January

Bonjourno! A good day/evening to one and all on this cold January day.

I have no idea what it is about January but it brings out the dog poo in droves. I'm not quite sure why bad dog owners feel the need to let loose (boom boom) in January just to make the month feel even more depressing but there is currently a poo-demic on our local streets. Seeing as my defecation stations never took off I have decided to put forward a new idea. ALL dog food sold in the UK MUST have a non-absorbent coloured dye added to it. Simple. It would mean that all dog poo would come out dyed a brilliant, bright colour - there could be all different colours depending on flavours/brand of food etc but I like the idea of a fluorescent dye if at all possible. This could mean that not only would our pavements be littered with interesting brightly coloured piles and smears of poo but it would also mean that the piles/smears would be easier to avoid. The problem at the moment is that the poos are hard to spot - sometimes leaves have been wrongly identified as poo and the other way round with more disastrous consequences. If you live in an affluent area of the world with uniform, light coloured pavement slabs this may sound a bit strange but our pavements are much like the area itself - a huge mix of old, new, posh, scummy, light, dark etc. No two pavements are the same and the darker ones make it particularly difficult to spot poo at a distance when travelling at speed on a scooter or pushing a buggy. (We sometimes even run when very late for school). Hence my new ingenious idea for colourful poo. It cannot be too hard to instigate, is harmless, fun and brilliant. Fluorescent excrement. I seriously have no idea why no one has thought of this before.

Luckily the snow has covered all the little pavement piles for a short while. One of the many benefits of the cold - for a few days all of London's streets are prettified by a dusting of the white stuff. Even non-uniform paving is at its prettiest. I love the look of the white stuff. I'm not so keen on anything else about it. I think snow is a bit of a waste unless you are either skiing or sledging. I used to love skiing. I mean the holiday. Not the actual act of skiing. I used to go away on a skiing holiday every year - (I used to think this was 'standard' behaviour) - but it wasn't for the sport, I just liked the pretty ski resorts, hot chocolates, wine and cheese. I mean I like swishing down the gentle baby slopes, wind gently rushing past my sun blushed, ruddy cheeks but I never liked to push myself on the skiing front. I didn't really understand the attraction of fearing for one's life. On one ski trip which was largely about skiing to a place we could stop and have a hot chocolate and a fag, the Magician Godmother decided she would prove that we could manage something more advanced. She took us (me and one other Uni friend) to the top of what can only be described as a 'near vertical' slope with a million big bumps (potentially refered to as 'moguls'?) on it. HOW anyone could have got down it in anything approaching a pleasurable fashion is impossible to imagine, so I, quite rightly, sat on my bottom and demanded she call for the rescue helicopter. She is a belligerent sort so refused. After a lenghty stand off I conceded the point and just slid from one bump to another slowly on my bottom until we reached the end and certain safety.  Ideally, if I were to ever go again (unlikely for another decade at least) I want a resort which entirely consists of gentle slopes and paths that all lead to a restaurant or a chair lift. I have never understood the need to pit oneself against the elements. I am very happy for the elements to reign supreme. Actually, and this is a true story, in my Junior school I made my parents pay for me to go on the school ski trip three times. Not because I used to like skiing as a child - no, it was for a. the fact that it was organised by the boys school (mine was all girls in case you are new) and therefore girls were in the minority b. we were allowed to take pocket money and it was to Austria where they sold Milka chocolate (you couldn't get it/my mother would never buy it for me in England) and c. the breakfasts were AMAZING - proper hot chocolate, amazing fresh white bread, delicious butter and jam - I can still remember the way it tasted now. I used to eat so much at breakfast it made skiing even harder work as ideally, I needed a jolly good lie down not a trek through the snow with my skis to the bloody ski lift. The ski lifts were good too. A chance to sit down. I seem to remember singing a lot of Jason Donovan as we sat there, enjoying the brief respite between leg aching runs.  "Too may broken hearts in the world" and leaving our wet towels out on the balcony to freeze - ahhhhh - such fun.

As for sledging - my new year's resolution is to make sure that this time next year all of the children have waterproof trousers, waterproof gloves and matching hats and scarves. Oh and we have a sledge or two in the house. Then the next time it snows I can be very excited and not panic and I can take them all sledging to make the most of it.  At the moment we have one pair of waterproof trousers in a size 3-4, one sledge at mums, two pairs of pink waterproof gloves, many many many odd gloves of the non waterproof variety and random scarves and hats. The same people who have non-twisted car seat straps also have children with matching hats, scarves and gloves and I am always very envious of them as we turn up to the gates with our mismatched gloves and hit and miss hat action.
 
My other resolution is going well so far. At my first weigh in I discovered the exciting news that I have lost 4 pounds. Hoorah. Finally I am going in the right direction. (I managed to put on 9 after the doctor weighed me at the 6 week check when he told me I needed to start losing weight.) I shan't keep going on about weight loss - it is terrifically dull for anyone but the person who is actually losing it. What I will say about weight loss is this though - it is flipping pricey. Yes, supposedly you are eating less than before but what you are eating is way more expensive. Budget biscuits, crisps and chocolate can be bought with pence not pounds - if you want more than one hit of fruit - you need pounds and lots of them. I noticed this phenomenon very early in life. In fact, as soon as I left home and had to buy my own food. During my year out between school and university - (necessary as I mistakenly thought I wanted to train as a teacher with a music degree - something like that anyway - there was definitely teaching and music in the mix but I forget the finer details - before I came to my senses and pulled out of the process to reapply to do English) - I went to live with a boyfriend in Plymouth. It was there that I embarked upon my first 'proper' job as a receptionist/secretary in a Solicitor's firm and earned the princely sum of around £550 a month. My rent was £145. I was attempting to repay dad £50 a month for some money I'd borrowed for Christmas. That left very little with which to live off.  I learnt a lot in a very short time. I wrote to my parents to inform them of my new found knowledge - my 18 year old self (who you mustn't judge as she didn't know any better) - wrote a letter which began, "I now understand why poor people are fat". Obviously I was generalising as there were an awful lot of 'poor people' thinner than I was at the time, but my point was thus - I could not afford a manicure as a treat but I could afford a bag of doughnuts from Tesco for 99p. It does irritate me. I notice the same now. I could happily and easily afford a big bar of Dairy Milk from the shop at the end of the road in order to cheer me up from the woe of illness and housework drudgery but instead I have to go further afield and spend more to find a mango or bunch of grapes or similar. I don't like to moan but it certainly doesn't help things. There should really be a tax on saturated fat and a subsidy for fruit and veg. It would make things so much easier.

Interestingly during my time living in poverty in Plymouth people would say I should get used to poverty as I was about to be a student. I would quickly correct them. In comparison I would be rich. And I was right. My time as a student were my richest to date. Back then 95% of my income was expendable. Not only was my kind dad giving me money to live on each week and paying my rent for me but I also took FULL advantage of all the 'free' money I was being offered. Student loans, credit cards, overdrafts, store cards etc. I took them all out. I went on loads of holidays and took up shopping as a full time job. Ahhhhhhhh. Those were the days. Such fun.  

Enough of the past and on to the present. In current affairs the news is this:

I have booked Cybil's baptism. Phew. If it is possible to be rude about a priest and not have too much bad luck thrust upon me I would like to say that the booking experience itself was very uncomfortable. I already feel heaps of guilt just being in the presence of a catholic priest (I am not catholic and I do not attend any church so I just automatically feel as if he will know and start telling me off). He was jolly rude about a. how old she is - clearly she should have been there with the placenta still attached - he wasn't thrilled about how long I had already left it and asked if she might have already done her A levels by April....(she will be all of nine months) b. the spelling of her name - when I explained my Syria/Sybil issue he asked me if I felt sad whenever I pass a Sycamore tree and told me she won't thank me for my choice later in life. Idiot. c. Refused to let us have the baptism in a separate ceremony so now we all have to sit through the entire hour long mass. So dull.

