The Pantone Colour of the Year 2011 is pink. Well, Pantone call it honeysuckle but that’s just being fancy, isn’t it. Apparently last year’s bright Turquoise (Pantone 15-5519) reflected the need to get away from the grey of global recession and this year’s Pink (Honeysuckle) reflects a community-style spirit of making the most of things, rolling up your sleeves and just getting on with it. Or so say the trend- setters. Though we all know what the cool-hunter, marketing- guru ,colour-designer at Pantone really did was go to work after dressing their three year old daughter and just couldn’t get the riot of Barbara Cartland shades out of their head when they started work on the grey ‘what colour can we dream up for this year?’ brief.

I’m done with being fed up with the marketing tyranny of pink everything for girls (both little and big), not to mention metrosexual and homosexual men. Which pretty much means everyone in the world who isn’t Jeremy Clarkson or the Olympic shot-putting team. Like Pantone, I’m embracing it. Pink, that is - not the Olympic shot-putting team.

This old litter attendant is ON STRIKE.

There’s nothing to make a person feel more Methuselah-like than a bad back. I’ve been walking around like an old hag, clutching my gnarled spine. The pain every time I bend has made me realise just how many bits of pink plastic I pick up every day. Things will have to change: by hook or by crooked walking stick, X will be trained to pick up her own pink dross.

I used to live in a fairly neat house. I remember when my social worker came to check out the house for suitability for me to be approved to adopt. “Not very child-friendly is it?’ she said disapprovingly, as she scanned my white-walled, newly-shelved, tenant-enticing styling. “There’d be something a bit weird about a spinster without even a boyfriend or state approval to have a child having a house all set up for a baby,’ I seethed – inwardly, of course; I never dared to disagree with the statuesque woman whom I sincerely hoped one day might morph a stork.

I should have seen the writing on the newly wallpapered walls the moment X crawled into the house. After I’d only had her for about a fortnight the architect-designer, who’d helped with my kitchen extension, came over to the house to take some snaps for his portfolio. ” Babies and minimalism don’t really go together, do they?’ he said mildly critical, as he surveyed the 3d version of his computer-aided design accessorised with baby bric -a –brac. I smiled my new smug-mummy smile. I totally knew he was totally wrong and that his boringly perfect design was totally improved by a few bright wooden toys. Just look at Elle Deco, there’s always some vintage wooden horse rocking on the real stone floor. Anyway, we didn’t litter, we artfully scattered. Totally different.

Now things aren’t scattered, artfully or otherwise; they’re definitely littered. Kiddie litter is everywhere. You know the way that little bits of white cat litter kicks into every nook and crevice? Kiddie litter is far worse because it’s not organic. The bits of pink plastic do not ever silt naturally into the floorboards. The older she gets the worse it gets. Baby toys come in manageable wooden lumps that encourage almost OCD neatness in children, rings that stack in size, shapes that post into boxes. Toys to spread the wings of the imagination also spread all over the house. Bubble-wrapped packages spill forth multiplicities of homeless design accessories: little gold phones, miniscule plastic Manolos, tiny hairbrushes. Even the accessories have accessories: the little pink doggie with it’s little pink basket and hairbrush. Where will it end?

Well, now I can’t pick it all up and shove it all into the pink dolls-house. I literally can’t get down to floor level without clutching onto chairs and doing heavyweight lifting manoeuvers just to hoist my heavyweight bottom up again. Finally X has been picking her own litter up and all I’ve been doing is heavyweight bellowing. She’s doing quite well, but I think it’s telling on her. She actually asked me how my back was this morning.

Four!

She's so proud of being four and so angry when her friend teases her for only being three - especially now it isn't true.

Fancy being proud of getting older, yearning for it, glorifying in being a big girl. Why am I depressed to think about getting older? When did I stop being proud of another year? I remember not wanting to be nine and stopping eating because I didn't want to be a teenager. I was probably much younger than many others in that way. In Japan they revere the old, or is that just a myth? And does that stop the old being depressed about getting older?

Is innocence the lack of fear of death? When do children realise they will die one day? X knows the word 'kill' but I don't know if she really knows what it means. I'm pretty sure that she doesn't. No wonder getting older seems like getting better. It's only after a million skincare ads have told you how fabulous it is to wind back time that

you get the idea that backwards is better.

She went to see her half sister yesterday. She fell twice and hurt a different knee each time, racing to catch her up. Her older sister can read. Her older sister is taller and more confident and can climb higher. Her older sister does not spill her hot chocolate. Her older half sister is a whole year and a half older. Why wouldn't a little girl want to be a big girl and do big things?

Why shouldn't I still want to get a year older and do more things? There are surely plenty of people older than me doing great aspirational things, surely? Beyond Elton and David, that is....

It must be nature because it isn't nurture.

Silence for too long from the bathroom.

'What are you doing?"

