We're all in the same boat

There is something about navigating through water in a small vessel that has come to symbolise our struggle as human beings. The concept of a voyage, with people pitched against the elements, has enjoyed mythical status throughout time, from the Aeneid and Moby Dick to J.K. Jerome's Three Men in a Boat. On Sunday my family went canoeing with our cousins, adding - I felt - our small contribution to the boating canon.

Paddling down Hennerton Backwater
Credit: William Lam

In a flotilla of three canoes - our inflatable and two hired Canadian canoes - we paddled down an idyllic stretch of the River Thames from Henley to Wargrave. We may have been unlikely literary heroes in our shorts and hoodies, but the way in which each crew tackled the challenge of reaching the George & Dragon pub in Wargrave spoke volumes about our attitudes to life.

Foreign fields

Travel diary
WWI sites in Belgium and France

Every evening in the Belgian town of Ypres, people of all nationalities gather at the Menin Gate to remember the young men who died in the Great War. At eight o'clock sharp, a group of buglers sound the last post to commemorate more than 54,000 missing Commonwealth soldiers. Their names are engraved on the honey-coloured walls, interminable lists of men who went missing in action. They died in the fields around Ypres, but their bodies have never been found or identified. 

Crowds gather at the Menin Gate

This ceremony has been performed every evening since 1928, apart from when Ypres was under German occupation during the second-world war. I attended with my family one Sunday in late May at the beginning of a half-term trip to visit the sites of World War I. The aim was to enrich the kids' understanding of the war, although I think we all came away with a deeper sense of what went on during this terrible period of history, viewed by some as a European civil war.

Watch the step-change

My life is about to change. As of September, I will have two kids at secondary school. I will no longer be a mum of young children. Yikes! Where did those years go? Cue midlife crisis.

Freedom at last?

But before I plummet into mourning, I am trying to convince myself that a new, exciting era is about to dawn... Yes! More freedom! I will no longer be wholly defined by my relationship with my children. As they become more autonomous, so will I.

The history teacher

Hermaphrodite Mum 
Three kids and a single mum

It's a sight to make every mother's heart sink: your child, curled up with her headphones on, watching YouTube on a mobile phone. It gets worse. Your child has already spent most of the afternoon hooked up to Netflix and has evidently forgotten about her school exams next week. 

Quiet One: lost in blah-blah land
© Anatolii Sushko | Dreamstime.com

I direct my most penetrating gaze at Quiet One, but she's lost in some virtual place, halfway between denial and blah-blah land.

Finally, I raise my voice. "Shouldn't you be doing some revision?" I shout. 

The earphones are pushed back a smidgeon and she looks up at me with an indignant frown. Then she humphs and slides off the chair. 

Christmas drama queen

Hermaphrodite Mum 
Three kids and a single mum

 "Are you alright?" asks Middle Child anxiously.

I am beached on the sofa, one hand massaging my temples. "Yes, I think so. It has been a long day."

"Were you working?"

"No, love, I was finishing off the Christmas shopping."

"Oh, is that all?"

I take a deep breath. He's young and inexperienced. How would he know what I've accomplished in the last few weeks? How I have written 80 Christmas cards, bought and wrapped in excess of 50 presents, hauled a six-foot fir tree into the house, dragged two boxes of decorations down from the attic, booked in three online food shops for Christmas and New Year, as well as all the usual drudgery, and... 

How to boost your brain power

Book Review

These days a working knowledge of nutrition has become part of a parent's job description. I'm forever persuading my kids to eat pro-biotic yoghurt, oily fish and crispy kale, with varying degrees of success. If you want to be healthy... I tell them nine times a day. But imagine if you could eat your way to feeling happier, less stressed and more motivated?

The Brain Boost Diet Plan by Christine Bailey is the latest lifestyle-come-recipe book to promise us good health by cutting out gluten and refined sugar. The book is based on the premise that with the right diet, it takes four weeks to optimise your mood, memory and brain health. 

