Prince William 'affianced' . . .world stifles yawn.

The Daily Mail today, took a break from what it does so well - latent misogyny loosely disguised as 'research' and suspicious looking foreigners (probably Benefit Thieves) receiving money for fussing about torture and illegal imprisonment - to announce minute-by-minute of the Engagement of William (he of the sadly receding hairline) and Katherine (nice looking girl but what does she do? Oooh quick Mr Dacre, didn't you do a mean spirited piece about that mother of hers? Looks like the pushy type - a few years ago? Well they're ENGAGED now so get rid of it.

So they're engaged. And it looks like a 'dream wedding' for no-longer Waity Kaity. In the ever deepening nastiness of this recession (a friend remarked that he's seriously thinking of telling his elder son to emigrate as there are going to be so few jobs around for young people starting out) us ordinary folk can doff our caps and cheer loudly as an attractive girl is sucked into that unpleasant archaic institution that like a bad tempered teenager, costs us a fortune to run and gives fuck all in return.

William and Katherine will be married next spring or summer - 2011, exactly 30 years since Lady/Princess Diana stood on the royal balcony and kissed that jug eared bloke, to roars of approval. I watched it on telly and tried to write an essay at the same time. I also watched astrologers twittering on about 'how well suited they are'. But 1981 was also a time of deep recession, thanks partly to the deregulation of the Banks, the savings and loan crisis and nearly three million unemployed (that particular 'record' was achieved in January 1982) - thank you Mrs Thatcher and Mr Reagan. Notably Reagan is now viewed as some sort of cuddly bear who made Americans proud to be Americans, and Thatcher's dismantling of Britain as some kind of gesture worthy of Elizabeth 1.

The Royal Wedding then in 1981 was a distraction - a brief one. And this will probably be a brief distraction too. I just wonder if our attitude towards it all has changed? Will we line Pall Mall doffing our caps? Or buy commemoration cups? Or this time will we just shrug?

Sayings of The Girl part 235

We're in a shop, The Girl and I, spending twenty minutes quality time with a plastic shopping basket, me dully repeating 'no no no' to increasingly whiney requests for:

String cheese
fruit shoots
muffins the size of a child's head
magazines stuffed with plastic shit
fizzy drinks with 'added antioxidants'
doughnuts topped with penicillin pink icing

'But the TV says it's good for you!' cries The Girl with increasing frustration. Just as I'm running out of responses that don't involve swear words, we make it to the top of the queue to pay, and The Girl spies a charity box for the local hospice. And in a sudden about turn, she asks if she can put all her pocket money in the exciting little hole at the top. 'All of it?' I ask. She nods firmly. Even the lady at the till enquires, 'Are you sure you want to put all your pocket money in there love?' The Girl is firm. She takes her money, slots it in and I smile benignly (it probably comes across as smug though). 'Her grandmother died recently', I whisper to the till lady and we exchange smiles at the wonder, the purity, the generosity of children.

Alas, when she gets home, The Girl counts her piggy bank money and bursts into sobs. 'I thought I had five pounds!'

I am bewildered. 'But you gave this week's pocket money away.'

She cries even harder. 'I thought it was YOUR money!'

Dad drove me to be a Muslim

The writer Lauren Booth has announced that she’s becoming a Muslim and has been roundly lambasted for it. Personally, as an ex-Catholic, another religion that regards Women with Opinions as deeply dangerous, I’m bemused. She was brought up in the Catholic faith, a religion where a nine year old rape victim was recently excommunicated for having an abortion. (Her stepfather who had also been accused of also raping the child's older handicapped sister was not excommunicated.) Not oppressive enough? Apparently not. How can she square ‘this shot of morphine, just absolute bliss and joy’ with a religion which has no qualms about stoning thirteen year old rape victims is beyond me. And yes, I know that there is a difference between the Koran and its interpretation. But to embrace a religion surely means you have to accept how it is practised? However, I feel a twinge of sympathy for her because around the same time she announced her new found beliefs, her father, the actor Tony Booth, blithely said in an interview that he doesn’t love her and is 'ashamed' of her. This 'character' has such a crass disregard for his children that he lauds his successful golden girl Cherie and forgets the names of his other seven daughters. Maybe it’s because I’ve recently lost my own mother but how can a parent say such a thing, loud and proud? Even if he feels it, to say it? And then to accuse her of trading on her relationship with her half-sister, Cherie Blair, when he himself has been doing exactly the same thing. You can only imagine the chaos he must have inflicted on his children. And yet, like so many utterly rotten parents he expects their support and loyalty. Which apparently Cherie gives and Lauren doesn't.

It struck me that what Catholicism and Islam have in common is a defined set of rules about what makes a ‘good’ woman. The Catholics hold up two types of women, the virgin mother and the reformed whore (Mary Magdalene) You don’t have to wear specific clothing but a good catholic woman eschews contraception, abhors abortion and considers her primary duty to bring up her children and make her family the centre of her life. Islam requires a woman to 'lower her gaze and guard her modesty'. It's always about the terrible power of female sexuality isn't it? Maybe it’s easier to think of yourself as ‘good’ if you follow a set of preordained rules, written by men, and view the world in black and white terms. But I think that it’s a mark of maturity to accept that the world is not black and white and perhaps you need a bedrock of self confidence to work out how to be good yourself without subscribing to a set of rules in order to do so.

