Thanks for the memory

“Thanks for my birthday Mummy,” says Eldest as he gets up from the sofa to go to bed. He bends his head towards me and I put my arms around his neck so I can kiss him and ruffle his hair, “and thanks for not embarrassing me!” High praise indeed.

He was 14 on Sunday and instead of a party with balloons, pass-the-parcel and pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey, like the one we held for our eight year-old three weeks ago, we agreed he could take some mates for a meal. He wanted to “go Nando’s,” and he didn’t want us tagging along.

Fair enough, but what about paying for it? “I could turn up and pay at the end if you like?” I suggest, hopefully. “It doesn’t really work like that,” Eldest patiently explains, “you pay first.” So that’s classy. We agree to give him the money and he looks absolutely delighted.

You don’t really want your mum turning up at Nando’s when you’re 14. I get it. I want him to have what he wants for his birthday, I just have to accept that doesn’t include me anymore. But we did still celebrate as a family in the morning. There was the customary opening of presents followed by the fry-up Eldest requested and then a cake with candles in the afternoon before his mates turned up. Did he want to wait and have the cake with his friends? No, he didn’t. I guess that’s embarrassing too when you’re 14. Funny, because by the time you’re in your forties it’s really rather nice.

Negotiation. At this age, it’s all about negotiation, and so far (cross fingers) it seems to work. There’s none of the conflict and emotion I had with my mother mostly because Eldest is so calm and laid-back about everything. He didn’t want me to go to Nando’s, or sing happy birthday with his friends, but he’s tactful, he doesn’t say, “Oh my God! That would be sooo embarrassing!” He just shrugs, raises his eyebrows a little and suggests we might not do it like that.

Then there was the sleepover on Sunday night (it was an Inset next day) when I agreed not to embarrass him by telling them to go to sleep at 10.30 and checking if they’d brushed their teeth, I said they could stay up, so long as we didn’t hear anything. Apparently, I’m the only parent who tells them to go to sleep at sleepovers. Yeah, right. Whatever. They all slept in the basement and we didn’t hear anything, so it worked; I guess.

It’s all a far cry from the first time, his real birthday, that June dawn 14 years ago, still my favourite memory and the one I use late at night when I’m trying to sleep. The other two births were lovely too but Eldest’s was special because…well, because it was first and it was good, great even. I know it’s not what everyone wants to hear, especially other mums with traumatic birth stories - and there are so many of them - but it has to go right sometimes. What can I say? I must be a peasant or something: I could have crouched in a field, had him and carried on threshing.

Instead of a field I almost had him in the car on Battersea Bridge on the way to the hospital. There was no time for pain relief and no time to ask for the water birth I wanted either, (as explicitly requested in my three-page birth plan. What a waste of an essay that was!). I arrived in a sort of animal trance, threw off my clothes, climbed on the bed and just managed to grunt the word, “water!” So they brought me a glass of the stuff.

“You’re going to have this baby within the hour,” said Jane, the wonderful young Australian midwife. It was just the three of us in the room – husband, midwife and me and dawn was breaking over the Chelsea rooftops: the beginning of a stunning summer day - and a new life.

That quiet early morning, the view through the window, the lack of intervention, the encouraging midwife, I think it all helped to get me through it, and I told myself, I can do this, it’s what I was made for. I’ve certainly never felt stronger or more alive and I guess there was some sort of natural high that kicked in as well. Of course it hurt, it hurt like hell; I didn’t wear the gown they gave me, and I didn’t lie down either, I knelt, with my arms over the head of the bed, and I had him, like that. It was wonderful.

Immediately before the cord was cut or anything, I took him in my arms, held him close and looked into his eyes, and he looked straight back at me. He seemed so wise, so knowing that I felt he was looking into my soul and we knew each other straight away. And I often think, despite all the ups and downs, all the inevitable frustrations associated with raising a rather lazy teenaged boy, maybe that’s why we still manage to get on, most of the time, because there was some sort of deep understanding between us right at the start. Probably sentimental rubbish, but I like to believe it.

Star Gazing

I’m in Claridges sipping champagne with Kristin Scott Thomas. Actually she’s sitting at the next table but let’s not split hairs. I was the first to spot her. You know when you see a celebrity but you’re not completely sure? It happened with Natalie Imbruglia in a bar. I thought: that woman looks like Natalie Imbruglia, just paler and much thinner. Then realised it was Natalie Imbruglia and she is paler and much thinner, if that’s possible. She looked ill. It must be her, I reasoned, she’s wearing a bowler hat indoors, in July. So it was a tad embarrassing when a member of our party, all a bit pissed and over-excited, nicked her hat and ran off.

