Showing off my assets

A fortunate side effect of some medication I'm taking is the acquisition of enormously enhanced breasts.  Well, when I say enormously enhanced, I'm doing so in the context of one whose spaniel ear bosoms lost any zest for life when they finished producing milk for four children in eighteen months.

I've never had good breasts, not even pre-children, and I'm positively delighted with my new toys.  I keep finding myself idling cupping them as I sit in traffic waiting for the lights to change.  It's not a sexual thing - I'd do the same if it were a new handbag.

They definitely attract more male attention than the old ones (although the cupping may have something to do with that) and I think they've given me a certain je ne sais quoi around town.

"Something's different about you."  My greengrocer said on Saturday.  "Have you had your hair cut?"

I leaned forward conspiratorially.  "It's my breasts."  I confided.

He gulped and dropped an extra aubergine in my veg box.

My husband's rather pleased with them, especially as they're actually in play at the moment.  The last time I had a magnificent cleavage it was the morning my milk came in, when the slightest touch was agony and landed him a geyser of molten milk in the eye.

Unfortunately my current medication is also responsible for some rather terrifying mood swings - or so my husband told me the other day from behind the safety of the shed door.  I don't know what he's moaning about - surely it's a small price to pay for a pair of enormous jugs.

The End

Do you remember that book I was writing?  It feels rather as though I've been writing it forever, although in fact it's been only a few months.  I'm not sure how long I spent messing around with the first three chapters, but once I had a deadline - an agent who wanted to read the full manuscript - I suddenly found the discipline I'd needed from the start.

I've written sixty thousand words since the start of August, in amongst the full time job, the children, the chickens and the blogging.  Whether they're good words or not remains to be seen, but never the less they're written.  For the last two weeks I've been halted at the final hurdle - the last chapter invisible even to my own imagination.  I had to let myself step away from the laptop for a while and wait for the ending to appear.

On Monday I took a day off work and retreated to my favourite writing cafe with one sole aim; to finish the book.  I ordered tea and I wrote.  I wrote and I wrote and I wrote.  I ordered still more tea, and still I wrote. And then suddenly that was it - I'd written the very last word of the very last chapter.  I'd reached the end.  I looked up at the group of old ladies with their tea cakes, at the funny man who sits on his own and laughs at everyone's conversations, and I grinned inanely at anyone who caught my eye.

A book - I've written a whole book.

On strict instructions from my friend and mentor, author Joanna Cotterill, I have put the manuscript to one side for a while before starting revisions, just to allow my mind to whirl back from the ending.  A copy has gone to the wonderful Tasha Goddard for editing, and when it returns, and the work is done, I will take a deep breath and a leap of faith, and send it back to the agent.

I may have reached the end of the book, but I'm hoping this is really just the beginning.

Do you have an ugly baby?

I was at work the other day when a colleague showed me a photo of what was quite possibly the ugliest newborn baby I'd ever seen.

"Isn't she beautiful?"

I gave a non committal murmur and let others in the office do the cooing and aahing.  Now, obviously I wouldn't expect anyone to shatter our workmate's dreams by pointing out that baby Lilly looks as though she's spent nine months licking a lemon, but the blindness of parental love never ceases to amaze me.   I'm not terribly good at lying, even for a good cause, and thus resorted to complimenting Lilly's baby-gro, to avoid pretending that a squinting gurn is a good look.

Babies - newborn babies that is - are just not attractive.  They're either wizened and wrinkly or they're puffed up bloaters with Michelin man creases.  As they get older their features emerge and then it's all down to luck and genetics.  Lilly's father has a nose the size of North Wales and her mother's frankly hirsute, so the poor girl was always in for a hefty whack on the head with the ugly stick.  With any luck the diluted genes will even out in time.

You have to be terribly careful with names in that respect.  It's no good having a delicate daughter in mind when you christen her Serenity, if she then grows up to be a hulking great monobrowed quarterback better named Bernard.  My father always maintained it would be more appropriate to give children serial numbers, and choose their names once their characters and looks had fully developed.

My children were all ugly babies in their own ways, despite the valiant efforts of my mother and her quest for positive attributes.  Young G has a vacant expression which quite belies her brightness, and my son's enormous head is still cause for concern.  I didn't see him and his twin brother until many hours after they were born and when they brought the Polaroids up to my room I nearly choked on my tea.  Even the midwife burst out laughing when she saw my poor boy A.

"It's not terribly flattering, is it?"  She said, diplomatically.

"That is one ugly baby."  I winced.  We both agreed it would be unfair for the picture ever to see the light of day - we would arrange for a second 'first photo' to be taken once his nose had returned to a normal shape.

