A Mother's Day meme

It’s nearly a year since I started House With No Name and I’ve learned so much about blogging in that time. Twelve months ago I was utterly clueless about guest posts and tags and SEO and Stumbleupon, so it’s been a massive (but fun) learning curve. And today I’ve discovered yet another blogging term I didn’t know anything about – the meme. I had to look it up and it turns out that a meme is an idea spread across blog posts, where you answer a few questions and then ask another blogger to answer them too. 

Anyway, I feel very honoured because the lovely Yummy Mummy? Really? has asked me to join in a Mother’s Day meme. The challenge is to answer a thorny set of questions about being a mum. So Happy Mother’s Day to mums everywhere, and here goes:

Describe motherhood in three words

Brilliant. Tricky. Fun.

Does your experience differ from your mother's?  How?

My mum died eight years ago. We used to talk endlessly about everything and there are still days when I reach for the phone to ask her advice and then suddenly remember I can’t. She had me when she was in her early twenties and went on to build a hugely successful career later on. I concentrated on my career in my twenties and went freelance after my two children were born. But even so, I think we had the same ideas about being a parent. Maybe she was ahead of her time but unlike some of her generation she never left us to cry when we were little and when I was older she always said “ring me any time if you need to talk – even if it’s three in the morning.”

What's the hardest thing about being a mum?

Worrying about my children. I always reckoned being a mum would get easier as they got older, but now they’re almost grown up I worry about them even more. I worry about my independent student daughter whizzing around London by herself and about my son doing scary stunts on his bike.

What's the best thing?

The moments when we’re all sitting round the kitchen table at home, reminiscing about their childhoods and laughing hysterically about something ridiculous.

How has it changed you?

On the upside I’m far less selfish, but on the downside I’ve turned into a worrier (see question 2!)

What do you hope for your children?

That they will be happy, fulfilled and realise as many ambitions as they possibly can. My mum once wrote: “I don’t think my children owe me anything… As long as they’re doing what fulfils them I don’t think they owe me a letter, kindly or otherwise, a phone call, a card come Mother’s Day or Christmas, or even a hand-crocheted shawl, if ever I should come on hard times.” Hmmm. I’d really like my two to come home now and again!

What do you fear for them?

That’s a tough one. It’s so hard to imagine what the world will be like in 25 years time so I just want them to be as all right as they can possibly be.

What makes it all worthwhile?

Every second of it (apart from the odd squabble about messy bedrooms and staying out till all hours).

So that’s what I came up with. Now it’s my turn to tag five fellow bloggers, so I’m asking:

Trouble Doubled

Here Come the Girls

Bizzy Mum

Mum's Gone To...

Hello It's Gemma

I’d love to hear how you all get on.

Friday book review - The Woman Who Went to Bed for a Year by Sue Townsend

It’s hard to believe that this year marks the 30^th anniversary of Sue Townsend’s bestselling The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 ¾. It seems no time at all since I first read it and so many details, from Adrian’s spots to his obsession with Pandora Braithwaite, have stayed in my head to this day.

Penguin has just brought out a special edition of the book to celebrate (with a foreword by mega-Mole fan David Walliams). And if that’s not enough, Townsend’s new novel has just been published in hardback.

The Woman Who Went to Bed for a Year is the story of Eva Beaver, a 50-year-old wife and mother who reacts in a very extreme way when her teenage twins leave home for university. Eva disconnects the phone, chucks tomato soup over her favourite armchair and goes to bed, not for a quick kip, but for a whole year.

After spending her entire married life looking after her astronomer husband Brian and their gifted but distinctly odd children, she wants some time to think.

As word spreads about Eva’s bizarre behaviour, an army of onlookers gathers outside the house. Some are convinced she’s an angel with special powers, while others swamp her with fan mail and set up a ”Woman in Bed” Facebook page in her name.

With her own family utterly wrapped up in themselves, the only kindness comes from two strangers – the window cleaner and a dreadlocked white van man who helps her empty her bedroom of everything except her bed and paints the whole room white. Her mother is as mystified as everyone else and tells a local TV news team that Eva’s always been “a bit strange.”

The Woman Who Went To Bed for a Year is a patchy read and it’s occasionally hard to keep track of all the walk-on characters, but it’s also a funny, poignant and often bleak look at modern family life. One moment you’re chuckling at Eva’s tortuous instructions to her inept husband on how to “do” Christmas. The next you’ve got a lump in your throat at the ghastliness of being married to a two-timing husband who’s more interested in who’s going to cook his dinner than in talking to his wife. Actually, I reckon Brian’s bedtime routine – which involves gargling, spitting and hunting for spiders under the bed with a fishing net  - would be grounds for divorce. Let alone his affairs, sludge-coloured clothes and dreadful mother.

The Woman Who Went to Bed for a Year by Sue Townsend (Michael Joseph, £18.99)

My Supertramp scoop

The interview Prince Harry gave to CBS News at the end of his super-successful Latin America tour didn’t exactly tell us anything we didn’t know already – but it did remind me of my one and only conversation with Princess Diana.

In 1984 I was a feature writer on Woman’s Own magazine, covering everything from stories we thoughtlessly called TOTs (short for Triumph over Tragedy) to pop interviews. Now and again I try and impress my teenagers with stories about the days when I rubbed shoulders with George Michael and Morrissey but they roll their eyes with boredom and change the subject.

Anyway, for some reason Princess Diana asked to visit Woman’s Own one wintery afternoon. She was expecting Prince Harry at the time and when she walked into the features department on the fourth floor she looked incredibly thin and drawn - in a grey coat-dress that drained all the colour from her face.

