Home is… something far too many people don't have.

Haven't got the pictures on the walls yet tho...

"Yes," said a friend of mine, when I showed her the newly decorated back bedroom and said how happy I was sorting it out and putting everything back in it, "Staying at home and putting a child's room back in order is nice, but I'd rather go out for cocktails." And she did. 

I think I would rather stay in and sort out Middle One's bedroom, I thought. 

Really? 

No really, I would. 

Wow. That is strange. 

Or is it?

(This is me talking to myself by the way).

I had been spending the late sunny afternoon indoors putting Middle One's room back together, after several weeks of building work in there, when she popped over to have a pre-cocktails drink in the garden. 

The drink was lovely. It was lovely to see her. It is always lovely to see friends, and to natter, and to go out. But I also love to stay in. Love it.

There has been damp in that top back bedroom, and a ceiling that looked in danger of caving in, and so we had the chimney stack taken off the roof and tiles mended up there, and the chimney breast removed inside, which makes an already good-sized room seem huge, and then a new window put in… and some new plastering... and while we were at it spot lights in the ceiling... and lights under the shelves for the desk … To be honest it all got a little out of hand but it's all finished now. Hooray.

So I was in heaven sorting it all out, emptying the boxes filled with his things and putting them back on the newly painted shelves. There is nothing I like more than arranging things on a shelf. Bliss. In fact all homemaking is a joy to me. I love it. Renovating, decorating, organising, styling, tidying, chucking things out, planning, painting, even putting flowers in a vase and unpacking the shopping onto the pantry shelves gives me immense satisfaction (but this is because I have a new pantry/kitchen, which I am in love with). Some people love their homes, love homemaking in all its shapes and sizes, and some people don't so much. 

And this got me thinking about what a home is, just bricks and mortar at the end of the day, of course, but also a construct: a place both physical and psychological within whose walls - that we imbue with colour, that we plaster with pictures and shelves and 'things' - we stamp our identity and make a little world of our own. 

I love creating that world, and I love being in it. Which then got me thinking about people who are less fortunate, who don't have homes to homemake in… 

Here are a few shocking statistics.

* 112,070 people declared themselves homeless in England last year - a 26% increase in four years

* Over the same period there has been a 75% increase in people sleeping rough in London taking the number to 6,437 for 2013- 14

* The estimate is that across England 2,414 people slept rough on any one night last year

* There are currently fewer than 40,000 hostel beds in England 

* The number of 16 to 24 year-olds sleeping rough in London has more than doubled in the last three years 

* 2,090 families with children are living in bed and breakfast accommodation (2013), an increase of 8% on 2012 figures 

* With more than a third of those living in B&Bs beyond the legal limit of 6 weeks

My heart goes out to those people, and to all people across the world who find themselves displaced or homeless through natural disaster, or war, or poverty. Because home is such a joy, truly where the heart is, as the cliche goes, and where family happens. And that is everything. At least to me.

And now I'm off out for cocktails. (Only kidding, I'm going to put a wash on actually).

Love E x

Ok, so he chose the colours...

Stats from Jon Henley, The Guardian, 25th June 2014 http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/jun/25/homelessness-crisis-england-perfect-storm

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The pants behind the bathroom door.

There is a pair of pants behind the door in the bathroom right now. I know this without even getting up from my desk to look. How do I know? Because there always is, every morning. One of my three boys (I won't name names) drops them before he gets into the shower. And almost every day I say, "Please don't drop your pants behind the bathroom door". 

When I went away with some mum friends recently I came back to find three pairs of pants behind the door, one for each morning I was away. And when I stayed in a B&B with this particular child - who will remain nameless - he left his pants behind the bathroom door there too. I only saw them at the last minute as we were leaving.

The pants behind the door is just one of the petty frustrations of being a mum to three boys who are 17, 15 and 12. 

To be honest I sometimes don't mind. I trudge upstairs from my office to the top floor, where they each have a bedroom and share a bathroom, and pick them up, along with the wet towels, and open the window and wipe the toothpaste off the sink. Sometimes I even use the pants to wipe the sink. 

