We have name books, of course we do. 2 of ‘em. What self-respecting parent-to-be wouldn’t? They’re rubbish. One of them in particular because not only is it full of standard names we don’t like, it’s full of pretentious or ancient no-longer-used names we don’t like as well. And some funny foreign ones too (no, not like that, I just don’t see how Bambalina or Guillermo would fit a child of English parents from Hampshire). Genuine suggestions from this ridiculous tome, which incidentally is called The Best Baby Name Book (my arse) are Brilliant, Desire, Brian (for a GIRL), Psyche, Calpurnia, Boniface (a boys’ name apparently), Gordius, Beowulf, Quirinal… I could go on all day. Can you see why we’re struggling a bit? I’ve no doubt these names have their places in history, literature and places where girls are called Brian but jeez.

So where else does one go for inspiration? Well, there’s always the web, plenty of lists of what to call your little darling, including helpful lists of the most popular names from previous years, presumably so you know what to avoid. Who wants their child to be one of 5 Graces or Joshuas in a class? Before you get offended by my choice of example I chose the names at random. And Number 2 son of mine is called Joshua, so there. Some of the sites have name generators, so you don’t have to think of one for yourself or something. Here are some examples of names it gave me to go with Flaherty.

Boys:

Ambrose, Rupert, Jeremy, Todd, Nat, Hugo. OK, I know I’m pretty middle-class (ahem) but really? Hugo? Hugo Flaherty? I strongly suspect Hugo might get picked on in my local schools.

And now for the girls:

Saffron, Lydia, Sue (for a BABY? Everyone I know called Sue is over the age of 30 and most are over 50. Sue is the name of people’s mums), India, Allegra. Sigh.

Name generators are a bit rubbish, then.

What about some celebrity inspiration? They’re in the public eye, they wouldn’t possibly call their children anything stupid now, would they? Oh. I’m not sure Satchel, Moon Unit, Kal-el, Apple, Moses or Zuma Flaherty really works. Or Princess Tiamiiiiiiiiiiiiii or however it was spelt to be “different” (read chavvy). Yikes. Maybe we could combine them with something else to make a new one? Prince Moon Satchel (lovely) and Kittyzuma. What a shame I’m not having boy and girl twins, I could use them both! Gah.

Now what? Well, my 3 children are called Jake, Joshua and Poppy. So I can’t have another J name or a flower name. I used to quite like Jessica, but that’s out for the J reason and also because that has always been very popular so I’d risk the 5 Jessicas in the class thing. My husband and I both like Holly but ruled that out last time round because it’s my cousin’s name. If she was a distant cousin, not a problem, but she’s not. And we couldn’t have it this time anyway if Number 4’s a girl because of the horticultural thing. This also rules out Daisy, Marigold, Primrose, Blossom and, er, Jonquil. Among others. Jonquil was the name of my aunty dontcha know.

Which ever way you look at it, we’re stumped. We come up with ideas but they’re often short-lived because one or other of us doesn’t like it or used to know someone we hated by that name. Sad to say it’s looking increasingly likely that this baby is destined to be known as Number 4. Or Brian.

Thanks go to the lovely @Mandi112 who came up with the subject for this post

Last of the TV debates
Before the general election
But will you let old Gordon’s gaffe
Affect next week’s selection?

While Cameron tries not to be too posh
And Clegg does much the same
How will Gordon strive to quash
His public “bigot” shame?

This is their last public chance
To sway the nation’s voters
So will their economic stance
Decide the stragglers and floaters?

The country waits with bated breath
For them to start this final jig
When all I’m really hoping for’s
A gatecrash by Peppa Pig!

Any love affair we may have had with driving, though, is coming to an end, thanks to its ever increasing cost. Sure, it’s still fun to have that open road freedom (like that ever really happens) but driving hits the wallet from all sides now. What you pay for your Road Fund Licence has changed for cars registered after March 2001, we used to all pay the same but now based on CO2 emissions you could be forking out a staggering £435 a year. OK, so very few cars belt out the 255+ g/km of CO2 that would incur such a high fee, but it’s still an awful lot. Car insurance premiums seem to be going up and up too and it must surely be the reason why, when you watch shows about Traffic Police (which I find strangely compelling), that so many of the people they stop are driving without tax, insurance or even driving licences. And they don’t even seem to care, there’s no remorse from them. They can’t afford it, or don’t see why they should pay it so they don’t. And because of people like that the price of car insurance goes up further still. Your classic vicious circle.

Worst of all, though, is that petrol prices are becoming prohibitively expensive. In my local Shell garage the price of unleaded petrol is currently 118.9p, almost as high as it’s ever been. I love my car, absolutely love it, but the fact that it’s a huge 2.9l petrol Volvo XC90 means that to fill it costs nigh on £80 and as we get little more than 20 miles to the gallon that £80 doesn’t go very far. It regularly makes me want to cry. It probably wouldn’t be so bad if we didn’t drive much but my sons live with their father near Aylesbury (if you want to know why go to www.squidpigeons.co.uk/porridge) and every fortnight we have to drive from Portsmouth to High Wycombe pick them up on a Friday afternoon and then back to Wycombe on a Sunday afternoon to take them back. The 10 miles the ex does must be a real chore. Don’t see him sobbing into his drainpipe jeans. Sniggering perhaps, definitely not sobbing. Petrol prices have been exorbitant for a while but what’s got me really riled this week are the announcements of BP and Shell’s profits for the first quarter of the year, $5.6 billion and $4.9 billion respectively. The last time forecourt prices were so high was in the summer of 2008 when the price of oil per barrel was $147. It’s now more like $80 a barrel so, correct me if I’m wrong, but I think their maths has gone a little awry. Even with the few pence added here and there to fuel duty it still doesn’t add up. Not even close.

