Been a while…

Well, it’s been a while since I was last here. I keep starting posts and then losing my train of thought. It’s been a funny old month – but a good one.

In the spirit of adventure, I’ve climbed the Yorkshire 3 peaks, been on a more relaxing holiday and shot another short film – not The Swimmer, we have 2 months to go on that!. It would have been a good idea to blog about each of these things as they were happening, but there has been another factor at work here.

Baby 2 is on the way!

aka 'pickle', eta 28.01.11

To be honest, I’ve just not been able to write, and I’ve let that take over. I felt I had to wait until the scan to mention it on here, but then couldn’t write about anything else.

It’s a funny time. I feel I should be at my most creative, but actually, the eyelids start to feel heavy as the afternoon progresses and by 7pm I’m useless. Often I’m useless sometime before then, operating purely in auto-pilot, day-dreaming about sleeping. I just about create dinner, nevermind a well-articulated blog post. I sleep through my peak blogging and tweeting time, waking the next day, promising to try and write something – and so the cycle continues. I’m excited about ‘Pickle’, but I’m just not very good at being pregnant. I don’t make it look easy, and it doesn’t agree with me. I’m prone to awful morning sickness (does anyone know why the hell they call it ‘morning’ sickness???!!! – I feel a campaign is needed to have the name changed) and just want to hibernate.

I’m 14 weeks in so I imagine they’ll be a change soon. There wasn’t with Little One – that lasted 22 weeks, but this time it does feel different and more manageable. I remain optimistic.

And so I’m back. I think I needed to get over the hurdle of writing this post before going any further. I’ve been building a barrier, an irrational fear of returning to the blog and what to write, free-falling through cyberspace, but I think I’m on my way back. Feeling much more positive just by being here again. I’ve turned a corner – maybe I can trick the morning sickness into leaving early!

CyberMummy

Hello,

Well, it’s been a busy couple of weeks, hence the lack of posts. I was going to tell you all about that as there’s been quite a lot going on, but feel i must mention the mummy blogging event of the century first: CyberMummy.

I’d been away from the laptop and blogosphere, so was completely behind on any plans to meet beforehand and the feeling of going was not unlike heading off for the first day at school. This continued when i got there and couldn’t find the right queue to stand in. Anyway, one name badge and a wonderfully huge bag of goodies later, i was in!

Oh, and the goodies were good. Friends will know i love a decent freebie, and there was pretty much everything, including some swim nappies – perfect for my little swim enthusiast! Had fun sorting through it all back at home.

A mark of the world we now live in, i suppose is that we know so much about each other’s lives but have never met, so it was fab to put faces to blogs. I spent most of the day with a heavily pregnant Nina, wondering if we were going to get to the end of the day without a baby being born. Special mention also to Jane, one half of twoambitiousmamas for good conversations and encouragement to grab more cake (all very important advice!) and to Ella as quite frankly, i don’t know what we would have done without you on the pub quiz!

So nice to have lots of encouragement on the Swimmer project from everyone and all in all a really encouraging day. What i imagine will be the first of many as mummy bloggers slowly head for world domination and maybe even start a political party…now there’s a thought.

Best bits? The keynote blog post readings didn’t leave a dry eye in the house – gosh what an emotional bunch! Also, i won a big voucher, which means my little lady is about to get spoilt with Leapfrog toys.

Regrets? Should have taken a bigger bag, with wheels, to get everything home afterwards.

Any other important tips? Maison Cupcake makes flippin’ good flapjacks!

Right, now for the job of visiting all those new blogs, and catching up on my own posts…

Toddlers: you couldn’t make it up!

A few weeks ago we were treated to a day at London zoo by my husband’s parents and his Nana.

We had a lovely day. Little one was in her element.

This weekend she’s off to spend some time with my parents. I thought it would be nice to see if she could say ‘Grandma and Grandad’:

Mummy: Who are we going to see this weekend? Grandma and Grandad? Can you say ‘Grandma and Grandad’?

