I know I slightly overuse those three little letters, but this is definitely an OMG moment.

My book is coming out on Friday!

I had been vaguely thinking about contacting my darling agent to see when (or even if, I admit I am a terrible pessimist and publishing is a fast-moving, cut-throat and jolly picky world) the book was coming out.  I kept getting cold feet, as she is bound to, rightly, tell me off a bit about slow progress with Novel 2. Then this morning, I had a brainwave. I would check on the German version of Amazon.

Well, I did, and look what I found:

http://www.amazon.de/Schokoherz-Alice-Castle/dp/3547711533/ref=cm_cr_pr_pb_t

Even more exciting, I already had two reviews and 3 and a half stars!!!!!

Then I clicked on the reviews, translated them, and found this:

“Brilliant SF novel about the people in an extreme situation
The earth’s climate has changed completely. The ionosphere, which protects the earth from excessive solar radiation, no longer exists.
The polar caps have melted, the sea level has risen dramatically, Europe is a jungle, where a climate is like in the Cretaceous.”

Ahem. Sadly, my book is not a brilliant SF novel about an extreme situation, though I’m beginning to wish it was. It’s the humorous tale of how a mummy journalist crashes out of her career, then finds her true self by transforming herself into a chocolatier. I  love the title of the book reviewed, though – it’s Carnival of the Alligators. Shiver! I may just have to order it for myself. But you go right ahead and get your copy of Schokohertz – it’s only euro 14.95!

Incidentally, I have been put in a bundle offer with the wonderful JG Ballard, who wrote the autobiographical Empire of the Sun but whose novels were mainly dystopian SF. I’m thrilled, I think he’s fab. Maybe my next novel will have a SF element. Yes, I can see it all now ….Chocolatier mummy sets up her new shop ….then gets whisked away by aliens in a spaceship who give her out of this world chocolate recipes! Right, off I go, 2,000 words by lunchtime ….

I’m very excited to be guest blogging here at Dulwich divorcee but I am a little nervous. I mean, this is Dulwich and therefore automatically cosmopolitan and cultured and I’m so, well, so not.

I live in the country.  Not the country you see in Country Life, but the dirtier, more rural version of that. Our house backs onto wheat fields, filled with poppies in the summer and haystacks in the evening sun at harvest time. It’s glorious. But look the other way from our house and you will see the mud-laden field full of sick sheep – the ones the fox didn’t quite get – bleating pathetically. That’s once you have looked past the pigs the neighbour keeps across the muddy lane that runs alongside our house. The pigs that have a distinctly piggy smell, particularly on hot summer evenings when you are having friends over for a barbecue. On those evenings, it’s all I can do not to reach across and have one as a barbecue sausage (the pig that is, not the friend).

In this part of the world you might see a mother or two on the morning school run, heading down our lane in a farm Jeep, navigating the pothole chasms on the path. It’s not uncommon to see six kids or more being thrown around in the back, seatbeltless. The mothers figure, possibly quite reasonably, that even though the children are not pinned in by seatbelts (there aren’t any), if you stuff enough of them in they are pinned in by each other. And anyway, who are they going to crash into? It’s so rural, there’s no traffic except the pheasants playing chicken as they cross the road.

It’s perfect for four small boys of course. Who wouldn’t love all the mud, the hiding places, the freedom? Go out after breakfast, come back when it gets dark, filthy dirty, don’t let your mother know a thing. Sometimes I try to make an effort at pretending to be just a little bit cosmopolitan, forgetting temporarily that there are two things against which I cannot compete: country life and four boys. In an attempt to be more environmentally conscious with the mountains of laundry that four boys produce, I once tried to switch from chemically-laden washing powder to soapnuts. But then my children appeared in the doorway covered head-to-toe in mud, baby included, breathless with running, with living. I felt like I was in an advert: can this mother get those stains out with this pretend washing powder? So I did the only thing I could do, the thing that a mother of four small boys can do expertly - I smiled beatifically and turned and poured myself a glass of wine in defeat. I am so not going to war with myself over washing powder.

