Yes, I’m going camping.

And not even to a civilised place like that one where there are permanent tents and proper loos and you can hire a chicken to play with for the weekend. No, I’m going to a no-holds-barred, feral, muddy (no doubt) proper camping site, where you have to construct your tent yourself and then sleep in it.

God knows what’s come over me.

Well, it’s the children, of course. I sent them off camping with a friend last year, and they loved it. And came back and began 364 days of persuasion, cajoling and outright nagging.

I’ve given in. We’re going with friends who more or less camp for a living. There’ll be someone to put the tent together for me, and someone else to blow up my lilo (I mean, for God’s sake, why would anyone over the age of 3 want to sleep on a lilo? It’s madness, madness I tell you ….). I am getting seriously worried.

It’s partly because the said experienced friends have been ringing up all week with little messages like, ‘you may need to buy a collapsible chair.’ A collapsible chair?? WTF? Why does anyone need one of those? ‘Just get one, or you’ll be in a bad mood.’ Fine. I bought one, from Asda. It’s hideous, naturally.

Then came another little call. ‘You’ll need a lantern.’ A what? Do they even have those outside historical novels? And what on earth will I be doing with it, sending signals to smugglers? ‘You may need it to, er, find your knickers.’ Whaaat? I shall be wearing my knickers, thank you very much. ‘Well, your toothbrush, then. It’ll be dark. Don’t ask any more questions. Just buy one!’

All right, all right. I went to Argos, another thing I never do, to buy something I shall use for a couple of hours. Naturally it’s also hideous.

‘You’ll need marshmallows.’ Hang on, I loathe marshmallows. ‘Ok then, sausages.’ What about a nice bag of rocket salad? Queue hollow laughter. ‘Get the sausages. Oh, and bring a parasol, sleeping bag, plastic plates, matches, candles, loo paper, cutlery …..See you there.’

Fine. So my one night’s camping has cost as much as a night at the Ritz, and the stuff I’ve bought is yucky beyond belief. But somehow, I am still looking forward to it. A whole night’s camping. It could be ….fun.

Unless I find a pea under my lilo, of course. If that happens, I’ll be back before you can say ‘goosedown duvet’.

Wish me luck!

When Weetabix asked me to try its new chocolate variety, I had a cunning plan. I’ve never been massively keen on Weetabix - the biscuits look too much like really harsh bathmats for my liking.  But I do know that they are very good for you, being only wheat, and wholewheat at that. So I decided to get someone else to do the testing for me – my children. Well, what on earth are they good for, these days? You can’t even send them up a chimney to do a decent day’s work any more, as everyone has central heating round here.

So the fateful morning dawned, and a collosal package arrived. A little large, I thought, for 24 Weetabix biscuits, unless they were using a massive amount of chocolate in the new recipe, in which case I was going to be doing  the testing myself after all. But in the box was a nice bowl, a chocolate spoon (I put that away in a cupboard pronto),  a selection of lovely toys from Hamleys and the stars of the show, the new chocolate Weetabix themselves.

The girls obligingly settled down to munch. The package was opened, and we sniffed appreciatively. Yum. ‘It smells of chocolate crispy cake,’ pronounced Child One. A very good start. They were soon tucking in, and enjoying the experience thoroughly, from the odd appreciative little snortle that I heard.

All good – until today, when I tried to get them to write up their reviews. ‘Muuuuuum, you  know I’ve got lots of stuff to do, I’m waaaaay too busy at the moment ….’ said Child One, heading off for urgent updates on Facebook. As school has now broken up it’s vital she keeps in constant contact with everyone at every possible moment of the day to discuss each nuance of how bored everyone is being stuck with their families. I tried to back Child Two into a corner instead. ‘But Muuuuuuum, you’ve been nagging away at me for ages to clean my room and I was just going to do it …..’ I checked quickly for pigs flying overhead but decided I’d better give her the benefit of the doubt. A tidy bedroom in the hand is worth two reviews in the bush, or something, probably.

‘But what am I going to say about the Weetabix, then?’ I said plaintively. ‘Just tell them we liked it, Mum. That’s all they need to know.’

Well, there you have it – they like it. And they really do, they’re still eating it. Thanks, Weetabix.

We got to see a wonderful preview of what’s in store for Christmas 2010. I can disclose that this involves a Russian military look, with optional pin-on medals (I saw this with Potty Mummy, appropriately enough, who can rock that whole Moscow look for real these days and was eyeing the sheepskin-lined Doc Marten boots rather lustfully). There is also a Hitchcock heroine strand or ’story’ as the lovely JL fashionistas called it, involving cinched in waists, a lot of jewellery and a flock of paper birds hanging from the ceiling by see-through threads. Damn, if only I had ever been any good at origami …

I’m not sure if John Lewis intends us to hurl out all our furniture so we can get in new stuff to be bang on trend for its Scandinavian-red-meets-woody-and-citrus-tones interiors, but I would certainly prepared to dump my sofa so I could get JL’s totally gorgeous patchwork velvet one instead. I felt quite tempted to try to smuggle it into my handbag on the way out.  I also loved being told, with great certainty, that ‘wallpaper will be very big this winter.’ 

