OK, so ignore the title of this blog. It’s to keep two of my friends who have dared me, happy. Ladies, you may now whoop, and watch as I get arrested for being rude. Please come and visit me in prison, if only so I can stick my tongue out at you.

No, this blog is actually about why you should never ever ever ever ever ever EVER eat out with children in the vain hope that it will be fun.
It will not.
Here’s why not. Tonight, I reach the end of a humungous writing day – and a third (ish) of my novel is finished. Hurrah! – and it’s dark and it’s cold and my kids, who have had friends to play, have cut up 50 sheets of paper to make mice and cheese, complete with holes, leaving their bedrooms looking like a snowstorm only without any of the charm or ski-ing potential, and there is no food in the fridge and I am so hungry I’m digesting my own internal organs, and my husband is off on a business trip.
SO…….I do what all sensible people would do under these circumstances: I suggest we eat out.

Good plan: no cooking, no clearing up, nice family time, we can talk, and play hangman, and eat chips. So, just like Sophie in The Tiger Who Came To Tea, we put on our coats and go down the local boozer.
Problem: the pub is full. So full, that a family with 3 kids is about as welcome as thrush. After instructing my daughter to look woeful and deathly, a kind couple shove up a bit and let us use five of the eight seats they were previously occupying.
Not long after, drinks arrive. A festive glass of prosecco  for me – I take a sip and feel approximately 4 billion times better the second it hits my tongue. This WAS a good idea.

And then the bickering starts:
‘Mu-um! She’s sitting on my side of the chair.’
‘Ems, move over please.’
‘But I can’t. My bum’s already hanging off the edge. Look!’
‘OK, Phoebs, she can’t move over. See, her bum is hanging off the edge.’
‘But I’m squashed. Hey, Charlie get off my drink. You’ve got your own.’
‘But I’ve finished it!’
‘Well, that’s not my fault. You should’ve waited.’
‘But I was thirsty. Mu-um! Phoebe’s not letting me have some of her drink.’
‘Phoebe, could you please give Charlie a sip of your drink?’
‘No. I can’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I’m squashed. Ems, move UP!’
‘I CAN’T. My bum is hanging off……’

And so on. By this stage I’ve necked the whole glass of prosecco, hoping it’ll have an inebriating effect. It does, but not enough to kill off all desire to stab my children with a fork and run off with the French bloke in the corner eyeing up my succulent breasts (the chicken ones on my plate – jeez. Can’t take you anywhere.) And that’s before someone kicks someone else under the table, my husband’s pint is spilled into his steak and Charlie has choked on a fish bone.

The squabbling reaches a peak when one of the more mathematically inclined members of our merry party spots that they have shared three more chips than anyone else. This is apparently as bad as having one of your kidneys removed. There follows the kind of petty arguing usually reserved for the House of Commons, and I lose the will to live.

The second the meal is finished we pay and leave.

Well, that was fun. Next time I suggest going out for a nice family meal, please remind me to stay at home and do something more fun, like plucking my eyelashes out.
Thank you, and bon appetit.

A very short, amusing snippet for you today, because I’ve been writing my novel for 6 solid hours (good liz) so my eyes are a bit screwy, and also I’m about to be late for collecting the Little Dudes from school (bad liz.)

It’s a lovely piece of news that raised a smile with me recently, and it’s this:
Scientists (somewhere. Not sure where or which ones. Doesn’t really matter here) wanted to find out whether 20-year-old men who watch porn regularly have a different attitude towards women than 20 year-old men who hadn’t ever watched any porn. So off they merrily went to get their subjects, only to encounter to their great surprise  the problem you thought of within six nanoseconds: there are ,of course, NO young men aged 20 who haven’t ever watched porn. Oooops. This deserves a united ‘Like, DUH!’

What I really love about this story, though, was their solution: they simply changed their experiment to now study the varying habits of 20 year-old men who regularly watch porn. Bless them.

