The Harridan

Daily Humiliations: Add the Dog

Posted on January 28, 2014 by theharridan

So, here is Magic, about a year on:

Relatively handsome, leonine-like, a noble beast, a bit foxy. He and I walk up to school twice a day, past the same kids and families and commuters. And he does annoying things like eat rubbish and pull me to the wall so he can sniff wee which yanks my shoulder and sometimes threatens to trip me up and my hands get little rope burns.

But the thing that kills me is that a large percentage of said kids and families are really scared of him, and do these daily dramatic and sometimes hysterical freak outs when they see us, sometimes with screams, often involuntary jumps, and almost always a massive sideways manoeuvre where, in the vain hope of not having to go near us AT ALL they throw themselves hard up against the curb of the oncoming traffic and they stiffen and lean back and stare at the Terrifying Dog Of Fluffiness. And he is always on a very short leash, attached to me, who is in turn attached to a sweet baby in a sling, with a bunch of small kids tagging along, all patting him and talking to him (when not kicking each other or scaling subway walls). And I wonder to myself

MUST WE DO THIS EVERY DAY?

And I feel embarrassed, and I apologise, and I sigh and wonder why everything feels so hard.

And on Saturday, I took him into Hyde Park and he ran over to a team of small boys playing organised football and he ate their post-match brownies. And on Sunday, I took him for a walk in the rain and he found a big muddy puddle and he started this embarrassing game he plays where he splashes and then he barks hysterically at the splash then he splashes some more and barks at his splash and it goes on and on and on. And there was quite the crowd of amused onlookers while he played his game, and then I tried to get him out but he was waaay too into his game and then a man walked by and tried to coax him out with treats and Magic The Greedy ignored him and I was getting very wet and bored and embarrassed as my calls of increasingly insistent Magic! Come! were utterly ignored then finally, after the splash game had gone on for about 20 minutes, a lady in Wellington boots rescued him and me from the shame of the splash game. He looked like this:

That face is what you call “Unrepentant” and “Not Bothered”.

So all of this embarrassment and bother has given me new forehead lines. LOOK!

They are new, and they are MEAN. They are there even when my forehead is resting. If I could be arsed, I would Botox them away in a thrice. See how my eyes are blazing with the injustice of Anglo-Saxon ageing? Even my nose seems to have taken on an outraged incandescent glow. Pah.

In other news, Barnaby is about to turn nine. Here is his birthday wish-list:

Longer than the Bible. You’ve got to admire his optimism, though, right?

We all got onesies in the sale. Mark has a skeleton, I have a monkey suit. They feel completely lovely and yet so revolting, kind of like when you are recovering from a vomiting bug and you wrap yourself up in an old duvet and it smells a bit like sweat and sick but you are too weak to do anything about it…that is what it feels like to wear a onesie when you are 36. Here we have a very tightly fitted Gorilla and a Wolf, dancing just like Richard Simmons would do, were he dressed similarly in a polyester animal suit:

CRIPES! It’s school run time – or, as we like to put it, The Dog Walk Of Shame. Here’s one last photo of the delicious Otis, who can now roll over, suck his toes, giggle and generally get me up twice a night. My Gina Ford Baby-Wrangling-Powers have thus far failed to work. But HOW CUTE IS HE?!?

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Baby, dog, Wrinkles | 19 Comments

Hair Situation

Posted on December 28, 2013 by theharridan

First, the bad news. I am moulting like a sorry dog. I would have said ‘I am moulting like poor Kate Middleton’ but her Hair Of Supernaturalness seems to have recovered from her hormonal lank-and-falling-out blip and it is Back. Which sort of well and truly ends my virtual sistership with her – you know, for awhile there we were both pregnant, gave birth in the same hospital (only a narrow slip road separating her private ward from my NHS public) we both exited St Marys with a balloon tum (with less of the international press photographing mine, it must be said). I live practically next to her palace, and we both have dogs. So I thought I may well just walk past her in Kensington Gardens one day while we wheel our boy babies around, and our dogs would hang out and then we would talk about our thinning hair, shrinking bosoms and our jeans that only do up if you hoist the excess skin up and over the waistband and I would give her sage advice about getting your babies to sleep all night and stuff. (HA! Thats when you know this is a work of fantasy).

But she is all back-to-normal, and her hair is thick and full and un-grey, and it mocks me. Mine is everywhere other than on my head, and quite a few of the bastards are grey.

But! There is a flip side. My excess hair can be collected up after a wash, in darkened clumps, and be twisted together to form small zoo animals. Everything from a monkey to a warthog can be fashioned, with a little imagination, and be stuck to the wall of the shower to wait for Mark to come and play the Guess Which Zoo Hair Animal Am I? He has never liked this game though. He says it grosses him out. I say, let’s make lemonade from the lemons on my balding tree, or something to that effect. Besides, he has been making some dark mutterings about me going back to work, and so, taking my Hair Animal idea further, I can’t see why I couldn’t pour some perspex onto my various crafted menagerie and sell them as brooches on Etsy. I am sure the Victorians did something similar, or the Crusaders, or something.

