Adventures of a Middle-Aged Matron

It's that time of year again! The carols, the fairy lights and the round robins dropping like bricks into the peace of family life. Christmas newletters are a literary challenge that I've never attempted, yet to which I have admiringly aspired. The ingredients are pretty straightforward: list the triumphs of your children and the traumas of people noone else will have heard of and season liberally with exclamation marks to make the plod through your engagement diary sound exciting. And so here, presented with requisite smugness, is my first attempt at communal Christmas cheer: Our year began, as usual, on Jan 1st. I lay under the duvet thinking: 'Goodness, do I have the energy to face 2011?!', but as usual my wonderful children revitalised me. They came and lay on my face and trumpeted a salute to the dawn on their new plastic recorders.  Both of them are very musical. Small son has mastered F Sharp on his instrument and we're hoping he'll branch out into B f...

in honour of  Mammasaurus . Before you ask, this is not me! My nails are frayed zigzags and rimed with coal dust and manure mulch. And I'll only touch lager. She'll know who she is, however, and, although I've never met her, judging by her jazzy digits, she must be an invigorating festive companion. What on earth is in that glass anyway? Suggestions here, please.

It is breakfast time and, as usual, I am late. Also as usual the cat pungently evacuates while I am making the lunch-box sandwiches. I pad outside into the freezing half light and scour the litter tray with the leaky garden hose and I return, soggy slippered, to the loaf. The second cat emits last night's dinner, poised acrobatically on the rim of the litter tray and the litter tray capsizes, flinging cat, turd and rolling wooden pellets all over the kitchen floor. The children descend. They squabble over the last slice of white bread and over who should lever the toast up out of the Dualit. The Vicar hurries in. He wants to know what he could thrust down the finger of a rubber glove to make it stiff. I hand him a carrot. The children begin battling over the single unscarred desert spoon. The Vicar wants to know what he could stick down the rest of the Marigold to make it into a fist. I hand him a knot of carrier bags. A cat leaps onto the breakfast table to sample Rice Kr...

The former Sunday school teacher asks me, after Mass, if I can touch my toes. She swoops effortlessly and taps the ends of her polished boots. She's a year older than I am. I put down my hymn book and ease myself over. Unfamilar strings twang sharply in the backs of my legs and there's a slight cracking sound that causes the sideswoman to look up. My finger tips judder to a halt just below my knee caps. The sideswoman comes over. She too swoops and taps. She's six years older than me. Both of them start bending and stretching at the top of the nave, triumphing in their pliant sinews. I try another heave and make it as far as my ankles. I am depressed. Two years ago I discovered that I can no longer do forward rolls. The former Sunday School teacher can. She proved it last summer in the churchyard. I daresay the sideswoman can too, but I am feeling cross so I don't offer her a platform. There is one thing I can do and I offer to show them behind the vestry curtain, b...

Bibsey  has commanded me to reveal my favourite Christmas song. Truth to tell, my heart sank a little. I risk losing cherished subscribers when I expose my musical preferences, and if I were to disclose what I listen to whenever I put up the Christmas tree I would undo two months of effort to present myself as an edgy Woman of the World. Moreover, since festive song has been piping me round the supermarket aisles round here since late summer, the old favourites have lost a little of their lustre. I feel a bond with Bibsey, however, for she admits to being almost as much of a domestic slattern as I am. So for her sake I give you one that reliably thrills me:

over at Mammasaurus . My rescue cats have been surprisingly merry since they moved in to the vicarage. Not quite sure why. All caption suggestions gratefully received.

I like to keep the language pure in the vicarage. It degenerates occasionally when the Vicar loses his keys, but the children have developed a range of wholesome culinary curses for use in extremis. 'Fromage frais!' yells my daughter when Ribena streams across her homework, and 'Fudge!' or 'Fried fritters!' if we can't find the remote control before 'Strictly Come Dancing' (NB: strange how they all start with 'f'). My efforts, however, unravel on the road. 'Bugger!" said my then two-year-old when she grasped the wheel of her new Little Tike car. I erupted. 'I have to say it,' she replied reasonably. 'I'm driving!' White Van Man, advancing mercilessly down a narrow side streets, provokes from me adjectives that would make a docker blush. Three-lane roundabouts,  unexpected filter lanes and anything involving the London North Circular turn me loud and foul and empurpled. My mother friends, contrastingly, sing al...

