********Mother’s Day Post- pleaae skip on if you would rather not read.**********

So hear me out on this- would you be pleased if your Mother’s Day gift consisted of a soft toy and a box of Miniature Heroes? Because, and forgive me if I’m wrong, is this not a more appropriate present for a child? How many mums do you know who would appreciate the like of this? Who on earth would actually say: ‘That’s exactly what my life has been missing! A pastel pink boom box cuddly toy with blue hearts and teeny tiny legs!’ Readers, let me reassure you that I’m not in the grip of some menopause induced stupor, but I saw such an item in a well-known service station on the Saintfield Road.

Have you ever seen such a pile of crap?

There’s no accounting for taaste, but while I’ve no issue with chowing down a few Cadbury’s Dairy Milks, I’m wreacking my head to come up with a single person I know, who would want to add to the mountain of kid’s stuff they’ve already accumuated. And I’ll tell you this for nothing, I’d be bloody livid if I was handed this next Sunday. It’s unthinkable. ‘Hi Mum, as a big thank you for the trauma of having us plucked from your womb, here’s a floppy-eared elephant fron Sainsbury’s.’

Observe the dark circles under the eyes. I blame the decluttering.

Maybe I’m touchier than ususal on said matters because I’ve recently instigated a clear out, and quelle surprise, I’m the main one  doing the clearing. Let’s be clear: I’m not trying to rob my offspring of all their worldly goods, but we’re being buried alive under all manner of shite and it’s destroying my happiness. So I took action, and lobbed a few soft toys into the machine and hung them out by their ears or arms in the winter sunshine. The Small Child, (or our very own Lord Sugar) got busy on Vinted, but it her Sour Wee Mother who packaged up two neon coloured sloths and a ‘Spring Bundle’ ( two lambs and a rabbit) for which we were offered a paltry sum.

Take them to Oxfam! I hear you cry, but very few charity shops actually accept teddies, so they mostly end up in landfill; the thought of which makes me go a bit funny.

What I’m saying therefore, is that toys are work. Anything, in fact that comes into your house, is work, that primarily the women have to deal with. Items have to stored, cleaned, and prised from the mouths of family pets with a strange proclivity for chewing off their eyes and noses.

I’m suggesting that mums deserve more than being gifted this sort of nonsense. So here’s a handy guide to what I think counts as a present:

Looking something thoughtful and sustainable? A charity shop may have the answer. Who wouldn’t appreciate a vase filled with hand-picked flowers a well-chosen book and maybe a bag of good coffee to go with it?

Feeling harried and put-upon? (Me- almost always) then a relaxing experience is what you need. Close to my heart in Belfast are Betty (Betty’s Place, on University Street) or  Geraldine Boyd who operates out of her snug and perfect ‘cocoon’ in Rosetta. Both use their intuition to tap in to where you need it most. A reflexology session or massage are two gifts in one- time away from frenetic family life, plus the benefits of something restorative.

No time or funds for any of the above? Maybe then on Mother’s Day, mum has dinner made for her. And, I mean deciding on, shopping for, cooking and cleaning up after the meal: the full hog.

In our house we don’t go big on these occasions. Case in point, last June LSB spent Father’s Day screwing on a new Toilet seat he bought in Homebase. And on Mother’s Day 2020, I trailed him to a random house off the M2 and we ended up coming home with a greyhound. ‘It’s entirely my project,’ I told him. It didn’t work out like that though; in fact he’s out walking his project now. But it was unintentionally the best present ever. And beats a toy boom box anyday. She’d only try and eat it.

Final day when sun has appeared. Finally. Like, ‘here’s the holiday you could have won.

‘Has your last holiday been an utter shit-show? Don’t worry, it could be worse. Make yourself feel better here, with SWB’s Guide to making your first ski-trip as stressful as humanly possible…

One– work your ass up to the last possible minute at work, filing reports until that final bell rings and you are spat back out into the community with your brain turned to mush and with spanking new crow’s feet round your eyes from squinting at Excel spreadsheets.

Two– Rock up at airport nervous and jittery, convinced that you’ve forgotton something essential. Meet new friends ‘Orlagh and Ronan’ at the bar and chug down a glass of Marlborough Sauvignon while you chunter on about your worst fears of coming a cropper on the slopes. Shudder as Ronan regales you with tales of going off-piste with zero-visibility and narrowly avoiding death by skiing off the side of a ledge with a 600ft drop in. Easily done, apparently. Eek. Swiftly knock back another glass of Sauvignon.

