Father William and I pontificate on the ageing process

One of the things I was thinking this morning as I came back from the school run, listening to Bachmann Turner Overdrive and Kenny Loggins in quick succession, and singing at the top of my voice with the windows down is: ‘Isn’t it great that I am no longer young?’

It seems to me that in this day and age everyone is desperate to cling to their youth. They slather on expensive anti wrinkle creams and force themselves into jeggings and listen to Take That in a post modern, ironic sort of way whilst surviving on the smell of cornflakes in order to pass as a world weary teenager.

Why?

I mean, don’t get me wrong. If spending £200 on a pot of whale spaff so that you can fool Nicky Hambleton Jones into thinking you’re 12 is what turns you on then please, be my guest, but if you are doing it so that you can only just bear to look at yourself in the mirror every morning, again I ask the question why?

Being young is not the picnic everyone likes to think it was.  The only good things I can say about my teenage years were:

I made a handful of the finest friends teenage angst can buy. We are now all sailing into our mid life crises together. We are in good company.

I was insanely thin.  This was not because I did not eat. I ate like a bloody horse.  If a horse had been standing nearby I would have bloody eaten it.  If I had been able to afford a Herve Leger bandage dress when I was 16 I would totally have rocked it.  Now I would look like a mummy smuggling a bag of lard out of the pyramid.

I discovered books and music while everyone else got into drugs.  Books and music were my drugs. What I read and listened to then shaped and changed my life forever.

That is all.  My skin was shit, probably through eating too many horses.  I was more miserable than I have ever been in my whole life before or since (and that’s going some, let me tell you), and I had no money.  I was rubbish at boyfriends, which given my figure and my relative bendiness was a crying shame. I was ludicrously lacking in self confidence, and if you had told me when I was sixteen that I would be gratuitously listening to Kenny Loggins in public whilst doing the school run without the aid of a hair brush and whilst wearing my husband’s clothes (I couldn’t find a top this morning in the dark), I would have died of mortification x 100.

You see, one of the big problems with being young was the accompanying need to be thought of as cool.  Mainly this was so that you didn’t get murdered by the cool kid clique.  Only a few kids could be uber cool, but if you knew what was in and what was out, how to dress and what to listen to, you could, in theory save yourself from social death and survive another day.

I knew I was never going to be cool, even then, way back in the olden days.  But then it mattered.  Now it doesn’t.

When I was young, nobody expected anyone over the age of twenty five to be cool. In fact if they were, or tried to be cool we thought they were weird, and possibly perverts.  Grown ups were supposed to be what young people were not.  That was the rule, and it seemed to work quite well.

Nowadays everyone seems obsessed with staying as young as possible for as long as possible, and as a direct consequence they are also trying to be as cool as possible.

But where does that leave the kids?

No wonder they’re bloody rioting. They have nothing else to do. All these middle aged wannabees are stealing their cool mojo.  If we just relented, kicked back our Doctor Scholls and embraced the joy of not being at all cool, then teenagers could get on with being teenagers and drop the whole terrorist role model thing like a hot rock.

You can’t tell me it’s any less exhausting trying to be a terrorist than it is to be cool.  But at least trying to be cool doesn’t land you in prison or all over the front pages of the Daily Mail while your mum drags you by the ear up the court room steps.

It strikes me that trying to be cool when middle aged is also exhausting for the most part, and no matter how cool and young we try to be it is an unavoidable fact that we simply have less energy to waste on these frivolous pursuits.  A teenager can spend eight hours a day trying to be cool because they don’t have jobs, they have the ability to sleep for 14 hours at a stretch and they are naturally more energetic.  Middle aged people simply do not have the time and resources for this unless they resort to drugs and/or hired help.

Being cool and trying to preserve youth also seems to  involve more canapes than I would like (judging by the pictures in glossy magazines), and an attention to detail with regards to personal grooming that is not compatible with three children and a healthy sense of meh.

I find being middle aged rather liberating. I wear what I like. I eat what I like. I listen to and watch what I like. I do not  feel ashamed of anything that makes me happy and makes my life feel richer, better and more joyous.

I do not want to be cool.  I used to cringe when my parents would moan about the ‘noise’ which constituted music on Top of The Pops, and snigger at the ridiculous fashions of the day.  I used to think: ‘I will never be like that.’

Well. I am like that. Don’t get me wrong. Some contemporary music is brilliant, but I cannot listen to Radio 1 for more than ten minutes without wanting to slam my head repeatedly in the toilet lid for half an hour afterwards, and I find my inner fashion police coming out to play more and more.  I walked around Top Shop for the first time in about two years this week.  My main thoughts were: ‘hahahahahahaha may God strike me down before I think of trying on that.’

Then I went for a cup of tea and a bun.

Much more like it.

