flossing the cat

Yesterday afternoon, I walked with my toddler and four-year-old son to the school. We walked in single file in the deliciously cool shadows of some cypress trees. My toddler was asleep in the buggy, fiercely clutching a dandelion clock, the spoils from an earlier battle with her brother. My son was wearing his beloved blue snowboots, from which he won’t be parted, in spite of the heat.    ‘Children get very tired walking”, he said. “Bumblebees get tired too, don’t they?” I passed him his new red water bottle. He drank with both hands clasped seriously around the bottle, his eyes closed, and although we were late for school, everything was absolutely perfect. Perfect, that is, until the driver of a massive fuck-off Eddie Stobart Heavy Goods Vehicle – which was already driving too close to the kerb – beeped his horn TWICE, long and hard. “Nigel, mate”, he shouted, waving to a guy on the other side of the street.  He beeped it again, this time for longer. The...

Everyone knows that the world is divided into two kinds of people: Larks and Owls. Larks love the mornings. Every morning, at the ass crack of dawn, they pop out of bed like a bunch of smiley creepy jack-in-the-boxes, before going for a run around the village, or composing entire symphonies, or eating thousands of goji berries, or singing really chipper hymns of praise to the Sun Goddess, or whatever. Unlike me, larks don’t wake up every morning to a spectacular shit-pile of negative thoughts, which in my case, looks something like this:     At least when I’m in a nursing home I won’t have to do THIS   I’m so tired I must have got M.E.   Would it be possible or practical to install an oxygen cylinder in the bedroom?   If I don’t get up NOW, or at the very latest before the alarm clock says 7:28, something awful will happen.   I could probably gain an extra half hour’s sleep if I home educated.    I wish I was three. ...