Stripping

Ever started something and then thought, puck – wish I hadn’t done that?
I’m having that feeling all over the place since I started stripping off the wallpaper. It had to come off – all thick vinyl which was one clear reason for, oh, at least half of the damp problem.
‘I’d leave the lining paper on though,’ opined the builder. ‘It’s probably holding up the walls.’ Ho, ho, ho. What an amusing cove.
Trouble is, said lining paper was a bit tatty and snaggly and torn in places. Surely it would be far easier just to take off the lot?
I asked on Purplecoo about stripping machines.
‘Don’t bother,’ said Edward. Then added, ‘Wouldn’t take off the lining paper anyway. It’s probably….’
Holding up the walls. Yeah, right. Heard that one before.

It was a slack day. My deadlines were suitably far off and I had absolutely no inclination to do anything like as energetic as trying to rewrite the novel (for the nth time). So I thought I’d try just a corner. Dampened it down. Wandered off and lay on the bed, reading Bleeding Heart Square, waiting for the obligatory twenty minutes it’s supposed to soak. Gave up after five and went and dug at it with a scraper. Hurrah – a huge bit satisfying bit came flying off. It was lovely – I’d forgotten how much I love picking and peeling. One of my great sadnesses is that I no longer dare get sunburned – the sheer joy of peeling off bits of curly skin. I try to do it to Adrian (who stupidly still gets burned occasionally) but the misery-guts gets all antsy about it and pushes me off, saying I’m a skin vampire.
Anyhow, before I knew it, about six feet of lining paper was off the wall and in the bin liner. Then I hit problems. A lovely large bit swung off the wall and, yup, took several layers of plaster with it.

I knew the house was in a rotten state but I didn’t realise it was actually, well, rotten. I didn’t realise walls could move, sway, undulate, wobble. It’s like having Quatermass or the contents of his pit living behind your wallpaper.
Adrian was horrified. ‘Stop it,’ he said as I sliced into a juicy bit above James’ bed and showered the poor boy (who was in it at the time) in a snowstorm of 1970s plaster. But I can’t. I’m obsessed. I’ve done the bathroom, rampaged through the guest room, got halfway through the loo before getting bored and leaving it as it is really really tough (and I’ve done the bits you can reach while sitting on the pan). I’ve nearly done the upstairs corridor and am going great guns in James’ room.
James looked a bit worried. ‘I don’t think you should be doing that, Mum.’
‘It’s going to look bloody awful,’ said Adrian, holding up one finger to forestall my next sentence. ‘And don’t even THINK about saying that once the electrician has been we can decorate it.’
Ah. He knows me too well. ‘Once the electrician’s been’ has been my constant refrain for the last three or four months. Said electrician has gone AWOL following a holiday in Thailand (yes, the recession is obviously an unknown concept for electricians) and hasn’t replied to our increasingly desperate messages. There are rumours of nervous breakdowns, of marital disharmony but one can’t help but take it personally. Safe to say, the electrician isn’t coming any time soon and so we’re going to have to live with the results of my stripping mania. I had an idea.
‘People would spend a fortune getting a finish like that,’ I said, with a sweeping arm gesture at the mottled pink, white, grey and mould coloured wall I’d just liberated from its grey and brown floral paper. They looked unconvinced.
‘People where, Mum?’ asked James.
‘Er, people in….er, London….’ I said, and then picked up confidence. ‘An absolute fortune. In fact, you’re really lucky to have a wall like that. We shouldn’t paper it – it would be a crime. This wall could appear in World of Interiors…..’ Pause. ‘Well, maybe Living etc.’
‘But we don’t live in London and I want blue walls and James Bond strip lighting.’
Philistine.
I know I should stop. I should call a halt before the madness descends down the stairs and into the rest of the house. Before the whole house maybe gives up the ghost and quietly collapses into a heap of rubble. But it’s like some awful compulsion. Hell, I even find myself eyeing up the brand-new paper in the breakfast room.
The problem is that stripping walls (even when they have a propensity to come tumbling down while you’re doing it) is a mindless, delightfully physical task. There is a goal in sight and one can move towards it (either in niggly irritating little scrapes or broad sweeps of sogginess). When it’s done, it’s done. It’s hugely satisfying and curiously soothing – unlike the rest of my life. So, for the time being, I’ll carry on stripping, regardless of the carnage.

