Dear Next Week, We haven't met yet, but honestly, I have high hopes of a beautiful friendship between you and I. Certainly, I know you won't let me down the way that bastard Last Week did. For starters, there was the unfortunate incident where I had to cancel a night away in a 5-star hotel in favour of dealing with emails about server upgrades. You'd never do that, would you Next Week? I am also 100 percent confident that you won't be involved in any bird-killing shenanigans, the … [Read more...]

Life's a journey. You never stop learning new things. Well, I don't. For example, this week alone I have learned that: If you put a bra in the tumble drier the wire might come out and you might only realise that when the expensive repair engineer pulls it out of the back of your (broken) machine and holds it in front of you while lecturing you about ALWAYS putting bras into a pillow case before putting them into the washer or drier. The day you send someone an email after months … [Read more...]

So this weekend, it was Flea's termly 'showcase' at her theatre school - all the kids do a few performances to show the skills they've learned over the past 10 weeks. I'm a HUGE fan of the theatre school Flea attends. I say theatre school because "stage school" calls to mind horrific images of precocious brats and pushy Mums and I hope we don't fall into that category! Actually, I don't much care either way if Flea has a career in the performing arts - although the laws of genetics suggest … [Read more...]

Your daughter has THIS conversation with your Mum:   Flea: Grandma, you know the apple you gave me?  Mum: Yes.  Flea: I've eaten it all.  Mum: Well done, just keep the core until we get home.  Flea: I've eaten the core. And the stalk, too. There's nothing left.  Mum: Really? You must have been hungry.  Flea: Well, we did forget breakfast and lunch today. Can I come to your house for something to eat?  It's not quite as bad as it sounds - we've been doing that festive thing … [Read more...]

So how was your Christmas and New Year? It's safe to say it was absolutely nothing like mine, judging by my Facebook timeline this past week. Everyone else in the world apparently had a "magical" Christmas, and a "perfect" New Year. Ugh. There comes a moment somewhere around Boxing Day where I reach virtual saturation point, and can't read any more about perfection and magic and wonderful and best ever. I'm glad you're all such models of domestic happiness, but I get a bit - well - … [Read more...]

It's been a hectic old week at the Whittle household. Flea's been off school, we'd had plumbers in fitting a new boiler, new radiators and fixing the bathroom leaks and what-not. And I've been working, madly trying to finish off everything that needs to be finished before my Christmas break - which I am DEFINITELY taking this year. So that's my excuse for hastily hiding an M&S plastic bag in the spare bedroom when I got back from a shopping trip with my Mum - a shopping trip where I'd … [Read more...]

I’m thrilled to have been asked to attend the Tesco Mum of the Year awards this year – did you know you can go and nominate someone inspiring for this award over at the Tesco Magazine website up until 21 September? Sadly, being invited as a guest means you can’t really nominate me for Mum of the Year. Tragic, I know. Cough. Personally, I think I’d be a brilliant Mum of the Year. For example: There was that time I accidentally punched my child in the face while strapping … [Read more...]

Hello, friends. Before we embark together on our journey today, I just want to make two things clear: First, what follows was totally, completely not my fault. Second, honest, it wasn’t really my fault. That established, I’ll give you the happy news: we’ve adopted two kittens from the local cat rescue, and we’re collecting them today. I KNOW! Much excitement in the Whittle household. So yesterday, off we went to the local Pet superstore, to buy a litter tray (ugh), and a cat … [Read more...]

Once, a really, really, really long time ago, I was driven halfway round the twist by a beeping smoke alarm in my house. Except we couldn't find it. For days, it went BEEP....BEEP....BEEP every 30 seconds. It was loudest at the top of the stairs, but couldn't be heard as clearly downstairs, or in the new loft/playroom. Whatever, it was loud enough to be heard in every single part of my house. I was reduced to sleeping with ear-plugs. After fruitlessly trying to find the wretched thing … [Read more...]

One of my abiding memories of childhood is coming home from primary school one day to find our Mum had put all our untidy toys into black bin bags and chucked them out of the window into the garden. We were given one hour to put away anything we wanted to keep. Otherwise it would go in the bin. Age has given me a WHOLE new perspective on this story. Flea is – in many ways – a wonderfully easy person to get along with. She’s polite, she does as she’s asked, she has a good sense … [Read more...]