Close Quarters

Living in the rented cottage was fun to begin with. It remains an extremely well-appointed holiday house. The not having any toys thing makes for remarkably clutter-less living. Truly remarkable for me. But on a Saturday when everyone else is out there isn’t much to do here and it’s no place to be on your own. Under normal circs on a Saturday such as this I would be cooking, radio on, singing, dancing, embarrassing any passing children.

We have collectively and individually become very good at spending as little time in the cottage as possible, the space being too small for the children to fight in, the kitchen too small to cook in for anything other than necessity and the bed too small for my husband and I ever to have a full night’s sleep in. (My husband or I can have a full night’s sleep in it, but not together.)

With the boys away killing birdies and my daughter at a friend’s house I have, until now, had a gratifyingly successful day of staying out of the cottage. I think what I have been doing is similar to what disaffected teenagers do. I may yet find myself hanging around the village cross at nine o’clock at night in inadequate clothes, furtively smoking whilst scowling.

I should acknowledge my horse’s help in facilitating my being out today. And, massively, my friend Ice Maiden AKA the Horse Whisperer. My horse went lame yesterday so I was up first thing to see him, dragging my daughter with me. He is staying at IM’s stable just now, my field (in which IM’s horses and mine live most of the time) being treacherously pitted with hoof prints, frozen solid and unusable. Having broken the early morning ice on the puddles at the stable my daughter snuck into IM’s house and ensconced herself. She has been quiet, tidy and helpful and has managed to stay there all day. Maximum points to her. I finished doing the horses and had a cup of tea. I sipped it slowly. I went and collected some hay from my store and stacked it in IM’s store. Very neatly. No point in going back to the cottage because the vet was coming. I went to our house and had a look round the building site where a totally humourless bearded man I have never seen before was standing in my son’s bedroom breaking something. I went and got some grit for the ice at the stables. I chatted to people I normally only nod to.

There are always horse poos to pick up. I did that too. Again. Then the vet came so I kept him talking for as long as I could. And the work experience girl who was with him. I’m sure she was more fascinated than she looked to learn that I did work experience with a vet when I was in 3rd year too. I fed my horse his pain killers and gave the other two something to eat too so they wouldn’t be jealous. Then it was lunch time – a dangerous break in the day. I went into the house to pretend that I was about to take my daughter and myself away and was offered some lunch. What could I say?

After lunch, the girls started designing a book. IM and Mr IM drifted off to do some DIY. Nothing to do at the stables so I walked across the garden to the field and attempted to pick up frozen horse poo there. The rake we use for the job was unwilling to be cajoled into service as an ice axe, a task for which it is plainly unsuited. A chip of frozen horse poo flew into my mouth. So I went and picked up some warm ones which by then had appeared at the stable.

It was too early to start putting the horses to bed so I went and had a coffee in the deli. I sipped it as slowly as I can sip a cappuccino. As I was leaving I saw someone I vaguely know walking up the main street. Even though my car was facing in the right direction for going back to the cottage I turned it round in the opposite direction and turned it again in her street, just in case she spotted me and perhaps, I dunno, asked me in for another coffee. But she had disappeared.

That was when I realised there was no avoiding going back to the cottage.

Now, fortunately, its time to start putting the horses to bed. It can take an hour if I steam all the hay, which obviously I will. Luckily we’re going out for dinner tonight. To Ice Maiden’s. Lucky for us, anyway.

Sing! Choirs of Angels

We had a sing-song in the car on the way to school today as we often do. The format this morning was everybody doing an individual turn rather than the mass choral effort that we only manage when everybody is in extremely good spirits. We had a couple of numbers from the school Christmas play, (of which we parents are expecting great things as the children have done little else but rehearse it since half term) we had the slightly tiresome old favourite The Wheels on the Bus and then it was my seven year-old daughter’s turn. She chose to perform a verse from Nickelback’s Rockstar.
“Well we all just wanna be big rock stars,” she started strongly.
“And live in hilltop houses drivin’ fifteen cars,” (Well you have a hillside house and three cars darling, I thought to myself, knowing that it would only have been something to say out loud had we been alone.)
“The girls come easy and the drugs come cheap,” I gripped the steering wheel.
“We’ll all stay skinny cause we just won’t eat.”
I try not to let my mouth fall open or to make value judgement faces but I failed on this occasion. My ten year-old son, who was sitting next to me noticed my expression. He chuckled conspiratorially. He enjoys his privileged position in the front of the car.
I wouldn’t say anything about houses and cars in public but should I allow casual references to cheap drugs and extreme dieting from a seven year-old? At eight thirty in the morning? With an impressionable six year-old girl in the car next to her?
My son shook his golden head.
“I know Mummy.”
He gave me a sympathetic look.
“She sounds like a total lezzer singing about girls coming easy.”

Bucking and Diving

I seem to have unwittingly become a horse dealer which is better, morally than being a crack dealer but not much. It’s probably worse than being a car dealer. Horse dealers make the Arthur Daleys and Frank Butchers of the world’s forecourts look positively benign and angelic.

My grey pony has to go. Two years ago when I bought him he was my children’s grey pony but they don’t want to know him any more so he has become mine. He is a companion for my overgrown pony and looks picturesque enough grazing in the field. He will allow small children to walk about safely near his hind legs and groom him. He is good with the blacksmith and the vet. He has huge black eyes and at this time of year, a coat like a polar bear. He has a fine life and is in rude health, his every need tended to daily by me. But I can’t be in the business of keeping ornamental ponies. Not even one.

Being a horse dealer now, you will have noticed that I didn’t mention in my description of him that he can be tricky to catch and he is a challenging ride. In fact he is a little bucker. He has bucked my son off several times, bucked me off and most embarrassingly bucked off my mother’s oldest friend’s granddaughter. He has galloped victoriously through the village, reins and stirrups flying after dumping children, he has ruined riding lessons and has put both my children off riding for life. (Something for which I am aware I should maybe thank him, but we don't have that kind of relationship.) I did consider giving him a career putting other people’s children off riding – hiring him out a week at a time to frighten and disillusion pony mad children into a sensible, cheap sport. But where to advertise that kind of service?

