The Harridan

Here it is. A week of two incidents involving this blog – the rambling, sometimes incoherent and entirely subjective drivel that I spout – and so it is time for some RULES to be laid down in manner of Camp Mother.

1. A blog is like a journal, kind of. And when you come across a blog, or get invited to take a look, I think it requires a form of two-way generosity. Generosity from the reader – who, for whatever reason, actually bothers to spend a few minutes searching for and then reading your words, taking them into their heads for a bit, laughing or disagreeing or nodding off or becoming outraged or even just mildly bored. That is an act of generosity and for everyone who has ever bothered with what I write, I am grateful.

Generosity also on part of the blogger. Because blogs are like a little peek into someone’s journal, an invite into whatever is bouncing around a blogger’s head at a particular time, it is quite the act of openness and trust and respect and generosity to publish these things, whatever they may be. It can lay you quite bare, and can give the reader an in-depth understanding into Proper Private Stuff (or tales of mundane cake disasters and plum tree crises, if it is my blog you choose to read). This is generous of the blogger and should be respected.

2. So, with this in mind, I want to say that in reading a blog, you may come up against something you do not like. A lot like reading a journal. You enter at your own risk. Do not read if you might get snippy, or cranky, or outraged (unless you like feeling that way).  Do not read a blog unless you are prepared to share a little of someone else. People get shitty, irrational, annoyed at their husbands and kids and traffic jams and Louis Walsh – this is the stuff of real life, ugly and precious and demented and marvellous and all those things in between. If this is too real, then go read fiction.

3. Comments. I love them. Thank you to anyone who bothers to make one. I like a bit of praise (am motivated entirely by praise, actually, so the more you write, the more I write. No pressure or anything).

4. Um, I think that is it. Lecture over.

Next blog post will be full of tales to make you snigger. I promise. I may even put makeup on the boys again and take photos purely for your pleasure. Now I am off to eat dinner and despair at the school run on the morrow, and at the full-sized fridge that has made its way into our hallway and for all intents and purposes seems rigged up and ready to stay. You get rid of the leather jacket, you inherit another fridge. SIGH.

On Saturday night, we had a bit of an M&S disaster. It was late, we were pushing it, but we thought we would pop out for a bit of shopping before dinner. Weekends tend to be a bit, er, muddy, where the routine is concerned, and while I don’t like to blame my husband, I really do blame my husband. He is on a permanent passive-aggressive go-slow from Saturday morning until Sunday night and so things go a bit mental. My nicely cultivated week-long relaxed demeanour goes out the window when I am suddenly not in charge and I get a bit snarly and the children go a bit haywire and my husband just ignores us all and tries to sneakily read his book in various hiding places throughout the flat.

Anyway, Saturday night. We had had one of the usual slightly strained days and we were out and Mark decided that NOW was the time to ditch Tiscali and get Sky. So he wandered up to the bored man at the Sky booth and said he would sign up. This process of course took about 40 minutes and so the rest of us just took off and went to M&S for the half-price champagne. At some point between the upstairs of Whiteleys and the downstairs of Whiteleys, all three of them went insane. So we go into M&S, filled with quiet, genteel and calm customers, and we head for the champagne rack and I grab three bottles. Noah squeezes out of the pushchair and runs around with Barnaby in a scary touching-everything kind of way. They are yelling and playfighting and customers are giving disapproving looks and swerving out of their way. I am stricken with a cold and so my voice does not go much above a very angry hissed whisper. Calling them back is no good, so I just charge ahead to the checkout and try to get out as soon as I can.

At the checkout, Custard squirms out of his straps and stands up in the pushchair and starts grabbing for all of the chocolate and percy pig packets and squeals in an ungodly manner when he can’t reach. I am all very pregnant, holding three bottles of champagne precariously aloft, and the other two are yelling and running and wrestling each other to the ground. Then all goes silent. I turn around, and they are both peering into the big cardboard troughs of M&S chocolate christmas decorations – the ones wrapped in foil in mesh bags. I am uneasy, but am busy with shrieking Custard – trying to keep his grabby hands from tearing into a packet of sour worms.

Then, I have a Terrible Mothery Intuitive Feeling. I march over to the chocolate trough, and catch both boys nibbling on broken slivers of christmas decorations from the mesh bags. STEALING! SHOP-LIFTING! BEING PROPER CRIMINALS! Their faces were a little bit smeared, and there was that lovely chocolately smell about them both.

Two thoughts – do I march them up to the store detective to give them a huge fright, or do I get out of there as soon as possible and give them a bollicking all the way home? I give in to exhausted enertia. I yanked them up to the checkout, paid and got out of there as soon as I could. And OH! the bollicking was good and proper. I told them that if I ever caught them stealing again, I would take them to the police station, and that thieves had to go to jail and be separated from their mums and dads and the food was terrible. I was so angry and hormonal and tired I nearly cried, shaking all the way home. Thieves for children – how horrendous.

So Sunday was less traumatic, thank goodness. The boys had a haircut at the very friendly Costas. They gave Custard a fake baby haircut so he wouldn’t feel left out – a quick sitdown in the barber’s chair, a cape, a spritz of the water, a pretend snip and a blowdry.  He was very pleased. Then the boys had theirs done – a little less successfully, as Barnaby looked like Richard Chamberlain playing Richard the Third in a bad 70’s movie, and Noah got a barely perceptible (but there nonetheless) mullet.

Here is Barnaby two days after the cut:

Uncanny how much he looks like his playmobil knight though, don’t you think?

It turns out that I have posh children, who are very used to lunches at Carluccios and babyccinos and sparkling water and organic food and dancing classes and trips to Greece and private nursery and the odd brunch at Fifteen. Whoops – it just happened. But they are all very nice and grounded and Barnaby goes to a local school with local people which is FREE (with a questionable line in apostrophe-training as you well know). So, conscience mostly cleared. But a quick scroll through iphone photos reveals that it is Custard who is the most privileged – his vast experience of London cafes and cakes and muffins and croissants with fluffy milk is quite remarkable.

See the damning photographic evidence below:

Ok, this is a taverna in Greece, not London per se, but you get the idea.

Carluccios. Greedy – he has two lemon granitas

GBK for chocolate milkshake

Le Pain Quotidien (ack, the spelling of that confuses me every time)

A Westfield establishment. Heavy on the fluff

Today. Artisan Du Chocolate. Possibly the very best fluffy-milk joint of all time. Note the cup – easy to hold, large handles just right for small not-very-dexterious boys under two. Chocolate rice-bubble-type things. And the waitress seemed fine when they got tipped onto the floor. Custard totally recommends (as do I – check out what outrageousness we got served for the tiny sum of £3!!!).