Parenthood

The best laid (birthday) plans …

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Sunday 6 February 2022

February arrives, bringing birthday season to our house, as within very quick succession, my eldest waves goodbye to her teenage years and Small-boy turns sixteen.

My first-born celebrates away at Uni-land, which just leaves me to plan something momentous for my son. The first treat is his other sister, Prom-dress daughter, who pops home for the weekend and certainly raises a smile. We re-unite with a Friday Chinese and a movie before Saturday dawns; she head out to meet pals for a ‘bottomless brunch’ and my son and I spruce up the house. .. because ‘the boys’ are coming round.

Now I learned a very important ‘teenage party lesson’ several years ago when my eldest turned 18! (Coming of Age). And I am happy to share it with all fellow parents,

‘Make sure you go out for the evening!’

So by 7pm, with 6 nice teenage boys happily gathered round an x-box, the table piled high with fizzy drinks and a take-away pizza menu pinned to the notice board, I grab my coat and drive into town to meet a friend for a quick bite.

‘Sorted!’ I foolishly dare to think.

For, just as I raise a first fork-full of food to my mouth, my mobile buzzes into life; Prom-dress daughter.

“Arghh mum! Got an email to say my train to Edinburgh is cancelled tomorrow…I am so stressed. Can you pick me up?”

‘What.. right now?’ I ask. We compromise on a 10pm ride home and I do actually make it to dessert before the dreaded mobile flashes again. This time it is the party-boy.

“Hi Mum. We’ve decided to play a bit of basketball… just letting you know so that you don’t run us over when you get back!”

‘An odd choice on a cold, wet and wild February night’ I muse, “plus….how bad do they think my driving is?’

But I manage to push these thoughts away and finish the rest my meal in peace. And how I cling on desperately to the memory of that civilised adult company as, having collected Prom-dress daughter, we head home. And what a sight greets us…

About nine teenage boys are now on my property. Clad in sleeveless baseball tops, soaked to the skin and brandishing basketballs, they seem to fill the kitchen, with noise, laughter and limbs – it’s like a scene from a Village People confederation! What, in the name of goodness, the neighbours made of it all, I can only imagine. Behind me I hear my daughter desperately trying to suppress a giggle as the slightly sheepish troop now shuffle back into the lounge so that we can make it to the kettle.

Armed with trusty cuppas, we retreat upstairs to re-book a train journey back to Scottish Uni-land and the boys regain their swagger. The noise level rises again, so do the occasional crashes and cheers and … it actually sounds like a whole lot of fun. Some go around midnight and a few stay over but I am done and descend into a speedy slumber.

Sunday arrives and I awake to find teenage boys straightening-up my house with military zeal – who knew? Sleeping bags are tightly rolled, bedding folded and rubbish re-cycled. Someone even offers me a morning coffee. They can certainly come again! Prom-dress daughter and I bid them a brief and slightly bleary-eyed fare-well as we hit the road for …Wigan! Yes, I wave my middle child off from a bleak and windswept platform in the land of the pie-eaters.

By the time I make it home, all is quiet and, at least until next year, party season is over once more. But I’ll confess, after the dreary Lockdown years, I did enjoy seeing the house full of life and laughter again. February gatherings; they might not always go quite to plan, but may just be the perfect way to really get this new year started…

Waking up to 2022 …!

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22 January 2022

When your 82 year old mum announces that she has ‘taken up Tai Chi’ and your only claim to 2022-fame is a 16 day winning streak on Wordle, you realise it’s time to start taking the new year a bit more seriously!

It is on a family meal outing that my amazing mother, half-way through a recommendation for an ‘apple, spinach and ginger smoothie’ she starts each day with, pauses to casually throws in, as an aside, her foray into martial arts. The rest of us nearly choke on our nachos!

” It is supposed to help me improve my balance…”

she explains calmly, with an air of innocence but a mischievous sparkle in her eyes.

Well, balance or no balance I have to say she is looking fantastic on it! And it it in that moment, right there and then that I decide to shake of the mild torpor and feeling of a ‘covid-hangover’ with which I have stumbled through January and get up and do something! So here is last week …

I run! With gloriously-perfect timing one of my run buddies re-emerges from a long, post-corona recuperation and we hit the Lancashire hills bright and early on a chilly Saturday morning. The exercise is good, if tough, but the chat is even better. It is, we agree, the loveliest of ways to kick off the weekend.

