June 2025

I’m absolutely delighted to be on BritMums’ Brilliance in Blogging shortlist for the Laugh category, up against some of my favourite blogs. Awkward. I started my blog to raise a smile on a knackered mum’s face, so I’m very chuffed that I’ve managed to make some lips twitch. Thanks so much to everyone who voted for me. And, er, would you mind awfully doing it again here to get me onto the finalist list? 

If you want to try before you buy, here is my blog in 10 posts:   1. The Shouting Bra. “You can’t command respect naked. Not even from your kids. Hence, I propose a Mumswear diffusion line, starting with The Shouting Bra and the Pants of Power.” 5. What To Drink At BritMums Live?  The one where I break the mummy contract: I just can’t drink gin. But I’ll clink a glass of prosecco with you any day! 6. The Meerkat Mum. “I was never a competitive mother – until I won.” I’m a Meerkat Mum – like a Tiger Mother, but more cuddly. “As I root out the chunks, I think grim thoughts about my husband, by now probably gently snoozing with our child nestled adorably in his arms. My only consolation is that with each breath he is inhaling the sick bug while germs seep into his pores from our poor infant’s soft skin.” 9. Kids’ Bedtime – The Last Straw. “The 7pm-8pm Vortex. You can be primed, kids in PJs, teeth done, their eyes (despite themselves) drooping, sitting on the bed about to read a story at 7pm. You feel pretty smug. Three stories, kiss on the forehead, downstairs by 7.15pm – done! But then, the Vortex opens. It has no mercy. It can sense a parent desperate for a break and it will gape its all-encompassing jaws and swallow time. That hour will be gone.  It is beyond your control. How does this happen?” 10. Oh October – Season of Shinrot! The Return of the Ugg. “One day in 200 years’ time, some meteorologist will dig my Uggs up from my grave, release them from my clenched bony fingers and be able to map the weather of this ancient age from the watermarks and snow-lines on them, like the dating rings inside a tree trunk. It’ll be like the Rosetta Stone, in sheepskin.”  Whether you vote for me or no, I hope you enjoyed this post. And may I take this moment of unusual un-Wryness to say a huge thanks to everyone that has read and supported my blog. Your kind words are far more important to me than an award.  Still going to pop the link here one more time though.
Linking up with #PoCoLo here – join in!

Oh boys, I would harness the moon for you, but I cannot carve the Death Star.

What my kids want, they get. Kind of. If it’s healthy and / or free, anyway. So when they said they wanted a Death Star pumpkin, who was I to refuse? If you ask my boys what they want for a present, they say, the second Lego Death Star. If you ask them what they want for breakfast, they say, the Death Star. So it was really no surprise that this was their answer to “How shall we carve our pumpkin?” Of course, as they see everything through the prism of Angry Birds, it was to be an Angry Birds Piggy Death Star. So I got to work. First, I cut the lid off the pumpkin – all wrong. As I discovered later when I lit a candle inside and it was immediately extinguished by the top falling in. Note: You are supposed to angle it so it doesn’t do that. If you don’t, simply skewer it angrily with cocktail sticks to make the wretched thing balance on top. I hollowed out the pumpkin with a big spoon and every intention of making the innards into a warming winter soup, that would somehow cause the kids to throw aside their lifelong hatred of a) vegetables and b) anything in runny form. A bad workman…blames his children That was the easy bit. Having no pumpkin carver to hand, I settled on a potato peeler. Oh, how wrong I was. The pointy end was ideal for carving out the “design” but the gouging was palm-blisteringly laborious. Still, after an hour or so, I delightedly called the children to witness the Grand Lighting. As with most craft projects, they’d wandered off to do something more fun after about five minutes, leaving me working beaverishly in grim-faced isolation. But they ran to see me light the candle inside. I did so. Nothing happened. None of my lines were deep enough. I nearly cried. They did cry. Having put them to bed with the promise of having it ready for them at breakfast, I embarked on Gougathon #2. Later, much much later, I excitedly summoned my husband to witness The Second Grand Lighting. One of the pumpkin’s eyes flickered. My husband’s dropped. Mine filled with frustrated tears. Having sent him to bed, I started again, the determination of an ox crazed with tiredness powering my carving hand, by now in shreds, muttering all the while, “Why did I let them choose what to carve? Why? WHY?” Finally, at a little past midnight, I applied the match, with shaking hand, to the candle…and the blasted thing lit up! As did my little angels’ faces when they saw it in the morning. If you are familiar with Angry Birds Star Wars, this may strike you with some element of recognition. If not, you must be wondering what in the name of heaven and earth is going on in my mind to produce possibly the scariest pumpkin ever. Note: If you were really hoping to learn how to carve an Angry Bird Piggy Death Star pumpkin, do the above, but a) with sharper tools; b) a template to trace onto your pumpkin (you put the picture over the pumpkin and put little dots all along the lines, then cut along them with your sharp tool); and c) less swearing.

Coffee mornings – that’s all we mums do, isn’t it? According to outsiders, that is. But, there is a grain of truth in it…

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OK, so I’ve more or less lost my baby weight. The baby’s given up the boob, so I’ve lost the nursing bras. But I…

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If my list and I left the house together, we’d be unstoppable. My levels of organisation would know no parallel. My life would lilt…

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Mary Berry would weep. I bake so seldom (once a year, per kid) that I have to buy all new ingredients each time in…

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There are few things more frightening than having something unexpected in your mouth. So imagine my horror when I gleefully popped in a segment…

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Five hours in, I was feeling pretty chuffed. We’d broken the back of this flight. Only a paltry two hours to go, and the…

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Your child is happily engaged in an activity – it’s action stations!  In the next four to five minutes, you have your chance to…

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I can’t hold off any longer – it’s cold, it’s wet, it’s Ugg time.  As the weather’s turned, I’ve been toying with the idea…

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I was standing at the hob today with my baby by my feet, when suddenly I felt what can only be described as a…

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It was when I started crying over a cookery book in Waterstones that I realised I needed to try harder with my children’s meals….

