I was reading a report today in The Guardian about student gap years, which claimed that for many young people, they are basically just an excuse for a year of excess – remote beach raves, drug fuelled orgies, and sexual promiscuity. Sounds alright to me really…
With Bee now in her final year of compulsory education, (I am so OLD!), it’s something I’ve found myself thinking more and more about – what exactly should I be encouraging her to do after school? Obviously I won’t be pushing her to settle for a nice little job in Subway, but is university nowadays really the best option? Do I want her to saddle herself with thousands of pounds worth of debt so early in life? And what about a gap year then – do they serve any purpose, or are they just a waste of time?
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I was coming home from visiting a friend in Cambridge over the summer holidays, and as I drove down the slip road onto the motorway I was faced with a giant billboard, offering me the chance to meet the man of my dreams through the website sugardaddie.com.

As the name almost suggests, the site offers the opportunity for both men and women to meet people who are “classy, attractive and affluent” at the same time as “eradicating the issues of financial stress that modern living can bring”.

Sounds good doesn’t it?

I’ve never had Money. As a child we never had money, which is why at 16 I became pregnant in a bid to get my own council house and sponge off the state for life. (Joke.) The pregnancy part isn’t a joke of course, but I have never lived in a council house…

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I was walking through town yesterday morning, enjoying the freedom of the first day back at school, when I heard music coming from somewhere. It was a tune I knew and liked – I could just hear it faintly, more of a hum really…

Then I realised it was coming from me.

“You really shouldn’t sing out loud to yourself,” I said out loud to myself.

“Or talk out loud,” I added, out loud.

I shut up then.

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It’s a well-known scientific fact* that the book is always better than the film version of a story. Seriously, try to name me an example where a film surpasses a book – there just isn’t one.

It’s all to do with the power of your imagination.

I remember the first time I read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory as a child. The impossibly fantastic sugary creations that came out of Willy Wonka’s incredible mind where just that – impossible. In my head though, it was all infinitely plausible, my imagination had no boundaries. “Violet! You’re turning violet, Violet!” I could really taste that gum in my mind – the hot tomato soup, the succulent roast beef, the not quite perfected dessert…

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It hardly seems like any time at all since I was ‘looking forward’ to six weeks of summer holidays, yet here we are, with only a few days until they are back to school and I can return to messing about on the internet in peace. I mean working of course.

I’ve never been terribly organised when it comes to getting ready to go back to school, so was actually pretty impressed to find myself in Clarks on Monday, a good week and a half before term begins. Despite my valiant attempts at beating the crowds, it was still packed with excitable children and panic-stricken parents, and the dreaded ticket system was in operation. They were on 83 when we arrived and we were number 92. It didn’t take too long though, and when they called out ‘number 92!’ I resisted the urge to ask for 4oz of olives and half a dozen slices of crumbed ham, so all was well.

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I would love to be one of those mothers who enjoys spending hours baking, painting, and building airplanes out of lolly sticks, but I’m just not.

Apart from the odd bit of cutting and sticking – who doesn’t like cutting pretty pictures out of magazines? – I hate pretty much all kids’ craft activities.

Seriously, they are DULL. View Post

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It’s a question that gets asked time and time again – are boys and girls just different, or do we raise them differently? Is it nature, or nurture? Only having girls, it’s a hard question for me to answer, so I enjoy spending time with friends who have sons, so I can compare notes…

Last week we went with my friend Vicky and her son Ashley to Dunster Castle. Living in Somerset, we really are spoilt for scenery and Places of Interest. Great if you’re retired or are keen on historic buildings, not so keen if you’re fifteen and like screamo.

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It’s official, the Sunday we spent at Camp Bestival was The Best Day of Bee’s Life.

We had a lovely weekend generally, helped along by the Pimms bus in the kid’s field, but the whole weekend was totally made for us all – well me and Bee at least – by our encounter with Seth Lakeman.

Bee has always been a massive Seth fan and over the last few years we have been to loads of gigs, seen him at festivals, and generally followed him about in a slightly stalkerish way. We were absolutely thrilled then to find out that Seth and his band were a late addition to the Camp Bestival line-up.

Much of the first day there was spent trying to find out exactly where and when he was playing, as he wasn’t in the programme, but eventually we tracked him down to a small bandstand on the Sunday afternoon. A bandstand! Did they not know who he is??

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How, as a single parent, are you supposed to work, maintain your sanity AND look after children who have six-week long holidays?? SIX WEEKS! It’s just not natural.

This afternoon, after being a full-time mum since the end of July, I have spent a blissful five hours in the house on my own designing databases and writing marketing emails, while Bee and Belle have been out shopping with my mother. I am extremely grateful.

After just two weeks of being a ‘stay-at-home-in-the-holidays’ mum, I am already reaching the end of my tether. It’s like being on extended maternity leave all over again (what a stupid idea THAT was) – my neck and shoulders feel permanently tense, and my voice has become slightly high-pitched and hysterical. My patience is more frayed than my hall carpet, which is saying something, and my poor children are suffering I’m sure.

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I can’t believe it’s really nearly here. I’ve been looking forward to it with a mixture of relief, excitement and dread and now I only have one more day to go.

The summer holidays. (DUM DUM DUUUUM!)

What fun stuff has everyone got planned? Holidays? Outings? Adoption?

This summer is going to be different from most for me. It will be the first summer where I have been officially working for myself and it’s a fantastic relief not to have to worry about holiday clubs, childcare or missing out on any fun.

But that’s the problem in itself. No childcare. ‘Excellent!’ I thought to myself, ‘I will wind down to the holidays, keep work to a minimum and enjoy lots of Quality Time with the girls’. But now I’m starting to get a tad panicky. Winding down is all very well, but I do still actually have some work to do, and you know how these things happen – the minute you actively DON’T want to get offered anything, you can guarantee something will land in your lap.

So the no childcare thing suddenly seems just a little bit foolhardy. Don’t get me wrong, I love my children, they are fabulous, but six weeks of non-stop seven-year old may just tip me over the edge.

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Last night Belle and I watched Wife Swap USA.

Yes, I know it’s mostly staged and it’s all rubbish, but I don’t care. I love it. So there. I particularly love the last five minutes when they go back to their own families and, despite having spent the swap coming out with lines like “I’d rather be DEAD than spend another day with that DEVIL WOMAN!”, they take home lots of Valuable Lessons, and all become balanced, loving families, living happily ever after. And no, I don’t even love that part in an ironic way, I just like to think it’s true.

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I finally got round last night to reading Saturday’s Guardian magazine. One of my favourite columns is Oliver Burkeman’s ‘This column will change your life’, as it invariable gets me thinking about the way I live and work.

This week he was talking about memories, and the tendency to remember only certain aspects of events, namely how they felt at their emotional peak, and how they felt at the end. So, if you’re remembering a week-long holiday, your memory of it will very likely be a product of one single very happy/stressful moment, and how you felt as you were leaving. The implication of this is that it is better to focus on short moments of intense fun than to holiday for as long as possible, and that half an hour of quality time with the kids counts much more than being around them all day, every day. Phew.

It got me thinking about the memories we create for our children, and the highs and lows I remember from my own childhood. I’ve always thought of myself as a person with a fairly poor long-term memory, but one exercise we did on my recent Arvon course made me realise that there are actually a lot of interesting sounds, sights and smells buried in the murky depths of my brain, if only I can dig around enough and find them under the layers of daily life.

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