I’ve never met LB but to have your father say such a vile thing about you, says far more about him than it does about her. Maybe it's not so strange that she has embraced the strictness of Islam to find some peace. But I'm wondering why isn’t he being criticised for such a wretched attitude about his children?

Giving up Smoking

Oh God, I feel as sick and dizzy as a pissed granny at a sherry party. It's because I'm wearing a nicotine patch - a clear, sticky thing that sends nicotine coursing through my middle aged veins. It's Day Two of my not smoking, so Serve Me Right. I'd like to say that I stopped because I was worried about lung cancer. Well I am anyway, especially as my lung capacity is a bit rubbish anyway. I once had to breathe through one of those tubes which measure it and the monitor shifted about half a centimeter.

I once asked a friend why he had given up smoking and he said: 'Because I was tired of being a slave to the weed' which struck me as a very sensible thing to say. You are a slave to it. Many is the time I've lit up and felt an overwhelming sense of disgust. I would smoke outside in the cold, shivering, feeling pathetic and ashamed. It seems so ridiculous as well as monstrously dangerous. My wise friend also said: 'Don't wait until you really want to stop smoking because that day will never come.' Oh I know all those smokers out there, including me, will sometimes wake up, headachy, breathless and chock full of guilt at the sight of full ashtrays and the rank smell and vow there and then to Stop. But the addiction comes creeping back, overriding the self-loathing.

To be honest, the real reason I'm giving up is superficial vanity. I've noticed a few thread veins sliding out of my nose (oooh sexy) and think that if I keep this habit up I'll soon have a nose like W.C Fields.

So this is it. And maybe feeling like a sick granny is a small price to pay. Any tips or advice from former smokers out there?

I wish I'd never had children . . . .

‘I wish I’d never had children!’ shrieked the ex wife of a friend of mine. Trouble was she shrieked it at her children. I don’t know what the situation was but suspect it was an end of her tether one and not something she bellowed at her kids to get them up in the morning. But her now ex husband occasionally repeats the phrase as though it’s a summation of her rubbish skills as a mother. ‘Can you imagine saying that to your children?’ Well pushed hard enough – possibly. I told him that once, years ago when The Boy was about five, he yelled ‘I hate you!’ at me, and instead of responding in a mature Penelope Leach like manner, I yelled back: ‘Yeah well I hate you too you little shit!’ He laughed but insisted that his ex wife's comment was a far worse thing to say because it was so damaging. I'm not sure about that. I think a one off horrible remark is less destructive than the drip drip of emotional abuse.

Parents, in particular mothers though, are not supposed to ever express the negative side of parenting, except in a jokey way. If they do they invite a landslide of hatred, usually in the form of ‘why did you bother to have children you selfish bitch?’ The writer Anna Pasternak once wrote a piece about how dull babies were and oh so many mothers wrote in to tell her a) what a crap mother she was and b) what stimulating company their own babies were. Yeah I remember discussing Wittgenstein with my babies and them dribbling in response. Happy days.

Shouting at your children that you wished you hadn't given birth to them is a pretty terrible thing to say, but I found myself feeling a twinge of sympathy. I don’t need to tell you parents out there that there a) there is a dark underbelly to parenting that sometimes comes out in flashes of hatred and fury and b) we all have days where the sheer endless never ending endlessness of it makes us want to step out in front of the nearest car. The people who are the most shocked and horrified by this dark underbelly are always those who haven’t spent much time around children themselves.

I’ve been thinking about all this because The Girl and I are currently staying with my dad as he’s not coping too well with bereavement, and it’s taken a while to get The Girl into a local school (an exciting tale I’ll bore you with another time) but in the meantime The Girl and I are spending a lot of time together. Most of it is fun but sometimes oh God . . . . .I wish there was an off button. I can’t get a minute to myself. And yes, I’m making sure she goes to interesting places, classes, new activities. It’s the endless stream of questions – the fact she says ‘Mum . . .mum . . .?’ before asking a question and will keep saying ‘mum . . . mum . . . .mum . . . ‘ whether I’m on the phone, on the toilet or with my head in a cupboard trying to locate the gas meter. No time off. No respite. And there's only one of her! Full time single mothers are heroines! How do they not go mad?

Today I took her to children’s yoga and had a whole forty five minutes to myself. And no I'm not being sarcastic. It was joyous. I paid a few bills online and listened to embarrassing music on my ipod. Bliss. Ah say the Experts, so why can’t you do that with your daughter around? Because the point of the child free space is the sheer luxury of being alone – you revel in it – stretch out in it like a warm bath. And you don’t need that much of it, to gather your fractured self back together again and return to the fray.