ski holiday

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.

A holiday for me, roughly translated, just means that I can be a grumpy fucker outside Belfast too. You’ll know us, if you ever come across us on your travels, because we’re the crew looking perpetually bewildered. Always searching, rooting around in our bags, under tables, arses sticking out of the boot of our car. The pandemic has amplified the problem, because now we have masks and Covid vaccination cards to add to the mix. Most people, I am swiftly discovering, wear their masks up their arms in Galway. I keep thinking they are all stricken with a similar injury or are sporting bandages to cover up tattoos they now regret. I see the wisdom though, to stop them having to ferret about in their pockets or bags. I tempted to take up the ‘mask/arm band’ look myself to save me a lot of hassle.

This holiday I have been particularly fraught, and my packing was even worse than usual. This was so achievement, given that the children started packing mid-July. I didn’t dare get excited you see, since our first wee sojourn was cancelled at the start of the summer, when the Older One had to isolate. Crushed I was, when I saw them sadly returning their shorts and tee-shirts into the drawers. (Who am I trying to kid, they fired them onto the floor, it was I who put them in the drawers.)

So LSB neglected to bring flip flips and sunglasses and an extra pair of shorts. I got my denim skirt soaked when I blundered into the sea in Bundoran and a wave drenched me, so  had to buy a pair of shorts myself. I also forgot that my period tends to arrive on holiday. First day and I’m like, what is that? Surely not- can’t even be three weeks since the last one. But no mistaking, there it was, complete with swollen belly, cramps and constipation. And not a pad or pair of period pants in sight.

‘There’s a pharmacy across the road,’ sighed LSB. ‘Off you go.’ The pharmacy, alas, had a disappointing selection of products. ‘I’ve just started today,’ said an assistant, when I inquired if they had any plastic free tampons. They didn’t.  ‘I literally in the door, like five minutes ago,’ said the girl, so off I went, regaling her with the environmental benefits of period pants. ‘Wuka, they’re called,’ I informed her. ‘W-U-K-A.’   In through the door came the owner. ‘I’ll sort you out at the till,’ he says.  ‘Have you heard of period pants?’ I ask him. ‘They’re brilliant.’

‘I haven’t heard tell of such a thing,’ he says, shoving my purchases into a paper bag with an alarming rate.

‘There’s a woman up the road makes pads,’ comes a voice from the back of the shop, ‘she has a website.’

‘You should sell those in your shop,’ says I. ‘I would have bought them. Today.’

‘Right you are then,’ says the man. The children are beside me, dying a slow death.

Two days later, I discover a Super-Value about two hundred metres up the road. ‘Check this aisle out,’ says LSB, ‘you’ll love it’. He’s right, there’s a whole display with a rake of eco-friendly products, period stuff included. Bearna, it turns out, is the village you need when you’re after a Laundry Egg and a moon cup and plastic free inter-dental sticks.

Anyway, it was one of those periods which floors you, and you look, and feel like a sack of shite. Stricken thus, it is ill-advised to drink two glasses of NZ Sauvignon Blanc at lunchtime in Pádraicins Seafood Bar in Furbo with your bowl of mussels, especially if you don’t want to waste the rest of the beautiful afternoon because you’re fast asleep. I blame the beds in The Twelve. Way too fecking comfortable, and the perfect place to retreat when you feel rubbish.

Poor LSB- he’s waited all year for a holiday and a rest, when really, the poor fecker just needs a rest from me.

So you know those films where children run amok and you chuckle because it is so extreme and therefore could not happen ‘In Real Life?’ Or else you comfort yourself because you think, ‘Phew, at least mine aren’t that bad?’ Well, shimmy on over and pull up a front row seat because mine are being absolute melters; candidates for Horrid Henry or Alvin and the Chipmunks. Day one of the official school holidays and we have already reached ‘peak melt.’  Earlier, as I walked past the living room, I saw The Small Child tying a basket to a piece of pink tinsel that was hanging from the light fitting. She was loading three cuddly toys (two ducks and a dragon) into said basket and giving it a vigorous push, like those big round  swings at the park.  I always want to curl up and read a book  on that swing sown in Cherryvale Park, except some bastard child is usually already ensconced. Darn shame. They need to open parks, at night, for adults, not necessarily for devilment, just quiet contemplation in relaxing environs.

