Other things I’ll miss now she has started school..

Credit: woman in suspiciously large Jackie-O Shades

1. Being late for work. Why be on time when spending your time fretting over how you’re never on time with a panic befitting the fear that some mythical meteor is about to crash land on earth – right on our house – is always preferable to actually being on time.
2. Stirring the various gangs of livestock out of their oblivious chewing with a predictable beep of the horn. Gets them and her every time.
3. All the little kids at her child-minder’s stampeding and shuffling towards the glass doors in various configurations of all fours like a remake of the closing credits from The Benny Hill Show.
4. Choosing the person to preside over her daily care after a careful selection process involving the ancient scientific method of instinct and instinct. Being dispossessed of this power is enough to send your average control freak over the edge.
5. All of us calling the designated daily carer-in-chief by her first name. The anachronistic but inescapable beginnings of insidious human hierarchies begins.
6. Keeping interaction with other parents to a sanity-maintenance minimum. I would rather chew my own cheek off to the rhythm of Enya’s Orinoco Flow than join the Parents Com-mit-tay. But see number four for odds of that not happening.

What did you just call me? That’ll be Mizz Neurotic to you.

(Not pictured: Audrey Griffin fulminating round the next corner)

“I love you, Bee. I’m trying. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.”

Bernadette Fox to her daughter during a car-trip while they listen to, and discuss, Abbey Road by The Beatles in Where’d You Go, Bernadette

I was already disarmed by the first step on to the classic speckled floor. Add the whiff of industrial bleach/alarm bell combo, and enough nasty flashbacks are triggered to complete the Pavlovian journey back to my ten year old self. Any moment now, I’ll avoid collision with a Reservoir Dog line-up of nuns sweeping the corridors. There’s not a sound, yet the din of rhythmic tables repetition swirls up and ricochets off the religious iconography lining the walls of my memory as I keep to the right. Or should that be the left?

“CUT”

My mind’s director is on her feet, whipping off her earphones and pulling her baseball cap back down after wiping her brow in defeat. She looks a bit like Sigourney Weaver. Fuck me, it is her!

“What is WRONG with you? [Jesus, she’s so American in real life].This isn’t even your school for Chrissake. You left that 30 years ago, remember? Picture the scene: you’ve come here for a work meeting with a bunch of banal civil servants who wear power suits and gesticulate weirdly about going forward. How hard can it be? [You’ve no fucking idea] Right, let’s try again.”

This is probably not a good time to open up about her being my first and lasting girl crush.

“ACTION.”

Three more takes and I make it to the meeting reasonably psychologically scathed. No tiny chairs to accommodate a quarter of my arse however. Thank Christ for being spared that stripping of dignity. Fear not though, they show up later in the evening.

It’s the first of two school visits that fall on what has come to be known as Freaky Friday (Was Sigourney in that show? Meryl?). The first is for work purposes with a bunch of grown-ups who end up acting like children; the other for children who pretend to be grown-ups, out-performing the real grown-ups three to one. They’re not mature enough to have developed passive aggression or the ability to take umbrage at anything from which umbrage can be taken, and from anything from which it cannot. Naturally, I’m torn between both camps, feeling like a tool. Story of my life.

I flee the first and meet the rest of the cast of the second before taking a moment to run through my lines while sucking on a few smokes starring my pen.

My concentration is interrupted by the snap of the board.

“ACTION”

Kneeling down to meet her at eye-level, I go in for the measured performance. Maybe more Jo in Fair City than Robin Williams in Good Will Hunting, y’know.. subtle…

“Listen, love, just go along with it like you’re really enjoying it. And don’t question the overly formal way they address each other. It’s a bit weird alright. Like much of grown-up life for which you’re now in training. Sure, they’re doing an important job up there on the cross and critical for your future; it means you’ll learn to read all the socialist pamphlet archives eventually. And whatever you do, give them the answers they want to hear, most of the time. But for God’s sake don’t set off the fire extinguisher, and don’t ever throw wet balls of toilet paper up onto the ceiling, or mitch. Or get caught mitching. And beware the head girls because they’re the ones most likely to conform and one day you’ll be eye-balling one of them from across the table, possibly on a seat with the capacity to accommodate a quarter of your arse, wondering where you know her from as you introduce your own child to her class. Grab all opportunities to learn and think critically, and don’t ever be afraid to form your own opinion, and if she has a problem with that, you just come to me..”

