Like a West London Pope rolled out for the Sunday blessing, I was today elevated to the priesthood. This wasn't because I wore a frock - I haven't done that since my first marriage in 1989 - but because my eldest Godson told his missis he was going to church in order to sneak out and brunch with me. She thinks he's on a diet, but after a full English breakfast with a huge beaker of fresh orange and a mocha, he finished off a large tortilla and a coke. He also managed a handful of fags - his full daily allowance - slipping outside to inhale vigorously as doing so indoors invites lynching by vegetarians. The waist on his 44" Gieves and Hawkes trousers appeared a tad loose, so the health regime is obviously working... Sadly we never got onto politics - we've literally gone nose to nose on occasion - but even the most mundane chat is elevated through his brilliance and passion. His mother, my best mate at school, would be so proud of him were she still alive:-( Yesterday the girls and I painted mugs in our local art shop. The eldest has smashed most of ours since she started emptying the dishwasher. "I feel very mellow and relaxed," the youngest said, trying out impressionist techniques to the sound of Otis Redding's Happy Song. Though chily outside, we were warmed by the sunshine that lit the room. Mellow yellow:-)

The eccentric in Saudi has submitted his second online writing exercise. This time I'd set a task around Africa and goats. How can anyone get that wrong? And yet he has. Perhaps he is starting a new school of writing. If so, can I fashion myself as his muse? Bizarrely, he sent his mobile number and asked if I'd like to text. At least he's now paying for the course. My website client has also paid up. He asked if I preferred milk chocolate or dark. I said dark, though I'd make an exception for Rococo. The kids say I'm being hit on. What fun:-)

Three years ago the kids and I went to the Mayhew Animal Home to get a puppy. "We've only got bitches," one of the handlers said, "and you need a dog. That way you've got a man of the house balancing your hormones." Somewhat nonplussed, we went home to wait - my eldest with some relief as she's not a dog fan. Clearly every beast to whom our details were shown bared his teeth and ran, because they've never called. This evening, we serendipitously found ourselves puppysitting. My eldest initially avoided the little mutt, but the youngest and I were entranced. Within minutes of arrival however, I was cleaning up both numbers one and two in the kitchen. Over a four hour period she continued to be prolific, most heinously on the sitting room rug. When she had a yapping fit during The Apprentice, I was ready to commit hari kari. "You're right," I said to the eldest, "We really don't need a dog." "Oh" she said, scratching it's head, "I was just thinking I'd really like one."

Painting my toenails, I wondered what happens to animal toenails when they get old? Humans get the chiropodist round with pliers. What do leopards or lions do when theirs become so horny that bits no longer chip off when they stub their toes on a tree? I once watched a fetish film in which an Amazonian blonde spent the entire time pampering her tootsies. This culminated in her shaving her stray toe hairs and walking around LA in in perspex fuck-me platforms. How does that work? Are four cleavages better than one? Does size matter? If a woman has a foot fetish, does she reverse the old rule of thumb and look at a man's lunchbox to calculate the length of his instep? These are the musings of the over tired. I was up writing notes at six. Fed and saw off the kids before another work confab over bagels. Then a bit of do-gooding for the eldest's school and now it's time for real work: knocking out press releases in return for a website design and build. Dealing with IT people is like being in the X Files. They speak in flow charts. Even where an outcome is obvious, they can't jump ahead until they've completed the paradigm. Strange. To get me in industrious mood I have put on tribal music - Baka, people of the rainforest, Philip Glass's Powqqasi and The Gypsy Kings. Yesterday my first love sent me a Pilot CD. The note read: 'wohoho it's magic, have a wonderful day.' Touched at this walk down memory lane, I put it on so I could back-refer in my thank you. The songs were banal beyond belief: Look out California, here comes Canada... It soiled my tastebuds for the day. No such mishaps this morning;-)