Three– Snooze on plane and arrive in Geneva with optimism restored. Marvel at its short-termed nature when there is no evidence of the expensive private transfer you have booked.  After retrieving your luggage, run gormlessly around the terminal, sweating like a bastard inside your borrowed ski coat, while you try to locate him.

Four– Arrive late to your hotel, where you lash another glass of wine into you, while slurping up a pasta dish so swimming in butter and pecorino cheese that you wake up (and consequently wake the rest of your family up) at three am evacuating your bowels in a hotel bathroom with poor ventilation and horrifying acoustics.

Five– Omit to check how far away your hotel actually is from ski-hire shop and the cable car where you are to meet up for your group lesson at 9am. Huff and puff your way to said shop to be kitted out by the slowest man in history.

Six– Discover that ski boots are the footwear from hell, explicitly designed to make your feet go into agonising spasms by halting the blood flow at the ankle.

Seven– Walk another two kilometres in aforementioned items of torture, carrying heavy skis along a narrow footpath while the buses, for which you haven’t purchased a ticket, trundle past. Phone the ski-school en route, and try not to vomit when they deny all knowledge of your booking, despite having fleeced you eight hundred quid for the week.

Eight– Locate cable car staion with joyful relief, and hop on, hoping for a miracle at the top. Receive call from school who have located your booking and provide directions on where to meet your group. Exhale. Make your way over to the meeting point, where none of the instructors will have a clue who you are, or give two hoots. With no previous experience, attempt to descend a nursery slope on your own, taking reassurance from that fact that children as young as toddlers are managing it with some prowess. Take off at terrific speed, while shrieking, ‘OH FUCK, OH FUCK, PUTAIN DE MERDE,’ so that said toddlers can hear you scream bloody murder in both English and French.

Nine– Admit defeat, retreat to cable car and descend. Mop up salty tears of rage, fear and frustration and blame husband for everything going to shit, even though it was you who booked it all. Realise that the ski-school is right at the bottom and go in. Observe the chaos and realize that it’s just EXTREMELY busy and that with a million others, your small family of first-time skiers have just fallen (mercifully not literally) through the cracks that morning. Munch pommes frites and mayonaise prior to afternoon lesson to self-soothe. Cry again when this attempt fails spectacularly and sends you scarpering into the small establishment’s single toilet, where you commit a crime against public restrooms and hope to God that no one at the little bar recognises you tomorrow.

Ten– Return to nursery slopes with instructor, and remain on said slopes for the next three days running because you are filled with terror. Ponder if you have a hitherto undiagnosed condition that impairs the transfer of any messages from the brain to the legs, which splay at odd angles akin to someone having a cerebral episode.

Eleven– On day four, move to a green slope in the middle of a blizzard. Prove incapable of gaining any purchase on this slightly greater incline, and clatter down multiple times, having forgotten anything gleaned previously. Cry, and then plead with your instructor that you want to go back to the nursery slope again, while your children look on, appalled.

Blizzard

Twelve– Award Brownie points to yourself for the following-

• Not stabbing an Australian woman in the eye with a fork who boasts about her five-year-old mastering a challenging blue route and telling you to book yourself and your husband into private lessons ‘which would only cost £250 for the morning.’
• Not throttling a Scottish man who laughed uproariously when he asked (and you stupidly told him) what you paid for your holiday.
• Using all your yogic skills to draw in deep, deep breaths when an English fella in a restaurant holds court at his table and tells his friends that really, Trump ‘isn’t all that bad,’ and that ultimately, ‘his transactional method of doing politics will work out in the long-run.’ Tool.

Attempt at ‘jolly family photo.’ Observe tight, forced smile.

Take aways-

On reflection, Australian woman may have been correct and a couple of private lessons wouldn’t have gone amiss, especially given my nervous disposition.

If doing this again, at a different resort, plan to arrive at a sensible hour the day before to arrange ski hire etc, to avoid the shambolic start. Accept that learning to ski at 46 years of age is really just an exercise in humility. Give thanks that everyone arrives home with little damaged only pride, and rejoice that you took the children when they are young and have no fear, enabling them, hopefully, not to look like a pair of total bollocks when they fall on their arses with all the grace and dexterity of a hippo on a unicycle.

I’m dying to know what you make of this. So, flicking through last week’s Guardian Weekend I read a feature on habits we can fall into with our friends. Great! I thought, because while  articles appear regularly on parenting hacks, or how to jazz up your romantic life, less is written on the topic of friendships. But one particular suggestion took not just the biscuit, but the entire box of Fox’s Festive Favourites.  Instead of meeting for brunch, says the author of The Radical Potential of Female Friendship, owhy not meet for a workout instead (ok…potentially) or wait for it, fill out your tax return together.

