Hot Suggestion

I was sitting on a bench in the centre of Leeds, breasts tight with milk and Nina still sleeping when the old lady approached. She was dressed in tweed, moving stiffly and as I remember her, she was using a walking stick. I may be imagining that because don’t all wise old grannies have one of those? She had come to look at the baby, and to give advice:  enjoy these years, because they were going to be the best in my life. It was at that point that Nina woke up hungry, my breasts spurted, and I was too modest to get my boobs out. I had to walk home with my top drying in the sun, smelling of cheese.

Even at the time, I was confident the advice was poor. I was a young first time mum in a strange town with no family support, about to be stuck with negative equity in our home that would last ten years. I had the final year of my degree to complete, no childcare, and no money to pay for any. I was about to walk two miles home through blazing August heat to find that our cat, unsettled by the move, had shat on the carpet. I’ve had happier times since. If that old lady had her magical advice giving hat on that day, the one that provides the sparkling gem of prescience that if taken will lead to a better future, she would have said, “Teach your baby to cook”, and then she might have moved on quickly so I could get on and feed her.

Nina is twenty now, and managing very nicely for herself in a student village in Swansea. I think Nick and I did very well in bringing her up. She’s ace. It’s just that she never wanted to be in the kitchen, and because it’s not the 1930’s I never insisted. I thought she would pick it up in her own time, and she has, sort of. A few years ago, while frying an egg, she set light to the cat (it deserved it, it had shat on the carpet all those years before after all and it was unharmed save the melted hair). She’s moved on from that. Lately, she’s been burning herself. There was a gammon incident a few weeks ago resulting in second degree burns to the face. Today, I see from facebook, there’s been a rice crisis.

It’s tough being a parent. You just never know what is worth teaching until all of a sudden the baby is out clubbing, and the decisions you took when you weren’t much older than your little darling is now are showing their worth. Seems a bit late to point out that hot liquids hurt skin. Ah well, she’s bound  to work it out before she loses an eye. Isn’t she? Or do you think I should advise her to live off takeaways?

If You Love Me

‘Do you love me?...If you love me please will you..’ I say this at least daily to annoy my family. Usually I ask for tea, sometimes for my Love to fetch something from upstairs. I ask Nick to make hot water bottles when he’s warm in bed and almost asleep while I’m wide awake with cold feet. If he refuses, I sulk. Almost always, my Loves go fetching and come back to find that I let the tea go cold, or fall asleep before the hot water bottle is ready, their love having been demonstrated. The whole thing is one of those family intimacies that don’t get shared outside because they’re a bit odd and shameful. A bit like sugar sandwiches.

And so, lovely reader, if you love me please will you watch these two excellent things featuring my favourite comedian, Richard Herring. Only people who can get BBCi-player will be able to demonstrate their love this time, although everyone can look at Herring’s blog which talks about his Mastermind appearance (spoiler alert).

Richard Herring on Celebrity Mastermind

Richard Herring doing stand-up on Russell Howard's Good News Christmas Special from 28.30 if you don't want to see the whole show.

Left in the Nest

As a younger woman, I commiserated with the older ones as their children left home for flats above shops, or for study bedrooms in University Halls. Inside though, I did not expect to share their pain when the time came. Every time my children have reached a milestone that meant I wasn’t needed, I’ve enjoyed it. The moment when they learned to take the straw off the juice carton and pierce a hole, I rejoiced (the moreso when they remembered not to squeeze). When they could run an errand to the corner shop, I made full use of the new skill, and hurray for turning 18 and being able to get matches and wine. I felt no sadness when they started school, or finished school. They’ve spent plenty of summers in Cornwall at their grandparents away from us. We’ve gone on holiday without them and it’s been lovely to have them take care of the dogs. We’ve never had place settings around the dining table so unlike what happened a poem I read once, I’m not about to notice an empty chair. I’m stalwart. Unsentimental. Yeah right.


Nina leaves for Swansea Uni on Saturday, and I’m a walking chiche of a middle aged mother with offspring about to fly the nest. Everything is packed, The Uni quilt made especially for the occasion but used over the summer has been washed and mended. I’ve passed on so much advice it’s become a joke. At the supermarket checkout, we were talking about financial arrangements. She asked why a parent would rather put money on an Asda student card than hand over a cheque. I made the cashier laugh, saying it would stop her spending it on booze and fags. ‘What?’ I said to Nina and the young man who might himself be a student. ‘I know all about your mieow-mieows and your alco-pops because I read about them in the Daily Mail’. I was only kidding. Although I wish I had taught her how to cook, and worry that she can be over sensitive and accident prone, my eldest is a non-smoker, non-toker, moderate drinker of Bacardi and heavy drinker of my Diet Coke.

Truth is she’ll do fine but I’ll miss her. She sings when she does chores, wakes up early and skips down the stairs, we talk social affairs and politics and friends. She knows the good places to go for lunch, comes with me to gigs and makes the best of what isn’t to her taste. We watch chick flicks and comedy together. She tells me about cool new trends in websites and introduces me to popular turns of phrase. Who’s going to do all that with me now? Ah ha, I have a backup, my youngest, two more years of hints on keeping young then. Phew.



In extra news; Nina’s latest recommendation is the delicious if over- filling 50 track Beans on Toast album Standing on a Chair. It’s on Spotify, but I still can’t work out how to link to it. Lefties will like it.

