Buttery pens. Buttery effing pens. That’s what I was up against this morning. I had dropped the children to school, giving the dog her morning walk in the process. Two birds, one stone- I was winning already. Yesterday I had bought myself a vegan breakfast pot from Kaffe-o in preparation for a good start to the day. LSB bought a filter coffee pot recently so I had a second cup of freshly brewed @Boden Park single roast to look forward to. I opened up my leather bound pink diary with gold embossed flamingos to make a few notes but then couldn’t find a pen. I remembered putting some in the pocket of my handbag for handiness and reached in to lift one out. My hand was met with a greasy, buttery mess. Fuck, I said.

How, you would be entitled to think, could that happen? I will explain. As you know by now, I don’t like waste. In coffee shops, when they give you three little pats of butter wrapped in foil when two will suffice, I pocket the third, fearing that all 25g of dairy goodness will be dumped, and putting butter in the bin is, IMHO, a crime.

It wouldn’t be happening to Marie Kondo though, I’m telling you. No, the crime in her book, would be coming home and firing the handbag down on a chair and neglecting to extract all its contents in an orderly fashion before placing the bag in its ‘special place.’ There’d be no forgetting about the butter and leaving it to melt and coat all one’s new pens in a rancid sludge.

So there you are. As well as cleaning up a pool of greyhound piss this morning because the cat sat blocking the back door and being the deferential type, the dog decided to go and piss in the living room instead,  , I also had butter-encrusted pens in pastel hues to clean. Later, you may notice a photo on Instagram, of my diary and pens and coffee. It will be intended to look as though I am an organised sort of a person. But you won’t be deceived, for you will know the truth.

I’m worried that I’m driving everyone nuts on Instagram chuntering on about Second hand September. You see, I just love it. I think it’s flipping brilliant. Now, I’m no cheap-skate, so don’t ever confuse my lack of enthusiasm for spending money on clothes with an aversion to spending money in general. There’s few people I loathe more than a tight-fisted fecker.  However, I do object to shelling out fifty quid on a top from a High Street chain that has cost pence to make in Bangladesh because they’re paying their workers a pittance in some shithole of a factory that collapse around them with the merest hint of an earth tremor.

Feck that.

Nor am I some kind of anti-new zealot. I do sometimes buy new, and trust me, if you were afflicted with my feet, you would too. I am woefully flat of foot and have the beginnings of a bunion. It is a terrible and painful state of affairs, for my wallet as well as my feet. But, thanks to God above I have discovered Campers, and I am never going back. Ever. They suit the shape of my deformed toes and I reckon that any shoes that don’t torture my tooties are worth it. So yes, I do buy new, when I have to.

But one of the best things about a pre-loved item, is that my friends know that I have no shame and regularly heave me a bag of garments to plunder through. There are few activities I enjoy more, truth be told. Most recently my pals Louise and Brenda transformed my back-to-work wardrobe when I got a call to start teaching again in September. The whole lockdown experience had quashed any creativity I had left for knowing what to put on me. Not a notion did I have, and everything I owned appeared to be blue. Navy blue, duck-egg blue, royal blue. I feared I was going to rock up at the school looking like the blue section of the Dulux brochure. So when they arrived with jackets of mustard and cerise and patterned dresses that my tiny addled brain couldn’t contemplate, they injected some colour and vivacity back into my wardrobe. It was all very jolly and cheered me up of a morning.

I also love it when people see me and they say ‘I know that dress!’ and are all chuffed to see it getting another airing. And I love having money left over at the end of the month so I can pay for a room in The Sandhouse in Rossnowlagh. How much better to spend the cash looking at the incoming tide and making those memories to carry us through the winter (which, according to the news earlier, may be a bit shite).

But with my enthusiasm for the second hand, I don’t want people to feel like they’re being judged. At the beginning of the month I went out for dinner with my friends and one of them had recently denied herself a new frock f because she feared I’d be affronted. ‘Not a bit of it,’ I said. I think it’s an opportunity just to shop a bit less and to make more considered purchases. I used to shop all round me just for the hell of it and I don’t do that anymore. I shop less and tend to put more on the items I decide to buy.