Can you imagine! ‘Hi Karen, listen, forget the huevos rotos in General Merchants this week. Yep, that’s right, no extra hot latte for you. You’re coming to mine;  I’ll put on a brew, and we’ll nail those self-assessments forms.’ Well, I know what Karen would say: friendship terminated-don’t let the door hit you on the way out. And she’d be quite right too. I mean, go for a walk, visit a museum, head to the cinema. But a tax return? That’s deadly! Another idea was to do the weekly shop together. Are you having a laugh? I have the concentration span of a praying mantis. I can barely get round Sainsbury’s to pick up  all the ingredients for dinner, never mind make it a social event.

But aside from these two appalling suggestions, others resonated with me because I’d discussed some of the issuess with my friends recently.

‘PLEASE can we go to more gigs this year?’ said Aisling. How we used to love a frolic. Twenty years ago we’d have been tearing up the dancefloor in Auntie Annie’s to the Stone Roses and The White Stripes. The release of a Saturday night dance after a week of teaching practice was not to be underestimated. But if we went to a club now we’d feel about seventy-two, and sure we wouldn’t know any of the tunes. A decent gig would be more like it, with the benefit that they start earlier and we could be home and in bed by eleven. Thus we plan to scour the listings and get booking. #decentnewyearresolutions

Something nice happened last year when I decided to take a risk…

Last February we were going to London and on a whim, I decided to contact two friends I had lived with on my year abroad. I hadn’t seen either for years and I was nervous about initiating a meet up. But was I glad I tentatively sent off those texts? You bet. I met Mary for lunch in Elliot’s on Borough Market while I despatched the family off to the Harry Potter Studio Tour. We had glasses of chilled red wine and ate cheese puffs and marvelled at our new ‘grown-up’ status. ‘How is it possible that we’re married now? That we have mortgages? Children?’ we mused. The years literally melted away and we could have been flatmates again,  in our funny little apartnent above a sex shop* on the Rue du Four a Chaux on Reunion Island. ‘Can we do this again?’ I asked as we hugged goodbye in Blackfriars Station. Abso-bloodly-lutely, she said.

The following day we headed to Richmond to stay with my other old flatmate, Emily. Initially I had said NO WAY when she’d invited us, because four days when we hadn’t met in over a decade felt like an imposition. So we compromised on a two night stay and planned a trip to the zoo with the kids and I booked Plaza Suite in the Savoy Theatre for us both by way of a thank you. It was a joy. Tom, who’s another one of those long-suffering husbands, opened a bottle of bubbly on our arrival, which we sipped with a rich chocolate cake which Em and her daughter had made because it was LSB’s birthday. They’d even dug out a bottle of the rum we used to drink on Reunion Island over which we toasted our reunion. We regretted this over-exuberance as we stood in front of the elephant enclosure in the mizzly rain the following afternoon. (Elephants do have their own quite distinctive odour, do they not?) That night, LSB took all four kids back to Emily’s on the train while we sought sustenance in a cosy bistro in the West End before the play. ‘What  made you agree so readily to have us over?’ I asked, over a restorative plate of samosas. ‘Because I need more fun in my life,’ she replied. Isn’t that just the nicest thing you’ve ever heard? It transpired that a friend of hers had interviewed an aging TV director who was still working despite being in his eighties. He said what kept him young was a conscious decision to have ‘deliberate fun.’ Deliberate fun; I like that. Such is the daily grind that I think we could all do with a bit of this, but it doesn’t happen on its own: it takes planning, risks, perseverance. But worth it in the end, I think.

Sometimes taking a chance is the only way if you want to see the people you care about. On Monday I messaged some girls and asked if they fancied going to Idyll on the Ormeau Road at the weekend. I didn’t expect anyone to be free, but miraculously, five of us sat down to a meal last night, and madder still, most of us drove, which left us sprightly enough to pursue our respective pursuits this morning. I managed a run in Belvoir Forest which I definitely wouldn’t have managed if I’d necked half a bottle of Malbec.

In essence, effort is required to keep friendships going. It’s too easy to do the same old things, and sit round the dinner table rehashing the same tired subjects. (Can I put my hand up and say that I bore the absolute bastard out of myself doing this so God knows how my poor friends feel.) So make plans, have craic, and seize the day. But for the love of God, do NOT suggest filling in a tax return.

*It was quite a large first floor apartment and below were three shop units: one which sold climbing gear, another was a pet store and then the aforementioned sex shop. I was only in the latter once, to borrow some chairs for a party we were hosting. Incidentally, our landlord lived next door to us and he was a Hindu priest. His wife, a lovely woman,  used to bring us home made rougail, which was a pickle made from green mangoes and evil little birds’ eye chillis. Merely opening the jar was enough to singe your nostril hair. My eyes still water thinking about it.

