For me, there have been few surprises about motherhood. There have been some, for sure, but in general Arch, who is now almost five, has brought me the awe, exhaustion, love, fun and general all-round blissedoutness I had always anticipated. Continue reading “Having a baby has made me want a baby even more”
Why I was not proud to see Arch being a star in his nativity play
Last time I blogged, I was asking for help.
My pride at my four-year-old son, Arch, felt so overwhelming I felt it should not be seen in public. I wondered how other parents handled (or concealed) this obscenely primitive emotion. Continue reading “Why I was not proud to see Arch being a star in his nativity play”
Help parents help! My pride is obscene
There’s pride and there’s parental pride and they are two different things.
The pride I take in my own achievements, I can handle – after all my achievements aren’t all that great. Continue reading “Help parents help! My pride is obscene”
Work-life balance? That’s the least of it.
I get heartily sick of the challenge of raising a family being characterised in terms of work-life balance.
Who thought of that phrase? Continue reading “Work-life balance? That’s the least of it.”
I have a tidy house (almost) for the first time in four years
As an anal person, I never used to understand why some people lived in a mess. I just didn’t get untidiness, because I’m someone who is never happier than when everything is in its place.
Now I can explain it. It’s called living with a small goat toddler. (Motherhood) Continue reading “I have a tidy house (almost) for the first time in four years”
Can you be a feminist if you can’t think?
Are you still a feminist?’ – that was a question asked of me last week by a young woman who had read one of my books.
‘Now there’s a question,’ I thought as I stood at the bus stop tapping a reply into my Blackberry. ‘I was a feminist when I last thought about it – about four years ago – but I don’t know if I still am because what would involve thinking and I haven’t got time for that.’ Continue reading “Can you be a feminist if you can’t think?”
The night after my mother died
I wrote this poem one Mothers’ Day several years after my mum had died. Recently I lost Arch, aged three, in the supermarket for about five panic-striken minutes. That experience has brought me back to this poem, re-living it, this time as the mum. Continue reading “The night after my mother died”
A cyber-room of one’s own
When Virginia Woolf famously said a room of one’s own was necessary for a woman to write, she could not have envisaged a room that looked like the one below.
But for me, having my own space on the web in which to doodle my thoughts and write my life feels every bit as important as the hut at the bottom of the garden, for which so many women yearn.