Stretching the definition of fun

If you ever see a sign advertising a 'Family Fun Day' - run. Run in the opposite direction. Run to the offy. Run to the airport. Run to the nearest place of worship and swear to God that you will never consider attending another family fun day again. For it says in the Old Testament (King James version, Deuteronomy 22.6) 'And lo, the Lord saw the children of Israel queuing for sinful entertainments, and with a great terribleness he did smite them by charging £2 for an ice cream and seven fucking quid for a Dora The Explorer balloon.'

Of course, this stupid heathen ignored all warnings and took Louis to a family fun day which was - to paraphrase Iggy and his Stooges- NO FUN. The weather started out cold and immediately became blazing hot, meaning I was wading about in furry lined boots and thick tights in 24 degree heat. Kids everywhere were acting like unmedicated schizophrenics - wailing, pooing in the bushes and gnawing on their own legs. There was a bouncy castle that was more popular than Glastonbury, a real fire engine that kids could sit in and relentlessly press the 'nee-naw' button, a selection of lame stalls and an events 'arena' featuring a bum-numbing display of falconry. All the way through this I was clinging onto sanity like Wiley Coyote hanging off the edge of a cliff with a stick of 'ACME' dynamite up his ass. When, I wondered, would the much- touted 'fun' part of this family day begin?

Luckily the tedious birds of prey event was the highlight of the day, in that a falcon called Goose saw his chance for some real fun and fucked off. Watching the handler getting increasingly desperate and dry mouthed as his prize bird flew up into a thermal 3 miles over Glasgow was actually pretty funny. Running out of things to say apart from 'Goose? GOOOOOOOSE! I'm supposed to be going out tonight!' the crowd grew bored and he was left frantically swinging his meat for half an hour on his own. This had a knock on effect on the running order, holding up the following act, the Ducks of Hazzard. I amused myself for a while imagining the performing ducks in their dressing room wearing dicky bows and bitching about falcons ('Darling, he's so unprofessional - he's not even a real goose').

Then five minutes later, my friend's child went missing, causing even more obscenely high stress levels and much bollocking when he was found. After that my friend's other child looked like she was spoiling for an asthma attack, Louis broke out in a blotchy heat rash that made him look like he was made of Spam, and I got candy floss stuck in my teeth. Oh yeah, and then I bashed my head getting into the taxi in the way home and cracked my skull so hard thought I was having a brain haemorrhage. It still hurts. It ALL still hurts.

Fun.

And the ducks were shit.


I AM A FIRST CLASS DIV

One morning a week I start work in Edinburgh at 9am, thus I have to stumble bleary-eyed out of bed at 6 to be at the train station for 7. (In some countries, this has replaced cutting off people's hands as punishment for petty crimes). As I was not on the ball, I pressed the wrong button and when I was on the train, the guard informed me that I had stupidly paid over the odds for a first class ticket. Still, I thought I'd better make the best of my expensive faux pas and I wafted into the hallowed Scotrail 1st class compartment, feeling like Lauren Bacall in Murder On The Orient Express.

God, what a disappointment. No flunky appeared to carry my Louis Vuitton trunk, and the only perk I was offered was a pre-wrapped cinnamon bun that looked like a dog poo with raisins in it. Meanwhile, behind the glass sliding doors I could hear commuters laughing and having a whale of a time while I sat in air-conditioned silence with a Chinese tourist who was uncomprehendingly reading a copy of the Scotsman. Oh, how I longed to be back with the great unwashed! To feel what they feel, see what they see! To try out my happy hardcore ringtones with no regard for other commuters! To talk loudly into my phone about meetings! To read the Metro letters page while sitting next to someone with bad breath from Falkirk! Man, it's tough living in a gilded cage. That's what P. Diddy must feel like all the time.

Defrost pie, kick ass

The other day, a work colleague said to me: 'You look like a woman who's cooked a few steak pies in her time.' Of course, my earhole filter heard this as 'Whoa, ya chubby bitch- lay off the Fray Bentos!' and I immediately launched at him with a blunt object. It was only when I was fretfully dabbing at his bleeding head that I realised that he was asking for specific pie defrosting advice and he meant I look like I'm a CAPABLE COOK.

Having spent about 34 years of my life looking like (and actually being) someone who would burn toast/kill your goldfish/forget to take her knickers off before she gets in the bath, this is worrying. In terms of sexual allure, this must mean I've jumped the shark and landed on Mum Island, where everyone knows a really good recipe for hidden vegetable pasta sauce but nobody is getting any - apart from for the purposes of procreation. It means that I am no longer Top Shop, I am John Lewis (larger lady department). It means that metaphorically speaking, I have cracked heels and grey pubes and think that David Cameron is 'dishy'.

