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It is early, ludicrously early on St Patrick’s Day morning. Himself is braving the elements to run the ‘Craic 10k’ and so I drag my tender self from bed to join my pair of tyrants upon the sofa. (Friday night saw me and two girls from the Tri-team let loose in General Merchants on the Ormeau. Dry January felt a long way off, I can tell you.) As we warmed our frozen feet under a blanket, and I tried to quell the queasiness within, I looked over at the fireplace.

‘How long has there been a face drawn there?’ I ask. My children shrug.

‘Seriously, who has been drawing on the mantelpiece?’ I repeat.

‘Not us,’ they reply, with indignation. Having never noticed it before, I begin to wonder if long-term exposure to Catholics makes one see miraculous apparitions on your mantelpiece on Saint’s days.

It definitely wasn’t me,’ insists the older child, and to prove her point, hops down onto the chilly floorboards (we remain rugless after the puppy we fostered urinated so extensively on the last one that I had no choice but to bin it) and starts doing an illustration by way of comparison. ‘You see,’ she says, after a few deft strokes with a felt-tip, ‘My ponytails look like THIS,’ she points to her picture, ‘and this ponytail,’ she points with her pen to the graffiti, goes like this.’

She returns to her snug position on the sofa, with something of an exonerated air. For six-fifty-five of a Saturday morning, I must say, I’m impressed.

The small child is keen to protest her innocence too. Up she jumps and sets to with colouring pencils. Her drawing bears even less resemblance to the mystery on the mantle. She holds it alongside, and makes flicking motions with her wrist, to show the upward thrust of the hairstyle on the grafitti’d face, in contrast to that her own. ‘You see,’ she says, solemnly, pointing at her picture. She shakes her head, looking every inch like a disgruntled holiday maker who gets her picture taken beside her over-flowing cistern in her hotel in Fuengirola and has her story featured in Take a Break.

I have no idea when I last looked at the mantelpiece. In fairness, the illustration could have been there for weeks. I could almost hand on heart say it was the small child, because that’s the sort of thing she does. That, and eat entire tins of biscuits behind the sofa of an afternoon. After resuming her seat, she chirps up, ‘You know, how sometimes, we have other children to visit?’ ‘Yes,’ I nod. ‘Must have been one of them.’

I’m hoping that the pair of them can find good jobs as barristers and keep LSB and me comfortable in our dotage. In the meantime, anyone know of a good French polisher?

Take some advice from one who knows. When it is bucketing down and you are in the grips of PMT, just stay in bed. Or, if that is not an option, since you have to deliver small children to their Spanish lessons, just park yourself in Kaffe-O until it’s time to retrieve them. Drink your one-shot latte and sit back until the rain subsides, and pray that your rage tapers off with it.

In my efforts to visit the library and do other non-essential tasks, I left my gloves in ‘Threads’, my car keys in the pharmacy and my mind somewhere between Corries and the Mace. Up and down the road I traipsed, in a state of befuddlement, but not until I’d bought a two kilo bag of spuds which I had to lug after me.

And all this was before, BEFORE the small child’s joint party with a little boy to celebrate their fifth birthdays. I need not tell you, that soft-play areas are my nemesis. The noise. The garishness. The bloody parents, especially those who feign ignorance when little Joshua elbows Hermione off the slide. ‘What? Who? Where?’ Surely not!’ You may recall that on Saturday the rain was torrential, so it felt as if every child between the ages of 0 to 9 a ten-mile radius, was in Funtastic. It was MAYHEM.

The small child was terrified when pluckier children took her off into the deeper entrails of the centre to the ‘big slide’. Balls were lobbed and tears were shed. She ended up making her own fun with a few others in their little ‘party room’ where they launched themselves off the sofa onto the pile of coats they had shunted onto the floor. I didn’t give a shit as long as I didn’t have to do anymore consoling, I was trying to put a brave face on it myself.