It’s not all countrybumpkin round here though. There are a fair number of celebs and plenty of people with money. They bring a little frisson of excitement on a Sunday lunch trip to the pub. Will we see Madonna, the children ask? (not since she left the country pile to Guy) will we see the man with twelve helicopters? (possibly, although I don’t think he’ll bring the helicopters for roast lamb I say to their disappointed faces). What I love about the rich here though is that they just muck in and apart from the occasional new Barbour coat it’s often impossible to tell you are talking to someone that is seriously moneyed.

A couple of weeks ago, I found myself standing in the aisle in church so that I could monitor the actions of my four boys on the loose during the family service (if you ever thought Hell wouldn’t dare make an appearance in a sacred building, you haven’t seen my boys bored in church). I was very visible. And possible quite audible what with all the hissing to get them to sit down, and to not stab holes with the pen in the kneelers, and NO, you cannot have a race down to the altar. After the service, a stout woman who had been sitting at the front of church approached me. I could tell simply from her drill-like walk and focused manner that she was the mother of many boys: there is never any dawdling with all-boys about, it’s a full-time business keeping them rounded up and out of the nearby metaphorical river. She had seen me in the aisle attempting to control my children with hand-signals like a novice runway controller bringing planes to the gate, and spotted me as a kindred spirit.

She introduced herself and admired my four boys. ‘I’m the mother of four boys,’ she declared. ‘I would have liked a girl but it wasn’t to be,’ she went on matter-of-factly. ‘Anyway, mine are a bit older, but I can tell you, you do get used to all the cricket gear and having the larder emptied every few hours.’ She laughed, forcefully.

I nodded. She looked a bit muddy round the edges, a bit beaten down, her energy quite possibly sucked out of her by the process of mothering several energetic boys. It was, rather frighteningly, like looking in a mirror. So we chatted over coffee and exchanged stories about our boys and as we talked I thought perhaps I might have found a friend, a kindred spirit. Someone who would sympathise with me when the boys were attempting to drown each other in the birdbath! Someone who perhaps stayed at home and so would be around to have an occasional cup of coffee, not caring as the children trooped more mud into the kitchen. As her children were slightly older she could be my mentor to guide me through the joy and pitfalls of boys at each age, tell me what to expect! And she would ring me for moral support when her boys were attempting to climb on to the roof for the second time that week!

We exchanged telephone numbers and I left church with a lighter heart: at last there was someone who wouldn’t care whether my floor was covered with muddy footprints, who wouldn’t care that I was dressed in the daily uniform of jeans and wellies, who wouldn’t be surprised when our children built a wattle and daub den in her garden by tearing all the small branches off her trees and covering them – and themselves – with mud. We would laugh at our failed attempts to be a bit a bit more cosmopolitan and a bit less country.

A few days later my husband and I were watching a programme about the state of the economy (‘cos we’re fun like that – you must have us over), when I realised with creeping astonishment that the woman I was watching on the television screen was the same woman I had met in church. My new friend with so many similarities was talking about her company worth millions of pounds! My new friend who looked so brow-beaten in church was almost unrecognisable in designer clothes. My new friend who could have had coffee with me on mornings when our children were driving us mad by setting light to each other was in fact a high-flying City slicker who probably barely had time for a cup of coffee between meetings! My new friend with four boys who I thought was so like me was so… so cosmopolitan and cultured. I stared at the screen in disbelief.

So I did the only thing I could do, the thing that a mother of four small boys can do expertly - I smiled beatifically. And turned and poured myself a glass of wine in defeat.

A very big thank you to DD for letting me loose on her blog, and please come over to my blog today where she has written a wonderfully funny story for me.

Blog: http://mostleast.com

Twitter: http://twitter.com/ellamost

It’s either been snow, or children. Have you noticed how it only snows in the UK on Wednesdays and Thursdays? That’s because that’s when I’m supposed to be at work. Likewise, if you’re one of my children, please don’t bother feeling ill any other time of the week – Wednesdays and Thursdays are the obvious days to pull a sickie.

