letters from london

Starbucks is not a creche

2011-07-20T07:59:00.024+01:00

I was at a restaurant this week with two friends and an array of small children of various ages. One of the babies threw up inside of and in fact all over my son's pushchair. We had no idea it had even happened until my daughter, pointing, asked in that loud matter of fact way children have: 'What's that?'

The pushchair had been parked between my son and my friend's baby while they sat in highchairs chatting away. It was covered in the stuff, even dripping with it, slowly making a messy pool on the floor. But what was most troubling of all, aside from the smell that is, is that we'd completely failed to notice this child being sick centimetres away from us. I guess the fact that seconds later she was happily munching on a piece of bread as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened may well have lent to this terrible oversight on our part, but it still sort of bothers me that I missed something so fundamental.

Small children, babies especially in my experience, can be sick in this way and it doesn't appear to bother or distress them in the same way it does adults. You just don't see a baby, his or her head hanging over a loo, thinking to themselves, 'Oh dear god, there goes the broccoli'. Or, 'Oh no, no, no, now we are down to stomach acid! It was in my stomach a moment ago dissolving things and now it's in my mouth and nose!'

To the external observer (a few revolted looking diners at nearby tables) we probably appeared terrible parents. The small kids were doing what small children do when their patience for sitting in restaurants has reached its limit (you have about 30, 45 minutes tops), climbing on the sofas and being a bit rowdy. There's a baby throwing up, and in the middle of it all we are eating our lunch, yelling at the rowdy kids, having some kind of disjointed conversation, 'No Nathan, no, stop that now! Can you pass the olive oil please? Yes and as I was saying, they do really good self catering chalets,' and feeding said babies.

I guess its no surprise that we missed the vomiting incident.

Starbucks and small children, vomit or no vomit, is a tricky situation. There are always the people who take their coffee, get out their laptop, and hunker down with a serious look on their face. Some may well be working on the formula for an end to cancer, but there are some I'm sure, that are cruising Facebook. There are days I'd quite like to be cruising FB myself rather than preventing my daughter from rearranging the Fair Trade coffee bean display area.

These people sit down and emit a certain 'Quite please there are people working here' vibe, reinforced by the shooting glances they aim at you and your kids from time to time. Which is all well and fine, if, say, you were in a cafeteria at the Beeb, or indeed a library. And to quote Jerry Seinfeld who I was lucky enough to see last month here in London, 'A mocha does not an office make.' Thank you Jerry.

I'm with people on noisy kids. I don't care for it, and when I do get a rare opportunity to be in a coffee shop on my own (cruising FB on my phone), lovingly cradling my decaff latte with soya milk (also known as a 'Why Bother?'), I sure as hell would prefer to sit there in relative calm and actually hear the dulcet tones of Nina Simone or whatever elevator music they are playing.

But, on the other hand, there are droves of parents out there that would simply go stark raving mad without the Starbucks's of the world. Babies and small kids pre school NEED airing, as do the parents. It is essential. And sometimes you are sat at home with this small person, and you can feel those four walls closing in on you. To get out, somewhere, anywhere, where they serve a semi decent cup of coffee, where you don't have to brave the windy or rainy elements of the park, where you don't have to fork out 15 quid for a 45 minute soft play session, where you can just sit down for a bit and not be at home, and where you can feel like you are a part of the human race again. A visit to Starbucks with your baby for half an hour during the day is salvation to a lot of people.

The women who arrive in packs with their pushchairs and kids and take over the place are another story. I am occasionally one of those women, and it's not me that's taking over the place, it's my child. It's important to get into the habit of blaming your kids for everything early. But again, what do you expect a nearly four year old to do but practise ballet and circus moves in the small open space between tables while her mother discusses school uniforms and the merits of iron on labels versus sew on?

Children get bored and do what children do to entertain themselves. We shouldn't put them in adult environments and then be surprised when they don't manage adult behaviour. But god knows, sometimes you NEED that coffee, and you NEED to get some adult company. And I open handily apologise to everyone else about the noise and the inconvenience we are causing you while you drink your Venti. But rest assured your patience and understanding on this matter serves as an important public (mental) health service.

Yesterday, at a friends' house (see, we aren't always at Starbucks), I overheard my daughter playing a game and talking to her doll. , "Now Rosie, what the hell are you doing?!" I think I sunk down into my seat a little and nodded my head as if to say, 'No idea where they get this stuff from?!' But I have been known to use that phrase almost always when she is attempting to harm her little brother; push a piece of plastic Lego into his leg, grind his hand with her elbow, sit on his lower back as he frantically tries to crawl away.

While I am easy going with a lot of stuff (why ride children when they have a lifetime of enforced soul destroying conformity ahead of them?), I cannot and will not abide physical violence and bad manners. I am also painfully aware that as my son grows he will, not long from now, be bigger and stronger than my daughter and revenge will be sought. I have warned her that even in his little baby mind, right now he is tallying up her transgressions and retribution is not far off.

I actually managed a few adult, baby free, put on lipstick and Spanx kind of evenings last week. Yes, out, on my own, in the big night time adult world. It's strange being out there sans the protective barrier of the large heavy nappy bag or desperately-in-need-of-a-wash pushchair. You enter a room or sit down at a table and take a minute to adjust. Sometimes, in the early part of the evening (before I've had any wine and sometimes forgotten I have kids), at times I instinctively look around me to spot one of my children or where my pushchair is parked, only to notice people without mucous running down their noses, drinking things without Nesquik in them, and making intelligible conversation. Ahhh, yes, that's right, the children are at home in bed and their father is minding them. *Breathe out*

I make a conscious point to not talk about my children too much, because I'd like people to believe that there is more to me, more of my brain, than my ability to extol the virtues of my beautiful talented amazing children. And that I have opinions about things like strike action, oil prices, Hillary Clinton's hair, etc, outside of my (super fantastic) progeny.

So I introduce myself, and inevitably it comes up that I have two small children and the person I am talking to glasses over for a bit while I spend about five minutes talking about them, accompanied by requisite iPhone photos. But then I try and move the conversation onto other topics. You can usually note a glimmer of relief on the faces of people who don't have kids because the whole topic for them is merely raised as a matter of politeness and needs to be brief, and then more important things should be talked about. Like Greece's debt, and how amazing Kate Middy's (sorry, Catherine's) style was on the Canada trip (even if she is a tad too thin these days). And I have a lot of opinions on these things, especially the latter, because one of the many disjointed and interrupted conversations my mother friends and I have is how to shift the baby weight, so we watch Kate's progress closely.

But what I most love about my forays into the world of adults and wine and lovely stuff, is the weird shit people come up with. Stuff that is not about kids, but uniquely adult. Like a couple of months ago I was out with a few women for a friends birthday, and a male friend of one of them told me that he completely lost his erection when a woman he was about to bed took off her clothes to reveal that she had not visited Brazil. Having spent about five minutes talking to him (too much time) I thought to myself that he was lucky this woman, in fact any woman, even got as far as his bedroom. God he was boring and full of shit, and so narcissistic. I was tempted to tell him that when you have kids and no time, your husband is just so grateful to get any kind of sex (hairy or not) even with a wife that is dozing off to sleep, that he counts his lucky stars and thanks Buddha. But I'd already filled my 5 minute 'my wonderful kids with pictures' quota so I just bit my lip instead.

I have made a solemn oath that I am going to write more. I have even pasted a picture of the Royal Tenenbaum cast on my wall as inspiration. I used to have a good readership, admittedly people who came to see links to pictures of Lindsay Lohan's crotch, but hey, hits are hits. And I do still have a life outside of my children (OK not much of one, but some) and opinions on things (see Kate Middy note) so it's time to get back into the world of the literate and share my two cents worth.

Whoever thought that stay at home parenting involved watching Oprah and doing art out of pasta and glue had no idea. Which reminds me, when I get a chance, I really should do the pasta art thing with my daughter because she would really really love it.

Sleep and this and that

2011-01-24T15:00:00.001Z

I had to have blood taken last week at the hospital. I arrived to see about 40 people in front of me, some of whom sounded as though they were about to cough up their left lung. The germ phobe in me wanted to run out of there screaming and not stop until I had plunged into a hot bath full of bleach. But reason prevailed; with small kids the opportunities to go and wait for two hours to have blood taken don't come up that often.

I had just settled down between two surly looking men (no obvious symptoms), when a man came out and announced: 'For those of you who are waiting, there is a completely empty blood room in the basement.' About five of us raced downstairs and were seen to asap. I think some of those waiting upstairs didn't have English as a first language and couldn't understand him, and the others probably felt that after waiting a couple of hours they'd be damned if they were going to give up their place in the queue.

I've had a few spells of being ill recently which hasn't been good. It's taught me a valuable lesson though, and to quote a Middle Eastern taxi driver (who gave me this bit of wisdom en route to an antenatal appointment back when I was pregnant with my son), 'A woman is like mother earth, she must take care of herself. If she gets ill, everyone that relies on her suffers.'

It's easy to forget when you get wrapped up in the all-consuming needs of your children and family, but it's so true. I got very ill with the flu (and shortly thereafter bronchitis), and one morning I was literally unable to get out of bed. The rest of the days I just felt like death but carried on as you do when you have kids, but on this occasion I was simply too ill to get up. Someone had to help me with the children, get my daughter ready and take her to school, see to the baby, and it was horrible and scary. A stark reminder that if something happens to you, well, it doesn't bare thinking about.

So I've learnt that it's vitally important to beg, borrow, or steal help from time to time. Get a bit of rest where you can take it, remember to nourish yourself, and if someone offers to babysit (barring any criminal record or penchant for your wine collection) take them up on it and enjoy some time out for yourself or with your partner. Jokes aside, you absolutely have to take care of yourself physically, emotionally and mentally (not that these things are unrelated or even separate) so that you can take care of your family. And a bit of fun from time to time, dare I say it even a bit of reckless abandon? And an opportunity to forget all the responsibilities and just be the you that doesn't care for or worry about others all the time? Well, essential really.

I recently had a spring clean of my closet. It's evident that the items I've had for absolute ages (those that have survived successive culls over the years), are items I've spent a little more on and where I've chosen classics: black woolen trousers, fitted shirts, a simple and well cut cocktail dress. They last because they are good quality, suit my shape, and they defy trends. I think Tim Gunn would approve. The items in the chuck or give away pile are almost always impulse or trend purchases. And I hate to say it, but the really cheap stuff is never good at surviving the rigours of the washing process. It's a false economy. Less is definitely more. At the age of 36 I think I'm finally coming to appreciate this.

Our baby is almost 8.5 months old. Time flies. We feel like we've surmounted the hump - i.e. the really difficult (and at times nightmarish) bit of the new born months and juggling two children. This morning I even had, heaven forbid, a brief (very brief) thought about the merest possibility of having a third child.

It was about this time, when Julia was nine-months-old and we were in the swing of having a child and enjoying her, that I contemplated having another for the first time. Funny thing about human nature; you just get over the tough bit, start really enjoying your child/ren and having some time to yourself again, and you think, 'Hmm, why not go and throw myself back into the wars again?'

I seriously doubt we will have more children. It's just that I woke up to the sound of my baby boy gurgling and 'chatting' to himself in his cot (the best alarm clock in the world, other than say, a sultry good morning kiss from a sleepy lover), and I thought, 'Oh my goodness he is so wonderful and cute and lovely, and he's going to be one-years-old soon and no longer a baby, and I won't get woken up by those lovely gurgling sounds ever again.' (Legal note here: This momentary lapse of judgement did in fact follow a most excellent night's sleep.)

This kind of dangerous thinking is how perfectly sane people land up with a rugby team of kids. It's true.

Which leads me to my next point; While our baby is growing up, sleeping through the night (praise the Lord), and is happy to play (supervised) independently, it's still full-on and hard work mostly because we have two small children.

Our three-year-old daughter has pretty much skipped early childhood and become a teenager overnight. I say this because I believe she is supposed to be entering a parent-pleasing phase at this age. No idea what happened to that? She is so stubborn it drives me crazy. 'But why do I have to do dat? or 'But why can't I do dat?' have become standard phrases. Followed by me retorting with things like 'Because the alternative is plummeting a meter or so and breaking bones on the hard tiled floor, that's why, " or "Because you've watched enough television and too much of it rots the brain."

We also get into these incredibly time consuming and annoying tautological exchanges which go as follows:
Her: No I don't want to

Me: But you have to
Her: But why?

Me: Because of X Y or Z (I give an overtly generous explanation given the fact that these conversations usually take place when we are running exceedingly late for something)
Her: But I don't want to do dat sing
Me: Listen, sometimes we all have to do things we don't like doing, but it's not all bad right? I mean, you get to see your friends at school right? And that's fun isn't it?

Her: But I don't want to go to school, it's too noisy
Me: I understand that it's noisy, but surely there must be some things you enjoy about school?

Her: But I want to stay home wis you
Me: It's three hours and then you are home with me all afternoon, now let's go we are running very late
Her: But I don't want to go

And on and on and on and on, until I become the mother you see in the supermarket shouting at her kids and you think to yourself, 'Those poor children, that women has no patience at all.'

On other days the children play together and I sit nearby sipping (and amazingly get to finish) a cup of tea, smiling beatifically and thinking, 'Ahhh, this is lovely. I love my little family,' that is while ensuring she doesn't bend his fingers back, place plastic bags in her mouth, or he doesn't chew on the underside of the rug or eat newsprint.

It's all good. But then pretty much most things are after a good night's sleep.

0.0003% Alcohol

2010-09-29T18:33:00.005+01:00

A few years ago, back when Roberto and I were free and easy, we visited friends of ours who had two small children. After a fun day of us thinking perhaps this having kids business wasn't all that bad, it came to that time in the evening when children are exhausted and go a bit nuts.

We watched our harassed-looking friends try and corral their offspring for baths, bed and beyond. The father, noticing what were evidently terrified looks on our faces, quickly said, “It's not all terrible, you know,” while being gripped around the leg by a howling child, and attempting to hold on to another using a sort of fireman's lift.

Small children suck you dry, there is no two ways about it. In the case of my baby son, quite literally. He nurses so often I may as well invest in a grass skirt and just let it all hang out. It would save me a lot of time, money on ugly nursing bras that do nothing for your silhouette, and probably make the Amazon delivery guy’s life a bit more interesting.

In my daughter's case, she is still incapable of understanding that other people, i.e. my husband and I, have needs outside of hers. Sometimes it’s somewhere between 8 and 9pm and I am dead on my feet tired. I haven't yet eaten dinner, and I'm at that point where I just want to crawl into a corner, gnaw on my hand for a bit, and fall asleep. I'll say something like, “OK, I'm going to say goodnight now. I'm very tired and hungry, and I need to go and take care of myself.” And she'll respond, quite cheerfully, with: “Read it please,” shoving the eighth story book of the evening into my angst-ridden face.

I don’t think we have a budding sociopath on our hands; it’s just that she doesn’t quite have empathy yet. A bit like some of the people I've worked with over the years, the difference being that she is actually two going on three, and not just acting that way. It’s starting to change though, the other day I woke on the sofa to find she had partially covered me with a blanket of hers, and shoved our son’s plastic toy keys in my armpit for company.

Our son is getting bigger, quite a lot bigger actually. Although he has just gone four months, he fits into 6 to 12 month clothes, some of which quite snugly. I’m kind of kicking myself for my over-zealous shopping at the start, as a lot of the stuff has gone unworn. He's not really fat, but more so kind of big with large paws for hands and long feet. I'm thinking American footballer, in his spare time, that is when he's not inventing life saving vaccines and writing Pulitzer prize-winning tomes.

To deviate briefly from the fascinating life I lead right now, I find it genuinely strange that people are so shocked and surprised by the recent spate of footballers cheating on their wives and girlfriends. Or rather, let me rephrase that; the recent spate of footballers getting caught cheating on their wives and girlfriends. I thought that when you dated or married a footballer, it was like marrying into the mob. You kind of know your husband does stuff you'd rather not spend too much time thinking about, but you enjoy the lifestyle enough not to let it worry you too much.

A funny moment for me (I imagine not so funny for poor Coleen) came when one of the prostitutes Wayne Rooney slept with reported that he wasn't particularly good in bed. I think the word she used was 'boring.' I’m not sure anyone was too surprised by that. At least, according to one of the many women Tiger Woods slept with, he had some moves to go with that monstrous appetite. In the case of Rooney, I imagine his idea of doing something risqué involves removing his socks before getting into bed.

We are looking to buy a house at some point in the future. This means we have had the pleasure of getting to know our local real estate community rather well. These guys dress like Wall Street bankers. I'm assuming the thinking is that it makes them look successful, and thereby bound to be successful at selling your house or finding you one. But to me all those expensive suits are just a reminder of what big a cut they get from selling your house. Or indeed how much they are going to try and drive up the price of the house you are buying. On our recent holiday in America we met an estate agent who actually owned the agency. He wore an old shirt, a pair of faded shorts, and trainers. That man I trusted.

I'm not sure how it works in other parts of the world, but where we live a favourite little caveat beneath the price on the brochure is 'guide price.' There's no such thing as offering low, going up a bit, and then eventually getting the place for something around the mark the sellers sort of wanted anyway. No no no, that little caveat means the extortionate amount listed is just for starters, you've got to offer even more, and quite possibly get into a bidding war.

And if that isn't bad enough, the estate agents have a way of making you feel cheap if you aren't capable of chucking in an extra 50 grand or so. I mean, it’s just another 50 grand right? I’d really love to see where they live. And then there are the dirty tricks; take my advice, if someone says to you the house you want is going to a silent bid, save yourself a lot of anguish and walk away there and then. These things, as we learnt from bitter experience, never turn out well.

My mother, who is visiting with us at the moment, is obsessed with weight loss shows like ‘The Biggest Loser.’ I always know when she’s been watching one, because she’ll sit down for lunch with a worried look on her face and say something like, “Just a little for me please, I don’t want to get Type 2 diabetes.” My mother resembles a piece of string and eats like a bird, so I don’t know what her worry is.

I on the other hand, eat like a horse. Everyone tells me this is normal when you are nursing. My concern is that my stomach is going to stretch and get used to all this extra food, making it tough to go back to the way things were before. Not to mention getting a taste for all the sugary stuff I enjoy right now. I think I’m going to have to go cold turkey on the Chocolate Digestives and mini Magnums.

I’ve got some sort of bronchitis-type thing. I went to the chemist today to try and get cough mixture that was nursing-friendly, but that would be effective enough so it doesn’t feel as though I’m about to cough up my left lung. She found something, pointed at the ingredients, and told me it had a tiny bit of alcohol in but nothing that should be harmful. I reflected on the large glass of red wine I allow myself at night, but said nothing. You’d be surprised how superior people can get when it comes to your breasts and what you do with them.

The naked Impie Warrior Princess and routine versus baby-led

2010-08-06T13:21:00.003+01:00

I look at my daughter, aged 2 years and 8 months, and how completely unaffected she is. She says whatever's on her mind, laughs hysterically and manically when she is happy, screams and cries if she is angry or sad. Tells you she loves you spontaneously in the same way that no amount of prompting can illicit that term of endearment if she is not feeling it. She strips off her clothes if she feels the urge, regardless of who may be visiting. She looks at her body and its various parts with the detached curiosity of a first year medical student. She uses the potty or toilet in front of anyone if she needs to go. She flings her arms around you laughingly and embraces you fiercely if the desire takes her, and avoids an embrace if it doesn't. She says pointedly if she likes something and someone or if she doesn't. She is, and I'm painfully aware it's only for a tragically narrow window of time, absolutely free, present, and human without any of the baggage we collect along the way.

The irony is that we are all like this as small children, and then our parents, carers, teachers, and peers spend an insane amount of time and energy telling us not to because its impolite, socially unacceptable, not nice, etc, effectively killing everything that is spontaneous, beautiful and free about the human spirit. So we develop affectations, insecurities, and coping mechanisms in order to fit in, and then later in life spend a lot of money on therapy or crappy self-help books trying to recapture that freedom of just being that came so very naturally in the first place.

Anyway, that's me just being maudlin. But I think there's something there to be aware of when raising your children; do so with a light touch.

Our little boy is 11 weeks old already. We haven't done a formalised routine with our son, as we did our daughter - what I liked to refer to as Gina Ford light. It's given me a very good compare and contrast on the baby led and routine method, both of which, I have to say, have their plusses and minuses to my mind.

The routine (i.e. baby eats at four hour intervals at the same time every day and sleeps around the same times and gets the night and day thing sorted fairly early on), gave us a lot of freedom in that we knew more or less when our daughter would be doing what, and also, because her feeds were scheduled, a pretty good idea if she was hungry or not. It may seem pretty self evident, but actually in those early weeks everything is a guessing game, and you find yourself spending a lot of time putting the baby to your breast or making and wasting bottles, trying to figure out if they are hungry or not. Hunger being the most obvious reason babies tend to cry.

With the routine we were able to plan nights out with a sitter fairly early on, knowing that give or take half an hour, our daughter would be asleep at x o'clock, and only require another bottle or feed at x o'clock. She travelled extremely well and we could arrange things more or less around feeding times which made life very easy.

We also had her sleeping through the night, as in 7pm to 7am from around 5.5 months and barring waking a few times (only for a few minutes) for a pacifier in those early months, or if she was or is ill, she is still a good sleeper and continues to go down at night and sleep through without any hassle.

On the down side the routine, again especially in those early months, was a stress. It doesn't just happen over night, it takes a lot of work, and there are days when it goes a bit pear shaped and you have to work to bring it back into place. I used to get anxious if we didn't do things on time because I knew that everything was intricately linked to the bigger picture and if one thing went wrong the whole thing would be affected.

Visits with friends had to be scheduled if they wanted to see her, because I knew she'd be awake for an hour only, in which time I also had to nurse, change the nappy etc, and if they wanted to cuddle her they'd get only a small margin of time to do so before she was swaddled, and put to sleep in her basket in a darkened room. We were also a lot less inclined to bundle her up and go out to dinner in the evenings because again she needed to be bathed at a certain time, fed, and in her darkened bedroom without any distractions to sleep. Yes it's true, perhaps we took it a bit too far, but as I said, this was the light version!

Our little guy on the other hand is 100% breast fed (our daughter was combined breast and bottle), and try as I might to get him onto the same sort of timing routine as we did our daughter, I find it extremely difficult. He doesn't last 4 hours between feeds throughout the day. He likes to eat when he wants to, and sometimes that is twice in an hour. Sometimes he sleeps very little during the day - a few cat naps, other times he does a four or five hour sleep in one go. Fortunately he more or less has his night's worked out, so he goes down to sleep at 8pm or thereabouts and then wakes twice or sometimes three times, but twice on a good night, to be fed before waking at about 7am again.

On the positive side I don't worry too much about when he's eating (he is gaining weight steadily so evidently we are OK in the department) or sleeping. Although sometimes I do worry if he sleeps for an exceptionally long period during the day as I know we are going to have a wakeful, albeit often happy, little chap in the early hours who requires walking around by dad as he serenely surveys the room for an hour or so.

We also don't think twice to put him in his pushchair and take him out in the evenings, and if I miss bathing him at 5.30pm in the evening, I top and tail him and do it the next day. So yes, a much more relaxed approach.

People say that nursing is very convenient. This is true and it's also not true. It is convenient in that you don't have to wash and sterilise bottles or indeed spend money on formula. You also don't make and waste bottles when you are trying to figure out if your baby is hungry or not. There's no need to worry about taking bottles, sterilisers and the right amount of formula with you when you travel. And if you are stuck somewhere you always have milk, if you'll excuse the image, on tap at the perfect temperature, without frenziedly tyring to find a clean bottle. People who bottle feed will appreciate that terrible feeling you get when your child is screaming and you are stuck in traffic or out somewhere and you realise you've used your last bottle already because you thought you'd be home long before now. It is truly horrible.

The inconvenient bit is that if you are nursing exclusively, i.e. not even expressing, you are effectively that child's only means of nourishment. So no asking your partner to do the 2am feed so you can have some sleep. Also, as with our son, a lot of nursed demand-fed babies don't always do so on a routine, so if you need to go out and leave the baby with someone, it can be difficult to plan. I believe this changes as the baby gets older and that they do more or less start to nurse on a routine, but I'm yet to get to that point.

It is also not always convenient to nurse in a public space. Some women are so expert at it that they lift a top or jumper, pop the baby underneath and do so without anyone being the wiser. For those of us with more, how should I say, obvious and larger breasts, it's not quite as easy, and the whole process requires a scarf to cover up and a lot of faffing with a crying hungry baby. Plus, some places are not so keen on you nursing on their premises and as a nursing mother you spend a lot of time walking along high streets looking into coffee shop or restaurant windows eyeing out quiet corners.

Superficially you are obligated to wear button down garments, unless you are OK with showing off your belly as you lift your T-shirt, in order to access your boobs without exposing too much of yourself. And then there's the gross unattractiveness that is the nursing bra, and believe me regardless if they have polka dots or are made of lace, they are still ugly. Plus of course an endless supply of breast pads (like large cotton wool pads to stick inside the bra so you don't, er, leak).

Still, I like the fact that when our son is upset, like after he got his first round of shots recently, I can put him to my breast and he is immediately comforted. Likewise when he is upset or unsettled during the night. And then there's the fact that he has gained weight in leaps and bounds since his birth, and I feel a tiny bit of pride that I've contributed to that. There's literature about how good it is for baby to be nursed, and some which says a lot of the benefits are really minuscule past those early weeks. I honestly don't have a firm opinion on it either way. I guess I'm as conditioned as most to think that it is largely beneficial, and I'm going to roll with it for a few more months, but most likely not past 6 months. Even I have my limits as to how long I will endure broken sleep and such unattractive underwear. And my feeling is that two things will prevent me from nursing longer (1) when my son gets teeth, and (2) when he can address me in perfect English asking for it.

"I'm counting till three!" and other sins

2010-07-15T21:02:00.012+01:00

When you become a parent, much to your dismay, you find yourself making the same mistakes your parents made. The difference being that they didn't know any better, and in this day and age of Oprah, you ought to.

I blame it on being severely sleep deprived and therefore not in possession of my faculties. It's the only explanation for some of the rubbish non sequiturs I've found myself spouting of late. Like, 'It's no because I said it's no,' or, 'I'm counting till three' (what's supposed to happen after three I have no idea), or, 'I'm not asking you again,' (of course I ask her again).

Fortunately I have yet to resort to cutting Julia's beautiful babyish locks into a Nazi Youth League inspired short back and sides because 'hair is like grass, the more you cut it the thicker it grows.' I swear to god this is the logic my siblings and I were subjected to for years, resulting in people thinking I was a boy for the first five years of my life. And why it was so important we had thick hair in the first place is yet another incomprehensible mystery.

The fact that my mother took this advice from the vertically challenged compulsive lying Cypriot barber in our neighbourhood is beyond any and all reason. Strangely, she could distinguish that he was maybe, quite possibly, lying when he said he had been the personal hairdresser to Elizabeth Taylor for years, but not that he was talking bollocks about the structure of hair follicles and the fact that what you do to the ends has nothing at all to do with the roots, or indeed one's genetic predisposition towards fine or thick hair.

So it was a happy day for us children when the idiot put tinfoil on my mother's newly permed hair (with chemicals still on) and stuck her under the drier. First she noticed her ears feeling rather hot, followed by the smell of burning hair and smoke. It took months of continual hot oil treatments and haircuts at a rather more sophisticated hairdressing salon for her singed pompadour to recover, her ears requiring an intensive moisturiser to abate the excessive peeling. But best of all, thereafter we children got to choose our hairstyles and direct stylists who actually understood how to cut hair as opposed to just shearing it.

But back to the threats us parents make; I have a theory that the more you pick on a child and their behaviour (easy to do when you are tired and irritable and things you'd normally ignore suddenly really annoy you) the more defensive they become and start acting out. Recently, I noticed that the more I argued with Julia about things she does - silly childish things to get my attention - the more defiant she was becoming and it started genuinely depressing me how much we were arguing with each other. It felt like everything was becoming a battle, and I mourned the great relationship I had with my little girl when I could make her laugh, and vice versa, or distract her and all would be well.

Having reflected on why our relationship had changed so much, I had to concede what is true of every relationship in life - the dynamic is co-created. Certainly there is the plain and simple reality that due to the new baby in the house and having being usurped as the Majordomo, there was bound to be some regression and seeking of attention. The fact that at this point the baby requires my attention most of the day leaving little for her, also doesn't help. Then there's also the fact that being a little kid she does things she shouldn't because she is pushing boundaries and asserting herself.

But the rate at which she was doing these things and the way she reacted when I told her off, was telling about how I was handling the situation too. So by easing up and having a sense of humour about stuff and being a lot more patient (god help me), it's had a really positive knock-on effect with her too. It's genuinely been quite a dramatic change.

Sure, there are still times when instead of laughing about something I find myself yelling out, 'Jesus Christ! Get that electrical adaptor (plugged in) out of your mouth now!' but by and by, there has been a marked improvement on both our parts. And Julia, in all her graciousness, has taken to telling me, 'I'm sorry you shouted at me like that,' said in a poignant apologetic tone as though benevolently done on my behalf. I have no doubt she would make an accomplished Catholic in the guilt-inducing stakes.

On my end I don't really have a life outside of my children right now. An exciting moment comes when I have an opportunity to sit down for five minutes and read Heat magazine (apparently Lindsay Lohan's biggest fear about her pending 90-day prison sentence is possible weight gain), or feel like I am living on the edge when I crack open a can of Diet Coke. Just think of what that Aspartame might do. God I'm reckless.

I've started trying to regain some sort of regular human appearance, as opposed to the blob in stretch trousers with roots even Shakira would be ashamed of. I saw my stylist a couple of weeks ago, and we drank Starbucks while he stuck foils in my hair and reminisced about that day, so many moons ago, when he coloured my hair for Roberto and my wedding. Back when I had one chin, and only wore support pants on Friday nights.

Our holidays are coming up. I had two bathing suits delivered in the post (I do all my shopping online these days - changing rooms being far too traumatic). The good news is that they fit, the bad news is that they are enormous. Still, I think I should be awarded points for bravery in as much as I plan to wear the things near the general public and a body of water.