“CUT CUT CUT”

Was it the Cork accent? Not authentic enough? Come on Sigourney, that was a tour de force performance surely.

“She’s only three years old. It’s an induction to pre-school”

“Yeah, she’s like..three years old”

But this is all alien to me, Sigourney.

“That’s not very funny”

“Yeah, that’s like..not very funny”

I turn to her Da. Seriously, must you insist on lick-arsing all my guests?

Pirouetting on my heel, I take a moment to re-group by the sandpit and watch her join the others to feed fake plastic babies.

Sigourney remembered where she knew her daughter’s teacher from

At seventeen, my mother knew all about my lesbian love affair. At the same time, she feared for what my burgeoning dependency on aerosol can sniffing would lead to, an anxiety she disclosed to me when I was 27. Only, I wasn’t having such an affair, and the cloud formation in my room was a consequence of struggling to maintain an anti-gravity hair do. I doubt she’ll ever believe me.

I’ve never been one to impale myself on too many certainties, but more than once a week, I’ve witheringly declared that family members are the folk who know me least. They would interpret this as sheer denial; more evidence of me wilfully rejecting my shortcomings. All the better if I’m exhibiting ‘typical’ hot-headedness while making the declaration. They’re so predictable. Insert eye-roll here etc.

Of course, they would be half right; in the way my Mother was half right.

I wasn’t having it off with my mate. We were just doing our homework together. Not really. We were endlessly on our backs practising smoke-rings, taking in it turns to change the record. At three years older, she was a grand canyon of a leap ahead in coolness and maturity, so I out-sourced much of my cred to her along with my determination to be an individual by going along with whatever it was she wanted to do. Less sexual frisson than the thrill of circulating with the older boys and getting a premature swagger on. Whatever it was I was radiating, my Mother’s instincts slightly lost the run of themselves.

And that’s how our relationship has trundled along ever since. Raging instincts in combat with half-insights and quarter confessions between which truths fall unnoticed only by hindsight, if ever at all. A woman sure of herself locking hormones with one who is not.

Mother knows her child best. That sounds like an awful lot of pressure to me. And a bit of a supernatural feat, if any can manage it. Grandparents, too, are certain about our little one’s personality if the wonky parallels drawn between this cousin and that uncle are anything to arch a brow at. Aunties, too. Soon it’ll be teachers defining her with pat descriptions while instructing us on the ways and whims of her being.

She’s brave. She’s shy. She’s fearless. She’s old-fashioned (spot the vernacular relic). She loves company. She’s happy on her own. She’s a thinker. She’s a dreamer. She’s quick. She’s taking it all in. She’s a bleedin’ heart liberal. She’s Mensa material. (I just made that up). She’s voting Yes. Etc. etc.

She sounds suspiciously like a moody cretin best avoided but I listen on in bemused detachment without any definitive contribution to offer.

For I don’t really know what she is. She seems as changeable and contradictory as the rest of us. Lately, I’ve been outsourcing decisions on her weekend meals to her child-minder. What does she like best? Should I give her some scrambled egg along with her seemingly sensitive side? Or is that not a sensitive side but just a phase that would prefer mashed potatoes d’ya think? She’ll eat anything, she replies.

No she won’t. She really doesn’t like ice-cream, especially if you give it to her when she’s wondering why a cartoon character is acting sad. She’ll have lost interest in everything else until she finds out the reason why. That much I know.

It’s a start that has no ending. Sort of like this post.

