The Harridan

The baby (probably him, but it could be any of the little blighters) took the bath plug and put it somewhere and we have not had clean children for four days now. We have looked everywhere, in drawers, under tables, in rubbish bins, in the shredder. I found a banana neatly tucked away in my pyjama drawer, and quite a lot of rotten apples and other decomposing delights, but no plug. And of course, every evening at bath time we have said to each other that we must buy a bath plug tomorrow. But you never remember that when you are walking past the hardware shop, do you? DO YOU? No.

So, last night I cracked. The big kids have showers but the baby shrieks with demonic abandon when you suggest he gets in there with the others, and so he has had good old-fashioned English sponge-downs but his bottom remains resolutely whiffy and I could stand it no longer.

So last night we tried to find a bottle or a lid that would fit into the 4 centimetre chasm which stands between me and a nice-smelling baby and we could not. Desperate, I was, and so I fished some manky homemade ‘playdough’ (in our house, this means flour and water mixed together until a clay-coloured paste forms with which you can ruin IKEA utensils on by leaving bits to dry and be stuck forever like some wheaten concrete) out of the fridge, wrapped it in plastic wrap and shoved it onto the bath plug hole and the kids had a quick bath to wash their bums while the playdough slowly disintegrated into the water like frog-spawny-pond-scum. And I had to hold it there while the children tried to foil my excellent New Zealand-y ingenuity by pushing their feet into the lump of dough and out of the hole. There was more yelling than usual. And so today, I have in my warm little palms, a bath plug from the shop. It may change my life.

On the subject of yelling, Mark has just informed me that the levels of my street-yelling alarm him, and possibly many of our neighbours and that when I yell, and he hears me from the bottom of the stairs, he is reminded of my younger self who thought that people who screeched at their kids in public were quite bad people who needed to read more books on alternative non-confrontational methods of parenting. OH HA! How I laugh at the memory of myself at 20. What a dick. I also thought that:

1. I would always be a member of a gym – my gym membership would never slide, no matter how far I sunk in life.

2. I would always wear black, because HELLO! it’s slimming! and stylish! and fashion editors wear it! and I look sophisticated in it! Colour is for CLUELESS PEOPLE!

3. I wouldn’t let my kids watch TV, eat crisps, have a buzz cut, wear pink, or swear, and I would NEVER hit them or squeeze their arms in a hurty way in the supermarket, ever.

4. I obviously knew more about stuff like feminism, race relations and Swedish film than older/other people because I studied some papers in my arts degree (actually I was probably right about the Swedish film bit). And I was clearly destined for an excellent career.

5. I thought the only designer I would ever love was Kate Sylvester (she who I stalked one sunny memorable afternoon in the supermarket) and that I had found my shape (50’s inspired, a-line dresses and skirts, cardigans, strong graphic lines. In black).

6. I would share all domestic chores equally. I would never iron, and I would never change my name. HA!

Well, it turns out I was a total meathead and to anyone I have ever been a superior ridiculous moron to, I APOLOGISE. Really. I knew nothing, and I think I may very well know less now. I am moving away from an incorrect assumption of clever wiseness towards a swirling vortex of complete ignorance and oblivion. Aided somewhat by sauvignon blanc, it must be noted. I think I like it better that way.

Photos. To lighten the mood, as it were.

The bath-plug-stealing baby. He turned two, and now acts like a crazed insane person. Here he is, once again refusing to get into the buggy and come with me. He screams and falls out of the buggy, runs towards the Grange Hill-esque brick wall of the school, turns his face away, and stays there for a REALLY LONG TIME. So boring, I die.

And his haircut. I keep ruining it, by snipping away at the dreds haphazardly and unskillfully. The Unfortunate Warhol Years:

Me and Mark, on a night filled with Champagne that somebody else bought. Thanking you, Unnamed Benefactoress.

The new french farmhouse kitchen table, only partially scarred by homemade playdough dried lumps, at use on a Friday night.

The balmy night this week we all ate our dinner in the garden. Spring is here! Kind of.