And secondly , I go vegan … well I attempt exactly one vegan meal! Towards the end of December 2021, I did go further than this and propose a ‘Veganuary’. To my surprise, Smallboy, the most committed carnivore on the planet, was very much up for the challenge. I, however, did not get my act together at all and New Year’s day came and went without so much as a carton of almond milk being added to the supermarket trolley. This week, with renewed vigour, I determine that all is not lost and that one vegan dish per week still constitutes quite a culinary change and onTuesday night, we contemplate … tofu.

“The thing with tofu, Mum, ” advises my Eldest confidently over the phone, “is to build in flavour and texture. I often coat it in flour and deep fry; it is really good!”

‘What could be simpler?’ we tell ourselves as we chop for a stir fry. Probably many things, I would now conclude. Before our horrified eyes, both the tofu and flour disintegrate into a mushy paste in the wok and feature as scarcely more than a smooth thickener in our sauce, when we eventually slop the meal onto plates. Nonetheless, we are hungry, the sauce and veg are very tasty and I am close to ticking it off as a plant-based triumph until Small boy observes,

“Err Mum…I think we used egg noodles!“

Arghhh; next week we will do better!

And last but not least, I, or should I say we, will also continue to play Wordle. Yes, I discover that my son has also discovered the daily word puzzle and tends to solve it at least 1attempt more speedily than me. “I always start with ‘adieu’ mother … 4 vowels…’ he explains and I have to admit; that is pretty smart!

So wisdom and inspiration from the older and younger generation for me this week. It has been a pretty good week, so long may it continue…

A New Year … with some blasts from the past!

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15 January 2022

This is my first post of 2022, so

“Happy New Year!”

Uncharacteristically however, I find myself a little out of sync with the advent of this novel chapter of life. As the seasonally resolute launch into fresh starts, new regimes and forward thinking with enthusiasm, I spend much of my initial fortnight taking a trip down memory lane…

See the source image

Well, quite frankly, no-one could blame anyone for wanting to retreat from the jaw dropping January chaos of Boris’ unbelievable Britain! News channels and social media can scarcely keep apace with all the scandal and speculation: Downing Street parties, sozzled civil servants, surging omicron cases, disgraced royal princes and rocketing energy prices. It feels like utter madness and misery, which why, were this the catalyst, I know that I’d be forgiven for looking wistfully back to a simpler time when I was young and wrapped up with friends, boyfriends and schoolwork. Back in a bygone century, with only 4 channels on the TV, not a mobile phone in sight and at an age when I was only half aware of anything that was happening out in the wider world.

But the reality is that I don’t find myself reliving some of my past because of any of this. No, it is all far more straightforward! I am contacted unexpectedly by some-one I went to college with; whom I have not seen or heard from for over 30 years. How exciting! We re-live classes, teachers, social exploits and gatherings (some of which I can only dimly recall.) And it is fun. So much so that I decide to really wallow in girlhood nostalgia and challenge Alexa to bring back the soundtrack of my youth.

Now, I spent most of my late teens, clad in black leggings and Ts, lying on my bedroom floor listening to The Smiths, convinced that Morrissey was the only person on the planet to truly understand me. A champion of teen angst he may well have been, but for an aging mother of three, Mozzer wailing through the house is a bit of a mood killer, so I wind the clock forward a few years and go for Alanis Morissette instead. And that is much more like it!

“And what it all comes down to. Is that everythin’s gonna be quite alright.”

I warble along lustily, dancing around the kitchen making tea; I feel fantastic. My chance re-acquaintance may have reminded me that I was once under 25, but the music … I swear that it actually takes me back to an age when I was carefree and finding my way in the world. Maybe it does? In at number 4, on Saga’s ‘Top ten ways to feel instantly young again’, is voyaging down memory lane by looking at old photos or listening to music from that time. Similarly, Wes Baines in an article outlining how youth is defined by ‘action not age‘ suggests that,

“Looking back at your life doesn’t have to remind you of what you’ve lost—it can remind you of what you still have. It’s easier than you think to slip back into that youthful mindset when you surrounded yourself with music and photos and loves from that time of your life.”

