As a child, I could usually be found with a book in my hands and a story streaming through my mind. I'd tell you I loved 'Famous Five' and 'Trixie Belden' but that would show my age.

Anyway, after my pet dinosaur, oops I mean dog, showed no interest in moving from the country to the city with me, I ventured forth into the big wide university world by myself, where I had many adventures and quite a few cups of hot chocolate (sorry to confess I don't drink coffee. Please don't hold it against me. I have other vices. You should see how many empty milk bottles I put back in the fridge).

Eventually I found someone to love and cherish who was a real person (sorry Darcy), and we did some roaming of the world after we were married, and also a bit more roaming with our two children some years later, because the first time round we’d visited Venice on a Sunday, and everything was closed. This time we stayed for a week and discovered the ice cream.

Homeschooling consisted of hubby’s favourite reading: a mathematics textbook, my favourite reading: Story of Our World (so proud when doing a walking tour in Prague that my kids from New Zealand could answer all the questions—thank you Susan Wise Bauer), and one we all appreciated: 39 Clues. Actually I read about ten of the 39 Clues books, out loud, whenever we had to drive a long distance. (I could tell they were going to be good the moment I read the first chapter and discovered the protagonists had the same names as my children. Made it fun trying to work out who I was in the story, which changed, depending on my mood and how well my kids were behaving. You parents understand—some days you’re the Cinderella's fairy godmother and some days you’re the wicked stepmother and some days you wish you could’ve been written out of the story just like the father. Especially when you’ve promised your kids one last ice cream from their favourite store in Venice only to arrive on a rainy day to find it’s been flooded out).

Sometime after my kids recovered from their ice cream trauma, they also both ventured out to university. But they still manage to come back home so often the cats don’t even miss them. As for me, I manage to sneak in a lot more writing than when I was homeschooling, which is my delight. That and rain on the roof when I’m drifting off to sleep.


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