Hello. How are your summer hols? We've got to the point where we have run out of cash for going out to do child-friendly summertime things, so tonight the Twins have invited their friends over to camp in the garden as a low-cost alternative. I think there's hail due tonight. And they've set their alarm so they can all wake up at midnight for their midnight feast. One way or another it's going to be an interrupted nights sleep. Oh well, they can all just sit inside and watch telly tomorrow, whilst I rustle up another meal from Tesco's 'everyday value' ingredients (it's amazing how many things you can do with half a packet of tortillas and some old cheddar cheese - I feel another 'Mexican surprise' coming on...) and Hubby watches Top Gear re-runs. Actually, I feel like I'm doing Hubby a disservice because yesterday he mowed the lawn and cooked supper and hoovered the entire house and put up a tent for the kids. And this morning he read through my dissertation for me (again - will I ever finish the damn thing?). But this afternoon he did fall asleep on the sofa in front of Top Gear. I guess he deserved a break. Oh, and talking of hard work, I don't want you to think that it's only him who's been at it. No sireee. Yesterday I dug up the enormous weedy front flowerbed and sowed it with grass seed. I have barely done so much manual labour in my life (in fact, I think the last time I wielded a spade was in 1994 in Tanzania). Today I have neck ache and a nasty blister on my hand, so I have attempted nothing more challenging than spritzing glass cleaner over the bathroom mirrors and making a risotto. And I went to the hairdresser's as well (I was meant to go last week, but I discovered a nit the night before - I think it was Polly's estranged stepfather, Derek), and now feel fully up to date with important current affairs issues such as why Katie Holmes really left Tom Cruise and when Prince William actually fell for Kate Middleton (and some stuff about someone from the Saturdays getting married too). I also have shorter, marginally less Kate Bush-ish hair. The hairdresser was nothing if not honest. After I'd sat down and explained what I wanted, she gingerly fingered the end of one of my desiccated tresses and said: "Well, I know what you want it to look like, but I'm telling you now, it won't end up like that." She went on to mention that it will take around a year to get my hair back into good shape, thanks to the coiffure nightmares it has suffered over the past few months.
Now, I value honesty above all things, but in a hairdresser perhaps it's a somewhat overrated virtue. Couldn't she just have told me that my hair is lovely and that I look gorgeous right now. I don't want to be told that I'll have to wait a full three hundred and sixty five days just to look normal again.
Still, what can you expect for twenty quid (I'll tell you what, a whole week of everyday value 'Mexican Surprise' that's what)? Next time I'll just pay more for the senior stylist in the hope that she's a more accomplished liar.
Hope your hols all going well.
Take care xxx

Holidays, holidays, hurrah for the new-to-us trampoline and that plenty of other kids are also holidaying at home this year. Twin 2's nits are pretty much gone. There were about four that seemed to linger, and Hubby took to calling them her nit family and asking what their names were. When I did the last comb and found one and showed it to Twin 2, she said, 'Oh, no, not Polly, she was just a baby and I loved her!'. Anyway, I think they're finally gone now, but I'm going to do one more comb just to make sure, in case perhaps little Roland or Uncle Frank are still hiding in there somewhere.
So, yes, the hols carry on, and I'm almost forgetting about my ambitions to become a novelist. The way things stand, I'm less bothered about being a good writer, and more bothered about being an adequate bathroom cleaner...we had some people over the other night who might be posted to Nepal and wanted to talk about it, and I couldn't shut up about the joys of domestic staff. The poor things finally managed to escape after a couple of hours of my ranting on about how nice it was not to have to tidy anything up for three years. Sigh.
Hubby finally has a job, sort of. He's been in work this week, but then is off for the rest of the hols. We're going camping next week. At least, that's the plan, but have you seen the blooming weather forecast? Honestly, I think another four days at Butlin's would be preferable to camping in the rain. Maybe I should just become too ill to go and send the rest of the family off so that I can stay home and finish my dissertation?

Oh hello, sorry about the silence, I'm still recovering from the Butlin's experience. Sharing four whole days with the equivalent of the disgorged contents of an EasyJet flight has taken its toll. The kids loved it, but Hubby and I have had to break it to them that we are never ever going to go to Butlin's again. Ever. On the way back we had to visit not one, but two National Trust properties in order to fully cleanse ourselves of the chavtastic experience. Luckily the Olympic opening ceremony was on when we got back home, so we could watch it and feel proud to be British again, instead of faintly sullied by association. Talking of which, my sister-in-law was in the opening ceremony (if you were watching carefully you might have glanced the back of her head) and my niece - the cheerobics one - is going to be in the closing ceremony. I'm quite jealous, actually, wish I'd been there to see Her Majesty parachute in in person (the twins think that bit was real, and I'm not about to bust their bubble: a parachuting Queen, what a role model, eh?).
Anyway, I'm going to go now, and revel in living in a place that doesn't have drunken arguments raging outside my bedroom window, and not having to share space with people that I'm a teensy bit scared of because I'm worried that if I look at them funny they'll beat me up in the loos.
Tootle pip! x