Next they’ll try to study teenage girls who have never shouted at their mum before…

http://twitter.com/findingimogenB keep following folks!

liz fraser 10th December 2009

Yesterday I was in London all day filming a new parenting series for GMTV, which will air in January. I’ll let you know all about it in good time, so please fret not and carry on not checking the TV listings.

It’s called the Baby Breakfast Club and it’s all about babies. But not about breakfast. And it’s not really a club, but ‘club’ sounds friendly, and like you’re a part of something, so let’s be merry and pretend we’re all in this club together, and just roll with it.

The day itself was pretty easy, if LONG, and I learned a few things:
1. WAGS have very very very very very white teeth. I mean, whiter than white. Daz white. Snow white. Mine are practically grey next to such pearlies. And no, I’m not going to name names.
2. eating a sausage roll between takes is a BAD PLAN because you get bits of pastry stuck in your gums and nobody tells you ,so now there it is – big smiley pastry teeth in the can and ready to air on national telly.
3. playing with someone else’s babies is fun. They giggle and dribble and smile and wave….and then someone takes them away and you can go home on the train in peace. Can’t wait to be a granny. But it was lovely to see babies again, now that mine are so grown up.
4. I am not broody.
5. when you leave your clothes at a Grazia shoot the previous week, you’d think you’d remember to bring your clothes home from a GMTV shoot. But no. I didn’t learn. I left my skirt.
6. Telling your husband that you left your skirt in London ellicites strange looks and requires a damn good answer.

And that’s all folks, except for the REQUEST:

Pretty please could you start following findingimogenB on Twitter. She’s the main character in my next novel, and I’m doing a little experiment which should be a talking point in the coming months.
Thank you so much, and please spead the word far and wide and LOUD. Need to hit 1000 if poss in the coming months so tell everyone you know or pass in the street and bump into at the cold meat counter in Tescos. Or maybe just your mum.
You are marvellous people and I thank you all enormously.
This book is going to be a blast and this way you can say you were there from the very very beginning!! : -))

OK, so I’ve been lazy and haven’t blogged for a while. But here I am with a bumper edition!

Tuesday was the shoot for Grazia that caused all the telephone panic last week. It’s for an edition guest-edited by Sadie Frost, out on 5th Jan. There, got the plug in. Now we can relax.

I’ve done many, many photo shoots for everything from the Mail to Marie Claire to the local rag, and I’ve learned a few things. The only thing I’ve learned that matters, should you ever be called upon to pose for such a thing, is to BE YOURSELF and BE COMFORTABLE.

The thing is, everyone on a shoot has their own agenda: the photographer has to make sure the pictures aren’t blurred; the make-up artist has to make the models look better than they did when they stepped off the bus; the lighting guy makes sure it’s light, the stylist makes sure you look like you have some style and the editor talks into a mobile all day, shouts at people and drinks too much coffee.

This shoot is no different, except that I have my eldest daughter in tow because it’s a piece about mothers and daughters. She is beside herself with excitment, but keeps it remarkably well hidden. She’s great like that.

On arrival at the shoot, at a house in North London that I think we can safely call outrageously enormous, we are told things are running approximately 2 hours late (this is normal) and we can just hang out and make ourselves at home. For me, this means having a good nose. Which I do. And then I feel sad, because everything is so beautiful and expensive.

The time finally comes for hair and make-up. This is the best bit. The make-up artist gives me a 2-minute pick-me-up facial – apparently I look like I need it –  and I almost fall asleep in her soothing hands. She then makes me look better than I’ve looked since last time a professional got their foundation-covered hands on me. It takes 2 inches of slap, but the result is good. Hair involves sitting in rollers for half an hour, which is fine, and then comes the tricky bit: wardrobe.

Here’s the thing: every time you go on a shoot, they ask you to bring 3 changes of clothes. Being a dutiful person, I oblige, and cycle to the train station carrying a big bag of clothes that I’ve carefully selected. I might as well not bother: the stylist’s agenda for the shoot is always to get you to wear as many of the clothes lent by designers as possible. So your own clothes are pointless.

