A Generous Pinch of Salt

Sport Relief

2012-03-22T16:33:00.000-07:00

The foremost reason I love school uniform (and, before you say it’s a great leveller, if you believe that all kids look identical in schooliform then you are still living under Deng Xiaoping in 1979 - wearing the same clothes does not make you any taller, shorter, fatter, slimmer, less blonde or less plain) is that, for the majority of term time weekdays, everyone in La Famiglia Lane is in agreement on what needs to be worn. There is sufficient material already in the Parenting Handbook to encourage dialogue in the mornings: who is winding up who? what is acceptable breakfast fare? whose turn it is to drink the last of the smoothie? where is the elusive PE bag/music wallet/homework? are teeth brushed yet? without festooning this most special of family times with sartorial indecision.

I’m afraid that I do not share the excitement and anticipation of my small uns when they hear they are to have yet another amazing day at school, with normal lessons suspended for specially prepared sessions on Florence Nightingale or Pudsey Bear. For me, there is a ripple of loathing whenever I open any ParentMail beginning “Next week the school will be holding This Day or That Day”. Why? Am I Mommie Dearest who cannot share in her children’s joy? Do I really, truly, madly, deeply love uniform that much? No! It’s just that none of these standalone schooldays can actually be stood alone without a small amount of forethought and fortitude from yours truly supporting them.

Tomorrow is Sport Relief – please dress as your sporting hero. Next Wednesday is Geography Day – we would encourage everyone to dress up in the colours of a certain country or a country’s flag. A fortnight or so ago was World Book Day – please dress as your favourite book character. History Day. French Day. Comic Relief. Children In Need. Jeans for Genes.

Taking into account our straitened finances, I cannot justify spending the HusBank’s hard-earned dollars on any prêt-a-porter fancy dress outfit which can be aesthetically mimicked by a bit of subtle snipping, stapling and sticking at 2am accompanied by a glass of Disaronno. Poverty breeds creativity and I have pulled together Sam I Am, Hiccup Horrendous Haddock, Emily Wilding Davis, Charles Lindbergh, a cow, a mouse, an innkeeper, a shepherd, star, angel, clown and much more – many a breaking dawn has witnessed me sewing ox horns, wire into mice tails, Moominpappa’s top hat, Easter bonnets, rosettes, spots on trousers – does anyone know why there are hardly any spotty clothes for boys – are spotty things sexist?

All this I would do, albeit with a smidgeon of resentment, a hundred times over for my kids’ elation and the fervour derived from a piece of felt cunningly crafted into a pair of cloven hooves.

But this week I’ve been additionally discouraged by the lack of enthusiasm from my babies.

My children are not interested in sport and sport is not interested in them. Give them a spelling test or a piano recital and they are in their element. Our fridge and pin boards are covered with Outstanding Achievement Awards for This and That, Work of the Week, Star of The Day, Merit Award for Rapid Recall of The Seven Times Table, but, sadly, there is little to congratulate in their limited sporting prowess.

I am all prepped for Geography Day but hopes for any sports-related outfit are far abroad. There is no handy Chelsea kit or England rugby shirt in our wardrobes.

Naturally, I blame myself. Research describes a clear correlation between a sporting mother and her athletic children. My sporting potential was clipped early on, when I discovered a group of influential peers at school, smoking Sobranie Cocktails on the railway bridge, half way round my school’s cross country route. With my first or second puff, I left the athletes and built substantial and lasting ties with the aesthetes.

It’s not even that the children are reluctant to exercise or hateful of the outdoors –regularly dragged over hill and glen with our petit chien in all weathers, they will also joyfully scoot from Here to Kingdom Come and can bounce for Queen and Country on country cousins’ trampolines, but they have a strong congenital disregard for anything defined as “sport”.

Not one Olympian or celebrity sportsperson could extract any endearment from either child. A brief flirtation in Google Images with Tom Daley was the closest hit, but can they spend a whole day at school in just trunks?

Finally, with only the night and early morning hours to go, a rummage through my wardrobe and I have discovered something to tempt one of them into sporting fever tomorrow morning. Thanks to my brief flirtation with the Euro Tournament in ‘96, when patriotic pride, spurred on by several Smirnoff Ices and Messrs Baddiel and Skinner, provided the foresight to buy myself a vintage 1966 football top, Jules Rimet will gleam again courtesy of Number One Son.

And Baby Girl? Well, it’s not for nothing that she has been a passenger for seven years, experiencing the skill and dexterity employed by her mother when driving around London Town. My youngest’s flair on the Nintendo Wii driving game is second to none, and, anyway, I think this late in the game we can be little lateral with our interpretation of sport and hero. So I’d better pour myself a nightcap and cobble together something resembling overalls, and perhaps, tomorrow morning, Mario and her Kart will be screeching into school in the Works Golf.

So, maybe I have not encouraged my progeny to be sporty types, but I do know they will have the charm of being good sports.

Let's call them Sports Relief Chocolate Chip Cookies

After a late night sticking and sewing, who can be bothered to bake from scratch?

