So apparently, eating fat can make you slim…bloody marvelous. Fish and chips, bacon butties and pizza…what, pardon? Sorry…what did you say?? Oh, I getcha, healthy fats. This is celebrity trainer, James Duigan’s idea of what we should all be following:

Monday: ‘Put wilted spinach in a ramekin’, Tuesday: On Monday night…bla, bla, bla (it lost me after telling me to basically ‘be prepared’ 12 hours in advance…I mean, ya whaaat?!
Wednesday: ‘Fry onion in coconut oil, add spinach and wilt’

Ok, ok yeah: ‘and wilt’, because by Wednesday morning on this bloody diet, I would be wilting. Not through protein loading or overuse of the current foodie lovey that is: coconut oil, but wilting because I hardly have time in the mornings to pee. I don’t have time in the mornings to look in the mirror first thing and spot that I look like shit (luckily), I certainly don’t have time to be pleasant. I already have my mornings mapped out and trust me baby, there is no room for ramekins in there. There just isn’t the space to fry f-all and I’m telling you right now, honey, if you think I can deal with garlic…yes, you heard me right, garlic (see Thursday), at 7am, then you really don’t know me! I AM LUCKY TO MAKE IT TO THURSDAY!!! By Thursday morning I am whooping and hollering that tomorrow is Friday and I can crack open wine with impunity. I am NOT in the crushing garlic zone! ‘Fill with smashed avocado’…seriously, is this for real? By Thursday there are several things, such as teenagers’ heads, that need smashing together, but smashing an avocado?? Really?

Friday: more wilting spinach – I can relate to that – yes, we’re wilting it right up here – and, ‘scramble’…or more like: SCRAMBLE!!! (Said in a delirious Saturday night tv presenter’s over-enthusiastic voice, with the emphasis on the final syllables).

And SCRAMBLE I shall – away from celebrity trainer: James Duigan and his diet. It may well be Lara Stone’s food of choice, perhaps it gets David Gandy fired up in the mornings, but for me, I’ll stick to my well-oiled routine: alarm, groan, shower, still groaning but a little less so, background noise of kids killing each other over tights, downstairs, listen to kids constantly bickering over naff all that is important, sign a planner – either for four weeks in advance or for four weeks that I haven’t signed it, trip over the dogs, trip over the kids, hear that their train has been cancelled, groan, make packed lunches if I forgot to the night before and boot four kids out the door…and BREATHE…is there room in my life for wilting bloody spinach or sprinkling ANYTHING, let alone garlic (see Day 6) …the answer is no.

Does anyone have time for this? Really…anyone? (Actually, if you really do, then please don’t make me feel any more crap by telling me).

Btw…I haven’t even started on his lunch menu, but safe to say, if you don’t like fish then you’re scuppered and if anyone knows how to stuff a trout (no rude jokes please guys) or to make, ‘courgette ribbons’, then please e mail me. Actually, don’t bloody bother, because I will be too busy having a life.

I don’t like to leave the house looking like a bag of shite, though that’s certainly not to say this doesn’t happen. I recall a conversation with a friend some years ago, (when I was younger and less understanding), in which I commented on the fact that as celebrities know that they are going to get photographed when they leave their front door, why don’t they at least make an effort to look half decent. I went on to say that I never leave the house thinking that I look like shit. My friend was appalled. She couldn’t believe that I was judging the celebs so harshly and added that she often leaves the house without having made any effort whatsoever. We were good friends and I still to this day remember being surprised at our difference of opinion – it’s one of those conversations that stays with you.

A selection of celebs who are looking a bit shit (or, as I would say now that I am older and more sympathetic to the above weary and stressed out appearances, the camera just caught them at an unfortunate angle)

Appearances are an interesting thing. We all know the old adage that appearances can be deceiving and of course this is true. However, quite often they are the real deal: the parent with baby sick on their shoulder tells a story of a family with a newborn child. The teenager with her tits hanging out tells us of her need for attention, me covered in dog hair shows that I own dogs and so on. It did amuse me when I heard about my little sister’s recent job interview for a job as a Hostage Negotiator. She told me that while she was waiting to be seen by the panel, she realised that her skirt was tucked into her knickers. Phew, she chuckled to the receptionist, can you imagine if I hadn’t noticed! That’s the least of your worries, ma’am, the receptionist replied, your knickers are on inside out!

Sometimes we get away with an appearance issue, like the time partner inadvertently wore his slippers to Co-op, and sometimes we don’t, such as the time he took my Taekwon-do trousers squad training instead of his own. When he got back and told me he had worn them I was mortified with embarrassment for him. He, on the other hand just shrugged his shoulders and said, “it was fine, no-one even noticed.” The following week I entered the changing rooms to hoots of laughter from the female squad, who were beside themselves laughing at the fact he had trained in my trousers. Sometimes, ignorance of others’ thoughts is bliss. (Partner did rightly point out, that had he not trained in my trousers, he would have been training in his pants…I shudder to think…)

So what are your thoughts on this quote:

“In your 20’s and 30’s, you worry about what other people think. In your 40’s and 50’s you stop worrying about what other people think. Finally in your 60’s and 70’s, you realize they were never thinking about you in the first place!”

At the end of the day, if someone’s appearance doesn’t have a direct impact on us, then do we really care? And most interestingly – SHOULD we?

