I started reading Far From The Tree by Andrew Solomon months ago… literally. It’s taken me ages to read – but that’s more down to the fact of my moving house and having been stupidly busy and lazy lately. This book is quite large, and therefore not very transportable – it’s Read more…
I had a really hectic week this week; I had appointments and general gubbins to attend to every day, as well as trying to get some actual work done – not to mention Christmas shopping, housework and other such duties. I was feeling overwrought and fed up. On top Read more…
When a relationship breaks down, parents often try their hardest to do what is best for the children involved. For me, that meant removing S’s father from our lives completely. For a lot of parents, it means biting your tongue and trying to be pleasant to your ex, for the Read more…
I figured since I am asking other people to write about a day in their lives, I should probably write about my own day! I’ve written a few of these posts before, but since the last one a lot has changed in my life… So here is a day in Read more…
Last week, I went to parents’ evening at S’s nursery. I talked to her keyworker about how she’s getting on at nursery, how she gets on with the other children, all the usual things you talk about at these things. Then I was given S’s Learning Journeys to Read more…
When I had the opportunity to review the Breville Halo Plus Health Fryer my first thought was, oh, sure, I like chips! When I was a kid, my mum had one of those deep fat fryers; I remember it making loud bubbling noises in the corner of the kitchen, the stink Read more…
At the moment, I’m reading On Writing by Stephen King. It turns out Mr King has an irrational (or perhaps entirely rational) hatred of the passive tense. And adverbs. For those who don’t know, verbs are either active or passive. When a verb is active, the subject of a sentence Read more…
Lisa blogs at Mummascribbles, and lives in Hertfordshire with her partner, her toddler Zach, and a cat. This is a day in her life… 5.45am The dreaded alarm goes off. Most of the time I tend to wake up before the alarm and lay there waiting for it to Read more…
I’ve written a couple of posts showing what a day in my life looks like before. I thought it might be fun to show what other people’s days look like too, so I’ve decided to open this up to guest posts. Would you like to write a guest post Read more…
A while back, someone offered me tickets to go and see La Traviata at the ENO. I respectfully declined because I thought I would feel too out of place “At The Opera.” Whenever I’ve seen TV shows where people go to the opera, they’re wearing amazingly posh outfits and look incredibly Read more…
A friend of mine once told me a story about a woman he had dated. He saw her a couple of times, after which he decided he didn’t want to date her any longer. And he also didn’t really feel the need to be friends with her either. She didn’t Read more…
S has always been a fairly quiet child; when she met new people she would do her best to make her head disappear between her shoulders, and resolutely looked at the floor until they stopped speaking to her and went away. Sometimes, if the person was visiting and stayed for Read more…
For her first birthday, S was given a “My first Steiff” teddy bear by Big S. Shortly after her birthday, she started nursery and they suggested I should bring in a transitional object from home – something for her to cuddle and be reminded of home. The Steiff teddy fit Read more…
We’ve all seen the ubiquitous “humble-brag” on social media, haven’t we? The old “oh, I wish Tarquin weren’t so ahead of everyone else in his pre-school class, it’s so frustrating!” or “it’s so hard to parent a genius; you can’t just send them to a normal school, you know.” Read more…
As you may know, I’m self employed and have been for a year or so now. Just lately, I’ve noticed there’s something of a dichotomy in the types of work I do. On the one hand, I write. I write columns and articles, I ghost write blogs, I write Read more…
Today is World Prematurity Day. Every year 15 million babies are born prematurely. 60,000 of those are born in the UK. It seems hard to believe now she is two and a half and full of life and giggles, but S was one of those 60,000 in 2012. She was Read more…