Little One: (complete with under the arms impersonations) Monkey. Oo oo oo (beams with achievement).

It’s going to be an interesting weekend.

Proud Mummy Day

At the same time as acknowledging the desire for my little one to grow up and be free to choose to be whoever she wants to be, there’s always a part of me that gets more than a little pleased when she starts exhibiting characteristics that I recognise as my own. It’s like an unspoken score chart i have.

When I became a mum, I had those dreams of things me and my daughter could spend time doing together as she grew up. As regular visitors will know, I like a swim. My OH doesn’t and the few times i’ve actually made it to organised ‘wild swims’ I’ve hoped that there would be a time when i could go with my own little companion. Not so much wishing my life away, just hoping that i would have a son or daughter that would enjoy the same things as me. My little girl is quickly approaching two and we abandoned swimming ‘lessons’ after a few weeks when she was 5 months as she just wasn’t enjoying them.

Suddenly over a year has flown by and I decided to brave the local children’s pool a month ago. She loved it! In fact she’s recently become completely obsessed with water and pouring games. I’m in a constant battle to rescue my garden from drowning.

This weekend, we had a family outing to Tooting Bec Lido. I’ve been experiencing a bit of a swimming drought of late and was very excited at the outing. OH was on toddler duty – they have a paddling pool, whilst I could indulge in a swim. Slightly enthusiastically, we were there not long after 9am, to discover that the paddling pool doesn’t open till 10am – why? It’s next to the main pool.

I swear I’m cursed when it comes to pools and opening times. As well as previous posts here and here, we turned up on a scorcher of a day in May, (which means pushing a pram 2 miles uphill) with a picnic packed, to discover the whole thing was closed to the public until the week after. We sat on the green outside the shut gates watching the members going in and out. There was quite a collection of the ordinary public and their children sat, disappointed, eating picnics outside the gates, so at least i wasn’t the only one!

Anyway, I digress. Little one knew she was going swimming, she’d been shouting the word and doing swimming actions all the way there. Once inside, she bolted for the big pool. It’s freezing. Completely devoid of any heat. Probably a bit like sitting in a freezer. I thought the easiest way to prevent 30 mins of distracting her from the edge was to let her dangle her feet in. She’d soon realise it was freezing and wait for the paddling pool. She settled down on the edge – complete with psychedelic UV suit, arm bands and a rubber ring – and dipped in her toes. I waited for the scream.

But none came. She loved it and five minutes later she’d made it fully into the pool and was splashing around. It was quite a moment for me, and I admit to enjoying the smiles of onlooking swimmers. I could suddenly see us in years to come ploughing through lakes and rivers, racing in the lido. Just us, the water and the sky!

Homebrew and other important life skills

Did any other parents out there decide that maternity leave was going to be the perfect time to learn new skills? As if the whole motherhood experience of 24-hour caring for a baby wasn’t enough? I did. Baking, growing my own veg, knitting, perhaps I’d make some clothes, or at least start with a pair of curtains, certainly learn a language…hmm just a matter of choosing which one. The list goes on.

New in the knowledge of impending motherhood, I went to the local craft superstore to buy my knitting needles, ‘How-to’ guide and wool. As I write, they are still sitting on the shelf behind me where I popped them that very day, about two years ago.

Needlework, for both clothes and curtains. Nah, not happening either.

Language learning. I did manage a few weeks home tutoring from a learn yourself French CD set last summer before going to deepest, darkest France for a wedding and a holiday. Found it a little difficult to keep the momentum going once we’d got home though.

Baking, growing my own veg, and of course homebrew. Much more successful. Yes, it hasn’t escaped my notice either that the things i’ve achieved are all to do with food and drink. I have mastered quite a few recipes, and last year managed to grow some herbs, 14 tomatoes, 6 strawberries, 22 peas and 3 courgettes that were more the size of gherkins. I even got creative with the courgette flowers in a bid not to waste anything I’d managed to grow. I have a very understanding OH, who suffers silently as these gems are served up each night, masquerading as a proper meal. It’s about quality not quantity…

Admittedly, it will be a while before I’m self-sufficient, but the joy I felt at each one of those miniscule vegetables was almost the same as listening to my little one say a new word. They’re all growing again this year and I’m hopeful of breaking my record for produce, though it might still be a while before I have enough to start making jams and chutneys.

