Ten Thousand Letters To My Children: Return To Sender (03/04/2017)

In front of me sits a small black box.

It is a hard drive onto which I have finally saved all the photos and videos of my twin children that have been accumulating over the last 3 years 10 months and 11 days since they were born.

This represents a personal triumph of great magnitude for several reasons:

1. I have significantly reduced the risk of losing all those cherished memories to an unforeseen but entirely predictable hardware failure, spilt drink or stray projectile (or perhaps all of the above).

2. I have ticked a 3 year 10 month 11 day old job off the 'to do list' and so really have no excuse not to do the tax return as well.

3. I have dismissed the future need to berate myself in any "don't you take a lot of photos - you do back them up, don't you?" conversation, of which there are rather a lot.

4. I have overcome the last self-imposed obstacle to writing something down about the children before I start to forget what it really felt like and begin to make up something a bit Disney.

I am not going to write 10,000 letters to my children (though it might feel like it). I only called the blog 'Twins: Ten Thousand Letters To My Children' because:

(a) It seemed suitably portentous;

(b) I can see it on the cover of a vanity published paperback; and

(c) Nearly every other permutation had been nabbed by people with the discourtesy of having got there first.

The 'Twins' in question are Alex (a boy) and Sophie (a girl). Any more detail than that probably destines them to be the perpetual victims of identity fraud and PPI cold calls.

'Ten Thousand Letters' seemed like the number of days I might still be here for bearing mind my father and his father before him lasted that long too.

I do hope I can capture something of the wonder of their arrival in my life and perhaps a little of the chaos and joy and exhaustion that came with them.

To those who have children, let this be a sincere encouragement as there is no turning back.

To those who don't, let this be an answer to the eternal mystery; why can small children not hug you without leaving suspicious stains on your trousers.

Read on.

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