NO, Mummy, no!!!! screams my little boy as nursery staff begin to forecfully prise his wrench-like grip from around my neck.

I watch as his little swollen face crumples in horror and he is carried off horizontally like a plank, fingers-stretched towards me, agony in his eyes.

Lately, every morning is beginning to feel like Sophie’s Choice.

Not that being dragged into nursery is exactly the same as being taken to a concentration camp – but try telling my son that.

Every morning for the past four weeks we have gone through such dramatics – with each performance becoming more spectacular and my guilt levels topping the chart.


As a result to ease my feelings of being a terrible, inadequate mother – this weekend I am hosting a birthday party for no less than 21 toddlers.

Between popping the beta blockers and trawling the internet on the hunt for Peppa Pig-themed loot bags I’m beginning to discover there is a whole new meaning to the phrase party politics.
I used to think that kids’ parties were simple. A round of pass the parcel, musical bumps, some Dairylea sandwiches and a cake – Bob’s your uncle.

Oh no. It’s all hiring of double decker party buses, pool parties, football parties, fairy parties, pony parties, reptile parties, people who bring a real live lion cub into your house (actually that last one sounds tempting).
My husband has become quite scared of me. I am planning this party with military precision and bankrupting him in the process.

“Do they really need actual genuine Peppa Pig toys, can’t we get the cheap fake ones?” he looked in horror over my shoulder as I pile toys into my Amazon basket along with overpriced George Pig napkins – despite the fact the soft play centre is including tablewear in the cost.

“No” I shrieked in my best banshee impression, “This is your son’s second birthday. These party bags have to be perfect!”

All I am accomplishing is this – 21 sets of bitter parents who will feel they now have to spend a fortune on their kids’ parties too, and will stop inviting us on playdates in revenge. Bliss.

MOST people I know roll their eyes or pretend to stick their fingers down their throat when you mention St Valentine’s Day.

Everyone scoffs at how commercial it is, that they’re not doing anything to celebrate, blah blah blah.
But Valentine’s isn’t traditionally about couples. It’s for secret admirers to declare their feelings without the fear of rejection.

It’s the one day of the year you can announce your undying love and hide behind anonymity.

The most exciting St Valentine’s Day of my life was when I got a card from a genuine secret admirer – propped up outside my back door against the milk bottles. By the time I got on the school bus everyone knew that I had been sent a card by Graham Robinson in the fifth form. Secrets in secondary school are sadly a rare commodity.
It didn’t matter he was ginger with a predilection for Guns N Roses T-shirts and Newcastle Brown.

It didn’t matter that he used to shout abuse at me from the street corner with his gang of mates a mere two years previously.

In my eyes, his simple act of buying a cheap tacky card from Mr Mann’s newsagents, leaving it by the back doorstep to give me a clue to his identity – he used to help out the local milkman – was nothing short of poetic. It had to be true love.

Three months later and I’d moved onto a bass guitar player called Tom – and all that was left of Graham Robinson’s heartfelt gesture was a mixed tape and a Nirvana T-shirt.

But it was the most romantic gesture in all my 14 years – and to be fair remains one of the most romantic gestures in my life to date.

Although my husband won’t be too chuffed to read that, given it’s our first wedding anniversary on February 14.
All I’m saying in this...your husband, boyfriend, girlfriend, wife – they all you know you love them. Well they should do if you’re doing your job properly.

Singletons – Sunday is all about you. Make someone’s day and get Cupid out of the dole queue. Sending an anonymous card does not make you a stalker. it puts you up there with Lord Byron.

What have you got to lose?

EVER wish that life had an un-do button? It’s fair to say that I don’t get embarrassed that easily.
Empty dance floors don’t deter me. I will sing, albeit very badly, in public, I expose my deepest darkest secrets in this column most weeks.
However I had a particularly cringe-worthy experience this week. I had my implant removed after deciding it is the sole culprit for the half-a-stone I gained over Christmas.
Expecting a lovely discreet little plaster, I was a bit shocked at being bandaged up like a mummy, and distraught not being able to get my arm through the sleeve of any of my shirts.
Needless to say the first thing everyone asked me on my arrival to work was “what’s up with your arm?”
Tried muttering “Err, I’ve had something removed”, but that was met with sympathetic looks and questions about biopsies.
Clearly I did not want to give anyone the wrong impression, so had to mutter out of the corner of my mouth: “I’ve had my implant removed.”
“What implant?” one male colleague boomed, “What do you mean?”
“My contraceptive implant” I whispered. About 80 times.
So in a meeting on Tuesday morning with my brand new boss and managing director, there was little point in lying.
I’m not allowed to lie anymore anyway. I get a bit carried away with myself and become embroiled in giant web of deceit.
I once told a bloke I was trying to impress that I played the violin. I even told him I could play Riverflow by The Levellers and used to be in a band.
Imagine my mortification when round at his mother’s he presented me with a bow asked for a rendition of The Wonder Stuff’s violin-heavy Welcome to the Cheap Seats.
Needless to say I have learnt my lesson – so told them the truth. They were a bit taken aback, but nothing I can’t deal with. Not like when I asked the man in the garden centre where his chlamydia was. Clematis, Lisa, clematis.