 Intersperse this with sneak previews of the hot toys for Christmas 2010 – I can exclusively reveal that they are fab and your children will have tantrums if they don’t get them – and a very happy time was had by all. Oh, and there was a certain amount of chatting involved – I met loads of lovely bloggers I’d never seen before, and bumped into old friends too. I’m terrified to do a name-check in case I do that dreadful thing of leaving someone out, and everyone was so lovely.

Best of all, adorable John Lewis gave us all a Flip camera-video-mebobble thingy. ‘Don’t worry, a child of two could use it,’ I was told arily. That’s fine then. As soon as I find a child of two, I’ll get them to explain it to me. As it was, I took the usual out-of-focus, wonky shots on my iPhone for your delectation.

Have fun, and see you at John Lewis at Christmas. I’ll be buying the really big wallpaper.

The prize for our efforts - and I am typing this in hushed tones – is a Green & Black’s hamper.

Now I am completely abandoning the hushed tones and shrieking a bit, as I want to win that badly. Yes, I know it’s a bit sad, and I am not normally a competitive person – I refer you to the comment from my exasperated PE teacher on my school report after a crucial netball match long ago, ‘DD needs to move more’ – but this hamper, I feel, has my name on it. In very big letters. Actually, I have no idea what is inside it at all, apart from, I presume, large quantities of chocolate. But I do have a secret little fantasy, that the hamper itself is made from chocolate! That way, I could just chomp my way through the whole thing ….

Ooops, getting carried away, back to the baking. I think you’ll agree that this is a devilishly cunning cake, which has partly come about due to our current obsession with baking fairy cakes. During the school fair bakathon, a couple of weekends ago, we had several batches of batter on the go at the same time. This got me thinking. I love coffee and walnut cake. Child One loves coffee and walnut cake. Child Two, by contrast, hates coffee and walnut. She likes lemon. Which Child One cannot abide. You could carry this on for ever, and never find a single cake which is going to make both girls happy at the same time. Soooooo, I present …..the Having Your Cake and Eating It cake:

One side is coffee and walnut, the other side is lemon. And everyone is happy. I don’t know if English Mum wants us to give recipes, but this is the easiest possible all-in-one sponge, featuring 8oz butter and 8oz caster sugar, creamed, four eggs, added one at a time, 8oz self raising flour, sieved and a few drops of vanilla essence. Divide the basic mixture into two bowls, add the juice and zest of a lemon to one, and a tablespoon of strong coffee (instant is good) and 4oz crushed walntus to the other. Splosh into two identical baking tins. 

Cook for about 30 mins at gas mark 3. For the icing, take a basic buttercream (3oz butter, 6oz icing sugar) and add the juice and zest of another lemon to one half, and another tablespoon of strong coffee to the other half. When the two cakes have cooled, cut each in half and layer them up with either the lemon or coffee icing. Then swirl away on the top to your heart’s content. Voila. Everyone’s happy.

Seeing such a tantrum-inducing pile of wonders led us, naturally, to discuss the naughty step. Who would we each put on it, and why?

My candidates, at the moment, would be the Dulwich bicycling parents. I’m not sure they’re being naughty – but they’re being provocative, like little children sticking their tongues out at the grown-ups.

Who would you pick, and why? The rules of the meme are to pick five bloggers to answer, tap them on the shoulder by letting them know they’re it in their comments, and then link back to this blog. Peasy! My five are:

LivingwithKids

Realmammadiaries

Exmoorjane

You’vegotyourhandsfull

Familyaffairs

Voila! Enjoy ….

I’ve used the word ‘allow’ – but is that right? I doubt whether the children are gagging to go off alone every morning. They have apparently made this trip safely for the past six months. It’s been sunny in Dulwich for about three weeks. The rest of those six months have seen pretty horrible weather. If I were a five-year-old, I’m not sure I would want to be out cycling in all sorts with only my slightly older sister for company every morning. If I were an eight-year-old, I definitely wouldn’t want to be responsible if my little brother fell off his bike into traffic in the rain. If anything happened, of course it wouldn’t be her fault, but she would undoubtedly feel guilty. It seems a massive burden to plonk on such young shoulders.

But weather’s  not the main issue, of course. If only it were. The trouble is that Dulwich is in London, a big, nasty mean city. However much we pretend we’re in a village cut off from the troubles of urban life, we Dulwich residents are as much subject to bonkers drivers, perverts, traffic jams, accidents and stress as anyone else in London.

