The Nanny started last week, in preparation for The Big Return to Work. Having staff is a whole new experience for me; I find it difficult even to ask the window cleaner to do the pane he has missed, or to suggest to the builders that a three hour tea break may be a little […]
Dear Burglar
My next door neighbour was burgled last night. This is a major event for the entire street; we are all middle-aged people in a middle class street, in a town which has the lowest crime rate in the South of England. Based on the theory that criminals often return to the scene of the crime […]
The hidden cost of children
A friend of mine asked me recently, “so just how much do children cost?” It brought to mind a colleague who, after discovering his girlfriend was unexpectedly pregnant, calculated optimistically that a mere £6 a week was required to sustain this future child. I would love to track him down, some seven or eight years […]
Waiting Room
Day Five,originally uploaded by ~Prescott. You see the same plastic, hard-backed chairs in any other waiting room, but the tension here is palpable, and the atmosphere rarified. The room is full of couples – the occasional same-sex pair, the odd lone female, but mostly couples; holding hands as though this show of solidarity alone is […]
Becoming a working girl
No, I’m not planning to drop my (considerably more expansive post-children) knickers and go on the game (it’s not an issue of morals; the pension plan just doesn’t measure up to the public sector) but I do need to re-join the rat race. I left work in 2006 when, six months into my first pregnancy, […]
Costa Boy
On Christmas Eve I went to Leamington Spa. It was a snap decision, taken somewhere between picking play-doh out of the carpet and explaining once again to my son that, despite appearances to the contrary, Father Christmas, Jesus and Noah are not the same person. I needed a present for my husband; one which would […]