A single mum's special day.

I'll let you into a little secret: it's my birthday this weekend. Regular readers may remember what a big kid I am at Christmas yet birthdays are a different story, mixing feelings of mild excitement - we are still talking presents, after all - and minor dread. Dread that, as with most of us, my actual age - the one facing me in the mirror - in no way matches the one in my head. I know ageing is all part of the natural process, and better than the alternative, blah, blah, but birthdays force focus on the numerics like no other day. And, birthdays highlight another issue too.

As all single parents will know, any event or occasion is down to us to organise, even our own birthdays. It breaks my heart when I recall mine just a month after I split with the DD's father. It was the least of my concerns that year, yet when I put them to bed the night before, DD1 looked up at me anxiously, and said "Mummy, it's your birthday tomorrow, what do we do?" Unknown to me, they had presents but didn't know the 'drill' for a birthday, as the adults had always led the charge. To their credit they are (almost!) as happy to celebrate my special day as they are their own. They just need me to tell them what we are doing, what we are eating, who we are seeing, should they buy a cake or can they make one, where do I keep the candles etc. All the stuff they're used to me sorting for theirs. Oh, to have time off from being the grown up, to be able to sit and be the carefree teenager I am in my head for this one day whilst someone else picks up the slack! (Just for one day, mind...)

But I'm not complaining. It's an overused, yet apt, sentiment that to estimate ones worth we should look at how much is left if we take away everything money can buy. With my kids, friends and family, I am stinking rich and very lucky.

So I will stop feeling sorry for my ageing bones, greying hair and the fact that this birthday finds me wearing reading glasses for the first time ever *stifled sob*.  On Saturday morning, I will be woken by giggling outside my bedroom door and loud 'sssshs', designed to do the exact opposite, and a half-spilt cup of tea will appear (which I will discreetly 'Vanish' from the beige stairs carpet later). Homemade cards, painted stones, pictures and collages, bundles of carefully chosen gorgeous things and donated precious items wrapped in pretty paper with mismatched ribbon will plop onto my duvet. My darling girls will pile into bed next to me, argue over what I should open first, then give a running commentary on who chose what and why. Later, friends will pop in, my lovely mum will sing 'happy birthday' down the phone, we will eat cake, and I will feel loved and special.

Sunday will find me a year older and starting preparations for the fast approaching DD1's birthday, the wish list for which I have already received because it's an extra special one this year. So, actually I should just get over myself, stopping focusing on the wrinkles, and face up to the fact that theirs are the only birthdays that really count anyway.

I've got a crush and I'm not afraid to admit it

Hands up who had a crush on Donny Osmond or the Bay City Rollers? Maybe David Cassidy was more your thing? My own obscure crush was the curly blonde bombshell that was Peter Frampton after I saw him in the Sgt Pepper film with the Bee Gees and it was instant love. I can still remember the delicious certainty that the song lyrics were written and sung just for me, about how my love for my victim, oops, object of my affection, would never die. Bedroom walls were bedecked with posters and snogging was practised on album covers – much firmer I found as the posters used to go soggy after a while. And during Top of the Pops if my little brother so much as murmured during “Baby I love your way” I'd have gouged his eyes out with a teaspoon.

Now I am a fully fledged grown up - I have the gravy jug to prove it - and my love for Jon Bon Jovi is no secret to regular readers. But in my more lucid moments, I have to accept he is unattainable. He's married with kids and is never in one place for very long. Not really the best start to a proper relationship. No, Jon is up there on his pedestal keeping Rob Lowe, Gerard Butler and Patrick Dempsey company. I happen to think though that my boys are some of the least embarrassing people to have crushes on. I mean, have you looked at them lately? Like fine wine, so much better with age.

But I know two grown women who have huge, gallumping crushes on… I can barely type it… Michael Ball. In fact, one of these women has the following in her workplace: a calendar, mug, framed portrait, an embroidered silk cushion, and various pictures all paying homage to Mr Ball. She has even been known to wear a shirt with Michael’s name embroidered on the breast pocket.

