Second only to ‘Is it lady time, sugar t*ts?’, ‘You’re turning into your mother’, trips so easily off my husband’s unwitting tongue. Even when he knows he’s beyond ‘pushing it’ this phrase still makes it into his ‘say it now pay for it later’ Tourettes top ten.

Mums. Totally underrated.

Sometimes it’s a quip or a tease. Sometimes it’s almost a reprimand, a slap on the wrist, don’t do it again. But why is it such a loaded statement?

Because, the thing is, while we may think becoming our mothers or fathers is the scariest thing since crow’s feet, bingo wings or the Child-catcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, I’m actually beginning to think it’d be bl**dy marvellous to end up half the woman I now see (through spectacles covered in porridge and banana) as my wonderful Mum and Thomas’s Nanna. And similarly my Dad.

Don’t get me wrong, there are things about my Mum’s makeup that I’d like to avoid repeating: obsessive use of bag clips, compulsive hoarding, doing a steak in the oven…but I’m talking minatiae.

Becoming Mum

So if I am becoming her, I can’t help but think it is only a good thing. Here are the things I’d like to thank my Mum for and that I’d like to think I’ll carry on.

BELIEVING IN ME

My Mum sang my praises even if my picture of a mermaid looked like Free Willy had got out again. And I too brandish anything Thomas ‘makes’  with sheer glee – ‘look – 3 colours he’s used here,’ I say, while my husband just gives me the Jesus wept’ look. But isn’t it better this way than the other? After all, if your Mum isn’t going to be the one to think you sh*t rainbows who is?

HEAVENS BATHROOM, THOMAS. THIS IS LIKE THE SISTINE CHAPEL! HAVE A CHOCOLATE BUTTON. OH MY GOD, HAVE TEN!

MAKING ME BELIEVE IN ME

When I wanted to do something but I wasn’t sure I could she’d keep saying ‘you can do that’ until I  did. Granted, sometimes she had to be there at  the end of said project to pick up the pieces  (auditioning for Annie, circa 1984), but she  made me think to try. Anything.

CLEANING UP ALL MY SH*T

This one goes  without saying – I have a 21 month old and a 3 year old. 35 years  on she still does my ironing and washes the  pots for me whenever she can. Not to mention the metaphorical sh*t storms she’s cleared up for me.

TAKING ALL THE OTHER SH*T ON

Teenage hormones, Kevin the teenager strops when I came home form Uni and thought I was a ‘woman’, the fact that, during the noughties, most times I went out I came home without my phone or any recollection of where I’d been.

Kevin the teenager (or me, in my Uni days)

LETTING ME MAKE MY OWN MISTAKES

The amount of times I go to show Thomas the way a toy or project ‘should be done’ when actually, it doesn’t matter – he is happy sticking the lego cow through the hole where the orange triangle should go, and learning in his own way.  My parents let me make the mistakes I wanted to. When I told them I was switchingback to English Lit from Sociology after already switching from it at Uni, they noticeably winced but carried on eating their chicken dinners. I love them so much for that.

MAKING ME APPRECIATE THE VALUE OF MONEY

Making me appreciate the value of money, and similarly, thoughtfulness. As an only child I always tell people I was spoilt. Not with money, but with love. I was the apple of everyone’s eye, the centre of attention, my Mum and Dad’s world. But with money, I was taught value and appreciation. One of my most valued things in adult life is that I’ve been taught to love a gift more for the thought that goes into it than how much it cost. My favourite presents as a child were the swing my Dad made me with left over rope and drain pipes and a netball ring he made me from an old net shopper bag and another drain pipe. And I’ll be making sure Thomas grows up the same – maybe minus the drainpipes, but always knowing the value of a gift given.

MAKING ME KIND

My Mum always looked after other people and taught me to do the same. Thomas doesn’t have to volunteer at a soup kitchen but I want him to remember to give what he can when he can and to realise how enjoyable it can be to help people around him.

GIVING ME COURAGE

I don’t mean she gave me a sword and a steed and sent me off into battle, but she taught me to wok hard, stick at life and not let life’s challenges wear me down. My Mum did a job she hated for many years because she had to. I never realised it at the time, it’s only looking back that I see how much courage she had to have – day to day courage – the most impressive kind.

