Original and best

Oh lord. I've now seen the actual 2012 festive missive from Dad's cousins. As well as exciting news of a self-catering holiday in Peebles, it contained the following gem:

Enid has had an encouraging year with the card-making group (complete with photo of a crappy homemade letter rack.)

December

In December Simon finally removed a watermark from Suzy's car seat that looked very much as if she had suffered stress incontinence going over a cattle grid. It was in fact Sprite.



DISCLAIMER: The author and her husband would like to make it clear that while a handful of these entries are based on truth, the one about Simon's skid marks is pure fabrication.

November

In November life in the Southwold household became dominated by one word: MUD. A combination of heavy rainfall and clay soils means that there is now literally nowhere to walk the dog that she won’t come back looking, but alas not smelling, choc-dipped. A waterproof doggy trouser suit had been suggested by a well-meaning acquaintance, but when showed to Molly her response was profane in the extreme, including the phrase “I wouldn't wear f***ing tartan if you paid me in sardines, Mother”. Work on a disposable, cling film-type alternative was halted when Molly began to lose consciousness, although Simon maintains that she was just holding her breath to scare us.

October

In October Suzy's sister continued the family gene pool by squeezing a new person through her cervix. Obviously we can already discern signs of extreme intelligence, even genius, in her weeny bundle of joy.

September

Towards the end of September Suzy was eagerly anticipating a very important event, probably the most significant since her wedding. After 9 months of watching everything expand, a date of 27th September was bandied about. Nerves and anticipation led up to the big day - could it really be as good as people said it would be?

YES!!! The new Waitrose in Market Harborough opened on schedule.

August

In August we hoped to enjoy the English summer, but it rained on both days.

How to... Make New Year's Resolutions

Obviously I don't need to make any New Year's resolutions because I am already perfect, but I guess some of you lesser mortals might, so here goes.

Don’t be too ambitious. New Year's Day is a singularly poor day to instigate lifestyle changes. Let's be honest, any normal person wakes up on January 1st with a raging hangover. Metallica will be playing a one-off gig in your skull while the man from Carpetright lays a new Axminster on your tongue and Michael Flatley performs Riverdance in your digestive system. The last thing you’ll want to do is go for a 3 mile jog followed by 50 chin-ups. Best, then, to ensure your list includes some easily-achieved resolutions. For example, you could resolve not to peel parsnips between the hours of 2am and 5am.

Most resolutions are about fitting in with society’s expectations. I'm sure you don't need reminding that these are wholly unrealistic. You can't combine Nigella’s cleavage, Carol Vorderman’s derrière and Jessica Ennis’s stomach. No-one does. Much healthier (mentally, anyway) to think “I am what I am” and go through the festive Radio Times drawing moustaches and devil horns on anyone more attractive than you. Elasticised waists were invented for a jolly good reason, and I would remind you that while people who exercise live longer, that extra time is spent exercising.

Life is short: why not make some resolutions you’ll actually enjoy keeping? One habit I genuinely recommend: I never pick up the home phone unless I know who’s calling. A £10 answerphone is all you need. Cold-callers, deranged relatives and garrulous acquaintances can be instantly avoided, and if that doesn't make for a better 2013 I don't know what will. I also decided last year that I would have nothing whatsoever to do with lawn maintenance - mowing, strimming, weeding or wrestling clippings into the green bin. (Caution: this one needs an understanding spouse, or paid gardener.)

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all. Now, would someone pass me that Radio Times?

July

In July three became four when Molly joined our little family. If you have not yet had the pleasure of meeting Molly, imagine a black feather boa with five sets of teeth and a bad attitude. Simon came home from work that day with a squeaky toy cow, which was at the time bigger than the dog. After five months of vigorous play, Cow is now missing two feet, one ear and part of her udder, but has gained an astronomical bacteria count.

June

In June, Suzy was pleased to find Sellotape satin-finish Gift Wrap tape on 3 for 2 at Rymans. We also visited Barcelona. Barcelona is a city in Spain.

May

In May, Simon was delighted when he found a solution to his dry itchy skin condition.

April

In April we took to experimenting with different positions in the bedroom. It was an exhausting couple of weeks and Simon pulled a muscle twice. Sometimes Suzy took the lead and other times Simon made suggestions (with his artistic background, tending to prefer more unusual combinations). Lighting was a problem and sometimes a torch had to be used, and on one occasion we even had to get our next door neighbour round to help with all the humping, but eventually we decided to put all the bedroom furniture back where it had been in the first place.

