Category Archives: Wife’s Archive

June 14, 2012

Win a copy of The Hobbit – one of the greatest children’s books of all time

To coincidence with the re-release of one of children’s literature’s greatest books, I’ve got THREE copies of The Hobbit to give away. To win, leave a comment about your favourite childhood story/book you can remember reading with your parents.

To my shame, I have never actually read The Hobbit. It wasn’t on the curriculum at the state comprehensive I went to and I never sought it out.  It’s only now, as a father, that I wish I had.

However, I know a woman who has read it. And it changed her life.

She’s my wife, Rebecca, mother of my stepdaughter Daisy, ten (that’s her, above, getting stuck in), and our two sons, Tom and Sam, aged seven and four.

I asked her about the impact The Hobbit made on her when she was a little girl. Here’s what she wrote…

‘I am in my bedroom, lying on my bed listening to the clatter of my mum in the kitchen downstairs, and there is a door in front of me, a perfectly round door like a porthole, painted green, with a shiny yellow brass knob in the exact middle.

And all I want to do is push it open and see what lies beyond.

So I do.

And I am propelled into a world so vast, so thrilling and rich in colour and scope, yet precise to the very last detail, it pops my eyeballs and sucks the breath right out of my lungs.

It is now more than 30 years since I first read The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien but the moment I opened Bilbo Baggins’s front door again, I was full of the same eye-popping wonder.

It is, in many ways, such a simple story about a company of friends who go on an adventure.

But it changed my life.

Aged ten, I was shy and awkward. I didn’t really fit in anywhere. I wasn’t cool, I didn’t have posters of popstars on my wall and I lived largely in my own inner world and, well, that was the kind of behaviour that saw you getting picked last for everything at school – except a savaging by the popular kids.

It was The Hobbit that saved me.

The story, the characters, the strange and fantastical lands were my escape. I loved Tolkien’s language – otherworldly, yet oddly also down-to-earth, and really funny. I loved the creatures – the elves, the dwarves, goblins and trolls. I loved the names – Thorin Oakenshield, Smaug and Gollum.

I was blown away by the enormity of the creation. There were maps and back-stories and even a dwarvish language. It was, and still is, almost impossible to believe that all of this came from the imagination of one man.

I knew straightaway, of course, that I was Bilbo, the timid and distinctly ordinary hobbit who, without wanting to, finds himself embarking upon a perilous journey.

Along the way he makes friends, battles enemies, steals a very important ring, bags the treasure and, most importantly, discovers he is not so timid and ordinary after all.

For that last bit alone, I owe this book a lot.

In fact, it’s hard to overestimate the impact The Hobbit made on my life. It made me believe that inside the timid and awkward me was someone who could strive and be successful. It started my love affair with reading and the written word that still endures. It made me realise that there is simply no limit to the sweeping breadth and depth of the imagination, and it made me determined to be a writer when I grew up.

If we accept, and I do, that no reading you do in your lifetime is as important as the reading you do as a child, then it is true to say this book made me who I am.’

If you’d like the chance to win a copy of The Hobbit, please leave a comment below about your favourite childhood story/book that you can remember reading with your parents.

 

• This is a sponsored post.

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October 10, 2011

My Missus Monday: ‘How stressful are kids? Let’s put it to the test’

I’ve always thrived on stress – the right kind of stress, that is. Workplace stress. Meeting deadlines, dealing with difficult people, getting stuff done. But parental stress is a whole different ballgame. I’m sure my blood pressure has reached dangerous levels since becoming the head of the household. And it’s all down to my kids: nagging them to tidy their rooms, shouting at them to stop bickering, worrying about them in pretty much any situation where there is an element of peril. (‘WALK down the stairs; don’t LEAP.’)

My Successful Other Half wrote about this when she was a columinst for one of Britain’s biggest women’s magazine, strapped a blood pressure monitor to her arm to test how stressful being a parent really is…

One minute the bathroom was tidy, the next there was a towel in the bath, toothpaste on the mirror, water all over the floor, and someone had put my facecloth in the toilet.

