Last night the screw top for my hip flask got stuck under my breadmaker

Any more? (Not including scarf/nail problems)

The slugs got to my pak choi, and Poppy was touched by a Pov child on the way to Montessori…..

I tend to leave a post-it note for the au pair to sort these type of tiresome things.

If you were of better breeding, you'd know that hip flasks without captive tops are to be avoided for that exact reason. Have you just been promoted to middle class?

The bread made by my breadmaker is too big to fit in my Dualit toaster.

Daughter singing in the earshot of the (obnoxious) boy from the ex-council houses at the edge of the village, "He's just a poor boy from a poor family."

Waitrose forgot my San Pellegrino. Plebs.

"Last night the screw top for my hip flask got stuck under my breadmaker"

Can't you just ask her to stand up for a moment while you retrieve it?

Daughter singing in the earshot of the (obnoxious) boy from the ex-council houses at the edge of the village, "He's just a poor boy from a poor family."

There's a nice little snob in the making…

I, of course, have none of these issues.

I did slip on a discarded fag packet in the kitchen earlier. Knocked over a stack of empty lager cans.

Ocado just delivered surfines capers rather than nonpareilles.

Waitrose forgot my San Pellegrino. Plebs.

My wife told me today she read on mumsnet that Ocado are better than Waitrose for online shopping because they pick fresher veg out for you.

I'm not trying to be funny, but it made me laugh anyway.

T_S_Y – I'd get your man to have a word, that's unacceptable.

😀

My man is on his way to the Job Centre. Now the au-pair is going to be run off her feet and I'm going to have to pick up Tarquin from nursery, I always go to David Lloyds for a power workout on a Friday, that's not going to happen now is it. This has just ruined my weekend. If they've not sent my favourite vintage Armangac I'm going to re-employ my man just so I can kick him out the door again.

If I'm honest my Graze box is a little heavy on dried fruit, rather light on olives. The snails have been at my planted-out chillis, but fortunately only the jalapenos have suffered, leaving the scotch bonnet alone. I'm particularly concerned though that this particular alignment of circumstances is undoing my naescent attempts to offset food miles.

lolol…
Shaun Keaveney (pleb ;)) on 6Music does have a quote he uses from time to time – apparently heard at a music festival last summer: "Rupert, you've left the Actimel in direct sunlight all day!"

Poppy's pony has nibbled through the rope which retains the gate to the paddock. The Hounds escaped from the courtyard, savaging a number of household pets owned by the local proles. Now I've been informed by a couple of members of the great unwashed that 'Where there's blame, theres a claim'. Though how you'd go about taking legal action against a horse, I have no idea.

Its a frightful inconvenience though

We appear to have run out of petrol in the Range Rover. This has never been allowed to happen before. What does one do?

i think this may be my favourite thread of the day! 😆

What tyres for my Discovery3?

"A lady in Jimmy Choo's does not walk!"

Unfortunately, my wife to a colleague as they went for a post-work drink – the car park of work and the pub car park are different sides of the same road…

I did slip on a discarded fag packet in the kitchen earlier. Knocked over a stack of empty lager cans.

That's what you get for straying into staff territory, though quite why you keep your conceptual art installation there is beyond me.

realising there was only enough monmouth house espresso blend left to fill the small single shot portafilter and not my usual double, i agonised over popping to waitrose for some illy to make a double shot but i want decent coffee not supermarket crap.*

*true story, i'm having to rearrange my day to fit in buying more proper coffee, i just have to decide between square mile's spring espresso
(50% El Meridiano, Tolima, Colombia 50% Fazenda Ipanema, Minas Gerais, Brazil) or monmouth house blend. if i go to monmouth i can pop into bedales and buy a bottle of Borgogno freisa d asti

LOL.

theres a lady ive been dealing with through work, a customer i suppose, who phoned me up in tears.

"this has all be so terrible (we are sorting out structure problems in her house) and ive had SO much to do this week as the nanny is away, ive had to take the children to school, and pick the children up from school……"

i thought there was more on this list, but there wasnt. thats a MANIC day for her apparently.

