Ashamed.

There's a cold wind blowing down Marylebone High Street, but I can hardly feel it because I have an appointment at Fired Earth to see a kitchen plan the lovely designer has done and so I'm excited.

We sit side by side on stools at a kitchen island in the basement of the shop, its marble top is cool and grey and beautiful. She shows me a sophisticated 3D image of what the new kitchen might look like. I sip Earl Grey tea. We pore over the design and the catalogue. We look at colour swatches. We compare samples of wood. I feel the grain. She brings out a tile with a glaze so lustrous, it looks exactly as if someone has poured thick farmhouse cream all over it. The whole thing is total heaven.

After an hour and a half I come out of Fired Earth back into the cold wind. I cross the road quickly and dive into the Conran shop. I stroke a long wooden kitchen table top with a ludicrous price tag of £5,000. I take photographs of hanging pendant lights with my iPhone. I touch the soft, deep wool rugs that hang side by side by the wall.

I leave the Conran shop and pop along to Skandium. I leaf through wallpaper samples and ask them if they'll order me one, just to see. It has foliage in blues and greens with bright orange and yellow flowers in between. It's £75 a roll.

I go into Divertimenti and look at the hand painted crockery like the set I have at home. Azure paint strokes, fat red plums, swirling chicken motifs. It's as if the warm Italian sunshine is bouncing off each plate and cup and bowl. The largest bowl is £75. I head back for the Tube.

It's so bitter that I stop to do up both my cardigan and my jacket and get out my scarf and gloves. Then I walk briskly, as all the while cosy images of my possible future New England-style kitchen play out in my head.

At Bond Street Tube I dodge the milling crowd at the entrance, heading for the left-hand side to descend, just where the sharper gusts of wind catch there on the corner, and nearly trip over something on the ground: it's a boy. He's young. No older than my Eldest who is, right this minute, still tucked up in his warm bed at home recovering from his exams and from having a nasty infection.

The boy is huddled. I can almost feel the cold unforgiving ground creeping up through his bones. He has an empty, upturned cap in his hand and a sign that says: 'Hungry and homeless, please help'. He looks utterly frozen and so pale that as he looks up, it strikes me his face is the exact same colour as the beautiful creamy tile I held in my hand a short while ago. 

I give him a pound coin from my pocket as I whiz by, and I feel completely ashamed.

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Things you shouldn't say out loud.

You need to be careful about the things you say out loud. I'll give you two examples.

One: 

On Saturday night Husband and I went out. I know! Very unusual. I think he doesn't dare object when I suggest something now and some talented musician friends of ours were playing at Kings Place, near Kings Cross, so we got tickets and went.  We had to meet up with our French friends first, who were visiting London for the weekend, and ended up having a very speedy drink with them in the cafe upstairs at The London Transport Museum but, as the Americans say, God bless 'em, that is a whole other story.

We arrived at Kings Place in the nick of time to see the 'band' who were playing before our friends. I say band but that's possibly giving you the wrong impression. They were the New Radiophonic Workshop and they were playing (and again that's possibly giving the wrong impression) in the dark. 

Their set consisted of a series of random sounds accompanied by a group of lightbulbs, suspended on strings on stage, which came on and off to the 'music'. To say it was challenging is an understatement. I was worried Husband would be cross with me for dragging him all the way across London to listen to a series of random noises with accompanying lightbulbs and that he would want to get up and leave but luckily he was fine about it, but only because he was asleep.

At the end of this performance, before our friends came on, a woman behind us said very loudly what those of us remaining in the audience were merely thinking: "I just can't believe how bad that was!" And then she said it again for good measure. 

Two: 

Afterwards we met up with our friends in the bar. I was introduced to someone I had been told a story about that has stuck in my mind like glue ever since, probably because it's about sex. This is the story -

Heartbroken woman is being pursued by male friend - the male friend in question being the man I was introduced to - but the girl is in pieces over a love affair that has just ended and can't contemplate starting another relationship and doesn't fancy this male friend anyway. Not one bit. But somehow he persuades her to go camping with him and while camping they somehow have the most amazing sex in a tent. It is so amazing that she immediately and completely falls in love with him - the man I am currently being introduced to - and they have been together ever since, in fact they are married, and she was there with him, smiling, a lot.

