Mother's Day special

06:42

What is Lily doing downstairs? All this clunking and clattering going on. I'm trying to sleep!

06:54

The latch to my bedroom door is lifting. Is she ill? I blink and raise my head to see over the duvet. She enters, brandishing a plate with a boiled egg and a toasted English muffin slathered in Marmite. Bloody Mother's Day!

'Darling, do you know what time it is?'

'No!' she grins.

'Why didn't you look at your watch? It's really early. It's very kind of you, but I really don't want breakfast now. You have it.'

'OK!' she says cheerily and goes out again.

Serve me right for asking her last night if she remembered what day it was tomorrow, and telling her how some daughters made their mothers cards and breakfast in bed.

CO calamity

Oh my God.


On carbon monoxide poisoning:


Although you may make an apparent full recovery, it could take several years for the damage to show up, by which time the CO incident has been forgotten and the damage attributed to something else. In severe cases, it is even worse than this. Recent medical research has shown that the uptake of carbon monoxide in the membranes of our brain causes these membranes to break down releasing further poisonous and dangerous chemicals, leading to long term brain damage. A few cases have been recorded, where victims of CO poisoning have apparently made a complete recovery, only to be admitted to hospital a few days later, with Parkinson's like disease. Only very recently have these problems been linked to CO poisoning. Longer term, victims can suffer cognitive and learning difficulties. Again, the past these were attributed to growing older and other medical conditions, but now it is known to be caused by the long term effects of CO poisoning.

The lifespan of a person who has had a carbon monoxide incident can be severely shortened. 


So much for the 24 hours. Thank God Lily's been boarding so much. All that healthy eating, all for nought. Body is now saturated with killer chemicals. Well, this settles it. Must emigrate to a country where heating not needed. 


Though this is probably a country where all the cars pump out CO. Doomed!

Death to the Pink Frog!

Awake at 5.30am! Zingy bright-eyed, perky, ready for action! Stay in bed, naturally, for another 45 minutes, but ... up at 6.15am! Yoga, hairwash, shoeshine, all sorts of activities ensue and then the joy of cooking an omelette in an instant on the camping gas stove, instead of waiting 20 minutes for the Rayburn to crank up.

Joy to the world!

Death to the Pink Frog!

Rayburn revelation!

A day to rejoice, in a slightly skewed fashion. My Rayburn has been making funny noises and throwing out pungent oily metallic fumes for some time now, but I've been ignoring it until Lily's saxophone teacher dropped by yesterday and expressed horror and consternation. So I have with me now the very charming local Rayburn man, who agrees that yes, there is a nasty smell emanating from the oven.

'At least if I can smell it, it's not carbon monoxide,' I say cheerily.

'Oh no,' he says, 'it will contain carbon monoxide. Do you feel dizzy? Headaches?'

'Brain fog!' I cry. 'Alzheimery symptoms? Like not being able to find the right words or remember things?'

'Oh yes,' he says, 'all that. It clouds the judgment and general thought processes...'

'Hooray!' I shout. 'I thought it was the menopause! Or Alzheimer's!'

'...which is why I have to condemn it,' he says.

I have been pumping my head with the silent killer! I don't care if I freeze and can't cook. Within 24 hours - the time it takes, apparently, for CO to work through your system - my brain will be crystal clear, my thought processes sharp as a box of tacks.

Although I can't say I've noticed much sharpening of my brain when I go away for more than 24 hours. Hmmm.

Think pink

Oh God!

Am googling Pink Fog and it's not the sort of fog we menopausal mothers are lost in at all! Esme's mother is the one in a Pink Fog league of her own! Unless she's not Esme's mother. Unless she's Esme's father, dressing as Esme's mother? Because, according to a cross-dressing forum:

Pink fog is the overwhelming urge to do something for your femme side. Example: You go out to get a pair of workboots and along the way you see a nice scarf that you have to have and then a cute skirt, etc. You finally get home with 12 femme items and no boots and maybe no money...

I knew it was an incongruous name.

The Pink Frog

'It's called the Pink Frog,' says Esme's mother.

We are in our daughters' dorm, trying to locate lost hockey socks and school fleeces in other girls' drawers, under the bed, etc, while simultaneously exchanging the usual stories of frustration at our ailing memories and faculties.

Slow, heavy footsteps on the stairs. Mattie's mother staggers into the dorm and, breathing heavily, flops on the nearest bed. 'Urhhh,' she groans. 'That was embarrassing. I just asked Saskia's mother if she'd tended any casualties lately. She looked at me as if I was a mad woman. I thought she was the new nurse. They both look like lambs with their crimpy hair.'

'The Pink Frog strikes again,' I say knowingly.

'Pink Fog!' laughs Esme's mother.

I thought it was an incongruous name. I'm in a Pink Fog league of my own.

