pets

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.

Do you think one can you claim ‘overuse of your house’ on the home insurance? Some chance: I can just imagine getting on the blower to check. ‘Aye right,’ Billy from Hughes in Newtownards might say: ‘I think it’s known as ‘wear and tear’ you total chancer,’ is how I think that conversation might end.

‘Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold,’ said the inimitable WB Yeats. I believe he was referring to the collapse of civilisation after the horrors of the trenches, but he could just as well be describing the state of chassis in my house right now. Everything is broken, crumbling, collapsing into disrepair, and it is very much grinding my gears.

It’s not just me either- we stop with our neighbours while out walking the greyhound. ‘Will you at the STATE of the fence,’ says Stephen, nudging it with his toe until the panels rattle, a bit like the mad auld priest in Father Ted who yells ‘Cowboys the lot of them!’ as he wrenches Ted’s door off its hinges. He’s right though, it’s looking considerably less robust than this time last year. I fear his boisterous dog and similarly boisterous child are responsible, with the former flinging herself against it when she spies her mate Bode the Labrador, and the latter using it as a football net.

Their bannisters too are teetering on the brink since Sam, like our girls, eschew the stairs, choosing to access the first floor by climbing, lemur-like up the outside ledges before slinging his legs over the top. What is it with our children and their inability to sit in a chair or ascend the stairs without inflicting damage?

Last week the Small Child handed me a familiar looking piece of wood that she’d removed from the dog’s mouth. ‘What the hell is that?’ says I, eying the teeth marks on it. Small  Child points to one of the bar stools. She and her sister had managed to break off part of one, apparently when eating their morning snack. The dog, seizing her opportunity, had dashed in and called first dibs on her new toy. This is after I spent a fiver on a big marrow bone from ‘Posh Pets’ in Gilnahirk. (Keeping the dog entertained definitely count as an essential journey in my book. Plus, it’s worth a trip alone to meet ‘DelBoy’ the Bulldog. He’s some fellow.)

Both the washing machine and the dishwasher are exhibiting signs of exhaustion and the coffee machine met a tragic end last week, when, befuddled after a nap (yes, I’m still loving the forty winks in the afternoon) I proceeded to chuck a dessert spoonful of coffee into the water tank, before I came to, and realised that I hadn’t put in the actual coffee funnel. Now it has clogged up, and despite LSB’s efforts of reparation, switching it on produces the smell of melting plastic.

Words fail me: it’s not as though I’m an NHS worker, banjaxed after working a nineteen-hour shift on a Covid ward. I am simply rendered incapable of functioning in this tilted world. It’s hard to define oneself when worlds slip and slide into each other- a collision that isn’t without casualties. Wife, mother, teacher, writer, tender to pets: it is hard to know where one’s different selves begin, and others end, amid all this tumult.

Nora Ephron had an epiphany once, when she was at an event she’d organised and realised that little was being carried out to her satisfaction. She was mid-rant, her friend turned to her and said firmly, ‘Nora, you can’t do it all.’  Despite having heard this phrase many times, on this occasion, it resonated. She claims that she was much gentler with herself when this sunk in, because she finally recognised that doing it all was quite simply, an impossibility.

This week, as the reality of Monday morning dawns with all the subtlety of a breeze block, I’m going to keep this in mind. Some things I may do well, others average, and inevitably I’ll  fuck-up aplenty. If the house is still standing at the end it, and I’ve managed to preserve what remains of my mental health, I’m taking that as a win.

Hear me out here folks, but we’ve almost reached half-term and although we aren’t going on any of our usual jaunts, I still feel more than a frisson of excitement. The girls each have a wicker basket which slots neatly into a dresser in the kitchen. I am making sure that come Friday afternoon, every single book and pencil and ruler are fired into the receptacles provided where they shall remain for a solid week. I do not want to hear about seven times-tables or think how to punctuate a sentence correctly. I am weary of my own voice, droning on ad infinitum, boring myself rigid.