Good story eh? Actually it reminds me of another good getting-it-together story that involves a friend of mine who was also recently heartbroken (what is it with people who are recently heartbroken?) who went to a play and saw a handsome young actor up on stage and thought, 'oh my God, that is the man I must be with' and so wrote him a letter to say so, and then they went for a coffee and now they have four children. I love that story, both because it's improbable and romantic. The best sort.

Anyway, I digress, back to the couple in the tent. So, on Saturday night, after the challenging random noises and the lightbulbs in the dark and listening to our friends play (they were SO good, which was a blessed relief), I was introduced to aforementioned man and suddenly it all clicked and I remembered the story...

"Oh yes! I've heard all about you!" I say, and I am about to add, "You're the guy who gave that girl the amazing orgasm in the tent!" because I have just had two beers and a large glass of red wine in quick succession in a desperate attempt to forget all about the New Radiophonic Workshop. But, thank God, the edit fairy was actually on duty for a change and I didn't say that. I thought it, oh yes I thought it, but I merely said, "Yes! I remember all about you!" 

And so Orgasm Guy looks me straight in the eyes, holding my gaze with his piercing blue peepers for slightly longer than is strictly necessary and there is definitely, most definitely, a little twinkle in them. 

Well, there would be wouldn't there.

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Kitchen news: fallen in love with Fired Earth kitchen. Probably can't afford it.

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Neighbours from hell.

"You won't get anywhere shouting your head off," I say to Eldest, "that would make us as bad as they are and will only antagonise them." He wants to scream at the people in the garden backing onto ours, the people who have kindly wedged their stereo speaker into their window in order to blast House FM straight at us. 

At least it feels as if it's straight at us because we are directly behind them but it's nothing personal, they are also kindly blasting House FM into ALL the gardens in the vicinity, spoiling the day for loads of other families as well. 

These wonderful and considerate people (I'm using my sarcastic voice here) live in the middle flat of the large house behind us. They have a piece of garden to which they don't have direct access because it's beyond the garden belonging to the ground floor flat. 

The volume is unbelievable and it's not the first time they've done this, they did it last Sunday as well. It was so bad that Youngest ended up in tears and we all came in from the garden, shut the doors, and Husband and I took a trip to the Council dump via a beer joint on the way back to drown our sorrows. Now it's bank holiday Monday, a lovely day, and we are out on the decking contemplating having a barbecue later on. 

Right, I think, time to nip this in the bud. I pop my head over the fence and smile. Eye contact, eye contact! And be nice!

"Hi!" I say. They look up at me. He has a pinched little weather-worn face, shaved head, no shirt, tattoos. She is wearing a strapless boob tube dress straining across her lumpen form. And if that sounds snooty I don't care, it's true.

"Any chance you could turn that down a bit?" I chirp, when really I want to say, "Any chance you could turn that off and we could all sit in peace in our pretty gardens in this beautiful sunshine and listen to the birds?" But I don't dare do this.

"Oh!" Exclaims Boobtube Woman, "Is it too loud? We weren't sure." And they look at each other. 

Was that a smirk? Are they taking the piss? They turn the volume down. But not much. We can still hear every beat and, worse, every single word the DJ says (he's hot, he might have to pour a whole bottle of water over his head in a minute, he's got a great line up of House music for us for the whole afternoon! Radio 4 this is not). We all go in the house.

Husband and I have row. I think he should say or do something. He thinks I'm over-reacting but really he just doesn't want the hassle. 

Youngest says he can't go on the trampoline because their music is too loud (Middle Class problem!) and goes off crying. 

Eldest goes to play his guitar in his bedroom at the front of the house where he can't hear the racket.

Middle One goes out, to Herne Hill, to play his guitar with his band, thank God, because he is the one who gets the most incensed by it all. 

I contact the council.

