As Belle has moved into year six this September, over the next few weeks we have to go through the process of applying for her place at secondary school.

You might think I’d be an old hand at choosing schools, but actually I’ve never really thought about it much before. My choice of primary school has mainly been driven by things like a nice smell, or a particularly attractive male teacher, and when it came to choosing a big school for Bee, we were living in Bridgwater, less than a mile from the school that pretty much everyone in my family has been to, so not a lot of comparing of league tables went on there.

Now we’re in Bristol though, it’s a bit different. I know nothing about the schools, and although other parents seem to have known since birth where they want their little darlings to be educated, I’ve found it difficult to drum up any enthusiasm for the subject until recently. Even now ‘enthusiasm’ would be a strong word. ‘Obligation’ is probably more like it.

This week then, we went to our very first open evening at a local all girls school that has recently gone from being fee-paying to an academy.

“Do you think there will be drinks?” Bee asked Belle as we walked down the hill.

“Yes,” she answered decisively.

“How about cakes?”

“Probably…”

“No,” I interrupted.

“…not.” finished Belle, seamlessly.

If  ‘finding the entrance’ is part of the selection process, I fear we may have reduced our chances already, as it took us ten minutes and three attempts to even get in. When we did, we were greeted and shown around by a carefully chosen selection of wonderfully smiley and polite young girls in blazers. Rather too smiley in my opinion. A little bit Stepford Wives.

The school seemed fine. It had desks and chairs and everything, and far more computers than we had in my day obviously. Cue jokes from my children and Boyfriend about writing on slates and counting spearheads.

How do you know though whether a school is right for your child? It was the evening, meaning I couldn’t do my usual trick of judging the smell of the school dinners, so I was at a bit of a loss. It had everything a school should have facilities wise, but how do I know if it has that something that will ensure the right balance for Belle of fun, discipline, ambition and independence?

To add to the frustration, it’s doubtful that we’ll get much choice even if I should have a preference, as Bristol is well-known for being difficult when it comes to admissions. In that case, perhaps I should be focussing on the argument that says it’s support at home that’s what’s really important when it comes to achievement?

That sounds a bit too much like hard work for me though. Homework? Projects? Educational days out? I’d rather not. I quite like the idea that school is responsible for stimulating and educating her, and that I’m in charge of chillaxing. I always feel less guilty about her watching TV if she has been at school during the day.

Looks like boarding school it is.

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So I thought I’d tell you about it. It’s not very interesting, but it’s been a while since I told a proper story, without so much as a mention of a product of any kind, so here you go. What a treat!*

Yesterday I took Bee to the dentist for some fillings. (That’s not the funny thing. In fact it’s funny that I’ve not had to take her sooner, given that she has clearly inherited my horrible rotten teeth.)

As she is now practically a grown-up, she went upstairs on her own for her appointment. I also get a little bit funny around dentists, and have to count things to stop feeling panicky, and I didn’t want to have to sit on the one chair in the room with Belle on my lap, wriggling about and blocking my view of the phone cord by the door that I like to count the loops of.**

So anyway, waiting downstairs away from the drill I felt much calmer, and didn’t need to count anything at all. In fact, I spent a good ten minutes instead horrifying myself with Men’s Health magazine. Honestly, it was dreadful. Pages and pages of different exercises for your abs, interspersed with pictures of women in their pants and articles telling you how size really does matter. It’s no wonder men are insecure is it? No-one actually cares about abs, and most women I know would take an offer to do the washing up over an abnormally large penis any day.

Where was I?

Oh yes, the dentist.

So, I’d been sat there, fretting about the state of the media, for about ten minutes, when a man walks in with a large camera. (Not a euphemism). He has arrived, it transpires, to take pictures of the surgery for the company’s website, and for the Business of Dentistry Magazine, which looked actually rather stylish for such a dull sounding publication, and probably has far less ab exercises in it.

