I am supposed to be preparing for our after-school cookery club which we hold every week in the kitchen. This involves:

1. cleaning the kitchen

2. removing all papers – odd pieces, old homework, newspapers, written-on post-it notes – to recycling bin or into a neat pile on the stairs for ‘sorting later’

3. preparing surfaces for their weekly shroud of icing sugar and flour

4. geeing myself to be really calm about ensuing mayhem

I am also meant to be making fish pie for supper, and need to get a move on as the kitchen will need fumigating of fishy smells before the quite-fussy-fish-eater returns from school

But hey fuelled by the seriously good and very strong coffee at my favourite café, The Spoke, I’m ignoring everything and embarking on a new post. This morning I’ve thought a lot about the crossroads I’m at. I’ve wondered how best to represent it here, the sketches in my notebooks are garbled maps of balloons, scribbles and jottings.

There are seven roads off the junction leading to:

BAKING

ESTABLISHED BUSINESS

FAMILY

PUBLISHING

SWIMMING

PEOPLE

MY SKILLS

and some of the routes overlap. At each destination there are shiny things, and bright lights beckoning me. I don’t have an A-Z, SatNav or Google Maps to help me navigate my way. Sometimes one route seems best, other days another, and some days there are diversions blocking each way. I’ve popped the page from my notebook at the foot of this – you can tell it’s genuine as it’s not very legible.

Above it all there’s a signal gantry – a bit like on motorways, with three routes off it.

There’s a voice in my head that’s getting louder and stronger, boosted no end by my husband’s unswerving presence at my side, and the voice is urging, ‘Just do it all. Go for it.’ So that’s exactly what I am doing. And I’m hoping not to get lost along the way!

PS Whatever you’re doing and wherever you are (waving hello to readers here in the UK, in America, Australia, Canada, Kazakhstan) thank you very much for following my adventures.