Weekends

They should be days of rest.  We should, as a family, be going out to pick blackberries on the common or carrots at the pick your own farm.  We should be able to go out for a walk.  We should have moments of silence when each member of the family is busy at a task of their own imagining.

Mummy and Daddy should have time to talk, to sit together discussing the past week's events, the coming week's plans.

In our family, weekends are not days of rest.  The stress is too great.  A simple errand to the local shop turns into a wrangle of western proportions and ends up in two groups going their separate ways.

Today we surrendered.  The television played host to three pairs of focussed eyes, three mouths open with bated breath.  Two films later, Tom and Kesia at least found that they were able to enjoy each other's company with the help of Mummy's home made playdough.

And tomorrow, Nick is looking forward to another week of demanding work and in some strange way gasping for the peace of the office.  I have a week of driving these children around our part of Surrey in a bid to keep them busy and me sane and safe.  I do have Friday to look forward to - a day to myself, when all three children will be at some playscheme or other.

Next weekend, we have considered splitting up and visiting Nanny and Grampy, but we want to be together - the two of us anyway!  So no doubt we will soldier through.

I am looking for a comfortable formula with which to end, but life is not that comfortable or simple, and does not respond well to formulae.

We merely soldier on.