Some days, allotmenteering with children in tow is a real joy: you feel all earth-mothery and fab. Some days it is hell on earth and you spend the entire time screeching like a harridan as they fight over the tools/throw the lovely compost out of your raised bed/climb on other people’s cold frames (a fantastic combination of breakable glass, poisonous slug pellets and other people’s property)/roll about on other people’s lovely even potato furrows/screech/whinge/climb into the car and turn the radio up really loud then cry in fright. The whinge some more for good measure.

I have come home feeling rather more harrassed than I did before* but secure in the knowledge I have at long last got in my first row of first early potatoes (“epicure”) thanks in no small part to Peter, one of the old boys, who brought up spade and rake and worked for me for over an hour – how kind. I’ve brought home the last 5 white tulips and a bag of purple-sprouting broccoli for tea as well: hooray!

*Which was already quite harrassed, thank you: C is somewhere fabulous near Milan with mountain-and-lake views from his suite; I have a largish deadline tonight; my cleaner has apparently quit, or at least not shown her face since before Easter.

A great birthday: presents first thing*; Daddy got home around 11**; Aunty Suzi, Mia and Callum** came for lunch. Then this afternoon was The Party: about 8 4-year-olds** and several younger siblings – musical bumps, pass-the-parcel, egg-and-spoon racing, cake, and plenty of time to play, dress up and jump on all the beds. The Aunty Sara and Uncle Ian** came for tea before Mummy fell in a heap, Daddy collapsed with jetlag and Maggie refused to go to sleep (“I’m not tired“). A huge success with plenty more photos to be found on flickr.

*loads of them and what a star she is, wanting to ring everybody up and thank them immediately.

**with more presents, naturally.

What are we kitchen goddess types to do when faced with the last day of preschool before the holidays and an elder daughter, whose very name means blossom, with a birthday mid-holiday? Why, blossom biscuits of course!

They looked rather better before the icing was applied, as you could see the authentic cherry-blossom shape. (But she is nearly 4 and minimalism just will not do: they had to be Pink. Though she took some persuading that they shouldn’t be pale pink with dark-pink middles; her expectations exceed my abilities.) The boys at preschool may refuse*, so we made a few white ones too. And they would have been somewhat improved had I not all but run out of plain flour, meaning we had to make them with wholewheat with the bits sieved out (I’ll get a reputation as a nutrition nazi down the nursery). But I think they are cute and seasonal, so there.

*Paddy likes pink, apparently. The other, less-assured boys are more batman and ninja turtles.

Last summer, for Ann’s birthday, we were all booked to have a lovely spa day until Tamsin got chickenpox* and I had to cancel. It’s taken 8 months to rearrange but finally, this Sunday, we went! It was touch and go as I dosed a very sad Tamsin with calpol* on Saturday night, but by Sunday morning she seemed a little more cheery and frankly I needed some time off, so off I went. A spot of lunch; a float about the pool – more chat than swim – steam room, jacuzzi then off for our “treatments”, a lovely facial and a pedicure. Hoorah! I don’t care what Julie Burchill has to say about it, I think being pampered is rather nice from time to time.

Today, I feel achey and shivery, which I very much hope is a manifestation of lack of sleep because I do not have time for a lurgy. Maggie has been back to the doctor with her cough, which is keeping everybody up for hours every night, as the inhaler did absolutely nothing. We now have antibiotics, which are not expected to do anything “but sometimes you are surprised” (I actually very much like this doctor – coughs are just one of those things, aren’t they). Tamsin has a nasty cold and is like one of those revolting toddlers with a green streaming nose that I dislike so much when they belong to other people; she’s refusing to settle at night for hours on end too, and is very thin post-virus. Tempers are starting to fray.

On the bright side, a sunny (but very cold) day today persuaded me to take the girls to the zoo for a quick run and to see Margaret the new baby giraffe. She’s less than 6 foot tall with big eyes and absolutely gorgeous so I am very glad we did. And the elephants were having fun in the pool.

*Is it only my children who are constantly ill?

Another hour in the doctor’s waiting room today (I know it’s a cliche but why can’t they give sensible appointment times that have some bearing on reality?), this time to come away with an inhaler for M. He’s not saying she has asthma, but thinks it might help with her cough (and frankly I think Cameron is going to explode if he has another night like last night: T was up for nearly 2 hours then just as she dropped off at long last Maggie started to cough) and I am prepared to try it. She does seem to get a cough with every cold, and Cameron does/did have asthma, so who knows. Maggie was most reluctant while we were in there – I don’t think the doctor helped by telling me what I should do if the inhaler was “too scary” but by the time we had been to the chemist and got home she was quite excited to try it. I think several of her preschool friends have inhalers so they are not the freaky scary weirdy things they might once have been.