It turns out that in this glorious city of ours, in addition to eating Rowley Leigh’s burgers in the middle of a movie and visiting the Tate to help obliterate a room by putting stickers all over every surface and go and see Adele play at the tiny Shepherd’s Bush Empire for £16 (ok, that was 4 years ago, but still) you can ALSO go and find all sorts of historical artifacts sitting amongst the shingle at the Thames foreshore at low tide.

May I introduce Mudlarking, the funnest and freest and muddiest thing to do in the capital EVER. Fact.

So, it seems that the Thames is the largest archeological site in the world. It is all a bit tricky to get to, though, because the tides come in pretty quick and leave you stranded up against green algaed walls, and the stairs are unnoticeable rickety steep things dotted here and there. It is a bit dirty, although not like it was, so they say, and you really don’t need much more than wellington boots, babywipes, antiseptic gel and a plastic bag. And I SWEAR it is more fun than you would BELIEVE. So much fun that the childcare aspect of an afternoon is largely overlooked, kicked to the curb in favour of deepest concentration, as you scan the shingle and burrow into mud and bend over awkwardly as you attempt to find Victorian buttons and medieval shoes and Roman coins. So the smallest kids do fall over a bit, and they do cry and show you their muddy hands and despair over their wet trousers and try to pull their little legs from the old bits of rotting planks, but you are TRYING to find stuff and really resent having to look up from the rocks and so it is a bit hard to do both. Mudlarking and being a parent – totes incompatible. WHO KNEW?

Anyway, look at the hoard:

That is a most-excellently-laid-out collection of medieval ship’s nails, old crockery, Roman tiles, and 16th century handmade clay pipes. AMAZE. And a close-up of my treasure:

And yesterday’s attempt, from the same spot, underneath the Millenium Bridge:

And here we are eating fish and chips and drinking gin and tonic in the sun after our first successful anthropological morning poke:

More Boffinery:

The mud in the Thames is anaerobic, which means it has no oxygen and so things are preserved there. Basically, what you can find is just stuff that has been dropped into the Thames, accidentally or not, over a very long time. The tide and the increase of faster boats zooming along the river have slowly eroded the muddy layers and so new old stuff appears all of the time. How supremely excellent is that? You aren’t allowed to dig unless you have a £7.50 permit, and anything that you find which is of historical significance should be passed on to the British Museum. Apparently, the 400 year old clay pipes are so common that they don’t pass for ‘interesting’. That is a very odd concept for someone from New Zealand whose colonial past only goes back a few hundred years. Anyway. I have turned into a mudlarking bore and it is all I want to do with my weekends until I die.

Except for attending London Fashion Week shows, of course. Here is my actual invitation to an actual show. Mary Katrantzou, no less, which by association quite obviously makes me fabulous. See the genius hologram invitation WITH MY NAME ON THE BACK (you have to imagine that part):

And see the badly photographed show, where I was pretending to look like I had a reason to be there, other than desperately searching for a glimpse of the back of Alexa Chung/Anna Wintour’s respective heads while chanting to myself

Be cool, be cool, look disinterested:

I saw neither Chung nor Wintour, although they were there, according to the Daily Mail. Disappointingly, no one photographed me for their blog full of well-dressed fashiony LFW attendees, either. I expect no one was fooled by my ‘edgy’ look of geometric charity-shop polyester frock, old Kate Sylvester boatneck shirt, rabbit coat and babylissed hair. Ahem. Actually, the women getting photographed were all wearing comedy outfits, on the wrong side of ‘wrong’, with big spectacles and ankle socks and 80’s jumpers. So QUIRKY! so IRONIC! And they were all thin, and probably didn’t have dried weetbix smeared on their cuffs. Thanks, the Unsupportive Kids. So I didn’t feel too slighted. It was actually excellent fun – not exactly to the mudlarking degree of funness, but not very far behind.

Here is a model to further prove I was actually there, and not just fantasising:

So. In other news, Casper has become a very badly behaved child, worse than before, calling me an idiot very loudly in public, along with the old “SHUT UP’ favourite of his. I sometimes squeeze his arm, I sometimes ignore him, I sometimes strap him in the buggy, I sometimes yell right back. It is awkward and embarrassing and I think this is what they mean when they tell you parenting is hard work.  He starts school in September. I think I love September.