Childhood Prayer Optional

In Sainsbury’s today (I was buying Choritso because I am middle class, since you ask) Nina and I spotted a tiny girl pretending to sleep on the floor. A Jamie Olive leaflet was her pillow, and her hands were in the classic two hands to the ear pretending to sleep position which nobody ever adopts to do the actual deed. It brought back a rush of childhood memories for both of us, mine most strongly of my Nan’s Cornish voice, ‘Del’a, get up of the dirty floor!’ What with thinking about the Pope’s visit, and about faith, stories, values and belief, I’ve since been remembering something from Nina’s childhood. She hates me to write about her, but this is cute, so I’m going for it.


We were walking home sometime in the first term of year one. Blue gingham dress and grey cardi, lunchbox swinging high. We had gone around the corner, past the blackberry bushes that stuck out so that you had to step into the road, and over the lollypop man’s road. The crowd was thinning out as people went their own ways. Nina attended a Roman Catholic primary school. Not because we were Catholic, but because of the two local schools, this one had a sense of order and a headteacher that came out onto the playground every morning and afternoon. Nina had been learning a lot about Catholicism, and teaching us in turn. Sometimes our lack of faith would reap frowns and sly comments from the other mums, but back then, as well as being open minded and ambitious, we were young and brave.

‘Mummy,’ Nina chirruped, ‘Tonight we have to pray for an old man’. The old man, she went on, wasn’t a very good or nice man, but he was old and poorly. He lived alone and didn’t keep his house clean. He liked to drink and sometimes swore at Mrs F, so he needed people to pray for him, Mrs F’s class especially. It was a charming tale, but although I didn’t object to Nina doing a bit of praying, it made no sense to me. ‘Well you can if you want,’ I said, ‘ but maybe your class should do something to help him like taking him some food, or being his friend, and Mrs F could help him with his cleaning. Perhaps then he wouldn’t be so grumpy or need to drink’.

Nina had been listening intently, looking at me sidelong as she skipped, but she came to a sudden halt. ‘I don’t think we can do that’ she said. ‘We can’t see him; he’s in the waiting room’. I asked a few more questions and in the way that only parental understanding of a child can, it hit me. The old man had died and was now as far as Mrs F knew, in Purgatory from which the way out was via the prayers from a class of thirty five year olds. Nina remembered the word and agreed. We carried on walking, I was keen to find out what else Nina had picked up ‘So, what’s this Purgatory place like?’ Nina thought hard for a while. We were almost home when she said ‘Well I don’t know, but it’s a waiting room a bit like the one at the Station....and it has a chocolate machine and seats.’

‘Do you think he’s happy there?’

‘I expect so, there are people to talk to and a cleaner and if you have the money you can buy Ribena’.

Platform 1 of Coventry Railway Station: as good a place as any to spend eternity. I expect the old man would have preferred wine though.

Episode of My Family

This is the first September in seventeen years that hasn’t been committed to the school year. Half way round a room of introductions at Uni, I stopped short that I couldn’t say I was the mother of two school children, or even two teenage children. I’ve started to think about pensions, the quality of Marks and Spencers goods, and the menopause. There has been a tipping point over the summer, I went in myself, (pale cold and damp) and I’ve come out middle aged (slight tan, hot flushes, dry…). Ah but life goes on.

Been rather busy, tidying out cupboards and cleaning things, almost like I’m a 42 year old housewife (oh). Also, I ‘ve finished four quilts (Nina’s for college, Bernard’s poorly blanket, snuggly throw for H and Bernard and Gwen’s Emerald Anniversary double). Textbooks have arrived, and I have a new pencil case with good pens, stapler, and post it notes. It feels good.

Soon, I shall be youthing up. Freshers week starts in fifteen days, and while this time around, I’ve no plans to be getting drunk on cider and black, being too scared to see the Petshop Boys at the Union, or crying myself to sleep in my loneliness, I am looking forward to doing something different. Can’t see myself at the Freshers UV Bubble Party though. If this weren’t excitement enough, the weekend before freshers, we have to do the parenting classic and drop Nina off at Uni where she will move into a swanky student village which is sure to be an upgrade on the place we’ve hitherto provided. I’ve given her so much advice that she is now only willing to receive it in iambic pentameter. I am concerned enough to rise to the challenge. It is only slightly more pressure that H starts at college tomorrow having spent the weekend in Manchester with a girl she met on a train.

This is surely a middle aged lifestyle you couldn’t make up (busy but boring), unless you scriptwrite for My Family, in which case hello, and I KNEW you had rigged CCTV in my house (not really, I don‘t watch it, it‘s busy and boring).

Prom Dress

Prom. That was a word I’d never heard in 1984 (the year I turned 16, took my O’levels, first heard a Billy Bragg record and lost my virginity). My younger daughter, H, turned 16 a few months ago and is even now revising for her GCSE’s. She’s already met Billy Bragg twice. Thankfully, I don’t know about the virginity thing.


Of the things that have changed in the last 26 years, the importing of the concept of a prom seems to be for the best. A chance to celebrate together before moving on to other things. A chance to buy a really nice frock and to play at sophistication before kicking off the high heels and rolling down a grass bank fuelled by crafty glugs of WKD. Some girls relish the whole dressing up thing. I wasn’t sure how H, always a jeans, tee shirt and expensive trainers girl, would take it. Since she was four years old, she had bought one dress and that was in denim.

I remember the dress before that. It was a blue gingham school dress with white peter pan collar and cuffs. I bought it in H’s absence and presented it to her, anticipating squeals of delight. There was silence and a furrowed brow. ‘I can’t wear that’ she fretted ‘people will see my legs.’ She did put it on a few times, reluctantly, for my sake. It began the period of her refusal to buy clothes from the girls section of any shop, and her instructing hairdressers to give her boy’s hair cuts. To be mistaken for a boy was her ultimate accolade.