And finally. Another Godmother has popped! Ted's GM produced a healthy and beautiful baby girl on Monday morning and I am soo excited. Another new baby to squish and relatively local to boot. That is two GMs down and two to go.  And on the new baby news front I must also break the fabulously exciting news that I am to be Godmother to baby Harry! I know. Clearly I come in to my own later in life. First time as bridesmaid last January and now first time Godparent (outside of my family) this January. I am already godmother to my niece who is now 11 so I've been waiting a long time for the honour to be bestowed again. I am usually the bestower. It made a lovely change to be on the other side. It also makes me feel a little more grown up. Every little helps. 

Right, that's it for now. It's cold and I'm tired. I'm going to warm up in bed. xxxxx

2013

Hello! And welcome heartily and merrily to 2013. (We are 13 years in to this millennium and I still don't know if I prefer saying it in thousands, 2013 or tens 20-13). So, I haven't bothered to check where I last left you but I know it was pre Christmas so I shall quickly catch you up. There was an AWFUL lot of Cava at parties, lunches and even at my very own Annual Curry and Cava night and more calories consumed than Victoria Beckham sees in two years. It was very busy. Hence my prolonged silence. If I wasn't worse for wear or stuffed, I was wrapping. Three nights pre-Christmas of solid wrapping - I didn't get to bed much before midnight. It was exhausting. Although totally worth it. There is nothing that matches that feeling of seeing it all finished and ready under the tree - it is my job satisfaction. Cybil has also been keeping me away from the computer with her sudden dislike to evening sleeping. It lasted for a good few weeks and was terrifically tiresome, although fingers considerably crossed, she seems to have packed it in and realised I am best in daylight hours only.  I have also been at the technological black hole that is my mum's so even though my week post Christmas was relatively relaxing I still haven't been able to inform you of any of my exciting comings and goings.

Although it already seems aeons ago I shall take you back to before Christmas. I was slightly concerned this year as Bea was trying desperately not to find out the truth about the big FC, even in the face of many careless indiscretions by me and a number of children in her class and year group telling her the truth in a very blunt fashion. Still, we managed to get this last year under our belt with them all believing and I was very grateful. I nearly blew the whole thing wide open after Bea's total prat of a teacher decided to fill in time before the end of term by getting all the children to email three things they wanted to Father Christmas six days before the big day itself. This sounds fairly innocent enough but miserably the lazy sod of a teacher didn't check out the site the children were emailing and unfortunately Bea took this opportunity to try her luck and ask for an iPad on the off chance that the big FC was real and magic can actually happen. The reply she got 'from Father Christmas' told her that he was so happy she had asked for an iPad this year as the elves love making ipads and they say they are so much easier to make than ipods because you just stick a few ipods together. (Bea repeated this back to me a lot as she tried to convince herself it 'could happen' as I promised her that it would absolutely and definitely, definitely not happen as 8 year olds are not allowed to have iPads. That's the law) The paragraph that followed was quite remarkable, it went something like this, "Oh! An Elf has just told me that he is even more excited that you have asked for an iPad as we have an app you can download on to your new ipad. We will email you after Christmas to remind you to download it." Now. If I was 8, and I still believed in Father Christmas and I believed that this letter had come from him and his minions (she did) then I would be monumentally excited about the prospect of Christmas and my new iPad which this correspondence had all but told her she would receive. I didn't do anything straight away but that afternoon I did make a beeline for the lazy-arsed teacher who immediately took the defencive and thought I was upset about the fact she had even asked for an iPad, assuring me that lots of the children had asked for one. I showed him the offending paragraphs and asked if he had seen them. He said he had not and was slightly surprised. He said 'I'll 'ave a word' (He is northern).  I suggested he never use the free emailing service again and not to bother as I would be having a few words with Bea myself. In the end, I opted to tell her that the email was not real, not the whole north pole shebang. She understood and all ended well.  Although I was a tad cross that my joy and excitement at how much Bea was going to love her presents had been overshadowed by the knowledge that none of them would compare to a flipping iPad. K and I even did a mad Internet search for cheaper tablet alternatives but mercifully came to our senses pretty quickly. That was the only drama pre-Christmas and it was fairly short lived. The rest of the festivities went off without a hitch - G even sang at his non-nativity 'show' where excitingly, he got to hold up the card for the Eight Maids a Milking during the Twelve Days of Christmas.

Christmas Eve with newly married sister, bro-in-law and mother was a total success. I find it a really tricky day usually as you feel the pressure to make it special, but the children are always so hideously over excited that their behaviour is appalling, but doing something new and totally out of our usual Eve routine meant that they were wrong footed and behaved incredibly well; Bea didn't even realise Christmas Day was the following day until 5.30pm and she made a hurried note to welcome the still believed in big FC and we put out some gingerbread biscuits and carrots.  Annoyingly, on the big day itself I awoke hours before the children at 4.30am and lay there worrying about what would happen if they woke up at that time as well. A most futile activity. The day was lovely - although hard work. Lots of building of toys, food preparation, clearing up and an ill advised new 'tradition' of getting the chocolate fountain out for pudding. I cannot get the melted chocolate right and the bloody thing is a total pain and took hours of fiddling-about-preparation for only about five minutes of fun. Their fun. Not mine. Then they ran off and left me with the mess to clear up. K and I didn't really exchange proper gifts due to budget restrictions but I did get tea towels, an oven glove and an electric hand whisk. A slight change from the luxury of last year but actually I am quite excited about the hand whisk as it will make cake baking and meringue making an awful lot easier. Boxing day was on to his mum's in Essex and more present opening. I arrived a tad late due to a ridiculously annoying lost phone incident. K went ahead with the big three and I stayed back to put the dishwasher on and finish feeding Cybs. After he left I did just that and then realised I didn't have my phone. I didn't panic initially. Then panic seeped in. Then it spread. It was nowhere, I had no way to communicate (we have no home phone - a connection for the internet obviously but no phone plugged in to it) and I was about to leave the house for a week. After forty five minutes of frantic and angry searching I eventually ran across the road and found some new neighbours were in and demanded a mobile phone (Obviously I was actually incredibly polite and grateful but I was cutting to the chase).  More searching with me ringing my phone from the neighbour's phone. Still nothing. I rang K. He was unimpressed and unsympathetic. Eventually I made the (incredibly) brave decision to leave the lost phone and drive to Essex regardless. I got there just in time for lunch and very quickly my saviour of a brother-in-law informed me of the 'find my phone' app, bought it on my behalf on his phone and within seconds told me that my phone was exactly where we were standing, safe and sound somewhere in one of our cars. Modern technology is truly remarkable.

So, on to a New Year and a new me. Actually I just want the old me back. She was great. She had loads of energy, great clothes and could be arsed to put make up on every day. Now C has turned 5 months I feel I ought to get my shit together. I can't remember if I have spoken of this before but I have taken on the appearance of a used candle. It is a term I created after we watched a bit of the US version of The Biggest Loser.  Quite often the contestants had a 'normal' sized head and face when they were doing their introductory interview with the camera in close up, but then it would pan out to reveal a body of colossal size which made it look like they were made of wax and someone had put a lot of heat above their head so that the wax had melted and dripped down to settle around their middle. I too have that look. My middle is disproportionately large and ungainly. My naked self is alarming and terrifying. I have to do something. So, it's back to Wibblies I go. For those who weren't here at the beginning, Wibblies is short for Weight Watchers. It came from Cupcake Sister who named it that because the people who attend 'wibble and wobble'. Cupcake Sister is doing it with me - although 'remotely' as we live too far apart. She is also wibbly at the moment. There is a lot of it about. I weighed in on Monday and it was a total shocker. It is now a nice round four stone I have to shift and double the amount I have put on with each of the other pregnancies. I will keep you updated with my weight loss progress you lucky, lucky things.

