recycling

So we’ve hit ‘Twixt-mas’, that irksome period where nothing makes much sense, after a couple of years which haven’t made much sense either. It’s not much wonder we’re feeling more discombobulated than usual.

The children serve as a pleasant distraction on one level, while ramping up the crazy on the other. The older one landed down for her lunch yesterday with bubble wrap wound tightly around her arm, fastened with a white hair bobble. It was somewhat distracting, trying to eat my leftover turkey and ham with her opposite me looking like she’d just returned from the burn’s unit of the Royal. Later it lay discarded on the carpet, looking disconcertingly like a used condom.

One wonders idly what to do with the long drizzly days. In the ‘Before Times,’ LSB and I would have been donning matching elf outfits and trainers as we zoomed down to Castlewellan for the annual Christmas Cracker Race. Eight miles over mountain trails we ran, with the air taking on various hues of blue as I puffed out expletives with every excruciating step as we neared the finish line. And yet, this never seemed out of the ordinary for me; it was a delightful antidote to the peculiarity that is endless lounging coupled with fizzing adrenalin which characterises ‘Twixt-mas’.

Since this year I have all the energy of a semi-deflated balloon, I batted away all thoughts of fell-running, and yesterday I was that person, the one still wearing their pyjamas at four pm, Googling recipes for what to make with all the Snickers languishing at the bottom of the boxes of Celebrations. I used to enjoy a Snickers, but now I find all the peanutty pieces get lodged between my molars. I did however, read almost all of a Jo Jo Moyle’s novel, while the tree lights twinkled and the warm scent of the fig and winter berry candle almost concealed the wet dog smell emanating from the snoozing greyhound beside me.

At least LSB and I have plans for tomorrow night as it’s our anniversary (11 years- wow!) so out to dinner we shall skip, and I shall divest myself of the pjs and may even don a frock.

He really is a good sort, all things considered, tholing all my neurosis, which in recent times have been many and varied. How he hasn’t sought a divorce after this omnishambles of a year I don’t know. His patience with all the animals, which I insisted on getting, has been remarkable, especially when I complain about the smell of piss that still lingers on the rug we had professionally cleaned (twice) and the cat hair which tickles my nose when we go to bed and keeps me, and thus him, awake. He walks the dog in the rain and picks up not only her poop, but other mounds of shite left by other less conscientious owners* on the street.

My increasingly obsessive recycling habits don’t seem to have struck him as bizarre. He holds the door when I come home from school burdened with cans and papers and bottles, and obligingly jumps in the blue bin to make room for all the excess. He doesn’t mind when I stop in the street to pick up cans; in fact he now keeps a plastic bag in his pocket for the purpose. I’m full of fun facts these days, chuntering on about how aluminium is infinitely recyclable. Funny how one’s goals change. We used to talk about Personal Bests, but now I say things like: ‘I got five cans between Forestside and the house!’ and he’ll comment: ‘That’s a bumper loot!’

I’m sure you must get sick of all this,’ I said to him the other night, as I stood on the Ormeau emptying half a tin of White Lightning into the gutter. ‘To have and to hold, to collect and to crush,’ was his reply. Readers, I think I got a good one.

* (or will be just call them what they are, selfish, lazy bastards.)

Do you know what has me stressed out no end? Climate change, obviously, and the doom mongers who tell us that, even if we buy electric cars and rely on wind turbines we’re still only clinging to the precipice of disaster with our fingertips.

It’s hard to fathom that Cop 26 is happening in Scotland, next week, and Johnston is making sweeping, grandiose statements when he’s content to ignore tons of untreated sewage to flood our waterways, and send tons of plastic to Malaysia to be ‘recycled’, when in fact it’s just dumped on unsuspecting villagers who are subjected to toxic fumes while the remnants of our ready meal containers are burnt in a field beside them.

But what to do, when Johnson goes round telling school children that recycling isn’t the answer? (Well obviously it isn’t, when he’s just sending it overseas where it’s just not our problem anymore.)

The message of Cop 26 is that we must collectively make radical changes to our lives, but how exactly that is supposed to happen, given the timeframe which should have been implement thirty years ago, is difficult to compute.