Usually, the school run is a bit of a blur for me. The preamble is an hour of shouting, rushing, eating, hair-brushing, gym kit finding, project printing, homework finding and general chaos. In the car, things tend to be calmer, though on the road around us people are constantly losing it big time. Dulwich has been ringed with temporary traffic lights for months. Temporary traffic lights mean permanent headaches for everyone caught up by them. There is a lot of revving and snarling and frankly aggressive driving. I even found myself cursing an elderly lady on a bike today, as she swayed all over the middle of the road, reducing me and a long queue of others to a slow cycling pace behind her.  People in Dulwich drive big cars and, in the morning rush, they just barely tolerate other people driving big cars. They hate people on bikes. I’d like to think that we’d all make an exception for very small people, unaccompanied, on bikes, but I know that if these little kids were cycling in an annoying way for any reason, they’d get plenty of toots and angry revving swerves.

It’s also a horrible fact that, about two years ago, a man nearly succeeded in abducting an eleven-year-old girl in Dulwich, about three streets from where I live. She was walking home with friends and the man literally picked her up and grabbed her – she was small for her age – and tried to stuff her into his car. It was only the children’s shrieks and the fact that it was a hot day, so people had their windows open and heard the commotion, that saved her. Can I just stress, this girl was eleven.  I don’t want to give anyone ideas but, if I were a pervert, and heard that there were unaccompanied five-year-olds available in Dulwich … it doesn’t bear thinking about.

I understand that the parents in question want to reclaim some of the innocence of their own youth. The father, it seems, grew up somewhere rural in Germany where it was perfectly fine to ride around from a young age on your own. Well, that is all lovely, and doable no doubt if you live somewhere idyllic in the countryside, like Narnia. But, ahem, this is London.

And don’t the parents want to spend the time with the children? No-one is pretending that the school run is the finest slice of quality time available, but it can still be fun, discussing the day to come and the ins and outs of playground etiquette. Even when both parents work, people everywhere juggle arrangements so that the children can be delivered at school in one piece and on time. Children grow up fast enough, and the moment comes all too soon when they actively do not want their parents around to embarrass them. At the ages of five and eight, though, they still need and want their parents’ support and protection. Independence and fortitude are great strengths, but they have time enough to develop them in the years ahead, surely?

I’m aware that I’m sounding judgemental, which I don’t want to be, but I am finding it hard to understand the parents’ motivation. They seem to be actively seeking to make a point. Fair enough – but please don’t use your children to make it.

The Downtown Squishy handbag:

In a stunning shade of King Prawn, otherwise known as damn-the-au-pair-forgot-to-sunblock-the-kids pink, the Downtown Squishy has pockets for all those vital accessories, like your iPhone on permanent speed dial to the nanny agency, the keys to your 4×4 blocking the high street, and a highbrow paperback you have no intention of reading but will be pontificating about at your book club anyway.  The Downtown Squishy goes brilliantly with the Tablecloth Shirt over at London City Mum’s blog. I myself have the Embellished Tablecloth Shirt with napkin rings sewn around the neckline. You can also buy the bag with the King Prawn wedge colourblock espadrilles if you want to spend time meeting interesting new doctors in casualty. A word of caution – you may need sunglasses if looking directly at your handbag. Enjoy!

*Forgive me, Johnnie. I love Boden, as you and my bank manager know. But I couldn’t resist. Mwah.

Once I’d stopped gibbering, lots of lovely people pointed out that it was just a new spam scam. But by that stage, I’d already reported it to the police.

I felt a bit shame-faced when I got a message on my machine from the local police station expressing concern, telling me it was probably a scam, and suggesting I shouldn’t stuff the unmarked fivers into an attache case any time soon (do attache cases still exist? It would probably be a laptop bag now, maybe even one of those really nice stripy ones from Paperchase,  and I probably wouldn’t be able to bring myself to hand it over when the crucial moment came). The policeman didn’t leave a number, or I would have rung back and said thanks, but I’d now had a long lie-down (and a vat of medicinal Chardonnay, and a lot of lovely support on my blog) and was feeling fine about it all.

I thought this would be the end of the matter, but then I got a letter. ‘We are very sorry that you have become a victim of crime,’ it said. ‘We have enclosed a leaflet, ‘Victims of Crime – support and advice.” There was no leaflet in the envelope, but there was another letter, beginning, ‘Dear Victim of Crime …due to a supply problem we are unable to enclose the leaflet at this time. Contact the Victim Focus desk and we will send one when we receive further supplies.’

