The Harridan

The clever, sexy and accomplished writer Betty Herbert (her ACTUAL, PUBLISHED book on shagging your (own) husband is coming out very soon, no less) tagged me to list 10 things I love. Ok then, says I, seeing as I have blogger’s block, although not like Anna Wulf in Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook, which I have just suffered through in the name of Book Club, because she was PROPERLY cracking up in the most tedious, well-documented way. No, I just have nothing to say, other than:

1. Casper has begun to shriek “I will tell the police what you are DOING TO ME!” when we are in public, when something doesn’t entirely go his way, and it causes people to look at us, all alarmed and suspicious-like, while I whisper very loudly that he should NOT talk about the police to other people, and anyway, I DIDN’T DO ANYTHING! Sweaty, ha ha! oh how kids say the funniest things! etc etc as I wheel the buggy out of the shop quick smart and run home to the safety of sound-proofed walls. Obnoxious and precocious, that little monkey is.

2. I gathered up all of my unworn clothes, ironed them, cleaned the bits of dried spillage with baby wipes, photographed them, posted them on eBay, did the maths and mentally bought myself a Chanel 2.55 with the hefty proceeds, watched and waited for NO BIDS. No one wants my clothes. My Marni dress. My YSL jacket. My DvF dresses. Is it becos I is UNSTYLISH? Clearly. Anyhoo, there will be no more of this sad eBay business. For real, this time.

3. I am driving to Derby tomorrow to meet a manufacturer. I really don’t think I can drive for that long. My eyes will close in driving-related sleepiness fo’ sho’.

4. I have been given the go-ahead to have another baby, provided it is a girl. So that is good news, although, technically, difficult to meet the requisite conditions. I will try, though, aided by my googled “How to Make Sure Your New Baby Is A Girl” articles, by people who are QUITE POSSIBLY medically trained.

10 Things I Love

1. I don’t really want to put these fellas here, because it is not very original, and a bit soft-in-the-head, but I love these the MOST MOST MOST:

Really inspired choice of husband. I didn’t really know it then, but it was the most genius decision to hitch my ride with him. And of course, the hideous-yet-excellent children. You know what they look like. Dirty, and violent. A reminder, anyway:

2. This:

My Mulberry Alexa. Because I am a filthy, soulless snob. I use it every day, and it makes me feel AWESOME. I am like that with all of my clothes, and I have been like this since I was 12 and I had a clothing epiphany. I realised that purple t-shirts and bike shorts were ugly, and the way forward was FABULOUSNESS every day, even if you are overrun by small children/poor/tired/pregnant. Which leads me to my next love:

3. Sample sales. Tonight, I am missing the Christopher Kane one. The one in which I would have found a perfectly fitting neon orange dress with a prim neckline and pleats. I would have been awesome. But I couldn’t go, so I just have to imagine the awesomeness. Last week, I did manage to get a babysitter and go to the Alexander McQueen and Erdem sample sales. I have new excellent expensive clothes (which no one will want to buy in a few years when I realise the folly of sample sale-ing and I try to hock them off on bloody eBay again).  But it was fun, OK?

4. My La Pavoni coffee machine. It is sleek and lovely and reliable (and leaky).

5. London. For the parks, the seasons, the streets, the noise, the cabs, the tube, the pubs, Selfridges, all the obvious.

6. Tom Ford everything. Shame about the merciless destruction of those excellent lipsticks.

7. A glass of sauvignon blanc of an evening. (Of every evening, actually).

8. My iPad. I love it unconditionally.

9. Benefit Benetint, for making me look younger. Botox also works for this.

10. A three-way tie between Kate Middleton, scrambled eggs and Glee.

And yours?

Hark! It is the school holidays again, and the house is filled to the most uncomfortable Victorian capacity not just with small boys, their assorted homemade-cardboard-box robots, their discarded night nappies, pyjama tops stuffed under couches, slowly hardening with dried cereal-matter, but also my new ebay ‘finds’. Ahem.

Witness the scene this morning, a morning in which we were all woken by Barnaby at an entirely unnecessary 6:09am.

