I’m 32 and a bit years old, a Chemistry graduate from the UK with two kids aged one and three. I live in Prague, Czech Republic.

I’m lucky because I work from home two days a week. This way I get the best of both worlds; time with the kids three days to go to the park and meet friends etc. and work time to earn some money, use my brain and keep my skills up-to-date for the future.

Even though I live in Prague, I work as a freelance Research Analyst for a company in the UK. All I need is a quiet room, a telephone and a computer with an Internet connection. I don’t often get to use my chemical knowledge specifically, but I frequently need to use my broad general scientific knowledge as I research projects for companies with a strong research and development focus.

I’m lucky to be able to work so flexibly like this – it is only possible because I worked for the company before I had the kids so I already had the contacts. The downside is that the work isn’t guaranteed. So if things are slow I don’t always get work, and then of course, I don’t get paid.

15th April 2005

The kids woke me up at 5am! Before 9am, I had to feed both breakfast and clean up porridge splattered on the floor, change two pooey nappies, put the washing on and then hang it up to dry and empty the dishwasher. I think I remembered to have breakfast myself? Grandma arrived at around 9am to take over. I disappeared upstairs and shut the door -ahhh peace and quiet (working is by far the easier option!)

My assignment was to research [a topic that is an industrial secret!]. I was spying; trying to find out for a competitor what the other big manufacturers are getting up to in terms of new products, research, collaborations, etc. I can’t say more because that would give the game away. I used only Internet searching for this project – google, medline, findarticles etc.

By about 5pm, the kids were getting hungry and tired and noisy; so I finished work and went downstairs to help with dinnertime – thankfully granny made dinner – so that made life easier. I gave the children a bath- they had fun splashing around. Hot milk time, story time and then bed by 8pm.

The deadline for the [secret] project was the following day, and I had another hour of work to do to finish off. At 9pm, I collapsed in a comfy chair with a book…..