Finally and totally unrelated, I wanted to spend a moment to express how saddened I was to learn about the tragic death of Sebastian Horsley. For those of you who didn't know him or of him, he was an eccentric London-based writer who's rather controversial autobiography, 'Dandy in the Underworld' (so controversial that the Americans refused him entry into their country), had just been turned into a West End play and was in the process of being turned into a movie.

I met Sebastian on a few occasions as he attended the same poetry functions as me at my club, back in the days when I still had a social life. Despite looking at me as a hungry dog might appraise a juicy steak, he was surprisingly shy and extremely courteous in person - in stark contrast to the violent, sexual, and in your face shock-factor of his book, or his articles for the Erotic Review for that matter.

Apparently it was a suspected heroin overdose. Knowing what a narcissist Sebastian was and the fact that all his dreams of major fame (notoriety having long preceded that) were about to come true, I prefer to think it was a terrible tragic accident as opposed to suicide. RIP Sebastian x

Well you did ask

2010-07-06T20:38:00.011+01:00

People, friends of mine that have one child and are considering having another, ask me what it's like having two kids. Like my experience and opinion is going to make one bit of difference to their insane evolutionary drive to procreate repeatedly. But what the hell, I humour them anyway. I tell them about a heavy smoker I met many years ago. A psychologist, he told me he had never touched a cigarette in his life until such time as he got a job at an institute for the criminally insane, and by the time I met him, he was up to 40 a day. That anecdote pretty much sums up what having two children is like for me right now.

There are good days, days when the baby eats and sleeps well (he has reflux so these things are far from a given) and Julia happily fits in and around him and we do stuff together when he is asleep and she plays on her own when I am seeing to him. Time flies and before we know it Roberto walks in the door at 6pm to a relatively calm happy scene. We have dinner as a family, bath and put Julia to bed, and catch up on a bit of TV and time together before going to bed after the baby's next feed.

Then there are days, days which I fondly refer to as 'hell,' when, for example, I am nursing him and J is attempting some or other death defying stunt which she just happens to illustrate within an inch of her brother's small head. I ask her calmly and repeatedly to please refrain from whatever craziness she happens to be doing, and she continues and eventually I have to raise my voice. She starts to cry and yell, 'I DO NOT LIKE IT WHEN YOU SPEAK TO ME LIKE THAT!,' and because I am attached by the skin of my breast to the mouth of a small and hungry locust, I am incapable of going over to her, cuddling her and explaining why I said what I said, and what it all means. And so she cries louder and harder.

At which point the the baby, distressed by the racket, detaches and starts to cry too - sucking in loads of air which is just great for his delicate digestive system. Still hungry but too upset and sore to latch on, I then have to get up and try and wind him and console him while J continues with her tantrum, and I try very hard not to feel resentful towards her, especially as I know where it's all coming from.

By the time Roberto walks in the door in the evening, I resemble Jack Nicholson hacking through the bathroom door in 'The Shining' - all wild eyed, crazy, and angry as a disturbed hornets nest because he has the audacity to need to pee and wash his hands before taking the increasingly heavy baby off of me that very second.

That evening, the baby has a rough time settling, J throws a tantrum because Roberto wants to bath her and not me, she struggles to go to sleep, meaning one of us is either holding the crying baby or seeing to her. Then the moment she does settle, around 10pm, we quickly tidy the house which has a blanket of toys just waiting to be trod on by a bare foot in the middle of the night, pack the dishwasher, and then wait for the baby to wake up to for his 10(ish) feed. And then hope and pray he settles quickly and sleeps well between that and the 2am and 6am feeds. Which can often be more like 11pm, 2am, 4am and 7am feeds, with lots of bleary-eyed walking in between

Times like this and I become strangely envious of a friend of ours's recent solo trip to Antarctica to bird watch. I hate cold places and have zero interest in bird watching, but boy does that idea suddenly seem like heaven to me.

Oh, and then, because things aren't hard enough, thrown in for good measure is the guilt factor. I feel tremendously bad about the fact that I spend an increasing amount of time telling J off. I'm not a bossy sort of person and giving orders and being an authority figure has never been my thing. Probably one of the reasons I'm repeatedly walked over by people who work for us, but there you have it. So to have to tell someone what to do and sometimes say, 'You cannot do this or that, because I said so and I know better,' feels very strange and somehow wrong as it leaves my mouth. What, I sometimes ask myself, makes me think I know what is better for J then she herself? Yep, I know, the teenage years are going to be fun.

I don't believe in the term 'naughty'. I think it's a lazy blanket term which doesn't address the complex array of behaviours which little people frequently display. To know your child and understand that more often than not they act out because of x, y, or z means you can address the issue at hand and hopefully nip it in the bud or at the very least ensure that the next time it happens know where it's coming from. This seems a lot more productive and far less ambiguous to me than labelling something or a child as 'naughty.'

Knowing this however, still doesn't make it easier. Like, for example, when they put sandwich bags over their heads and call our 'Look at me' cheerfully, your heart stopping as you respond with 'Jesus Christ!' resulting in peals of laughter from said little person. Or when they drink the bath water, drag your pashmina through the indoor flower bed (damn bloody ultra modern houses and their bloody indoor flower beds), or step off the potty after a particularly messy poo and come and sit on the rented suede sofas (which come with the rented house) without wiping their bottoms. Or attempt to touch the face of their newborn brother with the hand that's been fiddling with that unwiped little backside.

All of this makes me sound like the most inattentive mother, but with two, one of which is a babe in arms who requires almost round the clock carrying because lying down means gross discomfort, I simply cannot be there all the time to see what J is getting up to. And so she sometimes does this crazy shit, I try (and fail) to reason with her which means I get angry and tell her off, she gets upset, and so and so and so.

But it's not all bad. We have the weekends, when Roberto is around, and we take the kids to breakfast and the zoo and the park, and the whole thing, this family thing, makes sense. When J says to me as I'm tucking her in at night, 'Sometimes I feel left out when you are trying to nurse Isaac,' or 'I love spending time with you Mummy,' or 'I love you the most after playtime when it's time for bed,' and I respond with my usual refrain (much to her delight), 'Ah, but I love you all ALL of the time.'

And then, much later in the evening, when both of the children are clean, bathed, and safely tucked into their little beds, we laugh and smile during those precious eight minutes and thirty seconds of free time, and agree how lucky we are and how much we have to be thankful for. And indeed we do.

And then there were two

2010-06-12T20:09:00.010+01:00

I'm writing this while England play the USA (football), and I should probably be sleeping, because it's a rare moment when both our children are sleeping and the house is blissfully quiet, apart from my lovely husband yelling at the TV as the USA have just scored their first goal. But the blog calls and all two of my readership have been asking for an update, so here goes.

I had our little boy almost four weeks ago - my god it's gone quickly. That tends to happen when you have two children it seems - time flies. With Julia those first few weeks and months seemed to take forever, both in a good and a bad way. The bad being that I felt as though I had been hit by a truck, and my life as I knew it was gone forever and now seemed to slow down into a blurred Groundhog Day of sleep deprivation, extremely sore breasts, and baby baby baby.

I imagine there are women, specifically those that have had experience with babies or small children, or who have grown up in big families, who take to motherhood naturally and instinctively. With me it was a learning experience, and while I loved my little girl from the start, I had to learn how to be a mother in the weeks and months following her birth. I'd say I'm still learning. And there were also times where the relentless responsibility of the undertaking had me wanting to run into the street screaming. Probably a good thing then that when it comes to exercise I am inherently lazy. But yes, a pretty serious and life changing shock to the system.

This time round the responsibility is no less full-on or relentless, and times it by two because we have another child, but it feels easier somehow. We're used to bad or broken sleep (although it never fails to suck), we know how to take care of an infant, how to hold him, that he won't break, that every little skin imperfection is probably not the start of meningitis, and also, that the hectic nature of these early weeks passes and things get easier.

The first time round you don't know that it gets easier. I mean, people tell you that, but you don't believe them, because there are the same bastards that told you having a baby was wonderful and amazing. And here you are manically sleep deprived, emotional and hormonal, fighting with your husband because he had 6 minutes and 30 seconds more sleep than you and didn't get you a cup of tea, and your body and breasts are desperately sore. What in god's name is amazing and wonderful about any of this? With our second all of this is still the case, but somehow it's in perspective.

I had a C-section again which was OK, but you know, quite frankly, I don't want to go through that experience a third time. The epidural for one thing is horrible - there's just something perversely disturbing about having someone, and indeed knowingly and willingly allowing someone to stick a sharp thick needle in your spine, especially while you cannot see what they are up to back there. They give you a local anaesthetic to numb the area before they dicky about with your spine, but that in itself hurts like the bejesus, and then you feel this weird sensation as the anaesthetic enters into your spinal column. Oh god, even remembering it makes me feel sick.

This wipes out all sensation in your legs, and let me tell you, that messes with your head big time. I had this overwhelming desire to shift my right buttock and couldn't. And I wanted to move my legs too and couldn't, and then had anxiety about the fact. I think the nurses were getting a bit tired of me asking, 'But I will get feeling back right? I mean, how long will this last?' while nervously gnawing on my lower lip.

But I was in good hands and as far as these things go it was swift, expertly done, and before I knew it I had our little boy in my arms and the rest seemed to fade into the background. That is until the blood pressure machine in the recovery room started playing up and I had a few nurses standing around looking very worried because my blood pressure was so very low - so very worryingly low. There I was holding my little one, looking at their worried faces and asking, 'Should I be worried?' followed by, 'so when will I be able to feel and move my legs again?' Fortunately someone cottoned on that it might be the machine and a new one was brought in and I was deemed OK.

The recovery has been fine, but it's major surgery and they cut through quite a few layers and this hurts. For a few weeks after you cannot lift anything heavier than your baby, which is tough when you have a toddler that needs lifting in and out of a high chair or onto a toilet. Plus just walking around is difficult. I'm starting to get to the point now where I can go out and do a fair walk and it not hurting too much, but I still have a few aches and pains and days when I need to take something for it.

So back at home and the big question everyone has been asking is how is J, our little girl, who is two and a half, taking to the whole thing. The fact is she's been pretty amazing actually - remarkably patient and understanding and also, it has to be said, a bit indifferent. She frequently asks to have the baby on her lap, but always, as it would seem, when the poor little guy is about to feed or in desperate need of winding and not wanting a zealous little sister fawning all over him. And there are also times when she doesn't seem to notice him and happily carries on with whatever she is doing.

I try and include her in things as much as possible and we have this system where while I am nursing she turns the pages of a book so I can read to her at the same time. But yes, she's a star and happily tells people she has a little brother and there have been no threats or proclamations to the effect of, 'I hate that baby' or 'I want to kill that baby'. Thank god. She calls him 'a little peanut' and when he cries tells me he most likely needs to have milk. Her tolerance, understanding, and patience for someone her age blows me away.

Juggling two children on the other hand can be tricky. I have someone that helps me with Julia in the mornings, but until she arrives, and in the afternoons it can be difficult, and there's a bit too much TV watching for my liking. The other morning I was sitting at the kitchen table nursing our son, feeding our daughter her breakfast (she's not a big fan of eating), and trying to read to her all at the same time. In between spooning cereal into my own mouth. It brings a whole new meaning to the words multi-tasking. Or other times, nursing our son while watching our daugher clutching 'down there' knowing I have minutes to get her to a toilet before she christines the floor, while she stubbornly insists she doesn't need to loo.

Before number two, Roberto and I were an excellent tag team and would take it in turns on the weekends to have lie-ins or playing with my daughter in the afternoons so one of us could have a nap. Now he's pretty much responsible mostly for J, and I am responsible for our son, because I am nursing so it just makes more sense that way, and we briefly swap so we can spend time with the other. There is no break for either of us at the moment, so we have to remember that and be kind to each other, which sometimes we forget, mostly because we're tired and wondering where that scrap of personal freedom we'd managed to salvage for ourselves after having our daughter has gone.

We're going to start easing our little guy into some sort of routine now, which is really a lot less malevolent that what it sounds. For some reason a lot of people have this terrible notion of what it involves - like it's some sort of Victorian torture of small children, but it's really just a good tool for everyone in the house, and J certainly thrived on it. The idea is that the baby eats regularly to avoid dehydration and gets their daily nutritional intake, and then has these good chunks of sleep in between. Babies also don't really distinguish between night and day, so again the routine just helps things along so you don't have a little guy wide awake for two to three hours in the early hours - as has happened to us for a couple of nights recently.

And now I need to quickly grab an hour or two of sleep before our son wakes up to feed, and hope and pray we have a better night ahead of us. If I get five hours I'll be laughing.

Paints, prams, and Phil Collins

2010-05-05T18:51:00.010+01:00

So I'm in Ryman's this week, perusing the paint selection in the kids arts and crafts aisle. I spot these large bottles of paint which state on the label that they are 'washable' but not suitable for finger painting.

I am introducing J to a basic version of the colour wheel and mixing colours to create new ones. We go through a fair bit of paint as a result of her watching intently as I carefully create green or orange, and then enthusiastically following suit by mixing everything together resulting in a muddy brown/blue colour, while whimsically uttering, "A little bit of red, and a little bit of blue.... ." And then, "More red, more blue I've muddied the colours!" (toddlers could teach dictators a thing or two). I dutifully wash out the mess and start from the beginning by putting neat little dollops on the palette. A slow, repetitive, and very messy process, but all in the name of learning.

So back to Rymans and the large bottles of washable paint that are not for finger painting. I'm confused, so I grab the nearby assistant, who looks 16-years-old. Admittedly since I turned 30 everyone that is 25 and younger looks 16, but I digress.

I ask her why something that is washable may not be suitable for finger painting, not that J does much of the latter these days, that's if you discount her penchant for panting her hands, her legs, and pretty much any visible surface of skin with a paintbrush she holds fairly adeptly. And then demands a bath. As it was on sale in the kids section and talked about being washable, it was evidently not going to be toxic, so I was just trying to establish what the deal was. The exchange went something like this:

Me: So this label says it's washable, but you cannot use it for finger painting?
Her: Yes, that's right. You cannot use it for finger painting.
Me: But why, I mean, if it washes off?
Her: As you can see on the label, it is washable, but you should not use it for finger painting.

At this point I am tempted to say, ''I'm sorry, but do I have eejit tattooed on my forehead?" But I don't need to, my expression says it all. Seeing this, she thinks a bit and then says, "because kids can put their hands in their mouths"
Me: But they could do that with finger paints too right?
Her: You cannot watch them 24-7, they could put there hands in their mouths or something like that, which is why we put on our label (er, you mean Crayola puts on its label) that they are not for finger painting.

Realising I was getting nowhere, and not wanting to get into the whole, actually if you know anything about kids you will never leave a toddler alone within arms-reach of paint, ever, I said thank you and bought them anyway. Turns out they don't wash off the hands quite as easily as the finger painting stuff but that's the only visible difference.

Had my 37.5 week checkup today and our baby hasn't engaged at all, much like his sister during this point in my pregnancy with her. Which is why I required a c-section with her and am booked in to have one with him. Saying that, you never know, he may decide to surprise us all and trigger labour, but my doctor thinks that's unlikely due to my pelvis which is apparently small or something and there is no space for the head to settle into. I'm so sad I take this as some sort of compliment, "Yes that's right people, I have a small pelvis - I'm really, secretly, beneath it all, a thin person."

I think I've got everything ready, more or less. We just need to assemble the double buggy/pram (for two kids) thingy that we bought. My god, if there ever was a captive audience just waiting to be robbed (aside from ageing women and the cosmetics industry that is), it's parents. The price of baby apparel is frightening. Some of my friends and I have a system of swapping things as and when we need them which has served us very well and saved a bunch of cash.

I always advise new parents not to buy a pram (you use it for the first 3 or so months only) - borrow rather, or get one of those contraptions that starts off as a pram and then converts into a pushchair. Although in my experience it's rare that these doubling up things are ever a great success at doing both things really well, not unlike the shampoo&conditioner trend of the 80s. Also, whenever buying anything, ask what it comes with and what's included. So many of these things, despite the enormous cost, don't include basic stuff, requiring you to spend more to get the 'extras.' A bit like the iPad and the stand, or never mind that, a case. God, don't get me started on laptops not coming with cases as standard, or digital cameras for that matter. Itemisation is definitely one of the devil, I mean, marketing world's most profitable inventions.

Last night I took a stroll to the little Tesco's on our high street and walked past an exotically attractive woman handing out belly dancing class pamphlets. She gave one to me, and I looked at her and said, 'Well, I've certainly got the belly." Her eyes fell downwards onto my bump, and her face spread into a smile, "Oh maybe for after," she said. I think I might look into that at some point. I mean, I've always been someone who has a 'tummy' so why not put it to good use? Display it, and jiggle it about, instead of trying and failing to get rid of it, As you can see, rationalisations ahead of losing the post baby weight are already in progress.

So the big UK elections tomorrow. And yes, I, cynical me, am going to vote. For years I'm avoided doing so because my feelings on politics have always been that the candidates are all as bad as each other - just in varying degrees. But then something happened, or rather, someone happened, that being Barack Obama and the US elections and for the first time I thought, 'Here's someone that's really different and will (at least try) and make a real difference.' It changed how I view politics. Now, although I still think we are forced to pick the best of a bad bunch in these UK elections, I think rather have that, then have the worst of a bad bunch be voted in.

And on a parting note, I leave you with this ahead of making your vote tomorrow: Forget public service cuts, if the Tories get voted in, Phil Collins may well return to Britain. Could you really live with yourself if that happened?

Just a thought.

Oh baby baby

2010-04-20T17:00:00.003+01:00

So I'm on the last stretch of my pregnancy, the operative word here being stretch. In fact, I don't think there's enough skin left on my belly to do any further stretching, my backside on the other hand is doing just fine in this department.

It's a miracle how we manage to carry these little people inside of us, and just when you think there is no more space, you get even bigger. Then there's the waddling, sore back, aching joints at 3am when you really really need your sleep what with a toddler to see to at 7am. And 24/7 exhaustion accompanied by dark circles under the eyes, that not even industrial-strength concealer can conceal.

We had a lovely long weekend in Disneyland Paris with our daughter recently. A sort of last fling for the three of us before her position as Number Uno gets usurped for ever, and we are grounded for a few months. She had absolutely no concept of who Mickey Mouse was and what any of that Disney malarkey was about. However irrespective of what the character was, chipmunk, mouse, etc, it was as though a bunch of giant soft toys had come to life. For some, especially those on acid, a nightmarish scenario, but for our almost 2.5 year-old animal mad toddler, heavenly.

Then there were the rides, the copious amounts of diabetes-inducing candy on sale, and of course the merchandising. Alas, our daughter became au fait with the expression, 'I want to go to the shop,' and we came home with a toy Pluto, an acid green 'Frog Princess' dress and feathered tiara to match, and a toy white cat which she (strangely) named Tito. Indeed, Tito the good time communist cat - appropriate naming coming from a pint-sized dictator.

No more travel for me now, not until our anticipated little one is a few months old. I have trouble getting off of the sofa, let alone an aeroplane or walking around sight seeing. It's a strange feeling when you are waddling down the street and suddenly experience this seismic shift in your belly - not unlike the scene in Alien, although without the teeth, and bursting out of your stomach and killing people thing, thank god. Plus lots of stabbing cervical pains/sensations which halt you mid step, requiring a few deep breaths to get your bearings back. People on the street have looked at me as if wondering if all their E.R rerun watching may come in handy.

I've noticed a pattern in the stages of both my pregnancies when it comes to personal appearance. It starts off with me being super excited and wearing pregnancy clothes even when I don't need them. Then starting to need them and buying far too many, a lot of which look great on the (tall thin ) model in the catalogue or celebrity (damn you Heidi Klum, damn you!) , but stupid on me. Here's a tip - if you are short and squat, don't go for loud Pucciesque prints. Ditto on leggings.

Then I splurge on expensive cosmetics and makeup as compensation for feeling depressed about my massive weight gain, and to detract from the stupid Pucci prints. And then there's the end bit where I am just so happy to have three remaining items that still fit me that I live in those same clothes. Combined with the discomfort I spoke about in the first paragraph and there's not too much hair blow drying and makeup application going on either. My husband comes home to someone resembling Fester Adams in sweats, albeit with (bad) hair, and shorter.

Julia remains exceedingly excited about the arrival of her little brother. There is a lot of talk about milk drinking, visiting said brother and me at the hospital, and imitating a baby crying. I've been honest with her and told her she isn't going to get an instant 'playmate,' but someone who will need to be fed often, will (hopefully) sleep a lot, cry a lot, and soil nappies. I have however assured her, her baby brother will most likely enjoy being read to, cuddled (gently!), and given bottles of milk. She seems happy with that.

On the subject of bottles of milk a recent piece in the Daily Mail about a local celeb that had required a C-section and had difficulties nursing, had what I thought was an unfairly negative reaction in the form of numerous comments. The usual rubbish by people who have no medical training and a lot of whom, I hate to say, were men.

Having spoken to my consultant, who is a woman and in her late 60's (i.e she's been around the block and has the same equipment), there are a few reasons why a woman may require a planned C-section. It is not, as those opinionated eejits would have you think, only for extreme life-threatening medical emergencies on the spot.

In my case for example, I have something dodgy going on with my pelvis which along with a baby that never descended at all, not even an inch, led to a planned C-section two days ahead of my due date. Two other family members had the same issue and as it went undiagnosed in their cases, landed up having to have emergency C-sections after difficult and traumatic prolonged labour and attempts at natural birth.

Then there's the nursing thing and the usual barrage of comments that women these days just don't try hard enough etc. While I'm sure there are women who choose to bottle feed from the onset, which btw I think they are entitled do, there are also those of us who give it the good ol college try and once again thanks to our physiology, aren't able to continue. I'm sure there are numerous articles on the makeup of the breast and how complications in this area can arise, but hey, why bother with that when you can judge someone from a totally ill informed perspective?

Oh and then there's the whole thing about how women should forgo pain relief during labour, because it's more natural. Yes, passing a kidney stone is natural too, I'm sure, but when my father was taken to hospital on all fours screaming in pain, strangely it wasn't suggested to him that he forgo any pain relief.

It's all down to individual choices, which I just wish people would respect. Go natural, push that baby out without any pain relief, fantastic. Decide you want to pay extra and have your baby via C-section because the idea of natural birth terrifies the hell out of you, great. Who cares, as long as both mummy and baby come out of it safely? Recently I read how a teenage child bride in the Middle East had died after three days of difficult labour. So even the 'natural' method is not without risks, again down to physiology and unexpected complications.

I think at this point, with four weeks to go, I should probably avoid reading the Daily Mail altogether. This is a publication after all that insists on using the word 'Chaos' in at least one of its daily headlines. But whether it's down to pregnancy hormones and growing chronic discomfort, or the fact that I'm just a sad old cow who likes the occasional fight, I think I quite enjoy venting spleen in those comments facilities. There I've said it.

And so and so

2010-02-17T20:39:00.008Z

I'm in that final stage of my pregnancy where you become a complete bitch, or at least, where I have become a complete bitch. I don't want to lump all third trimester women into the same category because there are some, admittedly annoying ones, who are glowing and floating about in their size 6 skinny pregnancy jeans all happy and chirpy. So maybe I should just speak for myself and say that most of the time I am fairly annoyed, sweating the small stuff (something I try very hard not to do usually), and definitely not wearing any skinny jeans. In fact I'll go further and say I resemble a hippo - front and back.

The thing about hormones, and women that have suffered from PMS will know what I'm talking about, is that it feels as though your patience and tolerance levels are chronically worn to a thread. You don't want to be like that, but it's very difficult to control and you find yourself experiencing rage-like feelings over something like a coffee machine that doesn't work, have fantasies about destroying the dishwasher with a hammer because it won't stop beeping, or, in my case, extreme anger at my cleaner that has screwed up yet another one of my items of clothing. Made worse by the fact that due to my earlier hippo reference, I have about 5 items of clothing in my wardrobe that actually fit me right now. This jumper being one of them. There's also not a hell of a lot of decent pregnancy kit available so when you find a good item you value it. Again, this jumper being one of them.

OK, so I probably shouldn't have said to her: 'See that jumper over there in the plants? I threw it there in a fit of rage when I noticed that it no longer fits me. In fact, it's completely ruined,' accompanied by clenched fists at my side and bulging eyes. The woman must think I am barking mad. She's also not had children so she may not get the 'very pregnant so must be going through the nuts phase' thing either. Not an excuse I know, but one I'd hope would afford me some tiny glimmer of understanding.

Anyway...

Morocco - yes, Morocco, we just got back from there. A north African country bursting at the seems with hard sales people, not so charming snake charmers, lots of stray emaciated animals, and also some of the nicest people I've met. A beautiful country in many ways, and also very poor. I found it hard to make up my mind about whether or not I liked the place because I found, probably unsurprisingly, my feelings on this shifting from day to day.

I suppose animal welfare in any very poor country is not exactly going to be priority. But it doesn't make seeing something like a dog so severely emaciated and ill, its back legs struggling to support it, having little option but to void its bowels in the middle of a busy traffic-ridden street because it simply cannot help itself, despite the risk of being run over. Or stray cats by the dozen in every nook and cranny, or donkeys, small depressed-looking creatures, over-laden with carts filled to the brim with this and that. Animal lovers would find this a hard place to be in, there is no doubt.

Then there's the hard sell aspect. I am not averse to a bit of bargaining, I've certainly done it here in London at one of those carpet places which have had a 'closing down sale' sign outside for the past 10 years. But what I find extremely difficult in Morocco is the absurdity of the process. For example, an item that is valued at around say 10 quid, would, upon request, be stated as 100 quid. I kid you not. You know it's way too much, he knows it's way too much, but it's part of the ritualistic sales dance that you start with a stupidly high price and then find some sort of middle ground. You then offer something like 5 quid, he laughs in your face and says be serious, and you say OK 10, then he says, how about 60, and you say,15 ,and and and. And eventually you land up paying something like 25 quid for it. If you are really good you walk away and the guy runs after you and you get it for 12 quid.

Less brazen folk, especially in such a poor country, find this incredibly tough, but as the owners of our riad (house-like hotel) told us, the guy is not going to sell it to you for a price that he is not happy with. Albeit he may only make a profit of 5 quid as opposed to the 25 he wanted, but he will still be making a profit. And the mortally offended look they affect? Apparently also part of the sales spiel. But also, look at the item, decide for yourself what you feel it is worth and what you are happy paying, and go from there. Don't worry about how much he is making on top, and don't haggle for the hell of it, especially on cheaper things.

You get the hang of it eventually, but most people get ripped off on their first excursion out into the Souk and later find said items for a fraction of the price somewhere else. It's all part of the 'Welcome to Morocco' initiation ceremony.

Another thing I found difficult, is the culture people have of touching your child without asking your permission. In this day and age of swine flu, active TB, generic stranger bad hygiene etc, you don't want people grabbing or kissing your toddler or babies hands (which small children have a habit of putting in their mouths all the time). While I relish a place that is so welcoming of kids, I draw a line at the man that was just scratching his scrotal area or sneezing into his hand, touching my daughter. But maybe that's just me.

What's worse is when you encounter the hard sale guy who also happens to be a child hand toucher. We ran into one such person in the main square in Marrakech. We went to take a look at the snake charmers because Julia (our two year old) is animal crazy. Now neither Roberto or I are averse to spending a bit of cash for an experience, and were more than happy to hand out a bit for a picture or for watching something. But this guy didn't even wait for us to approach and enquire. Before we knew it he was right down at Julia's pushchair level forcing a green snake at her telling her to 'Touch it! Touch it!'

It became an infuriating point of principle with me and I said, 'No, I don't want her to touch it.' He replied that it wasn't venomous and then back to Julia, 'Touch it touch it.' And I said, 'That's not the point. She is my daughter and I say no, so it's no. I am the parent.' Again he ignored me and that's when we got angry and hot footed out of there. Now had the guy been sensible he would have apologised and I would have said, 'That's OK, we just want to watch your colleague over there do the snake charming thing and we'll give you some money toward it.' Or hung back to find out what it is we wanted in the first place.

So no sale for him, me steaming mad, and Julia now upset and crying because of the heated exchange. Perhaps I'm overlooking the desperation a lot of these people have to make a living, and at the same time I defend my position to ensure my child's safety.

Oh yes, and then there's the language thing. Morocco is a French/Arabic speaking country. Most people in Marrakech spoke at least a bit of English, what with all the tourists to rip off, I mean, sell to. We had quite a bit of difficulty at our resort near El Jadida because a lot of the support staff (waiters, house keeping, room service etc) did not, despite the hotel website being both in French and English.

Room service orders were often a case of room service roulette - never quite knowing what one was going to get, despite using Google Translate and a lot of bad charade-type mining to explain orders. Knowing a few words like, 'Please', 'thank you', and 'if you touch my child with that effing snake I will kick the shit out of you', aside, you really have to speak it properly to communicate the nuances. For e.g. we found it incredibly difficult to get a warm glass of milk as opposed to a hot one for Julia. The word in French for hot is chaud, for warm it also appears to be chaud, adding 'pour baby' made little difference. Likewise it took us three days and the receipt of some interesting items to finally find someone who understood and brought us some washing up liquid for Julia's drinking cups. But again, that's most likely sweating the small stuff, and as my mother would rightly point out, 'Be glad you had a glass of milk in the first place, what with all those poor starving animals about.'

For eight of the ten days of our holiday we had based ourselves near El Jadida at a beach resort. Unfortunately the weather was bad, not bad compared to the Hades-inspired stuff we were having back in the UK, but not exactly bikini-wearing Pina Colada drinking hot either. Windy, most days highs of about 17 degrees Celsius, and often overcast. Perhaps that's a February thing or a global warming thing. But due to my advancing pregnancy it was the only time left for travel.

