All Best Wishes

Tactful omissions: 4. True stories

2012-01-10T11:19:00.000-08:00

And so my mind wanders to wondering what life’s greatest tactful omissions might be...

I wonder how many sitting rooms are housing an elephant while their inhabitants silently watch TV.

I wonder in how many boardrooms tomorrow the recession will be blamed for everyone’s failings.

I wonder how many forbidden ‘I love you’s’ are not being said tonight.

I wonder about the stories we tell ourselves in the dark, so that we might sleep soundly.

And I ask myself whether fear, self-preservation, the greater good or a simple act of kindness is the reason for these tactful omissions?

Tricky lesson number four: always tell the truth, especially to yourself.

We tell ourselves we use them to spare others’ feelings, to boost their confidence, to keep the peace. But how often do we tell them for our own sakes: because we don’t want others to think badly of us, because it’s an easier life, it’s easier to please, easier to be beloved by all?

Perhaps the truth is that our tactful omissions are at the heart of what define us. For life is an editorial process; we shape it as we go, writing our stories and vaguely remembering the discarded opportunities and the unwritten, unwritable chapters.

Tactful omissions: 3. Blind eye

2012-01-09T14:07:00.000-08:00

The Impster and I are discussing notable points in the school day.

‘Rupert was running in the corridor again so I told Mrs Roach,’ she says.*

‘What? You mean you told on him?’

‘Yes, we're not allowed to run in the corridor. Those are the rules.’

Tricky lesson number three: always tell the truth, but never dob in your mates.

Unless you're two.

'I'm afraid he’s in the accident book again today,' one of the nursery staff says when I arrive to collect the Boo.

The Boo is always in the accident book.

'Nevermind,' I say, signing the book.

'Got bitten by another child,' they whisper, preserving anonymity at all costs.

'Duncan did it,' he pipes up.*

It is impossible for a two year old to lie. The part of the brain that understands lying simply hasn’t developed. A four year old on the other hand can happily tell you a bare-faced lie. So in our house at the moment we keep replaying variations on a theme:

The Boo: Waaaaaa! She did it.

The Impster: No I didn't. He hit himself over the head, silly billy bumpkin.

Me: Of course he didn’t. Don’t lie!

Sometimes I bother with the naughty step; other times I just let him get on with it and biff her back over the head. I always know if he’s the culprit because the Impster will wail with righteous indignation, ‘I didn’t deserve that!’ It’s perfectly obvious that at all other times she does.

There is a stage in childhood development called Machiavellian intelligence, which kicks in around about the time children start school. They suddenly begin to grasp the power of a convincing lie and how to make it sound as believable as possible, but they still have a wobbly moral compass.

Thankfully the Impster is an extremely poor liar, and folds quickly under interrogation. She looks to me to pull rank, to settle quarrels and dispense justice, and is never more infuriated than when I simply choose to turn a blind eye. I wonder if this is what is meant by exemplary parenting?

* Real names have been tactfully omitted

Tactful omissions: 2. For appearance's sake

2012-01-08T13:19:00.000-08:00

Once upon a time, a very long time ago, there was a young man who caused me a certain amount of aggravation on account of the fact that I did not fancy him. Then a few years back we arrived at a party and there he was. He had let himself go to the point of resembling the Michelin man.

K walked over, shook him warmly by the hand, and said, ‘Good to see you looking so prosperous.’

In that moment of winning charm it was clear that a score had been settled.

How rarely, though, it pays to comment on appearances. No one likes criticism, and we English can rarely take or give a compliment without exaggeration. In fact, if you want an honest opinion, you need to ask a child.

Yesterday my daughter went next door to play, and as soon as our neighbour opened the door the Impster said, ‘I love your necklace.’ And then she said to her, ‘You look quite pretty today.’ My neighbour said the ‘quite’ made her chuckle all day.

Only a four year old can dish out such faint praise and have it taken as a compliment. But you know it’s sincere, and it’s invaluable just for that fact.

You have to proceed with caution though, as a friend of mine learnt to her cost. She asked her four year old what she thought of her new fringe and was told, ‘I think you look a bit like a horse mummy.’ It’s hard to walk with your head held high after that.

Rewind to our pre-Christmas party. The Impster and I have shopped for the ultimate party dress, and truthfully, she looks stunning.

Seven thirty pm. Guests arrive and I hear, 'Look at me! Don't I look dazzling?'

I tell myself something must be done about this child (and her curious vocabulary), and I embark upon:

Tricky lesson number two: always tell the truth, except where modesty is required, or where haircuts are concerned.

‘Why?’ says the Impster.

‘Because it’s boastful,’ I explain.

‘What’s boastful?’

Oh how much you have to learn my child. White lying – or diplomacy as we prefer to call it – is a hard lesson to teach one who has been schooled in honesty. But for the moment, she is still able to get away with the truth, and perhaps I should make the most of it too. If I’m brave enough, she could even improve my appearance.

Tactful omissions: 1. Little white lies

2012-01-07T14:37:00.002-08:00

Yesterday I got a text from a friend asking whether I had a copy of Julian Barnes’ The Sense of an Ending. I do. ‘I thought you probably would,’ he replied. ‘My brother-in-law gave me a copy for Christmas and he was so pleased to have chosen it I didn’t have the heart to tell him I already had it.’

My family does not understand these social mores. On Christmas Day the Impster rips open a present to discover a book she already has. Her face falls.

‘Well I've already got that one,’ she says. ‘We must tell Aunty Katy and she can get me something else.’

Tricky lesson number one: always tell the truth, but not necessarily at Christmas.

K and I discuss and differ.

Him: Lying is never right.

Me: Of course it's the right thing to do if it spares somebody's feelings. It’s called diplomacy and basic good manners.

Him: There’s never any need to tell a white lie. Anyway, who are you lying to? Either you're with a friend who should want to know the truth, or you’re with people who aren't your friends so it doesn't matter if you tell them the truth. In any case, people almost never ask for a direct opinion.

(Just shows he doesn’t work in publishing. I’m paid to say what I think of people’s writing every day. Perhaps that explains why I’m so preoccupied with the problem of kind rejections. Bat them away with enough force that they’ll never come back, but so softly they don’t feel the blow.)

Me: What about work colleagues?

Him: They can know the truth.

Me: And your boss?

Him: Definitely, that's what he's paying me for.

(Here’s a man who has never worried about his employment. For a heartbeat I am proud. Then somewhat nervous.)

Me: What about your mother's friends then?

Him: Avoid talking to them! You don't want to put yourself in a difficult situation, now do you?

He is direct in manner but with a tendency to skirt around tricky issues. Yes, K – like many men - has perfected the art of the tactful omission. I cottoned onto this about twelve years ago with the result that these days I’m more interested in what I’m not being told. So generally, it doesn’t work out quite as well for him as it used to.

But it does beg the question: what is the difference between telling only part of the truth and telling a white lie? If someone gives you a present you already have and you say, ‘How thoughtfully chosen,’ is this a white lie? It’s partly true, but what you really mean is that they’ve thought about it and have got it so right it’s wrong.

I believe in white lies, as much as white Christmases. As if proof of their value were needed, a friend gave the Impster a coat. It was a bit small. She is a very good friend, and the words of my beloved were still ringing in my ears. So I told her the truth and said that we loved it, but if she still had the receipt the next size would get more wear. She didn’t have the receipt and instead bought another coat. I now feel like the biggest ingrate the world has ever seen. I should have had enough heart for a little white lie, or at least to tactfully omit the truth.

Baby love

2012-01-03T14:43:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I went to Cambridge to see my friend’s new baby. It doesn’t matter if you don’t see a friend for six months because they’ll still know who you are when you turn up at the door. But if you don’t see a child for six months then there's no chance they’ll recognise you the next time they see you. So, there's nothing for it but regular journeying.

I had a very nostalgic time cuddling the baby, but it made me a little bit sad to think how my friends have dissipated. Once upon a time not so very long ago we all lived in London and took meeting up regularly for granted. Now we are having babies and living in places like Hampshire and Kent and Durham and Cambridge and Bath and Devon and Lincoln and Bristol, and really – although I think I may have started it – I’m not sure I approve of it. I want to be able to pop in and babysit their children occasionally so they can have a night out, and for them to feel they can say ‘well this week’s been a bit sh*t’ when it has, and to drink bottle of wine together to make it seem better. This, after all, is what friends are for.

I have made some wonderful local mummy friends in the last four years, whom I honestly couldn’t survive without. But I think of my oldest and bestest friends living miles away and am acutely aware that parenthood must be changing them, and that at this particular juncture in one’s life, distance can create distance. And that’s just between mummies, never mind what happens to the friendships with your non-mummy friends.

If truth be told, I was also a little bit sad to think that the Boo is no longer really a boo but a marauding toddler who calls the shots about when it’s time for a cuddle. The Impster adores babies and asks if we can have a new one every day. But the previous night, she requested a scientific explanation of how a baby gets into its mummy’s tummy. I think this might be nature’s way of telling me to quit while I’m ahead.

Since I met him

2011-12-29T15:15:00.000-08:00

Last night I made the Boo’s birthday cake. I knew exactly what he would like best: a Star Wars R2-D2 cake. And I thought: how very strange that two years ago he was still inside me, and in such a short space of time has developed such specific tastes. Then I thought: only four months ago I had no idea what ‘R2-D2’ was. I would probably have guessed it was something to do with Star Trek or Dr Who. Yes, already the Boo has taught me a thing or two.

So there I was, up to my eyes in butter cream, sternly concentrating on my piping as if it was the most important thing I had ever done in my life. And here he is today, blowing out his two candles:

A year ago he could barely say a word, but nowadays we talk about everything. Like all two year olds, he is pure will. But he holds very firm opinions on matters. He tells me all the things he likes and, with greater force, all the things he doesn’t. ‘Get off you cheeky rascal!’ he says now when I try to change his nappy. And he struts around the house tutting ‘Oh for goodness sake.’

At nursery he is described as ‘our little legend’ on the days when he’s behaving, and ‘the ringleader’ on the days when he’s not. He is suited to this environment because he has to be in the thick of things. He is naturally happiest when surrounded by lots of people, and his enthusiasm for life, his extreme joie de vivre, means that even older boys like having him in their party. Today, he was in his element:

And at the end of the party managed to find himself a nice quiet spot to enjoy an ice lolly:

Of course I am biased, but the Boo is unusually easy to adore. He is sharing and forgiving, and last night when I banged my head on the medicine cabinet, he said ‘Poor mummy, I kiss it better.’ And so he did and so it was.

Naturally, he is always up to mischief, but is quick to apologise. And then he’ll give me a look, with that triangular right eyebrow which he can move independently, and that smile that lights an entire room like the Blackpool illuminations, and before I know it I’m smothering him in kisses and giving him a chocolate biscuit.

So how is it that in just two years he has learned so very much about how to live? And how is it that, since I met him, I have learned so very little? What have I been doing with my time? I haven’t learnt a new language. I haven’t developed any new motor skills. I haven’t even learnt how to deal with people any better.

Being a grown up sucks sometimes. But I will say this for it. Once in a while, you can give birth and fall in love.

What Christmas looks like

2011-12-26T13:28:00.000-08:00

Thursday: a man is walking towards me as I run down a muddy track. He is dark and thick set and he looks like he wants to kill someone. Then around the bend appear four children walking with their mother. She looks like she wants to kill someone. Oh dear, I think, Christmas holidays.

Friday: my beautiful goddaughter is hanging a gingerbread family on our tree (a few limbs go missing). My children are playing a raucous game of 'touching the ceiling' with her father. Outside on the drive K's car is drawing up. He is home early and we are all excited. Oh good, I think, Christmas holidays.

Saturday: a little sequined angel is standing at the front of the church, holding hands with a littler shepherd clutching his toy lamb. The angel is singing Away in a Manger and is protecting the shepherd from stampeding wise men. A young couple steal a kiss as they leave the church. Oh good, I think, Christmas love.

Sunday: four wide eyes, sparkling with excitement as wrapping paper is ripped open and presents are shared. K is carving a five bird roast, symbol of generosity and greed. Oh dear, I think, for what we are about to receive I feel horribly guilty.

Monday: two people standing by a fire on their allotment, which gives me a warm cold feeling as I run past. The owner of a local wine bar walking his dog waves hello (and I resolve to drink less next year). More people walking in ever stranger familial formations. A waterlogged nature reserve, with up-tailed ducks searching for morsels. Two planes flying overhead, uniting and dividing a couple of hundred families. The world's coolest parents on rollerblades, teaching their youngest of three how to skate. Darkness descending as I reach home, but on the front lawn two bright white doves shine out. Oh good, I think, Christmas peace.

The littlest things

2011-12-24T02:02:00.000-08:00

I've been making little mistakes, like forgetting to attach the email attachment, and bigger mistakes like wrapping up the wrong present. I don't usually make mistakes like these but perhaps its not surprising. I am exhausted. There are also six birthdays in December and I have been up until one wrapping.

During the wrapping session I am also on the phone finalising birthday party preparations.

'I've got the parental champagne,' I say, 'and I just need to sort parental nibbles.'

'Great! I've hired a helium canister,' says my friend.

'Goodness,' I say, 'You've thought of everything.'

'Actually I feel like my head is about to explode,' she says.

This is exactly the feeling I have. This is Christmas.

'I'm sorry to sound like a moaning 70s housewife,' she says, 'but I think men think that Christmas just happens.'

When I was a child, my mother drove us insane. She'd make three puddings and complain about all the work she had to do, and we'd say, 'But you only needed to make one,' and she'd say, 'Well I like everyone to have their favourite.'

Looking back, I think she achieved the miracle of Christmas by never sleeping. The house was always full of happy people and wonderful cooking smells and a matriarch who had been making lists for a month and had thought of everything.

This year I only started feeling Christmassy yesterday. I like to be in the kitchen cooking, I like a houseful of people (lots of whom must be chocolate-stealing children), I like to have choral music in the background, I like a church service, I like lots of fairy lights, I like the smell of a real pine-needle-dropping tree, I like lots of booze, and giving beautiful things.

Christmas is a million little things. It's the things that make your head almost explode. But as my mother taught us, it's the thought that counts.

Handmaiden

2011-12-18T15:55:00.000-08:00

Take my hand.
Hold tight never cling
Even when we're scared.
Squeeze to ease intensive pain,
Or as a secret sign of your affection.
Casual care became
Handwritten love
Intertwined,
Wrapped neatly,
Fingers tracing
Felt affection.
Touched together:
This is our handmade love.

I love the sense of freedom and unity that holding hands gives. This is about my family. About marriage, about giving birth, about holding the Boo's hand to help him down the stairs, about the Impster reaching for my hand today in the Christmas shopping crowds, about walking along the South Bank with K, about holding my grandmother's hand as she lay dying. Small acts of love which mean everything.

