Angry Young(ish) Mum

Get that bottle of wine opened, QUICK. Egad, what a week. Call me Bill Murray and send me to Punxsutawney because I have been trapped in Groundhog Day all week and I can’t TAKE IT any more! You are witnessing a woman on the edge, people. If anyone calls out ‘Mummeeee…’ ONE more time I swear I will scream. I guess it’s just the culmination of 4 weeks with a daughter who can’t quite do everything for herself at the moment thanks to the full leg cast. And this is a girl with a very low threshold of patience. She gets huffy waiting for the TV to warm up so you can imagine the rocket I get if I don’t jump her side within 10 seconds of her calling me. She has this indignant tone that has well and truly driven me round the bend. And I thought I was only heading over the hill, isn’t life full of surprises? But however many times I repeat my mantra that the house and the shopping and the cooking won’t do themselves and Mummy wasn’t actually standing around picking her nose waiting for a job to do it never seems to get through. In fact, while I was writing that last sentence a little voice just called down the stairs for Mummy. The little person attached to the voice was put in bed half an hour ago but they just can’t resist one final request when all I want is to park myself and do something for me for a change. I have tried all ways of getting the message into their precious heads including, I am ashamed to say, yelling until my throat hurts but the next morning it starts all over again and I realise that I might as well talk to the wall. In fact I did just that earlier in the week when I was getting zero response out of my little darlings but they just found it hilariously funny and called for a repeat performance. So now I am the entertainment as well as the dogsbody – my CV has never looked better.

Gawd, listen to me. I must sound like a really resent them, which of course I don’t, and I know I am going to miss it when they both evolve into Kevin the Teenager and declare how much they hate me and it’s so unfair, but puh-leeeze… can we let just ONE minute go by without adding another item to the to-do list? And if it’s not their immediate needs, like feeding one end or wiping the other, then they’re banging on about what toys they’ve seen on the adverts that they absolutely, positively have to have for Christmas. Yes, even though it’s still months away and the Christmas ads haven’t appeared yet I’ve already had the full interrogation from Poppet about how exactly Santa knows what he’s supposed to be buying and how precisely he gets in our house when we don’t have a chimney. It’s my own fault for borrowing the film The Pole Express I suppose. For now I’ve completely banned commercial telly for them, I don’t care how many times they’ve already heard the story in Balamory, it’s CBeebs all the way for us.

Anyway, here’s to a better week; only 11 days to got until my dear Poppet can start to walk again and so fetch her own drink, take herself out into the garden and stay for lunch at school a couple of days a week (yippee!). Meanwhile I shall resign myself to the perpetual routine for a bit longer and take solace in alcohol after lights out. I actually made it to a party last night, minus husband though because the local babysitters are too young to cope with lifting Her Highness should the need arise, plus Pickle is coughing fit to bring up a lung… again. I blagged a lift with a friend who was also husband-less and spent the evening beside the drinks table steadily working through the champagne and talking about anything but children. It was lovely! And tonight the wine is already open so frankly all I’m up for now is a bit of sofa-time.
Thank you for listening!

Buggy-rage

One school-run down, three to go, and now I have 2 hours all to myself, yippee!! First I need to have a cuppa and calm down after the stress of getting one able-bodied-yet-reluctant child into one school and a willing-but-unable-to-walk child into the one next door. It’s dawned on me during these last three weeks since I had to re-join the buggy-brigade just how much I have been taking for granted since the children stopped needing to use the pushchair. Luckily most Mamans outside the school are wise to me now and get themselves and their kids out of the way when they see me coming but there is always one who stands there looking at me as if to say ‘Make them walk why don’t you?’. Er, have you been living on the moon for the last three weeks or what? thinks I. And then you get the lazy ones who park their cars half on the pavement to get that extra 10 metres closer to the school so I can’t get past. I cracked this morning and left a note on one Renault Espace. She’ll know it’s me of course, though, because the grammar is bound to be all wrong plus I don’t write in the flowery French script everyone is taught here. Bit of a give-away so I hope it doesn’t come to an argument! Having been here so long now they all expect me to speak perfect French and quite a few have stopped to ask me about Poppet’s leg recently. I think I am making sense most of the time but in every conversation there is a point where they frown and I realise they’re losing my thread. Oh well. I am making no apologies for being an alien.

