I Scream, You Scream

Back to reality after our seaside idyll – with manky hairbrush and underwear well hidden in the bottom of my bag.
As always, the beaches of South Wales did not disappoint. There was only one slightly tense moment when my luminous blue-white legs emerged from their protective covering, causing bronzed locals to avert their eyes in embarrassment, and hiss urgently at their children not to stare at the poor lady. The sea at this time of year is cold, very cold, but being British it was only natural that we should want to submerge our pasty bodies in it. Of course, the kids were all decked out in several inches of state-of-the-art neoprene, so not only did they look stylish, but they were also relatively inured to the arctic temperatures. I was wearing a baggy lycra swimsuit, which might as well have been knitted, for all the thermal protection it gave me. It took me ten minutes of girly squealing to achieve full body immersion, and I would say that it was worth ten weeks of concerted pelvic-floor exercises. Unfortunately though, it was some time before that pinched, concentrated stare of the ‘secret pelvic-floor clencher’ began to dissipate.
After we had all leapt about like salmon for half an hour, I finally persuaded the kids to get out by bribing them, bizarrely, with an ice cream – although chicken soup and hot sweet tea might have been more appropriate in the circumstances.
In the same way that banging your head against a wall feels great when you finally stop (or so I’m hoping, with this child-rearing lark), when I finally emerged from the icy depths, looking more Honey Monster than Honey Ryder, my skin felt like it was burning in the comparative heat of the air. A brisk rub down with a sand-encrusted towel was a more effective exfoliator than any salon treatment, and totally painless at the time, due to the anaesthetic effects of the Atlantic. I’m sure it won’t be too long before the skin on my upper arms heals properly.

Although I was disappointed that I didn’t even get close to trying any of the Welsh Cariad wine, I am very excited by the prospect of drinking this glass of Barramundi Semillon Chardonnay as recommended by The Grocer (£4.79 Ocado, or go to The Grocer’s shop!).
It tastes of melon and citrus fruit, and makes me long to dabble my toes in tropical waters.
I seem to remember that about ten years ago, this wine used to be sold in a brightly labelled bottle. If so, it has had something of a sophisticated make-over (I could do with one of those myself), but the label still suggests warm, sandy, Australian beaches.
Maybe Cariad wines could do a similar tie-in with the beaches of South Wales - the wine label could include pictures of sand, surf, baggy lycra and mottled blue legs.

There's Lovely

We are off to the most gorgeous part of South Wales for the weekend. If the nice weather holds, the kids will spend the whole time frolicking on the beach, splashing in the sea, peering expectantly into rock pools and terrorising starfish. We can eat cockles, fish and chips and ice cream. Heaven!
This is where H grew up, spending his formative years like a young Ray Mears - camping, canoeing and generally boy scouting for all he was worth. As a result, he is fairly impervious to the beautiful surroundings, whereas I, with the romantic perspective of the outsider, am totally besotted with the place.
I do have to enter a seaside Faustian pact, though. When we visit, we stay at my mother-in-law’s house. Now, as tangled mother-in-law/daughter-in-law relationships go, I have been let off pretty lightly - you do hear some real horror stories. My mother-in-law cannot do enough for us, but at the risk of sounding churlish, that is exactly the problem.
As an ex-nurse, she is one of the least squeamish people I know. She thinks nothing of removing the manky pelt of matted hair that clings to the bristles of my hairbrush. I have never actually seen her do this; I just spend ages looking for the brush, which is of course, totally unrecognisable when it’s hair-free. My toes still curl at the memory of the time we spent a week at her house, and she kindly offered to do some washing for me. I placed the bundle of ‘whites’ in the washing machine, only to return later and find her washing all my knickers by hand.
There is a Welsh wine called ‘Cariad’ (meaning love, aaaah!) but I’ve only ever bought it in Wales. The white was a little sweet for my liking, but I think they do a rosé which would be worth trying in the warm weather – I’ll let you know if I get my hot little hands on any.