I have discovered, that since doing Dry January, I can’t drink anymore, or not without feeling truly vile anyway. We had headed for pizza on Friday night as I was in no mood to cook (I had a rabbit cake to bake, I wasn’t cooking dinner as well; HELL no.) I drank two small glasses of red and I might as well have polished off the bottle for the throb in my temples the next morning.

You will, however, be pleased to know that the chocolate bunny cake, despite having a lop-sided head, was a success. ‘Wow,’ said the small child, looking on in wonder. ‘Told you you could do it!’ chirruped the older one, and my sour little heart soared.

But I was saved by the loveliness of the mums and dads who came along to the party. Every time I muttered ‘For fuck’s sake’ as some haribo-fuelled hooligan tore past, they smiled in sympathy and made reassuring comments. My friend and I practically had to exert force to make them accept a cup of tea or coffee. One mum refused outright. ‘No way, I’ll get my own,’ said she, and I had to almost rugby tackle her away from the café queue. ‘I have brought you here, to this ninth circle of hell, for my child’s party,’ I said. ‘for fuck’s sake accept a cup of coffee.’ She sat back down and drunk up smartish when it was proffered.

I rang the Mothership after to report how it had all gone. ‘Dreadful,’ she said. ‘I’ll never forget the time we had your party in the Groomsport boathouse and those boys, the RAMSTAMMING of them up and down that hall. And those wee girls, ashen they were, for fear of being trampled, or having their head taken off by a football. I had a migraine for a week after it.’ Yes, I don’t recall that party being much craic myself.

‘I hope you at least got the mums and dads a nice cup of tea,’ said Mum.

‘Surely,’ I said, and told her about the woman I verbally abused as I exhorted her to take a cup. Sometimes mum can cope with swearing. Not last week.

‘You said WHAT to the woman?’

‘Relax,’ said I. ‘everyone swears a bit now.’

‘Desperate altogether, to think how such profanities have infiltrated everyday parlance.’

(I think she’s reading the Classics again.)

(Folks I started this last week, before our wonderful granny passed away. I just finished it this morning as I think Anne would have liked it, especially the bit about her being well organised.)

People I am melted. Pure melted. Hot on the heels of ‘Dress your little darlings up as a Fairy Tale Character’ comes ‘World Book Day’, so head directly to Sainsbury’s and buy another fucking costume so you can create more clutter in your house and empty your wallet in one fell swoop. Now, I am a ‘stay-at-home mum’ so perhaps you are thinking, what has got her goat this time? MAKE something you lazy article.’ But alas, I may be able to fling a few words at a page, but artistic I am not, and sewing is not one of my skills. I think before we built the extension I had a needle and thread but in sooth I know not where one is to be found these days. Long gone. Anything in need of fixing is sent directly to my mother or mother-in-law. In fairness, if it goes to my mum it is set upon ‘The Chair’ and is then retrieved and sent to the mother-in-law where it comes back fixed within the week. I come from a line of procrastinators. (‘Doing me down again,’ I can hear my mother say.)

In first form at Glenlola Collegiate, the Home Economics exam entailed a sewing exercise whereby we had to sew around a circle, square and triangle on an A4 sheet. My sewing machine was at the back of the room on a funny little desk and I recall my foot getting stuck on the pedal. When I handed up the massacred sheet of paper the teacher looked on agog, before  enquiring if I was making some sort of feminist statement about girls being forced to do needlework.  (I went on to win the prize for Home Economics at A-level, for which I was awarded a silver teapot so clearly feminism had never been on my agenda).

But you know by now that I’m mad about the reading. It’s why my house is bogging, and why I never get round to gardening because if I’m not writing or cooking dinners I’m engrossed in a book. The children are never out of the library and the poor critters are read to morning noon and night. But does this mean that I want to so spend my evening sewing a fecking costume? It does not.

