HEY BABY!

I’m afraid the Lesbian Love Slut affair had to be postponed due to inclement weather and another event which unsurprisingly took precedence. LLS will be rescheduled and reported on in due course but for now here’s what happened this week written live and direct from my dining-room table:

"I’m writing this with shaking hands in between devouring a large bar of Green ‘n Black Cherry Chocolate and waiting for the phone to ring.

It’s been a rather surreal day which began at 8 in the morning when my elder daughter called to tell me that she had, at last, gone into labour. The baby was only a day overdue but it’s been a long nine months and as it’s her third, we all expected the birth to happen quickly.

It is now 9.15 in the evening and I’m still waiting for news. She’s texted me intermittently throughout the day with details of epidurals being administered and waters being broken, but she requested that our large extended family do not descend on the hospital until she’s all done and dusted and her other children have had the first sighting of their little sibling.

I live the closest to the hospital and it’s been very frustrating. All I want to do is get in the car and go down there, either to keep her and her husband company or at least pace up down expectantly outside the delivery room. But they like their privacy and I must respect that.

My two older granddaughters, Tatiana and Normandie, are with their other grandmother and my grandson, Noah, is with his mum also awaiting news.

We don’t as yet know what the sex of the new baby will be. They’d quite like a boy for a change but as long as it has ten fingers and toes and is healthy inside and out, it doesn’t really matter.

9.40 p.m. A call comes through to say 'It Won’t Be Long Now!' Enough of this procrastinating, I think, so I leap in the car, arrive at the hospital in record time and burst in through the double doors. I’m sent straight up to the fourth floor and there is my daughter, halfway between birth and afterbirth, looking calm, serene and very happy.

In a crib by her side is a tiny head covered in a dark mop of black hair.

‘You have another granddaughter!’ she says with no trace of disappointment, just joy and relief that the little mite has arrived safely.

Weighing in at 4.04 kgs or 8lbs. 9 ozs. in old money, the baby is to be called Xenia Minnie! My mother was called Zena, another grandmother was Minnie. Mouse may become her nickname but not from me!

So no toyboy stories this week I’m afraid, though I do have a tea date with one tomorrow. I’ve been washing, shopping, cooking, cleaning and generally performing my maternal duties like the good girl I sometimes am...

Some r ‘n r would be most welcome, but it’ll have to wait till next week...