The Harridan

Last week, in my rambling ranting excitable post, I forgot to say that I had finally graced the narrow dining table of The Hidden Tearoom. On Friday, mum and I (she with the smartly-curled perm and me with the only slightly dirty frock) went to a MYSTERIOUS location in Old Street, pressed a buzzer, gave a password, and got led into a magnificent old building with enormous landings and narrow hallways connecting lots of odd-shaped flats – one of which was the location of our secret nighttime rendezvous. We were taken in with eight other people, nearly all of whom turned out to be good-looking, mostly lawyers, and all with a history of seeking out underground events in London. Which was weird, really. Both the good-looking lawyer part, and the part where they do this regularly.

Anyway, we were taken into a young couple’s home, given champagne, led out onto their roof terrace where we had a good view of drunken men pissing onto walls far, far below. Hot out of the oven came little cheesy garlicky scones, and then we were led back inside to sit at the dining room table and begin our High Tea, what HO! It was excellent, and odd, and completely worth the measly £25. There was a dog, and more cakey-type things like toffee brownie and finger sandwiches and lemon drizzle cake and truffles and more and more and more to heart-attack-infinity and beyond. You HAVE to go.

And more on a tourist note, we went to Buckingham Palace today. Two observations I brought back with me:

1. the female staff are dressed in dreadful sexless uniforms that were so ugly I nearly poked mine own eyes out to avoid looking at them. Think shapeless blazers and mid-calf black skirts. Oh how the Europeans must guffaw! and

2. the ticketing system was so incredibly incompetent and unnecessarily complicated. There were two marquees in which to queue, and many, many lines to get lost in, and once you we made it to the cashier, he had to type in our names from our cards. WHAT? But why, Crazy English Royal-Type People? And there was some sort of airport-like security thing where we had to put our stuff in the trays to be x-rayed and we had to walk through the metal detector. The palace was harder to get into than AUSTRALIA. What do you think we want to do with your State Rooms? NOTHING! WE JUST WANT TO LOOK AT THE CEILINGS AND LISTEN TO THE AUDIOGUIDE! That is all. Talk about self-validating.  Annoying.

So, on Thursday we had to take an emergency trip to the Science Museum. We walked through the park, me with the baby in a sling, Noah and Custard in the double buggy, and Barnaby talking at me without taking a breath. Here is a sample of our dialogue.

Barnaby: What does God look like?

Me: Um, a cloud?

Barnaby: No.

Me: Fire? The sun? An old man?

Barnaby: No.

Me: Maybe you could ask Grandad?

Silence.

Barnaby: Shall I tell you about Scooby Doo?

Me: [relieved] Yes please.

Barnaby: There is Freddie. He has yellow hair and he solves all of the mysteries. There is Shaggy, he loves Scooby Snacks. There is Scooby and he is a dog.

Me: What about Daphne?

Barnaby: Who – Daffy? OH yes, she has a purple shirt and she loves purses and handbags and she knows how to clean stuff.

Me: And Velma?

Barnaby: She wears glasses but I don’t remember what colour shirt she has.

Me: So, which one are you?

Barnaby: I am definitely Fred. Noah is Shaggy, and Custard is the dog.

Me: I agree. Who am I then?

Barnaby: You are Daffy.

Me: Do you mean Daphne?

Barnaby: No. Daffy.

Me: Like Daffy Duck?

Barnaby: No. DAFFY.

Me: Ok, so I am Daffy?

Barnaby: [Looks at me closely, especially at my hair.] No, you are Shaggy.

And on, and on, and on. Notice how poor old Velma is unnoticed even by five year old attentive boys? It is her glasses, I’d wager.

PS We have a chandelier in our stairwell outside. Yes. I too am puzzled. More on that, if and when it becomes clear just why it is hanging there.

So much to say! So much to report – because I have been busy going OUT! And it is school holidays, 9:05am and I am in my pyjamas and intend on remaining in them for as long as I can – at least, until sub-contractors start turning up looking for keys/paychecks/tins of paint, etc. I actually AM a busy lady with lots of child-and-domestic-related chores, but whenever anyone is looking, I am sitting here with coffee checking my blog stats or tweeting something innocuous or applying nail polish and ignoring the hair-pulling vicious children.