It’s the same with Kristin Scott Thomas. Not the hat nicking thing, the pale and thin thing. But it’s definitely her. The friend I’m sitting with is thrilled, she says it’s because there weren’t many celebs where she grew up in Coventry. There weren’t many where I grew up in York either, just Judy Dench. But apparently they’d have killed for a Judy Dench in Coventry. She is a Dame now I suppose…Judy Dench, not my friend.

I used to work in the media, you see, where celebs were ten a penny. I’ve worked with Joanna Lumley, I went to her house and she gave me champagne darling. And then there was lunch with Michael Palin, just me, the manager of my department and Michael. And I’ve rubbed shoulders with any number of early 90’s BBC has-beens, you know the sort: Jilly Goolden, Tony Slattery, people we never hear about now. I’ve got a great story about Tony Slattery I often reel out at dinner parties, and one about Jilly Goolden. If you haven’t heard them ask me - but chances are you’ve heard them.

I got to know Bernard Cribbins quite well when I worked on Jackanory (how old does that make me sound, for God’s sake?), and once had drinks, at Soho House, don’t you know, with an actress friend (called Beverly Hills, I kid you not) and her great mate Meera Syal. So, maybe that’s why I’m not that bothered about Kristin Scott Thomas.

But I do love that movie, The English Patient, fabulous. I just cannot agree with another wonderful friend of mine, let’s call her G, who, although pretty perfect in all other respects insists Meet The Fockers is better. Maybe it’s because she’s foreign, she doesn’t get all that British tight-lipped restraint in The English Patient. Well I’m sorry, but that sex scene, the one on Christmas day, in the heat, while all the soldiers are celebrating and they’re doing it standing behind a wall? Need I say more?

Right now Kristin Scott Thomas is eating tiny cucumber sandwiches like butter wouldn’t melt. I really can’t imagine her doing it against a wall. But that’s great actresses for you.

Oh, and I nearly forgot, I met the Queen at Buck House (as husband endearingly calls it), special invitation, arrived by limo because I worked on a programme about her. Then, afterwards, caught a Network South East train home from Victoria Station to my bedsit in Streatham. Sat next to a man eating a burger. Bit surreal. But all that was many moons ago, in another life, or rather, a life. Nowadays I have to make do with Arthur Smith in the local café, or that Andrew Rawnsley chap on the way to school. He writes for the Observer, you know. Well, it impresses me.

Funny thing about celebrities, however minor, they always know when you know, you can just tell, it’s almost imperceptible but it’s there, that telltale little look, they’re watching for it. Kristin Scott Thomas knows we know and for some reason I find that annoying.

Here at Claridges, with the chandeliers, and the music, and the dainty little cakes like miniature hats at Ascot, all worlds apart from my usual routine grilling fish fingers in Tooting, I’m blissfully unaware that in approximately forty minutes I’ll be back home, heels kicked off by the front door, new dress hanging in the wardrobe again, chatting to the boys and husband wearing my sloppy trackie bums and attempting to cook two Waitrose Essential pizzas for tea but burning them round the edges because I’m a bit pissed.

And you know what, you can keep your celebrity lifestyle; truth is I’m happy in the kitchen with my kids. It’s lovely having little trips away from it (and them) now and again, like this one, because they make me realise that.

What are family holidays for?

It seems a silly question, but think about it. After days of military-style preparation: organising what’s to become of the pets, spending a fortune in Boots, washing and ironing my body weight in shorts and t-shirts, packing the car with everything from Monopoly to the obligatory boules set (and let’s face it, how many of us ever actually play boules on holiday?), it’s only the thought of walking back into that lovely empty house again after the cleaner has been and cleansed it all that gets me into the car. And that’s just the start. When they are good they can be very, very good, but when family holidays are bad, they are horrid. And sometimes they can be good and horrid at almost exactly the same time.

Take cycling through a coastal pine forest in France this week, wind in the face, hair blowing behind, husband and three boys up ahead, thinking – this is the life! And then, minutes later, rounding a corner to find Middle One standing beside his prone, twisted bike, eyes ablaze with tears, kicking furiously at the front wheel.