Whether it's impending menopause or last week's reality check, my happiness quotient is up and down with the frequency of a schoolboy playing the pink oboe. This is an apposite comparison as I have decided to be more male. Last week I was taken off course by the horrible happenings around me. This week I am going to compartmentalise and refuse all offers to gossip, advise, listen and emote between the hours of ten and six. Unless they comcern opportunities for extortion (good) or impending bankruptcy (bad). My Private Eye ad had two responses. An Irishman in Saudi signed on for the writing course. He completed the first assignment in an abstract way. The Mark Rothko of reportage. It doubled the workload, but he liked my comments: "You set a professional standard. I shall pay immediately." Not a bloody sou so far.... The second was a detective setting up a new website. As a favour, I rewrote the home pages and he immediately incorporated the changes: 'How much to do it all?" I quoted lower than a snake's navel, but... not a bloody word so far:-o It is hard being a businesswoman. My friend the life coach insists all you have to do is believe. But for years I have believed I am slim, rich and beguiling, and... Many moons ago, a Chinese mate joined Buddhist showbiz: the nam yo horengay kyo people. Followers included Tina Turner and Richard Gere (but not Pierce Brosnan). "You can get anything if you chant twice a day for ten minutes," she said. "You just stick up a picture of what you most want and pray. I know people who've had envelopes of twenty pound notes coming through their letterboxes." I cut out a pic of what I wanted most and spent a month on my knees. They swelled up, but nothing much else happened. With hindsight, I suppose anyone trying to push a new Ford Escort XR3i through my letterbox might have encountered problems:-(

I woke up this morning in an absolute panic. I've got two months to sort out this business or we're down the swanee. It's been a shitter of a week. Started off brilliantly, then one marriage almost down, and now one of the most fantastic women on earth - my friend L's mum - on her way out. Ninety years old, she was booked for Botox on Friday, but Dr Death blew on her the day before. I was in Kent when the emergency bleepers were going off, away with the eldest enjoying lunch with the most contumacious family on earth. They ask you a question then answer it themselves, each pulling the others' views apart. It's stonkingly good entertainment. My mate's son is another of the godchildren. Off to uni this autumn, he's got a job cleaning his own school to save up. His mum can't afford the £65 a week hall fees. Neither, shockingly, can I in our current circs or I'd have offered. Instead, I'm poring over the property mags looking at flats in readiness to downsize:-( All these factors have insidiously, and possibly not before time, put me in a flat spin. It will pass. It's not as if we'll end up in a paperbag in the middle of the road, living on cabbage soup, is it?

This last weekend was pure Paul Young. Wherever I laid my hat was home, starting with Southwold, a fashionable seaside concoction of industrious old and second-home new. Back on the M25 I moved onto elegantly wasted Hastings, dole capital of the south. My travels, punctuated with warm welcomes, fluffy duvets and good scoff, finished with a visit to my 6ft 6" godson. Foolishly I gave him some birthday money. He went straight out and blew it on puff, coming back red-eyed to declare 'maximum love'. His mother was not happy. I mention his height to set him apart from my five other godsons, one who's dwarfish, one ginger, one rounded, one foolishly idealistic, and one whose pragmatism will stifle his creativity if he doesn't lighten up. They cover the spectrum. My two goddaughters are, thankfully, fairly commonplace in their presentation. But I digress. Returning after a jolly lunch on Monday, I attacked my front bush with large shears:-) This brought on a hayfever attack of such violence that my false teeth fell out - see pic. I took early retirement as I had a date with Christy Moore at the Barbican and wanted the wheezing to have stopped by then. Suddenly the phone rang. It was a very dear mate. Her old man had sacked her. She was distraught. Out went Christie, in came R with a little wheelie suitcase and tincture of Jacob's Creek. For 48 hours we traversed the male psyche. Then she went home and he apologised. I don't believe women will ever understand men. They're so simple, we keep deconstructing them believing there's got to be more there. Then we forget how to reset the pieces and lose what little we had. Discuss. My girls returned from skiing looking like sunburned racoons and truly pleased to see their burly mother. It's mutual:-) The house is full of energy again. Though I could live without the eldest playing reveille on the trumpet.

