sourweebastard

I’m everyone’s favourite person at Christmas.

I’m the popular teacher in the canteen, who intercepts children en route to the bin with the remains of their Christmas dinner and shrieks, ‘My dog will eat that!’

I’m the guest who arrives to a friend’s festive party, with their offerings packed into a gift bag so old that the arse falls out of it when I emerge from the car and watch the cans of craft beer go rolling down their driveway and the mince pies crumble as they hit the deck. THEN, when I go to put the offending bag in their blue bin, I deliver a mini lecture on why soft plastics (including bubble wrap) don’t belong with all the rest of the recycling items. It remains to see whether I’ll be invited back. It was my first visit.

You want to see me, hovering around the kitchen island, saying ‘do you know that you use that foil again to cover left over vegetables or even line your grill? Mind if I take it home? We go through a LOT of bacon this time of year.’ People often take a nod and smile approach, as they would a doddery relative.

When it comes to wrapping presents I’m up to my usual antics, digging out paper from yesteryear and leafing through old Guardian papers for decorative pictures. I purchase one roll of festive wrap a year from Oxfam for bigger items. My loved ones tell me they feel like the anointed one when they detect the lack of wrinkles and realise they have been given virgin paper. Don’t worry I say, you’ll see it again next year, so don’t get used to it.

Needless to say, I am not a fan of the novelty gift, aka plastic shite that one appreciates for all of seven minutes in the spirit of frivolity, and wonders how long they can respectfully wait before it goes in the bin. Makes me all a-quiver, that sort of thing.

Talking about getting me going in a different sense is thinking how to use all the waste products- all those salvaged Amazon boxes, vegetable scrapings and leftover cards. LSB wonders if he’d see a bit more action if he took a job with Bryson House, or even just got hold of one of their uniforms for an evening.

A good pal has just put six raised beds into her garden. We stood surveying her husband’s handiwork from her warm living room. She was getting excited about the plants she would be filling them with. I on the other hand, was becoming increasingly animated, telling her to chuck in all her green waste and cardboard so she wouldn’t need as much compost. ‘Donkey manure!’ I said. ‘Need any? ‘I can source some.’ Another guest politely left in search of prosecco at this point.  Can’t say I blame her.

When I start talking about well-rotted equine shit it’s probably my cue to sign off. May I wish you all the merriest of Christmases, and urge you to take your joy wherever you find it.   If you’re looking for me you might find me down Ormeau Recycling Centre, with a beatific smile on my face.

I was chatting to a girl in work recently who is normally sanguine and imperturbable. (Then again, compared to me, most people are.) It was thus a surprise when she let forth a string of invective on Monday which, even for a Monday,  had a distinctly maritime feel. If you too are a parent of younger children perhaps you find yourself in the same boat (pardon the pun.) December has landed, and alongside festive cheer and anxiety it brings with it another annoyance- the bastarding elf on the shelf. If you want to know how to make twenty-four days in December feel longer than Dry January and Lent put together, then go ahead and invite this torment into your lives.

 This lady I mentioned earlier summed up exactly the frustration I used to feel myself in this scenario- falling into bed, fatigue laden and grateful for a soft duvet, anticipating a lovely sleep when the thought appears, Where’s the effing ELF!!

One invariably finds that the partner who has ordered the elf, having been cajoled into doing it because ‘the elf visits other people’s houses so why not ours?’ is the one who is either blissfully snoring or clean out of ideas to do with elves at exactly six minutes to midnight.

When I asked my offspring whether they missed their bygone Elf on the Shelf days, only for them to shrug and say no, they didn’t. When pressed further, as to why they had no fond memories of the demonic sprite who had wrecked the advent period for me for five consecutive years, they said, ‘Well, he didn’t really do much.’

‘HE DIDN’T REALLY DO MUCH?’  I spluttered. Well, the Mothership could have heard me in Bangor, such was my ire.

