There’s something thrilling about spotting evidence of your special day. Wherever the date appears in public – on the masthead of a newspaper, on the start-up screen of a computer, on a notice about roadworks – it seems as if the world is celebrating your birth.

18th January: this day belongs to me.  Although I despise the  ostentatious show of wealth, I will forever regret not snapping up something I spotted for sale a few years ago: the personalised car licence plate DEB181 – a double celebration of myself.

This year, the first place I see my special date is on my mobile phone.  I keep it by my bed to wake me up each morning with a gentle tune. Beneath the date appears a message to remind me (as if I could forget): “My birthday”.  I instantly feel a sense of history, as my mother must also feel when she sees this date written down. On this day, so many years ago, my arrival changed her world for ever- and mine began. (For my part, 23rd May will forever be one of the sweetest sounding dates in the calendar: it’s the day my only child was born.)

By contrast, seeing 19th January pop up on my phone the next morning is a gloomy reminder that normal service has now been resumed. All that lies ahead is dreary, indebted January and foggy, freezing February. It’s a very long haul until Christmas and my next birthday.

I’ve always felt hard done by that my birthday comes so soon after Christmas.  It would have been even closer if I’d been born on my due date, instead of two weeks late.  I knew my own mind even then.  As a child I envied my brother for having the perfect birthday: 21st June, the summer solstice, half way between two Christmases.

Even so, a birthday is a birthday. Better seize the day. Happy birthday, dear me!

Postman Laura - role play at the Bath Postal Museum

Every November the same thing happens: I buy second class Christmas stamps as soon as they are issued,  smug at my preparedness.  It strikes me as indecently early to start writing my cards just then, so I put them to one side.

December dawns, but while the days of the month are in single figures, card writing seems less than urgent. I determine to wait until the Advent calendar doors reveal more than they conceal. By then, I tell myself, I’ll be feeling Christmassy enough to write cards.

And then, all of a sudden, the last posting date is looming.  I scrawl a quick signature on the cards that don’t require an accompanying letter and whiz them up to the pillar box. With misplaced optimism, I set aside the others into my letter-writing pile. So far, I’ve refused to succumb to the catch-all standard letter as issued by some friends and family, but maybe I should, as without such drastic recourse, those cards awaiting letters won’t make it as far as the postbox, never mind the intended recipients’ mantlepieces.

Village greetings

For a small subset of these people, it’s no big deal if I miss 25th December.  These are my Jewish friends. To them, the Christmas festivities serve simply as a trigger to an annual exchange of news. One of them pointedly writes to me each year on Christmas Day itself, just to remind me that they’re not celebrating.  That’s fine by me: the main thing is that I hear from them. They may even interpret my delay as a thoughtful recognition of their faith.

Christmas Day passes, and Boxing Day.  Well, who wouldn’t welcome a New Year card instead? I love New Year and its promise of renewed good intentions.

New Year comes and goes; the unwritten cards remain on my desk.  I despair until I realise that despite the BBC’s broadcast of 2012 dawning around the globe as it turns on its axis, there are still some quarters in which the New Year has yet to arrive. It’s not too late for me to wish my friends a happy Chinese New Year. That doesn’t fall until next Monday, 23rd January. So all is not yet lost.

新年快樂,as they say in Beijing.

The plumper the bird, the thinner the person who feeds it

One of my New Year’s Resolutions has morphed into a New Year’s Revelation – that feeding the birds is an excellent aid to losing weight.

No sooner do I start chucking stale bread crumbs outside the back door at breakfast time than  a  few blackbirds, thrushes and robins arrive to peck them up.  They hop cheerfully about the patio, jerking their heads this way and that, while I admire their beautiful, subtle markings.  Give me the gorgeous tawny speckles of a song thrush any day over a peacock’s gaudy markings – though one of those occasionally visits the village too.

"Eat your crusts or your hair won't curl". I can only conclude that I was force-fed an awful lot of crusts.