I’m actually a bit sad now that September is coming to a close. It gave me a wee thrill, sharing pictures on Instagram and keeping in touch with some friends when meeting up in person hasn’t been an option. It’s been a distraction from everything- a bit of much needed frivolity, and f**k knows we could do all do with that right now. So if you do see me posting my attempts at second-hand chic well into October, then just humour me.

Well, how the heck is everyone? F**king awful, if you’re anything like me. The sunshine has finally arrived, and am I get a second to enjoy it? Of course not. I got the dreaded call to go back to work, and no easy transition was that, I can tell you.

I had aspirations of resting myself for a while, after the combined horrors of teaching online and home-schooling. I think I’m still suffering from PTSD, with early stages of cirrhosis of the liver too, no doubt. But didn’t the phone go at the end of August, with a man looking for someone to teach youngsters English in a local school.  How LSB’s eyes lit up upon hearing that news. Frankly, I think he wanted me out of the house but he claims that necessity simply dictated that I should go. Stony broke we almost are, after  staying in that f**king eco-cabin in Donegal and now back home, we’re forking out for all manner of activities so our children grow up to be well-rounded individuals. I’ll tell you who’s NOT well-rounded, nor well-rested either at the moment, and that’s me. More fried than a Glaswegian Mars Bar that’s had a double dip, that’s what I am.

Have you ever clapped eyes on those ‘Hama Beads’ that my children express a fondness for? Bastard things altogether: a million tiny pieces of plastic that get spilt over the floor and press into the soles of your feet when you’re trying to do your yoga. Well, imagine that a large tub of these has been upset over your carpet and you are trying to scootch them all up. That’s what it’s like when I try to write anything presently. The synapses just aren’t firing as there is too much afoot.

Teaching used to be trying enough, but as you can imagine with all this Covid shite, the stress has been upped significantly. Used to be you could sit in your room, waiting for your class to trot in. Instead, I am looking every bit the bewildered substitute teacher, as I shuttle around the building searching for rooms and attempting to follow the one-way system. I keep forgetting my mask and have to keep racing back to find it. Then it’s into the room and logging on and futtering about with a computer. Just getting the class started at all is a miracle.

So that’s school. Then there’s home, when I’m ever actually in it and not taxi-ing weans hither and thither. And no sooner are they dealt with, than there’s an animal annoying me to be walked or fed or removed from a clean pile of laundry. Speaking of wildlife, guess what befell me this VERY evening. I was perched upon the sofa, writing my blog for the first time in 3 weeks when The Small Child appeared at my shoulder. ‘I’m very sorry to interrupt you,’ she began, ‘But we are going to have to bath the dog.’

They often suggest bathing the dog, just as a fun activity, and I ignore them. I could tell by her tone, however, that this wasn’t just a notion. ‘She has rolled in dog dirt,’ went on the child. ‘And it is all over her neck. It smells really bad.’

Well that was the end of my peaceful half hour. Up I had to get, run the bath and lift said greyhound in, trying not to get smeared in shite in the process. Raging she was about it too. ‘Well that makes two of us,’ I told her, as I lathered doggy shampoo into the offending area.

So there you are. Not much writing has been done, of late, and tonight’s escapades should give you an idea what the tempo of life has been like. So to any one of you out there, who is currently working full-time and managing not to throttle those closest to them, fair play to you. I mean, I was stressed BEFORE I went back to work and now I’m just hoping I don’t give myself a hernia. Any tips, you know which way to send them.

This isn’t the morning to discover that you have a hole the size of a five pence piece in the sole of your boot. The rain and wind are driving in from the west with a velocity bordering on venomous. It’s the first day back at school and I am trying to manoeuvre the children out of the backseats without bashing the car beside us. I have parked too close and am mouthing ‘SORRY’ to the man beside who is refusing to look at me but no doubt thinking that I’m a clampet.

