Apparently I am lazy.

Today my 6 year old son said to me: "Mommy, you're getting quite lazy you know."

(I should just explain here that they call me mommy because I'm South African and we are mommies, not mummies, even though I say mummy to people here in case they think I'm strange).

Given that I have been getting up at 6am, doing the usual laundry, tidying, lunchbox packing, breakfast making, cross training, crazy mother trying to get kids out to school-ing, working like a mad women on multiple new business pitches and two client launches, racing to do pick ups, more work-interspersed-with-cbbc-and-breaking-up-fights, making dinner, charging off to karate classes, bed/bath and more work till midnight most nights, I didn't really feel like I'd been lazy.

So I politely asked why he felt this way.

"You've been lazy with the groceries mommy."

Oh right.

True. Tonight they did have to eat an instant lasagne from the freezer (thanks husband for stocking those). And as there was nothing instantly weight watcher friendly in the freezer, fridge or cupboard, I was forced to enter into a WWII ready steady cook event. (Note how World War and Weight Watchers have the same initals. Hmmmm. Interesting.)

I was rather proud of the soup I made out of 3 limp carrots, 2 sticks of celery, an onion, some sprouting sweet potatoes, a tin of lentils and a hefty (a little too hefty in hindsight) sprinkling of curry powder.

I did point out that the avocado man (Ocado for those of you who don't speak child) was coming tomorrow but that yes, perhaps I had left it a little late in getting some food in, particularly as tomorrow's packed lunch for son2 looks likely to involve pasta salad sans salad. i.e. plain boiled pasta, cold. Or a frankfurter and a celery stick. Or as son2 pointed out, he could have cheese and crackers. Because we still have both of those. Just. Scraping the mould off shouldn't take long.

So yes, maybe I have been a little lazy on the groceries front, but we somehow seem to manage to eat our way through an exhorbitant amount of food, particularly as husband is away abroad (eating steak and drinking great South African wine not that I'm in any way envious) and I'm still on my starvation kick and the kids ignore most of the stuff I put on their plates anyway. Where does all the food go?? Surely it was only seconds ago since I bid farewell to the last avocado man (Bob, in the Cabbage van, nice to meet you).

I seem to spend vast sums of money on food that lasts minutes. Besides the expense of it all, it's rather time consuming all this shopping, even with the wonders of instantly filled online shopping baskets.

So yes son, I have been lazy. And you know what, I don't actually care. Tomorrow, if Petr in the Strawberry van doesn't get here in some cruel twist of fate, you'll be having dinner comprising meringue nests (a left over from election night dinner's Eton Mess), topped with frozen peas and corn (possibly defrosted if I can be arsed) and a side serving of frozen frankfurters. Because that's what we have. Suck it up.

Ding dong, Avon lady calling!

I have spent the weekend feeling sorry for myself. My throat is impersonating a fiery volcano with real lava flows of snot. This morning I have woken without a voice, which my husband and children seem to be enjoying but it makes barking orders impossible.

'Look out for the cup of tea!' turns into ' 'look out for the cup of tea!'. It's impossible to sound authoritative without a voice. And my big treat for the day is going to be grocery shopping. Stand back before the excitement kills you.

The only thing of interest to report from the weekend has been my husband embarking upon a scorched earth policy in our garden, hacking down almost every tree we have. I think he thinks that gardens need a good hack in the winter so that they grow better in summer. But I do believe that you need to leave something to grow and I'm not sure he has. He was a man with electric saws and other power tools and nothing was going to stop him once he started. Now that the decimation is complete, he is faced with a mountainous pile of trees, shrubs and bushes to get rid of. I feel that the wood chipper will be making an appearance today. This actually means that my husband will get to stand in the garden on his own feeding branch after branch into the machine under the guise of 'gardening' while secretly enjoy a sanctuary away from the children (who will tire of it within minutes).

So while our weekend has been a shrine to domestic mundanity, on Friday I did get to go into London in proper clothes rather than jeans, talked to grown ups and pretended I was a regular, sophisticated townie. Except I wasn't. When you live in deepest, darkest West Berkshire with Newbury as your nearest town, your ability to dress fashionably is somewhat hampered. Newbury's only remotely fashionable shops are White Stuff, Fat Face and Phase Eight. It has a department store with teeny, tiny sections for Oasis, Hobbs and Fenn Wight Mason, where those stores send the clothes they can't sell anywhere else. It is a desert wasteland in fashion terms.