Oh dear. I was now feeling very guilty about not being enough of a  proper victim. I’d had a shock, but I’d calmed down and a lot of people had been nice to me. ‘Dear Hysterical Woman,’ might have been closer to the truth, though I don’t suppose they would have a big uptake on their Hysterical Woman leaflet (possible suggestions for dealing with us could include: ‘throw cold water over the hysteric. If this doesn’t work, slap her around the face. Should all else fail, administer chocolate and position the hysteric in front of a TV costume drama’).

I’d just about got my head around it all again when the phone rang. It was another kind PC, checking I was ok and making sure I hadn’t been bumped off. How kind. I explained the whole thing was just a nasty case of spamming and that if you googled ‘hitman’ my exact same letter would pop up (thanks so much to everyone who told me this). At the end of our chat, the PC said he was glad I was ok and said, ‘God bless you.’

Awww. Thank you, police! I’ll try and get a grip now.

Saturday, the day before the fete, was also hotter than hell. You probably felt a little warm as you went about your business. Well, the kitchen of Divorce Towers was 400 degrees hotter than Satan’s armpit, as we whisked and baked and iced all day long.

Luckily, the cupcakes produced in these far less than perfect circumstances were actually rather beautiful. We don’t have anything clever like cool bags but we do have a few ice packs, which I tucked around the cakes to stop them vanishing into lakes of goo. We even created an optimistic range of St George cupcakes, which went like, well, hot cakes. Unlike our team. Grrrrr.

The fete was fun – my lovely friend S brought her beautiful cakestand along, which was just as well as I’d had a meltdown before leaving and left my stands and a batch of beautiful pink dollymixture cakes behind. Other friends came by and chatted and helped and we all had a wander around the other stalls and found a few bargains. We sold the cakes in aid of Great Ormond Street Hospital and a friend did say she thought it was very good for the girls – it was their idea, they did the lion’s share of the baking themselves, they loved the selling part and I think they feel a little glow of achievement. I did pilfer some of the money in order to buy the delicious PSA hamburgers at lunchtime and a friend hissed, ‘that’s a defibrilator you’re spending!’ But don’t worry, I put the money back.

Then it was off to see England play, and things went rapidly downhill. The normally serene confines of Dulwich Village became jammed with snarling middle-class people in massive cars, all desperate to get to their tellies. A French lady’s camper van got wedged in Gallery Road with a bus going the other way, and she went from car to car to explain the problem, evidently baffled at the hostile response she was getting. ‘You do realise England are playing in 20 minutes, that’s why everyone’s cross,’ I explained when she came our way. ‘Ah yes,’ she said. ‘But as I always say, they will still play even if you are not there to watch them.’

She was quite right, of course. We all would have been better off not watching. If only that bottleneck had gone on. And on. And on. And we could have missed the whole game. Oh well. The England car magnet has now come off the back of the Divorcemobile. And only the fact that David Cameron had to watch the match sitting with the German PM has cheered me up.

I was lucky enough to go to a huge event yesterday with TL –  absolutely huge if you’re a scientist. It was the Convocation of the Royal Society. The Royal Society has been concentrating on sciencey stuff since 1660 and every big boffin worth their mad hairdo, from Newton on, has been a member. Every 50 years, they throw a big party, and this one coincided with the 350th anniversary as well so it was extra special. The Queen was there, as well as the Duke of Edinburgh, Prince William, Princess Anne and the Duke of Kent.

One of my more intriguing hats, or I suppose I should say tiaras, is being a UK Royal commentator for the Flemish TV station VTM. I worked on the Daily Express for six years and did tons of stuff on the Royal family so there’s actually not much I don’t know about the subject. I’ve been able to surprise people quite a lot in pub quizzes over the years. But, despite having met Princess Diana, chatted with Fergie, hung out with those in the know and all the rest of it, I’ve very rarely seen the Queen in the flesh. Yesterday really was very special for that reason.

The arguments over Royals-vs-President make me sleepy, but I do admire dedication to duty, stoicism and dignity and, of course, no one does these better than our Queen.

She walked in at the end of a specially commissioned fanfare performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra – enough to make the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end – and sat throughout the speeches, her face shaded by a rather pretty blue hat.

Was she amused, entertained, entralled, or even bored? It was impossible to tell. She is a cipher, a symbol. She has been careful not to let us know too much of what she is thinking or feeling over the past 57 years since she was crowned. In these days when we seem to know every sorry thought limping through the howling wastes between the ears of celebrities like Jordan, I love the Queen’s sphinx-like air of mystery. 

She is a real woman, doing a real job (though we could argue until the cows come home over that job) into her eighties, and for that reason alone I think she is inspiring.

And, of course, I got to wear my purple satin slingbacks and my new frock, which everyone said was too posh ever to leave my wardrobe!  Thank you, Ma’am.

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