Not for the first time I pulled away from our one’s childminder’s, relieved she doesn’t require a degree to do what she does so brilliantly. Not for the first time I handed her cash, struggling to square the sums with the sum total of responsibilities, energy and capabilities involved in her job. Not for the first time do I join the chorus of my peers demanding more imaginative, equitable and accessible childcare support policies that account for the diversity of family support needs and the right to corresponding choices.

Not for the last time will I wince when I hear care of those two and under couched in the narrative of ‘early years education’. Not for the last time will I feel slightly nauseous at the rise of the persistent framing of this stage of life within the notion of a formalised educational framework. Not for the last time will I head-scratchingly despair at the subtle expansion of the uniformity of this language to legitimise this pathway as the only available route to validating the skills of childcare workers; or the panacea for inadequate recompense from the state for their contribution to the economy and future lives of our youngest citizens.

Not for the sake of politeness do I show a keen interest in the continuing professional training our childminder is required to undertake to keep pace with good practice and the evolution of standardised care of children. Or the on-going regulations she is subject to. These are critical. Not for the want of devaluing her brilliance do I know it unlikely that she would have been able to access third level education were it a requirement when starting out. Or in the future. Not for the want of deliberately failing to recognise the value of education do I hope this gallop towards third level childcare courses slows down. And catches itself on.

Not for the want of being unsupportive of others choices do I bristle when I hear soundbite after soundbite about the ‘need’ for childcare to be treated exactly like education. Not with any grand teaching insights am I unwavering in my belief that there is surely a cocktail of ways of regulating and elevating early years care in the hierarchy of valuable work without it being subsumed into mainstream education. Our six-month old didn’t need a curriculum, if she enjoyed one by a less formal name. Same when she was a year. And eighteen months. She’ll be in it long enough. Some would say unfortunately. Including me.

Not for the belief that I think I’m right do I feel calls for investment into services only is a slippery slope towards shutting down the variety of childcare options that the diversity of families rely on. Not through any certainty that their voices are less valid do I wish for the validity and legitimacy of all choices to be taken on board and safeguarded.

Not, if we were never to see her again after our one moves on, will we be anything but grateful for the love, care, capability, enthusiasm, intuition, warmth, and empathy our childminder had for her while in her care. Our choice was based mostly on chemistry, backed up by recommendation. Letters after her name would never confer any of these talents on her, and certainly won’t guarantee better terms and conditions, as workers in various other caring and community sectors who require them can attest. And as the latter unfortunately know all too well – there is no utopia in sight where jobs are guaranteed on the basis of the assumed worthiness of the work, and the best learning and skills don’t come from a lecture theatre only. Those who enter it exclusively for purposes of compensation from changing family circumstances, or the need to diversify to fit with family circumstances, are in for this rude awakening.

..on the Pope’s progressive approach to child discipline.

Under controlled circumstances, I imagine it’s entirely possible to raise a child without ever smacking. From what I can see, the majority of parents and guardians in my tribe and beyond are determined to pursue this way of family life. But I’m not sure everyone manages it as efficiently as they would claim. It’s a sound philosophy, if you can apply it. I would like to think we will achieve it.

The reactionary smack on the part of the frightened/exasperated parent is always wrong, but sometimes extremely difficult to control; so long as that reaction is not foul then it’s entirely forgivable. I would hope the Mexican wave of moral outrage won’t drown out these quandaries surrounding parental discipline. After all, the majority of parents currently enraged are in pursuit of support for their peers in their child-rearing role overall.

Closer to home, I would hate to think of my Mother feeling guilty for the odd slap that was more of a reflex action. She needn’t feel guilty about them; she probably saved me from more serious harm in those incidences. Sometimes they were unavoidable. That said, a child should always be apologised to regardless of the circumstances. It’s when that reactionary smack or aggressive reaction is violent, systematic, and a form of discipline, that it becomes obscene and grossly wrong; a critical issue about the parent’s lack of self-control.

We will have to learn to make judgements on when to apply the reasoned let’s-talk-it-out approach; when that is futile, and how to balance keeping the child safe from danger in an instant with managing the boundaries she’ll naturally attempt to push. The odd lapse in judgement seems inevitable somehow.

