However, Ms Question was coming at it from quite a different angle to Ms Big Picture.

Ms BP was aware of baby’s communication skills, feeding cues and so on. She knew that you don’t just feed when the baby cries. And when I asked what the baby learns about his or her parents, when the parents respond to early hunger cues (rooting, sucking, lip-smacking etc), she quickly replied they learn to trust you. Normally I have to spell that out.

Ms Q was convinced that at some point I had told her she must record the length of her baby’s every feed.

The thing about breastfeeding is that the milk production system is dynamically stable, provided you don’t mess with it, and you ensure it’s operating effectively. The system has all these different elements that facilitate its stability and effectiveness, and when these elements are undermined or misunderstood, that’s when it goes wrong. Sadly the culture we live in is big on the undermining and misunderstanding of breastfeeding, and that’s why the majority of women stop doing it before they feel ready.

Here are some of the indredients in the recipe for no-big-deal breastfeeding.

1. A newborn baby has a stomach capacity of around 5ml. A teaspoon of colostrum (the kind of milk you have when your baby is first born) is therefore big enough to fill it. It is likely that the tiny tummy will both fill and empty quickly, and therefore need to refill frequently. (Undermined by the idea that colostrum is insufficient therefore artificial milk needs to be given, therefore breastmilk production system insufficiently stimulated).

2. Short frequent feeds stimulate the milk to change from colostrum to mature milk, which happens over the next days. (Undermined by the idea that baby’s frequent demand for the breast indicates a problem with breastfeeding, when in fact it may be normal, or it may indeed indicate some problem that could be dealt with. Offering artificial milk does not deal with this problem).

3. Newborn humans are highly dependent and inherently appealing. In cultures where ‘lying in’ is practiced, the newborn’s needs to be close with his or her parents are naturally fulfilled. (In cultures where governments spend 14 pence per baby on promoting breastfeeding, and baby milk manufacturers spend £20 per baby on promoting formula, such as the UK, we have tended to forget about the baby as a person with needs, and started to cast it as a demanding creature that makes its mother’s life difficult). A baby who is kept close to his or her mother is likely to feed little and often, stimulating the milk supply and growing well.

4. When the change in the milk occurs, around day 4, there will be a lot of milk in the breasts. This is called engorgement. It is what it sounds like. It is important to get this milk moving out of the breasts, using baby or pump as necessary. That’s because milk contains something called Lactation Inhibitor, and if the milk remains in the breast then the LI informs the body that milk is no longer needed. Milk production then decreases or ceases. It’s also because the baby needs to feed on the milk.

5. Breastfeeding should not be painful. Pain indicates a problem. The majority of the time, the problem is something to do with the way the baby is held, or the way the baby attaches at the breast. The majority of the time, such a problem can be dealt with by giving careful attention to these things, finding a way to make mother and baby more comfortable. If the baby is well-attached, the mother should feel no pain. If the baby is well-attached, then he or she can feed effectively, giving the correct level of stimulation to the milk supply, keeping mum from getting engorged, and consuming enough milk to sustain his or her own growth and development. (Undermined by the phrase of course it hurts, what did you expect? leading mothers to persevere through pain and misery to the point at which it becomes unbearable, and they stop.

6. Newborn humans may be highly dependent and helpless, but they do have the ability to signal when they are hungry (see above), and stop feeding when they are full. Therefore it should be possible to feed the baby on cue, for as long as he or she needs to feed, without pain, and for breastfeeding to work. (Undermined by pressure from ourselves or others to be in control of the chaos, to get back to normal, to have a life, etc etc etc).

I see a big circular diagram with lots of arrows connecting all these things together. The challenge for me is to convey to pregnant couples that for breastfeeding to work well and fit easily into one’s life (an oft-stated aim), it is necessary to optimise all of these elements. I fear that what this comes across as is an edict that you have to Give In To Your Baby, otherwise you are a Bad Mother Who Never Really Wanted to Breastfeed Anyway. Our modern culture clashes horribly with the needs of a breastfeeding mother&baby. I can understand how hard it is for so many of the women I meet, coming from Important Jobs and busy lifestyles where they are used to having control and predictability. Many work until very shortly before the baby is born, and it seems to me when I meet them in classes that the baby is still very abstract, and their idea of what life is going to be like is unrealistic. Perhaps we should be encouraged to stop working a good month or more before the due date, and spend that time hanging out with new mums (Hm, isn’t that what NCT Bumps and Babies groups are for?). Initially this would be disastrous because all they would hear is the horror stories, but perhaps slowly an understanding of the necessarily fuzzy boundaries of new motherhood might develop.

With the paper form, I would usually get a 90% response rate, and very rarely would any of it be useful. When they leave the session, people usually say thank you, and often a couple might remain to tell me that they found it useful or enjoyable. No-one has ever stayed behind to tell me that they didn’t like it. So in-person feedback is not useful in a learning sense, but at least makes me feel good.