On a good day, when I'm not particularly busy and feeling calm and relaxed, it can give me quiet satisfaction to tidy up. On a bad day, when I have lots of things to do and not very much time, it makes me want to pull all my hair out. 

But this is not the only irritating thing about being a mum to three boys who are 17, 15 and 12. 

Here's more...

Empty glasses bowls and plates in bedrooms so that there are none left downstairs in kitchen. This is compounded by "Where are all the glasses?!" issued in an outraged manner by a boy who opens the empty cupboard. In your bloody room, is usually the answer. This is another thing I do almost every day after the pants/towels/toothpaste routine - a glasses sweep.

This leads me neatly on to "Where is my… ?" And you see where that ellipsis is? The three dots after "where is my?"? Well in that space feel free to add pretty much anything you like from the following list - P.E. kit, book bag, vest, trainers, phone, Oyster card, shirt, favourite jeans, important letter from school, I.D. card, money. To be honest it's endless.

Following hot of the heels on the old favourite "Where is my…" is "Where is the…" In this case please feel free to place any of these - nail scissors, kitchen scissors, glue, sellotape, bread, juice, biscuits, remote control, back door key, printer ink etc...

So this is the mother's dilemma. Does she tell them where this item is and/or go and look for it only to find it moments later in the EXACT place she said it would be? The advantage of this approach being that she can then feel quietly satisfied that she does know SOMETHING, which will give her empty life some sort of sad and twisted meaning. OR, should she jolly well keep her mouth shut and let them look for themselves because a.) they should and b.) no one ever helps her when she has lost something? So there.

"There is no food in this house". That old chestnut (and yes there are some of those in a tin in the cupboard). No matter how much food I haul back to the cave, and I haul bags and bags of the stuff over the course of a week, it is never enough and they are never satisfied. I am poor mummy bird endlessly flapping back to her open-mouthed brood. I will never get enough juicy worms for their liking. I know this. I should give up trying. Especially the quest to have enough biscuits. It ain't never gonna happen. 

Recently I have taken to hiding food stuffs so that I can produce more without having to go out to buy it. I did this with the tonic water this week. I hid two bottles behind the wine. When I went to have a glass of tonic last night it was all gone.

There is more, of course, clothes and shoes on the floor, mess everywhere, washing not put in the washing basket, or ever put away, holiday/school trip packing never done for themselves, unpacking never done for themselves, and I haven't even mentioned the noise yet, which is epic at times. I'll save all that for another time. 

Because I am aware, I do know, that in some strange way I love it really. Because it's them. They are MY boys, with all their mess and chaos and noise. Family life is challenging and busy, often exhausting and frustrating, but I love them to pieces with a passion, a fervor, that I cannot begin describe. They are ace, fab, super, brilliant, wonderful. We have enormous fun, laughing and rowing and cuddling and fighting and shouting and singing and guitar playing and having meals times and dashing in and out. I love that we all live together in this mad, crazy house. 

And God knows I'm going to miss those pants behind the bathroom door when they are gone.

After breakfast - the kitchen table mess they all leave behind for me. Thanks.

Love E x

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Meal times are for arguing.

Meal times are for arguing. You might think that's a bad thing, but I'm not so sure…

Sitting down for dinner is special family time. We eat together every night at 7.00, unless there is a very good reason why we can't, like it's parents evening for one of the boys, or one of us is going out to a 'do'. 

I cook. Usually I begin cooking at 6.00. Meals are made from scratch and almost never from a recipe. Because I've been cooking for a family for more than 17 years now, every night, I have become inventive. Perhaps it is a lasagne, or a fish pie, or a roast chicken, always proper food, but more often that not it's something I've made up using the things I happen to have in the fridge, especially leftovers. Often these will emerge in a pie or as fritters or in a stir fry, their favourite...

This is the one time of day when all five of us are guaranteed to be together in the same room for at least half an hour and so this is when conversations happen and also, very often, when we argue. 

Lately there have been a lot of arguments, or perhaps it would be better to call them 'heated debates'. They are often began by something I have read in the paper and decide to share, or by Eldest, who tells us something he has read or something he has heard, or, more often than not, just something he thinks.