But so it goes. While I wish I could be a drunken gobshite floozy forever, in 2007 my Mum Island passport was stamped with indelible ink and now my citizenship is starting to show. And you know what, I'm proud of my new found skillz. After all, in the past 3 years I have been on a crash course of cooking, coping, cleaning, crying and carrying. And I've learned many things, such as:

1) Children are like drunk, short tempered chimps and they should be locked up
2) You must keep on top of your domestic tasks even if they make you feel like Sylvia Plath, because otherwise you and your children will die of a flesh eating bug
3) Give your child healthy meals otherwise they will turn into toothless fat prawns who wear 'Future Wag' t-shirts and break all the chairs at school with their lardy arses
4) Often you will be called on to be resourceful, so make sure you know about knots and shit
5) You will never, never get a chance to do anything you want to do ever again but you will be so tired you won't remember what those things are anyway.
6) Mums are totally hard as nails. Like cage fighters with 7 bellies.

In fact my newly acquired Mum powers came in handy on Saturday night. I'd had a trying day stuck in the house with Louis - who was acting like Mariah Carey after discovering that the flowers in her dressing room were £2 carnations from the Jet garage - and I was at the end of my tether. Luckily, I had a night out planned and went to the West End for a drink. All was well until a twentysomething student twat hijacked the taxi me and my friend were getting into and wouldn't budge. In previous years, I would have been intimidated but all I could see was an overgrown 15 stone toddler in a Superdry t-shirt. I yelled at him to get out several times, which didn't work. So I got in, got hold of his arms, and physically dragged him out of the cab, leaving him to have a wee tantrum on the pavement.

Mind you, he got off lightly. If I'd been feeling really evil I would have spat on a hanky and wiped his face as well.

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?

10 ways to deal with toddler tantrums

1. Gently but firmly stand your ground
2. Desperately offer piffling bribe such as raisin or organic cheesy puff
3. Shout like Ian Paisley being attacked by hornets
3. Descend into terrible melancholy
4. Plead with the devil child to spare your soul
5. Rock backwards and forwards gibbering
6. Reel around the room as you are hit between the eyes with a copy of 'Calm Down Boris'
7. Uselessly reason with them using laughable phrases like 'you're making mummy sad'
8. Wonder whether child will end up in prison
9. Wonder whether you will end up in prison
10. Go into another room, turn up the telly and smoke an enormous bong

11. write them out of your will (optional)

CARRIE ON CAMEL

Although you couldn't get me to watch Sex and the City 2 if you skewered my bumhole with a Manolo and carried me aloft to the nearest Cineworld, I have been unfortunate enough to see the trailer - which looks like a particularly far-fetched Middle Eastern themed Playmobil set. The funniest bit though, is one that will bring a bitter smile to any mother who has ever had to look after their own children without the 24 hour help of a well-meaning grey-haired Polish nanny called Magda. 'Being a mother is sooooo hard' says Charlotte to Miranda as they clink cocktails and drip with designer frippery. 'I know...' says Miranda. 'That's why we sometimes need to take a break.' IN A SEVEN STAR HOTEL IN ABU DHABI. Anyway, nothing that will ever be written about Sex and The City can ever measure up to this brilliant article by Seattle journalist Lindy West. Unfortunately Ms West makes me even more depressed than Carrie and her clip-clopping tranny friends in that she is so wildly funny and insightful that I may as well give up writing forever and get a job in Poundland. Damn you, empowered modern women.

22 things I love about the number 22

The number 22 bus from Edinburgh's Princes Street to Ocean Terminal in Leith has to be one of the great journeys of the world. From elegant Georgian architecture to delightful junkies smacking their kids, it's a smorgasbord of human triumph and human faeces. Before it gets replaced by a new-fangled tram, here's are 22 things I love about the 22 bus and its route.

1. It's pink!

2. The blind man who stops every bus yelling 'Are you the 22?' (Note to blind man: it would maybe help if you took off your ipod - are you a glutton for punishment or what?)

3. The 'clientele': ranging from Scottish government workers and urban professionals to fragrant homeless people.

4. It's gay friendly: the 22 passes Priscilla's drag bar and Number Eighteen, a gay massage parlour. I love Priscilla's. Sadly I've never been in there, but yesterday, scrawled on the window in semi-literate luminous marker pen was the legend: 'TONIGHT - Miss Kitty Litter'. Genius. And if you're a fan of that little known drag act 'E.Coli', on St Patrick's day they offer free Irish Stew. Unless 'irish stew' some kind of niche gay euphemism?

5. Unexpected pathos: In the sheltered wheelchair ramp at the side of Majestic Wine lives an old man with a white beard and dreads - dodgily but quite accurately known to the locals as 'Black Santa'. Or at least he did live there until the powers-that-be at Majestic cruelly boarded up his house. Santa, if by chance you've got a laptop and you're sitting in Starbucks using the free Wi-fi, I wish you good luck in your new home in a cardboard box on the motorway.