But I do digress. As I type, Scooby Doo is keeping the children from hurting each other, and so I shall quickly get out all the Very Interesting Things that I have done this week.

Sunday: Out for drinks with the ladies for salmon canapes and Oyster Bay. Nothing really notable here, except that I wore my new grey Kate Sylvester dress and I told too many indiscrete tales about the Secret Genius Project and  my husband. My bad.

[Please let me say “my bad” without sniggering. It makes me feel down with the kids.]

Tuesday: Skype meeting with the designers in New Zealand. Except that they forgot, so we googled images of babies and drank tea and ate biscuits instead. It were wild.

Thursday: Tall Tales’ reading evening in Kilburn. Notable for three things;

Belgian Waffling – Yes, she was there, and she was all things fabulous and funny and with the skin of a newborn angel, or something. With perhaps the pinkest and most clean feet in all the world.

Outright Ingrate – Yes, she was there too, and she is also very funny. She has cool hair and laughed at my jokes. I was standing because I was late, and my old-lady-arthritic knees where getting a bit ouchy in my half-size-babyish heels, so I had to sit down and drink half-pints and gin with her while straining to see through the audience to the stage. Which brings me to my next point:

Gin – I had too much, and so Friday was a sad day of sickness and murky despair.

Friday: Mostly a sad day of sickness and murky despair. See above. However, we did venture into Mayfair to MacCulloch & Wallis to talk to a handsome gay young man called Lexus about the properties of cotton jersey. He was like the grown-up son of Gok Wan and Finn from Glee, if such a joyous happening could, er, happen.

Saturday: It is hard to describe Saturday’s Wedding of Crapness without being really mean. So I won’t even try not to be. I didn’t know the bride and groom, they asked for cash, they forgot to give us any drinks, no food was served at all from the time the wedding began at 2:30pm until 7:30pm and it was food served on plastic plates! With plastic knives and forks! Like being on a plane! It was in a darkened hall, as I just KNEW it would be and the DJ practised his horrible musak and woke the baby up. The waiters were so slow that some of the guests got up and served everyone else. Oh it was dreadful.

Sunday: Church, on Regent Street, with my parents. Custard got naughty, so I snuck out with him to Topshop and bought a dress and got back in time to have some chocolate biscuits. Everyone won. Except for the part when we went to John Lewis on the way home to look at beds and the children did Bad Stuff to other customers with pretend guns and dirty shoes and we were told off twice.

And here we are again. Monday. In the spirit of ‘here we go again’, here is a photo of the boys in their hats of two weeks ago, doing something Chippendale-esque and entirely, utterly WRONG.

We are supposed to be lounging around Primrose Hill this weekend, but ALAS! Apparently we are invited to someone’s wedding. The electrician’s son’s wedding. Whom I have not met. Nor have I met the wife-to-be-on-Saturday. And the invitation was hurriedly passed to me yesterday AND WHAT IS MORE there is something on the back of the invitation asking for “no boxed gifts or vouchers”. So. You want me to come to your wedding, stranger-type-person, and give you cash. AWESOME. I am delighted. Luckily, my parents are here and they can babysit for the whole of what will be the sunniest day of the year while I am in some HALL somewhere talking to the baby in a very animated way because I will only know the baby. Everyone else will be from HARROW! And they will probably be electricians or have some sort of electriciany-type job that makes them handy with tape and fuses and what will I say to them? How is your white van? Are all your trousers low-cut at the back? Is that some sort of  union-type-trouser arrangement? Harrow, Dear Reader, is very far from W2.

So I am a little bit cranky. Again. And have been very busy since I can back from the Land of the Long White Cloud. My lovely parents have been staying here and it seems that the stomach bug that I give to EVERYONE in the world whom I have anything to do with struck them down too. I think I even have powers to transmit it over the internet. If any of you feel a bit queasy after reading this post, it will have been my bug. So sorry.

