The Harridan

Tomorrow it is my birthday, and we are in the middle of an October heatwave. It is very kind of the weather gods to give me BBQ weather and a bit of a shoulder tan and an excuse to wear the summer frocks for a little while longer. It almost eases the pain of being in my middle -30’s. How bloody awful is that? I remember thirtysomething being on telly when I was supposed to be in bed when I was still young and hopeful of a meaningful career/future tamed flaxen locks/eventual thinness and they all seemed like ALIENS because they were so old.

I am now irretrievably thirtysomething. Ach.

The benefits, they say, of this horrible ageing truth is that alongside the grey patches and the sinking decollete and the tentative creases that spring up each time I inspect my forehead with a magnifying mirror will be a new-found freedom. A liberation from feeling like I have to fit in, from caring what people think of me, the sweet relief from calorie-counting and feeling guilty about stuff. Obviously, as my last self-indulgent post in which I moaned about my upper arms and feeling like the big dumb new girl in a bad frock shows that we have not found the elusive 30-something complete liberation yet. But it is coming. I feel it in my ageing waters.

Meanwhile, I have learnt some stuff:

1. The girls who looked groomed at 12 and 13 were actually BORN groomed. And their mothers were groomed. They had no choice but to be groomed. They probably felt terribly jealous of my way with the bed-head hair and the stains in my clothes. You do not just reach an age where you are miraculously waxed/tinted/toned/clean/ironed/blowdried. You have to actually be born into a groomed family and then you will suck up the groomedness by osmosis. If you did not grow up in such a family, you have to TRY EXTRA HARD AND PAY OUT LOTS OF MONEY. And you have to lie to your husband about how much it costs. And yours will be the blowdry that falls out halfway through the evening, and yours will be the heel that snaps and yours will be the sleeve with mysterious dried food-matter stuck on it. Remember the eyelash disaster? A case in point.

2. It is ok to find a style when you are about 23 – you can wear cardigans and fifties skirts and little pumps with a myriad of vintage brooches and plastic beads, only then to decide that you have to change your look when these things make you look absurd. You can also start spending money on buying grownup stuff, like tailored things and excellent makeup. You kind of HAVE to. Those young girls will always look cuter. So you have to look excellenter.

3. You don’t have to dance or go to nightclubs if you feel like a giant dickhead. You can call it a night at 11pm. That’s totally fine with me.

4. You don’t have to be friends with people who make you feel bad. They can go. Hang out with people who read and who make you laugh and who understand that the shape of the shoulders on a blazer could actually be the topic of conversation for a good length of time. People who like food and wine and dressing up and talking about nothing/everything- these are the ones who can stay.

5. Don’t bother reading books that you don’t love. This one causes me much discomfort but I think it is true. Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook – I am looking at you right now, all forlorn and read up until the last 60 pages. You were BORING.

6. If someone invites you to Marrakech for the weekend, you should go. And so I am. Middle of November, in fact. There were cross words spoken, and a bit of needling and whining and sulking but the tickets have been booked. Hurrah! There shall be more souks, apple tea, shisha pipes and enormous swinging breasts in another steamy hammam. Which brings me to my last point:

7. Bodies. Who cares? Just wear that tight sucking-in underwear, pop your boobs out, wear lots of lipstick, be funny, wear a cardigan, no one will notice if you aren’t all 17 years old-esque. Or, more correctly, they won’t care. And women who eat are far more fun to be around. FACT.

Anyway, tomorrow I leave the land of the early-thirties and enter into the far more sophisticated mids. It will be awesome, especially if I get a cake. I will have to get my own, but that in itself is kind of liberating, is it not? You want some cake? Buy it yourself! (Actually, I am not convinced by that one.) I will post some photos of my self-bought cake, and I will list any presents I get. I imagine that the list will be blunt, short and to the point. I am hoping I can grow to be ok about this.

We went to Istanbul last week for five days with no children.

(That, frankly, is worthy of a sub-heading).

We nearly didn’t go because we thought our darling lovely friend Evelyn (who was the babysitter) was having a heart attack. BUT after a day of asthma inhaling and chest infections and heart monitors and a long day of tests at St Mary’s hospital, she was ok, and she looked after the children very well, and no one died. It was all ok. PHEW.

So. Istanbul was wonderful, but we were surrounded by younger-than-me-no-children-thin-upper-arms energetic young people who not only could stay up for two consecutive nights past 12am, they also dressed entirely appropriately for the evening boat cruise along the Bosphorus for the wedding reception we were all there for.