This may sound to you like Heaven on Earth – a massive designer wardrobe to play around with?? Yes please!! But no. No thank you. Because what happens is this: you end up looking and feeling like a plonker. Put it this way, unless you’re Cheryl Cole, it’s unlikley that you spend most of your time in designer gear and high heels. So when you DO wear a designer dress and heels you feel…well, you feel not like you. Which, unless you’re a model, is about the worst thing to feel when you’re having your photo taken.

But the stylist, who is lovely incidentally, is determined, and tries me out in an Alice Temperley dress to start with. It’s beautiful and fits like a glove. I feel like a danish pastry.
Next we try a bright green Alexander McQueen number, teamed with a shoulder-padded pearl-encrusted jacket which probably costs more than my last holiday. I feel like Elton John.

OK, this isn’t working. How about skinny jeans and a jacket? Good! I like skinny jeans and jackets. Oh, hello, but not THAT jacket. THAT jacket would look conservative on Joan Collins. How about this one? No, too plain. But I AM plain. Yes, but the shoot can’t be plain. We need….va va voom! Well, can’t you just get Thierry Henry to do it then?

In the end I am allowed to wear my own jeans (yay!) and my own boots (yay!) and a very very very gorgeous leather jacket by someone I can’t remember. I just know I can’t afford it. I feel good, I look good, the shoot goes well, and Emily, bless her, steals the show in her own, cheap, funky H&M gear. The stylist is cross with me, but I don’t care. I know that I did the right thing to insist on wearing something ‘normal’ and ‘liz’-ish. If people want to see a picture of me, they might as well see a picture of me, not me dressed like a cake.

So if you ever do a photo shoot, please please remember to be yourself and NOT give in to the wishes of a stylist if her suggestions make you feel like you’re in a pantomine. It’ll show all over your face and you’ll regret it, as I have a hundred times. Please remember also not to leave all the clothes you so kindly brought with you, at the shoot. Ooops. I hope the post is working well these days.

Remember folks – 5th Jan, Grazia. Then you can judge the choice of clothing for yourselves ; -)

A couple of gender-related things crop up this week, which make me think about stereotypes, and what ideas children have about men and women, and their roles in society. The first involves maths.

My son, who is six and to whom I’ve been reading daily since he was born, and teaching all kinds of fascinating things and taking to museums and all of that jazz, declares that he has maths homework. I offer to help. He looks at me, stunned. “Can you do maths??!”

This is the point where I am tempted to say ‘Well son, even though I possess ovaries, and buy Grazia, and like shoes, and love George Clooney’s arse, yes, I can do maths. Actually, since you ask, I did both maths and Advanced maths at A-Level (OK, mainly because I fancied the Mediterranean pants off a Spanish guy who was doing Advanced Maths and I was trying to impress him – I failed – but what the hell…) and then I studied science at Cambridge University which is where, you know, quite clever people go, and I can add up the total of three pairs of pumps in Office in milliseconds. (The answer, incidentally, is always ‘too much’.) So yes, I can do maths.’
I am tempted, but don’t want to look like a complete tosser, so what I actually say is ‘Yes, I can. Would you like me to help you?’

He looks at me suspiciously, and lets me have a go at some Year 2 multiplication. I do very well on my six times table, and seem to pass the test.

Later, my daughter is talking about her Year 7 maths teacher, Dr Something-or-other. I’ve heard about this maths teacher a few times, and although I’ve never met Dr Something-or-other, I have a clear picture in my mind of what he looks like. Until my daughter calls him ‘She’. She? He’s a She?
I am shocked that I find this surprising. Without even thinking about it, I had assumed Dr Something-or-other was a man. A man in his, oooh, about 40s or so, who is good at maths. Like men are. Why did I assume this? Why do we often assume that anything math-y or science-y is going to be done by a man?

