Crummy Mummy OR diary extract of a very bad girl

On the shelf in the boys' school, there was a book of this title. On the cover, there was a mortified-looking boy and a mother with rather large hair and wearing bright colours. "Oh - that'll be me, then."

Crummy mummy tried to be on top of things. This week she had helped with the collection of items for a Japanese garden and put together an outfit for her 6 year old's 'French' parade and song ( having daubed "Je suis un rock star" on the back of it, she recanted and made a more sober version, having surmised that one of her son's teachers might not approve). Then she had gone through the younger child's road safety  booklet after the visit from the man with the amusing name (it wasn't quite Dr Goodhead -as in the Bond film- but it was close enough to make her snigger). Junior told her there were just a couple of things he didn't understand.

"What are those, darling?"

"The things about crossing the road."

Great. Between them, crummy mummy and Dr Goodhead had some work to do.

The children had a fist fight before leaving the house.

"I hate you!"

"You smell! and the cats like me more than you! I wish you was never my brother EVER and I saw you NAKED!"

"Raaaaaaaa!"

Lunge. Hair pull. "HE STARTED IT AND HE STEALED MY MATCH ATTAX FOR HIS OWN!"

The Japanese garden again. Crummy mummy hurriedly shoved her bamboo sprig in someone's green bin on the school run when she saw other children's magnificent glossy foliage.

Spellings. "I'm on it, miss!"

Japanese technological products in the home homework. Check. A moment of misunderstanding, though, had seen the inclusion of a book of Haiku on the list.

Pillowcases for 6 year old for an as yet unidentified future task. Check - including one of the two for another crummy mummy who did not keep surplus white pillowcases. "Whoa!" said crummy mummy: "I am getting ahead, here." But that was before she discovered that she had been supposed to provide a Japanese costume for the next day.

Another homework just discovered: back to the road safety booklet and the work of Dr Goodhead. This was an altogether weightier tome to be studied by older child. Plus, if he successfully completed the next week's road safety outing, he got a certificate. Crummy Mummy noted that she might not have worded it quite like that. Then, her eye fell upon a grammar error and two spelling mistakes on some correspondence and she felt the red pen urge, then was ashamed because she had nothing to be on a high horse about. Especially, as one of her friends pointed out, she had accidentally worn a cleavage-exposing dress the previous week and made a twit of herself. Accidentally, that is, because crummy mummy - unlike the sleeker yummier mummies in the playground - had not noticed the popping off of two buttons and subsequent, slightly slapstick exposure of breasts in the key stage one area.

Crummy mummy shuffled off home, to practise (note to educational establishment: practice with a c is a noun; with an s it is a verb) mummy skills with the help of a book . On the doorstep there was a dead frog; it was next to a spider crab shell. The shell had been intended for the Japanese garden material; the dead frog was unrelated but a present from the cat. Inside the house, she found a letter that she had meant to read the previous night: it said that school dinner money was in arrears and the now unable to feed your child bit was underlined twice in red biro. But it was a fine sunny day and crummy mummy heard a toddler wailing and a blustering mother trying and failing to keep her cool somewhere beyond the back of the house. She felt a bit better - even got to thinking that, if she did manage to tuck her dress into her knickers on school run today, it was hardly the end of the world. And they were very nice knickers, purchased recently when some well- meaning friends told her that her lingerie was threadbare. See, crummy mummies are crummy in other areas, too.