Oh, it is a glamorous life in Londontown. This morning, after dropping off children One and Two, and heading back to Bayswater along Bell Street, strewn with lettuce heads and dog poo and broken glass, with sons Three and Four in the Pushchair’ o ‘Filth, I came across this guy:

WAGNER! Or, even, VAGNER! Only, this time he wasn’t crooning or leering at nubile young dancers – he was instead sitting in a very sleek darkened car, with a muscular bouncer-esque Arab, and he was smoking, and he looked a little bit incongruous amongst the halal chicken shops and the barbers at 8:42am, and I found myself PRACTICALLY KISSING HIM. Because he is sort-of famous, or at least, he was last year, and I got inexplicably hit with the famous-person-rush-of-blood-to-the-head-lose-all-sense-of-self-respect stick. I waved manically and blushed and he said “Hello” in a proper dirty-old-man kind of way. It was awesome. Heart pounding, as I left him in his Mysterious Car, I thought about taking a photograph, and texting someone. But I couldn’t remember his name, and then I started to think that perhaps he was not from the telly, but actually the man from Tesco, or the bank manager, or someone from the school committee. It was waaaaay too much for a Tuesday morning.

And then, this afternoon, long after the Wagner-magic had worn off, Mark told me that I smelt ever so slightly of wee. I tell you, it is highs and lows around these parts. For the record, I have sniffed, and searched, and think the wee smell is a combination of

a) fake tan, and

b) actual wee. Not mine, most probably. But who knows. This flat is actually a kind of shrine to incidental ammonia patches. On the chairs, on the cushions, the rugs, the newly washed laundry, the face cloths, the school ties. Possibly on the food.

Anyway, that was a little bit of a downer. But hark! Cheer Up! Here are some more photos of my children. (I am aware that photos of my children are really really boring to anyone who didnt birth them/father them, but heigh ho).

The baby in a Beatles t-shirt at St Michael’s Mount, and various Easter Egg hunting scenarios:

Ahem.

Some More Important Things To Report:

I have ikat-printed billowing trousers with tight ankle bits from H&M. They are a bit odd, and a bit pyjama-ish, and they have prompted Barnaby to name them “Ugly Pants”. And then to ask me if I could go back to wearing a dress. Mostly, these complaints/helpful suggestions are posited at me during the long and ugly walk along the A40, where we all cough with poisonous car fumes and yell at each other over the noise of screeching sirens and car engines, and sometimes attract the attention of the police. Today, Barnaby tried to engage me with questions of a lively existential nature, which was simply annoying and ill-timed, as I couldn’t hear him properly, and replying meant shouting into the A40 vortex of filth. He never bothers to ask me these kinds of things while in the relative comfort and SILENCE of the living room. It went like this, all shouty, and apropos of nothing:

Barnaby (really shouting, little face pointed to the pavement in the vain hope of finding some six year old boy’s version of ‘treasure’): “Can you tell me which stuff you don’t know anything about?”

Me (shouting, irritably, pushing the double buggy and wondering why my upper arms refuse to get muscly): “What? No, because I don’t know about what I don’t know about.”

Barnaby: “What? Can you tell me all the things that you don’t know, I SAID! Come on! What do you know nothing about?”

Me: “I CAN’T! Because then I would know about them!”

Barnaby: “Ok. Can you tell me instead about why some people kick turtles?”

Me: “Well, no, not really. I don’t know. Because they are mean?”

Barnaby: “WHAT? No, not “kicking”. I didn’t say anything about kicking. I said “liking”. Why do some people like turtles?”

AND ON AND ON UNTIL MY VOICE GAVE OUT AND I NEARLY PUT MY HEAD UNDER THE TYRES OF A BIG BUS.

I really do not know why some people are turtles-lovers, and some are not. You can’t just google that kind of question, either, as I have come to find out.

The other thing that is IMPERATIVE to tell you, is that I have finally made friends with ebay and now I have no free time because I am EXTREMELY busy looking for crocheted blankets, 19th century embroidery samplers, vintage maps of Africa and Royal Wedding commemorative biscuit tins to line my hallways like a mad cat-lady. This will be the ruin of me yet.