I DON’T normally agree with new year’s resolutions. All they do is add to my list of Things I Have Failed At this year, making me feel just dandy about myself while I sob into my champagne at midnight in 12 months’ time.
So far I have not managed to stuff myself back into my size 10 jeans, nor have I become a confident, guilt-free working mother who does not find herself with an eye twitch on the drive between nursery and work.

I have not given up secretly blaming my husband for the filthy sealant around the bath, for the mysterious bruise-coloured stain on the white carpet, nor for the giant hole in the plaster on the kitchen wall from his shelf putting up attempts.

I have not managed to get through 2009 without crashing my car and I have not managed to finish writing the Great British Novel.

However, I have decided my negative attitude is standing in the way of me becoming the very embodiment of peace and  serenity.

Therefore, my new year resolutions will be all about looking for a positive in everything. So this year I will:
1. Stop feeling guilty over my outbursts of rage. It’s healthy to express oneself.

2. Just live with the squalor in my house. It is post modern and eclectic.

3. Enjoy watching Alvin and the Chipmunks and The Tale of Despereaux again and again and again. Can almost recite the entire script. Could go on Mastermind.

4. Let toddler sleep in bed with me if it means getting more than 20 minutes’ kip in one stretch. Tell all whittering Stepford mums of the “you’re making rod for own back” persuasion to go and plug themselves back into the mains.

5. To enjoy nagging husband. Is character building for us both.

6. Don’t worry about driving abilities. It’s not like I have any no-claims bonus to be fair.

7. Give up the novel. Prize winning writers are all up-themselves toffs and people who read them are all boffins with no   girlfriends.

There. I can pretty much guarantee that next New Year’s Eve I will be sitting back with a satisfied smirk on my face.

IT can’t be that fattening. Turkey – white meat and therefore very good for you. Carrots, sprouts, all towards your five a day.

Ok, so the goose fat in your roast potatoes isn’t going to win you any healthy eating awards.
But how can one meal constitute putting on half a stone in two days?

Here’s why.

According to the British Nutrition Foundation a typical Christmas dinner is about 1,470 calories.
That only includes two slices of turkey, sausage meat stuffing, four small roast potatoes, a portion of sprouts, a portion of roast parsnips, a serving of gravy, a serving of Christmas pudding and a spoonful of double cream.
That doesn’t include the giant tin of Quality Street, three pounds of Stilton and a slab of pate on a loaf of bread.
Besides, who has only four small roasties at Christmas?

I just can’t get my head round how come it takes about three months to shed half a stone with diligent hard work, yet takes 48 hours to put it back on again with absolutely no effort at all?

And with new year on the horizon, I might as well add another half a stone for the bucket of wine and vat of gin I plan on consuming.

I’ve spent the last three days in the Lake District with my selfish family who insisted I drive a billion miles with a tired toddler, despite the fact I’m the only one in my family who works, and the only one who has to trek then to Newcastle to see dad, then Wetherby to see the in-laws. In three days. No wonder I’ll be hitting the booze for new year after a very sober Christmas.

And yet still, somehow, I am bursting out of my jeans and developed a hideous muffin top.

And it’s not like I’ve been sitting around on my backside all Christmas – no point, because there was NOTHING on TV this year.

Bring back blockbuster films on Christmas afternoons, sledging and a much higher metabolic rate. Otherwise I’ll be the one in the Santa suit next year.

A WEEPING angel, a shepherd who has wet himself and a hysterical choir mistress popping beta blockers.
That’s pretty much how I remember nativities.

Shivering in the wings of the drafty church, peeping out to try and spot your mum in the audience, the little innkeeper bricking it in case he forgets that all-important line “No Room at the Inn” and accidentally gives Mary and Joseph a kingsize double with en-suite.

A bag of straw scattered about on the floor and the child with pushiest mother draped in a blue sheet cradling a Tiny Tears.

A sea of tiny girls, wearing lovely white dresses, and paper doilies on their heads, getting ready to stand round the baby Jesus and sing Away in a Manger and make their fathers cry.

