Came and went, as it does. We went to church on Good Friday because you can’t expect the kids to pick up your religious heritage by osmosis, you know. Otis apparently thinks that Jesus has something to do with Van Gogh, so we realised something has gotten a little lost in translation. We went along to the children’s service at the fancy Anglican church down the road but there were only us there, apart from the family who put the service activities together, the door guy’s kids and the vicars. LUCKILY we bring such a hoard of children with us – enough for three regular-sized families, am I right? So the kids got the full attention of the curate who organised the creation of an Easter garden, complete with a small Gethsemane made of small herby shrubs, crosses, a tomb (actually a terracotta pot on its side), sandy bits for the path, rocks, a biggish boulder that would have been rolled away for the Sunday service but we wouldn’t know because instead we were having an egg hunt and prosecco-and-cassis brunch in the garden with some new, exciting, fresh-from-the-telly ‘sleb neighbours. That’s a whole other story – meanwhile, I PROMISE I will do my best to ensure Otis learns how the Easter story ends, and that there is much more to it than thorns and blood and post-impressionism.  the garden with

What news? I weighed myself and I am not getting any skinnier – I was expecting some sort of natural thinness to occur after the baby, but apparently I am just gaining kilograms, little by little, to my shame and horror and sadness. So it’ll be OUT with the two pieces of toast and large boiled eggs of a morning and OUT with the devil-may-care attitude towards cinnamon rolls and OUT with half price Easter eggs and IN with rationing and running. I shall pick my vices wisely, because without something to look forward to of an evening, no one would last very long. Mine shall be negroni cocktails. I make my own now and they are like medicine. Literally, they taste like medicine. But in an acquired-taste kind of way, you know? Like, drink enough of them and you rather get to like the numbed face feeling. The running has been once a week now cranked up to twice, and I think I can squeeze in another from Monday. It’s all very dull to talk and think about, but those upper arms aren’t going to fit into my breastfeeding-friendly button up shirts by themselves. I have a new sample sale Erdem shirt which I bought in a size 16 which is perfect for the bosom situation and was reduced from £680 to £65 but it barely contains my arms – quite literally bulging at the seams, so needs must.

Also, I have a new Chanel jacket which fits on the wrong side of snug. Remember the Chanel jacket I bought from a charity shop for £62 years ago? It was green and pink and cream striped and reminded me of Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins, and I could never figure out how to wear it without looking a bit mental, so I sold it for £245 on eBay. Great work, I hear you say. What a profit! Well, yes, it was, but as soon as I sold it, fuelled by my homemade negronis, I immediately bought another one from The RealReal which was reduced from £450 to £255 + £30 shipping. So far, so reasonable and actually brilliant –  right? But then, alas, I discovered that I owed UPS £93 in taxes because it came from the US. Which throws all of my clever up-selling maths into some sort of ugly cauldron of false economy and shame. And it arrived and it is a bit tight on the arms. WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME? Let’s not even get into the fact that I have alerts on my phone to tell me about Chanel jewellery auctions and that I bid on a horrible necklace a month ago, and accidentally won it and now it is on its way to me and I will have to flip it pronto because it is both so ugly and so emblematic of my conflation of happiness with buying stuff.

So that’s all a bit embarrassing. I did buy a very nice skirt at the Erdem sale which was £750 reduced to £100, and I wore it last week and THREE random people came up to me and told me it was lovely, so it isn’t all bad buying decisions – not all of the time, anyway. And it fits and flares nicely over the empty-sack post-baby stomach, so that’s something.

But really, truly, there is more to this post than overpriced clothing. The Easter holidays also featured Otis being run over by a dickhead on a big heavy bike in Kensington Gardens, ending up all bruised and bloody. I went completely apeshit and the young man on the bike probably went and had a cry somewhere after it was over. We also went to the zoo, National Trust gardens for picnics and egg hunts, the movies, Holland Park for the peacocks, Westfield for the Lego and Brick Lane for the dumplings.

Here’s the jacket that briefly made me profitable before I blew it on a tight-fitting imported substitute:

Brick Lane outing with eldest and youngest:

What we do when we get a tree and a swing and no one from the National Trust is watching:

Otis running off to photograph a peacock in Holland Park so I could do some work (as a diversion, it lasted about seven minutes):

Easter Monday at Cliveden  – the third time in a week. Not all of us are thrilled to be there:

Joy of joys – the baby. I am less into him today though as he did some sort of loud sad thing from 8pm until 1am last night, sending Mark onto the couch and me into eye-prickling despair. All smiles today though:

TTFN