My Living Room, London, May 2011

My new ebay 50’s wool crochet granny blanket, competing for attention in a living room destined to overload your sensory capabilities (and probably acrylic):

The baby carefully removing the BBC Planet Earth DVD’s out of their cases, then preparing to rub them shiny-face-first onto the rug:

The ebay embroidery sampler which was clearly not embroidered in 1888, judging by the so-new-they-are-practically-fluorescent colours of the thread:

Cereal box robot tv-watching companion:

The ebay ‘silver-plated’ butter dish which is less actual silver, and more silver-coloured:

And the french primary school desk which cost £41 to buy, and £65 for postage. Post-war industrial chic-tastic they may well be, but they fit no one with a bum bigger than an 8 year old boy:

So. There you have it. My ebay Shame. My Housing Issues. My DVD Dramas. I spared you the photos of the nappies, usually peeled off every morning in the manner of an ill-formed burlesque dancer, slowly un-velcroed on one side, then the other, as the heavy damp nappy-squib slides down the small boy-leg, only to be grasped delicately before it hits the floor between forefinger and thumb, then lifted high above the small boy-head, and twirled rapidly until the g-force sends it spinning into the fruit bowl/shoe basket/someone’s unsuspecting head. EVERY MORNING. Then they tend to lie upside down on the couch, legs in the air, pantless, and staring into middle distance despite frightening grunts coming from me, ordering them to GET YOUR UNIFORM ON NOW! More middle distance. More grunting. A bit of swearing. Middle distance staring, absent-minded humming, etc etc forever and ever until I go properly mental, yell, sweaty and spittle-y and I dress them MYSELF.

Best to imagine that, really.

Anyway, this week we were asked in to see the kid’s school books and get an informal bit of feedback from their teachers as to how they are doing. Barnaby’s books were filled with stickers and praise from his teacher for his ‘wow words’ and complicated drawings of Superhero Chicken-Man and Royal Wedding impressions and stories involving trolls and scary forests. I was so proud I felt a bit teary, and on the way home from school, buoyed up from sheer relief that he is normal, and delight that his strengths lie in art and words, I promised he could spend £20 in Argos “because you have done so well at school this term”. Argos, I hasten to add, is his choice of on-line provider. It is really only Amazon for me, but word on the school hallways is that Argos does the best toys. So, who am I to argue the wisdom of mercenary six year olds?

WHAT? I hear you say, after a sharp intake of breath. £20? 

Al I can say is, I know! I have NO IDEA where that came from. I can only blame it on the madness of the love’o’the’firstborn and the aforementioned relief. Outrageous. So, anyway, he ran straight to the iPad and ordered dragon eggs and a water pistol. Mark was a bit cross about my lavish arrangements.

Aaaaaaaand then we had Noah’s book-inspection, and the whole thing was quite a different matter. He got his £20 Argos treat because he had “tried so hard at school this term”, which, frankly, is the kindest and most polite way of summarising all of the blank books, scribbling and complete and utter disinterest/inability for learning ANYTHING AT ALL. Dragon eggs and a water pistol #2.

All of the dragon eggs and water pistols arriving through the post didn’t escape Casper. He asked for them too. So I have been trying to think of a way to either:

a) ideally, avoid giving him anything at all because suddenly everyone in the house is being showered with extravagant plastic rubbish, or

b) turn this into a bribing star-chart-type-opportunity to turn Casper into a nice child. Because, quite simply, Casper spends a lot of his time attempting to maim his brothers/friends/strangers.

Thoughts?

And lastly, look at how my IKEA baby cups have colour-blocked themselves! They are like a plastic utensil Jil Sander advert, are they not?

It has come to my attention that turtles require a bit more thought than I have previously ever given them. Specifically, what it is about them that might make you like them, and what it is about them that might make you kick them.

The argument for liking:

They are cartoonish, and you can often find a soft toy version in various soft toy departments, or cute little rubber ones, and even plastic. Probably.

They lay eggs, which is a bit interesting. And they give birth on the beach in Thailand, I think. And actually, in Turkey too – see below for polite “Turtle and Nature” poster from Patara Beach, Kas Peninsula:

They swim, and they are quite old. Eventually.

They are quite undemanding I would imagine. Not very noisy, and only a bit snappy if you go and dig up their eggs, and put sticks in their faces and tease them. Which you wouldn’t because you LIKE THEM.

Some people eat them.

The argument for kicking them:

(Obvs, actual kicking would be a little bit mean. But if you felt like kicking a turtle, it might be because of the reasons below:)

They can look a little bit unpleasant when their head rolls back into their scraggy pointy neck. If you know what I mean.

They snap.

They are unwilling to perform tricks, and have no time for ball games or curling up next to you by the fire. They would also be awful at guarding your home.

