It’s Tamsin’s naming ceremony on Saturday (she’ll be 8 months tomorrow!), which means I have extra mouths at every meal between now and Monday. Which is fine: I generally like having visitors, but I confess to feeling somewhat overwhelmed tonight. I’ve done an Ocado shop – and, naturally, started making a list of all the things I forgot to put on it (like milk, for goodness sake). Cameron can nip to Sainsburys on Saturday. I’ve got a gazebo and lots of sausages and some ketchup. I suspect if I’d had more than 90 minutes’ unbroken sleep at some point in the past fortnight I’d be quite on top of things – as it is I just feel desperate. And the house won’t get its usual Friday clean tomorrow (unless she just turns up as normal? It could happen.).

It seems it was not the outside lights filling with water that was shorting out our circuits – although they were filling up – it was the 2″ of water collected under our floorboards and in a junction box. That’s not good, right? Another 2 days of tripping over extension cables and no hot water and then hours and hours of making cups of tea for the electricians today before he sawed through the floor and found it.

Bizarrely and, we think, unrelatedly, our Sky box packed in last night. Or rather, the connection between it and the telly was feeling uncooperative. After switching on and off and on and off and disconnecting and reconnecting several times, Cameron rang Sky. Who suggested he disconnect the scart lead (yes yes we’ve done that), turn it around, and reconnect the other way. Which worked. Which has completely messed with my comprehension of leads and connectors and basic physics: if somebody clever could please explain I would be most grateful.

Ascot was pleasant: I was very glad to be in wedge heels not anything pointy as being stuck fast is not elegant. Drank champagne, chatted pleasantly, ate a lovely lunch, waved at the Queen (she said oh hello how nice of you to come again this year*), won 30 pence, came home to my babies. Cameron stayed on and came home £50 up which is completely unheard of for us and just goes to show I may not be the good-luck talisman I imagine myself to be. Perhaps picking the jockey with the nicest jumper is not the most reliable technique after all.

Saturday afternoon was spent at Bernard‘s first birthday party: very high quality cake and party bags so I recommend everybody tries to wangle an invite to his second.

Trite to mention the weather, I think? Only I was very amused by the hordes of men in cagoules standing about with flashing-light vans yesterday lunchtime, scratching their chins and contemplating the ford that was developing in the main road out of the village. When I returned some hours later it remained, larger if anything, but it was now adorned with a triangular sign reading “flood”. So that is why we pay our taxes**.

*Of course she didn’t.
**That, and so the queen has a nice hat to wear to Ascot.

1. I’ve bought this dress in a fit of enthusiasm-cum-panic: we are off to Ascot again this year and once again I haven’t got a thing to wear. I haven’t yet taken off its labels, as I am not confident. It is perfect for Ascot (C thinks it is too long but what does he know: one must go maxi or mini this summer and I am not doing the latter) if it is sunny. Really sunny. Even if it is, I’ll need something to wear over it (my denim jacket would be perfect but too casual for Ascot) because it’s a bit too strappy; I also need shoes. I have some dark-red wedge sandals (and a matching bag): what do you think? Personally I fancy some silver sandals and a shiny silver bag (there is a reason for harping on about bags: I’ve fallen for this one and want an excuse to purchase it) – but have neither. Yet.

2. If it’s not sunny or I can’t find the appropriate accompaniments, I have a dark red silk ao dai I bought some years back in Hanoi. I’ve never worn it (I always seem to need maternity clothes when we have an occasion!) and would rather like to. I think it would need adjusting – I’m half a stone lighter than I was pre-Maggie – but it might be stylish. Or would it be weird? That would definitely require new accessories: again, I think silver might work. I’d need a top to go under it, too. Argh.

3. We are having a naming ceremony for Tamsin. Another formal occasion but not the same sort of formal as Ascot. It would make sense to have something that can serve for both (at least the basic outfit) but neither option 1 or 2 strikes me as terribly appropriate. 1 will be ok, again, if it is really sunny, but then there’s the whole breastfeeding issue with dresses, too: one doesn’t really want to reveal one’s knickers to feed one’s baby.

Help me, oh loyal and elegant reader!*

*Of course I reserve the right to ignore your advice and do my own sweet thing. But I’d like to have some, please.

Congratulations to: Helen and Simon on the arrival of baby Sophie, a sister to Charlotte; Heather and Jack on baby Margaret – great choice of name! – a sister for Rebecca; and Caroline and Pete on baby Imogen, a sister for Charlotte. Anyone who’s anyone has two girls, you know.

