Well, I hadn't really planned on starting a blog today. It just sort of happened. I'm sitting in my gym clothes ready to get out there and actually be a bit active, but the dreaded computer has sucked me in again. I swear, it is a worse addiction that chocolate. You sit down and three hours later you remember that you were just about to put a load of washing on, honest!

So, maybe I'll start off by telling you a little about our family, just to set the context, and we'll see how it goes from there.

We are a fairly unconventional family. There's me, Rachel. I'm 38 and I teach science in a high school. I used to love my job because I love science and I love teaching kids and seeing their faces light up when they get an idea. At the moment I really don't like my job very much because I am truly fed up of being verbally abused by 'orrible teenagers every day. There's only so many days you can be called a 'tosser' or a 'cow' before you start to think life is way too short to bother with this sort of stuff. So, I'm looking for a way out, but I haven't yet found anything that tickles my fancy enough.

My husband of 12 years is Nick. He's ten years older than me and ten inches taller than me. Trust me, I'm not short - he's just kind of tall. He works for the railways. At the moment this means sorting out the London Underground system (not that we live anywhere near London).

We have managed to have 4 children in two batches. The first set of twins arrived in January 2000. Idonea was a couple of minutes before Melbryn. Three years and 13 days later we repeated the feat: Eartha is a minute or so older than Saskia. So somehow we managed to get four Capricorns in 3 years, which was maybe not good planning. It was efficient if nothing else!

Other than that, we have a white cat with ginger bits called Fergus, and a large border collie called Palafox, though most of the time we call him Woofer or Dog.

That'll do for a first attempt at blogging.... Let's see what happens next.