Mummy, I would like a humming-bird and also, I would like a swan. Well, there are no humming birds in Scotland, and I think all the swans belong to the queen. Why? Emm…history? They just do. We can’t keep them as pets. Anyway, they’re fierce. The Queen is greedy, keeping all the swans for herself. Why does she even want a pet swan if they are nasty and vicious? I don’t want her ever to come to my house. She won’t, sweetheart. She won’t come to our house. Why not? She’s busy,

Paddling in the cold peaty water, the river stole his left jelly shoe and my right flip-flop. He uses the slimy wooden weir as a slide. She doesn’t like the moss and pine needles touching her tiny toes. She’s hot and sad today. He wades out to a grassy island to share his picnic. I came here thirty or more years ago, with my mum and dad. The memory brought me back, with my own babies, to play in the pools and on the rocks of the Feugh. You can’t make a memory. Memories make t

Mummy, imagine if there was a tree as big as twenty-eight million thousand school buses, and it went up as high as the moon? Would you climb up that tree to the moon? Yes, I would climb and it would take lots of days and years. I would go with Polly. What would you do on the moon? I would show the aliens my butt. You’d need a lot of sandwiches to keep you going when you were climbing up to the moon. Cheese sandwiches. When I got to the moon, I would throw cheese at the space

I know he will fear the terrible creatures, their teeth and claws. He is building the little boat that will take him there, and there is no room for me. He’ll launch it without fearful memories, confident he has the tricks to tame them. I cannot tell him not all monsters have yellow eyes. I cannot tell him that boats might can sink and people drown, and never come home from that place. I cannot tell him I will always be there, or that I can make them go away. But I have help

The wind is booming in the chimney. The clock ticks. The house sighs and creaks. Silence is so precious to me. It’s a luxury, and indulgence, like lobster, new underwear or a pedicure. I fucking love when the house is silent. There is nothing I want to hear more. Alone. No needs to meet. No questions to answer. No smile to force. There is mess. There is a sleeping baby. There is a never-ending list. So much I should be doing. An angry voice in my ear. It comes from me. Shut u

Got up at six thirty. Fed and dressed the kids and myself. Full face of makeup. Drove little boy to school. Housework. Drafted application for a writing competition. More housework. Picked up little boy from school and dropped baby girl at nursery. Rehearsed for a concert on Wednesday night. Drank coffee with my sister. Watched The Handmaid’s Tale recorded from Sunday, on the sofa, with my husband. Finished writing application, made dinner. More housework. Three loads of wash

My baby is one year old. She does not want to crawl or walk yet. She does not like to cry or fuss about anything. What she likes to do is smile, wave regally, and blow raspberries. She wants to splash in the bath, and sing like a fighting cat in the quietest places. She likes to stretch up her hands for a cuddle. She makes a rainbow mess with food. She turns the upside-down pages of books and chews on them. I know she will take their arbitrary milestones, rearrange them and b

I feel sad for children who are not allowed to get filthy. I like to see mine with mud under their nails, grubby hands and knees, faces sticky with ice cream. I like to watch her tiny hands in sand, tugging at grass or stones. Today he found a giant worm in a puddle, and played in the muck. At the end of the day I run a bubbly bath and plunge them in. The water runs brown off his hands and legs. There’s a place for plastic toys, for screens and electronics, but the only place

My little boy picked me some bluebells from the garden. I put them in a tumbler, on top of the piano. My Mum planted flowers around the front of our house, little pots of colour. My friend brought me a bunch, with white and pink roses. I don’t know the names of the flowers that Mum planted, or the other flowers in the bouquet Liz gave me. If I had time and room in my brain, I would find out more about flowers, wild and cultivated. I know their colours are beautiful and they m

My little boy loves minibeasts. He digs for them in the soil, and scrapes them into pots, offering them fruit and leaves, poking and prodding. Yesterday he found a millipede. He called it Robert and he carried it everywhere. He cried when we let Robert slither away into the grass before bedtime. Robert will die if you keep him in a pot, I tried to explain. Instead we drew, crafted and researched millipedes together. These are the times when I feel like a good mother. They are