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I've just returned from a two-day business trip to Cardiff. This 48-hour excursion provided incontrovertible proof of several things, including that service station burgers taste ten times as good at four in the morning; that truck drivers are a friendly bunch who will gladly smile and say hello to others taking a break from the motorway in the pre-dawn hours; that Welsh hospitality is a delight; and that there is never more than a five-minute gap between hearing people in the Bay area say, 'Oh wow, that's the secret entrance to Torchwood!'
I've always loved Wales. Several family holidays during my childhood were based in the north of the country, notably in a converted watermill near Bala and on a farm with a view of Snowdon. It was in Wales that I first rode a horse. Accordingly it was also in Wales that I first fell off one.
Visits to the south have been rarer, although a fortnight in a static caravan in Saundersfoot is a fond memory. Where else could you walk to the neighbouring town (Tenby) via the beach at low tide, then take a trip to a monks' island (Caldey) in an ex-military mini landing craft known as a duck whilst leaning over the side to spot jellyfish?
Cardiff though was new territory. The city has in recent years been accorded worldwide promotion twice over thanks first to the massive modern redevelopment, and second to Doctor Who.
Given that most roadsigns in Wales are written in both English and Welsh, and that it takes mere moments to learn that 'police' in Welsh is 'heddlu,' I now wish I'd learned a little of the language as a courtesy. Just a few basic but essential phrases, such as 'Good evening,' 'Have you met Charlotte Church?' and 'It's bigger on the inside...'
My husband, who was easily persuaded to come along for a short break and sweetly did all the driving, was, in a purely masculine sense you understand, complimentary about Cardiff's shopping. The real meaning of this is probably that there are plenty of bars and coffee shops among the boutiques, but he did also present me with an exquisite little jade brooch and matching silk scarf. Daniel's spur-of-the-moment romantic side is as charming as the waitress in our hotel's restaurant, who, on learning we were newly(ish) married, sent a box of chocolates up to our room later that evening.
We drove home on Thursday afternoon by way of Hereford, home of my beloved Bulls who in a display of unrivalled kindness are still propping up the other 91 teams in the football league. It was sad beyond words to see the damage done to some historic buildings by the recent fire, but a joy to pay a fleeting visit to the town and enjoy an enormously generous bar meal beside a real log fire. There was even a labrador curled up in front of it.
All this notwithstanding, there's no place like home, and the moments when the M4 becomes the M25 becomes the M23 and Gatwick Airport hoves into view are reassuringly familiar. But thank you, people of Cardiff and Hereford. We'll be back...
I'm not usually one to take any notice of our worryingly popular tabloids and certainly would never compliment them by buying one, but they do get left lying around in odd places and I can seldom resist a flick through. It's the same morbid curiosity that makes us look at the aftermath of a car crash as we drive past, however much we don't want to.
Over the weekend this meant seeing a photograph of some WAG or other, five months pregnant and already looking as if she had a Zeppelin under her jumper. As I glanced down at my own near-flat middle, I didn't know whether to feel smug or envious.
I settled for relief at not being married to a Premier League footballer, most of whom seem to think chastity is a mispronounciation of Chester City and that monogamy is a dark wood.
Coincidentally, two friends both had their weddings on Saturday, neither of which I was able to attend. Which is probably just as well, because the cake wouldn't have stood an ice cube's chance in the Sahara the way my pregnancy cravings and appetite are persisting.
Neither of the ceremonies were in this country, and although invitations and airline tickets to both were received, a busy few days kept both me and The Bump rooted in Brighton, where in the city centre the first Christmas decorations have been strung up across North Street. As, indeed, should be whomever is responsible for them, and not merely because there's still a sixth of the year between now and the tide of Yule.
These seasonal banners straddle the road at regular intervals, and look like threadbare fishing nets with a few token lights attached surrounding a child's drawing of Santa. One can safely say they'd have been better advised spending ten quid in Poundland, or not to have bothered at all.
But as usual, commercial promotions are out of synch with the calendar. George at Asda will still sell you a bikini whilst only just deciding that perhaps gloves and scarves should be given some retail space. Festive tat is creeping onto more and more shelves, including groanworthy tubes of 'Merry Pringles'. It must be just a matter of time before chocolate eggs make their appearance.
I'm not sure when Easter falls next year, but the stork will make his delivery before the Easter Bunny. Remember, won't you, that the clocks go back this Hallowe'en weekend; with all the above swirling around, you'd be forgiven for forgetting what time of year it actually is...