Something has unsettled me since we moved to London. It's not so much the fact that my nine-year-old now felt-tips tattoos on her forearm, or the inventive things that local youths can do with a steak knife. It's not even the pungent  knotted sacs that swing from the lower branches in our local park. No, the thing that has most unsettled me is the unreliability of London tooth fairies. In our provincial days, when teeth first started tumbling, you could count on a quid beneath the pillow. The blood, the gore, the anguish were washed away by the certainty that fairy gold could be translated into a bumper bag of Haribos next morning. Perhaps two recent house-moves and the sheer number of teeth have overwhelmed the magical benefactors. For now my children place their shed pearls doubtfully amid the bedding. 'Of course, the fairy will come!' I assure them with a conviction I do not feel. Last time I placed a Post-it on my laptop, reminding the fairy to drop by, but she ...

over at Mammasaurus's blog. Think of a witticism... and flaunt it here. All suggestions gratefully received.

I am facing a Night Out. I've had two of these in the year since we moved to London: Dolly Parton live with a visiting vicar and chicken korma with the ladies from the choir. But this night out is different. It's in the city centre with a glamorous ex-colleague, whom I've not seen in the decade since we bore babies. And I am worried. I am worried about the parting from my friendly tartan sofa rug and my Primark slouchers. I am worried that every outdoor garment I possess is made of tweed or pilled wool. I am worried that I will not manage opinions on the Greek bail-out and the obesity crisis with an intellect shrunken by Balamory. And I am worried that the Vicar will forget to put the bins out. Above all, though, I am worried that I am so worried. I pull on my edgiest cable-knit and I buff up my spectacles and I am a scuttling woolly figure reflected in shop windows. But when I breathe the thick brothy air of the Underground I am energised. I stride to the ticket barrie...

Kateonthinice has devised a cunning new meme to expose the essence of her fellow bloggers. She has cast a handpicked dozen onto a desert island and escape is forbidden until we have completed 11 questions. 1. What one thing about being a parent makes you scream 'Get me out of here!'? Evenings, when my Beer Moment tantalisingly approaches and the kids appear to be caterwauling the Ring Cycle while nude-wrestling in the bath. 2. What skills, if any, do you have that would be useful in the jungle? I can lick the end of my nose. This could be handy when my sleeve runs out. I am still pretty accomplished at climbing up trees; just not so reliable at getting down them again. 3. How are you likely to annoy people if you were stuck with them for three weeks? I shall alienate the entire company the minute I'm let loose on the cooking pots. 4. What is the worst thing you have ever eaten? Anything cooked by myself. No, hang on  -  tongue! A huge cow's tongue ...

Time: 8.20am; Setting: the vicarage hallway.  The plot so far: we are stressfully hunting down matching shoes for the walk to school after a sticky, delaying incident with the cat litter tray. Small Son:  [as we head for front door] 'By the way, I've got to bring a firefighter's outfit to school today.' Me:  'Now you tell me!' [Thinks quickly] 'Go and grab your navy trousers and  Bob the Builder helmet.' Small Son:  'I don't think they wore helmets in 1666.' Me:  'You've got to be a 17th-century fireman?' Small Son: [patiently] 'Yes Mum!' Me:  'What did they wear?' Small Son : 'Dunno.' Me:  'Probably tights and tunic. Quick, ask your sister...' Small Son:  'I'm NOT wearing tights!' Me:  'Did they even have firemen in 1666?' Small Son: [disapproving] 'No Mum! They had firefighters.' Me:  'You have precisely 60 seconds to turn yourself into a 17th-ce...

at Mammasaurus . Every caption suggestion gives me a thrill... ...so please, make my day!

