Let Them Eat Cake (from M&S)

I am always slightly behind the times. But even I can’t fail to notice that baking has suddenly become the height of fashion.

I know this because it was not only on the cover of my Daily Telegraph, but also on the cover of my secret vice, The Lady. Yes, I was hoping to read another nice interview with Gareth Malone with my morning coffee – and instead I find yet another person generously sharing their secrets for creating the perfect Victoria Sponge.

It did not inspire me to get my mixing bowl out.

I blame my mother, of course. Every year, we had to take a home-baked cake to Guide Camp. Every year, she would send me off with a supermarket version that she hadn’t even tried to disguise in Bacofoil.

One despairing Girl Guide friend did try to teach me to bake a cake. I fear I was not a natural, as I didn’t try to bake another one until my son’s first birthday, around 18 years later. Annabel Karmel said the recipe was foolproof. It wasn’t.

But even if it had been: why on earth would I want to bake anything? Maybe in another universe, I would have smiley children who took turns and waited to lick the proverbial spoon. But in real life, baking means:

Drawing up battle-lines in the kitchen and counting out grains of flour, lest one child feel that the other has had preferential flour-treatment.

Mess. Two children plus one hand-mixer equals yet another thing for me to clean up. If the children try to clean up, I then have to clean up their cleaning attempts.

Washing up. Why does baking always require 35 bowls and 150 spoons?

Attempted manslaughter. When my son was obsessed with Chemistry, his baking powder (contaminated by copper sulphate) somehow got muddled up with the one we use for baking. Our guests found the blue flecks inside the scones somewhat unappetising.

I’m sure that I ought really to like baking. All real mummies like baking. But in that case, I will remain an unreal mummy – and when my children’s birthdays roll around again, I will send up yet another prayer of thanks to Marks and Spencer.

Grunt and Boden

A new survey (oh yes) that popped into my inbox today told me some truly shocking news.

Modern mums are struggling to keep a proper eye on their children, it said.

The “hard-hitting” study (by a stair-gate manufacturer, no less) of 3,000 mothers found that seven in ten are so very busy that – shock – they are reguarly forced to  leave their children to play unsupervised while carrying out household chores.

The report also found 40 per cent of parents admit their child has been injured around the house while they themselves were busy cooking, cleaning and juggling aspects of domestic life.

And the majority of “helpless mums” say it’s impossible to keep an eye on their child permanently to prevent accidents.

The solution is obviously a stair-gate. But what I’m wondering is how many of these mothers told the truth?

The most common distraction for mothers is, apparently, cooking. Hoovering and ironing are also blamed by this virtuous cohort.

Then again, I can’t blame them. After all, who apart from me would want to admit that they let their child fall downstairs while trying to eat a coat-hanger because they were reading about Kylie’s hot-pants on the Femail website?

THE SURVEY’S TOP FIVE ACCIDENT-CAUSING MATERNAL DISTRACTIONS  (yeah, right)

1. Cooking
2. Being on the phone
3. Other children misbehaving or requiring time
4. Working from home
5. Cleaning

THE REAL TOP FIVE ACCIDENT-CAUSING MATERNAL DISTRACTIONS 

1. Boden
2. Mumsnet
3. Twitter
4. Facebook
5. Rightmove

But hang on a moment. I now see that this is all encapsulated in the Pious Mummy list. Only there it’s called ‘working from home’…

 

The Lady’s Not For Turning – Not

Thanks to last night’s news, I have been reminded that U-turns are a Very Bad Thing. Ed Balls said so, so it must be true.

To my mind, this proves only that he spends more time at work than he spends with his children.

All real parents know that U-turns are inevitable.

Dummies, toddler reins, television, computer games, Annabel Karmel, Disney … you name it, I have U-turned on it. Schools, puppies, where to live … yep, you’ve guessed it. If it weren’t for U-turns, my son would have been under a bus, and my daughter would be bottom in Horrible History.