Running to keep it up

2011-11-18T13:49:00.000-08:00

‘Frustrated?’ he says.

‘Always,’ I say.

‘Come on then, start a fight,’ he says. And I try to beat the sh*t out of him.

I have recently become a convert to boxing. It never fails to exhaust me, so it surely must burn some calories, and it never fails to satisfy either.

If I want to process things I like to walk. If I want to forget things, I run. I love running, because I love the comfort of its rhythm, but it doesn’t allow me to think - my head seems to work slower the faster that my legs move. If I want to vent, then boxing is the best therapy. If I’m bursting with happiness, then trampolining gives me an even greater high.

There was a moment after I’d had the children when I looked at myself naked in the mirror and wondered who was staring back. That’s not my body. Where have my boobs gone? Where has my waist gone? Bloody hell, where is my arse going? I knew I needed to get a grip before gravity did, so I started commando training at the Rugby Club under the tutelage of the rather wonderful Simon Weatherall. Without whom, I wouldn’t know a hook from an uppercut. Without whom, exercise would be something other people did.

As well as training the odd world championship boxer, and running GetFit121, Simon is on a one-man mission to give everyone a personal trainer, which is why he launched the free Oobafit website and app earlier this year. Not only does it give you a tailor-made exercise plan, but it will also give you a personal nutrition plan, and at a click Tesco will deliver everything you need for the week direct to your door.

This week’s blogging activity has proven extremely bad for my state of health. Firstly because I can only blog while eating chocolate. And secondly because half an hour spent blogging is half an hour not spent running.

Alas I find myself growing in direct proportion with this blog. So here, thankfully, endeth the last post of the week.

Scary fairies and evil angels

2011-11-17T14:28:00.000-08:00

The Impster is employed in the task of colouring in her Christmas cards (better early than never), while I am simultaneously cooking the tea and taking a work call.

‘Mummy,’ she hisses in her loudest whisper, ‘I’m making the angels all wicked and evil.’

I enlarge my eyes in the attempt to communicate that perhaps this output will not be suitable for sending to Great Auntie Jean or her friends from Sunday School:

Over tea we discuss the semiotics of colour, and the tradition of angels taking a godlier complexion. ‘But I just love everything that’s scary,’ she says.

I know. I’m still getting over the horror of the ‘scary Disney princess’ birthday invites, with the appearance of each card more terrifying than the last. ‘Are you quite sure that Sleeping Beauty wouldn’t look prettier in pink?’ I asked. ‘No, she looks really wicked in black and green,’ came the reply. And indeed she did.

Nor has her poor friend Georgina recovered yet from the shock of the face painting episode at a fairy party event they attended. There were butterflies and flowers and pussy cats and all manner of delights on display, but as you see, the Impster’s brief to her make-up artist was quite clear: ‘I want to be a scary fairy please.’

So when Halloween arrived this year, the Impster was in her element. She had been counting down the days since April, and no child’s face could have been more enraptured by the appearance of the Halloween aisle at Sainsbury’s in early September. But to her eternal envy, I was the one who had been invited to a Halloween party that weekend, which required full fancy dress. Wicked outfits are something of an Impster speciality, and no personal shopper could have bettered her efforts that afternoon in the search for my costume.

Now, it is a truth universally acknowledged that Halloween has become sexy these days (though even I could not have anticipated the quantity of latex on display that night, thanks to the wide-ranging stock of a designer of bondage gear who happened to be one of our party.)

So I explained to the Impster what we were after – red fishnet tights, red hotpants, devil horns etc – and she leapt upon the task with alacrity, cross-questioning each and every shopkeeper in Winchester about whether they stocked said items. ‘My mummy’s going to a party tonight and she’s going as a really scary Devil,’ she told them, dramatising just enough to make them take a step back.

Her attention to detail was quite astounding: she thought a big scary ring would look good (it did), and what about scary purple glowing eyeshadow (good call), and had I thought about my nail varnish (no I hadn’t, but again...). This was the final result:

(The red hotpants had to be exchanged for the leather skirt, mainly because I felt the need to curtail the Impster’s retail enquiries, but also because K remembered just in time that the Devil wears Prada.)

But why am I telling you all this so long after the event? Well today I attended a ‘stay and play’ session at the Impster’s school - a very ardent Church school as it happens. The idea being for parents to get an insight into the school, though I strongly suspect the reverse is true.

Apparently the children had been asked after half term to draw a picture of what they had done over the holiday. Apparently the Impster drew a picture of our house, with me at the door in full Devil regalia, looking ‘very wicked indeed’.

I did not see that picture. Apparently it has been taken into the care of the Headmaster. I await a call from the child psychologist. Or a summons to the Headmaster’s office...

Crap restaurants

2011-11-16T15:11:00.000-08:00

When we were in Cornwall on holiday in August we made a last minute booking at The Driftwood restaurant. I went with low expectations and was highly delighted. So much so that when we got back and discovered that our friends had booked to go, I built it up to such heights in my enthusiasm that they were inevitably disappointed. If they keep a list of crap restaurants The Driftwood is at the top. (Apparently the food is too wanky.)

And yet it was these self same friends who had enthused to us about 36 On The Quay and you can read about that unfortunate experience here.

We all know that the best dining experiences are the ones where you go along with poor to reasonable expectations, only to discover that the food is divine. And there is nothing more guaranteed to disappoint than having your expectations raised and dashed.

Choosing a restaurant might be a personal thing, but there are some things, like not being offered tap water as an option, or having the discretionary 15% service charge already added to your bill, or having to flag down inattentive waiters to place an order, that deserve a universal crapness accreditation.

Well last Friday we went to Nobu London (admittedly about 14 years too late) because I love Japanese food. I could bore you for hours about the virtues of Tosa (King Street, W6) or Mai Food (Kenway Rd, SW5), or Roka (Charlotte Street, W1), or Tokiya (Battersea Rise, SW11) or the fabulous Japan Centre (Regent Street, SW1). I’d never heard a bad word said about Nobu, so what could there possibly be to dislike?

As soon as we walked through the door we could have been anywhere in the world. When I’m in London I want Londonish places (or at least Japanese), but this was as unique as a Starbucks. We were squeezed onto a table far too close to a party of American business men, and it felt as if nearly everyone there was dining on expenses. I presume this was probably the case given the eye-watering prices (the infamous black cod in miso will set you back £50 by the time they’ve automatically added on 15% service). It was certainly not the place where you expect to see the fattest man you’ve ever seen in your life. How is such girth possible on a raw fish diet? At Nobu it would surely cost him somewhere in the region of £24,000 to maintain his day’s calorie intake.

Nobu is greatly proud of its fusion approach – Peruvian Japanese – so we had high expectations of piranha sashimi and the like. But in reality it means that everything just has a tiny bit of chilli in it and they can put chocolate on their pudding menu.

There is an upside though. Since very little is actually cooked, they can turn your table in just over an hour, so you can beat a hasty retreat.

Men from whom I would not recoil

2011-11-15T14:03:00.000-08:00

Well I promised you juice and juice you shall have, but just in case my father’s eyes are already wide with alarm, then I shall take the precaution of subtitling this post ‘How to Stay Happily Married’.

It was our wedding anniversary on Friday - Remembrance Day, lest we forget.

Fidelity, being the highly prized moral quality that it is, seems to have got the better of us both. Six years after exchanging our vows we staggered along Regent Street, a bit wiggly from too many cocktails, reminiscing about how we might have lost our fidelity along the way, if only we could have been properly tempted. I cross-question K on the women from whom he has recoiled. ‘Too litigious.’ ‘Too horsey.’ ‘Too dull.’ ‘Too...not you.’

What virtue, I ask, in lack of opportunity? For as the existentialists would have it, morality lies only in choice. After all, is it not self-evident that:

Fidelity = opportunity x self-restraint

(Doubtless my father will correct my maths homework if it’s gone a bit wobbly.)

After six years of marriage I think we can be perfectly honest about this whole equation. There's a head thing, and there's a heart thing, and then there's a groin thing...

About three weeks ago I fell deeply in lust with a certain wine merchant. He shall remain nameless, but knows who he is on the account of my ordering three hundred quid’s worth of wine from him the next day. Alas, mine was not the only groin stirred that night. My friend E reports feeling equally unusual, and although our husbands still roll their eyes at the sound of his name, we can’t help but believe that they must at least have sympathy with our plight. Possibly a slight affection for him too, if truth be known, on account of his Château Lamothe Cissac, Cru Bourgeois 2005. Wares like that can win you a head, a heart and a groin.

Sadly he slipped neither of us a hastily scrawled note with details of an assignation. And neither of us recollects being ravished over a late night glass of Botrytis Semillion. But let us imagine for one idle moment that this had been the case....

Sorry, where was I?

... let us imagine that had been the case. How might a respectable married woman have found salvation in such temptation? Because if we are to have learnt the lessons of a certain Emma Bovary, not to mention Anna Karenina, we know these things do not end well.

It doesn’t take too much imagination to foresee that in a couple of weeks, the whole affair would have become the biggest, time-wasting, heartbreaking, pain-in-the-arse imaginable. Or more worrisome still, had the relationship run its own six year course, who is to say that another delectable wine merchant wouldn’t have eventually appeared on the scene, requiring us to run yet another weary lap on the course of true love.

To avoid such exhaustion, we must acknowledge the truth of how these things begin. Not in a premeditated fluttering of the eyelashes, nor in the heat of grand passion with an irresistible wine merchant. No. It happens in a flicker of a moment that passes so quickly you don’t catch it, yet it writes itself gently and imperceptibly into your heart. Where it lies unread, until sometime later another such moment arises and it feels warmly familiar. And then the trouble begins...

We may have made the ultimate choice six years ago, but it took us eight years to make it. I liked the idea of living in sin, of waking each day knowing ‘I choose you.’ It was high moral ground. And it seems to me that this is the fundamental problem with marriage – it gives us a sense of having chosen, rather than of choosing; a past tense instead of a present tense.

So we should look upon opportunity as our friend. For it is our chance to say again ‘I choose you’ and to hear the resounding echo ‘I chose you:’

I choose you I chose you I choose you I chose you I choose you I chose you I choose you I chose you I choose you I chose you I choose you I chose you I choose you I chose you I choose you I chose you I choose you I chose you I choose you I chose you I choose you I chose you I choose you I chose you...

...all the way into the future.

The liberal vegetarian

2011-11-14T14:14:00.000-08:00

Oh dear, have I really not posted since August? Then like it or not, I shall give you post a day for the rest of this week, and hereby I pledge you my troth. Time dictates they will be written breathlessly, and pithily (dearest G, who will probably be the only one who reads them, tells me I am better when I’m pithy). So I shall give you pith today and juice tomorrow, and hopefully will draw the line before revealing too much flesh and skin.

Let me take you all the way back to August and our dining room table where we are having tea. The Boo has just reached across the table and has swiped all the ham from the Impster’s plate. Now he is greedily shovelling it into his mouth with obvious haste and pleasure. ‘Naughty!’ I exclaim in my angry mummy voice, trying to get the reprimand in quickly before the first blow is struck, ‘That’s not your ham and you shouldn’t steal it.’

‘Don’t worry mummy, he can have it,’ says the Impster, and with a slightly superior tone declares, ‘I’m a vegetarian now, so I don’t eat meat.’

‘What? Why? Since when?’

‘I don’t eat any animals. Just like the twins don’t eat animals. I need a special vegetarian option.’

Of course - the bloody twins at nursery. Well, she’s only four, and if I ignore it, perhaps it will go away. Admittedly though, I had not expected her to enter a vegetarian phase for another ten years.

‘Presumably you eat fish?’ I ask as casually as possible.

‘No fish. Or lamb, or chicken, or duck. Or anything that’s an animal.’

Ah ha! Perhaps this only applies to meat that is clearly named after its origins. ‘What about pork?’ I enquire.

‘Pork is from pigs,’ she says, ‘I don’t eat pigs and I don’t eat lambs or anything else that is roasted on a spit.’

Of course – bloody K. Back from a party at the weekend, elaborately regaling us with tales of Patch’s giant spit roast. Last year a whole pig. This year a whole sheep.

‘No surely not,’ says the mighty carnivore when I later hold him responsible for her ethical stance. ‘She was very interested, especially in the photos.’

Yes, dear reader, this is what she saw. K and Patch rotating the impaled beast like a scene from Lord of the Flies.

These phases pass, but not that quickly with the Impster. I recall only too well her purple phase, in which she would dress in no other colour for a whole 15 months. She has nothing if not resolution.

We go to a friend’s for Sunday roast, and she politely but firmly refuses the chicken, on the grounds of vegetarianism. ‘It’s a vegetarian chicken,’ explains our host. But the Impster is not to be won over.

And so the weeks go by, until one day towards the end of September I have the good fortune to be cooking sausages and make the helpful discovery that processed meat is so far from its animal origins that she hasn’t worked out it is meat at all. I pass this useful tip onto friends and family trying to feed her.

October dawns, and I arrive home from the deli with pastrami. The Impster would like to sample it. ‘What is pastrami?’ she enquires having eaten a plate full.

I take the brutal approach. ‘Meat. From a cow.’

‘Oh. Well I’m a vegetarian except for pastrami.’

She has done extremism. Now she is moving onto her liberal phase. As long as it comes from an expensive deli, it can be accommodated. Chorizo, salami, prosciutto, pastrami. All these can be tolerated. I pass this useful tip onto friends and family who take grateful note.

But the end of the month sees the Boo tipping my venison sausage casserole on his head, and the Impster refusing to eat it on ethical grounds. Perhaps it was the word venison that alerted her to the fact that not all sausages are vegetarian. But she can’t help loving food and her resolve is clearly wavering.

Tonight I cook sausage and mash. I can see her deliberating. ‘They’re only 50% pork,’ I lie. ‘Why don’t you just eat half?’ And she does.

The Dark Side

2011-08-16T14:42:00.000-07:00

It is well past her bedtime and the Impster has been crafting a spaceship out of two chairs, a table, a frying pan, her tricycle and a load of cushions. We have friends over which is making her somewhat excitable. ‘It’s still not working,’ she says. ‘We need more cushions!’

‘Ah, a typical woman’s solution,’ says our friend H (who is typically male in many ways, and not least in his antipathy towards soft furnishings).

‘Han, Han,’ continues the Impster, tugging at my trousers, ‘Get in, it’s time to go.’

At the moment our family exists in a parallel universe where she is Princess Leia, K is ‘my brother Luke’, I am Han Solo, and the Boo is rather unfortunately characterised as ‘Chewie’ (aka Chewbacca), perhaps on account of his nascent speech abilities. You have to keep up with these personas at all times. For example, ‘where is my brother?’ counter intuitively translates as ‘where is daddy?’ and it can all get a bit confusing. Especially if it’s the middle of the night.