‘There was the thing in the bathroom once,’ offered the Small Child. Trust my children to remember something scatological, I thought, although I couldn’t recall doing anything too toilety with an elf. I know some elf zealots get busy with chocolate fondant icing but to me that was a step too far. In a house with multiple animals and small children one sees enough excrement, without having to fashion replicates. Yes, piped up the Older One. You wrote, ‘I’m back’ on the bathroom mirror in red lipstick. ‘Did I? I can’t remember,’ I mused.

‘And once, you strung some tights round the lights over the kitchen island and said he was on a zip line.’ I didn’t remember that either. And that was the conversation closed. Two things, they recalled, two things their elf did, and frankly, they were both a bit shite.

I vividly recall having him build Lego and ice buns and putting little floury footprints over work surfaces. He drew portraits and wrote notes and yes, admittedly, there were occasions when I stuck him in the Christmas Tree for three days with a note that said, ‘I’ve been too naughty so I’m here learning manners,’ but the rest of the time he had a fairly packed schedule.

So, my message is this: children forget things. When it comes to elves on shelves, the ratio to aggravation versus appreciation rests firmly on the former.

Before I posted this, I searched the blog to see what I’d written before on this topic. And there, in 2022 as though to spite me, was a post where I actually spoke up in FAVOUR of elf antics. All I can say is that I must have been hotting the drink when I wrote it. Hard. I don’t remember it with much delight, in retrospect, and more importantly, neither do my children! So consider yourselves off the hook, ye who ponder whether to be assed or not.

‘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.

Sometimes in our weekly convos, Frank Mitchell and I don’t see eye to eye, and our chat this week demonstrated such an impasse. This time, the hot topic concerned making a cup of tea, a matter I hold strong opinions on. It appears that the Gen-Z’ers are at it again. As if their love of matcha and mullets isn’t bad enough, they’ve only gone and taken to making their brew in the microwave: the horror! And Frank’s response?  Fairly ambivalent. He then confessed to not even owning a teapot. Readers, I was scandalised. To make matters worse, he admitted, (with no hint of shame) that he is a dunker of teabags, and that sometimes, should his mood need bolstering, he could finish his hot beverage with no fewer than three bags lurking at the bottom of the mug!

What an abomination! This is more than taking liberties with your Lipton; it’s a crime against tea; a bastardisation of a brew; a plague upon your Punjana.

I mean, the clue is in the name, isn’t it? A brew is something that you, well, brew.  A decent cup has to infuse a while to let all the tea-y flavour emerge in all its delicately piquant goodness. The Mothership takes her tea-making very seriously. Down in the Ballyholme kitchen, there live an assortment of teapots, but only the stainless steel are in use, the ceramics are a mere decoration, as they don’t keep the tea hot enough. When I was growing up she preferred loose tea, but that was bloody awful as I was always forgetting and ended up with a mouthful of leaves. Desperate altogether.

‘Will you like a cup of tea?’ she’ll ask, with seconds of your arrival.

‘Obviously,’ I’ll reply.

‘Who else is taking tea?’ she will enquire, and I will have to secure an answer quickly, because this will dictate which teapot will be employed, and how many teabags are used, as a strict drinker to bag ratio prevails. Should there be more drinkers than tea, another bag could be added, but this is done under duress as apparently it diminishes the quality of one’s cup. On to the hob it goes, and then, you wait, for precisely four minutes. When, and only when the microwave timer has pipped, can your tea be poured. And the milk goes in first, by the way. And the Mothership milks her own tea, always, as she takes barely a whisker and how she hasn’t burnt the oesophagus off herself is anybody’s guess.

I mentioned the ‘m’ word there. Gen Z’ers please note- the microwave timer can be used as a TIMER for for tea, and at a push, to reheat a cup. But never for the whole procedure. That’s a firm no. I’m glad we’ve that settled.

Once my friend Gayle had two Japanese friends visiting and my mum dutifully made them tea and homemade scones and served it up on a tray in her delightfully retro tea set. No joke, they said it was a highlight of their trip, in fact they referred to it as an Irish Tea Ceremony. The Mothership dined out on this for years.

So that’s a brief history of me and tea. I could go on, at length, but I won’t, and shall go now and relax and enjoy a cup. I advise you to do the same.

