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.