Julie Arkell

Next week I'll be escaping all of my usual routines and responsibilities for four whole days. Instead of changing nappies and making packed lunches (and nagging the two big girls about putting their &@@%$^£& coats and shoes on because if they don't they'll be LATE for school)  I'll be spending my days at West Dean College with Julie Arkell and a room full of people with similar textile-related passions!

This is the course I'll be doing. To be honest, even though it's only a few days away not, it still doesn't seem very real. I've got the husband, parents and parents-in-law lined up for childcare, and I've just spent the last half hour writing a 'Control Freak's Guide to Looking after my Children' (two pages of closely typed A4...) and I still can't quite believe that I'm going off, on my own, for four whole days. I know that I'm very lucky, and that it's going to be wonderful (surely any trip that recommends you take your own glue gun HAS to be good) but I also know that it's going to be weird and that I am going to miss my little gang very much. So if you spot someone on the train somewhere between Bath and Chichester, looking red eyed and weepy and with an item of children's clothing pressed to their nose, that'll be me.