Are we poor?

‘Mum, are we poor?’
I fight my immediate urge which is to stare wild-eyed and shout in a loud despairing way, ‘Yes, of course we’re poor – absolutely on our uppers; outrageously, revoltingly, disgustingly poor’. Instead I pause. Possibly too long.
‘Mum? Did you hear me? Are we poor?’
‘Er, why do you ask?’ (Always deflect a tricky question by asking another question).
‘Well, it’s only that Henry said we were poor.’

Did he indeed? Having always held Henry high in my estimation (lovely manners, helps clear up, polite, always comes armed with a nice line in ‘thank you for having me’ gifts) his crown is now slipping wildly. Nasty little tyke, horrible child. No matter that he is clearly stating the obvious. After all, what child wouldn’t look around the Bonkers House in all its faded, damp-ridden desperation and not think ‘hard up verging on insolvent’? The parents have all given up asking the hopeful little question, ‘Building work finished yet?’ because the answer is patently no, mainly because all work ceased several months back. But then, nobody likes to be reminded of the truth, do they?
‘Mum?’
‘Er. No. Not really. No.’ Shakes head. Gets a grip. ‘Not at all. Well. It’s all relative, isn’t it? Obviously we’re not Poor poor – we have a house, enough food, clothes. In fact we’re really very lucky.’
James is not looking impressed.
‘But equally obviously we’re not rich. Certainly not Rich rich.’
‘As in we don’t have a huge swimming pool or a deer park.’
‘Quite.’
It really doesn’t help that James goes to the kind of school where children do indeed have huge swimming pools and tennis courts and, yes, even deer parks.
When James went to the village school you couldn't tell which of the mothers owned several thousand acres of moorland and a vast pile and which lived in a council house (they all dressed the same and the landrovers were equally beaten up). The 'deep' countryside is a huge leveller I think - people just got on with it. But his present school has a townie/suburban intake as well as 'real' countryside and also a lot of 'trophy' landowners and I am occasionally appalled at some of the oneupmanship behaviour.

The other week I overheard two fathers at the school gate having the most hilariously revolting conversation, obviously sizing each other up and doing the 'I've got more than you' thing. It seemed they only knew one another vaguely as they had to ascertain where each lived before launching into something like this.....

'Had much ice up your way?'

'Well, not too bad up at the house. The stables were pretty bad.' (ie, we have stables).

'Yes, ours too.' (so do we). 'Frozen pipe in the large barn too though the cottages seem OK.' (and we've got a big barn and cottages.)

'Yup, ours smashed and flooded while we were in Antigua.' (see, we were away somewhere hot and smart).

'Bad luck. But, yeah, don't have that problem in our place in Grand Bahama.' (I go to hot smart places too and I own a house there.)

'True, true (he he). Mind you, doesn't seem to happen at the place in Chamonix.' (OK, so I haven't got a house in Antigua but we do have our own ski chalet.)

'Pity the poor puggers who have to go out to work though.' (I don't)

'Yeah. Had to cancel my trip to New York - two miles of icy driveway? Just wasn't worth the risk.' (I go to important places and I've got a pucking long drive).....

'You want to get someone to do that for you..' (haven't you got staff?)

This was evaded (to my intense satisfaction) and then followed a long debate about the various bits of smart techology they had before their children finally emerged and shut them up. I suppose I should be grateful they didn’t get their willies out to compare size.
Anyhow, all this flurried through my head before I realised James was still waiting patiently. Er, where were we? Oh yes, deer parks.
‘But, hey, who wants a deer park when you’ve got the moor on your doorstep eh? We can see deer any day of the week….’