Holiday Haircuts

I took the boys to get their hair cut today. I say cut, but it looks more like a marine jarhead shave. The place we go to is an old fashioned barber’s shop, complete with stripy pole outside and Brylcreem smell inside. The boys have loved going there since they were tiny. It could be the 1970s Technicolour photos of chisel-cheeked heroes on the walls (no ornately coiffed boy bands here) that they like. It could be the good-natured, efficient chaps who wield their shiny scissors with such dexterity. It definitely has something to do with the lollipop they get at the end. But most of all, I think it is just that the whole place is steeped in an atmosphere of benevolent ‘blokeishness’ that you really don’t find anywhere else.
The boys always have their hair cut as short as possible. It cuts down time spent on hair washing and drying, stops them from catching the head lice that their schoolmates are always generously donating to others, and lends them an air of menace. They climb into the barber’s chair with hair that is already shorter than the boy who has just vacated it, and after five minutes with the electric shaver (1 at the back, 2 at the sides, 3 on the top), they emerge looking like rather intimidating newly-shorn sheep.
The reaction of other parents to this extreme haircut is usually mixed. Dads frequently run their hands across the boys’ suede heads and smile nostalgically. Some Mums however, obviously find the whole ‘ASBO chic’ thing a bit too much to bear, and laugh nervously as they manoeuvre their ringletted children away to a safe distance.
We are having fish and asparagus tonight, so I have already uncorked some Gavi La Madonnina Araldica (£6.99 Ocado) which I have mentioned before, as it is a firm favourite of mine. Hopefully there will be some left by the time we sit down to eat.
I realise that, as with all parental decisions, I am probably storing up trouble for myself in the future by having the boys’ hair so short. I can see that the moment they are able to choose their own hair length, they will opt for the full Johnny Depp, and I won’t have any say in it at all. But then, since I won’t have to wash it, dry it, or pull nits out of it, I doubt I will care that much either.

Catalogue of Misery

The thud of slippery plastic bags onto my doormat this morning heralded the arrival of (yet another) clutch of catalogues. Or should the collective noun be ‘an envy’ of catalogues, or ‘an over-spend.’
In catalogue-land there are no longer only four seasons – more like eight. They include such periods as ‘early Spring,’ ‘late Spring’ and ‘deep mid-Winter.’ The inference being that I need to reassess the state of my plastic bowls, doormats and towels according to the weather conditions.
Sadly, I am incapable of throwing these catalogues away without at least a cursory flick through. Perhaps subconsciously, I think I am about to discover the one item that will deliver the Holy Grail of a well-ordered home. Instead, I am just left with the vague awareness that nothing in my house either matches or co-ordinates with anything else. Unless you include the contents of the wine rack.
Therefore, I really should have known better than to look inside the latest offering from “The Sleepover Company” which sells everything you supposedly need in order to have another child stay at your house for the night. If ever there was a publication designed to up the ante on competitive parenting, this is it. My eldest is only just dipping her toe into the sleepless world of the sleepover, yet it’s easy to see the inevitable slide into full body immersion. On the rare occasions that I had a friend over to stay when I was young, it merely involved pulling a mouldy sleeping bag out of the loft, and going to sleep on the floor. According to “The Sleepover Company” not only should you completely re-decorate your child’s room with a stowaway bed and matching furniture, but you will need to install a trampoline and outdoor activity centre in your garden. They even sell stripy ‘Popcorn bags’ for the little emperors and empresses to hold (or maybe hook over their ears), while they sit in front of your 40 inch wall-mounted home cinema system.
I am drinking a soft, vanilla-like Patache Médoc Cabernet Sauvignon (£5.99 down from £7.99 until 6/05 at Ocado) and realising that, if I’m being honest, I am against sleepovers for two reasons. Firstly, the ‘away fixture’ requires me to stay off the vino in case I am needed to pick up my blubbing child at 2am. Secondly, the ‘home fixture’ requires me to stay off the vino in case I have to console someone else’s blubbing child at 2am. That looks like a Lose-Lose situation to me.

Mirror, Mirror On the Table

When I was a teenager, my friends and I used to place a mirror on a flat surface, position our faces directly over the top, and look down. Amid shrieks of horrified laughter, we told each other that this was how we would look when we were forty (gasp!). Of course, with typical youthful arrogance, we didn’t believe we would ever get that old, and certainly not that hideous. Ah, well.....
I was reminded of this game when H and I were at a friend’s house for dinner this weekend. It was all very pleasant, until we sat down at the stylishly set dinner table, where the hostess, in her skeletal wisdom had decided that ‘mirrored place mats’ were a good idea. Every time I looked down, I thought there was a shar pei puppy under the table trying to eat my food - it was extremely disconcerting. I suppose if you extend the idea of the teenage mirror game, then this is how I will look when I am eighty (as if I will ever get that old or that hideous!).
Helping me to forget that troubling image, is a glass of Pimm’s – just with lemonade and ice, since we haven’t got the strawberries/orange/cucumber/mint/borage/cabbage or whatever you are supposed to put in it these days. It’s a shame really, because if we did, there would be enough food in the one glass to call it a decent enough meal, and I wouldn’t have to bother cooking tonight.
Maybe I could just pour myself another Pimm’s and spoon a few baked beans into the glass.......

