Summer cold

I am so thrilled to see the sun.

Honestly. The true benefits of fresh air and running around become more apparent to me every day – I now realise they’re not just for the old-fashioned, or skint. But crucial for the mothers of small boys who just want to be outside, transferring stones from a watering can to a flowerpot and back again.

Or jumping in a muddy puddle, if not trying to drink it, or at least sit in it.

Water is endlessly fascinating to Logie. But we can generate that ourselves – we don’t need any more from the sky just now thanks.

Nextdoor’s fishpond has the greatest, magical pull. At a jubilee barbeque he threw our neighbours’ fish slice in it. Splosh. Where it has remained ever since, despite valiant efforts to rescue it, one of which included a magnet borrowed from school and a homemade weighting system.

So I can’t wait to start enjoying the sunshine. Unfortunately we couldn't do so yesterday, as Logie and I have very boring heavy summer colds. He also has a cough. As he had a temp, he couldn’t go to nursery (of course, naturally, quite right, much better for him, and the other children, not a problem at all). So we spent the whole day cowering inside, like gremlins who’d melt in daylight.

Also: napping fitfully, watching lots of Peppa Pig and Britain’s Next Top Model, whinging quite a lot, thinking we wanted things to eat then deciding we didn’t when they were in front of us, looking beseechingly at eachother (‘You’re normally the person who makes me feel better – why are you punishing me?’) and practically weeping with relief when Jon came home specially early at 6:15.

The highlight of our day was a visit from the Sky man – who deleted all the programmes from our Sky+. I didn’t even have the strength to get up my usual head of steam. I just muttered "That's a shame" darkly, and slightly louder a second time, but the significance was completely lost on him. Logie then handed him my flip-flop as a thank-you present.

The only really bright thing to come out of this episode is an experiment with a new cream, to prevent that sore patch developing under a runny nose. Which Logie got so badly last time I’m surprised there weren’t flies buzzing round it. Anyway, we’ve been trying something called Siopel, and it seems to be working. You can get it over the counter, but it’s pretty outdated and unpopular because it has peanut oil in it.

Speaking of old-fashioned, I’ve also been reading an historical novel. It’s not very good, but I like it. It’s a comfort book. I can’t bear it when people slag books off – usually ones they deem too lowbrow to be worthy of them – “Wasn’t it awful? Soooo badly written!”. Because, newsflash, you could just stop reading it! Life is too short to spend your precious leisure time on something you don’t enjoy. That’s the great thing about eyes – you can switch them off.

Anyway, this book is about very posh people in the 1930s, who spend most of their time drinking fearfully expensive champagne and thinking about the placement at their next dinner party. One character goes down to her (2nd? 3rd? 4th?) home in Devon with her two little girls and leaves the baby boy in London with Nanny. Then she has to rush back because the baby develops measles, so she asks the Devon housekeeper if she’d mind hanging on the girls for a few days and the chauffeur will come back to collect them.

I don’t quite know why I mention this. I don’t know why I wrote it down. I just can’t process it.

But back to the present, in Action (the i is optional). Even though we’re feeling marginally better today, and have another gaping day to fill, we don’t much feel like going outside. It’s too bright, and sort of questioning, and undeniable. And we are fuzzy, and fractious, and unpleasable.

But I won’t hear a word against the sun. It’s lovely to have it, at last, and I am poised to give a very stern, old-fashioned, outdated look to anyone who dares complain about the heat.

Testosterone

Here's a quiz for you. Don't you just love a quiz?

We even had one at our wedding, which I'm not sure I should admit to. Especially as in subsequent years, more than one person on the winning table has admitted they cheated (iphonically). And those who love quizzes sure hate cheaters.

But it was partly the best man's fault for making it too hard. (He also slightly misfired his speech, bringing out various props that included a dog muzzle.) One wants to average about 7/10 in any quiz, for reasons of morale.

Though no one's spirits ever flag at A Wedding!, not withstanding shoes that hate feet, pre-dinner post-fizz blood sugar fandangos and being forced to 'have a dance' with the faintly creepy friend of someone's parents.

Anyway, it's just one question. Which of the following scenarios has nothing to do with testosterone levels?

