Swearing. And more swearing.

I have been quiet, because i've been test driving new medication. More of that another day. For now, a big sweary rant. I'm not big on swearing. Whilst I went through my 2 sweary phases (once at 4, when my mother uttered the incredibly stupid phrase "When you hear me swear, then you can swear", which led to nigh on a week of stalking and then a whole 24 hours of happy blue air and a very cross mum, and phase 2 was my "bad girl" teen year(s), which basically amounted to saying "bloody" a lot and listening to the Smiths), I don't really swear now, unless I stub a toe and the kids are not around. When they are around, which is always, I generally resort to "cornflakes" which has some pleasing consonants, or "Ruddy Ugger". I do slip up though. Son is my Dog Poo radar on the way to playgroup, scooting ahead of the buggy and shouting "Bloody Dog Poo!", pointing. But mostly, we are a swear free zone, although Husband is not as sweet as me, and often gets a kick. As a teacher, I hated hearing students swear, and they did, a lot. Often 5 words out of every 10, and with increasing severity, with a word like "Innit" or "bare" at the end. I was hazy on what the C-word was until i'd read Tery Southern at university (eagerly) and leaving aside its' Chaucerian pedigree, I find it a pretty worrying word to be out of a 14 year olds mouth. As a vile form tutor, if I ever caught one of my flock turning the air blue, I would high them to my classroom and there force them to turn the pages of my ancient and large dictionary, until they concocted a juicy phrase that was sans swearing, and rather more intelligent sounding. My pet with swearing was not, and is not, the word per se, but the hugely lazy attitude of saying the same thing again and again for effect. Your brains, I would lecture, are humungous. Why use the same pathetic words everyone else does? Why eff and blind when you can patronise and insult? It was a badge of pride when I heard a year 8 of my form call his neighbour a cretinous globule. Now, of course, I tell my children not to swear. This was not a problem, because they did not know what swearing was, only that some words were new to them. This was until son came home from playgroup proudly declaiming that (nameless child) says "fuck" a lot, and that is very, very naughty. Of course, he had figured out that by saying the word in parentheses, as it were, and always being careful to mention (nameless childs) name, he was blameless. I let it ride, but pointed out that (nameless child) was very naughty, and made mental note never, ever to invite him round. All this was well and good. Until last week. When, pushing the buggy loaded with scooters, bags, books, Baby Annabel, various motorbike models in (the kids don't use, it no, but I still need it to push round the retinue of crap they trail round with), we met that most charming of floods, the going-home-from-secondary school flood. And, of course, the aural flowering of Effs and Blinds, and C's. Sons ears pricked: "That boy is NAUGHTY, mummy! He said...." Yelp from me. Child/youth in question hears this, and proceeds to Eff and Blind more vigourously, to the joy of his friends. I size him up. Year 9, at most, bit fat, trying for a laugh from his mates, wears glasses. I put best teacher voice on and politely ask him to stop swearing in front of my children. He does not, bouyed up by it all. I ask him again to stop. He does not. By now, they are all at it. My children are actually getting scared. I take out my phone, take their picture, and while they are all expressing anger at this terrible infringement of their rights, I point out that I know where one of them lives, his mum has always been perfectly pleasant to me, she will doubtless identify the rest of them, and be burned by shame at the idiocy of her offspring. Furthermore, the area we are traversing through is a sheltered housing area, full of elderly people who do not want to be frightened by a bunch of hormonal teenagers whose one brain cell has not caught up with their mouths. One of the kids says "Leave her alone". There are murmured "sorry" noises. They scuttle off. Today, they walked by the house, as the kids were playing in the front garden. Son was shock still, waiting to see if they would be naughty. They all said hello, quietly, and one of them said "I like your scooter" to him. All it took was a word. And not a rude one.

no smoke with out fire or ire

I am blessed with an alchemist as a neighbour. He firmly believes that metal will burn, he seeks the jewel within a stack of burning metal. He thinks plastic burns. He has a great huge round circle of scorched earth at the rear of his property that regularly piles up with wood, carpet, old plastic chairs, anything, anything, tyres, anything. And then he burns it. As we walk past, son, who is just 4, remarks "But metal doesn't burn and plastic just smells!" Quite. And pollutes. After one of his huge plastic chair burning fests I wondered if the chickens would survive (I needen't have bothered: in the end of days, my chickens will be there. The kids can't kill them, the kids leftovers can't kill them, plastic fumes merely make them stronger.Expect an Uber Chicken Superhero any day now). I contacted the council after an American friend pointed out that in the USA, that man would have been drenched in USA fireman hose and fined to extinction. Here, it's a cycle of 3 polite letters, after which they send a mild mannered bloke out to see the bonfire and have a quiet discussion. Meanwhile tons of plastic nastiness has been exhumed into the air, and my chickens.



It made me think of the current smoking pallaver. Son and daughter are both deeply, deeply interested in smoking. Why do people do it? All fags are "smokers", every person smoking we pass means a full five minutes of nose flapping and saying "it STINKS!" They both profess to hate it . "Bob must stop! Or his baby will DIE! But why is he?" and so on. They know it is bad. They know it stinks. I walk past people smoking with them and know both will pass flapping their hand saying "it SMELLS! That lady/man STINKS!" and whilst slightly embarressing, it's the better sort of chagrin. But, beneath it all is an absolute fascination as to why people do bad things. Both kids are compelled by it, why someone might put a burning thing in their mouth. I am keen to encourage disgust at the habit, although it can never truly insulate the child. I was a vehemant anti-smoker, born of having two smokers as parents in the 70's. Imagine: sending your kid to the shop for fags now. Imagine smoking as you drive with two kids in the back seat. Imagine parties full of people smoking, smoking, while you wear exceptionally flammable party dresses in polyester at nibbles tray height. My whole childhood was smoke ridden. I transported home textbooks of lungs to show them. I said I never would. But, I did. Because, if it's normal, when you are a kid, it's normal somewhere in your psyche.

And so I smoked. And not. And smoked. And not.
Before I was an ex-smoker (which I have been, with varying succes, for periods of 1 month to 7 years) I could never see that it was advertised. It passed me by. I just smoked, is all. It wasn't until I had kids that the issue of where and how they were in shops hit me. My kids are canny, they noticed that the fags were by the till sweets. That's two issues, sweets, and fags by the till. Both kids have commented that "smokers" are by the sweets. It never occured to me that the packaging was beyond adult. As an adult, I always figured that i'd go for my brand,whatever, the proposed ban on cig packaging may have seemed like overkill. But as a parent, the fascination with the colored packs behind the checkout, alongside the sweets IS my concern, and a plain package is one thing that this government could do that I would agree with. (Bet they don't though: too much Tory tobacco money). To have them for sale, with colours, by sweets, makes them normal. Put them under the counter, no colours. Not normal.Those that want, can have. Those that haven't noticed, don't notice.

I would love for my kids to grow up where fags are under the counter. I love that they point out smokers, and people who spit. I love that they find that nasty. I don't think my mum, my friends who smoke and others would mind in the least picking up plain packets. I wouldn't. I would just be happy that one more reason to smoke had been taken away.

My days are numbered.

I was always beyond crap at maths. Forced into a set that was higher than my level at 11, forced to take it early because, taking English Lit and English Lang early, I was evidently just pretending to find numbers scarily meaningless, and forced to fail O Level. Then forced to fail GCSE a record 6 times. Yes, 6. Finally, entirely lacking in confidence, and needing the magic C grade to become a teacher despite having a degree and a postgraduate degree, (because, you know, marking history essays means you need to be able to balance algebraic equations) I enrolled in an evening class with no hope whatsoever once I saw the class, who were (maths coming up) 70% disaffected East London youth, 20% employees forced onto the course, and 10% sadly numerically deficient weirdos. (I just did those percentages on my fingers). Luckily for me, the teacher was a genius with one arm, a drink problem and a haphazard knowledge of the bars of Camden as well as a bit of an idea about fractions. We got on. I finally "got" algebra after a mammoth drinking session and many scribbled beermats. I got a B. Then I became a teacher and I never used maths again. Ever. It doesn't come into Napoleonic Warfare much.

