In answer to Candy's question my little one is a little girl. She had her first birthday on Friday. We had the in-laws visiting over the weekend. It wasn't too bad really. They nagged my beloved but not me. I think they know me well enough now to guess what my reaction would have been.

We all have terrible colds now and mine has turned into a chest infection.

I haven't been posting recently because I've had difficulty getting online. Hopefully I'll be on more regularly in future.

My baby will be 1 year old later this month. So this time last year I was waddling round the house cursing my pulled back and having long talks with my bump about how it was time to come out.

What else can I tell you about myself? I have two brothers and my beloved has two half sisters. My best friend is very nearly my sister-in-law. I mean that she lives with my youngest brother and one of these years may get round to marrying him.

I belong to a Kung Fu school. A proper one. Yes, me, what are you laughing at? Whenever I tell people that I can see them thinking "You do Kung Fu? How?" And the answer is, "Badly". But that doesn't matter because Hung Ga Kung Fu training seems to be more about how hard you're trying than what you can do. I try very hard.

Maybe more later. If I can think of any more to tell.

I suppose it's time I introduced myself. I live in the North East of Scotland with my partner and our baby. I'm 32. I'm female. I'm Scottish, which just means that I pronounce r fully and the 'ch' in loch properly and I get offended when people call me English. I'm also a pict, maybe, which means that in winter I'm a pale blue colour and in summer it takes me a week in the sun just to go white and I spend the rest of the summer with my face peeling.

More later

Just in case anyone's wondering (you know who I mean, Candy Froggie) while my blog is personal I do mean for it to be read. If it was a secret I'd write it in a notebook and hide it under my mattress.

Pretty soon I'm goint to have to post some backstory on myself. Not just now though, I'm all written out. I've been posting crits on the Crime Story challange over on the BBC Get Writing website.

Spent the weekend in the bosom of my family. The family I came from, that is, not the family I started.

it was very strange to watch my parents doting on my daughter. I couldn't help wondering if they were like that with me when I was that age. And if they were then how did I end up such a mess.

I keep waiting to screw up. I'm convinced that one of these days I'm going to make a mistake that just can't be fixed and my baby's life will be just as awful as mine's been. Maybe I should have given her up when she was born. I just don't deserve her.