‘It was him,’ said the eight-year-old pointing to the five-year-old.

‘It was him,’ said the five-year-old pointing at the toddler.

The toddler just grinned.

As I stood there, my breathing quickened, my jaw clenched and the vein on the side of my head start to twitch and throb.

‘If you lot don’t start behaving,’ I muttered, ‘I’m going to have a heart attack.’

I made myself a cup of tea to calm down but just as I took a gulp, my breathing went funny again and I almost choked on my PG Tips.

But this time it wasn’t the kids sending me over the edge. It was this headline in the newspaper: Being a mum actually REDUCES your blood pressure

According to research, mothers have significantly lower blood pressure than childless women. This is apparently because parenthood gives them a sense of purpose and meaning which helps to reduce stress and put the hassles of life into perspective.
‘Ha! What a load of rubbish!’ I said to The Partner Who Is Not My Husband that evening. ‘Having kids doesn’t reduce stress. It causes stress. I bet my blood pressure is sky high.’
‘When did you last have it checked?’ The Partner asked.
I shrugged.
‘Perhaps,’ he said, ‘you should find out.’
But I wanted to know than my blood pressure level as I sat in the doctor’s waiting room. I wanted know if the research was right. Did being a mother reduce your blood pressure or did it, as I suspected, send it skyrocketing? So I bought myself a small home testing kit to carry around with me and record my blood pressure as I went about my daily routine.
According to the Blood Pressure Association, we should all have blood pressure at or below 120/80. At this level we have a much lower risk of heart disease or a stroke. I wondered what my blood pressure would be after a week with my three kids.

Monday
We slept in. Just as I was throwing cereal into bowls, I remembered that the five-year-old needed a packed lunch for a school trip and the eight-year-old had a swimming lesson.

I slapped some cheese in a roll, fished a swimming costume from the laundry basket, splashed milk over cornflakes and dragged a comb through three tousled manes.

‘Get washed! Get dressed! Get downstairs!’ I barked. ‘And don’t forget your teeth!’

I pulled on a coat, hurled hats, coats and gloves at the kids and shoved them towards the door.

‘I’ve only got one glove,’ said the five-year-old.

‘Tough,’ I said. ‘Car! Now!’

I battled with the children’s seatbelts. The traffic was terrible. It was raining so hard I could hardly see through the wipers. Another driver cut me up on the roundabout. And as I got out of the car I stepped in a puddle.

Blood pressure reading: 164/68 (high blood pressure)

Tuesday
The school run was much calmer but when I got home and stepped into the kids’ bedroom, I began to experience a familiar tightening in my chest.

‘Look at this place!’ I said to the toddler. ‘How do they get it so messy?’

I made beds, I put away clothes and I sorted toys into boxes. Then I loaded the washing machine in the kitchen. It was a moment or two before I realised the toddler had gone quiet.

I went back to the bedroom and let out a cry. The floor that had been tidy just moments before was once again covered in Lego, crayons, books and toys. And at the centre of it all, grinning madly, was the toddler.

Blood pressure reading: 138/79 (normal to high)

Wednesday
The pestering began the moment we left the school gates.

‘Please Mum, please,’ said the kids. ‘Just 15 minutes.’

‘No,’ I said.

‘Ten then?’ said the eight-year-old. ‘Five? One? Thirty seconds? Please, oh, please.’

I said: ‘There will be no Club Penguin until all homework is done.’

Ever since they’d discovered the online game, my children had become obsessed with playing it. While they were online it was impossible to get them to do anything else. Especially homework.

‘That is so unfair,’ said the eight-year-old. ‘I hate you!’

The five-year-old snaked an arm around my leg.

‘Don’t worry, Mum,’ he said. ‘I still love you.’

‘Thanks, love,’ I said.

He smiled up at me. Then he said: ‘Does that mean I can go on Club Penguin?’