Much of our inability to change is simply through ignorance. Take a recent purchase by me as an example. After freezing our arses off in the garden during the first lockdown, I nipped up to Hillmount to buy a fire pit.  It was in the trolley when I clapped eyes on a gas burner and bought that instead, so I didn’t have to tend a fire while I served chilled Sauvignon which comes from, you’ve guessed it, the vineyards on New Zealand’s South Island. Did it enter my head that burning gas in my back yard was perhaps a big ‘no no’, especially for one who’s so keen on eco issues? Of course it didn’t; I just thought it would be nice to chat to my friends in peace without waving smoke out of my eyes.

One of the major obstacles in our inability to make changes isn’t through laziness or a disbelief that the planet’s in trouble, it’s because we just don’t think, and we don’t often see it modelled to us.

Take local schools and businesses for example. Most homeowners will recycle, sorting their rubbish into bins. But trot into shops or cafés and you’ll see cardboard cups and cans and food waste all chucked in together where, thus contaminated, it will be shipped off to landfill. Case in point, I hoked a few cans out of a bin in a café on the Ormeau on Friday. I asked a barista first and he was very nice about it. ‘Knock yourself out,’ he said, kindly handing me fairy liquid and a towel to wash and dry my hands when I was finished. ‘Dunno why they don’t do that here,’ he said. ‘I do it at home, but not in the café.’ This makes no sense to me at all. Why aren’t there facilities provided? Isn’t this is a perfect example of individuals being asked to do one thing and businesses another?

On to food waste. Not being a scientist, I didn’t realise that when food breaks down it produces methane, which is why it should be kept separately to make compost.  Now that I know this, it’s cracking me up when I see food scraps shoved in with everything else.  School canteens often rely heavily on plastic cutlery and polystyrene containers. Pupils and teachers alike STILL use these without a second thought, then chuck them into a bin-liner along with leftover food. Every. Single. Day.

Surely there are  environmental experts who could interject and show businesses and schools how they could do this better; perhaps with a small financial incentive to do so. It would, I imagine, be easier to tackle these problems at source than try to strain our oceans of detritus after.

So in short, despite Boris making a total bollocks of himself and telling children that recycling isn’t the answer, we need to start small, work out what will help and try to implement it.  In short, nobody’s perfect- like me and my gas burner. Being a bit more mindful is at least the start, but it’s hard when global conglomerates are still shunting all the responsibility on to the individual and doing what they want. There has been no central lead on recycling from our government. Ever. They may parrot Greta Thunberg to sound good- but that’s all it is, meaningless rhetoric until they legislate for companies to produce less packaging and make it easier for people to recycle.

Do you know what people hate? Being interrupted. Even if you think it’s worth interrupting them for, you probably shouldn’t bother, as they won’t thank you. I should know, because I’m a serial interrupter, but I’m trying to rein it in because I’m already quite annoying. I usually interrupt people as they are trying to put an object in the bin, but I hover, ready to intercept them, lest that aluminium can lend up in landfill instead of in my recycling bag.

I was pootling about Dalkey on Saturday last week, when, to my glee I found a charity shop. Dalkey doesn’t have many of these, but it does have a raft of small establishments where you can buy a shampoo bar made of lichen and algae for 11 euro, or a hessian bag to put your eco-friendly products in, which will only set you back €21.99. I’m not going to tell you what I spent on a reusable coffee mug, but I think there’s people of the Mothership’s generation who spent the same amount on their first car.

Anyway, so I’m trying on shoes in the charity shop (a pair of Una Healy’s which I purchased and are rather fabulous, despite the fact I’d never heard tell of her and was later running round telling people she was in a band called ‘The Yesterdays.’) and I overhear the staff out the back having a protracted conversation about battered mushrooms. They finally emerge from the back and the chat has moved to lasagne, and in particular, problems with their béchamel. Fortunately for them, a customer trots in who has no qualms about interrupting with details of a sauce she now routinely makes. ‘It’s changed my life,’ she says. ‘Take a tub of natural yogurt and beat in an egg,’ she says, waving her hand in a flourish. ‘Done!’ A dietitian gave her the recipe, she says, as she leaves. One of the shop volunteers, who walks past me with an armful of clothes rolls her eyes at me. She was enjoying her good complain about her lumpy sauce and didn’t care for the unsolicited advice.

