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!)