When all other pleasures fade...

About three million years ago, Edward paid a few guineas and we ran off to Spetses, an island which I think is somewhere off the Greek coast, most famous for not allowing cars and forcing poor hot tourists to get off the hydrofoil and pile their stuff on picturesque but slow donkeys.

While we were there, it was Black Wednesday. Edward spent a lot of time reading days-old Daily Mails (pre-pre-internet, in fact pre-mobile phone) to work out if we could even afford to get home as clearly the global money markets had waited for the second we left London to go into freefall.

We had an apartment above a wicked old East End chap who was clearly on the run. He was walnutty brown and wrinkly and had a filthy temper. He lay in the shade grumbling endlessly about the sodding heat and the dirty Greek germs. We played Scrabble on the wrought iron balcony above him, shamelessly and gleefully eavesdropping on him barking angrily at the busty bird with him. 'Ave yer washed them tea-tahls aht yet? I don't wanna catch nuffink nasty. Get us a cuppa if you got time to lie abaht in the bloody sun all day.' We concocted a gloriously violent and blood-soaked history for him, scaring ourselves stupid. When the Scrabble tiles fell down onto his terrace, we shot into the shadows of our room, eyes huge and hands clapped to our faces, listening to the stream of furious sweary threats he directed at the source of clattering alphabetical rain. We didn't dare ask for them back.

I also read AS Byatt's Possession that holiday; cold glasses of rose washing down salads made of great mis-shapen tomatoes, pale creamy clouds of taramasalata piled on thick sweet bread and warty, intensely-flavoured cucumbers. I struck up so many conversations about the book; everyone seemed to be reading it or just finished. Impromptu book groups sprang up on the jetty; we women swooning over the clever parallel love stories and sumptuous descriptions of Victorian mourning jet jewellery. Overhead, lines of squid and octopi dried and the English men watched the wiry Greek fishermen slither their catches onto the cobbles, choosing what they would eat when the sun went down.

It was an odd juxtaposition, but a strangely pleasing one, and when, years later, I ended up living in Richmond a few roads away from where a crucial 19th century denoument took place in the book, it seemed a logical and fitting reason to re-read it, this time across smoky autumn twilit afternoons. I highly recommend it, sun or gloom, and mention it because I am now reading her The Children's Book and have been suddenly reminded of the fabulousness of her writing. Never condescending, always scholarly, her stories combine credible Victorians and a dense domestic detail that draws you deftly in to witness coversations, fires, meals of long-ago times. There are also several wonderful secrets and glimpses into the Victorian cellars and storage areas of the V&A museum, one of the most wonderful places on earth. I am revelling in it.

We can all learn from Alice

'Dahling Alice, this is all very well my deah, but is this really the right time to swan about off your face on morphine, seducing all the neighbours, banging away at your ukelele, swathed in jewels and keeping a black panther when the country doesn't even have a Prime Minister?'

'Yup.'

Loyal readers will remember the obsession I have with the mystery surrounding the murder of Lord Erroll in Kenya in the first half of the last century and how unspeakably dull and hectoring I can become on the subject at the drop of a pith helmet. Well, it would appear it was Alice de Janze wot done it - portrayed with glazed and dirty elegance by Sarah Mills in White Mischief. For the past week or so, I have been glued to this book every waking minute. She was riddled with madness and style, abandoning her sons and adopting a baby leopard. The writing is a little wooden, but her fascinating story is gripping and well overdue.

Which is a shame, because while I have been hiding in Happy Valley, we have elected a schizophrenic Government, Greece is in economic and civil meltdown and Freddie's school swimming trunks are now budgie smugglers. He told Edward 'Mummy bought them three years ago and they're so small now. I'm worried I might hurt myself.'

So I need to get my maternal finger out and save his manhood, my professional finger out and go to Wales for two days and organise training on some hijusly dull bit of obscure legislation then my culinary finger out for two lovely weekend houseguests.

Then I am shoving my cloche hat on, parking my arse on the verandah, under a leopard, shouting at the houseboy to bring me gin and opium and shooting dead anyone that annoys me.

No changes there, then.