But the last months has been maths hell. This is because the children are horrible little beasts who cannot bear the thought of the other one having a teeny tiny bit more than them. This is the reason that other peoples' children run out of playgroup screaming "mummy!" with a look of delight on their faces and mine comes out to face his sister and ask "Has she had anything?" while she blurts triumphantly "I had a BISCUIT!", the having of the biscuit that he did not have being far tastier than the actual biscuit was. And so it is, that this month I have been mostly measuring. Drink depths, slices of pizza, any foodstuff at all. Measuring with a stopwatch who was fastest, who went furthest, who made the longest play-dough sausage. The distance jumped, the height reached. Who is tallest (she's always going to lose). Who ate the most, or the least. They lay there at night shout-whispering to each other "I'M going to go to sleep first!" "No, I AM!" It reached its' apogee this week when I was called upon to judge who had done the biggest poo. It was at that point that I flipped and did something terrible to the tape measures and rulers. Since then, I have been given the top tip that one child cuts the cake/pizza, and the other gets first choice of slices. This works until you realise that you need a tally chart to keep track of who has done the choosing/cutting, at which point they fight over it. My cousins' wife, who also did the remarkably rash thing of having children too close together, reminded me that this competativeness is what drove her now noticeably good young adults to succeed and do well. Unfortunately for me, my two couldn't care less about competing to do well. But who's got the biggest poo, well, that's a competition they've GOT to win.

And then more numbers for me. This time, the numbers of my blood test. My last visit to the endocrinologist went something like this:
Me: I know that my TSH is surpressed and so it comes "under" the average range, but i'm feeling quite well now, could you leave me alone?
Endo: What? Have you been reading? Numbers? Don't worry your head about them? Of course, now go away and leave me alone to get back to the more interesting diabetics.
End result: endo writes a letter to my GP clearly stating that I am surpressed and overmedicated and cuts my dose by 50mg. Apparently, people my height and weight should only be on such- a-such amount. Well, here's the thing. I am not a whizz at maths, I agree, but even I can see that a range of permissable blood readings must be taken from a wide range of people and is, even then, only a guide to the possible healthy readings. It is natural and likely that some people will be both above and below that range and be healthy. I am one of them. But as a result of the pathetically inadequate endo, I am now undermedicated, barely able to keep my eyes open and having tremors, weird hair loss again and all the other less lovely hypothyroid thingies. A phonecall to the hospital results in my finding out he is on holiday. For four weeks. I'm to be seen at the end of March. This time, I am taking with me my old , weighty, GCSE maths textbook, and will carefully point out the chapter on averages and ranges to him, before using it to beat him soundly around the head. Failing that, perhaps he would like to come to my house and see quite how difficult it is to measure 4 million things a day when you can't string a senetence together and need a nap every 5 minutes. We could measure his ego.

I'm elderly today, and wheezy, and boy are they taking advantage.

When I were a nipper, I was in and out of hospital constantly with asthma. Being the age I am, treatment then was not the snazzy nebulisers of today, oh no, it was a little tent they puffed full of oxygen, plonked you in it, and hoped for the best (has she gone red again yet? Or still blue?) Then it was inhalers of brutal inefficiency, which necessitated you puncturing capsules full of foul steroid powder, and inhaling it. Yes, inhaling powder. How much fun is that for a 4 year old? I spent weeks off of school, watching black and white movies on BBC2, wheezing on the sofa eating toast, and honestly, quite enjoying myself once I could breathe enough again. My asthma faded as I hit my twenties, and even the plane trees and pollution of London didn't make it come back.

Sons' treatment is flasher: two puffers of space age design, and a nebuliser when needed that makes swooshy noises, on loan from the Health Visitor. He also has preventative powders that you mix with ice-cream (hey, what a hardship:kid, I was inhaling POWDER into my lungs) that have staved off any serious attacks. I still watch him like a hawk as soon as he gets the sniffles though.

I don't pay as much attention to myself. On Wednesday night, I woke up at about 2am feeling wheezy. I thought this was odd, sneaked into sons room and had a few puffs of his salbutomol. Ok. By lunchtime on Thursday, i'd rung the doctors to ask for an appointment. How foolish, of course there were none until 2014. But I'm not breathing very well, I said. Maybe someone could ring me back to tell me how much of my sons medicine I could neck? They duly did. As much as I wanted, apparently, and they'd see me the next morning. Even though I couldn't breathe very well, like, now? I gave up. I carried on playing with the kids, who by now had worked out that going up and down the stairs took me ages, so were running upstairs to fight each other, reasoning that it was a good five minutes worth of whacking before I got there. Husband rang me. Hearing me gasp "no, i'm fine, just a bit breathless", he ignored the pleas from me that I was doing....wheeze....fine....just cooking....fishfingers.... and drove home. In-laws arrived, I was whisked to hospital, arriving with blue lips and 70% oxygen, and after 6 nebulisers and a foul pink steroid drink, eventually released home again with a bumper pack of drugs and a strict ticking off for the GP's surgery. It appears I have adult onset asthma again. Apparently, many childhood sufferers have clear periods, only for it to return in middle age. Crap.

So, today, after a careful tip-toeing around this morning, and a gleeful son who was not taken to playgroup (it being a 3 mile walk. Not happening today), the kids have gotten over their disappointment that I wasn't actually staying in hospital ("Then I could have seen you with a mask on and it would have been cool!"), and initially, been very caring. Played quietly, sat on the sofa and read, and been considerate children. For about an hour. Then it started. "DON'T SHOUT! MUMMY IS POORLY! OR I WILL HIT YOU!" "NO, I WILL HIT YOU!" (runs upstairs to do so, remembering wheezy ascent of yesterday. They are still safe). Noises of violence from upstairs. I turn up "Cash in the Attic" louder.Then they argue about who is going to give me my puffer. Son takes his puffer. Daughter cries, she is the only one without a puffer. She wants poorly lungs too. Pretend to give daughter puffer. Son points out that medicine is only for real poorly people, not pretend, and now she will die. Weeping. 95th cup of tea of the day. My hands are trembly and the steroids are making me weird. Shall we all have spaghetti for lunch? Realise that I am like an elderly person. I can't walk far, I am wheezy, I am not safe to hold a hot teacup and the kids are running rings round me. Reasoning this, I ring up the in-laws and say they can take the kids out for the afternoon. There's really no difference.

The difference of three hours.

Life with kids, staying at home, can be repetative. Hell, what am I saying, it IS repetative. But it occured to me today that despite this, there is a massive difference between hours of the day. Anyone with small children knows this. Children, like werewolves with the moon, are subject to the ebbs and flows of the hourly clock. Their last meal, the waking hour, the tired hour. And so are we. For me, the three hours in the day that most illustrate the breadth of my day are these:
The Happy hour.
All children have one. This is when the equation of energy+food+time / energy + food+time of parent is at it's most balanced and = 0. For me, this is the days when there is no playgroup, between 10 and 11. At around 10, they are eating, dressing, the breakfast has kicked in and they are playing happily, not yet bored, angry and cross with each other. They are a clean slate, keen, eager, interested and happy to play with each other. I have time to play with them. This is the hour to learn, where they will absorb anything and retain it, the hour they are not naughty and the pre-breakfast shouting has been forgotten. After 11, they are hungry again, and the cycle repeats.
The Misery hour.
This is where the equation is tipped. For me it's 3.45 - 4.45 pm, that hour before dinner where they have no energy, they're tired, they need food, i need to cook it and have no time, and they are WAILING. This is when they use whatever is to hand to hit each other, steal each others toys out of spite, and come running past me as I cook screaming "Muuuuum! She's doing it again! So I HIT HER!", as I try to judge which wails are anger and which might be the result of said blunt object whilst mashing potato. Then 15 minutes of plea bargaining about food, as I know they need it, they don't want it, they want whatever I ahven;t cooked, but I know that within 15 minutes of eating approximately a third of the plate, they will humanise again. You can see it happening. Like a vampire who's had a drink of the red stuff, they start talking in a vague civilised manner as the carbs hit home and the tummies fill. From then on until they sleep, it's diminishing returns, but at least the energy bit of the equation is sorted.
The Peace hour.
7.15-8.15. Mine. They are in bed. I am on my bed, reading. Husband is not yet at home. This hour, is mine, before I am up and cooking again. If he comes home early and wants dinner, I feel like killing him.

Like little animals. If they were see-through you'd see a little line in their tummies marked "Shout below this line". As soon as the food level dips, it's dog eat dog and they will fight over a cheddar biscuit they've found down the back of the sofa to the death. As soon as the attention level from me dips, a little light flashes in their brain which tells them "I am being abandoned! I will have to live on cheddars from the back of the sofa! and lightning like, they will fling themselves at each other or my legs. This is why whenever the phone rings, I go to the toilet, as it gives me 3 minutes before they get to me.

