An inordinate fondness for bathmats

I have been away for the night, reviewing a hotel (bloggist's note: I know this sounds incredibly fortunate, and it is, but let me just say that I have been doing this particular job for four months and this is the first time I have actually managed to persuade a hotel to let me stay there in order to review them. Allow "asking for things" to be added to the list of things I am bad at. Admittedly I also got free some beef cheeks last week but I neither wanted, nor asked for them).

It was wonderful, but of course now I am staring angrily around me and wondering where my aperitif and fluffy bathrobe are, whereas in fact I am surrounded with the following: 8 assorted novelty slippers, an empty Actimel carton, a mysterious wizened half lemon on the coffee table, 4 glasses, several miles of cabling and a copy of 'Le Big Livre de l'Incroyable' (which I despise and the children love, as it is basically a 21st century freakshow: spider babies, 5 legged calves, and pictures of people lifting aeroplanes with their earlobes). Hidden just out of view, I feel confident in predicting, are at least 7 socks of assorted vintage.

It was ridiculously beautiful. A baby chateau in the middle of nowhere in the Ardennes, an aesthetically pleasing dusting of sparkly snow, huge fires, and a deserted, elegant spa where I splashed like a toddler, and floated, silently on my back, watching the snow gather and drift on the glass roof. Ridiculous. So much so that I took 41 fuzzy iphone photographs of the bath and another 23 of the view (endless miles of Ardenne forest, frosty pale red sun), then four of the floor and one of large onion in my excitement. Shortly after that, I got accidentally drunk on two glasses of wine and the strangeness of eating alone in an entirely deserted restaurant and spent the remainder of the evening nearly blinding myself on the artful arrangements of twigs when I tried to look out of the window (I NEED TO LOOK AT THE BEEYOOTIFUL VIEW! Oh! It's dark! Ouch, twig! Rinse and repeat).

(My actual view from my actual bedroom. Twigs not included)

Also, compulsively moving the bathmats here and there. I only know I did this because I kept finding them this morning. Bathmat on the windowsill. Bathmat under my pillow. Bathmat on the desk. So many bathmats. I didn't know I felt so strongly about bathmats.

(Bathmats)

Mmmm, I miss the bathmats now I am home, where no one has offered me pink prosecco, or lovingly placed a small card with weather forecast on my bedside table, and where there is unaccountably no roll top bath with a view of snow dusted pines.

All is not lost, however: I do have a view of snow. Depending on the window, I can choose from: snow dusted Ikea bargain corner garden chair with a bin bag as a makeshift rabbit feeding shelter and a kilner jar of abandoned worms courtesy of eldest child, or snow dusted old kitchen sink, with three pots of dead hyacinths. Both of these views are intermittently accessorised with snow dusted furious gigantic rabbit. Snow makes everything pretty, even Satan. I also have a reserve of Peanut Butter Chunky Kit Kats that I suppose I could slice and place on my own pillow. I am only limited by my own imagination, really, and by not possessing an exquisite château in the Ardennes and a private income.

Also, I have the most barbaric hangover for a person who drank two glasses of wine. Two! It's like a medieval punishment for having a nice time. This hangover was calibrated by John Knox and refined on a lengthy journey on a rail replacement bus with several of the smelliest men in the Ardennes and a furious two year old. It peaked after my return home during a dual bill of Inazuma Eleven, topped off with "New Zealand World Records" featuring some Kiwis trying to shove 16 people into a Smart car, accessorised with some light DS related thumping from my beloved offspring. It is now gently declining, since I have sent everyone to bed in disgrace, including myself.

As a result of the foregoing, I have nothing else to offer tonight. However! This weekend I want, and intend, to challenge Pierre Marcolini's assertion that "the best patisserie is the patisserie you make at home" by attempting to make something out of his new book. I think we will all enjoy that, except, possibly, Pierre Marcolini, but we can just agree not to tell him, right?

Should I make:

A soufflé ("you will succeed every time with this soufflé" says Marcolini, a shade over-optimistically, I fear);

A flan ("revisited for the greater happiness of flan lovers"); or

A religieuse (this recipe includes the casual instruction: "réaliser une crème anglaise" as if this were a thing I did daily. I have a carton of crème anglaise. Will this do?)

Answers on a postcard.

(Belgians, rich ones with Commission salaries and an advantageous tax status, the hotel was this one. I would weep with joy if someone took me there, really.)