I wanted to walk the children down with the dog this morning. I wanted to it to be a pleasant experience, after all the randomness.  I can get oddly emotional about them going to school, (which is quite ironic since I’m often looking rid of them.) I wanted to smile at their wee friends and their other mums and dads, or at least try to convey that I was smiling behind the mask. But there is no time for any salutations in the car park. Just as the water seeps into my sock and I squeeze the three of us between the cars, another mum calls over that they aren’t letting any of the pupils in before their appointed time: we are seven minutes early. We clamber back into the car. Both children have donned wooly gloves and warm coats. The Older Child left her detachable hood on a class trip to Oxford Island, so she is wearing a pink hat with a star on it. It is pointy and makes her look like an elf. The leggings they are wearing were labelled ‘cosy’- I had bought these for after Halloween, in a fit of organisation. I didn’t imagine they’d be worn on the 25^thAugust, but since nothing in 2020 has turned out the way we’ve expected, fleece lined leggings should be the least of it. 2020- the year that just keeps on giving.

At 9-12am they begin bleating that they’ll be late, so we do the sideways shuffle out of the car again and weave our way over to the gate. The rain falls in torrents. I see The Small Child’s teacher at the door as she herds in half the class, ‘Bubble A’. Although her hood is up obscuring her face, I know by her gait that she is reassuring the children as they come in. She taught the Older One last year and I feel enormous relief that at least some things remain consistent.

I come home and strip off my soaking socks and leggings. I am so grateful that I’m not teaching at the moment- that I can come into my warm kitchen and reheat my coffee. It’s just as well LSB and I are both here, so we can act as referee between all the animals. The visiting cat (Fat Bramble) has taken up residence and our tortoiseshell is giving him daggers through slits of eyes. He disappears under the sofa with a disconsolate mew. The dog is bewildered by the inclement weather. We put her coat on her earlier so she could go out to pee but she just stood at the door looking back in at me with a hurt expression. Greyhounds are a very sensitive breed apparently. It doesn’t pay to be sensitive these days. I voice my concern that she is going to urinate, (or worse) on the floor again so LSB leaves what he’s working on and dons his coat. Fetching an umbrella he trudges up onto the grassy bit of the garden where she prefers to pee and holds the brolly over her while she relieves herself. He comes back in, peels off his sodden socks and is now back at his computer looking like a Jedi with in his green hoodie. I’ve just interrupted him to ask if he thinks greyhound coats come with hoods. He starts googling. While he’s at it, I ask him to see if he can buy us a golf umbrella made from recycled plastic. Apparently both are available on Amazon. I feel that it’s quite wrong to name a storm after a Saint who was  so fond of livestock. Or the present Pope for that matter. Surely he wouldn’t have approved? They should be running these things past the Vatican before letting them through, in my opinion.

LSB got stuck in a queue the other day behind a long-winded person, who, in his words, was talking ‘absolute mince’. This expression just about sums up my own attempts to communicate, since my ability to articulate verbally has gone down the toilet. I have started gesticulating to indicate what I want, as though I’m a scuba diver and the kitchen is my underwater world, minus the iridescent fish. Handing LSB my coffee cup earlier I made a swirly gesture, drawing circles in the air with my forefinger, which he miraculously correctly as giving it 30 seconds in the microwave to reheat. As though reverting to toddler-speak, I have referred to the dishwasher recently as the ‘whoosh whoosh’, and have told the children to eat their bun over a plate so I don’t have to get the ‘vroom vroom’ out. While I like these terms for their onomatopoeic quality, I fear any onlooker may conclude that I am a bit of a simpleton.

Finishing a sentence has also become an achievement. When we were younger, my brother and I would get frustrated with The Mothership, as her statements petered into nothingness. ‘FINISH WHAT YOU’RE TRYING TO SAY,’ my brother would shout, which was never a very helpful response. I have now overtaken my mother with my lack of coherence. Put simply, there is just too much going on in my head. Information overload has occurred and I lack the headspace to process it. Last week the children went to a camp. I got up early and did some yoga, walked the dog and cooked dinners while listening to Radio 4. For the first time since March, I had a significant amount of time to potter, undisturbed. I still took to my bed two days after lunch to stare at the ceiling for half an hour.

Friends of mine, with children of a similar age, weren’t exhaling at all. Instead, since they are teachers, stuck in back to back meetings and preparing for the return of the pupils. I felt exhausted on their behalf. Merely reading the guidelines and the ‘do’s and don’ts’ for my girls as they start back at school next week took it out of me enough.

