Water Cress Soup

I LOVE stars, says Grace. And so do I. Tonight they're phenomenal. Moonless, with The Milky Way pushing through. How I love to share the wonder of all this with my children, to hold on to the naive awe that I felt when I was a boy, which has never really left me. Look at all the shapes, Grace says. Ah.. the shapes. Therein lies the story of our species, but not tonight darling. Earlier we went for a walk down the stream, to the little stone arched bridge where water cress grows. I've noticed that it flourishes twice a year, now being the second time. I take off my shoes and socks and step into the crystal clear water that I like to drink. Brook trout dart away at our approach. Grace paddles, gloriously fearless of the squidgy bank and the watery life that lives there. The cat has followed us so we have to make sure he knows when we're returning otherwise he'll get lost again and I'll have to come out and call for him at midnight. Cats get a bit silly when they're too far from base. This one does, anyway. It's dusk. The shadows are lengthening. Autumn cool. I grab a large bunch of water cress to make soup with later on. Before going back to the house we pick half a jug full of blackberries.

Tidiness

I'm not the tidiest of people. But lately, as I've tackled the flotsam of dirty plates, crumby breadboards, jammy knives, half opened cans of tomatoes, old teabags, and so on, and so on, that seem to wash up several times a day on our kitchen work surfaces, I've begun to understand tidy people a bit more. And as I've picked off the clutter, bit by sticky bit, and a semblance of space and order has momentarily returned before some child dumps a cereal bowl or the cat leaves muddy paw marks, I've even found myself wondering whether I'd develop OCD. If life was finally to become little more than a losing battle against dirt and chaos why not embrace the challenge and become obsessive about it. Wipe your feet. Don't spill it. Clear your things. Whose is that!? Give me order in the chaos. Give me back some control before I finally capitulate to the onslaught of stuff.

Intensity

Good or less good to experience the intensity of your young children's emotions? Sometimes may be better to gently switch off, but what may be missed or misunderstood in doing so?

A Wedding

Here are most of us - at Emily's wedding 22 August in Hawes in Wensleydale. I'm the one in the blue tie. I'll leave the rest to your imaginations. The fifth washing machine is hidden on his mother's shoulders. You can see all the others clearly.

Cold Turkey

Something wrong here. Leaving our bed regularly in the middle of the night when 15 month old still waking gorgeous boy comes in. Can't sleep with the snuffles and restlessness. Then Grace comes in an hour later - once or twice a week. Must sort this and soon. Given that he's not ill or hungry we should not let the screaming get to us. Make him aware of our presence close by but don't lift him up, they say. This is a four nighter. How do you even contemplate it when you're nodding off at the wheel and aching in every joint already? Cold Turkey, for all of us.

Where's North?

Walking back the through the village to our house Grace, 4, suddenly asks 'Where's North, Daddy?' I'm usually good at unravelling concepts for children but this one is hard. I wave my arm vaguely across the fields to our right where rain looks to be pressing in to ruin our day. 'Over there, where those clouds are. Do you see?' 'Can I go there?' 'Not really darling. It's a direction.' Hopeless. 'You remember how I told you that we live on a giant ball. Well when we walk up that ball we're going North.' Still no good.

32 Toyota Tankfuls

On most days of the week we both finish work work around five and then switch straight over to childcare, which goes on until at least nine. Or maybe one of us is working later. Either way there's no let up, for either of us. This hefty routine has been going on, on and off, in my life since the early 1970s and the sheer exhaustion you feel on the last leg is the surest way to alcohol dependence. It starts with a single glass of wine, just enough to neutralise the buzz and get you smiling at each other. Quite soon this becomes two and from being an undiscerning quaffer of plonk you begin to know a little about wine. The idea of dependence doesn't occur to you - it's just a way of making a hugely stressful experience manageable, enjoyable even. Supper time is fun. You give yourself to bath time. You are present when you're reading the story and could even recount it if asked. And there's the thought of what's left in the bottle for that quality time together later on.

I stopped drinking completely nearly three years ago - not a drop since apart from a couple of glasses of Prosecco at our wedding and even this made me feel rough the next day. What struck me was how STRONG it was and what shocked me was how much of it I must have drunk in the previous 35 years. When I stopped I was drinking about a bottle of wine a day, not excessive by alcoholic standards, but then what exactly constitutes alcoholic? I had been trying to stop for a while until one day was just the right day to go for it. Why stop? Because something I'd thought was making me more present was doing the opposite, cumulatively, over a long period of time. Not that I was ever drunk. More that I realised that effect of alcohol never really left me. I can't say, at the end of a long day of work work and childcare that not having a drink has made me feel that different. Once past the sense of achievement it's DAY ONE of the rest of your life. But my older children tell me I'm different, less emotionally absent, easier to communicate with and I suppose they'd know. I do miss good red wine though. But a bottle of wine every night for 30 years? At 12% alc that's 12% 0.75 litres x 365 days x 30 years = 985.5 litres of pure alcohol - or put another way - 32 Toyota Avensis Tankfuls. That's a lot.