Happy New Year and other three word phrases

Last week, my youngest children joined the sixth form at their school. After much moaning, they condescended to stand in the garden and have their photograph taken in their school uniform to mark the event. "Why Mum?", they complained. Because it's only two weeks since I took you to nursery school - or at least, that's how it feels!

This is the start of the new year for me. Twenty four years of autumn terms marking new school years and so we begin again. Twenty four years done and only two to go before the last two flee the nest (probably) and twenty eight years of hands-on, sleeves-up parenting will have come to an end. It's all a bit scary really.

So whilst I am spring cleaning (yes, really!) and getting into those bedrooms which have been almost impenetrable for the last two months - either because they were occupied till nearly lunchtime by comatose teenagers or because, even if I could get in the door, I couldn't find the carpet to vacuum it - I have been looking back on what has been a really epic summer in so many ways.

Cricket and tennis started the summer here with training done and matches played, or not, between showers, and sport was rationed according to GCSE study demands. Then there were the dreaded exams which seriously stretched my maternal resources. I never cracked the conundrum of what to say when one twin gets in the car, post-exam, and tells me it was cool, paper finished, read through and all fine and then the other one gets in and says that it was a nightmare, didn't get to the last question and how everyone thought it was impossible. Nope, still don't know what to say...

Once the exams were behind us, we galloped off to America for our fabulous trains and boats and planes trip to Chicago, San Francisco, California and Las Vegas. Lots of lovely and amazing memories to be stored up for ever and a really special time with children 3 and 4 who will, like the swallows who have crapped all over the garden shed floor, be gone before we know it.

Then a few weeks at home before our great trip to name the house in Guernsey and stay with our brilliant and very dear friends in their amazing new home. And of course, those weeks were completely dominated by the Olympics - more wonderful, more emotional, more just jubilantly British than anyone could possibly have imagined - except maybe Boris Johnson who clearly has a mind differently wired from anybody else. Perhaps his terrific bonkersness is a sort of embodiment of how we are perceived across the world. Who knows?

For me, so ridiculously and often irrationally patriotic at the best of times, I have spent more time in front of the telly, frequently in tears, than I care to admit. But not a moment wasted because those extraordinary Olympians and Paralympians are such an antidote for our celebrity-stained world. And of course, we actually went to the Games. I have met so many people recently who didn't go through the tortuous process of trying to get tickets and who now so bitterly regret it. It was a once-in-a-lifetime.

And so to a rather traumatic results day (parents of twins: you will know what I mean) and we have YES! got a full set of GCSEs and despite some rather hasty A-level-choice-switching to play to our new-found strengths, the term has now begun and life is returning to something like normal.

I could and nearly did write this blog last week but there was one final piece of the jigsaw for me and I didn't want to tempt fate by predicting it. A few weeks ago, someone asked me for a stand-out memory of the Olympics. This is a tough question and after quite a bit of thought and a whole host of possible choices, I came up with the moment when Andy Murray won gold. No question, it was the only prize in tennis Roger Federer has never won and he wanted it but Andy denied him and the British public, for once, were behind him all the way. They called it the fifth slam and it was, so imagine how thrilled and delighted I am that Andy has now won the US Open. When he said his overwhelming feeling was one of relief he spoke for us all!

Finally to the three word phrases: I went to a hen night last weekend. I am not generally good at hen nights - spending the evening with a big group of women with a lot of booze on board is, for me, quite intimidating but I went and had, honestly, a very good evening. Before the do, as it were, we were all asked to describe ourselves in three words. I wasn't witty - though I wish I had been - but truthful. However I did ask the children if they could help me with this. One child decided not to get  involved, one was utterly charming and said nice things about me only to be called a creep by the others, and the other two came up with the following: loud, grumpy, bossy, weird, strict and funny. So much for my parenting skills!

The House at Cow Corner (with apologies to A A Milne)

We've just come back from a short jaunt to Guernsey to stay with our lovely friends, A and A, in their amazing new home. We had a brilliant time with them, the fabulous Grannie Annie and their children who came and went much like ours do at home. Not only was it a lovely pre-exam results trip (to take our minds off tomorrow's results - ho hum) but we were there on a mission, the roots of which go back some three years to our last visit to this glorious island...

We go back a long way with A and A. My beloved was at school with A and there are pictures of the two of them from those long ago days with very dodgy haircuts looking very slim and youthful in their various school team strips. We went to each others' weddings - on Guernsey and in Yorkshire - and we have godparented each others' oldest children. Over the years, there have been a few trips to Guernsey with tiny, medium-sized and now rather large children and it's always a treat.

