Diamonds And Pearls
Oh Maya Angelou. So beautiful and strong. It is so sad to know she’s dead when her honesty and generosity with her own life and her raw story felt like such an open gift to everyone.
In Memoriam – Part II
My 6 year old son is more sentimental about the past than his Great Grandmother who was born in 1920. And yet… he combines this nostalgia (for when he was a small boy, that day when I let him have 3 polos, the time he found a stick in the park, the birthday party three […]
Home Coming
In Belfast airport this evening, on the return leg of a work trip, I was confronted with my son’s first love. Sophie The Giraffe! There she was, a tiny statue version of herself, dancing on a music box in a tourist shop. A last minute gift for a busy parent like me to grab at; […]
Pot(ty) Luck
I loathe the phrase ‘quality time’. Possibly because I can’t work out what it means. And I am both suspicious and indignant about things when I don’t know what they mean (and everyone else seems to). I’m told my husband and I should have more of it. And I should feel guilty for not spending […]
Don’t Touch
My favourite parenting nightmare is when a simple conversation with a toddler is revealed later to have a different, often diametrically opposite meaning to each participant. Or indeed when many conversations appear to have been at cross purposes. Such as in February when we realised the toddler thought that the word for the ladder on […]
Wobble
Eldest child has his first wobbly tooth. This is the sort of thing which makes me feel unimaginably old, but also so very young and green and quick. It unites the child me and the grown up me, sheds light on the foolish me of my twenties when I was clear I’d leave a twenty […]
To do
David Attenborough was allegedly asked once which animal he found most fascinating to observe and replied an infant human. I concur. I was holding a baby yesterday and her mum remarked on how the wee one liked me. I put it down to a combination of experience at mumming and the fact that uncivilised babies […]
July / Birthdays
This month was a well of nostalgia. July always is. I am thrust back to the past, however hard I cling to the present. However hard I work I’m hurled with my broken nails into maudlin reminders. A month of anticipation and worry, niggling silliness. A week, two days, 24 hours until the anniversary of […]
Who is that? (Come on baby, the laugh’s on me…)
You sit around getting older. There’s a joke here somewhere and it’s on me… It was my birthday last week. To celebrate I danced to Horrible Histories songs in the lounge and played Springsteen too loud for my own good. The quote above is, of course, Springsteen. It is from Dancing In The Dark […]
In Memoriam – Part I
I’m interested, if not an expert, on how we use photography and social media and how it influences our lives and in my case both my experience of (and presentation to the world) of my parenting. Above is a picture I took a few months ago. I kept it on my phone despite feeling very […]