Life in the Slow Lane is written by Clare Kent. She has three children - Max is eleven, Flo is eight and Bobby is nearly seven - and lives in Wiltshire.THIS WEEK’S ENTRYWeek Thirty-Three: Shoe You “I’m far too busy telling her to do up her laces to see that the whole back half of the shoe is missing.” EARLIER ENTRIESWeek Thirty-Two: Full Time Fever “To all you working mothers out there – respect. I am sorry you were so misrepresented by so few.” Week Thirty-One: Hitting Home “People need help to get out of violent relationships and parents need advice on how to parent their children without resorting to verbal and physical abuse. Help is available and we need the strength and courage to seek it.” Week Thirty: If Music Be The Food of Life - Listen On “Au revoir l’innocence, as they say in Frangland, and hello locked bedroom doors.” Week Twenty-Nine: Ten Reasons for Not Killing Yourself When You Hit Forty “8. Gardening – oh, the joy. How come no one ever told me?” Week Twenty-Eight: Drink Up “Stick with beer,” I hear myself saying. “Spirits are for losers.” Week Twenty-Seven: Christmas Budget “I suppose one can but admire my children’s optimism, but today I find it grim beyond belief.” Week Twenty-Six: Let's Talk About Sex “They recommend candles in the bathroom, exotic literature, role-play. Are there really parents of smallish children out there who can manage this?” Week Twenty-Five: Coping Badly “When I see Nigella teaching us how to be domestic goddesses, I think blow the Victoria sponges, how about the rest of it?” Week Twenty-Four: Demolition Squad “Like buses, breakages come in threes.” Week Twenty-Three: At the School Gates “Is there a protocol that someone never fully explained?” Week Twenty-Two: Smoked Out “Flo peers at me in ghoulish terror, waiting for me to expire as I inhale the smoke.” Week Twenty-One: Hopeless Mother “His school bus leaves at eight in the morning from the centre of the village and returns him in the afternoon at four thirty. He’s informed me that my waving, teary presence is not required.” Week Twenty: Pet Talk “The pressure to get a dog is hotting up here as we draw towards the autumn.” Week Nineteen: Holiday - What Holiday? “I’m thinking ofng a Holiday Rehabilitation Centre for knackered parents. I can see it now...” Week Eighteen: “Climb Every Mountain, Forge Every Stream” “We’re off on holiday tomorrow to the children’s least favourite destination.” Week Seventeen: Competitive - Moi? “Oh, we all coo, “ just so long as little Johnny has a good time”. But watch the parents at the side of the Sports Day field and you will see another story.” Week Sixteen: Catalogue Heaven “Summer’s here (isn’t it?) and it’s time for some family home shopping. Mail order catalogues fly through our letterbox with the frequency and persistence of invitations to Hogwarts for Harry Potter.” Week Fifteen: Ing-ger-le-und! “So amazed am I at how seriously I am taking the whole competition, I feel sure there must have been some kind of paranormal intervention.” Week Fourteen: Half Term Already? “‘Can we go to Disneyworld for half term?’ says Flo. She asks this in a straightforward sort of way, just like she was asking if we could have fish fingers for tea.” Week Thirteen: Walk the Walk “There are days - reassure me that I’m not alone here - when I’m just this side of grumpy.” Week Twelve: Neighbours from Hell “Are we the new neighbours from hell? Oh no, I think we may be.” Week Eleven: Moving Times “Sometimes, in fact quite often, I wish I could have been born fragile, petite and preferably blonde. Such a woman could luxuriate in her femininity and surely wouldn’t be expected to carry a sofa on her head.” Week Ten: Time to Tidy “I keep the pegs for the washing line in an old Tupperware box by the back door. It tipped over, scattering its twenty-odd plastic pegs on the ground. Instead of tidying it up, I left it there…” Week Nine: Spring Fever “Being a neurotic, hysterical, doom-laden mother does have its advantages, although I have to say I can’t think of any right now.” Week Eight: Monkey Business “How do we feel about sea monkeys? Personally, I’m ready to flush ours down the loo.” Week Seven: Can't Sew, Won't Iron “I would absolutely love to be able to sew, gaily running up pairs of curtains in a weekend, producing adorable smocks for Flo’s dolls, that kind of thing. Sadly, it is not to be. I was the one with the bloodied, grimy sampler at school and unfortunately, that is how it has remained.” Week Six: You Rock My World “The car’s a perfect venue for tricky topics: the very act of driving requires intense scrutiny of the road ahead thus ruling out any awkward eye contact.” Week Five: Whose Day Is It Anyway? “After some consideration, I realised that if I could have anything at all on Mother’s Day it would be a day of complete peace and quiet....Unfortunately, saying my best sort of day would be one ‘without any of you lot’ is hardly entering into the spirit of the occasion.” Week Four: Feed Them and Weep “I, on the other hand, will shortly have to start wearing a Hannibal Lector-style mask to prevent any more hoovering up of leftovers. I cannot bear the waste, although I do draw the line at the Friskies.” Week Three: Life Without Pop Idol “The Father of the Children thinks I’ve gone soft in the head, incredulous that I have been sucked into the hype of something which to him is so blatantly fake. When I read bits about our local hero from the paper out loud to the children, he looks at me as if I’m force-feeding them arsenic.” Week Two: Half Term “I feel like wearing a large sandwich board: one side could read NO TREATS - NO OUTINGS, the other SORRY- RIGHT OUT OF CASH. There’s nothing for it but to morph myself into an all singing, all smiling, Blue-Peter-style mum.” Week One: Bug Alert “Here I was greeted by a scene not normally witnessed anywhere except the toilets on a cross channel ferry in a force 10 gale.” A Preview (posted on National Bug Busting Day) “How do you tell your daughter’s best friend’s mother that her daughter has head lice?”
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