Or, later, hugging knees, sitting at the edge of an expansive, empty beach in the sunshine, starring out at the glittering surf, listening to the children’s delighted whoops as they roll down the dunes and then suddenly being confronted by Eldest’s naked left toe dripping bright blood onto the sand like water from a tap. “Mummy, I think I might have stepped on some glass…”

This is the stuff family holidays are made of, heady highs and plunging lows complete with unexpected challenges. How do I concoct a nutritious meal for five on an unresponsive electric hob using only eggs, UHT milk and a bulb of garlic? Or, how many times can I recycle socks (and worse!) for the children - and smelling them all to find out. (The socks, not the children.)

Good weather is key, having the power to turn a mediocre week’s break in cramped accommodation into a blissful retreat - as happened this week. Beginning a bit mixed, sunshine and showers, a little chilly, turning radiators up, finding that extra jumper, and so nearly sliding into disaster the evening it rained when we came back from Nausicaa and the older two, slumped on the inadequate two-man sofa in the tiny living-room/kitchenette, announced they really would rather be at home with the Wii and the X Box (and secretly I agreed). There was a complete volte-face when we awoke next day to blazing sunshine. What a wonderful place!

Success could be charted from then on by the position of the table outside, on which we took all subsequent meals, as it moved from the middle of the lawn, to catch every precious ray, to the increasingly essential dappled shade of a nearby tree.

And what meals! The chocolate bonanza that was petit dejeuner (chocolat chaud, pain au chocolat) moving on to the dejeuner of cheese, bread, beer and seafood and invariably ending with moules, or steak, frites in the evening, sometimes at a café by the sea. And if the wet Tuesday evening was the low, then the sunny Thursday morning horse riding with Middle One through the dunes was the definite high.

But best of all there was nothing and nobody else. No telephone, no Internet, no newspapers, no TV and no appointments to be made or kept, just us. In particular it was lovely to spend so much time with Eldest who, at very nearly 14, is increasingly leading a social life of his own at home in London. I told him, often, how much I was enjoying spending time with him as well as with the other two, and he smiled benevolently. In fact, he smiled a lot, despite himself. We all did. So, I think I’ve worked it out, that’s what family holidays are for.

Playing house

The playhouse is being dismembered. Loud cracks and splintering sounds are punctuated by sudden crashes, all of it reverberating down a green tunnel that is the row of gardens between two terraces. Virmas, a Lithuanian, and very possibly the best workman in London, is knocking it down.

Why? Because a neighbour living somewhere behind us, we don’t know exactly where, has objected. I bet they can hear it now, whoever they are. They might even be watching. Arguments, shouting children, booming music, we hear it all, and see quite a lot of it too. Our very own south London Rear Windows. Disgusted, I go back in the house to chop onions.

That playhouse was made from guilt - and my grandmother’s money. Guilt that, at our old house, three little boys had only a tiny, concrete garden to play in for years. The previous owner, fancying himself a bit of a bricklayer, had erected walls and platforms, none of them straight or level and all made of different materials, which dotted the area like toddler trip wire. Its only redeeming feature was a beautiful apple tree that Middle One in particular loved to climb.

On hot days that garden seemed to shrink, even after we eventually removed the concrete. It was so small the boys bounced off the fences while their footballs invariably bounced over them and adults, despite sitting as far away as possible, always got soaked from the paddling pool.

So what did we do? We moved to another house, where we live now, with another tiny garden. It faces northeast with no redeeming features whatsoever, not even a tree. Brilliant!

So when my grandmother left us a little money I hatched a cunning plan, (as Blackadder would say) finding out who owned disused land behind, (housing association) and enquiring if we might buy, or lease, it. After much to-ing and fro-ing we eventually signed a contract and the lovely Virmas come to sort it all, knocking down partitioning, erecting new fencing and laying turf.

Voila! We doubled the size of our garden and gained a tree for Middle One to climb. But still, it was dull. A tree house would have been ideal, but complicated. So Virmas made a playhouse (essentially a shed on stilts) with a hole in the roof to climb out and railings so they wouldn’t fall off. We presented it to Youngest for his birthday last year.

For three weeks the idyll lasted, then a letter. Someone had complained; the Council wanted a look. Let them! Surely they can’t make us pull down a shed in our own garden? Ahh, the innocence…

It was a lovely South African lady at first. She smiled; she said she couldn’t imagine the Council taking it further, what with the expense and the inconvenience. So when new messages began again in January, from someone else, I was sure it was a mistake.

Nope. More visits and letters, phone calls and the threat of an injunction. We needed planning permission. For a shed! The charmless new official wrote there was evidence of “demonstrable harm,” involving “noise and privacy issues” for our neighbours (the ones who keep us up having parties and barbecues in the summer, no doubt). In other words, our noisy children could look over the fence.