Anyway, I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas. We went to Devon again, and were the only people in the cottages and so had two heated pools and one jacuzzi to ourselves. We went to the beach and lost Noah, and to the Barnstaple Pannier Market and lost Cassper, we ate Nepalese curry, lots of pasties, duck, ham and lots of oak-smoked cheddar. There were no badgers this year, but I did find a dead toad:

Here is the pool which turned my Alex Monroe jewellery black and gave me a tiny bit of eczema but was warm and comforting like a bosomy womb:

Putsborough Sands before Noah got lost and had to be rescued by a bemused family:

The 15th century church in Tawstock where we had the Christmas Day service, and they asked Otis to be Santa:

We drove everything dawn in the Bad Air-Polluting Landrover (we discovered a little too late that driving it incurs a daily £100 fee in central London…ahem) and fitted everyone in, presents and Christmas food and clothes and towels and baby paraphernalia, and little extras like four gingerbread house packets to make up and glue together and decorate with sweets. I tried to get all four boys to do it but was a bit casual with the icing mix (and used bloody fair-trade golden icing sugar which turned the ‘snow’ into a very urine-y yellow) and it was nearing dinner and my jumper was making me itch and I was hot and rushed and they all fell apart spectacularly and this is how the gingerbread houses all looked:

Like a building site. I may as well have stomped on the packets in IKEA and be done with it.

Anyway, I want to write more, but the dog has eaten Otis’s last dummy and everyone seems about to start crying. I am not, because I spent the day in Selfridges returning some stupid boots I panic-bought on Christmas Eve and then wandered the floors buying stuff with the refund, and so I am officially Above It All, still adrift in the Sea of Consumer Euphoria and suchlike.

Happy New Year to everyone, and enjoy the break – especially you little summery New Zealanders, all smug in your tents and covered in fresh freckles. And I leave you with this tiny photo of our Christmas lunch. x

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Sad Story About Falling Over

Posted on December 14, 2013 by theharridan

Hello all. I am not going to talk about the baby, except to say that it became apparent to me at about 11:55pm last night after the work party and the associated prosecco/brandy/bitters/exploding sugar lump cocktails (?) malarky that the baby is really The Greatest Baby Of All Time. And if you abbreviate that hefty moniker to GBOAT, then you have G-Boat. Which is quite possibly an excellent nickname for him, even though Otis is so much quicker to say. But less meaningful, if you follow.

So. I have had an eventful month, one in which I fell over face-first with the baby in the sling in front of a busload of early morning commuters at a full bus stop and I let go of the dog lead in my valiant attempt to shield the G-Boat’s face from being skinned on the pavement and my nail polish got ripped off instead and there is now a hole in my post-baby jeans and big knee bruises and I admit, I cried. But PHEW G-Boat’s face was perfectly unharmed. And WHY did I fall over at the bus stop with a baby in a sling in the early morning School-Run of Doom, you ask?

The answer depends on your perspective. Now, with a clear head, less anger, time to have processed said events, more sleep in my sleep-bank, hormones a little less haywire, I suppose I have to say that I fell over because I was manically half-running to school with a dog in one hand and dragging a reluctant child in the other, and the broken pavement tripped me up a little and perhaps, my ankle boots with the mid-heel, worn to give the illusion of longer legs (at 8:18am, no less – never let an opportunity to fake a leaner silhouette go by, Ladies) may have been a contributing factor. On the day, however, as I so hissily weepily angrily told the boys – IT WAS THEIR FAULT. And, to be fair, I had had a few days of being the victim of Casper’s new manipulation – the one in which he sits down on the pavement en route to school, and refuses to move. Past rationale for the very public foetal-street-postioning has variously been:

a) He wants to hold my left hand, and Ned is holding my left one. The right one is free, but unacceptable

b) He was trying to tell me something and I didn’t respond correctly

c) I didn’t zip up his bag

d) his jacket has slippery shoulders, his bag keeps falling off and I won’t carry it for him

e) I folded a piece of paper he handed me. Folding wasn’t ok

etc etc

So, in response, he curls up in protest on the dirty pavement in amongst the A40 tumbleweed and mouse carcasses. I try to ignore it and keep going to the next crossing or just out of sight at the next bend, but mostly, he still has not moved at that bluff, and by this point there is about seven people crowded around him, asking him where his mother is, and pulling out their iPhones to call the police, and so I finally give in and and walk back and pull him up by the arm and hiss at him that he will have to go STRAIGHT to the headmaster when we get to school, and then we have to kind-of-run to make up the time and only then do I find him half a block behind, walking with tiny steps and staring at me like Shriver’s Kevin. We wait, watching various traffic light cycles go by, the time ticking on, and he catches up with us and tells me that he walked like a snail because I was rude to him.

So that day, the falling down day, I had had a bit of the pavement sitting and snail walking, and I was consequently raging along in my ungainly half-run pulling Casper along with me, ranting about this awful behaviour, and so I went splat.

Sometimes I feel very mad, doing this job.

But then, you go see Santa, and everything feels ok again.

Here is a much less dramatic and entirely painless autumnal jaunt through Santa’s wood to the wishing tree via reindeer feeding at Crockford Bridge Farm. Sometimes, we are perfectly sitcommable.

And there was a birthday brunch at The Wolseley with N, who has been my friend since I was 12. She looks as beautiful as ever.

And here is G-Boat, dressed in both lemony/minty knitting from the church fair and his warm bear suit. It’s the Little Black Dress for babies.

