I don't know why the caged bird sings

It's July. You know when it's July in the North of England, because of the rain. "Nice weather for ducks," muttered a man who splashed past me in the supermarket carpark with his trolley; I turned on the car radio to hear an advert for a shopping centre. "Come on in," it purred. "It's warm and dry."

This was the selling point. Who cares what shops it had in it?

We have spent the weekend in true English summer style, locked up inside our house. Friends came and brought fantastic spherical flowers and a small baby, which we jiggled till it gurgled. I blame the influence of Blogland entirely for the fact that I forgot to take any pictures of the baby, but made sure to get a range of snaps of the flowers.

I can see my own flowers perfectly well from my kitchen window, thank you. I'm not going out there and getting soaking wet. Last year, Silverpebble sent me a lovely envelope full of flower seeds, which I scattered in my garden. A single evening primrose has come up in my garden - but a stunning patch of flowers has appeared on the other side of next door's lawn.

For a good part of the afternoon we have fought over the Hama beads. We have made several heart shapes and a multi-coloured horse whose tail instantly fell off. All day long, Littlest has been approaching meltdown. We call these her 'pinball moments', when she throws herself around the house in such delirium that there are many tears, many knocks, many plasters. The rain has turned her into a caged animal.

We put on the Zumba DVD to try and exhaust her. Eldest very pointedly put her nose in a book. Any attempts to get her to join in by doing the arm exercises from her physiotherapy programme were met with the kind of teenaged look you wouldn't expect from a ten-year-old.

Tempers are frayed. Eldest flies off the handle and howls at the slightest thing. As soon as an adult back is turned, Littlest is on a chair, trying to pull some high object off onto her head. A frustrated Eldest is violently threatening various family members with the deadly tip of her crutch. A shout comes from the bath. "She's trying to kill me!" Cold cups of tea are abandoned around the house as the demands for help with activities become more hysterical.

As if part of some grand plan, the wheels in the Coffee House have inexplicably deflated: all three tyres on the off-road wheelchair; the tyres on Littlest's bike. Neither Mr Coffee nor I can reinflate them, and no punctures can be found. The gods are laughing: you can't go out there. Even if the rain stops, there's nothing you can do.

Shoes

I'm not a hoarder. As soon as an outfit no longer fits either of the Lattes, it's out of the house. You won't find me with a loft full of babygros.

But the shoes. The tiny shoes.

For years I've been stumbling over my children's first shoes, which kicked around the house idly waiting for something to happen.

Anyone who has what is known in the trade as a 'neurologically typical' child may be looking at the above shoes and thinking, "What cute shoes! Like miniature Doc Martens!" And it's true - in retrospect, they are pretty cool. But if you have a special needs child you may well be sighing. Another pair of Piedro boots. Pair after pair, all the same design.

(At least when Eldest was small and the NHS provided Piedros, I didn't have to tramp around the High Street trying vainly to wedge her unyielding, bulky plastic splints into shoe after shoe. Since her initial diagnosis, I have never really shed a tear in a doctor's surgery. I do, however, weep quite openly in a number of shoe shops.)

Below are Littlest's first shoes. Clarks. My mother jumped on her chance to go into town and buy these one day when I was feeling unwell. I could tell that she felt was Littlest was cruelly ignored, running round like an urchin in her socks. Perhaps she thought we were too traumatised by shoe shops to enter if we didn't absolutely have to.

Anyway. Somewhere we have a polaroid of a confused child in leggings and a massive nappy standing in a shoe shop, surrounded by a cutesy cardboard frame entitled "MY FIRST SHOES'.

You know what you do when something has been kicking around the house for too long? You glue it to a board and stick it on the wall. This is a genius idea. On the floor right now I can see a denim jacket, a sock and an empty packet of chocolate buttons. I can see our walls becoming a LOT more interesting.

The soup of the insane

It was a coincidence - or a demonstration of how I really need to tidy up more - that just as I was reading The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England I moved the microwave to clean behind it and found a sheet of medieval recipes.

We'd picked them up on holiday during a visit to Beaumaris Castle when the whole castle had been taken over by medieval re-enactors. It was a lovely day (they're doing it again this year if you're in the area) when we sat in the sunshire watching the sword-swallowers, jugglers, dancers and firebreathers who entertained us between swordfights.

As we wandered around, a woman on a stall called The Unfound Door handed each of the Lattes a cup of plain cabbage soup, which they not only ate but actually claimed to enjoy.

Naturally we took a recipe sheet. Naturally it fell down the back of the microwave.

Caboches in Potage requires you shred one head of cabbage, 2-3 leeks, 2-4 cups of stock, two onions, and one-eighth of a teaspoon each of ground cardamom and coriander. You can add salt, but since I was using bought stock I had enough salt already. (I never use salt in cooking, except to bake bread.)

I used half a head of leftover white cabbage, and some assorted odd greens that had appeared in a bag from my mother's friend's allotment. I don't know what they were. I assume they were cabbage-ish.

And then you just shove it in a pot, bring it to the boil and simmer for 5-20 minutes, depending on quite how much help your eldest daughter needs with her homework before lunch. There's no faffing about with sweating your onions in the Middle Ages.

Did you think it was going to be horrible? It wasn't. It was very nice, and thankfully I had resisted my 21st-century temptation to chuck in just a bit more coriander, because an eighth of a teaspoon didn't seem like much. There was only one problem.

A note appeared on the chalkboard. It read 'mad soop' and was violently crossed out. Littlest pointed at it, frowning.

(When Littlest was small, I would pick her up from nursery and prattle brightly about  the yummy soup or salad we would be eating for lunch. Solemn eyes would meet mine in the rear view mirror. "No sayad," the child would growl. "No soop.")

"I do not want to eat the mad evil soup," Littlest decided, and no amount of spelling 'medieval' on a bit of paper and talking about knights on horseback was going to convince her otherwise. The mad evil soup remained untouched. (Eldest ate two bowls.)

There are a couple more recipes I'd like to try - so it will be interesting to see if we get the same reaction to a Mad Evil Pudding. Watch this space.

(Winners of my Kung Fu Panda giveaway are magsmcc, David, Pennie and Blatherskite. Congratulations - but if I haven't contacted you by lunchtime that probably means I don't have a contact for you. Let me have one).

This is where I get to feel like Blackbird*

Last week I went to see some live music. (Remember the last time I did this? Two years ago? At this rate, I have about a dozen times more before I retire.)

Anyway, a friend wanted to see The Secret Sisters. And we were just waiting around, beginning to speculate about whether we could actually manage to stand up for an entire evening (weren't they going to put out any chairs?) when we noticed the support act, Alex Hulme, who was singing a song that was so sensitive and beautifully crafted that our jaws dropped a little.

We clapped loudly in our comfortable shoes. Go! we thought. Follow your dreams! Pack your belongings in your spotted hanky - we'll wrap a healthy snack to get you on your way. Are you getting enough green vegetables?

It was one of those moments when you realise where you are in life. A beautiful young man on a stage - and we hoped his mother was proud.



*Blackbird has all the best tunes.


My Kung Fu Panda day out giveaway still has a couple of days to run - go enter! And if you entered under 'anonymous', drop me an email at cappuccino(dot)mum(at)gmail(dot)com so I have everyone's details when the draw closes.