Birthdays don’t count any more at my age, but it is still a bit sad to wake up one year older on your own*. Cameron went to London yesterday and isn’t coming back until tomorrow. He has left a nice pile of cards and presents (but I’d rather he was here with no presents than presents are here without him). I told Maggie it was my birthday and she should sing to me, but she seems a bit confused: she was quite put out that I didn’t put on my party dress and wanted to know where the tree was and had “Farmer” Christmas been. We all overslept (see note below) so I haven’t opened anything yet; I thought I’d wait until she’s home this afternoon rather than doing it just with Tamsin this morning.

I did have a nice reflexology birthday treat, and Sara brought me cake last night. I’m not feeling too hard done by, just a bit starved of adult conversation. Trying to decide whether my evening would be better spent with Buffy or Moulin Rouge at the moment. I know how to have fun.

*”On my own” means Cameron isn’t there – of course I actually woke up with Tamsin snuffling away as usual on my right; I had about a foot-wide bit of bed then Maggie was spreadeagled across the rest of it, one foot in my face, on top of the covers. Cameron rang at 8 but M didn’t even wake: she came in around 4 last night in order to share an hour of coughing (very generous) so she was tired.

I seem to be blessed with a windy baby this time around (M hardly ever burped and was never sick). Rather than going straight for the infacol in the modern manner, I am tweaking my diet to see if it makes any difference: first on the hit list is sugar because I have been eating loads since she was born (OK, OK, and before) and So-san, my Japanese midwife, was always very down on sugar. Tired, hormonal, naturally sweet-toothed…then Christmas came with its usual cake-and-sweety bounty and I reckon I’m nearly up at 1930s levels (according to a recent thread on Downsizer, the average sugar consumption of the poor working class in the North in the 1930s was something like 3 lb per week. Wow.)

I managed 30 hours and then the 4pm Hunger (familiar to all pregnant and breastfeeding mothers) struck. Two digestives, two bits of Christmas cake and four pieces of chocolate-covered ginger in about 5 minutes flat. And then, as I was off the wagon anyway, half a packet of jaffa cakes in the space between University Challenge and what would have been Waking the Dead if Maggie hadn’t woken up screaming, causing me to spend the rest of the evening on the phone to NHS direct. I’m not generally a neurotic mum but the screaming was quite out of character and she was complaining of a pain in the lower right-hand side of her tummy*.

Anyway, that was really a bit pathetic so I’m trying again. It’s not just about uncomfy Tamsin now – although she isn’t a very happy bunny today – but about my inability to resist chocolate. It is evil and it calls to me. Only today is proving quite hard enough to get through: I’ll see you the aforementioned screaming and raise you last night’s storm battering our windows, which are the village’s first line of defense against the winds that race across the Dee floodplains from the Welsh Hills, and a tax return. I’ve succumbed to a(nother) jaffa cake and, sadly, a horribly pinkly sweet fairy cake. But I am trying, and when the Ocado chap turns up in the next hour with lots of lovely savoury treats I should find it somewhat easier.

Incidentally, when did jaffa cakes become a health food? The packet is plastered with information about how they have only 1 g of fat but “lots of energy” (ie calories, no?) so are recommended by nutritionists.

*She’s fine.

the new site is taking shape. I know it looks the same to you as it did yesterday but I now have my book lists in the new style. I had a thoroughly interesting half hour reformatting the lists: I knew I was reading less these days but hadn’t realised quite how much less. Pre-Maggie I went through a book a week (and “proper” books too, with far fewer trash thrillers and mummy memoirs). Maggie’s birth decreased my reading to more like one a month; moving back from Japan decreased the rate again (driving in a car rather than sitting on a train hasn’t helped) and I have read precisely two thrillers since Tamsin’s arrival. It’s not just a lack of time – though mostly that – but also a lack of mental function even though Tamsin is an angel who now does a full 6-hour stretch at night (maybe I am suffering mummy amnesia but I don’t think Maggie did that until she was much older).

I was, however, quite impressed with my ability to recall great swathes of plot for almost every book on the list. Even those from 2002. Apart from a pile of books by Richard North Patterson (who the hell is he and why did I read so many?) and Colette, of which I have no memory, although I do know I read it for my book group and that it has <200 pages following one member's request for short books.

(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.