I want to make tacos at lunchtime without checking what shite they have posted on Seesaw without showing me first. I want to watch two episodes of Gilmore Girls instead of one so they won’t be grumpy, tired little feckers in the morning. I want to take my laptop upstairs to write without a child bleating that they need to read a story on ‘Bug Club’. Next week, I am fervently hoping for more sun so I can open the door and boot them out to play before they have the chance to annoy me.

The odd thing is, and I wonder if anyone else has experienced this phenomenon, but I actually feel a sense of relief not to be going anywhere. Has Stockholm syndrome set in? I’m not even talking Covid here, although I’ll never feel the same about a sauna again. I’m just reflecting on other irksome things that happen on holiday; like having to queue for breakfast, then being shown to a mediocre table and horror of horrors, for a family with a wailing toddler to plonk down beside us. My children can be very irritating, but at least they’re past that stage. I want to drink my own, good quality coffee that LSB makes in the morning, instead of the piss they serve in hotel restaurants. Can anyone enlighten me how they actually MAKE the coffee in hotels? Is it just one great big vat with some poor scullion stirring in tablespoonfuls of Maxwell House? It’s always weak, watery and lukewarm.  And, top of my list of things to be grateful for, is not having to set an alarm, to leave the cosy hotel bed, to get into the flipping swimming pool at 8am. Yes, I know no one is holding a knife to my throat to do this, but it’s either that or venture in later to be bashed and splashed by obnoxious little bastards flailing those great foam noodles in your face.

I don’t want to have to drop my pets off the ‘pet resort’ where the proprietors demonstrate all the warmth and congeniality of my grumpy tortoiseshell when I sit on her by accident.

I’m relieved not to have to pack, as inevitably I forget things and then have send LSB beetling off to pick up toothpaste/moisturiser/hairbrushes. Who I am trying to kid? Let’s not forget the warm coat I had to buy in Limavady when I went up with only a jumper on me last October. And my worst faux pas, when I said I’d take care of the packing for a trip to Kenya in 2010 and left all of LSB’s boxers sitting on the kitchen table. He had to go looking in a   department store in Nakuro, and they only did a range of Y-fronts in bold, primary colours which weren’t particularly fetching.

I am seeing a silver lining here, and frankly, I’m as surprised about that as you are. By nature, I am keen on a gallivant, but right now, not so much. With everything closed this half-term our options are greatly limited and I’m thinking ‘Thank f**k for that’. It means not having to traipse the children to the Folk and Transport Museum for an edifying experience. It means not having to squeeze my thighs into a pair of tailored trousers for an evening out. It means having a bona-fide reason NOT to meet that person you always say you’ll hook up with for drinks when secretly, you’d rather remove your liver with a butter knife than enduring an evening while they talk about their child’s lactose intolerance. You just can’t, Boris says no, simple as that. Hallelujah- first time I’ve been grateful to that gobshite for anything.

Today, even though the frost sat three inches thick on my windscreen, I didn’t mind because I didn’t have to go anywhere. As the Older Child read ‘Fantastic Mr Fox’ the sunlight streamed through the window illuminating her in a pool of golden light. On hearing how rubbish I felt last week,  a neighbour rang the bell and handed me instructions, on how to make fat balls for the birds, along with lard, birdseed and cord. There are signs of light and life, and if we just get a week of respite, then we’ll be able appreciate them, wherever we are.

I did an interview with The Newsletter this week on the topic of home-schooling- here is the unedited sweary version for SWB readers…

Anyone know the Crowded House ‘Four Seasons in One Day?’ Well, that’s my life at the moment, except replace four with eight, or maybe ten. I ricochet back and forth between feelings of exhaustion and ennui, gratitude and griping, busyness and boredom.