Once they are teenagers, and able to eat their own bodyweight from the fridge without asking, and desperate to NOT have your attention ("Leave me ALONE! God!"), and in bed all day, listening to impenetrable music, I might find it easier. The equation there seems to be food+gadgets+headphones+sleep / money +food+ blind eye from parents = only 4 rows a week, from memory. Oh joy.

I'm back, cross, and need a drink.

I left off writing for a few weeks, month, schmonth, whatever, because I was pure and simple worn to smithereens by illness, the illness of children, Christmas, weather, relatives, relatives again, weather again, illness again, husband being in Florida while I was in the Fens, kids that never, ever say please despite the elephant story (see here), and feeling like I needed to SORT THIS FAMILY OUT before I went potty. So this week, the husbandless one, has been a mummy-boot camp week. Why choose now? Because, you know, it's easier to do it with one parent.

Really. With two parents, or at least, this two, I am always "bad cop". Daddy gets to waltz off in the morning, and listen to Radio 4 in his car for an hour, while I am shouting "YES, you need to clean them in the mornings!", smelling the breath, sending them back, and forcing unsightly cereal down them. I moan all day, I pick up the points all day, then daddy waltzes back in just before bedtime, hypes them all up and is just the most bestest parent ever. I do get a bit sick of it, can you tell? At weekends, the little rules I spend ALL WEEK being mean about, little rules like saying "please" "thankyou" not treating me like a servant, not eating sweets before meals and so on, go out of the window because daddy is a complete soft touch. And yet conversely, he is much more liable to fly off the handle at the constant whining than I am, because he doesn't have to listen to it all week, and has yet to develop the whining deaf ear I have, or learnt to choose his battles (you know: it's 4.30, dinner is half an hour away, the kids are wretched, whiny, fighting. Now is not, I repeat, not, father, the time to have a conversation about getting your feet off the sofa). So yes, it's easier with just me. And you know, maybe i'll get to be good cop for a bit too.
So far, I have been hideous.Here are my main fights.

• I have re-introduced the rules that were in existance before Christmas about eating. Simply, they are, try everything on your plate, no afters with no effort, and no sweets apart from twice a week at my stipulated times. Snacks before meals? Fruit. No, not the truckload of biscuits and sweets that Mother-In-Law shows up with 4 times a week, waving in front of you 10 minutes before dinner, no. And yes, I have had a word. 15,000 times, in fact. How is it going? 2 days of weeping, pushing away food and staring sadly at the cupboard of MIL love. I'm not giving in. So they'll lose a little weight.
• Bedtimes are real. For me and you. I prefer mine to be a lot further away from yours than you want it to be. You can play your organ and screech "Welcome to the Dangerzone" down it, you're not coming out of your room. And you, madam, can throw as many Sylvanians at the door as you like. I don't like them anyway. I will be reading in my bedroom, going "la, la, la".
• I like the word "please". But just shouting "PLEASE, then!" does not have the same effect. I want to hear "Please may I?" I'm an arse, but I can dream.
• Water is nicer than juice. Of course it's not, but you've got to drink it. Because I said so.
• Would it be possible, do you think, to have under 10 playthings out at once? Maybe put some away when you've finsihed, rather than simply tip new toy on top of old, in an attempt to create archaeological layers that would baffle that one who used to be Baldrick?
• TV and PC is down to 45 minutes morning and 45 mins pm, IF you've been out and about in the meantime. Play with the mountain of stuff you got for Xmas. I will play with you, I promise, if you promise it won't be Sylvanians or little army men. Playmobil it is then. I like Playmobil, it fits in my hoover lovely. Actually, this is the only successful thing so far. I like playing with my kids, I just like it more when they are nice and well behaved and i'm not just a skivvy.

And my target is to not shout. I found after xmas the whole house was getting shouty as a result of too much stuff, plus, daughter hit her twos for real,and spent much of the holiday having Bette Davies style paddies, for 45 minutes at a time, at the base of the stairs for maximum annoyance because I wouldn't undress her sodding stupid Barbie AGAIN. Son hit his first hormone rush (boys get their first testosterone rush at around 4, this is what makes them suddenly shouty, angry and liable to want to be really boy-like all of a sudden. Steve Biddulph is good on this.) It's time to draw breath and redirect my parenting energies. Hence my absence for a bit. I needed to drink wine and stare at tv of an evening instead of type.
Let's see how we are in a few days.

Bet he'll be glad to get back to work. A stream of consciousness Xmas.

Xmas Eve: frantic children believing a lie that YOU (and I ) endorse so we can have a (huge) whisky and blame a fictional figure. Her sack is bigger. No, it's not. It's just a different pillowcase. How will he get in? We don't even have a fireplace. Oh, that magic key shit. No, he won't go into your room if you leave the sack downstairs. I agree, it IS creepy. I did my sack (ooer) on Ebay for a measley tenner each child. Can I drink the rest of the whisky?

Xmas Day:Yes, it's 5am. Oh well. Let's all rip open everything in a random way that makes identifying gift tags redundant. And do it quickly ,before we have to get dressed and stuff everything into the the car to travel to the relative du jour. They won! Now our holiday is just like a playgroup day! Get dressed! Quick! We're on a timetable! Again! Stuff evry single toy into the boot. Arrive. Open more toys. Frantic children being so surrounded by gifts that they end up hitting each other for the sake of familiar fun. Eating (you, not the kids. They live on Jelly Tots.) The main cook saying "I'm really not that hungry, you're not, when you've spent all day cooking" (sigh, nose down, trough). Drinking (only one of you. One of you has to drive back from the relatives du Jour). Task Arguing. "YOU put them to bed, I spent all day being SOBER". "No YOU, it was YOUR PARENTS, I NEEDED Lager". Slumping in front of diabolical TV, asking "Who got run over in Eastenders this year?" before passing out, dressed. One of you makes it to bed. Did I get a present? Oh, bless, it's jewellery far too fragile for my everyday existence, from tesco points. The gift of love.

Boxing day: The Other Lot. The ones that didn't get the kids on Xmas day. Its MORE FUN than Xmas day, even though the kids are knackered. Oh, ANOTHER EFFING DINNER. Yep, we could all do with another 3 courses. And more packaging, for our bonfire the size of the house. Can I watch my recorded Dr Who now? No? Oh. What's that you say? Daughter is weird? Well, yes. Oh, sweaty wierd. Ill weird. Initially, this means a glad token of being able to usher out the Other Lot early.By 10pm, it's clear it's the usual Xmas virus. Yes, the floor is lovely in here. Just give me a duvet and the calpol dispenser. I'll sleep on a rug in her bedroom.

Oh, still. Still every 3 hours, 3 days in. Days are spent on the sofa watching The Wizard of Oz. My God, Glindas' hands are big. Start spotting disenfranchised height challenged people not being proper Munchkins. After 8 viewings, root for a Witch Wins version. Lions and Tigers and Bears, oh Sod it. I'll run in front of her toting a jug of gin, she'd follow then, and sod Toto. Son is less enamoured. Stupid little poeple, why are they giving her a lollipop and what are those monkeys doing with wings? Can we go OUT?

Here's the rub, Husband is on holiday. He thinks, (laugh) that this is a HOLIDAY! No, you cannot sit and watch the History Channel. No, you cannot lie in. Here's an idea, why not take the not-sick kid out? And LEAVE ME ALONE?

Phew. Now I can watch the Stupid Wizard of the Stupid Arsing Oz again, with sick kid. And wine.

Oh, wait. Everyone is almost well. You''ll cook dinner? I would be happy, but I know this is just a lovely way of standing in the kitchen for 6 hours and leaving every single sodding pan dirty for the poor other sods to wash up. Can't I cook? Oh. I must sit down (read: deal with kids). I cooked the other day. But I WANT TO COOK LIKE YOU DO. Not the actual recipe. That is neither here nor there. I want to take 4 hours on a tomato sauce, with a glass in hand, without having to wipe a childs arse in the meantime.

The kids are "I want Daddy to do it". Fine. Daddy gets all the good bits. I notice it's never Daddy who gets to wipe bums. Still, the sheen is off. He's been off for days. The kids are having philosophical debates as to the nature of a minute, due to his "In a minute" responses. My minutes are minutes. Not so his. And you know, kids don't really like watching the history channel, and I don't want them seeing the holocaust episodes, really, so, if you don't mind, can you go back to work? Because, I might kill you otherwise, and you will go crazy, and I will weep, because you have no conception of how I run this. Go.