SAMPLE SALE TALLY

This was a mixed bag, I’m sorry to say. I bought Alexander McQueen black trousers for £50, but I didn’t try them on, and so discovered they were unhemmed and ah, don’t fit. Erdem was excellent, furnishing me with sharp patterned trousers and Nicholas Kirkwood for Erdem yellow pointed heels for £60, but Christopher Kane had an hour and fifteen minutes queue to get in and a fifteen minute coat check line which gave me three minutes to look before I ran back to the babysitter, kind of annoyed and embarrassed by my sample sale compulsion. Here is a highly unflattering photo of the Erdem haul:

If only I could actually wear them. I blame my sixth toe.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Alexander McQueen, Christopher Kane, Crockford Bridge Farm, Erdem, The Wolseley | 9 Comments

Babies Need A Passport, Doncha Know

Posted on November 24, 2013 by theharridan

I went to Paris yesterday, with Mark, and B and G, in order to eat macaroons and buy patisserie and search out some cheese and eat lunch at Georges, the beautiful restaurant at the very top of the Pompidou Center. The tickets had been a present for Mark’s 50th. And we had organised a babysitter for the big kids to arrive at 6am and we were going to take baby Otis in a sling. But on Friday, suddenly I realised that Otis had no passport. The thought just swam up to me through the murk of Paris-related things-to-do and once I was aware I hadn’t got him one, I felt like the biggest, dumbest dick. I sweatily called the British passport office who were very clear that no, there were no emergency appointments available for today, nor were there any emergency appointments available all week, and in any case, first passports were not eligible for the one day urgent service. I didn’t freak out though, because I had a Plan B – I called New Zealand House, and explained my problem, and asked if they could issue him with a passport. I was put on hold, then the woman on the phone said that Otis needed to become a NZ citizen first, and in order to rush that through, we needed an exceptional reason for it. I had already answered her question of “What is the reason for your visit tomorrow?” with a feeble, truthful but not very strategic “Erm, for fun?”. She said it would be 20 days just to get citizenship. Plan C was to call Eurostar just to make sure we actually needed a passport for an infant, and they OF COURSE said yes, you do. So I asked about changing the dates, but they were OF COURSE non-refundable and non-exchangeable.

So then, we were left with this dazzling array of enticing options:

a) hide Otis in my coat and attempt to casually smuggle him into France, or

b) use Ned’s passport for Otis and hope they didn’t notice that the small baby was, in fact, nearly four years old according to his passport, and fraudulently smuggle him into France, or

c) don’t go, cancel the babysitter, stay at home, and seethe with rage all day while shouting and weeping and gnashing teeth, or

d) leave Otis with someone, give him formula for the first time and hope for the best.

We chose d).

So Friday afternoon was a flurry of frantic organising of extra babysitters (one for the baby, one for the dog), asking friends to take the kids throughout the day, the buying of bribery food and the expressing of milk (an hour of Friday night expressing yielded about 40 mls – pathetic), last-minute taxi ordering and money exchanging and weepy whispers to the baby of “I’m so sorry! I’m so SORRY!”.

And so that is why yesterday I was to be found toplessly squeezing milk out into the toilet basins at Georges, marvelling at my porno bosoms’ freakish size and alarming woodenness, hoping I had locked the door well enough and that I cleaned up all of the wayward spurts off the walls. It was not my chicest moment, and Paris was distinctly grayer without my lovely baby (although my back felt distinctly less achy). I avoided checking on the baby for as long as I could, but eventually I found out that not only does he happily drink formula from a bottle, but that he didn’t really notice I was gone. The boys were farmed out to a birthday party, play dates and to the movies, the dog was taken for 5 hours by a teenage dog-loving boy, the fish swam around in a daze and no one embarrassed us. It was phenomenal.

This is me, en route to Paris and its bakery goods:

Mark looks a bit stunned, i just look so pathetically grateful to have left the flat.

And so Paris in Autumn is glorious, the food brings me to tears, the aimless romantic wandering possibilities are dreamy, the waiters handsome and the eclairs are as delicious as you would expect. We got a bit lost between a local food market in the Rue Mouffetard and the Pompidou Center, then drank passionfruit martinis and ate foie gras and a jambon omelette at Georges (I am nothing if not a compliant tourist), marvelling at the view, over-Instagramming and smugly remarking how clever we all were to be in Paris.

Here’s the view:

And this is photographic evidence of the excellent wandering to be had:

We ended up in the market district of Les Puces where I nearly bought bakelite-handled butter knives, an old apothecary bottle and some excellent 1930’s oil nudes but kind of ran out of time. Sometimes the looking is enough. Here are the market stalls:

I missed no one, although I was very happy to see Otis when we got back, and to feed him and relieve the pressure of my enormous boobs, which had been stinging and leaking and poking other Eurostar passengers in the eyes. We paid the babysitter about a million pounds and ate apricot tarts for a late evening snack. It was fantastic. Totes should do it more often, but with less of the TERRIBLE STRESS. Ahem.

Anyway, I am aware of the rather first-word-problem-aspect of this post. So here, instead of moaning, is a photo of Richmond Park today:

There’s a stag in there, somewhere.

And Otis. He is the best.

Righto. See ya, then.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Eurostar, Paris, Richmond Park | 13 Comments

My Name Is Jodi And I Am An Oversharer

Posted on October 27, 2013 by theharridan

I know – I know. I know I have a few ‘issues’ regarding my oversharing tendencies and unapologetic storytelling of my childrens’ devilish antics, and I am completely aware that they are quite likely to sue me when they progress past youtube clips of chipmunks and finally one day read my blog, which is actually their blog, only they don’t know it and they didn’t consent. Apologies to my boys, then, although, it must be stated that if they behaved nicely, there would be nothing to talk about. So it is actually their fault, if you think about it.