Three years ago we stayed at the house they had recently bought. The house was not quite in the A-and-A mould we have known over the years but the view was spectacular - an uninterrupted vista across the sail-dotted sea to Herm. In the hall of the house, there was a model of the home they intended to build on the site. It looked like Thunderbird Tracy Island right down to the swimming pool!

During the trip that year, there were a few cricket elements, not least because number 3 was with us and the Ashes was on. So when we weren't messing about in boats and on beaches, doing Scottish dancing (yes, really!) and barbequeing, the cricket was on the television. Also staying was a young man who was playing for the MCC against Sark (a rather unlikely venue for a cricket match) and we all went by boat to watch and support. So cricket was much on our minds.

One evening after dinner there was a discussion about what to call the new house, once the old house had been demolished and Thunderbird Tracy Island had been built in its place. Number 3's voice from the sitting room where cricket was dominating the evening television schedule proposed naming the house after a fielding position and suggested Cow Corner - somewhere between mid-wicket and wide long-on apparently.

Three years later and we're back on Guernsey - my beloved, numbers 1, 3 and 4 and number 1's boyfriend and we're here for the naming ceremony. While the house was being built - and it is amazing, making the spectacular view an integral part of the family home in a way that I couldn't have begun to imagine - Cow Corner was translated into Guernsey patois and became Couin de Vacque. Number 3 is given the honour of revealing the new house name, carved in stone by the gate, by pulling away the Guernsey flag. It's a great moment, with family and those involved in the design and build present and we are so thrilled to be a part of it. So in this most beautiful spot, there is a fabulous and unique house, proudly named by a Yorkshireman, translated into the local dialect and celebrating the game we love. Nice!

Postscript: While we were waiting for our plane this morning at Guernsey Airport, number 3 spotted the New Zealand cricketer, Lou Vincent. When we landed at Manchester, he introduced himself to the one-time opening bat for the Kiwis and very friendly he was too. Apparently he had playing cricket on Herm - how could we have missed that!

The Glorious Sound of Leather on Willow

When they talk about the Olympic legacy of people trying new sport, I'm not sure this is what they had in mind...

On Thursday evening, we were in the pub - me, child 4 and the intrepid granny - for the weekly quiz night, along with the singing, dancing doctor and Il Presidente of the village cricket club. Each Saturday during the season, our village turns out three teams to play in the Nidderdale League for this is a cricket village. Disaster was about to strike. There were enough players for two teams but not enough for three. Not fielding a third team would mean a deduction of six points and would put them in danger of relegation. Il Presidente was a man on a mission. He would not let this happen.

The singing, dancing doctor has two sons who are brilliant at cricket but are currently away on a World Challenge trip to the Far East so, in his sons' absence, he bravely volunteered. Cue the arrival with classic timing of my beloved. He had been on an all-afternoon lunch and had wisely arrived back from Leeds transported by bus and taxi. He was very relaxed. When asked if he would turn out for the village third team, he smiled and willingly agreed. If we'd asked him to do the Olympic pole vault, go bungee jumping, no doubt the answer would have been the same. Then, surprisingly, number 4 child - the small, beautiful one, volunteered too! Excitedly, with only one bar of signal in the notorious mobile phone black spot which is our village pub, Il Presidente texted the third team captain. Job done. Ten players so no deduction. They didn't have to win, they just had to turn up.

Fast forward to Saturday morning and the realisation of the task ahead had hit. Number 4 was kitted out in number 3's old whites whilst he was playing for the second team that afternoon. My beloved was promised kit by the team captain and off they went, with some trepidation to our next door village where the third team have their home ground. Intrepid granny and I followed in support.

We arrived to find that the singing, dancing doctor was dressed in his number 2 son's kit and looked the part which, coupled with his sons' own aptitude for the game, had convinced the skipper to put him in as batsman number 3. He went in (looking fabulous!), got a run and got out (still looking fabulous and so excited he hadn't got a duck!). Then other proper batsmen went in and were out but a half decent score was accumulating and things were looking up.

Then the legend that is Wilf who is a septuagenarian and normally bats, if at all, at number 11 went in at number 8. Not for long, sadly though runs were still mounting up, and suddenly he is walking off and my beloved is walking out to bat - 37 years after the last time he had done so. I worried: would he have a heart attack (fortunate that his doctor would be present) or split the captain's trousers which were snug to say the least!

He faced the first ball, he looked the part, he hit it ... over the boundary for four! The crowd gasped. The proper batsmen commented on his timing, "he's still got it" and he continued to amaze us - actually running between the wickets, but only singles. Then the last proper batsman at the other end got out and suddenly the small one, helpfully padded and helmeted up by the skipper strolled out to bat with her father.