But hey, it’s Friday! And it’s felt like one long old week. Nobby got back from Sweden (not Swindon) on Tuesday night armed with presents for all of us. He bought me some perfume by Hugo Boss called Boss Woman. Aptly chosen I thought, clearly he knows who’s in charge round here. Unfortunately he lost his phone during the trip so I can’t send him bossy texts all day any more. When I told Pickle Daddy had lost his phone he frowned and said ‘He’s lost it? But that’s what we normally do’ (meaning him and Poppet). Ah, the wisdom of the young. Pickle himself has been ill again this week. I think it’s back-to-school-itis: they keep those classrooms at about 30 degrees hence incubating all the germs they’ve all picked up on their summer travels and by mid-September half the class is off sick. He was up half the night on Monday coughing and wheezing so it was off to the doctors looking like a pair of zombies on Tuesday morning and I am dosing him with antibiotics now. And trying to ensure there are always tissues within easy reach, by which I mean pretty much in his hand because if there is any effort involved he uses his t-shirt instead. It doesn’t seem to bother him going round with snotty shoulders but personally I’d prefer to be able to cuddle him without the risk of sticking.

But it’s going to be a busy weekend again, no rest for the wicked. Last weekend we wanted to get Poppet off the sofa and out in the sunshine so we went en famille to the ‘Pick-Your-Own’ farm on Saturday afternoon. She languished in her pushchair pointing out all the discarded comedy veg she wanted me to pick up for the ‘collection’ she was making for her stuffed bear; carrots that look like a pair of legs, potatoes that look like a pair of buttocks, that sort of thing. Then she started snacking on a carrot fresh from the field, dirt and all. Mmm, yummy. I just thought about the vitamins and let her get on with it. The only thing she could really help with picking was the raspberries so Pickle and Nobby did most of the harvesting and had a lovely time while she and I grappled with the spiky raspberry bushes. Of course for the rest of the weekend all they wanted to eat was crisps so most of the veg is still tucked up in the dark in the garage now.

On Sunday once Nobby had left for the airport I had the great idea of taking the kids to the local Brocante – it’s a cross between a car-boot sale and a flea market and the whole town closes down for the day so the residents can clear out their attics and garages and flog their unwanted possessions - and let’s face it total tat - on pasting tables and rugs up and down the street. It only takes place once a year so it’s about a mile long and packed solid for the whole day but it’s a good source of cheap toys that they can break at their leisure and last year we even kitted out the whole family with second-hand roller blades for about 10 euros. So I bravely set off with the double buggy and a pile of cash and we returned a couple of hours later with four more Barbies with a talking car and horse-and-sleigh and three more Action Men, one of whom has a parachute. Pickle started launching the parachutist off my balcony and I had visions of him following it down – it’s about the height of the slide Poppet broke her leg on so naturally I was having kittens watching him. So I taught him how to fling it up underarm from the ground instead which he accepted. Then he had the brilliant idea of flinging it underarm from the top of the climbing frame to get more height. I think perhaps I should have plumped for the deep-sea-diver Action Man instead…

Anyway, this weekend there is French school tomorrow morning, including the annual parents meeting, where the teachers get us all in a room and tell us how they will be challenging our little darlings this year. They make us all sit on the children’s chairs and keep quiet until they’ve finished so it’s a real power trip for them and a dreadful flashback to being 6 years old for us. The children all go off and watch television during the meeting, lucky things. I know where I’d rather be considering how hard I have to concentrate to follow the French. Saturday afternoon should be more fun though, when two little friends are coming for a sleepover while their parents go to a wedding in Paris. The children have been excited about it all week. Pickle has already made up a bed on the floor in his room and even put out some of his favourite pyjamas for the little boy, and I’ve heard the little girl has been telling her Mummy how she’s going to sleep in the same bed with Poppet. Hopefully she’ll change her mind once we point out Poppet’s plastered leg and the cute little bed I’m making up for her on the floor.

So check back here on Monday and I’ll let you know how it’s gone, and whether we actually managed to see any of the rugby. I am hoping that the girls will play Barbie and the boys will play trains and they’ll all be knackered and in bed by 8pm. Hmm. Place your bets, please.

