I don’t know what’s happening in the UK to make me slack off on the blogging. Possibly my re-acquaintance with wine.

And my new addiction to Goodreads.

Seriously I sit in front of the computer refreshing the page and watching the counter on my Hunting Lila page. As of now, 709 people have added it to their To Be Read shelf. Sorry 710.

I spent a heavenly week in London. It was heaven because I was BY MYSELF. All you earth mothers look away now…  I am not just a mother I tried to explain to Lula earlier today. I’m also ME. She ignored me.

So I took 7 days off and oh my god, hello happiness. Hello ME.

I spent five days at my friend’s house in a very lovely part of South London (yes those areas do exist). She skipped off to work every morning and I’d saunter down in my undies to the kitchen, make myself a cafetiere of fresh coffee, slope back upstairs, enfold myself between the crunchy crisp white duvet and piles of pillows and start surfing the web and er, ostensibly editing my book in between facebooking and tweeting. Oh the joy of not having to drag myself out of bed to make a small child breakfast, argue over wearing pants, brushing hair…

Mid-morning I’d stretch my limbs and get dressed then hop a train to London and meet a friend for pints of wine, gallons of pimms, fish and chips, giggle splurge trips to Vivienne Westwood, hot chocolate at the Curzon, dumb movies and lazing in London parks.

When I say this week was heaven I mean it. It probably ranked up there as the best week of my life. Possibly even trumping my honeymoon.

And then Lula came back.

Not that I don’t love my daughter / wouldn’t die for her / enjoy her company in the 53% of the time when she’s not tantruming, but seriously I do miss and I do crave solitude. And as a writer I need it more than ever. So I intend to spend a week like that every year from now on. (Claire are you listening?)

Now we’re in Cumbria in the middle of nowhere. I try and tell Alula that this is where she comes from. Her roots. This is her family’s land and has been for generations. She ignores me, picks a red clover (apologizing to mother earth as she does) and starts singing ‘WE ARE HERE WE ARE HERE WE ARE HERE’ (you need to have watched Horton Hears a Who to get that one)… ‘it’s about no matter how small you are mummy you are still important’ she tells me. Her grandfather chases some dogwalkers off. I protest because what’s the harm in them walking across a field. There aren’t any sheep.

It’s my land, he says.

The French revolutionary inside me rears up and I walk away before I call for his head.