Ryan

We’ve been slinking down the back alleys of all the empty houses on the block. It’s quite good, counting how far along the terrace the house with the ‘To Let’ sign is, then going round the back and figuring out which is its gate. There was one with a load of mouldy furniture piled like Jenga beneath the kitchen window, one with a ferocious dog and one with a gate that swung open so that Tom fell into the yard when he tried to peer through it.

“I think we should stop this now Mum,” he said, standing up and brushing himself down, “people might fink we’re burgallohs.”

He was right. And none of them had yards much bigger than ours anyway. So, I went back to thinking we should stay put and pay off some debt.

Then, last night, when I collected Tom from his holiday club, we walked down our alley and someone had tried to blow up a wheelchair outside our back gate.

“What is it Mum?”

There was the wheelchair, with a big hole in the seat, lots of white ash flakes and some cans of Lynx.

“Someone has tried to set fire to a wheelchair.”

“Why did somebody try to set fire to a wheelchair?”

“I don’t know.”

We went to the supermarket and tried to buy light bulbs. That’s the other thing about our house. It has those fancy halogen spotlights which are impossible to replace, unless you’re ten feet tall and patient. And every time one blows, the power to the entire upstairs / downstairs goes. Invariably it happens when I come in from a night out. I have to feel around in the dark electrics box with its spindly spiders and slug trails. I feel like I am stuck in a never-ending cycle of forking out for expensive light bulbs and sitting in the dark, psyching myself up to shove my hand in the cupboard of horrors or climb up the wobbly step ladders. (I have three main fears: the dark, spiders and heights.)

The supermarket didn’t have the right light bulbs and it was dusk by the time we got home again. Children were pushing each other fast along the cobbles in the burnt-out wheelchair. Last weekend, we stayed in a beautiful Somerset Farmhouse (a prize I won) and I’d watched Tom running round the garden with the little boy who lives there. He got really excited when he found a legless cricket and some blackberries and I got the countryside guilt again.

The dark nights are coming on quick and I realised it was bin night too late. I promised to read Tom a story right after I’d put the rubbish out. I opened the back gate and the wheelchair had gone. It was black and scary and I saw something moving and jumped. It was a hedgehog. Some teenage girls were passing and I pointed it out to them and they screamed, said it might bite them and ran away. When I was a child, we were always seeing hedgehogs in our garden. I ran back inside and told Tom to grab his torch and my camera and come with me. He thought it was magic and so did I. I picked it up and put it in the bushes so it didn’t get kicked or run over by the burnt-out wheelchair. Tom called it Ryan. After I washed my hands, I could still feel the prickles on my palms. I put Tom to bed and he did dot-to-dot on the tiny red dints in my skin.

“Fanks for showing me Ryan. You’re the best Mum I’ve ever had.”

Rubbish

Obscenely good sunsets

Could anything better sum up the grim reality of returning from paradise to my crap terraced street than the Bin War? For two-and-a-half years, I have put up with the bizarre anctics of my neighbours, who will go to great lengths not to knock on my door and say “Excuse me, why do you keep your bin in the alley?” or even, the extremely far-fetched “Would you like a hand bringing the bins in and out?”

I have received letters ‘from the council’ written on a typewriter and returned home drunk to find my bins pinned up against the front door. Half of the neighbours have long drives:  acres of space for their bins, which they decorate with wildlife stickers. They love them so much that they pay someone to come and clean them.  I have listened to people beneath my bedroom window at 7am TALKING IN REALLY LOUD VOICES ABOUT THAT GIRL WHO NEVER BRINGS HER BINS IN and Tom’s Auntie J has had a stick waved at her and been asked why I don’t bring my bins in.  Still, no one has bothered to ask me. (It started when Tom was a baby and I had to either leave him in the house alone or drag him and the bins around. Now it’s because my yard is too small for a load of bins.)

(And I am stubborn.)