I became sickeningly aware, within minutes of exiting the hotel room and lining up with all of the others waiting for the minicab to take us to the ferry, that I looked completely WRONG. The Youth all understood that they were to look sharp and eveningy and all work cocktail frocks and the men were in stylish suits. The women had their hair all proper and they had high heels and shawls and they had evening bags and they glistened with RIGHTNESS. I was wearing a crepey tea dress that was a bit 40’s and not at all evening and then I forgot my McQueen blazer in which to add a stylish punch and had very little makeup and NO HAIR PRODUCTS and only that morning we had been to the hammam for thorough naked-lady-cleansing and the enormous-breasted Turkish naked lady in parachute knickers had washed my hair in banana shampoo (no conditioner) which had dried in the taxi-ride-wind home like a crinkly wooly lamb. It was all a bit awful. And my upper arms, which have begun to let themselves go, were a bit white and soft and lumpy. I thought it would be too hot for sleeves. HOW WRONG I WAS.

Here are some pictures. (I must add, though, that because the whole uncomfortable thing is still so fresh, that I won’t put those photos in which show the wind pressing my dress very tightly to all of the lumpen parts. You just have to imagine those.)

Here I am, hiding, shamed.

So. Other than that sartorial crisis, and the after-reception nightclubbing which I spectacularly failed at, moaning about my sore feet and the music being too loud, and looking so cranky and miserable that one of the thin and appropriately attired girls  came up to me, rubbed my arm, and shouted through the house beats “OHHHHH, ARE YOU MISSING YOUR KIDS?” to which I cackled shrilly and said “NO WAY, JOSE!”, the actual five days in Istanbul sans children was brilliant.

Here are some pomegranates which the man juiced for us so we could drink:

And photos from the Grand Bazaar:

Aaaand there was a turkish delight shop so lovely, I ACTUALLY died for a short while:

It makes me feel a bit sick, because I like to eat about five pieces in one go, and your teeth sting a little bit afterwards. But it is heavenly, all the same.

Coming home was funny, because while we didn’t miss those pesky kids, it was a relief to get back to them. Awful as they are, they are ours, and we have gotten used to the awful. The awful is ok, actually. It might even be quite fun, depending on how you look at it. And the baby was weaned, cold-turkey-like, while we were away, which means that he now screeches at me even more and I feel sorry for him and I carry him around while trying to load the dishwasher/wipe down the weetabix-encrusted table/pay bills online etc. The only consolation is that my upper arms may remember their former youthful tone so that I can wear them exposed the next time we are invited to cruise the Bosphorus on a late summer evening in a glamorous manner. SIGH

Last Sunday I forced us all to get into the car and drive to castle. As you do, when it is the last weekend of the Longest School Holidays In History and it is raining and you cannot face more indoorsy screaming and weetabix underfoot and the cushions getting taken off the couch to make huts. I cannot understand it – those boys wake up, get out of bed, go straight to the couch, take every cushion off, lay them on the floor, then walk away again. Every day of our combined lives. You go to sink down into the couch and whack your head against the wooden leather-covered frame. Is nothing SACRED? NO.
Anyway we were supposed to drive for an hour and a half to the castle and then we could use our new National Trust membership cards to get in free. But there was some cycling thing on near the river and all the roads were closed and the GPS sent us in ways that were long and mental and illogical and it rained heavily and we arrived at a pub at about 1pm and it was torrential and we had lunch and the children upset all of the locals because they had been strapped into the car for THREE HOURS. And it was extremely average Sunday Roast.
But then the rain cleared and look! A photographic essay of fabulousness:

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Did you notice the technological slideshow wizardry? Another triumph, which I can add to my mastering voicemail on the phone this morning. If you call me, and you leave me a message, I will TOTALLY be able to locate the message and hear it. I am impressing MYSELF with my knowhow.

So. The kids are back at school, I have accidentally sent someone a YSL jacket without them paying for it (another ebay FAIL), I have been up to Chesterfield to see a manufacturer and been away a whole day and then been locked out of the flat for an hour and even then no one noticed I was gone, I had a fight with a designer and a fight with a lady from the head office of the nursery and I currently have a little bit of poo juice on my leg thanks to the baby.

But.

It is all ok, because this afternoon Evelyn is coming to stay in our lounge and she is going to be our babysitter when we fly off to Istanbul for four days on Friday. That is so monumentally fantastic that even the poo juice doesn’t matter much.

Meanwhile the Rugby World Cup is on, and everyone in the house must be quiet and must not fight each other around the TV or distract Mark from the games. If these rules are not obeyed, somehow I am responsible and I get black looks and people yell at me. So I must get the children dressed and take of the poo juice pyjamas and leave this house of interminable rugby and go out in search of tasty cake-like treats to fool Evelyn into thinking this babysitting gig was a good idea.