No, I haven’t slipped off the face of the planet

Is it true? Have I got 5 whole minutes to finally update my Blog after about a month of complete silence? Can I really get it all done before all hell breaks loose again? I have been trying for 5 days but something always comes up, usually the children getting an attack of the ‘Mummy!’s. How is that they can be completely quiet for hours, even tell me to go away and stop interrupting their games if I dare to try and find out what they are up to. Then the second I pick up the phone, turn on the computer or sit on the bog they suddenly need me desperately? ‘Mummy! Will you get my Barbies?’. ‘Mummy! I’m hungry!’. ‘Mummy! Will you wipe my bottom!’. Well, for now, Nobby is in Sweden – which Pickle has delightfully misheard and insists he’s gone to Swindon – Pickle is upstairs doing who-knows-what with his train set and Poppet is parked on the sofa as usual watching the TV. She’s watching Pop though, so I know that as soon as the adverts come on she’ll pipe up with more additions to the Christmas list. ‘Ooh look! A dolly that can swim! Oh, I’d really like one of those, Mummy.’ And did you know that with commercial channels like that you can’t get away with saying ‘Mummy can’t afford it’ because the very next advert will be for a loan and the kid just says ‘but look, Mummy, you can borrow the money’. If only CBeebies played back-to-back Charlie and Lola we’d never turn over.

Anyway, quite apart from the constant lumming (as Rose calls it in her house) it’s been kinda busy here, in a Piccadilly Circus meets Spaghetti Junction sort of way, what with reading the final Harry Potter book (fabulous!), popping off to Marbella (more in a mo.) and to-ing and fro-ing to school. I have counted my school runs per week: 18 on a normal week, 20 every other week when there is Saturday school as well. And with Poppet’s leg still in plaster for another 4 weeks I can’t really call in any help yet. The crowd of Mums outside school are getting more used to my enormous double buggy now and have started to make way for us so I haven’t taken out too many ankles just yet. The kids in the playground await our arrival with great impatience and the moment Poppet’s bum is off the seat they all pile into it while we limp to the classroom. I’ve let them get away with it so far as there is naff-all to play on in their playground but they’re going to burst the tyres one of these days. It all adds up to a much lengthier school run than usual so I am constantly chasing my tail trying to keep some sort of routine going. I wrote my parents a veritable encyclopaedia of instructions on how to keep things running smoothly while I was in Marbella for 4 nights, but you just can’t account for the curve balls. For example, you get everyone up and dressed and fed and you’re just about to head for the car and Pickle decides that he needs to play Musical Statues. Right away. Er, come again? This was last Monday morning and the only solution to avoid the massive strop was to go with it for a couple of rounds, and let him win of course. He’s like Jekyll and Hyde that one. (I believe the word is capricious, if you saw Ant and Dec’s spelling bee…) On Tuesday we got as far as Pickle’s classroom, while Poppet was freezing her bits off outside in the buggy, and he announced that he didn’t want to go to French school, he’d rather go to the English school. Hmm. At least that’s an improvement on the previous week when he told my Mum that since he’d been to school twice that week he didn’t feel the need to go any more. Luckily the appearance of one of his friends persuaded him into the classroom so I could drop Poppet off. But as I made my way back out of the playground I found they’d already locked the school gates and I couldn’t get out. Thankfully the ‘Lollipop Man’ had a key so I could get on my way but it’s been becoming a regular event ever since. How much would it take for the gate-locker to glance over to see whether the double buggy is still parked by the classroom before she turns the key? Hey, but zis is France…

I hear a wailing upstairs; I think Pickles game is fighting back and my time may almost be up. So I must just report on my patient. Hard as it was leaving her and taking my trip to Spain after all, it was probably the best thing for both of us. Not so my liver, by all accounts, given that the bridal party in Spain were a bunch of total party animals and I felt compelled to join in and beer it up until 4am each night… but Poppet really started trying to be independent, despite the tonne of plaster on her leg. My Mum reported that she was even getting herself up the stairs the day after I left and she’d hardly needed any carrying. See, there’s the irony again; as Poppet re-masters the art of moving about on her own her Mummy goes out and gets shedded and can’t walk down the street in a straight line any more, let alone find her hotel room. I think I missed out somewhat having never done the Marbella thing pre-children. It was a totally new concept to head out for the evening at midnight, a time when I would usually be tucked up in bed, and I had a serious fashion wake-up call too that first night. The bridesmaids were all looking fantastic in little dresses and strappy sandals with their hair coiffed to perfection, while I stood there in my jeans and t-shirt with hair by Crazy Meg after my long journey which included a whole hour looking for the hotel. Then they announced they were planning to dress up the following night… hello? I’d just mentally discarded the twin-set and pearls and was racking my brains as to whether I had anything vaguely trendy with me, that didn’t reveal too much of the muffin-top or show me up as mutton-dressed-as-lamb, and here they were discussing sequinned camisoles and hot-pants. Deary me, I know sometimes it’s nice to stand out from the crowd but not as the obvious stay-at-home mum-of-2 who gets all her clothes from Tescos. Anyway, I think I pulled it off ok because I pulled a Spaniard the following night when all the girls hit a disco-bar together! Poor guy was a bit crestfallen when Nobby turned up to find out where I’d got to, and Nobby was a bit surprised to find my wedding ring on my right hand… (I was just living the dream for 5 minutes!)

