I was pretty surprised on the morning that in spite of waking up far too early I was relatively calm, not over-thinking what I would say too much and not desperately trying to think up an excuse to not go and do it. I was even more surprised that my taxi turned up on time (in fact he was early) and that I was relaxed and unrushed when I got to the station to catch my train into London. I even managed to concentrate on my book on the train, and of course my phone which was necessary to cover all social networking bases…I can’t possibly do anything without broadcasting it to anyone that will listen. The fact that most of the time no one at all is listening doesn’t stop me either. The Victoria line was suspended for the weekend (I hadn’t thought to check) so I decided to walk the 20 minutes to Broadcasting House rather than fanny about on the tube and I was glad I did, it was a cold, crisp morning and early enough to be devoid of shoppers. And muggers, thankfully. Even with the walking I was still horribly early, arriving a good half hour before everyone else and I sat waiting, deliberately avoiding the tea and coffee that had been provided for us (my bladder is pathetic), half listening to the Today Programme but unable to take any of it in and wondering to myself exactly what I’d let myself in for. Eventually the others arrived, we made polite conversation, met Rev Coles, former Communard, great wit, MK fan and indeed presenter of the show and filed through to the studio. Gulp. I told Sir Alan that no. 2 son had done Bugsy Malone as his last school play and it turns out it’s a very popular choice in schools. Given that he probably hears such things all the time he was incredibly polite and I must say I thought he was lovely. Unless you count the one in HMP Downview’s media house I’d never been in a radio studio before and I found it was a little scary, there were several microphones around a table, soundproofing on the walls the like of which I’d not seen before and, inexplicably, there was a cooker in the corner. Through a large window a number of people were sitting in front of a console containing many buttons just LOOKING at us. I fought the urge to wave. We could hear the end of the Today Programme and I couldn’t take my eyes off the clock, suddenly I really was terrified and there was no escape. We talked amongst ourselves while I assume they checked we could all be heard and I said little and probably looked quite sick. And then it began, not with me thank goodness and I listened carefully while Alan Parker was interviewed (did I mention that I love him?) and thinking how conversational it all was and how flipping interesting. Richard Coles never seemed to be looking at a script or list of questions and frankly I was a little awed by it all. Genuine awe, you understand, not modern “that’s awesome” rubbish. But with every second that ticked by, and every question and answer it was getting closer to my turn. Erk.

If you were to ask me now what I was asked, how I answered, what I was thinking, how long it went on for, anything, I couldn’t tell you. I haven’t listened it back and I don’t really want to but I’m pretty sure I didn’t make a giant tit of myself and that’s all that matters. I know I was careful about how I put things, was extremely careful about how I talked about the actions of my ex-partner and I know that in doing so I made myself look like a far worse person than I am. Or so it would appear from the initial response to my appearance. The Daily Mail readers were out in force and of course their knee jerk responses are always the first to be given. How dare the BBC give airtime to a woman that admits she committed a terrible crime? Well, yes she does, but did you notice how she didn’t really talk about the circumstances? She couldn’t because she doesn’t want to incur the wrath of her former partner, not when he holds all the power when it comes to seeing her children. Sad but true. It was all over so quickly that I feel I didn’t say enough to get my true message across: this could have happened to anyone. But at the same time it could have NOT happened to me. I felt threatened, I genuinely thought I was going to die and I overreacted. Does that mean I should spend the rest of my life languishing at Her Majesty’s pleasure? Well, I don’t think so. I don’t think I am a bad person, a stupid person, yes, but not bad. I admit that I drive over the speed limit on the motorway regularly and when I was under 18 I drank alcohol in pubs. I have never shoplifted, never used or sold illegal substances, never mugged anyone or burgled them, never imported drugs from abroad and never murdered anyone in cold blood (other crimes are available). I paid my debt to society, I lost my liberty, I lost forever my ability to be a normal mother to my sons. But I took it on the chin, accepted the things I could not change and bloody well made the most of them. I did whatever I could in prison to fill my time and to enrich my life. I got fit, I read books, did courses that interested me, I was respectful (but very cheeky) to the officers I encountered and I earned all the privileges a model prisoner could. I kept in touch with my children, my family and my friends, I didn’t let it ruin my life and hopefully it didn’t ruin any of theirs.

But this is only half of my message. The other half is about prison in general. Because of my experience I will always have an interest in prisons and how custodial sentences are used to punish and rehabilitate. At the moment I think the system is failing very badly in what it is meant to ultimately achieve. Yes, a prison sentence is designed to remove people from society for the protection of the public and at that it is of course very effective but not enough is done to rehabilitate offenders, to address their offending behaviour, to make peace with their victims with restorative justice where appropriate or to help them prepare for life back in society. Levels of illiteracy are high but basic education is not compulsory, and neither is there any incentive to pursue it. How can anyone, in particular a prisoner, have any hope of getting and keeping a job upon release if they haven’t learnt the basic skills a lot of us take for granted? How can they get a place to live if they don’t have a job? How can they avoid crime if they have no home or no job? And so it goes on. Re-offending rates are so high it defies belief that so little is being done about it. Or at least that’s the way it appears. In truth there are a number of organisations out there helping ex-offenders learn new skills, giving them a chance where other people wouldn’t. Job loyalty amongst ex-offenders is much higher than amongst the general population so for the most part return on such investment is good. So why aren’t they shouting about it? The problem is that the Daily Mail readers are so vocal with their ill-informed opinions that while all this good work is being done no one really wants to own up to it so it carries on under the radar. Let us not forget the National Offender Management Service who employed me after my release to write and edit an e-bulletin about the seven pathways to reduce re-offending (of which employment is one) and who, in a fit of fear, decided to pull the plug on the project leaving me very suddenly without a job. A job that I relied on to pay the rent on my home (another pathway), maintain ties with my family (another)…etc. Ironic, no? Being so risk averse is no help to anyone and it genuinely angers me that this is the norm when what should be happening is the education of the masses. Without the help of the masses we can’t reduce re-offending, we need schemes in the community to help ex-offenders turn away from crime and earn their place in society. This work starts in prison but it shouldn’t end there. Instead of condemning “criminals” we should be helping them choose another path. Don’t forget that a prison sentence is a far greater burden on the taxpayer than community based alternatives and the cost of putting re-offenders back inside is in the billions. I’m not saying that all prisoners can be rehabilitated but it’s not as black and white as many people think. Given that prisons are fit to burst and reoffending rates are at 67% it doesn’t look like the current system is working, and there has to be another way.

This afternoon I was listening to Julia Hartley-Brewer’s programme on LBC where they were discussing “what prison is for”. There were one or two fairly balanced calls from listeners and then a former police officer called in saying that prison is too easy and that if he had his way they’d bring back the birch. He was disgusted that prisoners had televisions. He wanted prison to be about punishment and nothing else. Is the loss of liberty not enough? It surely was for me. Another caller said he’d spent a week in Wandsworth and described it as being “like a five star hotel”. I beg to differ! I was so incensed I felt compelled to call in and put the record straight. Amazingly I got on and got the last word. Prison was NOT a holiday camp and neither is it the easy option. It is and should be about rehabilitation. I seem to have developed a bit of a taste for this radio lark, watch out Daily mail readers!

If you would like to hear the Saturday live interview you can find it here.

Hope Springs
Porridge Part 1
Porridge Part 2
Porridge Part 3
Porridge Part 4
Porridge Part 5
Porridge Part 6
Porridge Part 7
Porridge Part 8
Porridge Part 9
Porridge Part 10
Porridge Part 11
Porridge Part 12

With every telethon, be it CiN, Comic Relief or Sport Relief there is inevitably a charidee single. These seem to fall into 2 very distinct categories: the comedy charidee single and the worthy charidee single. Let me give you an example, in 1986 Cliff Richard and the Young Ones did a rendition of “Living Doll” for Comic Relief (I can’t believe it’s that old). I love that song (not the original you understand) especially when they sing “fies my soul” and when Vivian bashes Cliff on the head with a mallet at the end. As a child of about 10 I loved the silliness of it and the shoutiness of their singing. I love all of the comedy charidee singles without exception because there’s nothing I like more than people poking fun at themselves, I even loved Hale and Pace’s “The Stonk” and bought the single. Don’t tell anyone, will you? Even Children in Need has the odd good single, like the excellent children’s character one that Peter Kay did a couple of years ago but for the most part all charidee singles are utter pop based rubbish. This might not be so bad if they didn’t occasionally butcher a perfectly good song. Or use the Spice Girls, S Club 7 or the SugaBabes (not all worthy singles have been produced by bands whose name starts with S, it’s just a coincidence). Why is it though that when they choose a song to murde…I mean “cover” they choose one I like? Do they do it on purpose? Take Girls Aloud vs The SugaBabes version of “Walk this Way” classically covered by Run DMC in the 80s. It was beyond dire, and they even tried to recreate the video which was both embarrassing and not as funny as they seemed to think.