So I advertised him for sale on a horsey website. I was a bit vague in the advertisement but resolved to be honest with anyone who got in touch about him. I didn’t want anyone else’s child’s dream of Olympic glory or true pony love being trampled beneath Grey Pony’s hard little hooves. I couldn’t have that on my conscience.

I was truthful with the first person who got me to call her back and then hung up on me. The second person said she didn’t mind buying a pony that needed work. I seized on this unguarded revelation and worked at it like a garrulous tinker at Appleby Fair. She wasn’t convinced. I may have told the third person that both my children have hacked him out alone but then I cracked and had to mention the few wee bucks he sometimes puts in. Conscience is not useful for horse dealers. The phone went quiet for weeks.

And then a friend said he had a friend in the horse business who might be interested. When I say in the horse business, she actually, er, runs a riding school. So lots of people’s children would be riding him. I think my friend told her the story of Grey Pony but I didn’t check meticulously. On Friday I loaded him up into the trailer and drove him over to be inspected by the riding school lady. (It wasn’t actually quite as simple as that. He ran away from me after I caught him and had to be apprehended by The Horse Whisperer, and then I loaded him up; hard little hooves, hard little heart, the whole lot.)

Riding school lady looked him over in the trailer and liked him. I was encouraged, so much so that when describing his time with us I’m not sure that I used the exact word ‘buck’. I unloaded him and walked him up. She made a few positive noises. I spoke eloquently about his time in the pony club with his previous owners. She scratched his nose and asked him if he would like to come and live with her. I maintained my impassive expression while my heart leapt at the prospect of possibly selling him before we go on holiday at Christmas. She asked if she could have him on trial for a bit. I managed to look regretful as I left him in her stable.

He has now been there for four days and I haven’t heard anything. Could no news be good news? I have told myself that if she thinks he is a suitable pony for a riding school with all her experience, then who am I to argue? We horse dealers can be so plausible.

Put It Away

I turned 39 on Friday and went for a night out in Edinburgh on Saturday. The two events were unrelated – I was almost as uninterested in this bridesmaid of a birthday as the people I live with were. Not quite – I did remember about it. My brother, my father and I all forgot my mother's birthday once so I put it down to a motherhood milestone. There will be no chance of any of them forgetting about it next year.

The night out started badly. The dress I had brought to wear had shrunk in the wash and was borderline for a 39 year-old to be wearing in public, The Wee Craicer called off and the taxi had £5 on the meter when we got into it outside my parents’ house where we were staying. The £5 was my fault for agonising into extra time about the shrunken dress. While the taxi rattled in the street outside, my daughter suggested that I wear the slip only, without the chiffon dress on top, my son was unequivocal about how bad it looked and my mother thought it was fine. My Dad thought it looked great, as did my very long ago former boyfriend, The Director, when we finally got to the packed bar we were meeting in. The Director had come dressed to carry out a burglary so I wasn’t the only one looking a little bit niche. We might both have looked quite zeitgeisty in NoLita or Hoxton, I in outgrown rags, he in streetwear that suggested malicious intent. But we were in Edinburgh where despite the temperature outside, lots of bare flesh was on show; some expanses firmer than others. The wobblier the flesh, the louder they were shouting. And the drinks were eight pounds each.

Only half the people we had originally designed to be on this rare and precious night out shoved their way through the bar to our table in the restaurant. The others were snugly at home with their sick children, workloads and music at an acceptible level. My husband was wearing the locked-in look that means he can’t hear anything and is wondering whether to drink white or red while he observes the evening. I felt sorry for him. As I sat eating and catching up with the The Perfect Couple and The Director I became aware that it would have been nicer to have been in one of our houses. (Not our rental or our building site actually, but either of their's.)

But what was I thinking? If we had been in one of their houses there wouldn’t have been a club to look forward to. And a club was where we were headed. At someone’s house there would have been no anticipation of that completely abandoned singalong dancing that you can really lose yourself in with old friends and not care who sees you. No glitter ball or hand waving or hair shaking or lights. No being gripped in a sweaty headlock by a drunk friend and told you are loved. After dinner things would liven up.

That was what we were all looking forward to as we descended from the blustery pavement into the breathy fug of the club. But it was rammed too. My husband took up smoking again just to get outside. The most expensive two cigarettes ever - bought from a machine for over three quid each. I mounted a halting expedition to the dance floor but it was listless hands by your sides dancing only and the music was so emptily wetly lame and generic that the urge to put my hands up (for Detroit or anywhere else) was gone. It was the final two fingers up to that night out and possibly all nights out for us. Even the music would have been better in any of our kitchens. Staying in looks like it really is the new going out. And if buying into that isn’t an appropriate way to mark your 39th birthday, (whether you mean to or not) I don’t know what is.

Wanted: Dead or Alive

A friend gave my son a ferret for his tenth birthday in August. They say ferrets bite. They are right. This one, named disrespectfully after my husband, did little else apart from eating and pooping. It bit my son more than anyone. It also bit his friends, my friends, babysitters, someone who works for my husband and the blacksmith’s apprentice who is a ferret expert and managed to handle it for longer than anyone else before being bitten. About 20 seconds. The blacksmith’s apprentice is tough and accustomed to wrestling huge horses but he was no match for the ferret.

We don’t seem to have much luck with animals smaller than Labradors. My two ponies are very happy, our Labrador is one of the oldest and contentedly smelliest in the county. But our hamsters have all escaped, the guinea pig was dropped resulting in a fatal concussion and one rabbit froze to death while another ran away. (There was a period when rabbits were pets before they became prey.) I should have known the ferret would be a disaster. I probably did, but my better judgement was swayed by the idea that perhaps having a ferret would mean that my son could go and kill rabbits in the garden without a firearm or a resentful adult being involved.

We tried everything suggested by books, the internet, the person who gave it to my son and the blacksmith’s apprentice. Everything short of buying it a friend. Nothing worked. It hated us, we hated it and the rule that if my son had a ferret he had to look after it was eventually being flouted every day. I became quite ingenious at feeding it without touching it and filling its water with a hose over the door of the stable that had become its home. Cleaning it out was more of a challenge.