They probably have the whiff of a fish about them.

And so, Dear Reader, should anyone ever ask you anything at all about the relative pros and cons of a turtle, you can point them RIGHT HERE. A veritable hotbed of Turtle Knowledge and Associated Thoughts.

But all this turtle-talk is a thinly veiled attempt to avoid talking about the whole eBay thing. As it is, I am sitting here on a Thursday night, waiting for a courier to drop off a huge primary school double desk to be placed somewhere in the living room, destined to never fit very well and to always bruise me in the hips, and hit the baby on the forehead as he drunkenly totters past on the way to dropping things into the toilet bowl. The desk is supposed to be a homework desk, but we all know it will never actually be used for homework, but as a handy surface to put small pieces of paper on, bank statements, bits of food and mugs of tea and endless bits of Playmobil which I won’t throw away because I think they might form part of a tractor/pirate ship/ice cream cart. And I have had to pay more for the couriering than the actual desk.

What happened it this: I got really excited about the possibilites of eBay and all of the bits of furniture I thought I would like, and I bidded on lots of things, and I WON NEARLY EVERYTHING. And most of the things were pick-up only, and they were scattered around the United Kingdom. So, like, more than a Sunday afternoon’s drive away – HOURS away in lots of directions. Oh, how I died inside when I kept getting emails that once again I had won a french school desk/pine table/crocheted blanket/silver butter dish/lace bedspread/embroidery sampler etc etc. And I had to fess up, and tell Mark that all of our weekends until early June would be booked up in driving around the UK, picking up bits of ‘antique’ furniture and old blankets. He was a bit cross.

Anyway, there will be no more of the eBay foolishness. Quite probably.

Here is a photo taken last week in our garden. This is all six of us, after ingesting cake and blackened sausages:

And me, fond of a drink in the afternoon: (note wildly asymmetric hair billowing like a lampshade AGAIN)

And the baby after his easter eggs were eaten and smeared as only a dirty baby knows how:

And the Royal Wedding flyover:

And a Royal Wedding street party. Note the two guys on the left who are a little bit OVER being photographed by me, the passer-by with the hungry eyes who clearly had no street party of her own to go to:

Oh, it is a glamorous life in Londontown. This morning, after dropping off children One and Two, and heading back to Bayswater along Bell Street, strewn with lettuce heads and dog poo and broken glass, with sons Three and Four in the Pushchair’ o ‘Filth, I came across this guy:

WAGNER! Or, even, VAGNER! Only, this time he wasn’t crooning or leering at nubile young dancers – he was instead sitting in a very sleek darkened car, with a muscular bouncer-esque Arab, and he was smoking, and he looked a little bit incongruous amongst the halal chicken shops and the barbers at 8:42am, and I found myself PRACTICALLY KISSING HIM. Because he is sort-of famous, or at least, he was last year, and I got inexplicably hit with the famous-person-rush-of-blood-to-the-head-lose-all-sense-of-self-respect stick. I waved manically and blushed and he said “Hello” in a proper dirty-old-man kind of way. It was awesome. Heart pounding, as I left him in his Mysterious Car, I thought about taking a photograph, and texting someone. But I couldn’t remember his name, and then I started to think that perhaps he was not from the telly, but actually the man from Tesco, or the bank manager, or someone from the school committee. It was waaaaay too much for a Tuesday morning.

And then, this afternoon, long after the Wagner-magic had worn off, Mark told me that I smelt ever so slightly of wee. I tell you, it is highs and lows around these parts. For the record, I have sniffed, and searched, and think the wee smell is a combination of

a) fake tan, and

b) actual wee. Not mine, most probably. But who knows. This flat is actually a kind of shrine to incidental ammonia patches. On the chairs, on the cushions, the rugs, the newly washed laundry, the face cloths, the school ties. Possibly on the food.

Anyway, that was a little bit of a downer. But hark! Cheer Up! Here are some more photos of my children. (I am aware that photos of my children are really really boring to anyone who didnt birth them/father them, but heigh ho).

The baby in a Beatles t-shirt at St Michael’s Mount, and various Easter Egg hunting scenarios:

Ahem.

