Motherload

I've been having trouble with hearing voices for years now. Don't worry, I'm not going nuts, or no more than usual. The problem I have is a writing problem. How do you convey multiple voices in a narrative? How do you do polyphony convincingly? When you're in the school playground, on the bus, in a restaurant, in a cafe surrounded by mothers, when you're in a park, or waiting outside some activity or other, you are surrounded by conversation. People — especially women — chat about their lives constantly. While it's very difficult to define what the 'stuff of life' really is (once you've identified DNA, you realise you don't even know what consciousness is), we are indubitably brilliant at using language to continually construct, shape and reshape our reality, and that's what conversation is all about. So at least capturing conversation might help you convey 'reality'? I've been trying to write Motherload  for something like ...

When my little girl was very much littler, she began a correspondence with the tooth fairy. Each time a tooth came out, the tooth fairy wrote back, no matter how busy or tired she was. It was quite a chore, remembering the world I'd constructed. Often it felt like a total pain in the neck, and I moaned about it, and about the Motherload that went with it — what was I trying to prove? That I was a Perfect Mother? I was an idiot, trapped in my own sentimentality. Rage rage, write write. One day the tooth fairy even sent a photo of her shadow. The little girl was utterly enchanted, and the correspondence grew apace. This week, my daughter's last baby tooth, a molar, came out. We were staying with friends, and she said in dismay, "I'll have to write to the tooth fairy and say goodbye!" I felt secretly pleased — that was one chore out of the way then. Phew! That night she wrapped the tooth in tissue paper, and slipped it under her pillow with her note. Late...

Jacqueline Rose's review of a recent glut of publishing on motherhood makes, as ever, brilliant and thought-provoking reading. But, oh dear, I struggled to read it — not remotely because what she says is somehow inaccessible or highfaluting, or jargon-filled (the usual accusations made against 'academic' writing, mostly without bothering to read it). What she says is limpid and multi-layered, suggestive, provocative, and I agree with it. I struggled because there is just no bridge today between academia and other areas of life, and it causes me pain every day. She opens on Tim Minchin's Matilda , noting the wry critique he offers of vicious perfectionism in childrearing. Music to my ears. Try, however, actually saying anything like this about Matilda in Muswell Hill. What it means here is the summer workshop at the local performing arts centre, populated by little girls, whose parents are assuring them constantly that they are (and must remain) miracles while pus...

Last night I went to Mudchute, and saw a brilliant play. The Inner Life of Sophie Taylor is a play written and devised by Roisin Rae, for and with Prams in the Hall. It's been on this week at The Space , a fringe theatre on the Isle of Dogs with a fabulous bar. Prams in the Hall is a theatre company that explicitly aims to be inclusive to people with children. They offer actors, directors and writers the option of having their children with them in the rehearsal space, and also offer flexible working hours. For audiences, they put on watch-with-baby performances, although it's crucial to stress that their work is for adults, not for children. The Inner Life of Sophie Taylor is about a busy mum who is also an artist. She has not been able to work for six years — they have three children, whom she looks after while their father goes out to work. Out of the blue, she is asked to contribute to an exhibition, and desperately wants to make two new pieces, although she only ha...