Morning dew

Em and I take the dogs for a walk. How quickly one becomes a townie! I have in my immaculately hoovered car boot (on account of the recent Spanish ant infestación rather than a newfound rigour re neatness or indeed cleanliness): flipflops, cute little suede espadrilly things acquired from the new (to me) TK Maxx in Brixton, and 'waterproof' trainers which have never been remotely waterproof.

The thing is, in London, we don't have dew! At least, not at the hour I dogwalk. In any case, in London we have tarmacced paths through our grass. Within three minutes, my 'waterproof' trainers are drenched. I squelch through the meadows, avoiding cowpats, feeling wrong-footed and alien. How on earth did I do this for two whole years?  

Homeless and hotbedding

Homeless! Well, not exactly homeless per se, since we are looking after Sophia and Vincent's house in Chelsea for a year while Vincent goes through his midlife crisis late-onset gap year. (Yay! Thank the Lord for midlife crises gap years, otherwise we really would be on the streets.)

We are, however, country homeless. After much angst and deliberation, we finally quit our Mistlebourne shoebox. No more jam tart bake-offs for the Mistlebourne Flower Show! No more bacon butty breakfasts at the Saturday market! No more staggering back in the dark from drunken dinners at Jemima and Hugo's! No more breakneck drives down narrow lanes to reach The Manor before chapel! Which is why, having taken Lily back to school yesterday, and wishing to loiter until the weekend so I can watch her first hockey match of the season, I am hotbedding.

Last night, it was at Sal's. Tonight, it's chez Emily, Mattie Butler's mum from school. Tomorrow night, it's Franny's. (Dan, naturally, has drawn up his drawbridge and is pretending nobody's home.) It really is marvellously social being homeless!

After we've downed a couple of G&Ts, and a gammon joint and roast potatoes are sizzling in the Aga, Em goes to fetch Mattie and Flo. 'Shall I ask Lily if she'd like to come back for supper too?' she asks.

'You can try,' I say. As if my child would like to be prised away from school to see her mother!

Twenty minutes later, Em returns empty-handed. 'Look how well I did!' she remarks, removing three place settings at the table. 'Nobody wanted to come back with me. Flo said today was the best day of her life!'

We make happy/sad faces at each other. 'It's good, though, isn't it?' Em adds, smiling to mask the little catch in her voice.

Brain training

'Did you know the sea isn't really blue?' asks Lily.

I am caught up in my own world, wavering over the bin liner bound for the dump and the one bound for the charity shop, with a telescopic umbrella with two bent spokes. 'What?'

'Did you know the sea isn't really blue?'

'Yes.' I think, on balance, I did know this.

'Did you know the sky isn't really blue either?'

'Yes.'  I drop the brolly in the bin liner that's bound for the dump. Love the new Louisa-injected ruthless spirit.

'Did you know that clouds were just water vapour?'

'Yes. Totally.'

'Did you know that your hair is made up of living cells?'

'Hang on, I thought once the hairs come out of the head, they're dead.'

Lily is rooting around in the fridge. 'Did you know Saturn has more than two rings? You can only see them through the Hubble telescope thingamajiggy.'

'Hmmm.' I turn to look at her. 'Did you clean your teeth?'

Packing trauma

I can't do it. I'm wandering around the house in a daze, staring at the teetering stacks of clothes and boots and books and papers and magazines and cards and pompoms and borrowed DVDs and board games and miscellaneous knick-knackery, and I don't know where to start. I'm suffering from a severe bout of packing trauma. 

I can't ask any of my friends to help, because a) they've had enough of my indecision and are probably envisaging having to help me unpack it all again in a couple of days, and b) they're also beset by menopausal inertia and lack of energy.  

Aha. A light bulb is flickering in the back of my mind. Louisa. An old pal from my early London days. When I last saw her, she said something about actively liking cleaning. When I looked suitably aghast, she said, 'I adore putting on my rubber gloves and making somewhere disgusting look gorgeous!' Yes! I call Louisa. 

'Help!' I cry. 'I've just had two days free with Lily at holiday camp, and I've done absolutely nothing. I'm moving to London next week, and I keep walking from room to room and feeling filled with dismay. I don't know what to do.' 

She instantly takes charge. 'Right, Eliza. First of all you need to weed out what you don't want before you pack. Do you know where your local dump is?'

'No,' I whimper.

'Well find out. Go through your things and make a pile for the dump.'

I can't even answer, so frozen with horror am I.

'Eliza?'

'But... but...'

'You've got to be ruthless. You don't want to carry your whole life around on your shoulders. Get rid of what you don't need. You'll feel so much lighter.'

Within minutes she's given me a plan of action for the day: 

1. take Lily's mountain of soft toys to the children's corner in the church

2. put anything I haven't worn for a year in bin liners and take them to a charity shop

3. locate the dump and pick up some boxes and packing tape

4. recycle my magazines

'But I haven't even read half of them,' I wail. 'All those National Geographics. I can't bear the waste.'

'We had the same problem! The house was being overrun with National Geographics! I made Mark cancel his subscription. It's all online nowadays. You'll feel so much better once you've got rid of them.'

'I can't!' I cry. 'All that work... the photographs... I can't just chuck them. Maybe I could take them to the doctor's...'