Marathon Woman

My lovely friend Kate Beeden is running a marathon this weekend.  Now we all know how I feel about running in general, but even I have to admit that there are times when running is a good idea.  Mostly these times involve running away from ferocious were beasts and/or nuns with laser beams for eyes.  Sometimes they involve running towards cream buns or book shops.

There are very few times when I would endorse running 26 odd miles, just because you can.

However, for Kate I will make an exception, not only because she was my main source of wisdom on the world of nipple tassels, along with the divine Betty Herbert, but because she is running for an exceedingly good cause.

She will be running to raise money for Cancer Research.

There are many charities who ask for money, and quite often I think: ‘hmm. That’s very nice, but I cannot relate to saving a Siberian tiger today.’  It is not that I think that such charities are not doing a good job. Far from it.  It’s just that there are so many good causes that it can sometimes be difficult to make a decision about where your money should go.  Especially when you have a son that loses as many cardigans as I do.

I wonder if I should start a charity for bereft, poverty stricken parents of feckless cardigan abusers?

Anyway.  Cancer Research is one of those charities where I think it is almost impossible not to see how your donation is going to be relevant and helpful and worth giving to.  I do not know anyone whose life has not been affected by cancer either directly or indirectly.

Consequently I have promised Kate that I will post the link to her donation page on my blog.

So, if you want to donate, please follow this link

As ever you may donate or not as you wish.  I shall never hold it against you if you have recently saved a Siberian tiger, or one too many cardigans has tipped you over the edge financially.  What you do with your money is entirely your own affair, but I am offering you the opportunity to help, should you wish to do so.

If you cannot donate any money, then please spare a thought for Kate at the weekend.  This is her first ever marathon, and she is nervous.

I know that she will do brilliantly.  A woman who can swing her tassels can definitely run a marathon.

Money Money Money

Today I have been crap.

Actually that’s not fair. Most days I am crap.

Today I was crapper.

Let us hope that tomorrow I will not be crappest.

I am sleeping terribly at the moment. I am still averaging about four hours of sleep per night, which would be fine if I had a new baby as an excuse, but not when all my children are sleeping through the night.  When I do sleep I have awful dreams and wake repeatedly.  I am knackered.  It is making me weepy and stupid.

More weepy and stupid than normal.

It means that mornings are more than usually gruesome too, and I can’t say I was a morning person before the insomnia reared its ugly head again.  Everything is hard work.

This morning things went from bad to worse.  I ran out of clean school trousers for Oscar. This wouldn’t have been too bad had I not been rather efficient the night before and put a load of washing in before I went to bed, which included school trousers that we could have sponged down and made do with if I had been my usual slatternly self.

The only option I had, other than to send him to school with non uniform trousers, which is tantamount to sending him to school with a sign attached to him saying: ‘Please beat me to death.’ was to take his clean yet wet trousers to my mum’s in a carrier bag and hope that her tumble dryer was being efficient.

I was cursing about trousers when Tallulah loped into view looking guilty.  She breezily said: ‘After breakfast I must finish my homework.’

I said: ‘Homework isn’t due in until Thursday.’

She said: ‘It is Thursday.’

I said: ‘Crap.’

Then I asked her why she hadn’t done her homework earlier in the week. Apparently she couldn’t. The reasons were complex but boiled down to a) being too lazy and b) being too busy trying to smash her brother’s face in.

Neither reason sat well with me if I’m honest.

Then, because she spent so long faffing about she didn’t even have time to do it after breakfast.

When we got to granny’s house I shut her in the pantry and denied her Coco Pops until she had finished it.  I went and did arcane things with the tumble dryer.

By the skin of our teeth we arrived at school with homework intact and the right trousers on.  These activities were also connected to the correct child, which was gratifying.

This afternoon I have spent hours in Sainsbury’s stocking up on school trousers and cardigans.  Oscar has lost three school cardigans this week. I have tracked them all down with the stealth and efficiency of a bloodhound, due to the fact that they cost £15 each.  I bought emergency non logo’d cardigans from Sainsburys for £3 each, which is much more satisfactory if they go missing.

Yesterday, when Oscar came out of school sans cardigan I said: ‘Have you looked for it?’ to which he shrugged his shoulders nonchalantly and said: ‘Someone will find it eventually.’

We had sharp words.  I have intimated that if he does not keep the cardigan either on his peg or on his back I will sew it to his shoulder blades.  He did not lose it today.

I also had to buy school shirts.  I thought I had bought school shirts. It transpires that I did, but I bought summer school shirts, and soon it will be time for winter. Winter shirts are an entirely different kettle of shirts.

It is all very confusing. Confusing and costly, which is not a combination that appeals to me.

Tallulah came home from school and informed me that I had purchased the wrong colour school skirts for her. I thought she was supposed to wear grey ones. The teacher informs her they should be navy.  I need to find out. I am dreading having to spend more money on school uniform.

