A long, long time ago in exactly the same galaxy, country, city and indeed London borough as now, there lived a girl. This girl was bored with her job which had become overly stressful and which was, quite frankly, getting her down a bit. She decided it was time to see the world. Again. (Because she is a spoilt brat and had already been around the world once before. But not that spoilt because she did fund it all herself actually. Which reminds her that she still needs to get round to getting the money back for the mis-sold payment protection insurance. But that is another (rather boring) story.)

And so throwing caution and PPI payments to the wind, she gaily pootled her way around various faraway lands, missing most of her flights, spending all of her money and while doing so sent silly messages home to her friends and family. In response, these friends and family told her that she had a bit of a knack for the silly message and urged her to do more writing. Not wanting to rush into things, however, and because she is an expert in putting things off, she thought about it briefly and then went back to her boring office job for another five years.

At this point she was made redundant and again had time on her hands to reflect. She took part in an elaborate career assessment program paid for out of guilt by her redundancy-making company and came to the conclusion that yes, indeed she did want to think about moving on, but was still not exactly sure where she wanted to move to. Again people said to her that she had a knack for the silly message and should branch out beyond the realms of boring IT. Other people said encouragingly that she could become the new Kate Adey, or Julia doo-da hiking person or Rachel doo-da gardening type (pretty much any (female) BBC presenter, in fact), or what about a speciality ‘Dear John’ break-up letter writer (based on a particularly good one penned for a previous disastrous relationship), a speech writer, a teacher, a hat maker, in fact ANYTHING other than your boring IT office job Kate, for God’s sake what are you thinking?!?…

Still not wanting to be too rash, however, and just to make absolutely sure that it really truly wasn’t her thing, she decided to give IT one more chance. So in a terrifyingly ambitious side shuffle from database computer shit to website computer shit she started another boring IT office job and stayed there for a good solid three years. During this time, her extra-curricular activities centred themselves around getting married and having twin children (watch this space and that space for more details on those ludicrous adventures) but then, during her long, drawn-out maternity leave that niggly ‘what-if’ feeling came back to the fore. And so it is that ten years after the first person first told her that she had a bit of a knack for the silly message, she decided to make writing that silly message her main occupation¹.

Which brings us to now. We are here. We are doing it. We are mothers who are hovering close to insanity! Well I am. But I’m rather hoping that there are other people out there – mothers or no – who feel the same way too. Otherwise I’m just someone who is openly admitting a bunch of rather deranged and at times embarrassing details about my life that no-one else in the entire world can relate to. Oh well, why not?