On Durex and Mashed Potato

In her dotage Hearth-Great-Grandma collected Andrex puppies. She saved up hundreds of coupons from toilet tissue wrappers and added to her soft-toy assemblage over several years. She was obsessed with them. When she died we took a couple away in her memory, and now the kids play with them. Yesterday they began a process of renaming different toys. 

'But you can't,' said Gilby, pointing to the stuffed Labradors, and exclaiming very loudly and publically, 'These ones are all called DUREX!'

In other news, we have taken the plunge and planned a New Year's Eve party at home for the first time in a decade. For the first time post-children, in fact. They are going to be safely shipped off to grandparents for the night, ensuring that things are able to get well and truly out of hand.

We had great fun thinking about invitations and who would come, and in the end decided that we would make it for the villagers, allowing us to use the 'hilarious' slogan: A Local Party for Local People. We got Gertie to take a kind of campaign photograph on the doorstep, arms outstretched for a handshake; placards and rossettes on display.

Hearth-Father went off delivering, gleefully, and returned, still in role, announcing that, 'The invitations have been despatched!'

'What do you mean, the potatoes have been mashed?' Eddie asked.

'And that, I announced triumphantly, is why you can come back on New Year's Day.'

Happy new year everyone! 

Steven Gerrard Ate My Sausages

Getting to bed at a respectable 2am after seeing in the new year with friends and family, it is fair to say that I was nursing the suggestion of a teensy-tiny hangover first thing.  Given that I was clearly in the lower magnitude on the Richter scale of hangovers, and was not the only sufferer, discussion at the in-laws this morning focused on the merits or otherwise of different hangover cures. It is worth stating here that Hearth-Father visited the opticians yesterday. I am beginning to wish he had had his ears tested instead. For 'bacon sandwich', that well-known remedy, he heard 'baby cabbage'.

Even as a vegetarian I think I know which I would prefer.

The inclement weather meant that this new year's day has definitely been one for 'plotting up', a favourite expression in our household, rather than going out. I have thereby discovered that it is actually fun spending time with members of my family. Eddie has been running round earnestly completing pages of his 'Wreck This Journal', a lucky, last-minute choice by Santa, as it turns out. Gilby, obsessed by the trials and tribulations of Tom Gates has also begun keeping a journal of his own. Today's entry was entitled 'Steven Gerrard ate my sausages' which is an inspired interpretation of the morning's events.

I won't spoil the mystery by explaining exactly how that came about; suffice to say that is is, in a sense, accurate, (not the Steven Gerrard, obvs) and provides an excellent, if somewhat obscure, title for a blog post.

There has been some new year's brotherly love. I'm not panicking, it's bound not to last, but I enjoyed it nonetheless:

I spent two hours in the bath reading Anna Karenina, which means that I might just about have finished it in time for new year 2018 - but what luxury. Turns out you can do that sort of thing on New Year's Day. And Arsenal won, helped by a blinding goal from Giroud. Happy new year one and all.

2013: The Highs, the Lows

Happy new year to all my friends and family, readers and fellow bloggers; and during this time of reflection and resolution, a very quick, if self-indulgent, look back at 2013.


For the family, the biggest moment was Eddie finally taking his first steps back at the end of July. Looking at him running round after his siblings now you'd never guess it had been in any doubt. It quite brought a tear to his mother's eye. In September Gilby started school and has shone ever since. How cute did he look in his little school uniform, just a month after his fourth birthday? It...brought a tear to his mother's eye. After one term he can read and write and loves it. And Gertie becoming the Under-5 Celtic National Irish Dancing Champion in November brought, yes, a little tear or two to her mother's eye. A month later she had the lead in the school play. A star all round.


2013 was the year that I turned 40 and I had the most fantastic weekend for this milestone birthday as well as taking a long-held dream trip to Venice (just my husband and I, no kids!) to celebrate later in the year.


I think I have to count diving into the pool in Cabrieres for the first time at the start of our summer holiday as one of my top moments, and arriving at Harburn House in Scotland for Christmas as another. We can't travel the world in the same way as I once did, but clearly those little short trips and family holidays are just as special and important. Learning to ballroom dance is up there too, though we won't be troubling Strictly any time soon. We celebrated our seventh wedding anniversary very happily; where did those years go?


2013 had some professional highs: passing what I thought was my penultimate MA module last January with a merit, being accepted to present a seminar at the NATE conference in June, beginning a National Writing Project Group in Sussex in July, gaining an OFSTED outstanding at school in November. (I know that last one shouldn't count, but it does!)