I get this feeling when I'm in love or writing a novel. It's a madness, a sense of being wired 24/7. I lose the ability to stop, to sleep, to idle. to chill. Even if I'm not doing anything, the internal radar is constantly checking for possibilities. I've got that feeling right now, which is why I'm at the Mac after five hours sleep. The eyes, as you see, are proverbial pissholes in the snow:-) And I only managed five hours the night before, too. Is it the prospect of work that has me sloughing off the sluggishness of recent months, the mental and physical atrophy? Yikes! The seder was just great despite one Holy Joe who tried resisting efforts to skip large parts of the service. A group of us nearly came to blows over the vagaries of public transport and the cost of the Olympics. The kids rang, and were blissed. It is wonderful to be surrounded by good and special people:-o Got home at eleven thirty still sparking and spent two hours loading pics and playing Letter Rip - 54,740 points. I shall text that score to the little one;-) Now here I am: it's Good Friday and there's an inquiry about the online writing course in my inbox. The birds are singing for all to hear in NW6. I'm dead on my feet, but industrious and, after lunch, the holiday weekend begins. No wonder I can't stop smiling:-)

I did my first business deal yesterday. I acquired secure brochure delivery software for the company website! In return I will rework the supplier's literature and workshop his team on creative presentation. Now we have to build the website before I fall out with my oppo, a cute but surly dating site whisperer;-) This one is not to be confused with the sympathy muncher whom I had earlier met for a coffee. Alas, we never got onto work things because I was completely distracted by his facial mole which wasn't oversized or particularly unsightly but was placed on a laughter line and moved as he talked:-o Today I continue to wear the work hat - which you will already have noticed is rare. I've two assignments to mark from online pupils - my only pupils - and later I have to collect and cook two kosher chickens for it is Passover. As the head of a secular Buju household - me Buddhist, ex husband Jewish, hence children affectionately labelled Bujus - I am off to a seder tonight, a tedious meal bemoaned by most of my Jewish friends but one I enjoy immensely because it's a family occasion. I had no family bar mum till my thirties. That said, what use is family? My holidaying kids haven't rung me once. Clearly the Jewish guilt gene bypassed them. Beyond the comfort of ritual and the extraordinary aesthetics gifted by Moghul Islam and Renaissance Catholicism, I have no time for organised religion. It's another yoke to which we harnass ourselves. It is, however, a handy shortcut for teaching children the difference between right and wrong without having to furnish explanations... Anyway, the chickens are the overspill from tonight's feast, and I'm doing them here to save oven space. And also because the hostess is easily diverted - this year she is planning 'Passover the Musical' -and doesn't always cook things right through:-o

Woken by a loudly mewing cat - not the one alongside who is called Bashy, and is Godfather to my youngest - I jumped into action, impelled by the energy that came out of yesterday's 13 hour brainstorm - after which we hope our careers will rise phoenix like from the slag heaps of middle age - and by the fact that my partner in crime, who is working today, had failed to rouse despite the hideous yowling that came from our novelty alarm clock. Now the iron is on and Midweek has started. Life renews:-)

It's all a swizz isn't it, environmentalism? We went to the London Wetlands Centre and four of us - eldest, youngest, grandma and me went tramping round acre after themed acre. Whole continents - Africa, South America, Asia, were thriving side by side with promises of every kind of wild fowl known to man. But all we saw were ducks. Hundreds of them. And not one that you wouldn't see in Regents Park. The trailer trash of all mallards were there, spawning children by the thousand across the entire Barnes globe. "At least it's a good walk" my mother said, and that was true. But she hadn't forked out the twenty quid for the family ticket. That said, she took us for a fab dimsum lunch in Queensway and then it was back for serious industry. The fox, by the way, was sleeping in my neighbour's yard, not in the wetlands:-o Tomorrow the girls go skiing with their father, so the utility room became Command HQ for ironing and packing. Calm has descended on the house and I miss them already:-( No time for sighing, however. Tomorrow I swap the beanie hat of motherhood for the cloche of professionalism and go into a 24 hour conflab with my mate H with whom I'm setting up a life-changing workshop idea. The first team we worked on has invited us to their banging out ceremony on Wednesday. It's at the Arsenal so I've got to go. It means putting off the 'date'. In honesty, it was the culinary equivalent of a sympathy fuck. He's recently taken on his children after their mother unexpectedly died and I've been doingonline counselling. In response, he's offered me a load of marketing contacts. I've been agony aunting. He, meanwhile, has an address book full of marketing contacts. And says I can have them. Bloody hell: perhaps I should suggest brunch instead;-)