March

In March Suzy was forced to replace her wiper blades, having tried and failed to alleviate the noise with white vinegar and kitchen roll. So unfortunately at a mere 3 years 5 months old, this set didn't beat the “raining” (Ha! Get it?) champion's record of 4 years and 1 month. (Trico brand, a freebie when she worked at their Abergavenny factory one glorious summer.)

February

February was the month in which an anaesthetised Timmy-cat was separated from his testicles. Unlike Harvey before him, this was performed by a qualified veterinarian and not an ill-judged leap over a rusty barbed-wire fence. To everyone’s relief Timmy didn't show the area undue attention and thus avoided the ignominy of a Buster collar.

Round Robin

Every year my father's cousin encloses a round robin with his Christmas card to my parents.

(Actually, let's start with the card itself. Without fail it is addressed to my mum, my dad, me and my sister. Seeing my name writ large in his oh-so-neat script especially annoys me, as I am a married woman of 35 and haven't lived "at home" since 1995. Either find out my address or stop pretending to care, but let's not make out it's still the early nineties.)

Irritation aside, this pales into insignificance compared to the round robin itself. It reeks of smugness and self-delusion: his wife's lecturing career, the joys of a minicruise to Antwerp, his fascinating hours volunteering in their church coffee shop, and how their great love is their grandchildren (who at 21 and 18 are surely too old to be spending so much time with Granny and Grandad).

In a spirit of defiance, I wrote my own round robin this year. I'm going to tweet a month every day between now and Christmas Eve.



Merry Christmas to family and fiends, near and far. The Southwolds extend our festive wishes. We can hardly believe that 2012 is already drawing to a close, like the long-awaited finale of a tedious primary school nativity.

And what an exciting year it has been! In January, Suzy was delighted with the results of “Almat” washing powder - thank you, good folks at Which? magazine! - and vows that she will never use any other. She finds it keeps her delicates soft, while effectively removing the shitty skid marks from the arse of Simon's boxers (when used at 60 degrees or above.)

How to... Support a new mum

I am Aunt Suzy! My little sister, whom it feels like only yesterday was biroing on my dolls’ faces and ruining my carefully curated Enid Blyton collection, brought baby Florence into the world earlier this month. Here are some things I have learned about how to support a new mother.. and how not too.

1) DON’T mention her size. Although her perverse streak meant that my sister positively enjoyed the stage where strangers feel uncomfortable wondering if you are pregnant or just fat, one teenage boy will always regret the moment he leaned out of his mate’s car and shouted “I hope that's diet!” to my sister as she bought a Coke. (She literally reduced him to tears. Rookie mistake, kid.)

Similarly, I have learned to my cost that even blood relations are not allowed to study the “bump” through narrowed eyes and wonder aloud if she's sure she isn't having twins.

Our father takes the biscuit though: “I’m surprised you've got so many stretch marks, because you had so much skin to begin with.” Tactful, dad.

2) DON’T even attempt to assemble an infant car seat unless you have a degree in advanced mechanical engineering, or were once a technical advisor on Scrapheap Challenge. The first astronauts went to the Moon with less protection. Glibly agreeing to have a go cost me most of an afternoon and two fingernails. Personally I don't see why you can't just wrap them in Bubble Wrap.

3) DO obey the hospital’s rules. I was unceremoniously ejected from the delivery suite at midnight when a senior midwife realised my sister had three birthing partners. (Previous staff had clearly been fooled by my skilful impersonation of a foetal heartrate monitor.) Poor Sis was forced to soldier on without my patented Rousing Medley of Show Tunes.

4) DON’T expect to win a conversation that starts “I’m so tired...”. They have the monopoly on fatigue for the next 18 years. Especially if you let slip that you are tired because you were down the pub until midnight.

How to... Eat abroad

I come from stock where anything that can't be grown, hunted, fished or foraged in East Anglia is dismissed as “foreign muck” (with the noticeable exceptions of coffee, wine and tobacco - hmm, Mum, Dad?) I was 19 before I ate in a curry house, 28 when I first tried sushi - I remain the only person in my family to have done so. So sheltered and scared was I that on my first self-catering holiday in France, I took my own body weight in tinned goods and dined, the first night, on a Fray Bentos pie. Now a sophisticated and cosmopolitan woman (stop laughing at the back!) I present my guide to Eating Abroad.

Tea: The only country where you're all but guaranteed a kettle in your room is Blighty. Worse, the tea served abroad is universally revolting: weak as a kitten and either served with hot milk (ugh!), UHT milk (blee!) or no milk at all (waiter!). There is absolutely NOTHING wrong with sacrificing a corner of your suitcase for a travel kettle and 40 teabags. You're British, after all.