She got feminine again though, but never went girlie, and still never wears pink. Her clothes are neat, simple, always fit well and always suit. I’ve never known her buy anything and not wear it, and she’s never let me buy her anything she doesn’t want. H’s now has a limited collection of garments that last years. She likes quality, and is worth the investment. I’ve been curious to find out what she would choose to wear for the ball, and feared that she may want to wear a dinner suit. I’m not sure how I would have dealt with that. I also speculated that she would perhaps go for a plain black shift dress, or one in the light shell shades that are big this season.

Off we went to Birmingham yesterday, to get the dress. We had a lovely time chatting about all sorts of things. We don’t do enough of that. She’s busy with her own life after all. This time, she was in a mood for openness and we had laughs and serious discussion on school, girlfriends, books, family and clothes. Phew there were a lot of clothes. She was game to browse and try on, modelling ball gowns while keeping her socks on. In the end, she went for the first dress we saw. Neither the style nor the colour I had guessed at. A perfect fit, fun, youthful and suitable for the occasion. Can you tell I’m proud?

I can’t tell you more about it because, like a wedding dress it has to be a surprise (clue: it was from Warehouse). We have yet to get shoes, but H is considering heels. That would be the biggest step yet.

Hello England, this is Swansea Calling

Nothing on the planet has a cry so loud as a teenage girl. I will definitely have to get those windows replaced. Nina has an offer of a place at Swansea University (conditional on getting the portfolio verified by 31st August. It has been a hard road, and such a relief as she really wanted and deserved this.

A couple of nights ago, I dreamed that Holly failed all of her GCSEs and couldn’t go to college, I was quite disturbed by it. My thoughts are full of study plans as if all goes to plan, I start back at Uni at the same year as Nina. Holly starts at college at the same time. My little Bro may even be returning to China for his MA. No wonder I’m a bundle of anxiety. Just think of how smart we shall be in three years time. Ideally, we will work together for a unique organisation specialising in improving the mental health of Chinese children and youth by means of photographic-linguistic therapy. That’ll work. I expect there’s grants for that type of thing. I hope the work turns out to be well paid. It’s going to be an expensive three years.

Dulce et Decorum est

A difficult week for a member of the family. An easy week for me. ‘It's not fair‘. Little girls tend to say that quite a lot. My little girls used to chorus it regularly, their whines tingling up my spine until a cup of tea after bed time. The logical part of me tends to say that we make our own luck and life goes tits up due to our own poor judgement but, as my little ones used to say about whatever it was, ‘it's not fair’ is often just as fair an assessment.


I have a vivid memory from school. Lanky, deep voiced Mr Tinson, usually funny, looked ancient to me but younger than I am now, was in serious mood. Apropos of something now unremembered, he told his class of 29 thirteen year olds that one of us would be dead before the age of 30. In a generational coincidence, Nina was told the same thing while she was at school.

I never thought more of the concept until the first time that a school friend died. Not a friend, or someone I knew well. A nodding aquantence in the way of school life. She died aged seventeen having accidentally driven her new car over a pier and into the sea. I remember her name, her long blonde hair and her laugh from across the sixth form common room. It shook me up at the time. It was a big story in the news and a man on the bus commented loudly, knowing nothing, that it must have been a suicide. It wasn’t. The coroner found that she had mistaken the reverse for a forward gear in an unfamiliar vehicle and bunny-hopped the car as a new driver will. Bad luck that she happened to be parked on a unfenced pier at high tide. I got off that bus, and got over the shock in the way of the young. It was part of growing up.

Last week, a school friend of Nina’s died. Not a friend, just a boy who happened to be in her form. A nice enough boy who had said hello to her, who was a bit naughty and cheeky until his last year at school when his teachers threats to give him a poor reference for his application to join the Army turned him into an angel. He joined up at sixteen, and died at twenty, it was a roadside bomb in Afghanistan. He was a specialist in disarming those bombs. The army was his life, but he was looking forward to coming out soon and starting civilian life. A new military campaign has been all over the national news. They say it is going well. The local news carried nice footage about the young man’s death, with intervews with his friends and family. The school said that everyone is in shock.

There can be no proper response. I find myself no more eloquent in thought, word or deed than when I was Nina’s age. It’s not fair.

Life goes on and with it the little disappointments and patches of ill-health. My poor baby, it isn’t fair.





Dulce et decorum est is Latin from Horace although I know it from the poem by war poet Wilfred Owen which I was studying around the time Vanya died. The meaning is,’It is sweet and right’. If you don’t know it, please read the poem for the rest. http://www.warpoetry.co.uk/owen1.html

This post is dedicated to the memory of Vanya Bray 1969-1987 and Guy Mellors 1989 - 2010
http://helmandblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/sapper-guy-mellors-killed-in.html

A Bequest

Wednesday 3.2.09

In the process of looking out patchwork books to inspire me to begin work on H's Uni quilt (I have less than three years to make it so best make a start), I came across something from the past. An A4 file, faded from mid-green to light, dusty. In it, photo negatives spanning two years (1992 - 4), my monochrome period, where I took up serious black and white photography and developed my own negatives.

H and I looked through it together. She can't remember me making the images, although there are some of her as a small baby sprawled on Nick's chest, being held by our midwife, propped on the sofa. All of the usual baby images. She remarked that she was a fat baby, and so she was. Sorry to disappoint the food fascists, but she was fully breastfed for six months, so it was all our own work and no Farlies. Now, she plans to study photography at college, so she was interested in the contents of the folder, from the effects of exhausted fix (now sending the black and white prints brown) to the spare plastic wallets that hold the negs.