Last night I celebrated Nollaig na bhan in a beautiful, understated way. Initial plans to host a pre-emptive soiree on Saturday evening hadn’t materialised, so instead, a friend and I opted for ‘Mellow and Mindful’ yoga with Carla in Studio 52 in Hill Street. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the building, but it’s a gem in the Cathedral Quarter, and we practised on the top floor in a candle-lit room with creamy walls and dark beams.

The session focused on floor work with low lunges and lizard and pigeon poses and the occasional downward dog: it wasn’t the night for warriors and balances. As we stretched out on our mats for savasana at the end, I could hear the soft padding of Carla’s feet on the wooden floor, as she came around and dabbed our wrists with a drop of sweet-smelling oil- a fusion of lavender, eucalyptus and bergamot.

It felt like the wisest thing I’d done in a long time, to allow myself to lie in the company of other women and melt into forgiving poses. ‘Thank you’ said my aching muscles after a gym session that almost killed me last week.

‘Push. Push. Push. Keep going, just get the through the week.’ That’s like the mantra of modern living, isn’t it? Diaries bulging with targets and deadlines, endless chores and commitments. And inevitably we get sick, and then we feel bad and guilty for falling behind and ‘letting people down.’ We can’t even recuperate in peace.

Surely it’s basic biology, that in the cold our bodies have to work harder, and in the absence of daylight our rhythms naturally want to slow down. Then comes Christmas, with its heady mixture of adrenaline, expectations and over-indulgence which can drain us further.

And then, just when should be nourishing ourselves as we face three more months of could weather, we are hit with the usual January shite of ‘New year new me!’ Well, excuse me when I say, Fuck that. I’m not even sorry. In the words of Anne Lamott, ‘It’s hard out there.’ And she lives in sunny California!

Now is the time to cultivate warmth, to go slowly, reflect. Sleep like a squirrel. Doze like a dormouse. Hibernate like a hedgehog, and should you be disturbed, feel free to fire up those prickles.

Over the holidays I had plans to write; to pick up after a fallow period. But the more I forced it, the less it came. I wrote NOTHING. This was exacerbated by LSB gifting me a new laptop since my older one was banjaxed, with a battery life even flatter than mine. ‘Now you can write,’ he said gleefully. Oh the pressure! And then the negative self-talk came in- you’re useless, you haven’t a creative thought in your head… on and on it went. I wasn’t very nice to myself. So instead of feeling relaxed and rejuvenated after the break, I fell a bit miserable.

But I wasn’t producing anything because I felt like I had to, trying to tick boxes before I went back to work. What I wasn’t acknowledging was that I had to release the pressure before I could flow, which sounds a bit new-agey but I don’t care. The writer Katherine May sums up my feeling in her words below:

“Plants and animals don’t fight the winter; they don’t pretend it’s not happening and attempt to carry on living the same lives that they lived in the summer. They prepare. They adapt. They perform extraordinary acts of metamorphosis to get them through. Winter is a time of withdrawing from the world, maximising scant resources, carrying out acts of brutal efficiency and vanishing from sight; but that’s where the transformation occurs. Winter is not the death of the life cycle, but its crucible.”
― Katherine May, Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times

On Sunday I took myself to The Black Box to hear Stuart Murdock from Belle and Sebastian in conversation with Wendy Erskine. He suffers from ME, a condition for which he is now an ambassador. But he recognises that were it not for the disease and the enforced periods of incapacity, that he would never have become the songwriter that he is today. The time spent alone in a room, made him more introspective, and this lent itself to the creation of some of his most memorable lyrics.

Surrender has been a word which kept appearing in Miranda Hart’s recent book. She too has endured long bouts of illness, but having recently discovered the root of it, she has learned to live, and to live better. By acknowledging her limitations and not just doggedly ‘pushing through’ she has found peace and acceptance. I don’t think she’d be having any truck with this ‘New You’ bollocks, unless it’s about self-kindness, making better decisions and reflecting what it is you really need.

So I leave you with this today- what does ‘wintering’ mean to you, and how are you going to prioritise your needs when the ground is icy and the sun resolutely sets before five pm? Take care of your lovely selves, and it is so good to be back on here with you.