So they have been jetlagged and stomach-bugged and have had their ears polluted from the unholy noise of the children, and they are a bit old and it has been a little bit exhausting. They were also on the couch. Can you imagine putting your elderly parents on the couch? Who does that? We do, obviously, but I can tell you that it is not the kindest solution. Anyway, they have been packed off to a very nice flat in Notting Hill with no noise and proper beds and a TV with 20 channels. Mum has lost her bra but that seems to be the only real casualty. And Dad has been arriving in the morning with fluorescent foam earplugs firmly in place. It seems to have done the trick, although makes it hard to tell him when to stop walking and turn left.

We had a little party for Noah on Sunday in the garden. I painted the kids faces. I am not really skilled in that area, despite many years of painstaking makeup application. See?

Ah well. We can’t all be good at everything, right? I have the power to nauseate friends and family. Asking for artistic skills may just be greedy.

So, Noah turned four yesterday and I made a cake. He has asked for a Batman cake for months and months and so I mustered up my cakery skills and made this. And I am peeved. Because:

1. No one eats the cake part. Only the yellow icing which is made from a packet substance akin to building putty with a suspicious claggy chalky texture and no flavour. It is full of yellow food colouring and sugar so the kids will probably go blind or something with toxicity. The kind of toxicity that I have not only allowed, but I have positively encouraged. Am sure modern mothers are supposed to colour their icing with saffron and sweeten it with carrot juice, but Not I. Which makes me a bit of a bad mother on a smallish scale (although not if you were Gwyneth. If you were Gwyneth you would faint with the dreadfulness of it all).

2. Mark will not eat the cake part either because it ‘has no chocolate icing’, (whinge whinge). So he eats none of it at all. And yet, he asks for cake all the time. I think he loves the idea of having a wife who bakes. I also like the idea. But I am officially resigning from this calorific and oderous task whch results in cocoa everywhere and me all cranky and me eating cake at frequent intervals throughout the day just to finish it off. Thanks family, for your following-through of cake-related appreciation, and for helping me not get lardy.

Humph.

Aaaaannnnyway. Noah got to choose what he wanted to do on his fourth birthday. I was hoping for the puppet theatre on the canal in Maida Vale, or the Zoo, the movies, or Bramleys or even some swimming at the Porchester Center. But Noah wanted to blow bubbles in the garden. It was an extremely cost-effective option. And it involved a traipse across the road. Such a sweet kid.

Then we scoffed pancakes at Harlem (a little breakfast cocktail for me first, ahem) then bought policeman hats from the tourist shops along Queensway enroute to the pirate park. Then we had ice creams. It was lovely. Here are the boys after their bath in their hats, looking a little bit odd: Note the extremely cranky kid on the left. Not best pleased by the cosy photo op.

In other news, my parents arrived this morning and have won the children over with gifts and magic tricks involving false teeth. Custard tried to take his out too, and only gagged. That was kind of a low point. But so far, so good. Tomorrow we begin our galavanting – we plan to do the kind of stuff that I usually can’t do on my own owing to the clambering monkey-like children that are variously strapped to my back/head/ankles etc. For once, the adult:kid ratio will be even. They have been warned.

Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated, just like Jeff Goldblum.

I have just been in New Zealand for about five days. No one has actually thought I was dead, they just maybe noticed I was gone because did not post anything for, like 2 weeks! and I could have been dead, and I did have some sort of a jetlaggy stomach bug. Not quite DEATH but there you go.

So I am alive, I was just in a place far, far away, with sunny winter days and cold houses and proper coffee with patterns in the froth, and islands called Waiheke and baches festooned with tivaevae patterned cushions, and where you have pie and cold chicken for your picnic lunch. It was so nice I nearly wept.

Here are the good things about NZ:

1. A kid went swimming in the lagoon on Onetangi beach, in the middle of winter. It was sunny.

2. Mount Eden is all chichi with lovely cafes – I ordered eggs benedict and it was so saucy and warm and filling and delicious. The baby was welcome, and the cake slices were cut thick like telephone books.