Some More Important Things To Report:

I have ikat-printed billowing trousers with tight ankle bits from H&M. They are a bit odd, and a bit pyjama-ish, and they have prompted Barnaby to name them “Ugly Pants”. And then to ask me if I could go back to wearing a dress. Mostly, these complaints/helpful suggestions are posited at me during the long and ugly walk along the A40, where we all cough with poisonous car fumes and yell at each other over the noise of screeching sirens and car engines, and sometimes attract the attention of the police. Today, Barnaby tried to engage me with questions of a lively existential nature, which was simply annoying and ill-timed, as I couldn’t hear him properly, and replying meant shouting into the A40 vortex of filth. He never bothers to ask me these kinds of things while in the relative comfort and SILENCE of the living room. It went like this, all shouty, and apropos of nothing:

Barnaby (really shouting, little face pointed to the pavement in the vain hope of finding some six year old boy’s version of ‘treasure’): “Can you tell me which stuff you don’t know anything about?”

Me (shouting, irritably, pushing the double buggy and wondering why my upper arms refuse to get muscly): “What? No, because I don’t know about what I don’t know about.”

Barnaby: “What? Can you tell me all the things that you don’t know, I SAID! Come on! What do you know nothing about?”

Me: “I CAN’T! Because then I would know about them!”

Barnaby: “Ok. Can you tell me instead about why some people kick turtles?”

Me: “Well, no, not really. I don’t know. Because they are mean?”

Barnaby: “WHAT? No, not “kicking”. I didn’t say anything about kicking. I said “liking”. Why do some people like turtles?”

AND ON AND ON UNTIL MY VOICE GAVE OUT AND I NEARLY PUT MY HEAD UNDER THE TYRES OF A BIG BUS.

I really do not know why some people are turtles-lovers, and some are not. You can’t just google that kind of question, either, as I have come to find out.

The other thing that is IMPERATIVE to tell you, is that I have finally made friends with ebay and now I have no free time because I am EXTREMELY busy looking for crocheted blankets, 19th century embroidery samplers, vintage maps of Africa and Royal Wedding commemorative biscuit tins to line my hallways like a mad cat-lady. This will be the ruin of me yet.

THE WEDDING!THE WEDDING!THE WEDDING!THE WEDDING!THE WEDDING!THE WEDDING!THE WEDDING!THE WEDDING!THE WEDDING!THE WEDDING!THE WEDDING!THE WEDDING!THE WEDDING!THE WEDDING!THE WEDDING!THE WEDDING!THE WEDDING!THE WEDDING!THE WEDDING!THE WEDDING!THE WEDDING!THE WEDDING!THE WEDDING!THE WEDDING!THE WEDDING!

etc etc

I was very disinterested in the wedding, until the day before. It suddenly became clear to me that a) getting a day off from the School Run of Physical and Psychological Trauma was actually awesome and b) having parties and drinking Pimms and buying bunting and making victoria sponge to be eaten at 10am was also similarly awesome. And then, of course, there was the wedding guest outfits to wonder over, and discuss at length.

And then, I fell in love with Kate Middleton. Who knew that I would turn out to be a Kate-Lover? I nearly died from the Kate-Love, and when The Dress turned out to be McQueen, and it was all Grace Kelly-esque and gorgeous, and she looked so tiny and she EVEN DID HER OWN MAKE-UP, well, I just actually died a million times from the sheer fabulousness of it all. Mark was similarly affected, which is another reason why he is an excellent catch. The poor children got bored and ate half a pot of jam with their fingers before we could tear our eyes away from the BBC. And I made scones and baked a ham and we drank prosecco in an effort to be British and supportive and authentic and I even squirted little tears whenever I thought about Kate, whom I now Properly Love. I expect we could be friends, although I may get a little bit giggly when she says “holy” and “very”.  We could go shopping on the King’s Road. I am actually a little bit posher than her in some crucial ways, of course, because I don’t bother much with the high street, and I certainly wouldn’t wear an angora cardi anymore, nor would I bother with honeymoon clothes from Warehouse, because my internal goalposts have shifted and now I only like properly expensive stuff. As for the polo and the game fair, I know I would get VERY BORED, but she could teach me about luscious hair and we certainly could go over blusher application a little bit. Anyways, about the hair.

So. I was walking the smallest children up to the playgroup on Friday, coughing and wheezing from the furry evil plane tree filthy spores that kept flying into the back of my throat and CHOKING ME with their fluffy barbs and I saw an old mothery friend who I see now and then. I stopped her, and we talked about easter things, and then her eyes took in my new asymmetrical hair and then her face morphed into sad, wistful, and sympathetic. She said:
“OH! You have short hair!”

and I said “Yes”, patting it, and feeling a bit NAKED and kind of nervous. “I think it might be a little bit too short.”

