Lilly's Birthday Party.

A certain little madam I know turned two yesterday. Her uncle Peter and I went down to Riby to visit, along with her Lola. For the record, I hate the way that Jan insists on being called Lilly's Lola instead of her Grandma. It started because she wasn't spectacularly happy that Stephen was having children while she felt too young to be a grandmother. She won't get away with it with my children. She will be their Grandma.

Jan's eccentricities aside, we had a nice weekend. Peter drove, which is a miracle in and of itself. Jan is a little bit of a control freak. I don't say that in a mean way, but she is very definitely a Mummy and will treat both of her boys as though they're still children if they will let her. Peter doesn't really let her anymore. Out of the two cars, Peter's 306 is far more comfortable for more than two people in it. Jan has a three-door Citroen C2, which is not big nor comfortable. As if having to clamber into the back through the front doors wasn't awkward enough, with two people there, neither the one in the front nor the one in the back has leg room enough to wriggle even in the slightest. Every time the three of us have gone down there, Jan has driven. This time, Peter was determined that we would go in relative comfort, and that he would drive. Jan agreed with little but token argument, although I suspect that is because her car lost electric power earlier in the week and that she has lost confidence in it. So, for now, Pedro has succeeded in asserting his I'm-not-a-kid-liness, and is rather on the happy side about that.

We arrived at lunchtime on Saturday, and were immediately launched into baby-sitting duties. Stephen and Sara are, afterall, Malones, and are therefore poor planners. Sara was working and Stevie had plenty of things still to take care of for Lilly's party the next day, including shopping for all of the party food. So half an hour or so after our arrival, Stevie and Jan nipped off to Morrisons, and we stayed with the girls. Lilly was as easy as she always was, happy, bouncy, starting to push her boundaries and ignore you when you said "no, Lilly, come away from that," but lovely nonetheless. Ebony, on the other hand, was a tyke. There was absolutely nothing wrong with her, and we both knew it, but she cried every few minutes nonetheless. I kind of think she was just bored. We'd sit with her and bounce with her and play clapping games, or something, and she'd be fine for a short while, but start whining shortly after. If we moved her to look back at us or out to the room or if we swapped her between us or if we took her for a short walk around the house, she would stop. It wasn't too stressful or anything, but I did find myself wondering what the heck was up with her. Admittedly, I hadn't seen her since she was two weeks old, and now she is four months old, but by all accounts she is a calm and smiley baby who only cries when she's hungry. I figure maybe she doesn't just like Pedro and I. :D

It wasn't bad, although I don't think I'd like to be left with them too often. I don't mind helping out, but I don't feel with Lilly and Ebony like I can tell them off or just be as relaxed with them as I always have with my own niece and nephews. It's difficult, because I know that Peter would feel the same way if we were looking after Jamie or Lauren, but he's unwilling to tell Lilly that she's being naughty or that she needs to come away from this or that. His attitude is very much "she's only playing," whereas mine is "Yes, but she's playing with a carving knife, Pedro!" I mean, okay, it wasn't a carving knife. But it was the same principle.

Stephen and Jan were back within an hour or so, and we had lunch and continued to play with the girls. The afternoon was pretty much spent just like that, playing and basically sitting back and wondering how so much energy could fit inside such a little girl. She's a livewire.

When the girls had been put to bed, we spent the evening looking at photos of the boys that Jan had brought along with her. There were some of them as babies, all of the way along to Stevie being fifteen or so. I was assured, amongst much laughter at Stevie and Jan's sake, that there were bagfuls for me, too, when Peter and I were settled. Colour me amused. :D

Sunday was Lilly's birthday. She was awake before me, and had already had her breakfast and was running around bottomless by the time I emerged from our bedroom. She knew that it was "Lilly's Happy Birthday Day!" but wasn't particularly aware of what that meant further than that she was having a party with her friends from nursery and that she was getting a Princess Cake. She wasn't expecting presents, and watching her face when they were brought out was an absolute treat. She opened her cards first, and was thrilled to find that they almost all had princesses on. She squealed very cutely when she opened the card from Pete and I, decorated with her princess, Cinderella (Cinderella is blonde, and therefore her in princess form, and Sleeping Beauty is a brunette, and therefore her sister, Ebony). That was the first of our lucky hits. Our presents hit the target, too, although they could very well have been a miss.