And recently, for fairly obvious reasons, politics has raised its head. I was going to say 'ugly head' but I am not one of those whose mantra is that all politics is boring and irrelevant and who declares emphatically, 'they are all the same anyway so what's the point'. 

I think being politically engaged, or at least aware, is a good thing. I want my children to know what is going on in the world around them and to form opinions based on information so that they can vote in elections, or at the very least decide not to vote in elections, because of things they believe. The worst thing by far would be for them to have no beliefs, no ideas, no passions. Political apathy is anathema to me.

And so lately we have argued about UKIP (even though we are all opposed) and immigration and what exactly constitutes racism and whether voting matters and how politics divides people and what exactly the Nazis stood for. Just the little trivial things, you understand. 

And although we don't all agree, and we rarely come to any firm conclusions, I hope that by arguing together as a family, in a safe environment around a dinner table, we are doing something that is valuable and helpful to these three boys, with their three very different developing minds, and that is making them think. As the famous philosopher and atheist Bertrand Russell once said: "Most people would rather die than think; many do."

Here is a recent stir fry. Always better to argue on a full stomach...

Love E x

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Too much book group last night.

I can't blog today because I have a cracking headache because I drank too much red wine last night at book group. First world problem, as Middle One would say. 

I had forgotten that if you are a mum you can't drink too much, it's just not worth it, because the next day you ALWAYS have to get up and cook things and drive people places and be sensible.

As I recall the last time I had too much to drink was on a Sunday evening in 2006. Never again. The agony/shame/sheer hell of that experience is etched into my psyche. 

I had been to a local wine bar to watch a friend who was singing and playing guitar there, and I hadn't eaten. I remember other mums kindly telling me later that the vast quantities of ropey white wine I had consumed must have been 'off'. I also remember having my head down the loo, retching, very early the next morning, while my anxious toddler hovered nearby endlessly repeating: "Is Mummy ok?" 

My living room curtains were still drawn at 2 in the afternoon. If there is one thing that denotes a bad mother living within, it's her living room curtains still being drawn to the world at 2 in the afternoon. 

It was one of those days that you long to be over as soon as it begins, and goes on in your head for what seems like weeks. I couldn't take my older two to school and had to get a neighbour to do it. I vowed never to get that drunk ever again. And I haven't.

I think it was the red wine last night. Rather a lot of it. Let's face it, it's what book groups were designed for: a load of mummies de-stressing mid-week on alcohol. Reading books hardly comes into it.

I had planned to write about money today. I had a whole thing about billionaires and capitalism, weaving in the housing bubble and over-heard in Waitrose anecdotes (my boys tell me the best one is - "Titus, can you get the alpaca milk, please?" but I think that might be made up). But I can't write any of that now because inside my head there is a banging akin to a primary school band practice  - percussion only. So you will have to wait for my pontifications on money.

And I hadn't even read the book.

Love E x

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Listen with mother.

I'm eleven years old. We don't have a telly at home because we've just come back from living in Canada and my parents thought it would be a good idea to try and do without one for a while. I'm not missing it either, but I am rushing home from school to be entertained by something. I'm loving the story and I want to hear more...

So who is telling the story, you wonder? Without a telly it can't be an episode of Jackanory I am rushing back for - although there was plenty of that before and after the period I am writing about now, and then I went on to work on the programme. Perhaps it's the radio then, a bit of Listen With Mother, or Poetry Please? 

Nope. I may be into double figures now but I am rushing back to listen to my mother read aloud to me. I can't wait to be curled up on the sofa with mum in the middle and my younger brother on the other side, listening to her read the next installment of A Likely Lad by Gillian Avery, or The Hobbit by J R Tolkien, or, when we were a bit younger, The Little Wooden Horse by Ursula Moray Williams.

These are precious childhood memories. My mother loved to read aloud to us as much as we loved to listen. She was great at 'the voices', as she called them. In fact she still is. And I have always suspected, but never known for certain, that one of the reasons I have grown up to be someone who loves to read and, more particularly, to write, is that I was read aloud to from a very young age and for a very long time. And incidentally my younger brother writes too. 