"Will they be nice?" screeched intrepid granny who was assured by our captain that they would. Fielders crowded round the bat and she hit the ball. In fact, she went on to double the singing, dancing doctor's score before putting up a catch. The fielder sportingly apologised to the small one and she led, long hair blowing in the wind from under her helmet, the fielders and her father back in for tea. Number 4 out for 2, my beloved 11 not out and a total score of 140. Respect!

They didn't win, they didn't get a batting point but no deductions and the third team live to survive another day. Later in the pub, number 4 has been invited to play for the village ladies' team and play in a girls' cricket tournament in September and my beloved was asked if he could play next Saturday. Mercifully he can't - not least because he may not be able to walk tomorrow.

Proud doesn't even begin to describe it. And number 3's team won. A day to remember.

Flying the Flag - our Olympic Story

You know the way that small children say "he's been!" on Christmas morning when they find their stockings (or in our case, pillowcases) have been filled by Santa. Well, that was me on Wednesday morning when we arrived at the Olympic park "We're here!". Ridiculously over-excited because we, number 1 child and I, were there in the most amazing sporting place in the world.

Ever since London won the bid, the whole Olympic thing has been whizzing round my brain. I immediately told my children that it was one of my ambitions to be an Olympic mother. "Pick  a sport, any sport!"  I exhorted and yes ... they failed me. 

Then moving on to the torch, I nominated my dear and brilliant friend, Louise who is the inspiration for raising over £800,000 for two local charities - Alzheimer's and scleroderma - and wonderfully and emotionally she ran with the torch at Barkston Ash and we were there to celebrate her fantastic moment. 

And while all this was going on, I had spent hours - yes, hours - trying to score tickets in the ballots. High levels of abuse at Sir Seb that despite the huge amount of sport played and watched and coached and organised from the little house on the prairie no tickets were available. I chuntered a good deal and finally tried in the third and last ballot for tickets to the diving and yessss (pause for Olympic-size cheering) we got tickets to the men's synchro 3 metre springboard diving! 

So on Wednesday morning I was on the train to Kings Cross to meet number 1 for our Olympic diving fest. Straight on to the javelin train from Saint Pancras where we encountered a very smart volunteer who proudly told us he was in the flag team in the stadium for the victory ceremonies - what a great job! 

Through security and everyone - volunteers, army, spectators - are smiling and sharing their Olympic news. The park is amazing and we walk round to check out the various stadia - velodrome, basketball arena, hockey, pool and main stadium. Of course, there's a massive screen showing all the action from the rowing and cycling taking place elsewhere in the capital.

Lunch proved a bit of a challenge. This is the only the sign of difficulty that we encounter. The various food stalls have had logistics problems getting provisions into the park so paella with hardly anything in it but rice but we don't care - the sun is shining and we are on our way to the pool.  

Before the competition in the pool starts, all the divers from all disciplines are training so we see Tom Daley practising on the 5 and 10 metre board as well as the other GB divers. Then the competition starts and the Chinese are awesome. They have won every diving medal so far and this is going to be no exception. The Malaysian pair bow charmingly after every dive and the Mexicans, trained by number 1's old mate Fito who used to be the coach at Shipley, are doing incredible high tariff dives which are either very successful or a disaster. The GB team gets such a huge cheer every time they step on the board that it feels like the roof may come off. They finish 5th and that's a fair result because the Chinese win by a country mile and deservedly so. As Tom Daley said, winning silver in diving is like winning gold in any other sport. The Chinese have it all sewn up.

Then back out into the park to see Bradley Wiggins getting his medal on the big screen to huge cheers from the crowd in the park and then we join a queue for return tickets for the women's basketball. It takes an hour but yes, we get lucky and front row seats are ours for the GB Russia match. The atmosphere is like a party and the feel is very American but every British score is ear-splitting and the result is close... but the wrong way. 

I sometimes think that as a nation we are not proud enough of being British. I hope that national pride is a legacy of the Jubilee and the Olympics. Proud to be British and so, so proud to be there. A once-in-a-lifetime day. 

PS Massive good luck to Jack Laugher, our GB diver who goes to Ripon Grammar is in the springboard event next week. Can these Olympics get any better!? 

Viva, Viva Las Vegas!

So this is my last blog of our great American adventure. We are sitting in the airport unbelievably early - yes, really! - for our flight back to Gatwick. Number 3 is catching up on his cricket, rugby and golf news and number 4 has gone airport shopping. My beloved is editing the hundred or so photographs he has taken in that most eccentric city, Las Vegas.