It clearly wasn't working so I fell back on that favourite old chestnut, ‘be grateful for what we’ve got’ and its sister platitude ‘we’ve got each other.’
James rolls his eyes.

But truly, we are lucky. In this consumer society, it’s all too easy to slip into that daft game of one-upmanship, that idea that life would be tickety-boo if only we had a better job, a smarter house, a new fancy car or HD/plasma/blu-ray/whatever TV. Try telling that to the poor souls in Australia who lost the lot. One chap stood out in that disaster. Piecing through the soot and ashes that was his home, he stood up, smiled and said something along the lines of, ‘It isn’t the end of the world. We’re all alive. We can rebuild.’ Of course they can. We are so spoiled, we forget that human life is very fragile and at any moment we are just a heartbeat away from death. That may sound dramatic but it’s true. This last year has been a shocker for funerals – not just the old who, you could argue, have Had Their Time but also the young. One moment riding along a lane; the next lying in the morgue. It’s gloomy and it’s depressing but it does ram home the thought that, truly, you can’t take it with you. Who gives a flying puck if you’ve got the perfect car, the pristine lawn, the latest gadget? In this mixed-up, muddled-up, shook-up world we should be darn well grateful to be alive, to have people we love and who love us. That should be enough. So, I re-evaluate my reply to James.

‘Actually, dear child, we are pretty darn rich. Rich as Croesus. Just slathered in riches.’
I then swallow him in a huge, all-enveloping hug and as he wriggles to get out, add quietly…

‘Er, you couldn’t lend me a fiver, could you?’




PS - apologies to purplecooers who may have a sense of deja vu on some of this post. I'm trying to haul myself back into blogging so a half-written post was a blessing.

In which the Phantom Pooper attempts suttee (or The Self-Immolating Collie)

Heck it’s cold here. I’ve been trying to work but every five minutes I have to get up and launch into a series of star jumps to get the circulation going again. Those of you with still-functioning memories might be suspicious at this point, muttering that ‘surely she has heating now?’ and indeed we do. Lovely, brand-new through-the-house heating and dead impressive radiators. However Adrian is being stern and unrelenting on the question of oil and, having seen the way the stuff is racing down the tank like juice being sucked out of a glass by a greedy child (or gin and tonic by its mother), I take his point.
My office has a hole where the wood burner will go. There is even a slab of slate waiting to be laid. Only problem, no money for said wood burner. So it’s back to the star jumps.

Now I know I have moaned a lot about The Phantom Pooper (17-year old collie, not ours, generally loathed but what can you do?) in the past but, bless her aged (and still revoltingly sound) heart, she is trying to help us stave off the chill. The other night I was lolling on the sofa (with a thick blanket wrapped, burka-like around me), watching back to back DVDs of Boston Legal. Adrian was sitting next to me engrossed in some arcane classical rendition on his iPod. The fire was burning pretty well (thanks to libations of candlewax) and the PP staggered over towards it. I assumed she was simply trying (like the rest of us) to keep warm so didn’t pay much attention. She then wobbled over the brick threshold into the inglenook itself. Weird dog, I thought, then simply figured she must be really cold. Attention strayed back to the television. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed something large and black waving around – with a glowing tip. The stupid dog had obviously wafted her tail over the fire and it had caught light.
‘Oh puck!’ I said.
Adrian carried on blithely conducting. The PP carried on blithely waving her tail and the glow deepened.
‘OH PUCK!’ I yelled.
‘Eh?’
‘The dog’s on fire!’
‘What did you say?’
If you’re wondering why I didn’t jump up and attend it’s because, in the Bonkers House, certain duties are clearly delineated and the task of Stamping Out Sparks is one of Adrian’s. He does that man thing of spitting on his fingers and then picking up the smut or spark with his bare hands. Let’s be clear here it is the only macho thing he does and so he is inordinately proud of it – it would be emasculating and cruel to take it away from him.
Anyhow, the PP was waving her tail like an Olympic torch, seemingly totally unperturbed by the fact that she was, quite literally fanning the flames and possibly (hopefully?) facing self-immolation. Finally I managed to mime conflagration to Adrian (yes, I’m good at charades, if I say so myself) and he slowly swung his gaze to the fire.
Taking off his headphones he said, calmly:
‘What’s up? What’s that dog doing?’
‘Committing suttee,’ I said. ‘Or trying to.’
‘Suttee?’
‘She’s on fire, for puck’s sake. DO something!’