Buy a packet of Sainsbury’s chocolate chip cookie dough (in the readymade pastry and butter display). Don’t take any notice of their instructions to roll out and cut pretty shapes. Just break off the dough into chunks – about 20 depending on how big you want each cookie – place the pieces on a baking parchment lined baking tray, keeping at least 10cm space between each one.

Place the tray in a pre-heated oven to 180°/350°/Gas mark 4. Check at about 8 minutes – if they look golden and turning teensiest bit brown at the edges remove whilst still a tiny bit soft in the middle. Let cool for 5 minutes and they are ready to eat.

Mothers' Day

2012-03-18T15:14:00.000-07:00

I dreamt that my mother died. I woke up one morning and said to my friend, “I had really strange dreams last night. I dreamed that Mummy died and then I dreamed the baby had died and then I dreamed that they had both died”. I repeated my dreams to her parents, who begged me to get on quickly with my breakfast as my stepfather was on his way. Twenty minutes later, he arrived and said that my mother was dead.

Of course, I didn’t have some unnatural telepathic link with my mother’s life so that I knew that it had ended. I would have heard the whispering during the night after my stepfather phoned to tell the neighbours with whom I was staying.

I was 12 years old. It was August 1980. My thirteenth birthday was in five days’ time and the previous day my mother, Mary, had gone into labour with my stepfather’s child. My younger brother had been driven to a relative’s home earlier in the day and, when it became apparent that Mummy was still in labour much later, I was collected from our house by a neighbouring friend to stay overnight and await news of my baby brother or sister.

Afterwards, I remember sitting in the car as we drove to collect my brother: I couldn’t believe it, but yet I knew it was true. And as much as I wanted to believe it was a lie and that I would see my mother later, I was also old enough to be frightened by the thought of seeing her again, as I knew I would be seeing a ghost.

I have seen her from time to time over the past 30 odd years. Sometimes, I walk around the corner in a shopping centre and I catch glimpses of her as she walks out of an exit. She has been further along on an airport escalator, or sitting in the passenger seat of a car I pass on the motorway. And then, when I’m really lucky, I go to check on my children at night, and I see my mother’s quiet smile on my son’s sleeping face.

I didn’t really think about my mother’s death. The villagers rallied round as they do in a small parish. They bought me presents and took me shopping on my birthday, the day before the funeral. The only real upset was at the funeral when my aunt, Mary’s sister, having been up most of the previous night dipping into the extra supplies of sherry accumulated for the funeral reception, attempted to jump into the grave on top of the coffin. I was humiliated by my aunt, but, as to my mother, I didn’t really give a thought.

By Easter the following year, my stepfather had asked his new girlfriend to move in with us. They were engaged and married soon afterwards. Perversely, I still didn’t think of my mother very often. My stepmother was so completely different from the mother I knew that there was no similarity which would awaken a memory.

Mary, tiny, shorter than me when she died, was an introvert and would choose to spend time with children rather than adults, with whom she felt unable to provide witticisms or be opinionated on current affairs. She had arrived in England from Burma already pregnant with me, and later separated from my father. Left to support herself, she fell upon the largesse of wealthy friends she had made, who let her borrow their second homes in which to raise her children. She was exotic in the new modern world of the late 60s and early 70s, but it was by being sweet and full of grace that she charmed everyone.

My stepmother was big, heavy, loud, a flirt, who dressed in a low cleavage blouse and a split pencil skirt to meet me. An alcoholic, whom my stepfather divorced 10 years later, this was her third marriage. In each of her two previous marriages she had borne a son, and at each divorce the child had stayed with its father. But my stepfather was still reeling from the death of my mother, and was easily seduced, not only by her burgeoning bosom, but also the promise of support to raise his stepchildren.

My stepmother didn’t care whether I did well at school or came home on time from friends’ homes. She gave me my first cigarettes and bought me a bottle of Cinzano to take to a party when I was 13. My aunt visited, said that this was not what my mother would have wanted for me and then left for Australia not to be seen again for many years.

But if my mother had wanted better for me she should never have risked her life for another baby. She should have been content with the ones she already had and stayed alive for us. Well, that is what I thought when I was 14 and both my step-parents had begun the spiral of inevitability laced with affairs and rows.

I estranged myself from the troubles at home, dropped out of my stepfather’s circle of relatives and grew my own family from friends and their families.

In my twenties, I acknowledged my mother’s death by accepting it and ignoring it. Of course, from time to time, when others went home for weekends with their parents or told me about overbearing mothers, I would feel sorry for myself as to my lack of mothering, but I never reflected on my actual mother.

And then one day, fifteen years later, soon after I returned from honeymoon, I fell pregnant. I was 34. My mother had died at 33. I was already older than my mother would ever be.

I would like to know this woman, Mary. I grieve for my own loss at no longer seeing her and also for my babies at never knowing her. I fantasize scenarios where she shares my pride at my children’s successes and comforts me when things are not well. A young woman, now more than ten years younger than me, I sympathize with her over relationships with men and her children’s behaviour. Sometimes, when my children answer back and shock me with their astute reasoning, I am reminded of that young parent being bullied by her wilful daughter and even though I recognize that this is the way between parents and children, I feel ashamed of myself. I didn’t ask to be born, but I was and I didn’t ask for her to die but she did.