"dental x-ray"

My teeth pose for a picture

One of the receptionists, a red-head, immediately turned the colour of her hair, and the other patients in the waiting room looked like they’d rather have teeth pulled than get involved, which was fortunate really, given our location. The second receptionist though, an older woman in the brightest blue eyeshadow you have ever seen, was well up for it, and was cracking jokes about contacting her agent and winning an oscar.

Belle and I of course played it cool. I waited at least two seconds to volunteer us to play the roles of ‘interested looking customers’. You know I don’t like being the centre of attention after all. (Oh no, hang on a minute, that’s a lie). Anyway, I’d actually brushed my hair before I went out, which doesn’t happen often, so I thought I should make the most of it.

So while Bee was upstairs, having adrenalin accidentally injected into one of her blood vessels, (which I did feel afterwards that perhaps I should have been there for), Belle and I pretended to look fascinated by some floss, while the photographer snapped away. It was quite fun really, and meant we could casually say to Bee when she came down that we’d ‘just done a quick dental photo shoot’, which sounded funny, and is ironic, given the state of my teeth.

Who knows where this could lead? This year it’s the Business of Dentistry Magazine, next year I might be in my pants for Men’s Health…

*Heavy sarcasm implied here, as it really isn’t a very interesting story.

**In case you ever want to try it, I should warn you that counting the loops on a phone cord is very hard to do without hurting your eyes. Every time I blink I have to start again.

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Bee is a bit of a dab hand in the kitchen when she wants to be, and after giving her recipe books as Christmas and birthday presents for the last two or three years, she has recently finally got the hint and started making me some cakes.

“Hooray!” I cheered.

“Is that why you’ve been buying me cake books all this time?” she asks, eyeing me suspiciously.

Well dur.

For ages now I’ve been wanting her to try out the giant silicone beehive cake mould we got from Betterware. I thought it would be cute, a Bee baking bees, so this week she gave it a go.

This is the mould, and this is what you’re aiming for in the end:

"beehive cake mould"

"beehive cake"

She used this recipe, taken from the Betterware blog, created especially for the mould:

You will need

  • 170g Clear Honey
  • 140g Unsalted Butter
  • 85g Light Muscovado Sugar
  • 2 Medium eggs
  • 200g Self Raising Flour
  • Bee Hive Silicone Mould

Inside the cake

  • 55g Icing Sugar
  • 1 tablespoon Clear Honey
  • Hot Water

To decorate

  • 75g Icing Sugar
  • Water


Here’s what you do

  1. First up pre heat the oven to 180c/350f/Gas 3
  2. Grease the inside of your mould lightly with butter or cake release. Make sure you grease every crease and fold to ensure your cake is easily removed once baked. This is a really crucial bit, so I stood and watched over Bee’s shoulder as she greased, saying really unhelpful and annoying things like ‘make sure you grease everywhere really well’.
  3. Add the honey, muscovado sugar, butter and a tablespoon of water into a large pan. Gently heat until the mixture is melted
  4. Beat eggs and sieve flour Everything seemed to be going well at this point, so I retired to the lounge for a little sit down.
  5. Remove from the heat and mix in the eggs and flour
  6. Spoon mixture evenly into both sides of the mould and bake for 40 to 45 minutes. Your cake should be springy to touch. Poke a sharp knife through the cake, if it comes out clean your cake is ready. I’d been sitting down for some time, and was getting concerned that the spooning stage was lasting quite a long time. I went into the kitchen, where I found Bee looking grumpy. “It’s rubbish,” she said, “you can’t put it in the oven because it just flops all over the place.” I gave her one of the looks I always mean to be sympathetic but which tend to come out as patronising, got out a baking tray to put it on, and we were back on track.
  7. Leave to cool on a wire rack before gently removing the cake from the mould

It was at the ‘bake for 40-45mins’ bit that things went a bit wrong. 40 -45mins is a long time, and after 30 minutes, our beehive was already blackening around the edges. Whether it was user or designer error I don’t know, but the mould had bent out of shape, weighed down with cake mixture, meaning it didn’t rise evenly. I think we’d need to practise this a bit.