FINALLY…

No, I’m not afraid I’m becoming my Mum any more. Because, in forty years from now, as I tear about the nursing home with my zimmer frame moaning about the standard of the meals, the lack of gin, and the temperature of the bath water, if my son thinks anywhere near as highly of his Mum and Dad as I do, I’ll have a bl**dy massive grin on my face as I do so.

* original Keving the Teenager image from Youtube

Aka – Mummy You Will Lose Your Sh*t*.  And it’s ok!

I’m guessing you can relate, when I say that I am an ‘angry woman’ far more these days than I was pre-kids.

Since two little boys came along I’ve had Ross (from Friends) Rage in most supermarkets within a 15 mile radius of my house and, in my local coffee shop, they still eye me with an air of slightly terrified precaution after witnessing me angrily sticking a full gingerbread man in my mouth to prove a point that neither son could have it if they fought over it any more. (Yes – I did only have myself to blame then, when they started trying to copy my rage-eating two hours later at tea time, with whole pork sausages, but you live and learn).

I know I’m not the only Mum to have meltdowns and I know generally,  we are accepting and morale-boosting to each other but it really gets to me that there are still people out there – and some of them actually ARE Mums, that still get the ‘judgy’ ‘You wouldn’t catch me doing that’ face on.

So when my neighbour, who is expecting her first baby in April, asked me for any advice – I just said what I always do ‘do what gets you through,” adding “we’re still making it up now’” Because we are. And when baby is here and turns toddler I plan to elaborate. Because I think it’s better to offer ‘yes, they are little sh*ts sometimes’ and ‘everyone loses it sometimes’ than ‘sleep when they sleep’, ‘cherish it, it goes so fast’, ‘one day you’ll miss these moments’.

What people don’t always think about, when they shoot a judgy look, or even a  comment,  is how much genuine sh*t has happened already that day as a prologue to the mere 3 minutes of red-faced ranting you did in Sainsbury’s. And like I say, what really gets me, is that, yes, there are folks that haven’t got children and are only outsiders looking in but that also, there are other MUMS, DADS, ‘SISTAS’ who give that look, shake of the head, ‘I wouldn’t do that’ stare. For ten of the lovely ‘every-Mums’ out there, is at least one judgy Mum who looks on as if none of this ever happens to them, either because they’ve forgotten it as their kids grew older, or they don’t want to admit their own flaws so they openly judge other people’s. Or maybe it genuinely doesn’t happen to them – lucky them! (But I still think they’ve secretly thumped the bannister on their way out once or twice).

So, specifically for those that witnessed the Gingerbread man massacre or the supermarket rant, (where, I should add, I actually got to my knees to full on eye-ball my child into not embarrassing me any further) here is how the day probably progressed before then…

HOW IT ALL STARTS

5.28am ‘Muuummy’ ‘Muuummmy’  Toddler cries out.

I duvet-dive and pretend for 3 whole seconds that my life is a different one.

Tiny toddler feet scurry across the floorboards in the room next door and reality starts to dawn. The problem isn’t going to go away but I  remain under the duvet and pray my husband hasn’t had an ‘American Hot’ pizza the day before.

‘Muuuummmy’

Just 3 more seconds under this duvet.

‘mummy, mummy, mummy, mummy, mummy, mummy, mummy, muuuuuuummy!’

The jig is up.

If I don’t act now, toddler will wake his 18 month old brother. I can’t cope with both of them right now. 6.28 is a far more realistic time for that.

Now, we have a very strict rule in our house, that no one comes into Mummy and Daddy’s bed. We didn’t want to get into that. No. We were sooooo sensible and smug about that. Except that, it is in many ways a ludicrous rule because all that happens is I end up curled up on the floor by my three-year-old’s bed covered over by a towel that I grab off the landing on the way past along with my pillow to pitch up at my usual spot next to his bed. But I’m too tired to think that through fully right now.

So – 5.39, all ‘tucked up’ on the toddler room floor, I’ve managed to get my little boy back to slumber on the proviso that I stay on the floor next to him. The floor may not be an ideal place for everyone to sleep but it’s amazing what peace exhaustion can bring so I drift back off like the Daddy bear in Peace At Last. It’s almost serene.