The pink tinsel, I must admit, has been strung around the light fitting  since the Older Child’s birthday back in October. I think I am still recovering emotionally from that week before half-term when I was at the primary school two night’s running for the ‘Halloween disco’, then we stupidly decided to host our very own ‘Flamingo themed’ party in the house. The recollection of that time still makes my right eye-brow twitch. Even looking at the tinsel brings back feelings of angst and I can’t bear to  actually touch it. Last week I was visiting a friend and I saw she still had some Christmas decorations up in her dining room. ‘Don’t ever change,’ I said to her, clutching her hand in the manner of one demented.

Back to my off-spring: let me list their other offences. Perhaps the most annoying thing is their utter inability to finish a meal while keeping their backsides on a seat. They eat with their hands and with their mouths open, like savages. As a child, my parents were most particular about table manners. Once, I used to be particular about table manners, but I have now given up entirely on such trifling affairs. Avoiding scurvy and Beri-Beri: those are my current concerns, so I do not care how they eat vegetables, as long as they ingest some vitamins which don’t come from a packet of Halibo-Orange for Kids.

This eating ‘on-the-move’ habit which my girls have acquired means that the floor is strewn with bits of bagel, pizza crusts and ice-cream wrappers. LSB shows his love for the girls by buying them whatever they want.  At the moment, the children and Himself are on a quest for the elusive ‘Apple-saurus Rex’ ice-lolly. This has proved to be a fruitless search and to make them feel better he buys them oversized lollies such as Magnums or Super Twisters, to compensate.  Should any of you, on your travels, come across this refreshing icy treat, do get in touch as we have now started to believe that it is nothing but a ruse to draw dinosaur crazed children into shops.

The children are being especially bad and bold because we have a guest. They like to ‘up the ante’, when we have visitors, especially paying guests. This week we are hosting a French person. Her English is ridiculously good so they keep asking me if she’s really French. Our last lodger (of whom we were very fond and wanted to keep; I kid you not, she had a penchant for tidying and she LOVED children) had a very shaky grasp of English. However, since this didn’t interfere with how she enjoyed arranging my cushions neatly and doing jigsaws with my kids, this was no problem whatsoever. Anyway, as the French girl arrived the kids were returning from an outing where they’d ingested half their body weight in Haribo and were in ‘climbing mode’; clambering all over the furniture and swinging and jumping off the bannisters. ‘Go outside!’ I bellowed, at which point they came in to tell me that the cat had left a gift, which was of course a mouse. The cat then appeared with another mouse between her jaws, and we all looked on in horror as she batted it about.  The French girl hadn’t even had a cup of tea at this stage. Order was no sooner resumed when I looked in to the garden and thought, ‘F**k me but the cat really has got enormous,’ before realising it was actually a large black dog. A collie, I think. I had never seen said dog before in my life and then another appeared and they bounded in exuberant circles in the garden before making off through the fence. Meanwhile our feline  hissed and spat with a back so arched she resembled a boomerang.

‘It’s not usually as bad as this,’ I told the French girl. I’m not sure she’s convinced though, as today  the house was in a similar state of chassis.  I was trying to cook, blithely ignoring the children, (I’m a massive fan of the benign neglect method of holiday childcare) and they instantly set upon her when she came in. ‘Let’s play Hide and Seek! Come on!’  They led the poor girl straight into the garden before swiftly returning.  ‘Mummy,’ said The Older Child, ‘guess how many dead mice are on the patio?’