3. Kate Sylvester was on sale, and I had english pounds. I now have a new drapey dress, a 40’s WW2 cropped merino wool army jacket, and an ice skater’s dress in my wardrobe looking too stylish for words.

4. My friends were there. They made me tea and drove me round and flew up from Christchurch and came out for dinner and gave me TWO duvets of suitably-crushing weight to keep very warm under, and they bathed the baby for me. None of them have aged so I suspected secret botox. But it turns out it is just the CLEAN AIR! And antioxidants from feijoas. Probably.

5. The middle-aged air hostesses said stuff like “Man, your baby is WAY cute” and called me honey. They were bosomy and motherly and I wanted them to hug me. They were also wearing Zambesi.

6. Air New Zealand runs an aircraft safety video with the staff in bodypaint and nothing else. I watched it from beginning to end, and laughed, and clapped my hands at the geniusness of it all.

Here are the bad things about NZ:

1. My Christopher Kane t-shirt was wasted. No one knew who he was. I wore a big, gurning, slightly ugly doll face on my chest for NOTHING.

2. The houses are cold. There is no central heating, and people wear blankets wrapped around their shoulders like the pioneers. You have to close the curtains at 5pm so as to keep in the heat.Going to the loo in the nighttime requires quite a long dialogue with yourself, like this:

MYSELF: “I am so busting. I cannot pretend any longer.”

MYSELF: “Yes, but if I get out of bed, I will freeze.”

MYSELF: “My kidneys are aching, though. Actually aching. There is clearly a bladder infection upon my immediate horizon. So get up.”

MYSELF: “But if I get our from under these two duvets, the cold air will sweep in and around my only-partially warmed body, and then I will have to get out entirely, and race from room to room, gasping with the shock of the cold. The tap will run very cold. It will be most unpleasant. Bladder infections are not even that bad.” etc, etc

3. It is so very far away, you have to go on a 36 hour door-to-door journey with very little chance for sleep. It makes you a bit wobbly and seasick.

We flew with Emirates and they gave us lots of curry-based meals. Not sure of the wiseness of this. The women had the most excellent red lipstick, but very, very bad hats with drapey veils on one side of their faces. They were a little bit slow with bringing around the water, and so we were a bit dry-mouthed and sharp-eyed for hours. They also cancelled the flight when we got to Sydney. Oh, THAT was Memorably Bad Moment #1.

Anyway, the flight is a bit like labour – a dreadfully painful, boring and long-winded – but you forget about it once it is over. Mostly. So I got back on Friday and the children were typically mercenary about their gifts. My husband said that he and the borrowed nanny had done a very good job of keeping things tidy and perhaps I would like to ‘try to keep it up’. That was Memorably Bad Moment #2. I am still trying to work out an appropriate response to that one.

Anyway, when the floor stops rocking and my eyes stay open past 8:30pm, I shall try to think of something to write about. Until then, then.

I fell over today in the scrambly little sharp devil-pebbles at the gate of the garden and I have a blackened, bloody weepy knee like those children of mine are constantly sporting. For once, I feel a bit sympathetic. And they do not usually have a few glasses of Hardy’s Sparkling Rose buffering them from the pain. I managed to keep the baby from smashing face first into the shards of evil spiky stones, but only through some primal mother-instinct that came out of nowhere like a Superhero reflex I did not know I possessed. I am feeling quite sorry for myself.

I also did not know I possessed Occasion-Specific Tourette’s Syndrome. Apparently I do. On Tuesday morning, Noah’s new teacher came for a home visit. I had spent the entire morning sort-of cleaning up, but getting sidetracked into tidying piles of magazines in obscure corners and wiping out cupboards and folding stuff, and not really actually making the living room any better. Because, as everyone who has pesky children knows, the little buggers wreak such havoc of a morning and there is a lot of filth to deal with. They sprinkle Special K over the floor and always, always tip their water over the  kitchen table frighteningly near the Mac and there are toast crumbs spread disproportionately widely, as well as flung nighttime nappies and sharp crucial bits of Lego that bruise the undersides of our feet and make us wild-eyed  and snarly.