Peter and I agonised for a few weeks over what to buy her. She's a very lucky little girl, you see, and essentially has four sets of grandparents from whom she is always given expensive and impressive presents (Jan and her boyfriend, Michael; Aidan and his until-very-recently girlfriend, Sandra; Sara's mum Ida and her husband, Harry; Sara's dad Joe and...well, I don't know if he has a partner or not, to be honest). In the end, we settled on a few very inexpensive gifts. We bought her some foam bath toys that were basically shapes that she could stick on the bath-tiles and make animals out of, a paint-your-own piggy bank that she'll love making a mess of, a plastic shopping trolley full of pretend food boxes and tins and such, and a little till that she could use in conjunction with that to play shop. We spent a sum total of about £20 on her, which was very little, but that wasn't the point. We wanted to get something that could be easily packed away and wouldn't take up too much room when she wasn't playing with it.

She loved it. Once that parcel was open, she wanted to play with it right away and couldn't be coaxed into opening any other presents for half an hour. Quite amusing. We spent a little while playing shop, in which she would bring us various things and take the money that she had already given us, and then bring us our change. She's a very sweet little girl, really she is.

She carried on opening her presents for a little while, and then we spent the morning playing with them together while her parents were bustling around putting up the garden toys for her party and preparing the food for the barbecue and such. The girls went down for their afternoon nap and we all sat out in the garden, having a light lunch and finishing with the lawn toys before her little friends arrived at three o'clock. There were two little girls, both called Isabelle, both blonde with curly hair, and two little boys, one called Robin and one called Danny, who is, apparently, Lilly's first boyfriend. :D

I don't actually remember much of the party, and we left only two hours into it after Lilly had blown out the candles on her much-anticipated Princess cake. She grinned excitedly as we all sang Happy Birthday to her, blew her candles out very happily, and then went incredibly shy all of a sudden when people cheered and clapped at her. It was an instant and very cute transformation. I was highly amused. And sorry to leave so very soon afterwards.

We had a lovely time, all in all, and I believe that Lilly certainly had a Happy Birthday indeed.

Salvaged.

Some bridges that are burned are salvageable. Sometimes, when someone leaves your life, they're gone, and they're not coming back. This has happened to me quite a few times over the years, and I have to say, I've not always been sorry about it. Sometimes, though, I have. Sometimes, it's broken my heart.

One such occasion concerns my nephew and niece, Alan and Lauren. Now, for the sake of anyone that doesn't already know, I shall briefly start from the beginning.

My eldest brother is Alan. He's twenty-nine now, and still annoys the piss out of me, but was eighteen when he became a father. Well, not technically. There was once a girl called Sarah. She was a few months younger than my brother, and when they were both seventeen, she fell pregnant. The thing is, she wasn't my brother's girlfriend. She wasn't even his friend then. She was his friend's girlfriend. Sarah fell pregnant to Shaun. Sarah and Shaun broke up, and she and my brother got together, despite her pregnancy. They decided to raise the child together, and, when they were both eighteen and on the 6th of March, 1997, my "nephew" was born, and named "Alan James" for my brother. He wasn't of Alan's blood, but that little boy couldn't have been any more Alan's son if he was. He was my nephew from the start. He wasn't my brother's step-son, he was his son. Two years later, on the 7th February, 1999, my niece Lauren was born. Now, Lauren was and is Alan's true daughter. Nevertheless, both kids were his, children of his heart if not his hearth.


Unfortunately, when Lauren was two, Alan and their mother broke up. I don't know the ins and outs of it, to be completely honest, but my brother swears that she didn't cheat on him, although she and Shaun were back together pretty darn fast. Now, although little Alan had been visiting his real father and his real grandmother all through his little life, when Shaun and Sarah were together, her new (old) partner started throwing spanners in the works for him. First, he wasn't allowed to visit little Alan. He wasn't *really* my brother's son, you see. Then, when Alan went to visit Lauren, he would arrive and be told that she was visiting Cag (Shaun's mother), or something.

