Look at me! Look at me!

The image on my lovely new header is courtesy of the fantastic Martin Chester at litfest.

Not knowing who your friends are

I tell you, the reason I'm online today is mumsnet. An online community for mothers, I fell on it a few years ago when I was working from home and became a complete addict. There were all these other mothers on it, and they were great - they were sarcastic and imperfect, and they helped me learn how to bring my children up without killing them.

They told me loads of useful stuff. How to bake a birthday cake, how to make playdough from scratch, and what seeds to sow in my hedge. I found out how to clean my house with the insanity that is flylady; that Poisson Rouge could entertain the Lattes for hours; that I could sell old books on Green Metropolis; that I could get away with wearing pencil skirts and killer heels even at 38; and how to paint the spindles on my staircase (with my hand in a disposable glove and an old sock with paint on it, in case you need that information sometime). I found out that women you just don't know can be very, very caring and very, very funny. When I was frantic they calmed me down, and when I was miserable they cheered me up.

But lately I've found I just don't want to be there. I've realised that the website that changed all kinds of things about the way I am can't change the 15-year-old in me that worries that nobody likes her. (In real life, she's quite happy, thanks, and has no problems in this area anymore). I have spent the best part of four years chatting away to a load of women I had come to think of as my friends - despite the creeping realisation that if I fell off the planet tomorrow none of them would notice I had gone.

Lately the realisation has got less creeping. It has started STAMPING. Like Godzilla.

It's nothing personal. It's the nature of internet communities. People come, and people go, especially during the early years of having children. I don't need to know how many times a week to bath my newborn anymore. I don't have questions to ask about toilet training. And as new mothers join, and names I don't recognise start to fill up the conversations, I'm in danger of turning into some crazy has-been cabaret act, jumping around and shedding sequins in my desperate attempts to retain popularity. It's not seemly for a woman of my age, even if I can still wear the costumes.

I love mumsnet, and I always will. And if I ever want to know the answer to the kind of question that makes Mr Coffee roll his eyes and wander off, I will always know where to go. Or if Mr Coffee is out of town on business, and I find myself watching Lord of the Rings on TV with a glass or two of wine and want to talk about Sean Bean's, er, acting skills - well, you know where to find me.

But the playgroups are all over for me for this lifetime, and it's getting harder and harder to keep in touch with my real friends. It's time to ring them when I want a chat. It's time to move on.

Bill Granger, I fear for my skirt and it is all your fault

Oh, Bill. Bill, Bill, Bill, Bill, Bill.

When the Eldest Latte was 2, I bought a skirt in the sale. It was gorgeous - red velvet, a full-length skirt, and despite her shaking her head and saying "No, mummy" as I stood in the changing room, I decided what did a two year old know about velvet, and bought it.

For six years, said full-length skirt has sat around waiting for me to get the sort of life that it deserved.

It never happened.

This week I took it to the alterations shop and asked them to turn it into a knee-length velvet skirt. It will give it a new lease of life. My skirt and I will never be seen apart.

But six years ago, I couldn't bake at all. And if anything is threatening my reunion with this lovely item of clothing, it is Bill Granger's chocolate and banana loaf.

More water! More water for the rainsoaked garden

Today was the second day of summer. Yes, I know it is October. But I have had two good gardening days since the May Bank Holiday, and today was one of them.

Mostly this summer we have just watched the rain pour down the kitchen window, and on the rare occasions I have ventured out there - usually to hang out some washing which came in a few hours later, wetter than it started - it has been like a nightmare landscape, with long wet grass, huge fat slugs and looming, blackened sunflowers.

The Little Lattes like gardening. Well, to clarify, they like getting things wet, digging (the Eldest Latte used to spend hours doing this), and shouting at ants (this is the Littlest Latte's department). So here they are, getting something wet - some new flowers, and Mr Coffee's acer, which we have planted in the ground after it nearly died of a lack of water during the May Bank Holiday. It has had plenty - plenty - of water since.

(In the foreground you can see the lovely autumn colour of one of our three blueberry bushes. This year the Coffee House planned to spend the summer eating bowlfuls of homegrown berries - raspberries, strawberries and blueberries. In the end we ate four strawberries, all of which ripened on different days, giving the Little Lattes the chance to eat half a strawberry each, once a week for a month.)

I'm 83, you know

I am turning into a little old lady.

The Littlest Latte is growing up. She is in preschool five days a week. Next September she will be in school. In less than three months she will be four, and I will no longer be a Mother Of Small Children.

What's more, I don't seem to have learned anything. All the memories I thought I was storing up for my old age seem to have fallen out of my head. It has been my job to keep children alive for 8 years, but I can't actually recall how I did it. When faced with a new baby, I have turned into one of those irritating mother-in-law types who pick them up when they don't need it and can't remember how old they are when they wean. I now know why my own mother-in-law thought the Littlest Latte was late talking when she refused to utter a coherent sentence at six months old. You forget; and all babies look the same age until they get a school uniform on.

A couple of days a friend rang me and told me how grateful she had been for my advice on new motherhood when her first child was born. She had passed it onto so many people, she said. It was the most important advice from anyone at the time and she remembers it to this day. She repeated some of it back to me and good grief it was good. Trouble is I can't ever remember coming up with it. I came off the phone convinced she had mixed me up with someone else, apart from the fact I had given it to her in Brucciani's cafe in Preston, and I always remember a cafe.