I’m hiding in the kitchen. Eating sugar snap peas straight from the packet.
(Makes me think of Cassandra - “I write this sitting in the kitchen sink” - brownie points if you know the book 📕)
Callie Coles
I’m Callie
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Even if it was flying far too close to the wire - We are on our way 🏴
Toby sent this photo from his window in the new house this morning. It all looks so green!
Beehives over fillers and botox - any day.
I feel a little bit like I’m stuck in a time warp where I am the only one ageing. I’ve never had a filler or botox. I don’t use photoshop or facetune. And I look like the middle aged woman that I am.
Someone came to the house yesterday and laughed when they spotted 'Mummy’s Commandments' but I stand by them.
I want them to be good humans. I want them to read books and offer to do the washing up. I want them to look you in the eye when they’re talking to you. To open doors for people.
Sleepless Nights
I manage to sleep at first and then, boom, I’m awake at eleven and then that’s it. Wide eyes. Staring into the night.
Schadenfreude
I think she had it in for me because I was not remotely smart. I wasn’t clever. I wasn’t even particularly sporty. I definitely wasn’t well connected.
In a nutshell…
A little recap. Just in case you have no clue who I am. I am Callie. I’m a mother to three boys. A wife to Toby. I’ve just published my first novel, Tangled Webs. It’s part of a trilogy. Next book to be published in July. The third in July 2028. That sounds like such a long way away. I have no doubt it will creep up on me though.
We have all had our heads buried in the sand a bit.
T - 3 weeks
God Bless America 📚♥️
In January this frazzled Englishwoman asked for your help on the other side of the pond.
I am fairly certain I am going to give birth to our fourth child in the footwell of my car…
I am in my seven month of pregnancy. I am wildly superstitious. I’m not very practical. Where do you think the line can be drawn in the sand for beginning preparations?
Pub Day! 💚🌱📚
Good morning,
Spilt milk 🥛, War and Peace; Books and spinning plates 📚
I’ve never really worried about the heat before. I always just thought that I was cold-blooded. Piscean through and through. However these past few days have been brutal. I had to take my husband’s 40 year old Land Rover into town yesterday with the children. Toby is away. I feel like a spinnaker that has lost its ropes. Wildly lost at sea.
Sticks and Stones
I’ve had that thought - but ten times worse
The Father’s Day conundrum.
Hopefully solved 🙏🏼
I thought you were moving house? You look far too produced these days. I’m so disappointed that you’ve put make up on. Your life looks fake and like an advert.
I thought I’d address a few of the outraged comments I received on my Instagram account over the last few days. I have more space to do it here but it is probably fruitless as I doubt the real cross patches will bother to read more from me. However, it has been bothering me - so I will answer them - even if it’s only helpful to restore order in my own mind.
He wanted to be called Grumpy Grampy. I couldn’t manage that.
Gobbi Gobbi it became, and stuck forevermore.
'One table-spoonful to be taken at bed-time.'
My trigger this morning. Another wet, tangled towel abandoned on the floor in my husband’s dressing room. Does he still not know - after YEARS of relentless nagging - that they don’t dry in a bedraggled heap on the carpet?
A tangle of words and emotions
I lost my second grandfather last night. I hadn’t seen him for ten years. I’m overflowing; full of complicated sentimentality.
How do you quantify a great person? How do you measure a disaster?
(How do you hold a moonbeam in your hand?)
A few thoughts about making an average week - a bit better…
I know it sounds so obvious but I’ve been struggling with life a bit. I’ve felt so rubbish that common sense kind of flew off out the window recently. But. Eating well. Every day. Is so important. I read a book a few weeks ago that changed my standard pregnancy survival MO (eating boost bars, rye krisp and marmite 24/7 as many times a day as possible to keep the chronic nausea at bay for 40…
Walking, breathing, living on eggshells…
My 12th pregnancy.
"Didn’t your parents love you?
I remember people saying to me, in fact, it still happens.