Anyway, whadya know? One day a couple of weeks ago it escaped. We went happily back to a ferret free existence. Free from anxiety about being savaged by it, free from guilt about whether it needed a friend, free from having to make special expeditions to a particularly dreary industrial estate in the third-rate local town to buy ferret nuggets and free from the smell of ferret. But you know what they (the same lot who say that ferrets bite) say about bad smells? (And ferret is a very bad smell.) Instead of taking itself off to the moor to live off voles and ticks or allowing itself to be lifted away by the scruff of its ungrateful neck by a hungry buzzard, it decided to hang around our house. In fact it moved in. Every morning last week, when the builders arrived it would be there before them, curled up in some of our lovely new insulation or beadily eyeing one of the bunches of expensive new cables which seem to be everywhere and smacking its curled lips.

There is now a price on the ferret's head. It is slightly less than the cost of replacing one bunch of newly installed data cables, but is still a significant sum.

Not a Bunny Boiler

I think rabbits are sweet, although I was a bit annoyed when the courgettes my daughter was growing were eaten by the pesky varmints. My solution to the problem was to cuss them up a bit while I erected a fence. (I may not, in truth have erected the fence myself, I may have persuaded a man to do it, fence building being mens’ work.) The fence meant that the courgettes were safe and I when I opened my curtains in the morning I could still see thumpers in the garden hopping around and doing that cute thing to their faces with their wittle paws.

If my ten year old son happens to be with me when I open the curtains, his reaction to the sight of early morning rabbits is somewhat different to mine. He might do any of the following: a) tap on the window repeatedly, gesticulating at them to get off the garden, b) take our ancient dog outside to be humiliated by them, c) hurl the window up and yell impotently into the gale at them or d) begin the process of attrition with which he will finally persuade his father to take him out in the evening to shoot them.

When he first became interested in killing things at the age of about 5, I knew it was fruitless to try to persuade a small boy that all life is sacred so instead I set about teaching him that if he killed something, it mustn’t die in vain and the best way to ensure that it didn’t was to eat it. He took that lesson very much to heart. Being an up-for-it kind of cook and pretty non-squeamish I didn’t think to drum into his impressionable young head that his kill also should be given to the kitchen oven-ready. In those early days he might have presented me with one Daddy-shot pheasant a month. Now that he is actually nailing animals himself, not merely watching his father, (who can take animal murder or leave it) the lolling head count in the kitchen has increased hugely. Its not that I mind doing it every once in a while but there are things I could more profitably be doing than gutting and plucking or skinning several animals a week. Claws and fur add greatly to cooking times.

On Thursday my son shot a rabbit which he brought to me triumphantly and said he wanted to have stuffed for his Christmas present. Fantastic. All I had to do was shove it - whole and hairy - into a plastic bag and into the freezer. And phone the taxidermist. But instead of calling it a night, his father allowed him to shoot two more. These two were for the pot.

Rabbits need to be gutted as soon as they are shot or all kinds of disgusting things start happening like the contents of their intestines being reabsorbed into their flesh. I told my son that I was just putting dinner on the table but if he wanted to gut them I would keep his warm. The smell of shepherd’s pie wasn’t enough to tempt him away from the rabbits for the short time it would take them to start absorbing the contents of their alimentary canals therefore rendering themselves useless for human consumption, dammit. He wanted to gut them. Which he did, leaving the entrails by the doorstep of the rented house we are living in for the owner to step over when he let his dog out last thing at night. The rabbits were brought in dripping a little and still furry.

“Could you skin them, darling please?” I asked.

His response was along the lines of no. He had selflessly hunter-gathered something delicious (both killed cleanly with the first shot) for the family pot and the least I could do was skin them myself. I began to point out that he is the only person in the family who likes rabbit, but it occurred to me that I was raining on his parade so I shut up.

Eating rabbit would be very credit crunch, but the only thing about it that appeals to me is its essential zeitgeistyness. The results do not justify the immense effort required. Its now Monday and Thursday’s rabbits remain in the fridge, approaching, surely, their use-by date and still furry. But if we don’t eat them my well-trained son will be appalled at the wasted lives.

Meanwhile I’m snacking on six quid a tub granola which is crunchy, but definitely not credit crunchy.

All aboard

Had my children been on holiday and my family enjoying our half term visit to London this week, we would definitely have gone to see the victory parade for the Olympic medal winners today. We devoured the Olympics and to say that the games saved August for us would not be an exaggeration. My son and I regularly did six hour stints in front of the television watching any sport (except sailing – there were limits) and we watched at all hours. The closest either of us got to participating in any sport during that fortnight was driving to the nearby field where my horse was recuperating from an injury and throwing some food and pain killers in his general direction. (While the three day event was happening we told him how the Brits were doing while he ate before jumping back into the car and hurrying back to the sofa.) I wept at medal ceremonies, marvelled at the skill and commitment of the competitors and dived under cushions which I chewed while London’s contribution to the closing ceremony was being broadcast. I watched the whole closing ceremony. That is how much I loved the Olympics.

I can’t say I watched a single second of the Paralympics, although I did catch a fascinating programme before the games about a paralympic dressage rider and his preparation for his event. The achievements of the paralympians are in many cases greater than those of the able bodied Olympians but they are personal triumphs, sources of great interest and pride to the family and friends of the competitors and of no more than passing interest to anyone else. I don’t know anyone who watched the Paralympics. Not even my most sport-obsessed male friends who will watch football matches between Burundi and Ulan-Bator, DVDs of rugby matches played last century, in fact anything that involves running around wearing a number, even shinty. And yet despite the fact that there must be few people in the UK who were not directly involved with the paralympics who could name a single athlete, the paralympic medallists paraded today alongside the Olympians. Their achievements are impressive but in no way comparable to those of the athletes who triumphed over thousands of others worldwide to qualify for and win their events. The numbers of disabled athletes competing worldwide in each event are tiny in comparison. Having them on the open-topped bus alongside Chris Hoy was awkwardly inclusive at best, head-pattingly patronising at worst.

