Muslim misogyny and how it can kiss my arse.

I am fucking sick to the teeth of Muslim men.

If they’re not trying to condescend me, they’re trying to send me and equality back into the fucking dark ages. 

Take tonight for instance. Nice taxi driver. Until I tell him that he’s in the wrong lane for where I want dropping off.

‘You women. You wouldn’t understand if I told you.’

‘Try spelling it out for me then?’ I said. ‘Maybe being a silly, stupid woman, I may surprise you and understand what nonsense you’re talking about eh?’

To which he mumbled something in whatever language he chuntered off in (probably something insulting to women nonetheless) and gave me the silent treatment for the rest of the journey home.

As we pulled up outside the door, the meter said £5.40.

I gave him a fiver.

‘Be grateful that I’m only underpaying you 40p.’ I said to him. 

‘In your culture, you suppress women.  But In my country, women help pay your wages so have some fucking respect.’

Boring Old Fart – 0 Thrill Seeking, White Knuckle Supermum – 1.

It is imminently looming that my kiddies will no longer be so ‘little’ anymore (they start Secondary School this autumn) and whilst kicking and screaming while I do so, I will have to reluctantly adapt to these dramatic changes. 

So, as I see it, this year will be our ‘last’ pre-teen Spring/Summer together as a ‘young’ family so I am determined to make it as memorable as possible for us all. 

  

The poignancy is that I am soon to become my children’s mortal enemy No#1 when they hit full blown adolescence so it’s absolutely imperative that my children have a multitude of happy memories of me when they eventually do look back and appreciate their childhood.

  

And today absolutely nailed it.

  

It ticked every single box despite nearly being wrote off as a non starter at 7 o’clock this morning.    

Shit weather and shit reviews.    

Both, luckily, completely misplaced. 

  

We had such an amazing day at Drayton Manor.

  

Today I really, really recognised just how my influence as a parent and teacher to my children has truly empowered them. Today my kids reflected those teachings right back at me by showing just how carefree and courageous they really are.

  

And today, they both put me to shame Goddammit.

  

I have ALWAYS been an adrenaline junkie and I love, love, love Theme Parks, white knuckle rides especially.  But as I’ve got older, eye-watering heights and hanging upside down with just the support of one measly T-Bar on four bolts for prolonged periods of time (especially with my kids sat at the side of me) freak me the fuck out.

  

However, give me a high speed roller coaster and I’m a sucker.  The G-Force roller-coaster was going to be a fucking walk in the park then surely.

  

Er, no.  Fucking forget that.

  

As the carriage made the initial climb, all was fine and dandy until we started to crawl at snails pace upside down and around the inside of the loop, practically hanging out of our seats as we did so.

  

My son started screaming, ‘I’m falling out Mummy, help me, I’m falling out’ and I started to panic.

  

I grabbed hold onto his arm and shouted across at him (my eyes clasped firmly closed) ‘You’re alright darlin, you’re alright ’.

  

Needless to say, he’d recovered by the second loop because it’d picked up speed by then so he was shouting ‘Awesome!!!’ as we whished and curled through a succession of loops, twists and turns but I on the other hand, didn’t recover to enjoy the rest of the ride.   

I was a fucking nervous wreck.

  

I managed to compose myself by going on the swing boats and carousel afterwards but was itching to know what the mahoosive roller-coaster was at the far end of the park and whether the kids (and me!) would have the bollocks to ride it, especially after the last one.

  

Turns out it was a stand up coaster and I’d never done one of them before so I was well up for it and so was my daughter.  

  

My son, bless him, sensibly declined – opting to watch my handbag instead.

  

I fucking shit my knickers.  I didn’t open my eyes all the way through.  All I heard throughout the ride was my daughter screaming ‘Wicked!!!!’   All I saw was the back of my eyelids.

  

Next stop?  Apocalypse.  Jesus Christ. 

  

Dragged up into the air on a hydraulic column so you can practically see Calais and then dropped into free-fall. The only voice you could hear coming back down sixty thousand miles into cold concrete was mine. 

The two white knuckles we did opt out of were Maelstrom and Pandemonium. 