So back to World Book Day. The small child wants to go in dressed as a koala bear after the book ‘A day at the Animal Airport’ (which is pure genius and has been penned by someone as demented as me by family life and the trauma that is flying with small children.) ‘Righteo,’ said LSB as he started looking up koala costumes on Amazon. I nearly had a fit. ‘Houl on a minute there, we have no more need of another costume! sez I. Upstairs we have two child sized and one adult reindeer outfit, three rabbit ensembles, one polar bear suit and a giant banana. There are numerous girly princess dresses and a clatter of other random fancy dress paraphernalia. ‘I WILL NOT BOW TO CORPORATE GREED,’ I yell to himself, who nervously closes the laptop and mutters, ‘and me only trying to help.’

The older one wants to be ‘Plop, The Owl who is afraid of the dark’. I remember that LSB’s reindeer suit was next to wrecked after the Castlewellan Christmas Cracker and start contemplating cutting it up into bits and sticking brown fuzzy scraps on to cardboard wings.

In the end, after the week took a horrible turn, on Wednesday evening LSB says ‘What about World Book Day and I say ‘Oh fuck it,’ and we march the little people into M&S and one gets to be Rapunzel and the other is Alice in Wonderland. And then it snows, so they don’t even get to wear them into school on Thursday. We are forty quid down, and there is YET MORE CLUTTER. But as I watch the kids don their outfits and dance away some of their sadness for a moment,I don’t really care. ‘Come here til we have a story,’ I say and we cuddle on the sofa and give ‘Animal Airport’ another whirl.

At significant times in my life with LSB it has snowed. Heavily. When we announced our plans to marry at Christmas in 2010, the Mothership was immediately resistant to the idea. ‘What if it snows and guests can’t make it to the day?’ she muttered. ‘Putting people in mortal danger. Not on, in my book,’ she went on.       ‘It’s never that bad here,’ I replied, dismissing her concerns. My mother is prone to hyperbole. Well, wasn’t I in for a rude awakening. That was the Christmas where the weather was so inclement that the pipes froze and emergency water had to shipped over from Scotland. Guests arrived in their finery to our wedding having had an all-over wash with baby wipes that morning.

We were to see plenty of baby wipes in the two years that followed. When our second daughter arrived in February 2013, I was looking forward to taking her our for a stroll in her Uppa-Baby, when the heaviest snow in my lifetime hit Belfast. In our Four Winds micro-climate, we were completely cut off. Forays to Sainsbury’s were an expedition which necessitated snow boots, and skis would have been the more expedient option.  Optimistic guests came with baby gifts only to find themselves in an Arctic Tundra, unable to get up the hill.

And this week, we face a horribly new phase in our lives. The loss of a parent. LSB’s mother, who had taken ill in January, passed away on Monday. And the snow came, this time with its full Arctic blast, as if to reinforce our feelings of shock and disorientation. We weren’t ready for this. Anne had been ill before, but a defiant and resilient spirit meant that we were  convinced that she was going to stick around for a while.

In the same week that saw the small child’s fifth birthday, sympathy cards now jostle with birthday cards on the mantle. Decorations were erected on Tuesday for a small party for her birthday, and taken down last night so we could take soup to warm us after the funeral service and the cremation. I was tempted to leave the mint green and peach bunting up as I think the mischievous streak in my mother-in-law would have approved. Garlands for Anne Garland would have been appropriate, but in the end decorum won out. We will grieve when it is the time to grieve and later we shall celebrate her love for this family and her indomitable spirit.

So all feels odd and strange and more tenuous than before. But what remains despite the sadness is the warmth of the people who surround us. The phones which have buzzed, not just with good wishes but with practical offers of support, of which we have not been too proud to avail. Our beautiful girls have been minded; we have been fed and cheered and comforted and this has quelled the emptiness in our hearts.

Anne would have been thrilled f she could have seen how it went today, and what a stellar show was played out in her honour. And somehow, with the tingling glow we felt despite the sadness, I think she may well have had a inkling.

(LSB found this beautiful photo of Carrauntoohil on Twitter. It was from today, but we have no notion who took it. Fair play to them, it’s perfect.)

I have turned into a fanatic. I’m having flashbacks to myself as a teenager when I frequented the Pentecostal Church. There, I would meet kids who one moment were drinking Scrumpy Jack in Brice Park and the next were reading their testimonies and announcing they were heading to Khartoum to preach the Gospel during the summer holidays.

