summer sunday

‘I love the South of France, Mummy’, said Milly with a sigh as the warm sea lapped gently onto the soft sandy beach. I gazed out at the blue waters of the Mediterranean where a few yachts bobbed gently beyond the golden sands under the warm southern sun. ‘I know darling’ I smiled. ‘What’s it like back in the North?’ I asked. ‘It’s raining’ answered Milly, 'and Tilly has a cold and she’s been sneezing over everybody’. ‘Well’, I began, ‘Perhaps I’ll bring you on holiday next year after I’ve finished my book. In the meantime, this call is costing me a fortune and I'm not made of money you know’. 'Yes you are', said Milly, ''We've been reading your blog while you've been away'. I never could get the hang of parental controls. 'You should be doing your homework, not going on the internet!' I told her firmly. Milly sighed. ‘Sorry Mummy’, she said. ‘I’d better go now too, I have to make hot toddies for everyone and I can’t find any brandy, only empty bottles.’ We said our goodbyes. I was due to be away for another few days but, thinking about my poor children being so unwell, I soon began to worry. I immediately rang my travel agent to try and get another flight home He was ever so helpful and when I hung up I was mightily relieved that I’d managed to rearrage my return flight. Thank goodness, I thought, I'd managed to get another week out here.

maybe it's because I'm a liberal

...that I love London so, although I'm stuck up here in the north now unfortunately and I don't know if I mentioned it before but it's grim. I also love wife in the north of course, who seems to have had an uncannily similar weekend to my own. On Saturday my husband and I both went down to the cottage so we could feel good about helping the village by combining two houses into one and reducing the village's carbon footprint by displacing an entire family from the community. While we were down there I’m afraid I got rather annoyed with the builder fellow who's doing the knock through. Now I’m a liberal, and this family occupies four houses at present and you can't get much more liberal than that, and being a liberal means that everyone should speak like I do wherever I go because a liberal is the only thing to be. As far as I'm concerned it’s no more acceptable for someone up here in the North East to call me pet than it is for a waiter in some foreign clime to give me a dirty look when I order the polenta slowly and loudly in Cheltenham Ladies College english. That's just pure prejudice on his part and we all know what a jolly bad thing prejuduce and condescending stereotypes are, don't we boys and girls! I've decided that when my husband moves up north we will reclaim the north for the God, Harry and received pronunciation! I'm sure if those Gideon chaps started putting Forster in hotel bedrooms instead of the bible that would be a start in showing people how to behave. We may no longer have the empire but now the north has become the white man's burden and with my huband at my side we'll jolly well re-colour the north pink just like in the good old days!

But for now though, Sunday has arrived and as I write this my husband and Fabio are on the sleeper back to London, making the sacrifice of sharing a berth to help reduce carbon dioxide emissions. As I close the front door after them I contemplate that he's left me again with nothing but the children, my veet squeezed in the middle (men!), the joint account chequebook and an aga catalogue mysteriously stuck together at the centrefold. Just as I gather my thoughts, my new mission to achieve universal radio 4 pronunciation receives it's first impetus as Milly asks me 'mummy, do we own some seaside all for ourselves now?' 'Whatever do you mean dearest?' 'Well mummy, when Fabio had left with daddy, Natalia asked us what we thought now we'd seen daddy's beach'. So many people not like me, so little time to change them, sigh..