'Tis The Season To Be Jolly... fa la lalalaaaaaaaAAAAA!!

AAAHHHGGGGHHHH!!! Sometimes I just HATE Christmas, don't you? I am usually such a positive person and am pretty happy most of the time but Christmas really stresses me out. It's not the present buying, the cooking, the decorations, the noise or the same old Christmas tunes belting out of the radio... it's the F word. Shhh... families. Did you hear that? Sometimes I just can't be doing with them. It's even worse now I'm married and have a child. It's not that my parents want to see my or my husband, but they want to see our little girl; they live two counties away so it always has to be an overnighter when we see them.. this fills my husband with dread - he's antisocial at the best of times, and to make matters worse - he and my parents don't see eye to eye, never have, never will... My husbands idea of Christmas is slippers on, remote in hand, Quality Streets at the ready. My parents like us all to join in - silver service, champagne, let's get pissed and play charades. Chalk and very smelly stilton cheese...

My in-laws (who I get on with very well) are always at home and always have their other children and granchildren over for Christmas lunch. This is all well and good except that the grandchildren run the show. Call me old fashioned but I expect to be able to sit down for Christmas dinner and stay at the table throughout (bar trips to the lavatory or to top up drinks etc). I don't expect kids to be zooming around on scooters, not sharing things - screaming MINE! every 5 minutes and basically not allowing any grown up conversation to exist while they are conscious. Maybe Christmas dinner in the evening would resolve this, but my mother in law insists on lunch time. And surprisingly she is more than happy to let the kids run riot, behave like monsters and drive everyone potty. My husband and I can't cope with the level of noise, level of bad behaviour, the stress that it causes as the parents of the badly behaved kids get frowned on and in turn get the hump and behave badly. Phew.

Roll on the 25th - we're off to the pub!

Pah! PA?

I've just read an astonishing article - well I found it astonishing. I think most every day mothers would feel the same. Admittedly the article was in The Times, which probably appeals to a higher form of human being to me, but even if it had been in the News of the World I would still have been open-mouthed.

Apparently mothers now have the option to employ a PA to do the jobs they can't fit into their busy lives. From Christmas shopping, to organising childrens' parties, these PAs can seemingly do anything, and work any hours you instruct them. Well wouldn't that be lovely, if you can afford one! How many mothers in this day and age, particularly with the credit cruch, can afford to pay for this 'extra pair of hands'? Not me. I am my husband's PA, my daughter's PA, my own PA for that matter, and still I have to find time for my own work and ordinary day to day housewifing and mothering duties. You have to be organised and find the time - even if that means staying up til' Midnight (and looking rough in the mornings). I can only imagine that these mothers who can afford a PA are out enjoying champagne lunches while the tasks they consider too mundane are undertaken by a perfect stranger. Or am I a cynic? Tell me if you think so.

Do they consider themselves above the normal, run of the mill parenting duties? Or are they so disorganised, or over-achieving that they simply need the added help? Either way it proves that there is far too much pressure on mothers to look gorgeous, have gorgeous, well behaved children, hold down a job, look after a household, have a perfect marriage, and fit in time for a social life too.