Unforeseen dilemmas

The children are busy growing up. The summer is ended and Toby has started school. Yes, that's right. My tiny little, one month premature, mop-headed six pound baby is wearing a shirt and tie and V-necked jumper and Start-Rite shoes (I do so want him to start rite) and trotting off to Reception, away from my soft and loving arms into the charge of the iron-faced Mrs. Ferris.

Who is Mrs. Ferris that she should get my boy for four and a half hours every day?

There are thirty children in the class. That's nine minutes per child. Bearing in mind that lunch is one hour and playtime twenty minutes, that's six minutes per child. Six minutes! How's he meant to learn to read in six minutes?

Beatrice, meanwhile, spends long minutes writing stories and teaching her baby how to use the potty. Her baby, she informs me, does not have a willy. Toby, on the other hand, does have a willy. Please stop pulling Toby's willy, I asked her yesterday when they were in the bath.

Oh, said Toby airily, she doesn't have to.

And people said I was lucky to have one of each.

Lego Star Wars and other obsessions

Beatrice: I don't like that Darth Vader, he makes me cross.

Toby: He's a baddie. He's my favourite baddie.

Beatrice: He doesn't say please can I get down. He just gets down and plays with his toys.

Toby: He does say please can I get down. And then he kills someone.

Beatrice: Not kill someone.

Toby: Please can I get down.

Me: Yes, Toby.

Toby: Not Toby. I'm Darth Vader.

Beatrice screams, very loudly, for a prolonged period.

Me: Stop screaming, Beatrice.

Toby (with the weary air that belongs to the vastly experienced): She's giving me a headache.

Me: Me too. Beatrice, what's the matter?

Beatrice (weeping): Toby's Darth Vader. I not like Darth Vader.

Me (reassuringly): Darling, Toby's not Darth Vader. 

Toby (affronted): Yes I am.

Beatrice: He's going to kill me with his light saver.

Toby: No I'm not.

Me: You see? He's not.

Toby: I'm going to kill her with my light sabre. She's Luke Skywalker.

Beatrice (seriously distressed): I'm not Luke Skywalker. He's a boy. I'm Cinderella. I don't want Darth Vader to kill me.

Toby: I have to. I'm a baddie.

Thus do my days pass.

Working from home

I consider that I work from home. I cook. I clean. I mend things and sew Cash's woven name tapes into them. From here I make my forays into the outside world and bring back groceries, mended cars, dry cleaned suits and nursery-stimulated children. I hold the many threads of our family life in my strong, capable hands and, with deft twitches, keep us fed, warm, clothed and (mostly) on the rails. I do all this from home, and home is, as a result, a blessed, fun and welcoming place.

Stephen is working from home today, in order to spend more time with the children even though the demands of his work are becoming astronomical. As a result, I am not allowed to

• answer the telephone (it might be an important client)
• make any telephone calls (an important client might be trying to get through)
• allow the children to have even minor mishaps (children crying is not a professional background noise)
• permit any arguments (children arguing is, if anything, a less professional background noise)
• have any enquiries that might require Stephen's input (he's working, for goodness' sake, Clementine)
• give the children any clues about when Daddy might emerge from purdah and play with them (he doesn't want to make promises he can't keep).
• hoover

On the other hand, I am allowed to

• produce espresso coffee on demand
• cook and serve a full lunch in between collecting Toby at 12 and dropping Beatrice off at 1.30.
• provide a constant armed guard outside the study door to prevent intrusion by loving and curious offspring.

There are things, like wearing a pair of trousers, baking a souffle or being the President, that only one person can do at a time. Working from home, I have decided, is one of them.

