Some months ago-no, I tell a lie, it was years, one  whole year ago to be precise-I acquired a troll.

It was just after I’d announced publicly that I was still breastfeeding my three year old and the haters burst forth to offer their poorly educated and unwanted opinions.  Surely that child is in school!  What does she do, sit at the back of the classroom cupping a boob, just in case?  The idiocy of people never fails to astound me, but anyway, that is not the point of this post.  The point is that I went away for a long time.  Not because of the breastfeeding, or the idiots, but because life simply got in the way.  I focused on work, parenting, my tentative attempts at a love life and the unshakeable modern habit of scrolling through my phone feeling steadily increasing levels of existential despair.  Blogging just slipped away.  There seemed to be nothing to say, and I had no compulsion to say it.  A more accomplished scribe might call it writer’s block, but I just call it not being arsed.

And then, finally, the summer holidays dawned.  Eight (eight!  Don’t hate me ’cause you ain’t me!) weeks stretched out ahead of me, unfurling like a beautiful dawn out of the window of a long haul flight, when you finally realise that you’re landing at some point in the distant future, you’re still alive and you might not die in a fiery wreck after all.  Yay!  All of a sudden, in between parenting, trying not to go bankrupt after spending all my money on languid lattes in overpriced soft play centres, cramming in a bit of work (probably in a feverish sweat on the long night of 1st September) and learning to drive (again), I actually had some time.  A little bit of time, and best of all, something to say which wasn’t “Hello world, today I went to work, collected my son from nursery, carefully arranging for him to fall asleep on the bus so that I didn’t have to endure a tedious “bedtime routine,” watered the plants, loaded the dishwasher and went to bed.  Life is great!”

So, armed with a selection of witty vignettes on how I haven’t quite yet managed simple clutch control, I lurched once more unto the fray, and logged into this blog, only to find that not only had absolutely nothing changed, but my troll was back once more!  The troll loves me!  He just can’t stay away (I’m going to assume it’s a he given that in my limited experience it’s usually men who have nothing better to do with their lives than hurl insults at strangers on the internet, but I may of course be mistaken (oh and hashtag NotAllMen I know it’s not all of you!  Back off snowflakes or I will be forced to quote statistics!)  And this troll must be very keen on me, because he makes constant comments on my appearance (“Horse face!” “Buck teeth!”) and tells me how undesirable I am as if I gave a toss about the opinions of randoms with limited vocabulary and poor command of grammar.  Yes this troll, who first popped up a whole year ago, is STILL writing comments on here, despite the fact that I haven’t blogged in three months, and I am still dutifully deleting them.  Well, here you go troll.  I’m not sure what your objective is, but I can only assume you are looking for attention, so here you are, a whole post dedicated to you, from your buck-toothed, horse-faced friend.

May you find some love in your life and something to do which doesn’t involve word-vomiting insults at strangers.  Here’s to you, O persistent one!