I shall leave you with this:

A baby who is playing in a puddle. It was ok with me. Other parents looked on in horror. When will they stop with the horrified looks? Chill out, Passers By and General Populace. Dirt and water and sand and soil is good. I draw the line at glass, ok?

This is how bored I am:

I just washed my hair at 2pm.

I am considering going through my clothes, ironing the unloved, photographing them, listing them on ebay.

I am ‘supervising’ the holiday homework. (I am secretly actually AGAINST holiday homework. Who cares if they cannot write their name when they get back to school? Who cares if they have forgotten how to hold a pen/sit at a desk/count? Not me. But that is because I am an apathetic middle-class parent who is a bit lazy and disengaged. At least I am self-aware, if not actually good at the hard parts of parenting).

I am not only bored, but I am sulking. Because I would like to spend the last 12 days we have left of these holidays staying somewhere where there is

a)a sun

b)no rain

But we are not going anywhere. And so I will have to get used to wearing jeans and weatherproof boots. IN AUGUST.

We are all so bored and sulky we are making involuntary low moaning sounds. We are half-dressed, we are cranky, we are finding toothpicks and are making small holes in the leather couch with the pointy end. We are also wetting our pants and then hiding.

That is what happens when you are five weeks into a holiday but you go NOWHERE. Bad, bad things.

Anyway. Sigh. Low moan.

Kerry sent me this, and I am to post ten interesting things about myself. This may just alleviate the deep pain of my holiday ennui but it may not be interesting.

1. I studied film and art history at university. Swedish Film was the best. It involved long Friday afternoons in the AV department basement, watching Ingmar Bergman movies. I was “learning”.

2. We own a property in Auckland. It has two houses on it, some chickens and some rotting verandas. We used to think we would like to come back to it and live there. That was before we had hundreds of children who now will not fit. Planning ahead FAIL.

3. I have no parental panic button. It is entirely missing. When the children do dangerous things, I merely shrug, if I bother to look up at all. Two years ago, Noah fell from a cafe chair into a small Greek harbour. I just kind of watched, interested. Mark dived in and saved him. I think this lack of panic may be our downfall.

4. I am seafood-phobic. It all disgusts me. I won’t touch chips if they have been wrapped up in newspaper close to fish. Prawn crackers are revolting. I am nervous of fish sauce. Anchovies are the devil. Seafood, in all of its slimy stinky guises, is my krypotonite. (As is maths, to be fair).

5. My mother is a very good landscape painter. I used to be fairly good at art at school. Now my genius six year old firstborn is impressing me with this kind of stuff:

Meanwhile, his brother, who is perhaps less artistically gifted but no less perceptive, has come up with this lovely drawing of him and his enormously-wide-girthed dad:

So.

6. I had a very large mullet while growing up. It started off quite flicky and manageable, but, post-puberty, my short mullety bits grew outwards from my head like a bushy lion’s mane, with long silky wavy brushed pony hair running down my back. It was a bit like this:

It was a very difficult mullet to deal with. So at about 12, I sacrificed the long pony hair at the back, to allow the lion’s mane to ‘join in’ with the rest of my head. It worked. I have been mullet-less for 22 years now. *proud, sheds a tear, high fives self*

7. I speak no languages other than English. I know little about politics and I am embarrassingly ignorant of current affairs. Yet I think I am quite smart. It may be all relative.

8. My parents took me to Disneyland in California twice when I was a child. My much older brothers and sister stayed home. I cannot comment on it all really, except to say it was awesome. For me, not so much for them.

9. I met my husband when I was 14. I used to think I was somehow disadvantaged by meeting him when I was so young, but I now think I am lucky.

10. I believe in God, and think that that is why I am not often glum. My cheery disposition is directly related to my thoughts about God, or so I think. I used to be a Sunday School teacher but I was a bit rubbish. I also used to play this rather averagely:

In a group a little bit like this:

But I was younger, and sporting a mullet.

There has only really been pyjamas til midday and a smattering of brotherly suffocation. All in all, a very elegantly spent summer holiday, thank you very much, even if we have not been to the continent like every other self-respecting Londoner.

Of course, there were the riots last week, which initially seemed to be happening Somewhere Else, like south of the river or somewhere indistinctly north in some place that I have never been to, on account of being spoilt in my rich-person’s enclave of W2, where the most damage that may befall you happens to your credit card and just perhaps some old lady will yell at you, but not real damage damage.

