Page 130 of The Bad Mother's Diary

For the Harrods trip, Althea dressed Wolfgang as a punk Christmas elf, with safety pins through his green elf ears.

When it was our turn to see Santa, Althea warned the door elf that Wolfgang was ‘quite sensitive’ and tended to bite when angered.

The lady elf reassured us that Santa was very good at putting children at ease. Then she led us into the grotto, where a big, jolly Santa welcomed us.

Wolfgang shouted, ‘Fat! Fat!’

Santa chuckled politely and gave Wolfgang a toy truck to snap in two.

Daisy wouldn’t take her dolly present. She pushed it away and said, ‘No, no!’

Wolfgang tore off the cab compartment and a wheel from his truck, and gave it to Daisy.

She chewed the wheel happily.

Wolfgang really can be a kind little boy sometimes.

Monday December 7th

Did a ‘bad mother’ thing today.

Needed to get the forms filled in for all the legal stuff with Nick.

Put Daisy on her baby gym while I was doing it, thinking she’d be safe. But somehow she managed to pull my handbag off the sofa, unzip it, pull out a bag of Cheesy Doritos, open the packet (HOW?) and eat a big handful of tortilla chips.

I had a heart attack thinking about all the salt.

Spent an hour obsessively googling ‘baby salt death’, with Daisy crying in my arms.

It turns out a baby died from eating Ready Brek!

And Ready Brek can’t be half as salty as Doritos.

Panicked.

Took Daisy to Accident and Emergency.

After a few hours, two midwives came to see me.

They laughed when I told them about the Doritos.

Then they told me all the salty things they’d given their babies.

Pretzels. Bacon. Chicken chow mein.

‘And they turned out just fine,’ they kept saying.

Midwives are strange. One minute, they tell you to sterilise everything. The next minute, they’re taking the piss out of you for being overly cautious.

You just can’t win.

Tuesday December 8th

Althea and I took the kids to Bethnal Green playgroup today.

We had to get there really early, because London playgroups are like nightclubs – once they’re full, they’re full, and then it’s one in, one out.

Today was especially busy, because Santa was visiting.

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