Just because I never want to forget how precious he looks when he is asleep.

And so since the day you bought it almost ten years ago the little house you live in has been white.Though much talked about, it has never been painted and now the white has a grey cast you had almost become resigned to. Almost. Never rankling you quite as much as the persistent crop of tangled weeds strangling the postage stamp that is your front garden (while simultaneously lowering the tone of a lane that considers itself a tad too well to do), but casting a shadow over a sunny little life all the same. 

Some things you see, seem impossible. And then he is there, all six foot four of him, and the pebbles too heavy to load into the car you haven't got, are stifling the life, prettily, out of the weeds in the garden and you are walking around the diy store, hand in hand, freaking yourself out while debating the merits of painting the house one of seven possible shades of masonary cream, and looking at him in something akin to heavenly wonder when he kisses your nose and tells you painting the house will only take a couple of hours, certain now that there is nothing he cannot do: bake cheesecake, transform gardens, paint houses, perform brain surgery and force you, biting your lip in utter terror, out of your comfort zone.

At night time, when he isn't there laughing at the peculiar combinations you see fit to serve up as dinner, you do not miss him. You are accustomed to your own company, greedy for the kind of independance that wouldn't dream of lifting up a paintbrush and is letting the house fall to rack and ruin: living proof that one can live in beautiful, contented shambles and only occasionally ache for the stroke of a paint splattered hand across your chin. Living proof that fear is a stubborn old mule.

Because you are a little afraid. It has been three long years of yourself, and the picking up and putting down of what went before. Of resignation and a collection of men nit-picking at your ability to trust in your own dubious judgement. After trauma, emotional or otherwise, one battens down the hatches and makes for those who are left behind, a safe haven. Your safe haven has candles and books and blankets and a little boy so precious you are only willing to share him bit by bit. A goodnight before he goes to bed here, a trip to the cinema to watch some spectacular 3D affair there, the three of you sitting grinning at each other in Micheal Cain style black rimmed glasses while eating Percy Pigtails and Colin Caterpillars and other sweeties he cares enough to go buy in his lunch hour. Then maybe half an hour in McDonalds once in a while and occasionally a few minutes out of the room while they become accustomed to each other and negotiate a friendship based on the strengths and weaknesses of various Pokemon that you will never be a part of. Leaning against the door listening. Crossing your fingers that neither will find the other an impediment to loving you. Crossing your fingers in the hope that the tall one knows what an absolute gift the little one is and treads carefully upon his dreams forever after.

At night time, when he is there you drink red wine and pinch each others weak spots. Sometimes you poke a finger into old scars just to see how deep the wound goes, force feed him olives and pine nuts and all the other things he hates just because you can and stretch the elastic of his boundaries so far back you are certain that all too soon they will snap and ping you in the face. It is early days. Both of you negotiating the weird, terrifying terrain between dating and hours spent on the sofa watching Come Dine with Me without the fluttery screen of false eyelashes between you.

And now the house is going to be cream. He will transform it before your eyes and your hard won independence will shrink a little in shame. Butter cream. A soft yellow, yielding cream, that will change your emotional landscape and have you falling in love with your little terraced cottage all over again. Falling in love. Yes. You are a little bit, a lot, in mad whimsical scary love and the thought that someone loves you back is enough to have you seeking shelter in the cupboard under the stairs. While the thought that someone cares enough to sprinkle pebbles over the ugliest of your weeds is enough to make you feel like singing it from the rooftops.

If only you could sing. Or dance. Or order an Indian meal from a restaurant that actually delivers. But alas you can't so thank goodness perfection isn't part of the deal.

Possibility is enough.

While I may be all sweetness and light online, in reality I can be a bit of a cow. While my Dad tried to impress upon me the importance of reading How To Win Friends and Influence People I was too busy obsessing over the naughty bits in the rite of passage that is Judy Blume's Forever to be concerned about my all too obvious lack of social skills. And so it came to pass that I grew up firm in the belief that I AM RIGHT and YOU ARE WRONG and no more is this evident than should you find yourself in discussion with me about anything remotely babba related, because when it come's to parenting I (shamefully) KNOW I am right. Even when I'm clearly completely WRONG!

Now as you can imagine this is the kind of attitude that can get you into all kind of fixes when your entire social life is based around the school gates and every conversation you ever have with the suburban mommies in your Mommy possie naturally revolves around your respective children. While other women nod politely as they listen to each others experiences, I am there shouting my mouth off about my latest theories in not very progressive childcare, shaking my head vehmenently at anyone ludicrous enough to be following anything other than the Alison May School of Mothering and feeling sad in my heart for the little blighters unlucky enough to have the kind of Mummy who isn't me!