New Year's Eve itself was spent with mother. We had a nice meal and a nice bottle of wine and then went to bed. It was wild. As per usual. The only vague bit of excitement was that earlier in the day a friend of my mother's visited and when she walked in she proclaimed that she was scared of babies. It was most odd - I have never met anyone with an actual fear of babies.  I felt a little sorry for her as she must have been quaking in her boots as I sat there breastfeeding Cybs, and added to that scary sight, a neighbour who had popped over also had her small daughter with her.  I can understand being unkeen on babies - I clearly can't empathise but I can definitely see why people choose not to have them - but to be scared of them is strange. It has occupied my thoughts on and off ever since.  I wonder if it is like me and spiders - although I know they can't actually hurt me and are more afraid of me than I am of them, it is the unexpectedness of them turning up that freaks me out. That and because they are just actually scary and they move very fast. Although a key difference is that babies are unlikely to scamper over you after hiding in your towel. Anyway, I met my first person who was scared of a baby. She liked dogs. She called her puppy her baby. And yet I liked her all the same. It wasn't the most thrilling of New Years. However in other baby news - very excitingly - the first of the Godmothers has split in two and produced a child! Sporty Godmother (to G) - has produced a son, heir and little brother to her daughter, called Harry. I have been to see him and he is quite the most adorable thing. I DO like a newborn baby. This one in particular. He was not in the slightest bit scary and he didn't cry once in the entire two hours we were there. I might see if she would hire him out to help the poor woman who is afraid of them. It would be good for her. 

In other shocking news I have managed to kick my Real Housewives addiction. They made too many changes to the line up and I lost interest. All my favourites had left so I didn't have the determination to get through the arduous ten hours (minus adverts) a week. I do feel a sense of loss but I am glad to get the time back. It was rather taking over.

So there we have it - it wasn't really worth the wait was it? Not exactly a thrilling start to 2013.  I bet you thought with such a long wait all these dramatically exciting things would have happened to me. I apologise that you got a lost phone, a scared woman and a diet. It is not really adequate. Also apologies once again for the delay, I will be back much sooner next time. I need something to do with my hands to keep me away from the food so there may be many more thrilling stories coming your way - paint drying, traffic jams and how many times I wake up a night are all possibles for next time. Bet you can wait now.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Mary and Bright

 

Ding Dong Merrily on High! In a change to recent posts I am on a wave of happiness and good feeling. Even the magpies have changed their tune - I am now seeing far more couples and only the odd, ominous singleton. It may well be that I am seeing the same two magpies over and over again as I walk in a circle around the same streets day after day after day but even so, they are giving me a jolly boost with their promise of joy. And so far they are being true to their word.

Ted has had two good days at nursery with his behaviour which is fantastic news. Normally, I pick him up and ask the dreaded question 'how has he been?' to which they pull a face and the older, more forgiving woman says 'he definitely tried today' whereas the other, younger woman says 'not the best' and then goes on to list his major crimes. However on Tuesday and Wednesday of last week they both concurred that he had been very well behaved! The first time in about a month or longer if you include 'going in well' and not screaming. His behaviour at home has been marginally improved - sometimes outstanding and sometimes hideous. He is the only three year old I have had who decided to give the newly installed 'non-drop ' (HA BLOODY HA) Christmas tree a thorough hair cut or take pleasure in writing on the sofa and walls in felt tip on a weekly basis but he isn't waking at 5am every day now and is far less violent so I shall take the good where I can. I even had a break from him as K took him to his mother'son Sunday. He is far easier to love in his absence.

As well as magpies the streets have given me plenty to be happy about - I seem to be on a bit of a role with finding great stuff people have thrown out. So far I have acquired a £50 micro scooter, a mamas and papas baby walker in excellent condition and a fantastic baby Einstein activity centre which only needed a quick once over with dettol. These kind of things make me fantastically happy. Things for free (and I hasten to add there was either a sign saying 'please take' or they were quite clearly left on the pavement to be taken - I promise I didn't just swipe them whilst the owner was loading their car and had momentarily left their belongings) is like winning a competition. A lot of the things in our house were free at the point of consumption. Sofas, cupboards, radiator covers, chairs and an awful lot of toys. I'm not as bad as the old folks over the road who couldn't quite cope when their late friend's house next door was having a complete renovation by the new owners and removed the carpet and underlay from the skip as well as blinds and light fittings etc. I was exceptionally grateful that they were on holiday when the loo made an appearance on top of the skip. They didn't even need the carpet and underlay but pulled up their own carpet to put the underlay underneath just to 'make use of it'. I am not that bad but I do love a good freebie. (And yes I briefly flirted with Freecycle and got involved but I never managed to get anything I wanted as I was always too late and ended up with an awful lot of stuff that I really didn't need, sometimes travelling to great lengths to get it so I weaned myself off the email updates pretty quickly.)  In further free stuff excitement I have also completed my Christmas shopping for the children, largely thanks to our Tesco vouchers. I saved them all year (as did my mother) and doubled them in the exchange scheme and yet again I have received £200 worth of plastic excitement for absolutely nothing. I was almost giddy with glee. New stuff for free is even better than old stuff for free.

Thursday morning was a slight misery due to a ridiculously early start but yet again the magpies delivered and as I stumbled in to playgroup tripping over Ted and lugging the great fat Cybil in her car seat on my arm, the Rev made a beeline for me and proclaimed that 'I had the perfect holy family' and 'would I be a Virgin Mary?'. Well my heart clear leaped - it may shock you to know but I have never, ever (ever) been asked to be a Virgin Mary. I hate being the centre of attention (again this is shocking) and so I make a pretty terrible actress (seriously I can't even lie convincingly) and only ever had background parts in school productions. It could also be because in one Nativity production at my primary school, I was so busy looking out at the audience for my mother, I forgot to look for the gap between the main stage and the steps leading up to it and so fell sharply down it. As an adult I can see how funny it must have been, to see a small child in a white sheet and a tinsel halo disappear down an unseen hole right in front of you but as the child concerned it was a. painful and b. hideously embarrassing as I saw every single person in the packed hall wet themselves with laughter. It has scared me for life. There was one notable exception when I was about 10 and I played Good King Wenceslas for a Christmas concert and got to walk around the stage for the entirety of the song with a crown and mum's fur coat on, holding a brace of dead pheasants. Other than that I have been very much a background actress and so, you can imagine my pure joy at finally being asked to be the MAIN PART at the grand old age of 34. I looked down at my 34yr old body and wondered if it was my heaving bosom or my matronly girth that finally made me the perfect Virgin Mary but alas, it was just that I had given birth recently so had a ready made Jesus and I had a boy child who would 'do' as Joseph. I was only Virginal enough due to my prolific procreation. Oh the irony. So, happiness restored, I set about informing all the mothers that I would finally be playing the part I was born to play, when some party pooper reminded me that my grand performance clashed with G's carol singing/non-nativity production at the school. GUTTED. I briefly and desperately tried to work out a way in which I could do both and perhaps see the singing/non-nativity on the Friday - but that clashed with Ted's nursery Christmas party. I didn't think I could miss either (even though the odds are that G won't actually sing a bloody thing) just so that I could finally fulfil my calling on the acting front. Plus, although the lovely Reverend Carol had instructed me to 'dress up' and asked that Ted didn't come dressed as Superman, Spiderman or indeed a Witch on this occasion, it really is just a brief run through of the 'main event' before the children sing Away in a Manger and not a particularly formal 'production' of the Nativity, and so it would be particularly inappropriate to miss either of the boys' Christmas events just so that I could enjoy a few minutes of playgroup fame sitting on a chair in front of the collected group of children and carers dresssed as the Virgin Mary. Actually, my sacrifice is particularly seasonal - Jesus and I clearly have an awful lot in common.

