I thought I had seen it all. I thought I had endured the worst that the dating world had to offer. I’d been on every dating website going. I speed dated, I met people through MySpace (remember MySpace!). Hell, I even went to one of those hideous “lock and key” parties that were all the…
Tag: single parenting
When Your Child Has Dozens of Siblings
I once heard that there was once a woman, long ago, who became known as the primordial Eve. Not by her own people, presumably, as they cannot have known what her descendants would become, but by modern scientists; geneticists who spend their lives in laboratories, examining the immense data of the human genome. We are…
Five Things People Say to Single People That Essentially Translate to “Thank God I’m Not You.”
When it comes to being single, I am the most experienced person I know. Tedious online dates where you get talked at for hours? Check. Turning up to discover a date who is unrecognisable from the photos they posted online? Check. Escaping halfway through because “something bad happened”? Been there too. And the only thing…
What’s it like to be a Single Mother by Choice?
The simple answer is, not much different to being any other mother. We all spam our Facebook feed with pictures of adorable newborns, food-covered weaning babies and exuberant toddlers. We all tell tales of sleepless nights and bodies that are never the same again. We all scan the parks and baby groups for the sight…
To Date or Not to Date?
That is the question. It’s a question that I have so far been answering with a resounding “no.” The thought of going online and putting myself forward to be scrutinised by strangers, and not making the grade. The thought of having to sit opposite someone and make small talk, thinking all the while about how…
Who Needs Conventionality?
It was all supposed to be so easy. Grow up, go to university, enjoy your youth for a few years, then settle down, buy a house, have the big wedding with the big white dress, the perfect photos, the perfect venue, the perfect gushing speeches, and then pop out a baby; then a second, between two and…
What do you do in your “Me Time”?
At the beginning of this week I found myself in the unprecedented position of having no less than two days to myself. That’s right, time to myself: Me Time. No work, no childcare duties, no nothing.
I’ve Never Been In Love….And That’s OK
Tonight my brother and I watched a programme about Euro ’96. We sat there, and I drank wine and he ate his nutritious dinner of turkey twizzlers and chips, or some such horror (I stole some of the chips. I am not above such filth). We sat there in the parental abode where we grew…
The Grass Is Always Greener
One of the main perks of being a working parent is the cherished opportunity to talk to other adults about things other than teething and infant sleeping patterns. I call this “water cooler conversation.” This morning’s water cooler conversation, so called because it took place next to an actual water cooler-albeit one that is not…
The Up and Down Life of A Working Mother
In the toilets at work there is an unforgiving mirror. It is in this mirror that I see the cold, hard evidence that life is starting to take its toll. I sometimes use it to pull out that evidence-the grey hairs I seem to have suddenly acquired-when no one else is around. Being a working…