But then the riots happened in Queensway! Like, two streets away! Look:

Aaaaand so that was a little bit too close for comfort. Now there are police everywhere, and in the days that followed the Notting Hill smash-n-grab there were cops dramatically arresting the local hoodies, and sirens going all the time. And everyone kept inside. Very apocalyptic, although also very short-lived. The shop windows had been boarded up, but the last few are now being replaced, and the show has gone on.

We were never really in any real danger at all – shopkeepers and small businesses were the ones who have been hurt, although patrons at The Ledbury were apparently robbed of their wallets and jewellery. PHEW lucky we weren’t there, spending a fortune on small but delicious puffs of parsley-flavoured souffles and tiny terrines.  We ate all that stuff at Maze on Saturday night instead, and had the kitchen tour, which was extremely awkward.

“Hello! How has your evening been? Please come over here (mind the boiling hotplate even though you are on your seventh small glass of perfectly matched Greek/South African/Austrian wine) and look at these sweating chefs who would really rather you moved out of the way so they could do their work, and LOOK! a bit of meat and another HOTPLATE! Thanks and byebye.”

Gordon was of course not there. And Neradah says I choose the wrong dessert, and she may well be right. The hazelnut parfait, NOT the lemongrass panna cotta! I am a pudding FOOL. Lessons learnt.

Anyway, the holidays are rapidly whittling away, week by non-productive week, and we have yet to go Camping. Mark thinks that it would be lovely. I disagree, but who am I to say that rain, three small violent boys, a hot gas cooker with a flame, thin nylon walls and a violent baby don’t bode well?  So we wait for a break in the weather and a lapse in the loft-conversion-industry to drive to Wales/Isle of Wight. We wait. We hope.

MEANWHILE

Casper had his booster shot yesterday, and he hardly whimpered, but shed silent, brave tears. When he got out of the nurse’s office, he turned to Barnaby, Noah and Ned and declared

“I nearly DIED”.

It was sweet. They are funny, when they are not garrotting each other with bits of string, which unfortunately happened in front of alarmed and vociferous teens in the garden while the babysitter was soothing a screaming Ned. We were trying to go out to Maze, trying to find dresses that would fit the upper arms without sleeves splitting at the seam, etc etc, and so sent them all out to the garden while we got dressed. Three minutes later they all came trooping back in, with a very shaken babysitter, a cross Barnaby and a red-eyed ashen-faced Noah. Barnaby had him pinned down on the ground and had a string around his neck. There was choking, there were strangers intercepting, there was yelling, there was another episode of PARENTAL SHAME. I get a bit sick of being known as the neighbourhood freakshow.

BUT. They did behave very nicely on Friday when we went to Southend-On-Sea for the day. Casper unfortunately tumbled headfirst down the escalator at Liverpool Street station, and there was some blood and some interaction with the First Aid team, and it was all before 9am, but then we decided that his head injury was quite mild and so a trip to the seaside would be the best thing for him. They swam and played in the fountains and ate fish and chips and had ice creams and I refused to let them play at the funfair.

“PLAY WITH THE SEAWEED! BACK TO THE WATER! NOW! No, we did not spent two hours on the tube and train for you to play arcade games and go on small and very average rollercoaster rides! Get back in the sea for a bit, and put a jumper on if you are cold!”

We are New Zealanders, after all. We are totally FINE about feeling cold and wet. We don’t need shoes. We are HARD. And we do not spend money on arcades and funfairs at the beach, because that is MENTAL.

Anyway, it was awesome, and I got to read about seven pages of my magazine. The rest of the time was taken up with Casper’s frequent trips to the public toilets. He kept telling me he needed to do a poo IMMEDIATELY and so we would wait in the queue, nervous, willing the people in front of us to be fast and not part of a huge and complicated extended family with weak and synchronised bladders only for Cas to sit on the toilet and fart. Small waste-of-time-and-emotional-energy farts. Again and again.

Enough bottom-talk. I have to go and clean the floor because the boys have been playing “Watermelon ShopKeeping”. It involves knives, watermelons, and shot glasses.

I have just been into Waitrose very quickly, mainly to get bread because my husband has expressed his consternation that sometimes there is no bread in the whole house, and it makes him despair and weep a little on the inside, and so we raced in, all five of us, after a long and productive Monday morning at the Pirate Park annoying no one and actually behaving quite well, to get the bread that keeps Dad from Carb-Related-Sadness. But the boys were a bit shrieky when we went into the supermarket, because they HATE shopping, even for crusty posh Gail’s bread, and they were tired, and so all of them were making loud noises in which to ricochet around the tiled cold supermarket walls. And I knew we had to hurry because the noises were not going to get much quieter any time soon. So we go down the first aisle (THE FIRST AISLE) and some AWFUL DREADFUL HORRIBLE old cow of a woman marches straight up to me and says:

“Please do something about the noise that your children are making. It is a supermarket; CONTROL them for goodness sake!”