For me, the past rushed in. The past that I was barely aware of when it was the present. In the self portraits, I see young woman of 24 or 26 unfashionably dressed, yet with a Suede haircut as the britpop scene that I was barely aware of was in ascendancy. I wasn't living the britpop life either. No raves, no snorting coke, no intense multi-partner relationships. Unless you count wife and motherhood. You didn't then. I wasn't doing the fashionable thing by being married with children. In many ways, I'm still not. Plenty of my contemporaries from school and college are without children or just getting started with the IVF. Tick tock.

I was zigging while others were zagging. I hung out with a bunch of women from the flats down the road. Just about tolerated by them, now I look back. I had no career plan. I took odd paid jobs in the voluntary sector and volunteered endlessly. In those two years, me and my mates from the local estates raised the money to build a nursery, at at time when there was only one other in the city. It's still there, although it went into private ownership a couple of years ago. The bricks are made of left wing principles, bought with right wing grant money and are, as a matter of fact, only a cladding for the prefab underneath that was brought in by lorry and hoisted by crane to the applause of two year olds. We also built a play area, took a massive group of primary school children to the theatre, helped out at carnivals, gossiped, ate veggie food, and supported Labour (but not Blair). Then there was the photography project. We were funded for that, creche and all. It was the only reason I went at the beginning, truth be known. Then, I fell in love with the darkroom. The photos are quite good, though I say it myself, especially when I was working in the reportage style.

Seeing my own young face there gave me no jolt. I wasn't an attractive young woman so now, I don't find getting older a hardship in the way that once pretty women sometimes do. I regret though that I wasn't aware then of how handsome Nick was. A geeky style of young man who would have been fashionable if he was turning thirty in this decade. He was serious looking in aviator specs and worn tee shirts, as though he was solving a maths problem while holding his children with the tenderness now lavished on his dog. There's a good one of him just yawning, which may represent that time for him. I'll ask about that. Now, I fear for him, getting older. Although we've been through all manner of stuff between then and now, I don't know how to ask him to take better care of himself, or if I could. We were never very good at talking about the serious stuff.

They're only photos. I enjoyed looking at them, and H has promised she will develop one of the negatives of Nick. I never got that far. Perhaps I didn't think they were good enough, or perhaps he didn't want me to. I don't remember. In return, I've passed the whole folder on. By the look on H's face, it is one of the best gifts I've bestowed. To quote her facebook status, that stayed up for a heartwarming twenty minutes, 'My Mum = proper legend.'

Soup Day

Tuesday 2.12.09

It is bizarre how a single day can have a blot of dark, a pool of light, and a tin of soup, but so it was today.

H has needed to give a police statement as a witness. The thought of it, and of the friend to whom it relates has been at the forefront for a few days. In tawdry sitcom style, H went off to school as normal today, but fifteen minutes later, I got the call to say she was required. Nick rang the school which tracked her down, the teacher getting the wrong end of the stick and thinking that H had done something bad. That resolved, she was shown out of a secret gate known only to staff, and was on her way home again. Our anxiety increased as even as we were walking to the police station, we got another phone call asking where we were.

The CID officers were bright, and kind. I somehow hadn't been expecting a twenty-five year old woman in a good suit and spiky heels, but she was the sort of person who I would gladly take as a role model. The video taped interview was as gentle as possible, but harrowing. H cried, and this is an extremely uncommon thing. As she had lessons that she wouldn't have to catch up on in the afternoon, I kept her home. She made herself soup, and then slept the afternoon away in a rare display of teenage indolence. Sometimes, I think it has to be enough to be glad that it's not your own child that is suffering. I think of H's friend and her Mum though.

Late afternoon, we went out to H's interview at Henley College. This went extremely well, and H has another offer of a place to consider. We especially liked the lecturer. A clean shaven man in a long mud green coat. Pinned to the lapel of the coat was a floral broach, a bunch of cornflowers I think. It seemed incongruous in a pleasant way, and he was charming enough to make me consider asking him about it. I didn't though. He spent some time looking at the photographs on the wall with us, and telling us about them and the photographers who made them with some pride. H warmed to him and talked freely about her work. She'll have to pick between the newly built college with arrogance painted into the walls and on to the faces of some of the staff, and the scruffy old building with the warm personality. Or A'levels of course, but that seems less likely now. I'm glad she has her sights on something, and that she's clear headed about it.

What happened to One Hundred Days? I intended to take a photo on the way back from the police station, but it wasn't appropriate. As the light was fading, H and I walked around the back of Henley College and I got my camera out. Battery flat. That was that. As I was saying yesterday: it's just like a New Years resolution. They generally start on the 2nd. Don't they?

..and Would it were the Last

Thursday 26.11.09 (Thanksgiving for you, if you're American, but not for me. Hope it was good.)

We rushed out through rush-hour traffic this evening to make it to H's school. It was the night where the school encourages sixteeen-year-olds to stay on after their compulsory stay expires. Oddly enough, it was at a school that we had never visited. H's school works in partnership with the boy's school up the road, so there we were at 5.59 trying to find somewhere to park. H is our youngest, so we won't have to do it again. Like nappies, it's not something I'm going to miss.

The school is an old one by Coventry standards. I found myself noticing things about it that I'm sure escape the pupils. There are some lovely remnents of the 1954 architecture and ethos. The school was one of the first comprihensives in the country and attempted to emulate the independent sector. Some of the steps are made of very large, hard stones, worn smooth by many feet, but not worn away. Above the stage in the hall is a plaster frieze in Grecian style with paired male and female figures. I wasn't able to work out who they represented. There are wooden plaques of the type seen in independent schools with the names of old boys who have achieved national sporting success. Perhaps thirty names in fifty years.

