Charlotte Philby's Parental Leave: 'I'm woken to the sound of the child sobbing gently on to a pillow of empty wrappers'
A mother's weekly dispatch from the pre-school frontline
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Your support makes all the difference.We're going to Latitude! Our first family festival, minus the baby who is staying with his grandmother for the weekend. We arrive on site at 2.45pm after a night on a makeshift bed in my mum's cellar surrounded by table-legs and crates of wine.
But we've made it and the sun is shining. I am focusing on the sound of a middle-aged man practising poi and whistling The Levellers, to block out the child who is screaming from her perch on my husband's shoulders: "Why do I always have to carry EVERYTHINGGGG?".
"I love festivals," I sigh as we collect our tickets, surveying the roster of Cuban ballet and obscure poets. "Last time we went to a festival you spent the whole time crying," my husband replies. "Yes, but I'm not pregnant this time," I point out, un-riled, as we bat our way across the family camping field until we find a spot on which to address the tent, last erected in something of a stupor at 5am in 2006.
Noticing a woman cooking crepes on an Aga-like contraption across the field, the three-year-old asks, "Where's our kitchen?". I smile, knowingly: "Darling, we don't need a stove. We've got a sleeping bag and two boxes of Trackers! Besides, your great-grandfather travelled the Saudi desert for 20 years with nothing but a camel."
At 1.45am, in the middle of a brutal storm, rain pouring in from every imaginable direction, I am woken through the fog of sleeping pills to the sound of the child sobbing gently on to a pillow of empty wrappers. "It's OK, darling," I dribble. "Have another Tracker bar."
@philbycharlotte
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