I wasn’t particularly surprised, last night, when Child Two started to clutch her stomach and look peaky. In fact, I was only amazed that I’d got away with a whole day at the office yesterday. This morning, I did wonder whether a miracle had occured and that, Lazarus-like, Child Two was going to rise chirpily from her sick bed and bounce off to school without a backward glance.

Not a chance. I even considered, briefly, begging her to go to school – hell, who am I kidding? I did beg her. Then she burst into tears, and I felt a total worm.

So I rang work, again, and said that I had a sick child on my hands. They were lovely about it, of course, but I’m sure that, even as they are saying, ‘hope she gets better soon,’ they are thinking, ‘I’m never employing a woman with children again.’ It’s soooo difficult, both for employers and for me, the guilty little employee. For I do love my job and want to keep it. I can’t do it from home, as it involves massive amounts of computer software which would undoubtedly blow this little box to kingdom come.

If I’d had any niggling doubts about the exact nature and severity of Child Two’s malaise, they were abruptly put to rest just after I’d installed her on the sofa, when she threw up, the poor dear. Ah well. I must confess, I am secretly quite glad. I do love it when we can snuggle up and watch yards of MI High together, drinking weak lemon barley water and testing each other’s foreheads with the backs of our hands.

On second thoughts, we might just stay put here forever.

Now this would probably have been a much more painful exercise if I hadn’t decided to Transfer yesterday. For those of you not in the know with handbags (I’m probably talking men here) Transferring is a sacred ritual which takes place, in my case, two to three times a year. My Transfers tend to be seasonal, or to be carried out when a Handbag Mistake has been made. Unfortunately, I recently made a terrible Handbag Mistake, buying a bag in a shade of purple which, at the time, I thought was cheery, and then discovered that, in natural daylight, was retina-singeingly vile. But the less said about that the better. And the fact that I also bought a top to go with it, as though that was somehow going to make things better ….la la la la I’m singing now so I can’t read what I’m typing. It works better than you’d think. Don’t be surprised if both turn up on eBay soon though.

Anyhoo, back to the Transfer. During the Transference, the contents of the bag are removed, sand-blasted clean if necessary, pruned, restored and reorganised, then moved into – tada – a new bag. Now in my case, in the interests of economy etc (ahem, because I had just wasted a fortune on the purple monstrosity) the contents went into a rescusitated bag. In fact, this one is positively vintage, dating from the years of my marriage. It was, in fact, a rather lovely birthday present from Mr X, and the matching purse was a Christmas present. A few years (who am I kidding, months) ago, I would rather have ripped out my toenails with my own teeth than used this bag. It just shows what time and ill-advised purple can do for a gal.

Now, as some of you know, I am so keen on bags that I have another handbag as my avatar on Facebook. This is partly because I am fighting a constant war against too much self-revelation (you may well wish to fall to the floor laughing at this point) and partly because I am a slave to Louis Vuitton.

The lovely Louis made this bag too, and I was really feeling rather swish this morning when I headed out with it, all lovely and pristine as I thought. I was actually rather smug sitting down to do this revelation as I thought, ‘I am just going to have the neatest handbag in town.’

Then I put the contents of the bag on my desk to photograph. Bear in mind, please, that I put this stuff in the bag on Sunday. This is what it looks like now:

OMG just doesn’t get near it.

This is what that pile of tat consists of:

4 biros, two nicked from Barclays Bank (hah, consider it my bonus, oh banking fat cats)  two fruit-scented gel ones nicked from my daughters

2 hair ties, grubby

1 iPhone sock, in pale blue

1 Sally Hansen natural shine nail varnish

4 crumped old tissue sachets

1 set of colouring pencils which Child One got in a kiddies’ lunch bag from M&S – she is so phobic about strange foodstuffs that the comfort of a tiny ham sandwich and juice box is still huge for both of us

1 token for a Swedish supermarket trolley, very useful in Sainsbury’s I don’t think

1 pink leather photo holder with pics of my girls

3 lipglosses,  Nivea, Juicy Tubes and Maybelline

1 makeup bag containing four old mascaras, two more lip glosses, a concealer which is a horrible salmon pink but which was expensive and I can’t bear to throw away, one moss green eye pencil and a tube of No7 protect and perfect

1 bottle of Advil painkillers, bought on my trip last year to Disneyworld – they are a gorgeous blue colour and look utterly poisonous.