Two and a half years ago, I discovered a sister. One evening, I had clicked languidly from one website to another after my husband had retired to bed and stupefied myself by discovering a note which my sister had posted seven years before attempting to trace her real family – that I should accidentally come across her request for information buried in over 2,000 messages seems so preposterous that for two or three months afterwards I was still overwhelmed and unbelieving. For her part, this missive had been lost in the annals of time and she was now happily past caring where she had come from, so imagine her shock too when I responded to her ancient cri de coeur.

My mother had given birth to another child between me and my brother. I will never know the full story and that is not my story to tell. The amazing revelation that I was in contact with a fully- grown sister, was swept into recognition that my mother, a most child-centric woman, had given away one of her children.

I met with my sister and we began to build a friendship through photos and e-mails and sporadic visits as she now lives overseas. She was married with no children, but at the intersection of our venn diagram there were so many coincidences that the whole scenario appeared farfetched. Our married surnames are one letter apart; we had both bought homes a few miles from each other despite the fact that we had both grown up in different parts of the UK; we even had a friend in common who didn’t know us as sisters since we didn’t know we were sisters either.

After years of close girlfriends, I found myself stumbling through this new relationship. Women I met in the queues at adventure playgrounds and at the till in Sainsbury’s seemed to have stronger ties to me than the ones I was making with my new sister.

At the beginning I felt as though it was me that had given away a child – a tremendous guilt on behalf of my mother, ashamed for her actions mixed with sadness that my wonderful mother, who had bestowed on me such a memory of perfect parenting, had walked away from one of her own babies. How could I explain this paragon of maternal nurture and affection as someone who could part herself from her own child?

I barely knew my mother and yet her death has always made me more certain of the mother I want to be. I don’t know why and how hard it was for her to give up my sister for adoption. But I do know that she will have made that decision out of love and hope for my sister’s better future, just as she gave me love and enough self-belief and values to help me grow into the woman that I have become. There will never be answers to so many of my questions but now I have a new life to think about. A few months ago, my sister gave birth to her first child. Now we are both mothers, our relationship is evolving more quickly and we have much more common ground to look forward to than anything in our past. Motherhood, which once separated us, has brought us together.

Minced lamb cutlets

For years I was slightly ashamed of my mother’s cooking. I was desperate for her to cook ordinary bland English food like my friends’ mothers. I begged her for plain old shepherd’s pie but instead she put cumin and green chillis in the mince and wrapped them into little patties of mashed potato. These are similar to samosas – little shepherd’s pie canapés - you can skip the chillis if you make them for kids and don’t want to deal with rings of fire the following day, although green chillis are usually fairly mild.

Packet of minced lamb – the less fatty the better – about 500g

Groundnut oil or any flavourless light cooking oil

Finely chopped onion

Minced garlic or finely chopped

Finely sliced green chilli

1 tsp ground cumin

1 tsp ground coriander

1 tsp ground turmeric

Petits pois if you fancy them

Salt

Potatoes

Knob of butter – about 25g

Milk – about 100ml

Plain flour

Egg wash

Breadcrumbs if you want

Oven on warm.

Boil the potatoes with a generous pinch of salt until soft – about 15 to 20 minutes. Add a knob of butter and a splash of milk and mash the potatoes. Mash should be fairly dry.

Heat a tablespoon of oil in a pan. Fry the onion for a few minutes to soften, then add the garlic. After a minute, add the lamb and fry for about 10 minutes until cooked through. Add the spices and the peas. Fry for another couple of minutes then add the sliced green chilli. Fry for another two minutes then generously season with salt to taste and leave to cool.

Make a small tennis ball of mashed potato and then flatten. Put a tablespoon or so of mince filling in the middle and then mould the potato around the mince to make back into a ball. Slightly flatten down again.

Repeat until mash and mince used up.

Roll each patty in some flour and then into the egg wash. If you want to add breadcrumbs, this is the bit now!

Fry them gently in batches in some butter or oil until golden brown. Keep the cooked ones warm in the oven until all done.

School of Hard Knocks

2012-03-05T04:51:00.001-08:00

We are skint.

Long, long ago when we had savings and pensions, holidays and cleaners, we were in the privileged position, not so much to pay for our children to attend a newly founded independent primary school in the next town, as to pay for them not to attend our allocated state version in the next road.

This decision has been reinforced many times over by their passion for school, an evolving hunger and enjoyment at learning new topics and developing existing strengths, their strong confidence in their current abilities and an enthusiasm to attempt many subjects, sports or artistic efforts, regardless of their abilities.

As with many sole traders, other people’s recessionary measures have undermined my husband’s attempts to keep a strong credit balance in our bank accounts. The cost of barely living rising quickly, our decision to educate our children privately has been much derided by our accountant and any of the lending institutions with whom we have attempted to build a pecuniary relationship. All recoil from our attempts to ameliorate the situation once they are in possession of our school bills outgoings against our actual incomings.