The Archdeacon is coming to dinner. This is a problem because the Vicar, who does all the cooking, is out all day and so the catering will be left to me. I cannot cook. The Sunday school teacher, whose cup cakes rise half a foot high, knows this and is worried. She offers to leave a three-course meal for three on the vicarage doorstep because the reputation of the parish is at stake. I do not like this idea because also at stake is my pride, so I tell the Vicar that the Archdeacon can have an all-day breakfast. All-day breakfasts are the only thing I can cook. Now the Vicar is worried. He says it's a helpful thought, but maybe he can stay up late after Parochial Church Council the night before and pile wine and proteins into the slow cooker. Next evening, as the doorbell rings I realise that I do not quite know what an archdeacon is, but I do know that it's venerable because the Vicar has bought the same duck breasts that nourished a passing bishop. Therefore, I rush up to ...

My daughter has an announcement to make. She assembles us all on the back lawn and allows suspense to thicken. 'I am going,' she declares importantly, 'to become a tomboy.' I am surprised. Her all-pink bedroom is full of all-pink Barbies and her favourite pastime is Claire's Accessories. But the childish spirit must not be quelled and so I congratulate her and tell her that she'll be able help with my manure mulching. She looks aghast and says that she's going in to change. Shortly afterwards her head pokes out of her bedroom window. 'What do tomboys wear?' she yells. Then she reappears in carefully coordinated jeans and shirt and trainers. She tows a bag behind her as she climbs the apple tree and draws from it a pair of sun glasses, an iPod and a hair brush. I offer her a spade to help with the shovelling. 'No thanks,' she shudders. 'I'll get my clothes all muddy.' And she dons the sunglasses and the iPod and reclines on...

Flossingthecat was dancing on mashed bananas when, unbidden into her mind came the image of Me, hunched over a record of Doris Day. And so, intrigued, perhaps that a vicar's wife would listen to anything so raunchy , she's tagged me into sharing music that thrills me. Doris will have to top the list, naturally. But what to choose? That forsenic analysis of the human condition, 'Booglie Wooglie Piggy: Oink Oink' or the optimists' anthem 'Que Sera Sera'? I decide to go radical. Interminable motorway journeys are relieved by the shifting pictures sketched by clouds and so I shall always empathise with Joni Mitchell, as improved upon by the Girl Next Door. There is, beneath my thermal layering, a cool woman waiting to break out. For I have, now and then, ventured beyond the 1950s and sniffed the cultural air. I've tried Dolly Parton and The Monkees. I've even made it into the 80s with the parting shots of Abba. But my coolest moment came wh...

at Mammasaurus . Don't waste your witticisms -  share them here:

Nine is an enticing age: old enough to nag for body piercings; young enough to believe in fairies. I tell my tweenager of the miniature feasts that I used to leave out for the fairies and of the miniature thank-yous that they would bestow in return and she is agog to feed the little folk herself. I'm not sure if fairyland abutts our part of London and I'm not sure if modern fairies will tolerate junket. Hoummous, she reckons, is a surer bait. She transfers her dolls house dining suite to the patio and fashions a microscopic feast from bread. Her brother transfers his dolls house dining suite to the patio and heaps faux gold plates with Hundreds-and-Thousands. And I wonder long and hard what modern fairies leave for their benefactors. The same, it would seem, as their 1970s predecessors. I know, because I glimpsed it, that tiny silver-foil baskets bearing tiny sugared eggs were left that night on the tables and that the tiny plates were emptied. But the children never kn...

'Do you like wanking?' my mother asks the bishop. I am startled. I have much to learn about ecclesiastical etiquette, but this does not seem a proper way to address a visiting prelate. The bishop, however, is unperturbed. He tells my mother that he likes wanking very much and they embrace jovially by the chapel door. I am relieved when I discover that he was reared in war-time Bristol. 'Wank', my mother has often explained to me, was a blameless word for a walk in the West Country dialect of her childhood. She only learned that this was a localised definition on her first day as a London career girl, when she told her new colleagues of the lengthy one that she'd enjoyed before work that morning. My mother and the bishop are thrilled to share a lost verbal heritage and wank side by side all the way across the churchyard. And I follow at a safe distance and reflect on the unpredictable social adhesives that can bind strangers.

