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Do you know when you meet someone who rubs you up the wrong way, and you’re chatting a while and you think to yourself, ‘Aren’t I an auld bitch because they’re not that bad?’ Inevitably though, out they come with whatever it is that has you wanting to stab them in the eye in with a fork. BAM! You were right all along- avoid them at all costs. Well, that’s how I feel about desserts. Not EATING desserts, but MAKING the buggers, from scratch. Take lovely sunny Saturday, for example. A lovely friend invited us up for dinner and oh the EXCITEMENT I felt at sitting with friends round a table indoors and not just freezing the absolute bollocks off yourself outside. I was in like Flynn- I’ll bring a dessert!

Last week, I was reclining with a coffee on the sofa perusing the Guardian Feast magazine. I took a fancy to a ‘mango-misu’ and bemoaned the fact that I couldn’t justify making it just for the four of us. This invitation thus afforded me the perfect opportunity. Diligently I set off to Sainsbury’s and bought the ingredients a day in advance. ‘I’m winning at this game,’ says I. I started making it in the morning to give it plenty of time in the fridge. This is when it started to hit me, though, why I hated making puddings. It’s all: Make the syrup in one pan. Beat up eggs and sugar in another. Leave to cool. In another bowl beat up egg whites. Stand and peel and chop about 60 mangoes. (six, actually, but I’ve never mastered chopping mangoes so it took a fecking week.) Shout at the older child who is supposed to be helping but drops sugar over the floor and brings over a chair to stand on which I trip over, spilling the zabaglione. Was there a bowl in the house left unsullied? There was not. This recipe was about fourteen steps too long and my mangoes, despite Sainsbury’s assertion that they were ‘ripe and ready to eat,’ where about as juicy and luscious as a boiled turnip.

Then I realized I hadn’t bought enough mascarpone and had to leg it to the shop for another tub. (There’s a whiff of the middle class about this post isn’t there?) By the time I got back the egg whites were no longer in stiff peaks- they were droopier than my boobs after the second lockdown. I had to get the Kenwood whisk out again, and I’d already washed the fecker. LSB is all, ‘Are you coming to take the dog a walk?’ and I’m like: ‘NO, I AM TOASTING COCONUT.’

It was an utter pain in the arse and I should have followed my instinct and bucked in a whole lot more rum because it was sadly lacking in that department and was barely detectable.

My friends liked it though and gave us some home.  I’m after eating a dish for my breakfast there, so all wasn’t lost. But folks, I’ve learnt something. Marks and Spencer’s: it’s there for a reason. Use it.

Do you want to know what is doing my head in this week? I shall tell you: it is making the dinner. It is making something we can ALL eat, that doesn’t involve tons of washing up; take shedloads of preparation, and isn’t nutritionally void. I mean, is that too much to ask? We used to feed the girls earlier and then eat later ourselves, which was a bit of an arse-ache, because I seemed to be washing up all evening, BUT, at least it allowed LSB and myself to be more imaginative with our choice of cuisine. But during lockdown we decided it was nice to all sit at the table together and pretend to be civilised, hence I am trying to cook once and make it do all us and the results are, well, varied to say the least.

Here’s a list of things everyone will eat: Spaghetti Bolognese; chicken fajitas (unrecognisable to most Mexicans, but hey-ho), pizza, roast chicken or ham, fish and chips. So far, so flipping boring. Here’s what isn’t on the menu: lasagne (‘too creamy’), stir fry (‘too cabbage-y’, despite the fact that there wasn’t even any cabbage in the last one I did); curry is ‘too spicy (even if it’s bland as f**k). Salmon, sea bass, veggie burgers or any veggie meals AT ALL, are off the table completely. I tried experimenting with pulses for a while, but other than chucking a few lentils into a sauce, it was a dismal failure. The faces that greeted me when I set down the spinach and chickpea curry from BBC Good Food; are etched on my memory for evermore. Anguished they were, ANGUISHED. Out came the chicken nuggets and into the oven they went. In an effort to avoid waste I ate it for my lunch every day for the rest of that week. That was over a year ago, and if I’m being honest, I’m still not quite sure my bowels have recovered.

