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 am very happy with the new furniture: doesn’t my room look larger and lovelier? Something of a saga getting hold of it: we initally ordered some bespoke free-standing stuff last March. Excuse followed excuse (at one point the cabinet maker cut off a finger, which we thought was a good reason for a delay, but the replacement just seemed to spend all his time making expensive kitchens); the chap in the shop never once rang us spontaneously or for weeks after when he promised to, and sometime at the end of last year he sold the business. Eventually, patient people that we are, we just asked for the deposit back (and got it after 6 weeks of hassle).

Then we rang Neville Johnson. I cannot praise them highly enough: if you are in the market for fitted furniture and have plenty of cash* (they were not cheap but it appears you do get what you pay for) then put them high up your list. I suppose it shows what shoddy service one gets used to that I am utterly delighted to have found a company whose employees ring when they say they will (within half an hour when they say they’ll call you back), turn up spot on time, are courteous, clean, and well-presented and completed the entire process from initial contact via design (3 hours at our house), planning and installation in less than 2 months. I am a very satisfied customer.

In other aren’t-people-fab news: Tamsin dropped my purse in Asda today and apparently when I picked it up I left my card behind. Flustered in the queue (T climbing out of the trolley**, M crying because she hurt her finger), I was on the verge of putting back all my shopping when the lovely kind shining-armour lady behind me in the queue paid for my shopping! Gave me her address so I could send a cheque: she deserves some really fantastic karma. (My card had been handed into customer services by somebody else kind so I could get cash out to pay her back on the spot.)

*or are sufficiently fed-up to pay anyway.
**why don’t they have straps?

This is dedicated to anybody who has not been sufficiently put off the thought of visiting us by my last post.

So, it’s one thing having rats waaaaay away at the bottom of the garden (who hasn’t?) but slugs in the living room? I’m less keen. (Fortunately the monster spiders are nowhere to be seen at this time of year, else I’d be firmly esconced in the travelodge up the road by now.) We’ve been aware of their presence in a vague back-of-the-mind way for some time, as we often come down in the morning to a silvery trail on the carpet: I was actually moved to do some research into getting rid* just last week.

Tuesday morning, Cameron was up at some ungodly hour to go to London – his taxi arrived at 5.15 – and decided to investigate. The three slugs gruff (daddy slug, mummy slug and baby slug) were parading around our dining room, bold as you like. On the bright side, they appear to be coming and going via the fireplace, which covers step one of how to get rid of slugs (“find out where they are coming in”) if not giving any clues to step two (“and stop them”).

*Possibly the least-useful google I’ve ever done: the consensus appears to be that they prefer older damper environments (no shit Sherlock) and that one must find out where they are coming in and stop them.

We have always been very dismissive of people who told us not to add meat to the compost as it would attract rats. Bah, we said, slinging everything in, there are rats everywhere anyway so why would we care. And it’s true except. Except. I lifted the lid of the compost bin yesterday to check its progress*, and there are tunnels. Large ones. I dropped the lid sharpish – and, while I am still unbothered by the presence of rats in principle, I feel rather uninclined to turn it or even to pull compost out to use.

*it’s doing really well: in fact all 3 bins are composting fantastically just now. Rotting even faster, it seems, than they did in the summer. I wonder if they reach a kind of critical mass then just take off?

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?

Sunshine on Saturday saw M and I at the allotment with eight very heavy bags of cow manure (“it’s poo but it doesn’t smell like poo”!). If you are really interested you can click on the photo to go to the original, which is annotated: you can find out just what is in those pots and whose shed that is in the background.

Shortly – literally minutes – after this picture was taken I did a deal with the chap on whose plot I was standing to take the shot (I really must figure out all their names. I am utterly hopeless, and they are all men of the same sort of age: I know Ken, Mike, Colin and Peter but can’t tell Steve, Geoff,  or the chap in the corner plot apart). I casually mentioned that I was considering a gooseberry bush: he said he was going to get rid of some of his as there are really only so many gooseberries one can use: there is now a very large, old, thorny bush right next to those PSB plants at the bottom of the photo. Hoorah!

On Wednesday, assuming Cameron doesn’t spring a surprise business trip on me, I am supposed to be going to the pub with the allotment gang (better work on those names). I am a bit nervous: we might talk about slugs and beans all night. Or it might be fun and to be honest it will do me good – the less I go out, the larger the inertia becomes. The fact that I am already thinking about it shows how out of practice I am: without practice it becomes more and more difficult to speak to people one doesn’t already know well.

Cameron was actually here this morning (unlike last year) but, as he left at 6 for Germany, it wasn’t much of a party. On the other hand, Maggie is more useful than she was last year: she remembered to bring me presents when she woke, and sang to me and everything. She’s a bit put out that I am not having a party (or even a cake bah humbug) but has enjoyed opening my cards.

We had a small celebratory lunch at Borders after swimming, and I have just submitted my tax return a full 3 weeks early! I am so proud of myself (and yes thank you I am quite aware that I could have done it in September but, seriously, 3 weeks before the deadline is hugely progressive for me). Sara is coming for tea (salmon that I am marinating in den miso, and will be cooked just slightly but mostly rare, yum yum) and to help put the children to bed. And, I hope, join me in a celebratory Baileys.

I spotted this cow parsley looking all fresh and newly unfurled and spring-is-on-its-way-y at the allotment yesterday, so took some quick photos (just before I yanked it up by its roots and added it to the compost pile). Is this more evidence for global warming, I wonder (actually I have no clue when cow parsley is supposed to start flowering). Either way, I was glad I had waited until the last day of the holidays to get down there as I spent a glorious couple of hours in the sunshine: by the time I came home the plot was looking uncharacteristically neat.

I had a small dilemma: should I make the most of my child-free time to listen to my nice new Christmas ipod, or should I stay unplugged and enjoy the birdsong and whatnot. In the end I plugged myself in but compromised by keeping the volume low enough to hear the birds singing and the clock chiming, and listened to the wigglywigglers podcast to keep it topical. I pulled the netting back over my purple-sprouting broccoli, which is starting to look pleasingly purple, and dug some Jerusalem artichokes for a gratin later in the week. I then started hefting about the bits of carpet we laid a year ago, to uncover what should now be weed-free (or at least relatively less weedy) ground and cover up the weediest bits again. I have some plans in progress, so if you are really interested watch this space. I also uncovered lots of slug eggs – left them out for Mr Robin – and an army* of frogs. I knew Cameron was bringing the girls down to visit so, once I’d realised there were 10 or more frogs in two colonies** under the edge of one of my carpets, I left it in place until they arrived, expecting them to be interested. Which they weren’t particularly (but Cameron and I were very interested indeed so I was glad he saw them).

*This is a proper collective noun for frogs, I checked.
**And this is another.