The Blurb...

"MOTHERHOOD takes place in a single day that pushes to the tipping point Eliza’s fundamental fear she’s lost herself. Starting at dawn, her to-do list is daunting: prepare for and throw her daughter’s 6th birthday party, mind her toddler son, battle for a parking space during an epic alternate side parking showdown, navigate playground politics with overbearing moms, and mend a rift with after posting her best friend’s confession on her blog. On top of it all, Eliza decides to enter a contest run by an upscale parenting magazine. All she has to do is write 500 words answering the deceptively simple question, “What Does Motherhood Mean to Me?”

In the process of trying by nightfall to put these thoughts into words that don’t “sound like bad ad copy,” Eliza rediscovers her own voice and realizes what is truly valuable in her life. At once hilarious and poignant, MOTHERHOOD looks at the challenges facing mothers everywhere with a keen eye to every slight to a nearly-middle-aged woman’s selfhood – from being called “M’am” by condescending twentysomethings to endlessly stooping to pick up toys and a spouse’s dropped socks."

She's a Mother. She's a madwoman. She's a blogger. I'm kind of hoping she's me. And you. Right up there on screen. And I'm kinda hoping that one day I too might be able to put into five hundred words exactly what Motherhood means to me...

But perhaps tonight just five will have to do...
Murky, beautiful, scary, biblical and blinding.
Your turn?

"Mostly they are clean-shaved, but I saw one the other day with a beard." She lifted a warning finger.

"The truth was revealed! My nose!"

So there you have it, quite the most nonsensical captions ever to accompany really rather lovely turn of the century illustrations from the constant source of Brocante inspiration that is The Girls Own Annual. Just the thing to brighten up the kind of Tuesday when you are imprisoned in your own home with a six year old suffering from a set of swollen glands that have quite transformed his face. Bless his little heart.

Have a gorgeous day won't you Housekeepers?

We knew this day would come. We knew that if we kept everything we've got crossed that one day the good people of Anthropologie would flit across the Channel on a cloud of pretty bohemia and decorate our lives everafter. Because yes indeed, any minute now Anthroplogie will open it's door on London's Regent Street and we who have quietly loved their wares from afar will begin making pilgrimages to the Capital to ooh and ahh and spend the Christmas present budget on loveliness it is clear we will not live without.

Go visit Anthroplogie.Co.Uk ,and on the way give thanks to Holly at Decor8 because without her beady eye all manner of scrumptiousness would escape me.

I have no words. My head is full of bonbons and jelly babies and dazzle drops and other truly scrumptious sweeties you can buy by the quarter. Life is supposed to be this pretty. Kitchens are supposed to be filled with polka dotted appliances and abundant with cupcakes. A person cannot have too much pretty. Actually thats a lie, there is a certain type of pink pretty that makes my head hurt, but anyway what I am trying to say is that I heart this Aga. In fact I heart all Aga's: I would just have to move house and sell my body to get one.

Oh and while we are talking Sweeties, have you seen Hope and Greenwood's new book? 

Gratitude is all. You say it often enough. You scrawl it into journals and whisper it under your breath as you wait for night to fling you on to her magic carpet. Gratitude is all.

And then there are the days when there is nothing to give thanks for. The days when the laundry falls out of the washing machine already smelling musty. When the book you are reading will not let you in. When food tastes like tumble dryer fluff and everyone you know seems weighted down with their own particular brand of sorrow. These are the tetchy days. Tuesdays in the backwater that is October. Every day in February. Grey yesterdays and blue tomorrows.

You fear these days in the same way that you have always feared the kind of monotony that will not lose itself in a good story. You fear these days because there is too much thinking involved. Too much dwelling. No purpose or reason, just the long, empty now shimmying her goose-pimpled shoulders in front of you, bating you with all things you will never get around to doing, all the women you will never get around to being. Much worse now you do not have a car you can get into and simply drive away from yourself.

So you light candles. Of course you light candles. They are the housewifes opium. The gentle soothing flicker of everything will be alright. And it will. (Because there is nothing wrong). You light candles and you flick switches and still it feels dark because it is cold, and only heat brings the yellow glow of warmth that you are seeking. You make a deal with the devil and turn on the radiators, pull on thick socks and let your hair warm your neck. Then you sit down with a bundle of old postcards and copy the words written on their backs into your journal for no other reason than that the polite lilt of yesterdays good tidings sooths your snuffly soul, before finally giving up on trying to get warm and  taking a bath in warm cloudy milk, shivering in the steam and  rubbing salt into skin pebble-dashed with resentment.