Electronic feedback, usually a few days after the session, gives the respondent time to think about how they found the session. They have probably talked it over with their partner. If something bothered with them, it will still be bothering them, and I give them the opportunity to let me know about it. I suspect that the electronic feedback is skewed towards the negative; either that or I’m really not very good.

Of course I take negative feedback to heart; wouldn’t you? Sometimes I feel it is justified, but also that the element they didn’t like is justifiable; for example the complaint that I don’t answer direct questions. The first is true, as long as I have time to facilitate a discussion: I would rather the group figured out an answer for themselves, than simply sit in front and dictate to them. It’s not really the NCT way, is it? Plus, the ‘right’ answer for one family may not be the right answer for another. So take co-sleeping as an example; most parents-to-be will categorically state that they will absolutely never ever ever EVER have their baby in their own bed. Yet the statistics contradict this: 50% of parents admit to sharing a bed with their baby at least once in the first six months. So even if they think right now that it’s irrelevant and I should just tell them not to do it because that’s what FSID says, perhaps it really is worthy of some discussion? So the question comes: Why would we have the baby in bed with us? and my answer will always by: What do you think? Why do people do that? What are the benefits? What are the risks? How might it impact on breastfeeding? I answer a question with a load more questions, and it irritates the hell out of some people, but I stick by it.

Sometimes I get feedback that is justified and that I feel bad about. This has happened a couple of times recently with relation to one particular activity I do, where I get the dads-to-be to teach their partners the principles of good positioning and attachment. I show them, explain it, give them scripts and props to use, and – crucially – encourage them to stick to the script. And usually it comes across really well, because the group takes it seriously (but not too much), and pays attention when I tell them how it works. But once or twice it has completely bombed, the group of dads has been giggly or tried to ad lib, and the whole thing has been jumbled and confusing.

Inevitably, the feedback then says that I didn’t do a very good job of teaching them something as important as how to position their baby at the breast. Mums-to-be sometimes say they would have liked an opportunity to try it themselves (I try to remember to tell them that there is no point trying this with their massive bump in the way.) I am wondering now if this is usually worse when I only have a small room, and it’s too noisy to explain the activity properly, but no I don’t think it’s that because I had an awful room the other day in Windsor, and the best performance ever from a group of dads (they juggled with the knitted boobs). Sometimes I get to the explanation and then the dads say what do you want us to do? and then I know it will be bad, because if they didn’t listen to the first instruction (I’m going to explain it all to you, and then your job is to convey it to them), then they didn’t pay attention to the explanation either.

One thing I have started to do is recap the whole thing after the dads have finished, although last time I did this, they had done a perfectly good job and I felt like I was patronising them and suggesting they hadn’t done it well. One thing with teaching people about breastfeeding is that you become hyper-aware of the danger of undermining people’s confidence. So maybe I need to decide on a class-by-class basis whether a recap is necessary (In fact they always get a recap, but because it comes maybe 15 minutes later as part of the next segment of my session, perhaps they don’t quite notice that I’ve done it). The trouble is, recapping material that has already been covered uses up a chunk of my time, and I rarely have time to spare.

And then last week, along came some feedback that made my jaw drop: that I was aloof and seemed bored with the material.

Seriously? Those who know me in a non-BFC context may be able to see aloof; but in a breastfeeding context, really, aloof? I find this so difficult to get a grip on. Either the respondent doesn’t understand the word aloof, or they must surely have misunderstood some other element of my performance that day: tiredness, being slightly under the weather, and finding them a fairly heavy-going group, perhaps. Sometimes it’s like that in an evening session, it’s late in the day, I fail to get a spark off them. My questions hover in silence and I have to step in and answer them myself. I don’t think I am bored with the material, but sometimes I am disheartened by a group whose agenda focuses mainly on expressing and what gadgets to buy, as that one did. It doesn’t give me much to work with, when I know I have to convey the mechanics of milk production whilst also conveying that for newborn babies milk=love, safety, health and well-being, and not just food, which explains away much newborn behaviour. Perhaps my internal sigh when someone told me that fathers are disadvantaged in bonding, because they don’t breastfeed, was not as internal as I thought.

I have been saying for weeks that I need a break, so I can come back with a fresh approach and not feel so jaded and cynical; but that isn’t going to happen until December. Next August I will be taking a much longer chunk of time off, for precisely this reason. I am leaving this post with no conclusion, but at least I have reflected on what I can do better and maybe I’ll write that one sometime. Work isn’t busy…

Earlier in the year, we had a plot I actually felt quite proud of. Approximately divided into quarters, there was the fruit/herb section, the potato section, the veg section, and the compost/fallow sections.