And I was nervous, even though Noah’s new teacher is Barnaby’s existing teacher and I see her every day – I was nervous, and slow and a little bit domestically unfocused. And they were early, Gramatically-Challenged Miss L and her sidekick, Camp Mr F. And I got excited, and started to swear. I was throwing mildly fruity terms into polite conversation like this:

“Oh, it is bloody raining, is it?” and

“Here is Baby Ned. He is lovely, but always pissing on the cushions” etc etc.

There was an uncontrollable urge to pepper my speech with inappropriateness. The urge won, and I was powerless to stem the tide of rude words. It was some kind of linguistic hell, which only got worse and more difficult to get out of when I began to discuss my interest in Botox and my theories about ageing. Miss L, it should be noted, is 24 and had no idea what I was waffling on about. Even the Camp Mr F was avoiding eye contact. He wrapped things up pretty quickly, by applying the old “as much as we would like to stay here and chat, we have other parents to see” one-two. Ouch. I am sure I was trying to be cool. Swearing & monologues concerning my increasingly unclear jawline = cool, obviously.

Yes. I am a bit of a dickhead and not my smoothest when I need to be. Oh, the shame of it all. I have a feeling there will be a handwritten note on the front of Barnaby and Noah’s files warning teaching staff of their mother who has a potty mouth and who may be a little unhinged (“avoid unnecessary conversation if possible”).

Here is Noah watching Beyonce on Youtube after scoffing a ChocoLeibnitz:

Here is Custard giving Ned a *loving hug*. These inevitably turn a bit squeezy and hurty.

They all at least understand the value of SILENCE.

Maths Week came and went without real incident. Barnaby ran around the football field seven times. There was a family maths quiz which has lain forgotten and trampled on the floor. We scored another matchbox and filled it with Latvian coins. It ripped but I taped it up with all the motherly DIY-skills I could muster. There was a fight between moron parents at the marble jar raffle table, something to do with parking, and one of them swore while both were held back from each other like snarling dogs. Good one, Moron Parents. I do not think anyone really feels any more love for or comprehension of numbers, but thank you for trying, School.

Meanwhile, Custard has developed dags in his hair, a bit like Barbie used to when you did not look after her properly. Well, I never had a Barbie with dags, because I was the baby of the family with lots of toys that I did not have to share and so I choose to hoard my stuff, keeping it all pristine and silken and boxed and unsullied. Which means, I suppose, that I have a better track record with my Barbies than with my own children, and it may well be that my childhood OCD requires further investigation. Ah well. Here are the dags:

They will have to be cut out. The excellent platinum Gaga-tribute hair will have to be hacked into, and for that, I am sorry.

This week I have begun giving the baby real food. This is a terrible, shocking bore. Next to labour and five-year olds, it is the worst thing about having offspring. But look how magnificent Baby Ned looks with an apple:

He is spookily goodlooking. And so clever with his four and a half month old hands.

Now, last post I said that if I had a whole day off I would play scrabble and go shopping in Oxfam and stuff. But I did forget to add that I would LOVE to finally go to The Hidden Tea Rooms. Lady Grey is an American who has set up a secret tearoom somewhere near Old Street. There are weekend dates that are emailed to you in advance – they get booked up quickly because *word on the street* says she is excellent and her cakes are divine and the whole thing is a bit mysterious and fabulous. But I have been thinking that my Bad Kids would be unenthusiastically received and weekend babysitters in the day seems a little bit wrong and so I can only imagine how lovely it would be. Here is the link: www.hiddentearoom.com

Cake, though. Who needs more cake in their lives?

Vogue and Elle say that this season it is all about the beige. Or ‘nude’, or ‘biscuit’. They say that Celine has an excellent collection and really, those are the clothes women want to wear. Utilitarian, pared-down, in shades of beige and biscuit and greyish khaki. But beige is no good for the cake-eater. Nor is Celine. I had tried, really tried to do it right this summer. I have bought beige-y peg-leg trousers and worn with battered converse and breton stripes and Meg Mathews’ old tan leather jacket, but I do not look very good. I look like a clueless suburban lady with unkempt hair. So boo to you, beige police. I am going back to polyester frocks and belts and I shall never, ever wear peg-leg trousers again. Because we have, in our family, thighs like this:

Lesson learnt.

