Foot and mouth

Glendale. Some people wait all year for the right agriculture show to come around. Ok, they may flirt a little with another agriculture show but when you know you have found the agriculture show for you, a strange peace steals over you, that hard coiled part of you relaxes, thinks: "Perhaps this is how life is, should be, will be forever."

Alternatively, we have just lived here too long. We arrived early, as we settled by the main ring to eat bacon sandwiches and watch the horse jumping, I thought: "Oh good, horses to watch". Events here are a little like wallpaper; you glance up and there is a horse. I have never looked that closely, maybe it is wallpaper. But it moves; maybe that is the water though. Anyway, they had the moving wallpaper trick going while we ate the bacon sandwiches and I gasped when a stray hoof knocked off a pole. My husband said: "I think you are going native." I said: "I don't think so. Make sure we are back in time for the hounds. They are on at three." He muttered something. I did not ask him to repeat it.

Courtesy of foot and mouth, there were no cattle, sheep or goats. I missed them. I hope they missed me. Sign of the times there was a "chief livestock and biosecurity steward". Presumably he has links with the United Nations.

Without beasts, I had to find comfort in the horticultural and industrial tent. In the vast marquee were baked products, flowers and the fruit and veg of entrants striving for unnatural glory. Some onions the size of a three-year-old's head; cabbages the size of a 10-year-old's. Some leeks were as long as an arm; some spilled over the table and reached for the floor. When I was a trainee reporter, I covered a leek show. A man who was languishing in a coma won first prize. He was in the local hospital after being knocked down by a car late one night. As he lay ill and all unknowing, never likely to recover, his twin brother carefully tended his leeks, watering them, feeding them, talking to them. The mother was old and frail. She visited her lost son every day, sat by him, held his hand. She was there when they announced he had won first place with his leeks. Tribute to a brother's tender love. I remember she cried.

One of my favorites yesterday were the competitive potatoes. Without wishing to malign the potatoes, I could see very little difference between them. Perhaps the winner had a little more muscle tone. It was also a very slow race, I stood there for some considerable period of time and I could hardly see them moving. It must have been a relay though because they were in teams of four. No team dropped a baton.

The competitive ethic was everywhere. Potatoes, cabbage growers, horses in fancy dress. I was slightly disappointed because there had been talk of me judging the horse fancy dress competition but when I arrived, someone else was down to judge it. I had been practising shaking the children's hands for the past fortnight, looking them straight in the eye and saying: "Well done. Jolly good effort," which was slightly confusing for them at tea time or indeed when they got up on a morning. But in a way, I was relieved because I was not sure which hoof I should shake when it came to the horse. Did you perhaps shake all of them? Or more if it was a male horse?

The fact that I once thought that I might judge the fancy dress meant I sat and watched it with a particular interest. Two horses came as walls. That is to say they were covered in brick painted sheets. On one wall a little humpty dumpty sat with two King's Men in bearskins riding behind him. A woman next to me muttered: "I'm sure Humpty Dumpty comes out every year." I thought that harsh but as I say, they are very competitive up here. Even the potatoes. The other wall came as Hadrian's Wall complete with a Roman soldier in a red tunic and helmet. Other Roman soldiers followed on horseback and two little Romans in togas tried to keep up behind them. Needless to say the Roman "man" had to pull a reluctant Roman woman behind him. She was probably saying: "But Gluteus, I like Londinium." The audience liked the little Romans and their horses. They love Hadrian's Wall in Northumberland. I have found when there is a pause in the conversation, if you say: "So, that's a hell of a wall, you've got up here," it gets you quite a long way. That and: "So, do you ride?" If all else fails: "So, do you farm around here?" Aside from Hadrian's Wall, there was a Teddy Bear's picnic, lots of children dressed as teddy bears, some poor bear girl pushing a bear baby in a buggy round and round the main ring that will probably put her off motherhood for life. The horse was dressed as a picnic blanket.

Hadrian's Wall won which was a safe choice but you had to give full marks to the parents who blacked up their children. Blacked up their children. Just one more time. Blacked up their children. I watched the cavalcade across the field as they walked on. A rider in a black hooded cloak, another with a Arabian scarf wrapped around part of his face. Each rider pulled along a blacked up child; one wearing a large black Afro wig, the other a black Mohican with a ponytail. I said: "Oh my God," as they came by. "Are those children pretending to be black?" At that moment, one of the children raised a placard with the words: "The Abolition of Slavery, 1807." So that was a "Yes" then. Full marks to parents who attempt to be political at an agricultural show. I would have made them my winners for sheer effrontery. On the other hand, cor blimey. Cor blimey. I did see one black person at the show. Black black. I presume. (Unless he was their dad and had blacked himself up for the occasion.) I wondered whether he was watching and how he would feel. If he would think: "Well, it's a good cause. They've got their hearts in the right place." Or: "I think we should go now." I nudged my husband as the slave trade came by. I said: "What you said earlier...I don't think that's true."

St Aga-tha

I am no longer an Aga virgin. I know this for a fact. Firstly, I burnt my chic black and cream Aga oven mits; scorched, singed, crisped at the tip of the right hand. I laid it down on the top to reach over to a pot. I peered into the broccolli and thought: "Mmm, that doesn't smell good." Only to realise the oven glove was smoking. On the upside, I did not have to eat it and the burn does make it look as if I occasionally cook. The Aga, however, I have discovered is a tell-tale. My husband was the one who wanted it. I did not. The cost made me feel bad. More than bad. The cost made me feel sick. I gave in though and I was warming to it up to the moment I put the kettle on to make a cup of tea. Friends came round for supper; I had fed six children then four grown-ups. I had cooked sausages and baked potatoes and beans alongside a vegetarian option. We had eaten in the garden which entailed a fair amount of scurrying backwards and forwards carrying things. The pink kitchen table was on the grass since we do not have any garden furniture. This meant I had one surface too few in the kitchen. Things got moved about. My guests left. I thought: "Before I put the kids to bed, I really want a cup of tea." As I say, I put the kettle on. Now this was not my fault. I told my husband when the Aga arrived that we would have to use it for warmth (tick), for cooking (tick), for drying clothes (tick), for ironing(tick-ish), for making toast (slices of bread pinned in a mesh bat contraption then pressed to death much as a Catholic martyr might have been between the hot plate and the chrome lid: tick) and for boiling the kettle. Well that is what I do. He, however, got the electric kettle out of a packing case and put it on the side. I put it away again. I said: "We have an Aga. Use the Aga kettle. Fill it up and put in on the hot plate. We are wasting enough power as it is without plugging in a kettle." He got it out again. On Saturday, I put it on the Aga. What can I say? It had been a long day. The Aga kettle was not where it normally was. I wanted the tea badly. I looked at the electric kettle as the black plastic started to wrinkle as it sat on the hot plate. I looked at the red switch you use to turn it on. I thought: "That is so not supposed to be there and it is so not supposed to be melting." I wrenched the kettle off a little late for the black toffee bottom and my hot plate which now has the face of a clown imprinted on it. Unless, of course, it is the face of a Catholic martyr.

Let them drink coffee

I took the boys to a coffee morning in a beautiful farmhouse. Was not entirely sure of the etiquette. I took off my wellies at the door. Technically, you do not need to wear wellies at the moment but they are the only shoes I can find. I thought you just needed to pay for entry. In reality, you need change for the raffle, sweet peas, cake stall and marmalade. It was more of a small fair. Funds went to the hunt. (God better not be a fox or Northumberland is doomed to hell’s flames and back again.)

I knew a smattering of women there but the vast majority were strangers. I find it difficult to keep walking into rooms full of people I do not know. As if a large, flattened stone is perched at the back of my throat, rocking slightly, waiting to slide down it. Children ran around scavenging luxury chocolate biscuits while smart, silvering women talked about bridge and said things like: “Where is the lemon curd?” and “I don’t think I’ll be riding a horse much longer. I’ll have to take up golf.” I met a judge at Crufts dog show and a lady whose husband used to work in a castle. Plates of buttered girdle scones littered coffee tables. Years ago, the tradition was to put sixpenny and threepenny bits in the girdle scones for children’s birthday teas. I felt I had to keep eating them in case I found one. Builders are expensive to keep; sixpence here, sixpence there and I can pay for them to put up a length of new guttering.

I really like my friend's mother-in-law who organised the coffee morning. One of those small dynamos who make the world a better place by being in it. Twenty years ago, she set up her own agriculture museum on the farm. She raised so much money for charity from it, she got an OBE. She bakes, then distributes cakes to her daughters and her one daughter-in-law. A month or so ago, I was visiting my friend. She made me a cup of tea then pulled the lid of an old biscuit tin and pushed it across to me; in it were four girdle scones, four butterfly cakes, four iced buns, four chocolate cornflake cakes. I have never had a mother-in-law. My husband’s mother died when he was just 18. I always wanted a mother-in-law. I looked at the cakes then across to my friend. I said: “Can I have your mother-in-law please?” She said: “No. ” I said: "OK. Maybe she would just bake for me then?” She said: “No. Have a girdle scone."

Let them eat cake

I like the Aga. I feel like a traitor to the working classes when I say it but it is warm and it is the nature of things to cling to what is warm. It disappointed me last night though. I tried to make chocolate eclairs. It might have been ambitious but the Aga stands there like a giant reproach. "Use me," it says. "Call yourself a woman? Bake something, damn it." So you have a glass of wine and think: "I know. I'll make eclairs." I have never made them before but the recipe sounded simple enough. Melt butter and water and slowly bring to the boil, add flour all at once, beat in the eggs a little at a time. Admittedly, I did not think it made the "smooth paste" the book called for which you then piped in rows along a baking tray. More like playdo when it has been left out of its popping cup a while. Ever hopeful, I slid the tray into the roasting oven. Twenty minutes later, I pulled out bread sticks. The recipe had said leave room between them to expand. They did not expand. They shrank in on themselves outside the dark, hot privacy of the Aga. My husband said: "What are they?" I said "Eclairs. But I don't think the cream will fit." I thought about dipping one end in whipped cream and the other in melted chocolate but I did not think they would convince. I wanted to bake because the little ladies who used to live here, one in this house and one along the row, were coming up for coffee this morning. They had shortbread; I bought it.

