The alarm goes off. I fumble under the pillow, trying to press any button I can find. There is no way on earth it's morning. I refuse to believe it. I try to find the button that snoozes rather than turning it off, because even though it's clearly impossible that it's morning, I have a ...
Author: me
Hell and Back and Smiling
"Don't turn on the outdoor tap!" "Don't climb over the gate!" "Come out from under the table!" "Stop digging in the flower beds!" It struck me recently that I spend a huge amount of time telling my five-year-old what he can't do, and they're very often things that in an ideal world, he could spend all his time doing. ...
Big Little Milestones
Book launches and being horizontal
Anyone who knows me in real life will know that I'm not exactly horizontal in the chilled out stakes. I'm somewhere between about 45 and 80 degrees. And depending on the situation (organising a kid's party, organising a barbecue, trying to get out the door when we have a babysitter...) I'm really quite the opposite ...
Human birthdays and book birth-days
Sun and showers and sun showers, school runs snaking in and out between parked cars, windows down, temperatures up, singing voices raised, tempers frayed. June is everywhere and we are exhausted. It's time to wind down towards summer holidays, but at this time of year, it always feels like it's ramping up instead. Not the homework, ...
Drive me crazy
Feast or Famine at the Titanic Experience Belfast
It was one of those weeks - everyone had an upset of some sort. Nothing big - just little things that are tough to deal with when you're five or seven or nine years of age. Or twenty-one-and-a-good-bit and all your kids are upset. On Friday morning, after a particularly fraught start to the day, my husband ...
Hindsight on what matters – a note to my eldest child
On Our Own Riviera
We run along the path, glimpses of blue bobbing up and down in time with our steps. Down we go to the edge of the road, then we wait for the green man to stop the slow-moving but determined traffic. Across, and they keep running, but I stop for a moment, because there it is, stretching out ahead. ...
West Cork holiday – because the internet told me to
Once upon a time, booking a trip meant googling and trip-advisoring and searching and checking and reading every single review on the internet before finally deciding on what we hoped would be the perfect spot. But now, there’s no time for researching, and short-cuts are required, so my new modus operandi is to take the first ...