So we came back down to earth with a bit of a bump (not to mention a thumping head) on Saturday but I am pleased to report that my parents made it through 4 days, 4 nights, 7 school runs and a trip to the hospital (Poppet’s check-up) without strangling either of the children, or each other. And my ironing mountain is no more! What it is to have a Mum who actually likes ironing. I am eternally grateful to them for the respite, they are truly wonderful parents to me, I don’t know what I would do without them. Thanks bigly too to Rose for accompanying them to the hospital as translator. And thanks also to our newly married friends for the opportunity to go large in Marbella. Since my return Poppet has been rather less independent for the last few days, I think its subtle punishment for my having sloped off without her, especially to a wedding, her favourite kind of event. She firmly refuses to use the crutches at home but she does shuffle about on her bottom and I’m keeping everything crossed she doesn’t whack her leg on the tiled floor and send us back to square one. But since all exercise is good at this stage I am happy to delay running to meet her demands in case she decides it’s not too much trouble to do it herself. Besides, I think she has a posse of other slaves at school to satisfy her and she did a great job on her friend’s dad the other day when she attended a birthday party and got the poor man to fetch and carry for 2 hours. (I had warned him, by the way, and he had blindly volunteered to give me a break, LOL!)

Well, I hope it’s not too long before I get another chance to write some more. Pickle has just announced that it’s his turn on the computer now. Who am I to argue?

How to get out of going to school – Lesson One

I couldn’t believe it was already the end of the summer holidays. We came back from the Vendee last Saturday and school started today so I was running about during the intervening days trying to prepare. We spent hours in the stationery shop getting all the obligatory pens and pencils for school – note to self: don’t get the kids to choose their own, they will without fail always choose the most expensive ballpoint pen you ever saw in your life. Why have a 20p Bic biro when you could have a 5€ Barbie ballpoint with bits of plastic and feathers dangling off it? We practised getting up before lunchtime a few days so the 7am wake-up call on the big day wouldn’t send everyone into a tailspin. Yesterday Poppet and Pickle were up at 7.15 and fed and watered in good time for the school-run so we had an inspection at 8.10, our normal departure time. One slight flaw was that they were both naked as all the clothes are still in the laundry after the holiday. I swear all the clothes are breeding while my back is turned. Nobby and I have done so many washes and there is still a heap in the spare room and you don’t even want to know about the ironing mountain. Suffice to say I caught sight of snow on the upper peaks the other day so it might be time to break out the crampons before eagles start nesting on it.

Anyway, all was going well, the house was gradually getting cleaner, the children were getting over the trauma of leaving their new group of friends behind at the holiday resort and we’d caught up with a few friends in the neighbourhood. Sure there were a few curve balls like the flush on the downstairs loo suddenly breaking while we had a houseful of kids, and the vacuum cleaner having a nervous breakdown over the amount of sand I wanted it to suck out of the car. Then yesterday we were over at Peony’s new house being introduced to her new puppy and we decided to go to a fun park which boasts a huge inflatable with a slide at the end of it and a variety of bikes and cars and things to play on. Pickle had his birthday party there in July so we knew they’d enjoy it and get thoroughly worn out for a good night’s sleep before the return to school. What we weren’t counting on was my 6 year-old, Poppet, jumping off the top of the slide, landing badly and breaking her leg. Yes, I watched my child break her leg yesterday. The irony is she’s been climbing trees and mucking about on bunk beds for 2 weeks on holiday without so much as a scratch but half and hour on a bouncy castle and its sirens all the way to the hospital. So that’s how you get out of going back to school! There were good parts to the aftermath such as the superbly hunky ‘pompiers’ who turned up in the ambulance and carried her off on a stretcher and the blatant queue-jumping for a cubicle in A&E while the trolleys were stacked up in the corridors. The bad bit was seeing my little girl in so much pain – they eventually gave her laughing gas while they set the bone and that was very amusing afterwards when she was all giddy and chatty. I’m so proud of how brave she was and thankful that it was a clean break. As I keep telling myself, it could have been a lot worse. Now all I have to get used to is being her slave until she decides to give the crutches a go and get her backside off the sofa. I mean, who wouldn’t take the chance to languish in front of the TV all day with Mummy at your beck and call, peeling your grapes, carrying you to the loo and wiping your bum? I’m currently taking the reverse psychology route and hoping that if I tell her to stay lying down she’ll want to get up – we’re usually at similar odds so we’ll see what happens.