For 4 whole minutes.

5.43 – the soft toy massacre begins. On my head. It said in the book to ignore this, so I do.

5.45 The declaration ‘Mummy I come and sleep with your pillow with you’

5.50 He has moved from the bed (which seems ludicrous since there is now a bed going begging with neither of us in it) to take his place ‘with my pillow with me’. (NB This might be the part I’m supposed to cherish and I try to, I really do. I do a good knackered cherish actually)

5.55 Mummy you’re pretty, I love you, you’re my best friend. (Actually, this bit is nice, who wouldn’t want to hear this?!)

6.10 Mummy, I want to go down the stairs. I SAID, I want to go down the stairs. (What would Supernanny do? Ignore, ignore, ignore)

6.15 I’m not your best friend any more Mummy.

6.16 Toddler pulls my make-shift towel duvet away, then my pillow like an angry officer in an army movie.

6.20 I’M. NOT. YOUR. BEST. FRIEENNNNND’

A bit more shouting taking us through to 6.30 something when the baby decides the two of us have been having fun without him for a whole few hours and it’s high time he got involved too.

We venture down the stairs and begin our day. I already (almost) need wine. But coffee will do.

To facilitate time to drink coffee comes Shreddies for toddler and banana for baby. Ie the first part of the don’t-want this/don’t-want-that ‘continental’ breakfast.

Toddler has recently decided to ‘be more baby’ and if throwing half his breakfast onto the tiled floor is good enough for baby, then it’s good enough for him too. Shreddies and milk everywhere, including my hair, we venture onwards.

Now, some Mums have strategies for getting clothes on. Really logical strategies like ‘no TV until there’s clothes on’. I plan to do this every day. I plan. But then, I get 5-6 hours of disturbed sleep, much of it on the floor by my toddler’s bed, and something goes awry.

So I spend a good half hour trying to pin clothes on moving targets (children) until they have an acceptable amount of outerwear on.

It is now at least only 4 hours until it’s noon and then it’s only 7.5 hours to bedtime.

It’ll be around this time your three year old will announce something along the lines of m’ummy I weed on the mumpit’

As you wonder what on earth he means you lay out a pile of spare clothes for the changing bag.

‘Haha It’s on the mumpits. They’re sooooooaaaaaking!’

You laugh along with the toddler as you take off ‘baby’s’ nappy.

As you realise you haven’t got the clean nappy to hand you also come to terms with the fact toddler was actually trying to say crum-pets – ie tell you he has peed all over them just as he suggested a moment ago. Into the actual bag of crumpets. That you had been saving. For your own breakfast. Which you could have eaten 4 of so far.

While you pick up the sodden crumpet packet between the smallest amount of fingernail possible you turn to see that in the time this has happened the nappyless 18 month old is gleefully peeing all over the spare clothes pile you had put together previously.

We somehow manage to leave the house for a ‘paint a pot’ session – but I ill-time sugar, allowing my 3 year old to have a hot chocolate prior to the session (again I blame the blinkers of exhaustion) which results in mayhem as he prefers to ‘Spiderman’ up and down the stairs in the Paint a Pot café (which is frowned upon), roar loudly in other children’s faces and generally wind me up in cahoots with his younger brother who is fast-learning I’m an easy target (especially when I’ve had no breakfast due to wee-gate) and this is fun.

The final straw for my morning is when an older Nan-like figure sees toddler ‘Spidermanning’ down the stairs, and holds two small children back looking askance like a scene from we need to talk about Kevin.

IT’S THE FINAL STRAW

So when you see me at 11.20am – I may well be losing my shit because my day started 7 hours earlier, on a floor, under a towel, but

• I didn’t lose my sh*t at sleeping on the floor
• I didn’t lose it at the dirty protest on the spare clothes
• And I didn’t lose it at brotherly wind-ups, or even crumpet-gate, or failure to participate in the paid-for paint=a-blo**dy-pot session

So yes sometimes, just sometimes I don’t have the calm serenity Jo Frost wants from me in ‘Toddler SOS’. Because I’ve just had enough. For five minutes. Until someone does something cute or lovely and then I’m right back there in the cherish game.