The most stressful element of my day is definitely the home-schooling. I quickly get frustrated when I see that my children’s academic progress has gone into a swift decline since lockdown began. When I look at what they are producing presently I turn into a raging harpy. ‘Have you ever HEARD of a full stop?’ ‘Yes, fifty-five take away fourteen IS  forty-one but since that is a PLUS sign the answer is sixty nine.’ FFS. There is much sniping and sighing when I have the audacity to point out these mistakes. When I asked  my nine year old to give me a couple of adjectives last week, the little s**t replied: ‘Mean and nasty’. How very encouraging.

I dug out some of their school-books from previous years, and there was yet more evidence that my home-schooling techniques are rubbish. A quick flick through and I saw  positive comments and gold stars- ‘Go you! Amazing! Wow!’ What is abundantly clear is that that they lack both the inclination and ability to concentrate at home with me.

Last lockdown LSB used to blithely say ‘Send them up to me!’ when he heard raised voices below. Since then, he has installed two large monitors on the desk where they used to sit. ‘Not much room for them here,’ he says. Since January he has a significantly larger number of meetings for which is attendance is, apparently, mandatory. Obviously, I am not remotely suspicious about any of this. Useless f**ker.

I did not choose to join a religious order because I didn’t fancy a life of servitude, but this appears to have happened anyway. I am now bringer of breakfasts, server of snacks and deliverer of the Key Stage Two Curriculum. Sometimes I try to do put the laundry on while they ‘work’ but have discovered that this is a complete waste of time.

Does anyone else feel as though their brain is being hacked in half with a blunt machete? The See-Saw app is fiddly AF, so if I’m not at their shoulder to oversee what they’re doing they merrily press ‘send’ and send their teacher a load of rubbish. Some of the work coming home is new, and while teachers patiently and with enormous effort, post explanatory videos, I still need to sit with them as they do most of the activities.

Afternoons are spent with my trying to avoid a visit to A&E as they treat our living room furniture like a jungle gym, vaulting over tables and hanging off the banisters. Last Lockdown LSB had to screw the leg back into the sofa and so far this time we have bid farewell to a kitchen chair. Sometimes I feel like a life in a convent would be preferable; at least it would be quiet.

And yet, when I am not strung out multi-tasking, I often feel a sense of relief. Latterly when I was teaching in a local grammar school, I was aware of the pressure which staff and pupils alike where struggling under. It was an absolute f**king melt. This was the result of not knowing whether exams were taking place or not, and students were doing their nut about what they had missed. Tensions ran exceptionally high. Peter Weir is as qualified in the role as Educational Minister as Trump was in the role as President. Not a notion does he have, and running his own party’s agenda to boot.

So are there any upsides? Well yes, of course. When it snowed this time two weeks ago it seemed like a gift- we took the girls to the local meadow with their sleds and played for hours. I didn’t have to navigate icy roads and sit at home wondering whether the school would be open or not.

There is also the sense of celebration when the weekend arrives. Late afternoon I escape, lighting a candle and doing some yoga. Even if it’s just a fifteen-minute practice I feel like it’s something ‘just for me.’ Also, just for me, is the can of wine which I crack open every evening at seven. These are tough times, and if you can’t savour how the flavours of elderberry and green apple marry together in a sparkling white now, then when can you?

I realize, that although life is strange and frightening, that I am lucky. Annoying as they can be, I have a family and a menagerie of pets to keep me busy and (sometimes) amused. Being on my own would be infinitely worse, so when I feel myself close to losing my temper I try to remember this. I try. People I try. But let’s face it, I often fail miserably, please tell me you do too. Solidarity is key for my sanity.

Folks, send me some good vibes because seriously, I have not come up for air. So you think Dominic Cumming had a bad week. Did he, I ask you, have a visiting cat who took a dump on his freshly laundered sheet and a dog who then pissed on the scrubbed mattress to mark her territory? No, all that frigger had to do was pack a box and do the humiliating walk of shame along Downing Street. (How I smiled.) Anyway, back to the poo incident.

