This is my son Josh, in his first appearance as a stand-up comic. I don’t know if there will be a second: I didn’t even know he liked the idea of stand-up, but when I showed him the list of school holiday workshops running at our local theatre, this was the one he chose. The kids […]
Parenting
Managing the domestics
My husband has booked a cleaner. It seems the rising tide of dog hair and dust (the levels of which ebb and flow, depending on my proximity to a deadline) have defeated him, and so he has hired help. Domestic decisions of this nature – finding babysitters, interviewing nannies, calling the window cleaner – sit squarely […]
Happy Christmas: a poem for parents
It’s the night before Christmas and all through the land, Parents are pacing, the wine close to hand. Have we bought enough presents? Have we got the right ones? Is Rupert too little to play with Nerf guns? When’s your mother arriving? How long is she staying? She always drinks more when she’s not the one […]
How to spot a Smug Mother this Christmas
Christmas is coming and the Waitrose goose is getting fat. Across the Cotswolds Smug Mothers are glowing with festive pride as they prepare for family celebrations Kirstie Allsop would be proud of, while the rest of us are drowning under never-ending lists of presents to buy, food to order, and work to finish before the kids break up. […]
Eight years
It was a day like today; the day he died. Crisp underfoot, and dragon’s breath left trailing in one’s wake. We drove to the hospital in silence – there was nothing left to say – to hold a christening amid the tubes and the wires and the perspex cribs. Holy water administered from a bottle; a […]
It will get easier
Was there ever a bigger lie told, than ‘it will get easier’? Was there ever a more useless platitude, a more toothless attempt to soothe? It doesn’t get easier. The years don’t dull the pain, or replace the choking sobs with a wistful sigh. They don’t loosen the chains around your chest that crush your lungs […]