Recently, the neighbours stepped things up. They formed a residents’ society, for people who have got time to get upset by things like tall trees, building work, dog shit (actually, that does bother me) and their beloved bins. When I got back from my holiday, the latest residents’ newsletter was on the mat, with a biro rectangle and an asterix around the article ‘Wheelie Bins (again).’ Oh go away. I’ve just been sleeping on a beach in a place where the bins are old olive tins painted with hippy hyperbole.

Then the council finally got involved. They sent me a letter (not done on a typewriter) threatening me with a fine. It told me to move my bins on to my property but not too close to the house, in case they got set on fire. How you are supposed to keep three wheely bins away from your house when your yard measures 6 foot by 5 foot is beyond me. Faced with an actual real-life fine, I brought them in. There is now no room whatsoever for Tom to play outside. I can almost feel the warmth from my neighbours rubbing their hands together.

Why does anyone bother with reality? I thought today, washing up and staring at the neat row of bins beneath the kitchen window. In came my best boy, right on cue:

“You alright Mum? Is yer ear hurting? Do yer want a glass of water?”

And I snapped out of it. Spending the aftermath of my trip on codeine had probably softened the blow.  It was a delayed post-holiday comedown. Last week, I gawped at a shooting star (I don’t think I have ever seen one in real life) and my friend who lives there laughed and told me they see that there all the time. Grim reality just means that the contrast is cranked up when you go away.

Top of my priority list now is finding Tom a home with a garden, instead of a walled rubbish tip. He loves those wildlife bin stickers.

The Book and Other Stuff

Me and my notebook

I am back and alive. When I arrived at my destination by boat last Sunday morning, a Turkish man who had taken a particular shine to Tom when we were there ran over to me gesturing ‘small person’ and fixing me with a quizzical gaze. I felt guilty and had to grab a translator to explain that I had not completely abandoned him. We only spent two days there, but Tom had made a big impression  – people kept introducing me: “Remember that cool kid who was dancing on the bar? This is his Mum.”

It was strange being back there without him, but when I spoke to him on the phone, he was busy and happy and could visualise exactly where I was (sadly the tortoise who lives by the toilets was elusive, so I couldn’t keep my promise to say hello.) I wrote loads. I found the perfect desk in the shade in an al fresco library and the words just flowed.

On Saturday night, when I returned to the port, I had a few hours to kill before my flight. I spent some time loitering outside a tattoo parlour and chickened out, then decided I had better pick up some gifts. I heard the usual shouts of “Lady, lady” as I wandered around and paid no attention, but one shopkeeper came running after me and tapped me on the shoulder.

“Lady!” he said, catching his breath, “Where is my beautiful boy?!”

He’d let us wait in his air-conditioned shop for the boat when we were there in June and hadn’t tried to sell us anything.  Tom had drawn him a picture, which, it emerged, he had hung on the wall. I had photographed the two of them, beaming and he had asked me to email him the photo to keep. I had thought it a bit strange and forgotten, but he really was completely harmless…

“Your son, you took picture with me and said you would send. Every day I check computer and it is not there. You forget?”

“Yes, I forgot. I’m really sorry.” I said, remembering the exact page his email address is scrawled on in my notebook.

“Where is he?”

“He’s with his grandmother.”

“When you see your son, please give him big kiss from me. And do not forget photograph.”

“Of course.”

“Your son, he is very happy child, like sunshine.”

“Thank you for remembering,” I said, still shocked; he must see thousands of tourists every day.

I flew with sea water in my ear and ended up arriving back in Manchester in agony. My punishment for refusing to go to bed on the last night and swimming under the stars. Standing outside a Salford chemist where they serve you through a metal hatch, shivering, with sea-shaggy hair and black eye bags, wearing flip-flops, writhing about in the worst pain I have had since labour was a low moment. A few minutes later, I was codeine-soothed and off to sleep. When Tom came back, he insisted on bringing me a constant stream of glasses of water and cuddly toys. He really does look after me.