I could see it in his eye – how tempting just to leave her to go up in a self-appointed pyre. No more endless poop scooping, no more being woken several times a night, no more sick to shovel off the kitchen floor. She would even keep the fire going a bit longer.
Then his basic animal-loving nature got the better of him (plus he probably figured out that burnt collie is probably a very unpleasant room fragrancer) and so he calmly got up and dowsed her tail in the ash bucket.
The smell of singed dog is, indeed, not to be recommended.

When I told Milla the story she laughed (as you might have guessed) and then pointed out that, had the PP really been committing suttee that would imply that Asbo Jack would have pushed off this mortal coil beforehand. I sighed and indulged in a blissful moment’s reverie about a life sans dogs. Then the barking started again.

Changing the subject abruptly (sorry, have to spit this out quickly before my fingers freeze into one solid chunk) I don’t attract a lot of blog bling (another Milla phrase gleefully stolen). So I was rather childishly chuffed when Hadriana bestowed the Superior Scribbler award on this unworthy blog (oh go on, boost my ego by taking exception to the unworthy bit). I now have to do my own bit of bestowing and so, in no particular order, these are a few blogs whose writers have a certain way with words….(there was a prescribed number but I can't remember and my fingers won't last long enough to go back and find out)....

Little Brown Dog – someone give this poor woman a break. Life’s grim but the writing is juicy.
Ladybirdworld – a superior wordsmith – a new find and already a favourite.
Milla – the inimitable - when the puck will someone give this woman a newspaper column?
ElizabethM – lyrical and just luscious prose and pictures.
Ernest de Cugnac (oh, I mean God of course) for the God Diaries. Sure God doesn’t need an award but this is just one of the cleverest, funniest things I’ve read so I’ll bestow it anyhow (he can always pass it onto Lucy).
Edward for Rotwatch – don’t think he’s a blog bling man either but you never know. I don’t really watch TV but this makes me laugh even when I haven’t a clue what he’s talking about.
Cowgirl – fabulous marriage of words and images…
KittyB – a neat turn of phrase, a way with words….and the damn woman is slim, gorgeous and can cook too (how I hate her!).

Oh, there are loads more but sorry, sorry, fingers about to drop off – time for another set of star jumps – or maybe I’ll get a fire going and get as close as I can to it (without setting my hair alight).

PS – apologies for all the brackets – they are becoming the new exclamation marks.

Jungle Barbie and empty coffee cups

I was sitting at a table in Café Nero, staring at the coffee cup opposite me. Two minutes before Adrian had been sitting behind it, gulping down his three shot cappuccino before racing off to catch his train. Strange, I thought, how he’s gone but there’s still steam rising from his cup. I became a little fixated with it, truth to tell, couldn’t take my eyes off it, wondering at which precise moment it would stop steaming. When he would really be gone. My thoughts turned morbid, as they are wont to do. What if this was all that was left of him? What if the train crashed or a suicide bomber hurtled into Old Street? Adrian, just a bit of steam.

