The children, catching sight of my laptop on the bed – “Oh no, daddy has forgotten his laptop. Mummy MUMMY quick phone daddy”
Major distress ensues, there’s lots of jumping and voices are raised. The kind of panic that is generally reserved for missing toys or an empty Marmite jar. How will daddy do his work?
Me – “Don’t worry boys, it’s my laptop”
The hysteria continues. Of course it does, nobody is listening to me. At one point even I feel a sense of urgency to call daddy.
Me – “No, really, mummy was doing some work earlier” (I’ll admit, it’s an oddity and something that hasn’t been seen since 2022).
Reader, they didn’t believe me.
There’s a slight pause, though one child continues jumping up and down for reasons only known to him.
Suspicion sets in.
Child 1 – “You don’t have a laptop, you just play with us and make dinner”
Child 2 – “Mummy just goes to Tesco and Pilates”
There it was.
It was at that moment that I decided it was time to log back in.
So here I am. Fingers on keys. A quiet return. A nod to the parts of me that exist outside of snack preparation, endless laundry and school runs.
Let’s start with a recap of April, a digital scrapbook, if you like. I’m pushing aside the thought that tells me there’s 3 years of undocumented life and how can I possibly dive into April 2026 without acknowledging the time that has passed. This is the exact thing that has paused the physical scrapbooks we keep and to be quite honest I’m tired of putting up barriers.
Let’s get on with it.
April began fast with the Easter holidays and swiftly saw us leaving Cambridge in favour of the seaside. We often go to Southwold, somewhere I grew up visiting as a child. In the summer we spend most of out time on the beach, my eldest is truly himself when he’s there and parenting becomes a little easier. However, on this occasion, the weather was cold and windy. We dabbled with a brief trip to the beach but snuck away for chips and ice cream much quicker than normal for this time of the year. The rest of our short break saw us checking out all the local play parks, visiting the Norfolk and Suffolk Aviation museum, road-tripping in search of good coffee (shoutout to The Silo Cafe) and eating way too many pastries thanks to our old favourite, Magpie Bakery.
We saw some big changes to the area of Suffolk we visit due to the early stages of Sizewell C – the latest nuclear power station on the Suffolk coast. I think things have been in full swing for about 2 years actually but it was only on this visit that we saw new roads, a Park and Ride for the workforce and many more construction sites. We also spotted metal rats In hi-vis vests situated outside peoples homes. With a quick Google it seems these have been created by a local artist in a bid to highlight local anger around the ‘Sizewell C rat race’.
This year Easter Day fell on my birthday, our final day of the trip. Thankfully the Easter bunny had done its overnight shift so the hunt began early. We then moved on for coffee, obligatory pastries and monster trucks at The British Country show (a very fitting pairing I’m sure you’ll agree).
Our few days away were an excellent start to the month which continued with a lovely trip to Norwich to visit family and two trips to London. Finally came a week of Lego building, painting and park-hopping to try out different skateboard ramps around Cambridge with my children. We also spent time each day working on phonics and reading and little by little the usual pushback began to fade.
Then it was time to head back to school for the summer term. As I’m writing this the school just sent over the summer curriculum which I always enjoy reading. I like to find activities and related books or programmes to link into what my children are learning, not that they’d ever mention they have touched on the subjects at home. Greater depth who? It was at the end of the first week back to school that we found out that my son’s wonderful teacher was going to be leaving, we were both gutted to say the least. Let’s take this moment to ensure we all show appreciation and acknowledgement for our children’s teachers throughout the year, they have a damn hard job.
We’ve been ending school weeks with a Friday evening energy burn at various parks around the city. This seems to have quickly become a regular fixture over the last few weeks and is proving to be a nice way to wind-down after school despite what my hay fever might think. These Friday evenings have been made even more glorious with a detour to the train station to grab dinner, Joe & Juice for me, of course. All I need is a Tunacado with extra jalapeno and I’m all yours. Delicious with a side of feeling virtuous.
With one child back to school it gives me a chance to have some one on one time with my littlest. Together and with friends we spent the last few weeks stomping around Milton Country Park, taking the scooter to Eddington and he had a rather fancy time at the hairdressers which he throughly enjoyed. He also attends a nursery so I was also able to find a few moments for myself which included coffee with my mum, attending as many Reformer Pilates classes as possible and aiming for 15000 steps a day. I have lost just over one stone and it’s given me a real kick of motivation this last week.
That was a busy but fab April.
Still no sign of my professional reputation recovering at home.