1 packet of Neurofen

Hundreds of Pizza Express cinema vouchers which I will never get round to using

Purse containing umpteen loyalty cards which I still never manage to find when in the right shop

Security tag for work

Mini sewing kit from the last hotel I stayed in

Plasters 

Ancient furry tampon

Purse containing 97p

3 Marie Curie charity daffodil pins – gorgeous!

1 iPhone – unfortunately it doesn’t fit into the phone pocket of the bag – the bag is that old!! – but it’s been riding around happily on the mound of rubbish

1 Card from Child Two, made just before her first school trip away at the very tender age of 8 (we lived abroad then). I think she thought she might never see me again. I said I would always carry it in my handbag and, no matter how many Transfers I make, I always will.

Gosh, I’m a bit shocked at that tally. Now I’d really like a peek in some of your bags. I’m going to tag Chic Mama, Linda, Metropolitan Mum and Family Affairs.

‘I have to make a model of the Forum in Rome.’

As if this was not bad enough, she then added:

‘And I have to make it out of matchsticks.’

It took all my strength not to propose a joint suicide pact. But, over the ringing in my ears, I could just about hear a little voice suggesting  that this would, perhaps, not be the path that a good mother would take.

Why do teachers do this to poor, innocent parents? There was I, with a pleasant weekend of blogging and tweeting stimulating children’s activities planned, when I was suddenly plunged into an architectural crisis of epic proportions. Those who created the Forum the first time round had it easy, let me say. It’s on a massive scale and was complete when they were finished. Nowadays, it’s a total mess – how the harrumph am I supposed to know what goes where? And with matches???

Making the Forum out of matches is quite obviously crazy. The Forum looked like this:

Whereas this is a bunch of matchsticks:

Do you see the similarity?

Me neither.

Nevertheless, we pressed on.

I should add that, at Divorce Towers, we have a bit of a history with school projects. Child One’s mosque, made in Year Seven, was the talk of the school, and not in a good way. While one of her classmates came in with, I kid you not, a mosque with actual working electric lights (her dad is an electrician), Child One was forced to turn up with a total monstrosity, thrown together at the last possible second and comprising a Sainsbury’s Basic range 99p sieve as the dome and a kitchen roll tube as the minaret, with a Comic Relief red foam nose topping it off. True Love did appear at one point and helpfully told me that the model was obscene and the school would be closed down by the police if I insisted on taking it in. I informed him it would all be fine once it was spray-painted cream. 

It wasn’t.

Anyway, she did take it in, the girl with the electric lights got the school equivalent of a knighthood and poor Child One’s creation was left in a dusty corner, where I’m told that, even now, the red top of the minaret glows in a most disturbing manner.  

It was with a sense of dread and failure that I approached the Forum.

Now, there’s always the option of leaving the children to sink or swim on these projects. Believe me, I was tempted. It’s just that nobody else does. And this time, if I’d left poor Child Two to scrabble about on her own, no doubt someone else’s Mum would have turned out to be a stonemason and reconstructed the entire Forum out of Carrera marble. So I plunged in, with as good a grace as I could muster.

After several million years, and once I’d got most of a tube of superglue stuck to the table, we produced this:

Obviously, it looks nothing like the Forum. But it does look a bit like a model of something. Child Two and I went to bed exhausted, but with a glow of virtuous satisfaction.

In the morning, at breakfast, this awaited us:

Carnage! The Forum was all over the place. Either the tiny little Fimo people we’d spent a millenia or so fashioning had had a big argument over Roman politics while we all snoozing in our beds, or a monster had ravaged them in the night …..

‘Don’t worry,’  I said to Child Two, fixing my all-purpose Doris Day grin on to my crumpled divorcee face. ‘It’ll look absolutely fine when it’s been spray-painted cream.’

