CLEVER MUMMY 




She has two children, a husband in IT who can afford a nice little artisans house like mine about fifteen years before me. She worked for a year or two after university but since then has married and looked after the house and the two children. Her little daughter is polite, confident, full of fun and phonics - she is already ahead of children a year or more older. In fact, thought she is only allowed to be in nursery due to her age she does phonics with year one because she can help bring them on! Mummy also has enough time and energy to make homemade party bags such as the one above.  She has just been interviewed for an open university PGCE to become a maths teacher and they are crying out for them in our area so it looks as if she can build a career around her children's term times. What clever choices she has made with her life. 


I have some friends who believe that the economy will crash irrevocably who are moving to a farm in Devon. It is a choice that scares the wife more than the husband. She is not sure she wants to leave her house in a safe contained enclosure where her children play with neighbours to go to a place two miles from another house. She is supporting her husband's choice and putting her faith in him and God. He is fifty and doesn't know much about farming, except for a year in farming one field which didn't produce much.  It's a brave choice. 


Another friend made a great choice to take time out from her NY advertising career to give her children some mummy time all summer for her children. 


Life feels as if it is spinning dizzying fast to me, the weekends barely long enough to sort the washing let alone sort the future. I hope my choices in middle age finally become more sensible for the sake of X.

Fonic Fun ( better a witty fool than a foolish wit )

Tricky thing the English language, practically every word one picks is an exception to the rules of phonics, not to mention the rules of grammar, spelling and a load of other rules that take up rather too much childhood time.

On the way back from seeing a friend in Holland Park we play spelling the names of her friends.

‘Me and my best friend, it’s OK.’ She says, delightedly.

Ok, to get the (what I choose to call a ) joke you need to know that her best friend’s name begins with K and hers O. Ok, even after that it’s not exactly a belter but it’s her first wordplay joke, as far as I'm aware, though maybe she puns and riddling with the teachers and minders all day every weekday.

We begin to sound out the name of another friend.

“A, m, e, l, i, a….”I enunciate in my best consonants and vowels (might as well do a bit of elocution at the same time).

“Eh?” she says.

“Yes: A, m.....- e! Clever girl!”

“U?”

‘No, e!’

“E?” I catch her eye in the mirror, she’s looking very pleased with herself.

Oh, eh! I geddit…another little wordplay. At this rate I’ll have to get her a Shakespeare red nose

t-shirt for Comic Relief.