What weekends are meant to be

Despite being from Africa, I don't do very hot weather very well. I long to live somewhere warm, where flip flops and t-shirts are the order of the day, but with a gentle cooling breeze making it all bearable, rather than oppressive.

Which is why England on a sunny summer's day is about as good as it gets. Honestly (to you lot with raised eyebrows). You wake up to a dawn chorus, with a perfectly blue sky and a sun that promises a day full of potential. So often in this country, you are faced with a choice of wet, grey or cold, or possibly a combination of all three. It doesn't inspire adventure or the sense of opportunity that a sunny day does. When there is sun, the whole world opens up.

So with 3 whole days (that happened to coincide with a weekend!) of glorious sunshine, we were all set for perfection. And it would have been had my husband been in the country instead of me being a single parent. But despite this one small snag, it was exactly as a weekend should be.

It started with friends to play on Friday afternoon while the mummies sat in the sun sipping on chilled drinks. The kids got to swim in the newly opened pool. The same pool that one short month ago was home to 8 frogs (all now sadly perished from a choline overdose) and was almost solid green with multiple congealed worms floating in it. But after 30 days of hard graft on my part (again, someone tell me why the pool is my job?) it is now sparkling blue, if a little chilly. After swimming (them) and chatting (me), Son1 went off to football practice in the evening while son2 and I vegged out enjoying the evening sunlight.

Saturday - and another morning that you could write poems about. Morning cartoons for the boys, a long hard session on the cross trainer for me, setting me up for a day of virtuousness which meant I could eat with impunity. And indeed I did.

Then off to our first ever cricket practice at the brand new cricket club in the neighbouring village. I sat in the sun with my Saturday paper wearing a sun hat and occassionally giving a little clap when the boys got close to a ball. If I'd taken a flask of tea and a few scones with jam and cream, it would have been perfection. What's more I got to talk to other adults. This is always a novelty given that I work at home on my own and seldom leave the village, even to get groceries (see previous post).

Grilled sandwiches on the BBQ for lunch, followed by the friends who live over the road coming round and the boys spending all afternoon in the pool. And then another BBQ for dinner (because if it's BBQ weather, we SHALL BBQ). And then a quiet evening on my own with a chilled bottle of chablis and full control of the TV remote.

Sunday morning. And possibly even more glorious that the one just gone. French toast with syrup and cinnamon for the boys (something slightly less calorific for me) before heading out to the nearby nature reserve for a bike ride with friends. I didn't bother to do any exercise this morning as I knew what was coming up. Attempting to teach son2 to ride a bike without stabilisers. I challenge anyone to come up with something more strenuous that running semi- crouched holding someone upright.

Then back home for - you guessed it - a BBQ! Sausages and garlic bread this time. And then more swimming in the pool, the boys climbing over the fence to go fetch their friends from across the road, them racing over, all of them shrieking and splashing and generally having a ball while I got to read the Sunday papers. Eventually even I was too hot to stay out of the water and spent ages chashing the boys around the pool.

We finally all lay on a big blanket in the garden, drying out. The lazy heat of the late afternoon sun, combined with the gentle breeze left me feeling all tingly as my body tried to figure out if it was hot or cold. Eventually it settled on sleepy and I drifted off with my son lying in my arms.

And now, I'm just about to put two small boys to bed before I head off to the local pub with an all-girl team for the pub quiz, which will involve wine and other things not approved by weight-watchers.

It has been lovely. Utterly lovely. Carefree, spontaneous and exactly the way I want my children to remember their childhoods. May all weekends be as good as this.

Surviving the summer holidays: playdates for mums

Day 1 of Holidaywatch. And I'm already stumped as to what to do. Yesterday afternoon for about 15 minutes we had a blaze of glorious sunshine and for that brief time I had a snapshot of what summer holidays could be like if it actually felt like summer. Ball games in the garden, picnics, BBQs, long walks, swimming - the potential was awesome.