Of course, the oil companies will argue that most of the cost paid on the forecourt in the UK comes from fuel duty, currently (I think) 57.19p per litre, not to mention VAT at 17.5%. By January duty will have risen by a further 1.76p. Fantastic. I wonder what the treasury actually do with the billions of pounds they make from it? It’s tempting to say “furnish second homes and buy duck houses” but I don’t think they do that any more… Are they investing this money into public transport? Doesn’t look like it, train journeys are hideously expensive and buses, in Portsmouth at least, are unreliable and also incredibly expensive. And does fuel duty have the desired effect? Does it make fewer people drive, share cars or take public transport? Not by the looks of it, there are now more cars on the road than ever. Unless there was a serious overhaul in public transport I doubt many people would give up the convenience of their cars, however much fuel costs. But the point to all this (I think I have a point somewhere) is that while there’s little we can do to change how much tax we pay on fuel, surely the petrol companies are taking the piss by keeping the forecourt price high while announcing massive profits, way above predicted levels? In fact MP Lindsay Hoyle said we’re being “legally mugged” by them. If an MP said it, it must be true. A boycott has been planned on facebook for May 1st, I’m not entirely sure of the details but I think the plan, unlike those of the past to boycott all petrol stations, is to boycott just one company. More details can be found here: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=307148262680

Our house has a nice big garden, pretty unusual for Portsmouth, but this just means there’s more for me to ruin. Last year I put some strawberry plants in hanging baskets and some tomatoes in pots, which I put on the sunny patio at the end of the garden. Guess what happened? Go on. That’s right, for a few weeks I watered and fed them religiously. And then I sort of forgot about them, especially the tomatoes on the far patio which you can’t quite see from the house. So we had a crop of about three strawberries and maybe about ten tomatoes. Sigh. Not only that, I had some extra strawberries in pots by the patio doors. The dog ignored them completely for a few weeks and then suddenly, for no good reason, ravaged them. Bastard. She smashed one of the tomato pots too. Bastard. In fact, having a dog has not been entirely advantageous to creating my Titchmarsh ideal. Quite the contrary. Having a dog has royally buggered up my plans before I even got a chance to bugger them up myself. Bloody dog.

This year, though, THIS YEAR is going to be different. No, it is. It IS! This year I fancy a crack at growing some veg, and clearly because of my previous “successes” it’s a brilliant idea and we’re going to save a fortune by producing vast quantities of our own vegetables and not having to pay supermarket prices. Of course we are. Well, OK, were I to be in charge of this little project myself it would naturally be doomed to failure. That’s why I have a little trick up my sleeve, I have enlisted the help of my mum, hurrah! Aren’t mums great? My mum doesn’t have a garden at her house and misses having one quite badly and as she has proven herself to be a very competent gardener in the past, surely having her on board is win win? As long as the INcomptent gardener (yours truly) doesn’t bugger it up. I really hope I don’t.

Growing your own is all the rage at the moment. It’s like everyone’s suddenly rediscovered The Good Life and are all desperate to emulate Tom and Barbara’s suburban self-sufficiency dream. Possibly minus the pigs. I fear I’m a bit more like Margo than Barbara, though. Especially when it comes to worms and creepy crawlies when I’m digging, it’s all I can do to stop myself running inside when I encounter something with more legs than is acceptable to me (four is acceptable, more than four is not). Or fewer legs than is acceptable as in the case of worms. Our local council gave away some growing kits to encourage people to grow healthy produce in whatever space they have, be it in a garden, a window box or even a window sill. The people of Portsmouth do need all the help they can get and this is quite possibly the first council scheme I’ve ever liked the look of. The BBC also gave away growing kits and since the licence fee is pretty high it would have been rude not to apply for one. You’ve got to claw it back where you can. As well as that I spent a few quid on seeds, seed trays and compost (from Wilkinson, bargain place) and that was about it. Oh, apart from my seed potatoes. I may have made a slight error of judgement when considering exactly how many I would need because I didn’t know anything about growing potatoes. Consequently I still have millions of the bloody things but on the plus side they were reduced because they’d all started sprouting already. And I’ve learnt something (that I’m an idiot) so that’s good.

In the Easter holidays I somehow managed to persuade Number 1 son to dig a vegetable patch at the back of the garden near the patio you can’t quite see from the house. Really, though, I suspect it was done more voluntarily by him, probably because he knew damn well I’d never get round to it. He’s a very wise boy, that one. I could reel out the pregnancy excuse again but it is wearing a bit thin. While he was doing that I filled many seed trays and small pots with compost and exciting looking seeds, tomatoes (lots of), strawberries, carrots, leeks, spinach, cucumber, aubergines, broccoli, peppers (lots and lots of) and possibly myriad other things I’ve already forgotten. I’ve got a mini greenhouse in my garden so I shoved them all in there, watered them and impatiently wondered how long it would be before anything happened, if anything happened at all. I wasn’t feeling especially confident. I also filled some potato planters with compost and was a little perturbed to discover that each one only takes 3 seed potatoes. I have hundreds. Oops. I’ve been good so far, I’ve watered everything regularly and was delighted to see some shoots in some of the trays and pots after a week or so. My mum came and planted some strawberries in the hanging baskets and some onions, cabbages and cauliflowers in the vegetable patch. The dog is now fenced off from that part of the garden so can’t suddenly decide to ruin anything after weeks of ignoring it, however much she wants to. The problem is that with just onions, cabbages and cauliflowers the patch is already almost full. Where the buggery bollocks am I going to put the tomatoes, strawberries, carrots, leeks, spinach, cucumber, aubergines, broccoli, peppers etc.? Perhaps I’m just not cut out for the Good Life…

Anyhoo.