"beehive in the mould"

On the plus side,  the pattern looked really good when you turned it out, but the way it had risen just wasn’t conducive to constructing a beehive. We tried trimming it, to create flat surfaces that we could stick together, but the amount we had to trim meant we were really just left with a 2D drawing of a beehive.

"beehive cake"

I asked Bee to sum up her beehive baking experience, and here’s what she said:

Pros

  • Recipe was easy to do
  • Mould was easy to grease
  • Pattern came out nicely

Cons

  • Mould was a bit flimsy
  • Rose weirdly
  • Wasn’t the tastiest cake ever
  • Couldn’t stick together
  • Got annoyed with it a lot

So there you go, that sums it up pretty nicely I think.

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Recently, I asked you how much pocket money you thought I should give Belle.

We’d been trying out Roosterbank, a new online saving and shopping site for children, and not content with spending her birthday money, Belle was, unsurprisingly, keen on the idea of securing herself a regular income.

Now, in my post I said that I would take everyone’s comments, and try to come up with an average amount that would then become Belle’s weekly allowance. What I didn’t bank on however, (Get it? Bank? I’m so funny…), was you all being so darn flash with your cash. Seriously, five pounds pocket money a week?? What do you think I am, made of money??

Still, a promise is a promise.

Although technically I’m not sure I did actually promise…

However, I have decided to offer Belle a basic rate of two pounds a week. For this, I expect her to do some basic things around the house, such as keeping her bedroom tidy, taking her plate out to the kitchen, not intentionally grinding food into the carpet, that sort of thing. So that’s it right?

Wrong.

Now I have another problem that I need your help with.

Once the money has officially left my purse and entered Belle sweaty palm, how much control can I maintain over what she does with it? Now obviously I’m not going to condone her saving up and splashing out on ten Benson and Hedges, but exactly how free a rein should she be allowed? If she decides for instance that she wants to spend two whole pounds every week or sherbet, am I allowed to step in, for the sake of everyone’s sanity, or should I leave her to make her own decisions?

Using Roosterbank does to some extent alleviate this problem, as their site stocks lots of lovely, wholesome age-appropriate toys. It also requires me as the parent part of the account to approve every purchase, so we’ll never find ourselves in the position where a replica gun or a live guinea pig turns up on the doorstep without my prior knowledge.*

Roosterbank is designed though to give you the flexibility to spend your savings when you’re out and about too, not just through the site, so if we’re in Primark on a Saturday afternoon** and she insists she wants to blow everything on a pair of gem-encrusted denim hotpants, do I retain the right to say ‘no child of mine is being seen in those’ and drag her off to Waterstones instead?

Where do the boundaries lie? Please help me decide…

*I don’t think Roosterbank stock these anyway.

**Heaven forbid.

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Do you know how much it costs to kit out your kids for school? Well, according to a recent survey by Staples, 12 years of schooling for my two children would cost £5,033! And that’s just back to school costs like school uniform, sports kit and stationery. I’m a bit of a stationery geek, so most of this is probably spent actually in Staples in my case.

This total equates to £209.72 per child at the start of each school year.

Bloody hell.

And that’s not all. Think of all the costs throughout the year too – school trips, raffle tickets, the extortionate amount you have to spend on ‘smencils’, just so your daughter isn’t cast out of her friendship group for not having handwriting that smells of root beer. The list is endless. I thought I’d put together a few top tips for you, to save money on your children’s clothes, pencils, and other back to school essentials:

  • "school bag"Forget OFSTED reports, send your child to the school that is closest. It seems obvious, but not everyone does it. According to experts at What Car? the school run adds £52 to the annual fuel bill of the average family. £52 could buy you at least two bottles of decent gin. You do the maths.
  • Shop around for the best deals on uniform, and don’t buy things at obvious times of the year. Clearly Clarks are not going to have a sale on in late August, but do you really need to buy shoes then? Spread the costs over the year instead, taking advantage of offers when you see them. (Like the 20% off the new 6-12 years range of kids clothes at Polarn O. Pyret at the moment.)
  • Better yet, send them to a school with no school uniform. Like I do.
  • Want to save money on stationery? Don’t bother forking out on yet another set of pencils, instead, just have a look under the sofa cushions and behind bookcases. Seriously, every time I lift up a sofa cushion I find a pencil. I swear there must be about 369 pencils in the average family house. All you have to do is find them.

