Morning! So here's my big news for 2010: me and Steve are going to be parents. It's exciting and very, very scary. There will be a person in the world totally reliant on us, who will eventually call us mummy and daddy. Even though we wanted this, I still find myself thinking occasionally that I could do with a time-out. The nipper isn't due till July, so I guess we have some time to get used to the idea, not to mention to clear out and redecorate parts of our flat...

The past few months have gone quickly. Here's my big secret: pregnancy isn't fun. It's really not. I'm probably a bad woman for saying that. All the pregnancy magazines and books and blogs have a cheery, chin-up tone that makes me want to curl up into a ball and hide. And my first trimester wasn't even that bad, compared to a lot of women's. I felt sick and queasy all the time, was exhausted by about noon even if I got up at 9 (never have I been more appreciative of my freelance lifestyle), and cried at anything. ANYTHING. A BT advert? The news? Family section of the Guardian? I blamed it on hormones, cos they are actually to blame. Other glorious symptoms: piles! nosebleeds! forgetting everything!

And right now I have a cold. Feel sick and sleepy and gross. Dreaming about a big mug of Lemsip, making do with a lemon and ginger tea.

Halloween weekend was full of dancing and heavy eye-makeup and a slightly painful left leg. All my Actionette-related leaping around has caused my sciatica to flare up again, and my leg is tingly and heavy and just feels a bit weird. I am hoping someone invents a pair of MBT go-go boots so that I can continue performing. Although as they'd be the ugliest footwear known to man, I'd sooner resign.

Since then, I've been spending lots of time with baby Leon, or Cuckoo-Ricoo as I sometimes call him, to his bemusement. (Just as Polish dogs say 'how' (try repeating it loudly), and cats say 'mru mru', the cry of the rooster is 'cuckoo-ricoo!' Which still doesn't explain why I have that nickname for L.) He still naps, but finds little ways to rebel. He's taken to removing whatever trousers my sister or her husband dressed him in that morning, and chewing on them. I think he's trying to say he prefers onesies, and after seeing him in the indigo velvet dungarees with an owl on the front, I have to say I agree. Chomp on, little flea!

In November the Actionettes went to Rome for a weekend of prosecco, pizza, other amazing Italian food (courgette flowers stuffed with mozarella and anchovies? I'll have five) and an appearance at club night Twiggy. It was all fun and games until bastard EasyJet lost the communal 'ette suitcase. (Contents: seven kitschy washbags filled with false eyelashes, hairspray and black eyeliner, and my dancing dress.) After an hour of watching the empty carousel at Ciampino airport, we admitted something might be wrong and reported the luggage lost. We left the address of our HQ for the weekend and were told the bag would be on the evening flight from Gatwick, and that we'd be happily reunited before the day was out. Long story short, that didn't happen. We spent the weekend toiletries-free (well not entrirely, come on - we bought some cheapy ones to share, oh and seven toothbrushes) and I didn't have a dancing dress. On the night we performed, this wasn't actually as big a ball-ache as it could have been. The lovely Miss Corvette lent me her dress for the first set, and then I handed it back, slightly damp, for her to wear in the second. The only downside was thatwhile all the other 'ettes got to prance around in pink dresses covered in giant pink and red discs, I looked like I'd come straight from the office. It was still an amazing night.

So far today has been a big wet raspberry, but it'll get better around 7pm, when Mags and my two lovely sisters arrive for dinner. For the vegetarian sister there's cheese and salmon (yes, she eats fish), for the other vegetarian there's sausage and ham (she won't eat beef but everything else is fine) and for me and other sis there's a lot of everything else. Pumpkin, coconut and sweet potato soup, too.

Things I am watching on eBay

• Black cat brooches, to be pinned to orange dress for Halloween Actionettes gig
• Black spider brooches, as above, but they're too scary and I know I'd keep seeing them on my dress and freaking out
• Vintage biscuit tins and canisters. Plan is to buy some and bake amazing cookies, and give these as homemade Christmas gifts in the tins
• Usual lineup of 70s vintage dresses with puffy sleeves, patterned yokes and A-line skirts. Sigh.

Baby Leon, last seen on this blog at a cute five weeks, is now an all-crawling, loud-laughing, curious eight-month-old little sweetheart. He loves books and music and wiping his nose on his auntie's clothing.

How did I go nearly three and a half months without posting? It was easy. And it's not even like I was so busy doing amazing stuff the whole time. Since the end of June, I've done... nothing. Well, a bit of work, a weekend in Bournemouth with the Actionettes, five days in Wales for my and Steve's wedding anniversary, and not much else. I did buy tickets for next May's All Tomorrow's Parties, as it's curated by Pavement and I've wanted to go to ATP for years, so this was all the encouragement I needed.