Us ladies are a funny (fabulous, wonderful and charming) bunch of people. No sooner has a friend on Facebook given the slightest whiff of concern about saggy boobs and there are 25 women telling her (quite rightly) that she is beautiful inside – at the same time as being the voices of realism and telling her that they too have saggy tits since breastfeeding 1, 2, 5 kids and then throwing in something sex related along the lines of: bet hubby doesn’t care though 😉 to which the one with saggy tits replies: glad I’m not the only one! THAT’S why we are so amazing, because we empathise, but we are realists. We empathise because we’ve been through similar experiences, we’re realists because these experiences are often shit and sometimes demoralising and often painful, all in varying degrees and we know that you can’t always sugarcoat it.

So back to the, ‘but you are beautiful inside’, in all its various guises.

What I want to know is, us ladies are so bloody good at dishing all this out, why do we find it ABSOLUTELY IMPOSSIBLE to believe our own hype? Because let’s face it ladies, if we really did believe this, why the hell are we spending so much money on make-up? Why are we chucking bloody awful slimshakes down our necks and pretending we’re ok doing it (at the same time as retching into the sink)? Why the heck are we googling ‘tummy tuck’ and thinking which of the kids we would sell to pay for it? If we’re all so bloody gorgeous on the inside? LIKE THAT’S ALL THAT MATTERS! The point is, of course, that however lovely we are as people, most of us want to look good on the outside too, no matter how much we all, in each others’ lowest moments, are trying to convince ourselves otherwise.

So how about some alternative quotes to wheel out the next time a friend tells us that she hates her tits or her arse or her hair or her thighs. Perhaps these will encompass both empathy and realism in fairly equal measure, without us having to muster up a weak smile and nod when one of us tells you that you are inwardly beautiful, whilst you are thinking: but I wasn’t feeling that inner beauty today, as I told the husband he was a twat and shouted back louder at the kids than they shouted at me. These quotes are for us ladies:

The can is open and the worms are crawling everywhere, since a mumsnet user posted a question on the parenting forum:

“Would you leave a peacefully sleeping 10m old home alone for 7 minutes?” The user explained that their 10-month-old sleeps reliably and at the same time every day. They also said that their journey took 7 minutes and the destination was 50m away.

It sparked over 800 replies and naturally the Daily Mail got hold of it too…the debate rampages on. Since Madeleine McCann went missing in Portugal in 2007, we have become the judges and the jury. Before this, we all went with our gut. She was 3 years old when ‘it’, whatever ‘it’ is, happened and I had children not much older than her. Of course it hit home. You couldn’t help but become obsessed with the story. I can clearly remember watching a news report when Kate McCann, the mother, was first visiting the police station to be questioned. How can she look so calm? I thought (judging – thinking how I’d react). How dare I judge! I didn’t just have an opinion, I judged. Is there a difference between the two? The point is, pre Madeleine’s still unexplained disappearance, I left my babies alone and not just me, friends and family behaved in a similar way to me. Sounds shocking? You haven’t heard the details yet. The mumsnet lady hadn’t given details, so of course we all form an opinion on what we can see or hear. After a negative reaction to her post, with some positives for what she did too, she gave us avid readers more details: she lives in a flat and she was picking up boxes of clothes so that she could try them on in peace…hey lady, stop! You’re making it sound worse to the mumsnet gestapo, not better! She says that she did a risk assessment first, possibly similar to the one you might do before opening a second bottle of wine, she assessed the risk as, ‘oh fuck it, go on then!’. Yes, I’ve done that same risk assessment that she did, on my babies. What allows us as mums to love, cherish, live and die for our babies, but still happily leave them alone in certain situations? Buying petrol – you do a quick risk assessment: baby asleep in car seat, door locked, I’ll be literally minutes and can see the car from the window, tick. The positives hugely override the negatives of waking her up, especially when you’ve spent the past 30 minutes driving around getting her to sleep and that’s why you now need the bloody petrol. Then, while you are in the petrol station, a car that is parked on a hill opposite rolls down the hill, onto the garage forecourt and into the side of the car where your bundle is sleeping. Unlikely? It happened to me when I was a child. Is it ever worth the risk?

People replied to the lady on mumsnet saying: what if a fire ripped through her house while she was out. Others posted, ‘unlikely’. The point is that we never know what might happen and you can bet that all of us who may say fair play to her, would be the first to tut if there had been a fire. So, back to the days of the gut instinct? When my children were tiny, I lived in a village, which perhaps made me feel (stupidly) safe, or perhaps I was just bloody knackered and my brain was in that place they pack their bags and take themselves off to when baby one appears. I don’t know why I did it, but I parked my car, complete with 4 kids under 5 in it, outside our local village shop, left the engine running and ran in to buy something. My risk assessment was screwed. Maybe I thought no-one would want 4 kids under 5 and would leave them well alone. Another mum came into the shop and asked me whether I wanted someone to take them, as she handed me my car keys. I was incensed (embarrassed) – how dare she! Looking back on the incident, my reaction is: how could I have done that?! But I did.

Perhaps the answer to the worms is never to take a risk. Just simply imagine that the worst may very well happen, rather than very well won’t. Is this a healthy way to live, adding to the neurosis that comes with the title of ‘parent’?

One thing that is for certain: as a nation we have become extremely judgemental. I suspect it is the rise in social media that is to blame for this. We play out our lives on line and we are bate. One of my favourite quotes is:

Temporary traffic lights 😡 My life seems to have become a series of traffic lights. So, when I’m sitting at a red light now, I think about projects I’m working on that aren’t moving forwards and try to work out solutions. When I’m at an amber light, I think about ideas that have just taken off and that I am excited about and when I reach a light that is green I give some thought to all the positives in my life; all the things that are going really well and bits of my life that I am exremely grateful for……nah, do I bollocks! When I see yet more f***ing temporary traffic lights I scream nooooooooooo more! I’M LATE ALREADY!!!