In ten days time my daughter Veronica is getting married. I have been to the edge of hysteria and back a couple of times in the past few days, but as always it has been the mental picture of Tim Brooke Taylor running around shouting, “I am a teapot” that has saved me.
I am a potter after all and I know a thing or two about teapots. Fiddly bloody things they are. Tea pots require precision and patience, two virtues that I am not overendowed with at all, and when one’s only daughter is getting married in ten days time there is never room for hysterics. Mild panic and hyperventilation I can deal with, but hysteria will never do.
I had grand plans of making stacks and stacks of plates for Veronica’s wedding, lovingly crafted and beautifully glazed. I had visions of friends and family eating cake and commenting on how lovely it was to eat from handmade plates. Of course whilst not wanting stealing the limelight from the bride, I nonetheless discretely basked in the glow that was my due as Mother of the bride and erstwhile creator of fabulous plates.
It was a lovely daydream, I was even wearing a fabulous hat with purple roses.
But of course time is fluid in my world and suddenly all the time I had to make those glorious plates had vanished in the twinkle of an eye and my deadline was looming. It was November the first and I of course was plateless as well as hatless.
So I set to work and made some plates for my girl. Not the hundreds that I had seen in my dreams, but enough for a lucky few to admire from a distance, if they make it out of the kiln in time.
The kiln is cooling down as we speak and I should be able to open it tomorrow. If the Kiln Gods are smiling on me, all the wedding ware should emerge unscathed and uncracked and I can get down to the serious business of glazing the bloody things.
The deadline is now, rather tight.
by frogpondsrock on November 8, 2011
in Veronica
Hi internet, I have so much to tell you, so many unwritten posts are busily roiling about inside my head. But I am so pressed for time that all the words needs must stay inside my head and I worry that all the good ones will slide out my ears to slowly drip, invisible and unwritten into the atmosphere.
There are certain pressing matters that demand my attention. The most important of these being the fact that, my daughter,Veronica is getting married in 18 days.
Veronica is being very Zen about her impending wedding whilst I am starting to quietly panic.
In 18 days there will be a wedding.
Veronica tells me to relax, it will be fine and she humours me as I ask pressing questions like, do you have enough chairs, or more importantly do you think your ancient toilet is up to the job honey? So while my mind is full of details like hiring chairs and trestle tables, sorting out a way to livestream the event and organising a porta-loo. Veronica’s mind is full of her immediate concerns such as deciding if she can walk across the room without dislocating anything major.
I am trying to be calm.
But my baby is getting married in 18 days.
Otherwise my head might just explode and that would be very fucking messy.
Some people are just arseholes. There is nothing you can do about their inherent arseholiness other than stand by with your mouth agape and wonder where on earth they learned their low life skills.
Australia, the lucky country, the land of the fair go, home of the tall poppy syndrome.
Where if you start to shine a bit brighter than all the other stars out there some lowlife will always come along and decide to start throwing a bit of mud.
anonymously of course
*sigh*
Well,
what can I say. firstly congrats on the wedding, Really, you drug your child at 3 am with panadol, didnt you watch today tonights segment on the effects of medicating our children for a “good” nights sleep, oh thats right you have sold out to ACA and Kellogs for a measly few words on allergy free breakfast. Luckily – you didnt make an “idiot” of yourself.
Selling out? Where on earth has all this talk about selling out come from? Veronica has always had advertising on her blog and has always worked with brands.
Drugging her child? For fucks sake. Amy was sick. You use paracetamol to reduce fever you idiot. You of all people should know that.
I am seriously grumpy today internet. Mainly because I am 99% certain I know who the anonymous arsehat is and that makes me very sad as well.
I am going to play in the garden today because I need to have my hands in the soil. I need to earth myself so that all the negativity is absorbed by the universe instead of fizzling around inside my head and fucking up my balance. And if you scoff at that as old hippy nonsense well then anonymous that is your loss and I advise you to remember that Mammon is a poor excuse for a god.