To my amazement someone at the noise abatement department actually answers the phone. He rings me back within the hour and then he sends two very nice people round to the house. These two very nice people quickly agree that the noise nuisance is out of order and say they will send a letter. Result!

Unfortunately two teenage boys do not agree that this is a result. They do not think letters are the answer to very much at all and by the time we all go back outside again in the late afternoon to start the barbecue, and the music is still blasting far and wide across the gardens for miles around, they are beside themselves. 

Middle One wants to set up his amp on the decking and play Jimi Hendrix "turned up to 11". He is as enraged by their choice of music as he is by how inconsiderate it is. I try to persuade him that if he does this we will be as bad as they are, but teenagers don't appreciate this kind of logic. 

Eldest is just as bad. He wants to shout/kick the fence/throw a rock/swear at them/blast music back at high volume. Again, I tell him this is NOT the answer.

We all end up bickering about what we should do, then we stand on the bench at the back fence and look over. There's nobody there. They have gone back in their flat leaving the music blaring out of the window. We feel like Gromit in The Wrong Trousers when he finds the evil Penguin wasn't in the house playing terrible lift music all evening after all.

All of a sudden someone shouts: "SHUT THE F*** UP!" at the top of his voice. It's Eldest. The music very briefly gets louder and then is switched off. Completely. For good.

"You see!" says Eldest triumphantly, "why didn't you just let me do that in the first place?" And I have to concede that he has a point. Trouble is now Boobtube Woman and Tattoo Man will be getting that arsey letter from the Council as well. 

Think we might have to lie low for a while...

View of our garden from office window with the offending house behind to the right.

Kitchen news: Two appointments with kitchen designers this week so far, two more organised for next week. Went to Grand Designs Live! by myself last weekend, which was two parts hell to one part useful and have started a Pinterest board! 

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If I were a man, I would get so much sex.

If I were a man, I would get so much sex. That's what I pitched to a newspaper this week. I'm not going to say which one but perhaps you can work it out for yourself: tabloid, right leaning, has popular women's section. 

Surprise, surprise they went for it. Funny that. If you want to work as a freelance feature writer for the national press, I'll give you a top tip: put the word sex in the subject bar. Works every time. Problem is, of course, that you then have to WRITE about sex. Ah! So, how much do you want to give away? There's the rub.

So, the crux of my feature was a survey out last week that said 10.30 pm on a Saturday night is the time most couples say "I love you" to each other. 

Again, funny that. I wonder why that could be? Precursor to something perhaps? Which reminds me, I once read in some other unreliable newspaper survey that the most common time for couples to have sex is a Saturday night after Match of the Day, in bed, with the lights out. But I am going back a few years here.

Anyway, this same survey, the one just out, revealed that many men NEVER tell their wives or partners that they love them, either because they think they should know already or because they do stuff around the house to help out and think that should suffice. 

This got me thinking. And by the way that's my second top tip for if you want to work as a feature writer for the national press: read the national press, a lot, and then sit down and do some thinking. It's harder than it sounds.

So I pitched an idea. It's easy, I wrote, if I were a man I would be able to get as much sex as I wanted because all you have to do is follow ten simple tips and Hey Presto! Bob's your live-in lover, or rather, your lover is your live-in lover. 

1, Look her in the eye, A LOT, but particularly when she is talking to you about her day and how that woman in Sainsbury's (or Waitrose, depending on your demographic) pissed her off. 

2, Make remarks to indicate that you are listening. A simple 'Uhu' now and then will suffice. 

3, Always notice what she is wearing, especially if it is new, and always say it looks great. ALWAYS. 

4, Ditto hair. Notice that is has been coloured/cut/blow dried/shaved off. 

5. Talk to her about her feelings. And your own feelings. And everybody's feelings. A LOT.

6, Combine this with trying and stay awake on a Saturday night long enough to say the regulation, "I love you" at 10.30 pm before... Well, you know what before.

7, This bit is crucial, you MUST actually stay awake on a Saturday night long enough to actually have sex.

8, Say, "I love you", be romantic, do big gestures, book tables for dinner and weekends away. Notes on the pillow telling her you think she's beautiful would be good. That's a free special tip from me that will GUARANTEE sex, I promise. I know it sounds cheesy, but really, we are THAT easy.