Intelligence of my new cafe travels fast on the avian grapevine.  Gratified by the birds’ speedy response, I decide to bump up their rations.  Here is the excuse I need to cut the crusts off my morning toast.  I’ve been averse to crusts since childhood, when I was implored to eat them to avoid waste.  (The nice man next door who gave me tiny pencils filched from the betting shop, also told me to eat my eggshells or my hair wouldn’t curl.  I had natural ringlets like Shirley Temple’s.)

The toast crusts quickly disappear, once soaked in water, as per the RSPB‘s advice to stop them swelling up post-meal in the bird’s tiny tummies. On consulting the bird feeding book (a Christmas present to myself to inform my new hobby), I discover that blackbirds and thrushes like chopped apples.  Out go the yellowing contents of the fruit basket. Ends of cake and the remains of a packet of mini doughnuts are added over the next few days. Far better to boost the birds’ calorific intake than mine.

Cooking bacon for breakfast at the weekend, I instruct the family to cut every last sliver of fat from each rasher.  This source of high energy helps birds survive cold weather. In my cosy hide behind the forest of pot plants on the utility room windowsill, I am rewarded by close-up views of nut-brown speckled songthrushes tucking into a fatty brunch.

By lunchtime, the patio is bare, so I scout around for a top-up and alight on the Christmas cake. Plenty of plump dried fruit in there to boost a chilly bird’s body temperature.

When my daughter starts back to school, my attitude to her lunchbox is transformed. I used to dread opening it on her return home to find half of it untouched, destined only for the compost bin. (She eats like a bird herself – a very chatty parrot, too busy talking to her friends to make time to finish her lunch.) Now I make a beeline for her lunchbox every day after school, viewing it as a welcome source of afternoon tea for my feathered friends.

No meal is unaffected by my new garden diners. Having been brought up to clear my plate, I’m now keen to leave a bit of rice here, a handful of of pasta there, to make sure there’s something hearty on the patio, ready for when the birds descend at dawn. And as I seek out high energy snacks for the birds, I’m gladly and painlessly pruning my own consumption of carbs and fat.

The bird lady from the Mary Poppins film

So there we have it. Janet’s Theory strikes again: if you want to get something done, do something else.  Feed the birds and you’ll lose weight.  And you don’t even have to pay tuppence a bag.

"Sorry, Grandma, no eyes!"

The day my daughter was born, I was briefly convinced that she had no eyes. As the obstetric nurse placed her gently in my arms, I took my first look at Laura’s tiny screwed-up face and fell instantly and deeply in love.

“Oh well, we’ll get by without eyes,” I thought to myself, groggy from the drugs that facilitated my Caesarean.

As the days passed and the drugs wore off, it became apparent that not only did Laura have two fully functioning eyes, but that they were two of the most beautiful blue eyes with the longest, darkest lashes that I am ever likely to see.

This was my introduction to maternal hyper-anxiety.

If I cuddle her close enough, maybe some of my hair will creep across to her head

Next on my worry list was her hair – or rather, her lack of it.  As Laura neared her first birthday party, I despaired of her ever growing any.  Peach fuzz is all very well if you’re  a peach, but there comes a time when a girl really needs a ponytail.

But I needn’t have worried. By the time she started school, she had an ever-thickening crop of long, lustrous hair.  We even had to buy a special brush to penetrate it.

Then came the worries about her education.  I tried every trick imaginable to encourage her to read – phonics books, word games, flash cards, reward charts (and yes, I admit it, bribery).  But would she volunteer to pick up a book and read? Oh no.  The more I cajoled, the more resistant she became. Then came a visit from the Rainbow Magic Fairies (thank you, Daisy Meadows), who cast their own special spell on her, and suddenly she couldn’t put books down.  Before I knew it, she was in the top group of readers in her class. At last I achieved my ambition: to have to tell her to get her nose out of a book.