Oldermum has kindly awarded me a green square labelled The Versatile Blogger. Presumably that's because I've demonstrated versatility by managing to display, in the course of two Saturdays, photos ranging from an elderly gentleman standing in a doorway in a funny hat to a scarecrow standing in a garden in a funny hat. In order propertly to merit this award, I must: 1: Thank the person who tagged me. 2: Share seven facts about myself. 3: Pass the award on to 15 deserving bloggers. I must also master the technology to import said green square onto this website. My versatility may well not extend to this, so you might have to imagine it - it's green with flecks on and has four straight sides. So - 1: Thanks again Oldermum. 2: The Secret Seven: I have kept a journal every day for 28 years. Narcissism presumably drives me, plus an idea that, if I were one day to re-read them all chronologically, some kind of order might emerge out of life's randomness. Tra...

....at Mammasaurus ' blog. A spot of after-school hob-nobbing helps children's social training, for you never know who you might bump into.  All caption suggestions gratefully received. 

Sahdandproud  has displayed his biscuit-eating head-quarters (where he also does a bit of writing) on his blog and is now keen to know where I do it. The truth is, up in the guest room, as far as possible from the biscuit tin, so that I burn off maximum calories in the regular commute to and from it. I'm glad of the interruption, for this is where I battle writer's block and where my kittens battle my mouse. To the right is the sheaf of deadlines that I'm supposed to be meeting this morning and on the screen is Mr SandP's website and Twitter tag over which I'm idling instead. The calendar and the trees remind me which season we're really in, for the guest room is so frigid I'm in thermals all year round. I would like to nose into the secrets of Katetakes5 , Himupnorth  and Mills&Boonwannabe . With thanks to Bibsey  for the original brainwave.

There is something magical about washing machines. You stow in Y-fronts and a knot of school uniforms and you draw forth conkers and fancy rubbers. I found a gentleman's watch last week, the same day, by coincidence, that my seven-year-old lost his. My boss found a mobile phone that had whizzed round with her woollens. Sometimes my whites emerge rainbowed with liquefied wine gums. On lucky days there'll be a clutch of coppers stiffening a gusset; on really lucky days it's a quid. But  -  I have an issue with tissues. Like that malicious, lurking tea spoon when you've just drained the sink, there is always a tissue in the trousers. My floors are snow-flaked from my progress to the top-floor drying rack, and a confetti of white shreds floats down on the stairs when I hang up the smalls. I am resigned to the inevitable, but I shall tweak the inevitable to my advantage. I have ditched the own-brand tissue boxes and the pretty pastel shades. I stalk Personal Hygiene in W...

I have bought myself a new top from Zara. This is partly because it was £3.99 and partly because I can fit my thermal vest under it without the edges showing. I think it's rather an elegant new top and, although it is cream and therefore not compatible with rotted manure, I wear it while teaching the school gardening club to mulch beans. 'Do you have a baby in your tummy?' asks seven-year-old Sonja, thrilled. I laugh shrilly and make a joke about doughnuts. Later, I tell one of the new school fathers about the remark and pause pleadingly for reassurance. 'So, are you pregnant?' he asks, peering. I go home and survey myself in the guest room mirror. There is a definite billow where my belt buckle is protruding beneath my new top. Only I'm not wearing a belt; the bulge is a spare handful of me. I suck in my breath and tell my daughter about Sonja and the new school gate father. She studies my midriff appraisingly. 'It's obvious you're not preg...

It's Picture Caption Day over at Mammasaurus  and a chance to air the family album. If you are tiring of fireworks, put your mind to a suitable witticism for when I next go to visit my father. All suggestions considered!

My daughter is staging a show in the sitting room. Usually she swirls one of my winceyette nighties to the Hits of the Monkees. Today, though, she is wearing a black mini skirt (bought by her grandmother), a black crop top (bought by her grandmother), strappy black high heels (ditto) and a black leather, metal- studded waist clincher (ditto ditto). 'I am a hard girl,' she sings, 'and I need a man who likes it rough.' On the sitting room stereo, Lady Gaga decides that she can't sleep with a man who dims her shine. My nine-year old sings gustily along with her. I am in a dilemma. She hasn't a clue what she's singing about. If I snap it off she'll suspect adult mystery. She'll interrogate me for enlightenment or, worse, interrogate her street-savvy class-mates. And so I sit tight and watch her gyrate and I reflect on the snares of motherhood. She'd spent her savings on the CD with my reluctant sanction. 'Explicit lyrics' warned the lab...