Three. There were three very small, very dead mice on the patio; another lovely job for SWB.  However, given how much food my youngsters leave at their behinds, I’m currently feeling very grateful for Izzy, the ultimate mouse-destroyer.

(In the interests of public health I would like to add that there is a large field behind where we live. There are sometimes cows. We basically live in a farm but without the benefit of fresh eggs. We also employ a cleaner, for whenever I miss a bit.)

Should you have been in Marrakech airport last week, you may have seen a dishevelled looking woman ordering her husband about in shrill tones. ‘Don’t dare lift that! I’ll put it on the overhead cabin! PUT IT DOWN!’ It was of course me, with sand still in my hair (and just about every orifice.) The worst of it was, that it was all my fault…

‘Sand-surfing! That sounds fun- and a sunset picnic afterwards! Yippee!’ No, that wasn’t the musings of a small child high on Haribo, that was me, searching up activities on ‘Get Your Guide’ on holiday. We were hoping to take surf lessons in the seaside town of Essaouira on west coast of Morocco, but high winds rendered the waves too treacherous for novices like us. Sand-surfing in the dunes sounded like a less perilous option. LSB booked us in, with all the enthusiasm of someone admitting themselves for a colonoscopy. We were sitting in a bar overlooking over the port in Essaouira, with live music and a sunny, if windswept terrace. They served beer in big tankards and salty chips. Himself could have whiled away an evening rightly, given the option. Alas, such simple pleasures were denied him in my quest for a more adrenalin fuelled activity.

Sand-surfing, for the uninitiated, involves a surfboard, a sand dune, and a hefty dose of optimism. We were all under the misapprehension that sand, if one were to fall on it, would be soft and cushion-like, but hitting it at speed soon disabused us of that notion. The children managed their descents with aplomb, and progressed to standing up on their boards fairly quickly. High fives were exchanged with our instructors and up they scampered again to take their next turn. The same could not be said by myself. Scaling a sand dune is an exercise in humiliation; every night that I have spent watching Netflix and drinking wine instead of going to the gym taunted me. Towards the end of the session, I was reduced to ascending the dunes on hands and knees, my shame compounded by the guides skipping past me in great strides, a surfboard under each arm.

Still, the few times I stayed upright while whizzing down, induced a childlike glee and were almost worth the bruises from the less successful attempts. I got off lucky though: when LSB came hurtling off his board, he face-planted the sand with an almighty THWACK, he lay so still that I thought he’d lost consciousness, until he valiantly gave a little thumbs-up. Ironically, he’d executed his descent almost to perfection, so much so that I was clapping and whooping at the top.  When he clambered to his feet, his face was so caked in orange sand that he bore an uncanny resemblance to Donald Trump, an image I’m still trying to expunge from my mind.

I thought we may have to abandon the next bit of our experience, which was to catch the sunset while sipping mint tea in a Berber tent, but good fellow that he is, he tholed the bumpy off-road trip further along the coast. Sadly the sky remained grey and brooding, giving off a vibe that was distinctly more Rossnowlagh than Rabat. Still, the smell of woodsmoke as our host grilled fresh sardines, mingling with the salty air and mint tea lent a cosy air to proceedings. Any chance of a proper drink now?’ asked himself, and so back in Essaouira we drank Moroccan wine with our dinner. I grimaced when he ordered a third, but got short shrift. ‘It’s pain relief,’ he said, through gritted teeth.

The girls and I did manage a (regular) surf lesson on the morning of our last day, prior to a 3 hour taxi to the airport. Unfortunately for LSB, he was unable to take part as by this stage he was walking with a limp and unable move his right arm in any direction. While I was looking forward to getting into my own bed at home, LSB had thoughts of checking in at the local A&E to see the damage done.

Happily, the four X-rays he had on the day after our return, showed no broken bones, but he’s been told to rest up for a couple of weeks and avoid any exercise AT ALL. ‘And stay off those boards!’ the good-natured nurse called as we went on our way.

