The Harridan

Lovely lovely day yesterday, it was. Not at first, because we were waiting for the neighbours to come and have a playdate and I abhor playdates because of the mess and the yelling and the inevitable get-your-younger-brother-naked-and-push-him-outside-and-say-you-were-just-playing-prisoner thing. Poor Noah.

Anyhoo, there was a bit of that, and some scratching and some bedroom eating (of which I don’t normally approve) and a lot of tipping out of toyboxes that have not been explored for a very long time, and as such dehydrated apple cores and biscuits that turn to mouldy dust as soon as you get near them were all over the carpet (thus the bedroom-eating-disapproval). The baby is very mobile and gets under chairs and screams quite a bit, and Custard is currently out of nappies, which rather than meaning he is toilet-trained, actually means he just wees all over the carpet and poos into his Wellington boots. But you can’t go back, right? Right.

[And in an unrelated bit of Custard news, his cuddle blanket which has followed him around in a fug of saliva and bits of old food, sucked and nibbled and slept on and really, really loved, is LOST FOREVER! It hurts me more than it hurts him, I think, as I see the whole big boy pants and no security blanket thing as proof that he is growing up. I think I imagined I would keep the once rather acceptable Cath Kidston blue holey shawl and just have it there with my Lady Stuff, and sniff it occasionally and remember how much Custard loved his blanket. But now the binman has it, I think,and so Custard has been fobbed off with New Blanket. He is totally unconvinced, and it is me who is a bit mopey without the old one. Too much, too soon.]

So, Wednesday was quite nice because after the playdate got a bit too hurty, we took the kids to the pirate park. Barnaby jumped off the ship and whacked his hip on some rope and was hobbling around and Noah got his face smashed in with the playdatee’s boot and we all got a bit bored of the maiming and so set off in search of the Anish Kapoor sculptures scattered throughout Kensington Park Gardens with ice creams in hand. Near the horse statue, Custard wet his jeans and asked me to take them off. I told him he would get cold, but he was adamant that he wanted them off, and I stripped him. And so we continued on, with him in a woolly hat, long-sleeved shirt, bodywarmer jacket, wellington boots, and a bare arse. Oh, the autumnal fun we had! There was conker-searching and leaf-collecting and dog-stroking and squirrel-chasing and one fairly innocent poo episode. How we laughed.

Until.

Until, meters from the park gates, a woman on a bike sidles up to me. She says:

“Excuse me.”

“Yes?” says I, all rosy-cheeked from the lovely frolicking.

“Why are you allowing your son to walk around without trousers on a day like this?”

I had a split second of total glee when she said this, because every single bit of repressed, simmering anger that had built up over five years of tut-tutting strangers and every moment of feeling embarrassed and inadequate as a mother and knowing that people where witnessing my distress and floundering and messing up, well, they collided. Here was a woman coming up to me and practically begging me to let her have it. And so, Dear Reader, I DID.

I smiled, and turned to her, and went a bit apeshit. It went something like this, working up to a bit of wayward spittle and a purplish face:

“Are you trying to tell me that my efforts to toilet-train my young son on a mild autumn day, when we are minutes from home, and when we have been enjoying the afternoon together, and when I have four kids under my care, and when they are smiling, and still have bloody organic ice cream drying on their faces, are you trying to tell me I am doing something WRONG? Would you like to come closer to examine my son’s sodding underwear and jeans, and tell me if you would prefer me to put them back on him? HOW DARE YOU! Mind your own business! Which part of this is not acceptable? Is he upset? HOW DARE YOU!…” and on and on.

Then she says “Well, it is autumn, and social services might like to see what you are doing. Look at your other son!” (Points to Barnaby, who is wearing pyjamas, a werewolf suit, his school tie, my cotton scarf, plastic medals and a wool duffle-coat, certainly getting me on crimes to fashion, but hardly negligence.)

Luckily, at this point, a dog-walker, who had been overhearing all this, came up to Miss Italian-Anal-Retentive-Cyclist and said to her “What are you doing on this path! Get back to the bike path, you annoying busybody! Leave this poor woman alone! Disgraceful! Get off the path! Off! Piss off! Anyone can see this little fellow has had an accident! I have had enough of people like you! Off!”

And I am marching behind the dog-walker, and we chase her out of the path, chanting “Out! Get OUT! And think twice before you hassle someone ever again!”