“OH!” Her eyes were big and soupy like a Japanese cartoon and almost wet with sadness and a little bit horrified.“Wow! Well. Why did they cut it so short? I mean, it is nice when it is long, and your hair is not straight enough to be short, but not curly enough to, er, look right when it is cut like that. Oh well! I wonder why they did that? WHAT a SHAME.” 

And a bit of me curled up and died. Not in a good way, either, like the dying I did when Kate smiled at me through the telly and telepathically suggested that we could hang out when she gets back from Wales. In a MORTIFIED naked ugly I-really-have-to-stop-going-to-Aveda kind of way.

Needless to say, Kate wouldn’t have been quite so blunt.

So, that was gigantically awkward. But then I had the wedding, and that pulled me through, and now I feel like School Camp is over, and am all empty on the inside, and wonder if I shall ever truly, really, have fun again now that the bunting is down and the flags have been ripped and the ham turned into ham and potato hash.

I know I should be filling up my aching Kate-shaped hole with finishing Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook for book club, but it is frankly a little bit boring and I have a raging hunger for wedding day details and related frippery.

I shall leave you with this.

My Archilles Heel – bits of wet, weepy tomatoes left on the bench, every day of my married life. If I ever divorce, it will be because of the tomatoes.

Oh yes, I have been away, and you KNOW how I like to sum up my gadding-about with a song. A music-less ditty which should both educate you and charm you. Bucolic Cornwall. Here is my tribute.

CORNWALL

Cornwall, Cornwall,

The land of clotted cream and other dairy products

You recycle everything

And you have a lot of intricate waste-water systems 

Which I now know a lot about

Thanks to your signage.

Cornwall, Cornwall,

You have a lot of plants

And rabbits

And windy beaches with cold people huddled up on.

YOU ARE SO LOVELY!

Even if you are about seven hours drive away

And your pasties are a little bit average.

Ithankyou.

So, we went away for a week. In case the ditty has left you with more questions than answers, here is a little highlights/lowlights list for you to compare and contrast:

BUCOLIC CORNWALL HIGHLIGHTS:

1. The ice cream is all very worthy and creamy and traceable (i.e. the eggs came from that farm and the milk from that herd in that paddock over there, etc etc). The children loved it, as these helpfully placed photo shows:

And on and on to infinity. There was ice cream every day. And chips, because you cannot escape chips on holiday. Apparently.

2. There was a hot tub in the cottage. It was awesome, except when Casper emptied the water out and left us hot-tubless for 24 hours. That bit was naaaasty.

3. The cottage landlords had an excellently placed (i.e. upstairs) 14 year old daughter who babysat twice. She was gorgeous, with flaming red hair and extremely good mascara application. Thick, dark lashes that she swore were simply Max Factor, but I suspect were very good fake ones. Because I can tell, now that I have narrowly escaped the clutches of Bad Lashery. Anyway, we got home after the first night having dined at the excellent New Yard restaurant in the Trelowarren estate, and she had done the weirdest things with the children. They had no pyjamas on, only nappies, but the nappies were on the big children, not the little ones, and all the lamps were on in their room. It was like broad daylight in there, with the smell of wee hanging sharply in the air. We got her the next night too.

3. The scenery was gorgeous. The boys were mostly well-behaved. There were lighthouses to explore, and farms, and tadpoles to watch and donkeys to listen to. There were seals in the water. SEALS!

4. Kynance Cove. Even for a hardened our-beaches-are-better-than-yours-New Zealander, this beach was a surprise.

No matter the wind factor, or the bit when Casper tried to jump off the cliff. The rockpools were everything little boys need.

CORNWALL LOWLIGHTS:

1. The stinging nettles got a little bit boring, as did the wind on the Lizard Peninsula. I was always a little bit cold. Here are some four-year-old knees that have been stung repeatedly by those sly nettle bastards:

2. The pepper in the eyes episode. This morning, the boys shook pepper onto the baby’s head, which moved into his eyeballs. Then they all got some in their eyeballs. Cue much wailing, puffy pseudo-allergic reactions, emergency baths, baby wipes, angry parents, and NO TRIP TO THE LIGHTHOUSE GIFT SHOP YOU FOOLISH AND MEAN GANG OF LITTLE NASTY BOYS. Ahem. All while I was *supposed* to be packing, but was in the pantry, playing Words With Friends. The pantry got the best wireless signal, ok?