I can certainly recommend it as an uplifting hour, if nothing else. Further, I venture a tentative ‘yes’, that a 1980s/1990s kitchen disco brightens my outlook a little and helps me start to look ahead to the new year, with some of the ambition, hope and optimism that I had all those years ago. We shall see… and in the meantime, Alanis certainly knows how to write a great song…

You live, you learn
You love, you learn
You cry, you learn ….

You Learn : Alanis Morissette

The Covid Christmas Chronicles 2!

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Monday 27 December 2021

“Shhh! I hardly dare say it aloud, but I think I have just recorded my first negative covid test for … what feels like an age!”

A week of isolation, that is all it has been but it has taken its toll and I am going a little bit stir crazy! Why yes, we still have our board games, but we have played them to death. Our favourite was Trivial Pursuits, gloriously updated from the original 1980s version, so that my Gen Z offspring are no longer left puzzling over the ‘Male star of Man about the House in 1974′, but have questions that they can actually answer. Nonetheless, we have now circumnavigated the board so many times that we are struggling to find a card that hasn’t been used: yesterday, or the day before, or the day before that! Want to know the second largest German city by both area and population? I’m your girl!

Mealtimes too provide little variation, as the national season of leftovers collides with our dwindling supply of groceries. A once very fine Christmas dinner attempts a plucky revival each evening but progressively loses a little bit of shine each time, as we run down the veggies and scrape around the freezer digging out oven chips and bits of quorn to make up the nutritional numbers!

Prom-dress daughter is now also positive and, in consequence, when we do gather as a quartet to watch a new festive movie, we shiver in communal harmony with the lounge window wide open for ventilation and clinging to hot drinks for warmth!

Do I need to get out here? Well let’s just say that if you offered me a quarrelsome festive family walk right here and now, with everyone trudging gloomily along in the mud looking venomous and despondent … I’d bite your hand off!

And so it is that this afternoon’s negative test almost has me dancing with joy! I still need a second to secure my ticket to freedom, so I restrict my celebrations to breaking out of my pyjamas, for the first time in 8 days, and donning enough clothing to hit the garden and rake up some wet leave.

‘Woohoo – living the dream!‘

Of course I am very grateful that we are both OK … but please… finger, toes and everything crossed here for only one pink line on the lateral flow tomorrow….

The Covid Christmas Chronicles

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Wednesday 22 December 2021

Day three of the long awaited Christmas holiday and things are not exactly going to plan…

Ho ho ho! Did I dare to think that Christmas 2021 was going to mark a return to more festive familiarity; with the extended family WhatsApp whirring into December discussions about a month ago? Alas, no sooner have I collected both Uni girls from the station; handed round the glasses of seasonal Baileys and unveiled our new Christmas board games than…

I am floored on Saturday by a revolting attack of vomiting and severe headaches. Generally, there are few low level ailments that stop me; as a single parent of the past decade I’ve learned that being ‘under the weather’, duvet days and most variations flu/common cold/fever etc, are simply not a viable option for the only adult in the house and, thanks to my amazing allies, Anadin Extra and Lemsip Max, I’ve trundled on. But this; well I can hardly raise my head from the pillow! At 7pm, I attempt to prop myself on the sofa for the long anticipated ‘Strictly‘ final but, before the first ‘9’ paddle (Oh Craig; why not a 10?) appears on the screen, I have crawled back into bed to toss, turn and … well throw-up for the rest of the night until…

Sunday and “Ding dong merrily on high!” the sickness finally stops. I summon the energy to take and keep down a painkiller and my headache dulls to blissfully acceptable levels. Festivities are surely back on track! My eldest and I head into town, indulge in yuletide gingerbread lattes, find a few late gifts and splurge my Tesco ClubCard triumphantly on copious amounts of food and drink for the Christmas Day dinner. My mum comes over and the five of us have a hilarious evening of board games and mince pies. I do choose to wear a face mask, explaining, “I really don’t want anyone catching this disgusting sickness bug”, but that measure aside, it is holiday business as usual! In suitably high spirits, we all agree meet-up plans for the week ahead and turn in for what I hope will be a better night’s sleep.

But it is not great, because an irritating cough has set in and I am wide awake even before the 6am work text, ‘Remember to take your lateral flow test‘ pings onto the screen. Within seconds, the test goes a bright-pink, determinedly double-lined, impossible-to-miss … positive.

