Off to Cyprus Tomorrow

Dear reader, you'll be free of my pointless witterings for a whole 10 days while I attend my lovely sister-in-law Lucy's wedding in Cyprus. Take it easy - normal service will be resumed when I return, hopefully looking a bit browner and more relaxed...

Best Bitching I've Heard for a While

One woman to another in the coffee bar this morning:

“She says she’s having a nightmare because she’s looking for a place in LA, yeah, been around 15-20 places; none of them were good enough. This is where you lose sympathy because they were fabulous houses and she’s turned her nose up at them all. And there was this one, which admittedly needed some work, yeah, because it’s kind of falling down a cliff, but she comes out and says ‘Oh no, I couldn’t – not with the kids.’ And I was thinking: ‘Right, like you’re such a good mother – where ARE the kids? They’re hardly ever with you…’”

World class, jetset bitching ahoy!

Children's Party Survival Guide

It was Stan's first birthday on Sunday and we had a party to celebrate. I'm still recovering. I went to some wild parties at university and a fair few illegal raves, but they were nowhere near as messy as this.

Chaos was unconfined in our little house, with Mila and Frankie's friends playing musical statues to nosebleed techno (my fault - I'd left the CD on the stereo), off their heads on Coke and Monster Munch (half of which ended up stamped into the carpet). Then there were Stan's little mates ,who were engaged in trying to mash Cadbury's Mini-Rolls into the furniture with their little chocolate-besmirched fingers. When they weren't doing that, they were crying or just trying desperately to escape to somewhere suitably dangerous.

By mid-afternoon I'd decided that the only way to get through the party was to get as drunk as possible, so I was utterly muntered by the time we blew out the single candle on Stan's cake and sang happy birthday. In fact, I was barely able to blow the candle out for him as I couldn't actually align with the bloody thing. However, I had also stopped worrying about the carpet.

So there you go - that's my advice on surviving children's parties - get REALLY pissed! Can't see that making it into the Saturday Guardian's 'Family' section.

Creatives! Cartoon Part 3: Dress Sense

Click on the cartoon to see it engorged

Back, back, back!

Apologies to my reader for the paucity of blog entries over the last week. I’ve been waylaid by a combination of work, children and illness. Also, to be perfectly honest, I couldn’t think of a bloody thing to write about that’s vaguely entertaining. No diatribes, rants, wry asides or observations.

I now understand why newspaper columnists are so boring to read – they have a financial incentive to keep churning out crap, whether they’re inspired or not. The worse of the lot, in my humble opinion, is AA Gill, who writes smug wank for the Sunday Times and GQ magazine. The worse examples are his post-modern restaurant reviews, where he whitters on about random tedious nonsense until the final paragraph when he actually discusses the food.

On a less ascerbic note, this week has marked Stan's transition from baby to toddler - he's walking and has a vocabulary of 4 words: 'mum', 'hia', ''Ello' and 'Lookatdat'. If only AA Gill's vocabulary was that limited.

Star Spotted! New Heat Magazine-style Feature

Guess who I just spotted on the Tottenham Court Road? Rick Wakeman, keyboardist from seminal 70s prop-rock behemoth band Yes, at the till in the newsagent buying fags. He was wearing slacks, a ratty old brown jumper and - bizarrely - was carrying a Tetley Bitter hold-all. From the Alex Ferguson-like purple of his nose I would say he likes a drop or two of the hard stuff. In fact, generally, he looked like a tramp.

I didn't ask him why he wasn't wearing a cape because he looked like he was in a bad mood.

Signs I'm Getting Old, No. 1

I had a long conversation about washing machines today and found myself rather enjoying it.