Except this time it’s not about religion, it’s about waste. I plonked myself down in front of ‘The Devil Wears Prada’ the other night and I couldn’t focus on Anne Hathaway’s transformation or Meryl Streep’s icy candour. All I could see was the single-use coffee cups from Starbucks. Twitch twitch, went my eye.

Then I took the kids to a birthday party at the QFT last Sunday but, stop the press, I HAD FORGOTTEN my reusable coffee cup. Well, what a moral dilemma that brought on. ‘Please,’ I asked the hung-over looking chap at the bar, “give me my coffee out of one of those mugs over there.’ ‘What mugs?’ he asked, bewildered. ‘Those ones,’ I said, pointing to the draining board. ‘But those belong to the staff,’ he replied, looking around him in desperation. ‘Get me away from this zealot,’ his eyes said. Finally my need for caffeine overrode my concern for the environment and I accepted my latte in a disposable cup. However, not before I’d harassed the manager and helpfully suggested buying some cups that they could fire in the dishwasher. (They do have a policy where if you bring your own cup you get a sizable discount, so at least that’s some valuable market research conducted.)

To assuage my guilt about the latte, I took it upon myself to take home three black bin bags full of waste and sort through them, popping congealed popcorn into my brown bin and washing plastic spoons. (The QFT do recycle plastics and cardboard but they don’t compost and I was in a sort of deranged, save-the-earth-one-sticky-snack-at-a-time mood.) LSB landed in from a fifteen mile run and winced when he saw his kitchen transformed into a recycling plant, and sickly sweet ice-cream oozing onto the floor. ‘God help us’ he uttered, before retreating for his shower.

Last night, I inflicted myself upon the good people of the Ormeau Road in Boden café, where gorgeous duo Erin and Jo of ‘The Edible Flower’ were putting on a supper club. Now, if anyone ever deserves a shout out it’s these pair. I swear, I would hand-on-heart consider turning vegan if Erin would move in and whiz me up her guacamole and deep-fry me a few leeks. Their food is inventive and ethically produced with love and creativity. Jo also brews her own beer and her Sloe Wit brew  was the closest thing I’ve drunk to the Bière Blanche I used to guzzle on Réunion Island. There was sun and hedonism in every sip.

But these girls, boy but they are FEEDERS. We were tempted by golden samosas on arrival, and on and on the sumptuous fare came. By the time the main meal arrived I was lamenting my tight skirt and wishing I’d shunned fashion and donned trousers with an elasticated waist-band. Erin and Jo live in Saintfield in a big old farmhouse where they can grow vegetables- they even have their own pigs. Now LSB has to talk me out of getting a goat or a small pig on a regular basis. ‘But it would eat the leftovers,’ I whine, and he shakes his head and reminds me that just because there’s a field out the back doesn’t mean we live in a space suitable for goat habitation.

So poor old Erin is lifting a few glasses and there I am, pestering her about whether she’s going to be taking the leftover tagine back for her porcine friends. My pals look on, as she explains that they aren’t allowed to feed the pigs food directly from people’s plates for fear of contamination but assures me that at home every last scrap of potato peeling gets sent their way. ‘Good,’ I say, before leaping into a cab and leaving her in peace.

Now, at least I have the self-awareness to realise why I’m doing this. Plastic is a hot topic, what with Blue Planet 2 compelling us all to act; but in the face of the world’s madness I feel so helpless, that I think at least if I do something small, like save a few bottles from the Atlantic, well, it’s better than nothing. But feck, I’m going to have to rein myself in, because very shortly people are going to start legging it when they see me coming. ‘Quick, hide my bottle of Ballygowan,’ they’ll say to themselves, before flinging it over a hedge to avoid a lecture.

If you too, are prone to lunacy, don’t be afraid to get in touch. They say ‘misery loves company’, but us mad women, we quite like it too.

