Marriage column in the Times

My first column on marriage started in the Times last Tuesday. It's a lighthearted look at the difficulties of living with someone day in and day out. I know from talking to girlfriends that not everyone has the perfect sex life or the most amazing marriage all the time, and who would want to read about that anyway? Surely that would be boring and slightly smug.

So far the only two comments underneath the article have not been positive. Clearly though these people want to read about a loving, perfect marriage but I just don't think that's a true look at the reality of a long term partnership. They say that it is a depressing look at marriage, but its meant to be funny and sad and true. I think the last line shows that they still love each other. If anyone manages to read it I'd love to know. There will be more on Tuesdays.

Heating and Haiti

We have been living without heating for eight long days. This happened after a series of errors on the part of our boiler insurance company. On day five my husband telephoned the CEO of the company. We didn’t actually get to talk to him, but we left a very severe message with his PA. My father always told me that if you have a problem, go straight to the top and yes he’s right. Afer the call, things started to move. But we still had eight days huddled together in the sitting room, where we ate, played, argued and cooked. My husband even slept on the sofa, as my daughter had to bed down with me because her room has an outside wall and was literally freezing. The cold began to get to me: my husband and I argued, the children went stir crazy in the one room. The sitting room was relatively cosy, if we kept the the heater and the oven on, (our kitchen and sitting room merge into one) but the corridors and bathroom were freezing, like being suddenly thrust into Antartica. But at least we had a roof over our head.

After I read the following account of what it is like to be Haiti, right now, I was ashamed to complain about my heating. This message was posted on facebook by a friend of a friend: “My 
four sisters, brother, and father are down there; (Haiti) they have lost their 
home and are now sleeping and wondering on the streets with a bunch of 
dead bodies, rapists, and many more. My sister had a 3 storey building fall on her, and was trapped for 18 hours. She 
now has a really bad infection in one of her legs. She told me that she is at the airport asking the air-force people to 
help her, but they told her that they are helping Americans first, so 
they refuse to help her. Having an infection is really bad, it could 
even kill her. I hope she finds 
some antibiotics or sees a doctor right away. It
’s really hard to see all that happening and not being able to do
 anything.”

My children’s primary school are holding two fundraising events today and tomorrow, for Haiti. I wish I could do more.

Tis the Season to Be Festive

I have been very busy being festive: Buying presents, hanging a wreath, and also making my own paper chains with the children which for one wonderful moment made me feel like a woman who knits her own socks and bakes her own bread. I have also spent a good deal of time searching desperately for costumes for various nativity plays and end of term drama productions. My son was bad santa and insisted on a black santa costume. I was just about to slog off for the dye, when somebody mentioned Poundland and yes, unbelievably they sold black santa hats! My daughter was a dancing cat yesterday, but on Friday at the after school drama production, she will be a duck. I haven’t got any further than buying a big yellow squashy envelope and deciding that she can wear her brown sleeveless shaggy jacket from I Love Gorgeous, because it kind of looks like duck feathers. If I was someone who baked bread, I would know how to make the yellow envelope into a beak, but I don’t bake and have no idea what to do next. For one awful moment in the middle of the night, I wasn’t even sure that ducks do have yellow beaks.

I’ve been buying presents here, there and everywhere, starting in November at the Victoria and Albert shop and finishing last night, when a lovely girl called Clara delivered some beautiful hand made bath bombs, made from natural ingredients. ref="www.beauty-by-hand.com/">://www.beauty-by-hand.com/ and presented in a stylish brown box with a silver ribbon. I’ve spent so much money that I now have the definite feeling that I couldn’t possibly buy anything for myself. For a long long time I’ve wanted a new vacuum cleaner. Mine is old and smelly and cumbersome and I somehow dread it. My husband would definitely have said keep it, so I planned to get a new one secretly.

The new one arrived in a box and I was confused because it was so light. It’s a thing of great beauty, like a piece of sculpture, and it makes my old Henry seem quite archaic. It has a battery that you charge up and then it races around, bagless and beautiful. Even my disgruntled cleaner agreed that it was divine. I feel like I’m living in 2025. ://www.vax.co.uk/shop/product/upright-vacuum-cleaners/life/LiFE-Cordless-Upright-U91-LF-B"

One Minute to Save the World

Apparently since 2000, the recycling rate in the borough of Hammersmith and Fulham has shot up from %8 to %25. And if you are the kind of person who doesn’t particularly care about recycling you maybe interested to know that H and F council spends an incredible £4m each year sending waste to landfill and landfill rates have doubled in the last two years. If the council were able to recycle twice as much as they already do, it would save 2m a year in landfill charges and mean lower council tax charges for us. It makes me angry that people can’t be bothered to put a can or some newspapers or a glass or bottles in the orange bags. It’s so easy.

On Sunday I was one of four or five member of Wecan . who watched about 50 shortlisted, one minute long films that had been entered for our film competition, One Minutcome to Save the World. The 50 had already been whittled down from 200 entries that have been entered from filmmakers all over the world. There were films from amateurs, professionals, companies and under eighteens. One of my favourites shows a little boy playing with a paper boat, flying it in the air as the earth has dried up and is barren and parched. We then see him dragging it along by a string. It is really poignant. We chose 27 which will now go to our panel of judges including Franny Armstrong, director of Age of Stupid and Bruce Parry. Some of them are brilliant, some charming and some very sad, but they all make an important impact. You can view at http://www.1minutetosavetheworld.com/ The winning entries will be shown at the United Nations Climate Change conference in Copenhagen in December.

