I must admit, having that I was rather hoping for a lighting bolt of self-actualisation on my 40th birthday, but it didn’t quite happen like that. For one thing we were in the middle of a global pandemic, deep in the third lockdown in a year, I hadn’t seen my parents or brother for months and I was trying to homeschool a 6yo and a 12yo. Survival was the only goal.

However, over the next few months and years I did start to develop a greater confidence in myself and the validity of what I wanted. Firstly I thought about my career and decided that what I really wanted to do was work as a school librarian, and two years ago I got a job doing just that - and I was right, I love it.

I had been a parent governor at my youngest’s school for a few years, and when the Chair stepped down I had the confidence to step up - something I would not have considered myself able to do in my 30s.

But I think one of the biggest changes in my 40s has been owning the things I love to do. The things that make my soul sing, which truly nourish the person I actually am, rather than the person I or someone else thinks I ought to be.

I have been feeling sad over the last couple of weeks because my beloved Henry Cat has been diagnosed with cancer, and probably won’t be with us for very much longer. As an antidote to sadness I thought I would write down all the things I do which make me happy, with no filter to make them cooler or cleverer or more interesting than they really are.

1. Walking outside and looking at the seasonal changes, especially flowers. Yesterday I had three medical appointments - one for me and one for each daughter - and walking between two of them through sun-dappled, bluebell bespattered Epping Forest really lifted the day. I also love filling my camera feed with pictures of wild flowers.

   

2. Staying in on Friday night and drinking fizz with my husband, chatting about our weeks.

3. Swimming in the sea. Swimming anywhere outside is good, but the sea really feeds my soul.

4. Baking. Especially baking a simple, comforting recipes like cookies or chocolate cake as an after-school treat for my girls.

5. Colouring in.

6. Yoga. Honestly, not so much when I am actually doing it, but the feeling I get afterwards.

7. Flicking through home magazines and looking at interiors I would never be able to recreate with feelings of interest rather than envy.

8. Reading Golden Age detective fiction.

9. Reading ‘children’s books’ - Chalet School, Ballet Shoes, Anne of Green Gables.

10. Writing.

11. Giving someone a book recommendation and them enjoying it.

12. Meeting friends 1-1 or in very small groups (and avoiding big gatherings of people I don’t know well).

13. Singing hymns in church.

14. Browsing through my cookery books.

15. A new edition of Simple Things magazine.

16. Visiting my parents with my daughters and seeing their pleasure in each other’s company.

17. Lazy family breakfasts on a weekend morning.

18. An afternoon by myself in an empty house, or an evening when no-one else is in and I can mindlessly watch Location Location Location and eat nachos.

19. Snuggling up with my girls to watch a teen drama on Netflix.

20. Our family ritual, developed during lockdown and continued ever since, of family hot chocolates after school on a Friday.

21. Browsing in charity shops.

22. Sitting in the sunshine in a beautiful and historic European square with a glass of wine.

23. A long train journey in a comfortable seat with a good book and tasty snacks.

24. Listening to podcasts while cooking or cleaning - the explosion of fascinating podcasts has transformed domestic tasks from necessary drudgery to time when I can feed my brain. My current favourites are The Rest is Politics, The Rest is Politics US, The Rest is History, All About Agatha, Tophole, Shedunnit, Practical Positivity and Sustainable(ish).

25. And of course, I have to end this list, with one of the most satisfying, soul-feeding, calming, enriching activities there is - cuddling my Henry Cat.

    

My eldest daughter turns 17 this week. As everyone told me would be the case, the days were sometimes very long indeed, but the years have been terrifyingly short.

I don’t want to write too much about my daughter because she deserves to control her own online footprint, but I will say that she has grown into such an amazing young woman. Inspiringly brave and persevering in the face of the challenges presented by her visual impairment. Clever, thoughtful, sensitive, kind, creative. So much fun to have a conversation with. We are incredibly proud of her.

So, in lieu of writing about her, I am going to write about me - or about seventeen thingsI have learned in this seventeen years of parenting.

Because this focuses very much on my lived experience as a mother I am going to put a trigger warning here for anyone who is struggling with baby loss, infertility or bereavement of a parent or child.

One: Nothing prepared me for the intensity of love and depth of protectiveness I feel for my children.

Two: I can feel many, many times that I just can’t - whether that is stay awake a moment longer, play another round of Where’s My Cupcake, tell another bedtime story, fill in another form or go into battle with another bureaucrat who is trying to tell me they know better than I do what is right for my child. But somehow I always do.

Three: I care more about the world being right for my children than I do for myself. We are living in frightening times, and sometimes having children feels like a hostage to fortune, but it is also my motivation for keeping going and trying to do whatever tiny bits I can to make the world safer, kinder or happier.

Four: Dropping a full glass bottle of Calpol on a tiled floor is a very, very bad thing to do.

Five: The quickest way to cure a child who seems at death’s door is to insist on an emergency GP appointment. Within seconds of stepping through the surgery door that frail, wan, febrile bundle of misery will be gambolling around like a well-caffeinated kitten.

Six: It’s really important to try and carve out time with my husband when we can be a couple rather than co-parents. Paradoxically this gets much harder as the kids get older as they don’t go to bed until I do!

Seven: The Whatsapp group I have with two close friends who have similarly aged children is an absolute lifesaver. And marriage saver. And creating-extra-burdensome-work-for-local-Social-Services saver.

Eight: I can be unexpectedly resourceful, especially in the field of costuming. Five year old decides at breakfast time on World Book Day that they would rather go as Alice in Wonderland than Tabby McTat? No problem. Twenty-four hours to create an astronaut costume out of recycling materials? I’m on it.

Nine: Seeing your own quirks or weaknesses reflected back at you in your child can be very hard to manage. Interestingly one of our girls is more like me in personality, and one more like my husband. When they are having a bad day, I am able to maintain patience much more easily with the child who is like my husband, and he is much calmer with the child who is more like me. Presumably because we have many years of experience of dealing with each other’s personality quirks!