Anyway, you might imagine my discomfort yesterday when she kissed me passionately on the lips, looked intensely into my eyes and whispered ‘I love you’.

‘Good grief,’ said I (with more than a hint of alarm), ‘where did you get that from?’ For I always make a point of trying to track down the primary source of any ‘highly original’ behaviour. 'The Empire Strikes Back,' came her unhesitating reply.

Now tell me if I’m overreacting, but this occurred on the same day as the Boo requested a ‘Jabba the Hut pictch [picture]’ to colour in. He is 19 months, has only just learned to talk and yet within his limited lexicon the following expressions are crystal clear: ‘Em-piire Strike Back’, ‘Yoda’, ‘Prince Leia’ and now Jabba the bloody Hut.

And worse still, every day when I pick him up from nursery now, he runs towards me, arms outstretched, beaming from ear to ear shouting ‘’tar War DD’ [DVD]. Goodness knows what the professional carers are thinking but I imagine it runs along the lines of ‘as soon as she gets that dear little boy home she must just sit him straight in front of the television.’

Well this is a cautionary parenting tale. For our shift to the dark side occurred not as a result of us parking the children in front of age-inappropriate feature-length films, but while sitting down on the floor playing with them. While I was swimming with the Boo, K was at home constructing a Lego Star Wars Snowspeeder with the Impster. And then (strictly for contextual purposes you understand) he showed her the Battle of Hoth scene from The Empire Strikes Back, which, like some supernova explosion, has obliterated life as we know it. Never having watched Star Wars myself, I am now an outcast, an alien in my own house.

Mothers, I implore you, beware your husbands spending quality time with your children. Find a fence that needs repainting, or a shelf that needs erecting, but do not let them prejudice vulnerable minds. Before you know it you will find yourself beset daily by requests to make a Death Star out of a dozen left-over Lego bricks and to recreate a Princess Leia hairstyle from a few curly locks. Inability to perform these miracles will only lead to tantrums which will only be calmed by recourse to half an hour’s viewing of Return of the Jedi.

Right now, here I sit at the computer, poised to make the best of the situation by the ultimate comfort act of ordering more cushions.

Study in grey

2011-06-27T14:14:00.000-07:00

The self-evident benefits of decisiveness bring to bear the more knotty question of what advantages (if any) may consol those of a more fuzzy-brained disposition. I write as one whose grey matter feels overwhelmingly grey much of the time, and therefore have more than a little interest vested in resolving this particular quandary to my own resolute satisfaction.

I have a theory that the reason we British love polite conversation – no religion or politics please – is the result of a bizarre contradiction. We feign apathy to disguise our strength of feeling. Look at the passion with which we support football teams in this country - obviously we are a nation with a deep-seated psychological need to take a stance.

All the same, I can’t help but find too much certainty painfully irritating. Everyone must have a friend who is so confident of their own opinions that they have no idea how to converse, no idea how to explore the views of others. Such people have a complete inability to either acknowledge life’s complexities or to take delight in them. They are very likely to say things like ‘there’s no such thing as luck’ – a phrase that so revolts me with its idiocy that I have an unfortunate tendency to respond like a lunatic, shouting out things like ‘have you never played snap?’, ‘tell that to the last lottery winner,’ ‘let’s hope you never get cancer or have your house destroyed by an earthquake,’ ‘where is your compassion?’ and so on and so forth, with everyone looking on concernedly in case I’m about to have a seizure.

Shortly after such an outburst there are usually polite mutterings about the time of night, or someone kindly sees to everyone’s glasses as if to indicate that if that’s the kind of evening we’re in for, we may need some liquid relief. Usually the no-such-thing-as-luck chap looks slightly baffled to encounter someone who can be bothered to challenge his opinions, and later enquires concernedly as to whether either of my parents is French.

Of course, there is more than one irony to being resolutely indecisive. When you are not being an accidental Ambassador for Chance, you may be accused of being an Ineffectual Liberal or an altogether Hopeless Case.

Well here’s the comfort. How we deal with life’s uncertainties, its shades of grey, is entirely illustrative of our psychology. People who are ‘ambiguity intolerant’ as psychologists call it, view contradictions, inconsistencies and uncertainties as worrying and threatening. Those infuriating black-and-white thinkers simply have a delicate psyche, a deep-seated need to create their own certainties.

And the grey-minded need not feel inferior in the work place. On the contrary, psychologists have shown that you don’t need to be a black-and-white thinker to be a good leader. The no-such-thing-as-luck chap, who prefers to ignore or deny life’s ambiguities, tends to be risk averse, and were he let loose to run the country, would (almost certainly) be a dictator. Those who can deal with a little bit of uncertainty but prefer to minimise it, would operate an oligarchy. And those inveterate committee types, who like to get the group discussing everything until a consensus emerges, would probably run a very satisfactory democracy. Finally those lovers of ambiguity, who thrive on it and use it as a source of creativity and innovation, they are life’s anarchists – disorganised, explosive, and proven to be more adventurous. They are also more likely to indulge in excessive drink I’m told.

Cheers!

Study in black and white

2011-05-06T14:28:00.000-07:00

It’s been a while since I last posted, and I blame work for getting in the way. There have been some difficult decisions to make of late, and I find it very damaging to my head space when I have a decision to make. I simply keep thrashing it out to the exclusion of almost everything else.

Instinctively, I feel the need to debate matters properly, explore the shades of grey. And I am ever sceptical of those who make their decisions easily, assuming they are somehow weak-brained, and haven’t properly grasped the problem. But, as T.S. Eliot puts it, there is ‘time yet for a hundred indecisions’. So I thought I should rightly write about the business of decision making.

Broadly speaking we tend to make our decisions using either our reason or intuition. But if you have a conundrum that you just cannot decide upon then you might like to try the following ways:

1. Listing all the pros and cons, and giving each a weighting. Then totting up. This is a slightly more scientific way of:

2. Tossing a coin. Very handy in settling disputes among squabbling children, but chance seems an unsatisfactory method for resolving anything that matters.

3. Prioritize the options , because – as a well-known psychologist once explained to me – most people actually make their decisions based on a very limited criteria of the two or three things they care about most. (K is a master at this reductionist method of decision making, which tends to be a quick and infuriating process.)

4. Ambivalence test yourself, by asking ‘what are the benefits of doing x?’, ‘what are the benefits of not doing x?’ ‘How will I feel if I do x?’, ’How will I feel if I don’t do x?’ and so on. This seems to me a deeply tedious way of going about solving a problem, but I expect it might come in handy if you’re thinking of leaving your husband or something (see 3).

5. Look to your motivation. Buddhists believe that there are three undesirable motivations: raga (passion or lust); dosa (hatred or malice) and moha (delusion). The desirable motivations are basically the absence of these, or put another way, caga (renunciation), metta (loving kindness) and panna (wisdom or understanding).

Well, it would seem that even in writing this post I have failed to reach a conclusion. But my instinct tells me this is a decidedly good thing.

Silent weekend

2011-02-27T13:00:00.000-08:00

It's been a funny old week. Having nursed everyone else through the lurgy, I finally succumbed and ended up bedridden myself. Then on Wednesday, I completely lost my voice. But I started a new job three weeks ago and thought it would be bad form to look like an ill person who always takes days off, so I hauled my sorry self in and whispered to everyone. Which made the voice worse (and, frankly, made me look like an ill person).

Well, yesterday was my birthday, and because last year it was disastrously eclipsed by our house move, K very thoughtfully arranged dinner an a room for us at 36 On the Quay, a Michelin-starred restaurant in Emsworth. We had planned to go there for our anniversary in November, but as readers of this blog will know, our travel plans are generally foiled. And so it was that on that occasion, the Boo was too ill to be left. So the whole expedition was rescheduled to my birthday weekend, when, inevitably, we were foiled again, this time by the ridiculous situation of my not being able to speak.

But this was our first night away together since the Boo was born and I was determined that a lack of words was not going to fail me. (After all, the queue of volunteers willing to lose a night's sleep on our behalf is not long.)

We arrived in good time and were taken to our room, entitled 'Clove' and fragranced accordingly to give the off-putting impression of being at the dentist's. Style-wise and size-wise it was rather like spending the night in a caravan, but no matter: it was clean and child-free.

K explained our predicament. Could they please seat us in the quietest corner of the restaurant, so as to avoid the ridicule of the other diners while I played out the necessary charades? But of course.

And indeed much thought and attention was granted to the seating arrangements, but unfortunately none whatsoever to the evening's timings. I imagine that they put their staying guests on the most leisurely serving schedule. New diners arrived and left while we waited. Very quietly. An hour after being seated we got our amuse bouche. Two hours after being seated, we finally got our main course, by which time - conversation being a sore point - I had drunk fifty quid's worth of Chablis. So I ask you: what the fuck did they think we were going to do for an entire evening when we were unable to converse? Eating seemed to be off the menu.

So when the main course arrived, it was subject to the kind of great expectation that carries its inevitable disappointment. The food may have lacked balance and flair but so did I, and feeling decidedly queasy I abandoned my fish and poor K, and beat a hasty retreat upstairs. And thus, I am sorry to say, it was not the happiest of birthdays.

But there is a happy ending and it arrived in the form of breakfast in bed. Breakfast is my absolutely favourite meal of the day. Perhaps it's because I am 'a mornings person' (which is not to say that post-midnight revelling and gluttonous consumption are pleasures unknown to me). But if you have an enormous breakfast, you have a whole day in which to work it off. If you have an enormous lunch, you lose a three-hour chunk out of your day and feel as if you need a sleep afterwards. If you have an enormous appetite for dinner, chances are you won't have an enormous appetite for sex afterwards. Yes, breakfast works for me.

So I will say this about 36 On the Quay - they serve a mighty fine breakfast. A Continental breakfast that is (which always brings out a kind of xenophobic disgust in my beloved, who never fails to find room for a Full English, in the same way that the children can always squeeze in a pudding, even when they are 'fully up for veggies'). Delicious homemade muesli, hot toast and jams, warm and perfectly-formed pastries, sweet fresh raspberries and pineapple, and not-too-gelatinous yogurt.

Enough of poncy dinner reservations. Have a break, have a breakfast. I now intend to launch a very thorough investigation into the finest places to breakfast. And you know the best bit? It is socially acceptable to breakfast in silence.

Déja vu

2011-02-03T12:47:00.000-08:00

Have you seen Episodes starring Matt LeBlanc, Tamsin Greig and Stephen Mangan? There have been four episodes so far and it’s just about the only thing on British TV at the moment that leaves me wanting more rather than less. But as I sat down to watch the first episode I realised it was strangely reminiscent of Moving Wallpaper (which to my mind was just a teeny bit better.

I hardly ever watch TV these days – mainly because I’ve developed A-list fatigue. I simply can't bear to see any more of the likes of Jamie Oliver, Stephen Fry, David Attenborough, Alan Titchmarsh and Graham Norton. I'm not saying they're not brilliant, and of course they are national treasures, but it's a bit like having visitors that stay too long: however fond of them you are, sooner or later you just want to see someone else in your living room.

And it's not just the talent, it's the formats. Peter Kay's hilarious parody Britain's Got a the Pop Factor and possibly a new Celebrity Jesus Christ Soap Star Superstar Strictly on Ice revealed Saturday night TV for precisely what it is - the same programme shown over and over and over again. And they go on forever. I mean how many more series of The Apprentice and Strictly Come Dancing will they foist upon us? Big Brother is a genius concept, but has now run to 11 series (not to mention all the celebrity series), which surely makes it rather tired in anyone’s eyes. Several people have asked me if I’ve been watching Michel Roux’s Service and the answer is ‘only the first ten minutes of the first one’. I’ve seen Raymond Blanc’s The Restaurant and I’ve seen Jamie’s Kitchen – I get the idea and am bored now.

To be equal handed, I won't limit my derisory sniping to reality shows, because so-called factual TV has been driving me bonkers too. The same old tedious A-listers making documentary series about things they know nothing about. For example, Alan Titchmarsh on nature (British Isles: A Natural History), David Dimbleby on British architecture and art (A Picture of Britain and How We Built Britain), Jeremy Paxman on history (The Victorians), Sophie Dahl on cookery (The Delicious Miss Dahl)... I'm find myself so embarrassed watching it that I have to peep out from behind the cushions. I mean, it would be like me commentating on the tennis - sure, I like tennis, but that hardly makes me qualified to comment on it.

Of course they can't make new things all the time, and with so many channels now they have to fill the schedules with something. And it's fair enough to say that I probably don't know about many very good new shows because I don't like watching TV any longer (and because it was my New Year's Resolution to stop buying the Radio Times). But the unfortunate truth is that in the UK we have the BBC and we actually believe that our creativity and media are pretty much the thing we do best.

So are we quashing that creativity with a risk-averse media culture, or have we just run out of ideas? Is the golden age of TV long past? Long live the internet!

PS For what it’s worth, here (in no particular order) are a few things past and present that I’ll never say a bad word about:
Cracker, The Street, Lost, 24, Mad Men, Sex and the City, Life on Mars, Ashes to Ashes, Shakespeare Retold, Jeeves and Wooster, Cold Feet, Sopranos, Yes Minister, Moving Wallpaper, Outnumbered, The Trip, Grass, Gavin and Stacey, Blackadder, Teachers, The Green Wing, Grand Designs, Simon Shama's History of Britain, Andrew Marr's Making of Modern Britain, and pretty much anything by Louis Theroux (which is why I must stop typing right now - Ultra Zionists is just about to start).

The necessity of failure

2011-01-14T08:05:00.000-08:00

As a P.S. to my previous post, I happened to be listening to Howard Jacobson talking about his book The Mighty Waltzer on Radio 4’s Book Club . Having just won the Man Booker for his latest novel, The Finkler Question – and receiving the biggest ever sales boost from the prize since records began - he had this to say about his success:

‘All my books have been about failure of some kind and I’ve always argued success is not interesting. It’s not interesting to a writer, it doesn’t make a story, it’s not what a writer is; if a writer were a successful person he wouldn’t be a writer. I actually say to all of you in the fondest way, if you are readers, as I am a writer, isn’t that because we are all in a sense failures together? Failures at being worldly - we read because we want the world to be somewhat another place, we write because we want the world to be [another place], we do not feel the world is satisfactory to us, or that we have made our way in a satisfactory sense...I mean this in the most complimentary way. For me to be a failure is the highest achievement...you haven’t been a banker, you haven’t become a footballer, you’ve gone into the imagination, to remake and to relive the world....Even in success, a man of imagination can find failure.’