I made a terrible mistake last week. My right earhole is still sore; it may even be perforated. It all began when I rang the Mothership to tell her about our Christmas tree debacle. What should have been a festive occasion had descended into one of chaos. There were the usual shenanigans with broken lights which hadn’t survived their sojourn under the eaves for 12 months. But while LSB went to buy NEW set, the dog decided to puke all over the sofa. Extensively. I was stressed after a day at work and LSB had a rare day off so I left him to deal with the vomit and stringing up the new lights. This was a mistake, as he bundled the newly washed sofa cover into the spin drier, where  it promptly got snared round the drum.  We now had a lovely twinkly tree, but a sofa cover with a big hole in it. MELT.

So, my opening gambit when I rang home was this, ‘Poor auld LSB,’ says I. ‘He’s having a worse day than Gregg Wallace’s PR team.’ (It was of course, LSB dealing with all the unpleasantries while I feigned busyness with baubles and strings of decorative gold beads.)

Down the crackle of the line, I heard The Mothership inhale sharply. This never bodes well. What had I started? ‘This business with Gregg Wallace is NO LAUGHING MATTER,’ she exclaimed. ‘How has he not been booted off on the air? And they call him THE TALENT? Talent my eye!’

My God but the Mothership was livid. What had really incensed her, were the comments by men (funny enough) on on-line sites, who had Wallace’s back,  claiming that he was doing the contestants a favour with his ‘bawdy banter’, by preparing them for life in ‘real kitchens.’ And, then, one of his defenders, had mooted, that if the contestants were so offended, why hadn’t they just walked off set and withdrawn from the competition?

This got the Mothership’s goat something terrible. ‘Withdraw from the competition? Why should THEY be the ones to miss out? That crass, bullying UPSTART driving people away while he stays on, raking in for a fortune! Is this what I’m paying my license fee for?

I haven’t heard the Mothership so exercised since they moved the Great British Bake Off to Channel 4. On she went.

‘Now who I really blame, is the BBC- don’t tell me they didn’t know about this. Of course they did. They should be out sourcing new talent, not keeping on the likes of him who’s engaging in the behaviour of a dirty old man!’

I have to admit, at this stage the phone was jammed between my ear and left shoulder while I fried up some chicken up for dinner. (I’d have given it a two out of ten in the taste-test.) I was only half-listening. But then she said something which struck home. ‘Imagine if that had been one of your girls on there, and him saying God-knows-what to them. You’d have had something to say about that!’

And she’s right- I would indeed.  TV sets are daunting, not to mention the stress of the competition itself. The last thing anyone needs is some narcissistic green-grocer in their ear, spewing filth that would make the bananas blush.  Because it wasn’t just ‘bawdy banter’; it sounded much more like harassment, aimed at those who were least likely to report it.

All I’d done was ring home to get advice about the vomity sofa cover, and now I had a hole in both the sofa cover AND my ear drum. I had to open a bottle of red to calm myself. But fair play to the Mothership for getting so incensed, because if we ignore this sort of toxic shite, it will just keep happening, won’t it? And when people leap to Wallace’s defence, I want them to imagine that it’s their daughter stuck in a lift with him, or manipulated into situations which are at best uncomfortable, and at worst intimidating. Thankfully there’s still a few #MiddleClassWomenOfaCertainAge to challenge him.

Anyway, the tree is up, and it’s looking lovely, (Even the dog approves, as you can see in the photo.) And LSB just the fired the sofa cover back on, with the holy bit on the other side. The job’s a good’un.  Pukka, in fact, to quote another celebrity chef.

I learnt the most wonderful word today- ‘tartle.’ Heard of it? No, me neither. I spend most of my adult life being ‘startled’ as the world grows ever more chaotic, but ‘tartle’ was a new one on me. It’s a Scottish term for that particular excruciating pause when you can’t remember someone’s name. We’ve all been there, gormlessly staring at some expectant soul as your tongue tries to wrap itself around their moniker, only to be left adrift, without a bloody clue.

I wonder though, if the Scots have a specific word for not remembering anything at all, because you’re menopausal and your brain is trapped in a perpetual fog? If they don’t, maybe they should.

In an attempt to dissipate the gloom, I took myself to Holland and Barret’s and picked up some Lion’s Mane for focus. ‘Give it a week,’ said the fella behind the till, who was a helpful sort, ‘and you’ll feel more focused.’

‘I should fecking hope so,’ said I, when I clocked the price tag, but I didn’t have much option. I live in constant fear of forgetting things; checking my diary six times a day and just waiting to be caught unawares.

It doesn’t help, of course, that Mother Nature is playing silly buggers. How is it possible that the age of one’s off-spring should coincide with this delightful new chapter? People tell you terrible lies about parenthood. ‘It’ll get easier,’ they say, when you’re schlepping about after toddlers, making sure they don’t brain themselves by clattering off the slide at the playpark. Well it doesn’t, ‘get easier’. It just changes. Yes, your pre-teen may suddenly be able to make you a peanut butter cup, and at a push a cheese toastie, but tragically a protein packed snack isn’t enough to solve all your problems.

