Fringe on the Royal Mile 2011 061 (Photo credit: byronv2)

The problem with housework is that it is so unfathomably tedious, it gives the mind an opportunity to wander blithely into that hinterland known as ‘Bad Thoughts’.

And as if on cue, today, whilst scrubbing round the u-bend, my mind got snaggled on a particularly thorny subject.

Loss.

Yes, I’ve lost M. But I’ve also lost the future we had planned together.

(Not that we had much planned actually, except to grow old together, laughing at that Channel 4 Arts Correspondent, whilst continuing to call each other Pet and Buble.)

One thing we had planned though, was to have another child – a sibling for our daughter.

Those who become embroiled in the complicated world of conception know that there is a ‘moment’ during the month in which all systems must absolutely go – you have a thirty second window before the egg explodes and the sperm shrivels or something. So that was our window, the night He died.

We’d lost a baby in the September. (Like grief, that’s another taboo subject, so DON’T tell anyone I’ve told you). I still think about that baby – it would be fifteen months old now, no doubt ginge like the first one, no doubt causing me endless worry about its blue shit. I mourn for it because of what it has come to represent – loss, on so many levels.

Yes, in theory I’m not too old to have another baby. But I don’t want any other baby  – I want HIS baby. And I am eternally grateful for the baby of His I already have.

But today, whilst on at the u-bend, I thought about my siblings – the one whose sole purpose it is to make me laugh and the one who is my best friend – and I felt like a right git for denying my daughter those relationships.

The lesson? As I always suspected –  DON’T do housework.