Blood pressure reading: 149/82 (high)

Thursday
I took the toddler to the park. After a turn on the climbing frame, the slide and the swings it was time to go.

The toddler had other ideas.

He ran off to the sandpit. I ran after him. He ran to the roundabout. I ran after him. He tried to climb on the see-saw. I nabbed him. So he filled his lungs and let out a blood-freezing scream. Followed by another one and another.

Around me, necks craned and heads turned to look.

But the toddler hadn’t finished. He wriggled and jiggled and thrashed about in my arms. He slapped my face and pulled my hair.

‘Stop that,’ I said in my best Supernanny voice.

‘Stop it and I’ll give you a million pounds…and a chocolate,’ I whispered in his ear.

I wrestled him all the way home and then collapsed on the sofa.

Blood pressure reading: 165/87 (high)

Friday
I was midway through a pile of ironing when the phone rang. It was the school. The five-year-old had fallen in the playground.

‘There’s a nasty cut on his head,’ the teacher explained.

I grabbed the toddler and ran all the way to school, my heart thumping. I burst through the school gate expecting to see my child screaming and covered in blood.

Instead he was sitting on the floor playing with some bricks.

‘Ugh!’ he said. ‘What are you doing here?’

Just then my phone rang again. It was the eight-year-old.

‘Mum, it’s Friday!’ she said. ‘You forgot to pack my leotard for gym.’

We jumped in the car, drove to gym club, delivered the leotard and I relaxed. Then I thought: ‘Heavens! I’ve left the iron on.’

Blood pressure reading: 182/110 (very high)

‘See?’ I said to The Partner that evening. ‘I told you having kids gives you high blood pressure. Being a mum is tough.’

I switched on the TV and flopped on to the sofa. The kids climbed up beside me. As I sat happily on the sofa with a child under each arm and one on my knee, The Partner said: ‘Are you happy?’

‘Yes,’ I replied.

‘Then take your blood pressure now,’ he said.

I strapped the monitor to my arm, pressed the button and the cuff on my arm inflated. I waited a moment and my reading was displayed: 117/67

I checked my blood pressure chart. This was perfectly healthy, nothing like the readings I’d taken over the last five days. It made no sense.

But then, as I scanned all the readings I had taken, I realised something. The moments when my blood pressure had shot up had occurred just once or twice a day. For the rest of the time, my life rolled on fairly smoothly, contentedly even.

When my blood pressure rose it was a blip, rather than the norm – unlike the 30% of women in the UK who have consistently high blood pressure.

Perhaps the researchers were right. Perhaps being a parent did create a general sense of well-being. Trouble was I’d been too focused on the little problems to notice the bigger picture. Yes, being a mum is hard work. Yes, it is frustrating. Yes, it brings me close to tears at times. But for the most part it is the best thing about my life. And that’s not just me talking. That’s straight from my heart.

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September 12, 2011

My Missus Monday: Does your Tweenage girl have body image issues? And if so, who’s to blame?

A post from my wife’s archives when she was a columnist on Take a Break, Britain’s biggest-selling women’s weekly magazine.

This week’s theme: At eight years old, my little girl was worrying about getting fat. It was crazy. But who was really to blame?


