WE FEW, WE HAPPY FEW, WE BAND OF BROTHERS;

Continuing with my birdwatching amongst the Costa Shop Regulars.......

Now, this next up is a very strange one..

NAME:   HENRY V                           SPECIES: Middle-age Male

SIGHTING: Common, All year                         CALL: Cappuccino & a blueberry muffin                                                                                                                            

PLUMAGE: Khaki sleeveless utility jacket (lots of pockets) over navy blue jumper

Red/black North Face jacket (looks new)

Blue check wool scarf

A painting which hangs
in the National Gallery

This chap is a recent addition to the Regulars. He has a very odd hairstyle which instantly reminds me of a painting of Henry V which hangs in the National Gallery. The style is like a very short, pudding-basin haircut - actually, it's less of a pudding-basin and more of a cereal bowl. I'm not sure what he asks for when he visits the barber:

Barber:  “Afternoon sir, and what can we do for you today?”

Henry V: “A short, cereal-bowl cut rather like that painting of Henry V which hangs in the National Gallery please.”

Barber:    “Right you are sir. Doing anything nice at the weekend?”

Henry V: “Oh, you know, nothing much. A relaxing coffee in Costas, before popping over to France for a quick siege at Harfleur, maybe a spot of argy-bargy at Agincourt, then back to Calais in time for tea and some duty free luxuries .... normal weekend really"

Or it could be like the ancient joke my father always likes to tell:

I'd like a Henry V please

Barber:  “Afternoon sir, and what can we do for you today?”

Henry V: "I'd like my hair cut like David Beckham please.”

Barber cuts hair into a short cereal-bowl style, rather like that painting of Henry V which hangs in the National Gallery.

Henry V (outraged):  “But that's not how David Beckham has his hair cut”!

Barber: “Well he would if he came in here sir”.

Boom, boom...

But I digress: Henry V's hair is always very neatly combed, even in inclement weather – which is admirable – and he wears little half-glasses to read the paper (unfortunately, another blessed Daily Mail reader). He often cleans his ear out with his little finger.

He is always alone and seems to be in a constant bad mood, which means he comes across as a right old misery guts. In fact, I often feel he looks upon the rest of us mortals with disdain: something inferior and nasty that he has to put up with - a necessary evil of life. He does a sort of  'cutting his eyes' thing over the top of his glasses (usually with a faint sigh) at people who have irritated him and has a withering look that could stun a crying child at 50 paces.


Henry V particularly dislikes being disturbed by noise when he is reading his paper....

Women talking loudly on the other side of the room? Huff.....

Child whinging for attention from indifferent mummies?Glare.....

Mobile phone conversation on the next table? Grrrr..

Have you seen that painting of
Henry V which hangs in
 the National Gallery?

I have wondered if his gripe with the world rests beneath some deep-seated psychological issue, resulting from an unrequited love. Maybe the only woman in the whole universe who could possibly replace his mother as his soul-mate, rejected his amorous advances and ran off with a plumber from the next village. Oh, the injustice..... Of course, the simple reality may be that his Y-fronts are chafing, but who knows? I'm certainly not going to ask him.

He doesn't appear very popular. The staff never ask how he is and although some of the other Regulars smile at him, he never responds. No-one wishes him a 'good morning', but he doesn't seem to mind - in fact, I think he actually prefers it that way.

Next sighting: The Poison Grannies

BIRDWATCHING WITH COFFEE

The Tiara has not been on good form just lately. Life has taken yet another one of its regular wrong turnings and left me up a gum tree with a leaky paddle. First, I thought I would vent my spleen at the injustice of my lot through my blog, but then the vacuum cleaner broke so the Dyson felt the full force of my wrath instead. The result of all this anger is the vacuum cleaner lies a broken piece of revolutionary engineering in the spare room and I am still shouting at whatever God happens to be passing by.

Thus, with a dusty floor and a heavy heart, I plod off to my local Costa Coffee to sit and watch my world pass by. I often tweet about the regulars that flock there, so I thought as part a creative writing therapy to lift my mood, I would blog about the characters that share my hour every morning between 9 and 10am. They are all real people; their monikers merely protect their identity and save myself from a black eye should any of them ever find out I am writing about them.

Despite an abundance of tea shops, we have two Costa Coffee shops in this town (and a Starbucks, but that's a whole different kettle of mackerel) and they all do a roaring trade with the more elderly population who seem to be more than happy to pay £2.45 for a cappuccino*.