Poor love.

true story, i'm having to rearrange my day to fit in buying more proper coffee

Really? Have a beer and chill the f*ck out!!

And I thought I had it bad as the chap who cleans my Aga informs me that my granite could do with a colour change.

the labrador ate my toasted brioche whilst I was booking a tennis lesson

Really? Have a beer and chill the f*ck out!!

but i haven't any decent beer in the house. i can pick up some westmalle brune or corsendonk when i go to buy the coffee though.

I'm also concerned that I don't have very much triple sec left and no orgeat syrup whatsoever.

but i haven't any decent beer in the house. i can pick up some westmalle brune or corsendonk when i go to buy the coffee though.

Well that's just poor planning 🙄

Daughter off to Brownie camp and kit list specifies 'metal plate and bowl'.

Our camping crockery consists of the ironic choice of this stuff;

will she be ok with that?

My Dido CD is stuck in my Bose CD player

'for gods sake, if you need cheap and cheerful just nip to peter jones'

My Howies order hasn't arrived yet.

This is a genuine one. Used to work for a construction company years ago and the owner was a multi millionaire.

He phoned the workshop one day and asked for a mechanic to come to his house to change the batteries in the remote for his garage doors.

It's a bank holiday weekend, I've given the staff the whole weekend off and I'm nearly out of espresso 😯

How are things down there in the middle classes – still crawling over yourselves in aspirational social climbing?

This is a genuine one.

Aren't they all?

My home has always been my sanctuary, a place of exquisite beauty and calm. I read or sit undisturbed on our leather sofa in our family room with its off-white walls, stainless steel and sage-green stone surfaces, and gaze through its wall of sliding glass doors onto our fragrant cream and lavender garden with its climbing roses, ancient apple and pear trees, camellias and jasmine.

All that changed in less than 10 seconds on Thursday when the tornado visited. The glass roof of the side-return exploded, tinkling down from the ceiling like sharp raindrops. Somebody's concrete windowsill crashed onto our worktop and now rests amid a quarry of shattered glass. A black roof tile speared the American walnut floating shelf, scattering our younger daughter Ella's birthday cards. "Congratulations! Nine years old today!" The words have been lacerated by shards of glass. Three bricks. Rainwater. Broken glass. A wooden bowl of Christmas clementines. These are vomited across our limestone floor.

If you dream of your home, it symbolises your psyche, what makes you you. It's your security. My soul was in that house. For three years, I'd indulged my passion for perfect decor. In January, it was to have been shot for Homes & Property. On Saturday Ella is, no, that's was, having three friends for a birthday sleepover. I am crying as I write this.

I was sitting in my first-floor office on Thursday morning, making a whirlwind of phone calls; speaking to Ella's classmates' parents, feeling explosive at hearing stories of bullying. There was a colossal thunderclap and gigantic explosion of lightning. I remember thinking it extraordinary, this physical manifestation of my psychic state. Suddenly I glanced out of the window. "Oh my God," I said, standing up. "Oh my God," I said into the phone.

There has been a terrorist bomb, I thought. A moustrous cloud of black smoke that spread the width of two three-storey houses and towered above them 200 feet away across our gardens was angrily blasting branches, missiles, bricks and branches into the air. With sudden terror, I realised that the "smoke" was moving towards me. The words "Wizard Of Oz" went through my head as I crash-dived under the desk.

The second my head hit the floor and I crossed my arms to protect my eyes and ears, there was an almighty explosion, then the sound of a 140-tonne aeroplane roaring through my office. I lay on the floor screaming hysterically, a primal sound. "Caroline, what's happened? Talk to me?" The voice of film producer Julia Barron came from the phone. I screamed and screamed. Once, I witnessed an IRA bomb in Olympia where a second blast was expected. In my post-tornado confusion, I was waiting for another bomb to blow me up. I've nver felt so alone. "Caroline! Are you hurt? Speak to me! Have you been hit by lightning?" I felt immensely relieved; lightning doesn't strike twice.