Tallulah also informed me that her school shoes do not fit. I remember that she told me this on the Sunday night before the Monday morning they were due at school.  I melted down and after a small tantrum, chose to ignore this information.  It appears I can ignore it no longer.

She also bought home a letter about the school disco, demanding money, and a letter about the yearly shoe box for Christmas charity, which means more money.  The shoe box charity thing is where each child is asked to fill a shoe box with gifts for a child somewhere in the world so they get Christmas presents. It is a lovely idea and I usually wholeheartedly support it.  Today my pockets just wept as I contemplated another mass exodus of money.

On the school finances front things can now only get worse if Tilly comes home tomorrow demanding to go on a skiing trip or wanting to take oboe lessons.

Or become a solo oboeist on skis.

It’s all to Play For – It’s the Semis of the Bake Off and Nobody is dressed as a Belgian Bun

Last night was the semi finals of The Great British Bake Off, the programme which I have retitled: ‘My drug of choice.’

After last week’s eviction of Yasmin, who left clutching the caramelized stump of hand that was all that remained after her disastrous croquembouche attempt, we were down to four:

Holly, who is practically perfect in every way, and who uses a geometry set to make sure that her pies are all pi.  She is like Mary Poppins with a slide rule. She scares me.

Mary Anne, who is an avant garde experimentalist, and makes Heston Blumenthal look like my gran when it comes to baking inventiveness.  Every week I wait with baited breath to see what wonders Mary Anne will perform.  Will she strain her strawberry coulis through an 18th Century fisherman’s wig? Who knows?

Jo, who still has a teeny, weeny voice. I don’t know if I can trust the baked goods of a woman who consistently sounds like she lives down a well.  It has been troubling me all series. I still have not resolved it in my mind.  I might make a better decision if she gave me some cake to aid concentration.

and last but not least, the glorious, the one and only Janet, dazed and confused but ready to channel Delia like a mo’fo’.  Janet needs to wear a tin foil hat to stop the voices, but goodness I love that woman.

I was delirious with joy when they announced that in this programme, entitled Patisserie, that they were reintroducing the signature bake.  My psychology project is back from the dead.  I did a little dance  I uncrumpled my graph of fox’s heads on sticks and licked the end of my pencil. I was poised.  If I find out where Lord Lucan is based on mousse preferences I will get a knighthood at the very least.

The signature bake challenge was to make a layered mousse cake.  There had to be sponge that was light and airy.  There had to be mousse that was thick and lusciously flavoured.  There had to layer upon layer of moussey, cakey wonder, and it had to look sensational.

The problem, according to Paul Hollywood who much like Kevin McCloud in Grand Designs, is all about pointing out the horrendous things that could go wrong whilst mentally rubbing his hands with glee, is that because the cake layers are light and thin, they stand a good chance of being crushed by the sheer weight of mousse unless you get your proportions just right.

It really doesn’t sound like a problem to me. I do not see why being crushed by the weight of mousse could possibly be a bad thing, but that is because I am a ginormous greedy pig of the first water.  I dream of being immersed in mousse.

Holly, who I thought would rock this round, due to the need for ratios and precision, had a complete disaster with her Genoese sponge mixture.  Now I sympathise here.  Genoese sponge does not use fat in the mixture. You just whisk your eggs etc in a pyrex bowl over boiled water until it looks like meringue and then fold the flour in.  If you can do it right you achieve light, succulent sponge of aching beauty.

If you do it wrong it comes out like recycled road surfacing.

I know this from bitter experience.

Holly now does too. Her mixture just would not rise properly. Paul raised his eyebrows to show how it should be done.  It is a little known fact that his eyebrows are sculpted from Genoese sponge cake.  Mary worried about whether Holly’s eggs were fresh enough. Apparently the fresher the egg the more bouffant the mixture.  Sadly there were no pregnant chickens to hand, so she had to soldier on with her sub standard eggs and reap the whirlwind.

Holly’s cake was sort of redeemed at the last moment by the fact that she sprinkled it all over with praline, but it didn’t float my boat.  The judges weren’t that keen either. Holly ground her compass into the back of her hand and looked darkly at her protractor.

Jo did a towering edifice with strawberries and raspberries and a decided list to one side, much like a patisserie version of the Leaning Tower of Pisa.  Paul commented that her strawberries were too big.  At this stage of the competition it is very important that you be able to size your strawberries properly.

I noted this down on my graph.  My fox’s head had a small strawberry tucked behind one ear.

Janet did things with chocolate mousse, which is always satisfactory.  She smothered her sponge in Amaretto liqueur and produced something which made Paul go mmmm.  Praise indeed.

