It is a Tuesday morning and I wake up at around eight o’clock. Dan, a Romanian Roma father, has already left to go to his construction job. I walk into the kitchen, ready to put the kettle on to make a cup of tea for me and a cup of coffee for Cristina, a Romanian Roma mother. This morning everything seems a bit different. Cristina is rushing around frantically, boiling water in the kettle and taking it upstairs to the bathroom where she is filling washing bowls (there is no running hot water in the house). I offer to help her and she asks me to get cereal ready for Lucia, her 3-year-old daughter’s, breakfast. I settle down at the table in the front room next to the kitchen to have breakfast with Lucia. She is happy and full of energy as usual. She eats about half of her corn flakes and manages to put half on the table. She absentmindedly points into the kitchen: “Rat,” ( shobolan [sic]) she notices. I shut the kitchen door quickly and bang on it a few times to scare the creature away.

In the meantime, Cristina has finished rushing up and down the stairs with the hot water. Eventually she brings the babies downstairs and places them on the couch. They have been dressed in the clothes they often wear for church. Cristina has also dressed differently. She has plaited her long blonde hair that reaches to her waist, has a long satin skirt and blouse. I say that she looks very pretty ( shukar ) and she replies that Louise from the church had given her these clothes. She makes the babies’ breakfast of bread and yogurt and we sit down to feed them, trying not to get breakfast all over their clean clothes.

After the babies have eaten, Cristina jumps up again to clear everything away and to sweep the floor. She runs upstairs and brings down an armful of soft toys. She places them around the babies as Lucia picks them up and throws them around. Louise, a children's centre worker, and Kay, a volunteer at the local Baptist church arrive. Cristina greets them with hugs and invites them into the house to sit among the toys and babies, offering them “a cuppa tea”.