It was AWESOME. I done non-hover-parents proud. I haven’t had that much fun since the Selfridges sale. The next time, I will film it, and start a Facebook group called “You Wanna Piece Of Me? – Mothers Against Tut-Tutters” or something. Even the retelling of the story has me worked up. Off for a cup of tea, then.

There will be hardly any speech marks in my posts ever again, because I am becoming increasingly unsure of when to use them. I have lost touch with the grammatical world, and it scares me, and so I am just going to back away from all of the rules that confuse me and just IGNORE it all. So, forgive me if things look a little non-edited. It is because they are non-edited. I might just use bold a lot. And maybe more italics.

My parents had their 49th wedding anniversary today. They are lovely. Here is a photo of them in Turkey, in their respective swim suit and funky holiday shirt:

Still married. Through teeth loss, four pesky children, campervan ownership and a vegetable patch, still they love each other. Apparently the Prime Minister of New Zealand came up and congratulated them, but I think that was less about the wedding anniversary and more about them being in the right place at the right time.  Which brings me nicely around to my next Startling Bit Of News.

I saw The Queen Of England and Wales today, being driven with her husband through the Bayswater streets, looking not at all bothered. I got a bit excited when I realised the policemen on motor bikes (two at the front, two from behind) were not stopping traffic for something as dull as a car accident, but for the Queen of England and Wales. I waved, and jumped up quite a bit, and pointed out to all of the tired-looking tourists that the Queen of England and Wales was in that car. I don’t think they understood.

And last weekend, as you know, we went to the country. I only did a little bit of the dishes (rinsing the plates, a lot of mumbling about whether there was anything I could do to help, etc) and a fair amount of apologising for the Hugo Boss Sunglasses Incident. Which went like this:

1. Custard is excited about being in a new house

2. Custard is feeling a bit like he needs some attention

3. Custard spies some Hugo Boss sunglasses

4. Custard bends the frames and twists them until the lens pops out

5. Custard announces to everyone that he has broken my glasses (of course, they weren’t mine, as I have Marc Jacobs sunglasses) thus preventing me from shoving them down the back of the couch and denying all knowledge.

But other than that, and the one broken wine glass, and the screaming, they were mostly lovely, and the country was nice, if a little bit lacking in shops.

And then we get back here, and it is all a little bit cold and the flat is a bit tiny and there isn’t a helicopter landing pad in our backyard like where we were staying (yes! they had one!) so I went to the movies to cheer myself up. And what a horrible horrible mistake that was, because I went and subjected myself to Eat Pray Love. Gah! So foolish! So foolish. I came out with all of my fingernails bitten down to bleeding stubs. Julia made me do it. She made me eat my own fingers. Because it dulled the pain of watching her have middle class existential dramas about NOTHING! And going to an Ashram to do NOTHING! And to fill my head up with words like guru gitas and with scenes involving her communing with elephants! And to watch her make sexy eyes with a plate of spagetti! These are the lessons I learned from my night with Julia:

1. Hoops earrings are maybe worth trying because they looked nice against her blonde hair.

2. However, blonde is not always best, Ms Roberts. You look anaemic.

3. When on holiday to exotic climes, do not buy the local clothes and wear them because you will look like a midwife in batik scrubs (Bali, obvs), or an old school librarian (Italy) or a Gap year student who is well past her Gap year (India).

4. When you are wealthy, and successful, with a nice husband and a nice apartment, and you feel like weeping for no real reason, do not leave your nice husband. Go and be a volunteer, or talk to your doctor about a SAD light lamp. Go running. Little things. It is not the end of the world, spoilt white privileged lady. We all feel like that sometimes.

5. When Javier Bardem loves you, honestly, LET HIM. Yes, his face is a little wonky, but do not go mental and tell him that it will make your life unbalanced. Because it makes your audience EAT THEIR OWN FINGERTOPS IN ANNOYANCE.

I know that it isn’t actually Julia Roberts I should be disapproving of, but really. C’mon Julia. You let me down. What an outrageous pile of dogshit.

Gratuitous shot of Baby Ned to calm me down:

Unfortunately, there is a song by The Wiggles, sung by the unlikely-but-truely-named Jeff Fatt, which goes like this:

“I eat grass

And I moo all day.

I’m a cow

I’m a cow.

Moo

Moo.”

