Guinea Pigs, Augustus Gloop and Surviving the Six Week Break

Oh God, the wheels have totally fallen off on this school holiday. I don’t even know whether that’s the right terminology for what has happened, I just thought that it might be a more polite way of saying everything has gone to shit. I’ve managed to drop every single ball, work-wise, and I still haven’t managed to give the kids the Famous Five experience that I seem to very unrealistically set as a goal, year after year, where we make tents out of old sheets and forage for stuff.

So nothing has been done to the expected standards and there has been zero evidence of anything even resembling work-life balance: if “getting through the holidays” was a school subject then I’d be averaging a C minus. If I could be graded on effort alone, I would be a solid A+: alas my efforts and intentions do not tally with the output. I’m like a deluded, tone-deaf songwriter who has put in a series of 100 hour weeks only to produce an album that sounds like the wailing death throes of a possessed medieval jester.

Anyway, here’s what I did last week - a delve into my personal diary. Welcome to the chaos.

Sunday 3rd August

Woke feeling smug because we’d had some friends round for dinner the night before and I had managed to do the whole thing, until around 1am (ONE IN THE MORNING!) on about three small glasses Rosé. And had drunk loads of water in between them. Can’t say I felt fresh as a daisy, because alcohol does terrible things to me these days and makes me feel as though I’ve been subtly poisoned by someone who doesn’t exactly want me dead but would like to see me mildly suffer - a charitable poisoner, a rational one with a sense of restraint - but I felt better than Rich and that was enough to see me through the day. Ha.

Had planned to aim for a fairly low-key week, because I had PMT, and went to bed with good intentions: no rushing about, no stressing, no trying-to-do-too-many-things-at-once.

Monday 4th August

Drove the kids to my parents’ house (100 miles), arrived to a hearty lunch of homemade lasagne, took the kids to the park so that they could skateboard and practice getting across the monkey bars, respectively, spent time with my brother and my four-year-old nephew, got tricked into helping to load some “pebbles” from the neighbour’s garden into my Mum’s wheelbarrow, (Reader they were not pebbles but much bigger stones), did some video editing on my laptop that was three days overdue and sent it off to be approved by the client, did this at the dining room table which meant that at the same time I was having three different conversations with various family members and listening to my Mum tell me about my auntie’s house-move, had chicken stir-fry for dinner, had a good chat about a new project I have on the go, had some wine, negotiated with the kids as to who was going to sleep in the “middle room” and who was going to bunk in with me in my old bedroom, had more good chat, went to bed, rearranged the furniture so that I had a reading lamp next to my head, read my book for forty minutes, went to sleep.

Tuesday 5th August

After such a quiet Monday, I decided to pack our Tuesday with enforced fun. Up and out by 8.30am to get a passport photo done for a Blue Peter badge ID card and then ready and waiting for Attwell Farm to open at 9am.

Attwell Farm doesn’t accept Blue Peter badges so that’s another epic fail by Chat GPT (I think I am going to boycott it, it’s destroying the world and inaccurate!) but in we went anyway because it was vital that we saw the guinea pigs. At eight and ten I thought that my kids would be past the whole “petting zoo” thing by now, but they are obsessed with guinea pigs and Attwell Farm has a load of them so it seemed a fine way to spend a morning. I was sold on the “petting experience”, where children get to pet a rabbit, chicken and a guinea pig; I had visions of them sitting on a hay bale, guinea pigs cuddled in laps, gentle squeaking sounds coming from the contented mini-beasts, but it could not have been further from my imagined ideal. In reality, one guinea pig came around in a wooden box with tall sides, like a roomy coffin, and the kids could poke their hands down into the box and stroke the fur on its back.

Now before you go off on one, now that I have properly thought about it I can absolutely see why they do the petting like this and not like how I’d imagined it would be. It would be utterly terrifying for a guinea pig to be passed from pillar to post, from insecure, shaky little mitts to grabby sweaty hands and everything else in between. 50% of children would drop it. 20% might squeeze it until its eyes popped. A guinea pig safely encased in oak, apart from the very top of its back and head, is a tremendous idea. Top marks.