  

We’ve done ‘Freak Out’ (which is pretty similar to Maelstrom) at the local fair and my son hated it.

  

I spent the whole ride praying to God and frantically trying to reassure my son that the ride would soon be over.  It wasn’t.  It went on forfuckingEVER the twats.

  

Pandemonium was a hang upside down; write your will quick smartish type of ride so again, we sensibly declined.

  

We did every other ride though, except Thomasland. The kids drew a firm line at that.   

  

Although my son did want to pay a visit, just to knock over the Fat Controller for being horrible to Harold the Helicopter once, apparently.  

Where there’s girls, there’s bitches...

To say that it takes a lot for humans to get on is a real understatement I think.  

  

It takes time, compromise and a shitload of commitment to make real friendships work and it can take forever (if you’re lucky) to find a network of true friends you can count on on one hand.  

  

In the very long process of trying to find who your bona fide people are, you will inevitably come across a whole lot of shitfaces who will pose very convincingly as your friends, but who over time will prove to be the absolute opposite. 

  

Seeing my daughter come home from school devastated because all of a sudden, and for no explicable reason, the girls she once considered her friends have unexpectedly now become her mortal enemies, makes me want to smash their evil little faces in. 

My heart breaks when I hear how her ‘kookiness’ has now become ‘weird’ and how her sensitivity and kindness have somehow now become a beacon for her to be bullied and demeaned.

I've been in that same dark place where she is right now, and I too have felt those very same feelings of despair, confusion and isolation that she feels because her ‘friends’ have materialised to be absolutely nothing of the sort.  It hurts. A lot, I know.

  

I too was laughed at, publicly ridiculed, called hurtful names, humiliated, ostracised by my so called friends at the exact same age and it’s a real shame that nothing's changed in the thirty years since I was 11. 

  

But then again I suppose, some things never will. 

You just need to learn to rise above it. 

  

Certain girls are genetically modified to be cunts and that’s exactly what I tell my daughter.

Autistic? My son?

I’d always concluded that my son’s inability to sit still and concentrate on anything for longer than five minutes was merely the workings of a slightly hyperactive child. 

I didn’t make a song and dance about his ominous attention span throughout the years because when he wanted to, he’d happily sit transfixed to the TV watching The Simpsons and the whole ‘Dr Who’ back catalogue for hours on end.   

Besides, I just thought that he (like all kids do) ignored his Mum on purpose.   

His inability to see things from others perspective was what I thought ‘a boy thing’. 

I mean, I am a female, so what the hell did I know what boys really feel like.

I put his outbursts down to him being ‘a spoilt brat’ despite him still being stuck in the terrible two’s at nearly eleven years-old.

Take earlier for instance.

Mum, can I have this Dr Who book?

No.  I can’t afford it.

Whhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy?

Because if I spend £4 on you then I have to do the same for your sister and I can’t afford to spend nearly £10 on magazines.  Not today anyway. 

Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy? (Only fifty decibels louder, so the whole shop comes to an absolute standstill)

I said no.

Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy?  x 15 times (and I am NOT joking).

This was followed by a sit-in demonstration, a screaming tantrum and a totally unprovoked attack on an intricate bottled boiled sweets display, finished off with those loving words... 

I hate you. You’re nasty.

Now I love my son with all my heart but, when I tell you that his whining and demanding, groaning, moaning, crying, screaming, shouting, tormenting his sister, repetitive tapping, clicking, rocking and asking the same question sixty zillion times over sends me to the point of insanity, I’m REALLY, REALLY not lying to you. 

But, when you have two children the same age, who get treated & loved exactly the same, you’re able to measure and compare their progress and development over the years.

You can’t help but notice the difference when one child responds to the word ‘No’ with a simple ‘Ok, Mummy’ and the other turns into the Devil incarnate on the sheer breath of the word.  

But now Thank God, I’m really NOT going mad.

I am legitimately sane.  I really don’t have a lunatic child. 

There’s a profound reason for his challenging and extremely difficult behaviours. 

He has a social and communication disorder and because he’s so highly functioning, it took forever for the people who influence decisions to pick it up.

The most ironic thing is, his diagnosis is the same thing I’ve been telling my kitchen cupboards for years.