I was tempted to do some interrupting myself the night before in the hotel restaurant. The lady at the table next to us was all for buying herself a pair of DM boots. ‘Like I had when I was young,’ she tells her mum. ‘They’re all the rage again, except they’re about £140.’ I’m thinking she could nip into a Dalkey shop and spend the same amount in seven minutes on a few toiletries, but I say nothing.  ‘I’d love a pair though,’ says the woman. ‘They’re so comfortable.’ I really have to rein myself in at this point, because my DMs are many things: eight hole, high gloss and of a lilac hue, but what they are not, is comfortable. Excruciating, torturous, lacerating of heel, but definitely not comfortable. I’ve had a large glass of wine and I’m about to start in to what a nightmare they are, but the waiter sets my starter in front of me and the children emit long sighs of relief because they are fed up with me accosting randomers.

A writer friend of mine commented that her DMs are ‘soft as butter’ now that she has them broken in, and I’m bewildered because I’ve had my pair since Christmas and they’re still brutal. ‘Google them to see why they’re still so bloody awful,’ I tell LSB. He sets down his Guinness with a sigh to investigate ‘breaking-in methods for DM boots.’  My pair are made of ‘vegan heavy duty material’, which is possibly why they leave red welts on the tops of my feet. I have been trying to wear them in for a few months and all to no avail. They also take an age to put on and take off. In short, I hate them, but they look so pretty I can’t bear to get rid. I consider interrupting but my goat’s cheese starter with fig and candied walnuts, looks incredible so I get stuck in to it instead.

Yesterday though, one of my lovely readers sends me a message. She recalls that I was bitching about my DMs on Insta and empathised because after 3 YEARS hers were still torturing her. Isn’t that shocking? Anyway, she recommends buying silicon heel protectors, which are hideous and look like something a plastic surgeon would dole out if you scalded yourself, but sure they’re for under your socks so who cares? Sadly these are only available on Amazon, but feck it, whatever my beef is with Bezos I’m ordering a set, so I can actually get some wear out of the DMs, which cost Himself an absolute fortune. I bet every fibre of of his being wishes he hadn’t bothered at this rate.

Do you ever harbour notions which have little, if any, basis in reality? I do, all the time, and this morning was no exception. I had a rare day off work, and so, with uncharacteristic enthusiasm, I walked the Small Child down to school, dog in tow. How fine it will be, I said to myself, to breathe in the fresh dew-laden air and soak up the autumnal sunshine.

It didn’t take long for the dog to disabuse me of this romantic notion. Just at the school gates, (a mere 2042 steps from my door, according to the Fitbit,) she took a massive dump. A ‘double bagger’ it was, which was some fun clearing up, while the parents all filed past.  The Child scuttled on in, because we were, inevitably, running late as well.  Big bag of shite hand, on I went, my initial glee somewhat tempered. The dog was in one of her sniffy moods, stopping to root about under the hedgerows, an activity she finds tantalising indeed. It was thus a stop-starty sort of a dander, preventing me from striding purposefully forth.

Not far from the wee primary school in Rosetta, nature called again. The second deposit was smaller, and happily so, for I discovered I’d used up my bags. It is exceptionally bad craic to leave a poo anywhere, but near a school is unforgiveable in my book. I did, however have a bag of plastic wrapping in my rucksack, destined for the recycling bin in the Co-op. I thus repurposed a packet from a bag of Sainsbury’s Taste the Difference Anya Potatoes, which, whilst not ideal, did a decent enough job.

On we go.  At this point I met Matthew O’Toole, our local SDLP MLA.

‘Hello!’ I say, with gusto. Matthew makes the rookie mistake of asking how I am and I thus regale him with tales of dog defecation and plastic recycling. He does his best to seem interested, sympathetic even, but the voices in his head must be screaming ‘MAKE IT STOP, PLEASE GOD, I BEG YOU.’ That’s the problem with being a politician.  The world and his wife feel they have the right to accost you and go over any auld nonsense. At least I have encountered a bin between me and Matthew, so I’m not clutching a bag from a packet of potatoes turned dog-shite receptacle.

There’s a lesson here. To avoid this sort of caper, which is never edifying, (but most definitely not what you need of a Monday morning,) DO NOT feed your dog Sunday leftovers of roast potatoes and pieces of beef brisket. And especially not if the grandparents have already called in and fed her excessive doggy biscuits and ‘Jumbones.’ And, should you meet anyone, just let them carry on.