(It’s a good job I don’t own a petting zoo because it would be absolute carnage. “Come and have a spider on your head! Come and have a snake wrapped around your neck! Dogs welcome!”)

After doing self-powered Go-Karting with the kids (you had to pedal the carts, it was a great Peloton substitute) and spending half an hour in the (very good) soft play adventure area, where I got to read my book in relative peace for a while, we headed home to my parents’ house for a fish and chip lunch and a sit down.

But not too much of a sit down.

Not content with one activity before a 100 mile drive back to Somerset, I decided to pack in a quick visit to the local National Trust property, Hanbury Hall.

God I love my National Trust membership. I am almost evangelical about it. I’m just very appreciative of the fact that almost wherever you are in the country you’re within an easy drive of one of their properties. That is to say, you’re within an easy drive of an old country house with a cafe that does good sausage rolls and a stable block that’s been turned into a second-hand bookshop. What more does the mid-forties woman need? The kids can safely run about and hide inside ancient gnarled hedgerows and the adults can pretend to be interested in things like 18th century wallpaper printing techniques and window tax.

A painting at Hanbury Hall. Heads are too large, if you ask me. Also the left hand one looks like she’s a half dog-hybrid.

I just like that it gives you a day out, a place to go, without having to think too much about it. You’ve already paid, so it’s free, and the more places you go to in the year the more free everything becomes. We visit at least twenty places a year (admittedly ten of these will always be Stourhead because it’s our “local”) and even though each visit costs us around eight thousand pounds in ice cream, Cornish pasties, a plant from the plant shop and a second hand book, it’s still one of the best value things I subscribe to.

After Hanbury Hall I said goodbye to my parents, my brother and my little nephew and drove the kids back home. Put them to bed, briefly considered doing some work but then opted to finish the TV series we’d been watching instead. (The Madness. We gave it 7/10)

Tried not to be passive aggressive about the fact that Rich had just had two whole days to himself. Granted he had painted my cabin, fixed my cabin door, done something else handy and cleaned all the windows in the house but still. What had he done with the other one and a half days? Ha.

My new painted wall in the cabin.

Wednesday 6th August

My one clear work day of the week. Was absolutely raring to go, to-do list written, laptop charged, tripod erected, camera lens off. Got up, had a massive headache, went back to bed “to let the paracetamol kick in” and woke back up again at 1pm.

For God’s sake! This is what happens when you risk all of your work on a single day! This is why little and often is such a good idea! Just in general! In life!

Sluggishly moved through the afternoon, managing to wash my hair and dry it by 5.30pm and then film one of my overdue videos at 6.

Tried not to be passive aggressive about the fact that Rich had had two whole days to himself. Oh, had I mentioned that before? Sorry. I don’t wish to sound resentful.

Thursday 7th August

To London! I had a job to film at the new Space NK store in London, at Oxford Circus, so I did what any sane person would do and took the kids with me. It would be a nice day out and there was also a Jellycats x Space NK launch going on at the same time and they love Jellycats. And it would count as a proper, bona fide activity to pop onto my parenting plus points list. Up at 6.47am to write a script, plan my shots and make sure I had all the bits I needed for filming, then we all piled on the train at 8.43am and made our way to Paddington.

Rich too. No way was he getting another free day. Absolutely not. Because had I mentioned he’d already had two free days? I don’t count these things and I would never ever store them as ammunition, because that is not what a partnership is about, but I like to have a vague tally.

Bumped into my friend Lily at Space NK

London was quite full-on. I had decided to not do anything remotely sensible or straightforward for my Space NK advert and so it took me a little longer than expected to film - when the kids arrived to meet me for the Jellycats launch I was crawling around on the floor of the shop with chocolate-flavoured lip gloss all around my mouth, pretending to be Augustus Gloop drinking at the chocolate river. Rich just raised an eyebrow and laughed because nothing shocks him anymore but the kids looked semi-disturbed.