Ten: Society doesn’t value parenting. I chose not to return to my old job seventeen years ago, and I don’t regret a single moment of the time I have spent at home with my kids. It has given me the chance to write and get my novels published, to engage in various voluntary roles, to put down real roots in my community, in the last couple of years to do a part-time job I really love, and, most importantly, to help two neurodivergent girls navigate the world without the pressures of having an employer to answer to. It’s been entirely my choice, fully supported by my husband, and we are lucky to have been able to afford to make it. But it is a choice which I feel is seen as eccentric at best and selfish or lazy at worst. When I was working as a senior manager in the health sector I was stressed, miserable and unfulfilled, but when people asked what I did and I told them my job title they were impressed. Now, when I explain that I am a part-time school librarian, school governor, writer-who-isn’t-publishing and stay-at-home mum I feel like I have to apologise for my lack of a proper career of the kind that previously high(ish)-flying graduates are supposed to have. I’m not a trad-wife, I think mothers (and fathers) who want to work outside the home should be able to do so, and that should be facilitated by excellent and affordable childcare. But I also would like to see stay-at-home parenting treated as a valid option, and a choice which more families can afford to make.

Eleven: The days are long but the years are short!

Twelve: I am incredibly proud of my body for growing two beautiful babies and then feeding them until they were toddlers, and will be forever grateful that it was able to do so.

Thirteen: Miscarriage is deeply painful, and the pain never fully recedes, even though I have been lucky enough to have a rainbow baby. But also, experiencing the loss of longed-for pregnancies has made me even more passionately pro-choice. Pregnancy and birth is physical and emotional chaos. Women die from it. It is beautiful and miraculous and awful in the original sense of the word - full of awe. Bringing a baby into the world and raising it to the best of your ability requires every ounce of physical, mental and emotional strength you possess. Forcing a woman who does not want to do so to remain pregnant is a form of rape, and incompatible with a civilised society.

Fourteen: You can read all the books and follow all the online gurus, but ultimately you can only parent as yourself, and that’s fine. Kids need to be safe and loved and fed and heard - if that all happens they’ll be fine.

Fifteen: As a parent you are constantly low-level grieving for a version of your child who is gone for ever. Those baby toes, chubby toddler hand stickily warm in yours, four year old dressing up as a fairy or six year old with their made-up words and cute mis-pronunciations are never coming back, and that can hurt. However, the massive compensation is that watching your child/young person develop their independence, their personality, their belief system and moral code, their friendships, their sense of style, their taste in books and films and music is magical.

Sixteen: My husband and I are resilient, and so are our kids, and so is our family unit.

Seventeen: Having children has given me harder moments than anything else, but I don’t believe that anything in life could make me happier than they do. Having children literally creates new love in the world, and new relationships - I get to see my husband as a father, my parents as grandparents, my brother and sister-in-law as uncle and aunt, my girls as daughters and sisters and nieces and granddaughters, and I get to feel part of, as Elton John might say, the circle of life.

The big news this week - in my social media filter bubble anyway - is the release of the much-trailed Schools White Paper with details of reform to the SEND (Special Educational Needs and Disabilities) system.

Now, I have plenty of skin in this game. I am mother to an autistic and dyslexic teenager who also has a physical disability, and to an AuDHD 11yo. I am Chair of Governors at my daughter’s primary school, and am also the governor with particular responsibility for SEND. I work in a secondary school, and many of the kids who gravitate to the library as their safe space in a busy mainstream secondary are those with SEND, whether diagnosed or not.

I really care about this stuff, and spend a very large proportion of my personal and professional life thinking about it, reading about it, talking about it, and so I have been looking forward to this White Paper with interest and some trepidation.

Why trepidation?

Well, a lot of the framing of this SEND debate, and the tone of many of the leaks over the last few months, has been that this White Paper is to solve a problem. The problem being that the costs of SEND are spiralling and the public purse cannot sustain it.

It is true that SEND costs have risen quickly over the past decade since EHCPs replaced ‘Statements’. However, if you ask the parents or teachers of young people with additional needs, or indeed the young people themselves, you will hear that despite all this extra money, the actual system of support is falling apart. More and more children are unable to cope in school at all, children’s mental health services are in crisis. Something definitely needs to change.

However, the narrative from many politicians and media outlets is that the problem is the kids themselves, or their pushy parents. We hear of a crisis of ‘over-diagnosis’ of autism and ADHD, with these diagnoses apparently being doled out like dolly mixtures in order to excuse poor parenting or secure advantageous support at school.

My eldest daughter’s autism diagnosis was a painful process which took over four years, and included an assessment she found so traumatic that she couldn’t physically enter the building where it occurred for several years afterwards, as well as a meeting with a psychologist who suggested to me that rather than being autistic she might have separation anxiety, caused by me stopping breastfeeding ‘abruptly’ (when she was 18 months old!).

No-one would go through this unless they really had to. And when we finally got that piece of paper saying ‘autistic’ it was no magic passport to additional support. The conclusion of that painful journey was the commencement of another, almost equally difficult one, to get an EHCP which entitled her to the extra support she needed in school.

So, why has SEN spending (and diagnosis of neurodivergence) rocketed?

Sam Freedman in his Substack Comment is Freed summarised it well:

At the same time the school system was becoming less inclusive, with ever more focus on academic attainment. Historically there had been a stigma around special schools and parents often tried to keep children in mainstream even if it wasn’t appropriate. But as this stigma fell away, and mainstream seemed less suited to those with needs, demand for special schools started rising fast. This was exacerbated by falls in school funding, which meant they also applied for more plans because they could no longer afford to support pupils who needed extra help via other means.

So, in his analysis, a combination of factors: the age of austerity post 2010 meant that school funding was reduced and so parents and schools needed to apply for ‘additional’ funding for adjustments which would previously have been possible within school budgets, and there was a (welcome) reduction in stigma around special schools.

But most crucially the school system was becoming less inclusive, with ever more focus on academic attainment.

SATs at the end of primary school judge schools and children against their proficiency in maths, reading, handwriting, spelling and grammar. That’s it. Seven years of primary education, and that’s what we think matters at the end of it.

The grammar rules, by the way, which my 11yo is studying, are so complex and arcane that I have managed to undertake an English Literature and Language degree at Oxford University and careers as a senior manager, a professional writer and a librarian without needing to know them. Do you know what a fronted adverbial is? Will you ever need to know?