So, free stuff, Christmas shopping and nearly-a-Virgin again all set me up nicely for a Seasonal weekend.  The school had their Christmas Fair on Friday night which was even better as I didn't have to attend thanks to C as an excuse - it is far too crowded and busy to get a buggy around and she hates the baby carrier and so do I as she is so heavy - so I sent Bea with a friend and G with K who had to leave work early - but it was worth all their sacrifice as I luxuriated at home awaiting the cake I had ordered K to buy. Cake is an important yard stick of how your school is doing by the way. I have a 'Three C' policy to tell if your local state school is 'up and coming'. The first C is cake. When Bea first started at the school, the cake sales were small and the cakes on offer were mainly shop bought cheap ones that were sold off for 5 or 10p with a few notable exceptions from enthusiastic mothers who had put time and effort in to making some fabulous cakes that were sold off for the princely sum of 20p. Three years on and the cake sales now span across two to three tressle tables, you can't buy anything for less than 50p and everything is home made - mostly from a Nigella book and signposted to tell you so and the Brownies are made with Green and Black's chocolate. It is the stuff of a cake addict's dream. I spent over £5 at the last sale. (I went back on three separate occassions so as not to arouse suspicion or unfavourable views from the mothers on selling duty). So the first C is cake - good Nigella cake is a sure sign that the yummy mummy middle classes have moved in to the area in their droves. The Second C is for coats. I have a particular weakness for buying childrens' coats and therefore am able to spot a Joules/Boden/Cyrillus/Monsoon coat at fifty paces. If you can see a good splattering of middle class coats on the children going in to school then your school is definitely 'up and coming'.  The last C is for Cars. I don't mean judging them for their price tag - this is a state school, not a private school where such things matter. At an up-and-coming state school you need children dropped off in their beautiful Boden coats either on foot/scooter or on a bike. Being eco-friendly is very middle class. I once went to a school where the entire 'No Parking' yellow zig zag area outside the school was covered with cars, parked directly underneath the signs pleading with them to 'show you care, park elsewhere' - clearly NOT up and coming.  You see how it works? Middle class parents 'care'. In fact, at a state school around here, seeing a new shiny Range Rover Sport or BMW X5 is not a good sign, the fewer you see of these outside the school gates, the better. (I have gone in to brackets here as I don't want to be chastised by anyone but come on - everyone knows these are the favoured cars of  drug dealers - don't shoot me for pointing it out).  So, there you have it, my Three C's to judging if your local state school is good enough for your precious offspring. Cake, Coats and Cars. I should charge for such wisdom - you are very lucky to get such gems for free.

I should actually confess that the other reason I was pleased not to go to the Christmas fair (I did buy raffle tickets in advance and donate half the contents of our playroom to the cause just in case you thought badly of me) was that I was a little bit pissed. I know. It's not something I wear as a badge of honour, more of total bemusement. I have been a little 'merry' before after a Ladies lunch but I am ashamed to say I was a little beyond a little merry after ACTUAL champagne and not Cava was served at Blonde Bombshell's lunch. It was thrown in honour of her youngest's fourth birthday and I had tried to cut back on what I ate in the lead up to the lunch so the first few glasses of bubbly made contact with an empty stomach and therefore went straight to my head. The rest were consumed sitting down and I lost count of the number of times her or her husband 'topped up' my glass. By the time I stood up to go I realised that the lunch hadn't gone nearly far enough in soaking up the liquid and I was a bit squiffy. I had to work incredibly hard to force my brain in to sober mode as I picked up the children from school (including the extra child which I feel particularly guilty about - it would be terrible if my drinking caused any harm to come to my own children let alone one that wasn't mine and whose parents had assumed I would be sober at pick up time). By the time I made it back with them all, the concentrating on acting sober had given me a substantial headache and I suddently found the floor appealing so I lay down on it and asked G to look after C whilst Ted laid down with me, sharing my pillow. I told them I had drunk too much and needed to lie down for a bit. G asked if i was drunk. I didn't answer. It is hard to explain the difference between drunk and squiffy to a 6 year old. I definitely wasn't drunk. The great think about drinking too much at lunch though, is that the hangover comes whilst you are asleep and by the following morning I was feeling an awful lot better and was ready to welcome the arrival of our Christmas Tree with open arms. (FYI Cybil seemed to show no ill effect from the drinking - I don't think everything I drink goes straight down my throat and in to hers via the boob - I'm pretty sure it is all quite separate thanks to the stomach and digestive system etc and the boobs themselves producing the milk, not my stomach).

So the tree arrived, was swiftly erected by K who, for once, knew exactly where the tree stand was and, for once, was not still holding the old Christmas tree within it outside in the garden. The Christmas decorations were retrieved from the loft, a light up train was dropped off from a friend and now the living room has a very pleasing 'grotto' theme. There are an awful lot of flashing lights and it smells delightfully of 'tree'. And most importantly there are four stockings hanging up this year. I am SO over excited. I can't wait to see their faces. I have done particularly well with my shopping and I can't wait for Ted's reaction in particular - he may be the hardest to look after but he also the most enthusiastic when receiving gifts and I have gone spectacularly Spider-man-tastic so he should be the happiest he has ever been. AND we are, for the first time ever, planning to enjoy a Christmas Eve family celebration at Newly Married Sister's posh flat in North London. I really am a tad too excited for someone of my age about the whole thing. I will go before I gush anymore. It must be the hormones - I am normally far more cynical about the whole thing. K and I aren't even exchanging gifts this year due to budget restrictions, and I am still excited. I am so like that boy from the John Lewis advert last year.

Ooh, Tesco is here I have to go. He brings with him more happiness in the shape of Diet Coke, Wine and chocolate biscuits. It is hard to imagine life getting any better.
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Wonderful Women

Apologies for the delay - as you can imagine you haven't missed anything ground breaking. I can pretty quickly catch you up with the bare bones of it - K has caught up with me and turned 34 and therefore officially ended the birthday season. He even got presents - proper ones he actually wanted and not just a bar of Cadbury's Whole Nut (I gave him TWO bars this year - he was thoroughly spoilt). Ted has been 'trying'. And I use that as a massive understatement - I actually talked to K about a Miss Havisham type arrangement, where we send him to live with my mother under the guise of her being able to provide him with a life and education we can't afford, but actually was just to get rid of him. We had, at the time, both decided that we couldn't cope with him anymore and it seemed like an excellent way to keep a widow company and offload a troublesome child. In the end we kept him - I am still on the fence over whether that was a good idea. The only thing that keeps him from being given away is his bizarre devotion and love and for his baby sister. It makes me love him and momentarily forget how hard he is to look after.  So we are stuck with him until he starts being horrid to her and then there will be absolutely no reason to keep hold of him. Bea has finally received a reply to a letter she sent to The Queen about 6 months ago, which has caused huge excitement both here and at school. Cybil is still fat and getting bigger and there is very little to tell you about G. He is precisely the same as he has always been. He did get taken out on a fab day trip by Sporty Godmother who managed to clamber all over HMS Belfast even though she is 8 months pregnant. It was a bit above and beyond the Godmotherly duty I think - particularly as it was raining - the whole ship must have been a slippery health hazard but as birthday presents go, it was a big hit. I am precisely the same as well. Tired, fat but overall content and getting excited about Christmas. Once that is over it is another 8 months until I have to buy another sodding present for one of the children. Hoorah!


So now you are up to speed I shall fill you in on some of the detail.

When Ted was about Cybil's age, K was made redundant (the recession has not been particularly kind to us). We put the house on the market, accepted an offer and planned our uprooting to Suffolk. I was pretty upset at the time as I had recently been introduced to a group of ladies who I thought looked rather fab and I remember thinking how sad it was that we wouldn't get to know each other as we could have been friends. Fate clearly thought the same thing, as a couple of weeks after we accepted an offer on the house, K was contacted by a company who had been trying to track him down after his redundancy to offer him a position with them. So, K took the job, we kept the house and I was reinvigorated with a love for SE23 after I came so close to losing it forever. The ladies, as I had predicted, became firm friends of mine and there is now a great group of us who meet up at playgroups, parks and at people's houses on an awful lot of Fridays to drink, eat and be merry as a way of celebrating a birthday of a mother or child. We also have infrequent weekend jaunts, thanks to the groups resident 'Events organiser' - herself a mother of four and owner of a 'Ted'.  We have spent many, many hours over the intervening years yelling at our Teds to stop doing whatever hideous thing it is they are doing and trying to wear them out sufficiently so that they might sleep - and she is constantly planning the next excursion for her family or friends. She also has an amazing knack of having whatever it is I need to borrow - from a camping stove to a king's crown - her garage contains it all. 