And if that doesn’t save you enough, take them out of school to ‘home educate’ them and send them up chimneys instead. I’m pretty sure that’s allowed.

Happy saving!

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Last week, sorting through some piles of crap in preparation for another house move, I came across my first ten-year passport. (The one I had to report lost, after it found its way into said pile of crap).

I was 18 years old, and sporting a boyish crop. I’m smiling, my cheeks are rosy, and despite the fact that I already have a one-year-old child, I look fresh. The world is my oyster and I am ready to explore.

"passport photo"

I took out my current passport to compare, where I’m 32 years old. Good grief, I wish I hadn’t. In this one I definitely look like I need a holiday, but that I probably don’t have the energy to pack a suitcase. What has happened?? I know I don’t photograph well, but this is ridiculous. You can almost see me sighing wearily.

"new passport photo"

Well dur, you might say, you’re 14 years older, of course you look worse, but it’s not even that. I could slap on any amount of anti-aging products and I’m not sure it would help – it’s the difference in the expression that concerns me more than any wrinkles. 14 years down the line and I look tired, like I can’t even be bothered to smile for the camera.It’s pretty scary.

A couple of days after I found this, I had to have my driver’s licence renewed, and I wasn’t going to be caught out in the same way again. As I stepped into the photo booth I tried to remember how it felt to be 18. Not much different I didn’t think. So I smiled anyway, and attempted to ooze youthful innocence and joy. (Not easy when you have a woman from the Post Office squawking ‘you can look pleased, but no teeth!’)

Hopefully this one will turn out a little better. Otherwise I think I’d better stock up on my anti-aging, Q10, plumping, firming creams. And maybe some prozac.

Don’t you just love getting older?

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Today is officially back to school day.

Hoorah!

Seriously, I think Belle would have just about exploded if she had stayed at home any longer. Over the course of the last week especially, the pressure has been building, the singing has been getting more high-pitched and manic sounding, and you can almost see my nerves fraying. (I’m picturing it in my head a bit like a cheesestring, my body sagging and getting weaker as layers of me are pulled away.)

To celebrate back to school week, I’ve put together a little gallery for you of our family school pictures. Yes it’s very self-indulgent, but this is a blog. Dur.

This first one is of me. I think I’m about seven years old, in my hand knitted school jumper, and it’s a perfect example of my mum’s infamous fringe cutting skills:

"back to school"

This is Bee in her very first year of primary school. Isn’t she just the most adorable thing you have ever seen? She basically looks the same now. This is the only haircut I know how to do:

"school photo"

And this is Belle at preschool, about two and a half years old. Bee and I like to thing of this as her NSPCC poster girl look. She really didn’t like being apart from me at that age:

"School photos"

Here’s to the start of a new term. May the school hours be peaceful ones.

 

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It’s a good question isn’t it? Do stain removers really work? Well, read on for my Oxi-Action Powder review and find out…

In the Slummy single mummy guide to housework, stain removal does not feature highly. I’m so busy throwing crumbs behind the sofa and hiding dishes in cupboards that I just don’t have the time for soaking my whites. I don’t even separate the whites in my washing. Come on.

I’ve always had this idea that stain removers, along with other household things like carpet cleaners and weed killers, don’t actually work – they’re just one of those myths, like anti-wrinkle creams. We know they can’t ever do what they say on the tin, but we really want them to, so we buy them anyway.

That was before though. Before Vanish asked me to actually try their stain removers, rather than just scoff at them in the supermarket. It has been quite a revelation. They’re not foolproof, but this is my honest account of how I’ve got on…

Vanish reviewFirst I tried it out on our white towels, which normally end up pretty grimy, covered in mascara and Dove’s ‘gradual self-tanner’, (which I discovered just makes you all smeary and then comes straight off on your towel). For some reason, my towel had also acquired some strange blue stains in patches all over it, that looked like Belle might have secretly used it to clean up an ink spillage.