Morocco is quite beautiful in a busy crazy sort of way, and the countryside, or at least the bit between El Jadida (near Casablanca) and Marrakech, is beautifully green. A middle-aged American couple we met had done a lot of touring around Morocco, including travelling to the dessert and having a bourgeois (mobile toilets, full-kitted out tents) Sherpa(esque) camping experience which they said was great fun. They were loving it. The food can be very good, the sights were colourful, and there's certainly fun to be had. I'm also (usually when not pregnant) the sort of person who loves doing the whole camel riding thing, excursions, strange experiences etc. So maybe next time.

I'd like to think we made the most of it, and also staying at a place which had a baby club allowed Julia to have a nursery-type introductory experience and Roberto and I to get an hour here and there to chill out. Also, just time to relax and spend time together before number two comes along and the sleepless nights, sore leaky breasts, and arguments about who has had 8 minutes more sleep arise. Or as the Hallmark co would like us to believe, 'Our bouncy bundle of joy arrives courtesy of the stork.'

Pregnancy (again), Christmas, birthdays and botox

2009-12-13T09:36:00.003Z

I've done all of my Christmas shopping, barring a couple of things that actually require me to get off my fat backside and venture into the heaving throngs of Central London. Something I've been putting off but is looming. For the record, Boots use way too much packaging. One set of items were in a box so enormous that I asked the delivery person if he hadn't made a mistake, because I had certainly not ordered something that large. Turns out if was mine, containing two small items, the rest full of brown paper bunting to make up for the enormous amount of room in what could have housed an American-style washing machine,

The Internet is great - it's how I do most things these days. There's always the annoying business of actually having to wait for the stuff and ensure you are home to receive it, but at this time of year this seems a small price to pay compared to getting bashed around by people who haven't yet noticed my enormous belly.

Saying all of this, I hate the entitled pregnant woman or person with the pushchair who expects the seas to part in her wake. I don't want to be one of those, so I often wait for people to go in front of me, and act very surprised when someone holds a door open for me. "Who me? Why thank you kind sir," my ever-so grateful expression conveys. I'd probably chuck this Pollyanna act were I to have a long tube journey every day and some able-bodied person sitting in a disabled seat was pretending not to notice me.

This debate rages still. I appreciate that people wait for a seat and everyone feels entitled to one, pregnant or not. But pregnant or not, I've also always considered those disabled/old people/children seats as lucky temporary respite before someone who fits into one of those categories comes along, at which point it is my duty to jump up and offer it to them. I just couldn't sit there while some person with a bad leg or enormous pregnant belly stood nearby. It would make the comfort of sitting pale in comparison to the burning guilt.

On the subject of being pregnant (is there any other for me right now?) I loathe those sloganned crappy T-shirts that say stuff like, 'Kick me baby one more time,' or 'Baby on board,' or 'Funky Mama.' Maybe these are aimed at very young enthusiastic mothers-to-be who are oblivious to the stretchmarks and gravitational pull that is about to befall their young elasticated bodies.

I don't feel like a Funky bloody mama. I feel enormous, occasionally still a bit nauseous, and my body is doing things that are foreign and rather revolting. There are women out there who claim to love being pregnant. I like to believe that these women are either deluded or lying. For me there is no great pleasure in the physical aspect of pregnancy, other than the knowledge that at the end of this rather strange journey I will get to meet the next addition to our little family.

With my first pregnancy I showed properly (as in got a visible bump) at about 4.5 months and only started finding sleeping on my back uncomfortable well into my second trimester and most certainly in my third. With this one I showed already at around 6 weeks and have had difficulty sleeping on my back from the start. My doctor tells me that a lot of this is down to my stomach muscles being knackered from the first pregnancy. See, that's another thing those first time T-shirt-wearing enthusiasts have got to look forward to.

The good thing about subsequent pregnancies is that you don't have to sit through the whole NCT class thing again. Personally I think anyone that tells me I should think twice about having serious pain relief when I pass the equivalent of a watermelon through my vaginal passage is to be viewed with some suspicion. The key word for me, and I believe what should be for every women in this situation, is choice.

These classes strongly suggest you prepare a birth plan ahead of time, and for the first-time mothers, having never given birth before, who honestly knows what they are going to be capable of in terms of such pain endurance? I say, yay if you can push that bugger out without it, but what a relief to know that it's there if I want or need it.

Anyway, bygones. Don't get me started on the whole breast is best thing. Yes yes I know, it's wonderful and great if you can nurse, but again, for women that cannot due to whatever reason, mostly physiological issues, it would be nice to be able to give your baby formula and enjoy those early weeks without the tremendous guilt that you are in some way a bad mother. Why is it that people have to have such absolute and rigid thinking on such matters when our bodies, and indeed life itself, are anything but simple?

Julia had a wonderful 2nd birthday party this past weekend. She had some idea that it was a party in her honour and beforehand there was a lot of talk of cake, balloons , and presents. Nice to have those kinds of concerns, as opposed to say, worrying about what is a good age to book in for your introductory session of botox, or whether or not you qualify for a concession ticket at the zoo.

Christmas is also way more exciting for me personally now that I have a little person. I've always enjoyed it, but at some point it becomes something you do, and you kind of go through the motions. At least this has been my experience. With Julia it's like being a kid again - decorating the tree, choosing stocking fillers, trying to remember what I liked to receive (and almost never got) when I was a kid. And having to remind myself that Tinkerbell makeup, the entire 'New You' collection, and my mother's velvet high heels, are probably not suitable gifts for a two-year-old.

It's pregnancy Jim, but not as we know it

2009-11-25T18:56:00.008Z

On a recent return trip from Berlin I noticed an exhausted and exasperated-looking woman try and maintain some sort of hold on her three small children who were running riot, while also trying to keep an eye out for their bags and extricate said bags off of the luggage belt. She looked like she was either going to have a nervous breakdown or throttle someone, or both. I thanked my lucky stars that I only have one child, who despite a rather calm and patient disposition (well for an almost-two year old that is), can also do her fare share of running riot in inopportune places and at inopportune times.

And then I remembered, 'Oh shit, I'm pregnant.' Our 'tuck one under your arm and you're off' (as my grandmother was fond of saying) life is about to irrevocably change, well, at least from May of next year, if all goes well. And then I'll be that woman looking like a mad person trying to contain her offspring.

I'm not a big family sort of person. I think after this next one that's it for me. I've never had fantasies of a Walton-type brood. Whether it's the product of being one of four, or simply knowing my limits in the patience stakes I don't know. Even having another child was, and I must confess this, primarily a consideration for the sake of Julia having a sibling. Having spoken to some friends who were only children I was continually met with the adage, 'not just an only child but a lonely child.'

I am very excited and looking forward to having another baby. Despite my intellectual feelings my instinctive maternal ones had me broody on quite a few occasions since Julia turned about a year old. But, and I think this is certainly a risk, the older your only child gets, the more of a groove you get into. You get to know each other as people, you get into a routine, you've got your life more or less back (and your boobs), and as a family you've kind of got things figured. So the prospect of throwing ourselves, and Julia now, back into the chaos that was those early weeks and months of bringing home a newborn does terrify me. I'd be lying if I said it didn't.

Also, will the children get on? I get irritated when people wax lyrical with fantasies of their unborn children 'playing together' to a Julie Andrews soundtrack. As one of four I can strongly attest to the reality that from day one children have personalities and these can and often do clash, and kids don't always play together. You can land up with children so different to one another that your peaceful home becomes a war zone. It's an extreme scenario to be sure, but it's also a possibility. In my case differences in ages often meant that my siblings had little interest in playing with me (the youngest), once we weren't very little any longer, and I relied heavily on friends for company.

Still, I'd like to be one of those irritating parents-to-be and have that fantasy that my children will be best friends, look out for each other always, be close as adults (as my siblings and I are), and bitch about their father and me behind our backs. Why not?

A friend of mine recently emailed me saying, 'I know you used to have a blog,' which scared me. It shows how long it's been since I've updated this. My excuse, a valid one I feel, is that I've had horrendous morning sickness.

I had it with Julia and alas I had it again this time round. It started at around week 6 with certain smells becoming intolerable, followed a few days later by these smells making me feel sick. Followed by these smells (and many others fast being added to the list) actually making me throw up. To a few days after that, throwing up for no good reason at all.

Smells could be things like Flash cleaning spray, or one of those thingies you stick in the loo so it cleans it when you flush, or a particular food cooking, or my ultimate nemesis, opening the door to the dishwasher that contains an unwashed load from the night before. Why they call it morning sickness is a mystery, because as any woman that has had had to endure this will tell you, it's 24-7 - morning, noon and night. Nausea and or throwing up. I could go into detail here but I'll spare you.

With Julia I actually lost weight in my first trimester (three months). In this pregnancy if I ate, preferably sugary fattening pastries and breaded-type stuff, every two to three hours, I managed to stave off the severe nausea and just have the mild nausea. The result is that I've put on a stone in three months. Yep, if ever you wanted to know what 3-4 Paul almond croissants a day will do to your waistline, well, now you know.

Then there's the fatigue - not just fatigue, but narcolepsy. Usually an uber attentive (read: paranoid) mother, I found myself nodding off in a chair in an upright position while reading to Julia who was on my lap. So much for never letting your toddler out of your sight. Does being in the same room with your eyes closed count I wonder?

I shouldn't complain because every time I feel ill (which still happens now from time to time) or throw up (ditto) it's a sign of a continued pregnancy, which I am enormously grateful for.

Having passed the three month mark, we've told Julia we are expecting and she is fast becoming fond of telling just about anyone (today the passports clerk at Heathrow) that "Mummy has a baby 'on her tummy'.'" There are also many comments about my fast expanding stomach and breasts, most recently, "Mummy has cake in her boobies." I imagine having seen me wolf down that plethora of pastries from Paul, she's figured it had to have gone somewhere. I guess I should be grateful she hasn't noticed the size of my backside yet.

Forty and da mummy

2009-09-02T12:43:00.006+01:00

The title of this post has nothing to do with the inevitable approaching crisis ahead of turning 40 that awaits me, fortunately I have a few years to go yet. Rather it's what Julia called our most recent holiday destination, Forte dei Marmi, in Italy.

I had heard it was an über posh part of the Italian Riviera, and so I took great pains in packing what I imagined an Italian model turned millionaire's wife might wear so that I might blend in. Only think shorter, fatter, and a mixture of Next and M&S as opposed to Dolce & Gabbana or Roberto Cavalli.

There is something about places like Monaco and the like that have a way of awakening certain insecurities in me. Not a lot I can do about the reality that genetically speaking I was never going to be tall and built like a racehorse. Then there's the fact that although I try and make an effort with my appearance, I just cannot keep up with the perfectly groomed thing 24-7. I think you need a lot of time, money, and staff on hand so you can keep those French manicured acrylic nails from chipping, and don't ever have to let those tight white jeans from Joseph get tomato-sauced little hands all over them. It's taken a lot of therapy to get to this point, but I think, finally, I've just about made peace with it.

I was pleasantly surprised to discover that although Forte dei Marmi is indeed full of shops like Dolce & Gabbana, Prada (that bastion of civilisation) and the like, it's also got a good mixture of informal restaurants, as well as people and families who don't all look as though they've stepped out of Italian Vogue. Although, admittedly, there are certainly still plenty of them that look as though they do. What I will say is that Italian women, certainly from around there, age very well. There's none of this letting themselves go to seed because they are of a certain age. Women from 60 and over were still beautifully dressed, attractive, and well put together and it was a good reminder that just because you get older, it doesn't mean that you have to fade into the background.

The Italians adore children, and Forte dei Marmi had a very family oriented feel, although don't let those 'screaming brat' phobes among you avoid going there on vacation because it's a lovely place. But yes, the eateries, regardless of how smart they were, welcomed children. So you're unlikely to get disapproving looks from the staff or patrons if you arrive at 9pm for dinner with your toddler. Something which the Italians appeared to enjoy doing, and something which Julia found very strange. A Gina Ford baby, she's never really been taken out at night, and is usually fast asleep in her little bed at 7pm every evening. On a few occasions this holiday, she'd look around in amazement, point and exclaim, "Night time! Stars! Moon!"

Everyone rides bicycles, young and old. I have never seen anything like it in Europe, outside of Amsterdam, but then I've probably not seen as much of Europe as I'd like to think. But yes, lots of people on bicycles, even in cocktail dresses, en route to dinners, clubs etc. Mostly cycling while talking on mobile phones and occasionally some cigarette smoking thrown in too, for good measure.

There is this fantastic central bit in the town which has a little funfare which operates every evening. You can drive these little cars around with your children, or even drive your own miniature horse-drawn carriage. There are also tea-cup rides, pony rides, dodgems, a mini games arcade etc. I think for kids under 13 and those adults who care to admit it, it's heaven.

Some of the negatives about Forte dei Marmi is that taxis are extortionately expensive. To contextualise we got back to Victoria station and caught a taxi which dropped Roberto off at work in W1 and then took me back here to NW3, and it cost around 26 pounds and I thought what a bargain. A trip of that distance and time would cost us around 70 pounds in FdM, standard. The other thing, which wasn't a negative for us, but may be for some people, is that there didn't appear to be any on the beach hotels. The beach is separated from the houses and hotels by a two-way main street, and split into beach clubs, which hotels have affiliations with. So in our case each morning after breakfast we'd grab some towels, put Julia in her buggy, and then walk the five minutes or so to our beach club.

There are also a gazillion people wandering around selling fake designer handbags, and watches, sunglasses, dresses and hats. A bit of a pain in the backside to be disturbed every 10 minutes or so, and so excessive that even Julia began to say, 'No grazie' when she saw them approach. Alternatively there were plenty of Thai women walking around offering massages and both Roberto and I got a very good reflexology one.

The beach clubs are very well organised, but I imagine in season get fully booked, so it may be worth reserving your spot when you make a hotel booking as I don't think that a reservation at the hotel immediately ensures you a reservation at a beach club. Our spot afforded us a canopied bit so that Julia could play in the sand and we could read without incurring third degree burns from the hot sun, plus a couple of loungers and chairs. A restaurant close by for lunch and a place to buy water and drinks. Perfect really.

A couple of memorable moments from our holiday included:
A much older permanently scowling bear-like Russian man behind us at the beach club taking full-frontal topless photos of his much-younger attractive girlfriend as she got a back massage from a itinerant Thai masseuse. Roberto, who was having lunch with me at the time, was in full tilt to get a good view. For academic purposes naturally.

A restaurant owner in Pisa happily telling us that the unborn bump on his very pregnant chain-smoking wife was also to be called Guilia.

The frighteningly loud and excessively ostentatious hour-long fireworks display that initially led us to think that Basque separatists had relocated and decided to include the Italian Riviera on their shit list.

Julia spontaneously bursting into a very loud and somewhat off key rendition of 'Twinkle Twinkle little star' in the Duomo in Pisa. Also, exclaiming, 'Amazing church!' and 'Amazing windows' pointing to the many beautiful stained glass windows in the cathedral.

I liked this part of the world enormously. It's close to Pisa, and that leaning tower really is worth seeing, trust me. Plus the Duomo, which, I imagine, much like many cathedrals and churches in Europe was built at enormous expense while the masses faced abject poverty and starvation, is, well, remarkably beautiful. And then there's Luca, and of course Florence - all train-rides away. We're already planning on going back again next year. Lets hope the strength of the pound versus the Euro improves, what with all those pony rides and gelati's to pay for.

Endings

2009-08-07T11:31:00.006+01:00

So I fired my cleaner today. Actually, fired is the wrong word. OK, so maybe I did fire her and I'm just trying to make myself feel better about things.

The thing is (and you know there's a massive guilt avoidance rationalisation when someone starts a sentence with the words, 'the thing is') she didn't speak very much English. Not very much at all. Which doesn't make me prejudice, because I don't travel to countries and then throw a hissy fit because the god damn locals aren't sophisticated enough to understand me. Nor do I make the very dangerous and ignorant assumption that not speaking English is equal to a lack of intelligence. Rather it was a case of us just not understanding each other, which on a day to day working basis leaves room for all sorts of misunderstandings, irritations, and conflict.

There are those of you who would question just how complicated communication needs to be when someone is doing something as simple as cleaning your house. But then you're probably not very anal and particular about how you like your house cleaned, which, unfortunately, I am. The product of growing up with a mother who was clean obsessed and living in a house where inviting friends round was discouraged because of the inevitable mess that would lead to. Don't get me started on the incredibly uncomfortable wooden ball and claw lounge furniture - the arms of which we were strictly forbidden to sit on. Although that was more my dad than my mum. Why anyone would choose furniture like that with small children is beyond me, but I guess that's also a generational thing.

I'm a lot more relaxed about our home and probably a lot more tolerant of mess. But there's a big distinction between messiness and a place being dirty. I cannot abide dirt. I have the same reaction to it as some people have upon seeing rats, spiders, or Torries.

Anyway, countless attempted conversations with my cleaner went over her head. Like trying to explain that if you cannot make it in to work or if you are running late for whatever reason, it is courteous to do the texting or calling, rather than have your employee text or call you to find out where you are an hour after you are meant to arrive. Or attempting to communicate that leaving 40 minutes early, while still taking the full hourly wage is impolite. Or that dumping sopping wet towels in with the rest of the laundry in a woven basket is ill advised.

When I managed to find a Babelfish equivalent and asked my cleaner, in Lithuanian, to please stop doing this, what with the laundry basket visibly beginning to rot and all, she smiled a great big smile and said, 'Ahhh, thank you, thank you,' delighted that'd I'd taken the trouble to translate for her. And equally, and strangely, appeared happy and relieved as though I'd explained and she'd finally understood something complex like the theory of relativity. Or perhaps she was just overjoyed to have an end to my painful weekly charade spiel of pulling a bad face and pointing to the unfortunate-looking laundry basket.

Today I couldn't even honour the end of our working relationship as I'd like because once again she stared at me with a kindly blank expression while I prattled on about being grateful for all her work, hoping she would find something soon (I gave her a months' wages in lieu), and being sad to see her go.

We are settling in to the new house and also dealing with a few teething issues. A house as technically advanced as this one (it pretty much runs on a central computer system - lights, heating, shutters etc), is bound to get a bit temperamental from time to time. Think about how often you have to call IT at work, and that gives you some idea. Last night we also had a lot of leaking from the glass roof and skylights, although admittedly, that was some pretty intense rain. Plus there's a mouse, although he has been a bit scarce lately. I'm hoping and praying to god he didn't eat any of the poison that the handyman laid out in a trap and just disappears of his own volition, because having met him he is a very sweet and handsome little fellow with big ears and a small brown face. Probably a field mouse. The idea of him lying under a floorboard somewhere hemorrhaging to death fills me with horror and guilt.

An onwards into August. I find it hard to believe that we are coming to the end of summer. The shoe shops, the windows of which I walk past slowly and salivatingly peruse like a dirty old man, are beginning to stock winter boots already. One of these days it's going to be time to retire my Crocks for the year. A sad day indeed.

On a final note, I went along to see Coco before Chanel last night and it was lovely. Visually beautiful and Audrey Tautou was wonderful as Coco. Benoit Poelvoorde as Etienne Balsan was superb too, and I reckon there's an Oscar tip in it for both of them. It has subtitles, for those of you who find such a thing an irritation, but don't let that stop you. 5 stars from me and also another reminder that I need to chuck those Crocks. I mean, what would Coco say?

George Michael, moving, and due dates

2009-07-29T10:59:00.008+01:00

So we're all moved in to the new place. The move, as in packing up the house and moving it between A and B, went as smoothly as these things go. I can say from first hand experience that even if you use a high-end moving company you still encounter things like wet bath toys and cloths in boxes, despite expressly saying to the packers 'If stuff is wet don't pack it.' Or discovering your soap dish, with the wet sliver of soap still in it, all wrapped up in a piece of paper. The paper, soap, and dish now merged into one dried inseparable mess. Or heavy items placed on top of rolls of wrapping paper effectively squashing the whole roll in half so it's now unusable. Or finding your missing shoes all shoved one on top of the other inside another box with completely unrelated stuff.

But I'm just nit picking and all in all it was an OK experience (as opposed to a nightmarish one that these things usually are), and the movers were careful with our furniture and everything made it in once piece. They also had an excellent moving manager, a man in his late fifties, 'a born and bred Clerkenwell cockney', who I enjoyed talking to over the three days they packed up our house. He had opinions on everything, and appeared to have given a variety of random topics a great deal of thought.

On George Michael, he poignantly noted, "I mean, that one could ave had any woman e wanted. I remember pictures of im with the ladies anging off his arms. Could ave ad e's pick. But no, e's got to go and be stupid and choose that gay business. And for what? Too much choice and time on e's ands that's what it is. They get bored you see."

Asked if he used the Internet much he replied, "Internet? Oose got time for that? We're common you see, we don't use none of that Internet. I work all day, get ome. It's a nice piece of pork and some tatoes, a bit of TV, an bed."

An exchange between him and one of his staff went as follows:
Mover: 'Ow ow, my hand,' (while trying to get a sofa down a flight of stairs and evidently getting said hand squished between the sofa and the wall)
John: "Never you mind your and, just make sure you don't damage that sofa."

The new house is, and I have to give credit to Roberto for this, quite lovely. I had a lot of reservations about how it was going to work for us, with a toddler and all, but so far it's revealed itself to be a remarkably well thought-out family home, but in a very modern setting. I've asked Julia on a few occasions if she likes it and she keeps saying, 'No.' I then follow that by asking her if she likes chocolate, and she immediately says, 'No,' and then gets an expression on her face which reads, 'I've just been had.'

Our two top choices for nursery have no spaces for next year. One of them only takes 16 children, the other's enquiry form asks for your due date, which should have alerted me to the fact that I was wasting my time applying at this late stage. I mean, a year in advance, what was I thinking right? A third place appears to have spaces, thank god, but we have to pay an application fee and then based on an assessment of Julia next year in a playgroup setting, they say yay or nay. So it's not guaranteed. I've also put her name down on the waiting lists of the other two schools, just in case.

This is one of the many things that people don't tell you before you decide to start a family - these hidden forms of worry and stress that arise, like finding the right school. A safe, nurturing, and stimulating environment that is going to have the same approach and ideas about learning that you have. Plus minus any masochistic teachers with a predilection for hitting small children with wooden rulers (don't get me started on my junior school). And without any heavy religious leaning (or any religion at all, sez Roberto).

You just want to get it right and do the best thing for your child, and having said that, I realise how much like my mother I sound. Which makes me appreciate just how much my parents must have loved and cared about me. Which feels like a nice and happy thought to sign out on.

These are what we call quality problems

2009-07-22T14:58:00.007+01:00

So we are just about to move, as in quite literally just about to move. Today the chaps came and packed up most of the house, tomorrow they'll finish, and Friday we move into our new home. It's an all man crew, and I think the 20-something-year-old chap who is sporting some impressive sleeves (that's tattoo speak for both arms covered from wrist to shoulder in ink) will be packing up my underwear drawer tomorrow. I have mixed feeling about this (him being a man that is, not the tats) but then rationalise rather him than me.

Naturally ahead of the guys arriving today, we had to have the requisite porn sweep. This is my term for pretty much anything you want to put into a box yourself rather than have the aforementioned 20-year-old stranger come across, I mean, discover. You know the sort of thing - creams and lotions for embarrassing body ailments, dodgy stuff your girlfriends gave you at your hen night (as yet unwrapped fyi), your copy of Debretts, etc.

Anyway, so most of the house is packed up. The guys left Julia's bedroom as is until tomorrow, "So the little un don't get upset." And they have a point. She's already quite disconcerted to see her home for a year pretty much in boxes. Walls bare apart from a few menacing-looking exposed nails here and there, furniture gone, and everything topsy turvy. She's been walking around from room to room saying, "Is empty."

This is only the second time we've had people pack up our place for us, and while it's a god-send and I highly recommend it, it's also a tricky business. If you do it yourself you are in a position to dig something out if you still need it. Whereas with someone else doing it stuff is packed and sealed and loaded on a van as much as two days before you actually leave your old house. As a result, for e.g., I have peppercorns all over the kitchen floor and no dustpan to deal with them. Oh yes, and I kind of sort of forgot to keep bibs back. And dish clothes, and dishwasher tablets. You're getting the idea right? Fortunately I managed to rescue the bottle opener just in time. What with those cold beers for tonight in the fridge and all.

I've gone through varying emotions about our move. I think anyone that knows me knows how much I love our current house. Built in the 30's it's my idea of the perfect family home; Light, airy, classic architecture but with a modern interior, roomy but still cosy feeling, and a great garden. Unfortunately the landlord doesn't want to sell nor did he want to reduce rent to an amount that was in line with the changed market. Almost everyone we know that rents has managed to get a reduction this year, except us. Indeed not only are we paying too much, but we were contractually obliged to meet a rent increase this coming year. So yes, it was time to move.

The new place is very different to where we live now. Very very modern, which means Roberto loves it. I'm looking forward to the benefits of the integrated family design its based on, which is really just fancy speak for a place that is big enough so a family don't drive each other nuts, but also structured in a way so that you feel connected with one another. Also it's in the heart of the village which means I can pop out to Tesco's in my pj's if need be. Naturally this will never ever happen, but I like the sound of it. It makes me feel like I'm living on the edge.

In and amongst all of this I am phoning around getting Julia's name down for nursery schools next year. One of the places has on its online enquiry form: 'Date of birth/due date:' Yes, that is for parents who want to register their unborn child. I kid you not. And what's worse is as ludicrous as I find this, I still catch myself getting swept up in it all, phoning around like a maniac and saying things like, "No no, but you don't understand. It's vitally important to us that there is some continuity between nursery and reception year. So she has to be on the list!" And breathe out.

I didn't even go to nursery school. I don't think my parents could afford it, and in those days it wasn't really considered a necessity. I think my mum prided herself on the fact that she didn't have to send me to nursery because she was a stay at home mum, like it was something parents only did because they had to work. She recently told me that as a baby she'd entertain me/keep me busy while she did chores, by parking my buggy in front of the operating washing machine. Yes, I imagine an analyst, were I to have one, would have a field day with that. Not to mention the more sarcastic among my friends.

Anyway I did find that the first year of reception or Grade 1 as we called it, was a bit more of a challenge for me than other kids, and this probably had a lot to do with not having gone to nursery. Some of these kids already knew their ABC's, and basic counting, and that it wasn't OK to bend someones finger back until it nearly broke. So clearly there was a lot more to this nursery business than just expensive child care.

Tonight we are having takeout sushi (me love sushi is pretty damn good btw) on our remaining sofa, making sure we have a change of undies and enough clothes and toys for Julia for the next 48 hours (which means a lot), and then it's all stations go. More once we've landed... .

The Hamptons

2009-06-20T02:45:00.018+01:00

Before having a child a big part of a holiday for me was having a lie-in. In fact, I'd avoid hotels that did the whole 'breakfast included' thing because I never made use of it. Neither Roberto or I are particularly ambitious sightseers either, so yes, sleeping late, having some sort of brunch somewhere in town or at the hotel, and then a bit of laziness in the afternoon before cards over drinks, followed by dinner and then bed was pretty much standard fare. Occasionally we'd set ourselves an activity so we wouldn't feel too guilty about traveling half way across the world only to eat, sleep and play cards.

With a baby or small child a holiday is a whole different ballgame, in fact I'm not even sure one can classify it as a holiday. Or perhaps it is a bit of one in that you have your partner with you so you can actually go and use the loo alone for once, without a small person trying to squeeze their hand between your generous bottom and the toilet bowl. Or have a shower without said small person yelling at the top of their lungs because you have the audacity to need two minutes to wash yourself while they are left with a pile of toys and books that you wish you'd had as a child.

And then there's the whole self catering thing which, before having a child, I reacted to much the same way a vampire's supposed to upon being splashed with holy water. Memories of my mother complaining about how it wasn't any kind of holiday if she still had to cook, clean and do laundry have stuck with me. Or perhaps it was her smoldering resentment that's lingered in my memory. Either way, I'm inclined to agree with her. Holidays are all about having someone else make your bed, and eating in restaurants, and using lots of towels that magically reappear clean , fluffy, and folded in the morning. Oh, plus all those delicious dinky complimentary bathroom toiletries.

But hotels aren't particularly practical with children. You see you need the self catering thing in order to have access to a washing machine and dryer so you can do a dozen loads of washing a day. And then there's the kitchen so you can wash stuff, sterilize stuff, make food on command, store bottles in fridges etc. Plus place for them to run riot and break stuff, rub biscuits into carpets, spill milk on etc. You're really getting the holiday vibe from all of this right?

So for our most recent holiday in the Hamptons, we rented a house that came with a maid service. We thought it would be a good compromise. But upon arrival at the house we were met with a large pile of dirty laundry (sheets, towels etc) lying in a pile by the washing machine. The upstairs beds lacking bed linen. The dishwasher full and unpacked, leading me, at first, to curse the landlord for what appeared to be a lack of dishes and cutlery in the house. Half used loo rolls in the bathrooms, and a filthy carpet in the lounge which looked as though it hadn't seen a vacuum since it's conception in Bulgaria.

When we confronted the landlord about this mess. I mean, who wants to arrive in the middle of the night at the beginning of their holiday to that right? He said, 'Yes well, um, my cleaner doesn't really like doing laundry.' Hmmm, sounds like his cleaner doesn't like doing anything much at all, except of course to take home the large sum of money he pays her. Personally I thought the guy was getting ripped off, but that's his business, and more so, bad for his business. First impressions are lasting ones, and to have your guests arrive to a dirty house is not good.

Anyway, so having seen how crap his cleaner was I didn't want her services. I think mainly because I couldn't trust myself not to tell her that I thought her work, or lack thereof, was crap. So our catered self catering thing kind of went out the window, and we did it ourselves. But Roberto is a good helper and between us we handled things. Plus the house, when clean, was actually perfectly nice, and there were some very friendly ducks in the creek at the end of the garden who rather liked the bread Julia and I fed them.

The Hamptons are a beautiful part of the world, even when it's raining, which it did, a lot. My favourite places included East Hampton (beautiful and lots of posh shops for window shopping), Sag Harbour (great little bay for the kids to play and oh so pretty), and Bridgehampton because it had the best ever vintage clothing shop. Replete with authentic items such as Victorian jackets, glass beaded evening flapper dresses (salivate), old Chanel handbags, 1920's evening purses, and on and on and on. It was like the British Museum - requiring many return visits to truly appreciate its cavernous treasures. Expensive but a must see for people who like authentic vintage and not some old shyte from Mango that some shops I've been in in London try and pass off as vintage.

