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.

“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

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:

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.

Since coming home from holiday, Mummy has complained that she needs a holiday to get over coming home from holiday.

Mummy got a pet-sitter* from a website to look after the cats and do something called ‘basic house care’ but apparently the sitter did ‘shag all’ apart from keeping the cats alive. Despite Mummy having e-mailed ‘detailed instructions’ she didn’t put ANY of the bins out, which is a criminal offence as far as Mummy is concerned. Daddy says is Mummy is ‘bin obsessed’,  especially in summer time when they can get smelly. Also, our blue bin is always overflowing because Mummy collects stuff she thinks might not get recycled by other people and brings it home to put in our bin and then Daddy has to get inside the blue bin and stand on it. I don’t think he likes this.

The house-sitter also never unloaded the dishwasher that Mummy had put on the morning that we went away AND HAD SHOWN HER HOW TO USE IT. When we came home and Mummy opened it I heard her shout the eff word many times because her plates were covered with blue mould.

The house-sitter also left a day early which posed a problem with the cats. Daddy had to organise for Grandad to come over and let them out, but the cats just hid under the sofa and eye-balled him and refused to leave. The next day Mummy wasn’t in a very good mood after travelling all night, and when we got in she was very annoyed when she went upstairs and found a massive poo on her bed. Mummy said it could have been done by a rhinoceros because it was so big and she says this is known as a ‘revenge dump’.  She shouted the eff word A LOT while she was cleaning it off the mattress protector.

The culprit.

Mummy also can’t stop sneezing because she has an allergy to cat hair which she normally manages by going through six lint rollers a week. But despite leaving said rollers around the house the pet-sitter neglected to use any and the cats had ‘moulted tremendously’ according to Mummy. All her new dark blue velvet chairs from Next were covered in white cat fur and the back of one had been used as a scratching post. Daddy asked when she was going to get around to buying the covers for them that she keeps going on about but Mummy gave him the side-eye and said had he not noticed that she had been REALLY EFFING BUSY RECENTLY?

When Daddy made Mummy her ‘post-holiday cup of tea’ she wouldn’t sit down to drink it until she had lint-rollered half the house and when she did sit down it was not only cold but had cat hairs floating in it. I thought Mummy might cry.

Tilly wasn’t left with the house-sitter as she goes on her own doggy holidays to her dog-walker Shane, who my mum says is ‘a saintly creature.’ But he had collected Tilly before she had eaten her Pedigree Chum that Mummy had left out for her and the house-sitter never scraped it into the bin. When Daddy lifted it the bowl to clean it he dropped it on the floor because he said it was ‘moving’ and it turned out that there were maggots in it. He shouted BOKE and started retching and Mummy shouted the eff word again. I had never seen a maggot so I was interested at first but then I saw them and I retched too and Mummy shouted NOT ON THE CARPET!

Daddy then made a terrible mistake because he asked Mummy did she not check the reviews for the house-sitter and Mummy said she DID look for reviews but she couldn’t find any and Daddy said DID THAT NOT TELL YOU SOMETHING ABOUT HER? and Mummy stormed off to lie down and then shouted F*#K again because she forgotten that she’d have to make their bed up after the rhino-sized poo.

Last time I saw Mummy she was on the Easy Jet website and I saw ONE ADULT TRAVELLING ALONE on the screen. Daddy doesn’t think the one adult is him.

*Before any future house-sitters come Mummy says she is going to read some guidance very carefully.

I’m just back from a family holiday in Dubrovnik and the post-trip glow is fading as fast as my tan, especially when I check my bank-balance and have to take deep yogic breaths. Croatia, I’ve since been told, is renowned for being expensive, but I missed the memo and only realized half-way through, after blithely charging drinks to the room at the pool-side bar.

But, if you aren’t heading abroad and think you’ll miss this feeling of being royally ripped off, never fear- take a spin to the Old Inn in Crawfordsburn and enjoy being robbed closer to home.

When I met my friend for a catch-up in back in June, I’d felt feelings of warm nostalgia bubbling up at the prospect of our meal there. In our twenties we used to visit The Old Inn often, popping in for coffee after a coastal walk, or long chats by the foreside at Christmas, our hands cupped around glasses of red wine. Sometimes we’d spot Gary Lightbody, and that would make our night because not only has he a cracker set of lungs on him but he’s a decent sort, is our Gary.

He wasn’t there on this occasion though, and I can only surmise that he won’t be there with the same regularity because he’d fairly fritter his fortune away.

Readers- the prices are EYE-WATERING; enough to make you cough up your cappuccino, should you be foolish enough to fork out £5.50 for a cup. You can try ordering tap-water, but it took me three goes to get a glass delivered to my table.

Menu choices were limited and well, strange. The bar menu was standard fare, but it was all on the heavy side. I know the jet-stream has wandered off-course but I at least wanted to pretend it’s summer, so I wasn’t after a lamb casserole or fish pie.

The A La Carte menu didn’t excite either. I didn’t want veal or duck or smoked mackerel with eel mayonnaise- (would anyone?)

And so I settled for the aubergine curry, after having to ask for the vegetarian menu, which was another disappointment. Tell me this, since when does white asparagus and olive oil potatoes constitute an actual meal? As a menopausal woman, I didn’t feel I should have to ask for eggs on the side to ensure I met my protein target for dinner.