Should your partner or off-spring be applying pressure that you source them a dog or cat for Christmas, demonstrate caution. Think carefully about the following: animals and their digestive needs are complex and specific. If only they could defecate on demand and in appropriate places. When it rains (ie, all the f**king time in November, was there EVER a more heinous month?) our animals exhibit reticence about leaving the house to do their business. Our dog will BOUND out the door if we produce her lead and rustle her coat, but if we hold open the back door and gesture that she might have go out and relieve herself,  she looks at us with huge doleful eyes. LSB bought himself a large golf umbrella to watch the children play football. Now, he dons his old trainers and takes the brolly out so the dog can pee and poop undercover. He is a good sort, auld LSB, but little thanks does he get, especially from children and pets.

On Thursday he was beavering away at his desk and entertaining notions of a having a wee jog to himself at lunchtime. Entering the bedroom he did a double take, as there, on our duvet colour, the cat had shat extensively. He had cart the duvet into the bath and shower it down before washing it. Only the night before I had laboriously changed all the bed linen, endeavouring to turn our clutter filled mess of a room into something warm and inviting  One night. One night we got to enjoy this and the cat sullied it.

It gets worse. Coming home, I went up the stairs to survey the wreckage.

‘I thought you said you’d washed AND dried it,’ I called, my voice tremulous with desperation.

‘I had,’ he replied,  following me in.

‘Oh God,’ he said.

The bed was soaked, in what could only have been a deluge of greyhound pee. Tilly has somewhat appropriated our bed during the day, and therefore took it as a slight that the cat had used it as a toilet. More cleaning ensued. A cleaning frenzy, one might say. My hands, once smooth and wrinkle free, now have the reddish hue of an eighteenth-century scullery maid. It’ll take more than Vaseline Intensive Care to sort them out.

All weekend, we have been washing. Clothes that I have worn to school and don’t want to wear again, lest Covid has woven its insidious way into the fabric. Towels from giving the dog a bath; school uniforms; my husband’s sweaty sport’s gear. I try to get my detergent from Refill Quarter but I can’t be arsed driving over so I’ve just put an order in with Smol to test drive those. I’m stressed, people. Owning pets is another f**king job. Don’t let anyone persuade you otherwise.

But as I type this, Tilly has come up the stairs and curled up beside me, emitting soft, greyhound sighs. Her coat is fragrant and shiny from her bath yesterday, and occasionally a little paw reaches out and brushes my leg, as if to say, ‘Sorry about the pissing, I’m just getting used to my new abode.’

If it is a job, ultimately I love it. I’m just very, very tired right now. However,  reading this wee article on Medium just made me think again how gorgeous she is.

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). 

Way back at the start of Lockdown a couple of friends asked if I could do book reviews. So, I’m getting to it, finally now, just as restrictions are being lifted. But hey, isn’t it almost summer and yes, we’re less likely to be on a beach on the Costa del Sunshine, but there will hopefully be time to read a book or two anyway, even we are freezing our backsides off in an Air B&B in the back end of Mayo for want of nowhere else being open. (And yes, I am aware that it’s been roasting, but perpetual pessimist that I am, I’ll be amazed if it lasts all summer.)

My first recommendation is The Bookshop of the Broken Hearted by Robert Hillman, which I took with me on my girlie weekend to Barcelona. Much as I love my friends, I was so captivated by the story that I carted my sun-lounger to a shady corner of the roof terrace so I could lose myself in the narrative. I didn’t budge for two hours, not even for a glass of cava, so I’m telling you, this is some read. And when I finished it I wanted more- so much so that the next day I started it again from the beginning. I’ve never done that before.

And, I kid you not, I chose it based on its cover. Standing there I was, in ‘Books Paper Scissors’ and I said, ‘What’s that you have there now Paul?’ because it looked so fun and whimsical with its bold red jacket with a yellow canary perched upon a shelf. It all got a bit meta- me in an independent bookstore looking at a book about a small bookstore. However, the obvious difference is that in this story the proprietor is a Hungarian Jewish émigré who has survived Auschwitz and come to live in the backwater of Hometown in Australia. Here she meets Tom, a divorcee sheep farmer, and the two form an unlikely couple.