But before you roll your eyes and mutter - not another one - this book is worth a peek. Grounded in nutritional science, it contains a four-step programme to cleanse and revitalise your brain, with lots of tasty recipes that are relatively easy to prepare. It is also well-laid out with plenty of charts, infographics and glossy photographs.

Six memories from Gran Canaria

It's a downward slope to Christmas but a recent family trip to Gran Canaria has made me feel quite chipper about donning my winter woollies. In the last of our summer indulgences, we spent a week soaking up the sunshine at Hotel Cordial Mogan Playa, based in the small seaside town of Puerto de Mogan. 

Winter sun: Hotel Cordial Mogan Playa

My parents discovered this attractive and well-run hotel almost a decade ago and this was our third visit as a family. Safe to say, we've got our routine down to a fine art! Mostly, we set up camp by the main pool, reading books and/or people-watching. Occasionally, we attempted to burn off two courses of breakfast in the morning yoga/Pilates class. Once, my husband even hired a bike to explore the hilly terrain. (I was with him all the way... via the 'Find Friends' app on my phone.) 

Lessons from Queen Victoria

Hermaphrodite Mum 
Three kids and a single mum

I read in The Times newspaper that a quarter of 14-year old girls are depressed. Good grief. The reasons cited for this dip in teenage mental health are familiar - a preoccupation with body image, as well as the pressures of social media and achieving academic success.

The lure of the mobile phone
© Mirko Vitali | Dreamstime

Helpfully, the newspaper provides a little quiz to test your daughter's own mental resilience. So when Quiet One gets home from school, she's barely had time to reach for the biscuit tin before I start firing questions at her.

"In the past two weeks, can you tell me if this statement is true, untrue or sometimes true..."

"Untrue."

"But I haven't told you the statement yet!"

Greece: a taste of the good life

The long days of summer are shortening and the sun has lost its satisfying sting. My kids are back at school and, after a month off, I have prised open my laptop once more. I just love the summer - walking the dog in grassy, overgrown fields, coasting down the river in the late afternoon and al fresco suppers (occasionally) in the garden. Most of all, I love escaping to the Continent for a few days and savouring life in a Mediterranean climate with olive groves, swimming pools and warm, turquoise sea.

This year, for the first time, we holidayed in Greece, near the small town of Horto on the Pelion peninsula, a hooked stretch of coastline between Athens and the northern city of Thessaloniki. The region is part of the mainland, but it felt like an island with its steep, windy roads and wraparound views of the sea. We rented a villa set in two acres of olive trees and perched on a hill above the Pagasetic Gulf, a lagoon-like sea. Five days into the holiday, I would still glance out of the kitchen window and stop dead in my tracks to drink in the view.

The mesmerising view from our villa

Meditations on a festive theme

Hermaphrodite Mum
Three kids and a single mum

My children still believe in Father Christmas - even the eldest one, aged 12. It amazes me that I have managed to hoodwink them this long, without inadvertently spilling the beans. To be honest, it's killing me. I just want to shout: "HE DOESN'T EXIST!" It's me - my darlings - your dear, old mama, who excels in wish-fulfilment. 

When to put up the tree?

But, of course, I can't. There is magic and excitement to be maintained. If I told them it was Mummy filling their stockings each year, their little eyes would roll over with disappointment and ennui. 

Instead, I adopt the psychology of a serial adulterer, secretly hoping to be found out one day. I use the same wrapping paper for the stockings fillers as I do for the 'main' presents around the tree, in the hope that they will rumble me. I even leave price labels on sometimes. Last year, Middle Child idly remarked, "Oh look, Father Christmas shops at John Lewis. Isn't that funny?"

Between the covers

Some of you will know that my nine-year old son, Tristan, was a finalist in the Henley Literary Festival short-story competition, run by Dragonfly Tea. Just for a bit of fun, I thought I would post his entry here on the blog. Have a read and see what you think!