And that leaves the elderflower tree at the back of the garden. Hmm, what can I make with that? After some googling, I’d decided that the best idea was Elderflower Champagne, and the recipe was by Mr Hugh Fearnley-Whittenstall. It was the only one I could find that used all natural simple ingredients (others use citric acid). I used these bottles and they arrived quickly and worked a treat.

Last year was my first go at this and what the recipe doesn’t mention is that it is SUPPOSED to grow a layer of mould on top. Thankfully, I discovered this before throwing it away. There’s nothing quite like the feeling of enjoying something you’ve made yourself – especially when it works.

Our only mishap, was only filling the last bottle by about a third, as we’d run out and couldn’t fit anymore into the other bottles. Somebody more scientific will know that the rest of the bottle fills up with gas, so when we opened it, the top flew off and hit the ceiling, narrowly missing damaging us and the kitchen. So heed this as a cautionary tale and fill those bottles right up!

Spirit of the Brits

The optimism of this island and its inhabitants never fails to make me feel proud. We may moan about the job scene, the increasingly desperate state of the housing market, the tories, the weather, but that never stops us getting out there, and showing that underneath all this moaning is a resilience and optimism that has kept us strong.

Picture the scene, if you will: the beautiful Norfolk coast on a bank holiday, crowds of holiday-makers and day-trippers pouring into the little coastal port of Wells. The family and I were amongst them.

After a pleasant ramble around the town, complete with a quick run for shelter from a passing storm, we’d headed for the beach. We were on holiday, after all, a passing torrent of rain wasn’t going to stop us. The way to the beach involved a fair walk along a path by the side of the harbour. It took a good 20 minutes, but finally we were greeted with an incredibly pretty scene of multi-coloured beach huts, pebbles leading out to softer sands and the sea.

We played. Little one had a great deal of fun digging in the sands and little one and her daddy had even more fun watching me run around after various items that were blowing free from the pram. Did i mention the summer breeze (think gale) that had blown us there?

Then we heard it. The unmistakeable crack of thunder. “It’s a way off”, “It’ll never get here”. We stood our ground, along with most of the other families there. Another crack. “Hmm, ok. Maybe we should start to head back.” We could see a few others were thinking the same. We dragged the pram to the edge and got back onto the path. I should mention perhaps, that this was a very exposed path, fairly high up and with absolutely no shelter.

If you looked up, you could see the black clouds quickly over-taking the fluffy white ones. The storm was definitely heading inland. We picked up pace as another crack was heard.

Now, the thing about this path, was that as far as I could see, it didn’t go anywhere else but the beach, yet there were as many people headed up it as there were running down. Armed with picnics, windbreaks, tents, buckets, spades and determination people were still heading to the beach. No thunder storm was going to stop them.

I loved the optimism, the strength of character exhibited on that path that day. It’s one that many British filmmakers have in order to get anywhere. Yes, i know it looks fairly diabolical out there, but we’re not giving up. We have a film to make and that’s what we’ll do!

Seconds later, we got absolutely, totally, completely drenched.

Night at Bafta

Some days, you just can’t complain.

Yes, it was another day of play-dough, activities, play dates and general mess with a frantic hour of blogging/tweeting/emailing over the lunchtime nap, pretty much as any other, but then i got to dress up and go to a film screening at Bafta.

The film was “Bad Day” and stars Claire Goose, Donna Air, Sarah Harding and a good friend of mine, Riana Husselmann. She plays the baddie! Always the fun role – and she’s great in it by the way. (No I’m not biased, watch it and judge for yourself).

