Vogue’s 73 questions posed to celebrities had completely passed me by, until Charlie at Mess and Merlot, blogged her answers in a post and tagged me. Most people who have been tagged have vlogged their answers. I am going to save you all from having to endure me on screen and simply write them down. So here they are:

I’ve read a couple of posts recently from mums who are expressing a certain guilt at feeling bored when they are with their little ones. No shit? I was bored out of my bloody mind half the time. I’ll say the usual mummy disclaimer because we all feel we have to: I loved my babies and toddlers to bits – unconditionally all the time, conditionally some of the time, but by Christ the monotony fucked with my mind.

I was never the craft type. Painting was only ever carried out at grandparents’ houses and playgroups. If Pinterest had of been around when my kids were little, I would have had, ‘failure’ tattooed to my forehead. Yet still, because I had 4 kids under the age of 5, other mums would refer to me as: the earth mother.

Now, I’m not entirely sure what they meant by this. Perhaps that my girls constantly looked as if they needed a good scrub. However, I always thought to myself: I know that I am not an earth mother because although I feel like I’ve got a handle on things some of the time, I get bored. I don’t want to get down on my sodding knees and push a tractor around a plastic farm. I cannot stand the thought of feeding an ugly, plastic baby a bottle and I fall asleep reading them their bedtime stories: it’s so bloody boring!

And it wasn’t just the kids who I found boring – I came across a fair few mums who bored the crap out of me too. Please don’t judge me for saying it – you’ve all thought it. You know, the sort you get stuck with at the toddler group, who bangs on about how advanced her 3 month old is. There’s only so many times you can hear, “he’s already saying ‘Kumon'”, before you want to punch her. You’re desperately looking for a reason to escape, until finally you are so bored you shout: ‘Oh God! She’s just bitten another child’ and rush off to be with your rather bemused 3 year old, who was happily making a plastic cup of tea in the kitchen.

Earth mother I most certainly wasn’t. Bored I most certainly often was. So as I read these posts from these wonderful mothers, who are scared shitless of admitting that they occasionally find life with a 3 year old boring, I thought about how stressful being bored is. Even now when I am bored, I feel stressed.

Boredom is basically the result of a failed effort to engage with our surroundings and the result of this is anxiety. It’s fine if you can use those moments of boredom to daydream and think creatively, but the problem with having a toddler is that there is an incessant invasion of your head space. So you get out your phone as a signal that mummy is not available, so go and play with your sister for 2 minutes – that is why we had her – and then you get some grumpy old fart telling you what a shit parent you are. Unfortunately, the truth is that tablets and smart phones are preventing all of us from getting bored, but they are also curbing our thoughts and potential great ideas, as are our children.

So next time your kids whine at you those wonderful words: I’m bored! Just scream back at them: yeah, well so am I!

When I got shortlisted for the Mumsnet Blogging Awards, I was so excited. The thing that excited me the most was that it was down to the public vote. It meant that people were actually reading my blogs and, even more shockingly, enjoying them enough to vote for me. I love writing, but what I really love, is that other people love my writing. You lay yourself bare, press ‘publish’ and wait. You wait for the likes and the loves and the comments – not because you are a sad individual who has nothing better to do, but because it makes it all worth while.

Then it happened again: I got down to the final 3 and once more because of the public vote. This time, as well as feeling euphoric, I felt validated. Somehow, it made me feel that I really could call myself a blogger and it justified the time that I spend on it. I still don’t have a clue about SEO. I haven’t mastered Pinterest. I struggle with widgets and don’t really understand what it means to self host. I suppose that I blog in a fog. The writing is the clarity, the rest is shrouded in mist.