I’ve always had a gothic turn of thought. When I was young – and I mean very young – I used to pore over Bosch paintings, fascinated by scenes of torture. Poor Barbie got it something rotten. While my friends primped and pampered their dolls, mine had to battle through jungles, getting her hair snagged out by the roots and her clothes ripped. I drew scars on her cheeks and hauled her through mud. I even poked pins in her on one occasion when she was being pursued by hostile natives. Barbie wasn’t remotely Lara Croft though – she didn’t kickbox her way out or blast three shades of hell out of everyone. She just submitted in a totally craven and rather pathetic fashion. She annoyed me so much that I decided her life in the jungle was really too exciting so I built her a croft in the remote Highlands (otherwise known as the rockery in our Sutton garden). She got a few scraps of tweed to wrap around her pneumatic breasts and a plastic horse for company. There she stayed, gazing mournfully out over the remains of the lavender, picking at her mascara, until she became green with mould. When each of her babies inevitably died, she hauled herself to their funerals and threw herself onto their graves with fits of sobbing, wiping dirt over her (already filthy) face. OK, so the babies were frogs (having managed to get them from spawn to four legs, they sort of gave up the effort – but this could have been something to do with my home-made bin-bag pond). Anyhow they died, in rapid succession and were buried, with elaborate ceremony and arcane ritual, in padded matchboxes to a backdrop of Barbie’s wailing, interspersed with the odd hacking cough (the poor creature probably had pneumonia).

Sorry, that was a long diversion but it is pertinent. I think my main problem is that I’m having a problem with the fact that – unless some medical miracle occurs – my life is more than half over. I’ve never been very good at the second half of things. Holidays are a case in point. I love the first week, all is promise, hope, excitement, new things to try, taste, smell. Then the halfway point is reached and the gloom settles in. Homeward stretch. I start thinking about the return. Have even been known to start packing. There seems no point in making huge plans, chatting to new people because, well, it’ll all be over soon. Same with everything really. I just sort of wilt after the halfway point, want it all over. Can’t be bothered.
Not a good attitude really when it’s one’s own life in question.

I know this is a common theme and I moan on about it far too much but I’m still feeling washed up. Finding it hard to summon the energy for anything really. Ye gods, I’m turning into bloody misery-guts Barbie.

Back in Café Nero, I suddenly realised I couldn’t bear to see the actual moment when the coffee stopped steaming so I jumped up, threw on my coat and hurtled out without a backwards glance in case seeing the moment of death could, by sympathetic magic, cause it. Is that a bit odd? Yes, thought so.
Still, I pulled myself together and went off into town. I haven’t been shopping, as in proper shopping in a town, for about half a year and I thought I’d lost the knack yet I managed to do all my chores in about forty minutes flat. Then, with two hours still on the parking meter, I thought I’d get my annual spot of total degradation over and done with. This is the moment when I decide I should Make An Effort and buy something shimmery or glittery for all the parties I will try to make excuses not to go to. Last year, you may recall, it was the Only Gay in the Village sequinned t-shirt. This year, I decided, it would be a dress. I know. Don’t laugh. I don’t actually have a dress (no, not one - seriously) so this was a challenge.

Why do we do it to ourselves? Maybe there are women who can sliver into something slinky and smile at themselves in the mirror but those women are not me. OK, so I was trying them on over jeans and pointy cowboy boots, with a white (ish) bra – but still. I looked like a home-made Christmas decoration, overstuffed and straining at the seams. Like Barbie I have out of proportion tits and very long legs. Unlike Barbie I go out at the waist rather than in. It’s not a good look. One dress flattened out my boobs into one enormous shelf – the size and shape of a Wii Fit. Another sort of caught them and tossed them out towards the mirror - two vast flashing white orbs intent on world domination. In the end, after half an hour of vehement self-loathing and self-pity, I settled for something vaguely shapeless with spaghetti straps (so it’ll be a large shawl or coat over that then – truly what’s the point?). It’s still too snug (despite being diaphanous) – so that’ll be a diet then (yes, another one).

Ah heck. Maybe I’ll just forget Christmas and go and hole up in a croft and feel sorry for myself there…watching the steam rise from an empty coffee cup.

White nights

I didn’t sleep last night. Instead I spent virtually the entire night tossing and turning. I also read my way through nearly the whole of Jodi Picault’s latest novel, a curiously uninvolving tale of ghosts and love, made deeply syrupy by huge gobbets of quite inappropriate magic realism.

Every so often my eyelids would droop and I’d gratefully turn off the light and turn over. Squash the pillow and snuggle down. Then turn the other way. No, it wasn’t going to work. On went the light again and back to the ghosts (who did very unghostly things like snogging and digging, poking red rose petals in people’s pockets and misdirecting phone calls). I have the strong suspicion that JP has read some Alice Hoffman and decided she could do with a bit of magic. Wrong, JP, wrong. Leave it to Alice, love.

