Fecklet really has quite a mild case, thank goodness. He’s been quite cuddly and wanting attention, a little itchy and easily frustrated, but he’s not miserable. He’s eating well and sleeping well and enjoying baking soda baths. We’ve been reading books, listening to Winnie the Pooh, and watching Animal Planet. Yesterday he ran around the garden for a bit.

So he’s pretty well, considering. I, on the other hand, am going totally bonkers. I’ve had to cancel his sessions with his child minder and at nursery, so I haven’t had any good blocks of writing time. My story is going round and round in my head and the more I think about it, the more I’m convinced it sucks. After having written 12,500 words the previous week, I’ve written about 1200 in the past six days.

Rock God Husband is on tour, so I haven’t had more than a few fleeting moments of adult company since Saturday. We haven’t gone to the supermarket, so have been eating through our supplies, and have run out of wine. (Yikes!) I have left the house twice in three days—once to get milk, and yesterday to go to the post office. Both times, perforce, I’ve had Fecklet with me. I could have tied him to the sofa I suppose, but I didn’t think that was appropriate. I’m funny that way.

I made the mistake of mentioning to the man in the post office that Fecklet had the chicken pox. (It’s not readily apparent; all his poxes are on his torso.) He gave me a dirty look and said, “You shouldn’t have him out of the house! That is catching!”

Thank you, Post Office Man. I already feel like I’m on the verge of slaughtering an entire village with a chain saw because of isolation (NO BEER AND NO TV MAKE HOMER GO CRAZY—in this case, it’s NO WINE AND NO WRITING MAKE JULIE GO CRAZY). And now you’re making me feel guilty, too?

Thank God I didn’t buy wine while I was out. Can you imagine the guilt if I’d been caught hauling my child out of his sick bed, spreading germs willy-nilly, in order to buy booze?

Anyway. I ordered groceries online and they’ve just been delivered. (Wine! Cheese! Fresh fruit and vegetables to ward off scurvy! Did I mention wine?) And some friends whose children have already been pox’d are coming over to visit in the next few days. And hopefully the pox will be scabbed over by the end of the week.

On a much more cheerful note, Nina Harrington has put up some photos of my signing on her blog.

Listening to internet radio this morning. Paul McCartney and Wings came on singing “Listen To What the Man Says.”

As this question has often plagued me, I turned to my very young son the Fecklet, who was busy posting his shoes down the back of his pushchair, and asked him, “Who IS the MAN, anyway?”

Without pausing his shoe posting, he replied, “Elvis.”

Well, we’re on the fourth day of Fecklet not being well. He’s got some sort of tummy bug, and though he’s over the fever now and he’s having some cheerful moments, his appetite isn’t good and he’ll suddenly turn from cheerful to crying and needing cuddles. I’ve definitely noticed a pattern, in that he feels much better after eating something and then has a dip, so I’m trying to make him eat little and often.

Anyway, this morning we baked a cake to prolong a cheerful moment. He loves dumping ingredients in a bowl and mixing. We made an eggless cocoa cake, and then after we’d licked the bowl we decided the pan was too big for the cake so we made half an invented recipe of eggless orange cake and marbled it through. The batter tasted wonderful and it smelled great in the oven. The finished cake is pretty lopsided (I think the orange batter rose more as the OJ reacted with the baking soda) but I’ll slap some frosting on it and it will do wonders to cheer us up this afternoon, I’m sure.

And I also just had a brainstorm and remembered the carrier bag full of plastic dinosaurs I bought from the charity shop and was saving for a rainy day. Fecklet is now obsessed with dinosaurs, and I do believe that even though it’s sunny outside, this might be a metaphorical rainy day.

All of this means I’ve had very little time to write, though I did finish a chapter last night and now have to find out what happens next. I’ve just read Getting Rid of Matthew by Jane Fallon and am now reading The Beach House by Jane Green (I obviously had a subconscious thing about Janes when I visited the library) and the thing that gets me is how effortless their stories feel when you’re reading them. Like the Janes never had to rack their brains to find out what’s going to happen next in their books in between changing really disgusting nappies, doing endless laundry and calming down a red-faced two-year-old. Obviously for the Janes, the stories flow beautifully from their fingers, with nary a crow or a moment of grossness to deter them, and immediately become best-sellers.

Or maybe, just maybe, they have to scrape it and work it and shoo away crows as much as I do, and it just comes out seeming effortless because it’s taken so much effort. (And possibly cake and dinosaurs too.)