Apparently this week is Maths Week at school. I was told this through the medium of earnest, enthusiastic newsletters and even more earnest and enthusiastic teachers who persuaded me to come to a Maths Week meeting this morning. There were about three of us parents in total, who had been rounded up before we had a chance to scurry off to our real lives, looking around kind of nervously. It still feels new, being on the teacher/parent side. Anyway, I have to confess that maths and I are not friends. So the prospect of Maths Week is about as enticing as Fish And All Seafood Week. Both topics leave me both a bit sweaty and sick-feeling. Anyway, Maths Weeks is going to involve lots of raffles and counting marbles in jars and workshops for parents and sponsored walk-a-thons around the football field. I reckon reception class will manage about 100 meters before they start crying. Which is going to be a cost-effective sponsorship, if nothing else.

One of the activities the kids are doing involves a matchbox. They have to fill it up with as many little things as they can. They could do this, if their brothers had not ripped the naked little unfilled matchbox on Friday afternoon. In the meeting this morning I had to raise my hand and ask the teacher what I should do now that there was no matchbox. She frowned and said there were no more. I felt like I should try to control those little hooligans a little better. Meanwhile, Noah and Custard were rampaging the library and running into the hall with books to shove onto my lap. They were really enjoying the acoustics in the hall and ran with deafening stomps. Everyone was wincing. I was sinking lower into my chair. Then the leaflet went round for Good Parents to sign up for the workshops. Maths workshops, mind. One of the tough parents who runs the committee and who smokes outside with his gang of punk parents asked me if I would like to sign up. I said, in a weak voice, that I couldn’t. Because (and I quote)

“I have too many dependants” (pointing to the Bad Kids with the clomping and the books and the baby). He was wearing denim cutoffs and had a blond quiff. He was not impressed.

Anyway, I got a meme today from Belgian Waffling. I am a little bit excited. I decided to wait until those children were properly asleep (not just screaming in their bedroom and taking their nappies off and using Noah’s mattress as a slide) until I could concentrate on the answers properly. Here goes.

What experience has most shaped you and why?

As much as I do not want to say this, because it makes me seem a bit dumbass and twee and sad and erm, inexperienced, it has to be the birth of all those pesky kids. I really, really like the job, and it suits me, and I find it mostly fun and actually a bit of a privilege. I have become much less wimpy. I have a much stronger sense of myself, and have figured out all sorts of Humble Human Truths, like those girls at school who were groomed and thin – they would always be that way. You do not grow into that – you are made like that. And that your perspective on life is the difference between a fun one and one that is a bit of a drag. I also think birth order is crucial (sorry, Middle Children – I get it now), and that Gina Ford speaks the truth. Being a mother has been a very liberating experience – and I think I can still say I am me first, then their mother second. Which maybe makes me less cranky about it all. I am not completely lost in the chaos and the filth, I am in there somewhere, admittedly swearing and squeezing little upper arms a bit too tightly. But there, you know?

If you had a whole day with no commitments what would you do?

Do my makeup properly, in the LIGHT.

Have breakfast with Mark in Harlem with some sort of alcoholic drink.

I would then ditch Mark and go looking in the second hand shops on the Kings Road and Kensington.

Lunch at the River Cafe

(I would in real life get all tired now but let us continue this complete and utter fantasy of freetime)

Home, for coffee with the La Pavoni and some online scrabble with my mother. Then off to Beach Blanket Babylon for drinks, via SCP and Coverture then to The Ledbury for the tasting menu. Home at 10:30 for some reading.

I would be really fat and tired but so, so, so happy.

What food or drink could you never give up?

Bacon and eggs. I love bacon and eggs and would be happy to have them every day for the rest of my (shortened) life. But of course it must all be posh – Poilane toast and Abel & Cole’s farmhouse butter and well-looked after eggs and proper expensive organic bacon. HOW uncouth is THAT?!? Should have said sushi or something.

If you could travel anywhere, where would that be and why?