Number bonds – who needs them?  Laura was convinced that she didn’t and she resisted my attempts to teach her.  I began to despair that she’d ever get the hang of them.  At times I wished I could graft my Maths O Level on to her, as a loving mother might donate a kidney to her ailing child.  Then just the other day she startled me by correctly adding four double-digit numbers in her head faster than I could and I realised she’d got it at last.  Tick, star, VG, house point.

Now the wretched times tables loom.  Games cards, charts, pictures books and yes, once again the bribery, are all being ignored by my wilful child.  Psychology follows: “You only have to learn them once and then you’ll know them for ever.  Just do this thing!” Tonight I add threats to my dubious repertoire of persuasive techniques: “If you don’t learn your tables, you’ll have to do a really boring job when you’re a grown-up, like picking up litter on the streets all day.” Is this bad parenting?  Mental cruelty? Probably.

"Look Mum, eyes AND hair!" (We got there in the end.)

But the biggest challenge of all is: when will I ever learn to stop worrying about her? Never, I suppose, is the answer.  Because no matter how old she is, she will always be my baby.  My father told me recently that he still thinks of me as being about 6.  No wonder he often calls Laura Debbie.  I think of him as being about 33 – the age he was when I first became aware of grown-ups’ ages.  I’m now way beyond the sum of those ages, and I know that he (and my mum) still worry about me.

But at least I know my times tables.

If you enjoyed this post, you might like these earlier posts about a mother’s worries:

The Perils of the Supermarket

How Do Larger Families Get to School on Time?

Bacofoil - not a flattering look but a welcome comforter after completing the Bristol 10K last year

Feeling sorry for myself during a bout of pre-Christmas flu, I decided I needed something more powerful than paracetamol to tackle my symptoms. So I tried the psychological approach: visualisation. I imagined how I’d feel if I was better. I started to picture myself doing healthy, vigorous things in the open air, in sunny spring weather, quite unlike the raging storms that were beating against my bedroom window.

I discovered I was frighteningly suggestible: before I knew it, I’d reached for my laptop and signed up to run the Bristol 10K next May. This also made a splendid New Year’s Resolution. I coasted into the Christmas festivities with confidence, knowing that I’d soon be running off all those mince pies.

This was a prime example of Janet’s Theory in action – a phenomenon I named after my sister-in-law’s insistence that “the best way to get something done is to do something else”. The most memorable example she gave, in an unguarded moment at a dinner party, was “If you want to get your nails really clean, make pastry”. The apple pie she’d made for pudding suddenly seemed less appetising.

I’ve seen her theory proven many a time. Getting my car valeted provided my husband with a new mobile phone. (The valet found one I’d lost – and replaced – underneath the driver’s seat.) Taking my car to be MOT’d equipped me with a whole new wardrobe. (Killing time while I waited in the high street, I discovered my favourite clothes shop was having a big spring sale). And if I ever want the house spring cleaned, I know exactly what to do: plan a party. That always triggers weeks of scurrying round to get the place respectable before the big day.

So if you have the misfortune to catch a cold this winter, I suggest you give the Lemsip a miss and let your imagination provide the cure. You never know what it might lead to.

I wish you a healthy and happy New Year!

(This post was originally written for the Hawkesbury Parish News, January 2012)

I’m tempted to keep a supply of small hats in my coat pocket to slip on bareheaded babies when their mothers aren’t looking. I wonder how often I’d get away with it? It’s a bit like guerilla gardening: my intentions are of the best, but I don’t quite dare do it in public view. So I don’t.  I restrain myself. I simply shake my own (behatted) head and move on.

But wouldn’t you think that new mothers would have got the message by now?  Especially as expectant mothers are told to bring a bonnet to the delivery suite.  These days, baby’s first photo usually incorporates a large hat.  It looks like a tiny relic of the 1940s, when you’d be as likely to leave home without your knickers as go out without your hat.  Minutes after my caesarean, my daughter was sporting a cheery pink and purple number.  I’d knitted it especially for the occasion.