Anyway, so there we have it, 'c’arrive' (it happens) and it concludes a summer where Sod’s Law has well and truly reigned. Like Alanis Morrisette sang ‘Isn’t it Ironic?’, only I’m not sure she went far enough in my opinion and I suppose ‘Isn’t it Just Sod’s Law’ wouldn’t have had the same ring to it.

‘It’s like rain on your holiday,
a nasty smell when you’ve cleaned and cleaned,
it’s like ten thousand road-signs to Rouen when all you need is one to Paris,
or falling out of trees for weeks on end, then busting your leg on a bouncy castle.’

How many sleeps left till the holidays?

Nobby sent me for a loop this morning. He decided to get all his clothes ready for packing last night so I woke up this morning in a total panic convinced that I needed to get everything packed today. I’d been locked in suitcase hell for most of the morning, punctuated by wild demands from the restless children who I really think I going to kill each other at some point. Pickle was chasing after Poppet with a very noisy ray gun and she was teasing him mercilessly by making up nursery rhymes about him and singing them in a mocking voice. He then hits her and she screams but doesn’t hit back. I wonder if one day she will lose it and give him an almighty thump and things might calm down for a bit. If I don’t knock their heads together first. Or end up in the Funny Farm, because, of course, we are not leaving until the day after tomorrow so I actually had another 24 hours to decide how much junk to take this time. So I did in fact have time to move all the furniture round in Poppet’s bedroom as she requested and I did have time to add more cardboard furniture to Boo-Boos little house for Pickle. So far since I last reported on the junk-modelling project we have added a turbo-boosted rocket bike for the two pet monkeys complete with a luggage compartment full of miniature rolls of sticky tape which they apparently sell door-to-door. Poppet made a convincing articulated lorry to transport her life-sized guinea-pig soft toy around in and I have been working on an elevator so that Boo-Boo can get up to the upstairs bedroom more easily.

I am thinking of putting in my application to Blue Peter quite soon.

Or I might join the ‘How Clean Is Your House’ team instead after bowing to pressure and reorganising Poppet’s room for her. Egad! it was filthy down behind all the furniture. And I discovered upon moving the bed that the snot painting went a lot further down the wall than I previously realised. How exactly do you get hardened mucus off the walls? The children were quite a help with the removals at first. Pickle is a dab hand with the duster and vacuum but he had to give up when he fell off the bed inside the princess tent which was temporarily resting on top of it. He didn’t damage himself too much, just a scratch on his cheek but he sat there sobbing ‘I hope I can still eat, otherwise I’ll just have to die’. (I’m not sure where the current morbid streak comes from but they are both at it lately. Poppet completely freaked her brother while they were sharing a room on holiday by recanting some dream of hers where a dog bit his hand off. I came in to check on them to find him weeping inconsolably lamenting ‘You shouldn’t tell me things like that. I’m only 5, I’m just a child.’) Poppet was reasonably helpful at clearing the floor but she gets easily side-tracked and spent a lot of the time nursing her Baby Annabelle doll who she claimed was upset by all the dust. It’s really sweet to watch her playing Mummies. I wish she didn’t have to do all the sound effects though, especially the high-pitched crying every 10 minutes. I just hope she doesn’t insist on bringing Annabelle and all her paraphernalia on holiday with us. She filled the back seat of the car earlier with the pushchair, feeding kit and change bag when we went to visit Nobby at his office. When he invited her to come in and see where he spends his working day I don’t think he was banking on carrying a pink buggy and a life-sized dolly past all his colleagues. Luckily she was persuaded to leave it all in the car and just took the guinea pig instead.

