Calamity, Kids and Other Stuff

Thank You

2012-01-22T21:04:00.002Z

Thank you all so much for the wonderful, supportive and oh so generous comments which have come my way since my article was published in The Guardian yesterday.

I am so very touched by everyone's care and concern. xxx

The Guardian piece

2012-01-21T19:52:00.011Z

So! The piece is in today's Family Guardian

I have to confess to feeling a bit worried about it beforehand, especially about the photograph! But it's not too bad, and generally I'm pleased with the piece. It is just possible that I was one of the first customers to visit our local newsagent this morning!

Thanks so much to everyone for your lovely, supportive comments.

Trying Times

2012-01-18T14:06:00.003Z

Sometimes my children make me feel so angry. I'm not alone.... am I?

I won't describe the particular incident which triggered my meltdown (not too strong a term for it, I assure you!)last night, apart from mentioning the constant struggle involved in getting a certain son to do as he's told. Not all the time - that would just be unreasonable - but just some of the time. Just some of the time, after a long day at work, I would appreciate a bit of consideration and a bit of peace and quiet. The problem is that when I'm tired, Ed has more energy and determination to resist me than I have energy and determination to deal with him like a perfect parent.

Sometimes our whole household seems full of strife and noise - despite us all loving each other and despite my resolutions to deal with the kids with more calm, more patience and more consistency.

Maybe I'm just too old to be a parent. I wish I'd had them in my twenties. Would that have made a difference?

Guardian Piece? What Guardian Piece?

2012-01-15T19:44:00.003Z

Ok - so it was a false alarm. It's coming out in the next few weeks apparently! Not that I went rushing down to the newsagents at 8am or anything.......

Happy New Year and all that stuff

2012-01-09T21:42:00.003Z

Happy New Year to you all. As usual things have conspired to keep me away from the old blog - so I'm making new resolutions to remedy that. The problem is that after I've worked all day and marked and prepared lessons for the next; in between sorting the kids out, making packed lunches, going to swimming lessons (kids, not me), writing and reading and shopping, cooking and cleaning (phew!) there's not time for much else.

I don't mean to relegate my beloved blog and any readers who may still be out there, to the bottom of the very big teetering pile but the problem is that you're all so quiet compared to the clamour which echoes through the rest of my life.

So.... a catch-up. Christmas came and went in a blur. The kids were hyper - Ed at the age of 8 still waking up at the crack of dawn whenever there's a sniff of excitement and Martha and Hattie swirling through the days filled with everything Christmassy. For me, I guess it was the first Christmas since my cancer diagnosis (3 years ago I was going through radiotherapy)that I didn't wonder with quite such a heavy feeling inside whether that Christmas wouldn't be my last. I suppose I'm beginning to have just a little faith that I may stay alive for a few more years yet. I have an oncolgy appointment on Wednesday - just a check-up, but just walking through the doors of the hospital can make me feel shaky and less than sure about anything.

I read bit over Christmas - Look at Me, by Jennifer Egan which I thought was really interesting and dark, and I've just started Saint Maybe by Anne Tyler to cheer me up about returning to work. I love Anne Tyler for her easy readability and explorations of family relationships. I've read most of her books but gloriously I've missed this one. The problem is that I'm so tired when I get into bed that I fall asleep almost instantly. A least it spins out the pleasure for longer!

I'm also in the middle of applying for child psychotherapy clinical training for next year. Yup - finally I've decided on a career change. The course is scary in it's demands: I have to start regular analysis before I start. That is scary - I'm a little wary of meeting whatever might be lurking in my subconscious. And it's a doctorate which is another scary thing - if I ever had any brain power I think it's disintegrating fast. But it's worth a try. I completed the pre-clinical training while I was pregnant with Ed, and had intended to continue straight on to the clinical training however life (in the shape of two more kids, and cancer) kind of temporarily got in the way. Hattie starts school next year - and now is as good a time as ever to start the training seeing as I have to earn for a long time to come -I'm still hoping to become a full-time person of leisure, but it's not really looking likely any time soon!

Excitingly (although I'm shrinking with horrified anticipation at the same time) I have an article coming out in the Family Guardian this coming Saturday - yes, the 14th January. Read it if you haven't anything more interesting to do which I'm sure that you have. But I did write it which is pleasing. Bit worried (understatement of the decade) about the photo. Hope the beautiful kids eclipse the frazzled and 'seen better days' mother.

Christmas is Coming

2011-12-14T20:42:00.003Z

How excited can three kids possible be? I'm not sure that we'll make it through to Christmas in one piece!

Ed - excitable at the best of times - is getting up even earlier in the morning. Given that the alarm goes off at 5.55 every morning, which is early enough in my book, I am findng hearing his voice singing carols more annoying than charming. He can't wait for his sisters to wake up so that they can make a camp or set up a stage to perform a Christmas pantomine. I blame the schools!! No - I'm joking, although there is so much Christmas related activity so early in December in their classes, that they are revved up with joy and anticipation by the time the term actually finishes.

We're getting our tree on Saturday - and then I think I'll feel Christmassy. Maybe I'll make some mulled wine to get into the spirit of the season, while we decorate it. I do make a rather good mulled wine -although the large quantity of rum added to it along with orange juice, cinnamon sticks and brown sugar, can lead to dangerously inebriated behaviour. Or it did last year.... but that's another story!!

Zzzzzzz

2011-12-03T20:04:00.004Z

Ed and Martha have gone (on the train - cue squeals of ecstasy!!!!) to stay with their cousins for the weekend. They are terribly excited - the lovely house in the country-side, deep in the Scottish Borders, with a farm just up the road.

And we've got Hattie to ourselves for a night. I was busy today so Rog had a day with her - and took her out for tea. And later I bathed her and put her to bed, with no annoying older siblings to disturb her. Life is definitely easier with only one child although I suppose the house does feel rather empty. We've got a good evening ahead - Rog is cooking and I'm watching X-Factor with a nice glass of wine.

I read 'Room'. I was quite amazed by it, and really moved too. What a strange and unforgettable book.

I'm tired - can you tell? I've got lots of projects on the go, in different areas of my life, including an article coming out in The Guardian newspaper in a couple of weeks time. I'm looking forward to having some time off work at Christmas - just to sleep and read and generally catch up with things.

An early night I think.

Christmas Plans

2011-11-26T19:55:00.003Z

Four weeks to Christmas..... four weeks! I haven't done anything at all. No Christmas shopping, no planning, no thinking, no decking the halls. Up here in Geordie-land, most people are 'all-in' at this point. Their tree is up, their presents bought and wrapped and the turkey ordered.

I'm half in admiration and half jealous - with just a dash of bewilderment thrown in - ok that's more than a whole but you know what I mean. I can't get Christmassy in November, however if I'm going to rely on online shopping I'd better get a move on otherwise the only thing that will arrive in time for Christmas is, well, not a lot.

I hear you asking what I want....

Well seeing as you ask, an iPad 2 would be fabulous - some chance - and a puppy (loads of time to look after a puppy!!), so I'm probably looking at some books, and maybe some luscious Jo Malone goodies if I'm very lucky.... which isn't too bad. The best present will be a couple weeks off work. Family time will be lovely - although Hattie's ruling the roost these days (was there ever a time that she didn't?)so I'm feeling a little weak, as well as excited, at the prospect of Yule-tide celebrations.

I expect I'll come over 'all Nigella' at some point soon, although being a working woman again has dampened down some of my more ambitious culinary plans. Sleep has become very important - and I haven't seen Nigella draped in fairy lights planning the next day's lessons in between icing cakes and preparing 'impromptu' mid-week suppers. Maybe I just haven't looked carefully enough.

I'm about to start reading Emma Donoghue's 'The Room'- or Keith Richards' autobiography, I can't decide which. Maybe I'll start them together.....

Still Here....

2011-11-08T17:46:00.004Z

I'm waiting for the chicken casserole to cook, and I've just finished an online grocery shop to arrive in a couple of days. It's my day off from work, and as usual there's lots to do. It's lovely just pottering around though, doing the stuff I used to do before work dominated my waking hours.

I've taken and picked up the kids from school (what used to be mundane is now appreciated) and watched Martha playing her violin in her concert this afternoon. I would like to return to the time when all I had to do was 'home-stuff' although as my mum reminded me recently, it's not as if those three years away from work were hassle free. Recovering from aggressive cancer with a dreadful prognosis, kind of took up some time!

I'm resolved to write on my blog at least once a week, if not twice - work should not be able to encroach upon my time the way that it does.

It was Ed's birthday last weekend. He's 8. It's practically impossible to process how it might be that a tiny baby in a spotty babygro has become this gangly, charming impossble boy. But it has. And time marches on as the kids grow up and somehow it's nearly Christmas again. I look back on my blog to my Christmas posts over the past couple of years and I marvel how things have progressed for me on all sorts of levels.

I'm not reading as much as I have been - and I'm suffering for that. However I'm limping through novels in record slow time. Most frustrating. At the moment I'm reading 'The Tiger's Wife' by Tea Obreht. She writes like an angel - extraordinary. I'd recommend it if you need to be transported far far away.....

Sorry

2011-10-08T20:38:00.003+01:00

I know - I haven't been around. Work is proving quite hard going - just trying to balance it with the kids is really quite tough. And I'm so busy that I'm kind of neglecting lots of apects of my life, including my blog.

Anyhow, I'm hoping the work-life balance starts to get a little easier....sometime soon!

Working Blues

2011-09-08T21:22:00.004+01:00

So - now I'm working flat out. And it's tiring - and stressful - and just so hard leaving the kids.

Martha's just had a complete meltdown.

"I don't want you to go to work, Mummy. I want you to take me to school every day."

She sobbed for half an hour this evening curled onto my lap like a little baby. I think she felt like one at that point.

I feel pretty low at the moment. If we didn't need the money I wouldn't be doing it - not when the kids are still so small. We've been through a lot - the kids have been through loads in their short lives, nearly losing their mum before they'd even started school. I know most women have to work.... I know it's nothing so monumental. But for our family just at the moment, the dramatic change feels pretty monumental. Not much I can do though really if we're to continue paying that blasted mortgage!

Any advice out there for me???

Home Again... Holidays Over

2011-08-25T15:50:00.003+01:00

I've just been shopping with the kids. And now I need to lie down in a darkened room to renew my breathing abilities. All three needed new school/nursery shoes. The two older ones needed new plimsols for PE. Ed needed the new regulation black shorts/white t-shirts needed now he is in the Junior school. And I spent a fortune yesterday online buying them uniform.

The coats are going to have to wait intil my first pay-cheque (and there was me wondering why I'm going back to work!) Until then they can squeeze into last year's ones.

Children are so expensive....so expensive....so expensive

By the way the floorboards look fantastic. I did have a small sense of humour failure when I came home to the whole house covered with a layer of wood-dust, but now I've regained my sunny outlook (ha ha).

Back to Frankenstein.... Blog, Facebook, Twitter stop distracting me!

In Cold Blood .... amongst other things

2011-08-18T15:50:00.005+01:00

We're still up here in the Highlands, minus Rog who had to head home to work. I'm getting twitchy. Work is looming, ever closer and I'm reading, reading, reading in preparation. No-one could say that I'm not putting in the hours - and I'm not even getting paid yet!

Have you read Truman Capote's 'In Cold Blood'? I'm teaching it, so I thought it was a good idea to read it!! It's fascinating. Amazingly written and chilling for unexpected reasons, mostly for what one can see about how Capote's focus changes as the story unravels. I have spent the past few days feeling as if I'm in Kansas - and not Dorothy's Kansas at that. Instead, a far darker and sadder place. I didn't know before reading the book that Capote was a very good friend of Harper Lee, and in fact she helped him to interview the residents of Holcomb after the murders. I had, however, noted to myself that there was something about Capote's style that reminded me of 'To kill a Mockingbird' - and then couldn't help but feel a little pleased at picking up on that reference from Capote's text alone.

Home at the weekend. Either to my mum's so that Rog can strip (and varnish) our kitchen floor down to the boards, while the kids are out of the way - or not, in which case our slightly manky and very old carpet will have to remain for some time longer. Not sure - the DIY option risks chaos well into next week as Rog (possibly inevitably) discovers that the job will take him longer, while I decide to implode through stress at the dusty and unusable kitchen alongside kids and school and work approaching fast. On the other hand I do hate that carpet so...... and maybe I should be grateful that I have someone willing to hire a horrible big sanding machine and do a job like that - while I'm safely out of the way.

Glamping? I Think Not!

2011-08-07T21:44:00.004+01:00

We're home now - weary and grubby, but having had a lovely time (notwithstanding the soaking tent complete with puddles throughout - after a particularly impressive night-long storm). I may be lying if I said that going home at that point didn't cross my mind.

But, visiting Tintagel - King Arthur's amazing castle which falls off the Cornish coast, was a high point. High point in many ways as the huge steps were cut into the cliff edge. Hattie insisted on climbing every step herself - showing a toughness suitable for the court of King Arthur himself.

We went to The Eden Project, The Tate at St. Ives, the Lost Gardens of Heligan, Lanhydrock House and beaches, and walks.... and went to the circus.

Camping was kind of fun - more so than I expected. Hattie got increasingly overtired though, missing her afternoon sleeps and inevitably getting to bed much later than usual, bundled into her sleeping bag alongside her big sister. So - it certainly felt pretty full-on, but it was a good family time - time to play Monopoly, to eat breakfast outside together every morning. And Rog and I went to bed much earlier than we usually do. By the time it got dark, bed called - and reading with a flashlight on a blow-up mattress was certainly a novelty which after 10 days lost some of its charm.

The older kids had a great time - buying fresh croissants from the farm shop every morning. Ed made a friend who lives in London, whom he's determined to write to. Even Rog and I had the odd chat with fellow campers - especially our neighbours with their four sons and dog called Hattie (imagine Hattie's delight....)

We're already planning our summer holiday next year - camping in the French Pyrenees maybe?

I've managed to stave off impending job anxiety by living in denial. Job? What job? September? That's months away! etc etc.

I'm feeling much better too at the moment - which showed that I needed a holiday I think. However I am going to have to have an interview by Occupational Health before I start work, which has annoyed and upset me greatly. I'm well enough to go back to work, and if I'm not, then I should be able to receive the disability benefits for which I'm no longer eligible. I've been entirely up-front about my cancer when I had my job interview and I fail to see how an interview with some individual from a private company whose services are bought in by the council employing me, can shed any more light on whether my cancer will return and require me to have time off work. I wish I knew the answer to that question. Having this interview feels intrusive and potentially upsetting. I'm 2 and a half years in remission, and we're skint. So I have to return to work. If I could have some more time to rest and recuperate I would. But I can't.

Anyhow - off to Scotland in a couple of days. Lots of driving this summer, that's for sure.

Travels to Cornwall....and Scotland too

2011-07-25T14:40:00.001+01:00

We're on our way down to Cornwall right now - I'm posting from my blackberry in the car! A new and novel way to write - but if I don't write now, and write from my phone, my posts will become even more sporadic!

We've had quite a tiring start to the holiday - just so much to do before we could set off. Same old, same old - packing, cleaning, trying to remember how to put up our tent etc. But now we're in the car on our way! It's a long drive that's for sure, but I'm really looking forward to visit some of the beautiful places right in the foot of the UK.

Our campsite is near St. Austell, which is quite near the Eden Project, and the Gardens of Heligan. And the coasts.... And the pasties... And the cream teas...

I've been quite stressed about starting work in September and have spent the past few weeks doing some preparation which is why I've been absent from the blog. I've also been feeling grotty and tired which is always a cause of concern. In fact - most things have been put on hold while I've been sorting childcare and stuff for the autumn. My book hasn't made much progress but I'm planning to do some work on it later in August when we head up to the highlands of Scotland (yes - we're driving the length and breadth of the country this summer).

And I've got a pile of books packed in the back - hopefully there'll be a bit of time for wine and reading!

Pre-holiday Meanderings

2011-07-15T20:06:00.003+01:00

We're going camping soon. But I've so much left to do before we can get into the car and head for the hills (or head for the Cornish pasties at least).

I haven't been writing - on my blog or anywhere else either, as I've been embedded in preparation for my lessons in September. And there's a lot to do. I'm determined to head off on holiday feeling relaxed and as sorted as I can for my return to work.

And sorting the details hasn't been easy - Ed's haemophilia means that being out all day, not around the corner and available for any eventuality, is particularly stressful. I guess it'll sort itself out - but it's sometimes hard to imagine how it can

On a different note - has anyone watched 'In Treament'? It's great, great, great. I'm plannng to watch the rest of the first season this holiday (although not in the tent of course).... and may start the second season, in between re-reading 'Frankenstein' and 'Lord of the Flies (which I'm teaching in September), and reading 'Lacuna' by Barabara Kingsolver and the new Kate Atkinson novel: 'Started Early, Took my Dog' for my own pleasure and delight. That's in-between fielding the tantrums of a small Hattie and refereeing the squabbles of the other two.