We did a bit more gadding about in London before heading home in the late afternoon - I had to turn my edit around for the Space NK video that evening and so it was straight up to the work cabin until the kids’ bedtime. If I was being entirely honest the edit didn’t take me the full two and a half hours, I spent a while looking for cotton lightweight shorts online, which seems to now be a full-blown obsession, but you have to snatch the quiet moments when you can.

Friday 8th August

The lovely lady who does the changeovers at The Dorset Nook (gorgeous holiday cottage by the sea [ad-own business] you should go) was getting married so we all went down to the seaside to do the cleaning, linen-changing and garden-tidying that is necessary between guests.

Rich goes down every fortnight anyway, to do general maintenance and to keep everything ship-shape, but doing the full changeover is always a bit of a Challenge Anneka situation and requires both of us, with Rich outside battling the hedgerows with his hedge-trimmer and me inside frantically polishing and hoovering and cleaning the bathroom and stocking up the logs for the log burner.

The cottage is down a tiny footpath, just up from Eype beach, and when I tell you that the plants along this footpath go wild in the space of two weeks, I mean they go WILD. I think if Rich didn’t strim it all in the summer months, guests would have to be armed with a machete to get to the garden gate!

Anyway, we were absolutely knackered by the time we left in the late afternoon. We had promised the kids a bit of time on the beach and an ice cream and so we headed to West Bay, a mile or so down the road, and the sun was out full-force and all was good with the world. West Bay has some absolutely corking ice cream shops, each selling a different West Country ice-cream brand. I went for a honeycomb ice cream from Purbeck’s, this time around, but I am very partial to a Baboo!

We got home at 6pm and I had the world’s most intense headache again (PMT) and so had to have a bit of a lie down. Had egg and chips for tea, because Rich was in charge of it, but there were no eggs so then it became just chips and then he found some fish fingers in the freezer so things looked up again but I have to say that it was pretty disappointing. Rich won’t read this so it’s fine: even if he does, it won’t be a surprise to him. I could see the disappointment in his own eyes as he forked down the meal he had prepared. It wasn’t the finest meal.

Saturday 9th August

This is where the diary week ends but it is by no means an anti-climax. We went to the circus! Gifford’s!

Enjoyed by all four family members and we each had our own favourite part. The kids loved the clown who constantly tripped over things, said the word “botty” an lot and called his testicles his “chicken McNuggets”. Rich - and I could have absolutely predicted this - loved the two ladies who hung from a hoop on the ceiling of the big top BY THEIR HAIR. And slinked up and down ropes dangerously, wearing the same sort of costume Princess Leia wore when she was tethered to Jabba the Hut. Often doing all this with their legs in the full splits. I have no idea what Rich saw in it all but he was quite transfixed. Mesmerised.

My favourite was the man who read out the birthday announcements in the interval. I don’t know what this says about me. Actually I do - he was dressed as a 1950s bad boy and had a great American accent. I don’t think he did any acrobatics or hoop-jumping and he didn’t fly through the tent on a homemade plane (this did happen) but he obviously stirred something up inside.

Gifford’s was quite magical and I would 100% recommend you go, whatever your age. I can imagine that the evening shows probably get a little more raucous and there’s an excellent bar with an impressive wine list and lovely food stands and sweet stalls and it feels like a very special little world. I’ll definitely be booking again next year - their website is here.

End of diary. But I’m about to start a new post because I have to show you what my Mum gave me when I went to her house! And I also need to write about the three whole TV shows we’ve managed to blitz our way through in the past fortnight. Oh, and also I need to tell you about a cleanser (not a new launch) that has instantly become one of my all-time favourites and do some book reviews… Just need a few more hours in the day…