Poor old Digger

Dan's dog Digger has come to stay. He's rather a charming old boy, with white chops and white rings around his eyes. If Digger were a man, he'd be about 6 ft 5, slightly stooped, a bit arthriticky around the knees, with a shaggy-eyebrowed Patrick Moore quality about him. As it is, he's a dog. He goes straight over to the carpet, buries his nose deep into the shagpile to get a good whiff of what must be the beguiling equivalent of Chanel No 5 (eau de Cinder, Hugo and Jemima's sleek young labrador), squats unmanfully over it and wees.

'Oh God!' says Dan. 'Digger! OUT! Sorry, Lize,' he shrugs helplessly. 'I can safely say he's never done that before.' They always say that, of course, like the owners of all those Staffies that used to attack Dusty in London. 'Never done that before!' they'd say.

Dan clearly doesn't trust me. He's bagged up the food in four individual daily pouches. Poor Digger is absolutely starving. His ribs protrude from his worn old coat. He only gets fed once a day, hence the instruction to give him his breakfast in two halves, lest he scoff it so quickly that he's sick. I dutifully follow orders. Digger inhales the first half in about 3 seconds flat, gagging as he goes. I wait a few minutes for him to compose himself, then give him his seconds, which he hoovers up in one. I send him out and, as predicted by Dan, a poo immediately pops out. Then he paces up and down groaning, throws up half his food, studies it for a moment and then eats it up.

Digger comes with an instruction manual and glossary. Dan was clearly traumatised as a young boy when we let him believe that the bath plug was called a 'plugout'. I think he was about 12 before he realised the truth. Now he's meting out his revenge on his poor dog.

Bastard! - basket!
Paid for! - you may now eat
Piddle! - self-evident
Dump! - self-evident
Bark! - self-evident
Safe! - stop barking
Goodnight - to be said several times in different intonations when retiring for the night
See you later - to be said cheerily when you go out and leave him

'What about when you want to stop him eating poo?' I ask, since poo-eating (not his own, but cow's, horse's, fox's, that kind of thing) is apparently one of his foibles.

'Kick him,' says Dan.

'Can I give him any treats?'

Dan frowns. 'He's doesn't have human food, if that's what you mean.'

'Dog biscuits?'

'He can have one at bedtime.'

'Can he have a chew?'

Dan inspects my bag of panatella-sized hide chews and hesitates for a moment before conceding. 'He can have a chew.'

Poor Digger. This will be a loving respite home for him.

Half-term industry

'Mum,' says Lily. 'I woke up at 6.30 today.'

'Really?' Since we were up till past midnight playing Scrabble, this is incredible news. 'Did you get up then?'

'No. I just stayed in bed till 7.30.'

'Reading?'

'Thinking and reading and doing nothing - multitasking, basically.'

Strict Connecticut

I've been getting comments from members of Lily's contacts list about her emails, which go something like this:

Hi, how r u? 
Love Lily x


To add insult to injury, these communiques are not even personalised; they are sent out to one and all, with the addresses on display in the 'To' line. Uncle Dan, Club Penguin, Godmother Franny, Godmother Rose and random friends. (Her mother is never included.)

In the car, going home for half-term, after hearing about the pop lacrosse near-triumph (they lost 9-15, but Lily always sees the positive side) and a few funny dorm stories (their matron says there's an invisible Wall of Smell between one half of the dorm and the other - I'm pleased to discover Lily is on the Side of Sweet Perfume and not Stench), I broach the email question.

'Now, darling, have you heard of netiquette?'

She looks blank.

'Have you heard of etiquette?'

'Nope. But I've heard of Connecticut. It's in Madagascar.'

'What?'

'In the film, it's where Marty wants to get back to.'

'Ah.'

There's a silence while I consider whether it's worth tackling the importance of the bcc at this juncture. I decide that, as ever, I would only be wasting my breath.

'Do you remember I told you Mattie has a pet scorpion called Fluffy?' asks Lily. 'It just died and they had it...'

'...cremated,' I offer.

'Nowuh!  What do you call it when you keep it and have it...'

'...stuffed.'

'Nowuh! when you put stuff on it and it keeps it for ever.'

'Pickled.'

'Nooooo! It begins with muh... muh....'

'Mummified.'

'Nowuh! Varnished. That's what they did. They varnished it and put it in a translucent box with foam on the bottom and foam on the top, to cover Fluffy.'

Daisy and Confucius

Lily and I are driving on a dual carriageway. A big overhead sign looms. DON'T PANIC WHILE DRIVING. Oh God! Should I be panicking? Is there something up ahead to panic about? Then I think of Franny - she often panics while driving and has to stop. What a nice, supportive, public service message, I think. Then we get closer and I see the message afresh. DON'T PHONE WHILE DRIVING.

We are listening to Classic FM. The bloke is going on about Delius and if there were one piece he would play that captures the wonderment of Delius, it would be On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring.

'That's good to remember,' I say to Lily. 'On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring. And who was it by...?'

'Delia Smith.'