Soup of the evening, beautiful soup!

Yesterday could have been better. Yesterday could have gone to plan, really. Plan B, though. The realisation that it was Plan B I was following, because I had forgotten that there was a Plan A, dawned rather rudely, with a telephone call at 11:30.

I had been having a happily productive morning, planning Sunday's teaching session - Stephanie suggested an actual Seder meal, which meant a slightly out-of-the-ordinary shopping list. I was leaving the actual shopping until lunch time, so that I would be back in time to babysit a friend's little girls while she had a meeting. (Polly and Amelie Dickenson, for those who care.) Leisurely plan, late lunch, lovely girls, until, Hell and Damnation, Kevin rings to wonder whether the soup I had promised to make for that day's Lenten Lunch was going to be with them within 30 minutes, as that was when the punters were going to start rocking up. And was I going to bring my own apron for the table-waiting I had undertaken to do.

Oh crap.

Mind you, I don't know how else one discovers that it is actually possible to have all the ingredients assembled and on the boil within five minutes. With just enough time to pack a bag full of keep-two-little-girls-occupied stuff, make a call to their Mum to change the venue, overload the blender motor, get the spare blender unpacked, assembled and working, decide to take the car because by now I was running REALLY LATE, load the car, making sure to put lots of newspaper in the passenger footwell in case of spillage . . .

Spillage? Spillage? Gordon Bennet. A large saucepan (lidded, to be sure. Not WELDED SHUT) in a car exiting a driveway sloping down at - ooh, say 40º? is not going to give me spillage. What it's going to give me is not even slightly covered by the word 'spillage'. What it's going to give me is FOUR LITRES of tomato gunge (did I mention I had no red lentils? Only green ones? And the resulting colour of the soup defied category? Well, printable category anyway?)

Oh hell. You get the idea.

So I ran. Well, sort of lolloped, heavy bag over one shoulder, clutching a fairly sizeable, uncomfortably warm, and very sloshy saucepan (lidded, to be sure. Still not WELDED SHUT though) to my chest, down into the village to the Reading Room, and all only 25 minutes late.

I love this

It's a bright
It's a light
It's a so outta sight
It's a feeling all right, morning noon or night

It's the best thing in life that you don't have to buy
It's a funny funny feeling down in your heart

It's a neat
It's a treat
It's a something that's sweet
It's the one thing in life that will never be beat
It's a once it's inside you it loses the key
That's that funny funny feeling down in your heart

(Chorus)

It's love (3x)
It's the funny funny feeling down in your heart

Let it in
To your heart and you'll feel this funny feeling
Let it in
And together we'll join in harmour love

Let it in
For the beat of your heart will keep the rhythm
Let it smile
On the outside and sing in harmour love

"Aaw, Joe!"

It's a pin
It's a friend
It's a how have you been
It's a `I'm looking forward to seeing you again'

It's a laugh
It's a grin
It's a let it begin
With that funny funny feeling down in your heart

It's a walk through the park
It's a kiss in the dark
It's a vow made by two that they never will part
It's a spark that you feel from the moment it starts
Known as that funny funny feeling down in your heart

CHORUS

Jeremy has Peri-orbital Cellulitis.  I'd give you a link but you really really don't want to know.

Notes to self

The crucial thing about being badly under the weather for a couple of months before Christmas is that bulbs do not get planted. I hope that, by the time I thought to hire a Portuguese gardener to do the work, it wasn't too late. Remember - Throw Money At It.

Do not on any account buy the new version of Monopoly, the one with the credit cards and the enormous prices. (Shanghai - FOUR MILLION!!) You never know how much money you have, unless you ask the banker to find out. The banker is involved in EVERY SINGLE financial transaction, always with the possibility of pressing the wrong button or putting the wrong card in the slot - great if your group of players includes a compulsive control freak. And the numbers are so big you lose the opportunity for your smallish children to practise mental arithmetic. And the will to live. And the player pieces have too many that look similar, so figuring out who's who is an unnecessary trial.

Send the middle child off with DH for a bonding day, just the two of them, and become aware of how much poorer his absence leaves in the family dynamic. Become embarrassingly aware of the possibility that we might need him rather more than he needs us. (And the fact that the Science Museum was HEAVING, and that their time there was spent queuing, didn't seem to impact his enjoyment of having his father to himself.)

Practise. Kit and I are working on a Carulli duet, and if he isn't better than me now, he will be soon.

Don't you just HATE it when . . .

. . . you discover, after getting into the shower, that ALL FOUR BOTTLES on the shelf are conditioner?

And your only options are the hand soap and the bottle of Drain Clear in the corner?