The veg section We had numerous little strips of vegetables: carrots, corn, brussel sprouts, borlotti beans, courgettes, beetroot, leeks, fennel (not bulbing), runner beans, psb and a cabbage patch. The shallots and garlic were harvested and I sowed turnips in their space, but the seedlings kept disappearing, even when I resorted to both slug pellets and netting. Now I have an out-of-control week patch.

The courgettes are bright yellow but not as prolific as I expected. Nearby, I transplanted winter squash, and those have gone mad. I need to know two things: 1. When do we pick them? 2. Should I pull up the ones that are starting to loom over the cabbages and cauliflowers?

We have enough brussel sprouts to live on them for the entire winter, and we’re not even going to be at home for Yule.

The corn is almost ready. How thrilling is that? I really can put the water on to boil, go and pick it, bring it back and drop it in the pan.

The fruit/herb section This is all a bit of a mess. The raspberries are golden in colour, which is a really dreadfully unappealing colour for a raspberry. I am tempted to pull them all out and replace with proper fat pink ones, or even loganberries. Their bed is full of weeds and strawberries, and also alongside them is a small patch of strawbs that we brought over from the old plot, and which have done absolutely nothing. I mean, maybe one fruit in the whole bed. Why was this? Will it happen again next year?

There are some small fruit trees, with too much grass growing around them; and three hefty rhubarb plants, one of which I intend to move.

The herb bed contains a large oregano bush, a pathetic little sprig of mint, some ailing rosemary twigs (which may pick up), another raspberry cane, some chives and about a thousand tiny alpine strawberries. These make great ground cover, but taste ridiculous. The whole area needs an overhaul, but has been lower priority than the vegetables.

Bernard’s little plot is in this area, currently bearing a multi-flowered red-hued sunflower and a small currant bush.

The potato section This year we have been away so much that we haven’t even harvested all the earlies yet. The plants have died down and annual weeds are springing up so that I can’t tell where I still need to dig. We really need to get those weeds out and start clearing and composting this ground, which will be next year’s veg section. Last year we didn’t have enough potatoes, and this year, despite sowing fewer of them, there are too many.

The compost/fallow section The old asparagus patch, which was thoroughly infested by couch grass, has been covered with black plastic, and Pete’s dad has offered to dig it out. Next year, it will be combined with this year’s veg section to host the potato crop. A corner of it may be given over to a new rhubarb plant.

At the other end there is a strip of grass and the massive, nettle-infested compost bins.

The problem We have been away so much, and there has been all that rain, that now our most prolific crop is the weeds. It looks awful and I’m expecting another letter from the council any day now. I am wondering if we should give up all or part of the plot, because it feels like a terrible obligation that I never get round to dealing with. The worse it gets, the more I avoid it, and the worse it gets. There are times during the day when I should be able to get down there and rip some of those weeds out, but Bernard finds it tedious to go down there when I actually want to do some work, and even though it’s just across the street from the house, I still feel he’s too young to be left alone there. I also have continual anxieties that I should be sowing something right now, before I miss the correct season for whatever it is; the time I spend worrying about this question could be used looking in one of my several books that would give me the answer, but no, I just stress about it and do nothing.

On the other hand, it’s still so massively satisfying to go across and pick everything I need for our tea. Yesterday we had pasta with leeks, roast beetroot, courgettes and runner beans. All my own work, except the pasta. I’m not sure it’s much cheaper than buying it, by the time we’ve paid the rent and bought the seeds and invested the time in being anxious about the whole operation. But allotments are valuable and I’m reluctant to let go of mine.

If I don’t have time to look after it, I shouldn’t have one, should I?

At school he does phonics, which means learning letter sounds and letter combinations, along with funny little actions like blowing out a candle for p. He has a few phonics books that we inherited, and they make excruciatingly boring reads. When he picks them at bedtime my entire being yawns. It’s a bit better now that he reads them to me, rather than demanding that I read them to him. I can switch off and plan my next knitting project. Yes, you heard it hear first: sometimes mothers are not remotely interested in what their adorable offspring are up to.

In the Oxfam bookshop, I found an old Peter and Jane Ladybird book, you may remember the sort of thing if you’re as old as me. It contains such thrilling plotlines as Here is Peter. Here is Jane. Here is the dog. Peter likes Jane. Jane likes Peter. Peter and Jane like the dog. etc. But it’s still better than the phonics books [oil. boil. coil. soil.]

I brought it home and read it to him once, and then he had a go. He started by reading in a staccato monotone, halting completely when he reached a new word. I encouraged him to sound out the word using those boring old phonics, and he has gradually realised that even if he hasn’t tried to read the word before, he can often work it out. I can see now that he is recognising whole words, although he often guesses the ending from recognising the beginning, and gets it wrong until I prompt him to say all the sounds. Then he gets it right. Of course by now he has read the book so many times that he knows it off by heart, and reads it to himself with intonations and real fluency.