The mental load is huge. God help any parents who have children in nursery, primary and secondary schools, having to juggle all the different times and restrictions. In the next few weeks tempers will be frayed, appointments will be missed and new rules will be broken. It’s inevitable and it’s no one’s fault: there is just so much information. And for those of us who have the memory of a gnat to start with it’s going to prove exceptionally difficult.

But, and to use a phrase that I hate, ‘it is what it is.’ Either we attempt to have a sense of humour as we muddle on, or the next few months will have all the cheer of binge listening to the Radiohead back-catalogue. My advice is to be kind to ourselves when we f**k up, because this is all new, and a bit shite. Self-preservation is key. So when you see someone headed your way who winds you up, hide in a doorway. Know your people, find your tribe and develop a hand signal with your significant other which means ‘get me home immediately and put a large glass of red in my hand’. If you’re as fried as me keep in touch, as it would be great to know I’m not alone here.

This Wednesday Whinge is devoted to growing courgettes, or more specifically in my case, my failure to grow any class of summer squash. I’m fed up listening to celebrity chefs dishing out recipe suggestions on the radio to allotment owners running out of ideas with what to do with this season’s glut.  They can all shove their courgettes and that’s the end of it.

At the start of Lockdown I bought some Mr Fothergill courgette seeds because I was told, repeatedly, that they were the easiest thing to grow, one up from cress, which every child of nursery age has grown successfully with a bit of moist kitchen roll and a window sill.  The perfect place for a novice like me to start then, I thought cockily to myself.  Bill Bryson is always chuntering on about New Englander’s love of ‘zucchinis’, and how they grow them in prolific quantities. Such is their surfeit, they are forced to become ‘guerrilla courgette givers’ sneakily leaving bagfuls on neighbours’ doorsteps under cover of darkness. In small, crime-free villages, people start suddenly locking their cars in July and August, when they nip in to the local shop for fear of a randommer chucking a boxful into their passenger seat before scuttling off.

Thomasina Miers is dishing up ‘Grilled courgutte and mint tart with tahini cream’ this week in the Guardian Feast. The Edible Flower are stuffing their courgette flowers according to a Cypriot recipe, and I’ve come across a Spanish chilled soup  as an alternative to gazpacho. But why stop at savoury? One could try a lemon and courgette cake or grate some into a muffin and add a few sultanas. Sounds revolting, but hey ho, better than a pile of mouldy courgettes languishing in the bottom of your fridge drawer.

Well, needless to say, I shall be attempting none of the above as despite my best efforts, following the instructions carefully and planting my seeds 45 cm apart in my containers, I’ve grown a measly three, all of which are stunted and deformed in appearance. Now I’m all for a wonky vegetable, and have been known to deliberately seek out the ‘imperfect peppers’ in Sainsbury’s. But still, you’d need to be a brave one before you’d sink a tooth into one of these fellas. And then, a green fingered friend told me why my efforts may have been thwarted, as a courgette scourge has infected some of this year’s crop. Not so benevolent looking now, are we Mr Fothergill, with your bushy moustache and wide smile. No, like some great vegetable villain, his seeds are out to wreak havoc with your digestive tract, as this bitter tasting strain of ‘curcurbita pepo’ can result in vomiting and diarrhoea. So, 2020 strikes again then. You take up a lovely new hobby, getting outside and embracing the good life, only to find that your lovingly homemade ratatouille could see you hollering to Huey on the white porcelain telephone.

I hunted out my seed packet to see if my seeds were part of the infected batch. And apparently not, so I don’t even have an excuse.

I’m not even going to start on my tomatoes. No mutant seeds there, to the best of my knowledge, only my inability to keep them alive long enough to bear any fruit. I asked an elderly neighbour if he had any suggestions why they looked so ravaged and he shook his head. ‘Overcrowded and insufficient soil’ was his verdict. ‘I’ve a good gardening book I can lend you,’ he said. ‘Looks like you could do with it.’

Great, I thought. So I am to tomatoes what battery farming is to chickens.

I mean, surely if Matt Damon can manage to plant and harvest a bumper crop of potatoes on Mars, for f**k’s sake, I should have been able, with my frequent watering and diligent removal of slugs, to grow more than one radish and a single tiny carrot this summer? I’m wondering if any of it was worth the effort at all. Quite despondent I am.