We all love Xmas.

Bad mother misses Nativity.

And it was his first ever one. Bad brained mother here was just downright empty headed about it and flummoxed by the Medieval system of school security. Unable to process the arcane rituals of gate openings, I was stymied by the blockade and, being 5ft, unable to scale the walls, clutching daughter and the Phil and Teds. Here is how it begins.

I drop son off to the usual playgroup entrance. I access this through the left-hand school gate, Gate A, which is open for the 8.50 drop-off,(Otherwise closed for the 11.50 pick-up, open again at 3pm. Guarded by Cerebrus in the meantime) walk across the school grounds and say "See you at the Nativity!". I then walk into "town" (this is in speechmarks because really, 2 charity shops and a bakery do not make a town). I walk through the Town school gate,Gate B, open for the 8.50 drop-off, but closed for the 11.50 pick-up, open again at 3pm. Otherwise, guarded by Orcs and an all-seeing eye. Gate A saves me a long walk, as Gate C, near to the playgroup and open for the 11.50 pick-up and 3pm pick-up, otherwise closed and guarded by sundry demons, is a mile and half around the town away. So my walk to playgroup in the morning is 2.5 miles, on the way back it is 4 miles. The politics of the Gate are arcane and not open to reason. A friend with SPD and heavily pregnant was not allowed to spare herself the walk at the 11.50 pick up, and was forced to walk the 1.5 extra miles. The Gates cannot be opened. I walked her boy rather than see her struggle. The Gate protects the kids, it must not be breached. Mexico border controls are more lenient than this.

Anyway, I then return, after whiling away an hour in the library with daughter, to Gate C, for the 11.15 performance of Nativity, starring son as shepherd, and many varied carols that bear no relation to ones you might know. Gate C is locked. I ring friend, who is in hall. "Help! Gate C is locked! I can't fling my Phil and Teds over the fence! Can you get someone to open it?" No. Nobody will open it. I must run.

I do not run. Apart from a brief period in the early 90's, which was really all about snaring some unworthwhile bloke, when I went to the gym 3 times a week, I have never run. Never. I may jog, I may speed walk with a double buggy, but I do not run. Until now. Strapping a screaming daughter into the buggy "NOOOOOO! I want to WALKKKKKK!", I pound the pavements, swerving people on mobility buggies and cursing their wheels, run, run, until I reach Gate A, which is open, all the Orcs being inside watching the Nativity that I AM MISSING. I screech to a halt in the school reception and demand to be let into the hall. Obviously, I am bright purple, sweating, about to have a heart attack, and clutching a puce angry daughter. I look insane. The Head comes out as the scretary has evidently pressed the panic button. They let me in. As soon as daughter sees the stage and bright lights she exhibits her (thankfully present) anti-X-Factor genes and screams. We go out again. I find crumb sodden old dummy from last month in bottom of my bag, shove it in and return to see the last song being sung and son looking bored in a tea towel. All the other mums are looking at me. They all have cars. Son asks why I was late. "The Orcs were not at the gates", I tell him. And he just accepts it.

Later, I get the DVD. Sons head is obscured by Marys' voluminous headress throughout.

4 years ago, I stopped working.

Not literally. I mean, my arms and legs still go (althought my thyroid could do with some work), and I still (just about) string a sentence together. So, yes, I still work. But I don't WORK. This time, 4 years ago, I said goodbye to my form group, fellow teachers, and GCSE/AS/A2 students, saying "See you in a year!", and waddled out that door, heavily pregnant, and never went back. I've been at home, with kid(s) ever since. For a while, post son, I said I was going back. 6 months in, I tried to read a book about Napoleonic warfare, and the new syllabus, and failed. My brain hurt. I visited childminders in our neck of East London, fully intending to leave my little bundle with them and return to work. The fact that I wouldn't have left a dog with them decided me. (Amongst the gems were a woman with 6 dogs, one who said she wouldn't take me because I was ethnically wrong, and another who stood smoking on the doorstep saying she "only did it outside" in such a manner that I wondered what it was she did outside, as it could have been any number of things, including soliciting).

We moved. We moved far, and cheap. We moved far and cheap enough so that we could manage on one wage for a few years. Just as well ,as along came surpise daughter. (Yep, really. 6 months in surprise. You know when they say breastfeeding is not a contraceptive? They are right). But what was happening to me? In the (admittedly brief) interim between children, I struggled. I had been a 5.30 am riser, who went to work, worked all day, came back, planned, did some more work, then went to the pub. I was a good, committed teacher and a big socialiser. My love of subject (history and polictics) ,was such that I spent weekends campaigning, visiting musuems, and husband and I courted on the IWW battlefields, in trenches. I loved my job. I loved watching my class set up as the League of Nations, and do a better job than they did. I loved it. I loved my form group. I loved my work. And now, I didn't have it. What was I?

Well, to some of my friends, I was a big wash out, a let-down. Someone who had "wasted" their education. To others, I simply wasn't down the pub anymore, and slipped away. To one, I had "let myself down". I should be being MORE, being a job, an ambition, a dream. What could I say? Yes, I had a half finished novel, but waking up 5 times a night does for that. Yes, I loved my work, but was that all I was? And most importantly, is that all that matters? No.

I can honestly say it took over a year. Over a year to not be upset by my demotion, for, let's be frank, that is what it is. You had a bank account, it had stuff going in, now, it doesn't. You have to ask for money, or set up a joint account. You had a timetable, now you don't, your day is dictated by breastfeeding, weaning, potty training. (See previous posts for how I cope with this: effectively, I just teach a subject a week to them, it gives me a timetable and a focus). You used to have lunchbreaks and piss alone. Now you don't. Ever. (I still don' know what to do on "lady" days. I distract them with a trick.)You used to have a status, now you are "just" a mum. You used to have a purpose, now you are "just" a mum. You used to have targets, discernable results, now the only result comes when they are 18 and not a serial killer. Yet. There's time. It takes time. It took a gut wrench instinct to say "I want to be at home", as every fibre of my intellect screamed that no, I was a working woman, but all my mum fibres said "sod it". I fought it, but I settled. I have seen every first. I have cooked a gazillion refused meals. I wipe up wee. I wipe bums. I read "Peepo" 8 times in a row. But I am still a teacher. I explain sunlight, rainbows. I explain why they need to go to bed. I am lawmaker. I am a scary monster. I am the builder of sofa cushion rafts. I am the one they hate. Until they fall over. I am the bad cop mum who says "What do you say? How do you ask nicely?" when good cop dad can waltz in from work and be fun. I am the dispenser of Savlon. I am a mum. I am not a worker.

And yet. I am. I am there, the whole time. So much that they get bored of me. I am up at 6 sometimes sooner, bed early, for the night shift. I know i'll be up at least twice, for wees, lost toys, wonky duvets. It's work, but the results you want are different. It's not attainment based, it's happiness based. Can I help my son and daughter be happy? Can I make their days at home, with me, a privilige? Can I make them into nice people? Funny people? Tolerable people? When I shout, can I say "sorry"? Can I make them able to enter school, secure in the knowledge that when they come home and ask for fishfingers and mash, I really know they are asking for a hug? It seems like nothing, sometimes, this stay at home lark. But when, as I did today, you hear you son say to the searching playgroup lady, sending him out to be picked up, "My mummy is over there, she ALWAYS is", it does seem worth it, as well as a life sentence. Or am I just justifying my choice? So hard to know. I just know, I'm glad i've done it. Although I wish it had a ruddy wage and some respect. It's a life skill, a diversifiable skill, a transferable skill to be able to find the bedtime teddy when it goes missing. (In the drawer, in a tupperware box. Of course.)

Make do and Mend.

Well, I've spent the last few nights snipping and sewing stuff from the little scraps I've had lying around, and some of the pillowcases I obsessively collect for 10p from the local Sally Army ("It's only 10P!!!! I MUST have it!") I whizzed up some bunting for daughters room to brighten it up a bit (must snip that thread!), using pillowcases for some of the flags and bias tape, and some leftover quilt patches for the rest.