Schools are not judged on their inclusivity; on how kind or community minded their pupils are, or how active and sporty, or how artistic and creative. We know that reading for pleasure, with all its associated benefits of improved mental health and longterm educational success, is declining dramatically amongst children and young people, even as focus on reading ‘scores’ and ‘ages’ increases.

The problem is a system forcing schools to fit children with wildly diverse skills and needs into a series of very small identical boxes.

This continues at secondary school, with ‘behaviour’ or ‘pastoral’ policies often associated with getting children to conform to a set of increasingly rigid rules.

Uniform, for example. When I was at secondary school my uniform was a navy skirt, blue or white blouse with optional tie, and a navy jumper or cardigan. No blazer. No-one cared what colour my socks were.

The school where I work, and all the local secondary schools we viewed for my daughters, have a uniform with a compulsory blazer (made of recycled plastic bottles - fragrant!), shirt and tie, skirt/trousers, and proscribed colour of socks, shoes, coat, even school bag. There are rules on make-up and nail varnish and hair colour.

The system values control over comfort, or individuality, or the ability to be active at break-times. Teenagers are often desperate to express their developing personalities, and so instead of educating them, teachers are spending huge amounts of time arguing about the pink streaks in their hair or the fact that their socks are blue not black. It doesn’t seem a good use of anyone’s time; not to mention the ick I get at middle-aged men policing girls’ bodies with comments about their skirt length or make-up. We are also holding young people to sartorial standards which are now completely outdated in the workplace.

Then, stop to think that neurodivergent people often have sensory issues which make tight collars, ties, synthetic fabrics, rigid shoes intolerable. The school system is setting them up to fail before they even step through the door, and then as a society we wonder why they are struggling. Children who don’t wear correct uniform are sent home to change, re-enforcing the idea that control is more important than then being educated.

Another issue is that ongoing real-terms funding cuts to schools mean that there are fewer and fewer teaching assistants. TAs are the unsung heroes who keep the creaking system working to the extent it does.

When TAs are present they can provide micro-levels of support that stop anything else being necessary.

As an example - sometimes my daughter gets overwhelmed and panicky. Ten minutes sitting in a quiet space with a TA, doing some breathing exercises, usually re-regulates her sufficiently to rejoin the class and get on with her learning. What would happen if that TA role was cut, as many have been?

My daughter, instead of being gently helped, would probably find that if she stayed in the busy classroom environment her anxiety and overwhelm would escalate. The class teacher, with 30 students to be responsible for, can’t take her out or help her regulate her breathing. So she sits there until mild dysregulation has escalated into a full-blown panic attack. Then her whole class is disturbed as the teacher takes time to cope with the situation, and she probably ends up being sent home. Repeat that situation day-in, day-out across the country, and you begin to see why so many children are struggling or unable to go to school at all.

Creating a truly inclusive education system shouldn’t rely just on special interventions for those with additional or differing needs, but on creating an environment in which all children can thrive.

Off the top of my head:

Comfortable sensory-friendly uniforms (leggings/tracksuit bottoms, cotton t-shirt and/or sweatshirt with school logo, trainers). Remove focus on hairstyles, make-up and jewellery (unless it’s a safety risk like large hoop ear-rings). Replace buzzing, flickering, harsh florouescent light-fittings. Have movement breaks. Have quiet, calm chill-out spaces. Create a curriculum which values all talents equally with academic ones. Remove unnecessary formal testing for teacher-led assessment. Don’t make lack of eye contact, fidgeting or doodling a ‘behaviour’ issue. Have more lessons outdoors - gardening, forest school, play-based learning. Encourage children to read whatever and whenever they want - comics, magazines, Manga, graphic novels, sports news - all equally valid. Think what skills are needed in the workplace and adult life in general- the ability to think independently, ask questions, follow your passions, develop creative solutions, appropriately challenge authority, move and nourish your body in a healthy way, build relationships, manage your mental health - and focus the curriculum and school ethos on these rather than a rigidly academic control and command model. Invest in support staff in schools who know the children and young people they work with and can do the right thing in the right moment to support, nurture and stop situations escalating.

No child without SEND will suffer in an environment designed to be inclusive, but without that many children are unable to access school at all.

I am reserving judgement on the White Paper - some of it sounds fine, some of it worries me - but one thing I am sure of, it is the system, not the kids, who have created the current situation, and it is the system, not the kids, which will have to change - dramatically - before things improve.

I guess this should be read as a companion piece to my Sometimes You Have to be a Little Bit Naughty essay.

I used ‘naughty’ there as a short-hand for not meeting society’s expectations, particularly those placed on women and girls. I argued, and still believed, that we need to let go of people pleasing in order to thrive.

However, that doesn’t mean I want to live a life of selfish indolence.

In the past couple of weeks the situation unfolding in Minneapolis has focussed my attention on what ‘good’ might need to look like in an increasingly scary world.

‘Good’ has looked like a woman, a middle-class mum, (appropriately named Renee Nicole Good) dropping her little boy at school and then going to do what she could to protect her neighbours and community from dark forces of neo-fascism, and then being shot dead by officers who are meant to uphold the law.

‘Good’ has looked like a man, an ICU nurse in a veteran’s hospital, Alex Pretti, obeying his training and instincts to go to the aid of a woman who was hurt and vulnerable, and then being shot dead by officers who are meant to uphold the law.

‘Good’ has looked like thousands of Minneapolis citizens, ordinary people like Alex and Renee, joining together to support and protect others. Through food parcels delivered to those who can’t leave the house, through training in observation skills so they can record and bear witness to what is happening, through blowing whistles and sharing maps to warn people, and continuing to do this even as it has become obvious they may be putting their own lives at risk by doing so.

I have repeatedly questioned myself as to whether I would be brave enough to do the same if we ever had ICE type forces on the streets of London. Unfortunately, that isn’t as far-fetched as it might have seemed even a year or two ago. Reform now lead in the polls, and they have stated that they believe in forced repatriation of people who aren’t ethnically British (whatever that means - spoiler alert: The Romans weren’t ‘British’, the Anglo-Saxons weren’t ‘British’, the Vikings weren’t ‘British’ and the Normans weren’t ‘British’ and yet it was those waves of immigration which established the language, religion and culture which so-called patriots today celebrate), including people who were born in Britain and are by every possible definition British, but happen to have Brown or Black skin.

