Day 161

Level 2 Chi Kung.

An unsatisfying start to the day. Sometimes during the week I, for various reasons, end up going to bed later and later and becoming correspondingly sleep deprived. Because the weekends don’t usually offer much opportunity for catching up on sleep, and given the strong evidence base for the health, wellbeing and productivity benefits of naps, I will sometimes take the opportunity to get a bit of extra sleep when I get home from the school run. I tried this today but, unfortunately I had only been asleep for 20 minutes when I was woken by the phone. Now, it’s bad enough to be woken by someone you want to hear from: friends or family or a tradesman who’s call you’ve been waiting for. It is significantly worse to be woken by one of those scam computer repair calls where they tell you that your computer has been sending out viruses every time you turn it on and you need to give them X amount of money to fix it. I recognised at once that it was a scam. Of course, having married the tech support, I would never pay someone else to fix my computer, so I was quite safe even if I had believed the caller to be genuine! Annoying though – I loathe scammers who call people at home, as they so often end up preying on the elderly and other vulnerable people. I spent the rest of the day wading through the hundreds of responses to my ad for a cleaner. I was really tempted to avoid this by getting someone from an agency but the problem with that is, you end up paying £10 an hour but the poor cleaner only gets minimum wage. Far better to give the £10 directly to the cleaner. It can be heartbreaking though – having to turn down people who could obviously do the job and are clearly desperate – but I can only take one.

Things perked up in the afternoon as I had agreed to help out Sinniqua, the mother of Katie’s little Finnish friend Elias, by collecting Elias from school and bringing him home for some dinner before taking him and Katie to their trampolining class at 6pm. Elias is a nice little boy – white blond and a little chubby, he looks rather reminiscent of Moomin Troll! – and very easy to have around. Unfortunately I had forgotten that we had a social worker coming to discuss additional support for Jack. As we got home from school, the social worker had just arrived, early, on a bike. In the darkness, Katie saw a tall thin man in a reflective jacket, cried ‘Daddy!’ and raced over and threw her arms around him! I rescued the SW and told him that he was welcome to put his bike through the garden gate for safety. He said that would be great and then, in spite of having been warned about the dog, swung the gate wide open. Dash then hurled himself through the gate in front of the SW and the SW made some remark indicating he thought that was a bit rude. Of course it was actually very quick thinking on Dash’s part as he had raced through in order to stop the dog from escaping. I can’t now remember which science fiction writer named his house ‘Chaos Manor’ (Carl Sagan? Isaac Asimov?) but I sometimes wish I’d got there first!

I got everyone inside and started the process of trying to brief the SW while preparing three different dinners for Jack, Katie and Elias (Dash fetched his own dinner). By the time everyone was fed, the SW was just about finished so I left him with Nick and started bundling Katie and Elias back into their coats to go out to trampolining. Katie and Elias had been chattering non-stop about a Christmas party due to take place at Clara’s house after trampolining, but, given Katie’s history of arranging parties at our place without telling me, I had been unconvinced. However, when we got to trampolining it turned out that there really was an impromptu party planned, so I left Elias and Katie in the care of the other mummies and raced home to gather up whatever I could find for our contribution: a couple of bottles of wine for the mummies, and hot chocolate and marshmallows and crisps for the children. Back to trampolining again just in time for everyone to decamp to Clara’s for pikkujoulu – the Finnish tradition of ‘small Christmas’. We were certainly an international group: a Finnish actress, a Russian journalist, a French childminder and her Italian husband, and me. I mentioned how impressed I had been with the impact on my niece of going to an international school, and how I had felt a bit wistful about that – until I realised that Katie’s school pretty much is an international school – without the hefty fees!  We drank mulled wine and ate lovely food and the children put on a show for us (with little Elias taking his role as the only male dancer very seriously). We all agreed that, although we all love and sometimes miss the countries we come from, we are very lucky indeed to live in this lovely, leafy part of London.

Day 160

Level 2 Chi Kung.

Katie was very reluctant to get out of bed this morning, with the result that, although I woke her at 06:45 as usual, she was still not ready to leave for school two hours later. We finally got to school at 09:35 for an 08:55 start. After dropping her off (having got a late note from the office!) I jumped on a train into Charing Cross, en route to the Ideal Home Show at Earls Court. The purpose of my visit was to investigate an outbuilding we are thinking of buying. In the end, the company was indeed exhibiting but only had one building on show – not the one we are considering. Still it gave me an opportunity to have a careful look at the build quality etc and I then managed to get a bit more Christmas shopping done.