Another friend has seriously saucy dreams about Will Young (the fact that he’s gay means nothing to her), another lusts after Richard Hammond (only since the  crash - eh?) and yet another bought a life size photo of Vigo Mortesan  from Lord of the Rings and hung it over her bed. Her husband left shortly after. 

Perhaps crushes are our way of maintaining that lighthearted, fluttering emotion we experience at the beginning of a relationship before real life takes over and we are trawling around Halfords on a Saturday afternoon looking for roof boxes with our men. Who wouldn't prefer an emotionally attuned god of rock ?  Or god of stage and cross-dressing? And I guess it's only fair that the boys get Angelina or Jennifer to counter-balance all those hours spent pretending to care whether those cushion covers match the sofa.

Though I am not as prone to developing crushes as you might think, I have recently developed a new little one which is embarrassing for an entirely different reason. Because to admit the new object of my affection I have to admit to doing something which I haven't even confessed to my best friends: Micky Norcross - 'The Only Way is Essex'- you have been warned!

Memories are made of this.

My Great-Aunty Glad was 4ft 9in, Welsh, single and lived in a one bedroom flat in Kings Cross, London until she passed away at 84. She worked well past retirement age in the post room of a store called 'Knobs and Knockers' (I jest not), had a passion for frogs and all things green, smoked two cigarettes every day: one after the other at 6pm along with her daily whisky, was good friends with a wonderfully eccentric gay couple long before it was widely 'acceptable' and was the most selfless lady you would ever meet. She was once briefly married, but always managed to avoid answering our questions about him.

Aunty Glad with me, rocking my shades!

My sister, brother and I frequently stayed with her for weekends, squishing into her flat and sleeping top and tale on the z-bed while the favoured one (we took it in turns) got to share her small double.  She would take us to see the Changing of the Guards at Buckingham Palace declaring that we had seen it so many times we could change them ourselves: grey coats in winter, red the rest of the time, "march, left, right, left, right,  'ttenshun". We would copy them all the way back up the Mall to feed the ducks in St James's Park. Later she would take us on the 14-stop tube journey to Osterly to visit my lovely nan (her sister) where we said, without fail at every stop, "How many stops noooooow?". How annoying we must have been for other passengers, but Aunty Glad was always calm and smiling. What I later realised was that this tiny lady was regularly taking three small children for the weekend to give my parents breathing space and this was her way to wear us out and keep us out of her tiny flat for as long as possible.

Her flat was so small that the rolltop bath tub was under her kitchen worktop and she had a sign on the back of the loo door declaring it 'The smallest Ty Bach in London' (Welsh for toilet). When we arrived we would cannon in through the front door to be met by the overwhelmingly welcoming scent of what I now know was Channel No 5. Aunty Glad had a china cabinet bursting with the most amazing finds from her travels. She would let us play with our favourite things: mine was a beautiful miniature set of Limoges furniture from France which I loved to endlessly arrange into room settings. I was horrified when I accidentally chipped one of the chairs when a large stone dog fell on it while I was getting it out.

But the thing I remember the most was her biscuit tin full of buttons which she kept under her bed. I would spend hours sitting on her bedroom floor tipping them out, making patterns, sorting them into colours, just running them through my fingers; touching them.

We were adults when she passed on and were asked what we would like as a memory of Aunty Glad. Please, just the buttons, I said. But they had gone. In the weeks prior to her death Aunty Glad started distributing her possessions. Her sad friends would leave with arms laden so she knew 'things had gone to the right place'. To larger items still in use, such as her rocking chair, she sellotaped notes: "Lorna", or her standard lamp: "Barry". I can only hope the precious button tin made its way to somebody with equally special memories. I was lucky enough to receive the precious Parisian furniture. And her favourite bug-eyed stuffed frog, Ferdinand.

When I started my own family I decided we too needed a button tin. Over the years I've added to it, snipping the spare on new clothes and those beyond the charity shop are de-buttoned before sending out for recycling. And even though none of Aunty Glad's buttons ever made it into my tin, I am convinced when I open it there is a waft of Channel No. 5. Because precious belongings and experiences that touch all our senses nestle in our minds as memories to launch themselves at us when we least expect it. I love that many of the joys my own children are living are storing up in their little brains as memories to relay to their future offspring, and perhaps for blogs they may one day share about their childhood.