Unfortunately, the Labour and Conservative Parties, instead of standing up and firmly calling out policies like these for the racist, nationalist nonsense they are, seem more interested in appeasing Reform by talking about the evils of (proportionately tiny) illegal immigration rather than central and positive role immigrants play in British society.

The Christian religion? Brought here by immigrants.

The British Royal Family? Immigrants themselves (Prince Phillip, father of the current King, escaped Greece as a small child, stowed in a box in, yes, a small boat, as his family were forced to flee persecution).

Rebuilding a broken and bombed out country after World War II - immigrants.

Working in universities, schools, care homes, coffee shops - immigrants.

Building much needed homes and infrastructure - immigrants.

Forming the backbone of the NHS, coming over here and saving our lives - immigrants.

My daughter was in A&E with a severe chest infection last week, and was cared for by a doctor from India, a nurse from the Caribbean and a radiographer from South-East Asia.

St George, the patron saint of England, whose flag is adorning numerous lamp-posts in the name of patriotism was a Palestinian or Syrian, equally revered in both Christian and Muslim traditions.

I want to see politicians standing up and saying this, and I also want the government to invest more in schools, health and social care and housing. Most of the people supporting Reform aren’t racist - they are people stuggling with the cost of living, worried about their families, and being told by politicians that it is immigrants who create these problems.

I would also love the people who are claiming that Christianity is being eroded in the UK to ask themselves WWJD (What would Jesus do?).

The evidence is pretty clear, Jesus speaking in the Gospel of Matthew 25:36-40

For I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in:

Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.

Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink?

When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee?

Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?

And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.

‘I was a stranger and you took me in’

I was brought up a Christian, and although I am now a woolly agnostic as much as anything, I have found myself furiously indignant at the likes of Tommy Robinson trying to claim they are defenders of Christianity against Islam whilst simultaneously ignoring the key teachings of Christ to ‘love your neighbour as yourself’.

It gives me an insight into how Muslims must feel when the actions of extreme violent Islamists are ascribed to their peaceful religion, and it is so ironic because all the Muslims I know are deeply respectful of Christianity and the history and beliefs which Christians and Muslims share.

The Christianity I was taught and believe in is showing up on the streets of Minneapolis, challenging the state in unfair and harmful actions. There are people of all faiths and none out there, but it is definitely what Jesus would do, did do, was crucified for.

And then we come back full circle to needing to be naughty. If laws, if people in authority, if social conventions, are causing harm, then it might be necessary to naughtily stand up to them in order to be good.

Do you have a friend who has an allotment and grows all their own vegetables? Or one who has six children and operates a no-screens household? Or whose house is always immaculately tidy and decorated with creative flair?

Do you find yourself thinking, god, I barely have time to nip to the Tesco garage and buy a bag of carrots…CBeebies raised my children as toddlers and now Disney Plus is carrying on the good work…and you can track my kids’ growth by the height of the grubby finger prints on the paintwork?

How do they do that, I frequently think to myself. And because it is really hard to celebrate the accomplishments of others without letting that genuine admiration become a stick to beat yourself with, how do they do that, becomes why can’t I do that?

The thing is, I absolutely guarantee that you will have a talent, skill, accomplishment or habit which others look at and think how do they do that? And I can also guarantee that you will dismiss that thing (probably lots of things) as being unimportant, unworthy of admiration, because it is just what you do.

For example, I love cooking, and, especially, baking. I cook most meals from scratch, I enjoy trying new recipes, and my go-to when I want to cheer myself or someone else up is to bake a cake. Or a batch of cookies, or brownies, or muffins. You get the idea.

I find it hard to believe that this is unusual or worthy of admiration, and yet the response of others tells me it is. What I can see is that there is no real virtue in the fact that my donations to coffee mornings and school fairs are homemade, or that my kids have always had homemade birthday cakes, and fresh-from-the-oven chocolate chip cookies when a friend comes round for a playdate.

I just love baking. It’s my happy place, the sweet spot (pardon the pun) of engaging my brain and my hands at the same time. The scents of cinnamon, ginger and vanilla comfort me, take me back to being a little girl kneeling on the bench at my granny’s scrubbed wooden kitchen table so I could reach to ‘help’, or begging my mum to let me lick the bowl after we made fairy cakes.

But more than likely, my veg-growing pal feels the same about the damp rich smell of the earth in her fingernails, or my interiors guru just loves to kick back with a Farrow & Ball paint chart and a roll of sandpaper. They aren’t trying to be good at something, they are just being themselves.

The same thing goes for the person who gets up at 6am to go to the gym, or hand-sews all her toddler’s clothes, or spends every weekend volunteering at the local homeless shelter.

None of us can do all those things. I promise. Maybe Arianna Huffington aside, there is no-one who is getting up early to go the gym, growing all their own food, living in beautiful and stylish home, engaging their children in a screen-free lifestyle, giving two full days a week to voluntary work and sewing all their own clothes - as well as doing the mundane adulting chores like earning money and cleaning the toilet.

We need to be better at owning what we are good at and enjoy, and leaning into that. Recognising that the activities we enjoy and find fulfilling aren’t (or shouldn’t be) part of a self-improvement mission, but a joyful and intrinsic part of being the individual human we are.

One quote which sticks with me from A-level English Literature is Iago in Othello:

Virtue? A fig! ‘tis in ourselves that we are thus and thus.

I wouldn’t necessarily always recommend taking life advice from Iago, but this quote has always appealed to me.

Shakespearean scholars may disagree, but I see this as a dismissal of the things we do to try and better ourselves, self-conscious ‘virtue’ and a call for more authenticity and ownership of who we actually are.

(Although, if you authentic self leans towards framing your best friend’s wife for adultery in order to incite him to murderous levels of jealous rage, and then strangling your own wife…maybe be a little less authentic and try allotment gardening.)

I’m not saying we should never try new things, or aim for self-improvement (I am proudly on a 13 day New Year Duolingo streak as I write!), but celebrating and valuing what we already shine at should be the priority.

I suppose what I have just spent several hundred words saying is ‘You do you, hun’.

I compounded the Christmas chaos by giving birth to my youngest in mid-December, so we have birthday shenanigans as well.

It’s also coming to the end of a very long school term, so, certainly in my household, the kids are also tired and emotional (in the literal not metaphorical sense!)

