Today was meant to be peaceful. I went to bed very late last night, but it means that everything is ready. The in laws are on their way; the fridge has been emptied, cleaned and refilled with all the ingredients filed in meal order. I’ve done enough in advance that I should be able to […]

There’s a rather salty shepherd’s pie ready for lunch. There’s a pheasant casserole for dinner, and a birthday cake whose decoration is the sole preserve of child 2. The pigs are in their blankets, the red cabbage and apple is ready, there is home made ice cream and home made nougat glace, the turkey is […]

So. London. We got the cheese, and we had hot chocolate and croissants in the café opposite the cheese shop and watched whole pigs being delivered to the butcher next door. We went to the Tate Modern and found a whole wall covered in deep pile orange carpet, in which we wrote our names. We […]

James has a little car, a single fingernail with which he clings to life pre-children. It gets very little use, partly because James works hard and doesn’t actually like going out without the children, and partly is battery is mostly flat, so taking it out involves an hour or two locating the jump leads, manoeuvering […]

The Financial Times says ‘at least nine,’ the Guardian goes with a definitive ’12 killed.’ A truck ploughed into a Christmas market in Berlin and people are dead. Paris, then Nice, and now Berlin. The German interior minister says, ‘We don’t yet have anything conclusive regarding the circumstances and the course of events…’ and yet […]