Dear Teacher, I'm writing this down because if I try to say it to you in person, I'll cry (I cry very easily) and I'll mortify myself and mortify you, and my child will never speak to me again for all the mortification, and with all that going on, I won't get to say what I really ...
I was driving somewhere - dropping the kids or picking them up - when I saw her. A woman, a bit older than me, kneeling at a flower bed in her garden. Weeding or pruning or sowing or tweaking, one or all of the above. And the image stuck with me as I drove past, ...
When I was about thirteen, I remember reading Flowers in the Attic and realising pretty quickly that it was a good thing my parents didn't know what it was about. I'd been stopped from reading Judy Blume's Forever a few years ago, and had learned to be more careful about revealing my reading choices. It's ...
I woke up this morning unable to breathe. I'd been dreaming that I was suffocating and when I woke up, I found I still couldn't breathe. I sat straight up in bed and opened my mouth and gulped in some air. Hay fever. Just bloody hay fever making me think I'm dying again. I got up ...
They came on Saturday afternoon - my almost-last round of edits. This is the time to make final tweaks and find typos. (Typos are so hard to find, but I know they're there, lurking, grinning slyly, hoping to make the final cut.) And for me, the only way to do this is to read it out loud. All ...
"So what did you do for St Patrick's Day?" asked our lovely optician on Monday. "Did you go into the parade?" "No..." said the child. "Did you watch it on TV?" "No, Dad was watching the match, so we didn't see it." I jumped in then, quick to clarify that I'd been at a wedding, so my husband had stayed ...
What’s your ideal holiday? If you had asked me ten years ago, the answer was easy. Reading good books, getting some sun, sleeping in, eating out. Basically relaxing. I didn’t need to go to the warmest beach or the hottest club – my needs were simple. Or so I thought. Until I first tried holidaying ...
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 ...
I accidentally ate a smidge of banana yesterday, and the kids were in convulsions watching my own near-convulsion when I realised what was in my mouth. Most people have at least one food they can't bear, and for me it's bananas. (Shudder) I'll eat pretty much anything else though, and I was the same as a ...
These are just my own personal essential parenting tools - they're not by any means universal - but without them, I suspect I'd be in some kind of institution at this stage. In no particular order: 1. Kids' TV TV saves my life every evening. Take yesterday for example. There were fourteen children running around my kitchen ...