It is a rainy day but NO ONE IS BORED. That is because we are in London. I am so glad I live here. It is grey and drizzling, but there is stuff to do, and stylish things to be done and excellent food to eat and places to visit and chairs to buy. I am forever grateful. If London was a woman, I would have a girl-crush on her. I may well follow her around in a little bit of an odd way, like the time I spotted Kate Sylvester in a New World supermarket in Auckland, and I wheeled my trolley into aisle after aisle after her, pretending to be very interested in dried apricots and tins of beans, but actually willing her to be my friend. Sweating a little bit about it, maybe. Raised blood pressure, certainly, no doubt a bit of a nervous rash creeping up my neck. Anyway, thats how I would be if London was a lady. If that, er, makes sense.

So. Why? WELL! Look at these photos taken last Sunday. At Ham House, in Richmond. It wasn’t open, but that’s ok. There were the gardens, horses, and the National Trust tea rooms filled with scones and tea and (terrible) baked potatoes and small, clean families with only one or two kids all speaking French and being whispery. That is the kind of thing you can do when you live here.

And Yet Another London Thing

You can even get a babysitter to come at 6pm, like we did last night, and you can saunter down to Queensway with your husband, in your heavy liquid eyeliner and your Cherry Lush and your disintegrating rabbit-fur coat, and you can go to the new poshed-up cinema in Whiteleys where you pay double price for tickets BUT you get to go to a bar first and drink cocktails and then go and sit in the new theatre which has enormous reclinable seats, all leather and machinised, and (this is *amazing*)…you have waiter service all movie-long from staff who get you food from Le Cafe Anglais while you watch your movie! And you can keep ordering more drinks! And the food comes to your little table which is on the side of your huge leather chair (all a bit too much like being on a plane, perhaps) and you eat in the dark, kind of, and you spill stuff down your shirt and on the leather chair and in between the cracks but it is OK because probably EVERYONE does it! And it was too delicious! And too weird. We are TOTES going back there. I liked having three cocktails. It make the movie kind of dreamy and sleepy. It was The Artist. And the lights stay on a little bit, but you don’t really mind because then they bring out excellent desserts, and you want to be able to see your salted caramel ice cream before it drips onto your shirt. It was so excellent.

We ordered salsify fritters and aioli to share which I told Mark were lovely root vegetables which I think had something to do with the sea. He ate one, told me it was fish, I spat mine out, he ate all of it, I came home, googled it, found it it was actually just a root vegetable after all, and told him, and he just laughed and said my fish phobia was mental. It was an evil plan to have the fritters all to himself. So mean.

Anyway, we decided to bid on a farmhouse table this week and we won it and picked it up this morning and I now have a huge old table with which to have big rousing meals around while the kids behave nicely and we will all be so witty and charming we may as well have a sitcom devoted to our excellent family-ways. And so we whipped up to Portobello this afternoon to buy some old mismatched chairs. There weren’t any. But see? London again. There could have been some. There were some cinema chairs and more old tables and quite a lot of fish-smells from the fishmonger. Fishmonger shops are  my kryptonite. I shudder and cross the road to avoid them. But there were also lots of moroccan food stalls and Pizza East and men in bowler hats and the Lisboa patisserie full of pasteis de nata, which I couldn’t buy because I am now a running-type person who doesn’t eat delicious portuguese tarts. Sigh. But see how much fun London is? And look! Here we are eating passionfruit, banana and chocolate muffins from The Providores, the NZ Peter Gordon cafe of excellentness and overpricedness.

Totally ruined my I Love London So There theme, just then, didn’t I?

Yesterday, according to my new iPhone, it was minus 5 degrees outside. All plans of driving to a National Trust property to have scones and tea and play in the gardens or other equally ambitious ideas of going mudlarking on the Thames searching for clay pipes and roman coins were put quietly aside. Going out the door in this current cold snap is like walking into a refrigerator and closing the door behind you, but not in a *fun* way.

And we are all recovering from some terrible flu-esque swollen-gland sore-throat fevery thing which made us all sick last week and which made us wonder again why are we here by ourselves with no one to look after us. Sometimes you really need a mum/sister/cousin/best friend to mind the kids while you go and sweat your fever away in a dark room with only a few lemon and honey drinks to break the delirium. Casper got tonsilitis, Noah’s eardrum perforated and the baby suffered from very bad dreadlocks:

It has been a tough week.