Vegetarians: I'm not, my husband is. Absolute nightmare. He nearly starved in Brittany, as the French resolutely refuse to believe that lardons (the bacon bits in salads) count as meat. As the spouse of a veggie, be prepared for the disappointment of walking past 50 top-class restaurants until you find a dodgy-looking establishment that smells of drains, but sells Margerita pizza.

Tourist Traps: Every year I forget about them. Every year I get ripped off. In 2009, we paid €27 for a glass of wine and a Coke on the Champs Élysées. At least in Fornells last year I realised the famous Menorcan lobster stew, caldereta, was €70 for two BEFORE we sat down.

The USA: Prepare before you go by tripling portion size, dousing everything in cinnamon and getting your wife to introduce herself when she puts your dinner in front of you. Set fire to a few £10 notes to desensitise yourself to the shock of tipping 20% for the privilege.

It's still raining cats and dogs

As of Wednesday, Chez Southwold contains a 10 week old Schnoodle puppy as well as a (just about still a) kitten. The puppy is oblivious to the kitten. The kitten (twice the size of the puppy) took one look, and ran three quarters of the way upstairs to eye the new addition unhappily through the bannisters. He's only come in to bolt some food since. I haven't yet worked out what this says about cats and dogs.

(NB for sensitive souls: puppy is not allowed upstairs, so kitten gets his usual nighttime fuss and cuddles!)

How to... Keep house

Given that I’ve been a disciple of the Lakeland catalogue since the age of 19, I’m always slightly forlorn that our home never looks as good as I’d like.

People fall into four ascending categories where housekeeping is concerned: absolute slobs; clean but untidy; tidy but grubby (or “Fur coat and no knickers” as my Gran would disapprovingly have put it) and Anthea Turner.

I’m a “Clean-but-untidy”. While visitors may have to step over three pairs of Crocs, a sleeping cat and a broken umbrella to enter our home, I take comfort from the fact that you could literally eat your dinner off my bathroom surfaces. I also have a thing about spotless plugholes and dishwasher filters - unfortunately places that visitors don’t tend to inspect, unless you insist, in which case they tend to look awkward and suddenly remember a dental appointment.

By contrast, most of my friends are Tidy-but-Grubbies - it all looks great, until you go to move something in the bathroom and find it is welded on with soapscum and rust. An old boyfriend’s stepmother was a prime example: her house could have been featured in Country Living magazine, but after two years we found out that she didn’t bother changing the sheets between guests, relying instead on a few squirts of Febreze. The thought still makes me shiver.

I own a brilliant, tongue-in-cheek book called Feng Sh*** by Anna Crosbie, and I’ll leave you with some of her tips:
· Bookshelves make an ideal holding pen for miscellaneous chores – items you intend to file some day, return to the shop for a refund, or post to your cousin in Australia.
· Buy a coffee table with a lower shelf designed to display posh, oversized photographic books. Use the shelf to create an 8ft³ living sculpture entitled “I think my car keys are in there somewhere”.
· Every home needs a pinboard on which to display menus, eclectic business cards, expired supermarket reward scheme vouchers, inspirational recipes and mystery post-it note phone numbers. Cull the contents only when drawing pins become dysfunctional.

Twitter 1, Argyll and Bute Council 0

As 1) an ex teacher and 2) a glutton, I've been watching the Martha Payne thing unfold on Twitter today with some interest. For those who have been living in a shed with their eyes shut and earplugs in, she's a precocious Scottish 9 year old who set up a blog in April photographing and reviewing her school dinners. Yesterday Argyll & Bute council told her to stop, citing tearful, demoralised dinner ladies and blatant misrepresentation of school dinner portion policy (Yes, such a thing exists!)  After a media frenzy, a bigwig at the council overturned the ban a few hours ago.

The irony is that nine times out of ten, Martha's pretty complimentary about the food, often more so than you would expect from looking at the photo. For instance, a recent dinner of Macaroni Cheese, which looked to me like something you would step round on a city centre pavement on a Saturday night, garnered a perfect score of 10/10.

Having experienced primary school catering first-hand at various points between 1986 and 2012, I think things are on the up overall, although it's been a bumpy trajectory. I managed Suffolk school dinners for about half a term when I was 9 before giving up after a meal of hockey-puck-like burgers and home-made crisps that oozed oil when prodded with a fork. The thought of this still makes me want to retch 26 year later.

