Overheard: My husband and his mother on the phone

Hello Mum.
Yeah?
Do you have cloves?
Of course I have clothes!
Cloves!
Clothes?
CLOVES!
CLOTHES!
C for Charlie, L for Lima, O for October...
Oh, Cloves!
Yes, do you have cloves?
Yes, why?
Can I have some?
Ok.
Erm, do you have muslin bag as well?
Muslim bag?
MUSLIN!
MUSLIM?
Jesus!
Ah, muslin.
Yes. Goodness! I'm coming up.

Highchair

And so we got the highchair from Germany, yehey!
The box is held in place with a sliver of packing tape. Couldn't they just have doubled it to make sure?
The box wasn't in a good condition, to say the least.
And then there were no screws. NO SCREWS. How in heaven's name could we put the highchair up without screws?
So we emailed them pronto. Please send us the screws.
They replied two bloody days after. Please could you confirm there were no screws?
We emailed back. We can confirm there are no screws.

We're still waiting. For an email to say they're sending the screws. And for the screws.

Your German is very deep, I cannot swim!

'Why did you have to buy a highchair from Germany when the only German I know is Lidl? Why not from Boots or somewhere in England'? I said to my husband a couple of days ago. He just murmured something about wooden self-assembly and surely there would be an English translation of the instruction that goes with it!

This morning I got this email. I read it to my husband in the best way I could, Filipino way:

Sehr geehrter Kunde,

Ihr Paket mit folgender Paketscheinnummer(n) ist heute versendet worden:(numbers)

Mit dem nachfolgenden Link können Sie Ihr Paket(e) im Internet verfolgen:

Is there somebody out there who could translate this for me? I only understand the word 'Internet', obviously.

Indifferent

When the English dance, you know they’re drunk.

Yesterday, I took the boys to town to do a bit of shopping. As it was bank holiday, there were multicultural dances. One particular interesting group was the Turkish all-male dancers and musicians. The music was great; very upbeat. I started to jiggle as soon as they started. But when I looked around me, nobody even dared to move an elbow or sway a bit of hip or shoulder! Everybody was as stiff as a lamppost, tight lipped as ever and glum looking like a typical English weather. After about 10 minutes, the band stopped playing and announced that they would love everybody to dance with them. The crowd then dispersed like they were just about to smell and hear a musical fart.

What’s more, Zak declared, Let’s go home mummy. I don’t like it!

Before the sheep took over the picnic,

they basked in the glorious afternoon sun.

He's certainly afraid of the dark

I've been a little bit obsessed with parenting books lately and somehow, I realized that one of these days I would have to face the dreaded bit of parent-child conversation: sex education.

This afternoon, situation called for me to slowly introduce the topic. I was resting in bed while little Lewis was having a nap in his cot. Zak then took the opportunity to have a chat with me. He obviously noticed my flabby postpartum belly and attempted to shove the bits back in the hope that his little hands could do a wondrous miracle of flattening my stomach. Anyway, I explained to him that when he was a baby, he lived inside my belly and came out through a hole (naturally, the hole was my belly button).

Him: Was it dark in there, mummy?

Me: Yeah.

Him: Did I bring a torch?