Friday 24th October – I am a pleb

A bit of peace this morning before we go to granny’s house for the day.  We love granny.  This is the most exciting thing we have done all week.  The girls are thrilled because they get granny all to themselves (Oscar is in nursery today).  I am thrilled because we are going to my favourite greasy spoon to eat chips.  I have been totally obsessed by chips all week.  I am desperate for chips.  I usually get my worst chip cravings at about ten o’clock at night when of course, it is entirely impractical to do anything about it.  If it weren’t for the fact that I’ve had all my bits and pieces tied up in a giant no baby giving pretzel I’d swear I was pregnant.  My boobs are more unmanageable than usual (I’m working on this theory that they respond to weather conditions, much like hair going frizzy in the damp), I think it’s hormones.  Jason thinks I washed my bra on the wrong setting.  He’s so practical.  It doesn’t explain the fact that I have a corking spot over my eyebrow, and I dream of chips, chips with lots of salt.  mmmm!

This morning I really shouldn’t be blogging, not really because I have any great responsibilities, just an ever present, nagging list of stuff. In fact I am actually very proud of myself.  I am ahead in my OU work, despite me worrying I’d never get around to doing any of it due to my mad need to blog continuously and the presence of wall to wall children.  I’ve done all my parties for the year and am now resting on my laurels, and the children are having a brilliant time playing with all of Oscar’s birthday toys now that he’s out at nursery and can’t run off and hide with them in the cupboard under the stairs. 

On my random list there are two things I should do however which are making me feel extra specially guilty about talking to you, but at the same time strangely naughty and decadent (It doesn’t take much these days).

Firstly, my sister in law is coming to stay for the weekend.  She is vegetarian.  I have a fridge full of sausages.  This is not so good.  Luckily I also have a glut of tomatoes.  Every now and again I go through these weird phases where I decide that we categorically need a certain thing.  I rush around moving heaven and earth to buy it, get home and realise we’ve already got twelve of said item and didn’t need it at all.  This will be forgotten about thirty minutes later.  I will get panicked that we haven’t got enough etc, etc… I once managed to accrue eight pots of apricot jam in this way, which is quite scary because we’re not big on jam in our family.  I believe that particular manic episode happened in about 2002.  We have just finished  the last pot of jam.  I am now in the tomato phase.  Today this may be lucky.  I think I am going to make spicy tomato soup for dinner.  Obviously the children will think I am trying to poison them, but they can eat the leftover sausages and lump it.  I should make the soup now, because we are going out all day and it will save me rushing when I get home.  However I cannot be bothered, and have just fatalistically accepted the fact that I will be frantically skinning tomatoes and sweating over a saucepan later on.

The other thing I really need to do is to read the most enormous book that Amazon Vine have sent me.  They seem to be specialising in enormous books at the moment.  I just finished one by Wally Lamb which was the size of a double garage and nearly broke my wrist.  Now I’ve got; ‘The Northern Clemency’ by Philip Hensher.  I picked it for the bizarre reason that several years ago he wrote a book called ‘The Mulberry Empire’, which got fantastic reviews and which I always meant to read and then never got round to.  I saw this on offer, felt terribly guilty about ‘The Mulberry Empire’ and decided to assuage my guilt by reading this instead.  I’m sure he’s thrilled.

It arrived on the back of an elephant, straining under the weight, about a week ago and I have been lugging it round in a kind of papoose ever since.  I have read six pages.  This is not good.

I really need to get cracking with it, because they’re sending me another one to read tomorrow.  It’s not that this one doesn’t look good, it does.  It’s some epic slice of 1970’s life which is supposed to be cringeworthily accurate and was shortlisted for this year’s Booker.  Nevertheless its size is hugely daunting, and it’s in hardback, so I fear for my wrists and the sudden onset of carpal tunnel syndrome.  And, what I really want to do is to read the next installment in the totally puerile but very funny Georgia Nicholson books by Louise Rennison.  I started reading the first one because I picked it up to see if it was suitable for Tilly.  I finished it, forgot about Tilly completely and rushed out to buy the next one.  I read it in two sittings laughing like a drain, thought: ‘how juvenile’ and promptly ordered the next one.  It is now calling to me from the side of the bed like a slice of particularly delicious cake, the sort that’s ninety percent air and shaving foam, made by a woman in a hair net in an aircraft hangar in Barnsley, but which you can’t help eating anyway.

So basically I have chosen chips followed by Arctic Roll over home made vegetarian soup and culture.  It’s a cruel indictment of my life, cruel but true.