Mary Anne, as ever did something complex.  She made fatless cakes, that were very like swiss rolls, but she made a special type of cake mix to put in them called something like jaconde, which you pipe into intricate patterns and then freeze to create an amazing marbled effect.  She did this and then kind of wrapped her entire mousse in slabs of chocolate marbled wonder. Nom Nom Nom.

Apparently Mary Ann has seven hundred cookery books, which explains the strength in her upper arms.

It did not help her a lot in the technical round, sadly.  She clearly has not got round to ‘I’ for ‘Iced Buns’, as this is what they had to make.  Paul obviously read my comment of last week that he was Ms. Berry’s beehatch when it comes to the technical challenge, because it was his special recipe for iced buns.

Iced bun shaped slap down for La Berry there I think.

Everyone on Twitter was salivating at this point. Me, not so much.  I do not really like iced buns.  Obviously if someone offers me one I will eat it. I am not that stupid. At the end of the day it’s still a cake product, and as such not to be sniffed at, but it is just not exciting.  It’s too bready for a start, and it has icing. I do not like icing unless it has the word butter or the words cream cheese preceding it.

It did not matter whether I liked them or not, sadly.  I have no say in setting the challenges. Would that I did.  My technical challenge would have been: ‘Find ways to fill me with cake that do not make me a) fat or b) sick or c) both.’

That is a true technical challenge.

There was trouble in Bunville over the challenge.  The problems were mostly down to the fact that they had to make a batch of buns, and each bun had to look identical to the next bun and have uniform icing integrity, and other baking phrases that someone who takes a helicopter view would think of.

A cloning machine would probably have been easier and taken less time.  As it was they stumbled on, Holly waving her ruler at every opportunity. If only the Beeb endorsed advertising, Helix would have been raking it in.

Everyone’s buns tasted delicious. Even Paul got icing on his moustaches in his eagerness to stuff as many buns in his face as humanly possible before Mary grabbed them all and ran off to the judging tent shouting: ‘You’ll never take me alive.’  But they were not the best buns in the world.  Icing neatness was a problem.

As I suspected, Holly’s use of set square and military precision measurements meant that the bun challenge was in the bag for her.

The show stopper challenge was to make three types of pastries all made with the same dough, the technical name of which is laminated dough.  This is troubling. Lamination is something I only really consider in relation to whether I should do it to the cat to stop her shedding hair in my keyboard. I haven’t really grasped it in pastry terms.  I think I must have given up domestic science before lamination got involved, probably to the relief of everyone concerned.

Lamination basically involves making a layer of pastry. You then add a pound of butter rolled out into a slab. You fold the pastry over it (you do this bit with your eyes shut, saying ‘It’s not really that much fat’) and then roll it out. You then fold and roll until your arms fall off.  You pop it in the fridge, grow new arms and then repeat several times.  You then leave the pastry for twelve hours while you go to the shop and buy some bakery bought croissants which you eat thoughtfully, shedding crumbs and musing over whether all this is really worth it.

When the twelve hours are up, you proceed to make things like croissants, Danish pastry and a small padded cell to climb into when you realise that you are spending days of your life laminating pastry just so that you can get crumbs in your bra.

Mary Ann, as usual was going off piste.  She was the only one to make savoury pastries, opting for a cheesy plait type thing with onions. She also made praline pinwheels and rose squiggly shapes (and yes, those are the technical terms).  She had a very un Mary Ann like disaster when she took her pastries out too soon and they were raw.

Jo made a chocolate plait and a pain aux raisins as well as a banana and raisin danish which just looked grim to me.  I am always in a bit of a spin when it comes to the banana. I loathe them in the raw. I adore them smothered in custard, ice cream, chocolate, nuts and double cream (with a heart attack on the side), and I occasionally like them in a cake, but I wouldn’t be able to tolerate them slithering over my Danish. Wrongness is the word that springs to mind.

Holly did Escher like star shapes and various other geometric wonders, while Janet, the lovely Janet who had been doing so well up to this point, went, as Paul put it, into ‘the land of the giants.’  She opted to do the classic pain aux raisins, croissants and pain au chocolate and she went all out, producing pastries you could raft down a river on.

Me, I don’t see any problem with this. As far as cakes go, more is always more.

But Mary and Paul were casting glances that boded no well, and so it transpired that Janet’s giant offerings meant that she was asked to leave.

Do you know that this is the only time on the whole programme that Janet did not look surprised?

Also, before everyone could hug her she thanked everyone for her time on the programme, told everyone how lovely they had been and was absolutely the most delightful woman ever to lose a baking programme due to her mammoth buns.

I shall miss her and her alarmed expression. I had hoped against hope that she would make it into the final and maybe even win.  I knew in my heart of hearts it could not be so. The Delia link broke too many times and at the times she wasn’t channeling Delia she ended up baking like me, erratically with a lot of flour in her hair.