I think all I’m saying is be kind to each other. It’s said a lot but often it isn’t quite followed through on. And I think especially from Mums to Mums, being kind, or at least not giving that funny look is what we should be doing for and  each other every day.

*Original Sex and The City image  YouTube

Whatever gets you through

“I just never get the urge for a drink these days” said the Mum I was chatting to at playgroup coffee time. We’d agreed upon most things so far that morning: we’d like to feel a bit more ‘appreciated’, we’d like ‘me’ time to be more than a dash when the kids are in bed to the lady-time aisle at the 24 hour supermarket and, like everyone, we’d like more of a work-life balance. But, just like on First Dates when they’re doing so well only to blow it with some ‘I’ve got a penchant for adult nappies and I keep a bottle of vodka in the wardrobe’ revelation, I thought it was all over. She’s going to judge me, I thought, if I say I get the urge, pretty much every 5pm.

When she went on to say “Too tired I guess” I think my face actually went a bit Khloe K when Kim hit her with the handbag.

Sorry, what?

I nearly put the conversation to bed there and then, and changed the subject. But for once, rather than clamming up on my own vices, I ventured, honestly,  ‘Yes I know what you mean. I still like a drink though’. I did clarify ‘At bedtime,’  just in case she assumed I was a raging alcoholic with a bottle of vodka in the wardrobe.

what happens when you open up

I’m not going to lie, I did have a brief moment when it went a bit quiet and I thought, “sh*t, she’s going to tell me she thinks I’m a raging alcoholic with a bottle of vodka in the wardrobe,” but she eventually came back with ‘but I do stuff my face with Pringles and Cadbury’s Fingers when I think they’re not watching’ and all was well again.

Whatever gets you through…

Funny enough, the fact that I didn’t slink off, embarrassed by my own shameful thoughts of “drinking a lot of wine is what the bad mummies do” then led to a discussion about various other misconceptions I often allow myself all too much when speaking to other Mums. For example, she told me she only had clean, swishy hair that day (which I had noticed – and compared my own to, obvs) because she’d been on a KIT day the day before and had treated herself to a blow dry the day before that. I think I was actually a little bit in love with her in the moment just after she said that.

people ARE MORE OFTEN THAN NOT ON YOUR SIDE

I realised I had been silly to be sat there making myself feel inferior comparing my dry-shampooed, scraped back it’s-Friday-I’m-hanging-in-there’ hair and sniff-tested sweatshirt, to what I assumed was her ‘perfect’ existence  when here she was openly admitting to me that actually life was far from Lenor freshness and coiffeured hair too.

But it got me to thinking that, even though we now live in a world where Mums mostly champion and support each other, we still have to be honest and show our flaws to each other sometimes just so we know none of us are perfect and we are all in this together.

One Mum’s Stealth Snack on the loo is another’s longing midday look at the cherry brandy miniature, purchased on a trip to Dubrovnik in 2008, that lurks at the back of the booze cupboard. Or something. God, maybe I am an alcoholic….

Most of all, don’t project your own judgement of yourself onto others when actually they are ‘with you’.

We are all just getting by.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that Mums need alcohol

• Sorry, what? GIF PopKey,
• Stuffing face GIF Tenor
• Drinking GIF Giphy

Continue reading →

Remember that Avril Lavigne song ‘These Things I’ll Never Say’?  Here are some of mine now I’m a Mum to a one-year-old. Do any of these ring true for you?

1. Yes, of course we can disturb his routine this  once – I can’t see there being too much fallout.

2. Mmm, I love the smell of nappies in the morning.

3. Hahahahahahaha this motion sensitive singing toy, with no apparent off-switch, is really funny.

4. This story about a lazy, binge-eating caterpillar, is utterly compelling reading

 

We’ve been to a few weddings recently, with and without the little people. We’re due to escape to one on our own shortly (*little happy freedom dance) Here is the reason why are the main differences between weddings then and weddings now, with toddlers in tow…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Before: A wedding was a joyous celebration consisting mainly of love, laughter,  and terrible dancing.

After: A wedding is a joyous celebration consisting mainly of bribery, near misses with chicken nuggets and wedding dresses, and terrible dancing.