And I just do an inward sigh and I hold my tongue and I crouch down to them and ask them to be quiet because “THAT WOMAN” pointing and talking loudly “is very mad at you” and then we walk around and we most unserendipidously happen to tail her aisle for aisle and she is really mad and I am really embarrassed and then Barnaby starts to fling his scooter around and she marches up again and tells him to stop and that it is dangerous and that there are other people in the supermarket and he must behave and all the while I just blank her. Really, awesomely.  Like she is imaginary. Or she is just a small insignificant irritant like a persistent fruit midge. And I walked around and kept bloody well passing her or finding myself in the exactly the same part of the cheese aisle, reaching for the same packet of halloumi. It was all deeply uncomfortable for everyone involved, except for the troublemaking children who persisted in being LOUD, aisle after long echoing aisle.

We continued the awkward tailing of each other even at the checkout, but it all became simply too much for her to bear and so she took her self-righteousness and her trolley and her air of  disgust and hid in the wine department. I then loudly told the checkout staff (who LOVE me and the boys, I promise, probably because we startle them awake and our charming antics involving the tossing of blueberry punnets and the squashing of yoghurt pots are endlessly amusing) all about her mean comments and the various sisterhood behind me were all wide-eyed with empathy when I explained what she said. We then (of course) found ourselves at the same traffic light outside. But we each looked into middle distance and I refrained from telling her to have a lovely day in my most sarky voice. Then I followed her home.

Nutty? Yes! The actions of the unhinged? For SHO’! But she was mean, and you can’t cross me. Or you will get shrieking children follow you to your door.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHA!

A (Less-Mental) List Of Week 2, School Holidays Of No Plans And Bravely Winging It

1. We have been to the Lido, we have played with the hose in the garden, we have been yelled out twice by another old cow in the third story who leans out of the window screeching at the oblivious children who were variously watering some steps/touching dead leaves lying unloved on the grass to “STOP! STOP doing that! Get Your MOTHER here NOW!” while I cower behind the picnic tables waiting for her to stop.

2. We have been out to the Kensington Roof Gardens  where they do actually have pink flamingoes living seven stories above Kensington High Street in a garden which  has uneven paths and odd little bridges over strange little streams. How do I know the bit about the uneven paths? It is because I wore these:

Lovely new Stella McCartney wedges. Impossible to walk in, and very possible to make you fall over, twice. In the gardens, seven stories up in the air, on a still Tuesday summer night in the capital. The Wither Hills Estate marathon didn’t help much. Anyhoo. I hardy felt the gouged knee at the time.

3. Susan and I have progressed rather nicely with our Secret Genius Project and we are through to the semifinalist round of an industry competition. We are pitching to some safety experts in a ten minute prototype-less-but-heavy-on-the-powerpoint-presentation in three weeks. A bit like Dragon’s Den, but without the making-us-weep part. Probably. WHAT will I do with my HAIR???

4.I have branched out in my vegetable baking cannon to include Beetroot Brownie. It was a little bit like someone had made a perfectly normal and delicious brownie, promptly buried it unwrapped in the garden, only to retrieve it weeks later, brushing off the obvious clumps of mud, presenting it with a loving flourish. Unexpectedly, the children loved it. MORE CHOCOLATEY SOIL! MORE CHOCOLATEY SOIL! they clamoured. It was a win, more or less.

5. Noah has relinquished his cuddle blanket. It started off as a very intricate, lovingly woven blanket for the Baby Barnaby, was claimed by Noah, and was taken to bed for years. It looked like this:

It has gone to the Great Cuddle Blanket Resting Place In The Sky. R.I.P.

Hello! Again. Here it is:

1. My FACE! My face is very normal. See:

My hair is less so. That is because of this:

Moroccanoil. It is supposed to make your hair look like a luscious Middle-Eastern belly-dancing queen but it makes me look a bit bald. It also smells of claustrophobia, decay and hippies. Up close:

Lank, dry and you can see my scalp. Which brings me to the next point:

2. My tooth. It got worse, it got bigger and redder and I cried, and so I was packed off to the emergency dentist for a bit of devil-may-care Sunday morning lancing with a scalpel and some suction and no anaesthetic. I am still too scarred from the gum-trauma to go into too much detail, but, frankly, birthing the 11lb babies hurt MUCH LESS.

3. Noah turned 5. We had two cakes. A plastic spider one:

and better-looking cupcakes:

On his actual birthday, cruellest of cruel twists of fate, it was Sports Day. He runs in slo-mo. He runs as though he is underwater. It was painful to watch:

He is not in that photo. He is still intently staring at his shoelaces at the starting line. Welcome to the rest of your life, Dear Son-of-Mine.