She’s had a puff which appears to have made no difference. Fingers crossed for 5 am.

(Tamsin update: no episodes for over 24 hours; still whingy.)

I’ve been having a slightly trying time of late: Tamsin started to be sick last Monday night and hasn’t stopped yet. She waits nearly 24 hours between bouts, just long enough to lull me into thinking she’s stopped…then off she goes again. I finally took her to the (lovely trainee) doctor today who diagnosed viral gastroenteritis and was very reassuring. Which is just what I wanted: I expected them to not really do very much but after a week some reassurance was required. We agreed I should steer clear of having her weighed for some time, though our motives were slightly different: I just don’t want to be mithered by bullying health visitors while the doctor was more concerned I would worry. I’m just glad she’s still breastfed as at least she is absorbing some nutrients from something: it is a bit of a pain that she’s reverted to a near-newborn feeding pattern, but she wants to be on my knee all the time anyway.

Anyway, she hasn’t  been sick since teatime yesterday so fingers crossed she’s on the  mend.

In the meantime, Cameron went to a freezing, snowy Istanbul. He spent a day at what sounds like an entirely health-and-safety-free steel mill but did manage to squeeze in the blue mosque &c, and brought home a photograph of himself with an unusually slim and glamorous belly-dancer. It’s not all work work work.

I zipped south armed with kitchen roll, antibacterial spray and spare clothes aplenty to stay with my parents for a couple of days. We braved the cold to visit the new glasshouse at Wisley which, as seems to be the way of these things, was more impressive from the outside (though I liked the root zone and we coincided with an orchid show, which was gorgeous).

Saturday was a bit of a nightmare all round – we were supposed to rendezvous with Cameron in Harrogate around lunchtime, for Mia’s birthday party. He made it around 7.30 pm having spent the day crossly at Frankfurt airport (though on the bright side his bag unexpectedly accompanied him home). We got there after 3, about 10 minutes before the start of the party, having sat in traffic queue after traffic queue on the M1. And Tamsin was sick on her party dress.

Sunday morning Suzanne and I left the daddies in charge of diarrhoea-Tamsin, vomit-and-diarrhoea Callum (Tamsin kindly shared her bug) and the two falling-out big girls, and spent a pleasant and much deserved couple of hours in the Harrogate turkish bath: what a treat! It’s a very old-fashioned Victorian bath house – all patterned tiles and ancient plumbing – with a steam room, an icy plunge pool, and three rooms heated to different temperatures for lounging in. Atmospheric and wonderful (especially after the estimated 4 hours’ sleep I’d had the previous night) with some very scary attendants.

I know I’ve been a bit awol but frankly all I can do at the moment is whinge and moan, and I can do that just as well elsewhere! Cameron is away again (that is at least 2 usually 3 often 4 solo bath-and-beds every single week this year so far: fantastic) and Tamsin is teething really badly, with accompanying cold, cough, streaming nose and miserable not-eating-not-sleeping. Maggie has a cold. I have loads of work on. Last night, for example, I spent the evening going upstairs every 30 minutes or so either to resettle sad Tamsin or to help Maggie back into bed (she fell out)/find her a tissue/give her a big optimistic dose of Medised – I finally finished work after 11. Tamsin didn’t really settle properly until I got into bed with her (even then we were up every couple of hours through the night) and when I came downstairs this morning I was confronted with last night’s tea things that the fairies hadn’t dealt with overnight. I am Very fed up.

On the bright side, we had a fun weekend at centerparc and Maggie can swim! She’s not yet 4: I am so very proud I feel quite teary. She doesn’t just do it for us, either, she’s done it at her lessons, which means she is going into the next class after half term. Mixed feelings there – I’ll miss going in with her as I do enjoy it (especially when, as I was explaining that I wouldn’t be going in with her any more, she said but I’ll miss you!) – but the relief at having my Tamsin-care issues solved is quite large.

OK. Both girls were asleep by 7.30 (yay me and my single-mumming skills). Tamsin woke again at 9, 1, 3 for an hour and 6. At 5, Maggie came in complaining that she was cold (it was cold) and that the bunny clock had got confused and woken up. She mithered and moaned for a good half hour before going back to sleep with her icy feet on me. Naturally, we all then slept until 8.30 and M was late for preschool. I have absolutely no idea how we will cope when she starts school in September.

Edited to add what I intended to put when I started typing but didn’t, due most likely to severe sleep deprivation: Margaret Thatcher got by on 4 hours’ sleep a night, apparently. Does anyone else think that explains a lot? I feel quite like closing mines and laying people off and taking milk from my babies today, too. What a glorious country we might be living in if she’d only got her full 8 hours.