Please don’t go sending me any pictures of your vegetable patch success stories: it’s all still too raw. It’s as bad as those b******s who went to Donegal last week and filled their timeline with pictures of sensational sunsets and idyllic white sand beaches, when our reality in July was a monsoon in a wooden hut. No, of course I’m not bitter. If you want bitter just try sampling one of the contaminated courgettes I was telling you about…

The phone went at ten past three yesterday afternoon. It was The Mothership, in puerile form altogether.  

THE MOTHERSHIP:  Helen, I’ve just watched that video you put up; the one about recycling. 

ME;  Oh good, do you approve? 

THE MOTHERSHIP:  Well, there was some useful information apart from washing all those catfood  packets.  People have to go to their work you know.  No wonder you don’t get much done of a day.  Contact the manufacturers and tell them they should have tins as another option. 

Not that I ever liked tins. I threw out more food than the cat ate because it went off.  But, would  you believe, your Dad stands and cuts those sachets open with scissors, kept for the purpose; he says there’s a lot left inside and it’s a terrible waste. 

Anyway I digress.  What I have to say is, if you must continue with these videos then you need  to improve your presentation. I know you’re an amateur, but is there any need to make it so obvious? 

ME: (I’ll be honest with you folks. It stung.)  Deep sigh. Can you pin-point exactly what was wrong? (I mean why? Why in the name of God would I ask that?)  

THE MOTHERSHIP: Where do I start? Well first, the sound wasn’t great and near the end I could hardly make out what you were on about.  Did you not do that exercise* I showed you? 

ME: Deep sigh.

THE MOTHERSHIP: And then there was the sloppy English. It won’t do Helen, it won’t do at all. 

ME: Oh God.  

THE MOTHERSHIP: You were dropping your ‘ing’ endings all over the place and it doesn’t  sound well coming from an English teacher, of all people. You actually said ‘boggin’ and some other unpalatable terms  that I won’t go into now; very uncouth they were.  Who wants to listen to that sort of thing? 

The woman can suck the oxygen from a room in 9 seconds flat.  

THE MOTHERSHIP: And then! And then at the very end, when I thought you were finally wrapping up, you said ‘Stinkin’.  

ME: Did I?  

THE MOTHERSHIP: You did. You said Stevey wouldn’t use a pot of toothpaste instead of a plastic tube of Colgate because it was ‘stinkin’. Most uncouth. I can say, hand on heart, that I have never actually used it.  

(This is true. The Mothership has let me get away with saying FOR F**K’S SAKE in her earshot but I don’t think I’ve ever said ‘stinkin’ without getting berated for it. In fairness, I don’t employ it often.)  

THE MOTHERSHIP: And one more thing.  I mean that about complaining to Sheba or Gourmet, and I’d be asking them to start using the tins again. Because Cleo** is fussy too, she’s off the Sheba now and she wouldn’t look near Felix, but I think the Gourmet is very overpriced and she’ll only eat the Poultry selection, never the Ocean range, and that’s what Asda keep sending me. They just replace items if they don’t have them in stock, and they don’t even ask you. It was the same with my tonic water. I didn’t want the ordinary one, I wanted Slim-Line but they sent the other and your father has to watch his blood sugar.  

ME: You were saying?  

THE MOTHERSHIP: Yes, get on the phone or e-mail, I don’t suppose it matters, and tell them that yes, the plastic is bad for the environment or whatever, and bring back the tins. Far easier to wash. I agree.  

Finally!! The woman actually agreed on something!  

Off she went- rant over.

And, I’m raging to have to admit it, but she did, of course have a point. Several, in fact.  

Truth is, I was so mortified about doing the bloody video in the first place that I couldn’t bear to watch it again. But I did last night, and I didn’t even have a drink to soften the blow. Flip me but didn’t I go on and on? Far too long. I bored myself, so she was spot on there.  

Secondly, once I wrote a post about the children reading Enid Blyton and I mentioned the ‘paucity of adjectives’ in ‘The Magic Faraway Tree’ (and, let’s be honest, every other piece in her oeuvre). Turns out I don’t have a leg to stand on as I must have said the words ‘brilliant’ and ‘fabulous’ a total of nine times each. The shame. 

