Every time I think I was a complete failure as a parent, I bat away that thought by recalling times when I think I was quite a special mum.

It’s a rainy day today in Cornwall and I’m binge watching TV with the dogs snoring on the sofa next to me and a memory came flooding in.

I was a single mum which at times had many benefits as I could indulge in lots of special times with Toby with no one to interfere or judge. It was TV shows that bonded us on rainy weekends and Friday evenings. I can’t remember exactly how old he was but it was before high school so he must have been 9 or 10.

On Fridays I used to finish work early so I could pick him up from school, something I mostly missed out on being a single working mum. We went swimming then on the way home we’d pick up snacks at the newsagents (bacon wheat crunchies were a favourite), then make a camp on the living room floor with cushions and bedding and watch American sitcoms. Our favourites were Cybill, starring Cybill Shepherd, Ellen (before she became a chat show host and had come out), and of course Friends.

Toby particularly loved the Nickelodeon channel and loved Sarbrina the teenage witch (don’t tell his mates). One weekend they had a marathon showing back to back episodes and we spent a whole day in PJs camping on the floor, watching episode after episode and probably eating junk food.

When Toy Story came out we went to see it about 5 weeks in a row, over and over again. Weekends were ‘our time’ as during the week I was working full time.

When Toby went off to University I sent him a Toy Story sticker book and a set of miniature Toy Story figures as a little joke to cheer him up. The little figures were returned to me with his belongings after I lost him.

Most weekends when he was little were spent visiting steam railways as he was obsessed with Thomas the tank engine. I have so many photos to treasure of these times. My mum and dad took him out on lots of trips, he went to the Thames Barrier, the zoo, Duxford aircraft museum.  

Even when he was older we did spontaneous things like deciding to drive down to Torquay the night before the total eclipse in 1999 or going up to London to see David Blaine hanging in a box over the Thames.

Sure I made lots of mistakes and I may not have been ‘mom of the year’ but memories of happy times help me on days like these. I was rubbish at discipline, saying no and getting him to do his homework but having all these memories to treasure reminds me he had a happy childhood, despite not having his dad around or any siblings.

I gave him the best life I knew how and that’s all we can do as parents. In my book a good parent is someone who loves their children beyond anything else and would go to the ends of the earth to make them feel happy, safe and loved, even if they broke every rule in the ‘good parenting handbook’.