The flip side of independence is that my have taken to gaslighting me, swiping my socks and my hairbrush and worst of all, MY MAKE-UP.

‘I just don’t understand how it got there,’ said my eldest the other day, when I found my favourite Mac lipstick on her dressing table.

‘You can help yourself to all the Rimmel and the No7 you like, but I swear to God, if you touch the Mac again I will disinherit you,’ I said in a low and menacing tone, akin to Liam Neeson when he tells the kidnappers in ‘Taken’ that he’s a man with a particular skillset.

Not content with thieving my skincare, they are now perilously close to robbing me of my sanity as well, by impinging on those moments one holds close, as a parent, the much dreamt of NIGHT AWAY. Himself and I had, some time ago, booked tickets to see  Vampire Weekend in Dublin.

Cool New York Indie Band? Tick.

Trendy hotel by the docks? Double tick- we’re coming for you baby!!!

Children and pets catered for? Who’d have guessed it but we’d managed that too!

And then. Didn’t the pair of them get through to a Cross-country final: in Waterford. THE SAME WEEKEND.

So we’re still going to the concert. All four of us. We can’t all be together- as the Small Child is still too wee for a standing ticket, so Himself and I will enjoy the tunes with a child each at opposite ends of the venue. The aforementioned trendy hotel had no rooms left, so we had to cancel our booking and are now headed to a dingier alternative further out. It might be Finglas, which the only information I can find out online is that someone once brought a horse into a Tesco. And a family room, obviously, so there goes the romance. Then the next day, it’s off to Waterford when we will tramp around a sodden field, likely in the pissing rain. Hurray. I’m already excited.

I hate to appear curmudgeonly, and it would be quite wrong to begrudge one’s offspring’s a chance to compete, but of all the bloody weekends?

Anyway, rant over. Happy Friday everyone.

Yesterday I lifted my phone to text a friend. But first I clicked into Instagram, where I waited five minutes watching cute animal videos, my favourite being the one about an orphan kangaroo called Bella taking her first little hops, before being popped into a cute cotton pouch for a rest. I had to show this to LSB and we both ooh-ed and ahh-ed some more and remarked how similar sighthounds and marsupials are around the eyes. Come to think of it, I still don’t think I’ve messaged my mate, because the notion left me, drifting off into the ether as I flitted about, feeling simultaneously busy but listless. Ok, it was a Sunday, day of rest and all that, but still, my feelings were not that of having a day well spent.

I was pontificating about having the attention span of a gnat when LSB sent me an article from Belfast Live which explored this very topic, which I finally read after checking umpteen messages from five different WhatsApp groups. It was therefore a relief to read that I’m not alone with my inability to settle to one task at a time: seems like many of us are similarly afflicted.

Oddly, the people surveyed for the poll mostly claimed that their ravaged attention spans were more down to stress and fatigue than phone use, although they accepted that for younger people, the latter may be more to blame. But, from the point of view of a 45-year-old menopausal mother with a portfolio career and a house full of pets (one of which currently has continence issues) I’d say the reasons for my depleted mental bandwidth is down to all of the above.

I start one task and begin another, (or several) half-way through. I rarely complete any of the jobs, because something more urgent seems to land in my lap which takes priority.

As a result, things are left to the last minute which makes me infinitely more frazzled and mental exhaustion ensues. I’m typing away here, thinking I could actually puke at the thought of my to-do list.

So what metaphorical head-torch can we don to help us focus through the fug and turn that infernal ‘to-do list’ to an ‘off the effing list for good’ list?

Here’s a few strategies I’m trying to implement-

Eliminate visual clutter. Lift a box and chuck in any of the trumpery that’s causing your head to fry. You don’t have time to go through it piece by piece, just heave it all in and get back to it later. At least you now have a clear space to work.

Set a timer. Years ago, someone introduced me to the Pomodoro technique and I find it useful. Take 25 minutes to concentrate on one task (and one alone.) See what you can do and don’t stop til you hear the bleep.

Have a goal to spur you on, ie, ‘After this, I’ll make a coffee.’ Short-term goal- if I do this now I can do nothing work-related all weekend. Medium length goal- This will pay for a trip at half-term, better get my head down. Long term- early retirement!! Ah, that’s the dream. But little goals do work because we’re simple creatures who like our comfort. If you’ll excuse me now, I’ll get back to the current task at hand, once I and drag my eyes from You-tube videos of ballet dancing squirrels frolicking to autumnal tunes. (Dear God, what have I become?)