Girl Heaven

Another Friday afternoon, another birthday party for my seven year-old daughter and her classmates. Same venue as the last one, almost indistinguishable format. Like their parents they love reassuringly familiar social rituals. The form is for all the girls in the class to disappear into the loos at school when the bell goes at 3.30 and spend till 4pm getting changed into party dresses. The slutty ones wear stud earrings and heels too. They all want to wear stud earrings and heels. Once in their outfits they prance across the playground feigning indifference but thrilled by the exhibitionist novelty of not being in their grey tunics. They are then whisked to the party, sometimes via an unnecessary ice-cream or the swing park if the hosts have been inconsiderate enough to have an inconvenient hour and a half between school and party. And when they arrive at the party they launch into the compulsory sausage rolls, Mika singalongs, sweets, over-sexualised dancing, pass the parcel and more recently, the application of fake tattoos. Tiger face paint doesn’t cut it any more.

At four o’clock my car load still hadn’t emerged from their changing room so I went in to chase them. Apparently immune to the airless reek of a day’s worth of centrally heated poo and commercial soap they were lingering over the task in hand. My daughter had deviated from the party dress norm on this occasion and was arranging a layered look with flat pink tasselled boots a denim skirt and a fur gilet. She looked fantastic. One of the heels and earrings had her attention momentarily diverted from her study of her own appearance by the gilet. She looked my daughter up and down. “You look weird,” she lisped. And you look like a child prostitute, I thought murderously. My daughter gave her an almost indiscernible look of pity and carried on doing her hair. I was so proud.

I had to hang around at the party as I couldn’t get anywhere I would want to go and back again before the party finished so I took my laptop and a few good intentions. The party venue of the moment is a community centre so there was a table to sit at with internet access and a drinks machine. (No Viognier in it, sadly.) I cracked my laptop just as the karaoke struck up. Abba. Fantastic. Dancing Queen. Aware of the teen Goths using the internet at the side of the room I managed not to sway along to the intro and I sang only into myself. The little girlies couldn’t be expected to know the words of the first verse - some of them have only seen Mama Mia three times – but I was disappointed when they got to the chorus and were still neh, neh, neh-ing. I suppose I was glad my daughter wasn’t belting out ‘gimme, gimme gimme a man after midnight’. I’m sure I wasn’t the only over-30 there itching to take the mike. Maybe the words of Abba songs is something we can work on at half term along with lace tying, tie tying and the 3,4,6,7,8,9 and 12 times tables.

I managed not to disgrace myself with the present this time. No, I did better than that - not only did I get a present and wrapping paper, I remembered that it was a joint party and got two presents and two cards. Unfortunately I let myself down by playing a game of pool with a boy of whom my daughter disapproves who had fled the dancing. I thought he was a very nice boy, my daughter disagreed. Probably not the last time that will happen.

Moved

We are finally out of the house. Lock, stock and barrel apart from the pine wardrobe which my mother wants because she is artistic enough to make it look less yellow and industrious enough to put nice new handles on it. And minus the Aga which is still in the former kitchen waiting to be collected by its new owner. I am trying not to think that it is looking reproachful, that it is remembering all the great meals we have cooked together, all the Christmas turkeys, all the times I have snuggled up to it as the only source of warmth in the house. Of course it can’t be aware that my daughter baked her first tray of biscuits in one of its capacious ovens or tell our shameful secret that she called them cookies because she had watched too much American television. And it isn’t reminding me of the uncountable mornings when thanks to it alone everyone had dry clothes to wear.
A farmer and his wife came on Monday and agreed to buy it as soon as they set eyes on its cheery redness and shiny lids. They are as nice as the Hoggetts in Dick King-Smith’s Babe and they are going to put it into the house they are building for their retirement. It is a good home.

Clearing the house was a horrible slog. For days and days as the container and the skip and the local charity shops and the recycling bins filled up, the house didn’t seem to be getting any emptier. But after a final push on Monday night of wantonly skipping what remained (I rescued the video camera the next morning) and indiscriminately ramming bags with jumbled miscellany, the endless job was done. The house is now naked. There are no carpets and already the plaster has been removed from the walls. With all the stone showing it feels like walking round a ruin, cool and calm. It is such a relief.

We all had things we were particularly pleased to dispose of. I jumped on the mug tree repeatedly before putting it on the skip and would have reversed over it several times in my car if it hadn’t succumbed to my welly. Peeling the damp stripey yellow wallpaper from the sitting room walls was a treat too. I am going to ask the builders if I can take a crow bar to the useless noisy pump which grumbled at all hours about inadequately draining our smelly shower for eleven years.

For most of these eleven years I have vastly preferred being in other people’s houses to being in my own. Now that we have moved into our temporary accommodation in a holiday cottage at the other end of the village I am actually living in somebody else’s house full time and I love it. Having rationalised so much of our junk I feel that I am living a well-ordered life for the first time ever. And I am no longer overwhelmed by the laundry mountain because I had to do it all before we moved out. I only emptied the festering contents of the bottom ten inches of the laundry basket into the skip. There has been a tidy person inside me trying to get out for years. Now she has come out. When we move back into our new improved old house nothing will be the same. It will feel like someone else’s house too. The trick will be to keep it feeling that way.

Our new bedroom will be in what was the kitchen. I’m hoping it won’t be haunted by the banging of oven doors or unexplained cooking smells.

Presentation

This week I have ten articles to ghost write which involves interviewing ten ghostees and then editing or padding what they have said into 500 words. There is also the small matter of moving out of the house to be attended to. The furniture has now all gone leaving only piles of dust, dead flies, crusted socks, atrophied apple cores, dusty half-read books, a pile of sharpened sticks which I can only assume my son in stockpiling for the revolution and loads of clothes. Who knew we had so many? Lots of them don't fit any of us any more and will be edited when I come back here to visit from our rented house, where there are beds, on Sunday morning. The moral dilemma I will be grappling with then is do I launder and dry clothes for the charity shop or wheech them straight into the skip? The cupboard under the sink, which will also need to be cleared in the next 72 hours is already stuffed with ex-clothes dusters, enough to be surplus to my requirements for the rest of my life, even if I live to be 150.