Starting to read has also affected the way he says some words, because he is more aware of word endings. Until now, he has often swallowed the endings of words, or simply got them wrong [using hers instead of her]. Now he has begun to enunciate more clearly, which is a big help in comprehending him.

And because the Ladybird readers are so much less dull than the phonics books, I am quite happy to sit and listen to him read. But we may have to move him on to Nabokov soon, just to keep me interested.

We had a large, pleasant room with a view over the English Channel and an extremely comfortable bed (which I could have spent more time in). We had two trips on a hovercraft and a go on the dodgems on Sandown Pier. But more than anything else, we had food.

I’m not kidding, this was a gourmet tour of the eastern parts of the IOW. The amount of food we ate could probably have fed us at home for a week.

On arrival in Ryde on Friday just before lunchtime, we decided that fish and chips were necessary. I suppose if I had thought it through, having pre-ordered two lunches and being aware that evening meals were also planned for the weekend, I would have suggested that alfalfa salad would be sufficient for the time being. Instead we dashed straight into the first sit-down chippy we saw and enjoyed an excellent meal. Bernard experienced scampi for the first time, and did not behave particularly well, having been up very early after a rather bad night.

We then took a taxi to the hotel, just south of Seaview. We booked high tea for the boy and then headed straight to the beach, where we spent the afternoon digging with shells, in the absence of a spade. The others arrived over the course of the afternoon, and we checked into our room and discovered how lovely it was. Bernard ate a mountain of spaghetti bolognese, but left the home-made ice cream for Pete to finish. He continued to behave badly pretty much until he was asleep, at which point I escaped to join the party in the restaurant, and was plied with wine. It was necessary.

Dinner at the restaurant was delicious. I had gazpacho, goat’s cheese risotto, and birthday cake. At the time, I felt deprived of a pudding; but I realise now that one less course, over the whole weekend, was a good thing.

A few hours of sleep followed, and then down for a cooked breakfast. Bernard ordered porridge and didn’t eat it; I ordered a full english and did.

It was a grey and damp morning, and the sea was reportedly too choppy for the planned boat trip to take place. Our taxis were summoned and we headed to Sandown for old-fashioned fun at the pier. The pier was your traditional seaside entertainment, from amusement arcade and mini golf to lewd jokey photo-cut-out thingies. Bernard played a racing game with Pete, squirted water at some fireman, went on his first dodgems, and trounced everyone at air hockey. (There is some rumour that the grown-ups let him win).

Lunch was in The Pond Cafe in Bonchurch, which we were informed was the best restaurant on the island. It was extremely small, so as a party of 13 we had pretty much all of it. Wisely, I seated Bernard by the door so we could get out once he got bored; at that point I had no inkling it would take around three hours for us to finish the four courses and wait for some lingerers to have coffee.

This whole weekend had been kept secret from Pete, it being his birthday treat, so I had pre-ordered lunches without consulting him. We therefore shared a carpaccio of beef with parmesan and rocket, and a large pile of peas and broad beans as a starter. This followed enormous bowls of warm olives and cashew nuts, inappropriately described as appetisers. They would have been enough on their own. One assumes, of course, that the portions in places like these are going to be tiny, but no. My main course was a large calf’s liver with vegetables, and then there was a cheeseboard. I liked the IOW soft cheese, but found the blue quite peppery. Yes, I really was still eating. Bernard had eaten a lot of olives and cashew nuts, and then all the salmon and none of the chips in his large children’s meal, and then got bored as predicted and gone off outside.

The home-going taxi paused to allow for the purchase of proper buckets and spades, and we spent the remainder of the afternoon making the aforementioned large sandcastle for the boss to sit in. Sadly Bernard and I did not witness any sitting, as it was time for high tea. You should know that the high tea cost £16.50 per child, and Bernard managed one sausage and a small lump of mash before demanding payment of his bribe of being allowed back to the beach to see the finished castle.

Our evening meal that night was at The Boathouse pub in Seaview, ten minutes down the road. I was uncomfortable being so far from the hotel, with a colleague’s parent minding the baby monitor. I was also uncomfortable because I had already eaten half a farmyard worth of food and it wasn’t all that long since I’d put away the last cracker of lunchtime. So we skipped the starter and opted for a salad. Ah, more goat’s cheese. An entire goat’s cheese and a load of pointless lettuce. I do really love goat’s cheese, though. It rained, and we strolled outside on the seafront, looking at the lights of Portsmouth. Bernard was sleeping peacefully when we got back to the hotel.