Down drooped the eyelids, off went the light again. Turned over and…
‘Aaaaghhhhh!’ A shriek broke out next to me.
‘Aaaaghhhh!’ I shrieked in reply.
On went the light and James and I both sat bolt upright staring at one another in terror. At this point I have to explain that James has been sleeping in with me for the last fortnight because his arm has been in a cast (following the day when five boys went to play at one boy’s house and two ended up in casualty while another went home with a bloody nose.) What can you say? Shit happens.

‘It’s not right, you know,’ muttered Adrian (about being cast into the desolate wastes of the spare room, not about the War of C*** Cottage). ‘He’s nearly ten.’
But, to be honest, I’d rather have James (snores; grinds teeth; hogs bed but is reasonably small) than Adrian (snores loudly; thrashes; hogs bed; talks total utter nonsense and is unfeasibly large).

‘What are you doing, Mummy?’
‘I was reading.’
‘But it’s four in the morning.’
‘I know.’
‘Why are you reading when it’s so late?’
‘Because I can’t sleep.’
‘Poor you. Why?’

Why indeed? Is it because I’ve been well and truly credit-crunched? Is it because, for the first time in my life, I don’t have a zillion things to cram into a day? Is it because we have spent our way through an extraordinary amount of money renovating the house – and yet still have walls with huge holes in them, ceilings balancing on rotten rafters and something unspeakably nasty in the cellar? Could it be acute anxiety over a whole phalanx of friends going through hell right now? Or simply that I had one too many cups of coffee or one too many glasses of wine? Or both?

‘I dunno. Sometimes it just happens.’
‘Rotten luck. Can I read for a bit too?’
‘Sure.’
So we lie there, like an old married couple, me harumphing over JP, him reading The Ashes.
‘I’m tired now, Mum. Hope you get to sleep soon.’
So do I.
‘I will. Night, hon..’

I’ll fall asleep at 4.30am. I nearly always do. I know my insomnia like an old enemy – we go way back. I started not sleeping when I was pregnant with James and never really regained the knack of peaceful slumber. At its worst, I would go for weeks, and sometimes months, without more than two or three hours sleep a night. But for the last year or so, it’s been better and I’ve forgotten just how truly miserable it is when the hours tick by and the hopes of a reasonable next day to follow start to vanish.

I remember once staying at the Lowri Hotel in Manchester in readiness for a live TV interview the next morning. My alarm call was booked for 6.30am and I was tucked up in bed by 10pm. At 1am I remember thinking, ‘Well, it’s fine – five and a half hours would be OK.’ Ever the optimist, a couple of hours later, I was reasoning that I could get by with three hours. My magic witching hour of 4.30 came and went. When it was down to ‘Well, an hour would help,’ I knew I was clutching at straws.

Insomnia sucks the joy out of life. It wrecks your immune system, destroys your sense of humour and turns you into a paranoid, grumpy, spotty haggard old crone. So forgive me if I am not witty and sparkling and amusing today. I have missed blogging and felt that, if I didn’t write something, anything, I would lose the knack forever. What seems funny in the moment loses its lustre if you don’t catch it pretty darn quick and all the curious little incidents of the last month I had been squirreling in readiness of a blog or two have grown boring and tarnished.

So, a sorry little blog today. Will try harder next time.

Being Bohemian....

‘We’re Bohemians,’ said Adrian, swigging a glass of something to prove the point. ‘We don’t follow the rules of normal society.’ He crinkled his nose and waved his hand airily in a dismissive fashion as if the mere thought of doing things properly, decently or cleanly was simply too appalling to contemplate. Being Bohemian is shorthand in this house for any poor behaviour – drinking too much; squandering money on duck when we should be eating haslet; wearing uncoordinated clothes with bits of croissant attached; not going to church; not having a regular salary (no, not even one between us); dropping clothes wherever you exit them rather than deigning to put them in the laundry basket (James and Adrian); wearing strange earrings and too much dark eye shadow (me, not Adrian or James).
We’ll haul out the Bohemian excuse book at the drop of a hat - for not joining in, joining up and for running wide-eyed and gibbering from any kind of communal responsibility or anything involving wearing ties and long dresses.