Amongst this chaos this morning, as my seven year-old daughter packed a costume for her first disco after school today (her godmother hopes she doesn't have her first cigarette at her first disco) she wondered if we had remembered to get a present for the birthday girl. Ehh, no. It was five to eight. Five minutes until we had to leave and I had to be straight back home after the school run to do an interview. I didn't think the birthday girl would want a sharpened stick, even if my son could be persuaded to part with one and I am not the kind of organised mother who has a present drawer, even when my house isn't half empty. (I wish I was.) My husband suggested giving her a bottle of wine. I suggested an IOU and taking her present to school on Monday. My daughter looked disgusted at the prospect of arriving empty handed. Then - a victory - I found a card. I could give her a tenner. Vulgar, but a solution. Yes! No. Chavvy, horrible. No, no, no! Half a clove of garlic wouldn't do or an apple or a even a brand new unopened tub of jalapeno houmous. I consulted everyone and they all said no. So I reached for my bag, fished out my wallet and found a limp tenner. It might have spent a week tucked away in a tramp's pants waiting to buy a bottle of Thunderbird on a rainy day but, I reasoned, it was worth the same as a crisp one. We wrote the card, closed it on the note and shoved it in the envelope, which fortunately my daughter didn't notice had a water stain on the back of it. Lets say it was water. It was a horrible present but better than no present.

As soon as my daughter got out of the car at the school gate bearing her shameful present, her best friend came running over, pigtails flying carrying a pink gift bag with tissue paper stuffed in the top and the corner of a beautifully wrapped present peeking enticingly out of the top. There were curled ribbons, there was glitter. My heart sank. The BF held the ultra present out to my daughter and said, "I can't go to the party, would you give this to the birthday girl for me?"

"Of course she will!" I beamed, grabbing the bag from her and stuffing the stained envelope into it. I put it into my daughter's hand and waved them off.

I think the Patron Saint of Rubbish Mummies must have had a hand in that. Bless her.

R & R

I had a few days in London at the weekend. The sun shone, the wine flowed, the chit chatted and I saw lots of lovely friendies including a few of the kind of men I never see at home. A change really is as good as a rest, not that we parasites ever really need a rest but we appreciate one and it was nice to escape the packing and even my beloved skip for a few days.

Not my usual kind of chap #1
On Friday morning as I wandered the shops of Knightsbridge in a Nurofen daze, post-eyebrow threading and a little bit morning after, I decided to make a small detour on my way to lunch with the Babe Mamas to look in on Abercrombie & Fitch. I had heard it was a rewarding retail experience. The front of the shop looks like it might be the head office. It doesn’t look shoppy. No windowsful of wares, no branding splashed across its frontage, no lights, just a douce little sign on low-key double doors. I only just spotted it from the other side of the street and crossed over to investigate. The door opened and there standing before me was a half dressed nineteen year-old boy/man. I was in the right place. The half that was dressed was snugly encased in low-slung jeans. I didn’t see what he was wearing on his feet but he was naked from the jeans up. Naked, tanned, muscley, toned, smooth and blemishless with blue eyes and hair which involved too much obvious product, but in a good way. I glanced quickly at him and carried on into the dark interior of the shop. It is like being in a vast club on several floors. The multitude of shop assistants, male and female are all gorgeous and young and the music is LOUD, except in the fitting rooms where the same music is at a more contemplative level. Lots of the staff were dancing alone and with each other. The non-dancers were more attentive than the dancers but they were all friendly. Each had a sector of at least two or three piles of t-shirts to patrol which they did beautifully and to the very best of their pulchritudinous, expensively educated ability. The girl whose job it was to chat up old ladies even admired my trousers.
I tried not to squint at the sizes in the darkness or draw attention in any other way to the fact that I was definitely the oldest person there buying clothes for myself. The t-shirt, I promised myself as I left the fitting room, I would only wear in the garden and the sweatshirt only to the gym.
As I left, my old coolness reflex tried to kick in and was about to prevent even a peek in the direction of the half naked one. But just in time I remembered that I am 38 and was therefore invisible to half naked one and his co-workers on manning the door duty. Also I had just spent £85 in the shop and was going to get my money’s worth. So I had a good long look, top to toe to top and went out into the sunshine smiling.


Not my usual kind of chap #2
Dressing up a bit was going to be required for a Saturday night out with the laydeez so I removed the Abercrombie & Fitch t-shirt I had been wearing all day, showered and replaced it with a little floaty tea dress. I applied proper foundation, took infinite care with my eye make-up (smokey) and zhuzhed my hair. I lip-glossed and Jo Maloned and forsook my usual huge hold-all for a more elegant small evening bag. The Blonde Adonis is the best turned-out and one of the best looking men I know and I had no reason to think that his new (to me) boyfriend or their friend, the Altar Boy would be unkempt either. (Although we did establish during the evening that none of them has ever had a back, sack and crack wax.) We started the night necking delicious cocktails and looking at pictures of Blonde Adonis and Perfect Boyfriend’s new dog. I think the dog is a good sign. It is also immaculate – the glossiest puppy I have ever seen. I bet it even smells good. We talked about mastitis for a bit, not that I brought it up, and got through a range of other bodily functions too. And of course we talked all about art and politics and the credit crunch. We even got onto the whole altar boy/priest thing. The answers are yes, yes and yes. But only once the Altar Boy had reached the age of consent and left home.

As I stood giggling and swaying and talking nonsense with everyone else on the tube home Blonde Adonis read my mind. “You’ll be out of all this and back in the country this time tomorrow,” he said. He was right. And as I left the train I was glad of all their lovely hugs.