Now I know what you’re thinking, I’m being all Victor Meldrew again and maybe I am but the fact is it pains me that the vast majority of music produced these days seems to be manufactured pap and that these autotuned muppets think nothing of destroying songs written by genuinely talented artists. And now, you see, I’ve reached my point because what this is really about is my horror at the choice for this year’s Comic Relief official single. One of my all-time favourite songs, Massive Attack’s Teardrop, a beautiful, haunting song has been utterly ruined by the treatment it has received by “The Collective” a group of predominantly pasty, chubby faced 12 year olds who “rap” some new (incredibly lame) lyrics and warble (badly) the original lyrics. I really have no idea who most of them are. I read on BBC’s Newsbeat site (BBC news dumbed down to single syllables for morons) that said it was the “most credible cover yet.” Before going on to explain what credible means. Watch it here (you’ll probably need earplugs unless you’re DWTK).

I’m not against the charidee song per se but I honestly think they would be far more successful and sell far more copies if they always did something silly. I would buy a silly song every year because they make me smile, and I bet there are a lot of people out there around my age who love Teardrop as much as I do and are just as upset as me about it. I know it’s only music but the music I love has always really mattered to me because of the way I can associate it with particular points in my life. And while I know many people now associate it with the theme tune of House (at least outside of Europe) to me it reminds me of being in my early 20s seeing the video for the first time and being totally transfixed.

So I’m afraid Children in Need won’t be selling a copy of their travesty of a cover to me and, as the “brains” behind it Gary Barlow needs to have a word with himself. And to retire from music as a punishment.

My daughter is 3 and has no idea what my name is. None whatsoever. She knows what my husband’s name is, though, indeed she very naughtily calls him by his name often. “Adun!” she shouts, “Adun, where are you?” I didn’t say she pronounced it correctly. She knows the boys’ names and doesn’t confuse them like I do. She can distinguish between her grandparents, Nanny and Grandad and Grandma and Grandpa. She’s even stopped calling Hattie “Pattie”, something she did for some months and I’m still not completely convinced she wasn’t doing it deliberately, after all she could say “hat” perfectly well. But as for me, well, I’m just “Mummy”. Or “Muvver” when Joshua has been being a monkey and calling me “Mother” because he knows it annoys me.

As far as Poppy is concerned I don’t have another name because she’s never really heard it, not at home, anyway. That’s right, my husband NEVER calls me by my name. EVER. Well, not unless he really really has to, like if I’m in a different part of the house and he’s calling me to let me know I have a phone call or something. It doesn’t happen often and on those occasions Poppy’s probably wondering who on earth he’s calling to. It’s all a bit strange, not least because I’ve known Adam since I was 19 when we became very close friends and I’m pretty certain he used my name in the same way that normal people do. But since we’ve been together it’s like there’s some kind of mental blank. Whatever is wrong with him?

I have a vague recollection that when we first got together he called me Helen, the name of the girlfriend before me. He had been with her for a number of years so it’s hardly surprising but in my vague recollection I believe there may have been some merciless teasing about it. On the other hand the recollection is SO vague it may just have been a dream. But if it was real then I guess that could explain his reluctance to use my name. At least at the start.

So what does he call me? Thankfully not “woman” (think “get in the kitchen and make me some pies, woman!”). No, when we were first together I guess he didn’t call me anything. Then it evolved into “lovely girlfriend”/”gorgeous girlfriend” and variations on the theme. When we got married it changed of course to, guess what, “lovely wife” etc. I still think it’s weird but it’s even weirder when he actually says my name. I would worry that he has a whole other secret family somewhere else and keeps it simple so he never makes any mistakes except he rarely leaves the house except to go to the gym. No time for secret families. I’ve asked him why he does it and he doesn’t know, it’s just one of those things. I probably shouldn’t worry about it really until he starts calling me “horrible wife”.

It’s not the first time I’ve done something like this. I vividly remember an occasion when Josh was about the same age as Poppy (so a good 9 years ago) and was also at pre-school while Jake was at proper school. I knew what time I needed to pick both boys up but for some reason I was only thinking in terms of Jake’s pick up time, not Joshua’s, a good 10 minutes earlier. As the time of Joshua’s pick up arrived and I glanced at the clock, the horror of my stupidity struck me and I had to run all the way to pre-school, normally about a 10 minute walk. This was before I had taken up running too so you can imagine how that went. I was pretty disgusted with myself and I have to say I didn’t do it again but it made me late for Jake as well and my stress levels were off the scale.

Clearly I’m very absent minded and it probably doesn’t help that I’m not one of those “yummy mummies” (I really really really really hate that expression) you read about in the paper. You know the ones, all hands on with Tarquin and Fenella, dividing their days up with nature trails, crafting, art lessons, tennis lessons, samba band practice and all the other middle class rubbish I can’t be bothered with. Tarquin and Fenella would never be plonked in front of the TV all day long, even if some of the programmes do have some educational qualities. These mummies are all in direct competition with each other and while I can see the benefit of a lot of what they do, who really has time for all that? Life really is too short to be cleaning glitter and homemade play-doh off every available surface. We read a lot of books, play silly games and do lots of crazy dancing, is that not enough? Do I really have to feel guilty that we don’t leave the house much to follow other pursuits?

I don’t think any of my children have suffered from my more hands off approach to parenting. They all enjoy reading, even Hattie who was “reading” Peace at Last to me this morning by pointing at the pictures and talking gibberish, with the odd exclamations of “KITTY!” They all enjoy drawing, one thing I do actively encourage at home because it doesn’t make much mess if you only give them pencils. Both boys do well at school and apply themselves to it, both enjoy sports but equally they both enjoy computer games. Poppy, while a bit (a lot) of a handful at home is very well behaved at pre-school and is coming along in leaps and bounds and I’m sure now that she has the opportunity to do all the messy stuff I won’t let her do at home she appreciates the fun of it all the more. And there’s no question that all of the children appreciate my love of baking, and for the boys that has extended into them wanting to bake too.

So while I am a bit rubbish and am a fully paid up member of the Mean Mother’s Club I think I’d rather be like me than Mother of the Year.

It hardly seems possible that it was 5 years ago that we celebrated the launch of IJP in a swanky bar just off Fleet Street. The prosecco flowed a little too freely (though not to us prisoners), Adam Shaw of Working Lunch looked a little unsure as to why he was there (it was probably because Adrian Chiles wasn’t available, not that anyone had heard of him then what with it being pre-One Show days and all), and Ed Miliband thankfully didn’t mention strikes being wrong. A prison officer we didn’t even know made a bit of a tit of themselves but apart from that a high old time was had by all. I made a comic about it. I like making comics.

I hope Ed Miliband doesn’t see it (as if!).

Today a much smaller group of us gathered in a bar in Hoxton to celebrate 5 years of film making and 5 years of changing the lives of prisoners. I made a special cake to mark the occasion (it was HUGE) and amazingly we managed to easily demolish half of it.

I caught up with people I haven’t seen since I left prison, met new people that did the PA job after me and we all had a great chinwag about all aspects of how it has helped us become the people we are today, and how being a part of it changed our lives. All in all it was a flipping brilliant day

But then a couple of years ago it was my lovely Nanny’s 80th birthday. My mum very kindly volunteered me to make her cake, I’m not quite sure why and told me it needed to be big enough for about 50 people. Or was 100? Either way, a LOT of people. I was a bit concerned, Nanny makes beautiful cakes, what if my one wasn’t up to scratch? We hired a huge square tin and I made a gigantic Victoria sponge, which thankfully turned out intact and light. But it was the decorating that concerned me. I don’t remember if it was what Nanny had requested but it was decided that the cake would be covered in icing flowers in varying shades of pink. I’d never made an icing flower before but the internet showed me how to make roses, fairly simply. What the internet failed to tell me, however, was just how long they would take: flipping AGES.

