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The Long TableFamily life across two homes
A long kitchen table by a window with chairs pulled out, mugs, a school bag and a wall calendar behind.

The Long Table

Family life across two homes

A British magazine about the practical side of family life when one family runs across two homes: the week, the handover, the school bag and the weekend.

  • 6Sections
  • 48Articles
  • 15 SeptemberLatest piece

Where to start

Six ways in

  • Two mugs of tea on a scrubbed kitchen table beside an open week to view diary and a set of house keys.
    The shared week

    Co-parenting

    Plans, calendars, handovers and the messages that hold a shared week together.

  • A child's red rucksack and a pair of scuffed school shoes waiting in a hallway beside a front door.
    From their side

    Children and change

    School, listening, screens and time together: change from the child's side of the table.

  • A small bedroom with a single bed, a folded duvet and a shelf holding a few books and a torch.
    The practical layer

    Two homes

    Bedrooms, budgets, paperwork and the habits that keep two households in step.

  • A wide pebble and sand beach in Devon under a grey sky, with a family walking near the tideline in coats.
    Out of the house

    Family life in Devon

    Exeter, the coast and the moor: days out that survive rain, budgets and short weekends.

  • An unmade bed by a window at dawn with a bedside table holding a glass of water and a paperback.
    The other half

    Parents' wellbeing

    Sleep, routine, reading and support for the adult half of the arrangement.

  • An open notebook and a pencil on a windowsill, with rain on the glass and a garden fence beyond.
    Written this month

    The Notebook

    Short dated notes on the British family year, month by month.

Recently published

Newest first

  • A wooden courthouse bench under tall windows, late morning light falling across a stack of printed case papers and a pen resting on top, shot from a slight angle at table height.
    · Co-parenting

    Docket, decision, story: three different things

    A docket is a list of what happened in court. A decision is a ruling. The story told afterwards is neither. A plain guide to Maine court records.

  • A kitchen table in daylight, a ring binder open beside a stack of dated letters and a cup of tea, photographed from above at a slight angle.
    · Parents' wellbeing

    A civil claim in plain terms

    What each side in a civil claim is actually asking for, why the paperwork decides more than the argument, and how a dispute takes shape.

  • A kitchen table in late afternoon light, a plain manila folder open beside a mug, one signed page face up and a house key resting on top, shot from slightly above.
    · Two homes

    Wills, trusts and probate, asked plainly

    What a will does, what a trust does, who each one names, and where the signed copy lives. A plain guide for families in two homes.

  • A long banquet table in a warm-lit hall, ivory cloths laid and water glasses filled, a brass chandelier above and a wooden dance floor visible at the edge of the frame, shot from the doorway at eye level.
    · Two homes

    Booking the room for a family party

    Numbers, timing, sound and food: the practical questions that decide whether a family party evening works, asked before you sign anything.

  • A plain kitchen table in low morning light, one sheet of paper and a pen beside a cooling mug, shot from slightly above with the back door out of focus behind.
    · Parents' wellbeing

    One habit that survives a hard term

    A single repeated habit for parents whose week is already full, with a short version for the hardest weeks and a way to restart after missing days.

  • A kitchen table in daylight with a half-written birth card, a pen, a mug of tea and a folded list of names beside it, shot from above at arm's length.
    · Two homes

    Birth cards when a family lives in two homes

    Who goes on the card, what the wording has to carry, and how the news travels when a baby arrives into a family spread across two homes.

  • A small care home bedroom in late afternoon light, a folded blanket on the bed end, a framed photograph on the bedside table and a name card on the door behind, shot from the doorway.
    · Two homes

    When an older relative moves address

    A practical guide for families when an older relative moves into a care home: visits, the room, paperwork and keeping everyone in touch across one more address.

  • A kitchen table by a window in flat morning light, a paper folder open beside a mug, a handwritten list of dates and a child's inhaler resting on top of it.
    · Parents' wellbeing

    What to bring to a child's first appointment

    A calm checklist for a child's first visit to a new family practice, from dates and notes to questions, annual exams and the patient portal.

  • A public library reading corner in late afternoon light: a low chair, a single picture book left face up on the seat, and a child's coat over the back of it, shot from a few steps away at seat height.
    · Children and change

    One book, one language, one voice

    A reading day for the whole family: what Día is, where it came from, and how one adult reading aloud in one language keeps a household together.

  • A kitchen table in late afternoon light, an open cardboard folder with a handwritten address sheet on top, a pen resting across it, and a phone showing a photographed letter, shot from slightly above.
    · Co-parenting

    Paperwork that works in two homes

    Which details change when a family runs across two addresses, where to keep the folder, and how both homes hold the same version of every form.

From the shelf

Still worth reading

Earlier in the year

The back pages

About this magazine

In one paragraph

The Long Table is written for British households where one family life runs across two front doors. It covers the practical layer and nothing else: the written parenting plan, the shared family calendar, the four minute handover on the doorstep, the second bedroom and the wet Saturday that has to be filled somewhere in Devon.

Everything is in British English and everything is checked before it is printed. What we will not do is offer legal or clinical advice, a limit set out in our editorial policy. Readers who want the fuller account can read about the magazine, and anyone with a correction or a suggestion can reach the desk on the contact page.

The pages we keep on the table

Checked and kept close

These are the pages we return to when a week needs a plan, a room needs setting up or a child needs listening to, so they stay close at hand as the magazine grows.

Elsewhere on the web

Two reads beyond this magazine

Families planning a repeatable Saturday routine will find Lane Six a clear guide to parkrun and junior athletics and to volunteering at English clubs.

For readers whose work spans more than one country, Syrian Talent follows careers that cross borders: the working lives of Syrian professionals between Syria and exile, from career change to remote work.

When a free weekend calls for water and a longer horizon than the Exe, fishing Eagle Lake in Zone 5 is written up season by season, with the licences, limits and trip planning that go with Vermilion Bay.

Households whose two front doors stand in different countries will recognise the doubled world kept by Muslim life and travel in Kobe, an English-language guide to the mosque that has stood since 1935, its community and halal food in Kansai.

For a quiet habit that packs into the weekend bag between houses, Stitch Ledger keeps crochet lessons and free patterns in one workbasket, from the first slip knot and gauge swatch to blankets made for charity.

Keeping one family album going across two houses is easier with habits from a practical photography journal that works through exposure, one-light portraits, faster culls and the business of making pictures.

When the family map stretches across the Irish Sea, Ballina and the River Moy are kept in an independent magazine of fishing, coastal walks, bus and rail guides and Gaelic games for north Mayo.

Readers whose weeks away run further north than Devon can walk the shore in print first with the North Yorkshire coast, a slow-reading notebook of villages, cliff paths, old railways and food between Staithes and Robin Hood's Bay.