Sorry about the silence. There's no excuse, really. I would love to tell you that I've been busy, busy, busy, but actually I've been doing quite a lot of drinking coffee and wishing I were a better writer. At least the dissertation is nearly finished now, just in time for summer hols (hooray!). I have decided that Hubby is my muse. I'm not sure if muses are supposed to be small bald middle-aged soldiers; I think they're supposed to be lithe young women wafting about in diaphanous strips of silk (I could ask him to try that, but unless Ben Sherman does a line diaphanous silk t-shirts, I don't feel lucky). Anyway, he's my muse because every time I get stuck and write something rubbishy and cliched that I just can't get right, he swings in with a really great plot suggestion. I wonder whether we should do a job swop? I could harrumph about in camouflage sorting out engineering solutions and he could write a book about three young women in the army in wartime. Or maybe he should do both jobs, and I should spend my time wafting about in diaphanous silk and looking pale and interesting? Perhaps I could try that one when I sign on after the school holidays and have to give suggestions of the kinds of employment opportunities I'm looking for. The way I see it there are three choices:
1. Muse wafting in diaphanous silk (might be a slight issue with the varicose veins and cellulite with that one);
2. Bestselling and extremely rich author (unlikely to happen soon, given my current speed of output);
3. Dinner lady (smells of gravy but far greater likelihood of generating income than either of the above).
Last day of school tomorrow and then we're all off for our chavtastic holiday in Butlin's (the perfect break for a wannabe dinner lady/muse/author), yay! xxx

Twin 2 has nits. I've never had nits and nobody else in the family seems to have them, and their source remains a bit of a mystery. Anyway, the good news is that I'm developing closer relationships with school mums keen to furnish me with anti-nit advice. Apparently hairspray helps as the nits can't cling onto hair, so I'll be sending the girls to school with nice eighties haircuts in future.
Other exciting news this week includes Son's role in the school production of Cinderella. He was a horse. We were of course very proud (watch out Hollywood)...
The dissertation is ticking along. I'm saving the panic until next week: because it's the last week of term I'll probably hit Monday morning and realise with dread that I'm never ever going to finish it before the hols. Luckily Hubby is on a course next week so he'll miss most of my stressing and feeling inadequate.
Did you hear the news about armed forces being used as public service polyfilla yet again at the Olympics? I do hope they don't pull Hubby in as it would ruin our week in Butlin's Skegness!

Just effected the great rat recovery part two. Last night Son was in tears: the rats had vanished. We searched the house but they were nowhere to be found and as the french windows had been open, we suspected the worst...poor old Son had a late night and Bach Rescue Remedy. Then today, when I was sat at the kitchen table 'writing my dissertation' (drinking coffee and daydreaming about being Joanna Trollope) I heard a suspicious scuttling and saw a flash of Rattus, the pesky little rodent. After school Son had a proper hunt and we found pesky Rattus and fat-bottomed Nameless had made a little den inside the sofa bed, in the underneath bit where we keep the bedding.
Would it be wrong to make Son pay for the cost of two ruined pillows, pillowcases and kingsize duvet cover? I feel the trauma of believing his ratty little daughters were dead was probably punishment enough.
What else? Hubby now has a job, sort of. At least our days of behaving like a couple of OAPs are over - no more endless lattes in Costa, and I fear my hairless Hugh FW may soon be replaced by a small angry soldier. Oh well, it couldn't carry on, all those coffees didn't come cheap and we've run out of money now, anyway.
Right, need to get kingsize quilt of the line before the thunder starts (damn that pesky gulf stream and those even peskier rats). Take care xxx

On Friday I had supper sitting next to a cannon, in precisely the same spot where Nelson said, "Kiss me, Hardy". Well, it might have been, as we were on HMS Victory, after all. Although according to Horrible Histories, he said "Kismet" not "Kiss me" - anyway, nobody said either 'kiss me' or 'kismet' to me as they were all too busy guffawing about hilarious armed forces things from their six months in Camp Bastion (however, I almost said, 'bugger me' when I banged my head on a big metal thing that you use to pack powder into the cannons).
Whilst I was busy being blinded by the reflections from a thousand medals and bumping into various bits of nineteenth century military hardware, Son and Twins were being babysat by my lovely niece in London. We all think she's lovely, but to my seven-year-old daughters she is beyond perfection because she teaches cheerleading and cheerobics for a living. They all stayed up late learning some cool moves and as a result were tired as old dogs in the morning, and a good job too, because none of us were in the mood for an early start, least of all the war hero in the bed next to me (who I have to say looked particularly handsome in his uniform).
And now we're all back in Nottingham, in the rain, and dreaming about the possibility of a summer happening at some point...