Prince Charming

I was watching Disney's Sleeping Beauty with the children earlier on, and it struck me just what a collection of spineless, insignificant, characterless creations these various heirs to the throne are. In Cinderella, the man appears, dances with beautiful girls as per his father's instructions, then exits the story entirely while Cinderella and the palace staff sort things out between them. Thank the lord she had the intelligence to hang on to that glass slipper or the whole thing would have gone horribly wrong. For the palace staff, that is. Cinderella might have been better off with the dressmaking mice; at least they listened to her troubles and took independent action to help. A man who lets his valet do his courting for him isn't going to sign up for Relate sessions when things start going wrong. And Prince Philip (not the racist one with funny eyes, the fictional one whose identical twin just married Cinderella. At least I hope it's his identical twin). He muscles in on the innocent game the owl and the rabbits were playing with Briar Rose, breaks the poor girl's heart and relies on a trio of middle-aged fairies to point their wands at anything that might get him into trouble. Put the cast in leather and set the story in Soho and it'd be a whole different ball game. Except Philip can't even stick his own sword into the witch at the end.

And then - after having done nothing - they get a half-share of the closing credits.

Stephen has introduced Toby to the delights of the Star Wars Lego game on the Wii. He thinks that calling out Clem, look, it's the Millenium Falcon will prove an irresistable siren call.  In fact, it depresses me to see Harrison Ford reduced to an inch and a half of coloured plastic. I'm going to make the children's tea and brace myself for the screams and protests when I tell them it's time to stop.

And that's just Stephen.

Cake

It's just gone midnight. I've been baking. There's a nursery coffee morning on Friday, a cake sale on Saturday morning, Mum's birthday next week, the mother of a boy Toby plays with at nursery coming for tea and Stephen's penchant for afternoon tea with the children on the days he's working from home. So I put the children to bed, made Stephen's dinner and got started. I made two currant Genoa cakes, forty two pink fairy cakes, two batches of chocolate brownies and a heart-shaped Madeira. While they were cooling I made a batch of chocolate crispy cakes. Stephen came in to the kitchen just as I'd got the cakes wrapped and labelled for the freezer.

'Clementine,' he said, 'there's a cake in a bag here with Give to Rose on Thursday written on it.'

'Yes?'

'And this one says Use for Mum.'

'Yes.'

'Leave for Tuesday? Emergency coffee morning supply?'

I didn't deign to reply. I have my systems.

'The thing is, Clementine,' he said, shaking his head sadly over my handiwork, 'you think this is normal.'

Mother's day

It went like this. 

Me (just over a week in advance, knowing that if I want Mother's Day to happen I will need to drop some large hints in Stephen's direction): It's Mother's Day on Sunday.

Stephen (tapping his BlackBerry adoringly): Oh, right.

Me: Are we going to do anything?

Stephen: What, now?

Me: No, on Mother's Day.

Stephen: I don't know. When is it?

Me: Sunday.

Days pass with no further reference to the topic, during which I order flowers to be delivered to Queen Victoria (Stephen's mother). I did wonder whether to book a restaurant myself, in order to make Stephen's life easier, but decide I've done enough.

To cut a long, no-tables-till-half-three-bloody-hell-I-didn't-send-my-mum-anything story short, we ended up eating half-frozen sausages that Stephen threw onto the barbeque in the rain (it's a gas barbeque) and all dying of salmonella.

At the pearly gates I asked Stephen why he hadn't done anything at all about Mother's Day.

'Well,' he said in injured tones, 'you're not my mother.'

Betrayal and other domestic concerns

We watched Casablanca last night. Victor or Rick? Victor or Rick? Does Ilsa do the right thing? Is being part of someone's work, the thing that keeps him going, fulfilling for her? And how can Victor really be the victor if Ilsa spends the rest of her life yearning for Rick?

I don't think Rick really wants to marry her. I think he likes the roaming maverick role, saving youthful innocence from the paws of the lecherous police chief, holding the real power in Casablanca between his jaded, done-it-all palms. He sends her off with Victor because he wouldn't have known what to do with her if she'd stayed with him.

Poor Ilsa.

I hope she developed outside interests and revelled in all the free time her husband's political activities gave her. Or got involved - Beautiful Silk-Clad Women Against the Bomb. Or something. But the film doesn't hold out that hope. She's a cipher, that's all - a symbol through which the boys fight to see who's got the noblest willy.