The 2016 finalists for the children's short-story competition

Hi! I’m Larry the bookworm and I’m hooked to books! Adventure, fairytale, scary, funny, anything! If it’s a book, I’ll read it! I’ve probably read over a thousand, but then I do live in a library where there is always a book to read. The book I’m reading at the moment is called ‘Evil is Back,’ the sequel of ‘Evil in Front.’

Drama in the night

Hermaphrodite Mum
Three kids and a single mum

"Blow winds and crack your cheeks! Rage! Blow!" was King Lear's famed reaction to the storm. "Where the hell are my children?" was mine last week as I lay in bed listening to rolls of thunder shake our house to its very foundations. 

Where are the kids?
© Jaroslav Noska | Dreamstime.com

Normally, a rollicking, good thunderstorm never fails to bring all three children running into my bedroom like rats deserting a sinking ship, but last week as the storm bellowed outside my open window, there was no sign of them. My first thought was: Oh well, I'll just go back to sleep! But then I started to panic. What if Walking Toddler was a gibbering wreck, too frightened even to call out my name? What if one of them has been struck by lightening unbeknownst to me?

Game on

"Come on Mummy, you can do it!" Could I though? Could I really? It turned out I could. Hop, skip and a jump along the towpath, ignoring the stares of the more sedate grown-ups out for a walk. That's all there was to it. Yes, I know, we are not talking about rowing across the Atlantic here, but for some reason I seem to have lost the ability to play with my children. Now the summer holidays are upon us, I am struggling to re-discover my inner child.

Recovering the lost art of entertaining the kids!

A whole year of working freelance, finishing off my novel and squeezing out the odd blog post has left me devoid of play skills (and I mean the physical, get-down-on-the-floor, act-like-an-idiot mode of play). When my kids were little, I wasn't too bad at it. Apart from that first culture-shifting moment at a Monkey Music class in Earlsfield, where I realised that parenthood now required me to sing ridiculous songs and swing my arm like an elephant's trunk, I generally managed to get down to my kids' level in those early years. 

At the zoo

Hermaphrodite Mum
Three kids and a single mum

The children came back from their dad's place this weekend full of the joys of spring. As I got supper ready, I listened stoically to their excited tales about going to the Land of the Lions at London Zoo. Apparently one of the male lions came right up to the glass partition and looked like he wanted to gobble up Walking Toddler! Imagine that? What fun! Oh, and Daddy managed to film it all on his iPhone. Wonderful. I can see it now: YouTube sensation as toddler becomes lion fodder at London Zoo. 

Walking Toddler as lion fodder!

Seriously though - I am glad we have reached a point in our lives where our kids are happy to spend time with either parent. Ex-husband and I can pat each other on the back for being civilised grown-ups and managing our divorce in a mature manner...

Christmas unwrapped

Christmas time, mistletoe and wine... Late nights, too many presents to buy/wrap and overdoses of vitamin C to keep the winter bugs at bay. Every year, it's customary for me to have a little moan to my husband about how overworked I am. It's all part of the tradition, along with mince pies and decorating the tree.

The presents are piling up

I often struggle in the build-up to Christmas, particularly as I am not religious. Undoubtedly there is vicarious pleasure in watching my children enjoy the magic of Father Christmas, but even my youngest is beginning to have doubts (despite his fervent desire to believe). When I let slip the other night that I sometimes gave Father Christmas a helping hand, he declared passionately, "Please tell me you are not Santa, Mummy!" 

So if you take away the religion and the myth-making, it seems that all you are left with is a marathon of present-buying and no where to park in town because we've all decided to go shopping on the same day. 

A pox on failure!

It has become fashionable to extol the virtues of failure. Our children need to flounder; they need to experience the blood-rushing slam of disappointment! In some ways, it is a bit like trying to catch chicken pox. No one wants the inconvenience or the pimples, but it is a rite of passage. For how else can our kids build up emotional resilience? The old public school system would have filed it under 'character-building', along with draughty dormitories and short trousers in winter. I even catch myself saying to other mothers: "Failure is good for them, you know." But who am I trying to kid? 