You wonder if other women feel sinful when they take bath in the earliest part of the afternoon, or whether they simply organize their lives in pursuit of doing what is right? Of taking a shower before their eyes are open and never, not even for a minute risking being caught naked in the middle of the day. Of doing what is proper. Knowing instictively how to behave and never questioning the possibility of something more. You wonder whether you were off the day they taught the other girls how to be good. You wonder when the want will stop.You wonder when you started to believe decadence should be a way of life!

And then it is quarter to three and there is just enough time to sit for five minutes cupping a warm mug of chocolate. Half an hour before you will need to go and stand on the playground and grit your teeth through another lesson in suburban parenting. You sip your chocolate sitting at the table in front of the window and wonder how it is that when you finally got what you wished for, you simply moved the goalposts. Always reaching. Always stretching. Never satisfied. Milky skin coating your teeth. A toe wiggling it's way out of your left sock. A child waiting to be collected.

Yes. A child who will soon be home in all his runny-nosed, tatty-headed glory.You wait for this moment from the minute you hand him over to a woman who is failing him at every turn in school. And when you see him run towards you, freedom written large all over his button nose, you want to frisk him with kisses, checking for lumps and bumps and words he didn't understand, scoldings from the scary headmistress and the minorest of slights from other children. But you don't because he would die and one mustn't embarass one's children, so you satisfy yourself with a grubby hand clutched tight in yours, walk back kicking leaves and open the door upon a warm smile. Because there it is: home. Waiting to hug the two of you.

Gratitude would be all if you raison d'etre were not so fond of hide and seek. Gratitude would be all if you weren't so bloody ungrateful...

We wrapped ourselves up in autumnal scarves and boarded the train after school. I stared into space while my baby teenager aged six and one month pretended he wasn't with me because he didn't like my hat.

At Central Station, Liverpool we disembarked and I bought his friendship with a Thorntons pumpkin lollipop and he insisted I remove my crocheted black beret and be like all the other Mummy's currently to be seen sporting tatty Amy beehives around town. So I shoved the hat in my bag, mussed my hair back into frizzy life and dragged my child around my favorite place in the world, the Blue Coat Chambers, once upon a time a school, and now home to a gallery, a restuarant, some oh so pretty little shops and a courtyard where I spent many afternoons as an art student, sunbathing in my dungarees and eating home-made cheese and pepper sandwiches, and now often retreat to to mourn my lost youth.

Then we skipped next door to Cath Kidston, which to my fantasy ridden mind is rather like visiting a shop owned by my bestest friend, so familiar do I feel with her wares, so eager to call her up and say Oh Cath, if you had asked me I would have told you that next door to the BlueCoat Chambers is a gorgeous place for a Kidston shop, suitably and rather deliciously a little off the beaten track which only adds to the feeling that one has happened upon a star sprinkled Aladdins Cave. Oh and did I mention that I love you more than Russell Brand and can I come and work in your shop please? A feeling clearly shared by Finley who announced he could "live" in this shop before demanding that we make our way to McDonalds and stop "messing around" with "flowery things".


 And so because I am the kind of Mummy who likes to do as she is told, that is what we did, and ten minutes later found ourselves sitting in some very fancy schmancy Big Brother style chairs in Mcdonalds, me with an "M" burger and him with two bags of chips in a Happy Meal box which is sadly the only viable option for a Celiac kid in said den of culinary inequity. But he doesn't care and it's the experience that counts, even if your Mum has dragged her silly hat back on to attend the cinema with the six foot four one, who took one look at said hat and declared a sudden yearning for a cup of tea inspired apparently by the cosy on my head.

Ha ha bloody ha. They are ganging up on me Housekeepers. Is it any wonder I felt obliged to eat all the popcorn in revenge?

And so since the day you bought it almost ten years ago the little house you live in has been white.Though much talked about, it has never been painted and now the white has a grey cast you had almost become resigned to. Almost. Never rankling you quite as much as the persistent crop of tangled weeds strangling the postage stamp that is your front garden (while simultaneously lowering the tone of a lane that considers itself a tad too well to do), but casting a shadow over a sunny little life all the same. 

Some things you see, seem impossible. And then he is there, all six foot four of him, and the pebbles too heavy to load into the car you haven't got, are stifling the life, prettily, out of the weeds in the garden and you are walking around the diy store, hand in hand, freaking yourself out while debating the merits of painting the house one of seven possible shades of masonary cream, and looking at him in something akin to heavenly wonder when he kisses your nose and tells you painting the house will only take a couple of hours, certain now that there is nothing he cannot do: bake cheesecake, transform gardens, paint houses, perform brain surgery and force you, biting your lip in utter terror, out of your comfort zone.

At night time, when he isn't there laughing at the peculiar combinations you see fit to serve up as dinner, you do not miss him. You are accustomed to your own company, greedy for the kind of independance that wouldn't dream of lifting up a paintbrush and is letting the house fall to rack and ruin: living proof that one can live in beautiful, contented shambles and only occasionally ache for the stroke of a paint splattered hand across your chin. Living proof that fear is a stubborn old mule.