9, Buy exciting and personal presents (nothing for the house and certainly NOT for the kitchen, unless it's a Kitchen Aid) for every single birthday/anniversary/Valentine or, best of all, for no reason at all. 

10, Do not think that unloading the dishwasher or hanging up a bit of washing is a substitute for any of the above because although very nice and much appreciated YOU SHOULD BE DOING THIS ANYWAY. 

A bit of all of the above - as listed - combined with trying not to fart in her presence ALL THE BLOODY TIME and picking up your dirty pants will work an absolute treat. Really, it's not Rocket Science.

And don't come telling me I'm being sexist and why shouldn't men get any of the same treatment because men don't need any of the same treatment, they just want IT. Full stop. They are almost always in a state of high alert looking for a bit of action. Unless they are ill. They don't even mind farting. Honest. Well, not in my experience anyway.

That was my pitch. An absolute gem. How many other women might relate to this and give me some juicy/funny anecdotes to go in the piece? (anonymously of course). Loads! 

For example, I remember a girlfriend (not that sort) telling me that the way into a woman's knickers is through her head. Sounds nasty, but I knew exactly what she meant, and she wasn't being anatomical. (Just to clarify, she meant that women like to be wooed into bed.) 

Another friend told me that she always knows when her husband is after a bit because he suddenly and uncharacteristically asks, "So, how was your day?" before bedtime.

Conversely all men need is; "So how about it big boy?" and then they're off. Actually, who am I kidding? They don't even need that.

Sadly, after a discussion with a lovely editor at this national tabloid newspaper with a right leaning and popular woman's section, that shall remain nameless, I had to turn the work away because she (or rather 'him', upstairs, the overall dreaded EDITOR) wanted it to be about my own experience ONLY. In other words, he wanted it to be a piece in which I slagged off my husband.

No, I said. This is a piece about EVERYWOMAN. I want to write GENERALISATIONS about how most women feel about sex and love and relationships: that for women - most women - sex is part of a package involving intimacy, a feeling of connection, appreciation and being told they are loved once in a while, hence the survey. That was my angle. 

I was happy to write about myself a bit, to kick off, and then include lots of lovely funny anecdotes from other women - and maybe some men too, and top tips.

But no, they wanted it to be entirely personal, so I turned it down. I had to, didn't I? Bye bye work. Bye bye money. Not a good feeling. But I did the right thing. And not for the first time, damn it.

I did do the right thing, yes? I mean, I love my husband and he's a good man and I know it sounds like I'm saying that HE doesn't do these any of these things, as above, the romancing and the complimenting etc, but he tries his best, as I guess do most men, so I'm not going to write something that sounds like a massive whinge about him. I'm just not.

So, here is my third and final top tip about being a freelance feature writer for the national press: DON'T DO IT. 

Just put it all in your blog instead.

Comments please! On the blog. On twitter. On the Facebook page.

P.S. And for those of you on tenterhooks for news of the kitchen, I think I just may have found the builder - hooray!

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Happiness.

"What makes you happy?" I asked a good friend of mine recently, "You know, really happy?" and without missing a beat she said, "I think you can't beat a nice cup of tea." That made me laugh, but she has a point. 

What are we constantly striving for when you can achieve unalloyed pleasure just by sitting down (and the sitting down bit is crucial) and having a nice cup of tea? I think Victoria Wood said a similar thing on the telly last week and it was in the papers only the other day that it's still the nation's favourite drink. 

It got me thinking about other simple pleasures because it's not just having a cup of tea but lots of little things that begin to take on new meaning as you get older. At least, I think it's because of getting older. Take spring, for example. 

I know the winter we have just struggled though has been unprecedentedly long, but still, I don't remember leaf bud and blossom ever causing me quite this level of heart-swelling rapture before. Maybe it always has and I just don't remember but I think there might be something particularly springy about this particular spring. 