I’ve become hooked on Strictly Come Dancing and as I was watching on Sunday night it struck me that, despite loving the show, it had never crossed my mind to vote. Who does vote on these shows? Apart from family and friends, who actually bothers to vote? Voting is an interesting and faceless process. I am so incredibly grateful to everyone who voted for me. People who I have never met, but who enjoy what I write. Every week the dancers on Strictly say that they are enjoying being a part of the show and they do not want their time to end. I am really enjoying blogging and as long as people are continuing to like what I write, regardless of what the judge decides on 12th November, I don’t want my writing to end.

As I was pushing the beast that is my hoover, back and forth across a ruined carpet this morning, hoping for a miracle, I thought about how the sound that it emanates is not dissimilar to the sounds I make in my head rather a lot of the time. It growls very loudly and then every now and again, when I require it to accelerate, it almost screams at me and then it settles down again into a complaining whir.

I’m quite sure that all parents make these sounds in their heads. This particular model of hoover is certainly not top of the range. We couldn’t afford the upright Dyson that I was drooling over on Amazon, so we went for one that said it picked up pet hair and cost 70 quid. Still a lot for a hoover, I thought, but seemingly in the hoover world the model we chose was just very average. I reckon that upright Dyson that costs about £250, is the equivalent of those mummies who wear suede, stiletto boots on the school run and have groomed eyebrows. I expect it purrs, just as I imagine they do, as they talk about their child’s harp lesson with a friend, over a soy latte. Meanwhile, me and most other parents run around endlessly, not knowing their arse from their elbow a lot of the time. Groaning and complaining under the sheer effort of life. Trying to do the same jobs over and over again, backwards and forwards we go, picking up shit, whilst another constant supply of it builds up behind us.

Don’t get me wrong, I, like you I am sure, enjoy life. I have no wish to purr. I am quite happy wearing a trackie or jeans and having the odd wayward eyebrow hair. I love being busy and having a noisy, crazy family. However, every now and then things just get a little too much and in my head, just like my Hoover, I begin to scream. At which point I just want to take my foot off the pedal, unplug and breathe in the peace.

A few years ago I drooled over the thought of owning a posh washing machine. An expensive one with integrated dryer and settings that claimed to do things I would never have dreamed possible. Anti-crease buttons that meant I would never have to iron again. Instead, I ended up with the cheapest model. The model that moved half way across the kitchen on the spin cycle. The model that had the neighbours banging on the adjoining wall and begging for mercy, as the overloaded barrel heaved clothes around during yet another overly ambitious load. One day when my then husband was away on a business trip, I sat on the washing machine at the height of its frenzy, in an attempt to lessen its movement. The sensation that I encountered was so pleasant, so, let’s say, orgasmic, that it made me think. It made me realise, that for all its noise and protesting, there was happiness to be had and this, I feel, as I heave my screeching hoover around the room, is certainly a metaphor for life.

You know when you see something and you are truly shocked, angered, incredulous and frustrated, all in equal measure? There’s a lot of adjectives there – what could have possibly set me off? I was on my way back from teaching a class of 7, 4 year old girls how to be strong and empowered against the grumpy Taekwon-do crocodile. We were working on their yellow star life skills badge: developing their independence and leadership skills. They had worked hard and shown real strength in their small, ever developing and easily malleable characters. After this class, I got stuck behind the school bus – the bus that these little 4 year olds may well be getting to school in 7 years time, and this is the image that set me off spluttering a stream of adjectives:

This is the bus that my 4 teenage girls get on. The bus that someone has felt it appropriate to plaster a highly sexualised and derogatory image of a woman on, with the words: Super Service.

The image makes me angry: the huge cleavaged, short skirted, high booted, sexually posturing female. Sending out a message to girls that this is normal. After all, what could be more normal than a bus? The image and the words: Super Service make me feel sick to the stomach. The connotations of that juxtaposition undermine everything I am teaching my daughters and my Taekwon-do students. It undermines the message that parents are trying to teach their sons about the difference between women on a screen and real women and what really disgusts me, is that it’s on the back of the school bus.