So. Today, children, I want to talk to you about the new John Lewis advert, following a girl through her life, school, love, marriage, popping out babies, er, kids growing up, family arguments, grandkids, old age, blah blah blah. All in a lovely middle class setting with lovely John Lewis “stuff” most of us normal people can’t afford and to the sound of Billy Joel’s “She’s Always a Woman” (albeit a cover version). They stop before she pops her clogs, presumably because John Lewis don’t do a range of coffins. Here it is if you haven’t seen it yet:

Now, this advert, while appearing fairly cleverly done (to me, the uninitiated who doesn’t really know about these things and is waiting to be put right) has divided opinion, on twitter at the very least. A lot of people, really, an awful lot, are saying that they love it and it made them cry. Actually cry! I will grudgingly admit to you when I saw it for the first time that I welled up a little but IN MY DEFENCE I am pregnant and am therefore a bag of unchecked hormones. Also, all little girls with brown hair remind me of my very pesky daughter, just like all small boys have always reminded me of my sons and this has been wont to cause me problems in the past. Like the time my sister and I were in McDonalds in Glasgow and the young chap on the table beside us dropped his chips on the floor and cried his little heart out. My heart melted and his little face reminded me of Number 2 son so much I went and bought him some more. Yes, I am a total sucker. Had to queue for bloody ages too. Er, but I digress. The Joel song they’ve used is very sentimental so I suppose I can see why some non-pregnant, non-sucker types might feel a bit emotional, but still. In fact, if it did make you cry watch it again but with something like Cowboys from Hell by Pantera playing. Same effect? Really? You weirdo.

The other opinion, however, is much more interesting. A large number of people have found the advert to be depressing, after all the woman’s whole life passes by in a minute and a half, and all, weirdly, present day. Not to mention the fact if you don’t have the friends/family/John Lewis products that she has surely your life is a big fat fail? That’s what they’re telling you, right? Many are annoyed by its sentimentality, others that a Billy Joel song has been covered, others that the song has been used at all. My favourite tweets on the subject were from columnist Grace Dent: “think i’ll have a massive gin and watch the John lewis ad again and then put my head in the oven” and author Jenny Colgan: “My favourite bit in that @johnlewis ad is when she goes to university and gets an interesting job. Oh, no, hang on.”

I don’t think it’s changed my opinion of John Lewis particularly, rather emphasised its middle class stereotype. In her final incarnation Mrs John Lewis bears a striking resemblance to all the tweedy ladies that frequent my local branch here in “Saithsea”
and who look down on me for daring to go in the rather small lift with my daughter’s pushchair. Perhaps I don’t look like I can afford to kit my entire life out with John Lewis’s finest (I can’t), even if they are “never knowingly undersold”, but come on tweedy ladies, I’m still allowed to look! Aren’t I? Oh, I’m not. Back to Argos with me, then.

This walking causes me many problems.  For example, if I have some food, any food at all, she will come stomping over to beg for some.  And I really do mean beg.  She makes this horrid whiny “mmmmmmm” noise and it seems the only way to stop it is to shove whatever it is I’m trying to eat in peace in her gob.  Oh, she’s good.  She seems to be of the opinion that my food is her food regardless of what it is and regardless of whether she actually likes it or not.  I must admit it is pretty amusing when you give her toast with marmite and her whole face contorts and she shakes her head from side to side.  What’s that you say?  Evil parenting?  Pah, she shouldn’t be so greedy.  Or keep coming back for more when she knows she doesn’t like it.  At least I haven’t videoed the marmite face…..yet.

But it’s not just food that’s fair game for her now.  The cats find themselves of great interest and if they’re stupid enough to stick around when there’s an excitedly shrieking baby thudding towards them they’re likely to fall victim to a bashing or have their whiskers pulled.  If she could say more words than “wassis”, “wassat”, “dog”, “cat” and “foot” (each with varying degrees of recognisability) she’d probably say “I’ll hug him and squeeze him and call him George” at the unfortunate kitties.  Similarly the fish tank is regularly clobbered, sending the poor buggers zooming off to hide behind Spongebob’s house.

If I thought I was struggling to get anything done before the pesky little monkey became mobile, though, it’s absolutely impossible now.  She’s so quick and she always makes a beeline for all of the things she’s not allowed, easily picking out the remote control or the phone over and above the millions of toys we have provided for her education and entertainment.  And while sometimes it’s possible to get her to sit still with some toys and a cup of milk (but you have to strap her into her high chair so she can’t escape) it’s never for long and soon I’m back to chasing her around and stopping her from climbing the stairs or breaking things.  She’s most contrary and I have no idea where she gets that from…

I realise I’m complaining about what most parents are overjoyed by but I have managed to produce possibly the cheekiest child ever to have been born.  Plus she’s my third.  I’ve seen it before.  And well might my husband (for whom the demon child is his first) gasp in wonder at her increasingly sure and steady stomping, but he doesn’t have to chase after her all day.

So, against my better judgement, I have succumbed to the bright colours, dreadful songs and patronising speech of children’s television, most particularly CBeebies.  I bloody hate CBeebies.  It’s not just that programmes like Balamory and Big Cook Little Cook are a chore to watch (and believe me they are) it’s also that the presenters in between are absolutely terrible so there’s no respite from the awfulness.  They talk utter twaddle.  They sing very badly.  They draw rubbish pictures.  Aren’t they embarrassed?  I am for them.  They’ll never work again, not if anyone ever finds out they did CBeebies.  In fact they really never do work again, as my older children are now 12 and 10 I’ve been subjected to CBeebies hell before and the presenters from then have disappeared.  I suspect the BBC had them shot.