Skip-edy taboo dah

We are moving out of the house in a couple of weeks, while some work is done on it to make it more civilised. I have hired a large container which is sitting outside waiting to be filled with all our belongings and furniture. By me. A small corner at the back has so far been filled with a few boxes and one dismantled bed. Actually not all our belongings are going into it. Some are going to the charity shop, some to the recycling facility, which used to be called the dump (or one of my favourite Scottish words, the cowp) and some are going in a skip and thence to the landfill. The skip arrived this morning. I am delighted with my skip and have been flinging stuff into it joyously but some of the people I know are a touch disapproving of it. I think skips may be the last taboo. But how, I ask, am I supposed to recycle the following:

The sweetest shoes that my children wore when they were first walking, gnawed to pieces by mice. A very smelly man-made fibre jacket left by our Polish au pair three years ago, also with evidence of mouse activity. Two broken plastic clothes airers. A gross of plastic hangers from clothes shops. A hundredweight of broken MacDonalds/stocking filler/free with a magazine toys. A carpet peed on by three species. Opened packets of dried chickpeas, flour and quinoa dating back to 2004. Single shoes and boots. Holey tights. Outgrown pants - clean but still second hand. Broken lamps. 1998 jam. Cracked plastic toyboxes. Half a ton of vacated plant pots. Stained soft toys. A wheel-less barrow. 59 miles of baler twine. A pedal-less, saddle-less bike.

I am filling the skip in continuous rain. I resolved never to mention the weather in my blog because it is boring so all I'm going to say is that I wonder if this saturated, sodden part of Scotland will be inhabited in a hundred years?

Better stop. Crud to chuck.

The Honey Trap

There I was this morning, my day panning out to be a near perfect example of my parasitic lifestyle. First I dropped the children at school. As no-one in my car load is now in Junior 1, I don't even have to walk them up the steps to the school any more. I take them across the car park past the dangers of the tiny blind women in the huge cars and wave them goodbye from the foot of the steps. After that I went for coffee with the Second Wife. She filled me in on the gossip from the parents night I missed last week, we bitched about one of the teachers, then I went to the gym. So far so little contribution to society.

The gym I go to is at our local university which is also an elite centre for Scottish sport. Or a centre for Scottish elite sport, or a centre for elite Scottish sports - curling, anyone? As the beginning of term approaches it is filling up with students again which means it is busier but also means there are more people to look at. My favourite students to look at are the young fit male rowers, the young fit male footballers (more lithe and narcissistic than the rugby players), the young fit male swimmers and the young fat female students who are there to lose weight. I may envy the girls their plump faces but I don't envy their plump backsides, their thunderous thighs or their muffin tops. It gives me a nice warm glow and mildly accelerates my endorphin rush to be stones lighter and years fitter than them.

Full of the righteousness of the recently exercised I made tomato-faced for Sainsbury's where I ambled the aisles picking up everything I needed for cooking this weekend. I even found polenta in our understocked outpost. I almost had everything when I remembered that my daughter had requested a new jar of honey. I buzzed back to the jam shelves. The British honey which I would usually go for was the most expensive - the fault of the dreadful summer I am told - over three quid. Too much. The Australian was a pound cheaper. But too many air miles. The blossom honey was the same price but was the product of more than one country. Yuck. (Not as yuck as a bag of salad leaves from more than one country but still yuck.) The organic was organic but expensive and who told the bees? The same person who told the salmon? I don't think so. At the very end of the shelf was some Mexican Fair Trade. Cheap, clear conscience and half the air miles of the Australian but from all over Mexico so no good. I read the backs of jars and jars, squeezy bottles, tubs and pots. The honey almost robbed me of enough time when I got back home to have lunch at the deli and ride my horse. But I managed to fit both in.

I have some work coming up over the next couple of weeks so I'll be justifying my existence while my children are at school for a change. I'm going to be ghost writing commentaries for a group of estate agents for their in-house magazine. I expect they will be putting a positive spin on conditions in the housing market. I won't be contributing much to society (except possibly to the gaiety of anyone who reads it) but at least I'll be paying my way.

Party, Party

It turned out it wasn’t the smart dinner party we needed to bring a jumper for. It was perfect in every way, temperature included, thanks to a huge fire, ranks of candles in silver candle sticks and being snuggled up with twenty nine others at a table narrow enough to flirt with the people opposite as well as those on either side. Very good planning. The husband who organised it is an ex-soldier and there was evidence everywhere of military-standard logistics of the type that I failed to implement for feeding the same number at my son’s recent birthday party. Enough people to dole out food to that number, for example. A table plan. Which put me between two intelligent interesting men. Enough knives and forks. Water glasses. Enough plates. Enough courses. Ice cold kummel in respectable receptacles. (At my son’s shambolic birthday dinner I broke out the home-made strawberry vodka intended for New Year and sloshed it out at room temperature in plastic tumblers. The Eminent Surgeon suggested owlishly that it needed to taste more like alcohol.)

The army were much in evidence at the regimental ball but hadn’t thought to warn us to bring a jumper, or that the bar and sitting area were outside. Early September in this part of Scotland is winter. Maybe as a Scottish regiment holding their party in an ancient castle they assumed all the guests would be as hardy as them or that we would know to come in skiing gear with bivvy bags instead of handbags.

We arrived in our inadequate clothes after dinner. Getting into a chilly car to batter half way across the county in the dark might not sound like the ideal after dinner activity but I loved it. It reminded me of the days when I used to spend all night in a pub then go off to a club – yippee! I still struggle to escape a feeling of failure if a dinner party I have given ends before 5 am or without dancing but there was no chance of our host suffering from any such feelings that night. (He is a little way past the difficult age I am at now, so no doubt is better adjusted anyway.)

The kind of bitter youthful experience outlined in my last posting taught me not to wear silly dresses to balls but the teenagers at this ball were a sensible bunch. And sober too. All of the girls were in dreary high cut dresses that looked like belted silk sacks, rather like mine. But I am thirty eight, twenty years older than them. It was evident that we were in the company of the generation who go to University to work hard and pass exams. And that we were amongst the oldest people there. Did we, the Blonde Bombshell and I wondered, appear to them as the veritable old dames of the neighbourhood had appeared to us fifteen or twenty years ago?