Manic obsessive

2011-01-09T01:49:00.000-08:00

Something has been bothering me this past week. Yet again I am beset by that morale-sapping anxiety of not having made much of myself. It tends to sneak up in January, when the year lies stretched out in front of you like a crisp white page waiting for the next chapter of the story to be written. That familiar internal conflict arises: on the one hand a sense of aggrandisement that allows you to imagine yourself achieving self-realisation and leaving a valuable legacy in the world, and on the other hand a bitchy self-sniping about your own limitations that forces you to conclude that writing a novel, or composing a symphony, or discovering a cure for the common cold, or growing a beard, is work best left to humanity's more talented pool.

I'm talking about success, but not the sort measured by happy homes, good friends and getting through a week without recourse to prescribed medication. No, I'm talking about old-fashioned, traditional success, measured in terms of fame, fortune and 'reaching the top'.

Getting there, of course, has less to do with innate talent than with knowing what you want and being sufficiently committed to get it. But it has now dawned on me that there is another ingredient still more relevant in the recipe for success: obsession. Think of anyone you know who is a shining star in their area of operation and I will bet you that they are a total obsessive...

...which brings me to the nub of the matter. A man who is obsessive is, frankly, just a normal man. The well-known 'men and their sheds' scenario: women have hobbies, men have obsessions. Men do obsession naturally and they do it brilliantly (a psychologist would probably say that as hunters men are biologically designed to focus on the target without distraction). But an obsessive woman is distinctly noteworthy, as in 'God woman, you're obsessed!'. So I ask you, who wants to work with an obsessive woman, or date an obsessive woman? They're way too weird. I mean, 'just get some perspective!'.

Typically, a woman will allow herself to do the thing she really wants to do only after she has done everything she has to do. Take this blog for example, which is only ever written after the children are both asleep, my paid work has been dispatched, dinner has been shopped for, cooked and eaten, everyone has the things they need for the next day, and all social engagements have been fulfilled. Compare and contrast Mr London Street who is my very favourite male blogger. I have no idea where or when he writes, but I notice that in 2010 he wrote 178 posts and I wrote 11. My energies, I fear - like those of a cave woman foraging all over the place while keeping an eye on the children - are simply too diffuse to ever amount to much.

So are men pre-destined to be more successful than women? Perhaps my New Year's Resolution should be to get a bit more obsessive. But now I come to think of obsessive women I have known, it didn't end well. Helluva story though...

Rate your Santa

2010-12-17T06:35:00.000-08:00

Dear Father Christmas

It isn't often that I write letters of complaint - and perhaps my thirty-something years should have made me world-weary enough to let this pass - but I can't help thinking that it's not too late. With a few pointers there is still time before Christmas to keep the magic alive for hundreds of other girls and boys.

You might think that I'm not your target audience, but as one who paid your £5.50 entrance fee on Tuesday you would be wrong. I don't expect you to be RADA trained, just convincing enough so that a three year old can't see right through you.

It has to be said that you've got a lot going for you – the willing suspension of disbelief has already been created. Most performers don't have the benefit of such a receptive audience, but unfortunately this comes with a certain level of expectation. I've spent a long time building you up, and you've got a great back story, lots of magic powers (always sells), a warm and jolly persona and a fine intellect to match. You can break and enter into any house without chimney, and best of all, you are the image of selfless and bountiful giving. What I'm trying to say is that you're trading on an elaborate cultural lie and your job is to enhance it. The last thing we want is to tell our children the truth, or who can say where it will end?

Allow me to enter into specifics:

1. Your 'grotto' was frankly grotty and your 'elf' was entirely without any elfin features (a hat and rosy cheeks really would make all the difference. The diet can wait until January).

2. £5.50 for a five minute interview and a tube of bubbles did not leave me feeling bountiful and full of festive cheer.

3. I didn’t see a list of your convictions pinned up outside, so you really didn't need to discuss your CRB checks with us at such length, nor launch a tirade on taxi drivers the world over who do not require such paperwork. The Impster was totally befuddled, but mercifully on this occasion was sufficiently distracted not to request her customary chapter and verse explanation.

4. Your parting shot should not be 'Goodbye! If you liked it, Merry Christmas, and if not you can see Santa at Debenhams.'

5. Don't ask a three year old the kind of question that would fox an adult. They are probably feeling rather shy and in awe of you (particularly in light of your passionate feelings regarding the necessary police checks) so starting a conversation with 'Now how many reindeer do I have?' won't put anyone at their ease.

6. I know that in this era of globalisation it’s probably harder to get your story straight, but you really should decide on where you live and stick to it: is it the North Pole, Greenland or Lapland? It doesn't help to give the impression of being hazy about geography when you have to cover the world in a single night.

I don't mean to be picky, but it is clear that you are not a man who enjoys his work. Perhaps you dislike children? Or consider parental expectations to be wildly excessive these days?

Anyway, you can take heart from the fact that the Impster still thinks you were 'better than the Father Christmas with the bell' who was outside the cathedral last week. I, too, was unconvinced by the cut of his jib. There is something altogether wrong about a skinny Father Christmas (though that is one accusation I would not lay at your door).

Well, I wish you the very best of luck for the remaining festive season, and let us sincerely hope you find more satisfying employment in the New Year. Should you wish to persevere with this career path, please don’t hesitate to contact me. I am now actively engaged in launching The Father Christmas Consultancy in time for next Christmas.

All best wishes

This Father Christmas was found in his Ice Cave at the Winchester Cathedral Christmas Market. If you've had an encounter with a good, bad or indifferent Father Christmas this year then please leave a comment about it.

By the way, as long as you’re not too fussy about where your letter ends up, little people can write to Santa Claus, Reindeer Land, SAN TA1 and the Royal Mail will try their best to deliver it in a timely fashion. (Just for the record, the real Father Christmas lives in the mountains of Korvatunturi in the Finnish province of Lapland but then you have to rely on the chimney method of delivery which is somewhat fraught with hazards.)

Also, don’t forget you can track his movements around the world on Christmas Eve here (they need Disney or Nintendo on the case with their animation but it’s clever enough to impress a three year old).

Merry Christmas one and all!

May cause offence

2010-11-24T14:34:00.000-08:00

It is bath time. I am kneeling devoutly by the side of the bath, engaged in the ritual practice of extracting the Boo’s fingers from the tap. Suddenly the Impster pops up holding her watering can and sponge. ‘Blood of Christ?’ she asks proffering the watering can.

‘What?’

‘I’m playin’ churches,’ she explains. Then picking up the sponge, she hollers loud enough to shame a barrow-boy, ‘Anyone want some body of Christ?’

The Boo looks suitably impressed and flaps his arms as if to say, ‘Don’t mind if I do.’

It started one evening way past her bedtime. K told her she could choose ‘just one’ book for her bedtime story. So she chose the fattest one she could find: The Bible. They embarked on Genesis and she pointed to the picture of Noah on the opposite page: ‘Look daddy, it’s the Fat Controller.’ It was clear that we had a little explaining to do.

Or at least someone did. The following week she started Sunday School and came home full of it: ‘I thought it was horrid. I wanted to draw pictures of wicked witches.’

Perhaps it was the post-Sunday School chocolate digestives that eased the way, or possibly her recent discovery that Holy Communion contained edible goods: ‘Daddy, did you get something to eat?’

Six months later, she has started spreading the word. ‘I like Church,’ she said trudging along the other Sunday. ‘I wonder if granny knows about Church?’ And lo and behold as we are taking our leave of my parents she says, ‘I’ll watch out for you granny, and God will watch out for me. God is at Church.’

No evangelist, however good, can match the charming yet obsessional fervour of a three year old. How otherwise could Disney and Barbie continue to practise their strangulating hold on families the world over? Yes, children spend their days greedily consuming everything they see and hear, only to throw it back up when you are least expecting it. Like my friend’s four-year-old niece, who sent shockwaves across her family last Christmas by yelling ‘let’s open the fucking presents!’

Childish enthusiasm knows no abstention, no tact, no diplomacy. It is boundless, heartfelt and unbearably honest. Just don’t ask for an opinion on your haircut.

Rational fears

2010-10-29T14:17:00.000-07:00

It had happened once too often. After the Roundhouse debacle I insisted he got therapy. In the middle of a very enjoyable piece of art theatre there was a spurt of fake blood and the thump of a bullet meeting its fleshy target. And there was K, passed out on the floor: limp, palid and clammy from the shock. It wasn't so much that they believed he was on drugs that marked the turning point. No, my outrage was at having to miss most of the play.

Now, as far as he can recall, the first of these faintings - and probably the root cause - was watching the Oberammergau Passion Play. This vivid rendering of the crucifixion of Christ was made particularly ghastly to his six year old mind by his belief that they had crucified a real criminal. So there he lay, perfectly unconscious, while his mother summoned a local doctor to diagnose the problem.

Alas his fear of blood was to resurface on many a public occasion. There was the production of King Lear at university, during which, at the moment when Gloucester gouges his eyes out, he began flailing wildly with his arms before falling unconscious into the lap of a young lady in the seat next to him. Then there was the convincing self-harm scene involving a pair of scissors in a play at the Royal Court (same reaction, different lady). As for films, he was out cold during much of Scream 2, Face Off, and Highlander as far as I recall (and believe me, I've tried to blank these occasions out myself).

So when I was expecting the Impster, it was clear that if he was to attend the birth without detracting all medical attention from the main event, then something would have to be done. 'But it doesn't bother me,' he said. 'It's a perfectly rational fear and passing out gets away from the problem nicely.' (He always has been immune to social embarrassment.)

So now he is cured of his phobia, but I have a rather debilitating one of my own. This weekend I am going to stay in Dorset. The house is surrounded by beautiful countryside. Do I intend to go for a walk? No. In the city I enjoy nothing more than walking for miles at a time. But faced with the Dorset countryside I become gripped by a familiar terror. Perhaps I will be abducted by a raping murderer and no one will hear my cries. Perhaps just around the next bend a dog is going rush out of a gate, barring its fangs and - as the Impster once put it - 'woofing its head off.' Oh yes, all might seem calm, but there is a very unsettling unpredicability about the countryside.

My feelings towards dogs are pretty much the same as my feelings towards children. That is to say I like the ones I know but have a deep suspicion of strange ones. I'm more than happy to observe them at a safe distance and if they don't interfere with me then I won't interfere with them.

As for ominous men, I've walked past hundreds of drugged up, drunk and mentally unstable sorts while living in London, but have never felt particularly threatened. Yet the raping murderers of my imagination, who crouch unseen within the Dorset undergrowth are a far more terrifying possibility.

The Imspter is at a natural disadvantage in having two bonkers parents on top of all the common neuroses of childhood. She has taken on board my canine phobia, along with a deep-seated fear of the dark. And as readers of this blog will be aware, she does house a rather lively imagination. So at night she will wake screaming about all manner of things, from being abducted by magpies because of the silver embroidery on her pyjamas, to falling down the crack between her bed and the wall.

I would venture that if you know someone who has no fears, you probably don't know them well enough. K has a colleague who has an irrational fear of wet wood. Poor bloke can't even bring himself to look at a lolly stick. And my friend Sarah suffers from a supposedly irrational fear of holes. In her case even I can see that there is a perfectly rational explanation. When she lived in Earl's Court there was a sizable hole in the floorboards of her bedroom, which - given that she used to return very late and very pissed most nights - must have presented itself as a considerable demon to overcome.

Of course knowing the cause of your fears is helpful because it rationalises them. I know my doggy anxieties are due to a particularly terrifying childhood experience. But what K learned from his cognitive behavioural therapy was that his subconscious would respond to an imagined situation (such as a play or film) more strongly than if he cut himself with the kitchen knife. In other words, the further a bloody scene was removed from reality, the stronger his imaginative response, and the more extreme his physical reaction.

Being without fears then must suggest an immense failure of imagination. I would go so far as to wonder whether you can have imagination without fear? Fears are what occur when our belief in reason is suspended. They come crowding in to challenge our rational sense and join the carnival of the imagination. So this Halloween why not celebrate your fears, however rational you like to believe they are?

Which Disney Princess Are You?

2010-09-28T13:39:00.001-07:00

Every time we want the Impster to do something she finds disagreeable (such as putting on her shoes) she gets all huffy and shouts: 'I'm sixteen years old, I'm not a child anymore!' She's actually a three year old with an overactive imagination and a Disney addiction. This line comes straight from The Little Mermaid and she is currently styling herself in the leading role, drawn here:

It has some advantages, being a useful way of keeping strangers at arm's length by lying about her name, and also a way of getting her to put her shoes on if you only remember to address her correctly.

But on balance the advantages are outweighed by the disadvantages, as we discovered on holiday last week when she told the man at passport control, 'my name is Ariel'. Then later (much later as it turned out) when we were characteristically lost in search of our destination, a little voice from the back of the car chirps merrily away on a pretend phone call: 'hi Sebastian, it’s Ariel. We are very lost. [Pause for response.] Well. Well, we are in the middle of the dark with French words all around us. [Pause.] No, we don't know where we are going.'

When we did finally arrive at the gite it took her about four and a half minutes to sniff out a whole cupboard of bloody Disney films, which goes to prove yet again that there is no such thing as a holiday with toddlers. As if to reinforce the theme, what should be in her a bedroom but a full-scale underwater sea mural, which (along with the Little Mermaid) I hold responsible for her terrifying insistence on only swimming underwater in the pool. Most embarrasingly of all, she has a bevy of imaginary mermaid friends and spent the week VERY clearly telling anyone who would listen: ‘I’m not interested in lady love.’ That surely can’t be more Disney scripting can it?

Anyway, in the style of Just Seventeen , if the Impster is Ariel, which Disney Princess are you?

1. You meet the man of your dreams. Are you likely to:
a) have met him once upon a dream
b) dance all night with him but have no idea of his name in the morning
c) be grateful he's over 4ft tall
d) admire his mode of transport
e) think he's a bit ugly but hey, looks aren't everything
f) find yourself speechless

2. You're currently seeking professional help to overcome your:
a) narcolepsy
b) lack of assertiveness
c) claustrophobia
d) anger management issues
e) terrible eyesight
f) laryngitis

3. Your family set up is:
a) muddled. You were adopted by three eccentric old women, and didn't discover your true identity until you were 16
b) absent father, abusive stepmother and two hideous stepsisters
c) both parents deceased, pathological stepmother
d) absent mother, doting father
e) absent mother, hair-brained and grossly incompetent father
f) absent mother, tyrannical father

4. Your best friend is:
a) an owl, a squirrel and a rabbit
b) a family of mice
c) an assortment of woodland creatures with domestic prowess
d) a tiger
e) a teapot
f) a stripy fish and a lobster

5. On your sixteenth birthday you are given:
a) a spinning wheel
b) a glass slipper
c) a poisoned apple
d) a magic carpet ride
e) a rose
f) a pair of legs

Congratulations! You can now live happily ever after. If you have answered mostly:

A's, then you are Sleeping Beauty. With three good fairies and a heroic prince to look out for you, you can expect lasting happiness (provided that your husband isn't sent down for murder).