I snipped at the shrunken jumper to fashion it into a bag. It's not quite done, some applique to do, but it is a bag from a jumper, albeit an odd shaped one due to the armholes, but a bag nonetheless. I've mended my jeans and even saved all the little itty itty bits from my cutting mat for stuffing toys. I'm being tight, i'm mending and making do. It's partly part of my year of thrift (see previous posts about not buying any new clothes for a year: nearly there!) , and partly because I've been inspired, again, by my Nan, now passed on, whose sewing box I inherited in April but only recently picked up.

It is GORGEOUS. Not to look at, just your standard wooden box, one knob missing. Butinside there is a wealth of making-do. Alongside the box, I got a tub of crochet hooks, a tin of ribbons and ric-rac, a tin of elastic and fastenings, and a tub of needles and scissors. Nothing was ever thrown away by my nan. Every ribbon from every present was tucked away. Every sequin that came off saved. The cotton reels alone are amazing, some of them are wooden, and wound with silk thread that was made in Britain. But this little envelope I found truly amazing. A little selection of nylon and silk thread in stocking colours, wound round card, with their own matches attached to melt the threads together. Imagine. Not throwing away a stocking, but darning it and melting it, and using them till they dropped. Last night I took a leaf out of my nan's book and what I couldn't mend from my mending pile, I unwound or cut into patches for later, some old trousers are earmarked for a doorstop. God, even the words "mending pile" sound great, but kind of 1950's. Inspired by my Nan, and by how easy it was to not buy any clothes this year, I am going to do it again this coming year. A bit early for New Years Resolutions, I know, but really, one purchase of snowboots in a year was actually quite easy, once i'd gotten over the thrill of spending. And this year, I promise, will be even better. This year I will not only buy secondhand (my limit was £5.00 a week), I will REFASHION. Take a look at this lady, who did a dress a day, from charity shop jobs, every day for a year. Now if that isn't inspiring enough to get me to learn how to seam, nothing is. I WILL learn how to hem properly, I WILL use my nan's thread to sew up a storm from a size 20 charity shop dress, and I WILL, (maybe) learn to crochet).

And check out the "Mend and Make Do" thread on Netmums, where ladies are going crazy on their machines.

The power of a lullaby: and what to do when your child is choking.

Lullabies and choking are not connected, maybe, but this weekend, they were.

When son was little, I sang and sang, he was a super colic baby and did nothing but scream for 4 months. The singing was often less to do with soothing and more to do with drowning the noise out. The only was he would settle (settle, not sleep, Lord no, not for 16 months....) was by flinging him about to Frank Zappa telling him not to eat yellow snow or wailing Little Green Rosetta, which lasts for 8 very long minutes. I'm not even the Zappa fan in this house. (That said, he is a great Pixies singer now, so i'm getting my return). He would allow me put him in the bouncy chair if I sang "Let's go fly a Kite" from Mary Poppins constantly, on occaision allowing a segway to "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang". But daughter was different. Whether it wa second child so-soon-after status or not, she would always pop down for a nap and go to sleep beautifully (even though she still wakes up for a "chat" at 4am). I would sing her a lullaby every night feeding her to sleep. I know I wasn't meant to, but hey, both mine self weaned no problem at 15 months. (smug). Our verse of choice was "My Bonny" (click here for a wiki about the song, and see above for the chap in question, Bonnie Prince Charlie) and every night we'd go through 4 rounds of it. Even now, at 2 and a half, it retains a massive power. It literally knocks her out. I can sing it in the middle of the day and her eyes go sleepy. It it so intrinsically linked in her mind to sleep that it sends some sort of "Sleeeep" message to her cortex and off she goes. How I wish I had one of these for son. He does still sing "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" though.

How does this relate to choking? On Friday I put them both to bed at 7pm with nary a bother and absolutely no sign of any illness at all. I spent the evening sewing and quaffing a nice wine. At 11pm, we heard a barking noise from daughters room, and as husband shot upstairs, we found her choking, making that croupy noise and gasping for air. My first thought was that she'd swallowed something from her dolls house. We rushed her downstairs and I called 99, I am really not au fait as to how to cope with small 2 year olds choking, my first aid is all about teenagers. By the time they arrived it was clear she could breathe, but badly, and the medics took one look at her and slapped her back in particular places, and dislodged some almighty globule of mucus. Splat. Daughter was in receipt of one of the worlds fastest acting colds. As she returned to a normal colour, we could see that her eyes were gunky, her nose was blocked and her throat was raw. Poor wee thing. Plus, she was surrounded by medics, stressed parents who were also a little embaressed that it was just mucus and panic, and grandparents who had sped over at breakneck pace. Cue screaming and some obviously healthy lungs. Medics said goodbye, rather reluctantly, as we sent them off to Peterborough at chucking out time. I took daughter to bed. And here is where the lullaby does it's stuff. Nurofen, a nightlight and "my Bonny" and whack she was away, despite all the excitement.

And now for the choking bit.

I knew how to do a Heimlich on an older child, from my teaching training. But toddlers and babies are different. Firstly, if the child is breathing even slightly, as daughter was (ie, if they can make a noise), then do NOT slap their back . It could dislodge anything and send it further down. The correct technique for toddlers and babies is completely different to adult techniques. Here's a link to a baby example. For toddlers, or small children like my daughter (who at 2, is still in 12-18 month clothes), lay them over your knee face down rather than your arm as shown by this gent. I am off to find a Red Cross class that deals with kids first aid. So that I won't have to call out the ambulance unless it's really needed, and I'll be able to cope until they get here if they are.

NO! When little boys get hormones.

I attended son's playgroup parents evening last week. According to them, he is learning to stand up for himself, after a shy start, and is as good as the proverbial golden child. I retreated, gobsmacked. At home, he doesn't have to stand up for himself, because he is too busy lording it over his sister. He is not in the least bit shy, and he certainly isn't good. he is Omen like in his ability to predict what will annoy most. So far this week, he has cut his sisters hair (again, so she looks like something from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest), taken to smacking her on the head when he thinks I'm not looking (despite my telling him, with alittle artistic licence, that it hurts your brain, in retrospect, this is possibly encouraging him), waited till she's set up her entire doll's house and then driven his motorbike and army men through it ("what? What? they're just having a smash-up party!"), lied ("I DID NOT eat the gingerbread!" Here's a hint, wipe the gingerbread mush off of your face before you deny it), smashed his room up when sent to it, and scribbled biro over the bath. Which to be fair, was hardly noticeable alongside all the grime and rust from skanky bath toys. All of this accompanied by a point blank refusal to sit on the naughty step. (Look at him in this pic, I thought he was bad at 2, but boy, I was wrong).

He is rising 4, and I'm wondering if this sudden bout of sheer stubborn naughtiness is a hormone surge. At around aged 4, boys experience the first of many (ARRRGH) hormone surges, which increase aggressiveness, energy levels and urge to engage in boisterous play (launching himself at husband as soon as he gets in from work screaming "fight me!"), and reduce their ability to concentrate. Luckily for us mums, this first surge lasts about a year (a YEAR?) and then fades until about aged 7. Steve Biddulphs' book "Raising Boys" is very informative on this. I can glance across to son at any given point in the day and he will be engaged in transmuting his sisters carefully thought out narrative with the farm animals into a farm armageddon. Yes, a definate hormone surge. Only a few months ago he was gentle thing. Now he is a maniac. So what to do?

I'm trialling the 1,2,3 method. It's meant to work well with boys and children with autistic spectrum disorders, because the rules are simple and do not allow for much negotiation. Now son is older, I often find myself embroiled in negotiating with the boy rather than stating what he should do. As a teacher, it's a cardinal rule: you earn the right to negotiate, it's not a given. Yet here I was, involved in some high table UN debate with a 3 year old. 1,2,3 it was. Basically, it's an old teaching trick but it works, hopefully. State to the child that they get 3 warnings only and on "3" , what the consequence will be. As son will now no longer sit on the step without running off it to where I am and mooning at me (yes, really), my "3" consequence is for him to be put in his bedroom without his favourite toy motorbikes for 5 minutes, then 5 again if he hasn't calmed down and apologised. Then, you clearly get to "3". Here's an example from this morning.

Daughter is screaming, with real tears. Son has hold of the toy she had, and she haltingly (but with glee) stammers out that son hit her on the head. I know she's egging it a bit, she's gone all Bette Davis, but hey, he did hit her. Son admits it.

"Say sorry to your sister and give her the toy back"

"No! I don't want to!"

(Holding up finger, speaking calmly) "That's one. Can you please say sorry and give the toy back."