My little sister's bete noire, in the early 90s  - different school, same county - was "tuna flan". This sounds revolting and indeed was. It was invariably served with frozen mixed veg of the sort that comes in 2kg bag for 79p from Heron Foods. Hot tuna is the devil's work anyway and combined with mealy broad beans, overcooked diced carrot and the hard ends of green beans, poor baby sis tried in vain to keep it down. I think that was the start of her pack-up period, too.

At the same time I was at high school and the dinners were, largely, delicious. I still hanker after their Mushroom Bake and a baked potato with cheese and herbs, followed by splitting a tiny paper bag of chips with my friend Helen if we both put in 17p. I have nothing but happy memories of the catering at high school, so it is probably no coincidence that I was a bit of a chubber.

After 1995 I didn't set foot in a school canteen until 2006, when I got a job as a TA prior to teacher training. One of the best performing primary schools in Leicestershire, the children's academic excellence clearly wasn't based on what they were eating at lunchtime. Here is a blog post I wrote at the time:

We all love the Jamester, but let’s not pretend our kids are going to come home from school packed full of vitaminy goodness as a result of the new guidelines for school meals.

The hot dinners at my primary school, which I am contractually obliged to force daily down the throats of 15 retching four-year-olds, have allegedly been “healthified” already. So don’t worry, catering managers! Just follow the [name of school removed] four-point plan for Exploiting Every Loophole.

•  When serving spaghetti Bolognese, don’t forget to make it out of the cheapest meat possible then add three times the normal quantity of water, such that it looks and smells like dog diarrhoea.


• Tiresome vegetarian pupils getting you down? Just buy a huge bag of frozen mixed vegetables at the start of term, then serve them daily. With tomato sauce and pasta. With white sauce in pastry. With pasta and cheese in a bake. With some hideous pastiche of curry sauce. Don’t worry, they don’t need protein! It’s their own fault for being pernickety!


• You can get away with serving mashed potato as a main meal if you mix it with a sneeze of Cheddar and call it “cheese and potato pie”. For maximum lethargy, serve with a jacket potato and beans on the hottest day of the year.


• You are not obliged to name a type of meat before the word “burger”.

At the school I've just left, the dinners were either fantastic or shocking. You had to read the menu really carefully in advance. On a bad day, I'd prefer an Aldi pot noodle to flabby fish fingers, dry pasta and chewy sweetcorn. In contrast they did cracking roasts, and their pizza with jacket potato and coleslaw was ambrosia of Last Supper worthy deliciousness. But there was never enough of it, and this appears to be the crux of Martha's complaint too.  One one occasion she recounts being given just one potato croquette, and says she couldn't concentrate all afternoon.

I taught the oldest kids in the school, and every time we held a class council the subject of portion sizes came up - the unfairness, as they saw it, that in a 5'9" eleven year old and a 3' four year old were given roughly the same amount of food. Martha's school apparently told the children a few days ago that they could have unlimited bread and salad. Well, so could we, in theory, but in practice a bowl of salad (of the same size I'd make at home for my husband and me) had to go round a hundred or so kids. Martha's school also seems to have the odd arrangement that you can only have fruit if you've cleared your plate. With public health in Scotland as dire as it is, surely fruit consumption shouldn't depend on whether you have already forced down sausage and chips and treacle tart?

Martha's blog is here. The famous one-croquette meal is here, a particularly nutrient-free attempt at Chinese cuisine is here and in fairness to her dinner ladies, their Jubilee efforts look absolutely lovely.

10

Trying to rid the car of the smell of spilled petrol, I left the boot open. Through two hours of heavy rain.

Niggly

I'm having one of those days when nothing really major goes wrong, so you don't feel properly entitled to be grumpy, but a string of trivial things make you quite irritable. Here is the list, and yes, I do realise that compared to pestilence, famine and world hunger they are pretty trivial.

1. A large, very thin spider has taken up residence in the bathroom. Just as I went to put the plug in and run my bath this morning, I saw one of her legs retract into the plughole where she was hiding. I couldn't stomach the thought of drowning her, so I had a shower instead, and my unshaven legs feel like Velcro.

UPDATE: I might as well have shaved my legs, as Reggie has just eaten her. "What's that in your mouth, Reg? Cotton? Oh..."

2 .Tried a new hair styling product. Hate the smell and it's lingered all day. I smell like a Year 9 boy's changing room.

3. I am on Morning Cat Duty for a friend, whose house I pulled up at on the way to work before realising I hadn't brought her front door key with me.