So I’ll perhaps do another video in 2021 when I’ve got over this bollocking. Have a lovely Monday everyone.

*The Mothership has a range of vocal exercises she used when teaching children how to extend their vocal range for the class choir. There’s a lot of humming involved- the trick being that your ‘lips have to tingle’ as you do them. Otherwise, there’s no point. Apparently.

**Cleo is the small black bolshy cat we once left in Bangor while we went on our holidays in 2010. She’s still there, living it up by the seafront, giving orders. Savage wee beast too.

I’ve always had an obsession with buying prints and framing things. Great trouble I have, shifting myself past the shop window of an arty shop. When I was in first form, we had guests coming from America. Five of them there were, and they were all staying in our house in Bangor. I don’t think my mother has recovered yet from the experience. Clean daft she went, touching up the paintwork in all the bedrooms and assembling bunkbeds. In the middle of this ecstasy of cleaning, I had my dad up a ladder hammering nails into the wall so I could display a picture featuring four kittens in a basket. (I was an innocent sort of a child). No expert at DIY, he made a shambles of it, covering the freshly vacuumed carpet with bits of plaster and The Mothership had to fetch the Polyfilla and start rectifying the situation. Pure raging the both of them were, at my prioritising picture hanging over more pressing concerns as to where the guests were going to sleep. Incidentally, the Americans, when they arrived, were a pain in the arse. Well I suppose the adults were alright, in a terribly earnest sort of a way, but the kids were total ingrates. ‘I WANT I WANT I WANT.’ (You know the type). While playing Monopoly with them one rainy evening I landed on a Community Chest and was chuffed to get lucky with the ‘You have come second place in a Beauty Competition, collect £10’ card.

‘Must’ve been a very small beauty contest,’ drawled the little fellow, who was no oil-painting himself and could have done with holding back on the auld Hershey bars. Little bugger.

Anyway, I digress. 30 years on and my passion for all things art-related hasn’t waned. I’ve been on the look-out for a new piece for the study I share with Himself, and wanted a motivational one that was original and avoided all the clichés; I’m sick to death with the whole: ‘When Life gives you Lemons grab salt and drink Tequila’ prints that abound in every single arty shop I frequent. I had too many unfortunate brushes with tequila slammers in my youth for those to bring me any comfort at all.

And then, through the magic of Instagram, I discovered ‘Brown Paper Packages’ by local artist Gemma Ruth Brown. The print that immediately jumped out was from the Bookm of Proverbs and I thought ‘well that’s unusual, but what a cracker line.’ This is exactly the message I want on my wall’. Now it realise that this may sound ironic for the likes of me, considering that my writing is peppered with profanities and the fact that I base most of my Tenx9 stories on my bowel movements. But this message about strength and about laughter and the miracle that is being unafraid leapt out and spoke to me. For years I was afraid to be myself. I was afraid to be different and quirky and above all, I was afraid to tell my story. I love how the pink and purple pop in this picture and how the bold white letters are capitalised. ‘Don’t mess with me,’ they say. ‘You can try, but I’ll just get on my way now. Have a good day.’

Chatting to Gemma she told me that during Lockdown her painting and writing became a form of therapy for her, as she carved out a little ‘me-time’ away from her full-time job with Tearfund and looking after her toddler. In her new collection there is a nod to the fear and uncertainty we have all experienced recently, but rather than dwelling on the darkness they focus on seizing moments of joy. Her use of space and colour show, I feel, the relief that taking time out to be creative afforded her, and when I look at them I see a sense of  lightness and levity. Flip me, couldn’t we all use a bit of that right now?!

