And just like that, Piglet is practically an adult. Well OK not quite, but put it this way. I NO LONGER HAVE A PUSHCHAIR. Ever since the cold day in January 2017 when we first moved into our new abode, the trusty Bugaboo has had its place in the porch, and now the porch stands…
Tag: public transport
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…
Sorry Not Sorry: A Never-Ending Story of Guilt
This week, my A level students and I have been discussing guilt. As we debate over whether or not using someone else’s mug in the common room is a matter for a guilty conscience, my own mind keeps returning to the question of parental guilt. I feel guilt on a daily basis. Some of it, like…
#Single Mum Tips: How to Survive Being on a Train with a Toddler
Apologies in advance peeps, for I thought it was time I wrote a tips post. Yes, a tips post. The sort of tedious diatribe where someone sees fit to give you their pearls of wisdom on a subject that you probably know more about than they do. I have read some classics in my time:…
Is Driving An Essential Requirement for the Middle Class Parent?
Being a parent very often feels like being on trial. One of those televised American trials where the defendant appears, hair unwashed, wearing a drab ill-fitting suit, to find the eyes of the media are upon them, probably having given them some hideous nickname, like “Foxy Knoxy” or something a lot less flattering. I sometimes…
Welcome to the World of Mothers
“Welcome to the World of Mothers,” said no one, ever. But yet I was a newcomer in the World of Mothers, and the other Mothers knew it. With tales of breastfeeding woes and terrible births, of reassuring smiles and messages in the dead of night to tell me I was doing OK, the World of…
Five Things I Swore I Would Never Do When I Had a Child
There were many things I swore I would never do before I had a baby. Most of them were things that other people did that unintentionally annoyed me, as someone who was desperate for a baby, and as a member of the public frequently forced to take public transport. Others were merely naive reflections of…
Caravan Holidays: Bucolic Idyll or Hell on Earth?
During my childhood and teenage years, I went on more than my fair share of caravan holidays. There was a time in the mid-90s when I probably could have named every Haven holiday park in the country. And believe me there were a lot of them.
The Public Badge of Good Motherhood: What’s so great about it anyway?
Picture the scene. You are in a cafe. Your toddler, having just had a floor-hugging, rigid back arching, high-decibel screaming meltdown over not being able to push his own buggy into the centre of the cafe and then spend the next twenty minutes using it to bash tables, and the legs of anyone who happens…
Dear Mum-to-Be, here is my rubbish advice
Recently, a friend of mine announced that she was expecting. It made me think, if I could go back and speak to myself in those hideous, anxiety-ridden, nauseating thrilling days of early pregnancy, what would I say? What sage snippets of wisdom would I have to impart? I came up with the answer today while…