Big Sister Syndrome…

 Being in the middle of four means I am both a big sister and a little sister – therefore I get to enjoy the perks of both roles. Younger sister, is like the annoying puppy that can tag along and take my big sisters stuff, whereas an older sister gets to be annoying and and embarrassing… Sorry Pouty.

You know, when you do something you maybe shouldn’t and you make the younger sibling take the blame or you use them to bring you a snack from downstairs or make them share at least half the bag of buttons they just tried to loot out of the kitchen… It’s just one of those things you have to play upon. Plus, I had to put up with it from two older siblings myself.

So, recently, Pouty and I started attending the same school, so far, I don’t know if my yougner brother is enthralled that on route to his next lesson he may just bump into me and have no way of hiding or avoiding your Humble. The first time, I think I was rather reserved with only shouting his name, waving incessantly and blowing him kisses. Maybe helping any street cred my nerdy little brother had deteriorate…

Then I started adding ‘Kins’ to the end of his name and calling him other various pet names. Possibly, my teenage sibling would prefer if we pretended not to know each other for the majority of the days duration, but I am not about that life.

I think Poutykins was reaching the end of his tether however, I may have just set said tether on fire on the day where I saw him in school and gave him a huge bearhug. In public. In front of all of his friends. As him being a couple inches taller, won’t stop me. I think the exclamation of: ‘you can pretend you don’t want to hug me here‘, may have set him over the edge as that was when I got covered head to toe in a fizzy tsunami of Coke.

As apparently, just telling me to F off, was even far too cool and mainstream for our dear Pouty-poo.]

BYE!

 

Little Sister Syndrome

“For their is no friend like a sister in calm or stormy weather; to cheer one on the tedious way, to fetch one if one goes astray, to lift one if one totters down, to strengthen whilst one stands” ~ Christina Rossetti

Pretty Peters is my big sister, but also one of my best friends. Even when she is feeling glum, she smiles and manages to make others do the same. Even though I don’t think she realises how much she inspires and makes the rest of the world exult happiness.

Pretty is thoughtful, selfless and kind. Despite not having a lot herself, she still goes out of her way to spoil others with trips to the theatre, Nando’s or Subway. I don’t know too many other sisters who do that.

Much alike, I know few people who were as close with their sister as we are; regardless of a prominent age difference that almost placed us in different genres of society. For instance, in spite of being aged around 1o and 14, we went out of our way to purchase a matching outfit, fully suited with accessories and shoes – all of which were turquoise – even though most grumbled about looking back on baby photos (before there was a choice) at parents forcing their children into coordinating clothing – not us. We did it for Mum.

If Pretty ever needs a back up plan, I feel acting path is always paved with a half completed portfolio of earlier work: Pub videos and the Sheila sketch. Pouty, Pretty and myself, (Pongy refusing to join as he thought he was too cool for us) used to spend countless hours in our bedrooms writing scripts and recording these awful, questionable videos that started off being set in a pub, until there was 45 minutes worth of footage. None of it will ever see the light of day. Never.

Then, only a couple of years ago, there was the Sheila sketch, written by Pretty as part of a school project and inspired by soaps and sitcoms. To power phrase: Sheila is married, but the man she had an affair with shows up and won’t leave demanding Sheila back. Then the modern Romeo and Juliet comes into play, when the husband and other man have guns, one pretends to be dead then jumps up and shoots the other leading to Sheila taking her own life… Busy. But of course, Pouty, my younger brother, ended up playing Sheila (very convincingly if I may add) and Pretty and I played the men – this led to a lot of dressing up, Pouty in the full thing: dress, wig, bra and makeup, whilst the sharpie moustache phase of Pretty and me started.

Why we aren’t on the big screens I’ll never know.

Though, what type of big sister would she be if she didn’t take advantage of little sister syndrome once in a while? For instance, daring me to jump off the top bunk – which obviously couldn’t be my bed – or not letting me across the line dividing our room into her side, despite that being the side with the door on… Even more recently, using the phrase ‘Would you just mind doing this?’ whilst she supposedly made a cup of tea for Mumma P until I had unknowingly made it entirely.

I am lucky to have a very special sister, even if when she says we can both say the ‘b’ word and she won’t tell, but I slip up and say bloody instead of blinking so she does tattle…

BYE!

Karts and Waves.

The sun peeked out in England today, so of course, absolutely everyone slapped on the sun cream, whipped out the shorts and shades and was off to the beach.

This particular day out would have gone ahead whatever the weather (yes we’re those nutters in the sea when the water is a few degrees off freezing), but the shining veil made it a much nicer experience. It had been planned for months, stamped on the blackboard: there was no possibility of it budging after such commitment.