It was chicken nuggets and chips for tea and I was expecting happy faces around the kitchen table.
‘Brilliant!’ said the five-year-old. ‘Nuggets and chips!’
‘Chip! Chip! Chip!’ squeaked the toddler.
So far, so good.
Then the eight-year-old sat down and surveyed her plate.
‘I don’t feel very well,’ she said. ‘My tummy hurts.’
Up until that moment, she’d been fine.
‘What is it, love?’ I asked. ‘What’s wrong?’
She looked at her plate, she looked at me and her face crumpled.
‘Chips,’ she said. ‘I hate chips.’
The five-year-old stared at his sister as though she’d turned into a dinosaur and started rollerskating through the kitchen.
‘Hate chips?’ he said. ‘Hate? Chips?’
‘Since when?’ I asked. ‘Chicken nuggets and chips is one of your favourites.’
‘Not any more,’ the eight-year-old replied. ‘Chips are really bad for you. They make you fat.’
I put down my mug of tea and thought very hard about what I should say next. Should I be pleased that my daughter was learning about eating healthily? Or should I be worried that this sudden aversion to chips was a sign of something sinister?
I considered it for a moment and then I said: ‘Chips are not very healthy, it’s true, but they’re all right so long as you don’t eat too many, too often.’
I reckoned that sounded like good advice.
But the eight-year-old still didn’t eat her chips.
I decided not to make a big deal of it. But later that evening I sat down to watch television and I began to change my mind. I was watching an episode of Jo Frost’s Extreme Parental Guidance. One of the issues being tackled by Britain’s favourite Supernanny was children’s body image.
Working with researchers from Cambridge University, she discovered that most 12-year-olds in Britain think they are too fat, while half of the country’s six-year-old girls want to be skinnier.
All of the girls who took part in the programme were a normal, healthy size.
I stared at the screen and shook my head in astonishment.
‘Worrying about your weight at the age of six!’ I thought. ‘What on earth is wrong with them?’
When I was six, I didn’t care what I looked like. I thought all women looked the same – like my mum who was, in my eyes, absolutely perfect. She was the only woman I wanted to be. I had no idea what a model looked like, never mind wanting to be one.
So what had changed to make today’s six-year-olds feel differently?
The mother of one of the girls in the programme reckoned she knew the answer. She said the attention given in the media to very thin models was responsible for making normal children believe they were overweight.
She had a point.
These days, it is virtually impossible to look at a fashion or celebrity magazine and see an average sized woman – unless, of course, she is being ridiculed. In fact, it is often hard to find a picture that resembles a real woman at all. Very many of the images we see have been heavily airbrushed and retouched. Of course, as adults we know that impossible beauty is exactly that. But a child doesn’t know.
For this very reason, The Royal College of Psychiatrists’ (RCPsych) Eating Disorders Section has called for warning symbols to be put on digitally altered photographs, and for underweight models to be banned.
The RCPsych says the promotion of unhealthy figures by images of underweight models can “glamorise” eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia.

Dr Adrienne Key, consultant psychiatrist at the RCPsych, says: “Eating disorders are serious mental illnesses. Although biological and genetic factors play an important role in the development of these disorders, psychological and social factors are also significant.

“There is a growing body of research that shows the media plays a part in the development of eating disorder symptoms – particularly in adolescents and young people.”