It’s great when you’re at home. Not so great when Paul is staring you down with his steely gaze and Mary is wondering about the depth of your filling.

So farewell Janet, may your pastries ever increase. I shall miss you in the final next week.

But just to blow my own trumpet for a moment. I too was a winner this week. The BBC link to blogs on the Great British Bake Off page has a link to my blog post about the week of long pies episode.  How chuffed am I?

Oh, and Sue Perkins has promised, via the power of Twitter, that after the final is over next week, she will reveal to me what the best thing she ate over the whole series was.

A scoop!

Yorkshire – I am so tired I cannot think of any other title

Yesterday I drove to Yorkshire to see my friend, Heather.  The morning did not go as smoothly as I had planned.  This was due in large part to the simple fact that it was Monday.  My brain was not ready for it to be Monday. My brain was still clinging hopefully to Sunday and refusing to peek at the horrors of the week to come.

Then Tallulah came downstairs whey faced, croaky and complaining of stomach ache.  She did look ill, although it is important never to take them at their word i all they are presenting with is looking a bit peaky. Much like those questionnaires you have to fill in to see if you are an alcoholic or a ‘social drinker’, you need to get multiple ticks on the chart before illness is conceded.

Unfortunately for me and my inner sceptic, Tallulah did not want to eat her breakfast.  This is unheard of. Breakfast is, I would hazard, her favourite meal of the day.  This is mostly because she is not compelled to eat fruit and/or vegetables.  It is also because she knows that granny has a secret stash of chocolatey cereal, and that if she eats a proper bowl of cereal at my house, she gets chocolatey goodness at granny’s later in the day.

She got nothing but me putting my head in my hands thinking I would either have to a) cancel the trip to see Heather which had been arranged two months ago, or b) take her with me. Neither of these things appealed.

I manned up.

We set off to do the school run.

Luckily for me, when we got to granny’s house and granny heard the options available to us, she took pity on me and Tallulah and said she would look after her for me.

Because I had been dithering and inept I still had to go home after I had deposited all the children in their rightful places and pack. Then I had jobs to do which I had failed to do over the weekend but which could not wait.

My aim had been to set off at about 9.00 a.m. I set off an hour and a half later.

My consoling thought was: ‘not bad for a Monday.’ and at least I set off.

I stopped at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park for my lunch. It was two junctions further up than I needed to be, but the weather was glorious and I didn’t want to spend an hour eating crap in a motorway services when I could eat sushi sitting on a bench staring at a bunch of Henry Moore sculptures in some of the most idyllic countryside England has to offer.

I snaked my way over the Yorkshire Moors to Heather’s house, nearly crashing several times as I spent rather too long oohing and aahing over the spectacularly beautiful scenery.

Heather and I ate and drank and ate, and chatted, and ate. She gave me the Bridgewater Figs Comport that she had managed to source for me. I gave her a plate for her collection.  We stroked pottery. We ate, we drank.

This morning I set off into the Autumn sunshine replete and happy.  I retraced my steps over the top of the moors, puzzling at a random pub sign that read ‘Soup and Chips £4′ and just underneath this ‘Horse Carrots £2′.  Not somewhere I wanted to stop for lunch to be honest.

I crossed over into the Derbyshire Peaks and enjoyed some more top class Autumnal action, stopping to lunch and wander round in Ashbourne, a quaint old spa town I have only ever driven through before.  It was full of chi chi clothing boutiques and art galleries and artisanal pie shops.  Just the sort of thing I enjoy browsing around to be honest.

Back in the car I spotted The Rivendell Caravan Park. This tickled me greatly as I imagined Galadriel throwing shrimps on the barbecue while Elrond queued for the shower block with his soap on a rope.

I made it home in plenty of time to pick everyone up from school, which was brilliant because I was also picking up granny, and it doesn’t do to make her wait.

We sloped off to Mrs. Roody’s where we met up again with my friends Bronx Bee and Mary Anne and enjoyed the finest desserts Mrs. Roody had to offer.  Oscar danced with Mrs. Roody. Georgie taught Tallulah how to blow bubbles with gum. Tallulah, being Tallulah, tried to make a gum moustache, at which point we had to cut lumps of hair covered in bubblegum from her scalp.  Everyone tried new fruit flavoured rabbit food (no, this is not a euphemism).  We concurred that only a rabbit could love it.

We went home, trailing Bronx Bee and Mary Ann behind us in our wake like a comet, and sat drinking tea and sharing stories until it was time for the children to go to bed.

And yes. I have watched The Great British Bake Off.  And I will blog it, but not tonight Josephine.

Oscar’s weekend wit

I have been having a bit of a posting fest today.  I have lots of things on my mind and I am going to be so ridiculously busy over the next week I don’t want to get behind with my punishing, self inflicted mental schedule that nobody else but me cares about.