And he gave away almost all of his birthday presents. Attached to nothing, bothered by nothing, interested only in TV, sugar and lying upside down on the couch. Preferably without pants on.

Like this, but even more vertical, and even more naked.

However, the party in the garden was lovely. See my lanterns, my bunting, my friends:

So as you can see the garden is looking exceptionally fine, and conspicuously empty, seeing as all of the regulars are off on Euro-jaunts and French farmhouse stays. Bastards. So we practically own it, and we are both weeing in the garden and jumping on the frail garden furniture while we can.

4. We bought Woody Allen’s movie that he made in London two summers ago, using the garden and a flat a few doors away as locations. It was called You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger and it was teeth-grindingly dreadful. Do not buy. But you knew that.

5. The baby has done something mysterious with the La Pavoni coffee machine handle. It cannot work without the handle. The baby refuses to answer my questions about where he has put it. He, conveniently, maintains he DOESN’T SPEAK YET. We are at loggerheads. I am caffeine-free, and I don’t like it ONE BIT. A new one is coming in the post, and it cost £60. That baby is going to pay, someday.

6. Mark’s osteopath came around for cannelloni on Tuesday night. He launched into a story about his detox, which I only heard snippets of because I was doing parenting things. But I heard him talk about a 6-inch long clay-based ‘evacuation’. Mark wants to try. Not on my watch, dude! It made the cannelloni much less appealing.

6. I went a bit mental in the sales. I have (among other questionable purchases) a pair of apricot patent leather Miu Miu raffia sandals which, as you may be able to ascertain, are awful, and some very high and heavy wooden pleather Stella McCartney wedges which will be most excellent in Istanbul in September. You can’t win them all, as they say.

And I shall leave you with this.

First things first. You know how I was jesting rather merrily about my sore tooth last post? Well. It got much uglier. There was the emergency dental hospital, stronger painkillers, 11 days of antibiotics, waking at 3am to top up the meds and wait for the throbbing to stop (quite a bit of delusional commenting on blogs happens at that hour of the morning, in case you were wondering) and a whole lot of head-screwing PAIN. This is what I looked like:

UNHAPPY FAT FACE OF PAIN

CHEERFUL FAT FACE OF PAIN

Except it was not funny. I was merely illustrating the stroke-like effect that the infection was causing. There is no light behind those eyes, just suffering from the hideous bang-bang of infection and the shame of looking so distinctly unsymmetrical. There is nothing stylish about an abscess, Dear Reader.

But OH on Monday night I was invited to Betty Herbert‘s book launch at Coco De Mer for 52 Seductions (you know – the wonderful book about remembering to have sex with your husband) which was simply too excellent to miss. I put lots of ice on my enormous misshapen squirrel-saving-up-her-nuts-for-the-long-winter cheeks, did my very best makeup, and tried to shade down the fat bits and enliven the droopy bits and off I went into Londontown, bound for a sex shop and lots of fabulous people.

It was hot, I was sweaty, and I think my theatrical makeup dripped off into my clothes before I arrived. Coco De Mer was full of bloggers and Twitterers and people I sort-of-knew, but only virtually, which was odd, but kind of fun, and after two glasses of pink cava, it didn’t matter who I was talking to. I did preface every introduction with an apology for my swollen face, and I earnestly attempted to show people with my hand how each side was different, the normal uninfected side being the usual me, the ‘stroke’ side being some DREADFUL ABOMINATION OF GOD. Luckily, the clever and milky-bosomed Belgian Waffling was there, and she steered many an awkward monologue from my stroke-face to other, less uncomfortable topics.  She was TOTALLY ACE. @Kirstieh was there, and she let me sniff her pale Chanel 2.55, and @nicky_t was there and she showed me her new tape measure.  And of course, Betty Herbert was there and she was resplendent in a long grecian gown and was full of grace and loveliness and I did not even picture her once in the Reverse Cowgirl position. I did picture her in her fishnet catsuit though. That image never really leaves my head.  Then, everyone went off to the pub, and I went home because I had to eat my salad and take more drugs.

All this talk of sex. On the way to school this week, Barnaby asked me to when we were going to make another baby. I thought that it was as good an opportunity as any to give him the heads up on human reproduction, and so, while walking along the A40 on a Wednesday morning, cars screeching along beside us, while we yelled questions and answers into the automobile vortex of fumes and noise pollution, we had The Talk. It went well, and there were only a few nervous smirks and a few winces and a few vomity-faces (mostly mine) and we got to school with Barnaby in no doubt as to the real reason for having a penis. Of course, the discussion was a bit flawed, as neither of us could hear very well, and we were running late, and so we were distracted, and we had Noah interjecting loud nonsense things like:

“Your diddle has some little fish inside and it swims to the baby and the baby eats the fish. Isn’t that right, mummy?”

