November 2024

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.