It’s a ‘Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels’ type affair, but made with a budget of £40,000. The screening was to mark it’s release onto DVD. As you can imagine, there’s nothing left for publicising the film, so i’m trying to do my bit here.

A high-action crime thriller that takes place over 24 hours. Undercover agent of fictional organisation, Organised Crime Division, Rebecca Ryan (Claire Goose), is out for revenge when her daughter is shot. Her hunt leads her through the seedy crime underworld of London and it falls to wise, world-weary OCD agent Darius Cruise (Anthony Ofoegbu) to track her down with newly assigned assistant, Abby Barrett (Donna Air). They need to move quickly as things spiral out of control and the line between right and wrong starts to blur.

It was written and directed by Indie British Filmmaker, Ian David Diaz, and is his fourth feature. There’s plenty of good ideas in this script and some nice one liners, and Diaz has been resourceful with his meagre budget. There’s a lot of strong female characters which makes this film stand out from the usual male worlds of these stories, where us ladies are generally used to decorate a few scenes in the role of a mistress. Here, the mistress character is played by Sarah Harding.

However, this is still a very male film, and I suspect Diaz had a great time making it. There’s lots of girls fighting, shoot-outs, and graphic deaths. There are some warmer moments with Goose’s character, but generally this is a hard, violent world where anything can and does happen.

BUT, there is one big problem with the film and that is the script and it’s a real shame that time and money wasn’t spent developing this further. It’s never going to be easy to shoot a film on £40,000, but a good script will carry you far. Bad Day shows a lot of promise with some good ideas but ultimately suffers from too much dialogue; long scenes of exposition (biz word for scenes telling the backstory) make it too static in parts, and at times it is often still hard to keep up with what’s going on.

Having said that, go and watch the DVD, (its widely available, including lovefilm) as the moments when it succeeds are a testament to the struggle of a hard-working, persevering filmmaker.

Is it a British thing?

Have you ever had one of those days where you seem to be solving everyone else’s problems and wish you could be so clever when it came to your own?

So far I’ve helped a friend of mine get some high-profile guests to her film screening and got a gig for my brother’s company for later in the year. He’s a circus performer with a children’s entertainment company, by the way. (Let’s see if I can add to today’s successes!)

The phone lines have been busy. I felt like a networking genius and all before 9.30am! Ho, ho, I may be off the pitch, but not out of the game!!

And then I remembered all the things I’m supposed to be doing for my own project. Don’t get me wrong, I’m doing them, but at what feels like snails pace. Ever wish you just had a few more skills – I’m lacking all the technical ones.

When I first started this project, I decided the only way to get going was to take the project seriously, but not myself. If I get too carried away with what everyone thinks, I’ll be paralysed into inaction.

Do any of you feel the same? It’s easy to sell someone else’s ‘product’ and come up with lots of ideas, than it is your own. Perhaps it’s a British thing. We’re not very good at putting ourselves forward – a huge barrier for many a brilliant, creative mind. We worry about what others will think. This is a nation that champions the underdog not the winner. What will people think of us if we put ourselves out there, on a limb?

What do you think? Do you agree?

Who da’ Mummy!

Well, glorious weather aside, we’ve had a rather miserable few days at filmmaking HQ. The cause? A sickly toddler. Poor little thing!

When she was first born, I took heed of all the advice that said clear your calendar of commitments for a few months. As someone always on the go, it was really refreshing to be able to do that. It took the pressure off at a time when you should be allowed to be ‘selfish’ about what you do and don’t do.

But then, time presses on and you forget these lovely lessons you’ve learnt and benefitted from. Recently, I’ve been busy reading for new film ideas, finding my feet in the world of blogging and twitter, writing, fundraising for The Swimmer, and helping with the post-production of our last short (the one we needed a composer for) and of course being a full-time mummy. So, it was terribly inconvenient (!) to wake up on Saturday morning to find a poorly little toddler on my hands. We had so many plans to get out and enjoy the sunshine, but none of it was to be.

