Still lying here, as Today prog embarks on heated discussion on the shameful lack of statutory provision of holidays for carers. Hate getting up, and so I'm just thinking about the whole Notting Hill mummy thing, and how actually outrageous it is that Ralph ever mentions me in the same breath as NHMs.
A real NHM lives an organic life of holistic therapies and private training sessions in a multi-million pound house... with just a couple of Filipinas chained up in the basement... while looking scrumptious and concerned about the environment at all times. It’s all about being beautiful, rich and caring, all at once! About having a Porsche Cayenne... as well as a Prius! It’s about having slate solar panels to heat your London home... as well as an eight-bedroom spread in Shropshire!
And I have neither car, am so low-maintenance I never even get my moustache waxed, and all the help I have is Fatty (Fatima is a Portuguese grandmother whom I am ashamed to say I have been known to refer to as "my housekeeper” as if she is colour-coding the children's ironed underwear as I speak, who sighingly makes an appearance three times a week).
A NHM is married to a banker, a film director, the owner of a multimedia agency, or the editor of a national newspaper/head of TV channel.
I’m married to a man who does a spot of light consulting and cranks out a few sheets of subscription-only insider info on oil and gas (zzzz) once a month.
A NHM lives in a house which has all or some of the following: leather floors; rare hardwoods from Japan; a chill-out zone; his and hers bathrooms (his has a plasma screen and connectivity and a glass roof, so he can feel like he’s taking a shower outdoors while on the phone to New York, hers is a cosy boudoir); climate-controlled shoe closets; filtered central air-conditioning; a slate-floored larder; a walk-in wardrobe; a rubber-floored playroom with a piano and professional recording studio (for the kids jamming sessions); a wetroom, a mudroon,, a utilities room, and acres of stainless steel.
And even if a NHM has all of the above and her next door neighbour suddenly puts an ozone pool in the basement, then she suddenly realises that she "needs” a swimming pool, too, and will literally move heaven and several cubic miles of earth to get one too.
I live in a faded, shabby but not chic, late Victorian terraced house with none of the above - though it does have glorious views of the communal garden. As I lie here, I look out on golden sunlight on green leaves. Which is, I admit, nice.
NHM barely works, let alone full-time in an office. One, she’s much too busy spending to earn, and two, she’s much too tired after a long day ferrying children between activities and attending appointments on only a rocket and shaved parmesan salad to attend to what our mothers darkly call a husband's "needs," let alone perform gainful employment - she’s much too busy being an uber-mummy for any of that. Instead, she’ll go to yoga or Tui Na to unblock her energy channels, or book an appointment for emergency acupuncture with Donna (£100 an hour) after her shattering day.
And a shattering day for an NHM might involve switching to a green energy supplier... choosing new wallpaper for the drawing room with her own personal colour consultant... as well as "coping” with the school run with the assistance of a full-time driver and an omnicompetent, permacheerful, Antipodean nanny.
Here in Notting Hill, you are a NHM if and only if you have met all the following key developmental milestones by the age 40 - but preferably by the age of 35:
1. Be invited to join a private celebrity-studded, yoga group/book club/Pilates class;
2. Have at least one gifted child;
3. Have at least one special needs child;
4. Weigh less and, even spookier, look younger than you did at puberty;
5. Employ a family nutritionist, a personal PA, plastic surgeon and a weekend nanny as well as a live-out nanny, a homework nanny, a housekeeper and team of alternative therapists;
6. Privately tutor your children in music, chess, maths, Greek and Sanskrit
7. Invite your 100 closest friends to a Wigmore Hall level recital - given by your own child - in which he plays a selection of his own compositions;
8. Invite a few neighbours round for kitchen supper which includes at least two internationally-renowned foodie friends (locals Sally Clarke, Rowley Leigh or Alistair Little work well for this stunt);
9. Become new best friends with fab Emma Freud (the Notting Hill Mummy's poster mom) and, whilst we're on that hallowed subject,
10. Have a fourth child, fifth or even sixth child, as a famille ultra nombreuse is the ultimate status symbol for mothers who like to show they’ve more money and more help to buy them more sleep, the most precious beauty product of all, than everyone else.