Every fortnight my blue bin is overflowing with plastic. I try to cut back and then I spy the Dine In offer in M&S and cave in; and let’s face it, unless you are super committed, avoiding plastics altogether is damn near impossible. At least I recycle most of it, but over Lent especially, I’m going to be creative and make a conscious effort to ditch the packaging and reduce my footprint.

One thing we have managed to cut back on is clingfilm. I used to use rolls of the stuff in a bid to prevent food waste, but I’ve finally caught on to using plates as lids and I’ve invested in tupperware.

But what irks me no end, is when I’m fastidiously washing out my containers and scraping every last scrap of food into my compost bin, is seeing single use plastics being used needlessly.

Schools which proudly display their eco-badges routinely use polystyrene cups. I’m not trying to create work for people: I appreciate there isn’t much time and schools are short on funding. It’s easier to bin cups than wash crockery, but I’m sure there’s some green-minded parents who wouldn’t mind staying an extra fifteen minutes after the nativity play to help wash up. If it stops bag after bag being chucked into landfill then surely it’s worth it.

I took action last week, and off to Ikea I headed to purchase 120 reusable cups for parkrun. As you know, LSB and myself practically live in Ormeau Park at the weekend, between the adult and junior parkrun. On Saturday morning, up to a hundred people sojourn to the Ozone centre to have a hot drink and a chat after their five km. This is entirely separate from parkrun, as at many events the participants complete their run and go about their day, so it’s a testimony to the sense of community at Ormeau that we meet to drink coffee afterwards and have the craic. But on Saturday I was a bit nervous about producing the cups. Would the folks say ‘Here comes Kill-the-Craic on her Save the Earth Soapbox again?’ but they didn’t. It was a talking point and the consensus was that it was a great idea.

Usually two or three black bin bags are filled and binned, but not last week: there was only one. The milk containers were taken away and recycled and everyone helped tidy up. It was a resounding success and it could  happen everywhere, with a bit of organising.

And, it seems I’m not the only one concerned – the BBC thinks its a good idea and wants to ban single use plastics by 2020.

The EU (Brexit or not) has planned it for 2030

So – perhaps this is a case of acting locally, and thinking globally in action?

So my question to you people is, do you do a parkrun, or   congregate somewhere that uses non-recyclables, and if so, could you change it? (Sorry to evangelise, but you know I used to be a right happy-clapper). Small steps to a cleaner earth, and let’s face it, Stormont isn’t likely to have that on their agenda anytime soon. Power to the people!!

Meet Geoffrey. He’s not at his best, bless him. I’ve only managed to get him thus upright by jamming his neck through the door handle. His legs have been so twisted and bent by children clambering astride him that he is unable to stand unaided. Not so much as a tuft of mane remains, after the scissor happy small child got carried away. ‘It was just a trim Mummy!’ Aye right, scalped, he was. A few of their little friends came to play one day and set about him with a selection of coloured stampers, so for a while there he boasted rainbow splodges. (I think he’s had enough juice spilled over him since to wash most of them off.) LSB said he felt sorry for him in August, stuck up here in the foothills of the Castlereagh Hills instead of down the town partying at gay pride. He pulled the short straw alright, did Geoffrey, landing here. I bought him on a whim years ago for the kids when I saw him in a shop in Newcastle. It was a devil of a job getting him up the road, I almost had to shove his neck out the window of the Corsa. It was another challenge trying to hide him too; I swear it would have been easier trying to secrete a corpse.

But if your home is sadly lacking in the almost life-sized stuffed animal department, fear not and take a trip to Malahide and bag yourself a Geoffrey in Robyn’s Nest. I was most taken with this boutique toy and gift shop. There was a distinct lack of plastic shit and plenty on which to feast the eye.  My children were almost stunned into silence with the treasures they beheld.  Agog, they were, when I said them they could choose a small treat each.  The wee one’s a canny wee article though, as upon spying a polar bear boasting a scarlet scarf she enquired if she could have ‘a medium-sized treat.’ I nodded and it was duly wrapped in red tissue paper and placed in a beautiful bag. I think she almost went a full forty-five minutes without complaining after that.