Last week my daughter said that last Christmas wasn’t as much fun because of me being ill on Christmas Day. Of course, my default response was to feel guilty - but possibly an excess of guilt is what made me ill in the first place. I had a gradually worsening headache all morning, burst into tears cooking dinner when I managed to splash myself with hot fat, and then spent the whole afternoon in bed with a migraine.

I really, really don’t want that to happen this year.

But there is so much to do - much of it fun and enjoyable that I really don’t want to skimp on - but all requiring time and energy which are resources I have to be very careful with.

Between now and schools breaking up a week on Friday I have, in addition to all the routine life and work stuff:

• Birthday presents to wrap

• A birthday cake to bake

• An ice-skating party for 12 to chaperone

• Going down to the ice-rink to find someone to confirm the booking and menu choices as they are totally ghosting me, ignoring my emails and there is no phone number! (The leisure centre provider in Waltham Forest is ‘Better’ which may be the worst misnomer in history)

• A family birthday tea party to shop for and prepare

• Christmas jumper day at both my children’s schools and mine (checking we all have clean jumpers and working out where the charity donations have to go)

• Christmas cards to write, stamps to buy, cards to post

• Festive 6th Form Book Club at work (we are reading Hercule Poirot’s Christmas)

• Christmas ‘Feel Good Friday’ at work - this is an end-of-term lunchtime event in library where the kids get to do seasonal crafts/puzzles/colouring and eat cake. it’s very popular, really lovely, and utterly exhausting!

• Advent Reading Challenge prizes to buy and competition to judge

• Final Governors Meeting of 2025 to chair

• Heading to the hospital for a blood test

• Wrapping and posting Christmas presents that need to go by post

• Cloning myself so that I can go to eldest daughter’s school Festive Market whilst also being in work (spoiler: I can’t, so actually I just need to manage the guilt on this)

• Finalising the BIG CHRISTMAS ONLINE ORDER (and then waking up at 3am in a cold sweat that I have forgotten something vital)

I am definitely not the only person staring down the barrel of a similar to-do list this month.

Here is what I am doing (or not doing) in order to try and beat festive fatigue:

• Not making a Christmas cake

• Buying frozen ready-done roasties and parsnips for Christmas dinner

• Only making one birthday cake (for family celebration) and getting a Waitrose ready-made one for daughter to decorate herself for her party

• Treating myself last week to a trip to the gorgeous Thames Lido and having a lovely swim, sauna and hot-tub. Planning on doing the same thing again next week.

• Going to bed really (really) early on nights when I’m not out.

• Limiting the number of kids coming back to ours after the ice-skating to her two closest friends.

• Taking time to snuggle up and watch Christmassy films with my daughters, rather than running round like a crazed woman while they watch. (This does mean house looks like a cyclone has hit it)

• Letting my youngest make her own Christmas cards and send them to people she wants to, rather than standing over her nagging whilst she writes them to every child in her class and second cousin once removed.

• When all else fails, ‘tis the season to put a nip of Bailey’s in everything.

What are your December survival tactics?

I love musical film and theatre - particularly theatre. It’s a love I have indoctrinated in shared with my children.

We have been to the theatre twice to see Matilda the Musical and it is utterly brilliant. My youngest daughter’s favourite song from it is Naughty, which makes sense, because pretty much from birth she has been cheerful, positive, determined, feisty and fiercely independent.

I wonder why they didn’t just change their story

We’re told we have to do what we’re told, but surely

Sometimes you have to be a little bit naughty

My husband and I feel like one of our biggest jobs in parenting her is keeping that ‘naughtiness’ alive in a world which wants to squash it.

There is evidence that until the age of 8 boys and girls display similar levels of self-confidence, but after that girls’ levels decline rapidly and never recover.

We still live in a society that wants women to be small and neat (literally and metaphorically) and to fit into boxes (probably only metaphorically). When was the last time you heard a boy or man referred to as ‘bossy’ or ‘too much’ or ‘a bit of a diva’? If you are born with testicles those same traits that attach negative labels to vagina-owners are instead referred to as being ‘strong’, ‘confident’, or ‘determined’.

My girl is nearly 11 and so far her sparkle and strong sense of self seems to be intact - thankfully she is at a school which encourages individuality as well as a sense of community, and tries to ensure that all pupils have a voice.

I am very aware, however, that the teenage years are highly perilous for a girl’s sense of self-worth, and that the need to fit in and avoid drawing unwanted attention can become compulsive.

I am particularly aware, because I was a naughty little girl who became a dutiful and conforming bigger girl, teenager and woman.

According to my parents I was a nightmare as a baby and toddler. I didn’t sleep, I had tantrums and breath-holding episodes and would scream until I was physically sick.

When I went to Nursery, the teacher reported to my mum that at ‘tidy-up time’ I refused to actually put any toys away myself but used my efforts to direct and manage others.

When my younger brother was a tiny baby he became very ill. My mum took him to hospital where he was admitted, and my dad was desperate to join them, but couldn’t take 3 yo me with him to an intensive care ward, and I refused to stay with any of the neighbours who would have looked after me, - the refusal taking the form of screaming blue murder. The only option I would countenance as childcare was ‘Auntie Gill’, one of my mum’s closest friends. She was dragged from whatever she was doing, probably work, to meet my dad at Alder Hey so that she could look after me.

When I went to school I used to escape the Reception classroom when I got bored, and head to the school hall where there was more space to play the imaginary games I loved, and was apparently totally unrepentant when caught each time and returned to where I should have been.

When I was chosen to present a gift at a school assembly to the local Rector, who was retiring, I flatly refused - I didn’t want to, so I wouldn’t.

These stories (and many more like them!) are family legends. A lot of them don’t show me in a particularly good light (and I still feel ashamed and embarassed about some of them 40-odd years later!).

This naughtiness didn’t really last. By secondary school I was a pathologically law-abiding straight-A student.

Funnily enough, that didn’t make me especially popular with my peers, but by that time I was addicted to parental and teacher approval, and the way to get my fix was to work hard and be ‘good’.

I got excellent grades in my exams, went to Oxford, obtained a place on the competitive NHS Graduate Management Training Scheme.

