It’s been nearly a week since Mark and Otis left to fly through the night, and day, then drive for hours into the summery afternoon half a world away with jetlaggy dust clouding their vision and sinusitis colonising their nasal passages – well, Mark’s vision and nasal passages, at least. They arrived, there are no signs of that pesky coronavirus even though they popped into Hong Kong for a few hours, and now they are both spending time with family. Hopefully my dear husband will be making the tea rather than getting it made for him, but this is really out of my hands.

With little to distract me, I Marie Kondo’ed my drawers and have finally emptied our spare fridge (the one in the entranceway, opposite the front door to the left of the buggy, tools, screws, hammers, golf accessories and a massive surfboard) of all the food that usually Mark would have eaten as Leftover Lunch. Oh, how I hate Leftover Lunch. Sure, Mark may have had to take a hit by spending all that money and inflicting upon himself several hours (30-something in total) on the flight, but I too have sacrificed. I have eaten through the old cornbread and the wet unidentifiable curry like someone who doesn’t like throwing away things, but who also really hates leftover food when they are on a kind of pseudo-fasting period in order to slim their arms down enough to reclaim all those lovely pre-pregnancy silk blouses bought at sample sales on the days that they felt a bit like Gillian Anderson. I didn’t want to eat all that stuff, but my parents are postwar and so I have been brought up to believe, quite rightly, that we do not waste a thing.

I would have fed the formerly delicious, now somewhat worryingly old bits of food to the dog but he stole half a massive traybake brownie from the kitchen table on the weekend and has been shitting tar everywhere and so I thought it wasn’t the most prudent of ideas. He is on a lot of water, frequent walks, a vet-watch and strictly No Chocolate Or Other Things That Might Kill Him Diet until that dog poo resembles once again the crumbling log we all hate to pick up. But pick up we do, of course because we are good dog people. It occurred me today that since Karzan fixed our gate, the dog has not run away even once, and thus no one has yelled at me for bad dog ownership. This is quite a turnaround.

So life without the others is really quite nice. The bed is now massive – a sea of a thing, something to roll over and thrash about in while I marvel at how there are no oily man-head smells wafting over to me throughout the night. The sheets stay clean and smelling of shampoo. The bedroom is tidy because I put all of Mark’s weird stuff away in his cupboards, hid the portable pizza oven in his wardrobe and wiped down all of the dust next to his bed. No wonder that guy always has some sort of sinus infection going on. I’ve gathered up all of his loose change and given it to the boys, chucked out some stashes of very old chocolate bars and recycled the things I felt needed recycling. I get to chose what we watch in the evening, working through The Hustle, For Sama, The Windsors and The Great Pottery Throwdown and in the evening I read for as long as I like. I do not need my earplugs. I can’t exactly sleep very well without him there which galls me, but all in all, I think it is a fine short term arrangement.

We have had two of the boy’s birthdays since he has been gone and I have been part of a complicated surprise 50th birthday party for a very tiny woolly headed little lamb friend – all of these things have been a bit tricky to pull off when solo parenting. Thank the Heavens and the Lord Above and the Angels for our babysitter and cleaner, who swoops in, looks after the kids and shines the flat like a Christmas bauble. I wouldn’t mind marrying her if she wasn’t already taken.

So Friday, as part of the 50th surprise birthday plans, we met the Little Birthday Lamb at Selfridges after she had been busy in the Soho editing suite (cool directing job, doncha know) with some cockamamie story about getting our makeup all done together so we could see her before we escorted her home so she could go out for dinner with her family. None of the story really worked but she had the grace to go with it and not examine the nonsense we were spouting from our as-yet-mildly-made-up lips. This is me, slightly apprehensive but up for what ever makeup they thought I would look most ‘party’ in, wearing my ever-present Batsheva party dress which I thought was the greatest until I saw some photos of what it did to my waist. Please ignore my fingers which look like I have killed somebody and forgotten to wash the blood off. It is really just an unfortunate combination of dermatitis and badly removed nail polish.

Behold – The Before:

The AFTER:

So horrible, and yet quite fun.

Here we all are, me with weird hair and a lot of waist-girth like an old drag queen oak tree with the other two lovelies who got better makeup. From left is MAC, the middle is Tom Ford, and mine is Pat McGrath. So beige! So eyeliner-y! Ugh, I can bear it no longer. Scroll down. 

This is much more flattering because the light is not so department-store-harsh and we had all had had a drink. The pub makes everything better:

I would TOTALLY do it again though. I paid £35, got 30 minutes on the chair, came out with an odd pancake face but also with very nice lipstick in a great enamel blue case – the cost was redeemable with a purchase, so of course you would. FYI the Tom Ford makeup sessions are free.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Ned turned ten and I made him three cakes in total. As you do. Here are two banana chocolate cake triumphs:

Tonight, we feast on GBK burgers and milkshakes (except for me because of that whole curry/cornbread mashup) and watch any kinds of movie we like. No one will be permitted to sit in Mark’s chair though – it just seems all wrong.