A really great book for London families

For five years our weekends and most holidays were spent at a tiny coastguard cottage on the Solent. It was in the middle of a row of ten. We shared front gardens with our neighbours on the left and back gardens with our neighbours on the right. For some reason the weekenders used the front gardens, which faced the sea, and the full time residents used the back gardens, so we never really had to share at all. But there were long expanses in the mid winter when we simply didn’t use the cottage and felt guilty when we weren’t there, in fact felt guilty whenever we went anywhere else. When it was cold we couldn’t face the drive, the weather and the wind. We gave it up in January, as it didn’t make sense to be paying for two houses in the middle of a bleak recession. At first it was exciting to be in London with so much to see and do. I liked tramping the dirty pavements and going to cafes, and seeing random last minute films. There were friends to invite over and museums to visit, but having exhausted trips to the country to stay with out of town friends and with a five year old and an eight year old to keep amused things became tense. Our small garden, (well more of a patio) is not enough to contain them for more than a few minutes. When we had friends over for lunch the other day they spent quite a lot of time playing on the flat roof outside Belle’s room. The adults ate lunch and pretended not to notice or to care about the potentially life threatening situation.

I heard from a friend about a brilliant little book: Adventure Walks for Families in and around London by Becky Jones and Clare Lewis. Last weekend we drove to the Chilterns in the rain because I was determined and desperate to get out of the city for a hearty walk recommended by the guide. We had decided to do the Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Walk. At first the children were reluctant. My five year old sat at the bottom of a hill and refused to budge. We coaxed her up, (well my husband put her on his shoulders) and as we passed the windmill used as a location in the film, she cheered up, and climbed down, and I told her a few back to back stories, until she really got into the walk and sped down the hill towards some grazing black cows, that really did look like an art installation. I forgot to mention that by now the sun had come out and the landscape was stunning. The children ran and laughed and looked for items for a scavenger hunt: a feather, a shiny stone, a piece of animal poo etc. (again advice from the book) and then their moods changed and by the end of the walk they were smiling, happy and rosy cheeked. Luke and I had our usual discussion about moving to the country (which actually never goes anywhere). The walk was two and a half miles and completely restored us. The book also recommends pubs to visit and things to do in the car. Genius.

Nightmares

My husband often has bad dreams, but I rarely do. However the last two nights I've had terribly anxious making dreams, not quite nightmares but dreams that I have been really really relieved to wake up from. This morning I dreamt that I was a director of a film about to be shot, but I had no experience of being a director. I knew everyone was relying on me and I was in a state,because I was in charge of this huge production: actors, extras, producers, crew. I woke quite slowly realizing that actually no, I am not a director. HURRAY! Although I have to admit I was a little disappointed. But HURRAY that I did not have this huge responsibility and could breath again. I also felt admiration for my friend Martha who is a real director! The night before I dreamt I was on a boat, and there was someone kind of gliding above me and I was holding the string that kept him afloat, and I was suddenly scared that I would blow up into the sky, so I let go of the rope and he went crashing into the sea and I thought he was DEAD. He wasn't dead but shaken, and I couldn't admit it was me. Awful.

What is going on with me? I think I've been going through quite a difficult time, but perhaps that time is coming to an end. There is never enough time to do this blog properly, I sometimes find it hard to write all day for a living, and also write the blog. I still have to answer some questions that I was tagged with a while ago, which I will get round to. I want to read so many blogs, but now, I have to run to pick up the children, bring them home, than rush back for parents evening!

Talking at the new Sheperds Bush Library

Last week, my friend Josa, me, and a friend of hers, did an event at Nottinghill Waterstones. I couldn't sleep the night before as I had never done anything like it and was SO nervous that I could feel my heart jumping out of my chest. I invited my mother, brother, sister and two friends from school to come along, incase no one else turned up. Josa did an introduction linking us together as apparently we all write about "modern heroines." When it came to my turn to talk, I tried to concentrate on the Waterstones subtext: Feminism meets Chicklit, and I'm still not sure if I was making sense. I was trying to say its still hard for a woman, because half of her wants to stay at home with the children, and half of her is frustrated that she can't get on with her career, (I know alot of women actually like staying at home and being with their children and actually I really approve of that) because in most cases its not going to be the Daddy who stays home and worries about sports day and the costume for assembly,and so if you don't stay home, you will have to hire someone else to do it.

I read out a paragraph from one of Potty Mummy's blogs posts on being a stay at home mother, in which she tells us how hard it is after being a career girl to then be at home, but how she has come to accept it, and be good at it. It is a really interesting read, as are the comments underneath. And of course being a mummy at home won't be for ever. Ellie the character in my book, The Seven Year Itch is shocked when she hears herself walk into Gap and say, "It's a shame you don't do those shirts with the teddy logo any more." It is at that moment that she thinks her life must change, as it can no longer be all about teddy bear logos. She is also motivated by the fact that her husband, the irrepressibly selfish Jack, has lost his job starring in TV soap. She reflects about her time at home that no one praised her for being a good mother and no one reprimanded her for being a bad one, which made her feel truly invisible.

On Thursday (tomorrow) Josa and I will be appearing at the new Sheperds Bush Library at Westfield in London. We are starting at 630 so if any of you can make it, please do. It will be so excruciating if only three people turn up!! Yikes. A weird single man came up to me at the end of the last one, and said you won't like me saying this but it's very Desperate Housewives. I was thrilled.

My 8 year old son was really rude to me yesterday. He was tired and moaning, and walking at 0 miles an hour to school, so I lost it, and was really mean and said "I can't wait for you to be at school," and he retorted, "I can't wait for you to die!" which really shocked me, but later when I regaled the sad little story to my reading book girls, they all laughed, including me, and the wise Denize, mother of two teenagers said, "you have to learn that they will always come back at you with something more hurtful, than what you've said to them" and later when the conversation had moved on and we were talking about parents and children Rebecca said she had read somewhere that "All parents are destined to love their children more than they love them!" Makes you think!