Stephen's work's in trouble. And what it means in practice is that I constantly come second. In everything. Never before has he said, 'Nothing,' when I've asked what he's doing. Now he does it all the time. There are bad things happening in the wider world, and when Stephen won't talk to me, I feel that they're lapping at our door. I'm as supportive as I can be - after all, I'm part of his work, the thing that keeps him going. But it's not enough. Not for me. All I can do at the moment is hope that it's enough for him.

Internet shopping

Sarah told me to start doing my supermarket shopping on the internet. I've been doing what Sarah tells me since we were eighteen; I can't stop now. So Sarah logged me on and registered me and I shouted 'Milk' and 'Baby wipes' and 'Marmite' at her, and she performed whatever dark occult procedures are required to transform virtual items in a non-existent trolley into actual shopping delivered to my door.

At least she said she had.

The shop was due this morning. I had sufficient faith in Sarah to stay in and wait for it, instead of making sure it happened by bundling the children to the supermarket and doing it myself. I'd taken Beatrice upstairs to dress her when the doorbell rang. 'Wait there,' I said to Beatrice, and went down. And all my wildest fantasies came true at once. There, on my doorstep, was a wildly handsome man in uniform, surrounded by supermarket carrier bags that contained all the things I needed and only the things I needed. There would be no gadgets in these bags, no impulse purchases of things no one ever eats, and this man would not have forgotten the milk. I nearly proposed when he carried the bags into the kitchen. I just don't get this kind of help on a day to day basis.

I went through the bags in a state of euphoria. It was all there. And I hadn't had to do anything except shout at Sarah and open the door. For almost a minute, I was an internet shopping convert.

And then I went upstairs. Beatrice, true to her highly individual and determined self, had interpreted my instruction in a personal and creative way. She was exactly where I had left her. Only she was there minus her nappy, which she had removed because it was 'smelly, mummy.' The source of the 'smelly, mummy' was spread all over the changing station, the mat, Beatrice's dress-up princess frock (lots of layers there) and the wall. Not only that, but she had applied Sudocrem liberally to the same areas. And her face and hair.

By the time we got downstairs, the ice cream had melted all over the kitchen floor.

The whole episode took just over two hours, and it was time to pick up Toby from nursery.

I might as well have gone to the bloody supermarket. At least we might have had time to stop for a coffee there.

Overreaching ambition

Some heady combination of half term and a wistful look in Stephen's eyes made me think it would be a really good idea to take two toddlers into London on the train to meet Daddy for lunch.

And it was. 

They were unbelievably, unutterably and gorgeously good company. They chatted to Stephen about the train. They ate all their lunch and said please and thank you to the waitresses without being asked. They sat beautifully in the taxi afterwards and cheered when the driver told them that he'd seen the Queen waving at them from Buckingham Palace. Even when the train home was so packed that they both had to sit on the floor surrounded by other people's bad-tempered knees, they just sat looking tired but making no fuss at all.

Who are these angels and what have they done with my children?

The Twilight Phenomenon

I gave in and read the book. Whilst not enriching my life, it has at least left me thankful that I am neither a teenage girl nor a Mormon trying to make celibacy sound like an attractive prospect. I mean, falling in love, marrying, having two children and then forgetting you ever had a brain might be tough at times, but surely it's preferable to falling in love with someone who's going to kill you the minute you surrender to the mutual attraction?
I'm told she has a baby in the fourth book but I'm not sure I can stand all these teenage hormones seeping through the pages for that long. At least Toby and Beatrice's crumbs can be hoovered up with reasonable ease. Although, it has to be said, with a great deal less romance. What IS it about vampires?

Marital harmony

Toby, Beatrice and I were waiting for Stephen to get up so that we could all have breakfast together. I thought we'd get ahead on Toby's project. I went through the papers and cut out cakes. I drew cake outlines and provided an array of glitter, stars, coloured pencils and tissue paper. I told Toby he could use the big scissors and have sole control of the Pritt stick. When Stephen came down and asked what we were doing, I felt a stirring of respect for the Early Years Curriculum ('Because Dads are important too!!!') I explained that we were coming up with preliminary templates for Toby's ultimate fairy cake design, which we would then recreate in sugar, food colouring and edible sprinkles.