There’s an interesting debate over at Jenn Ashworth’s blog about blogging pitfalls. Some time ago, I was offered the chance to write a  book about the back story of this blog. I toyed with the idea for a long time, feeling strange about privacy and stuff. I have finally decided I need to tell the story though and I have grasped the right way to go about it. I found the perfect point to begin while I was away and got going with it. Now I can say, with confidence (and a little nervousness) that – ahem -  my book will be coming out next summer. There you go. I’ve said it now…

My best writing spot

My Old Friend Fate

The Tortoise Who Lives by the Toilets

Ever since Tom turned up, I have been a great believer in Fate. Recently,  I decided I needed to get out of Manchester and kick start my book.  I couldn’t stop thinking about that camp I found when I took Tom to Turkey. It was so peaceful, imagine how much work I could do if I went there alone! In a moment of utter madness, I booked to go back, but after clicking ‘confirm’, I felt dread instead of excitement.

I have left Tom before, but this time it feels different. Maybe it’s because we’re having so much fun at the moment. The terrible twos are long gone and four’s a good age where he just gets funnier and brighter by the day. Perhaps it’s because I went there with him and it’ll be weird going back without him, or maybe it’s because my number’s up.

Tom keeps going on about death. Last week, he asked me what ‘that dying place’ looks like as he wanted to paint a picture of it. He asked if I’ll die and I swallowed a lump as I told him that we all do eventually (being reminded of that is always horrible, even more so when you’re a parent.)

“How do you feel about me going back to Turkey without you Tom?” I asked.

“Fine Mum. Practise makes perfect.”

Practise makes perfect? That’s Ok, I thought, he’s just reusing a phrase he’s heard, he doesn’t really get what it means.

On Sunday, Tom found a manbird (male ladybird) on the beach and buried it the sand.

“Don’t bury him Tom, he might die.”

“That’s OK, you’ll meet him again in Heaven.”

Great.

The thing is, I had to fight Fate to get this trip. The first time I tried to book, the tour operator went bust. Then my maxed-out Mastercard said no. Eventually, I had to beg Mum for a pay day loan. Then I read this excellent blog post by Jenn Ashworth about not really needing to have a special place or complete solitude to write. Her idea of spending an afternoon clearing a table being a good idea rang true – perhaps my ticket money would have been better spent on a high grade cleaner to blitz my untidy house. The whole thing began to feel like a hare-brained plan that I wished I had never made and I started having nightmares about what might happen while I’m away. It got ridiculous when I told work-connected people that I’d be in touch on my return and suddenly panicked that I might not fulfill my promise.

“You’re being silly now,” said Mum, “I had to push you out of the front door when you went to New York after 9/11 because you were convinced you would die and you ended up having the time of your life.”

She was right, I was being silly. Then Tom came home, singing “Mum! Look what I’ve got!” brandishing a plastic model of a sullen, golden angel from Dr Who.

“Tom, what do you really think of me going back to Turkey without you?” I asked, sitting him and the angel on my knee.

He rolled his eyes like a moody teenager. “Mum! I’ve told you, it’s fine. I am going to have loads of fun with Nanny. But please, promise me one thing?”

“Yes?”

“Please say hello to the tortoise who lives by the toilets. And please, have lots of fun.”

I’ve got official permission from him now. Maybe it’s time to stop thinking I’m going to die and actually get excited.

Grey with Green Bits

I keep having that argument with myself, the one I’ve written down here before. The one about the city versus the countryside. I’m writing at the moment about moving back to Mum’s just before I had Tom. It’s reasonably rural there, but it’s also by the sea, which seems like a perfect place to raise a child. Most people move from the city to the country when their kids learn to walk, I did it the opposite way round.

I made a video on my old camera phone of Tom learning to walk in Mum’s back garden. It was a hot day, there were loads of daisies out and you could hear wood pigeons cooing in the background. He was walking in circles round the rotary washing line, holding on to the metal pole. Every time he let go, he fell down and laughed. It was idyllic, but I was hell bent on getting back to Manchester and carrying on with whatever I felt I’d interrupted when I had Tom.

These days, I’m feeling guilty for letting my non-mothering life take over. I’ve let my emotions and concern get sapped by situations where they’d be far better lavished on Tom. The realisation has resulted in an ultra high-density love for him that’s impossible to describe.