My ‘running’ has been tossed aside for blankets and radiators and two episodes each a night of The Killing. (It is as good as everyone says, and Sarah Lund’s jumpers exceed their hype. And I now believe I can understand Danish.) All evening appointments have been cancelled, the school run has been undertaken in the car. I haven’t eaten anything other than chicken broth since Monday, and we have been through about 7 bottles of Calpol. I am waiting for my jeans to slip down off my hips in a thin snakey sickly kind of way. I thought not eating food for a week would show somehow, but the jeans still refuse to budge, the cheeks remain full, the arms plump like good italian sausages. I don’t even have romantic consumptive hollows under my eyes. WHAT IS THE POINT OF ALL THAT SUFFERING?

Anyhoo. There have been two birthdays in the last two weeks. I made Barnaby a spider cake, which was specifically requested. It was a triumph, if you don’t mind the shameless bragging.

Ned then turned two and he got a supermarket cake. The rule is, if you are too small to notice that your mother bought the cake for you at the supermarket alongside sausages and toilet paper on the day of your Actual Birthday, then you are too small for your mother to feel like she was Bad. Or something like that. There is, of course, no question that birth order has quite a lot to do with all of this, and that each kid after Barnaby gets a significantly less-generous quota of the Mother-Feels-Obligated tasks. Sorry about that, small fellas, but it is biology. Beyond my control.

Here is the Hedgehog cake blazing with all the ferocious intent of an actual furnace with a stunned and pathetically-grateful Ned:

Before I begin, I just want to clear the old potentially-parasitic-ridden air with the lovely news that I don’t have nits, just psoriasis. PHEW. So I don’t have small animals living in my thin blondey-grey head, just red scabby welts. DOUBLE PHEW. That dastardly plane journey from Brisbane to London dried out my skin like a little forgotten dead gecko on a flat rock in the Outback, is all. So. As you were.

This week I have started a running programme which makes me hobble around for days. I suspect this is normal. But maybe not. Ouch! go my little arthritic knees. But I persevere because I want to have lithe limbs like Anya and Amber. So up I get at 6:15am to run around the Round Pond in Kensington Gardens in the dark and hopefully not get either lost or molested. So far, I have only gotten lost. And of course I needed to go to JD Sports to buy full running gear and shoes and sports bras and new Reeboks and I also needed to buy an iPhone so I could get the running app. I am nothing if not organised and nothing if not quick to find a way to go shopping. So I have the shiniest pinkest unstinkiest Nike gear on the planet and I am yet to become lithe. BUT OH! My iPhone has, of course, changed my life, yadda yadda because now I have an app for everything! I don’t have to even talk to anyone anymore. And I can throw away my new diary and all writing instruments and watch and scrabble board and phone and camera and even my own sense of self and judgment because there is probably an app for that too. I love it all. I just need to remember to Act Normally When Real People Are Around.

So my first day of ‘running’ (actually I walk then jog then walk then jog in a painful slo-mo-type-way which must be excruciating for people to witness) I donned my new running trousers and they had a little pocket in them. Kerry who went ‘running’ with me said she thought the pocket was for keys. I thought it was probably actually for the new white iPhone 4s which I had gotten the day before and so I stuffed the new phone into my pants. It bounced out of my pants and cracked the screen. So I took it back and had to pay an insurance premium and then I got another phone after a two hour wait from another Carphone Warehouse store. But they switched over my sim card and so on Tuesday afternoon I had to pick the boys from school and all of us had to get on a bus to Notting Hill to switch the sim card back over. I knew the boys would be a pain but promised them frozen yoghurt if they behaved. We got onto the crowded bus, me with double buggy, them in front of me, and they turned to each other in the aisle, grabbed each other’s heads and immediately and inexplicably gouged each other’s eyes and strangled each other’s necks and screamed like TOTAL FERAL NUTTY PEOPLE. They were so caught up in the pain-induction that they didn’t even move out of the way. They just locked on to each other like weird violent pitbulls, oblivious to the stares and gasps of horror from the public. And I was stuck with the other two in the buggy, having to wheel it along and into the parking bay bit, finally banging the buggy straight into the two weirdo vicious kids and forceably separating them from the Lock Holds Of Public Humiliation.