Unequivocally NOT New Zealand because I am flying there in 2 weeks for a Mysterious Reason (something to do with the Secret Genius Project) for one week. That is a topic for another blog post. If I could travel anywhere, it would be New York. I am entirely unoriginal in this. But New York has an energy unlike anywhere else I have been before. I would like to go find some salt beef and pickle place and listen to the customers and drink some bad coffee and do all the touristy stuff and then do the non-touristy stuff. I have been there once, for six days and was (of course) pregnant.  How lovely to not be, and swan about.

Who do you have a crush on?

Mary Portas. But I wish she didn’t ruin the charity shops. I shall never forgive her for that.

Mark Ronson. Oh, I LOVE that man and his hair and his suits.

Unfortunately, all men, in some form. Witness me with the husbands of friends/Mark’s workmates/the waiter at The Commander/fathers at nursery. I can be a bit minxy and it can be embarrassing.

If you were the leader of your country, what would you do?

Make us all bi-lingual – the Maori language would have equal standing with English. Kids would grow up, go travelling, and would meet europeans with the command of three or four languages, and we would have our own, and not feel like language dunces.

Do something about violence towards children.

Then I would cry in a corner, whimpering “This is too hard. Just let me be a TV presenter instead”.

Give me one easy savoury recipe that does not include cheese.

Bacon and eggs. Toast the poilane, butter it, cook the bacon, cook the eggs.

And my question:

What did you think you were going to be when you grew up?

I am going to tag Foxymoron, Art By Anya, Halfway Down The Stairs and Paisley Jade.

IF ONLY I KNEW HOW TO HYPERLINK AND STUFF. But I don’t. Sorry.

The kids have a deep, inappropriate love for Lady Gaga. There is a whole lot wrong with little two year old boys waking up from their nap, sitting themselves down by the MacBook and asking for “Lady Gaga, Ra Ra Ra”, I think. Who can I blame though? Who said, in a desperate bid to stop them doing hurty things to each other/taking apart the couch/stabbing the bananas in the fruit bowl “Let’s all watch some Lady Gaga on YouTube!”. That high-pitched plea would have been me. It worked, they liked, we all now have Gaga songs living inside our minds. They have begun to ask for Lady Gaga during the day and so there we all are, sitting inside round the kitchen table in a basement flat, silently staring open-mouthed at her armadillo McQueen clogs and smoking sunglasses. As you know, she swears, and she is a bit lesbiany and a bit wrapped-in-police-tape-doing-suggestive-hip-movements, and she mostly wears just sparkly knickers and a bra. Which is all very well, but I am left wondering at which point I try to turn them to some Bon Jovi or something else suitably soft rock and manly, or at least to a female singer who puts clothes on.  I am aware, as mother of 4 boys, that I am in a unique position to teach them to love women, to respect them, to clean up after themselves and to cook more than just mashed potato and steak. So is Gaga-Encouragement a bad thing? Should I shield their eyes from the bonkersness and the near-nipple sightings? I quite fancy that we bond over a bit of Family-Gaga-Appreciation. Any thoughts?

Anyway, yesterday we went to the Connaught Village Festival. “What is that?” you ask. Well, I am not entirely sure, and I have been attending for the last three years running. It seems that the Village (a.k.a two small streets with a large amount of real estate agencies) likes to close itself off, put some live music on a bandstand in the middle of the road, plonk two food stalls and one face-painting tent on the tarmac and lets the punters go mad. The ‘punters’ in this case are really just some mothers with kids tearing around on scooters. Everyone else is at work. Which is just as well, because yesterday there was a fair bit of alcohol going around. I spied glasses of Pimms at estate agency no. 1, and sidled up quick smart to get one for me and helium balloons for the kids.

REAL ESTATE AGENCY FESTIVAL STALL LESSONS FOR LIFE:

1. Tie string to helium balloons SECURELY. Otherwise, the balloon will come off, float high into the air, and kids will be left with tight string cutting off wrist circulation, a loud annoying wail and a life-long wariness of estate agents.