Perhaps if I was in the countryside, none of that nonsense would have mattered. Maybe I could hack it out in the sticks. Those stone cottages look good in the sunlight, but bleak in the winter. Then again, our street looks bleak in the winter; everywhere looks bleak in the winter. Friends and I took Tom on a drive out to Ramsbottom.  It was a beautiful afternoon, but I left feeling scared to take the country plunge. Ramsbottom’s quaint (unlike its name) and I don’t think I can do quaint on my own.

At Mum’s, all you can ever hear after dark is pheasants and then at dawn, people shooting the pheasants. I prefer the reassuring wail of sirens and footsteps on the pavement outside making my living room floor shake. Last week I heard a couple kissing and getting a bit breathless under my window, further down the street a window gets smashed from time-to-time and the wheely bins are always rumbling around in the night, but I’d rather have all of that than total silence.

I’m never completely alone anyway, because my neighbour, (who I keep accidentally referring to as my housemate) is brilliant and has a car. We don’t have to drive far for our twice-weekly trips to the woods or the river. Tom loves being boyish: wading through puddles, hunting for bugs and building dens. Yesterday, we picked and ate wild Salford raspberries. I’m still shocked that these shady, empty places that smell so wild are only down the road, but that makes them even more magic.

It is time to stop trying to relive student life but I don’t think I should lock myself and Tom away in a remote cottage just yet. Everyone knows Manchester gets grey sometimes, but it suits it. We’ve still got good friends here, we’ve still got space to run around. It’s grey with plenty of green bits. When babysitters allow, I can order a late cab to town and be home again by three. The perfect way to spend the next day? Not lying in bed feeling low but den-building and bug-spotting with my intrepid, happy boy. For now, Manchester is home and Tom loves it too.

My Shrekky Twenties

I always try not to swear around Tom. I would definitely never say the eff word in front of him. Mum works with young children and says there’s nothing worse than a small child coming out with an expletive they’ve obviously heard at home. I quite agree, but sometimes it is difficult to get through life without swearing. This was a particular problem when Tom was a baby. Getting out of the house having got yourself and a baby ready is quite a challenge. (Nowadays, Tom can dress himself and choose his own outfits, which is always fun, given the fact he thinks co-ordinating means dressing from head-to-toe in the same colour.)  It’s even worse when you have public transport to catch. I was forever clattering down the staircase of our local train station, Tom screaming in his buggy, the changing bag flapping against my feet, saying a breathless “shit” for every one of the 31 steps.

Tom hadn’t been at his lovely private day nursery long when he picked up on it.  I was strapping him into his buggy at hometime, when he chucked a toy on the floor and shouted  “Oh dear!”

“He’s always doing that,” I said to the nursery boss, “Throwing things deliberately, pretending it’s an accident and saying ‘oh dear.’”

“It’s not just ‘oh dear’ he says though, is it?” said the Nursery Boss.

“Oh?” I was genuinely oblivious.

“Yes, we have noticed him saying s-h-i-t a few times.”

I was mortified, but made a conscious effort to stop and happily, seemed to nip it in the bud.

Fast forward two years, and I admit to getting a bit lackadaisical. I vaguely remember saying “shit” in front of Tom a few weeks ago and quickly telling him that it was a naughty word he must never, ever repeat and that I was extremely bad for saying it. Thankfully, he’s got a good memory and you only have to tell him something once. I do try not to swear unless there’s an absolute emergency, but I am only human.

I was talking to my neighbour last night when I slipped up and said ‘shit’.

“Mum!” said Tom, “That is a very naughty word.”

“Yes Tom, you’re absolutely right. It’s a really bad word and I shouldn’t ever ever say it.”

“Why can’t you use one of those other words you’ve got instead?”

“What words?”

“You know: fiddlesticks, crumbs, sugar butties.”

Ah yes. I didn’t realise he’d picked up on those.

“Or Mum, instead of that one you just said, how about ‘Shrek’? It still starts with’ sh’ but it isn’t a bad word.”