Back to Blackheath in time to collect Katie and then home. Sherlock was absolutely manic when we got home – now that I’m not working he is used to mummy being at home all day and doesn’t like being left on his own – even with free run of the kitchen, a chewy stick, access to the garden and plenty of food and water. In the end, to reassure him, I hand-fed him his entire dinner, one kibble at a time, with lots of cuddling in between.

Day 159

Level 2 Chi Kung.

Lovely autumn sunshine. Home from dropping Katie to deal with some admin, then off to Lewisham to buy socks and underwear for the boys (to replace those eaten by Sherlock) and stock up on fruit, veg and that other essential staple: hot cross buns. Yes, I know it’s nearly Christmas but hot cross buns have been a year-round fixture at M&S for more than a decade now! Continued just that bit too long to allow me to drop everything home before collecting Katie, so ended up showing up at the school gate with a huge pile of shopping.

Lugged Katie and the shopping home to be there for Dash and then took both of them back out to drop Katie at cello.

Knee absolutely agonising by 6pm – hoping the anti-inflammatories will start to work wonders sooner rather than later.

Day 158

Level 2 Chi Kung.

Monday morning and the fact that all three children have gone to school feels like a novelty! Didn’t manage to do Chi Kung before the school run because Dashi’s bus was late, so had just finished and was about to hop in the shower when Susan Laborde arrived – catching me all dishevelled! Lovely morning with Sue and stress-free on account of having so much food already prepared. No cake though – ‘the tins’ were empty! Sue left at 13:30 and, by the time I had cleared away the dishes there was only time to do a couple of minor things off the to-do list before it was time to pick up Katie. Katie was slightly late coming out but, even so, we should still have been home in time for Dash’s arrival. So I was surprised to hear urgent tooting and have a big white bus pull up and disgorge Dash while we were still en route. Apparently they had already attempted to drop him off (it seems the four kids who are normally dropped off before him are all away, so they got to us super early) and, finding the house empty, had continued on, only for clever Dash to spot us a couple of hundred meters down the road.

At 5:10pm I had a GP appointment to get the results of the knee x-ray. I had tried to get an appointment with the doc who referred me for the x-ray in the first place (and was so open-handed with the opiates!) but she is away until the 8th of December, so I ended up seeing Dr P – a very charming, if sometimes disconcertingly jolly man I have seen a couple of times before. The good news is that there is no bone damage. The less good news is that, in addition to what he described as ‘routine wear and tear’, there is medial damage (presumably from the dislocation) and osteoarthritis. He asked if I was taking anti-inflamatories and I started to say that I had been taking ibuprofen but had been told to stop and given codeine by the other GP, but I only got halfway through the sentence before he interrupted to cheerily announce ‘good gracious you need something far stronger than that, oh and a referral to the knee clinic’. Then, still cheerily, ‘if you need a knee replacement…’. Now it was my turn to interrupt: having only just heard about the osteoarthritis, I was a bit alarmed that the talk was immediately turning to knee replacement. Fortunately he explained that he wasn’t implying that I would need a knee replacement but pointing out that, for people who do go on to eventually need a knee replacement, the ones who HAVEN’T taken lots of anti-inflamatories and pain killers have the worst outcomes because they tend to stop taking exercise (because it hurts too much) and therefore have very little muscle structure to buttress the new knee. On the other hand, the people who take the drugs tend to get on with their usual activities and have plenty of muscle. Which explains why they are so open-handed with the drugs. It would have been helpful if the original GP had explained this logic as, although I have continued to do Chi Kung, I have been avoiding hills and cutting down a bit on the amount of walking I do, not just because it hurts, but because it felt like I was doing more damage.

Because they were running 25 minutes behind schedule and there were people still in the waiting room behind me, I had gone into the appointment conscious of needing to be quick, but, as soon as I mentioned Chi Kung, Dr P lost all sense of urgency and wanted to hear all about it. He used to do Tai Chi when he was younger, can’t think why he ever stopped… then when I mentioned Matala, it turned out he had been there in 1986. Finally, feeling guilty about the patients still waiting, I stood up, thanked him and left the room, whereupon he followed me out to the waiting room still chatting and then saying ‘Oh yes, must remember to do that referral’. So I hope he didn’t get so carried away with reminiscences of good old Matala that he forgot to do the referral to the knee clinic.

