The publishing exec came to visit for the weekend. The Princess nearly expired from happiness. The publishing exec is officially her “favourite person in the whole world”. The Princess spent the weekend in a state of high excitement, laughing constantly (slightly manically). The publishing exec had to accompany her everywhere including to the toilet in the swimming pool where she informed her horrified aunt that she was “going to do a big poo”. I should clarify that said aunt is not the lucky parent of children herself and so is not inured to the presence of the poo of others in her daily life the way you and I might be. When the publishing exec wasn’t playing with, carrying or otherwise occupying herself with the Princess, she was cleaning the house. She can come again. Furthermore, she brought us, inter alia, volume II of the Supernanny book. I am disappointed that all of Supernanny’s wisdom was not given in volume I. I must say, though, that having had to read it, for work purposes, the publishing exec, applies it to our little girl (at least, I assume that this is where she gets her child minding tips from and that she hasn’t got little mites of her own stashed in the attic in London). And damn it, it does seem to work. It is unclear to me whether this is because Ms. Frost is a genius or because the Princess would do anything for her aunt including wearing a hat in the sun.

At this juncture, I could give you loads of gossip from the world of publishing, but I want my source to continue to feed me information so I will restrain myself. I am proud to report that she used something from my blog in a cartoon for one of her books. She quelled my delight somewhat by commenting “the book needed cartoons and I had to draw them and think up all the captions myself; they’re not very good” (who knew, just how much content an editor provides?). All I will say is that the publishing executive does a lot of celebrity biographies which she considers mildly depressing because many of the celebrities are rather young to produce meaningful biographies and the literary content isn’t maybe what she was hoping for when she graduated with her double first in English and then went on to do her thesis on the metaphysical poets. On the plus side, her employer buys her Grazia, Cosmo, Heat, Hello and pretty much whatever celeb rag you’re having yourself and pays her to read them on the job. Watching big brother is research. Do you want her job? Well, off you go and write a thesis on the metaphysical poets.

The publishing exec is the youngest member of her family. Mr. Waffle and her other brother (the piccolo cugino’s papa) were born in Montreal and Costa Rica respectively. By the time the publishing exec was born, the family had moved back to Dublin permanently and begun holidaying in Kerry. This is her parents’ excuse for the fact that their family photo albums contain many pictures of her older brothers as babies and youngsters but only one blurry snapshot of her as a baby. “We were abroad when the boys were little”, they argue “we were really photographing the countryside”. Nevertheless, the publishing exec remains a little testy on this point. Mr. Waffle, in the manner of older brothers, can be provoking. After our trip to the swimming pool, the publishing exec expressed regret that she had not taken the Princess swimming on her back “like Dad used to do with me in the Blue Pool” she said referring to a serviceable but rather unglamorous swimming pool around the corner from her parents’ house. “Ah yes,” said Mr. Waffle, delicately taking his life in his hands “I remember doing that with him in Barbados, I think we saw a barracuda”. As the baby of her family, I can’t help feeling that her mother’s proposal that when we all go to Kerry, the publishing exec should share with the Princess has not met with enormous favour.  Or maybe, she just doesn’t fancy being awoken by her niece bouncing off the walls from 5.00 am.  Hard to know.

In only one respect was the visit mildly unsatisfactory; we have a three bed roomed flat, so the arrival of visitors sees Mr. Waffle and me decamping to the boys’ bedroom. This is not ideal. I think that future visitors may have to be routed to the guesthouse round the corner. On the other hand, it was nice to see the publishing exec getting up to entertain the Princess at 6.30 am in response to incessant knocking and the odd kick aimed at her bedroom door. Come and visit us; have a little break. The problem is not so much the moving bedrooms but the fact that the boys sleep even less well than usual when we are in their room. Last night the four of us ended up sleeping together. It was very warm. Daniel is the Prince of Perspiration, the Grand Vizier of Glow, if you will, and this morning we were all rolling round in the small puddle he had created with his hot, chubby little body. Lovely.