6 pm pyjamas

*Spoiler Alert* Beware, faint-hearted reader, this missive contains language likely to offend.  Read on at your peril and don't say I didn't warn you. Hearing the word 'fuck' from the mouth of a seven year old is never going to be a happy occasion for any parent.  But like everything else you're not quite prepared for, you deal with it as best you can at the time you are faced with it and keep your fingers crossed that you won't spend years paying for therapy as a result of your helpful/encouraging 'anything goes' attitude to questions between mother and child. Language is a tricksy creature: majestic and mercurial; slipping and sliding; context dependent; designed for so many purposes and as a consequence, so ripe for misinterpretation.  I have no idea how we got to the subject of swearing, but along with anything to do with toilets, bottoms, farts, poo, willies and vaginas, as a parent you can kind of hear the warning bells going off when it's t...

I am new to the world of chicken keeping.  I'm not sure really why I wanted to have them but I suspect it taps into my dream of having a smallholding where I could keep my horse and pigs (there's no chance of ever having a horse or pigs so chickens seemed the closest farmy type creature that I could have... I know, go figure).   Eggs are not cheap to buy, not if you buy ones where the hens have actually had the opportunity of having a decent - if short- life where they have space to move around and can experience the sun on their backs and dust baths.  I have discovered that chickens REALLY love a dust bath and they are very funny to watch as they try to roll over and then hold their wings out to catch some rays.  It's a win win situation when both parties are amused. At least I think the hens are amused.  I'm not great at reading human faces, less so with chicken ones. The eggs my hens produce however, must be the most expensive known to mankind.  I...

I love a craze.  It is after all, something that I can ignore for as long as it is en vogue and then get into once everybody is bored of it and has moved onto something far more interesting.  This happens a lot with tv and music now and was a prominent feature of my childhood when essentially if the new thing wasn't about anything equine, I was just, like, so not there.  Okay, I did have a brief flirtation with a jelly bag but I drew the line at the shoes.  I know, it's so cool, even now...who wouldn't want one? But... thanks to the virtues of being a mother, I am here, right now, at this very moment WHEN I COULD BE DOING ANY OF THE SEVERAL THINGS ON ONE OF MY MULTITUDINOUS 'TO DO' LISTS, making loom bands.  The noise you can here above the sound of the laptop keyboard being tapped is indeed my teeth grinding at the sheer boredom of it all.  Yes, that's right - I have managed to be 'on trend' with this fad while simultaneously having ...