7. Odd, what you think about when your mind wanders [Odd, Thomas Street, Manchester]

Some nights are better than others. Last night I surfaced for the second waking (1am) feeling catastrophically grumpy. Quite, quite cross and with a scratchy, tetchy headache that thumped from one side of my hemisphere to the other. Cold arms dragged me from the warmth of my bed, while Milo grumbled and did the jagged [...]

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6. Bleurgh [My bedroom, Manchester]

I can now testify that there is something worse than being at the mercy of a nasty bout of food poisoning: being ravaged by sickness (and the rest) with a tiny baby in tow and almost five months’ worth of sleep deprivation on top. What, exactly, are you supposed to do when the baby is [...]

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5. Money for old cups [CUP, Northern Quarter, Manchester]

The best thing about being a mother is the amount of coffee and cake I consume. That, and the little lessons in life I get to impart to my sponge-like son. Little M is thankfully still too young to recognise that his mum is making things up (or ‘reckoning’ as Simon says), recycling and [...]

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2. Do wishes come true? [Egerton Road South, Chorlton]

So there I am, wheeling Milo through Chorlton with the kind of grim determination that only sleep deprivation can bring (‘you will have your nap, goddammit, you will have your nap…’), when I happen to pass a house with a wishing tree. I mutter under my breath something about wishing I had a baby that [...]

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