And so to photos of the new baby. I am in love, and he smells delicious, and his hair is fluffy and his ears are a bit scaly and his little mouth all pouting-fish-like and I CANNOT GET ENOUGH and so I must photograph him at all times, and post it on Instagram, which makes my feed repetitive because all the baby does is sleep. So I have to take different versions of him sleeping, so I don’t forget, and so you can all share in his sleepy loveliness, and so you don’t forget. This addled, hormonal logic makes sense to me, even if I have made some of my less baby-lovin’ my friends block me.

Just for the record, it will all be over soon, I promise. I shall return to photographing the dog, failed cakes, sample sale queue lines and perfect Ottolenghi flat whites just as soon as the baby starts to seem less like an extraordinary gift. Until then, a rehash of the last 7 weeks! You know you want it.

So that’s it, then. A house full of boys and a dog and their residue and so many discarded socks and slightly-damp trousers and bits of drawings and chewed up pencils and sharp lego bits and piratical maps and scrabble pieces pushed down drains and stolen packets of Haribo and homework and dog hair and acorns and half-read papers and invoices and lip balm and keys, always keys.

THINGS I AM CONCERNED ABOUT:

1. We had a seven-seater Renault for getting kids to school in the rain, and trips to National Trust places and trips to Westfield to buy stuff from COS, but we all got a bit too numerous and large for it, and so Mark sold it and bought this:

Now, that behemoth has to take us to school and to Devon for Christmas, but it is terrifying to park, it smells like a mechanic’s overalls, it rumbles and growls like an army truck, the radio won’t work and the GPS isn’t plug-in-able, there’s no automatic locking system, the driver’s door won’t unlock at all and so you have to reach across from the passenger side with a screaming baby in one arm to flick up the lever, the alarm keeps going off unexpectedly and IT IS TOO BIG TO GET INTO WESTFIELD! No more mid-week shopping for me, then. And the boys sit opposite from each other in the back, a perfect distance from which to kick each other in the shins until we have to pull over and deal with the escalating shrieks. It has made me wail twice, I’m not ashamed to admit.

But it is kind of cool, though, eh?

2. Kate Middleton had a baby six weeks earlier than me, and her stomach is flat and teenage-like. I do not understand. Baffling. Was it all just a fat suit and she surrogated Baby Prince George out in order to retain her waif-like figure? Pffft. Whatevs. Baby Otis is better looking, anyhow.

3. Robin Thicke. Dumb name, dumb misogynist. A bit of a dick all round. But I am conflicted, Dear Reader! Because I really like that terrible, feminist-principle-compromising song! I cannot help singing it, and I turn it up when it comes on the radio! (Which of course, it no longer does, because of the behemoth’s non-radio-status). I am aware of the wrongness of it all, and I won’t play the album much anymore nor dance around the kitchen, imagining my bosoms to be as perky as that lady in the video. (I actually bought the album. I KNOW. I know.)

BENIGN ISSUES:

1. I got the diamonds for my birthday, and they are amazing.

Thanks to Mark, and to Baby Otis. The dazzling sparkle detracts from my under-eyebags and milk-vomity shirts quite nicely.

2. Halloween pumpkin gathering. We did this yesterday:

It was a giant pick-your-own pumpkin extravaganza in Surrey, with only a little bit of blustery rainy weather and poisonous fungi. We have succumbed to Autumn, and it feels good.

3. TV. Obviously, Breaking Bad has come and gone and we have to find something else to fill the aching void. Mark is watching Justified, which is seven kinds of stupid, and I am waiting to unleash the reputed delights of Six Feet Under. Any further suggestions would be very gratefully received.

Righto! It’s now time to make a lasagne and do washing and scold some boys and breastfeed and take stuff to the laundromat and work on my abdominals. Ahem.

Posted in Uncategorized | 16 Comments

This is going to be all about babies

Posted on September 25, 2013 by theharridan

So step away if other people’s babies bore you or gross you out. I have to admit to finding other people’s babies a bit oily-smelling and flaky-skinned and veiny with worryingly skinny limbs and generally not that interesting.

Mine, however, tend to be dreamy. Just look at my delicious 9.7lb Otis Willoughby, whose head smells of biscuits and whose thighs are reassuringly chunky with a good amount of downy hair and heartiness. Thank goodness for my efficient placenta.

The details: the labour was five hours long, and it hurt more than I remembered that it would. It was as typically undignified as all labours, with vomits and unladylike deep squatting and ugly grunting towards the end. That whole pushing bit is a little too close to dying, is it not? Then, I must confess, I was initially a little bit sad that Otis was not a Tabitha, faced as I was with yet another hefty purple-skinned black-haired lusty boy, but then that lovely little face and tiny little murmurs and good smells changed my mind fairly quickly. (PHEW). Having a newborn is simply lovely, and precious, and I would really really like to have one more baby to even out the numbers. Just sayin’.

The breastfeeding is all normal, in that my poor boobs have been torn and scabbed, torn and scabbed and now only one is toe-curlingly sore. The other is just eye-wateringly painful. Ha! And they insist breastfeeding shouldn’t hurt! I say, tell the truth. It hurts, then your poor nipples get fierce and then weeks later it is fine. You stop weeping at each slightly-incorrect latch-on, and you only whisper swearwords under your breath, and you hope that the various lumps you can feel are not some brewing mastitis-malarkey. And you learn to shield your poor nips from the shower spray, and you get good at wrapping yourself up in a towel post-shower in elaborate origami folds so as to ensure no piece of rough towelling gets close to your huge, throbbing formerly-unremarkable bosoms. And because it is your fifth child, no one bothers to look up from their obsessive pimp-my-landrover youtube tutorials while you whimper over in the Breast-Feeding Corner Of Pain. (That’s a whole other blog-post…Ahem.)