“Bloomin’ covid !”

Monday; very much the ‘Bleak Mid-Winter’! I drive to some god-forsaken testing centre where a disinterested youth, briefly looks up from his phone screen to pass me a PCR kit and nod his head towards a make-shift booth. Like some irrelevant miscreant, I skulk home to await my fate.

Let me be clear… I am not even remotely close to being ill any more, at worst I cough occasionally and feel mildly spaced out. Nonetheless, ‘I have covid!’ Moreover, I am an important key worker, who has ploughed through 2 years of disruption and chaos without a single day off and ‘I have covid!’ Even if that tester was completely unimpressed, can I not be allowed centre of attention status in my own home? And so, I trounce around the house like some spoiled brat, demanding star treatment from a bewildered trio of teens who do their best but, quite honestly, could carry me around in a sedan chair and serve my meals on a silver platter and I’d still find something to criticise. By the time I stomp off to bed on Monday evening, no-one is speaking to me and… I am confident that none of you would blame them…

Tuesday, brings: the PCR confirmation and me to my senses; well ‘Hark the blessed Angels sing!‘

I reorganise ‘Christmas mum-plans‘ with my brothers, apologise to… everyone in the house and start thinking instead about how to make holidays fun from the confines of my four walls. No traditional family film outing, but endless outstandingly awful, cheesy Christmas movie-originals on Netflix. At some point we may crack and turn out attention to worthy, unwatched classics, Citizen Kane; Breakfast at Tiffanys, Casablanca… but for now it is, unashamedly, the Christmas Prince trilogy! No lunches out, but at the touch of a button, lunches delivered in. No rushing around to perfect table trimmings or stocking-filler gifts, but … loads of time together, three cheers and Fa la la la la for my board games and …. a very welcome change of pace.

I am super-lucky, I know, to have such a mild dose. Be it the variance of Omicron, or my recent booster or just a fortunate roll of the dice, I am very grateful that I am not poorly, as so many friends and work colleagues have been with this wretched virus. And I will be glad to get out! When one of my brothers sends news of the reduction in isolation time to 7 days, I almost break the land-speed record to dig my box of LFTs out from under the bed and cross everything for a negative test (no joy yet alas!) But until I get my ticket to freedom, I will concede that sitting out the frenzy of the pre-Christmas prep has certain advantages. I may have to live without bread sauce on the 25th and have frozen peas instead of parsnips… but quite frankly I am struggling to remember why that was ever important ….

The North Shropshire by-election

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Friday 17 December

At 6am I hear the news that Liberal Democrat candidate Helen Morgan, has won the safe blue seat of North Shropshire, overturning a Conservative majority of 23 thousand votes and unseating the Tories from a seat they have represented for 200 years. And suddenly a week that was feeling distinctly low on festive cheer looks a lot brighter…

“A major political earthquake…”, gasp the media commentators, as I scrabble frantically for my phone in the dark bedroom and start scrolling through Twitter like a lunatic. What grabs my attention here, however, is not the interviews with eloquent analysts nor the well-versed soundbites from party leaders but a clip of local voters explaining their reasons for switching life-long allegiances away from their usual party of choice. And they outline, with crystal clarity, basic honest values in their answers. Even in the middle of a global pandemic, or maybe because of it, they uniformly reject and refuse to accept any excuses for: sleaze, lies, double standards and lack of care for their community.

And they make me cry….

Yes, I’ll admit that they make me feel pretty damned patriotic and proud to be British. For we may have endured months of neglect, disregard for all that we hold dear and the mismanagement of our precious public services. In recent weeks we may have felt despair, anger and fury at the battery of dismal, derisory stories from our arrogantly self-entitled Westminster government but that none of that can dismantle our values as a society.

No; today the great British people, as they showed throughout the darkest of Lockdown days and the toughest of times for our poorest families, remain a caring and principled people who do not want to live in the world of our current Prime Minister, a man described by former attorney general Dominic Grieve as a “vacuum of integrity”. And, possibly the greatest of all our British values, democracy, means that they have the power to do something about it. Did the people of North Shropshire speak for us all? They certainly spoke for me; to echo the words of their new MP Helen Morgan

“Your amazing efforts have delivered a gift of hope to our country just in time for Christmas“

And hope is a wonderful tonic. Hope means it is worth teaching your kids about right and wrong; fairness and justice. Hope means it is worth standing by your beliefs and trying to make your own corner of the world a better place! Hope means that community and family, care and kindness all do matter.