So, the day after I left you last, it was a Friday and therefore time for a lunch - this time it was for my Birthday and was being held at the house of the Blonde Bombshell.  The birthday bash was preceded by a particularly popular (I am loving my alliteration) coffee morning in aid of Birthday Twin's Eyebrow fund.  Rather than sit around feeling sad for our mutual friend, Blonde Bombshell went proactive-tastic and set up a fund raising drive in order to raise money to pay for BT to retain some of the features that make her 'her' whilst she goes through Chemo, and have her eyebrows professionally tattooed on (by the person who did Kylie's no less). The coffee morning contained a vast array of delicious cakes and endless pots of tea to accompany them and we all paid per cup and cake. I was obviously trying to save myself for my birthday cake although I did sample a few, just to be polite
naturally, but I made up for it by drinking about ten cups of tea. The only cakes that didn't sell were the particularly special flapjacks BB had tried to make at midnight the night before. You could have built houses with them they were so hard.  Coffee morning cleared away and paying guests departed, my birthday celebrations began. Lunch was the usual deliciousness and then an epically good cake was presented to me courtesy of the Events Organiser's husband - it is his signature bake and is indescribably good. I got the candles and cake part of my birthday and a lovely gift voucher for the local beautician's. It was a nice way to mark a rather 'non' birthday and I got to raise money for my friend by eating cake. For the record I am always happy to raise money for anyone by eating cake. Just in case you were wondering. Any fund raising cake buying that needs doing - I am there. Far easier than the next step of the fundraising push....

The following morning was Saturday and I was up and out by 8.25am with Ted and Cybs to pick up Events Organiser and her Ted and get our arses as quickly as possible to Dulwich Park. For there it was that the larger group of wonderful women were warming up and donning comically large eyebrows in order to raise yet more money for the eyebrow fund, running 5k around the park. The weather was not particularly great but the runners were. I was dumbfounded by the speed of humans. Not being naturally athletic I am in awe of those who can move their bodies so effectively. My friends were running as part of an organised 'park run' which take place every Saturday at 9am in parks all over the place. That got me - I am usually in my pjs sipping tea at 9am and these people were up and out and running for no reason other than they wanted to. Astounding. When the run started, I turned around to find a Ted who had gone AWOL thinking that I would have a while before there was anything else to see but, as I turned back around after swiftly locating the missing Ted, the first runners were coming back around - only minutes had passed and these humans had run a mile already. My brain finds it very hard to compute this information. My friends were a bit behind the 'proper' runners (although not far behind for BB) but every one of them finished and some of their children did too. It was a properly heart warming event and for the first time EVER I wished I had run it too. The great news is that the coffee morning, sponsored run and Blonde Bombshell's husband garnering support from the locals at the pub, meant that the Eyebrow Fund was met and surpassed by some margin. Hoorah! 

Then there was Tuesday and my first proper night out. I ventured out with C to West London and a Thanksgiving dinner at my friend's house with lots of my school friends. I love getting together with them. It feels comfortable. Some of them have known me since I was 8 and we have literally grown up together so it is always a good evening when we get together.  However this one was made even more brilliant as the friend in question has a rather awesome clothing company and was selling off some of her old stock/samples for very reasonable prices so there was shopping, cava, food and friends which really is the perfect combination. Even C was well behaved. It was one of the best evenings I have had in a very, very long time. I didn't even mind that as we sat around eating the lovely food made by her husband (they are living the dream), I realised that I was surrounded by ridiculously successful people. One was designing and producing clothes for Pippa Middleton and Nicole Scherzinger (the host - check out Paper London if you haven't already - amazing stuff), one has recently received her Doctorate and works at The British Museum, another is almost running a major PR firm, another two are Lawyers working with banks - one advises them and the other is helping to make the law for the new banking standards and two work in TV - a producer on maternity leave and a Script Editor - I mean it was insane. I had emptied the dishwasher twice and put on a few loads of washing. It just isn't the same. I felt a tad inferior on a career/brianiac level which made them seem far more 'grown up' than me. My maturity seems to have stopped progressing at the same time I gave up work so I am permanently 25 in my head. (I was SHOCKED to learn that I am older than David Haye. So weird.) People keep saying that I am grown up because I have a lot of children but let's face it - I could have achieved that by 22 if I'd tried really hard. Getting pregnant a lot doesn't make you a grown up. It doesn't make you anything particular other than tired, poor and a mother many times over. 

Since I've had C, a number of people have asked 'how do you do it?' which I get a tad embarrassed about. My life isn't particularly skillful - I am not doing what these friends of mine are doing on a daily basis.  It is so weird to think that my peers are now 'grown ups' and changing things - real things in the real world. I am just getting up after not very much sleep and keeping on going until the end of the day when I pass out in the same bed again before doing it all again the next day. The house is in need of a thorough deep clean, I rarely cook for K  (maybe twice since C was born), I don't iron, I don't open 90% of our post, I don't file the 10% I do open, if I can't be bothered to bend over and pick something up I will often leave it until it is kicked out of the way by someone else, K and I often bicker in quite a childish fashion, I often shout at the children, the children watch far too much TV and I couldn't tell you the last time I thought about whether any of the children had had any of their five a day. I am not saying I am totally crap or 'woe is me' - I am more than happy with my lot in life and I don't think I am shit at this mothering malarkey -but I am definitely not an all rounder, so when someone asks me how I do it, I want to say, 'not particularly well - but just about managing'. One of my mummy friends, who also ran for the eyebrows fund, who I affectionately call 'perfect mother of four' because, as the name suggests, she is ridiculously perfect. She is an exceptional teacher at a local secondary school, she runs, cooks, bakes cakes, has an immaculate house at all times (I have often tried to catch her out but to no avail) and I am almost certain, although I haven't checked, that the straps on her children's car seats are never twisted. I have a theory that you can divide mothers in to two - ones who have non-twisted car seat straps and those who don't. Naturally I fall into the twisted category. I have never managed to keep them twist free - much like running 5k at 9am on a Saturday morning - I can't imagine it being possible.  Such perfection has always eluded me.

So, there you have it. Women are amazing. I am lucky enough to have loads of them as my friends (and sisters but they weren't mentioned today) which is great as it means I can live my average life vicariously through them. From the safety of my bum sized dent in the sofa. (I really have made a dent in it - Ikea clearly don't take the obese into account when testing their products).

I am far too tired to continue. As per usual. Must dash to my body sized dent in the bed.

Toodlepip xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Being 34

So far being 34 has not been a great success.

As predicted, the big day itself was a bit of a wash out. K couldn't quite bring himself/didn't realise he had to wake early enough for any indulgences like breakfast in bed so celebrations were downsized to a brief presentation period downstairs at 7.45am. Although this made me quite on edge, as there really isn't a lot of time in the morning for any shenanigans - it really is get dressed, get fed, get out and I get very nervous around the 8am time as there is only half an hour left..... However, I enjoyed a lovely few minutes where I was presented with a beautiful group of prettily wrapped presents and pictures from the children before Ted tried to open my gifts for me which made K quite cross as he had clearly spent time making them look pretty, so the beauty of the moment was slightly marred by K's angry shouting at Ted and Ted's particularly angry shouting back.  Nevertheless it was a nice way to start the day. I was also lucky enough to be bombarded with texts, cards and Facebook messages from incredibly early on in the morning, so I felt very loved. I had secretly hoped that K might have booked the morning or the afternoon or maybe the entire day off work so that he could do the school runs or help me for the day, but there was no such surprise in store and in fact he left half an hour earlier than usual - after enquiring whether I had anything planned - 'no' - 'so who are you spending the day with?' - 'Ted' - 'Good luck. Bye!'. So I did the school runs and on the way home I got an invitation for lunch from a friend who had no idea it was my birthday, but it was a very happy coincidence as it gave the day purpose. Other than that it was entirely uneventful. K got home in time to help with bath and bed and then I was allowed a Take Away supper of my choice. Miserably, I went for a delicious Indian. I say miserably as I subsequently came down with the horrid winter tummy bug.

