It is hot, and most of us (well, me, Barnaby and Custard) have some form of hives/eczema/dermatitis AND it turns out that the pirate park sandpit is riddled with sand fleas. Noah has a permanent whiff of peanut better about him, and Custard cannot keep his hands out of the toilet bowl. Luckily I have my new Mulberry bag to stick over my head when it all gets too much. Deeply sniffing that (Turkish!!) leather is very resorative, and stroking the enormous Mulberry logo is calming to my nerves.

Tonight, we are off to the Connaught to go get bankrupted by Helene Darroze’s tasting menu. Men, apparently, should wear a jacket. That is going to be tricky as it is: a) far too hot; and b) Mark does not have one. I just KNOW we are going to have a frenzied, panicky yelling argument just before the cab arrives about WHY he doesn’t have one, and WHERE are his one pair of wedding/good occasion/funeral black shiny shoes? He will be muttering “I must have left them in Greece” which is the one holiday destination that gets the blame for all missing things. Somewhere, in a villa on the hill near the beach in Kefalonia, there must be an entire storage cupboard filled with Mark’s film canisters, wedding shoes, swimming goggles, Garth Brooks CD’s, extra spades and house keys. And those inanimate objects are cruelly LAUGHING at him.

And of course I must find something to wear. Not so easy, these days, as the 10-weeks-pregnant belly is hardening and spreading and all the other bits of me are swelling in sympathy. So somehow, between the both of us, we must leave the house looking dressed, shod, and not too enormous. This is going to require some thought.

Yesterday was memorable, not just for the hayfever and the quick burst around Selfridges and the attempted but failed trying-on of the DVF dress which was simply TOO SMALL, but because Barnaby’s next year teacher came  for a home visit. Which of course was a terrifying prospect. Does one turn the TV off in the hope of sending a “we don’t let the kids watch TV” vibe? Does one tidy up better than usual? Does one put makeup on/buy in some cake/hide the FHM magazine with nearly naked lady on the cover? Anyhoo, I was frozen by indecision and inertia and did none of the above, and luckily she seemed to be quite normal and young and not too scary. She did say “Aw, Bless” a lot, which made me feel she was probably from Hertfordshire, and was maybe quite a bit younger than me. This I shall have to ponder more deeply.

It turns out, in the course of the visit, that we can only get a uniform from John Lewis on Oxford Street, which makes me feel poshily reassured. Going to Tesco would not have had the same sense of occasion – after all, I am a bit snobbish. And we agreed that Barnaby would have school lunches in the cafeteria, rather than last-minute manky peanut butter one from me. I figure one good meal a day would absolve me from feeding him well. So it was all very nice, and I have the profound feeling that sending my firstborn baby off to school is going to be GOOD! The tears will cease after about a week, she tells me. His rather than mine, I am thinking.