And so, as I hop into the car for work, I am feeling fantastic and full of seasonal cheer. In fact I raise a cheer to every little thing that is or has been good about the last 7 days!

Went to a Christmas concert featuring Small Boy and the local Youth Orchestra,

“Hooray!”

Met up with one of my besties for a Christmas Cream tea with wine and Baileys,

“Hooray!”

Today I break up for the Christmas holidays,

“Hooray!”

This evening, both girls are arriving home for Christmas.

“Hooray! Hooray! Hooray!”

Roll on Christmas and thank you good people of North Shropshire, important as Omicron covid jabs may be, you have been the boost that I’ve needed this week ….

I

What’s wrong with being woke?

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Friday 26 November 2021

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“Don’t call young people ‘woke’ or ‘snowflakes“

Samantha Price November 2021

It is a headline grabbing moment from headteacher Samantha Price, president of the Girls’ Schools Association, at a conference in Manchester this week. Reading various reports of her speech, I don’t think that she objects to the word ‘woke‘ itself, rather that the ‘older generation‘ now use it as an insult to ‘sneer‘ and ‘dismiss’ the views of young people on issues they care deeply about such as: climate change, Black Lives Matter and gender identity.

Well climate change terrifies me; racism sickens me; gender identity, I’ll confess that still baffles me, mostly because I know far less about it. So, whilst as a parent and teacher, it is a cardinal sin for me to even contemplate ‘getting down with the kids’ it makes me ask myself,

‘Am I a little bit woke too?’

But firstly, what exactly does it mean?

Although its origins can be traced back hundreds of years, woke first appears in the OED in 2017, where it is defined as ‘originally: well-informed, up-to-date. Now chiefly: alert to racial or social discrimination and injustice’. While the Urban Dictionary entry reads, ‘being woke means being aware… knowing what’s going on in the community (related to racism and social injustice)’. Simply summarised, woke means consciously awake.

And what, I would ask, is wrong with that? Shouldn’t we all be on board? Clearly not; for in certain circles of society there is now a vehement ‘anti-woke‘ movement. John McWhorter writing How ‘Woke’ became an insult in the New York Times, suggests that this reflects a certain inevitability in language and evolution within the very communities who first adopt it; a ‘euphemism treadmill’ if you like,

A well-used word or expression is subject to ridicule or has grimy associations. A new term is born to replace it and help push thought ahead. But after that term spends some time getting knocked around in the real world, the associations the old term had settle back down, like gnats, on the new one. Yet another term is needed. Repeat.

Others, point to an anti-left wing agenda, who articulate a weariness with the judgemental and preachy tone of woke advocates. The Metro reporting,

“‘Woke’ has dethroned ‘politically correct’ and ‘snowflake’ as the insult du jour for many internet … wishing to mock the hypersensitivity of the left”

And indeed, there are long list of famous names outspoken on the need to crusade against ‘political correctness’, waving the flag for the ‘Anti-Woke’, even portraying the entire movement as ‘anti-British.’ Notable faces including: Piers Morgan, Nigel Farage and, self appointed anti-woke warrior, Laurence Fox.

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And here is it that I pause to decide which side of the balance I land on; Woke or ant-Woke? I could search on for ‘the truth’ but, in today’s society that would be be a very long quest. Statistics, politics, new stories, values… in the right hands they can all be spun to suit any purpose. In consequence, whenever I think about voting, for example, I look at the people behind the policy and ask myself ‘Who do I trust the most?’ . If I apply that decision making strategy to this scenario then, it appears to boil down to whether I see myself in Team Greta and Team Malala, or … choose to line up behind Messieurs Farage and Fox.

Well … that took me under 30 seconds to answer and it will be woke for me! But I respect that for many of you it may take longer and it may be a different verdict.