My now-beautiful daughter E really took the biscuit in the ugly baby stakes.  A tiny, spiky bundle of grumps, she looked like an elderly Romanian Gypsy and behaved like she was possessed.  Without the 'lovely personality' to make up for the lack of looks, even my mother had to admit she was in trouble.  We were all relieved when the passing of time softened everything, and in certain lights now she doesn't look half bad.

Before you lambast me for my baby-hating evilness, look me straight in the eye and tell me you've never once thought a baby was ugly.  Never entered your (adorable) baby in a beautiful baby contest, and checked out the competition chortling at the hideousness of other people's snotty-nosed off-spring.  I don't believe you.

I smell dead people

My husband has spent much of the last week wrinkling his nose in distaste every time he comes into the kitchen.

"Why does it smell of dead people in here?"

"It's probably the bins.  I'll take them out."

It's not the bins.

My husband has a sense of smell akin to that of a blood hound and can locate an abandoned nappy in minutes.  He tracks the smell of corpse to the microwave and beckons me over.

"Smell it."

"No."

"Go on - smell it."

I don't want to smell it.  I have a frighteningly over active gag reflex which causes me to retch at the slightest unpleasant odour.  I was once caught in a lift to the seventh floor of a hotel in Lisbon, with a fat man who passed wind as I got in at the ground floor.  I managed to fall out at the fifth just before I was sick in my hands.

I lean near the microwave and hold my breath, whilst pretending to take a huge sniff.

"Nope, nothing.  I think it's your nose."

"It's not my nose."  He replies indignantly.  "Why would I have the smell of dead people in my nose?"

"Try some Vicks."  I suggest helpfully.

Shortly afterwards I inadvertently stand too close to the microwave and catch a whiff of the most unholy stench I have ever smelt.  It does indeed smell like the aroma of a thousand corpses rotting in my kitchen.  How have I not noticed this until now?  I call my husband back, gagging slightly as I do so.

"It's not your nose."  I concede.

Further investigations reveal a dead mouse in the housing of the built-in microwave.  I'm not sure how long he's been there.  Long enough to smell, not long enough to decompose, if that sheds any light on it.  I have no idea how he got there, but I worry that it was some sort of bet.  I'm concerned about all his little mousey friends, mounting a search party and wondering whether they were wrong to have dared their compatriot to  microwave his tail.

The mouse is consigned to the dustbin.

"What's for supper?"  My husband asks.

"Microwave meal."

We get take-out.

Sorry, I'm too posh to talk dirty

Last week I had a heavy breather on the phone.  I think I was a bit of a disappointment.  You see, I can't do dirty talk.  I once had a boyfriend who liked me to chat while we were having sex.  He wasn't interested in the Boden sale or what I'd do if I won the lottery - he wanted to hear what we were doing right now.  He liked me to talk dirty.  The problem is, I'm not terribly good at it.  For a start there's my accent - I never feel that porn works terribly well in the Home Counties.  I did try dropping a few aitches and flattening my vowels to take the edge of the poshness, but I ended up sounding like a Croatian prostitute.  The boyfriend of the time said he preferred me speaking with plums in my mouth.  But then he would.

Dirty talk does rather tend to make me laugh, whether I'm doing it myself or listening to someone else.   I'm far too coy to adopt the lexicon of seventies' porn films, and have to resort to a Mills and Boon style narrative involving much grasping of manhoods and heaving of bosoms, which makes me giggle in a particularly non-sultry way.  

I do rather like the linguistic challenge presented by dirty talk.  It requires a certain level of inventiveness to avoid repetition - there are after all only so many ways I can tell someone I'm going to get intimate with their heaving manhood.  Ah - I may have confused myself there.  You get the picture, I'm sure.  

When I first picked up the phone to this heavy breather, I thought it may have been my elderly neighbour.  He has a habit of dialling and then leaving the phone on as he shuffles to his chair and gets comfortable.  However, when the caller asked me what I was wearing, I realised it was a genuine dirty phone call.  Heavy breather phone calls have rather gone out of fashion so for a split second I rather admired him for this touch of nostalgia.

"Oh", I said.  "Um, some rather grubby tracksuit bottoms and my husband's rugby shirt."

"Tell me what you'd like me to do."  The breathing became rather more laboured.  I wondered if he'd consider a request to mow the lawn.

"I'm terribly sorry."  I told him.  "I'm afraid I can't do dirty talk.  I'm too posh, you see."

There was a pause.  The rasping breathing became more normal.

"Not to worry, love.  Thanks anyway."

What a very polite man.  

What's the perfect age gap for children?

Is there such a thing as a perfect age gap?  My mother loved that the four years between each of her children gave her one-to-one time with each baby, just as their older sibling started school.  Amongst my friends it seems common-place to begin trying for a second shortly after baby's first birthday - aiming for that oh-so-popular two year age gap.