Maybe I'll find going back to work restful after that?? Maybe.... maybe not!

Stuff

2011-07-06T21:21:00.003+01:00

I know I'm a sporadic blogger again and I apologise. That said, I'm pretty sure you have plenty of other things to do to while away the time between my posts!

Over the past few weeks I've been trying to get my head around what I'm having to do when I go back to work in September. And suffice to say - there's a lot to sort out in a short space of time. Heaven knows how all this is going to work out with the kids. I feel very very stretched in too many directions, and I haven't even started yet.

But I'm determined not to let the writing go - and I want to try to make sure that I devote a regular slot in the week to that..... along with everything else.

I'm dreaming of sandy, hot beaches where I can lie in the shade of a palm tree. Am I heading to a beach? Well, not that kind of beach...... a Cornish one onto which I may stagger from our tent. Not quite the same.

Kids.......My God!

2011-07-02T11:31:00.002+01:00

A splitting headache and a terrible 3 year old do not make a good combination as I'm discovering (as if I didn't know) on this sunny Saturday morning. Just one weekend without the kids is all I ask - even if all I do is lie in a darkened room and wait for my migraine to pass.....

Cloud Atlas

2011-06-27T12:43:00.006+01:00

Finally, finally, finally I've finished David Mitchell's "Cloud Atlas". It has taken me weeks, in between everything else, and I have to say that at times it was hard going enough to make me consider giving up. As you will have gathered, I did not find it an easy read.... but in the end I decided it was a truly amazing one.

The plot is convoluted - six different narratives scroll through the book and connect together at the end. But it takes a leap of faith to believe that such different voices and such different stories can connect in any meaningful way. They do, though. He plays with the way that language has been used in literary narrative over the past two hundred years: some parts of the book are pure pastiche, while the whole book is something quite original indeed.

It's an intellectual read - a funny and at times an annoying read - but certainly a challenging read.

As I read it mostly late at night once I was finally bed, I'd often fall asleep while reading it. And several nights it infiltrated my dreams in unsettling ways. I feel really bereft now I've finished it - which is a testament to how consumed by the book I felt. And I've spent much time pondering the complex messages and themes which Mitchell is exploring.

Have you read this incredible book? If not, I'd recommend it to you. Let me know!

Tiger Mother? I'm Growling like a Kitten

2011-06-21T13:59:00.006+01:00

Thanks everyone for your lovely and supportive comments after my last post. I haven't got the results yet - and I'm guessing no news is good news. As I said, it was a routine scan - but my reactions really surprised me. Clearly something inside me wasn't feeling routine.

Now, I'm grappling with a new and different issue. Have you heard about the 'tiger mother'? You must have done. It's the name given to pushy parenting, or maybe more accurately to parenting in a more traditional way. So it's making your kids practice their reading, maths and musical instruments everyday whether they want to or not. It's about not praising your children for every move they make, instead one might ask them to try harder before you praise.

Some time ago I read 'Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother' by Amy Chua. It caused a big controversy on both sides of the Atlantic. I thought it was quite funny and I thought that much of it was written tongue in cheek. The controversy I thought came, largely, from a collective sense of humour failure.

However, undeniably Amy Chua presents herself as a pushy mother. Very different from me and my parenting style. But after I read it I thought I'd try an experiment.

Both Ed and Martha play the cello and violin respectively. I encourage them to practice but if I'm honest the time seems to fly between lessons, and sometimes - what with everything else - the practice can fall by the wayside. We pay for these lessons, the kids enjoy playing and I want them to stick at it. But I'm guilty of letting the practice slide sometimes.

So, I decided that for a while I'd make them practice for 15 minutes a day. And I decided that I'd be just a tad more critical. I wouldn't just say, 'That's lovely, Ed', if it actually wasn't. Instead I resolved to ask him to do it again and do it better. Just a bit, a teensy bit of Chua style parenting! The kids were quite surprised. And a little bit outraged it has to be said.

But..... their music has improved and they are enjoying playing so much more. With the practice - properly focused and a just a little bit demanding - has come a leap ahead in terms of achievement. They're doing better, they play better and they're having fun.

Interesting, really. I guess it's certainly so - that if I'm half-hearted about something, even accidentally half-hearted, that doesn't help them to succeed.

Right - on with the Latin then.

Only joking.....

Rage Against the Machine

2011-06-13T13:58:00.017+01:00

On Thursday I went for a scan on my spine. It was an MMR scan and although ordered by my oncology consultant, I was not too worried as it was meant to be checking out a long-term lower back problem which actually pre-dates the cancer. Not too worried in theory - but in reality any scan makes me sick that something horrendous will be found.

And because I was not worried, I took myself off on my own. My friend was looking after Hattie and the kids were at school. To be honest it didn't really occur to get Rog or my mum to come with me. I've had enough hospital appointments to know what I'm dealing with. Or so I thought.

Walking through the oncology department where I have my check-ups, where I had my radiotherapy; walking behind a nurse who looked after me when I was at my illest during my bone marrow transplant, who didn't recognise me - that was all ok.

It was when I was sitting in the waiting room for the scan that things began not to be ok. In the small, cramped room were people waiting for CT scans and MMR scans. Mostly old people as they always are, needing scans for all sorts of reasons. Chattering and nattering away - seemingly entertained by the novelty of a hospital appointment: for some one can't help but wonder if having something worthy of an appointment is almost an event to celebrate. But opposite me was a woman - younger than me. She had no hair; was thin, pale, crying and was retching as she tried to swallow the liquid which one has to drink for the CT scans. She was hanging onto her boyfriend who was trying to shield her a little and give her some privacy from the prattling around her.

And I knew. I knew how ill she felt. I knew how scared and angry she felt. Because three years ago I had many scans when I too was sitting, holding onto Roger and trying to hide my vomiting. I remember being petrified about the results - my whole life hanging suspended, waiting for the call to tell me what the machine had revealed.

I wanted to say to her that I had been where she was now and that my prognosis had been so terrifyingly poor. I wanted to say, "look at me now!". But of course I didn't. Instead I concentrated on hiding my tears of horror and stared down at the blurred page of my book.

Called into my scan - I burst into tears as the surprised technician sat down to take me through the details of my test.
"Couldn't you find that poor girl somewhere else more private to wait?" I sobbed. "Can't you see how ill and scared she is?"

And then I lay down in the jaws of a machine which resembled a tube as claustrophobic as a coffin. I've only ever had an MMR scan on my leg, so I didn't have to lie right inside. I've had plenty of CT scans which are unpleasant and scary but quick nevertheless.

I hadn't read the information which came with the appointment booking. I hadn't realised that I would be inside this contraption for up to 50 minutes, wearing headphones to try to block out the horrendous clanking, grinding and scraping.

I was pushed into the tube, lying on my back, my nose a few inches from the top, my hands on my stomach holding an emergency buzzer if things became too much, my arms pinned to my side. And the scan began.

I started to cry. Lying alone, deep inside the machine, the tears fell straight down my neck into my hair. I couldn't move my arms to wipe them away.

I think it was a kind of panic attack. I don't do panic attacks. I'm quite a down to earth person by and large. But I had terrible flashbacks in that machine to my radiotherapy. I hadn't thought about the radiotherapy, I don't think, since I finished it. But all of a sudden I could picture the way the little cogs wouuld move and change above me to emit the damaging radiation deep inside my chest.

I tried to calm down, telling myself that apart from anything else if I buzzed for them to take me out, the whole thing would just last for longer - and if I refused to have the scan, there would be that uncertainty and worry at the back of my mind: what if there was something to find after all?

So I summoned up all that I had and took some deep breaths. I closed my eyes and pictured a walk I love step by meticulous step. From time to time I looked up at the top of the inside of the scanner and focused on a tiny dot in the plastic. The roof was so close to my eyes that it was hard for my eyes to focus and the dot kept dividing into two. How many others had done the same thing?

After 20 minutes they pulled me out and injected some contrast dye into my arm. I'd managed to surreptitiously wipe away the tears by then. I wasn't ashamed of crying - I just couldn't deal with talking about it at that moment at all. And back I slid into the depths.

The second half of the scan was easier. The shock at the strength of my feelings had passed. And now I knew how claustrophobic the scanner was. I spent the rest of the time thinking how I was going to make the kids' hyena costumes for their performance (almost as stressful as a scan for un-artistic me, and certainly distracting!!!!), and picturing my drive home to fetch Harriet. I was relatively calm by the time all was finished - but felt absolutely washed out and exhausted for the rest of the day, and was really shaky on the drive home.

I don't know why I'm surprised really - but I am nevertheless - at the degree to which my traumatic memories can come up and grab me by my throat in dreams, or sometimes still in my everyday existence.

I haven't had the results yet.

The River Tyne

2011-06-05T14:45:00.006+01:00

This morning we went for walk. But instead of heading out of the city as we usually do, we decided to explore much closer to home. And alongside the Tyne, heading under the famous bridges, out of the light, and hugging the muddy water-line like a shadow, was a path.

Walking down this path felt ridiculously intrepid and exciting. All these years I've lived here and I've never known of this path's existence. Have I never been curious enough to wonder if it's possible to walk beside the river, towards the horizon, past the glamorous quayside with its galleries, cafes and restaurants?

The Tyne is a romantic sort of river, but away from the centre of the city it is mysterious and a little formidable. The life which surrounds this part of the river is much more private; strange objects tossed into the shore-line quagmire speak of adventures, games and sometimes things more sinister. A bike entirely submerged apart from its pedals made me wonder why someone would come this far to dispose of junk in such a dramatic way. While we found a place to turn around, the path headed onwards destined for the Tyne Valley, destined to leave even the dregs of the city far behind. Along this path you can walk or cycle coast to coast - I'm taking my blue bike along there one day soon.

But on the way back we turned directly up the steep riverbank, trying to take a shortcut home, and followed a narrowing path into the depths beneath the foundations of the train bridge. In the rusting, shadowy iron hollows which form the giant girders of the looming bridge lay pools of strange and rotting detritus. As the undergrowth closed around us, now I urgently wanted to get away back to the civilisation which we could hear around us but could not see. It didn't feel a good place to be with the kids - discarded clothing lay around as well as other pieces of 'equipment' which we recognised but thankfully the kids did not. A padlocked clearing, covered with barbed wire and rickety corrugated iron to keep out intruders, looked threatening and dangerous. Quickly, we retraced our steps back down to the muddy riverside and walked back along the path we'd left, once more hearing the echoing bridges far above us.

Back at home, realising that this derelict and forbidding place awash with the reverberations of the city is only a moment away, has made me feel disorientated. I feel as if I have newly arrived here - all that seems familiar is for the moment superimposed on top of my new sense of the river, winding nearby and possessively keeping safe its secrets.

Martha

2011-06-01T14:36:00.004+01:00

Martha is staying on her own at her grandma's. It's just a night but it has been organised with all the seriousness and gravitas which preparations for a royal visit might entail. Those pajamas, those clothes for tomorrow and that book for tonight.

I unpacked her toothbrush when we arrived and called her into the bathroom.

"There's your toothbrush and there's the toothpaste", I said, nonchalantly waving a hand in the general direction of the sink. "I'm telling you now, so you know where they are for later."

There was a pause.

"I think I'd better move them, Mummy", she said with firmness and something close to sympathy for my cavalier clumsiness.

And oh so carefully she moved the toothbrush and the toothpaste just a tiny bit: straightened them up and aligned them exactly.

"There", she said with satisfaction. "That's much better."

And I'm not sure that I've ever loved her more than at that moment.

"Much better", I agreed.

Today

2011-05-31T20:50:00.003+01:00

I was offered a job today. A part-time job I really wanted in a great school. I am quietly pleased with myself - the interview was challenging: I haven't worked for three years and I had to admit to the gaps which would necessarily be there after some time out of a profession which changes faster than is strictly necessary! But as I said to them, I'm a fast learner.

It's all a big step forward on the journey to my future - my healthy future where my cancer is nothing but a horrible memory. This time three years ago I had started my chemotherapy, my hair was falling out and I didn't know if I would see Christmas. I wouldn't and couldn't have imagined that I'd ever be well enough again to apply for and accept a job like this.

It's the same old stuff - yada, yada yada. This time three years ago yada yada yada. But I'm still living with the legacy of what happened in many ways - physically and emotionally. It's increasingly a private legacy: there's only so many times you can say these things to the people around you without, I don't know, sounding as if you're going on.... I seem to be able to 'go on' on my blog though. Sorry.

Anyhow - that's good news for me and for the family, although there'll be some changes around here! I do feel bad for Hattie - our peaceful days of lunchtime CBeebies' watching will be truncated. But I'll still be at home for part of the week, and we need the money. And maybe I need to get back to my career. My other career.... I'm still hoping, probably in vain, the writing will take off.

What I'm Going To Be When I'm (ahem) Older

2011-05-26T12:14:00.004+01:00

See - I've neglected my blog too long and my blogland friends have turned their attentions elsewhere - very understandably I might add. But I'm still here, and I'm determined to keep going. Maybe I can encourage you all to come back by some scintillating posts. Hmmmm. That's a problem right there then!

So, I was going to tell you some stuff about me which you might not know. Why should you? And then I began to think about myself in a kind of analytical sort of way. And then I began to wonder where I'm heading (in a life-journey, metaphorical kind of way rather than a heading off on the school run kind of way) and I thought about all the stuff I still want to do before I die as a happy and very old woman.

Here goes:

- I'm heading off on the tran-Siberian Railway just as soon as I can (don't hold your breath)

- I want to publish a short-story that I'm really proud of. In fact I want to publish the next Booker Prize winning novel, but small steps and all that.

- I need to ride horses in Argentina

- I want to experience at least one of those exotic beach holidays that other people always seem to have. You know - three weeks in the Maldives or somewhere with just Roger and a HUGE pile of books for company

- I want to buy a house in Pollensa in Majorca

- I want to travel to New Zealand, Australia and .....oh, to a host of other places too

- I want to have a really toned and bendy body, in an, "aren't you fabulous at yoga and pilates?" sort of way.

- I want to be able to achieve a zen-like approach to life, and be remembered and missed as that serene and wise old woman

Ok - this is actually a list in progress I've just realised. To be added to as and when. I have noticed a certain wanderlust theme - tricky with those pesky kids in tow, no money and annoyingly tying jobs. Anyhow...... a girl can dream.

Back to Work

2011-05-23T22:13:00.009+01:00

So - if I go back to work next year (it's looking maybe like 4 days a week - it's the only offer I've had which isn't full-time!!) I'll feel guilty and sad at all that I'm missing. Hat's still small, the other kids are not big and they all need their mummy. I'll need to fight to be able to have enough time to see their school plays and concerts and to see Hattie settled for her mornings at nursery. I'll still be organising all the shopping and cooking and washing with a big burden of marking essays, planning and general work-demands hanging over me too. Can I cope with secondary teaching (high school, that is) and all the stresses that it brings, along with all the current stresses of family life.....as well as the ongoing saga regarding my health????

But - we need the money first and foremost. Even with childcare (lots to be thought about there) the money I'll earn will come in very very useful. I'll have all those weeks of holiday when I'm free to be with the kids and Roger and I'll still have a day a week to get myself, the house and the kids organised. Bills need to be paid, and life is always too expensive however hard you try to be frugal, something which isn't a natural character trait of mine I'm forced to admit. The time has come I guess, but with Hattie just 3 it's come quicker than I anticipated. I worked before I had Hattie when the other kids were very small. It was just two days a week and I remember how hard it was just to get everyone out of the door. And now I have to give Ed his treatment twice a week in the early morning just to add a small detail of fun into the mix.

Underneath it all, though, I have to admit to a little (and sometimes very fleeting indeed) flicker of excitement at the prospect of finding some sense of myself again -an adult, work-place me with something new and challenging to do. Teaching changes all the time - I haven't worked for three years and there'll be a steep learning curve up which to climb.

I need time to write though, and I need space to stay well. Three years ago I was dying and since then I underwent a year of hardcore treatment to get into remission. I'm coming up to 2 and a half years in remission now. It's a good length of time, but it's not 5 years. Not yet.

I've got to find a balance so that I can keep healthy and keep my family well. What a terrifying prospect.

Frustration

2011-05-18T13:42:00.009+01:00

I just can't get anything done!!

How am I expected to clean the house, shop, cook, do the washing, ferry the kids around - all with an obstreperous Hattie in tow - and also write regularly, blog regularly and chase part-time teaching work for September?????