But I persevered with them and that little lot there took me DAYS. I was pretty pleased with them, however. Then I had to get onto the scary business of covering it with icing, something I had proved to be rubbish with before. I had experienced similar slippage as before with the jam and buttercream filling and rolling out a giant bit of icing to go over it didn’t go well. It was too thin in places and too dry. The cake didn’t seem to be level either, there was a small dip in the middle and I didn’t have a knife big enough to cut bits off – not that it occurred to me to do that at the time anyway. All in all it looked worryingly rubbish. Luckily though I had loads of icing roses to cover all the bad bits up and I set about doing that and made a load of tiny ones to cover up the rips in the sides. I had to pipe an 80 on it too, and had never used a piping bag in my life. Stupidly (I really am dense sometimes) I made buttercream for it, not royal icing and it didn’t come out very well, especially as all the fat squirts out of the bag onto your hands, which is very, very unpleasant. But the end result was OK and Nanny loved it. It wasn’t until we got to that party that we realised my mum had got the numbers wrong, there were only about 20 people there. Nanny kept the cake in her freezer and is probably still eating it now.

As far as I was concerned that was the last cake I was ever going to decorate and I fully intended to go back to making only rustic cakes. And then this year, just before Hattie’s birthday, I couldn’t get a Peppa Pig cake in the supermarket. I seriously couldn’t be bothered to drive all the way to another supermarket to see if they had any so bizarrely decided to make my own, expecting it to be a disaster but thinking it would be far less hassle than a traipse to ASDA. I stocked up on white and coloured fondant icing and took the plunge. Peppa Pig is a very simple shape so I thought it might have a fighting chance of looking a bit like her if I printed off a suitable enough template from tinternet. Although the end result wasn’t well covered at the sides and was a bit lumpy on top, I was really quite pleased with the results, and best of all the girls knew who it was meant to be.

And after the success of this I thoought I’d try something even more ambitious for Poppy, a Ben and Holly’s Little Kingdom cake. No pressure. The Peppa cake had been simple and quite quick to make but the Ben and Holly one took HOURS. It was much more complicated. Like before it was pretty lumpy, I really have no idea how to do the icing so it doesn’t layer but Poppy knew who it was meant to be and that was all I cared about.

And now I’m making a cake for the 5th birthday of the film company I used to work for. Asking for ideas earlier on it was suggested that I make a rainbow cake. I found a simplistic picture of a movie camera and decided I could easily make that in black fondant icing until it was suggested I make a royal icing plaque. I really like the idea of having a black and white cake and then opening it up to the surprise of the rainbow cake inside. I’ve never made royal icing before and had to go on a hunt for glycerine as none of the supermarkets had any pre-mixed royal icing sugar but it seems to be OK. Who knows if it will turn out well or not but it’s fun to try something new.

I know I’ve earned myself a bit of a reputation as a younger, more feminine and definitely better looking Victor Meldrew character but what the hey. The world is teeming with idiots forever doing stupid things and it’s much easier to write about things you don’t like than things you do.

Celebrity culture is all the rage these days and whole magazines are devoted to pictures taken by the paparazzi of people we apparently all aspire to be. Oh yes, I WISH I was Cheryl Cole (I don’t). Or Victoria Beckham (I don’t), although she has clearly modelled her miserable face on mine. Or rather suffers from the same condition: turned down mouth syndrome. Just because I look a bit unhappy it doesn’t mean I am, I just don’t walk down the road grinning like a loon.  I don’t really care about these people or their lives, who they’re sleeping with, who they’re friends with or why they have given their child a ridiculous name. I don’t even care that they’ve been snapped with a massive sweat patch on their t-shirt or have flashed a photographer because they went commando and got out of a car in a very unladylike manner. I don’t really understand “celebrity” or why some people are considered to be in their exclusive little club. What I DO know, however, is which ones I don’t like!

Sure, it’s mostly pretty irrational, I don’t know these people but when you watch someone on TV regularly or hear them on the radio you feel like you do. Take Jo Whiley, for example. She has the most irritating and monotonous voice. It genuinely sets my teeth on edge and coupled with her gratuitous name dropping it has me reaching for the nearest large object to hurl at the radio or TV. Oh yes, she’s infiltrated TV now with the same unique “I’m best friends with all these amazing bands” style. I suspect she thinks she’s channeling John Peel but she’s not. Heck no.

Women on the news too, a lot of them drive me mad. It isn’t enough that they’ve dumbed down the news to the point where an amoeba could follow it they have to now present it in a conversational style with gesticulating arms as though they’re just having a chat with someone over coffee. A BBC newsreader, Louise Minchin, used to really annoy me but I must admit it’s worn off a bit now, having seen her on other programmes where she comes across as a bit silly (I like silly) and actually rather sweet. DO NOT tell anyone I said that. Susannah Reid on the other hand clearly fancies herself and has been the most alarming shade of orange since she covered the Oscars a few years back. My husband despises Fiona Bruce, although he can’t put his finger on why. She’s pretty smug. Of course it’s not just women on the news that get our goat, some of the men annoy us too. Charlie Stayt, Reid’s partner in crime with his anchor man hair and atrocious interviewing technique is a prime example. Particularly because he was once talking of a coup somewhere in the world and pronounced it “coop”. Shocking.

For the most part I can back up my dislike for such slebs with good(ish) reasons but sometimes there is no explanation. Kate Thornton. Why can’t I stand her? No idea, just can’t. Eamonn Holmes. Fiona Phillips. All of Girls Aloud. Tess Daly. Brucie. Gah! Although now I think about it I kind of can think of reasons for others. Carol Vorderman because she thinks she knows all about maths and is really embarrassing when interviewed (see previous blog about me being a terrible cringer). Alex Jones because she’s thick. Wayne Rooney. Actually, all premiership footballers. Oh, the list goes on and on and on. And on.

Don’t get me wrong though, the ones I like far outweigh the ones I don’t but the general rule of thumb is if they have no discernable talent I’m not going to like ‘em. I love comedians in particular, especially the ones whose observations of life resonate with me. There are many people out there who don’t like Michael McIntyre and I just don’t understand that, I think he’s a genius. The fact is, like in life, we can’t all like everyone but you’ve got to wonder why some of these annoying gits are in the public eye!

(This was an Old Git production for bladdy hippies everywhere to poke fun at)

Over the course of the last few months I’ve seen some things, let me tell you. A heck of a lot of people come to this gym, of all shapes and sizes and it’s great to see so many people taking care of themselves and trying to getting fit. But, I could be wrong, some of them seem to come a few times and never return. I’m pretty sure from one month to the next I only occasionally saw a face I recognised from before. It could be my fading eyesight though, yes, that’ll be it. Apart from that curly haired woman who’s always on the stepper that is. And the frowny runner. I think they might be married, they’re never at the gym at the same time but always have the same water bottle and similar towels. Oh yes, and that bloke who occasionally gets a bouffant bonce and secretly checks out all the men’s bottoms. He thinks I didn’t notice, but I did.

I did notice a few specific groups of people while I was lying by the wall for all that time. You’d think the view was rubbish from down there, but you’d be wrong, I saw EVERYTHING. For example those “mememe” steppers. Say it with a high pitched voice. I know they really annoy curly-haired-woman who steps like a mad woman and makes the machine inch forward. The mememes take such tiny steps they surely can’t be doing anything? They certainly don’t have a bead of sweat on them when they get off. CHW always looks like she’s just run a marathon, all tomatoey faced and drenched in sweat (not a good look). I heard a rumour she’s training for a marathon. She doesn’t look very happy about it. And what about the uphill treadmillers? Walking up a hill so steep it can’t exist in nature but hanging on for dear life. I’d rather go for a walk in the fresh air, blow out the cobwebs a bit. If I had legs. And wasn’t an ex-moth obviously.

Of course there are the typical blokes you probably get in all gyms too, meatheads who like nothing more than pumping iron, pump, pump, pump until they get those comedy muscles so big they can’t put their arms down by their sides properly. There are plenty of show offs, too, the other day I say a bloke hanging upside down and doing sit ups. Madness! Don’t tell anyone but I thought it was quite cool. Shhhh. I personally loved the weedy guys, lifting way above their maximum and probably getting stuck under the bench press needing help from a sniggering meathead. In fact I heard that happened to CHW once in the prison gym under one of those smith machines. There weren’t even any weights on it, what a muppet! There are a few scary ladies too who do a lot of resistance and have strong looking muscles. You wouldn’t pick a fight with them, no siree.