A grey morning dawned on Pete’s birthday, and Bernard was up bright and early as always. One advantage of a hotel room is being able to stick cBeebies on and get back into bed with my head under the pillow until a more civilised hour. We were finally prompted out of our bed by his grumbling for breakfast, and again we were first in the restaurant. I sensibly stuck to fruit and toast, and did I mention that the coffee was phenomenally strong? From breakfast we went directly to the beach and claimed the stream as our own. This activity filled the morning, culminating in a dash back to the hotel to clean up the children before the check-out deadline.

Taxis arrived to carry us to our final meal on the island: Pete’s birthday lunch event took place at The Seaview Hotel and Restaurant, which was an odd place with the appearance of a very ordinary hotel as you went in, but the further back you got, the smarter it became. We had a long table, possibly the first time the entire group sat down for a meal together, children an’ all. Bernard sat next to his new friend Jack, and they entertained themselves by drawing pictures and presenting them to other members of the party. I feasted on grilled mushroom with goat’s cheese, roast pork with an anomalous but pleasant yorkshire pudding, the ubiquitous cheeseboard, and birthday cake. Pete was given gifts. A taxi returned us to Ryde and the hovercraft, and we went home.

That is not to say that I disrespect people who do believe in one or more gods, but that’s more on the basis that I respect and disrespect on the basis of the person, not their beliefs.

As far as my own belief systems go, it’s not that I have no spiritual side at all; but rather that, as with many other things in my world, I take an eclectic approach. However this has to fit into a very busy schedule; there is rarely time to reflect and consider what my spiritual side consists of.

Our camping trip a couple of weeks ago did give me a few opportunities, and it would be a shame to throw myself back into the whirl that is my life without trying to consolidate some of my thoughts, at least a little bit. So I write as I think and make it up as I go along, as usual. There were moments…

Waking up early on the last morning of the trip, I lay cosy in my camp bed listening to the rain spattering on the roof of the tent, the stream swishing past outside, birdsong and baa-ing, and the comic childish snoring of my son. I lay there for a long time in such peaceful peace, not really thinking at all but just enjoying it. Enjoying the fact that for a little while, nobody needed me. Deeply relaxed and happy that all my favourite things were within an arm’s reach.

My life is information-overloaded, socially-overconnected, non-stop doing doing doing. I think as I go along. I reflect, because as a counsellor I have to, but usually in a professional context. Hell, I hardly even blog anymore. I don’t lie snug in a sleeping bag feeling contented, much. I do feel generally satisfied with my busy, useful life ['smug' is probably the word you want to use]. But the peace! It was the peace and the almost free-floating sense of being comfortably alone while my family slept, that made it a spiritual experience.

Up in the Lake District, we spent three nights at a house that has been in my family for a long, long time. Again I was allowed a little space to examine why the place is so important to me, particularly as my associations with the house itself are largely of being terrified of the dark. It is the one place in the world where I feel grounded. I find security in the elements that remain unchanged even when there are years between my visits, and at the same time I’m comfortable with the changes too. The house, the garden, the hillside, the lake, the village: they go on without me when I’m not there. I’m irrelevant to the place, but it’s a huge part of me and my history, going back long before I was born. The stories are incomplete, and when my mum or my great-aunt tell them, I realise how much my imagination has filled the gaps. I want to open it all up to Pete and Bernard so that they can be part of this little history, and carry it with them too.

When my great-aunt dies, it is assumed that we will no longer have access to the house, although no-one knows for certain what will happen to it. But part of the garden is being left to the village, and I can still go there and refresh my internal picture of the most quietly beautiful view in the world. I will still have the constant point.

On our first night, we arrived at a campsite to find half of it cordoned off for the Derbyshire Pagans’ Lammas celebrations. In the early evening when the drumming started and they lighted the lanterns, we stood in the circle until we got too cold. When I started this post, this was the bit I meant to write about, but now you see, I have already gone on too long and will have to start again another day.

The ritual started with welcoming the spirits of North, East, South and West, and then various other symbolic goings-on to do with fire and bread and so on, which I cannot google from my Christian workplace, but of course represented the things that are at the heart of every community: food, warmth, and each other. I feel that some faiths are better than others at admitting that this is what it’s all about: making certain of one’s basic needs, so that higher needs can follow. It’s basic Maslow, really. Or Maslow is basic religion.

I liked being in the circle, and would have loved to have a drum. Bernard stood beside me asking questions, and Pete stood apart, observing with his cynical eye. He says it’s all very well, but what’s all this welcoming the spirits nonsense? I say that probably very few people in the circle were actually welcoming the spirits in a hello spirit how are you kind of way, just as I guess there are a number of Christians who don’t actually believe they are eating the body of Christ when they take communion. I could be wrong on both counts, but anyway, that’s where I’m standing.

For me it was about a community celebrating what was good and expressing their hope for the good stuff to continue. The use of ritual and symbolism enables them to express a collective feeling without it all disintegrating into a rabble; or, like me, being so eclectic and uninformed that I never take a moment to stop and reflect on what’s good or what I hope for. Which is kind of where I was going when I started writing about lying in a tent being rained on.

