The Crepe Papers

[motherinferior]

Did it!

M&S do cheap ones: Celtandco (as I think it's now called) does fabulous but pricey ones. If you're blessed with large feet (and I say this seriously, as have mutantly tiny trotters myself) M&S bloke ones look good.

Ooooh just looked at website, the elderly ones I have are celtandco I think - I got given them, didn't realise they were so pricey. As I have vast and ugly feet, think will head off to MandS menswear. Thanks.

These start in a 6.

Okay - own up, who broke MN? I can't post from my PC, but okay on phone/iPad ....

Sorry to hear various woes, but also at red coats and text messages.

Has the official Stropps search party headed off yet? Happy to join!

I am shattered and it's only Wednesday.

Dp in US where he has endured bag searches, 3 lots of shoes and belts stuff and none of his cards work, because he hadn't informed the bank - and the hotel make free wifi almost impossible so rather than pay 12 dollars a day he is at a place near the YMCA piggybacking on theirs
He wants to come home...

Gorgeous slipper options, thank you

Those baffies look more suitable for a 90yo than a mere crepey, MI
I am after a pair of furry bootees to replace my old ones, my current slippers are actually really warm because of the substantial soles, and they do a bootee style

I will PM Stropps!

I am joining the knackered club - I have a headache and left my phone at work. Thankfully it is only up the road and I managed to convince the cleaner to let me in and get it. It's amazing how attached one to one's phone one can become

BD, shame your DH isn't having a fab time in the US!

I have another commission and am knackered. Also Zest magazine has just folded....

Last team meeting at the other place today - baked cake for it . But still need another one for DH's birthday tomorrow.

Two more days of long drives among the untamed container lorries and car transporters of doom. Then back to more civilised commuting.

I like the helpful serving suggestion on the M and S slipper site of "The perfect pairing for any brushed cotton pyjamas" (as opposed to suspenders and stockings, presumably). I love those cable boot slippers BTM, but I want ones that I can shove my feet into without using my hands as I often seem to have to change while carrying smelly rubbish (why? )

I am so tired I want to curl up in a little ball and whimper. Am sleeping badly. Grrrrr.

OTOH I am getting quite good at producing lots of work at v little notice.

I'm in the outrageously extravagant position of having TWO pairs of slippers. One ancient and smelly 'secret support' ugg-type M&S bootees, to keep the cankles warm in the morning, and one pair of slip-on 'ballerina' type things from, of course, Sainsbury's. The second pair I bought on Monday and have already stretched beyond belief. Fortunately they can go in the wash.

motherinferior - I feel much the same. Almost certainly with less justification .

Yoohoo - I'm baaack - after going nowhere in particular. :) I have been variously: glowering in corners and bemoaning my lot; suffering my badly-behaved extended family; gnashing my teeth at dd and finally trying to get my sensible head back on. Etc. I have not had anything nice to say at all.

Crem, so sorry to hear that your recovery is not going at all smoothly. I hope you get to wear your swishy coat very soon.

MrsS - nooooooo - not BitchBoss... You were supposed to have left all that rubbish bossitude behind.

Auriga, YAY! Enjoy the cake(s) and the reduction in stress.

I am still gibbering about my lack of funds and exactly where and how I am developing my professional "skills". Ho hum, yadda yadda.

I have also been fussing about the upcoming school reunion for the place I left when I was 16. It's all most odd as various people that I have not spoken to in 25, or in some cases 32, years have been appearing in my inbox and on FB. Until I started speaking to you lot here (which happened at the same time as I caved in and got a website and a FB presence), I had spent a lot of time being rather secretive and avoiding my past and making myself hard to find, for various reasons. I'm now going back in time to a point where I was supposed to be the brainy kid who would do terribly well and having to 'fess up that I've not done very well at all. And I'm learning to do this with good grace and a smile, which is probably a step forward.

Dd has notionally agreed to attend an important appointment which may help her move forward with this and that. Which is good.

Hi Stropps! Good to see ya back!
Since you mentioned your reunion, I have pondered whether I would go to one. I am unsure. I wasn't unhappy at school, even though I thought it was a rubbish school. I just don't know if I'm that bothered making small talk with people I haven't been interested in seeing for 30 years!

Stropps and BTM, I went to a school reunion very reluctantly a few years back. I had to fess up to not capitalising on my early promise with advanced mechanics (!), and other failures. There were plenty of others in similar boats, and a general feeling of being sold a pig in a poke as far as the joys of combining high achievement with family life went. Everyone was much more friendly than I remembered them (and claimed I had been scary too).

I feel exhausted as well, also probably with not much justification. But I have found a slipper supplier from Pembrokeshire, which has made me happy.

On the subject of slippers, DS tried on my M&S fluffy booties today and decided that he wanted a pair exactly like that! Minus the little bows on the side, I assume.

We're off to see Sarah Millican tomorrow evening, in Hammersmith (we've concluded it will actually be quicker to drive in, dumping the car at Barons Court, where I used to live, and walking up). Our lovely neighbour is due to babysit, but informed us today that she has a ballet rehearsal finishing at 7.30pm, and we need to be away soon after 6pm.... so we are planning to leave the DCs on their own for an hour or so, with the babysitter's mum on standby two doors down......do you think that will be OK? And what does one pay 17yo sitters nowadays?

