The Boy is Eighteen Today

I can't believe it.  The small, blue eyed, soapy smelling monkey child who would cling onto me as though he wanted to climb back inside is eighteen today.  Technically at 8.47pm in fact because after twenty eight hours of walking up and down hospital corridors attached to a drip and cursing whoever said that 'natural childbirth' was 'powerful' - it all went wrong, I was flipped onto a bed (ok not so much flipped as heaved) and The Boy was dragged from me grumbling profusely.  'No change there' says A, 'he didn't want to leave his room then and he doesn't now.'

The Boy did grumble rather than cry but as he had uttered not a sound up to that point and several ashen faced doctors were gathered round him, we were pleased at any sound frankly.  It was boiling hot, much like today, and A had smuggled in an electric fan which he kindly aimed at whichever bit was the sweatiest.  Oh the romance.  But finally I remember glancing at the clock at the exact moment that the Boy grumbled croakily and it was 8.47 and we had a son and he was fine.

Now he is eighteen and taller than me.  He calls me 'Micro Mum' and when I try to remind him of stuff or tell him off he laughs at me.  Happy Birthday Boy.

Making a Meal of It

Yesterday afternoon I heard shouting, swearing and crashing noises in the kitchen. Was Gordon Ramsay cooking for the Queen? Or Marco Pierre White gutting squid for a state dinner? No – it was The Boy making lunch: pasta with tomato sauce.

I found him in the kitchen, crashing about, ten saucepans littering the work surfaces, moaning and clutching his head. ‘What happened?’

‘I banged my head on the saucepan and slipped on an onion.’

It was difficult to see how he’d banged his head on a saucepan since they’re kept in cupboards at knee height. At my confused look he explained sheepishly that in frustration he had hit himself over the head with a saucepan. Ah right. ‘I’m trying to make tomato sauce’ he grumbled.

I suggested a can of tomatoes would be a good idea. He put on the pasta. He heated the tomatoes. Then he decided he’d give the onions another go and chopped them into large lumps. After a few seconds he started crying and swearing. ‘My eyes are watering and the lumps are too big. Why didn’t you tell me to fry the onions first!’

‘You didn’t ask’ I said tightly. He got out another saucepan and I showed him how to fry onions. I could hear Husband’s voice saying: ‘Don’t bloody do it for him.’ I ignored it – he was in a nice clean office with grown-ups and not a tantrummy teenager. ‘Do I have to keep stirring it?’ The Boy huffed. Then he decided to add some garlic and spent a good fifteen minutes trying to peel it but his nails weren’t long enough or something. Meanwhile the pasta was overcooked and clinging to the bottom of the saucepan like those rubber bands in massive bundles, collected by thrifty types. I snatched the garlic, pulled off the skin and showed him how to chop it.

‘Euggh! Now my fingers smell of garlic!’

Christ – this was turning into some Japanese endurance test. Taking a deep breath I told him to tip the garlic into the onions, stir and cook for five minutes, and then add it all to the tomato mixture, taste it and add salt and pepper.

‘Stop stop – you’re going too fast for me!’

Finally he tipped the tomato pasta mess into a dish. I was going to suggest he grated some Parmesan over it but was worried his brain might explode. How does he manage to get his trousers on in the morning?

Buying clothes for The Boy

It's The Boy's birthday on Saturday, so I popped (arggh - middle aged word) into a store called BENCH, which describes itself as an urban lifestyle brand, thus explaining why they charge £25 for a tee shirt. Was fingering a mud/poo coloured top that he might like when a spotty teen sales assistant shuffled over. We had the following conversation:

HIM: (IN HIGH PITCHED SQUEAKY 'MY VOICE IS BREAKING' VOICE) Can I help you wiv anyfink today Madam?

ME: I'm looking for a t-shirt for my son.

HIM: (IN A BURST OF INSPIRATION POINTING AT THE VERY TEE I'M FINGERING) Well what about that one Madam?

ME: Er right. I need it in a small.

HIM: I don't fink we have it in a small.

ME: (CHECKING THE LABEL) Yes you do.

HIM: Where?

ME: (SHOWING HIM THE LABEL) Here.

HIM: Oh. Please let me know if there is anyfink I can be of more assistant wiv?

ME: Thanks.

(PAUSE)

ME: You're in my way.

