"I want to be like everyone else"

It is day 10 of Primary One...

This is not the end.

It is not even the beginning of the end.

But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.

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This picture was taken today, about two hours ago. It is the first day of the Scottish school year,  L's first day of proper school, and S and A's first day in the nursery at the school (sort of a half way between nursery and reception, for those of you down South).

And I have come home to a very quiet house, with this post in my head, and discovered that Tara has set Emotion as the subject for the Gallery.  And although I have been rubbish and haven't done the Gallery for months, this seems like more than coincidence.

I'm not sure what emotion it is though.  I'm not sure what I'm feeling at all.  I can't quite identify it; but I have a very odd feeling in my stomach.

What I wore

Well, Potty Mummy and others, the party of the century (or at least the last forty years) was precisely one month ago today.  And I did it....

And this is, sadly, the only photo.

Oh, and those are my sister's slippers.  Apparently they're her favourite thing.

Bleak House

That's not a witty metaphor or a clever allusion.

It's a literary reference of the purest form.

I'm sitting on an east coast train, slightly teary tissue scrumpled up on the table, and I've just finished Bleak House.




When I started blogging about my reading I was doing so, and I said I was doing so, partly in the hope of improving my literary diet. Yet when I look over my book-related posts, that's not the impression I get.

The last book I read actually isn't that shameful. It was Kate Atkinson's latest Jackson Brodie: Started early, took my dog (or something like that). It's good, it made me think about loss, and children, and the loss of children. But I don't think it can be a good sign that one day I want to read all the series in a row because they're all starting to blur into one.

So, anyway, I bought Dickens. All of them. Sixteen books sitting on my shelf. A challenge.

And I started with Bleak House, all 880 pages of it. In 8 point print.

To be fair, this isn't the first Dickens I've read, I've enjoyed, years ago, both A Tale of Two Cities (no italics, I'm on my phone) and David Copperfield, but nonetheless I approached the weightiness of Bleak House with trepidation.

Was I really strong enough?

A revelation! It's brilliant. I know I should have known that, but somehow I'd forgotten. People aren't still reading this stuff a hundred years later just because a few dreary critics and English teachers say they should. They're reading it because they are carried along by the plot, because they see those they know in the characters, because it makes them laugh (another shameful revelation there - despite English A-level and literary (though not English) degree, I had no idea that Dickens was funny) and cry, and because it makes them look at the world afresh.

And I'm not just saying that because I'm a Chancery lawyer.

My plan was to intersperse Dickens with nonsense, as light relief, but in my suitcase, along with two books the titles of which I have already forgotten (although I packed them only hours ago), is Hard Times.

And I know which one I want to read.

What should I wear to my husband's 40th?

It seemed like such a good idea at the time:

Please wear your favourite thing (and your swimming costume).

It's B's 40th on Monday (let's skip over the oh my goodness where on earth did the last ten years go bit) and we are having a party.  It's a These are a few of my favourite things party, because that way he gets to have all the stuff he likes: champagne (on offer), hot tub (hired - hence the swimming costume), karaoke, disco, roast pork, poppadoms (the curry house is bringing 100 round at 6.30 on the evening), ice cream... All in the garden (if the rain ever stops).

So obviously, the dress code is your favourite thing.  Which seems so easy, until you think about it.  Because actually my favourite thing is the thing that makes me look most like Angelina Jolie and least like a slightly stressed, slightly flabby, slightly saggy mother of four. (Angelina has six, or seven, which must be easier, economies of scale, and all that). And I don't seem to have a magic wand handy.

I've narrowed it down to the fact that I can't buy anything new (because that feels like cheating) and I genuinely like dressing up (in the posh, not stupid, sense), so where plenty of people are planning on coming in their pjs, that's not for me. I want to look splendid, and pjs (or at least my pjs) aren't splendid.  And I'm definitely wearing these:

But what else?  Because while B might be quite happy to have me in just gold sparkly shoes, I'm not sure the Scottish Borders is ready for that.

Here's the shortlist.... leave a comment letting me know what you think. I don't promise to do what I'm told, but some independent thoughts (and not that I need my legs waxing, that's next Tuesday) would be very much appreciated.

We could go sort of smart casual-ish.  These are absurdly flattering jeans (although better with shoes), and it's a nice top, although looking at the pictures I'm not sure it doesn't make my body look long and my legs short, which they are, but still....

Or the other extreme.  Nothing casual about this. I bought it for a friend's wedding in 2003.  Still love it:

 
Downsides: it appears to make me fade into the background, but I'm hoping that's just the picture.  Oh, and no bra... possibly unwise in a woman who has breast-fed (and sort of appears still to be breast-feeding) four children.

Or this.  I made this dress out of fabric my brother bought back from his gap year in China. Quite proud of that, but not sure I still have the figure I made it for. 

Or what about this?  I bought this in a charity sale about two weeks ago for a fiver.  It makes me feel all flirty.

B's always been quite a fan of this dress, which I bought with a friend (the same one whose wedding it was, as it happens) in about 1999.  I'm not convinced it does that much for me, but he wants me to put it to the vote:

He's also quite keen on this one, my amazing coat, bought on a whim for my birthday about five years ago in a funny little shop by Baron's Court tube, but I haven't got anything that really works underneath it (this purple job's a bit of a poor compromise), and as I've mentioned I'm not sure the Borders is prepared for the alternative:

So what about this?  Bought for the day after our wedding, when all the people my parents like but we don't know were invited for lunch.  Got a bit of a red wine stain on the front of it from a wedding about a month ago, but you can't really see it...

Or this? It is one of my favourite things, after all....but is it really that sort of party? And am I prepared to risk it?

Answers on a postcard (or in the comments box, if that's easier...).

How to keep your children entertained for the whole* of the holidays

I had a shock on Tuesday.

It was the end of term.

Yes, readers South of the Border, you did read that right.  The END OF TERM.  On TUESDAY.  It's not even the last week in June and I have all of my children all of the time.

Until, even more weirdly to someone raised on English terms, the 12th of August.

As I said.  Weird. I'm sure I'll get used to it, but nonetheless, and I say this as someone whose children are still only in school/nursery half days, it has caught me unprepared.

Still, we have survived the first two days, unscathed, thanks mostly to the Toucan Box.

I was sent the Toucan Box about a month ago, and I foolishly started it then, but it is, genuinely, not only one of those "ideas I wish I'd had" but also one of the very few freebie/testy/bloggy things I've been sent that I will, honestly, be spending my hard earned cash on again.

It's a box which arrives at your door with no fewer than four (yes, four... if you eke them out, that's one a week, so 2/3 of the holidays done) crafty activities, a story book (Dazzle Duckling - I thought it was quite annoying, but that might just be because I have read it approximately fifty times in the last three weeks), colouring pictures, instructions, inspiration, and, and here's the impressive bit, all the stuff you need:  all the glue, the glitter, the paper, the funny little matchsticky things, the card, the sequins, even the bird seed. The whole bang lot.  All you provide is scissors.  For the distinctly craftily challenged, this is priceless.

Here's a little gallery of us making our stuff over the past four weeks.  Stupidly, as I've said, we started it pre-holidays, so now we've finished it and are going to have to get another one.  You, if you are five miles South of me, have three weeks to prepare. You have been warned....

How it arrived....

 We started with the peacock collage... (each of them had a different colour)

 

We did the colouring in, too

 Next up, the bird feeder.

Quite a lot of audience participation required here

In situ. Although if the truth be told, it didn't survive the combined onslaught of heavy rain and even heavier pigeons.  RIP bird feeder.

Next up, the toucan family.  This was our favourite.  I liked the very gloopy paint that didn't go everywhere when knocked over

and they liked the toucans (actually I'm quite proud of these too, although they are a little fragile for the amount of loving they've been getting):

And last but not least, we had the bird glider.

It doesn't glide:

But we enjoyed colouring it in:

The Toucan Box isn't cheap (if you sign up for one a month for a year it's £16.95 a month, and it's more expensive than that if you sign up for a shorter period of time), but it is absolutely, totally, from the bottom of my heart, worth it.   If you know me and have small children, these are your presents...

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Full disclosure alert - they sent it to me for free.  But I honestly will be buying them in future.

*ish... but you could definitely call it 2/3...

The secret agony of every parent.

M is ill at the moment.  Not, I hope, really ill, but ill enough that the words "maybe we'll admit him if" have been mentioned.

While I sat in the surgery for the second time in 24 hours, M floppy and listless against me, I realised that when you're pregnant everyone wants to share their stories with you.  They tell you about stretchmarks and piles, forceps and stitches, epidurals that don't work and midwives that don't care, sleepless nights, colic and exploding nappies, stomach upsets, fighting and whinging.

They tell you about the night, six weeks in, that their husband said: I can't take this any more, and walked out, letting the door slam behind him.

Or the New Year's Eve in Edinburgh when their two week old twins screamed and screamed, until babies and parents fell into an exhausted, fretful sleep at 11.45p.m.   A sleep which lasted only fifteen minutes before the whole world exploded in a crash of light and noise and heaving I can't cope sobs.

Or the time they fell asleep on the sofa, cuddling their three day old baby.  And the baby rolled off them onto the floor, and they woke to the scream, and the wide open eyes of accusation and pain.

And all those things are (and were) awful.  Frightening and painful and tough.

But none of them is the worst thing about parenting.

This is the worst thing about parenting.  Everyone must know it, but no-one talks about it:

You can't keep them safe.

They are the most perfect human beings ever to have existed and you'll never be able to keep them safe.

When L was about four days old I rang my mother in tears.   I couldn't bear to put L down because I was frightened that she would never wake up.  But I was scared of more than that. I was scared of everything: grazed knees, tummy upsets,  broken limbs, broken hearts, muggings, assaults, injury, illness, death.

My baby will get hurt, and however hard I try I can't stop it, I said, through sobs.

That's what being a mother is,  my mother said.  I still feel like that about you.  Admittedly, I don't worry so much about you having a bath on your own, but I don't sleep well if you're out of the country and I start to panic if I ring you twice and I can't get hold of you.  It doesn't change because you're grown.  It's just there, and it never goes away.

I didn't know. How could I know? No one told me.

Every night before I go to bed I do the rounds of my children.  I go to A and S first.  Normally one of them has fallen out of bed, so I pick her up, and steal an extra cuddle.  I tuck her in, and then her sister.  I kiss them both, listening to the rush of their breathing.  I go to L, normally face down in her pillow, hair hiding what little of her should be visible.  I brush it away and kiss her too.  I move to M's room.  I can't reach to kiss his face over the bars of the cot, but I stroke it, and lift his hand, simultaneously pleased and nervous when he moves - is he going to wake? - and kiss that.   Each little kiss is a memory of that conversation with my mother.  They feel more vulnerable in their sleep, tucked up in their warm safe beds, than at any other time, and I feel acutely, painfully aware of that vulnerability.

But I push that pain away, down into the depths of my self.  I ignore the knowledge.  Don't look at it, don't speak about it.  Pretend it isn't there.

I can't keep them safe.

And, somehow, I know that every other parent, even though we never talk about it, feels it too.