Motherload

Last night I went to Watford. There was a good reason – an old friend of mine from college days was doing a one-woman play at the Watford Palace Theatre. Getting into Watford is like driving into  Solaris , a one-way spiral to concrete hell. The Palace car park is a triumph of function over design, lowering across the town centre like a premonition of the world's end. I had to do the circuit at least twice to get into it. Once I was in the theatre, things brightened up a lot – the Palace is a cheerful Edwardian theatre covered in gilt and red velvet, with comfortably bulging balconies. There I sat with my plastic glass of beer, resplendently alone on my night out, waiting to see my lovely friend perform. Fourteen  is a kind of cross between The Diary of Adrian Mole and Kindertransport . It's about a girl with brilliant academic promise growing up in Watford in 1984. She is an only child, and her parents seem to fight a lot. We see her upstairs in her bedroom, chatting to u

I am sitting at my table, and my husband is leaving me.  He's going to China for three weeks, and he has gone to drop off the boy, collect shoes, bank money, remember bits and bobs. And I am sitting at my table, only just registering that I will be alone for three weeks.  Except that of course I will not be alone. The children will be here to keep me company, and I will be looking after them.  What that makes me feel is… sad. I spend so very very much of my time managing  their lives, an incredible amount of time arranging and rearranging my iCal calendar, synchronising four lives, orchestrating visits from other members of the family, planning to fine granular levels exactly what we eat, where we go, what homework is done, etc etc.  There is so little time for being or love.  For a person who thinks she does little else but try to understand her own feelings and those of others around her, I actually do an awful lot of doing .  Now that the room is silent, the children