OK, I admit it! I’m a terrible mummy! I’ve been too busy working to even notice my poor baby lying unattended and unloved in a quiet corner of the study. For a while it whimpered quietly, hoping to attract my attention, but eventually it gave up, the tears dried on its cheeks, and it fell silent…

I’m not talking about my real children of course, don’t call Social Services, they are used to a bit of healthy neglect. It’s good for them. It teaches them to be independent.

I’m talking of course about my blog.

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Sex and the CityRecently I seem to have developed a rather worrying and shameful habit.

I think I have become addicted to Sex and the City.

As you can read here, I was a late starter when it came to Carrie and her oh-so-stylish chums, and have always felt slightly guilty about watching, but lately, thanks to Sky+, I have been making up for lost time, to the point where it’s almost a daily fix.

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I was recently asked to write a series of posts about parenthood for Bounty. The idea was to provide a realistic, honest account of motherhood, that wasn’t all about introducing home-made, organic purees at six months on the dot and leaving your contented baby to settle themselves to sleep at 7pm every night.

They came to the right place.

I really enjoyed writing them – I am a blogger after all, of course I love the chance to bleat on about myself – but I did struggle at times with exactly how much information to reveal about myself. Visitors to Bounty are mainly new and expectant parents and I didn’t want to scare anyone, or have people actually follow my example of giving nutella as a first weaning food.

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Do you remember a few months ago me banging on at you to vote for me in the MAD blog awards? Well last night, after months of nervous nail-biting, I travelled to the surprisingly funky Butlins in drizzly Bognor Regis for the awards ceremony.

And guess who won the award for ‘Best New Blog’?

Me!

Hoorah!

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I was recently invited by my bank to go into the local branch for a ‘free financial review’. Of course what they actually mean is ‘please come in so we can try and sell you things’, but it was a slow week, and working at home makes you a little desperate for adult company, so I thought I’d give it a go. Needless to say I left the review with even fewer products than I started with.

Generally I’m one of life’s risk takers. It almost seems to be a self-destructive thing sometimes – I will deliberately be late back for the car park, always have that extra shot of sambuca, and occasionally I even leave my front door wide open when I go out, just to see what happens. Don’t tell anyone that though – I don’t want burglars.

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Last night I had one of those dreams about being in love.

When I was younger I used to have them about piles of pound coins, huge mountains of them that I would discover behind the sofa and run my hands through greedily. Now I have them about men.

The man in question is normally someone I have never met before, never seen before (although it was recently Peter Jones from Dragons Den), but I always just KNOW. He is The One.

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One of our Quality-time-family days-out over the summer holidays was to Wookey Hole – you may remember it being in the news a while ago when they advertised for a new witch. (What a job!)

We went with our friends Vicky and Ashley, and we really did have a lovely time. It’s one of those places that definitely makes the most of the space – it’s built around some caves and an old paper mill, and hats off to them for the amount of entertainment they have managed to cram in. In terms of ice-cream outlets per square foot, you certainly get value for money.

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I was reading a report today in The Guardian about student gap years, which claimed that for many young people, they are basically just an excuse for a year of excess – remote beach raves, drug fuelled orgies, and sexual promiscuity. Sounds alright to me really…
With Bee now in her final year of compulsory education, (I am so OLD!), it’s something I’ve found myself thinking more and more about – what exactly should I be encouraging her to do after school? Obviously I won’t be pushing her to settle for a nice little job in Subway, but is university nowadays really the best option? Do I want her to saddle herself with thousands of pounds worth of debt so early in life? And what about a gap year then – do they serve any purpose, or are they just a waste of time?
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I was coming home from visiting a friend in Cambridge over the summer holidays, and as I drove down the slip road onto the motorway I was faced with a giant billboard, offering me the chance to meet the man of my dreams through the website sugardaddie.com.

As the name almost suggests, the site offers the opportunity for both men and women to meet people who are “classy, attractive and affluent” at the same time as “eradicating the issues of financial stress that modern living can bring”.

Sounds good doesn’t it?

I’ve never had Money. As a child we never had money, which is why at 16 I became pregnant in a bid to get my own council house and sponge off the state for life. (Joke.) The pregnancy part isn’t a joke of course, but I have never lived in a council house…

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I was walking through town yesterday morning, enjoying the freedom of the first day back at school, when I heard music coming from somewhere. It was a tune I knew and liked – I could just hear it faintly, more of a hum really…

Then I realised it was coming from me.

“You really shouldn’t sing out loud to yourself,” I said out loud to myself.

“Or talk out loud,” I added, out loud.

I shut up then.

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It’s a well-known scientific fact* that the book is always better than the film version of a story. Seriously, try to name me an example where a film surpasses a book – there just isn’t one.

It’s all to do with the power of your imagination.

I remember the first time I read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory as a child. The impossibly fantastic sugary creations that came out of Willy Wonka’s incredible mind where just that – impossible. In my head though, it was all infinitely plausible, my imagination had no boundaries. “Violet! You’re turning violet, Violet!” I could really taste that gum in my mind – the hot tomato soup, the succulent roast beef, the not quite perfected dessert…

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It hardly seems like any time at all since I was ‘looking forward’ to six weeks of summer holidays, yet here we are, with only a few days until they are back to school and I can return to messing about on the internet in peace. I mean working of course.

I’ve never been terribly organised when it comes to getting ready to go back to school, so was actually pretty impressed to find myself in Clarks on Monday, a good week and a half before term begins. Despite my valiant attempts at beating the crowds, it was still packed with excitable children and panic-stricken parents, and the dreaded ticket system was in operation. They were on 83 when we arrived and we were number 92. It didn’t take too long though, and when they called out ‘number 92!’ I resisted the urge to ask for 4oz of olives and half a dozen slices of crumbed ham, so all was well.

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