Before they arrived though when we were still at breakfast, the builder walked in. He had started work cutting tarmac for the farm gates at around 8.30am and the chap renting the cottage next to us who arrived yesterday went out to complain about the noise. He told my builder he had paid "good money" to come away, having been told it was a "really peaceful" spot. Maybe it was, once upon a time.

Hup two, three, four

Went to the Edinburgh Military Tattoo at the weekend. Got more profoundly and thoroughly wet than I have ever been in my entire life - including baths. Two hours sat in the pouring rain. Luckily I had bought rainproof suits for the two boys. This is a tip I have picked up from other mothers up here. When I ask them what they do when it rains, they say they put the children in their rainproofs and send them out in it. Spartan really. Anyway, I took a leaf out and picked up the suits at the same time as the farm gates. I quite wished I had one of my own by the end of the evening.

We went to the Tattoo for the sake of the four-year-old who is in love with the idea of soldiery. I hate this. I do not want him dying, brave and beautiful, in a desert; for a dashing photograph to flash up on the evening news, tagged "Dead hero" to be forgotten, buried in the viewer's mind by the time the soaps start. A climbing wall, tree, fast car, pond, sea, war: I hate them all. Is others' motherhood so full of fear or am I just a fright filled soul? My more valiant son pointed to a picture in the programme of a fusilier, all gilt braid and towering bearskin marching at the head of the massed, kilted pipers. He said: "I am going to be him." I said: "Soldiers have two jobs: to kill people and to be killed. Neither of those is a very nice thing to have to do." He said: "I don't care." I thought: "I will take him to the ballet next time."

The soldiers did their stirring stuff with the backdrop of a misty Edinburgh castle, lit by flaming torches. Then the Taipei First Girls' Senior High School Honour Guard and Drums Corps marched in. Teenage girls do not carry the same baggage of bloody death and honour as drumming solider men. But they were young and beautiful and I smiled to see the golden plumes astride their bandsmen hats. Plumes that nodded as they marched in white pleated minis and matching knee high boots. I envied them the plumes, flirting skirts and boots: I envied too the legs to wear such things. But most of all I envied them the fact that they could march in step, first right, then left, then wheel. When I was young, I went away to school for six months. The Canadian college had a compulsory training corps. We drilled, carried guns and wore red and felted tunic coats. We marched; first right, then left, in front of proud and smiling parents. My friend and fellow Brit said he groaned aloud to see my squad parade: every other soldier teen lifted one foot and I the other; then wrong again, first right, then left or was it left then right? I cannot march in step. I have tried before.

Happy holidays

The week has been mad; then again, every week is mad. My clever cousin came to do complicated things to my computers. He was supposed to come on Wednesday and leave Thursday at noon. Every time he fixed something, something else unravelled. He ended up leaving Friday at 6pm. He does not have kids. He has cats. I said: "What do you think?" He said: "It's chaos." I would have asked him why he thought that, but someone screamed, interrupting my thought process. It might have been me.

Summer holidays mean that we have neighbours again in the other cottages along our row. Small children play complicated super hero games in the shrubbery. My six-year-old's part demands he spends every waking moment in a John Deere tractorman boilersuit and his cycle helmet. Even when he eats. When the boys and their friends do things I do not like, I throw them out of the garden. If it is good enough for God. Following a bad experience with a room being trashed which would not have shamed a seventies rock band, I also have strict rules about playing inside. On Friday, as I was talking to the builder about the next phase of work in the arches, my six-year-old asked: "Can we go upstairs mummy?" I said: "Yes," noticing too late the tribe of children with him. As soon as I had finished talking to the builder, I ran upstairs to bring everyone back down. There was a young boy I had never seen before in the room. I said: "Who are you?" I suppose I should really have said: "Whose are you and where are you from?" I still do not know. Later, when I asked my sons, they just shrugged.

So here we were: my cousin mired in computer hell, flies a-buzzin', children everywhere, and a builder working in the utility room right next to the study where my cousin is trying to do his stuff. I am vaguely embarrassed about the study; it is not yet unpacked and is crowded out with large cardboard boxes and files. Occasionally, the builder would walk through the study to the front door where he is sawing lumps of wood. (The study unfortunately is a thoroughfare between the kitchen and the utility room. We have four bedrooms upstairs with views across the fields to the sea. The study was supposed to be in one of them but the boys insisted on having their own rooms. Now, we look out on to coal sheds and get to put the washing on.)

At some point in the morning, my riding pal drops by with her friend. They are both on large horses. My friend says: "I'm really hung over. Can I have some water?" I go get her some water. I say to my cousin: "Come and meet my friend." He stands up, eases past the builder, steps round the workbench at the door, and comes outside to meet her. I say: "She is on a horse." I probably did not need to say this. We chat awhile about the fact the other rider is on a horse with a glorious, glamorous name. She says: "But I think she looks like a Matilda." I look at the horse. I think: "What would make you think your horse looks like a Matilda? What would make you think your horse looked like anything but a horse?"

They trot off. A couple of hours later, my evangelical friends arrive with their three children. I say to my cousin: "Come and meet my friends." I realise I cannot even offer them a biscuit because I am completely out of food. I own an Aga and I am completely out of food. They probably take away your Aga if you do not dedicate at least one day a week to baking cheese scones and cherry cake, let alone run out of food.

My cousin finally made a successful break for freedom. Then on Saturday morning, we had to get out early to visit a farm shop to buy wooden gates for the access road outside the cottages. The boys pestered me for two small padlocks. I gave in. Within an hour of getting home, my six-year-old had padlocked one neighbour's boy to a metal clip attached to a knotted rope, tied to a tree which they were using to let themselves down into a nettled strip of field between our garden wall and the barbed wire which keeps the cows out. As the boy dangled from the rope, my son realised, a little late, he had lost the key to the padlock. I had hoped this habit would skip a generation. My husband managed to haul the boy up and unlock him with the spare key I had kept (you live and you learn) but not before the struggling had snapped the branch to the rowan tree. I threw them all out of the garden for that one. But not before the boy had said to me, pointing at a small tear in his trousers: "Look! He did that when he padlocked me to the rope." I thought: "I am so not explaining what happened to your mother." I said: "Well, next time he offers to padlock you to anything, say 'No'."

Lady of the Flies

OK. War. I went into the local market town to arm myself. I paused briefly to admire the window display of the local army surplus store but moved on. I am not sure my knife skills are yet adequate to pin a fly to a chopping board at 10 paces. I am hoping by October. I may have over reacted but this morning was genuinely disgusting. I bought two swaying, beaded, clacking curtains to hang from the two frontdoors. I fear they may give the cottage the air of an Amsterdam bordello but if I get pestered by punters walking slowly up and down on lads' weekends, I will take them down again. Usually, it would take about three years to manage to put the hooks up to hang them from, but since I have a team of highly paid professional builders still in situ, someone should screw a couple of hooks in for me over the next few days. I also bought two plastic fly swatters. I bought two on the off chance I might get to keep one when the boys discover them and take them out to the garden to hit each other with. I am probably wrong. I bought a poison pen to wipe round the windows and doors although it does strike me as slightly Agatha Christie. I also bought pretty transparent sunflowers to stick on the windows and a wasp trap on the off chance that the flies make it past the beads, the swat and the sunflowers and fancy a Carlsberg. The wasp trap may have been overkill since it is technically for the wrong kind of insect but I am guessing that flies do not have a strong sense of self awareness and might not realise we are operating an apartheid system and the drinks are only for the wasps. There is also a blue electronic butcher's light perched on the fridge. Actually, two, as the shop insisted you buy them in pairs. I am slightly worried at the metaphysics of encouraging insects to fly towards the light; perhaps though, blue oblivion beckons to a jammy fly paradise. The shop did not have any electronic bats and had sold out of sticky fly papers but the final weapon in our kitchen Death Zone is a fly trap, basically a large plastic bag which requires powdered "bait" and a litre of luke warm water. I do not think I have the stomach to use it. It says it "catches up to 20,000 flies every trap". 20,000 flies? I think I will retain it as my nuclear option.

Plagues upon houses

Have been visited by plagues, several and diverse. A plague of boils. Maybe not boils, spots then. It is fair to say I have not had spots like these since I was 16 when I spent a considerable period of time staring at my nose thinking: "How spotty can you get?" Not only spots, a skin rash has reappeared which I have not seen since I was locked in a job in TV which I hated and which hated me back. When I went to a cosmetics counter in the nearest city last week and explained I needed the magic potion I had once used to get rid of the stress rash, oh yes and I had spots. The woman found the magic potion, then said: "Try a pore minimizing serum." A pore minimizing serum? That is to say, I have spots, a rash and enormously large pores. Why don't they train these women to say things like: "Well, I think you are beautiful as you are but perhaps you would like to try this shaving foam?" or "I hardly noticed the adult acne because I was so taken by your enormous blue eyes." Managers are trained to do something similar: "On the one hand, you make a lovely cup of tea; on the other, you have just cost the company £32 million pounds and you're fired." I want to know whether these women look at their sisters and say: "Do you know what? I think you are just too ugly for me to help."

And it is not just the boils, we have so many flies in the cottage, it is difficult to think we are not damned. They are everywhere; they surround my post-ironic chandalier (I have to call it post ironic since one of my closest friends up here said she did not like it).They drop from nowhere into your tea cup or onto a half emptied plate. I have sprayed and closed doors, I have stalked with tea towels, newspapers and heavy books (they jump backwards, did you know that?). I am trying to get hold of one of the blue butcher's lights which will make us look like we are living in a French movie. Either that or an electronic tennis bat you swing at them; hanging, after all, is too good for them and tieing nooses that small can be very time consuming.

