Who is MrsNormal?

The world is in a terrible state. We can all agree about that. Heroic action on all fronts is needed to put it to rights.

But not all of us can be Joan of Arc or Naomi Klein, dropping everything for the struggle. Some of us have 2.4 children and a spouse, and all the chores and ties that go along with that. Some of us dream of living in a hand-patted, cob-walled tree house in an Arcadian forest, surrounded by light-footed neighbours who share our values, far from the evil seductions of the big city… and wake up to police sirens, a husband whose masculinity would be fatally compromised by leaving the house with a string bag, and children whose dream home is a Hummer limo.

I like to call myself the moral conscience of the family; they prefer to call me the Food Nazi, or, more endearingly, the Environmental Taliban.

It got to the point where I had to leave home, or write a book. The book sounded cheaper. So I stayed, and carried on. And wrote the book. You’ll find a bit of it on the site, under  book 

It’s fiction, but with a core of tragic fact. Comedy being, after all, simply tragedy from the other person’s point of view. And that truth at the heart of the book, and the obsessive interest in (for instance) waste disposal technologies to which that life led me - all that needed a place to go.

Hence this site.

And if it has a message, I guess it would be that, just because there are children to feed and chores to get done, it doesn’t mean you can’t occasionally raise your eyes from the sock drawer and remember your duty to leave the world a better place. Even if it doesn’t do much for your domestic approval ratings. Even if it sometimes seems futile and pointless. It’s a personal responsibility.

So this is for all of us, fighting the lonely battle out there to do good without destroying our happy homes, and ending up on a compost heap of our own making.

This is MrsNormal.com, because heroism is not just for men in big boots; and because seeing the funny side is - normally - better than going on a killing spree in the shopping mall.