4. Left my mobile in my husband's car yesterday.

6. Was meant to be at work until 1.15. Stayed chatting until 2.45.

7. Naively volunteered to fill the lawnmower petrol can. Little did I know that petrol pumps have about the same flow rate as a fireman's hose. Drenched the forecourt and myself, much to the amusement of the men in the booth. (The petrol can got about half of it.) This proves that I should have absolutely nothing at all to do with the cutting or maintenance of lawns.

8. Tried to saw a slice off the bread I made last night, which has the approximate colour, texture and heft of one of Moses' tablets of stone. In so doing, robustly grated the antistick coating off the kneading paddle which had stuck in it.

9. Listened to answerphone. Man meant to be purchasing loft ladder at 9.30am tomorrow had left angry voicemail from outside my house at 9.30am today.

10. Don't know. Too scared to move off the sofa.

Complain-y

On Tuesday I received a £20 voucher for a well known Italian-esque restaurant chain (ok, Prezzo) following some fairly robust feedback I had left on their website. The sticking point had been a "tomato and onion salad" that consisted of a fridge-cold supermarket value-range tomato cut into six, a small red onion hacked into thick rings, and approx 0.5mls of vinaigrette. Admittedly I have been spoiled by six years of WI-catered buffets at the village hall, but this still seemed sub-par.

Anyway. I was pleased with the voucher (just remind me not to order any side dishes this time!) but one sentence in the letter stuck in my craw a bit: "The duty manager informs me he would have been happy to replace any dishes you were unhappy with if you had brought this to his attention at the time."

DUTY MANAGER? I could barely find a waitress to take our order. They had three staff on between 70 people. We were in for a quick bite; I'm hardly going to wait 15 minutes to get a salad replaced that I will have to eat way after I've finished my main course, like some weird über-healthy dessert. And who's to say the new one will be any better? If that's what they think constitutes a salad, it's hardly like Jamie Oliver is going to race into the kitchen and show them how to do it better. Anyway, I have never lost The Fear that if you complain in a restaurant your meal will come back invisibly garnished with bogies and spit.

Bring it to the duty manager's attention. Pfft!

How to... Choose a pet

I am one of those hair-covered sorts for whom a house is not a home without a cat or three. I react badly to people who claim they don’t like animals, much as if they had told me they didn't enjoy ”Bullseye” or gin. Pets are brilliant, and here is a guide to choosing the right one for you:

Rabbits: there is something innately sinister about the thought of an adult owning rabbits. That said, baby rabbits are the softest thing in the WORLD. If you must purchase, try getting them from a petting zoo where they’ll be used to being handled and you won’t be guilt-tripped into buying Mr Bunny’s Dream Hutch, a pink diamanté water bottle and a pair of Emma Bridgwater feeding bowls, a snip at £314 the lot.

Reptiles/tarantulas: whilst their skins are undeniably great for taking to school for Show & Tell, I personally prefer a pet for whom the best outcome is something more than ”it doesn't bite me”.

Cats: God's way of telling you your furniture is too nice, cats are wonderfully soft, clean and self-sufficient. Unfortunately they are also contract killers who will deposit endless corpses on your pillow. Furthermore, they are shameless thieves of the glass of water you put by your bed in case you wake up thirsty in the night.

Dogs: if you want to own a dog, first consider your response to the following questions:

1) Do you mind if your clothes, home and car stink for the foreseeable future?

2) Can you watch 14 episodes of Blue Peter back-to-back without weeping? The relentless enthusiasm of its presenters will clue you into the mutt mindset, where almost everything is a wonderful new surprise. Oh wow, food! Oh wow, a shed! Oh wow, a pheasant! Oh wow, faeces!

Horses: I wouldn't know, because despite working hard at school and passing all my piano exams, my little sister was the one deemed worthy of a pony. Not that I’m bitter or anything.

The downside of being an animal lover

Tonight I think my cat is dying, so permit me a bit of self-indulgence.

I've known this little boy just about five and a half years - he was my husband's cat - and I really didn't like him to start with. Grumpy, noisy, inclined to brawl - I used to joke that he was the reincarnation of my grandfather, especially when he would come in at 2am making a hell of a racket, ensure that everyone was fully awake and then pass out for nine hours.

But just as I loved Grandad despite his foibles, I came to love our scrappy little Persian. An experiment in breeding that didn’t quite go to plan, he features an underbite worthy of a cartoon bulldog and fur the texture of cotton wool. He is chronically clumsy and famed for his ability to fall off tables when asleep. He will not tolerate being groomed and has to go off to be shaved under anaesthetic once a year, coming back looking like a little grey shammy leather, wobbly on his legs.

