Today I got rained on, and got blanked by a friend’s husband and my new Stella McCartney jacket was run over by my pushchair. Luckily, there is a pie in the oven, which may fix me. And I just busted the children still awake, with all of the lights on, at 8:15pm, making some sort of trap involving yoyos, rope and mesh tunnels. I got cranky and yanked the tunnel off the top bunk and the yoyo string broke and pinged me in the forehead which TOTALLY ruined my righteous anger. And there will be NO WINE to soften the wrongness of today (see below). It shall have to be extra pie, instead.

Anyway, to thoughts of Christmas. This year we are flying home to New Zealand to see family and friends. Before you get all envious though, with your thoughts of Crowded House and The Piano and Rachel Hunter and flightless birds, THINK ON THIS ugly little nugget of economy-related travel-doom:

It will take 27 hours flying time and it will cost us £7374.00.

Yes. The kids will be punching each other before we even get to Heathrow. I will be weeping in a toilet cubicle at the airport, wailing and sobbing and wrapping myself up into a tiny tiny ball. There will be wee-incidents in the waiting lounge. We will be sweating, the children will be shrieking. Everyone will shudder when they see us board. The baby will want to walk up and down the aisles from London to Dubai, only to fall asleep when we land. We will then be hauling everyone off the plane, to walk through Dubai airport at the equivalent time of 3am, only to get back on again for nearly 20 hours.

CAN YOU IMAGINE THE HELL? CAN YOU? DO YOU SEE WHY WE DON’T EVER DO THIS?

Except, this Christmas, we are. Oh, I feel nauseous just writing this. And how many ways would I rather spend £7000? Aaaaaand then we will come home to freezing London and we will be fined for taking the kids out of school for three days unauthorised leave, and so we will have to fork over £300 to Westminster Council. AWESOME. The jetlag! The plane illnesses! The 27 hour return trip! OH OH OH!

And in other middle-class-woes, I drank too much wino at The Providores on Monday night (which, as normal people are well-aware, is a school night) and I said yes yes yes to the Dog Point sauvignon blanc and the pinot noir and the Sipsmith gin and it all turned so unbelievably ugly on Tuesday morning when the children ran in screaming at 6:15am. The room was spinning and I was sick, and I had to lie down on the couch. It was AWFUL and I am blacklisting wine for at least one more evening. I was hoping that this little wino-free-period would make me feel thin and my skin would be like a shining dewy baby and I would spring out of bed in the morning, virtuous and athletic, but I feel the same.

Moral of the story? Wine-holidays are for the weak. See you at the bar, baby.

Fearless Casper Attempts To Insult Big Kids

And before I go, Casper, he of the permy white bighair, who has been in a little bit of trouble at nursery for poking other kids and hitting his best mate Harry, was in the park today after school, taunting enormous teenagers. His insult was a spontaneous creation, linking the worst thing anyone ever says to him (“You’re a baby”) with an extra word to really make it clear. I caught him standing near them but at a safe enough distance to be able to run away, yelling at them earnestly and desperately while they failed to notice him at all, with this:

“You’re a baby…..SITTER! Hahahahahahahaha! A BABYSITTER! Yes, you ARE! HAHAHAHA!”

I led him away, ranting and gaffawing maniacally. It was a sweetly pathetic.