Argggggggggggggggggggg!

1. Don’t be a single mother. This applies to more than just half term, but I’ve shoved it in here just so I can try and garner a bit of sympathy in advance before you all decide you hate me. You’ll see why when you read on …

2. Don’t organise a MASSIVE new work project for half term. And don’t then go around pretending that it’s not your fault, the interviewees can’t reschedule, when the horrible truth is that you just clean FORGOT about half term and now have to run around like a headless chicken failing to juggle the mess …..

3. Don’t let it drizzle every day. Well, yesterday was beautiful, but today we are back to drizzle. Just try not to let this happen. Even the cat is soggy.

4. Don’t keep telling the children, ‘wouldn’t it be lovely to have a little bit of independence?  Wouldn’t you love to walk up to the village and have a hot chocolate ALL BY YOURSELVES?’ Because, guess what, they’ll realise what you’re up to and superglue themselves to your legs, just like they did when they were 4 and 2. They’ll probably never set foot outside the house alone again.

5. Don’t mention your work crisis to friends, as they will all promptly leave the country to avoid being embroiled in your childcare arrangements yet again.

6. Don’t forget to look on the bright side – it is lovely being snuggled up in front of the fire watching the Young Dracula marathon on CBBC. Who cares if I get fired?

7. Don’t even try to work after Chardonnay O’Clock. That soooo doesn’t work. Besides, I need to keep up with yummy Being Human and Shameless just to hang on to a shred of sanity.

8. Don’t keep moaning on. They’ll be off to Mr X’s on Friday night, by which time I’ll have finished the project, be on my tod, and will be sobbing into my glass of white.

9. Don’t forget to look on the bright side – they’ll be leaving without the enormous stash of cupcakes, yay!

10. Don’t forget you’ve got a lovely lunch with a friend to look forward to on Saturday. That should keep you going. Good luck!

As you will see, they are as pink and fluffy and Valentiney as anyone could ever wish:

Delish, n’est-ce pas? I can say that without seeming (too) disgustingly boastful as it was actually Child One, my secret weapon, who made the little artworks with her own fair hand. Here she is in the act of decoration:

And look at the detail on this one:

Of course, I don’t know where she gets this culinary talent from.

No, seriously, I don’t. Because here are my efforts, truffles concocted as a Valentine’s gift for TL. As you can see, they look like an intriguing amalgam between roadkill and turds:

Yummy!

No, seriously, they are. And their rather, shall we say, disreputable appearance, is just my way of keeping small hands off them. Well, that’s my story, anyway.

The Cast: Dulwich Divorcee, Child One, Child Two and a special guest star appearance by True Love.  

Act One

The lights go up as the four participants are clustered around a single piece of paper. ‘Don’t rip it!’ ‘It’s mine!’ ‘Get off,’ and ‘Could you all just go away, this is my taste test,’ ring out into the still Dulwich night.

On the floor, being trampled, are eight bars of Green & Black’s chocolate.  The cat pops in and starts trying to sneak off with the white chocolate bar while everyone’s arguing …..

Unseen, next door, the neighbour’s finger hovers over the final digit of the 999 call ……

Act Two

‘Right, thank goodness that’s sorted out. I’m in charge and we’re going to do it like it says on the piece of paper. First, we are going to observe the chocolate.’ High pitched teenage giggles break out.

‘Anyone not observing the chocolate can leave. ‘ The giggles are hastily surpressed and the neighbour reluctantly replaces the receiver next door and stomps off to bed, reminding himself to put his earplugs in. They’re evidently making a night of it next door. Again.

‘Now we are going to smell the chocolate.’ Giggles are now reaching a near-hysterical pitch.

‘Next we will take One Small Square Each, put it in our mouths, and hold our noses.’ The giggles become curiously porcine honks at this point.

‘This is allowing us to experience the taste in the mouth, as opposed to the flavour, which is perceived by the olfactory gland in the nasal canal.’ ‘Yeah, yeah, we knew that,’ say the children as best they can with their noses pinched.

