Zac Efron is our science teacher

Littlest wanted to know why her screaming was giving us a headache. Through his pounding skull, Mr Coffee tried to explain about sound waves.

It was Eldest who picked up the Kiddie Science baton.  All you need is some rice, some speakers, and a High School Musical CD. (Okay, you can choose your own CD. You're grown-ups.)

Other optional items include a disembodied Barbie leg with which to spread the rice around, and some Ibuprofen.

Here comes the science bit...


HSM rice from Coffee Lady on Vimeo.

Dear Santa

I would like a dressing table please

Not pork.*

Love, Eldest.

I hope Santa is better at reading her handwriting than we are.

*pink

Making a difference

A few years ago I had a job for a while raising money for a school for disabled children. If you want to talk about job satisfaction, let me tell you, the days I got to open envelopes offering me hundreds or even thousands of pounds were pretty good.

Community grant schemes can make a real difference in an area – and now the Co-operative Community Fund is looking for people to carry out positive work in the community.

The fund is made up of donations from Co-operative members who have chosen to give a percentage of their twice-yearly share of the profits. This year The Co-operative Members have donated £1.2 million to local community groups across the country. 

The Co-operative Community Fund operates on a truly local level – with the money donated by members in each area given back to that region. Projects are allocated by postcode.

Grants vary from a minimum of £100 to a maximum of £2,000. And if I had £2,000 to play with, I wouldn't mind installing a few of the new-style disabled accessible kissing gates on country walks. It's no fun lifting an off-road wheelchair over a stile, but we're lucky that we still can – a disabled adult out in the countryside might just have to turn back.

Groups have to apply for the funding – an application form is available on the Co-operative Community Fund website.

To be successful a group must:

• Carry out positive work in the community (it does not have to have charitable status to apply)
  

And the project must:

• Address a community issue
•  Provide a long-term benefit to the community
• Support co-operative values and principles
• Ideally be innovative in its approach
  

 

The Cooperative Membership Fund




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Feeling the burn (that's the burn of disappointment actually. So it's more of a sting).

So the other night the phone rang, and it was a woman from Sport England who was trying to find out what exercise I did in order to 'plan services in my area'. She had come upon my phone number by getting a computer to choose a random set of digits. This represents the strongest argument I have ever heard for the existence of Artificial Intelligence. The computer, you see, was having a larf.

She kept her identity a secret till the end. On and on she went, asking if I was on any sporting committees and how often I found myself panting. I spent most of the conversation trying to work out what special kind of identity thief would require information on how many children I regularly drove to sporting activities.

When I found out the research was being carried out by Sport England, it all made sense. Her attitude. The way she'd said "Nothing else?" at the end of each question with a mounting despair. Her spluttered "Only two!" when I answered how many continual walks of 30 minutes or more I had taken in the last month. She didn't care about my taking two 15 minute walks a day. She made it very plain that she believed she was talking to the least energetic woman on the planet.

She seemed slightly cheered by the yoga. But then she found out it didn't make my heart rate rise or cause me to pant, and she slid once more into her chasm of despair. At that point I had begun to deeply dislike her, and answered the heart rate question with an incredibly sarcastic "It's yoga."

Did I cycle? Well, I would, but see, my brave green steed has developed squeaky brakes and dodgy tyres and I haven't found the cash to get them desqueaked and undodgied. What would I like to do? I reeled off a list of impressive pursuits including energetic cycling and regular swimming, which I can't even do properly. It didn't take into account at all time or money. It was one of those lists that would find its equivalent in my five-year-old writing the first draft of her letter to Santa: "And twenty Hello Kitty toys, and a DS, and a television in my bedroom and a camera..."

On my desk right now I have a copy of a rather alarming exercise DVD bought in a charity shop, where a camp ice skater in a dance studio full of pot plants springs about whilst holding tins of beans in his hands. This may all work okay in a professional studio with a sprung floor - me doing it at home makes it sound like the whole house is going to fall down.

Despite all my good intentions, I actually could be the least energetic woman on the planet. How about you? How would you fare if the Sport England woman rang?

So this is Christmas

Really. Apparently it is. When we went to spend Eldest's birthday clothes voucher last week, we found that ten million people had rushed to the shops to buy 100 bags each of vital items. The rush is on.

And if you're as stupid as me, and you have let your children grow out of their school blouses, don't even think of bobbing out to get any. You will find yourself in a shop almost entirely stocked with bizarre gifts (really, if any single one of you is thinking of buying this I suggest you don't come back to my blog ever again because we have nothing to say to each other).  The school uniform section will consist of three pairs of trousers for boys, aged 13-14.

Who's The Mummy is running a blog carnival for Oxfam, asking bloggers how to Simplify Your Christmas. To be honest, I find it easy not to panic too much about Christmas. I can read this post again, and remember that just being awake on the day makes it pretty much perfect. A tree, lots of candles, and a variety of different glitter all over the floor is more or less all I want from Christmas. Oh, and sherry.