All of these things came to my notice because the talk was turgid. Twenty minutes of self aggrandising on the theme of how excellent the school is, in spite of the figures dictating that at best its results are just below the national average. The sixth formers who spoke were however, charming and beautiful to the extent that I had to wonder if they had been chosen as head boys and girls on the basis of those characteristics. We were warned, though we didn't know it at the time. Standing at the sides, a man next to us pointed out the high and wobbly staging, "Room up the back", he said. We declined, high and wobbly doesn't combine well with fat and clumsy I find. "Are you sure?" Mr Jovial continued, "He goes on a bit once he starts". We thought it was a bit of a mean comment. That was until the talk commenced. What I'm saying is, I have true admiration and respect for any boy who has been taught by that particular teacher. Even though the teacher prefers to call himself Director. Maybe especially so.

The scrum around the trestle tables commenced. Not selling cakes and plants, but futures. What can you do with this A Level, or that one? Teachers of the less popular or less respected subjects working hard to drum up support, English teachers barely visible. Pupils keen. A credit to their school. H looked a bit daunted, but in spite of encouragement from school, she's settled on College instead. More-or-less anyway. She'll apply to sixth form anyway, just in case she changes her mind between now and September. And why shouldn't she? A year when you're nearly sixteen is, after all, one-sixteenth of a lifetime. By the look on her scrunched up face, I think we can count on it that she won't be taking business studies, and given the lack of disguising this, she maybe shouldn't take up acting either.

In the middle of the night, I woke Nick up coming to bed. He expressed disappointment that I had not written in my blog that he and his team have won three gleaming national awards for their work on improving bus travel. Frankly, since I got myself in trouble for my early writing about not getting the specific box of Thorntons' Continental chocolates I wanted, I decided to lay off more than casual mentions of him. Last night, he said that it would be all right to write nice things about him. Ah, but this blog is all about me me me isn't it? I agreed to publish a list of one hundred things I like about him. It won't be hard, it will be mushy. I'm just saying, you might want to skip the next entry, that's all.

Title is a quote from memory from George Eliott's Middlemarch. Casabon makes me on a bad day look cheery. Back on the up.

As It Occured to Us

Monday 16.11.09

For weeks, I've been hankering to see Richard Herring's As It Occurs To Me live. It aims to have the qualities of a radio show without the censor, is recorded live and goes out as an unedited podcast. I thought he made a disappointing start, but it came on leaps and bounds and I love it. Nina took pity on me, or perhaps got tired of my whinging, and offered to take me to London for my Christmas prezzie to see the show.
We had a good trip down on the coach. I was confident enough about the travel sickness tablets working not to overdose on them as I did last time, although I still slept on the coach and was dozy for an hour afterwards. we were in very good time for the show and killed an hour or so walking about Chinatown and Theatreland looking at the lights, the people, and the fabulously decorated sponge cakes in the window of the Chinese bakery.

I had spotted a homeless man partially hidden in the shadows of a doorway opposite the Leicester Square Theatre and, as we approached him on our second circuit, although he wasn't asking for money, I offered him a couple of pounds. He had some cans lined up but seemed quite sober and sane, telling us in an Eastern European accent that he stayed around here because it was close to the church, telling us about his faith and how he would prey for us. It was a nice interaction, and we said goodbye and walked on. Nina asked me why I stopped in the first place and I tried to explain that although when I was young I would have said that it wasn't right to give to beggars and that the only way was to support charities, I no longer feel this way. I had eaten and thought that the homeless man might like to, but if he wanted to drink, then a couple of quid would make no difference to his addiction and might take the chill off. We talked about the rights and wrongs of this for a while, and came back full circle again, about to go into the venue.
It was then that the homeless man called us over. He began by saying that he had been thinking since we had been gone and had said to himself "Why did I not ask this question?". He asked if we had some time and I said that we needed to get going but would see him when we got out. He kept us talking and said he only needed a minute and would ask now. Nina and I looked towards each-other, both of us thinking he was going to talk to us about religion and that this would be awkward. He took a deep breath, and looked at Nina,
"You, I think, are too young." now looking at me, "But you, I say to you, I am a very sexual man but look for love also".
He went on for a minute or so with both Nina and I too stunned to speak. It was the first time anyone has proposed marriage to me (I proposed to Nick, but that's another story). Here I was on a street around the corner from Leicester Square being proposed to by a virtually sober, almost clean, homeless man. It was awkward, and funny, and sad. Where were my liberal principles now?
"So, what I ask is how you are fix?", he said.
I explained that I was married. He looked crestfallen and was apologetic. I tried to be as nice about it as I could. We said goodbye hurriedly.

As we went into the theatre, Nina pointed out that nothing we heard tonight would be as funny. She was correct. We talked about it and giggled about it. At her suggestion, we put our hands up during the audience participation part of the show, and it got a big laugh from the audience. Clearly, we were only willing to go so.. far in our bid to help the homeless. Had I not have been married, it might have worked though. A genius solution to the problem of vagrancy, well done that tramp. He wasn't there as we came out. It was just as well.

Waiting for the midnight coach at Victoria, a middle-aged besuited Asian man was eyeing Nina up. He moved seats several times so as to get a good all-round view. We resorted to laughing over this too, I asked Nina if she was merely jealous since he hadn't yet proposed.

Here's the podcast, we are 33.5 minutes in to episode 5:
www.comedy.org.uk/podcasts/as_it_occurs_to_me/
but listen to the whole thing and ten subscribe on itunes because it is excellent.

Friday 11.9.09

My mood has completely lifted. This seems to be entirely random, I just woke up feeling normal. Nina had the day off today, so we spent most of it together and got lots done, running errands and cleaning the house.