I can quite easily relate to what the pagans do, not least because the term ‘pagan’ covers such an eclectic mish-mash of belief systems: wicked witches at one end and eco-activists at the other, and at the same time, not all of those are pagan, and not all pagans are those. I reckon I could apply the label to myself without ever donning a long velvet cloak or banging a drum. I don’t have to meditate in the garden at midnight on the solstice, to admit that quiet slow moments of peace are more likely to occur for me in conjunction with baaing and birdsong, than with the clack of computer keyboards and the buzz-whir of machines, and that those rare moments are spiritual for me.

I like the Wheel of the Year: the importance of the changing seasons, and respect for the earth. I get a tiny blast of this every time I go over to the allotment and come back with a bowl of beetroot or beans or ruby-red new potatoes. Admittedly not so much when an angle-legged spider runs across the carpet. I want to be able to mark the passage of time without it having to have a christian context like Easter or Christmas.

Sometimes I would like to belong to a group where my individual role is not important: wife, mother, breastfeeding counsellor, volunteer, secretary. That group of pagans banged their drums late into the night, and if one individual took a break, others carried on, so there was never a noticeable gap. The whole community drummed on.

I do miss the two half-days of free time for me, although when I say free, I mean busy doing admin or teaching a Starting Solids Workshop or doing a counselling shift. I’m not doing any work on the helpline at all during August, because even when I do get the time, I find that I need some respite. Which I then waste, of course. Last time I had a whole evening to myself, I spent the entire time buying books on Amazon, something I haven’t done for ages. I’d forgotten how much fun it was.

August is also broken up with holidays and mini-breaks. There was the Big Camping Trip at the start of the month, which took us to Matlock, then Skipton, then Grasmere, then somewhere near Ludlow, and home again. The camping element was much more successful than I had expected. Nights were warm and comfortable (I have a canvas camp bed and the boys have those funny floor-mat things. I am older and achier than they. Why, even if you add Pete’s and Bernard’s ages together, it still comes to less than me). The food was mostly excellent, especially the night I made bulghur-pesto salad and served it with cheap bangers. The boys voted that their favourite meal of the holiday, and ate the lot. All the campsites had their ups and downs, but the best bits were: the Derbyshire Pagans, all the children for Bernard to play with, and camping on an island by a stream.

This weekend is Pete’s Big Birthday, and his boss has planned the company summer outing in a big way, to take account of this. I can say no more here, for it is all a big secret from him. And that, of course, is killing me: planning all these details without consulting him. I also have to be careful how much I share with Bernard, who thinks that secrets are very exciting, and wants to talk about them to everyone he meets. He is thrilled at the idea of spending two nights at a “hoe-tayul” [lord knows where the Penelope Pitstop pronunciation has come from], and I’m just hoping he’ll go to sleep at bedtime so that I can join the grown-ups for the evening meal.

And at the end of the month we head up north again, but to Armpit in the east; which means Granny and the beach, two things that please Bernard immensely and give me some knitting time. And then we will come home with a spinning wheel.

What strikes me most is the emptiness of my life before becoming a parent. And I don’t mean that in a cloying children are so fulfilling kind of a way. I just mean that I wasted a whole lot of time doing absolutely nothing. I had no hobbies (apart from sleeping, which I miss), few projects, and very little engagement with the world around me. I had no local community at all.

Nor do I intend this to sound smug in a see how much I do for others kind of a way. As Phoebe discovered in Friends, there is no truly altruistic act. The things I love doing most in the world may well serve or help others, but they are also immensely rewarding in one way or another. Parenting itself is a great example of that: it’s such bloody unrelenting hard work, but I do have an imp-faced adorable little boy who smashed an egg on a table this afternoon helping me to make a cake; who is reading at the age of 4 and thusly making me very proud; and who has granted me the wish I made in an antenatal class that he should inherit his dad’s charm.

It can be said, however, that the amount of time I spend being a wife-and-mother is negligible. It’s something I fit in between everything else, and may not always do to the best of my ability, because I’m either too tired or too busy to give it my proper attention. I have lately started to describe myself as over-committed, and resolved not to take on any new projects without pruning back some of the old. This is a hard resolution to keep, when my mum’s just offered me my granny’s spinning wheel.

So what’s going to go? Obviously not the wife-and-mothering. And not the paying work, either: 14 hours a week as PA to the CEO of an adoption charity run by Christians is a necessary evil as it brings in a regular income. It’s relatively stress-free and mindlessly dull. The most amusement it ever affords me is wondering if anyone will notice me doodling pentacles and suns in the margins of my minutes.