Good/bad

Goodness, all the old gang are back blogging: Antonia, Mrs T, and, I have only just realised, the Bendicks Bittermint brilliant Non-Working Monkey. There is nothing more pleasurable than realising someone whose blog you love has been industriously churning out posts for the last few weeks with their small, simian paws and you have a delicious backlog to read. The NWM and I met once in Paris early last year and it was very very funny. The memory of that makes me quite angry that we don't live on the same continent. Anyway, she is back. Vive the internet circa three years ago.

I liked the Non-Working Monkey's television reviews particularly (re. Julianna Margolies in The Good Wife: "She has won over 142 Emmys for her performance which remains exactly the same from episode to episode") and her list of things she is good and bad at. I would like to read other people's, I think. What are you good and bad at? Mine, after some thought, goes:

BAD AT:

1. Arguing

Poor grasp of logic, take things too personally, uncomfortable with all forms of conflict, even purely theoretical ones undertaken for "fun". It is not "fun" for me to have to argue about anything, even about which is better, a KitKat or a Twix (I DON'T KNOW. Whichever you prefer). It distresses me. Imagine for a second what a great lawyer I was.

2. Maths

Astonishingly bad. Get nine year old's homework wrong bad. This wouldn't be quite so shameful if my father didn't have a motherfucking theorem/equation/thingy named after him. I tried to go and look at it experimentally, but it fried my brain. God, he knows proper stuff, that is useful to the universe. I have slightly depressed myself.

3. Parking without panicking and crying and breaking wing mirrors.

4. Driving without panicking and crying and breaking wing mirrors.

5. Painting my nails.

6. Games. All of them. Ones with balls especially.

7. Complaining. See: arguing.

8. Thinking up meals. Ugh. Let's have fishfingers again.

9. Going to the Post Office even though it is actually fine and there is almost never a queue.

10. Accepting criticism.

11. Talking to strangers.

12. Using the telephone.

GOOD AT:

1. Reading aloud to children

2. Spelling

3. Touch typing

4. Compiling Christmas stockings

5. Meeting deadlines. I put this down to all those years of being shouted at by boggle eyed bankers to produce 9000 pages of pharmaceutical industry due diligence on time.

6. Writing work emails that sound considered, and thoughtful, when in fact they are written in 5 seconds while watching You Tube videos of sloths.

7. Maintaining steely indifference in the face of spiders/mice/rats/ferrets/snakes/earwigs/wormy things/pretty much anything living.

8. Maintaining a strong stomach in the face of dog or child effluvia of all kinds.

9. French.

10. Remembering shop or restaurant names and addresses.

11. Remembering the ridiculous ephemera the children are supposed to take to school on particular days. I am basically extremely cowed by all forms of authority and thrive on mindless deference to rules. This is not a good thing in the wider sense, but the remembering is, I suppose.

12. Drawing Pokémons to order. Want a Jigglypuff? Form an orderly queue.

What are you good and bad at? Please add yours in the comments.

Devil

I have had an odd day. All that wotthehell defiance of yesterday evaporated and was replaced by one of those heavy stones in the pit of the stomach, you know the kind, the ones that are made of a thick matted pelt of ferret hair and melted down lead piping, stolen from an outdated Cluedo set. That was somewhat improved by having a conversation with M, where we both started out really quite serious and gloomy and hand-wringing, and ended up pretending to be dogs.

"HELLO! YOU LOOK NICE, HUMAN! I LOVE YOU! DON'T GO! I'LL JUST SIT HERE AND WAIT FOR YOU!"

"I'LL JUST SIT HERE AND LICK MY BALLS WHILE I WAIT, OK?"

"BALL! SAUSAGE! BALL! MY OWN TAIL! SAUSAGE!"

"WOW, THAT PEE SMELLS DELICIOUS ON YOU!"

I was sort of half-laughing, half-crying, snotty and hysterical by the end, as I often am with M. This is why we are friends, I suppose.

Then I went to a presentation about a diet meal delivery service, and after that I went straight on to a presentation by Pierre Marcolini where I ate three puddings. Which was nice and not remotely contradictory. He was absolutely charming, and the chocolate sorbet was like shooting cocoa straight into your eyeballs. In a good way, in that it did not cloud my vision or involve needles. Ok, FINE, I mean it tasted nice.