Of course it started off with bad moods, in fact it was a good day, sandwiched with bad moods. Dad was huffing, Pouty was whining and I felt generally lost. Then on the way back, we had no shoes, uncomfortably covered in sand and weren’t entirely sure where the car was situated – but all that matters, was the magnificent middle.

We started at an activity park. Which due to being mainly reserved for children aged around four, there wasn’t much to do, except the one go-kart course. Pouty, Pappa P and I were ready. Belted up, hands wrapped around the wheel and foot hovering over the pedal; nothing like a bit of healthy competition, eh?

We were also on the track with three other men, but in the words of Dad, they could “eat our dirt”. I was fourth in the pit lane, with Dad and Pouty behind me, but the ranking at the end of the curvy course, which didn’t give me much hope for when I start driving was Dad in first, then myself second. Pouty coming in about fifth. But he won’t admit that.

HE WAS LAPPED. HE DIDN’T GET TO DO HIS LAST LAP BECAUSE HE WAS SO SLOW. HE WAS LIKE A LITTLE CAUTIOUS OLD PERSON.

However, somehow he is blind to this fact. Claiming he came third because that was where he came in at the pit stop, not that somehow Perfect who started infront of him was then behind him despite him never over taking.

RIP my special flip flops. To get down to the beach after our intense Formula 1 experience, we had to walk down a practically steep dune where I thought it’d be much less effort to just let my feet slide down and use my flip flops as skis, but it actually meant the band securing my feet to the sole popped out and then there was no more flipping or flopping.

“The waves are savage” ~ Honestly, it took a lot of effort to get out into the sea because of how strong the waves were; I almost stacked it a number of times, but we were there with out flowery body boards having a whale of a time. They were almost verically and very capable to wipe us out.

The quick succession of waves that we didn’t know about, were quite frankly – epic. Pappa P, Pouty and I were bobbing along, acutely aware that none of us could touch the bottom, when the first wave lapped us up, and in that instance, whipped us off our boards and under the water. Having the instinct to not want to drown, we quickly started swimming to the top, and discovered the tunnel between the ever so near surface and the water – a white, foamy, wet surrounding where right as we went to gasp for that necessary breath, the first waves bigger, brutish brother came and knocked us back under again. To the experienced surfers around us, it was entertaining and to us, ignoring the loitering sea water in every hole of our face, was too.

BYE!

River Rapids

What better way to spend a rainy Saturday than in a river?

Pappa P, Pouty and I wished to make the most of our wetsuits and decided to drive down to a lovely river and go for a swim. The weather didn’t really matter becaus rivers tend to be wet and the wetsuit would stop us from getting to cold. But it did lead to a rivalry between my dad and brother over who got the wetsuit gloves…

All in all, it was a fun little outing.

Of course it started with Spagnoodle arms not being able to get his wetsuit on, because my younger brother honestly has hobbit feet.

“The only person who needs a tailored wetsuit. One with flares.” ~ Pappa P, talking about Pouty’s massive feet and tiny ankles.

He’s also the only fifteen year old boy who needs his dad to put his wetsuit on and then take it off again… He blames the feet but I’m not convinced.

With the bad weather, came a fast flowing river. This made swimming upstream quite the challenge. It was almost like being on a swimming treadmill because wearing the snorkels, you could see everything on  the ground moving away in the direction you’d wanted to go as it pushed you back.

I also had another sudden realisation of how short I am, when I was having to tread water whilst the other two walked quite leisurely…

Also the strong current revealed I had the worse balance, or the lightest legs as it kept yanking me down. But, once I finally made it past all the rocks, I tried to sit down and forgot about the rapid flow which snatched the snorkel out of my hand and took it down stream. I shouted to dad who swiftly jumped into action and started making his way down the river searching for it. At least twenty minutes of searching the river later, and ahving to storm up and down the current, Dad returned feeling downhearted with aching legs. Tired and out of luck. Until he saw a yellow thing sunken in the river about three metres from me… We found the snorkel. Oops. Sorry Dad.

The downside of the day was when we took on the water – River Vs. Peters – and the water won. We swam down where the water was strongest and thought it’d be fun to let the tide take us. Except it ended up catching me and repeatedly slamming me into the wall… Ever since, I have been limping but my dad and brother had fun and much more success in the river rapids.

Pouty is a bit of a nutter. And found a way to make walking upstream even harder than regular resistance walking is; he found a rock. It was a huge rock. A rock the size of a plate that he simply couldn’t put down because it looked like chicken tika masala. He looked heart broken when he dropped it and could carry it no further. Something tells me though that Mumma P wouldn’t have let him keep it in his room.