That’s the day job. I also have variable hours of teaching antenatal breastfeeding classes, which pays very well but is mainly restricted to evenings and weekends, and is the most enjoyable job I’ve ever had; and the odd paid shift on the telephone helpline, when I can manage it. Alongside this there is an unpaid workload of admin, supporting local parents, keeping my skills and knowledge up to date through study days, reading and meeting my colleagues; and voluntary stuff that I don’t have to do, like running a breastfeeding support group. I have cut back my attendance there to once a fortnight, already; it’s no fun at all.

What else do I do? I have a weedy allotment and a neglected garden. Last year I nearly got round to consolidating this into a single project, and I still think that might be a good idea. The garden won’t lend itself well to vegetable growing, not without a fair bit of work in clearing the overgrown shrubs and creating some terraces. But at least then we won’t have the allotment glowering at us from across the road. The big argument for the allotment is that very occasionally – like, three or four times a year – I go over there in the evening while Pete puts the Small Boy to bed, and do a bit of weeding in the peace and quiet, which is blissful. Oh, and a surplus of beetroot = the most delicious chocolate cake ever.

I knit all the time. But not at times when I should be doing something else. Not too much, anyway. I knit on the train, while watching telly, in the car, at the breastfeeding support group when no-one comes, and on social occasions when my hands get twitchy because I’m not doing anything useful. I knit to cope with anxiety, and it works on many levels. I think about knitting when I can’t get to sleep (which is often).

I’m editor of the local NCT newsletter, and a damn fine publication it is too. I enjoy this job but do find it a bit stressful as the deadline looms, as it is at the moment. This project has in fact been earmarked for pruning, and I’m in discussions with someone who might take it on. A hard one for me to let go of, because I want to keep control of the content and make sure it stays on message; but it’s good for me when I reach the point of accepting that something is no longer my problem, and I’m looking forward to feeling like that about MY newsletter.

I’ve decided to step down from the newsletter because in September I start the first module of the NCT BA in Education. This will open up more pathways from my role as a Breastfeeding Counsellor, such as supervision and assessment. If I can get enough daytime work, perhaps the Christians will one day have to do without me.

All of these things are new things that I have started since becoming a parent. Granted I used to work full time, but my daytime hours are mostly taken up by working for the Christians and parenting. So you would think that there’s something I used to do, before I had a child, that I no longer do. What is it? Sleep in until Saturday lunchtime? Chat online with Pete while sitting in the same house? I suppose there are fewer days/nights out in London with childless friends; but there are more trips to see family and weekends away just the three of us. I think I did once read about 100 books in a year, but that’s when I lived alone with no TV or internet connection at the house. My life pre-Bernard was by no means empty, but I definitely didn’t fill it.

I could bore you with all the ways she helped me, but won’t. I was so caught up in my own complicated world at that time, that our relationship was very much all about her rescuing me from various evils.

Then she moved North, I met Pete, our lives changed, and we fell out of touch. Good old Facebook, eh? You know how sometimes you add someone but you don’t particularly talk to them, they’re just there? So I’ve seen Eva’s updates for a while now, and was starting to wonder if I’d added the wrong person.

The Eva I knew was happily married, sociable but settled, with a successful career at some financial institution or other. I know she had some health problems but she never discussed them in any detail. The FB updates I have been seeing are all about a single socialite never without a cocktail glass in her hand, and recently In A Relationship With someone who was not her husband.

Then one day she posted something that left no doubt she was the Eve I know, so I sent her a message. She replied. Our discussion was of course quite private, but two themes emerged:

1. Facebook is The Great Facade. The single socialite is only the face she presents to the world. Behind the laptop sits quite a different person.
2. We both turn 40 in about six months’ time, and this, for some reason, is causing us to reflect on where we are and where we’re going.

And from Eva’s perspective, she had been wondering if the Karen on her FB page was actually the same person she knew 8 or 9 years ago. I was in a mess back then, and the life I live now was unimagineable to either of us. And yet her marriage was already in those early, deniable stages of disintegration, and now she is where I was (albeit with a great deal more self-knowledge).

How did I get from there to here? I never planned any of it; but it seems like almost every step I’ve taken from that place has been a determined one. I suppose if you read through my archives, you might see the same thing. Not that I’m suggesting you waste your life doing that, dear reader.

Putting aside the fact that I’d rather go to the dentist than the hairdresser, live 40 miles from central London, and have a total of zero minutes of spare time per week, I did my best to appear thrilled. Generally, I am crap at looking thrilled when I don’t mean it, but I think I got away with it.

Shortly after Easter, I put in place the following arrangements: found a Thursday in July when I didn’t have something on, to coincide with friends in London being available to spend the afternoon/evening talking about knitting; arranged for the MIL to come down from The North (a mere 180 miles) to childmind before and after preschool; looked up train times and prices; put my already-overdue haircut on hold.