It’s all very hard, isn’t it? Used to be, when in doubt, one could always fall back on a sausage. When I was little, The Mothership served up sausages at least once a week, and often they made an appearance at breakfast. The Mothership is a great one for the breakfasts and could write her very own blog about how to get toast ‘just right.’ And tea: fuck me, never get her started on the perfect cup- she sets a timer and all, for it to brew for exactly 4 minutes. Tea obsessed is that woman. Anyway, back to sausages:  I’m after reading about the pig farms in Ballymoney and I was near sick. I don’t know if I can ever eat a pig related product again, except I have a bit of Spanish chorizo in the fridge, and it livened up the chicken fried rice I made last night no end.

When the children were small I read a French guide to child rearing. It taught me many things, but mainly it made me feel shite as the French just appeared superior in just about every aspect of parenting. The book suggested that a child has to try a food thirty times before giving up on it. If I thought I was going to have to watch the Small Child’s face while she forced down a piece of cauliflower thirty times, I would be downing a litre of Smirnoff every night, just to get through the meal. There were many other tips, such as how to get your offspring to eat grilled courgettes and pamphrey and braised celeriac with a balsamic glaze. Needless to say, this is all pure bollocks and my children have yet to eat any of the above.

They also don’t like salads, soups, quiche, meat pies, risotto, or spaghetti carbonara, (which I fecking LOVE). And when I use the pronoun ‘they’, LSB is included in that. He doesn’t have the most refined palette and would live, if I permitted it, on white bread and bacon. At this stage in his life, I think he is about 50% nitrate.

It’s shite, I’m telling you. Every week I get the ‘Guardian Feast’ and entertain notions of trying something new, and then I take one look at Ottolenghi’s list of ingredients and feel tired. I live in Belfast, not the fucking Edgeware Road in London, I think to myself, and it would take me about a month and a half just sourcing the ingredients for a meal, half of which I’ll inevitably to be scraping into the compost bin.

So it’s Friday and thank the good lord above because it’s takeaway night and thus I have very few decisions to make. Hallelujah. I would say ‘send me your suggestions’ but it’s probably a waste of time, so just leave a ‘wee thumbs up’ if you too are suffering from ‘extreme dinner fatigue’.

Check out Dirt Birds too on this theme- it’s Hilarious

Do you know what’s ironic? Someone writing about mental health at the end of ‘Mental Health Awareness Week’ when their head is more fried than a Mars Bar in a Glaswegian chipper. And do you know what’s wrecking me the most? It’s the fact that the pace of life has been ratcheted away up again and I’m no more fit for it. I just see a list of things that aren’t done and I can’t get near them because everyday there are eleventy-billion small things to do- all of which take longer than they should fucking need to.

And the absolute second I get stressed, guess what I do? I lose things, important things.  So this week I realise I’ve lost my bank card, and then WAIT FOR IT: in a fit of nervousness one evening I picked the magnetic strip off LSB’s bank card and rendered it useless. Of course this occurs in the week when we have the Small Child’s First Communion, when I need cash to pay for the lasagne that I can’t be bothered to cook; I need cash to give as gifts, and then suddenly I need cash for every other flipping thing under sun.

So I ring the Nationwide Helpline for lost and stolen cards (and psycho mummies who couldn’t find their arse with both hands.) I get Clive*, who exhibits the same willingness to help as Boris’s willingness to apologise for historic crimes. His tone is flat as I fail to understand a question. ‘I’m going to repeat this a second time,’ he says with a sigh, and then, because I’ve clearly annoyed him tells me that no,  I’ve failed to answer the security questions so no, he can’t order me another card.

‘Please, can I try again?’ I say. ‘I’m just very frazzled.’

‘Ring again, my hands are tied,’ says Clive.

‘Can you at least tell me that someone hasn’t already used it and emptied my account?’ I say, in desperation, hopping about on one leg trying to put my sandals on as we got ready to leave for the church on Friday morning.