We don’t even save our U-turns for little things like where to live, either. They even extend to McDonald’s and Pizza Hut. Mr Balls has obviously never been trapped in a Cornwall-bound car with my children for 12 hours if he thinks that  fuel duty, static caravans and Cornish pasties represent a serious change of policy.

I like to think that my U-turns demonstrate my admirable flexibility and willingness to listen and take into account the situations as they are, rather than as I imagined they might be (cue ludicrous visions of well-mannered children daintily nibbling home-made organic cous-cous). They are obviously not the result of having made rubbish decisions in the first place.

I think the only thing we haven’t U-turned on is having children. Though that’s probably only because it’s too late.

When it comes to everything else, this lady is very decidedly for turning.

The Queen Is Dead

According to my seven-year-old, at any rate.

I was in the middle of preparing a gourmet feast of chicken nuggets and Monster Munch.

‘Mummy, was it three weeks ago that the Queen died?’

Me: ‘Um, she’s not dead yet.’

Daughter: ‘Yes she is. The Lord Mayor said so.’

The Lord Mayor had visited school that morning. But I find it hard to believe that he would announce the death of Her Maj in a school assembly.

Me: ‘But you saw her in the cathedral three weeks ago. She was definitely alive then.’

Daughter: ‘She died after the service. The Lord Mayor said she died in his house.’

Aha. Yes, there was a slap-up lunch in the Lord Mayor’s house after the Maundy service (I know, because I was trapped in a crowd of tourists, miles from my Pret-a-Manger sandwich).

Me: ‘Do you think he might have said “dined”?’

 

Long live the Queen.

 

 

The Facts of Life

My guinea pigs have decided that spring has sprung.

I know this because they have spent the entire day waggling their bottoms and growling at one another. Oh, and they’ve also been trying to hump one another’s heads.

As a good mother, I have decided that this is the perfect opportunity to enlighten the children about the birds and the bees (and the piggies).

As they (the children, that is) are nearly 10 and nearly 8, some might think that I should have done this already.

I have tried, honest: I bought a How Babies Are Made book and left it oh-so-casually lying around on the kitchen table. It was ignored, so I left it oh-so-casually on the bathroom floor. I’m not sure the captive audience was captivated.

So when my daughter finally asked why the guinea pigs were playing piggy-back, I seized the moment. They’re not playing piggy-back, I explained. It’s the time of year when want to start making baby guinea pigs, and they’re feeling frustrated because they haven’t got a girl guinea pig to make them with.

“Are they gay?” my son asked (thanks to the older boys, ‘gay’ is the talk of the playground).

No, I replied. Guinea pigs can’t really be gay.

“Why not?”

This is not going quite the way I’d planned.

“Well, I don’t really know. Anyway, they’re brothers.”

As if that explained everything.

I congratulated myself for having enlightened the children without causing undue excitement as they sloped off to the trampoline.

But what is this? They weren’t heading for the trampoline after all. They were heading for Daddy’s Workshop.

“Daddy, Daddy, guess what? The guinea pigs are standing up and fighting, and MUMMY SAYS THEY’RE HAVING SEX.”

I fear I still have some explaining to do.

Melting Moments

When my seven-year-old daughter said “Mummeee…” on Friday night, my heart sank.

The children broke up from school last Wednesday, so we had had what felt like several light years to get ready for her Beavers trip to a local fire station. So at 5.55 pm, I was of course losing my keys and fighting with my hair straighteners.

“What do you want?” I asked suspiciously.

“You said you were going to iron my Beavers scarf.”

“I did?”

“Yes. You promised last Friday.”

My heart sank even further. I did promise, and I had failed to deliver. Again.

“I know I promised, but we haven’t got time now,” I said.

“But you said you would iron the folds in. I won’t get the Smartest Beaver award without ironed folds.”

Well. There was only one solution. The hair straighteners.

“Right. Ironed folds are what you will have,” I declared.

Only they weren’t. Why doesn’t it say in the hair straightener instructions “not to be used on polyester Beavers scarves”?

