My summer of au pairing is now over. Which I’m quite glad about, really. They’re sweet, children, but I now fully appreciate how exhausting they can be. And I can also, for the first time, see why parents snap at their children for piddly little things that really don’t warrant being snapped at. You come across mums everywhere, on buses or in the park or in the shops, having a go at their children for the stupidest reasons, exploding over tiny things, and I’ve always thought this sort of behaviour is completely unnecessary and unhelpful. I still think it’s not necessary, but I can see now why it happens. Children really try your patience. They even try my patience, and I think I’m a pretty patient person. I’ve had to exercise severe self-restraint in order to stop myself behaving like those snappy-mums with Ellen and Frankie on a number of occasions. And, actually, apart from the odd 4-year-old-tantrum, Ellen and Frankie are pretty well behaved. I hate to think what it would be like with a couple of really badly behaved children. I would probably feel like hitting them round the head and a cup of tea after about ten minutes.

I finished in London just over a week ago, rounding off a particularly tiring week with Ellen and Frankie by celebrating my birthday, two days early, with some friends and homemade pizzas. Hurrah! Saturday started early enough at 10 am when I met Rob in Green Park, in central London. We then met Tessa for lunch in Covent Garden, and then Rachel at Waterloo for a drink, before Tessa and Rob left to respectively get home for a Christening and to write a dissertation, leaving Rachel and I to meet Thom and Aaron on Oxford Street so we could go back to my empty aunt’s house to cook. Organisational stress, generally. And what I found most amusing was that Rachel, Thom and Aaron formed potentially the most random combination out of all my RHUL friends that I could have asked for, given that the three had either never met before or hardly knew each other. Ha ha! But it turned out to be a really lovely and chilled evening, with far too much pizza, which tasted mostly of oregano and rosemary, some good apple crumble, which contained large amounts of cinnamon, a bit of wine, some charango music, and general humour. Hurrah.

For my actual birthday, which was last Monday, I somehow found myself climbing through treetops in the rain with my Dad and sister, despite a nagging suspicion that what I really should have been doing was going out and getting drunk. Oh well. It was quite fun, really, although very wet. After a week at home which was spent not looking for a job I completed my au pairing duties by taking Ellen and Frankie up to Newcastle on the train from London. And I’m now back at home. For at least another four months, if not quite a bit longer, which is an idea that is taking some getting used to. As is the whole gap year thing in general. And the concept of going off travelling on my own. Hmm. But I’m sure I’ll come round to it all in the end. I’ve got to, really.

It’s been quite a good summer, though. And seems to have gone really quickly, probably because for the first time in about three years I’ve actually been doing something, as supposed to wasting away my time in Norfolk failing to find a job. Children no longer frighten me half as much as they did. I’ve almost managed to save up my first thousand, which is not bad really. Now I’ve just got to find a job, decide where to go travelling, get used to living at home again and learn to cope with the isolation that is Banham and Norfolk in general. No problem.

I think the best Ellen-and-Frankie moment of the summer occurred one morning when we were sitting eating breakfast, and Alice had just put the washing on. And Ellen and Frankie got out their two little wooden chairs, put them down in front of the washing machine, and sat and watched the washing. It was classic.