My daughter is eighteen today and so, essentially, I now have two adults rather than two children. Aside from the pride I can feel in having managed to get them this far in their lives I am worried about their diminishing need for me because parenting is probably the role I’ve been most comfortable playing […]
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I’m waiting in the car for my daughter who said she wanted to leave at 9.45. She knows I am never late. Sitting with the engine turning over I stare at the door willing it to open even though there isn’t anywhere I have to be this morning. She emerges with a plastic takeaway tray […]
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When we were in our teens Paul and I invented a game. From halfway down my long garden, we’d climb over fences and hedges into neighbouring gardens. If a light went on or we heard a door open we’d scoot back from where we came as quickly as possible, hiding behind trees or in the […]
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In the park Flynn, my sisters Lurcher spots him first and takes off like the wind, hurtling through the trees and off down towards the lake where the path meanders, with the others soon in hot pursuit. “It’s Stuart,” I say, with a resigned half-smile. I know what’s coming. “That bloody man. He’s such a […]
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Out for a birthday dinner with my family, we are celebrating the end of my son’s teenage years. Talk turns to the recent documentary about Michael Jackson’s alleged child abuse and a discussion about whether the most despicable crimes render art worthless, and I wonder how much art is borne from some sort of dysfunction […]
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While reading an article about a 30% rise in perfectionism I think about the number of times I’ve told my teenage daughter to be less demanding of herself, and then I realise I have rewritten this paragraph at least six times. Once, in a woodwork class at school, I was asked to plane a piece […]
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Spending a day at University with my daughter we are listening to a presentation about student life. She is conscientious and committed, but she worries that everything she learns won’t stay in her head and be there when she needs it. I can remember my first episode of depression soon after I’d started a job […]
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I need to write a presentation but I am finding it hard to craft the beginning. To avoid the discomfort of sitting and staring at an empty screen I go and make coffee but, as the minute’s tick by, I start to feel bad about myself, about not using my time efficiently. To avoid the […]
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I went to see Mr Pascoe every Wednesday at 12.30. I would drive the twenty minutes from my office and sit in his shabby waiting room with the pleasant receptionist who didn’t have a computer and never seemed busy. When he called me in he would leave the room while I got undressed. I remember […]
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In my dream, I can see an ex-lover across the road in the small hut where I used to go to pre-school, but I can’t reach her. She is saying something to me but I can’t hear her. As I turn the corner and approach the church, it is gone, raised to the ground and […]
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