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I blame the Government and its literacy drive. I have spent the last month [it seems like much longer] goading Rebel daughter into doing a literacy project on sharks. Being a journalist, I know just how easy it is to leave everything to the last minute and I was determined she should get most of it done beforehand because I knew that, if she did leave it to the last minute, it would be a very long session with the glue and scissors and there was a very strong possibility that Toddler daughter would come and chop it all up. She is going through what can only be described as her Destructive Period. Everything within two metres of her is ripped or cut to shreds. Cards, drawings, posters, even the beloved High School Musical jigsaw have been obliterated. I have had to put all my work in very strategic positions.

Anyway, the shark project is a work of art. We have got lots of books out of the library, bought a 3-D book on sharks, read and photocopied shark top trumps, searched the Internet and Rebel daughter has created her own shark quiz games. I feel I know too much about sharks now, but that I will remember the crucial facts about how many babies whale sharks can have in one go [300] and how fast a shortfin mako can swim [40 kms an hour with a fast tail wind] far longer than I remember anything to do with work [my memory span currently lasts approximately 1.34 minutes]. I am indeed looking for ways of introducing shark trivia into my work. I am taking it as a sign of incipient old age that, whereas I once used to sit and quake in meetings, I now glaze over entirely in the boring bits and day dream about shark facts. I remember once going to lectures when I was at university and the lecturer saying what are you young people doing in here, you should be out falling in love. I was quite a dull person at the time and I thought 'but I want to learn about the world'. I now regret that earnestness. Much of my work is either spent in front of a screen or in meetings. I once took Rebel daughter to a meeting. It was at a job where you were allowed, in extremis, to take children and the subject was music. I thought she might like it. Just the word 'meeting' now sends a shudder through her body.

The good thing about "a portfolio career" is that you avoid office politics [you don't have long enough in any one place] and even the most boring meetings are bearable because you are coming to them refreshed, having done something entirely different the day before. Throw in all the other children-related stuff like sports days, childcare problems, opticians appointments, open evenings, swimming lessons, lack of sleep [caused by bonkers daughter's continuing concerns about the "blinking shadows"], shark projects...and every day is guaranteed to have its own peculiar challenge.

This time of year seems to be full of activity. The weekends are packed with meeting friends you never see for the rest of the year and the weeks are full of school-related things. Plus for the last two weeks my mum - who normally picks up toddler daughter four days a week and has her for a couple of hours - has been in Spain with my brother, sending me emails asking for urgent Dr Who information. I watched the programme and reported back, but am not entirely sure I understood a single word of it. Luckily, it was not very scary due to the fact that no-one else in my house understood it and the bad guy seemed to be a small octopus, which, as we all know, can't live long out of water [much the same as sharks, if you're interested. Sharks, though, are remarkably healthy and could provide the key to serious human illnesses, such as cancer. Fact]. However, it might actually be that the octopus was a good guy in the end and the true bad guy was that nasty Davros, king of the Daleks. But if that is so, why did the Dr want to save Davros and not the nice octopus thingy?

Anyway, my mum has been away. Not really resting as she is looking after my brother's three-year-old daughter who has developed a Tracy Ullman fetish. Life gets more complicated when she is away, given the lack of afterschool facilities in this area or at least afterschool facilities which I can afford. Ditto with bells on holiday childcare.

Plus the girls in this area are all revving up for the summer by hiving off into gangs. One group of 8 year olds allegedly cornered and beat up another girl last week. Each party says the other one is lying, of course, and the girls' sisters have now allegedly taken to goading the other group. If Rebel daughter, who seems to be doing better in school after hitting a bit of a low point, associates with either group she is doomed and yet they all come round asking to play with her. I have psyched her up for any encounter by quoting Nelson Mandela, Gandhi and the humble and much misunderstood basking shark [a highly sociable fish]. I just don't remember things being so complicated when I was young. On the positive side, she and bonkers daughter are forging a strong bond and actually walkie talkied that they loved each other tonight. It was a very Waltons moment, but one well worth savouring in a world full of aggression, cut-throat competition and on the edge of extinction [for hammerhead sharks more than most].