Then I grabbed a sweaty welty Noah away from the red and bleeding Barnaby and accidentally whacked his head into the pole in the middle of the bus aisle which made him scream and then wail in a very uncomfortable long, loud kind of way. Then when I told them both to stop, and hissed and grabbed their arms in a very hurty grip, and got very angry and told them off in that everyone is looking and listening and I want to DIE kind of way, Noah yelled at me really loudly to “SHUT UP!”.

What a triumph. A moment of pure parental wizardry. High-five to myself for excellent parenting skills.

On Wednesday morning, I asked the headmistress to give them a proper bollocking for the hideous bus behaviour. She cleverly got them both into her office and explained in her inimitable South African terrifying way that someone from the bus had called her, concerned about some very shocking  behaviour from kids in school uniform from her school. She told them that this sort of thing would not be tolerated and she made them cry and said that if they ever behaved in a way like that again in public they would be punished at school through detention. It was genius.

I picked them up from school on Wednesday and Barnaby was red-eyed and sullen and told me that someone from The Public had spoken to the school about what had happened. Noah, cranky-faced and unrepentant, took one look at me and said “Don’t you ever tell on us again”. Nothing gets past that kid.

We are home again after that evil interminable flight. Every time you check the flight information board, the hours left to your destination seem to get stuck. 15 more hours until we get to Dubai, you say? And no food for Ned because the travel agent forgot to ask? Ohhhh, someone has stepped into the curry residue on the tray on the floor? Ohhh, the baby has been standing in a pool of someone else’s wee in the toilets? Ohhh, the husband has fallen asleep again while the children punch each other and the baby tries to spit at the people in the seats behind us? LOVELY.
But we got home to mild weather and a clean flat (incidentally the size of a doll’s house, which is a bit disappointing – people in the Southern Hemisphere live in Real Houses with Actual Backyards and even GARAGES IN WHICH TO PUT STUFF! Amaze…) and our excellent bed and power shower made us weep a little inside with sensory-related gratitude. And we have been mostly awake in the day, the kids forced to school yesterday, Mark back at work, me managing the sleep apnoea of the little kids. And we are now very grateful for the lovely month spent at home with our family, and we are wondering if we should move closer to them. Hmmmm.
So, Australia was very muggy and there were lots of gumtrees and noisy animals screeching at 5am and geckos who scampered up walls and kangeroos which were quite awful to look at. Kangeroos look like small muscular men with ears and fur and a strong alarming tail. We fed them. Look!

The kids were unaware of the wrongness of the small-man-masquerading-as-a-furry-animal-with-penile-worrisome-tail thing and fed them anyway. And there were snakes and lizards outside the supermarket for kids to stroke. You go for milk, you come back with the whiff of a snake on your hands. Astounding.

We were together with all of my family and their kids, mostly kids we have never met. And there really is a whole part of life that we have been missing out on – one where you have your family around and you do stuff together and you share a bit of the pain. You trash other people’s houses, yes, but they love you so it doesn’t really matter. Probably. And there are older cousins to inspire and intimidate and to play Lego with and to climb on and to annoy, and younger cousins to chase and scare. And grownups who think your kids are ace. This was all a total revelation.
Time for photos. I have neglected to include the ones showing the infected scabs which covered three out of the four children. Sorry for the inaction, little fellas. I will try to up my levels of this-needs-medical-attention-awareness. Ahem.

The beach! On one of the rare days we weren’t inside, sheltering from the monsoons.

Burgers and Uncle Glenn’s chips and fluffies at Schnapper Rock, Tutukaka.

Stinky geysers in Rotorua.

Lovely Aunties and delicious babies.

Stopping at the Karangahake Gorge for some essential stone-throwing

Cousins, uncles, aunties, grandparents, brothers and sisters all along the seafront with icecreams. How excellent.

Dorky beachwear.

Handsome baby Ned in his new Country Road outfit of terry-towellingness.

L&P and a mixed bag of lollies. In the car at Paeroa, naturally.

Grandad and Ned, having a moment.

Ten thousand pounds poorer. 