Walking around Carnaby Street, I realised that I wasn't in Newbury anymore. I was wearing my newest, trendiest clothes and I still looked several years out of date - in fact its questionnable whether I was ever in date. This was depressing but resolvable, I felt. One day when I don't have to pay the tax man, I could take a trip into London with someone who knows about how to wear boots on the outside of your jeans and I could restock my wardrobe. (And to be honest, a daily walk to the school and back to my home office doesn't require much in the way of fashionable clothes).

What is going to be more difficult to resolve is my face. I caught glimpses of my reflection in several shop windows and kept wondering who the old lady was. I had applied make up for my big trip into the city yet somehow it sat on my face, enhancing my wrinkles making me tired and dull. In contrast, shiny, dewy, bouncy creatures sashayed past looking as though they'd fallen into a vat of beauty flash balm. They managed to achieve a natural look even though none of it was natural.

It made me realise that the time has come for serious action. Not a scalpel. But an overhaul of my beauty regime. Given that I'm using free samples from purchases made several years ago as my beauty products right now (cost cutting and all that), I do have quite a long way to go. I spent my evening googling 'how to get a dewy look' (apparently you need to put cutical remover on your face and then make your own face misting spray with rose oil and witch hazel) and investigating Avon's website thinking that perhaps I need an Avon lady to call and tell me exactly what I need to do for a sagging neck and wrinkly dull skin.

I feel that the tax man is just going to have to suck it up and wait for some of his money because my face is more of an emergency right now. If anybody has any top beauty suggestions, please share them. A brown paper bag over my head isn't a lasting solution.

Telling lies to little children

Some people think you shouldn't lie to your children. Ever. I just want put on record that I think that idea is just plain bollocks.

Let's start with some of the big lies we all tell our children. For example, there's that fat old man in the north pole who happens to deliver a bazillion presents every Christmas Eve with the help of just a few reindeers. And it's not just one lie. There are all the little lies we have to add to somehow make the story plausible. But there are those sad people who believe it's wrong to lie to children and who completely take the magic of Christmas from their child. Bah humbug to that.

However, there are other day-to-day lies that parents tell. My favourite is: Look! A purple dinosaur just ran past the window (in a bid to distract a yelling child who is refusing to get into their car seat). Or in a similar vein: Wow! I just saw a hawk catch a bird (there's a story behind this which I will share one day) or: Is that a fairy?!

Then there's the cunning ways to get children to eat: if you eat that broccoli, you'll grow taller than your brother (not necessarily a lie but a bit of a long wait to find out). Or: there's absolutely no onion in the sauce. The shiny bits are transparent carrots, which you love. (actually they're onion but I'm not going to pick them out one by one).

There's the 'I really need to go check my emails but need to pretend I'm not working' lie: I'm just going to put on a load of washing...

There's the standard lie when shopping for groceries and the nagging for sweets starts: 'We'll see'. Which means no. (Incidentally, I've been told by a friend - you know who you are - that my use of the word 'groceries' highlights the fact that I am foreign as a normal British person would simply say food. However, I feel groceries is a more all-encompassing term so shall continue to use it and while I'm at it, will say traffic circles instead of roundabouts).

But yesterday I told my 2 year old a bit of a whopper and I'm now reaping the not-so-clever rewards. He has been out of nappies for almost a year but seems to forget this on a daily basis and pees in his pants constantly. It is driving me insane, not to mention what he's doing to our washing powder consumption.

So in an effort to get him to not pee in his pants, I put him in a pair of underpants that has a little monster on the front with sharp teeth. I told him the monster was called Morris. Morris the marshmallow munching monster. And Morris doesn't like getting wet. And if he peed on Morris, Morris would sink his sharp teeth into his willy and give it a bite (obviously mistaking it for a marshmallow). The child - with fairly large eyes at this point - asked what would happen if he didn't pee on Morris. Not being able to think quickly enough, I said that Morris would give his willy a cuddle instead.

Sigh. You know what's coming next.

'Mummy, I haven't peed in my pants so Morris is cuddling my willy'. And this morning: 'Mummy, I'm not going to let Morris bite my willy today.'

Which is all well and good when it's just the two of us having this conversation, but when he relays it to staff at the nursery it's really not great. I fear I might be getting a letter from them soon suggesting that social services might want to come round.