And all that's without factoring in the haemophilia. This morning I optimistically - and some would say stupidly - dressed for a run. My lovely child-minder friend was having Hattie for the morning (.... some crazy idea that it'll get her used to me going back to work), and I thought that I might just be able to sneak away before returning to the long imaginary to-do list in my head which began highlighted in bold, 'Hoover Ed's Bedroom' (oh.... the glamour of my life). I won't continue down the list but you get the picture.

Anyhow.... Ed has had a painful bleed deep inside his knee since Monday tea-time when he went out to play football. I treated him on Monday night (new blue needles) and again yesterday morning. But this morning he was still hobbling - packing him off to school, while tempting, didn't seem to be the entirely responsible option. So, after changing out of the fetching running gear, off we went to hospital. Last week he was there on Tuesday and Wednesday morning, this week he missed this whole morning and may have to go tomorrow if things aren't settled.

I am meant to be starting to write an article as well as ringing and arranging to visit several schools today. I also promised Rog I'd look over his latest job applicaton letter (for a headship - not bad!), and I wanted to run (did I mention that), and I needed to clean, as usual. Now I have about half an hour before the school run and all I want to do is lie comatose... or at least slump with a cup of tea in hand.

I also wanted to post on my blog today. Have actually done that! I've achieved something then!

My Love Affair with the City - It's Starting Right Now

2011-05-14T14:44:00.009+01:00

Who-eeeee! The kids (well at least the older two) have started going to a local theatre club on a Saturday morning.

For 3 hours!!

Now I'm not saying, in any way, that it's lovely to have three hours of relative peace with Rog and Hattie. Three hours with no squabbling, no crazy TV watching (Ed), and no listless Saturday slouching (Martha).

All I am saying is that they enjoy their drama, and we enjoy heading towards our local cafe and kind of experiencing (remember there's still Hattie spilling juice and dropping toast)the blissful Saturday mornings we had pre-kids.

We've always dreamed of moving out to the country. Not far, just to the beautiful Tyne Valley, where I could live my fantasy of country housewife (ha ha). Yes - chickens, ducks and dogs all figure in this life I've concocted. I've always explained to anyone who'll listen that as soon as we can we're heading out of the city.

But recently, as the kids inch ever older, I have to admit to a certain pleasure in city life and what it can offer. Last week I met a friend for a pizza one evening, went to my course at the university and did a Zumba class. I would have taken Hattie to the Sage Concert Hall to take part in a music class if Ed hadn't needed a trip to the hospital (which given the haemophilia and my trials and tribulations is conveniently only minutes away)......and the kids can go to a drama club on a Saturday morning. Not to mention the Tyneside Cinema which is the most wonderful art-house cinema in the centre of Newcastle, and fabulous Pannis with its wondrously, life-affirmingly handsome Italian waiters (get the picture?) and its beautiful, beautiful coffee.

If I'm sounding smug or like some kind of crazy city-phile, you only have to show me an old farmhouse in fields surrounded by sheep, for the grass over there to seem seriously greener. But I'm learning to love my city-life all the same for the good things it can bring to a tired girl who is faintly remembering who she used to be beneath the exhausted and rumpled mother she's become.

Wednesday Blues

2011-05-11T13:48:00.009+01:00

I've been for a run! Well - more like a power walk with sporadic and very short bursts of running. But still - I got myself into gear and headed for the park. And I've booked a Zumba class for Friday too.

I'm pretty sure that there won't be any discernable change on the outside for some time to come.....but I feel fitter already.

It's been such a hassly week. Ed has been backwards and forwards to hospital after hurting himself at a roller-skating party at the weekend. And yesterday - again - I couldn't find a vein. The upshot of me not being able to treat him myself before school, was that we had to spend the best part of the morning at the hospital; Hattie missed her music session which she loves and spent most of the morning wailing in disappointment; and I??? I could feel my blood pressure rising! Today we've just returned home from the second visit of the week - it ran so late that I just got Ed back to school in time for the afternoon session. And even then he was eating his lunch in the car on the way. I'll be lucky if Hattie gets any sleep at all before I have to whisk her out of bed and go to fetch the kids.

On top of this, I have one seriously overworked, seriously stressed husband who's not sleeping due worrying..... and we have no bloody money. I need to find a job, and fast! Although I'm not sure how all the ferrying, cooking, cleaning and washing will get done if I'm working as well.

So - I'm pleased that I did actually head out to the park this morning before the hospital appointment. I was almost distracted by the state of the house (how I wish I had a cleaner), but in the nick of time I decided that some fresh air would do more for my spirits than a clean house. And it did - although the stairs selfishly didn't hoover themselves while I was out.

Weekend and all that stuff.....

2011-05-09T13:42:00.006+01:00

Another weekend filled with kid-related activity.

Before I start to moan about how exhausting it is to have three small children, and I'm afraid to say that this had been the intention of this post - a familiar theme of my blog, I'm sure you'll agree - I need to announce Harriet's third birthday. While this is hugely significant for her (chocolate cake with Smarties and "cangles" or should that be candles??), it is enormously significant for me too.

Three years ago I was visiting my tiny premature daughter, born at 32 weeks, in the Special Care Baby Unit. She spent her first days hooked up to tubes with an oxygen mask strapped over her impossibly tiny face. I had just come from another part of the hospital having had a scan to see if the cancer had spread from my chest into my abdomen. My prognosis was poor and my first dose of chemotherapy was scheduled for the following week; and after that I was facing the best part of a year of aggressive in-patient chemotherapy, a bone marrow transplant and radiotherapy. My other two small, small children were waiting for me to come home.

I am increasingly bemused to think how I managed that time from moment to moment. I know I spent my days, and nights, waiting to die. And I never, never, never thought I'd be making Hattie a cake on her 3rd birthday here in May 2011. She had a party with all her family this weekend. And along with singing, "Happy Birthday to you", we all quietly toasted my health too.

I'm not out of the woods yet - I have to get to her sixth birthday to throw the mother of all parties. I'm planning one too. It'll be my 45th birthday just after her 6th. On my 40th I was still very unwell, so a party was not really in order. But if I'm here on my 45th - and I'm more confident than I've been for the past three years that I might just get there - we're celebrating in style. I'm already saving for the holiday of a lifetime for Roger and I.

It's good to look forward - I can tell you.

So - luckily for you, I'm not going to moan after all. I'll save that for next time!

Scotland.....Again!

2011-04-27T09:33:00.005+01:00

Here's the latest posting then - from the Western Isles of Scotland. The weather has been fantastic: suncream a necessity and picnics a staple.

We've been cycling, walking and I've been reading as much as possible. Our friends came to stay for the first week with their daughter and the four kids had a whale of a time doing lots of kid stuff - rolling down the sand-dunes, watching films and eating the first round of chocolate easter eggs which seemed this year to have appeared with alarming regularity.

It's tiring though - full-on family time leaves me feeling exhausted. No school to take the kids off my hands for a while, and Hattie's afternoon sleeps have been truncated shall we say. By the time the kids are in bed, I'm kind of ready for bed myself. Rog and I are slowly watching our way through the box-set of 'The Killing' - the Danish series. It's fantastic, have you watched it? The down-side are the subtitles which require more concentration than one might expect, especially when you're trying to follow the intricacies of a fast-paced psychological drama....in Danish! Last night we resolved to watch TWO episodes - and by the time the second one was on we were both falling asleep in shifts and then waking and saying, "What's just happened?" Needless to say much re-playing of crucial moments was happening. I got to the point where I was wondering if I could manage to close my eyes between the subtitles appearing. Time for bed? I think so!

We've another three days or so here before we have to head home and normal life will have to be resumed. We'll avoid the dreaded Royal Wedding - up here in Scotland it's not even a bank holiday thank heavens. Fervent anti-royalist though I am, I have to admit to a sneaking interest in her dress!! So I might just watch the news or something to catch a glimpse. Have I completely lost it? Don't tell anyone! I've a hospital appointment next week, so has Hattie (not for anything too serious) - and she has her third birthday to celebrate too. Three years ago, I don't want to remember what was happening to me. On that note, I have some niggling worries which I can air at the hospital appointment next week. I hope to be reassured of course....

I'm managing Ed's treatment again - touch wood, having had a blip where I just couldn't find a vein and we were getting into all sorts of bother. And yesterday we discovered that Martha had a tick in her neck! They're a bit of a hazard up here - and the kids have been spending large parts of their time outside in various kinds of heathery landscapes. Out came the tweezers and I pulled that horrible thing out accompanied by a certain amount of family hysteria. I was cool as a cucumber. Ed had one last year so I've become something of an expert. I was quite proud of my medical prowess yesterday - tick removal one moment, giving Ed his treatment the next. Maybe I should deliver a baby today?

Actually, that said, all around us in the field to the back and side of the house lambs are being born - a whole collection have appeared overnight. The farmer/shepherd has been up all night. We've just seen him exhaustedly making his way home to bed I hope. There is something so eternally amazing about seeing a new life appearing, and something so touching about seeing the ewe feeling the same maternal pride and anxiety which all mothers, animal or human feel. Quite humbling really - and helps one to feel connected to the world around in quite a profound way. I know, I know.... give me a few days back home in the city and I won't be feeling this mellow. But, hey - at least it visited me even very fleetingly.

And cooking? Oh yes - lots of cooking which is somehow more pleasurable up here when there doesn't feel the inexorable grinding pressure of making porridge at 6.45am, packed lunches, tea for the kids before swimming lessons and the like, and then a rushed meal for us afer the kids are in bed.

And reading? Yes I mentioned reading. I've just finished Colm Toibin's "Brooklyn" which I just thought was marvellous. An incredible snapshot of a young girl's life which was unputdownable. And before that Maggie O'Farrell's "The Hand that First Held Mine", which gave a desolate account of the pains of motherhood, although was an ultimately uplifting read. Now I've just started Douglas Kennedy's "Leaving the World". I've read quite a lot of his books. I always start off quite unconvinced, I think he's quite a light read and certainly a 'holiday' book rather than an intellectual experience. But I always end up thoroughly involved with his characters - and a couple of chapters in I'm hooked.

I've just started reading "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" by C.S. Lewis (as if you didn't know!) to Ed and Martha. They are totally entranced. I've managed to steer them away from the films so they've no idea what the books are about. We read four chapters last night before bed and Ed had to be prised away from the book - I've promised at least another four tonight. The best fun - reading those fantastic classics to your kids. Now I know why I became a parent - I can see the absolute delight that I felt when I read them as a child reflected on the kids' faces. Isn't that worth something? Well it is to me who would happily read rather than do almost anything at all.

Ok - sorry to write nothing on a regular basis and then suddenly subject you to a torrent of inconsequential detail about what's going on in our corner of the world. I'm wondering anyhow if anyone will bother to read this. Perhaps I've lost my blogland friends through my irregular posting. I hope not - my blog is still important to me despite my less frequent posts, and I still enjoy reading everyone else's posts too. It's a funny old thing blogging. Life kind of gets in the way... although I suppose that is how it should be.

Catch-Up

2011-04-12T08:46:00.002+01:00

No - I didn't get the job, and although I was disappointed I'm beginning to see it as the best thing really. Two people working long hours is really two people too many when the kids are so small.

So, I'm back to my original plan of looking for part-time teaching work and supplementing that with doing some private tuition and some exam marking. Glamorous it is not, but I think it's the best way at least for the next couple of years before Hat starts nursery and school.

And maybe I'll get my lucky writing break before then and become an official writer! And then again...

I'm finding it so hard to find time for my blog at the moment. I'm missing it - but feeling strangely uninspired about what I want to write. Life gets in the way I guess, and just as my other writing has suffered through the past turbulent couple of months, with family stuff and work stuff pushing itself to the front, the blog has not been paid its due attention either.

The kids finish for the Easter holidays on Friday (I can't wait!) and we're heading off to my mother's house in the Highlands of Scotland for a couple of weeks. I'm hoping for some peace and quiet and some space to try to do some writing again.

I am reading though - lots and lots. If only an avid reader made a successful writer. I'd be sorted.

And for the first time since I was diagnosed with cancer I've re-scheduled my three monthly check-up for after our trip to Scotland. Which means it's more like a four month gap. I know that seems insignificant, but for me it seems to represent something important. Those appointments have always felt written in stone for me, and in the early days were times to dread. As Hattie's third birthday approaches at the start of May, which is also the third anniversary pretty much to the week of my diagnosis, I guess my confidence that I might just be ok is returning.....just a bit!

April

2011-04-04T13:43:00.002+01:00

Happy April!

But it's so cold here, like winter not spring. I'm huddled close to my netbook as I write this, waiting for the phone to ring to tell me if I've got the latest job. I went for another interview on Friday, and wierdly (for jobs in education where you always hear whether you were successful on the same day) I'm waiting to hear today whether I'll be offered it. It went well but I guess it depends what the school are looking for. It's a full-time job so I have many of the same reservations that I had when I went to the last interview.

Yes - I need to write that best-seller pretty damn quickly.

Hattie doesn't like to see me in my suit - I think she can sense that changes may be ahead. Ed very clearly announces that he doesn't want me to work full-time and I have to say that I think he has a point.

Off now to pick up the kids from school. Typical - I bet the phonecall comes when I've three kids caterwauling in the back of the car.

Catch-Up

2011-03-25T14:31:00.002Z

I'm sorry my blogging has been so sporadic recently. There's family stuff going on which concerns others so I can't post about it here, but it's certainly taking up a lot of emotional and physical energy.

And I'm going for those job applications. I had a full on, major, day-long interview on Tuesday for a full time teaching position. I didn't get it - but the interview practice was useful at least. I had to teach my first lesson in 3 years to 25 fifteen year olds, while being observed by two people and then I had two formal interviews one after the other. I was really disappointed but also relieved as I don't really want to return to full-time work until Hattie is in school. But this seemed too good an opportunity to miss.

Anyhow - back to those applications!

I've had some rejections for my children's picture book - but I'm hanging on in there and trying not to get too disheartened.

And that's about it. The kids are driving me mad with their constant bickering - will they ever grow out of it or will it just get worse? Who knows? It's just awful to live with though. And Hattie is revelling in her hoodlum role as she approaches her third birthday. Often by the end of the day I'm absolutely shattered - being bossed around all day long by a very small and hugely determined person is rather wearing. Sometimes full-time work seems very appealing indeed!!

Crazy Stuff

2011-03-10T22:04:00.003Z

I'm sorry - call myself a blogger! Things have just been crazy around here. A mixture of bad and good - things have been tricky on the haemophilia front, and I have had some medical stuff which isn't great (but isn't a relapse.....I hope). And I'm applying for a big job which has required much concentration. I'm emailing it tomorrow so fingers crossed for me ..... please??

Hattie has had such a horrible virus that she ended up spending last Friday in hospital after I took her to the GP. And she's still not right almost a week later. A severe lack of sleep hasn't helped the ever present sinusitis to stay in the background so I'm currently taking antibiotics which, by the way, ARE NOT WORKING!

But - I'm planning to be back blogging once things have calmed down, and I'm planning on them calming down round about now. Still, I'm about to become an aunt again for the fifth time I like to boast (any minute now, sis) which will be very exciting all over again. I think I must go and sleep - or at least go to bed to read the fantastic 'Long Song' by Andrea Levy. Read this I urge you. I've learned much more than I knew, and learned much of what I should know, by reading this book.

Lastly, I can't believe that I didn't mention that I met my first ever co-blogger in real life while I was staying at mum's pub the week before last. Good old Legend in His Own Lunchtime tapped me on my shoulder while I was having lunch with various motley kids in tow. He lives in the US but was over in the UK sadly as his mother had passed away. But it was fantastic to meet him and to prove to myself that I'm not just a creation in cyber-space (only joking). He has a standing invitation from my mother to come and play in the pub so I'm looking forward to seeing him again when he's next up here in the North of England.

Back to School

2011-02-28T14:25:00.002Z

Back home again after a VERY busy week. The kids had a lovely time - lots of beach stuff and lots of gettting wet, accompanied by their cousin whom they adore.

And I'm back to making packed lunches, ironing, shopping etc etc.

Hattie has been demonic all week partly because she was too excited to sleep in the afternoons, and she certainly needs her sleep!! Thank heavens she's settled to sleep this afternoon. I couldn't manage without my hour or so while she sleeps.

No news yet with the book I've sent off - but maybe no news is good news. Oh, and Rog is back from the States - with a hideous soft toy purple monkey for Hattie, lovely PJs for Martha and a model Corvette for Ed. All are delighted.

Half Term Holidays and Winter Ice Cream

2011-02-18T13:26:00.003Z

Brrr. It's cold today. I'm heading off to an ice cream parlour of all strange things, once the kids have finished school. Not quite the place to visit that springs to mind in the middle of an English winter but, hey, why not? We're meeting a friend and her children to celebrate the end of the first half term of the year.