“Mmmm, yes, Noah, but please don’t scooter over my feet…” etc etc

And the real discussion between Barnaby and I would have to go from loud to quiet as we passed the commuters who were on their way to the Marks & Spencer’s head office, trying not to yell “PENIS” and “VAGINA” and “EXCITED”-words at the wrong moment. It was awkward.

Anyway, here is some photographic evidence of the Illicit Fruit Sampling:

What do I do with the little nibbled bits of formerly-lovely-in-season-and-fragrant stonefruit? Make a crumble? Force the kids to eat them? Give up buying nice fruit? Or just hide it high up in the fridge? Ideas, anyone?

[OUCH MY TOOTH]

I had my third root canal filling yesterday, and it was so much ouchier than I remembered being the first two times. And this one cost me £500, and this one is giving me a big fat old lady headache and causing me to eat nurofen like a foodstuff. The lovely dentist told me yesterday not to eat for two hours after the injection and the drilling, because “your mouth will be very numb and you will eat your own inner lip” but it was lunchtime and I was needing a distraction and so I ate a sandwich and I did eat some of my inner lip, just as the sage dentist had warned. It was very wonkily swollen from my own little ratty teeth-marks, and a friend thought I had had lip plumping. Ha! No. Not collagen, dude, but blood and bitten tissue and PAIN. I was smiling like half a Milanese dowager. Anyway, AS IF I would be so vain as to get collagen! Ha! Ha. Ahem. Not this month, anyway, because all of my spare cash has gone into paying for my root canal. Well, Mark’s spare cash, because I am both

1. unemployed, and

2. have no money of my own.

None. Except for my ebay money, which had risen to the hefty paypal balance of £400.00, until I blew it on a YSL belt that is too tight, a Marni woolly jumper, a YSL red blazer which smells of wet, slightly rancid NUDE skincare products, a Karen Walker necklace, and maybe, if I win the auction, an Erdem summer mac. Handy for the torrential rain we are having, and which is turning my hair all curly-like.

[OUCH MY TOOTH]

Anyway, my lovely husband updated his Facebook profile. He logs in twice a year, fiddles with it a bit, adds a photo or two, stalks people, then walks away. This time, he added this photo:

Long-lost friends may just check out Mark’s profile, to see how he did in the life/wife-stakes. This is the only photo of me that he has on his profile.

Yes! Yes, that is my wife. Yes, she does have WORKING EYES. No, she often USES them. It was just SUNNY that day. And I forced her to peer into the sun.  

So that was quite awesome. Want some more unedited-previously-unpublished-for-very- obvious-reasons shots? Why not. Here’s a bit of wonky-face, roundy-pregnant face, double-chinned profile, enormous arms, big dumb glasses, sleepy eyes, dim-witted eyes.

And on and on to an unpleasant infinitum. Never let it be said that I am either photogenic or vain.

And here is a photograph of Ned The Newly Vicious, whose hair I brushed, and then I saw that he is like a spooky small Andy Warhol.

I tried to photograph him with a Campbell’s soup can in his fat little violent fists, but we had none. Only Heinz Baked Beans, which was taking a bit of a liberty, I thought.

More Thoughts That Don’t Fit Very Well Into The Body Of The Text:

1. Kate Moss looked a bit ordinary in her wedding dress

2. “Wayne” is a dreadful name to call a baby

3. I have changed my mind about changing my mind about a fifth baby. I do want one. But you knew that.

4. The kids keep taking small bites out of the nectarines then putting them back into the fruitbowl. Illicit fruit-sampling, if you will. It is bringing the fruit flies around, and it makes me very cranky.

5. Seen “Bridesmaids” yet? I am that harrassed woman with the three boys and the blanket. Except I have more sons than her, and I am mostly not a lesbian. Mostly.

And there you have it. It is clearly time for me to much some more ibuprofen washed down with a V&T. Who needs consciousness, anyway? Til next time.

[OUCH MY TOOTH]

Oh, it has been too long! But I am back, newly-shorn and tinted, and I have much to tell.