Merry Christmas!

Ahem. So, we are in New Zealand,some of us on a big marlin-catching glamorous boat, some of us in the living room at our parent’s place while we try not to get too sad looking out of the window at the oily rain while we wonder if the children will stop wetting the camper-van-seat-mattresses that they are sleeping on every night, and while we wonder how to get the weesy-pyjamas washed and dried in time before the Northland mugginess makes everything smell a little like wet dog. 

More Questions Raging Through My Wind-Swept Jet-Lagged Mind:

1. Will the children like it here better than London?

2. Does London miss me? Has it even noticed I am gone?

3. Why does is the bread in New Zealand (nattily named Breads Of The World in the supermarket over the road where, incidentally, I was an ace checkout girl about 18 YEARS AGO) all spongey and soft and white and samey? Did the French teach us nothing? (Actually, I suppose the French haven’t actually visited all that much, but still.)

4.If the rain continues, what shall we do to entertain the children? They will most certainly turn to furtive scribbling on the walls, that that won’t go down very well with the grandparents.

5. Who wants to play Scrabble?

6. Can I eat more of Dad’s baking without getting really fat?

7. Why does my new Christopher Kane tattoo jumper just look like a floral polyester middle-aged-lady’s top in this country? (I know the answer to that one, actually. CONTEXT.)

8. Why am I lacking so obviously in seratonin? Will my vitamin D deficiency get sorted out with all this rain?

However, the coffee has been routinely good, the first week at the bach mostly a ball of joyous fun.The cousins turned out to be excellent, The Salvation Army filled with people I have grown up with, all lovely and friendly and fun, the magazines excellent, the feijoa-related foodstuffs the thing of dreams.There is a little tiny 1940’s beach house we have our eye on. The is pohutakawa everywhere you look. Oh! And we finally found our wedding album after thinking that it was lost forever, hidden amongst boxes of cracking 30-year-old tupperware and mouldering cushions and dead mice in our Storage Room Of Unbelievable Junk.

And we had TWO bonfires at the beach with marshmallows on sticks, no less.

Here are some photos to make all of you in the Northern hemisphere a tiny big bit jealous:

The flight was as unspeakably horrendous as I knew it would be. It was so much worse than giving birth. Instead of a nice new baby at the end of it all, you got New Zealand Customs. They make you take your shoes off. There were tears. The children thought it was the middle of a very long night, having had about 4 hours sleep over two days. We were bleary and cranky and sweaty and sick with clothes that had bits of unidentifiable curry sauce all over in dribbly patches. Dry skin. Red moisture-less eyes that wouldn’t close very convincingly. Breath of the devil. Flat hair, new spots, burgeoning sinus infections, fat ankles, baggy redundant maternity tights, no tolerance for people, customs, relatives or kind friends.

Merry Christmas!

Anyway. There are ways to feel less like you are at the bottom of the Pacific on a rainy grey day. Bidding on Alex Monroe gold bumblebee pendants and putting DVF ipad cases into my shopping cart at matchesfashion.com are all things that soothe the homesick tender self. Buying stuff from amazon that will be sitting for me waiting under the rickety stairs to my basement flat.

Bayswater, I love you more now than I ever did. I will see you soon, after another 36 hour journey with no baby at the end. 

Fish makes me sad, too.

I am a little bit thinner. And I can drink prosecco with abandon. I have retrieved all of my unforgiving pencil skirts and other tight stuff out of the dusty suitcase mentally marked “Not To Be Opened For About Two Years” and put them back into the wardrobe, along with M&S huge underwear that sucks in your gut and redistributes the fat all the way up to your boobs. On the less bright side, I have had to hastily shove the maternity stuff into that same dusty suitcase and hide it away. Not to be used just now, anymore.

Anyway. Here are some things I have learned.

1. When someone tells you that they have had a miscarriage, do not say the following:

a) It was really a blessing, when you think about it, because you are about to fly to New Zealand and it would have been so uncomfortable to do that while pregnant;

b) You shouldn’t have flown. I was going to say to you, when you said you were going to fly to Morocco, that that was a bad idea; and

c) Ah well, there must have been something very wrong. It’s Nature’s way, don’t you think?