If nothing else, Mr Red Socks over in Rome has succeeded in raising discussions on child abuse, which is always a good thing. We have come a long way in advancing our understanding of child psychology and the cyclical nature of violence. It is the combined experience of the child, parent/guardian and guidelines that counts, and it is from these controversies that the sharing of common challenges that lie beneath the aspiration of a smack-free home should be possible. That said, there’s always a danger of this opportunity being eclipsed by the tip of the scales of anger. To obscure the difficulties of parental self-management and discipline would be a pity.

I’m often struck by the differentiation made between physical and verbal punishment. The differences are easily understood, but to a child, being roared at by an adult must be a terrifying experience; one in which their esteem and confidence takes an almighty bruising. For the older child, it becomes a subtle but insidious and crushing weapon of ridicule. I was smacked by one teacher in primary school, but like many of my peers, I met a number in both primary and secondary level who were a bunch of bad tempered, short-fused fuckers who should never have been allowed to work with young people. If I met one of them now, I’d probably be tempted to give them a serious mouthful. They taught me well. There are children and young people caught in verbal storms in homes and schools everywhere; yet a hand will never be raised to them.

Let’s wag the finger surely. Wag it all around.

Looking out at the road rushing under my wheels (name that tune) last week, random flashbacks of scenes from Boyhood continued to pop up in my head like the last surviving bubbles in a dead drink.

Studying my teenage nephew during a visit home, I tried conjuring up early versions of him but couldn’t replace his face with anything other than the present tense. His voice in the key of deepening monosyllabic disgruntlement; his side profile a shadow of his Dad’s.

In the adjoining room, a montage of family photos captures him grinning as a boy blowing out various configurations of birthday candles. His growth is almost imperceptible with each passing year until it becomes a challenge to reconcile the young person towering over his grandparents with the toddler stepping out from his tractor; one not unlike our own with their shared severe fringes and the absence of self-consciousness.

As impossible as it is to interact with him as anything other than the young adult he is, the inevitability of our little one eventually crossing that threshold into burgeoning independence is an unimaginable given. In the way it’s difficult to recall her as a baby; guesses at sketches of her future-self are fleeting sleet showers that never lie long enough.

Back then, what mattered most was converting the kitchen into a science lab for the sterilisation of various feeding paraphernalia with all the diligence of surgical staff scrubbing in. The scrupulousness extended to the stairs by taking ten minutes to climb them to avoid detonating creaks that risked waking her up as she slept through the neighbour’s pneumatic drilling; or berating each other for slipping out of whispering as she slept with the TV on.

I can’t remember if my nephew was breastfed; or if his mother wore him on her. Baby-led weaning was a term not yet invented despite it describing a practice around forever. I know his mother was entitled to three months state maternity pay only, so some things were different. No doubt calculators were brought into late-night discussions on childcare options to determine bottom lines. That for every there-and-then, there was a next-short-while, and a long-haul to be weighed up and balanced.

One of the many triumphs of Boyhood is its resistance to clichéd cinematic drama. Not a whole lot happens other than the spinning of family life on the axis of time that rushes under the wheels at a terrifying rate that goes unnoticed until it’s too late to notice. A series of moments revealing its members trying on the best version of themselves in their efforts to find one that fits. A string of here-and-nows, and as many long-hauls that suddenly show up as next short-whiles. The essence of life, essentially.

Our here-and-now is much like any other family from a similar demographic contending with modern life with all its attendant worries and woes that don’t need repeating here.  It’s invested with the same sense of urgency and importance every waking phase of life radiates when you’re in it. For now, there is a lot of early year parenting going down.  The merits of the various local pre-schools are currently occupying our chin-strokes. There will come a time when none of it will matter as it does now, if it ever will to the extent we fear, or should fear. But it seems important right now.

Looking around, empathy is the grown-up version of everyone holding hands as they strive to keep the show on the road.  Relief ripples out when an exasperated parent braves the letter page in the national press to say it like it is, and occasionally a phrase will take on a life of its own to become a sound-bite that’s meant as short-hand for the commonly understood experience and corresponding crusade for fairness.

