On Fridays I go to an art class. I know, it’s a tough old life, but what can you do? Our teacher is hugely talented. When we arrived last week, we had this to draw: It’s a perfect little fairy garden she made using a square of astroturf, some dwarf hyacinths and daffodils from her …
It’s time to confess. I’ve always hated supermarket shopping. Now I hate internet shopping, too. I know, how lazy can one woman get? But it’s true. There are so many pitfalls to internet shopping – there was the time when I got six kilos of bananas delivered, instead of just six actual bananas, and had …
When I showed my girls my latest car number plate photos, they rolled their eyes for about ten minutes and then told me I was very purile. Well, it’s probably true, but as I pointed out, it does keep me occupied on the school run, which is much longer since we moved last year. Anyway, …
Isn’t Ian McEwan just fab? At the Guardian open weekend, he was telling everyone that his son was set his prize-winning novel, Enduring Love, for GCSE. McEwan modestly said that he’d offered his boy a few pointers, but the poor lad had not done brilliantly at all – apparently the teacher was convinced that the …
Unexpected acts of kindness are so lovely, aren’t they? Yesterday, via email, I received a recipe for dairy-free brownies from a friend who had just heard about Child 2’s lactose intolerance. I admit that I used to be one of those harsh souls who believe a lot of diet troubles are fads. ‘We never had all these …
All this tax business (it’s the budget here today and we’re all just waiting to see how much richer the Chancellor, George Osborne, is going to make the rich) is making me have a Political Moment. Now, once upon a time, I was quite a political person and it was more an occasion for capital …
Memory is an odd thing. I was thinking, yesterday, of Mother’s Day last year, which was very difficult for various boring, sad reasons, and a huge contrast with this year, a happy occasion marred only by the odd spat with a teenager-who-shall-remain-nameless. I could remember last year really well, and I remember other years with …
Have you ever wondered how some people just have the knack of collecting lovely, designery bits and bobs around them, without appearing to break the bank, or even spend days schlepping around the shops? Chances are there is more than luck and good taste to it. They are probably members of one of the …
Child Two has the most Lady Bracknellesque expression of outrage on her gorgeous little teenage face. ‘I can’t believe you can get a Sylvanian chimp family now. In my day, the brown rabbit family was exotic!’ she sniffs. I love the fact that she’s peeved that the Sylvanians have moved on, even while she’s been …
There’s a mayoral campaign going on in London, and one of the key issues will be housing. When I left university and moved back to London, I was able to get flats reasonably cheaply, sharing with friends – all right, one place was sublet from the council in a frankly dodgy way, and another was …