If you do want to give the Cheryl Cole gift set a miss, as a mother of two girls I recommend as an alternative the Oxfam Unwrapped Give Girls a Headstart gift, aimed at increasing the chances for girls to become educated in communities where girls are often kept at home to help with childcare or household chores.

If this isn't parenting, I don't know what the hell it is

So at 8 o'clock yesterday morning, after a bowlful of that delicious porridge I was busy being so smug about, Eldest informed me via a series of wails that she NEEDED her school PE kit, that it hadn't fitted her since LAST YEAR, and she didn't EVEN KNOW where it was.

Could any of you hear the matching parent-and-child screams coming from The Coffee House that morning? Because I swear I heard the dustbin wagon come partway down the street outside and then back right away again with its reverse alarm beeping in terror.

Today has been much better. Who needs therapy when there's the Marks and Spencer website? I may be back here at the weekend bemoaning the fact that none of the Cotton Rich Stripe Waistband Joggers go anywhere towards fitting my long thin streak of a child, but for now, it's like I lit a whole load of candles and said 'Om' for half an hour.

And then this afternoon Littlest and I cut a box up and made a small room for tiny plastic animals and naked Polly Pockets to play in. Want to see?

 

If anyone is interested in any of the items within the house, a good deal of them are available from John Lewis, since we chopped up a press pack I got from them back in July. That towel, by the way, which Littlest has used as the backdrop for the clock. (An inspired design touch, you have to agree.) The wallpaper. That lamp. That rug. Other items are from an old Charlie and Lola magazine, so may be a little more difficult to source. We're eclectic that way.

And then at bedtime, Eldest and I had a very lovely, intense conversation which left me utterly breathless at just how fantastic my daughter is turning out to be.

Life is so up, so down. Yesterday the PE kit was the last straw; yet another of the blasted heavy balls tumbling out of the air. I was minded all that day to write a post about how hard it all was and how endless and how miserable, how useless I was at it and how awful my kids were and how it had all Gone Wrong.

Tonight I have two wonderful children and a new cardboard house. And no real conclusions to draw.

A short list of things

... from my week

• Very often when I walk from work to pick the Lattes up from school, I meet a couple of neighbours coming in the opposite direction to pick up children from schools on the other side of town. We used to say hello as we passed - just recently we have started high-fiving one another, wordlessly. I cannot tell you quite why, but this makes me ridiculously happy.
  
  
• I have finally managed to con the Lattes into liking porridge. This has involved very large amounts of demerara sugar, but at least now I don't have to make umpteen different breakfasts. I am dropping very large birthday hints to Mr Coffee about this bowl - I already have two cups and a milk jug from this range but I am sure that the porridge bowl would be a life-changer.
  
  
• This Pumpkin and Ginger Teabread is one of the best cakes ever - and I remember it every Autumn when I'm left with the scrapings from the inside of the pumpkin lanterns. Luckily for me, Rowse sent me some free jars of honey which made it into an even easier project since I didn't have to worry about how much honey would be left for breakfast.  I've been buying Rowse honey anyway ever since it was the only thing on the shelves back in 2002 when there was some kind of honey crisis. In addition to the Light and Mild honey, which can be used for baking, they also sent me some Supahoney which has a bit of Manuka honey thrown in for good luck. I don't claim to be an expert on the benefits of Manuka honey, but it does taste very nice in a glass of hot water with a slice of lemon in it, first thing in the morning. Or stirred into a Lemsip, depending on how well today is going for you.

Remember, remember

One last blast this week for Silverpebble's Splash of Colour. We made lanterns.

And then we joined a parade through town shouting about how we were going to burn the traitor Guy Fawkes.

Thing is, I've become rather fond of him.

November

For Silverpebble's Splash of Colour Week, I shall let you into an old family secret - The Coffee House Patented Method of Avoiding Trick or Treating.

We don't like trick or treating. We are miserable people. The Lattes would love to go, but we stand firm. Last year we devised an alternative, which centres mainly around milk laced with food colouring, served in suitably unusual glasses and renamed 'Witches' Brew'; pumpkin lanterns; spooky stories by the fire in flickering candlelight; and absolutely, positively not going outside in the rain and cold.

It also involves cake bribery.

As it is November, this morning I saw my first poppy seller of the year. I love the Royal British Legion poppies; we rarely pass a seller during November without buying or replacing a poppy. Not only are they just so simple and stunning, but as soon as they appear each year I'm reminded of my late stepfather and the Navy stories he would tell over and over again.

I was going to do Autumn leaves, but there are much more talented blogger/photographers out there who can take care of this for us. So one last picture - this is what it looks like to be me, all wrapped up in my woolly scarf.