The onset of autumn means many things; leaves crunching underfoot, gloves and hats finally appearing in the shops a week after we first needed them; biting northerly winds; rapidly shortening daylight hours; and my husband constantly looking at the calendar and remarking on how long it isn't until the baby is born.
He has a point. November is almost upon us, and when it is we'll be counting down through fewer months than have passed. The exact date of conception is not an absolute, although we can narrow it down to one week in June when we were together in Monte Carlo, and that's about as much detail as I'm going to divulge on that most romantic of stopovers, thank you very much.
And now, at last, I am starting to show. It is, to be frank, about time. When people ask how far gone I am (a horrible phrase which sounds more like an enquiry into one's current level of drunkeness) and I state the dates, the reaction is usually a look of disbelieving astonishment.
In truth it's not rare for a pregnancy not to show until it's some way advanced, and there have even been cases of women giving birth without even knowing they were expecting. But I want it to show, so that I can glance down at The Bump and actually see something there. And anyway, it also guarantees a seat on the bus.
Amazingly, it does also, genuinely, give me the right to pee in a police officer's helmet. I'd always assumed that this was one of those myths, but a simple bit of research ascertained that this most quirky of laws does indeed still exist. It does somewhat overlook the mutual embarrassment factor, but in Brighton you're never more than a toilet roll's throw from a pub or a cafe or somewhere else with a convenient convenience.
My husband, may his stock always rise (and it certainly did in Monaco), has now taken to patting my stomach when we slink into bed at night. It's things like that which bring a lump to my throat; completely natural reflex moments that demonstrate how much his paternal instincts are kicking in.
The other day, he sent me a text to say he was on his way home. It began, 'Hello both of you.' I filled up.
And then went into the kitchen and filled up with custard. Not the craving-satisfying quick-fix tins bought in bulk from Asda, but real honest-to-goodness home-made custard. Well, every special occasion demands to be marked...
It's all happening in the blogosphere. I've barely begun this personal, lighthearted online diary, and now my services have been snapped up by (fanfare please) The Argus, our local newspaper here in Brighton and the surrounding locales of Sussex.
Well, specifically their website. Invitations to pen the occasional article for the actual paper have yet to flood my inbox, but let's not allow that to dampen any ambitions that may happen to be bubbling beneath the surface.
So, now I have two blogs to write on a regular basis. The Argus blog, entitled 'Devine Inspiration' (yes, I know, I've always hated puns on Devine and divine, but it works, so I'm rolling with it), is to be a (mainly local) news agenda reactive blog, in which I shall pluck from the esteemed publication and/or its website whatever reports trigger thoughts, and proceed to analyse them with all the incisive skill I can muster. Or, if all else fails, fall back on 'And finally...' style stories such as the skateboarding dog who hogged most of page three earlier this week, complete with shameful 'Bony Hawk' pun.
The irony of this hit me this morning, when, reading through the web editor's guidance notes which make the simplest processes seem like The Italian Job but with added complications, I remembered how, a few months ago, I and two friends were plagued by the most bizarre of accusations.
Neither I nor they were believed to actually exist in the physical world at all.
Now this would certainly be news to many people. My parents would surely be bemused, as would my husband and the rather suave vicar who presided over our wedding ceremony. Yet for weeks the three of us were subjected to a barrage of abuse and accusatory vitriol demanding to know why we were all masquerading as real people.
Spot the blatant flaw in the argument: according to one person in particular, all three of us were using Facebook and Twitter from behind fake profiles. All of us. Which left nobody to be the 'real' person behind them.
Eventually, one by one, we deleted and deactivated, and set up entirely new profiles in which we were far more careful about whose friend requests and suchlike we accepted. Since then, all has been well, and it is no coincidence that my new Twitter profile bears the wry-smile tag of 'ReallyLulu'.
It does rather bring a whole new meaning to the term ghost writer. Allegedy our little trio was a figment of our collective imagination, and we were no more rooted in actuality than the mind-bending universes of The Matrix or Inception. Although were the ludicrous barbs true I might claim that we were better acted.
The most laughable twist is that these daft denouncements arose because - in the bitter words of our accuser - we were 'commenting on each other's posts all the time.' Well, er, isn't that what social networking is all about?
Happily, as two midwives and a health visitor can now also attest, we three are very much alive and walking this earth rather than reinventing Marley's Ghost or mischievously floating around like Casper.