In spite of the need not to spend money this month (last month's three trips away left a big overdraft) we bought a new Hoover. The last one gave up the ghost. I can't be too cross about that, not having had all that much use it had been with us a good while. Buying a replacement was interesting. There was a choice of around thirty models, price range £50 to £350, but how to make the selection? I didn't want to spend too much, but £50 seemed too cheap. Most were about £100, which seemed an alright price but then what? I was a bit bamboozled. In the end I bought one with a paw print on on a red machine. Those were the two key criteria that made it the best for me. I suspect that the £50 does exactly the same thing, but I'll bet it doesn't have the above gadget. I will never use that special thing because I don't know how to fit it on to the machine, and also, I don't know what I would use it for. Ace though isn't it?

Nina refused to go halves on it with me. This is in spite of the fact that she will use it more than me (I always make her Hoover the stairs, she loves it). The shop worker warned her not to get over excited about it. Her words were wasted, Nina squealed with excitement as she unwrapped it.

After the ace veggie curry I made for tea, I got an email from my former boss agreeing in politely formal tones to provide the reference. It was a relief, I had begun to worry a little. Maybe I want this college thing more than I'm letting myself believe. UCAS next. Gulp.

Friday 4.9.09

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Thursday 3.9.09

I've been enjoying Youtube clips of Tim Minchin lately. He writes and performs good tragi-comic songs and has a sexy stage presence down pat. It has been fun reading the comments from thousands of besotted teens and twenty somethings. It's amazing what way too much eyeliner and hair gel can do to make a man alluring. Gordon Brown might wish to take note. I don't totally get the image thing, but his work, which attempts to strip away sentiment but is paradoxically sentimental has me hooked. I'm perhaps showing my age by being a bit less keen on the atheist stuff. There seem to be a lot of young comedians God bashing and raving about science. I think it has become as fashionable to the new breed of white liberal intellectuals as homeopathy was to mine, taken up with equal zeal, and with equal ignorance. Do you follow the values of Jesus Christ? No, I follow the values of Dawkins, I like his books better.

It isn't that I'm bothered by this change in fashion. I had abandoned Christian belief before my age reached double figures, spent my teenage years in morning Assemblies refusing to bow my head, justifying this to friends and teachers. I grew out of talking about it though, and feel no desire to bang on about it or debate with anybody. One of Nina's friends turned up a couple of months ago with an Atheist badge. I wore CND badges in the 80's but I don't get that at all. Why would you need to tell people what you don't believe in? There is a whiff of faux superiority to the new atheist movement. As though having a spiritual belief of any kind should be considered childish. In amongst comments on Tim Minchin's work was a debate between two fans, one of whom was strongly denying the existence of the 'soul'. It was a music video, but they weren't talking about David Soul, it was all very earnest and conceptual. Considering the main aim is comedy, I felt the urge to tell them to lighten up. I also felt ever so slightly defensive because in spite of my own rationalities where organised religion is concerned, I do believe in the soul. Without soul, what is sentience, or love, or friendship, or humanity but a few ounces of grey matter and electrical impulses? If that's all it is, then that's too scary for me to get a handle on. I need a bit of mystery.

Closer to home, I had cause to wonder what makes one person like or dislike another. H had a new friend over today. From a brief conversation, I found myself liking her, which is odd, because I'm generally quite reserved and don't really like visitors (that's not the depression talking, that's just me). While I scrubbed up the kitchen I thought about it and concluded that I had taken a liking to her because she had laughed at my jokes. That was enough for me. I think I may indeed be that shallow. Later on in the evening, I told H about this. "Ah", said my kid. "I'll phone all my mates and let them know, then they can all come round tomorrow." Gulp. I shall be sure to make no more jokes to teenage strangers. Just in case. It would be for H's own good. There's nothing worse as a teenager than having your Mum try to ingratiate herself with your mates, now is there?

Saturday 8.8.09

It's bed time. The other day, I got my credit card out and ordered Nina a new bed. For the first time it's gonna be a double.

As Nick sometimes gently points out, I'm soft where the kids are concerned. Her old single (must be eight or ten years old and much repaired) fell apart. She offered to buy her own but I felt sorry for her, she works such a long week for very little money, and since she was willing to go for the cheapo Argos option, I ordered it for her. It is due to arrive on Monday, so Nina and her Dad spent the morning taking the old one apart and rearranging her room for the new one. It was a nice family type thing, poignantly commonplace.

Nick and I were reminiscing about when we were young, sleeping together in single beds, just as until now Nina and her boyfriend P have had to do. We broke a slat in Nick's bed in his teenage bedroom at his parent's home. It was smirkingly repaired by Nick's dad who as far as I know - and I think we would have known - never said a word to Nick's mum. We never slept together in that bed though, Nick would sleep downstairs on the floor, coming back up next morning with tea to reach under the bedclothes. We giggled quietly as we still do. Our favorite shared single was in my student room at Headingley. Nick would drive up from Coventry every weekend, and we would sleep snug in the old single bed that was a mattress over a metal spring base, extra squeaky, wedged against the wall that adjoined the bathroom. I had the smallest room in the house and it was a cold place in a cold city.

It was our first regular pattern of spending whole nights together. I had the outside edge and often woke with a jerk, almost falling out. Nick had the side next to the wall, the cold side. I still love the lyrics by Billy Bragg that ran 'When I fall between you and the wall/Our Titanic love affair sails on the morning tide'. It's from the ahem 'seminal' Milkman of Human Kindness, he still sings it live, on most but not all set lists. Knowing Billy, the line could have some political meaning, but when I think of it, it's about falling out of bed on the wall side. Nick and I had other single beds, one in a bedsit I had in Leeds, but only for one weekend (a make or break one in our relationship though), and one in another bedsit that we rented for the summer before we got married. Once we started living together properly, for a while, I missed the closeness of sleeping in a single bed, feeling somehow less loved. We both slept a lot better though, and got used to the space. Now, we have a kingsize bed, and it all felt a bit cozy the other week when we had the double at the holiday place.