There are lots of women too, not just curly-haired ones and mememe steppers. Someone really needs to tell some of them that just sitting on a vibration plate probably isn’t doing much. Apart from making the wobbly bits jiggle. And at the other end of the spectrum while you’re obviously very proud of your washboard abs, some of you, no one really wants to see them on display. Did you forget to put your t-shirt on? There are a few that seem to come in pairs or little groups of three, I’ve always suspected these ones of being on the hunt for lurve.  There are similar groups of young blokes too. On my imaginary Venn diagram of the gym the girly ones also fit comfortably into the group that “make eyes at the personal trainers”, all giggly and pink of face while they chat about who knows what and protest that they can’t possibly lift up that kettle bell or run an extra mile per hour. They do it anyway though…hilarious.

Those of you that know me well know that it has been my aim for some time to be California Thin™. Now, don’t get me wrong, I have slightly more wardrobe options than just marquees but it bothers me somewhat that thus far California Thin™ has eluded me.  But not to worry.  The thing is, in the past I’ve had nothing better to do than knock out a 3 mile run, maybe do a bit of cross training, a 10 minute row and a full body pump or spin class. Oh, and a load of resistance training. Genuinely nothing else, I was locked in the gym so I made the most of it and because of it I became incredibly slim and could still eat anything I wanted.  Too slim, if I’m honest.  Good job I ate all those mars bars so I didn’t totally waste away.

Nowadays I have far less time and need to squeeze my daily exercise into an hour, or maybe an hour and a half at weekends or if I get up VERY early (I can’t get up VERY early).  And that’s OK, I do a bit of running here, a bit of stepping there, the odd bit of rowing and if I’ve got a spare 10 minutes I can shoehorn in some slightly rushed resistance.  But it’s too bitty and while I can feel and see that my body shape is changing it’s too flipping slow and I WANT RESULTS DAMN IT!  To be fair I’ve had a few problems with injury and illness.  My marathon training (which seems like a dim and distant memory at the moment but will need to start again sooner or later) started with aplomb. Right up until I was 3 miles into my first run and my left calf went *TWANG*.  Two weeks’ rest required.  I managed a bit of rowing and cross training but it’s not the same.  It started again and I made good progress. I felt strong on the 10 mile training run, and on the 12 mile, but I got to the 15 mile run, reached 11.5 miles and stopped dead, I just couldn’t face another step.  By this time I was having a few issues with my left knee I’d not experienced before. It could have been my new trainers, it could be that I was overcompensating for my calf, even though that was fixed.  Who knows, but my knee was becoming very stiff and taking a while to loosen up regardless of how much warming up and stretching I did, and it would then seize up the second I stopped. Stupid knee.

So I had to stop running for a while and find something else.  I upped the stepping I do having discovered that it’s a very effective calorie burner. So effective apparently that it tells me in 10 minutes I have burned the same amount of calories as I would have in a 3 mile run. Bladdy rah!  But it does get a bit boring doing it every day with only an iPod for company because the music played in the gym is beyond dire, though it is always great fun to laugh at the mememe steppers who aren’t doing it properly.  And while I was going great guns doing the stepping Poppy started pre-school and we all got ill over and over again. Stupid pre-school.  So, now I’m back, I’m nearly well and I’m trying to exercise properly.  I’ve tentatively started running again, but only on the treadmill and I’m stepping a bit too hoping the two will complement each other without taking up too much time. Tomorrow I may add a bit of zumba-in-the-living-room-where-no-one-can-see-me and 12 mins light resistance from me Scary Woman Book (I believe I may have blogged about her before). My aim is to lose the wobbles and lumps, (though I suspect the bum lump from falling down the stairs will only disappear after surgery) and get back into my Chinese dress, even though I’ve nowhere to wear it.

Who knows, maybe I’ll get there in time for Christmas (I won’t).

I just can’t get on with reality TV, it makes me cringe and want to gouge out my eyeballs with a spoon.  It makes me want to hide behind the sofa far more than Doctor Who ever did, back when I was a child and it was scary.  All right, that may not be strictly true and it rather depends on what you mean by “reality TV” (not to mention the fact that I could just switch it off).  To me it conjurs up an excruciating image of poor deluded individuals thinking their tone deaf warbling is good enough to win them a recording contract, right up until the point where someone tramples insensitively all over their feelings. Yeah, that’s great TV.  Yet millions of people mock the afflicted on X Factor week in, week out.  And point and laugh at the unfortunates who think they can sing, but can’t.  Not Simon Cowell any more, apparently though.  He’s far too busy in his counting house, counting all the money he’s earned because of someone else’s “talent”.  I’d name them but apart from Will Young I can’t think of a single one!

It all started with Big Brother.  Except it didn’t really. We’ve always had talent shows, who remembers Lenny Henry winning New Faces?  I actually don’t because it happened in 1975 and that’s the year I was born but looking at the list of winners and contestants from the New Faces wikipedia entry I recognise most of the names that were involved: Marti Caine, Roy Walker, the Chuckle Brothers (to me, to you), Victoria Wood and Jim Davidson, to name but a few. Although the less said about Jim Davidson the better.  Back then talent shows weren’t as ridiculously prolific and it seems as though winning actually meant something.  Most of those people stayed “famous” and indeed many of them still are today.  It seems to me that fame is all that people crave these days. They don’t want to share their song-writing and singing skills, their ability to make people laugh or to astound them with a magic trick, no, they just want to be famous for the sake of being famous.  They want fabulous riches, houses a footballer’s wife would be happy with and notoriety, without doing a scrap of hard work.  I think it’s sad.

And this is where Big Brother comes in.  It offers a prize of many thousands of pounds, approximately 13 weeks’ exposure on national television, if they stay the distance, all they have to do in return is be separated from their friends, family and normal life, behave like an idiot and allow people to play increasing cruel psychological tricks on them.  Brilliant.  It takes a special kind of person to want to be on a show like that.  Very special indeed.  I’ve only ever watched Big Brother once (celebrity versions excepted), and that was only because I was in prison and it represented 13 weeks of my sentence, a sizeable chunk.  I must admit I was absolutely hooked, the people involved were generally pretty vile and in some ways their interactions were fascinating, as well as painful to watch, but I’m happy to say I’ve never had cause to watch it since.  Big Brother wasn’t even the first show to put people together in this way, shove ‘em all in a house and set the cameras a’rolling. Nope, MTV did it first with The Real World in 1992, and amazingly it’s still going today.  I have seen one series of this, Real World London and again I was hooked, but I was a teenager.

Oh, Gawd, and all the musical ones! Gah! I’m not a fan of musicals (though I love “Oliver!”) so that’s another cause to switch channels quick as you like. Uuuurgh.  And they keep making them.  And Andrew Lloyd Bladdy Webber (a delightfully attractive toad…I mean man, I’m sure you’d agree) can make even more bladdy money.  Uuuuuurgh.

By now I’m sure you’re likening me to the Old Gits from Harry Enfield and friends. It’s true, I am quite a lot like them (nyeeeeeeeeeah) but these shows just aren’t my bag.  They have nothing to offer me in my little middle class bubble where I polish my Aga (I don’t have an Aga) and pop to the shops in my Volvo to pick up a new Le Creuset (I don’t even have a Volvo any more) or a lacrosse stick for little Araminta and tennis whites for Tarquin.  Oh, all right, liking reality TV has nothing to do with class, I just like making stereotypes, sue me (please don’t).  And although I have recently developed a soft spot for Strictly Come Dancing, I don’t really think comes under the same category, slebs making fools of themselves is fair game in my book.  So most of the time I’m forced to *gasp* turn the telly off of a Saturday evening and just maybe I just hanker back for the days of Noel’s House Party and Gladiators.  I never thought I’d say that…

As you may or may not be aware I am a keen baker.  Although my repertoire is fairly limited I’m not afraid to try new things or work out how to perfect them and I’m never happier than when making cakes and biscuits for other people.  Even better when they enjoy them and tell me so (although in truth I am useless at taking compliments).  But while I consider myself to be a pretty good baker I’m only a passable cook.  I’m not like one of those lunatics on Masterchef that go on and on about how passionate they are about food.  To them I have been known (on more than one occasion per episode) to shout very loudly at the screen “IT’S JUST COOKING!”  Well, it is.

I have a pretty good selection of cook books, several liberated from my very keen cook of a mother, but I don’t know what it is, I just don’t fancy doing a lot of the recipes.  They always start out simply until you get to a point where suddenly you require capers (dubbed by Mrs Binners as the devil’s bum nuggets), celeriac or fennel.  I’m sorry, but I just don’t like these things. I don’t like asparagus either and, even worse, I mostly shop at ASBO or Tesco (I can hear the collective sharp intake of middle class breath from here!). Ocado’s great and all that but ASBO is cheaper and while I may be doing them a disservice I don’t remember ever seeing fennel in their produce section.  Not that I was looking for it.

