Sometimes I have the distinct feeling that I go to sleep and something extremely bizarre happens while I'm out for the count.
This has happened again. I went to bed and sensible, fashion conscious and stylish women were kipping down for the night in sexy satin nighties, cosy cotton PJs and classy nightshirts. I woke up to discover the hideousness that is the onesie is now being touted as nightwear for grown women. What?!
And here it is, the ghastly onesie. Who on earth over the age of five would want to be seen in something like this? If you happen to be slim and petite you're going to look like an overgrown toddler and if you've got curves, hey, it's the instant Teletubby look. Lovely. In my book the only people who look cute and adorable in romper suits are babies. Young teenage girls might just be able to get away with them in the privacy of their own home and look sweet and Tiggerish but anyone else, no way.
Not only are they supremely unflattering, they're also totally impractical for any woman who's starting to wish she'd paid more attention to those pelvic floor exercises. All those buttons, just what you need when you're dashing to the loo.
There's something disquieting about the onesie too. Perhaps it's just me, but I've always found those nightshirts with cutesie teddy bear motifs on the front unsettling and the onesie falls into the same category - why would a grown woman want to wear something that's more suited to an eight-year-old girl? We're not little girls, we're women.
And sexy? Hardly. I can't believe there are many men out there who'd get all hot under the collar at the sight of their beloved in one of these. They'd be more likely to fall about laughing, I reckon. Can you imagine the logistics of getting out of a onesie too? It'd be like peeling a banana.
I'll probably be told the onesie is ironic fashion. Well, I'm all for irony and black humour but the onesie is a fashion horror too far for me. I'm sticking to my safe satin nighties and PJs.
Today the most surprising thing happened. I was walking through Bath city centre when a complete stranger stopped me, apologised for bothering me but said they just wanted to say how glamorous I looked.
Blimey. I was so taken aback that I just smiled, stuttered out a brief thank you and we went our separate ways. I later tweeted and posted about the encounter on Facebook adding 'presumably they were on the way to Specsavers.'
Is it just me or are there others out there like me who find it hard to accept a compliment? I can graciously accept any compliment about my writing, (I positively beam if anyone says nice things about my blog), but the minute someone says anything even vaguely favourable about my appearance, grace goes out the window and I cover up being flustered with self deprecating humour.
I've always been the same. I've ruined many a romantic moment with my inability to take a compliment. I was once told by a man, who happened to be gazing into my eyes at the time, that I had 'beautiful eyes', that they were such a 'lovely colour'. Did I just smile enigmatically and thank him? Oh no, smartass me piped up 'yep, muddy puddle colour eyes, that's me.' (They're green). See what I mean? Just can't keep my mouth shut.
I'm good at giving compliments. I'll often comment when I think someone is looking great but when it's me on the receiving end, it's a different matter. Hopeless. If a friend tells me I look good in a certain dress, it's a dead cert that I'll come out with something along the lines of 'it's got plenty of stretch, it needs it to cope with my arse.'
I have no idea why being complimented on how I look makes me uncomfortable, but it does. Today's totally unexpected compliment so took me by surprise that I didn't have the time to open my mouth and come out with some chippy comment. I wasn't able to spoil what was just a very nice moment, something that made me smile and feel perky all day.
It's not the only compliment I've had recently. The 11-year-old and I were talking the other day about the fact I was going out that evening to my Rosemary Conley diet and fitness class, or Fat Club as I like to call it.
'You know what Mum,' he said in a musing kind of way, 'it really wouldn't matter how fat you were, you'll always be a stick to me.'
Now that's my kind of compliment!
In a few months' time I will be 50. A lot of my friends have been or are about to notch up their half centuries too.
Those of us who are yet to celebrate the big 5-0 have begun to notice something worrying, something that's scaring the be-jesus out of us and it's this, the increasing propensity of family and friends to feel they have to come up with something 'special' as a present, something wacky, something 'to make you feel you're alive', something to prove 40 or 50 isn't old, something different, out of the ordinary, an 'experience'.
This concept raised its head in our family when my sister turned 40. Fully expecting a garden centre voucher or a nice new woolly jumper from her loved ones, she was somewhat startled to discover she'd been 'treated' to a flight in a very small plane to do aerobatics.
Now, my sister has never shown any interest in aircraft apart from when she books her twice yearly flight from Heathrow to Nice, so why on earth her nearest and dearest thought she'd fancy looping the loop heaven only knows?
For one heart stopping moment we actually thought her husband (whose life had never been in such danger before) had completely lost the plot and bought her one of those wing walking flights where you're in a jumpsuit strapped to the top of a bi-plane (remember those Utterly Butterly adverts?) but, thankfully, she'd be sitting a la Biggles in a seat when the pilot turned a small, flimsy plane upside down. Small mercies.
For a long time she went around looking decidedly pale and muttering 'what on earth were they thinking? I'd have been happy with a Kindle.'