I may despise it but the effect on my pesky daughter is amazing to behold.  She will quietly sit watching this rubbish for 15 whole minutes at a time.  15 whole minutes in which cats, fish and household objects are safe and I could relax if only I wasn’t screaming inside for this dreadful crap to end.  I can only imagine what she’s thinking as she watches it, it’s hard to believe she’s enjoying it and I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s only watching it to gain ideas of how to use children’s television as a vehicle in her plot to take over the world.  Seriously, I’ve seen it in her eyes.

Today, though, for the second time in a few months I braved it because I had a meeting about some potential unpaid writing work for the Probation Service in my area.  Writing the whole Porridge series for this blog has re-awakened my interest in matters of criminal justice, you see, so rather than sitting around on my bum (as you are well aware I am incredibly proficient at) I thought I’d get off it and do some good.  Or something.

Portsmouth City Council has become something of a bastard in recent years, in particular when it comes to parking.  It used to be that you would have to pay in city car parks during daytime hours only.  Not any more.  Not only do you have to pay extortionate rates whenever you park now, you also find that, rather like rats, you are never more than 6 feet away from a parking attendant.  So, with 5 minutes to go before my meeting and as I was filling up the parking meter with about £450 worth of 10p pieces I was somewhat alarmed to see one of these attendants eyeing up The Beast (the Flaherty family car is big).  I’d only been there for 20 seconds, for the Flying Spaghetti Monster’s sake!  And where the hell did he come from?  He must have been hiding behind that Corsa!  When he started writing something down I panicked and loudly informed him, while still shovelling coins into the meter and giving him a Paddington hard stare, that it was my car.  He looked very disappointed.  Bastard.

All in all not the best of starts.  And next came the walk to the Probation office door.  I’ve been there many times, but if there are ever people outside smoking, and there usually are, it’s pretty intimidating.  It sounds snobbish of me, and I don’t mean to be, but I feel out of place there.  The people you see look as though they’ve fallen on hard times.  The conversations you hear are not like any conversations I’ve ever had.  Today three drunk people, two men and a woman smoked and talked about the job centre, manicures and breaching their licences.  Who’s drunk at 2pm on a Wednesday afternoon, especially if they have a Probation appointment?

The problem is that I feel guilty for feeling this way.  They’re people, just like me and you.  And as I’m trying to style myself as some kind of ambassador for ex-offenders in the hope of altering the attitudes of the wider public, maybe I should have a little empathy, after all I’ve been through the system and then some.  But it’s so hard and I realise my hopes for being able to do something positive in the fight to reduce re-offending rates are a little idealistic.  This won’t stop me though and I’m determined to chip away at attitudes a little bit at a time.  But next time I have a meeting I might suggest we meet in the coffee shop…

Eyebrow acting is something I’d only really noticed once before (though I’m sure it happens lots) and, to be honest with you, I had thought I was alone and that I’d made up the phrase.  A Google search, however, has set me straight, I am neither the first person to have noticed and I’m not the only person to call it that either.  Oh well.  Let me describe the phenomenon to you.  Eyebrow acting manifests in the over-actor, presumably to make them appear earnest and serious, but in fact making them look as though a pair of caterpillars are dancing a jig on their face.  Or making them look like those kids on the Cadbury’s advert and who knows what was the thinking behind that one?  Or the drumming gorilla for that matter.  Darius was pretty awful, his eyebrows were all over the place (in fact only Peter Serafinowicz would have done him better than he does himself) but by far the worst offender is Emma Watson who plays Hermione in Harry Potter.  As if it wasn’t bad enough that Hermione is the most irritating character in the history of all book or film (or both) characters, the actor they chose to portray her just happens to be incredibly irritating too with eyebrows that act with such gusto that they should probably have their own separate contract.

I know nothing about Emma Watson but I imagine she’s your typical stage school brat belonging to pushy parents and who takes themself rather seriously.  And waggle their eyebrows about to prove it.  She’s a bit of a ninny, really.  But if she does come from a stage school background that probably explains the eyebrows to a degree.  I found out from wikipedia that old Darius had been doing some stage work, musicals or something so I have come to conclusion that these thesps (if you can call them that) have a tendency to exaggerate their facial expressions for the benefit of the old dear in seat Z6 in whichever crappy theatre they’ve been appearing.  I doubt it has much effect other than to make them look very silly but hey, what do I know?  But don’t they have acting coaches to help them with the transition from stage to screen?  The old biddy in Z6 might not have noticed something was amiss but I certainly have.  If someone you knew well started waggling their eyebrows about when they talked to you wouldn’t you take them to one side and ask them if everything’s OK and suggest that maybe they should cut down on the Red Bull and double shots of espresso?  It’s not Am Dram for goodness’ sake, you’re on the telly!  People can see!

Like a lot of people I love ebay.  It never fails to amaze me some of the crap that people will attempt to sell or that some muppet, somewhere, will most probably buy it.  I’ve sold a fair amount on there myself, I had a wardrobe full of dresses I’d never worn and knew I was never going to wear so I got rid of them.  Had I have thought about it a bit more carefully I probably would have started them off at more than 99p because a lot of very nice things went for pretty much bugger all.  But so what?  They weren’t doing anything and collectively they made me a fair bit.

I’ve run out of things to sell now so I spend lots of time looking for things I might like to buy.  It’s fun.  Especially if you can get stuff really cheap, which you can if you’re prepared to look.  I’ve recently bought some tops and trousers for me and a load of baby clothes for the Popster.  That’s right, I buy baby clothes on ebay.  Second hand!  And no, they aren’t all covered in poo and sick, I’ve managed to get some very good stuff for a song.  Now, if you go to the right places (i.e. supermarkets and Primark), you can get some pretty cheap baby clothes but if you get a fair few bits and pieces it soon mounts up.  And the thing is with kids that they have this annoying habit of growing, and continuing to grow until eventually they stop growing only to declare themselves big enough to buy their own clothes.  It’s rather inconsiderate.  So, with the exception of vests and sleepsuits, I buy pretty much everything for her on ebay.