Any group of people gathered together to take part in Scottish country dancing will include roughly 10 percent Ball Frowns. We had one in our Reel of the 51st Battalion. They used to fill me with mouth-drying fear and embarrassment but the little red one we encountered on Friday just made me giggle. And not only when she poked the Bombshell with a stubby finger. She reckoned that my husband and I had not kept dancing our way down the set far enough and had therefore robbed her and her partner of their turn. It is unlikely that we got it wrong as my husband is posh enough to have been well-drilled in reeling from an early age. Its never the posh ones who are the Frowns anyway, they’re too polite and they can dress up and do reels whenever they like. In their own ballrooms. Ball Frowns take part in Scottish country dancing simply to boss people around. That is how they derive their pleasure from the evening. I wonder how they teach their children to dance: set to your partner, cast off one place down the set , set and turn your first corner, roll your eyes when they end up facing the wrong way. Manhandle English people and people in white kilt socks into the correct positions. Never smile. Ever. If they could they would sacrifice anyone who puts a foot wrong straight after the dance. The whole set would frogmarch those who made a wrong move outside the hall (all in step and in time to the music) and burn them at the stake. They might have to watch a perfect foursome as the flames began to lick at their ankles.

Too late we discovered that there was another bar inside, in the brightly-lit regimental musem. I was regaled with a long story about the car park at a northern branch of Aldi which persuaded me, in case the teller had a sister in there, to go back outside where I was forced to remind myself (with an object lesson, obviously) that smoking doesn’t keep you warm and that I’ve gone off it anyway. I met a girl who I hadn’t seen for years and congratulated her on being a QC. She thanked me then looked a little panicked as she tried to remember what I did. “And you’ve got two children!” she beamed. The second and last cigarette of the night wasn’t any better than the first.

A dress to depress

Unusually I am going out this weekend, not once but twice. Friday and Saturday. Going out on two consecutive nights is not something I do any more. Going out at night isn't something I do much any more, unless I'm away from home. I'm looking forward to it. I have even arranged an excellent babysitter in good time. So I won't be scrabbling around at the last moment and end up entrusting my preciouses to the untested monosyllabic, obese barrel-scrapings they are subjected to when I am less organised. The embarassment of having to translate broad early school-leaver for my children always makes me flee from the house early, compounding my guilt. But this weekend I hope, I can party on, safe in the knowledge that my babies are being watched over by pretty, chatty, fragrant Alpha babysitter who knows how to play monopoly, can tell the time and drive herself home. Please don't let her be ill.


What with all the animal husbandry and cooking that I do I tend to wear manky clothes most of the time, which isn't to say I don't enjoy wearing nice clothes. I love wearing nice clothes. I love buying them, thinking about buying them, planning to wear them and wearing them. One of the reasons I love going out is that I get to put on the foxy cool clothes which hang unworn for their own protection for 99 per cent of the time. And do my hair and wear makeup. I will have two opportunities to wear things I don't usually wear on my nights out but with provisos. There are strict dress codes for each event - floor-length on Friday, black tie on Saturday.

On Friday it is a ball at a castle and on Saturday a smart dinner. I had a rummage in my wardrobe yesterday - forward thinking again, I must be growing up. Somehow amongst all the jeans, misshapen t-shirts, smelly fleeces and unworn loveliness I found the sort of dress the regiment holding the ball will deem seemly for their big night. I have worn it once, eight years ago; the last time I went to the same regimental ball at the same castle. It was made specially for the occassion when I was pregnant with my daughter. I don't wear floor-length dresses often so I was pleased to find it and (kind of) to discover that it fitted fine and wouldn't need a belt.


Dressing successfully for a ball in Scotland where you will be expected to take part in rumbustious Scottish country dancing (or reeling as I now call it having married well) has nothing to do with little girl fantasies of gowns and jewels and silver slippers. Its about practicality, comfort, not flashing your boobs and not breaking any limbs. A bit like dressing for the gym only less foxy. Forget strapless, particularly if you have tiny boobs like me. Even in my pre-children voluptuous 34B days strapless was a non-starter, as I finally had to concede after spending a friend's birthday party largely topless. In most of the dances a man yanks your arms above your head and spins you violently, disorientating you and removing one boob from the top of your dress before passing you on to the next guy who will do the same thing in the other direction which removes the other boob before you have had a chance to scoop the first boob back in. In WAG circles it would count as an assault. Sleeves might sound like a good idea but aren't because all the hands above head turning means the dress will be ripped at the armpits after the first reel or the sleeves will be lying trampled on the floor or the wearer of a more robustly seamed dress will have flashed sweaty pit patches 96 times in 10 overheated minutes. A high-cut dress with sturdy shoulder straps is the only thing for it and at a regimental ball it has to be floor length. Which means grannyish ankle length because if it is sweeping the floor or has any kind of train it will be stood on, tripped over and cursed by wearer and fellow guests alike. Practical. Comfortable. Not words I like to associate with going out clothes but which on this occassion I must, or risk bringing shame on the good name of our host. I don't want to go into the details of the practical comfortable shoes I have selected and risk bringing shame on my own name. Suffice to say my daughter has forbidden me from leaving the house in them.

The dress situation for Saturday night is better but, exasperatingly also imperfect. The black tie dinner is being held in a huge freezing pile so we have been told to bring a jumper. I'm not sure a jumper will improve my favourite little black DVF dress but my joy in dressing up doesn't extend to being cold, ever. The hosts can't afford to heat the house now that they have bought it and have chosen feeding us dinner over keeping us warm. I would rather eat crisps and be warm. I would rather not wear a jumper over the favourite party dress that I get to wear twice a year.

The Battle of the Bands

This was a weekend without plans, so liable to tip over into cantankerous mass cabin fever and shouty unpleasantness at any moment. My husband and I both know this so yesterday we mounted an expedition to the gala day of a nearby village. The children looked a bit doubtful when we told them but I was ready for them before the looks became vocalised. "There will be old lady teas," I coaxed, "and probably ice cream (I would do one or the other not both once we got there) and loads of junk to spend your pocket money on." Gratifyingly, that worked instantly. My seven year-old daughter scurried off to get her purse while my ten year-old son went to say long goodbyes to his ferret and the dog. My son didn't get his wallet as he knows there is no need when I am there. That is a genetic money saving trait he inherited directly from me. I never carry cash when I am with my husband.

The grown-up's motivation for going to the gala day, aside from scones, Mr Whippy and shopping was to see a man/boy who sometimes works for my husband playing with his band, Wyldflower. They were setting up when we got to the park where the gala was being held. The stage was in the ring and the choice for them as they lugged drums and amps onto the lorry back was a tough one. Play facing a wall, backs to most of the gala or face the right way but have the limp rooftops of a tent directly in front of them and between them and the audience.