Every time I visit my reflexologist* she reminds me, ‘You can always say no. And ‘No’ is a full sentence.’ She’s right of course. I constantly take on too many things, feel overwhelmed, and stressed out, with the accompanying tension headaches and stiff shoulders creeping up towards my ears. If I do say no to something I find myself over-explaining, as though I have to justify my refusal. 

If you too are a chronic people-pleaser, I suggest you read ‘Please Yourself‘ by Emma Reid Turrell and ‘The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a F**k’ by Sarah Knight. Both are very helpful in making you check your ‘Yes reflex’; which I am convinced is a very female thing, where we feel we must acquiesce to others in order to appear ‘nice’ and ‘kind’, like the ‘good girls’ we were brought up to be. 

I really wish I’d learnt to say ‘no’ to things earlier. Saying ‘no’ would have meant that I didn’t have to go to a Hen Party of some random in Edinburgh as a favour to a friend, sporting a T-shirt emblazoned with the words ‘Horny Helen.’ Or going along to parties in my twenties when I knew rightly I was only being invited to boost the numbers or going to a piece of excruciating theatre to support a friend I never see anymore. Those are all hours I will never get back. 

But I am learning, albeit slowly, to say ‘no’ a bit more. A phrase that has helped me is thinking, ‘what am I saying no to if say yes to this? If you have built time into your week to put on a face-mask and sip a prosecco, or watch three consecutive episodes of Gilmore Girls with your kids, then that should trump someone’s last minute request. It’s just a thought to all those people out there who are constantly checking their phones and never feeling off the clock. It’s damaging. It’s unfair. And it’s unsustainable. Later this morning I’ll be on U105 about this very topic, based on a brilliant article in The Guardian yesterday. I am more than happy to admit, I’m very much still a work in progress when it comes to this. In the meantime, here’s a piece I had published in Mslexia a while ago, on a small word which has become a bit of a trigger…

Just

Of all the four-letter words, the very worst one, which sets my jaw a-flicker and makes my eyelid twitch, is the seemingly innocuous word ‘just.’ When used as an adverb I believe it to be multi-faceted in its odiousness.

‘Just’ can be the jagged edge tagged on to a compliment. ‘Your new hair’s lovely, it’s just…’ There you are, smile at the ready and maybe about to relax into the moment when you hear the ‘just’ and you know they actually hate it. I think anyone with an opinionated mother can identify with that one.

Then there’s the ‘just’ of rejection. ‘It’s just that it doesn’t quite work,’ or ‘it doesn’t just ring true,’ or the generic dismissal, ‘just isn’t what we need right now.’ Fine, you want to say, ‘Just don’t get my hopes up next time.’

Or perhaps it’s that time-thief colleague or the annoying neighbour you skulk behind the hedge to avoid whose opening gambit is, ‘I’ll just take a minute of your time.’ It’s never a minute though, is it? Experience dictates that unless you shut them down quickly you can wave goodbye to the next half hour.

Worse than all of these, though, (and I’m convinced that this particularly pertains to women in the workplace,) is when it is used to couch a demand. How often is a request prefaced with ‘just’, as though the extra work is a mere scintilla, so slight you may not even notice it atop of your already teetering to-do list. How ironic, that a word which stems from the Latin, meaning righteous, is used to undermine or play down a time-consuming task?

If it really is ‘just’ one small thing, a thing so small that is barely a thing at all, then you could be forgiven for retorting, in as sweet a voice as you muster, ‘Maybe, you could just do it yourself then?’ 

For all of the above scenarios, I suggest you delve into your other four-word arsenal for a response, even if you decide to ‘just’ whisper it to yourself. Mslexia, Elevenses Newsletter, November 2023

*Yes. I accept how middle-class that sounds. Don’t care. Geraldine is a gift from God. 

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

In some of my past Father’s Day posts, things have taken a mundane or even scatological turn. In the interests of continuity this post will be no different. Poor LSB- he earns his moniker for a reason.

