DaisyWilson's Blog

A new school term approaches, but I am reluctant to buy into the notion of summer being over. Even though I wasn’t on holiday, it feels like a holiday to let sleeping children lie; to not rouse and rout them out of bed to morosely eat cereal and drag themselves onto school buses. It’s luxurious to not panic on Sunday evening about the school uniform, still unwashed, or to not spend three hours...

On one of the many beautiful blue sky days recently, I stood on our local beach with the four-year-old, surrounded by tourists and locals picnicking, swimming, sunbathing, paddling. It was an idyllic scene; beach umbrellas, toddlers coated in sun lotion and sand, skinny-legged kids jumping over the waves, the knowledge that lifeguards were watching over everyone and that, just beyond the sand...

Parenthood teaches us to experience multiple opposing emotions on a daily basis at dangerously high levels. Take fear; f ear comes into its own once you become a parent. Who else wakes up seven times an hour to check on the breathing of a perfectly healthy human other than a new parent? Who else can spend an hour in intense conversation on the terror of choking hazards, on the danger of the...

Sadly, I wasn’t the lucky 5.5 million euro jackpot winner last Saturday. When I heard there had been a winner I knew it wasn’t me because I never remember to buy a ticket... Probably for the best really, I’m not sure that much money can be good for a person, unless you immediately gave the majority of it away. I wouldn’t mind ten grand though; ten grand would be lovely. My family is not...

The three-year-old was going through an extended period of tantrums, whining, complaining, obstinacy, sulks and any other kind of negative you can think of for a pre-schooler. She refuses to sit in her seat when we get into the car, slipping will’o wisp style into the front seats, always one step ahead of my grasp. When we arrive home she refuses to get out. You can’t see the car from the...

The eldest has been sick for well over a month now. Not constantly sick, but she’ll get a run of three, four, five days of good health and then the cold returns, or a stomach bug, or a fever. We go back and forth to the doctor. We get antibiotics. Every person we meet has a story on their lips, of how the colds and flu this year are worse, are stranger somehow than in other years. Tales are told...

Parents are often much maligned for over-sharing their family life on social media. Some share the highlights - the foreign holiday with glowing tan lines, little darlings playing tea-parties with teddies, the autumn walk through the park. Some go for the warts and all - little Johnny coated in poster paint after an over-enthusiastic bout of finger-painting. I’m guilty of sharing both such type...

Our previous home didn’t have enough of a kitchen for us to sit around the table for proper family meals, so most nights we ended up in front of the telly, dinner on laps or the coffee table, hoovering up our food in a way that felt kind of wrong. I would pause, fork half way to my mouth and survey this family scene: everyone focused on the bright rectangle in front of them, concentrating on...

I was standing in line in Aldi today, surrounded by trolleys of sprouts and potatoes, parsnips and chocolate. A man in front of me gestured to a pack of cellophane wrapped dates and asked his wife in a tone of puzzlement whether she liked dates. You’ve got to have dates at Christmas she said. He nodded quietly as he took in this new information. Dates at Christmas are one of those food...

This weekend, I visited the land of hangover hell. I don’t go there very often anymore, but I was a regular during those distant college years. But hangover hell was different back then. Back then you could ring in sick, nap, lie under a quilt on the sofa all day, nap, eat takeaways, nap, watch daytime TV completely undisturbed, nap a bit more. Hangover hell has changed. No more are the long...