Continue reading →

It’s nice when folks ask how your day went. Especially when they ask, then immediately glaze over, throw themselves on the sofa, and give themselves up to the pure pleasure of the SKY SPORTS DAILY LOOP. Often, I think a more demonstrative approach might work. Next time someone asks how your day with your little person went, perhaps you can try some or all of these:

• Purchase an ear trumpet, loud speaker, headphones. Bellow ‘I DON’T WAAAAANT THIS’ as loudly as you can into whichever you’ve procured for at least an hour non stop.  Never give any intel into what the ‘THIS’ is. Repeat as necessary.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

• Go quiet for a time, preferably in another room, while splitting open packets of peanuts and wilfully distributing handfuls of muesli. Wet some of the muesli and make sure some of it gets where the naked eye might not think to look. If they don’t run in to see why it has gone quiet within 30 seconds bang something really hard that sounds like it could well be the baby’s head.

 

• Face-plant on the decking. Or the tiled kitchen floor. Go really quiet until they panic and rush to your side. Go a bit limp until a more naughty idea distracts you.

 

• Pull out a clump of their hair for absolutely no reason. Laugh maniacally as you do it.

 

• If any visitors come to the door, pull out some of their hair too.

 

• Smoosh something gunky and a bit smelly into their hair. Aim for something that requires at least 3 washes to get out.

• Get them to try and perform some everyday arithmetic  whilst you bang pan lids on the kitchen floor.

 

• Make up a cup of cold coffee, some cold baked beans and a glass of water with about 4 raisins in it and present it to them as a delicious home-cooked meal. If you’ve got a cloche you could use this for effect.

 

• Get them to run outside and peg an item of clothing out then run in, pick something off the floor and set it on the high chair tray then head back out with another item for the clothes line. Again, make them do this somewhere in the region of 20 times.

 

• Wet their pants or the sofa with something that could be wee, could be water.

 

• Bite them hard on any areas of loose skin. Especially upper arms, neck, or anywhere they’re particularly self-conscious about excess fat.

 

• Cut just one of your finger nails to a very fine, scratchy point and claw it across their face sporadically and without warning.

 

• Stick their favourite snack/treat on a plate. Every time they nearly get to it, scream, knock an entire sack of potatoes over or climb a curtain.

 

• Put everything and anything you can find in   the bath. Turn on the taps.

 

• When they express a need for the toilet do not allow them to go for at least an hour. When they assure you they are at bladder-bursting point and cannot hold it any more insist on them carrying you up the stairs to the loo with them. Make sure you balance right on their bladder.

 

• When you need the loo, rip down one side of your nappy and just do it wherever you are.

 

• Next time, do it in their shoe.

 

• Procure the remote, ‘squeeze’ the TV picture and set the language to Portuguese. Hide the remote so they can’t change it back. It might also be worth deleting one or two of their favourite programmes from the planner. A season finale if at all possible.

 

• Finally, crack open a bottle of wine and laugh, at how deranged you must really be to choose to endure this sort of torture,  happily, every single day, in return for just one amazing smile, kiss or cuddle from your little person. Oh – then (maybe) ask them how their day went too….

* Image of man deafened by noise – Side Pose of Businessman by imagerymajestic and muffins pic by Stuart Miles, both at freedigitalphotos.net 

When I went back to work after maternity – both times, I was genuinely scared. Of having to think and sustain adult thoughts*, of forgetting what I’d done with my children, of just generally f*cking everything up.

*thoughts requiring mature conversation, not thoughts of a sexual nature.

What I wish I’d known is that being a working mum is really ok, in fact, it’s a lot of fun, if a little manic, hysterical and surreal and it makes home time even more special. But there are things that are different now. Any of these ring true for you?

