Motherload

A good friend of mine was having coffee round at my place this morning. She and I have often talked in the past about having children, whether or not to, and what it means not to have children. She described how a close friend with children said to her this summer, "I won't be able to see you 'til September". I was incredulous — until I thought about my own behaviour: I, too, duck into the trenches over the summer weeks, mainly because I don't have childcare, partly because everyone seems to go away, and sometimes we do too, and, with regard to single or childfree friends, I somewhere make the assumption that they won't want to see me with my pesky kids. But my friend today made it clear that it was she who felt excommunicated. "Why does she think I wouldn't want to see her children?" my friend said. I think that, after years of interrupted conversations, I know the answer: her friend wants to have a peaceful chat, and knows she won't g

Harriet Harman gave a lovely answer this morning when pressed on why she didn't run for leadership of the Labour Party: I actually... still... wanted something else of my life outside the Party. She had just been discussing the paucity of women in Parliament (even as Thatcher was Prime Minister); the fact that fewer than 1000 men have taken up maternity leave if women want to return to work within a year of giving birth; the notion of transferring unused leave to mothers and mothers-in-law (although these people are likely to be working to reduce the earnings deficit they themselves suffered through having a family); and finally she had slipped in the old chestnut that women are still tearing their hair out looking for affordable, flexible, reliable childcare. Women. Because apparently no one, however much they believe in equality, can ever bring themselves to imagine men "looking for childcare". That, apparently, is intrinsically, inherently, BIOLOGICALLY part of a

This week my daughter sat an 11+ exam for a grammar school in our area. We stood outside at 7am, in the biting September cold. No one spoke to anyone else. Everyone clutched their daughters. We had got up at 5.30am. The staff called out, "All right, we're going to take your girls in now". Their voices took me, in a heartbeat, to the moment late in the night after I had given birth to my daughter, when a nurse told me, "All right, we're going to take her away and give her formula". I wanted to push her aside, run into the hall and take the damn test myself. You know it has to happen, you've got this far, and you know/pray/hope she's going to be OK, but you are being left behind, and others are going to have possession of your vulnerable child. Who knows what they are going to do to her? My husband was away while it happened, and, in his panic, ended up shouting at me that I hadn't prepared her enough. Three hours later, she came out smili

This week I was contacted by a lady called Heather from the States, who has been living with cancer for the past seven years. She asked me to put a link to her awareness campaign on my blog. She has a rare form of cancer which is contracted through exposure to asbestos fibres. She was diagnosed incredibly soon after having a baby, and given a poor prognosis. Wanting to live for her child has kept her focused on seeking treatment and looking after herself: I am a wife, mother, and a mesothelioma survivor. When my daughter was 3 ½ months old, I was diagnosed with this rare and deadly cancer, and given 15 months to live. Despite my grim prognosis, I knew that I needed to beat the odds for my newborn daughter, Lily. It’s been 7 years now and I feel that it’s my duty to pay it forward by inspiring others. In honor of upcoming Mesothelioma Awareness Day (September 26), I want to use my personal story to help raise awareness of this little known cancer, and to provide a sense of hope f

I spent a lot of time at our children's school today. First up was a class assembly. One of my children is entering her final year of primary school, and a mother pointed out that this will be their last class assembly before they leave. Class assemblies, for the uninitiated, involve three weeks of daily rehearsals, a worthy topic spiced up with some in-jokes, and a Friendship Song. If it was going to be their last, the involuntary parental sobbing quotient was instantly ratcheted up to 'Full On' before they even started. Not aided by my daughter's Special Dream, so innocently voiced as part of the assembly: "I would like to do well in my exams and get into [insert names of local hard to get into schools]". I'm not sure if there actually was an audible gasp, or whether it was just the rush of blood to my head as I watched my child tell 700 people what she really really wanted (along with 1800 other little girls). I'm not sure how often I have gen

Yesterday I made a glutinous Banoffee Pie for the first time in my life, so sweet that my son actually failed to finish it. The Banoffee Pie There's been a theme to desserts recently: (1) we've had some; (2) they've all been baked, brown and packed with sugar. The Salted Fudge After we came home from a brill 1970s stylee driving across Europe holiday (all 2700 miles of it, mostly un-air-conditioned, once we'd realized how much fuel aircon uses, and how pricey Italian petrol is), I felt the need to end August with a violent burst of baking. Suddenly, the dormant bread machine was mobilized, and produced streams of chewy pitta bread, and white loaves with glorious tanned muffin tops to match my own. We'd spent all our money on French motorway tolls, so I immediately reverted to type, and behaved as if we were in the Second World War, except with bananas. Out came the houmous recipe, and we all had to suffer through weeks of dubious chunky chickp