And the kids are off school next week so we're heading to mum's pub on the coast for a week. Well, the kids and I are anyhow; Rog is off to Washington DC taking some students to see the sights. Jealous me? No........

I'm expecting a large, shiny present all the way from the States.

Awards, awards, awards

2011-02-16T14:03:00.005Z

Well, thanks so much Jen at Jennerally Speaking for my lovely award.

In return I have to tell you seven things about myself that you might not know. The problem is with this is that if you've been following me for a while, you probably do know much of what makes me tick. But here goes:

1. I swam naked in the Adriatic Sea with my first boyfriend, aged 18. And my clothes were stolen.

2. I love tulips and daffoldils - and have bunches of them in my kitchen as often as possible.

3. I adore anchovies and would eat them with pretty much anything - on their own if necessary.

4. One of my all-time favourite actresses is Judi Dench.

5. I have a big birthmark on my shin.

6. I would love to run a bookshop with a fabulous cafe selling carrot-cake - and will one day when money is not an concern (ha ha)- so I don't have to worry about competing with Amazon and Kindles.

7. I am planning a huge 45th birthday party in three years time to celebrate achieving five years in remission. And Rog and I will head to Mauritius to bask in the sun.

And now I have to pass this award on to 7 of my favourite blogs. But I'm going to pass it on to 9. Call me crazy! Some of these I've given awards to in the past - but they remain my favourites and if you're a new follower of mine, I'm generously sharing the delight. Enjoy.

Legend in his own lunchtime

Letters to the World

Life of Riles

Older mums are fun

Uno, dos, tracey

Fruit of the Carolyn

Diary of a Desperate Exmoor Woman

I don't have an attitude problem

How to Survive life in the Suburbs

Phew! It's hard work this awards business. Imagine how stressful getting a BAFTA would be.

Finally Free From Freedom....

2011-02-15T14:29:00.003Z

Ok, so finally I've finished 'Freedom' by Jonathan Franzen. And in the end I liked it. It's a very impressive book, a very intellectual book - still charmless in some ways though. I found it very hard to feel close to the characters although I was interested in them from start to finish. I think it's a very male book - I wonder if that is where the sense of distance lies, and I don't mean that in a frivolous way.

But imagine writing a book like that. Incredible.

I'm sending my book off to some agents tommorrow - fingers crossed.

Blackberrys and Freedom

2011-02-10T13:17:00.003Z

How can upgrading your phone (to a Blackberry - whoo whoo) be so incredibly difficult? I've spent a very frustrating morning - yes MORNING! - conversing with Vodafone. I did take Hattie to the park to feed the ducks when it all got too much.

I've got my writing class tonight, so I must go to prepare the tea for later. Will the babysitter manage to give the kids tea when I walk out of the door at 4.45? I hope so.....

And now, although I have LOTS to do, Hattie's asleep and I think I'll make a cup of tea and read Jonathan Franzen's "Freedom". I've been reading it since Christmas at about the rate of a bloody page a night, just as I'm dropping off. It's a very frustrating way to read indeed. Actually, despite the rave reviews I'm not sure how much I'm enjoying it. While it certainly doesn't help any book to be read so slowly, I am finding it a rather charmless read. Considering I love reading like nothing else and considering I have so little time to do it, it's frustrating to read a book which doesn't delight. On the other hand I'm three quarters of the way through it - stopping now would be frustrating too. Has anyone else read it? What did you think of it?

Sunday

2011-02-06T16:54:00.003Z

I'm waiting for my chicken with green olives to cook. And while I do - blocking out the shrieks from the children fighting in the other room - I'm sitting down for the first time today.

Up early, having had Ed coming in and out of our room through the night telling us he couldn't sleep; the pouring rain punctuating my early morning sleep. To the park DESPITE the pouring rain to imbibe a little fresh air. And then back home. To the supermarket for a quick shop and then home in time put on a loaf of bread to cook in trusty breadmaker and to make promised biscuits with Martha in honour of our friend coming for the afternoon.

Said biscuits made and quickly consumed through the afternoon mostly by Ed, while my friend and I attempted to catch up through the cacophony of Ed, Martha and Hattie 'playing' (read 'showing off').

Friend leaves for the peace of her house and I start to make chicken and green olive casserole (yum I hope). I stack the dishwasher, get lovely loaf out of the bread machine and peel the potatoes for mash.

It's not even half past five yet. I'm exhausted and there's still the delightful bedtime routine and the ironing of the shirts and uniform. What the hell happened to lazily reading the Sunday papers and actually having a REST? Having kids happened - that's what.

Acupuncture Ahead

2011-02-02T13:32:00.003Z

Today I had acupuncture in my lower back and legs to try to relieve the awful nerve pains I have down my legs at night. It's been going on for the past couple of years, is getting worse and is really starting to disturb my sleep. I have a suspicion that this is a legacy of the chemotherapy - but whatever it is, I need to sort it unless I am going to spend my whole time taking painkillers.

The acupuncture was strangely relaxing (once I'd got over having to remove my jeans in front of the handsome, young physiotherapist). In fact I didn't really get over that but I just blocked out the vision I had of myself lying prone on my stomach with pins sticking out of me. I talked quite a lot.... possibly in an attempt to distract him. But I do have tremendous faith in acupuncture - I've had it before - so fingers crossed.

It's disappointing being (nearly) 42 and not in supermodel shape. Still - I haven't forgotten my pilates resolution, so I'm sure a hot bod is just around the corner.

And I wrote the first draft of my children's picture book yesterday. I'm pleased with it but I WISH I could draw. I can exactly see how I want the pictures to be, but I can't draw them. GRRRR!

Newest Venture

2011-01-31T16:01:00.003Z

Now I'm trying to write a children's book... and although I think I've got a good idea, it's very difficult indeed. Every word counts and all that.

I'm also about to start another writing course at the university - this one taught by Jackie Kay, whose writing I LOVE. The problem is that I shall feel a little intimidated. Although it's so blimming hard to get out of the door at 5pm on a Thursday evening - complicated arrangements involving our babysitter doing tea and even bed with the children, which is a step forward from her usual come in and watch tv when kids are already in bed gig! - that I think that I'll be too fraught to be intimidated. Phew -that was a long sentence. Maybe I should make them shorter for Jackie Kay!

I do hope something helps to make our fortune soon - budgeting is tiring and dispiriting I find.

Tigers

2011-01-27T22:31:00.002Z

This evening Hattie came roaring into the kitchen.
"I'm being a tiger", she announced.
"How scary!" I said.
"Well, I'm just pretendering Mummy", she said.
Lucky she told me.

Damn

2011-01-25T14:26:00.003Z

Damn - I was being so good. And now I've just eaten a (big) ciabatta with goat's cheese and tomato and am just about to finish the last of the Christmas stollen with my cup of tea. I've been rushing around all morning having had only half a cup of coffee at 7am this morning. I know, I know.... I should eat breakfast. That might prevent me feeling ravenous by lunchtime.

The gym must be resumed without delay.

Work-Stuff

2011-01-18T13:30:00.006Z

There's lots going on at the moment. I'm applying for a part-time teaching jobs (three days a week - heaven help our already more than crazy mornings!) I'm also hoping to do some private English tuition in the evenings - hence spending most of yesterday applying to a tutor agency. Very helpfully I've managed to lose my BA, MA and teacher training certificates so I'm having to re-apply for them to different universities which is quite a torturous process in itself.

And - listen to this. I think I'm going to start an online business. Scary? yes! I'm hoping to sell ethically traded lovely stuff. So - with a very tentative but excited mood upon me, I'm going to start building the steps I need to get this thing up and running. I'll let you know how it goes, in fact I might even blog a little about my experiences - and will put a link on here to my shiny new website when (ahem....) I actually have a shiny new website.

Needs must regarding all this energy being poured work-wise. I don't want to work full-time in teaching at the moment. Hattie is not yet at school, or even nursery. I'm only just two years in remission and teaching secondary school English to hordes of teenagers certainly isn't easy. I want to at least wait until all the kids are in school - Hattie will start in September 2012, which isn't so long away. And if I can develop a few more strings to my bow in terms of earning possibility, maybe we will be able to at the very least continue to pay the mortgage and put food on the table which is proving difficult at the moment.

This morning I've spent the whole time in the hospital with Ed who had banged his head hard at school yesterday. As you know Ed has haemophilia so a knock on the head can be very serious. I gave him treatment last night but this morning he was still complaining of having a headache. So off we went with Hattie in tow. He had another dose and a check-up and then arrived back to school in time for lunch. And I'm still feeling grotty - in fact a bit worse than that now. And it's bloody difficult coping with the kids feeling like this. Ho Hum.

Tuesday

2011-01-11T15:36:00.003Z

I'm having a frustrating day today. I've got dreadful sinisitis which makes me feel as if my head is in a wooly vice (if such a thing should exist) and that is just to start with.

I've waited in all morning with a cooped up toddler for a boiler maintenance person to come and give our boiler a service.

From 8am till 1pm.

Did he (am assuming it would be a 'he') turn up? No. When I rang they said that they had no record of an appointment. When I explained that I had written the appointment on the calendar in December while speaking on the phone to their company, the woman confessed that mine was the third call today complaining about appointments not being kept. Hmmmm.

I can't write.

This is a boring post.

Hattie didn't want her afternoon sleep on account of having done nothing all morning but wait for the gas man. So now she's driving me mad too.

And I have a headache. And a face ache. And I have my check-up at the hospital tomorrow - for which I'd like to be feeling fighting fit. Pyschologically that helps with walking past the wig stand and smelling THAT hospital smell which makes me want to run for the hills.

Ok - shouldn't have posted. Am going to make some tea.

Hello 2011

2011-01-05T15:00:00.002Z

Today the kids are back at school and Rog is back at work. Hattie is asleep and the house is peaceful. I've just finished taking down the Christmas decorations and wrapping them up for another year. And this year I'm not putting them away with dread in my heart as to whether I'll be around to unwrap them again next year.

I'm not out of the woods yet as far as my cancer returning is concerned. I'm only two years in remission and I've got to get to five. But somehow, for some reason that doesn't feel as scary as it did. I guess that time does heal, and that the dreadful truly harrowing year following Harriet's birth is fading from the foremost of my memory. I'm living with some distressing, and what I'm scared to think might be permanent, long-term side effect of the chemotherapy - but I'm alive.

I've a hospital check-up appointment next week: always anxiety provoking at the best of times, but I'm looking and feeling well (apart from that pesky sinusitis which often hovers around) and it was gratifying to hear at the New Year party how many people genuinely complimented me as to how healthy I was looking. In fact I have a suspicion that dancing until 3am might have been what sparked off the sinusitis. A far cry from the way I said goodbye to 2008, thank heavens.

And new year's resolutions? Pilates. And writing. Quite a good mix actually, I think.

Happy Christmas....of course

2010-12-29T18:48:00.002Z

A belated Happy Christmas to everyone and lots of good good wishes for the new year. I've been woefully inadequate in my posting and my reading of my favourite blogs. But full action will be resumed in the new year. It's just been a lovely - but full on - Christmas. Hattie has chicken pox - the first spots appeared on Christmas Day(!) and the others have variations of a sick/flu bug which is going around. But, still lovely despite all of this: the right combination of being at home and seeing all the family. And there's still the new year knees-up to come! Exhausting.

This Christmas

2010-12-14T13:09:00.007Z

It'll be turkey on Christmas Day - I'm making chestnut and sausage stuffing, my lovely roast potatoes (I hope they'll be lovely!), lots of other bits and pieces and chocolate prune and armangnac pudding with rum butter. It's my first Christmas Day in my own home with just us and the kids. My first Christmas day where I'm in charge instead of my mother. And I'm excited. I want it to be perfect.

We're off to stay with my mum, my brother and sister, their partners and my four small nephews on Boxing Day - and that'll be lovely too. The kids all adore each other; seven cousins aged between 7 and 6 months, with another coming in March, will certainly make for chaos. Proper family chaos that's for sure!

Due to my German heritage, Christmas Eve is important to us too. We exchange our presents entirely on Christmas Eve around a tree festooned with lit candles (try buying the tree candle holders anywhere in this country..... I've had to resort to ebay!), and we eat bockwurst and potato salad with rollmops. I'm not making the Stollen though - that's still the domain of my mum who makes perfect batches - I hope enough to take one home for us. We have a magical Christmas angel who comes to light the candles on the tree when it gets dark while the kids outside the room press their ears to the door to see if they can hear her speak or catch a glimpse of her out of a window as she flies away. When I was a child, Father Christmas didn't figure at all in our Christmas, he was always a mystery to me really; but for my kids I've had to build him into the story -without Father Christmas things are too complicated at school and with their friends, so now he comes and leaves the stockings later on Christmas Eve. In that way we can leave a mince pie and a glass of whisky for Santa and a carrot for the reindeer.... and attempt to amalgamate the two traditions. I'm always confused though and have to remind myself who does what - when I was a child the Angel came back to leave the stocking!

I'm coming up to two years in remission. This year I'm going to a New Year's Eve party. I haven't felt able to since the diagnosis. Two years ago at Christmas I was going through radiotherapy -and due to my poor prognosis I had very little confidence that I would be around for the next Christmas. Last Christmas I was still hounded by profound anxiety and ill health. This Christmas I think I believe I might just be here for the next. That's progress for me. I think I can face this New Year with new optimism. Life's a scary business that's for sure.

Weekend Bliss

2010-12-10T11:05:00.004Z

My mother is having the kids this weekend. I'm picking them up from school and driving them up the snowy - but thawing - A1 into Northumberland. And then I'm driving home without them. The joy! Two mornings without being woken at the crack of dawn, two evenings when we can act like relaxed, sane people - the world will be our oyster!

I don't think we have plans to do much really, and we're too skint for anything too glamorous. But, we can read the papers from cover to cover without interruption. We can watch more than one episode of our beloved Mad Men box-set without falling asleep because it's so late. We can please ourselves. A little light lunch in town? Yes please. An afternoon trip to the cinema? Quite possibly.

We've all been on top of each other during these past couple of weeks - and I've been getting quite stressed and more shouty than I've wanted to be. This weekend is coming at just the right time. Thanks, Mum.

Fed Up!

2010-12-06T13:19:00.002Z

It's so cold! It was -11 when we set off on the school run this morning. It took me the best part of half an hour to de-ice the car and get it vaguely driveable.

Because our backyard - where we usually park the car - and the back lane too, is like a snow-covered ice-rink, the car was parked about a ten minute walk away from the house on the main road. So the de-icing happened with the kids and Hattie in tow. Suffice to say Hattie did not enjoy the experience - and lets face it, neither did I.

And then we got stuck pulling away onto the road. Cue lots of wheel spinning and snow flying. We have a big heavy car which is not 4-wheel drive. And don't I know it? We're not equipped here in England for this kind of thing. Even up here in the north.

So - even the most everyday tasks become major deals. I suppose there is a sense of achievement which goes along with getting the kids in through the school doors. Hmmmm.

I've got lots to do - it's Christmas soon - hurry up and melt, snow. Enough already.

Cooking and Cooking and Cooking Some More

2010-11-28T14:36:00.005Z

And now to more prosaic matters. The cold cold weather and crazy snow has had the same old effect on me - I've been cooking like a dervish.

We've lit our woodburner every day for the past week - the warm, sauna-like heat a balm for the terrors which hit us when we venture out of the door. It's a military operation getting the kids to school or buying a pint of milk. I've given up entirely on the car for the time being.

And I'm cooking. I've made my jars of pear chutney, ready to give to people as Christmas presents. A certain skint state has forced presents of economy this year - but corny though it is I've had much more pleasure from my rows of beautifully sterilised, prettily lidded and labelled jars, than I have from lining up bought gifts in previous years. And there's still homemade lemon curd and honeycomb to be made for the same lucky recipients.

And I have been cooking my way through the latest Nigella Lawson book as I threatened to do. Today we're having meatloaf - not something I've really thought to cook before, being English through and through. But this looks delightful with slices of egg running through the middle, and bacon wrapped around the top. Not a vegetarian's idea of heaven, I'll agree, and certainly not the lightest of meals it's true. We don't eat that much meat ourselves - but there's something about the snow that makes me want to snuggle right down with food and warmth and forget about other more aesthetic pleasures.

I'll let you know how the meatloaf turns out.

Snow - thinking of Dickens!

2010-11-28T14:13:00.005Z

Snow weighing heavily in the gutters on the roofs. Snow lying wonkily along silhouetted branches. Snow feet deep on paths, hedges and pavements. Snow breathing, snow falling and snow settling on a new, stark landscape where nothing seems the same.

Old people, bent like sticks, wrapped up fruitlessly against the cold, struggle along the streets clutching packages of precious rations in their hands. With luck their tins and jars will last till the 'snap' is over - make a nice ham sandwich and a cup of tea against the cold! Breath rising in the cold house, saving the heating, they huddle next to the one bar on the heater.