(They’re desperately hard done by, my two: my dad nearly took his end in the newsagent’s in Ballyholme one day when the older child asked him solemnly, ‘Can we look at the magazines that we’re never allowed to buy?’ I think he bought them one each to make up for my parsimony).

Another item they stocked in Robyn’s Nest and which tickled me no end, were ‘Lottie Dolls.’ Have you heard of these? No, I hadn’t neither. They’re the antithesis of Barbie and Bratz dolls with their make-up and improbable figures. They all have a wee back-story, like working in animal shelters and rescuing orphaned kittens, or volunteering in Cambodia, or moving to Chile to go rooting for fossils. All very virtuous and cute. ‘Would you like one of those dear?’ asked the lovely Linda, who was trying to enjoy her mid-morning cup of tea when we landed in on her. She passed the older child the doll with the cochlear ear transplants, which she looked at with polite disdain before dandering off to choose a small stuffed monkey instead. (Well, we had been to the zoo the day before,  thus animals were the order of the day.)

So it’s a bit of a traipse all right, and your local Smyth’s is doubtless handier; but for an edifying experience and a bit of craic with the proprietor, I couldn’t recommend this place enough. They do absolutely splendid cards too: I do love a bit of mischief.

(In no way was any of this sponsored by Robyn’s Nest. Given the traffic to my blog I’d probably have to pay them sponsorship.)

We were keeping it classy on the street this morning. 8.05 and I’m careering down our icy drive in my dressing gown and M&S fluffy slippers shouting: ‘STEVEY, YOU”VE FORGOTTEN THE THREE BEARS!’

The bears, you see, were of utmost importance. The small child, was going in to school dressed as Goldilocks. We had no wig of golden loveliness, (and alas the paucity of her own hair was insufficient for plaiting) and we had no fairytale dress. We had upended the dressing up box last night and she had turned up her nose at all of the costumes. ‘NO: that one’s for a queen. NO: Goldilocks DID NOT DO BALLET. NO: that’s the wrong princess.’ The Bo-Peep outfit WOULD NOT DO and the staff was missing in any case, though the older child tried her hand fashioning one out of a kitchen roll tube. The mood was fraught.

Finally, we got to the root of the problem. ‘I WANT TO BE A BEAR!!!’ she wailed. Ahhh, of course she did. There is always an animal theme with the wee one’s outfits. But as the older sister pointed out, ‘Bears in nursery rhymes are usually brown and you only have a polar bear suit.’ I suggested that this Goldilocks could be set in the Arctic but merely received a withering look for my efforts.

To soothe tempers, we sojourned to the sofa and read a couple of versions of the tale, and concluded that Goldilocks just needed some class of a frock, which surely we could muster up. The small child still looked despondent though.

And then, I STRUCK GOLD. ‘Let’s focus on the bears instead.’ I decreed, triumphantly. I even produced the CIRCULATION BAG, which is the bin bag into which I heave about 20  toys every so often and produce on a whim and the kids think it’s Christmas. ‘Mummy, it’s Eli the Elephant! It’s Henry Sharpe! IT’S STEVEN CRAIG!!!’ (Yes, toys and dolls get their full title in our house.) Three bears were located, duly dressed and chucked in a Tesco Bag. ‘You have PROPS!’ I told the small child, and she beamed.

Meanwhile, my phone had been a-buzzing with all the mums’ on the WhatsApp group in a similar state of angst. It was a particular challenge for the boys, but if they donned a green shirt and black trousers apparently that would suffice as Jack and The Beanstalk. I posted a photo of the three bears (of which I was ridiculously proud) and got a panicked message in response. ‘You mean they have to bring toys as well?’ ‘No,’ I typed back. ‘It’s just because her outfit is going to be so shit.’ I got a lot of smiley emojis. ‘Please,’ I implored, ‘Just keep the standard very, very low everyone.’ ‘Teaching our kids a valuable lesson’ replied another exhausted mum. ‘The bare minimum will do.’