And I went shopping, hee hee! I was treated to both ends of the French ‘Customer Service’ spectrum while I was there. (sorry, I feel a mini-rant coming on, bear with me.) I was in the sports shop looking for UV suits for the kids in case we actually get some sun next week. I couldn’t find the size I wanted so I took a suit up to the Inquiries desk and asked if they had a pink one in size 8. I was informed that I had to find a member of staff on the shop floor for stock inquiries. (So what’s the desk for then??) The person I found was most unhappy at being dragged away from the young hunk she was helping to put up new shelves and marched round to the UV-suit section, took a quick glance in the empty Size 8 bin and told me ‘Non’. Er, I’m only English, not blind or stupid, I could see that for myself. I asked if there were any in stock, she told me all stock was out on the shelves. So why didn’t the other bl**dy women on the desk tell me that in the first place?! Gah! It’s enough to give you total trolley rage.

So I went along to the lingerie shop feeling I owed myself a treat after that performance, plus given my current waistline crisis I felt I ought to get some extra boost so the tummy can look flatter. (Trinny and Susannah swear by getting the right fitting boulder-holder so it’s worth a try). I was pounced on as soon as I got in the door by a lady, clearly on commission, who wanted to know what I was looking for. Unfortunately I had a mental blank at that point completely forgetting the French for ‘lift and separate’. She was a tacit professional though and soon sorted me out with a good selection without shouting my size too loudly round the store and even left me alone to try them on (for which I was profoundly grateful; I’m not up for the full Trinny & Susannah chummy tit-grabbing experience yet). So after that faultless piece of service I don’t know why the sports shop woman had to be so grumpy. Even the security guard there had said ‘Bonjour’ to me as I walked in, it’s sort of customary in most French shops to greet the shoppers and say goodbye when they leave. It was very noticeably absent when I went back to the UK. Maybe that’s her problem, she knew I was a Brit and wanted to make me feel at home. Thanks but the weather is already doing that.

Anyway, I am sapped of all energy now as it’s been a bit of a madhouse this evening what with picking Nobby and Poppet up from work, crow-barring Pickle out of his friend’s house, getting everyone fed and fixing the boiler which was throwing it’s monthly hissy fit and refusing to heat any water for the children’s bath. I swear that thing is female; I bet these breakdowns are on a lunar cycle. I feel the need to park it for a little bit, and maybe chomp a few biscuits which are only going to go off if I leave them in the cupboard while we’re gone. Rude not to really.

Legs Bums and Tums (and Boobs)

I am pleased to report that I don’t ache too much after our marathon bike-ride yesterday. And Poppet hasn’t repeated the naughty word I used when I asked her to stop asking questions while I was panting my way up the hill (well, not to me anyway). However I still felt the need to don the Bridget Jones pants again this morning before going out in public. I also decided to dig out a body-toning and ‘abs’ exercise sequence I received from some American fitness instructor just after Christmas as part of a 6 week on-line challenge I signed up for to beat the post-Christmas bloat. (I actually spent Christmas in France not the UK but perhaps there is a pattern emerging here…?) Throughout January I faithfully stuck to the daily schedule and industriously read every motivational email that plopped into my Inbox each morning… yeah, did I heck-as-like. Hence the need to *dig* it out - from the deepest, darkest depths of my email archive. It’s a nice, short, easy-ish routine, now I’ve finally tried it, although I had to laugh when it suggested using cans of baked beans for ‘increased resistance’ when doing the bicep and triceps curls. I think baked beans are part of the reason I’m in this mess in the first place! Luckily I found some old dumb-bells in the dark recesses under my bed so I don’t have to look temptation in the eye when I am supposed to be working out. Exercise makes me hungry enough as it is. I am staying away from the scales too. I very rarely weigh myself. Being one of these saddos who hangs on to the same clothes year-in-year-out I pretty much know when something needs to be done when the waistbands start to bite. That and the straightforward test of looking straight down to check whether I can see my belly beyond my boobs. It’s simple but effective. Nothing is scarier than the realisation that your wobbly tummy is entering the room 5 minutes before your nips. It hasn’t got quite that bad yet but I do remember the horrible moment during my first pregnancy when the bump overtook the oversized bust I had suddenly developed even before I wee-ed on the stick to confirm I was knocked- up in the first place. And then of course my waist disappeared and my belly button turned inside out and the degradation was complete. These days the old ‘rack’ isn’t quite as impressive which means the flab doesn’t have so far to go now, although I’m far from the ironing-board-with-a-pair-of-Smarties figure.