And then, all of a sudden, he just wasn't allowed to see them. It wasn't as ill-reasoned as it seems on the face of it. To be honest, I don't generally think that my brother is a very nice person. He goes on constantly about what he's going to do to such and such a person to get them back for some slight against himself, or how he's going to break this person's windows and trash that person's car. Mostly, I ignore him, but that pretty much tells you everything you need to know about his attitude: he thinks that the world owes him something. Frankly, I don't see how it can since he's never put anything useful into it (lovely niece and nephews aside!), but this is how he thinks. Therefore, it's quite alright for him to steal from people. Which is what he was doing back in those days. He was in and out of jail for stealing cars. The final straw for Sarah was the last time he was sent to jail, not for car theft this time, but for affray with intent. That's the technical term, so I hear, but basically... he chased someone down a street with an axe. Like I said; he's not a very nice person.

My problem, and I know that it's selfish, is that I wasn't allowed to see them either. I was to begin with. I would visit their house once every two weeks or so, have a cup of tea, visit with the babies, go home. Unfortunately, that didn't last. Shaun and Sarah decided to change little Alan's name. He no longer had our family surname, which is understandable with his real father back as a major influence in his life, but his first name was dropped. He was, from then, known as James to his family. I slipped twice in one day, and that was the end of my visiting. It wasn't a gradual thing. I wasn't given time to adjust. I was just told one day that now his name is James, and that was that.

I managed for a few visits, but as I was playing with them one day, I said something along the lines of "that's not a very nice thing to say, Alan." He looked at me, very pointedly for a four year old, and said "my name is James." I apologised to him immediately, with an explanation of how it was hard for me to suddenly call him James when I was used to Alan, and that I might make a few mistakes for a while but that I would try my best and that he should keep reminding me if I did slip. He smiled his beautiful smile, said that that was okay, and we kept playing. Then I did it again. He told me again that his name was James, and as I was in the middle of apologising, Shaun grabbed my arm and summarily turfed me out of the house, and told me that if I couldn't get it right, I wasn't welcome. Sarah, this woman I called my friend, said nothing. I was only sixteen myself. I think it was a forgiveable mistake.

I haven't seen Alan James since.

For seven years, we heard nothing. Despite my sending Christmas cards and birthday cards to them for years, always in an envelope addressed to Sarah and unsealed in their own envelopes so that she could read them if she wanted, I heard not a sausage. I gave up. Can you blame me? I lost my niece and my nephew, and I thought that I was never going to get them back. This is how I remember them:



On the 8th of May, this year, my internet perusal was interrupted by a message on our answering machine. The internet won't connect if there's a message on there. It's weird, I know. Anyway, I picked it up and listened to it several times, and didn't understand it. My brother was sat in the living room watching a movie, or something, and since I could hear that it was for him, I asked him to listen to it. I thought it said something like "Hi, this is a message for Alan, Laura blah blah blah. 077-whatever." When he listened to it, he got it immediately, it said: "Hi, this is a message for Alan; Lauren needs you, can you call Sarah on 077-whatever."

We both panicked. We sat together for about two minutes trying to figure out what could be so wrong that Sarah had to leave a message on the family house phone (considering she didn't even know he was back living here) at five past eleven in the evening. We just kind of figured she was ill. Really ill. Alan was too nervous to deal with it, so I called Sarah back. Our conversation went something like this.

Sarah: Hello?
'Ren: Hi, this is 'Ren. You just left a message on my answering machine and I'm not really sure what it said. My brother's not in right now, is it urgent? I can call him.
Sarah: Oh, hi 'Ren, it's Sarah Surname.
'Ren: [pause] ...is everything okay?
Sarah: Yeah, yeah, everything's fine. I was just leaving a message for Alan because I didn't know how else to contact him. Lauren wants to see him.
'Ren: Oh! Thank god that's all!
Sarah: Yeah, I mean, she's nine now and she's asking questions about him, and I don't think it's fair to...
'Ren: I was so panicky. I heard part of the message but not all of the message and when you said "Lauren needs you" I thought, 'shit, she's in hospital and needs a kidney,' or something!
Sarah: Oh no, no, nothing like that. I didn't mean to worry you or anything.
'Ren: Well, I'm glad she's okay. Do you have a message for him, then?
Sarah: Yeah, just tell him that Lauren is asking about him and wants to see him.
'Ren: I'll do that. Like I said, he's not in right now, but I'll tell him when he gets in from work.
Sarah: Okay. [pause] It was nice to talk to you, 'Ren.
'Ren. Yeah. I'll tell him. [click]

I hadn't, and still haven't, forgiven her, in case you couldn't tell. And since Alan was sat right there listening to the whole conversation, I had no message to relay. His instant reaction was suspicion. Sarah has contacted him twice before to renew contact with Lauren. I didn't know about this until that night. Both times, all she really wanted was help with something expensive, and then contact stopped.