To sit with a dog on a hillside

I've had a skip parked in the drive for the past two weeks. No, thanks for asking, I haven't been trapped under it. Nor has the Colonel buried me in it. Nor have I thrown myself from the attic window, half-pike-tuck-and-twist to land perfectly in the rotting cardboard, ancient ladders, heartbreaking outgrown and loved-to-bits-toys and piss-smelling flops of brown swirly carpet. The man who came to get it said with evident delight 'you clearly never read the agreement, Modom. Them fridges will have to come out, I can't take them.' So the skip has gone but two fridges and a freezer stand in a pikey way on the drive and are more annoying than the fact he claimed 'Health & Safety' as his reason for leaving them rather than the truth. Which was clearly: let's see if we can make a grown woman cry when she gets home from work.

Anyway, apart from looking like Kizzy's gaff from the outside, great strides are being made indoors Sorting Things Out. The Colonel, between assignments, has turned his gimlet eye to domestic matters. There is now a regimental order to pretty much everything, from wooden spoons to lingerie. The bots and I are road-testing the sytem to destruction: 'where are my blue shin-pads?' 'the notebook I wrote the Twighlight pre-quel in?' 'my wits/patience/sense of humour?' He is doing a great job; however, this is the payback:

He thinks the dog should be out of her cage and sleeping in her basket on the upstairs landing. I am nervous that she will abuse this freedom and double her opportunity to find something wildly expensive (feather curtain tie-backs, silk bed throw, anything with a La Perla label) and chew the shit out of it while we are all asleep.

The bots are, understandably, enormously pro this plan. Of course, she never eats football boots or M&S pants and they know that she will sneak silently onto their beds in the dead of night and curl up with a bone-breaking sigh in the crook of their knees, slither a silky head under their chins and breathe sweetly and heavily in their ears and they will all pretend she had JUST arrived when I thump in to wake them and grumble about hairy beds and muddy paws.

I think I need to learn to pick my battles.

Spells for Skivers

'Freddie, love, Mummy's just landed in the playgound; she says have you got your ESB speech stuff with you?'

'Fuck, someone cover my arse while I dig my way to Australia with a ruler. Pete, can your parents adopt me? Anyone got the Childline number? Quick, over the the woodwork room and I'll saw my leg off for sympathy.'

The minefield of choosing a Godparent is, unless some crass cosmic joke occurs, firmly behind me. In my Schiaparelli-pink-tinted retro-vision, I gaze fragrantly into the cot at the sleeping bots and bestow gifts in human form. A children's book editor (imagine the presents). A brace of titled/well-connected good souls (one eye on the Gap Year). A drummer in a rock band (swallow the feminist cant - son, meet the groupies). A French rugby player (no justification necessary). A staunch Catholic (hedge those bets). In the Pampers-panicky reality that was my life all those years ago, I provided exactly this because they were all people I knew would say 'yes', could be counted on to turn up at the church on the right day, fuel me with champagne at the party afterwards and exchange delightful conversation with the assembled starchy grown ups.

The ensuing decade has proved an interesting one. Almost all of the above are still in birthday-remembering play. But they have been joined, incrementally, by several others. Official and Unofficial Gods who bring gifts I never thought of. Cricket obsession. Adoration of velvet. The love of spending hours cooking an Indian feast from scratch. The art of lolling about on a bed disecting one's wardrobe and sneakily adding unsuitable items to it behind mummy's back. The talent for inapropriate smells during a private tour of Tennyson's library.

Rose's Godmother is dropping in this weekend to share her love of historical novels, gossip magazines and Petit Bateau. I will send them out together to wander the sunny harbour and drink hot chocolate. Freddie, the Colonel and I will be at home. Working on the speech-with-visuals he is giving to the English Speaking Board examiners next week. That he has NOT been 'working on' since before Easter. That he didn't even get out of his bag when he was at Edward's last week. That remained untouched this past weekend when he was winning a football tournament. He will be somewhat surprised when I get him after school today as he thinks he's at a cricket game.

Might need a silent spell for my gob.