Tom is a pragmatist, and like the rest of the straight-talking townspeople, he finds Hannah’s bohemian eccentricities mystifying, but it is this clash of culture, often expressed through snippets of dialogue which make the story so engaging.

Hillman is the master of ‘show don’t tell’. A powerful example of this is when he describes how Hannah and the clutch of survivors of the ‘slave army’, carefully ration any food they manage to find as they journey through a freezing Poland: ‘A bag of ten hard sweets was divided up, two minutes per sweet by strict count in the mouth of each woman.’

In another vignette Hannah offers to help Tom dig a channel for the flood water to drain away after a Biblical downpour. He is amazed at her ability to dig, her steady handling of the sodden earth belying her slight stature. He wonders if this was something she learnt in Auschwitz, but hardly dares ask.

The novel skips seamlessly between past and present, as Hillman uses flashbacks to tell Hannah’s story set against her current life in Hometown with Tom. This is no ordinary love story- it is a testimony to the human psyche’s ability to not only endure, but to flourish. Although a short novel, Hillman manages to create a vivid depiction of small-town Australia and post-war life in Budapest with a startling clarity. And Tom. Dear God. Everyone needs a Tom in their life. As the novel unfolds, Hillman builds upon his character with tiny details, so that by the end of it, you mourn that he doesn’t belong in your close circle. The world needs more Toms, and more books like this one.

I read it a third time, over Lockdown. Something about the language soothes and settles me.  We could probably all be doing with a bit of that right now.

So, it’s January, as you may have noticed. I’m frozen, tired and not even feeling smug and virtuous because I’ve neither given up  wine nor embraced a meat-free lifestyle. Last night a friend put a picture of her steak dinner in a local bistro up on Instagram, which prompted me to think: ‘Take that down before you’re lynched!’ I am just properly NOT in the form for any class of self-denial. I am working full-time. I have two small, demanding children. I am trying not to think about the pending apocalypse. Boris Johnson is still PM. Trump is still President. How are earth are people managing NOT to drink? If you’re doing Dry January and still managing to stay remotely positive then I applaud you.

Equally, I extend my admiration for my friends, who in growing numbers have embraced ‘Veganuary.‘ Sometimes, (and I know this makes me a bad person) but I wish my friends could be a bit more rubbish, just to make me a bit better about myself, and my limitations. Maybe I could live without drink, or TRY to be a vegan, but definitely not as a double whammy. And not in January. I can’t even manage to SAY ‘Veganuary’ without it sounding like some sort of invasive gynae procedure. I think the NHS may have missed a trick in not coming up with ‘Vaginuary’, to encourage more women to get their cervical smear test over early the year and look forward to brighter things ahead. While on the topic of lady bits, check out the new candle range from Gwyneth. Dear God. Whatever next?

However, as a nod to a healthier attitude towards my innards and climate change, I have been experimenting in the kitchen with hearty soups and dhals. My red lentil dhal, in particular, was a thing of great beauty. But having given it a great deal of thought, the idea of never eating a soft boiled egg or a bagel slathered in cream cheese would make me very sad indeed.

But instead of feeling shite about what I’ve NOT managed to do, I’ve been thinking back to something I did last year which brought me much happiness.  At the risk of being perceived as a sanctimonious do-gooder and all round pain-in-the-hole, I shall elaborate. Lately I’ve been noticing features on Radio 4 and shared articles on social media on the benefits of doing good and I’m thinking, feck, these guys might just be ON TO SOMETHING.