So, the anti-inflammatory he has prescribed is called ‘naproxen’. Anyone had any experience of it?

Tackling the laundry mountain in the evening, I was surprised to find several pairs of Jack’s underpants with large holes in the back. It briefly occurred to me that they might be evidence that Jack, like his fictional namesake Jack the Bodiless, has developed the ability to actually (rather than metaphorically) fart flames. On reflection however, I think they are evidence of Sherlock’s extreme lack of discernment in what he chooses to gnaw on.

Day 157

Level 2 Chi Kung.

Nick’s turn to have the morning off, so I made gingerbread pancakes for the kids. I have great difficulty getting the ancient gas hob to maintain a pan at a steady low heat and have been trying various pans and griddles. I had high hopes for a heavy pan I bought a while ago which is the kind you are meant to season, so that, having started off shiny steel, it gradually goes completely black and becomes that holiest of grails – an effectively non-stick pan that can be used on a very high heat. The pan was gradually blackening up when poor Nick used it to make chilli one night and the next day timidly presented me with a pan which was, once again, all shiny silver. I thought at first that he had scoured it, but no, the it seems that the chilli itself had dissolved the coating! I don’t eat chilli, so I can’t attest to the impact, if any, on the flavour.

I had hoped to get the Christmas photo done this weekend but the light has been terrible. I bet we’ll get lovely autumn light while the kids are at school next week. I may have to give in and try to do an indoor one – the price of printing the cards will go up sharply if I don’t get them off to a printer before the end of November.

Day 156

Level 2 Chi Kung.

A normal Saturday, with Stagecoach and guitar. On the way home after Stagecoach, Katie and I were discussing the fact that it is now less than a year until I have to go back to work. She has previously suggested (several times!) that I should become a childminder, like Clara’s mum. but she has gone off that idea after returning from a play date at Clara’s a couple of weeks ago saying “that house just has TOO MANY BABIES’. This time she suggested that I should write children’s books. I said that that would be lovely except I have no ideas at all for children’s books. She replied that that wouldn’t be a problem, as she had plenty! Later that afternoon, I found her in the living room:

J: I’m ready.
K: [puzzled] Read for what?
J: Ready to start writing our book.
K: [running upstairs] Yippeeeeeee!

My expectation was that Katie would supply a general plot idea and I would do the actual writing but, in the end, my role was merely to type as Katie dictated. We got the first page of Jill and the Giant Sandcastle done before Katie decided she needed a rest-break. I was about to post it – but I realised I should probably get the author’s permission.

Day 155

Level 2 Chi Kung.

Katie didn’t want to go to school today, saying that her throat hurt. I made clear that, if she stayed home, she would be left mostly to her own devices as I had stuff to do. My main task was to advertise for a cleaner – our old one, who was fab and had been with us ever since we moved to Blackheath, having returned to Bulgaria to get married and start a family. The children were very fond of Genoveva, who occasionally babysat as well as comingonce a week to clean, and seemed quite alarmed when we told them that she was going back to Bulgaria.

K: [outraged] Bulgaria? She’s going back to BULGARIA?
J: Yes.
Dash: And is Bulgaria a free country now?
J: [vaguely, thinking that they must have covered Eastern European communism at school] Yeah, more or less, for the moment.
Dash: Even the children?
J: [enlightenment dawning slowly] Honey, the country in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang isn’t Bulgaria, it’s Vulgaria – it’s just a made up place, it’s not where Geni comes from.

After some consideration, I decided to use more or less the same ad I used last time I had to advertise (Geni came to us as the friend of a friend of our old nanny). I thought about this quite carefully, as the last time I used the ad, it did generate hate mail, but I also got emails from people saying things like ‘I’m so sorry I’m booked up on Mondays, but I wanted to thank you for the best laugh I’ve had all week’, and, most importantly, it also brought us the best cleaner we have ever had, a young animator doing all kinds of part time jobs to support herself while she got established in her real career. Here’s the ad:

“We are looking for a very special cleaner who:
• Speaks English
• Understands “bone-handled knives and crystal glasses don’t go in the dishwasher”
• Will notice chocolate-y hand prints on the door AND wipe them off
• Will vacuum right into the corners and behind and underneath the furniture, not just the middle of the room
• Won’t put rubbish in the recycling
• Knows how to polish brass
• Understands “Don’t ever touch the computer screens”
• Realises that cleaning the bathroom means actually scrubbing the bath not just spraying it with cleaning fluid and hoping for the best
• Is prepared to do ironing
• Always empties the vacuum cleaner
• Is happy to use a limited range of eco cleaning products.