But it was worth it to see that momentary light of love appear in The Boy's eyes (or it might have been avarice but never mind). There were several anxious moments while he tried it on and said: 'This isn't a pyjama top is it?' and I assured him that it wasn't. He then nodded and said: 'Not bad mum. Thanks' before adding, 'Don't tell anyone you bought me this.' And then he gave me a hug and I felt his long bony chest against mine and remembered how when he was small I would say: 'Hold onto mummy like a monkey' and he would wrap his arms and legs round me as though he were trying to climb back inside me.

Inconsequentials

No - not my granny's term for underwear but the sheer amount of brain clogging stuff I seem to wade through on the domestic front before during and after any proper work can be achieved. Last week I sat through the numbing spectacle of a classful of five year olds muttering something inaudible about Farmer Duck. Despite my utterly brilliant Girl saving the show by muttering inadibly with her usual star quality, I sat, mind racing with all the crap that had to be done that day. Inconsequential crap. That nobody would notice. Unless it wasn't done.

1. Buy a green t-shirt for The Girl's Sports Day.
2. Run very fast past the School Office in case the long clawed arm of the PTA suddenly shot out. Remember those bits in the Hammer films when Christopher Lee shouts: Don't look into the eyes! PTA is just like that. You stop for a five minute chat and two seconds later you've been seconded into baking 200 cakes, directing the school panto for the next five years and supervising the school trip to Beijing. Any feeble protests about a full time job don't get you off the hook either.
3. Pick up half eaten worms off the kitchen floor. The cats have given up on offering live frogs and now feel my tastes extend to decomposing worms instead.
5. Pick up Husband's dry cleaning. I go to the dry cleaner's so often he actually smiles at me. Maybe he likes me! Husband perks up. Maybe he'll give you a discount.
6. Water the tomatoes. Wonder why they're not growing faster. Go back upstairs to office and wonder what that terrible smell is emanating from The Boy's bedroom.
7. Discover that the pillowcase I deliberately stuffed with The Boy's half-eaten apples and sandwiches that he left by the side of the bed (deciding to Show Him The Consequences of His Actions) - he has been peacefully sleeping on for the past week and the contents of said pillow are now green and pulpy. He hasn't even noticed! Resist squealing like a girl.
8. Look out of window and see next door's cat trying to have a poo on my tomatoes. Shout in rage and shake fist ineffectively. Cat looks at me then strolls off tail in the air in that fuck you manner that cats have down pat.
9. Sit down at computer. Get writer's block.
10. Get biscuit to help with writer's block. Decide to water the plants again with hose. See next door's cat on the shed roof. Deliberately turn the hose on the little shitter. Feel better.
11. Writer's block gone. Hurrah! Do some work.
12. Hear loud knock at door. Peep out of window and recognise old bag from No 42 and owner of probably very wet cat. Think about confronting her with her cat's tomato crapping habit and my just revenge.
13. Hide under the desk instead till she goes away.
14. Lunchtime!

It's all my fault. And it will be better tomorrow. But it feels so foolish when Producer rings and asks when the draft of script will be ready. Life keeps getting in the way. It sounds so feeble. It is. But it does.

Ten Random Things

Lovely Wife of Bold has given me an award so I'm going to go all Gwyneth Paltrow for a minute. So much love . . . sniff . . .blub . .goop . . . thank you . . .

What a delicious way to start the week now that The Boy and The Girl have finally gone back to school after a week of driving me mad I'm missing spending quality time with my lovely children. The deal is that a) I link to seven other blogs and b) talk about myself endlessly. No problem. After some thought here are my blog choices.


Kit Courtney (My first follower so y'know - a bit special. And she writes with fluidity and ease. And her dog is lovely!)

How Publishing Really Works (Just essential for every writer. Reminds you of where you are aiming as well as how to aim)

Product Placement (Lovely, friendly and loads of useful information about makeup and girl stuff. Could grow to be the UK version of Makeupalley.

Atheist Revolution (Not everyone's cuppa but a thoughtful passionate and necessary counterpoint to the frightening kind of Christian extremism that grips much of the US by the throat)

The Daily Quail (wonderful slap in the face to the Daily Mail)

Caution - Woman at Work! (Only just discovered this one but it's energetic, funny and honest)

Help! I Need a Publisher (I particularly like this site because Nicola Morgan deals mainly with children's books. She is passionate about writing and it really really shows. Her advice is invaluable)


Ten Random Things About Me

1. I once did a parachute jump from 12,000 feet. I've never felt fear like it, but once done it gave me a touchstone by which to measure other fears. As in Come on you lazy bint. You've jumped out of a plane - now get that script finished you hopeless twat and other exercises in self-love.