At the school where I’m currently teaching we got word of a BBC initiative  to encourage children and the elderly to read poetry and then bring them together. It was thus named, imaginatively, ‘Poetry Together’. ‘How fabulous,’ I thought to myself.  As a preliminary exercise I went along to a local residential home with my  offspring and read some poems: Pam Ayres, Wordsworth, Marriott Edgar, (quite the eclectic mix.)  Initially my children looked a bit sullen but I made them go round with a bowl each of Murray Mints and Butter Balls, which perked them up a bit. The next week the Small Child even managed a tiny smile and by the time our third visit rolled around they were actually saying ‘Is it time to go yet?’ The residents were brilliant, some of them sparky and acerbic, which I enjoyed very much. I was giving off about how dreadful my children were one evening when one grey haired lady chirped up: ‘What did you bother having them for if they’re so awful?’

I thought this was marvellous. ‘Sometimes they’re alright,’ I conceded. ‘I did take you for ice-cream after school, didn’t I?’ I said, nudging the Older One.

‘She did actually’, she confirmed.

Nice to know they have my back.

So when it came to taking the pupils from school down for the ‘official reading’ it was all a lot easier. It helped that I was familiar with the place, because when organising any trips these days it can be a stressful affair, with about a million risk assessment forms and God knows what else to consider. Given my past experiences, that’s probably just as well.

But, to my utmost delight, it all went swimmingly, better even than expected. (That’s the joy of being a pessimist, any positive outcome is always a tremendous boon).

I had prepped the kids with some questions to ask, and one wee fellow went straight up to a lady and said ‘Hello! What pets did you have when you were young?’ She was all pleased, and told him about her lurcher, who according to her father, was even better than the border collie for rounding sheep. All the kids circulated, chatted away unselfconsciously without any awkwardness, before performing their poem. A few even volunteered to read out their own limericks. I was almost in tears with the loveliness of it all.

I’ve decided to continue to call in when I can. One afternoon we borrowed Fred, our friend’s springer spaniel and he went down an absolute storm. He’s nine now and a sedate sort of a fellow, thus a perfect fit for a care home. We did, however make the mistake of going at lunch time and he would have had an elderly gent’s beef and cabbage swiped off his plate had I had not a mighty grip of his lead.

That same day we got chatting to a lady who had been an evacuee during the war and had been sent to live on a farm in Tyrone. She said she missed it dreadfully when she got back to Belfast and had loved animals ever since.  I’m thinking of getting on the line to Streamvale Open Farm and seeing if I could get the lend of a few chicks, or maybe a rabbit. That would make for a fun visit.

In contrast to all these good vibes, a couple of times over the holidays I found myself in the city centre. It was a frightful experience altogether: most people had the faces gurned off them, and I overheard a few irate gentlemen opine that ‘it was all fucking shite, so it was.’ I agreed with them entirely.  All the horrible mindless consumerism doesn’t appear to be making us any happier. Maybe volunteering would be a better way to spend an afternoon, (or part thereof.)

It’s true, as Phoebe from Friends once said, that there’s no such thing as a selfless good deed. Anytime I take a trip to the home I leave feeling a bit more contented with my lot.

So you heard it here first: altruism is the new drug of the twenty-twenties. In the midst of all this horror-show it’s lovely, actually, to take some time with a few nonagenarians and take a few deep breaths. It’s soothing for a troubled soul, and makes me feel less bad about the glass of Primotivo of an evening. I guess if we do what we can, in whatever way works best for us, we can ignite a few sparks as we wait for the spring to arrive.

‘I NEVER WANT TO SEE ANOTHER PUMPKIN,’ I said last year, with feeling. Last November I had set myself a challenge to do one positive a thing every day. It damn near killed me. I attempted to take the ‘zero waste’ approach to Halloween. I failed miserably in most respects but I did end up carving a lot of pumpkin. People started bringing me their Jack-o’-lanterns  that otherwise would have gone to waste: all that pumpkiny goodness languishing in landfill. I couldn’t bear it, so I set to, peeling and chopping and popping them into boxes. I ended up posting pictures of them on FB to see if anyone fancied pre-prepared veg for soups and curries.

