Oh, the horror. It's Halloween tomorrow. I have been less than enthusiastic about it and even made the children buy Halloween costumes with their own pocket money. Well, it all just smacks of a bit of a money-making scam by the supermarkets, doesn't it? Back in the day, Halloween meant bunging on a black jumper of my dad's and a hat made out of black cardboard and wondering down to my aunty's for a handful of humbugs. Anyway, I've been nagged and cajoled into the whole thing, thanks to competitive  Halloween decorating here on camp. Yes, some of the houses have graveyards in their gardens, or pumpkins carved like spiders or cobwebs all over the place, but we don't. (Well, we do have cobwebs all over the place, but not because of Halloween, just because of my general abhorrence of housework). I have finally capitulated and carved a small pumpkin and bought some things to hang up  on the front door. And I've spent a small fortune on sweets (although, mixed in with them are all the sugar-free ones that nobody wants to eat from our family - because of that time at the cinema when we all ate too many and succumbed to the 'laxitive effect' that too much sugar substitute can cause...but let's not dwell on that). Right, anyway, I should really go and get some shut-eye. Night night! xx

Well, I might be stumbling inexorably into middle age, but I'm also a closet lesbian, apparently. This is what Hubby keeps telling me. His evidence is that I'm reading a book called 'women's barracks'. Yes, it is a title from the lesbian pulp fiction genre, but it was written in 1950, so it's really very tame, and I'm only reading it because it was written about a women's barracks in London during WW2 by a woman who was there, so the details (aside from pert breast showing beneath silk blouses, etc.) are all pretty authentic and useful for research. This is what I keep telling him. Anyway, it could be worse. I could be reading fifty shades of grey and forcing him into humourless and somewhat tiring S&M stuff (actually, I have only read a short excerpt of fifty shades of grey, so I may be doing the novel a disservice - perhaps it's not all about humourless and tiring S&M stuff, I wouldn't know, would you?)...Anyway, I'm off to bed now, to read all about cigarettes and knowing glances across the bed blocks. For research. Night then x

Oh, I am so middle aged. Here's the proof: I am celebrating getting all my ironing done by having half a shandy. I didn't use an iron until my mid-thirties, and back in the day a celebratory drink meant considerably more than half a shandy. Now I feel a thrill of personal fulfillment at a neat stack of school uniforms and a freshly-bleached hob. How has this happened? It won't be long until I start crocheting toilet roll covers and and joining the WI...
So, it's nearly the end of half term, and, the rest of the week has been quite calm in comparison to our watery start. Dog seems to have recovered from his near-death experience, and I managed to sneak in a nice pair of jeans ('skinny boot', since you ask) and a green jumper (no, it's really different from all my other green jumpers, honest) into the shopping basket when Hubby was buying new clothes for him (he's lost inches from his waistline and thus needs new clothes - sadly I don't have that excuse).
Blah blah blah...wish I had something more exciting to tell you! take care xxx

Hello, how are you? I'm just back from a weekend sailing in the Solent (which was not unexciting, given that we had a terminally ill labrador and a girl with cerebral palsy on board - luckily we also had Hubby and his v. nice friend V, who are used to taking boatloads of incompetants out in howling gales, so it was fine. Apart from the bit where Dog decided to test his tenuous grasp on life by jumping into Gosport Harbour; thank goodness for the helpful sailors who hooked him out of the water and brought him back to us.). So we're all back, and now have a houseful of small-ish girls (both Twins have a friend each over to play), and Son, who is trying to engage them in a complicated game involving his 'weapon of mass destruction' (a light sabre with some pipe cleaners sellotaped to the end). There is a fair amount of screeching and banging going on, but nobody has asked me to phone for an ambulance yet, so it all seems to be going off as well as can be expected, for a rainy day in half term. Hmmm, what else has been going on? Oh, I have just doubled my earnings (don't get excited, my income will now pay for school dinners and petrol - whoopee) because my class got so popular that we ran out of chairs, and have had to arrange for another class to run. Of course I take this as a sound endorsement of my teaching skills (best summed up as smiling a lot and hoping nobody asks about past participles), and nothing to do with the fact that this is the only place that offers an English class with free childcare included. Right, I can't think of anything else to tell you, so I suppose I had better go and tackle the downstairs bathroom - if I can make it there without being frazzled by the 'weapon of mass destruction'... Cheerio! x