“Raised in childcare” has been doing the rounds lately. It has been circling my head, too. For all the sympathy I have for those who agonise over childcare, and the frustrations I relate to concerning the balancing act of work and child-rearing, I’m personally relieved to report that the full-time carers of our child are not raising her.

They are the same exploited, over-worked, underpaid, women enabling many families to just about break even. The carefully selected cherished minders whose responsibilities far exceed the dismal recognition and acknowledgement they receive by the state or in their wage-slip. The women depended on for their undervalued love of children and integrity in maintaining their care and well-being for a sizeable chunk of pre-school life before the baton is passed on to the state.

State educators will no more raise our child than her child-minder before them. Their collective responsibilities and potential impact are immense, but her fundamental sense of worth, her early values, norms, attitudes, rights, responsibilities, and sense of self, will be shaped predominantly by her home environment, as only they can be.  Educators and child psychologists are unanimous in recognising this.

The disappointment many parents feel at how family life has panned out next to their expectations is recognisable. The gnawing sense of feeling undermined by the state and the market place, and the inability to direct family life according to a reasonable yet dearly-held script is understood by many. And of course, the concern is played out against the importance of the first five years of a child’s life broadcast on loop as though it is the beginning and end of child-rearing.

When the time comes for us to look back through all the birthday candles hopefully extinguished by our one, it will not be the child-minders or teachers we’ll be directing the hardest questions about her rearing to.

Raising a child as we both understand it: a marathon task involving a long haul battle with ourselves to maintain perspective in the here-and-now. A series of moments whizzing by.

1. Annabel Karmel is a chancer. This can take a while to figure out. And it’s most likely not her real name either, which is actually Mabel Sidebottom. You’re secretly impressed with her entrepreneurial spirit and set about depleting your remaining brain-cells in an attempt to identify a gap in the market. The best you can come up with is The Rock-A-Bye Baby™. An electronic rocking frame type thingiemejig for a Moses basket to slot into. Think walking exercise machine only smaller. We’re just at the prototype stage. Catch me on The Apprentice…

2. You wonder if all children’s TV presenters are on cocaine. Especially that Katy Ashworth. You fight the urge to want to punch her and eventually change channel to suppress your violet tendencies.

3. A great many Parents talk to each other in a virulent strain of English, which has its roots in regular English, but with lots of exclamation marks attached. Sometimes you find yourself doing the same and are ashamed afterwards.

4. Homeschooling doesn’t seem that ludicrous an idea after all.

5. Early onset educationalism (an irrational fear of mainstream education) can begin as early as when the child is one year old. This includes dreading the inevitable school-gate grimaces and small-talk, and knowing in your heart your child’s teacher doesn’t ‘get’ her/him. And imagining the teacher as a dodgy photo-fit of all the teachers you despised from your own school-days combined with the hair-styles of all the head girls, who probably went on to become teachers.

6. The above may lead you to remember your embarrassing crush on your former Geography teacher and to blush at the evidence that confirms she probably had a fair idea. This may or may not detonate other unresolved mysteries surrounding former crushes. But you know he/she/they knew full well. This kills you but reminds you that you are human. And relieved they all live hundreds of miles away.

7. There is a third party that comes between you and your partner. This is a deadly entity that is apparently inescapable and present at all times whether you recognise it or not: Mammy Guilt. “Like all working mothers” is probably the most generalised statement uttered in these territories. Rather than become exasperated, it’s best to exploit it by giving yourself permission to moan about work more than your partner. And despair aloud about how he is spared it along with PMS, sagging breasts, and the tyranny of having to select coordinated clothes for the child in the mornings.

8. Soft play centre. I wish I’d thought of that first. Look at the fortune I’d be making.

9. The first time you respond to your child’s query of “What are you doing, Mummy?” with “Coping with the world of parenting”, it’s probably time to leave the soft play centre and not return for at least a month.