The editor had instructed all the feature writers to sit at our desks and look like we were working – which was difficult, of course, with a royal superstar in our midst. By the time Diana got to my desk I was so nervous that I said the first thing that popped into my head. “Which is your favourite rock group?” I asked.

She replied with charming alacrity. “All the papers say Duran Duran are my favourites but that’s not right,” she said. “I like Supertramp best.”

Supertramp weren't exactly cutting edge at the time and it was hardly the scoop of the century – but I was thrilled to hear Prince William list his mum’s favourite music in an interview with Fearne Cotton a few years back. Elton John, George Michael, Michael Jackson, Tina Turner, Bryan Adams – and yes, SUPERTRAMP!

Eating toast and listening to Sade

A pair of size 11 trainers came thundering down the stairs at top speed. “What is THAT?” said my teenage son, gesticulating at my iPod speakers.

“THAT,” I replied happily, “is one of my old Sade albums. I haven’t played it in years.” “I’m not surprised,” he said. “It sounds like the sort of thing they’d play at an 1980s night club.”

I could have taken offence at my son's scathing tone but actually, he had a point. It’s exactly the sort of thing I listened to in the 1980s. That’s why I like it.

Twenty-five years ago Sade was the girl we all wanted to be. I once interviewed her for Woman’s Own at her flat in a disused London fire station and she was stylish and stunning, with the most gorgeous, sultry voice. 

Just listening to her sing Your Love is King transports me straight back to my tiny studio flat off Clapham Common. I’d stagger home from a hard day door-stepping Fergie for the Evening Standard (she lived round the corner in Lavender Gardens so it was always me who got sent to knock on her door and ask when she was getting married). I’d pour myself a glass of Chardonnay, make a piece of toast (I didn’t possess a cooker) and if it wasn’t Sade playing on my ropey old cassette recorder it’d be Human League or Paul Weller. One of Peter Gabriel's guitarists lived in the flat below so I had to play my music extra loud to drown his out. 

I’d completely forgotten about Sade until I spotted a story this week saying that she’s trumped the amazing Adele in Billboard’s 2012 list of high-earning musicians. Now 53, Sade apparently earned a staggering £10.5m last year after her first North American tour for a decade and the release of an album called The Ultimate Collection. She was the sixth top earner (Taylor Swift came top and Adele tenth) – proof that even if you haven’t had a number one record for a while you can still be a superstar.

Primary school children ask the trickiest questions

My sophisticated student daughter hates to admit it but she liked everything about her North Yorkshire primary school, from the home corner and golden time to skipping in the playground and dressing up as her favourite book character.

I loved taking her into the classroom every morning (she banned me from venturing past the school gate once she reached the heady heights of year 2), having a chat with her teacher and admiring the works of art festooning the walls.

But now, 15 years later, I’m visiting primary schools again – sometimes to interview heads and teachers, but often to talk about writing books. I’ve visited loads in the last 12 months and the sessions are always lively, fun and utterly unpredictable. You can prepare your talk as precisely as a military campaign but you always get a couple of questions that completely floor you.

I recently pitched up at a local primary school clutching a copy of my novel, The Rise and Shine Saturday Show, and several of my favourite children’s books (Madeline, The Swish of the Curtain and Clarice Bean.) After half an hour of talking to the four to seven year olds (and them talking to me about their Batman and Barbie books), the eight to 11 year olds were led into the school hall by their teachers.

I told them a bit about my newspaper days, read the opening chapter of my book and then turned things over to them. Scores of small hands shot up. That was great – you don’t want a hall full of bored, silent children. Their questions were searching and incisive, ranging from where writers get their ideas from to what were my favourite children’s books. That was easy – I thrust my battered copies of Madeline and The Swish of the Curtain in the air.

But then like a bunch of seasoned newspaper hacks, the children began lobbing in a few trickier questions. Did I spend more time writing than looking after my children? How many books will I write in my lifetime? And finally they cut to the chase with a belter – how much do I earn? Cue a long silence. For once in my life, I was completely stuck for words.

The Little Paris Kitchen - book and TV series

My favourite piece from yesterday’s Sunday Times was an interview with new cookery sensation Rachel Khoo in Style magazine.

Rachel is the hotly-tipped young chef whose gorgeous-looking cookery book, The Little Paris Kitchen, hits the bookshops this week. Not only that, from March 19 we’ll be able to see her in a six-part BBC2 series of the same name.

But the reason the feature caught my eye in the first place was that Khoo’s career took off after she moved to Paris from Croydon six years ago to work as an au pair. When the art and design graduate arrived in Paris she couldn’t speak a word of French and didn’t have any culinary expertise. Now look at her. She used her earnings from her au pair job to pay for her cordon bleu training and at 31 is an established food stylist, writer and cook. From her tiny Parisian kitchen she whisks up delicious delicacies like potato and pear gallette with Roquefort and cassoulet soup with duck and Toulouse sausage dumplings.

It can’t have been easy starting a career from scratch in an unfamiliar city, and she admits that it was “difficult and lonely” for the first two years. I can well imagine. I was an au pair in Paris for a few months when I was 18 and even though the family I worked for was lovely, it was tough. I remember wandering around Ile de la Cité and Notre Dame on my day off, not knowing a soul and having to fend off leery old men who said they wanted to paint my picture. Hmmm. A likely story.

Now I’m worrying about my daughter, who’s studying French at university and will be off to live in Paris soon. But if I got by with my hopeless French and Rachel Khoo made such a stunning success of her move, then I’m sure she’ll have an amazing time. And return with impeccable French too…