Born Whole

I’m no super mum and neither do I pretend to be one. It’s hardly a secret that I am next to useless in the kitchen. Fish fingers and pasta is just about the only thing I can manage without burning the food to a cinder.

Last week my husband asked me to watch the beans he was cooking while he went to fetch the girls from school. By the time they got back the whole house was filled with smoke as I’d completely forgotten about the beans. At least, we discovered that the smoke alarm wasn’t working.

Leave me with a pile of school uniforms to iron and I’ll surely burn a hole in them. I’ll never be a domestic goddess for sure though I am pretty good with the vacuum cleaner.

If you ask my daughters what their parents’ greatest skills are, they answer:

“Daddy is a great chef and Mummy is really good at sleeping.” 

In fairness, I do have other skills, but it’s true I love to sleep. Besides, when you’re middle-aged like I am, it’s no longer cool to say, “look at me, I only slept four hours last night.”

It’s been years since I could manage on less than six hours of sleep without sacrificing my sanity; now I need at least seven hours of shut-eye, or I’ll become intolerably grumpy, if not outright aggressive. Just ask my husband.

Francesca Martinez, one of my comedic heroines, also likes to sleep a lot. She even goes as far as to suggest that if people got more sleep, there would be less trouble in the world.

Margaret Thatcher reportedly slept for only four hours a night when in office. Says Martinez, “maybe that was why her politics were so inhumane – she was just cranky all the time. Perhaps right-wingers would be more empathetic if they spent more of their lives asleep.”

Never mind the burnt dinner then; I sleep in the service of world peace.

Sweet dreams!