Great idea.

“Why did I swear again?” I asked my neighbour. “There was a very good reason, I know that.”

“You realised Bestival clashes with his first day at his new school.”

“Bollocks, yeah, that means I can’t go really can – ” Oops.

The Bestival business is not a real emergency. It’s a bit crumbs, but worse things happen at sea. I need to get better at this. If I do mess up though, I’ve always got my walking, talking swear word thesaurus to give me a good bollocking.

My Nitty Twenties

A couple of weeks ago, I decided to boycott our local chippy. It’s not like we’re regular patrons, but there comes a day (approximately once every month) when I cannot be arsed cooking or washing any plates. The thing is that the man in the chippy has got a problem with Tom’s hair, which is reasonably long and curly.

“Why do you make him have his hair so long?” He asked, the first time. I laughed but he was serious. “This is wrong, he is a boy, his hair should be short.”

That pissed me off, mildly, but I had forgotten about it by the time the next chip day came around. This time he decided to lay into Tom about it:

“You like having long hair, huh?” He asked him, as his wife wrapped our chips. “You tell your mother she must cut it.”

That’s it. No more chip days.

The majority of little boys round here do seem to have their heads shaved.

“Aargh! I mean, what is people’s problem?” I ranted to my friend, “It’s not as though he’s more prone to….

(nits.)”

I instantly regretted saying that. I have recounted before here the only time Tom has caught nits, the night before we were due to fly to Australia when he was a baby (the lice survived a rushed chemical treatment, four flights over 36 hours and possibly infected a load of Korean Air passengers who passed Tom round the plane because they thought he looked like an angel.)

Anyway, sure enough, just after finishing school for the summer, Tom appears to have caught nits. I was just combing out the last ‘chicken pock’ from his hair when I spotted something wriggling. I thought it might be a bug from our walk in the woods last night but closer inspection revealed a vile transparent thing full of fresh blood. It took a good load of squashing to kill as well (which was difficult to explain, having recently told Tom to never kill an ant on purpose.) I ended up being late for an excellent writing workshop run by the good people at Creative Tourist and spending the whole session scratching my head and worrying that my hair was visibly riddled. On the way home, I bought a fancy metal nit comb and some tea tree oil

Happily, I appear not to have been infected with the nits. (I am really hoping all the people who were at the workshop today don’t start emailing me complaining that they have them.) And an hour or so of intricate raking unearthed no more than the original lone louse on Tom.

“Why did they choose my head?” he asked, his head on my lap.

“Because you’ve got good hair.”

“Why didn’t they choose someone else with good hair?”

“I don’t know.”

“Mum… Why do they suck blood? If I was a head louse, I would eat apple crumble and drink orange juice. I would still live in people’s hair but I would do nice things like… ummm…  go to the art gallery or go swimming or go to Disney World. I would eat cucumber and drink milkshake. Errr… I would eat and drink everyfin really as long as it wasn’t blood because that’s horrible.”

And it is really.

Damn, he won’t be this innocent forever. The cherubic curls are staying for a bit, nits or no nits.

I challenge you to read this post and not start scratching your head. Especially if you were at the Cornerhouse this afternoon.

The boy and his (not particularly long) hair

Straight In at the Deep End

I wrote this post in my notebook in Turkey last month, because I didn’t think I’d be able to recapture the moment when I got home….

On the first day of our trip, Tom proved to be more confident than I realised when he jumped straight in the deep end of the swimming pool. He had his armbands on but I still went in after him. He was fine and we swam together for a bit. When we eventually climbed out, I could hear a loud crackling sound coming from my person. People were staring, it was a bit embarrassing. It took a long two or three minutes for me to realise that it was the last few sputters of my dying Blackberry. I’d tucked it down my bikini top for safekeeping. Even an afternoon pulled to pieces and laid out in the 30 degree heat wasn’t enough to bring it back to life. I am an idiot. Still, I felt a bit relieved. I didn’t really want to know every time I received an email or a Tweet or someone commented on a photograph that I had previously commented on in the strange world of Facebook.  The only thing I did miss was knowing the time; guesswork meant we missed breakfast the following morning. We headed straight into the next town, which was like Blackpool, only in the middle of the Turkish mountains. Think foam party discos and ‘Pork World’ (butchers) across the road from the mosque.