B's, then you are Cinderella. For true happiness, just do yourself a favour and get a cleaner.

C's, then you are Snow White. One day your prince will come, but you'll have to work your way through seven unsuitable men first.

D's, then you are Jasmine from Aladdin (coloured in with much enthusiasm below). Watch out that class differences don't start to ruin your marriage (or that your tiger doesn't eat his monkey).

E's, then you are Belle from Beauty and the Beast. Ah, c'est bon. He may not be a beast any longer, but you're still left with a frog.

F's, then you are Ariel from The Little Mermaid. Consider investing in an outdoor swimming pool to make family visits easier.

Aunt Sally's bucket

2010-08-26T15:26:00.000-07:00

'Have you seen my white White Stuff top anywhere?' I asked K this morning. The sleep deprivation is seriously beginning to tell - the Boo at seven and a half months shows no sign of sleeping any better than a newborn - and I am permanently befuddled. 'You've already asked me several times. You're getting as bad as her,' he says, nodding in the Impster's direction.

Worryingly, our new house has a Bermuda Triangle quality about it. So far I have lost my watch, my favourite Chanel sunglasses and now a very useful White Stuff top. But the Impster is on the case.

Anyone who has come to the house since early July has been greeted with her baffling inquisition: 'Have you seen Aunt Sally's bucket and Promra's earrings?' And having had no luck in turning up a satisfactory response, she has now branched out to the general public with her enquiries, so that wherever we go, shopkeepers, old ladies, and car mechanics alike are accosted for routine questioning.

Aunt Sally and Promra are the Impster's two eccentrically named and peculiarly attired Barbie dolls. Aunt Sally came complete with a wetsuit, a dolphin, a belt full of fish, and a bucket. She might have been wearing blue mascara but otherwise pretty much deserved to have a somewhat singular name bestowed upon her. Promra on the other hand, is uncannily named because although the Impster has no notion of what a prom is, this Barbie is properly bedecked for one, with full-length ball dress, corsage, tiara, and - as the Impster informs us - 'a white shrug and purple earrings'. The only thing her Barbies have in common is their purple outfits, which is quite enough for the Impster to adore them (they were both given as gifts for their special purple qualities and I simply can’t remember how I got by without seeing their cheery fixed grin and enormous boobs each day).

This recent chain of events reminds me of the time my friend Nicky kept losing her belongings, only to discover a few months later that she was living with a kleptomaniac. But the Boo is the only newcomer in our midst, and while the Imspter has already condemned him as guilty until proven innocent, I hardly think he has it in him to make away with a ladies Tag watch, however fast his crawling skills and discerning his taste. Come to think of it, he may have eaten them. After all, he did try to consume the entire Yellow Pages yesterday.

No, the Boo suffers a far worse lost property conundrum himself. Yesterday his first tooth appeared, and I have an independent third party witness as well as the Imp to verify this fact. This morning there is no sign whatsoever of the tooth. I kid you not - it has simply disappeared without trace. Hmm, maybe I should check in the Yellow Pages...

Just write (now)

2010-07-24T14:11:00.000-07:00

Because I’m so impossibly slow at posting, it has now been nearly a month since I was working at the 30th Winchester Writers' conference. This is the problem you see. I'd love to write, but life keeps getting in the way. The original writer's block. In my case, I'm usually too busy editing other people's books (which is what I've been doing more or less day and night this week).

Terry Pratchett gave the plenary address at the conference, which he entitled 'Why are You Listening to Me When You Should Be at Home Writing?' Deliberately provocative you might think. Oddly enough, in his speech he didn't refer to the title he'd given it, and he didn't try to convince us that we'd all be better writers for listening to the wisdom of a multi-million copy, bestselling author. Rather, it seemed to me that the question was a genuine piece of advice: don’t prevaricate, just write.

It’s hardly an original suggestion. Every other week someone or other seems to complain (as if for the very first time) that creative writing can't be taught, and that universities offering creative writing courses are somehow sapping our originality. Instead we should just get on and write 1,000 words each morning before we switch on the radio or speak to another soul.

At Winchester, people came to me - and to many other editors, agents, writers and publishers - to get advice on how to improve their chances of publication. Some would say that they were looking for a magic solution. On the whole I expect they received sound advice, but three things became apparent.

Firstly, many people who attend writers' conferences are more interested in being published than they are in writing. It is common to have the desire to publish a particular book. It is far rarer to meet someone who loves writing, does so profusely, and will keep doing so for their whole lives, published or unpublished.

Secondly, you just can't get away from the need for a brilliant idea. If you're writing a novel, you need great characterization; if you're writing non-fiction, you need a stellar proposition. As Lorella Belli put it, 'writing is like singing: we can all do it, but to be successful you've got to be good enough for other people to spend money reading or listening to you.' Just about everyone I’ve ever met has a book idea that they think is a corker, and people will always point out that if Wayne Rooney can write a book, then surely so can they. (Actually only the very weak-brained make this argument. It’s perfectly apparent to anyone with an iota of sense that Wayne Rooney does not spend his time writing (happily enough), but is paid a staggering amount to be published because he’s famous.)

Where was I? Oh yes. Thirdly, I'm better at dishing out advice than I am at following it myself. (This is nearly always the case with people who dish out advice - why else would books with titles like 'How to Write a Bestseller' always have an author one has never heard of?) This blog, for example, has no clear proposition. But that's the glorious thing about blogging, you're not asking anyone to pay to read you, so I say it’s fair enough to write what you damn well like.

If on the other hand, you are lucky enough to be paid to share your random preoccupations, then you are probably a bona fide ‘Me Columnist’, which is how The Independent terms ‘Self-obsessed witterers who occupy prominent corners of the national press to tell us about their doings’. To be honest, those columns are usually the only reason I buy a weekend paper.

Well, if I'm ever to write anything, I need to start by repressing the editor within. And I need to get over the fact that writing takes up time which could be spent earning money. This is where I think writing conferences and degree courses have real value – they seem to legitimise time spent scribbling.

Deep down I suspect the main reason for writer’s block is familiar to all of us, writers or not. It is the fear of failing at the thing one’s dreams are made of. Nothing ventured, nothing lost. A sense that our expectations so often triumph over experience. So I wonder: how often are all best wishes no more than fictions?

Little green dress

2010-06-13T14:10:00.001-07:00

A few weeks ago, the Impster popped the question. 'Granny, where was I bought?' My mother, appalled by the venality and vulgarity of one so young promptly explained that not everything in life is bought, and that many of the best things are made.

I have to excuse the Impster's love of shopping (though not her insistence that we take the Boo back and exchange him for a girl), because it's probably genetic. And who can say that they've not been perked up from time to time by a successful shopping trip?

Last bank holiday weekend was spent at a wedding in Ripon. K was carrying out his bestmanly duties on the morning of the wedding by writing his speech, in his head it would seem, whilst strolling around the city. But he was not so focused on the task that he failed to notice a dress in a little boutique that he thought was made for me. Isn't that nice? And a useful reminder that while he might not be one of life's planners, he can pick out a good dress at twenty paces. Where a shopping trip with a girlfriend is my personal hell, K has that kind of endless patience for clothes shopping as rare as hen's teeth in a heterosexual male. He also matches it with a stunning tenacity for sourcing desired items on line (which is how we end up with a house full of so much stuff).

As soon as I saw it I agreed, it was the most exquisite dress known to womankind. So despite said boutique being closed on Sunday and Monday, the following weekend I took delivery of the lesser-spotted little green dress.

Did I tear it open with excited anticipation? Did I hell. Since giving birth to the Boo, I make a freaky little figure of a woman, still pixie like, but with a tummy resembling Mr Greedy's. Aside from saving us a fortune in new clothes because nothing ever fits, the singularity of my shape has led the Impster to point and ask, reasonably enough, 'Is there another baby brother in there?' 'No, I'm just a bit fat.' 'Oh good.' Hmmm.

Discovering that the dress you love actually loves you back, that it disguises your fatal flaws and brings out all your best points, is just about as hard as finding a man who can perform the same trick. So on the occasions I pull it off, I'm on a high for days.

The dress has made me insane with delight, and as I whooped around the house, aglow with love for both dress and husband, even the Boo knew it was a special moment. Here endeth the first lesson of his boyhood: girls love to shop, and boys who encourage them can do very nicely for themselves.

Enough.

2010-05-31T14:47:00.000-07:00

Are any of us getting enough? As if I'm not already obsessed by the matter, earlier this month journalists reported that you are 12% more likely to die prematurely if you regularly get less than six hours sleep a night (or more than nine hours, though sadly this is unlikely to ever worry me). Sleep turns out to be surprisingly like sex: inevitably ruined by the onset of children and at its most addictive when you're not getting quite enough. Well, it's official. Your children not only prematurely age you, they might actually kill you.

As if you can't guess, the Boo doesn't sleep. K emerges each morning as if he's spent the night in the trenches (presumably why he's taken to sleeping in Beijing these days*) and I exist in a semi-permanent coma. My mother sagely points out to me that in his nearly five months the Boo has been to a rock concert, a hen weekend, an upmarket stag weekend, a 40th birthday party and a wedding. And has concluded that nighttime is for partying and that sleep is for wimps.

So far this year I've had somewhere between no sleep and five broken hours a night. In desperation I considered a night nanny before realising that I'm already too guilt-ridden a mother to employ one. It's the old parenting spectrum: at one end are the parent-led routines beloved of Gina Ford and nannies everywhere, and at the other end are the baby-led theories (much in the news of late) beloved of Penelope Leach, Oliver James and hippies everywhere.

The 'parent-led' lot have made a fortune by writing instruction manuals for the clueless, with much talk about 'good habits' and 'routines', and 'sleep training your baby' as if it were a dog. Of course, they are responsible for instilling the myth that as a parent you should be able to maintain cool control over a 7am-7pm sleeping baby and solve all your problems (hence The Baby Whisperer Solves all your Problems). Hell, the Boo is not a problem, he's a baby...and the last thing I need is to be made to feel like a poor excuse for a mother because having a baby has disrupted normal life.

On the other hand, the 'baby-led' camp believes in giving yourself over to the needs of your child as much as you can: breastfeed them until they wean themselves, let them sleep in your bed until they voluntarily get into their own, carry them everywhere until they walk, don't leave them to cry in case they grow up to be emotionally stunted. But the Boo is just a baby, and really it's neither fair nor sensible to eschew all the tricky parenting decisions of when and how and leave it up to him instead. And I'm highly suspicious of any parenting theory that proves its unassailable logic by pointing to the fact that this is what cave men, or Amazonian tribal folk, or our impoverished ancestors have always done. (Believe that, and I'll gladly relieve you of your hoover, washing machine, TV and car for a week or two. Then we'll see how you cope.) No thank you - I won't be made to feel like an inadequate mother because I frequently run out of the energy and patience to meet my baby's every demand.

Isn't it time we were honest and admitted that we all parent according to our own tolerance level? We all have a breaking point at which we have to say Enough, and start trying less hard. Mine was at about 12 weeks of serious sleep deprivation when I reached the point of realising the Boo had actually 'sleep trained' me. When you've had Enough, then treat yourself to a read of Tom Hodgkinson's The Idle Parent. It is every bit as comforting as a chocolate bar, with the rare benefit of making you feel much better about yourself.

The Real Contented Little Baby Book isn't published, but every baby has read it. Let's take a sneaky peak at an extract:

7pm - the tiring parent will put you in your cot. Do not make it too easy for them: it is very important that they do not grow complacent in their parenting skills. Wait to observe their first yawn and then begin your protest.

7.30 - appear to give in and get yourself 30 or 40 minutes kip to recharge your batteries for the next stage

8.15 - scream inconsolably. Typically the parent is just sitting down to eat, but you must train them to serve your needs first. They will probably blame wind or colic and start endlessly patting your back. No matter - they will almost certainly get you out of your cot in the attempt to find a cure.

9pm - provided you've kept up the grumbling they'll believe that you must be hungry. It is very important to take this feed quietly as then you'll probably be allowed to have it in front of the TV.

9.30 - poo explosively (complete change of clothing preferable). The parent must not be allowed to rest for long or you'll miss out on your evening's entertainment.

10pm - the parent will repeat the 7pm procedure and put you back in your cot. It is very important that you protest at this time in the evening, or they might start having sex and the last thing you want is a sibling to usurp your place in their attentions. Wail with all the strength you can muster.

10.30 - you will probably be taken from your room for fear of waking elder siblings or neighbours. We call this 'pick up put down'. The parent must be made to learn that only by picking you up will you be quiet. You may have to do this 128 times on the first night, about 57 time on the second and probably only 23 times on the third. Be reassured by the knowledge that most poor parenting behaviour can be reversed in about three days. The key is being consistent: start as you mean to go on, and don't be afraid to show them who is younger and has the most energy.

11.30 - by now the parent will be tiring, and should soon give up and take you into their bed. They will believe that if they give you a large bottle of milk at this point you'll sleep, so make sure you take it all, otherwise you'll lack the energy for your 2am feed...

...Aaarghh. And so to bed.

*Note to self to avoid any enterprise involving husband + air travel. The man is a proven travel jinx (see On Destiny and To the Hermitage by Ambulance). This time, he was involved in a motorway car crash on day of arrival, and then overslept and missed his plane back.

Happiness (of epic proportions)

2010-04-11T08:27:00.000-07:00

Whenever I write to thank someone for something these days, I always seem to do so ‘belatedly’, as in ‘A very belated note to say thank you so much...’. You’d think that a mother of two on maternity leave could take time off from drinking lattes in Starbucks to write a blog at least once a month, but sadly no. (Though as well as the lattes, I’ve had no internet or computer for four weeks due to the house move and a hard drive explosion.) So it’s without surprise that I’m starting this blog with a belated apology to Mrs Trefusis who so kindly tagged me on her blog back in January. The idea is that you write ten things about yourself (presumably without boring the pants off your readers) and then tag seven blogs yourself.

The task of finding ten moderately interesting things to say about oneself induces a strange form of writer’s block in itself. But then I was reading The Happiness Project by Gretchin Rubin, whose blog and one-woman mission to make each of us happier, inspired me to tell you ten things which have made me happy this week. After all, what makes you happy defines who you are. So here are a few of my favourite things:

1. ...starting with music. On Thursday night K, the Boo, and I went to the launch party of the new Scouting for Girls album. Here is my little rock legend at the end of the evening, totally rocked out:

He met the band, had his T-shirt signed by all of them, and I stole some POS material for posterity. I wholly recommend taking babies to unsuitable occasions because everyone wants to meet them, making mingling with strangers so much easier. (If you can’t manage a baby then try a puppy – it would probably have the same effect.) The new Scouting for Girls album, out tomorrow, is just as upbeat and happy-making as the last, so check it out, along with their blog.