"Cleaning the bath. It really needs it!"

There she was, in the bath, happily cleaning the tide mark with our facecloth.

I can't think where she learned that from - I don't think she's seen me do it that often and I don't even think that Joyce, our cleaning lady, does it that much either....

Maybe all little girl's just love to clean - when they are four.

THE AA - VERY NICE MEN

Yesterday we were late. It was 7.40 by the time we bundled into the car, and then- click!- the engine just clicked when it should have va-va-voomed. The night before X was playing with the vanity mirror as I unpacked the car so naturally I assumed it was a flat battery. The car might have been going nowhere but my mind went into overdrive, immediately replanning the whole day and how I was to get everywhere and pick up on time as I hauled the poor little girl to the minders on foot so fast that she was running most of the way. I must admit I was a bit fed up, having bought a new car I was hoping that the flat batteries of the twenty year old one were a thing of the past.

At lunchtime I discovered you can book a time to get the AA out. Excellent! They came after I'd given X her bath in the evening and I packed up a little bag of stuff for her to fall asleep in the car with me driving around for an hour to charge it up. The AA came late but hey, I was in the warm watching The Apprentice, so that was fine. When Mr AA finally came he started the car immediately. No, immediately, without even opening the bonnet.

In my hurry in the morning had forgotten that the new car only starts with the clutch depressed. I explained that it might seem like a very silly mistake but I've a twenty year old habit of starting the car with my foot jammed on the accelerator. He gave me a look. Ok, it was a silly mistake. A very silly mistake. Silly mummy. I really felt a very silly mummy. But with hardly even an annoyed eyebrow lift the nice AA man said goodnight and raced off to deal with real emergencies.

MUMMY FAILS THE SPELLING TEST

We sorted the Christmas cards at the weekend, all on nice white card, and then - when those ran out - we even found some old brown paper. All we had to do tonight was write three little cards for three little extra friends that have suddenly become new best friends today. But is it Arhmen, Armen, Arghman? Or even Amen? It is a church school, after all....

And is that Chanel or Chanelle and Bryanna, Brianna or Prianna? According to the little one it begins with a D; but she's not reliable on letters, to be fair. Can it be shortened to Anna? Calm, steady yourself, this isn't that hard, just get it done. Yes, but is that Briyanna or Breeanna, or Arhnem or Ahmen? Must check the register next time I get to take X to school next year.

I WANTED TO SEE SANTA TOO! WAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!

Juggling is a fact of freelance life and also of mummy life. Put the two sets of juggling together and you need more hands than shiva on an ordinary friday.

This friday went really well. Dumped off the child at the minder before she had even a chance to swallow a gulp of water. We were on time! True, I should have been in two places all morning but I had my exit from one to the other sorted. I didn't let the harassment about where I was going to be over xmas get to me too much- except to laugh at how being out of a full time job can be so much more demanding than full time employment. And I had my path to the afternoon arrangements almost watertight. And it all went to plan! Amazing! I actually found myself with a five minute break at tea time when I had my lunchtime sandwich. And I finally managed to get to pick up child before seven! A great day. And little one said "It's my mummy!" as I walked in the door. And not even with an upset look.

So why am I moaning?Because that is what we all know is about to come...

It was just when the minder said that little one had a present from Santa.

"So you went?!" I snapped. Well, of course she did. She is the school minder, who picks up all the children, of course she took them to the school fete. "It was very crowded, I didn't stay for long," she said.

"No, no ," I shouted, "I'm so glad you went,"

"Look mummy , santa gave me a present!"

"It was only little," said the minder, stuffing it into my little one's bag. Intercut a five minute pause at this point where minder and I shove two pound coins between the two of us. No, but I really , really am glad she took X to the school fete and that she saw santa for the first time and he gave her a two quid present and I am really so grateful that the minder is so nice she will pay for that rather than make a big deal with a parent about it.

I just wish I'd been there. And I wished I could be there all day.

Then X and I went shopping. She was so excited about seeing santa she told: a man on the street, a beggar outside Sainsbury and a young man stacking shelves in a santa hat. The beggar outside Sainsburys was a weird one, considering her mum, who I always consider at times like this. "You shouldn't talk to strangers,"I say to X. "But I don't want to tell you, I want to tell them!" she says, ever so reasonably.

It was a good day. I juggled all the things that pay the bills very well. I just didn't get to be there when she first saw santa. But hey, can I remember where I was when I first saw santa? Um no, I can't actually ever remember seeing santa as a child. Well, not in real life, only as a scary thing that was supposed to come into my bedroom at night. In my day he didn't make school appearances, as if he was part of an X Factor PR initiative.

I am glad she saw santa the first time she ever saw santa, No. Really. I just wish I'd been there too. But I'm not going to be there for a lot of other firsts, no doubt, so maybe it's time I started growing up about it.