There is nothing really noteworthy about this song other than we have a DVD of Jeff dressed up in a man-sized cow suit with udders while he sings, which has enchanted the children who ask for it twice daily. (I assent, because the flat is quieter that way.) He incidentally suffers from cow-esque uneven skin pigmentation, which must have been a bit of a boon for the makeup department when they painstakingly tried to transform him into a bovine approximation. Anyhoo, the point of all this is that I am oft to be found staring into middle distance, silently mouthing the words to “I’m a Cow”, at the supermarket, in the bank, mid-parent/teacher meeting. Jeff Fatt and his farm animal aspirations have taken up permanent residence in my head, much like Robbie Williams and Celine Dion do from time to time, and it is getting embarrassing.

I went to the Selfridges perfume department on Thursday to sniff the really expensive perfumes (because I have decided to leave the masses with their Thierry Mugler and their Calvin Klein – I want to really expensive stuff that smells like old leather couches and tobacco-stained tweed, baby) and when I had finished with the new Balmain the man gave me coffee beans to sniff. Because coffee clears your nose. It was like a sorbet, except for my nasal passages.

And watch out because here comes my latest OPRAH WINFREY LIGHTBULB MOMENT…

We need someone to invent something like that but for YOUR HEAD! A sorbet for your brain! Coffee beans for YOUR MUSICAL MEMORY! Ohhh, think of the implications – you could have an extra string dose to erase your mind of bad boyfriend choices! Unfortunate high school ball frocks! Ill-judged teenage stalking incidents! (Ahem. I assume we all have those?). Genius, isn’t it? I am just going to file that one neatly away in the mental folder I call “One Day It Wont Matter I Wasted My Tertiary Education On The Wrong Degree Because I Have Other Ways Of Making Money”.

Moving on, then.

Weekly Things What Happened Of Note:

1. I forgot to return the DVDs to Blockbuster. They called me up and told me, in bored, stoned, DVD Guy voices, that I now owe £21 in fines. We only even watched one of them! I felt very annoyed and wondered if I was supposed to plead with them to let it go. Then I figured that if I never ever go into Blockbuster again, anywhere in the world, not even once, they might not find me. Risky, and hardly Principled Living, but these are hard times.

2. I have a crush on Jason Bateman. It is because of Arrested Development. I think I love him.

3. We are off to the country today. Somewhere in deepest Epping. I think we need to buy a cake and expensive deli items to show we are good guests. But it all fills me with ennui. I do not think we are going to a manor house where there are servants and cocktail dresses and shooting parties. I think it is a bungalow in the suburbs. I will probably have to do the washing up.

Gotta go. Apparently we have to leave the house by ten. Yeah, like that’s EVER GOING TO HAPPEN. If you don’t hear back from me, you will know I am stuck in Epping, doing dishes for people I barely know. x

Reading my last post, it would seem that I have blamed my lax parenting on the ABSENCE OF EGG TIMERS. Outrageous. I am shamed.

Ahem. Moving on then, to Friday. After a whole half-day of quite a bit of working and only a little bit of facebook stalking/twittering/Elle perusal/cake-eating, I whipped out for a child-free walk to Waitrose via the Post Office.

[A word on British Post Offices. As per usual, the Post Office in Queensway had a strong whiff of wee. It is always a bit trampy, a bit wet-dog-smelling, and everyone in there always has a wild-eyed sweaty browed Michael-Douglas-in-“Falling Down” scent of barely-contained mania about them. Occasionally there are proper mutters in there, like the spitting walking-framed ancient Italian woman who swears at me every time she sees me, and the young fella who one time sat on the floor in the queue and refused to move and warned everybody in a loud voice that he would ‘soil himself soon’. The queue is always very, very long, and it is narrow so that the pushchair doesn’t quite fit, and I run over other people’s toes, and they shoot dark and angry looks at me, and scowl at the children. The children always shriek very loudly in there, and try to get out of the buggy and pull all of the pamphlets off onto the skanky floor. No one is happy in a British Post Office.]

Anyway, I took a little detour to Blockbuster in order to fill the house up with movies so that we will not fight over watching Arrested Development vs odd 80’s slightly pornesque violent movies with muffled sound that you find under the catchily titled Sky channel “Movies For Men”. And as I crossed the road onto my beloved Westbourne Grove, I accidentally caught sight of Pete Burns. He looked like this:

Eek!  And then I thought that he is starting to resemble Madonna! See?

