I am astounded by my multi-tasking abilities. I bask in anticipation of the praise sure to fall from my husband when he returns from his week away to find I have not only finished painting the chicken house, but have built an entire run from scratch. I am a veritable land girl, green-fingered, tousle-haired and […]
Parenting
Having it all – or doing it all?
We working girls are fond of rather smugly claiming that we have it all. The four bed detached, the Boden-clad children, the successful career… but I’m beginning to wonder what exactly it is that I have in such abundance. Indigestion, mostly, it seems. Today I was late home for the nanny for the second time […]
Mary Poppins is no match for Miss Marple
She’s late. The final short-listed candidate in our quest to replace Mary Poppins. We interviewed the others last weekend, and have refrained from making a decision until we could meet K, whose CV positively oozes experience from every line. My husband’s primary criterion is that K isn’t any larger than the others. It’s not that […]
The end of the affair
I should put this into context. I have never been dumped. Never has anyone ever dared to dump me. I was stood up once by a student from Luton, but even that turned out to be a misunderstanding. I just didn’t think I was the sort of girl who gets dumped, but clearly things have […]
My stomach and me: marks of a multiple mum
Yet another celebrity mum is snapped stretching out on a beach in a skimpy bikini, three months after having a baby. I groan and push the offending magazine back into the rack, slinking out of the newsagent in despair. I try in vain to convince myself that she was never pregnant in the first place; […]
Grave Behaviour
The children and I stop at the church to visit my little boy, who died when he was just five weeks old. My surviving son is his twin, and we have regular conversations about why this happened, how far in the ground his brother is buried, whether he is allowed Haribo in heaven (I vote […]