The trouble with me is that I’m just not a natural cook.  I wouldn’t know where to start with the “marriage of flavours” Nige Annoying Slater’s always going on about (my mother WORSHIPS him).  I know the traditional ones, of course, lamb, garlic and rosemary’s always a winner and, er, some other ones.  Chicken and chorizo, that’s good.  Pie and chips. Things of that nature.  I just have very few ideas of my own.  That said I rarely use a recipe book for making dinner and devised my own chicken/ham/cheese/leek pie that Adam is very keen on but it’s hardly a revelation, I’m pretty sure millions of people make similar ones.  But all I make is comfort food, spag bol, lasagne, toad in the hole, bangers and mash, sausage casserole, dumplings, pies….oh gawd it all sounds so boring and so….pedestrian!

I don’t want to be one of those “passionate” numpties from Masterchef who blub at the drop of a hat because their chocolate fondant wasn’t runny inside (they never turn out right, everyone knows that), or a Come Dine With Me contestant that thinks they’re it because they once had snail porridge a la Heston Weirdo Blumenthal (bleurgh) but I would like to be better. I love food (but I’m not passionate, it keeps me alive and I like things that taste nice), I just want to be a bit more adventurous. In fact I want to be like the lovely Kate Anwyll, her dindinses (that is a word)(it IS!) always sound divine and I swear what sounds like a whole day’s kitchen slaving for me is done with little stress for her. Not that I’d have had the idea in the first place.  In fact my friend Karin is a similar cook and it all seems so effortless.  It’s NOT FAIR and I am EXTREMELY JEALOUS!

Perhaps I just need pointing in the right direction…SEND HELP! If not for me for my poor family that are suffering for having the same old dinners.

“The House that Apple Built” may be an exaggeration but we do have a heck of a lot of kit between us so why not, and with the sad news of former CEO Steve Jobs’ death today I thought I’d write about our family dalliance with Apple fandom.  Yes, my husband is a Mac fanboy.  For shame.

I got my first MacBook shortly after I was released from prison. I’d had an ancient Dell desktop running Windows XP (bleurgh) but it was running like a dog and when I asked my then newish boyfriend Adam to format it for me in the hope that he would fix it, it ground to a halt and would never switch on again.  I could have done this perfectly well by myself, but, you know, it’s nice to make a man feel useful about the place, and as it turned out it worked out very well for me as guilt at breaking my wretched old Dell meant he offered to buy me a new computer. Sucker.  I had managed to land myself a job as a writer and editor and as I would be travelling round a bit I decided it made far more sense to get a laptop than a desktop and Adam seemed really keen for me to have a MacBook.  Who was I to argue? I had had a very small amount of experience of Macs before but long, long ago when they were really complicated, tricky to use and all the colours of the rainbow, more or less.  We’d had one at the company I worked for doing internet support and I remember always dreading the calls from Mac users as they were SO different.  And I remember an old school friend had one donkeys’ years ago that was like a small tower with a tiny screen at the top of it. My maths teacher at college had had one too.  But Adam assured me things had changed and the user experience was infinitely better and he thought I would never want to use Windows again.  And if I didn’t like it, then he would have it and get me something else.

Off we went to PC World to get one. At the time the options were black or white and I went for black in the vain hope that it would stay looking cleaner for longer.  It probably would have if I wasn’t too lazy to give the screen a good clean every so often.  I know it’s a bit sad to say so but I opened up the box and fell in love.  It was beautifully packaged, no carpy bits of polystyrene or cardboard, everything fitted perfectly and looked lovely, there was real attention to detail and you really, truly don’t get that anywhere else.  It was fantastic, so easy to use, the screen was lovely to look at and best of all it came with a programme called Comic Life…. You may be aware of a few of my creations with that.  So Adam was out of luck, he’d have to buy his own.  And buy his own he did, but of course his was better and faster and shinier but as he’s a massive nerd we’ll let him off.

Adam’s MacBook Pro was not his first Mac, not even his second and he still had an old Powerbook, a G4 desktop and a 1st generation iPod, a massive brick of a thing with a huge dial on the front.  These things must have cost him the earth but as I say, he’s a REAL fanboy!  Eventually my eldest son inherited the Powerbook and got his first taste of computer programming and we flogged the G4 on eBay (for peanuts as it was ancient). The iPod is still knocking about somewhere.

And then the iPhone was invented.  And the iPod Touch.  Someone that came to our wedding had an iTouch and I wanted one sooooooo badly.  So as we’d been given quite a lot of money and didn’t need a washing machine or anything we decided to get an iTouch for me and an iPhone for Adam.  Again the packaging was beautiful and again I fell in love.  So sad.  The iPhone was like no other phone I’d seen or used before, especially once the App Store began and the floodgates opened. Adam even became a developer and made a few silly games including Bathroom Racer and iPang… *PANG* By the time Poppy was 1 even she knew how to use it and Hattie is the same.  Bit scary.

And over the last few years we’ve changed and upgraded what we have, my original MacBook had an unfortunate accident next to a glass blender that cracked when the liquid I put in it was too hot (oops). The insurance company sent me a white replacement which eventually died when Poppy knocked it off the sofa onto a fake marble hearth (oops). For a while I got to use Adam’s Air until he decided he really needed that for development and I ended up with a hand-me-down iMac instead.  In fact, now I come to think of it no wonder I’ve never got any money for clothes because we spend all our bladdy money on computers.  Even spoilt no. 1 son got a MacBook for his birthday (and Christmas) this year because it was what he really really really wanted.  But just as a note to potential burglars we never ever EVER leave the house. Ever.

Anyhoo, I digress. We have a stupid amount of kit but can mostly justify it because Adam works for himself and needs it for his software development business. And I need it to test the software and….er….prat about on the internet. Oh, and write that book I’m supposed to be writing. And OF COURSE make mildly amusing comics for your delectation.

So to you Steve Jobs we raise a glass and say thank you. Without you changing Apple’s fortunes in a roundabout way there would be no silly comics and (maybe) no *PANG*. Although I would have loads more clothes.

I feel I should start this with a bit of a disclaimer.  If you’re looking for a love story worthy of Mills and Boon with heaving bosoms and boy meets girl, boy acts like a blaggard, boy and girl have some kind of misunderstanding and 27 years later fall into each others arms…well, you’ll be disappointed.  Although I can probably do the heaving bosom bit.  But apart from that…

It was a winter’s morning in suburban Hampshire, the sun was low in the sky trying to break through the early mist. As Fiona sat on the bus her heart was full of wonder at the beauty of the morning and the sound of birdsong.  Or rather the nasty screech of seagulls overhead looking for a tasty morsel in the nearest bin.  And actually it was probably raining.  Looks like I won’t be making my fortune from romantic fiction. *sad face*

I was roughly 19 years old and had started at South Downs college to do a new A Level course after spending 2 years elsewhere doing subjects I didn’t really like.  For various reasons I quit 6 weeks before my exams, horrifying my parents, but I was determined I didn’t want A Levels in Spanish, German and History. Nope, I was going to start again with Physics, Chemistry, Maths and Spanish. I still liked Spanish.  South Downs is a big place not far from where I lived and I already knew a few people there that were doing retakes so I settled straight in.  It probably helped that I enjoyed the subjects I was studying this time around.

One winter’s day he came into her life, their eyes met across a crowded maths class and he was drawn to her, not turning away or blinking until he was right beside her, gazing into the pools of her eyes……

“F**k off, you can’t sit next to me!”

Oh. Having established that, actually, no one else was sitting there Adam flipping well went and sat next to me anyway, the cheeky monkey.  And it wasn’t really the first time he’d been in the class, he’d joined a few weeks in from the start of term to do an AS and had been sitting on the end of a bank of desks but was struggling to see the whiteboard so decided after a day or two to sit in the empty place next to me.  How rude.  Adam was 17, fairly tall with floppyish hair and some very fetching spectacles, the kind that wouldn’t look out of place on a Physics graduate (sorry to my friends with PhDs in Physics, but admit it, you know what I mean).  His skin was annoyingly clear and his teeth were annoyingly straight and he always wore the same jeans, white t-shirt and blue fleece.  He didn’t smell surprisingly, even more of a mystery as he rode his bike to college every day up a very steep hill (and he’s a right stinker now).  I suspected he had a wardrobe full of the same clothes like Jeff Goldblum did in The Fly.  I was something of a hippy, all batik, tie-dye and DMs with mad ringletty hair dyed a deep shade of red with random ringlets bleached blonde. It would have been quite striking, probably, if I didn’t keep leaving it too long between re-dyeing. It would fade to ginger every time.  I was very fond of low cut tops as well and this would become a problem for poor Adam as we became friends as it seemed he couldn’t take his eyes away.  I was always catching him looking down my top and always telling him off.