Eek again! And this naturally led me to wonder who would win in a fight. Although Pete is clearly quite mental and burly, I think Madonna would use those arms as ferocious weapons and overpower him with her pillowy cheeks. Imagine the dance-off! Ugh. It was all really a bit traumatic, when you are only going out for movies and milk. And I love Madonna, so it pains me to see her looking so oldyetyoung. The new Dolce ads are a case in point.

So that was Friday, which was supposed to end on a high note, with George Clooney in “Up in the Air”, GBK burgers on the couch, Oyster Bay Sauvignon blanc quaffed in a pseudo-binge fashion. But the baby got all cranky and woke up, and the movie was a bit dull, and then we had that dreadfully boring fight over the right way to clean up the kitchen. There are two ways to clean it up, of course. The proper way, where the surfaces are cleared, the dishes put away in the dishwasher and the bits of food and unidentifiable wet stuff wiped up. And there is the half-arsed way, which is where you push everything to the back of the bench, do a big yawn, stretch, scratch yourself then head off to bed.

So we had that fight. Again. And woke up all not-speaking and sulky, and headed off in different directions – me and two kids to Borough Market, Mark to (haha) Hyde Park. (Going to Hyde Park for me is like going to the office on the weekend  – that’s why I put the “haha” in, dudes.) It was all just a bit teenage and boring, but I do maintain that cleaning the kitchen properly is just a nice, kind and grown-up thing to do.

Questions to put to The Readership:

1, Does the kitchen clean-up disagreement warrant a cranky weekend, or should I just let it go?

2. Where does one put the full stop after putting a sentence in brackets?

3. Is it wrong to eat two-thirds of your birthday cake by yourself?

4. Is it wrong to have had to buy yourself the said birthday cake?

Answers on a postcard, please.

Oh I am full of things to say! Thusly:

1. Jonathan Franzen came to London. Harper Collins published his new and hotly anticipated book. Whoopsadaisy, they published the wrong draft. The shame. Then, they had a party at the Serpentine Gallery. Someone came up to Franzen and nicked off with his glasses. There was a chase, and a helicopter, and a late night dip in the Serpentine. There was a’twittering about it.

TENUOUS CONNECTION ALERT:

Today, Sue, partner to the Secret Genius Project, tells me her husband came in very late last night. He was at the police station. Why, you ask? Because he had been chasing Jonathan Franzen’s glasses-thieves through Kensington Gardens. He was at the party, and he GAVE CHASE! Like a gentleman. Like a swiftly-footed glasses-saving CHAMPION of the near-sighted.  Thanks to him, we may still get another Franzen book. In about 10 years time. And Harper Collins, in a Guardian article on the very same subject, called him a hero. How excellent and slightly weird is that story?

2. I turned 33. I didn’t get a cake. It rained, I was cranky, I got a stomach bug on the birthday eve. There was a bit of vomiting. It was not in any way stylish, or enjoyable. I spent the day feeling a bit unloved, and ignored, and old, with a weak stomach and a pained expression.

Anyhoo, my lists of booty as follows:

*iPad (it is kind of mine, sort of.)

*Stella McCartney mental-person naked lace blouse. AS IF I WILL EVER WEAR IT. Cursed, wretched thing.

*Tom Ford lipstick in True Coral. That I bought for myself. The children wrapped it up, then cried when I wouldn’t let them play with it.

*Rose Prince’s Kitchenella, Justine Picardie’s Coco Chanel, Dietmar Blow’s Blow By Blow. It, er, pays to have friends at publishing houses.

*Artisan Du Chocolat pearly chocolate ball things. They lasted till the afternoon.

*A bracelet from BF Amber. Lovely. Endorsed by India Knight (She Whom I Have An Odd Crush On).

*A purple leather iPad case and a scarf to be worn in the manner of a nonchalant Parisian. I tried to do that today, but I just had a bit of neck-heat-rash. I think it may take some practicing.

*Dinner at Bar Boulud in Knightsbridge. I had a £20 burger stuffed with foie gras. Recession? Ha! Vulgar display of wanton spending? Yes! Yes! Yes! It was my birthday after all.

And that is it. A little slim, that list, if I do say so, but tasteful nonetheless.

3. I went to IKEA today. I drove, and I got a little bit lost. I was glad to return to the cosy environs of Bayswater. I avoided the meatballs, and the flat-pack ensembles. I spent £34. It was some kind of miracle. I have many, many IKEA Christmas cards that I am sure not to actually send out. But how marvellously prepared am I!