Things get further complicated when, for reasons I truly cannot explain, I decide to wear a short, tight skirt and boots (oh, and a top, obviously) and cook pancakes for breakfast, before school. I’m not sure which is more surprising and out of character, but I think the wearing of a short skirt has it bya whisker. When I come downstairs in my new, sexy, feminine get-up, all of my kids say, in unison, “Wow, mum! You look amazing!!” and smile at me. A lot.
And as my bizarre Martha Stewart moment is in full flow, and I’m standing there tossing perfect pancakes, in my little skirt and my pretty top, I look across at my kids and notice that they haven’t looked so happy for ages. They apparently love seeing Mummy looking all mummy-ish, and not wearing the same old jeans/jumper combo that they see every single day, while carelessly throwing Cheerios into a bowl.

And I wonder if, deep down, we don’t all have some fluffy, warm notion of a smiling, pancake-tossing, skirt-wearing mum, and a maths-doing, suit-wearing, car-mending Dad. It’s certainly not the image of women and men we’re trying to give our kids – we both cook, and both fix the car, and both paint the walls. And we both do the maths. But they seem hard-wired to expect differently, which I find pretty interesting.

Mind you, so far only one of us gets to wear the skirts, and I think that makes us by far the superior sex. Maths and skirts…? Ladies, we rock.

Have a good weekend )

Meetings today with 2 production companies to whom I’m pitching programmes ideas, and who want to work with me. That second bit is always helpful…So off to London I go, on the train.

London is a city I just love love love. It has an energy and buzz about that shakes me out of my smalltown fug, and brings me home believing ‘YES I CAN!’ It’s like twenty little villages all stuck together by an arterial network of never-ending coffee bars and bullshitting. They say you can walk from Oxford to Cambridge on land owned by Trinity College. Well, I reckon you can walk from Camden to Hammersmith never setting foot off land owned by Neros/Costa/Starbucks/Pret and their lovelier, independent cousins.

And people here move. Where I live, the average speed is just slower than it’s comfortable to shuffle along on your bottom at. It’s S-L-O-W. This is nice at times, like when you’re not hoping to get anything done before the next recession. But if you’re, you know, trying to get from A to B some times this year, F-A-S-T is a better speed. And in London people walk fast.
Sadly they do this while drinking their gazillion lattes and talking on the phone at the same time, which is exactly how I came to see a lady get hit full on my a double decker bus on Picadilly. I screamed. She had a lucky escape.

Meetings go well. Very well. I hear ‘OK, just so we’re clear we love you. We absolutely love you. You’re FAB.’   This is a very good thing to hear at a meeting with top TV execs. I feel mildly upbeat. But after 2 hours of brain storming and saying the words ‘concept, big picture and fuck’ (media people like to say ‘fuck’ a lot, which is probably why I ended up working there) we are yet to come up with what they like to call ‘The Vehicle’ for my supposed talents.

I tell them I’ll take any vehicle they can offer me – tricycle, tram, lorry…whatever. Just give me a bloody lift, eh?
We’ll see. These things take time. Just enough time, usually, for your ideas to get taken away and made into programmes by other, even more FAB, even more loved people. But that’s just me being bitter. When it happens to you once you cry. When it happens twice you tend to be a little more cautious about opening your mouth and then feeling pleased with yourself….Time will tell.

But that was this afternoon. This evening is 2 hours of novel-writing in a bar in Soho, being chatted up by a group of very persistent Australian rugby lads, and then it’s book lauch party time, for my good friend Jeremy Musson’s latest volume: Up and Down Stairs – The History of the Country House Servant is published by John Murray and is an absolutely delicious, corking, splendid book for Christmas. (That’s my free copy in the bag. Cheers love….) W1 is lit up like a Christmas tree, rich people are looking into shop windows on Bond Street going ‘Oh, but isn’t it GORGEOUS?’ and I’m just happily walking on by. Fast.

