Twins at my age! Thoughts from an older Mum

I can’t stop thinking about smoking. It’s crept up on me and now I imagine if I had a cigarette all strains, stresses, anxiety , exhaustion would ebb away as I look into the horizon and puff away. In this moment I am alone and all is quiet! Well tonight I had some childcare and decide to take L for games on portmeadow with D - rare ‘just-us-three-time’.  It all unfurls not quite to plan, I’d forgotten about a lesson L has and D bumps into a friend who has a boat. D skips off and is found drinking a beer. But I have the bright idea that he could extract himself from his happy moment and bicycle L to his lesson. He agrees on the promise he’ll be back. Anyway suddenly I have a surprise, stolen moment all of my own... it’s the most beautiful warm summers evening and I am with Ds lovely friends sitting in a sort of tented gazebo at the end of their wood panelled Dutch barge looking down the Thames, with glass of red wine in hand. They both smoke. And I just can’t resist my first cig...

I had a pause today, when I stopped and tuned into the heartbeat of the earth, (if that sounds hippy it is!) Or in fact I followed the girls lead and tuned into their close examination and wonder of nature. We were sitting in the garden near the flowerbed and a bumblebee bobbed and buzzed slowly past and landed in a large clump of forget me nots. We all watched it bounce from flower to flower or rather bumble with it’s wonderful furry bottom in the air gathering pollen in to its pollen baskets, forming a bright yellow clump on its hind legs. All the surrounding noise and flurry in my head stopped and we observed the bumblebee and the tiny clear blue flowers for what felt like hours but may have been 10 quiet still minutes. It was extraordinary and made me think how rare it is to really stop and look. And there is such infinite beauty around us and my girls are absorbing all these new sights so openly and wholly. Later that day I discovered forget me nots were Princess Diana’s favou...