Marrying Yourself: Tale of Tragic Spinsterhood, or What We All Deserve?

In a school I once taught at, an enterprising Young Enterprise group (I guess that was the point) started selling “Last Rolos” for Valentine’s Day. I bought one for myself. Mainly, I wanted to support the students in their entrepreneurial ventures, and it wasn’t as though I was going to try wooing someone else in…

Read More

The Token Women

I went to university with a woman-let’s call her Liv-who, some years after our university days had ended, I spotted walking up the street in the dead of winter wearing nothing but a pair of hotpants and a T-shirt emblazoned with the slogan “I AM NOT A TOKEN WOMAN.” Liv could never have been mistaken…

Read More

What about the dad bloggers?????

It was just a joke, you know.  Just a little joke on Twitter.  You ladies, you just can’t take the bantz.  All I said was “Dads are better than mums and anyone who says they’re not is a man-hating harpy.”  God, anyone would think I’d walked into a W.I. meeting, shouted “Periods don’t hurt AT…

Read More

Why September is the REAL New Year

It goes without saying that New Year is awful. Last year, I returned to work having had one of the best New Year celebrations of my life, holed up in an enormous house in the countryside with twenty friends, only to return home and find that everything was bleak, bleak, bleak.  It was about minus…

Read More

Single Mum Cooks: Baked Eggs in Wonton Wrappers

Once upon a time, long, long ago, I lived in Japan. That was all many years ago now and a story for another day, but one of the longer lasting effects of my tenure in the Land of the Rising Sun (longer at least than my grasp of the Japanese language, which has all but…

Read More

Would You Sell Your Pre-Baby Wardrobe?

The other day, whilst idly perusing my phone in the usual way, I came across an opportunity to work with Ebay as a blogger.  The job involved listing some stuff on Ebay and then writing about it. I thought about it. I met the criteria.  I hadn’t listed anything on Ebay in years (this was…

Read More

Egg Freezing: Putting all your eggs in one basket?

“Do you think we’ll all still be single and friends with each other in our thirties?” The year is 2000.  A new millennium has dawned, and having recently read and become mildly obsessed with Bridget Jones’ Diary, I am sitting in a bar in Oxford with two of my closest friends from university, musing aloud…

Read More

When Is The Right Time To Teach Appropriate Topics For Public Conversation?

The toilet has always been a popular subject in our house. We talk about it constantly, and I have lost count of the number of songs I have made up about it, usually to the lyrics of classic tunes such as I Need A Hero by Bonnie Tyler (“I Need a WEE WEE!  I’m holding…

Read More

Why It’s OK To Be Single, And It Doesn’t Mean You Need Fixing

I have a friend, let’s call her A, who has a fabulous life.  Fabulous in that anything-could-happen sense that only the life of someone with no ties-no partner, no children-can be.  Filled with friendship, travel and opportunity.  A glance at her Instagram feed shows seemingly random jaunts abroad, wonderful food and friends from all corners…

Read More

“I’m Sure Your Husband Will Do It.”

“It’s not going to fit.  It won’t go up those stairs.” The delivery man places the brand new pink velvet chair that was perfect for the loft room, but turns out to be somewhat larger than it appeared in store, down underneath the loft stairs and examines the underside, where four slim gold legs poke…

Read More