‘Please, let there be an end to the pumpkin,’ sighed LSB. This was ironic as it was he who bought the bastard thing in the first place with the intention of creating a festive decoration.  He then proceeded to leave it there, staring at me until November 1^st when he conceded ‘there wasn’t really much point anymore.’ I never would have started any pumpkin related nonsense had he not started the shenanigans.

And then, THIS year, what does he trail home from Sainsbury’s but the biggest f*ck-off sized pumpkin that one could ever imagine. He arrived with it on the 26^th October, at half past five, precisely half an hour before twenty guests were due to arrive for the Older Child’s 8^th birthday. This, I’m sure you will agree, is not the best time to start carving a mammoth squash, when there is beer that needs chilling and floors that needs sweeping and wives that need a fortnight in St Lucia* booked before they explode with rage and the sheer exhaustion of existence.

On the 27^th October the children asked could they carve it, but we were too busy clearing the post-party debris to contemplate such a chore. On the 28^th they enquired again. On the 29^th we were heading to the Roe Valley for two nights and attention was diverted as we tried to catch the cat to cart her off to her ‘pet retreat’ in the Castlereagh Hills. She seemed to sense her impending departure because upon awaking she did a large shit in our shower; a most unpleasant surprise, and frankly not very ‘birthdayish’, as the Small Child opined. Of course she then legged it, refusing to return. Her reservation thus had to be cancelled and favours called in from LSB’s Dad to come and feed her, with dire warnings to check the shower on each visit.

‘NO, THE PUMPKIN IS NOT BLOODY COMING,’ neighbours heard me shout, as I dragged my bags to the car. The Older Child by now seemed to think of the pumpkin as a family member, or perhaps a pet, rather like Father Jack and his brick but with more nutritional value. We nearly had an episode, which I now call ‘Mother Close to Tears Prior to Departure’ which happens on most trips and has LSB saying, ‘we’ll get you a gin at the airport,’ or in this case, ‘Here, just drink that can of Sauvignon Blanc in the car. I’ll drive carefully.’

I thought I’d left all pumpkin related woes behind, until I heard a ping:

‘I’m going to have to make a soup when we get home,’ I muttered miserably to LSB.

‘I’m removing that app from your phone.’ he said, having looked over my shoulder. I had signed up to Olio recently in a bid to minimise waste. They send me all sorts of interesting snippets and this one stated that the number of pumpkins chucked away uneaten in October would be enough to give every person in the UK a bowl of soup.

We came home and the pumpkin seemed to be staring at me, daring me to not to do something with it. I googled ‘how to cut up pumpkin’ on Youtube and watched an  Ozzie fellow set to with a carving knife, but even with his deliberate air of insouciance it still looked hard work. I had wanted an easier way. There is no easier way, with pumpkins, I have found. It’s a huge effort, and one could suffer injury if not extremely careful. But I persevered. I chopped red onion, garlic and red pepper, plus the persimmon fruit which we had bought earlier that day in the veg shop on the Ormeau. ‘Can we try that?’ asked the Older Child.

‘Why not?’ I said; I’m nice like that. Disappointing it was: rather bland and most unworthy of the 69p it cost. So I fecked it in the saucepan along with the rest of the veg, which I fried gently in coconut oil. I roasted the rest of the pumpkin, generously seasoned with salt and pepper and rapeseed oil. Our kitchen took on the heady scent of autumn, and for a while I was cheered, and a tad smug, if I’m honest.

Then I tried to blend it, forgetting that the last time I used the blender I had a disaster. Said disaster reoccurred, and the mixture leaked out, all over the worktop, all over the floor and tragically over my new M&S slippers.

‘FUCK ME,’ I seethed.

I managed to salvage some, and eventually blend it. If there is any good to be derived from this sorry tale, is that when LSB came in from work and I presented him with a bowlful, he claimed that it was a marvellous and exactly what he needed on a Monday, when he felt all cold and feeble. Still, if he dares bring another into the house next year he may well end up in the Royal with pumpkin issues unrelated to carving, but simply a blow from one aimed at his head.