slightly deluded and lacking empathy with the rest of the world. (eg, I have never 'only' been a writer, always writing books while making theatre, while writing theatre, while having cancer, while doing Other Stuff -- like everyone!). As for mothering being a full time job, well, I really don't know. My mother -- who was a good mother, working with the best she had available -- worked full time and brought up 7 kids in a time and place of great poverty (post-war London, Woolwich), so my own truth is that I see it happen everywhere -- women working full time while bringing up kids while trying to make their dreams. But I also see that it's only in the wealthy West that we suppose that working AND being a mother is unusual. Isn't it the norm for most women in the world? Regardless, I think my real point is that we all have huge burdens, huge sorrows, massive pain ... and that is normal and usual. And we also, mostly, work on, through it. As, in my opinion, we ought to, our contribution to the world, as artists, as makers, being of value. I'm just not sure any one group gets a special dispensation, as if any one of us gives more than the other. (I have yet, for example, to meet the parent who is having a hard time -- let alone the one who is loving being a parent -- who would trade their hard time