PS I didn’t get to go on my allotment evening out – C came up with the expected business trip. I understand he had a very expensive very nice meal out in a London restaurant: none of my A-list babysitters were available at 24 hours notice and it didn’t seem an important enough occasion to go to the B-list so I stayed home. Poor me.

We’re having what Pewari euphemistically tell me is called a “mental health day” today. I’d have called it a “sitting on my lazy arse” day, but hers sounds better – and, to be fair, we often have days like this and I do have robust mental health (touch wood) so perhaps there is something in it. If you’d asked me last night what I was going to achieve today the list would have been long: to town on the bus to go to bank, library, Holland and Barratt, and (shh!) get a birthday present for Cameron. By 10 am, however, it was apparent that none of this was going to happen. I am trying quite hard to not spend the entire day chatting on msn and surfing at random, but Cameron left at 6 am, after which we all fell asleep again, and I can’t quite bring myself to care whether the kitchen is clean or the living room tidy. Let’s be honest: I struggle to care at the best of times, and this is not the best of times.

In other news: Tamsin has her first shoes, a minute size 2 1/2. She’s right on the cusp of toddlerhood and really not a baby any more.
And if you’ll excuse a bit of insufferable mummy pride, Maggie is clearly a methmatical genius in the making: I told her to eat 10 more spoonfuls of weetabix. After a bit she told me she’d eaten 5 so had 5 more to go. Then I asked how many she’d had she said 2, then told me that meant there were 3 left! I was most impressed – no counting on fingers required (apart from by me, to make sure she was correct).

Less impressive perhaps, but more amusing: she told me she had been asleep for 100 years and been woken by a handsome prince. I asked his name; she told me Sarry. “Sarry?” I said. Yes, Prince Sarry. Say it fast!

A Tamsin anecdote to even things up: one day last week she scampered up the stairs on her own and back down again bringing my conditioner from the bathroom as a souvenir. It’s great to know she is safe and confident on the stairs but this is not quite the way I expected to find out. She might feel ready but I’m not sure I am yet.

I’ve been reading Kate Atkinson’s latest book, which has had me wondering why some novels are literary and some just, well, novels. I’ve found some interesting ideas around the web, about internal versus external plots and about longevity, which seems to confuse literary fiction with classics (are they necessarily the same thing?) At which point my brain went la la la and I reverted to housewifery (while continuing to enjoy my book. I think, for what it’s worth, literary fiction is that which speaks to something deep inside: without necessarily knowing what or why, it touches your soul. Even if it is nominally a detective story. Oh, and it probably needs some recurring motifs that have a clever link to the characters.)

And now I am going to order some seed potatoes. Who says there is no variety in the non-working life?

Today so far I have nagged, bribed, cajoled and shouted to get the children out of the house in time for swimming (we have to leave at 8.50, which is a killer. Goodness knows how we will cope when M starts school next year), only to sit in traffic for half an hour to reach the end of the road; the two alternative routes I tried were no better. To the veg shop instead – might as well, since we are out and would have to go this afternoon – to find it doesn’t open until 10. I’ve promised soft play this afternoon in compensation; would it be really bad to not mention it and hope she forgets? I don’t really have the energy, and have rung round friends to no avail. If we go, we go alone.

Yesterday was not good either: the day started at 5 a-bloody-m with M complaining of a tummyache. Which received very little sympathy, it must be said (Bad Mummy) so she was sick to make her point. I packed her off to preschool anyway (Bad Mummy) because she scoffed two weetabix – how bad could she be feeling? – and she was fine. T was in bed asleep by 6 last night (having only managed a 20-minute nap during the day – and again today, Bad Baby!) and M not much past 7; I lolled about like a wrung-out rag until ooh 9.45 then gave up too. This week’s manuscripts are not getting the attention they deserve.

Dear readers, I need your advice. We have People coming for dinner on Saturday. I don’t know them well: he was Cameron’s first boss at Shell (and the terrifying head of the group I was in as a student there – fortunately he is no longer terrifying but really very nice) and she is his wife, who I have never met. What do I feed them? Also there is the getting-the-children-to-bed factor, which means it can’t be anything that requires much faffing, unless the faffing can be done 3 hours in advance. I’m thinking a chicken (in fact I have just bought a chicken so that is fairly set) which I can roast or pot-roast depending on the phase of the moon and the direction of the wind on Saturday. With rice and something spicey-and-squashy and something red-cabbagey, I think. But what to have for pud? The last few people (and People) to come have had Delia’s croquembouche: it looks most impressive and is really delicious, with very little effort. But it’s a bit summery and I’m a bit tired of doing it. Nigella’s bread-and-butter pud made with pain au chocolat? A pavlova? Something else? Whaddya think?