With two children in consecutive years, there is no respite from the merciless burden of the school fees invoice, and we have been slowly reducing extra-ordinary expenses in order to meet the final demands.

As well as a million other mothers in the UK (I know this figure to be exact, as I have been told by several large employers ... “Dear Mrs. Lane, Thank you for your application for shite-y job. We were overwhelmed by the response from a million applicants and sadly we have been unable to look properly at your application at this time as we are now seeking a suitable employee to reply to the million applications.”), I am desperate to find the perfect job. This, of course, used to be megabucks-earning Head of Something at Dynamo International, but my lack of extended family to support my primary employment as mother of two young children means my expectations are diminished and I must find something more parochial, school hours, term time only, in order that I can accommodate my family responsibilities. My current salary expectations go hand-in-hand with the demands of my children, i.e. I will work for almost any ridiculously low salary if I can find something that fits in with the school timetable and the excruciatingly long and frequent holidays and thereby save outlaying extortionate childcare fees.

Constant on our minds is the capital we have in our London home. It sometimes seems ridiculous to have so much equity in a house, which will only realize any of its potential if we up sticks and move hundreds of miles away from it. Do we really have to move just to afford a better education for our children?

For my own part, instead of downsizing my house, aside from my small efforts to earn money, I have attempted to maintain what little we have by incrementally downgrading my lifestyle. Gone are the Lady That Lunches restaurant bookings, the fortnightly pedicures, rich and luxurious unguents to smother my ageing skin. Oh, Pampered Princess, wherefore art thou? I have recently bought my body lotion from Sainsbury’s instead of Harvey Nichols, so it cannot be said that I am not doing my bit.

Our only beacon of hope is the recently opened West London Free School – it’s not until you pay school fees that you realize quite how much you would save if you didn’t pay them.

A river of promise flooded this part of West London and maybe some parts of North, South and East London too, when Toby Young and his fellow steering committee members announced they had signed their Funding Agreement to set up a free school in the area. Early days yet, but glimpses of pupils in King Street and Ravenscourt Park, send shivers of anticipation and excitement at the opportunity for my children to wear the WLFS’s smart uniform and the opportunity for me to wear my own uniform of choice made entirely out of pieces-not-necessarily-found-in-every-High-Street-in-the-UK.

Could this be the answer to all our problems? All of our problems? Because, let’s face it, what could not be resolved by the restoration of our family’s middle-to-low income as opposed to just bus fare for Carey Street? Do not all parents with children at great state schools live blissfully in love with their spouses, never arguing about whether the incredulously high heating bill in the winter will negate the warmth of a sunny holiday in the summer? What couldn’t be achieved by expensive weekends in Mr & Mrs Smith boutique hotels with bills being settled from full bank accounts? And which relationship not rejuvenated by the wife wearing expensive moisturizer again?

Don’t get me wrong. It is NOT ALL ABOUT MONEY. The primary reason we were reluctant to accept readily the local authority’s designated offering was driven by its new Head who reassured me that whilst the school had failed to reach a reasonable level in their recent OFSTED report for Literacy and Numeracy, I should satisfy myself that my 4-yr old Number One Son, who counted to 100 and could read basic words like cat, mat, hat, would surely be awarded a place on the school’s Gifted programme. I am ashamed to admit this but when I heard “gifted”, I also heard “special” in the same breath, but not with the same warmth with which I greet Special Offer. As much as I think my children are the most intelligent, confident, amusing, interesting children I could ever wish to spend my time with, gifted seems rather farfetched and I was adamant that my child would not be dozen-ed out merely on the basis that he was one of 12 children out of 60 in Reception Year who benefited from two English as a first-language parents, and thus the mere fact that he spoke fluent English was enough to make him conspicuous.

Unfortunately, our naivety at not attending services regularly over the previous four years also annihilated any chance of his attendance at a church school and so we were left with a school which had been our reluctant third choice or to look elsewhere.

The decision to go privately did not come lightly. We had two children and only one proper income. My husband had attended several state schools across the world when his father was in the RAF and had managed a First in Chemistry before beginning a PhD at Oxford. We flattered ourselves that we were bright, educated parents, who would easily support our children at a state school and we had looked forward to being part of the local school community. But this was at the outstanding state school a few hundred yards from our home, or even perhaps at the other good state school less than a mile away. All this was attenuated when reality came to visit and our son was not placed at either of our first choice schools.

In Kew, there are two schools opposite each other – one, Queen’s, a state funded church school and the other, Kew College, an independent. Recently driving through at pick up time, a number of 4x4 and sports cars were parking in the street between the two schools. What was interesting was that the parents, on alighting, turned towards the state school and not the independent. Possibly, by not paying school fees, these families had income enough for high-end vehicles.

