Hi everyone and welcome to Squiggly Careers podcast. I'm Sarah, one of the hosts, and this week I'm not joined by Helen, as it's one of our special editions. So I'm delighted to say that I'm joined by Christine Armstrong, who's the author of a book that everybody recommended to me. It was one of those books that I started to feel more and more guilty that I'd not read because so many people were saying it was really good. A book called The Mother of All Jobs, which we're going to talk about today. And then actually, by pure

coincidence, we were actually introduced by a mutual friend. So not only was your book

recommended to me by everyone, but also we know lots of the same people, so I'm really excited to have this chat today.

Thanks for having me.

This is actually the first time Christine and I are meeting, so I was just joking with her

that it's quite an intense way to meet someone to be like, hi, I'm now going to interview

you for a podcast.

But I spent the last week on holiday in Wales.

You'll have me talk about it in the last podcast because I was very smug about my holiday and actually managed to read a whole book on a

holiday which anybody else who's got a toddler will appreciate that is no mean feat and I have to say

that is partly down to the very smart way in which Christine has actually written the book so credit

to Christine that she's come up with a format that I think is accessible and it means it's not going to be

one of those books you know that sits by your bedside table and you look at them every night and think, one day, one day I will

read all these books and be super smart, but you never quite get to them and they're a bit intimidating.

So this is not that book. So what we're going to do today, I'm going to talk to Christine a little

bit about why she wrote the book, ask us some specific questions about the things that really jumped out to me from the book around parenting and combining work and careers

and some of the challenges. I'm sure she hasn't got all of the answers because I'm not sure

any of us do. And then we're going to talk about some of the questions that you've submitted

through Instagram. And then as I always do when I'm interviewing somebody who's written a book

I will do my little book review live at the end which I like to feel keeps people on their

toes until the very last minute. So Christine as you know we're writing a book at the moment

and it's a lot of work a lot of dedication and you know you did it by yourself at least Helen

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