We had to take the Boo with us because he’s still not touching bottles (strictly draught only). Combined with his party-all-night spirit, this is altogether proving to be very tiring affair because I never get a break (just deleted the caps...really need to get my rage under control). However, all the calories from breastfeeding (an alleged 500 a day) is allowing me to eat lots of chocolate, which brings me onto...

2. ...the subject of Montezuma’s truffles, which are a divine creation. A belated thank you to my mother for giving me their dark chocolate Eclipse truffles for Easter – they have been making me very happy this week. Their yummiest truffles of all time are Far Cape, which have a hint of Orange and Geranium - sound hellish, but taste heavenly. (By the way, if I was writing about ten very wrong things, then I’d include chocolates with alcohol. They make me want to spit. Chocolates should taste of chocolate and alcohol of alcohol. End of.)

3. Naturally, alcohol consumed in the manner intended makes me happy. Last night I was drinking a bottle of local wine from the Wickham Vineyard, at nearby Bishops Waltham. It was their 2008 Special Release fumé dry white, which goes particularly well with curry. Perhaps that’s why Michelin starred chef Atul Kochhar opened the Vatika restaurant at the vineyard. The Wickham vineyard is the first English vineyard to buy a chain of shops (they bought thirteen shops in Hampshire). Doubtless they remember the heavily pregnant lady who passed out after the tasting whilst paying for a case of wine. Low blood pressure (that's my story and I'm sticking to it. One day I'll tell you about my other passing out pregnant episodes.)

4. Hampshire really is a treat for foodies and has some fab restaurants, made all the more pleasing by one having to make the effort to find them, unlike in London. My discovery of the week is The Thomas Lord pub at West Meon, near Petersfield.

5. And when I’m not eating I’m probably cooking, especially if it involves chocolate and is in anticipation of friends coming to stay. This week I’ve made a delicious chocolate cheesecake from the Hummingbird Bakery cookbook, and some scrummy gooey chocolate brownies from a recipe I got from a cookery demo on a friend’s hen weekend in February (the Boo came on the hen weekend too. He really is a party animal.)

6. So as well as breastfeeding to burn off the chocolate calories, I spent most of this morning bouncing on the Impster’s trampoline. No one can be uncheered by bouncing on a trampoline (especially when you’ve just had a baby and it proves there’s nothing wrong with your pelvic floor muscles). But equally, I loved the boxing lesson I had on Thursday morning. I’ve warned K that I now have a mean right hook, which I think is how I persuaded him to take the children out so that I could write this blog. The only thing that would beat these is a round of bouncy boxing. We tried it at an army ball a few years ago and I can vouch for its happiness-making properties.

7. I was also connecting with my inner child, as well as my actual child, when I took the Impster to see The Gruffalo at the theatre. It made both of us happy for an hour, so I recommend it unreservedly.

8. Although it’s far from a new discovery, the Times Alphamummy blog is one of my absolute favourites, combining as it does the themes of working and mothering (not that I’m doing much proper work at the moment). This week though, I was made happy by being asked to write a book. As you’ll see from the lack of blog postings, it was clear that this was not likely to happen, so I politely declined. But I do have an idea for writing a children’s book, so must work on that. One true alphamummy is Maeve Brabury, mother of five (yes five), who must start writing her utterly fab Happy Housewife blog again.

9. And while we’re on the subject of books, I’m currently reading The Children's Book (and probably always will be), but I was made very happy this week by my friend G sending me David Nicholls book One Day. And then by noticing it gets a mention on one of my blog recommendations: Read Like a Writer.

10. A new pair of shoes can raise the heaviest of hearts, as no doubt Mrs Trefusis will attest, so I bought a new pair of Jimmy Choos this week. They make me happy some of the time. Here’s the story: I bought them, and realised even as I was paying for them that they weren’t entirely comfortable. So I took them back to the shop. But then I missed them. So this week I bought them again. I love looking at them, but am resigned to wearing them for only short periods, mainly when seated. One of my favourite blogs, Tollipop, which you must check out, has a very convincing argument against this kind of vanity. She asks ‘what kind of little old lady will you be when you grow up?’ and I’m sure to be one with bad feet. And finally, on the subject of fashion, I am decorating our new bedroom with a beautiful Vivienne Westwood wallpaper, which is enough to guarantee that I’ll always be happy in bed.

Oh dear, yet again a post which is rather too long. I hope it doesn't read like The Diary of a Nobody. I've lost count of how many blogs I've recommended now, but here is a final one: the diary of self-styled modern day Charles Pooter.

Of butter dishes and daleks

2010-02-18T03:00:00.000-08:00

On days when I'm in a particularly dark mood, nothing lightens my spirits more than the thought of selling some of my husband's possessions. Were I suicidal, I am quite sure that K agreeing to divest himself of all his belongings would resurrect in me the will to live.

I feel I can write with honesty on this subject, given my strong suspicion that the feeling is reciprocal. Only last week I bought a Cath Kidston butter dish to replace one the Impster had broken. K looked offended at its appearance and muttered something about hoping she might break this one too.

It is common house-sharing etiquette not to clutter communal living spaces with your belongings. Dirty tea cups, empty yoghurt pots, discarded coats, stinking shoes, a dubious taste in poster art...all these would induce siege warfare among friends living together. When you are married though, it seems that totally different rules apply. Somehow there is a sense that because you are living with a loved one, it is basically the same as just living with yourself. Or possibly, that all your beloved possessions are simply an extension of yourself to be at least tolerated if not embraced and admired by your other half.

Now, I'm not overlooking the virtues of K's hoarding. For a start, being a cluttery kind of person suggests to me a certain rootedness which might increase the chances of fidelity. I figure this on the basis of there being too much stuff for him to move, too much attachment for him ever to leave it, and the impossibility of any other woman in the world being willing to take it on.

But next week we move house (with the seven week old littlie), so at the moment I'm frantically trying to declutter, or at least impose some order on the stuff we've managed to accumulate. We've long had a house rule that it doesn't matter what stuff K has, as long as I can't see it. Otherwise I get such a vicious attack of claustrophobia that I struggle to breathe and begin to hallucinate that the walls are marching inwards towards me.

That's why when we moved into our present house, I insisted upon him having a room of his own. This has served remarkably well as a great invisibility cloak, hiding vast quantities of consoles, games, Dr Who merchandise, DVD box sets, amps, subwoofers, and home cinema kit.

But now we have the children - and are no longer just two tall children ourselves - Virgina Woolf's entreaty to have 'a room of one's own,' of which I had been an ardent supporter, now seems too antisocial and exclusive. Suddenly I find myself fixated on the importance of NOT having a room of one's own, and preaching the virtues and necessity of integrating our possessions in a caring and sharing kind of way. Perhaps the time has finally come to admit that we do actually live together.

This could easily prove to be the kind of ghastly mistake which leads to a state of perpetual snipping and sniping. Every time the postman delivers another CD, DVD or magazine, and I threaten to instigate a 'one in one out' policy, I'm reminded of the infamous 'soup line' imposed by a friend's mother in her perpetual battle against her husband's incorrigible stockpiling of tinned soup.

I dare say that moving house could result in the tragic loss of a remote controlled dalek, the breakage of an overly twee butter dish, and the eventual (much longed-for) demise of the Impster's 'Noisy Noisy Fairies' book. If in this brave new world of sharing we are still all speaking to each other in a few weeks I shall report back with jubilant satisfaction.

My little superman

2010-01-31T14:30:00.001-08:00

You’ll forgive the lack of recent post perhaps if I explain that I’ve been giving birth and things recently.

At precisely midday on New Year’s Day, my little one whooshed into the world, arm outstretched over his head like Superman. Midday, 01.01.10: a very tidy birthday and no doubt one that portends something or other. According to my discharge notes, the birth took 2 hours 24 minutes, though at best this must be a good guess, for he was born on the antenatal ward with a midwife turning up only just in time to catch him.

After all the hooha about my so-called 'high risk' pregnancy and no less than 18 mornings spent attached to a grotty old machine being monitored, the hospital lost my medical notes and left me totally unsupervised and unmonitored for the whole labour. The most surprising part is that having insisted on having him out, and inducing the whole process by breaking my waters, the possibility that I might, in fact, have a baby pretty soon apparently didn’t occur. So ladies, the moral of the story is do not give birth on a bank holiday if you want some moral (or rather medical) support.

After the birth I hemorrhaged, and to be fair, they very competently stopped me bleeding to death. Which is why I can type with such speed and vigour now.

Since I have become a mother of two, something peculiar has happened. For the first time, I feel as if I’m a proper mother. If your first child is a kind of practice run, in which you discover with distressing suddenness that you know absolutely nothing about babies, cannot control anything and have alarmingly neurotic tendencies, then in comparison, your second child makes you feel almost competent and possibly even fit to call yourself a parent. This is the wonderful thing about second children. They seem easy peasy and really quite a treat.

What is not so easy is the business of simultaneously looking after the toddler as well. The Impster, who permanently inhabits some sort of ‘second life’ these days, refers to her younger sibling as ‘Sizzles’, the dog from Charlie and Lola. Naturally, she has assumed the role of Lola (in case you’re not a seasoned CBeebies viewer, Lola is an infuriatingly chippy little brat). Unfortunately, this means that Sizzles is regularly patted, sometimes with startling enthusiasm, and must on no account share a bath with her ‘because I’m scared he’ll poo on me’ (which is fair enough and pretty well reasoned). She frequently insists that I ‘take him off the breast’, particularly when I am instructed to ‘watch the telly’ (quite literally – it is not turned on, because the Impster likes to make believe her own programmes and talk you through the action). On the whole she is indifferent to his wellbeing, but has been the happy recipient of numerous ‘big sister’ gifts.

Well, even Superman can’t be entirely super. To be frank, he is somewhat needy and his current wails suggest not wholly appreciative of this blog, so I must away.

Would the real baby Jesus please step forward?

2009-12-28T13:37:00.001-08:00

Let's face it, you have to be a particularly abhorrent two year old not to be adorable. Especially if you spend most of the day immersed in a pretend (and much more satisfactory) world. This week I’ve been reminded that things are not always what they seem, and that sometimes this is a decidedly good thing.

I've been reprimanded for stepping on the Impster's imaginary dogs, not hearing her imaginary cats meowing, and accidentally washing up a chopping board with her imaginary olive pesto ('and now,' she hollers outraged, 'I have to start all over again!' Oops). To get her into the bath it is necessary to make believe picnics and train rides, and to get her out again, tents and camels; to get into pyjamas, ball dresses and glass slippers, and to bed a hastily improvised story on a subject of her choosing. I have been allocated the unflattering roles of Ugly Sister and Big Ears, but happily have also been permitted to marry a prince and eat strawberry tart, which seems like a fair enough trade.

It turns out that Christmas time has been specially designed for two year olds. On Christmas Eve I took the Impster to the children's service at the cathedral, dressed as an angel (any occasion which calls for the wearing of fairy wings in public goes down very well with the both of us). Just a few minutes before the service I hastily bastardised her white bridesmaid dress, fashioned a tinsel halo, and accidentally stabbed her with the needle a few times in a fervent attempt to attach the wings. Ta-da! - one angelic child.

But when we arrive, things get kind of complicated. 'Where's the Angel Gabriel?' she asks. To which I point out all the other angelically-attired children. 'No, the Angel Gabriel'. Oh, the real one. I see. 'Well, he's probably in the sky somewhere at the moment. He only pops down occasionally when someone really needs his help.' She ignores this unsatisfactory response and provides her own: 'He's upstairs with the baby Jesus I 'spect.' I nod sagely.

Ditto the wise men, ditto Mary, ditto the shepherds. Yes yes, she can see the children dressed up (durr Mummy!) but when are the real ones going to turn up? 'I can see the stable,' she says, looking up at the wooden screen in front of the choir. And as a baby starts crying mid-carol, she turns to me and says, 'That's the baby Jesus going waa waa waa I s'pose.'

The service, heaving with several hundred barely-continent toddlers does not last long, and there is a rush for the doors. But not for us. The Impster is not leaving until she has located 'the real baby Jesus'.

My explanation of how he lived a rather long time ago and isn't a baby any longer and how we are just remembering the story, suddenly seems fraudulent. You see, only the day before we have taken her on a steam train and she has met 'the real Father Christmas' who has given her presents and everything. Just like the story.

Now, if a two year old indulges in pretend it is a beautiful and charming thing. But somewhere along the line, pretending becomes dishonest and wrong, and we despise grown ups with any hint of 'pretence' about them. That’s why some very dedicated Christians actually refuse to let their children believe in Father Christmas. But without him, surely childhood is a bit, well, serious. If we stoke our imagination when it's young, let it run riot, fuel the furnace with all sorts of fantastical nonsense and whimsy and amusement, then just maybe we are expanding our capacity for belief; to believe in whatever we finally decide is worthwhile believing in.

So right now, as well as being ceaselessly entertained, I'm utterly evangelical about indulging in as much Christmas magic as you can conjure. I will never stop believing in Father Christmas. And if you've spent the week playing charades and feeling all bah humbug, do me a favour and just pretend.

You are where you live (well, maybe)

2009-12-04T15:17:00.000-08:00

No one could accuse me of impatience when it comes to housing matters, though one might be justified in questioning whether my tenacity doesn’t suggest a mildly alarming psychosis. Having offered on our future abode no less than 18 months ago, at last we appear to be in danger of actually moving in. The intervening period has taught me the value of waiting for what you want (as if) and (more truthfully) the nature of my housing personality. Now what about yours?

1. If someone mentions moving to the country, you
(a) offer to accompany them for all viewings no matter how far away
(b) lend them your copy of John Seymour’s Complete Book of Self-sufficiency
(c) ask them whereabouts in Surrey
(d) laugh your stilettos off

2. When looking at property details you
(a) know you can’t afford it but can’t resist a peek
(b) book a viewing if it has a family-sized kitchen
(c) immediately check the square footage
(d) only pick them up if the house has serious curb-appeal

3. You know if you’ve found the right place when
(a) you’ve been waiting for it to come onto the market for the last 10 years
(b) you walk in and it feels like home
(c) it ticks all the boxes
(d) you spot the Eames lounge chair

4. You idea of home is
(a) the house where you live in your dreams
(b) the house where you were born
(c) the house where you live now
(d) the house on p24 of The World of Interiors

5. Your partner falls in love with a house by the sea, so you
(a) immediately check out www.upmystreet.co.uk
(b) assume they mean a beach hut
(c) wonder if its insurable
(d) enquire about the view

6. When viewing a house you
(a) look to see how much value you can add
(b) are blown away by the period features (including the original Burlington cistern)
(c) hope to move in without needing to even redecorate
(d) envisage knocking down two walls and moving the staircase

7. For you, suburbia is
(a) regrettably more affordable
(b) lovely if your friends live there
(c) where you currently live
(d) hell on earth

8. When asked the current value of your home, you
(a) can cite three recent agent’s quotations
(b) have no idea, you’ve been living there too long
(c) make a quick calculation based on the national average
(d) ask whether that includes soft furnishings

9. The thing you value most about your home is
(a) its location
(b) its contents
(c) its spaciousness
(d) its interior

10. Your favourite property programme is
(a) Property Ladder
(b) The Home Show
(c) Location, Location, Location
(d) Grand Designs

If you answered:

Mostly As – you are a property Obsessive. You’ve just moved, but you still subscribe to Rightmove updates. You think about property approximately once every three seconds, and never visit a new house without mentally redesigning and revaluing it. Your local estate agent now thinks you fancy him because you unavoidably slow down every time you pass the window.

