Perchance to dream

You have different obsessions at different times of your life; breasts, sweets, sex, a job, a lover, a baby, sleep and, finally, when and how you die. It is possible to strand yourself in one or other but I have swept through and out the other end of most. I have not yet begun to draft my final words or plan my soily grave; I swear to God, though,I would be a nicer person if I got more sleep.

Three out of the four last nights have been disturbed by one or more children; two out of three nights, I have had to sleep - I use the term loosely- in the spare bed in the study to be closer to a cough-filled baby. Last night, I had a choice of distractions: I could listen to the gusting wind outside the house as it harried red-brick chimneys and bare-branched trees, or, I could tune into my hacking, pilgrim baby who tumbled her way round first her cot and then my bed, trying to find some peace. By 2.45am, I decided either she had to be medicated or I did. I carried her back into the darkness of her own room and found the new bottle of cough syrup. I pressed down and twirled away the child-proof cap watched by a murky Peter Rabbit, and groped for a silver spoon in the gloom. She coughed against my chest. "Ok darling," I murmured, "Mummy will make it better". (I don't know how long that one lasts - I figure it should hold until she is two.) I sat down wearily, bundled her gusting warmth into the crook of my arm and tipped up the sticky bottle. It emptied itself all over my bare leg. "Oh dear," I said out loud in the dark. "Mummy's poured cough syrup all over herself." For a moment, the wind outside died and there was silence. Carefully, I scraped a spoonful of blackcurrant linctus off my skin and swallowed it.

Bedrest

Getting up was so difficult today I almost did not bother.If I had been given a choice or my children had shown a degree of compassion, I would be there yet. I finessed my sons into the sofa infront of a video in the hope of another couple of precious pillow minutes. It is not that I regard the television as an unpaid childminder; it's more of a dear family friend.The baby, however, is made of sterner stuff than the boys. She was awake. I had to be awake. I had brought her in to feed but after that, she was a lot keener to get on with the day than I was. I steadfastly refused to move; eventually, she clambered out of the large carved bed, clinging on to the sheet and lowering herself carefully on to the floor where she discovered my handbag. I did a mental review of whether she might find an ecstasy tablet, prompting horrified headlines and a visit from an under-paid, over-anxious social worker. I decided it was unlikely since I have never bought an ecstasy tablet. I have tried. Apparently, they do not sell them to the middle-aged. Reluctantly, I opened one eye to check she was still there and had not crawled off to fling herself down the stairs. She was standing by the bed, watching me. Next to me was a pile of money lying on the mattress - every note and coin I had loose in my bag. I felt cheap. I do not think a 15-month-old baby should feel she has to bribe her mother to get out of bed.

I got lost again today. I think that getting lost is becoming a metaphor. It is happening so often, I think part of me wants to get lost. Maybe if I got lost enough, I would one day, find myself on the fringes of London. Then I could ring and say: "You'll never guess what. I got lost. Guess where I am. I don't think I can find my way back." What made it worse was that my children noticed. I hate it when they notice I am lost. I think it diminishes their respect for me, which is probably low enough already now they pay me to get up. My six-year-old said loudly: "Mummy you are going the wrong way." I denied this. "I really think you have gone wrong mummy." Ofcourse, he was quite right. As I slewed the car round, narrowly missing a horse box, he said: "I was going to say something, but I won't." I pulled back on to the hedged and narrow road. "What were you going to say darling?" I looked back at him through the rearview mirror. "I was going to say 'I told you so'," he said. I could see the tiniest smile as he glanced down at his toy puppy, "but I decided not to."

"Mama? Mama?"

I was thrown out of the house last night - well maybe, not so much thrown as eased out gently with a flashlight and a duvet and told to sleep next door. My husband, let's call him TW, has had enough of the baby's nocturnal breastfeeding. Since we are pushed for space and there is nowhere else for her to go, the baby's cot is in our room. Unlike my husband, the baby rather likes her nightly routine and, in that halfway state between sleep and wakefulness, I have been unable to resist her plaintive bleatings of "Mama? Mama?" in the cold darkness. She starts up and I stumble out of bed, pluck her from the cot and sink back into the bedding with my little victorious suckling. As she sees it, I'm lying there and it's not like I'm doing anything else. But TW is right, it has gone on long enough. She's nearly 15 months old and God knows, I could do with a night's sleep. The mini-bar is officially closed.

Apocalyptic horsemen and friends

Life in London was simpler in many ways. Cafes knew how to make a decent skinny latte with an extra shot, muddy wellies weren't de rigeur and most importantly I had friends. Quite a few of them. Often in the media and certainly in work. Those who had children, juggled their responsibilities, adjusted their career expectations and got on with it. Those who didn't, tried not to talk too much about the exotic holidays and how long they spent in bed on a Sunday. I had things in common with my friends, an office, children of the same age, an outlook.
When we moved to Northumberland a year ago, I gave up on the friendship I had once known. There is, for instance, noone I feel I could immediately turn to in a crisis - I simply don't feel I know them well enough yet to impose. During my husband's absence in London for three weeks, I was left with my five year old, three year old and a teething baby. One Saturday, after four sleepless nights on the trot, I was desperate. I hated my husband, myself and my children in about that order. I spent the day on my knees. When Sunday dawned, I crawled onto the phone to confide in my absent husband that I simply didn't know how I would cope, what to do with myself or what to do with the children. "I know," came the reply. "Why don't you go to Alnwick garden, gather autumnal leaves and make a collage." "I know," I replied. "Why don't you just come home and you can make the f***ing collage." I know there are people up here who would have welcomed me if I had 'fessed up to a crisis but I just didn't feel I could. I was too low and my children too ghastly to inflict them on anyone. In London, I would have shown no such scruples. I would have thrown everyone in the car and expected my friends to welcome me into their homes even if I was insanely grumpy and my children monstrous.
Without a job to go to up here, my main route into friendships is through school. To start with the village church school is tiny so the potential pool of bosom mates is small. In any event, one of the perks of rural living is a free bus for the kids which cuts down the number of mothers you see. I was desperately disappointed when I realised one particular mum was now bussing her son in. Unlike me, she didn't consider the 40 minute round schlep twice a day worth a few minutes of chirpy banter and who can blame her? Well, me for one.
A substantial number of the other mothers I have met are married to farmers. Even if they aren't, they often have pet horses or sheep. I mean why? Don't they get enough mucking out to do at home already? If they don't keep something with four legs, they often keep chickens instead. For the eggs. Which makes their life a perpetual search for egg boxes. And they don't buy eggs, so you see their problem. Hardly any of them work outside the home. Some of them do some teaching on the side. They aren't news junkies. Few of them talk about books. All in all this town mouse struggles sometimes with her country cousins. Not least when religion comes up in the conversation - which it does. A lot. One couple have been immensely generous and welcoming but I can't say it' s not disconcerting when someone you had previously thought entirely sane admits, he is waiting for Christ to return to earth. He told me: "I believe the world will end, the four horsemen of the apocalypse will come among us, death and destruction, the whole package you know. I would only say this to another believer," I shift uncomfortably in my seat at this. Evolution he dismissed as "a theory". Homosexuality an "abomination". Even slavery was Okayed providing it met the biblical caveat of justice within it.
So take your choice. Do I remain a Billy-no-mates or do I ride with the apocalyptic horsemen and his friends, chickens perched jauntily on our saddles , my inhibitions scattering to the wind.?