The nighttime wakings are tiring but kind of lovely, because you get your little squirmy baby to yourself, and you can play one-handed Words With Friends in real time with your NZ-based mother. And you can catch up on America’s Cup-related news before your husband wakes up and be the first to tell him the worsening news. (OH! OH! That whole sorry saga kills me, just KILLS ME!).

Speaking of husbands, here I pause for some vital advice to all Husbands Of The World:

Please refrain from yawning loudly all day and telling your barely conscious wife that you fancy a sneaky nap after lunch. KEEP THAT TO YOURSELF. Keep that little insidious nugget in your head as a harmless fantasy, and do not act upon it, even if you are convinced that you are coming down with a cold. You will make your sleep-deprived wife with the bleeding boobs and disposable knickers REALLY REALLY MAD. If anyone can have a sneaky nap, IT’S HER!

I hope I have made myself crystal clear.

In Other Non-Baby News:

1. I have finished the first part of Breaking Bad Series Five. I was a bit surprised by Walt’s humanity bypass. And he also became MacGyver. Where can he go from here? (All you with Netflix, don’t tell me.)

2. I am now attempting to love Homeland. Damien Lewis talks without opening his mouth, which is quite awesome, but also distracting. And his wife had an ill-advised mullet until she cut the ‘party bits’ off at the back. Deeply, deeply distracting also.

3. Casper has been in trouble at school three times in the first three weeks of the new school year, culminating in yesterday’s Red Card of Shame. According to my other (perhaps over-dramatic and not very sympathetic) boys, that is one step away from SUSPENSION. What a way to start the new year off, and with a new teacher, too. Sigh.

4. We have been showered with gifts and meals and cake since Otis arrived, and I haven’t had to cook or think about domestic boringness. Thanks for that, kind friends. Its like a birthday in my flat every day, with gifts and visitors and cards and flowers. As it is my actual birthday next week, and I will be turning an ancient and forgettable 36, I am making the most of the gifting and general celebratory atmosphere while I can. Take it where you can get it and all that. I have been mentioning how much I need some diamond studs to replace the one I lost while running around the park, and have been priming the kids to tell their dad how much I need and want them, and putting the auction house website on all our mobile devices, but I fear it is not going to happen. I shall keep you posted.

5. My stomach is doughy, but not as doughy as the last four times, and I am putting that down to that running I did, sooooo long ago. I have a plan to start running again, but not until I can at least walk to Boots without feeling like my nerves have been rubbed raw. I reckon another few weeks off of everything is in order? Including cooking and basic household chores?

Thanks for indulging me with my baby-talk. It’s going to be like this for awhile, at least until the hormones wear off. I will sign off with this little gem: Magic has been neutered, and he has to wear this Edwardian frill for another few days. He just rolls with it, ya know?

Posted in Uncategorized | 23 Comments

Repulsive children who make me cry and who are remorseless

Posted on September 3, 2013 by theharridan

There may be a tiny bit of moaning in this post, a bit of more-than-usual whinging about the children, mostly due to my terrible advanced pregnant-ness and the hormones and the tiredness and the ligaments and the endless demands for toast and the constant maiming… Just a heads-up. Feel free to read no further and go find a pleasant blog with nice stories to tell and photos of creative ways with origami paper. I would.

My breakdown has slowly unfolded since we returned from Turkey – The Land Of Husband-On-Holiday-&-No-Domestic-Crap-To-Deal-With. It is still school holidays, and the weather has been gorgeous, and mostly I really like the kids, and spending time with them and doing holiday stuff and sleeping in and bumming around, doing touristy things and watching movies and mainlining ice cream. But then,at some unspecified moment, the goodness/badness delicate balance topples over spectacularly and you find yourself weeping by 9am.

Yesterday, in a typical almost-good-day we walked back from the park where there had been no sand-throwing or dramas with strangers or lost children requiring the help of the police over a decent period of three whole hours, and so we walked to Oddonno’s for gelati as a high-five to us all. We got there, the kids order raspberry and mango sorbets, vanilla and salted caramel, we sit at our usual booth overlooking the ice-cream-makers through the big windows, and then Casper starts kicking the other kids’ legs and then they kick back, and soon they are all on the floor, writhing and kicking and yet, skillfully, attempting to finish their ice cream, all at the same time. So we leave immediately, I tell them off in my now-usual-public-shouty-voice and I take them to Marks & Spencers for milk, because we have none, and we need some for the morning, as they do love their cereal. We get as far as the first Fruit On Offer aisle, and soon they have tackled each other to the ground and they are kicking and there is a security guard looming over them and then a checkout lady rushes up and looks around for the mother (who has lost her sunglasses in the violent fall-out and is actually primarily concerned with gathering them up, because they are a very nice Tom Ford ebay number and it is glarey outside) and then I notice the scuffle and the crowd and I pull them apart, like you have to do with locked dogs, grab as many hands as I can and we march out, but not before shouting at them (again, all loud and spittle-fuelled) that they will not get ANY CEREAL IN THE MORNING! At least, it shall be DRY MILKLESS CEREAL! And you will all be going into your room and there will be no TV and no iPad and there will be NO CHOCOLATE AND CHURROS TOMORROW FROM THE SPANISH CAFE BECAUSE YOU HAVE EMBARRASSED ME ONCE AGAIN BY BEHAVING LIKE BRATS!

