Rain and shine

Rain rain rain rain rain. That stops everyone going out, so Dig and the children stay irritable at home.

Hahahah. I don't. I go out. With Oo. Shopping. I am a Proper Girl. And I am doing Proper Girly Things like drinking coffee and complaining about the cake in John Lewis.

Well, Oo complains. I don't. I am just grateful. It is free, I tell Oo, because this is the voucher given to me nearly two years ago when a member of staff saw this down-at-heel mother of triplets. She took pity on the stains from the weeping. It's why I don't wear mascara anymore. She gave me a voucher for two cups of coffee and two slabs of cake. I didn't like to point out to that kind shop assistant that I never have time to go to John Lewis coffee shop and, worse, I didn't have any girl friends to go to John Lewis coffee shop with, except for one who lives in Dubai.

Anyway, today Grit is a Proper Girl, even though she has never watched Sex and the City and is not actually sure what Proper Girls do. Hey, I remind Oo, the year Shark, Tiger and Squirrel were wrenched from my wretched body, Big Brother started on TV. I was so cut off from society you had to explain to me what it was, because I never understood what people were talking about. That's what motherhood did for me. It started off as a sort of a prison sentence where the guards would dribble and squeal and slurp and sleep and poop all day and all night while I watched over them shouting She smiled! and Dig would grunt, She burped.

But this is now, and the results of a proper girly afternoon out are to look at clothes, complain about the state of undress in the youth of today, and purchase some brown facial fluid in a bottle, which Oo will probably have to explain to me about. There are, of course, other expenditures, which I'm going to keep quiet about.

The afternoon is also gratifyingly disastrous, because this is Oo after all, and involves several John Lewis staff at closing time scouring every shop floor looking for a Debenhams shirt.

And I do not know whether this is the mark of a Proper Girl, but there is my complete gratitude that on this rare occasion, the person I am with shares my understandings, consoles me about life, says on balance I am right to eat crisps, and does not interrupt to shout poopy head, or to make demands for cheesy rice, toast, and where is the leg of the doll because I said I would glue it on. No, they just made me feel like today, the sun came out.