Like many women after a divorce, Nicola Hodgkinson found herself facing a stark reality. With three young children to raise, a ramshackle cottage by the sea she had a choice: to wallow in self pity or pull herself together and get on with it. She chose the latter. And with her choice came the decision to embrace a more casual approach to parenting, convinced as she was that fresh air, a positive outlook and the freedom to learn from mistakes would be good for the whole family. And so life with the lid off, began.This is a book about all the magic, and the chaos, of family existence. Steering her way through village life, Nicola discovers the hazards that solo domesticity can bring, from a disgraced cat sailing through the window into a jam-and-scone cottage tea sale, to a car which acquires a resident mouse. Constantly surrounded by a haphazard menagerie, along the way we meet a spirit donkey, a pig with empty-nest syndrome and a lot of quails. As Nicola learns to muddle through, and even delight in, a less than perfect existence, Life with the Lid Off is a brilliant, profound and funny evocation of a universal theme: how to find yourself again amongst the hurly burly sandwich of family life. 'This is the most wonderful story. A very worthy winner of the "People's Author" competition' Alan Titchmarsh