Finally, on my way home, after this unprecedented day of leaving the house and speaking to people I am not even related to, a group of approximately six unconnected passengers on my tram started CHATTING, as if no one had ever explained the basic rules of public transport behaviour to them. They were discussing the new, zealous breed of ticket inspectors, who, from what I heard, are creatures of stark ferocity. One of the women involved in this outrageous cross-tram discussion actually worked at the STIB and she said they were allowed to fine you €100 even if you were in possession of a valid monthly or yearly 'Carte Mobib' (our folklorique version of the Oyster card) but had not touched it to the reader. You know, like in most other countries. But we have been used to never having our tickets scrutinised here in Belgium and most of us just assumed public transport was free. Combined with a message from Beatrice on Sunday who had to text me in shock to tell me her ticket had just been examined, I feel it is incumbent on me to present you with this awful warning (well, the four of you who actually live in Belgium): we are now to look forward to more frequent inspections. You might want to consider buying a ticket and so on. I believe you can buy them at, erm, stations? And possibly in machines. I will investigate and report back, if I am not incarcerated by the forces of transport law.

That is possibly the most boring thing I have ever written on my weblog and god knows, there is some very significant competition. Apologies.

Then I got home and dragged the dog out in his pissy, ridiculous whippet coat to throw the ball in the park strewn with frozen dog turds in the -9°C dusk, until I could no longer feel my hands. The children were already cheerfully in their pyjamas at 4pm with the babysitter, as is their wont, currently. They get home, put their pyjamas on, make themselves a selection of snacks and sit under a duvet on the sofa, refusing to do anything. Genetics is a wonderful thing.

Dutch words I have learned courtesy of my children this week:

Sheep

Hamster

Godfather

Goldfish

Parrot

Tortoise

Grandchildren

Canary

The phrase "Concentrate, this is my father". (?)

I am building up to an excellent vocabulary, slowly but surely. I can sing a song about sandals, tell someone I live in Mons and boast a very sizeable menagerie, all of which will surely come in handy at some point. This current conflation of family and animals pleases me greatly in a Gerald Durrell kind of way.

Also, as a sort of thrilling homework bonus, Lashes went on a "history walk" round the neighbourhood today and has been reporting back. Notably, he told me a fascinating, if garbled, tale about a bar just round the corner being five hundred years old and the King of Spain calling the owner a devil. He also mentioned Victor Hugo, who I am quite confident he has never heard of in his short life. I have untangled the story slightly. It is this place and apparently the owner was very rude to Charles V, caretaker manager of the Holy Roman Empire and the Hapsburg jaw. It is comforting to know that Brussels service has not changed greatly in 500 years, and that being King of Spain and Holy Roman Emperor does not make a shred of difference, so I might as well renounce my claim to the throne. There appears to be some other story about a group of travelling players all getting massacred* there whilst performing a play (the Spijtigen Duivel - something devil - of the bar name) parodying the Duke of Alba. Do not mess with the Duke of Alba, I suppose, is the moral of the story. The bar was also, apparently, frequented by Rimbaud, Verlaine and Baudelaire and it has taken my nine year old, who probably thinks all these people are characters in Galaktik Football, to tell me about it. Shame on me. I will go soon and find out more.

Wigs on the Green did finally make me laugh last night, in a scene where reprobate youth, Jasper, goes to Peersmont, the "special sort of bin for lunatic peers .. built on the exact plans of the House of Lords, so that the boys should feel at home" to try and extort money from his incarcerated grandfather. He meets the "curator", a jolly young man, who explains that his grandfather is:

"deputising for our Lord Chancellor, Lord Rousham, who is on the sick list again - no, nothing at all serious I am glad to say. He has just nipped up to the top of a big elm tree and is building himself a nest there".

Where would you build a nest? Mine would be very, very far from the Duke of Alba.

(*Did this thought cross my mind during the English-language-performed-by-French-speakers Oliver Twist I saw recently? I suppose that is possible)

Life Skillz

As a struggling freelancer writer, one of my new skills is dealing with constant rejection. I say "skill". I haven't really mastered it yet, but this kind of thing used to knock me for a week, now I just feel slightly sick for half an hour, so I am claiming it as another shitty personal growth opportunity (who coined that phrase? I love them). You too can battle your tiny sense of self-worth and triumph! These are my current top coping strategies:

1. Delete any rejection email so quickly it as is if IT NEVER HAPPENED. Then empty your deleted items folder. Then your sent items. If necessary, forget your password. Or emigrate. Whatever it takes, really. What email? If you can't show me it, it never happened. Nope. Not me.