We are also a house of pestilence and disease. Not only did my six-year-old, my husband and I all fall to vomiting and bile, but we have had a family staying with four boys and their seven-year-old and nine-year-old also came down with it. Last night, my baby girl caught it. I moved a mattress into her room, right by her cot. She would say: "Feel sick" and we would play catch into a plastic bowl. Say: "Wata" and I would hold a sippy cup. Vomit and I would say: "I'll be right back, OK?" and she would lie there, nod and I would go wash an unlucky panda, or fetch another towel or sheet. We lay together on the mattress and she pressed her perfect apple face into the dark place between my cheek and cotton pillow. I said: "I love you darling one." I do not think there is a word, nor ever can be one, to catch and paint the all at once rush of a mother's love. It is as if you catch a leaky boat to ride the rapids; tip and swirl around the rocks, gasp to see the rainbowed, unmapped waterfall, then plunge - not downwards into the white and foaming water rush but up and up and up.

Diva

This is my London diva girl. Beautiful, of course as divas always are and glamorous. Glamour too is the diva's way of going on. But I call her "diva" not because of narrow, selfish ways, buffed nails or rhinestone studded shoes; rather, because she claims her life while others, I include myself, will watch their own pass by. She stands centre stage, not to own the spotlight which is hers by right, but to anchor the performance, give depth and meaning to the words of those who surround her star. Her fellow troubadours seem small from the stalls. She will turn her head an inch to whisper: "Stand tall. Move up to your mark." When they miss their cue and lose their place in fright at life, she will say: "Here, try these words for size." I blame her though, for setting such a high tide mark in friendship, leaving seaweed and stripped and silvered driftwood in its wake so that I cannot forget where she has been. For never failing me when darkness came around and sadness washed right through and over me. For being there when it would have been simpler and far cleaner to give me "space and time" and all those things that mean: "I don't know what to say." For sitting by and listening to, feeding me and all of mine, and pouring red, communion wine into my crystal glass. Which I then drank. I hold her thoroughly responsible for all her wisdom, gentle comfort, the ringing supper laughter and the kitchen bar stool smiles. I love her children as I love my own; if terrible things happened and terrible things do happen, the first to come around and pick up those that had been mine would be my London diva. Cue: applause.

One thing and another

I tend to think, if it is not one child, it is the other; if it is not the children, it is my parents I am worrying about. Most recently, it has been my six-year-old. Having clambered up the climbing wall at the agricultural show (did I mention how much I enjoyed it?), he duly climbed a tree and promptly fell out of its branches. No great harm done, I thought. A bumped head, hurt and boyish pride. The next day though as I was shopping in the local market town, he started sobbing, clutching at his side, teeth bared, nose wrinkled in agony. He ratchetted up the hysteria to the point I had broken open the bottle of Nurofen in Boots rather than wait to give it to him outside. Apart from drugs, I could not think of anything but throwing all three children into the car and driving to the hospital in case he had cracked a rib and had only just realised it because he had in fact been concussed for the previous 24 hours.

As soon as we drew up at the hospital, the hysteria subsided and he began to look quite perky again. As is the way with these things, one of the mothers from school is on duty in the hospital. I am wondering as I gabble to this capable health professional of my child's hysteria-inducing pain whether she will think I am making it up (people think that sometimes) or just plain useless in a crisis. The doctor comes and looks at me as if I am the one in need of medical care when I say I did not know whether my boy had perhaps cracked a rib or punctured a lung in falling from the tree. He shakes a head, but says there is tenderness and there could be a gastric problem some time soon. There is. The night after the day after the expedition to the beach (did I mention the expedition to the beach?) I start throwing up, my six-year-old starts throwing up and my husband starts throwing up. I am deeply hacked off when my husband starts throwing up as I wanted him to look after me. We eventually stop throwing up in time for today's outing to the big city hospital to look into my son's nut allergy. They cover his two arms with solutions and prick them through the skin. It turns out he is also allergic to cats, dogs, horses and grasses. I tell my husband if he was allergic to sand and bad coffee, we could all go back to London.

The children's outpatients is busy with intent artists carefully sticking sequins onto cardboard sillhouettes of children who run and jump for joy. Next to them, small boys gaze rapt into virtual reality, only their fingers and eyeballs moving as the game plays out. Pretty girls wear golden princess frocks while others storm a grey and plastic castle with battlements and an orange slide for a quick getaway if small barbarians make it through the gates (did I mention that they have?). As my sons played in and around the castle, I noticed a small engraved and silver plaque, then its shiny brother hung on a different wall, each hardly bigger than a matchbox. They said: "With love from The Family and Friends of Katie Grant Aged 2". I wondered who she was, this lost child, whose parents thought to gift a toy to others. I asked a nurse. Asking, I thought, I hope she is remembered and not just in a plaque. She was. As she cleared away the glitter, the nurse said: "Ah yes, Katie". The nurse said people were so kind, a fire engine, a doll's house. Each toy to mark a missing child. She said: a shame, the slide was broken, the castle, it would have to go. But Katie's silvered name will not lie among plastic and forgotten ruins, the plates will be unscrewed from castle walls and fixed to something else. I thought how right to keep her name; right too, that a toy should break from hard and eager play. That is what toys should do.

Inside out

When my London diva visited with her family, my house was perfect, pretty much, give or take the odd builder or odd box. Houses are one thing, lives are more difficult to primp.

We went to look around the castle and smell its ancient stones. The baby decided she did not want to walk around a castle; she lifted up her arms: "Carry, carry Mama." I picked her up, carried her awhile then put her down. "Carry, carry Mama!" This time mildly outraged I would think that she might walk. I hefted her anew. The six-year-old clung to my side: "I don't want to be here. What about the ghosts?" Suicidal soldiers and a small and long dead little girl, he had heard tell of. "Can we go now?" he pleaded. I put the baby down to rest my back. "No darling," I said, "we've only just arrived." "I feel sick," my four-year-old informed me as the baby began to weep again. I reached across his brother's head to stroke and pat his cheek, said: "Do you darling, never mind," and stooped to pick the baby up. I calculated the distance from the entrance where we stood to the exit. Far too far away. We staggered on past china plates, armour and still and waxy dungeoned gore. "Look children, history, no, don't look there." I put the baby down; she wailed again. She did not like my habit. Maybe it is here, that ghostly stories start: a weeping child, a desperate screaming mother around a corner and out of sight? Climbing down some steps, my six-year-old barked his shin; his face crumpled. I put the baby down to kiss him better. He cried. She cried. The four year old said: "Don't you care that I feel sick?" My London diva, walking ahead with her husband, her pair of beautiful teenage and near teenage girls, turned back. She paused a moment to admire the family snap we made and said: "Is this your life?"

On Sunday, we went for lunch and a tractor trailer ride on haybales down to the beach. I have occasionally seen such groups sprawled across the sands. They picnic and play cricket, the children like ants, the men in long, flapping shorts bowling out their sons, attractive wives and mothers lounging on blankets with tumblers of wine. I have thought: "I wonder are they dear, good friends or one great, happy family who holiday and play charades together in the evening when their sunny day is done?" The reality is this. The wind is cold and the sky grey when we get down to the beach. We do not blink. We think: "This is the beach and summer. We will be fine." The braver types strip off and plunge on into the sea including my own children. I think: "They must be mad." I wear my wellies though and do a little dragging of boys on boards through salty waves; try not to mind too much when I am drenched by childish play. The men break out their wickets. I break out into a cold sweat. Ball sports can do that to me. As I watch them bowl and field, I think how very bad I was at rounders. How I would stand among the last and most despised in school to be chosen by the girls who could use a bat to hit a ball not just spin round with it like me. I would watch them while they whispered in each other's ear and hope it was my name that they were whispering behind their hand. I was never last. Never quite last. I was never fat enough for that. But I was never all that far away I was so very, very bad at catching.

Instead then of playing "Nice shots Sir" with the boys, I sat around with the babies and the girls in an all together different kind of game. I moved my seat closer to a pair of chums; lobbed in "God" as a topic. (In my defence, it was a Sunday picnic.) Then, tried to break into their chat. It dropped out of the sky and died. I picked it up, threw and tried again. Still dead. No resurrection here. I put on sunglasses; the baby and I filled a bucket with sand while someone filled my plastic cup with wine I would not drink. Does everybody drink as I think they do in the country or do they just pretend? Conversation changed to eyecream, wrinkles, things well within my ken. I tried again, said: "You have lovely skin". As the talk moved on, asked: "Why? How old are you?" No compliment flew back. No question in return. Still zap. The two women sat closer on the rug. I dug another hole and poured the wine into it. From a distance, I think we would have looked a happy band of chums with wine and bikes and blankets spread out upon the sand. You would have said with envy: "Is this your life then? Can it be mine?"

Brick built

The builders found a brick. Not so unusual; this one has a name written into it "William Lockie, Chathill". They found it in the wall they knocked down which once ran between the two cottages. They found it, then they lost it; piled up the lime covered red and yellow clay kitchen wall bricks to stand on the garden terrace and wait there for another purpose. Once you have been a brick standing in a wall, it must be difficult to consider other options. They found the brick again, read it and rejoiced. We have found the brick with a name, an example to bricks everywhere. In the arches, they are creating a hearth, a home. We have stone jambs and a windowsill which once belonged to a church to be the lintel. The builder carefully winkled out the mortar around one brick in this hearth, pulled out the anonymous and eased William Lockie's in. I hope it will not look as if he is buried there.

A stitch in time

You lose things and you find things when you move house. I lost my temper, sleep and two dresses, both new, one of silk pink and red roses, the other, black, jet beaded and gathered at the hem. There are worse things to lose. And I found things too: my home, my mauve snakeskin sandals and a tapestry kit once my mother’s.

I am not a woman with a veil, a distaff and a wheel; have no pet sheep to shear and fleece to spin out yarn, then weave it into cloth. Unlike my mother, I do not sew, knit, pearl or craft in any kind of way. I do not ice tall white cakes for grateful niece brides or snip snap, then glue butterflies on to get well cards. A few years ago, this craft art stopped for my handy, never idle mother who could not knit another pair of eyes when hers gave out. She could not see to find and buy a pattern. She cannot see the faces of her grandchildren, read them tales. Sometimes she might weep, but I have never heard her grumble. Instead of a craft knife and a rubber stamp, my mother holds a white stick and decoupages smiles.