Three weeks ago a message was left on my home number saying that because of illness, they wouldn’t be able to see me at 11am, but could offer me an appointment at 1pm instead. They left a number and asked me to confirm. I called the number and got through to an answering machine. I left a message the next day, mentioning that it wasn’t convenient, and asking them to call me back. A week later, having received no call, I called again and got the answering machine. I found another number online and called that, and eventually managed to speak to a human being.

She apologised profusely and told me that I was now booked in for 3:30, because I hadn’t called back to confirm 1pm. I explained exactly what arrangements I had made in order to get to this appointment, and why I wanted my hair cut at 11am as booked several months ago. She said it was not possible as they did not have the staff. I asked what time they would be open on that day? 11:00, she told me. So there will be someone there cutting hair at 11am? Yes. Then please inconvenience someone other than me, who didn’t book this appointment months ago, who can change their plans at the drop of a hat and doesn’t have to move the earth to get into London during the working day. She didn’t have the authority to do that, so promised her manager would call me the next day.

As I type, my original appointment was due to start ten minutes ago. I still haven’t received a call from the manager. I am rather hoping they will be calling to find out why I don’t turn up at 3:30 for the appointment I told them was inconvenient for me. And I have given the voucher away to someone who lives in London.

We pitched our tent a little more efficiently than last time, while Bernard lay pathetically on a blanket feeling sorry for himself. The poor mite had some sort of stomach bug, which fortunately I didn’t catch until after we got home. We figured we may as well sit in a sunny field with a whiney child, as sit at home with one.

And it was particularly sunny. The basic facilities did not include an ice-pack freezing service, so the small quantity of food we brought in the coolbag was in great peril and had to be shifted constantly into ever-decreasing patches of shade. What the basic facilities did include was: one tap, two composting toilets for men and two for women, and two pump-your-own-water showers. A composting toilet, in case you didn’t know, is a hut built above a pit of poo.

These were sited just inside an ancient oak wood, through which there was a shady pathway that led to the shop and cafe, where they served delicious lattes (almost as good as Pete’s), and interesting salads. (Quinoa and strawberries, for example). We hired a brazier and bought a box of logs (but were forbidden from raiding the wood for kindling, lest we slaughter the insects who make their home in bits of dead tree).

They had no sausages, so we went into Cirencester where we found a traditional butcher (and a yarn shop!). Cirencester is very pretty, and would be nice to explore without a whiney child in tow. The high street was very non-generic; and as I said, a traditional butcher! You don’t get those around these parts.

Back at the campsite, several more tents had arrived, and all seemed to agree that our corner was the most attractive in the large empty field. It’s a very popular place for families, and those campers without children had wisely pitched at the far distant end of the field. There was a group of four or five families with countless children right behind us, and more arriving before our very eyes.

Pete fiddled with our stove and I failed to light a fire in the brazier. We ate sausages. Bernard was ill so I put him to bed and we sat outside until dusk, listening to the screeches of little girls and crows.

In the morning the farmer took us to see chickens and pigs, and showed us some big trees. We also spotted a stoat running after some rabbits. We went into Cirencester again, and then spent the rest of the day lounging around on the grass trying to persuade the whiney child to go and play with some of the non-whiney children. He was quite happy to ask other parents to play with him, but had no interest at all in the children.

Our fire that night was more successful, and we toasted marshmallows late into the evening. Despite Bernard being unwell, we considered our small adventure to have been a pleasant one. He seems to like camping; at least, he said he didn’t want to come home, and is looking forward to our next trip at the beginning of August.

And that’s the totem pole up there in the corner; Pete fancied a change.

Me: Erm… Italy. Where pizzas come from.

Bernard: That man on the stairs is also from Italy.

Me [after eventually realising what on earth he's on about]: Yes, your Pinocchio puppet is from Italy.

Bernard: That’s my bestest country.

I could not square deliberately making my child ill, so no party. We waited, and waited, but the pox did not appear for nearly four more years.

Yesterday I got home from teaching an antenatal breastfeeding class and noticed that the boy was Acting Tired. Shortly afterwards I spotted, if you’ll forgive me, a small scattering of little pink blister-like spots on his face and neck, a few more on his tummy and a big one on his back. At bedtime, on a dose of calpol for the high temperature and general malaise, he was asleep in minutes: always a big clue that he’s Not Right. And this morning he is poxed all over.

Our half term plans to visit Granny up north are cancelled, since Granny has already suffered shingles once and is full time carer to my invalid stepfather. Those whose attitudes to pox parties differ to my own will be welcome to come and entertain us. Lucky it’s a bank holiday week and of course I don’t work Thursdays and Fridays, so we only have two days of emergency childcare to sort out. Now I must away and do some research to figure how long we’re likely to have to isolate him for.