4. Both the children got into scrapes today. One got a bloodied lip, the other got punched in the eyeball. They are 5 and 4. I gave them a new pencil case in a sorry kind of clueless recompense. I probably should have given them timeout.

5. Timeout is meaningless in our house because the pesky kids have systematically broken all of the egg timers. So, timeout has become a kind of wafty, inconsistent threat which nobody can be terribly bothered to carry out. And the location changes. It can be the hallway toilet, or their bedroom, or a corner of the living room, or even on the couch. Often in front of the TV. Which means that timeout is just another word for TV time. Bloody hell, no wonder the kids sport confused looks on their faces.

6. I am horrified by what the X Factor stylists have done to the formerly normal hair of the finalists. That fellow Storm now has pink hair, and that good-looking young lad who nearly got through last year now has hair the same as Linda McCartney did when she was in Wings. It is just MEAN.

And that is all.

Woo hoo this is a post written on the new iPad. It is MINE! Although we are pretending it is for ‘the family’. Because then Mark still wins, and I win. Win-win if you will. Whatevs, just shove over and gimme my iPad because I have IMPORTANT APP PURCHASING TO DO, for goodness sake.

So today must be brief because I am very busy playing with my iPad, and really normal life has not really resumed since this little baby came into my life. Children have barely been fed, conversation with humans has not exactly been forthwith. Mark has been perfectly happy about this because it has meant he has been able to watch
bad and violent movies without me looking up from the screen. Win-win, as I say.

Of course, whether I have engaged with it or not, normal life has been busy banging on in the background and this week it has been so terribly horrible that I cannot even make a joke or dwell or see anything remotely nice about it. It has been a week where we got a very distressing phone call from New Zealand, and the week in which we found out poor little Noah has been operating on a 40 per cent hearing loss for probably years. AWESOME.

And I lost nearly 7000 photos in my iPad-related MacBook clear out. OK, I found them again but only after a night of tearful, snotty vows to never touch hard drives again, and certainly not to go near the trash bin when I have a few glasses of pinot noir inside me. The shock of losing the photos meant the last glass was left nearly untouched, and whoops! Custard drank it all this morning. He was fast and sly. Sorry about that, Social Welfare-types.

So there have been tears, flights to New Zealand researched, and a few apologies to children who were cranky FOR A VERY GOOD REASON. Sometimes you are a bit of a crap parent. And sometimes you get your kid grommets. And a few extra treats in some sad attempt at compensation. Sorry, little man.

On a lighter note, it is my birthday on Sunday and I have found someone to come out with us. Yes, some people are totally into coming out with me, it is just that they are a little hard to find. And so, for my birthday, I have a Stella McCartney blouse, some (more) Tom Ford but in True Coral this time, and an iPad (which is not officially mine, but we all know the truth.) Yaysers. Becoming 33 is quite beneficial from a commercial point of view. I think a little secret trip to the botox lady might be in order when the smoke clears from the Week Of Sad News. Do not tell anyone though because really, officially, I do not approve of such vanity. But whatevs, there are lines appearing, and that is not Stylish, dudes.

So, happy birthday to me, and all of you other librans out there. I wish you all the Mac technology money can buy, lovely lips, and wide ear canals for your children. Ahem.

Oh, Day of DARKNESS! Day of Creeping Despair and Vague Feelings of Crankiness! Day of Reasons To Feel a Bit Sad For Oneself! Day of Dramatic Sighings and Head Cupped in Hand Hoping Someone Would Notice!

Why this sudden departure from usual larkings and family funtime frolics and dressing up as woodland creatures along the Edgeware Road? Well. Here are nine perfectly reasonable reasons why:

1. I locked myself out of the flat twice today. Two times. The first time, I got the turbanned tiler to come and let me back in, which was all very handy as he was working on someone else’s tiles a few doors down. But whaddya know? I did it again, like a sick attention-seeking locked-out recidivist. And I was too ashamed to go and hassle the tiler, so I waited in the garden for Mark to come home while I put my head in my hands in a Very Dramatic Way. No one noticed, though, which brings me neatly to number 2:

2. My friends don’t want to come out for dinner with me on my birthday. The less said about this one the better. But, like, I sent a little email out, suggesting a restaurant and a date and other such helpful details, and NO ONE REPLIED. Not one. Is it me? Is it the restaurant? The recession? It must be me. Ah well. Could it possibly be related to number 3?