These things are a bit awkward and slightly embarrassing for all concerned, once they leap out of a mouth and hang limply, forlornly, in the air. I think, when faced with the conversational topic of a miscarriage, that it is best just to express that you are very sorry to hear it. Listen to the story, if it is offered, then perhaps give the lady a little hug, flowers if you must, a card, cash, whatever. Just a thought. But, please, none of the above Sentences Of Shame.

So, in the aftermath we have decided to go out lots and make ourselves overtired and a bit cold-symptomy in order to soak up some northern hemisphere pre-Christmas festive cheer before we board that Emirates Flight Of Despair and Sadness. A list of going-out-shenanigans:

1. Dinner with our excellent architect friends at the Dean Street Townhouse, where we ate so much rib-eye steak and bearnaise sauce chips and red wine and 17th century pickled grapes and devilled eggs that we staggered home and had to be a bit sick. Which is a bit shameful, really, and a bit gluttonous and deeply, deeply, unstylish.

2. The Shepherd Bush Empire for a nostalgic trip amongst portly New Zealand men in their 40’s to listen to the soft-rock legend that is Dave Dobbyn. We arrived at 8, and heard he wasn’t on until 9:15. Panicky looks passed between us because it meant we had to survive on one G&T for an hour (antibiotics for me, driving responsibilities for him) and we had to chat for one hour and 15 minutes to each other, looking lively and happily married in case we saw someone we knew, or we got hit on. Luckily, in through the door bounded my brother’s wife’s sister’s family, whom we hadn’t seen since 1999. PHEW. Then we got a parking ticket. But Dave was excellent, and hobbity, and made us sing loud student-pub-songs all together. It made us a little bit sad for home.

3. Winter Wonderland. AVOID! It costs thousands of pounds for terrible rides and awful chips.

But there were very nice cinnamon pretzels (see above) and the children cracked a few smiles. Noah poked a lot of tongue, which got boring for us, but not for him.

And a two minute heinously expensive ride which made Casper cry.

(Gratuitous shot of the baby, who is still resolutely good-looking:)

 And more tongue.

4. Out on Friday night to Erin’s 40th birthday. Erin is so good-looking that I want to kiss her face. But I didn’t, I just drank the prosecco instead, and I got louder and MUCH MUCH FUNNIER as the night wore on. I would like to state that I wore a vintage home-sewn dress with a very tight ebay YSL belt which usually makes me feel a bit carsick with the pressure, but that it fitted rather nicely, and I didn’t feel ill at all. I plan to get thinner and thinner until I arrive back in New Zealand, and I will be so thin that the customs officials will swoon and high-five me. But, I digress.  It was in a private room at a restaurant in Portobello, filled with charming bankers and Germans and Scots and French and South Africans and even the Italians. It was ace.

5. Tomorrow night we are off to Chez Bruce for Neradah’s birthday. She is also thin, thinner than me, and makes excellent cakes and brownie. She has raven-black hair and a baby called Fox.

6. Last weekend, Mark spent all Sunday evening at a cage fighting competition in deepest Croydon. He said it was fun. I am baffled, and extremely pleased that the invitation didn’t extend to me. Apparently there were not only women dancing in the cages between fights, but also some small kid. Hmmm.

I have run out of outings to write about now, but this is mostly because I have a lasagne in the oven and I can smell it and that means it is about to burn. I am sure we have done more stuff, but it all has to wait. Until next time, then. But, in the meantime, we are fine, thanks for all of the lovely comments and care and stories shared. xx

Here is Casper wearing Tom Ford Cherry Lush, waving you off:

So. Morocco.

There were some very good bits. Here is our riad – a bit far through the winding alleyways of the old town for geographically-challenged me, but lovely:

And the deceptive riad front door: Who knew there would be a sunny-ish courtyard oasis just inside? With clementines and dates and endless silver teapots filled with sugary fresh mint tea?

And here I am, on my first day in Marrakech, about to eat a decidedly average rooftop lunch, but very happy anyway, even though my dress was a little bit short and my pregnant belly just a little bit too sticky-outy.

The sign for the traditional hammam. We didn’t go to that one, because it looked a bit scary. We went to the lovely posh one. But look! The sign is so lovely!