Last night I had a Kafkaesque experience. Entering Charing Cross Tube from the Strand, I descended to its bowels only to find the Jubilee Line was missing. I checked the Northern and Bakerloo platforms for a sign. Nothing. Confused, I returned to the concourse, searching behind ticket machines for boarded-up walkways. Nothing. Back on the street, I entered the station via Trafalgar Square. It brought me to the same place. I went through the whole charade again, finally stopping at the foot of the escalators where I stood vacantly like a callgirl's twat for some time. As any Londoner will tell you, the Jubilee doesn't go to Charing Cross, and my amnesia was a function of alcohol consumption. Tellingly, today's papers claim single mothers consume more alcohol than their married peers. This has a ring of truth, but last night's drinking was unconnected to the stresses of parenting as my genius progeny had gone for the weekend with their father. Nor was it connected to cocktails in dubious nightclubs while being louche. No: what exacerbated my intake was four hours of dull though not uninteresting round-table chitter-chat: email overload, inheritance tax, Sion Jenkins, Tuscany, squarials, and Donald Where's Me Troosers - that's my fat arse in the muddy troosers after an accident in Laos. The mention of Donald and his troosers - another gift from my elderly neighbour - led to the single moment of joy when the boys broke into song. During these proceedings, the host kept pouring the Rioja and I kept drinking. A big mistake... I once went to a Thanksgiving Dinner in County Kilburn where a guest drank a glass of rough Spanish and keeled over into his turkey not once, but twice. That night, I had fearful and vivid dreams - Marquez, not Kafka. I have since avoided Spanish wine. Until last night. This time I swear I'll never drink it again. Funnily enough, the only one on water was the married woman at our table. Because she was designated driver. And there, at it's most simple, is the reason why married women drink less;-) Today, after lunch with a dear pal who's going crazy at the surfeit of responsibility and shortfall in fun that comes from having an ill husband, I'm hotfooting it to Suffolk for a friend's 50th. For her man's birthday, she bought him an old punt. Let's hope it's sunny tomorrow so we can go down river:-)

The cousin who should have left this morning opted to stay on, hanging out with my youngest and a precocious new classmate who came up on the tube after breakfast looking like a dwarf courtesan in dangly earrings and a low cut top. They trooped off to see Alien Abduction expecting an Ant and Dec comedy and found themselves sitting through the hoary old Hangar 18 mystery - did some poor sod alien really crash land in the US desert ? After a lively tour around favourite conspiraces they grabbed skateboards and headed out again, and I turned my hand to making a lasagne while listening to Los Paraguayos - an unexpected gift from my elderly neighbour who, apprised of my ebay efforts, told me to sell it and raise a few bob for myself if I didn't like it:-) Chopping carrots I puzzled over the reply to my Daily Telegraph letter. 'I'll be in touch when things calm down.' Is that hopeful or hopeless? At least the new editor to whom I'd written is prompt. Yesterday I emailed a brilliant comment idea to the Inde and received the out-of-office auto reply, dated last week, this morning:-o At five the overnighter left for Brighton and the eldest returned for dinner and we whizzed to the South Bank, dropping off our remaining visitor en route. The night's double bill at The Cottesloe - Burn and Ciizenship - is aimed at, and about, teenagers. The first piece, which may have been about 'belonging', was ruined by a small boy behind me eating crisps. He was trying so hard not to make a noise that he ended up rustling that damn bag for the entire play. It was like having tinnitus. I evil-eyed him a bit, but it didn't work. In the interval his mother smiled apologetically. Anticipating the worst - perhaps a second half in which he grappled with pork crackling - I had trouble forcing movement at the extremeties of my mouth. The second play, about sexuality, was funny and well acted though the youngest was put out by a gay 15-year-old's on-stage snogging. My eldest, pictured here, will soon be 15 and remained blase though I doubt she's done much more than practice on the back of her hand. The days when people kept busts are gone, which is a shame. I practised kissing on Churchill's wooden head in my Aunty Vin's spare room. It was Churchill who taught me to avoid knocking noses by tilting my head.

