Being Me

I had this letter from Santa this morning.  We have a long and regular correspondence going back some years. You can read previous letters by looking up 'Santa Writes to Me' posts.  Here is today's letter.  I am still feeling hurt by it. Lapland August 2010 Dear Fran You usually write to me with your requirements at the end of August, no matter how many times I have asked you to leave your letter until at least November.  This year, I thought I would anticipate your letter and clear up a few matters which are still hanging over from last year.  May I point out the following?.... 1. Elves have limits.  They have to distribute their energies equally in sorting out the hundreds of thousands of requests we receive each year for presents.  This means that we cannot accept lists like yours from last year which run to fourteen pages of A4 paper.  These fourteen pages did not even include the pages from the IKEA catalogue, the NEXT catalogue and the six copies of Homes a

So, because it is a hundred years since I was a young mommy, there I am, at the cafe, on my own, sipping peacefully on my chocomochalotsashockingcalories, snaffling a muffin the size of the Taj Mahal, reading my book, or doing the crossword, and watching five mums, surrounded by all their children, trying to talk to each other while simultaneously trying to amuse all the babies and toddlers. That's what's called 'an impossible task', perhaps as difficult as this .... Perhaps even more difficult than this .... ...  but definitely more difficult than persuading a man to ask for directions or pick socks up. When I had my kids, mums didn't meet in cafes - we met in each other's wattle and daub houses.  We ate each other's failed carrot cake, drank each other's vile coffee, whispered criticisms of each other's home decor to the person next to us, and tried to pretend that we didn't mind each other's children grinding chocol

What I love about the word 'antonym' is that it means 'opposite' and 'antonym' is the opposite of the word 'synonym' - it's so cool when things turn out like that. What would have happened had some famous novelists thought, 'Nah!  Stupid idea!  I'll do just the opposite.'  I have had a think about this, and here I offer you some 'Antonymised (?) Book Titles' and the storylines which may have emerged ... A Room Without a View - A young middle-class woman visits Italy and gets a room with a beautiful view.  Some chaps next door offer to swap it for one which overlooks the hotel boiler room and a yard where the dustbins are kept.  She feels she can't say no and gives in.  This leads to more giving in when someone called Cecil asks her to marry him.  Having settled for a view of a hotel boiler room and dustbin yard, marrying someone called Cecil seems to fit into the general picture of settling for second best.  Just in time,

Today I am pretending to be a Mommy blogger.  This means that, not only am I pretending to be a young mother blogging about life with kids, but I am also pretending to be American, because Brits don't say 'mommy'.  I think we should.  Firstly, I think it sounds good, and secondly, imagine how irritating it must be, when browsing the Internet, to find advice on breastfeeding when what you really wanted was this ... Anyhow, I would like to share with you a handy hint on how to keep little children occupied without bankrupting yourself in the toy shop on all that coloured plastic which, whatever way you look at it, isn't going to match your cream leather sofa.  This method worked for me when I was a young mother which is a few years ago now quite a while ago now a long time ago  just after the Normans invaded the British Isles. When our kids were young, they had a high chair with a tray, like this ... *slope off to Google to find pictures of high cha

This is a tale, a tragic tale, of buses and of duvets You will not hear its like in any plays or books or movie ... movays It is the tale of what occurred when I decided I Would take my   duvet   on the bus, not Catcher in the Rye. A book, you see, is more the thing to take when on the bus. But duvets need a wash sometimes.  (They're full of bits of us - A million trillion skin cells that slough off in the night - And form a tasty supper for a zillion dustmite.)   A duvet looks unthreatening when laid out on the bed. It's just something to warm you as you rest your weary head. I thought the same, dear friends, that duvets were not filled with spite, But mine’s a Big Mike Tyson duvet, spoiling for a fight. Be warned, be warned.  A duvet, faced with being rolled and shoved Into a plastic bag thinks it a sign it is not loved. It's like a screaming toddler who will not in buggy sit And stiffens up his legs until the mum admits defea - defit. After the half an hou

Regular readers will know that Tenby in South Wales played a big, big part in my life earlier in the year, even if its only attractions were A Big Wall and a Library and Enough Icecream to replace all the melted ice at the North Pole and reverse Global Warming. You can read about Tenby here  and and in other 'Me Travelling' posts if you like. Now, promise me you won't mention this to Tenby, but Whitby, in North Yorkshire, where I've just been for a week, has No Boring Wall, a Bigger Library, and just as much Icecream.  It also, though, has another staple foodstuff. Here is a picture of Whitby. Here is a picture of what I did in Whitby. Here is a picture of what I saw everyone else doing in Whitby. Here is a picture of Me after a week in Whitby. As you may have gathered from my subtle hints, fish and chips are not just a staple foodstuff in Whitby, but are so revered and worshipped that, as you walk along the seafront,

Whaddya mean, what are YOU doing here?  I said I'd be back in September, and here I am................ It's not September? So, what month is it, then? Oh, really?  August, you say?  Like ... the VERY END of August? No? Only the middle? You mean, like. the latter half of the middle? No? Oh . The 16th, you say? Yes, I suppose that is more near the middle ... Although, it IS one day more than the real middle, isn't it?  Because ... doesn't August only have 30 days? Oh.   *Sigh* Well, okay, then.  So it's not QUITE September.  But can I come back anyway?  Please?  Pretty please?   I mean, I have worked really hard.  I said I would write, and I did.  I wrote a sitcom and found a producer who agreed to read it.  I entered some competitions.  I sent some sto