The last three days have been a blast. This is a massive weekend destination for Americans and on Saturday, the pool area of our hotel was packed with stag and hen parties. The volume of the celebrations, coupled with music, made the pool a hot and noisy place to be. We hung out there till the heat and the noise got too much for us and then we headed out to explore.

The Bellagio has to be everyone's favourite. It's a surprisingly beautiful building and it manages to maintain its dignity despite having thousands of fruit machines in it. And the restaurants are superb which explains a lot why my beloved has such a fondness for the place.

At my insistence, we fight our way along the packed pavements to the Venetian which has, yes, proper canals and gondolas - and singing gondoliers. Lovely friends of ours stayed there when they got married earlier this year in the Elvis chapel so we had to go and check it out. All these hotels have huge shopping malls and I suppose the strange thing about this place is that actually you could come here for a week and never go outside. And I suspect that this is a reality for serious gamblers.

Amidst all the colours, sights and sounds of this brash city, we (my beloved and I - 3 and 4 being galleried out) went to the Monet exhibition in the Bellagio. Peace and extraordinary beauty by a painter who was a favourite of mine in my teens and twenties.

So our last forty eight hours have been spent relaxing by the pool, eating, drinking and taking in the sights and sounds of Vegas. For me, the high point is the amazing Bellagio fountain to which no video can ever do justice. We must have watched about five performances of the fountain - the last, appropriately Elvis singing Viva Las Vegas. So goodbye USA, now it's planes, trains and automobiles for the next 24 hours to get back to Blighty.

In the desert you can remember your name

Three days in Dana Point and we're properly chilled. I've realised why I don't usually write a holiday blog (unless of course it's Kenya or Morocco or up the Nile, and those tend to be Granny holidays). Writing about going to the beach, lying by the pool and eating in lovely harbour restaurants looking at very nice boats probably doesn't make interesting reading. 

There has, however, been mother and son tennis - number 3 now beats me every time but I put up a tolerably good fight in the heat. And we did have plenty of Baywatch moments when the lifeguards rush into the sea like David Hasselhof in his prime which is probably why I burnt my back - clearly too much baywatching and not enough sun cream. Oh, and all the waiters sound like Freddie Prince Junior and say "awesome" when we tell them we come from England. 

On our last night in Dana Point we head up onto the cliffs above the resort to a restaurant called Cannons (absolutely nothing similar to the like-named gym) for dinner with a magnificent view of the harbour and yacht club - and a wedding which is taking place on the patio, one level below the dining room. Beautiful bride and a set of seven big bridesmaids dressed in red - and I mean big! Couldn't decide whether this was the bride's way of making sure the spotlight was on her but they were a buxom team of women squeezed into tight red dresses. Anyway this kept us entertained whilst my beloved took number 3 back to the hotel because he had a touch of sunstroke and couldn't eat - a cheap dinner for once but he needed to eat a lot the next day to catch up.

Then in the morning we leave lovely Dana Point and drive down the coast to La Jolla which is home to one of my beloved's favourite restaurants, George's, where we sit on the roof terrace and look across the bay. La Jolla is also home to a seal colony and loads of pelicans and we watch the seals play and relax on the rocks. Then back in the car for our last drive of the holiday - this time, along the coast to San Diego where we do a quick detour to Coronado Island so I can pay my respects to the Del Rey Hotel - scene of much of the action in probably my all-time favourite film "Some like it Hot" starring Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis and Marilyn Monroe. I jump about on the sand in front of the hotel in roughly the spot where Tony Curtis does his shell routine with Marilyn Monroe, probably looking more like Jack Lemmon in drag than the other two.  With a bit more time, we'd have gone to the Top Gun bar as well but that might have to wait for another trip.

So it's goodbye to Gloria, the sat nav, and now we're airborne on our penultimate flight - to Las Vegas for our last three days on our big American adventure. 

Whoa! We come out of the airport in Las Vegas and it's like someone's switched a thousand hair dryers on full in our faces. It's over 100 degrees and it's eight o'clock at night. As we snake round the taxi line which is mercifully fast-moving, we are virtually dripping. 

The ride up The Strip is literally an assault on our senses or at least our optical one. After three Oceans films, you'd think the landscape would be familiar but nothing prepares you for the Pyramid, Eiffel Tower, Disney, Arc de Triomphe, Trump, Cosmopolitan, Cesar's Palace  and, of course, the Bellagio. All this in a desert. We pull up at the Vdara and my beloved goes to check in along with a queue of others. And the fun begins ...

