THE FACE OF EVIL

When you have a child, you spend a lot of your time marvelling at their tiny little nose and their big big eyes and their rosebud mouth and their Johnson and Johnson's scented sugar-spun baby hair. (Mostly because you're too tired to do anything fun, like clog dancing or doing tequila shots strapped to the wing of a fighter jet).

Then as they get older, you participate in endless conversations with people about who he/she takes after, or whether their face is getting thinner or fatter. That beautiful face is the main feature of hours and hours of camera footage cluttering up your hard drive, and occasionally you may shell out vast amounts of money to 'professionals' to have that face immortalised in a 10" x 12" canvas style portrait - with matching coasters and mousemats and a keyring - so that you can remember this wonderful stage of their life forever.

THEN, you go to a family fun day. And you do this:

This is Louis - as Spiderman, I think.

Or Darth Maul.

Or a grilled tomato with a pair of sunglasses on.

This amazing work of art lasted approximately five minutes until a tearful incident on the bouncy castle led to what I can only describe as carnage. He spent the rest of the day looking like a shellshocked burns victim jabbering about his trauma to Sky News. Even worse, later on he wiped his red hands all over the CHAISE LONGUE. New parents be warned - face painting ruins your child and your soft furnishings. And he had pink eyebrows for a week.

my nervous breakdown will not be televised

I like watching telly. I watch lots of telly. I watch adverts for the sheer joy of watching how they're going to advertise a Toyota that looks like the last 27 Toyotas (usual answer - shot of it sleekly going through an underpass while paint bombs go off in derelict buildings) . I watch Come Dine With Me, and Timeshares In The Sun and I'm 13, Fat And Pregnant Wot You Gonna Do About It? I watch incessant repeats of Family Guy that are so old they should be examined by archeologists. I EVEN watch River City, Glasgow's impossible-to-export soap opera, which is so amateurish and baffling that it may as well be performed by a pair of giant hands moving some lolly sticks about and speaking Scottish. Yes, it's fair to say that I'm a square eyed, slack jawed, telly addled loon.

So I don't know why I'm surprised that my child is the same. Louis wants to watch telly all the time. If it was up to him, he'd have a telly attached to his forehead that played Cbeebies constantly while he was at the playground or interacting with others.

Today, I took him into town, which involved a hideously middle class trip to Princes Square, lunch, chalk drawing on the steps of the art gallery, an hour and a half in the art gallery drawing and looking at stuff, a trip to the library and 2 journeys on the train. When we got back, we went to the glasshouse in the park, looked at terrapins and geckos, went to the soft play, then to the play park for an hour. To top off this perfect mother routine, on returning home I even baked a cake, until finally giving in and putting on the box.

And still when my husband came home and asked him what he did he said: 'Watched Zingzillas'. I wouldn't mind but Zingzillas features a monkey rock band and some coconuts and it's totally SHIT. I give up. I may as well give him the remote and go to the pub.

GET WRECKED, BUY A PINEAPPLE

The Scandinavians, because they are right about everything - apart from Ace of Base and eugenics - believe that it's healthy to cut loose once a month and get completely hammered. Not like three-glasses-of-wine pissed, but full on weeing-in-a-viking-helmet-and-waking-up-in- a-skip-in-the-Lidl-car-park pissed. Now I'm an adult with responsibilities, I tend more towards dinner and the odd magnum of Sauvignon Blanc, but the other night, my decorum went out of the window.

I should have known it was going to, because I was wearing a bra that was too small for me and I'd been at a children's birthday party all afternoon which featured 22 kids and a very rambunctious game of Musical Statues. Anyway, me and my friend got billy bollocksed and decided it would be a great idea to go to a birthday party that we hadn't been invited to, so we went to Tesco and bought the birthday boy the gift of a lifetime - a pineapple and a packet of Pro Plus. Then we legged it down to the venue which was MILES away and completely empty apart from 4 uncomprehending Polish people, who took one look at our pineapple and shut the doors. So I texted the birthday boy who didn't invite us. He didn't reply. Then I realised it was next week and that now we would never be invited because we had committed a grave social faux pas.

But when you're wearing a bra that's a bit too small for you and you're carrying an exotic fruit, nothing matters. Seriously, single ladies, take a pineapple out on the pull. Everyone loves you - it's a bit like being Carmen Miranda. I even got chatted up by a man who look like Raoul Moat - what more could anyone want?