I found a half complete field of sunflowers caught up in a frame. Bundled wool skeins hang from card: lemon, whites, khaki green, dark moss green, pale apple green, dark olive and light tan. You hold up the hole punched card and a meadow of wool falls from it, ready for the harvest. She sorted them and mounted them, then named them for their colours. On a cardboard scene, she spelled out the wools that she should use, this line here at the heart of the sunflower, dark brown, around it medium brown, then tan. The petals, yellow, dark, medium and light, the background off and white. The borders round the flower and falling leaves, medium air force blue. She has sewn, half cross-stitch, four sunflowers to top and tail the bordering, winding leaves, mallow backdrop clouds, trees and grassy slope. Twenty-two sunflowers stand complete and tan hearts for 80 more. But the rest, the rest is empty painted canvas, waiting to be stitched.

Her sight lost, hope for remedy lost, she stuck the needle tidily in the canvas, swept up the half competed masterpiece in wool and said: “Here, you take this. Finish it for me. I’ve worked so hard on it. I want it finished. Will you finish it instead of me?” I looked at it, the complex graphs with crosses, dots and spots of colour, numbers walking up and down the lines. I thought: “I’ve no idea. I’d never have the patience.” I looked at my mother who hates to leave a job half-done and said: “Yes. OK. I can’t say when.”

I wrapped it in a pillow case, along with daughterly and good intentions and put it in a drawer. This week, when I unpacked, I found it. Took it out and read what I should do. Keep the tension even, the canvas taut, never start or finish with a knot; decent rules by which to live your life. I thought: “I’ll never do this.” Picked up a length of lemon, then threaded it. Sewed a line of sunflowers in the distance underneath the trees, one arm wrapped around the canvas, the needle pushed, then pulled, the stitch complete. I thought: “This will take me till I die. My mother’s work complete.”

Music boxes

Yesterday as time folded itself down into the twilight, neat and away, a golden wash lay across the sea and half the fields. Beasts grazed in the last of the sun and thought: "You know I am a lucky cow": unlucky cows preferred the grassy gloom of the departing day, said: "My life is skimmed. Soon it will be the knacker's yard for me." Cotton rompered babe in arms, I looked out beyond the glass to the shadows and the light. She looked too, said: "Night, night cows." Then turned away to the rocker and her bedtime books. I sat, rocked once, tipped her in to lie against my chest and said: "Listen, darling child."

I opened up the little leather box. The chiming tinkling rhyme rang out as the tiniest of ducks swam on the round about blue pond, chasing forever the two row, row, row the boats with their little painted trippers. "Shall we take out a row boat Maud and spend our plastic forever in it? It is sunny in this box even when they close the lid, though they do not know it, and somewhere in my pocket I have napkin wrapped sandwiches for lunch." My baby girl likes this song; sings it on my knee. I am teaching her to smile and persevere, though life be but a dream. The baby points at vain and circling Maud, holding a parasol above her head for fear of freckles; she is wishing she was there, small as her finger nail. I, however, am wondering if Maud knows there are crocodiles in the papered water and whether, if the lid came down, we would hear her scream.

Roll up. Roll up

Ran away at the weekend to a local agriculture show. Deperate housewife that I am. I looked for an escape from the chaos all around and thought: "I know, I'll go look at tractors." There was all the paraphenalia of country life today. Small girls in tweed hacking jackets and enormous, hard hatted heads. I wondered how it is for them when they are twenty-something pretties, locked in airless city jobs when they cannot cling knee-tight to a handsome horse's back; cannot clutch the warmth of his sinewy neck or move in for a kiss and smell damp hay breath. I wondered if they fall for unsuitable men for no better reason than teenage habits and memories of Dobbin. Away from the riding competitions, there was a food hall, a catherdral of diversification churning out chutneys and strawberry fruit wines, caramel fudges and blood brown, vaccuum packed meats. Before any farmer marries these days he would want to know whether his bride to be could make a decent red onion marmalade. After all, there is the future of the farm to think about.

There was also a climbing wall, studded with stones. My motherhood is filled with fear: that they might go to sleep and not wake up despite the bedtime prayer; that they might ride a shiny board through salty waves and be taken by a riptide or a lost and toothsome shark; or that the freakish and bizarre might snatch them in a supermarket aisle as I turned to pick up beans. I once had a friend. She said her father was obsessed with safety: if you did not drive on icy roads, you would not die as your car span merrily out of control to smash against a hard, handy tree. I looked at the wall. I thought: "You and your like. You are my enemy."

My six year old, buckled in and harnessed to a rope, set off, in a pilgrim scramble up the stones. I thought: "If you do not climb that wall, you will not fall off it. If you do not climb that wall, you will not climb a mountain when you are 20. You will not climb another and another. You will not die, young and brave and foolish, caught out by the weather on a mountainside." He climbed and climbed; one foot slipped and then the other to leave him hanging by his arms. I caught my breath to see his white face look down at the ground as his body peeled his fingers from the rocks. He fell. He swung ofcourse. He did not plummet then to hit, bang smash, the ground. He reached out once again, caught a rock, clung on, pushed on and scrambled higher, then still higher.

Wagons ho!

My husband said: “Is this all a huge mistake? Are you sure you still love me?” “Is what a mistake?” “The move, all this. The three moves,” he gestured to the cardboard boxes of who knows what, toys spread across the floor, black plastic ragged sacks of sometime never to be worn again clothes. “Too late now,” I said. “We’re here. We’ll sort it out. It might take a while.” I do not know when my husband asks me this if he needs to hear that all is well. How he would feel if I raised a hand, said: “No, stop the wagons. Turn back. I’ve been far enough away from city life for long enough. This prairie adventuring is not what I was looking for. Too many cactii for a start. Pa, let us return to what we know.”

Change brings chaos with it. How do other people cope? Are we more chaotic then than most? Or is this family life? Constant friends constantly reproach me for the chaos. We have moved. Again. We still have builders. It is like living two centuries ago with Uncles Joe and Nicholas and Benjamin, and cousin Nathan(he’s a little slow, lives out in the barn but harmless. Providing you are not a chicken. Chicken necks, he wrings). You walk along the landing and see a bearded head. Old Testament but without a bloody, silvered platter. The decorator is painting the upstairs window frame. You reproach a child for breaking eggs into a box of his books; a door opens and a builder slides through on his way to fetch the sugar or a hammer. He says: “The Lord cometh” or sometimes: “The skip is in the wrong place. I told them not to put it there. ”

We have three children. Three children’s toys and clothes and washing. Three children’s crayoned loose leaf paper and favourite plastic bowls and cups. Three children’s legs to wrap around you, pin you down, stop you from standing up and tidying away. How do others manage? I do not know. I cannot say. I find it helps to cross my eyes. A glass of wine helps too at night and work. Work can divert nicely for an hour or two. Never long enough. And occasionally I rage and scream. A psycho mother for a while. All of these I recommend, except possibly, the last.

Hiccup

Slight hiccups in the moving.

*the builders are still here doing the utility room and finishing off the arches. When I say "builders", I mean builders, decorators, plumbers and electricians.
(Irritation factor, 0. Surprisingly.)
Actually they are quite handy to have around. Company you know. Other people have damp, mice, a labrador or a cyberspace lover. I have builders. I do, however, worry that they might judge my housekeeping skills which are negligible or that they might report me to social services for child cruelty.

*most sentences now begin with the words: "Have you seen...".
(Irritation factor, 7)
We are still awash with boxes and black plastic sacks we cannot hide in the loft because the plumber has not finished working in it. My London diva girlfriend will visit next week with her family. She will look pointedly at the chaos; I have nowhere to hide it before she arrives. I am contemplating asking each of the builders to carry a black plastic sack up their teeshirts during her visit. She will think them fat but she will think me tidier than she would otherwise. Possibly they could each take a box out to the arches to sit upon while they drink their tea.

*the four-year-old is down with ongoing stomach migraine which leaves him with a permanent stomach ache and insanely grumpy. Grumpier even than his mother. Yesterday morning watching Scooby Doo in the living room, he threw up all over the new beige, textured three seater sofa we had just got out of its plastic wrapping. I had not even sat down on it unwrapped. Luckily, we had paid an extra £120 to get it fabric protected. Money well spent. I think they should use a vomiting child in their advertising. He also threw up over a new wickerwork chair. Yuk. And the new oaked floor. Fair enough. My best friend from school is a business tycoon in the West Midlands. She is everything I am not: optimistic, positive, dynamic, efficient, organised, good with numbers, sporty, child-free. She did her own multi-million pound management buyout and runs a company that makes car cleaning products. She visits. Presumabily when she thinks my house smells bad, she delves in her car boot and pulls out large plastic bottles of bright blue liquids. She says: "I think you should use this."
(Irritation factor, 0)

*I lost my internet connection.
(Irritation factor, 8)

*the children's behaviour. I know I am supposed to do lots of positive reinforcement but it is just not enough. My boys never, ever, ever do as they are told the first time of telling. Ever. I know we have just moved. I know that is disruptive to a small, sensitive child. But they didn't do it before either. Buying a new kitchen carpet for the rented house is costing me more than £400 because they dyed it pink. I had thought it was an accident. It emerged their father told them to stop doing it and they ignored him. He went upstairs and left them to it.I tell them to do something, or to stop doing something; the big one looks at the little one; they carry on. Sometimes, the little one will look at the big one and carry on. They are in league. I swear to God. They have drawn up some midnight demon pact signed in boy spit and toad piddle which involves never losing face infront of each other by doing as Mummy says the first time.
(Irritation factor, 10)

*my mother fell.
“I’ll just give the carpet a vaccuum.” Trip and tumble. Crash and bang. Onto the fake coaled fire and the spiked metal grate. At least, the fire was not on. “Ooops” and “Ow”. Tears and “Shouldn’t haves.” Old lady preoccupations and old lady consequences. Vaccuuming a carpet she cannot see. To pick up dust of no consequence to anyone but her, she tripped over the wire. Her arm grazed by the spikes and bruised by the tumbled out coals, she lay there a while. The white marble hearth like a gravestone beside her. That is what old ladies do. The etiquette of an aged person’s fall. Lie there and play dead. Lie there and wish you were young again. Lie there and wait for Christmas to come or someone to walk through the door to pick you up and dust you down. Not onto the carpet though. It is important to keep your carpet clean at all times. My father was out shopping. She remembered, flat against the burgundy and woolen twist. She had turned the key, click, in the back door lock. You can never be too careful. Always lock your door to keep wolves and bad men out. You do not want wolves in the kitchen, they make such a mess. Blood and crumbs everywhere.