I know. Don't worry, there are times when I want to strangle me too.

And then my own little blighter started shooting all my parenting skills sky high and I have to eat humble pie in the cupboard under the stairs and pretend I reserve the right to change my mind in public, should I then find myself having to explain why I am now embracing something I previously loudly deplored.

Take for instance the question of extra-curricular activities. These, my darling oh so tolerant friends, know I could once barely stomach. No! Not for my child the dragging off to football three times a week and karate on a Friday and Recorder lessons at lunchtimes and drama class followed by swimming and a quick shimmy under the monkey bars at the baby-gym on a Saturday. No! Of course my son wouldn't be having extra maths lessons, joining Scouts or Sunday school or Big boy Tumble Tots or playing the violin or learning street dance, or indeed doing just about anything that didn't happen between the hours of nine and three, or ate into the empty, just being time I have long believed paramount to the development of the kind of wild imagination I think every child should be blessed with.

So for a while I stuck to my guns. I looked mildly disapproving at the very idea of any child having to endure another lesson of whatever when they crawl home white-faced with baby exhaustion after a long day in reception and I failed to feel sympathetic when one Mummy after another bemoaned their own lack of time due to their willingness to spend every spare minute ferrying little children from pillar to post. I was that Mother. The superior being you want to smack.

And then the rebellion began. The occupational therapist suggested that Finley might benefit from the discipline of martial arts and so off to karate he went. Then Finley himself announced that his friend Mark was brilliant at football and if I didn't let him go to to Saturday morning footie he would DIE and because one cannot sacrifice one's child for the sake of half an hour shivering at the side of a cold field, I said ok to that too and before I knew it I was dallying with the idea of swimming lessons and a weekly half hour with a tutor to help him with his writing and maybe even drama lessons and then he announced his intention to be a model/actor (!) when he grew up and I, flailing permanently in single mummy guilt, decided that drama lessons it was and promptly delivered him to an empty school having mixed up the starting dates for the class that was going to make my baby a star!

And so it goes on. I'm riding a coconut mat down the helter-skelter of IT'S ALL TOO MUCH and all of a sudden I find myself helpless to resist the kind of peer pressure little boys and other Mummies apply in great big dollops and I have to apologise to Kath who bears the brunt of my most outraged and usually desperately dull parenting rants because it is clearer by the day that I haven't got the courage of my convictions and will go on delivering my child to activities I suspect neither of us much enjoy, when in my heart of hearts I know that it isn't a man in a football kit  or a scary lady with a whistle at the side of a swimming pool who will help my little boy become the strong, imaginative, creative man I know he will be, but instead, the cosy hours spent lying next to me on the floor, telling me in great detail the reason why Willie Wonka is the scariest film ever made that will make all the difference. The time he spends apparently talking to himself, narrating games of such imaginative magnitude I cannot ever hope to understand them, that will shape his creativity, and all the other rituals that we maintain as a tiny family that will let him be the kind of little boy happiest dangling upside down off his chair, singing at the top of his voice and dancing by himself when he thinks no-one is watching, and  ultimately provide him with the ability to entertain himself without constant stimulation. 

I KNOW this and yet and yet and yet: I could be wrong.

Tell me now how much is too much? At what point did I begin to lose confidence in that which I was sure of?  Is that what happens, do we begin to doubt ourselves the minute our children assert themselves? When they become not mini-me's but little people in their own right?

I really don't think I was cut out to be a Soccer Mom.

While the journalism in the Daily Mail may border on scaremongering on a daily basis, the writing for women is occasionally excellent if only in terms of its cringe-worthy ability to tell it exactly like it is (excluding anything spluttered from the vitriolic, whinging gut of one Ms Liz Jones).

Shudder inwardly and proceed to Room 25, the rather grandly titled “Ambleside Suite”. Install Peggy in prison cell single room and greet maid still making beds at three o’clock in the afternoon in ours. Try not to be violently ill when Finley reports that the bathroom tiles are “stuck on with blood” nor have a hissy fit of the most ugly kind, when kind maid advises me to open the windows on pain of death or else the room will fill with pigeons. Thank her for large pile of individually wrapped custard creams for Finley and promptly hide them in suitcase in case he is suddenly struck by the true horror of hotel and embarks on a gluten riddled biscuit binge.