Munters in Hunters

Just cock off, I'm not bloody well coming back. She's got every episode of Pineapple Dance Studios on SkyPlus, she's bought me bloody legwarmers and body glitter AND she's replaced my Eminem CDs with the Cabaret soundtrack. Jesus, Rose, get the mad bitch to start drinking again. I'll call you from Australia.

The bots had an Easter week in Wales at Edward's family farm. They rang me where I was battling elements of all types up in the Lake District: 'It's fab, we saw loads of these small lambs.' 'Oh, darlings, how wonderful, there are masses here too, aren't they adorable when they leap into the air?' 'Not these ones, a fox ate their brains and all their livers have come out.' 'Oh, and we went on quad bikes. With no helmets.'

Meanwhile, ignoring rising panic, I revisited the lovely house I grew up in on a cliff, climbed the wall I have scaled in my dreams for over 30 years, spied on the children who live there now and discovered that a middle-aged heap of sobbing nostalgia stuck on a very high wall is statistically more likely to frighten than enchant.

Like a Hobbit, I stumped about the fells and cliffs in attractive waterproof trousers, fuelling up on heavenly coffee and walnut cake from the WI in Cockermouth (which name still, pathetically, makes me snigger), being uplifted by and warbling tunelessly along to this and working through the first series of this on my laptop each night. I walked and climbed for miles and my poor old wellies have finally given up the ghost. So, in time for summer, I have discovered this amazing website and my new-dead-cheap-technically-I-have-saved-money Graphite Gloss Hunters arrived this morning. I'm rather pleased with them, but suspect I am rocking less of a Kate-Moss-British-summer-festival vibe than a Lego Lady Policeman.

Either way, they are hideously shiny, so I am taking the dog into the fields now to get them covered in lamb's brains.

Me an' Jem

So, other than the obvious - thick, tawny hair, endless elegant limbs, eye-watering personal trust fund and the fact we've both kicked Hugh Grant out of bed more times than we'd care to remember*, it would appear that Jemima Khan and I have even more in common than ever. Her offspring too have eschewed Mini Boden for Top Man (though Freddie wouldn't dare describe it as 'gay'. Yet.).  See this month's English Vogue for the full story if you can be arsed.

Which is how I found myself in Tweenieland in London over half-term. The bots smirked and did slidy eyes when I suggested Hamleys and ice-cream. They had checked out the website and press releases and were set on Oxford Circus Top Shop, where we haggled in hisses over the suitability of denim shorts that wouldn't cover Barbie's plastic arse and a T-shirt saying 'Screw You.' I told them that people who needed to show their bottoms and swear in public were losers, not amusing hip young folk and that I was not very impressed with their choices so far.

We agreed after what felt like several strip-lit thumpy-music hours on some bright stuff for Freddie and some pearl-encrusted stuff for Rose and then I played my trump card - the theatre! I had returns for Legally Blonde, knowing Rose would adore it and Freddie would be super-excited at just the whole Savoy-theatre-London-treat experience. Well apparently not. He took one look at the huge pink billboard, gaggles of schoolgirls also in pink and a blow-up chihuahua and rolled his eyes backwards in his skull. His shoulders went down and he was incapable of speech. It wasn't helped by the mincing torch-bearer who showed us to our seats asking him why he wasn't going to see Kick-Ass instead.

Rose and I had a great time. The court-room number 'Gay or European' is one of the wittiest things I have ever heard, marred only a tiny bit by my clearly wildly heterosexual nine-year old son slumped as far down in his seat as he could looking everywhere but at the stage and shooting off for the exit before the curtain calls had started.

We had what the bots have started calling one of Mummy's Awkward Conversations in the taxi about being grateful and not spoiling everyone's treat by being unimpressed and cynical. 'Like you were in Topshop?' wondered Freddie, all huge-eyed and over-the-top-interested in what I was saying.

Wonder how Jemima would have handled that one.

*Some of this might just be bollocks.

Hello from up my own backside

Thanks for the lovely messages and amusing speculations...

Sorry to be MIA for so long, am a little preoccupied with some stuff but we are all OK here and will be back to resume normal service as soon as I can.

Happy, peaceful and daffodil-filled Easters to you all.

xx