But then a vast black cloud moved in and dumped a deluge of water on the garden and we retreated indoors. Just like that, the wisp of potential drained away.

Now I know that there'll be a bunch of lovely mums out there who are tutting as they read this. The minute the rain moves in, they're probably whooping it up with arts & crafts, baking, puzzles & games, or even putting on raincoats and wellies and heading out for a splash. All good stuff. And I agree that all of these things can be fun. But for how long? And perhaps they have children who actually do the arts & crafts rather, than say, paint the walls. Or who can play a game for more than 3 minutes before the arguments start about whether to go up the snakes and down the ladders or vice versa.

So I start to look outwards, towards the countless number of places that keep children entertained at vast expense. Once you remove all those that aren't suitable for rainy days, you're left with a handful of options, none of which fill me with a huge amount of joy. I find myself doing a website roundabout tossing up between a museum or movie and eventually being debilitated by indecision, all the while the kids get bored and destroy the house.

Part of the problem is that any activity - whether it's a museum or finger painting, football or picnics - is so much better when you do them with a friend. And adult friend. Because then, in between breaking up fights, you can have a chat/commiserate and it feels less like hard work.

Don't get me wrong, I am perfectly capable of enjoying my children's company and I know the key is to not attempt to do anything else other than throw yourself into an activity with gusto. But just like the kids enjoy having a friend to play with, so do I.

But I've found it hard to find friends to do things with. We do have a good number of people that we'll be seeing during the holidays that we've pre-arranged things with, but what I'm missing is someone like a Who Wants to Be A Millionaire phone-a-friend type friend. The kind of friend who you know is sitting in the exact same position as you are, just as confused as to how to spend the day and just as open to last minute spur of the moment get togethers.

But everyone else seems to be so organised. They all seem to have every last minute of their holidays accounted for. They're all armed with playdough and museum season tickets. And friends. Lots and lots of friends.

Do they really all have every minute of the next six weeks accounted for? And how, without sounding like Desperate Dan or Norman No Mates, do you let other mums know that you're at home with two bored children and are more than happy to meet up for a spur of the moment play? There should be some kind of international sign - like a skull and crossbones flag (only the bones would be rolling pins and the skull would have bags under its eyes) - that you can fly outside your house. Any other mum who sees it can pop in and say: right, let's all go splash in the puddles together shall we? It turns an ok afternoon into a great afternoon for everybody.

I really hate being the person to call and say: are you free? Do you want to meet up? Only to be told that they have a free day at some point next Easter. I love last minute get togethers. They're the best kind. In fact Martha Lane Fox could set up a new kind of Lastminute.com to help mums get together, not only with kids but for the odd night out at a pub.

It's that whole fear of rejection which stops us putting a call into another mum and suggesting a meet up. But maybe, they are just like me, sitting there wishing the phone would ring.

I should start a campaign called Dial-a-mum in which mothers are encouraged to call people - even people they're not 'friends' with but acquaintances who they've met at the park or school gate who they could potentially be friends with. I'm sure I could get a phone company to sponsor it....

Anyway, I think we've decided to go to a museum. I think. And the kids are now killing each other, so I must go. But please tell me I'm not alone in this thinking.

Dilemma: summer body or summer food?

This must be the longest spell of good weather I have experienced since I moved to the UK in 2003. If this is global warming, bring it on.

We have a swimming pool in in our garden. I'm not sure why but I always feel that I have to justify myself when I say this. We don't live in a mansion with acres of grounds, a tennis court, stables and pool. We just happen to have a pool in our garden. It is a pain in the arse 99 out of every 100 days. But for the last few it has been marvellous. The boys have swum everyday and have had friends over to splash around with them. We are the envy of all.

Yesterday we had a friend over and the mum coolly whipped off all (I mean all) of her clothes in the garden without batting an eyelid before slipping into a bikini. Yes, she has a child and wears a bikini. And she looks like super model in it. I wanted to weep into my iced elderflower cordial. I decided that I really did need to give myself a good talking to and stop eating so much, not to mention cutting back on the gallons and gallons of wine I've been consuming of late.

