I’m sitting in a freezing cold house. My boiler has broken down – on the coldest day of the last 10 years. Bloody typical. Weirdly, its issues like this that slightly tip me over the edge of my usual just-about-can-do-it-all-single-mother-coping-mechanisms. […]
FINALLY we managed a family get-together for my mother now that lockdown has been eased and she’s had her two vaccinations. I went and picked her up and brought her back to my house where she hasn’t been for 18 […]
I thought I’d write a letter to my 23 year old daughter on International Women’s Day to offer her some sage advice from an older, wiser woman who has been round the block a few times and got the scars, […]
Happy Mother’s Day to you all…even though I’m thinking about all those people out there who don’t have their mothers anymore, or who aren’t mother’s themselves. It pains me that the day has become quite so commercial and tonight, I […]
It was “Visit Your Relatives Day” on Friday and visit my relatives did….loads of them…it was my mother’s birthday on Sunday and so we held a sleepover in her honour on Saturday night at my house along with all three […]
SO PROUD of my son. He is actually getting paid to play football!! It is his dream come true. He was scouted from his university team and is now playing for a PROPER CLUB when he can fit it in […]
I feel as if I’m on borrowed time. I managed to get the day off work today so that I could spend time with my mother and my daughter at one of my favourite spots in the whole wide world. […]
I am having a moment….a kids growing up too fast moment and I wanted to write something on being a mother for a minute because I’m feeling a little bit scared about the prospect of losing another child in October […]
FAMILY AFFAIRS SO once again, I’ve been too busy to pay any attention to my blog or even more importantly to anyone else’s blog. I am a blog disaster at the moment. No time to feed the embers and NO […]
THIS is why I don’t care that I am completely broke post holiday. We had such an amazing time in Italy all together and the following Instagram picture my daughter posted makes me very, very happy (and good that I […]
It was my mother's 70th birthday yesterday so we celebrated with a little family party at my house which she loved. It's still very hard for her to enjoy anything very much without my father being around. She still misses him desperately. However, we did what we could and sparkled up the house with balloons and candles and flowers and cake and champagne and surrounded her with all five grandchildren who range in age from one to nearly twenty one and I think she had a really lovely time.
Quite a significant gap there between the grandchildren - one won't go to bed and the other won't get up. On the one hand she was trying to stop her teeny weeny one year old granddaughter from falling over and hurting herself because she's just learnt to walk and on the other she was trying to stop her 20 year old grandson from falling over and hurting himself because he's had too much to drink.
Anyway, the thing that amused her the most was the rather boring stripy wrapping paper my sister in law bought which when opened on the inside had lots of naked men:- 
We danced to our family anthem Pata Pata and mixed up all the ages - which I LOVE doing - my children getting on down in the kitchen with me and not minding dancing next to their mother - it is truly an honour to have somehow passed that test (even if they're sniggering to each other behind my back).
Here is my son's birthday message to my mother - not sure she was particularly happy with her size or indeed her hairstyle:- 
and here is my brother celebrating the fact that there was yet more wine in the fridge:- 
