From smug to mug over my fruity tea
The only sort of water I can force down my neck is flavoured so, in the interests of keeping myself properly hydrated, I’ve been adding fresh lemon juice to my H20 and swapped my lattes for fruit teas.
I felt quite smug about it – doing the healthy thing.
But scientists from King’s College London wiped the smile right off my face this week.
It turns out, they say, that “sipping on acidic drinks such as fruit teas and flavoured water can wear away teeth and damage the enamel”.
The good news is that you can halve the damage if you drink while eating a meal and then neutralise the acid with cheese or milk.
Maybe I’ll just cut my losses and switch to prosecco.
It was World Book Day on Thursday, there were 15 minutes left before the school bus arrived and my nine-year-old Zac was still dithering about what to wear.
Last year he went dressed as Harry Potter and I was all for recycling that costume. I do like to get my money’s worth and there are always so many Hogwarts outfits no one would remember.
But he had that look on his face – all mums know the one – that makes you feel rubbish for not having organised something better sooner.
Then I had a brainwave: “I know Zac, why don’t you go as The Boy In The Dress from that David Walliams book?”
He looked at me as if I’d suddenly started speaking in parseltongue.
“I go to an all-boys school,” he growled through gritted teeth. “There is no way that I’m turning up wearing a dress.”
At that moment I realised I’d stumbled into an opportunity to teach my young son an important life lesson.
“What’s wrong with wearing a dress?” I asked.
“Oh come on, Mum – you know what’s wrong! Boys don’t wear dresses and I’m going to get picked on and everyone’s going to think I’m weird.”
Deep down, I worried that he was right. But I didn’t want to pass up this character-building chance.
I was determined to convince him to slip his sister’s dress over his head and go into school with his head held high.
“Zac,” I told him, “wearing a dress doesn’t mean that you’re weak, weird or any less of a boy, it’s just a piece of material. By wearing a dress today, you are going to stand out for all the right reasons. It takes a brave person to do something different, to not follow the crowd.
“In life you can’t please everyone, but that’s all right as long as you don’t hurt anyone’s feelings.”
He listened, weighed it all up, and then said: “Oh, all right!”
Of course, then I panicked and thought: “Oh my god, what if he gets bullied, what if the teachers think he’s weird, what if, what if…?
Because deep down I knew that putting my boy in a frock for school was as much about my need to make a point as it was about his learning curve. But he was on board now, so I found my daughter’s pretty dress and a little cardigan and sent him on his way.
I won’t lie. I spent the rest of Thursday counting down the minutes to pick-up time. Was nine too young to stand out from the crowd? The guilt just grew. That afternoon I was the first mother at the school gates. The doors opened and out came herds of Harry Potters and Ninja Turtles, some soldiers and spies and even an Oompa-Loompa. But there was no sign of my boy in the dress.
Was he hiding? Had he had a tough time? My heart was banging like a drum when I spotted him running towards me with a big smile on his face and his best friends in tow.
I played it cool. “How was it?” I asked, giving him an extratight squeeze.
He shrugged. “Well, some people thought I was weird but I didn’t care.”
Then he started laughing and larking around with his pals. Job done, I thought.
Which reminded me of what David Walliams said about his Boy In The Dress character.
“So much of school life is about conformity, about being the same as everyone else,” he argued.
“Yet you often find the people who are most successful after they’ve left school are the ones who don’t conform while they’re there.”
Something all us competitive parents would do well to remember.
Emma Thompson got us talking about infidelity this week when she revealed that she used her heartache over ex-husband Kenneth Branagh cheating on her to play a wronged wife in Love Actually.
We asked the Loose Women audience to share their cheating stories. My favourite was from a woman who said: “I knew he was having an affair when he said he was going out to play golf – and it was dark.”