Holiday role play

Ice skating at the Natural History Museum, singing carols at Miss Six’s school nativity play and spending two full days wrapping other people’s gifts – in branded wrapping paper more expensive than the presents I normally buy… This week I’m playing Mum, Holland Park-style, while the parents travel overseas.

I’ve got the morning schedule down to a fine art: wake, shower and feed myself before Miss Six rises at 6.30am. Get her dressed – in an outfit neatly set out the night before – fed and hair brushed as I coax Masters Twelve and Nine out of their slumbers and into their school uniforms. Make the boys breakfast – force feed them sliced apple – brush Miss Six’s teeth and bundle them all into the car, with just enough time to warm up the engine and pour water on the frozen windscreen. And we’re ready to go!

Now that my little men are officially on term break – Missy finishes tomorrow – I’ve had to plan high-energy activities in order to keep them out of trouble, hence the ice skating. Between this family and the other, I’ve been four times in the past month… I’m now, quite the skater.

Tomorrow I’ll accompany Madame and her classmates to their end of term theatre visit, a pantomime down in Wimbledon. With all the carol singing and the craft – she and I have been making her friends Christmas cards, tied up with string – I’m feeling very Christmassy indeed.

Yes, I know Miss Six throws tantrums daily – she howled for twenty minutes on Tuesday when she realised her Mum had not stayed to watch her walk down the aisle at her school mass, apparently my being there just wasn’t enough – and sure, Master Nine ignores pretty much everything I ask of him, but at the end of the day these cherubs are keeping me young. There’s nothing like mock-sword fighting of an evening to burn a few calories and who could turn down mandatory afternoon visits to Hummingbird's for cupcake sweetness. I just have to get through the next five days of parental absence without letting slip an expletive, crashing the car (as they wrestle in the back seat) or losing one of them mid-transit. Oh the joys of being a nanny.