With a scoop of Oxi-Action Powder in the wash, they came out lovely and white, although to be fair, my mascara usually does anyway, as it’s pretty cheap and not waterproof. Still, the mystery blue stains came out too, which was pretty impressive.

Next, a real test. I’ve got this one jumper that I’ve had for years. For the last six months though it has been annoying me – every time I put it on, I remember that it has a faint spaghetti Bolognese stain right in the middle on the front. Every time I go to wear it, I end up putting it straight back in the washing basket, washing it, drying it, hanging it back up, and the whole process starts again. I was pretty excited then to think it might actually disappear. And do you know what? With a bit of Vanish gel on it for ten minutes before the wash, it did! As if by magic! Poof! Nice.

Vanish reviewThen Boyfriend tried it out on his dress shirt, which, like me and my jumper, he keeps putting on and forgetting has stains on it. This he soaked beforehand, in warm water with a scoop of the Oxi-Action Powder and it came out lovely sparkly white.

In the process of soaking, we also discovered that Vanish is excellent for getting rid of stains in white ceramic sinks. Seriously, our kitchen sink has never looked so clean. Top tip there for you.

The one thing it didn’t manage to get rid of was blood stains. Belle had a little middle-of-the-night nose bleed, and although we tried the next morning rubbing Vanish gel in pre-wash, and then using it in the machine too, it wouldn’t shift it. In a way though, I find this sort of comforting. You wouldn’t want a murder scene to be rendered spotless with a quick wipe round with the Vanish would you?

And of course if you really can’t get rid of a stain then you can always cover it! Custom patches are a godsend here – a way to cover up stains and decorate your clothes at the same time.

Do you have a Vanish review you’d like to share? Do you think stain removers work?

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Sunday evening, eight o’clock.

The children have just gone to bed and you’re about to enjoy a cup of tea and perhaps a rich tea finger or two. You sit down, ready to get comfy on the sofa, making that ‘ahhh!’ noise that proper old ladies make.

And then it hits you, and you sag visibly.

“Shit,” you say, “I forgot to wash the school uniform.”

The start of a new school term is even worse. Despite your best intentions, you leave it until the last Saturday of the holidays to make your annual pilgrimage to Clarks, and as you enter the shop, you count at least 27 other families there already, clutching their tickets, staring hopefully at the display and occasionally just throwing themselves down on the floor and crying, beating at the carpet tiles with their fists.

The children are just as bad.

These scenarios are all too familiar to me, which is why reader, when we moved to Bristol, I chose a school for Belle without a school uniform.

Forget SATS, forget OFSTED, I just want to be spared the pain of Clarks on the first Saturday in September.

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“Can we do it now?” Belle pleads, her nose about two inches from mine, her legs and arms twitching. I don’t know how she does it, but she has this ability to get right up in your face, like a really over-stimulated squirrel with some sort of attention disorder. It’s very annoying.

“What?” I snap, flapping her away with my hands.

“The Roosterbank account! Can we do it now?” she asks.

…

Roosterbank is a new online saving and shopping website for children and is, to be fair, something I would have loved as a child. Possibly almost as much as I loved the money-box I had that automatically sorted the coins into separate columns and then told you how much money you had.

"Save 4 it"

Pretty cool right?

With Roosterbank though, the fun graphics are online instead of on your bedroom windowsill, and the idea is to encourage children to earn money, save and spend responsibly. As a parent, you can set up to add a regular amount of pocket, and add or take money away on an ad hoc basis. No money has to actually leave your purse at this point either – the cash only changes hands when you make a purchase, until then it’s purely virtual savings.

…

“Alright, alright!” I give in. She has been asking me every four minutes since I mentioned it, despite us being in a yurt in the middle of Bodmin Moor, with only a mobile phone, a dubious internet connection, and no electricity. Anything though to keep her quiet for a few minutes.

