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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

It’s me- I’m back! I haven’t posted in AN AGE, for two reasons. Firstly, I’ve been caught up in the clamour and hurly-burly of life. And secondly,  I am in the proper grip of the MENOPAUSE. This was confirmed to me after a blood-test showed that my hormone levels have bypassed the peri-stage of the process completely and I have crash-landed straight into the main event. This was an immense relief to discover because I thought I was just losing my shit altogether.

According to the NHS website, approximately 5% of women experience ‘a spontaneous early menopause’ which occurs before the age of 45, (which I turn in June.) The use of the word ‘spontaneous’ makes me laugh here. Normally, the word has pleasant connotations for me: an unexpected night out or a last-minute trip away, or an old friend picking up the phone on a whim for a chat. Spontaneous combustion now, THAT I get entirely, especially given how my moods ricochet round-and-about at the minute.

Others pointers indicated that I may have entered the realms of full-blown menopause.

1-My mind is mush- I’m searching for words through a sea of golden syrup.

Finishing a sentence has become quite an issue; as has using basic words. They aren’t on the tip of the tongue, the back of the throat, or even in the general area of the head. They are far-flung, dancing in the ether.

Last night I tried to issue instructions to my children.  ‘Bring in your stuff in case it rains in the night.’ I was met with blank stares. I gestured towards the window. ‘You know, your stuff, off the thing, the thing in the garden, the JUMPY THING?’

‘Girls grab your coats off the trampoline,’ interjected LSB, to put an end to the torment. Out they trotted. (Can anyone else’s offspring manage to have a bounce on their trampoline without setting up camp? Just asking.)

My inability to articulate has become a bit of a joke now. Himself read somewhere about items being bequeathed different names for the sake of amusement. Thus he now refers to the colander as the ‘holy-bowly’, tissues are now ‘sneeze-paper’, and instead of changing the bed sheets we now put on the beds pyjamas. This he does in an effort to make me feel better, or so he says.

Apparently some people know the menopause as “power surges” however I feel the opposite- like someone has stolen my plug.

2- The forgetfulness is a killer. Last week I went into the pharmacy to collect a much-needed prescription. ‘Ten minutes,’ said the kindly girl at the counter. ‘Wonderful! I gushed. ‘See you shortly.’ But by the time I’d picked up some veggies and cat-food I’d clean forgotten about the prescription and motored on home.

I’ve kept my friends informed about my dwindling mental capacities  and have told them not to take offence if I’m late or ditsy and to just please text or ring me if I’ve missed something.

Phone numbers and passwords. Holy God; not a mission do I have. Now, to be fair, I switched my phone contract recently and in the change-over I lost my old number. I mourn it every day, because I’d had it for yonks and could rhyme it off on autopilot. Maybe I’m still in the denial stage of the grieving process, but I’m damned if I can commit the new one to memory.

3- My confidence with regards to writing has plummeted, and this is such a vicious circle as a nasty little voice instils itself in my head, insistent that anything I write will be utter rubbish. But this affects all writers, even those who like me, have yet to have a book published. But, as any budding writer out there knows, if you don’t flex your writing muscle, it makes it harder to focus and return to the practice the next time. Sometimes you have to force yourself, like when it’s raining and you have to take the dog out and neither of you can be arsed but if you don’t she’ll pee all over the floor.

Hopefully though, things are on the up because I’ve started on the patches and already a feeling a semblance of calm descend. It may as yet be a mere scintilla, but I’m clinging on to it like hell and hoping for the return of clarity soon.

I know this has been a ranty/complainy post but I will be back soon with a few things that have cheered me.

My pre-teen girls have discovered shopping, and very excited they are about it too. With newfound independence and their friends in tow, they’ve taken to heading down to our local shopping centre and the novelty has rendered them almost giddy with glee.

Here I find myself in a CONNUNDRUM because I’m Miss ‘Second Hand’, Miss ‘Rewear-don’t-care’, Miss ‘Let’s go plunder a charity shop’. They’re only little, hence my reluctance to grim them out with doom-laden talk about the environmental impact of their purchases.

I also don’t want to rain on their fashion parade because I remember this time very well myself. I recall channelling my inner Claire Danes from  ‘My So-called Life’ and ogling a red and black lumberjack shirt from Tammy Girl. It wasn’t just a shirt; it was a pathway to teenage drama, to mild transgressions and experimentation. When I finally got it for Christmas I was beyond thrilled, layering it over my Lee jeans and black bodysuit. Sadly for me, up at my local Youth Fellowship there were no Jared Leto look-a-likes who fancied me in my Indie-grunge attire.

Later came my hippy phase, when I took to wearing crocheted cardigans and tie-dyed skirts paired with DM boots (which sliced the shins clean off me, long after they should have been worn in.) But regardless, it was sourcing these items in Ard’s Shopping Centre which was the real fun; curating a new persona with a little help from Top Shop and River Island. And I agonised over these purchases, because I knew they couldn’t just last a season, as I couldn’t just replenish my wardrobe the second I tired of them.