Fortunately the fire brigade did not have to cancel our Beavers trip as a result of the scarf-meets-hair-straightener scenario. But if my hair develops green and blue polyester stripes, I will know why.

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!

Eating My Words (with a side order of fries)

A couple of weeks ago, I pontificated in this very blog about how McDonald’s should stick to providing plastic tat with their plastic tatty Happy Meals. My children want junk, I said proudly, not yet more books.

As with so many things to do with parenting, I was forced to eat my words on Tuesday.

My daughter has been nagging for several weeks for a Happy Meal. As we had to wait for an hour for her brother, I spotted my opportunity to be a good mother (while granting her wish) and an even better one (knowing for sure that she would reject junk food unless it came with an equally junky toy).

“Very well,” I said. “But they’re giving away books, so you won’t get a plastic poo-ing reindeer.”

“I don’t need a plastic poo-ing reindeer,” daughter replied. “But I do need some chicken McNuggets.”

Humph. Well, at least I got the Good Mother points for saying yes.

In we went. “Don’t forget you’re getting a book,” I intoned. Memories of the plastic voice changer that enabled us to do convincing Justin Bieber impressions are fresh in my mind.

We sat down. She opened the box. “Ooooooooh!” she squeaked. “A sheepdog story!”

My daughter loves sheepdogs more than anything on the planet. She has two sheepdog hand-puppets and a life-sized stuffed sheepdog in her room. I had to sign up to Facebook solely in order to follow the antics of her all-time best friend ever – a sheepdog called Mineshop Muttley.

And then she spots what comes with the book. A sheepdog finger-puppet.

Well, her joy knew no bounds. We spent a happy time popping cardboard Muddlepuddle Farm animals out of the Happy Meal box and playing at schools with them. Then she read the sheepdog story to me. She even enjoyed getting her chips out of the stable door.

“Mummy,” she said as we left a convenient hour later. “That was the best Happy Meal present I’ve EVER had.”

Well, what do I know? After all, I’m just a parent.

Richard Hammond and the Porn Shop

I was about to turn our usual corner on the walk home from school on Friday when my nine-year-old son stopped me.

“No!” he said. “We need to go down G —-.”

“Why?” I wondered. He is not a child who likes to deviate from his routine.

“Because I need to go to the porn shop.”

“The porn shop,” I repeat slowly.

I know exactly the shop he means. It has a sign on the door warning people that they might be offended by what lies within. I am sure that notice is specifically addressed to me.

However, I have read articles about being open with children. Oh, hang on: I wrote those articles. And so I will not say what I’m thinking. Namely:

YOU WHAT? WHAT DO YOU MEAN, YOU NEED TO GO TO THE PORN SHOP? WHICH HORRIBLE CHILD HAS BEEN PUTTING THESE IDEAS INTO YOUR INNOCENT HEAD? I WILL BE REPORTING THEM FIRST THING ON MONDAY MORNING!

No: I will be that cool parent who chit-chats to their offspring about their porn habits while knitting a willy-warmer.

“Um, why do you need to go to the porn shop?” I ask.

“To look at the DVDs.”

DVDs????? OVER MY DEAD BODY, SUNSHINE.

“The DVDs?” I say faintly.

“Yes. There might be some Richard Hammond ones.”

Oh lordy.

“Richard Hammond?” Against my will, mullet-sporting fetishists are now in my head. What have I done to deserve this? I have already had one bad dream this week about being bucked off a zebra; I really don’t need one about naked Top Gear presenters.

“Yes,” he says, rather impatiently. “Daddy found one in the porn shop.”

“Daddy went to the porn shop?!”

“He took me there last week. We got a Blast Lab DVD.”

Hang on a moment.

“Um … which porn shop?”

“The one at the other end of G ——-. The one that people take their old stuff to and get money in return.”

Oh. That shop.

I breathe a huge sigh of relief.

“Yes, of course we can go to the pawn shop.”