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Day 13   There’s a wall in my house that I want to knock down. James won’t let me, because we don’t own the house on the other side of it and he feels our relationship with our neighbour might be affected. The structural engineer won’t let me, because apparently

Day 12   The more awful things are, the calmer I am. When child three dropped a glass jar of pancake batter onto the kitchen floor, I cleared it up and made scrambled eggs for breakfast instead; I can run a birthday party for twenty, thirty small children at the

Day 11   And the second new commandment is this – THOU SHALT ACCEPT COMPLIMENTS WITH GRACE. It’s a very hard thing to do; it takes practice. We so habitually tune our inner voices in to the negative that the positive doesn’t always get through, let alone heard. You’re going

Day 10.   We’ve already got a list of ten rules; I’m not sure we need another one. But some of the existing regulations are problematic, and the overall tone is a bit demanding. I am terribly glad I was born, but effective parenting has moved on a bit in

  Day Nine   I played in a concert yesterday evening and stuffed up so completely that I find myself seriously contemplating the merits of never, ever leaving the house again. At this precise moment, if you could guarantee me that Heaven consists of sitting on a white cloud playing

Day 8 Clever people don’t believe in God. I learned that long ago, from a father who had been brought up Catholic and lapsed spectacularly, for excellent reasons. He was – and is still, I’m sure – an atheist with all the passion of a convert. It wasn’t enough that