Anyway, by 10.14 I am back at the kitchen table, coffee poured and six thousand, four hundred and fifty-three steps under my belt. Aside from the cat pawing at the laptop and mewing pitifully for a second breakfast, the situation is much improved. Let’s hope it stays that way.

Scarves by Moschino; Louboutins in bubble gum pink, brogues by Paul Smith. Yes, you are on the SWB site and yes, I know I never mention labels. Usually I’m Mrs Kill-The-Craic, Mrs Reduce-Reuse-Recycle, sack cloth and ashes and all: that’s me.

But today it was all change: wait til you hear.  Didn’t I take myself over to Déjà Vu on the Lisburn Road, where I spent a cracker of an hour chatting to owner and style guru Ruth Seaby. Jeez Louise: by the end of it I was nearly asking for a job, such a lovely time was had. She knew most of the customers by name, and when they came in it was all, ‘would you keep an eye out for…’ and Ruth was right back with, ‘if anything comes in that’s black and a size ten I’ll be straight on the blower.’ It was ever so convivial.

This end of the Lisburn Road a glitz and glam fest. Déjà Vu is tucked neatly between a coffee shop and Sumo-cat Sushi, just down from a pretty blow dry bar, (La La Salon, if you don’t mind, it’s very Rodeo Drive, baby) and a funky little brow bar next to that. Now, I don’t give two hoots about brows and lashes, but if it makes you happy, knock yourself out. This year’s been shite, so who am I to say what you do with your face?

But back to the clothes. Déjà Vu is where to come if you’re looking something swanky and different, but minus the designer price tag. Yes, I’m quite aware I’ve pinched TK Maxx’s marketing slogan, but this is an entirely different experience because here, you get the benefit of Ruth’s expertise. The shorts I bought in Galway (remember the three euro ones from Oxfam?) were a bit loose, (how the hell that happened I don’t know) and she had found me a blue Guess belt and shown me how to do the French tuck; (try saying that after a few mojitos) within a few minutes of my entering the shop.

This is the perfect place if you’re looking for a couple of unique items to spruce up your wardrobe and I got lucky.  I was mid-chat with Ruth when I squealed: ‘Is that a Diane Von Furstenburg?’ and indeed it was, a stripy dress in the trademark wrap over style that flatters the tum of a 42 year old who’s had two caesarean sections. Unbelievably, it was in my size, and I was even more chuffed than I was last week when the child’s PCR result came negative and I could send her back to school.  I’ve always fancied a Furstenburg piece, but wouldn’t fork out for a new one and couldn’t be bothered with the hassle of doing E-bay. Here I was able to try and buy, with no pesky packaging or trips to the post office. Hurrah, says I.

Here’s how it works should you have any items to sell. Ruth takes clothes which are in season and in pristine condition and keeps them a few weeks to see if they goes, and if not, you can come and retrieve them. Should they, you get fifty percent of the sale prize. Sounds fair to me.

So there you go, a #secondhandseptember win for me, (two actually, if you count the belt). If you like your more exclusive brands, then keep this place in mind, as it takes browsing to a new level. There are clothes to suit everyone: Ruth told me that increasingly she sees students coming in, on the look-out for quality items that they will re-wear again and again. ‘Far more savvy than our generation,’ she says. ‘These girls do it better.’ I think she’s doing pretty well herself, is our Ruth.

You know me and my obsessions everyone: sometimes it’s recycling and micro-plastics and reducing waste. At the moment I’m on a mission save water, and so today, as grey clouds loom over the city and rain falls in torrents, I thought I’d give you a watered down version of what’s going on in my head- so as not to bore you rigid.

Yesterday I met friends for lunch in District on the Ormeau Road. As I sat, eating a Portuguese tart and sipping tea, a downpour of Biblical proportions began. Rain gathered in the awning and gushed along the guttering, before streaming onto the footpath below.  I had to restrain myself from asking for a wee basin: I thought the cafe was missing an ideal opportunity to harvest the water and use it later for their plants. Obsessed I have become- I’m telling you.

In July, as the ground baked and my lawn turned brown and crispy, I became ever more conscious of dwindling water supplies, and how quickly our reserves here in Northern Ireland become depleted. I am grateful for my water butt which I made LSB buy (and install) last year. Since we have our own supply, I never feel guilty about watering my plants and I even managed to resuscitate my poor parched sweet peas, after failing to notice how dried out they had become. That’s the thing about plants- needy little feckers.

