My eyes water. Wind, sharp and stinging, pushes my hood down and drives me back. I lean in, but not in a Sheryl Sandberg way. I've got 58 minutes and five tasks. Stocking fillers. A fancy gift box. A Secret Santa pick-up. Stamps. A book. Dark shapes huddle under hoods, rushing in all directions, maybe ...
Last week I wrote about the books my kids loved this year - 28 recommendations from my kids to yours - so this week I thought I'd post about the books I loved in 2018. There are lots of "best books" newspaper articles and blog posts at the moment, and at first I thought about trying ...
One night a few months ago, I made a third attempt to get my six-year-old interested in Cabin Fever, a Diary of a Wimpy Kid book by Jeff Kinney. I read it for him as his bedtime story, promising he could have a second story if he didn't like it. There may have been an ulterior ...
“We want you to be branch manager.” I hung up the phone, those out-of-the-blue words still ringing in my ears. It was 2006, and my department was being outsourced to another financial services company. And now apparently they needed a branch manager. I was thrilled - for a whole millisecond. Then the doubts started creeping ...
Five o'clock Thursday. Peak domesticity. The washing machine was swirling. The dishwasher was whirring. The sausage rolls for Friday's lunch boxes were half-cooked. The shower was running, the heat was heating, the lights were on. Until suddenly, mid spelling-test-prep, they weren't. The house was in darkness. Myself and the spelling-test-prepper looked at each other, then she ran ...
Every year for the last four years, September and October have been a little challenging* in our house (*all-out chaotic messy nightmare). The fact that this four-year timeline coincides with my departure from my office job is surely neither here nor there - no doubt something other than my presence has caused all of this, ...
So I could couch this in all sorts of domestic and parenting terms. I could tell you a story about the challenging day I had last Thursday; dashing home at 3 o'clock to make a curry, make school lunches, and supervise baking for the school cake-sale. I could tell you about the kids insisting on making ...
Pivot. I like that word. It makes me think of a dancer, or a gymnast turning to the next move in a routine. I was never a dancer, but I did harbour gymnast dreams once upon a time - first, Olympic dreams (because why not, and because I was six), then only slightly less unrealistic ...
As I picked up my middle-child from football training tonight, she said, as is her wont when it's just the two of us, "So how was your day?" "A day of two halves," I said, thinking back. It went something like this: One half: My eldest decided to make pancakes yesterday morning, but at 8.05 she was still trying to ...
A few weeks ago I took the middle child out for a lunch date to Dundrum, preceded by a trip to Claire's for some new hairbands. When I opened my phone cover to take out my Laser card, it wasn't there. Nor was my parking ticket. I had a credit card in my wallet so could ...