I didn’t ever question whether a graduate management job was what I wanted; it was what I felt was expected (I don’t really know by whom), so it’s what I did. I pretty much hated it from day one, and began exploring other career options - doctor, teacher, midwife. However, a radical career-change didn’t feel like what I was ‘meant’ to do, and so even though I was grown-up, and there wasn’t anyone actually setting rules, I wasn’t naughty enough to break away from my self-imposed expectations.

I was hard-working and conscientious. I got promoted. By 26 I was Head of Fitness to Practice at the Nursing and Midwifery Council - a hugely responsible job where I managed over forty staff and a £15m budget. I loathed it, and forcing myself to go into work every day was an enormous effort.

Then I had my first baby. Somehow, being responsible for someone else gave me the courage to be a little bit naughty again. I didn’t want to go back to working insanely long hours in a job I hated while my daughter spent twelve hours a day in childcare. The one thing I had always been certain of was that I wanted children, and I wanted to be as hands on for as much of the time as I possibly could.

This was an unusual decision amongst my peer group, and I felt quite defensive about it, but also certain it was the right thing for me and my little family, so I stuck to it.

That baby girl is now 16, and has continued to force me to question everything I thought I knew about being ‘good’. She is dyslexic and autistic, and although she is also extremely bright, all those rules to which I adhered - from spelling to mainstream school attendance to speaking when you are spoken to - have proved to be impossible for her.

I still wasn’t as naughty as I should have been. When she started to really struggle at secondary, I believed the prevailing wisdom that she was better off at school, even when it meant I was forcing my brilliant and beautiful square peg into an educational round hole every day; a forlorn and broken little thing, and then going home in tears myself.

I had to try and unlearn decades of fitting in and people-pleasing and conforming to the expectations of authority figures in order to fight for her and advocate for her with a whole slew of health and education professionals, until we finally got the right school placement for her, where she is able to thrive instead of barely surviving.

What I am trying to do in my forties, for the sake of my daughters and myself, is to get back some of the fearless naughtiness of the little girl I used to be. Maybe not screaming until I’m sick, but being clear about what is acceptable to me and not brooking alternatives, removing myself from situations where I am not comfortable, making space to be creative instead of just productive, delegating to others instead of burning out trying to do everything perfectly myself.

Sometimes you have to be a little bit naughty.

Writing a Substack like this, which focusses on my own experiences but hopefully also resonates with my readers, requires a similar skill. When I wrote about the difficulty and importance of friendships in midlife it clearly struck a chord, and I was pretty confident before I published that it would.

This week’s post I am less confident about. Part of me is hopeful that it is going to ring true for at least some of my readers, and that is why I am pressing ahead, but another part is cringing in advance at the thought of exposing my personal failings at basic adulting to a critical internet.

I am 44, and there are almost no habits which I feel ‘normal’ people have which come naturally to me. The only one, off the top of my head, is cleaning my teeth. I do that morning and night basically come what may.

I carry out other habits too - I (mostly) make my bed, brush my hair, unload the dishwasher in a morning. These still don’t feel natural, though, every time I am forcing myself into it. If I get straight out of bed and into the shower that is a habit, but if I don’t shower very first thing then doing so later feels like an almost insurmountable task.

I do put my phone on to charge at night, except when I forget. I am mostly in the habit of hanging my coat up when I return home, but my bag almost inevitably gets dumped on the nearest surface. I only manage to hang my coat up because I use pegs in the hall - the theoretical system of having my most-used coat in the hall and the others upstairs in my wardrobe is very much theoretical. That is why the coat rack in our narrow hall is bowing under the weight of denim jacket, trench coat, waterproof, smart winter coat, fun fake fur - every piece of outerwear I have worn in the last six months.

When I read magazine articles about 5 step skincare routines it is like an anthropologist discovering the lifestyle of a remote tribe. Are there actually, really and truly, people who double cleanse with a special cloth, then moisturise, then apply serum, then eye-cream? Everyday? Twice a day? Really? I honestly feel like I am bossing it if I manage to swipe some micellar water coated cotton wool in the vague direction of my face in the evening and put an SPF moisturiser on after my morning shower. And yes, I know that cotton wool isn’t good for the environment. I bought some little re-useable pads. But I couldn’t get into the habit of washing them, so there was never a clean one when I needed it.

There are lots of wellness or organisational habits I want to adopt, and periodically do. Lifting hand-weights while waiting for the kettle to boil. Yoga With Adriene. Gratitude journalling. Meal-planning. I definitely feel better when I do these things, but however hard I try they never become an effortless habit that I just do. It is always an effort, then I miss a day, and then somehow three weeks have passed and I haven’t done any of them.

Other habits which should take no effort, like a nightly vitamin D and magnesium supplement feel disproportionately effortful. It’s not forgetting (although sometimes it is forgetting). It is standing looking at the bottles on my kitchen worktop (if I kept them in the cupboard there is literally zero chance I would ever take them) and having to really force myself into the action of unscrewing the lid and swallowing them with a gulp of water. Not because I hate taking tablets (I don’t) or because I don’t know it’s good for me (I do) but because part of me is resisting having to do it.

Having children means I am now also responsible for getting them into good habits. Taking their dirty lunchbox into the kitchen when they get home from school. Remembering various different bits of equipment on different days. Brushing their hair. Putting their dirty laundry in the basket. Homework. Music practice. And more seriously, managing long-term medication my eldest daughter is on.

It’s not going well. I don’t remember to remind them, and then it feels hypocritical to get cross with them for not being able to manage the things I also struggle with. They each have a tick-list in the hall of things that they have to remember for school, and so my only job is remembering to remind them to check it. I also rely heavily on lists - they are the only thing that come even close to calming the clamour in my brain of all the things circling which I need to actively remember and make myself do because they have never become habits.

I actually have a pretty good memory for lots of things. I’m a governor at my daughter’s primary school, and recently had to do a Health and Saftey tour of the school with the Head and the Premises Manager. It took an hour and a half, and the Head was impressed that I took no notes and yet managed to write a comprehensive and accurate report of what we discussed afterwards. That, to me, is easy - if I tried to take notes I would only become absorbed in the conversation and forget anyway, so it’s better just to concentrate on taking it all in. Keeping 90 minutes of detailed and sometimes technical information in my head - no problem. Remembering my daughter needs to take her guitar to school on Mondays - no chance.