What was it David Attenborough said, ‘Live the life you want to lead, just don’t waste anything.’ If he could see our failing water system, I fear his ninety-four year old heart might splinter in two. We lose so much of our water supply to leaks as in hot weather the ground overheats and contracts, causing the water pipes to crack, wasting thousands of litres. This happens ALL THE TIME here, because the system is so elderly (Victorian, if we’re being precise) and long overdue reconstruction.

There are massive problems with the infrastructure and a lack of funding, but there are small steps we can take to protect our water supplies, thereby allowing NI Water to direct costs elsewhere into improving the system.

Obviously there are the ways to save water- not overfilling the kettle when you’re making the ninth cup of tea that day; turning off the tap when we brush our teeth, shorter showers etc. So far, so obvious.

But have you heard about the ‘fatbergs’? No, this isn’t an American comedy you’d find in the early hours on E4. Seriously, if you’re eating, come back to this post later because this is ROTTEN. You know when you’re cooking your mince and you fire the grease down the drain because you think it’s only a wee dribble? Well, imagine everyone is doing that, including restaurants and cafes.* The dribble becomes a flood, and when this hot fat hits the cold pipes it congeals. Here’s the queasy bit. Wet wipes, even the ones which claim to be flushable, stick to these, as do sanitary products which folk still insist on chucking down the loo. These create enormous ‘fatbergs’ which take huge amounts of time and expense to disperse. If NI Water weren’t dealing with this sort of nonsense, they may be able to put their money to better use.

Which brings me to my proposal, water butts for all! Wouldn’t it be amazing if NI Water could team up with a company and use recycled plastic to provide water butts for renters and home owners alike? This way everyone could have access to their own water, and wouldn’t have to use purified water from their taps to douse their dahlias and feed their fuchsias. I even use mine to rinse out the plastic containers that I pop in my blue bin.

What do you reckon? If you were offered a water butt do you think you’d use it? And how about if a big multi-national company saw fit to MAKE the water butts form their recycled bottles? Obviously, I’m thinking of Coca Cola. They do own ‘River Rock’, after all, so surely they have an interest in water supplies. I contacted them to see what sustainable steps, if any, they were taking during the dry period in July with regard to water consumption, but I’m still waiting on a response.

It’s just a thought- but on days like this when it’s lashing non-stop, I can’t help but think we shouldn’t let a precious resource flow straight down the drain. My water butt is now almost replenished after last week, so that’s me set up again for months ahead. What can I say? I like big butts and I cannot lie ….. (sorry, couldn’t help myself.)

*If you wait for the fat to cool, you can pour it straight into your brown compost caddy, on top of vegetable waste which will soak it up. I’ve taken to lining my caddy with newspaper for any excess liquid. (I take pride in sourcing articles which feature BoJo’s face for this job.)

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.

I have a coat (and that’s it in the photo).

It is not pleasing on the eye. It was never meant to be a statement coat, but at least one I could wear in public without resembling one of the grotesques that used to feature in ‘The League of Gentlemen.’ Could anyone ever sit through a whole episode of that show by the way? I had a flatmate who used to LOVE it, but it always made me feel a queasy because they were so rotten (both inside and out). Shortly after acquiring this over-garment, (£40 down from £80 in the Benetton winter sale) I lost the belt which cinched it in around the waist, lending it some form of definition. Its troubles increased when I wore it to the dump, (or ‘local recycling centre’) and clarried white paint all down the front, which despite many attempts, I have never successfully removed. These remain in grey, washed out smudges. I am a small person, and wearing this coat, which reaches my mid-calves, creates the appearance of a Womble. Given that these days I often take a litter picker when out walking, I would be much better suited to Wimbledon Common than the Upper Ormeau.

But I love this coat, and I suspect that I am going to love it a lot more in the coming few days, when I shall wear it out, not just when walking to dog, but to friends’ gardens where we will partake in libations and revel in the joy of company, sitting together, and not just passing each other in the road or in the school carpark, trying to exchange niceties when we can see and hear fuck all under the masks.

I may take Jess Carter Morley’s advice in her weekend Guardian column and wear something that smacks of frivolity underneath the coat- I still have two skirts from Christmas which have never seen the light of day, but I suspect that April isn’t really the season for a pale pink sequinned clingy number that LSB ordered from the Savida range in Dunnes. He’s a wild one for the skirts, is LSB, but tragically he has underestimated the collateral damage that lockdown has done to my arse: it could be a while yet before I wrestle my upper thighs into anything remotely structured.

