Horse Face

Two

I have already mentioned my husband so obviously I'm married, and I also have three children. Yes three. I know I don't look like it, at least that's what everyone says anyway, though I'm not sure what I am supposed to look like. Perhaps there is a chart like the evolution picture, with all the monkeys in a line, but instead, it's women after one, two, three, or four children.

I have managed to maintain a fairly decent figure. I'm not stick thin or anything and I have a sizeable backside, but I don't think I look too bad in a generous size 10. Other than not looking like I have had three children, everything else about me is quite average. I have hazel eyes, scattered freckles, olive skin, and deep brown – almost black – hair.

I have always wished I had some startling feature like piercing green eyes or better still two different coloured eyes. Anything just to be a little different– in a good way obviously, I wouldn't want like a massive nose or a severe case of vitiligo or anything. Anyway, the point is I look quite ordinary, and I live a pretty ordinary life.

Ordinary, however, does not mean traditional, for example, I don't live in an apartment overlooking Hyde Park– actually I don't live in London at all. This surprises a lot of people because I am a Magazine Journalist and anyone who is anyone in Journalism lives in Soho or Chelsea. Except me, because I live in the East of England, which is just as well since I write for a Country Magazine. I never go out for cocktails because I can't cope with hangovers and cocktails are super expensive, plus, not many pubs around here accept Capital One card as a form of payment. I don't own a little black dress to wear for the man of my dreams either because, the one I did have doesn't fit as well as it did ten years ago, and the man of my dreams has seen me give birth three times. Even an LBD can't erase that image.

I don't do the school run in my pyjamas either – well I have a couple of times but with a really long coat on so nobody knew – and I don't drink wine every five seconds to help get me through the parenting of teenagers. When I am feeling desperate gin is more my tipple of choice and perhaps a cleverly disguised shot of whiskey in my tea.

I actually live in a small village in the heart of Suffolk and have the terrible accent as proof. Anyone who speaks to me might assume I had been raised on a farm tending to cows, wearing dungarees, and learning how to operate a combine harvester.

It Is safe to say I could never have had a career in voiceover work, and I have no desire to speak to anyone unless they have a similar accent and would therefore not notice mine.

I always wish I had a Scottish accent, it's quite pleasant, humorous, and easy on the ears. Sometimes, I pay special attention to Sky Sports and try to imitate the managers (why are most football managers Scottish?) but I always end up sounding like I am better suited to providing commentary for the West Indies cricket team instead.

I had my first two children quite young, so now that two of them are teenagers and I am still a year off forty, I always thought we were likely to be more friends than mother, son, and daughter. This is absolutely, most definitely, not the case. I am more stressed now than I have ever been in their (and my) entire life and fighting to win popularity amongst them is worse than trying to get the position of Goal Attack on the high school netball team. How can I keep track of two gigantic teenagers? It's so much easier when they are young, you just dress them up in hideously fluorescent t-shirts and let them run off and play, safe in the knowledge that you could find them should they get lost in a crowd. Or better still, I could attach them to things, like pushchairs, reins, car seats, your arm, basically anything they couldn't escape from.

Unfortunately, I can't do that now, as I am fairly sure I would some looks if I were walking around a shopping centre with a nineteen-year-old girl hanging off one arm and a fifteen-year-old boy hanging off the other, attached to me by reins. It would seem like I'm just wandering around the shops collecting fellow humans for a bizarre science experiment or something. Nowadays, I just follow their instructions for dropping off and picking up and try to listen to where each one will be, when and why, then I usually murmur something about my house being a hotel, or what a stupid and, frankly, dangerous plan that is, and then off they go and do it anyway.