‘No I can’t,’ says Clive and tells me to ring customer services again so I can waste another 15 minutes of my life being put on hold,  listening to shite music and a billion phone options. At this point LSB deftly stepped in and relieved me of the phone as he sensed that Clive was about to get a tirade of abuse. ‘No need for that,’ said LSB, sending me downstairs where he had the hair straighteners warming to do my hair.

He’s good like that, is LSB: properly in tune with his feminine side. When I pulled him in to Solstene Grene on Saturday I said to him, this is where you may want to just lop off your bollocks with a pair of secateurs, but he didn’t seem to mind in the least.

(We’d only gone into town so I could go to to the Nationwide, where, incidentally, the lady at door was so maternal and kind as she sorted me out that my eyes filled up and I nearly had a wee cry.)

Sometimes folks, you just aren’t feeling it. I think I am just very, very tired of things being arse-about-face, and I need some good news. I need the promise of a holiday; some quality time with LSB without wondering what the hell the children are up to, and hoping that a cat hasn’t taken a shit in the bath (again).

Be kind to yourselves everyone. Nothing is normal, yet the pressure is on. Does anyone remember an Irish Furstenburg advert from the early nineties which was a series of conversations all spliced together? At one point a fella is saying ‘ALL I SAID WAS,’  as a prelude to another person losing their shit.  I think that neatly encapsulates how life is right now. It may just be one thing, but it’s plonked down on top of a festering quagmire of what other people have said or done (or not done,) or just life in general being a total fucker. We’re all struggling, and in these circumstances, why wouldn’t we be?

With this in mind, we maybe need to take a second and remember what we’ve all just lived through. We are a whole lot tougher than we give ourselves credit for. Yes, at times we may feel like something the dog just puked up, but we’re all here, getting our shit done. And if we need a good cry sometimes or to take a duvet day, then so be it. Let’s all just mind our heads.

And as always, a massive thank you to everyone one of you who reads my blog- whether it’s on Facebook, Twitter or on the blog itself. It really helps me to have this as a form of therapy. Anne Enright, bless her, says that regardless of whether you ever write a book, sitting a a desk and writing regularly will change you. I don’t know if it makes me any more sane, but I find that writing helps, and if  what I put down manages to resonate with anyone then that is a massive bonus. Thank you for giving me space to vent and taking time to read.

You can read my other musings on Mental Health here.

*Names have been changed to protect the guilty

I am dropping balls all over the place. I cannot, at this precise moment, even SEE the ball. The ball has been booted so far off the pitch it has landed in some dense, thicketty undergrowth, where it may lie, undetected, for a while.

When my children are being little ingrates, I tell myself to cut them some slack. ‘They’ve had a hard time,’ I say, when my gut feeling is to rage and shout and throw their Nintendo Switch into the black bin. But what, I think, about cutting ourselves some slack? No one has lived through a pandemic in generations. All of this is stressful, confusing, frightening. Even when I think I’m doing ok, I am swiftly reminded that perhaps I am not, because I forget everything. I can’t keep dates in my head: even the magnetic chart on the fridge isn’t helping, as I blunder along.

Last night we went to bed early. ‘Isn’t this marvellous,’ I said to LSB, as I carefully arranged myself, so as not to poke the greyhound in the eye with my toe. ‘In bed, at 10-25 on a Monday, with the dishes done and the counter cleared.’ (I’m telling you, doesn’t pillow talk just ROCK in our house?) ‘Brilliant,’ said he, and immediately fell asleep. THE BASTARD. How do men do that?

Well, I totally jinxed myself, didn’t I? I read a bit. I turned off the light. I took deep, meditative breaths. Nothing. I might add that I was very, very tired, but regardless, no sleep was forthcoming. I blamed the tee-shirt I was wearing so I tip-toed to the bathroom and put on a different nightdress and drank some water. Still sleep evaded me.

On the mind whirled. I sat up with a jolt and remembered that the girls were supposed to be at ballet today. Or were they? I couldn’t ask LSB because he was asleep. I tossed around a bit and made exaggerated sighs to see if I could wake him up. It didn’t work. I cursed myself for being useless: this was the third thing I’d forgotten this week. My thoughts turned to asparagus. I hadn’t bought any fresh vegetables. The one remaining pepper I had left left was fried up between the four of us. That, in my book, is not a sufficient amount, because we need all the antioxidants we can get right now.

