Veronika Wild

These are just their clothes There is glitter in the bath and a trail of destruction through the house. There is every indication that a natural disaster has taken place. The little girls are in residence. All three of them. They have taken over the bedroom Over Christmas I happened to mention to my older son how my big sister used to tickle me unmercifully until I agreed to do the dishes for a week or any other unpleasant task she could think of. “What a great idea!” he remarked enthusiastically, “I could see them deploying that at Guatanamo to extract secrets from enemy combatants.  It wouldn’t leave any traces either.” Well, I have another rendition technique for those so inclined. Just leave them alone with a toddler and two small girls for a while and they will confess all. Grind them down with sleep deprivation, the constant noise and the chaos and the state of perpetual emergency and they will soon become quivering, malleable wrecks. It certainly causes ...

Talk about having one’s life pass before one’s eyes. I am going through the wreckage of my life so far. I  already parted company with most of the hardware – kids’ bikes, the bassinette, unfinished hobbies and several generations of dead computers – remember the 311? - even the spinning wheel - before I moved house, but I am now being confronted by about 30 years’ worth of old lecture notes, recipes, craft ideas that I never managed to find time for etc. etc. which have just returned from storage to haunt me. That’s where all this nostalgia is coming from in case you were wondering!   It’s not cool to admit to having been a hippie these days, especially when you look at old photos or movies of people in flares, body suits and crazy hair, but I’ll have more to say on that later, when I finish this job, the other one and the house maintenance. But I digress, yet again.   Technically, if I wanted to, I could spend the whole of the next decade sifting through the last th...