And most of all, someone who would never in a million years think of wiping out the roasting dish and then smearing the same greasy cloth over every other surface in the house. If this sounds like you, and you are available for four and half hours on a Monday, please email …”

Managed some quiet time with Katie, discussing how she might best deal with X. No real conclusions, but she seems to be feeling better.

Random musings – forensics, Rosetta, India

Level 2 Chi Kung.

There has been a fascinating series on Radio 4 over the last week or so, about the development of forensic science. Dr Crippen (famously apprehended after the first use of ship-to-shore telegraph to capture a fugitive) was eventually hanged for the murder of his wife, based on forensic evidence. However he maintained his innocence to the very last, and DNA testing has now revealed that, not only do the human remains found buried under the brick floor of his cellar not share DNA with his wife’s descendants, but they aren’t even female!

This child of the moon landings has been enjoying the Rosetta coverage.

I have never had much desire to go to India – six hours in Bombay airport was enough to put me off – and, listening to the coverage of the sterilisation camps, I have less still.

Day 154

Level 2 Chi Kung.

Katie had a doctor’s appointment this afternoon, so I suggested last night that she stay home from school today. She asked what time the appointment was and, when I told her 2pm, she said ‘You know Mummy, mostly when children have appointments, they come to school and then their mummies just collect them at lunchtime’. I said ‘Well we could do that if you like.’ “Oh no’ she said ‘I would much rather stay at home’. I let her sleep in and, after I had got Dash off to school, tried myself to go back to bed, but was prevented by Sherlock repeatedly throwing his little furry body against the kitchen door! I set Katie up in the living room with a pile of half-finished homework sheets to get on with while I did Chi Kung and had a shower, with a promise that, once I was dressed, we would do some baking together.

For weeks now, small but annoying cuts have been appearing on my fingers and thumbs and, unable to think of any other cause, I have assumed that they are paper cuts. Unfortunately, as I got out of the shower this morning, I found out the truth – the hard way. Bending down to open the vanity unit in the en suite bathroom, I felt something slightly sharp. I pulled my hand away and tried opening it with the other hand – thus ending up with deep cuts on the tips of three fingers and a thumb, spread over both hands. The stupid porcelain knob had fractured and a sharp piece on the back of the knob (where one can’t see it) had cut all my fingers and blood was spurting everywhere. I eventually managed to get myself all plastered up, by which time I was dry (but frozen) but then discovered that I couldn’t get my bra done up with all my fingers plastered and beginning to hurt. Made do with a sports bra and got some clothes on.

The original plan had been to do Christmas baking, and I had spice biscuits in mind, but at the last minute Katie decided that she wanted to make chocolate cupcakes instead. This was fortuitous as the recipe is so simple that Katie could do almost everything herself and I didn’t have to get my plastered fingers in the mix! Unfortunately we got halfway through the recipe and discovered that there were no eggs. As a teenager I hated babysitting for people who never had any food in the house – it’s no fun sitting up until 3am when the television goes off at 10:30 and you can’t even have a cup of tea because there’s no bloody milk – and I vowed that I would never be one of those people who are always ‘running out’ of things. As a result, we very seldom run out of store cupboard foods – not due to any sophisticated approach to inventory control, we simply keep lots of everything on hand – but years of living within 50 feet of a well-stocked corner shop have made me less reliable on perishables. Now that the nearest eggs are a ten minute walk away, I will have to develop some more reliable approach. We put the dry ingredients to one side and picked up a dozen eggs on the way home from Katie’s appointment. I’m not much of a fan of cupcakes, but these ones were, IMHO, very good indeed. Unfortunately Katie didn’t think so – they were a bit too chocolate-y for her – but she liked them a bit more once they were iced.