"I'm not (even) fat, I'm pregnant"

There must be thousands of pregnant women who are looking at the pictures of Gap’s new maternity range, featuring Eva Herzigova’s stretch mark-free ‘bump’, and weeping into their lycra tummy panels. Herzigova (she of the talking tits) is apparently 7 months pregnant, with what I can only presume is a hamster. She proudly displays her gently rounded stomach, which looks look like an over-indulgence on a Chinese takeaway meal, rather than an actual pregnancy. It makes you want to yell “Go on Eva, one burp and it’s gone.”
Of course, I am just plain envious. When I was pregnant I resembled a ship in full sail from about 5 months onwards – I even put weight on my feet. My heart goes out to all the poor souls out there in the latter stages of pregnancy, whose only relief in this hot weather is to ease their massive bulk into the kiddies’ paddling pool and be sprayed with a garden hose.
According to The Sunday Times, Eva is not worried about getting ‘back into shape’ after the birth (yeah, I bet). I always said I wasn’t worried about getting my body back after pregnancy either – I would much rather have got someone else’s instead. Sadly, I had to settle for my own, but with the added bonus of a stomach that had so many folds, I could have put a drawstring through and made a really useful duffle bag.

A glass of slightly smoky La Grille Chenin Blanc (£5.99 – down from £7.99, Ocado) is helping me see a small chink in Herzigova’s gushing mother-to-be perfection.
She reveals, mischievously, that she has developed an unfamiliar liking for sweet things, especially chocolate. Well, that’s not going to go away. I give her a year before she is gobbling leftover biscuits, and surreptitiously licking the insides of empty chocolate mousse pots.

Oysters

There comes a time in every school holiday when the kids have finally tired of Olympic-level bickering, eating playdough, and watching wall-to-wall cartoons (okay, maybe not the last one). That’s when they turn to the tower of stuff hidden at the back of the cupboard, which can be loosely termed ‘craft kits.’
These are all birthday gifts from schoolfriends, whose mothers enjoy the warm glow associated with giving a present that is both educational and creative. What these mothers have always failed to do is enclose their Filipina maid for half a day to help make the wretched thing.
My daughter has a vast collection of these unopened kits, ranging from plate-painting, T-shirt tie-dying, crystal growing, snow-dome creating, and various knitting and sewing packs. Using my finely-honed procrastination skills, I have always convinced her that she needs to do these kits on a day that ‘we’ have more free time.
Today I was finally forced to stop running. She produced a kit (where you create little fabric toys which attach to a keychain), and set about it with gusto. Less that two minutes in, she was, understandably, having trouble threading the needle. Ten minutes later, despite heaps of encouragement, she was seething with frustration. We eventually spent all morning stitching together a shiny green ‘oyster keychain buddy.’
Now, I am not the world’s greatest needlewoman, and the resultant oyster looks like it owes its heritage to Dr Frankenstein, rather than the shores of Brittany, but she seems delighted with it.
I think my (very domestic) mother-in-law realised I was going to be a huge disappointment to her, when her masterclass on ‘how to put a duvet into its cover correctly’ failed to elicit the expected grateful response from me. Although I am rather scathing of Grandma’s obsession with domestic trivia, I have to agree that her sewing skills would have come in very handy today.
In a futile attempt to avoid gender-stereotyping the boys, I invited them to make an oyster too. Thankfully they preferred to run up and down the garden non-stop, which required no parental involvement whatsoever. They also managed to produce their very own 'Dockyard oysters' as a result.
Given that it is Friday night, I should be popping open the prosecco. However, courtesy of a recommendation from Stay At Home Dad I have a glass of Waitrose Pfalz Riesling (£4.99) in front of me. It is, as he describes, both fruity and dry, and it will go extremely well with tonight’s curry. However, I’m not at all convinced by his argument that its intensity means that you drink less of it. Thanks SAHD! If anyone else wants to recommend their favourite wine for under a tenner, I would be delighted to give it a go.