*According to my mother (who purports to know about these things) the older person only ever orders cappuccinos because they know what's coming; whereas (according to her) no-one really knows what a latte involves – it's one of those exotic foreign practices – the unknown, like spaghetti bolognese in the 1970s. My mother feels the same way about pesto and even today, still won't entertain feta cheese.

Anyway, back to the coffee shop sightings. First up is one of my favourites:

NAME: ESPRESSO MAN                                   SPECIES: Elderly Male

SIGHTING: Common, All year                                          CALL: ESpresso, black

PLUMAGE: Raincoat, flat cap, shopping bag

This old fellow orders the smallest, but strongest espresso Costa can make. Espresso man is about 90 years old and I imagine he must have the stomach lining of a mountain goat, because he drinks this stuff every day. A little while back, my husband once tried an espresso. The resulting energy buzz meant he cut the lawns, washed the windows, took the rubbish to the dump and started to sort out the garage. However, the buzz eventually wilted and quickly curtailed this unnatural phenomona of movement. He retired to his bed with a headache, leaving the garage as a work-in-progress - where it remains to this day. He has never touched the coffee again.

Espresso man is a whole different specimen however. He is a tiny, bald Irish man who wears an oversized, beige raincoat and a muddy-green, chequered flat cap. He shuffles when he walks; is always alone and carries a jute shopping bag which appears to be empty apart from a copy of the Daily Mail. He is quite deaf but can cuss in 4 languages (Gaelic, English, Italian and French - I happen to know this for a fact).  He reads the newspaper aloud and whenever he comes across something that he considers ridiculous (which is nearly on every page – it is the Daily Mail after all) then the effing and jeffing begins. Most of the regulars and staff are very fond of the old guy and tend to let him get on with it, but he still causes much consternation to whoever happens to be sitting on the next table (Yummy mummys, tourists and posh people particularly get outraged). Espresso Man says his late wife had kissed the Blarney Stone and could talk and talk and talk; then she got Alzheimer's and everything went quiet... and then she died. His motto to life is: "never live too long".

Apart from me, Espresso Man is the only other customer I have seen to have his coffee delivered to his table.

Next sighting: Henry V

DON'T JUDGE A BOOK BY IT'S SUNGLASSES

A rather irritating thing occurred to me a few weeks ago – initially I let it go, but then almost exactly the same thing happened again this morning. It has really got up my nose which means I should probably write it all down, take it to the window and chuck it out with the rest of the mental garbage I insist on drowning myself with.

So, here goes.......

First, a snippet of background: My back and leg problems have left me in a bit of a state. I try not to use my walking stick – I have a hate/hate relationship with the blessed thing - it's a symbol of everything that is wrong with me and I stubbornly refuse to lie down and give in (at least to the outside world).  I live in a rural area (8 miles to the nearest shop) so I rely on the car.  I have also shoved my pride up my backside and accepted a blue mobility badge, which entitles me to park nearer to places and has admittedly been a great help.

When I received the badge, one of the first things my parents said to me was “well, you'll have to limp more than you do when you get out of the car; otherwise people will think you are cheating”. I was horrified at this suggestion. I have nothing to hide, I didn't blag my way to easy parking - I cannot walk 60/70m without resting and my application was fully supported by my GP, hospital consultant and physio, but it just shows the suspicious society we have sadly become. Now the general consensus is that everyone else is working the system and no-one (especially the law-abiding tax-payer) likes to think they are being short-changed by what they see as the privileges of others – the 'big society' sure is a leaky bucket.

Still, the brush sweeps wide and paints a lovely shade of stereotype. Although a number of people will fit the bill, we now seem to have a media situation where anyone on benefits is probably a 'cheat'; all single-mothers are pony-tailed, teenage miscreants wearing large gold hooped earrings (widows are also single-mothers, but let's not worry about that, it doesn't fit the argument). Oh, and don't forget those pesky teenagers who are all trouble-making hoodies; or how you can only be considered disabled if you are in a wheelchair; not to mention all mental health patients will most certainly push innocent strangers under trains at some point; or all Londoners are either the Notting Hill set or cheeky chappy cockney wide-boys etc., etc.,........I could go on.