I really should follow my own advice to Veronica when dealing with arseholes, which is to stand a little taller, square your shoulders and be secretly pleased that you chose today to wear your teflon shirt so that the shit these arseholes fling, just slides right off.
But I am having a bit of trouble with that advice right now.
Deadshits.
I spent my whole parenting life raising my children to be independent free thinkers. I raised my daughter, Veronica to be a strong feminist, not by quoting her tracts from Greer or De Beauvoir and hiding the razors, but by example. I tried to show my daughter that all you need to succeed in this life is determination and hard work and that no man or woman can tell you what you can or can not do within the bounds of the law.
My daughter has found her own path, she is marching to the beat of her own drum and is now raising her own strong willed daughter, Amy. The more my grand daughter grows into her personality the more I see myself reflected there and I am equally terrified and exhilarated.
As a child I fought the restraints of parental control every step of the way. Every single curb was met with a defiant why? Followed up with a detailed counter argument as to why I should be allowed to do exactly as I pleased. There was much wailing, gnashing of teeth and dramatic flouncing and I now know that I was an extremely difficult child to parent.
Primary school was the single most isolating and lonely place I had ever been forced to endure. High school was just an endless clash of wills, with the Catholics determined to teach me to submit and to accept without question the ridiculous notion of a virgin birth and the subservience of women to God’s law. I didn’t like to break the rules by walking out as overt rule breaking makes me extremely uncomfortable, so I just endlessly argued against everything instead.
I faked illness after illness to avoid going to school so that I could just stay home and read in peace all day. One faked illness went a little bit too far and at age twelve I had a perfectly good appendix removed. Of course I lapped up the attention a stay in hospital brings but unfortunately for me I didn’t have any more disposable organs, so that avenue of school avoidance was closed.
As my grand daughter grows up I hope like hell that I live for at least another twenty years to see her through the challenges she will face. And this is where Mum’s untimely death has left a huge hole in our lives. Mum related wholly to Veronica and was Veronica’s support person where as I relate wholly to Amy and I am of only minimal support to Veronica as I relate far to strongly to my grand daughter. I am forever looking to explain or question why Amy behaves the way she does instead of just giving my daughter my sympathetic ear.
In this life you just have to make the best of what you have and try to understand each others limitations.
I am pleased that the education system isn’t as rigid as it was in the seventies but I still worry that there are far too many children out there that are getting lost in the system. I know as I watch my daughter parent her two quirky children that they wont be swallowed up by the machine but I still fervently hope that I am around to throw a few spanners in the works just in case.
The simple pleasure of a nice cup of tea was ruined for me when I was pregnant with my first child Veronica.
The experience of vomiting the remains of a cup of china black, all over the roses in a handy garden as I was walking to work, made me determined to avoid that particular trigger and for years afterwards even the smell of freshly brewed tea made me feel slightly queasy.
So when I found a sample of She Tea in my conference bag, I quickly gave it away to the now grown up Veronica without a second thought.
A conversation with Veronica a few weeks later about how pleased she was with the lusciousness of She Tea’s blends had me intrigued. So I borrowed enough of the Happy Hippie blend for a couple of pots of tea and I was pleasantly surprised. Very pleasantly surprised.
The tea was very nice. So nice in fact that I left a message on She Teas website enquiring about their product and before you could say, “whats your credit card number,” Jodie had called me at home to discuss my preferences and I ordered some tins of their tea.
So this is NOT a sponsored post or a review.
This is just me saying you should check out She Tea because it is bloody nice tea.
I was impressed by Jodies warm and friendly manner on the phone.
I was impressed by the little added extras in my parcel.
I paid $50 for three tins of tea and when I opened the box I found some small samples of other types of tea, as well as one of those silver mesh ball thingies that you use to brew a single cup of tea and some cool postcards as well.
I was very happy.
You can find She Tea’s website here
Or like them on facebook here
Happy tea drinking.
