Ellen is constantly distracted by stalking old acquaintances on Facebook, googling ‘simple’ recipes and hairstyles on Pinterest and watching seemingly perfect lives play out on Instagram. Sims captures perfectly the sheer relentless monotony and drudgery that can easily form a large part of a parent’s day and pitches this perfectly to the social media generation. The pressure involved in try to drag the children out the door to school…the arguments you just cannot win (your child does not care about the threat of scurvy)…and the bliss of relaxing at the end of what may well feel like a very long day indeed, only to reflect that it is, in fact, only Monday – Monday! – and everything you did today will need doing again tomorrow. For parents of young children, or who remember having young children, this will likely entertain and cause nods of familiarity in equal measure. The diary entries open with a scene familiar to those familiar with the blog: Mummy is making a list of how her life could work…then compares it with how her life really works. What’s it like?įunny, sweary, mostly relateable. This is her diary of her year as she approaches forty. Ellen likes wine, shoes and reminiscing about times in her life that involved Fun and Frolics rather than refereeing fights over who had the remote first. Her children, Peter and Jane, create chaos and drive her to drink. Her husband, Simon, is obsessed with gadgets. Could it be as good as the blog? The short answer is, not quite. So when I learned she had written a book, I was excited and delighted to receive not one but two copies of ‘Why Mummy Drinks’ for Christmas. Gill Sims is an extremely successful “mummy blogger” who maintains a Facebook page which presents the trials and tribulations of her family life to the world.

Why mummy drinks book