Minutes passed, the shining gilt and glass carriage clock made tick tock turns around the garden. Slowly, she levered herself up to grasp the handy sofa arm, struggled upright and wobbled to the door to turn the key. A blessing the sofa was so close to her; pulled away as it was from the walls, for a better and more thorough clean right up, knock, against the glossed and skirting boards. It goes to show you should never cut corners when cleaning. Without the sofa there, she would never have got to her slippered feet.

She wobbled back to find the phone and speedy dialled a number for a neighbour. Shame she had put in the number wrong. Instead, she rang an aged brother, miles away, who said: “Put down the phone and try again.” She tried again. No joy. She really must be more careful with her speedy dial-ups. What use else? She rang my cousin and talked awhile, of the rain of which there is too much, and of me, of which there can never be enough. “Stay with me on the line till he comes back,” and so my cousin did. Kept my mother company while the old lady cried awhile, waiting for her shop gone husband.
(Irritation factor. "Irritation" does not cover it.)

Cupboard love

My new kitchen is perfect. Clean cream cupboards and silky black granite tops. The aga altar and the dropped in round and white ceramic bowls. The pantry to hide in when family matters matter too much. The oaked wood floors good enough to dance upon. A polka, I think, would be the best and liveliest of kitchen dances; though the choice is wide and a foxtrot too, is tempting. My kitchen is perfect. That first day, I put away, wiped away, tidied away to make it so. This, I thought, this is how I will live. Stylish and clean, glossy even. Easy. Cream painted walls smooth as a woman's thigh. A matching cream, intimate and leathered sofa; here, I will lie about in many "me" moments, hold magazines between crimson manicured fingers and read of political skulduggery. At the very least, I will do that. This window sill; here, I can mourn lost cities and swallow down the comfort of bitter, milky coffee. A fellow London exile stopped by. He left me two Starbucks china mugs - complete with medium strength Columbian dregs. He said: "I heard you might need these." My kitchen is perfect. New but with a history. "Did you hear the one about the architect? He finally came round to the pantry." My kitchen is perfect: it's official.

Life happened. Already. That did not take long. Now, a padded snail on rockers rides my wooden floor. My kitchen is perfect. Strawberry jam and dirty boy feet mark my sofa. "This is our sofa Mummy," and my kitchen is perfect. They eat their snacks on Starbucks stools. "We don't like the table. We like it here." A green cardboard frog with concertina legs and a red and lolling tongue sits on my shelf. Though desperate looking, he carries around a scrawled and thought filled bubble: "This is fun." An old decoupaged fire screen stands on my hearth, snipped and pasted before blindness ripped away my mother's sight. Washing waits patient on the side (good job my mother cannot see it) and a small boy's muddy coat hangs by one arm from the aga. Tears cool and slide across china plates onto my water smashed and disappointed granite; the china from the children's roasted chicken tea. My kitchen, my beautiful kitchen, is perfect.

Carry on moving

Right. The move. It was grim. They usually are. We did at least have a removal company this time rather than three mates and a horsebox. I almost wished we had stuck to the horsebox. There was some mix up in communications. I said to my husband: "Are they sending a pantechnicon?" I am not sure what a pantechnicon is, but it sounds big. He told me they were sending three vans. It sounded odd at the time, but I thought OK. They did not send three vans, they sent one van and two men. Two unhappy men who took one look and did not like what they saw. They immediately started talking about their tachograph. I do not know what a tachograph is either, but it sounded a lot less helpful than a pantechnicon. They had only just arrived and were already grumbling about getting back in time and needing four men instead of two. Not even bacon, egg and mushroom sandwiches from the village bakery quietened them. And they are particularly good sandwiches.

My only consolation was that I could not entirely make out what the gaffer was saying. He had a very thick Scottish accent.(For the record, I like Scottish accents and my husband is partly Scottish. I think it must be his lower half as he wore a kilt at the wedding. I do, indeed, find the Scottish accent a thing of beauty; two of my best friends are Scottish; I have also holidayed in Scotland and would recommend it heartily. Umm. I am not kept awake at night by the West Lothian question, am a great fan of Edinburgh, and like porridge.) Still. He would hold out a box and say something like: "Eurrrgh rrrrrrrhhhing khhhheeeargh?" Occasionally, he would say: "Eurrgh rrrrrrrhhing tachograph." When he said something like that, I did not want to understand him.

I could not even make the point they had been sent an inventory and it was their decision to send the one van and two men because we were so very much in the wrong for not putting every last fork in a large cardboard box of its own. I had to accept responsibility for that one. For some reason, I was so depressed the day before the move, I had to bail out for an hour, go lie on my own on a friend's wooden bench and look at the world's most beautiful castle and the lighthouse and the sea for a while. I could not tell you whether I was low because of the grinding boredom of moving again or because I was thinking: "OK, this is it then. I really have moved to Northumberland. No more coxing and boxing and renting. I have a proper home. It is time to start feeling like I belong." But by midnight, with some way to go on packing, I had entirely lost the will to live. I went to bed. I decided the children's toys could stay in their own unlidded plastic boxes. I asked myself: "Why unpack drawers when you can put a piece of paper over them?" I told myself it was entirely reasonable for my husband to unhook the computers and pack away his office paperwork in black binbags and suitcases while the removers were shipping stuff out of the house. I admit this did not work well. It certainly does not make me a pin-up as client of the year back at the removal company depot.

I was totally in the wrong. Apparently, everything needs to go in a box. I am the only person the world who does not realise you break the social contract with your removal company when you fail to put your plastic boxes and carrier bags in their cardboard boxes. It is something to do with stacking them one on top of the other and squaring them off. I thought the boxes were optional extra like those small bottles of shampoo you get in hotel rooms. You are not actually obliged to use them to wash your hair. My builder has moved 17 times in 16 years. He has an infinitely more patient wife than me. I said: "When you move, do you put everything. I mean everything. In cardboard boxes?" He said: "Yes. My wife is very organised." The upshot was they did two runs between the rented house and the cottage but did not quite finish the job. My husband said I am not allowed to go back to the rented house and see how much has been left behind. I think I will sneak in like Bluebeard's wife when he is busy elsewhere. It is possible the village might hear my scream.

Ta-ran, ta-ra

We got our cancellation. Due to move tomorrow. The builders are on course but we have so much to do by way of packing, I am not sure we are going to make it. I decided last night as I tried to get to grips with stashing my life in cardboard boxes that I really rather disliked my husband. Communication is the key to a successful relationship. He said: "Do you resent me for making you do this again?" This is our third move in two years. I said. "To be accurate, I resent and dislike you in equal parts." We have been invited to a party where you have to "come as a feminist". Only the fact that my husband then clambered into one of my old skirts and stuffed a pillow up a jumper to form a pair of low slung breasts, succeeded in tipping the balance in his favour between me staying and leaving that night.

I am very excited about going to the party. Despite the fact I droan on endlessly about my pursuit of friendship, I never went to parties in London. Here, I went to a fiftieth birthday party soon after we arrived, and a 30th birthday party a few weeks ago. The only problem, people never say: "Come as you are." The fiftieth party was seventies themed and the 30th party was also fancy dress. My husband acquired a severe work crisis within a minute and a half of seeing what I was wearing for the 30th. I had to go on my own. I stood at the community club bar for a considerable period of time wearing my orange frock and even more orange silk blouse, black and white stripey tights and red suede ankle books. Oh and my long, curly, dark brunette wig. And my silver beaded purse slung across my body diagonally the way you carried your little ladybird leather purse at school when you were seven. The theme was fifties, sixties, seventies and eighties. I had sixties clothes and seventies hair. In the right light, it was conceivable I looked like a Vogue model, circa June 1971. In the wrong light, it was conceivable I looked like a "dog's dinner". Not even Batman. Not even a Blues Brother came over to talk to me. I am hoping I shall have more luck as Mary Wollstonecraft or Emmeline Pankhurst. If I decide to go as a suffragette, I may invest in a rubber feeding tube to thread up my nose and down my throat.

My most recent dressing up experience was on Saturday, I spent the afternoon, dressed as a Victorian to sell cakes at the school fete and the evening in a gown at the hunt ball. The Hunt Ball. It is worth repeating. "How was your weekend?" "Oh, y'know. Did the shopping. Trip to the beach. Went to the hunt ball." I was slightly disappointed because I had thought we would eat dinner on horseback but they insisted we sat on chairs at a table. I had thought we would eat roast fox but it was braised Northumberland beef. I also thought we would burn an effigy of Tony Blair before the dancing started; instead, we were entertained by white-fleshed belly dancers. It could have been a chartered accountant's annual thrash had it not been for a couple of clues. The raffle prizes for instance, included an £80 voucher to "buy new tack for your horse (saddles, bridles, bits)" as well as a pallet of "haylage (which) provides the ultimate in high nutritional forage...sweet and appealing to even the fussiest of horses." I was so disappointed when I did not win the haylage. Another clue were the chaps in red tail coats who are the masters of the hunt. I think that means if they point at you, you are obliged to have sex with them.