I have great memories of college and I really think I owe that to Adam, eventually he gave up the course he’d originally signed up for to do A Levels in Maths, Further Maths and Physics so we were together for most of the same lessons.  We were very silly in our classes, always up to no good, taking the mickey out of other people and messing up their experiments for our own amusement.  I’m sure I’ve mentioned it before in another blog but we did an experiment using a signal generator once and we were perfectly placed next to the plug to switch it off every time one of our class mates was expecting some output.  Funny, it never happened when the poor confused boy called the teacher over…and thankfully our sniggering went unnoticed.  We were meanies but never bullies, everything we did was in good fun. I hope so anyway.  We got away with our cheekiness because we worked very hard and got good grades…well, Adam did.

It was always pretty apparent to me that Adam wanted to be more than friends but that was never going to happen, I was two years older than him and had an older boyfriend, and much as I liked him (I always considered him to be my best friend) he had no chance.  I did get a bit jealous when he got very friendly with another (large breasted) girl but I never gave it away.  And it never affected our friendship, we carried on being great friends until we finished college and moved on, he with a girlfriend that I always suspected didn’t like me (she really didn’t) and me single again by that time.

We met up again after a couple of years when I was 21 and had just had my first baby, strange to say I’m not sure 19 year old Adam was especially interested in the very small Jake.  Can’t think why.  He was rather keen to impress me with his new found success with the ladies since he’d started uni and dumped the specs in favour of contacts (the relationship with the girl that didn’t like me hadn’t panned out, shame) and I must say, I was very impressed (I wasn’t).  And so we lost touch for a number of years, I was firmly ensconced in a disastrous relationship with two small boys and he was off being a bona fide nerd in some other part of the country.  I’d get the occasional message after Friends Reunited was invented but our hearts weren’t really in it.

I won’t bore you with any more of this as I know I’ve already told the story of how we eventually got together in the Porridge blog, suffice to say hurrah for social networking, without Friends Reunited who knows what would have happened?  We’ve been together for nearly five years now, and married for nearly four and every day I think how lucky I am to be with someone that totally gets (and shares) my cheekiness, propensity for sarcasm, and willingness to be silly.  He is also very good at managing my appalling grumpiness, though it must be very irritating and although there are many times when I could happily bop him on the head with my trademark frying pan and I glaze over when he starts talking about computer programming, I think we’re really happy together.  Who better to marry than your very best friend?  He’s still always trying to look down my top though…

I hope he doesn’t kill me for this!

We get a plethora of freebie newspapers here (yes, two a week IS a plethora) and on the front of yesterday’s offering was the news that MK would host its first marathon, open to 6,500 runners of all abilities. I’m not sure what happened but let it be known that Adam is an accomplished manipulator of people (I’ve seen him in action, it’s impressive) so I suspect he worked his mojo on me and suddenly I was walking around saying (in a monotone, slightly detached from myself) “We should do that, I’ve always wanted to do a marathon…” Yes, that must be it, it was a nerdy mind trick, no free will involved whatsoever.

Now, it’s not completely the end of the world, because I do run. Well, jog. OK, plod. But although I’ve done the Great South Run 3 times before and have participated in the Race for Life once or twice, those were in Portsmouth and Portsmouth is flat as a pancake.  And the Great South is 10 miles, it’s not even a half marathon. And thinking about it, I’ve struggled round every single time, especially those last 2 miles along the never ending seafront with the wind buffeting you from all directions. So really this is lunacy, even though I’ve been working on my speed on the treadmill and desperately trying to get a teeny bit faster.  Whereas Adam has been pounding the streets and the treadmill, sometimes with my eldest son, increasing his speed so that he can now run 3 miles in under 20 minutes and 5 miles in around 35. Gulp. I feel it pertinent to mention that Adam’s renewed interest in running occurred when his younger brother took it up some months ago and started to get quite good at it and lose weight. Coincidence? Hmmmm.

So that’s it, it’s done, we have entered and on 29th April 2012 we will be standing in Stadium MK “raring” to go and I will be quaking in my running shoes. This gives us 10 months to train and I fully intend to start on Monday, having found several 14 week training programmes to follow. I have worked out I can do them three times over with two weeks to spare.  What fun!  It is a serious commitment but is probably the kick up the bum I need to get me really properly training and if it’s not too dull I will try and do regular blog updates.  Assuming the training doesn’t go horribly wrong I am thinking of running for charity and would quite like to raise money for Diabetes UK in memory of my friend Julian who died early this year. I’ll let you know how to sponsor me nearer the time.

In the meantime, I am running the 10k Race for Life on July 24th in memory of my friend Lizzie who also died early this year after a long battle with breast cancer. You can sponsor me here.

The moral of this story is never allow yourself to make a decision on a day when your mind has been playing up!

Back in the dark ages when I was 13 there were very few “products” available on the market. Hairspray, of course, and maybe mousse, but also, given that I was young and clueless it didn’t even occur to me that covering my bonce in gunk on a daily basis might spare my blushes a little.  It probably did me no favours that I brushed my hair as ever I had either, separating the curls into a kind of special halo of fuzz.  I’m not sure how long I walked around like that but I can assure you the ill-advised addition of a fringe did nothing to enhance the overall effect.  It wasn’t just a Fright Wig. It was a Fright Wig From Hell.  And then I discovered that not brushing helped a bit. As did water.  If I wet my hair several times a day it would clump together into a temporary ringlet.  The ringlet would dry out eventually though and de-clump a bit but at least it was less of a frizz halo.  Except soaking wet hair is pretty impractical and teenaged girls are not backwards in taking the mickey out of someone whose hair drips all over the shop several times a day.  I’m staggered at my lack of common sense at this age.  Did it not occur to me there might be something out there that would achieve the same effect without  looking like a drowned rat? Really?

By the time I did discover that hair products make your hair look better I’d already been a sight for some time. And that’s without even thinking about my awful glasses. Hair mousse was great, really it was but most of the time it made my hair crunchy. It might have looked OK but it felt pretty awful.  It also had a tendency to stay looking wet, but obviously didn’t drip so was marginally less embarrassing. I later learnt that a combination of mousse and wax made my hair look really pretty good but if anything this felt even worse, the mousse still made it crunchy and the wax gave it the added bonus of feeling all greasy as well.  Had any myopic boys wanted to run their fingers through my hair, well, I imagine they would have been quite upset as they tried to surreptitiously wipe their hands on their jeans.  And if they had persevered their hands would have got stuck anyway.

Needless to say I spent a great deal of time and effort trying to find ways of straightening my crazy curls out.  A blast from a hairdryer  created a sort of pom-pom effect.  Not really what I was looking for.  Perming solution, it turns out, does not give curly hair an anti-perm, no matter how much you try and pull it straight.  I tried crimpers as well, crimped hair being the fad of the 80s/early 90s. They were marginally effective but it was very short-lived, plus the smell of burning hair was a bit disconcerting.  I even tried using the crimpers in the way you would use modern straighteners, pulling it down the length of the hair.  Not only did it do untold damage it also bloody hurt and didn’t look that good anyway.  I was depressed.  So would you be, I looked like this:

I'm the one on the left. With the hat. Dear God.

I resigned myself to a (celibate) life with rubbish hair.  I couldn’t understand why random people would tell me how lovely my hair was when they had beautiful straight, easy to manage hair.  They could get out of bed first thing in the morning and not have to do battle to make themselves look halfway normal.  I was once accosted in a pub by someone that refused to believe my hair wasn’t permed and wanted to know where I’d had it done, she was SO adamant about  it I had to make up the name of a salon just to get rid of her.  I think she may have been drunk.

