You’ll be ever so pleased to know that I am no longer infecting the world with my baby gas every time I walk more than two meters. In fact, I am *quite* calm and restrained again in the bum department. My stomach is sticking out just enough to make people give me a seat on the tube, which is nice although not entirely necessary yet; and sadly, my bosoms stubbornly refuse to grow. Still sore, still tiny, but with just enough of a hang to look as though they are depressed. In a bikini, I look like I was made out of thick, badly rolled tubes of plasticine and then stood on by the dog.

But no matter. It’s the school holidays here and I am making the most of Casper and Ned being in a sports camp for half the week, knowing they are getting very tired out by youths who are getting paid by Westminster Council to play endless games of Camouflage and Hide The Flag (or something – when they get home, they are too tired to talk and I am bad at feigning interest). The others are either going to a dance class (Noah – too young to be self-conscious – hurrah!), playing endlessly with the incomplete Playmobil Nativity Set (Otis – the set has been out of bounds and stuck in a cupboard for many years because the kids don’t respect the importance of the Three Wise Men sticking together, and they lost Baby Jesus about 10 years ago who has now been irritatingly been replaced by a Lego figure, and the animals are also now an assortment of differently sized plastic polar bears and bloody dinosaurs and it KILLS ME but I have lost my resolve and out it has come) and playing on phones and getting mad about Fortnite (Barnaby, obviously).

So – I have pulled the plugs out from the stupid PlayStation and hidden it, because sweating hairy 13 year olds should be outside or drawing, not losing their hours and days virtually killing things.  All the kids are very mad about this, but I have to get tougher and be the boss. Things gonna get harsh round here.

Case in point – this morning, Otis went on about me making him scrambled eggs, and I did, and he ate about two mouthfuls of my precious Burford Brown eggs and then deemed himself full. This made me very shouty but luckily, in a household crawling with young boys, there is always someone who will hoover up the leftovers, so I let it slide with some sort of heard-it-all-before rant about respecting eggs. But then Otis went on and on about me making him a hot chocolate, and I did, and then I heard him and Ned screeching in some sort of loud, exciting game, and later I discovered they had taken the hot chocolate outside, sucked it up with a bike pump and sprayed it all over the windows. OH THE HILARITY!

So I grabbed them both and made them watch me tip all of the Green & Black’s hot chocolate powder into the rubbish and swore I would never, NEVER, buy any more of it again and I would never, NEVER make them hot drinks as long as we all shall live. They were sad and a bit shocked and Casper was very indignant because he says he would still like a hot chocolate every now and then and now he can’t and HOW’S THAT FAIR? And I said he needed to get angry at his wasteful little brothers and then plugged in my headphones so I could listen to the sweet tones of Pandora and Dolly discuss cultural touchpoints and new books I need to buy. So much more rewarding.

In other parenting news, I took Barnaby for a haircut at Aveda which I have justified as an alternative to the Period Party I would surely host if I had been lucky enough to have a girl at some point over my many years of making people. He’s given up on the idea of going to the barber – he said the barber cuts it too short and he wanted to go “somewhere nice like you do, Mum – somewhere expensive” and I was horrified and told him I would only spend £25 and he would have to pay the difference out of his small cash fund. But he said he wouldn’t pay, but also wouldn’t go back to the £11 barber, and so we had a massive hair standoff. I relented, finally, because it is too hot to have a wavy stinky mop of boy-hair in this heatwave and it turned out that Aveda would be £32, not the £40 I was imagining. So he went, and I sat with him, and drank coffee and read magazines and air kissed everyone and he was really sweet and grateful and he got a proper, flattering haircut and sort of – kind of – came of age. Or something. It’s like I witnessed a change in him, of an outward step into manhood – one in which he really owned his gangly, changing, tricky new body and felt proud of himself and felt mature and deserving of something grownup and adult, and it was really lovely. Plus everyone said he had a great head of hair, it finally looked clean and the stylist Kristy gave him the very best choppy, textured, cool haircut ever. We left with some pomade, a larger bill than I had thought,  and a quietly happy tall kid who is emerging into new manhood feeling less like a dork.

 But It’s Not All Posh Hair Cuts

There have been tears and public shaming. Let me talk you through.

On the last week of school, I picked up Casper and Ned with the dog and both kids ran to the bus while I carried on walking home. They have taken the bus together many times, and it is madness to take it because it is quicker to walk once you wait for it and it drops you off only halfway home, but it was a hot day, and so why not, I thought – more time for me to listen to Pandora and Dolly without content requests for a Sainsbury’s stop of for croissants. I crossed the road at the ugly and polluted Edgware Road junction under the Westway and then I see Casper has run back to me. Casper said Ned wanted to wait for the bus by himself, but that he couldn’t be bothered to wait with him. So we carried on and got over the road to the Hilton, but I looked back to try and see if Ned was still waiting because he hadn’t taken the bus by himself before, although I wasn’t worried because I don’t think the kids should be treated like complete morons and have judged getting the bus to be both safe and reasonable, and Ned is no chump. But then I see Ned has materialised on the traffic island halfway across the massive road, looking sulky and sad like a Japanese cartoon and then I clock a man who was holding his hand and bent over talking to him but also scanning the streets for his absentee mother.  I weakly raised a hand and waved, and the guy seemed to be checking with the woeful Ned if I was, in fact, his absentee neglectful mother or just some sort of similar-looking mother-imposter who might well want to steal him away and sell him to work in the mines or whatever, and he stormed over the lanes to me, keeping furious eye contact the whole way and I thought HERE WE GO AGAIN.

“Are you this boy’s mother? Why was he alone? What were you completely unconcerned  when you saw us at the lights?” And THEN he pulls out his badge to show me he is a very angry cop.

I was both outraged by him and scared of him and I ranted in a very inarticulate way about what had happened and why there was no need to overreact and then I cried big gulping sobs. It was bad. He kind of patted me down and said it was ok and left, and I turned to the boys and said something (in between my crying) about social workers and the dangers of appearing like you are a shitty mother and how they can never take the bus by themselves again.

Oh Well 

Here’s a lovely haircut on its way though, and a shy boy:

And me, out with Celia and Sarah, not crying or farting:

After a long school holiday midweek day in Kings Cross at the fountains where we lost a zip card and gained some facial hair:

Noah turned 12 and we ate Portuguese tarts:

Ned, not by himself, not neglected and in no need of police assistance:

Til next time, then.