Kids - blurs of colour aganst the white - slip and slide, their shrieks hanging in the cold air, static and frozen in time.

Cars, driven by the most intrepid and devil-may-care, slide and skid around the bends in the road, their tyres spurting sludgy snow onto those venturing out on foot.

And we, watching the snow falling, falling, falling tune our radios to the local stations to hear the latest on whether the school is open - radiant hope and exhilaration only a moment away for the children.

And it's still November.

Beer and a Latte?

2010-11-22T12:05:00.007Z

I spent the weekend pulling pints and making complicated coffees on the enormous coffee machine at my mum's picturesque pub on the beautiful Northumbrian coast. She and my sister run the pub - it has its own micro brewery which brews fantastic beer if you're into that sort of thing (I'm more a whisky girl myself), and serves amazing food in the evening, so much so that the bookings are taken weeks ahead.

This weekend and next they're short-staffed so I was drafted in. I was working in the evening too - remarkably stressful having to glide around taking orders, opening wine while trying to look as if I know what I'm doing when I don't! I wasn't invited into the kitchen. Thank heavens.

I was rather tired by the time I finished on Sunday afternoon. The weather was terrible all weekend and consequently the pub was constantly completely packed with walkers trying to wait out the deluge. Many hot chocolates were consumed (by them not me!)

I left the kids behind in Gateshead on Saturday morning with poor Roger who was exhausted at the start of the weekend and beyond exhausted by the end. When I walked back in last night at tea-time chaos reigned with Hattie shrieking, Ed upside down on the sofa and Martha giggling horrendously in that particular way she has.

I finished making the tea, and after the usual bathing and reading and all the other bed-time mayhem, sank onto the sofa for an hour before springing upwards once more to tackle the ironing. Roger who had arrived home on Friday from work with the usual pile of marking and other work, retreated upstairs to his study. And much, much later we muttered goodnight to each other before falling asleep. I think we've exchanged a couple of sentences -if that - this weekend. Crazy - but at least I got a lie-in on Sunday morning before I started work. That's more than Rog got.

De Duh De Duh... De-Duh

2010-11-15T14:14:00.004Z

I've started another writing course at the university here in Newcastle. It's full of confident people discussing the merits of the iambic meter. Hmmmm. And now I have to write a poem for Thursday. Why do I do these things?

To Newcastle

2010-11-09T22:58:00.002Z

Recently I went to hear Ian McEwan speak at the Newcastle University, just over the river from where we live in Gateshead. He was amazing - so clever, articulate and erudite. Well, what would you expect from Ian McEwan?

I left here at 6.30pm. Rog had just walked in the door while I attempted to make a pretty sharp exit. And I left - the kids to their bed-time routine and the house to its mess.

Later, after the event I walked on my own back to the car across the beautiful old campus, underneath the ivy-covered arches and I felt acutely transported back to another time in my life 20 years before.

You see, I did my undergraduate degree at this university, far away from what was my home then in the south of England and when I worked it out it really was 20 years ago - more - when I started.

Walking across the flagstones past the building in which I had studied, all those years ago, I passed a group of students - kids they looked to me - with arms linked, all chatting and laughing. I felt as if I was passing myself coming the other way. Would I recognise my 41 year-old self, filled with different pre-occupations, hurrying back in the other direction to my three children? Would I have expected my life to have been as it has?

Cutting through onto the road I'd parked my car, the hospital loomed dark against the night sky. And there too were so many memories. In that hospital was where I'd had my three babies, and also where I'd had all my cancer treatment. The actual ward three storeys up where I'd endured my chemotherapy and my bone marrow transplant had been due for demolition not long after my treatment finished. The building was shaped like a thin arm and for a long time the partial demolition cut open the end so one could see inside the three storeys at once like a tube with the end severed. Into that maw I could see the space where the beds had been, hanging open to the elements. Because there were people who were so very sick in that ward, fresh air was not allowed. Instead there was some kind of system which kept the air purified and hideously stuffy - it was one of the many discomforts about staying there. I would drive past and feel glad that there was air in there at last.

Now, however that part of the hospital has been entirely demolished, and the cancer centre rebuilt elsewhere in the city with flash new facilities and all mod-cons - that's where I have my appointments now. And back at the old hospital the space where I had all my treatment just doesn't exist anymore. It's thin air. And that makes me feel very very strange. It's almost like a dream - or a nightmare. It's almost like it didn't happen. But that ward, those rooms, that space where my worst nightmare did come true are etched in my mind and in my memory. I dream about them and they don't exist anymore. I cannot successfully convey how uneasy their absence makes me feel.

Driving home over the beautiful Tyne Bridge, the river lit up by lights on the Millenium Bridge and the Sage, I realised what a connection I have with the city of Newcastle. It's my home now - my adopted home. Twenty-two years ago I came here to study English at the university. I had a fabulous time and made friends and memories which last until today. Then I left for a few years - did my teacher training in the south and worked for a while down there. But the place lured me back and for the past 14 years I've lived in Northumberland and then the city. I've married here, had my children here, nearly died here and hopefully will grow old here.

I miss where I grew up and those country lanes along whch I walked and rode are part of my fabric but this city is a shape superimposed on top, blending and blurring until I almost can't tell which came first. My southern accent will forever mark me out as a newcomer, my children are already skilfuly mixing the Geordie and the South in their speech. And they truly belong to the city, born in the centre. This is their home.

(apologies for this re-posting!)

Birthdays Etc

2010-11-07T20:23:00.004Z

Just totally exhausted. A weekend of birthday celebrations have taken their toll - including yesterday taking 6 very over-excited children to the cinema and for pizza.

And now I have to iron lots and lots of shirts and a plethora of school uniform. I'm watching the X-Factor results but they're not helping. Am kind of fed up with the X-factor although have just seen Kylie who I do quite like in her pop-disco kind of way.

Another week of packed lunches and school runs loom. But I'm off to London on my own next weekend to see a friend so that'll keep me going.

Must head to the gym this week as well - have managed to enjoy quite a few birthday treats myself over the weekend!

Bonfire Night and Ed

2010-11-05T21:15:00.004Z

Out of our loft bedroom window we have a panoramic view over the city. This evening, after dark, on my way to put Hattie to bed we paused to watch the fireworks exploding in jewelled colours near and far, wherever we looked. Hattie was frightened and transfixed in pretty much equal measure.

It is Ed's birthday today - and I've always told him that fireworks went off everywhere in celebration on November 5th 2003. Being born on Bonfire Night clearly has nothing to do with it! And tonight he was off with his dad and sister to watch the fireworks at the park near our house.

But Ed has never been scared of fireworks, even as a very young child - while Martha has always been terrified until this year. And tonight he told with me with entire seriousness that the reason for this was that he'd heard fireworks just after birth. True he was born at 7.30 in the evening which is firework time, but he was also minutes old and in a hospital. But who am I to argue?

Anyhow, I'm excited and pleased for him that he's reached 7. But he's not a baby anymore - he's far from being that newborn in a spotty babygrow. And I'm sad at the way time marches on.

Tomorrow we're taking Ed and some friends to the cinema and for a pizza. Sounds rather exhausting!

Now, it's an episode of Mad Men and then bed to continue 'The Slap'. What an exciting life I lead.

To Bhutan

2010-11-04T13:16:00.004Z

I got up at 3am this morning to take my mum to the airport. She's going to Bhutan - how amazing is that?

As she disappeared into the airport out of the rainy night dragging her bag behind her, I had to suppress a fairly large pang of envy. While she was heading adventure-wise, I was heading back to making three packed lunches and the school run.

Oh how things change - the boot is on the other foot now. I remember so clearly today, my mum dropping me at Victoria train station aged 19 with a rucksack I couldn't carry, terrified and starting an overland trip through Europe: final destination - Kathmandu. A few years later after university, I travelled in the States and then went to Canada for a fabulous solo trip. And in between those trips were many visits to Florence, Rome, Berlin and Paris to name but a few. I think my mum was always envious. My parents couldn't really do a huge amount of travel abroad due to my dad's haemophilia as well as more latterly his struggle with HIV. They travelled in their campervan around Scotland and Ireland and a little in France but that was really the limit.

Now, that my dad has so very sadly been dead for the past 12 years, my mother has her footloose freedom just as I've lost mine. And now it's me waving her off with wanderlust in my heart.

I'm sending her all my love on her travels. She's pretty brave really, setting off on her own at 62 to a relatively little-known place a long way from home.

Diary of a Harrassed Mother

2010-11-02T15:20:00.002Z

Kate is hassled. She is the often failing mother of Ed (7), delightful in a loud, herd-of elephants, trumpeting sort of way, Martha (5) quite self-possessed and very stroppy already and Harriet (2) who is convinced she’s in charge, and often actually is.

6.20: Alarm goes off. Or rather annoying clock radio starts playing ‘Today’ just as the business news starts. Through my sleep fuddled brain I remember that this is Tuesday. If this is Tuesday then I need to get up especially quickly. Ed who has haemophilia has to have one of his IV injections this morning. Preferably while husband is still home so that he can hold his hand (and mine) through the agonising process.

I shower at the speed of light, throw on whichever clothes are on the top of the pile of clean ones which came up from the drier (ahem, a couple of days ago actually) but haven’t yet been put away, and rush downstairs ignoring Hattie’s shouts to be ‘getted from my bed’. Trying not to trip over Martha who is following me like a shadow grumbling quietly, I rush between the bedrooms laying out clothes for Hattie and school uniform, peering with bleary eyes to see if yesterday’s jumpers will do again for at least today. Ed’s usually won’t.

7.am: Ed’s treatment. I find the vein first time thank heavens, so not too much trauma to us all. Ed disappears straight away back upstairs to continue building his enormous lorry terminal which takes up his whole room and involves every bit of furniture, cushion, piece of bedding and wooden bricks he can lay his hands on. Weakly I raise my voice at his retreating back and implore him not to make a mess. This phrase falls on deaf ears.

7.15: porridge on to cook (now a daily must since I watched a programme about salt in breakfast cereals - damn TV). I did remember to switch on loaded dishwasher last night though unlike the night before. This represents an achievement.
Harriet appears downstairs with her dad who has got her dressed. This is his job every morning – hooray. She declares that it’s not rainy enough for a ‘fudd’. She means flood – and has been absolutely obsessed with them since the week before when I had to drive through a flash flood on the way back from picking up the kids from school. Granted actually it was scary – I had a nasty moment when I thought I couldn’t go backwards or forwards. Shades of ‘We’re Going on a Bear Hunt’. We had to go through it. It’s a big topic for Hattie.

7.20: Packed lunches next: husband’s first and then the kids. Why didn’t I make them last night? What’s wrong with me? Moment’s pain, long-term gain. Remember that. I hate packed lunches. Have to dodge cross teacher husband running around flinging things into his bag and muttering about how late he is again.

7.25: Porridge is served. No – I haven’t finished the lunches yet; I’m multi-tasking. I quickly chop up strawberries and chuck on blueberries – see, how spoilt they are. They would of course infinitely prefer coco-pops and after clearing up the sticky mess which Hattie leaves all over herself and the table, so would I. They’re allowed corn-flakes and things at weekends. Mainly so I don’t have to make the bloody porridge.

7.30: husband leaves for work and children eat their porridge. I finish the lunches dodging Ed’s accusing and critical attempts to see what horrors I’m putting in there. ‘Why can’t we have crisps every day like everyone else?’ is a constant and very tedious refrain.

7.30: I long for peace and quiet, a strong coffee and an almond croissant. Maybe a long and comfortable train commute (first-class? why not) and then a lovely day writing successful and witty pieces in a fun, lively environment. Glass of wine after work? Why not. Etc

7.35: I shoo/usher/yell at kids as they make their way upstairs to get dressed. The notion of brushing teeth before putting on uniforms is somehow so terribly hard to grasp. This is important to a mummy but extremely unimportant to an Ed who often appears back downstairs with toothpaste all over yesterday’s carefully preserved school sweatshirt. Martha shouts several times about what Ed isn’t doing to get ready, while running giggling like a dervish between bedrooms. Butter woudn’t melt with Martha.

7.45: Kids still not downstairs. Plenty of strange and very loud hootings, rumblings and thumpings from Ed’s bedroom. My blood pressure is starting to rise. Sometime ago I came to the startling conclusion that I like quiet in the mornings. Unfortunately I’d already had the kids by then. Meanwhile Hattie is still slowly smearing porridge around the kitchen, eating the fruit but nothing else.

8.00: Kids have been practically dragged downstairs as I can’t bear the noise upstairs. I’m filling school-bags with reply slips for photographs, parents’ evening and payment for music lessons. Both Ed and Martha have been singled out as being musical (cue much maternal pride and bemusement) and have been offered lessons at school on a scheme to nurture early talent. Great of course despite having to lug a cello and violin as well as bags, packed lunches and Hattie up the steep hill to school. Oh and having to pay £20 a week.
Hattie is hosed down and gets down from the table. She immediately tries to take whatever Ed is holding and shrieks when he won’t let her, “Give it, you little boy boy”, which is her most desperate insult. Sometimes mummy is a little boy boy too.

8.15: Martha has her hair brushed and wriggles and complains while I try to put it into a neat pony-tail like other girls have. I am torn between being pleased and annoyed that she is not interested in looking pretty and neat. I wet the brush to tackle Ed’s unruly mop and straighten his collar and check he has his trousers on the right way round. Hattie’s shoes are discovered upstairs in yesterday’s swimming bag (??) and coats are forced on.

8.30: In the car. I put on make-up quickly by rear-view mirror, having realised that I look completely wild. Cello, violin, bags, packed lunches, my hand-bag, shopping bags for exciting trip to Sainsburys, and spare clothes for baby are strewn in the back. And off we go.

Christy Moore

2010-11-01T22:56:00.002Z

I've just been to see Christy Moore singing at the fabulous Sage Concert Hall in Gateshead. What a beautiful voice that man has. His music is deeply moving. I enjoyed every second - I literally felt transported.

I'm going to force Hattie to listen to him all day tomorrow on my ipod. She needs some lessons in soul.

Whisky, Red and 'The Slap'

2010-10-30T20:38:00.005+01:00

Home from Scotland just in time to see the X Factor. That said, after 8 hours of Hattie shouting in the car (with Ed and Martha contributing) over Harry Potter on the Ipod - I'm not sure that I can cope with anything noisier than a darkened room and a very large whisky.

And.... very exciting. My copy of the December edition of Red was waiting for me on the doormat. And there, in black and white was MY ARTICLE!! The photos aren't too bad considering I'm not exactly a natural supermodel. It feels a bit wierd but I'm very pleased with it.

Definitely a darkened room and some whisky.

P.S Has anyone read 'The Slap' by Christos Tsiolkas? I read mixed reviews but am now, only a little way in, completely hooked. So far so good I think.

Dad

2010-10-29T16:31:00.006+01:00

We've been up here in the Highlands of Scotland for the past week and are finally packing up to come home. It's been a lovely week - all the family here at the start: nephews, my brother and sister and my mum, and then people gradually drifting home until all that's left is our immediate family and my mum. The weather has been truly Scottish - rainy and windy, so much so that today I haven't really fancied putting my nose out of the door.

We all try to get together around this time each year. Twelve years ago my dad died at the age of 54 after a protracted struggle with HIV - contracted after he was given infected blood products with which to treat his haemophilia. I was 28, my siblings younger and my mum was 50. He didn't get to meet our partners or any of his 8 grandchildren. His death tore our family apart - we all adored him and nothing has seemed the same for our family since.

A year after he died we scattered his ashes up here in the Summer Isles at a place he'd always loved and now we gather each October just to be together.

I truly miss my Dad. I got on with him so well. He was a deeply humorous, very intelligent man - and we would sometimes talk late into the night about anything and everything if the opportunity presented itself. He would have been a tremendous support for me in the past couple of awful years. But so much more than that, he would have been so happy to see my beautiful family, and such a lovely grandfather to the kids. We've all missed out. But him more than anyone of course.

So, dad - I want to say that I miss you. But you know that - or maybe you do if you're somewhere around. Now though I have to go and get your youngest granddaughter from her afternoon sleep. Cross Hattie and you get a cross Hattie is all I'll say.

No Results and Nigella

2010-10-19T14:01:00.003+01:00

Well - no results I guess means good results?

I'm still feeling under the weather and inexplicably really feeling more than a little low, but I did haul my ass to the gym yesterday so I'm pleased about that.

I've just bought Nigella Lawson's new cookbook, 'Kitchen', in an attempt to cheer myself up. It's truly lovely - maybe I should cook my way through every recipe in the book a la Julie Powell and Julia Child - but don't worry, if I do I won't blog about it! I might just mention the odd delightful concoction.

