Our attempts to do intensive toilet training on L this week foundered on her refusal to co-operate, specifically to sit on the potty. She has obviously not been reading the same book on toilet-training that we have. This is despite the fact that we have recently bought her a book on potties, a ‘feed and wet’ doll (to help her work out the rough anatomy of where things come out), and ‘The Story of the Little Mole who Knew it was None of his Business’ (http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1856024407/qid=1117693727/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl/026-8565937-5354816). (This is a story about animal poo, now I believe also a play (which I guess I will skip)). Whether this is the correct approach to training a bright toddler, but one completely lacking in common sense, we will have to see.

This should have probably have been the first bit of the blog, but a linear narrative is surely too pre-modern for words. In case anyone ever chances on this work, a brief introduction to who I am and why I am writing. I am a British woman in her very late 30s (actually half-American by birth, but wholly English by upbringing and culture). I have just submitted a PhD on early medieval masculinity, so I may yet become a doctrix. At the moment, however, I am only a magistra, having (improbably) three masters’ degrees, in mathematics, librarianship and history. I am married to Edward, ex-solicitor and now an editorial manager with a firm of legal publisher, who combines an unhealthy concern about the correct positioning of semi-colons with the useful skill of managing stubborn and over-intellectual subordinates and academic writers. During my PhD I also became the mother of L, now two and half and marked by charm, talkativeness and a firm belief in her own (frequently incorrect) decisions. This blog is intended as a reflection on academic and maternal life and other matters loosely connected to them. If you don’t like liberal intellectuals, I suggest you stop reading now…