Lovely women in silk and beaded frocks cantered around on high and skinny heels; occasionally they whinnied. I had decided against high heels. This was possibly a mistake. The organiser is particularly beautiful. Very tall. Her legs are as long as I am; the top of my head is about level with her midriff. I looked up at her. I said: "Well done. Everyone is having a fantastic time." She smiled brilliantly at me, a vision in bronze and black satin. She said: "Oh, thank you. How nice of you to say that." As she turned away, she patted me on the head. I wondered briefly if she was going to offer me a sugar lump. After dinner, there was dancing. I am not sure what they are like on the field, but they are bloody dangerous on a dance floor. Gusto does not cover it. Hooves pounded the ground, sweat flew from flanks; they leapt over "Come on Eileen". The hounds scented their prey and they thundered on past "I predict a riot", ploughing through the mud, the blood beat in their ears. One idea filled their heads: "Should I go as Germaine Greer or is Margaret Thatcher a safer bet?"

Wedding blues

I know the feel of my mother's wedding dress. Her first one that is. As a girl child, I would slip it over my plaited head and feel the scratch of net at my throat, the rippled waves of lace; drop pearls and rainbowed sequins catching beneath my nails as I clawed, vain, at the too tight zip. Bride for an hour, I would gather up the skirt in frothing handfuls, not to altar fall; preen and whirl twirl before the glass. Dressing in my mother's past and my own future. I wonder will my daughter do the same in my ivory and satin empire line? Will I let her play dress-up? Or will I say: "No darling, mummy wants to be buried in her dress. Won't she look pretty in the box? She'll finally get her money's worth anyhow. Here's a cowboy outfit. Wear that instead."

I have seen black and white photos of that special day, my mother's happiness with the groom who did not stick around. Who had to be replaced with something that smiled and was more durable. "You may kiss the bride and make her cry," the priest must have said to this groom who fathered a child and then cavalierly, cancerously died. Job done. But I never knew until today that my mother's bouquet was of golden yellow roses with a white ribbon bow. Now I know, I can smell the yellow from here.

Black and white; the day seems far away. In the hectic pink flush of my mother's cheek; I am there, or at least, the idea of me. My uncle JPEG'd me a colour photo of the day. Double click, double click, open and OK: my parents wedding, 24th August 1963. A windy day. My mother's lace dress with its hooped petticoat, lifted up and hurled against her own proud and sentry mother in a sky blue two piece. Dress and coat with matching "I'm looking for something for my daughter's wedding" daisy petalled hat. "He loves her, he loves her not." He loved her; just not for long enough. And my gran, my gran who liked an orchid, exotic in a clear and plastic box, her orchid was a burgundy. A nice contrast, we all thought, against the blue.

The huddle then, from left to right, my father (now deceased in a dove grey silk tie), his grim faced mother (my other grandmother in a dark blue suit), my sky blue gran and the pink cheeked bride. My mother is the only one to smile. I cannot tell if his mother is trying to smile and just unaccustomed to it. Or whether she is thinking; "This will not end well." A groom then, two widows and a bride. I think he should have guessed how it would end. The way it often ends for men. Dead. And gone. Did I mention he was gone?

Still, I am glad I went to the wedding, stood with them in the breeze awhile, smelled the flowers, admired my gran's hat, the sheen on my first father's tie. I magnified his face to a pixillating blur. A blur the size of a daughter's hand. I know this to be the case. I pressed my hand against his glass face and measured it. Taking it away and looking hard, I thought I saw him smile.

What price history?

The BBC's Antiques Roadshow came to the local market town yesterday. I thought: "Why not?"I will tell you why not. I do not own any antiques. Indeed, I do not own anything of value apart from the children and the Aga. I did not think there was any point bringing the children when I have no plans to sell them; I decided the Aga was too heavy for my handbag. In any event, despite the fact it is trying to look as if it has been in the family for at least 17 generations, we only got it last week. My husband said I could not go to the roadshow without something old or they might not let me in. I said: "Fine, I will take you." He did not laugh. We have something of a connection to the roadshow. My brother-in-law made it on to the opening credits of a previous series in a Citroen 2cv with the roof down and a grandfather clock in the back. This brought him and his car no small degree of fame. When he was out and about, people would say: "Is that the car from off the telly?" His best moment was when two girls pulled alongside him at traffic lights, the driver flashed her breasts, then drove off. The power of television.

As you stepped through the castle archway onto the green lawns, nice people queued up in an orderly fashion by signs that read "Jewellery", "Books" or "Military." I stood in the "Miscellaneous" queue. Somehow it was a fit. Queuing was dull. Much more interesting were the antique dealers in their smart jackets and silk ties sitting at tables, trying to look excited by what you can find on Ebay these days. Even more exciting was the appearance of Michael Aspel in sunglasses, looking more dishy than a 74-year-old has any right to be. I bought a photograph from the official souvenir stand for one of the friends I was with. She said: "I dare you to get it autographed." Dares are so juvenile. I sidled up to Mr Aspel who was being talked at by a large sixty-something woman while he signed pieces of paper for other silver fox admirers. I smiled brilliantly at him and looked slightly overcome as I held out the photograph. I said breathily: "Would you mind?" I can tell you Michael Aspel also knows how to smile brilliantly. Perhaps he hoped I might show him my breasts. He took the photograph, clearly impressed by my youth or the fact I had paid 50 pence for his likeness. I said: "Would you make it out to...?" and gave him a name. He might have thought it was my name. The deal was if I got the autograph, she had to put it up in her lounge. So far, Michael and I are in a win: win situation. I get the autograph: he thinks I am a big fan of his work. This worked really well till my friend decided to go up to him about an hour later and confess that it was a put up job and the autographed picture was for her. I saw him walk back across the green; I swear he looked disappointed.

Back at the tables: out came a hideous vase painted with blossom and butterflies. The lady asked: "Can you tell us about it please?" What she meant was: "How much is it worth?" The dealer did not come straight out with: "Put it back in the plastic bag, dearie. It's rubbish." Instead, he sat back in his chair and talked about "the revival of chinoiserie...". Value: £40 a pair. The lady next to the vase woman brought out her smeary blue china plates. "Wedgwood and Co," said the dealer "a different company." Value: £1 or £2 each. "They were my mother's," she said, as if that might up the catalogue price. You had to wonder whether some of the hopeful crowd might have been better not asking the experts. Whether they would have been better cherishing the object handed down to them or picked up cheap at a car boot sale. If they had never asked, they could have held on to the dream that perhaps they were millionaires but did not yet know it. Even worse, the shattering of your dreams is witnessed by the onlookers around or those who sit in the comfort of their armchairs at home and use the identical vase as a spittoon. You can feel the air flinch in embarassment around you as the inquirer attempts to keep smiling as she wraps up the offending object along with her hopes of a bungalow and zips them back into her hold-all again. If we were not British, we would yell: "Rats. You know nothing" at the men in blazers. Instead, we nod and say with exquisite and understated courtesy: "Thank you. That was very interesting. I wouldn't have sold it anyway."

Occasionally, a fortune does make it unchipped through the years to stand dusty on the sideboard. An elderly couple brought in a green, white and gilt vase with pelican handles made in the early 19th century. It was left to them by their neighbour who died 10 years ago and whom the old lady had looked after. "She had no family," the lady explained, tiny in a green driving coat. "I used to bring her meals in." Goodness rewarded. A Rockingham Porcelain vase. Value: £1,200 to £1,400. "I will be frightened to dust it now," she said.

Some remain resolutely unimpressed by discovery. One couple were told they had a rare example of an 18th century station or dial clock, the round clocks that hung in public places such as railway stations or schools. The dealer was sceptical it worked. He advised restoring it at a cost of £1,000. Value after restoration: £5,000. I said: "Will you restore it?" The husband said: "Probably not. It will be the same in 10 years time. We'll hang it back on the kitchen wall. It keeps perfect time."

One of my friends took a chronometer which had belonged to his grandfather. This particular marine clock came from a German submarine. Not just any submarine. In May 1941, two merchant ships in a convoy heading for Liverpool had already been torpedoed when a periscope was spotted in among the other ships. The sub was forced to crash dive after it came under attack but surfaced after it was damaged by depth charges.The German sailors including its commander abandoned the sub. When the German officer realised that his attempts to scuttle the sub had failed he attempted to swim back to it but was never seen again. Instead of ramming the sub (the U-110), the commander of the British destroyer in charge of the convoy ordered a boarding party to row over and board it. They took what they could find including the chronometer, a naval Enigma machine, code and cypher books and charts. An event described by King George VI as the single most important maritime event of the second world war. The machine and documentation was sent to Bletchley Park where they were used to break the German code. Six months passed before the German forces changed their codes. Value: "£5,000 - £10,000?" then again according to the dealer: "impossible to put a price on."

Indefinite futures

We were supposed to move house the day after tomorrow. During a conversation with the builder yesterday, it rapidly became apparent that moving in, when there was still so much to do, was going to be a nightmare. We said we would try and get hold of the removal man to put things back. Today, the builder described it as "imperative" we did not move in. Unfortunately, we could not get hold of the removal man to tell him the move was imperatively off. Again. And would he mind moving us next week, or possibly the week after that or maybe sometime never? I had this vision of a large removal van turning up at the crack of dawn only for us to open a bedroom window and shout down: "Not today, thank you Milky." When we finally managed to touch base, Milky said he was charging us for Wednesday and that his next slot was in two weeks time unless he got a cancellation. Two weeks! Cancellation! What are the chances of a cancellation? Who cancels removal men? "Darling, I know we said we were moving. Well we're not. We will just live with the nice people who bought the house. They seemed fun, don't you think?" Obviously, "we" cancelled the removal men. Twice. But I cannot believe it happens that often. God. Two more weeks.

Maybe if I stopped wanting it so much, it would all come together. As it was, every time I walked into the cottage, I looked around and thought: "This is not going to get finished in time." But you do not want to seem like a panicky, depressive girly. You do not want to stick a finger in your mouth, twirl a curl round around and giggle nervously as a man tries to reach the finishing line. They do not like it. I was right though.