This is worrying. But as I sat watching TV I wondered if there wasn’t someone else to blame for our daughters’ self-loathing.
Earlier that day, I’d taken the eight-year-old over to my friend Sue’s house so she could play with Sue’s daughter. While the girls swapped stickers and pretended to be pop stars, Sue and I chatted.
Sue, who is an average and healthy size 14, was having a moan about herself.
‘I am so fat,’ she said. ‘I hate how I look.’
‘I feel the same,’ I replied. ‘Fat and frumpy. Not so much a bikini body as a beached whale body.’
We sighed. We sipped our tea. And all the time we were unaware that two other pairs of ears were listening. And two other brains were processing our words and emotions and going click…click…click.
Mum is fat. Mum is unhappy. Looking like Mum makes you unhappy.
But, actually, I am not unhappy. And neither is Sue. Of course, we’d love to look like Myleene Klass in a bikini but the fact that we don’t doesn’t keep us up at night.
Talking disparagingly about our bodies is just something women do without thinking. The words just roll off our tongues. We rubbish ourselves as easily as we breathe.
Why? Because it is not only little girls who have been conditioned to equate fashion and beauty with thinness.
The other day I was flicking through the newspaper when I came across some photographs of a fashion show in which size 12-14 models had been used.
Instead of thinking: ‘Wow, how wonderful to see an average sized woman on a catwalk’, my first reaction was: ‘Urgh!’
Only later did I come to my senses and think: ‘Goodness, those models are still slimmer than me. And I am not overweight.’
Trouble is, we are so unused to seeing breasts, tummies and thighs on a catwalk or in a magazine that, when we do, they appear all wrong to us. But they are not wrong. Beauty is not just one shape and size.
It’s time for mothers of daughters to wake up because if we can’t think straight about women’s bodies, what chance have our girls?
I made a decision.
The following evening I was getting ready to go out with a group of school run mums. Normally, I’d pull on a pair of black trousers and a baggy top. But now, as I rooted through my wardrobe, my hand reached for something else.
I pulled out a red velvet dress. Of all my clothes, it was my daughter’s favourite. She was always begging me to wear it. And I never would.
‘I’m too old now,’ I’d say.
Or: ‘It’s too short.’
Or: ‘I’m too fat.’
But the truth was, I’d done such a good job telling myself I looked rubbish that I’d lost the confidence to wear it. But now, I reckoned I needed to get that confidence back. Not for my sake but for my daughter – because the only role model a girl needs is a confident and happy mum.
I slipped it on and went downstairs.
I stepped into the living room where the eight-year-old was watching television. She looked up and her jaw dropped.
‘Oh Mum!’ she cried. ‘You’re wearing it!’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘And what do you think?’
She got up and threw her arms around my waist.
‘You look lovely,’ she said.
She made me do a twirl and then she said: ‘Do you think, when I’m older, that I could have this dress for myself?’
‘What on earth for?’ I asked.
The eight-year-old look confused.
‘To look like you, of course,’ she said.
I pulled her close.
‘Consider it yours.’

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September 5, 2011

My Missus Monday: All 3 kids are at school and I can’t wait to get ‘Me’ back!

With the kids going back to school this week (Hurray!!), I thought this rather poignant article my wife wrote about our youngest son starting nursery last year was worth an airing. He is four now and starts Reception on Friday. It will be a Big Gulp moment, let me tell you. He and I have had six whole weeks together, and as much as I complain about the frustrations of being a SAHD, I will miss him massively. I will miss all three, of course, but his stepping up a year feels especially poignant. He is astonishingly wonderful company.

This week’s theme: My nest is EMPTY!