Another aspect of her prints that I’m obviously mad about is the lengths to which Gemma (and her husband and collaborator Dan) go to, to ensure that they are environmentally sound. The materials are all eco-friendly: they use cardboard envelopes to post which are easily recycled and the clear envelopes they pop the prints into are made from corn/potato starch so are compostable. It’s as though ‘The Guardian’ are delivering to your doorstep, so obviously I’m a big fan.  Have a look at the prints yourself on www.brownpaperpackagesni.co.uk and have a read at Gemma’s blog, www.gemmaruthbrown.com. Her photos are stunning- boy does she have a good eye for the camera. Eek, I’m starting to worry that you’ll never read mine again- just as well I’ve my new print telling me I’m strong and ‘without fear.’ Just as well with this new kid on the block. 😉

Are you ready everyone for this morning’s tirade? Because, this week, (although we’re only mid way through) I am at the end, the very end, of my tether. I am demented, driven daft and distracted (all at the one time) by the state of my f**king house. Even worse- a lot of it is my own fault. I wanted a dog. And, it turns out, there’s rather a lot of work involved. Animals it seems, attract other animals. Would you believe it another cat has rocked up at our back door, ambling in out of the brambles out of the back. The children thought that Bramble would be a suitable name for him, but given his rotundity have christened him ‘Fat Bramble’. With his vocal range and girth he’s like the feline equivalent of Pavarotti. He is a beautiful tabby and white puss with a temperament to match, unlike our dour and truculent Izzy, who’s only pleasant when you’re dishing out her Sheba. Problem is he has wreaked havoc since he arrived. The aforesaid Izzy took immediate umbrage, blamed the dog for this outrageous intrusion and decided to go for the poor greyhound. The dog ran off in terror and took a massive dump in the living room. All this before 8am. It wasn’t the best start to the day. My house is in a big enough state of chassis without these shenanigans.

A couple of weeks ago I posted a little video about my endeavors to recycle because I was going at it great guns. I had a system and it appeared to be working because I had actually just managed to off-load a lot of stuff for TerraCycle. But people, it seems that I am being thwarted at every turn. The dog.The f**king dog. She’s a sight hound and can sniff out anything food related in a matter of seconds. However she likes to wait until we are out and then she goes on the hunt. We left some sourdough on the counter and went upstairs. When we came back down that was gone. As we had run out of green compost bags I had also scraped some peelings and leftovers into a foil container. It was on the floor, licked clean. Then the blighter headed into the front bedroom where I am storing all my recycling. She found the bag of cat pouches which I had painstakingly washed and ripped a load of them to shreds- the floor was dotted with fragments of foil, catching the light. And no matter how fastidious one tries to be while cleaning, there was a distinct aroma of Sheba ‘Prime Cuts’ and ‘Fine Flakes in Jelly’ lingering in the air. That’s the last time I’ll be doing that.

The truth is, I could actually spend my entire life cleaning the house and sorting the recycling and it still wouldn’t be done. On Monday night we went down the Ormeau to Shed (Eat Out to Help Out oh yes, please I am in) and you’d be entitled to think ‘check her out, having her dinner in a restaurant of a Monday evening’ but the truth is, I instigated the meal by saying to LSB: ‘If I have to look at the f**king state of this shit show a second longer lives are going to be lost.’ ‘Let’s book a table,’ he replied. Few things cheer me more than a glass of Shed’s cracker of a Prosecco. 

Other people get a skip. They get a skip, and they f**k everything into it and take back control of their lives. I can’t do this. No, instead I go around to their skip and start hauling out stuff that they’ve chucked into it. I can’t help myself. I can’t bear the thought of adding more to land fill, so round I go, lifting out plastic sea-shell shaped sandpits and elderly storage units and chipped plant pots. ‘I will put this on Freecycle,’ I say, giving myself a self-righteous pat on the back. Indeed I intend to, but it doesn’t happen.

So yesterday I took action. ‘Feck this feeling miserable business,’ I thought. We had a new chest of drawers and a Billy Bookcase arriving from Action Cancer on the Ormeau so this spurred me into action. I popped some clothes belonging to LSB on a Facebook Zero Waste site and they are being collected tomorrow. I popped an ad on Gum Tree for a dog bed I thought we might use but never did. I sorted out some of my recycling, asking my children to help.

I felt a bit better.

To sum up, if you want an easy life, don’t get pets, unless you really like the smell of Dettol. Have no principles at all. F**k everything straight in the bin and to hell with the oceans.