Well, hopefully my toning routine and some more bike rides will help along with our return to more sensible eating now we are out of reach of Tescos. I’m even trying those new exercise shoes which are supposed to tone and slim as you walk around at your daily tasks. And perhaps they will – when I’ve found enough balance to be able to let go of the wall. But for now the couch is beckoning instead, as are my comfy slippers. I wonder what’s on the box? (Pity we can’t get the slimming channels over here – maybe Paul McKenna could help us get the kids to sleep before midnight?!)

No, you don’t lose weight running around after the children.

I read an article in the paper last week which said that entertaining kids all day for weeks and weeks during the long summer holidays has been driving some women to drink. Well I haven’t hit the bottle just yet (well not tonight so far anyway) but I can identify with what they mean. It’s taking all my powers of creativity to keep the little beggars occupied so they’re not knocking the crap out of each other or slowly baking their brains in front of the TV or computer. I didn’t realise how easy I’d had it while we were on holiday but now there are no grandparents around and Nobby is back at work (lucky b*stard) it’s becoming a real test.

I have had some success with ‘junk modelling’ - using old food packets and cardboard boxes to create new and interesting toys (also known as the miser’s free alternative to Playmobil with the added bonus that you can chuck it away when the little darlings have had enough it after 5 minutes rather than filling the house with overpriced moulded plastic that nobody plays with). Pickle especially loves it as it appeals to his ‘inventing’ streak and Poppet likes to join in when all the work is done and she can move her toys in and make up stories. So far this week we have made a rocket ship for Boo-Boo Bear (and his side-kick Baby Boo-Boo) complete with space helmets and rocket-packs followed by a two-storey bachelor pad for their visits home to planet earth. Poppet muscled in on the ‘cottage’ with some of her dollies who, having no interest in exploring the universe, have taken up residence as squatters in the spare bedroom with a Fruit Joy frozen lolly box for a bed. Pickle couldn’t decide between Uncle Ben’s Rice or Atora Suet as the best packet for a wide-screen television so he’s opted for the wall projector cinema screen instead and stuck a huge picture of Batman on the wall. (He’s definitely not invited next time we go to Curry’s)

But really the main problem with my two is still bedtime and it’s not the ‘going to bed before the sun’ excuse any more. They just don’t want to stop playing. Poppet was messing about with her Barbies until 2am last night, even though Nobby and I went turned in at midnight. I don’t know where she gets the energy from – or why nocturnal Barbie games have to involve so much loud singing. And then the monkeys get up at 8am the next day to start playing all over again; ‘Lie-in’ is not in their vocabulary. In a bid to wear them out in the fresh air this evening we all went out for a bike ride after tea. I know that I am pretty exhausted myself after hauling myself plus a bike with a 20kg child on the back of it up the huge hill to the cycle trail. But I’m not sure it’s really done it for the kids, I can still hear them up and about in their rooms and it’s nearly 10pm.

A bike ride seemed like such a great idea of Nobby’s as we are both feeling the pinch a bit after over-indulging on the English fair last week. I could have done without Poppet’s running commentary from the child seat though as I limped up the interminable hill: ‘why are you going so slow Mummy?’, ‘why are you breathing so hard, Mummy?’, ‘why are we stopping again?’. YES! I am out of shape. I’ve been dreaming up all sorts of alternative reasons why my tummy isn’t quite fitting into my jeans any more. Perhaps it’s a phantom pregnancy? Or chronic water retention? But I think I need to face facts that I’m porking up. Hence the strenuous bike ride and the ‘slimming knickers’, à la Bridget Jones, that I dug out of the drawer this morning. (Sexy.) It’s not looking good for basking on the beaches next week; some do-gooder might decide I’m a whale and try to roll me back into the water. As luck would have it I did catch part of a revolutionary dieting TV programme on some obscure slimming channel at my Mum’s last week. Paul McKenna was telling an audience full of the dimensionally-challenged that they should eat what they want, when they want but stop when they are full. There was more to it than that I think and he was going to use some of his hypnotism techniques to help with cravings and addictions but, strangely enough: I fell asleep!

Dammit, looks like it’s the gym for me.