Husband wanted to fight it. I wanted to let it go. Then I wanted to fight it and he wanted to just let it go. When we found out planning permission costs £150, entails endless forms and would probably be denied, in a rare moment of accord we rang Virmas. Let’s spend the money on something else!

Best thing we ever did. John Lewis just delivered. “This is much better than a playhouse!” say the boys and right now they’re screaming and shouting at the top of their voices as they jump up and down.

Of course, bouncing on the new trampoline gives a clear view of all the gardens around and one neighbour's garden in particular.

Plan B

“I just don’t have Plan B,” I overhear a stressed-out mum saying in the school playground as I dash past. Ah, childcare problems! At least I don’t have any of those.

I may not have a career in TV anymore (or the job satisfaction and esteem that went with it) but I have absolutely no need for Plan B. Plan A works very well for me thank you very much. Plan A is polished to perfection. It’s Plan A all the way because Plan A is…me. And I’m here all the time.

We stay-at-homes don’t need Plan B because we don’t go anywhere, at least not the ones I know; a bit of tennis, a bit of coffee, the odd jaunt to Peter Jones, that’s about it. It’s the one thing we have over those, ‘don’t know how she does it’ types.

But this week the stars aligned or the Gods conspired, or something, and lots of rare treats came at once, like the number 159, or multiple orgasms. Two pamper nights, a gig, the theatre, a dinner party and a night at a spa hotel in Gloucestershire to celebrate a friend's birthday. I don’t care what husband says, I think you can have too much of a good thing. It was exhausting, especially relaxing at the spa hotel and for once Plan B was required. So I dusted it off and set it in motion: Daddy.

What could possibly go wrong? All he had to do was wave Eldest off to secondary school on Monday morning, take Middle One to primary and accompany Youngest to his appointment at the fracture clinic. So, feeling optimistic I packed my bijou over-night bag (three bikinis, four dresses and two types of moisturiser) and escaped.

“And then, after yoga, we all sat together, naked, in a bath of goats milk,” says friend, M, as we sip Kir Royales by the pool on Sunday lunchtime. She’s telling us about another escape, a weekend at a friend’s French Chateau with a group of scary alpha mums two years ago. They were meant to get in touch with their ‘inner Goddess’. I’m not sure if she found hers but it did make her feel (what was her expression? Oh yes,) frisky. Which can only be a good thing at our age. I’m hoping one night away might have the same effect on me.

It didn't, quite the reverse. Perhaps I should have tried bathing in goat’s milk rather than drowning in alcohol? So much was consumed in fact, that when my mobile eventually woke me at what felt like the crack of dawn on Monday morning (but was in fact five past nine) and a strange voice said Eldest was throwing up in a gutter outside school, I thought I was hallucinating. I wasn’t, it was the school secretary and she wanted me to come and get him.

“I can’t,” I stuttered, fizzes of nausea wafting up from my stomach like bubbles in a Jacuzzi, “I’m not even in London!” SO THIS IS WHAT IT'S LIKE TO BE A WORKING MOTHER. And then I remembered - Plan B. So I rang him.

Daddy was duly employed to ferry vomiting Eldest home from school along with the by now also vomiting Youngest (who obviously could not attend the fracture clinic) and as due penance I agreed to cut short my jaunt, but not before stuffing three tiny jars of complimentary sweets into my suitcase by way of compensation.

One problem: they weren’t complimentary. The other mums told me later. They cost £3.50. Each. If I give the hotel a nice plug do you think there’s any chance they might not charge the extra £10.50 to my already over-loaded credit card?

And by the way, did I say how lovely Cowley Manor was?

Kidding around

“Today I’m a goat, “ says Youngest, trotting off and crouching down behind a sapling, "and you have to find me." He is, of course, still clearly visible.

We are at Morden Hall, the aquatic and garden centre, buying weed for the fish tank and this sort of behaviour is not unusual; deciding to be an animal is his 'thing'.

Lately we’ve had to play, ‘I’m something cute and then you see me,’ every day on the way to school.

“Ah look! It’s a lesser spotted…” I begin, bleary eyed and struggling to form sentences early in the morning while carrying two book bags and a trumpet.

“No, No! In the accent!”

“Ah look!” I repeat, putting on my best Australian accent. It’s easier to try and get it right than protest.

Just occasionally I’d like to walk to school in silence. I’d like to drink in the lovely spring morning and the view of the common (we’ve been walking the back way). I’d rather not be a packhorse with a crap Aussie accent. But that’s motherhood for you, and, to be honest, there’s a tiny part of me thinking, ‘I’m such a great mum to be doing this!’ that almost makes it worthwhile… but not quite.