It was HORRID. I spent the night not sleeping - Bea came in to join me quite early on and so K had to sleep across the foot of the bed due to all the female members of his family taking up the head end. Every time he coughed or moved, I woke up or C woke up which meant I had to wake up. Bea is quite a mover in her sleep so she also woke me and C up and the gurgling tummy feeling started in the early hours so I basically didn't sleep. K wasn't really aware how ill I was, so didn't jump up to help in the morning but mercifully Bea did and was a total legend. She really is an excellent co-parent when you really need her. G had been complaining of his ear aching for a few days and he decided this was the particular morning he would bring his complaints to a head so I had to wait by the phone to call the doctors and book an emergency appointment before they were all taken at 7am. Then I realised my phone had been cut off due to the now regular non payment of bill. I managed to rouse K and get him to find his phone and put in his code and therefore was able to get an appointment for G. So, to cut a long and sorrowful story short I took a very well-appearing G to the Docs after dropping two others at school, waited for half an hour to be seen, only to discover that although well, G did indeed have a nasty ear infection. He pounced on the news and insisted on staying at home so I spent the day being very ill and nursing G who wasn't ill and looking after everyone else and doing school runs as usual. I couldn't eat anything all day but still had to breastfeed the monster baby so by 5pm I was on my knees with tiredness and hunger and was a bit of a heap on the sofa. Mercifully K knocked off early and arrived Knight-like through the door to relieve me and I crawled in to bed. K then got the bug, spent all night having to get up with it, so cancelled his morning appointments, stayed in bed til 11, before making it in to work and then came home that evening and got straight back in to bed. And therein lies the fundamental difference between our lives. As he freely admits, he could not possibly have looked after the children and been ill but as I am keen to point out - I didn't have a flipping choice. AND to compound my now certain belief that my 34th year is cursed (I have seen SO MANY single magpies it is ridiculous - I mean on average around 4 a day - that is an omen not a coincidence) the Sky box decided not to record my Real Housewives on my birthday. It was eerie - it suddenly decided to delete the command to record every programme. I am totally freaked out. I may never know what happened in those two vital episodes that marked the start of the third season. Sniff. So, as you can tell, the big day and the day after were a tad pants, and a marked contrast to my last birthday - (I won't go on as I wrote about it last year) - where I had a fabulous weekend extravaganza with lots of amazing things and best of all, my new baby. (She was 3 months and 4 days on my bday this year.....). Actually, it was in total contrast to the preceding week as well, as that was totally lovely.

I have no idea why but a whole person seems to have evaded attention. I shall immediately correct that wrong by telling you about Posh Putney friend.  (I must quickly say that she isn't actually any more or less posh than any of my other school friends, but her real name begins with P as well and I am a big fan of alliteration so that is stuck in my head). On the Thursday before my bday, back in the good old days of non-cursed 33, Ted and I took a break from our usual playgroup date and took a trip over to Putney. On the way I have to go through Clapham, Northcote Road, Wandsworth etc and I have to admit to finding these areas a bit of a 'downer'.  Largely because I spend my time driving through them, musing over what life would be like for me if I had not been so hasty to have a baby and instead  spent more time getting rich first. Stupidly I gaze at the skinny women pushing their smart bugaboos with expensive baby bags in their boden coats and leather boots and wonder what life would be like if I were one of them. We would have gone on proper holidays. We would have a 'finished' house. I would have a personal trainer at my swanky gym. We would definitely have gone out more. My wardrobe would definitely have far less Tu and George and far more Zara and ASOS. (Cue a really cutesy sentence where I say 'but then I look in the rear view mirror and see all the car seats and I realise how lucky I am...' Obviously that is so not me and I did not feel lucky as I can't afford the car and the children who fit the car seats plus I had an awake Ted who was asking me for the millionth time where we were going and I could also see all the mess and detritus and leftover birthday balloons so it just compounded my sorry-for-myself feelings). Anyhoo, I then got to posh Putney and saw my lovely friend and I felt a lot better. Ooh not because she lives in a shit hole or anything but just because I was so happy to finally meet up with her and meet her new baby. PP and I had spent so much time exchanging emails, texts and scrabble app messages (she is the only person who has continued to play with me) in the lead up to the births of our babies (a week apart) that it seemed so extremely odd that we hadn't met up before the babies were 3 months. The big boys - who were also born within 6 weeks of each other - played beautifully together for hours and the young ones slept over lunch so we got a lot of time to talk which is just so nice. PP was my first school friend to have a baby and by that time I was on my third so it was my first experience of going through the pregnancy and birth thing with a peer and it really does make a difference. It is comforting to know that finally someone is going through the same things as me for a start. However more importantly I realised that even in Posh Putney things are very similar to Slummy SE23 (no offence, I am going on the alliteration theme and slummy sounds better than shitty) - children are still children and although hers will go to very nice private schools and on lovely foreign holidays, they still keep her up at night and make her pull her hair out at times. I love that about babies and children in general - they are great levellers. Irrespective of who you are or how much money or how little money you have, having a baby still makes you feel the same feelings. That makes me happy. She also made me have an epiphany about my 'clapham' dreams - I realised that even if we did live off the Northcote Road with a cellar full of wine and a pristine Bugaboo I would want a bigger house, garden and cellar that I couldn't afford and I'd want to send my children to the same schools as my neighbours which would mean I'd have to work full time and I'd still only be able to send two, which would mean I couldn't have my four children so I'd be moaning about lack of money in my 'alternative' world as well. Although arguably in nicer clothes. SO, I realised that I've  'never had it so good' as Macmillan once said and I should stop moaning. I therefore promise to try not to. It is highly likely I will fail but I will definitely try to stop thinking about 'what could have been' and deal better with what 'is'.

Especially because I move on to Friday and another friend I really should have mentioned before now. My Birthday Twin (who shares my birthday in case you didn't get the name) has recently moved from SE23 to leafy Kent, and Friday was the SE23 part of her birthday celebrations. She couldn't make our usual joint celebrations with the local mummies this Friday (AGAIN I cannot believe I haven't gone in to more depth about my local posse - I shall rectify this in my very next post) and so she booked a table at the Tapas restaurant at the end of my road and a big group of us went there for a particularly lovely birthday lunch. It was another fabulous event with a lot of brilliant women who I very much enjoy spending time with, as well as great and plentiful food. Birthday Twin looked particularly well and happy and Ted and the other boys were bizarrely well behaved for two hours - C even slept for an hour as well - so it was slightly magical. Sadly, the reason BT can't make our joint birthday celebration this year is because it is on the day that she starts her second course of Chemotherapy as she was diagnosed with Breast Cancer in August. Her two children are the same ages as my big two and G and her younger daughter formed a very firm friendship over their mutual love of Dinosaurs. I met her when our eldest girls were still toddlers at a local playgroup and we have been friends ever since so it is very odd not having them around the place anymore and even odder to know that whilst life still carries on as per usual for us, she is busy dealing with the aftermath of a really bastard buggering bollocks of a disease. She writes a very excellent blog so we are kept regularly up to date of what is going on with her and the girls, which makes it feel like she isn't that far away, but obviously seeing her in the flesh doesn't happen that often which made the event particularly special. (http://seaofattention12.blogspot.co.uk is the link to her blog if you are interested - which you should be as it is well worth your time.)

