The year Emma Jones poisoned someone she was 10 years old. She hadn't planned it. In fact, she had never planned anything in her life. She was told what to eat and wear, when to go to bed, and to be thankful to the boys who pushed her in the playground for the attention they spared her. 

I drank too much last night and now I have one of those low-lying headaches. You know the ones; you used to have them all the time — not really the throbbing kind, more like they’re fused to your skull, etched onto your soul. It was fun, though. You'd like him. We had pasta at that place down in Bloomsbury. He didn't even seem to mind when I cried over my bucatini because I can’t contain you and your evaporating form. He was nice but somehow, I don’t think I’ll hear back. It’s ok, like you always said, if a man can’t handle your tears, he’s not worth their salt, right?

There is a scene in The Handmaid’s Tale when June is hiding in what used to be a busy newsroom. Amongst her many finds strewn across desks, including pictures of journalists’ families and hastily abandoned mugs of dried coffee she finds a DVD of Friends. For a moment June allows herself to cross over, back to a reality that has now evaporated and seems at once childish, perversely carefree and the very embodiment of humanity.

A friend of mine with three kids once said that if she heard the song “Let It Go” one more time she would pierce her eyes with an icicle. You know, for added dramatic effect. “They have it on ALL THE TIME,” she said through gritted teeth. I concurred and nodded politely, as you do, sprinkling it with a customary solidarity sigh. “They play it like three times a week!” Wait, what? This time I felt like offering a big, fat “your kids need a lesson in true fandom, lady.” You see, the beauty of autism is that Thomas’ laser focus on a particular interest means that in our household we get through at least five viewings A WEEKEND, and then there are re-enactments of Princess Anna waking her sister Elsa up to build a snowman some 15 times in a row, plus exact lines from the film told to people in the park, at the supermarket till and to random strangers on the street.

Your moods eschew the constancy and comfort of my familiar, lazy days spent under the warmth of a perennial sun. Instead you offer yourself in winks and seductive head tilts; a ray of sun briefly and gloriously highlighting a green patch of tender grass, bending softly under the push of a sudden breeze; a fast moving cover of cloud, simultaneously as grey as lead and as white as cold breath, torn and frayed at the edges by the wind that picks up pace.

Ok so this is gonna sound a bit creepy but I like to watch. I walk onto the train, grab a seat _ there are benefits to being at the start/end of the tube line _ and ready myself for the show. The Victoria line is my happy place. Sure it can get crowded, hot and smelly but so far no one has screamed for biscuits or demanded Hey Duggee at the top of their voices so we’re smooth sailing.

Memories are tricky things. They can either pull you down dark rabbit holes or lift you up to the skies on warm clouds of sugar, spice and everything nice.

In case you haven’t noticed, it’s Christmas. Time to be grateful and acknowledge the gifts we already have in our lives and all that jazz. Some gifts in the parental life, you’ll agree, just keep on giving. Like getting kids dressed in the morning. “The Suckometer is strong with this one,” I hear you say and I’m nodding deeper than a GIF on steroids. Now, let me tell you, getting a little boy with autism to put on anything resembling an outfit kicks things up a notch to Olympic status. Every. Single. Morning. Aversion to textures, lengths, colours, necklines, joins forces with demand avoidance to create a vortex of endurance testing that eats through your patience faster than you can say Pac Man (showing my age here…). It also eats up whatever little time you, yourself have to get ready. Having trousers on and a top is a MASSIVE achievement. Putting something on your face to ensure people don’t mistake you for the Ghost of Christmas Past is next level business.

Dear readers, brace yourselves.  This is a long post but there was no way around it.  When life’s plans change drastically you can either spend the rest of your days mourning your original path or you can remap the journey but there are no shortcuts for that and no pretty summaries either. At least not for me. I’m not good at bulletpointing my way through life. I need words. Words are my anchor, my breadcrumb trail into a new destination, my friend, my guiding light when it looks like I may get lost, my way out and my way back in. So brace yourselves. This is a long post but there was no way around it. Just into it.

Franklin, I don’t know much about you. In fact I know nothing about you. After all I only spent 30 minutes next to you as we waited for an ambulance to take you to A&E, and I never saw you again.

This could be a post about going on a first long distance plane travel with a tantrumy 3 year-old but why would I want to give you acid reflux and nightmares? I’m not gonna do that to you. You’ve all been there and if you haven’t, DON’T. Sit back, relax and “enjoy” your flight knowing it won’t last longer than three hours. Keep doing it, keep covering the countries around you and don’t venture out any further. I didn’t take my own advice and recently got on that plane with an 8:00 hour journey in front of me. Before that joyous experience even started,  I tried to get my son to sit down, way ahead of departure because the flight attendant insisted he needed to be strapped in to “listen” to the flight safety information. Insert big lols here, both for the sitting down part and the safety info. Is this the bit where you’re gonna tell us to fit our own masks first before helping others? Yes yes, we get it, it’s about not actually dying before being able to put the damned mask on the kid, but still. What mother would instinctively do this? Aren’t we hard wired to put them first at all times?

It was Mother’s Day. The morning was off to a promising start despite the twisted irony of British Summer Time screwing with what was possibly a mother’s most undeniable right to have a lie-in in the whole year. The baby _ he’s three but we’ll go with baby _ came into the bed at an acceptable hour, cuddled without wedging his foot into mummy’s lungs and it was all very rainbows and unicorns. They all got up and mummy managed to have a hot cup of coffee and breakfast _ yes, both _ and got some lovely cards. Winning.

Dear Son,

Last week was a tough one. The wheels of the crazy carriage were well and truly spinning at never before seen speeds _ work was at an intensity level where all sorts of nuclear buttons were being pushed, the house and its menacing trifecta of clutter, laundry and kid crumbs was threatening to swallow us whole, and the parenting bit was like losing on all fronts. Also I chose this very week to go on a bit of a carb-free run.  In the world of superlatively bad choices that one got all the medals.

I don’t know about you but bad meatballs really piss me off.

It’s here. Valentine’s Day. The day most of us love to hate and hate to love. I’ll admit it, I’ve been a hater for pretty much forever. Red hearts, plush toys, overpriced flowers, the naffness of it all and the pressure to show someone you care when that should not come from a place of pressure at all and it should happen freely, not on an allocated day.

Lady Gaga has a potbelly.

It was the end of a long day. My eyes felt like puddles of burning flesh and my head heavy, like a container of voodoo dolls being pierced every other second by a vindictive despot. Tolerance was nearing below basement levels by the time I got on the tube.

My feeding chair is bright and yellow with cute white chickens with red beaks. It was more expensive than the Ikea one you considered buying, remember Mother? You had high hopes for this high chair _ visions of slightly messy but wholesome meal times, filled with giggles and the occasional meltdown.

There is a baby bottle standing on the kitchen counter. It keeps being moved around, lid loosely over teat, like it needs to be washed but no one can really be bothered to do it.

Lift talk at work:

Sleep.

Ahhh, the nursery pick up and the bus ride home. Much like a 45 minute journey through purgatory with the contours of a warfare scenario or a mini UN session at play. You negotiate, you make silent complicit alliances with short glances and knowing half smiles, you pass judgement, you pretend you didn't see that, you outright bully your way in armed with pushchair, you manage that tantrum with the skill of an elite army officer with a bag of apple flavoured rice cakes and dummies as ammunition.

“Mummy Beauty?” I hear you asking. “What is that?” Do you understand it’s not even 8 am, we’ve already applied entire tubes of concealer and we’re still looking like hungover pandas? Please, sister. When you put those two words together, mummy and beauty, you speak of pink unicorns, that is what you speak of.