2. Elaborate a pleasant deferred gratification fantasy scenario for yourself, ie. "When my book is fabulously successful, and I am the acknowledged wunder-non-kind of Anglophone Belgian literature, you will be BEGGING me to write for you". (Do not, whatever you do at this point, go and look at your book manuscript as this may catapult you into terminal decline. Just let yourself think you have a gem hiding in your documents folder. Don't have a book in your documents folder? Doesn't matter! If anything, that's better, because the fantasy of its planet-dominating success will be easier to maintain).

3. Pretend to yourself you sent the pitch in error. 'Oh god. Did I send that? Did I? SHIT. Thank god that person didn't say yes, that would have been awful'.

4. The way of M: "There is no such thing as failure. You try something. It does not work. So you try again, or you try something else". I find this mantra works best recited with a Chunky Peanut Butter KitKat clenched between your teeth, and a YouTube video of a sloth on screen. Messy, but restorative.

5. Remind yourself of your blessings: 'I have a wonderful family, two beautiful and kind, if somewhat scornful, children, a scavenged rabbit the size of Geoff Capes:



an incredibly stupid dog:


several of my own teeth, my health, some nice Frédéric Malle body cream and a collection of really great shoes from when I used to earn decent money. I am doing great. Why do I need external validation?*'.

(*The answer to this is mainly: money. But also: craven need for approval.)

6. I can often distract myself for up to quarter of an hour by looking over here, at my weblog, and trying to think of ways to 'monetise' the fucker. This has always been a catastrophic failure in the past, but hope springs eternal.

7. Remember that rejection is very good for the soul. With each rejection, my soul looks less like a blackened, blighted raisin, and more like, erm, a UNICORN. Possibly. If I put it in caps it become true, apparently.

8. Think of another publication which you haven't humiliated yourself by approaching yet, and TRY AGAIN.

9. Laser eyes.

How do you deal with rejection? Any hints?

I want to live in a nice magazine

I like nice things to look at on a Saturday. I miss the proper, British Saturday papers, back in the day when I could read them without my simple pleasure being faintly but consistently undermined by career envy. Here in Belgium, I read 'Victoire', the lifestyle and fashion magazine which comes with Le Soir. It is a pleasing, if utterly eccentric read. Last week was pubic hair themed. This week it is all about Japanese sexuality (and an unrelated bonus feature discussing the etymology of euphemisms for blow job). I wish I could write for Victoire, but quite apart from being ten years too old and not having a waxed moustache and a fixed gear bike, I don't think I am comfortable enough with FILTH.

I could, of course, go to Waterstones or similar and buy the proper British Saturday papers, but that feels a bit shameful, somehow. Like 'I embrace your culture wholeheartedly, Belgium, oh yes, just as soon as I have picked up this Guardian, four Crème Eggs, some overpriced paperback middlebrow fiction and 90 Yorkshire Teabags'. Oh, hang on, that is exactly like me, as you were.

Anyway. This is my lifestyle edit (ahahahhahahahhahaahaha "lifestyle edit". Going up: bruxism (so chic!), accountant's bills, frowning and extra chins. Going down: cerebral capacity, time management, personal grooming) for the weekend, since I do not have a magazine to do it for me and I am too lazy to go to Waterstones, and even if I did, I would end up lusting after things that are not even in the right country for me.

Shops:

I have just discovered My Table in Rue de l'Aqueduc, a sort of kitchen and fripperies shop. It ticks several of my pervy, lizard brain shop boxes. Esoteric cake decorations: yes. Good, large tea cups: yes. Bizarre household items that look like animals: yes. Same sex Barbie and Ken couples in catering sized boxes of Quality Street: yes.

Pleasing. Also: lovely man running it.

It is opposite Moss & Bross in front of which I often linger, admiring the gorgeous array of Porselli ballet flats. Yes, yes, ballet pumps, so fucking boring but these ones are so pretty and so soft. I think I love the violet best, but the real delight is seeing them all together - racing green and hot pink and sunflower yellow and silver and leopard. It reminds me of the agony of buying Converse for the first time, some time in the mid '80s. How can you choose just ONE colour?