It occurs to me that when it comes to mothering we all have our strengths and weaknesses. I'm no good at teaching mine their maths times tables, for example, since I barely know them myself. I've never been very good at sitting down and doing a jigsaw with them either, I find it boring, and I don't much like playing board games. I wasn't fond of playgrounds back in the day (although I went to plenty) and I hated going to the local swimming pool standing waist deep in lukewarm water while they splashed around me (swimming pools on holiday are another matter entirely), but there is one area in which I can honestly say that I am good, and it's probably because of those early experiences dashing home from school to be read to by my mum, and that is reading aloud to them. 

Owl Babies, The Jolly Postman, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Where the Wild Things Are, Danny Champion of the World (read in the Isle of Wight one summer, I remember) Stig of the Dump, Charlotte's Web, The Wind in The Willows, The Hobbit, the list goes on and on and I read them all, some more than once, and I'm still reading to our youngest most evenings now (and so is Husband, at the moment it's Tin Tin).

So I was delighted to read in The Times last week that being read to as a child has a greater influence on academic success than whether parents had a degree. It was found that those children whose parents read every night to them when they were five, and who went on to have a passion for reading, did better at tests at 16 - even in maths - than their peers who has similar academic ability when younger. 

The study, led by Alice Sullivan at London's Institute for Education, which analysed the performance of 6,000 children born in 1970 in maths spelling and vocab tests, concluded that, "the positive link between leisure reading and cognitive outcomes is not purely due to more able children being more likely to read a lot, but that reading is actually linked to increased cognitive process over time." 

It's lovely to know that despite all the things I know I don't get right, and the guilt I sometimes feel about not sitting down to do their homework with them, as so many of the other mums I know do, I have been able to do one thing to help my three on their way, a thing that gave me - and I hope them - enormous pleasure. 

It may be the end of an exhausting day, it may be the last thing I feel like doing - and believe me I've been there - but once you get into it, with your child snuggled into your arm, mustering your best Gruffalo/Hobbit/Mr Wonka/Badger voice, reading that favourite story, perhaps even one that you remember your own mother reading to you, is a moment to treasure and a joy to pass on.

And they might do well at school as a result. Win win.

Love E x

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Stand and stare.

Alan Bennett says he can only write in the house when it's completely empty. He doesn't have three boys then, or workmen going in and out, or a cleaner, or a husband. Not one that we know of anyway. I haven't updated the old blog for ages and one of the reasons is that over the Easter holidays I was hardly ever alone in the house to write, and then I was working (more videos) and then I had workmen coming in and out (new decking, having the kitchen done trashed the old lot). Here it is… And the other reason was that I took a little break from social media, which started by accident over the holidays and then, when I realised I hadn't been on Facebook for a few days, or on Twitter, I continued deliberately.  I think I'll see how long I can abstain for, I thought, a bit like keeping off the booze, just to see if I could. And it turns out I could. At time of writing I haven't been on Facebook for more than two weeks. It has ended up being a sort of monastical online silence. Not that I was chanting. Actually I was planting. This is some of what I was up to… And it was as I was out in the garden enjoying the beautiful emerging spring, rather than blogging or Facebooking, that I kept thinking about the Center Parcs ad, you know the one where they quote the poem, "What is this life, so full of care…" I googled it actually. Here it is in full … Leisure WHAT is this life if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare? No time to stand beneath the boughs, And stare as long as sheep and cows: No time to see, when woods we pass, Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass: No time to see, in broad daylight, Streams full of stars, like skies at night: No time to turn at Beauty's glance, And watch her feet, how they can dance: No time to wait till her mouth can Enrich that smile her eyes began? A poor life this if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare. W. H. Davies And while standing and staring in the garden I discovered something. I discovered that 'family' is not a constant thing, it is a thing that we make, something fleeting, precious, that requires time and commitment. But most of all, time.  What is a family after all? A group people living individual lives, going off each day in different directions to mingle with other different groups of people and experience different views of the world.  But those moments when we are back together in the holidays, under the same roof, pottering in the garden, eating a meal, watching a bit of TV, going out to the cinema or a restaurant, these are the times when 'family' happens, that curious indefinable alchemy we sentimental types hold so dear. I decided that family is a series of fleeting happenings and shared memories that when woven together make something bigger and more important than the individuals in it. Apart we are just the pieces, the scattered patchwork squares, together we are the tapestry. So you could say I was concentrating on my tapestry for a few precious weeks there, looking inwards at how it is put together and taking care that this fragile thing made of disparate pieces is a strong enough whole, rather than looking outwards at the world via Facebook and Twitter. It has left me strangely calm, sleeping well and deeply each night, refreshed even. Perhaps we all need to take a social media holiday occasionally? Time to just stand and stare. Love E x Twitter @DOESNOTDOIT Facebook https://www.facebook.com/pages/I-Dont-Know-How-She-Doesnt-Do-It/547812378582001