See what I mean? Suddenly it's de rigeur to mark the passing of another decade by being 'treated' to white water rafting, a bungee jump, waterskiing, paragliding, diving with sharks.....
Undoubtedly there will be some people who'd enjoy any one of those pastimes - but I am most definitely not one of them. I'm a wuss. I don't like heights, my knees creak going up the stairs, I panic in deep water, I'm blind without my contact lenses, I'm rubbish at skiing, I got seasick on the Staten Island ferry.
So I'm laying down a marker. I don't want an 'experience', thank you very much. I really, really don't want to cuddle a snake or abseil down Ben Nevis. I can't think of anything I would like less than swooping around the skyscrapers of Manhattan in a helicopter. I have no inclination to pot-hole, to ride a killer whale, drive a speed boat or go camel racing in the desert.
That's not to say I'm hoping for National Trust membership or a tea cosy and I do admit I wouldn't mind a session in a fast car around a racing track but that's about as lively and wild as I'll ever get.
So please, please, all those of you who think fondly of me, please let my 50th pass elegantly, with lots of laughter, pink bubbles and fairy cakes but most definitely at ground level and on dry land, without any hot air ballooning, stunt driving, canoeing, wing walking, fire eating......
A cuppa in bed, something 18ct white gold and sparkly and maybe a new book. That'll do me nicely.
Every autumn it's the same, the battle over when to switch on the central heating. We circle each other, me looking for the opportunity to make a dash for the on switch, him keeping an eye on me to stop me doing so.
If he had his way we'd all go around in so many layers that we'd resemble a family of Michelin Men and the only way to get on and off any piece of furniture would be to roll. The heating would go on when there was snow on the ground and the bird bath was frozen solid. I, on the other hand, will have been itching to light the log fire since the August Bank Holiday weekend.
He grew up in a big oldish house that looked lovely from the outside but was so badly built if you knocked a picture hook into a wall, a brick would fall out outside. The heating system was woefully inadequate and that's putting it mildly. It is the only house I've ever known where, if you took a glass of water to bed with you in the colder months, it would be frozen solid in the morning. Visiting any time between September and April necessitated layers of clothing, preferably cashmere, and I once was so cold I kept my coat on throughout dinner. Having a bath there was like one of those gruelling treatments at an Austrian boot camp spa, the water never got above tepid in the huge cast iron bath.
I grew up in a relatively modern house which had underfloor heating when we first moved in. Great idea except in reality it meant roasting feet but every part of you from the knees up was cold. My parents liked to walk around in short sleeves all year round so that was soon switched off and a whizzy proper heating system went in. Oh we were snug. Actually I spent most of my teenage years virtually comatose because not only would they have the heating pumping out at a constant 25 degrees but my mother had an aversion to open windows so it was like being sealed in a very hot, airless bubble.
I'm somewhere in the middle, I like to think heatwise I'm your average person. I don't expect to swan around in a camisole top indoors in December but neither do I want to have to wear 16 layers to be warm. I like fresh air but I also like to be cosy and warm as the temperature drops.
This morning I saw my chance. He was distracted by the Match of the Day he'd recorded so I made a break for it. Success. The heating is on.
The 11-year-old has just walked past the conservatory radiator and put his hand on it.
'It's warm! Yay, the heating is on. Finally'. See, it's not just me.
I'm about to drive across France. This fact is causing me a fair amount of worry even though I've done the trip from Calais to Frejus in the south many, many times. In fact the last time was only just over a month ago. So why am I fretting?
This is why, all those other trips were with another adult. This time it'll be just me and my two boys, the 17-year-old and 11-year-old. They're not the problem. The problem is I have no sense of direction. Literally. I was born without a directional gene in my body and, in a few days, I'm about to try to navigate my way from the Channel Tunnel, 800 odd miles across France and hope I end up on the southern French coast rather than in Switzerland.
The odds aren't good. Only a few weeks ago I went to the loo in Cafe Rouge in Bath which is downstairs. All I had to do was go through two doors but in the time I was in there, all of a couple of minutes, I managed to come out of the ladies and find myself looking at two doors. Naturally I headed for the one which wasn't the exit but a storage cupboard. See why I'm worried?
Then there was the time I was at the wheel on another trip across France and all my passengers had dosed off. Coming up to traffic lights in Reims I had the choice of turning right or going straight on. I went straight on and found myself driving the wrong way down a one way street in the centre of Reims at rush hour.
I've gone the wrong way around Eton Square in London, I've got lost trying to find Oldbury nuclear power station (losing one of these is hard as they are BIG and kind of dominate the skyline), I've had a major panic attack that my car had been stolen in Oxford only to discover I'd taken a park and ride bus back to a completely different car park on the other side of the city from where I'd left it. My family and friends are used to me walking out of a shop and having physically to guide me in the right direction.
