During parental leave, I yearned for my ‘old life’. Then I had an idea (2025)

This story is part of the April 27 edition of Sunday Life.

My boobs hurt and my eyes stung. I cursed every moment in the previous 35 years of my life in which I’d dared utter the words “I’m tired” out loud. Until now, I’d had no idea what the word tired even meant. As I caught my outline reflected in my computer screen – a frizzy, messy bun on top of my head – I could have sworn I used to be hot.

Until a month before, I had worked full time as a radio host. Ash London Live was my first baby, and I’d left the show to birth my second. A human baby this time.

I looked across the room at my two-week-old son sleeping soundly in his bassinet, my abdomen still tender from the three-inch incision that brought him into the world a month early. The room was quiet. I stared at my microphone and wondered if I would ever use it again.

As the weeks went on, I could only chuckle when remnants of my “old life” appeared: an Instagram memory on the red carpet of some awards show in LA; the designer sneakers I purchased on a work trip to London that I could finally admit were truly hideous; and the emails from Qantas telling me I was about to lose my platinum frequent flyer status.

I’d spent the last 10 years working in an industry and living a life that felt completely normal at the time but which now, with hindsight, seemed quite absurd. Now I was a walking milk factory, existing solely for the purposes of keeping a small human alive. A small human who didn’t even know who Taylor Swift was. Rude.

The transition from full-time work to full-time motherhood is different for everyone, and to be honest, it was one I revelled in. I loved the quietness of this new life. I almost found the monotony comforting. But the difference between my “old life” and my “new life” was still jarring at times, often forcing me into moments of quiet reminiscence.

For instance, once, on a work trip to Los Angeles, my producer and I sat by a famous rapper’s pool while we waited for him to come out for his interview. We waited for two hours, his assistant coming out every 15 minutes to say he was “wrapping up in the studio”. What she didn’t realise was that we could see him through the upstairs window, lounging about in a velour robe smoking god knows what. Unperturbed at the inconvenience, we took advantage of the situation and had a poolside Instagram photo shoot while we waited.

Early in my career I watched a then-unknown Sam Smith sing to a room of 20 people in our office kitchen, all of whom went from scrolling on their phones to staring in shock and awe the second Sam sang. I was at Harry Styles’ first ever solo show in London. In my early days as a music journalist, I interviewed a 21-year-old “rising star” called Ed Sheeran because nobody else in the office wanted to do it (a year later they would have committed murder for the opportunity).

So, as life continued and the world moved on without me, I began to write. Partly out of gratitude, partly as a kind of therapy. I wrote as a way to remember, but also as a way to rewrite history. To write the version of some of my own experiences I wish were true. To say the things I wish I’d said, whether in tough contract negotiations or moments of self-doubt. I wrote a love story that made me swoon, one that takes readers around the world at the pointy end of the plane (because if we can’t travel first class in our dreams, then when can we?).

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Eventually, I had enough scribbles to pitch a novel, a work of fiction inspired by a decade-long (so far) career in radio. My publishers laughed when I told them I’d have the first draft finished in three months. I laughed back when they said they’d give me a year. They were right.

And so, a year later, I handed in the manuscript. Ninety thousand words written while my son slept at my feet, on my body, and in his cot at 3am while I sat alone in a dark room tapping away.

This book became my escape from a year as magical as it was mundane. It was my portal back into the life that had given me so much. The career that introduced me to my husband. The job that showed me how wildly capable I was. It’s a love letter to an industry that broke my heart and made it soar. But it’s also just a silly little book that will make you laugh and help you forget your ever-growing to-do list and the fact you forgot to buy milk again. Which reminds me … I definitely forgot to buy milk again.

Love on the Air (Allen & Unwin) by Ash London is out now.

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