Of course, I am not so ignorant that I believe this to be the case for the majority of parents. Just as not all fee-paying schools are populated with children whose parents are on the breadline paying the fees. But why can’t all hard-working parents have our cake and eat some of it too? Although there are many thousands of families who would not even consider a private education for their children as it is so far from their means, it does seem like a sacrifice for so many of us, that merely by living 100 yards too far from a good school, we should then have to consider spending thirty percent of our income on our children’s education.

Yes, children from independent schools get more attention from smaller class sizes, but they also have longer school holidays, which in turn means providing more childcare, whether by one of the parents or by paying someone else to look after their children whilst they are at work paying for the school fees. Anecdotal evidence suggests that more women are working part-time just to countermand the holiday and afterschool childcare costs of sending their children to state school. Can you imagine how much that increases when you are paying fees and childcare?

Statistically, fee-paying pupils come from comfortable homes with all mod cons and Ocado delivery shopping. But not all of these children are from middle-class Stepford families. There are divorces and deaths and siblings with disabilities across a wide spectrum of middle England – state schools do not get exclusivity when it comes to broken homes or living with terminal handicaps. But most fee-paying parents provide good school and home support for the children and, naturally, this is reflected in their children’s education. If you are paying for something you tend to support it wholeheartedly. Not to say that state school parents are not one hundred percent behind their children, but our parents are in front of their children hammering at the door asking whether they are getting their money’s worth and kicking down the door if we feel we are not. That is the benefit we buy from a private school and, at this level, when it is just a case of your child settling into their legal obligation to be educated, THAT IS IT.

There are no longer tax allowances for parents of independently schooled children or any financial incentives, but the very nature of some parents not sending their children to state schools means they are saving the country millions of pounds every year by the government not having to provide education, buildings and general care for them. What would happen if the majority of independent schools closed and the local authorities had to accommodate over half a million extra pupils?

Why are there so many detractors from the new West London Free School or any similarly set up institution? Why would anyone not want a really good school to open up which had places from families from any income bracket and offered a similar academic adhesion to that of private schools together with a real crack at social mobility for many families? AND WAS FREE??? We must all try and live within the limits of our actual situation, but the opportunities arising from an aspirational education means that every now and then we are encouraged to tip toe out of those parameters and have the confidence to push those boundaries back a bit.

Don’t get me wrong, if I win the National Lottery or I somehow find out that despite both my parents being dead for many years now, that I have inherited more than strong calves and a strong stomach for cava, I will be applying at every independent secondary school across London and the South East of England. The truth is that we need the Free School but even at its best, at this stage in its evolution, it cannot compete with some of the more established fee-paying schools available and, if I was to find myself rolling in money, I would take advantage of them. But, the chances of us having more money than our house is worth are slim. So I cross my fingers that we will make the WLFS allocation, and there is a chance that not only will our children receive a first class education, but perhaps by no longer paying out one-third of our net household income each year on school fees, we can begin to start saving for our future too.

Pericles said “what you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others”. I hope our children remember this when they look back at their heady childhood days and then look gratefully forward to subsidizing their aged parents who despairingly spent all of their pensions on their children’s education.

Port Plum Cream

Really quick, cheap, pudding for cheering yourself up on a ranting day. Quantities depend on how miserable you are or if you decide to share with others - the pudding and the rant. Increase as necessary.

4 plums – de-stoned and quartered

Good splash of port, say, 100mls

1 Cinnamon stick or teaspoon of powdered cinnamon

5 Cardamom pods

2 tablespoons of any kind of light brown sugar

300 mls Double Cream

150 mls Greek or Greek-style yoghurt

Put the plums, splash of port, sugar and cinnamon and cardamom into a pan and heat gently with a lid on until bubbling. Leave to simmer until plums are soft through with a knife. Leave to cool. Remove the cinnamon stick if used and cardamom pods.

Whip double cream until consistency of Mr Whippy machine ice-cream. Fold in the yoghurt and then fold in the fruit.

Chill until needed or if you are sharing, decant into pretty serving bowls first then chill.

Cake and eat it too

2012-02-28T12:13:00.000-08:00

The new oven has arrived.

John Lewis told me it would arrive and be installed between 2 and 9pm which it was and which originally sounded reasonable enough until you take into consideration that we’re 4 hours in already, neither of the two previous oven sockets are working and my children’s annual School Cake Sale is tomorrow.

Unless I intend to replicate Kate Reddy’s smashed mince pies, I am going to be under the cosh even to roll out a bit of shortbread before 10pm.

Not least because, for me, there is always a little stress attached to baking without the absence of a working oven to add excitement to the equation. Given the hours that I spend in the kitchen, peeling, slicing, stirring, blending etc. one might assume that I would be fairly pragmatic when it came to cakes and pastries.

Sadly, the antithesis is true – if only I could create moist sponges and lighthearted patisserie with the abandon of my casseroles and paellas, but inexperience is led further into peril by my kitchen nemesis, The Recipe Which Must Be Adhered To Precisely.

Of the 53 cookbooks that are in my possession, I have only ever followed whole recipes from two, both of which are for cakes and biscuits. With everything else, I flick through the pages, determine which ingredients I have in stock – usually most of them – the light of alacrity comes on et voilà, pinny tied, a bit of chopping and flash of heat or a low simmer and I have provided yet another Dish of The Day.