3. There was no dishwasher in the cottage. That sucked bigtime. It was like going back into olden times, or something, and I didn’t like it.

And here is me, looking so puffy (which may or may not have something to do with sauvignon blanc) but with a happy little baby with nothing other than sunshine in his baby-eyes.

I have spots blooming all over my face and it means that, once again, I must put away my Tom Ford Cherry Lush because it matches both the deep red of my acne, and, alas, the deep metaphorical red of shame because I AM TOO OLD FOR THIS! Old ladies should be free of those pesky little spots of yore. And the worst, deeply tragic thing is that last week’s Aveda tribute to Dave Stewart, the Hair Cut of Fashionable Asymmetry, is a jawline-revealing crop. So, suddenly, my previously clear and spot-free jaw has been cruelly exposed to the world and it has responded by angrily camoflaging itself in weeping pustules. Hormones, I thank you, no, really I do, because you help me to Keep It Real. Without flashes of angry teenage-esque skin, I would be a botox-loving, vain and extravagant cosmetic-obsessed bore. And PHEW we don’t want that.

One nice thing about having children, I have latterly come to notice, is that they do not ever seem to see your hideous disfigurements. They always think you look like mothers are supposed to look. And ever since Noah had his grommets inserted and had his hearing restored, I have had the New Happy Noah Who Talks In Full Sentences giving me a daily little bit of Calculated Flattery in order to win me over and make like him more than the others. It totally works. He tells me every day, no matter what I am wearing, that he “likes my dress”. So, I could be in my ripped-at-the-inner-thigh-skinny-jeans-perhaps-they-were-a-bit-too-tight-after-all jeans and a stripy shirt with yogurt wiped all over it and he will creep up to me to tell me he likes my dress. And I always feel terribly pleased, even though he is four, wears pyjamas all day by choice, smells very much like ammonia, and has this odd compulsion to follow me into the toilet to tell me a lengthy story about princesses whose pants are shaped like the letter ‘o’. I have NO IDEA what he is on about, but he wins the Best Child competition and I would save him first in a fire. Because he gets me, sartorially, and that is GOLD, Dear Reader, GOLD.

But anyway. It is the school holidays, and it is day two. We have been to the zoo, and I drove the seven minutes up the Marylebone Road and I sweated and felt giddy and a bit nauseous because driving in London scares me to my very core. We go all that way, and I expend all that nervous exhaustion, and the buggers only ever want to see the giraffes for about three minutes, and then they run to the bouncy castle which costs £1 for five minutes and they get all sulky when I tell them that the bouncy castle is not what we are at the zoo for.

Me: Let’s go see some more animals!

Them: No. We want to go on the bouncy castle.

Me: Well, you can’t, you small but effective gang of INGRATES.

Them: (Scowling) OK. Can we have ice cream instead?

Me: ANIMALS!

Them: Ok. The elephants, then.

Me: There are no elephants at this zoo.

Casper: The dinosaurs then.

And so we end up at the gorilla enclosure, and the gorilla mother has had a little baby, and she is swinging him roughly but kind of tenderly and nursing him and I get misty- eyed and love them both and think that me and the gorilla mummy are JUST THE SAME, because we love our babies the same and her baby has little baby feet and so does mine, and my boobs look a little bit droopy and old like hers, and we have a moment, then I see the children are engrossed in watching a dying fly trapped in the glass. What, I ask you, is the POINT?

Ingrates with very short attention spans. Four of them. All day long, for practically the whole of April. Which brings me to Istanbul. We are going to a wedding and spending four days there in September. It will be excellent, and even excellent-er will be when we figure out who is going to look after the children while we are away. I am hoping the answer will become clear to me, like a sign from God, a stigmata, a piece of toast with the name and mobile number of a reliable babysitter burnt into it in a mysterious and miraculous way. I really hope I don’t have to wait too long.

It is fair to say that my current job has few measurable rewards, and rather a lot of setbacks, and that successes are generally of the domestic kind. At the end of the day, you might find me talking at my husband or having a lively internal conversation with myself, recounting the triumphs of my day. Like this:

“I did three loads of washing and cleared the pile to HALFWAY! Cha-ching!”

“The vomiting has stopped!”