I had a blast giving my workshop this morning. I’m doing a lot of workshops at the moment and it’s really good fun, especially when someone turns to you and tells you they’ve learned something. That is a total buzz. If you happen to have been to one of my workshops and are reading this now, go ahead and warm your poor instructor’s heart by leaving a comment below to say hi.

I’m giving a totally new workshop at a sixth form college on Monday, so I have to do some proper lesson planning for it tomorrow. I’m rather rusty at this. But I enjoy it.

In other news, I gave Fecklet a haircut today because he was seriously looking like Cousin It. This is a tricky job because he hates it and refuses to sit still and the scissors are sharp so it’s like dicing with death. The best way of proceeding is to sit him in front of the TV and sort of cut the hair by stealth from behind, though this doesn’t work so well with the fringe. Unfortunately I slipped a couple of times and cut a bit too much off, plus I couldn’t really reach the left side of his head, so it’s all a bit lopsided and in fact he probably looks just like Cousin It after being run over by a lawnmower. Poor kid.

Fortunately he doesn’t give a rat’s behind what his hair looks like and will most likely be rubbing porridge in it tomorrow anyway.

So last night Fecklet’s having his bath, and he’s happily splashing about playing with his bath toys while I sit beside him reading my book (Identical Strangers, about identical twins separated at birth who met when they were 35).

Then he starts saying something.

I look up. In one hand, he has a rubber elephant. In the other, a rubber zebra. The zebra is munching on the elephant’s head, and Fecklet is chanting, “Braaaaiiinnnssss…braaaaiiiinnnnssss…”

I’m so proud.

Fecklet (who is TWO! can you believe it?!) was up at 4.30 this morning, though to give him his due, he did play by himself in his room until 5 after I explained to him that I needed more sleep. Still, the morning drags on a bit when it starts at 5, so to make some use of the a.m. hours we made some apple and raisin muffins to share with his little friends this afternoon.

Fecklet loves to cook. He pretends all the time, with an assortment of bowls, pans and uncooked pasta shapes. His real-life cooking experience until this morning consisted of arranging vegetables on an uncooked pizza (the mushrooms got bunched up a bit, and quite a few peppers were waylaid by mouth between hand and pizza, but that’s fine), helping with a batch of chocolate chip cookies (the chocolate chips were added one by one), and dumping cans of kidney beans and tomatoes into the last chilli I made.

This morning, I gave him the job of carrying the measuring cups and spoons into the living room, where there’s a table low enough for him to reach. Then he carried in the apples, baking powder, sugar and flour. I left him for a moment, to put some butter in the microwave to melt, and suddenly I heard the unmistakable sound of sugar being poured from its container.

“Fecklet!” I cried. (Well, this isn’t literally true; as you will have figured out, my kid’s real name isn’t Fecklet, that’s his internet alias, because I’m carefully building him up to have an identity crisis in later life, when it will do the most damage. Anyway—) “Fecklet!” I fictionally cried. “No! Wait for Mummy!” And I booked it from the kitchen into the living room, picturing sugar all over my floor.

He was standing, sugar bag in both hands, carefully pouring it into the cup measure. He hadn’t spilled a single grain—not until I barrelled in, anyway, when he wavered and spilled a little bit on the table. Of course he burst into tears, and I had to cuddle him and tell him how proud I was of him for being so careful.

After the muffins came out, he carried one of them all around the house in both hands, crowing, “I made it!”

Went to bed at 11. Fecklet up screaming at 2. Sheets stained with blood, best I can tell he’s either bitten his cheek or a tooth has come through (he’s still got his last set of molars to come). Change sheets, cuddle, calm down, back to bed. Up again at 3. And 4. And 5. For good at 6.

Lots of my friends take their kids into bed with them on a regular basis or when they can’t sleep. When I do this, Fecklet spends the whole time poking me in the eye, pinching my face, twisting my lip, sticking fingers into my nose and mouth. We don’t do much sleeping.

Today, I am tired and craving tea and chocolate. Poor Fecklet is uncomfortable, still, and tired, but is enjoying eating tomato soup for lunch.

Speaking of the importance of voice…

The Fecklet, who is not quite twenty-two months old, can’t read words of course–though tonight he held his toy cat up to the book we were reading and said “Meow, meow, meow”, which seems a pretty good impression of a cat reading to me. But he can recognise style, or the artistic equivalent of voice, in pictures.