Step out in rain wet enough to dampen the spirits of even the most ardent of Japanese tourists and consider buying over-sized translucent mac and looking as utterly ludicrous as everybody else. Decide, even in the face of adversity to maintain dignity. Drink the first of many cups of tea with Peggy and try not to bash her when she announces that Mark’s new girlfriend is a nice girl with a lovely slender figure. Feel like a bitchy heffalump as you retaliate with the news that the oh so slender teenager also has a hole in her tongue. Watch her lips purse and feel guilty for at least three seconds. Watch her posing with vicious swans on the lakeside and remember how much you love her. Decide not to be offended by her mildly thoughtless tongue. Eat in a restaurant straight out of 1970 and refuse the offer of “fruit juice” for starters. See red felt shoes I would sell my son’s grandmother for, in window of pretty shop. Resist! Get in bed at seven thirty in the evening and wonder if purgatory is also equipped with the smallest kettle in the world.

Wake up to a chorus of pigeons pecking at the window. Don wellies and wade through puddles to Beatrix Potter museum. Love it. Debate what the sentence would be should I be found in possession of Mrs Tiggywinkles vintage linens. Decide stealing off a hedgehog goes against my morals. Watch Peggy talking to waxwork model of Miss Potter. Suppress hysteria when she tells me woman has lovely skin. Get on open topped bus to Windermere and drown. Arrive looking MAD. Eat gluten free cheese toasties (WOW 2!) in gorgeous little cafe. Try not to punch ex Mother In Law when she tells me she has warned her boys (Mark and fellow errant husband, brother Simon) not to take up with women with children because they are “more trouble than they are worth”. Ask her if she wants to phone Richard and tell him. Ask her if she wants to ring Mark and give him bashing for forcing me into the ranks of potential trouble and long term spinsterhood. Drink coffee and remind myself that she once accused me of stealing a collection of aluminium teaspoons. Find solace in teeny old bookshop. Buy first edition Amelia Jane and feel better. Take child to posh restaurant. Order flame grilled chicken for him and receive biggest paddy ever seen as reward. Chase him down hill shouting. Glare at appalled tourists in matching anoraks. Reach end of tether. Agree that yes child too may have reached the end of very wet tether and smile winningly when he tells complete stranger he hates me so much he is taking me to the police station and reporting me for being a rubbish Mummy. Feel grateful when Peggy takes charge of child. Ring Mum and describe fabulous day. Sleep. Boil half to death in hot room. Strip sleeping child down and blow cool air on his skin and wish someone would come and do same for me. Begin to feel rather fond of ugly room now brain has gone into suspended animation.

Wake up and find Mark on doorstep. Offer him mountains of individually wrapped custard creams as reward for timely arrival. Tell him his Mother is a Darling regardless of all that should never be said. Tell him hotel is so lovely the maid gave up a great job as Manager of a Mercedes Dealership in Newcastle to come and change the beds here because she loved it sooooo much. Wonder out loud what is wrong with the people of Newcastle. Agree to go on one more day trip to Grasmere “en estranged famille”. Get wet. Eat famous Grasmere gingerbread. Get wetter. Find absolutely gorgeous little house shop and refuse to listen to ex Mother In Law and Father of Child tutting at prices of beautiful objects. Buy lots of beautiful objects. Tote expensive beautiful objects shamelessly. Defend purchase of beautiful objects then remember it isn’t necessary and go and spend silly money on more. Feel better. Get in car and tease Father of Child with reckless spending mercilessly all the way home. Get delivered to Mums and skip into sanity. Feel giddy. Feel like I’ve been to hell and back in wellies and rather liked it. Wonder if all holidays are the same? Run home to de-stink house and resolve never to go to on holiday again. Put tired little boy to bed and open door to Richard. Feed him something terrible and endure impertinent insults to cooking and random hair growing willy-nilly out of nose. Feel at home again. Rather miss hotel trouser press. Rather miss Peggy.