Back to my order. ‘Have you tried it?’ I asked our server, because the whole menu indicated that it would promise much but under-deliver. ‘Oh yes,’ she replied, ‘it’s good, very fragrant.’ Now, she had me at fragrant, because notional creature that I am, I thought of velvety massaman curry with coconut and galangal. Alas, whoever concocted this curry wouldn’t have known fragrant if a stick of lemongrass had speared them in the eye. A bowl of brown gelatinous gloop appeared, the base of which, I can only imagine came from a generic plastic tub one finds in the Asian supermarket. Swimming in the sludge were a few beans and a token amount of aubergine. The key ingredient appeared to be sliced potato. It came with rice, but no little extras. A small portion of poppadums would have livened up proceedings, likewise nan bread, maybe even chutney or raita. The one garnish, plonked atop the rice, was a clump of sodden watercress; that one ingredient a curry should never be without. But I get it, who wants to go off in search of  fresh coriander on a summer’s evening? Bit of a faff, that.

My friend lives in New Zealand now, so when she converted the prices she baulked at the thought of paying over forty dollars for a burger. Instead, she ordered arancini from the list of starters and a portion of fries. It was underwhelming.

We weren’t convinced that a dessert would be worth it’s £10 price tag, but that did mean we were denied sitting on and listening to a fellow patron chortle at loud videos on his phone for another half hour. Maybe this is what Trip Advisor meant when it said the Inn was ‘a playful blend of the old and new.’ At least my visiting friend was treated to some cultural highlights of NI in the summer time, as the bar area afforded direct views of local Orangemen vaping outside the Lodge.

A homely, convivial ambiance has always been the charm of the Old Inn, and is why, I suppose, people keep coming back. But since the change in ownership, and the hike in prices for such mediocre offerings, I can’t see me returning. ‘Trust us, you’ll love it,’ says their website. That’s just one of the many things they got wrong.

A big thank you to everyone of you lovely people who read my latest post on the auld menopause.  I received so many messages and comments or folk met me out and about and said it chimed with them. I’m glad- the Mothership is regularly suggesting/imploring that I stop being so open and telling my business but I’m not going to heed her advice, because a) I find it cathartic and b) I think women have shut up for long enough  and that by airing such matters we might all feel a little bit soothed that we’re not alone.

The other morning I sent Herself a message to say to listen up because I was going on the Frank Phone-In and she WhatsApp-ed me back with the tersely worded reply, “Tell me it’s not about your menopause?” coupled with a ‘hand-over face’ emoji. As it happened, it wasn’t, it was to chat about Marie Kondo making more money from our human frailties, by peddling a box where you shove your phone so you can get a moment’s peace.

You can buy a Faraday Box for as little as twelve quid off Amazon, but ‘the queen of con’ as I’ve taken to calling her, is charging £75 because hers is tastefully coloured in Farrow and Ball shades of beige and apparently blends delightfully with one’s kitchen. (Providing, I suppose, that one’s kitchen is beige, which mine is not.)

I appreciate that many of us are in thrall to our devices, and get twitchy when they aren’t close to hand. But instead of buying a pricey box to sit in our way, we could wrap our phones in tinfoil and try leaving them in the other room? But of course we won’t, so we’ll just keep on going as we are, looking at the bloody things all day long, which is my current state of play.

Take today, for example. I’m presently trying to write a short story, and as fiction is not my usual medium, it’s proving tricky. I lift my phone to ease the pain of feeling frustrated and untalented. First, I check my Parkrun result from earlier. Yes, I think to myself, I’m faster than last week, AND I came in before LSB*. Yeooo. Next I read a disturbing WhatsApp message from a mummy group which says some P7 kids already have boyfriends and girlfriends, and not only that, but buy each other expensive gifts! Heaven help us. To comfort myself,  I scooch over to Instagram, and watch a reel about a man who takes his cat paddle-boarding and the sea and sky are a dreamy blue and so I start fantasying about my holidays. This prompts me to wonder should I invest in eco-friendly sun scream because my friend said she tried one and it reduced her prickly heat and is kind to coral and sea-life. I’m tempted to order on line but then I think to myself, FFS NO! you’re supposed to be writing the short story because the deadline is June 10 and you haven’t even finished the first draft and you are SELF-SABOTAGING! So now I’m still not written the story but I am at least writing this which is something, I suppose.

So this proves that I am hopelessly addicted to looking at  my phone and maybe I do need a Marie Kondo Faraday Box in muted shades of beige.

It pains me to say it, but Kondo is right: mental clutter wrecks your head just as much as the detritus on your counter top, and so fairplay to trying to flog her boxes, because it raises the elephant in the room that phones are a fecking menace and if people are even tempted to pay £75 to address the issue, then that proves it.

I did lift an old copy of Red Magazine the other day and came across a review of ‘Indistractable’ by Nir Eyal which I found useful. He suggests we  interrogate the reason WHY we’re reaching for the phone and ‘surf the wave’ of being tempted and wait ten minutes. Maybe I’ll try that first, and save a few bob.

*For any new readers, this is my husband, Stevey, or My Long-Suffering-Bastard