And the moral of the story is...

When I bought my house, one of the prices I paid was the lack of parking. My house has no drive, but I fell in love, and it's perfectly located for just about everything: schools, shops, friends. It's not terrible, and I gave myself a stiff talking to before I signed on the dotted line that I was not allowed to get hung up and that I would never be one of those people who moved their car if a space became available outside their house. Yeah, well if only I listened to myself when we have these stiff talks I might be a better person. I have never moved my car just to get outside the house (well ok, once, but I wanted to wash it and made overbright noises to the DDs so I didn't seem petty "Yes, darlings, we'll wash this tomorrow" in a loud voice) but that doesn't stop me wanting to even if I'm just across the road. And I consider it a personal failure if on returning home from work on a Friday night and finding a prime spot, I need to drive again before Monday morning. It is beyond petty and I hate myself for it. But the other day I did something which demonstrates just how far I've come from the care-free girl of my youth.

First of all, a bit of justification if you will. In addition to the residents parking there is a car dealership nearby who insists on parking spare cars in our road, and the re-development of a large building to contend with. Every morning without fail at least six white van men descend on us, attempting to squeeze their beasts into the limited parking we have, along with Mr Car Salesman dumping unwanted Escorts for days at a time. (My road is actually lovely, though I realise I'm not painting a marvellous picture of it.)

So on my first day of self-employment, working at home, I decided to go shopping. Yeah, I know, but if I didn't get the DDs Easter eggs this week then it's school holidays and DD2 says she still believes in the Easter bunny... The car was required even though it had been right outside my house for the last three days. How much I must love my kids. I psyched myself up for my return, clicking my ruby slippers, "There's no place like a parking space at home", and I put my shopping bags on the back seat. As I slid into the driver's seat, I noticed an inordinate number of vans in the road and not a single space anywhere. Then one of the van drivers who had been hovering over a drive opposite - oh, how I envy the drive-owning chosen few - saw me about to leave and started his engine. He was going to nick my precious space!

Well, I panicked and did what any sensible grown-up would do. I turned my engine off and went back in the house. So he's looking confused, I'm standing indoors arms crossed, looking like Les Dawson's mother-in-law, thinking "You silly cow, now what?".

Well, the moral of this story is this: I gave it ten minutes and skulked off to the shops feeling very silly. By the time I returned with the chocolate booty, every single van was gone and there were plenty of spaces to choose from. Except the one outside my house. Mr Car Salesman had stuck one of his bloody bangers in it and it's still there three days later.

A new chapter

I mentioned in a previous blog that I've made another major change in my life and it is this: I resigned from my job and I am now working as a freelance writer and clinical hypnotherapist. As a single parent with a morgtage and responsibilities this is quite a scary move, but I was finding it more and more of a challenge to juggle work with school  holidays, sick days, snow days, teacher training days etc. Any working parent knows how hard this is. The DDs are now too old to need a childminder or holiday club; they just want to hang out with their friends, go swimming, shopping, bike riding, and have a base to come home to when they want feeding, fall out with each other or need a change of clothes before they go off again. Although I've been incredibly lucky to have friends and family who looked after them for me, on the whole I felt that if I had the choice to offer them me working at home, then I should do it, hopefully reducing stress levels all round. I qualified as a hypnotherapist over a year ago so I'm putting this into practise on a more regular basis,  and I will also write features for magazines, websites and anything else that I can snag. Oh, plus I have set myself a goal to finish my novel by November.

Of course the DDs have heard me say enough times in the last few weeks that I will be working from home (in the generating money kind of way, rather than the hard slog for no pay or recognition SAHM kind of way I did during their early years), though I'm not convinced they have quite grasped how this will work in reality. DD1 looked quite shocked that I was up, showered and getting dressed as usual when she cheekily tried to commandeer my dressing table and hair dryer this morning. "But I thought you'd be having a lie in!" she said.