“Noah has not had to have his uniform changed by the teachers. I cannot smell any wee WHATSOEVER! I can use his trousers again tomorrow and there will be NO IRONING!” (high-fives self)

etc etc. And so, I thought I would share my latest success with you, in the spirit of Over-Achieving, Type-A Mothering and Needing a Proper Job. It is of the domestic variety, and it is probably boring, but it is also actually quite genius, even if I do say so myself. Ahem.

It was Multi-Cultural Day at school last Friday, and we were asked to dress the kids in their national costume. Our New Zealand national costume encompasses everything from jandals and sunburn to gumboots and woollen singlets to traditional Maori outfits and pois and pounamu and t-shirts with L&P logos emblazoned across the chest. Barnaby was keen on dressing like a Maori warrior, mostly because he would get to take wooden weapons and sticks to school. I was resourceful, and made his costume from cardboard, string, a hemp bag-for-life, cotton handles, and the wool insulation torn from my Abel & Cole delivery. It was a triumph of MacGyver-like proportions. See below:

SUCCESS. Like my rainbow cake, but not cake. Or rainbow-coloured.

It turns out I am quite good at this stuff, and smug, and competitive, and alarmingly focussed – at the expense of other things, you could say. A success, therefore, but not without its flip-side of drama and blood. I would really like to be able to say that no-one was harmed during the making of this Outfit of Authenticity and Michael Van Der Ham-like tailoring-innovation, but alas, the new IKEA sharp craft scissors were left out on the bed during my frenzied cutting and pasting and colouring-in, and Casper, sensing weakness and parental distractedness, ferreted them away like a little dangerous monkey, and they were then used to cut the baby’s finger. Not entirely off, as I am sure was intended, but a good way through the pad of the ring finger on MY TINY BABY”S LITTLE HAND. And there was more blood than was believable, and we thought about taking him up to the A&E, but then I reasoned that Social Services might get alerted, and I just didn’t have the strength for any more of those kinds of episodes, and so we DIY-first-aided and he is ok and his little tiny baby finger is healing very well, no thanks to his psychopathic brother.

The lesson in all of this could be thus:

Just send the kids to school in an All Black jumper. There will be less joy, but also less blood. Presumably. See Noah in his no-effort-no-blood-slightly-bummed-out-but-too-bad Costume of Equal Authenticity:

And in other baby-accident-related news, Ned was charmingly climbing on our antique post office chair last night, and I pointed out to Mark what a clever little baby he was, and Ned was beaming, clearly proud of his gymnastic abilities, and we had a moment of parental pride, and then he fell off into the corner of the TV and smashed his brow and has a black eye.

And I had a haircut following a fit of despair, and it was daring and short and angular and scary, and now I look like Dave Stewart from the Eurythmics. Not in a good way, though. Sort of like this:

Once again, I fall for Aveda’s calming head massage and peppermint tea. WHEN WILL I LEARN that they collude in making me look experimental and a bit daft?

And I went on the school trip to an Orthodox Synagogue and found the man quite attractive, and found myself becoming increasingly drawn to the kosher section in Waitrose.

How was your week?

Things I am a bit ashamed of:

This cake:

To be fair, and in my defence, I had “help”. The cake was supposed to be a VERY CLEVER dinosaur cake, for Casper’s 3rd birthday yesterday. I had very grand plans for it, but the children all woke up on Tuesday in pools of vomit, and so couldn’t go to school, and so my cake making day was besieged by three keen, yet entirely unskilled, chubby-fingered, sugar-hungry, dirty-fingernailed children. And at some point, I just surrendered to the horrible colours and the lumps of misshapen royal icing (which were supposed to be dinosaurs, apparently) and the bits of picked-off cupcake all over the floor and the split icing which oozed with waxy butter and the sticky jam that ended up being eaten from the jar with a spoon under the cloak of the dining room table. It was all really unfortunate. And, after all that, here is the only evidence that anyone was tempted to eat it:

Not the cake, mind, but the weeping orange pterodactyl made of food colouring and sugar. The cake has since been shaved, the green scraped off, the cupcakes dumped, and tonight I covered it all up again with chocolate icing. Yesterday’s revolting cake becomes tomorrow’s school cake sale offering. You can’t call me wasteful.

And yes, I think Casper is holding a packet of matches. Ahem.