2. I think that people accept you the way you present yourself. So walk in with your head held high and nobody will guess you're a quivering insecure wreck.

3. I bitterly regret sleeping with two particular people. Not at the same time I hasten to add, but both times I slept with them for *cringe* validation. I was very young at the time but it's something I want to drum into my daughter. Never do this and never assume that if someone wants to go to bed with you, you are somehow obliged to reciprocate.

4. I don't understand why so many young women are embarrassed to be thought of as feminists. They do believe they should have equal pay, equal rights, support from the fathers of their children, not be subject to gropes and catcalls at work, and reproductive rights though. All things hard won by feminists! Be grateful you selfish minxes!

5. A week before 9/11 I took The Boy up to the top of the World Trade Centre. I remember thinking how cheerful and chatty the lift guy was, considering he took people up and down it all day long. 'I love my job ma'am' he said.

6. I can eat my own weight in cheese.

7. I've recently taken up running. This may be linked to point 6.

8. When I was a teenager my parents trusted me to attend a Catholic Sunday School. I snuck out and went to see The Clash at Brixton Academy instead. Because I looked so guilty when I returned home (default Catholic behaviour) my parents never questioned me.

9. I don't get Bo Selecta. I think he's spectacularly unfunny.

10. When I was small my uncle had this fabulous black labrador dog called Jake who was so well trained, he could be trusted to babysit me. No really. Jake knew he was not to let me out of the house. Then Jake was accused of sheep chasing and my uncle had to shoot him. A week later they found it was another dog. It broke my heart.

My body is a temple

In other words there are bits falling off it, damp patches, strange lumps, and hairs sprouting in dark corners. Today, as the sun was shining for about three minutes I got to grips with my St Tropez and slapped it all over my legs. Then I put on a slutty short skirt and spent about ten minutes checking to see if any extra cellulite had grown during the night. The Girl watched me. 'Mummy I've got a hundred friends' she said. Just like a celebrity. Then realising we were late for school I dashed downstairs to find that The Boy's armpit stench had somehow permeated the living room where it hung like a plague miasma, even though he had left half an hour previously.

The Girl and I nipped off to school. They close the gates at 9am like The Shawshank Redemption, so any late parents suffer the shame of having to go in the Back Entrance, proclaiming their tardiness and ineptitude to the school. Only now they don't call it lateness anymore - it's A Lateness Outcome and we have to think of Punctuality Solutions. (Like not spending half the morning checking our arses for cellulite.) I dropped The Girl off at her class and she announced in a clear, keen voice: 'Mummy was late because she spent a lot of time looking at her bottom.'

I was going to buy her some sweets but she can think again. Happy Half Term!

Starting a book

Oh it's such a beautiful day. So why am I sitting on the bed, laptop in front of me, fingers poised and frozen above the keyboard? Not literally of course - I'm typing this, which is much more fun than Starting A Book. How do real writers do this? I've had this idea fermenting for months now, made notes, wrote a few scripts in between, shouted at the children, examined my split ends and now I can't put it off any more. I have to get started. The words have to come out of my head *she says pretentiously* It's like editorial laxatives.

*Long Pause while I stare at the screen and it mocks me back*

Husband has just walked in and starts ironing his shirt. "Do you know this ironing board is older than either of our children?" I consider this. "Yes and it's a bloody sight more useful too." Knowing our luck, The Boy will still be sitting in his room among an ever growing pile of crusty pants and sticky crockery when he's 50.

Ok. I've got the title.

Coffee Break!

Don't like the title.

Anyone got any tips?

There's a Frog in the Kitchen

What am I gonna do
There's a frog in the kitchen what am I gonna do?
I'm gonna teach that frog . .

Actually what I did was scream like a girl and hide. For God sake. The poor frog crouched froggily in the hall, eyes flickering from side to side, while through the glass of the kitchen door, two furry faces pressed up against the glass. 'Pick him up mummy' said The Girl, helpfully, from her vantage point of half way up the stairs. I did the next best thing. I ran up the stairs and woke The Boy who was extremely grumpy. 'There's a FROG in the hall!' I whimpered. 'Yeah I know' he mumbled, crawling stinkily out of his pit. 'It was in the kitchen last night so I put it in the food bin.' In the food bin?! Meanwhile the cats were scratching at the kitchen door like the floating vampire children in Salem's Lot.

