Dolly's blog: The commute

It's 6.45am and I'm shivering slightly in a station car park whilst the man I love nearly as much as my husband makes me a skinny latte. Phil has a mobile coffee van and without him my quality of life would be immeasurably worse. Clutching my brew and slowly gaining consciousness up as the train hurtles for 85 minutes towards London, my morale is dependent on him to such an extent that I write his holiday dates in my diary and count down the days until his return.

Waiting in line for my daily fix as the drizzle starts to fall, I can't help but notice the proliferation of exceedingly smart motors in the carpark. Porches, BMWs and Land Rovers pack the parking bays and I ponder whether this is an attempt to compensate for the fact that, like besuited vampires, many of these people don't travel in daylight for half the year.

You get to recognise the characters of course. There used to be a wonderful old schooler who always wore a trilby (which he would doff in greeting) and reprimanded any male yoof who didn't allow ladies on the train first. I loved that. It's Wiltshire so Army officers abound and even in a suit you can spot them a mile off, standing straight as rods with steely gazes and ironed to the max. Then there's the Lads; the middle aged public school financial services types who banter like they're on Top Gear and don't (I strongly suspect) do the dinner when they get home. Between all these tribes there's a certain sense of blitz spirit camaraderie, particularly on the bad days when we all get chucked off at Basingstoke.

In many respects this aspect of my working life is the sworn enemy of work life balance. I generally leave the house at 6.30 and if I don't catch the 5.20 return train then there's a good chance I won't see my children awake that day. There's something oddly exhausting about travelling and when I do see the kids the honest truth is I'm often so knackered that my focus is on getting them in bed rather than any pretence of quality time. I've written before about the days I sit in the car outside our house summoning the strength to start the second shift of kids and cooking. When not working on the other side of the world my husband can walk to work in 4 minutes and on the odd occasion he does the commute you'd think he'd ascended Everest as he lies prostate on the sofa that evening, no use to man nor beast, and I stretch every sinew to resist saying something really irritating like "Well now you know how I feel".

And yet in many ways this is my quality time. It's an additional work time buffer zone which just about enables me to do a four day week and keep on top rather than go under. It's time to catch up on play date text messages and other such family admin. Above all, on the very best days, it's time to think and aside from that do very little at all. The value of that is seriously underrated, most city workers being rather driven types for whom doing nothing is anathema.

But we all need time to pause and reflect. Most of my best ideas come to me when gazing at fields out of the train window. And when I do get home and surrender myself to a relentless bombardment of enthusiastic child questions all beginning with the word "Mummy...!" my stamina is boosted by the preceding drive through lanes which wind through beautiful countryside. I'm a Londoner through and through but find the older I get the more I appreciate grass. And whilst fewer words strike greater fear in a commuter than Replacement Bus Service, even on those days I have to grudgingly acknowledge it's a lovely place for the kids to grow up.

After 19 years of fee earning, Dolly now works in a management role in a London law firm.  Working four days a week she has three children aged 5 to 9, a wonderful (though often absent) husband and a charismatic dog who keeps her sane.