Shall update ye all if good news comes of these meetings. Lordy I hope it does…

OK, some words to begin:
1. I just wrote this for a magazine, so I probably shouldn’t be publishing it here. But hey, you’ve very sweetly made the effort to come and read my stuff, so you are duly rewarded with a scoop! My pleasure…
2. I don’t mean 90% of what I say. That’s very important to remember when reading these blogs. It’s also important to work out which 10% I DO mean…
3. none of my kids has ever killed a pet by electrocuting it. Probably.

So here’s the piece:

There are many things a parent of school-aged children dreads. Nits. Forgetting to turn up for the Xmas show because you were washing your hair. Having a child who becomes the teacher’s pet. Having a child who accidentally kills the teacher’s pet by introducing it to the light socket. Fancying the Head master. And so on.

But none of these compares even remotely with the sheer terror, the horror, of The Playdate. Because the Playdate is fraught with more potential for social disasters, ruined carpets and bad influences than anything else your child will ever suggest. It is also something that you cannot possibly avoid.

Here’s how playdates start: Child A likes Child B. They play together every day, without spitting, hitting, biting or calling each other ‘Fuckface.’ Child A’s Mummy likes Child B’s Mummy, because their mutual children seem to get on so well and because she has nice shoes. One fine day in the playground, Child A says to his Mummy: ‘Mummy can Billy come to play?’ Child A’s Mummy and Billy’s Mummy both scrawl through their mental diaries, trying desperately to find one day in the next six months that works for both parties, and finally agree that next Tuesday is a good day, because there is no swimming/ballet/football/cello/drama/drinking before 2pm…..and so it’s arranged.
Next Tuesday there will be a Playdate.

Barring a fresh outbreak of swine flu or an Act of God such as a plague of locusts (start praying for one now…) you are now committed to this Playdate. And that’s Rule 1 of Playdate etiquette: you cannot cancel. Ever.
Cancelling a playdate is like returning the birthday present your Mum bought you, because you’ve just realised that you look like a hippopotamus in it. If you cancel it gives a clear indication that something else is more important or more desirable than Child B. And Child B’s Mummy isn’t going to like that, least of all because it means a diary reshuffle.
It also means three days of misery, as your own child mopes about looking deathly, picks holes in the wallpaper and tells you he hates you.

Rule 2, concerns authority: have some. Playdates almost exclusively take the same form: tired, overexcited kids come home from school, throw their bags, coats and shoes all over your hallway, eat most of your food, leave the table without clearing it and run upstairs to empty every toy cupboard onto the floor. Whether you survive the next two hours depends entirely on how you handle this first ten minutes. If you play the Kind Mum Who Lets Visitors Get Away With Murder card, you’ve had it.
Much better is to make it clear from the get-go, that in this house we have rules, and we stick by them so that we avoid killing each other before bath time. “Tommy, would you like to hang your coat with all the others please?” is one way to try this. Another way is, “Tommy, if you don’t want me to call your mum and ask her to take you home RIGHT NOW, then how about you hang up your coat? Here. Now.”
The first way is best if you can manage it.

Manners, or rather the lack of them, is a HUGE bugbear of mine. I’ve had kids sit in my house, on my chair, breathing my air while I’m offering them my food, and not once – not ONCE! – have they said either please or thank you. Not even when I subtly add these niceties after every single ‘yes’ or ‘no’ they utter, do they cotton on. They simply won’t say it.
These children get the mouldy end of the cheese and hamster droppings in their juice…

