Chronicles of a Trailing Spouse...

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...

(An edited version of this column appeared in Good Taste Magazine, Dubai in September 2012) Thing 1:My creativity knows no bounds ‘ Are you going to be doing that all night? ’ whines my husband from the sofa. It’s 11pm on a school night, and I’m sitting on the floor surrounded by bits of cardboard, glue, crepe-paper and scissors. I've been here for over three hours and have so far produced: a one-foot-high, red and white striped hat for my seven-year-old ‘Cat in the hat’ ; a t-shirt with a ‘ Diary of a wimpy kid’ design painted onto it, for my nine-year-old Greg Heffley wannabe; a blue wig which has been fashioned from the insides of a scatter cushion dipped in blue paint, and glued to a rubber swimming hat, for ‘ Thing One’ aka the five-year-old.  Yes, it’s Book Day tomorrow, and like any good school event, the real work is done at home - long into the night – by us, the hapless parents. And any plans for an evening spent, glass in hand, sitting in front of ‘ Colin...

So DH has his Christmas staff party tonight and I am reminded of the many, many staff parties there have been over the years - good, bad and downright ugly. There was the first (and only) staff party for the company he worked for in Abu Dhabi. I think fondly of this one as it was not long after we arrived in the UAE and I had lost a startling amount of weight with absolutely no effort whatsoever. Travelling from Al Ain to Abu Dhabi for the big night, I took great pleasure in buying a gorgeous, strapless purple number from Reiss in Marina Mall which was a UK size 10 and ever so slightly too big. (It now hangs, unloved and unworn in my wardrobe, unlikely to ever be zipped up again...) As always, it isn't a Christmas party unless we haul the entire brood with us, installing them in the hotel room with TV and the room service menu while we party it on downstairs. At the time the eldest was only 8 so we got a babysitter to the room. The poor girl was Ethiopian and hadn't a word...

It happens in a split second doesn’t it? One moment you’re browsing the underwear section, trying to decide between the Spanx or Charnos control pants for that dinner party, while the two-year-old tugs a rack of bras down on his head; the next moment he’s gone. I lost my son in a mall once. He was two and a half at the time. We were in Marks and Spencer and he had freed himself from his buggy to look at the toys with his sister. He always did this and, unconcerned, I ventured over to a nearby section to browse the toiletries and cookery books, confident that both children would still be there when I returned.  But when I did, five minutes later, I found my daughter leafing through a book, alone. ‘ Where is Oscar?’   I demanded. ‘I don’t know’ , she shrugged. ‘ Can I have this?’ she held up a Disney Princess diary. He must have followed me over to the toiletries , I told myself calmly. Yes that’s what happened. Pushing the empty buggy, I wandered over t...

It’s hard to believe we left Paraburdoo just over a month ago; looking back on it, that life seems like a bizarre half dream, the type you get after you’ve drank too much champagne then fallen asleep in front of a blaring telly. Life in our new home has settled into a comfortable rhythm; the older children head out across the frosty garden each morning, while the daylight is still struggling to establish itself, to take the (free) school bus to a neighbouring village where they attend their secondary school. Having seen them off, I’ll snuggle back in the sofa bed (the marital bed is on a ship somewhere in the South Atlantic and won’t be here for another month) with a cup of coffee in front of Good Morning Britain, cuddled up to the smaller children until it's time to get dressed. Watching this show should be illegal...it's a time thief!  The four-year-old is now in (also free) playschool five mornings a week, something which has left me at a loss; rattling a...