The food in the Hamptons was a mixed bag and expensive, especially in East Hampton. A very good place to eat was the East Hampton Point restaurant at the East Hampton Point Marina. Highly highly recommend it. It has a stunning view of the marina, and the food was great. Do me a favour and have the lobster linguine - hmmm.

We got the impression that wealthy New Yorkers and New Jerseyites that have their second homes there begin arriving in drips and drabs ahead of the 4th of July holidays. The table next to us at dinner one evening (four silver haired stalwarts with thick New Jersey accents), started their conversation recounting their latest blood pressure readings before talking about their grandchildren. It's the kind of thing you tend to overhear when you have dinner at 5pm. To us they said, 'Oh, you must come in Joo-lie', this weather has been most unusual.' Which was a polite way of saying that it had pissed down with rain most days.

The day before leaving we drove over an hour to a petting zoo in Manorville, for Julia's benefit of course. Another thing you do on holiday with small kids is drive over an hour to places that you only spend half an hour in tops, because your child inevitably decides that actually they don't really want to be there.

It was a toss up between this petting zoo come animal rescue place and a wildlife themed park. I went for the first because I liked the idea of a place that uses its proceeds to actually help animals in need, as opposed to just acquiring them to make money. However, the animal rescue bit should have warned me that it was going to be depressing. The website boasted that they had rescued some snow monkeys and built them an enclosure thanks to money generated from donations and the income from the petting zoo. In reality that enclosure was something one might have seen in a zoo circa 1973 - all concrete floors and bars. And the animals, quite frankly, looked depressed. It made my heart sore, but it was probably a vast improvement on wherever those poor creatures had been rescued from, plus now they were getting fed and looked after.

I also had to remind myself that without adequate space, money and resources these sorts of places are never going to be Whipsnade. I'd like to contact them and a local animal food supplier in the area and see if I can get some sort of regular donation going.

On a different sort of outing, we visited Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner's house, which was literally a 5 minute drive from where we were staying in East Hampton. That was quite an experience, especially as I had seen the film (very good!) with Ed Harris as Pollock not too long ago. Pollock's studio, a converted barn in the property, still has the paint splattered floor and walls. The plot of land the house and studio is on is vast and ends at the water's edge - very beautiful and inspiring. Perhaps less inspiring is the fact that Pollock died in a car accident, thanks to his penchant for boozing before getting behind the wheel, on the very street the house is on.

I imagine there is a ton of stuff that we could have done and didn't do in this part of the world, so don't rate this as an exhaustive travel guide of any sort. But yes, very very pretty and hopefully, good weather and effective maid service permitting, we'll definitely go back.

Best Vintage clothing shop - ever. Bridgehampton (main street)

Julia and Robert meet the donkeys at the petting zoo

Jackson Pollock's studio. East Hampton

Blah blah blah

2009-06-02T11:34:00.007+01:00

So, Susan Boyle had a bit of a melt down after she lost in the final of Britain's Got Talent. I think it's safe to say that with the pressure that poor woman was under she would have had that breakdown even if she had won. Not helped by tabloid journalists lurking in the hotel she was staying at during the show and winding her up. I hope once she has rested and realised that a record deal is far more lucrative than performing a one-off for the Queen, she will feel a bit better about things.

For those of you elsewhere, we are having absolutely gorgeous weather here in London. Yesterday it reached 27 degrees Celsius. In fact at times it was too hot and one longed for a cool breeze. Definitely pedicure season.

This kind of weather also brings out all the celebrity diet crap in the magazines. If I have to see another celeb-endorsed DVD in my copies of Now and Closer I'm going to scream. Why these people don't just come out and say that they exist on diet coke and fags, and in some cases other more nefarious substances, is beyond me. Makes for much more interesting reading.

There's also always the requisite two-paged spread of a celeb showing what meals she has opted for instead of what she used to eat. So there's a picture of a burger (like she ever ate burgers!) and then an arrow pointing to an anemic-looking grilled chicken breast with some sprigs of lettuce next to it.

In a few months time they will be interviewed in the same magazine saying that actually they had been starving themselves and were miserable.

I'm just moaning because my own diet is a disaster. Actually I never diet per se, because the moment I put myself on one I want all the kinds of shit that I never eat. Like peanut butter on toast, KFC, or Snickers bars and stuff like that. Also, I don't diet because I have yet to find one that I can stick to in the real world that you can adapt to in restaurants and stuff. What I do try and do, once in a blue moon, is cut out the sugar in my diet, likewise the heavy carbs, and not eat late at night. This actually works a treat and I do genuinely lose weight. I tell myself I am not dieting, just eating properly. Yeah right.

Unfortunately I am also very bad at making food for myself, and the result is that I snack instead of eating meals . And a handful of this and a handful of that is full of hidden calories blah blah blah. Anyway, I'm feeling very fat right now so I'm not too happy about it, especially as we are on our holidays soon and I don't want to scare off the fish.

I read a very interesting article about charity shops on the weekend. A well known clothing guru woman (I'm afraid I forget her name) did a makeover on one of the charity shops. I think it was an Oxfam. What she discovered is that most of the work the shop volunteers do is sorting through the crap that people leave outside their doors. And when I say crap, I mean, literally rubbish. People use charity shops as a dumping ground and amazingly something like 90 percent of that stuff is unsellable and has to be dumped.

The charity shops then have to pay for this junk to be removed and taken to a recyling place.

One bag contained a pair of trousers with the dirty knickers still in them (nice), and another black sack contained a whole lot of unusable junk plus two dead mice. Yes, people clearly hold the needy in very high regard.

So it's worth knowing (because in all fairness some people do not know this) that they are not taking your old sweater with the holes in and placing it around the shoulders of a freezing cold but oh-so-very-grateful tramp. These places are shops, and the whole point is that they try and get a few quid from your old gear from someone just like you, and then the money generated is used for charity work. So before you stick it in the Oxfam pile, ask yourself, is it in saleable nick? And knickers, dirty or otherwise, are never OK. Best chuck those into the fabric recycling pile at your local dump. I think the same goes for bras and boxers.

Addendum: I went online to the Association of Charity Shops to find out about what they take and don't take. This is what it said:

Charity shops work because they can sell items with a second life. Please check your donations are both clean and functional e.g. tears or broken zips on clothes – missing chapters in books!

You are helping a good cause AND the environment – re-use is even better than recycling.

The best way to donate is to take items directly to your local charity shop. If this isn’t possible, you could fill a charity shop collection sack, or take items to clothing banks.

If you have more specialist items, for example, electrical goods or furniture, it is best to check that the charity shop can accept these items for re-sale before donating.

If you are not sure whether your clothes can be re-sold – donate them anyway – whatever clothes a charity shop can’t sell they can send off for further re-use or recycling! (A friend of mine (see comment below) pointed out that some old stuff can be used for the purposes of mattress filling etc. I think it's worth putting that kind of thing in a seperate bag and mentioning it when handing it in).

Everyone's talking about Jordan and Peter Andre

2009-05-20T13:53:00.006+01:00

OK, well, everyone in the reality that I inhabit that is, which is what counts right? In this weeks' issue of OK Magazine, Jordan aka 'the heartbroken star' confides in the magazine about her 'shock' marriage split. Yes, she's so heartbroken and shocked she's managed to pose for an exclusive photoshoot to accompany the feature wearing 10 tons of makeup to look like she isn't wearing any. She's bare faced, sincere, and coming clean - get it?

It's good to know that despite being so distraught and cut up over the end of her marriage, she's still able to strike poses that show off a good deal of thigh and cleavage. I mean, why break with tradition? The pictures are accompanied by little blurbs to tell you what they are: Facing Page: Devastated Katie - Dress £189 Harvey Nics, Shoes £300 Gina, 5 thousand magazine deals (accompanied by flesh-bearing photo spreads) re public divorce: Millions. OK, so maybe it didn't really have that stuff about the dress and shoes.

It's sad for their children, not least of all because they will undoubtedly get dragged into future photo shoots accompanying their lingerie-clad mother spilling the beans on every last filthy detail of the state and demise of her marriage. But I don't really believe either of them are bad parents - I mean you actually have to spend time with your kids to be in a position to act as a bad parent right?

But (claws firmly retracted now) I do sincerely like Peter Andre. Call me sad, but in the various 'reality tv' pieces they have done he comes across as a genuine sort of person who isn't afraid to be emotional, and it's very clear he adores his children. As for Katie, well, who knows? The woman is about as charismatic as a piece of plaster board and appears emotionally arrested, so it's hard to tell.

There's massive speculation in Heat Magazine about whether or not the split is a publicity stunt, and OK magazine has dedicated almost an entire issue to the history of their relationship which resembles a photographic eulogy. Whatever's really happening, magazine sales are up and everyone's clearly making a buck.

And on the subject of making money, the 'Team Andre' T-shirt featured is something I macced up. Feel free to steal the idea, I'll certainly buy one. I also created it to accompany this post because I'm sick and tired of getting emails from photo agencies demanding huge sums. Haven't you people heard of fair use? Gawd.

Anne Frank's house

2009-05-11T21:54:00.009+01:00

On Sunday morning, despite approximately four hours of interrupted sleep thanks to my hotel neighbors coming in in drips and drabs from their various nocturnal activities, I woke up and decided to visit the house that Anne Frank lived in before her untimely death. In retrospect probably not an ideal excursion what with being severely sleep deprived and hungry, but given that I only had a couple of hours to spare before our flight, I felt it was a more worthy use of my time than sleeping or eating breakfast. I bet Maslow would have something to say about that.

After waiting in the queue for 30 mins (getting there early has been an advantage) I entered with a tight feeling in my chest, knowing I was setting myself up for a difficult and painful experience.

For some people I think going to the house is a thing you do when you visit Amsterdam so you can say you've 'done' it. For others it is an integral part of their culture and past, (indeed isn't it an integral part of all of our pasts?) a concrete place to visit, meditate, and remember grandparents, relatives, and friends for whom no such place exists. For others still, and perhaps a category I fit into, it is about visiting an important historical landmark and paying your respects. To remember, and by doing so, become aware, and perhaps try and gain some understanding of the spirit of humanity, both good and evil.

It is no surprise that the experience left me feeling profoundly upset. Shaken in an archetypal sort of way that is hard to explain here. It wasn't just seeing a place that these people had lived and hidden in, both in fear and hope, for such a long time. The height charts still on the wall showing the children's growth. Anne's pictures (the subject matter not that different to things that interested me at that age) cut from magazines and pasted onto her bedroom wall, to try and approximate an outside world and freedom she had no access to. The windows perpetually covered so those people never felt the sun on their face for two long years.

More so, it was a painful template, giving a concrete reality to the millions of faceless families that were systematically torn apart and murdered. Just imagine for a moment, your children and or loved ones being ripped from your arms and taken to their certain slaughter. That feeling that you instinctively experience when you imagine that - that is the feeling that accompanies you when you walk through that house and which lingers long after you have left it.

What is desperately upsetting and deeply worrying, is that this is not just the story of this one family, or of the Jews, so we can reflect, 'Yes that was a terrible terrible thing that happened to them,' and then move on with our lives. Racism, discrimination, and ethnic cleansing are alive and well and happening today. People are being slaughtered en masse as I write this, just look at Darfur. And there's the disappearing of people in Sri Lanka, again, happening right now. And and and. This is not just history then, this is humanity at its worst playing this nightmarish drama over and over again, and one wonders if it will ever end.

As a teenager I asked my grandmother, who had lived through the war in South Africa. "But didn't people know about the Jews being murdered? Why didn't anyone stop it?" "We heard stories," she said, "but what could we do?" Indeed, what are we doing from stopping it happening today? How are the people in Darfur and Sri Lanka, and countless other places were such atrocities are taking place, any different to Anne Frank and her family? What are we doing to help these people?

It was also a very sharp reminder to me of the extraordinarily fine line between casual racist, discriminatory, and bigoted remarks and opinions, and the blanket depersonalisation and objectification of people which led to the Nazi's and their sympathisers doing what they did. How, I ask myself, could you kill all those people? How could you kill children and babies? These terrible cold blooded evils, perpetuated by men and women with their own families and children sitting at home awaiting their return each day.

It is important that we face these dark thoughts, and ask these questions, so that we can remember, become aware, and in doing so keep ourselves in check and teach our children. It is also true that at some point I had to stop myself from fixating on it, and indeed since my return, keep myself from returning to those thoughts, because it is too much. You need to step out of that place from time to time, because the alternative is drowning in it. As Primo Levi said, "One single Anne Frank moves us more than the countless others who suffered just as she did but whose faces have remained in the shadows. Perhaps it is better that way; if we were capable of taking in all the suffering of all those people, we would not be able to live."

More positively, the experience was also strangely and surprisingly life affirming, not unlike surviving an accident. I came out of it acutely sensitised to my life and what fills it. It made me feel profoundly grateful for my family, for my daughter (who was showered with kisses and held a bit too tightly on my return), for Robert, for the fact that I live in a democratic society that allows me to voice these thoughts and opinions. That I can live my life without fear. That I can step outside and feel the sun on my face. That I can, god willing, see my child grow and have children of her own. That I am free. That I am free.

Jews for Jesus and intense environmental guilt

2009-05-07T19:22:00.004+01:00

There was a neatly dressed middle aged man handing out 'Jews for Jesus' pamphlets in Hampstead today. As he tried to hand me one, I wondered if he had detected my one quarter Jewish ancestry in my features, or if the Jews for Jesus don't discriminate and are trying to educate and invite all and sundry. After crossing the street and taking another look it appeared that he was in fact disseminating to pretty much anyone.

I should have taken a pamphlet, as I'm curious. I mean, there are some questions regarding the central premise there. But I was in a hurry to get home and didn't want to risk a time consuming religious discussion. The last time it happened I managed to get a Scientologist so irate with me, that even as I walked away he was shouting angrily in my wake. Who knew that Scientologists could have such tempers on them? What with their low stress levels thanks to all those Theta tests.

Today I got suckered into buying an expensive cosmetic product that I really do not need. And I'm so angry at myself. I hate those cosmetics sales people. You go there to buy one thing and before you know it they've convinced you you really really need six. That your skin, your life, and the state of the world depends on it. What makes me even more angry is that I know this, and I went there prepared to fend off any extraneous product pitches, and what happens? I come home with something to 'intensely protect my skin from the environment.' What I really need is a product that intensely protects me from evil pushy cosmetics saleswomen and my own pathetic weak-willed narcissistic self.

I try and assuage myself with the (very) remote possibility that my odd extraneous purchase is helping our failing economy - circulating cash back into the market and all. Nothing like a rationalisation to deal with the guilt, if only it worked.

And on the subject of guilt, I'm off to Amsterdam with some girlfriends tomorrow for the weekend. It has to be said that I'm not looking forward to leaving Julia for a whole weekend. She'll be with Roberto, so in hands I consider as safe as my own, but it feels like such a long time to be away from her. This evening, while I was bathing her, she said, out of the blue, something I say to her when she gets back from the park with Anna, "Mamma, Imissya". Yeah, you can imagine how that makes me feel about leaving her tomorrow. Perhaps it's not so much about her separation anxiety as it is my own.

Not sure if I can be bothered to lug a laptop with me to the land of tulips and free syringes, so I'll probably make copious mental notes, forget everything on my return thanks to a couple of late nights, and write a highly embellished account of the weekend come Monday. Ta ta.

Guilt is other people

2009-04-25T21:45:00.004+01:00

So I'm sitting in Cafe Nero last week (yes Starbucks, that's right, I'm a flippant hussy), and I overhear an exchange between a woman and her approximately two to three-year-old daughter.

The woman (for the purposes of clarity, let's call her 'Mrs Overbearing') had been having a coffee with a friend of hers. This friend was also there with her daughter who looked to be the same age as the other child. Mrs Overbearing had been constantly bickering with her little girl who was trying to clamber out of a highchair that was evidently too small for her. Eventually the friend announced that she had to leave and run some errands. After she and her little girl left, Mrs Overbearing turned to her daughter and said, "You see Emma, Becky and Ruby left because you wouldn't sit still in your highchair."

Yup, way to go lady. Lay on the passive aggressive crap and guilt tripping early. Not to mention the outright lying. I see great things for you and your daughter's relationship in the future, as well as her emotional development, left to simmer in your company, over the next 18 years.

I am off on a girls weekend trip to Amsterdam in a couple of weeks. Yup, Amsterdam, famous for its great museums, nostalgic architecture, beautiful canals, and legalised dope cafes., Actually, I don't smoke dope. What with the fact that I'm already 100% naturally paranoid and anxious, who needs any help in those departments? But yes, I'm all for choice, and having it, and Amsterdam strikes me as a democratic laid back sort of place. Even the heroin addicts are laid back there, usually in the parks I'm told.

The last time we were in Amsterdam, as in Roberto and I, we decided to do the requisite walk through the red light district, which meant he kept his head down, eyes fixed to the floor, and I walked along staring with my mouth open, trying, surreptitiously, to take photos. The muscular transvestite prostitutes looked like they could smash through those glass cubicles and break my camera and me in two, so I was a bit more careful down those particular strips.

This will be the longest I have ever been away from Julia, which will be a strange experience. But yes, probably necessary from time to time to remind yourself that you are in fact an entity unto yourself, and to have some time to just be outside of your roles as a mother and a partner.

Not sure if anyone has been watching the US Drama series, 'Damages?' I am totally hooked on that and eagerly awaiting series II. Very very good TV. I was also enjoying the American Celebrity Apprentice, for the escapist quality of course, until Donald Trump fired Khloe Kardashian, not because she was shyte on a task, but because he found out she had a DUI. I kid you not. He even said so.

It was quite shocking to watch actually, and while I have a feeling a lot of that show is staged, this felt genuinely real and was very offensive and upsetting.

And what's worse is when you see someone like Ivanka Trump, who is evidently a very intelligent successful young woman in her own right, sitting there and nodding in agreement to what her obtuse dinosaur of a father has just done when I felt sure she was thinking, like the rest of us, wtf?

While I am probably the most anti driving under the influence South African you will ever meet, I felt firing her was totally discriminatory. She'd been punished by the law for what she did, was very open and honest about the fact that she had done it, and was even raising money for people with drug and alcohol abuse problems. But all of that is completely irrelevant. The premise of the show is that people get fired for screwing up a task, and while she was by no means a stellar contestant, the annoying country singer Clint Black was overtly responsible for the failure of the task and everyone knew it.

I don't know why I bother. Bring back Project Runway with the lovely Heidi Klum any day. Oh, and some Top Chef would be nice too.

Things overheard in shops

2009-04-14T12:03:00.006+01:00

I hate packaging. The kind of stuff they wrap scissors in. The irony being that while trying to rip the indestructible cardboard and plastic encasing the scissors, you need the very pair you bought in order to get to them. Likewise, I hate how tight they make the tops on things, especially the cardboard juices that have little plastic tops that screw off. Always, while trying to open them and ripping the skin between my thumb and forefinger, I wonder how the elderly and especially those with arthritis in their fingers manage if I cannot. And indeed just the other day while in St John's Wood Tesco's, I saw a tiny old lady asking the cashier if she could open her pint of milk for her so she could have a cup of tea when she got home.

I was in Boots the other day, and a young girl, possibly 15, maybe even 13, walked in dressed very much how I imagine she thought a much older women dressed. It looked incongruous, much like me wearing my mother's massive 70's styled engagement ring when going to the British Embassy all those years ago and saying that while I wanted a 2 year working holiday visa, I was in no way planning on staying here and looking for work. I was engaged, in love, and very much planning on returning to South Africa to marry pronto, flashing the dated bling in the woman's unimpressed 'honestly do I look like an eejit?' face.

Anyway, so this young girl walked up to the counter clearly mustering all the confidence she had, and with as nonchalant tone of voice as she could manage said, "Hello, I need emergency contraception please." The man behind the counter looked at her and said she needed to talk to the pharmacist, to which she reddened and said she'd wait to do so. The delay, and then having to say the same thing to yet another person, seemed to shake her confidence.

I felt sorry for her to be in that position, and at the same time I thought it wise of her to be taking care of matters. I also had a compulsion to pull her aside and say in the nicest possible way: "Next time make sure the little shit wears a condom." You can see I am a mother to a daughter now, shamelessly biased.

I'm not sure how we are going to handle the whole sex talk thing with Julia. I've heard from friends and family that kids actually start asking questions about the subject a lot younger than one might imagine. And I myself remember being explained the facts of life rather crudely by a girl called Paige, when I was about six or seven years old. I didn't really process what it meant at the time, but it sounded disgusting and certainly not something I ever intended on participating in. Especially after looking around at the motley crew of smelly, nose-picking scabby kneed boys in my class, thank you very much.

I suspect I'll say something like: When you get to a certain age you may find your body telling you it wants to do things with boys. Ignore it and eat chocolate or go shopping. Boys themselves will tell you that you might enjoy doing these things with them, and in that case you come home and tell your father, and he will get out the shotgun and take care of them. Hopefully that will take care of matters for a while at least.

Separately, but on the subject of guns, I am overjoyed at hearing the verdict in the Phil Spector trial: Guilty. Justice has been served, a misogynistic nutter will be removed from the streets, and that poor woman can hopefully rest in peace.

Snakes, ladders, and gadgets

2009-04-08T12:08:00.004+01:00

I recently bough a packet of vitamin tablets that you take when you are trying to conceive. As in a child, as opposed to a money-making invention, for example. Although I suppose if you make your kids work as child models, you could say that you had conceived money-making inventions. But I digress, massively.

We are not actively trying to have another baby, it's just that I'm neurotic and I want to get my body ready for when we do start trying. Some books and nutritionists advise getting your body into shape three months before even starting to try. Saying that, a lot of women fall pregnant after a night of heavy drinking, and indeed continue to drink, smoke, and imbibe other interesting things without even knowing they are pregnant in those early weeks. And their children turn out perfectly fine right? Or like Amy Winehouse.

So these vitamins - the box has an image of an attractive young couple embracing and smiling smugly at the camera, as if to imply that they are intimate with each other, just in case 'For women who are trying for a baby' in clear lettering is not self explanatory. There's also what looks like a large pink moon being attacked by a giant blue snake in the foreground. I think it's safe to say that the marketers were assuming prospective buyers of the product were not only trying for babies but were idiots too. God only knows what non-English speakers must make of that packaging.

We've been house hunting ahead of our move in the summer. You'll be amazed at people's choice of light fixtures. It's always an interesting one. One place was absolutely gorgeous - newly done and with great taste. And then you entered the dining room and there was this eyesore of a chandelier. The landlord stood there and proudly told us it was all Swarovski crystal, and how he'd gone directly to the manufacturing factory in Europe to get it etc. I had a feeling that any request to have it replaced with something a little less ornate would not have been warmly received.

It's come down to two houses, and Roberto and I are split down the middle on this. One is very much a family home - beautifully finished, well thought out, and it has a nice airy peaceful feel to it. I think it's safe to say it's boringly perfect. The other, well, it's kind of like this massive gadget, but no less beautiful, light and airy, just not what you'd picture if you were going for a 'family home'. No prizes for guessing which one Roberto favours, and if you are still in doubt, one of them has fingerprint recognition technology to get into the front door.

I thought back to all the times I've struggled to get the television and phone to work in Roberto's absence, and an image came to me of myself standing in the rain loaded down with shopping, babies crying, trying to get the fingerprint recognition thing to work at the front door, failing, and the state of my marriage being in serious peril.

But as Roberto so emphatically points out, the sensible perfect family home can be rented, or even purchased, at any time. But how often do you get a chance to live in a gadget house? With, lest we forget, fingerprint recognition technology? I think he's got me on that one.

Floor-length capes and the like

2009-04-02T22:17:00.010+01:00

Our internet has been down yesterday and today. It is only during these kinds of technical inconveniences that I see Roberto really angry. Apart from when he has to do domestic chores that is, but then, to be fair, he is merely acerbic and grumpy. Apparently Virgin are having technical problems in the Camden area. I thought the only technical problem Camden experienced these days was Amy Winehouse moving out. Just think of the drug dealers and bar owners throwing themselves out of their apartment windows as their assets plummet.

Having no internet is a hassle, especially if like me you work from home. However it’s worse than that, as almost our entire household runs through the internet, including the television and the phone. Yes, our home phone runs through the internet. Roberto tells me our current convoluted set up is actually designed to make our lives easier, this after he had to give our babysitter tutorials on how to (a) turn on the TV (b) find channels (c) change channels and (d) choose a channel.

At my aforementioned visit to my obs gyn the other week she told me that a lot of women experience more acute PMT/S in their 30’s. This, combined with our overly technical household setup, probably doesn’t bode well for Roberto, poor man. During my pregnancy with Julia (PMT times 1000) I once got so annoyed with our TV system, or more specifically my inability to get it to work, that I nearly opened the lounge window and shoved the whole lot out onto the street below.

That internal exam business is a schlep whichever way you look at it. There’s always the thing of worrying about which underwear to wear – certainly none of the greying stuff with holes in it. Then there’s the grooming, and hygiene one must attend to, at least for the sake of the poor doctors. I watched this episode of Oprah where her resident doctor said that the vagina is actually a self-cleaning part of the body. One female GP in the audience piped up, ‘Yes, doctor, that may be so, but that doesn’t mean women shouldn’t shower ahead of internal exams. Please, ladies, keep it clean!' She had quite a desperate expression on her face and I imagined she had seen some unpleasant things in her time.

So you wear the right undies and have a shower, then you’ve got the whole awkwardness of lying there with your kit off, or half off, waiting for the doctor to come in. You both try and pretend that you’re not doing what you’re actually doing, i.e. you lying there vulnerably with your your legs akimbo, and she inspecting your bits. A good doctor almost always attempts to deflect the gross discomfort of the situation by asking you some random question about an upcoming holiday while he/she inserts a jellied speculum into your nether regions, and you try (cheerfully) to expound the virtues of Trip Advisor and how it’s never ever let you down.

And breathe out.

Yesterday, while perusing some photography books in Waterstones, I suddenly found myself next to a very tall man clad in a floor-length fur-lined black cape. On closer inspection I noted that he was also wearing head to toe black velvet, a large cravat, and these rather menacing black leather gloves which had enormous cuffs attached to them. On his feet he wore knee-length black boots, not unlike the feline protagonist in 'Puss n' Boots,' which also featured two sharp spurs on the back. Looking up I noted he had a long thin face with chiseled features and a dramatic Salvador Dali mustache, complete with curly waxed ends. He resembled a glamorous if somewhat effeminate conquistador lost in the wrong century.

What makes a person dress like that to go to the book store? I wondered to myself. Or perhaps he merely stopped in the bookstore en route from some terribly exciting and dramatic adventure where such flamboyant dress was required. Who knew? I imagine he was looking at me and my lack of imagination jeans and T-shirt thinking very much the same thing, only minus any thoughts of adventure on my part.

It's true, I've joined the leagues of boring and unimaginative dressers and pretty much live in jeans these days. To their credit, jeans are hardy companions, and never complain when you smear them with mud, regurgitated pieces of cheese, or stain-inducing baby food. They wash well, most of the food and stains come out, and they are good to go the next day. Certainly I watch episodes of things like Project Runway and make promises to myself to be more careful in my dress, but right now, with a small somewhat mess-prone toddler, I think jeans are the uniform for me. At least in the day time.

Julia had her very first professional haircut today. Discounting of course that time when she was a balding little baby and I cut off the long comb-over strands that made her look like a middle-aged man clinging to the illusion of his lustrous youthful mane. The result of that exercise was that she looked like a little corn on the cob, with a stubby tuft of short hair on the top of her head. The second time, not so very long ago, I attempted to cut a fringe for her, which resulted in the hairdresser today, a straight-talking Portuguese women to say, 'This fringe? This is not the work of a hairdresser.'

She sat there well enough until the hairdresser started blow drying her hair, something which was not only noisy but entirely foreign to her. Not even a lolly could diminish her distress and the final styling and ambitious bouffant was not to be. And later, as if to emphasise her disgruntlement and indignation at being manhandled in such a way, she rubbed a variety of food stuffs into her stylish little quiff, making it known, in no uncertain terms, what she thought of the whole business.

Is it me?

2009-03-24T08:58:00.004Z

Yesterday morning I was en route to see my doctor in a taxi driven by a large distinguished-looking Nigerian man, possibly in his late 50's. The radio was playing, and on the news they announced that Jade Goody's family were finalising her funeral arrangements.

This prompted my driver to comment on how sad it was, and I agreed saying that the disease had taken her quickly. He nodded and added but what had really shocked him, was the death of Natasha Richardson. I agreed that that was indeed a shocking and sudden tragedy. And, of course I had to add, 'And on a nursery slope of all places!' I have long rationalised my fear of skiing by pointing out that you can actually die from it, although personally until poor Natasha Richardson, I have only ever heard of one other person, namely that unfortunate Kennedy cousin who was skiing backwards while trying to catch a football.

My driver, not to be outdone by my Kennedy story, went on to name every person he has known personally, as well as sports people and celebrities, that have died suddenly and unexpectedly. Including an aunt of his that came to the UK for a visit, had a routine medical, and was told her body was riddled with cancer, despite exhibiting no symptoms or experiencing any pain. "Just like that! She never got to go home again, " he said somberly.

At this point, on my way to an internal exam by my gynaecologist, I had had about enough death and cancer talk for a lifetime, and attempted to change the subject by asking my driver if he missed Nigeria.

He told me he missed the weather, the people, the life he had there. He said that people over here don't give a damn about anyone, whereas at home they take time to enquire as to your health and the health of your family pretty much every time they see you.

"Here," he said, "a friend of mine was dead in his flat for four days before they found him. Four days! What kind of place is it to live when people don't even know you are missing? And the neighbours? Forget it! Here you don't even know them. Back home if you were missing even for a day someone would come and knock on your door to see if you were OK."