3. I have an ugly coldsore of leper-esque crowd-thinning proportions adorning my top lip as a weepy scabby Monument To Filth. It makes wearing Tom Ford redundant, and very wrong, so I am reduced to Zovirax and hiding in the flat. Sort of. Not really, because life must go on, and someone has to drop the kids off at school. Which I did, this morning, and Tom the Dad chatted at me for about three minutes just GAWPING at my coldsore in the way that men may gawp at your boobs if you wear the right top, and then he said “Jeez, that is one hell of a coldsore, girl.”

I KNOW, Tom. I did not confuse it with leftover muesli-bits. I KNOW.

4. I am wearing moccasins. I found them in my wardrobe. They look a bit funny. It shames me.

5. Ok, this one is making me a most angry lady. Strangers keep tut-tutting me about the children. I get glances/reprimands/”helpful” suggestions from complete strangers about those pesky kids doing ordinary stuff, like using their scooters, climbing up stuff, falling asleep in the pushchair and having their heads loll to one side. In an effort to make my feelings clear on this emotive issue, I have penned a letter to the world. It goes like this:

Dear The World:

My children are not made of glass. I am not a bad parent. The kids are fine, I am sure of it. Please keep your glances and tut-tutting to people who really want your advice and help. It is not me. You make me very cross. Parenting is hard enough anyway, without it being a public sport.

And seriously, relax. Children are tough and need to learn and sometimes they go down the hill a bit fast and they fall off and they LEARN. And sometimes (I am speaking to the Italians among us) the kids can be out at 6pm without shoes and without a jacket. They are hardy, and they neither freeze, nor get hypodermic needles stuck in their feet.

RELAX.

Yours,

A Non-Hovering Parent

6. The babysitters have fled. There are none to be found. This could be related to the whole filthy coldsore thing. Anyone of you free on October 2?

7. Everything in our bathroom cupboard is growing fur. It is damp in there. You open the cupboard, there is a smell, there is mould. It is making my essential oils and posh unguents look positively manky.

8. The teacher’s aide keeps insinuating that Noah’s packed lunch is annoying (his lunchbox is made of tin and is constantly breaking with a very loud clang throughout the lunchhall) and that I fill it incorrectly. This is LunchBox Harrassment. Apparently, he cannot have any more yoghurt because he eats it messily, he has too much in his lunchbox, and he eats too slowly. I get some variation of this theme every day. My dear little Noah has just turned FOUR. I say, leave the poor fella (and his mother) ALONE.

9. My hair has grown into the lampshade shape again, but there are no babysitters to be found in Londontown for me to go to Aveda and get it fixed. See #6. Yellow lampshade hair is very, very far from stylish.

I feel better now. Thank you for the opportunity to vent. Anyone else want to have a turn?

Woo hoo. Saturday. The baby has begun to sleep through the night and I am getting thinner. Could be the two hour school run. Whatever. It means I may just investigate further my mother’s startling claim that I look better in trousers than dresses. Aside from the fact that my entire sartorial life’s work has been based around the 50’s frock and its permutations, this is difficult news logistically. I actually have no trousers. Ah well.

In school run-related news, I have worked out a new system to get me (us) all to school on time, and it works like this:

I prepare.

I know. It has taken me a year, but I get it now.

So, I do stuff like think about getting the boys to do their homework before breakfast. Say, for example, the afternoon before. I get Claudia the Cleaner to iron those pesky M&S “non-iron” white shirts which inexplicably exit the washing machine like an old crumpled tissue with grey cuffs all at once on Saturday and most importantly, I sort out my clothes the night before. Which works, mostly, as long as:

1. I have not been latterly suffering from body dysmorphia whereby I fancy I can wear cut off denim shorts and a midrif top, forgetting the British climate, the cultural climate at school and that whole four-pregnancies-since-2005 thing; and

2. the washing has been done every day, thereby avoiding those mildewing spotty stains which appear on lots of my clothes (but why? how?); and

3. that I am not pregnant or just had a baby and therefore cannot fit ONE SINGLE ITEM in my inappropriate wardrobe kitted out for an imaginary office.

But sometimes, alas, it all goes wrong anyway. Take yesterday, for instance. The night before I had somehow told myself as I drifted off to have a dream (about India Knight being my wickedly witty and well-connected BBF, no less) that wearing grey tights, pirate boots, boob-revealing breton stripes and a green cropped army jacket would look stylish and stun the other mothers into appreciative murmurs.