‘Don’t worry, I will!’ he shouted.

‘I was talking to her,’ she replied, looking at me through narrowed eyes. I could tell she held me responsible.

So that’s himself sorted with a carte blanche to sit in the pub on all future holidays. Probably for the best, to be fair.

‘Larger cats behave rather like small dogs,’ said the vet on Friday night, when we were telling her about Bramble’s larger than life personality, which matched his proportions. I was stroking his head, behind his ears as he liked best, while providing a running commentary of the many ways he liked to destroy our upholstery, bed linen, flower beds, and often our peace of mind. We were slipping in and out of the present and past tenses, because this chat was taking place after she’d introduced the first dose of euthanasia, which turned out wasn’t enough and she had to administer another. Bramble, it seemed, was hanging on.

Les than two hours before he’d been snaking between my feet as I tried to bake a chocolate bundt cake. He’d been in and out, mewing plaintively at the window, before pestering me for food. Now, he wouldn’t be content until he’d either sampled the cake batter or thwarted the whole process. I’m not the most competent baker at the best of times, and Bramble was doing his utmost to disrupt proceedings. The Small Child scooped him up and in doing so sent plumes of white fur into the atmosphere. ‘OUT!’ I shouted, holding a tea towel (clean, I promise) over my big bowl. ‘Fuck’s sake Bramble,’ I muttered, as the pair of them exited, and I set to folding the cocoa and butter mixture into the flour.

Fuck’s sake Bramble, we would mumble, when he scratched at our bedroom door at four am with his big white paws every flipping night.

Fuck’s sake Bramble, I’d gasped, as he launched himself on to the table, almost landing on the oven-baked brie which my guests were trying to enjoy.

FUCK’S SAKE Bramble, we’d  said, when we came home from skiing, to find he’d not only shat on our mattress, but pissed on it so extensively that LSB had to trail to IKEA for a new one the next day.

All cats take liberties, but Bramble made it an art form.

Shortly after cake-gate I heard LSB use an entirely different tone, ‘Come on big fella, what’s up?’ as Bramble yowled and panted for breath, trying to walk but falling over on his side. There followed a frenzy of ringing the vet, fishing the cat box from the shed and then sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic on the Boucher Road to reach the only surgery still open at six-forty on a Friday evening. He never was a good traveller, and this journey was no exception. One look at the vet’s face when we arrived told us it wasn’t good. A blood clot, she said. The prognosis was bleak, and options were limited.

Few things make you feel more like an adult, than making decisions like this. We know, because it’s the second time in two months we’d had to do it. We lost Izzy at the end of August, in remarkably similar circumstances. Her ashes are still sitting on the kitchen dresser in a little pouch. We can’t quite bring ourselves to deal with them.

I didn’t write about it. These are turbulent times- it felt indulgent to mourn a cat; publicly anyway. But again, maybe that’s why we should mourn them; in troubling times their exacting presence can offer solace. Bramble turned up in lockdown, in a time of chaos and uncertainty. He brought more of that with him, albeit in gentler, feline form. He was habitually ‘in your face’, with a myriad of ways to wake us up, either by a paw on the cheek or by  purring so aggressively that little flecks of cat saliva landed on your pillow. ‘Some people wouldn’t tolerate that,’ said the Mothership.

But suddenly having a third pet seemed to make the house a busier, more playful space. He was a definite distraction, and a welcome one for the most part. We could have lived without the revenge shites on our bed, of course, as he took being left at home as a very definite slight, no matter how lovely his cat-sitter.  (Nobody could nurse a grudge like Bramble.)

Izzy initially loathed him, but a détente was soon reached, and they would often be found together, bathing in the morning sunshine by the back door, or at opposite sides of the sofa. She was the absolute queen, and once that fact was established, they got on mighty well. The girls think Bramble has been depressed ever since she passed away.

