What's in YOUR Bag??

Well - thanks Diney over at Older Mums Are Fun for tagging me. I love your blog. But now I have to - in the spirit of reciprocity and tagging- tell you all what's in the dark recesses of my handbag!!

Oh.... did you mention Orla Kiely? Sorry. I thought I heard you say Orla Kiely... Yes, I DO have a beautiful Orla Kiely bag to which I devoted an entire post not so long ago. However, before you wish me suffocated with my Orla Kiely bag over my head (how many times can I say it? I'm annoying myself) let me tell you that the other day in Sainsbury's while I was lovingly carrying her, my bag slung casually but stylishly over my shoulder, Hattie was hideously sick all over AND INSIDE my bag. And the floor. And the rest of me. And some shopping which was in a bag on the floor. See pride does come before a fall after all. The other lesson I've learned is that I shouldn't try to pretend that I can carry off style and parenting at the same time (or separately come to that). It's all so very sad.

As is what's inside my bag which I can't pretend hints at a hot and sexy secret existence. So here goes.... try to stay awake for the end of the list if you can.

Lip balm (Neal's Yard) - totally necessary due to ridiculous changeable weather and central heating. Again - the chapped lips look isn't the most stylish, but one which creeps up on me all too quickly if I don't use this baby regularly.

My filofax - Strangely I don't have many meetings with the PM, publishers and agents just at the moment, but it's always useful to have it with me should I need to know for example at any given moment exactly when the kids' dentist appointments are!! My filofax is actually quite a lovely version, made of fabric and given to me the Christmas I was pregnant with Hattie just before I became ill. Oddly I still have squashed into it my diary for 2008 and 2009 as well as 2010. It's some kind of superstitous thing - all my chemotherapy appointments, Hattie's birth, my radiotherapy dates are there superimposed onto earlier entries to do with work I thought I'd have to do before starting my maternity leave, before I knew that my life was going to change out of all recognition. I guess I should get rid of those years, but somehow at the moment it seems necessary to keep them.

My sunglasses - Yes, very necessary at the moment in the snow and pouring rain!! But I bought them last summer at a fanatastic market in Sarlat in the Dordogne. We took the kids camping in France -an amazing and exhausting holiday, long before I was anywhere near being well but a holiday to prove that things were getting back to some sense of normality.

My Orla Kiely purse. Need I say anything? Actually I'm not exactly sure that Rog exactly knows about this purse. Not exactly. Hmmmmm.

A sock - Hattie's

A pair of socks - Ed's

My digital camera - I'm trying hard to take more photos before I blink and the kids are leaving home.

My book - I'm just starting 'February' by Lisa Moore. I don't ever get to read through the day, but I can't take the risk that Hattie might fall asleep somewhere in the car or buggy and I can sneak a few pages. I'm laughed at by my family and friends for always, always having a book - and lugging it around the supermarket, on the school run, wherever. It started when I was a child. We'd go on family holidays to Yorkshire, Northumberland or Scotland and I'd have my nose in a book from the start to the end. I'd read through picnics, drives in the car, rainy afternoons in the caravan - much to the utter disgust of my brother, and sometimes the irritation of the rest of my family.

Ibroprufen and paracetamol - I like to have a choice when it comes to killing pain.

Neal's Yard Calm Spritzer - I'm a bit of a Neal's Yard fan as you can tell. This smells lovely.

I hope there's nothing unpleasant left in the bottom of the bag connected with the nasty incident in the supermarket - I don't think so.

I have to say that the above is a little too much for an Orla Kiely bag! It's kind of a little out of shape. My reality is hard to contain in a piece of frippery - lovely though it is and that's the sad truth.

Are you still with me? Well if you are, here's the part when I'm going to tag some other bloggers whom I read regularly as well as a couple of new finds - so that they can tell us all what's in THEIR bag!

Rebecca at Letters to the World

Tracey at uno, dos, tracey

Jane at ExmoorJane

HotCrossMum

The Dotterel (Ok, so maybe you don't have a handbag - but you must have some sort of bag) at Bringing up Charlie

Debra at Menopausal New Mom

Enjoy!!