Stephen and I got busy cutting, sticking and colouring. Stephen came up with the idea of edging a red cake in white triangles to look like an open dinosaur mouth; I worked on a more traditional floral concept. I explained that the blueprints needed to be assembled into a scrapbook to chart the progress of Toby's design ideas. We exchanged ideas. Stephen wondered whether one could add food colouring to white sugar without destroying the crystalline structure and was fascinated to learn that powdered colours, although harder to source, are both truer and less damaging to the fondant icing's texture. He contributed the fact that he recently saw some wrapping paper depicting a wide variety of decorated fairy cakes, and  that he would attempt to obtain some in order to provide a cover for Toby's scrapbook. We felt connected in a way that has eluded us for some time.

Toby and Beatrice, meanwhile, wandered off and raided the fridge.

The Importance of the Early Years Curriculum Is...

what exactly? Toby is three. Three. He performed his nursery rhyme on Friday and we all breathed a sigh of relief. And they sent him home with homework. Homework. Toby's come home from nursery - nursery, mind, not university - with a Design and Technology project. If nursery's doing Design and Technology, what's he going to be doing at school? Aeronautical Engineering? He has to design and create the decoration for a fairy cake. Anything he likes. Fairy cake recipe attached. No adult help needed or required.
Oh well, that's all right then.
What are we doing to our children? It's all very well for Sarah to laugh and tell me to get a life. This is my life.

Sponsored nursery rhymes

For reasons best known to themselves, the teachers of Toby's nursery class have decided that it would be a really good idea for each of the children to get up and recite a nursery rhyme to the rest of the class. We, the parents, sponsor our offspring and the number of fluffy kittens who aren't drowned at birth at thelocal cat sanctuary is increased accordingly.
Fair enough. Toby knows Twinkle Twinkle. We can work with that.
But then comes the announcement that the children are allowed to dress up as a character from their nursery rhyme. Toby wants to be a wizard. So, faced with a dearth of a) wizard costumes and b) nursery rhymes about wizards, I sacrifice an old skirt and get creative with lyrics. All week now, Toby has been singing, Twinkle, twinkle, little wizard, Making snow come in a blizzard, When you cast your magic spell, Down comes snow we love so well, Twinkle twinkle, etc. Job done. Except that Sarah fronted up from New York last night bearing gifts, among which was a dragon costume. Now Toby wants to be a dragon.
'But Toby,' I say, 'we don't know any nursery rhymes about dragons.'
'Oh,' says Toby airily, 'I've got one.'
'Oh,' I say, while Sarah practically wets herself laughing. 'How does it go?'
'Dragon, raaaa, dragon raaaa, dragon raaaa.'
So there you have it.
I can't ask Sarah if she's pregant if I'm not speaking to her, can I? I only hope Mrs. Money at nursery is adequately impressed.

Here's a question. What do you cook for a dinner party when your guests are three of your best friends, when the sole purpose of the dinner is to find out who's pregnant? And when the cooking of said dinner has to be timed around the bedtime routine of two small children, at least one of whom will start climbing the walls if he realises that Beth is in the building and isn't playing with him? Is it OK to slap down a plate of sandwiches and see who avoids the pate and the soft cheese? And how do I get rid of Stephen for the evening, yet still have childcare on hand in case of sudden revelations?
Oh the trauma.

Perfect day

We took the children to the Natural History Museum this morning. Toby skirted round the animatronic Tyrannosaurus Rex peering from behind my coat. Beatrice stood squarely in front of it and roared right back.
She's two and she's already learned to confront things that scare her head on instead of hiding behind a range of vaguely dissatisfied comments about nothing. And so I am going to take my cue from my daughter. I am going to hold a summit. Beth, Ruby and Sarah shall all receive dinner invitations, and Beth, Ruby and Sarah will all accept them. I shall present the evidence and demand an explanation.
It's got to be done. Whoever it is must be dying to tell me. All I'm doing is creating the chance for them to do so.