I think builders are natural optimists. They step through their own personal landscape of debris and chaos. They say: "I am really looking forward to getting stuck in to that big problem with the drains." They like banging their heads against brick walls. That way they get to knock them over. I am trying to keep it in "What's another week or two between friends?" perspective but I am desperate to stop squatting in the rented house. Ever since the boys dyed the kitchen carpet shocking pink, I have not been able to relax. Lately, I have not even wanted to get up on a morning. I have always been able to get up straight away. The last few weeks, I lie there until the children's screaming escalates to a pitch I cannot ignore. Then I get up and shout at whoever I see first. Victim or offender. I am not fussy. The only time I moved with the speed of light was one day last week when I heard my six-year-old tell the four-year-old: "Look. I have shaved my head." That got me up. Thank God, he was not entirely accurate. He had not shaved it. He had cut a large, sloping chunk out of the fringe. I cut the rest of it to match. It did not look that bad. Sometimes I think I should have been a hairdresser.

The whole process of getting back home is just taking so much time: packing or at least thinking about packing; endless fannying on about bits and bobs of furniture we have managed our entire lives without but which have become critically important to our happiness. Glamorous stuff like pan stackers and trivets. I mean "trivets". How have I managed all these years without a trivet? There was once a time when I did not even know what a trivet was. Ah. The innocence of youth. Then there is the Aga. All sorts of rituals appear necessary when a new Aga is installed. This afternoon, I spent several hours mopping down the sweat from the hulking brute. Normally, I would quite like that. But there was little return. I took up a slightly soapy cloth and washed it first. An hour later, the sweat was running from it. I tell you these things are very demanding. I expected something that would clean itself and do its share of the ironing. What do I get? A traditional "Mop me down and worship at my size". It does not even have any decent conversation. It just stands there saying: "Big aren't I?" over and over. Still, it is on now and it will keep the builders warm.

Wipe your feet

Ok. God. We were unusual among our London friends in that we went to mass. Being a "believer" has no novelty value here at all. My "belief" is a pretty ropy affair of feminist hesitation, personal doubts, general embarrassment and a cultural legacy from my mother. I am a catholic; that is my get out of jail free card. I do not have to talk about God. I hardly have to talk to God. The priests and my mother can do that for me. I have issues with God. I have certainly got issues with the Pope and frankly, I would be much happier if I could have back the childhood, gilded glory of a robed and guardian angel. Did he leave my side? What I thought was a breeze, was that the moment that he left me for another soul to keep? Or, did I just stop believing he was there and "Phut" he was gone? Feathery and glorious. Is that the moment, the loneliness began? I admire sheer conviction but I cannot lose myself in "Jesus". I cannot think myself saved and another damned to fall and burn. I can flirt; I cannot bring myself to surrender. I have tried, watched myself, the thought comes unbidden: "Ye gods." I am facinated though by others' faith, struggling as I do in all my uncertainties.

At the weekend, we had to go to a border town to pick up large numbers of cardboard boxes from the removers. It began to rain and we stumbled into a cafe. I tell a lie we stumbled into a church that was pretending to be a cafe. No not true either we stumbled into a cafe that has a sideline as a shop and which turns into a church on a Sunday. We sat down, all unwitting. My eyes fixed on a photo frame for sale. It said: " "For I know the plans I have for you," declared the Lord, "Plans to prosper you and not harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." (Jeremiah 29:11)" I thought: "Golly." I looked around. Sure enough there was stuff like that all over. One thing struck me. How often in the merchandising, the Christian believer or customer asks or expects something of his God. " I have paid £4.99 for this mouse mat, I expect happiness for the rest of my life and my child to get into the university of his choice." I particularly liked a frame with three photographs in it. The first, a bakerlite phone "Ask and it shall be given you"; above and below the pair of binoculars were the words "Seek and ye shall find" while the door knocker was "Knock and it shall be opened unto you." (Matthew 7:7). My least favorite was a watercolour of a plant in a pot: "Without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him. (Hebrews 11:6)

The merchandising went on and on. A soft and cuddly praying frog who sang "Now I lay me down to sleep..." ; blank paper which they made sure you knew was "compatible with printers and computers" with the heading "God's best to you! Christ's blessings on you! (Philemon 1:3)The Message" and I liked a purple coffee mug emblazoned with "...handle with prayer." I thought: "Who buys this stuff?" Then I thought: "Me." There was a pair of holy novelty socks with a design of the burning bush and two pairs of feet. One of them Moses and the other Joshua. Apparently, there are more than 600 references to feet and walking in the Bible. I never knew that. The packaging instructs you: " "Put off the shoes from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground." Exodus 3:5." The packaging says: "Displaying our faith in a non-threatening and humorous way, our original designs are interesting and amusing and can be conversation stoppers ..." I personally do not think the "non-threatening" bit is true. I would assume, anyone who wore socks like these was a complete lunatic and immediately feel very threatened. Naturally, I bought a pair and plan to wear them tomorrow. I also bought a book about starting a house church, that is to say, people coming together to worship in someone's home rather than feeling they have to attend a "real" church. I am thinking: "New kitchen, coffee, all these people up here who believe in God." I said to my husband: "Look, I could start a church." He said: "Yes. The church of the cappuccino. Your kind of place."

House about town

I am trying out a new cafe in the nearest market town. It has armchairs. This may sound like nothing very much but believe me, an armchair to drink a decent cup of coffee in, is right up there among my priorities alongside "Bring up the children to be decent human beings. Stop my mother getting any frailer. Make friends" and "Learn German".

Perhaps I will not need the armchair. I had an idea. The newly refurbished kitchen, at least the half refurbished kitchen has a high window. I have decided to buy two bar stools, tile the windowsill in black granite to match the work surfaces and acquire one of those large china coffee mugs that want to be a Starbucks paper cup. When particularly desperate, I could ask the nice man who drives the big red bus for golfers and tourists to come round and park in front of the kitchen window. I could stare out; pretend I am back in the city. I have it all planned. I will do the school run in the morning, buy the newspapers, and head for my little piece of London. I will turn on the Gaggia coffee maker, perhaps I will queue up by the sink for a while and leave some money in the children's toy till. I think that would work. The other advantage to my sill cafe is you do not need friends in Starbucks. If you sit there on your own, you feel not odd, but urban and busy. "Too busy for friends right this minute. Too busy thinking of romance. Too busy planning my career. Too busy writing this screenplay. I only just have time for this latte and one more piece of caramel shortbread." Alternatively, if my lonely coffee stop palled, I could always say to another mother: "Come round for a coffee. I will meet you at my windowsill. Ten'ish."

God knows, I need more coffee these days. I blame the osteopath for telling me to cut down on caffeine. If people stopped telling me what to do, I would not have the urge to go out and do the opposite. I also blame my caffeine cravings on the fact that we are due to move on Wednesday. We were due to move on Tuesday but pushed it back a day to buy our way back into the builders' affections after making them shift the bath. I went up to the cottage this morning. In fact, I went up to cottage three times within five hours. I suspect the builders have started hiding in my pantry when they see me coming. The plumber moves more slowly than they do. Or perhaps he cannot fit. I said to him: "Thank you for moving the bath." He did not say anything in return; at all; he just looked at me. He could have been thinking: "In this light, when she stands like that, she looks like Kate Moss" but I do not think he was.

There seems to be so much to do. Every problem knocks on to create another problem. Damp has started coming through the walls of the family living room and the kitchen. They have only just been painted. They have to be repainted with a silicone product. The decorator was already miserable because he painted everywhere several weeks ago, then electricians and plumbers ran cables down his walls. He said to me this morning: "This has been my worst job for 10 years. I am three or four weeks behind. " I felt quite guilty. So guilty I could not bring myself to ask him to repaint the two walls of the hearth which he lovingly tinted a warm pinkish colour to match the red square tiles underneath the stove. Yesterday, I picked out beige and duck egg green curtains. I think the curtains may insist on the hearth being beige. I am going to let them tell him.

Good cop; bad cop

It is less than a week till we move back into the cottage. It is difficult to believe it will all be ready. I do not think I helped when I asked the builders to move the bath they had just installed. They went off me a bit then I think. I walked into the bathroom and the roll top bath was pressed against the wall as if it had a crush on it. It looked terrible. Admittedly, the builders did ask me whether I wanted it to stand away from the wall or against it. I might have said: "Against it." I did not mean obscenely pressed against it, right against it, up against it. I did not mean for the bath to make a show of herself. I meant more of a casually, in the vicinity, if you happen to be passing then feel free to call in "against it". It is in fact not just the bath which is up against it, it is the builders. I thought about not saying anything. I always think about not saying anything. Then I climbed into the bath and realised you could not rest your elbow on the side or put your hand on the bath to lever yourself up. I thought: "Every time I have a bath I am going to think: 'This over-priced bath is far too close to that newly plastered wall in a bathroom I have just paid good money for and which I hoped would be perfect because it is costing enough to be perfect'." I said to the builder: "Slight problem." He was incredibly calm about it bearing in mind the plumbers had only just finished plumbing it all in. Sometimes though, I think my husband should have these conversations without me. The wrong insulation on the spec. My husband said: "You talk to the architect. He likes you." The mixer tap arrived bent and the taps arrived without their "Hot" and "Cold" buttons. My husband said: "You ring them." The Aga was installed surprisingly far from the wall. My husband said: "You talk to them." I say: "Why do I always have to be the bad guy." He looks at me with puppy dog eyes. "You know how I hate confrontation" he says, throwing down the nice guy card and sweeping up the chips. He wins both ways. I confront. The situation changes. For the better. For the both. He hands me a bullet for the gun, hands me a bullet belt for better rat-a-tat. I fire and in between their ragged, bloody gasps the wounded think: "I don't know how that nice bloke puts up with that stroppy baggage." My husband then will kindly smile down upon their suffering faces, uncork his canteen of water to wet their dry and cracked lips; then straighten up, beckon over his armoured wife, point, smile again and say: "This one's not dead yet."