It's so beautiful at the moment (I wrote this bit on Thursday evening by the way) that I'm even willing to forgive it the attendant hay fever it has so kindly brought along to the party (and can I just add that acute hay fever does not sit well with a middle-aged mother of three who has a weakened pelvic floor, that's all I'm saying, work it out for yourself).

I recall that famous interview with Dennis Potter just before he died, as he alternately sipped morphine and dragged on his I-have-nothing-to-lose-now-cigarette, in which he said that the blossom outside his office window that year was the blossomiest blossom he had ever seen; the point being that he knew he was never going to see any again. 

I think some of us feel a teeny tiny bit like that this year: we really were worried for a moment there that it might never come back. 

And then I thought of something else that makes me happy, apart from blossom, a nice cup of tea and family and friends, of course, and that's work. Bit of a shock that. 

Unfortunately the Nazis rudely stole the dictum 'work sets you free' to use in lieu of a welcome mat above the entrance to concentration camps so its original meaning is entirely disfigured by their extraordinary evil and I will have to apologise for using it, but the whole time I had my nose to the grindstone, working on a little film project over the last few weeks, it kept coming to mind. Maybe a better line is: 'happiness is the completion of achievable tasks'? (I've definitely read that somewhere) but it's much less snappy.

Work per se obviously won't set you free if it's back-breaking grind for little or no pay but work that is meaningful, creative, well-paid, that you can see through to completion and has a sense of satisfaction and achievement attached, not to say decent money, this is a wonderful thing. Another reason why it's just so damn criminal to have more than a million unemployed 16 to 25 year olds in Britain at the moment. 

Maybe you knew all about the joys of work already, I guess I did too up to a point, certainly writing has always made me happy or I wouldn't do so much of it for nothing (like blogging) and I'm always happy writing articles for newspapers, despite the fact that it pays so badly, and I was never happier than when I was writing a novel last year...

Ah yes! When writing the novel whole mornings, afternoons, evening slipped away unnoticed beneath my tapping finger tips and that's it, isn't it? Finding that time has passed without realising it, whole chunks of time, that's the hallmark of satisfying work. It means you're so absorbed, you are completely 'taken out of yourself'. No bad thing in my book.

Anyway, being asked to make a short three-minute film by a friend who runs a small production company recently, that was a whole different animal. Here was a task requiring a range of skills from coming up with a concept, researching and writing and interviewing, choosing music and over-seeing the edit and design and execution, most of it from home and all of it for money. Why, forget writing for newspapers! I thought, this is the Holy Grail! Needless to say, I loved every minute of that work, even if it was about a rather unglamorous subject.

Now that it's finished I fear there won't be any more like it for some time, or even ever. Was that my last blossom, I'm wondering? I hope not, but just in case it was I have attached a Vimeo link to the film at the top of the blog on the right, so you can watch it if you want...
  
                                 

P.S. And with regard to the kitchen, I saw a guy last week who did a lovely design and the structural surveyor came round on Saturday to go through ALL the (yawn) details about load bearing, steels and bricks (when all I could think about was wallpaper) and we have asked three builders to provide a detailed breakdown of costs.  So, it's onwards and upwards, dear reader.

See you next week...

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The Home Corner.

Let me take you back a few years - okay, so slightly more than a few years - to a primary school in North Yorkshire. 

Here is a newly built low level school, with bright modern classrooms, set in the middle of a huge open playing field, backing on to rolling farm land, on the edge of a rapidly expanding village.

Look closer. There's a little girl taking off her coat, hanging it on the peg with her name above it. Can you see? She's skinny, with blonde-ish hair, which is rapidly disappearing but it was there when she was a toddler, and she's rushing straight for the Home Corner. 

Remember those? They were usually next to the Interest Table, the one that had the ubiquitous feather on it, sitting next to a couple of shiny stones and a bird's nest with a broken blue speckled egg that somebody found on the way to school and brought in.

All the items on the Interest Table in that classroom have folded card labels to say what they are. Not that the little skinny girl rushing to the Home Corner can read what the labels say yet because she's in Reception, and only four years old, and she's not one of the early readers who arrived at school a few weeks ago already able to devour the entire series of Janet and John in one sitting.

