My new perfume? Yes, it's eau de cat pee...

I have just been out with Glamorous Friend and her chubby little godson for a coffee and a toasted fruit teacake at the local garden centre. We had a lovely time catching up and playing with baby H and all was rosy. As usual, Glamorous Friend was looking good - eye make-up and accessories matching subtly with her pretty summer top. She looked good. I looked alright, it was just a bit upsetting that I had pink arms from wrist to mid-forearm where I'd accidentally caught the sun on my gothically pale skin yesterday. I'd been painting the shed and got carried away, forgetting that I should be wearing Factor 4000 and hiding under a parasol...

Two front teeth...

Five year old O's top two front teeth are super wobbly. He's already lost two from the bottom, but these were quickly replaced by the new teeth and you really can't tell they've gone. I am in premature mourning for the top two teeth - they seem to represent the difference between his babyhood and him growing into a big boy. I don't feel ready to say goodbye to my boy's baby face just yet.

Introducing Sno Hey Noods Fansant Hey... The Gallery

Or to give her full title, Sno Hey Noods Fansant Hey Meanchod Sackad Hey. She is a cuddly polar bear and was once called Snowy and once had pure white fluffy fur. Now she is grey and ruffled and has the most bizarre name ever given to a bear...

Motherhood - The Gallery

This week, I didn't think I was going to do The Gallery - I'm doing this so late, I'm almost wondering why I'm posting. The theme is Motherhood - emotive, precious and guaranteed to whirl up a maelstrom of emotions. I looked through the photo archives - there are so many photographs of my boy, but not so many of my boy and me. I remember sobbing on Friend from Way Back's shoulder a few years ago as I lamented the lack of photographs of me and O in his babyhood. I was too tired, too fraught, too caught in the headlights to want to be in photographs when he was tiny. And now I wish I'd just said 'sod it' and poked my weary face into the pictures a little more.

F******* toads and light to medium flow - the perils of phonic reading...

I am an insatiable reader and always have been. I was the kind of child who was always being urged to 'go out and play, it's a nice day'. All I wanted was to sit in my room and read about Darrell and her adventures in Mallory Towers, or hide away up in the bower with Katy and the rest of the Carr children and drink weak vinegar-and-water. I lived for Thursdays when my Mandy and Judy and Tracy comics would be delivered by the paperboy.