We’re back. Though I note I didn’t actually mention we were going away.

Centerparc; we gatecrashed my sister’s holiday with friends – though I think they didn’t mind as it gave my niece Mia somebody of her own age to play with. I was confident that Maggie would enjoy herself but didn’t expect us to enjoy it as much as we did. Zipping* about on a bike; swimming for hours every morning; Maggie rode on a pony called Nibbles and the girls did plenty of soft play. The daddies played squash and on Thursday afternoon the mummies came over all yummy and swanned off to the spa. Bliss. Restaurants were much better than anticipated but the site recycling facilites are virtually non-existant, which is my only possible complaint (I was nearly but not quite moved to bring home our milk cartons. Had the car not been completely full to bursting I might have.)

*One doesn’t exactly zip when towing a trailer-load of children. But it is very good for one’s thigh muscles.

…with my brilliant new business venture: Chester Sherpas(TM). Watch out for me on Dragons’ Den soon! It Came to me in a flash yesterday as I pushed Maggie in a buggy (laden with off-balance shopping bags as well as a heavy child) with one hand while carrying an umbrella with the other; Tamsin was strapped to my front and the bag of “essentials” on my back. Available to roll out to other cities soon although Chester is particularly well-suited, blessed as it is with cobbles, sharp corners, the completely buggy-proof rows and large gangs of gawping tourists and loitering students who leap out in front of you without a second’s notice, necessitating wild and sudden changes in direction. I nearly lost control several times. (I mean literal control of buggy and/or umbrella not figurative control of my temper, although that did happen when I reached the new dentist to be confronted by a flight of stairs adorned with the magical sign “prams and buggies must be carried up these steps by two adults” (their emphasis). Was there another adult employed by them to stand by and assist? There was not.)

Tamsin is having a growth spurt (right on target for getting into size 3-6 month outfits) so today has gone feed-poo-feed-poo-feed-poo-sleep. And repeat. Meaning my day has gone feed-change-feed-change-feed-run about screeching and tearing out hair trying to wash nappies and provide food and entertainment for Maggie. Very hard going when single mumming again (he’s back tonight, hooray). I haven’t even managed to get out in the lovely sunshine despite good intentions and hopes. Although naturally I have been online (I can type one-handed while feeding a baby. No worries.)

Actually we did just knock up some blueberry and coconut muffins earlier. Ahem (buffs nails, looks modest yet smug). Pretty tasty and super-easy. Crumbs, bowls and spatulas (etc) everywhere still with little prospect of getting them tidied away in the near future, and tomorrow is Super Stress Morning (TM) as we try to get to swimming on time. Bring on the blizzards I say.  

(as my mum unfailingly said at the end of every single school holiday.)

Cameron has gone back at work and the rest of us are stuck in the house waiting for somebody to come and look at the gas meter. So far it hasn’t been as bad as expected: after 7 weeks of visitors, presents, biscuits and chocolate I was expecting M to be a complete horror but it’s only been quite dreadful, no worse. Touch wood. I even got her to eat an apple this morning: she had a friend round to play, which helped in terms of occupation if not in terms of preventing the house becoming completely trashed (but hey, who’s going to notice, we have strata of mess these days.)

All my blog “issues” prevented me writing anything over Christmas (but it would no doubt have been a catalogue of cake eaten and friends seen: nice to do but perhaps not to read), but I have uploaded some pictures of the girls enjoying themselves. Going out for dinner was a fantastic idea if I do say so myself – I got to spend the morning watching M with her presents rather than peeling sprouts. We went to the hotel around 11.30, in time for M to charm the pianist by dancing to his music, then there was carol singing followed by Father Christmas with presents for the children, followed by a 5-course dinner. Neither parsnips nor bread sauce but you can’t have everything, and the chocolate mousse more than compensated.

And now we are into a new year. I don’t really do resolutions but am finding myself thumbing through seed catalogues every evening with fingers itching to get out and dig. Is it immoral to tie one’s toddler to a stake, like a goat, in order to get on?

…but not quite a new me, in that I am still trying to do a million things at once and mostly failing to do any of them. I do, however, find myself with a new website (still under construction but open to visitors: just watch your step and wear a hard hat at all times please) a mere year after threatening it. What do you think? Smart, eh. Let’s see what happens when I hit “publish”.

PS anyone with links to the old turquoise, don’t forget to update them.