Oh no, this little girl hasn't got time for reading anyway, she's only interested in getting to the Home Corner before anyone else so she can tidy it up, make it look pretty, and make pretend tea while bossing the others about.

Surprising isn't it? Because of course you've guessed who the little girl is. She's me.

Fast forward a few years - okay, so more than a few years - and that little girl is going to come out of the closet and admit something (it's a very tidy closet). Here we go...

My name is Elizabeth and I am... wait for it, wait for it... house-proud. That's right, I'll just type that again in case you missed it: HOUSE-PROUD.

So here we are in 2013, in south London, and the little girl isn't skinny anymore, she's not even a little girl anymore, but she tries her best to keep middle-age spread at bay with exercise and lots of walking and sorts out the no-longer-blonde hair thing with the aid of her cheque book and a whole bunch of chemicals. 

In other ways she hasn't changed that much at all. She's still in the Home Corner a lot of the time and if it's a mess, which it invariably is, it still makes her crazy. She's still bossing people about when she can get away with it and she's constantly tidying, lining up shoes, re-plumping cushions and, most of all, sweeping the floor. She likes a place for everything and everything in its place.

She finds it hard to sit still and work at her desk in the office (she did learn to read and write eventually) when the Home Corner is still throbbing with wet towels and toast crumbs all around her, but she does this when she must. 

To be honest, a lot of the time she thinks it might be nice just to go and live by herself back in that primary school Home Corner in North Yorkshire.

Now, I'm not dim (I'm going to drop the third person here because it's getting weird and I'm beginning to sound like Margaret Thatcher), I know that busy modern women are not meant to confess to this sort of thing. Not educated so-called 'professional' ones anyway. But to be honest - and that's what I always try to be - all my life I've wanted to play house, to make my home look pretty and tidy, and so I offer the Home Corner anecdote by way of explanation - and a sort of apology.

But why should I apologise? I've decided I don't care if it's somehow anti-feminist to say that I like to keep a nice house, so I'm outing myself. I am what I am (to coin a phrase) and home-making is a massive part of my make-up and, I would imagine, a massive part of a lot of other women's make-up as well, and even some men's, but not, I regretfully hasten to add, the ones I live with.

I don't understand how, somewhere along the line, being 'house-proud' became a pejorative term, associated with small-minded bourgeois stupidity. I don't see why it should be. I can be as intellectual as the next woman (well, maybe not!) but I also want to have a nice, tidy and, crucially, fully decorated and finished house. 

So, this brings us bang up to date, to April 2013, and the question of our kitchen...

our hall,

our stairs, 

our knackered stair carpet,

and the peeling paintwork on the outside of the house,

to all the things in our home that have not yet been 'done' in fact, or not done to my satisfaction anyway, since we moved in six years ago. 

Wanting it all sorted and decorated is not an icing on the cake thing for me. It's not something that's sort of or vaguely important. It's something that matters A LOT. 

And not because I want to show off or keep up with the Janet and Johns, but because to have a nice finished house will make me happy. It's something I have been craving ever since I walked into that Home Corner and started to sort out that plastic mismatched tea set back in 1970-(cough)-something. 

Why am I telling you this? Because we are about to go on a journey together, you and I, dearly beloved blog reader. Finally I have the go-ahead from Husband for a new kitchen (and if ever there was an anti-feminist line that is it). He has conceded that, yes, it is cold and dark and in need of updating. The lean-to conservatory type arrangement that the previous owners, in their infinite wisdom, attached to the back of the kitchen/house is not fit for purpose. It is rotten and draughty and must be replaced. Plus I want to knock down the side wall and build into the side return and add roof windows. 

So, we are getting the builders in this summer (if I can find some). We have put in the planning application. We have talked to the neighbours and, most importantly, I have made a mood board full of swatches of Boho-syle wallpaper, like the type Sophie Dahl had in the kitchen in her cookery series a while back, plus Brasserie light fittings and natty shelves. 

Here it is...

And here are some more pictures that have  inspired me...

So hold on to your hat, dear reader, because I think we might be in for a very bumpy ride.