'No,' she says. 'They won't accept them because of the germs with all those people fingering them. Bag them up and take them to the dump.'

She gives me instructions for the weekend and says she'll come and help me pack on Monday. I almost weep with gratitude. The blessed relief of having someone make decisions for me.

Should I stay or should I go now?

Having spent the past year wondering whether to go back to live in London or stay in the country, today I finally make my decision, once and for all: I'm going.

Immediately there's a barrage of opposition.

'I think London is one of the loneliest places in the world,' says Lily's saxophone teacher. 'There's such a wonderful community here. Think how many friends you've made already. You just need to get more involved, volunteer at the market once a week...'

As Jemima and I watch Dolly and Cinder romping on the lawn, I remark that Dusty didn't really have any friends in London, whereas Dolly has zillions down here. 'Another reason not to go!' Jemima declares.

The heat is humming, the barley's turned strawberry blonde, everyone's out watering their gardens and inviting the neighbours in for homemade elderflower cordial. Oh it's all so cordial, I feel wretched and mad to leave.

Maybe I should stay. 

Baking dogs

The Hound for Heroine training is not going well. How on earth do you train a dog to tell the difference between your reading glasses and your driving glasses anyway? Plus she's even more clueless than Lily when it comes to baking.

I give Dolly a break and head off to yoga (surely normal human beings are not designed to stand on one leg, bent double, with the other leg sticking out behind and an arm sticking out in front?), omitting to bolt her into her cage. I return to moderate carnage. How did she manage to wrestle the edging shears out from behind the box of walking boots? She hasn't actually amputated any important bodily parts, but the rubber hand grip is in tatters (and indeed, partly in her stomach). The contents of the bathroom bin have been scattered around the room and, sporting a half-moustache of cotton wool, Dolly is making inroads into my computer lead.

Bad hound.

Oh, did you say heat the jam tarts?

The dog starts baking every time the doorbell rings 

50 Shades of Gray

You see, if I'd just called my blog 50 Shades of Gray, I could be a millionaire by now. Instead, I called it 50 is the New Black and am penniless. Also have not included much in way of soft porn or indeed hard porn. Will make some effort to rectify this, though did not feel edified when I was looking for a job as a school matron and accidentally ended up on a spanking website entitled overthedesk.com.

Hound for a Heroine

Dolly is puffed up with pride. Her brother Bunker has been chosen to be in a squadron of just 5 puppies to be trained as a Hound for Heroes. Apparently they scour the length and breadth of the UK looking for the perfect puppies, and out of some 140 labradors, Bunker, yes Bunker, was chosen.

Sigh.

Hounds for Heroes can apparently do remarkable things, such as posting letters, collecting bus tickets (not sure if they can swipe Oyster cards), supermarket shopping, getting your cash at the ATM and doing the washing (again, not sure if they can hang it on the line). So far Dolly has only mastered shredding papers, collecting shoes and trailing Lily's tights around the garden, but she is willing to learn. The training is pretty labour-intensive for over a year, but as of ... let's say tomorrow, Dolly is going into training with her handler, Eliza Gray, to become a Hound for a Heroine.

Dolly is willing!

Brownie points

Lily and schoolfriend decide to do some baking while I'm out this afternoon. When I get back, the kitchen is spotless and they're watching Mamma Mia.

'There's a surprise over there for you,' says Lily, not looking up from the screen.

I search the kitchen and find in the warming oven of the Rayburn a large baking tray of chocolate brownies (or, strictly speaking, chocolate brownie, as it has not yet been cut into pieces). I take it out and scrutinise it for flaws. There don't seem to be any. I am surprised, however, that the mixture has filled the entire tray.

'Which recipe did you use?' I enquire.

'Nana's usual one,' says Lily.

'Because there isn't usually enough mix to fill a tray this size. Did you increase the amounts?'

'No.'

I cut up the brownies and when they're cooler, try and transfer them to a rack. They collapse. I squeeze some of the mixture that's stuck to the pan into a ball and pop it in my mouth. Mmmm. Delicious. Incredibly rich and gunky. Much richer and darker than our usual recipe. I am puzzled but let it go, not least because Colin Firth is singing Our Last Summer.

Later, we're having sausages and baked potatoes. I ask Lily to get the butter.

'There isn't any.'

'There's some in the freezer.'

She does her 'Oops, guilty' face. 'We used it all.'

'But there was a whole new pack.'

'I know,' she says sheepishly. 'We used the whole thing and the one in the fridge.'

'But the recipe only needs half a pack,' I say, getting up to go and check. I pull out the bulging recipe folder from the cupboard. Yes, here we are. On a much-stained handwritten sheet torn from a notebook is the list of ingredients.

4oz butter
2oz unsweetened chocolate
2 eggs
5oz sugar
2oz plain flour
1 teasp baking powder
1/4 teasp salt

'There,' says Lily, pointing to the butter. '402.'

The girls have diligently weighed out 402g butter, 202g chocolate (creatively topping up the dark chocolate with cocoa powder and a good splash of milk to give it a melted chocolate consistency), 502g sugar and 202g plain flour.

Delicious, though. Must try same conversion technique for future recipes.

Bin there

I empty the bathroom bin, then try to put the bin in the new liner instead of the new liner in the bin. This is what it has come to.