People talk about ‘don’t put it down, put it away’ habits for keeping your house under control. Nuh-uh. Not a habit I am able to adopt. I don’t notice that I took the parcel tape out of the drawer and the marker pen out of the pen pot so I could return a parcel, and then left them on the dining table. Next to the book I finished reading at lunchtime and didn’t put back on the shelf, and the half-empty glass of water, and the bag of cat treats and my daughter’s hairbrush and my diary. I only notice at the point at which I come to set the table for dinner, and realise I can’t see it.

I love having a tidy home, and my mental health is much better when I do, but trying to achieve it is a daily almost unmanageable effort rather than a series of simple habits.

I am, however, excellent at adopting bad habits. I deleted the Instagram app from my phone at the beginning of 2025, and largely broke the habit of mindless scrolling, but within a couple of hours of reinstating last month it in order to check out a friend’s post, I was re-hooked. Hot chocolate for breakfast as a one-off on an especially cold, dark and wet autumn morning when I had slept badly and needed to be up early for work? You’d better believe that habit will still be going strong next spring.

So, what I particularly want to know from readers of this post is - do other people manage to form these habits as effortlessly as I imagine? Are you all gliding through life with your skin-care and exercise routines in your well-organised houses? Or did you struggle initially, but found you eventually could form the habits? Or are there other people like me with brains (and lives) that feel like a toddler’s multi-coloured scribble rather than an organised web of properly formed neural pathways?

It often feels as though life with children, pets, and a chronic illness is a constant tension between the woman I want to be - confident, creative, comfortable in her own skin, constantly moving forward- and the person various restrictions and setbacks allow me to be.

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The last week has been an illustration of this.

Firstly our cat, Ollie, got ill. He is normally a lively and playful boy, and instead he was dopey and lethargic, barely eating or responding to us. I took him to the vet, and they discovered that he had a high fever - I wasn’t surprised, because his demeanour had been exactly that of my kids when they have a temperature. It turned out he had an abscess on his head (hidden under his layers of thick fluffy fur), probably caused by a an injury in an altercation with another cat.

Thankfully injections of antibiotics and metacam (Calpol for cats) and he was swiftly back to his normal self. But he still needed twice daily antibiotics and cleaning of the abscess site. Not something I could depute to our teenage neighbour who had been going to come in and feed the cats while we went away for the weekend. Cat care trumped a weekend by the seaside, with breezes to blow away the cobwebs and the chance to swim in the sea, which is one of my absolute favourite things to do.

Then I woke up on Friday morning with a funny feeling in my left eye. It’s a familiar feeling, because I am prone to attacks of uveitis. This is an inflammatory condition affecting the eye (comes as a free gift with my inflammatory arthritis), and when it flares up I need to attend A&E at Moorfields Eye Hospital asap because, untreated, it can be sight threatening.

On Friday I convinced myself I was imagining it, and headed to work as usual. I had loads I wanted to get done, and the library was especially busy last week as Year 11s had mock exams and wanted to do last minute revision. Unfortunately, I wasn’t imagining irt, and the pain got worse, until I had to leave work and head straight to the hospital. I spent most of the rest of Friday in A&E before having my self-diagnosis of uveitis confirmed, and being sent home with steroid eye drops I needed to apply twelve times a day.

I know the techniques to deal with this kind of setback - mainly gratitude. Remind myself how blessed I am to have the cats, how fortunate that Ollie could be be quickly treated. How lucky that I live in a country with free universal healthcare, in a city which has one of the best eye hospitals in the world, and so I was able to access top-flight treatment quickly and affordably.

I did try all that, but honestly I still felt pretty fed up. My eye hurt, the inflammation and extra energy used by repeated trips to the vets meant I felt like a limp rag, my weekend plans had been cancelled, and I had to clean a cat’s abscess with hibiscrub. If you don’t have pets I will try not to traumatise you too much, but I will say that abscesses and cats are both unpredictable, and during the course of the week we had to cleanse blood and pus off several blankets, my daughter’s bedding, and the bedroom wall. It’s a shame it was the week after Halloween, because the blood-spattered wall would have made an excellent decorative feature.

The things which did make me feel better were getting out with my family for an autumnal walk around Forty Hall in Enfield, - it felt like we were in the depths of the countryside, and impossible to believe we were actually still in London - baking a coffee cake, and making a cosy pie and mash dinner which we ate with twinkling fairy lights

I want to feel that I am continually making progress, but I’m not. Sometimes the best you can hope for is getting through and making the most of enjoyable moments when they come along.

The point is, at fifteen, friendships are absolutely crucial, pivotal to who you are and the person you are becoming. Going from 3.30pm one day to 8.30am the next without speaking to your friends felt unthinkable.

Somehow over the next 30 years this changes dramatically. A meme I saw recently said that adulthood is saying ‘We really must meet up soon’ on repeat until you die. Bleak, but you kind of know where it’s coming from.

By forty most of us have responsibility for things like a career, a romantic relationship, children, a house, pets, voluntary work, feeding yourself and the people you live with, the endless laundry, keeping fit, being a good daughter, never-ending life admin…friendship is in danger of being the optional extra, the thing you will fit in once you have done everything else, which of course never happens.

This autumn, though, I have managed to carve out some time to spend with some of my closest friends, and been reminded why this should be an essential, not an add-on to our lives.

I have two close friends who generally live in my phone on our Whatsapp group - which is a lot better than nothing - but every autumn we abandon all our other responsibilities and make time for a weekend away by the seaside together - 36 hours of sleeping, eating, swimming, walking and talking. It’s so incredibly restorative and I value it hugely.

Then this September was my year’s ‘Gaudy’ - basically university reunion dinner. Because it is Oxford it was a formal drinks reception, followed by black-tie five course dinner with fine wines. Which was enjoyable of course, but the real magic was hanging round in my old college, one of my favourite places, with some of my absolute favourite people. Sitting in the coffee shop in Blackwell’s bookshop for hours on end catching up and gossiping and laughing and remembering that while we are older/greyer/fatter/more exhausted, we are intrinsically the same people.