I'm more a Panda Parent than a Tiger Mother.

So Kate Winslet wants to hold on to her children's childhood for as long as possible by banning them from computers and mobiles phones and not allowing them to slump in front of the telly for hours on end. 

If there's one thing I can't stand, it's child-rearing edicts dished out by pampered celebrities who have no idea what it's like to be trapped in the house for days - nay weeks - looking after a multitude of young children by yourself, while staring out of the window wondering where your life went, with one eye on the clock for a suitable moment to pour that first glass of wine. 

Sometimes sticking a child in front of the computer, or letting him have your phone to do a bit of filming or play a mindless game, is a God-send for your average beleaguered stressed-out mum. But then Kate Winslet is not one of those.

Those days are far behind me now - thank God - and I wouldn't turn the clock back and not have spent the time I did with my three boys at home for anything, because of course there were good times too, finger-painting-coffee-morning-playground-lego-building-story-telling-cuddling-away-rainy-afternoon-fun. But it's a tough job to give up work and stay at home with babies/toddlers/pre-school kids and I'm guessing Kate Winslet, with her let them eat cake instead attitude, or rather let them play in acres of her Wiltshire/L.A. garden, isn't really in a position to know that.

Mind you I pretty much resent all child-rearing 'gurus', pampered Oscar-winning actresses or not, especially that Tiger Mother. You know, the Chinese mum with the two girls who accepts nothing less than a A * in every subject and forced them to practice piano every night so that there were actually teeth marks on the instrument where one of them had gnawed on it in frustration. 

I subscribe more to the pandering line of parenting, pandering to their every need that is. Forget Tiger Mother, I'm a 'Panda Parent'.

Can't be bothered to insist they clear the table and would rather just get on an do it yourself because they'll only make a hash of it and wipe all the crumbs straight on to the floor for you to sweep up later? That's me.

Should really nag them to death about picking dirty clothes off the bedroom floor and putting them in the laundry bin themselves, or better still leave it on the floor so it doesn't get washed and they have nothing to wear and 'learn the consequences of their actions', but end up picking it all up and washing it anyway because you'd rather have a quiet life? Yup, me again. Mostly.

Know that you should be telling them to practice the piano when they get in from school because you are wasting your money on lessons every week otherwise but would rather sit and have a nice undisturbed cup of tea while reading the paper? You guessed it.

And the thing is, all that is true and our kids are ok. The eldest two play their instruments (electric/acoustic guitars) morning noon and night and I've never nagged them to do it. (Mind you I did make sure they learnt an instrument that I thought was likely to still be 'cool' when they were teenagers and I think that helps).

They get their homework done without being chained to their desks. I think.

They will do things around the house when they are asked, and sometimes when not.

I let them go on the computer way too much but I make sure I can see what they're up to. For the most part.

And yes I know I pamper them, I pick them up and drop them off from things because I don't like the idea of them walking in the cold and the wet when they are tired. 

I like to bake a cake and leave it in the kitchen for when they get home from school if I know I'm going to be out filming or on a recce or something.

And I hug them and get hugs back. A lot. Does the tiger bully mother get that? I like to think not. But we all like to think we're doing the right thing when it comes to parenting, don't we?

The truth is we're all muddling along trying to do the best we can. Even Kate Winslet.

Love E x