He didn't call her back right away. He waited a few days, getting his head around it, and then called her. They arranged to meet in North Shields, which is where they live, and talk things over. They met at eleven in the morning, and Alan came back after midnight. Sarah brought him a letter from Lauren, hand-written and decorated with stick-on love-hearts. It said that she missed him and loved and and didn't understand why she couldn't see him. Bad spelling (and really, it was atrocious) aside, it was a lovely little thing, and I know that he's treasuring it. By all accounts, Sarah and Alan spent the whole day in the pub, laughing and talking. Very friendly. No barbs. No flirting. I was surprised.

In fact, I'm pleasantly surprised by Alan's attitude towards Sarah. Perhaps being burned by her and then later by Vanessa has finally taught him a lesson. He's not interested in Sarah. He is only paying attention to Lauren. That's not to say that he's ignoring Sarah or James, he's not, he's just protecting himself. I'm proud of the way he's handling himself.

Anyway - they arranged for Alan to re-meet Lauren. He took her and James and Sarah out to Pizza Hut, not wanting Lauren to be on her own and scared or nervous. Alan has so far managed to avoid the dreaded slip-up of calling James 'Alan' by referring to him only as "your brother" to Lauren, or by any number of pet names (of which 'son' seems to be a particular favourite, but that's a Geordie thing. Me putting my happy "I want to be his Auntie again!" spin on it doesn't change that) to James himself. They had a good time. The week or so after, Alan took Lauren to the park by himself, not for long, but by himself, and they had a great time. In the past month or so he's taken her all over the place. They went ice-skating, they've been to every damned park in Northumberland, more or less, same with beaches. He took her shoe shopping, bought her new school shoes and extracted a promise from her to keep them nice for at least three weeks (the shoes she was wearing when he picked her up were all scuffed and awful and she'd only had them for two weeks). And she has.

I've met her again. It was only for a few minutes, and she was shy and nervous. It was on Father's Day, actually. Alan brought her home on the pretence of dropping off a card for her granddad, and I almost missed them. I had just jumped in the shower when they came in. I heard him talking to someone, but I just assumed he was wandering around and talking on the 'phone. I couldn't hear her. When I was out and dressed and was combing my hair, he shouted up the stairs for me, told me that they were there and would be leaving shortly. I think I've never come down the stairs faster.

I signed the card he brought in for my dad, said hello to her while I did. She was quiet, and Alan led the conversation. She showed me the Father's Day card that she'd bought for him, and the two little presents. A "World's Best Dad" tankard and trophy. Sweet. Alan is currently displaying them very proudly on the bookcase in our living room.

She is so grown up. She's nine now. It's been seven years. Seven years. How much have I missed?

All I can say is that, biased or not, I think that she's beautiful, and that I'm glad I'm not going to miss any more. I hope.

Diving in.

So, I'm just going to dive right in. I hate starting new blogs; I'm so bad at it. I figure that I'm not going to bother "starting," I'm just going to begin the waffling without pretence or introduction. Besides, if you found your way here, I know you, wanted you to find your way here, and you don't need to be told how old I am, what colour my eyes are and where I live. You lucky sods. To begin with, I expect this'll just be my new way to commune with Nahbois; beats the hell out of Amazon, at the moment.

In case you didn't know: twenty-two, blue, and Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England.

I feel like I have loads of news to update with, but I can't be bothered to write it out. The most important, then? I guess that would be my interview with Arbeia, on Tuesday. I don't really know what I was expecting, but it certainly isn't what I got. Perhaps I imagined a small-ish meeting room with two or three Tyne&WearMuseum Staff, six to eight candidates? Afterall, the job on offer was only a twenty-five hour part-time gig, one week on and one week off. Right?

Wrong. They received one hundred and forty applications. One hundred and forty. I couldn't bloody believe it. They cut that list down to forty, and decided from that twenty to interview. So at least I was in the top lot, right? Sounds like a good thing, and I think that I presented myself well throughout the afternoon except for one minor (I hope) boob. But, half of the people in that twenty were already volunteering for the museums: they do that job already, and are just looking to get paid for it. There was one absolutely lovely gentleman in his early forties who had been a nurse in the army until the year before last when he started a degree in Tourism. He volunteered at Arbeia itself (most of the others were volunteers at other museums/galleries under the same directorate), and gave tours on campus to potential mature students. He was so pleasant and happy to chat with me, I talked to him most of the afternoon and took the metro home with him. If I don't get the job, I hope it's him that does. On top of the volunteers, though, there were people that were reading/had finished degrees in museum curation and such.