Bad Mother

Toby's nursery teacher called me over at pick up time. 'Toby's penis is black,' she told me.
What was I supposed to say. 'Yes, I know?' What kind of mother knows that her son has a black willy and doesn't do anything about it? A Bad Mother.
Or I could have said, 'Oh,' (bright and interested) 'has he?' But tha twould mean that Mrs. Litt would think that she knows more about Toby's willy than I do. That would make me a Bad Mother, too.
Or, 'Oh, yes, we do practice body art at home,' thereby suggesting that Toby's black willy is all part of a Grand Scheme which, whilst it may be eccentric, is neither criminal nor untoward. But weirdness is part of being a Bad Mother.
The fact is that all mothers are Bad Mothers. The only Good Mothers are the ones that haven't got any children yet.
Which brings me to the fact that there is a Good Mother amongst my friends who is on track to become a Bad Mother.
Why has no one said anything yet?

Pleases and poached eggs

It's Saturday again. After a luxurious lie-in, Stephen joined us at eleven o'clock. He wanted poached eggs. I poached eggs. This set the children clamouring for lunch (fair enough, they got me up at six).
Eggs, mummy, eggs.
Eggs what?
Eggs like Daddy.
Eggs like Daddy what?
Stephen looks up from the paper and pours the last of the orange juice into his glass. 'Mine were poached,' he says helpfully.
I poach more eggs. I make toast. Stephen begins three separate sentences with, 'While you're there, Clementine,' and reinforces his newspaper barricade with coffee, a pen for the crossword and the fruit bowl. The children spread eggs and yoghurt over the table cloth. While I'm there, Clementine, I fetch a cloth.
'Aren't you having any breakfast, Clementine?' Stephen asks.
It's all I can do to stop myself telling him that it doesn't look like it.

Hail, Obama!

I found the lids of the marker pens. I locked my dressmaking scissors away and thanked Providence that there wasn't any blood on them. I flushed away the eggs and cleared up the shells. I gave Stephen a look that should have turned him to stone (to which he replied jovially, 'Hard work, aren't they?') and searched in vain for the damage that must have been wrought somewhere by the marker pens, judging by the state of Toby's hands.
I found it at bedtime. Toby, my pink and white catalogue-fodder toddler, has marked the election of the first black president of the United States by colouring his willy and most of his inner thigh area black.
It's permanent marker.
It didn't wash off.
It still hasn't.
Happy inauguration, Mr. Obama. If you're as tenacious, bloody minded and focussed as Toby, there really is hope for the world.

Four hours later

Four hours. I left Stephen in charge for four hours. I didn't even leave him with the responsibility of doing any meals. This is what I found:

• A full tub of ice cream melting on the kitchen floor
• Two permanent black marker pens with their lids off; whereabouts of lids unknown.
• Four eggs, cracked, floating in the toilet; shells thereof in fragments on the floor
• Toby's new rocket pyjamas lying shredded next to an abandoned pair of dressmaking scissors.
• Toby, Beatrice and Stephen asleep on the living room sofa with Monsters Inc. playing on the DVD.

I'm leaving. I don't care who is or isn't pregnant. As long as it's not me.

my untidy kitchen #2

Stephen's late home. I put the babies to bed by myself. Now I'm staring at two melamine plates covered in remnants of cherry tomatoes, ham and breadmen (like gingerbread men but cut out of a slice of bread instead), which I haven't had a chance to clear until now. But if I clear them, how will Stephen know what a hectic day I've had?
Note to reader: Apply the same logic to craft projects, children's paintings, my efforts to read a paper sometimes, the zoo we made last week out of stuffed toys and cardboard boxes and the fact that I have no shelf in here for the children's books, to create a mental image of my kitchen.