More on the birthday:

Casper wore a dinosaur polyester sweaty suit. He lost the headpiece quite early on, which velcroed under the chin, giving him a very tight hat with a tail-bit that was covered in spikes. He also had green polyester dinosaur shoes, but was wearing them under the Scooby Doo boots. Now THIS is a good look on the day of your third birthday. Comfort, as always, is overrated:

The Baby. After the party food, just before he grabbed my legs, and vomited all over my boots:

Casper was given a crocodile hand puppet for his birthday. It disappeared in our communal garden. I thought it would be in the shrubs. It wasn’t, so then I thought one of the privileged little kids who share the garden and who are largely cleaner, better-behaved, and therefore sneakier than my children had STOLEN IT. I made a poster, a plaintive, begging poster that I stuck on the swings to SHAME the thieving children and their complicit parents into giving us back the crocodile, and I took Casper and Ned into the garden to call loudly for the crocodile to come back, throughout the day. Here is the poster:

(It used to read “Taken from the garden 23 March” but I felt, at the last minute, that ‘taken’ was a mite accusatory, so coloured in the words and turned them into a black birthday cake, and replaced it with the gentler ‘gone‘). It was a mournful vigil. I was very cross with the thieves. I spoke to the gardener about the theft. She popped in tonight and handed me both the crocodile and the poster. It was in the shrubs. European Innocent Non-Thieving Children Of The Communal Garden – I apologise.

Aaaand the baby broke into my handbag and stole my last Tom Ford lipstick and stuck his finger into the tube and mushed it and ate quite a bit of it.

That is the third Ford lipstick the children have somehow mangled. There must be a lesson in this for me, somewhere.

Oh man, the weekend has been so spectacularly horrible that I can only stand to recall it in severely edited short cold sentences.

1. I had to go out in the evening three times IN A ROW.

2.I went to Farringdon to have some drinks with ex-work colleagues. (I had a job about 6 years ago, ok?). I learnt that the office has since been demolished, and they found a 14th century anthrax pit underneath. Thats probably why I have eczema.

3. Only one man took an interest in me at the bar. And he was daggy.

4. The rugby was on, so Mark stole away for the whole of Saturday afternoon. Which meant I had to take all four of the pesky kids to a birthday party in Hyde Park. The Baby was inexpertly dressed by a hasty Mark, and had no shoes on, and no jacket. The big kids were so horrified that the majority of the six year olds at the party were girls, that they took themselves off into a bush and poked everyone with sticks. There were tears, mostly from the soft European kids.

5. We got home at 6. It was cold, and we had no key. Mark had the key, in his pocket, in a pub in darkest Acton. We went to Whiteleys to get warm, wait for Mark, and eat pizza.

6. Casper went mental, and screamed for Mark. I thought he would stop. He didn’t. We ruined the pizza-dining-out-experience of about 15 people.

7. Casper ran away, and the security guard found him, and asked me if that was my fluffy-haired little girl. I said yes.

8. Casper kept screaming, and screeched that he needed to do a wee. There were no toilets in the pizza restaurant, so all four of us had to haul arse to the end of the shopping mall. When we got there Casper said he wouldn’t go to those toilets. He sobbed. We went back, lost Casper again, found him again, teetering near the escalators. We sat down. Casper started weeping that he wanted to go back to the toilet. I said:

“Too bad. You’ll have to wee in your pants, fella,  because WE AREN’T GOING BACK TO THE OTHER END OF THE BLOODY MALL.”

9. He refused to eat, and ran off again.

10. Mark called to say that he was caught talking on his mobile phone by the cops, and lost 3 points on his licence.

11. He forgot to come and pick us up, and just drove home instead, and so I demanded he come out again, but then I fled the pizza restaurant, and he arrived when I was gone, and I was stuck outside our flat in the cold, with shrieking children, way past their bedtime, and no key again.

12. Sunday I was shaking with post-traumatic stress disorder.

13. Monday, a phone call from school. Noah’s bottom exploded in the lunchhall. Please come and pick him up as quickly as you can. He will need a bath.

It was all so awful. Here are some photos to cheer us all up.

Noah, he of the Squirty Bum, dressed as a Victorian boy on a longboat in Maida Vale:

Noah, again, cutting strawberries, in a photo destined for school to show the teacher he is Improving His Small Motor Skills:

Aaaaaand Barnaby, who makes fruit salads in an OCD fashion:

The Baby, who is never, ever clean:

A spooky school photo of the eldest pesky kids:

And Afghan biscuits, baked for the Japan Fund. HOW good are they???