Obviously I don’t just buy any old crap in her size, I like to think I’m a bit more discerning than that but, again, if you’re prepared to put the effort in there are some real gems.  Something I can’t believe, however, is how much “designer” stuff is on there.  In a bundle of clothes I got today there’s a DKNY t-shirt and a Levi’s denim skirt as well as some other stuff that purports to be designer.  I am clueless so couldn’t tell you if it is or if it isn’t.  But I had a look and stuff like that bought new costs upwards of £20.  £20!  For a single item of babywear!  I’m hard pressed to spend £20 on a single item of clothing for myself, never mind for a baby that will have grown out of it in about 5 minutes.  What is wrong with people?  Don’t get me wrong, they’re nice and everything but there’s no way I’d have bought them if they hadn’t been in a bundle with tons of other clothes for 30 quid.

I fail to understand why people want to parade their children around in labelled clothes.  Surely it’s more important that your child is clean and happy?  It seems to me that these people are displaying their children as a status symbol, in much the same way that they do when they buy ridiculously expensive buggies and prams.  “I’ve got a Bugaboo Bankruptme”, “well, I’ve got a Silver Cross Sawyoucoming”, “oh, well we plumped for the Quinny Can’t-get-anything-in-the-shopping-basket-but-it-still-cost-an-arm-and-a-leg-and-we-had-to-buy-this-matching-rucksack-for-another-hundred-notes for our *little one*”.  It’s a competition, you know, between self-styled “yummy mummies” (vomit), who know nothing about parenting but think it’s very important to have the most ridiculous looking expensive buggy or pram on the market to impress all the other mummies.  Or make them jealous.

This makes me cross.  I seriously doubt the necessity of an “all-terrain pushchair” in the middle of suburbia, especially when most mummies rarely dare to venture out of their illegally parked Chelsea tractor other than to nip and get their nails done.  And I also doubt these all-terrain jobs are any more hard wearing that the reasonably priced travel system that we got for the Popster.  But I’ll let them get on with their shallow competitions, happy in the knowledge that while they’re ringing up I’vespentallmymoney Direct to take out an IVA or declare themselves bankrupt, I’m picking up their hand-me-downs on ebay for peanuts.

Now, it can be pretty tiresome when people want you to help them with their computing difficulties but in some cases I don’t mind.  My friend really doesn’t have a scooby about it despite repeated attempts on my part to teach her the odd thing.  You’d think that just by using the computer she’d pick up a few things but, no, she’s surprisingly resistant. I helped her decide which computer to buy and I put it together for her.  I was there when the man from the cable company came to install broadband and I made sure it was all working.  I’m nice like that.  So it may surprise you to learn that she’s one of my friends from prison.  And in fact I was still in prison when I went to set up her computer for her, and I used one of my town visits to go there.

I’ve mentioned before the stereotypical people I was expecting in prison and the fact that although they were in evidence there were far fewer than I expected.  But going to prison I never imagined I’d make actual friends, the like of whom I’d stay in touch with even when it was all over.  But I have.  OK, so none of them live anywhere near me and I never actually see them but the odd phone call, text message or chat on MSN or facebook is enough to know that they’re still there.  And still calling me biatch.

A lot of people came and went, the vast majority of those I came into contact with had sentences of less than 18 months so there was always a high turnover.  Although you can have a passing friendship with someone you know for 3 months you don’t really expect to hear from them again.  Maybe the odd letter when they’ve first gone home but it soon peters out, especially as most people want to forget they ever were in prison.  No, the ones I had genuine friendships with were those with longer sentences that were always there at the same time as me, some of whom are still inside.  And we had a laugh, we made the most of things, we watched TV, ate quality snacks, played cards and took the mickey out of each other.  This will sound bad (especially to Daily Mail readers) but most of the time it felt like we were at boarding school.  Not that I’ve been to boarding school but I do know people that have, and this is how I’d imagined it to be.  There was a camaraderie among us and I’m sure it’s one of the reasons why I came out with all my faculties intact.  Yes they are intact, how very dare you.

So next time the phone goes and the dulcet tones of my friend demand assistance I will happily oblige, after all it was partly her help that got me through it all.  And I’ll call her shithead.  In the nicest possible way.

The thing is, who wouldn’t procrastinate when there are so many exciting things to do all day when you don’t work?  My days are jam packed with such fun activities as changing the baby’s nappy, hoovering the carpets, loading and unloading the dishwasher and, my personal favourite, tormenting the dog.  Or rather, being tormented by the dog.  Why does she lick my legs?  I bloody hate that.  Now, housework isn’t something I’m particularly keen on or even good at.  If I had a choice I wouldn’t do it at all.  This is why I regularly invite people round for cake and stuff because it forces me to do it.  I’d die of shame if they knew what a tip the place normally is.  It really annoys me that I kill myself one day cleaning the place only for it to have reverted back to a pigsty the very next day.  How does this happen?  I’m sure it wasn’t me.  But I’ve blogged about this before, I won’t bore you with it again.