I actually went in there today, which was probably a mistake because the lady made me stroke some kind of ultra luxe goat tummy stole of catastrophic softness, in actual goat hair colour with the prettiest deep green border. It was entirely without function, cost something hilarious like €390 and the moths would have devoured it in less time than it takes to say "filing for personal bankruptcy". Nevertheless, I aspire to a life with cashmere stoles and jewel coloured ballet slippers of many colours and NO MOTHS. Also, she had a good line in telling me how very rarely they get the good colours of Porselli in, and how if I see a colour I love, I should snatch it up. And that they wear them at Le Scala, vous savez. I am the ideal candidate for this kind of flannel.

Beauty:

I finally bought myself the Heeley Menthe Fraîche scent I have lusted after since the summer, with my leftover Senteurs d'Ailleurs birthday voucher. I love Senteurs d'Ailleurs but Senteurs d'Ailleurs does not love me back: I am always stared at with undisguised suspicion, as if I might start stuffing testers down my pants.

This is my new scent, which as I explained recently on Facegoop, is supposed to make me smell like "Patrick Bateman in Psycho" or, possibly worse, "young, sexy fashion models". Hmmm.

I aspire mainly for it to take off the edge of fox shit and rancid towel that is my natural perfume. I am sitting on the sofa next to the dog, and he absolutely reeks. Also, he is sleeping with his eyes in Full Zombie:

.. which is convivial.

I am also wearing Essie Clambake on my nails, but I cannot show you, because even with 2 coats you can still see the frankly revolting state of my claws beneath. However it is a nice hot coral, and takes me at least three days to bugger up. Approved.

Gluttony:

Christine Ferber rhubarb and mint jam and a quart Poîlane for breakfast.

Ah, Christine Ferber. Why are you so delicious and so expensive when your raw materials must cost pennies? Perhaps it is because handling hot sugar is dangerous? Is that it? Do you have to pay your staff - presumably all apple cheeked grandmothers of great kindness - danger money? Are there jam maimings? I do not even care. You taste good. Send the rosy cheeked old ladies back down the jam mines to boil MORE RHUBARB.

Services

The Most Talkative Cobbler in Europe, who I love to distraction even though he is foully disapproving of my shoe-knackering ways, has found a way to fix my dog eaten Anya Hindmarch shoes. Look!

That heel was the same crackle effect silver leather as the rest of the shoe until El Stupido decided to chew them to a slobbery mess of €300 leather. This was a mistake he did not make twice, happily (that sounds like I beat him senseless, or dominated him in a Cesar Milan mind melding fashion. In reality I do not even have any memory of when this happened - it was several years ago - or how he went off shoe chewing, btu I am certain it was nothing to do with my powers of persuasion. His brain probably just short-circuited). Anyway, "we" (he) has constructed me a contrasting heel, and now I can wear the least comfortable shoes I own again. Welcome back to the fold, Tory shoes! You fit so perfectly with my lifestyle, with your 5 inch spike heel and your disco colouring! This is what my fleece/tracksuit botttoms/grey jumper with holes in combo has been missing.

(My cobbler: Rue de Livourne 27. Quite slow. Hates cruelty to shoes. Talkative. Genius.)

Books

This week I have read:

An appallingly written, dreary book about the 17ème arrondissement that I found on the shelf, for 'research'. It has a couple of ace pictures of Communards with cool facial hair standing nonchalantly around Batignolles considering what to shoot to fuck next, but apart from that, no redeeming features whatsoever. Called something inspiring like "L'histoire du 17ème Arrondissement". I told you.

Wigs on the Green - I thought I would love this, Nancy Mitford's light, frothy fascist satire (oh yes) re-released a couple of years ago, but it is failing to engage me. It feels a bit Wodehouse by numbers but without the simmering menace of Roderick Spode. Perhaps it will perk up.

Also, in retro-reading corner (tonight we're going to read like it's mid 2010), I have just finished both The Hare With Amber Eyes (oh, so beautiful, so vivid, so luxuriously indulgent, but wonderfully so. In places, it quite undid me. Seems unfair that De Waal can be brilliant at writing books AND making pots) and Freedom (I was expecting it to be Hard Work. It was not remotely Hard Work, though I skipped several pages of environmental longeurs in the middle).