2. Only give the woman with the multiple kids ONE glass of Pimms/Prosecco. Any more, and she will stop paying attention to her offspring. The woman will start dancing to the B52’s on the stereo system. It will not be stylish.

3. Do not bother with competitions where you ask people to guess how many blow-up footballs can fit into a taxi. It will not increase sales. It is not much fun, either.

But OH! how that Pimms glass and then the two sneaky prosecco glasses cheered my entire afternoon. It was a beautiful thing, really, that the more I sipped, the less I cared about the boys racing off on their scooters and the shoving and the crying and the extra-balloon-retrieval. It was as if I was immunised from stress. It was awesome. Until I grinningly gave Barnaby our house keys to ‘hold’ on the way home. They were not still being held by the time we got to the top of our stairs. Apparently, he had dropped them but did not think to pick them up. As you do, when you are 5 and strung out on free estate agency lollipops. Custard also lost a shoe on the way home. I was totally cool about all of it, thanks to the estate agents and their free-flowing ways. WIN.

England is playng the US in football tonight and it seems the whole of central London has gone quiet. Clearly everyone is watching the game – good on them – I too have felt the collective pull of sport-watching, but only for netball. Football leaves me cold and bored and fidgety. All well, then – so I have been on the NZ Herald site, having a look at what the news are in Old New Zealand Town. Unfortunately, it seems the teachers are having sex with pupils and watching porn while the 5 year olds draw very odd looking things and lisp to each other. At least the headlines are not screaming about horrific child abuse, although there is a fair bit to be found about 12 year old prostitutes. Sigh. Then, further scrolling down the headline news into the Lifestyle section leads you to articles nicked from The Independent, quoting Aldo Zilli give his take on dining with children in the UK. And it makes me feel a bit sad because it can feel as though I live in the centre of the world here, in W2, with Annie Lennox frequenting Tom’s Diner and the V & A a walk through the park and the Selfridges sale a 10 minute bus ride on the 92. One day we will go back home…and will I keep looking outward, back to London? Longing for London? I would like to think that life in New Zealand will be enough, but I am suspicious that it won’t be.

Anyway, these are the things I miss:

1. My parents. They are funny and brave and clever and when I think of them, I think of Scrabble and silverbeet from the garden.

2. Amber and Glenn. They are having a baby and I would like to be there to BOSS THEM AROUND.

3. The beaches and the camping and the warmth and the singing cicadas and the green, green Waitakeres.

Things I don’t:

1. Being a bit poor

2. Longing to travel. Feeling like the rest of the world is moving along on a stylish, fast-moving train and you have been left at the station, looking a bit dorky and sad with wildly inappropriate luggage.

3. The mosquitos.

4. The driving everywhere.

I am often wondering what we should do with ourselves. We have been here a little too long – I have been a grown-up here, we have had all our children here, I have had a few fun jobs and really gotten to know cocktails and tasting menus and seen proper theatre and been in the Brick Lane Festival crowd and felt deliciously swallowed up and always felt so anonymous. When we first arrived with backpacks and no where to stay and £1500 in our bank accounts with no jobs, it felt as though London was a tightly-closed, secret, unwelcoming scary place that would not let us in. I know now that it is a place that is forgiving, and complex, challenging, and beautiful. If we actually had tickets booked to go home, I think I would feel very scared. Palpitations scared. So we are a bit stuck. In the best kind of way. Kind of.

Enough of that. Here is my new teapot:

That *was* my new butter dish, except one of those pesky kids broke it. They are ugly ceramics with people in leotards doing jazzercise printed on them. Excellent. The DVD player is also broken, because Noah put a pen inside it. And I am waiting for my Alexa strap to be ruined, because Barnaby is obsessed with wearing it as a belt. He loops it to his trousers, then uses the hook to attach himself to trees/bunks/car doors, etc. Why do I let him, I hear you exclaim in a worried, perplexed tone (especially those who googled what the bag actually cost). Frankly, sometimes you take the path of least resistance. That is the only answer I have got.

And on that note, my last, here is a picture of what *was* my feathered headband, al la Lohan:

The feathers were pulled off, one by one.