6. The joy of overhearing the conversations of stupid people: 'God, there's no worse feeling than missing a bus is there? It's awful. It just feels worse than anything.' I heard a girl say to her friend yesterday. (You sure about that? How about waterboarding? Losing your entire family in a fire? Having your fingernails ripped out by Triads? No. Apparently nothing. Duh.)

7. Edinburgh bus rules. In Glasgow, everyone piles on, fists flying. In Edinburgh you have to wait for people to get off before you get on. V. civilised.

8. The CCTV. Check your hair in the bus telly as you get off.

9. The amusing shop names of Leith Walk. The Yummy House, The Spicy Pot, The Cat's Miaou, Lolo's Gemstone, and Chimei, which I can't go past without internally yelling 'CHIMAAAAI' in the voice of Timmy from South Park. Not forgetting Borland's Darts and Television (because throwing darts at the television is FUN!)

10. The S&M Hotdog: on the way to Leith shore, the 22 goes past a snack bar with an enormous fibreglass hotdog standing outside it. With a deranged expression on its sausage face, it stands there gleefully slathering itself with mustard and ketchup, waiting to be devoured. Weird.

11. Watching the inevitable slide down the social scale from the bottom to the top of Leith Walk. Bottom of Leith Walk - Italian delis, theatregoers, groups of well-heeled Spanish children on school trips. Top of Leith Walk - lepers with nae teeth.

12. The silvery glistening delights of Leith Shore. The water of Leith is really quite beautiful on a clear morning, even with dead ducks and Farmfoods carrier bags floating in it.

13. God, finding 22 good things about a frigging bus is hard.

14. The bus stop is right outside the Disney store, which means I can watch Tom and Jerry cartoons through the shop window while I wait.

15. It's never late. Or early. If you miss it, there's always another one along. It's just always there. In fact, it's so reliable that you could probably phone it at 3 am and cry about getting dumped and it'd be all like 'oh, don't worry, he was a bastard anyway.'

16. You can play ned bingo.

17. I've never had to stand up on it, ever.

18. Once this total loony got on and started singing the complete works of Gilbert and Sullivan under his breath at super fast speed. It was a virtuoso performance.

19. It deposits you at Ocean Terminal, where you can eat and go shopping - providing you only want a helium balloon from Birthdays and a M&S sandwich.

20. It stops outside an aquarium shop which has a sign on the door saying 'No Dogs. We have a cat.' (WHAT ABOUT THE FISH??)

21. It goes past Gayfield Square *giggles like an idiotic 9 year old*

22. Er, that's it.

wind and pish

If I've got a hangover and a child to entertain, (a rare occurrence I hasten to add- ahem) I feel a sense of terrible desperation - to cover up the fact that Amstel is coming out of my pores by overcompensating on the Fun Mum front. With a lightweight giggly hangover it works a treat, and it's a seamless transition from drunk and disorderly to 'hilarious woman rolling around in the soft play area with her knickers on her head'. However, when I've been out til 1 am and the bloody woman upstairs has her washing machine on ALL NIGHT directly above our bed, and Louis gets up at seven saying 'want Malties want Eatabix want Snap Crackle Pop' Fun Mum is replaced by Mentally Unstable Alkie Bipolar Mum who acts like Mr Tumble one minute and Ed Gein the next and says stupid, guilt-ridden things like 'I know, let's go on a family day out to a wind farm!'

So off we went to freeze our tits off at the Whitelee wind farm and visitor's centre. God knows what I was expecting, but fuck me, it was windy. The kind of windy that gives everyone hair like Howard Jones and grimacing faces like people from Ayrshire. The turbines started giving me the fear, with their strange swooshing and monstrous War of the Worlds dimensions - the wind chill factor was about minus 2, then Louis tripped up on a rock and cried and I had to carry him for about a mile up a hill as he whimpered at the SHEER BLOODY WINDINESS OF IT ALL. Conclusion: wind farms are too windy. Do not leave the house ever.

LOUIS SPOILS RECORD STORE DAY BY NOT UNDERSTANDING CONCEPT OF ALPHABETIZATION

Even though I know children and 25 year old indie music obsessives generally don't mix, me and my husband decided to get back in touch with the people we used to be and attend Record Store Day at Monorail, Glasgow's finest vegan vinyl hipster village. Of course, we didn't buy any records because we're skint, but it somehow felt important to stand near people who had, so we took Louis along to experience this special day. Unfortunately I'd forgotten that Louis' favourite game when in Monorail is to take all the laminated A-Z cards out and re-catalogue them in the idiosyncratic style of someone who doesn't actually know what the alphabet is. In indie record store terms this is a crime akin to wearing a Lighthouse Family t-shirt and doing a dump on Daniel Johnston. Must sit him down and teach him the error of his ways - filing Times New Viking next to Tom Tom Club = Naughty Step. Tsk tsk.