Moving Days...

Friends following me on Facebook already know of this week's woes.

A week last Saturday, we moved our man-child, Grizz, into his student accommodation for the commencement of Freshers' Week.

This is where they drink themselves through half their student loan, eat nothing but toast for a fortnight, and cavort about as if they were at a Bacchanalian orgy.

That I managed this without turning into a sniveling wreck is to my absolute credit. Of course, the fact that he's really not that far from home, and studying in the city where I work, is the reason why.

Mind you, we've had a number of run-arounds with Grizz this week. Thank the Goddess that he moved no further from home than thirty miles!

1. I rang him on Monday morning. Just to ensure he was up in time to catch the shuttle bus to get to his very first lecture. He was just about to leave his digs. Wonderful.

He rang GJ an hour or so later. He'd over-shot his bus-stop and didn't know where he was in the city. Unable to describe his surroundings, GJ was unable to tell him where he might be. He set off at marching pace in the direction he'd come in, now late for his lecture.

He texted GJ half an hour later to say he was standing outside of a filled lecture theatre, frightened to go in. My husband's text to him might have turned the airwaves blue.

So, not only was he late for his lecture, he couldn't find the University building.

He's only a Geography Student, FFS!

2. I rang him on Thursday, just to ensure he was up in time for his field trip. He was.

He texted my husband an hour or so later, to ask where Hadrian's Wall was.

Repeat the refrain, "He's only studying Geography, FFS!"

And we live in Northumberland, so there's no excuse for him not knowing the county's history!

3. I was about to ring him on Friday, when he rang me in the office in a panic.

"Mum, where's my boxers?!"

As I hadn't really been with him all week, this was an impossible call for me to make. I started to fret. If he was down to his last set of boxer shorts, how would he fare?

It turns out that, in spite of my constant nagging for him to do this all summer, he hadn't taken enough supplies, like underwear, with him from home, where they are breeding like rabbits... And he had ignored the bubbles of washing liquid I left him with, so he WAS down to his last pair of undercrackers...

My lovely, sweet colleague, a long-suffering Vicar's wife, parent to happy, healthy children in their twenties, and still relatively sane, talked me down from the roof.

"What's the worst thing that can happen, Fhina?

Is he naked out on the streets of Newcastle?

No.

If he isn't, there's not a problem.

If he is, the Police will put him in a cell, then at least he's got a bed for the night!

Stop fretting. He'll survive. He's got to learn..."

I know she's always right. I am grateful to her, always.

Could someone pass me a tranquillizer, please?

Student Central...

You recall that I'm now preparing myself, and Grizz, for his entry to University in late September? Of course, the man-child has reverted to type, expecting me still to take charge of things for him, while he's out there partying heartily and meeting his mates at all hours... (What is it about the young that makes them practically nocturnal?!)

Anyhoo, I've already advised him strongly that getting a BSc in Geography is beyond me, so not to expect any further support in that quarter! Still, I found myself applying online for student accommodation earlier this week, guided, of course, by him barking instructions from the other end of our corner sofa!

It turns out that some of the accommodation I'd ear-marked as suitable for him has received a very vociferous 'thumbs down' from his girlfriend, who's about to go into her second year at the same Uni, so I guess she'll be right...

And I almost found myself adding a comment to the Special Requirements section of the online application. Taking those dizzying 360 degree virtual tours of student rooms, I was staggered by how really tiny some of them really are. Now, Grizz doesn't have a big bedroom at home - (ours was originally a 'two-up, two-down' cottage, and the footprint of the house upstairs hasn't changed since the Nineteen Twenties and we claimed the bigger room), but some of the student rooms would fit into his room twice over!

Last weekend we measured Grizz's height against the door frame in the kitchen, where we've been charting his progress for the past nine years. The latest reading on the retractable steel tape, with my husband standing on tip-toes to read it, shows that he's now 6 foot 5 inches tall.

We made the child sleep in a grow-bag, I swear!

So, part of me desperately wanted to write specifically on the form, something along the lines of:

'This man-child is very, very tall, please can you give him a bed he can fit in, and a room big enough to swing a huge cat in..."

Call me daft. Go on!

The long and the short of it, the thick and the thin...

Well, we've had two musical interludes, mes bloggy blackberries... Thank you for sticking with me through thick and thin, weft and weave, spick and span, tricks and treasures.

I'm in London this week for work, and I suspect I might get more of a sense of 'map or direction' for my current work from our new Government, presided over by smart Whitehall mandarins... I swear some of them are so young and wrinkle-free, they're like thirteen year olds with two brains!

I hope the sun is shining for you this week, mes bloggy Boleyn Girls... We need some warmth on our bones, some 'currant bun', do we not?

I'm rambling, je le sais - I know it.

I bought a trunk from the balmy E of the Bay last week. For Grizz. To enable him to fill it with needful things, for him to, (hopefully, fingers, toes, eyes and teeth crossed...), take off to University to read Geography and Environmental Sciences...

I am very proud of my tall son and what he has achieved. In spite of the fact that I now have more grey hair than blonde, and that I have to pay my hairdresser, Hannah, double for her troubles in covering it up... That I've got more furrowed lines than a Shar Pei, and that I do not do botox, or other artificial fillers.

Well, other than English cheese...

So, this trunk... It's now sitting like a stalled mini-roundabout in my living room. None of us can get around it...

With my short-sight, I could give a mole a run for his money...

So, you see when I looked at the picture of the grey aluminium, vintage trunk... With its scuffed blue and yellow cruise stickers --Telling of far flung travel from Southampton to Down Under in the Seventies on the Australis, perhaps this trunk was used by a family with one-way tickets for emigration to Aussie-Land -- I was transfixed.

From ma soeur, the Goddess Wiki:

" The SS America was an ocean liner built in 1940 for the United States Lines and designed by the noted naval architect William Francis Gibbs. She carried many names in the 54 years between her construction and her 1994 wrecking, as she served as theSS America (carrying this name three different times during her career), the USS West Point, the SS Australis, the SS Italis, the SS Noga, the SS Alferdoss, and the SS American Star. She served most notably in passenger service as the SS America, and as the Greek-flagged SS Australis for Chandris. In 1941, she carried two Nazi spies from the Duquesne Spy Ring in her crew: Erwin Wilhelm Siegler and Franz Joseph Stigler. Both men were charged by the FBI with espionage and sentenced to 10 years and 16 years' imprisonment, respectively".

Fascinating, non?! But the Australis's demise, somewhere off the Islas Canarias, is somewhat sad and poignant, falling into the sea, bit by bit, to provide hidey-holes for exotic fishies and sea-creatures...

So, anyway the trunk, and my myopia...

The trunk arrived. I was at the office. My husband, GJ, was home...

I hadn't told him I had bought a trunk for Grizz. I thought I might hide it somehow, as I do many things he doesn't need to know about... Sale bargains, frippery and floozerie, stuff for the house.

"Just how big did you think it was?!, he said...

Sitting in the car, I did what most anglers do, and spread my hands wide, in some proximation of the trunk's size, when glimpsed in a two by two inch photo...

"Fhina, it's stuck in the middle of the living room, you'll have to vault over it to get to bed! It''s ginormous..."

So it is.