I wonder, is there a specific age when you  start to feel a moral authority to comment on other people’s parenting skills?  Um, yes, I think that would be middle age.  Ahem. Better get back to my knitting.

But just to show I’m not beyond correction myself, here’s a link to the tale of a middle-aged lady who turned on me in Morrisons this time last year.  Maybe it’s all part of the spirit of Christmas….  The Perils of the Supermarket

BABYCHAM DAYS

My fondest recollections are mostly about special events with my family. There was the year that my cousins Jackie and Fred came to us for Christmas dinner.  As the youngest in a crowded house, the three of us, aged about four to eight, were given our Christmas dinner around the coffee table, along with a miniscule bottle of Babycham and three liqueur glasses – unthinkable now, but a pretty good strategy on my parents’ part to guarantee a quiet Christmas afternoon.  Not long after, my cousins emigrated to Canada, making this one-off event an extra-special memory.

AVON GIFTS FOR GIRLS

Then there were the predictable annual visits from other less adventurous relatives. Auntie Shelagh and Uncle Alan, with their brood of four, would come to deliver an assortment of Avon products – for the girls, a peach-shaped soap on a rope or a bottle of cologne with a peach-shaped plastic stopper that I’d try to make last all year.

SEEING THE LIGHTS

Journeys to and from relatives were fun when there were Christmas trees to count in the windows of the houses we’d pass, walking Scout’s page (ten steps walking, ten steps running) to keep us warm.  This was another smart strategy on my parents’ behalf to stop us clamouring to get the 51 bus instead, though our family fare would have been just 1/2d (“two fours and three twos, please”).

But there were bigger trees to admire.  One special night each December, we’d catch the train from Sidcup to London Charing Cross, half an hour’s ride away.  We’d stroll through the West End, admiring the lights put up to decorate Oxford Street and Regent Street.  These days they are a disappointment, with the same pattern echoed along each road, but in those days, every string was different.  We were dazzled by simple 1960s technology: coloured light bulbs on a wire. After that, we’d head to Trafalgar Square, a stone’s throw from our train home, and admire Norway’s annual gift to our country: a huge Christmas tree that seemed nearly as big as Nelson’s Column.  We never tired of joining in the community carols around it.

SCHOOL CELEBRATIONS

Then there were school festivities to enjoy.  For one infant school Christmas party, we were excited to be allowed to make a hat on a theme of our choice out of crêpe paper.  I remember being incredulous that the teacher did not recognise the inadequacy of yellow paper for my requested nurse’s hat.  Presumably all the white had been used up for the inevitable scissored paper snowflakes that adorned the school hall.

It was also at infant school that I first became aware of the power of Christmas carols to move an audience.  As I stood on the stage with my friend Patrick, both of us chosen as soloists for “In the Bleak Midwinter”, I found it odd that the grown-ups could look so tearful when I sang what seemed to me  a happy song.  It’s still my favourite carol today, though I struggle to suppress the purist objection that it never snows in Bethlehem.

THAT SPECIAL SNOWMAN

When I was in the juniors, I was thrilled when my grandparents were persuaded to stay at our house one Christmas Eve.  There really was no need, as we lived within walking distance of each other.  Perhaps they came because the previous year we’d been living the other side of the world, in California, and they wanted to make up for lost time. They slept on the sofa bed in the lounge by the tree and must have loved being woken up by us at the crack of dawn (well, maybe!)

Better still, that afternoon, my grandmother volunteered to come outside into the garden to play with me in the snow.  Together we made a real, proper snowman, a little smaller than me, and we dressed it in the pink plastic mac that I’d just grown out of.

BEST CHRISTMAS EVER

But best of all was the first Christmas that I’d been deemed old enough to go to midnight mass.  This was not because I was religious (I’d got over my holy stage by then, fostered by the evangelical church we attended in California), but because I wanted to be allowed to do the same as my big brother and sister, and didn’t want to miss out on this grown-up privilege.