Guilt has made me update this blog. I was reading about this thing http://www.broadsummit.com/about/ on Mimi Smartypants's blog, and it made me sad and jealous. If I'd been good and updated my blog daily, or at least a couple of times a week, maybe I would be attending the UK equivalent (although I bet there isn't one...) of this sweet shindig. A weekend doing yoga and tasting wine? At a spa? It's a hard life.

I had a look at some of the blogs of the attendees. I really liked a few, but there really is a certain arrogance you need to keep - and very regularly update - a blog. Whole conversations retyped, verbatim. Endless stream-of-consciousness riffs on your love/hate of sweetcorn. I mean, who cares? If I did like those other ladies do and wrote down every last thing that happened to me, my blog for today might read something like this:

Got up. Late. Coffee, toast and marmite for breakfast. Did some proofreading, but not enough. Faffed about online for ages. Steve went to Lewisham market to buy vegetables - he got me a really nice pumpkin. We had leftover chili for lunch: yum. In the afternoon I went to Brockley Mess and had ginger cake and a pot of Earl Grey. The cafe was full of mums with babies. I glared at a small child pretending to wail and it made me feel evil but actually very happy. Walked home.

That did actually feel pretty cathartic...

Dear Bike Courier,

Please hurry up and deliver the work I'm expecting, as having to wear clothing in this weather is making me want to cry.

Thanks,
IJ

London is EFFING SCORCHING. Muggy. No breeze. I feel sluggish, duntish, and other negative words ending in -ish. It's too hot to think of more. And tonight I have the task of making a cottage pie. A couple of hours of cooking on the stove and baking in the oven. This must be done, as I have a packet of beef mince that's going out of date* and (what possessed me?) when we did an online grocery shop I ordered a 2 1/2 kilo bag of potatoes. I don't want to throw food out, there's no room for the beef in the freezer, so even though all I feel like ingesting is crisps, ice cream and loads of water, a pie will be cooked tonight. If it kills me. And it might.



*Those words normally form the beginning of any dinner invitation to my house

Here's what we did in France: ate shellfish (oysters = yum, raw mussels = yuk), visited Pezenas (that's where the door knocker is from), lazed by the pool, cycled by the water, and cooked giant, elaborate delicious meals.

The last month has flown by. Dan and Therese came over mid-May, and at the end of the month we all headed to France for a week of cheese, wine, sunburn, swimming in our lovely private pool, and playing Tom and Steve's patented game, Aquaminton. (It's badminton played in a pool, and it's amazing.) Dan and Therese left last week, and straight away I was on a train to Newcastle for a gig at the Star & Shadow, a beautiful venue that is part cimema, part bar, part performance space. The Actionettes danced and there was a screening of Beat Girl, and lovely Michael, who was running the night, even provided us with giant bags of popcorn. I only got back on Sunday afternoon, and since then I've been to a yoga class and that's about it. Oh and I went to Beckenham for my sister Jasia's birthday drinks. Also I picked up my framed Jeff Tweedy poster by my new girl-crush, Diana Sudyka. Here's her blog http://thetinyaviary.blogspot.com/ and somewhere here there should be a pic of the poster... I don't spend a lot of money on clothing or going out and I don't have any expensive hobbies (reading? a lot?) but I'll happily pay £60 to get a great poster framed. My next dream purchase is a Marcus Oakley painting, or another of Diana Sudyka's posters...

I'm slacking off again... so here are some random snippets from the last few weeks.

• Little sister is back from Gaza for a couple of weeks! Hurrah! She's travelling around the UK and to Poland, and is then planning to return to Palestine for the forseeable future.
• Me and Steve had a weekend in Whitstable, a pretty seaside resort in Kent, our first holiday since the epic and amazing honeymoon in October. Seafood was eaten (April is the end of oyster season, so we tried to scoff loads of those. BEST ONES were covered in bacon and BBQ sauce. That's how they eat them in New Zealand, apparently. Gotta love those Kiwis), pints of local raspberry beer were drunk on the beach, seaside strolls were taken.
  
• The Actionettes have had a few cracking gigs lately, and we've more over the next couple of months. A few weeks ago we danced at Shunt, the soon to be shut down cavernous venue under London Bridge station, and last night we were the guests of the Dulwich Ukulele Club at their May Ball. The hall where the ball took place was decked in spring flowers, there was a Maypole and there was a Green Man ritual. I didn't quite understand it, but I was drunk by then. In June we're heading to Newcastle, then July has Gay Shame in London with the people from Duckie, a tiki birthday party in Bournemouth, and (fingers crossed) the Port Eliot literary festival in Cornwall.
  
• This warm weather is bringing with it the unwelcome return of fucking huge spiders. Get out of my house!
• Bank holiday weekend so far = good. Lie-in, impromptu picnic and frisbee in the Horniman Gardens, red wine and chips in a lovely Bermondsey pub.
• Night night.