9. One parenting website is pretty much the same as any other. The emphasis is all on the ‘practical’ advice. Great. What can parents do to tackle discrimination in education against those who are not baptised, for example? Ah now, that’s a bit too practical to be talking about….

10. A parenting site. Why didn’t I think of that. Think of the fortune I’d be making now.

11. Ah now, being a parent of one child isn’t really being a parent at all now, is it?  Sure look how easy it is, eh? Eh?

12. As an older parent of one child, you start to think school won’t be too bad. There’s a chance you’ll meet other parents with children the same age as yours, even if it is their 55th child. But hey, at least they might remember what an LP was. And get your woeful Kenny Everett impersonation.

13. Everyone’s just doing their best.

14. ‘Doing our best’ is also a euphemism for ‘I don’t want to talk about parenting right now’.

15. Having a ‘Baby on Board’ sign on the car window automatically gives other drivers the right to make a negative value judgement on the driver. It’s harsh, but fair.

16. Ella’s food pouches. Why didn’t I think of that?

1. What to Suspect When You’re Expecting by Heidi E. Fuckoff & Sharon Nasalhair

My pregnancy bible and top of the best-seller list for another year. It’s broken into seven fairly substantial parts including:

First things first:
This contains all things pre-conceptual and preparation for both mums and dads. For example, did you know how close you were to getting knocked up for all those months before intentionally applying yourself to the task? Back when you were winging it with counting backwards from your last period and using the fingers on one hand to estimate your next before concluding “ah shure I’m grand for another few days yet”. Wrong. You had an eighty per cent chance of getting pregnant 45 days before ovulation, with or without dangling your legs in the air. As suspected, the dangling legs advice is designed to take the bad look off knocking back the Brazil nuts with gusto and leaving Fair City to watch on RTE +1 in order to maximise your chances this month with a sprint upstairs for a quickie. ‘Sprint’ might be an exaggeration. It’s also OK to have a pee two minutes after doing the deed. That’s ten minutes less leg dangling. There’s nothing in it about whether blokes notice your cellulite as much as you suspect but your first hunch is probably right.

Nine months and counting:
This is a riveting section containing month by month and week by week descriptions of the baby’s growth and progress. It charts what type and size of dessert it is each week starting with a hundredth and thousandth, and culminating with an entire vienetta. A comforting insight for those of us who are no strangers to what it feels like to be carrying around one of those in our tummies. It contains details on labour and childbirth with an advisory warning to read after giving birth when the reader will enjoy it more. Particularly the paragraph about being offered a paracetamol.

For Dads:
Who? Sometimes they get forgotten about but thankfully this book acknowledges the important role played by the dad, which is to remain in blissful ignorance about the continued downplaying and denial of his input in child-rearing in all ensuing discussions after the baby arrives. Unless he is a Stay-At-Home-Dad. This entitles him to the delusion that his opinion is on a par with those of mothers. And some of them might even fancy him, if he is one of those who interacts with his kids at the playground as opposed to hiding in the corner behind a paper. Or better still – the car.

2. No Lego by Naomi Clown

Why can’t we just leave our children alone?

If you’ve ever wondered why so many of today’s children are unhappy, stressed and selfish, under-achievers striving to over-achieve, then the answers and the remedy are to be found in this searing read. A tour de force for the modern parent.

Naomi Clown wants us to leave our kids be, to give them the space and time to grow into self-reliant, confident, inquisitive, happy and free people. Full of practical tips of what to do and (more importantly) what not to do, Naomi will not only help your kids be happier, but also help you, their parents, live happier and stress-free lives. By simply removing all the toys, gimmicks and gadgets from your home, and replacing them with an empty box of Cornflakes and a stick. Puts the imagination back into childhood.

What the critics said:

“The sort of book that will start a craze among parents not quite convinced they’re doing the right thing but everyone else is doing it so why shouldn’t they?”  –  Jonathan Wiseman, author of ‘Parenting: A Manufacturer’s Paradise’

“A McGyver manual for the under 5s” – Mr. T

“A world of pure imagination” – Willy Wonka

2. Harry’s Potty and the Chamber of Secretions by J.K. Rolling In It

Parenting is not wholly reliant on the straight-up manual format for guidance. Fiction has proven to be effective in portraying the trials and tribulations of family life revealing as it does some keenly felt insights for the adult reader of “young adult fiction”.