Fairly Accurate School Holiday Good/Bad Maths Involving Percentages:

65% awful, soul-destroying, sob-making, heart-rate-raising and potentially dangerous owing to the cortisone levels

30% neutral (mostly because of TV)

5% of those moments where everyone is being charming/cute/funny/intelligent and compliant. Like below, a snatched snap of happy kids in the Portolbello Road sunshine eating nutella and strawberry crepes in a “rockin’ your neighbourhood” kind of way. And here, in the garden, when nana and granddad sent balloons and stickers and baby blankets for all, and they were enchanted and distracted from the usual default position of wrestling and crying.

But thats a scarce 5% over 7 weeks. Think on that, fellas, think on that. And there has been one solitary but fairly dramatic incident of dog-and-kid-walking that went wrong, involving the usual supermarket shopping traumas and one lost kid and the others who fight in front of oncoming buses which resulted in me getting home, running to the bedroom and sobbing and muttering “little bastards!” in a soft, defeated, choked up way. And, incidentally, wondering where my audience was, because what’s the point in meltdowns when you are on your own? But I did tell everyone about the sob-fit, which went some way to making me feel better.

BECAUSE I AM 39 WEEKS PREGNANT! And all this stuff is HARD!

Aaaand this morning, there was fighting, and so I banished one kid to the bedroom, and in his rage he threw stuff around the room and broke my beloved 1940’s British Rail tiny child’s chair which I use everyday to hang out the washing. So, no milk, no clean clothes, more crying from me. Then I came out, accidentally broke a glass, broke down again, told the children through my snot that I can’t wait to be laid up in hospital bleeding with engorged bosoms and stitches with a new nameless baby because I CAN HAVE A REST FROM ALL THIS AWFULNESS! They looked a little worried.

DISCLAIMER: There may be something in the repeated crying that is related to pregnancy hormones and thus an incapacity to deal with things in my usual robust way, and maybe the lack of sleep owing to the useless bladder and huge stomach that suffocates you with its weight and girth, and the new cough that splutters out of my throat as soon as I relax, so I will give you that.

Anyway, I went off to Aveda to drown my sadness and resentment and got my brows blackened and my hair yellowed, all of which causes Mark to wince just a little bit. Here is me, eyebrows hidden in shame, nose looking mighty, but the face is a face of calm, because for three hours no one spoke loudly to me or tried to steal food or tipped anything over or hurt anyone. There was just whale music and massage and magazines. I could live there.

I think there is a hint of detectable sadness at returning home underneath that fluffy composure.

So, I have about a week to go before that new baby squeezes out and life has to rearrange itself around the mewling infant. And school goes back, and Ned returns to nursery a few days a week, and I have to stop avoiding chores like lifting stuff and doing bookwork. And, the stupidest thing of all stupid things, is that I will miss those little buggers terribly, and I will start longing for the next holidays. I is mental, innit.

Here’s some authentic tweaking at the Notting Hill Carnival.

Here are pasteis de nata from the Lisboa Patisserie on Golborne Road – a kind of thick, lemony custard tart from Lisbon. These are extraordinary. We bought 20, ate them fast, then returned to buy another 22.

A brief visit to the British Museum to follow a kid’s trial, before it descended into chasing each other around the Indian wood carvings and a bit of dangerous climbing onto marble light wells. It ended at Pizza Express with some unfortunate fisticuffs.

Enough of my parental woes. My next post shall hopefully be photos of a nice baby with a reasonable name, nothing rhyming or chavvy or comically themed. Until then!

Posted in Uncategorized | 29 Comments

Turkey and Skin: Take 36

Posted on August 8, 2013 by theharridan

We are back! Back from the south-west of Turkey, from a lovely villa in a little ghost town named Kayakoy, where there were lizards and huge grasshoppers and tortoises and 38 degree heat and so many ways with a vegetable. And water like this:

And ruins like this:

Hour-long treks up to the top of pointy mountains and back again, causing a few scrambly falls and blackened toenails and much, much sweating like this:

A sneaky tortoise in the garden:

and some grunting camels at the foot of Kayakoy, ready to ride for a few lira:

and a perfect villa with a shady, breezy treehouse and a pool which attracted dragonflies, frogs and bats at dusk:

There was one split lip, appalling behaviour at the airports both in and out, some thieving of gemstones, a little bit of exotic-creature de-legging and random crushing, daily violence and one blocked electric toilet on a boat, caused by some experimental throwing of shells down the loo, which caused the boat owners to don latex gloves and go fishing in it. Daily swims, daily ice creams, too much nutella and cocopops and the children’s first foray into fanta and coke, which of course made them mental.

I did a fair bit of this:

And read Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn, Birds Without Wings by Louis de Benieres, May We Be Forgiven by AM Homes and Margaret Atwoods’ The Year of the Flood. And we ate out once a day and I forgot about domestic chores and how rubbish they are.