But hold on a minute, I've been a few of these. I was born in the East End, and although I am generally cheerful, I don't spend my waking hours walking around with my thumbs in my braces, saying “gawd blimey guv, strike a light, those apple & pears have knackered me out today”. I've been a single-mother (sans ponytail/ earrings); I am now unable to work and have been on benefits in the past (which is not a lot of money for quite a lot of humiliation in the assessment tests). I have suffered mental health problems through depression – but I have never felt the urge to hurt anybody - and now I suppose I'm considered disabled, but I am resisting the wheelchair with all my might.  

However, as it turned out, it would seem that my parents were right...

Which (finally) brings me to my:

'bug up the nose episode of the week.....'

I had parked in a disabled bay outside the supermarket; it was busy and quite a few of the other disabled bays had cars with people sitting in them, presumably while their other half did the shopping, which you are not supposed to do, but is actually quite common practice. Anyway, as I was getting my bag out, an old boy, who was a complete stranger to me, came marching over and demanded to know the 'nature of my disability'. I was so shocked, I told him to mind his own business – whereupon he gave out a diatribe about how his wife was in a wheelchair, implying that she needed the space more than me. Perhaps she did, and I would have been happy to have moved on, if her other half hadn't gone into the “attack mode” straight away. It may have been wrong, but he was told in no uncertain circumstances where to go and I limped off into the supermarket with steam coming out of my ears.

It happened again today, when another old chap accused me of not being disabled – purely on the grounds of what I look like.   He also got a flea in his ear, because I would like to ask: what the hell is a disabled person supposed to look like? And why should they have to look like it? I have spent most of my adult life working in the Artificial Limb Centre in Roehampton, where the doctors and prosthetists work extremely hard to help patients function and appear aesthetically as near normal as possible. Most of the time you couldn't even tell if someone was wearing an artificial limb or not and surely that's the way it should be. 

 The sad thing is that this guy was convinced he was in the right and once he realised I was entitled to park in the spot, he accused me of not displaying the badge properly (it was clearly on show on the dashboard, he just hadn't bothered to look).  He made all of his assumptions and accusations completely without grounds and then refused to take responsibility for them.  The whole episode was unpleasant, upsetting and unnecessary and in the end he marched off without so much of an apology, kiss your ass or anything.  He had no understanding that people who have needs (whether physically or mentally) come in all different guises and need help for all different reasons - some of which will not be immediately visible.  Books and covers come to mind.

I know I am extremely vain and I go out of my way not to look my age or display what is wrong with me.  In fact, I have actually heard someone say:”well, she doesn't look very disabled,” and this observation was made when I have been sitting inside the car.  Well, thanks very much, but I don't want to wear a t-shirt that shouts:

'I AM DISABLED' 

if it's all the same - not because I'm ashamed, but because as far as I'm concerned, that is certainly not what defines me as a human being.

So, I shall still continue to have Pink blaring out of the car stereo when I pull up into a disabled parking bay and I shall refuse to dress my age; I shall keep wearing the eye-liner and Jackie O sunglasses and my only concession to the Daily Mail/Express disabled stereotype are my flat shoes and my stick (which I plan to cover in shiny diamante stickers). As I refuse to conform, I expect I shall be having a few more “discussions” like the one I had today with certain members of the Big Society, which seem to be mostly old boys in Waitrose car-parks. 

I hear so much hullabaloo about equal rights for the disabled and yet, when you try to remain equal, you are immediately labelled (yet again) with blagging the system. The bottom line is you can't have it both ways.

End of rant.....

THESEUS AND THE CONTROL FREAK

As the half-term holidays waves goodbye, so the 9 year old trundles back into the school playground with a heavy heart and an even heavier rucksack that would do a Gurkha proud, because deep within the bowels of that rucksack..... lies the dreaded half-term homework.

We have had a few “issues” this week with the homework and I'll be honest here – 90% of the trouble is me. For I am a perfectionist. I can blame my father all I like for this trait (and I frequently do) but in the end it's really up to me to control it. For instance, when child No.3 brings home a school project requiring a castle to be built entirely from household materials, I watch her at work.....and I watch....and I watch... and I try really hard, but I just can't do it; there I am, hovering round the empty Carlsberg Lager box and various toilet rolls with a pair of safety scissors and my glue gun. I just can't leave her alone to build the blessed thing without offering “constructive” advice.

ME: “What's that supposed to be?”

YUMYUM: (9 year old daughter): “It's a turret. Can't you tell?”

ME: (aghast) “That's not a turret. THIS is a turret!” (proudly producing a masterpiece that I just happened to have made earlier from the inside of a Thirst Pockets kitchen roll). “ You know, you have to be accurate about these things; for instance, what kind of architectural style does your castle represent?”