So we were back to talking about death again, and I did wonder to myself, what the hell is it with me and depressing taxi drivers? Another person I have encountered, not once, but twice from the same cab company, is a thin cynical man from Afghanistan who is full of doom and gloom. OK, so he's probably entitled to his depression what with things back home being as they are. But sometimes, you know, at the end of a long day when you are on your way to see your girlfriends for a glass of wine to help you unwind, you just don't want to hear about how the Americans are getting their targets wrong and killing and entire 200 strong wedding party, including babies, children and the bride and groom.

Our new nanny started yesterday. She's Italian, and a nanny by day and artist by night. And not just 'an artist,' in the sense that everyone who owns Photoshop calls themselves one, but someone who actually exhibits and sells stuff. I happen to like her work a lot, although I tell myself this had nothing to do with my decision to hire her. But yes, I did take a look at her website to try and spot any homicidal tendencies in her paintings. I think I detected a bit of heartache and angst in and amongst some of it, but nothing psychotic, which is always a relief when the person in question is going to be caring for your small child.

Rory Stewart on Kabul

2009-03-13T10:18:00.003Z

Last night my friend Patrick and I went along to the Royal Institute of Architects to hear Rory Stewart talk about Kabul and his work there for the Turquoise Mountain Project. In a nutshell it's a non-profit organisation that's working hard to regenerate the historical buildings in Kabul. They've also built a primary school (for boys AND girls), have workshops that employ local craftsmen to pass on their (prior to this dying-out) trades, and have removed tons and tons of rubbish from the streets employing practically every unemployed man in the city. This really is a nutshell because they have done and do a lot more and most importantly are giving the people of that city a sense of national pride and heritage.

Anyway, so listening to someone like Rory talk and meeting him in person has a two-fold effect on someone like me; The first is that I think, 'Shit, this guy has done an incredibly meaningful amount of stuff with his life and had some amazing adventures for his age.' (He is two years older than me, so I assume he is quite young, because I don't think mentally I have left 26). Then secondly, and related to this, comes the realisation that Rory isn't actually that young, he's 36, which makes me not that young either. But yes, still relatively young in terms of what he has achieved. Anyway, so I come out of the experience feeling as though I have largely failed to make a contribution to shaping and changing this world for the better, and I feel old.

So all in all an enjoyable evening then.

People like Rory Stewart are also a serious reminder to me of why I do not want to stick my child in front of the television for extended periods of the day, or in a push chair while I peruse the mall for pleasure. These are not conducive things to encourage a child's natural curiosity in the world, or to instill a hunger for knowledge. Unless we are talking about shoes and handbags that is, the importance of which should not be sniffed at.

Rory spoke in a magazine interview of how each morning en route to school his father would take him fencing in the park. Now that is the kind of thing we remember from our childhood - that meaningful time spent with parents where they are engaged with us and teaching us, rather than all the CBeebies shyte. Saying that, I do feel that all those episodes I watched of 'The Smurfs' played an important role in my emerging creative development and later my ability to stay in the room with an argument. But that's by the by.

Which brings me back to the importance of having a non-crack taking ex-con nanny that can also teach my child while minding her. We'll hopefully have reached our decision next week and I can start the serious business of having some time to myself. Hmm, time to myself ...I don't really remember what that feels like, so I don't quite know what I am going to do with it. Watch this space ... .

The interview

2009-03-12T10:49:00.003Z

So I've been interviewing a bunch of people for the nanny position. I don't really know how to 'interview' per se. Mainly I just have a conversation with them and try and remember to throw in some key questions like, 'Where does one get the best crack in London?' And, 'What do you do if someone takes your bunk in prison?' The answer to these and similar questions yields a surprising wealth of information about the interviewee.

One woman kept remarking how little Julia was and asked me if she was sick, had been premature, and if she ate properly. I was was like, 'Are you kidding me, there are women who would kill for a little waistline like that' (homage to David Sedaris), but I didn't. Our child is slight. She's on par to tall for her age in the height stakes, and she's on the slender side in terms of weight. No muscle wastage, nothing wrong, she's just slender. Hell, that's what I call a quality problem.

Another didn't stop talking, about herself that is. With absolutely no awareness of Julia in the room. Julia could have been dangling from the light fixtures playing with matches, and she wouldn't have noticed. I mean, if you are going for an interview as a nanny, surely you make some effort to interact with the child right? Weird.

On the plus side I have seen at least four people that I would hire, so that is a relief. It's good to know that of all the psycho child minders out there, some of them have at least politely chosen not to apply for the job of looking after our child.

I want to plug a photographer that came and took some family pictures of us this past weekend. Her name is Melanie Moss and her website is melaniemoss.com. She's got a very relaxed nice way about her and took some fantastic photos for us. If you want some pictures taken of yourself for that reality TV interview, or photos of your new baby or children, or some nice family shots for the walls or that Christmas card, I highly recommend her. She's also not overpriced. In fact, she's very reasonably priced for a London-based photographer. So take a look.

My time's flown, and haven't you grown!

2009-03-10T09:34:00.003Z

We are interviewing again for a nanny. I've tried doing the earth mother thing, but earth mothering an increasingly active walking, talking, climbing dynamo for 12 hours a day is becoming tough going. I think both she and I would benefit if she had someone else to come and take over for a few hours that has a bit more steam in their boat.

I placed an ad on a jobs site and have had about a hundred replies. A lot of the young women who applied are foreign, and expressed an interest in improving their English while working in London. Fair enough, but how does one hope to improve their English looking after someone who has about 20 words of human language, and mostly favours 'No' and 'Whoo Whoo?'

One candidate is an ex 'Disney on Ice' skater. I imagine her cracking open a beer and sharing tales with Julia of back-stage affairs, brutal ambition, and knife turning betrayal. Those ice skating people have seen it all.

We had a fantastic time in South Africa. Cape Town is a must for anyone. You need to drive though. And then I'd avoid the motorways because as is true of much of South Africa, and indeed the world over, motorway drivers are all psychotic. But yes, Cape Town has so many wonderful things to do and see, and one really gets a good feel for the country's beauty and diverse culture. Not least of all by encountering a vast shanty town beside the motorway minutes after leaving the airport.

We ate a lot of good food. You don't have to spend a lot of money to eat well in South Africa, and this is not just because of the exchange rate invariably being in your favour if you are a foreigner. Food is just generally quite inexpensive, tasty and well prepared pretty much everywhere you go. And if you are in Cape Town and like fish, well, the city is your oyster. OK, bad pun, but you get the idea.

I practically lived on deep fried calamari, which they do so very well over there. And it's not those shitty little rubberised rings either. No, these are proper big pieces of the stuff deliciously fried, and oh so good with some lemon butter sauce on the side. Because eating it deep fried isn't enough to clog the arteries, you definitely need the sauce to complete the coronary. And then there are prawns, oh and good steaks. Hmmm, I definitely miss the food there.

The V&A Waterfront in the city of Cape Town is fantastic for shopping. They have a large craft market selling the more Africany type stuff, and it's worth bargaining because prices are pretty steep thanks to tourism. If you do like African art, and want a genuine bargain, I'd recommend trying vendors that sell on the sides of roads which you will find in places like Fish Hoek and en route to Cape Point.

We attended my sister's wedding in Johannesburg which was a blast. We arranged an in-room babysitter and basically reverted back to our pre-baby pre-parenting ways for the night. Read: Much alcohol, much bad dancing, much talking of shyte. It was good to feel irresponsible again if only for an evening. Until the next morning that is, when fortunately Roberto and various family members were in a much better state to take care of Julia while I walked around feeling sorry for myself.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is why I don't drink like that anymore. Parenting on a hangover and or low blood sugar is a seriously bad idea and I advise against it at all costs.

And on that note I hear a certain young lady waking from her morning nap ...

Over and out

And that's that

2009-02-10T16:15:00.006Z

I was in a shoe store on the weekend and the only other customer in there was a woman buying flat open-toed sandals, and we kind of got chatting. She was trying them on with black tights, and there was some discussion about the size.

I was sorely tempted to point out that her big toe was protruding far too much out of that opening for the sake of public decency, but I managed to hold my tongue. I have something close to a phobia when being faced with people's toes looking as though they are about to clamber over and out of their shoes. Too small people! Too small. Can't you see it? Your toes are supposed to stay within the perimeter of the edge of the shoe, within it I say. Not extend beyond it.

Anyway, I digress. I did however ask her if she planned on wearing the shoes with tights, because that might affect her choice. "Hell yes," she responded, "I don't plan on shaving my legs until spring!"

An interesting if somewhat unexpected reply, not to mention the accompanying unpleasant graphic image it conjured.

Then one of the young shop assistants enthusiastically chimed in, "I agree! My legs are in a real mess. My boyfriend looks at me as if to say, "Please do something about that hair?!', and I'm like, 'Don't you give me that look!' "

Big toed woman heartily agreed and said her husband wouldn't even notice if she shaved her legs or not.

Then the conversation moved to pajamas versus lingerie etc. I know right? The things women talk about when they are buying shoes.

I decided to put in my two cents worth :

Me: But don't you believe in keeping things fresh?
Her: Fresh? Are you being serious? (She asked me this as though what I had said was genuinely alien.)
Her, again: You keep things fresh? (Same incredulous expression.)
Me: Well, yes, I try to. I mean, it's good to right? You plan on staying with someone for the rest of your life, you've got to mix things up, look after yourself, and keep the person interested right?
Her: How long have you been together?
Me: Coming up for 6 years.
Her: Ah, well, I've been married for 16 years.

She said this last thing as though it explained everything, and as though I had a lot to learn about marriage. I had a brief mental image of myself 10 years on; Botox maybe, perhaps a double chin or two. Hopefully a summer rental in the South of France. But certainly not hairy legs and ill-fitting shoes, regardless of whether or not Roberto had stopped noticing. I mean, one has to have standards right?

The sales woman was trying to sell me on a pair of dangerously high shoes for my sisters wedding. And admittedly, they were beautiful, but unfortunately I couldn't actually take more than about 2 steps in them without falling over. And this was without my daughter on my hip, where she will mostly likely be for a large part of the day. Not to mention all the embarassing dance moves I will inflict on the other guests a bit later on in the evening. Those definitely require some steady footwear.

The sales person asured me that all I needed was practice. I assured her that while that may be true, what I did not need were any injuries incurred while doing said practice.

So I had my birthday yesterday. Another year older. I don't have anything profound to say I'm afraid, so so much for being a year wiser. I do hope in this coming year the economy improves, Obama manages to mend some of the damage Bush did so that the world becomes a safer place to move around in, and that I can pull my finger out and get some writing done and actually send it off. I need to start getting those rejection letters in before I can genuinely call myself an aspiring writer. PS: If anyone knows any good literary agents, please drop me a line.

Before you order

2009-02-05T11:20:00.004Z

It’s not every day that as you peruse the menu in a restaurant, a man at a nearby table starts being violently ill into what looks like the restaurant’s floor cleaning bucket. Yes, a charming way to start a meal. People at tables that were even closer to his than ours looked as though they had been caught in a gust of strong wind – all leaning away in almost identical awkward angles.

With my germ phobia and the fact that we are ill ourselves, although at the (hopefully) tail end of a virus, you can imagine how uncomfortable this made me. I know, not nearly as uncomfortable as the poor soul that was being sick was certainly.

When I inquired as to the man’s health, our impossibly pretty eastern European waitress assured us that the man and his family had not even ordered their food yet, and that he was ill from something else, NOT, she emphasised, the restaurant’s food.

The next minute the man was gone, his family had switched tables, and they were all heartily tucking into their lunch. A disgruntled looking manageress was cleaning up what hadn’t landed in the bucket. A couple at the table next to us (who had moved from the table next to his), told us the man had been put into a mysterious-sounding ‘back room’ of the restaurant.

Now I don’t know about you, but if I was that sick, and believe me when I say this man, a tiny and ancient-looking Indian man, was seriously ill, I would want to go home straight away, or, even better, the nearest hospital. But there he was probably hugging his knees to his stomach in some strange room with a ladder and bucket in it, while his family ate burgers. Had that been my family they would be struck off my Christmas present list, pronto.

I think I may be coming towards the end of my virus, at least I hope so. We’ve been ill since our holiday in France. Not as ill as Julia got, but then we are a lot larger than her with a lot more antibodies, so we were able to fight it off better than she was. She is still coughing but a lot better. Also, she doesn’t know about self pity, so unlike us she’s carrying on like business as usual.

She had some shots yesterday. It’s amazing that even at the age of 14 months, she has a good little memory on her. The minute we walked into our pediatrician’s office she took one look at him and started to cry. Fortunately the whole businesses didn’t take too long and as soon as we got home she was laughing and running around again.

This shots business is an awful necessary evil that comes around every few months or so. The doctors always tell you that your child suffering from measles, mumps or meningitis is far far worse than the occasional needle in their thigh, but you still feel bad taking them and then watching their expressions as they look at you as if to say, ‘You betrayed me!!! How could you let this man hurt me like this?!?’

To which I always reply, 'Yes I know my darling, it was your father's idea.'

On a seperate note a HUGE congratulations to our friends Anna and Elliot on the birth of their baby boy yesterday.

And they're off

2009-01-30T09:50:00.004Z

So our nanny, after just one week, dumped us. I'd like to paint a picture (for literary purposes) of us being nightmare parents making impossible demands, but alas it's a lot less dramatic than that. She was doing part time work at a nursery, desperately short on staff they asked her to work full time, she decided the kids there needed her more, and the money (being more hours) was better.

All perfectly understandable and noble reasons.

I would have liked some notice though. Other than, say, a text message on the morning she's supposed to come to work, followed by an email. But what can you do? I'm glad it was only after one week and then we were away for a week on holiday, so Julia didn't really have time to get attached to her. Had that been the case I probably would have been a lot less forgiving of what was in effect an utterly shit position to put someone in.

This means going back to working at night and on weekends in order to deliver to my clients on time. I probably shouldn't have taken on the extra work, but then, foolish me, I thought I had a part-time nanny secured.

To make matters worse I'm ill, but walking wounded. Julia is also on the mend, following two nights in a French hospital while we were on hols, but that's an other story entirely.

I keep trying to write about it, but find it so utterly upsetting to revisit that experience. I will however say I have only praise for the French hospital in Solange that we found ourselves in. Clean, a lovely paediatric ward, fantastic nurses and doctors, and a hot chocolate with french bread, butter and jam (on the side) for the mum's who stayed over night with their little ones, for breakfast. And this was a government hospital. I know right?

When your child gets sick it is very worrying. When your child is so sick that he or she needs to go to the hospital and actually gets booked in, it's gut churning nausea-inducing worrying. Like discovering that it was you who accidentally left the office unlocked the night before it gets robbed, and knowing that you've got to tell your boss/or get found out. That kind of feeling times 100, because in this case the person you love more than life itself is so very vulnerable and you are completely at the mercy of other people to make them better. It is for those control freaks among us, an utterly anxiety-provoking situation to be in.

But yes, she is a lot better, despite a very runny nose that drips into the back of her throat and makes her cough. Thanks to everyone who wrote emails and Facebooked us their good wishes.

So aside from the emotional and worrying experience of Julia getting ill, we had a good holiday. I actually managed three days of skiing, but a lot of it wasn't pretty. I'm not pretty when I ski. In my fantasy I'm attired in a svelte figure hugging all in one with fur-trimmed hat a-la Bond girls, but in reality I wear every conceivable safety device available, making me look like one of those people they use to train attack dogs on. And if they were to do the equivalent of training wheels attached to ski's I'd probably buy those too.

I think a very good psychological profile could be developed by watching people's approach to skiing, specifically people who are relatively new to it. Mine would read something like this:

You are cautious to the extreme. You are afraid of trying things that are outside of your comfort zone. You anticipate the worst. The Kennedy who died skiing, did so trying to catch a football while skiing backwards. This is unlikely to happen to you as you haven't even mastered skiing forwards. And you are crap at catching balls. So stop worrying about it. You would ski better after an alcoholic drink.

Daisy

2009-01-10T20:00:00.002Z

My 1984 Barbie arrived in the post yesterday, in, to the eBay sellers credit, pristine condition. Actually it's even better than that, she's in her original box and it's unopened - the flaps still glued shut. How the hell, I wonder, does anyone have the self restraint to not open a toy for 25 years? Oh god, 25 years ago, that's roughly when I got my original Peaches n Cream Barbie. It makes me feel old.

Moving swiftly along.

I met the nanny who had the affair with Jude Law the other day. Remember her? Daisy something. I mean, Daisy is not a name you hear every day right? So there I am, what is it, three years after the fact? sitting in the community center with Julia, and this young woman starts chatting to me. She tells me she is there watching someones child for them, and is a former nanny but now has her own nanny and maternity nurse agency. Hmmm, the things tell-all interviews with Sunday rags can buy you. Anyhow, so I'm chatting to this woman and she looks very familiar. I have a bizarre photographic memory - like the time we wondered the length and breadth of Venice without a map, left my mobile phone in a random restaurant, and I was able to navigate us back to the exact same restaurant via the shops I had seen on the way. And if you know Venice, you'll appreciate how tough this is considering how many shops sell the exact same bloody Venetian masks. But enough bragging.

So I never forget a face or a Venetian mask shop, and coupled with an unusual name like Daisy, something in my head nagged me for days after that initial meeting. Then, about a week later, I'm about to watch the new Bond flick and my mind begins to piece things together and Ping! I suddenly remember where I saw that face before. Now to illustrate just how fascinating and ingenious the subconscious is, this is how I connected the dots:

Daniel Craig, aka 007, acted in Layer Cake with Sienna Miller, who of course was dating Jude Law at the time of nanny-gate.

I didn't see Daisy at the community center again, which is a shame really. I mean, I had a lot of questions.

We attended our friend Anna's baby shower today. She is due her baby in three weeks time. She looks fantastic. Seriously, most women that close to giving birth have an exhausted 'git this baby the hell out of me already' look to their faces. But Anna is glowing and looking beautiful and seems genuinely happy. I don't think I left the sofa in the last month of my pregnancy.

We are off on a ski trip this month. I'm between minds as to whether or not I will ski, or simply make the most of the coffee shops, catch up on my reading, and introduce Julia to snow. But as I'm going to purchase some ski underwear tomorrow, I'll probably have to justify the cost of my purchase by doing at least one day of skiing.

Yes, skiing. How I wish I'd learnt when I was a kid. Instead I took it up in my late 20's, with a vast knowledge of just how many ways I could injure and kill myself on the icy slopes. I hate that about being an adult. As a kid you hop on any old horse and hold onto its neck as it gallops off with you, thinking this is the most fun you've ever had in your life. Or walk up to random dogs without any fear that they might actually tear the hand you are about to scratch them with, off. At some point you get older and begin to over think everything. Far worse than wrinkles in my opinion.

The Nanny

2009-01-08T19:52:00.002Z

So, after much anxiety-fueled internal debate, I finally relented and agreed to get a part-time nanny for Julia. It's such an easy decision for so many people, and why shouldn't it be? As strange as it is to believe, there are people, other than oneself, that are perfectly capable of taking good care of one's children, and more so, doing a great job of it. But no, I had to play over every possible worst-case scenario in my head, practically giving myself nightmares and full-blown anxiety, before I finally calmed the hell down and saw sense.

None of this was helped by my mother who is fond of relaying things she has seen on shows like Oprah and Dr Phil, that involve hidden cameras and evil nannies dragging children around by their hair. While I don't doubt that things like this happen, I do wonder why, if you have any doubt at all about the person that is going to take care of your children, even going so far as to install hidden cameras, you would entrust them with your children in the first place? But that's by the by.

Also, I find it surprising that my mother is so paranoid about this sort of thing. I mean, this is the same person that delivered me to Mrs Hall (my home room teacher) on my first ever day of school (aged five) saying, 'This is Lucille, feel free to smack her if she is naughty.' Again, I need to remind you that my mother thinks everyone sees the world the same way that she does, so it wouldn't even occur to her that my teacher may have taken this as license to beat the crap out of me. A smack, in her opinion, is a whack across the bottom with the flat of the hand right? I mean, surely everyone knows this?

Fortunately, or maybe unfortunately as you will discover, Mrs Hall didn't need to do any smacking or beating the crap out of anyone. She had a secret weapon that soon meant my entire class was doing their utmost to avoid any kind of close-encounter confrontation with her. You see, Mrs Hall suffered from a case of lethal halitosis. It smelt as though some long suffering gravely ill creature had crawled into the cave that was her mouth, to die a very slow death in there. Its corpse gradually decomposing over time amidst her brownish neglected dental wreckage.

I'm not kidding. Even at the age of five I was aware that something was very very wrong there, and I'd often suffer through my letters with a broken pencil, or some boy at my table being obnoxious, in silence. Anything, anything, but calling her over and being engulfed by that breath. Good god, surely there were breath mints in those days?

I love being with Julia - we do stuff, we have our little coffee shop thing going, we play, we read, we hang out. But in and among all of this, I don't really have any time for myself to do things that I need to do. I get up at 7am, sometimes 6am with her, and it's all guns ablaze until 7pm when she goes to sleep at night. So aside from a couple of naps during the day (one of which is usually en route from an outing), time I use to shower, dress, maybe send an email or two, I'm not really in a position to do much. This is compounded by the fact that she is toddling now, so I can't just let her play on her own or watch television. I have to watch her all the time because she's into everything, has no real concept of danger, and she's not yet 100% steady on her feet.

She's far too young for daycare. I'm saying this as someone who knows my child - her capacity for the company of other children (around 45 minutes), her need for physical contact and comfort, her enjoyment of a quite space to play uninterrupted etc, rather than having an opinion on what the right age per se is for enrolling ones children in daycare. I'm also well aware that for many people this happens earlier than they would ordinarily choose due to circumstances of having to get back to work etc.

So my mother's voice in my head, chiming in with my own paranoid concerns aside, we've found someone we've very fond of, who is experienced, calm, and kind, and I think she's going to be a very good nanny to Julia and a contributor to my continued sanity.

I'm looking forward to having four hours a day where I have an extra pair of hands at my disposal. I can write, go to the loo, make an uninterrupted personal phone call, sort out my taxes, pop out for a haircut - you know the kinds of things you do at work - and still be around for my daughter should she need me.

New Year and all that jazz

2009-01-03T19:20:00.004Z

Happy New Year everyone!

So I won the Barbie doll on eBay. Those other bidders didn't know who they were messing with. You cannot put a price on nostalgia. OK, well, actually you can. It cost me, postage included, about 40 pounds. Which, my sister tells me, is a pretty good deal for a 'vintage barbie'. She reckons some of the new ones in the shops are that and more these days. My sister knows about things like this.

I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to do with it when it arrives. Hardened collectors don't even take their dolls out of the boxes I'm told. But I'm not a collector. I'm just a sad woman with unresolved childhood issues, clearly. What is certain is that Peaches n 'Cream Barbie circa 1984 is not going anywhere near Julia. She is fond of putting things in her mouth and rubbing bits of food into said items, and I'd quite like Barbie to keep her beautiful blond perfect curls, well, blond and perfect. Especially after what I did to my original one's bountiful synthetic mane. We won't go there.

So New Year's. Well, it was good. We had a few friends round and we had a few drinks and the sun went down and came up the following day. I don't know, this year it didn't feel like a big deal to me, just another day. Elizabeth, who is visiting, says as you get older things like Christmas and New Year's tend to be that way. I remember as a kid allocating some kind of magical significance to the new year; planning what kind of personality I was going to affect at school that year, thinking up new ways to torture my siblings, that sort of thing. This year the only planning I did was limiting myself to 2 glasses of champagne (babies tend to wake up every day at 6 or 7am requiring care and attention irrespective of any hangover you might be courting), and tidying up after the party to reduce the amount of potential choking hazards on the floor.

And yes, it hasn't escaped me that the amount of alcohol I consumed may have something to do with my lackluster attitude to this oft celebrated holiday.

I am reading Barack Obama's 'Dreams from my father' which I am thoroughly enjoying. I am a sucker for autobiographical writing, and when it also happens to be educating (I don't count Jordan's books about her boob jobs and sex life that, although they are entertaining), it's a bonus. As a full-time parent you don't get a load of intellectual stimulation, so finding time to read, is for me at least, a rare and treasured indulgence.

No real resolutions this year. It would however be good to run into my neighbor and find a way of dropping into the conversation the fact that my mother has some problems with reality. Totally untrue of course, but rather he thinks she's loopy than I'm an alcoholic. No?

Saturday night randomness

2008-12-27T18:52:00.010Z

I'm currently involved in a bidding war on eBay for a 1980 something Barbie Doll. That single sentence probably tells you everything you need to know about me at this stage in my life.

My mother recently informed our neighbour that I'm an alcoholic. We were walking home after a particularly enjoyable dinner at which I had imbibed the dangerously excessive amount of two glasses of red wine, and a small port. The port was a freebie from the Portuguese restaurant manager, and who was I to say no to port? Or a freebie for that matter? I mean, we are in a recession here no?

Anyway, so my mother and I are walking back from dinner. And by that single sentence you will know that we were not in South Africa at the time. No anecdote, set in South Africa in this decade, would start that way unless one were setting the scene for a crime story. But I digress. It was here in London and we were on my street. It was around 11.30pm and it was freezing cold. So cold that there was actual ice on the pavements. So I was holding onto my mother and slipping and sliding thanks to the ice. And we run into our neighbour who is walking his exceptionally small dog. This, despite the port, I found suspicious because they have a garden as big as a football field, and this dog, being the size that it is, could get sufficient exercise on a hamster wheel, but there you go. So my mother sees him and we greet each other and she thinks it's funny to yell out, 'Hello there, I'm just coming home with my daughter the alcoholic here!'

Anyone that drinks more than a glass of wine is an alcoholic in my mother's eyes. I probably don't need to say that she doesn't drink, at all. Another fact about my mother is that she thinks that everyone sees the world the same way that she does, and therefore finds the same things funny. This can be problematic, especially as she is fond of delivering these particular kinds of 'jokes' with a straight face. And the fact that they are often not particularly funny, well, not on the surface anyway. So here's my neighbour looking at me with a new found sense of caution in his eyes, and my mother is laughing her head off. I, as it happens, am a bit tipsy thanks to that free port on top of the two glasses of wine, and I'm laughing too and trying not to slip on the ice, and yelling back, 'No no, I'm not an alcoholic, really I'm not.' And in the middle of all of this, he takes the opportunity to slip into his house with his absurdly small dog.

Me: Mom! You can't be telling the neighbours that I'm an alcoholic. (This is especially true of this guy as he indirectly employs my husband. Oh, and even more importantly, he regularly sees me with a small child in my care.)
Mom: Don't be silly. He knew I was only joking!

Yes, of course he did. Having never met her before in his life, and seeing me slipping and sliding like that, and both of us laughing our heads off like maniacs. My mother doesn't need a drink to come across as drunk at times. She's naturally gregarious, full of energy and fun and, to be frank, is a bit nuts. But then aren't we all?

I am convinced our neighbour and said small dog is now avoiding me. Thank you mother.

I bought a pair of shoes yesterday for 17 pounds, reduced from 60. That's what a recession combined with the pre-January sales does. As in, things get sold for their actual worth. Brent Cross was absolute Bedlam today, and I did wonder: What recession? But with shops selling things reduced by 50 and even 70 percent, nice shops that is, I can understand why people want to stock up while the going is good. Hell, I wanted to stock up too, but I was under the watchful eye of Roberto who's patience is extremely limited when it comes to shoe and handbag shops that are filled with sale-crazed women. I know, downer huh?

Julia has started feeding herself. Not just holding the spoon and putting it in her mouth, but the whole scooping up of stuff and putting it into her mouth. Today, for the very first time, we went to a restaurant for lunch, ordered her something off of the kiddies menu, and she sat at the table with us and we all ate together. I don't know much about children, but this strikes me as rather grand for a one-year-old. Since we've been encouraging this new-sense of culinary independence, she's gone from a little kid that turns her head and resolutely refuses the spoon you are offering her regardless of what's on it, to hungrily enjoying her food. Evidently she craves a sense of autonomy, something which increasingly appears to be the case.

I'm sounding all-knowing here, but it was actually reading a passage in Gina Ford's 'The contented toddler years' that tipped us off that Julia's refusal to eat may have something to do with her wanting to do it herself.

I love Gina Ford. She has saved my arse three times. The first was in the form of an amazing Gina-Ford versed maternity nurse called Elizabeth who taught us how to care for this tiny, strange, lovely, disruptive person who came into our lives. The second time was when I randomly read a passage in Ford's baby book about what to do when your baby is choking, and later found myself in a frightening situation where I actually needed this information. And thirdly, this whole thing about why your 12-month-old may not want to eat and why every meal becomes this massive battle of wills. Seriously, meal times have gone from something I absolutely dreaded to moments that fill me with pride and joy watching my daughter feeding herself with relish.

Gina has got a lot of stick, mostly from people who have never read her books. Funny that? We went online to buy one and there was this review by a person calling herself a child health worker and she was going on about how wrong GF was about this, that, and the other. It had potential to be a convincing argument until she admitted that she hadn't even read anything Ford had written. The fact is, even if you don't buy into the whole routine method, this woman has been working with babies and small children long enough that she has learnt a thing or two. And pretty much everything she has suggested or recommended has turned out to be the case with Julia.

Anyway, it's almost New Year's and I'm already thinking of a few resolutions. One of them is to be better at responding to emails in a timely fashion. The other is to convince our neighbour that I am not alcoholic. Evidently I have my work cut out for myself.

Festivities and all that jazz

2008-12-23T14:36:00.000Z

Jordan and Peter Andre are on this week's cover of OK! Magazine once again ~~prostituting their children~~ posing with their family in some weird medieval getup. Junior, who is about three and a half years old, looks like he has had highlights put in. How the hell do you get a three year old to sit still for foils? I can't even sit still for foils.

Anyhoo, they say a bunch of inane crap as usual, and as usual you read it and think, 'Why the hell did I buy this magazine anyway?' Suckers, all of us. OK, maybe just me.

OK, so now it really is almost Christmas. I have done practically all of my Christmas shopping. Roberto has been dispatched to the arcades of St James's to do last minute bits and pieces, but praise the lord, we don't have to hit Oxford street. The only thing Oxford Street should be hit with is a large stick. I hate it with a passion.