And so we told him this, on Friday night. How glad we were that he’d chosen us, how we would miss seeing him at the window when we came home, and how we’ll miss him sitting on our desks, dunching us with his head for attention while we try to work. (His white hairs are clinging to my keyboard as I type.)

It took Bramble a long while to go. A mantra I hear often, is that it’s ok to take up space. Bramble lived this mantra- he took all the space he needed, on our beds, our sofas and ultimately our hearts. We’re glad he chose us, and our space already feels a good deal emptier without him.

Shall we talk about the fun of the ‘mid-life meltdowns?’ I’m sure you know what I’m talking about; when previously trivial things somehow take on extreme importance.

It all started with the bins. A quiet, then increasingly louder voice emerges with both me and LSB, a couple of days ahead of ‘bin day’. We leave our bins out on a Thursday night, in giddy anticipation of Friday morning pick up. So while normal folk look forward to weekend frivolity, we rejoice in empty bins and the restoration of order.

I blame the house sitter last year for this onset of neurosis. Of all the things she neglected to do during her two-week sojourn, managing to see that none of bins were emptied, was by far her most egregious crime. Anticipating such an event, I had left notes outlining the bin cycle in the area. I went as far as sending updates via text. (Her communication skills were somewhat poor and I had reservations before she arrived, but hey, we were desperate.) Still, there was zero bin activity. Thus when we came back, in the height of summer, we had an over-flowing recycling bin and another situation in which dog poo had been left stewing for three weeks… I won’t elaborate any further.

But this only illustrates one aspect of my ‘very boring preoccupation with minutiae.’ Do you remember the Peter Kay skit about how his mother used to practically hoover herself out of the house before going to the airport? And firing the plants into the bath? Well, readers, she ain’t the only one.

The night before an early flight and LSB is calling down the stairs, ‘Can I zip up the suitcase yet?’ but all he can hear is the whine of the Henry the hoover because I’m suddenly determined to get every last cat hair off the living room floor. This character quirk has taken me by surprise because I’m not overly fastidious when it comes to housework… usually. But something digs in when we’re vacating the premises. Another little voice likes to chirp up here: ‘What’ll happen,’ begins the interior monologue, ‘if you all get run over on holiday and professional house-cleaners have to come in and see the dust bunnies under all the beds?’ On she goes: ‘And the grimy skirty boards! The absolute STATE of the toilet bowl? And all the hair and soap that gets clotted together so it looks like a decaying mouse fungus in the shower drain.’ I kid you not. All this goes through my head.  I can just imagine the news: ‘Terrible tragic about that family who came a cropper on their holidays, but the absolute state of their house? It’s a wonder they hadn’t all succumbed to scabies before. Desperate altogether.’

People, I could go on (and believe me, LSB will tell you that I do) but I worry about everything, and then the worrying incapacitates me so I worry  about doing nothing constructive, and I worry about my liver because of all the wine I drink to make all the worrying recede a little. Would you be so good as to let me know what you worry about during the holiday season, and then I can worry a little less about being a basket- case? Comments gratefully received.

We bought a Ninja Creamy, so the fridge is crammed with fruits waiting to be whizzed into something with a million calories, by the time they’ve added the condensed milk, cream and pistachio cream, because we’re nothing if not on the zeitgeist in this house. I mean, are you even alive if you haven’t made several versions of Dubai Chocolate? So yesterday, when I reached in to find dinner ingredients, out tumbled  grapes and strawberries and I shouted ‘F**K’S SAKE,’ then, ‘Sorry about that girls!’ and LSB says to me, don’t worry, you’re in esteemed company, obviously referring to Trump’s blooper when he stepped off Marine One and lost his shit.

Poor LSB is sick looking at my ‘ What The ABSOLUTE F**K?’ face. The news gets worse every day, and I’m screaming at Alexa to turn it off when it pops up on BBC Six Music on the half hour, with that reassuring ‘sonic thud’ as an intro, which seriously, they need to address because it’s become a total trigger for me.

