Lift Chi Up. Resilience. Pizza, wine and lemon curd ice cream in the garden with Anne-Marie Stenson and Andrew.

A day of soft weather, perfect for getting on with the to do list except that somehow didn’t happen. Lift Chi Up, changed the sheets and did laundry, noticed some of the stone fruit needed using up so halved and stoned it, sprinkled the cut halves with cinnamon and brown sugar and baked it in the oven. Fabulous. At 4pm I took Katie to her final session of Roundabout – the wonderful year-long Conservatoire programme where children get to try a new instrument every six weeks. At this final session, the children and the tutors were to perform for the parents. My heart sank when I realised that the tutors would be playing Pachelbel’s Canon – a piece of music I thought I never wanted to hear again. When I was at university I read that listening to Baroque music while studying could enhance retention and understanding and decided to test it out for myself. Unfortunately, on an extremely limited budget, I was only able to afford two cassettes – one was Pachelbel’s Canon and, by the end of several months of study, I had developed a vehement loathing for it. So I was hugely surprised to enjoy today’s performance. Even more gratifying was the tutors’ end of year report on Katie, in which, happily, their opinion on which instruments she would be best suited to corresponds broadly with her own preferences. She surprised me a bit when we were completing the course evaluation forms though. It asked the usual questions about which parts of the course she enjoyed most and least and I was surprised when she said that learning the cello was the bit she liked least (because the cello pressed against her chest uncomfortably). This was a surprise because, last week. she had asked me to book cello lessons for her. I asked her if she had changed her mind about cello lessons. “No mummy, I want lessons so that I can get comfortable playing the cello.”

Lift Chi Up. Hospital appointment at which I startled the consultant by saying “I thought we’d skip the bit where I struggle to remember and you scribble” and handing over a neatly typed history, a full blood count and the discharge summary from a previous procedure. It worked really well and, for once, I didn’t leave feeling I might have left out some crucial piece of information. Home to play with Sherlock and do some quick watering before heading for ‘Cirque du School’ for Katie’s end of year show. Took Katie to the cafe for a treat then home to fresh sweetcorn, quiche and new potatoes for supper. Yum.

Lift Chi Up, followed by a long Skype call with Ann Eade, in which I admired her fab new kitchen and she admired young Sherlock. Took Katie to the fruit and veg market and to buy brandy. Set Katie up with her electrical circuits kit and she happily made light bulbs light up and fans whirr for an hour or so while I preserved 1kg of cherries in brandy (because you never know when an emergency might arise requiring the immediate application of champagne slammers).

And you already know what I did with the stalks!

Katie was discovered this morning snuggled up sound asleep in Dash’s bed, her own bed being covered in quantities of vomit such that I was reminded of Baldrick and the cappuccino. So plans for the day went out the window and it was mostly spent laundering duvets and pillows and entertaining a very bouncy, healthy and easily bored little girl, who nevertheless can’t return to school until Wednesday. If it’s fine tomorrow I think I will take her and Sherlock to the park and run some of the energy out of them.

Very funny article in Saturday’s Guardian.
http://www.theguardian.com/…/caitlin-moran-my-sex-quest-yea…. I particularly liked the part where the young Moran, having got her entire sex education from watching Twin Peaks, describes how she came to acquire a new skill: “what I found truly interesting was the scene where the sexy teenage Audrey Horne (Sherilyn Fenn) applies for a job as a prostitute at Twin Peaks’s spooky, high-class brothel, One Eyed Jack’s. The owner asks Horne if she can prove she would be a good potential employee. Other sexy teenage would-be prostitutes might have replied by bringing out their CV, or perhaps talking about their Duke of Edinburgh’s award. Or, frankly, just saying: “I have a vag.” But Audrey Horne was far too sassy for that. She took a cherry from her cocktail, popped it into her sexy, red mouth and, 10 seconds later, carefully removed from the tip of her pink tongue the stalk, now tied in a perfect knot.”

A red letter day for Sherlock as he had his first trip to the groomers. He normally has a fairly spaniel-like coat so it is bizarre to see him looking like a chocolate-brown sheepskin rug.

The day started out rainy but, just as I was about to give up on being able to get some planting done, the rain cleared and it turned into a lovely (if rather humid) day. We made the best of it and planted: four pungas, two cabbage trees, 12 feijoa trees, and six corsican mint plants. Planting the feijoas was a total pleasure – we have worked so hard preparing the bed for the hedge: digging out to a depth 2 feet or more, sieving the soil, mixing in our wonderful rich homemade compost and leaf mould and a generous quantity of manure (including some I opportunistically collected after a police horse answered a call of nature on the footpath in front of the house!). The pungas etc were harder work as we haven’t done the same level of prep out the back. Nick dug the holes with a mattock – and then got carried away and grubbed out a whole series of stumps, including one that I trip on every bloody time I go down the back. The only things left to plant now are the magnolias, the kowhai and the kakabeak but we think we will leave them in pots until we come back from Italy as planting them requires some serious prep. A large glass of wine and a nice hot bath to get the kinks out, now I’m off to bed. Tired but happy.