Blah, it makes my Masters and complete lack of experience look paltry. I can't believe I went into it slightly on the smug "I'm bound to get it" side. For shame, 'Ren.


We had four tasks to do within the three hours. The first was to partner up with someone else in the room and tell them about our keys. lol. It was really quite weird. We had fifteen minutes to just keep talking, and I suppose the point was to make sure that we could natter on when we needed to. I imagine that a tour guide needs that ability. I did it, and so did my partner, but invariably we ended up in "and then I realised I'd lost my keys" or "I was so drunk I couldn't get it in the lock" stories.

Amusing, but perhaps not what the museum Staff were after.

After that, the eighteen of us (two of the invited twenty didn't turn up; can you imagine that?!) were split into three groups of six, and we played a game which was about team-work. It involved wrapping up an "artefact" for transport, with silly rules. We all had to wear a glove, and only use that hand to do anything that was involved in the task. If the item was to be moved, two people had to be touching it with one hand each, and could only move one step in any direction before another pair took over. It had to be wrapped in tissue paper and then two different layers of bubble-wrap. It had to be secure enough to actually transport somewhere. I tell you, trying to find the end on a roll of sellotape with someone else holding it and your usually invaluable thumb-nail encased in a rubber glove is awful! Our team finished first, but then we for sure had the easiest item. We had a telescope, which meant we basically just rolled it up in each layer and were done, where the other groups had a wooden box and a carpet-beater.

The third task was to imagine that we had been trapped in a museum after closing for the holidays. You weren't alone, but couldn't get out and had to assume that you were there for the duration; no food left in the café and no electricity or phone or anything. Which out of a list of fifteen items that you and the people locked in with were the most useful? There was water, six bags of sweets, six dust covers, whisky, two torches, a mirror, a heater, a knife, a tin of red paint, ladders, a first aid box, a pile of fire wood, matches, and three other things I can't remember. Everyone put the whisky last but me. I put it towards the top. My argument was that if you were trapped in there over the Christmas holidays, you might as well enjoy it. The two Staff sitting with us that were scribbling on notepads now and again grinned at me, but didn't write down that I'm a drunk. lol. At the bottom of my list was the heater. Everyone else had but it third or fourth, after the water, dust covers (blankets) and sweets. One of the other candidates said to me "don't you think it would be better to use the heater before starting a fire for warmth?" My response was a blank look accompanied by "there's no electricity; it's useless." The two Staff scribbled at this point, so I assume that noticing that was a good thing.

The fourth was a plain interview, and this is where I think I made my minor (I still hope) boob. We were taken out of the room individually whilst the mass-group were completing a "Would you (A), (B), (C), or (D)?" questionnaire, and asked what our availability for work was, that there was the possibility of casual work at any of the sites if we weren't picked for the main roles, was there anywhere we would rather not work? I looked at the list and said that Sunderland would be hard for me to get to (which is completely true) and that would be at the bottom of my preferences, but that it was still fine. The look on his face told me that I was supposed to have said that they were all fine and that I would be happy to work anywhere. I mean... they are, and I would. I just thought I was being asked for preferences. That's what he said, that's what the sheet in front of him said, that's what previous interview experience said. That's not what his face said. D'oh.

Still, I don't think that that in itself is enough to let me down. It was a tiny thing, and the rest of the interview went well. They said that they would pick and let us know by the end of the week, and today is half way through Thursday. I guess I'll hear tomorrow. I don't expect to do well frankly because there were better candidates there. I'm not without hope, though. Some of those that appeared to be the perfect candidates were really quite arrogant and bossy and outspoken during the group work, and I hope that this works against them. Equally, some that had perfect qualifications but no experience were a bit on the field-mouse side. I was somewhere in the middle. Where I expect they wanted us to be.

Oh, I don't know. I'm trying not to think on the results too much. If nothing else, I now know what to expect, right? And if I don't get one of the two posts or some of the casual roles, perhaps I'll be just after those people that do and the Staff will remember me if something else comes up. Perhaps not, but I can hope...right?