We walked along the pavement hand-in-hand and passed through the school gate. At the classroom door, I crouched down and my three-year-old son placed his arms around me and pressed his face into my neck.
‘Have a great time,’ I said.
Then, in the next moment, he was taking the hand of another woman and waving me goodbye. The classroom door closed and a chapter of my life ended.
My youngest child had started nursery full-time.
I thought I’d feel excited. Instead I went home, made myself a cup of tea and had a good old howl. Anyone would have thought it was me starting nursery, not my son!
‘Don’t worry,’ said The Husband. ‘You’re just mourning the baby years. You’ll get over it.’
But all week I felt wobbly and weepy. The house was so quiet. I missed our mornings watching CBeebies together and our afternoons strolls to the park to feed the ducks.
I made myself busy. I scrubbed out the kitchen cupboards. I cleaned out the fridge. I even dared to venture beneath my nine-year-old daughter’s bed and found a mug that had gone missing three months before.
But the time dragged. I kept checking the clock to see if it had stopped. I felt out of sorts and limp, like a damp rag.
‘I’ve got all the oomph of a wet lettuce,’ I said to my friend Sue over a cup of tea later that week. ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with me.’
‘I do,’ she said. ‘You’ve got Empty Nest Syndrome.’
She explained. It was the term given to explain the loss and sadness that many parents experienced when their children no longer lived with them or needed day-to-day care. It was common when kids left home for college or university.
‘But he’s only gone to nursery,’ I said to Sue.
‘It can strike at any time,’ she said. ‘It’s not surprising really when you think about how much our lives change when we have kids.’
On the way home I thought about what she’d said. Ten years ago, my life was different. It was all about me. I went out to work, I spent what I earned on myself, I was selfish. If I wanted a new pair of shoes I bought them. If I wanted to go out with my friends I didn’t have to think twice about it.
Then I became a mother and things changed.
Instead of pursuing a career, I fitted work around the children. I spent what I earned on them. I put them first and me last. I didn’t mind. It was what I wanted to do. Now a decade had flown by. The kids were all at school and didn’t need me to be around as much. I took a long, hard look in the mirror and got a shock.
I thought: ‘I’m over 40, I’m going grey and I’m heading for the menopause. If I were a horse, I’d be put out to grass….Or worse.’
Never mind my baby years being over, I reckoned my best years were over!
I felt redundant. I’d given up my life for my children and now they were moving on. What would I do now?
Next day, after the school run, I walked home via the park. As I passed the swings I caught sight of some mums with their toddlers.
‘How lovely,’ I thought. ‘I wish that was still me.’
Then I took a closer look.
One mum was running around the playground after a shrieking toddler. One was trying to change a nappy on a bench. One was shouting. One was trying to drag her child off the slide while balancing a baby on her hip. And one was trying to coax a grumpy toddler into his buggy but every time she got him in, he got out again causing the buggy to tip over and all her bags to spill over the floor.
‘I’ve had enough of this!’ she cried, pulling at her hair and looking close to tears.
And I thought: ‘Yes, love. You’re right.’
I’d been mourning the end of a golden age but had it really been as wonderful as I remembered?
The years when our children are very young are precious. But they are also the hardest. Yes, there are magical moments but there are many more moments of sheer slog.
For nine years I have had at least one child in nappies, or in a buggy or walking so slowly I’d sprout a new grey hair by the time we’d made it to the shops and back.
I’ve lost count of the number of sleepless nights I’ve had, of tantrums, and of days out that started with high hopes and ended in tears and a massive sense of failure.
When the kids were very small I used to fantastise about what I’d do when they were grown up with homes of their own. I’d draw on their walls, pour washing up liquid into their fish bowl, take one single bite out of every apple in their fruit bowl and refuse to eat anything that wasn’t smothered in ketchup. And on trips out I’d wait until everyone was in the car before announcing that I needed a wee and I’d shout: ‘Are we nearly there, yet?’ before we’d even set off.
After all, I’d think, it’s just what they have done to me!
It’s easy to look back on the baby years with a rose-tinted view but those same years can leave mums feeling isolated, depressed, overwhelmed, frightened and angry.
I know. I’ve been there.
When my six-year-old son was a baby, I took him and his sister, then three, out for a picnic. Halfway through our sandwiches, my daughter needed the toilet. I took her off behind the nearest tree but then she refused to come out again. I tried to coax her but she ran off.
Of course, I had to go after her but I daren’t leave my baby so I scooped him up and carried him as I ran through the trees looking for my little girl.
I couldn’t see her anywhere. I called her name. Nothing.
I started to panic.
And then my foot caught a tree root. Before I knew what had happened I was falling, clutching my baby son to my chest.
I fell. The baby landed beneath me. And then my daughter stepped out from where she’d been hiding behind a tree.
At that moment I began to cry. Part of it was fear I’d hurt my son, part was relief my daughter was safe, part was anger at her behaviour and part was pain from my twisted ankle. But the main cause of my tears was a terrible and overwhelming sense of failure.
I thought: ‘I can’t do this. I can’t cope.’
Of course, I did cope. When you’re a mum you just have to get on with it. But now, as I watched the mums in the park battling with their double buggies, their baby bags and their fractious toddlers, I could honestly say: ‘I’m glad that’s over.’
Yes, I may be middle-aged. Yes, I may be going grey on top and saggy in the middle and, well, let’s not talk about the bottom, but at least I will never again have to deal with The Baby Years.
Instead, I can start to be me again, the person I was before I was Mum. What will I do? Who knows. But whatever it is, I won’t be attempting to do it while attached to a small child. I can’t wait.

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