Royal Doulton

Last Christmas, my mother gave me and Rob aprons. Mine is a Royal Doulton print in heavy heavy cotton, white and blue, and it covers me from neck to shins and wraps right around my front. There's a generous pocket, too. I wear it mainly for bread-baking and occasionally for washing up.

Today was the kind of day were someone had diarrhea on it. While I was in it. And yes, it got on the apron strings which I had to untie.

It's about cultivating an image

This weekend, we were walking along Broad Street, the four of us, when someone stopped Rob. Someone was a young man in baggy jeans and a faded t-shirt, with a ponytail and trendy-looking elastic-jointed walk, oozing hipness from every careless pore. He stopped Rob...

... to admire his cool tshirt.

(Soul Music tour, ancient).

Emer will be three

I'm trying to decide what to wear for her parties (three, at the last count).

In my family, one dresses up to honour special occasions or people - so for Emer's birthday I want to wear things she likes me to wear. Bright colours, then; something she can wear the same of (tie-dyed socks? Stripy socks?); a necklace and a bracelet; funny spiky hair.

She is so wonderful. When she is thwarted by people or physics, she puts down what she's doing - especially if it's doing it ALL WONG - and goes and sits on the bottom step of the stairs. She doesn't like to be spoken to or comforted, at this point - she waves with her arms, and if offered the choice of "Shall I sit with you?" she will say "Go 'way."

She sits quietly, with a very deliberate and exaggerated pout on, until she feels better - or perhaps just more resigned - and then comes back to the people around.

The only time we put her on the bottom step now is to do up her shoes.

I do wonder sometimes whether there's something about birth order here; she's much more convenient and people-pleasing and so on than Linnea is, just as my little sister always was much more "good" than I was. I think we're managing ok and Linnea doesn't feel that we always think Emer's better, though obviously there are times when we have to deal with Emer and Linnea differently because of their different maturities.

They love each other very, very much. They casually hug - an arm each round the other when they are standing close together - in a way I thought Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer made up but actually, maybe real sisters do, sometimes?

Emer can't tell whether baby photos are of her or Linnea, but Linnea can remember all of Emer's.

The way they build each other's realities is astonishing.