I went to London's Transport Museum in Covent Garden yesterday to meet up with my friend Lucy and her two children. It was a lot of fun for the kids, and a fairly impressive display. A visiting foreigner may even be fooled into believing that our transport system is pretty amazing. OK, I'm being sarcastic, it's actually not that bad. That is when you aren't waiting for forty minutes in the rain for a bus to arrive, or sat on a stuck tube next to someone who smells of raw meat. (Something that actually happened to me). On a trip to Japan a few years ago, Robert and I were amused at how the Japanese were tut-tutting and looking at their watches with scornful expressions when the Shinkansen (bullet train) was 40 seconds late. Seriously.

I used to love Christmas as a kid, even though I never, ever, got what I asked for. My parents believed in getting us what they thought we should have, rather than what we really wanted. This may sound like a middle-class problem to have, but as we only ever received non-essentials for our birthdays and Christmas, a year of waiting could often yield significant disappointment.

I don't even think money, or lack thereof, was the sole motivating factor either. For example, one year I asked for a Barbie Doll (I asked for a Barbie Doll every year and failed to get one) and received a Donkey Kong handheld game thing instead - not exactly an inexpensive gift. I had never displayed a remote interest in one, and wasn't even sure what it was initially, but there you go. It turned out to be a rare and happy accident and I enjoyed it immensely and got rather good at the game. By the time I did get a Barbie my friends and I had largely moved on to more interesting things, namely boys. But I loved her regardless, and can still remember the smell of her which reminded me of her namesake, 'Peaches and Cream.' (PS: Finding this link gave me a big lump in my throat. It is this exact doll that I got given).

Julia isn't aware of the full capitalist magnitude of Christmas yet. She enjoys removing things from the Christmas tree and looking at the lights, and occasionally she will attempt to chew a tag off of one of the presents, and that's about it. I've been told to enjoy these moments, because even the most saint-like children can become consumer-driven demons at this time of the year.

If I don't manage to blog before, then I'd like to take this opportunity to wish everyone a very Happy Christmas. Let's hope the coming year will mean a safer, cleaner world for everyone and a nice full tummy at the end of each day.

Almost Christmas

2008-12-09T20:04:00.003Z

Julia had her very first birthday party on the weekend. We invited everyone and it was a great success. She didn't really know what was going on except that there was a big fuss and the next day she got to unwrap a whole lot of cool stuff.

I can't believe she's a year old already. A year that has gone by insanely quickly. Last year this time I resembled the Michelin Man and had trouble walking. I was frantically decorating the Christmas Tree in anticipation of going into labour and not having that done. At the time that seemed strangely important. Then, just a week later, our lovely little girl came into this world and life, as we knew it, changed for ever.

We have put our tree up again this year, and Julia is very intrigued. She is keen on examining the decorations close up, sometimes with her teeth. Naturally this is discouraged.

It's odd doing Christmas shopping this year. The recession hangs in the air like a grey blanket, which, admittedly, takes a lot of the fun out of things. But certainly there are a lot of people without jobs this Christmas and indeed homes, so having to spend less on presents doesn't seem like such a big deal by comparison.

On the plus side the posh shops on our high street are always having sales, it seems like every week there is a different one. It's bloody good seeing nice shoes selling for 45 pounds again. It's been a long time since they cost that much in this country.

I know I've not posted in a while. The truth is I got terribly upset by the case of that little baby P that was murdered by his mother, her boyfriend and her lodger, and I just couldn't bring myself to write. Julia, and a lot of the children at the community center we go to, are at a similar age to that little boy during the time he was so severely abused. They are so incredibly sweet, vulnerable, loving, and fragile at this age, and it is so utterly beyond my comprehension how someone could hurt them, especially so systematically and so brutally. There is a line from the film 'Parenthood,' which goes something like, 'You need a license to own a gun, and a license to own a dog, but any arsehole can have a kid.' Too true sadly.

Demotix and moisturiser

2008-11-26T13:29:00.006Z

Yesterday I went in search of a new moisturiser. Having finished every single sample I'd ever been given (let it not be said I am not doing my bit for the credit crunch), it was time to get something new.

I made the mistake of saying, "Well, I'm not really loyal to a particular brand when it comes to moisturisers, and I'm happy to try something new." The salesperson licked her lips and then ushered me over to a section of the shop that had some really expensive looking stuff, "This", she said, looking as though she were holding a golden chalice, "will not only give you 24-hour moisturisation, but it also acts as a natural botox."

Botox? Who the hell said anything about botox? Do I look like I need botox?

She continued, "And, you can use it as a day and night cream and around your eyes." She was selling hard.

I'd been taken like this in the past - romanced into loving something only to get to the counter and find out it costs a fortune, by which time I am too in love with it/too embarrassed to pull out of the deal. I wasn't going for it this time.

"How much is it?" I asked. "93 pounds," she said casually, for 50ml. Yes, forget the oil business, cosmetics is where it's at if you want to fleece people and make a fortune.

Unsurprisingly I didn't go for it. In fact, I was pissed off that the first thing I get shown is probably the most expensive product in the shop. That, in my mind, is also not good salesmanship. Rather, she would have been better off showing me a less expensive yet effective brand and I would probably have got a few things, were we not in a recession that is.

I walked out of there with something a lot cheaper, and can happily report that the sun still came up this morning, well, not visibly, and my skin looks pretty much how it always does. But moisturised.

***

There is a great website called Demotix, which is kind of like a You Tube for news from around the world. People send in images, film clips and stories from their respective necks of the wood, be it Iraq or Fiji, and it's uploaded. News for the people by the people. The creator is a guy called Turi Munthe, who is the grandson of Axel Munthe of 'The story of San Michele' fame. My friend Patrick will get a kick out of this I'm sure.

You can write anonymously if you so choose, and they even have a way of scrambling encoded image data to protect the identities of people who send stuff from countries where the police hack into your account and are a little too eager to knock on your door and beat the crap out of you for showing what's really going on. This kind of democratic unbiased form of reportage really appeals to the champagne socialist in me.

Check it out here Demotix

Iranian Girls

2008-11-24T18:50:00.009Z

"Hello," I said. "I am Rory. I come from Scotland."

The headmistress interrupted, "tell the class how you have come to Hamadan."

"I walked here from the Turkish border."

"Class, Rory has spent the last two months walking across Iran, only on foot, not using any transport." She turned to me. "Iranian women are not free. They only think to get husbands with nice clothes and a nice job. That is why I will ask them whether they would marry a man like you." She looked at the beautiful 14-year-old on my left. "Would you marry a man like this, Aisha? One that is walking all the time. He cannot give you a car. Well, what do you think?" Continue reading
(Source: Prospect Magazine, November 2001)

This is an extract from a piece entitled, 'Iranian Girls' by Rory Stewart. Stewart is an author of multi-award winning books including, The Places in Between, The Prince of the Marshes: And Other Occupational Hazards of a Year in Iraq, and Occupational Hazards: My Time Governing in Iraq, a journalist, and CEO of the Turquoise Mountain Foundation, a not for profit, non governmental organisation whose mission it is to regenerate Afghanistan's traditional crafts and historic areas, creating jobs, skills, and a renewed sense of national identity. (Source: Wikipedia)

His life reads like that of a modern-day adventurer, and although he is only 35-years-old, he has done some truly extraordinary things. These include having worked as the deputy governor of the Iraqi province of Maysan and Senior Advisor in the province of Dhi Qar shortly after coalition forces entered Iraq, and having walked across Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, India and Nepal, a journey of 6000 miles, done in two stages without leaving Asia.

He speaks a dozen exotic languages, is respected by the local people, has a reputation for his sassy sense of style, and is reputed to be fearless, except when it comes to women. Apparently they scare him.

The world needs more people like him. People that instead of making alarmist and ignorant generalisations from the safety of their armchairs, are out there, venturing into places most of us wouldn't dare, and through helping and making a difference, educate the rest of us that ultimately, people are people, wherever you go in the world. With a lot of the same concerns, fears, hopes and dreams as the rest of us. His literature and journalism is truly eye-opening and essential reading.

There's a good article about him here, entitled, Stewart of Afghanistan by Aryn Baker

Further articles by Stewart can be found here

Photo c/o Time Magazine by Zalmai

Yes you can!

2008-11-19T15:38:00.004Z

Own one of these Obama figures that is. Check it out here. Not sure about the ears.

Thanks to Chantell for the tip

Pics c/o wantitall.co.za

Baby P

2008-11-17T12:23:00.004Z

I am so stinking steaming mad. I know I shouldn't read about it because it just upsets me, but the case of the 17 month old baby P that was murdered by his mother, her boyfriend, and lodger gets me so angry and emotional that I just had to vent on here.

Why the FUCK did social services not take that child into care. 60 yes SIXTY visits to his residence amid concerns about child cruelty, and they still thought it was a good idea to leave him in the care of that fucking woman. I am not a violent person by nature , but people like this, well, put it this way, it would not be a good idea for me to encounter them on the street.

This little boy was systematically abused and tortured and eventually died having suffered more than 50 injuries including a broken spine and 8 cracked ribs. What kind of person does such a thing to a little child that is incapable of defending himself? What kind of mother participates in and allows such a thing to happen to her child?

People are calling for the head of Haringey social services to be sacked. Sacked? Really? I think everyone involved in this case that failed to act should be prosecuted for negligence leading to his death. As for those directly responsible? Well, lets just say it makes me rethink my feelings on the death penalty. Yes, that's how strongly I feel about this.

More about this case here.

Picture c/o The Telegraph

Why I like box wine

2008-11-15T18:58:00.004Z

OK, so this post isn't really about why I like box wine, which, as it happens, I do. Yes a terrible admission, but there you go. You can get some pretty decent stuff, especially some of the South African wines. I find it far easier to stick to just one glass, and it also saves me the frustration of trying to reach my husband when he is travelling to find out if the bottle I am about to open to enjoy while watching America's Next Top Model will jeopardise the future of our marriage.

I was in Starbucks yesterday afternoon and there were a lot of teen and tween kids in there excitedly planning their weekends. I remember that time well. Talking about who's having a house party, what you are going to wear, if a certain boy will be there, and how you are going to act really cool while still appearing vaguely interested. If your spot cream will miraculously work in 5 hours, and whether or not your parents will notice that you are wearing makeup before leaving the house etc.

I mused on these long ago memories while juggling other more pressing thoughts such as, will I make steak for dinner? Should I get some mushrooms and salad to go with those? Are mushrooms carbs? Will we watch an episode of the American Office, or should we eat at the table like adults with civilised conversation? Yep, that's Friday nights these days.

I had a cell repair facial today. You know you are getting to a certain age when your beautician starts recommending those. She asked me if I would like her to apply the nourishing mask (thick cold stuff that had the consistency of Plaster Of Paris) to my eyes too. I was like, yeah sure, go ahead. Until she stared that is. It felt like there was an enormous weight on my eyelids and then she told me I could not open them. Cue mini panic attack. Amazing, I had no idea you could get claustrophobic just from having your eyes covered and being unable to open them. I took a few deep breaths, and she, lovely woman that she is, said, 'Just relax, I am here. I'm not going to leave the room, and let me know if you want me to take it off.' And it was cool. Soon we were talking about thyroid problems, taxes and insurance on small businesses in Poland, and Chernobyl. Relaxing stuff.

It reminded me of when I had an epidural for my C-section. You get completely numb from the waist down and your first reaction it to have an overwhelming urge to move your legs or wiggle your toes, and of course you find you cannot. It messes with your head something bad, until you tell yourself, 'OK, this is fine, this is OK, this will wear off.' Kind of like talking yourself down from a bad trip. Not that I would know.

I'm watching 'America's Next Top Model Cycle 10', and they have Paulina Porizkova as a guest judge. I'm surprised Tyra made that decision, because I get the feeling that it's all about Tyra and Tyra don't like no one messing with that shit. Especially someone like Paulina who is quite breathtakingly beautiful, intelligent and articulate, and a good addition to the show I think, unlike Twiggy, bless her, who was a bit of a wet blanket. But, and this is a big but, Paulina doesn't have a lot of tact. In fact, I think some of her comments are outrageously rude and inappropriate. On a couple of occasions she has made comments to one of the Polish/American contestants about not looking like a Russian Mail Order Bride, and Eastern European trashiness.

It reminds me of that episode of Seinfeld where a guy converts to Judaism and then feels he's entitled to make bad Jewish jokes. Only in Paulina's case she is Eastern European by birth, and therefore appears to think it's OK to spout these horrible stereotypes. It's rude and it's wrong, and I'm amazed they didn't cut it out. Tyra was probably too concerned with how fierce! she looked in the shots to notice.

And finally, just when you think the US courts are up their eyeballs in stupid waste of time cases, a rare and worthy one comes along. According to Michael on Dlisted:

Today on one of my favorite serious legal shows "Judge Alex" they had a case about something that is near and dear to me: eyebrows! Sharon Rivers was suing Joy Tran for emotional distress for f***ing up her eyebrows. Sharon paid Joy $180 to tattoo some "dreamy" eyebrows on her beautiful face. But Sharon claims Joy f***ed it up by making them purple and lopsided. (Continue reading. There's even a You Tube clip!)

A fond farewell to Kerry Katona's OK! diary

2008-11-09T20:37:00.005Z

I was absolutely gutted to discover that Kerry Katona's weekly literary masterpiece, her 'column' in OK! magazine, will be no longer. In this week's issue the magazine issued a sort of farewell statement saying that they'd had a long and successful relationship with her, been with her through the ups and downs blah blah blah, and that she won't be a contributing columnist any more. This stinks of: Kerry is checking into rehab, but they didn't say so.

There are clearly some issues in the woman's life, like an unsuitable husband for starters, but what I don't understand is why the press and public are so consumed by it. Even stories about Amy Winehouse fail to interest me these days. I think there's just too much of this shit going around and we've all become a bit bored with it. I hope Kerry and Amy get help and back on their feet, not least of all because Kerry has kids, and Amy has Blaaaaaaaake. Do I want to see another tell-all book about a celeb hitting rock bottom and then courageously picking herself up to see another OK! Photo-spread day? No, please god no.

Julia has started walking again. I say again, because she did it a couple of weeks ago and then seemed to lose interest. She's back at it, and has also sussed out the door handle in her bedroom, and just an inch or two more in the height department means we're in for trouble. We took it as a cue to install stair gates, which, I hate. I know they are necessary, but they also represent endless tripping and breaking your neck opportunities in my mind, especially in the middle of the night. Plus there's the whole thing about needing two hands to open the ones we have, which is a bitch when you also happen to be carrying a toddler.

Roberto reckons they will also be good anti-burglar devices. That most likely being because they will be too busy tripping and breaking their necks on the damn things to steal anything.

We went to a costume party on Friday night at Home House, a private member's club in London. The theme was fantasy/fairytale. Some people evidently spent a good deal of time and money on their outfits and they were spectacular. Others had an interesting interpretation of the 'fantasy' part of the theme, and their getups more closely resembled something you might pay them by the hour to remove. One such woman was dressed as Captain Hook, only the belt was also the skirt, and the top was actually a bra. She was thereafter 'Captain Hooker' to me, which I personally thought was genius, pity no one else agreed. That being because they were trying to pick up their tongues off of the floor no doubt. That's the trouble with keeping company with men at parties, that and the fact that they are useless at bitchy banter.

And in the news:

Sarah Palin may run for president in 2012, god help us
John Travolta minus the rug
And my personal favourite, the man who went to vote for George Bush's third term. (Thanks to Gareth for the tip).

On a final note, a HUGE congratulations to our friends on the birth of their beautiful baby girl Hannah.

A new day

2008-11-06T08:45:00.004Z

Yes he can, and indeed, yes he did! Obama is the new president of the USA. Here in little old England we got quite swept up in the fever of the American elections. It was hard not to. It was equally hard sitting back and hoping and praying that something you had no control over would come to pass.

A friend of mine, a self confessed cynic, got annoyed by what she described as Obama bandwagonning over here by some who didn't even know what his policies were. That may or may not have been the case, but what is certainly true is that it does matter to us who runs America, even if we weren't able to help make that decision. It maters to the whole world, not least of all because we get effected by decisions that are made over there. Just look at all the men and women we have lost fighting in a war we should never have joined. Indeed a war that should never have happened in the first place. Bad choice on our part too granted.

Likewise things like their decisions on nuclear testing, energy including oil relations, and their stock market - these things have a direct effect on the UK and the rest of the world. So hell yes, I care about who runs America.

Obama has a hard job ahead of him. Running a country as large and diverse as that is never going to be easy. Plus, once you are in office and faced with the extraordinary complexity of the job, I imagine it's going to be tough to deliver on all of those campaign promises.

But on a positive note I think he is the right man for the job and is hopefully going to lead the USA well and they and the rest of the world will benefit from some long overdue intelligent choices.

Bad luck to McCain. He put up a fight, and he lost. But come on, I mean, the guy totally sabotaged his chances by choosing that nut job Palin as his second in command. What was he thinking? That her straight (read crazy) talking folksy appeal would work on middle America? Even a certified god fearing gun toting voter can see crazy when it's standing in front of him/her.

And onwards...

Picture c/o papermag.com

Ruby Wax, atheism and Obama

2008-11-03T18:45:00.003Z

I spoke to Ruby Wax in Starbucks today. Actually spoke is probably an exaggeration of what we did. I said hello as we were both leaving, she looked thrilled at being recognised (no one else had done so), and simultaneously made a frantic motion as if to say she had to be somewhere. I asked her if she was doing any journalism at the moment, and she replied over her shoulder, 'Yeah, for the Telegraph,' before beating a hasty retreat.

Did I have bad breath?

The local church have a Thursday morning mother and baby/toddler thing. The notice reads: Are you a parent to a young child? Check. Would you like to have fun with your child and meet other parents? Check. Is it important to you to raise your child with the Christian faith? Er...maybe not.

The upside is that it's something to do with Julia once a week that involves free coffee. Kind of like AA meetings, except you can't smoke. Oh, and there's mothers and babies instead of addicts. At least this is how I sold it to Roberto who is a certified atheist. In fact he is more than an atheist - he told me he wants to start a charity which spreads the word that god does not exist.

I blame it on Richard Dawkins and his 'God Delusion' book. I have no problem with the premise except that everyone I know that's read it is a bloody pain in the arse about how great it is and how you must read it, and even going so far as buying you a copy. Not so dissimilar to the bible pushers themselves. The only thing that distinguishes the one kind of zealot from the other is their choice of literature, as is so often the case.

Roberto just pointed out that he has also read Christopher Hitchens's 'God is not great,' thank you very much. OK, so I apologise: there are two books you can purchase if you want to convert to non-faith.

So, the big election in the USA tomorrow. I'm an Obama person myself. I saw an interview with him very early on in the democratic race and he struck me as being intelligent and self deprecating, which happen to be two of my favourite qualities in a person. Oh yes, and he has a sense of humour too - essential if you are going to be running a country like the United States, or indeed any country.

To all my American friends and readers (all three of you) please remember to vote, I'd rather like to have an invasion-free 2009.

Saturday night yada

2008-11-01T16:11:00.004Z

The kids in our neighbourhood have evidently been told that saying 'Trick or Treat' is no longer PC. Instead last night we were greeted by various motley groups wishing us a 'Happy Halloween,' while their parents teetered in the background wearing overcoats and clutching cups of Starbucks.

One kid, about eight-years-old, asked me, 'How many sweets did you just give me?
Me: I don't know
Him: Roughly how many?
Me: I dunno, a handful?
Him: Approximately?
Me: OK kid, off you go

I think he was competitively tallying up his spoils to compare with the other children in his group, and for a brief moment it was as though I were looking into the face of an eight year old Roberto.

Julia was unwell this week and the doctor instructed me not to take her out of the house, for the whole week. Not being able to leave the house is like injuring a limb. You don't appreciate just how much you need it until it's out of action. My mum came round to give me a bit or respite on Wednesday and Thursday and I practically ran out of the front door.

Things seemed so much more vivid than I remembered them. The reds and browns of the fading leaves, a smell of a passing young girl's perfume, the beautiful stillness of the church yard that I walk through on my way to town, the feel of a hot Starbucks paper cup against my bare hand, and the sting of having to pay bloody two quid fifty for it.

We've been invited to join a table at a Human Rights charity dinner. I'm very excited to be going to and event of this kind, i.e. an elegant adult thing that doesn't involve me on the sofa wearing sweat pants covered in baby food. It also raises a few questions though, like, what do I wear? Will anything that I already own actually fit me? Do I bare my upper arms? And what good will me sitting around eating posh food and pretending to know what the person next to me is talking about do for the people in the Republic of Congo that are homeless, starving, being attacked and raped, and god knows what else.

I support a few charities but I always wonder what with politicians and armies often stopping aid from reaching the people that need it most, if it's really doing any good. Of course I'm being cynical, but the world genuinely seems so screwed up that it feels as though we've just put out one fire when another one starts up. God only knows how it feels for the people and children that are in the thick of it. It makes me sick to my stomach to think about it.

We've started recycling. I have a big box in the kitchen that I chuck stuff into instead of the bin. I didn't realise until I started doing it that practically everything is recyclable, and the pile in our box is actually loads bigger than the amount of trash we are throwing away. OK, so it's not saving any lives, but I guess it's doing our small bit.

OK, and on to more cheerful topics:

Heidi Klum outdoes herself, again, at her annual Halloween party
Pics from 'The Quantum of Solace' premiere
Jordan, aka Katie Price shows us why she needs a fashion label
That Kerry Katona interview on 'This Morning' that everyone's talking about. OK, not so cheerful this one.
And finally, the wedding that cost £100,000. Be prepared to be blown away by the style and elegance you are about to view.

Driving, the French, and kids TV

2008-10-24T14:49:00.009+01:00

I had a refresher driving lesson last week with a man called Desmond. Desmond was in his late sixties and from Jamaica, and had been teaching driving for 30 years. He was a laid back but no-nonsense sort of person, frequently placing his hand on my steering wheel so we avoided colliding with the curb, while simultaneously talking about a craving for chicken soup.

He had a passionate hatred of the police and told me it was commonly known that should any of the three or so policemen that lived in his neighbourhood find themselves in peril with only Desmond to save them, they would certainly die. The idea of being the only person that could help them but instead letting them suffer a slow horrible death appeared to be something he relished.

Desmond's son died at the age of 36. A strange case of the young man being found dead in his flat with no obvious cause of death. According to Desmond, despite the doctor that declared his son dead instructing them to do so, the police failed to classify the circumstances as suspicious and conduct an investigation. He said in his opinion the case was written off as just another black man involved with drugs, even though the autopsy revealed no traces of drugs or alcohol.

Clutching the steering wheel I prayed to god that we didn't have an accident. I worried for the attending officer's safety.

I had a tough day today. Julia is teething which means she's not sleeping very well. This in turn means she woke up a lot last night, didn't have a morning nap, and only slept for half an hour at midday. Happy to play the one minute, crying her little heart out the next. After a (very) long day of dealing with such manic depressive behaviour, I wondered how single parents do it alone. At least when Roberto gets home I can hand her over, and in a very calm controlled voice say to him, "Hello darling, here is your daughter. Please take over while I walk downstairs, open the front door, step outside, and scream. Thank you."

Having children is interesting it terms of what you learn about yourself. I consider myself a fairly calm and even tempered person, and make a concerted effort not to have Julia bear the brunt of my moods. But when you are dealing with someone that is so consistently irrational, it can be trying. It's one of the reasons I cancelled my account with Vodafone.

I bought Julia a couple of vests for a hefty sum from Petit Bateau the other day. The French sales person who had the waistline of an 8-year-old boy said to me, "You need to buy beeg, French sizes ah small." I looked at her and then down at Julia, who is in the 25th percentile in terms of weight, and, as our paediatrician is fond of saying, 'Not going to win any heavyweight divisions.' Bloody French, I thought, always superior with their small sizes and 8-year-old boy waistlines. Anyway, I took her advice and got 12 months (Julia is 10 months), and dammit if she wasn't right, it's a snug fit.

Compare and contrast to the stuff I bought from Sainsburys today. I thought I'd do my bit for the credit crunch and got her some sleep suits from there. I got the 9-12 months size thinking I might be taking a risk with them being on the small side. Well, no risk there. They are big enough to fit a hefty three-year-old. Seriously, wtf? I have never seen such big sleep suits, certainly children that are that size are old enough to get out of bed and put on socks if they get cold at night.

I've been watching some children's television lately. Having worked at the BBC as a temp I can swear some of the scenes are shot in and around the BBC building. Once programme is all about problem-solving numbers (yes, yes I know), and there's always a man mopping (cue BBC corridor) and someone in a cafeteria (cue BBC cafeteria). Those guys are clearly doing their bit for the credit crunch by saving on location costs.

Yes, kids TV. I look at those 20 to 30-something-year-old presenters and wonder how they switch over from doing all that fake cheerful crap all day to their personal lives in the evening. I kind of have this Crusty the Clown fantasy about them. Like the minute they get out of there they light up a fag, take a swig from a bottle of Jack Daniells, and say stuff like, "I was so much better at stage school than that bitch Keira."

And as a parting gift, here is a picture of Jodie Marsh and her girlfriend Nina. Nina's face says it all.

Update: I forgot to add, god, I can't believe I forgot this: Julia took her very first steps last night at 10 months and 1 week old. Well done Julia! And I'm looking forward to the weight loss on my part. God knows I need it.

Another day, another Vodafone f**k up

2008-10-21T12:45:00.004+01:00

So Vodafone eventually stopped calling me in the hopes that I'd change my mind and not leave them. Although I did get a call, once I had closed the account, from a young guy asking me if I was aware of their latest deals. I asked him if he was aware that I had closed my account. It was an embarrassing exchange. And I eventually got a very nice leaving letter from them with my PAC code in it. I'm now an O2 customer, and can I just say, the 3G iPhone they do rocks. But that's another story.

Anyway, so I got my final bill from Vodafone yesterday, and guess what? A total of £366.93 pounds. Yep, and those of you that know me, and know how much I hate using the phone when there's the passive aggressive medium of email available, will know there's no way in hell that was me jabbering. Nope, those were 'data' costs. You know, the costs they were supposed to have deducted from my second to last bill because they sold me a data package which they didn't implement because it turned out my existing package was incompatible with it?

I opened that bill at 11pm last night on my way up to bed and went from being dead on my feet tired, to dead on my feet tired and irate. Filled with rage, because I knew that this morning I would have to call someone up at Vodafone and explain a very long and complex story that featured their company's incompetence as the lead protagonist.

Fortunately, and there really is a lesson to be learnt here about getting stuff in writing, I had an email from the chap I spoke to last month confirming that they would credit my account with that massive data charge. And fortunately still, the woman I spoke to today, a lovely woman called Rachel (a beacon in a sea of stupidity), 'got it' without me having to waffle on for too long, and subsequently sent me another email stating that they are going to credit me a whopping £278.85, which means my final bill will now only be £88,08 as opposed to £366.93.

I'm going to call today and pay my final bill by credit card, but have a nagging feeling this shit is going to come back and bite me in the arse in the form of another outstanding bill for the data costs. I mean, if the sales people don't even know what their colleagues are doing, how can we expect there to be communication between sales and accounts? Certainly that is far too much to ask. Watch this space.

It won't surprise you to know that Rachel told me there were no notes on my account referencing the previous credit note or anything about the wrong data package being sold to me.

Matthew from Vodafone, if you are reading this, GET YOUR COMPANY TO INSTALL A NOTES FACILITY IN THEIR SYSTEM AND MAKE THEM USE IT!

On a separate, much more positive note, I saw the woman I'd met in Starbucks that was in a wheelchair after being hit by a car in Hampstead. The good news is that she's in hydrotherapy (which she says is fantastic) and is walking with the help of a walker. She reckons that in a month or so she will be walking unaided. Fantastic news.

And on a random note, if you use Lancôme's Eau de Bienfait Clarté (their fantastic cleanser and toner in one), and are as confused as I was as to why you can't find it anywhere, that's because they've re-branded it. It's now called Eau Micellaire Douceur Express cleansing Water Face, Eyes, Lips, or so I was told my the overly made-up Lancôme person at the Boots in Brent Cross. Mystery solved. Although someone should probably tell the Lancôme UK website, because they still feature it, though when you try and buy it it doesn't get put in your basket.

Over and out.

McDonalds, Lesbians, and Love Affirmation Ceremonies

2008-10-19T10:27:00.006+01:00

There are some role play toys that inspire future greatness in children. A doctor's kit for example, a fire fighter's outfit, a Lightsaber. Then there's the McDonalds Drive-Thru play center I encountered on a recent visit to Toys R Us. Wtf? If this is as high as the kids of today are aiming, it worries me. There is no way in hell Julia is going to work at a McDonalds! It's Gourmet Burger or nothing, she's been warned.

In this week's issue of OK! magazine, the perma-tanned Jordan aka Katie Price, and her husband Peter share their ~~photo-op~~ intimate 'Love Affirmation Ceremony' pictures with, well, everyone. Very intimate indeed. Katie also tells readers that they are NOT GETTING DIVORCED, no matter what you may see in the magazines. Sorry guys!

The copy reads, 'In keeping with the natural surroundings they decided to forgo the extravagance of their wedding day, exchanging a fuchsia-pink, rose-oil infused, Swarovski crystal-encrusted marquee for the wild expanses of Africa, and hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of wedding ring diamonds for simple leather bands which they plaited themselves.' (OK Magazine October 21 Issue 645)

That single sentence pretty much tells you everything you need to know about the couple.

Yes, and they really did forgo any extravagance this time round and beautifully blended in with the understated yet breathtaking African bush. But forget simple white cotton kaftan's or whatever it is people think white folks wear in Africa, Katie went one further by sporting something between a strippers outfit and a ball gown. The sequenced bodice open to the belly with an enormous amount of cleavage on display, and a ten ton tiara fit for a drag-queen. Peter is wearing an all white suit (with white tie), but fortunately for him, the shoes are at least tan.