This is however, the last post of the day.

Not the last post, last post.

I do not haz trumpets.

Nor am I inclined to end the world.

As you may have gathered, Oscar has been working overtime this weekend, gifting me gems of conversation as only he can.  I think he has been slightly oppressed by school and has, much like his mother, saved it all up to blurt out at a later date when he can share his wit and wisdom with an appreciative audience.

I have been tweeting his sayings all weekend, but for those of you who have a life outside of the internet I will share them here.  I also want them here for me, as twitter eats things after a while and it would be a shame not to keep some of this for posterity.

I could easily write whole blog posts about each one, and I have, with some of them, but there are too many, so you will have to have the rest in list form, as I do have a million things to do before bed time, and I am off to Yorkshire for two days tomorrow.

So here we go with the wit and wisdom of Oscar:

• When I am King, everyone will be allowed balloons.
• How much money does it cost to buy a motorbike when you are a dwarf? It shouldn’t cost so much because they are littler.
• Dada. It would be cool if you had a million jet packs cushioned around your car, and you could press a button and make it rise up. That’s the first cool idea I’ve had all week.
• I have always just been growing up to be funny.  Maybe I could be a clown when I get to be a proper grown up.
• I used that air freshener thingy to rub on myself just to make myself smell nice.

He’ll be here all week.

Try the fish.

Galloping Gourmet

I have spent the weekend, when I have not been cleaning up puddles of wee, eating glorious amounts of food.

This is the sort of weekend I like.  In fact like is not really a strong enough word to convey the emotions I feel when various people invite me to go and fill my face with them. Love, Lust, Desire, Dream of.  All more appropriate.

Yesterday was the first time I have visited the Stratford on Avon food festival.  I tend to try and avoid Stratford when I am not play going.  There is nothing wrong with it. It is in fact, a lovely, picturesque town, chock full of history, good places to eat and nice shops.

The problem is that it is always chock full of tourists.  I do not want to go on a tour bus, or visit Anne Hathaway’s cottage, or go to the Shakespeare Experience thank you.  Nor do I wish to spend my time cheek by jowl with lots of Japanese tourists taking photos of each other and jaywalking in that way that you know means that they’re only doing it because they’re on holiday and they’re shortly about to be mown down in front of your eyes.

However, we were invited to visit the food festival by two lovely friends I have made through the world of blogging, Mary Ann my go to woman on all things filmic, and the ever lovely Bronx Bee.  They visit Stratford at least once a year if they can, to catch up on theatre, and for the last three years they have been nibbling their way through the offerings of the food festival.

Some food festivals are fairly lame in my experience, especially since the invention of the cupcake.  I once went to a food festival which purported to show the best of Leicestershire cuisine and which had about twenty cupcake stalls, no cheese stall (Red Leicester anyone), and no pork pies to be seen.  It was not satisfactory.

Mary Ann and Bronx Bee are good foodie people though. They know quality when they see it.  We have eaten delicious, exciting and interesting meals together in the past.  If they say a food festival is worth going to, I believe them.

It was, despite the bustle and the tourists, a fantastic experience.  My favourite stall was Carluccios’ which surprised me rather. I thought it might be a bit corporate and soulless, but no. Basically it was a hymn to mushrooms. There were amazingly delicate mushrooms with blue stalks that were lavendery and wonderful. There were cauliflower mushrooms, and puff balls, and porcini and cep, and it all smelled delightful and earthy and mouth watering.

You could buy bags of mushrooms in the raw, or do as we did, which was fall on the mushroom risotto which was slowly simmering in a huge pan.  We had it with slices of warm foccaccia studded with salt, and fresh parmesan and ground black pepper.  It was heavenly.

We sauntered around taking in the sights and smells, freshly squeezed apple juice, local wines, sausages, hams, fruit and veg, a lot of it from Warwickshire itself.  One woman walking by complained to her husband: ‘There’s just too much food.’

Stupid bint.

For dessert, as the weather was lovely, we sat outside the newly renovated RST building on the grass with freshly brewed coffee, and hot chocolate for the non caffeine fixated, and ate a selection of wonderful cakes.  I had pear and plum cake with almonds and ricotta cheese.  It was moist and grainy and tasted of Autumn. It was the perfect accompaniment to the risotto of earlier.

Afterwards we shuffled off some of the stodge with a walk by the river in the afternoon sunshine.

I will be going again next year if we are still living here. It was first rate.

Today we went out for lunch with some friends at a pub called The Red Lion in Stathern, about forty miles from us, between Melton Mowbray and Nottingham.  It is the sister pub to The Olive Branch in Clipsham in Rutland, which won the Michelin pub of the year award.  I was quite excited about this.  The Olive Branch has been on mine and Uncle Robber’s list of go to places for some time now.

