Today is one of those hideous, defeated-before-you-get-out-of-bed days where everything is grey and oily-wet and you kind of ache all over and you feel like crying. It is a swimming day, so of course Custard has been quaking with fear and screaming at the top of his lusty lungs and been shedding very realistic tears, Noah has done about four lots of wees in his trousers and is once again spouting green slime from his nose. It is also the cleaning lady day, but in my awful boring pseudo-depression I even have a problem with that – because she comes so early and I feel guilty about the mess and then I do a bit of a cursory tidy-up but my big fat pregnant belly makes it hard to bend over and then the ennui takes hold of me and I just sigh. Adding to the pain is my unfeasibly sore squashed little toe and my green jersey bandeau top which keeps slipping down to reveal glimpses of either a little bit or the whole of my purple bra. So I am a skanky baby-mama as WELL as bad-tempered.

Even though I should be basking in the afterglow of my 32nd birthday, and even though I have birthday treats galore, some on my head, some in my wardrobe, some in the mail arriving slowly but surely, some I am yet to go out and buy myself, and even though I have a Birthday #2 weekend planned with a bit of burlesque at the Wam Bam Club and Daniel Merriweather at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire on Sunday, STILL I am in a grey, unreasonable cranky fug. For that, I apologise. Because I really have nothing to moan about and I am going to Greece in three weeks and Mark has lots of work and I have tonight’s dinner sorted out and the new Elle arrived today and I have a new Marni dress which matches my eyes. It may be a case of those pesky pregnancy hormones which have turned me into a temporary manic depressive.

So, anyway, I took Barnaby to school in the rain this morning and he insisted on wearing something with a hood. He too has fluffy wavy hair issues. So he wore Noah’s black duffle coat and when we got to school I told Miss L (she of the apostrophe crimes) that he was wearing his brother’s coat and that it had “Noah” written all over it because labelling clothes, or the lack of it, is a Serious School Issue. And Miss L just smiled and said a whole lot of “Aww bless!” which made me a bit (irrationally?) angry. It isn’t necessarily cute to wear your brother’s duffle coat, and I did not mention it to her for some sort of small-brother-appreciatiative-noises response. Bless who? For what? It made me want to go through the classroom and point out spelling mistakes. See – I have turned really really mean. I may need a hobby. Not of the Bully A Teacher kind, maybe more of the aggressive kickboxing/wrestling/throwing pots variety. Even better would be a post-4th-baby addiction to running. Ohhhh that would be good, as I would be stressless AND thin.

Here is a photo of Noah after our exceedingly bad brunch in Notting Hill on Sunday. We ate outside, luckily, as two out of three chocolate milkshakes got tipped out and onto the pavement within minutes of being served and the chocolate banana crepes horrified the children and my eggs were all microwaved in a rubbery, plastic-bowled way. And Charlotte’s baked potato had unidentifiable crunchy bits and the cheese was orange like they do in LA.

That is me in pink. That is all you are going to get.