The Mumpreneur Diaries: Business, Babies or Bust - One Mother of a Year. Mosey Jones

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      ‘Umph…whaaa—’ is his response when I lay his truffles on his bare chest as he wakes up.

      ‘Your valentine, sweetheart,’ I coo. It is quite tricky to maintain the turtle dove act as Boy Two has been chewing my bosoms off all night and the last thing I feel is flirty, but I think it best to have a go. Besides, he can’t cash the cheques my body is writing as he has 40 minutes to get to work and it’s hard to manage even a quickie when the clock radio sets off stirrings in Boy One’s room across the hall.

      ‘It’s what?…It’s today?…It’s, um, thanks. Haven’t got you anything, y’know,’ he admits, sleepily.

      Still thinking that somewhere may be a gift money can’t buy, I bat those lashes still not glued together by sleep and reply: ‘That’s OK, darling, you’ve got all day.’

      ‘Mm, I can’t afford anything – we’ve just had a baby, you know.’

      Really? I hadn’t noticed.

      ‘And I haven’t got time to shop ’cos I’ll be late home. The boss wants to go over the grants. I don’t think we’ve got a hope in hell, but she wants us to try all the same. Probably won’t be before 10 pm. That’s OK, isn’t it.’ It isn’t a question. On that note he stumbles off into the bathroom, scratching a buttock and leaving me with murder on my mind.

      On top of this, the birth of his second son last month has still gone unmarked, though, to be fair, all he managed on the birth of the first were flowers from the supermarket and a Pot Noodle, so the bar was not set high. (That said, a Pot Noodle was the thing I most wanted in the world at that point, all sanity being out of the window as I was probably still high on pethidine.) This is the second time in as many months he’s missed a Hallmark moment. Not that I’m keeping count…

      A bad day is made worse by having a trolley/car interface in Sainsbury’s car park. Somewhat unfairly, the trolley wins. A large, angry gash appears down the passenger side of my car, denting both doors. The mental cash register rings up four figures with a ‘Ding!’. It may only be a Fiat Multipla rather than an Audi, or a Porsche, but it is my Multipla. It is my 12-month-old Multipla and the only car I have ever bought from new. In places, if you can get beyond the trodden Hula Hoops and chocolate raisins, it still even has some new-car smell. And now it has a stupid, stupid hole in the side.

      The Husband isn’t best pleased but I blame him for it anyway. If he hadn’t been working so late on grant applications and had been at home bathing and feeding the kids, I might have had a chance of some shut-eye and therefore wouldn’t have been so spaced out as to prang the car. He retorts that surely I’d prefer he spent his time finding a full-time paying job rather than greasing Boy Two’s creases with nappy cream. I have to admit, grudgingly, that he has a point. However it’s still all his fault. On principle.

       Friday 15 February 2008

      When I was doing PR for a book I wrote a while back, I did the rounds of BBC local radio. This usually meant sitting in a little booth at Western House in central London, listening to a DJ in a far-off land via a pair of headphones and having a surreally pally conversation with the wall. One of the interviews, however, was with my local station, BBC Radio Berkshire, so it was just as easy to pop down the road and grace them with my presence. We had such a hoot that they invited me back again, and again, and again. What was a one-off puff for a book has now turned into a regular Friday slot doing the papers with Henry Kelly, the avuncular Irish broadcaster of Classic FM, Game for a Laugh and Going for Gold fame.

      Though all of my stints are unpaid, I enjoy my weekly banter over the airwaves. Every now and again I entertain thoughts of sliding effortlessly into a job as a presenter but mostly I stick to the reality, which is that it’s a bit of a laugh and handy if I ever need somewhere to plug anything. In fact, I don’t fancy the thought of being replaced, which is why I go back less than a month after Boy Two’s birth.

      Throughout last year, my growing bump had been the sole topic of conversation on Henry’s show. He delighted in telling me that ‘boys make a disgrace of ye’. When I occasionally turned up on the Saturday show too, the DJ looked petrified that I’d pop on his studio floor while he was inadequately stocked with towels. Henry also kept threatening to send the radio car round to the Royal Berks maternity ward for a live outside broadcast of the happy event. I had to subtly inform him that of the emergency numbers pinned to the fridge, the outside broadcast unit at BBC Radio Berkshire was not one.

      They probably think it’s mad that a woman with a three-week-old baby is so keen to get back on air. But, now that I have some possible projects in the pipeline and there is still a rabid PR girl lurking inside, I’m damned if I’m going to let free airtime pass me by.

      The bonus is that Henry’s Producer Man is quite happy to look after Boy Two while I’m on air. Breastfeeding, burping and nappy changing aren’t quite compatible with companionable banter on-air about the state of Reading Football Club’s relegation prospects. I’m not at all worried about how Boy Two will react to a bosomless stranger for an hour or so, but how is poor old Producer Man to cope? Since the episode in the hairdresser’s, Boy Two has been affectionately renamed ‘the vomit comet’.

       Sunday 17 February 2008

      On a visit to worship at the chubby feet of Boy Two, Middle Sister suggests I get into child modelling. Well, not me, obviously, but the offspring. Once I’ve recovered from the laughing fit I have to concede that she has a point. My children aren’t astoundingly beautiful by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, Boy Two’s passport photo is back and in it he is doing a fine impression of a Hungarian shot-putter – male or female, take your pick. Now, naturally I think that the kids are stunning, but that’s a mother’s prerogative, along with believing that everyone else’s children have appalling manners and are borderline ADHD.

      However, Boy One certainly fits the wholesome, outdoorsy image favoured by kiddie catalogues – Boden and their ilk. Boy Two’s bottom is just crying out for a Johnson’s Baby Wipe to be artfully draped across it. Middle Sister says that a friend of her boyfriend’s is a talent scout for this sort of thing and that she’ll send over some pictures. It isn’t really morally wrong to send a three-year-old out to work to support his parents’ Merlot habit, is it?

      After Middle Sister has left I crank up the internet and look into this modelling malarkey. Children don’t have to be ‘overly beautiful’ (good), just ‘clear-skinned and bright-eyed’ (would chocolate-smeared with unidentifiable foodstuffs in the hair count?). They also have to be ‘sociable, good at listening to instructions and carrying them out with the minimum of fuss’. This is all right for Boy Two who, having just discovered his smile, flirts with anything that moves, making for a very slow journey round the supermarket. Smiling babies are an absolute granny magnet.

      Boy One, however, may prove a little trickier. Massively photogenic (like his mother, natch), he does have a tendency to try to crawl inside my clothes when he meets new people. It doesn’t take long for him to get over himself and start showing off like a pro, but probably long enough for ad men to get bored and move on to the next angel-faced urchin. Equally: ‘Bad manners or sulkiness will not be tolerated.’ Boy One’s manners are fine but I’m a little sceptical about his Tourettelike penchant for bellowing ‘POO!’ for no good reason. He also does a nice line in teenage sulks if things aren’t going his way. (What will he do when he’s a teenager – behave like a toddler? It’s not beyond the realms of imagination.)

      Nor does it bode well that shoots can take ‘two to СКАЧАТЬ