I have to say that the food was delicious. I could not fault it.  The flavours were delicate. The food was perfectly cooked and there was sensible portion control.  The food was hot. The staff were friendly to the children and the children’s food was given to them while we had our starters so they weren’t left to sit around idly starving to death.

The downside was the service which was ridiculously slow.  So slow that by the time we had finished our main course we had to go because Jason was due at a party and we could not wait for pudding. I was, as you can imagine, somewhat devastated by this. The rest of the food was so good I was frantic to know how the puddings would measure up.

Hopefully we will go back.  The couple we went with told us that they ate there regularly and they had never had service like it. They were genuinely distressed about it, so it was obviously a one off thing. We just visited on a bad day.  Jason was so impressed by the food that he has said he would be willing to go and eat there again despite the service, which is something, as he is even more finicky and intolerant than me most days.

To the food.

To start with I shared a tapas board with one of our friends.  It was tapas with a twist, which was interesting.  We had local chorizo in wine, tiny spare ribs juicy with meat, and local bacon cooked to a crisp.  There were olives, cockles in brine, a wafer thin vegetable tart which was so tasty I could have eaten twenty of them, pickled quails eggs, pork crackling, slices of pigeon roasted and juicy.  It was gorgeous.

The waitress bought half a loaf of freshly made brown bread scattered with pumpkin seeds which was still warm to the table. You were given a carving knife to cut your own slices, and butter with chilli and herbs to spread on it. MMMMM.

For my main course I had a pan fried fillet of sea bream on a bed of home made ratatouille and cubed potatoes with a freshly made tomato and herb sauce.  It was succulent and glorious. The flavours of the veg complemented the tender meatiness of the fish and it was all delightful.

Jason had the roast beef dinner. The meat was juicy and flavourful and cooked to perfection. It was served with winter veg like roasted parsnip and beetroot, which I got to eat because he doesn’t like it, but which were sweet and perfectly cooked.  He had roast potatoes and Yorkshire with it, and he wiped the plate clean.

Oscar had beautifully cooked fish and chips. The chips were crispy on the outside and full of beautifully fluffy potato on the inside. The fish was light and tasty and the batter crunched as it should.  He managed pudding of vanilla ice cream (with vanilla seeds. Always good) and sticky toffee pudding which even I thought smelled divine.

It was beautiful, and I am now definitely taking Uncle Robber to The Olive Branch to see what they can do for us.

A pretty delightful weekend I’m sure you will agree.

Wee Wee Wee all the way home

Oscar wet the bed last night.

This has been happening sporadically since he started school.

Ninja kick boxing moves are not the only things he seems to have learned from his younger sister.

It is very demoralising.  Nevertheless we persevere and try not to make a big deal out of it. Bitter experience has taught us that the losing of cool over it really doesn’t help anyone at all.

I should however, have taken it as a sign that might be an omen, that things are not all ticketty Boo in the land of Oscar, despite his stellar conversational gambits (more of which anon).

Today we went to visit some friends of Jason.  Oscar and I had never met them before, but they have a son Oscar’s age, and he was excited to meet them because he likes having boys to play with, living as he does, in a very girl oriented household.

As we were nearing their house I was getting more and more desperate for the loo. Unfortunately we were early, and they were out with their son at rugby practice.  Even more unfortunately they live in a picture perfect chocolate box village, with matching Lark Rise to Candleford style roads. i.e. ones that have not been repaved since about 1893.

As we undulated, bounced and jogged our way round until they arrived home I got more and more desperate for a wee until Oscar had a brain wave:

‘Dada. If you just finish your bottle of orange juice, mama can have a pee in that and we won’t need to find a toilet.’

This nearly finished me off completely, as I then had a fit of the giggles to contend with.

Luckily, just as I was about to start piddling out of my ears, they arrived back and I unceremoniously hurtled to christen the bathroom.

After this all was going stupendously well.  The boys got on like a house on fire, we were all set to go to the award winning pub for a slap up feed and conversation was flowing.  Oscar came out to ask where the loo was.

Five minutes later he came back drenched in wee. Absolutely drenched.  It looked like he had taken his clothes off, whizzed on them, chucked half a pint of spare wee he had secreted about his person on them, and then fallen in a vat of horse urine.

In all the years he has been alive I genuinely do not think I have ever seen him covered in that much wee.

As you can imagine we were fairly mortified.  He is nearly five. He has been dry for a long time. I did not have any clean clothes for him. This does not happen. Except that it did.

We had to borrow clothes from our lovely hosts, who handled everything calmly, kindly and with the utmost grace, as if every family who fell through the door ended up drenched in wee and there was nothing to worry about.

In the meantime Oscar was hysterical and rigid in the teeny, weeny downstairs loo, refusing to get undressed, refusing to get washed or dried or redressed, and just spending his time screeching and wailing.