And I adore him. His fur is rainclouds over the sea and his little monkey face and black rubber lips - even that damned underbite - render him the sweetest, funniest-looking cat I’ve ever seen. He also has the most human personality of any animal I’ve met. Once, when I intervened in a standoff between him and a border terrier, he accidentally scratched me on the nose and I would swear to this day that he felt guilty - he sat and watched me for half an hour afterwards looking very contrite.

He is only 12 and I am not ready to lose him. I only took him to the vet because he seemed a bit short of breath, and the next thing I knew words like heart failure (at this point, the least worst outcome) and chest tumours were flying around the consulting room and favours were being called in at another branch to get him an X-ray first thing tomorrow.

I am on the sofa next to my boy, drinking him in, watching his little chest rise and fall at what is clearly too fast a speed, and I hope more than I have hoped for anything in a long time that he isn't lost to me just yet.

My week in pictures

Monday.



Tuesday and Friday.



Wednesday and Thursday.

How to... Be thrifty

My husband claims that I have a remarkable ability to save money, despite my modest salary. In these belt-tightening times, I offer the secrets of my stingy success:

1. Staunchly ignore any “Love your Leftovers” type advice proffered by the government or, worse, the C4 programme “Superscrimpers”. If, for example, two pears have gone a bit squelchy, surely it is cheaper (and better for the figure) to throw them away than to invest butter, sugar, flour, eggs and half an hour’s worth of Gas Mark 4 to turn them into some sort of unholy dessert. Let’s face it, if you really wanted pear Genoise sponge you would have made it in the first place.

2. Learn to love being at home. To recreate all the fun of the cinema while saving £6 a head, simply turn all the lights off and insist your other half sits behind you for the duration of Downton Abbey, alternately kicking your chair, giggling, crunching popcorn, texting, and getting up to go to the loo at inconvenient moments. For a pseudo-nightclub experience, set off your car alarm and dance around that, while wearing the skimpiest item of clothing in your wardrobe. (Add blue food dye to vodka & lemonade to get you in the mood.) Finally, enjoy an ersatz package holiday by turning the thermostat to “Max” and putting “The Greatest Hits of Wham” on a permanent loop.

3. Remember that the first syllable of “convenient” is CON. Frozen baked potatoes? How much easier than “stab with a fork and stick in the oven for an hour” do people need?

4. Strike “ironing water”, the ultimate CON, off your shopping list. Remember the good old days, when clothes just smelled like... clothes?

5. Stockpile BOGOFs as if Armageddon were a-comin’. Currently we have 19 loo rolls, 17 bottles of shower gel and enough cat food to keep the RSPCA afloat for a year.

6. Marry someone who earns more than you do, and conveniently forget your purse whenever you are out with them.

Small pleasures

I love the current combination of sunshiny days and freezing nights.

At the risk of sounding like some patchouli-scented hippie, I never realised how beautiful nettles are when they get iced!

Flickering

In a world first for humankind, today I managed to visit IKEA without buying a 36-pack of tea lights.

Are you a cat or a dog person?

Not entirely sure where this originated (http://i.imgur.com/p3JVL.jpg) but it made me laugh.

Alumni

Today a copy of the Leicester University Graduates' Review, a publication I have never requested but which bizarrely still reaches me in my fifth address and second surname since graduating 13 years ago, has plopped onto my doormat.

Like a tongue seeking out the tooth that aches, I like to irritate myself by reading the Alumni on Target Section, where you can make discoveries about past students and kick yourself as you realise the spotty geek you turned down at a house party in 1996 is now a dotcom millionaire, or that the infuriating girl in your Politics tutorials has single-handedly brought down a discredited junta in South America.

Were I ever to feature in this illustrious publication, my profile would read as follows:

Suzy Southwold (BA Hons 1999) only went to university because she couldn't think of anything else to do. She chose Leicester for its cheap rents and excellent road links with Suffolk. She once attended a graduate careers fair but was appalled by all the dead-eyed 22 year olds in polyester suits and went and sat under a tree in Victoria Park instead.

Through temping Suzy got a job in the NHS that barely required GCSEs, much less the 2:1 she came out with, and settled down to administrative drudgery before upping sticks to live in Canada for a year. Upon her return she rashly decided to become a primary school teacher which she didn't much like either. She is currently sponging off her husband considering where her career will take her next while regularly playing the National Lottery in the fervent hope that the answer is "nowhere".

Closing time

"Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end."