When the playing kicks off in earnest, Rule 3 comes in: establish a screen time limit. This can very tricky when Child B is used to a lot more screen time than yours. My kids have very little screen time, mainly because I think it’s important for them to learn how to invent things, use their imagination, listen to music, and, you know, actually TALK to me once in a while, rather than spend three hours a day blasting the living crap out each other’s Lego Star Wars characters.
So it depresses and frustrates me beyond measure when my child wants to build a huge fortress out of cardboard boxes and egg cartons, and his Playdate friend sits there looking glum, hands in pockets mumbling, ‘When can we watch telly?’ every two seconds.
Rule 4 is implemented here: be a bit like their mum. You don’t have to pander his every wish. Sure, he’s a guest, but his wish is to draw dinosaurs all over your walls in crayon – you going to say yes to that as well? No, because you’re not certifiable, so you allow some things and don’t allow others, just as his mum or dad would. Kids don’t mind this too much. They understand. They just call you Mrs Shitpig behind your back. It’s all healthy…

When it’s time to go home, follow this Golden Rule: get all of the coats, shoes etc ready early, give a five-minute warning that it’s almost time to go home, and when the time comes and Child B is screaming on the floor saying he doesn’t want to go, make a subtle exit and let his mum deal with it. This is one time when you can be of no use at all. Your work here is done.
Just as soon as you’ve put all the toys away and cleared up after tea or course…have fun.

Playdate nightmares:
Mute child. Says absolutely nothing despite your best efforts at coaxing out what she’d like to do/eat/play. Best to just let your own child get on and play whatever she likes. And maybe next time take the Hannibal Lecter mask off too…
Fussy eater. Unless there’s an allergy you need to be aware of, fussy eaters are right up there with mosquitoes in the night and dandruff. They cannot be tolerated. If your Playdate guest doesn’t like pasta, or rice, or pizza, or tomatoes, or peas, or cheese, or bread…explain that she’s just going to have to be hungry then, because that’s all we’ve got. Tough. This isn’t the Ivy, you know, darling.
Attention deficit child. Good luck. If your child’s friend cannot concentrate on any game for more than 2 minutes, suggest he finds a new friend.
Bored child. Some kids cannot find anything they like to do. Put them to task vacuuming the entire house and folding away the laundry. That ought to work…

A day of demanding editors, chapters 1 and 2 of new novel (Yes, oh YES!!! You MAY drink champagne to celebrate. It’s allowed…) and impossible requests:

Demanding editor writes email to say “Liz – where is copy??” to which I repy “Where is deadline?? I never got one.” It’s easier to write to deadline if you’re actually given one.
Piece for magazine will have to be written tomorrow. I’m outta time.

Then comes the impossible request: receive email from publicist to say that Grazia magazine would like to feature me and my daugher in a piece they’re running. Could they photograph us together.
Yes. When?
Monday.
Hmmmm. This is Monday. You mean next Monday?
No, this Monday.
So, that’d be today then. Yes?
Yes. Can you do?
Well, it’s 3pm, and I live almost a hundred miles from London. And my daughter is at school. I’m thinking… ‘tricky’. But I can do it. Of course. (No is not a word I use often enough when asked to do things. Am trying to improve on this…)

I suddenly realise that Grazia already have fabulous pics of me and said daughter, and suggest they might use those.
However, as this would be extremely sensible, I’m sure it won’t happen. Life doesn’t work that way.

I’ll let you know ; -)

UPDATE: Ha! It gets better: 4.30-pm. Getting a little stressed now. Make 5 calls to publicity department, and get 5 voice mails. Am leaving a message when I get a call from my publicist. She hasn’t heard back from Grazia, but they’d like me evening or early morning. I say could she call me the second she hears, as tomorrow morning is quite close now.
Tomorrow?
Yes. You said they’d like me there today. So I’m guessing if not today, then tomorrow morning.
Pause.
Oh no! It’s not today. It’s next Monday. Or maybe it’s Tuesday hold on….here’s the email……ah yes. Next Tuesday.

And the unnecessry panic is over. It’s a depressing thought that all over the world, communication (or rather miscommunication) just like this is going on right this very minute.
 Don’t you just love it when people actually read their emails….?! ; -)

Yesterday brings a classic pre-pubescent child/tired mother moment. If you’ve never had a conversation like this with your 11-year-old, then I’d like to know what you’re putting in her cornflakes.

