Chronicles of a Trailing Spouse...

They say what doesn't kill you only makes you stronger; certainly three months of quaffing a bottle of Shiraz each night may well have toughened up my liver in the same way the past three months have tested my Pollyanna -like optimism and belief that things will always turn out OK in the end. The symbiotic and simultaneous pan-continental misery and despair that has characterised mine and DH's lives during this time -- certainly our run of bad luck seemed to be overextended  -- left us at times wondering if we were the unfortunate recipients of a hex of some sort. In isolation of course most of these situations could have been rationalised, but when heaped on top of each other they became unmanageable and I spent several weeks bemoaning the turn my life was taking, convinced in my darkest moments that I would never see DH again and was sentenced to a life as a single mother of five.  It of course all started with- the house of horrors which was hovel-house;  DH ...

So tomorrow is Saint Patricks Day .  It's also charity day in my children's school meaning that we have to provide our children with biscuits and icing ( eight-year-old boy ), cheap toys or cash ( nine-year-old girl ) and god knows what ( six-year-old boy ...I think he lost the letter) so they can set up stalls to raise money for a school in Africa...or something. Laudable as this is, I'd rather they used the cash raised to buy back the French teacher who was sent packing last year ('S ooooo, you've raised the fees and cut French lessons! Splendid idea!' ), or bring back the extra PE lessons, music lessons, art lessons, I could go on... Not sure how my suggestion might be received though, I'm just a paying parent after all. Still, it is a day where they don't need to wear a school uniform, something which always sends my pulse racing.  Whoever made the statement that 'school uniforms are so much easier for parent's ' don't actuall...