Which in many ways is a shame, because it would be lovely to be able to indulge the ongoing custard craving in the certain knowledge that it would not affect my diet because I simply didn't have one. Or to look forward to the latter stages of pregnancy with the comforting surety that however much our baby kicked from its womb without a view, I wouldn't feel a thing.
As it is, just for the record, the gas and air can very definitely be on standby come the early spring of 2011. And if, as seems inevitable, I scream whilst delivering our firstborn, those wails will be coming from the maternity ward, and not from somewhere far away in the ether...
There is something disconcerting about the onset of autumn. It's a beautiful time of year, with trees turning from green to gold to red and sunsets becoming more spectacular, but the transition from summer always manages to catch me unawares.
This is, clearly, nonsensical. It's not as if we don't know the new season is coming; unlike a piano falling onto a cartoon character's head, it doesn't appear out of nowhere and knock us flat. Yet one hint of autumnal conditions and we Brits (not that I am, fully, having Austrian blood in my veins) do our favourite thing of all by talking about the weather. Obsessively.
I suppose it has been bizarre lately. It was so hot on Sunday that there were girls in bikinis on the beach. Yes, bikinis, in October. And today, we have a northeasterly wind blasting the city with a bite so sharp it feels like it could crumble one's skeleton. Which is why, having ventured out for the newspaper this morning, I then decided that staying in for the morning while the temperature struggled to raise itself a bit was entirely justified, not least with The Bump to think about.
Truth to tell, The Bump is not yet noticeable. Four months into my pregnancy and everything looks flat as a pancake. Except, needless to say, to me. Whenever I pass a mirror I glance sideways and am convinced that there is, at last, a visible swell of the belly. But as my darling husband points out, there simply isn't.
All of which means I can still wear whatever I please without recourse to looser, larger mid-maternity wear, or at least I could were it not suddenly so cold beyond the cosy apartment. This, I admit, is a relief, for whilst I have no first-time-birth fears of the pains of childbirth, I dread the weeks when I have to swathe myself in clothing so large and floaty it would prove highly effective attached to the mast of a yacht.
But The Bump is being kind and not manifesting itself. Five months still to go however, and my health visitor chirpily declared last week, 'Oh, I'm sure you'll balloon in the belly soon!' Which sent me scurrying for chocolate, on the basis that if she's going to say such things and cause me to seek comfort food then I may as well not worry about how I'll look when The Bump eventually expands...
Whilst making my mind up between the many indulgent delights in a high-street bakery, I overheard a conversation between a mother and her young child.
'There are three colours in a rainbow!' the child loudly proclaimed out of nowhere. To which the mother replied, 'Don't be silly. There are eight colours in a rainbow.'
I struggle to say a kind word about this country's previous administration, but I had a strong urge to turn to the woman and shout, 'Education, education, education!' I only wish I could be there the next time she sits down with her offspring and a picture book and begins helping him to count the rainbow's colours. And no doubt scientists would like to know what that eighth one is; who knows, it could be as significant as the elusive particles they're looking for in the Large Hadron Collider, that ultimate big boys' toy.
Instead, I plucked a chicken mayo baguette from the shelf and said nothing. Later, at Asda (other supermarkets are available) I found myself buying the biggest frozen chicken I could find, and realised that the first random craving of my pregnancy might just have kicked in.
It hadn't, as it turned out. But since then, two cravings do seem to have taken a firm grip on my daily dietary intake and assumed control of a whole shelf in the fridge. I am now at the mercy of rice pudding and custard. Not at the same time, I hasten to add, but in equal measures.
The shame of it is that I'm not even making my own. I could, and indeed often do, but life is busy and when a craving for either hits me the last thing I want to do is have to make it myself. So there is now a sizeable collection of (I say it with shame) tins of custard and rice pudding in our kitchen.
True, wandering around Asda and filling a corner of the trolley with 17p tins of own-brand rice pudding and custard doesn't feel good. Usually I wouldn't stoop so low. Speaking of which, could we please have it on a slightly higher shelf rather than at almost floor level? The pitying smile as all those cheap tins beep their way over the scanner is bad enough, without having had to almost go down on my knees to get them in the first place. I'll pile them high if you will!
But it turns out that custard is a secret love that hangs over from the treats of childhood well into our adult lives. Think about it; when dining out, custard is seldom seen on any menu, even as an option, and it's not something any of us ever mention when talking about food. But there I was, texting a friend the other afternoon, when I happened to mention these new cravings and he instantly craved custard himself. You see? We never grow out of it. It's a moreish secret treat.