Smug little mares. I never got to be an angel. I longed to wear the paper doily and look all rosy cheeked and serene, but alas, my appalling singing voice and advanced literary skills meant I got the least coveted part of the narrator. No costume for me. No sniff of a tea towel or a bit of tinsel. I had to wear my school uniform and stand at the side, my voice shaking and knees knocking.

However, I decided to get over the rejection – and took my tot to his first nativity at our village church on Sunday.

It was a fairly relaxed affair. No terrifying woman beating the children into straight lines and hissing cues at the giddy wise men.

The donkey was wearing jeans and a Shrek mask, if you get the idea.

Still, I was a little concerned when my toddler made a break for it up the aisle as he too wanted to throw the straw about – and play in the house (stable) with the baba Cheese-zus.

I leapt up, lest he wrecked the beautifully rehearsed scene and some crazed mother throttled me, but was shooed back to my seat by the Sunday school teacher.

Instead they found a spare tea-towel, shoved it on his tiny head and lo and behold, my little boy became a shepherd – and presented the baba Cheese-zus with his battered smelly teddy bear.

Now that should be what a nativity is all about.

Fog had descended over the valley, the rain was hammering on my windscreen like gunshots and the darkness had swallowed me, like the swell of an angry ocean.

No it’s not a Victorian gothic novel. It’s me driving through a windy back-lane belting out Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights at the top of my voice before plunging head on into a dry stone wall and causing more than £1,000 worth of damage to my car.

Hmph. I bet Cathy Linton didn’t have to deal with such inconveniences.

Seriously though, it was thick fog, pitch black and pouring down on Monday night as I drove back home through Emley.

I was doing about 35mph in a 60mph zone through a crooked country lane, with nothing at all surrounding me but bleak fields and the odd frosty sheep, when I lost control of the car.

At least I think that’s what happened. One minute I was tootling along shrieking ‘Heathcliffe, it’s meeeeee Catheeeeyyyyyy’. Next there’s a horrible crunch and grind of metal, and I’m at a standstill with a nasty smokey stench coming from under the bonnet.

With a thudding heart, I thought my worst fears were coming true. I have always had utter dread of breaking down in the middle of nowhere. It’s not like the olden days when you could find a friendly inn with a warm fire – or a dark handsome stranger to whisk you on the back of his trusty steed. More like he’ll gut you with a Stanley knife and steal your shoes.

I scrabbled about in my bag, terrified of looking in the rear-view mirror lest I spot a ghostly hitchiker at the side of the road, or one of those Baskerville’s pesky pooches pawing at the door. And I’ve never been so relieved to see the one bar of signal on my phone.

So in the midst of a crisis, I did what any self-respecting woman would do – ring her husband and try to make it all his fault.

When that didn’t work (and neither did my Oscar-winning damsel in distress), I played my trump card and burst into tears.

Result.

I may not be a Victorian heroine, but I can still use their best strategies.

Fear it, loathe it, scorn it, whatever – but internet dating is the only way to meet someone these days.

I am of course referring to those of us over the age of 28, when the idea of rubbing up against someone in a sweaty, heaving nightclub makes us want to vomit more than the cut-price, highly toxic cheap shots we’ve just necked.

If you don’t meet anyone through work, nights out are more about dinner and a good catch-up, or a few pints with mates rather than an all-out ‘on the pull’ mission, and all your friends’ boyfriends/husbands mates are already someone else’s boyfriend or husband – what option is there left?

You can moan about how unorganic and clinical it might appear, cringe at the thought of prostituting yourself on a website, but I know at least seven couples who have met their significant other via the click of a mouse.
Perhaps it’s because we all work too hard, or the Cosmo culture has drummed it into all women that we must NOT settle for anything less than a fireman who writes poetry, looks like Taylor Laurent and isn’t afraid to buy tampons for us.

Either way – the old fashioned boy-meets-girl situation is extinct.

If you’re not on match.com or dating direct.co.uk, then you might as well be declaring yourself celibate.
That’s what has happened to my best mate Karen. She is horrified at the mere suggestion of internet dating – even after a few glasses of wine. Even after we found out at the pub on Sunday night that there are sites such as notformingers.com. Nice.

She’s pretty, successful and very witty – and has had various relationships throughout her 20s, but failed to meet the one.

Now at 32, she’s getting concerned she may never find him, and although her biological clock won’t really start to kick in until she’s 36 (as pointed out by Meg Ryan in When Harry Met Sally), if you’re not lucky enough to have a straight male best friend – you’re up the proverbial creek.

Before I get any feminist rants about ‘you don’t need to man to complete you’ – that’s very true. But you do need one if you’ve got your heart set on children.

So any single men out there between the ages of 28 and 40, who are not psychotic stalkers and who feel like being set up ... e-mail me!