What the man needs, above all else, is an uninterrupted night’s sleep. I don’t think he’s had one since 2009, and even those were scarce because we used to live beside a Daniel O’Donnell super-fan who would croon plaintive ballads with gusto at all hours. Strange sort of a fella: on occasion he’d decide to play evangelical tapes featuring the Rev Willie McCrea, delivering a full-on hell-fire and brimstone sermon.  Ruined many a moment, did that neighbour and his antics.

Speaking of Satan, and other things ruining your sex life, we may have two of his willing servants here, in the form of our cats. Not a moment’s peace to they give us, determinedly scratching at our door and mewing pitifully for their pre-dawn snack. Yes, you read that right: PRE-DAWN. Soft-touch that he is, LSB wends his way downstairs to heave food into a bowl. It’s a wonder he hasn’t broken his neck on the stairs because they are quite narrow, especially for one in a somnambulant state.

‘Just put the bastards out,’ I hear you shout at your screen, but alas, they have honed a myriad of ways to torment. If we DO put the tortoiseshell outside, she has found a way to land at our bedroom window, from where she yowls, sometimes standing on her hind legs for emphasis. Relaxing it is not: looking up to see her demonic little head and wild eyes demanding to be granted access.

The dog, not to be outdone, was also in fine fettle this morning. Hearing LSB up and about, ministering to the demands of cats, she begged to be let out too. I woke up alone in bed, and found both dog and husband in his study on the sofa together. ‘I just gave up on sleep,’ said LSB miserably, staring ahead while robotically stroking her back. ‘She cries if I stop,’ he added.

 ‘Is that shit on her paw? I said, instead of ‘Happy Father’s Day,’ by way of greeting. Reader, it was. In her excitement at her early excursion she’d ploughed through some of her own excrement. How lovely. Off to the bathroom then, to fill a bucket and don a glove and soak a cloth and tend to soiled paw.

She then had to be walked early, so Himself did that while I went for a run. I did buy him brunch later though, by way of thanks.

Frankly he deserves more than pancakes and bacon for his trouble.

Still, he’s an easy-going sort, and as long as he has an hour in the evening to play ‘Doom, The Dark Ages’ (with his trusty hound on the bean bag beside him,) he seems happy enough. Apparently it’s actually set in hell, so it says a lot that this is where he turns for light relief.

I

I read something earlier which made me smile and I’m dying to know what you think.

So apparently Gen Z’ers are done with the whole ‘big proposal’ thing when it comes to getting hitched and are just bandying the idea about and testing the waters first, before trotting off to put a ring on it with zero flap and fuss.

I was talking to some colleagues about it and they were all, ‘Oooh! That’s so unromantic!’ And I was like, are you for real?

This is how we got engaged.

One morning we went to view a house around the corner as we’d decided to look for abode for us both, after LSB having moved into the two up two down where I was residing off the Cregagh Road. Said house was very expensive, and was only ever a dream really, but how grown up it felt, to be looking at properties to buy, as a couple. Yikes, says I, this all feels very serious. By this time we were sitting in St. George’s Market, because I had a powerful hunger on me, and I was tucking into a sausage sandwich with extra onions, if I remember correctly.

There had been no great discussion before LSB had begun co-habiting, other than I picked him up one morning, off the red-eye from New York where he was working, and instead of taking him to his rented place I drove him to my house instead and there we were, ‘living in sin’ as the Free P’s would say. The next stage was getting a cat, who was a narky old bastard and still is, lording it up on the Costa del Ballyholme where she rules with an iron paw and gets fed fresh cream and warm chicken by the Mothership. Anyhoo, that’s another story.

So, having finished my glorified hot dog, we left the market and I says to Himself, So if we’re looking at buying together are we getting married or not? and he said Yes of course we were, and I said, Should we look at a few rings then? and he said Absolutely, and within half an hour I had a my bit of bling* and he was considerably poorer and basically, I’ve been fleecing the poor fella ever since.

Theres a longer version of the story here

(Let it be known that I was wearing my running shorts and an unflattering vest top at the time and the woman in the jewellers hadn’t a clue what to make of the pair of us. Never seen the like, apparently. I finally went for my run but I had to take it handy as sausages are desperate for repeating on you, regardless of whether you’re doing aerobic activity.)