Dan Lepard's Short and Sweet - What should I try to make out of this, my Christmas present? I have limited attention span and skill and require a very favourable effort/reward ratio, but also, I am wary of baking something that only I actually like, because then I will get monstrously fat again, and I am only just starting to slough off the monstrous skiing fatness. Maybe bread. I have an excellent track record with bread. Do you remember my last attempt?

Yes, of COURSE it was supposed to look like a medieval gargoyle. Tsk.

Oh, also highly recommended in my imaginary magazine are my friend's beautiful baby quilts which you can buy here.

And if you want a bit of fiery online op-ed with your Saturday trivia, can I recommend you go and read Peter's post-slash-rant, here on lame ass commercialisation of online food writing.

Travel section? Here's M's very very funny guide to surviving Cambodian spiders. "Don't come crying to me when one of your eyeballs hatches spider babies".

God, it is exhausting half-heartedly pretending to write a lifestyle supplement. I am going to go and load the disher (red hot for Feb) and grind my teeth a little (so chic!) with my fox-scented companion and try and forget that my eldest son told me at length tonight how Richard Hammond is his favourite person in the world, and that my younger son has developed some interesting form of toe leprosy.

Board games are awful

It is winter, it gets dark at 4 and I have spent all our money on jumpers and Picard Surgélés eclairs, so we have been playing a lot of board games recently. Yeah, like the nineteenth century or something, I know, it's almost unbearable, I might as well just send the children up a chimney and have done with it. So they tell me.

This has given me ample time to develop a grudge on every game we own, for a variety of reasons. Board games are awful*: most of them are just a fight in a box. In French, they are called "jeux de société", which suggests society is full of rampant individualism, untamed aggression, vicious reprisals and sulking, which is completely .. oh.

I give you here the fruits of my research, so that you do not need to suffer needlessly. Say no to board games people, make this madness stop. Read a book. Send your children to their bedrooms. Wash the kitchen floor. Do anything, but do not suggest brightly "shall we play a game?"

Dominoes

Are you ninety? Are we appearing in an episode of The Archers? Are we in a half-timbered country pub with a fat labrador dozing by the roaring fire? Are you of an age when being able to count to six is a cause for celebration? If the answer to all of these questions is no, none of us has any place playing dominoes. Step away from the spots, punk, no one gives a shit and winning doesn't even feel good since it's PURE DUMB LUCK.

Uno

For a game so apparently innocuous, Uno creates a fugue state of hysteria in my children far worse than any food colouring, Nintendo game, violent Japanese cartoon or Haribo. I think it's the colours and the potential for minor acts of cruelty to your nearest and dearest. Do I know if you can keep putting "plus 4 cards" down infinitely, eldest child? No, I do not, nor do I care.

I want no part of it. Fuck off, Uno and take your pointless, expensive derivatives and variants (Robot Uno, Uno Extream, iPad Uno, Uno themed cheese strings for all I know) with you.

Scrabble

A Scrabble board is no place for the bilingually semi-literate. I love my children dearly, but their vocabulary and spelling renders this farcical: I end up playing for all of us, and getting progressively angrier as their proudly placed 3 letter words close the board down catastrophically.

Lashes asked me to buy it and told me he "loved Scrabble". I can only assume this was one of our many linguistic misunderstandings. He must have said "I love taking off my dirty socks and throwing them into the corner of the room" or "I love fighting", or "I love being bought enormous boxes of Lego". At least no one ever asks to play Scrabble anymore after my last strop about the use of "Yo" as the starting word.

Memory

This is a source of great sadness to me. I used to love Memory. When I was a biddable, bookish, shadow of a child, much preoccupied with death and ponies, we had a tragic but much-loved French Memory game with pictures of several kinds of nougat de Montelimar, champagne corks, pieces of the Eiffel Tower and stinking wheels of Brie. It was like a great, seventies middle class game-gasm. Best of all: I usually won. Imagine, then, my bitter disappointment that (a) our Memory game features Diego, Dora the twatting Explorer's overachieving, sloth fondling cousin; and (b) that my children DESTROY me at it.

"I've seen that damn coatimundi!" I hiss, staring angrily at the grid of cards. Then I jab at one, hopefully. It is not a coatimundi. It is fucking Diego riding a fucking turtle. My children fall about laughing, not wholly unkindly.