On the front of the Saturday Times magazine last week, there was another image that depressed me:

A woman draped over her footballer husband’s alpha male stance. His football boots hanging off her shoulder, symbolising the worst sort of possession. That possession that says: he’s mine, at a cost to my own self.

‘Super Service’ advertised at a cost to women. Disempowering with the worst sort of image of control. That control that says: this is at a cost to her own self.

In the news today, the head of a prominent girls’ school talks about how she would like to see girls having Shakespeare’s heroines as their role models, rather than reality stars such as Kim Kardashian. Shakespeare’s heroines are flawed, but strong. They have, she says: ‘the capacity in challenge and dilemma and pain, to love, to be vivacious, to be resourceful, to be resilient – they embody it so vividly, and that is a really powerful message.’

‘Vivacious’, ‘resourceful’ and ‘resilient’ are a stream of adjectives that I want my daughters and female students to associate with. Only last week, Caitlin Moran wrote in the Saturday Times: the two words all teenage girls should grow to love? ‘Jolly’ and ‘comfortable’. Not ‘on fleek’ or ‘hot’. ‘Comfort’, she says, ‘shows you at your best: confident. At ease. Finding your own things..not coquettish, “red-carpet ready” or heroin chic, but just…”comfortable”. “Jolly.”

I’ll leave you with a quote from my favourite female character in Shakespeare: the wonderfully strong, cynical and witty Beatrice from ‘Much Ado About Nothing’, in which she is telling her father why she doesn’t want to marry:

of wayward marl?

Let’s give girls the confidence to be strong, independent and comfortable in their own skins, not just at the service of others.

Last week looked like a toddler had been let loose on my diary with a pen. It was one of those weeks where you drink another glass of wine on the Sunday night in order to get through the thought of the following week and then when the alarm goes off on Monday morning you think: oh crap, why?

It was even one of those weeks that starts life as a busy week, gradually turns into a logistical nightmare of a week and transposes into an: okay, let’s take this shit one step at a time, kind of week.

We all got through it – and I was reflecting on how I had got to Sunday night without feeling totally done in. How come I was mentally still all there? It was immediately obvious to me: it was the connections I had made throughout the week with others, that had got me through.

It was that 10 minute cuddle with partner after the alarm went off. It was seeing my youngest daughter so happy. It was an e mail from my sister and a warm smile from my friend. Fleeting moments in real time that connected me to the earth. However, the thing I realised, when I gave it some thought, was that it wasn’t just those obvious connections with family and friends that mattered, it was also, and at times even more so, the connections with acquaintances and strangers that really made me connect with the earth – to feel more grounded and more sane.

We always talk of the importance of friends and family to our well-being. There are hundreds of quotes and memes devoted to this very important aspect of our lives. However, I think that I had actually underestimated just how good it feels to connect with people you don’t know: the snatched conversation with the cashier, the mum sitting next to you in the hospital waiting room, the dad on the hospital ward, the parent of a new child in my class. Last week, it was these quick exchanges that made me feel happy, grounded and connected.

The funny thing is, that until last week I am really not sure that I was aware of how important these moments with complete strangers are. There is a completely different feel to them. You know that they are transient and there are no emotional strings attached, no expectations to fulfill, no being judged. Just simple connections, that get you through.

When the orthopedic consultant said that daughter 4 needed Botox, my immediate reaction was: that’s the sort of cruel comment her older sisters might throw at her. I just wasn’t convinced. Something deep inside my mummy brain said get a second opinion.

I am a great believer in gut feelings. Gut feelings have changed many paths in my life and I have never looked back with regret. I once told someone that I don’t do regrets and they told me this was an arrogant thing to say. Everybody has regrets, they told me (arrogantly). They probably do, but I certainly don’t regret not being able to think of a regret when asked. I think it’s a trait of someone who doesn’t spend too much time wallowing in the past, but rather looks ahead to all those exciting opportunities that the future holds.

I’ve needed that mummy instinct before with daughter 2. One day, when she was almost 1, she stopped using her wrist. We were dismissed by the GP with his reassurance that she’d probably banged it on her cot. I wasn’t reassured. I took her to Minor Injuries and an X Ray showed nothing. I knew something was wrong. The following day we were sent to hospital and we didn’t leave for two weeks. She had Osteomyelitis, a bone condition that if left untreated can result in loss of that bone and let’s face it, everyone needs a wrist.

So gut instinct found me sitting next to daughter 4’s hospital bed for an outpatient operation of a steroid injection in her foot – definitely not Botox. The teenagers on the ward looked extremely uncomfortable, surrounded by children’s paintings and hand prints – all designed to make the under 8’s feel at home. After an unfortunate start when she knocked over the sample pot containing her wee, the operation seemed to go well. When she came around there was a certificate stating how brave she had been, lying on her blanket, complete with 3 minions pouting and rolling their eyeballs on the page. Obviously a 12 year old girl can quite easily relate to this, but I wondered how the strapping 6 foot, 15 year old boy who was next on the list, was going to cope with waking up to that. The best bit about the operation, as well as the fact that it will hopefully make her better, was that in her sleepy state she didn’t answer me back – she didn’t even want her phone! (I know, right?)

While she was in theatre, I went to grab a coffee and I decided that I had picked the best week ever for three separate hospital visits: Macmillan cake sales at every one. Two days ago daughter 4 and I entered the consultant’s room laden with cream gateaux. Today, my gut instinct had told me there may be cake, so I had brought along plenty of change.

Follow your gut, I tell you. No regrets.

I sat down on my daughter’s bed last night and snuggled in – a rare treat with a teen. Forcing a little closeness and it felt good. She carried on swiping through her phone with a dexterity that can only come from practice, liking photos of barely friends with a heart. She stopped at one whose look she objected to, took a screen shot and sent it to a friend: why? Why? Why? She asked her friend rhetorically.

‘The internet makes us all so judgmental’, I said to her. She could only nod her head.

We all have seeds of thoughts: little seeds of negative thoughts, when we don’t like a person’s choice of dress, or hair or actions. Dreams of holidays where the sea is clear and turquoise blue and the sand glides through our toes. Cravings for interiors that are clean and white and velvety grey. Wanting that gorgeous pair of boots, that dress, those shoes, that cashmere jumper to keep us toasty warm, because the nights are drawing in. Small seeds of worry, where we imagine that a rash is a fatal disease and a stomach ache is Cancer. Harmless seeds of fantasy, where sex is hot and horny.

The internet is the greenhouse for these thoughts. It germinates them quickly and they grow. They grow far bigger and stronger than they would without the hot house of the web.

Before you know it, you have put it in your basket and because it already knows your password, that seed of thought is quickly and easily real. Next day delivery is the icing on the cake. No need to wait. To ponder. One minute left to bid on E Bay creates an urgency and a need that a shopping centre can’t provide.

Before you know it you are sure you’re really ill. You wonder how many different ways you can write your symptoms in the search engine to get the answers to concur. You get an emergency appointment, to find your doctor disagrees. You decide she must be wrong, until you get better and you know, on that occasion she was right.

Before you know it you hate your child’s teacher because they failed to notice that your child was a little wet. All the other mothers on the internet agree: it’s outrageous! How could she not have noticed? (I mean, really: only 35 children in the class and a child who didn’t tell her). The seed has grown into a venomous plant. That seed of doubt about the teacher has turned into child abuse and neglect and everyone talking about it on the internet agrees. Horse shit on the roots that make the poisonous plant grow stronger and out of control.

Before you know it, your son’s seed of sexual fantasy is easily planted and is growing in to a monster that is never satiated and is uncontrolled. Unrealistic expectations create unrealistic relationship goals.

Before you know it you find yourself asking: why? Why? Why? Rhetorically.

Because we know what the internet is capable of; but once those seeds of thought take root, the genie has left the bottle and they grow.