And more signage of loveliness:

And the old town:

And me, at the Majorelle Gardens, looking smilingly colour-coordinated and a bit posey:

Those things, and the excellent company of Jo and Rebecca, and the souks and the Berber musician-seller-guy who kissed up and made us buy castanets and ugly drums and the terrible charlatan reiki healer who fleeced me £40 and the annoying hotel guide Hakim and the wonderful lamb tajines and the scarves made from 100% pashmina (hmmmm) and the sun and the hammam and the TIME OFF FROM DEMANDING TODDLERS was all wonderful.

The Bit That Gets Unpleasant:

On our first day I started bleeding a little bit. On our first morning in Marrakech I woke up to find a lot more blood. Throughout the day the bleeding continued and I figured out I was having a miscarriage. I thought I wouldn’t tell Mark, or go to a hospital, but just wait and see. By the afternoon, I was cramping and so we texted mark and he wanted me to go to hospital. We called a cab, and just as I was getting ready to go, I stood up and felt something come out in a flood. It was the placenta, along with a lot more blood.

We got to the hospital with me bleeding everywhere. The hospital was scary, and there was very little English spoken. I was seen by a besuited doctor, obviously on-call and mid-way through his restaurant meal when we was called to me. He examined me and said that the fetus was still inside and he needed to give me an operation to remove it. I was separated from Jo and Rebecca and wheeled away, into a room with a young nurse who spoke English. She said I would have another baby, and she would be beautiful. The anaesthetist came in and pumped my arm full of drugs which stung like acid, then I fell asleep for half an hour, only to wake up and start sobbing. The nurses stroked my hair and asked me why I was crying and I said it was because I lost my baby.

I was wheeled back into another room which had nothing in it, no flushing toilet, no supplies, and Jo and Rebecca found me. We stayed there for two hours, and I got cleaned up and was allowed to go back to the riad. I got to take the baby with me in a plastic container.

That part was not good. I called Mark and he was so sad. So was I. So we still are. I have never understood why miscarriages affect people. I thought if you didn’t know your baby, and your baby was small, and not ready, then you would be ok if it died. But I see now that I was wrong. I am really sad about my baby. I feel empty, and wounded, and weak, and quiet.

So.

So, I am not pregnant any more, like I was, on Friday, when I arrived for my lovely weekend off. It was very odd leaving Marrakech thinner, emptier, older, wiser. I am tired, achingly-tired, and ready to sleep. I just thought you had to know.

Tomorrow I wake at 5 and get to Gatwick and board an easyjet flight bound for sunshiny Marrakesh. There is not much to say about how excellent that is. You will just have to imagine.
So I am packing and wondering what to wear and fretting a little, and hoping that the boys will be ok, fed, watered and put to bed on time-ish while I am away. I hope their dad doesn’t go too mental when they break stuff and scream and draw vampire bats instead of doing subtraction equations.

Things that I fear may break my husband:

1. The baby has found a sneaky way to the nobs on the boiler and has been ‘playing’ with them by ‘removing’ them and now we have a boiler only works if you whack it. We have built a complicated system of washing-dryer-racks around the boiler to thwart the baby from his mission, but it seems in vain. He is stealthy like a cat.

2. The children have no respect for rugby matches. Apparently there is an important game on this weekend, but these things can only be enjoyed if the children want to let you enjoy them. And they are so fond of Nickelodeon. I know who will win this one.

3.  I overheard him telling them that they will do some cooking together. HA! If only he knew how small curious fingers (which always feel a little bit wet and suspicious) and cooking utensils/bags of flour/hot ovens Do Not Mix. There will be a few trips to Burger King, I think.

4. The mornings which have to begin at 6:15am. This requires a strong will and a deep fear of getting to school late. I am the only one who has these characteristics.

5. The subtle differences in the packed lunches (salami in one, peanut butter and jam in the other, one kid hates yoghurt, the other is revolted by pears, etc etc) the uniforms, the whereabouts of the socks, the way to turn on the washing machine, the biodegradable rubbish bags which break all over you when you hoist them out of the bin.

And on and on, to infinity and beyond.

Anyway, here are some photos of Waddesdon Manor and the children running amok at the park and autumnal things like that: