A Pair of Smashers

Kate Middleton is sitting in a limousine on my work surface.

Oh, go on then: it’s not the real Princess Catherine of Middleton. It’s an egg sitting in an egg-box. But my daughter swears blind that it’s Kate.

“Can’t you see her hair?” she says indignantly, pointing to the brownish splodge somewhere near the reddish one (that’s her lipsticked mouth, apparently).

“Ohhhh … yes,” I say dutifully, nestling her back into her egg-box limo.

My daughter was very proud of her egg-princess. Until, that is, we got to Beavers.

There, we were greeted by the most astonishing range of eggs you could ever encounter. The Eggs-Factor (complete with wigs, stage and disco lights); an Egg-splosion (a Chemistry lab with an egg-head professor); an egg flying a Lancaster bomber. Some parents obviously have too much time on their hands.

“I don’t think I’m going to win,” my daughter sighed.

Unsurprisingly, she didn’t. That honour went to the egg-doctor and his eggs-ray machine. But as I look at Princess C on my work surface, I think that she and my daughter are both simply smashing.

 

You Know You’re Your Mother When…

The marvellously wonderful Anna Tims (Adventures of a Middle-Aged Matron) has alerted me to this week’s listography at Katetakes5. The topic is ’Five reasons I know I’m a… [mother/bag lady/prevaricator - you choose!]‘. Sadly, there is only one thing I know I am for sure – and that is my own mother.

So – you know you’ve turned into your mother when:

You start quoting the Daily Mail as the source of all wisdom.

You tell your children that life is grim, life is earnest – just to annoy them.

You start watching programmes about gardening and antiques.

You iron your tea-towels.

You start growing sprouts for Christmas dinner.

QED!

We Must Be Barking

As Neil Tennant once sang: I want a dog.

I have been trying to persuade my husband to consider getting a dog for 15 years, to no avail. His objections have known no bounds. A dog would stop us from going on foreign holidays. It would need walking. It would cost us a fortune in Pedigree Chum. It would need taking to the vet.

However, my daughter is obviously more persuasive than I am. She is dog-mad (she sleeps with an entire army of stuffed dogs), and has managed to convince Daddy that she needs a dog for her eighth birthday this summer.

Now that my wish might be coming true, I am now not sure whether to jump for joy or hide under a duvet and never come out again. I grew up with dogs. They are like children, only they never get to the stage where they can go into town for the day with their friends. It’s true that the only place we’ve been on holiday for the past 15 years is Whitby – but a dog would definitely put paid to day-trips to John Lewis (infinitely preferable to any foreign holiday).

But now that we have agreed to get her a dog, we have to agree on the type.

We do agree that it can’t be too big, too hairy, too yappy, too smelly, too moulty, too girly, too diggy, or too jumpy-uppy. It definitely can’t be too slobbery.

This rules out … most dogs, actually.

In fact, it leaves us with whippets. I would gladly have another whippet – only my husband deems them ‘too bony’.

It also leaves us with border terriers. Husband would gladly have a border terrier – only I deem them ‘too terrier-y’.

Fortunately we still have three months to find the perfect dog. But I fear it might be in the toy department.