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?

Being a chionophobic is no joke. It causes me no end of troubles on the one day of the year it snows in these here parts. Last night I lay in a freshly made bed with white flannel sheets doing away with that terrible moment of icy horror that is getting into a Winter cocoon, with the curtains open peek-a-boo style so I could watch big fat beautiful flakes of snow fall on our lane and render it a gloomy, beautiful, terrifying hazard. And then this morning I woke up and the lane looked like this: Not thick gloops of vintage Hollywood, snowy icing, but a treacherous layer of sodden snow. I want to cry. I want to ring my Mum and tell her she needs to bring Finn and I parcels of warm food and ring the school and tell them I couldn't even begin to think about dragging my child out in this kind of weather and ring the weatherman and tell him I blame him for the state of the nation and the possibility that I will slip on an icy patch and die a quick and needless death. But of course I don't do any of these things, because even chionaphobic Mummies have to get their babba's dressed and equipped with lunch boxes and book bags and water bottles and money for balloon day (?) happening a week next Friday. And so we set off, Finley laden with all kinds of nonsense and a hat he objects to, while I gripped his stripy gloved hand and passing bushes on the way to the school which is thankfully, to be seen in the picture above, level with that woman in the distance... ie, considering that that is my chamelia in the very forefront of the picture, no distance at all... So we got there and Finley skidded across the playground while I looked on in horror and then delivered him to the classroom and shoved his wet gloves into his pockets and then skidded back down the lane and around the corner, past the church and the old school house below, (which is the source of much consternation in these parts because the Vicar wanted to knock it down and build a two storey morden glass affair, and we signed petitions and refused to let him, and the whole matter was the cause of many a parishioner to be thoroughly blanked by the good people of the church and indeed an over ambitious man of the cloth, but I digress...) ..and so down a skiddy little alleyway I waddled to the post office, where I exchange pleasantries with the locals and buy a pint of milk to be shoved into the criminally large pockets of my long black cosy blanket coat, and edge my way home, back to the twinkly warmth of the kitchen where I once again throw ingredients into the new breadmaker, (this time remembering the yeast), and stir a long tall cup of hot marshmallow sprinkled hot chocolate, then carry it, my shaky self and my beloved laptop up to my bedroom, where I resolve to spend the rest of this snowy, white day.

My two newest culinary fetishes: onion spelt crackers with the merest slither of the maturest cheddar I can get with orange juice for breakfast and a spoonful of black and peppercorn mustard to be served with almost everything else... The Kenwood (Delia Cheat) mini chopper currently transforming my kitchen life if only because I don't have to do battle with my oh so complicated food processor on a regular basis and I can whip up a terracotta bowl full of hummus in the blink of an eye with this little gem... And here lie's the terrible truth: where sensible people have kitchen gadgets and other relevant but pretty little frippery, I have school ties and plastic sports day medals. I clearly consider kids vitamins and little pots of yeast to be worthy of display, and this dresser represents only a fraction of my darling little dilapidated kitchen. And finally my Mums recipe, split pea soup, blended for all it's worth into golden yellow nectar. To my utter mystification now, when I was child my Mum and Dad used to get a little delirious about this salty soup, while I with all the snobbishness of a pampered suburban schoolgirl wouldn't touch it, truly believing that my parents fondness for it harked back to a yearning for the relative poverty of their youth, when a bag of peas, a scrag end of gammon, two carrots and an onion were considered something of a feast... And now I can't get enough of it. Yesterday, in wont of gammon, I substituted a couple of slices of smoked bacon and a few salty chunks of pancetta, and added half a bag of split yellow peas, the said carrots and onions, a couple of sticks of celery, salt, thyme, cloves and black pepper, and two hours later found myself with a cheery bowl of homely frugal bliss. Have a lovely weekend Housekeepers.