Piece of glass fell from my (miraculously uncut) legs. I'd had sash windows overlooking the garden. Now there were panes punched out and glass thrown with violent abandon. Outside, the entire street's garden fences were scattered like a pack of cards. A large uprooted tree from somebody else's garden had crash-landed on someone's roof… which was in my husband Adrian's lovingly tended garden. If I hadn't looked out of the window easlier and seen the tornado coming, I wouldn't have been able to see this scene of devastation. I'd have been blinded.

I called Adrian's mobile. He was at a job interview, having recently been cut from his work as a private banker. The mobile wouldn't connect. Hysterical, I phoned my brother Simon. He was watching his son George's Nativity play. "Our house has been hit by a tornado." He couldn't understand my screams. Watching our family boxer, Douschka, shaking and walking aimlessly in circles crunching glass, I rang 999.

Jamie, our musician neighbour and father of newborn Seth, was standing in our communal bomb-site. "Our roof has been lifted off," he said simply. "Look at our chimney dangling there." Incredibly, his wife and son had been spared. To the other side, builder Nathan Brown and film-producer Juliet Levy's top-floor bedroom wall had been ripped off. And 90-year-old Beryl's loft kitchen had lost its walls and roof. You've seen these in the aerial photograph in the newspapers. We are among the worst hit.

In the street at the front it was like a film set, so surreal was the scene and so many the people. But instead of cameras, it was being videod on phones. A group of refuse collectors stood in shocked dismay. The side of a removal van was harpooned with roof tiles, a Toyota was halved by a concrete lintel. Thank God our daughters Anya and Ella were at school.

Juliet came out and we hugged and wept. She'd seen the tornado and had run away, thinking only for finding her daughter, two year old Jasmine. (She was unhurt.) Juliet heard my cries through the thick Edwardian walls. "I thought they were the screams of a dying woman." A dishevelled man in slippers walked past. "I've got to get to my house," he muttered anxiously, "I need my medicine. I'm a paranoid schizophrenic." Eyes wide with fear, geography teacher Vanessa Ross Russell ran towards me. "I don't know if Claudia (her two year old daughter) is in the house." We ran up the rest of the street together. Normally we just share school runs. Her front door was opened by her nanny, colour drained from her petrified face. Claudia stood by her side, like a statue.

The emergency services came, along with my shell-shocked husband. I had only the clothes I was shaking in, and my mobile. I couldn't find a glass-free spot for Douschka. A fireman carried her to safety in the fire engine. Adrian went into our house. "Please don't go back in," urged a fireman as he came out. "TYhat chimney stack is about to fall." We'd lost part of our roof and all our back windows.

A neighbour, Chris Martin, an advertising producer, arrived. He survived the Hatfield rail disaster. On Thursday he had moved back home after three months of decorating. Luckily he was out when it struck. "You're in serious shock," he said. Emergency services treated people for shock, kicked down doors, vacated properties. They acted with kindness, spirit and awesome efficiency. Faced with a messy child's bedroom, one fireman seized the moment: "Looks like a tornado hit your room, love!" We spent 10 tremulous minutes waiting to hear whether our damage would be covered by Lark Insurance Services or disallowed as an act of God. "Well, are you?" asked a policewoman, her eyes bursting with compassion. We are.

I spoke to endless media. A need to be recognised when I'd almost been no longer. Then came acquaintances', friends' and family's touching offers of help, beds, cash and clothes. Deep-frozen, I'd already borrowed four jumpers from neighbours; I wore them all for three days. Amid the scene of devastation, a man tried to bring order to the world by washing his car. As rain poured into our kitchen, I dreaded an electrical fire stealing the remains of our home. I feared looting. Then we heard that a fiftysomething man had suffered serious head injuries. With rising foreboding, we went from official to official, from Mothodist Church Hall to the British Legion centre, to find out if it was our friend Chris Barker. It wasn't.