And so this is why, when LSB trotted off with the girls and I exhaled loudly as I sat down with my coffee, I took off after him like a crazed lunatic when I saw that the bag of bears had been forgotten.

Clearly, in my world, the BEAR minimum won’t do….

Happy Friday everyone.

So how did I make Dry January a fun, illuminating experience? Yes, you read that right. Not only did I get through Dry January, but I will always look back on it as a special month, of growth, renewal and reconnecting with self. Here’s how I did it….

1. I challenged my notion that non-alcoholic wine was rubbish.   We trotted to the Vineyard and treated ourselves to a selection of non-alcohol wines and beers. And to my AMAZEMENT, some were quite good. So I still took a bottle from the fridge and lifted down my wine glass, but I drank guilt free.

2. I offered to drive. January 6^th was Nollaig na mBan and I was meeting three of my finest lady friends for lunch to celebrate. We eschewed our local haunts in favour of The Poacher’s Pocket in Lisbane. I picked everyone up and the craic was mighty on the way there and on the return journey. It was dark when we left the restaurant and the moonlight danced through the trees which lined the country roads. At one point, as I ate my smoked haddock risotto, I thought: ‘A glass of chilled sauvignon would enhance this no end.’ Then my friend said something interesting and I forgot about it.

3. I did more yoga. Since I was busy with work, I struggled to make my morning yoga sessions, so I did a few yoga classes in the evening instead. One Sunday, after spending the afternoon at christening, (there was top-notch cake and coffee, so again, I didn’t feel I was missing out) I took myself down to a meditation class in Flow. The floor was still warm from the Heat class which had gone before, and as I lay, a bolster under my knees, bathed in music and candle-light I thought, this is such a gift to myself.

4. I joined an on-line Sober Club set up by my friend Amberlea, where a group of us posted comments tracking our progress and offering encouragement. Some people were going off the hard stuff for life, others were cutting down and getting 2018 off to a healthier start. It was an honest, funny and inspiring forum, without which I may just have opened a bottle (on the nights when the kids had me driven beserk.)

5. I was much kinder to myself, and focused on the positive. It felt great to wake up fresh every morning and and I found it much easier to give those negative feelings a good boot up the arse.

6. I spent time creating a feeling of Hygge in the house. We lit candles and plumped cushions to create a haven where we could relax in the evenings. I bought new furniture in Ikea and Action Cancer on the Ormeau Road and set to making our bedroom clutter free and cosy. It was a treat to slip between fresh sheets and read Eleanor Oliphant under my new light (usually serenaded by a purring cat).

7. I made a plan. LSB embarked on this together. We read How to Quit Alcohol (for a month), and discussed some strategies to keep us on the wagon. And this was why it worked. We decided that for a month, it was off the table. And we got on with it. When I fancied a G&T, I made this delightful concoction instead: Fevertree Tonic, lime and angostura bitters. It hit the spot.

In the interests of transparency, I do need to tell you as I’ve previously admitted, there was a small amount of wine. (though I think having one drink before a gig is a RESULT.)  But after our evening out we spent the rest of the weekend booze free and so far this February, I’ve had a couple of drinks, but a most insignificant amount. Hell, I even drove to a Pub Quiz, and this is UNHEARD OF. I feel that alcohol has relinquished its hold on me. I’m glad I’ve done this, and now I know I don’t need Prosecco to find my sparkle.

Facebook and Instagram; do we need a digital detox? Because let’s admit, they can be a right menace at times.

I was scrolling through my news feed the other evening and could feel my mood plummeting. There was too much information to process. My screen was almost fizzing with activity: there were videos from ecological campaigners, astute political commentary, petitions to sign. Suddenly there were alerts going off in my brain, ten things at once to like, read and comment upon. Then there were the updates from Facebook ‘friends’, having an apparently lovely time. I was suddenly beset with negative feelings and anxiousness. And this is me when I’m feeling sprightly! Not even in one of my ‘woe-is-me and aren’t-we-all-heading-to-hell-in-a handcart-moods.’