I considered this, briefly, Then I thought, wouldn’t it be awful? I wouldn’t be here now, tapping away on my laptop in bed with a greyhound lying alongside, keeping my right leg warm. Life wouldn’t have the same richness if I could make the coffee in the morning without my cat shouting at me. I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror without a sense of revulsion if I wasn’t obsessed with recycling. I wouldn’t be me if I wasn’t policing what everyone was putting in their bins.  It would be a half-ass life really, and who wants that? And if anyone wants to claim Fat Bramble that would be great. (Or if not, offer a cantankerous tortoiseshell a home so peace could resume here. I think that would be a fair exchange. )

(This is Tilly, hugging her trauma blanket after Izzy went for her). 

Saturday Shout Out for ‘Shared Threads’

This week I’m on about periods. What’s that you say? Periods, really? Again? Well hell yes, because for once I’m not just whinging on about my own (and the flipping big massive nuisance that they are) but I’m chatting about my epic friend Kirsty King who founded the charity ‘Shared Threads’. Wait til I tell you: Kirsty is a SUPERSTAR. Initial impressions would lead you to believe that Kirsty is mild and unassuming. But not a bit of it- this woman has a core of steel and grit like you could never imagine.  When she learnt that millions of girls worldwide miss weeks of school every year because when they have periods, Kirsty decided that she couldn’t sit on her hands and do nothing. And so began ‘Shared Threads’- a collective of women AND MEN who make recyclable sanitary cloths and send them to India. This initiative is not just about giving girls their own bag of period  pads- it’s so much more than that. It’s telling them that they are valued; that they deserve respect and that there is no shame attached to their bodies, not during their periods or at any other time.

Here in Northern Ireland we don’t much like talking about periods. I know this because I talk about mine all the time. I find it’s quite a useful way of shutting down a conversation if it gets a bit tedious. People, especially men, move along swiftly when you mention PMT or a crampy tummy. The Mothership gets very irritated when I write about mine on the blog. I can almost guarantee that she will lift the phone sharpish to tell me that no one wants to hear about my menstrual cycle, or my mood swings. ‘Too much information!’ she will say.

So imagine growing up in a country where there is a huge stigma attached to the female body and its cycles. I don’t think I’d cope very well. In certain parts of India, periods remain a taboo subject and because many young girls have no access to pads they then miss out on going to school. This is why Kirsty joined forces with an NGO who distribute pads and provide information in areas where this is likely to occur, thus alleviating the confusion and anxiety felt by these girls.

On International Women’s Day I joined Kirsty at her workshop in Portview Trade Centre to see every stage of the making process and see how I could get involved. I have a great aversion to sewing machines as I am risk adverse and they require far too much concentration. Happily, for the likes of me there are other ways I could contribute and I was given the infinitely easier job of cutting up towels which form the absorbent part of the pad. I took a bag of towels home with me that day and cut them up over the course of a few evenings.

During Lockdown, work didn’t stop for Kirsty, as her team of volunteers continued to snip, stitch and sign hand-written notes, staying in contact and dropping off their handiwork at each other’s doorsteps. I asked her for a few more bags of towels and she gathered up some for me. Since then some of my friends have taken a few towels each and snipped away. It occurred to me then that we could to get together of an evening when it was safe to do so, and a jolly soirée was had. We called it a ‘Cutting Party’, which sounds like some sort of tribal ritual but just meant that a small group of us  sipped while we snipped at my table in the garden. I do love an activity- I think conversation flows (pardon the pun) better when your hands are busy.

Everything about Shared Threads excites me. I love how, with the exception of the PUL (a waterproof fabric that is used in the pads), everything is made from second-hand material. I love how by repurposing household items we are reducing waste, and by switching to cloth pads there is ultimately less plastic in the ocean. Over the last year I’ve been using a mixture of cloth pads and period pants and it makes me feel better that I’m contributing less to plastic pollution- especially in the throes of this pandemic when the PPE is flooding all our landfill sites, and ‘reusable’ doesn’t seem to be a thing anymore. (I’m not saying it isn’t necessary, just that it’s happening right now and if we could off-set it in any way then that would be good).

So I’d like to direct you over to Kirsty’s fabulous blog where you can learn all about her endeavours, see how you can help and perhaps even consider becoming a patron so she can keep doing this for as long as women need it. We need to put an end to period poverty, and this is one glorious way to go about it.

(I think what really makes these pictures is my banjaxed shed as a backdrop.)