How to be a successful working mother

My new job means I've gone up from 2 days a week to 3, which doesn't sound like a big difference, and I'm sure all you full-timers are sniffing and thinking how pathetic I am. However, it actually feels like quite a big hike to me; it's a 50% increase after all. I have to try harder to get to yoga, I'm not meeting up with friends so much, and we're eating less healthily at home. (It doesn't look too bad, when I see it written down in black and white like that!)

In all honestly, I think fitting any hours of paid employment at all into your life when you have children is quite a lot. I'm glad I've got a job, and in terms of hours and family-friendliness, I think I've got it pretty good. Most of the time it's fine, but when family life is under pressure for any reason, it seems like there's no slack at all. Maybe not everyone feels the need for slack in their life, but I do. So I've come up with some top tips for how to make it work, when you're a working mother.

1. Have your mother living round the corner  I can't tell you the number of times I've felt a pang of jealousy when a colleague tells me her mother does the dinner a couple of days a week, or helps out with the school run, or whatever it is. It's just free, top quality childcare, which can be turned on and off like a tap, with added emotional support from your biggest fan.
2. Have healthy children  Yes, it's fine to take a day off here and there when a child is ill, but don't have the kind of child who picks up every bug going. How will it be when you have a couple of days off this week, and next, and then in a month's time, and then again in another month's time? (This isn't a problem if you have your mother living round the corner, who can morph into a part-time nurse as required.) If you have more than one child, make sure they are all ill on the same day. If one gets a virus, and then passes it on to the other, you can be off for nearly a week as quick as a sneeze. This is, unfortunately, the norm.
3. Be healthy yourself  Because you're going to have used up all your workplace's goodwill for sick leave covering your children's illnesses.
4. Have children near each other in age  It makes it much simpler if you are dropping off at and picking up from the same school. Make them do the same activities, in the same place, at the same time. ("What do you mean, you don't want to do swimming? Of course you want to do swimming. Like your brother.") You won't have time to be a taxi driver AND work.
5. Go to bed really early every night  Otherwise you'll lose your temper when helping with homework or piano practice. After a day at work, who has mental space for that kind of thing? Early bedtimes are the only way.
6. Don't be in a job where you need to dress smartly  It feels nice, but you'll spend your hardly-earned pay-packet on clothes, because it's so easy to justify:"I need this for work, and I can afford it because I work."
7. Be a teacher  Otherwise, what are you going to do with the children in those long school holidays? Your five weeks aren't going to cover it, are they? If you have teenagers, you can leave them at home alone, but they'll be on screens all day, and will eat cereal for breakfast, lunch and early dinner too (and then not be hungry for the healthy meal you've made an effort to shop for in your lunchbreak).

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If there's one fictional character I've never liked...

I've started a new job. It's exhausting, isn't it? All those new people, all those new systems, all that tacit knowledge that everyone else has that you don't. And the pressure imposed by the need to appear competent, not to mention well-dressed, cheerful, pleasant, and... most important to this story... consistently alert.

It was Week Three that it happened - the moment that both Miranda and Bridget Jones would be proud of. Or not proud of. I'd had a busy morning. I'd gone shopping at lunchtime. I don't drink caffeine any more. It was the low spot of the afternoon. I had a one-to-one training session on the database with a colleague. The database... From 3.00pm to 5.00pm... In a warm, airless office... My colleague was showing me how to do lots of clever things, and there wasn't much interaction. I was mostly just watching the screen. Asking the occasional question. Trying to be consistently alert (see above).

I nodded off. Only for a few micro-seconds, probably, but who knows? Felt like a few minutes. As I woke up, for some unknown reason, I opened my mouth and said "Henry". I must have been dreaming, of English monarchs, or hoovers. In the split second where I realised that (a) I was awake, (b) I had been asleep, (c) one shouldn't fall asleep in the office, when a colleague is demonstrating the database, particularly when one is new, and (d) I'd just randomly said "Henry" out loud, my brain went into "save, save, save" mode, and I uttered the following:

"Henry... Horrid Henry... Horrid Henry... would be a name we could use if we wanted to set up a dummy record. For training purposes. On the database. Horrid Henry. Would be a good choice of name."

Then, failing to recall the great "stop digging" advice that is universally helpful, I kept on going.

"I was just having a clear out of my children's old books at the week-end, and there were lots of Horrid Henry books, so that's why his name is in my head. Actually, I've never liked the Horrid Henry books, so I was really pleased to be chucking them out, but the name must have stuck in my head. So we could use it. If we wanted to set up a dummy record. Just a thought."

(The bit about sorting out children's books was based on truth, actually.) I don't know whether my colleague was half asleep too, or just terribly polite. Perhaps she had already concluded I'm odd and was merely adding this latest piece of evidence to the picture. She seemed to be valiantly ignoring my jibberings, and continuing to stare at the screen, clicking away at search functions. I left the room, on the pretext of going to make a cup of tea, and as I did so, my brain woke properly, by degrees, until I realised that, irony of ironies, I hadn't actually uttered "Henry" out loud, or anything else for that matter. I'd just sort of dreamt I was doing so, in that half-awake, half-asleep, head-jerking-up moment.

The subconscious. It has a lot to answer for.

If there's one fictional character I've never liked, it's Horrid Henry. And now I like him even less.

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