These guys had a wonderful time, with only a bit of blistering sunburn, water-logged ears, itchy bites, heat rash, some wetting of the villa-beds, sun-cream hysterics and wounds. Casper was very keen to spend the night in the melon patch with this guy, who protects the melons from wild pigs with his stick and his saucepan lid:

His family also harvest sea salt from the rocks, make their own bread daily from the wheat they grow and mill, sell tomatoes, olive oil, figs, peppers, honey from their hives, melons, plums, pickled courgettes and chilli, goats milk, bunches of oregano and thyme from the hillsides. It was all a bit humbling for this incompetent Waitrose snob. They also have a cottage to rent out at their little farm, which is cheap and cute right in the middle of their home industry, and close to the sea. Here’s the link if you fancy it: http://grandpasholidayfarm.blogspot.co.uk.

And here are the melons, and the brilliant bread (good with nutella and dripping butter):

It was awesome. And now we are home, and we have to cheer up, and start getting ready for impending new babies, and get used to walking the dog, and do homework and awful stuff like that. The dog seemed to have a lovely time with our flatsitters, although he did eat our curtains and our Turkish rug, a few shoes, toys, and a baby blanket. And he has learnt to escape through our gate onto the road and into the dog-forbidden-zone of our garden, which has seen me run/waddling after him twice in two days and having to carry him home in my arms, squirming and licking my face while the shock of the run/waddle threatens early labour and much oogling from neighbours.

AND IN OTHER NEWS:

I bought a Clarisonic because India Knight said I must, and Gywneth Paltrow says I must, as does every beauty blogger in the known world, and because through daily use of it, will slough off my mid-30’s skin, only to emerge as beautiful as Grace Kelly in her Hollywood heyday. It must be charged for 24 hours before use, however, and Mark has soundly schooled me in the ways of electronics and battery life and though I want to start using it now, like NOW, so my gorgeousness can emerge a few hours earlier, I know I must heed to the Battery Rules Of Life. So I have had to wait, and it is killing me.

I shall report back.

One more photo of that Turkish water.

Now I must go and pay attention to the small children. It is good(ish) to be home.

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Too Many Toilet Rolls, Man

Posted on July 15, 2013 by theharridan

Yesterday, while I was in the middle of precarious mushroom-cooking, which, of course, means never crowding the pan, slicing the chestnut mushrooms all up uniformly, using good butter, letting it get brown and nutty-smelling, before throwing in the mushrooms at a reasonable heat, and then leaving them longer than you think feels right, and then a gentle cruising around the pan, with a last minute crush of garlic thrown in, and parsley, and a squeeze of lemon juice and generous salt and pepper addition, when I get a call from Mark from the top of the stairs asking for some help. I was Extremely Busy with the mushrooms as previously described, so I yell out I’M COOKING MUSHROOMS! which I hope he bloody well understands, seeing as he is the mushroom-lover and I am only really the mushroom-not-really-bothered-type and so he does seem to understand, and quits calling, and gets the children to help with his mysterious loot.

Down the stairs with bangs and scrapes and crashy sounds and sweating children and cursing Mark comes these SURPRISE! items of gargantuan industrial-sized domestic utility, thrown through the window as many of them wouldn’t fit through the door…

1. An alarming amount of sirloin steak (see the bleeding carcass taking up a shelf of fridge):

An enormous jar of peppercorns:

So many gherkins:

A tower of toilet paper:

A hidden army of paper towels, shoved in between the winter coats like a disappointingly temperate, absorbent, hygiene-driven Narnia:

And a catering-sized slab of salmon, just perfect for wedding canapés for a party of 200:

And while the items of suburban-housewifery-delight mounted up in the living room, obscuring the TV, the dog went up our stairs and perhaps excited by the amount of toilet rolls begging to be torn apart, he did a big poo just behind the gate where each member of the family (except for me, owing to the mushrooms) stood in and walked through the flat. And then the children started to make Rachel Whiteread-esque towers of pulped paper stacks and jumping on them and crushing them so that they could no longer be easily pinned onto the toilet roll holder and so Mark, cross about the poo and cross about the sirloin steak thundering down our outdoor stairs with bits of cement grazed into its frosty exterior and perhaps cross about my unenthusiastic response towards the new space invaders, shouted out in some sort of desperation

“ALL THESE ROLLS FOR ONLY A TENNER! AMAZING!”

And he really wanted to know if I was pleased. And so I just carried on with my mushrooms, and then went to clean up the poo, with a kind of neutral-face. Because, Dear Reader, I don’t think our flat needs more stuff in it, even if bulk-buying may make some economic sense. I DON’T CARE ABOUT THAT. I want my cupboards back, and my fridge shelves back, and those peppercorns will still be lurking in our cupboard in two years time. And as for the gherkins, as we currently do not own a Jewish deli, so I can’t see rapid consumption of them, either. As for that freakish piece of salmon, well, you know that fish and fish things revolt me to my very core, but you may not know that the last two bits of Heston Blumenthal’s salmon has gotten stinky in the fridge because M forgot to eat them.

Poor fella. He just doesn’t get it.

(Thanks to my lovely assistant Sue, who helped out with my photos. I am too pregnant to lift that jar of gherkins, obvs. And, for the record, she agrees that the cost-cutting benefits of buying in bulk do not outweigh the awfulness of being donked on the head every time you open an overstuffed shelf in a two-bedroom flat currently housing four kids, two adults, a dog, nearly another baby, and too many handbags.)

On a less whiney note, summer has arrived, in a properly hot kind of way. And school finishes next week, and Turkey will be MINE!

