Leanne Harrison

Apparently going to the supermarket with two children requires a full tactical briefing. I’ve realised I don’t take my children to the supermarket. I deploy them. Before we go in, there’s normally a briefing. We’ll be standing outside and I’ll go through exactly the same things I’ve said approximately 400 times before. Where are we going? The supermarket. And what is the supermarket not? A playground. Do we run off? No. Do we touch everything? No. What do we do if we get lost? Go to the...

One late night, one chaotic Monday morning and a reminder that our cycle is never the only thing affecting our energy. We had a BBQ on Sunday. Friends over, food, kids playing, everyone having a lovely time. Before I knew it, it was ten o’clock and our guests were only just leaving. Now, we live in Italy, where children seem to have a completely different operating system when it comes to bedtime. You can walk past a restaurant at half ten at night and there’ll be a five-year-old sitting...

I thought I needed to sort out my afternoons. Turns out, I might need to update the routine that created them. I've realised something slightly ridiculous about myself this week. Apparently, part of my brain is still at school. Not academically, unfortunately. That would probably be more useful. It just still seems to be following the timetable. When I was at school, we'd finish at around 3.15 and I'd be home by half past three. And somewhere in my brain, that seems to have become the point...