“Yay!” She bounces up and down for a bit, ADHD squirrel style, and her eyes grow wide. “So how much pocket money are you going to give me then?”

And therein lies my question – how much pocket money do you give a ten-year-old??

It’s probably one of those things that’s in the parenting manual I forgot to queue up for when she was born, but I’ve no idea. I’ve managed to get away without having to really hand over much cash so far, but I know it’s not going to last. How much do I give her though? And, more importantly, should there be strings attached? Should I be expecting a return on my investment – a tidy bedroom perhaps, or regularly cleaned teeth – or is pocket money meant to be unconditional? I just don’t know.

We set up her account, with birthday money rather than weekly pocket money at the moment, to avoid me having to make a decision, and for now she seems content to just login and check out her page and play some games. From time to time when we’re out, she’ll make me log in on my phone. She says it’s because she’s forgotten how much money she has and needs to check. I think she just likes looking at the little digital counter and feeling pleased with herself.

"Roosterbank"

Belle gets a surprising amount of pleasure from logging into her part of the site to just to check her balance.

Still though, the pocket money question remains, and as soon as she has blown her birthday money Belle is going to be keen to get herself a regular income stream. So here’s what I thought I would do, in an interactive-reality-blogging styley…

Given that I clearly don’t know what I’m doing, I want you to tell me how much pocket money you think Belle should get every week, and whether or not she should do anything in return. Maybe you think she should have a shiny sixpence and be grateful, or perhaps you’d give her £10 a week and make her do her own food shopping? It’s up to you. I’ll then look at all the responses, and try to come up with an average, and that will be what she gets!

"How much pocket money?"

Fingers crossed Belle…

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Today, to promote their Mum of the Year awards, (Bee and Belle, if you’re reading, you can make nominations here, just saying…), Tesco have been asking people on twitter for the best piece of advice ever given to them by their mum. It got me thinking about all the weird things that I remember being told as a child, and also made me curious about what advice I’ve given that will stay with my children as they grow up.

I don’t have a very good long-term memory, and tend to rely on my sister, (who is actually four years younger than me), for key information from our childhood, but there are a few things that my mum told me that stick out in my mind, although I’m not sure I have remembered them completely accurately. I thought I would share them with you though, valuable as they are. It could save your life…

Scrambled eggs must be stirred at all times. If you really must do something important that can’t wait, like have a very quick wee, you’re allowed to stop stirring once, but no more.

If it’s raining, but you’re hopeful that the sun will come out soon, it’s probably a Clearing-Up Shower. I have no idea to this day whether or not this is a real thing.

Never ever run over the power cable when you are hoovering. You will die.

You see? Valuable advice indeed.

What’s the best advice your mum ever gave you?

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“Do you think there is anyone in the world,” asks Bee, “who has never said ‘I love you’?”

We’re in the car, listening to Paul Simon’s Something So Right.

Some people never say those words I love you
It’s not their style, to be so bold...

“Yes,” I say.

“Really?” She sounds surprised. “Even to their mums? And I don’t mean babies or anything.”

“Well, how about orphans?”

This is one of Bee’s favourite games. The sentences always start with ‘Do you think there is anyone is the world who has never…’ or ‘Do you think there is anyone in the world who has ever…’ and they tend to end with something ridiculous like ‘…tasted a food beginning with a vowel?’ or ‘…eaten a moth on purpose?’

I tend to always just answer ‘yes’. It seems pretty likely to me that whatever you can think of, someone will have thought of it before you. Plus there are some really strange people about. Someone is sure to have deliberately eaten a moth.

I’m even more certain that there are people who have never told anyone that they love them. It’s sad to think about though, and even  sadder to think that there must be people who have never had anyone tell them that they love them.

How would you feel if you nobody had ever told you that they loved you? Worst still, how must it be to never have felt loved, even if by someone who couldn’t say it out loud?

Some people never say those words I love you
But like a child, they’re longing to be told…

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