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Judge me – I’m a mum. Is the least likely phrase you might think I’d ever willingly say. But I’m not talking about being judged for how I look 12 hours after giving birth to Princess Charlotte, or for giving my toddler Hula Hoops for breakfast (it was just the once, honest!). I mean a proper, HR-style Mummy Performance Review.

“How am I doing?” must be the most frequent thought in my head. After: “I’m so tired” and “Oh, look at the pretty tumbleweed”, of course.

If this were a job, I’d have an annual review. A little list of my strengths and hopefully just a token “area to improve”. An outline of targets for the year ahead. Maybe a little pay rise?

But as a mum, there’s no such joy.

Who is qualified to give me a performance review, anyway?

The negative bits I’ve got covered. One thing mums are fantastic at is beating themselves up. Baby got a cold? I should never have taken him for a walk (even though he was ensconced in a snowsuit, hat and three blankets). Read him three stories at bedtime? Should have been four. Child got one letter wrong in his spelling test? I should have prepped him better.

It’s the positive stuff I’m craving. The pat on the back. The, to be frank, flagrant ego massage.

Who better to give me a review than my family? I hear you cry.

Well, that would be the obvious answer. So here’s what happened when I asked them to give me a bit of feedback:

Seven-year-old: “If I say it does that mean I don’t have to do my homework?”

Five-year-old: “You’re the best bum-bum in the world!”

Toddler: “Lolly?”

Mr Wry: “Well, you’re cheaper than a nanny.”

I guess that’s the price of vanity.

Will I ever know if my mummy performance is up to scratch? How do you judge that? Whether they can wipe their own bottoms? Whether they get A-C in their GCSEs? Whether they turn out to be good parents themselves?

Perhaps it’s best to keep the scope of your review small.

At the very least you can say to yourself:

“Today, I did OK.”

And as for the pay rise?

Well, I’m happy to be paid in their smiles.

What about you? Are you happy with how you’re doing or would you appreciate a bit of external validation?

I am honoured to be on the BritMums’ Brilliance in Blogging awards shortlist for Family. If would like to vote me through to the final, I’d be delighted. You can vote in all the categories here.

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Harmless bouncy fun or arena of doom? The jury’s out on trampolines in our garden. Do your kids manage to play nicely on the trampoline or is yours a pigeon-poo-stained mosh pit like mine? 

“ONLY ONE PERSON AT A TIME” shrieks the manufacturer’s label.

Who are they kidding? The rows that would ensue if I tried to enforce that rule! The whole point of the trampoline is that the kids happily bounce while I wash up at a safe distance, smiling through the window.

But oh no.

“X kicked me in my head!”

“Y landed on my chest!”

“Z won’t play super-ninja-Jedi-bounce-kwan-do!”

The time I spend going in and out adjudicating arguments and administering “there, there” rubs to injured body parts, I might as well sit out there on a chair operating a one-on, one-off system like a fairground lady.

But that defeats the object. It’s my washing-up time. And their “free play” time. They’re meant to be exploring their physical abilities, letting off steam, using up energy. Having fun.

They loved it when I taught them all the moves: tuck, pike, straddle, star, seat jumps and (low down) somersaults. They used to enjoy just plain old bouncing, just trying to see how high they could go.

But now it’s evolved into a wrestling ring. I have three young boys and they need to use up a lot of energy (as, I expect, girls do). So it’s no bad thing, and they’re gentle, really.

But they’re in a giant bouncing ring.

Oh, and gravity exists.

The Democracy of Boing

The trampoline is the children’s mini-universe. An enclosed space where they rule.

Rule – and fight.

When I hear the screams, it’s hard to distinguish whether they are exhilarated whoops or yelps of pain. Particularly through a pane of glass.

But I read recently that it’s beneficial to let siblings sort out their own spats instead of always weighing in. Equally, you can encourage imaginative play by taking a step back and leaving them to their own devices.

And my boys do often play nicely for ages, making up games, bringing props onto the trampoline to create their little world. Like, er…weapons.

They may spat like mad on the trampo, but try and get them off, and they move as one to the far side of the wretched thing, and huddle there thick as thieves, laughing in the face of my ineffectual pleas and arm-swipes. I feel like Winnie-the-Pooh sticking his paw in a hole in the tree full of giggling, sting-quivering bees.

I have two choices: shout at them like the child-catcher. And risk the neighbours’ censure.

Or get on and bodily remove them.

And then I’ve walked right into their trap.

There’s no such thing as a dignified walk on a trampoline.

One has no authority on an unstable surface.

And I defy anyone to get on to a trampoline and resist the urge to

BOUNCE!

So there we are, manically bouncing up and down, the kids fighting over who gets to hold my hands, everyone giggling themselves sick.

Them all the more so, as they know my pelvic floor is no match for their exuberance. Within minutes I’ll be running urgently inside, leaving them to their crucible of chaos, and the tea to get cold on the table.

It is a fulcrum, yes. Not just of bickering and bruises, but of creativity and comradeship.

So I guess I’ll bounce to that!

Just let me go to the loo first…

BIBs voting closes tonight (Friday May 15th) at midnight – please vote me into the final for Family (category 13). Thank you!

I’ve been nominated in the MAD Blog Awards for Best PreSchool, Best Schooldays and (incredibly) Blog of the Year – I’d be very grateful if you could add your vote in any of these categories. Deadline is May 20th. Thanks again!