Here goes: I get home from a run after a brain-crushingly long day at the computer, to find my daughter baking muffins in the kitchen with a friend. I’ve been looking forward to seeing her all day, and skip into the kitchen with a jolly smile, saying “Hey! How are you? How was your day at school?!”

The answer to that questions is apparently not “Fine thanks. Mind if I trash your kitchen?” but, “Mum, I HAVE to go to the party shop NOW to get an American Indian costume for Children in Need. It’s TOMORROW!!”

OK. Rewind a little. I thought we were baking muffins…and saying hello to one another like humans do. And anyway – haven’t we known about Children in Need for, like, a year? Why the panic the evening before?
I put all of this to my flour-covered child, and get:
“Mu–um! I’ve been busy and I forgot, OK? And I told everyone I’m going as an American Indian, so I have to buy a costume. NOW!”
“Well what did you tell everyone that for? You know we don’t buy costumes, and never have done. We give the money we would have spent on the costume to children. Who are In Need. That’s kind of the point – not dressing up in a £10 feathered head-dress and watching telly all night. Mind the FLOUR!”
“But GOD Mum, EVERYONE else is buying a costume. I HAVE to get one.” Stamps foot. (This is a bad move.)
“Don’t say God. And who is everyone?”
“EVERY-ONE!”
“OK. And did Everyone leave it until 5pm the night before to think about sorting out their costume? Claire – do you have a costume?”
“Ummmmm, not sure.”
“There, see? Claire doesn’t have one either. How about you both go as witches – you still have your Halloween stuff.”
“Witches??! No WAY. We’re not BABIES. We’re going as American Indians. Aren’t we Claire?”
“Ummm, yeah.”
I take a deep breath. I do not want a fight, especially as Monosyllabic Friend is here, I’m tired and I want to have a nice evening with my family. I try realism:
“Sweetie, it’s 5 o’clock. You are covered in flour. My kitchen is covered in flour. I see you have gone to the Co-op to buy half the world’s supply of flour and caster sugar, 90% of which you seem not to need and which cost me…let’s see this receipt now…ooooh look, almost a tenner, and now you are asking me to go to a party shop and buy you a costume which you will wear ONCE….”
“I won’t! I’ll….”
“Hang on. I’m not finished…when I SHOULD be going to collect your brother and sister from afterschool activities, and then make dinner and then clean up this baking goods explosion, and then decorate fifty muffins to look like Pudsey Bear. I’ll spare you the details of the stressful day I’ve just had at work for 7 hours, but in general did I get that right?”
There’s a pause.
“Yes but….”
“Did I get that right?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
More flour is wafted across the kitchen island as I pick up my 23 pence change, move three bags of sugar into a cupboard and turn the oven down from a frazzling 220 degrees to a more muffin-friendly 180. I think we can safely say I’ve won that argument.
And then it comes.
“But pleeaaase Mum I really NEED that costume!!”

The costume was, of course, not bought, the muffins were decorated to look like Pudsey Bear – we completed this task as Big Ben chimed 10pm – and my daughter went to school this morning looking ecstatic, dressed head to toe in blue, which is the colour of the anti-bullying campaign running this week. If I’d bought her five costumes from the party shop she couldn’t have looked happier. I watched her and her friends giggling and skipping to school, with not a shop-bought costume between the five of them.

If THAT wasn’t an argument we could have avoided, I don’t know what is.
All I do know is that I’ll be having another twenty of them before the weekend is out.

Ahhhhhh, hormones. Don’t you just LOVE them??!

Liz Fraser, 19th November 2009

I often get the following reaction when people who have read about me in the press meet me for the first time: “Wow, you’re not at all how I expected you to be. You’re….really nice, and normal.”