Eventually after a lot of bad language, I persuaded Frog to jump into a large bag and took him outside to the front garden. I think I convinced him that the alternative was being tortured by two nasty cats with bad breath. 'Frogs are meant to go near water and grass!' shouted The Boy. 'You put him in the food bin' said The Girl smugly. So I put Frog out the front and gave him a bowl of water. I can only hope he doesn't get toad away.

Aaagh!

Gird your loins parents. It's that awful sinking moment when you realise the Easter Holidays are now upon us and you're stuck with your little darlings for two whole weeks! Oh and The Girl woke up today with chicken pox. Either that or virulent acne. It's probably punishment for me being snide about that P.E. teacher who demanded The Boy wore socks.

Am trying to work while The Girl lies on the sofa saying things like: 'The spots are up my bottom. Can you rub it better?' and 'The inside of my foot hurts.' Soon The Boy will arrive home full of grumbles and upsets. Yes - it's Easter Bunny time!

I want to run away to a tropical island full of interesting men who want me to talk about myself all day and pour me ludicrous drinks.

Grumpy

Am feeling very tired and grumpy at the moment for three reasons:

1. I've received a letter from The Boy's school. From his PE teacher who writes that he is 'extremely concerned by the lack of progress being made by your son in physical eduction this term' Why? Because he is wearing 'incorrect socks'. This particular PE teacher roared at The Boy,'And what would your mother think of you not wearing the right socks for PE?' and The Boy responded, 'Actually sir, I don't think she'd give a shit.' And got a big detention.

Poor Boy. He's right about me not giving shit about his socks. But it's also because some PE teachers can be strange people. I had one who was obsessed with sport - carrying a long pole with a hook on it to prevent any errant (drowning) students in the pool from clambering out. She also had a fun game of screaming that the last person out of the changing room lost a House Point, so we all had to rush like mad, struggling into our wet clothes, so as not to be the one who let down their House by losing a House Point.

I'd be worried if The Boy was being bullied or a bully himself. I'd be worried if he was depressed. And I'd be worried if he was a lazy arse. But am I worried that his socks are incorrect? No I am not.

2. I've been doing a lot of marking at the moment. And it's exhausting trying to be honest but constructive and kind at the same time. I opened a short story where the author announced they were writing 'in the style of Sylvia Plath'. And succeeded. In the sense that after I'd read it I wanted to stick my head in the oven. Why can't writers develop their own voice?

3. The Girl has started reading her Key Stage One book, and I'm supposed to make comments in the notebook. I read one note from her teacher saying: 'The Girl has difficulty in recognising some words. She should try harder'. For some reason that comment really hacked me off. What words does she have difficulty with? Existential? Erroneous? Patronising Twat? Now I know how hard it is for teachers having to push children towards targets all the time but she's five years old. I'm going to read to her and let her listen to audio stories so she grows to love words and books, at her own pace. I restrained myself (just) from writing, 'Piss Off Teecher' in the comments box.

Told you I was grumpy. Off to eat steak and watch some bad telly. Less grumpy tomorrow.

My so called life

It being Saturday means that The Girl has to be escorted to yet another of her f***king parties (that child has a better social life than Paris Hilton) and The Boy is planning to go to Kingston to "buy some doughnuts". And speaking of better social lives, I had a phone call from a neighbour telling me that "Charlie and Lola visit quite a lot and Lola left her collar behind". Lola is my recently spayed and sulky cat. I went round to see my neighbour. "Oh yes" he said - "Charlie and Lola pop in quite a lot. Lola grabs some biscuits, hisses at Charlie and rushes out, and Charlie just sits in a patch of sunlight. They're quite friendly with our two." These are cats we're talking about. I also learned that Lola has been "waggling her arse at the male cats". The little slapper. We clearly got her spayed just in time. I also discovered that the black and white one who I named Mrs Robinson on account of her advanced years and the fact that our male cat Charlie seems to quite fancy her, is in fact a male cat called Freddie. Shows you how much I know about cats. Come to think of it, does this mean that Charlie is a metrosexual cat? Gay? Or just deeply dim? I fear it is the latter. Whenever I put him out of the kitchen to stop him eating Lola's food as well as his own, he just sits, staring in the wrong direction, for a minute before realising he is no longer in the kitchen.

The Husband and I have no social life at the moment but our children and pets obviously do so that's all right. Oh and five minutes ago I asked The Boy to help me with some housework. "I just flushed the toilet!" he shouted with the wounded air of one who had just vacuumed the house from top to bottom.