Mad old ladies

My four-year-old came in with a tightly folded piece of paper. He said: "Happy Birthday Mummy." Bleary, I pushed a pillow underneath my head. I said: "Darling, how lovely." I unfolded the A4 paper to admire the coloured pencil scribbling. I unfolded it some more to reveal the words: "To Granny and Granddad, love." I said: "This says it's for Granny and Granddad." "Yes," he nodded, "but they can't have it. It's yours." I kissed him. When I came down to breakfast, my six-year-old had marked the occasion by peeling a satsuma and making plate faces with it for his brother and sister and chopping up an apple for me. He must have been awake for some time because the apple was brown and deep scars striped its flesh; it looked like it had been in a knife fight and lost, badly. Technically, he is not allowed to use knives when I am out of the room but since there were no fingers among the slices, I pretended not to notice. The only injury of the morning was in fact mine when I was helping to dress him for school and an arm shot out of his sleeve and he socked me in the eye incredibly hard. I thought: "No one's ever given me a black eye for my birthday before."

Once the older boy was at school, my four-year-old and I went to the local ice cream parlour. It is a little how I imagine American milk bars to be; a long counter with stools which you draw up and occasionally fall off. Or perhaps I am mixing up my bars. This year, it finally recognised Britain's membership of the European Union and introduced cappuccinos and lattes. Before the arrival of the big glittery coffee machine, I once asked for a cappuccino and was told: "We don't do cappuccinos pet. We do coffee and hot milk." I love this cafe. It serves milk shakes in glasses whose sides bulge with pressed glass fruit. Next to the frothing trophy of pink, bubble popping milk, an aluminium vat stands with more shake; ready, when you drain the glass, to fill your life again with thick and chilly sweetness. Here, bar flies stuck fat and happy on their stools, eat bacon sandwiches and watch cold tourists buy colder ice cream cornets at the window. Hands wrapped around your coffee, you can sit there and think: "I live here. I know you do not have to stand at the window. You can come in and sit awhile." You do not call out an invitation to the strangers.

I think my birthday was all the better for being spontaneous. I like the idea of spontanaeity, I just find it difficult to work into my schedule. But as soon as I decided to stay put, it was make do and mend and the better for it I think. My four-year-old and I bought a blue marbled plastic bucket, a red spade and a fishing net to celebrate the day, snatched up the baby and headed for the beach. I always thought myself a silent soul before I became a mother. Silence was easy for me. I could hold my peace and never felt the need to chat and chatter. Then children come and you think: "I have to talk. I have to teach or my child will grow silent and grave as his mother. Which would never do." So you talk and you do not stop. You say: "Look at that..." Whatever it may be. You say: "Did you see...?" and "That's because..." till any sensible child blocks up his ears with peas. Then, children leave. "Bye Mum". There is silence in the kitchen and the car and everywhere. But I do not think there can be silence in the heart of that woman. I think in her most secret places, her mother's chatter plays out, regardless of the emptied nest. An old woman, shabby in a mac and slippered feet, holding a shopping carry-all; her hair, tousled; her mind worse. Sometimes then, the words escape again, she calls long gone children to her side and loud mumbles to them of birds and trees and passing marvels that she sees.

I have not yet become that ghost but as I watched my son walk ahead of me, intent on the sea, resolute in his wellies, his net in one hand, his bucket dangling from an arm, the spade in the other. I thought: "This is how the man will be; looking out to the horizon, armed and ready for his task, his mother hardly more than a memory. This is how I will be, trailing behind him, hoping he will stay safe, hoping he is happy, that he will turn round and remember me." He found his spot in a wash of water running across the beach while the baby girl and I squatted down, gathering seashells and pressing them into sandy walls of small castles. I got older. Despite that, it was a good birthday.

Today I discovered, my friend has taught my daughter to say "Princess" when she is asked: "What are you?". I said: "We're republicans" when I heard it first. Then I wondered: "Is it right to teach a daughter that she is a princess? That she is your princess? That she is special, different, richer, that life is a fairy tale, that she may need rescuing, her wishes will come true and her endings all be happy ones?" In the event of revolution, I have set before her a different path. Tonight, I taught her answers to a different question. "Who will you be?" The answers she can chirrup: "Docdor. Loya. J'neer." I am working on "Astronaut". "Physicist" may defeat me.

It's my party

Terrible night. My six-year-old woke up about 1.30am, complaining of feeling sick and had to come into my bed. I think I managed about an hour of sleep after that. If we weren't traipsing to the bathroom, he was asking for water, tapping on the wooden bedhead or moaning: "Mummy, I feel sick." "Me too," I muttered into the pillow. I can virtually guarantee that one or other of the children are sick whenever my husband is away. It is as if he says to them: "Remember. Be good for Mummy and be sure and vomit lots while Daddy is away."

I do not know whether it is sleep deprivation but I cannot decide what to do tomorrow. Tomorrow being my birthday. In London, if I could get the day off work, I would often spend it alone shopping, seeing an exhibition or a movie and then out to dinner with my husband in the evening. I do not know where to go here. Can I replicate the birthday I would have had but in a different place or is that a dangerous thing to do? Will I compare and contrast and find my Northern life too different for my taste? Will I end up buying a saddle for no better reason than I fetched up in the saddle shop? Or, do I do something entirely different? Go for a bone-drenching beach walk alone? (Happy Birthday Billy-No-Mates.) Take the four-year-old and the baby to a castle? (If I was counting, I would estimate I have visited two castles this week.) Perhaps I will buy a birthday cake and share it with the builders. I will say: "It's my birthday and I have changed my mind about that wall you knocked down." I feel old. I am old. I am old enough to have to think about my age. Sometimes, I get it wrong. I think: "Am I 42? Or am I 43?" I once had to knock 10 years off my age when I applied for a job undercover. If you tell people you are 10 years younger than you are, they tend to think you haven't aged well. Even so, as I readjusted mentally to the new me, I thought: "This is quite nice actually. I could do this. I could start my life over again and write it differently this time."

Did something happen?

Having a black night of the soul and it is only a quarter to eight in the evening. Tony Blair may have lost his job today but I lost the TV zapper. Usually, this would not be a big problem but Tony Blair lost his job today and I want to watch the TV. Desperately. I want to watch the TV and I am about as frustrated as a former political journalist can get when she cannot find the zapper and the world at Westminster explodes in hubris and blinked away tears. It is not just that I cannot find the zapper. My eldest hid it. I know this because hiding the zapper so he can use it on a morning when he shouldn't is one of his charming idiosyncracies. I am feeling insanely aggrieved. Being a stay at home mother sucks. OK, I am not exactly a stay at home mother, I work at home but I used to have a life, not just a BBC News 24 habit. I brought my six-year-old home from school because he said he was not feeling well and let him slump in front of the TV despite his father's ban. A ban imposed because of swearing. That is to say, using words he hears, when he does things like hide the TV zapper from Mummy. That will teach me to show mercy. That is the very last time. I want to howl at the moon. I would but it is too early for the moon. I should be there sucking in that green leather drama. I should be in London. I should be talking to MPs and asking how was it for them. I want to know. How was it for them? If I cannot be there, the very least I want to do is watch it unroll on TV. What am I doing instead of having a career or even a bad viewing habit? I am throwing Thunderbirds and dressing up clothes around the sitting room getting certifiably hacked off at my lot. Hacked off does not cover it. I was supposed to go down to London today for a friend's leaving do. Courtesy of the rain, I missed my window of opportunity. My husband made it by leaving in the early hours and is not back till Friday. Now I feel trapped. It has been a grey rainy fed up kind of day. Then this evening the sun broke out, all golden and did you miss me? I could not even go out and say hello. I am held prisoner by small guards who sleep through their shift and hide my TV zapper. I may riot.

Sweet home

Two weeks today we are supposed to move house. Again. This time in the right direction out of the rented house and back into what is supposed to be our Northumberland dream home. Two weeks does not strike me as a long time when I look at the cottage. It still does not have a bathroom although it does have half a kitchen. There are carcasses of creamy doored cabinets but no svelte black granite tops; half an oak planked floor, the rest, polystyrene and wooden struts; half a pantry, that is to say, an alcove but no shelves. The builders have only just finished knocking another hole in a wall to connect two rooms. I was slightly disconcerted because I had forgotten the rooms were supposed to be connected. I said: "Are you sure you weren't holding the plans upside down?" They tell me they weren't.

I respect our architect's talent and creativity. He is also a very nice man who has come up with a design for a family home which works on a number of levels. I suspect he has not warmed to me after I accused him of chauvinism (perhaps I had PMT that day), reinstated the pantry which he hated and which I had agreed to scrap(women can be so indecisive) and, most recently, wanted a forensic analysis of why the wrong sort of insulation was put into the roof space (and picky. They can be very, very picky.). He had specified the type of insulation but local planners do not accept it. He said this was a recent change in planning regulations. I said: "How recent?" (I have no idea why I do not have any friends up here.) To his credit, he agreed to absorb the cost of the £1,500 to £2,000 insulation in his own bill. I am pretty sure he will not want to keep in touch after the job is over.

I am not sure what my builders think of me. I like the fact they take decisions. I just like to know the reasons behind the decisions. "Why have you put the pantry door on that way round?" "Why can we have a flat floor when we couldn't a week ago?" "Why have you knocked down that wall?" The builder looks at me for a split second. Sometimes, I think he is constructing his answer. Sometimes, I think he is thinking: "Why. Do you ask all these questions?" They are very patient with me but I think they like to talk to my husband. I suspect he provides them with answers rather than questions. Maybe they just feel sorry for him. Maybe they think I ask him: "Why do you want sex with me tonight?" Anyway, they have another two weeks to finish off the job and give us our house back. It will not be entirely finished. There is a string of arches in the farmyard which are also being converted. Work will continue on the arches when we move back in but I do not mind that. Frankly I will miss the builders when they leave.

I really want to move back. I feel adrift. It has been nice to be in a village to see other houses and cars drive by but I want to get on with my life. I want to move into a home where we have space, where we can stretch out and breathe. There is a pond in the garden of this rented house. We carefully covered it up. The boys equally carefully uncovered it. I want to open the door and let my sons out to play in the garden without worrying about whether they will drown. I want to fill my pantry with fancy tinned stuff that looks like art and glass jars of fruit we will never eat, not even at Christmas. I want to keep vanilla pods in sugar and have everything just so. For a day at least. That will be a very good day. One to remember. I want to go home.