Bloggering Off

I’m swanning off to South Wales for two weeks. ‘Swanning’ being the appropriate word, since I am trying to maintain a cool, calm and collected appearance on the surface (see my graceful, slender neck gulping back this glass of sparkling wine), but underneath I am working frantically to get everything packed and ready (see my big broad feet thrashing around among the boxes in the loft).
This time we’re off for a week camping on the coast with one of my brothers and his family, followed by a week staying at my mother-in-law’s house. There’s lovely!
The camping should be interesting, since my brother’s family are seasoned caravanners, but have never taken the canvas plunge. I have told them that camping is ‘the holiday the weather can’t spoil’ but for some reason, they don’t believe me. I just don’t think they realise how little there is to spoil.
My emergency camping supplies are two wine boxes, both Hardy’s and both £17.99 from Tesco. One is Cabernet Sauvignon and the other Chardonnay. I haven’t tried either of them before, but since both grape types are generally good ‘crowd pleasers’ I reckon they will be just what we need. If not, I am prepared to slug the lot back on my own.
It is Friday though, so no matter how busy I am, there is always time to pause for the Friday Night Fizz. This week it is a bottle of Angas Brut (Oddbins £7.49) an Australian sparkling wine which has a delightfully smooth and creamy taste that somehow reminds me of strawberries. This is excellent value if you like fruity fizz, and I intend to stock up on several more bottles for the Drunk Mummy Wine Vaults.
In my absence, I thought you might like to read an article I wrote for the July edition of Dulwich Life & Style magazine. I don’t live in Dulwich. I doubt I would be allowed to, since I don't own a single pair of white jeans (unlike Dulwich Mum who was up to double figures at the last count). The article looks a bit outdated now, since it was published at the end of the school summer term, but never mind. Here goes:

A Question of Sports Day

It’s the end of the Summer Term - the time of year when many schools realise that parents can’t possibly have any annual leave left, so they organise a Sports Day.
At my children’s school, which terrorises parents on a regular basis, some bright spark decided it might be ‘fun’ to have some races for parents during this year’s Sports Day.
I have always felt that I embarrass my children enough in public without having to make a special effort, but my daughter had other ideas. She pointed out that I am always urging her to ‘join in’ so she wanted to know why I wasn’t entering the Mothers’ Race. My defence (that I was wearing a push-up bra) was scornfully dismissed, and within minutes I was lining up with assorted long-limbed and athletic mums. There were a few nervous jokes, and the occasional high pitched laugh, but there was no disguising the air of steely resolve.
Now, the race itself seemed to happen in slow-motion, but that could just have been the actual speed I was running. Still, in my mind, I was a streamlined gazelle, bounding gracefully over the grassy plain. The video footage taken by a sadistic parent revealed a much harsher reality. I had been right to worry about the push-up bra.
The Fathers’ Race which followed, proved to be a triumph of ambition over common sense, and no doubt, resulted in months of brisk business for the local physios and chiropracters. The testosterone-fuelled dad who won looked delighted with his victory, and when he faced the cheering crowd, his moment of glory was only slightly tarnished as he realised that he had run the whole race with his flies undone.
Of course, there were other competitive events at Sports Day. The Picnic Display was hotly contested, as parents vied to provide the most nutritionally smug lunch. At one point, a wholesome mother offered me a piece of home-made cake which consisted entirely of chickpeas, yogurt and toddler spit.
Over at the stall selling ploughman’s lunches, there was some Long Distance Queuing. Unfortunately, the line of shuffling participants was forced to witness the disturbing sight of a mother trying to cut a large wheel of extremely ripe Brie into sixty four equal portions. There was some concern about what was likely to crack first – her perky smile or her sanity.
Finally, there was the Pimm’s Bar Relay (a personal favourite), where contestants had to get the next full glass lined up and ready just before they finished downing the last one. In my opinion, Pimm’s should be classed as a health drink, by virtue of its five portions of fruit and vegetables in every glass. It is also a much livelier alternative to a ploughman’s lunch or a picnic.
I seem to remember at some point during the Sports Day, there was a rumour that the children might be running a few races, or something. But like most of the parents there, I was way too busy to watch any of that.

I am off to enjoy the last two weeks of this glorious English summer (cue hollow laugh). I will be back in September.
Cheers!