Do excuse me while I do the giddy mummy, yey he's back at school dance won't you? The house has barely survived the onslaught of another half term holiday and my little monkey is on the final leg of his very first year in big school, iced water bottle in hand and worry on his mind. When you are five the world is stuffed full of worries. There is the "What does God look like?" worry, because if nobody knows what he looks like, then he could be anybody, he could even be sitting on the train next to you and speaking of public transport, there is the "Who's driving his boat?" worry, which could quite frankly threaten the fun of a sail up and down the Chester waterfront, if said five year old refuses to step on the boat until the driver is in clear view. Then there is the "Pink icing" problem, because if Mummy squashes strawberries into icing sugar and dabs the whole lot on the top of a gluten free cake and the result is a girly muffin, then who knows what kind of shenanigans will occur in the lunch room, and yes, speaking of the lunchroom, how in the name of biscuits, will he survive his first school packed lunch in a few months? Will he be allowed to eat lunch with everyone else even though he's got a funny leg or will he have to sit by himself in the classroom and Mummy when the school goes to Chester zoo, what on earth should he do, because there is a whole lot of walking involved in looking at tigers and he can't walk so he will have to be pushed, which brings us neatly to the "Buggy or wheelchair?" debate, because if he sit's in a buggy, the kids will think he is a baby, and he's NOT A BABY, and if he sit's in a wheelchair, the kids will think he's sick and he's NOT SICK , so maybe he could just sit down and rest every five minutes or maybe have a little lie down after he's been in the batroom but oh no, he can't go in the batroom, because last time he went in there he did himself a damage with a big stick because it was very dark and he doesn't like strange dark, only his own dark and he definitely doesn't like having his photograph taken with strange Aunties from Ireland, so tell Daddy to never make him do that again or he will cry and cry and only a lolly ice will make him better, but lolly ices might have gluten in and grown ups can't be trusted to choose the right ones and oh no I dont want a new bedroom, and I don't want Daddy to change his car because I like my room and Daddies clapped out old shed on wheels is lovely and I don't want anything to change ever, ever, ever, so If I tell you my foot hurts, I want you to pretend you didn't hear me, because then you might take me back to the hospital, and I'll have to have another cast, and I like my leg as it is even though it is oddly hairy since the last cast came off, but could you ask the Doctor for something to fix my foot, but, you know DON'T MAKE A FUSS MUMMY... And on and on the onslaught goes... And I'm doing as I'm told, trying not to make a fuss, but he can't walk for longer than five minutes, walking now involving a limp, a hop, a skip and a jump as he tries to avoid bearing any weight at all while he tries and fails to play football or run with the other kids. It's heartbreaking, but short of keeping him permanently in a cast which may cause it's own problems, there is no solution until the necessary bone spontaneously reforms (as it does in 98% of cases) and so it really is a matter of pushing him around in a buggy, while avoiding the eye of frowning old ladies who believe I've got an over-sized lazy baby on my hands... It's quite the most awful thing not to be able to solve a problem for your babba. I can lead him to the man sailing the boat, and tell him to think up the most wonderful person he can possibly imagine and call him God (because if there is a god, he looks like Russel Brand in my warped head). I can compromise on the grand plans I'd made for his bedroom so I do not shatter his sense of security in a fit of decorating mayhem and I can swap the (absolutely scrumptious) strawberry topped cake for a more acceptable banana muffin. I can intervene in mad Irish Auntie photo sessions and monitor the gluten content of everything form lolly-ices to the glue on the back of postage stamps... but I can't perform a little miracle. I can't wish a bone back. And you know what? I really thought I could. I thought miracle working came with Mommy territory. But it doesn't. Oh what tiny cruelties we must endure...