I fell asleep and woke at four, the blueish hue of dawn filtering through the blinds and the birds revving up into a full-throttle appreciation of the day. Along came the magpies, little f**kers that they are, stomping and strutting on the roof above my head. The fat cat mewed dejectedly outside. I considered just getting up and making spaghetti Bolognese, but then remembered that I had no carrots to add to the pot. God, I’m shite at this mothering business, I thought.

I finally drifted off after five and slept til seven, but you know what? I’d have been better getting up and making the blasted Bolognese because of the wretched, anxiety ridden dreams I had. I kid you not, a Walker’s Crinkle Cut Crisp boasted fewer lines than my face this morning, before I set about filling in the cracks.

As it turned out, the girls had no ballet as it doesn’t start until May, so I got that wrong. But the problems fizzing around in my head at 2am faded into insignificance upon waking. Obviously I’m not really bothered about the ballet or the vegetables or my abilities as a mum. I’m just stressed to fuck because of the year that’s been in it. It’s made me a bit madder than normal and lacking in all perspective. But we should go easier on ourselves: this is still rocky terrain as we dare to dream of normality. Be kind to your wee discombobulated selves and I’ll try to do the same.

The Older Child’s violin teacher must think highly of manners, because I keep forgetting when she’s doing her lessons by Facetime, so when he rings my mobile I invariably lift it and shriek: ‘OH FUCK!’ when she’s no where in the vicinity.  I misread his text last week and thought he was able to do his lessons in person down at the school. There was the child waiting with her wee violin case in hand, while he was ringing me from his home in Donaghadee. Civil fellow that he is, he scheduled another one for the following evening at half-six. Inevitably, I forgot. She was frolicking in a friend’s garden when he called. ‘OH FUCK!’ I said, setting off down the road at speed, clutching my phone. There he was on Facetime, seeing the hedges and footpaths of my street as I hurtled along. ‘I’ll just ring back in five,’ said he. ‘Much better idea,’ I panted. I’m really not wise: this whole year has my head more mashed than the spuds for your Sunday roast.

All over Northern Ireland parents have been heaving deep sighs of relief as their progeny return to their leisure activities. My friend was down at Cherryvale Park on Friday night and with everyone back on the pitches in the sunshine, she said it was almost carnivalesque. Most people are thrilled with this dose of normality – all, of course, except me. (‘Not like you to be a contrarian, SWB,’ I hear you say.) This last while I have formed a close attachment to my sofa. We were always on good terms, but now, our relationship has deepened into Siamese twin like territory. Asking me to postphone my opportunity to rest with a book or watch Firefly Lane, especially OF AN EVENING, and I take that as a truly awful imposition.

There were, apart from the pestilence and disruption, elements of last year which appealed to me very much. As a parent, it turns out I am inherently lazy, and what threatens to push me beyond the levels of my endurance, is having to be at a particular place at a specific time. Take today (Sunday) for example. The Small Child has football training at 12pm while her sister’s training starts at one.  So far so good, except she has a piano lesson at 12-30. Through some manoeuvring on the part of her kindly teacher, I have managed to put this back to 12-20. In the middle of this, I have a tennis lesson at one. Nothing, will ever come between me and my tennis lesson, because I spent my entire childhood thinking I was shite at all sports, and now that I can actually hit a ball over the net,  I’m not giving up.  (My instructor practically puts the ball in my lap, to be fair, but trust me, this is still progress.) If all this to-ing and fro-ing doesn’t sound like a day’s work, then I don’t know what does.

LSB sensed my trepidation about lockdown lifting, so he bought a magnetic fridge organiser. Even with our chart, which LSB has neatly divided into sections, (complete with a marker with a magnetic strip for handy fridge adhesion), I still feel stressed. ‘Let’s talk it through again,’ I said to him last night, as I tried to get the pick ups and drop offs sorted in my head. ‘Hostage handovers have been negotiated with less fanfare,’ he sighed.