But when my kids bounce in with a tee-shirt and crow, ‘It was only £3!’ I want to say, ‘That’s not the bloody point!’ I hate the idea that they’ll start thinking clothes are disposable, when they can pick up a new top for the same price as a tub of gelato.

At this point though, I need to be transparent, because I have been known to feel a great deal of gratitude to our retail outlets,  such as on ‘World Book Day’ back in March. The Small Child, along with a few mates, took a notion to be an Oompa Loompa. Since it was her last year of primary school and I didn’t want to be a kill-joy, we ended up in H&M. I was relieved when she found a brown pullover and white jeans, both of which were relatively inoffensive and she promised me she’d wear again. (She also bought a shower cap and painted it green as I refused to buy her a wig, and I was impressed at her ingenuity.)

Last week, however, when I asked if she would wear the brown jumper, she made non-committal noises. I asked again, and it was a flat no. My response to this was language that Oompa Loompas may have fashioned a song and dance around.

But I may have stumbled upon a solution. The Small Child is of an entrepreneurial bent, like a mini Lord Sugar (except hopefully with better politics.) I’m currently persuading her to sell her items on via Vinted or E-bay, then you’ll be pleased to see that e-bay have scrapped their seller fees; a big bonus for buyers and sellers alike. It’s a small bid to promote a circular economy and is thus something that I am 100% behind.

Apparently Jennifer Aniston has taken to smearing salmon sperm to her face in an effort to retain her youthful glow. Don’t know if I fancy it myself, but then again, a quick squiz on Google and there’s all sorts out there to slow down the ravages of aging. Placenta anyone, from a sheep no less. It claims to do wonderful things.

But I’ll tell you this; if it came to it, I’d sooner apply placenta than go under the knife. Life’s hard enough without having the face carved off yourself, and I wouldn’t want to be bandaged up like a mummy afterwards. I’ll keep my crow’s feet, ta very much.

I’ve no plans to resort to the Bo-tox either, although if I do take a notion, it will be discreet. I’ve seen too many faces recently that look blown up like a pufferfish, and lips that resemble the work of a caricaturist on a plaza on the Costa del Sol.

But as yet, I’m still covering the greys and having my gel nails done, and I wear good makeup; wouldn’t be without it. And boy do I need to.  The dereliction of my face, (and believe me, I’m not being hyperbolic) is down to my own stupidity, or sloppiness at least.

I firmly believe that prevention is better than cure, so here’s what I SHOULD have done, starting in my twenties.

In the immortal words of Baz Luhrmann, wear sunscreen. Slather it on, every single day. I was an awful eejit, and when I headed on my year out to sunny Reunion Island in 1999, I paid scant regard to my Factor 50. Sure, I took more care when sun-bathing, but on a day-to-day basis, I was anything but prudent. Readers, the ravages are evident.

My mum had me well-warned, because she too spent her twenties in the tropics, and in the 1970’s no one paid much heed to the UV rays. Hence, she got a terrible shock when she took at close look at her arms, and compared them to those of her aunt’s, who was thirty years her senior. Aunt Emma had never ventured further than the Isle of Man, and had arms which were smooth and wrinkle free. It’s not an exact science by any means, but evidence enough, methinks.

Reckless choices are also responsible for the wreckage that stares back at me in the mirror each morning. And no, I’m not referring to an excess of wine, coffee and sugar, that unholy trinity which leads to tiny broken veins on my nose and cheeks. No, I’m talking cats, mine in particular. My furry despots demand attention at 3am, disrupting my sleep. There’s also the small matter of being slightly allergic to their hair: which makes my eyes itch and water, leading to much rubbing and ensuing redness. It’s both uncomfortable and unbecoming. But I’m stuck with my cats, and will just have to wait until they die of natural causes. Maybe I’ll fork out for the placenta cream in the meantime.

But it’s all a bit reductive really, worrying about our looks. Sarah Jessica Parker, now in her late fifties and just accepting the greys, pout it very succinctly when she said:

‘It almost feels as if people don’t want us to be perfectly okay with where we are, as if they almost enjoy us being pained by who we are today. I know what I look like. I have no choice. What am I going to do about it? Stop aging? Disappear?”

How I love SJP. When I saw her in ‘Plaza Suite’ back in February at half-term, she was skipping about that stage, lithe as a leveret, all gorgeous and gleeful.

Anne Lamott is another one of my heroines, and I don’t think she’d have any truck with inflated lips and frozen foreheads. As she said in her Ted Talk, ‘It’s an inside job,’ and I take this to mean that I should focus my attentions inwards rather than out, and to that end, I look infinitely better when I smile, and when I’m not complaining about something. And in these dark times, if I can still manage to find space for joy, then I’m going to celebrate every one of those laughter lines.