So I try not to listen, and endeavour to avert my eyes in the shops lest I catch sight of whatever apocalyptic headline the Daily Mail have decided to run with, to generate as much terror as possible. Their sole aim, I am convinced, is to stir up as much fear as they can and make us believe that the way to peace is to follow the warmongers’ lead, which sounds a tad counterintuitive to me. It’s all very Orwellian, but hey, what would I know- I’m only a teacher, not say a property mogul or a tech bro: apparently they have all the answers.

But needless to say, the news abroad and the news at home, has my nerves royally shattered. Generally I have a somewhat tenuous grip on sanity, so to be living in these “interesting times” has been testing. (LSB will attest to this.)

It’s why I haven’t been on here much, because in the light of global catastrophes, it seems trite to whinge about a rubbish ski trip, a shit house-sitter, or when my children turn up their noses at the wild Norwegian line-caught cod fillets I’ve sourced for their dinner.

To be ‘proactive’ I contacted my MP, (Gavin Robinson) about the situation in Gaza. After two e-mails, a Facebook request, and a phone call to his constituency office, I finally received a mealy-mouthed two-line response. Big Angry Gav doesn’t seem bothered– I mean, if you want a bag of flour in a war zone, you can only expect to first be hounded into a cage and then shot at, right?But what to do? I’ve kept e-mailing. I’ve kept signing the petitions, I’ve kept making donations. And I’m breathing deeply, running a bit and holding it together, because rocking back and forth in the corner isn’t much help to anyone.

If you would like to share your ways of coping with apocalyptic news I’d love to know. I also forget how much doing anything creative soothes me, by means of distraction. So thank you for reading my words. My mental health is the better for blogging, so I’m grateful that there is an audience out there for my musings. Happy Summer everyone.

Meanwhile:

What I’m watching:

 Ghosts with the family. A bit late to the party with this but it is hilarious and clever; a gentle watch if you will, so apt for troubled times.

What I’m reading:

I just finished ‘Lost for Words’ by Stephanie Butland as recommended by Lucy Mangan and it’s wry and poignant: a perfect summer read.

About to start The Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

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 had a word in his ear yesterday. ‘The front garden needs a proper sprucing. It’s making a pure show of us in front of the neighbours’

Himself looked up from his coffee. ‘That’s the most Protestant thing I’ve ever heard.’

I ignored this. ‘So I think we should go to a garden centre.’

‘Now THAT’S the most Protestant thing I’ve ever heard,’ said he. ‘And on St Patrick’s Day too.’

He has a pure hatred of garden centres, has my husband.  That is, until he enters one, and starts buying all round him. Case in point, earlier, when we traipsed down to Homebase, spurred on by some unsatisfactory time outdoors yesterday afternoon.

He had given in to my griping, (ALL I AM ASKING FOR IS THIRTY MINUTES OF YOUR TIME) and out he came, having donned appropriate footwear, because in 2019 we went to Majorca and I’d had him out digging a flower bed and a creature had worked its wily way into his shoe and devoured his foot. He said it really compromised his holiday enjoyment, and no antihistamine seemed to quell the itch so he took to the beer by way of distraction instead.

Anyway, no sooner was he out when he started questioning the tools at hand. In he went to the shed, but no amount of rummaging revealed the ‘Pokey’ device to dig the pesky weeds from between the paving stones. ‘It’s a patio knife we need,’ said he, having done a cursory Google search.

So it was down to Homebase this morning and poking devices were purchased as well as lavender and rosemary so we can be greeted by olfactory pleasantness at the front door. ‘While we’re here we may buy drain buster for the bathroom sink,’ he said, so off we moseyed and met Cruikshanks the Homebase cat on route, curled up on a padded chair, all supine and ginger and gorgeous. Cruikshanks has a perfectly good home in the housing development behind the store, but Homebase seems to hold a particular charm for him.