I have been a bad Mummy. I have made a show of my son. I have scarred him for life and he now considers me to be a "BumBum-Head" and does not intend to be my friend until "Twenty Million and Ten". Yesterday Finley (he of the eloquent insults) had a friend around for tea. I obeyed his strict instructions not to feed George anything that couldn't be served with tomato ketchup, baked cakes, tidied his room, hid his Mummy Bear, and presented myself in a suitably inoffensive Mumsy fashion. Two angelic little boys skipped home from school, and all was well with the world. Feeling a little bit pleased with myself, I scurried around the kitchen arranging a football themed tray of treats and juice, complete with bright red fairycakes in honour of Liverpool F.C. And in I swooped and presented them with a flourish for which I was rewarded with complete and utter, apparently appalled, silence. George it seemed, supported Everton (the blues!) and not a worse insult could I have set upon his head-which didn't stop him eating three little cakes, but which sent me plummeting downwards in my son's estimation to the degree that he was almost hissing in mortified, whispery apology as he dragged his cherry munching friend up the stairs to his bed-room... And there for all to see, was the second horror of the day. Many moons ago, I took it into my mad head to buy my poorly little boy a Ben 10 duvet. Those of you who know me, will know that bringing something so green and ugly into my home was the kind of sacrifice I would only make for the curly haired little love of my life. But on and on he went, so buy it I did, dressed his bed with it and delivered one sleepy little babba up the stairs to the kind of cartoon heaven that all too quickly turned into a nightmare when he looked at me like I had finally lost my marbles and demanded the immediate reinstatement of his favorite dancing duvet, and informed me that on pain of death would I ever, ever put that scary Ben 10 duvet back on. So I didn't. I sent it to duvet heaven and considered that the end of the matter. Until yesterday. When the thunder of a plaster casted leg came banging down the stairs and insults were hurled left, right and centre, the thread of which seemed to be that this was the day I should have read his mind and made the bed with the dratted Ben 10 duvet while George was visiting, before stripping it off again in time for bed. Ooops. Still it could have been worse. Imagine if there had been a doll in his bedroom! Hell's bell's there was. And this doll, once mine, and now occupying a place on Finley's precious things shelf (Uncle Simons football trophy, lavender bag he likes when he's snuffly, robot made of cardboard boxes, globe that was his first ever vintage buy etc...) is much adored by him, so in my race to win the bestest Mommy competition I failed to notice the doll, concentrated on baking naughty cakes and in the process hammered the final nail in my coffin. While gorgeous little George built the finest lego tower I have ever seen he informed me that he had eaten baked beans "once before", (but would prefer them served with a side order of pasta if you don't mind) and told me that his Mummy made great cakes called "cake mix", my little boy wandered around with tears welling in his eyes, living in fear of George revealing to all and sundry and more pertinently the bigger boys in year six, that Finley is the kind of baby girl who plays with dolls... I have fallen off my pedestal haven't I? I am a BumBum head. And my little boy is growing up.

The twisted ankle I mentioned yesterday? Well yes, that would be a broken foot, broke goodness knows how, but broken all the same, and the reason why my poor little chap spent an entire night sobbing softly in his sleep. And so we are confined to barracks again. And joy of all joys, Finn also has the kind of stomach upset that requires three visits to the loo every hour, and as the loo is upstairs, Mummykins here is thus required to throw her scrumptious little sack of spuds over her shoulder and lug him up there on demand as he is not allowed to walk... and to his joy, not allowed to bathe either. Bring on the board games! Oh and the valium if you please...

Mummy, are you glum? No Sweetie, are you? Not today. Are you ever glum Mum? Not really baby. You must be Mummy, everybody is glum sometimes. Are they? Of course! The world wouldn't make sense if everybody was happy all the time. We all take turns. Turns? Yes, at being glum. Today just isn't our day.

Sometimes the house takes on a desolate air. (As if you left three months ago and time has stroked a finger through the dust you left behind). Sometimes each room declares itself depressed and hovers around the housekeepers heart, slovenly and maudlin. Sometimes it is a cosy hug. A wallpaper lined snuggle. An infrastructure of bricks, mortar and history created only to laugh at your jokes and wrap warmth around your pimply skin like an apricot satin eiderdown. Today it is none of those things. Today it is a burnt soup prison. A place swimming in the raspberry rosewater jelly juice you dropped again on the way to the fridge. Now splattered up the walls like a scene from a grisly murder. Today this little house is drawing in its flocked green breath and gearing up to betray you to a visiting five year old. A child who will go back to his mother and declare with all the innocence of a fluttery blonde angel that "she fed us hairy rabbit shaped jelly and lets spiders live in cobwebby housing estates on the ceiling"... Today you don't much care. Sometimes you take on a desolate air. (Because your mind has gone trawling through New England). You don't have any more nails left to bite and your dreams are peopled by strangers wearing vulgar hats. Your son says he wants to crawl inside your jumper and live in your tummy. He wants, he says, to see what you see. You blow away the prickles of claustraphobia even as you squeeze him tighter and touch his skin with your teeth. Occasionally the road to rack and ruin calls your name. A silky gown and a naughty smile? You think about marmite crisps more than you should. Today (whisper it) you are wearing yesterdays socks. Now you are in the flourescent lit kitchen, separating icy cold spears of broccoli and crunching an apple, shocking yourself by breaking the rule of a lifetime by eating fruit after dark. Next door, you can hear the irritated hum of marital argument. But here the entire house is ringing with the giggles of childhood devilment and it is catching. In a moment of adult abandonment you laugh too. First a titter then a downright guffaw. The radiators clank along with you. The house is falling down. Your roof is letting in... There can be no soup. It is flavoured by charred pan. But there is a cheese and mustard scone, a sliver of salami, some rosewater jelly, a handful of pistachios and a dribble of Shiraz. A feast! A veritable fiddly feast for a leftover Princess.