But what's the point of al fresco dining if not to dine? Admittedly, summer foods can be a lot lighter than stodgy stews and steamed puddings, but we've BBQd so much that I'm starting to resemble a sausage. And although I've eaten my body weight in salad, I've washed it down with good helpings of creamy potato bakes. Then there are the lazy smorgasboard dinners outside in the sun, cold meat platters, cheese boards, grilled asparagus - just lovely summery food - but lots and lots of it.

And today, given the magnificence of the weather, I felt it was my patriotic duty to create a summer dessert that celebrates the infamous British strawberry. After reading a recipe in the Sunday Times magazine this weekend, I made sure the Ocado man delivered all the necessary ingredients so that I could create a dessert masterpiece, something I've not done for a while (well since deciding to sail across an ocean).

So I made this:

It was dead simple, dead gorgeous and dead tasty. It would also quite possibly result in dead me had I attempted to eat all of it, such is its richness.

So you see, this is why I can't wear a bikini. Summer food is just too good to ignore. It's a tricky choice: summer food or summer body? I know which one is winning around here.

Sod it, there's always winter to slim down.

Summertime and the living is easy

As I sit and type, I feel something I haven't felt for quite some time. It's the warm, slightly taut, prickly sensation you get on your skin when it's caught the sun. And it's lovely. Much like today was, because SHOCK! HORROR! ALERT THE MEDIA!, the sun actually shone. Admittedly it was what weatherman calls 'sunny spells' so hardly consistent and when the sun went behind the clouds, I was tempted to reach for a jumper. But still, the spells that were sunny definitely constituted a summer's day. I think that makes it three so far this year.

To celebrate, the boys and I spent most of it lying on a picnic blanket in the garden. Well I lay on it, they hurled themselves at me, wasted most of the sunblock on 'painting' each other and shouted at bugs that deigned to crawl on the rug (which I didn't mind).

I also had a moment of complete nostalgia. I set up the garden sprinkler thing that waves backwards and forward spraying water out in a fan shape. The two of them charged through it stark naked, shrieking in delight. It took me straight back to my childhood. Particularly the part when they decided to bring the sprinkler over to mummy , which resulted in more shrieking, only there was a bit less delight involved.

As husband hopped on a plane to enjoy a week of sleeping late in a hotel and long boozy dinners in the evenings, obviously interspersed with 'work', I decided to prove that I can be thoroughly self sufficient as a single mother and managed to rustle up a lunchtime BBQ. That's not quite as taxing as it sounds as I didn't have to rub two twigs together to get a fire started or even use firelighters and charcoal. I simply had to turn the knob on the gas grill, but still, that's normally husband's job so I got a small moment of omnipotence as I stood manfully turning sausages. (It also reinforced what I already secretly knew - that BBQing meat is easy yet men make it out to be A VERY IMPORTANT JOB THAT ONLY MEN CAN DO - so that women get to prepare everything else with all the credit going to the man with the tongs.)

I'd also spent much of the morning manually vacumming our swimming pool. Let me stop right here in case you think we're landed gentry with a butler called Jeeves. We're not. We just happened to buy a house that has a swimming pool. It was built in the early 80s and hasn't been updated since. I'd ignore it or add fish to it, except that having two small boys who might appreciate it once they progress out of armbands, means that I spend many, many hours trying to figure out how to make it blue. In the last month we've had to change the filter sand and pay £500 for a new pool pump. Now our automatic pool cleaner has died and the pool guy thinks its because an impeller has gone in the cleaner pump (I'll bet that sounds as though I know what I'm talking about. I don't.)

Which means that I have to manually vacuum it. Like vacumming a house that has two very mucky boys isn't enough. It is a somewhat therapeutic pastime, if only I wasn't constantly yelling at the boys to get their hands out of the pool chemicals or to stop leaning precariously over the deep end.