Another busy Saturday lived to the accompaniment of intermittent torrential rain – but this time I wised up and took an umbrella! Sherlock had his first date with a couple from BorrowMyDoggy – a site which matches people with dogs with people who would love to have a dog in their life but can’t own one for one reason or another. Possibly because I described him as “a chocolate-brown cockerpoo with film-star good looks”, Sherlock has had a lot of interest on the site but this is the first couple with whom we have got as far as the “Welcome Woof” as the site refers to the initial meeting. I was going to cancel, on account of the rain, but Tudor and Jo sounded so desperate to go ahead that I relented and we met by the church on the heath at 2pm. It was clearly love at first sight and, after talking to them for a while, I had a good feeling about them. I gave them a quick briefing on Sherlock, being careful to include his less desirable (sock-stealing, shoe-chewing) traits and warning them that he couldn’t be let off the lead in public yet as he is a bit unpredictable around other dogs, but they just gazed at him with worshipful expressions. When I asked if they would like to take Sherlock for a walk they, to use an expression favoured by an old friend of mine, “practically ripped my arm off and hit me with the wet end”. They came back an hour later, eyes shining, and reported defensively that Sherlock had behaved impeccably and was in fact very well-mannered around other dogs! As for the object of all this adoration, well, young Sherlock looked like a kid who has spent the afternoon being plied with forbidden sweeties at Grandma’s house!

The fruit and veg market was amazing today. This lot – aside from the ginger and garlic which are from last week – cost 3 quid, and we had already eaten some of the tomatoes for dinner! The flat peaches are very sweet and juicy.

A bit of a curate’s egg. The roadworks (replacement of gas mains) which have been creeping down the road for weeks reached our place today – ear splitting volume on what must have been one of the hottest days I have ever experienced in London (so keeping the windows closed was not an option). So I took refuge at the back of the garden and started reading JK Rowling’s A Casual Vacancy. I bought it when it first came out but could never quite bring myself to add a hardback book to the stuff I had to carry on the train. It was also extremely frustrating to arrive at Dashi’s new school for his first transition visit and discover that pretty much everything we were told when we toured the school a few weeks ago was incorrect. This school was not our choice – not even on our list – but, on the basis of what we were told, we decided not to take up our option to appeal against the decision. When we toured the school, we were shown around by a very impressive, dynamic woman called Jane, who introduced herself as ‘the assistant head’, which I foolishly took to be another term for ‘deputy head’. Unfortunately it turns out that ‘assistant head’ is a similar job title to ‘trainee manager’ in the sense that Supervalue used to use it as the job title for their newest and lowliest shop assistants. During the tour, Jane told us that the school has a very sophisticated transition process, honed over the years and including a short residential camp over the summer holidays before new pupils start in September. Today I discovered that there will in fact be no transition process at all – beyond the visit today – and the Head seemed totally confused when I asked about it. Jane also told us that the school’s new premises would be ready for the start of the new school year in September – now it’s Easter 2015 and slipping. They also have a very bizarre approach to permissions, requiring parents to opt out of things that one would expect to have to opt in to. Amidst a welter of form-signing, there was this conversation

Receptionist: ‘and if any photos or video are taken of your child then you agree that they will be legally owned by the Miss World Organisation.’
Me: ‘No, I don’t agree.’
Receptionist: ‘in that case, can you please sign this form?’
Me: ‘No, I don’t want to sign the form, I DON’T want photos of Dash used that way.’
Receptionist: ‘That’s what the form is for – to say you DON’T want the Miss World Organisation to own images of your son.’

I’m pretty sure that this approach would be frowned upon, if not actually illegal, under data protection regs.

Finally, given that at autism conferences, or in situations where there is only one source of provision, bright, successful people tend to be over-represented amongst the parents, it is a bit worrying to turn up and discover that all the other parents look like they are on the bones of their arse. Then the receptionist asks three times – ‘Are you sure you’re not eligible for free school meals?’ and you start to wonder what it is that all the other middle class mummies have worked out that you’ve somehow missed…

On the plus side, Dash seemed to quite like the school – though this was because they had iPads and let him eat chips and white bread for lunch, so not all that reassuring.

After I picked him up, we went to a cafe for him to have his favourite mango smoothie and then had a wander around the Turkish deli and the fruit and veg market. Later, after taking Katie to music, we had a swim and then I made a salad of tomatoes, red onions, rocket and watercress, dressed with the basil infused olive oil I got at the famous Mr Christians on my last trip to Notting Hill, and served it with Turkish bread and grilled haloumi and feta. Perfect food to eat outdoors on a summer evening. While we were eating, we were startled to see this little fellow approaching with no sign of fear. We never seen any sign of mice in the garden before (or in the house thankfully), so it’s hard to escape the idea that he was attracted by the smell of grilled cheese.