My last day in a primary school, having been utterly convinced 6 1/2 years ago it was the career for me, and quietly petrified for the last 4 that it wasn't.

I didn't once cry today, but tonight I am see-sawing between two emotions: utter joy at the release of tension (it's no exaggeration to say I feel like I can breathe out for the first time in four years), and bleak sadness at the loss of the relationships that made it worthwhile despite the stress. I have taught kids I'd take a bullet for, and I have made some truly wonderful friends among my colleagues.

When I was training, we had some drama coaching off an old boy close to retirement, and he said "I don't really care how much they know. I care whether I'm turning out decent people." The fact that I remember this 6 years on says it all. For me, the children's acquisition of knowledge has always come a poor second to their confidence, their happiness, their willingness to have a go and sometimes make a total tit of yourself in the process. Unfortunately, these are not victories measured by the blinkered automatons who run OFSTED, nor a series of short-sighted and reactionary Secretaries of State for Education*.

Here's to you, kids. In all your noisy, untidy, clumsy, affectionate, hilarious, loveliness.




* I physically can't look at Michael Gove without wanting to throw something at him.

There is nothing more contented than a heap of piglets!

I am cynical about lots of things, but never about pigs.

Just to make it 3 for 3

Friend came round at teatime saying she'd had a nice time at her son's: husband and I simultaneously realised we forgot to feed her cats this morning.

The number of rodent corpses on her carpet indicated they had taken matters into their own hands paws.

Absent-minded (2)

Sitting down for the start of assembly, the Assistant Head says "There's a lot of empty space - are your class in, Mrs Southwold?"

"Oh god! I've left them lined up on the playground!" I cry as I leap up to get them.

Absent-minded

As I waited to turn right onto the A6 this morning, I was struck by the horrible realisation that yesterday I had filled my car with £47 worth of diesel and driven off without paying. Luckily Sainsburys were most understanding when I phoned them from a layby, quiveringly pleading not to be sent to jail.

(Even more luckily, I had parents evening tonight so my husband went and settled up on my behalf.)

From pomegranate seed to cantaloupe

My sister had her 12 week scan at which the baby (which apparently got hiccups during the scan: this whole process is amazing to me) was described as "the size of a small lemon". Why this is deemed easier to visualise than 7cm is beyond me.  I suspect these fruit-based size analogies will continue throughout the pregnancy.

Rather her than me when it gets to squeezing something the size of a melon through an aperture more suited to a conference pear...

Could Do Better

Teachers mourn the halcyon days when a child's school report consisted of little more than "He speaks in a low tone" (travel writer Bill Bryson) or "Tries hard despite his obvious limitations" (my husband, PE, 1983). Nowadays we're forced to produce two closely-typed sides of A4 on each of the little darlings, covering everything from their personal development to exactly how they felt about last Autumn's geography topic on Rocks & Soils. Cut and paste comes in handy here: worth remembering if your daughter Sasha is suddenly referred to as Thomas.

Teachers are only human: for every rosy-cheeked poppet whose memory leaves a smile on your face, a skip in your step and a song in your heart, there's one you're only too happy to wave goodbye as they go off to Big School. Nonetheless, teachers are bound by societal expectations to be relentlessly positive, even about kids who have the intellectual capabilities of kindling, the charisma of Tupperware or the personal hygiene of a stoat (or in one memorable case, all three).

Having carried out extensive research (i.e. gossiping in the staff room) I hereby present the definitive list of school report euphemisms.

“Sara gets on with her work without fuss” - which one is she again?

"Gideon is popular among his peers" - lucky; the adults can't stand him.

"Timmy is a thoughtful, sensitive child" - shame he cries every time someone looks at him.

"Rachel needs frequent reminders to stay on task" -doesn't do a stroke of work unless someone's standing over her, glaring.

"Ryan can struggle to assimilate new concepts" - happy to sit there licking Pritt-stick.

"Rhys initially took time to settle in” - made life an utter misery until Christmas.

"Rosie can be distracted and distracting of others" - pain in the neck, never shuts up.

Reports are a necessary evil, but don't get too het up about them. After all, “A constant trouble... Always in some scrape or another” read the missive to two (presumably despairing) parents in 1884.

Their son's name? Winston Churchill.

The Fear

There are days when my decision to leave my job with nothing to go to feels less like this:


and more like this:

Let's talk about what "frugal" means.

(Bland American actress) Zoey Deschanel saves three quarters of her £60,000 a month salary by living frugally? Gee, can I have some tips on how I too could manage on just £180,000 a year?