For example, he calls any Dr Seuss book “Ham”, for Green Eggs and Ham. Hardcover, softcover, new, used, whatever–if it’s illustrated by Dr Seuss, he calls it “Ham”.

Similarly, we got a Lauren Child book out of the library, called That Pesky Rat. The cover has a rat on it. Nothing else, no children, just a rat in a garbage can in the city. But when Fecklet picked up the book for the first time, he said “Lola”–because Lauren Child does the Charlie and Lola books.

How did he know this? Either he can read the authors’ names (other than “Meow meow”), or he recognises style.

Crazy. Voice is so fundamental that you can recognise it when you’re not even two years old.

Okay I’ve had a heads-up that Kate Hardy is going to mock me for fancying men who she deems “not old enough to shave”. Also, I still feel rather guilty for lusting after a dude in a Hogwarts uniform. So today I’m going to explore the other guilty extreme: fancying guys who are in your son’s television programmes.

I am a bad person to watch children’s television anyway. I tend to get a little bored with the storylines and make stuff up, which is why I have a whole theory about how in In the Night Garden Iggle Piggle gives Upsy Daisy telepathic orgasms, and how Makka Pakka is an obsessive-compulsive genius who eroticises rocks. It probably also explains why my favourite line ever in Wonder Pets is when Ming Ming the duck tells an egg “I’m going to love you with my bum!”

But I have to admit that at times I have perked up. For one thing, Sid and Andy, the morning presenters on CBeebies, are actually pretty hot. Especially when they do their number raps.

I’ve heard rumours of other mums fancying Big Cook and Little Cook, and I do have a weakness for chefs. (See, for example, my books Delicious and One Night Stand, and Nina Jones also features two good-looking chefs.) And Little Cook Small is nice I must admit. But I think their dancing is a little bit disturbing. Not like Sid and Andy’s. Which is sexy, in like a totally non-sexy and suitable for children’s television way.

Lately, too, I have found myself ogling Lazytown‘s Sportacus. You gotta admit, those are some fine biceps. You also gotta love a guy who lives in a blimp. Apparently in real life he was an Olympic medalist in competitive aerobics. And hey, Kate, look–he’s got a moustache!

(If I ever tell you I’ve been checking out Bob the Builder, though, please call someone, because it’s a cry for help.)

We went to the lake at the university today, so Fecklet could use his new Thomas the Tank Engine wellies to splash through puddles and go chasing ducks. It was fun, though Fecklet got more bread than the ducks did.

I wish I could understand toddler obsession, though. At the beginning of our walk, he ate a banana, and for the rest of it, he carried the skin around with him. Even when it split into three. Even when it fell repeatedly in the mud. Even when he wanted his hands to do something else; he put one of the three pieces under his chin to hold it. At one point he put one of the three pieces of skin in the seat of the pushchair, which I was pushing alongside him, and he had to keep on checking to make sure it was still there.

Odd.

Then, later, when he’d finally forgotten about the poor banana skin, he spent a happy fifteen minutes repeatedly pushing a Twiglet through a hole in the side of his pushchair.

Naturally I indulge these obsessions as I am certain they’re signs of future genius, though as the genius is to do with banana skins and Twiglets I’m not sure what use it will be to others.

The Fecklet’s new activity is picking up a book, giving it to me, and sitting himself on my lap ready for me to read it. He does this pretty much ad infinitum, going through his stack of books again and again.

He does have his favourites. I have been reading Dr Seuss’s ABC, on average, five times daily. I am very pleased he’s chosen such a classic work of literature, as I’ve now memorised it cover-to-cover.

Fecklet and I were in the Lake District visiting with Anna this past weekend, which was great. She has four cats and was very tolerant of my boy running around after them squealing “KITTY!!!!!” She was also tolerant of his favourite game, which was “Remove Fruit From Fruit Basket, Take One Bite Out Of It (Even The Lemons) And Put It Either Through The Cat Flap Or Under The Grill.”

One of my favourite moments was when Fecklet lingered, sucking his thumb, outside the room where Anna’s husband was watching football, wanting to go in and be blokey, but too shy.

Anyway I am hard at work on proofs of Honey Trap, which is out in July. I so, so seriously love the hero of this one. He’s an ex-alcoholic, formerly serially adulterous, ex-rock star. He is sexy as hell. Even reading the proofs with a pencil in my hand is getting me hot and bothered. Oh, baby.