The eight-year-old me hated Barbie. My family couldn’t afford the impossibly-proportioned doll that my friends gleefully dressed as an air hostess or housewife. I made do with her cheaper, lumpen British equivalent, Sindy, instead. And yet I shall be in the queue for the Pepto-Bismol explosion of neon that is the new Barbie movie, starring
Day one of the school holidays this year set the tone for the sprawling six weeks ahead. My teenage son rolled out of bed at a leisurely 1.05 p.m., by which time my daughter had smashed her head repeatedly against the kitchen wall, bitten my leg and trashed our living room. And so began a
When lockdown starts, all kinds of things stop. The first one, in March, was the worst time of my life as a parent, not because of my daughter’s severe disabilities, but because of the lack of support. Elvi is 19. She has a mental age of three, sleeps four hours a night and can’t walk.
