Monday, the girls’ school was running teacher/parent appointments all day, which meant no school. One of Gloworm’s friends was coming to spend the day while her parents went to work, so first thing, just as I was taking Abstract to the station (snow and motorbikes make an unhappy combination), her dad dropped her off.

A little later that morning, my cleaner arrived, which meant I had to chase Gloworm and friend out of the sitting room.  Then our builders arrived to start taking apart our conservatory preparatory to building our extension (I know, exciting, huh?).  Just as they were getting out of their van, the postman brought me a special delivery of my copyedits for Linked.

Then Abstract phoned to say he was coming home because he wasn’t feeling well, so I had to go pick him up from the station.  Then I made lunch for the girls.  Shortly after that, they had to get into their uniforms and we all had to go out for parent/teacher appointments.

In between times, I did try to a) work and b) write, but it didn’t exactly go too well.  Fortunately, Abstract, bless him, was up to taking the girls to their ballet lesson at 5.45pm.  I waited in to deliver Gloworm’s friend to her dad when he came to pick her up, the builders disappeared, and I actually got half an hour of the house to myself.

Later, after dinner and TV-watching with the girls (we’re working through the first season of Ally McBeal – and I have to say Ally’s total emotional dysfunction is irritating me a lot more than it did twelve years ago!), I took the laptop to bed and caught up on my writing.

And that was Monday.  I’m hoping the rest of the week is a little more Immi-working oriented.

Back when my only job was being a full-time parent, I did an awful lot of housewifey stuff.  The girls and I used to do a Halloween party every October half-term holiday, with all homemade food, decorations and games.  Including, at various times, marshmallow ghosts, paper spider racing, a pizza snake, an “evil bunny” cake, the conservatory turned into a spooky cave with a “pin the broom on the witch’s cave picture” game, pumpkin and frog “well done” badges for the games, and one year a papier mache pumpkin pinata that proved so tough it had to be jumped on before it would burst.

I also made granola cereal, homemade “washing gloop” for the laundry, regular supplies of choc-chip and oatmeal and raisin cookies, mince pies, hot cross buns, soup…

I never did a great deal of ironing, to be honest (because who wants to iron when you can read?), but I had a pretty good handle on the cleaning, cooking  and fun child activities side of being the stay-at-home parent.

Since Gloworm went to full-time school and I became a part-time parent (and yes, I know I’m a parent all the time, but I’m no longer doing parenting all the time), since I started work, and even more since I started seriously writing, all that is a bit of a distant memory.

Nowadays I buy pretty much all the stuff I used to make, we have a lot more ready meals, and a weekly cleaner, and Abstract has taken over most of laundry duty.  And every day I put writing and my admin job over most of the houseworky chores.  And it’s good.  I loved being just a parent/housewife when the girls were little, but having them more grown up and independent, and being able to earn a living from basically my own imagination is a wonderful and welcome change.  And it’s nice to be able to buy cereal and laundry detergent rather than needing to make it because the homemade versions are so much cheaper!

However, after a week of entirely cerebral spreadsheets and character arcs and determining whether, if you’re signifying “I did a lot of baking” it’s more correct to say “I baked no end” or “I baked to no end”  (totally debatable and location-dependent, it turns out, much to my surprise, because I would have bet money on it being the former), on occasion it’s really nice to have a day of being that housewifey person again.

This Saturday, after a lie-in and a peaceful coffee-and-croissant breakfast, I sorted out a bit of laundry, then I peeled and par-boiled some potatoes for later, roasting the clean peelings in olive oil to make crisps.  Then I prepared ingredients for gravy and roast vegetables (garlic, beetroot, broccoli), and seasoned a joint of beef, and washed up and tidied the kitchen.  I did escape to my bedroom then, with a cup of tea and two Graze punnets and my laptop, to get a couple of hours’ writing done.  But then, while snow fell outside, I roasted the beef, and poured the dripping into the potatoes to make them all crispy and brown edged, and cooked the vegetables and made the gravy and set the table, and we had a lovely traditional British dinner with the world gone soft and white with snow outside our windows.

And then the girls and I watched Take Me Out and Take Me Out: The Gossip, and it was peaceful and domestic and totally non-cerebral.  And kind of felt like every Saturday should.