What I wonder, seriously, is whether or not they are having a laugh (all the way to the bank), or if this kind of chintzy camp crap is really what they're about. And what's worse, the fact that this stuff appears in OK all the time and sells a shit-load of copies makes me think that perhaps it must be, in some way, aspirational to or representative of at least a segment of the English population. Worrying.

I've found a babysitter for Julia. Yep, praise the lord. I thought I would be a lot more relaxed about it, especially after our wonderful initial experience with our maternity nurse Elizabeth. But unfortunately I succumbed to parental paranoia and found the idea of entrusting our daughter to someone else, even to watch her sleep, quite simply frightening.

I suppose this is a good thing in some ways, but it also doesn't bode well for one's marriage. You need time together as a couple outside of the house at least once a week, minus clothes that have Petit Filous on them. Roberto is over the moon, and we've set up a standing one night a week with our sitter. That, along with going out once a week each (while the other stays in), means we're pretty much back to pre-baby socialising.

Well, pretty much, except of course for the hangovers. I don't know why, but it's just not kosher to be a mum that goes out on the lash and drinks her own body weight in vodka. Also, there's only so long you can get away with, 'Mummy has a migraine' before your toddler starts cottoning on. Kids of today are far too smart for their own good.

And finally, for those of you that got excited about the fact that Jodie Marsh's 5 minute wedding is no longer, I'm afraid I have bad news, she's still off the market. Jodie is now very happily in a lesbian relationship with her hairdresser, Nina. Same sex couples everywhere that have long struggled to have their lifestyle's and choices accepted and respected will be overjoyed to hear Jodie's own proud and heartfelt testament, 'If I'm going to watch porn, I'll only watch girl on girl - 2 girls together turn me on,' according to Now Magazine. If that's not gay pride, then I don't know what is.

Of course it's not enough for Jodie to just get on with the business of eschewing men and have a relationship in private, she has to snog the poor woman in front of the paps to ensure we all get the point loud and clear. I could be completely wrong here, but I'm getting a very strong shock factor vibe from all of this and have a feeling Nina is going to get chucked on the pile with the rest of Jodie's exes, accompanied by a venomous blog tirade of course.

Thank god for date night, from the subject matter of this entry it's evident I need to get out more.

Just another morning in suburbia

2008-10-09T21:36:00.004+01:00

Yesterday morning my doorbell rang. No big deal, except that I was just stepping out of the shower, and as I'm expecting Julia's birthday present (we ordered early), I ran downstairs and snuck my face round the opening, while clutching the towel. I came face to face with a rather portly man in a T-shirt and jeans, his large open-back truck parked behind him in the street.

Him: Alo, I'm here with your mulch
Me: What the crap is mulch, I mean, sorry, what? What is mulch?
Him: The stuff you put on your flowerbeds, back and front. You can pay via cash or credit card
Me: What? I mean, I didn't order anything? Are you sure you have the right house (stating the house number)
Him: Yes, (stating the house number). Don't you remember I was here last year?
Me: I only moved in two months ago
Him: (Faltering) OK, well, it was ordered
Me: By whom? Paul, our gardener? The managing agent?
Him: Um, yes
(Julia begins to cry on the monitor - I've just put her down for her morning sleep)
Me: Let me just get dressed and see to my daughter and I'll be back
Him: (Hopefully) OK

I go upstairs, irritated that the managing agent or gardener has ordered something without telling me, settle Julia, and get dressed. I call both the managing agent (who doesn't answer and has still not returned my call) and the gardener, Paul, who tells me this bloke is a regular swiz artist that relies on the maids and housekeepers in our street not knowing what's going on, and then dumping his crap on their flowerbeds and presenting the house owners with a bill.

All this time I'm talking to Paul, I'm stuck on the fact that this guy might have thought I was the maid or housekeeper, and strangely, it bothers me. But what maid or housekeeper is running around a house in a towel at 9am? What kind of street am I living on?

Me: (Expecting some kind of confrontation after seeing he has indeed already dumped this crap on our front flowerbed) I just spoke to the managing agent and the gardener (half true, I spoke to the managing agent's voicemail), and no one ordered anything. This isn't for us. Not this house.

Him: OK.

OK. OK? That's it? Evidently he was expecting me to get pissed at having caught him out at his game, and he looked relieved that I didn't. So off he drove, rather quickly, and I now have something that resembles soil with some hay pieces and other rubbish sticking out of it on our front flowerbed.

And on the subject of trash, I just want to comment very briefly on the Jade V Jordan spat. For those of you fortunate enough not to know what's going on, just skip this bit. For those of you bored enough to care, Jordan (Katie Price) has been saying that Jade Goody has a case of bad taste for selling her cancer story to the magazines and newspapers.

WTF? Sorry, but this is Jordan that not only publicizes her every waking moment, but prostitutes her children to the pages of OK magazine, talking about bad taste. She poses provocatively in her underwear, or is it a bathing suit (who can tell?) in nausea-inducing photo-shoots with her kids. Bloody hell, talk about pot and kettle.

I don't much care for either of them, but in all fairness to Jade, she is effectively a single mother (financially speaking at least), and she is very ill indeed. The prognosis is not good, and she is doing whatever she can to make money to ensure her boys have a future, and freely admits to it. If I was her I'd milk it too.

Also, going through cancer and indeed something as frightening as the kind she has, and being so willing to candidly talk about it, is admirable in its own way. There are a lot of people suffering from this illness and it's good that it's brought into public awareness in such a personal way. It may even go towards raising more money for cancer research, which is never a bad thing.

What I did think was in very bad taste however, was this week's OK interview with Jade. The interview questions were beyond stupid and insensitive. These included:

'Do you believe in reincarnation - if so, what would you like to come back as?'
(Jade makes some weird comment about her mother believing her grandfather came back as a bumble bee and that she wouldn't want to come back as one)
And the interviewer then asks,
'If you did, who would you sting?'
Followed closely by
'Would you come back as a ghost?'

These are questions being posed to a woman who has stage three cancer and is planning her funeral.

And your question would be 'And why do you read this shitty magazine?'

Holy Cow!

2008-10-04T19:14:00.005+01:00

I'm not in the habit of plugging restaurants. Or rather, I'm not in the habit of plugging restaurants that do not send me vouchers for free meals to do so. Last night, however, I had the best Indian food I have eaten since coming to the UK eleven years ago, and I am compelled to sing its praises.

Let me just say, I am not a huge fan of Indian food to begin with. Mainly, I suppose, because I can't really partake in particularly spicy food, which tends to leave me with a very narrow margin of choices, chicken korma being my preferred among these dishes. And I often get the feeling chicken korma is considered such a Westernised wus dish that it's never really prepared with much enthusiasm by any self-respecting Indian chef. The korma's I've had over the years tend to range from being artery clogging creamy and coconutty sweet, to somewhat bland and fairly tasteless. Oh yes, and once the cream used was sour.

This week we got a door drop from Holy Cow, a restaurant promising 'fine Indian food'. Roberto starts getting withdrawal symptoms if he doesn't have Indian food once every two months or so, and I thought, what the hell, I could do with something other than deep friend Chinese food for a change. Holy Cow also have a very cool graphically designed takeout menu, and I'm a sucker for good typography.

We ordered their chicken korma (they call it Murg Korma), lamb rogan, and aloo palak (aka sag aloo aka potato with spinach), pilau rice, and a plain naan bread.

My god, it was bloody good. That chicken korma, I mean, murg korma, was out of this world delicious. Even Roberto, who prefers the spicier stuff, had half of mine - grrr! It was 'using the naan to mop up the remainder of the sauce and fighting over who gets to do that' good. In fact, all of the food was just superb, and Roberto, a bit of a curry aficionado said, 'And not oily!' This morning I woke up not only smelling of curry, but wanting more! A first.

Yes, it was that good. They have kitchens in Kilburn, Battersea and Balham, but evidently deliver further afield than that. That's Holy Cow - Check them out here.

And on the subject of door drops, we got another one, advertising in bright red and black capitals, 'ANY JUNK CLEARANCES, 7 DAYS A WEEK. RELIABLE AND FRIENDLY SERVICE. SUPPORTING CHARITIES. RECYCLING.' Plus a telephone number. And if you could capitalise numbers, I imagine those would be too - for the purposes of keeping with the overall design look of course.

This looks good no? I mean, we have a bunch of stuff leftover from our move that needs taking to the recycling center, one thing being a rather heavy and large electrical item that Roberto and I cannot lift on our own. Turn the card over however and the guy's prices are three times more expensive per hour than a New York based Freudian psychoanalyst. 70 quid for ten minutes of work, I kid you not. The service may well be friendly, but those prices aren't. I wonder if this guy actually gets any business.

Roberto's creatively named 'Eyeclops' night vision goggles arrived. The box has pictures of people in a greenish light playing pranks on each other, another of a badger (wtf?), and one of a man leaning over another who is asleep on a sofa. A gay reference perhaps? Some person evidently thought these things were so alluring that they should feature them on the box making someone, like my dear husband, think to him/herself, 'My god, I just must have them!'

I put them on and I have this much to say: Peripheral vision is zero, ditto re. depth perception. Also, the night vision thingy only works out of one eye, so I don't know how much reading in bed Roberto is going to do before developing advanced single-eyed myopia or a rare form of epilepsy. Either way, I'm hoping fear of these will be a deterrent for him doing so.

The rod and rat

2008-10-03T08:54:00.006+01:00

According to a recent survey, one in five teachers in the UK said they would like corporal punishment to be brought back to deal with extreme cases, i.e.spawns of the devil.

I think teaching the kids, some of whom are of a violent inclination already, that violence is a solution to a problem, is a mistake. I reckon they are better off getting Harvey, from Celebrity Fit Club, to make them drop and give 50. I'd go one further and say instead of detention they should train them up to be a lethal fighting machine. Channel those anti-social tendencies and have them do work experience shadowing prison wardens. It's a win win situation, on the one hand they see what the fruits of their criminal labours will lead to if they don't curb their ways, and on the other they get to see the very rewarding side of dealing with violent unruly types on a day to day basis.

For less violent more intellectual types. i.e aspiring criminal masterminds, there's the computer science department. Expert hackers are always in great demand. And for the less ambitious and merely aspiring thugs, there's work in the school fruit and veg allotment.

Bring back the rod indeed.

I visited my stylist yesterday for my regular six week appointment to maintain my natural blondness, as you do. I asked him if the salon was feeling the effects of the credit crunch. I ask everyone this as I'm really interested to know how people are being effected down the line from the big banks. And just a quick aside, people who view the downfall of the big American banks with the attitude of 'They were fat cats and they deserved what they got' are shortsighted. It starts with these guys and then it effects business that are associated with them, which eventually effects the man in the street. So big business losses like this are never a good thing, regardless of your feelings for the people that work in them.

Anyway, I digress, my stylist told me that business has in fact been better than ever (it's a new salon) and last month was one of their best ones.

Winter is creeping up on us, and I hate waking up when it's still dark. It feels like the middle of the night to me, and as though I am the only person alive that is walking around fixing bottles and changing nappies at that ungodly hour.

Our rat situation hangs in the balance. Rentokil have to come round and do their third and final visit. This should have happened ages ago but we went on holiday, and then I procrastinated for a couple of weeks, and now Adam, the Rentokil technician, is on vacation. I can still smell a faint odour of ammonia (i.e. rat urine) coming up from the drain in the kitchen, accompanied by another sweeter perfume (Adam's smelly sachets used to mask the stench).

I am reading a fantastic book right know, called 'Holidays in Hell' by P.J O' Rourke. Featuring chapters such as 'A Ramble through Lebanon' and 'Christmas in El Salvador'. I love this kind of gonzo-journalistic travel writing, and done with a such a brilliant sardonic touch. I'm thinking of writing and pointing him in the direction of Centre Parcs - there may be an interesting chapter in that should he ever do a follow-up book.

Breaking News: Fusionman doesn't die

2008-09-26T20:04:00.005+01:00

Yves Rossy aka Fusionman, flew across the English Channel with a single jet-propelled wing strapped to his back, and amazingly, survived. Definitely not something to try at home.

Here at home Roberto informed me he has purchased a pair of night vision goggles. I kid you not. I asked him what the hell for, and he replied so he could see the pacifier in Julia's crib to replace it in the middle of the night, and to read in bed while I am asleep. I told him that if he knows what's good for him he had better not wear those damn things in bed next to me. God knows I have bad enough dreams without waking up from one of them thinking I am next to Jame Gumb in the 'Silence of the Lambs'.

Men and their bloody gadgets.

A Starbucks exchange

2008-09-25T18:43:00.006+01:00

People often say, when musing how they should stop procrastinating and write their book, or quit that job they are unhappy in, or leave that destructive relationship etc, 'You never know what can happen, tomorrow you could get hit by a bus!' Basically that life is unpredictable and short, and that one should make the most of every moment, because you just never know what's going to happen.

Well, this evening Roberto and I actually met a woman this happened to. Only it wasn't a bus. Rather, two and a half weeks ago in Hampstead, she was hit by a car and thrown 15 feet, while stepping out from between parked cars. She spent two weeks in hospital, and is in a wheelchair awaiting test results to see what the damage is.

We met when Julia crawled up to her wheelchair in Starbucks and used one of the wheels to lift herself up into a standing position. The woman apologised to us, for some bizarre reason, and we were like, "No, no, it's us that should apologise to you." Anyway, the short end of it is that we got talking and without us even asking she came out and said, "You know on the 8th of September, after dropping some clothes off at Oxfam, I was hit by a car and that's why I'm in this wheelchair." She was very eager to talk about what happened and moved between almost non-stop talking and quietly tearing up. She was clearly, and quite understandably, anxious.

She told me the weird thing is that at the time it happened, her biggest concern was the fact that she had booked a cab to pick her up from home at 11.15 that morning to take her to a meeting, and that it would be waiting. It made me think of that line from the John Lennon song, 'Life is what happens to you when you're busy making other plans.'

We tried to be upbeat and said that the fact that she could wiggle her toes and that she had some feeling in her legs was a good sign, but what the hell do we know right? I asked her what it was like sleeping at night, and she said it was terrible, "I'm unable to move from lying on my back, and I hate being in that position." She was incredibly hard on herself and kept looking over at her sister, over to help from America, saying, "I just feel sorry for Deborah here, having to do everything for me. I don't know what I would do without her." Her sister, a warm generous woman, didn't look as though she minded at all.

I imagine going from being a completely independent person in all senses of the word to being dependent on other people is hard for anyone. The whole thing was an incredibly vivid reminder of just how random these things are. I mean, the one minute she's running some chores in town, and the next, well, she's facing a possible future in a wheelchair. "I used to run marathons," she told us, "and now I don't know if I will ever walk again."

Let my people go, Vodafone

2008-09-25T12:43:00.005+01:00

Vodafone have become my nemesis. Since shutting down my account with them, or at least thinking that's what I had done last week, I mean, 'I want to shut down my account,' is pretty self explanatory right? I've had two calls and two missed calls from their account closures department.

The first one caught me unawares while I was walking past Keats's house in Hampstead. An ominous sounding voice asked me to confirm my name and first line of my address. He then went on to ask me why I was closing my account. This was a golden opportunity to vent all my pent-up rage, and boy did I. He listened patiently and then, with no emotion in his voice, asked me if there was any way they could change my mind.

The conversation went something like this:
Me: No, I'm sorry
Him: Are you sure, I mean, is there any way we can keep your business?
Me: Listen, I'm sorry, but you guys, OK, maybe not you personally, but the people in your company are incompetent
Him: I'm sorry to hear that, but you've been a good customer is there some kind of deal we can do to keep you?
Me: Thank you, this really is the last time I'm saying this, but no. I am not interested, but thank you for your call OK?
Him: (Sounding sad and despondent), OK, thank you.

So I thought that was that, and I'd have my PAC code by now. But no, yesterday I see not one but two missed calls from that same account closures department. I didn't intentionally not answer, just happened to be busy with Julia on both ocassions.

Then today I got another call from someone called Daniel. Daniel asks me to confirm my name (which happens to be my pre-marriage name that they should have changed but never got round to doing), and the first line of my address.

The conversation went something like this:
Him: Hi there, I'm calling from the Vodafone account closures department, and I just wanted to ask you why you are closing your account with us?
Me: Jesus, are you people for real? I just spoke to your colleague on Monday. I mean, do I really have to go through all of this again?
Him: Um, well, is it because you have found a better deal elsewhere?
Me: Listen, you people are inept, as I told your colleague on Monday, and I have no interest in keeping my business with you.
Him: But...
Me: I've bought a 3G phone and as soon as you send me my PAC code I am going to use it. I do not want to use your company any more OK?
Him: OK, well, um, thank you

I realise that Daniel got the shit end of the stick, but the irony in all of this is that him calling me after I had spoken to two other people in his company unequivocally stating my decision to close my account and indeed believing it had been done, is exactly why I am closing my account. They evidently do not make notes on the accounts following phone conversations like this, or if they do they ignore them, and the result is that none of them know what the hell is going on.

I feel as though I'm trying to leave the Mafia or something. Just let me go already, and send me my god damn PAC code while you're at it.

Tropic Thunder

2008-09-20T22:14:00.001+01:00

Mascara, Vodafone, and meth

2008-09-20T20:03:00.003+01:00

I think mascara commercials, both print and television, are the best examples of false advertising. No one, except Julia of course, has eyelashes the kind you see in these ads. Basically three feet long and about a hundred per lid. I mean, who do they think they're kidding? You buy the stuff imagining you're going to get home, apply it, and not only get beautiful thick lustrous lashes, but a great body and a fabulous lifestyle too. And instead all you get are panda eyes from putting on too much, and disappointed at the fact that you didn't wake up with Jessica Biel's body.

Only recently I saw a Boots ad having the courage to include a subtitle which reads, 'Lashes styled using infills.' Thank you, thank you Boots for your honesty. I was so impressed I decided to go straight there to buy my next mascara. Only I saw another ad with a gorgeous celebrity and her impossibly long bushy eyelashes and got distracted. Reality, who needs it right?

I settled on the new Loreal mascara, featuring the impossibly beautiful Aishwariya Rai and her impossibly long thick eyelashes, called 'Volume Shocking'. I had a tough time choosing because they also had, 'Lash Architect', 'Lash Architect Midnight Black', 'Lash Architect Carbon Gloss', 'Double Extension', 'Double Extension Carbon Black', 'Panoramic Curl', 'Voluminous X4', 'Voluminous X5', 'Volume Shocking', 'Volume Shocking Exact Brush', 'Telescopic', and 'Telescopic Clean Definition'. And then men wonder why women take so long in Super Drug.

'Volume Shocking' does, and I can't believe I'm saying this, deliver the goods. It has this double wand thing so you have to read the instructions before using it. Yes I know, like I have time for that in the mornings. But it seems to work by coating the crap out of your eyelashes with two different types of stuff and therefore they do actually come out looking thicker and longer. I won't go as far as saying I put it on and people in the street stopped me and said, 'My god, we're shocked at the shocking volume of your eyelashes!,' but they were noticeably, well, noticeable. (I wish I could say this was a paid for plug, but unfortunately it isn't. If anyone at Loreal is reading this however, feel free to send me free stuff OK? I'm a total prostitute when it comes to cosmetics.

I ended my long term relationship with Vodafone today. I received a bill for 141.60 quid for 'Messaging, mobile browsing + data', this after signing up for their seven odd quid internet browsing deal (per month) in August. Apparently the guy selling me the plan failed to notice and indeed mention that my current plan was not compatible with that particular offer. So after getting a text assuring me it was now safe to inexpensively (don't get me started one what they charged me before) surf the net on my phone, I did so with reckless abandon, only to get hit by this bill.

So I called Vodafone. The short end of being transferred to and explaining the situation to about five different people and being put on hold for so long that I was able to make Julia's dinner and feed it to her while waiting, is that the mobile browsing and data amount is being credited to my account and I have closed it. It's not the first time they've managed to incur my wrath and it genuinely seems as though they have some people working there who don't know what the hell is going on.

The call centre guys have clearly been on 'Irrational Rage-filled Caller Training'. All the people I spoke to remained calm and professional, which was a bit disappointing really. I was chomping at the bit for a fight, even an argument, but no one went for it. I started off by shouting, 'What the crap are you people doing, I'm holding an enormous bill in my hands???!!!' And by the time I spoke to the 5th person I was like, 'Yeah ok, big bill, need refund and, oh yes, want to close account.' I reckon this business of transferring you from one person to the next is part of their plan to wear you out. Also, someone should do research into the subliminal anti-rage properties of bad wait music, I reckon there's something in that.

Ryan O'Neal and his son were busted with meth in LA recently. That's embarrassing. I mean it's one thing being caught out as a drug user, but quite another when it looks like you and your kid use together. There's something quite bad taste about the whole thing, not unlike having your mother cheering along to the stripper at your hen night. I don't have enough battery power in my mac to elucidate how much that notion creeps me out.

And finally, a Roberto quote of the day (after showing him a picture of Zac Efron on Dlisted and asking, 'Honey did you ever have these side stomach/groin muscles?')
"I have those muscles. They're just not visible!"

Things do to with under 5's in NW3

2008-09-18T19:09:00.006+01:00

If anyone asks me what the hardest thing I've found since having a baby is, the answer it not lost sleep and having to give up absinthe, as one might imagine, but rather finding ways to entertain my child, and likewise myself.

There's only so much Oprah you can watch, and when you child starts to crawl, even that goes out the window. Now you have to switch your attention from the TV to your child who is about to walk into the sharp edge of your glass coffee table. It's exhausting, and the best thing for it is to chuck em on the pile with other little people in a soft safe environment, so they can get on with it. And so that you can meet other parents. And believe me, no matter how much you like your own company, when you have a kid, other parents become beacons of sanity. Babies, for all their loveliness, are not great conversationalists, and you find yourself quite literally craving a good natter.

Anyway, I had a complete nightmare trying to find activities in my old area, so when I moved here to Hampstead I decided enough was enough and started accosting other mothers on the street asking them where I could take Julia. I got pointed in the direction of the community center, which has been fantastic. But that's only three mornings a week, what about Mondays and Fridays? What about the afternoons? I was desperate. And then, queue heavenly music, today someone told me about the nw3kids.co.uk website.

It contains a thorough list of things to do with children under the age of five in the NW3 part of London, categorising activities into such things as playgroups, singing, rhymes and stories etc. It even has bus routes and directions to help you get there. A real gem if you live in this neck of the woods. I emailed the site creator to thank her, who as legend has it, is some kind of super mom who took it upon herself to do this - god bless her. She asked that if anyone joins any groups on the site to please let them know they found said group through the site. Apparently it helps with the advertising.

I think every area should do this to help stop parents from becoming isolated. God knows I've been there and it sucks. So spread the word people.

Business Time

2008-09-16T16:32:00.003+01:00

This is absolutely hillarious! A big thanks to the lovely Roberto x

Our wedding revisited

2008-09-12T21:32:00.005+01:00

Today we took Julia to see where we got married, and then later, where we had our reception. Our wedding venue, the gardens of the Chevre d'Or in Eze, are not looking as beautiful as I remember them. The lawn is a bit overgrown and the flower beds need some tending to. My view may also have been tainted by the fact that we were accosted by the hotel porters on two occasions demanding to know if we were guests.

Having little to no French on our part didn't help, matched by their incomprehension of English. So explaining that we had got married there two and a bit years ago and we were bringing our baby to see it, and that we had permission from the people in reception to do so was futile.

Thug, I mean, porter: You guest of ze otel?
Us (attempting to answer): Well not exactly but ...
Porter (interjecting): No!
Porter: You are not supposed to beez ere!

We mentioned the name of the events organiser and got some glimmer of recognition in what was otherwise a blank merciless glare, and were eventually left to our little walk down memory lane.

I was also a bit put out by the fact that they so quickly made up their minds that we clearly weren't guests. It's true that as the hotel is a part of the village, they get a lot of confused tourists who accidentally wonder into the gardens which are for guests only. Also, as it's a small hotel, there may be a chance that they knew who was staying there, and we clearly weren't it. But what if we were new guests that had just arrived?

Perhaps, and this was something I was not willing to face, we looked as though we weren't dressed smartly enough to be staying there. Roberto agreed that we did look a bit scruffy. "Speak for yourself," I said, "a bit of baby food on my shirt does not count."

Later we went to the Villa Kerylos and asked someone to take a picture of the three of us to sort of recreate one of our wedding photos. It was a complete failure, and only the location is the same. Roberto is squinting against the sun, Julia is looking confused and gripping my lip, and I'm trying to art direct the shot and maniacally grin at the same time, while enduring the pain of my lip being pulled off of my face. It wasn't a success, but perhaps in its way, a telling portrait of how children change your life. In a good way of course.

And in the news:

Here in France, and what is believed to be a world-first, a magistrate has invited a dog to take the stand as a witness in a trial. My favourite thing about this story is one of the defence lawyers objections, "Besides, the victim died two and half years ago, which is seventeen dog years! How is the animal supposed to remember that far back?"
Europe's oldest woman celebrates her 115th birthday
A Saudi judge has said it's permissible to kill owners of satellite TV channels which broadcast immoral programmes. Good to know freedom of expression is alive and well.
Snoop Dog gets long-awaited Australian visa, provided he undergoes counselling. I'm wondering if the delay had anything to do with the fact that his tour is called, 'Smoked Out.'

This is not a comparative post

2008-09-11T15:45:00.004+01:00

We are staying in Cap Ferrat in the South of France. Whereas Longleat Forest (Center Parcs) was coldish and rainy, here it is 28 degrees today. Although it has mostly been cloudy, it's wonderfully warm and balmy, which is almost perfect weather for babies and red-headed husbands who burn easily.

The two holiday venues are completely different, but then, to be fair, they are two completely different types of holiday. One of them does sell Prada in the lobby however - always a beacon of unaffordable civilisation if there ever was one.

Yesterday evening we went to eat at one of the little local harbour-side restaurants in St Jean Cap Ferrat. I had an assortment of fish, pot roasted with vegetables, and french bread. Roberto had cod with garlic mayonnaise, and we had a half bottle of wine and a bottle of water between us. All of this was a fraction of the cost to an equivalent dinner at, say, Cafe Rouge in Longleat. Also, it was freshly made and finger-licking delicious. I actually lost weight at Center Parcs, which, admittedly, is not a bad thing in terms of the size of my backside these days, but not exactly a testament to the fine dining on offer either.

Julia has a cold. This she could have picked up on the flight, or it may be from Longleat - there were quite a few people sneezing and snuffling. Well, cycling around in that kind of weather, and what do you expect? Last night I was up with her most of the night keeping an eye on her temperature and trying to keep her in a more upright position so she could breathe more easily.

At around 3am Roberto took over and I got some sleep. Till 6.30am that is when she decided it was a good time to wake up and welcome the day. I was just so relieved that her temperature (which fortunately had never got high enough to call a doctor) was down and she was chipper. A healthy, happy child following a night of illness is a gift from the gods and worth every minute of lost sleep, regardless of how many tubes of Touche Eclat one has to get through to look presentable.

We spent today at the pool where we had another delicious meal of grilled sole with lemon butter sauce for lunch. This time it was expensive, but as our hotel is favoured by Russian oligarchs, it's to be expected I guess.

Being happy, well-fed, and dry, probably means I won't be blogging to the same extent as I was at Longleat. In an unfortunate and ironic twist these things tend to have an adverse effect on my ~~venting spleen~~ literary juices.

It was the steak wot done it

2008-09-09T22:29:00.004+01:00

Today, as previously mentioned, was rather horrible and rainy. But when you have a small child and rather ugly pebble dashed walls to stare at, it's best to get out even if it means getting wet. In the morning we put on our rain coats and took her to the Sports Cafe again, but not to eat (I'm not that stupid), rather to make use of their soft enclosed baby/toddler play area. After that we headed up to 'The Plaza' for an early spot of lunch at Cafe Rouge.

For non UK people, Cafe Rouge is a French brasserie chain. I use the one in Hampstead quite often for a hot chocolate and croissant, and it's perfectly nice.

For lunch today we both ordered steaks, Roberto's medium rare, mine medium. A while later two cuts of meat arrived looking as though they had seen better days. Mine was incredibly thin (and no I had not ordered the minute steak) and so well done it had carbon ambitions, and Roberto's was somewhere between well done and medium. I sent mine back and then received another piece of steak that was cooked to spec in places, blue in others, and fatty, stringy and nasty in others. Basically the cheapest worst cut they had.

I sat there thinking, 'What the fu*k???!!! Why does this keep happening to me? The thing is, although I write commentary, I'm not really the sort of person to complain. I never send food back, unless it's really bad, which has happened perhaps a handful of times in my lifetime. And by really bad I mean inedible, and why pay for something you cannot eat? It felt like groundhog day, and it made me angry.

We were eating lunch as it opened at 12 with only a handful of other patrons, so they couldn't even use the excuse that they were overrun and understaffed.

I felt sorry for our waitress too, who was working in a place that served such shyte. She seemed genuinely apologetic. I also never take shitty food out on the waiting staff by leaving a bad tip - it's not their fault.

We got back to our villa, took off our very wet outer clothing, and looked at each other. After checking the forecast (rain for the rest of the week), we decided if we didn't get out of there pronto, I could not be held responsible for my actions. We couldn't use the bikes, the pool was manically busy, and the odds on good restaurants were increasingly tilting towards shit. It was like taking a week off to stay in a really ugly flat you couldn't leave much, and get served bad food you had to pay a lot of money for. What was the point?

While Julia had a sleep we packed up our stuff, booked some flights, and tomorrow we are off to the South of France. Fingers crossed the weather is set to be around 25 and sunny, with a chance of rain on Friday. Hell, I'll take that chance.

I think what irks most is that this holiday was not inexpensive. The restaurants at Center Parcs are in line with their London counterparts in terms of prices, but with a captive audience they evidently take the piss in terms of quality. Saying that Roberto says he has never had good steak frites at Cafe Rouge, and he may have a point.