My untidy kitchen #1

I go through the post every day and deal with anything that looks as though we might get evicted if I ignore it (or leave it for Stephen, which comes to the same thing). I also open anything handwritten, just in case it's a party invitation or a birth announcement or something else that's fun and exciting and suggestive of a life beyond excavating cold Ready Brek from the floorboard gaps. Everything else gets left in a pile, which gets bigger and bigger until Stephen knocks it over and gets annoyed.
'Why do you keep this stuff?' he asks, brandishing charity appeals and catalogues and invitations to sale previews and exclusive offers on credit cards (yes, they're still sending them out - don't they read the papers?) and once-in-a-lifetime opportunities to consolidate all my debts into one easy monthly repayment (Note to Advertisers: There is NO SUCH THING as an easy monthly repayment.)
And instead of saying, 'Why don't you go through the post, Stephen?' I find myself putting forward one or more of the following arguments:

• I am going to do craft projects with the children and we need the pictures
  
• I may want to buy hand-crafted door knobs or macrame owl wall hangings one day
• I am vastly concerned with the plight of innocent kittens
• There might be something important in the pile
  
• The item in question was addressed to him and it's against my principles to open anything addressed to anyone else or make decisions about its ultimate fate.

None of which make any impression. I throw it all away in a fit of pique and the whole cycle starts again.
And just after I've thrown it all away, I decide that a macrame owl wall hanging would be a perfect present for Stephen's elderly aunt, and then remember half way through going through the bin that Stephen doesn't have an elderly aunt, and feel irritated with Stephen. After all, he was the one who knocked the pile over.

Weekends and other things that happen to other people

Saturday morning. Up with children at six. Instant enrolment in NASA space programme via large cardboard box and craft knife. Toby's demand that space ship thus created should contain 'real fire' supported by his provision of large box of Bryant and May's extra-long matches, kept securely locked in medicine drawer and last used by Stephen. Energy-draining repression of urge to burn Stephen at stake aided by imagining that Toby's screams upon confiscation of said matches are, in fact, those of Stephen attached to said stake. Astronaut-worthy breakfast (dried in packets; senior astronaut sceptical about fresh milk but persuaded by anecdotal evidence of existence of cow on moon. Cow jumped over moon and liked view so much, she jumped onto moon and stayed.) Space exploration halted for purpose of painting rocket red. Sound of rocket launching provided by ancient boiler complaining about excessive hot water demand. Realise that Stephen has woken up and is indulging himself in hot bath.
Unrepress all urges to burn Stephen at stake. Offer Toby and Beatrice the chance to have bonfire in garden. T & B dance with delight.

Mother's instinct

Mum came for lunch. I gave Toby and Beatrice some orange play dough to keep them quiet, then chopped up a butternut squash, thinking about how pale Beth looked the last time I saw her, and I cut my finger. I shoved the baking tray into the oven and remembered that Sarah tripped on our front step twice before she actually made it through the door. I burned myself on the oven door, stood up too quickly and staggered slightly. This reminded me that Ruby complained of dizziness last time I saw her. All signs of early pregnancy. Any one of them could be, and one of them is. Except that Ruby and Sarah are both single at the moment, which would make two things they're not telling me. I frowned as I sliced an avocado, trying to work out which one of them has been running to the loo the most often. Toby announced that he'd made dinner and I pretended I hadn't heard.
Mum was watching the whole performance.
'Clementine,' she said quietly when I sat at the table and served up, 'have you got anything to tell me?'
I rolled my eyes impatiently and snapped, 'No.' Then I swallowed a piece of orange play dough, which made me retch.
Mum's eyes went all soft and misty. 'Clementine, darling,' she said gently, 'a mother knows these things. When are you due?'
Mothers. We don't know a thing.