{“What’s that Mum?”

“A mosque.”

“Is that where the mosquitoes live?”}

Monday was market day, but there were no colourful spices or woven carpets, just a load of tat.

“Genuine fake!” yelled the watch seller from his stall, where everything was encrusted in diamante and covered in names like Rolex and Gucci.

“I don’t want a name, please just sell me a watch that tells the time.”

The watch seller smiled and pulled a tray out from beneath his stall.

“This I sell Turkish people.”

Plain black, three quid, perfect.

I’d been wanting to take Tom on an adventure since we arrived, but I didn’t want to drag him away from his beloved pool. Still, I wasn’t sure how much longer I could cope with listening to some on-repeat World Cup anthem about people losing their inhibitions in the street from the pool bar stereo. Imagine my relief when Tom came flip-flopping over to me after two days and said “Is this all we do then? Swim a bit, rest a bit, swim a bit, rest a bit?” Within an hour, I’d dug out the guidebook, packed a bag and we were off.

Now we’re in a valley accessible only by sea, (or a scramble down a sheer cliff.) There’s a beach, a hammock, some tents, a cafe, a few banana trees, some lovely people, some tortoises, some chickens and loads of butterflies. That’s it. It’s a bit like The Beach or Lost only without the sinister bits. Tom’s sleeping on a giant cushion beneath the shade of the grape vines, he’s tired out. He’s been running round pretending to be a pirate and looking for tortoises. He’s made friends from Istanbul, France, America and Australia. Last night, he was dancing on the beach and counting stars til way past his bedtime. This morning, he rescued a broken-legged cricket called Hoppy from our insect net.

All I can hear is the rhythmic roar and crash of the ocean. It’s one of those moments that no matter how hard you try, you won’t be able to recreate how good it feels at the time. I want to laugh at my 22 year old self for genuinely believing that having my baby meant I would never travel again. Here he is, lying next to me. What a good view. No emails, no Facebook, no politics or rubbish. The hot sunshine will force us out of our tent in time for breakfast if the cockerel doesn’t wake us first. I’d even settle for not knowing the time.

Faffing About

Much faffing about has been done by me as I toy with the idea of closing this blog down altogether, giving it a less offensive (but frankly twee) name or starting completely from scratch. In the meantime I have missed writing about a diverse summer, involving a magnificent trip to Turkey, Glastonbury, the sad chasm between non-parent friends and myself, the beginning of The Book, a job offer that I had to decline (because I got offered an even better one) and a whole load of other stuff which would have probably made good blog fodder.

Summer is always a funny time because I found out I was pregnant on 7th July and I struggle to get past that milestone every year without looking back. Now it’s been five years and it feels like we’re officially up and running and I don’t really want to hark back to all that horrible stuff from the beginning. I used to gaze for ages at 2005 but now I am happy with a quick, cursory glance. It felt as though the name of this blog was something very negative, because it came from that horrible email I got, telling me to enjoy my shitty, snotty, vomitty twenties. The thing is, I suppose the whole point of the blog is that I did get that email and I am enjoying my shitty, snotty, vomitty twenties a lot, thank you very much. So really, it is a positive name.  And they are shitty sometimes, to be honest. And I have just over two years of them left, so maybe I should make the most of being able to write a blog about being in my twenties at all, be they shitty or not, while I can.