Gorgeous though he undoubtedly is, Finley isn't an easy child to bring up. Like all boy's of his age he is constantly on the move, but he combines this permanent motion with relentless conversation, 1001 searching questions, and a running commentary of his every move, which is quite frankly exhausting. Though he is cute enough to get away with it, his hair is wild, his clothes are always undone, and his fingernails are dirty, and this alongside the fact that he can render a room immaculate to bombsite in the apparent blink of an eye, merely by hurtling around it and leaving destruction in his wake means that life as his Mummy always feels a little out of control... though my grubby little munchkin is rarely naughty, always polite and possesses emotional intelligence extremely rare in children of his age, so whether or not I feel demented is totally eclipsed by pride for a little boy who can with a simple sentence or two bring tears to the eyes of everybody in the room, so heartwarming is his sheer joy in everything he encounters and his skill in putting that joy into words. Though all Mum's like to think their children are special, I have always known that there was something different about Finley: that he wasn't like other children, and his first experience of formal education immediately resulted in assessment. Finley, I was told, wasn't right. He fell over too much. He was lacking in the scissor skills department. His gross and fine motor skills didn't marry with his very obvious verbal intelligence, he chewed his nails and worried too much and all of this implied that there was something wrong. That in their words, he would never fit into the standard educational system because his glaring innate creativity and emotional intelligence marred by his inability to stand up without falling over or running across the room and chucking himself at the wall just for the fun of it, would mean that he would struggle to fit into the typical classroom scenario. For a while Dyspraxia was talked about in hushed tones (as if it was a life sentence) but was ultimately dismissed by occupational therapists who declared him fine and dandy, said look, he can thread beads and draw perfect triangles: he can kick and catch a ball, walk along a straight line and though he is a tad wobbly, crawl around with his left arm sticking out at right angles to his body as requested: so let that be an end to it. He is a joy. Send him to big school and see how he fares. And so that is what I did. I sent him, and he took to it like a fish takes to water, loving the interaction with other children, adoring his teachers and enjoying the challenge of learning to read. And then the jungle drums started beating all over again. His letter formation was dodgy. He worried out loud about too many little things children his age didn't need to worry about. He pre-empted danger where there was none to be found. He threw his coat at his hook and dashed off to play without seeing it fall to the ground. Once he even managed to fasten up his shirt inside out... Finley, by all accounts, wasn't right. Could it be Dyspraxia, they whispered? Well? Could it? You tell me, I whispered back. Perhaps he was just five and very busy? Perhaps he's just bright and pre-empts danger because he is clever enough to work out that it does in fact exist, that this is a child with Coeliacs disease, a child used to identifying personal danger. Or perhaps, yes, perhaps, there is something wrong. Some of me wanted to say, You know what? Come back in two years and let him be a child for now. Some of me wanted to say, rather this spirited child, than the one in the corner so meek, the one internalising her every fear rather than talking it to death until it is understood. Rather this than the child who scowls and seeks perfection in everything he does. Rather this. And the rest of me understood that this is a child who one way or another has to fight his way through an educational system that will keep on drawing attention to his differences. That this is indeed a child who will not let me sit down without crawling on top of me and squashing his body against mine, who cannot bear hair cuts or hair washing, cannot tolerate the sound of the kettle boiling or the vacuum cleaner working, worries about the risk of the toilet flooding and is so afraid of dogs and goats he will run into oncoming traffic rather than come face to face with one. (Though thankfully loose goats are few and far between in these parts). That this is a child who is different and that it is my duty as his Mummy to give this difference the respect it deserves so we can all muddle our way through the school years. And so I began reading. I read The Spirited Child and The Sensitive Child. I read up on the symptoms of Dyspraxia and associated disorders, googled case studies, read The Sensory-Sensitive Child and finally found something that rang true with me. Sensory Processing Disorder described, almost exactly, my perception of Finley's difficulties. SPD with a particular leaning to Proprioceptive Dysfunction explained Finley's quirks and made sense of my experience of mothering a child like him: both the heart-ache and the exhaustion. And more than that, SPD was occasionally linked with children with Coeliacs, due to the fact that more than 40% suffered damage to their central nervous systems before diagnosis. I was ready to go in all guns blazing. I was ready to go in and fight the same kind of battle I'd had to have Finley's Coeliacs diagnosed in the first place: twelve months of knowing in my heart what was wrong with my child, but watching him slowly starve to death while the medical system investigated everything from weak stomach muscles to cystic fibrosis and stomach cancer, all the time ignoring my pleas to test him for what seemed all to obvious to me. So I was ready to do battle. And then a nice little woman called Pauline arrived, case notes in hand, admired my chipped paint and sat on my sofa and said that they in the Occcupational Therapy department at the Children's Centre had come to the conclusion that Finley had Sensory Processing Disorder, with clear Proprioceptive failings that could indeed be compromising his ability to manage a classroom situation. I could have kissed her. It isn't of course an answer. It is in fact merely a label. Sensory Processing Disorder covers a huge spectrum of difficulties that vary by both degree and impact. Nothing alters the fact that Finn is managing well, that he can now almost read and write and that label or no label, the kid can't stop talking. Life with him isn't easy. He is more demanding than the next child, but to me it is the fact that he asks me questions I cannot answer that is the exhausting bit and everything else is just a scrumptious little bit of the eccentric little boy he is. Eccentricity that is very real because Finley isn't experiencing the world in the same way that you and I do. And long may it last because chatterbox he may be, but I wouldn't change one little sausage of him. Not a single gluten-free sausage.