Only eleven and I'm exhausted. The youngest (in pixie pose at an Elvis Costello concert) fell asleep listening to R5 and the glorious news that Arsenal beat Juventus - glorious for her, that is. Apart from a brief showing as a Liverpool supporter while in the throes of passion - and funnily enough it was Juventus they beat that glorious night at Anfield - I know sod all about the game. The eldest and her staying-over cousin have finally gone upstairs, no doubt to create more mayhem. Foolishly I let them each have a beer to keep them off my back while I watched The Apprentice and they have been rolling around believing they are drunk. At last that tit, Samuel, has been given the boot. I couldn't tell him apart from the marketing bloke who'd have had difficulty selling bread rolls in a famine. I watched gloriously uninterrupted as the visitors had left by that time. Their little ones were asleep on their feet, which meant we completed a brisk slalom around recent life events without interruption. As a cover all - their crew is half veggie and half vaguely food intolerant - I'd bought in fresh pasta and Finest Mushroom Sauce from Tesco. The sauce was a triumph, and arrived as part of the the first delivery I've ever had from Dame Shirley family firm that got here within the agreed two hour slot. That said, at least they'll deliver with less than 24 hours notice which is more than the hugely efficient but over-subscribed, Ocado. Sweet dreams:-)

Just back from sushi and scrabble with Mrs B, my friend's elderly ma who lives down the road. I won by getting all out two points ahead of her, but then she made three more words with her remaining letters and claimed victory for herself:-( You can't really argue with an 80-year-old so I made my excuses and left, discovering as I wandered up the road that the shouting and swearing that had been blown to us on the wind a little earlier were the foul mouthings of a woman in a BMW Mini who was stuck behind a delivery van. Three men were unloading what looked like hundreds of packets of cement and sand from the back and it was clear they'd be a while. Why didn't she just reverse out? Why give yourself stress having an argument you're going to lose? Stress was one of the subjects over lunch, as it happens - the growing number of people who almost deliberately write themselves lists of jobs that don't need to be done but must, or who set themselves goals that far exceed their needs and others' expectations, and then get angry and tired and depressed when they fail... I wouldn't mind if I then didn't have to spend half my life dealing with the fallout. Ho hum. Apart from lunch, and arranging a lunch with a young man on the dating site this morning;-), I've ironed several sets of sheets. I also washed the kitchen floor as my ex sister-in-law is arriving later with a job lot of kids, one at floor level, and a different husband. My youngest has yet to return from her sleepover, and the oldest is going shopping after school. This evening one of the joblot is being left behind - yes, the holidays are finally beginning in earnest. Will I ever get anything done against this background?

Oh my god, I posted the pic because I thought it was funny. I look like a horse on a cup I bought in Homebase for £5.99. Seen in close up like this, it's scarily hideous, and the lens of my camera stuck immediately after I'd taken it - wonder why?

Bloody hell, is it two already? It's been one of those strange days in the twilight world of the professionally indolent - have done so little, and yet so much... It was gloriously springlike in the dustbowl that is the London Borough of Camden this morning. I wandered out to post yesterday's ebay sales in just jeans, tee shirt and a light cardie. A cardie while wearing glasses? Oh God: I must have looked soooo middle aged:-o The little one had to be dropped at a friend's, where she's booked to stay till tomorrow. The father, an honorary Sikh with all the right outfits, was singlehandedly managing the household of pubescent young women. "We've not had anyone's hair pulled out so far this morning," he said cheerily, "but it's still early." Giving thanks that my youngest is sporting a summer crop I set off for the bank in Willesden and ran into a woman I hadn't seen in twenty years. "I'm a granny now," she said in some bewilderment. She was also mother to the six-year-old at her side. I didn't ask the detail because, given the many forms of dysfunction that show themselves in family structures locally - our own included - I rarely have the energy to listen to, and digest, it... One thing was certain - she'd never wear a cardie. I picked up bagels and florentines on the way home and PING! Another ebay sale:-) This time the ELO - up to £10.55 after a mad last minute bidding war between higgyhoggy and shinto5. The latter won and I will be organising my first Japanese post tomorrow. Oh woe: when did my life reduce to joy over new postcodes?? Suddenly the bell rang. It was my ex husband who'd come to collect his bicycle, which he periodically leaves attached to my railings when collecting the kids on his weekends. He's like a tomcat spraying his territory, even though he's never lived in this house. Last year, when I was in the middle of a very serious relationship, he left it chained outside for three months. Today's visit was a short one - coffee and a chomp through my beloved florentines while he sought advice on various work problems and ideas. It was an interesting diversion and pathetic as it is, considering we got over each other a lifetime ago, I enjoy having influence with him because it probably irritates her indoors;-) But enough of yesterday's man. What are we to do with cardie woman?