Damn! Hattie's just woken up too early from her afternoon sleep after a crazy hailstorm which clattered in a very un-necessary loud way on the slopy loft roof and velux windows. I could hear it on the baby monitor which we still use because she's two floors up when I'm downstairs. Shall I ignore her sporadic cries of 'mummeeee' for a while as well?

Quick cup of tea I think.

Today

2010-10-13T20:37:00.005+01:00

So, I went to the hospital today. The consultant checked my back and felt my neck for lumps. She acknowledged that it was indeed lumpy and when I asked her if she was worried she said she wasn't. Immediately after that she asked me when they last took blood and said they should do it today. I'm trying to imagine that it was just a co-incidence that she decided to mention that directly after feeling my neck. I guess it is just routine - that said, they haven't been checked since April. The doctor seemed fairly casual and I made an appointment to come back for my next routine check-up in January. I hope she's not thinking that she'll see me sooner.

Blood results won't tell me directly anything definitely about whether the cancer has returned or not. They test for liver function, red and white blood cells and also there is a check on whether a certain scary marker has risen or not. If that marker has risen, that can indicate tumour growth, but it doesn't necessarily. Then they start those horrible CT scans. Even writing this is making me feel panicky.

Lets hope the blood tests were just routine and that they're fine. Oh my God.... I hope.

Tomorrow

2010-10-12T13:41:00.004+01:00

I'm feeling low. Tomorrow I have one of my three-monthly check up appointments at the hospital. If you've been following me for a while, you know how I feel about these, and if you haven't you can no doubt guess.

As usual when these appointments roll around I'm feeling rubbish. It's sod's law that I should have sinusitis just before it - something which harrassed me all of last year but which has stayed away for longer this year as my immune system improves. But now I've painful lumps in my neck which are always a cause for concern, despite logic telling me they're not cancer lumps but sinus-y,virus-y lumps. I'm feeling exhausted which is a cause for concern despite too many late nights, sinusitis, and the worry which sits very heavily on my shoulders at times. And I don't want to walk in through the doors of the hospital feeling anything less than brilliant.

I'm taking Hattie with me. My friend has offered to look after her for me but I've decided that I need her. As much as anything else she is a talisman for me - to ward off the fear, and to make me feel normal..... not someone living with cancer, living with the terror of dying young. I can't disappear into myself too much when I'm in the waiting room if Hattie's running around - although I may regret it after I've been there a while with a crazy toddler.

I wish I could run away from everything sometimes. Still, time ticks onwards and I'm still well....I hope. I think the emotional legacy of what happened to me is something which will take a lot longer to fade. On the surface I look fine - but underneath things are often in turmoil.

Apprentice Joy

2010-10-06T22:07:00.002+01:00

I love 'The Apprentice'! Oh how I love 'The Apprentice'. My all-time favourite TV show (maybe apart from Mad Men) is back. Hooray! Could they all be any more self-deluding? It's hard to know whether to laugh or cry. I've been trying to stick to my diet but I HAD to eat some Smarties in celebration.

Tigers

2010-10-05T10:39:00.002+01:00

Here's a poem I wrote a while ago.

Fighting Tigers

In Ancient Rome
slaves would fight savage, crazy tigers.
The stadiums - filled with screaming, lustful citizens -
must have echoed; ricocheting back to the roaring crowd.
But close up, I’d imagine that things felt a little different.

The sweaty piss-stained legs just holding the body upright.
The stave, sharpened to a comic point,
the roar of the crowd a scratchy whisper
as cat creeps nearer – great stripy tail twitching.
Carnivorous breath imagined hot on the cheek,
Or legs
Or back
While heavy barbed claw, quick as a viper
swipes the very life from you.

Thrusting a stick was never a good defence
in the face of such menace.

And so it is today.
The tiger I fight is a different kind – you’ll have guessed.
The snarling stripy metaphor not even a good one.
I should have tried harder.

The immediate terror, the fear is buried.
It doesn’t have a shape, or fabulous fur
burning bright.

My tiger, to flog a dead horse,
Is nebulous.
Whether it gets me in the end or not depends on luck;
on a body sensible enough to recognise and destroy
what hasn’t been invited and which shouldn’t have come.

Maybe it helped the Roman slave to be able to see what
he was fighting.
Not much though in the end.
He still wound up dead.

Fighting tigers is not really advisable.

Under any circumstances.

To Newcastle

2010-10-01T13:25:00.010+01:00

Yesterday evening I went to hear Ian McEwan speak at the Newcastle University, just over the river from where we live in Gateshead. He was amazing - so clever, articulate and erudite. Well, what would you expect from Ian McEwan?

I left here at 6.30pm. Rog had just walked in the door while I attempted to make a pretty sharp exit. And I left - the kids to their bed-time routine and the house to its mess.

Later, after the event I walked on my own back to the car across the beautiful old campus, underneath the ivy-covered arches and I felt acutely transported back to another time in my life 20 years before.

You see, I did my undergraduate degree at this university, far away from what was my home then in the south of England and when I worked it out it really was 20 years ago - more - when I started.

Walking across the flagstones past the building in which I had studied, all those years ago, I passed a group of students - kids they looked to me - with arms linked, all chatting and laughing. I felt as if I was passing myself coming the other way. Would I recognise my 41 year-old self, filled with different pre-occupations, hurrying back in the other direction to my three children? Would I have expected my life to have been as it has?

Cutting through onto the road I'd parked my car, the hospital loomed dark against the night sky. And there too were so many memories. In that hospital was where I'd had my three babies, and also where I'd had all my cancer treatment. The actual ward three storeys up where I'd endured my chemotherapy and my bone marrow transplant had been due for demolition not long after my treatment finished. The building was shaped like a thin arm and for a long time the partial demolition cut open the end so one could see inside the three storeys at once like a tube with the end severed. Into that maw I could see the space where the beds had been, hanging open to the elements. Because there were people who were so very sick in that ward, fresh air was not allowed. Instead there was some kind of system which kept the air purified and hideously stuffy - it was one of the many discomforts about staying there. I would drive past and feel glad that there was air in there at last.

Now, however that part of the hospital has been entirely demolished, and the cancer centre rebuilt elsewhere in the city with flash new facilities and all mod-cons - that's where I have my appointments now. And back at the old hospital the space where I had all my treatment just doesn't exist anymore. It's thin air. And that makes me feel very very strange. It's almost like a dream - or a nightmare. It's almost like it didn't happen. But that ward, those rooms, that space where my worst nightmare did come true are etched in my mind and in my memory. I dream about them and they don't exist anymore. I cannot successfully convey how uneasy their absence makes me feel.

Driving home over the beautiful Tyne Bridge, the river lit up by lights on the Millenium Bridge and the Sage, I realised what a connection I have with the city of Newcastle. It's my home now - my adopted home. Twenty-two years ago I came here to study English at the university. I had a fabulous time and made friends and memories which last until today. Then I left for a few years - did my teacher training in the south and worked for a while down there. But the place lured me back and for the past 14 years I've lived in Northumberland and then the city. I've married here, had my children here, nearly died here and hopefully will grow old here.

I miss where I grew up and those country lanes along whch I walked and rode are part of my fabric but this city is a shape superimposed on top, blending and blurring until I almost can't tell which came first. My southern accent will forever mark me out as a newcomer, my children are already skilfuly mixing the Geordie and the South in their speech. And they truly belong to the city, born in the centre. This is their home.

Thursday Moaning and Hattie's New Pants

2010-09-30T13:34:00.004+01:00

I'm tired of being skint. I know that I'm a whole lot better off in many many ways than the majority of the world's population. But that doesn't help me feel better today, although it damn well should. I had to squeeze a measly £20 out of the cashpoint to put enough diesel in the car to stop the fuel warning light from flashing.

I can't find work and I can't see how I can fit work into the week along with the kids- but many many do just that I know. I NEED to earn lots through my writing. Is that too much to ask?

I'm feeling very very tired and am having strange pains and strange skin things going on. Underneath everything else I'm worried that the cancer has returned. I'm seeing my consultant in a couple of weeks - an appointment I'm already dreading.

And I'm toilet training Hattie. Cue total obsession with lovely, new, stripy pants - pulling trousers down to admire them approximately every couple of minutes, lots of theatrical sitting on potty complete with arranging hands on knees to best effect. Lots of jumping up declaring that 'nothing's coming!' and then wet pants and trousers a few moments later. She doesn't seem to have grasped that it's supposed to matter if you wet yourself and that you're meant to wee in the potty. To her - wet pants? wet potty? C'est la vie. It's all good.

Getting On and My Cat Bill

2010-09-28T10:56:00.004+01:00

I wish I was as flexible as my cat Bill. He's just jumped high onto our wall with seemingly no effort at all. He has all the insouciant casual, unselfconscious grace of the young, as well as a completely wonderful long stripy tabby tail. I see this beauty in the children too (not the tail as well though thankfully). No achy backs, strange pains down the side of legs. They can fall asleep in the car with their heads at strange and wondrous angles to their heads, and wake unscathed ready to spring into action. No paracetamol for them just to get through the day.

In small and insidious ways - and some of them not so small and insidious - my body is hinting that I might be getting older than the 25 that I feel myself to be, inside my head at least. I realised the other day that my eyes weren't quite as x-ray like as they have been. I've been blessed with very good eyesight - have always wowed the optician if I go for a check-up. And I've always taken my good eyesight for granted. But although, heaven forbid, I think I'm some way away from needing glasses I think I can detect an almost imperceptible change. And not for the better.

I can understand why my 62 year old mother says that she can't believe she's 62. I imagine I'd feel that way at 92 - although if the creaky body continues to go the way it inevitably must, I'll no doubt look it. Quick - run to the Pilates class.

Christmas Comes Early

2010-09-21T14:03:00.006+01:00

Yesterday I had to have my photograph taken with the kids to go along with my article which is coming out in the Christmas edition of Red Magazine. A more stressful and potentially humiliating activity would be hard to plan in my opinion.

The make-up artist(!! No, no heavy make-up!!), sent by the magazine, was due to come at 2.45, and the photographer travelling from London up to the North of the country just to take our picture, was coming at 3pm. The kids were due home at 3.30 and then we all were heading to the park, dressed in scarves and boots and hats, despite the warm weather, in order to pretend it was Christmas. I'd drafted my mum to come too for moral support, and bribed the kids' good behaviour (and mum's!) with the promise of pizzas and special yoghurts with special corners which are the current longed-for treat in our house.

I had been dreading this - by the time the morning came, I was in an agony of nerves. I HATE HATE HATE having my photograph taken. I don't know what to do with my face. My eyes start to water with the effort of trying to look 'normal'.

The photographer was lovely though and with gritted teeth I posed as best I could. Ed, though, absolutely loved it. He chatted/ flirted with the pretty photographer (yes, he's only 6) and posed and posed and posed. She paid him the ultimate compliment and said that he had a look of the young Mick Jagger! Wow, I hope my son grows up to be as beautiful as him. I cheered up immensely then. He seems a bit of a show-man too, my Ed. Oh dear.

Martha looked beautiful and Hattie looked beautiful and uncooperative.

Now all I have to do is wait with toe-curling anticipation to see how I look. Heaven help me!

Monday

2010-09-13T16:35:00.007+01:00

I went to London this weekend to stay with a friend. I had a lovely time with no kids with me. I could do exactly as I pleased. Thanks Sophia.

But, just to remind me where my responsibilities truly lie...

This morning Ed woke with the biggest bruise into the muscle on his calf that I have EVER seen. It was hot and swollen and looked terrible. I swear it covered most of the poor child's leg. He tried valiantly to persuade me that he didn't need the Factor 8 injection which treats his haemophilia, but in the end (after taking him to school and then realising he really DID need his treatment, and bringing him home again to do it, toddler in tow) I gave him a big dose. I found the vein first time and all worked perfectly. This was only the second time I'd done this on my own without Rog for moral support, so I was very pleased with myself. I dropped him off at school and proceeded with my scintillating day which was as follows:

Go to supermarket in pouring rain with Hattie and do huge and horrifyngly expensive weekly shop.

Realise I haven't had any breakfast, and feel very hungry while shopping, nobly avoiding the resulting temptation to fill the trolley with loads of unhealthy things.

Drive home and unload Hattie and shopping - still in the pouring rain.

Make Hattie her lunch and unpack said HUGE weekly shop while she eats it. Feel even hungrier but plan relaxing lunch once Hattie is in bed for her afternoon nap which she keeps forgetting to sleep through....but that's another story. Start to feel a bit weak through lack of food as Hattie slowly savours every bite.

Hattie finishes and just as I'm about to head bed-wards with her the phone rings. It's Ed's school. They're worried about his leg - can I come and check it?

I put Hattie back in the car and drive back to the school.

Poor Ed's leg looks even worse - It is clear that I can't leave him at school, go home and put Hattie to bed and eat my lunch. I need to take him to the hospital.

Off we go.

Two hours later, after having contained an increasingly hellish Hattie in a treatment room with high examination couches big enough to scramble onto and then fall off, expensive looking equipment to fiddle with, and taps which automatically turn on when you put your hands under - imagine the delight?!, we leave the hospital just in time for Martha to finish school. Ed has been fussed over appropriately and has been changed to twice weekly home treatment (hooray, more battles) and I STILL hadn't eaten....anything at all.

And I needed to give him another treatment before he went to bed. Before that I cooked the kids tea and once they were in bed, cooked our meal. Now Ed has just been sick all over his bedding - copiously! Aaargh.

It's 10.30pm and I haven't tidied the kitchen or done the dishwasher or put another load of washing on. Roger works well into the night most nights so he can't be depended on to do these things. And I'm writing on my blog - because I want to. It's the first bit of time alone I've had all day. But now it's getting late and I'll have to stop. I've exciting news regarding my article for the magazine, but it's going to have to wait.

By the way I've been trying to fix my comment form thing because I think it wasn't working properly and was annoying to use, but I'm not sure if I have! Is this better? If you can bear to leave a comment, please let me know!

Roll on tomorrow.

Can't Write... Just Can't

2010-09-10T14:01:00.005+01:00

What I would like to know is..... why, despite reading lots and lots and lots, can't I write 2000 words in the form of a decent short story??? How can it possibly be so unbelievably difficult. Yesterday I sat down in front of the netbook (an achievment in itself) and wrote 750 words worth of rubbish.

F. Scott Fitzgerald I am not.

Damn Damn Damn.

September - Can it Really Be That Time Already?

2010-09-07T14:08:00.007+01:00

The kids went back to school today. They felt nervous - new teachers and new classes, and I felt nervous for them.

But for Martha her nerves were mollified to a large degree by her shiny new uniform. For Ed, fairly black and blue from haemophilia related incidents (ie Ed being silly!), I was worried all over again that I have to trust someone else with his care. I have to trust that the school have remembered and keep remembering that if he bangs his head someone has to pay attention. I hope his new teacher knows these things - I went in to see her this morning to quickly chat and she seemed dismissive, but I guess I should give her the benefit of the doubt on the first morning of the school year. Ed and I have such a volatile relationship, but I love him more than my life - he's growing up - 7 in November! - and he wants some independence and I have to let him find his way without cocooning him in cotton wool. And I don't. Ed plays football, climbs on everything, rushes around crazily like any other boy. But he does have such a serious condition and I worry that because he is so unconcerned and blase, that rubs off on the people around him who are responsible for his care.

Martha's new teacher is Ed's old teacher. She's great.... so that's alright.

And Hattie apparently doesn't sleep anymore in the afternoons. That's ok then. It's not as if I've been longing for the peaceful afternoons in term-time when I can catch up with jobs at home, write my blog and do my other writing. It's not as if I feel as if I'll go slightly crazy home with a bonkers 2 year old all day.

And that's about it at the moment. I've been a bit absent from blogland this summer- I'll try to post more often - even if I do have Hattie hanging off me.

Oh - and I have to go back to work - we're too damn skint. I need to try to find some teaching which will fit in with everything else. Hmmm. To fit in with the cooking, cleaning, washing and shopping and general child stuff which seems to quite satisfactorily fill the week on its own.

Green Man Festival

2010-08-24T21:48:00.015+01:00

Oh oh oh the rain in Wales. We put the tent up in TORRENTIAL rain on Friday lunch-time which didn't stop until Saturday evening. We were so wet - the tent was wet before it was up, and wet inside when it was up. The kids were dripping, I was wet through to my underwear despite big waterproof coat and wellies. Because it continued to rain - nothing dried, so we continued to be wet.....for a long long time.

I must confess to having several rather large sense of humour failures - and would have packed up and come home at several points over the weekend was the car not parked a 30 minute walk from the tent, and had we not had so much (wet) kit that it needed at least 4 journeys to get it all back again.