Swipe key in hand we head up to our room on the 14th floor. The card works and we open the door. It stinks of cigarette smoke - like proper old pubs used to smell. The room has half-eaten food, rubbish, unmade bed, clothes - it looks like students are living there. Back down to the lobby and my beloved is having words. Apparently they are "dealing with it". A moment later and we are crossing the walkway to the Bellagio to another of my beloved's favourite restaurants, Sensi. 

Sometimes I feel that my beloved leads a double life - the one at home with me and 1, 2, 3 and 4 in the little house on the prairie, and this one. The restaurant is fabulous and the kitchen is inside the dining room but divided by glass walls so we can watch the chefs work. And our waiter is, well, a hilarious tall, thin version of Stamford from SATC who comes from England but has been here so long he sounds mid-Atlantic. He can't do enough for us and the food is fantastic. And then (and this is another reason for thinking the whole double life thing is going on), the restaurant manager comes over - not the maitre d' but someone way loftier and greets my other half like he's a regular and promises us a special dessert. 

It arrives - fifteen desserts in a tower that makes other diners stop and stare on their way past. We manage 12 - not bad after five starters and three main courses! Stamford loves it and appears genuinely proud of us for our efforts although obviously number 3 has done more than his share of the damage. 

Then we have to go to the Bellagio fountain. Through the unbelievable visual cacophony of the lobby - a million flowers of every colour, thousands of people of every nationality and age, beautiful, ugly, dressed to the nines or looking like hookers and street kids  - it's all here  - and out into the hair dryer night to watch the extraordinary musical drama of the fountain. And for the few minutes the drama takes to unfold, the rest of The Strip stops and watches. And it does this four times an hour. 

It's late when we get back to the Vdara and yes, we are promoted to a top floor suite. Job done and it's been a long old day since we got up this morning in Dana Point. Long but definitely unforgettable. Living the Vegas life! 

I was thinking to myself, this could be heaven...

Every holiday with my beloved involves 'a big drive'. Even in Portugal where the most beautiful beaches are on your doorstep, he will have found one on the internet/in the guidebook that is 'absolutely superb' and off we'll go, driving for an hour or two and, lo and behold, the beach is as amazing as billed and I can't be cross that we've spent so much time in the car.

So the next two days of our holiday is 'the big drive' and we set off with the hire car packed to the gunnels - the four of us and Gloria - the sat nav. My beloved has a love/hate relationship with sat navs and he refuses to have one in his own car although he navigates the length and breadth of Britain for work. Anyway, Gloria is undoubtedly a spikey blond, a little past her best but she's had some work done and is only slightly disappointed that this is a step down from the newsreader's job she was hoping for. In my beloved's world, she is Myrtle, the big black momma and he persists in calling her that. Anyway, Gloria/Myrtle is the most patient woman on the planet because regardless of the directions she gives, my beloved is going his own way down the Pacific Highway. She says "recalculating" every time he does his own thing at a junction and even after a dozen or so "recalculatings" she doesn't let any edge come into her voice. This woman is a saint!

We have planned to stop off in Monterey and Cartmel but it's "oops, we've missed Monterey" but instead we go to Pebble Beach because it is famous for its classic car auctions apparently. Actually it is one of the greatest golf courses in the world and the fledgling golfer in me is rather enjoying the moment. I look at the names on the roll of honour: Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson and ... CB. Ah well, a girl can dream. Can I buy some new golf shoes here? (I wear the ones number 3 had when he started playing aged 9) No, apparently as a golf cap costs nearly 50 dollars so shoes would break the bank.

Then we queue through Cartmel but that's a bit cutesy for me - I can only take so much mock Tudor and overpriced boutiques and then on to Pismo Beach with just one stop on the way for the elephant seals. Everyone is parked on the side of the road looking at these giant growling slugs who coolly flick sand and indulge in some occasional pretend fighting. The usual questions from number 4: Can I stroke one/have one for a pet? No. Also, this is where I attempt to get into the wrong SUV much to the amusement of my family.

Gloria takes us to the door of our hotel in Pismo Beach - genius Gloria - and gets some grudging approval from my beloved. Supper then bed for us with another big drive tomorrow. Gloria must be exhausted!

I have cunningly persuaded number 3 to convince his father that we should go direct to Dana Point which is the beach and sun bit of the holiday and he obliges. We have sorted the spotify out on my ipad and we cruise down the rest of the route including the outskirts of Los Angeles listening to some tracks I downloaded before we came out especially for some California driving. Some chuntering from my beloved at the lack of interesting detours but here we are in a rather swish hotel with pools, fitness suite, spa and yes, a tennis court. After two days in the car, I definitely need to burn off some calories. Big drive done and Gloria and I are doing some chillin'.