For those of you still interested in visiting, they are refurbishing and had pamphlets (with glossy photos) of villas that are a lot more stylish and in line with this century's decorating trends. If it's a warm sunny time of the year, your children are not babies, you like doing active stuff, and you don't mind a bit of a gamble with the restaurants, I'd say go for it. Will I go back? Not a chance. But then I may still be pissed about that steak. Oh and that breakfast. Oh yes, and the waffle.

Center Parcs - Day ? (I forget)

2008-09-09T07:24:00.006+01:00

It's Tuesday morning, and, for my sins, it's raining. We've had rain on and off this holiday, but were fortunate yesterday in that it was only overcast. Yes fortunate to have coldish overcast weather instead of rain - you can see I've been in England too long.

We got fresh towels delivered yesterday - hurrah! Without even asking. I'm not sure how often that happens withing a week's stay, but I was overjoyed. The two cleaning ladies that arrived to do the maid service (they exist!) were rather nice and did a good job of cleaning up in the kitchen, packing the dish washer, and giving the bathroom a once-over. They even did a bit of vacuuming. I think over the weekend we were stuck with one cleaner on her own, the very glamorous 17-year-old (or so she looked) Tammy. Tammy told me she only does the kitchen and the bathroom, and the look in her eyes made it clear that I had better not ask for anything beyond that.

Yesterday we ventured down to the lake, and saw all sorts of outdoor activities, like zip slides and tree climbing things designed for zealous active sorts who have a taste for danger. The children's activity playground, for children aged four and over, looked genuinely fun. Roberto and I even had a go at the seated zip slide. Imagine a woman with a large backside, sun glasses, and impractical MBT's screaming loudly - and that would be me.

I've had some comments and a couple of emails about why we chose this place, I mean, considering how much I'm complaining. I didn't want to put Julia onto a plane again (getting to and through airports alone being an enormous schlep), and wanted somewhere not too far from home in terms of travel, for a week away.

In retrospect we probably should have gone abroad to avoid this miserable weather. Plus, as it turns out, this place isn't really suited to babies. I say that and yet I see plenty of people walking around with their prams looking perfectly happy. Rather, let me rephrase: if you are coming here to take advantage of the biking (it is the preferred means of travel to get around this place, which is rather large), it's not really ideal if you have a young baby.

The villa, although suffering from a case of bad taste interior decorating, is perfectly comfortable - nice bedding, soft (but thin) towels, and clean(ish). Plus, provided you don't get Tammy, the maid service is fine, though don't expect hotel-like standards.

Restaurants here have been a mixed bag:
Strada: Perfectly nice and in keeping with their goodish Italian chain reputation
The Pancake House: Fine provided you don't order a waffle. It is beyond me why a place that makes pancakes (and rather good ones), would use microwaved waffles. Or at least, that is what mine tasted like, and one that had been microwaved far too long. I had to send it back because it was inedible - think old boot left out in the rain, for 20 years.
Eat in delivery: We've had the Indian and Chinese food and both were very good. The menus were small and consisting only of popular dishes tailored to Western palettes (think sweet and sour and korma's) but those were done to a good spec.
The Sports Cafe: Horrible. We had breakfast there yesterday and they had these potatoes (round sliced and fried) which tasted as though they had been made at some much earlier point, then refrigerated, and then heated up again before serving. The bacon, beautiful Wiltshire bacon (which is famous and from this area), was overcooked to such an extent that you could make a handbag out of it. And the mushrooms and tomato were bland. The egg was good, and would have been even better were it to have come with toast, which it didn't - that was extra. What's worse is that they clearly had good ingredients and managed to destroy them, which is one of the worst possible sins in food preparation.

Service here is pretty good. The workforce appears to be populated by very young people, and they are enthusiastic, patient, and efficient. There are a broad range of activities in and around this place (archery, horse riding, laser combat etc) and in good weather I imagine one gets to fully appreciate the size of the forest with everyone spread out over multiple events. But, if it's pissing down with rain, then everyone gravitates to the indoor communal points, like that bastion of serenity, the Subtropical Swimming Paradise, and you get the aforementioned overcrowded chaos.

I think for future holidays I'd definitely choose a place with better weather, and in terms of opting for a child-friendly hotel/resort (because let's face it, we have to), I'd go for somewhere smaller and less inclined to fill to its capacity. I'd also quite like to have the benefit of self-catering accommodation (strangely beneficial with small children), but with the virtue of hotel services (room service, cleaning, fresh daily towels etc) should I so choose.

Will the real Winston Churchill please stand up

2008-09-08T12:44:00.002+01:00

In Yahoo News:

'According to a recent survey one in four children think wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill is the name of the nodding dog in insurance adverts. The survey, which polled 1,000 eight to 11-year-olds, also found that children are much more likely to recognise 'I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here' stars Ant and Dec than they are Gordon Brown.' Continue reading

Source and picture: Yahoo

Hell is 'The Subtropical Swimming Paradise'

2008-09-07T19:10:00.005+01:00

The words 'subtropical', 'swimming' and 'paradise' are quite lovely and evocative even as they stand alone. Strung together and they conjure up something quite exotic and sublime. You might imagine topless women, the kind in Gauguin paintings of Tahiti, serving you Pina Colada's from coconuts. And strange and beautiful coloured birds setting down to bath in fresh water that has cascaded down from a nearby waterfall. You may even imagine yourself wading through crystal clear pools, and in my case, with Jessica Biel's body, wearing a daring bathing suit.

OK, so being a realist, I had some idea that the ambitiously named 'Subtropical Swimming Paradise' here at Center Parcs couldn't possibly live up to my fantasy. And then there's the bit about it being a child-friendly place, so the topless Tahitian thing probably wouldn't go down too well either. So I had to have an open mind. And, is it turns out, way open would be best.

It wasn't like I imagined, nowhere near it. In fact, imagine the North and the South Poles and triple the distance between in terms of how wrong I was. The name, however, proved to be more accurate than I thought.

They certainly got the 'subtropical' bit right, if by that you mean exceptionally hot, steamy and smelling like the output of a giant air conditioner expelling the odour of 500 people strong. And as for the swimming bit, there were people doing that too, what seemed like hundreds of them. And being a massive enclosed space with all these people and children swimming and yelling in the hot steam, let's just say there was some resemblance to what Bedlam might have been like at bath time in its heyday.

The whole 'paradise' thing is what I have the biggest problem with however. Personally I thought it more closely resembled hell. And as I sat there in a little wading pool with Julia trying to hear my thoughts amidst all that chaos, I imagined myself working my way through an icy cold six pack of beer. And then another, somewhere far far away from that place. I wonder if you can sue an establishment for driving you to alcoholism?

It might be that it's the weekend, and things will thin out in this coming week (we pray) as people return to work, meaning we may venture back there for another bit of swimming. Julia seemed equally effected by all that chaos and did a fair bit of on-off crying, which brings me to something Roberto and I have concluded - this isn't really an ideal place for babies. Were she a few years older she would most likely be joining in with all the other crazies; running around, splashing and being offensive, but for now she just seemed small and overwhelmed.

She is also a bit on the small side for the bike trailer, and although fastened in tends to flop uncomfortably to one side. They are not the best designed in terms of back support, so probably better suited to slightly older children who readily sit up and forwards of their own accord.

But getting back to the Subtropical Swimming Paradise, it had nothing on the Subtropical Swimming Paradise's changing rooms. Come gather all ye obsessive compulsives for a horror story to keep you up at night: Dirty, as in the floor, and wet too, and you weren't allowed to wear shoes (a wise move otherwise there would be even more dirt), even pool-side flip flops, once you had changed and were making your way to the pool. So we had to walk, barefoot, on this wet dirty tiled floor so that whatever the hell it was down there stuck to our clean feet. And don't even get me started on my fear of athletes foot.

Then, on our return from the pool, I had a tired, crying, wet Julia in my arms, and an overwhelming smell of diarrhoea, that someone had just unleashed into the airwaves of the giant busy unisex bathroom/change rooms, hit me. I was having flashbacks, to be sure, and the heat and stench were nauseating. Plus throw in about ten babies and children (including ours) in the various stages of crying/screaming.

I have come to the realisation that while I am a person with a child, I do not care for places that cater for people with children. It's just too anxiety provoking.

Saying that, I think this place is in many ways perfect for children, albeit, as I mentioned earlier, ones older than babies. There is plenty to do, then there's the bike riding, and of course lots of places to eat in and even order from in the evenings in the form of takeaways. So you don't have to get too bogged down by the self catering thing. Personally I think the words self-catering and holiday are mutually exclusive, but there are some people who quite enjoy cooking without the stresses of normal day to day work and life.

There seems to be a lot of family bonding going on, especially with the bike riding, and I imagine in a few years Julia will love it here. And when she comes here with her friends and their parents that are not us, I'm sure she will have a great time.

Center Parks - Day II

2008-09-06T18:31:00.004+01:00

There is a sign on the door of the boiler room in our villa which reads, 'In the interests of safety, even where space permits, the boiler room must not be used to sleep in.' Bearing in mind that the room in question is a rather bleak L shaped one that is approximately a meter at it's longest end, I don't even want to imagine what happened historically to prompt the management to deem this warning necessary.

The bike riding today, once I got the hang of it, was actually rather fun, even without the fag and beer. It didn't even occur to me that the last time I rode a bike I was 10 or so, so it took a while to get going. Not before looking like a complete eejit that is, as kids three times younger raced past on theirs, while I struggled with takeoff. Julia was less impressed having to sit in her little covered trailer and did a lot of moaning. It was only when we took her out at lunch that we realised they'd given us one with a wet seat bench and her trousers were soaked through. On a hot day, no problem, but when it's coldish and raining, well, rather unpleasant. I probably don't need to spell out what I felt like doing to the spotty 16-year-old (all people younger than 30 appear 16 to me) that arranged that trailer for us.

We have yet to hit the water park - that's on tomorrow's agenda. We did walk past it however, and it seemed that adult and child alike were completely oblivious to the rain as they zooted past on the fun slide screaming like banshees. Adults behaving like children on these sorts of contraptions make me nervous. There's something of the maniac about them, and although it's one thing having a kid bash into you as you make your descent, I imagine a 14 stone man doing the same may result in some serious chiropractor bills.

I ensured I bought a pair of board shorts so as to not expose people to the sight of my extremely pale ample thighs. I'd like to use the excuse that I've just had a baby, but as she's nearly 9 months old, I imagine people thinking, 'Yeah right, that excuse expired about 5 months ago.'

Just a few more notes on the place, as a reference for people who may be interested in coming here: The towels provided for one's toilette, although thin, are nice and soft. These do not get replaced every day however. Now I now a bunch of you reading this will get all eco on me and say 'You don't need fresh towels every day,' and normally I would agree with you. But when you have a baby and um, er, maybe use the towels as changing mats, well, you get the picture. I believe there is a laundrette in town and one would most likely also be able to get fresh towels, but at an additional cost.

We signed up for the maid service, but to be frank, I have no idea what that involves because the only noticeable change to our villa on our return is that the bed was made, and badly. That's it. So I think that that's a complete waste of time and money, and as these places come kitted out with dishwashers, I'd just lump it and do the tidying and cleaning myself.

As I write this Roberto has just removed a pan from the cupboard (prior to this unused, by us that is) to make some bacon in and said, and I quote, "Jesus Christ, I'm not using this, it's filthy, and the non-stick surface is peeling off!" And this is a man who isn't anywhere near my levels of hygiene obsessive compulsiveness. So yes, not really sure what that maid gets up to, if anything at all.

We ate in Strada today (for non UK people this is an Italian-themed restaurant chain). They had this little soft play area (this whole place is a dream if you have kids), and Julia was enjoying herself in it while we ate our main course. Then she was joined by two small children, one 19 months, the other 2 years. The mother of the two-year-old kept warning him to be gentle with Julia as she was only little, that is until Julia herself started to use the 19-month-old as a ladder, while the poor child looked terrified. We managed to scoop her up and out of there just before she managed to extract the handful of said child's hair she had in her possession. Little indeed.

And now, dinner awaits and it's time to sign off. More tomorrow, provided of course I survive the rigorous of the water park.

Centre Parks - Day 1

2008-09-05T19:10:00.004+01:00

I'm sitting here in the lounge of our Center Parks 'executive villa.' I think the designers, when using the word 'executive,' were going for the whole modular living bachelor pad circa 1978 / Holiday Inn look as their inspiration. Actually that's not entirely fair, the sofas, with their homage to the American Indian print, are more 1980's, and, I'm wondering, an intentional juxtaposition to the rest of the place?

The contrasting curtains (orange) and carpet (green) were evidently a clever, and dare I say it, cheeky little decorating move. I have also never seen internal pebble dashing before. In fact, as I write this, I am surrounded by it. And not just in one colour mind you, but the walls are painted half and half in salmon pink and cream. I think the decorating genius behind our place was toying with our sense of colour and spacial awareness, and were I ever asked to help design a prison rec room, I'd blatantly plagiarise this look. And I'm not afraid to admit it.

OK, so interior decoration aside, which folks, is really as bad as I describe it, the place is pretty clean, well planned, and fairly spacious for our little family. We also have a beautiful view of the forest out of pretty much every window. The cutlery drawer will need a clean - it's a bit grubby, so that means all the cutlery will need washing too, and the mattress in the cot bed provided smells very faintly of vomit, but fortunately I brought my own cot linen. The latter was not provided by the way, but this may be something you can request.

We were going to bring our own travel cot but our car was absolutely choca block full. And don't look at me! Forget the days of packing matching shoes and handbags and the entire Estee Lauder Christmas Special mega-makeup gift set. Travel with a baby means you get a tiny little space for a couple of practical things like khaki shorts and a pair of sandals, and the rest is all their paraphernalia.

Everyone is cycling around on bicycles here - it feels strange and unnatural - far too clean living and healthy for me. I have an instinctive desire to hire the shortest, fattest, slowest bike (with training wheels) they have, and amble around with a cigarette hanging out of my mouth and beer in my hand. After all, it is my holiday too right? Unfortunately it probably won't look so good with Julia in the little cart attached to my bike. And one must keep up appearances.

Tomorrow we are off into the town bit to go and hire some bikes (shortest fattest one for me), and see what's on offer activity-wise.

But for now, I have a glass of Chilean wine to attend to and perhaps, who knows, some scrabble with Roberto, if he is so kind.

The rat files - Episode II

2008-08-31T19:12:00.009+01:00

Adam, the Rentokill chap, returned this week to attend to 'Stage II' of our rodent elimination process. It sounds a lot more impressive than it was. It simply involved him checking his traps, saying there was some mouse activity, and putting a bunch of deodorising sachets down the hole which the rat inhabits. These sachets are quite effective - strong enough to disguise the smell of rotting rats and mice, according to Adam. He told me he regularly uses them in situations such as ours where there is a possibility that the rodents are unable to exit and return to their nests to die, and so do so while trapped within/beneath the confines of your abode.

Yes, lovely image there: Our happy little family enjoying breakfast in our sun-filled kitchen, and then the camera pans down lower and lower till it descends to the scene beneath the floorboards - a dark, musty, and strangely perfumed battlefield of rodent death and decay.

Adam has a jaded air about him, as I imagine one would have were you to poison things and then retrieve their corpses for a living. He did however cheer up when talking about the fact that he and his wife are expecting a baby.

He said that they had already purchased their stroller and went on to tell me that it was great because it was easy for his missus to fold up. That seemed to be their only requirement when choosing - that the apparatus folded up easily. "It fits into her life, you see," he told me looking enthusiastic.

I mused that we too were like Adam and his wife once upon a time, foolishly thinking that all the things we were getting for baby were about our lives and how well these items, and indeed baby, would fit into them. And how we'd bundle her under our arm and continue with life as we had up until this point and nothing really needed to change.

Which brings me back to the adjective, 'foolishly.' When you have a baby, in fact the second you have that baby, it is not about them fitting into your life, but about you completely reorganising, reshaping, and overhauling yours to accommodate them. Babies, for their size, are incredibly life changing and not unlike a hurricane - you can prepare for their arrival to an extent, but you just don't really have a clue what to expect until it is upon you.

Still, there are rewards, and no this is not just something parents invent to make themselves feel better about the fact that they no longer have a social life and have to watch the Teletubbies instead of the Hallmark Channel. You see your child changing and learning new things almost daily, and getting pleasure and excitement out of the smallest and what seem like the simplest things. I watch Julia crawling around and playing before her bath, naked, and she is absolutely free and beautiful in her own skin. She doesn't know anything about body image or shame or feeling embarrassed. It is breathtaking to imagine, even for a moment, being so utterly without bullshit hangups and insecurities.

Unfortunately as soon as she is able to talk and understand and come into contact with other children, this will change. Children who, like their parents, are intolerant and ignorant to the concept that other people and indeed the world can be different to them and that this is a good and fine thing. Having grown up in a country where bigotry and intolerance were so thoughtlessly passed between parent and child, I mean to make a concerted effort to ensure our child doesn't suffer the same gift of supreme ignorance at our hands.

But I am getting far too serious and it's not in my nature, unless I am drinking a rather fine glass of red wine. Which, unfortunately, I am not. I've decided to limit myself to a couple of nights a week simply because all that fine vintage is going straight to my middle. It's quite incredible the havoc we can wreak on a perfectly fine body through over indulgence. And don't even get me started on my latest preoccupation with baking, which isn't helping matters.

Separately, is anyone else completely and utterly intrigued with the Foster fire in Shropshire case? I know it's terribly morbid, but I have a feeling in my wannabe forensic psychologist bones, that this is going to turn out to be a very sad and twisted tale of murder, betrayal and lies. The latest news is that of the two burnt bodies that were found, one has been identified as Jill Foster, with the post mortem revealing a gunshot wound to the head.

My theory is murder and then a cover-up by virtue of fire. The corpses of dogs and horses were also found with gun shot wounds, leading me to postulate that whoever did so did it as an act of compassion to the animals so that they would not have to suffer a painful death in the flames. This lends itself to a possibility that the person/s responsible were intimately involved with or indeed a part of the family.

Until the other body has been identified, said to be that of an adult man, Christopher Foster and his 15-year-old daughter Kirstie are still considered missing.

As a well as Jill Foster's body, which was identified from her dental records, an adult man's body was recovered on Saturday, though further tests are needed before a positive identification can be made.
A rifle, legitimately owned by the businessman, has been found near the bodies as was the body of dog, which was also shot.

A further three horses and three dogs found in the mansion's outbuildings were shot before the fire broke out, while spent and unspent gun cartridges have been found in the mansion's grounds. (Reuters) Continue reading.

The rat files - Episode 1

2008-08-24T21:49:00.004+01:00

The Rentokill man, a young fellow of about 24 named Adam, turned up at our house last week to start the ominous-sounding 'Stage 1' of our rodent elimination process. That's really a very nice way of saying that they are going to poison whatever is under our floor so that it dies a slow horrible death. Three days I believe - three days of agonising pain and then they die from external and internal hemorrhaging.

"Jesus, can't we just catch it and let it out in our neighbours yard?" I asked, looking mortified at what I was about to be an accomplice to. "Well," said Adam, hand on his hip, cup of coffee in hand, "the thing is, these rats carry disease. I've seen people taken very ill from rat bites." I doubted he had, but I imagine it's part of Rentokill protocol to give the soft-hearted housewife this spiel. And yes, I'm sure that some of them do carry diseases, so again, why not just let them out in our neighbours yard?

It got worse. "He might be down there alone, or he might have a family, but this stuff should take care of all of them," said Adam, thinking that the whole family line would make me imagine lots of rats and therefore make me less empathetic and more mercenary. Like I'd say, "Yeah, go ahead, annihilate the f***ers!" Instead I said, "Family? Who said anything about a family? Oh god," imagining a motley crew in Beatrix Potter Dickensian garb trying to make their way in a harsh world, i.e. the space under our kitchen floor.

Adam went on and on about disease and bites, and looked at me, and then at Julia, and I saw his point. I just wish there was another way, a quicker one that didn't involve them having to suffer such a long painful drawn out death. It genuinely unsettles me.

I also learnt that although rats live in filthy environments, they don't actually eat filth, or rather, given a choice, they don't. They much prefer cleaner things like grain, rice, that sort of thing. They are also apparently partial to peanut butter (them and Milla Jovovich is would seem), and crispy dry bacon. And as for mice and their love of cheese? Complete myth, according to Adam - they have no interest in it.

So that was my rodent 101 introduction. And instead of a manicure or nice client-paid lunch to look forward to this week, I have Adam returning to see if he's managed to catch anything in his traps, and to spot any mutilated corpses.

God forgive me.

I don't think we're alone now

2008-08-20T19:29:00.008+01:00

There are certain things you dread hearing from your plumber. For example, "That will be 250 quid please," following a 30 minute callout only to discover it was a simple washer replacement that you could have done yourself. Another might be, "I don't know what it is, but there's something a lot bigger than mice down there," when referring to the space under your kitchen floor he's investigating for a nasty smell. Only in our case the latter isn't just a humorous horrible scenario, but reality. Our plumber actually said to me, "I don't know what it is, but there is something a lot bigger than mice down there."

I probably don't need to illustrate how that made me feel. I will say this much however - I'm not sleeping very well at night. I have visions of this creature coming up through the hole the plumber made in order to send his scope down, damply creeping up the stairs, and greeting me with a sewage infused toothy grin on my pillow.

Oh, and did I mention we have a lot of damp down there too? Damp and something large that isn't a mouse. One can only imagine the night-time goings on under our kitchen - an Attenborough narrated nightmare. Actually I'd rather not. The Rentokill assessment man (strangely stressed in a suit and tie?) assured me that whatever it is, it isn't in the house itself, just beneath it. Yes, because that makes me feel A LOT better.

This creature managed to chew its way through one of the electrical cables, resulting in the main switch that the fridge, our dishwasher, and a whole lot of plug sockets connect to, continuously tripping. Fortunately the electrician was able to mend that particular problem on the same day. But still, what ambition to chew your way through a thick electrical cable. Who knows what else it may be capable of? I need to remember to log out of my email at night.

We had the chaps that flush out the pipes over yesterday evening too. They take their job very seriously and insisted on showing us what had been causing the blockage. As they reached into the wet filthy bag I felt a sensation of dread come over me, imagining them hauling out the dead carcass of our unwanted visitor's friend. I mean, if you are going to chew through electrical cables, murder and betrayal may not be far off right? I wouldn't put it past him. Yes, I've decided it's a male. Only a male could be responsible for that ghastly smell that rises up through the kitchen sink. Fortunately what we were shown was not a furry mutilated corpse, but a few bits of brick and concrete, evidence that previous builders had been careless with where they chucked their waste.

So yes, it's all fun and games out our lovely new home at the moment. An ominous smelly creature living beneath our kitchen floor, a lot of damp, chewed-through electrics, and blocked pipes - now (we pray) unblocked.

We visited Yo Sushi at Brent Cross for lunch today. A smartly-dress woman and her husband in their 60's arrived and sat down next to us. She only ate a bit of whatever her husband took off of the rotating belt (which wasn't much), and there was a lot of serious discussion as to what that would be. It seemed to me they were deciding on what would be least offensive, rather than what looked most tasty. I wondered why they had chosen a restaurant which clearly presented them with such anxiety provoking choices, and decided that perhaps, in their retirement, they had made a conscious decision to live life on the edge.

Roberto and I are off to Center Parks for our vacation with Julia in a few weeks. My god, Center Parks. I never thought I'd see the day. I'm not being a snob, I hear it's quite a smart holiday to spend with your kids and it's not cheap. But yes, it doesn't exactly smack of glamour and adventure does it? The brochure does promise a lot of interesting activities like horse riding, archery, and rock climbing etc. Then there's the crockery painting and water colour classes.

I think our days of finding a bar in Paris and perching until we've sampled all the cocktails are well and truly behind us, because lets face it, that's really living life to its glamorous adventurous max. Or at least, its alcoholic max. But yes, it's probably more sober wholesome breaks until Julia decides she's too old to go on holiday with her sad old parents, or when she's 18 and we decide it may be safe to get a hotel babysitter.

Croissants, crazies, and cakes

2008-08-15T13:16:00.005+01:00

This morning I was sitting in Cafe Rouge, trying to eat a croissant and feed Julia at the same time (not an easy task), when a young woman at a nearby table started talking on her phone. Talking is a polite way of putting what she was doing. More like shouting in a loud crazy way and using the F word a lot. Now I'm a firm believer that there are times when use of the F word is absolutely necessary when conducting a discussion - like when your crack dealer is attempting to short change you in a Soho alleyway, for example. But on this occasion the restaurant was full of children and it was plainly distasteful.

This is the information I could gather from her rantings to a poor soul called Danny who it seems was driving on the motorway at the time: She had maxed out all of her credit cards, had enormous amounts of debt, and had thirty pounds to her name. Not sure why you would go to Cafe Rouge for a coffee when you are down and out, but there you go. Also, not sure how wise it is to loudly exclaim how broke you are when you have just ordered something in a restaurant. I imagine the waiters were thinking - 'Yep, this one is definitely going to be a non-tipper.'

She was being thrown out of her flat and her parents had cut her off despite her repeated attempts to pull her life together. Her parents were also refusing to clear her debt. Oh yes, and her mother was a twisted evil bitch that could not be trusted (I'm qouting here).

She was losing her hair, and her mind, and didn't even have the money to have a haircut. She said the last as though her sanity and personal happiness depended on it. I reflected briefly on my own state of mind when my roots get really bad, and felt an element of sympathy for her on this point.

As the ranting continued it became clear that her family, her friends, indeed the whole world was conspiring against her, and she herself had absolutely nothing to do with the terrible circumstances she found herself in. In short, she was a victim - and the worst kind.

Eventually she got so loud and profane that the manageress calmly walked up to her, asked if she was OK, and then suggested she might prefer to continue her conversation outside. The whole thing was flawlessly conducted, coming across as helpful and considerate when in effect she was being thrown out. She apologised and carried on yelling and swearing as she walked out, leaving behind her half-drunk, unpaid-for latte behind. I think the staff saw it as a worthy sacrifice to be rid of her, and everyone breathed a sigh of relief. I had visions of getting home and hearing Julia utter her first words, "F**** her Danniiiiii!"

And finally, here is one of the funniest blogs I've seen in a long time - cakewrecks. It's cake decorating gone wrong when left up to eejit bakers (like my favourite one above), bad taste cake decorating (is there any other kind?), and just some weird shit you most definitely wouldn't want to eat. A big thanks to Gareth 'Hussein' for the tip.

Pic c/o cakewrecks

These (overpriced) boots are made for walking

2008-08-10T19:36:00.011+01:00

I bought myself a pair of MBT's yesterday - that's the Masai Barefoot Technology trainers, developed by a Swiss engineer. Yes because when I think Masai, I think trainers, and more so, I think Swiss trainers.

I had seen them featured in a magazine a few years ago, accompanied by a picture of Jemima Khan wearing a pair - all long, leggy and trim. The blurb waffled on about how these 'revolutionary' trainers are supposed to give you good posture, a great butt, and work out your legs and stuff just by walking around in them. But let's not kid ourselves here, clearly it was Jemima's tight cricket-loving bottom that was doing the selling.

The sales person in the shop (enviably toned and young) told me that you get a DVD when you buy your MBT's showing you the best way to walk in them, and what exercises you can do to maximise their benefit. Exercises? Who said anything about exercises? I'm always suspicious of any kind of footwear that's accompanied by literature. Exercise indeed.

I bought them because I do a lot of walking every day (as you do when you have a baby), and have a bad back too (ditto). I figured I needed some decent foot kit to ensure I'm not doing more harm than good, and if that kit also happens to help with butt firmness, then why not? God knows I can use all the help I can get in that department. Then there's the fact that they have this platform thing going which means even though you are wearing flats, you look a lot taller, albeit in a Tom Cruise hidden lifts kinda way.

I decided to wear them for the walk home. It felt as though I had springs attached to my feet, and steep downhill bits were a bit tricky - kind of like you are about to topple over in ski boots. But, to be fair to the hype, I did find myself, quite unconsciously, tightening my stomach muscles. I think it was out of sheer terror of falling forwards on my face, but if my abs (what abs?) get a workout, then I suppose that's a bonus.

We met up with good friends on Sunday for lunch and talk turned to putting Julia's name down for schools. Again. My god it's anxiety provoking. Apparently we are too late for one school, because you really have to put your child's name down when you are pregnant . So nearly 8 months is like way to late - I mean, stupid us for now knowing right? And that's just the baby school, never mind the junior and senior ones. God knows it's a taste of things to come. When I was a kid we went to the local school that was closest to where we lived, which also meant we could walk home if my mom got tied up. I think the latter being the sole requirement when my parents were choosing. We were thrown together with a motley crew of individuals - some academically ambitious, others aspiring thugs, and those were just the teachers.

I found a local place that does baby activity classes. It's an opportunity to break the incredibly repetitive and often insanely brain draining dullness of your day - at least that's how I think Julia feels about life with me - and meet other babies and their mothers. The first one I went to was a sort of music class. I didn't know what the hell was going on, and while the other babies dutifully went through the motions, Julia used it as an opportunity to crawl up to them in an attempt to scalp them or gouge out one of their eyes. I simply banged along on my tambourine with the other mothers, smiling like an eejit, and trying to look as though I fit in.

By the second class, Julia already knew what to do, far better than I did, but this time we were with older children and I had to protect her from getting scalped and having her eyes gouged out. It's definitely a baby eat baby world out there.

My sister and her son are visiting us at the moment. He is seven and very articulate and in touch with his feelings. This pretty much involves daily, sometimes thrice daily, announcements that his mother is showing more affection to Julia and that he is jealous.

Kids are amazing. As adults we never admit to jealousy. Instead we put our partners or friends through passive aggressive hell making them feel as though they are the ones at fault for our crippling insecurities. I tried to explain to him that jealousy was not something inflicted by another person, i.e. his mother, but a choice and something one had a degree of control over, granted with the help of a many years of expensive therapy . Bearing in mind that people three times his age would find this concept inconceivable, I thought he received it pretty well, "Yeah OK, but she still makes me jealous."

Finally, a HUGE congratulations to our friends on their engagement. Looking forward to the celebrations guys. Of course this means finding a babysitter that I can trust with our child. Oh dear god ... .