The plot thickens

There are other things going on, like Mum breaking her leg and Toby spiking a temperature of 40.2 and Ocado forgetting to bring me onions. But I can't stop thinking about the fact that someone who stayed in this house over Christmas is pregnant. More than that, they're pregnant and haven't told me.
I've tried to work it out a la Sherlock Holmes, but I can't get any further than that the person is question is A) female and B) someone I know, which isn't very helpful. If pregnancy tests gave any useful information, like whether the baby's going to be tall, or have red hair, or is wanted or unwanted, I'd have more clues to go on.
I have a very strict code of conduct about such things. If someone hasn't told me something, it means they don't want me to know it, and so I don't pry. When presented with some item of gossip, I smile sweetly and say, 'That's not something I know anything about.'
I'm not wildly popular at the school gate.
The thing is that there's some satisfaction in smiling sweetly and declining to participate in salacious gossip. And I usually get to hear it anyway, so I get the gossip without the guilt. But believe you me, there is no satisfaction whatsoever in knowing something so incredibly significant and being utterly unable to share it with anyone.
And if the person in question is indeed female and known to me, why haven't they told me?
I'm going to drive myself mad.
Correction. I'm going to drive myself madder.
Think, Clementine, think. Where's Doctor Watson when you need him?

Housework and other revelations

Stephen went to work today. I got up at half past six to make him scrambled eggs on toast, even though Toby and Beatrice were still asleep. I don't think he even noticed I was there. He had his head buried in a pile of papers and his right hand glued to his BlackBerry. Men don't grow up, it's just that the nature of the papers and the item glued to the right hand that change. Toby's going to be the same. The other day, I asked him if he needed to go to the toilet and he replied airily, 'No, Mummy, I'm just playing with my willy.' He's only three. There is no hope.
Anyway, Mum came round for lunch. And that meant that, for the first time since Christmas Eve, I had a chance to do some unencumbered housework. First, I walked around tidying up. Two hours later, having put away nothing that was actually mine, I hoovered and dusted, and then, feeling virtuous, I tackled the bathroom. And as I was coming downstairs, dreaming of having a cleaner in the way my friend Sarah dreams about handbags (except my friend Sarah actually buys the handbags), the contents of the bathroom bin escaped through a split in the bin liner and cascaded down the stairs.
First I went to the kitchen, fetched a new bag and put the kettle on. Then I returned to the stairs to harvest the debris. Cotton wool pads smeared with expensive-smelling lotions (Sarah). A collection of receipts and old Post-It notes (Beth, who always uses a stay at our to sort out her purse). Several strings of dental floss (Ruby, who's obsessed with dental hygiene). Hundreds of scrumpled tissues (Queen Victoria's had a cold and believes that one should only blow one's nose in the bathroom). And a pregnancy test.
A used pregnancy test.
A pregnancy test with a blue cross in the window.
I took it all out to the bin and then made some tea.
'Anything wrong?' Mum asked.
'I don't know,' I said. And it's true. Something's either very right or very wrong. Pregnancy tests are like that. The thing is, very right or very wrong for whom?

Happy New Year

Obviously it was a really good idea to go out last night, it being New Year and everything. It all seemed perfect. Mum offered to babysit; I tried on my favourite dress and found that it fitted; the restaurant had a cancellation. We even managed to stay awake beyond midnight (out of choice, you understand, rather than in thrall to the domestic tyrants). We stumbled home at half past one and spent half an hour congratulating ourselves on not allowing having small children to affect our ability to party before we collapsed mid-sentence.
What we forgot to do was to programme Toby and Beatrice to stay asleep until ten or eleven o'clock this morning. Consequently I was back in the family room at half past six with a thumping headache and two merry babies who deserved better, furiously typing comments about Stephen that would probably have meant the end of our marriage had I actually posted them. I'd like to think that my failure to post was due to my generosity of spirit and great maturity.
I'd really like to think that. And so, in the spirit of my suddenly formed New Year's Resolution to treat myself as I would like others to treat me, I will think it. I am so generous of spirit that I won't mention that Stephen is still in bed now. It's a quarter to three. We're expecting friends of his to tea in fifteen minutes. I am so mature that I would get no satisfaction whatsoever from sharing with you that I have had to entertain and feed the babies entirely alone all day, that Queen Victoria (Stephen's mother) rang and had to be conversed with and that Stephen is a selfish, presumptuous slug-a-bed with no more consideration for his hungover wife than a weasel. Happy New Year.