We shambled over to the wheelbarrow race - a timed there and back with barrower and barrowee swapping at the far end. There was a hundred pound cash prize on offer and I think we saw the victors; teenage boys old enough to be strong and fast but young enough not to be too out of it to perform. They powered home in 18 seconds. Someone I know was manning the soft toy tombola and beckoned my children over. Despite a recent cull of soft toys in our house we still have enough to run our own tombola every weekend for the whole summer. I smiled sweetly at the woman on the stall and my children and said we wouldn't be taking part. I explained that we are about to move temporarily out of our house while some work is done to it and I am trying not to re-clutter. Remarkably my children didn't protest. Could they have grown out of soft toys? Did they not fancy the matted, crusted cast-outs from other people's beds? Could they have been trying to be helpful? Any of these scenarios would be pleasing to me and I went on to the next stall happy.

It was another variation on the tombola theme, being run, like many of the stalls by hands-on community-minded dads in bigger versions of the clothes their sons wear to nursery. Extremely good eggs all of them. So unsexy. Fortunately my daughter failed to win a bottle of whiskey. The plate smashing was smashing and we invested several pounds. Most of the plates we were smashing were nicer than the ones we eat off which gave me an idea for what I could do with the ones at home instead of laboriously packaging them all up and putting them into storage only to unpack them all again and sully the shelves of our swanky new kitchen with them.

As we wandered on to the Dennis the Menace stocks a mobility scooter trundled towards us rather haltingly. I wondered why it seemed so hesitant, stopping every few metres then starting again. One of my husband's relations got one for her 70th birthday and gave everyone shots on it at her birthday party so I know them to be robust vehicles and very easy to drive. There is no brake, which sounds alarming but isn't because you accelerate and deccelerate using the same small thumb-controlled lever. Press to go, press less to slow down, stop pressing to stop. It seemed unlikely that it was being broken in but maybe its battery was low. As it drew nearer I realised what the problem was. Its hugely overweight probably emphysemic jockey was taking her hand off the go lever every time she took a drag on her cigarette.

At the other end of the attractiveness scale the lead singer of the band, easily the foxiest person there in her black dress, stilettos and pink wig was testing testing. The children and I sprinted to the ringside. Drums, guitars, an intro worthy of The Killers and Wyldflower were off. They strutted, they strummed they danced, they smiled. A listless afternoon about to be transformed. I wanted to dance. I didn't want to embarass my children. I didn't want to be the only person dancing. I really didn't want to be the only person paying any attention to them but I was. One of the unsexy Dads walked past and I smiled and angled my head towards the band. "Great aren't they?" He made a face. "Bit shrill. Bit loud." The second song ended and the children and I cheered and whooped embarassing ourselves and the band. Everyone else was pretending they hadn't noticed them or complaining about the volume.

I hope the indifferent Gala day audience are the worst audience Wyldflower have ever had. I am from Edinburgh, the festival city and from good audience stock which makes me an excellent audience member and I was uncomfortable in such an apathetic crowd. The band gave up after five songs but they did well to keep going that long. I hope they get to play T in the Park next year.

But it turned out they weren't the only band there. As we were about to leave my daughter reminded me that we hadn't been into the tea room in the hall yet. I said we weren't going to sit down but if there was a stall selling baking we would buy something and eat it when we got home. There was no cake stall in the hall. There was a stall selling knitted owls and egg-cosies and holey baby clothes. It didn't appear to be doing a roaring trade, but the woman behind the table was knitting more anyway just in case there was a rush on knitted goods later. The middle of the hall was packed with tables which were packed with people, four to each, all giving it up in their non-animated octogenarian way to the band on the stage - ranks of seated ancients with fiddles and accordians playing the kind of thing you see on Scottish television on New Year's Eve but with less gusto. Some of the audience had even abandoned their pancakes and Tetley, so entranced were they. I'm certain not one of the performers on that stage knew they had won the gala day battle of the bands, but they had.

OK, we'll come

A text from my Mum this morning. Not in triplicate, as they sometimes appear when she is trying to do something else as well as texting, but a single purposeful message. "Any chance you could all come for supper on WEd? I know its a school night, etc. No pressure." Well, just the teensiest bit of pressure in that she also texts that my brother and sister in law have already accepted the invitation. Wednesday? WEDNESDAY? My children are now back at school and we live an hour away. An hour and a half on a Wednesday evening. I text back, "Is it a special occasion?" I suggest my wicked Aunt (who is also going)'s 80th. She is not much over 70 and Joan Collins well-preserved. I am a wicked niece. My Mum texts straight back. She obviously isn't multi-tasking this morning. "Dad's 74th birthday".

I knew that. My papa's birthday is the 3rd of September, same as the papa in The Temptations song. Luckily mine isn't and never has been a rolling stone. I have been thinking about wondering out loud what we are doing for Dad's birthday, but what with my son's birthday, which for some reason required four cakes - one for the family, one for his school friends, one for the grown-ups' dinner party and one for his friend who is allergic to eggs - and my son's birthday party and the new term, I didn't get round to it. I take it on the chin in my text back to her. "Silly me," I text back. "What time are you eating?" If its 8 we're not going. Instantaneous beep: "7.30" I do the calculations in my head and realise my 7 year-old daughter who needs 12 hours sleep won't be in bed till 11. There must be an formula for an equation in which you put the age of the child over the amount of sleep normally required, multiply by the amount anticipated and work out how many grumpy hours you will have to endure the following day. My 10 year-old son isn't a sleeper so he'll be fine but its a hundred mile round trip for supper on a Wednesday, my whole family subjected to midweek homework, and the roadworks, fuel costs, other lame excuses... What am I THINKING? I have no idea how many more birthdays my Dad will have, I hope masses although I don't want to put a figure on it, but anyone with a 74 year-old parent will know the ball park I'm in with this. Of course we'll go, no question. I text back, "Lking fwd 2 it xx". Usually I text in proper English, fully punctuated but sometimes I do teenage texty lingo, just to show myself that I can.