YUMYUM: (thinks hard)..... “uhmm....the Fairyland style?”

ME: “Okaay – well yes, that's a good start..... carry on....” (silently places the other 3 matching turrets I just happened to have made earlier on the dining room table and slopes off)

Then came the English homework:

Q.1. Retell the story of Theseus & the Minotaur in your own words.

Firstly, let me just say that the classics are a subject very close to my heart. I studied them with the Open University and unfortunately, I can be a bit of a purist (ok, pedant) about the subject.

I can still remember squeaking at the cartoon film: “It's Heracles not Hercules! That's Roman, you Disney plebs - it's HAIR...A...CLEES not HER...KEW...LEES!! And YumYum saying: “mum, shut-up, the people in the second row are staring at us”. (side-note: even as I am typing this, Microsoft is telling me that 'Heracles' is misspelt – unlike the word 'Hercules'. I feel an e-mail coming on, but I digress).

spot the difference           

Anyway, YumYum goes off to write up her essay and I know I shouldn't have looked, but I did...

ME: “Er, I don't think that's quite right”

YUYUM: Giving me that 'here we go again' look.

ME: “Well, I just don't think Ariadne would say that to Theseus – after all, she was meant to be in love with him.

Own up woman, what have you done with me trews?

YUMYUM: “and?”

ME: “And maybe I'm a bit old fashioned, but if you're in love with someone who is about to face certain death in the middle of a labyrinth at the hands of a bloodthirsty monster - would you really say: “Listen Theseus, here's the deal. Luckily for you I  just happen to have this brilliant magic sword and a ball of silken thread.......”

YUMYUM: “I would say that” (one pities any future boyfriends – they may have their work cut out there).

Of course, she may have a point, for Theseus ends up abandoning Ariadne on the island of Naxos.  Perhaps he finally wanted to prove who really wore the trousers......

Now husband pipes up.

OTHER HALF: The question says “in your own words”. They are her own words. That's how kids talk and that's the kind of things they hear on tv and read in books now. Enid Blyton is dead. Long live the Horrible Histories and Nickelodeon.

..and here we have a fine example of
an Early English Gothic style
Castle from the Fairyland Period

So I let it go. It pains me greatly but I know that sometimes I have to step back because there is a fine line between helping and taking over or controlling. My intentions are well meant, but I have to consider the long term effect they will have on my daughter. I need to give her the space and freedom to grow and learn in her own way and only wield the double-sided tape when she really wants me to.

My castle is not her castle.

End note: Ariadne's bolshieness earned YumYum a credit, while the castle won first prize.

THE SEATS IN COSTAS

This song often gets stuck in my head when sipping a latte......
To the tune of 'Streets of London' and with apologies to Ralph McTell (I hope he doesn't get too cross if he ever finds out about it)

Have you seen the old man

sitting there in the corner,

flicking thru the paper

with a worn out sigh.

In his eyes you'll see no light

they're deadened by a too-long life.

Yesterday's hero - reading yesterday' s news

So how can you tell me you're lonely

and say for you that the sun don't shine?

Well, let me take you by the hand and lead you through the seats in Costas.

I'll show you something to make you change your mind.

And have you seen the young girl

sitting glued to her iPhone,

staring at her lap through her unbrushed hair.
She's no time for smiling;

She just keeps right on typing.

Checking every minute - for a text that's never there.

So how can you tell me you're lonely

And say for you that the sun don't shine?

Well, let me take you by the hand and lead you through the seats in Costas.

I'll show you something to make you change your mind.

And in the bookshop cafe at a quarter to eleven,

you will always find me - sitting there on my own.

Looking at the world

over the rim of my laptop;

editing a novel -

that the world will never know.

So how can you tell me you're lonely

And say for you that the sun don't shine?

Well, let me take you by the hand and lead you through the seats in Costas.

I'll show you something to make you change your mind

LET THEM EAT CAKE

This week I thought I would tell the sorry story of the birthday cake I bought my middle daughter for her  birthday last year (apologies to early Twitter followers who have already heard it).

Even though my two eldest daughters are now grown up (28 and 30 years – how can that possibly be, I ask?) I still don my mummy loves you hat and celebrate their birthday much more than I do my own. I buy a cake, a card and a present with a big bow on it and my husband always says: “they're not kids anymore”, but I don't care (the youngest on still is – she's only 9) and I carry on anyway – because they are, and always will be, my lilttle girls.