I've got the lurgy, and no, it's not just a convenient excuse to not clean the bathroom or do kids' bedtimes and instead languish in bed playing with my new smartphone (actually it's a bit too smart - way too much I can't figure out). It all started on Friday night when I pretty much gave up the ghost before Friday download/big friday fun/something else with friday in the title had even started on CBBC. I got up on Saturday to take the dog to the vet (he's put on five hundred grammes and has a teensy spring in his arthritic step - being close to death obviously agrees with him) but then went all grumpy and wobbly at lunchtime and had to spend the whole afternoon under a quilt watching endless re-runs of Location Location Location and speculating quietly to my feverish self on the possible lengths of marriages likely for all those eager young couples (not long, generally, given the bossiness of the women and the sappiness of the men). I managed to make supper whilst everyone else was out on skates or scooters (alright, I put some pizzas in the oven) and then went horizontal again in the evening for a DVD (Notes on a Scandal with Judi Dench and Cate Blanchet - v.good, but a little unsettling). Anyway, I'm still feeling a bit groggy today, but I went out for a meeting anyway, and ended up just ready to lie down again by six thirty. However, I'm a bit bored of being ill now, and I'd really like to feel better again tomorrow...especially as there are no episodes of Location Location Location I haven't seen, and I really can't face Jeremy Kyle...x

Hubby is home soon, back from doing important army things, and possibly with chocolate (I'm hoping Toblerone as he flew through Heathrow) - worth staying up for, I think. I've had a reasonably productive day because I've finished another chapter of the book - I'm up to almost fifty thousand words now. I mentioned this to the man who came round to check the asbestos and ended up receiving a not inconsiderable amount of manuscript advice from him. He had some jolly good ideas about one of my characters, but I did eventually have to hint that possibly he should finish his asbestos inspection before I had to do the school run, and he unwillingly got up from the kitchen table and got his ladder and asbestos-spying equipment out. I also tried to force my half-completed manuscript onto the wives book club. I said they could be my focus group - I hope they agree (I offered to pay them in wine...). Maybe I can run the asbestos man's suggestions past them as potential plotlines and see what they think. Incidentally, I'm in good company scouting round for story ideas - apparently Chekhov used to pay two kopeks for an anecdote, and more for a short story idea. So that's alright then.
Where is my husband? Maybe I'll go to bed and hope for chocolate for breakfast...xx

Just had two large glasses of wine and a bag of crisps. That's what happens when my newly-skinny and almost-teetotal husband goes away. Yes, he's in Cyprus at the moment. I'm not sure exactly why, but we have been promised giant Toblerone bars on his return. A large quantity of chocolate is always far more important than any spurious military information, in my opinion.
My mum & dad have just disappeared (not literally, they drove, in their big car, full of collies and canine accessories). They were en route from a holiday in Northumberland (why? brrr!) and going back to Devon. They said it was lovely to have some 'time off'. Now, my dad took early retirement at fifty five, which by my reckoning means he's been retired for (hang on, I've had two glasses and, no, I wasn't a competitor in the primary maths challenge last week).... twenty two years. That's like me having given up work aged twenty (oh, I know, given my two two degree and 'portfolio career' , that's almost the case, but I have moved house at least eight times and spent seven years overseas and had three children in that time). Anyway, somehow, retired life in an idyllic converted Devon farmhouse for the past twenty-odd years is a teensy bit stressful, it seems. So in order to stress-bust, they have just spent a week in Northumberland, in the autumn, in the rain. To me, none of this makes sense - but maybe that's just the wine clouding my judgement!
Take care xxx
ps - Dog is still alive, and thriving on his new diet of various pills and miniature trays of dog food. He's even been out chasing pigeons (suspect the whole bowel cancer thing might just have been an elaborate ruse to get us to buy Cesar and let him sleep on the bed)...

I accidentally ended up invigilating the Nottingham Primary Maths Competition today. I had planned a day of writing, with perhaps a short run and a dod of light housework, but no, somehow I found myself ferrying four kids to a private school and running maths relays and speed maths test etc. At least I got a free lunch (and Son's nice teacher bought me a lovely bunch of flowers, too). One of the school's teachers was meant to do it, but at the last minute she had to be somewhere else and asked, since Son was in the competition, whether I wouldn't mind taking the team. I thought she meant taking them, ie. dropping them off at the competition and picking them up afterwards. But no, I spent five hours helping run a numeracy olympics (luckily I wasn't asked to do any maths myself, as I had the answer sheet, phew). Most of the other people involved were either head teachers, or, at the very least, teaching assistants. I was just a random mum, and possibly more excited about the free chocolate biscuits on offer than the real professionals. Son was wildly excited about the whole thing, so excited, in fact, that he indulged in a little impromptu kleptomania and stole a whole box biros from the posh school that hosted the event (well, what can they expect when they invite pikey state schools through their gates?).
So, the bed sheets have not been washed, and my protagonist still hasn't had the showdown with her parents that I promised to write for her this week. However, I do have a very happy son (despite his team only coming tenth) and enough biros to last for the next decade.
Cheerio x