 

Never again will I read the vitriolic outpourings of one delusional Ms Liz Jones. That I am admitting that I buy The Mail on Sunday is bad enough (I have always adored the interiors and cooking features in You magazine), but to work myself up into such a state about something I read inside it is downright ridiculous.
You see while the rest of the world is up in arms about Russell Brand I have got my knickers in a right old twist about  Liz Jones. Oh yes, to say I am angry is an understatement. She makes me want to spit, and if you know me well, you will know that this is a rare occasion indeed. I'm generally of a live and let live nature except when it comes to Mariah Carey.

For those of you not familiar with Liz Jones, she is the former editor of Marie Claire who turned her marriage to a man a good deal her junior into a four year long column that documented everything from her lies (she shaved a few years off her age) and his lies (He became ludicrously unfaithful) to her obsessive compulsive urge to control every last detail of their relationship and its inherent financial inequalities (He was a struggling unpublished writer, she a prominent fashion and beauty journalist), her housework craze, their brood of cats, his yoga and ultimately their  shambolic, painful marital failure.

Gripping stuff if only because what she was willing to reveal was astonishingly neurotic, desperately human and surely occasionally a little embroidered, because no truly sane woman would have allowed her imbecilic young spouse to treat her like he did and still carry on behaving like his doting Mother.

But then who are we to judge somebody else's relationship? Nobody, that's right, so women across the country groaned every time she let him climb back into her bed after yet another infidelity and secretly rooted for the everywoman we believed her to be somewhere underneath the glossy, silly, paranoid surface.

But Liz Jones isn't everywoman at all. When the marriage finally stuttered to an end she moved into the country with her beloved menagerie and the subject of her column gradually shifted to document her loneliness and regret for the children she doesn't have, the marriage as it should have been and the men she hasn't got, alongside the turmoil of life in the country for a thoroughly pampered city woman. It remains amusing and sad, but is now a little too liberally sprinkled with the bitterness reflected in every word she writes elsewhere...

I first started to feel mildly offended by her when I read this:

" ...do we really want to buy into the idea that women should revert to pouring all their energy into raising children (who, if my nephews and nieces are anything to go by, will turn their noses up at something you spent all day making from scratch) and opting out of the jobs market as soon as child number two comes along?

Where does this vision of domestic bliss leave men, I wonder? I don't often see things from a male viewpoint but I can only think that men, when faced with the prospect of being with a woman who wanted to get to the top, who paid half the mortgage, was able to talk about something other than the huge pile of ironing they had just ploughed through, and gave him the opportunity of being the one to stay home and change the nappies, just might have given a huge sigh of relief to have the burden of responsibility shared for once.

Do thirty-something men have a choice in this new-found fervour for a ridiculously retro domestic set-up? I doubt it.

I have a very hard-working male friend whose wife decided to go part-time as soon as she became pregnant and had the cheek to say to him the other day: "Why am I the only mum out of my group of friends who still has to work?

"When are you going to be a man, and let me do my job, which is to raise our child?" (And before full-time mums write in to tell me how hard bringing up three small children under three actually is, much harder than sitting in an office, I don't care. You chose to have them.)

Women were suckered by feminism into wanting careers above all else. Now they all want to do an about-turn because, surprise surprise, they have discovered something men have known for years: that the workplace is monotonous and boring and hard.