And the festival? It was great. It would have been more fun and less totally knackering without an increasingly overtired 2 year old, and without the rain and without the mud. I've never seen mud like it although I gather that festival old-timers are well used to such a phenomenon.

I was all set to see the Unthanks and the Flaming Lips on Saturday night. It had (finally) stopped raining and all I needed to do was get Hattie to sleep in her buggy rather than her soggy bed in the tent. Ed and Martha had been promised a reasonably late night and were buzzing with excitement, and even I was feeling the festival vibe just a little bit.

And would she sleep? Not a bit of it. We pushed her here, we pushed here there - and she just squealed more and twisted more and showed no signs of slumber. By 8.30 pm I gave up, took her back to the tent on my own where she immediately fell into a deep and happy sleep and I sat reading a book by dwindling light with the sounds of happy music fans in the distance. Rog came back a while later, we put the others to bed and then off he went again to listen to the Flaming Lips stumbling back in again at 1.30 am. To be fair, he did offer to stay so that I could go but I was in too much of a grump by then.

And by all accounts that night was the best night ever at the Green Man Festival.

By Sunday, all was blue sky and sunshine as we packed away, and with the bloody car full of all the soggy, muddy kit - I began to feel a sneaking fondness for the whole dirty, smelly festival experience. None of us had had a shower since Friday, the toilet facilities left much to be desired especially with small kids in tow - but somehow I realised I was just a little bit sad to leave. And I even might just consider going again. Not until Hattie is at least four though - or maybe three. That's next year... I need to learn my Green Man lesson!

Home

2010-08-16T10:39:00.004+01:00

And now we're home after a long long drive in the car on Saturday with a two year old who managed to stay awake, with only a 20 minute window in the morning, until 10.30 pm when we finally got back.

Arriving with 3 sleepy and cross kids - we'd dropped my step-son at his mum's on the way - a car-full (and I mean full) of stuff, with a boot we couldn't open until we'd taken all the bikes off, was not the best of fun. Also the cats had left us a few 'presents' - need I say more - around the kitchen, some quite old and unpleasant. The teenage neighbour we were paying to feed them and let them in and out (early-ish every morning, and late-ish every night) hadn't taken her job as seriously as we'd have liked. So once the kid were in bed, we spent a (happy!!) hour scrubbing and cleaning before sinking into bed. It's a cattery next time we go away longer for a weekend I think!

A big trip to the supermarket yesterday and piles of washing to be done compounded the 'back home' feeling. But we're off to Wales for the weekend camping at the festival - I say 'but' as if that's a cheery thought, in fact, with the weather helpfully dreadful as only English summer weather can be, camping is seeming a little daunting.

Will I be relieved when school starts again? Yes and no. We are having a good time really - and we're lucky that Rog being a teacher means we have lots of time off together. So things are ok really. And I've finished my article - give or take a little tweaking, so I'm pleased about that too.

Rain

2010-08-11T21:56:00.006+01:00

It's raining and raining and raining up here in Scotland. It's the kind of rain that you'd take a deep breath to go out in even waterproofed from head to toe. So we've kind of been cooped up today. Consequently I cooked - and now we've all eaten far too much spaghetti bolognese and apple and strawberry crumble. Strange combination know but hey we're in the middle of nowhere you know and I had to use the fruit I had. It tasted good.

Now Roger's making me watch a programme on the Normans - actually it's quite interesting but after the fuss I made about it I'm determined not to admit that.

I think we'll have to do some exercise tomorrow whatever the weather. Or maybe I'll just get stuck into my book for a while longer.

Stac Pollaidh and Much More

2010-08-08T21:49:00.005+01:00

We're having a lovely time up here in the Highlands after a rather inauspicious start. Inauspicious as the kids were being monstrous and I couldn't imagine enjoying spending large quantities of time with them (I love them.... but you know!!!). But things seemed to have settled. Or rather Ed has settled down which has helped us all to settle. And he has quite a lot to cope with - giving him his regular treatment for his haemophilia has, for the past couple of weeks, been awful. I haven't been able to find a vein and the resultant poking and re-positioning of the needle has meant that Ed got very stressed. Not to mention his mother. Tonight he has the most enormous bruise wrapped around his shin and calf and his knuckles on one hand are black with a new bruise and his hand swollen and puffy. We're trying again tomorrow -it should have been tonight but he was vehement in his determination not to have the treatment. So we compromised, trying to give him some sense of control over his condition. But if I can't do it tomorrow morning we'll have to make the 4 hour round trip to Inverness where the nearest hospital is, so wish me luck.

But back to Scotland. We have been for a picnic bike ride and been on several long walks and I have achieved something which I have always wanted to do since long before I was ill. A couple of days ago, while my mum (who was up here for a few days) looked after the children for us, Roger and I climbed a mountain near the house called Stac Pollaidh. It's not the highest mountain in the world (607 metres) but it signified to me a return to good health and reasonable fitness which nothing else quite could have done for me in the same way. It was hard going and the last part was a real scramble but reaching the top was such a kick.

We had coffee from our flask up there on the top of the mountain surrounded by nature at its most fabulous and powerful - and I felt literally and figuratively on top of the world. I've taken pictures and when I'm home I'll post them on the blog because I want to show you what I did. In our family I've always been known as the bookworm who'd rather stay behind and read than stir myself in any strenuous way. But if my illness has changed me in any fundemental way I think it is that I value my body, its health and fitness and what it can do, much more highly than I ever did before. I still want to lose weight but I'm less focussed on that now. I'm enjoying being active and eating well - not a bad way to live I reckon.

Talking of books - I've just finished Audrey Niffenegger's book, 'Her Fearful Symmetry' which I really enjoyed. I didn't think I'd found it scary until I had a night of terrifying dreams at least ostensibly connected with it. Now I'm reading Penelope Lively's latest novel, 'Family Albumn'. I love Lively's writing - I read her children's books avidly when I was a kid: 'The Ghost of Thomas Kempe', 'The Wild Hunt of Hagworthy' - and her books for adults are beautiful with her intricate and unsettling characters.

And I have a real, proper deadline by which I have to send my piece to the magazine I mentioned before. It's going to go in the Christmas edition of this upmarket and glossy magazine. And I'm going to be paid! Proper money! And a reasonable amount too. I'm totally excited and totally terrified and have major writer's block. The deadline is August 25th - so I'd better get moving. Suddenly it seems an impossible task. But I do really hope it might be the start of something for me so I want it to be the absolute best it can be. No pressure then. And writing it while trying to have a family holiday is certainly not easy as I'm discovering.

We're here until next Saturday and then home for a few days to prepare the camping gear, before we head off to Wales for The Green Man Festival. I'm kind of looking forward to it and dreading it in equal measures. It's that obstreperous 2 year-old again putting a spanner in the works. But when she talks about Incy Wincy 'pider climbing up the pout - all is forgiven. Oh the folly of parenthood.

What's Going On

2010-07-29T20:11:00.007+01:00

I'm getting into cycling! The whole family are getting into cycling. We have been given by a friend, whose kids have grown too big, a sort of trailer thing for Hattie which attaches around the wheel of an adult's bike. Rog's not mine, I voted early on!

But we're off to Scotland on Saturday for a couple of weeks, and we've decided we HAVE to take the bikes and the trailer with us so we can go off for lovely picnics in the wilds. However we also have 4 kids (my 12 year-old step-son is coming too) and lots and lots of stuff as you can imagine. So for the past couple of days we have explored EVERY option you can imagine to carry 5 bikes and 6 people on a 9 hour car journey. Tomorrow we're fitting a tow-bar and a flash bike carrier for a fair amount of money. The picnics had better be worth it!

It is lovely to be considering such things - two summers ago surviving chemotherapy, a bone marrow transplant and radiotherapy were the preoccupations which filled my mind.

I've had some tentative good news regarding my writing. A big glossy national magazine are interested in commissioning an article - but it's not final yet! I'm excited though anyhow. I feel as if some of my recent hard work might be paying off at last. Watch this space!!!

P.S. on a completely different note - does anyone else have an extremely obstreperous 2 year old who runs the whole household with the ease of an experienced tyrant? Mine is very exhausting..... I'm trying not to wish for her to become 13 when at least she'll be sulky and silent and .... oh hang-on... argumentative and difficult. Hmmmm. Well, 16 then. Ok, 35.

Ear-muffs at the ready for that long car journey!

School Holidays

2010-07-23T13:50:00.004+01:00

It's the last Friday of the school term. In an hour I'm going to fetch the kids from school and then the long six week holiday stretches ahead! I don't really mean to make it sound like that. We have plans - camping in Yorkshire, heading off to the Highlands of Scotland and camping in Wales - and that'll be fun I'm sure, but oh so exhausting.

I'm feeling well actually - so exhausting doesn't really matter I guess. But I'm enjoying my peaceful space in the afternoons while Hattie sleeps and I can write. And I'm really writing - committing to spending regular time every afternoon writing at least a little. And that's why I've been neglecting my blog. But I've been missing it too so I'm going to post a bit more often again. And I'm certainly going to miss that window of peace in the middle of the day - September will promise some peace from that point of view.

But the summer holiday is also a welcome release from the tyranny of routine - from packed lunches, ironing uniforms and the clock-radio coming on at 6 bloody 20 every morning! We've pizza and chocolate tea-cakes for tea as a celebration.

On a more serious note though I'm a bit worried too. Ed and I seem to be falling out a lot at the moment. He is cheeky at only 6 and a half- always has an answer for everything and can wind me up quicker than anyone else I know. I seem to be especially short-tempered at the moment... and we're not a good combination when things get like that. I adore him with a passion but he really doesn't know when to stop and I don't seem to know how to keep calm. I don't want to spend the summer holidays shouting - so deep breaths before the school run. I'm the adult here.... and I'd do well to remember that.

Hello

2010-07-12T20:40:00.004+01:00

I'm tired at the moment. I have a clinic appointment on Wednesday. It's just a check-up but I'm kind of dreading it. I've been having loads of headaches and have itchy patches on my arms and legs which can be a symptom of something nasty.

I'm just so fed up with it all. Worrying is exhausting. Living in this way is exhausting - sometimes I still can't believe it's happened to me. I feel like a different person. And I was quite happy with the person I was before this.

As usual life is busy. Martha had her summer school concert this afternoon. She had a third hearing test this morning which she failed - next step, the hospital. And both Ed and Martha had swimming. Hattie ran crazily around the cafe while we watched them through the window until I felt quite frantic. Hattie doesn't stop talking by the way. Ever. And then we came home to tea - well the kids lolled around while I made it. Then bath, pyjamas and Ed's weekly treatment which always seems to come at exactly the most tiring and stressful moment. He has a bleed in the muscle of his arm and he's black and blue - hs legs look quite shocking, as I noticed while he was swimming. I haven't actually told the swimming teacher about the haemophilia as I'm always there at the pool with him, but I wonder if maybe I should. Otherwse I might get a call from social services. Can you imagine? Nightmare.

With posts like this it's just as well they've been thin on the ground recently. I know, I know..... I should count my blessings. It's easier said than done sometimes That's all.

Saturday Evening

2010-07-03T20:13:00.003+01:00

I'm waiting for my 'Jamie Oliver' stuffed peppers to cook. They smell good so that's a start. Am fancying a glass or two of wine tonight as well...

The kids are (finally) tucked up in bed after being exasperating and tiring in a Saturday sort of way if you know what I mean.

Tomorrow we're going to check-out campsites in the Yorkshire Dales to prepare for our first week of the summer holiday. I'm hoping the trip will be more successful than our Easter visit to the Lake District when - to sum things up - we were very COLD in our frosty tent.

Catch-Up

2010-06-29T16:00:00.010+01:00

I know that I'm really neglecting my blog at the moment.

Life seems to be getting in the way.

I'm doing lots more writing which pleases me immensely even if it'll quite possibly never see the light of day. I'm also working on a project - looking through an aquaintance's book to give my considered opinion(!) It's become quite a lot of work although I just really agreed to read it as a favour and now I'm in the awkward position of needing to be honest. But, what the hell do I know?

I have a really sore lower back too. It's my old problem giving me hassle but still in the recesses of my mind I'm worrying that it's really a tumour forming around my spine. Nice image - and one which stays with me a little too clearly in the middle of the night. I'm having some physiotherapy for it tomorrow so hopefully that'll ease it, and put my mind to rest too.

But I'm managing to go to the gym, or go swimming at least twice a week and I'm starting Pilates tomorrow evening. A more flexible me is just around the corner!

I'm waiting for a positive result from one of my 30 letters that I sent out to local high schools, asking for a couple of days work in September. On the other hand, I'm enjoying my time with Hattie and my days have a nice peaceful rhythm to them with a good afternoon patch to write in before the kids come back from school and while Hattie has her sleep. Long may Hattie's afternoon sleep continue in such a satisfactory way.

Maybe I can find work in the New Year instead! No-one can accuse me of not trying. Is it my fault that there're no vacancies at the moment.....?

I'm kind of getting the feeling that Hattie needs me at home at the moment. I get a wierd impression that she kind of senses all that we missed out on together when she was born and she needs to make it up now. On the other hand, that could be a convenient thought to justify staying away from teaching just that little bit longer.

Inconsequential I know, but do you have a bread-making machine? I have just got mine and I LOVE it. Some weeks I'm almost making a loaf a day.

And, have you read 'Kafka on the Shore' by Haruki Murakami? It's compulsive, deep and thought-provoking but also amazingly readable. I'm planning on finishing it tonight. I think it's one of the most interesting books I've ever read.

Glastonbury

2010-06-26T21:55:00.002+01:00

Wish I was at Glastonbury. I'll have to make do with watching it on TV. Not quite the same. How good are 'The Scissor Sisters'? Not sure they're exactly Glastonbury style.... but never mind.

New Boy

2010-06-23T21:05:00.003+01:00

I have a new nephew!

He was born this morning at 9.10am. Now there are 7 cousins, all born in the past 6 and a half years. Phew. Kind of exhausting. But I can't wait to see him - hopefully I'll manage at the weekend. It's a four-hour round drive - but I reckon a new nephew is worth it.

Just thought I'd let you know.

Football and Wine

2010-06-18T20:12:00.005+01:00

Oh.... I'm neglecting my blog at the moment. I'm trying to write lots of different stuff, find time to use my new breadmaker and do all the other myriad things which seem to soak up time. I have a whole novel to read before my book group meets on Tuesday! Hmmmm!

And the football! As I write, Rog is glued to the boring and very very loud England vs. Algeria match. Apparently it needs to be so loud so that he can hear the commentary. But all I can hear is the awful trumpet things - voovoozalers (I have no idea how to spell that word). I really dislike football - or rather I can tolerate it for about 5 minutes and then I want to scream. But in the interests of marital harmony I won't scream - even if we weren't able to go out tonight (yes, we had the rare offer of a babysitter - can you believe it?) because of the football.

I think I'll open some wine - alcohol is possibly the only way forward.

What's Going On?

2010-06-14T21:28:00.005+01:00

So, what's going on with me at the moment?

I want another baby although I spend most of my time being absolutely overwhelmed with the children I have. Not being able to have any more children - after the hideous chemotherapy thing - doesn't help. It's not good to think that your body doesn't work like it should do/used to do just 2 years ago.

I want to go back to work for a couple of days a week because I'm feeling overwhelmed and at times isolated and frustrated by all the endless repetitive duties at home. I'd love some chat and a good giggle with new colleagues. I'm good at getting on with people and am quite sociable. It'd be satisfying to have an existence separate to my family which takes place out of these four walls. Oh, and we badly need the money. But.....

I don't want to go back to work. Hattie's only just 2 and I missed out of loads of good time with her in her first year. Teaching English in a secondary school is pretty exhausting and demanding - especially teaching those younger kids. Bring on the A Level is all I hope and pray! And there's work to do in the evening. Back to the issue of feeling exhausted and overwhelmed with looking after 3 kids, two kittens and a house. Returning to work has to add to that pressure - what with Ed's haemophilia (yes, that's still going on... he has a bleed in his ankle at the moment, the school rang me today and I fetched him and injected him) and Hattie being bound to experience the whole gamut of childhood illnesses the moment she's ensconced in nursery.

I want to go to bed really early every night to indulge my old passion.... reading that is. But I want to stay up late enjoying the peace once the kids are in bed, watching rubbish tv and writing my blog.

I want a dog because I'm feeling broody and the kids would love it. I don't want a dog because I'd have to look after it and I'm tired of looking after things and people.

I want a campervan for totally fun family holidays. I want to ride a motorbike or a horse across Mongolia ON MY OWN.

I could go on but I imagine that you catch my drift.

Happy Birthday Martha

2010-06-09T20:19:00.004+01:00

It was my beautiful daughter Martha's 5th birthday yesterday.

