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.

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.

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.

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.

Level 2 Chi Kung.

A beautiful, dry, sunny autumn day, so, as soon as Sherlock and I got home from dropping Katie at school, I changed into gardening clothes and got to work sweeping up leaves. Filled four huge black bags with leaves, then weeded the rose bed and underneath the feijoas. It is a pleasure weeding under the feijoas now as the half-dead corsican mint plants I stuck in as ground cover have resurrected themselves and spread enthusiastically. This has not only suppressed weed growth, but every time you pull up a weed there is a wonderful waft of mint. Kept working, deadheading the roses and planting some gentiana septemfida that I picked up for a £1 a plant in the rejects rack outside the plant shop a couple of weeks ago. Those who know my gardening habits from Christchurch days will be unsurprised to hear that it took me a couple of weeks to get them into the ground. I have always had a bad habit of buying plants without being totally sure where I can going to plant them! By the time I finally stopped, I barely had time to clean up my tools and have a shower before I had to go and get Katie.

Level 2 Chi Kung.

Jack is still saying that he is too ill to go to school, so I got an appointment for Nick to take him to the GP while I was off having my knee X-rayed. I had a slight snag getting to Lewisham Hospital for the X-ray. I had to wait 17 minutes for a bus, so I was pleased I had left home really early. Unfortunately I then fell asleep on the bus and woke up halfway to Elmer’s End – many many stops past Lewisham Hospital. I had to hop off and get a bus back in the other direction and, by the time I had found radiology, I was about 15 minutes late. The staff on reception were lovely, said not to worry, everyone was late on account of the terrible traffic, and I said ‘Yeah, the traffic is terrible and then of course it doesn’t help if you fall asleep on the bus and wake up half way to Elmer’s End.’ They both cracked up and the guy said ‘I come the other way and I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve been trying to get to work and ended up in bloody Blackheath!’. Had the X-rays – sadly they don’t give you the results, so I will have to wait a week or so until the results get back to the GP.

Stopped on the way home to make a start on the Christmas shopping and, all important, to buy the children’s Christmas jumpers. Had chosen the jumpers and a pair of PJs for Katie and queued for ages to pay, when I realised that I had obeyed the hospital’s instructions to leave all valuables at home and didn’t have my wallet. I left the bag of shopping behind the counter and whipped home (crucially remembering to get off the bus!) and returned with my wallet. Having picked up the trolley as well, I took the opportunity to stock up on fruit and veg at the market: lovely pears, plums, capsicums, broccoli, huge bag of carrots, a big bunch of coriander and the most beautiful aubergines. It reminded me of an interview on NZ TV years ago with a greengrocer who was trying to get people to buy a wider variety of vegetables. They had been stocking aubergines for a while but didn’t really know what to advise when customers asked how to cook them. But she had noticed that one regular customer came every week and carefully scrutinised the aubergines before selecting two to buy along with her other fruit and veg. Assuming that, since she bought them every week, the woman must have some wonderful aubergine recipes, she decided that the next time the woman came in, she would ask her how she cooked them. The woman, looking embarrassed, admitted that she didn’t actually eat the aubergines, she just left them looking beautiful in the fruit bowl until they shrivelled up and then threw them away!

Picked Katie up from school and decided to make her dreams come true. Yes, we made eclairs! Well, cream puffs, anyway. My previous attempt at choux pastry – Delia’s Smith’s giant parmesan puffs made for Kay Redmayne-Porter et al, before Jack was born – were an abject failure (totally flat), so it has taken me a long time to pluck up courage for another try. This time I stuck to the gospel according to Edmunds and they puffed up beautifully. We even piped the mixture onto the tray. Edmunds says ‘teaspoonfuls’ but Katie is fascinated with piping on account of it featuring so heavily on Great British Bake Off, so I thought I would make all her Christmasses come at once.

Level 2 Chi Kung. Microcosmic orbit.

A wonderful sleep in followed by a mellow afternoon in which I wandered around in the rosy glow of actually having had enough sleep. Katie was keen for me to make eclairs but I wasn’t in the mood to try anything challenging, so I made Sue Wood‘s microwave chocolate cake, only with butter instead of oil. First microwave cake I have ever made (as far as I can remember – there might have been a pineapple upside down cake in 1988) and I had to make it in a silicon loaf tin as it was the only suitable tin for the microwave. It wasn’t quite chocolatey enough for my taste but, topped with mint-choc icing, Nick and the kids yummed it down. And it was so quick and easy – very useful recipe to have on hand. Thank you Sue.

Level 2 Chi Kung.

A cruisy relaxed morning with no Stagecoach – makes me wish I could persuade Katie to move to the afternoon class and then every Saturday could be like this. Dash worked really hard at guitar. Mr Baulch told us a funny story about the lady who taught him to play. Apparently she used to hold up an old photograph of a primary school class all sitting cross-legged on the mat and ask her students to say which child was her. They never could, so she would eventually point to her younger self and then say, ‘But what about that little boy beside me, do you recognise him? You know him. You’ve definitely heard of him.’ Finally, after making her hapless students guess for several minutes, she would beam ‘That’s Adolf Hitler’. She apparently had a rather strict, draconian teaching style, or as Mr Baulch and his fellow students inevitably put it, ‘She went to the same school as Hitler – and it shows’!

Wonderful quote from Shirley Conran (of ‘Life’s too short to stuff a mushroom’ fame) on Radio 4 this morning: ‘They wanted to know, at what age do women stop having orgasms. I said “Why are you asking me? How would I know, I’m only 80.” ‘

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At 17:18, I looked in the mirror and realised that I have had my jumper on inside out all day (a day which has included Dashi’s guitar lesson and lunch at a fairly posh local restaurant). The seams are quite neat, so not terribly obvious, but the laundry instructions sewn into the righthand side seam are a bit of a give-away.

And because I come from a superstitious family, I will now have to leave it like this until I go to bed, because it is bad luck to change it.

 

Level 2 Chi Kung. Microcosmic orbit.

Woken up 15 minutes before the alarm by Katie yelling ‘Mum, Dad’ at her (rather impressive!) top volume. Staggered through to see what was up and she announced that her tummy hurt and she felt too sick to go to school. Given that she normally struggles to wake in the morning, I thought it must be genuine and agreed that she could stay home. Nick was already intending to work from home to keep an eye on Jack while I went to an appointment at Dashi’s school. The paediatrician was impressed with Dash, who chatted happily with her. Asked what he liked doing at home, Dash gave eating my gingerbread pancakes top billing. When the paediatrician looked surprised, he said emphatically: “They’re really very good pancakes!’. I beamed – couldn’t help it, tried to keep it unobtrusive.