I forced myself to stay awake to trudge the mile or so to the Church of the Holy Redeemer.  This was the plain grey, low (in every sense) church in which my parents were married, we children were christened, and my grandfather was choirmaster. The evening was drizzly, chill and grim as we entered the church, which was bright and warm and welcoming.  We all took the time to admire the colourful crib scene lit up by the altar. The vicar, Mr Daniels, was a family friend, small, rotund and gentle, and it felt more like going round to his house to hear him talk rather than anything religious.

The service came to an end quite quickly (maybe I’d nodded off for a bit), and soon we were all heading for the exit – a black arched door half way down the side of the church.  Mr Daniels had already sprinted round from the vestry to bid us all goodbye there, shaking the grown-ups’ hands and kissing children like me on the forehead, seizing our young heads in both hands to secure his target.

As we’d sat in the middle of the church, we were near the front of the departing queue and stood back as Mr Daniels threw open the heavy door for the first to leave. And then came a moment of wonder that surpassed anything mentioned in the service.  For the churchyard was covered in the most perfect blanket of snow. We all gasped in delight, transfixed by the big flakes still falling steadily against the orange glow of sodium street lamps.  We’d never guessed that the weather could be so transformed in such a short space of time.  You had to admire God’s timing, for there it was – the real evidence of Christmas.  Deep and crisp and even, snow on snow.  The best Christmas present ever.

May your Christmas this year be just as blessed.

(What are your favourite Christmas memories?  I’d love to know!)

And we're off...

Sometimes I think my eight-year-old daughter is far too wise for one so young. Or should that be Young?

As usual, 8.23 finds us struggling to get out of the door ready for an 8.30 start at the village school which is 5 minutes’ walk up the road.  The adrenalin is pumping, voices are rising and each of the three of us blaming the others for the delay. Gotta get there before the bell rings!

Nothing I do makes a difference.  Setting the alarm to kickstart the day at an earlier hour, having a “no going downstairs until you’re dressed and washed” rule, strategically choosing a breakfast that’s speedy to eat (Frosties bar beats bowl of Frosties by miles) – we still end up in a mad dash.

Leaving the house, we’re like a racing car leaving a pitstop.  Coat, hat, scarf, bookbag, flute, music case, medical bag (to take care of her insulin dependent Type 1 diabetes) are flung at my daughter from all directions by two pairs of grown-up hands.  Usually, but not always, they land in the right place.

Laura, as ever, remains calm.  She has absolutely no sense of urgency, ever.  When I’m grumbling one day at pick-up time that she’s yet again the last in her class to finish changing out of her PE kit at the end of the afternoon, a kindly teaching assistant steps in to defend her.   Nicknamed Mrs Lovely by the children (because that is exactly what she is), she soon puts a positive spin on Laura’s dawdling.

“That’s because she’s always so thorough,” she says brightly.

I wonder sometimes whether my constant nagging will wear my daughter down and turn her into a resentful and resistant teenager.  Time will tell, but thankfully there are no signs yet. Laura retains her own laid-back take on the world.

“Don’t worry, Mummy,” she said sweetly the other day.  ”It doesn’t really matter if I’m a bit late, because my name is last on the register.”

What a good thing I turned down that proposal of marriage from Aaron Aardvark.

Laura's display of Playmobil characters and other small friends ice-skating at Christmas (Note Santa passing by in his sleigh)

‘Tis the season to start tidying!

In the Young household, the arrival of the Advent calendar kicks off our annual quest to banish clutter. When Santa arrives, we don’t want to have to tell him there’s no room for new toys – or so I keep telling my daughter Laura.

Not that we’re anticipating a flurry of extravagant gifts this year. Now approaching her ninth festive season, Laura has produced a positively frugal letter to Santa, reflecting our current economic climate. Even if he delivers everything on her Christmas list, it won’t take up much space. The intriguingly specific “yellow and white doggy key-ring” and “a biro with different colours” should fit easily in her pocket, while the requested “air freshener” will require only a couple of square inches of shelf space.