And thus one of the rules of motherhood that I shall be instigating during my child's life is simply this. Custard's too good for children; it's ours!
I hesitate to invite dreadful and over-tired comments with punning remarks about 'Devine' inspiration, but no sooner had I bemoaned the dismal performances that have seen Hereford sitting unprettily at the bottom of the Football League than the club sacked the manager. Much as I would love to be able to claim some sort of mystical influence over events, I think I can say without fear of contradiction that this was purely coincidental.
It certainly came as a surprise, as did the news this morning that just along the south coast in Hastings the pier has burned down. I'm not one for conspiracy theories, but there have been a suspicious number of blazes on piers, and at this rate the British coast is going to be littered with Victorian metal stilts sticking out the seabed but with nothing left to hold up.
Surprises have been numerous lately, not least the discovery over the weekend that a certain very good friend can knit. This was quite a revelation, not least because the person in question is only 17 and is probably the last of my social circle who I'd expect to be familiar with the mantra of 'knit one, pearl one' or the sound of clacking needles.
The said friend and her slightly older sister must now be the first to be given blog identities. I decided before setting up this personal site that I would never actually name anyone in these entries, partly because I respect privacy in the same way as I expect it, and also because it is, frankly, more fun to appoint sobriquets. It's a device deployed frequently by columnists (AA Gill, for example, refers to his partner as The Blonde), and is a useful means of populating these posts with the characters in my life without publicly identifying them.
So, let us call these American sisters now resident here in Brighton by the shadowy nicknames of Manhattan Musician and PR Brunette (since the former is a classical musician and the latter works at a PR agency; protecting but not confusing). For those who need assistance or occasional reminders of who is who within these diaries, I'll add a companion page to the site with a list of these protective names and brief descriptions.
And so a final thought that surfaced when contemplating knitting as an improbable leisure activity of one so young. Quite apart from the possibility of a few homemade baby clothes coming my way when Daniel and I welcome our firstborn in March, it struck me that arguably one of the most surreal fashion trends ever devised is the use of knitting needles as hair accessories. Of course it's inspired by the ladies of Japan, but it does look peculiar. It's tempting to entwine my tresses around something equally bizarre just to make a point - a knife and fork, perhaps, or a cocktail umbrella. But the latter would just be silly; I mean, where would I put the olive..?
It appears that being a Hereford United supporter and being pregnant have one thing in common: they are seen by others as cues for unsolicited but well-meaning advice.
It's no surprise to me that my pregnancy has opened the flood gates to a torrent of tips, and it's no less surprising that most of them seem to have been extracted from that old faithful, the book of old wives' tales. So whilst I'm amused to be told that eating broccoli will improve the likelihood of our child being a girl and that wearing copper jewellery will protect my all-round well-being, I'm no more liable to put any faith in these apparently random bits of hand-me-down wisdom than I am to ever consider an attempt to influence the gender of our baby through vegetables or to accessorise with some cheap piece of tat for health reasons. Please, I have standards.
Hereford are currently rooted to the bottom of League Two and in desperate need of mountaineering equipment if they're to stand any immediate chance of climbing to even minor heights. This is of course a topic on which even more people are wont to pronounce, the beautiful game being one of those things on which the world, his wife and their labradoodle have an opinion. And for me, the self-proclaimed football experts are only one step below holier-than-thou ex-smokers on the irritating smugness scale. (I speak as an ex-smoker but one who merely gets on with it and does not preach. This may change when I have a baby's lungs to protect, so if I rant on the theme next year you'll know why.)
What makes the armchair punditry worse is not the fact that everybody, myself included, thinks they know better than their team's manager, but that those who wryly pass the sentence of doom upon Hereford are always supporters of the top teams in the Premier League. Well, I say supporters; I'm acquainted with rather too many people who seem to support the likes of Manchester United with clearly no ties to the team, the town or even the region. Yes, it's easy to follow a team that does well. But you'll only find true passion in the lower leagues, even if does come with the required side order of frequent despair.
My husband, a man wise enough to preserve an aura of peace and tranquility around my volatile hormones, is one of the few who makes no proclamations on the Bulls. Instead he quietly perseveres with his loyalty to Brighton & Hove Albion, and I look upward at their lofty perch atop League One with envy.
And one need only look to the farmland skirting this city to observe this simple truth: seagulls do soar above bulls...
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