Years ago, facing ongoing health problems, Nick's parents put a single bed in their room, alongside their double. Nick's Dad was especially sad, but was anxious that G wasn't able to sleep as he was restless. I wondered idly why they didn't get two singles to save on space. I was in my late twenties, married with two children. What an idiot. Ah, but I've enjoyed teasing Nina about her new furniture.

I wish Nina well in her occasionally shared double bed. I'm not sure what kind of Mother that makes me. A different one from Nick's Mum, and from mine is for sure. I don't have religious or moral concerns. I don't think the having of more sleeping space is necessarily liable to lead to promiscuity, or STIs, or pregnancy. I hope it leads to the ability to stretch out and therefore, to more comfortable sleep. Although..... the trouble with parenting I find is that you only know after the event.

Tuesday 9.6.09

Feeling 100% better today. Nina came home earlier than expected, and although she was feeling a bit cross about working patterns, I was glad of her help to get the house sorted. She was up-beat and pleasant about it. We did a better job than I would have done on my own, and in less time too. I made the mistake of spraying febreze though. I genuinely prefer the smell of dog, and it set my asthma off. I never learn.

All of the scrubbing was in honour of H's visit. Nina and I went up to the supermarket for bread and milk, but mostly to get posh biscuits. Nina asked why H's visit merited the biscuits. That's a difficult one. I don't say I need an excuse but sweet stuff, but nice biscuits is largely about being middle class. I got the aspirational 'The Best' range of ganache filled Belgian biscuits. Yummy and showy offy. I knew H would like them, and that she would laugh at my pretentious but delicious purchase. H and I had a nice time, although I got a bit too emotional thinking about the first time she became ill, and made a bit too grand an apology about not being as helpful as I should have been. It was as though I had been drinking, I made a right tit of myself. I had been drinking, but only tea. Anyway, she took it in the spirit I intended and I hope it doesn't put awkwardness between us in the future as we are maybe going to see Billy Bragg.

I know you won't think me such a tit if I tell you that strawberry French Fancies are back in the shops. The special summer edition ones, all pink. I am not embarrassed to say I bought two boxes. Life is sweet.

Tuesday 2.6.09

Today's big thing was going to see Richard Herring do his last performance of the Headmaster's Son. It wasn't just that though, it was a big day in lots of ways.

At the eleventh hour, Nina's friend H was able to come with us so that the ticket abandoned by my brother didn't go to waste. We needed to get to Bristol for 8pm but decided to head off around 2 in the spirit of a day out. P brought his sat-nav which was a fantastic help.

The fun started outside out front door. A disembodied voice shouting 'Wankers' repeatedly. She didn't seem to be shouting at anyone in particular, just at the world in general. We all fell about laughing, but couldn't see the person responsible, which seemed a bit of a shame. That kind of comedy is hard to top.

We got to the Tobacco Factory in Bristol just after 4.30. It's a big space, in a regeneration area which is both poor and arty making for an unusual mix of inhabitants. There were lots of small shops beginning to close, and no evening places open. I was hot, tired, and - most importantly - without a hat. The sun was incredibly strong and I knew that I might well get a headache that would ruin my evening. We were practically thrown out of a shop by a gnome like woman 'are you going to buy anything because I'm closing', so we slunk away to find a park. We found one in the end, but I was conscious that by this time I was dithering and being selfish, old, and an arse. N, H, & P went and played in the sun, they had been incredibly kind to me which says a lot for them as I didn't deserve it. I sat on a bench under a tree watching men practicing their tightrope skills. I did a bit of writing which I haven't dared to re-read, it might be brilliant, but I suspect not.

We went in search of tea but ended up eating Londis sandwiches at a bus stop.

Back at the Tobacco Factory things started to improve. We went in well after Doors Open as I didn't feel like being at the front (the performance was being filmed for DVD). We split up, and I sat next to a retired man, light skinned with a red nose, much the worse for drink. He engaged me by asking if I was a teacher, going on to say that he thought a lot of teachers would come in order to reminisce because of the title. Alarm bells began to ring. I asked him if he had seen the performance before, he said not. Under questioning, I told him that I had seen it and had come again because it was really good. 'Ah, so we'll enjoy it' he said. I thought not, trying to imagine how he would deal with the wanking off paedophiles routine (or even any of the routine at all). Nina rescued me and H by finding seats for us together elsewhere, watching me from across the way had given her and P a good giggle. I couldn't help but keep an eye on my new friend. He and his wife didn't laugh the whole time. He fell asleep for a while, and they left in the interval.

Richard Herring was on good form and had an appreciative crowd. I have loved Headmaster's Son and was pleased I made the long journey for the last performance. I'm sad it was the last one, but it's a relief in a way because I've got a bit obsessed with parts of it, it has caught me up so that although I've seen it four times I still can't quote it. I thought Herring was a bit quick and nervy to start, but that he did the stronger parts of the routine better than ever. H and P who hadn't seen the show enjoyed it, which I was glad about because I was conscious that it isn't to everybody's taste and wouldn't have wanted to offend them.

We got back to Coventry at 1am. I was incredibly touched that P who had control of the mp3 player put Pulp on for me as he knows I like them without me asking him. Kindness beyond the call of duty. H and P sensibly stayed over, and along with Nina, got off early to work. I was glad of the thought of a lie in.

Is a disembodied voice shouting 'wanker' funnier than Richard Herring? No, but she did have that one brillant piece of material.

www.richardherring.com

www.tobaccofactory.com

Sunday 24.5.09

Having spent much of yesterday cursing my youthful fecundity and fantasising about my children leaving home, I spent today being a lovely Mummy entirely focused on their needs.

Oh, alright, almost. Nina was very excited about my suggestion that we all go to Drayton Manor theme park. It was quite refreshing, to see her that way as more often these days she projects quite a serious, grown up image. At nearly 19, I guess she can afford to be both childish and mature. She had already woken me early, but I had stayed in bed, and as is our fairly common pattern Nick had come back to bed for..erm, the things that couples might do at 8.30am on a Sunday. Nina burst into our bedroom in the manner of a lively five year old to demand that I get up, then stopped rather abruptly, "Oh, are you...". She hadn't seen much, but she was lucky, just one minute earlier...Nina's boyfriend had stayed over, so once we got downstairs, there was much hilarity. It is to Nina's credit that she did not say 'Eeeewww yuck', but as I say, one minute earlier...

So the car was full of Nick, Nina, P, and H when I drove up the M42 towards the outskirts of Tamworth. I used to know the road well having worked in in Tamworth for a couple of years. I think I started there in 1996 and finished in 1998, that's a long time, and a lot has changed for both the road (now a difficult drive thanks to the junction with the M6 Toll) and me.

Nick and I spent the day sitting in the shade for the most part. Neither of us like the big rides, and we felt a bit silly going on the tame rides with the under 8's. We did go on the model railway though. I talked to a little girl who was bursting to tell me about the humongous pink cat that she was carrying. Her Dad was with her. He had the look of a man who was simultaneously proud of his manly achievement in winning this amazing toy, and chagrin at having to now lug the thing around on all of the rides. I resisted telling him that his inexperience of parenting had led him to this. Never try to win the big cuddly toy until the end of the day.

We also spent some time in the Zoo, which considering it is part of a profit making organisation, is well kept and has some interesting animals who all looked happy. There was a brilliantly camouflaged black leopard, its spots were black on black, and you could only see it against the foliage when it moved its head so that its green eyes shone. The rhesus monkeys were fabulous as well, with loads of little babies. Best of all was the Tigers, which were just tigers being tigers. That's all they need to be impressive.

We ate far too much ice-cream, and everybody got on well. I got everyone's tickets, but it was nice to be able to ask Nina & P to get their own lunch (they are both earning a bit). Nina even volunteered to get H's lunch too. It was only slightly incongruous that I spent much of the day reading David Baddiel's The Secret Purposes which is about the internment of Jewish refugees in World War II. I am enjoying it, but it was strange to juxtapose the subject matter I was reading with the people enjoying a carefree sunny day at a theme park.

Guess what? All's right with the world, I'm a good Mummy again.

Saturday 23.5.09

Nick woke me up today with the news that we had received a letter from H's school. H and not been doing her homework. Despair made me want to hide under the duvet. Most of the time I feel like I'm an OK parent, but then something like this will happen and I feel totally at a loss of how to handle it. Nick had already shown it to H, who having said she 'hates that school', had thrown it down and flounced off. This, in the language of H means the school has it right.

I made it out of bed after a while, went into H's Hiroshima room and had a rant. That is, I'm afraid my default Mum setting. I don't do it very often, in fact this has been the first one since I started this blog, and I don't remember the one before that. I don't know what punishments other people use on their 15 year olds but I told H she was grounded and that if her work wasn't done and her room tidy by the end of the day, I would lock her out of all of the computers in the house. I had another rant about five minutes later when I smelled smoke. "Has someone lit a joss stick or a candle?", I asked. Chorus of 'no'. I traced it to H's room, and went on about how we don't light candles because they might set light to things and then someone would die.

I'll be able to check on the candles and tidiness situation, but not the homework one (which is the important thing to be honest). The letter from school tells us that our daughter is 'not getting her homework completed or handed in to her subject teachers on time'. It explains that the homework is important and that the Learning Manager will be monitoring progress and will inform us 'if there is or isn't improvement ' after half term. What the letter doesn't detail is the homework that needs to be done. Therefore, there's no way of us 'supporting' the school. It is a useless letter that is going to give us a miserable weekend, and with it being half term next week, there's no way of contacting the school to discuss it.

Stupid letter or not, it's H's responsibility. I've never managed to inspire her to work systematically through the things that need to be done. She has, since a very little child, chosen her own path, concentrating on the things that interest her to the exclusion of everything else. This led her to becoming quite adept at avoiding the things she doesn't want to do by means of lies, deception and distraction. At the moment, the interests are: composing music for guitar, watching short art films on youtube, seeing her girlfriend, and taking photographs. So, in spite of my talking to her every afternoon about her day, reminding her to do her schoolwork, providing books and internet access, and offering help, the letter has come home. Two days ago, there was a postcard congratulating her on her progress in maths. Perhaps the one cancels the other out.

I haven't told the truth. It's not H or the school's fault, it's mine. There is something I'm doing wrong. I just don't know what it is, and therefore can't change it. I have a horrid sense of guilty frustration with myself, feeling as I do that I set a very bad example. After all, I do very little work that the children see, and I'm nothing to look up to. Just for today, I'm wishing with all my might that I will wake up tomorrow five years older, and that they will both have left home and be living happy independent lives. They can visit once a week and I'll cook them dinner, we'll have a nice chat and then they can go away. I'm not expecting that wish to come true though, so I've planned a trip to Drayton Manor theme park for tomorrow. Just in case.