But would we have done it any differently? The proposal I mean? No sir. We were both pretty sure that marriage was the end goal, but it was all very abstract. LSB also knew that I wouldn’t be up for a cringe-fest of a big moment and would have been scundered by the whole affair, which put him in a right pickle because he wanted to ask me but didn’t know how.

Was that very unromantic, me doing the asking? I said, as we took the 6a bus back up the Cregagh, 15 years ago. Course not! he said, it was great! Sure I didn’t know how to go about it, you know what you’re like; not easily pleased.

Folks, I wasn’t even offended.

But it turns out that I’m in the minority, and couples (in my demographic anyway,) didn’t just want the song and dance, they wanted the whole damn West End musical.

So, nosy creature that I am, I want to know how it all happened for you. Were you dragged to the top of the Eiffel Tower, or did you choke on your cava in the Canaries, and would you ever let your husband choose the ring for you? Heaven forbid. You know where to find me with your stories everyone!

*I did quiz the salesperson at length about the origins of the ring and did my best to ensure it was all ethically sourced. If I were doing it again, I’d get a vintage one, to be sure.

You got to hand it to Aimee Lou Woods for calling out the performers on Saturday Night Live for their depiction of her on The White Potus. The sketch made me laugh, albeit ruefully, at the mess that the Trump Administration has made in record time. But why then punch down and latch on to the obvious dig by targeting her looks? Well, IMHO, that’s just lazy, and as Woods said, ‘mean and unfunny’.  It was the weakest moment in an otherwise clever skit.

I for one, am DELIGHTED that Woods has never had her teeth fixed, for the primary reason that they don’t need fixing. Au contraire, I think they add a delicious vulnerability to her look. And what’s more, there’s a defiance, an audacity even, in refusing to conform to the Hollywood beauty aesthetic. How wonderful in fact, to be gloriously distinct. Take a look around if you’re out of a Saturday night. Modern beauty trends seem to dictate a certain uniformity-same hair, same brows, same highlighted cheekbones. This is entirely at odds with the message of body positivity; urging everyone to be themselves, but only if they look like everyone else.

But let’s get back to teeth. My friend was telling me about a trip to the dentist shortly after having her third child. ‘Ever thought of getting a brace?’ he asked her as she was leaving. My friend shook her head. (I mean, who thinks about a brace when they’ve a child still in nappies? I was lucky to even have time to brush my teeth, never mind worrying about correcting them.) You never believe what he said to her: ‘It would fairly improve the look of your face.’

Can you IMAGINE hearing the like of that? I think it’s shocking. ‘Nah, you’re alright,’ she said, and went on her way. I think that was very generous of her. He’d want to be careful, making comments like that: if he’d said that to me he might have needed a full set of dentures after being clobbered round the face with his own drill.

Then there was this: I got a message on Instagram the other day from a local aesthetician, cordially inviting me in for a treatment of my choosing, which I could then document for my social media. I politely declined. It’s a road I don’t want to go down, because I don’t think I’d ever be satisfied: it’s like when you buy spangly new cushions to spruce up your living room, but they only make your knackered sofa look worse.

Do you want the truth? Of course I’m not happy with my face- it’s lines and creases show with painstaking honestly, every one of my forty-five years. Catch me from the wrong angle and I’m a wizened old crone. But I’d much rather spend my money on a weekend away with my friends, reminiscing about our riotous adventures in our youth, and making new memories together. That would bring me infinite more pleasure than someone coming at me with a syringe full of salmon sperm.

But listen, as my yoga teacher says, ‘You do you.’ I have zero business making judgements about how people choose to look. I do worry though, that the boom in aesthetic procedures could make people feel that they ought to aspire to a certain ideal. And that takes a lot of time, energy and cash.

Be fabulously imperfect, and embrace the feautures that make you authentically you,. I’m thinking of starting a savings account: if I toss in all the money I could have sent on dermo fillers and skin boosters, I might be able to afford a trip to some White Lotus resort myself to drink Mai Tais by the pool. Now that is the dream…