"NOOOOOOO! it's MINE! (stamping feet)"

"That's 2. Can you please say sorry and give the toy back. It is not nice to hit on heads, or snatch".

"No!" (throws toy).

"That's 3. To your room, please". March him upstairs. Remove motorbikes. Much wailing and screaming. After 5 minutes he is still lobbing stuff about. Tell him he has another 5 minutes. Go back in after that, he is forlorn on the bed.

"Why did I put you in your room?"

"Because I whacked her and now her brain might hurt". (near enough).

"So what are you going to do?"

Gives sister cuddle, has a cuddle, carries on until next outburst approximately an hour later.

By the end of the day I usually only have to get to 2, or sometimes even 1. It does seem to be working, but as with everything, consistancy is key. I know I am doing it religiously, as daughter was telling her dollshouse crew off in the same manner.

Other pointers for the angry boy parents out there.

Firstly, accept that he will get angry. Example: yesterday, I told him not to take food from the fridge without permission. He denied he was (still clutching the chicken leg). I asked him to put it back, he got angry. After the 1, 2, 3 scene, we had a chat about why he got angry. "Because I really wanted the chicken but you said no", and discussed what could be done instead of getting angry. "You could have asked me nicely for a snack, couldn't you?" and so on. Make it clear that everyone gets angry, but that there are often other options.

Praise the gentle. Really go overboard. "Oh son, the way you are stroking the chicken gently is lovely, they really like that" etc etc. Praise nice behaviour to the high heavens.

Go rough. Make an assault course of cushions, play boys games (yes, there will be killing in them), and encourage LOTS of walking, running. Get out everyday. Get messy. Be a boy for a bit. And, if there is a man on the scene, a daddy, uncle, whatever, rough play. I simply don't get the rolling around bit, but they do and they love it. It's a very important bit of male whatever. I know it hypes 'em up before bedtime, if, like me, the man arrives home just before bed, but hey, go to bed 15 minutes later.

Get your man model to model being gentle. And if your man model shouts (mine does at times) make him say SORRY. Little men will copy the big ones.

Get some man on boy time. Send them off to do tasks. Boys often learn by DOING at this age, and a morning with the man sweeping snow or hammering will work wonders. And get him to praise, praise praise while he's doing it.

Now, i'm off to do my counting again, as I can just hear a yell......

Conservatives smash childhood dreams shocker, and a cushion.

When I was little (or young, i'm still pretty little, height wise at least), I was desperate to be a showjumper like Harvey Smith, then I went through a phase of being a librarian and forcing mum to take books out all the time while I stamped them and fined her (none of my childhood books are untouched), and finally, a teacher phase, bossing my sister around and criticising her efforts. "NO! Do this NOW! No, no, don't cry, Mum will come, here is a biscuit".) And you know, apart from the showjumping, I DID do that. I was a childrens librarian for years, and then retrained as a teacher, which I loved, for years. I did what I wanted to do. Son is obsessed with levers, gears, mechanics. My dad is an engineer, In Law dad is an engineer, there is a clear obsessional path for him. Daughter is currently limited to doing whatever pees son off most. But whatever they want to do, I will say, "You CAN do it". Because really, they're bright, they're funny, they have drive, they can. Even if he still wants to be a policeman.

Except they can't. We will never, never, never have enough money to pay for degrees for our kids. Read that again. NEVER. This country now has the most expensive education in the world. Kids that are bright, from less well off families, will never get to University. The Conservative blurb may say "It's merely a debt...." blah blah" , but people who have no money do NOT get into debt. Imagine being an 18 year old from a poor background, and being told that your debt on leaving will be 40K, 3 years work for your dad. You wouldn't countenance it. Of course, it's probably different, if , like David Cameron, you are worth 19 million and you think this makes you Middle Class. I won't even mention Clegg, nobody can hear him from the cavernous recesses of Camerons passage anyway. Cameron just excuses any noise as being "something he ate".

This is what this government wants: education for the elite, the ones who a 40K debt means nothing to. Their dads earn it in a few months. I was the first person in my family to get to University, indeed, even finish school. I managed because I had no fees, and a grant. I repaid that generosity by doing public sector work for years. The State helped me, I help the state. I believed in the State. I put something back. They more than got their moneys worth from me, from the teaching in the East End alone, believe me. ("No, pupil, I cannot come and pick you up from Budgens for shoplifting. I am not your mother. I am your teacher. Oh. Alright. She's with you. And caught shoplifting. I'm on my way.")

No more. This week we learned that the local (and only) secondary school has lost it's Building Schools for the Future money. 9 million. This was to provide for more space and facilities. The school was built in 1938 for 500 students. It now has 1,350. The money has gone. Not needed, says the government. Not needed , says local bigwig Martin Curtis, and minister for children, no less, who also said that "screaming and shouting" won't do anything. Fine. We'll all just accept it then, shall we? And the fact that you've just more or less told our kids that they're worth much less to this government than the kids of the small enclave of wealthy Free school parents. And the 1,000 homes you've just agreed will be built here, to add to our hugely overcrowded school and village with no facilities and schools that are too small. ( Strange that all the local Conservative councillors are so keen on the idea, possibly it has something to do with the huge links to the building trade many of them have. ) This government sucks big time.

The students round here already perform terribly. Fenland has the lowest tertiary education take up of ANY English area. It has the lowest parental tertiary take up. It is a rural, on the land work, area. And a safe, very safe, Tory seat. Nobody votes, apart from the landowners, and me. Everyone else is too apathetic, working on the land they don't own, or in the middle of the Fens picking leeks for minimum wage, for 14 hours, while the voting goes on. So why should the local MP Mr Steve Barclay care? He doesn't. He went to Rugby. He is a golden boy who replies to my letters with the party line and never holds a surgery in my village, knowing full well there is no bus on earth that will get me, my kids and my hatred to his actual surgery. So i've written to him. (Again. See previous posts to hear about my effort to build up enough asinine replies that I can furnish my chicken coop with them. And they can shit on him. I know it's childish.) Would he like to come and tell my son that his local schools are falling to bits, with the government sanction? Would he like to come and explain why my kids will never get to tertiary education? Would he buggery. He goes to the opening of a crisp packet, but he won't come here.

And because i've made myself really cross again, here's a picture of some stuff I sewed last night: a taggie for an upcoming baby (NOT mine, dear me NO), a pot stand, and a pink(ish) cushion for daughters room. I'm getting into the swing of the machine now. I even wound a bobbin. (clap, clap, clap) Once I get good enough, I may even attempt to sew a tiny mannikin of our MP as a pincushion.

We bunked off and made gingerbread

It was snowing this morning. So much snowing, in fact, that the 45 minute walk to playgroup and back again appealed about as much as kissing Michael Gove. Still, I tried. We dressed in 4 billion layers each, and walked with arms and legs swaddled in thermals to the buggy, which a) daughter refused to get in and b) wouldn't go in the snow anyway. Both children are born for the sunnier climes of South America or Spain, not rural Fenland, much to Yorkshire husbands disgust. By the time we had struggled down the road, buggy veering from left to right as I failed to discover the wheel lock, with my best impression of bad mother voice shrieking "Come ON! It's just a bit of snow!" whilst son wailed despondantly "It's getting in my EYES! My EEEEYYYYES!", I realised that this was not going to happen. For one, I couldn't really shout "Come ON!" for an hour in a blizzard, and secondly, daughter had flung herself from the buggy into the snow and was weeping. We turned back and happily plunged into the house again.

By 10.30 we had eaten all the crumpets and were shouting at each other. So we made gingerbread. This is simply the best gingerbread ever, it is exceptionally more-ish and, if you don't mind your kids getting dental caries for the sake of an hours peace, the kids will eat all of it if you let them. It's another wet/dry recipe, my absolute favourite type as they are virtually idiot and chidl proof. You will need:

Dry stuff: 225g plain flour, 1/4 tsp salt, 2 tsp bicarb, 1 and 1/2 tsp ginger, 1/2 tsp cinnamon. Sift.

Wet stuff: 55g butter, 115g soft brown sugar, 115g black treacle. Melt all together and leave to cool a bit. + (1 tbsp milk if needed for dough).

Mix it all together, until it turns into a dough. If it's too sticky and tough, add a bit of milk. Roll out to 5mm thickness and cut out shapes. I usually get about 25-30 assorted snails, squirrels and stars from this. Bake at gas mark 5 for 10-15 minutes, but a lot depends on the shape of the biscuit. Eat. All of them.

