The Mumpreneur Diaries: Business, Babies or Bust - One Mother of a Year

At last the unmistakable franked envelope from my first ever publisher plops heavily through the letter box. I’m not ashamed to say I practically drop the baby on the floor in the rush for it. Figures baffle me at the best of times but I’m fairly sure that the number of minus signs next to four- and five-figure numbers is not encouraging. Matched by the virtual tumbleweed blowing through my online banking account I think it’s safe to say that those minus signs mean what I think they do. To cheer myself up, I hop in the car to go to the supermarket. I intend to spend next month’s freelance income (not actually commissioned but hey, it’s on the list) on baby trinkets and wine.

Or that is the intention but I am in such a hurry that I prang my neighbour’s car while executing a speedy three-point turn. He is parked on the double yellows that are there precisely to give you enough space to do a three-point turn without hitting any parked cars. I call the insurance company and pretend to be on their side:

‘I hit his driver-side bumper but it’s only a wee scratch really.’

‘So it’s your fault, madam?’

‘Ye-es, but he’s parked on the double yellows that are there to let you turn safely. Really, it’s his fault because he shouldn’t have parked there in the first place. If it’s his fault then you should refuse to pay. That I get to keep my No Claims is neither here nor there.’

‘But, madam, you were moving, he was not. Therefore, it’s your fault, your claim, your insurance and your No Claims, I’m afraid. I’d say you were into him by about £500.’

‘Bugger.’

It’s not 1 April yet, is it?

Chapter 3 Sleepless Nights (#ulink_3e0721d2-bd39-518c-88ca-24ec1e3df8fc)

Thursday 3 April 2008

You know that you’re a proper mumpreneur when you find yourself fixing your make-up in the dark in an underground car park using little more than Touche Éclat and a pair of blue Noddy pants, age 2-3.

I’m venturing out into the big wide world today. Often there aren’t just days but weeks when I don’t go much further than the edge of the village. But today I’m going up to town, to the smoke, to London. I’ve arranged to meet an old contact from my PR days who knows a bit about start-up businesses and how to go about getting them going.

The thrill of being allowed back into the world of the grown-ups (mothers’ corner at playgroup doesn’t count) is swiftly extinguished by yet another wardrobe crisis. That joey pouch is refusing to budge despite me spending the last four weeks pounding on the treadmill. Bosoms are also an issue, insofar as they don’t stay inside anything that’s not made of metres of cotton jersey. Shirts are a definite no-no as my cleavage is paying tribute to Debbie Does Dallas. I eventually drag on a dress which somehow manages to be both frumpy (hemline) and whoreish (neckline) at the same time. Hopefully the Pepto-Bismol-hued pashmina will distract my friend’s attention.

At least this time I remember the breast pads. Three weeks ago I was happily burbling away at Henry K on the radio show when I felt the telltale tingle under my armpits. This signals that I have exactly thirty seconds to deploy padding before the milk dam bursts and my top starts to darken in two very unmistakable ways. Halfway through dissecting the American Presidential Primaries I nonchalantly crossed my arms, hoping no one noticed me trying to stem the tide. I’m sure Henry thought it slightly odd that I kissed him goodbye and tried to leave the studio at the end of the show still with my arms firmly crossed over my chest.

My meeting today is instructive:

Could I cope if lots of mums wanted to use the service straight away? (Probably, maybe, in fact no, not really.)

Could I survive financially if no one used it straight away? (See 1.)

Had I thought about marketing, had I developed a distinct brand and did I have a budget set aside for it? (Yes, no and although I have a percentage of revenues set aside for marketing, 10 per cent of nothing is still nothing so, no.)

Was there a distinct division of labour between Partner in Crime and me to establish roles, boundaries, remuneration, etc. (No, in fact I haven’t seen her in ages. Must do something about that.)

Had I arranged my tax, insurance, qualifications, criminal record checks, etc.? (No, no, no and um, no. Oh dear.)

There’s a saying: ‘If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.’ Well, there are precious few solutions that come out of my meeting but a massive list of problems. At least I had a fairly comprehensive to-do list. I suppose I should be depressed that I thought I was good to go and it seems that I’m not even 5 per cent of the way to getting going on my own. But strangely I’m not. Now I’ve got my list of things to get on with, and if they’re all completed satisfactorily, I should have me a business.

Saturday 5 April 2008

Boy One has a date at his friend’s birthday party. Twenty screaming children aged three and four rampaging round a playbarn fuelled by cheesy puffs, cake and lemonade. This doesn’t frighten me as much as perhaps it should because:

it’s someone else’s party,

in someone else’s building, and

in two hours Boy One will experience a massive sugar

crash and lie comatose and drooling in front of The Lion King until it’s time for an early bed.

Therefore I can look forward to a longish period of peace and quiet this evening. I think I may sleep. Haven’t done that for a while.