So, with a lovely Thursday, Friday and Enlightening Epiphany behind me I went merrily into the weekend and a date with the hairdressers (YAYYY) and then we had a jolly visit from The Body Godmother on Saturday (G was particularly thrilled) and The Godmother (of Magician fame) on Sunday. So, I think the problem with my bday was that it came off the back of four very lovely days spent catching up with friends and having a high old time. Even then, as birthdays go it really wasn't bad, it just wasn't anything special. My mother often tells me that 'being a mother doesn't stop' so I shouldn't have expected K to do the school run and she reminded me once again, that she woke up on one of her birthdays on holiday, in a tiny, cold caravan on the Suffolk coast with me peeing on her leg. And my birthday twin woke up on our birthday to discover that her hair had finally given in under the force of the Chemo drugs and started to fall out in clumps. So. Without wishing to sound obvious, I am careful to count my blessings. No one pissed on me and my hair stayed put.  As I said, this is as good as it gets.

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Zoo fear

Hello, it's me. I am back. I'm feeling good although still tired obviously. I am assuming I will be tired for quite a few years to come so I shall endeavour to stop mentioning it unless there is a spectacular happening either way. Suffice to say the rest at mums was enough to bring me back from the brink and I am now slightly further away from jumping off the edge.

One of the many advantages of staying Chez Mother, after free food and having all my washing done, is the free newspaper I get to read every morning (as discussed before, there is no phone or internet coverage there so you are plunged in to print to provide any entertainment other than watching CBeebies with the children). I am not a big fan of the news. It is largely depressing and when you have small children it becomes a bit of a horror fest. Incurable viruses, infanticide, murder, child abuse, drowned children etc. Obviously she doesn't take a red top so there was no celebrity gossip or tales of X Factor contestants to lighten the mood - it was all very dour. The worst story was that the NHS are now planning to use the facilities at Zoos to scan the obese patients who can no longer fit through their 'normal' sized scanning machines. I am horrified. I mean, I am a fan of the zoo - I had a thoroughly lovely day at London Zoo for Bea's birthday with my Mum and Newly Married Sister last month - but the thought of turning up in a specially reinforced ambulance and manoeuvred on a specially enlarged bed by huge specially employed heavy lifters only to be wheeled through the veterinary area and then finally put in and through the machine they use to diagnose hippos and elephants, would be beyond mortifying. The whole point about being hideously obese is that you try to keep in the house as much as possible to avoid people taking the piss out of you - this news has totally rained on the parade of my dream of getting so fat that I just spend my days lying in bed getting fatter and fatter and watching The Real Housewives. I am now totally off the idea thanks to the sodding zoo scanning plan. Plus - if you have never been near a Rhino you can have no idea how much they smell - I really don't fancy passing through a scanning machine or being in a large animal veterinary practise where smelly animals might have been for any length of time.

Talking of Zoos and animals, our staycation ended a day early so we could leave at the crack of dawn and get back in time for G's 6th Birthday party on the Saturday.  Even if I do say so myself this one was rather fabulous and well worth the early packing up and journey. I had hired a couple who bring their mini 'zoo' collection as the entertainment - it was called Zoo 4 You and I can thoroughly recommend them - they had everything from a hissing cockroach to a meerkat with a skunk, snake and tarantula in between as well as lots of small animals, of which I couldn't possible remember the names. G even got to have a barn owl on his arm.  Although the best thing about the party for me was that it marked the end of our birthday season for the children this year. Hoorah!! I shall never again have to do birthdays and parties with a newborn and I am free of child birthdays until August next year. Huge sigh of relief.  So I am back on the Champagne in celebration. We have had a birth, three birthdays and five parties (the big two had two each due to me being an indulgent idiot and the days their birthdays fell) in the last three months and it has been a tad hectic. And expensive. I am broke. There is nothing going on in my life until after Christmas now as I can't afford it. I am actually quite pleased about it. I want to stay inside and hide away from the horrible world outside and to stop the horrible world outside from seeing me.

As testament to how little there is in my life is at the moment, I became disproportionately over excited at the realisation that the new 'I'm A Celebrity' series starts on the eve of my Birthday - it made my heart leap with joy - to the point where I have even researched the contestants (a 'low' even in my opinion). I feel somehow, that the coinciding of the start of the series with the eve of my birthday is a gift from the TV Gods just for me. It is most likely the only one I will receive as G's animal entertainers were so pricey that we can't afford any gifts. It is a shame as I had a long list. Some more likely than others:

a. A Loft Conversion
b. £10,000
c. A new kitchen
d. Liposuction
e. New carpets throughout
f. A single Wardrobe for Cybil's clothes
g. My hair done
h. The screen on my ipad fixed
i. Anti-mould spray for the grout in between the tiles in the bathroom
j. A device that chops an apple in to segments and leaves the core

As you can see they are in price order and there is a nice variety for those with deeper pockets than others.  It's not a waste of a list though - I can keep it to bring out again for Christmas.  I don't actually want to celebrate my birthday anyway. It is on a Monday and unless you are at University or childless, rich and unemployed with unemployed friends, a Monday birthday is just shit. Also I am too fat to celebrate.  There is no joy in being this huge, particularly when I torture myself and flick back to last year's pictures when I was at my thinnest. I realise that I am entirely to blame and I am the owner of a beautiful baby girl in return for all the weight gain but still, I can't be properly happy until I look appropriate again. I hate to be shallow but there it is. I can't pretend not to be hideously vain. 

As a natural response to me saying I am fed up with being fat and want to lose weight, people keep asking me if I am doing anything about it. Even the health visitor asked me (one managed to catch me at home yesterday - she was actually very bearable and weighed C for me which I did find interesting - she is nearly as fat as me - 15.8lbs/7.17kg). Anyway, I don't like to be asked and find it irritating, as I am not doing anything about it and not planning to either. I am just moaning about being fat. I want to lose weight. I just don't want to do anything in order to achieve that goal.  Essentially I want to wake up thinner without having to change a thing about my current way of life. Although actually that is a fib! Yesterday I did wake up and try to make a few small changes, they were extremely subtle changes though, I tried swapping chocolate snacks for sweets or crisps (less fat obviously) and I am starting to wear control pants again. I find they give you a very poor girl's gastric band effect as they reduce the amount you want to eat. It is as close as I am ever going to get to corrective surgery for my enlarged stomach.

I've realised I am now a tad one sided and have become a 'fat' and 'tired' bore - I promise to stop and move on. Next time I shall bore you with my penury. In the mean time, I shall leave you with, what I hope, is a funny anecdote from my staycation in Suffolk. On Friday Mum insisted on turning The One Show off as she 'won't have that man on her TV'. The man was Chris Evans and although I knew she had strong views about people and their morality, by and large Chris seems to be quite settled now with a wife, two children and a respectable radio show so I couldn't quite understand her revolsion. I asked why she hated him so much, to which she said she found him deplorable and horrid after "ringing that poor man and accusing his daughter of being a whore". I was dumbfounded for a while until I realised that she was of course, thinking of the Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand telephone prank debacle. I naturally tried to reason with her and spare poor Chris Evans the unjustified slur against his character, but even after I cleared his name the thought of watching him was vetoed. I have a good mind to 'tweet' (I'm so 'with it' see) Jonathan and let him know his actions have had far reaching and long lasting implications for far more people than he could ever imagine.

I shall not though, I shall bury it along with her comments over my increased size ("so nice to see you in colour! Much less forgiving than black but still nice.") and parenting skills or lack of - although she did have some valid points over Ted still being allowed a bottle at bedtime so that has now been rectified but still, no one likes to be told they are lazy when it comes to parenting. After all, her redeeming features are that she makes a truly exceptionally tasting cake and she generously paid for G's Suffolk party so I really can't complain. She even sent me home with enough delicious beef casserole to feed a family of six. Sadly I ate five portions in one sitting, (thoughtfully leaving one for K please note) but on the plus side I was so full I didn't even attempt to eat pudding. So in actual fact I AM doing something pro-active about my weight. I missed pudding once and have cut down on the chocolate. At this rate I soon won't need to worry about needing a zoo for a body scan.