Mostly Bs – you are a property Romantic. You are hugely attached to where you live and have lovingly restored all the cornicing and architraves. Home is very much where your heart is and a bit of mess just makes the place feel lived in. If you don’t live in it already, you’d like your next house to be your home for life, and you’re likely to pay over the asking price for it.

Mostly Cs – you are a property Pragmatist. You love the built-in storage, double garage, and the fact that the station is just 10 minutes walk away. You’ll move if you’re relocated but otherwise would rather stay put and have more money for holidays.

Mostly Ds – you are a property Stylist. You believe your home and haircut confer serious style and offer a window to your identity. One of life's perpetual worries is finding a decent cleaner. When you have a life crisis, redecorating your house provides instant solace and maximum therapeutic benefit.

The Thing About Publishers

2009-10-26T08:47:00.000-07:00

I’m still digressing, and doubtless regressing, but here goes.

I just love the business (some would venture profession) of publishing. On the one hand, you have those fresh-faced editorial assistants, with a humungous passion for books and a deeply Romantic notion of the author as solitary creative genius. On the other, you have a few ginormous egos in charge of a powerful marketing and publicity machine, ruthlessly operating under the belief that where we used to have artists living in garrets, we now have promotable celebrities. (Or that even when you come across genuine talent too big to ignore, it can always be made bigger with some help.)

Science long since gave up on the idea of individual genius. In that plain-speaking, objective way it has about it, it seems to have concluded that many heads are better than one. Today, the individuals that shine out like rare gems are ‘entrepreneurs’, not inventors. With ever-increasing specialisation and technological complexity, individual scientists are no longer famed for new discoveries made – it’s all a matter of collaboration.

Well, never was there an industry more slavishly in pursuit of individualism than publishing. So much so that vanity publishing is a term that deserves a broader remit. The literati is full of extraordinary egos: author, agents, salesmen, editors alike all believing in the individual genius (always their own and occasionally their authors’ too). And it strikes me that this has a powerful attraction in our recessionary times. The thought that individuals have unique and irreplaceable talents, offers soul-filling comfort of the rarest kind. With every P45 that’s handed out, another applicant for Britain’s Got Talent is born.

The Thing About Mothers

2009-09-28T14:33:00.000-07:00

Here’s a thing: why do we never ask even our closest friends whether their mothers worked? One friend’s mother – Mother Marjorie as we know her – is the wellspring of constant motherly wisdom to all of her daughter’s friends, not to mention the source of rallying pre-party expressions such as ‘tut tut, eleven o’clock and not a sausage pricked!’

It’s a weird thing, but I have no idea whether most of my friends’ mothers ever went out to work (apart from those I grew up with). We just don't ask our friends what their mothers did in the way we might enquire about their fathers – to them and to us the role of mother always seems enough. Simply by existing, our mothers matter to us. Simply by being, we are of mind-blowing importance to our children.

The problem for women today is that we’re educated for the workplace, not for motherhood. Motherhood flies in the face of all we have learned, because it is not about doing, but about being; it is not another project, but a whole way of life. Annoyingly, it’s a way of life that totally undermines and overturns all our former values and assumptions.

Motherhood is a great leveller, but it’s also full of different possibilities. Feminism might have given us choices, but it failed to solve the contradictions they posed. I’m fairly sure feminism would work better if it were designed for men. Men wouldn’t attempt all this multi-tasking and run themselves ragged trying to ‘have it all’. No, men would make a simple choice about whether to outsource the parenting role or the bread-winning role and respect each other’s different decisions. They certainly wouldn’t spend endless amounts of emotional energy on the feelings of guilt and envy and incompetence that mothers do.

In an incomparable expression of writerly genius, Helen Simpson once wrote of 'the deep romance and boredom' of motherhood. Having a child is like having the most intense, addictive, emotionally turbulent love affair of your life. And it's also like having a job where the rewards are great, but the day to day work is as tedious as hell. A bit like banking perhaps (one does get the occasional bonus even when times are hard).

So it’s no wonder that motherhood often doesn’t seem enough to us when we are faced with the mind-numbing tedium of it. But as mothers, we owe ourselves a daily reminder that we are insurmountably important, that our role is totally unique and impossible to delegate, and that even if we’re one day forgotten for everything else we’ve done, we’ll still be remembered for being someone’s mum. To our children at least, that is enough.

The Thing About Accountants

2009-09-23T14:36:00.000-07:00

Work has been much on my mind of late. Guilt at not doing enough of it probably. But I’ve also been having some career counselling, which must be a real drag for my counsellor, given that I arrived at our first appointment great with child and clearly no intention of getting a proper job. It turns out to be brilliant therapy though (a bit like the Priory, only without the pills). Someone is being paid to work out what makes me tick, and then explain me to myself so that I can live happily ever after.

Most people moan a fair bit about their job, while being oddly compelled to continue doing it. It’s an odd thing that most of us choose our career path pretty blindly and then stick to it. The other odd thing is how I have come to be friends with no less than thirteen qualified accountants (and I’m excluding all the ones I’ve worked with, however nice they’ve been).

Thirteen? This clearly exceeds the point of usefulness. But the unequivocal if surprising fact of the matter is that they are really good fun to be with. And the reason they’re such fun is this: they never talk about their work. They know it’s bloody boring so they don’t mention it.

Accountants kind of mess up our current thinking about work. We live in an age where we define ourselves in large part by our work choice, which is why when people meet you for the first time it usually only takes them 60 seconds to establish what you ‘do’.

If you meet someone who doesn’t ask you that question, I’d bet there’s a 90% chance you’re talking to an accountant. By and large, accountants do not work for the thrill of the challenge, or to create something of their own making, or to leave a legacy, or for the glamour of it, or in pursuit of a higher cause. Work for them is not an end in itself, but simply a job that needs to be done, which pays well, in order to make the most of time not spent at work. They take their sense of self not from their work but the things that happen outside it. Paradoxically, accountants value ‘lifestyle’ above all.

So, respect to my opposite-brained, bean-counting friends. They manipulate their excel spreadsheets with a dexterity not short of artistic genius, without cherishing the conventional modern belief that YOU ARE WHAT YOU DO. The rest of us, slavishly in search of self-fulfilment, might do well to consider this once in a while: if life is one big balance sheet, is work really an asset?

The Antidote

2009-09-07T06:58:00.000-07:00

Much good cheer to impart – at last I’ve had an utterly divine, entirely successful holiday. All thanks to G for introducing me to the remedy for the Impossibility of Holidaying. Namely, the 24-hour Holiday. There is only one rule: you must be child free for the entire duration.

It’s pure genius. Basically you are so extra specially grateful for the chance to escape for a non work-related purpose, that you get 67 times more excited than you would about a normal holiday. And because being left to your own devices is such a rarity, the day seems like an entire week. So by my calculations it is 67x7 = 469 times more fun than a day spent on any other kind of holiday.

Leaving the Impster in the care of my mother, K and I escaped as early as we could like two overly excitable teenagers playing truant. We spent a day of generous indulgence at the Champneys Forest Mere Spa, and then the night at the deliciously romantic West Stoke House, before returning the next morning to resume normal parental duties (me) and to fly to Buenos Aires for a few days (K).

Strictly speaking, it was a 27-hour holiday. That I pushed the limits of my mother’s babysitting patience no further, is doubtless an indication that she finally possesses a very serious deterrent against any wild or delinquent behaviour. She only needs to withdraw her babysitting services to ground me for life. So here is the new improved me – spirits soared, opulently satisfied, full of gratitude and goodwill to all mothers, stealthily plotting my next great escape.

To the Hermitage by Ambulance (or, Russian Hospitality)

2009-08-08T15:05:00.000-07:00

No, this is not the screen adaptation of a Malcolm Bradbury novel starring George Clooney, but a true and faithful account of how the Impster and I came to be travelling in St Petersburg last Thursday somewhat unconventionally.

With flashing lights and a masterful U-turn, our ambulance driver swings across four lanes of traffic to drop us at the bank of the River Neva so that we might make the next hydrofoil for our day's sightseeing at Peterhof. I offer him many spasiba's, and he kisses me warmly on both cheeks and pats the Impster’s head. Konstantine is my proof that Russians make powerful allies. If they're on your side, they can make things happen and will stop at nothing to help you overcome a predicament.

As a random pregnant tourist with a toddler, however, most Russians wouldn’t piss on you if you were on fire (never mind give you a hand with your pushchair). Russian cities are not child-friendly affairs. To attempt them with an infant leaves one exposed to the view that as a mother, one is at best eccentric, and at worst unfit for purpose. Lifts, highchairs, pushchair ramps, baby-changing facilities, and (it slowly dawned on me) children under the age of eight are nowhere to be seen in St Petersburg. And as the week went on, I had a creeping suspicion that mothers might actually be banned from the city centre. For one thing, the women living here of child-bearing age are intimidatingly svelte (possibly as a result of the unpardonable cuisine creating a kind of national Cabbage Soup Diet.)

For another, they have clever ways of making sure children don’t interfere with their cultural tourism, as I discovered when I went to the Russian Museum and was told that only disabled people could use the lifts. To be honest, I’d had better days than last Wednesday, redeemed only by the prospect of seeing a fantastic collection of Kandinsky’s. So to discover that the House of Culture was denying me access, put me in a magnificent rage (‘f-ing Revolution’ etc etc). But the good Book advises to, ‘Leave off from wrath, and let go displeasure: fret not thyself, else shalt thou be moved to do evil’, and being in a pretty murderous temper, I head for the House of God. Unfortunately, St Isaac's Cathedral is closed on a Wednesday. (This is the city that simultaneously made one of its cathedrals the museum of atheism and religion for a time, which is possibly an indication that it shouldn’t be relied upon exactly for nurturing spiritual wellbeing.) In the end I did what any oppressed English mother would do, and contemplated a fag and a McDonald's. But on my way I stumbled across St Petersburg’s answer to The Dorchester, which went a considerable way to lifting my spirits (plus, the Impster still got her chicken nuggets, chips and a toy, because you can order absolutely anything there).

And now, somewhat in the manner of Ronnie Corbett, let me return to the matter of the ambulance. On Monday morning, dear K wakes up feeling, as Withnail would have it, 'unusual'. By Tuesday morning he is off-puttingly pukey and shaking uncontrollably, so I think it best to call a doctor (all the time privately convinced he shouldn’t have had ice in his drink the previous day). Two hours later he’s in surgery with a nearly-ruptured appendix, and I’m harbouring visions of a theatre equipped with vodka anaesthetic and a hacksaw. Turns out we’re in the poshest hospital in the city, and after a brief sojourn in intensive care, K ends up in a private room with en suite, river view, telly, fridge and no hyperactive toddler - so is marginally better off than me. And one can't but admire the Russian method of convalescence, his room being furthermore agreeably furnished with six wine glasses and six shot glasses (not a water glass in sight).

Here he resides at the current time, visa expired, regrettably unable to leave the country due to a faux pas on my part. All I did was to call BA to try to get him upgraded on the return flight. Admittedly I may have laid it on a bit thick, but how was I to know they would take it into their heads that he was unfit for travel?

It's been a curious week all in all. On Monday my brother had his gallbladder removed, on Tuesday K was relieved of his appendix, and on Wednesday I began to wonder how many other expendable organs we might be housing. Perhaps in California one could plausibly sell the idea of getting rid of a few, as a new surgical weight-loss method?

Anyway, being so posh, this hospital does a good line in English-speaking guardian angels. Dear Olga pities my lone-mother-in-St-Petersburg experience so much that she insists upon ambulance transportation to help the Impster and me get about (the charge for an ambulance is £250 an hour, so she can easily find one hanging about the place). A Russian on a mission will go to any lengths.

A few nights earlier, Madonna has come to St Petersburg to do a gig in Palace Square. We get accidentally caught up in the hordes of fans, and then caught in the torrential downpour which follows (Russian rain is really something else). Next day, as Dimitri is driving me to the hospital, he tells me how the authorities tried to break up the rain clouds by shooting things into the sky. Can you believe that? I know Madonna can be, well, prima-donnaish, but they actually tried to move the rain for her. My friends, that’s Russian hospitality for you.

On Creativity

2009-07-26T14:21:00.000-07:00

This week, I’ve been naval-gazing in the hope of gaining some neurological insights (admittedly, there's a chance I've been looking in the wrong place). In a scribbly-brained moment, I had the overwhelming desire to establish once and for all whether I am capable of thinking in a left-brained manner like this:

Or whether my life's work is likely to be the result of right-brained mayhem like this:

So I’ve done lots of online cosmo-style quizzes, some of which judge me moderately left-brained, and others moderately right-brained, from which I joyfully conclude that (contrary to popular opinion) I do have a whole brain after all.

Having worked in publishing for so long, this is a perfectly shocking revelation. The entire industry is predicated on the assumption that people are either organised or creative (the former tending to hit deadlines, the latter tending to have brilliant ideas). So while half the industry is churning out thirty-odd books by Jordan, the other half has a licence to work completely chaotically whilst harbouring Romantic notions of their own genius and creativity. And when the shit hits the fan, a new and over-paid position usually arises for ‘a creative’, as if to say, ‘we don’t know what we need him to do, but he’s sure to figure something out.’ (Unfailingly, he doesn’t.)

Now as every newspaper editor knows, working in non-fiction tends to be a more creative enterprise than working in fiction. But of course brand credibility requires that precisely the opposite impression is conveyed - reliable, factual, blah blah blah. So when HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster recently became the first publishers in the race to release their Michael Jackson books, you’d have thought their publicity would have focused on the new revelations and extraordinary insights their books brought to bear on the life of the pop icon. You might even have reasonably expected a little white lie about how the book had been painstakingly researched for the last three years and was just on the verge of completion when the news of the singer’s untimely death was announced. Not so. One HC spokesperson was heard on The Today Programme boasting of how they had got a book to market ahead of their competitors in a mere two weeks: in summary, thanks to an imaginative writer with outstandingly rapid typing skills, fuelled by a giant crate of coca cola.