J K Rolling In It’s sequel to Harry’s Potty and the Philosopher’s Stone carries on where the original left off. Harry is returning to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry after the summer holidays and, right from the start, things are not straightforward.

Unable to board the Hogwarts express, Harry and his friends break all the rules and make their way to the school in his magical flying potty. From this point on, incredible events happen to Harry and his friends. Harry hears evil voices and someone, or something is attacking the pupils. Can Harry get to the bottom of the mystery before it’s too late or will he have to change first after wetting the bed yet again?

As with its predecessor, Harry’s Potty And the Chamber of Secretions is a highly readable and imaginative adventure story with real, fallible, characters, plenty of humour and, of course, loads of magic and bed-wetting.

“This is a triumph in bridging the gap between the classes. Toffs bed wet just like skanger children” The Daily Mail

“I have yet to meet a parent who hasn’t pretended to enjoy it” – Editor, Parenting Monthly

“Full of useful insights on the dangers and impact of prematurely introducing magic and supernatural powers to a child’s life”, David Coalman, Child & Family Psychologist

How not to react to a child wetting the bed

4.  Watermelons by Marian Keen

“Why is she crying again?”

“I dunno. Stephen Fry came on the television and she just started bawling”

Amy Hooverman is fresh home from hospital with her newborn baby . All she wants to do is stay in bed, eat pot noodles and watch The Real Housewives of Killiney Hill, but her husband Ryan O’Bisto has to leave shortly to make an advert for a national financial institution. Ryan wants to become a member of a select group of media elite after retiring from professional sport. To make matters worse, Amy, herself a model/actress/author/scientist/astrophysicist/aeronautical engineer, is booked to record an advert for an iconic jewellery brand in half an hour. She practices walking in dreamy slow motion like she’s just eaten an entire vienetta and smiling inanely in the mirror but her breasts are killing her. With no-one to mind the baby, she erupts into tears. Suddenly, the door-bell rings. Like a vision of amazonian greatness and platinum haired wonder, in steps her Fairy God Mother… Marian O’Callaghan.

This hilarious new novel is a must-read for the first-time mother condemned to the sofa and labouring under the misapprehension that she is alone. Even the rich and famous face the same classic new parent dilemmas: Should I answer the door or pretend not to be in? Who can I get to bring me more cheese? What will I watch till Frasier starts?

Author’s Disclaimer: All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

5. A Tale of Two Titties by Charles Chickens

“I decided to talk to women about their breasts, to do breast interviews, to finally let them tell their own story … At first the women were reluctant to talk. They were a little shy. But once they got going, you couldn’t stop them. Women secretly love to talk about their breasts. They get very excited, mainly because no one’s ever asked them if they could interview their breasts before.” Charles Chickens

A poignant and hilarious tour of the final frontier, the ultimate judged zones, A Tale of Two Titties is a celebration of female mammary glands in all their complexity and simplicity. Hailed as the bible for a new generation of  breastfeeding women, it has been performed in cities and colleges throughout the world, and has inspired a dynamic grassroots movement – Double D Day – to stop prejudice and prudishness when it comes to breasts. Witty and irreverent, compassionate and wise, Charles Chickens award-winning masterpiece gives voice to real women’s deepest fantasies and fears, guaranteeing that no one who reads it will ever look at a woman’s breasts, or think of breastfeeding, in quite the same way again.

Extract:

“If your breasts could speak, what would they say?”

“I hate it she sleeps on her front” – Breasts of a breastfeeding mother

“I need some scaffolding. Quick” – Breasts of a 42 year-old mother of one (ahem)

“I’ve been estranged from the other one for years. There’s no going back. Unless she wears a bra” – An anonymous left breast

Customers who bought this also bought The Anal Monologues