News changed by the minute. We were told that our house, though not visibly terrible, was the most dangerous in the street. There was rumour of its being demolished. When the cordon banning residents access to affected Crediton Road houses came down, apartheid prevailed for three houses. Ours was one.

Since then I've been in an emotional cyclone. I already had a brilliant trauma specialist therapist. I went to see him on Thursday evebning. I've felt a desperate need not to be alone, to keep in touch. (We've stayed with friends rather than in a hotel because I want to be with people I love.) I haven't slept much. I've shivered brutally. For three nights, I saw the tornado coming towards me whenever I shut my eyes. I've jumped at loud noises, panicked hearing sirens, cried endlessly. Sat in my car and screamed and screamed hysterically at such unfairness. Fought the desire for cigarettes and alcohol after 18 years' abstinence. Despaired of my loss of earnings. Felt like never living in my house again.

Now we've been allowed home to survey our own private war-zone. We don't yet know the extent of the structural damage, but it may take six months to repair. Neighbours Sunil Vijayakar and Geraldine Larkin have been told to throw away ALL their possessions, filled as they are with shards of glass. Simon Willsmer, our loss adjustor, hasn't yet broken that news to us. The insurance companies have taken a recent slating, but he was sensitive and honourable. He said we could stay in a hotel. Adrian explained that there is only one hotel in London: Claridge's. Simon did not demur. And he loved what's left of our specialist-polished plaster walls.

We're acknowledging our children's trauma, talking to them and giving them lots of treats. Staff at Francis Holland, Anya's school, have been magnificent in their sensitive handling of her feelings. We took Anya, 11, "home" on Friday. Her room was virtually untouched, being at the front of the house. But she feels displaced and traumatised. On Sunday we took Ella. She was devastated that her cat, Happy, was missing, possibly killed. She surveyed the destruction wreaked on her spotty Cath Kidson carpet, rosebud blinds and soft toys. "You always say my room looks like a bomb site," she said, smiling bravely. "Now it really does." Two roof tiles and 50 pieces of fist-sized glass lay on her bed. Just days before, unwell, she'd have been there at 11.02am. Tears filling her eyes, she picked up a pink rabbit, her favourite toy. A sprinkling of glass fell off his fur.

I attended Friday's crisis meeting in the British Legion. A room full of frightened people who'd scarcely slept in this makeshift refuge; many of whom had lost their homes and were too distressingly poor to afford insurance cover. I was offered a hard hat, possible council tax rebate but, so far, no counselling. Nearby were the Scientology Volunteers in emblazoned flourescent jackets; people preying (or should that be praying?) on the vulnerable. "Almost worse than losing my house is being accosted by Scientologists," I told the waiting cameramen outside. There was a tornado in Kensal Rise in the Fifties. Now I know about the Scientologists, I can't risk living there any more.

On Friday evening, stupidly, we met friends for dinner in that awful eye of the social tornado, Cipriani. I wore Tornado Chic – the grey pants and multiple jumpers that were still my only clothes. I screamed with grief in the loo. I fought the urge to shout: "Less than five miles from here, there are old people like Beryl who didn't even have enough money to paint her door, who have lost their roofs…"

The Apocalypse was not all bad. There was something comforting about watching the Salvation Army dispensing tea and sandwiches. Uplifting seeing people in crisis helping one another. And meeting kindly new souls in the street. As for the house, it's just bricks and mortar. We're not in a tent in Pakistan or even Brent council's temporary accomodation. In fact, we're staying with close friends. Thankfully Christmas isn't such a disaster – we already had plans to go away. Everybody is safe. Happy, Ella's cat, returned this morning.

Last night i didn't see the tornado when I went to sleep. I feel euphoric that I'm alive. I've got used to friends calling me Dorothy, a reference to the Wizard Of Oz. My family surmises that I'll do anything out of of cooking Christmas lunch. Oh, and now we might just get that communal garden we've always wanted.

off and I'm nearly out of espresso

i feel your pain

Adrian explained that there is only one hotel in London: Claridge's.

😆

I'd have given them a good kicking, then given them a cardboard box for the night!

**** Claridges ffs…