Youngest has been pretending to be someone - or something - for years. It started pre-nursery when I was invariably enlisted to be mother bear to his cub, or bitch to his puppy, (no sniggering at the back) and it wasn’t helped much by the nursery teacher who suggested I play on the floor with him. She said crawling improves the left/right orientation of the brain, or some tosh. So I was often on all fours barking round the living room. Not a future I envisaged when I did my B.A. Hons degree in English Lit.

Then there was a long period of space travel. Youngest always got the plum role while I could be any one of Buzz Lightyear’s many sidekicks: Mr. Potato Head, Slinky, Bo Peep, but never Woody - too much of a threat I guess. This went on for a while. I could be found in playgrounds with Youngest commanding I take-off in a rocket. Introverts need not apply for that job.

I know it’s not unusual for small children to have fads. The little boy over the road, let’s call him S - he’s three now - he had a thing for shampoo bottles, took them everywhere, lined them up, named them, put them to bed.

He played shampoo, went to sleep with shampoo and dreamed shampoo.

After six months of shampoo he awoke one morning saying, “where shampoo?” for the millionth time, and his mummy lost it.

“Enough already with the ****ing shampoo!”

And that mummy is a positive paragon, which just goes to show everyone has a breaking point. Which reminds me about the goat…

“When we get home, can you build me a goat shed in the garden?”

“You’ve got a playhouse out there, won’t that do?”

“No! Of course not! That’s no good for a goat!”

I even had to do the English comprehension homework - with a goat.

“So, what was the Granny doing when Jo got to her house?”

“Maaa! She was…Maaa!…Reading the paper…Maaa! And watching TV…Maaa! And knitting…Maaa! All at the same time…Maaa!”

I had to fetch fresh hay at bedtime.

“We can’t read that story! We have to find one about goats!”

When he woke up the next morning - you guessed it - he was still a goat.

Meanwhile little S over the road has moved on from shampoo. He’s obsessed with Barbie dolls now.

He lines them up, he names them, he takes them to bed...

also this week...

http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/families/article7123356.ece

Boxing Clever

“What I’d really like for my birthday,” said Eldest when he was about six “is a stick.”

Happy days that are now, unfortunately, long gone.

Two of them have a birthday coming up and no one has so far asked for a stick. An iPhone (you must be kidding, right?), a trampoline, but no sticks.

The youngest two are still crazy for cardboard boxes however. What is it about boys and boxes? If Middle One sees me demolishing an empty box - and I do love a bit of shredding - he goes mental.

“I needed that box! I was going to make something/keep my gerbil in it/use it for storing things…”

So I try to get boxes out of the house as soon as possible. As for boxes that come full of those white, foam, wiggly things - horror! I had to shower Youngest down last week after we unpacked lamps from John Lewis along with hundreds of tiny, sticky balls. They got everywhere: on his eyelashes, down his pants…

I let them keep a small stash of boxes in a cupboard and from time to time - for God’s sake don’t tell them - I have a little purge. I can always say the cleaner did it. She gets blamed for a lot.

Three years ago, when we moved, I dismantled a strange cardboard box-hanging-from-the-ceiling-from-an-old-piece-of-string arrangement in Eldest’s bedroom, throwing out most of the contents. You know the sort of thing: a few empty coke cans, some moldering conkers. I thought he’d forget, but he’s still looking for it.

Chucking things out is just something mums do, we have to, or we’d all drown in the tat. Just watch out for those transparent, orange recycling bags - they can spot a precious drawing through one of those devils at five paces.

“My drawing!”

“Oh no darling, what has the cleaner done?”

And then there are imaginary boxes. When Eldest was little he used to get scared at night. He was particularly freaked out by a Bible story (thank you Year 1 Teacher, you know who you are). I think it was the goat in was the burning bush. Anyway, one night it was really bad and I had to pull out all the stops.

So, getting into his bed and holding him close, I told him to imagine shrinking the monster until it was tiny, then dropping it into a strong box, winding a big chain around it, locking it up with a large, shiny padlock, carrying it down the garden, digging a hole, placing the box in the hole, covering the hole with soil, and then, finally, going back to the house. Genius.

He lay perfectly still listening to this long, detailed and (though I say so myself) rather brilliant ruse and then said,

“Mummy?”

“Yes darling.”

“That padlock…can I keep it?”

Actually, I think we gave him one as a birthday present that year.

Now that’s thinking outside the box.