(I'll interrupt this pool story to tell you another one. Last week when Andy the pool guy was here, he helped me fish a dead mouse out of the pool. Chuckling at my squeamishness he said: 'That's nothing mate. I've just come from a pool with a dead cow in it.' Apparently the people who owned the pool had been away for a week. Their pool lies next to a field, home to several cows. One cow, in a bid for freedom or just bovine stupidity, managed to escape, charge across the pool cover before sinking into its watery grave. It's now spent a week getting nice and bloated. Andy was about to go join the fire brigade to try and remove the cow while trying not to burst it. Because if it burst, the pool owners would have a terrific cleaning job on their hands, making my paltry efforts pale in comparison. I can only imagine the poor pool owners popping out for a morning dip, rolling back the cover to find a bloated haunch of beef bobbing in the pool. Must have put them right off their breakfast.)

Anyway, back to why I've blathered on about the pool. Because having finally gotten it to a point where it is mostly clean, mostly blue and mostly warm, I thought it was time we actually swam in it. And so we did. Well I did. The children sat on the edge and wailed until I pulled one of them in, which resulted in even more tremendous wails until he realised that is was actually quite pleasant.

So a combination of sun, swimming, sun tanning, sprinkler running throughing, BBQing, crazy dancing to my new '101 sounds of summer' compilation CD - earmarked for use at our summer party taking place in two weeks time - including doing the Macarena much to the boys bemusement, it was all a rather lovely day.

There was only one real blight on the whole thing (well besides the odd lurking cloud and a two year old who got overtired and whingey mid afternoon). Me...in...a...bikini.

It's official. I am vile. I knew things had gone a bit pear shaped (literally) of late due to lack of exercise from sprained ankle. But looking at me in the bright sunshine today, I realised that I cannot blame my ankle on the state of my flab-tastic body. There is not one bit that is toned. This is years of abuse I feel, coupled with carrying two children in my belly. I look like a rather plump uncooked pork sausage. It's not pretty. Something has to be done. What, I'm not sure. But I am sliding into middle age hitting every cellulite bump on the way through.

Although, come to think of it, realistically it's not really too much of a train smash. I mean it's only 3 days a year that I'm going to be seen in public with very little clothing on anyway. If we move to the tropics, I might have take the self improvement venture a bit more seriously. But for now, I think I'll eat another left over chicken goujon from the kids supper and wash it down with a glass of wine. We've had summer now. Bring on the winter pies.

Toodle pip.

P.S. A footnote. Just finished bathing children and getting them into bed. I was told that they want to move house. I asked why. They said they would like to leave this house to the bugs. Again I asked why. 'Because, the bugs keep coming into our house through a hole somewhere and we don't like bugs. Specially beetles and spiders. So they can have this house and we'll get a new one.' I'm not sure anyone has mentioned the economic downturn to them...

Gutted

I'm sorry. More on tea sets. But I've been watching a lovely tea set on eBay for 10 days. An hour before the auction was due to end last night - with mine being the only bid - I went off to have a bath. By the time I came back, the auction was over and some sneaky bastard had outbid me. I am devastated. It is after all only a second hand tea set but still, it was meant to be mine. Sniff.

Sigh.

Sniff. Sniff.

Sigh.

Guess I should get on and do some work now. Speaking of which, it is an absolutely gorgeous day, despite my not winning the tea set, and working in the house just seems plain wrong. So I might attempt to put a bikini on and work in the garden. Two downsides of course: A) should the neighbours see me, they might call the police to report that Mr Blobby has taken residence in our garden and appears to be nicking the computer; B) the sunshine prevents me from seeing the computer screen which does somewhat hamper me getting any work done.

But given that the forecasters have said June is the only month that's likely to feel remotely like summer, I'd better make the most of it.

Aaah. I do love home office working (particularly as there are no co-workers to spy on me as I search eBay for more tea sets).

Toodle pip!