My ear is blocked and all I can hear from the left side of my head is the sea. The ocean. The lapping of waves. It could be good, except it isn’t because I cannot hear WORDS or PEOPLE. My children could be saying “Please can you take me to the toilet right now, mummy – if you don’t I shall ruin the carpet” and my husband could be saying “Darling, it is time to finally buy you three stacked Tiffany Rings for all the children you have bore me so well over the last five years” and I would be none the wiser. I may be missing opportunities of truely massive significance. Or not. Anyway, right now, my useless ear is dominating all my thoughts. There are other thoughts in there somewhere – I shall attempt to drag them out in order to think of something other than the sensation of having a weighty and unsightly  conch shell strapped to the side of my head.

1. The Times seller on the bridge. There is a man with a big shiny smile who every morning as I pant and puff and sweat unattractively up over the bridge seeks me out with his kind eyes and beams his wide-mouthed smile and says ‘Good morning, Ma’am!”. The first time I was surprised, the second I was also surprised (this being 8:10am in the morning – it is tricky to be fully cognisant) and of course, now, we have reached a slightly uncomfortable impasse. As I come up the hill, I look for him, anticipating the cheery greeting and gearing myself up to respond in some way other than a neanderthal-type grunt, but then have to look away in case he sees me scoping out the bridge and interprets that as some feverish longing. It is all a bit awkward. Sometimes he sees me looking for him and I look away, quickly, at the kids falling out of the pushchair or the huge dribble of drying egg on my shirt or, even, the bit of pesky bra that is popping out from beneath my hastily thrown-on and potentially bad-taste-for-a-pregnant-lady strapless top, only for our eyes to meet after his usual greeting. I am quite clearly confused by this little exchange. Please advise.

2.Mark Ronson. I love him. He is so very very handsome and dreamy and I think he would always be stylish in dress and manner. He would maybe want me to be thinner, though. This is the part I do not think so intently about.

3. Successful brunch in Notting Hill. The Tabernacle. It was big, it had cushions, the waitress was pregnant and so didn’t hate the kids. It had chips. Brunch nirvana (except the coffee was a bit crap, but you cannot have it all). Batman approved, as did his thinly disguised brothers:

4. Whipsnade on a Sunday. In an effort to avoid the Sunday argument in which I get a sleep-in and Mark is therefore resentful for the most part of the day, and he exacts his revenge by being slothful and passively-aggressive about going anywhere or doing anything, and the kitchen is always too horrible for words when I finally emerge, like a mole, all tired and frightened of the cereal soup with crusty bits and the peanut butter smeared all over the table legs and there is usually a naked baby and someone has pulled all the toilet paper off the roll to make a hat and often the middle child is missing, only to be found drawing on the bedroom walls with green crayons with bits of stolen food crumbled nearby – well, in an effort to avoid all of this (repeated each Sunday without fail) I suggested we go to Whipsnade to see the baby elephant and it worked! We liked each other nearly the whole day. See below for the evidence:

My ear has stopped being blocked. It may be that this blog is carthartic in ways I cannot comprehend. Like, my ears respond to my outpouring of rubbish. That may be difficult to prove medically, but you know what I mean. I can HEAR! Tomorrow morning I shall fully embrace the screams for as long as I can stand. Goodnight, fellow Non-Hearing-Impaired-Readers.