This is a ranty post. If you’re not in the mood for a ranty post, then scroll on by. I fully appreciate I’m a middle-class mum with many a privilege others are lacking, especially in the light of the present global cluster-f**k on an ailing planet we are forced to share. But I’m exhausted and crabbed and want a moan.

Happy to stay? Then read on…

Yesterday the plan was to drive The Small Child and others to a Gaelic blitz in the arsehole of nowhere, or as I will now refer to it, ‘AON’. But I woke in the night with a pain in my gut and a trapped nerve in my neck and I whimpered to LSB, ‘please, will you do the run tomorrow?’ and obliging fellow that he is, he acquiesced and uttered soothing words while I feel back to sleep, after considerable tossing, turning and trips to the loo. Marriage is a delight, he tells me.

Morning came and the pains had abated, slightly. Off he went with his small charges and left me with the just the demanding pets (all my idea, God help me) and The Older Child. ‘I’m just going to potter today,’ I texted a friend, who had asked how I was. Potter: a verb I take to mean ‘amble about, maybe checking on the progress of one’s courgettes in the garden, then slathering cream on a scone.’

I don’t think what I did yesterday in anyway matched this definition.

Instead, we began by walking the dog first and took a circuitous route so she could conduct her ‘sniffari’ in her local environs. ‘That was long,’ said The Older Child when we got in, plopping herself down with a sigh.

Next, I cleaned the pet bowls and put on a wash, tidied away the breakfast dishes, and general debris of the kitchen. The child helped a bit, with more deep, audible sighs. ‘Perhaps I’ll do the Guardian crossword,’ I said, but instead I emptied the tumble drier, paired socks and ironed a few bits before sorting the recycling.

After hoovering the bedroom and hanging up clothes, it was time to buy the groceries. Parking at Forestside on the weekend is up there with getting an Oasis ticket, so we walked. ‘We don’t have much to get,’ I told the child. ‘Hmmm’, she said. I met lots of people, which was gas craic, except I hadn’t put any make-up on so it looked like Halloween had come a month early. Sainsburys had a wine offer, so in an act of piss-poor parenting I bought six bottles. ‘Your dad will pick us up,’ I told the child. Alas, LSB was still in the aforementioned AON when we rang him for a lift. ‘He’ll be at least half an hour,’ she reported. ‘Crap,’ I replied.

‘Shall we grab a coffee here and wait?’ I suggested, but my firstborn was livid: she just wanted to go home and I couldn’t blame her. In any case, all the cafes were queued out the door.

So instead, looking like a pair of homeless people, we traipsed up the hill, stopping regularly to put down the bags and boxes and rest our arms, before reaching our friend’s house where I ran to get the car and then returned for the child and shopping. ‘I never want to go back there. EVER,’ said the child when we finally made it home. I made lunch and we hung out the wash, then cleared up. The clock struck four as finally, I took the crossword up to bed with me, filled in about three clues and promptly fell asleep.

Pottering, eh? This reminds me of a post which often pops up on my Insta. It says, ‘A shower is not self-care, it’s cleaning yourself. Laundry is not unwinding, nor is cooking or cleaning. It’s home maintenance.’ I thought of these words when I came round from my snooze yesterday, still feeling less than replenished.  None of the above things are ‘optional’ if you wish to live in a functional home, but the question is, if you’re a working parent, when are you supposed to get anything done?

When I’m back at work, I feel a constant fluttering at my chest, an inescapable feeling that I must be ,ultimately-tasking, ticking boxes, burrowing , fast, to the bottom of a self-imposed to-do list. It’s all too much: it can’t be done, and so the feeling is of a constant sense of failure and playing an impossibly unachievable game of catch-up.

I’m just putting this out there,  lest any other beleaguered parents feel the same as September draws to a close and the tightness in your solar plexus already threatens to overwhelm. I’ve read plenty on the subject but aside from the mythical invention of an eight day of the week for which the Almighty has commanded nothing only the deepest of slumbers for 24 hours flat, I’m still floundering for answers. Feel free to contact me with suggestions, or at least sympathy. You’ll find me under a pile of unironed school shirts.

It’s the summer. I should be kicking back, lying in, relishing long mornings without the tyranny of the ticking clock telling me to chug back the coffee and get on the road before the school bell chimes, YOU’RE LATE!

But instead, I’m feeling bad about not filling these extra minutes with more activity. Since I don’t have to scarper before half eight, I SHOULD have time for an energising yoga routine, maybe some journalling (I never actually journal), and perhaps a stroll around the block to in take the refreshing morning air.