Herbs, don't worry about your nephew turning into a twattish entitled toff. Eton seems to turn out surprisingly down-to-earth, bright and interesting boys, unlike some other public schools. Most Old Etonians I have met (I say most...) have been rather lovely.

I feel particularly discombobulated as I went to this little local grammar school up until 16 where they knew me as silly Stropps who was good at spelling and then went to a v. posh boarding school for 6th form, where people knew me as someone completely different and where I felt I was a fish out of water because I was an ill-educated pleb and rather odd in a very dull way. I would never, ever go to a reunion of the posh boarding school because I was so unhappy there and it would be an entirely masochistic exercise for lots of reasons. (They seem to have reunions rather frequently and these seem to be often held at the House of Lords)

I'm now thinking I would have been rather better off staying with my small-town friends in my small town doing small-town things in a small-townish way and that my life would have turned out a bit better if I had. Am still hoping I can do better in parenting tricky teens.

See - I'm just a bit morose and ruminative at the mo'...

Sorry. x-posts, CV.

No problem, Strops.

Just remember that practically everyone at reunions is fretting in much the same way.

MI, I've slept dreadfully for 3 months it got away with it - not a car crash or even a migraine and not a day off work. For me I think the dread of sleepless nights is worse than the reality. I have to make sure I can't see a clock so don't know how little sleep I've had

Hi Stropps, glad to hear dd going to appt, hope it helps. Never had school reunion but really enjoyed a university one. Loved seeing how all the Lotharios had turned into devoted family men. Many of my contemporaries are professors, one is knighted (could give the honours system a good name) but they're all just themselves, only more so.

No slippers here but have bought jammies. This is the real onset of middle age.

Oh Herbs, meant to post that an exhouse-mate's son is at Eton. He got a full scholarship (and had to go to Westminster from Y7 IIRC) from his state primary - his mum had read about them in a parenting magazine. He is very bright (obvs!) but was also very sweet and not at all nobbish - even DS liked him, and he suffers fools very badly!

CV, they will be fine - early evening and your DS is now 14 - plenty old enough to babysit! DD is paid anything between £5 and £7 an hour.

Stropps, it sounds like your exschool-mates will be lovely. It seems (from FB) that many of the brightest stars from my grammar have ended up as TA's or SAHM's and have not managed to fulfil the potential the school drummed into them as well as having a family, so I am sure you will not be the only one feeling like that

Auriga, I would like to do a uni one!

I avoid uni ones. It's bad enough dodging all the award-winning books at Waterstones that are written by university contemporaries like Mark bloody Haddon.

Although I would quite enjoy showing them I no longer look like the pic I showed you before - hell, we could all do with a larf and it may test the Piratical pelvic floor

MI that pic is quite, erm scary

Stropps glad you are back - missed yo' and if you want to do 'look how little I have made of my life' I will meet you and raise you ;)

Here I have two pairs of slippers (because the dog will always pinch one and hide it under the bed so at least I have a pair....) - this is when ds han't 'borrowed' them....

Workwise I am considering various options - including selling the 'I do my boss' job' to the powers that be.

Sleep - ha - for the weak - insomnia is my middle name ;)

Well, my new boss seems even worse than the last one. On my first day she told me to be in the office for 0900 and she would be there to meet me. 0900 came and went. 1000 came and went. I emailed her and said I was there, but was going to have a coffee with someone else in the office, if she came and wondered where I was. 1100 she emailed back and said "Sorry about that. I got delayed. I'll see you at the midday meeting." Midday came and went - she came to the meeting, but left without acknowledging my presence. Came back at 1300, took me to another meeting room and barked at me "Tell me something about yourself." I asked if she meant professionally or personally. She said, let's start with professionally, so I went through my career in about 5 minutes. I stopped and she said "Now personal life." So I said I was married with children. She stopped me at this point and said "If you're married, why don't you wear a wedding ring?" I said I wore it on the other hand - why did I do this? Why? Why? It was like a machine gun firing questions at me. She then said I was very difficult to talk to - "I ask you questions, and you just answer them." There was no attempt from her to engage me in social conversation (or make eye contact), just this barrage of questions.

And then it got worse. She has given me some work to do, which is for two grades lower than mine. I will be "supporting" someone of my grade. I said I wasn't happy about this, and I didn't see what would be developmental or challenging about the work. She told me I would "have to do it as someone of my grade should do it." I asked how (it is quite menial work) and she screamed at me "You'll just have to get on and do it." I went in to see her boss at this stage, and told him how unwelcome I was made to feel. He said to me "You'll just have to try and get on with her." Nice, no? She has a reputation for having no interpersonal skills. I asked him if he would have a word with her, and he grudgingly said he would.

Oh yes - and this piece of work I have been given to do doesn't start for another six to eight weeks. I asked her what I should do until then. She said "Well I haven't got anything for you to do. You'll just have to do some personal admin or something."

I am going to try and see someone in HR today... wish me luck.

I probably need to add, that I really don't think it is me! In my 30 years of work I have managed a perfectly good professional working relationship (as a minimum) with everyone else I have worked for, apart from this clown and the last one.