The irony isn’t lost on me that if you are reading this it is probably through the medium of Facebook. I hope my sourness isn’t contagious. Although I like a good rant I realize I’m actually living the dream. I’ve a break from teaching, the extension is finished, my children are old enough to give me a bit of peace and I’m no longer having to wrestle pen caps off toddlers lest they choke and dissuade them from eating fluff off the carpet. Maybe you’re a former work colleague rolling your eyes and thinking “What is her fecking problem now? All those coffee shops she frequents and she’s still giving off. What a truly great pain on the rear she is.” But why does a quick glimpse at other people’s lives make me feel so rubbish?

Well I’m not alone, as some research I conducted has shown. The You and Yours Show on Radio 4  did a feature a while back on the effects of social media on the psyche. Many callers identified feelings of angst and extreme dissatisfaction with their own lives as soon as they clicked on Facebook and started seeing posts of their friends basking in the sun or clinking glasses on a rooftop bar. If the highlight of your weekend was a mediocre glass of wine as a reward for housework and ferrying around your offspring, then of course you’re going to feel shite. One lady was undergoing IVF treatment and the bombardment of photos tracking the progress of other women’s baby bumps was too much for her to stand.

Young people are especially vulnerable to the erosion of their self-esteem through the portrayal of other people’s picture perfect lives on screen. And they are perhaps less likely to suspect that life isn’t always as it seems. It is so easy to present a sanitised shot thereby manipulating the truth behind it. (If you read my blog, you’ve seen the photos of my teapot and mugs right? Let’s be clear, that was a very tiny corner of my kitchen).

Years ago a friend took a five-day break to St Lucia with her husband. Such was the value of their air miles that they flew business class, drank champagne and even had one of those clever foldy-downy beds on board. She posted photos of a sand so pure and sea so blue that the greyness of a Belfast morning was almost too much to bear. So when we met up I asked her all about it, my voice high and tight, trying to quell the envy. “God but it was awful,” she told me. Well, I was all ears. “Pete was sick the whole time. He caught a bug off the boys before we left and he was never off the toilet. He couldn’t leave the apartment. We didn’t even make it to the hotel bar.” The poor girl sat by herself on the beach. No wonder there were so many pictures of the sea, she was hardly going to be taking pictures of her vomiting husband, was she?

Pictures of me have appeared on many an occasion suggesting all is splendid in SWB’s world. A couple of years ago himself and I were snapped looking rosy cheeked and full of cheer at the ‘Castlewellan Christmas Cracker.’ It’s a race in which you compete in pairs and we were dressed in matching elf costumes, as one is encouraged to don festive apparel for this eight mile run up a mountain. There were turkeys, butchers and more Santas than you could have shaken a candy cane at, all charging through the forest park. LSB, gazelle-like creature that he is, ran on ahead. Some runners kindly asked me “Are you on your own little elf?” “No,” I replied curtly. “I’m with my frigger of a husband but he has deserted me. If you pass a dark haired elf on your way be sure to give him a good kick.”

I finally found him through the throngs and we finished together looking jubilant. Next stop was the Slieve Donard to celebrate our wedding anniversary. I looked ever so happy. Anyone who saw our photo on Facebook would never have suspected that a week before I’d been in the grip of an anxiety attack so acute I’d taken myself to the GP and been given anti-depressants to settle my nerves. (I chronicled that little tale in one of my Tenx9 stories, which you can read here if you can be bothered.)

At the moment when the photos were snapped I was smiling, and they captured that feeling of joy and relief I felt. I was telling a friend over coffee a couple of weeks later about my traumatic Christmas and she looked completely baffled. “But you looked fine in the photos!” she said. Point made. Facebook posts catch but a fleeting glimpse of life, and sometimes we need to occupy a quieter, more private place.

I am pleased to report that right now I feel settled and content. But if they can rattle me in my positive frame of mind, what are the effects on those feeling a bit rubbish? Something to ponder anyway. (And if you do come off Facebook, you can read my blog on www.sourweeblog.com, or subscribe, so the recent posts go directly to your e-mail.)