Plundering your life

The novelist Julie Myerson is in a whole load of trouble for using her son Jake's drug troubles in her new book. She pleads that old chestnut about doing it to 'help' other parents who can't understand what happened to their ordinarily grumpy teenager and have suddenly been landed with a smacked up extra from Trainspotting.

This all happened three years ago. Jake is now 20 and brands his mother 'insane'. She claims he became violent and abusive while on cannabis, and after several warnings, she and her husband changed the locks and threw him out. But whether or not the book is a success, or whether it helps other middle-class parents, it's unlikely that her relationship with her son will ever be properly repaired. It's not just the writing about the drugs - she used some of his poetry. Teenage poetry. I'd never live that one down.

To be fair to Myerson it must have been hellish to deal with an angry stoner. She says it "hit us out of nowhere" and being a writer you deal with it, by writing.

This mining your family - well, a lot of people do it. Including me. I put a spin on the essentially mundane; blither about the various doings of The Boy, The Husband and The Girl. And all writers dig about in the cesspit of their psyche. I'm writing something now about adolescence precisely because its a time that we never forget. It shapes us like red hot metal in a furnace. Adolescence brands us. I don't think I'd want my teenage idiocies (and there were many of them) forever emblazoned in print. But I was watching telly this morning as a friend of mine, Stephanie Calman who has written a book about her difficult relationship with her mother, called How (Not) to Murder Your Mother was appearing with another mother who had set up a website to deal with the misery of her son's skunk addiction.

Stephanie pointed out that we all have our own reality, and Jake's reality may have been very different from his mother's. The other mother spoke movingly of her utter despair at her son's change of personality, and her total isolation and inability to help him. (She used pseudonyms to avoid recognition). But what struck me was that both Stephanie and the other woman were both upfront about what they were writing; it was factual. Whereas with Myerson, the story of Jake crept in to a novel she was already writing and began to take over. Fact and fiction can oh so easily blur and other people's lives become mere grist to your literary mill.

There is also the uncomfortable question of writerly arrogance. If you're a really good writer, and Julie Myerson is, it's again very easy to assume that any hurt you're inflicting is transcended by your talent. That old chestnut - the talented don't have to abide by rules and can trample in a cavalier fashion over others.

I don't know what the answer is. If The Boy suddenly developed a skunk habit, would I blog about it? And if I were offered a publishing contract to write about it, would I?

Half Term and Haircuts

Half term. It creeps up you like Christmas and Chlamydia – silent, encroaching and suddenly overwhelming. But it’s times like this that I feel particularly glad I’m freelance.

I’m writing two scripts at the moment, and an article and marking a great deal of work from the Open University Course I’m teaching. That crept up on me as well. As a freelance it’s very hard to turn down work, so one minute you’re convinced that nobody will ever commission you again and the next, you’re frozen in overload panic. I’m not complaining (she whines) but on the brink of half-term, a heavy workload does test my work/life balance and finds it a completely stupid wanky phrase that means nothing!

So with The Boy who cannot be parted from his electrical entertainment, The Girl who needs stimulation and entertainment, and me with my workload, I’m going to visit my mum who lives by the sea, and is so sprightly it’s infuriating. But before we go I take The Girl to get her hair cut, so she looks slightly less scruffy. More importantly if I don’t get her hair sorted, Mum might Get Out the Scissors herself. And that wouldn’t do given some of the Horror Haircuts of my Childhood – far far worse than the horror of half term.

I think mum thought that saying a Hail Mary and (sometimes) wiping the bacon scissors was far more effective than several years of actual hairdressing training. As a result of her efforts, my dad would come home, look at my newly shorn hair and say: “You look like Joan of Arc!” He meant it as a compliment but when I saw the film, and noted that even with her amazing cheekbones, Ingrid Bergman’s hair resembled a seventies Purdy cut by a blind gardener, I cringed at what my hair must have looked like.

