La is foxed and brings home some exciting news

Sometimes my life with La feels like a constant struggle to stay ahead of the game. I can feel utterly calm and in control, she comes in from a day at the Centre and within minutes I'm a gibbering wreck, screaming with confusion as I race around trying to restore domestic order.

It would be fantastic slapstick comedy to any observer as La moves around the house, distracting and diverting me so that she can get away with her cunning plans:

• If I forget to bolt the front door - she's on the drive in a flash, alarming passers by as she heads towards the wheels of a passing bus
• If I forget to lock the fridge - she's in there in a a nano-second grabbing fistfuls of tinned tuna, leftover dinner, mouthfuls of cheddar cheese, cold falafels, etc, etc
• If I forget to hide the paper or a magazine underneath a mattress - in the blink of an eye, it's trashed with ripped pages littering the floor of every room in the house
• If I don't hide the bread dough - she delves in and her fingers and face are adorned with the sticky stuff

However, after a couple of weeks where La has been determined to thwart all (in theory, for me, therapeutic) bread making attempts (and the results of) this week my two blogs have collided and I have made breadbags out of an old sundress which did belong to La. It's possible that with time, La will rip them open, such is her ferocious strength but for now she is puzzled by the knots in the ties and the loaves (and crumpets)are safe.

La on tv

A few weeks ago, a charity called Music in Hospitals paid a visit to La's centre and a film was made demonstrating their work.

The fact that La enjoyed this came as no surprise to us. I remember a GP telling me when she was a baby that La would certainly excel at some random things in life. At the time I thought she may have been fobbing me off, softening the devastating blow for a mother who had just been told her child had a severe learning disability, but very quickly we realised that La is in fact a musical genius. When I say genius it's possibly an exaggeration but you anticipate the final chord of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring after hearing it once? 

By promising 'music', you can get La to do most things and her tastes are wide. She responds wildly to a strong beat and any kind of discord with a repertoire of innovative dance moves and improvised singing. Bad playing by others is her idea of heaven - at the moment La is loving the non-talky bits in the current BBC4 series Punk Britannia, for example. Every summer she enjoys most of the televised Proms concerts.

Back to Music in Hospitals, as it turns out that La's contribution to the music session was such that we have been asked to grant permission for La to be shown in the final edit, to appear on The Community Channel.

If this is ever online, I may just post a link and reveal La's identity in what can only be all her glory. In the meantime, we await the (in the bag)  Bafta.

Body beautiful

From the moment we start to think about a newborn baby's name,I'll bet most parents have some degree of conflict between a name they personally truly adore and one which will work for their beloved baby for their hopefully long life in the big wide world.


That's just the beginning of the decisions we make on behalf of our children, from the best school to suit their needs, to the clothes they wear to the clubs we enrol them in. I'll be honest, as my other children have grown up it's been a relief not to have to make all these decisions, as well as a delight to observe their imaginative, unexpected and exciting choices in seemingly banal matters.


For La, aged 22, we are still making these decisions and it doesn't get easier because she's an adult know, interacting with the world as a young woman. 


It falls on me, mostly to style her hair, buy her clothes, pick out her perfume, with an eye on her achingly stylish sisters, yet anxious not to make her look silly. La is a true eccentric but to dress her in a way which truly reflects her personality could come across as plain weird.


Yes, I know all this seems mundane and trivial but the personal is political, as they say, and since she has reached puberty, occasional comments have been made by the family about La's hairy legs and armpits. It's that time of year when we start exposing more. La is legging-less and her sleeveless summer frocks are starting to get an airing and there's no doubt about it, her hairiness is confronting me again.


For all her adult life, La has sported armpits a la Julia Roberts - has it drawn attention? Is he mocked behind our backs on beaches and in public swimming pools? Do people snigger on a summer's day when she mops her brow when wearing a sundress?

Last week, I admit, these anxieties overcame me, 'other people' are enough of a problem to La, she draws enough attention to herself without me adding to the spectacle. So I succumbed to the ritual. La cooperated calmly while I shaved her underarms in the bath.


Have I betrayed my own principles and somehow sexualised our learning-disabled daughter or am I just ensuring La conforms to the norm among women her age?