Anyway, middle daughter's birthday comes around in September and so I buys the present, I buys the wrapping paper and the big bow, I buys the card and I buys the cake. Here is the cake:

1st prize for realism

I thought it was a bit different and we had a cat once when middle daughter was growing up, so I bought it and proudly showed it to husband.

“Ahh, we meet again, Mr Bond”, says husband in his best 007 arch villain voice.  

“Shut up” says I, “some people just don't appreciate culinary art”, and I start to stick candles in it. Now, in real life,the kitty cake looked much cuter than the picture (which gives a more 'freaky' impression) however, stick a load of candles in it and you get... well, you get a nightmare that can be used to threaten little kids and old people. Imagine a sort of Tiddles meets Pinhead from Hellraiser and you get the picture.

I think I've got something
 in my eye....

By now husband is wetting himself laughing at my attempts to make the Pinhead Tiddles more palatable, but unfortunately, once you put the candles into a cake, they leave a mark. So, if you then remove them from the poor creature's head, you are left with a load of holes and a cake that now looks like a pox-ridden cat from the dark ages. Even I had to admit it wasn't looking good.

Later, I take a phone call from the birthday girl herself:

Me (in best sunny Doris Day voice): How's my little birthday girl? What would you like for your prezzie?

Middle Daughter (in best Eeyore with haemarroids voice): My life sucks. I want a new job, a new place to live and a boyfriend.

Me (looking worriedly at the pox-ridden kitty): Well, that's nice darling.... I'll see what I can do....

I was a bit put out at this point – I mean, she could have at least asked for something manageable, like world peace or a cure for headlice. Suddenly, it seemed to me that the bottle of Britney perfume waiting to be wrapped up in a large bow, wasn't quite going to cut it as a suitable present.

Come on in - room for plenty more

Still, the next day we pack poor Tiddles and the bottle of Britney into the back of the car and start the 90 mile trek down to London to wish Eeyore a happy birthday. This journey inolves roughly a two-and-a-half hour slog around the M25 - and anyone that does the route will tell you there is another circle in Dantes Inferno and that is known to the hapless commuter as: 'The Dartford Bridge'. This Divine Comedy usually involves sitting for well over an hour in a 7 mile tailback of half a million cars and paying £1.50 toll fee for the privilege of crossing the River Styx. You go from a dozen lanes at the tollbooths out into just 4 on the other side, and the only way to do it is to close your eyes and put your foot down on the accelerator, then it's every car (or 12-wheeled truck) for himself.

So, having successfully completed this deathly trial, we finally arrive tired, late and dishevelled at the birthday tea in South London. At this point, I would just like to say that a pox-ridden, Pinhead Tiddles does not travel well. It had taken a bit of a battering in it's box and had started to sweat. Now 'road-kill' Krueger would have been a better description.

Undeterred, I proudly lit the candles (giving road-kill Krueger Tiddles rather haunting and ethereal glow) and we all sang happy birthday to Eeyore, to whom the birthday fairy had not been kind – neither supplying a new job, a new place to live nor indeed a new boyfriend* – there was however, a bottle of Britney, £30 in Next vouchers and a Jamie Oliver cookbook, so it wasn't all doom and gloom.......

Here Kitty, Kitty

….at least it wasn't until it came to cutting the cake. For one thing, the cake designers at Waitrose had not taken into account is the squeamishness/sentimentality of your average English female. The birthday girl baulked at sticking a knife into Tiddles – even if it did look like Pinhead Krueger road-kill – and when husband (who had had enough of all this birthday histrionics after a 4 hour drive through the 10th circle of  Dantes Hell) grabbed the knife, announcing: “oh good grief, you are 28 years old for heaven's sake!” before cutting Tiddles' head off and slicing up it's body – there were squeals of disapproval and nobody really wanted to eat it.

The upshot of all this was that I ended up bringing the decapitated, Kruegeresque, pox-ridden head of Tiddles back home and, after 15 minutes of sitting looking at it, looking back at me, I gave it a decent burial and chucked it in the bin.

Happy Birthday!
(2nd prize for realism)

I have learned my lesson. Never buy a cake that you have to decapitate. Boring, but safe cakes from now on... I just need to work out how to wrap up world peace and put a large bow on it.......

*Since September 2010 the Christmas Fairy has come up trumps with the new job and new place to live - the boyfriend however, is still elusive.....

SCHOOL-GATE STYLE TIPS REVEALED!!