See you soon!

I want wallpaper in my kitchen somewhere -  a bit like that!

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A wet sock.

So, I'm sorting through my huge brown handbag in the kitchen when we get back from the Isle of Wight, as you do, (Orla Kiely handbag by the way, bought it when I got some filming work last year, excuse was: need a bag big enough for a clipboard)...

And I have my arm knee-deep in Cafe Nero napkins (napkins or serviettes? which one is naff? I think it's serviettes) from when I took a massive handful of them at the ferry port because we all had hot chocolates in the car while we were waiting (and you know what happens with boys and hot chocolates in the car, don't you?)...

And all the pens and anti-bacterial gel in there (never can be too careful) and loose change and an old lip stick and 'feminine requisites' (okay, well, I'm just telling it like it really is) and I find this nasty blue plastic bag down at the bottom... 

What the hell is this nasty blue plastic bag doing down here at the bottom of my lovely big Orla Kiely bag? I think, (because I really can't remember anything nowadays)...

And so I open the nasty blue plastic bag and there inside it is a soaking wet sock. A small one. 

Ah yes!

All of a sudden I am transported, like Joanna Lumley in that old Nescafe ad when she takes that piece of straw from her jumper and remembers how it got there (roll in hay with sexy man), remember? Or was it Mellow Birds? Anyway, finding nasty wet sock in the bottom of my handbag has exactly the same effect on me: it makes me remember. Not a roll in the hay though, sadly, more a child in a puddle...

We were having a lovely walk, from the Botanical Gardens in Ventnor along the coastal path to the town, lots of up and then down, which I like to do all in one go without stopping - up, up, up the slope or the steps or whatever until you feel the burn in your bum and your chest starts to constrict and it hurts so much and you're in pain but yes! yes! yes! it's doing you good, you know it is, and you must be burning fat and you think you're going to die and then... oh thank God for that you've made it all the way to the top! Where there's another massive set of steps...

And the boys were running ahead, well, two of them were because Eldest had stayed behind that time, back at the cool pad we had rented, the one with the WiFi and the Sky Box and the table football and his laptop, in order to 'revise'...

And we had to keep stopping and waiting for the boys as they took detours up a slope or to roll down a grassy knoll, or, at this particular point for a dainty navigation across some stepping stones on a pond that ran into a stream that ran into the sea...

And it was all so pretty and fresh and sea-sidey-get-away-from-it-all-idyllic really and then Middle One put his massive size 10 wellies, which go very high up his leg, into the pond and Youngest started to copy, to do the same as his brother, except his wellies are not high at all because they are tiny size 1's and so Husband and I both shouted in unison: "No!" but it was too late and we watched, helpless, as the welly momentarily disappeared and lots and lots and lots of freezing cold water gushed in all over the top...

So, I pulled sloshing welly off the boy, tipped out the bath full of water in there, took the spare socks out of rucksack (oh yes! I am THAT sort of mother), used a plastic bag we happened to have with us as a sort of long sock up his leg to keep the sodden trousers away from his skin, put the fresh socks on his feet, used another nasty blue plastic bag I found in the rucksack to put the wet sock in and then, later, put the nasty blue plastic bag with the wet sock in my Orla Kiely handbag when I got back to the car. And then forgot all about it for three days... 

Voila! Blue plastic bag with wet sock explained.

Apart from that it was a really wonderful little family break. We went back to a very special place we used to stay when the boys were little: a nature reserve. They ran ahead down the path just like they used to when they were small...

Later, I lay in bed that night and just before dropping off to sleep, going over the day's events in my head, as you do, I remembered exactly what they had looked like when they ran down that very same path all those years ago... Remembered it perfectly... In every detail... Until it hurt...

So, that memory of the boys on the path, that memory of the walk to Ventnor jogged by the sock, even those Cafe Nero napkins, they are all things we collect along the way, aren't they? Some we manage to hold on to forever, like my little boys running ahead on that path, which I will always have, and some we lose, like those napkins and that sock, which I just threw away.

The boys on the Isle of Wight - quite  a few years ago.

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