In the meantime, we have been strawberry-picking:

Finding excellent new spots to drink coffee while Ned spreads his impetigo around nursery (sorry about that, Small Kids – I googled those spots a few days too late to save you all):

A spot of flat whiting perched high in the Summer Pavilion on my way to see the Bowie exhibition at the V&A:

Growing ever more fat-tastic:

Attending a hangi in aid of fundraising for London’s only Te Kohanga Reo, complete with pois for sale, ginger crunch, a powhiri, polynesian dancers and a Maori cape that Barnaby spent three years’ worth of birthday money on:

And delousing everyone in the family. I’ll spare you the photos, but there were some massive little critters in Casper’s woolly head.

So happy holidays to everyone, enjoy the weather, I shall be back with tales of Turkey and pools, gulets and turtles, 40 degree heat and baba ganoush.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged bulk buying, lice, Te Kohanga Reo, Turkey | 7 Comments

Tuesday Fever

Posted on June 18, 2013 by theharridan

There is quite a bit of coffee going about my veins, and I am a little bit sweaty and darty-of-the-eye. HELLO TUESDAY! Tuesday was going to be awesome, there was going to be no kids until 1pm, and I was going straight from school dropoff to The Borough Barista for an excellent and shaky-making solo flat white, then to the Selfridges sale, where I could properly access/assess the racks of slightly soiled Miu Miu and ill-fitting Vivienne Westwood without being annoyed by children in prams. Mine, mostly. The maybe a sneaky look at the Matches sale for more of the same unlikely-to-fit fabulous items of expensive clothing. But Casper has a fever and so I am home, trying to be motherly and kind, and trying not to get a babysitter. I went so far as to text one, but I backed off from actual employment, because of The Guilt. It doesn’t bother me much, The Guilt, only occasionally circling my periphery like a pesky fly and very rarely attempting to land on my nose, as I have developed a kind of armour against it. It is called

General Disengagement.

My simple justifications are as follows:

1) They are loved

2) I do my best

3) They will end up in therapy anyway

And so I am mostly unburdened by much of the oppressive mother-guilt that lies so thickly in the WASPy middle-class air. But Casper got to me, and here we are.

Here are some photos of recent gadding about. Even though the weather requires tights and singlets, there is some weak sun appearing daily and everyone seems a little bit happier and healthier for it, and the summer calendar of excellent events goes boldly forward. Last weekend the Soho Parish school put on its brilliant Soho Food Feast, where for £15 you can get into St Anne’s church grounds for two days worth of the most delicious restaurant samplings for £2 a piece. It attracts very new, very sexy, popular foodie places, like Polpo, Brindisa, Rochelle’s Canteen, St John’s, and it is a total bargain. Mark got really excited about the burgers at Meat Liquor and GBK, and ordered us all two burgers each, which the children promptly unwrapped, noticed the cheese/gherkin/tiny bit of salad and pronounced inedible. Which meant that I ate three burgers and Mark ate about six. And the children wept. But there was dessert, and other little bits what we managed to squeeze in, and the kids went off to make vegetable sculptures and eat posh gelato.

Here’s the Brindisa stall, with the man very respectfully shaving aged parma ham while the food-savvy kids looked on:

And overpriced gelato:

And the children, recovered from their burger-accompaniment shock:

And both Mark and Ned dressed like toddlers in their backwards caps.

Masterful vegetable hacking, leading to undoubted sculpting wizardry:

I tell you, those children are GIFTED.

Not only with a sharp knife, though, on NO! It turns out that they are clever little urban gymnasts too, in the manner of stylish French inner-city teens schooled in the ways of parkour cement mastery! Yes! So, we were a little late to leave for school the other morning, owing to some usual stupid lost shoe/staring at the tv/running into the bedroom at the last minute to find something no one has thought about in weeks/desperate poo/forgotten viola type scenario, and so we had to run a bit all the way, with the less-than-melodious accompaniment of my shrieking voice telling them to stop being so slow and passive-aggressive and thoughtless in the mornings, and then we passed the bit near the subway against the A40 which goes deep underground about a storey’s-worth, under Edgeware Road, and I’m running to the lights, and shouting, and then I notice that Casper and Noah are not beside me, and have disappeared. So I turn back, losing all those precious seconds I have gained while puffing along, and look for them, and see they are scaling the ledge above the subway, one hand over the other like a monkey, slowly, determinedly, one foot in front of the other along the thin ledge, careful not to look down into the concrete meters below them, trying to make their way to the other side of the tunnel so they can scramble over the fence and then eventually get to me. There was quite the crowd of commuters assembled, watching, horrified, and looking around for the absent mother who, by this point has turned the buggy around so fast in a rage, and tipped poor old Ned out, then chucked him back in, and ran back to the kids hanging over the ledge, looking completely surprised that I was there, and only a little bit worried at the murderous foam round my snarling mouth and my superhuman strength as I reached over the ledge and pulled them back over the side in a very angry way. Here is the subway:

And the ledge, and a tiny human swallowed up in the depths of the concrete Tunnel-O-Danger:

I was so mad I nearly popped my baby out.

The recollection of this makes me, in my caffeine-ed state, get all cross again. I am all for kids hvaing the odd accident, and a bruise or two is not necessarily a bad thing, and risk-taking is good for you, but there is a TIME AND PLACE. Not when it is 8:26am.

Anyway, I have excited myself too much and may very well need a lie-down with Casper The Sweat-Machine. Signing off x.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Danger, Mother's Guilt, Soho Food Feast | 9 Comments