1. I have changed my mind about having any more children. There is no real point in me listing the reasons, because everyone in the whole wide world has already come to that conclusion, well-ahead of me. On Saturday, in a fit of post-face-painting fatigue, I reasoned that being pregnant and then having another small boy to carry around/wreck my stuff/make me yell would be a bit awful, and, in any case, I simply CANNOT FIT ANY MORE SCHOOL PARAPHERNALIA ONTO THE PUSHCHAIR. It is perilously close to capacity as it is. When I turn left, bags and drink bottles and handbags and muesli bar packets topple to the ground, I pick them up, I turn right, they topple into a pissy black puddle, the boys cry, I yell, taxis beep, the police slow down to a crawl and eyeball me sinisterly. I may have turned a mothering-corner. Of course, my period is late. Ha ha hahahahaha! Ha. Ahem. Will keep you posted.

2. I am in a Summer Wardrobe Sartorial CRISIS. Everything I wear makes me look 48. My exposed upper arms have become lumpen, and not just when lit from above. My printed Marni skirts look like traditional Alpine dress, and my vintage frocks have lost their irony. Wearing belts to emphasise my waist just makes me feel tired and I scramble to take them off.  And I only have Birkenstocks or Converse to wear, because my feet are too wide for brogues, as per The Youth, while wedge sandals on the school run look a little bit like I am pretending to have a job to go to. I am struggling to find the elegance and appropriateness in 30 degree heat.

3. I have made peace with the fact that my youthful aspirations to become a TV presenter have come to nought. I have been waiting to be spotted by someone for years. I was that woman lingering by random TV crews reporting on high street closures/tube strikes/TB vaccinations who wandered back and forth, sighing loudly and looking directly into the camera. I auditioned for things and was a very, very successful extra in Shortland Street, dressed in men’s running shorts pretending to be exercising. But no one ever took the bait. Best I let that one go, along with the mastering of a foreign language and basic maths.

4. Face-painting. On Saturday, it was the Summer Fair, and I was the Chief Face-Painter. It started at 11:30am when I painted Noah into quite a good tiger, blended nicely and convincingly with decisive black stripes. Then it became an unholy blur of demanding 4 year olds, and their mothers hovering, watching, getting a bit cranky when the lines went wobbly or when the glitter fell onto their coats, until 4pm sharp. Four and a half hours of unrelenting creative output, with only a burger and one pasteis de nata to keep me going, thrown at me by a friendly bystander who could see that I was weakening. But the kids were merciless, the line was never less than 10 deep, and they ALL HAD SIBLINGS.

“I want to be Spiderman!”

“A pink kitty!”

“A butterfly!”

“Pirate!”

“Flowers!”

Then came the cool girls, dressed in Disney polyester princess frocks, who, always one step ahead of the rest, stylishly changed tack.

“I would like a swimming dolphin on one cheek, and an orange unicorn on the other, please.”

“And I’ll have what she’s having.”

All fourteen of them. Do you KNOW how much it crushes your tailbone to paint tiny bloody unicorns on short people’s faces for HOURS and HOURS? How you want to lie down to correct the misshapen curvature of your twisted body, but the screaming children and their stern parents won’t let you? Getting up for the one wee-break saw me hobble in an very ungainly manner to the children’s loos, knees unyielding, back aching, hobble hobble hobble, getouttamywaysmallcharmlesskidsIneedtheloo, cranky and sad.

And I have never touched as many little faces in one go in my whole life. They were variously fidgety, snotty, tickly, impassive, bored, droolly, impatient, beautiful, awkward, smooth, Black, Arab, Asian, Antipodean, European, English, West Indian, fluffy-haired, bald, scratched, smooth, and dirty. I started off being chatty, asking their names, but I got bored of that quite quickly, and just held their chins and told them to look into my eyes.

LOOK INTO MY EYES IF YOU WANT TO LOOK LIKE A TIGER, SMALL FELLA. MY EYES ARE OVER HERE! OVER HERE! [Manhandles chubby little face into correct painting position]. I swear they averted my eyes because some small unconscious part of them knew that if they looked at me, really closely, they would be peering into DECAY. Older person’s decay. Broken capiliaries, wrinkling, eye bags, dried up nose skin, open pores, veiny eyeballs, wandering browhairs, patches of psoriasis. They knew they were glimpsing DEATH, and wanted no part of it. Like when you go to the optometrist and they hover closely over your face and you just LOOK AWAY for fear of seeing frightening inner-nostrils or missed bits of facial hair they forgot to shave. It’s a metaphor, man, a metaphor, and the kids just got it. Either that, or they were all simply ADHD.

And there was only one good sponge, and two pointy brushes, without which you can’t do the unicorn horn very convincingly. And the other ladies kept stealing my pointy brush, but I couldn’t really say much, because it was all for charity.

I was a total wreck afterwards. I got the shivers and had to go to bed at 9pm. It was FIERCE, and we raised £116 and one American dime.