No More Room At The Inn

Sybilla Hart reflects on her new life in Essex after leaving London

- Sybilla Hart

PERHAPS it was the thought of Christmas and the focus on little babies lying in mangers, but last week Beatrice, my seven-year old daughter, announced that I was, ‘lazy for not having more children’. Some of her friends have little baby brothers and sisters on the way and Beatrice is keen to have our own family addition, which in her mind is some sort of ornamental doll who will coo at us and occasionally require the odd bottle. A strange reality indeed!

When I had to let her down and tell her that mummy really shouldn’t be having any more babies of her own, she quickly thought of another way to slip one in through the back door. ‘Why not foster a baby, mummy?’ she said. ‘You don’t do anything all day. You don’t work. You need a job!’

Ha!