Whilst they were eating, I finally decided to crack on with using the sewing machine, which has been sitting and intimidating me. Having forced MIL to wind me lots of bobbins (I simply cannot do that yet), I grasped the nettle and a big stack of the cheap vintage pillowcases I keep buying because they are 10p, and decided to make some skirts for daughter, who thankfully doesn't care what she looks like yet, being 2. she will be in pillowcase outfits until she comes weeping to me and shows me photos of all her friends in Reebok or whatever, and even then i'll still moan.

So I chopped the top and end off of one fetching pillowcase featuring cars and bikes (she WILL not be girly, not if it's up to me. No pink here!) until it was a good skirt length. Then I turned it wrong side out, and straight stitched a pocket for elastic. At the bottom, I took a leftover bit of binding and sewed it around the hem, turned it right side out, and then sewed it around again. Wonky stitching covered. For skirt 2 I chose a green pillowcase, did the same thing, but this time without the binding edge and some ribbon instead, once i'd gotten the hang of sewing straighter.

Both skirts are very wonky and very amateur, but they took an hour of gingerbread eating and broke my machine virginity, so i'll always love them.

It's MY 30 Minutes, damn you!

I think the thing I miss most about smoking (and I've already come to the conclusion that I am always going to be a smoker, even If I am not smoking), is not the nicotine, but the 3 minutes. It was 3 minutes standing outside, usually, with the most interesting people. I would take a breather (even though I wasn't, I was inhaling), and have 3 minutes away from whatever I was doing. I'd chat about something frivolous. When alone, my first and favourite fag was the one when I got home from work. I was never a first-thing smoker, I always went all day, but my first cig when I got in, before I started the marking, was just the best. On the balcony, 3 minutes just letting go of it all, breathing the commute into the air and starting the day again.

Of course, as soon as I realised I was pregnant with son, I stopped and didn't even notice, really. The observant ones will be saying, well, if you didn't have one till 6pm anyway, you're not addicted. Well, I was. But to the minutes, not the fags. I didn't notice pre-son, because I was busy, and my evenings were mine. I just replaced the evening cig with a devilish cake. Job done. It was only after son, and then daughter, that I realised that I was addicted, to my 3 minutes outside without any of them. Because ever since son was born, Jan 2007, I haven't ever had more than 30 minutes alone. Not ever. I poo in company: "Mummy, don't strain. Do you want a book? Stella has weed on the bed". I suppose there was a brief moment, as they took daughet to weigh her post labour, before 15 month old son and husband arrived as visitors, but I can't remember it. I spend my entire day, 6am, sometimes earlier, till 7.30,. with company of the most demanding type. I never have 3 minutes to nip outside and go "ahhhhh".

It was only as the nights are drawing in, and husband has been getting in earlier, at 7.30ish as opposed to 8, that I have felt the terrible urge to yell. 7.30 till 8 was MINE! It was me, sitting on the bed, reading, blissfully. Let me put you in the picture. 7 is bedtime. It starts at 6.30. We read, we argue about teeth, we threaten that there will be no stories if teeth are not cleaned, we resort to headlock. We read that stupid Bog Baby book 3 times, sing "My Bonnie" and then that is one down. She is out like a light, to gather her strength before she rises at 3am to demand that I straighten her duvet. Now. Boy has "Cops and Robbers" (at least Ahlberg is interesting) and no song. But he decrees I must stay upstairs till he is "actually asleep" which leads to lots of "Mummy? I am not asleep? Are you here?" and so I have taken to reading a book, yes a BOOK upstairs while he dozes off, before going down and doing husbands tea. I sound 1950's, but there is revolution in my veins.

That half hour is MINE! Without it, as I discovered when husband rocked up at 7.25 and prevented kid to bedding, and lost me my half hour, I am crazy enough to consider murder. Or a fag, again.

Easy peasy pie child pacifier banana cakes

It is 2 in the afternoon. A walk to the park in freezing polar wind resulted in increased snottiness and wails of "My feeeeeet!" from daughter, who is genetically designed to live in San Tropez, not the Fens, where there is no tree windbreak effect. Lunch was wrong, just wrong, the quiche being one with "bits in". The "bits" were lovely last week, but this week they are disgusting. Shrek is now rubbish, apart from that bit where he farts. The hobby horse has been converted into a weapon. Whatever one has, the other must have, or die in the attempt. It goes like this:

"I love my Princess Joanna, she is better than YOUR stupid army man"

"No, she is not. I love my army man, he is cool, look, he can jump"

"I want the army man"

"No. Give me Princess Joanna"

"No." (picks up weapon, which is, nearest to hand, a small Roary the Racing Car).

"But I want her." (edges to sofa, reaches underneath for debris he knows to be there, it's probably sharp and unhygienic, result!)

War.

By 3pm, I am exhausted from shouting and referee work. The Scottish refs have it easy. Rather death threats from Celtic fans than being shut in this house for much longer. The only way out, the only way to bring peace, is to bake.

For some reason, even the most aggressive fight will cease when I shout I am baking. I have rules: you must share, you must not throw, and you must wash your hands, as a token gesture, even though I know you will pick your nose halfway through and eat raw egg. The prospect of licking the bowl out and eating cake often forces them to work together in some sort of entente, like France and England, being nice to eat other whilst quickly trying to eat as much of the cake mix as they can on the quiet. My own personal rule is that whatever cake we make must be prepared on the wet/dry basis, where you have one bowl of dry, one bowl of wet, then slap it all together.

These cakey muffiny things are quite the easiest and tastiest, and it matters not one jot of they turn out somewhat dense, as the banana provides an excuse for this.

You will need:

Dry bowl: 250 g Self-raising

1 tsp baking powder

1tsp bicarb

cinnamon

nutmeg

115 g caster sugar (or brown if you like things heavier).

Sift all this.

Wet bowl:

75g melted butter

vanilla extract

2 eggs, beaten

125 ml milk

3 small or 2 medium black and squishy bananas, squished.

Mix! Bake at Gas 5 for 25 minutes. You can muffin or fairy cake them, makes no odds.

Eat them watching the fart bit in Shrek.

Go in and watch them sleeping.

When you've told them, over 4 hundred million billion willion times to say "please" and they still say "get me". Yes, i've actually chopped the poo in half to get it down the loo. No, I don't know if it will be ok in the sewers. Who has pulled the chair out from under the daughter? There is much bleeding, and wailing, and lying ("But I DIDN'T!!!!" "Er, I saw you?"). There is a chunk of hair in the bedroom, and the so-called safety scissors are gone. The food goes to the chickens, again, who are fat, and no, you cannot have a biscuit. A Jaffa cake IS a biscuit, actually. Alright, it's a cake-biscuit. Do not run to Grandma saying "What have you got for me now?" (I told her, to STOP BUYING STUFF!). Array of interesting scribble all over the wall. And a damp patch there. And there. 4 toilet rolls and a toy dog are down the toilet. I am not sure if they have been weed on. No-one knows. The chicken poo trodden into the rug is no-ones fault again. That dastardly fairy of chaos, was it? or the pair of you, in wellies? What is stinking behind the sofa? It cannot be identified. The hair is tangled, my dear, because you put a great glop of icing in it. No, it is not nice to sing songs about willlies in front of people. I don't care what Daddy does. No, leave it alone. Put the chickens down. Down, I said. Well, if you will pick them up like that. Go and change. No, it is sub-zero out there, not the bathing pants. I don't know where the playmobil gun is. Where? You don't put things up there! No, I told you last time. Get the vaseline. Sneeze. Again. Good. No, let me wash it. You hate me. At 3. Well, I don't know what you will think by 13. You'll probably explode. Who hit who first? You can't both have done it at the same time exactly. Right. Right. Off to bed now. NOW! No, we don't have red toothpaste. It's blue. Just BRUSH YOUR TEETH. I will read both of you the same story in separate rooms. I promise. Christ, this story sucks. Yes, I am still upstairs. Yes. Go to sleep. You've already had some water. Oh. Go and wee then. No, a tiny dribble does not constitute an entire outfit change. The Toy Story ones are in the wash. Yes, they are. No, you are wearing a bedtime nappy. You are. Go to sleep. Sleep.

glug, glug, glug. Ahhhhhh. Now, go back upstairs, and watch them sleeping. Go on. It's designed that they look cute, you refill your love tanks, and they can go on being 3 or whatever tommorrow. A survival tactic. for them and you. Sneak up now.

