The Landlady: A trip down memory lane

I have now been writing this column for 16 years, since before The Small Daughter was even born. It is currently a subject very close to home because I am finally beginning work on a book of collected Landlady columns from years gone by. I am doing this because many friends have asked me to do so and my children are keen to read about their childhood, even if it is through my slightly skewed view.

Because I have been writing it for so long, gathering said columns is trickier than I first imagined as many were written on a computer so old that it virtually ran on paraffin. Others were written on The Very Ex Boyfriend’s computer Clive, which even when new in 2003, sounded like a wheezing elderly distance runner when you started it up. Then there were the years of columns written on the Toshiba, which passed away in 2010, superseded by the Acer, which died earlier this year. The only thing I have is a cardboard file full of the hard copies of my columns and it is these that I have been re-reading in preparation for re-entering into my shiny new computer.

Written on The Very Ex Boyfriend’s computer Clive

So far, it has been a very enjoyable task revisiting the ups and downs of my former life, and I am especially loving reading about how vile my children were when they were younger. Not The Small Daughter, as she was then a cute (yet often destructive) baby, who is only moving into the realms of vileness now. Tales of The Big Son and The Big Daughter as they were in their teenage personas have already had me howling with laughter. The Big Son, who is now one of the most successful and wise people I know, was an absolute arse when he was younger, which made for an unhappy pairing with The Big Daughter who was a sulky, spiteful ice queen hell bent on destroying her brother. They now get along like a house on fire and I’m sure they’ll think my columns are fantasy.