It's a family thing. Years ago my lovely aunt, who lives in the States, gave me directions on how to get from her then home in Baton Rouge to the French Quarter in New Orleans. She was quite clear that I had to 'go over the bridge' which I did and ended up in an area that, not to put too fine a point on it, made locking all the car doors and getting the hell out of there fast the most sensible course of action. 'You went over the bridge?' she shrieked, when I returned hours later safe but somewhat nervy. See, it's a family failing.
What doesn't help are all those 'reassuring' comments - 'you've done it so many times, you must know it like the back of your hand' and 'you'll be fine, you just come out of the tunnel, get on the autoroute and keep going'.
Yes, I keep telling myself, it's a pretty straightforward journey.....and then I remember Lyon. Lyon, the city where the autoroutes meet, where you either head south or off to Germany and Switzerland. I really don't want to go to Germany or Switzerland, lovely though they may be.
I'm taking a crash course in how to use the built in sat nav because that's another issue, I'm crap with technology. How ironic is that, the car has a machine that's made to save me from getting lost and I can't work out how to operate it!
So if anyone happens to be on the autoroute du soleil early next week and spots a harassed looking woman with two exasperated boys clearly heading to Germany, that'll be me.
Happy holidays!
What is it about women and guilt? Why are we women going through life burdening ourselves with guilt and feeling we're not really getting anything right or doing anything well enough?
I've heard several of my friends recently say how they feel guilty all the time - guilty for not spending more time with their kids because they're at work; guilty for not working more hours or not working at all and feeling they're not contributing to the family coffers; guilty that they're reading 50 Shades of Grey rather than something cultured and mind improving; guilty they're often too knackered for sex, guilty that they're not getting to that exercise class.... and on it goes.
One even admitted that she feels guilty if she sits and has a cuppa and reads a magazine because 'there's always something around the house that needs doing but instead I'm sitting on my bum'.
Another said with a rueful laugh, 'we women are just born guilty, it comes with the territory.' Woah, stop right there. Where is all this guilt coming from and why do we women seem to be putting ourselves through it?
Most of us are doing the best we can, juggling busy lives, kids, work, money. Pack guilt on top of that and you're heading for a stressed out woman. Guilt is negative and who needs negativity in their life?
I realised I have my own guilt, mine centres on money, spending too much, being too indulgent, having expensive taste, not contributing financially as much as I could if I worked full time in an office instead of being lucky enough to be setting up my own business and doing something I love.
So what I'd like to know is why is it that men don't seem to suffer from guilt the way we do? The menfolk in my house have shown not one iota of guilt at commandeering the TV sets and sitting night after night in front of another bloody Euro 2012 football match. All normal life grinds to a halt as soon as that whistle blows. It's now got to the stage where I can walk into the sitting room, speak to them and they don't even hear me or notice I'm there, so absorbed are they.
Now if I announced that I would be hogging a sofa for hours on end, several nights in a row for almost a month watching interior design programmes, well, I'd never hear the end of it.
So I'm taking myself off to the South of France next week to shop, sit by the sea, eat, swim, sunbathe - and do I feel guilty? Not a bloody chance.
Another summer, another diet. This year though I'm not alone. It seems a lot of my friends are now battling the middle aged bulge and are finding their bodies just aren't playing ball as easily as they used to. The pounds go on so blooming easily but are a swine to come off.
Weight sticks relentlessly to the bits we'd really rather it didn't, the days of springing out of bed are long gone as the joints creak and grumble, everything seems that bit more of an effort. If that weren't enough, we've got the menopause just around the corner to look forward to as well, oh joy.
Which is why it's more important than ever to be able to laugh at this inevitable ageing process, to see the funny side of the stiff knees, squidgy tummies and fine lines. This is where kids, with all their straightforwardness, come in handy, they don't let you take yourself too seriously, they say it how it is.
One of my girlfriends decided she'd had enough of the weight slowly but surely going on, she was fed up with her clothes not fitting, of feeling lumpy and bumpy. The time had come to do something about it, the day had come to join a slimming club.
Now anyone who has ever gone down the slimming club route will know that while it definitely works, it's joyless and humiliating. There is little worse than that moment of stepping on the scales for the first time in front of a lithe, energetic instructor and seeing what you've been denying but can't avoid any longer - that you're not 'just a few pounds over 10 stone' and haven't been for a very long time.
My friend took her 14-year-old daughter along for moral support to her first 'fat club' class. She filled out the forms, listened to the nutrition pep talk, jumped around in the exercise class and then came the ghastly moment, she stepped on the scales, with her daughter joining her for the weigh in and peering over her shoulder.
There was a sharp intake of breath from them both then a long silence as they took in the figure on the digital scales.
Well mum', piped up her daughter chirpily, 'it's a good thing you've got dad.'
'Why's that?', asked my friend.
'Because you've no chance of getting another man weighing that much,' came the reply.