Sunday 6 April 2008

Party was a great success except Boy One is now determined to have his own bash there in September. This will, I fear, be expensive and painful. However it has made me realise something about starting up this concierge service. Managing people doesn’t bother me, the tax situation is baffling but I’m sure I’ll figure it out. Setting up websites and whatnot is actually quite fun (new career as an IT wonk? Not impossible). But, by offering a party helper service as part of our package, it dawns on me that I could be stuck in a kids’ party filled with hyperactive three-year-olds every Saturday from now until the hereafter. This is terrifying.

I also give Boy One his biannual haircut today. I usually wait until 40-year-olds start saying, ‘What a pretty girl!’ before deciding he needs a trim. We’re going for the long-locked surfer dude look at the moment. The haircutting experience usually consists of a large bar of chocolate to keep him still, large quantities of spray-on conditioner to get the dreadlocks out and the kitchen scissors.

So far I’ve entertained the idea of starting up as a PR, childminder, doula, radio presenter and website manager. I don’t think we’ll be adding hairdresser to that list.

Wednesday 9 April 2008

We make yet another pilgrimage to the venerated grandmother north of the border. It’s nice to visit the old home town. In a life where I’ve picked up two fathers, four mothers, two half-siblings and three step-siblings, seven schools and twelve family homes – and that’s just up to age 16 – it’s nice to know that Gma and Gpa stayed put in the same village for all of my nearly 35 years. Gpa’s moved on to stay with some floozies with white dresses and wings and a big bloke with a beard, but Gma’s feet are still firmly planted on Scottish soil (as opposed to in it).

Indeed, there is much to love about the old family homestead: discovering an old printing kit I was given for Christmas 1983, ink all dried up and letters missing; or finding the electronic keyboard Gpa made for me out of wood, a sheet of aluminium, some wires and a battery bigger than his fist. The benefit of having a relative with a double first in Physics and Maths and part of the team that developed RADAR was that he could take a bundle of wires, wood and metal and make something really quite wonderful. You can take your Barbie, I’ll have my home-made stylophone any day.

Unfortunately, despite being fascinated by computers and the internet, my Gpa selfishly failed to install broadband into the bungalow before he popped off to electrify the angels’ harps. So here I am armed with a laptop and a feature on toddler play to file by tomorrow and no way of getting on the internet, not even with dial-up.

We are but minutes from Silicon Glen where many of the IT advances were made in the 1980s and 1990s but I can’t get a signal on my mobile or connect to the internet. With my web habit this is a serious problem. Nor does Gma’s village have anything like an internet café. It has a café but the only cookies they’re interested in have chocolate chips and go nicely with a cuppa.

In the end I resort to filing copy the way so many hacks did before the war – over the phone, using my voice instead of the beeeee-awwwww-bipbip-beeeennnnnnggg of the modem.

I’m also too embarrassed to do this direct to the editor of the magazine. After all why pay a freelancer to dictate to you something that you may just as well have knocked up yourself? Instead I call Middle Sister who is handily at her desk in a super-cool sports and music marketing agency in London.

I wonder what they make of:

‘“Your toddler will enjoy shouting rude words like POO and WILLY”—got that?’

‘Do you want me to capitalise all of poo and willy?’

‘Yes, please.’

I hope her boss in their nice open plan office is understanding.

Tuesday 15 April 2008

The trip to Scotland was nice but it puts us all out of sorts. Perhaps it’s the seven-hour slog up and down the M1 in the middle of the night that does it. You can’t contemplate a journey like that during the day. Bored children with permanently full bladders make for slow progress. And during the brief moments when you are actually making time up the motorway the children are bouncing up and down in the back, hyped on sugar from the endless chocolate bribery. Boy Two is a little young for the sugar rush but Boy One has a surprisingly long reach for someone strapped into a car seat.

So an overnight drive it is, speeding through the wee hours down the coast, listening to mad programmes on Radio 2. The Husband ponders why stations insist on playing bagpipe music or Wagner when you really need a bit of Bon Jovi or The Eagles to keep you going. But the children are both snoring peacefully in the back so we have to be grateful for small mercies.

At one point we both get hit by a dose of the snoozes so we need something more peppy to keep us going. The Husband has stored some comedy on his MP3 player so we plug in a bit of Billy Connolly to blow the cobwebs away. We’re right in the middle of a lovely juicy skit about inventive sex, in which Billy C gets himself in a right old froth and shouts, ‘FUUUUCCK, Fucking FUUUUCK!’ with great gusto, when a little voice from the back pipes up:

‘He said “fucking”, Mummy. Has he got naughty manners?’

I find myself completely incapable of speech. I’m trying so hard to stop myself from laughing that I clamp my mouth shut and my eyes well up. The pressure threatens to blow my ears off. It’s just as well there are few other cars about because I’m finding it hard to see. Eventually the Husband recovers his composure long enough to say: