Whenever I tell people what my novels are about - marriage, children, friendship - I also make sure to mention the fact that Samantha Smythe - my Samantha Smythe - is, basically, a housewife. Some women rear up at the very mention of this word. ‘A housewife?’ they say aghast. ‘Why have you written about […]

How much does it cost to bring up a child? Anyone with children will know the answer to that – lots and lots. It starts when they are babies and ends about 16-18 years later and some £300k down. But not everyone spends the same on their children. Some people will spend way more than […]

I don’t have a history of falling in and out of friendships. Some of mine have remained for the last 20 years, others have drifted has time has gone on. I am still very close friends with the gang of three girls I went to secondary school with. Yet I have no friends from primary […]

The general consensus on whether an epidural is safe or not seems to be basically that it is. A quick trawl through mumsnet reveals that of those who had an epidural, very few of them experienced any complications. Then again, none of them had an epidural fed into their arm like Mayra Cabrera who tragically […]

We are all on a credit drive. I mean not just myself and my family but all of us nationwide. I keep reading that prices are going up (true, cost of petrol is now exorbitant, cost of heating oil has risen four times over in the past six years etc etc) and that our wages […]

I met my husband-to-be at work. He was 24 and I was 33. He was young, free and single and I was a single mother. We were friends for about six months. I don’t think either of us thought about taking our relationship further, mainly because of the age gap. At the time, nine years […]

This morning I was hit by the terrible thought that the Easter holidays will be over in a few day’s time and that when my Eldest Son, now 11, gets back to school he will be asked to write an essay on what he has done over the past few weeks. But what will he […]

When I go over to friends houses for dinners with my children and I find them cooking up vast plates of food that not even Billy Bunter could eat, I feel quite ill. Then I watch what they chuck out and I feel even more ill. Why do they cook so much food and then […]

There are so many things my mother didn’t tell me that I am not sure where to start with what I wished she had. My mother was of the generation that, basically, kept everything concerning most aspects of life – love, sex, death – pretty close to their chest. I can’t remember when my grandparents […]

This is what every parent wants to know - how do I get my children to sleep? It’s odd that we all care so much. What is it about? When I was a teenager/much younger person, I don’t remember worrying about how much sleep I got. I partied away like a mad thing and didn’t […]