I'm sure I'll be pulling my hair out in the loooong summer holidays, trying to fit clients and assignments around the DDs social lives. I envisage much synchronising of watches and texting to remind them to pay attention to the 'Do not disturb' note on the front door if I have a client here, or 'ssshing' if I'm trying to conquer writer's block. But it has to be worth a go. Once we all get used to this new way of life, I hope we find we have the best of both worlds. I'll keep you posted.

Crafty old bird.

I don't know what's come over me lately. I've just made a(nother) life changing decision - more about that another time - but instead of concentrating on that as I should be, I've become a nesting, domesticated, crafting demon! I've always dabbled on the outskirts of domestic goddessdom creating handmade cards, salt body scrubs, button and wire hearts, knitted shaggy scarves and the odd victoria sandwich, but lately I seem to have these overwhelming urges to create things, both edible and otherwise. I'm quite unstoppable: if I get an idea in my head, I'm off, as though on a mission.

Here's some I made earlier:

Before:

After:

Then there are the crochet flowers which I can't quite master but I won't rest until I do:

Cakes are appearing more and more frequently. Not much left of this one (coffee sponge with blackberry jam):

But the biggest development has been in a previously totally uncharted territory:

A couple of weeks ago I had this screaming urge to buy a second hand sewing machine on eBay. Me, someone who hasn't used a sewing machine since forced to recite, by my Welsh needlework teacher, "Pin and tack, Mrs Williams" in response to "And what do we do before we touch our machines, girrrrls?" (We actually used to recite "Pin. Attack Mrs Williams" but she never seemed to notice.) My lack of interest in sewing machines since then also, I'm sure, has something to do with my long buried memory of Angela Turner managing to spear the needle straight through her index finger which she morbidly insisted on waving at us all as she was scuttled off to the medical room. Anyway, I bought a little machine. Then a week later, I bid on an enormous pile of fabric squares. Well, the most GORGEOUS little cotton squares plopped on my doorstep and I had the best fun just sorting them into piles. The DDs came into the room to find mummy sitting on the floor going "LOVE!", "quite like", "not keen", "spots", "stripes". DD1 walked over, kissed me on top of my head, smiling, and said "You're such a geek, mum".  I couldn't disagree.

Until recently, I saw sewing as something other people did. I've never had much confidence in my abilities in this department, worried that I wouldn't get it 'right'. But I have high hopes for these lovely scraps. DD1 requested some shabby chic bunting, DD2 fancies a patchwork cushion and I saw an amazing patchwork tablecloth on a crafting blog...

Last weekend I spent a wonderful sunny Sunday afternoon, sitting at my kitchen table, door open to the garden, Radio 2 in the background, measuring, cutting and sewing for my first project - bunting. I got as far as I could with what I had. Tellingly, I hadn't made the time to pop to the haberdashery shop to buy the bias binding as I thought I wouldn't need it for ages (perhaps still not believing I would actually get that far). Well, I'd have finished that baby if I'd had the trim. When the DDs returned, I proudly displayed my work-in-progress and even whizzed up a little fabric heart for DD2 while she watched to show them how easy it is. They were as amazed as me. I've since pinned the tape on and I just need a quiet evening with lots of concentration to finish this:

My future goals after these projects are: to relearn to crotchet  (I made a blanket as a child and am determined to do that again); to cover a cork board in fabric and ribbon to make a pretty noticeboard for my kitchen, a craft a material blind for my porch and to turn an old jumper into a cushion cover. Oh, and some little raggedy stuffed creatures to hang on twigs for Easter. It's all so wonderfully twee!

But here's why I'm embracing it for all it's worth: for years I suffered from general, then post natal, depression and during that time the world was a dark, black, lonely place where anything other than functional and austere was just not noticed, let alone appreciated, by me. Though thankfully the depression left me a long, long time ago and I've been noticing all this wonderful, feminine creativity around me for ages, I am finally in a place where I feel I want to be a part of it. I'm still learning to be kind to myself and not aspire for any kind of impossible perfection, just to be the best me I can be. That goes too for my bread, bunting and button hearts - in all their imperfect glory! And this new direction is filling me with more joy than I ever thought possible.

It's official: I'm boring.