Does failure lead to success?
© Pixelrobot | Dreamstime.com

As the next round of common entrance exams come around, many parents face a dilemma: whether to push their children to aim high (investing time, effort and pride) at the risk of watching them fail to secure a place at their favoured school. The poet Lemn Sissay has a saying: "Reach for the top of the tree and you may get to the first branch but reach for the stars and you'll get to the top of the tree." But what about those of us who aim high but still end up in the lower branches?

Ibiza unbound

Almost half a century ago, my grandmother came upon a notice in The Times newspaper advertising a villa for sale on the Spanish island of Ibiza. A few weeks later, she flew out to visit the house with my mother, who incidentally advised her not to buy it! Paying no heed to my mother's youthful caution, my grandmother, who had fallen in love with the villa despite the lack of electricity and telephone line, went ahead and purchased it. 

My grandmother's old villa near Port des Torrent

Or so the family legend goes. One way or another, history was made and my family spent almost every summer for the next forty years on the island of Ibiza. In 2006, my grandmother was forced to sell up because of health reasons and she passed away a few years later. This summer I went back to Ibiza for the first time since she died, to revisit this place that had provided a thread of continuity throughout my peripatetic childhood. My return to the island got me thinking about how people are shaped by the geography in which they grow up.

Sore losers

Hermaphrodite Mum
Three kids and a single mum

I am packing light for our holidays this year. No more Lego, Connect 4 (travel edition), or interminable Nintendo. All I am taking to Spain for our recreation is a humble pack of cards and an emergency iPad. This is our chance to bond as a family. It'll be fun! We'll chat around the card table and indulge in a bit of friendly banter. As I slip the Disney-themed playing cards into the suitcase, I feel the glow of smug motherdom warming my cockles.

No sign of the iPad...

Most of my childhood was spent playing whist and rummy. Tucked away in an old shoebox, I still have the scores from a summer-long contest with my sisters twenty years ago. What a jolly time it was! No need for an iPad back then. We made our own entertainment. I feel secretly gratified that I am about to pass this gift of gamesmanship onto my own children.

Mother of the year

Hermaphrodite Mum

Three kids and a single mum

My voice has gone hoarse. Too much shouting. It's week six and I have cracked. It's a shame cos I was doing so well. Only a few stern words and couple of sarcastic retorts in five weeks. I deserved 'Mother of the Year' and then I went and blew it in week six. Shouting. At the kids. It's official: the summer holidays have gone on too long.

Perhaps it's raining in Majorca?

We were in the supermarket. Middle Child wanted to buy a box of Mini Magnums. I said, no darling - remember we are trying to cut down on sugar, and he said, pleeeese, pretty pleeeese, and I said, HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TELL YOU, THE ANSWER IS NO!!! 

I think the guys stacking the trolleys in the car park heard me. It wasn't pretty. The old lady cruising down the frozen-foods aisle with a trolley full of prunes and Bran Flakes gave me a disapproving stare. I wanted to shout after her, "I've had them at home for six weeks for goodness sake! Give me a break! AND my ex-husband is in Majorca right now with his new girlfriend! She's probably rubbing suntan lotion into his back as I speak." But I didn't. I just put the Mini Magnums carefully into the trolley.

Bottling sunshine

It's hard to believe that the summer holidays are upon us once more. Where did the last term go? In another year, my daughter will have finished primary school - how did that happen? Hardly a day goes by when I don't lament (hand resting on my brow) how my children are growing up too fast.
 

Summer: a time for making memories

As a parent, hemmed in by school timetables, you tend to see the year in a very structured way. Inevitably, the end of the summer term becomes a red, flashing marker for the passing of time.

My children seem to change so fast that I occasionally grieve for the chubby, inarticulate people they once were. In some ways, every day spent is the loss of something intangible. This is compounded by the sense that time is speeding up as I get older (which is possibly a sign of my own mental deterioration rather than any quirk of physics).