I've just happened upon the weekly photo gallery at Sticky Fingers  where the letter T is the current theme. I thought of Tea bags because they cushion me through life's worst miseries, but  they do not photograph excitingly. Then I decided that I like Tussling more. The excuse for infantile behaviour in public is one of the glories of child-rearing and, when it is combined with my other great love, autumn leaves, Tussles are a matchless Tonic.

It is the Sunday morning service and we are gutsily singing 'For all the saints who from their labours rest', while above our heads is a painful sizzling sound, like ripping Sellotape, as a myriad cluster flies are zapped by an ultra-violet exterminator. As, in the musical climax, the saintly deceased reach the 'calm of paradise', our voices are drowned by a long and mighty fizzing. Something large and airborne is having trouble shaking off the mortal coil. Even the Vicar, in his gold-trimmed chasuble, looks uncomfortable. My peaceable husband has a warrior outlook when it comes to the lower links of the food chain. On summer evenings he leaps gymnastically about the bedroom, swatting midges with the Church Times until the walls dribble blood. This morning's violence is inevitable. Cluster flies have colonised the church in readiness for winter. Their whine gives an Amazonian flavour to the chancel, and they are dropping dead into the Jammy Dodgers. There is som...

Katetakes5 , fretting efficiently over her Christmas lists, is anxious to identify the top five toys of all time. Parent bloggers are invited to spare each other a fortune by listing their soundest investments in infant pleasure. This troubles me. My six-year-old rejoices in jay cloths, Post-it notes, cotton wool pads and twine. They form flaccid sculptures under his bed and have cost me half a dozen Hoover belts. My nine-year-old's wish-list would enrapture the auditors at Claire's Accessories. I'm the only one who plays Sylvanian Families in our house. But below are five ingredients that have, over years, made child-rearing that much easier. Hoops   The sort you see in Victorian etchings being bowled along with sticks. Modern descendents are rainbow-hued and pleasurably pliant with built-in rattle sounds and twinkly spangles. Ours have functioned as fairy rings, skipping aids, lassoos, bridles and ground-hugging boomerangs. They are the highlight of home-made assault co...

My married, forty-something friend Emily says that she has had to buy condoms and there was a problem. I'm not sure that I want to hear of this problem over toad-in the-hole, but she continues.  The condoms, she explains, came in packs of five  or packs of twelve. Emily is a thrifty girl. She always buys eggs and loo rolls by the dozen, but this twelve-pack confounded her. The problem was the use-by date: 2013. 'Am I realistically going to get through twelve condoms in two years?' she mused to herself in the middle of Family Planning. Reason prevailed and she saved £3.30 on the five. I am interested in this because I've read in the papers that couples in their forties have more vigorous relationships than those twenty years younger. Then I notice that our companion, Serena, is silent. Serena is also forty-something and she is also married. I ask her roguishly whether she'd have bought a dirty dozen. She says that her money would be more usefully spent on a set of ...

Suddenly we have acquired kittens. Two pretty brothers hailed us from a cage in the rescue centre and begged us loudly for a home. But first we had to prove ourselves to the scary lady who wielded a fat folder. She paced through our house, examining our plumbing and our characters, seeking nerve-wrackingly for a cause or just impediment why we and these two felines should not be joined together. So grateful were we to be found worthy that we agreed at once to expand our family. Now the house smells, the curtains are shredded and there is an unexpected IMP@ct oN my W*rking LiFE. The kittens Per@MBULATE A%cr*SS mY KEYBoard and take naps on CAPS LOCK so my editors at THe GUardiAn will think I'm SHOUTING. They take my computer mouse literally, claw a passage up my back and nest flatulently in my best hat. My guilty, secret Boden fund has been swallowed up by jellied rabbit pouches and I'm buying nappy bags again. But this is why it's all worth it:

