Motherload

I was sitting in a cafe in deepest Suffolk today, tapping away at the book, when a call came through from school. This is never good news, and almost always means our son has done something to himself. Last summer term, I had The Call two hours before the end of the school year. He'd fallen on his head, and it needed stitches. Today, the Teaching Assistant was clearly worried. She had not been able to get hold of my husband by mobile or landline, and she knew I was having some time away, so felt guilty for disturbing me, but felt she had no choice. Son had fallen in the playground, and hurt his wrist. The TA wasn't sure whether it was serious or not, but there was some swelling, it had been bandaged, and she didn't think it was a good idea he did Forest School. She wanted to know whether I thought he should be picked up early. Son was hanging about (lapping up the love), and I asked for him to be put on. "It's a blood cell," he importantly assured m...

Virginia Woolf famously said that, "a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction" ( A Room of One's Own , 1929). What Mrs Woolf omitted in her description of the ideal writing room for women… was a fire . When I arrived at my cottage for my month in the country, I thought that coffee would be the main operating principle of the whole shebang. Survivalist's coffee I might make a little too much and get the jitters, stay up all night, pen prose in my pyjamas, and feel ferally connected to reality by virtue of the caffeine in my system. Instead, the great revelation has been the fire. When I first arrived, I timidly assembled little fires with kindling, and the logs to hand. I copped out and used a fire lighter once, but after that I was off. The whole cottage gradually filled with warmth, and the beating heart of it was the woodburning stove. I dried my clothes and my trainers in front of it. I ate in front of it. I read in f...

I am not known for my rambling.  But I know that a ford is not just a make of car. And I know that I eat these.  I think  this was a public footpath.  It has been raining a lot, and it is very muddy.  The way back to London.  Nature, red in tooth.  A phallic bud. 

I sat and watched Another Year  (Mike Leigh, 2010) yesterday, because it was Sunday, I'd done my writing for the day, I'd fixed myself Sunday lunch on a tray, and I needed a way not to miss the family. Possibly not the best choice, then, a Mike Leigh film. I was intrigued by the Imelda Staunton cameo at the beginning, and thought it was going to be a story about counselling. However, Imelda turns out to be a red herring, sadly, or perhaps a framing device. Her cameo appearance represents the professional life of the main protagonist, Gerri, a counsellor. The four-seasons structure Leigh uses, around the life of an allotment (our allotted life, its circularity, its cyclicality) is a very old trope. It would shade into unbearable saccharine cliché, were it not that in Mike Leigh's hands, cliché itself is something to turn over in your hands, of which to scratch the surface, flake off a little dust. The allotment gives Gerri and her husband Tom produce and pleasure all y...

This was the thing he never understood: yes, he would give me time to work when I demanded it, but my time was considered to belong to our family unit unless I signalled that I wanted out. His time was considered to  belong to himself and his work unless I demanded that he opt in.    Even the nice ones don't understand what this is like. ' What's the problem?' They say it sadly, trying to do the right thing. 'All you have to do is ask...' *  I did not fall out of love with him at any stage.  I did not fall out of love with our lives here, in this house, with the world we had built around us… I fell out of love with the way I had coped, over the years, with the hard work I had done, the sacrifices I had made… if I fell out of love with anything it was with that competence of mine. I fell out of love with myself.   Apple Tree Yard , Louise Doughty A friend of mine told me about the thriller  Apple Tree Yard the other day, and sent me the...

Roman Krznaric has published a new book called Empathy: A Handbook for Revolution . I feel like crying. Everything that he says is, of course, correct. We are evolved to develop empathic skills by the age of around three. Empathy, the art of listening and putting one's self in the place of another, is crucial to conflict resolution, whether in marriage, the workplace or in parenting. I have myself practised an artificial empathy when trying to prevent myself from screaming at my children — he cites the parenting book How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk , from which I learnt to stop, look and listen when my children were acting out, and try to understand what they were feeling , through asking them intuitive questions. Often, in my experience, you can feel what another is feeling by monitoring the tension levels in your own body. If you start to feel stressed and anxious, ten to one it is not your own feeling, but the feelings of someone close by...

This morning was the weekly Farmers' Market in the local small town. I had been writing and felt like a change, so walked the mile or so along the side of the field to the town, and found the market in the old Town Hall. In London, Farmers' Markets are as full as art galleries, cinemas and restaurants. They are places to be seen. You go to them to display your localist credentials. We go to them so that we don't need to sit down at a table to eat goodies. "Look, darling, that's what a real turnip looks like! Don't worry, we're not going to buy one, Mummy doesn't like them either. Now, where are the sausages in buns?" I was the only customer at the Farmers' Market in Suffolk. There were four trestle tables lined up in the hall, its raised stage at the far end fringed with tired brown curtains. Every word I uttered boomed around the place as if I were Queen Mary come to launch a ship. I felt compelled to buy something from every stall. At one...

I got bored of writing at about 3pm today, and decided to have an excursion. First, I went to gather kindling from the paths around the cottage. Then I walked to the little town close by. Here I am, being W.G. Sebald: What I really did was walk to Waitrose. Of course I did, for this is the country, and I am from the city. I also went to Waitrose because the little town was completely deserted at 4pm and every single one of its shops appeared to be shut. Into the brilliantly-lit Waitrose cathedral I went, grateful for all its comforting condiments, tortillas, eighteen kinds of honey and 10% off with its store card. There's no place like home. At the checkout, the conveyor belt would not move. My stuff sat forlorn in the middle of the strip. The checkout lady bashed at big red buttons, muttered, got a colleague over. They peered at it together, and had a laugh about not breaking the equipment. Then she asked if I wouldn't mind pushing all my stuff down towards her. ...

The other day I was announcing the fact that I'd wangled a month in the country to write a book. Usually there are very few comments on my blog — but this post was somehow noticed by Mumsnet, and then caused a micro-ripple in the blogosphere.  The gist of the post was that I had felt the ire and judgement of people when I told them I was going away, and had assumed they thought I was a bad mother for leaving my duties for such a long time.  But the comments were an absolute revelation — people were not judging, they simply felt jealous .  I'll write about jealousy another time, but in the heat of the moment, this is what I felt, and wrote as a comment.  I saw afterwards that it's really the heart of the book I am trying to write: Oh no! the last thing I want to inspire is jealousy — I want everyone to find a way to do whatever it is they need to be happy.   — Part of that is a serious critique of the ideologies governing life...

"A MON TH!" This is the main reaction I received to the news that I was going away for a month to write a book (about motherhood, as it happens).  I couldn't work out whether it was men or women who were more likely to stare in incredulity. As if I was leaving my children on a frozen hillside, or having an affair with a well-known politician. Of course there were some people who got it (I think), who didn't react with a quickly-suppressed cough of scandal in their throats. These people said, “Go for it, just make it worthwhile, get that book written already! How brilliant that you've got a room of your own!” Of course it’s the doubtful  and silent  judgers I believe. Yes yes, it’s wrong to go, I should be safely at home, doing the washing, shopping for the endless routine of children’s teas, monitoring the activities, the homework, the notes home from school, the Forest Schools equipment, doing the Guides run, making inane conversation at drop off...