Once I clicked ‘Like’ and saved a video of the aforementioned daily stretches, and now my Insta feed is choc-a-bloc with other ways to enhance my mornings and boost my productivity.

Likewise, are the daily affirmations which flash up, telling me that ‘I’m enough’, …. And some days, when I’ve spent an hour mindlessly scrolling, I don’t feel enough at all. I feel like I’m wasting my life. I need to put down the phone and start actually living.

And when I feel that I should be implementing all the things the Insta-gurus tell me, it all becomes noise in my head. Too much noise, droning out the other stuff which is just as important.

Case in point: the other morning, I got up and headed downstairs with the intention of doing the stretches. But the Small Child was already up and ensconced on the sofa and JOY OF JOYS she had tuned on the telly and found an episode of Gilmore Girls that we HADN’T YET SEEN! Oh, but the bliss. We put a blanket over our knees and I fished some Nesquik bars out of the fridge and we munched in companiable silence and a cat joined us and it was altogether lovely.

I didn’t do the yoga and I didn’t sit on the floor as it’s more beneficial for the hips and I drank coffee, not ‘lion’s mane blend for concentration.’ And this is what I’ll remember about summer- a million times more than a few downward dogs. And no, I’m not saying that yoga’s not good, just that when I become a bit obsessed with ‘self-betterment’ it gets in the way of spontaneity. And in a few years, when the girls have upped and left and it’s just me on my mat in the morning, I might remember, with quiet joy, the episode where Kirk got blinded by a speed camera and careened straight through the window of Luke’s diner. Is that not what a morning in early August is about?

Daddy says it is deeply ironic that for someone who goes on (and on, and on) about travelling, my mummy hates the actual travelling part of the trip. Mummy likes to say things like ‘it’s the journey, not the destination’ but in real life Daddy has to buy her noise cancelling headphones to cope with other passengers and loud ‘musak’ in airports. Daddy sits with us on the flight and buys mummy gin and tonics and crisps and then she ignores us for the rest of the journey but tells us she is just ‘channelling calm’ because she hates flying and shouts F*@K ME! and grabs other randommers by the arm when there’s turbulence. We like sitting beside Daddy better.

Mummy complained A LOT about our flight to Dubrovnik and there wasn’t even any turbulence.

Our trip had begun well, because to save money and ‘reduce our carbon footprint’ we took the coach to Dublin airport which zoomed us down in such good time that we arrived before check-in had even opened. This gave Mummy plenty of time to complain about all the plastic bottles in the cafes and ask questions about recycling facilities. Daddy told her about the bottle return scheme which encourages recycling in the South which is another reason why a United Ireland is best for all concerned and Mummy told him to be quiet and just eat his chicken.

After check-in Mummy said, ‘Let’s get me wine!’ and Daddy found a bar very quickly and Mummy said it was a ‘lovely bar’ which hardly ever happens.  My sister and I went off to buy sucky sweets for take-off but when we came back Mummy was wearing her noise-cancelling-headphones because the bar wasn’t lovely after all as it was right beside a hotdog stand and a crowd of German men wearing matching t-shirts were yelling across the bar about fried onions and ketchup. Mummy said that Stag parties were a ‘scourge upon society’ and then Daddy ordered another large beer.

Just as Mummy was looking excited and saying, ‘It’s nearly time! It’s nearly time!’ Daddy told her our flight was delayed. He ordered us more Tayto but Mummy said NO MORE FANTA! because of her fear of dental cavities. Daddy ordered it anyway and bought her another wine which she pretended she didn’t want but she drank it very quickly for someone who said she didn’t want one in the first place.

FINALLY, we traipsed off to board which took a LONG time because there were a lot of VERY old people who were in a group and Mummy said they all looking, ‘extremely animated’ despite being so old. Daddy said there was a priest in charge who he’d seen having a Gunness and he looked like ‘yer man off Ballykissangel’ and Mummy said ‘ooh!’ because she has a thing about ‘good-looking men of the cloth.’

When we got on the flight it was freezing and Mummy looked very jealous because Daddy had brought his hoodie and she only had a little cardigan and a scarf which she then WRAPPED AROUND HER LEGS. I told her she looked like a burrito and she gave me ‘The Look’. I was glad we were beside Daddy. We were all strapped in and ready to go when the Captain said we’d have to sit on the runway for an hour and Mummy said, FOR EFF’S SAKE CAN THIS GET ANY WORSE?  It did get worse but I’m tired now and I will finish this another day because I’m getting ‘The Look’ again, and have to unload the dishwasher.