But the next morning, as I sauntered along, still cranky from the discovery that Custard had tipped my Benefit Benetint liquid blush all over the flat walls and carpet, I was suddenly struck by the odd but undeniable fact that I had dressed myself as an unintentional homage to Puck. I was a 32 year old Shakespearean woodland creature hauling my blue and grey mini-elves to school.  It was very panto, and so very wrong for a frosty Friday 8:15am morning.

So I skipped and danced my way home in manner of a giant mummy elf and redressed myself. Like you have to do with toddlers who get into the dressing-up box.

Style FAIL.

And it looks as though there will be a birthday present iPad FAIL as well. And I only have myself to blame. In a nutshell, as it were, I happened upon a big charity sale at Joseph on Westbourne Grove last Saturday on the way to Portobello Road. I was with the entire brood, and so asked Mark to keep them all on the other side of the road while I joined the unholy scrum. I found a Stella McCartney blush see-through lace blouse and the Joseph man said “That is the star piece” and I knew I needed it. Because a transparent pinkish lace blouse with Edwardian leg’o’mutton sleeves is EXACTLY what someone with vomity babies who hangs out in the sandpit needs. It was reduced from £1000 to £120 and seemed such a bargain, and had I been sans family I would have grabbed it and brought it home and not said a word. But I was being WATCHED. So I had to Discuss Said Purchase With Husband. And what did I do? I said

“It could be my birthday present.”

IDIOT. He says “Why, YES!” and I think “Oh no!” and now I cannot play my iPad mindgames.

He won.

Here are some pics that I found on Mark’s iPhone. Take note of the 3 day old reddish Ned, and spookily-thin-looking one of me. It is not real, but I like it.

It has been a week of sausage overdoses and sad little four year old boys being dragged to school and autumnal horrible rainy days and a big fat Friday night GBK burger which has me pinned mercilessly to the couch. I am helpless, and drowning in the burger aftermath. I can barely lift my fingers.

School. Noah started on Tuesday and he hates it. He is too small for the polyester uniform which is a fluorescent shade of nuclear-fallout blue and which nearly crackles with sparks when you touch it. He has been weeing in it quite a bit, which I take to be a passive aggressive protest. And bloody right, too. They tried to get him to sit on the caterpillar square on the mat, but he really didn’t want to. And so he said so. In a very loud shouty voice. And he stood and faced all of the other 29 nervous four year olds and looked at the teacher and the teacher’s aide and stood his ground. For a very, very, very long time, so they tell me.

So. I have one of those kids. I thought my biggest problem with him was going to be his cowlicks and resulting sticky-outy-fringe, but things may get a little more difficult than that.

Anyway, now is not the time to discuss speech therapy and hearing tests and suchlike. I am going to launch into answering a few questions from Ali at Hestia’s Larder. ‘Cos why not? I am always happy to turn things back to me, after all.

1. At what time of your life were you happiest and why?

Born with a happy disposition, and born to parents who were kind and resilient and sensible and generally overflowing with positive sentiments, I think I have always been happy. Coffee makes me surge with pleasure, as does breastfeeding that handsome Baby Ned. But that is just drugs.

Weirdly, I think I was most happy when I lived with Mark and Amber and Glenn in a basement 4 bed bug-ridden dorm in Bayswater when we were without children, without jobs and without any real trauma whatsoever other than running out of food money. It was ace.

2. Where and when did you meet the love of your life?

The Whangarei Salvation Army, a Sunday, somewhere in 1990. He was wearing a new grey shirt which may have been described as ‘funky’. He probably wore grey zip-up slip-ons too. His hair was a bit mullet-y. He was thin.

3. Favourite item of clothing ever or most treasured possession?

Oh that is SO HARD. Here is a list of the possibles:

Mulberry Alexa

Meg Matthew’s Doma caramel-coloured leather jacket

Kate Sylvester gold skirt with the bustle in the back. (Unworn since I lived in NZ, but it will have its time again)

Engagement ring

Super-king bed with memory foam. Oh how I long for snatched moments in that bed.

My iPad. I haven’t got it yet, but it will be.

4. Must have makeup or beauty item?

At the risk of sounding like an infommercial, my Tom Ford lipstick in Ginger Fawn is an every day essential. Pink Dusk has been a bit of a disappointment, because it looks too much like my skin, and disappears. True Coral is next.

Other than that, Chanel foundation, MAC eyeliner in Teddy (thanks  honeymoon1), and Clarins Blue Orchid Oil for the night to stave away the wrinkles.