However, while that’s all well and good and I will avoid a committee like the proverbial plague, I find that I lose the laissez-faire attitude when it comes to entertaining. Adrian can’t give a toss. He’s of the school that people take you for what you are (yes, yes, Bohemians, we know) and are grateful for whatever you plonk in front of them, providing it is washed down by enough booze. I (silly fool that I am) happen to think that a house should be warm, welcoming and look vaguely presentable (ie not inch deep in dust with tables perched on joists rather than solid floorboards) and that food should be
a) plentiful (I still cringe at the time A tried to make a small chicken feed eight)
b) hot (he tends to the Greek habit of leaving things a hanging around until suitably tepid) and
c) decently presented (at least without dribbles of gravy over the edge of the plate).

So, I have made excuse after excuse (and I think bare joists - see left - and a Greek chorus of firemen builders are pretty good) but now the man is getting restless and dreaming of cassoulet. It sends tremors to the depths of my soul. Last time we did this it was following a dream of paella which in reality clanged onto plates like cannon balls and ended up with me phoning round the pubs to find Adrian and the other two men who duly returned so drunk that one of the women was decidedly chilly for nigh on a year afterwards.

‘You’re falling into the yummy mummy trap,’ he complained. ‘Keeping up with the school gate bollocks.’ Cruel and unfair. I have long accepted that I have not the faintest chance of looking trim in Boden and that my hair will never flick under neatly into a bob. I don’t do coffee mornings and I will never be invited to join the girls’ trip to Antigua. All my own fault of course as I rarely adorn the school gate and, when circumstances demand that I make the trip, I tend to arrive incredibly early and park in the perfect spot – clear sight-line to the exit gate but tucked away from general view. I slump down, nose in a book, until I see James at which point I shoot out of the car like a greyhound from the trap (the only time you’ll ever see me sprint), mobile clamped to ear to forestall any possibility of chit-chat, sunglasses rammed on to cut out the possibility of eye contact and smile broadly yet blankly in all directions while yanking him back to the car. All within two minutes flat. It’s not that I don’t like the parents. Far from it. But I really truly hate the minutiae of the school gate and the inevitable questions, particularly at the start of term.
‘Go anywhere nice on holiday?’
‘House finished yet?’
The answer to both is, of course, a bald no. The staycation didn’t work, but then you knew it wouldn’t. Adrian got a ton of work in and I got panicky about a book deadline so we did precisely nothing. Our proposed days on the beach or loitering around National Trust garden centres or even lolling in our own garden fizzled away due to the sheer miserable fact of Having No Summer.
So while everyone else was off swanning round the South of France or galloping over the Alps, we painted shelves as downtime inbetween researching unusual forms of divination and Hindu deities and their vehicles. The house is sort of progressing (for those who have asked) – we now have the following:

- a kitchen (stern, Teutonic, vaguely threatening) - see below - floor isn't really day-glo yellow by the way and yes, that's Asbo's basket with the offending duvet cover with the vicious buttons.
- a breakfast/dining room (rather lovely except for the scuzzy fish tank)

- the Oak Room (or, as we should more accurately call it, the dodgy Pine Room) which is looking pretty fabulous - see below but ignore colours which are all horribly wrong - I am SO not a good photographer.

We have scrummy oak floors (apart from in the Oak Room, natch) and radiators that look like industrial art installations and miles upon miles of bookshelves (but still piles upon piles of books awaiting a home). However what we don’t have is a boiler (or even the Rayburn now) and there are still one-inch gaps in the window frames so it’s ploody freezing.

