How To Feel Better

Are things getting you down? Is your shared backyard full of dead plants, in a metaphorical or real sense? Mine is. Here are three things that make me laugh when I think of them, no matter how awful I’m feeling.

1. When she walks down steps, May Blossom has taken to sometimes refusing the proffered hand of her father or me and instead holds her own hand. Independent much? Lacking understanding of the concept of the stabilising force an adult hand can offer? Very, very funny to watch? All of these things.

2. When she wants to warn anyone of anything — that the heater is on; that there is a flight of steps approaching; that the cat is nearing dinner time and could remove the next digit or limb that gets waved near her — May Blossom says ‘Careful, mate’ in the most splendid approximation of H’s voice.

Out Of Control

The house. It is out of control. It really started to sink in for me when H suggested the other day that we at least try to keep a clear path from the front to the back of the flat. You know, for safety. Yeah. That’s too messy, even for me.

Mother’s Day And A Misunderstanding

On Sunday morning, H took me to brunch at a very fancy seaside restaurant to celebrate Mother’s Day. We ate what small morsels of a ricotta and herb omelette and a plate of corned beef and swiss chard hash with poached eggs and hollandaise sauce remained after the Tardis child had had her merry way with our meals. We were sitting around, savouring our coffee and nibbling on the superb house-made baked beans that we’d ordered as a side dish, when May Blossom picked up a bean between her thumb and forefinger and regarded it solemnly.

‘Poo.’ She declared. Then, in case I was in any doubt of what she was referring to, she pointed to the bean with her other hand and said again, ‘poo.’

‘That’s not a poo, that’s a baked bean,’ I replied, uttering a sentence I am fairly certain I have never said before.

‘No,’ she said. ‘Poo. Granddad’s poo.’

Lunch Of The Week: Mushroom Barley Soup With Grilled Feta Toast

Better a terrible photo than none at all, that’s what I always say. I couldn’t put my spoon down long enough to take a photo with two hands. That’s all you need to know about this meal.

I know, it’s a big call declaring a Lunch of The Week on Monday, but I’m feeling quietly confident that this will be the one to beat. It’s not a good-looking lunch, but it has hidden depths of deliciousness and you will find yourself a bit in love with it. It is the Stephen Fry of lunch.

This morning May Blossom and I donned aprons and scrubbed out the inside of the oven, which was, to paraphrase Neil from The Young Ones after he sticks his head in their oven to gas himself, dirtier than ovens at the bottom of swamps. It was a thoroughly dispiriting job, and one not made any easier by my insistence on using only bicarbonate of soda and vinegar (and child labour). With every scrub my brain screamed ‘Go buy a can of Mr Muscle, hippie!’, like Rik would have if they had ever actually gotten round to cleaning the oven on the show.

Crying Over Spilt Milk

One of my lovely readers, Aly,  asked me to write about my experience of breastfeeding. Inspired by this post from Cara at Peonies and Polaroids, I thought I’d give it a try, see what happens.

That sort of casual attitude is exactly how I did NOT approach breastfeeding. I approached it with a delightful cocktail of fear, apprehension, conviction that it would not work and yet utter determination that it would. Being something of an over-researcher, long before May Blossom was born I was reading about breastfeeding and the low rates thereof in many modern western countries. I read blogs about how hard it was by people for whom breastfeeding was a disaster for mother and child. Basically, I scared the shit out of myself.

Cooking With Gusto: Blackberry Sponge Pudding

We live in a house with a very small fridge. There’s only one place a fridge can fit in the kitchen, and there’s only one fridge available that fits into that place. And it’s not a big enough fridge.

It has, as you might expect, a very small freezer section. We like to keep it very full of food stacked so precariously that it is dangerous to open the door. Since January, a good 30 per cent of our freezer space has been taken up with a large tub of blackberries, which we picked nowhere near my parents’ property which absolutely does not have any blackberry bushes growing on it anywhere, Mr Council Noxious Weed Inspector Detector.

Since the berries were so hard won, I have been waiting for something worthwhile to cook with them to come along. I don’t know what amazing recipe I thought I was going to stumble across, or what worthy occasion I thought might arise (my receiving a Damehood for Services to Not Pulling My Weight Around The House?), but eventually I just pulled them out one evening when Mum and Dad came round for dinner and cooked them.

Secret Fairy Business

Everytime a child says “I don’t believe in fairies” there is a little fairy somewhere that falls down dead.

J. M. Barrie, Peter Pan

Sorry, fairies. It’s not that I don’t believe in them, it’s just that I’ve never really liked them. I hope that hasn’t left too many of them with asthma or one leg shorter than the other.

Fairies have always struck me as rather fey and ineffectual. Very pretty, of course, but what to they actually do? I don’t remember having any books about fairies as a little girl, and I didn’t own fairy wings or a fairy costume. As an adult I have lumped the whole fairy thing in with princesses: patriarchal nonsense that I want no part in for my daughter.

But then my cousin had a combined 30^th and 3^rd birthday party with her daughter. The theme was fairies. I decided that I wouldn’t make a big deal to May Blossom about my feelings on fairies, because as we all know, nothing makes you like something like your mother thinking it’s a waste of time.