And so along comes all this domestic nonsense, which women are grasping with both hands as a way to get off the treadmill..."

 

This from a woman who in the absence of children, has dedicated her life to horses so pampered she washes their manes in Frederik Fekkai! This from a woman who compromised her own very well documented "feminism" by allowing herself to become the doormat on which her spoilt ex-husband wiped the yoga shoes she no doubt paid for, on! This from a woman who's very dedication to her pets, (and by the same token the maternal dedication she bestowed upon her marriage), sadly tells the tale of a woman embittered by the lack of a significant other with whom to build the life of domestic contentment she so clearly craves.

So I was already cross with her.

And then, this weekend, in my eyes at least, she blew it all together. Speaking about Michele Obama in the main part of the Mail on Sunday, she said and I quote...

" Michelle Obama is the perfect embodiment of the American Dream.

From a deprived childhood on the south side of Chicago to Harvard and Princeton law schools and a high-earning career, she has suddenly been demoted to organising the Christmas decorations at the White House and the annual Easter egg roll, whatever that is.

While her husband is being likened in all seriousness to John F. Kennedy, Michelle is being held up as the next Jackie O,  an empty-headed, expensively dressed ninny whose first instinct, when her husband was shot in the head, was to try to climb out of the back of that moving car.

I worry whether a woman so intelligent and feisty (her husband learned at a young age to smile and charm and disarm whites of the notion that he was a black militant, but Michelle was always much more confrontational) will be able to melt herself down to fit this new, super-restricting role.

The constant battle she has with her hair, ironing it and chemically ‘relaxing’ it so that it becomes ‘blow hair’, i.e. hair that moves in the wind like a white woman’s, is likely to be played out every day with her fierce intellect.

She will have to suppress her views, her opinions and a loud mouth, which has meant, as one US political observer put it, she has already become ‘a target-rich environment’ in the manner of Cherie Blair.

Michelle Obama constantly has to reassure the American public that her prime concern is being a good mother to her two polite, well-dressed young daughters. ‘Even as First Lady, my No1 job is still to be Mom,’ she wrote recently.

‘My first priority will be to ensure [my daughters] stay grounded and healthy, with normal childhoods – including homework, chores, dance and soccer’.

While middle Americans can, now, accept that a black man is ready to rule the world, the idea that a woman might have interests beyond running a home is still, ludicrously,untenable.

The reason Michelle chides her husband for his bad domestic skills is obvious.

She is not emasculating him; rather, she wants to make him seem more down to earth, more ‘normal’.

But, let’s face it, even Osama Bin Laden must, at some point, shout down the stairs (do caves have stairs?) that he can’t find his turban to some poor, put-upon female.

Being inept at domesticity doesn’t make a leader appear more human; it merely means he is, de facto, oppressing someone else."

And as if this ridiculous, sexist, ill-judged borderline racist rant  wasn't enough she then went on to say...

*Far more revolutionary than electing a man of colour to the White House (will it now be the Black House?) would have been to elect a female at almost the same moment as a woman was being stoned to death for adultery in Somalia (that actually happened on October 28, 2008)"

Will it now be the Black House?? Please tell me she didn't say that. Hell yeah, she said it alright, and whether she said it with a hefty dose of irony is irrelevant to the fact that she spilled out something that in this day and age we shouldn't even think.

I don't pretend to know anything about the politics of America. But I know this: Michele Obama is an intelligent woman in her own right, and that is a fact uncompromised by whether she chooses to put personal ambition aside while she supports her family during what will no doubt be challenging, exhausting, wonderful times for them all.

And more than that how Mrs Obama chooses to style her hair has got bugger all to do with anything and merely the typical, cringe worthy, unintelligent viewpoint  of a fashion journalist full of her own importance and clearly hell-bent on courting controversy while diverting our attention away from the fact that because she has been all too willing to spill her guts about her personal life, we know how very bitter she is, and how very little she has achieved in terms of domestic fulfilment.

The saddest part of all of this is that this so called "feminist" clearly doesn't understand that modern feminism never for a moment asks  us to choose between a high flying career and the instinct to do our utmost to protect our children, while enriching the lives of the family we created. Modern feminism says only do what you have to do now. Do what matters. You always have that choice.

 

Me, you, Michelle. We have that choice.

 

So somebody tell Liz Jones, because until she steps off her high, lonely pampered horse, never again will I, and surely the rest of the nation, be able to read anything she writes.