I’m the sort of mummy that loves a routine (no, I never managed Gina Ford) and has a full week of activities and play dates arranged around nap and mealtimes. In a battle against the lure of CBeebies, we spend most of the day somewhere else. We carry pots of fruit and other terribly healthy snacks around, and have fairly nutritious balanced meals. And it all works perfectly well – I don’t need change, thank you!

But then someone gets ill and it’s all out of the window, including that lovely nugget of time you had over the lunchtime nap to get some work done. You’re housebound but can’t do anything in it. At first you panic, because clearly the skies going to fall down if you change your plans and routine for a few days, but then it doesn’t. Admittedly the housework piles up and food supplies dwindle day by day, but that’s nothing a little creativity can’t manage.

Next, you realise you’ve gone a day without turning on your laptop, so you quickly open up and manage a quick tweet, because surely the world will be wondering where you’ve gone. A speedy scan of the emails is too much to resist and you have mixed feelings about the number. Great, I’m not forgotten! No, I’ve got too much to do! You write a list. It’s half a page – almost, with embellishments. Almost half a page?! Is that it? But I’m ‘busy and important’.

And that’s the moment you step back and relax. As the little one, slowly lifts her head from illness/heat induced drowsiness to look at you with forlorn eyes, barely able to manage those important requests that she feels she needs for recovery: “Beebies”, “Chocolate”, “Snack” you give up on being ‘busy and important’ for a little while longer.

The laptop is shutdown, CBeebies goes on for what will probably be a long session and you both settle down with a couple of squares of chocolate. Just mummy and the little one.

It’s great to be busy, after all we invest so much of who we are in what we do, but sometimes, just sometimes, it’s good to be a little selfish and shut yourself off from the world to be with a little girl that just needs her mummy.

…and beebies, and chocolate, of course.

Yummy Mummy in Nappy Valley

Well, taking a break from the ‘search for a place to swim’ exercise, I thought I’d tell you all about my lovely morning out, yesterday. In fact the whole day and evening were incredibly nice and sociable which is why I’m only just writing about it now.

Living in Nappy Valley (non-local readers – that’s the nickname for Wandsworth), I often use our very own cyber centre for all things parenting related at nappyvalleynet.com.

The lovely Annabel over at NV HQ takes good care of us and often organises mummy meet-ups. Now, I’ve never been to one of these before, but I decided to be brave! And I’m so glad I did.

We met at the family-friendly Scoffers. Another first for me, but after sampling their cakes and hospitality, I’ll be booking a babysitter to go back with OH and sample the evening menu soon.

One thing that I love to be reminded of at these things is how entrepreneurial and clever us mummies are. I met many mums going back to or already working and juggling it all, but also there are lots of mums starting out with their own businesses. The NV website was the brainchild of busy mum, ‘Annabel’, but also I met Sophie, who’s starting a mobile hairdressing business (think child-friendly, designer and chic).

For me the main challenge with starting out on your own, is that it’s not enough just to be an expert in your field, you’re suddenly faced with the problems of trying to build the online branding and PR side of everything, and it’s comforting to know others feel the same.

When I finished the script for the short, as well as the obvious support of the filmmaking team, and an amazing OH (who built the website), I have had so much help from the many women I see in my day to day life. Most of them are mums with their own businesses or ideas for businesses. They have been brilliant with suggestions and support for the project, and this seems like a good time to mention Vicky and Beanie for your great ideas, Emma for encouragement, wine and online help, Bunny for constant support and supply of props, Bec, Sarah, Karen, Lia, Anna, Anna, Anna (popular name) Elaine and Sophie, for listening and recently Erin, for being such a blog expert.

There are oodles of great dads out there as well. I don’t mean to exclude you, it’s just that I’ve benefited from a big community of mums. If any of you are reading, I would love to hear about your experiences of juggling work/fulltime dad. Have you found the same support?

There are so many homes run and prams pushed by clever, resourceful and entrepreneurial brains. So, I think it’s fine to take a day off every now and then and devote it to coffee, cake and catching up, because often, that’s where the best ideas are born.