Well, it was worth making the list and checking it twice because it is now 4-30 pm  and everyone has been deposited where they need to be and I even did a shop and got the bottles recycled. My back hand is improving and there’s a chicken waiting to go in the oven. Man, I am ON FIRE.  And guess what, I’m celebrating by sitting back down on the trusty sofa, tea in hand. That is what I call a result.

I was shaky of leg and heavy of head when I woke up today, but no, it wasn’t just a typical Sunday morning chez SWB- instead I had joined hundreds of others yesterday in the 40 plus bracket and got my AZ jab. I’m finding a perverse enjoyment in feeling fragile, because this is not self-inflicted roughness, say from exercising without warming up or drinking too much NZ Sauvignon in a friend’s back garden, while riding the high of being allowed to socialise again. There is, dare to say, a ‘sanctimonious’ aspect to this malaise, because it’s for a greater good, like donating a kidney to a sibling.

It is possible that I milked the whole experience as I lay in bed last night when I kept rolling on to my left arm and emitting pitiful little bleats. At one point, I felt a weight on my chest and dreamt I was underwater, trapped under a wind-surfing sail. (People who grew up on the Esplanade in Bangor are prone to such night terrors). It turned out  just to be the Fat Cat, who had plonked himself upon me, tickling my nose with his whiskers. ‘Oh for fuck’s sake, what NOW,’ said LSB as I let out a yelp. ‘It’s a bloody zoo,’ I heard him mutter, as he lifted the cat under his arm and took him downstairs for his night-time snack, while the greyhound took the opportunity to stretch out even further along the bottom of the bed.

I had no idea how the vaccination procedure would pan out, because in true SWB style, I hadn’t read up anything upon it. When I heard there could be an hour’s wait, I assumed that you sat in your vehicle. In fact, I actually thought that a medic administered you the vaccine IN through the car window, like whenever I went to have a Covid test. I disclosed this to a friend whom I visited prior to my allotted time yesterday morning, dropping in some bottles for some of his home brew. ‘Do you not have a hat?’ he asked, as I turned up bareheaded at his door. I looked at him blankly: ‘You mean I have to get out of the car and wait in the cold?’ I said, at which the word ‘snowflake’ may have crossed his lips.

‘I wonder do they have coffee?’ I pondered.

‘Of course,’ he said, nodding vigorously. ‘And after that they come round with buttered sour dough on silver trays.’

‘There’s even champagne afterwards,’ chirped up his wife. Quite a chuckle the pair of them had at my middle-class expectations of the whole affair. He grew up in Derry City during the seventies and she hails from Soviet Czechoslovakia. I am often a source of great entertainment for them. ‘It’ll be fine,’ they said, as I took my leave. ‘You’re bound to meet someone you know as you wait, you might even have some craic.’

They weren’t wrong. I had just been directed to a yellow dot inside the foyer of the arena, when a colleague from my first ever teaching job, skipped up to the dot behind me. ‘Helen McClements!’ she cried and sure enough, it was me indeed. We chatted with tremendous animation, which I imagine those in the queue around us appreciated enormously. I mean, who wouldn’t want to hear the last 15 years of my life condensed into a 30 minute wait, at a sufficiently loud volume to carry between the socially distanced dots? Tremendous craic it was altogether. After the jab, I was afforded the opportunity sit and read, undisturbed for 15 whole minutes, without a small child annoying me or a cat asking to fed. I would go as far as to say that the whole experience was most edifying.

I was back in my car exactly an hour and 10 minutes after I joined the queue. I would have been speedier still, had I not had to wander round gormlessly looking for my car, since I had abandoned it and scuttled off in hurry, failing to note down where I’d parked it. It has now been thirty-two hours since the first dose and I’m almost feeling sprightly, which is frankly a bit of a shame as I thought I might have a decent excuse to stay off work tomorrow. Damn it.

Seriously though, it was extremely organised and everyone was incredibly kind and lovely and professional. Made me feel a wee bit better about life.