Notwithstanding the groaning baking cupboard, rammed-jammed with glycerine, rosewater, endless 70%+ cocoa cooking chocolate, six types of flour and every permutation of sugars and syrups from lightest icing to blackest, goo-iest molasses, I only bake about once every three months.

My light touch with pies and pasties, unbelievably swollen soufflés, perfect cheesy parmiers and spicy samosas means nothing when approaching the sponge cake.

Wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim'rous beastie,
O, what a panic's in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty

It’s only the sweet version of your pasty.

Despite painstakingly mixing sugar and butter, flour and eggs with scientific precision, my confidence and cake-esteem never rises sufficiently that the finished product will be something that I will actually want to eat. I stand nervous by the oven door, forehead hot from the oven glass, trying to peek inside and see what’s cooking. Would that I ever had the courage to open the oven door and check what sorcery I have performed. Will all be golden and ready for the wire cooling tray? Or will it sink in the middle or crack from side to side, burnt to a crisp at the edges, viscose still at its centre?

Tea time, for me, is clotted cream scones in Cornwall and Devon, full board 5-star hotel holidays or weekend overnight visits to friends. The art of afternoon tea faded quickly during the children’s younger years when the clock lost 12 hours a day on sleeps and mushed up meals and there was hardly any space between naps and feeds, changing nappies and watching Baby Einstein DVDs. Afternoon eating was little puffy things made from organic corn and rice, flavoured with tomato or carrot powder or dry little teething rusks, like Hansel’s fake bony finger with which he tricked the wicked witch. The occasional cake was a fat slice at a coffee bar or toddler gathering and the sight of bits of cake, made doughy in little fists or broken up into prams and furniture, made me gag.

I think this break from cakes has also dampened my appetite for them. I used to revel in the indulgence of a proper tea, little crustless sandwich fingers served on tiered trays, with enticing arrays of creamy, chocolatey eclairs and buttercream butterfly cakes to be washed down with long stems of champagne. But, once my two-year old helped himself to the bubbles and I was forced to disguise my Moet in a mug, the allure of tea at The Lanesborough or similar fell softly away.

Latter years have introduced sponge fashions. Whole bakeries set up just to satisfy everyone’s cravings for cranberry and white chocolate oatbran muffins or bitesize red velvet cupcakes with gorgeously swirling, whipped toppings, 10cm high, calling “EAT ME”. I could have a dozen in front of me and yet ignore them whilst the rustle of a bag of Lightly Salted Kettles Crisps being moved in a cupboard two floors down lures me to the rocky shore of late night snacking.

Maybe, it is my lack of desire for cakes and biscuits which affects my ability. My love of roasts and pies and stews and curries has seen years of perfection for my own benefit, if not for anyone else’s, so, it is little wonder, I suppose, that if I am not fussed about eating cakes and spend hardly any time baking them, that I should not be any good at it.

In the meantime, I have Betty Crocker and Dr Oetker to support me, as well as a little help from Kate Reddy’s guide to authenticating your home baking. And when occasion calls for baking wares beyond cookies and tarts, there are talented alchemists like Chiswick Cupcakes and Hummingbird Bakery to dazzle my guests at tea whilst I put the kettle on.

Palmiers

It is worth keeping some ready-rolled all-butter puff pastry in the fridge for these. You can use any make at all, don’t worry too much about quality, but make sure it is the butter version as the bog-standard one is too oily and bland. They are a fantastic standby if a friend drops by, one drink turns into a bottle and you need a little something to mop up the alcohol.

This is a cheese and onion recipe but you can easily replace anything except the pastry and the egg wash – different cheeses, ham, chorizo, chopped olives or for sweet ones you can use jam or pureed fruit or merely sprinkle the whole thing with vanilla caster sugar and/or some cinnamon.

Butter
Splash of olive oil
An onion or some shallots finely diced
Fresh thyme leaves
Pepper
Sheet ready-roll all-butter puff pastry
An egg
Grated gruyere, parmesan, cheddar

Lightly fry the onions or shallots in a little butter and a tiny, tiny splash of olive oil (to stop the butter burning) until they are soft but not too coloured – during the cooking process, add a grind of pepper and some thyme leaves.

Carefully unroll the pastry and brush the top with some of the egg. Sprinkle over the onions/shallots evenly across the pastry and then the cheese or cheeses.

Face the rectangle of pastry towards you so that the longer edge is nearest. Imagine (or if that is too tricky, make a tiny mark) along the middle of the rectangle. Start rolling the long side in towards the middle until you get to your imaginary friend, sorry, line. Turn the pastry round and do the same on the other long side, so that both sides of the pastry now meet in the middle and you are basically looking at a figure 8 at each end with two fat rolls facing you.

Use the rest of the egg to glaze the top outside and then put the whole thing into the fridge for 10 minutes. Turn on the oven to 200°C/400°F/gas mark 6.