Knee Trembler

It is amazing how long a weekend can seem when you are free of the shackles of domesticity. Time normally spent making meals, arguing about eating the food, clearing up, and then making the next meal, can be spent on far more agreeable pastimes. H and I were away from the kids for only one day and night, and yet we crammed so much into that short space of time, it felt like we had been away for a week. Even the weather was complicit in this wild fantasy, by staying dry for the walk during the day and turning sunny for the Saturday evening party.
My new walking boots were fantastic – robust, flexible and reliable, which is more than can be said of the person wearing them. My friends and I started our heroic hike with a visit to Chesters at Skelwith Bridge to talk strategy, between mouthfuls of cake. The unanimous decision was to walk up to Stickle Tarn in the Langdale Pikes. This isn’t a difficult walk, but it is steep, and took us over three hours. By the time we got back to the car park, my knees were trembling so much that I could have been a teenager in the side alley of a nightclub.
A hot bath sorted me out, and within a couple of hours I had morphed from hearty hiker to party princess (or merry matron, depending on your perspective).
Any meal which starts with Taittinger on the terrace is going to be good, and the spectacular views over Lake Windermere were an added bonus. There were plenty of tasty little ‘amuse gueules’ which certainly amused this girl. I ate so many of them, there didn’t seem much point in going inside for the main meal. I was only persuaded to do so by the promise of a French white (Lamy St Aubin chardonnay) and a South African red (Meerlust Rubicon). Obviously I felt the need to sample them both, several times over.
Strangely, the more wine my fellow walkers and I drank, the more our ramble to Stickle Tarn took on the dimensions of an epic mountain adventure that would have had Sir Edmund Hillary begging to turn back, claiming lack of experience. By the end of the evening, one of my friends was slurring so much that we felt sure her jaw was displaying the early symptoms of frostbite. The other was having dizzy spells and kept falling over, so she was obviously suffering from altitude sickness.
Back here in the kitchen it already seems like a long time ago. I want to recapture that heady romantic feeling of being on the hotel terrace, without having to shout ‘Come away from the edge!’ to a lively child every five minutes. Perhaps I can re-enact some of the glamour with this chilled La Prendina Estate Pinot Grigio Rosé (M&S £5.59). Its crisp fruity flavour makes me think of strawberries and raspberries, and warm evenings where the glow from the setting sun is reflected on the dappled surface of a lake. Sadly, the only water I can see from my kitchen window is a fetid pool of stagnant rainwater which has collected in the yellow plastic lid of the sandpit. Not quite the effect I was after.
I think I will just sit down at the kitchen table, pour myself another chilled glass, close my eyes and dream. I can already feel a bout of altitude sickness coming on.

Domino Effect

Two of my kids have been struck down with a mild flu virus. They have been too ill to go to school, and have spent the last couple of days wafting around the house like tragic laudanum-soaked characters from a Victorian novel. It started me wondering what the collective noun for slightly ill children is. A wheedle? A wilting? A drape?
Part of me was tempted just to sit them in front of the all-powerful TV, simply to get them out of my hair for the day, but since they would view this as the ultimate treat, I know I would never be able to get them back into school for the rest of the year.
I thought about descending on them like one of those mad-eyed women who threaten their children in high, sinister voices that 'we're going to have some fun now, aren't we?' But after so many years of maternal neglect, I'm not sure they would have coped with the sudden overdose of attention - it would probably have brought us all out in a rash.
I tried suggesting brightly that they do something 'educational' but they treated that suggestion with the contempt it deserved, by simply staring at me with their rheumy eyes until I went away.
In the end, I (rather conveniently) decided to let them get bored senseless, so that they would be clamouring to be allowed back into school tomorrow. Unfortunately most reality TV isn't on until the evening, and there are no politicians pontificating during the daytime schedules either, so we had to look for our tedium elsewhere.
Prolonged staring at the wall did the trick, but resulted in them falling asleep for most of the afternoon, so just before bedtime they were fully recovered and bouncing off the walls.
It was at that point that I finally turned to drugs - for them, not me, although a crafty swig from the Night Nurse bottle wouldn't have gone amiss. Putting my trust once again in St Calpol (the patron saint of a good night's sleep), I am praying that they will both be crashed out for the whole night - or more importantly, that they won't wake me up every couple of hours.
I thought about having a hot toddy myself this evening, as a preventative measure of course, but they usually cause me to sweat like a pig, and I don't want to wake up thinking I have somehow slipped into the menopause overnight. So instead, I have opted for milder medication in the form of a glass of Oyster Bay Chardonnay (Ocado £6.39 down from £7.99 until 3/7). It is fresh and subtly oaked, and it's having a wonderfully relaxing effect on me.
Unfortunately, I am also realising that even if both children are back in school tomorrow, the third is probably just about to come down with the same illness.
I think I am going to need more medication.

Wine Dinner Wipeout

Well, the Wine Dinner certainly was a lot of fun, and I certainly have been paying the price for such reckless abandon on a Monday night.

My new belt performed its sartorial duties with aplomb. The only problem was that the more I had to drink, the more I considered the belt to be an interesting topic of conversation: ‘Ah, yes, really bad news about your acrimonious divorce - ran off with the trainee didn’t he, how dreadful (pause) - do you like my new belt?’

The belt did take its revenge by gradually tightening its grip across my stomach over the course of the evening. Just my luck to buy a belt with sadistic tendencies. I suppose it just became tired of battling against the tide of food and drink I was consuming, and annoyed at finding no support in this unequal struggle from my stretchy trousers. I have noticed that I am starting to look for the lycra component in trousers in the same way that some people look for the percentage of cocoa solids in chocolate. Anything less than 70% and I’m not buying.

