Parents at the start of the school holidays fall into one of three camps. The first can be identified by the social media updates packed with references to gin, urgent play-date requests and confirmation that the children do go back on 5 September, don’t they? What’s that? An inset day? Oh give me strength! […]
Parenting
I had thought my children were too old to be embarrassing. I was wrong.
Now that the children are older, they are significantly less embarrassing. It has been really quite a while since any of the children deposited a poo in the wrong place, or pulled down my skirt at a drinks reception. Such good behaviour has significantly reduced my opportunities for story-telling, but does at least mean I […]
After birth
I answered the phone this evening to a woman who gave her name as though I should recognise it. She launched into an update on the local maternity hospital, now reopening several months after the suspension of key members of staff. I listened with half an ear, as the children ate their supper and I […]
Heaven
The boys were five weeks old when Alex died. In my head he has never got any older – how could he? If I think of those thirty-five days – and rarely do I allow myself to do so – it is of a hand curled around my finger; a butterfly heart beneath the translucent […]
Sunny days
There’s something about the sunshine, isn’t there? I woke up this morning and there it was: splashing itself across the garden in the most brazen way. I made pancakes, smoothies, fruit yoghurt. The coffee thrust itself upwards in the cafetière as though it couldn’t wait to be brewed. We sat on the deck beneath the […]
Evening time is MY time.
I am almost obsessional about the time between seven in the evening and bedtime. It’s mine. All of it. I revel in the peace which comes when the children are asleep, and the utter selfishness of an evening spent doing what I want to do. When the babies were all under two, and the witching […]