Today she had her birthday party - she was confident and polite and glowed through the whole event. I'm so proud of her - so pleased that we could focus on her properly and happily. Her past two birthdays have been, for me anyhow, connected with so much angst and worry. At her party there were parents who didn't know that I'd been ill - to them I looked like any other slightly harrassed mother trying to keep things going in a party-like direction. And that's how it should be.

Over the past two years I really didn't ever imagine that I could ever really be free of the legacy, even as far as my appearance was concerned. But now I look tanned from the totally amazing weather in Scotland last week, and apart from needing to tone up and continue to get fit (and lets face it, one doesn't need to have cancer to get a bit out of shape!) I don't think that I look much different to how I looked before I was ill.

She's an amazing little girl, Martha, and she's had a truly tough time - a tough time before she was even old enough to start school. But... so pretty and carefree today in her new birthday dress, she looks like a girl who has a happy future. And that's my birthday wish for her.

Scotland, Sun and Seals

2010-06-01T20:04:00.005+01:00

The weather is fantastic up here. There is a huge garden into which the kids can be shoved (or encouraged, should I say?) as early as they like in the morning. The house stands on its own in the middle of nowhere with a fabulous view, so we don't have to worry about the kids making noise too early outside, the way we do at home in our street if they want to go out and play in our tiny garden.

I haven't got the lead for my camera to put my photos on the computer so I'll have to post the photos when we get home. But it is really really beautiful and the weather is HOT for goodness sake, right up here in the north of Scotland.

I'm walking a lot but I'm also eating lots of good things too - well, I am on holiday! I'm hoping that the walking will cancel out the calories and replace the gym for the week - but really, I don't care that much I've just realised. 'Wolf Hall' is nearly finished as I'm managing to fit in quite a chunk of reading in the afternoon while Hattie sleeps - at home I've always got so much to do. And Rog and I are enjoying having some time together with the kids away from all the hassles of home.

Last week was a bit stressful - I got a bug which made me feel so unwell that I becme convinced all over again that the cancer had returned. I had such a heavy feeling in my stomach that I was really worried that I had a tumour in my liver. The cancer can return in any organ which isn't very helpful or easy to live with - and this is guaranteed to make even the most laid-back person worry. Although I have been feeling much more confident recently that my health might hold out, and I might just make that magic 5 years in remission - it really shook me to realise how close to my heart that anxiety still is. Anyhow - I feel lots better now as you'll have realised. It was just a bug.

Our friends are arriving to stay with us on Thursday evening. I'm really looking forward to see them - they're old university friends so they've known me for a very long time, right back to those free student days. But we haven't seen each other for three years - before we had Hattie and before I was ill - because they live far away from us on the Isle of Man, so a visit requires a flight or a ferry journey. It'll be lovely to catch up and we can enjoy playng host in this lovely house of my mum's. We're planning a boat-trip around some of the most remote islands to look at the seal colonies and the sea-birds. I hope the sea is not too rough - and Hattie isn't too much of a pain.

By the way, Hattie was pretty awful on the 9 hour car journey on Sunday as expected. We arrived with her voice ringing in all our ears - having strained ourselves to listen to Harry Potter on audio-book over the noise for some of the journey before giving up. There's only so many raisins, fruit-bars and bananas one small girl can stick in her mouth in one day we discovered. Helpfully, she slept for a total of 20 minutes all day compared to the 2 and a half hours she can easily manage at home. Looking forward to the return journey.....

Anyhow - I'd better finish 'Wolf Hall' before our friends arrive. Off to bed with my tea then.

Off To Scotland

2010-05-28T19:42:00.003+01:00

We're off to Scotland for the half-term break tomorrow. Away for the whole week - I can't wait.

I am slightly less enthusiastic about the 9 hour drive with a small tyrant in the car. This afternoon on the 10 minute drive to pick up the kids from school, Hattie wailed and cried and shouted at me because she wanted me to close MY window which was open approximately 2 inches! Reasonable? I think not. On the way home she yelled all the way because she dropped her small plastic red teaspoon which she likes to carry around with her for absolutely no apparent reason that I can see.

I've just remembered that 2 year-olds are not that big on reasonable - how could that have slipped my mind?

Actually do you find 5 and 6 year-olds all that reasonable?

At what age exactly do kids become reasonable? Let me know.

Where Have All The Comments Gone?

2010-05-27T12:35:00.002+01:00

Am having 'comment problems' - they're not showing up on my blog! Of course I know that you all will be trying to comment, unless everyone has unilaterally decided to boycott me which is a possibility but would seem a little unfair! Paranoid? Me?

While I'm here I must just exclaim at how tyrannical Hattie has become seemingly overnight. She has transformed from an easy and delightful, laid back baby into Pol Pot! 'Hattie do it', is her favourite and oft-repeated mantra. It's all very very exhausting.

This May I'm........

2010-05-25T22:14:00.006+01:00

gardening!

For the past two years our garden has been a source of embarrassment -even if I have had a pretty good reason for the neglect, what with my survival kind of taking centre stage, and my exhaustion meaning that the sofa was more appealing if I had any child-free time.

But this May, I'm feeling well. Not tired - hence my gym visits, and feeling much more confident that I might just get to next May with a bit of luck. Gardening seems a positive investment in my time and energy. Martha and I are spending time together digging, weeding and watering and things are looking better on the green front. Admittedly Hattie is not entirely an asset when tidying up the garden - pushing her toys into my brand new lupin indeed! And the kittens are keen on helping with the digging in their own particular way. However it is a very good thing to be alive and well and in the garden at all.

We're planning a rasberry and pear crumble made with fruit grown from our own garden. We won't be able to make the crumble until next August - but that's ok, we can wait.

Thomas Cromwell and the Gym

2010-05-20T20:04:00.003+01:00

OMG!!! I went to the gym again. And cycled and treadmilled until I was worried about my rapidly increasing heartbeat. Phew. I'm very proud of myself.

And this morning I took Hattie shopping and we bought her new sandals to celebrate the start of the lovely summer weather.

And at the risk of repeating myself I have to rave again about 'Wolf Hall'. I feel as if my life is a mere shadow compared to the world I'm inhabiting whenever I find five minutes to open the book. I keep expecting to bump into Thomas Cromwell. You might think he's unlikely to be in the gym though, or in the shoe department at John Lewis..... but I'm not so sure.

This Week

2010-05-18T13:47:00.003+01:00

Yesterday I was 41.

This morning I went to the gym in an attempt to ward off the advancing years.

Now I'm very very tired and want to eat biscuits while reading 'Wolf Hall' by Hilary Mantel which is amazingly, wonderfully brilliant by the way.

Or, snuggle down like the baby every afternoon and SLEEP!

Why I can't Get My Arse into Gear - an essay

2010-05-11T13:56:00.003+01:00

Ho hum.... birthay parties - Hattie's 2! Also washing, cooking, cleaning, ironing and shopping. And reading Michael Frayn's 'Spies' at top speed so that I can be useful when I take top dollar from some poor unsuspecting student who's coming here tonight for tuition before her English A Level. Only joking! Actually, I'm quite good at the teaching thing on the whole, although having to use my brain after 7pm is quite a stretch these days.

I'm struggling with my regular sinus thing at the moment - attractive red eyes and all, but I'm just about to start on my millionth course of antibiotics so maybe I'll make a miraculous recovery in the next few days. My immune system's still not 100% so there we go.

And it's my birthday next week. For a long while it didn't seem likely that I'd see my 41st birthday. But here I am and all that stuff......

Am not really managing all the writing projects and ideas for more writing which are swirling around unwritten or at best half-written. I don't have enough time after I've done all of the above.... and I do have to fit in some TV and reading down-time too. I guess successful writers are quite a disciplined bunch. I wish I wasn't quite so easily distracted. Oooh - another cup of tea I think while the baby sleeps before I have to go and get the kids from school. See what I mean?

Clegg, It's A Trapp!!

2010-05-08T20:50:00.004+01:00

What is going to happen after the election results on Thursday? I cannot IMAGINE how the Lib-Dems could possibly possibly contemplate any kind of alliance with the Tories. Surely that would split the Lib-Dem party in two? I'd be furious if I'd voted Lib-Dem (I'm a Labour voter through and through in case it's not obvious) as no-one would vote for them and expect that vote to help the Tories into government.

I can see that there's a bit of an insuperable problem here to be sure. Labour did not regain enough seats to hold the confidence of the country (why the hell not?) and it would be kind of difficult to see how they could form an alliance - even if various other fringe parties joined with them and they limped towards a majority, and govern with conviction.

But, If I had the chance I would urge Nick Clegg to think very very hard before he joins with Cameron. I think Cameron is a sly and slippery character. At least with Thatcher (and I certainly had no love for her the old battleaxe) one damn well knew what one was getting if one voted for her. Cameron's untrustworthy and insincere, not that game-show host Clegg doesn't ooze a certain smarminess. I guess there are some things which the two parties may have in common after all.

It might be that it would be best for Labour if some alliance between the Tories and Lib-Dems does happen. There'll be chaos and instability and when another election has to happen in a few months as a result, Labour may be voted in with the majority they should have had on Thursday if people hadn't had some foggy idea about voting for change without being clear about what change they wanted or indeed whether they really wanted it.

I Hait Mum

2010-05-04T10:09:00.004+01:00

So, another bank-holiday weekend bites the dust! What did we find ourselves doing on our extra day off work and school? Buying shoes for the kids, that's what!! I have my regular sinus thing back again which makes me feel totally totally rubbish (struggles to find polite word...) and trailing around looking for shoes to fit Ed who seems to have mysteriously impossibly unusually shaped feet, was not helping matters for me. Cue lots of shouting and tears from us all - when we got home not in the shoe-shop, although lots of furious hissing was employed there instead - and cue huge amounts of guilt from me about what an appalling parent I am. Not helped by discovering Martha's touching message for me which was on the floor of her bedroom. 'I hait mum'. Hmmm.

She later amended it to 'I love mum', but only after I'd produced the first offending note and she felt sheepish.

I hope the kids don't all end up in therapy in 20 years time expanding upon exactly why they all 'hait' mum.

Two Years On

2010-04-21T13:38:00.016+01:00

This week, surprisingly in many ways, has become a very significant week for me.

It's nearly Hattie's second birthday and the two year anniversary of the week that an x-ray discovered a huge tumour in my chest. I've come on such a journey in those two years; such a significant and torturous journey that I'm nervous to try to write this post - I need to do my experience justice, I need to untangle it and describe it so that I can live it and know it and put it away into the past. Does that make sense?

On Monday I took Hattie back to the Special Care Baby Unit where she'd spent her first 8 weeks of life. This is where the start of my drama unfolded itself as I visited her from a different part of the hospital, unhooked from my chemotherapy drip for a precious half an hour. It's where the photo was taken of me holding her on my 39th birthday, less than two weeks after her birth with Ed and Martha either side of me, my hair shorn and skin yellow, looking as close as I hope I ever come to death before I'm an old old woman.

I wasn't sure they'd let me in to the unit - I imagined they'd be busy and distracted, and I pressed the buzzer very tentatively, memories flooding back.

"Oh yes! I remember you, of course I do! Come in."

As I wheeled Hattie in her buggy through the unit she was wriggling to get down. How different to the last time she was here. We'd had to rush her back to the unit when she'd been out with us for a day as she was too still and pale. She'd had a blood transfusion and another overnight stay. Now, a beautiful, fiery and opinionated blonde toddler - a miraculous metamorphosis. All around in the bays were tiny tiny babies. I found myself standing in front of the bay which Hattie had been in for weeks. One of the nurses pointing to a space remembered exactly where Hattie had been.

Everyone was so pleased to see us well and healthy.

"You look a whole lot better than you did when we last saw you," I heard over and over again. Smiling, nearly crying really absolutely overwhelmed by the smells and sounds, I said helplessly over and over again,

"I am well, I'm very well. I just wanted to say thank you to you all!"

The nurse who'd spent a lot of time with me when Hat was in the SCBU had a day off, so I didn't see her much to my sadness. I'll never ever forget that she'd gone to buy a cake and made a card with Hattie's hand and footprints which was waiting for me on top of Hattie's incubator when I came in on that birthday. Of course I still treasure that card today. I asked the other staff to remember me to her and to thank her again for me. As we walked around Hattie became increasingly and uncharacteristically quiet. It almost felt as if she knew or remembered something about the place we were in.

Later downstairs in the hospital cafe I sat with my coffee and didn't know what to think or feel. This was where I'd sat so many times before. And now, here I was in another place and time with Hattie covered in strawberry cupcake - I figured she deserved a strawberry cupcake - and with a second chance maybe.....maybe... ahead of me.

And then on Wednesday I went to see my consultant for my three-monthly check. Not that there's much to do these days because unless I go and mention some specific ache or pain to be investigated, they're not routinely scanning me anymore and nothing really happens at these appointments. But she told me that she'd just been to Switzerland to speak at a conference about non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma. I had Hattie with me at this appointment - just to set the scene, squeaking and wriggling - and I have to say that my first thought was one of envy. Imagine having a high-powered career and having to be in Switzerland rather than making tea seven days a week! Anyhow. She said that there'd been lots of positive feed-back regarding the prognosis of people with my very rare form of the disease (she'd only treated 15 people with it in her whole 25 year career) since some new treatment was trialled, given along-side the chemotherapy. And I was lucky enough - and I use the word 'lucky' carefully - to be one of the first to be given this treatment. Although the cancer is so rare that there aren't loads of usuable statistics regarding prognosis, it seems that the use of this treatment, Rituximab, means that survival rates might change from as low as 30% (beyond terrifying) to over 80%! That's incredible.

I'm quite overwhelmed really, when I think of how many times I've been lucky since I was diagnosed - given that I was so bloody bloody unlucky to have developed this fearsomely aggressive cancer in the first place. I was lucky that the A and E doctor listened so carefully to the desciption of my symptoms, when I walked into the hospital off the street at 30 weeks pregnant and that she didn't just dismiss me as tired and pregnant as my GP had done only 3 weeks earlier. By the time someone did listen to me I apparently only had about three weeks to live and obviously my unborn baby was in great jeopardy too. It also turned out to be for the best, in some wierd and scary way, that the GP did dismiss my symptoms when he did, as every day counts with premature babies and they would have made me have Hattie much earlier then the 32 weeks at which she was born. And at nearly two she is fine now - no-one would be able to guess at her bumpy start. There was a very narrow window of time when I could be diagnosed and treated with any chance of survival and Hattie also would be ok. One of us or both of us could so easily have died.

I was lucky to say the least that I fell into the hands of my consultant - one of the top doctors in the country in her field. I was lucky that she knew about this new drug and its possible benefits and was able to put together a treatment schedule which in her own words was 'aggressive' in order to give me the best chance of survival. I was lucky I survived the actual caesarean - they were worried that my heart and lungs might not cope with the pressure of the tumour while I was under anaesthetic, and I was lucky that Hattie went from strength to strength every day. I was so so lucky that my body responded as well as it did to the treatment I had for those long months. And two years on Hattie and I are so so lucky that we're here, in remission and thriving.

It's kind of hard to express my thoughts about all of this and impossible in some ways to describe the desperate path down which I've been forced to travel. Snapshots, experiences, emotions, smells and tastes are locked inside me and only inside me. Even the people closest to me cannot share those. Perhaps they may become woven into pieces of writing I've yet to create, hidden or maybe disguised inside other shapes. It's such a cliche to talk about the way an experience like this changes one's life - that it makes one appreciate the small things in everyday life for their value. I'm still working on that one really, but it is true too, like all cliches. Having one's assumption of immortality shaken to the core, an assumption which we all fundementally carry around childlike inside ourselves, is like living through a private and invisible earthquake. And that is certainly life-changing.

The doctor said that she doesn't think it's going to come back. She's never said anything approaching that before. She knows that I know that that statement doesn't come with any kind of guarantee. Earlier in our appointment she'd reiterated that people were 'in trouble' if it did return. My regular check-ups will continue until I've been in remission for five years - and I'm only one and a bit years into that period. But I felt the significance of what she said and understand it to be in some way an echo of the way my own confidence - the confidence that maybe, perhaps, I can think again about having a future - is very slowly returning, jerkily in fits and starts but returning nonetheless.

At the end of the appointment I walked down the corridor of the hospital holding Hattie's hand, the doctor on the other side. She asked Hattie if she could hold her other hand and Hattie very solemnly gave it to her.

"This is the first time I've held a hand as little as this for a very long time. It's lovely!"

And as we went our separate ways it was funny to think that in some ways she envied me my life at that moment just as I had earlier envied her hers.

*************

Two years ago my family were just embarking upon this journey. Now we're here in this place, in our present. The most I can hope for - and it's hoping for the world - that the ripples from that stone thrown into the centre of our lives continue to reverberate outwards until they're so faint that they're no longer visible. Just known about and of course never forgotten.