And it isn’t the only excuse I use for procrastination although if you were to visit at the moment you’d notice I’m less exhausted looking because I’ve been keeping on top of it for once.  Because that way I don’t have time to sit down and take notes for my book.  Or do the testing I’m supposed to be doing.  Or contact all those companies for that business idea I had.  What is wrong with me?  Any one of those things could be a money spinner.  Don’t I want to earn any money of my own?  I’d love to, really.  I do not enjoy being a kept woman, I’d like to be able to pay my own way, even if it’s only a token amount.  But the routine of the day and keeping my daughter occupied and fed rather takes over, especially now she’s so mobile and requires constant watching lest she disappear up the stairs.  She’s so quick now, damn it.  So I do the cleaning when she has a nap and chase after her when she’s awake.  Somewhere in the day I need to squeeze in some exercise too if I’m ever going to fit in to my clothes, the vast majority of which are size 10.  I’m very much not a size 10 at the moment.  After all that there’s barely time to add in a peppering of daytime television and, oh look, the whole day’s gone.  Rubbish.

So this is a plea.  Somebody, somewhere, PLEASE direct a hefty kick up my arse and get me going with my book, my testing and my business idea.  If I’m successful you may even get a share of the profits or a job.  Although it’s far more likely to be a lollipop.

Of course, there’s every chance they’ve sorted the parking and it’s all fine and dandy (and probably cripplingly expensive).  But I’m still a bit worried about getting there.  For those of you that don’t know Portsmouth, it’s a small island city, very densely populated and with only three routes off it.  The QA hospital is just north of the island and fairly close to two of those routes.  The problem is the traffic.  There’s far too much of it.  If anything happens on one of those routes the whole city grinds to a halt.  I’ve seen it and it isn’t pretty.  So, if you go into labour in rush hour and there’s been an accident on the M275 you’re buggered.  Or you’d better hope they send you a helicopter.  Except they won’t be able to land unless you live near the common, the beach or one of the parks.  You could, feasibly, get the train to Cosham, but then you’d have to walk halfway up Portsdown Hill while you suffer a contraction every minute or your waters break all over the place.  I don’t think you’d make it to be honest.

Anyway, it wasn’t really that I wanted to talk about and I’m worried I’ve now terrified my heavily pregnant friend into packing up her stuff and camping outside QA until she goes into labour.  Sorry, Mrs B.  No, what I really wanted to talk about was the maternity services themselves which have now fully relocated to QA from St Mary’s Hospital (which is actually in Portsmouth and you could argue, therefore, more convenient to the people of Portsmouth).  Thus far I have had three babies, all at St Mary’s Hospital.  In fact, I was born there myself.  So was my husband.  So were most of my friends.  Portsmouth’s a bit like that.  Babies 1 and 2, my lovely boys, were born in 1997 and 1999 and were fairly straight forward, no worries during the pregnancy and pretty standard births.  That bit really hurts by the way.  I mean REALLY.  I wasn’t there for long and even went home the same day when number 2 son was born.  The midwives seemed OK, only one of them was scary and the only problem I really had was that number 2 son was born when their shifts changeover in the morning.  To her credit the midwife stayed for as long as she could but as soon as he was out and OK all I saw was her dust as she hotfooted it home to bed.

But then, at the end of 2007, I got pregnant with Poppy.  Or the Popster as we like to call her.  I am lucky in the respect that I got pregnant very quickly but I suspect that’s where my luck ran out because Miss P was a bit of a problem child from the off.  What a monkey.  Now, in my limited experience as a reluctant pregnant woman (reluctant in the sense that I suffer rather a lot with stupid things like migraines and swollen ankles and have a bit of a tendency to moan about it a lot) I’d noticed that things keep changing.  They change their minds every year about what you can and can’t eat, how long you should breastfeed (I think that’s until you die of old age now) and now when you should have scans.  They give you more now, it’s really quite good apart from the fact you have to pay for the prints.  Pfft.

But how, and where you see your midwife also seems to change, especially if you’ve changed doctors in the interim period.  Since it had been 8 or 9 years since I’d had a baby I’d most definitely changed doctor and was a bit bewildered by the procedure.  There didn’t seem to be one.  Which is why I found myself calling the community midwives number as directed by my doctor to try and get an appointment, only to find myself being treated in a very dismissive and extremely rude way by the woman who answered the phone.  She might as well have told me to fuck off.  Several phone calls later and I’d sorted out an appointment, with the rude woman.  You really shouldn’t ever piss off a pregnant woman because I was gunning for her by this stage.  I knew perfectly well that it was the same woman on the phone but I declared that I’d like to make a complaint about my ill-treatment from the VERY rude woman to whom I had previously spoken and I demanded an appointment.  She was suitably sheepish and even admitted it was her I had spoken to but that she wasn’t being rude.  Yeah right.  The reason I’m telling you this rather long-winded tale is that the same thing happened to my friend today.  She only has a couple of weeks left and is suffering with pain in her hands so her own midwife gave her specific instructions to call the hospital to make an appointment asap and get it treated.  The treatment she received by the woman on the phone was atrocious, she was told there was nothing they could (or perhaps would) do this close to the birth and that she was blocking the phone line for people who were in labour.  In other words, fuck off.  My friend was very upset, as you would be.  She was only following instructions.  I was upset for her, which is why I’m writing this today.  They may have a shiny new hospital to play with but it seems they don’t have the shiny new attitudes to go with it.