By this time we were running late for the pub.  I was not impressed.  It took me fifteen minutes of stern talking to get him clothed and out the door. Then I had to carry him to the pub as he refused to do anything except weep with mortification and ask to go home.

By this point the atmosphere was more than a little uncomfortable, and I, for one was all about tossing him down the nearest manhole cover and pretending to be childless.

Eventually, when we got into the pub, thanks to the sheer kindness and patience of our hosts and their son, he thawed and started to behave normally again.  Which was a blessed relief, and the afternoon was concluded in harmony.

I am sure that this is entirely down to him adjusting to school, and not a million miles away from being related to the problem that arose when we were on our way to their house in the car.  We were talking about silly place names. We had just passed a place called Bottom Green and I had told Oscar an elaborate story about how the village was called that because it was inhabited by a rare tribe of monkeys who had green bottoms instead of the usual red ones.

We were laughing about it and Oscar was asking Jason what other place names we were passing were called.  Jason pointed out that if Oscar would learn to read, that he would know what they are without having to ask, and he could make up his own stories.

There was a deathly silence from the back of the car.

Jason said: ‘Why don’t you want to learn to read Oscar?’

To which he replied in a very small voice: ‘Because if I can read then I will have to be a grown up, and I don’t want to be a grown up. I want to stay being a baby.’

And he promptly burst into tears.

I have every sympathy for him, but my heart sank.

I feel we have a long road ahead of us with this one.

It’s Not Pink

As you know, I am addicted to the television show Shameless.

Everyone said that it starts to go off the boil after season four, but half way through season five I have to say I am not disappointed yet. The writing is still sharp. It still has that dark, twisted, sickness that I crave, and it still has some absolutely hilarious lines.

In one of the episodes we were watching last night, a character is trying to make a go of it by starting his own executive chauffeur business, complete with luxury cars.

Disastrously for him he buys a hot pink limousine, which doesn’t exactly go down well with anyone.  All morning as he is washing it, people pass by and comment on how pink it is.

At one point he gets so annoyed he stands in the street and shouts:

‘It’s not pink.  IT’S FUSS CHIYA’.

I howled.

I love that.  I am going to call all shades of pink fuss chiya from now on.

It also reminded me of when I was learning to read as a child and thought that the word pigeon was pronounced piggy on.

Any mispronounciations tickled your fancy recently?

I was going to put the clip of Mickey shouting Fuss Chiya on here, but I can’t find it.

You’ll have to make do with Frank Gallagher instead:

Look Into My Toast

It has been a very Derek and Oscar weekend.  Really I should change Oscar’s name to Clive. It would be much more satisfactory over all, and pay homage to another great double act.

This morning Oscar was eating his toast at the table while Derek stalked him.

Normally I throw Derek out at meal times because she is such a bloody nuisance and she has no regard for social niceties.  If you have baked beans and she wants them she points a furry paw as if to say: ‘Look! It’s Superman wrestling a chicken!’ or some such nonsense, and then jumps onto your plate with all four paws as soon as your head is turned.  By the time you turn back to your plate she has hoovered up all the beans and is steadily licking up bean juice as if it were mother’s milk.

Breakfasts are less easy to patrol as we do not regularly all eat together.  I tend to eat on the run, Jason prefers to eat in a different room than the children. He is a man of tender sensibilities and the vision of Tallulah eating Shreddies of a morning does not sit well with him.

I try to keep Derek out, but the kitchen door is open and closed so many times it is virtually impossible. Hence her stalking of his toast.

She usually starts off playing it casual.  If the table is not too full she will lounge on it, stretching out as if to create the illusion that she is really not bothered one way or another that you do have food, she’s just here, scratching her foot, twiddling her whiskers, watching the world go by…

Then, if you relax your guard, she sits up very neatly, and inches towards you in slow but steady increments until she is practically nose to nose with you.

If you push her away with your hand, she feints to one side or the other, comes up in an unexpected place and usually manages to pop something into her mouth.

Oscar, who is a lackadaisical eater of meals, has been outwitted in this way so many times he has begun to resent it.  This morning as she inched nearer to him he was on guard.

He decided to get his own back once and for all.

He took his piece of toast and started waving it back and forth in front of Derek’s eyes.

She watched him, alert for the first sign of weakness.

He did not crack.

Eventually her head began to snake back and forth in time with the toast, much like Mowgli in The Jungle Book where Kaa the snake tries to hypnotise him, so he could eat him.

I watched them, and wondered if this was part of Oscar’s master plan.

Just as I had finished thinking this Oscar shouted: ‘Look Mama! I am hypnotising Derek with my toast.’

He was totally convinced she was in his power, which of course she was.

Until he had finished eating his toast.

He was gutted.