Nigel Slaters Toast - but not as you know it

I'm a big fan of Nigel Slater, both his writing and also latterly his TV show. He has a propensity for food that aligns with my own and his à bas prix approach to dishes suits parenthood perfectly. Suz and I just watched Toast - a film adaptation of his autobiography bearing the same name. It is a beautiful and heart warming tale of a young boy who loses his mother and follows his life's path soaking in the torrid relationship with his step mother and his fight with her for his fathers attention. If you have the chance to see it, I implore you to do so.

Nigel Slaters raison d'être is to provide an alternative to the prolix recipes offered up by celebrity chefs that require visits to specialist shops and lengthy preparation time. His recipe's are unadorned, which is glorious when your nights sleep reduce to a paucity of hours and a simple sojourn to the shops requires a mammoth pack, check, double check and go.

It's true, your children are time thief's. I am richly blessed in that I have a part time job that pays sufficiently well to afford us the luxury of Suzy not working. I am in genuine awe of parents who balance full time work and child rearing. It's the trickiest balance both from a decision point of view (posing the question whether to be a stay at home parent or not) and also in terms of weighing your attention in the correct percentage. It's easy to say your children come first, and of course they do in your heart and mind, but in reality executing this balance of attention is extremely difficult as work, by it's very nature is a time hog. The decision for Suzy not going back to work wasn't an easy one - it has required a significant financial sacrifice, but the bond created now is precious and unrepeatable and I would happily live on a plank to have it.

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Making the decision to have a child is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body. Words uttered Elizabeth Stone, some 200 or so years ago. Words that stand true today and I'm sure for generations to come. In your youth, whilst you have the privilege of a lack of appurtenance, you have the world at your feet, and your heart perhaps as saliently is entirely your own. You may chose to share such a precious de rigueur with a loved one but it's only when you have children that you discover the requisite requirement of handing your heart over completely, totally and utterly. Over the last few months I have turned into the kind of doting parent I was once baffled by, looking on, wondering why such small, loud, worry-inducing bundles could hold on to the key to such a grandiose thing as ones heart. I spend my days wistfully longing to be home to spend time with Olivia and am positively mirthful when the clock-settable gummy smile greets me at the door.

Today spelled out a new dawn for Suzy and I as we took delivery of a new car seat, one that faces forward rather than backward; an oppose that any parents will know spells out a significant step in growth. Olivia has progressed so much in the last few weeks. We have been graced with new found giggles, gurgles, and high pitched squeals that despite causing significant damage to my hearing, has been wonderful to see.

Jules Verne said that there is one thing remarkable about the future, that being that it is never futuristic. The same obscured-in-front-of-your-eyes change can be said of childhood. She'll have her own car soon...

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The best road I've ever travelled

Yes, I know, its been too long and what's the point of having a blog if you don't post on it etc etc. Well here you all are, (if indeed I can be so presumptuous as to assume people do actually read this) a post.

Since my last blog, almost 5 months ago would you believe, I've bowed to a huge proverbial mountain of life changes including a brand-new job and the expected adjustment to parenthood. And what an adjustment it has been! Absolutely nothing prepares you for the tumultuous chaos a new born brings you. Your mind is expecting sleepless nights, hours of seemingly fruitless pacing up and down and the constant attention monopoly, but somehow it still comes as a surprise at 4am when you have to leave for work at 7:30. Let us not be fooled, parenthood is hard, but my goodness it's worth it. Olivia graces us with the most pulchritudinous expressions I have ever seen. Her smiles, grins and giggles fill our world with colour that simply cannot be matched. Marcus Cicero once said, "the greater the difficulty, the greater the glory" and in the case of child rearing, a truer word could not have been spoken.

It is with great sadness I have recently overheard or read parents expressing their dissatisfaction with parenthood stating such things as that their children are causing them copious amounts of stress and that they are 'doing their heads in.' I do wonder if these parents will be the ones that in years to come fail to have a bond with their grown up offspring. I do genuinely fail to see how any parent can derive anything other than elated joy in the broad strokes with regards to their children, and indeed this opinion is shared by Suzanne who positively laps up the sleepless nights and the teething and the sick stained clothing. She, and I, do this because there is no reward greater for such hard work than to have just a single smile of appreciation in return.


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Location:Bedlington,United Kingdom