In the detergent aisle I was excited to see a storage device for organising saucepan lids. Into the trolley it went, quickly followed by a Super Powerful Toilet Cleaner and a Citrus Plughole Freshener which apparently ‘cleans and deodorises.’.

As I sit here typing this, I am treated to the sound of the power hose, while the Patio Knife and Pokey Device remain in a bag, while he blasts away merrily while wearing his new manly garden gloves. Our own cats are livid.

Never say we don’t know how to live it up on a Bank Holiday Weekend. Welcome to middle-age, everyone.

I took the head staggers last summer. After two years of Covid restrictions I was suffering from many things, but primarily it was over-exposure to children. I took to the Internet, frantically googling summer camps and signed them up to seven weeks of back to back activities. Come August, I had almost bankrupted myself. The children had summer scheme fatigue after it, and said they needed a holiday after the holiday, having been trailed hither and thither every day.  I felt it was important to introduce some routine after lockdown, but looking back, I see that I did rip the arse out of it a bit. This year I’m having to reconcile myself to being more pro-active when it comes to entertaining them. 

Happily, I’ve managed to book them into a course in Avoneil Leisure Centre for the first week of July and I’m hoping that Kinedale Donkey Sanctuary will run a camp in in August. We’re also away on holiday for a couple of weeks. That still leaves a month though, and I’m not sure that benign neglect as an approach to childcare is going to cut it. Pray tell me, exactly how does one prise children from their screens without having to listen to them bleat ‘I’m bored’ every ten minutes?   

I’ve wracked my brains and below is a list of a few ideas to keep the girls happy and make me feel better about my lackadaisical approach to parenting.  

• Create a campsite experience in the garden. Pitch a tent,  roast smores over a BBQ and sleep out. I’ll camp too, less they get frightened, but I can just cart out all the snuggly bedding from the house so it won’t just be a thin karri-mat between me and my patchy uneven lawn. I always find camping more bearable when one has access to one’s own toilet facilities.  
• Have a toy and book swap. Other people’s stuff always seems more interesting than your own and last year a friend invited us to spend a happy afternoon rifling through bags of cast offs. We dropped a bin liner of unwanted items to Oxfam and did a spot of decluttering ourselves. This was a much more palatable experience than traipsing round Smyths while the kids ogle some plastic shite we don’t need.  
• Spend more time at the beach. One of the joys of living in Belfast is that one can reach sandy shores in well under an hour. I stayed with a friend in Portstewart this weekend and I felt mighty replenished after only a brief spell by the water’s edge. Growing up in Bangor the sea used to not only be freezing but full of sewage too. There have been huge efforts to clean up our coastlines so if you can thole the cold, the water is a much more tempting prospect. That’s a few day’s out sorted then.

Now, here’s what NOT to do: 

• This ‘savvy saver and mum of two’ Emma Stretton shared her suggestions for keeping the children busy in the Mirror. One of her recommendations was taking the kids to Ikea for a ‘fun day out.’ One of the reasons why I HATE an Ikea trip so much is precisely because people like Stretton take their children there just for the craic. When I’m trying to note down the dimensions of the Söderhamn sofa with one of their futtery little pencils, the last thing I need is a squawking youngster in my ear. I also think it’s a short-sighted plan: who can push a trolley through Ikea’s Marketplace without filling it with napkins and glasses and picture frames? Trust me, this is not an excursion for the fiscally challenged.  
• Stretton also suggests baking, which I am going to strongly advise against: step away from the whisks and the bowls and the Magimix. I am still battling a banana bread belly from 2020, and while I love the smell of a Victoria sponge wafting from the oven, the washing up afterwards negates the enjoyment. The more conscientious parent may argue that baking improves literacy as their offspring read recipes, and develops mathematical skills as they measure ingredients.  I’m past caring. They can measure some water and cordial into an ice lolly mould and that’ll do them. 

So that’s my plan to prevent boredom and a keep clean kitchen. Does anyone else have any ideas?