Anyway, the Wine Dinner aperitif was one of those very fashionable award-winning English sparkling wines (this was a Ridgeview, but I have also tried Nyetimber before). Now, I don’t wish to be disloyal to the English winemaking industry, but delightful as these fizzies are, I think they are really expensive (the Ridgeview is around £18). There is so much good cava and prosecco around, that I just wouldn’t pay the money for this. I suppose there would be some huge cachet in serving it at a drinks party and braying to fellow competitors about your ‘sourcing of local produce, darling,’ but you might just as well serve cider and say the same thing. In fact, it may just be me, but there is an unmistakeable hint of cider about these English sparkling wines. I love cider (I have an emergency can of Strongbow lurking at the back of the fridge) but I wouldn’t pay twenty quid a bottle for it.

Having ‘mingled’ to excess, it was a relief to sit down and enjoy the whites – a young, citrussy Australian riesling (as I suspected there would be) and a rich Chilean chardonnay which had a lovely long finish.

Talking to the organiser, it seems that my problems with riesling all stem from my over-reliance on choosing wine by grape type, and ignoring the vintage. Quite frankly, I always feel that for my level of wine enjoyment (I just want to drink it, not have its babies) knowing which grape types I like is sufficient. Not so with riesling. The petrol-tasting rieslings which I can’t stand are the older vintages, which are also more expensive. The younger wines, with their crisper, more mineral taste are the ones I like, and they cost less too. I always have been a bit of a cheap date.

The reds were a peppery St Joseph (Rhone Valley) and a rich, warm Argentinian Chacayes (cabernet sauvignon and malbec) which made me want to hunt down and savage a raw steak. Certainly, the beefy young waiter seemed to be rather nervous around me. I think he was worried I might try and lasso him with my new belt.

Finally, the pudding wine was a wonderfully light Napa Valley moscato. Thankfully this delicate peachy brew is only 8%, and at that stage in the proceedings, it could make the difference between getting out of bed the next morning or not.

Talking of which, I think I need to lay off the wine tonight, and aim for a Drunk Mummy Detox - a bacon and egg butty, cup of tea and a good night’s sleep.

The Tattooed Lady

My nine year old daughter has recently taken to covering her arms with tattoos. Not the inky-blue prison varieties, but sparkly iridescent butterflies and flowers. They are like the old fashioned ‘transfer’ tattoos I loved as a child – but better. There is none of that ritual disappointment when you lift the paper off too soon to reveal only half of the pattern.

I suppose the tattoos are a step up from the lurid felt-tip body art she used to enjoy as a toddler, which was always completely indelible, despite over twenty minutes of feverish scrubbing in the bath.

Therefore, I can see that it is only a matter of time before she wants to decorate her lower back with some vast black Celtic cross, or cover her shoulders with the Chinese symbols for ‘fried rice.’

I don’t have any tattoos. I very nearly got one in my twenties, but as with everything else in those days, I just couldn’t make the commitment. I was living in Paris at the time, and along with two close friends, thought it would be ‘hilarious’ if we each got a French cockerel (symbol of French sporting excellence) tattooed at the top of one thigh. We thought the tattoos would give us all sorts of conversational opportunities (‘Would you like to see my coq?’ or ‘People say I’ve got balls, but I’ve got a coq as well!’) although I’m not sure they would have been the most successful chat-up lines.

We went so far as making an appointment at a tattoo parlour, and turning up on the night. But when we got there, the tattoo artist was so far behind with his appointments, there were still three people waiting ahead of us. We were due at a party that evening, and since we were all getting a bit thirsty, we decided to just forget it and go to the party instead. My friends wanted to re-book the appointment, but secretly I felt it was a lucky escape. I had actually spent the previous night lying in bed staring at the ceiling, in a futile attempt to imagine the rest of my life, and whether or not the cockerel tattoo would fit in with it. How ridiculous that I never suffered any such concerns over the decision to have children.

I remember my American friend was particularly unforgiving about my gutless ducking out. ‘Whaddya gonna do?’ she demanded ‘Start dating Senators, or something?’ I am embarrassed to admit that with the arrogance of youth, I replied that I just might. What I didn't realise at the time, was that I should have just gone ahead and had 'Put Your Shoes On' tattooed on my forehead - it would have saved me no end of grief twenty years later.

Another trip down memory lane comes in the form of this glass of Lindeman’s Bin 65 Chardonnay (I think it’s on offer at Tesco at £4.78). I doubt there’s anyone in the country between the ages of 20 and 50 who hasn’t tried this melon-tasting stalwart. I think it’s very pleasant, but it does remind me of dire ‘dinner parties’ in the 80s when young people sat around doing their best to emulate their pompous middle-aged parents. Maybe if I had gone ahead with the cockerel tattoo, I could have livened up the dinner party conversation. As it is, I’m not sure how I will react when my daughter decides she wants a genuine tattoo – I suppose compared to a cockerel, a gothic skull or red devil won’t seem quite so bad.