I like to think I have a good sense of humour. I see the funny side of all kinds of seemingly ordinary things, and the DDs and I have a 'right larf' all the time. But recently it was brought to my attention - by myself initially (we have a lot of heart to hearts, me and I) - that despite this I am really quite boring. I could put it down to my age as I'm supposedly about half way now, or my circumstances. Or is that just a cop out? I know plenty of older more financially challenged or single people who are the life and soul of the party. Maybe I just need to face the fact that I've seriously lost my fun gene.

Take the other night. DD2 wanted to go to a new dance class about 15 minutes away, from 6.30 - 8.30. I was aghast. What, in the evening?? On a school night?? After I've put my slippers on??  I'm used to running around after them to all kinds of activities straight after school, but pretty much by 6.30 we're done and dinner is in progress. Motherly duty conflicting with selfish hermitism, I begrudgingly agreed to take her. Feeling a little daring about venturing outside my hutch, I then suggested to DD2 that, instead of coming straight home, she and I go swimming at the local pool. She squealed with excitement and surprise and ran off to grab her kit. Ten minutes later, I wanted to stick pins in my eyes more than go swimming. But I couldn't disappoint her though I must confess I did try and tell her that she had a cough and maybe going swimming wasn't such a good idea after all but she just said "muuuuummmmy....." and I knew I couldn't get out of it.

Still not buying into the idea of Going. Back. Out. Again. I huffily dropped off a nervous DD1, bless her, and DD2 and I headed to the leisure centre. I fully expected it to be tumble weed city with perhaps the odd pensioner doing back stroke in the pool. I was staggered to find it absolutely heaving with people!! Out. In the evening. On a school night. There were flood lit football and netball matches going on, joggers running around the grounds, music booming from the dance studios, and there were quite a few people in the pool too, and not all pensioners. I felt like a newborn kitten, my eyes opening for the first time. The bustle, the lights, the noise.... Needless to say, DD2 and I had the most lovely time. She was content alternating jumping in with doing those bloody mushroom things where they disappear under the water until you are ready to call the lifeguard before they pop up breathlessly demanding to know "how many minutes was that??". I managed a decent number of laps and it all flooded (sorry) back to me. What seems like another lifetime ago, I used to swam 30 lengths in this very pool three times a  week. I even recognised a few familiar faces amongst fellow swimmers who were still going strong rather than having gone into hibernation like me.

And I felt guilty about my sulking earlier. DD2 is such a sweet child who is always the first to jump to my defense if I'm too harsh with myself. For example, if I'm gawping in the mirror at a new wrinkle and say "Oh, dear, mummy's feeling a bit old today" she will always say  vehemently "You are lovely mummy and I think you look 21" etc. You can see why I like her. So she and I were hanging out in the deep end and I said "Thanks, little one, for making mummy come out and play". She grinned. I continued "I know I'm really boring sometimes." And she just gave me a knowing smile. No quick denial. No false reassurance.It's official then.

And it got me thinking. Other than the regular belly laughs and tickling or dancing or just crazy moments I have with the girls (and even then it comes with warnings 'careful!', 'mind your head on the table', 'stop biting your sister') when was the last time I really, really let go and had fun? I always have lots of friends over and we regularly laugh over bottles of wine or a cuppa at my kitchen table, but I  couldn't remember the last time I was really lost in the moment, not wondering what time it is, or what's on my things-to-do list. I'm always the responsible adult keeping myself in check.

Then I remembered: The last time I completely lost myself was in June at the O2 watching Bon Jovi in concert. I was lucky enough to see them three times in 11 days (I only paid full price for one ticket). I've seen them quite a few times and when they are on stage, I never care who is watching, how stupid I look or how bad my singing is. I air guitar, punch my fist to the sky and screech along with my soul mate, peaking when he sings "It's my life, it's now or never". So I think perhaps I need to take a leaf out of the gorgeous one's book: stop being a boring fart and start living as though there's no tomorrow. Now or never. That's it then. From now on, I'm just one big ball of fun, fun, fun. Hmm... except I'm not sure how to do that. Perhaps I'll add it to my to-do list when I've taken this washing out of the machine, before I run the hoover round...