moment ago, but now he's put the notion in my head...
An hour later we're in the car and on our way to Middle Park School. My left leg is still slightly trembling, so I'm glad Jamie offered to drive.
The play is due to begin at 4pm, so by the time we reach the school's car park at twenty to, it's packed with cars. There will be plenty of doting parents at today's play, it seems. Jamie manages to find us a space next to a massive 4x4.
We park up and walk over to the school's entrance, which has something of a queue outside it, as the parents pay for tickets and shuffle their way in. Half the reason for putting this play on is to raise funds for the new gym roof, and I'm sure they'll have no problem reaching their target, given that each ticket costs £10.
'Ten bloody quid?' Jamie remarks. 'For a forty minute play involving a load of seven year olds?'
'Yep. Just grin and bear it,' I whisper, so as not to be overheard by anyone else in the queue. Being in the financial position we are these days, we are no longer allowed to complain when something seems too expensive. It's not British, and would be unseemly.
Love...Among The Stars: Book 4 in the Love...Series (Love Series) Page 14