1) The involuntary grunt that my husband emitted last night whilst watching 'Engineering Giants'. They were showing the outer layer of a 747's fuselage and explaining that the slight dimples you could see would be pushed out and smooth at altitude.

2) David Cameron revealing to a bunch of Glamour-reading women at Downing St on Thursday morning that he never wears a watch or a wedding ring. (NB it wasn't an inane event – I was there.)

3) The territorial roar that Logan does around other children. The hitting’s not quite so bad now, but he is rather menacing. When his friend Florence came to play on Thursday afternoon he did a lot of standing right behind her, threateningly breathing biscuit breath into her ear. And occasionally bumping her gently with his tummy, in the hope that she might fall over.

The answer is none of them. Probably.

Science says that making proper hot chocolate, in a pan, and bringing it to me in bed just before watching a programme about building planes proves that all is normal on the male hormone front.

I daresay some women also find it interesting that ‘in an industry where safety is paramount, even a toilet is a highly-engineered bit of kit’. But a man in safety specs explaining how he has 'an ear for the perfect flush' does leave me a bit cold.

Who cares whether Dave wears any metal between his wrists and fingertips? It is MEANINGLESS. The only reason people get het up is they think it’s another posh stick with which to beat him. (Ooh, Prince William doesn’t wear a wedding ring either, it’s a toff conspiracy!)

My husband wears both, but it does fox me why he has to take them off to bath Logan, especially as his watch is waterproof.

For a while now, I’ve been hanging onto a factoid that a friend told me – at this age, boys experience a surge of testosterone unlike any other apart from puberty. So Logan’s caveman aggression could be chemically explicable.

Sadly, I just looked it up on the internet, and this surge actually happens at the age of four. Not one and a half. So we’re back to just-trying-to-communicate, frustration or auditioning-for-Braveheart-2 explanations. It’s not a quiz I’m very good at.

Pleasurable pain

You’ll be relieved to hear that I have finally found a decent masseur.

Have I mentioned my bad back? I keep forgetting to tell people.

You know it’s a really good massage when you start fretting about it ending. When the thought of them stopping is so unbearable, you feel an uncontrollable urge to say “Look at my watch! You like it? I’ll give it to you, if you do another ten minutes”.

It seems that the only people who can manipulate my body effectively are men. I regularly take my clothes off for my osteo, and now I might be forming a new massage habit. Though I might have to develop a reverse bank fraud habit to fund it.

As I was face down earlier, I found myself wondering about said masseur’s girlfriend. Or partner. Or flatmates. How handy would it be to have someone at the other end of the sofa to unadhere you during Veep.

And when he did this thing to my neck at the end, I thought perhaps I ought to double-check the rules on bigamy in the borough of Ealing.

Some of it was quite hurty, but in a good way. Oh dear, this is getting awfully 50 Shades. But it was as if he somehow knew exactly where to [insert non-shady verb] his thumbs.

Actually, ‘somehow’ is bollocks. If you’re good at your job, you should know about muscle maps. I qualified as a massage therapist yonks ago, though I never did anything with it. It was when I was coming out of an epic depression, and needed a no pressure (no pun) way to occupy myself.

I thought it might be useful in the bedroom department if I ever snagged a boyfriend again, but it’s never really been in my repertoire cos it’s too hard work. The only man I’ve ever massaged is my Dad, for my coursework, and that was pretty weird.

Let’s rapidly move on to something more wholesome. Logie is doing the Big Toddle today. It’s a charity walk for pre-schoolers. The nursery is dressing them as superheroes. Gorgeous.

However, we were meant to gather sponsorship for them. I find this a bit of a moral maze. On the one hand, we’re all fed up with endless requests from schoolchildren and midlife-crisisers who have got into triathlons.

But sponsoring a one-year-old? He doesn’t understand what it’s for, it won’t teach him to strive or bask in our pride. We could just chuck in £25 ourselves.

On the other hand, the competitive part of me doesn’t want him to be the only one without several names on his form (which we’ve lost). And I know the photos will be supercute. Cleverly, nursery won’t be collecting any guilt money for a few weeks.

Perhaps I could hit up godparents and neighbours, and then do a Barclays on his sponsorship fund, creaming a bit off to pay for another massage.