Wordplay

Some things, well if I'm honest, most things have changed since we had children. As parents often tend to when talking about anything remotely negative in connection to their children, as if alleviating any suspicion of lack of caring, love, or commitment on the part of the parent, not that we'd change a thing is so often our get out clause. So, however much I wouldn't change a thing, one thing I've missed a lot, has been words.

I come from a family of voracious readers, my parents and all of my brothers (of which there are three, all older) have always devoured books, sci fi being huge with my parents and two of my brothers for many years. Writing also runs in the family, although only in a love way, in a passion, in a need it for distraction way.

While we were living in London I completed a two year Creative Writing course at Birkbeck. I had never completed formal higher education before and it had always been something of a personal hurdle for me. I guess I felt a need to validate my own intelligence, my own worth as judged by a wider audience. In many ways others have always found me outwardly very confident, but I have many insecurities, I just have a good poker face - my lack of formal higher education has been one of the greater ones.

Anyway, with the arrival of both our girls, time for reading and writing has pretty much disappeared. Like all things I know you can fit in what you find most important, but given the choice between sleep or reading in bed, my choice has always been sleep. Of late, however, I have taken a book to work on the train for my two out of mother role days. I've read three books in the last month. That isn't much compared to the funds that used to go to Waterstones on an almost weekly basis, but I'm so happy I've made the time, those few snatched moments, those words that, due to good choices in reading matter, have enriched me for those few moments each week. I even bought an iddy biddy book torchy thing that clips onto your book, only $3.95 at Spotlight. For now it's only been used in the early hours by the girls coming into our bed while we play shadow puppets on the wall, but as always, hope springs eternal.