5. What do you think is your worst vice or fault .. honestly?

Everything is actually about me. That, I think, is a very boring and lazy and irritating trait. Sorry about that.

And I am a bit of a brat. The whole iPad thing is driving my husband mental. It goes like this

Me to Mark: “It is my birthday in three weeks.”

Mark: “Mm.” (doesn’t look up from watching a made-for-TV movie starring Jean-Claude Van Damme)

Me: “I would really like an iPad.”

Mark: “No. Aren’t they about £800? No.”

Me: “Yes.”

Mark: “No.” (Eyes settle back to movie.)

Me: “Yes. It is the only thing I want. Yay! I cannot wait for it! I am going to go and google it! Yay, and thanks in advance.”

This conversation has been going on for weeks. I. Will. Win.

6. Would you tell your friend, if you knew her husband/wife was cheating on her/him?

Yes. I cannot abide such ugliness.

7. What ambitions, wishes or desires, for your life, do you still hold close to your heart?

I still want to live in New York. I have given up notions of being a hardened lady lawyer, and my TV presenting aspirations had long gone.

I would like to be a bit like Joan Didion, except for the sad parts.

I still desire a Chanel 2.55. And an iPad.

8. Where do you see yourself in five years from now?

In New Zealand, having made lots of dosh from the Genius Secret Project. Enough dosh, that is, to have a lovely Herne Bay house, a bach somewhere up North, and as many emergency trips to London/New York and Europe to feel connected to the world.

Sadly, I am a walking cliche.

Ok, I tag these fellas:

W1Mum

FoxyMoron

Outrightingrate

We are home, after a long and hot holiday in which we all swam, we all ate many tomato-based things and we are all suitably sun-damaged. Greece was lovely, Turkey was better, London is a little bit cold.

Turkey – A Song

Turkey, Turkey

You are like a sauna

And your pancakes are satisfyingly chewy

Best not to be tackled if your teeth are false,

Which mum and dad can vouch for.

Ohhhhh, Turkey, Turkey,

Your toilets take some getting used to,

And air-conditioning is a must

I like your coffee,

Even if it is like a thick paste of wrongness.

We will be back,

To buy some more stuff

While you ply us with apple tea.

Ohhhhhhh yeah.

Thanks. I just find writing these ditties really easy. It is a kind of talent, I guess.

And I did not buy a kilim. We got a big 60 year old pomegranate design rug, which will fill the house with good fertility vibes, instead. PHEW that will come in handy in our barren household. At first, unrolled and plonked in the middle of our living room, I feared that it was an extremely ugly rug and that I had made a rather unstylish choice. But now I feel only love for the rug. Let me hereby decree according to the Harridan Style Laws that souvenirs are always to be considered stylish, even if you have to stress the ironic aspect of that particular stylishness, and even if your Romanian cleaner sniggers softly to herself when you tell her how much you paid for said item. So says me. Moving swiftly onwards.

Here are some pictures so you can get all jealous.

See the fruit at the market! Witness the cute baby! Marvel at the cool trout farm/restaurant place! Gurn like my parents while they still had intact teeth! And below, the only photo of me out of 301 that I look not REALLY REALLY HEFTY.

And for your amusement, a little photo essay at Custard’s expense. Watch as he makes a run from the Greek villa:

Realises he has left behind his blanket:

Finds that he cannot get back over and is stuck:

And the full weight of the situation dawns on him:

But finally succeeds and is reunited with his blanket. He takes a moment by the air conditioning unit to regroup.

Annnnnd another gratuitous shot of my terribly good-looking baby.

There is no Greek song today, as Greece was a bit dullsville after the romance and drama of Turkey. If I did make a song, it may well be a bit moany and going on about the euro, so I will spare you. Poor old Greece was a bit arid and there were too many tourists in Lindos. The villa was a little bit plain and I was very accustomed to my Turkish infinity pool. The greek one was a bit, erm, finite in comparison.

In other non-holiday-related news, we got back to a new bed. It is a memory foam one, and it is super-king, so I have to roll for about three minutes to find my husband. It is so excellent. It feels as though it has been woven with the feathery wingtips of the angels, I tell you. One day I shall post a photo, but I would need to use the wide angle lens. The children are still elbowing each other in the eyeballs, but it really wouldn’t be a proper morning without that, you know?

Anyhoo, it is nice to be back.