Apparently there is something unusual and a little bit intriguing lurking out there on the internet. It’s called a mummy blog. IJ, aged nearly eight, has just informed me of this and has announced that she is thinking of starting one.
I have no idea what has come over her.
Naturally I have explained to her that mummy blogging is a bad idea. It’s highly addictive for one thing; it will frequently have her staying up long past her bedtime reading other mummy blogs, and there will be occasions when she suddenly feels the need to log back onto the computer late at night just to reply to a blog post, or a tweet.
It will also cause her to neglect whatever else it is she planned to do with her day and have her scribbling ideas for blog posts on the back of envelopes which will then cause embarrassment when she has to cross this out before handing over the birthday card.
But she is having none of it.
Clearly she thinks that mummy blogging can have some fabulous perks, connect her to a supportive community of like-minded people on-call on twitter whenever you need them, and result in the postman arriving at her door with everything from fruit juice to garden play equipment.
Alas no. That is not the case at all.
She has realised that the only way anyone gets the opportunity to spend time on the laptop in our house is when they suddenly announce: “I need to write a blog post.” Then they can hog it indefinitely to the exclusion of everyone else.
Clearly she is trying to tell me something.
I’ve explained to her that to write a mummy blog you need to be a mummy. As she knows that becoming a mummy has something to do with boys, so she has run a mile at the thought of it.
The computer is now all mine.