The picture shows son passed out on the Naughty Step. Sheer exhaustion. And daughter whacked out in the buggy.

Kids need quiet, and aloneness.

The value of quiet for children is something I have been pondering lately, and lo, in the Guardian the other day, Friday I think, Libby Brookes mentioned that there has been little research into thevlaue of being alone and quiet in children, as opposed to the mountains of research about kids and socialisation. Nobody ever talks about how, sometimes, kids like being quiet, and alone.

I've been thinking about it because son is due to go to school in Spetember next year, and I'm wondering how he will cope. He doesn't mind playgroup (3 mornings a week) but "It's very busy and I just like to be quiet sometimes". I fret about how he will do in a class of 30, full on, all day. I know him. He goes to his room / the garden/ the shed and just natters on to himself, making little bubbles of worlds and arranging things to his pleasure, if you poke you head in he says "not yet", he LIKES aloneness, it's his time to play with his imagination. He dislikes playgroup by the end of the week for the noise, the hustle, the "Now we will do painting". Often, on a Friday, he will say "Is it the weekend? Can I be quiet now?". i worry about how he will be in a big class. He does not speak up, not because he is shy, but because it overwhelms him. It is pointless to him. Waiting for a question to be answered in a room of 30, he may as well dream the answer himself. And it would be better.

Thinking of my own temperment and childhood, I was similar. I took myself off to the shed, to the swing, anywhere, and later, with a book. I disliked the enforced jollity of activities at playgroup, and later, school. Daughter, I worry less about. She does not fret. She smites. Go her. At toddler group, she merely said "I don't like it, they don't play properly, let's have a snack and go". She too, will happily go off and doodle away the while rearranging her dolls house into some sort of bordello with her brothers army men, or "reading" the books to make the endings better. For one, Cinderella gets a motorbike.

I think that the school day for a four year old must seem endless. I am told, often, that I should send mine to playgroup more, to ready them for school. What? They have 18 years of it! Let them while away the hours chasing chickens, building grass cutting dens. Let them go off to the bottom of the garden and transform the tree into a motorbike. A Kawasaki Ninja, to be precise. Let them lay on the (damp) grass for 30 minutes and come in and say "I saw a giant, but he was ok, but the clouds were mostly animals today". Playgroup does not do this. Nor does school. Children do this, alone, and themselves, because they are.

You know, i'm edging towards home schooling. More fun. More play. More time to be themselves. I know from experience that a lesson is that long because there are 30 kids there. one on one, I could teach it in 15 minutes. We could have a morning of school, and an afternoon of play, of being alone, of doing nothin, or judo, or swimming, but nothing is sometimes the best of all. Because when my kids are doing nothing, they are always doing something more imaginative and hilarious than I could have dreamed up.

What are the poppies for, Mum?

Son, 3, asked me this yesterday, as we walked past the memorial in my home village. It has flags flapping around the cross, in readiness for Sunday. Some of them are Polish, one is American (I live in the land of the airbase). A whole Scheme of Work flashed through my head, from the days when I was teaching the answer to this question to year 9 students. Them, I could stun into immediate submission by showing them, in lesson one, a full 20 minutes of pictures, film and reportage from the Front. That is why. But I can't show a 3 year old that. So what do I say?

That rememberance is about the people, not the war. So when we got home, the photo album came out and I showed him the pictures of my great grans' family, all of them lined up for a group shot. Then the pictures of her brothers, in Uniform, raring to go away,leave that life of shepherding and farm work, get a suit (a free one!) and see the foreign shores. Only one, of 7, came back, 2 boys in one battle. Leaving a depopulated village, women without husbands, brothers, fiancees, or any prospect of one. "They left to fight a war with another country" I said. "It wasn't their war, but they went to help, but they got killed".

Deflecting questions about how, exactly, (mud, guns, drowning, who knows? Only that it was at Mons, and Ypres). I used an analogy about how sometimes, if people are fighting, they sometimes ask for help. If you believe that the person needs help, you help them, and soldiers do it because it is their job. I didn't mention conscription. I mentioned how, when my nan died, we lit candles for her, to remember, and that poppies helped people to remember soldiers who have died. Who are brothers, and daddies. I didn't mention how some wars are not virtuous, how men died for little pay and no reason. I mentioned only that we should remember them, so we don't fight again. I didn't mention how it hasn't worked yet, but only that we should do it, in the hope that it does work.

I will take them to the ceremony on Sunday. They don't, thankfully, have anyone specific to remember in their living memory, as my Brother-in-law came out of Afghanistan alive. But they can think about my great grans brothers, who left a life of shepherding, and farming, and did not come back. And, as every year I taught it, I was moved by the sudden anger and disbelief of my year 9's, who usually didn't care about anything much more than their XBox, I hope that my two will grow up utterly indignant about the wars fought in our name and the losses they resulted in.

In my nans photo albums there are 6 photos of war graves, in France. They are my Great Grans brothers. She never made it to France, but my grandad went and took the photos for her. They are what she had, a known resting place. So many did not. In my pre-kids days, husband and I took our holidays in Belgium and France, trudging the cemetaries, walking the Menin ridge, marking the front lines as we went, noting the piles of shells French and Belgian farmers left by the roadside for collection, even now. The large cemetaries are too huge to contemplate, your eye is stunned by the mass of white rectangles. And then you realise that some rectangles name 2, 3 even more, and the walls behind note even more. Imagine them all standing. And then the next cemetary, and the next. Chinese workers are shoved to the side, Indian soldiers given side rooms. And still, still, many more lie lost and unidentified. Someones son, brother, lover, husband.

In Britain, we are privilged, in one way, not to have these markers on our landscape. But, we have no daily reminder of the loss. In Arnhem, husband and I spent a day walking the route of the Market Garden assault, eventually fetching up at the cemetary. All the way there, there are markers of which soldier held the front, which soldiers were valiant, but fell. It's pitted into the pavement, in metal. Schoolchildren are given dedicated graves to tend, and hold a yearly service of thanks. In France, schools have a gravesite each to tend and look after. It was fought on their soil, they see. We do not. We have the odd white rectangle sent home to country churchyards. We forget, and we should not.

Give your kid a camera, a real one.

I walk about with my camera all the time, it's my third eye. I sometimes think my own eyes see things through a square. For me, it's a way of seeing the little things that are beautiful or moving, seeing the small picture helps me to see the big one. When i've had a day of being moaned at ("NOT THOSE FISHFINGERS! The OTHER ONES!" "Oh, you mean the fish cakes." "I just cut a little bit of hair off!" Daughter sobbing, holding clump, says otherwise, you know the drill), and it's hard to see the wood for the screaming, I like to take a minute and look through a lens. So son and daughter are used to being snapped (although, if I get his "photo face" one more time I will scream), and son kept agitating for a camera. I looked at those big kiddy style ones that add cartoons and so on, but frankly, the picture quality is beyond dreadful. And why should kids have a "kid" version of everything? It's like saying "you are small and wouldn't be able to use a real one", when in fact, they can. Why should something have to be big and unbreakable, and have "fun" elements? Kids, given half the chance, will look after things that are delicate with care 95% of the time, and the other 5% of the time, they're just doing it on purpose. Why should a kid need "amusing" elements to a camera, when a camera is already fun enough, if the person looking through the lens is fun?

As I proved by digging out my old digital camera, an old kodak Easyshare model. It's small enough for his hands, it's a point and click, and away we went.He was careful, carrying it with the wrist strap. He took to it quickly. After asking "What should I photo, Mummy?" and receiving the reply "Anything that you think is beautiful, interesting, or silly! Anything you like!", we went for a walk. I now have snaps of the following, a window into the mind of a 3 year old boy. The tally is: 3 dead worm photos, 1 photo of dog poo, 4 trucks, 3 lamposts, 4 patches of nettles, 1 berberis berry, 1 of his sister (note she is less interesting than dead worms), 1 bike, 1 of a brick wall for "it is patterny", 1 of his new snowboots, and a staged shot of his sisters toy dog about to fall off a cliff. As well as being fun, and educational, it was really lovely to see him so engaged in his surroundings, and he has claimed the camera as his now. Interestingly, he clicked onto the zoom without being told, and preferred the viewfinder to liveshoot, so I am hopeful I may have a David Bailey who can support me in my old age.

So don't buy an expensive kid camera. Buy a real, cheap one, and let them click away. Look at life through your kids' lens.