Additionally, it is not only the faces of this generation of youth activists that sways me. No, I think it is also Samantha Price, who concludes her speech by reminding us that, whatever our grown up beliefs, it is the youth of society who will be the future and that to deter them is to “risk the level of progress in society – from sustainability through to equality“. So I resolve to avoid the clamour to join the grumpy oldsters when I hear views that sound new and challenging and hark back predictably to comfortable yesteryear. No, I shall aim to chime with Ms Price who states, “I am weary of hearing the older generation say, ‘you can’t say anything any more’…. The fact is that times have changed, and we simply need to keep up with them.”

It is, of course, true that no decision comes without its costs; the lovely Laurence Fox once decreed that he would not date woke -women. So I guess he’s off the dating list for me?

I think I can probably live with that….

Reading week…

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Sunday 14 November 2021

The university term reaches a ‘reading week’ for my Eldest and she finds time to pop home for a few days. What an unexpected treat …

Reading week, whose purpose universities inform us is “time to catch up on reading, do more in-depth reading, or prepare for coursework ” but often, according to, Eleanor Doughty writing in The Independent is “nothing but a poorly disguised trip home for a visit to Mum’s tumble drier…” was off the agenda in Autumn 2020. Fears over the rapid spread covid-19 cases a year ago lead to higher education institutions urging students to stay on campus throughout the term. Whereupon, as all ‘teaching and learning’ was online and ‘in your student room’ anyway, there was little to distinguish it from the normal working week.

Whatever its purpose, I am delighted to see the brief pause in lectures and seminars return and to have a couple of days with my lovely girl. We launch the weekend with the return of ‘Friday takeaway’, movie and wine. The following morning, after prepping her brother for his Chemistry mock exam next week, lunching with a friend and going shopping with her nana, my daughter announces that:

“We should do something on Saturday night!”

And so that is exactly what we do. My son already has plans with ‘the boys’ and so ‘we girls’ do cocktails, do food and do lots of chat. I drink far too much and find myself, I think for the first time I can recall, very publicly, ever-so slightly squiffy … on a night out with one of my children!!

I may have a banging headache on Sunday morning and I may resolve that I am never ordering a Negroni again…but it was very much worth it. As I wave my Eldest off on the train back to University land, I hope that she has had a bit if a break from the stresses and strains of term time because a weekend not spent cleaning, ironing, shopping and worrying about work has without doubt been a fantastic break for her mum! Do you know what… I might even forget the lesson plans this afternoon, open up my kindle and treat myself to a bit of reading too!

Going a bit greener …

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Tuesday 9 November 2021

COP 26, the UN’s conference for tackling climate change, puts a time frame on the impact of ignoring global warming that really hits home and I find myself feeling …. genuinely terrified.

Cop 26 (Glasgow 2021)

“The end of the century”

The end of the century to unleash the catastrophic effects of allowing the world to warm by over 2 degrees: ecological destruction, rising sea levels and immeasurable loss of human life, plant and animal species caused by natural disasters such as floods, droughts, wildfires and heat waves. The changes we are already starting to see foreshadowing a far bleaker and more devastating future.

The end of the century? That’s less than 80 years away. Clearly I will not be around to see it, but my children could be… and their children definitely will. Suddenly it all seems very real.

Now, of course, we need action on a worldwide scale but I cannot see a way to influence that. What I can do, however, far more than I do at the moment is to take small personal steps to be ‘a bit greener’.

‘Where to start?‘ I ponder

Well back in 2019, a friend of mine, in an inspirational new year resolution, went entirely plastic free for the 31 days of January. I, alas, am a very long way from this. In fact, as I trundle it out on bin day, I cannot hide from the reality that my blue plastic bin is a truly revolting sight. Right there and then, I decide to mend my ways. One new environmental move per month for me and, for November, I choose to remove some plastic items from the house. My grimy garbage points clearly in one direction – the shower gel needs to go!

Yes, it will be ‘adios’ to the overpackaged, perfumed nonsense of liquid body wash. I am going to buy soap instead. It is an easy swap to make and probably why it is already a popular one, the Friends of the Earth in their excellent article ‘Beauty and the beast: plastic-free bathroom ‘ finding that,

“By far the most suggested tip … was to steer clear of liquid shower gels and hand wash. Instead switch to solids, replacing these products with bars of soap.“

In terms of carbon-footprint, there is little contest between liquid and solid soaps. Per wash, the footprint for shower gels and hand washes is 25% larger than their solid counterparts. Liquid soaps also need 5 times more energy to produce, can use 20 times more packaging and do not last as long as the trusty solid bar.