What I will do though, for any frivolity in the coming weeks, is pop on a maxi wrap dress I got from Silk Fred, with a cardigan and my Ug boots, and in case it turns Baltic again (because let’s face it, it could), I will have the white woollen hat that Santa bought my child from Oxfam and that I have since pilfered. With its multi-coloured fluffy bobble, it brings me cheer- and at the moment, sure you have to take the cheer where you can get it.

Ultimately, who cares. I am just bursting with excitement at the thought of a proper chat. Earlier today I was returning from a jog when I bumped into a crowd of friends at Ormeau Parklet. Well, the giddiness of me was nothing ordinary. There was a suggestion that I’d been on the hard liquor with my Honey Cheerios, which of course I hadn’t because now that the children are back at school, I don’t have to go to those lengths to make it to 10am. Mid chat, I walked backwards into one of the seat and fell with clatter and a deluge of expletives, much to the amusement of a good-looking young couple with their baby in one of those buggies that costs the same amount as my first car. But hey, at least when we let ourselves down a bucketful these days, we have an excuse and don’t have to shrug and say: ‘I don’t get out much.’ We don’t, we haven’t, and we need a bit of a craic. My pals may have to power-hose me off their patios- such will be my reluctance to shift. I suppose though, that’s one of the benefits of a coat which doubles as a duvet. They can just dander off to bed and leave me on the garden seat, if they don’t want to resort to force. Jeepers, they’ll be saying- there’s tankers in the Suez that are easier to shift than that one. Happy holidays y’all.

‘Forty-eight’ LSB says to me, and I look at him blankly. ‘Six times eight is forty-eight,’ he repeats, while the dog takes her sweet time sniffing around a tree in Rosetta. ‘Oh God I say,’ did I just ask you your tables?’  Like, out loud?’ He nods, and we shuffle on our way, wondering what we have become.

The home-schooling has me undone this week, and it’s only Monday. LSB and I had got out on our own (aside from the dog) to buy a pan loaf from Tesco. It was nearest thing to a date we’ve had this long while. Forgetting it was him, and the not the Older Child who normally accompanies me on the dog’s evening constitutional, I’d started on at him about the tables. I’m unravelling quicker than a pair of £2.99 leggings from H&M these days, and trust me, they don’t last long on my children.

Since I never manage more than an hour or two of the old school work with either of my offspring, for fear I might eject one or both of them out a window, I feel an irrepressible urge to be imparting facts; if you’ve overheard a woman asking a small child: ‘What’s the capital Of Hungary?’* when you’re out and about, then it’s probably me you’ve encountered. I’m constantly badgering them with spellings or sums: it seems I have no off-button, rather like Father Dougal Maguire waking up Ted while playing Blockbusters in his sleep, ‘Give us a P please Bob.’

I’ve seriously gone a bit funny this lockdown, becoming wildly animated over the banal. Caramel squares, for example. A day without one of those bad boys seems like a grave waste of 24 hours. I’ve become more partial to a traybake than your average Presbyterian.

Then last week, while buying some extremely delicious but pricey sausage rolls at Newton Coffee in the Four Winds, I discovered that they are now allowing customers to bring their own cup. Well, recycling-enthusiast that I am, you can only imagine my excitement. ‘We can get frothy coffees!’ I told LSB, in the same exuberant tone I once used for say, getting a last minute table in La Taqueria of a Saturday night or the promise of a night away, sans enfants.

Those were the days eh? ‘Coffee is the new clubbing,’ said LSB, as I emerged from the café with two large cappuccinos and a wide smile. ‘Maybe we should go full rock’n’roll and just fill in our census forms this evening,’ he said drily. ‘No fecking way,’ said I. At the moment, a bottle of wine in front of ‘Borgen’ is just about all the excitement I can handle.

*(When I was little my dad’s favourite tea time quiz questions were capital cities. That’s what passed for entertainment in the late eighties. I knew that Ulaanbaatar was the capital of Outer Mongolia when I was nine.)