My daughters were born fifteen months after my previous batch of babies (I have my children in litters, like kittens).  I won't suggest to you that first year, with three children under the age of two, was an easy one.  I won't pretend it was particularly enjoyable.  It was about survival, and gradually I realised that survival had given way to coping, and that coping finally gave way to enjoying.  It was a long haul but the destination was worth it.

Now I wouldn't change it for the world.  A small age gap means the baby days are over in one fell swoop; there is finally light at the end of the tunnel in relation to nappies, bottles, travel cots and so on, and I don't have to pack it into the loft only to retrieve it in a year's time.  I didn't have to berate my son into tidying up toys which were unsuitable for babies; they all played with the same things.   Within the first year they were all wearing the same size nappies to facilitate the production line process, and they were pretty much all toilet trained together too.  I had no school run to contend with, so could happily spend the entire day in my pyjamas if I needed to.  And I frequently did.  Come to think of it, I still do...

Now that they are older the children play together beautifully because they like the same things and there are no accusations from big brother that his sisters' games are childish.  I'm not met with the challenge of planning days outs and holidays to meet the needs of differing ages, and there are no arguments over what to watch on television.

There is no 'perfect age gap' and family 'planning' is a famous misnomer, but I hope that the close age gap between my children will encourage a close relationship between the three of them as they make their way through life.

What's your ideal age gap?  

A place to write

If I have to, I can write anywhere.  I can write on paper or on the laptop, in pen or in pencil - I'd write with pavement chalk if it's all I had.  I find my writing is best when I am away from the house, where domestic distractions are few and the phone can't disturb my thoughts.  

I tried the library last week.  The ideal place to write a novel, I thought, and I wondered if indeed I would need to jostle for space among other literary types.  But it was empty apart from a man reading The Telegraph and a woman in a strange hat skulking in Romantic Fiction.  I found a corner and opened my laptop.  I stared at the screen for a minute.  Then another.  And another.  So very quiet...  Too quiet.  I found myself disturbed by every cough and rustle of book pages.  I couldn't help but listen to every book renewal and payment of fines.  I left and returned to my favourite haunt.  

The cafe is loud.  It's full of children messily slurping milkshakes and whining for cake.  It's full of prams and shopping bags and wet coats slung over the backs of chairs.  There is a constant bustle of activity through the kitchen doors, and the till rings noisily with every purchase.  I love it there and I write feverishly.  The sounds become white noise, perfectly attuned so that no single voice penetrates my thoughts.  They know me well now and are happy to accommodate me in a corner near a power socket, interrupting only to bring me the mint tea I make last an hour.  

I'd love a study at home, with book-lined walls and a reading chair where I'd do my edits, but I'm sure the silence would unnerve me.  I'd need to wander out to the cafe from time to time and let the sound of busy lives wash over me as I write.  

Just three chapters left to write.  I had better order some more tea.  

Trying out the Electric Bed

I never mind too much what my holiday sleeping arrangements are like.  I'm not fussy about the springiness of the mattress, or the thread count of the sheets.  Just as long as I have a bed, that's all that matters.  Each year we head down to Devon with the extended family to stay in whichever rambling property we've found to accommodate us.  

Last summer my husband and I were in the top bedroom, our three children close at hand in a side room.  Unpacking half done, the children ran downstairs to join their cousins in the garden and we examined our room more closely.  

"Electric beds."  I noticed.  We are such children ourselves that of course we had to try them out, so we leapt onto this novelty contraption and began playing with the remote.  

"You know, this could be quite interesting..."  My husband said, with a rather lecherous leer.  "If you raise the end of the bed, like that, you'd be in the optimum position for an orgasm."  

I stared at him incredulously.  "How do you even know that?"  

"Cosmo."  He confessed.  "I read it at work from time to time.  Shall we give it a go?"

"What, now?"  The house was full of people bringing in groceries and unpacking their cases.

"Oh go on - I'll be quick."  

He hopped on and I grabbed the remote and raised the end of the bed.  Hmm, promising...  

"What's that?"  I could hear voices on the stairs.

"It's nothing.  How does that feel?  The bed company should put this in their brochure as a special feature.  Maybe we should write to them..."

The voices were growing louder and with a sickening lurch I realised my uncle had arrived earlier than expected and was being given the guided tour.  

"Oh my God."  

"Is that it?"  My husband looked rather smug.  

"No, you idiot.  They're coming in!"  

He leapt off the bed and hurtled into the bathroom, as I fumbled for the remote and lowered the bed back to a normal position, the remote control spinning off the bed and onto the floor in my haste.  I tried to get up but my skirt was trapped in the bed mechanism and I couldn't move.  This was going horribly wrong.  

"And this is the attic room, which Emily's using..."  

The door handle turned and all I could do was arrange my skirt modestly and wonder where my knickers had ended up.  

"Hello - don't mind me, I'm just having a little lie down."  

I think I can do without that sort of electricity in our relationship.