Parenting

My children regularly pour out of playgroups and school with all manner of junk-modelled ‘art’. Most of the time I manage to seamlessly tidy these creations directly into the recycling box, but occasionally I’m forced to give them house-room for a while.  A couple of weeks ago the girls produced an extraordinary collaborative effort made […]

Last September I gave up my full-time job in favour of part-time freelancing from home. Life had become too frenetic, too stressful, too full, so the plan was to put the family first and take a break for a while. Sure, I’d have to work – that gin won’t buy itself, you know – but […]

Photo by Martin Godwin It’s leap day tomorrow and my girls will be four years old. We’ll be celebrating their special birthday on the BBC Breakfast sofa, which should make for a suitably interesting anecdote for them to tell at dinner parties when they’re older. They were in The Guardian on Saturday and seem to […]

I’m on my own with the children this half-term. The thought of kicking about the house for a week fills me with horror, so when a press trip to a UK holiday resort was dangled before me, I grabbed it with both hands. I compiled my packing list which, summarised, looked something like this: several […]

My five-year-old son has a best friend. Forged in the very first week of his first term at school, their friendship has remained steadfast over the last few months, despite the ups and downs of classroom life. Towards the end of last year my son was ill for a full week, staying home from school […]

The people we bought our house from were rather slapdash in their change of address cards. Every now and then a letter drops through the door addressed to the previous occupants and I love nothing more than to settle down with a cup of tea to read their latest correspondence. I know it’s faintly illegal, […]