Guardian Family: Confessions of a Full Time Mother

[morningpaper]

Confessions of a Full Time Mother

"Kirsty Gunn is not working on her next novel. She is not a columnist for the London Review of Books. She has chosen instead to disappear from the professional world and embrace a domestic life just as rich and interesting and inspiring ... "

PAH! She's opted out of the professional world - well except for this article and the book she has just written about her "year as a full time mum" - full time that is, except for the 30 hours a week that her children are at school in which I presume she fannies about writing drivel like this.

At first I thought it was an ironic joke, but sadly not. Perhaps she is friends with that woman who survived the concentration-camp conditions of Fulham after that breeze blew her wooden grapes off the sideboard...

that really is a difficult read. I couldn't continue beyond my desire , my burn.

My burn?!

I feel a bit like a burnt-out husk.

Do you think that's it?

Glad I wasn't the only one to read this and think "wtf?"

A load of old rubbish

"My husband weeps, quickly and quietly at the nursery school door when dropping off our youngest daughter"

It's called relief.

so she doesn't even do the school run then??

i have 3 school aged. with 2 f/t working parents.

i live in a warzone. why is this? we are barely here?

Oh dear god. It's like some kind of pretentious sixth former's poetry (I thought that even before I got to the actual poem).

"make lists for my day each day: Millie, 50p for a school project; Katherine, farm outing on the 28th. Bring seeds and twigs and cereal cartons to school on Monday; all water bottles to be named, please ... "

-- err, yes, we have to do that stuff whether we go to work or not, but it's hardly life-consuming, is it?

PMSL, Tinker

I was deeply moved by the touching insight she shared with us all. I didn't know how it felt to love a child before I read this (at 5am this morning, what a poncey old way to start the day).

How do you "feel my breath on their necks"? Surely they'd be the ones feeling it??

I feel really sorry for her.
She sounds like she is having a really hard time.
Imagine she might have to do her own cleaning on top of all the other stress.

Shall we write one...

Ds1 calls me, urgently, from downstairs. My heart - just for a moment - flutters at that knowledge - that I, and only I, have chosen to be the one to fulfil his every need, to soothe his fevered brow. I gird my loins, prepare myself for whatever dread event has befallen him. Ah...the relief. He can't get the lid off the PVA. Disaster averted...til next time. And now - my heart leaps again - ds2 is calling me..."Mummy! Mummy!" "Darling! I come to you! Mummy is near!" Quickly seizing a pile of freshly laundered washing from its customary pile at the bottom of the stairs I dash, with no thought to my own safety, back upstairs. "Mummy! Is my bottom clean?" - my beautiful child, the fruit of my loins, my reason for being, is waving a piece of pooey toilet roll at me...how lucky I am, that my day is punctuated with such precious moments. I hug my good fortune to me like a security blanket. I am truly blessed. What demands will my precious offspring make of me next...I only know I must meet that challenge, for my name...is sacrifice.

Lol Marthamoo, couldn't have put it better myself.

I actually thought the silly woman (not Marthamoo!) was on acid. She couldn't possibly have been sober when she wrote it, could she?

Brilliant Mrs Moo

Unreadable.

Will A must be gay.

its will self i bet

Don't think so because he's a dad, he wouldn't be so wanky, unless of course he was being sarcastic to someone who is even more up herself than he is

No sextusyllabic words for Will Self

"weeps quickly" If I had a dp who could adjust the speed of his weeping, I'd make a bit of money on the side with it somehow.

You know you've been reading too much MN when you start reading an article like this and think "wtf - where's cod when you need her"

agree with the unreadable comment. read half the first para, skimmed the second. gave up. (and that was before reading the comments on this thread)

We need custy's view here

LOL just IMAGINING her response

Ah, she's already posted

I reckon even our esteemed C. Phillips would blush at the thought of getting paid for such a load of pretentious old flapdoodle.

Women like this make me seethe, actually.