. . . and bobs

Over the past few - I dunno, but it feels like lifetimes - Beri and I have been working on a particular aspect of his socialization. The idea is that, when he asks me what's for supper, and I tell him, he doesn't melt down. Screaming 'No no no no' is inappropriate - a simple 'Oh' will suffice. For Pete's sake, it's not as if I'm suggesting he eat sheep's brain with an entrail coulis, followed by honey-glazed earthworms and pig's trotter brandade. Though I have been SORELY tempted . . .

We had been coming along reallly well - ooh look, three 'l's - until two days ago. 'What's for supper', he said, 'Chicken Bits' I said. 'No no no no' he shrieked.

Chicken Bits, I hear you say? That's the one where you chop chicken breasts into bite-sized chunks, dredge them in seasoned cornflour, brown them in a little oil, turn the heat down, put the lid on the pan and they are done in ten minutes? Good with rice, and some sort of sauce made with a stock cube, honey, soy sauce and orange juice? What on earth is offensive about that?

And then I realised. Older Brother Syndrome. (In Sid, it manifests itself as a tendency to sprinkle her conversation with the word 'fart'.) When Kit was little, and we were teaching him how to bathe himself, the expression we settled on for a *ahem* certain area of his anatomy, was 'twiddly bits'. After a while, he dropped the 'twiddly'. (He is currently using 'me tenders'.) Beri, however, still refers to 'my bits'.

So when I told him what was for supper . . .

It's been a funny old week 10 days whatever

. . . and I'm still waiting for the bit where I get to sit down with my feet up.

Sid's party was a hoot. Normally, for a party at home, I draw the line at seven guests, on account of I can sit eight people in comfort round the dining room table for a Proper Meal. But this time even I didn't honestly see how she could manage with any less than fourteen, and even that was risking pariahood (pariah-hood? Pariahness? Pariah-esqueness?) I got pointed at Asda for all the party stuff, I engaged the services of the lovely Elaine, we had an alphabetical treasure hunt, musical statues, sausages and mash and some concert-level shrieking, and my baby girl was five years old.

Then it was my turn. Breakfast in a cafe with my friend Anisa, which meant coffee, Danish and YAKKING until noon. Bliss. Ma cooked supper, yum, and Jeremy gave me a BEAUTIFUL box of 30 Caran d'Ache crayons. Not for using, mind you. Just for looking at. And maybe the occasional sniff.

You know you live in Chalfont St Giles when

. . . your husband, that guardian and protector of his family, makes the icy driveway safe by salting it with your ENTIRE box of Maldon Sea Salt.

The first day of the rest of my life*

Well, there's a cliche that turns out to be a universal truth. Sid started full-time school yesterday - well, I say full time, but for the first week the newbies do part-days, until next Tuesday, when actually she starts full-time school. Nevertheless, yesterday was The Day. And that thing they say about three being as easy as two? Uh-uh. No way. Exponentially harder, in my view. And the whole business where Getting Dressed turns into a Thing? That's a girl Thing, right? I mean, dear Heaven, she has all the necessary items of clothing ready the night before - everything she needs to GET DRESSED after breakfast, and it still takes her ages. Ages. So apart from the extra yelling, and the fact that they all start their school days in the morning now, actually nothing has changed.

But it will.

In other news, because I know you really want to know this, The Jumper is all sewn up. Purty, ain' it? Sleeves a tad long, I know, so we will ALL refrain from making jokes about the callouses on my DD's knuckles thank you very much. BUT there is another side to this. Literally.


Will you look at how many b****y ends I have to sew in! And I've already done a whole bunch. Is it any wonder I've moved onto the next project?

Oh - and I tried it on Sid, looking forward to her comments (on three months of work. Three months.) She said, and I quote, 'It's itchy.'


*Yesterday. I know. But, frankly, I was too busy playing QBZ.

We're all one year closer to our graves

The trouble with for a house guest is that, at every party to which you take her, she has to listen to you tell the sodium atoms joke*. At least for a husband, it comes under the heading of 'For Worse' (among other things (MANY other things). I know already.) not least of which is, he wants to tell the joke himself.

One of the (many) pleasures of a visit from Teresa was the vegetarian option. Our hosts for New Year's Eve dinner had the totally brilliant idea of hiring a caterer, who, for the omnivores among us, provided a perfectly yummy salmon-and-sea-bass en croute, and for the rest, a leek and gruyere - well, thing (flamiche? It could have been a flamiche) - in the face of which said omnivores developed unforeseen veggie tendencies. And Elaine brought Poinsettias**.

All eight children got along together fantastically well, Greg sang some Jake Thackeray songs, and we discovered that six is quite a small number of people for singing Auld Lang Syne.

*Na1 'I've lost an electron!'
Na2 'Are you sure?'
Na1 'I'm positive!'

** Cointreau, cranberry juice and champagne. Yum, yum and thrice yum.