In the evening, Siniqua picked Katie up for trampolining and, when they returned an hour later, Siniqua took me to one side and said that Katie had been very upset on the way home but she couldn’t imagine why, as nothing untoward had happened. After Siniqua and Elias had eaten a cupcake and left, Katie insisted she was fine, but later she came up to my room and asked if we could snuggle in my bed. We got under the duvet and she eventually told me what had happened. The bones of it were that X had said something nasty to her. I have been expecting / dreading this for some time. X is a child who tests the boundaries fairly relentlessly. Most of Katie’s classmates are polite wee kids and, while they might well give their own parents a hard time, will certainly behave nicely for someone else’s mummy. But the times we have had X at home, she has trashed the place and teased Dash mercilessly, and when I took her and Katie on a playdate to the beach, she screamed right in my face, demanding junk food which she would under no circumstances be allowed at home. So I guessed from the start that it would be only a matter of time before she started testing other boundaries – like how nasty she can be to her little friends before they push back. It is a delicate situation: Katie adores X and, at the same time, is perceptive enough to tell from my body language that I don’t like her. Not that this is especially difficult – it’s a mercy that Presbyterians aren’t allowed to gamble, as I would never have made much of a poker player. I tried reflective listening and solution-focused questioning but the solutions Katie came up with were for her to go back to her old school (way across town) or for her friend Jackson to move to Blackheath and go to her new school. I will try again tomorrow but I feel deeply uncomfortable with this situation. If all else fails, I might have to read Cat’s Eye aloud to Katie. It contains the best description of bullying by ‘best friends’ I have ever read.

Day 153

Level 2 Chi Kung.

Rain persisting down so, sore from yesterday’s gardening, I decided that today should be more of a cruisy indoor day. The colder weather has obviously flipped that switch in my head which turns off my inclination towards fish and salad type meals and makes me want to fill the house with rich savoury soups and stews. I made stock from the carcass of last weekend’s roast chicken a couple of days ago, so this morning while I waited for Dashi’s bus to arrive, I prepped the huge bag of carrots I got at the market on Monday and simmered them in the stock. Then, since Nick’s new eating plan permits all vegetables – even starchy ones – I roasted some butternut squash for him to snack on. At 1 pm I had to go to Katie’s school to be a parent helper. It is the first time I have had the opportunity to do this and Katie was very excited. The project this term is a kind of cross between a rag rug and a tapestry, depicting St George and the Dragon. It is the brainchild of Nina, a truly indefatigable mummy who organises the school fair, the endless bake sales, and the inevitable raffles, and still finds time to make all the costumes for the Christmas pageant. And who the Head Teacher never ever thanks… Last year I sat in the audience of the Christmas pageant while Mr Roach raved on about how much money the fair had raised, how the school had got an ‘outstanding in all areas’ Ofsted rating, and how marvellous the pageant had been, and then individually thanked all the staff who had participated, and DIDN’T thank Nina or any of the other parents. Mind boggling. Anyway, I was walking out the door to go and do my parent-helper thing, when it suddenly occurred to me that they were bound to have the crappiest scissors known to man, so I went back upstairs and collected both my big powerful left-handed dressmaking scissors and my small sharp embroidery scissors. I was so glad I did – I was definitely the envy of the other mummies on the fabric cutting table. The session was meant to finish at 2:15 and I had planned to fill in the time before pick-up at 3:20 sitting at a sunny table in a cafe near the school, with a flat white and a magazine. But no, chaos as bloody usual: 2:15 came and went with no sign of winding down or packing up. I finally excused myself at 2:55 so that I would at least have time to grab a takeaway coffee and drink it walking back to the school. I know it seems ridiculous, particularly when these days there is nothing to stop me going to a cafe any day of the week, but I really felt quite bitter at being deprived of my decadent hour.

Home again and onto making one of my favourite winter meals – a dish that was originally called ‘peasant stew’ but which I re-named ‘rich peasant stew’ when we were living back in Christchurch and I discovered what aubergines cost there (since only a fairly rich peasant could afford to make it). It’s fairly simple – though a bit more of a faff now that I don’t have three ovens – basically you bake aubergines, tomatoes and capsicums in the oven, leaving the capsicums in until the skins blister and char and adding anchovy fillets to the roasting tomatoes. Then you peel the skins off the capsicums and toss the whole lot into a casserole dish with your browned lamb. Throw in a couple of peeled and quartered onions and some courgettes and mushrooms if you have some to hand, then put the whole lot in a very low oven until everything is soft and yielding and the meat is falling apart. Roasting the veg beforehand may seem like an unnecessary extra step but it concentrates the flavours marvellously, adding a rich mellow quality to a dish which could otherwise be a bit boring and watery. Once it was ready to go in the oven, I got back to my soup – whizzed the carrots with a handheld blender and then tossed in a huge bunch of fresh coriander and whizzed it again. Most recipes for carrot and coriander soup seem to use coriander seed – but if you have fresh coriander it is even better. Yum.