While I applaud my daughter’s restraint, I’m anxious that she doesn’t miss out on the most important Christmas present of all: a large cardboard box  to play for the rest of the holidays. (They don’t call it Boxing Day for nothing.) A few weeks ago I invested in a big wooden ottoman for my bedroom. The even bigger cardboard outer in which it was packaged has since provided Laura with many happy hours of creative play. First of all it was a bus, taking her cuddly toys on outings. Then, as easily as Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, it turned amphibious, morphing first into a rowing boat then into a sailing ship. With the children from next door as stowaways, she spent a happy Saturday sailing round the living room. You don’t need to live in the Lake District to beat Swallows and Amazons at their own game.

Laura’s pocket-sized presents are the antidote to the huge items on my husband’s wish-list. After a pleasant hour of Googling, “a large telescope with stand” is soon joined by “a powerful SLR camera” without which, it seems, no serious telescope is complete. At least I won’t have to find house-room for these gifts, because he’s also desirous of “a garden observatory” in which to use them. I’d like to see the postman fit that through our letterbox.

To be honest, I’m now at an age when I neither need nor covet Christmas presents. I’d be happier to have none at all. For me, as an atheist, the festive season is all about spending quality time with family and friends, and I’m planning my December social calendar like a military campaign. Though to my mind there’s no finer place than Gloucestershire to spend Christmas, our festive tour of duty will take us as far afield as Scotland to ensure we can catch up with all those we love best. The only disadvantage is that after this holiday, I think I’ll need another one to recover. Alternatively I could just go AWOL now and again to escape the action – unless Santa brings me the one thing featured on my Christmas wish-list: a cloak of invisibility.

Happy Christmas, everyone!

(This post was originally written for the December 2011 edition of the Tetbury Advertiser.)

Estee Lauder shares the joy of lipsticks (Shame about the hat) (Image via Wikipedia)

Is it an urban myth that in times of recession, lipstick sales soar?  I’ve heard that when women are short of cash, they forgo bigger treats such as new shoes and handbags in favour of that pocket-sized pick-me-up, the lipstick.  But how many Plum Dandies and Flaming Fuschias does a girl really need? The longer a recession lasts, the less these crazily named shades appeal.

But lipstick is not the only treat.  There are plenty more low-cost luxuries out there to lift your mood without breaking the bank – and I’m on a quest to track them down.

First up is the humble face flannel. (Translation for the benefit of my American friends: that’s a facecloth, washcloth or washrag to you.)

You probably barely notice yours as you perform your morning ablutions.  Once its tread’s worn thin, you’ll relegate its role to duster or a polishing cloth, before its final demotion to the compost heap where it will quietly biodegrade.

If that sounds like the life cycle of your face flannel, that’s because you’ve never treated yourself to a posh one.  That can be a different experience altogether.

My eyes were opened only recently to these greater possibilities following the gift from my friend Susanne of a Crabtree and Evelyn face flannel.  It was a luxurious thick white cloth, embroidered with cornflower blue seashells, and the moment I touched it I was lost.  It was the Rolls Royce of face flannels. I didn’t so much wash with it as feel my face embraced. I leaned into its plush velvety softness with all the drama and self-indulgence of a toilet roll advertisement. It wasn’t so much a wash as a caress. Who’d have thought that washing your face could feel like such an indulgence? I”ll never again be be satisfied with a thin towelling square, no matter how precisely its colour matches my bathroom decor.

So take my advice and next time you’re after a cheap treat, bypass the chemist’s counter and the supermarket aisle.  Head for the luxury linens area of an upmarket department store and seek out the most expensive towelling range in stock.  Cast your eye along the plush, vivid-hued piles (another treat in itself, actually) and choose the most gorgeous colour you can find. Snap up the bath sheet’s baby brother – the luxury face flannel – and whisk it home before you can change your mind.

You’ll be glad you did – and you’ll be surprised at the lasting satisfaction it will bring you, all for as little as a fiver.  Just be careful not to stain it with your lipstick.