"Mais non, maman" they say, with infinite condescension, patting my hand. Often Fingers is cackling with joy and rubbing his long, long digits together as he swiftly locates the two sloths AND the two Diegos riding turtles. I start every game in high spirits, confident of victory this time and end every game contemplating mortality, my inevitable decay, loss of critical faculties and undignified death, or at least where I can find a draught of hemlock. Which is nice. If I want a memento mori, I'll find a more aesthetically pleasing one, thanks, Diego. Lo siento, and all that.

Monopoly

I don't really need to go into it, do I? We all know about Monopoly and how it's an interminable, conflict generating, heap of old toss. It is the original "fight in a box". I don't know why they don't just put that on the side. "Monopoly: a rancorous fight guaranteed every time". How do you play, reader? Fight, or get bored and abandon? I favour the second option, but I am always outvoted.

Pictureka

I like you, Pictureka, but you try too hard. Four different "rounds" in a single game? Teams? Miming? Eh. I'm exhausted just thinking about you. Two specific pointers for you, Pictureka: First, how the fuck do you expect me to mime "singing nurse?" And second: a board game shouldn't involve physical exertion, so don't go asking me to "jump like a frog". JOG ON.

Cluedo

In our household, we all believe we like Cluedo, but I am here to tell you that we are labouring under a massive delusion. Here is why:

1. Modern Cluedo seems to be set in some kind of low rent Champneys crossed with an episode of the Young and the Reckless. "A soirée at a millionaire mogul's mansion", says the description. It is monstrously vulgar: hitting people with a dumbbell? A trophy? A SPA (I don't think you hit people with the spa, but you get my point)? What was wrong with the candlestick, for pity's sake? What of the noble lead piping? Why does Miss Scarlet look like Stephanie Beacham circa 1982? I feel like a high court judge when I look at the board, furious and confused.

2. Again, this is a game my children are shit at. The youngest often forgets to show us his cards when he's supposed to. The eldest likes to show us all how clever he is by expounding his deductive reasoning out loud. Both of them forget to write anything down. Nevertheless, Lashes is convinced from about five minutes in that he knows all details of the horrible crime and hastens to the swimming pool (I TOLD YOU, vulgar) where he is proved wrong, and retires to sulk. After that, the youngest and I continue in increasingly mutual confusion until one of us decides to give it a punt. We will also be wrong. Then the last person tries and is also wrong. At this point what usually happens is that we realise that one of the cards is missing, probably under the dog.

1000 Bornes

Does this piece of shit even exist in English? God knows, I hope not for your sakes. It is, I am assured, a French classic, though it used to just be a card game and they have only recently introduced the board version for extra "fun". You are a small plastic car. You must travel 1000 kilometres before the other cars, by playing cards with varying kilometre values, that you pick up from a central pack, while the other players try to stop you by giving you cards with flat tyres, red lights and empty fuel reservoirs.

Ok, my main problem with this game is that you need a green light card to get started. I never, EVER get a green light card. The whole shagging game is usually over before I get a green light card. On the odd occasion that I do manage to limp a few hundred kilometres, one of my children blasts me with a red light and I get stuck again for the remainder of the game. Do I sulk? Yes, yes I do. I am thirty seven years old and I want to win 1000 Bornes for once in my life. Is that too much to ask? (Yes)

Bazaar Bizarre

This is like a visual acuity and deductive reasoning test and unsurprisingly, I fail every single time. There are 5 wooden figures: a red chair, a green bottle, a grey mouse, a blue book and a white ghost. There is a pack of cards. On each card there is some combination of some of the figures, but the colours are mixed up. Or they might not be. You have to find EITHER: the thing that is missing, OR the thing that is accurately represented on the card. Confused? Yes, that is normal, you are supposed to be if you aged over 10. I have stopped even trying to play: it is hopeless, I am far too slow to ever win a round, and the risk of injury from my children's fingerclaws is too high.

I think I nurture a particular prejudice against this, because it is one of those really wholesome Germanic board games that cost a million Euros and which your children tire of within 30 seconds because they are both boring and complex. Though at least this one comes with extra violence, I suppose.

Which board games do you play, gentle readers? Do you hate them all? Am I missing some gem which will reconcile us all?

(*Any suggestions that I am prejudiced against board games because my redundancy leaving present after 11 years service was a board game called 'Anti-Monopoly' are frivolous and unfounded.)