Baby clothes bagged up for the charity shop, each one faintly stained with memories and ghostly food smudges, and it’s hard to justify my sadness at seeing them leave. It seems inviting disaster to wonder if our babies might have babies, and need these same clothes many years from now.

At my parents’ house two days ago, my dad tried to laugh at the idea of his plans for the future, for retirement. A grimace, no sound, then a blank Parkinson’s stare again. Today, every window is open to try and rid the house of the smell, and he doesn’t wake much even when my mother strokes his face. I almost make myself cry by playing the Judi Dench performance of ‘Send in the Clowns’ in my head, even though my dad has very little affection either for Dame Judi, or for any musical theatre that doesn’t contain pop hits of his younger days. It’s just a beautiful song.

We sit with him, and listen to him breathe.

August 11, 2014

Neither of M’s best friends at school have English as a first language. At a Sunday afternoon barbecue with their parents, we are about seven languages behind everyone else (although I can now say “Pleased to meet you” in a pretty good Brazilian accent, though I say so myself). Of course, the food is excellent. At one point, the host takes a leg of chicken from J’s hand mid-bite, saying, “Don’t waste your time on that - have more steak.”

The next night we are served daal gosht and melt-in-the-mouth chicken liver kebabs at a 1-year-old’s birthday party which runs from bedtime to 11pm, the freshly feral pack of children running wild and sleepless in their darkening garden. There are pockets of deep goodness in the world, and I appear to have stumbled into one.

August 7, 2014

Exactly half-way under the Channel, my muscles started knotting, my breathing came shallower, I shucked off my week-old cocoon to reveal my new shape, same as the old one. I drove home angry, the pre-holiday rages settling like ratty fox furs back on my shoulders.

But past the front door, my in-laws waited, smart and funny and kind. And past them, past the night and into the morning, were the children, all taller and browner and funnier than before. M wants to grow a moustache. F doesn’t like crabs. P wears everyone’s shoes.

My fancies of flight can wait for another day.

August 1, 2014

The fields are filled with sunflowers, but we leave before dawn so get past most of them without being seen. I loathe those creatures. At best, they’re a forced jollity, a Chuckle Brothers prettiness with lipstick smudged round its mouth and a novelty balloon in one hand; at worst, by late August, they are fields and fields of blackened, charred children, berated, punished, burnt and sorry, their bowed heads just begging someone to forgive their cindered little faces, unable to even meet your eye.

July 31, 2014