            I am powerless not to immediately snog people who say this to me on the mouth – but not with tongues…there’s too much swine flu about. Because living with the name Yummy Mummy over your head is a bit like having ‘World’s Smuggest Prat’ tattooed across your Botoxed forehead, and when people ‘get’ me – the real me  - it’s a small champagne moment I like to acknowledge.

            Because I’m not. A Yummy Mummy, that is. At least, not in the Chelsea tractor/au pair/Jimmy Choos/home-made butternut squash gloop/more money than you can shake a Bugaboo at. Nope. I’m just a mum doing her best to raise her kids, and who doesn’t look like shit. And that’s quite yummy enough for me.

            Today is a good example of non-yummy mumminess. I’m not making any of this up – and I have witnesses…

            I take my kids to school this morning, on our bikes – me with a cello on my back, and 2 lunchboxes and a book bag in my basket – and then walk the entire length of the playground and back to drop my kids off at their classrooms, before cycling home again. When I get in I walk past a mirror in the hall.

Something looks weird. Where is my skirt?
Aha – there it is…tucked neatly into my pants at the side. Nice. Thanks for pointing it out, guys.

            After a morning’s productive writing, I have a meeting in town at a café called Le Gros Franck, with a very exciting person I’m hoping to work with. (I could tell you her name but I’d have to shoot you, so let’s just say she’s exciting, I could work well with her and the feeling was, I think, mutual.) The meeting goes well, until, in a mad moment of low sugar, I try to eat the small chocolate that comes with my coffee.

Please don’t ever try to do this in a meeting.

Here’s why: as it rests against a hot cup of coffee or similar, chocolate melts and what was a square of mouth-watering delight turns into a social catastrophe waiting to happen. And thus it is that, on unwrapping the little bastard, I get chocolate all over my fingers. There is now only one option open to me, unless I want to sit here with one hand peculiarly under the table for the rest of the meeting: I have to lick chocolate off all of my fingers without looking either a) like a weaning toddler or b) highly sexually suggestive. This is no mean feat but, by some miracle, I think I get away with it and I’m not arrested. We say our goodbyes, agree to sow seeds and get balls rolling and take over the world by Easter. I return to my bike.

            This is when I realise that my lock has jammed. Like, completely. After several minutes of squatting by the roadside and being whistled at by passing workmen (which is of course very pleasant because it means someone still finds me attractive, even if that someone finds anything that moves attractive) I give up, and go back into Le Gros Franck. I ask for some oil, please, because my lock is stuck.

            The Polish waitress looks blank, and goes to ask chef. Chef comes out. Chef is very gros indeed. Maybe this is Franck. He looks at me suspiciously, and we have the following glorious International communication moment:

F: Virgin?
Liz: No, no, I have three children. 
F: Zee Oeeel.
Liz: Oh, the oil. Yes…. virgin….fine. Or not virgin. I just need some lubricant, really, for my lock.

I shouldn‘t have said ‘lubricant’, or ‘lock’ because now Franck looks very hot under the collar indeed. He retreats with great panache into la cuisine, and comes back with a small cup full of light green liquid.
“‘eer you are. Eeez extra virgin.”

            The word ‘extra’ is hissed, like a spell is being put on me.

The oil works a treat, the lock pings open, hitting me in the eye, and I return the cup thanking Franck very much for his help. He never once takes his eyes off me, staring at this bike-lock jamming whore of a woman with three children who asks chefs for lubricant and wastes perfectly good olive oil on her bicycle lock. Ca alors!

            Returning home, I hang out the washing and get back to my writing. As I sit down, I notice I have copious quantities of melted chocolate smeared across my crotch.

            Poor Franck. No wonder he looked so suspicious of my intentions with his oeeel.

            And I’m suspicious that I am not at all a yummy mummy in any way at all. But I’m happy, yummy or not. And hey, tomorrow there’s every chance I won’t make an idiot of myself. It’s not a big chance, but it’s one I’m clinging to. If I avoid people, and talking, and lubricants, I think I stand a good one.