This week heralded the first day back at school after the six week summer holiday break.  My youngest daughter, YumYum is 9 years old and has finally left the safety of her fluffy, warm primary school nest and flown out into the big wide world that is the middle school (we still have three tiers here in West Suffolk: Primary School until the age of 9; Middle school until the age of 13 and then it's off to High School with you).

 The bell goes in three minutes...
10-4  Did you remember your PE kit?

Primary school days start at 9.05am. Which meant that YumYum did not roll out of bed until 8.15am, get dressed until 8.45am and then we would bomb it down the A43 at 8.58am to do a handbrake turn into the school road,with me chucking her out of the car door into the grounds of the school, Starsky & Hutch style (original series).

Middle school however, starts at 8.30am!! I'll repeat that, because it takes some believing: 8 flipping 30! IN THE MORNING!! Now, this is a big shock to the system – for the both of us. We don't “do” mornings. In fact, I only “do” about an hour between 10 and 11am, but that's by-the-by. Anyway, we managed to miss the school bus on the first day (start as you mean to go on I suppose) which meant I ended up taking YumYum into the school gates myself.

Of course, I have heard a lot about school gate etiquette:  the yummy mummies; the clothes, the make-up, the behaviour - and being an “older” mother myself (ahem) I suppose could I loosely come under that heading.

So here is what I wore for my first day at middle school gates. From the top:

Hair: Loose chignon;

Face: Natural style eye make-up. Lip gloss;

Top: Floaty, handkerchief style with cropped cardigan;

Bottom: Palazzo pants;

Feet: Flat pumps;

This isn't me btw

Accessories: Large scarf. Large sunglasses. Large Handbag. Large amount of perfume.

Pretty neat huh? Look at me everybody: it's Sadie Frost meets Zsa Zsa Gabor. Fantastic.

Now, let's look at what is really going on here.

Hair: Didn't have time to have a shower and wash it (ok, I own up - I couldn't be bothered). Resulting Barnet* has had a ton of Batiste dry shampoo sprayed into it so I can do nothing but hurriedly pin it up with a hairslide in the hope it stays put - at least until I get back into the car.

Face: Natural concealer to hide the bags and black circles under my eyes which are the inevitable result of too many late nights and broken sleep. Lip gloss is actually just a Chapstick, because lips are dehydrated through too much vino the night before (and probably another cause of the eye-bags/black circles and greasy hair if I'm honest).

Curse you Waitrose and your
oh so tasty iced buns

Top: Floaty to hide the Quatermass Experiment that is my waistline (I blame the menopause - the Waitrose iced buns have nothing to do with it I tell you). The cropped cardigan is ideal for hiding the chicken/bingo wings, the likes of which can only be found elsewhere on a plate at Nandos.

Bottom: Palazzo pants have a threefold benefit. 1. Elasticated waist (see Quatermass Experiment above). 2. Covers up abnormally large thighs (again, see Quatermass above) 3. Covers up legs which are in dire need of waxing: oh, they're not quite at the Wayne Rooney hair transplant stage you understand, more of a gentle bees knees stage.... if you know what I mean.

Crap! I'm still wearing my Louboutins!

Feet: Flat pumps because toenails need repainting - plus I need to drive like the devil to get to the school gates before the bell goes and heels are a handicap....

ask Lewis Hamilton.

Accessories: Large scarf because it's flaming cold that time of the morning and it also hides a well-developed turkey neck (see also Nandos above);

Large sunglasses because it's ridiculous o'clock in the morning and I haven't had any coffee to wake me up, so my eyes make me look like a mole caught in a spotlight (a black furry creature that is, not the skin type of mole). Not to mention that I managed to get some of the natural make-up concealer into my eye before we left and now it won't stop watering.;

Large handbag because I need to carry around:  1. a large supply of painkillers; 

2. a fold-up walking stick; 

3. a book for reading in the coffee shop (which immediately follows school gate appearance) 

4. a Waitrose iced bun to eat later;

5. a half-scrawled list telling me what I am meant to be doing after coffee shop and iced bun;

Large amount of perfume mainly to disguise the disgusting lack of shower (see above).

So you see, being a school gate yummy mummy is not all it's cracked up to be. You have to think on your feet (or flat pumps in my case) and because behind every “natural” flair, there is a natural disaster.....

Good morning teacher
Yes, you can "have a quick word" 

*For non-UK viewers: Barnet is cockney slang for Barnet Fair = hair.