When I finish writing this

I don't know what I'll do now. To start with it was just that I felt bored and frustrated. I started thinking about drinking and smoking: The weight in the head, the drag on the lungs; sensations that tell you you're still alive, or that you've still got a body. I knew I'd get a kick out of being irresponsible. It's exciting to get really bladdered when you know you have to get up early the next morning, until the next morning comes. But it's best to have friends if you're going to get drunk: go to a cocktail bar, dress up smart, a bit foxy, and share a massive goldfish bowl of ice and blue spirits sucked through long, multi-coloured straws. Smoking can be more soulful, solitary, wandering around looking at the cracks between slabs in the patio, sitting on a bench. It could be really shocking for the neighbours. You could do it with 'leper' hanging from a home-made sign around your neck. I thought about it.

Why didn't I do it? Motivation. Rebellion takes energy. But what about non-doing?

Neglect. When you're an adult it's not exactly ok to neglect yourself but to neglect your child is a sin punishable by multi-hells. As a Victorian it was par for the course and nobody minded - but today if the word spreads far enough forms get filled in and eventually your child is taken away.

If I didn't change her nappy/ if I didn't wipe her face/ if I didn't feed her digestible food/ if I didn't cuddle her and dress her in clean clothes/ If I didn't sing to her or undress her for the bath/ if I didn't read her stories/ If I didn't give her a kiss and stopped blowing raspberries behind her ear/

If I just sat and watched her struggle, watched her crying, watched her fall

I met mothers who'd had their children taken away. They had photos of them on their phone but they didn't know where they were living.

While I've been writing this the pears have burnt dry and there's been cying in the nursery. It's Sunday. My husband turns off the pears, brings me a cup of tea and says 'I'll see to her'.

I wonder what happens on Monday.

Headless

The thing about putting all your eggs in one basket, as anyone who has ever made an omelette knows, is that eggs break easily. You could break your eggs by putting them in, by taking them out, by a bump in the road during transportation.

Eggs are not like coconuts or pebbles or even picnic eggs, with meat already mashed. The thing about your average egg is that by looking at it from outside you have no idea of the state of its insides. Perhaps it is raw and unformed, or hard-boiled, dense and opaque. Perhaps it has been somewhere between the two for some time and is therefore likely to cause your insides to bi-directionally spill for a very uncomfortable number of days, even weeks, should you eat it.

Rotten eggs are not to be treasured unless for some de-facing use on those in the stocks or in Parliament. But then, eggs are so enigmatic, evasive and edgy that only by breaking them can you be sure they were any good in the first place.

Eggs suck.

Then there's the basket of course. What kind of basket do you have? Mine was made at a whicker class at junior school and is lined with red tartan-patterned cotton. Not thick, impact-absorbent material, though the hem around the edges is neatly sewn (the teacher did it). That won't have any bearing though when I trip over the pavement and the eggs collide mid-air (I see it all in slow motion) to morph spectacularly into an uncooked omelette that splashes and dribbles onto the neatly-sewn tartan, my shoes, and of course, my face.

But say, for example, you decided to put all your eggs in lots of different baskets? Well, wouldn't that make you cowardly, uncommitted? Isn't there something unheroic and manipulative about buying into multiple receptacles? And everyone else envies you because of your apparent security while they are, yes... tip-toeing around on (previously broken) egg shells, praying not to slip.

Over the last few years I've given up almost every vestige of personal 'security'. For years I had some kind of career, a degree of earning power, a sense of purpose and individuality and often I enjoyed rushing around like the proverbial chicken. If I drop the basket now or it's taken from my hands there won't be other baskets to search. I will have nothing but fresh air in my hands.

Who knows what may hatch.

Is there really any other way to live?