Off we trot to the local barber, where men sit in rows, waiting to have proper manly haircuts. They do two types normally – short and very short. But since The Girl started having her hair cut, they’ve added, A Quick Trim to their repertoire. There is none of the usual scent of sprays, lotions and urgency in the air, neither does someone called Leonard ponce about in tight leather trousers screeching: “Who cut your hair?” in a faux Italian accent. Instead, there’s a faint smell of well worn denim, and man dirt. The Girl sits quite happily in the shearing chair, while all around her, tough blokes chat to their crimper. “Yeah so I told him he could fack off”, “Bish bosh smack in the marf” and “Shut it you slaaaag” (no I didn’t accidently walk onto the set of Eastenders), while I read back issues of Nuts. There’s Rate My Uploaded breasts, which is pretty self-explanatory. Flick the page and there are Stupid Signs where doughy men are photographed pointing to signs like Spunk Alley and Turkey Cock Lane. Next page has a picture of a man with a large snake coming out of his nose, followed by an interview with Chanelle from Big Brother, naked, (you suck in that stomach girl!) informing Nuts readers that the idea of a threesome with a Nuts reader really turns her on.

Actually, a onesome with a Nuts reader doesn’t do much for me – considering I’ve had two kids and breastfed both of them, I’m in better shape than most of the beer bellied, saggy arsed, spotty faced pics of male Nuts readers. They seem unaware of the odd disparity between the hot babes they dribble over and the slightly rank, overweight, slack mouthed image they present. Or maybe that’s the point. Despite the girls in every single interview pantingly admitting that girl on girl action with a Nuts reader is their Ultimate Fantasy, there is about as much chance of your average Nuts reader getting it on with a Nuts Babe as there is of Nelson Mandela releasing a three way sex tape with Paris Hilton and Bishop Desmond Tutu. While I totally understand the fury Nuts provokes in many women, I flip it shut feeling pretty good about myself. Well about my tits and arse anyway.

Black Dog in the Corner

A smiling lady handed me a leaflet yesterday. It had a picture of two smiling people, surrounded by baskets of apples and inexplicably in the background, a large (unsmiling) moose. The headline was: All Suffering Soon to End, immediately followed, less cheerfully by When the End of the World Comes, Who will Survive? Who indeed? Cockroaches? Minor celebrities with firearms? Rats? No – only Jehovah Witnesses apparently.

I was feeling slightly gloomy which brings me out a really sexy combination of anger and tearfulness so I asked the lady: “Didn’t you think the world was coming to an end before? And you all sold your belongings and went to sit at the top of a hill, only unfortunately the world carried on as normal?” Her smile retained its full wattage: “Oh yes” she said. “It was known as The Great Disappointment.”

I’ve had a rather grey few weeks. Not Great Disappointments, just a succession of too much not-fun work, endless slush, the bitter and irrevocable realisation that cheese gives me spots, and an indecipherable contract.

Have you ever found yourself reading through a contract, seemingly written in English but so thick with clauses, sub clauses and indemnity blah that you can feel your brain sliding off the page? But after someone I knew got into terrible professional trouble for not paying attention to some tiddly widdly sub-clause in a sub-section, I have always given my contracts to someone else with big red rings round the bits I don’t understand ie everything except Sign Here. Luckily Husband is a) a contracts expert and b) deeply and generally suspicious. So when he started frowning and mugging and re-reading bits of it over and over again and still frowning and mugging, I felt my heart plummet. Because I knew I would have to contact the company and ask questions.

“Don’t worry,” says Husband. “Just tell them you want a bit of clarification on x y and z.” So I write a very polite email asking them to explain what subsection 6 means, all the while thinking that I will never hear from them again, and I really should get an agent to deal with this stuff and why can’t I understand contracts and why am I so stupid?

“Contracts are designed to be confusing,” says Husband comfortingly. “Nobody can understand them. Except me and a few other very clever people.” He is sweet and kind and right.

I’m blithering on about this because the exact moment I send the email asking for some clarity on a contract, I can feel a dark, spectral mist wrap itself round me and I know it’s back. He's back. No warning. No warning at all and the black dog slinks silently into the room and sits in the far corner. The thing is, I don’t know where he’s come from. Or why. And I thought if you’ve ever been through it, you get a warning. I know what the signs are – a slowing up, a lassitude, and a grey heaviness. Or was the vague gloom I’ve been feeling the last few weeks the sign? I’ve been moving around a lot today to try and shake it off. Going for walks, breathing in rain and air, stroking the various animals who wander in for a free feed, sniffing The Girl, trying to soak up her artless joy. The Boy knows – he always does. When he was a baby I was crushed with PND, and ever since I’ve been sodden with guilt at his sidelong glances and “Are you ok mum’s?” I make the most of his bony hugs, keep moving and hope it will pass soon.

The moving about is because the writer and psychologist Dorothy Rowe once suggested that it helped to think about what your depression looked like and I thought of mine as cold inertia. So maybe I should call it Black Ice, rather than Black Dog.