Eyoop, Just back from a jolly few hours near Rayners Lane, one of those strange burbs around the outskirts of the great metropolis. It was one of those nights where you're trying to play catch up, and several different strands of conversation are started and then left in mid sentence. My friend, a Miss World lookalike who met her man on Match.com, is a management consultant turned diamond dealer. We oohed and aahed over her faux David Morris: same designs, same artisans, same quality and half the price. Though we're still talking several thousand pounds more than you'd pay for a two carat twist in Argos. Or Costco. I don't understand women who boast that they've bought all their own jewellery as if this somehow makes them superior to those on whom jewels are gifted by men. Even if I had millions, the last thing I'd spend them on would be fripperies, but to receive a quality bauble as a gift is a great joy. It's not the value - a man will only spend as much as he can afford - it's the sentiment attached to the ritual of choosing and presenting;-) Got home and the girls were in bed. They've become so interesting lately, I was almost sad to have missed them. My mother was in the kitchen reading her way through our daily delivery of newspapers - The Mail, Guardian, Telegraph and Sun. Don't ask. She was agitated because the driver's mirror in her Skoda had fallen off - knocked by my eldest daughter's bottom as she climbed into the front passenger seat from the back. Don't arse. It had then been refitted upside down by the man in the petrol station where my mother stopped to ask for assistance after failing to fix it herself... I went to the car, and couldn't work it out either. Surely a mirror can only attach in one of two ways? Anyway, it provided an interesting moment of drama. She was mollified by a recycled yoghurt pot of home made mango pickle with which I'd returned home courtesy of my mate's ma, who is not very well and requires a lot of looking after, but still cooks four or five dishes a day. It was fabulous scoff, I have to say. I just hope I don't get heartburn in the night....

So finally I've done it. I've set up a space that acknowledges my existence:-o That isn't to say I've been sitting here unsung like some heroine of old and am now resurrected to fill a missing space in a history book lacking black or brown faces. I think my heroics, such as they are - maintaining the lifestyle of an urban professional bunker babe while earning less than my cleaning lady - are pretty loudly sung by those inside the Camden gossip loop. That is, the ladies who sit having coffee in the hostelries of West Hampstead at weekends, describing their peri-menopausal symptoms, lusting after men half their age and size, and swapping notes on the latest diet craze. As it happens, it's only the first two subjects that interest me. Our domestic diet is fairly standard - all food consumed on these premises has to be boiled, baked or bought. The calorie talk does however provide interesting punctuation points along a familiar route made up of mindless, but intensely comforting and occasionally profound, female smalltalk. It's just that nobody actually knows what I do with my day, here in my basement bunker. To be honest, I don't either. I have two children. One's at school today. The other is already on Easter hols and has gone to the science museum with my ma. They've left me to work. So far, this has consisted of a letter to the Daily Telegraph fishing for commissions, two album sales - John Entwistle and The Hollies - on ebay, and an hour flirting with married men seeking affairs on an internet dating site. I'm not looking to help them out, as it happens. I'm a bit po-faced about extra-marital activities, having been dumped in favour of blondes by both my dad and my ex husband, but they're always easier to talk to than the single men online who still call women 'ladies' and put down 'walks in the sunset' as their favourite first date. Why walk during a sunset when it's so much more edifying to stop and watch it? And to snog, perhaps, if you're still dating men before the dribbling stage. Anyway, that's what I've done so far that is productive. I've also tested some old vinyl for scratches, put on two washloads and sent an email asking my friend X if we're on for dinner tonight. She spends half the week with her elderly mum and the other half with her lovely husband. Talk about trapped: from soapy sandwich to Sandwich Generation in the space of a decade. So: I'd listened to the Archers repeat at two, discovered I couldn't update my Orange phone because they've already run out of the new Nokia, and was sitting at the Mac eating chocolate squares when I decided it was time to start a blog. Tantarra!! This way at least I have a record of what I've done with my time. Or not done, as the case is. And maybe at some point I'll look back at this, feel ashamed, and get a proper job.