Anyway, back to the Popster.  At the time I was due a scan they changed how they were done so instead of the old dating scan which didn’t show you much you now get a detailed scan where, if you want to know, they will even tell you the sex of your baby.  At mine they told me that my placenta was low-lying and that I’d need an extra scan later on to make sure it had grown out of the way.  I didn’t think much of it and didn’t really worry about it.  Only when I went back several weeks later it seemed it hadn’t moved and was blocking the pesky baby’s exit route.  Arse.  The midwife doing the scan told me I’d have to have a caesarean and seemed amazed I hadn’t been bleeding.  I must say, I was pretty alarmed.  I came home, looked up the condition they’d diagnosed, placenta praevia, and was even more alarmed.  It’s not nice and can be pretty dangerous.  Great.  The hospital had booked me an appointment with a consultant some 2 weeks later (!) and this, sadly is where things became a little bit farce like, all because of a tiny typo.  You see the midwife had accidentally left the V off the roman numeral IV making it look as though I had a mild case instead of a very severe one.  Oh dear.  I saw the consultant and was a little bit bewildered.  He said I didn’t need to worry, it was only a grade 1 praevia and there was a good chance I’d be able to have a normal birth.  I was certain the midwife had said I would HAVE to have a c-section but did I say anything?  Did I?  No, of course not.  I’d kind of expected him to be looking at stills from the scan while I was there.  Silly me.

Another scan was booked for a couple of weeks later, I saw the same midwife and she confirmed that it was very serious and that the slight communication problem had massively played down my condition.  She was still amazed that I hadn’t been bleeding, and I was still alarmed.  What I should have been doing was taking it very easy.  What I had been doing was as much as I could.  Oops.  I’d even, earlier on, attempted a 3 mile run.  This resulted in much puking.  I am an idiot.  A new appointment was made with the consultant, this time only 3 days later.  Only I never made it because I ended up in hospital the day before because of bleeding.  I was 35 weeks pregnant and a little bit scared.  And they wouldn’t let me go home and made me wear very sexy anti-embolism stockings.  The mistake had been realised and now they were going to make sure I did take it easy in the hope that they could give me an elective c-section at 37 weeks instead of an emergency one at any time.  Luckily I held on.  And, for all the faults of the vile woman on the end of the phone, the staff were fantastic and I was extremely well looked after.  I had the best of everything, anaesthetist, surgeon etc.  I was just bored out of my tiny mind for 2 weeks waiting for it to happen and always on tenterhooks for an emergency.  I read books, watched movies on my laptop, even surfed tinternet a bit and watched the chavs who were outside smoking for the rest of the time.  There were loads.  Most of them were pregnant.

I had my c-section under general anaesthetic and it was horrible, I woke up groggy and in lots of pain but the morphine was marvellous.  I’ll never understand why people would choose a c-section but hey.  Popster was fine, very puffy looking, but fine.  After 2 weeks stuck in hospital I was determined to get out as quickly as possible and went home after 2 days.  Result.  Poppy will be a year old at the end of this month and I can’t believe how quickly the time’s gone.  She’s still a cheeky monkey.

Three wise monkeys?

I feel I must apologise if I’ve gone into any gory detail, I really am not one of those kind of mothers.  But I do feel compelled to tell my good friend Mrs B not to worry about the staff, you came across one idiot but the vast majority are great and you’ll be fine in the spanky new hospital.  They’ll look after you and baby Tiberius very well. )

NB The baby won’t really be called Tiberius.  Or will it???

Anyway, the engine of the Solex wasn’t attached at the time and the thieves left that behind, as clearly they didn’t know what it was they were stealing.  Which begs the question, why bother?  It’s obviously a very old bike and you’re hardly going to get much for that, especially without the engine if by some miracle you actually knew what it was you had.  I can’t imagine a Burberry cap wearing chav larking about on it, not even in Portsmouth.  I’m worried that the bastards will just dump it somewhere meaning that the whole exercise, apart from getting a lifetime’s worth of tools, was mostly pointless and only served to upset.  And, of course, the police were no use, sending a “scene of crime officer” no doubt with “SOCO” emblazoned on the back of their jacket in CSI stylee.  Nice.  Apparently they faffed about looking for fingerprints and couldn’t find a single one.  You could argue they’d also struggle to find their arse with both hands.  Just saying.

I too had a fairly recent brush with some scumbags.  These ones were particularly blatant and less than bright.  The weather was pants, it had been raining and very windy and I noticed one day that my shed door had blown open.  I didn’t think much of it as I had things to do but later in the day I noticed some stuff had also somehow got outside the shed.  Namely an old headboard, some wood and a bike.  Now, I couldn’t be sure they hadn’t always been outside the shed, at least until I saw two hoodies walk out of my shed carrying another bike.  In broad daylight!  I couldn’t believe my eyes!  I didn’t really know what to do.  I paced a bit and went looking for the phone.  Was this enough of an emergency to call 999?  I wasn’t sure.  But I didn’t want them to get away with any of my stuff so I went to the patio door and banged loudly on it.  Shitbags 1 and 2 turned round, clocked me and legged it over the back wall from whence they came.

I dialled 999 gave the description, checked the shed to see if they’d actually got anything but wasn’t sure.  One of the quick release wheels was missing from one of our bikes but apart from that I couldn’t tell.  But about 5 minutes later I had a call, a police officer had responded and caught one of the little buggers.  How unusual!  He had a bike and they wanted to know if it was ours, but sadly I couldn’t be sure one way or the other.  And despite the fact my description matched exactly what the little bastard was wearing the CPS decided not to proceed.  Even though the policeman had caught him red-handed and he’d resisted arrest too.  I’m not a fan of the CPS.  (If you’ve not caught my earlier posts, why not?  And why I don’t rate the criminal justice system starts at Hope Springs?)

The thing is, I am very vocal about rehabilitation of offenders and passionate about re-educating the wider public to see them differently.  Most of them.  But it’s people like this that give ex-offenders a bad name.  These are the scumbags that most people imagine when they hear the word offender.  These are the scumbags that Daily Mail readers want to lock up and conveniently mislay the key.  Up to a point, even I agree.  Can they be rehabilitated?  Maybe not, they want something for nothing and don’t care who they hurt to get it.  I’m generalising but they’re not usually clever enough to avoid capture yet only get short custodial or community sentences for relatively petty crimes.  There is neither the time nor the resource available to rehabilitate offenders on shorter sentences, try as they might, and so for people like this prison becomes a revolving door.  So many things need to change, I’m working on finding some way of making a difference but I think I’ve got my work cut out.

