The Mumpreneur Diaries: Business, Babies or Bust - One Mother of a Year. Mosey Jones
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handbag will always fit
shoes will – almost – always fit
a haircut will always fit (though perms are often regretted).
I’m trying to curb my burgeoning handbag habit. My last ‘score’ was a baby pink Luella for Mulberry. A snip on eBay at £180, the original cost £800 plus. It was practically free. Shoes almost always do fit but as your feet swell a bit when you’re pregnant I’m not sure I can trust their size yet.
This has left a ruinously expensive haircut at the local ‘designer’ salon. A cut and colour sets me back £150. Not Nicky Clarke, I know, but easily a week’s worth of childcare or a week and a half’s maternity allowance. They say trust and openness are the most important elements in a marriage, so I’ll pay in cash so the Husband won’t spot my extravagance on the bank statement. If he spits feathers at my paying £400 for education, he won’t be impressed with £150 worth of salon time. He insists on spending no more than a tenner on a cut. He’s so proud of his thrift I haven’t the heart to tell him how much it shows. That’s the great thing about hair, it grows back. Most of the time.
In the end I get my money’s worth because while I am in the chair and they’re all cooing over the delectable baby, he is violently and copiously sick all over me, the gown, the chair and the floor. Curdled milk mixed with shorn hair and the scent of caramel highlight number 36. This is a small but instructive insight on what life is going to be like if I try to mix babies with business – messy, but we plough on regardless.
Wednesday 13 February 2008
Up to London to see, not the Queen, but our man about the book. He’s keen for me to write a ‘How to’ guide to being a mumpreneur – how you’ll manage your time (badly); how you’ll cope with childcare (expensively); and what the most suitable sectors are for mumpreneurialism (you’re asking me?). Somewhat ironic that I should be putting myself forward as the expert when my own enterprise is still pretty much at the drawing-board stage.
Book Man seems a little shocked when he’s told that I’ve left the Husband in charge of three-week-old Boy Two to come to the meeting, and that he is currently pounding the streets of Fitzrovia with the baby strapped to his front. I tell him that it isn’t going to be any more distracting working and writing a book with a three-week-old than with a three-month-old or three-year-old so, effectively, there’s no time like the present. I don’t mention that there is absolutely no time like the present because, when the maternity pay runs out in September – they tempt you with twelve months off then hit you with the killer that they’re only going to pay you for nine – so a juicy little advance would do very nicely thank you.
I hope that I come across as relatively capable despite the baby brain. I have one eye on the conversation and another on the clock as Boy Two is still doing his one hour on, one hour off trick, and my bosoms are ticking. If I’m not careful, my man with the plan will find his americano turned into a latte.
Duelling with the commuter chaos on my way home only serves to enhance my determination to leave the London limelight for good. Tucked up snugly in his papoose, my erstwhile baby bump now has a baby face, but that doesn’t stop other commuters cannoning off my front with a single-minded determination to get to their destinations in record time, to hell with whoever they flatten on the way. I don’t like playing human pinball any more. I just want to be human.
* Except she has five children and a hedge fund; I have two children and a hedge.
Thursday 14 February 2008
Last year, the Husband made a surprise video compilation of our home movies to the tune of Outkast’s ‘Happy Valentine’s Day’. I always bang on about wanting the flowers, the diamonds (I have a diamond thirst on a zirconia budget) for Valentine’s Day and this cost him nothing. It was the best present I’ve ever had. To make matters worse, when he pulled that romantic rabbit (note: not rampant rabbit – a girl should always be responsible for the purchase of one of those) out of the hat, I’d got him nothing so I felt adored, happy and really, really bad at the same time.
I have high hopes for this year.
I resolved to do what I could on a limited budget and even more limited energy. The Husband has always been a bit of a metrosexual at heart, though his nickname is Muscle Man because he did a bit of bodybuilding when we first met and could never wear a normal-sized shirt because of his massive neck – and arms, back, wrists, chest…Despite the cheesiness, I know that a big box of chocolates and sickly card will still go down well. Although I can’t match the high standards he set last year, I present his gift with a flourish and wait, preparing to blush at my romantic inventiveness.
‘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