What happened to weekends?

Once upon a time, a weekend was time to catch up with my family, lazy lie-ins or at least not a dash to the door with children, book-bags, packed lunches and unbrushed teeth. Now weekends are filled with - yep, be there in a minute; I just need to write this; just five more minutes; please, just leave me; sorry, sorry; it's just a year.

But, secretly, I love it. I have spent the weekend researching land girls in Cornwall for a story idea, writing about an old lady who doesn't know she has died and another lady who killed her husband with fry-ups! Children? We made a fire, they ate, they played together and no one shouted too  loudly. Husband? He's here somewhere......in the kitchen, with the kids, doing all the things I used to do. It's only for a year!

Thoughts so far, six weeks into MA on professional writing

Why, aged 40 something, with four young children, a husband who is freelance and works overseas intermittently, in fact works intermittently, why would I want to do this? Because I always believed I could write, at least more creatively and engagingly than a persuasive letter to the council or a plea to have car parking ticket revoked (unsuccessfully, as it happens).

Fear and thoughts of what do you think you are doing ringing in my ears hindered the run up to the course. Burying myself frantically in displacement activity - decorating my daughter's bedroom, decorating the hall, in fact decorating anything except the parts of my brain I should be decorating with absorbing thoughts on the theory of writing. My biggest fear? Being found out.