Patronising Pollyanna

Hollywood career, long happy marriage to a film star, unimaginable wealth and comfort - why on earth wouldn't Goldie Hawn be happy?

I can't believe she actually has the audacity to write a book about it. Believe me, love, you have nothing of value to teach me.

Grrrrr!

Trauma two.

Correction. It was a live mouse, just about. He, and the slipper, have been placed in a nearby hedge.

Trauma

The kitten hid a dead mouse in my slipper, which I then put onto my bare foot.

You've got to be in it to win it

I wake up to an e-mail informing me I have matched numbers on the lottery!




£5.



Stupid Thunderball.

A poor outlook for the species

My kitten, who until three weeks ago was perfectly happy to hunt leaves and twigs, brought the same mouse in four times between 7.25am and 11am today. After three rescues, my sympathy towards the hapless rodent had somewhat diminished.

Have you swiped your Nectar card?

At the time of writing, a famous TV chef has just been caught shoplifting goods via the self-service tills at his local supermarket. I'm full of admiration, not for his kleptomania but the fact that he managed to steal so much when I can't even get the dastardly machinery to allow me to purchase a doughnut without incident.

Self-service tills seemed like such a good idea in theory, didn't they? Unfortunately, like cutting a straight fringe on a wriggling four-year-old or installing a rollerblind, it's never as easy as the professionals make it look.

Many's the time I have watched my husband try to locate the bar code on a pack of Tenderstem Stir Fry, becoming increasingly tetchy and convinced that I have married an imbecile, before impatiently hissing “It's on the bottom! It's ALWAYS on the bottom!”. For my part, I must be incapable of the seemingly simple task of Putting Things Down, because after every fourth or fifth item I scan, the perky woman who lives inside the machine cries “Unexpected item in bagging area! Store approval needed!” (Next I wait two minutes for a bored teenager to wordlessly swipe her card down the side of the screen, while all around me furtive teenagers are stuffing their rucksacks full of contraband Galaxy and Red Bull, and a respectable-looking lady is putting a George Foreman Health Grill through as portobello mushrooms.)

They're no quicker or easier than going to a real person. It doesn't cost less. About the only advantage left, then, is when purchasing “embarrassing goods” - don't be coy now, you know exactly what I mean! Tragically, Murphy's first law states that the more intimate the contents of your carrier bag, the more likely it is to tear/rip/burst when you pick it up, exposing your Preparation-H and verruca socks to the world. Murphy's second law states that your boss, next door neighbour or would-be love interest will be the kindly passer-by who picks them up for you.

Insert trite analogy of choice for leaving job here.

Nappytastic

My little sister is pregnant, she and I found out today! Listen hard: you can probably still hear our mother squealing.

I have decided the baby should be named Wilberforce, regardless of gender. I have offered to drink for both of us while she is expecting. No need to thank me, Sis.

Delightful to have a nice surprise, to counter stepping on a dead mouse on the bedroom floor earlier.

How to... Survive Valentine's Day

Somewhere in the gap between Christmas and New Year, I noticed a rack of red cards in the supermarket. The presence of various drawings of roses, doe-eyed teddy bears and highly flammable synthetic padding could mean only one thing: these were cards produced in honour of St Valentine, aka “Hallmark rubbing their hands in glee day”.

Even as a happily married thirty-something, V-day makes me deeply uncomfortable. A tubby over-achiever with glasses inspired by Timmy Mallett, I was never a likely recipient for an anonymous card as a teenager. Even worse was the annual humiliation of receiving one which had clearly been written by Gran using her left hand. Once, aged 17, I plucked up the courage to send one to the resident heartthrob of Upper Sixth, only to spend a full week sweating in the common room as he and his friends tried to identify, via handwriting analysis and frank interrogation, which girls had sent the FOUR cards he had received. Oh, the horror.

The whole thing is a swizz, frankly. You try to go out to eat; forget it. Prices are tripled and all the food is pink, even the spinach. Restaurants are devoid of atmosphere as Derek and Barbara silently consume their blush-tinged stroganoff, Barbara thinking “Is that bunch of forecourt carnations really all he's getting me?”, Derek feeling irritated that he's paying £80 to sit in mutinous silence over three courses apiece and a bottle of Mateus Rose.

In the end there is only one way to make it through to 15th Feb, and that is to ignore the whole sorry business. If your relationship is working this won’t be a problem, and if it’s not, giving an adult a mournful-looking teddy and a slightly suggestive card is hardly likely to reanimate the corpse.

Ostriches have the right idea. Bury your head in the sand, and wait for it all to be over.