Chronicles of a Trailing Spouse...

(An edited version of the column appears in the December 2015 edition of Good Taste Magazine, Dubai.) To be fair, this is rather gorgeous.... The other afternoon I found myself surfing eBay for Christmas-themed duvet covers. The selection on offer was impressive; from tacky Santa designs to tasteful Nordic patterns, there was something for everyone and I started busily loading up my virtual shopping cart with one for every member of the family – me included – smug in the idea that I was making Christmas magical for the children. But as my mouse hovered above the ‘commit to buy’ button and I fantasised about tucking the children in to their Christmas-themed beds on Christmas eve, full of excitement on that most magical of nights, I paused for a moment and asked myself the question I often ask myself while shopping on eBay – ‘what on EARTH am I doing?’ You see, I am victim of an ever growing obsession among modern parents of trying to make every moment magical for my children...

It's just under five years since I wrote my last ' closing weeks of pregnancy' blog and I never thought I would be doing that again. Ever. But here I am, with seven weeks left and am starting to feel the full weight (pardon the pun) of what I've elected to put myself through again, as well as recalling all the stuff I'd conveniently forgotten. I feel a little like this woman... In the early days of this pregnancy I was filled with wonder and awe that my body was still capable of an activity mainly reserved for women at least half a decade younger than myself. Feeling a baby squirm and kick inside you, while your ageing eyesight causes you to you squint at small print through those £1 glasses from Poundland, feels a little like rearranging the furniture on the doomed  Titanic . At once my body shuffles towards its inevitable decline, while simultaneously prodding me daily with evidence of this last bloom of fertility, as each new stretch mark and quiveri...

Almost a month ago, I received the phone call that every emigrant with elderly parents dreads. "Mum's not well," came my brother's voice down the phone, "the doctor doubts she'll make the end of the week - you'd better make some plans." I knew this day would come, in many ways I hoped it would be sooner rather than later. Mum had dementia and had been non-verbal for almost seven years and missing for oh so much longer than that. After my dad had died - nine years earlier - she had declined massively within a short period of time, and had been living in a nursing home since then. To my shame, I hadn't seen her in four years. A woman who up until the last decade and a half had taken great pride in her appearance, mum had taught us girls how to be ladies; she placed great importance on good manners and a groomed appearance - she didn't understand the laddish culture I grew up with at all and consequently, and apart from a brief s...

I had a sort of revelation recently. I was sitting in a doctor's office in the maternity ward of my local hospital, and the 24 year-old-doctor asked me if the baby was planned. Without missing a beat I giggled and said, " NO, of course not!"  I then had to sit while she talked about the importance of contraceptive measures at six weeks post-partum, feeling like a skittish school girl. Sitting there, listening to this - well - child, lecture me on contraception made me realise something I've never admitted before; I WANTED  this baby and what's more, I wanted every one of them. This sounds elementary, obvious even. But for 14 years I've been acting as if the big family happened by accident. I even, to my shame now, once wrote in a magazine column that when asked why I had so many children, replied that I was both excessively careless and excessively fertile in equal measure. At the time I thought this was clever, funny even. But at 42 with my sixth baby ...

I realise I haven't blogged much over the past few months. I'm not really sure why this is. Perhaps living in the UK feels a little un-noteworthy - a little prosaic - after the exotic challenges presented by living upside down on the other side of the world where Christmas is in midsummer and July is a little chilly, or in a place where you are woken at 5am to the crackling sound of the Muezzin wailing the Call to Prayer as it splinters through the morning air. Is living here just too 'ordinary' to write about? Of course the answer is it's far from normal here, since in truth at this point I really don't know what 'normal' is - what is 'normal'? I still send the windscreen wipers hurtling across the windscreen every time I click on my indicators when out driving (did the same thing in Australia for three years - they drive on the same side but for some reasons the wipers and indicators are reversed). I still - after spending the first year...

(An edited version of this column appeared in Good Taste Magazine, Dubai, in April 2015) A text pinged up on my phone the other day. It was from my brother in Dublin. “AM SO BORED,” it read. Twenty minutes later another one: “AM HERE INSTEAD OF WATCHING RUGBY, NO JUSTICE!” Ten minutes later: “TEN YR OLD MURDERING A SONG FROM CATS!” These increasingly hysterical updates were the result of an afternoon  in a concert hall where his daughter's school was performing in a musical. He's not a heartless man, and dotes on his daughter, but let's be honest there are times when kids' performances can be trying. I know this intimately; with five children I've sat through countless performances, some good, some mediocre and some so bad you want to stick pins in your eyes - or clean the oven - anything but sit there for a moment longer. It's not necessarily my own children I object to watching (although there have been moments), after all I'm contra...