Poor Tamsin now has the pox, and far worse than Maggie did (breastfeeding schmestfeeding: so much for a milder dose). She’s completely covered in spots, has a temperature and is just miserable. Wearing a nappy over the spots can’t be very nice, and calpol makes her sick. Fortunately we’ve got M in for an extra session at preschool – after 2 days at home she was climbing the walls a bit and all the people-free places we might have gone (the back garden, the cycle path) are impossible in this weather. And a kind man from the garage came and collected my car for today’s MOT/service*, saving me from having to drag the children into town and swap carseats around in the middle of the forecourt then do it all in reverse this afternoon.

Currently quiet on my knee. She keep dropping off for a few minutes then waking for a scream, poor little thing. And she’s going to be all scabby for her naming ceremony in a fortnight: I’d better learn photoshop!

*It never rains but it pours. Ha ha ha.

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.

Just a few teeny baby spuds and some minute broad beans (I was too impatient to wait while they grew) and some very peppery radishes, but how exciting! The potatoes were fantastic: Maggie went mmmmmmmm and kept asking for more (no, because I only dug up a few) and even Tamsin polished hers off! Growing your own is fantastic. Even if I did have to extract them from a sort of muddy soup rather than digging in the true sense of the word. It’s soggy up there.

I pulled the garlic last week, too, because it was rusty and getting rotten: not an unmitigated success, but I’m drying them out in the kitchen and some will be fine bulbs to be proud of. (The rest will become compost.) I’d intended putting the PSB in its place but I (blush) left it up there in small pots while we had a mini-heatwave and they all dessicated along with a tray of lettuces – had it been this week, they’d have drowned – and slugs ate the artichokes. I do feel a little like King Canute holding back the tide (of weeds) at the moment but I understand that is normal for veg gardening in June – and my modest aim at the beginning of this first year was that I wanted to get out more than I put in.

Thanks to you all for your good wishes: M is now almost completely recovered if quite unsightly. (Old ladies still recoil in horror but as they are the same old ladies who unfailingly tell Tamsin she’s a lovely little man, I don’t care.) She returned to preschool today, thus preventing me from using my planned title based on the fact that it was the longest day ever, groan groan.

We are heading south tomorrow for our trip to Ascot: my outfit is assembled even if I have failed to try the whole lot on simultaneously. No point now as I can’t go shopping again so it will just have to do. There’s enough champagne flowing at these occasions that I will look lovely through everybody’s soft-focus eyes by lunchtime anyway.

M has chickenpox so we are in quarantine until next week. She’s not poorly but full of beans if tending a bit towards the whiny voice.

T has a horrible chesty rattly cough, a runny nose and is Definitely* teething.

10 o’clock this morning, the power went off. No telly. No computer!** No electrician until Monday.*** I’ve managed to get most things back on but no power to most of the sockets and no hot water.

*Bearing in mind that teething is something you can never be sure about until it has happened.

**At 5 in the evening I realised that I could get a really long extension cable and plug it in to the kitchen, the power to which I managed to persuade to come back on.

***I want “our” electrician not an emergency one, because it’s an old house and wires don’t always go where one might expect them to. Switches don’t always operate what you might expect them to. Some do nothing at all, as far as we know. He said he could come if I could swear hand on heart that it was an emergency as he’d have to leave a house half-wired. Fond (addicted) of the web as I am – and desperate for cbeebies as I feel - I could not honestly claim it was life or death.

..and no blogging because I have been suckered into pesky facebook. Hours fly by and nothing is achieved (so no major change from the norm) although I have become quite Zen about the whole thing: in 3 short days I have moved from but what is it for distress to accepting that it just is. And I’ve made other people join me: can you be evangelical and Zen? And a concomitant revival in my twitter account, because let’s face it if you are going to share your inane day to day activities with the world, why not do it on a minute-by-minute basis?

[aside: may I quote from this week’s Observer TV guide? “BBC3…is seemingly staffed by the sort of idiots even an undergraduate would dismiss as unsophisticated…as tragically middle-aged and out-of-touch as all those thirty- and forty-somethings clogging up facebook in a desperate attempt to recapture their lost youth”. Ahem.]

We did have a trip to Worcester last week, home of the family Naan (and she’s put a lovely picture of T and me halfway down); had a lovely time. Bit nervous before as she was one of those friends I have known, like, forever* but never actually met. But within minutes all was fine, even if I was not allowed to look in her fridge.

Spent some time at the allotment over the weekend – Monty says it is now June (and he is correct) and so one is to plant one’s. Um. I am sure he had a proper word for them (but it’s late and I’m tired) – you know, the things that have been in the greenhouse because they will die if the frost gets them. Sweetcorn, squashes and beans, in my particular case: I have a cane wigwam for the beans. I cannot express how proud of myself I was when I constructed it.

*Note teenage facebook-user-type vocabulary.

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.

…and jolly pleased with my new sandals I am too. Despite the cynics on Downsizer who claimed it was all a sop to the middle classes: I needed new sandals anyway, my Birkis having done 4 summers’ hard labour and really being fit for no more than hanging out the washing. So I sent off a pair of old jeans, a cheque for 45 quid, and got these lovelies back. And I have to tell you that their claim to be the most comfortable sandals you will ever wear is not at all exaggerated.

The only thing I should have thought about beforehand is the blue-denim thing: OK if you are *not* wearing blue-denim jeans with your sandals but a bit odd-looking if you are. And I do, about 30 days each month. So I am on the lookout in charity shops for some old red jeans I can have converted. How cool will they be?!

http://www.recycleyourjeans.com/

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.

Tamsin is fast approaching 6 months and, given that she has taken to swiping at my food and tries at least once every mealtime to actually pick up and chew my plate (plus having all the other signs of readiness), we are starting to think it might be time to wean. I am absolutely not messing about with purees again – I spent months making lovely bright-coloured mushes for Maggie, freezing them in baby-sized cubes, defrosting them, poking at them with a spoon, sometimes smearing them about a bit…then throwing them away (the only puree-type thing she really enjoyed was a horrible green pond-slime like substance from a jar. Spinach and potato, I believe). Baby-led weaning is the way forward in this house.

Her highchair has arrived (it’s still in pieces – we so love flatpack) and tomorrow I am going to treat her to some new dishes and bibs as Maggie won’t want to share the former and the latter are frankly not fit for use. Then it will be all systems go!

I’ve already given her a few bits and pieces in the interests of being allowed to eat myself (I already eat chocolate in secret* but I do draw the line at consuming entire meals that way). Just what we were having anyway. She had a floret of cauliflower which she found very interesting until it made her sick. (This was perhaps not a very sensible starting point – whenever I eat cauli or broccoli it gives her a tummyache.) She did rather well with sticks of steamed courgette – sucked the soft seeds from the centre – and licked a soft carrot stick for ages. This morning, after extensive research and consultation with Karen, who I have appointed my BLW guru, she had a bit of my buttered crumpet, which was very tasty indeed. I don’t think she actually injested very much but it was thoroughly sucked and mushed and de-buttered.

I then decided that we should move away from food beginning with C (my mum thought I was following some sort of wacko new baby guru’s alphabetical weaning method) so when we had our dinner tonight she sucked some bits of pasta and a few slices of cooked apple – some of which disappeared so I assume she ate them! I can see the main problem is going to be providing enough food (or keeping my floor more sanitary): so much got dropped and had to be replaced – quickly, else she cried. Perhaps assembling the highchair will help with that.

*A couple of nights ago I went up to tuck M back into bed. I gave her a kiss and she said hmm….that smells of…chocolate! Caught in the act.