At which point (after a long excursion elsewhere - apologies) I return to where we began and ask you – can you truly inflict Siberian cold on guests? I think not.
Given which, I reckon I've got at least another few months' grace before we can even t hink about dishing out invites - let alone cassoulet. However, naturally we will accept all invites to other homes (better insulated and floored) – after all, we do have a freeloading Bohemian reputation to keep up.

PS -apropos of nothing on this blog - reassure me, won't you - you have all heard of Joy Division? The band, I mean.

Trendy, green and smug

We’re on holiday. This is the week we had set aside for our ‘last-minute break’, smug in the certainty that the credit crunch would leave luscious cottages and villas ours for a snip and a song. The more I thought about it, the more my heart sank: dogs needing kennelling; builders needing elaborate instructions and wiring diagrams; SWCBM needing supplies. Not to mention the whole elaborate pre-holiday trauma. To whit:
1. Trawling in despair around the shops trying to find suitable clothing. I really don’t do summer. I have no natural affinity with cropped trousers (or, heaven forfend, shorts) and dinky tops. With breasts the size of melons (and we’re talking honeydew not Ogen) spaghetti strap dresses and suntops are out. Swimsuits are, frankly, an abomination – eyes water when I dare to brave a public swimming pool. No, it would be yet another amorphous kaftan (and a dark muttering that M&S are making their sizes even smaller this year).
2. The whole ridiculous beauty salon fiasco. The once-a-year cringe-inducing visit to see Emma or Shelley or Donna (they of the iron-straight bleach blonde tresses and uber-long nails). The ritual humiliation of that first appraising look during which you can almost see the pity mixed with sheer horror at the Sisyphean task ahead. The stripping of a year’s worth of cosy fur; the wholesale decimation of eyebrows; the emergence of eyelashes from invisibility; the gouging of cuticles.
3. The attempt at the fake tan. I am the archetypal Celt, pale, red-haired, freckled, genetically suited to lurking in murky bogs and wafting through shaded forests. I’m like a vampire when I hit the sun: heat rash, almost instant sunburn (despite liberal dosing of factor 50) and irritability on a superhuman scale. I have learned, by bitter experience and second-degree burns, that a natural suntan is not for me yet I still crave (pathetically) that sun-kissed copper shimmer. Hence the humiliation of streaked leg and orange face.
4. The packing. Having figured out what husband and child need; not to mention what the dogs need for kennels, I have lost the will by the time it comes to my own holiday wardrobe. Stuff is chucked in with barely a thought, to re-emerge at the other end unsuitable, unpressed and smacking of desperation.

Anyhow, this is all by the by. When we realised that neither of us had actually bothered to look for that last-minute bargain basement break, the solution was suddenly obvious and easy.
‘We’ll be trendy,’ said Adrian (not a phrase that trips naturally off his tongue). ‘We’ll have a staycation.’
So here we are. Instead of burning rubber on the M5 hurtling to throw ourselves onto a plane or lurching over the channel to face 12 hours of French motorways (and our particular pastime of counting the number of men having a pee by the side of the road), we are sitting at home. It is raining of course but do we care? Nope.
Our intention is not to work. We foresee carefree days in the garden, drinking wine and reading books. No matter that the deckchairs have mould and the garden furniture is sodden. We might toss a cricket ball around in a jolly way. We will, of course, have barbecues (in the shelter of the porch) and dutifully get our money’s worth from our National Trust membership by marching purposefully around some pile or other, exclaiming at needlepoint and admiring tree ferns. Hey, we might even get feckless and go to the beach (me cowering in the shade of a cliff). Our carbon footprint will barely indent the sand.
Then again, of course, the phone might ring and we might well find ourselves saying ‘2,000 words by tomorrow lunchtime? No problem.’ to some 20-something editor (as you do when you’re freelance and still have a huge chunk of Bonkers House to save from collapse). But then, given everyone now takes their Blackberries and laptops on holiday, what’s the difference? Except that we aren’t shelling out shedloads of cash for a grim gite and dodgy kaftans and I will avoid that particularly horrible sensation of growing-out bodily hair. Trendy, green and stress-free? I call that a result.