Pillow talk last night went something like this: Me: what sort of gun could I get hold of, if I really wanted to? Husband (who knows about such things): that depends where you were and who you knew. Me: No underworld connections. Just a normal, middle-class person, in a normal middle-class town. Him: Probably […]
Relationships
A holiday
It is three in the afternoon and I have just ordered a cocktail. I have done so not because I particularly want a cocktail, but in celebration of my departure from the status quo, which would about this time see me bracing myself for the school-run and pre-bedtime chaos. So I have ordered a cocktail, […]
What shall I buy my wife for Christmas?
It’s Christmas Eve. All around the world, men are walking blindly around shopping centres, trying to find something to buy for their wives. I shall leave aside, for now, the fact that you should have started your shopping long before now, so let me help you out a little with a few things not to […]
Time for bed
My best friend’s husband had a vasectomy last week. It’s become quite popular within my circle of acquaintances, which makes me realise I must now be middle-aged. It used to be tattoos and piercings – now it’s all tummy tucks and sterilisation. A vasectomy seems to be quite the in thing among responsible men nowadays. […]
Is Voldemort real?
Four-year-old E suffers from a vivid imagination. She seizes upon single issues and pursues them doggedly, often worrying for hours into the night about the hows and the whys and the whens. Unusually, for a mother as uncharitable as I am, I am enormously sympathetic to her. I think I was born worrying about something […]
Caught in the act
My husband is home. He’s early. He’s supposed to be sixty miles away. I thought I’d be safe for at least another two hours, but that’s definitely his car I can hear. Oh God – that’s his key in the lock! That’s it, then. He’s going to catch me in the act. I feel sick […]