Remove the roll from the fridge and then cut 1cm slices across the rolls so that you have about 20 figure 8-ish slices which you should arrange on a baking sheet. Bake for 10 minutes or until there is a little colour. Cool until warm and tuck in.

Swimwear Review (Or A Review Of My Swimwear)

2012-02-08T03:09:00.000-08:00

So I've been keeping a low profile desperately trying to lose the odd pound/inch whilst we’re all still under wraps in our polo necks and big winter coats. I've walked West London in the Masai Barefoot Technology trainers, swallowed copious amounts of acidophilus and psyllium husks (the coward's method of colonic irrigation), hauled my body through burpees in the snow at bootcamp this week, all in an effort to counteract my addiction to anything made with pork or cream.

My self-esteem, such that it is, I only want to be normal. Ordinary. The person you glimpse as she passes you on the beach and makes you think, Hey, I Like That Chick's Beach Bag, not, Man, Look At Those Stretch Marks/Cellulite/Caesarean Scar - okay, not that kind of beach. I'm only at the beginning of my resurrection from the ashes, not trying to give Elizabeth Hurley a run for her money.

I'm uncertain which crest of the wave I was riding when I ventured on the Figleaves website to look for mail order swimwear. I made a New Year’s Resolution some years ago to replace the maternity swimwear which has seen me through 9 years of motherhood, but each summer I look at my body and then at the swimsuit and somehow the two merge into the shallow end again. So, I braced myself and ordered roughly £700 worth of tactel with not a sarong in sight, so confident was I of my new MBT Body.

Not one bra from 32F to 36F via 34s C, D and E is strategically sufficient to cover my modesty. What's that all about? Am I Katie Price all of a sudden? Location! Location! Location! I find that once I've scooped up my breasts from midriff and under armpits and stuffed them into the cups provided, my bosom did not so much dissipate after breastfeeding but simply relocate.

When faced with my generous chest, the bikini top transforms itself into a QUADini so that there's now a breast inside each of the cups and then a bonus other, on each side, sitting comfortably on top. Not unlike jellyfish mating. A No Go there then.

Okay, so what's the story with the tankini? Is the answer in the question? Why would anyone who had a gorgeous, i.e. SLIM WITH TITS, figure cover it up with a tankini? And who in their marketing right mind would name this lycra top for Fat Birds anything where the sum of its parts still included the word TANK?

And, yes, of course, since it is no longer fashionable to look like Barbara Windsor in Carry On Nurses, I am forced to keep this sympathetic item in order to protect fellow sunworshippers from my more than ample bosom and pot belly. Whilst governments attempt to reconcile the various border countries across the Middle East, I shall be mediating local quandaries between the top half of my swimwear and my bikini bottoms each time I arise from the sun lounger.

Once more into the breach, dear friends, once more.

To the Miracle Suit, as recommended by Trinny & Susannah - the tag claims LOSE TEN POUNDS IN TEN SECONDS !!!!! And sure enough, because the sizing is so screwed up, a UK size 12 is miraculously transformed mid-atlantic into a size 8. Oh, the joy of scrolling the drop down menu to click on an 8. But I've disillusioned myself once again: I thought that by giving up breastfeeding I could reclaim what's mine and remedy the war damage imposed by earlier conflicts. Alas, it appears my body is still my children's, if not as a feeding zone then as a softplay area: for £120 I do look okay, but there is always a B side and when I prise off this sartorial option I have tramlines all over my torso so deep that my kids could run their scalextrics around it all half-term.

The good news, of course, is that all this exercise has given me a new positive outlook – on the bright side, such is the parlous state of our finances that the time has come the Walrus said to cut back on the hideous amount of wine we guzzle. This ensures fewer insulin producing calories and goes a little way to ameliorating the Farmyard Animals Diet which got me into trouble in the first place.

Anyway, as a guy called Will once said summer’s lease hath all too short a date, so for the very few days of swimsuit wearing weather we actually get in the UK and the dearth of foreign holidays we can afford, I have, of course, kept my longstanding maternity number on standby to see me through another year.

Pork and Cream (and Cider with Rosie apples)

Long slow cooked pork belly is delicious and all very well, but sometimes you only have a short time between mail ordering and picking up children from school so here is a quick one pan meal.

An onion halved and finely sliced

Garlic

A pork tenderloin

Thyme

Sage

Peel and sliced apples

¼pt cider

Cream

Paprika

Salt and pepper

Warm the oven to 150°C/300°F/Gas mark 2.

Heat some olive oil in a pan. Fry the sliced onion until they soften for about 10 minutes on low. Whilst the onion is frying, slice the tenderloin into medallions about 1½cm thick. Slice the apples into approx 1” thick slices. When the onions are soft and slightly coloured, add the garlic, chopped or crushed or whatever is easier, then add the apple slices and fry off gently for about 10 minutes until they colour too. Add the thyme and sage if you have them – less for dried herbs – fry gently for about 1 minute then empty everything into a dish which can sit in the warm oven. Turn off the oven or turn it down lower.