Unfortunately, I don’t do all my research before hitting the supermarket aisles and, triumphantly, adding two bars of Dove soap to my weekly shop. It turns out that, due to its ingredients (animal products plus the dreaded palm oil), over zealous plastic wrappings and various other crimes that the Ethical Consumer, in their guide to ‘Ethical Soap‘ actually grade my initial choice of product as zero out of 20. Yikes!

Well, on the positive side, at least some plastic bottles have gone from the bathroom. Small Boy is on board and, at work, one pupil tells me that I can also buy solid bars of shampoo. Now there’s food for through for December. In the meantime, I’m off to scour the list of more ethical soap choices. Perhaps I’ll put Lucy Bee soap bars on my Birthday list … by then we might have used up the dreaded Dove…

Autumn Half Term 2021

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It may be work on Monday, but that is still two days away which make it the perfect time to look back on a great half term, visiting ‘the students’ ….

Monday sees us powering up the A1 to return my Eldest to Uni, after she descended upon Manchester for a gig at the weekend. Small boy and I stay over, tucked into a B &B in the heart of student land and allow my daughter to ‘show us the sites’. We stroll around the Dene, with its waterfall and mill, we wander the University campus, seeking out the ‘Old Library’ where, nearly 2 years ago we came for ‘the interview’ and … over curry and wine, we meet the boyfriend (which, I think goes very well!)

Tuesday, after a post-lecture lunch with our lovely girl, we hit the road once more; destination Edinburgh and Prom-dress Daughter…

Gosh it is wet and wild in the Scottish capital and parking… just a night mare! I have a £60 PCN on my windscreen within 15 minutes of arrival. But all of that just evaporates away as a familiar smiling face bounces into our city centre hotel room and whisks us out for food … and cocktails. The next day, my two younger teens spend happy hours together perusing local bookshops. All three of us ‘nearly’ see the Art Gallery… come to think of it, I ‘nearly saw’ it about 15 years ago too, on an Edinburgh weekend with a best friend. On that occasion we got side tracked by the bar; this time it is the more wholesome excuse of covid- secure tickets selling out!

‘Never mind,…’ I cry recalling my previous visit, ‘…even if we can’t do the Gallery itself, the gift shop is great!’

And, to offspring who love to hear those retail tills ringing, the gift shop does indeed prove a hit; and maybe it is this very moment that catalyses a spell of clothes shopping too! Small boy perfects his ‘oversized clothes’ look with a pair of very (very) large jeans and Prom-dress Daughter, who has managed to shrink most of her clothes in the student launderette, gratefully seizes an opportunity to boost her wardrobe.

All too soon it is Thursday and Small boy and I must bid farewell to yet another family member and turn the car towards England once more. I detour via the Lake District, where my son is meeting up with his Dad for a few days, and by now, as heavy rain, foretold in ‘amber warning’ forecasts, viciously sweep across the North of the UK it proves quite a trip for us all. My Ex -hub is delayed by vehicle fires in one direction and we have to navigate several road floods in the other. Eventually, several hours behind schedule, Small boy is handed over … at a truck stop and I head home!

And the fun is not over for me either, for I am not the only parent with offspring in Higher Education. One of my very best friends now has a child at a Northern University, which gives us the perfect opportunity to meet up too – hooray! She comes to stay with me for a couple of days.We drink plenty of wine, she catches -up with her lovely family and as the younger generation leave for their own parties and social events, we head into Media City for a bit of culture at the Van Gogh alive exhibition and… wow!! I can, and will, post pictures but to appreciate this incredible show, you need to go in person. I can best describe it as a ‘concert of art‘; as we are enveloped in a vibrant,visual exploration of Van Gogh’s art and life with a gorgeous, rich musical soundtrack to stir the emotions and give the experience a magical and immersive quality. We watch wide eyed and open mouthed and just love it!

But as Saturday dawns, my friend too must drive homeward. Small boy returns and we collect Boris the Gecko from his boarding quarters at the local pet shop. I decide that I like half terms … a lot! Work will start again on Monday but for now.. I am already dreaming of my next school holiday …

“We holiday not to escape life, but for life not to escape us.”