Pouty also revealed to us his unique talent of identifying underwater treasure.

“Look! I found a jaw.”

So of course we stalked back to the river, despite being half way to the car to look at Pouty’s discovery. Do you know what it was?

An average, boring looking, grey rock. Just like every other one in the river. But he was convinced. We weren’t. So, that rules out a few career paths for him.

BYE!

Not Worth Reading.

There have been some hostilities – unreseolved tensions – within the Peters’ household for many months now.

It has been almost brushed under the rug recently and I think some of my relatives may be entirely oblivious to this ‘war’ – especially Pouty because he doesn’t notice anything.

There was a disagreement between Pappa P and I about whih way round the toilet roll should face. It doesn’t help we are both very particular about certin things, therfore passionate about which is right and therefore will compromise. However, more recently, my dad hasn’t been changing it his way every time, only really when he changes them over, but of course, I HAVE to change it to the correct position.

Dad’s way is with the paper running down the wall, so that it rolls in the clock

wise direction; this means you are more likely to punch the wall or scrape a knuckle and injure yourself and you cannot get precisely break off the correct amount of toilet paper – which is most certainly what you should be thinking about. Whereas, my way is the opposite side, turning clockwilse.

Anyway, I have had a breakthrough. This piece of knowledge, confirms and proves that all along, I was right – Listen up Father.

I’d really quickly like to thank Mumma P for blindly discovering the way to settle this issue once and for all. Toilet roll with puppies imprinted on.

The way I like the toilet paper features living dogs that are happy and frolicking around in the bathroom, whereas the dad way has puppies that are laying on their backs, arguably sleeping or dead, which is just morbid. Morbid enough for you to take the time to turn the toilet paper around the other way.

I know this is abosultely ridicuous, but it has been a dormant issue for quite some time, and Pappa P need to be called out on it.

BYE!

GROUP CHATS

It is the social norm nowadays to have group chat consisting of purely members of your family; whether that is only immediate family or every cousin, second cousin, uncle, aunt and gran, is irrelavent. Everyone has one. At least one. Some people have multiple… Or even an uber secret sibling chat that’s main topic of discussion is insuring our parents don’t discover the top scecret chat in question.

The Peters Pack are no exception.

Ours is called: Bring it down a notch people.

I would love to provide you with an explanation for that but I honestly don’t know, who or why that came about. It may have been frequently used to tell  Pouty to conclude shouting at his computer for the evening but that is a stab in the dark.

Having a group chat, means that as most of us live in the same house, one person sends a message, usually ‘when’s dinner?’, and then there is a cacophony of phones chiming, like a scene from Pretty Little Liars but much less ominous and it does start to drive you crazy, escpecially if your Pappa P.

There are many platforms for group chat, although I can only think of Facebook and Whatsapp… We use Facebook so there is the regular online dispute of the nickname fiasco. We used to have golf inspired nicknames that made no sense to someone on the other side of the glass: ‘Trevor Callaway’, ‘Eugene Footjoy’ (any golf fanatics recognising the golf brands? 100 points.) and glamourous Mumma P: Caddy Lady. However, Dad, being the least tolerant of the group chat, during a period of intense rage and fury, changed all of them to bland variations of our real names, except Mumma P who is simply: ‘Mum’, Pongy who is ‘Pain’ and Dad: Snoring t*sser who’s always in a mood’ – something tells me he didn’t set that himself…

A collective messaging area, also means incessant photographs. For the sake of this post, I scanned through all of them to conclude, the photos sent are usually of d
ogs, on plug sockets or food. When I say dogs, I imply dogs but also practically the same photo of Mum with Bixie sleeping on her shoulder, but it is a different day so she is wearing a different outfit, but everything else – identical. No need for a photo.

Along with photos, you get gifs. Mum is a serial giffer. If there was a way I could disable the app feature from her Messanger, I’d do it instantaneously. You don’t get our parents asking each other for cups of teas, or even sending the other a text. Nope, we all just receive a gif – a different gif everyday – that insinuates either parent wants a cup of tea. It’s slightly infuriating.

There are flaws with group chats. Messages get lost because there’s so
much white noise in the form of gifs and photos that you never actually get an answer; they blantantly ignore you
or your pesky younger brother has a remark to everything! Pouty doesn’t mind distributing the sass, or just replying ‘no’ to every question you ask. It can be disheartening when that’s your only answer and you were counting on so
meone picking you up and you’ve missed
all of the buses.

 

BYE!