Last week was half term, and I went up to Liverpool to see my parents. While I was there I managed to fit in sneaky Monday night cocktails with the amazing women who I’ve been friends with since secondary school. Those very same friends I would rush home to telephone. It felt very midlife - the first bar suggested was rejected because the seats weren’t sufficiently comfortable! Topics for discussion included HRT, secondary school admissions, the horror turning 40 has wreaked on our metabolisms, the torrid process of getting support for children with SEN (special educational needs), uterine fibroids and stress incontinence. It helps so much to know that while we might not be on exactly the same journey, we are on parallel tracks. Again, there was a lot of laughter.

The common denominator in all these meet-ups was that sensation of total comfort and relaxation. Friendships of this vintage are like sinking into a warm bath.

Poet Henry van Dyke said that

“Love is the heart’s immortal thirst,

To be completely known and all forgiven”

and he was talking of either romantic or spiritual love, but I think it can equally apply to solid friendships with the people who know us best, see us at our worst, and love us anyway. On a slightly lower cultural plain, The Rembrandts put it as ‘even at my worst I’m best with you’.

These friendships are too important to be placed on the to-do list under putting out the recycling, booking a parents evening slot and requesting a repeat prescription. It isn’t easy to prioritise something which feels purely joyful when there are so many mundane but clamorous demands on our time, but I think we would all feel better if we did.

And I will. As soon as I have been to Tesco to buy yoghurts for packed lunches and taken the cat to the vet.

I love writing, and as well as my novels I wrote a regular blog for many years. This started when my eldest daughter, who is now SIXTEEN, was a tiny tot of three. I called my blog ‘A Life More Ordinary’ because I wanted it to be a record of the little everyday joys and challenges which can so easily pass by unremarked, especially amid the chaos of parenting a young child.

Over the next few years I blogged about our day to day life - coping with a mouse infestation, getting two kittens, my daughter starting nursery and then primary school, family holidays and day trips. There was the odd political rant as we weathered the storms of an austerity focussed Conservative government and then the Brexit referendum followed by the first presidency of Donald Trump.

In a way I couldn’t have imagined when I started writing, I also found myself sharing some of the most deeply painful episodes of my life as I experienced five miscarriages in two years. This segued into the mingled joy and anxiety when I became pregnant with my youngest daughter, who is now nearly eleven. And then I posted many times on my mental health challenges which followed recurrent miscarriages and an extremely traumatic birth.

Even ten years ago mental health was much less openly discussed than it is today. I found there were very few people with whom I was comfortable to share my struggles in real life, but opening my heart on the internet was often very therapeutic. I also found that these blog posts were the ones that seemed to resonate more widely, and I also shared posts on forums like Selfish Mother and Mother of All Lists.

Then my children grew (they do that), and sharing too many details about their lives on the internet felt less and less appropriate. I did blog a bit through 2020 and 2021 as we all juggled working from home, home-schooling, separation from loved ones and a constant nagging anxiety contrasting with the unexpected joy of so much time to enjoy the very simplest of pleasures with my little family.

As Covid faded into an inconvenience rather than a disaster, my eldest daughter started secondary school and began to face increasingly severe challenges which were horrific for her and the whole family, and took up all of my time and energy. That wasn’t my story to write about; however now, after diagnoses of autism, visual impairment and OCD, and a change of school, my lovely girl is in a much better place and has started her own amazingly insightful Substack about her experiences.

In 2024 I started a part-time job as a secondary school librarian, and I absolutely adore it. It is funny, because both my parents are qualified librarians, and for each of them their first job after graduation was running a school library. When I was growing up my mum worked in a local public library, and my dad for the local authority school library service. As a 6th former and student I worked part-time in local public libraries, and have always maintained it was the most enjoyable job I ever did.

Somehow, though, training as a librarian never occurred to me as a career option, and it has taken me 25 years to circle back around to it. But now I have I love almost everything about it: Creating a safe space for the kids for whom secondary school is far from easy. Promoting reading for pleasure rather than work or duty. Working with developing readers who are struggling for one reason or another. Chatting with the bookish kids, and bantering with the Year 10 boys who tower over me in height but reveal moments of unexpected vulnerability. Being surrounded by books all day!

In my future I would love to develop my professional skills as a librarian, and possibly the most ambitious item on my Before 50 Bucket List is taking a Masters degree in Children’s Literature. Right now this job is literally the perfect balance, giving me a deeply satisfying role when I’m at work, alongside time to write, care for my daughters and manage my own health.

My health has been increasingly problematic for the last few years. I have two sub-types of autoimmune inflammatory arthritis - ankylosing spondylitis and psoriatic arthritis, which can be lumped together as the equally catchy and highly pronounceable ‘axial spondyloarthritis’. What this means in practice is stiff and painful joints - fingers, feet, spine and shoulder are my worst - and fatigue which can be almost crippling. The medications I take to help alleviate these symptoms are immuno-suppressant, which mean I also tend to be prey to any stray virus hanging around. And working in a school, with two children at two different schools, travelling by public transport - there are quite a lot of viruses hanging round. This summer I scared myself by feeling iller than I ever have before, coming out in painful, burning hives over pretty much my entire body, and with the CRP marker which should be below 5 in a healthy individual shooting up to 96. The medical jury is still somewhat out on what caused it - probably another autoimmune response to either catching tonsillitis, or the penicillin it was treated with, or that in combination with my regular medicine and having let myself get fairly burnt out.

Funnily enough the super strong steroids I was put on to calm that down erased a lot of the constant low-level pain and fatigue I live with, and meant the rest of the summer was really enjoyable. That created a virtuous circle, because I felt energised and motivated to look after myself - swimming almost every day, regular yoga, cooking lots of healthy food.

Of course no work, and my husband being around a lot more helped as well, but I have really been trying to carry some of those lessons into the autumn and beyond.

This autumn also marks a significant milestone in my life - it is twenty years this month since I moved to London.

So much has changed about me and my life since then - from a 24 year-old child-free young professional living in a rented flat in Clapham, to a married, middle-aged mother-of-two portfolio careerist in Walthamstow. I find that a significant milestone like this prompts me to look at how the fundamental me underneath has changed alongside all those externals.

Not wanting to sound too pretentious about it, this Substack is part of the process of trying to heal physically and embrace where I am and who I am now in mid-life, as well as exploring what the next half of life might look like.

I am here. And I am going to be writing about it, and would love you to join me.

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