There were some writing successes: Completing NanoWriMo with a 50,000 word draft of On Sudden Ground was a major achievement and now just that lengthy revision and editing process to go before securing that lucrative publishing deal in 2014. (When I will, also, finally complete my MA.) I won and was placed in a number of different short story competitions through the year; more writing to come in 2014, beginning with an educational article to be published in January.


The lows were thankfully few and far between. We lost my uncle last January. He was relatively young but it wasn't unexpected. Still very sad, though, especially for my mother. The beginning of March was plagued with illness, and I didn't enjoy going to work with an eye-patch during a severe eye-infection. On the upside, Gilby thought it was quite cool. Discovering that my final MA module wasn't was a bit of a bore (20,000 words still to go), and finding another 'suspicious' breast lump was more than a little scary, though thankfully now all fine once more. Being able to count those 'down' things on one hand reminds me of how very much I have to be grateful for.


It remains the family, of course, that is most important. We begin 2014 with a family day out and lunch with some dear friends, and that is the way that I mean to carry on.


Currently Reading: 72 Virgins by Boris Johnson. Not entirely sure why.

Life's Little Pleasures

I have been invited by The Wife of Bold to join the meme to list the ten best things in my life that are free. I love to think about life's little pleasures and remind myself of them - especially at new year, even though they change all the time. Some of them I can engineer, and some of them just have to happen spontaneously. Here are my current ones, in no particular order:

1. Watching a good crime drama with high production values. My addiction for Morse a few years ago has now been replaced by series like Wallender.
2. Doing anything together as a family, like our walk on new year's day or all going swimming.
3. Reading a book in the bath. It feels really indulgent and I am going to do lots more of it in 2010.
4. Riding my bike to the shop. My husband bought me a very retro 'sit up and beg' bike for my birthday last year and if it is a nice day I so enjoy a ride down to the local shop on a Saturday or Sunday morning when he is home to look after the kids. I feel healthy and free.
5. Scrapbooking. Creating a beautiful record of our lives and generating order from the chaos of a bundle of photographs and some dog-eared tickets or a theatre programme gives me a real sense of satisfaction.
6. Feeding scraps to my two chickens, Cecily and Isolde. They are so absurdly grateful and I feel a little like Ma Larkin.
7. Seeing my name in print. Sadly, even if it is just for a silly letter or filler in a magazine I get a little narcissistic buzz.
8. The feeling of total relaxation that comes when the house is completely clean and tidy and I am on top of all my chores. This one happens very, very rarely.
9. Watching Gertie do something charming and unprompted, like give her baby brother a spontaneous kiss, or throw her arms around my neck and clasp me in a suffocating cuddle, or do something little and helpful around the house without being asked.
10. Sitting by a roaring fire with my husband on a cold winter's evening when we have shut out the weather and the woes of the world.

Good. I feel better for all that. Looking forward to seeing if any of them happen today!

Bashing the Pedals for a Perfect New Year's Day

We've just spent the most perfect new year's day.

Gertie got up quietly and played with her little brother for a good hour this morning, giving us a tiny lie-in following last night's (moderate) celebrations to see in the new decade.

A large, leisurely breakfast followed; then a long walk through the woods from our house to a nearby pub for lunch beside a roaring log fire. (Entirely appropriate for this Hearth-mother.)

On the way home there was plenty of splashing in puddles, or 'bashing the pedals" as it is forever known in our family since this is how Gertie used to pronounce it when it first became one of her favourite things to do.

Lots of fresh air for the children put the colour back into their cheeks and means that they have both gone down to bed willingly and a little early.

How different from hungover, unproductive new year's days of old! The me of now bears hardly any resemblance to that person a decade ago who hadn't yet met her husband, was barely at the start of her teaching career and who most definitely did not have any interest in having children.

I spent the millenium eve a decade ago on Westminster Bridge awaiting the fireworks and 'river of flame' with a group of girlfriends. It was a cold, depressing evening, with my overriding memory being of drinking too much cheap wine from plastic cups resulting in us having to take turns to surreptitiously wee (if such a thing is possible) within a huddled circle of the girls due to the fact that we couldn't move off the bridge because of the crowds. I lost my sister for a couple of hours, she sprained her ankle and it took hours to get back home. Now this year's experience was far less dramatic but much, much happier.

What a difference a decade makes.