Pairs of straighteners came and went in my life but they were never up to the job. My hair would be straight-ish for a bit and then the tiniest amount of moisture would mess it up or a sudden rain storm would end up with me looking like the poor soul in Woman in a Dressing Gown (great film, watch it). Then they invented GHDs and all my prayers were answered.  For a long time from the day I bought some I straightened my hair every day, ruining the condition, of course, but I didn’t care a jot, I finally felt attractive: the Fright Wig was gone.  I liked it. People told me they liked it.  I was happy.  During periods of great laziness where I couldn’t be bothered to spend half an hour or so on my hair I would leave it curly, but I found that my hair wouldn’t curl quite right any more and I’d always go back to my GHDs in spite of the hassle. I just didn’t like my hair curly, I felt unattractive and was always reminded of the fuzz halo.  The fuzz halo was bad.

After I had Hattie, though, my time became severely limited. With her and a very demanding Poppy to look after, needing to find 30 minutes to spend on my hair became a serious annoyance.  So I stopped. I felt horrible most of the time, I was using the same old crunchy greasy mousse/wax combination and after so much straightening it didn’t really want to curl into the ringlets I occasionally quite liked.  I always just leave my hair to dry by itself when curly so I kept looking for the Holy Grail of hair products that I could shove on and forget about and finally came up with something that worked quite well. I got the hairdresser to cut it so it would curl better and I must say I’m much happier with it now.  More or less.  Of course no one’s happy with what they’ve got and it is still a Fright Wig. But a Fright Wig that’s quite ringletty and almost pretty in certain (low) lights.

Which do you prefer?

Inspiration comes in many guises and when we moved house a little over a month ago I realised I needed some from somewhere to break up the vast expanse of magnolia-painted wall in every room.  Our new house is modern, just over 6 years old, and has unusually large rooms.  If anything the magnolia makes them look even bigger.  Now, I’m not a particularly arty person, I don’t really “get” most art and while I know what I like when I see it it’s such a rare event that a lot of the time I don’t even bother to look.  On the odd occasion something does catch my eye it’s usually way out of my price range (to be fair anything over about 35p’s out of my price range at the moment) so I generally just photograph it for posterity and to see if there’s some way I could, er, emulate it.  Given that I’m completely hopeless with a paintbrush “emulation” probably isn’t the way to go.  I can draw, quite well even if I say so myself, but the problem with that is that I am painstakingly slow so anything I might attempt is likely to be abandoned long before I could utter the immortal words “can you tell what it is yet?”

Of course, I can’t expect the house to come together at the drop of a hat. Some purchases are more important than others, like new bookcases and a new sofa, and without a bottomless pit of funds I seriously need to consider what it is I want on my walls before I put anything up. Once the bookcases were up and filled, though, they kind of highlighted more than ever the huge space on the wall and this was compounded by the large screws where the previous tenants had a massive IKEA canvas hanging there.

I did consider getting a massive IKEA canvas myself but I didn’t really want a world map and nice though a London or New York scene is, I don’t have a particular affinity with either place.  Plus they’re £100 a pop.  So I was back to the idea of “nice pics wot I have seen” emulation. A dangerous idea, they could look lovely or, far more likely, I could royally bugger them up and display them anyway while having to pretend that Poppy did them instead of me.  I looked into the cost of white stretched canvases and realised that The Works (on most high streets) do very cheap ones in a huge variety of sizes.  And that’s when inspiration hit. Kind of. It was probably a bit more gradual than that.

Those of you that know me know that some years ago I had a brush with the law.  Not just a brush, really, more of a large discount hardware store’s brush department. Sorry to bang on about it but if you haven’t read it you can learn about it here. Anyway, my inspiration came from my prison cell, and no, I don’t mean having a toilet in the same place where you eat.  In my cell was a large framed bulletin board onto which we were allowed to stick whatever we wanted (within reason) and on mine I put the myriad photos my friends and family sent me of themselves, places they’d been etc.  Unfortunately drawing pins were very hard to come by and blu-tak wasn’t allowed so I stuck them on with the cheap free toothpaste we used to get, apparently an old squaddie trick, effective for a short time until it dried out and made a dusty toothpastey mess on the floor. I have a large number of photo prints and thousands upon thousands of digital photographs so I thought I’d order a load more and see what they would look like stuck to a large plain canvas or two, this time stuck with double-sided tape rather than toothpaste.  I bought two 50×40 inch canvases for £14.99 each, ordered 200 or so prints for about £15 and a couple of rolls of double sided tape.  It took many hours for Number 1 son and I to finish it but we really think it was worth it and every time you look you see something different, including a couple of duplicates we didn’t spot at the time. We’re now thinking of photoshopping Wally into one of the photos to see if people can find him!

We met in the pub, as you do.  The Air Balloon in Portsmouth in the early 90s was the place where all the young rockers hung out, especially the underage ones like me because they asked no questions.  I must have looked no older than 12, though I thought I looked very grown up, especially as my friends and I always overdressed for the occasion, the occasion being Saturday Night.  Every single Saturday Night.  We’d often walk the length of the city to get there in silly heels to save beer money and then get horribly drunk on snakebite and black. Delicious!  The faces you’d see there were the same every weekend, everyone collected in little groups and would hang about in the same part of the pub, week in, week out.  As well as the groups though there were “floaters” who seemed to know everyone and my friends and I used to do circuits of the pub so we could take in the different groups and enjoy a drunken laugh or bit of a dance with as many people as possible.  These were sociable times.

Around the time I met Jules he and his friends used to hang about in an odd little side room away from the bar.  They were a bit of an intimidating bunch of blokes (to me anyway) and they always seemed as though they were having a joke at your expense.  They weren’t but remember I was scared of most things at this tender age AND I had godawful hair and glasses.  In spite of being a bit scared of them I liked them and often used to join them in their little room.  They almost all had “rocker” uniform: long hair, band t-shirts, studded belts etc.  Jules was no exception, he had the most beautiful long naturally blond hair and would always wear light blue jeans, a band t-shirt and a denim jacket with band patches sewn on it.  Bless.  When we first met I remember I thought he was a bit uncool with all his denim (after all, all the cool boys wore black) but somehow at the end of most drunken nights I’d end up snogging him.  I really hope my mum’s not reading this.  In fact, the reason I ended up going out with him in the end was because he was such a bloody good kisser. I really really REALLY hope my mum’s not reading this. And my husband!

Ahem.  So, for the best part of a year when I was about 17 and he was 18 Julian was my boyfriend.  I met his family, his lovely mum Sue and his stepdad Derek and they were always very friendly and welcoming.  As the youngest child, Jules was clearly the apple of his mother’s eye and he had a great relationship with Derek who he regarded as his father.  It was lovely to see because I can’t imagine 18 year old boys are especially easy to deal with.  He had older siblings too with whom he had typical sibling relationships: love/hate.  From his older brother James I received one of my many nicknames: Fifi Fluffikins.  He still calls me that now, so kind.  As a 17 year old girl I was a bit new to having boyfriends. Sure, I’d had a couple before but this time I was really keen.  So keen in fact that I changed my interests to be more in line with his.  I had always enjoyed similar musical taste but now I went all out, even liking the bands I’d not been so sure about like Thunder and Little Angels. I started walking more like he did, he always walked everywhere because he’d never learned to ride a bike.  And I had a sudden overwhelming interest in Star Trek Deep Space Nine.  And horror novels.  And Mortal Kombat which he and his friends used to play down in the arcades on Southsea seafront.  I even made my parents buy it for me to play on my Sega Megadrive. I never could quite get my head round Manga comics though.  Or roleplaying games.  But that’s just as well because there was an important rule with roleplaying: NO GIRLFRIENDS ALLOWED.  I fancied myself in love, in the way that 17 year old girls do, and so when he told me he didn’t love me any more I really was heartbroken.  It seems silly now but I know I cried for days and days.  Somehow though we stayed friends.  Not close friends exactly but friends nonetheless.  We would always have a nice chat if we bumped into each other and he would always introduce me to whoever he was with as his “ex-girlfriend” even when it had been 10+ years since it was over.  I always had a suspicion that was because my appearance had improved drastically since my frizzy Deirdre days, sorry Jules!

In recent years we stayed in touch via the magic of facebook.  He’d been a bit unlucky in love over the years and I’d often gently rib him for the fact he was still living at his parents’ house.  He would often comment on my status updates too and we’d always have a bit of light hearted banter.  Sadly I hadn’t bumped into him for a long time but only the other day he said how he’s in the local precinct every weekend so I knew where to find him.  I just took it for granted that that was where he’d always be.