Because you are a little afraid. It has been three long years of yourself, and the picking up and putting down of what went before. Of resignation and a collection of men nit-picking at your ability to trust in your own dubious judgement. After trauma, emotional or otherwise, one battens down the hatches and makes for those who are left behind, a safe haven. Your safe haven has candles and books and blankets and a little boy so precious you are only willing to share him bit by bit. A goodnight before he goes to bed here, a trip to the cinema to watch some spectacular 3D affair there, the three of you sitting grinning at each other in Micheal Cain style black rimmed glasses while eating Percy Pigtails and Colin Caterpillars and other sweeties he cares enough to go buy in his lunch hour. Then maybe half an hour in McDonalds once in a while and occasionally a few minutes out of the room while they become accustomed to each other and negotiate a friendship based on the strengths and weaknesses of various Pokemon that you will never be a part of. Leaning against the door listening. Crossing your fingers that neither will find the other an impediment to loving you. Crossing your fingers in the hope that the tall one knows what an absolute gift the little one is and treads carefully upon his dreams forever after.

At night time, when he is there you drink red wine and pinch each others weak spots. Sometimes you poke a finger into old scars just to see how deep the wound goes, force feed him olives and pine nuts and all the other things he hates just because you can and stretch the elastic of his boundaries so far back you are certain that all too soon they will snap and ping you in the face. It is early days. Both of you negotiating the weird, terrifying terrain between dating and hours spent on the sofa watching Come Dine with Me without the fluttery screen of false eyelashes between you.

And now the house is going to be cream. He will transform it before your eyes and your hard won independence will shrink a little in shame. Butter cream. A soft yellow, yielding cream, that will change your emotional landscape and have you falling in love with your little terraced cottage all over again. Falling in love. Yes. You are a little bit, a lot, in mad whimsical scary love and the thought that someone loves you back is enough to have you seeking shelter in the cupboard under the stairs. While the thought that someone cares enough to sprinkle pebbles over the ugliest of your weeds is enough to make you feel like singing it from the rooftops.

If only you could sing. Or dance. Or order an Indian meal from a restaurant that actually delivers. But alas you can't so thank goodness perfection isn't part of the deal.

Possibility is enough.

"I houseclean my books every Spring and throw out those I'm never going to read again like I throw out clothes I'm never going to wear again. It shocks everybody. My friends are peculiar about books. They read all the bestsellers, they get through them as fast as possible, I think they skip a lot. And they NEVER read anything a second time so they don't remember a word of it a year later. But they are profoundly shocked to see me drop a book in the wastebasket or give it away. They way they look at it, you buy a book, you read it, you put it on a shelf, you never open it again for the rest of your life but YOU DON'T THROW IT OUT!  NOT IF IT HAS A HARD COVER ON IT! Why not?  I personally can't think of anything less sancrosanct than a bad book or even a mediocre book."

Helene Hanff, letter to Frank Doel, 1952.

I knew it! I knew that that at some moment in history there must exist a person who held the same philosophy on books as I do. Give them away. Put them in the recycling box. Sell them on Ebay. But don't stockpile them because I promise you there is no badge of honour for prolific reading, no judge or jury going to come knocking to see whether you have endured the latest "must read". Nothing. Just words that have mattered to you lining your veins. Sentences stored in your sub-conscience. And knowledge. Knowledge absorbed until it beomes a part of who we are. If you loved it, it is in you. If you didn't you don't have to keep dusting it.
So I am declaring a rubbish book amnesty. Go chuck 'em. Now.

There I will be posting links to new posts on Brocante, news about what I am working on, early invites to new downloads, quick links to all the gorgeousness around the t'internet and links to all the special offers for online retailers I get sent and never quite manage to fit into posts here on Brocante, and you will find all this and more right there in your Facebook stream without ever having to go navigating the waters of the url address bar again. Genius mais non?

In other news, subscription for Season Two of the Vintage Housekeepers Circle is now closed, in time for the launch of all new Christmas Countdown coming later this month. The current season will end on October 31st, following the completion of the current Seasonal Scrub and a few weeks of all new Puttery Treats in celebration of our deliciously fresh, spanking clean homes that I hope you will all enjoy!

In the meantime do add your name to the no-obligation mailing list for Season Three here (starting at the beginning of January 2010) and I would be absolutely delighted to see you over on Facebook...

P.S: Look out for the BrocanteHome 5th Birthday Celebrations coming in November won't you?? Five years online, heavens above where did the time go? How come blogging still feels just as wonderful as ever..?

I do love you all so very, very much, you know?