Shared (un) conciousness


family & parenting, words

This morning Spider-boy is indignant. Indignant, and confused, and beginning, I think, to get a bit upset. I’ve emerged downstairs after a catch-up lie in at 8.45 am. Both boys are in the playroom immersed in a reacreation of Cars 2 in which the smallest is crawling around, puking in the cracks in the floorboards, […]

24th July 2011

the toddler’s trope


words

There’s a figure of speech which has been dancing around, just behind my forehead, eluding me for months. I’ve seen it glimmering in reflections and groped about in the haze but not got it. I find as the sleeplessness of seven months begins to properly kick in, this happens a lot. I am turning into […]

25th June 2011

When God took a month off… and other clichés


words

I haven’t published for a week. This isn’t through lack of ideas, but because everything I’ve written has turned into a twisty, turny splurge. Not the kind that is ranty and fun to read, not a hurrah or a harumph with meaning, but empty black holes of rage and sadness; raggedy and vengeful and littered […]

8th June 2011

The L word


words

I don’t always shorten my name, but I can tell if I like people when they take it upon themselves. If I do, I feel loved and pleased with the pleasantry, if I don’t I feel indignation at the presumption. I’m not always keen on nick-names either, though that is because if they stick I […]

24th May 2011

Absolutely Fabulous


family & parenting, words

Parenting is a lot about storytelling. Already there are family stories kicking around our house. They are a messy, good-natured, gleeful mix of ours and other people’s; assorted anecdote scraps ready to be sewn into one brilliant mismatched quilt of funny things toddlers/grandmas/parents/teachers et al have said and done. The beauty of babies, the naivete […]

1st May 2011

Spider-boy Doolittle Clears Things Up


family & parenting, words

Spider-boy went through a fabulous phase when he was a bit younger where he’d describe himself as a Lah-dan bouy. Brilliant. Our lad owning his ‘hood, proud of his roots and (bus) routes. It went so beautifully with his love of our city, which I share as a Londoner myself who also had an early […]

1st March 2011

BIG (GREEN) LOVE!


words

I posted a couple of weeks ago about libraries, and my fearful sense of a future without them. Especially without them in remote or unpopular places. I’m still shuddering. I fear this may look funny, but the bookworm in me has been drawn out of the earth again, as my local book store has started […]

26th February 2011

Today we went to the library…


family & parenting, words

So today we went to the library. I shivered at a future that might have been. It is the first place I lost my son. And it taught me a lesson, in parenting as watchfulness and our duty to concentrate on what our children are doing. He was two and escaped the safe paddock and […]

5th February 2011

Introductions


birth, babies, bodies, breastfeeding, words

First words are a difficult subject for me, and I don’t mean the first words said by Spider-boy (for the record it was ‘baby’, he’s such a glorious narcissist) or his brother. I mean the first words I said to my children. The first words they heard from me. I really believed, before I had […]

26th January 2011