Julian was a lovely guy, fun loving, big hearted, funny and generous, the boy that never quite grew up.  I can’t believe he’s gone.  Sleep peacefully, Jules xxx

A drunken Jules with Harvey in the Air Balloon. Back in the day.

This song always reminds me of Julian.  It’s my favourite song by Stone Temple Pilots and it reminds me of him because he bought me the album for my 18th birthday.

At 3:15pm yesterday, Sunday January 16^th 2011, my friend Lizzie died aged 41 after a long battle with breast cancer.  I hadn’t seen Lizzie since before the disease was diagnosed because she moved away and I was…er… otherwise engaged (all right, incarcerated) but I can’t help but feel a great sense of loss and have shed a few tears. Tears for my friend but mostly for her children Eve and Jack, who are the same age as my boys, 13 and 11.  I can’t begin to imagine what they must be going through and though they knew this was coming that won’t have made it any easier.

I met Lizzie in the school playground of Hart Plain Infant School when my eldest son started school in 2001.  I don’t know about anyone else but I find school playgrounds filled with other “mummies” utterly intimidating.  There are a number of different types of mummies in the playgrounds I’ve had experience of and each group seems to form their own distinct cliques: pushy mummies, sporty mummies, chavvy mummies, mummies who were in NCT together and toddler groups together….the list goes on and on.  The thing about each and every one of them is that if they don’t like the cut of your jib they will completely ignore you.  It’s like you don’t exist.  As far as they’re concerned you don’t.

I don’t know what it is about me but I’m fine in any social situation except one where there is a collection of parents.  If anything you’d think it would be easier, after all we actually have something in common, children of the same age.  Stick me in a group of other mothers and their kids and I’ll clam up.  Someone will make a bit of small talk, I’ll blurt something inane and that’ll be the end of that.  It really is incredibly odd.  But not just that, generally I find that people don’t approach me in the first place.  I must have “STAY AWAY” tattooed across my forehead, possibly because of my irrational sense of intimidation.

Taking Jake to school was no different.  I’d turn up every day to drop him off and pick him up with my pesky 2 year old Josh in tow, avoid eye contact and then go home again.  Other people had made friends and I couldn’t understand how they managed it so effortlessly.  Then one day Lizzie introduced herself.  Jake and her daughter Eve were in the same class and we walked the same way home.  She also had a pesky little boy in tow and had clearly got fed up with waiting for me to do more than look at the ground every day.  We got chatting on the way home one morning and she invited us round for coffee.  I was so pleased we went round straight away.

Away from the school playground I was a different person, relaxed and comfortable, and suddenly chatting to Lizzie was really easy.  I’d always thought other “mummies” were just in the business of comparing their children to yours and were only interested in extolling the virtues of their precious darlings.  Not Lizzie.  Oh, she was completely devoted to Eve and Jack, but she wasn’t that interested in whether their reading ages were better than anyone else’s.  In fact we laughed about the child at school who’d been pushed into reading early, that child really was a precocious brat.  And her mother had bad 80s hair and a really fat bum.  Hehe.  While Josh and Jack played nicely together (a bit of a surprise) we chatted and drank coffee and ate biscuits and chatted and drank more coffee and chatted.  And I went to the loo about 38 times because coffee goes right through me.

I was delighted, I’d finally made a friend and through her I made other friends, Mel and Sandra and then Gill when the boys were a bit older.  But, I hasten to add, we weren’t a clique.  Though I’m sure everyone was probably a bit jealous of us because we were SO cool.

Mel and I were talking about our memories of Lizzie today and I’m happy to say there were so many that made me smile.  Her lemon drizzle cake.  The way she would stick obvious patches in contrasting fabric on her jeans if they got a hole in them.  Her comedy cat, a perfect circle of a thing with funny little legs poking out of its funny fat body.  It really did look hilarious and no-one knew why it was so fat when it ate the same as their other normal looking cat.  The way she always called Jack a plonker.  The way she didn’t bat an eyelid when Jack took his bottom half off and wandered around fiddling with his willy (sorry Jack).  How Eve is the spitting image of her.  And how Jack wasn’t allowed chocolate because it made him go bananas but Lizzie would always let him sniff it!

We used to take the boys to a soft play centre on some days and sit there with our bottomless cups of tea and coffee and go in and play ourselves, pretending that we were looking for the kids.  We did enjoy the massive slide.  One day I accidentally spilt my fresh cup of tea (which was piping hot) all over someone else’s child who had been playing near the table.  It had toppled off the tray as I went to put it down and I was absolutely mortified, especially as the mother of the child, someone I didn’t know, looked at me as though I was a murderer.  Lizzie offered me a great deal of support on that day, the mother and her cronies…I mean friends…had noisily gone off to A&E and we stayed behind while the boys carried on playing and I felt terrible.  Eventually we received a call to say the little boy I’d damaged was OK and the mother even apologised to me.  I couldn’t have got through that without the support Lizzie gave me, even though it seems fairly trivial now.

Oh, and our girlie weekend!  A weekend of pampering in Coventry (er, not sure why it was in Coventry) organised as a coach trip by our local paper’s (filthy rag The News) “Privilege Club”.  The four of us went, me, Lizzie, Mel and Sandra and we were allowed to enjoy the hotel’s pool, Jacuzzi and sauna plus a treatment and then have a day’s shopping in Solihull the next day.  The coach driver was a nutter, careering along the roads to Coventry and talking drivel into the microphone as he was going.  That’s probably illegal now.  How we laughed, he was a bit like a cheesy DJ that talks utter nonsense.  When we got there we were greeted by a vision of aging Brummy loveliness, whose name sadly escapes me although she pronounced it funny to make it sound posher than it was.  I seem to remember lots of giggling from our naughty little group, especially because the lunatic driver was trying to flirt with her.  We had a great weekend, lots of laughs, nice massages (Mel went for the full body one which included buttocks, the rest of us played it safe) and then our shopping trip.  The shopping trip was funniest of all and is how I remember Lizzie best.  While Mel and I were trying on “bedroom shoes” and clothes we’d never normally be seen dead in, Lizzie was buying new clothes and toys for her kids.  Even on a weekend which was just for us she was putting her kids first.

I’m really sad that we lost touch when she moved away but I am hoping to make up for it in a small way by running the Race for Life 10k in Portsmouth with Mel on Sunday 24^th July 2011 in Lizzie’s memory.

You can sponsor me here: http://www.raceforlifesponsorme.org/fionaflaherty2

Mrs Roberts was the name of one of the…er….”cooks” that churned out some of the worst tasting food I’ve ever had the bad fortune to be forced to eat.  And Mrs Gilbert was the dinner lady, I can only remember there ever being one.  She was there the whole time I was at the school and may even have still been there when my sister attended it some nine years later.  Mrs Gilbert was lovely, despite the fact that she was charged with making sure that every one of us ate every morsel from our plates.  We weren’t allowed to go out to play until we’d finished.  This mightn’t have been a problem were it not for the fact that pretty much all of the meals were absolutely disgusting.

The problem probably stemmed from making meals from the cheapest of ingredients. For example you’d think that something like spaghetti hoops wouldn’t be a problem.  I loved spaghetti hoops when I had them at home.  But the ones we got at school were vile, the tomato sauce tasting like nothing in nature, tainted as it was by who knows what.  Metal mainly, thinking back.  I can still taste it unfortunately.  Oh and the mashed potato!  I’d seen the barrel sized vats of instant mashed potato stacked up by the kitchen door, but had never dreamed that when mixed with water their contents could be so horrible.  I can’t even begin to explain how it tasted, but it was nothing, NOTHING like potato. And yet lumpy, somehow, despite the fact there was clearly no potato within a hundred feet of it.  The custard was also lumpy.  Perhaps it was made with the instant mash powder, but just dyed yellow.  It tasted foul, too.  There was a curious white custard as well that was reserved for use with chocolate sponge which just tasted of nothing.

If we’d been offered choice in our meals perhaps it wouldn’t have been as bad but we had one option every day and if we didn’t like it it was too bad.  Very few people at the time were vegetarian but if you were then on most days, well, that was tough too.  Regardless of what we were given and regardless of whether we liked it or not we had to eat every last bit.  Even on the days when the “meal” on offer was a lump of cheese, a splat of mashed potato and several over-boiled carrots.  A nod to the budding vegetarians maybe. I’m not sure who dreamt it up but I don’t think they won any awards for culinary genius.  And I hated cheese, still do unless it’s melted.  School dinners were a living hell.  Which is probably why they stopped them all together after a few years and we all had packed lunches instead.  Much better.