Now, I must away and catch up on my friends in New York City. My loving sky box saved 10 whole episodes for me over the half term!!  I might just finish them in time to start obsessing over I'm A Celebrity if I try hard enough. It will mean C putting on even more weight as I force her to do 10 hours of breast feeding. (The health visitor asked me about five times if she was being 'topped up' with a bottle as she was so big and putting on weight faster than she 'should' - I didn't tell her about my Housewives addiction but that is clearly where the extra few pounds have come from. Poor C. I shall have to cut her down soon or she'll be needing the Zoo.....)

Now off you go - I need to see if Bethenny and Jill Zarin have patched things up....

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Stuff and nonsense as per usual

I wish I could lie to you and tell you that the reason I haven't been in touch for so long is solely due to the children and tiredness and illness etc but actually I can't lie, it's also because of the Real Housewives of New York City. I have become obsessed with the ladies. One happy afternoon the four children were playing together upstairs and Cybil needed a feed so I sat down with the remote and happened upon them. It has changed my world. Two hours a day, every week day, my Sky Plus records a little bit of happy for me. So whenever I have some time I sit and feed Cybs for far longer than necessary and sit and watch these skinny women flit between The Hamptons and NYC and occasionally St Barts acting as if they are incredibly important people.

I don't have an awful lot in common with them. In fact I would say there are two things - all but one of them have children and they are all women (I am watching it from the very beginning so I am going on the original crew). Oddly, I am not even jealous of their lifestyle - it is way too high maintenance for me and a few of them have that 'hungry' look about them which I can't stand; (there is a very fine line between skinny and looking like you might suddenly crack from hunger and start devouring small children and babies). Also I would be a social pariah out there because of my weight. Especially now. Not even the bathroom mirror is being lenient - it shows me exactly how fat I am. My stomach has taken on a very peculiar consistency. It is a bit like what happens when you add cornflour and water together. When I lie down it looks like it might be solid, but the minute you move or touch it, it wobbles and moves like a liquid. In fact if you push your hand down on top of it, it sinks convincingly beneath the waves of fat and you can easily lose a finger or two under the liquid fat. It is odd, I'm sure I've never had liquid fat before. It has always had a firmer consistency. I wonder whether losing the weight before I got pregnant made all my fat cells really saggy and when they filled up again they are so droopy and lack lustre that I am now left with a cornflour and water stomach. It is a tad on the depressing side but it isn't forever and I am close to thinking about dieting again. I don't want to rush in to anything. I'm not over my chocolate and cake phase yet. I'm sort of on the cusp - half of me wants to rapidly lose weight and get 'my thin' again (it's relative obviously so I have to call it my thin and not thin. The RHONYC would still view 'my thin' as 'fat') and half of me yearns to just eat myself so fat that I become one of those bed bound people that can't do anything apart from eat, use a remote control and press the button that moves the bed up and down so I can sit up to eat. Sometimes I look at these people with a strange envy. I think it shows a great deal of balls to eat 10,000 calories a day until you get to a point where someone has to wash you and cook all your meals etc. I don't have the balls to do it, even though I know I could eat all day long, I know that people think I exaggerate but seriously, I could. It is only vanity and the need to look after the children that stops me. I don't have anyone to take over from me so if I got so fat I couldn't move, K would not take kindly to having to look after the children, or buy my food, cook it for me and do the washing up afterward. And I think having to give me a bed bath and clean in between the folds of my fat would tip him over the edge. Not that we can afford for me to get that fat at the moment. At the moment I am cold and hungry and we have no money for food or gas. We are slap bang in the middle of birthday season in this house and every penny has gone on the presents and parties. We literally have no money for anything. Mercifully a cheque clears tomorrow so I don't need to suffer for long. Fear not.

Anyhoo, where were we before the RHONYC? Hmmm. Oh I was ill. I have only just started to feel better - Thursday will mark the third week anniversary of my cough. I have become quite attached to it actually as it sometimes gives me that husky, deep voice which sounds so much more exciting and sexy than my squeaky, high pitched prim and proper voice, although, after four children and a lack of self discipline on the pelvic floor front, a very heavy cough is really not ideal. However after a hideous week or two with no sleep - the pinnacle was a 4am start - I finally seem to have sleeping children again. It has literally been a life saver. I was concerned that that was it and my life would never be 'normal' again but things seem to have finally turned a corner. Plus I've got my staycation at mum's to look forward to as Friday marks the start of Half Term. Thank the lordy lord.  Free food and the closest I'll get to my dream of lying in bed all day getting to weigh half a tonne. I still have to do stuff, obviously, but she does the lion's share of everything and I can spend more time than I rightfully should, sat on my expanding arse being fed. Plus her house is always very warm.  And the cups of tea just keep on coming. She is so overly attentive to a breast feeding mother, her concern for my thirst is unparallelled. She brings me more tea and glasses of water than it is possible to drink. I can't wait.

How I wish she was here now. We are so short of money that I couldn't afford to replenish the tea bags today and I am incredibly partial to a cup of tea. Luckily I was clever enough to ask K to 'borrow' some bags from work before he left so I will be able to enjoy a cuppa in the morning. It was a master stroke on my behalf, I might get him to do it more often to save money. When I used to work we never bought loo roll. I saw taking a loo roll home in my handbag every few days as a sort of 'corportation tax'.  I worked as a fairly lowly person in the PR world so I was paid a total pittance, and not wasting money on crap (ha ha) like loo roll all helped make the pittance go further. In fact, the way I played fast and loose with the petty cash to help me pay for the train journey home on a number of occasions, could potentially fall on the 'theft' side of things but it was a jolly long time ago so lets just gloss over that. Still, one of the advantages of having children relatively young (again, I wasn't a teenager - on some estates in the UK I would have been quite old having my first at 25 but I was the first of my circle of friends to have a child by quite some years), is that K and I have NEVER had money so we haven't had to adjust our lifestyle or expectations that much since having them.

I have relatively little to tell you about actually. Life is incredibly uneventful. Bea has had her birthday, birthday tea party and official birthday party (you can see why we have no money) and K and I attended his cousin's wedding in Essex which was very enjoyable, especially as the children were not invited so it was just us and Cybs. The wonderful Replacement turned up bang on time on Saturday morning and I basically threw her two children and told her where to pick up the third from, before we ran off to get to the church on time. The Replacement was, as usual, totally unfazed by the whole thing and set about making chocolate cornflake cakes and doing puzzles with them. And doing a load of washing so that they had sheets to sleep in. She really is quite legendary. And this is where you are going to disagree with me, so be prepared. I know that since I last wrote, a man has fallen to earth from space and lived to tell the tale but to me, this is not something that amazing. To be honest I think it's selfish. I know I know, it furthers mankind etc etc but I hate all this radical stuff. Take Ellen McArthur and her solo trip around the world. I don't see the point. She put her family through all that worry and trauma, she went through all that worry and trauma, plus she could have died on numerous occasions and all so she could end up where she began - not to mention the huge sums of money both stunts cost and really what for? For some reason these acts of severe selfishness are revered and celebrated. The man that fell to earth could have died from so many different things -  in particular, his blood could have boiled - I cannot even imagine such horror and his whole family where there watching. Plus, as far as I can see it was all a huge publicity stunt for Red Bull which doesn't seem worth dying for, but K assures me it was a huge leap forward for mankind and scientific discovery, plus he broke some records. Big whoop. Anyhoo, my point is, there are rather wonderful non-publicity seeking selfless people all over the place who are far better than Ellen and Felix Baumgartner. I hasten to add I am not one of them, I am deeply selfish. I have had more children than the world needs or than K wanted just because I wanted them. That is the most obvious example but I know there are loads more. I don't want to put you off me by listing them all now.

I've gone off on a tangent and I'm too tired to get back from it. I have to go.  Let's reconvene after the half term when I am refreshed and refuelled and reheated.

Arrivederci

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