There are so many property shows it’s almost beyond belief, from the happily now defunct Changing Rooms to the hilarious 80s throwbacks of Homes Under the Hammer, To Buy or Not to Buy, Grand Designs, Property Ladder, The Home Show, Location Location Location Location Location etc, and many more besides.  To be fair, the evening ones on Channel 4 are quite good, but the daytime ones really do suck.  By far the worst is 60 Minute Makeover on ITV during the day.  I’ve only seen it once but it really is atrocious because they actually do do it in only 60 minutes.  How good do you reckon the finish is on that then?  You’re absolutely right, it’s bloody awful.  Can you imagine going out for a trip to ASDA one lunch time only to come home and find that 437 people have traipsed mud through your house, got paint all over your carpet, put up some nasty wallpaper without smoothing out the bubbles and “distressed” your perfectly good pine furniture?  I’d be horrified.  They’re always bleating on about how much the lucky recipient deserves it so I can only assume the people that nominate them REALLY hate them.

Of course, these property shows all started when there was a massive property boom that seemed like it would never end.  And now it has, so have they all gone away?  No they haven’t.  No, instead they’ve all changed.  Now there are endless references to the “current market” and very serious faces.  Some of the shows even want you to make do with what you’ve got, rather than try and make a profit out of your bricks and mortar.  You mean….you want me to….LIVE in the house?  Good grief, I’d never thought of that!  That said, the irritating bastards they find to do Location etc still manage to have budgets of £950k and I’ve never really been able to understand how.  What the hell do they do for a living?  Steal organs and sell them on the black market?  Annoying though the couples are I do have a soft spot for Kirstie and Phil.  They have such great chemistry, something that was sorely lacking when Kirstie’s sister took over for a short while.  In fact she had her own show recently on the BBC and just came across as a rude skinny sour faced bitch.  Maybe that was just me.

I often wonder how Sarah Beeny doesn’t lose her rag at people on Property ladder.  This is a woman who has been developing property from a young age, knows exactly what she’s doing and has made an absolute fortune out of it.  So if she wasn’t presenting a property programme her advice would probably cost a mint.  But do the first time developers ever take any notice of her sage advice?  Do they?  Of course they don’t!  They know it would be much better to spend £50k on the kitchen with diamond garden gnomes on that only they like than the £2k one from B&Q.  Grrrrrrrr.

And Grand Designs, God, there are so many.  But Grand Designs is a good one.  Kevin McCloud is very honest about whether he likes each house and always goes on about architectural stuff i don’t really get.  As far as I’m concerned some of the houses look lovely at the end and some are horrible.  And not a one of them ever looks like the kind of place you could or would live in.  They all look like airport lounges.  Every one of them.

But my favourite episode of one of these shows ever was an overseas special of “Selling Houses” where they do your pigsty up so someone will actually want to buy it.  On this special show they featured a couple who’d bought a cave house on the side of a mountain.  They were complaining that it was a bit damp.  Imagine that.

Sadly, I think I’ve been drunk in front of plenty of people’s parents in my time and I can only remember making a twat of myself, convincing myself I sounded completely sober while doubtless slurring my words and reeking of booze.  Always a good look.  In fact, now I come to think of it, my new anti-alcohol status largely stems from the sheer weight of times I’ve made a complete tit of myself in a public place in front of people I do and don’t know.  Apart from at my wedding (where I’m sure I made a tit of myself with all that beer, champagne, snakebite and tequila swilling about in my system) the last time I really properly went out I fell asleep in the toilets of Tiger Tiger.  For about an hour.  Adam was beside himself, he thought I’d buggered off.  No, I had just passed out, and that’s the first (and last) time that’s ever happened.  At least I think it is.  Of course I looked a complete tit.  And before I’d passed out in the toilets I’d looked a tit because I was trying to dance to cheesy music, very unsteadily.

We had a party for Miss Woolley’s birthday a couple of weeks ago.  We played Rock Band.  The only way I have the guts to sing publicly is if I’ve been drinking.  Except when I’ve been drinking my singing sounds awful.  We made margaritas and I sang a bit, very quietly before anyone was really around to hear me and before they realised there was a video camera on the premises.  Phew.  But although I didn’t make too much of a tit of myself (at least that I can remember) I still woke up the next day with the overwhelming feeling that I had.  And I had a stonking hangover.

I know plenty of people for whom excessive social drinking is a way of life, it’s not a good night if there isn’t a picture of them passed out on the floor or at a table or riding something in a children’s playground.  For me, I left that kind of drinking behind when I stopped being a teenager, back in the days when I drank only to get drunk.  And now I don’t even like the feeling of being drunk, not at the time and most definitely not the day after.  I must be getting old.  I don’t like drinking wine with dinner either, I’d much rather have a glass of coke.  No wine connoisseur, me.

But don’t get me wrong, I’m not going to become a tee-totaller who looks disapprovingly at anyone else who exercises their right to an alcoholic beverage when the mood takes them.  I even still fancy the odd cold tasty beer or glass of pinot noir, it’s just that I can’t normally stomach more than one.  When I was in prison, I really missed drinking.  When I came out of prison Adam and I went out drinking all the time and we had a lovely time and no hangovers.  But normal life has now resumed, and with a small child in the house I’m far less inclined to go out or drink.  So I’ll stick to the occasional tasty beer and keep stuffing my face with pies instead.  I mean do lots of exercise!