Heat some more olive oil in the same pan, and add the pork tenderloin slices. Fry for 3 minutes of each side and then add a knob of butter and shake the pork around with the butter – when the butter melts, add the cider. Bring to the boil quickly and turn down. Add all of the stuff out of the oven and then add a splash or two of cream. Season with a generous pinch of salt and some pepper. Bring the heat up for a couple of minutes and then sprinkle over some paprika. Turn off the heat and let sit for a few minutes before serving.

A Job Application

2012-02-01T09:28:00.000-08:00

I watched 10 minutes of a documentary about the right time to have a baby, the 10-minute gist of which appeared to be that either you become pregnant between the ages of 12 and 17 with no partner support and thus become a drain on the big spend or somehow you selfishly make it through to the beginning of your 30s with your cervix intact (apparently pursuing high-flying roles or money-making-satisfying careers) but leave it too late to conceive thus denying the population a healthy number of middle class babies to look after us in our old age. I went to bed without discovering whether any of my single girlfriends had been interviewed who said What Fucking Career, Once He Proposes I’m Out Of Here? but I guess this programme wasn't aimed at this singular demographic.

Since these women are not to be easily convinced by either becoming a drain on the public finances as a Teenage Mum Shock nor the detrimental effect of the dearth of civil servants and medical staff to look after them in their pension years as they’ve left childbearing until their mid 30s, a more holistic approach might prevail by appealing to their vanity.

It occurred to me that three birds with one stone could be had with A Job For Debs! I could visit first schools, as part of their sex education syllabus, and then commercial offices, as part of the water cooler conventions. I would stand on a pedestal for half an hour, naked for examination, whilst a PowerPoint presentation, or whatever audio visual technology is up to these days, plays out behind me.

Either Teenagers Thinking of Taking an Early Plunge Into Motherhood or Women Thinking of Leaving It Too Too Late could see for themselves the ravages of my body after two babies: the caesarean scar / the stretch marks / the sad feckers which used to be my bosom / the bags under my eyes, my backside, my hips, my knees for christ's sake / the sad nutrient depleted skin / the tramlines ingrained in my shoulders and chest from wearing either a maternity or nursing bra non-stop for four years. And if they were really lucky, someone could make me laugh/ sneeze/ cough without warning and watch me pee myself….

In the background, perhaps with a soundtrack of Young Hearts Run Free, my day playing out : kids screaming at me, dog whining, my osteo's bill, my husband's sad surfeit of condoms, whining, breakfast, lunch, teatime, bathtime, bedtime, my wardrobe full of pretty shoes too short and too narrow, never to be worn again except by my daughter or someone from e-bay, a bed full of outfits tried on with hope and discarded with acceptance. Knackered, knackered, knackered.

Perhaps this might frighten the Teenagers into potentially plaguing their bodies so early on and the Late Leavers knowing that after late onset childbirth Mother Nature puts all her power into child rearing and none of it into restoring elasticity to your skin, your genitals and your pelvic floor.

That should do it. A walking Public Information Broadcast for teenage chicks and old broiler hens.

Dear Sir, I hope you think I am suitable to put forward for this popular role, but if you need any further information on any points in my application, I look forward to hearing from you....

Chicken with 40 cloves of garlic

Easy-peasy lemon squeezy recipe which rather bizarrely hardly tastes of garlic. Instead, you get a creamy, gooey load of garlic to squeeze out on whatever other vegetables, salad or carbs you are serving this with.

You will need to cook this in a deep casserole dish for optimum effect but improvise with what you have.

Whole medium to large chicken

Quite a lot of garlic -unpeeled

Some stalks of celery cut to about 5” long

An onion

Olive Oil

Thyme, Rosemary, Sage

Salt and black pepper

Some white wine if you want

Pre-heat the oven to about 180°C/350°F/Gas mark 4. Mix a spoon of olive oil with a generous pinch of salt and some ground pepper. Wipe inside the cavity with a bit of salt and then use your hands to smother the whole bird with the oil/salt/pepper mix. Inside the cavity put some stalks of celery, about 5 unpeeled cloves of garlic, half of your herbs and the onion cut in half.

In the bottom of the casserole dish pour a tablespoon of olive oil. Scatter the rest of the unpeeled garlic cloves and the rest of the stalks of celery. Now lay the bird on top and push the rest of the herbs around it.

Cover with a lid and roast gently in the oven for 1¼ hrs. If you want to add wine – add this after the chicken has been in for about 1 hour. Remove the lid and let colour gently for about 15 mins. Test the chicken to see if it is cooked by poking a sharp knife or skewer into the crease between the leg and the breast – if there is blood in the juices, this baby needs more time.

Remove the chicken from the casserole or put on a warmed dish or wooden carving platter. Cover with foil and a teatowel to keep warm.

Remove the cloves of garlic from the oil and juices in the pan. You can either serve these separately or squeeze out some of the soft garlic back into your juices to pour onto your meat. Feel free to add more wine or cream with perhaps some tarragon to the juices and leave on a simmer to make a sauce if you want something richer.