Tom is off school with chicken pox. Not a false-alarm, or an allergic reaction, or a heat rash, or a non-specific viral rash but the actual, genuine chicken pox. At last. It really isn’t as dramatic as I remember it being when I was a child. I used the calamine lotion once because it felt like my duty as a mother to douse him in it, but he hasn’t actually complained of itching. The smell of the calamine lotion transported me back to Mum’s grey plastic medicine basket. I remembered everything being calpol-sticky and there never being a plaster the right size for the wound in question. I don’t own a medicine box. Someone told me that bicarbonate of soda baths would fix the chicken pox quicker, so I went to Morrisons and bought four tubs. I kept asking for bicarbonate of sober. My bath has never looked so clean! And Tom’s spots have healed pretty fast too: I think it is time for me to send him back to school for his last week before summer. The living room is littered with remnants of his week off, like his Super Duper Computer (a piece of cardboard folded in half, with keys and a screen drawn on the inside to make it look like a laptop) and plates full of Soreen crumbs. Actually, we have pretty much lived off Soreen recently and a few weeks ago, I turned down a big promotional box of it because I don’t do reviews. Does that count as product placement? It is actually true. I might email the Soreen person again…

I wrote a blog post from paradise (the camp we found in Turkey) in my notebook, I’ll put it up here soon. Until then, here’s a couple of sunrises – one from Turkey and one from Glastonbury. Both felt really good to look at in real life.

In Praise of the Nannies

I don’t know how I would have gone about this whole becoming a mother business without my Mum. It’s almost five years since I lay on my bed and wept into the phone hysterically about how stupid I had been, while she calmly told me she’d support me whatever I decided to do. With a broken ankle, she rearranged my childhood bedroom to accommodate me, a load of crap and a cot. When I was in labour, I gripped her hand so tight that I caught her wincing at the the midwife and slipping off her rings because they had cut into her fingers (at the time, I confess that in some sort of warped way, I was pleased that someone else was experiencing pain that might come close to what I was going through.) In the early days, I’m not sure how Mum coped with getting up at 6am and driving to work: Surely she heard the hysterical midnight screaming of a baby who refused to breastfeed waiting while his mother stomped downstairs, slammed the kitchen door and prepared a bottle of formula.

Sometimes, I get emails from girls who are pregnant and don’t know what to do (I never advise them, just offer some comfort and tell them I know what an agonising decision it is.) The thing is, not everyone is as lucky as me and I don’t know if I could have done it without such a tolerant Mum. It works well because Tom loves going to stay with his Nanny as much as she loves having him. A couple of weekends ago, as I waved him off, I told him I’d miss him.

“Don’t worry Mum, Nanny will look after me and the gerbils will look after you.”

When I spent two days and nights partying at Eurocultured, a Manchester street festival, someone asked me where Tom was.

“Oh, he’s with his Nanny,” I said, realising afterwards that it probably sounded as though I could afford an au pair.

I am lucky because as well as Mum, I also get a lot of help from Tom’s Auntie J, a wonderful lady who I worked with when I was pregnant She ferried me and four car loads of my stuff back to Mum’s when I was seven months gone. Auntie J has made Tom a Man United fan (which bothered me at first but isn’t a bad idea I suppose, given the fact he doesn’t have a male role model and all his classmates seem to be little Reds). She was supposed to look after Tom while I went to work at Glastonbury this year. I couldn’t wait for my my lost week on Worthy Farm. Then my job there fell through. I became hell-bent on getting to Glasto, even considering selling things and paying megabucks for a VIP ticket. Then I stopped and asked myself what I was doing: going out of my way to spend a messy, muddy week away from my beautiful son. Silly me.

Auntie J and Tom walk through the tunnel at Old Trafford on his fourth birthday

It’s wonderful to have the Nannies. They certainly made the transition in to motherhood a lot smoother. Having a social life is important to maintain sanity when you become a parent, especially if you’re single, but it isn’t the be-all and end-all. I have started to look at child-friendly festivals I can take Tom along to this summer.

Auntie J was supposed to look after Tom this weekend, while I went to Parklife, another Manchester festival but I have come to my senses: I eBayed my ticket and booked myself and Tom on a very cheap flight to the sun. We’ll conveniently miss the dreaded Fathers’ Day card-making at nursery. Sadly, I can’t afford to bring the Nanny along on holiday, but she is driving us to the airport and sitting on the house (and the gerbils) while we’re away.

Tom and his beloved Nanny