'Cats,' says the woman blocking my trolley in Oils and Condiments, 'help children develop in a different way.' I'm not certain what she means by this. Whether feline companionship makes children caring and responsible, condemns them to a life on anti-histamines or fosters a violent enthusiasm for small rodents. My daughter is desperate for a cat. For two years she's been decided on the name - Frisbee - but has lacked an animal to bestow it on. Now everyone is telling me that pets are as vital to a child's emotional growth as sleepovers and probiotics and I know that they are right, but I don't want to face up to it. The sad truth is that middle age has made me cowardly. Long ago I planned to be a spinster with 17 cats. My two moggies shared my pillow and my dining table. But age, kids and matrimony got in the way. Now I worry about paw prints on my White Company bath mats, jellified lamb chunks putrefying in the kitchen, pigeon entrails draping the...

I am walking my daughter and a visiting six-year-old through the park. On a bench is a couple embedded in each other's larynxes. 'They're having sex!' says the six-year-old conversationally. My nine-year old notices me freeze. 'Don't worry, she consoles me. ''Sex' means kissing.' I am unthinkingly relieved. Then a horrible thought dawns. If sex means kissing, does kissing mean sex? What might she tell her school mates about daddy's goodnight peck? I realise that the Moment has Come and, as usual, I am not ready for it. I tramp onwards in weighty silence while I muster my shreds of courage. And then, with agonised effort, I tell her. 'Sex,' I gabble, 'is kissing ... without clothes on.' But I am whistling in the wind. The girls are shrieking with glee over fallen conkers. The moment has passed and I don't have the bottle to resurrect it.

My daughter wants an iphone. I am Against it. I tell her lamely that it's too expensive. She says she'll pay for it with her £1 a week pocket money. I tell her she's only nine years old and I was 35 when I got my first mobile. She says she's the Only One in her class without one and that even the French teacher illustrated conjugation with the assumption that 'We all love our iphones'. I pause. I'm not why sure why I am so viscerally dismayed by the notion. Probably it's to do with my instinct that anything that wasn't around in the 1970s is unnecessary to child development. Which is why my children can feast unfettered on Iced Gems, but I have vigorous prejudices against Haribous. We put on a DVD of The Railway Children (1970) and my intolerance suddenly crystalises. 'See that!' I say jabbing zestfully at Roberta's tumbling hair. My daughter stares at me, anxious. I tell her about the sacred rituals of Coming of Age: how maturity in ...

Eileen mentions that there is a bag of breasts in the vestry. All sorts of oddments have found their way to that dank back chamber since the church was reordered, but I hadn't noticed mammaries among them. Eileen explains that she's been knitting them in the evenings. Eileen is very good with wool. She can knit crinolined mice and fancy tea cosies, but she's not the sort of person you would expect to knit breasts. I do not want her to think that I am not a Woman of the World, so I ask very casually what the breasts are for and she explains that the ladies of the Mothers Union have been asked to knit them for the maternity wing in the local hospital. The nurses are no longer allowed to touch their patients when showing them how to suckle their newborns and so Eileen's breasts will be used for demonstration. I am briefly silenced as I conjure visions of midwives modelling globes of pink purl stitch and suddenly I am worried. Eileen is a gentle, proper white haired lad...

My daughter thinks that I do not stand trendily at the school gate. 'This is how you've got to do it,' she says, buckling my right knee with one hand and swivelling my toes together so that my left hip slews out and jabs Dillon's mother. Then she rotates my arm into a teapot spout, unfurls my index finger and instructs me to dangle my car key from the end of it like Summer's mum does. We both turn to look at Summer's mum. She stands there in a floral maxi dress, flesh bronzed at the Tantastic tanning salon, a Peugeot key swinging from her fibreglass nail extension. Then we look back at me. It doesn't help that I don't have a car key. If I did, I point out, it would be a Skoda key. It also doesn't help that I'm wearing my customary school uniform of corduroy stuffed into wellies. 'You look like an old countrywoman,' my daughter says. I find I mind this. Not the countrywoman bit. I nurture the usual urbanite fantasy of marshalling regimen...