Sunday Mornings

Sunday mornings are our reward for white knuckling it through all those Friday evenings, and facing all the Saturday drinks parties where the only non alcoholic beverage on offer is warm, sticky orange juice.

Aren't they just the best?

In six days time I am doing the Moonwalk with #1. The Moonwalk is a twenty six mile walk through the centre of London overnight, in aid of breast cancer charities. Thousands of women do it (and some men) all dressed in wildly decorated bras.

#1 is pretty fit. She plays two hours of sport every day. She breezed through our last training walk, propelled by a stream of non stop chatter. Me - not so much.

So, today I set my alarm for 6am. I left the rest of the family sleeping, wrote a note saying 'Gone walking', and set out on a ten mile training walk with the terrier.

It was a glorious sunny day, and I set the iPhone to the unashamedly nostalgic Magic FM.

As London started waking up I walked through Earl's Court, and past the flat where Mr SM proposed (to me, obvs), and where we celebrated with bottles of champagne.

I walked into South Kensington, and down Cornwall Gardens, where I lived in my university holidays and held wild student parties.

Then round the church on Southwell Gardens where two male friends of mine were arrested one night for climbing onto the roof, during one of said parties.

(When they used their one 'phone call to call me from the police station, all I wanted to know was what had happened to the vodka we'd sent them out to purchase).

I walked through Kensington Gardens, passing the bandstand where I threw massive Pimms parties in my twenties, and into Hyde Park.

Round the playground where I pushed my children on the swings for hours when they were toddlers, and alongside the Serpentine where we'd meet friends for long, boozy picnics.

I looked back on it all fondly, but it didn't make me sad.

If I'd still been drinking I'd never be up at that time on a Sunday (unless I hadn't yet gone to bed).

There's no way I'd voluntarily do a ten mile walk. I'd have been hiding under the duvet, sweating booze through every pore and trying to work out how to make it through till lunch time.

I would have missed out on the most magical morning.

I walked past a couple of drunks, sleeping it off on park benches, and was hit by the smell of stale booze and despair.

And I thought back to the days when I agonised over and over about whether or not I should, or could, quit for ever.

I tried to remember what I was so scared of. And I just couldn't....

Happy Mother's Day to all my American friends!

SM x