Newsflash- apparently, we’re all drinking too much over lockdown. I’m sorry, but this is the BBC actually calling this is NEWS? The real news would be if we were managing not to drink our way through this global cluster-fuck.

As I may have shared with you, I tried to give up drink this Lent, thinking that perhaps with some divine intervention I could abstain. Four days I lasted. Four days. I don’t know why I even attempted it to be honest- it was just Dry January all over again, which turned out to be well doused. Now is not the time for denial, when so much is off limits. But what I do subscribe to now, is careful policing of self and trying to be a bit more creative than just having a drink to dull the monotony/pulverised nerves/feeling of terminal gloom.

At least I’m not alone. Yesterday I had to use all my Tetris skills trying to squeeze three wine bottles into the bins at Tesco. Obviously, in the absence of the recycling centres being open, people are availing of whatever options are available, but I can conclude that Easter was celebrated in style in the Rosetta area of Belfast.

Like many others, this feeling of  wanting to drinking myself into a coma usually occurs at ‘witching hour’, around six o’clock.  Typically, I am trying to make the dinner, and children have buggered off up the stairs leaving me with three pots on the go; batting away opportunist pets who are trying to leap up on the counter for a piece of chicken; and a table full of all the shite of the day which needs cleared before we eat. Oblivious, or perhaps in a deliberate attempt to avoid helping, the girls are playing Minecraft instead of doing something edifying like reading. My reflex action is just to reach into the fridge or ferret about in the cupboards if I’ve nothing chilled. In cases like this though, I shouldn’t take it out on my liver. The sensible option is to shout for the wee feckers to come down and help,  The answer, I tell myself, is not in the bottom of a glass of sauvignon blanc, it is in creating a harmonious space to inhabit, instead of letting my rage grow and harden into a hernia.

Of course, if you absolutely can’t resist, and a bottle of Marlborough is shouting in your ear VERY loudly that it needs cracked upon and drunk, then have a glass, just stop early. Starting to hammer it into you at six and then sipping away until ten is a disaster, and yet, so easily done. I might have a glass while I cook, then one with dinner. I then say to myself, ‘FFS it’s a weeknight,’ and switch to tonic with a good squeeze of lime, which is fragrant and zesty and quenches your thirst. I know, I didn’t think it would satisfy me in the least, but it seems to.

A friend of mine, when she was pregnant, used to light a scented candle to quell her urge to drink. This, she said,  marked the beginning of her evening and her chance to relax. I can almost see you roll your eyes like Sister Michael in Derry Girls at this. But it’s not about the candle, is it? It’s the transition from a daytime of obligation to your chill out time. So it could be a bath with some Neal’s Yard Frankincense oil, or a stroll at dusk with a friend. Oxygen is underrated, and so is spending time with buddies who make your heart turn little joyful leaps. A friend shared a quote on Facebook which resonated with me. It read: ‘I am sick spending all my time with people who have either been, or came out of my vagina.’ Well, both my babies were popped out the sunroof, but regardless, you get the point I’m sure. We NEED to see other people: it’s not just pleasant, it’s a necessity.

There are other unexpected benefits to not drinking so much. LSB can testify to this after watching ‘Line of Duty’ the other night while I sipped a tonic and lime beside him. Thrilled was he, to be able to watch in peace, with only half the number of interruptions. Usually I pester him relentlessly: ‘Who’s he again?’ ‘What just happened there?’ ‘How the hell am I supposed to remember what happened in Series One? That was a lifetime ago, when the world was normal.’ Reassure me, is anyone else baffled by the show, yet compelled to watch, if only to shout out ‘There’s the garage off the Castlereagh Road! Remember we bought donuts there once?’ Or, ‘I know that woman! She works in Buttercups down the road!’ Highly excitable do I get, even when I don’t have the first notion who’s murdering who and why?.

I’m going back to work on Monday, so it is very possible that I won’t take any of own advice at all, and go a bit Father Jack. LSB may have to wrestle the gin from my hands as I attempt to adjust to working life again. So send me your tips, your encouragement, your life-hacks. I’m all ears folks.