To any sane and rational potential purchaser, this insight into the rushed compilation of celebrity hardbacks would be deeply off-putting. But it does at least prove beyond all reasonable doubt that to get there first you need to be both organised and creative. Though whether you need a whole brain is, of course, another question...

Eat, Drink and Be Merry (unless you're pregnant)

2009-07-14T14:18:00.001-07:00

It is generally agreed (in the way generalisations are) that second children tend to grow up to be rather competitive and with an air of having been treated unfairly all their lives. Whenever a cake is about to be served, you can bet that it’ll be the youngest (even if they’re 25) who has the fine-tuned ability to detect any inequality in the size of the slices to the nearest millimetre.

This week I discover that - quelle surprise – this turns out to be entirely due to bad parenting. According to various child psychologists, such is our concern over sibling rivalry and our desire to keep the first sproglet sweet, that we virtually forget we have the second one (especially since it all seems so much easier second time round). The result? A lifetime of in-your-ear ‘me, me, me’ whingeing.

Naturally, I decide to put pay to any namby-pambying of the Impster and focus on the bump for a moment, only to realise it’s already too late. For a start, no one (including fathers) gives a bugger about the second pregnancy. You’re already drained of your reserves from nurturing the first little poppet, so the second time you’re exhausted at the outset. Not to mention fatter. This time round, K was late turning up to the 12-week scan, so I was already lying on the couch slathered in jelly. Then the Impster distracted everyone from looking at the baby on the screen by spilling an Innocent smoothie down herself. Then, the photos mysteriously disappeared, only to turn up a few days later stuffed in a pair of K’s shoes (whoever heard of antenatal sibling rivalry? At least I’m presuming it was the Impster’s doing, otherwise I’ve got more of a problem on my hands than I’d anticipated).

And another thing that totally sucks. As if to make clear the essential undesirability of pregnant women, on holiday in Cornwall I spotted the above picture on a bottle of Grolsch. What can it possibly mean? ‘Pregnant women: piss off’? ‘Pregnant women: singing ist verboten’ (a unlikely event given our enforced teetotaldom in any case)? There is pretty much an endless list of reckless acts that pregnant women shouldn’t do, unless they wish to be held any more accountable than they already are. Such as eating peanuts. I mean, the whole nine months is just total suckitude.

Uh oh, have I just been having a rant? Tcha, I’m a second child - blame it on my parents.

The Consolations of Sugar Craft

2009-06-28T16:03:00.000-07:00

If you had been in Winchester yesterday, you may have seen a slightly tubby lady in badly creased clothes and wet hair, clutching hen-night merchandise, running through the centre of town like an overwrought banshee, trying to catch the London train in order to make a very important chocolate-making appointment. Happily, catching that train gave me (the aforementioned banshee) opportunity to write this blog.

Child-free journeys are the midwives of thought, which probably explains why I have such difficult deliveries these days. And if you haven’t yet asked me why I’ve not responded to your last email or posted a blog of late, then bless you for your impeccable manners and forbearance, and let me summarise thus:

1. Am pregnant and wildly hormonal, so naturally
2. Have just bought a car and decided to move house, then
3. Went to Cornwall on holiday, which was unremarkable except for the fact that
4. My brother was taken into intensive care, resulting in
5. The cancellation of my trip to Vienna tomorrow.

Now all this might sound like the prelude to another moan about the impossibility of holidaying, but as it happens, adversity has instead mustered a creative but somewhat haywire set of reactions. For example, my new asymmetrical haircut (with which I resemble a member of The Human League), and the frenzied organisation of no less than three parties in celebration of the Impster’s second birthday. Not to mention cake.

Last year for her birthday, I bought a cake from M&S and received a very reducing look from one stay-at-home mummy who said 'you know, I simply wouldn't feel right if I didn't make a cake myself'. So this year, rather than suffer a guilty conscience and incitement to murder again, I had a sudden attack of the Annabel Karmels. When my old work buddy, J, phoned and I told her that I was 'in the Entertainer buying In the Night Garden figurines to put on the Impster's birthday cake which I'm planning to fashion into a magical gazeebo.' There was a slight pause, followed by the enquiry: 'Have you had a stroke?'

Only very exceptional circumstances can drive an otherwise sane woman to seek solace in the art of sugar craft. For what can possibly result but yearly spiralling expectations and the potential for significant dental bills? Oddly enough though, taking on such a monstrous task was curiously calming, a bit like making sophisticated chocolate truffles on a hen weekend, when one’s expectations had been raised no higher than half a dozen chocolate penises.

My brother is recovering nicely, and now he’s off the morphine I do wonder whether I might have spent these last few weeks hallucinating in sympathy. All the same, I might knock up a few Viennese biscuits this week. Just as a consolation.

The Big Deal

2009-05-29T15:02:00.001-07:00

Time on the clock has exceeded time in the mind this week, which is why I’m so tardy in writing to tell you about my bank holiday weekend. Eighty or so of us were sun-burning ourselves at my goddaughter’s churchless naming celebrations in Deal, Kent. If you haven’t been (to Deal that is) you must remedy this immediately. It is utterly charming and resides on my list of favourite seaside towns, alongside Bamburgh, Porthcurno, St Ives, and Southwold.

We stayed at a place called the Beachbrow Hotel in Deal, which has an alluring enough website and, inexplicably as it turns out, a link from ‘The Best of Deal and Sandwich’. Our suspicions should have been aroused by being asked to pay in full for the whole weekend stay on checking in, but then again, as this blog has already shown, our suspicion-arousing antennae seem oddly defective. Or perhaps even before that, when the attention buzzer played all the Big Ben chimes at 100 decibels (the manager informed me he is deaf, so if you have a problem, you can probably guess at the response you’ll get). The restaurant was closed for ‘lots of reasons’, which momentarily brought to mind the episode of Fawlty Towers with the hotel inspectors – or perhaps I’m thinking of the one with the hamster. Anyway, you get the gist.

Somehow I had managed to book a family room which contained four beds (yes I know, just like a Victorian slum house). But to be honest, by the time we left, we’d had need of them all (for reasons best left unmentioned, but which sadly had nothing to do with any sexual antics). The ensuite, which admittedly was huge, but unaccountably shower-less, had a poo-chopping loo, which was so deafening as to rouse even a sleeping baby. And more curiously, water from the hand basin also seemed to get the chop (presumably as a precaution against any particularly filthy guests), so we couldn’t even clean our teeth once the little Impster was asleep. Really, what I’m trying to say is please do go to Deal, but book yourself in at the Royal Hotel.

Now, for Babe C* (or more factually Day-wood*, as C cannot yet read), here is a little poem which I wrote during one of my two sleepless nights at the Beachbrow. When reading it, you need to take into account that a) I haven’t written a poem since I was 12 and b) I was horribly sleep deprived (but to be fair, both these points are patently obvious). Thus:

Who can say what great events
Await you from afar?
But I am certain you were born
Beneath a lucky star.

Sometimes we get our just desserts
To each her own reward:
Smile and shine through all life’s trials
And you will be adored.

And when the path gets muddier,
If you need another,
I shall try my best to be
Your fairy godmother.

For what is life without good luck
And magical surprises:
Imagine just how dull we’d be
Ruled by our own devices.

So all best wishes, little one
From me to you this day:
For every blessing you can count
May one more come your way.

*So named by the Impster (who I don’t think can pronounce all her v’s yet, given she counts ‘nine, ten, a-lemon, twelve...’)

The Impossibility of Holidaying

2009-05-20T13:05:00.000-07:00

I have of late – but wherefore I know not – lost all my mirth. I took my leave of K with a right-minded smugness. He would be working, I would be holidaying on the French Riviera. He would be earning, I would be spending. A pleasing natural equilibrium seemed to have established itself. And Menton lived up to its promise in many ways: I barely had requirement to remove my sunglasses the entire week, there was a frisson of glamour about its yacht-studded shores and heady prices, and the promise of reckless abandon lay tantalisingly within grasp.

Query: when is a holiday not a holiday? Answer: when it is spent with two toddlers. After all, what defines a holiday if not rest, relaxation, and time spent at leisure, free from work? And how to fulfil same holidaying spirit if one is perpetually forced to rise at unsociable hours, appease tantrums, listen to whingeing, get splattered with tomato and orange juice in restaurants, and generally be subject to the relentless repetition and routine of parenting a nearly-two-year-old? No good ever came of believing that a change is as good as a rest. One day you have children, and the next you find yourself in the midst of a dance reminiscent of something from They Shoot Horses Don’t They? Menton has a garish little merry-go-round, which simply thrilled the Impster. Riding round and round and up and down and ‘again again!’ is the perfect metaphor for toddlerdom.

I confess I was greatly relieved to see K after the 9-hour journey home. He was looking remarkably chipper, and dare I say it, had a note of right-minded smugness about his countenance. He’d spent his week in London and Manchester doing that kind of sociable working which involves late nights, Michelin-starred restaurants, unbridled luxury, vast expenditure, lazy mornings and too much alcohol. Is it just me, or is that the definition of a holiday?

The Home Tourist - Part Two

2009-05-04T14:47:00.000-07:00

If the art of travel is to recognise why we love a place, to grasp the cause and meaning of its beauty, and to fathom its allure, then it is a gloriously subjective thing, not worth committing to paper. (Rather like this blog. Yet I do, so I will. Is that the same as saying ‘I blog therefore I am?’)

Elizabeth Gilbert , in her book Eat, Pray, Love, says that every city has a word which defines it, and that word is also the word going through the minds of most of the people in that city. Such as, Rome = SEX; New York = ACHIEVE; Stockholm = CONFORM. And she suggests that if your word doesn’t match that of the place you’re in, then you don’t really belong there.

So after my day of home-spun tourism, I got to wondering what makes Winchester, Winchester, instead of, say, Salisbury? And I’ve come to the late conclusion that it might be ASPIRE (as opposed to a spire, which Salisbury most impressively and irrefutably does have).

Edgy is certainly not a word one would use to describe Winchester - it is full of white middle class people, all trying to have something slightly better than the very nice things they’ve already got. Its only edge is a ruthlessly competitive and slightly smug one (people expect their toddlers to get French lessons at nursery).

But while I loathe its provincial smugness, I confess I love the reasons for that: its beauty, its sense of privilege, its boutique shops, marvellous hairdressers and fabulous farmer’s market. Yes, I am perfectly at home here, and no wonder. For I aspire to all best wishes: to idleness, happiness, expensive haircuts and one day being able to write a decent blog.

The Home Tourist - Part One

2009-04-29T14:14:00.000-07:00

My grandmother has only travelled further than a hundred miles from her home three times in her 91 years: once to London (where she objected to the cars), once to Edinburgh (where she objected to the rats), and once to Ambleside (where she objected to the ghost). Whether she harbours a secret envy of my foreign travels, or whether she sees them as a betrayal and rejection of the familiar homestead, I cannot say. But she is unremitting in her pouring of scorn upon any enterprise involving a journey.

When I return home she will usually say something like ‘so I suppose you’re more tired than you were before you left?’ – which invariably I am – and proceeds to evidence any number of additional hindrances to one’s wellbeing, such as rice-based diets, improper plug sockets, rabies, madcap driving, and over-exposure to midday sun. And while it is always advisable to agree with her, on the matter of travel, she does make the occasional, unassailable, valid point.

To what end do we put ourselves through different time-zones, airport departure lounges, grubby public transport systems, traffic jams, unsatisfactory breakfasts, and endless queues? In our anticipation of new and exotic locations, we somehow selectively overlook the less attractive details. Meanwhile, at home, we linger on such points, believing life to be better just about anywhere else.

Tomorrow, however, an ex-colleague from the US is coming to visit, and I am designated ‘tour guide’ for my home town of Winchester. And the rather appealing thought occurs that if I can only apply her travelling mindset myself as I show her around the city, I may be able to see its attractions afresh. What better way of enhancing one’s own happiness, than to appreciate one’s home surroundings?

So like any good traveller, I will repair to my armchair to plot my course. I might even partake of a nice cup of tea and a biscuit while I do so. Granny would approve.

On Destiny

2009-04-23T13:13:00.000-07:00

You only have to take the most cursory look at history to realise the dubious benefit of having the courage of one's own convictions. I’m thinking Icarus, Napoleon, Hitler, Maggie Thatcher.... Anyway, my dearest K is widely known for his work in the dark art of persuasion, so much so that until we met, few if any had dared to challenge him on a whole plethora of peculiar beliefs, which together constitute certain idiosyncrasies of character that only a wife could love. So it was that, blessed with the appeal which utter confidence inspires, I blithely followed him aboard the flight he had booked, and made the unusual mistake of going on the wrong holiday.

It seemed like nothing less than good fortune when, trying to harness a wriggly one-year old Impster on my lap, the pilot announced that our flight would only take 2 hours. Indeed, I had anticipated the flight to Lanzarote taking a good 4 hours. The only obvious (and dare I say it, logical) explanation was that we were experiencing an unprecedented tailwind (my father is an aerodynamicist – I really do believe such things are possible). And as we came in to land, K pointed to the volcanic mountains and remarked that the island was really much larger than he'd remembered. Then out through customs, more curious yet, was the inexplicable absence of the car hire firm we'd booked. Tcha, what cowboys! Undeterred, we hired a different car and sought a map of the ‘island’. And in the midst of our most creative gesticulations and finest pigeon Spanish, the horror crept upon us. Quite clearly, we were in mainland Spain, aka The Wrong Lanzerote. Yes, if our stupidity is to be believed (and we’ve made careers out of it not being), then we had not the slightest notion that Alicante was on the Costa bloody Blanca. How wise was Robert Louis Stevenson when he wrote that to travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive.

In short, my beloved had booked flights to Alicante (ALC) instead of Arrecife (ACE). A note to self that late-night use of lastminute.com is a truly hazardous thing – you could end up anywhere waiting for those screens to refresh! But K is so entirely plausible as to be a liability - a reputable member of customer services at Gatwick was actually grateful to him for being told that Alicante was in Lanzarote. After all those years of ignorance!

Looking on the bright side, as far as the little Impster is concerned, she's had a super week in Lanzarote. Well, it seemed a trifle unnecessary to confuse matters when she'd just learned to pronounce the place, and 21 months is far too tender an age to reveal that grownups are fallible (or whither parental authority?).

I must confess, dear reader, that we had a rather fine holiday after all (though an extra jumper wouldn’t have gone amiss). Which begs the question of whether we were not destined after all for our destination? For who can say how often we take a wrong turn in life, only to end up at the exact place we had been headed all along? As the Spanish would have it, ‘Que sera, sera’.