My Little Ramazan - Day Eighteen

Sat 28th August 2010

Fatigue has slapped a big white label on me reading ’She’s Mine’ so let’s keep this brief.

It’s been one of those days where you’ve got zilch planned and you’re wondering how to while away the hours. You know, as your stomach growls and your body feels like a lump of lead. Then suddenly you’re in the middle of a flurry of activity and you realise that spontaneity can still gatecrash an otherwise boring day and happily take over.

Baran awoke at an unthinkable hour this morning (which was very unlike him as he usually worships the modern marvel of a bed and a duvet). He spent an hour in our bed playing the highly amusing game of fake snoring and fake waking up approximately one hundred and eighty two times before demanding I get up to serve him breakfast. This I did on auto pilot, not really being tempted by the Weetabix and banana mush he ravenously chucked down his throat. I did however, wish that there was some form of shelter other than a café when I took him to the local park and it began to chuck it down. Mostly because the place was positively jumping with the smell of roasted coffee beans. And it was raining outside. And I was cold. And I needed some sort of hot beveragey type comfort.

So a hot water it was then. And a fruit shoot and a piece of carrot cake for the wee one. Yet again, he came up trumps.

How chuffed was I then, when my mate Jo rang and invited me to join her and her twin baby girls to a little trip out to Findhorn Community Foundation. Anything to escape this coffee-scented anguish. So we packed ourselves (and the incredible quantity of baby / toddler equipment) into her little white van and headed out, chased by rainclouds all the way.

It was lovely to amble about the Findhorn community. So interesting to see how people live in caravans, wooden shacks, stone huts as well as beautifully crafted wooden houses with velvety grass roofs. There was an incredible, sunshine-coloured eco house for sale and Jo and I seriously thought about looking into squatters’ rights. I think Baran would happily trade his bed and duvet for a sleeping bag on a floor with under-floor heating. As long as there was plenty of carrot cake on the go.

It wasn’t so lovely to sit in yet another predominantly coffee-scented eating establishment. Ordinarily, I would have been delighted to have discovered the ‘Blue Angel’ café with its extensive range of organic food, fresh ingredients and beautifully described dishes (cream of rocket and cracked black pepper soup – imagine!). But today it was not fun. Exacerbated too, by Baran’s point blank refusal to eat a perfectly scrumptious looking (and smelling) slice of pizza. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a beautiful piece of pizza, and that’s saying something considering my husband crafts the stuff for a living. Honestly, the red onion, the oozy cheese, the finely chopped tomato and pretty red, yellow and green pepper sprinkled like confetti – how could anybody in their right mind refuse that? He proceeded to refuse it an approximate total of thirty seven times even as we walked around the park and it sat, wrapped lovingly in tin foil in the bottom of his buggy. What was up with this child?

I think he’s in on the whole thing. He gets it. He has found yet another way to test Mummy’s self control. This theory was reinforced when we returned home and he left his entirely acceptable dinner of pasta and sauce steaming enticingly on the table, in favour of a plastic croissant and a plastic broccoli floret in a plastic saucepan in his new plastic kitchen. Now tell me that’s not a boy who knows what he’s doing.

So, I’m sure you will agree that I deserved the humongous dinner I served myself tonight, carefully timed to enhance essential X Factor viewing. And I definitely deserved the handmade chocolates Jo so considerately presented to me. But before sleep takes over, I must make sure the remaining choccies are pushed far back into the depths of the fridge. Otherwise, in a sleepy, shuffle-toed stupor, a chocolate breakfast may suddenly seem overwhelmingly appealing in the morning. I think a plastic croissant is a safer bet.