‘Now let go of your nose and breathe deeply, sensing the aromas ….’

Oh dear. That’s torn it ….

Act Three

Once the demon cocoa flavours have been released, there is no stopping three-quarters of the tasting team. Picture werewolves as the moon comes up. Imagine, if you will, a vampire in close proximity to a trembling, naked white neck. See, in your mind’s eye, a juicy steak moments before a lion sinks its teeth into it. A feeding frenzy begins.

As the light fades, the divorcee tiptoes away, to take refuge somewhere a little more civilised. All that unrestrained chomping is simply giving her a headache.

‘Oi! Hang on a minute, who’s taken the Butterscotch?  And where did the Milk Chocolate and Almond go? She’s only left us with the dark and the cooking chocolate. Typical!’

The divorcee reclines on her chaise longue, smiling slightly, and sends a silent prayer of thanks to the lovely Tara.

The curtain falls.

Of course, it got me thinking of my own lame claim to fame. My bathroom blind is in Mike Leigh’s best film, Life Is Sweet. It happened like this.

Once, years ago, when Mr X were living in *delicate shudder* north London, a film pantechnicon drew up, loads of techy and actory types leapt out, and before we knew it, they were filming right round the corner from us.

At the time, all seemed to be well between X and me. We both had biggish jobs, no children and, while I disliked his flat and north London, we had a laugh. Then we decided to put a blind in the bathroom.

It was a standard issue, John Lewis jobby, nothing outrageous or even mildly exciting. It was pale grey, if memory serves. Naturally, I left X to it. Where I come from (south London), putting up blinds is men’s work. Hours passed, not peacefully, and when I finally ventured into the bathroom again, the blind was crooked.

I suppose it sums up all that was wrong, without me knowing it even was wrong. I just wasn’t great at marriage. There was no teamwork, no compromise, there were expectations and there was criticism.  There was also, now, a very crap blind.

We went to see the film the moment it came out, hoping, I suppose, to see ourselves strolling by, elegantly incognito, as Jane Horrocks et al gave it their all. All we did see, looming in one scene, was the painfully crooked bathroom blind.

Although we limped on for many years, I now look at that blind as a seismic moment. It reminds me of the last part of Philip Larkin’s tremendous ‘they fuck you up’ poem, This Be the Verse:

‘Man hands on misery to man

It deepens like a coastal shelf

Get out as early as you can

And don’t have any kids yourself.’

Of course, we did have kids, thank God. And I now have curtains in my bathroom.

Anyway, read and enjoy. Oh yes, and possibly snigger, too:

‘CHECKLIST FOR DEALING WITH A TELEPHONE BOMB THREAT

 Immediately alert the person responsible for security or your manager, but DO NOT PUT DOWN THE HANDSET OR CUT OFF THE CONVERSATION.      Obtain as much information as you can. Complete this form as you go along.

 Time of call……………………………………………………………………………

 Message (write down the exact words)………………………………………………

Code Words………………………………………………………………………….

 What time will it go off……………….. What does it look like…………………….

 What type of bomb is it……………………………………………………………..

 Why are you doing this……………………………………………………………..

 DETAILS OF CALLER:

 Man                                                                                    Old                             

Woman                                                                               Young                        

 SPEECH:

 Intoxicated                                                                         Laughing                    

Rational                                                                              Serious                       

Rambling                                                                            Message Read            

Impediment                                                                        Spontaneous               

Accent (specify)                 …………………….               Disguised                   

OTHER NOISES:

 Traffic                                                                                Railway Station         

Talking                                                                               Music                         

Typing                                                                                Children                     

Machinery                                                                          Other                          

Aircraft                      

As soon as the call has finished, give this form to the person responsible for security or your manager, who will decide what to do.’

Don’t you just love it? Particularly the bit at the end, where you put your life into the hands of your manager and wait calmly for him or her to save your life.

Call me old-fashioned, but I prefer the traditional way of dealing with a bomb threat. You shout, ‘OMG, it’s a bomb,’ and then you run as fast as your Boden kitten heels will let you. Good luck, everyone!