Perfect 10

MY love is like butter I baste them all in, yes yes, but then ... they went. Vanished. The whole blinking lot of them. Far, far away, to the in-laws, as a writing deadline roared close. Leaving me utterly alone. For 10 whole days. Guilt? What do you think. The deliciousness was ... obscene.

Why had no one ever told me about this? The best gift a mother could ever receive - the envy of every mum in the 'hood told me that.

Parenthood's a state of siege. I know that now. Mainly chosen, welcomed, revelled in of course, but a siege nonetheless. To cough with impunity in the early morning, knowing you're not waking an entire house. To uncurl in an absence of to-do piles and crumbs. The glee of stripping child-locks off cupboards as the adult side of the house is released from its cordoning-off; the languidness of being in a supermarket all by yourself.

First task: clothes purchased in an ecstasy of deluded youngness; garments wildly inappropriate but oh, the joy of a child-free shop. Second task: hair dyed, at home, because it hasn't been done in six months and too many eyes have been straying to the temples with sadness and tut; that look of "Oh, she's let herself go". Third task: a chocolate Monte packet consumed in one fell swoop because one can - and doesn't have to do it in great haste while furtively hiding behind the cupboard door. Fourth: sleep gulped, and upon waking just floating back once again. Because there's no one to wake up for. No one to serve.

Distant memories: being so tired there's no time to dress for the school run so in a doomed attempt at togetherness the nightie's accessorised with a belt. So tired you're forging the Walkathon form with every relative you can think of because it's hand-in day and you forgot. So tired you're calling everyone but the dog the dog's name. So tired you've lost yourself and your angry voice has turned you into someone else. That you don't like.

To live organised, lean, wolfishly again!

After the frenzy of Montes the diet settled into a rhythm of sushi and banana smoothies. I could get skinny again, living like this; resolutely can't in the thick of family life. As Jerry Hall said upon splitting from Mick Jagger: "Your life is how the other person would like it to be." How they'd all like it to be. As I widen inexorably and eat what everyone else wants I've become the hot water bottle of choice; the bed like Grand Central Station come winter as they all gravitate to the spreading warmth. Too often, my life feels like it's been reduced to a communal hot water bottle that never goes cold.

So. Ten days sitting like a beached whale in a vastly empty bed and writing solidly for 12-hour stretches, newly dyed head a helmet of straw reflecting no light. But delighting in the idea of the whole raucous lot of them again - because, frankly, towards the tail-end of last year I could've wrung several necks at once; was thinking I couldn't cope. This circuit-breaker was the answer to everything before one headed into kindy, one to high school, one into daycare and one to puppy school, and a myriad of uniforms needed labelling and sorting out.

Imminent invasion. Stretching on the couch, gathering in the silence and pocketing that last half-hour of golden peace, like a squirrel, for the year ahead.

The house waited for the jumbly-tumbly assault of them, ticking in the heat, holding its breath. The carcass of an old self had been dragged out to the rubbish and I felt young again. Knew it wouldn't last (13 minutes to be precise) but I had the strength and energy to face the world again. "Please can we do this every year?" I gasped as the whole crazy, glorious, exhausting tumult of a cycle began all over again.

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