Last week my post about becoming a Boring Bastard went down a treat, as a number of readers identified with my new found tendency. Last night, however, as we engaged in the gloomy activity of taking down the Christmas tree, I fear I may have peaked.  ‘Let’s colour code the decorations,’ I declared, suddenly finding a use for the big plastic sweet tubs we accumulated over the season of ‘Eat your way to Type 2 Diabetes’.*

I got quite ‘Sergeant Major-y’ about it. ‘Red baubles in here, silver items in the Celebrations tub over there, anything gold in the Miniature Heroes one.’

‘What about this?’ said the Small Child, holding up a green stocking shaped ornament fashioned out of Fimo clay. I was tempted to say ‘Bin’, but gestured towards the newly formed miscellaneous tub instead. The children tired of this activity in approximately six minutes. My enthusiasm too, was short-lived. Celebrations tubs actually don’t hold many baubles, and so the plan was aborted and they were all tipped into the usual box without further preamble. Despite this, the floor downstairs is still littered with lights, tinsel, and a pile of cuddly toy elves and Santas. I’ve decided just to close the door of the living room to deal with this problem for the time being.

I bumped into a friend on Thursday and when she told me about some of the chats that she’d had with her husband of late, I felt a lot less dull.   She’d recently bought up the topic of shower sealant and gone on at length about the topic.

‘Put that in an E-mail for me, would you? he said when she paused to drink her coffee. ‘I think I’d love to read it all again, and take my time over it.’

In response to my prompting, she disclosed their top three ‘Boring Bastard’ chats. In third place was conversations about the weather, with particular regard to just how ‘mild’ it was. They got from their house near Ravenhill Road almost all the way to Carryduff chatting about this, with a brief diversion when they passed Brackenvale where she commented that they do a decent beef stew, although it’s a bit heavy on the thyme. Runner up is her husband’s preoccupation with a ‘good strong bin liner.’ He has never got over the time he sustained a nasty nick from the lid from a can of baked beans through a flimsy B&M own brand bag. Top prize though, has to go to their exchanges about leave in conditioner, versus wash out conditioner for their children’s hair. (I know, I swear to f**k) this was the girl with whom I spent many a riotous evening during our PGCE.

Obviously we can’t talk. Yesterday we went to buy a new front door. That was a riot, I can tell you. LSB has been banging on about a new front door ever since a part of our letterbox ‘fell off’ and subsequently went missing. In a fit of ‘New Year, New Me’ getting things done, he managed to get an appointment with a sales rep in the Door Store over in the Abbey Centre. (Can you imagine how thrilled I was to end up in the Abbey Centre on a Sunday afternoon?) Don’t ever go to buy a front door thinking that you’re going to be in and out in under an hour.  Turns out there’s a lot to consider, when you’re looking a new front door. There’s the height of the threshold, for starters, which was clearly never something the people who installed our original door thought too much about. Many’s the guest hasn’t appreciated the depth of the ridge and has come hurling through into our hall. It’s a wonder no one has put a claim in. There’s the colour and the type of glass you want, depending on how much light you want to come in. Then you have to decide  whether to go for average 40 inch width or fork out for 70 inches which provides more insulation? (Well do you?) Do you want the colour of the frame to match the door or would you prefer just to go for white?  Apparently that can set off the colour of the door quite nicely. FML.

And, to add to the trauma of this experience we had to cart the children along because obviously they can’t be casually dropped off to the grandparents anymore lest they are harbouring a new and decidedly more contagious strain of Covid. Luckily, one of the nice salesman had brought in a bag of all the chocolate his children didn’t like from their selection boxes so they each got two Curley Wurleys and a Chomp. While LSB discussed the finer points of doors,  (Not ‘The Doors‘, just front doors. Rock and Roll eh?) I took them over to the window and made them stare out to see if they could spot any escaped animals from Belfast Zoo. Given our esteemed zoo’s inability to keep its animals enclosed, this should have been relatively easy.

Just in case you aren’t sufficiently bored yet, and fancy reading yourself into a coma, I’m putting up daily posts on Instagram about eco-friendly suggestions for the month of January. I took a notion to do this on January 1^st, at approximately 9pm, so much thought and planning went into the endeavour.  However, recycling makes me happy and there’s precious little else making me smile right now so I’ll take it where I can get it.

*Only two of these were actually ours- I actually rescued the rest from school where I feared they might just have dumped. I always like to keep a tubs such as these for pen or crayon storage, sometimes even cake. Sewing items too. (Oh God. I’ll get my coat.)