Since being a back-to-work Mum

1. You’ve developed a more than irrational hatred of all young people with massive headphones and the latest statement trainers that push to get to the only free seat on public transport before you. No, you’re no longer pregnant, and you’re not yet technically elderly, despite feeling like Madge from the Dame Edna Everage Show most days – You are just VERY tired. And you almost certainly have yet to drink you first cup of coffee of the day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2. You regularly Google the symptoms of chronic fatigue syndrome.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

3. You’re similarly, just as irrationally jealous of the young people with the massive headphones and the silly trainers, because they smugly sip from their own,  searing hot, caffeine-packed cup of Joe-mocha-chocca-latte while you secretly foam at the mouth waiting impatiently for your first of the day, like a teenage boy circa 1988 watching Pamela Anderson’s debut in Baywatch. Also because you’ve never felt  cool enough to get away with massive headphones or the latest statement trainers.

4. You leave the house without makeup, apply it en-route and end up doing something unforgivable with eyeliner.

5. You suck your stomach in until you’re in a state of negative oxygen, in an effort to try to look younger, hotter, fitter. And to convince yourself you can still rock a pencil skirt.

6. You have a day off from sucking your stomach in and wear a pair of Spanx dupes instead.

7. You swear off wearing Spanx dupes (too tight!) and go back to sucking in your stomach.

8. You wash your hands so thoroughly, the people you work with start to suspect you have OCD.

9. You regularly wrack your brain for an amazing, ground-breaking business idea that requires very little time and energy, can be done from home in pyjamas, and will set you up for life.

10. In the meantime, you play the lottery.

11. you think you’ve stumbled upon one of those amazing, ground breaking business ideas –for example, a place where people can pay to just sleep for a bit. Then you remember that that concept, i.e THE HOTEL, has, in fact, existed for centuries.

12. People buy you hand cream because of the hand washing and its toll on your digits.

13. You listen to teenage conversations on the tram whenever possible to keep ‘up’ with what goes ‘down’ these days and what might go ‘down’ when your child is that age.

14. You pray to God that some of the things going ‘down’ with the teenagers are never favoured or referred to by your own child.

15. You look at well-behaved teenagers as if they are Elvis, born again. You try to work out how they’ve been brought up and wonder whether to ask them for their parents’ number.

16. You work myself up to sport trousers with a funkier cut than you’d ever normally wear, to try and be ‘cool’.

17. You put the trousers back in the wardrobe and never take them out again because they make you feel like an 80 year old in a Velour tracksuit.

 

 

 

 

 

18. You blame stains on your clothes on your youngest child. Even if they have nothing to do with him or her.

19. If you drive to work you think about how it must be illegal to operate machinery this tired. Then you remind myself that just having that thought is energy that could be better and safer expended concentrating on actual driving.

20. You sometimes imagine yourself as a sexy, caped crusader SuperMum/lady. You dance mentally round the house in celebration of this.

21. Seconds later you feel like absolute crap because you dropped the ball on something, or you sprained you ankle on some lego.

22. You pretty much skip into work after a bad night/morning with your little person.

23. You pretty much skip home after a rubbish day at work.

24. You go into work after a 4 night strike of ‘they slept throughs’ and are mad, bad and dangerous to know at organising

25. You have a bad night,  followed by too many coffees and are just as mad, bad and dangerous, only to crash spectacularly around 2pm

26. You get midway through a sentence and totally forget what your point was

27. You run practically all the way to nursery at home time like a woman possessed.

28. You run all the way to nursery then slow down for just 2 more minutes peace and quiet.

29. You have a G and T on a school night. At home in your pyjamas

30. You  leave nursery in a morning in such a blur you can’t remember leaving the child(ren) there. You think about knocking the school night G and T on the head.

What’s else has changed in your life since being a Mum that works?

*Original Dame Edna Madge image rom YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUFWjtWEb7g

**Original Betty White picture (LEGEND!) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAmTDVZX8m8 

 

Quite often, as I charge around the house picking up more snotted-on lego blocks than I realised we owned, rogue pieces of spat-out toddler biscotti or remnants of gluey glitter because against my own better judgement I’ve guilted myself into an afternoon of craft, I start resenting the time my husband spends away from the circus we call ‘home’ working  and traveling.   It was worse each time we had newborns because the feed,change,rock-a-bye-baby-like-a-maniac cycle was relentless then and I counted minutes, not hours til my other half made it through the door. Some couples send messages to one another through the day along the lines of  ‘ooh, the things I’m gonna do to you later…’

I sent threats.

Especially when he ‘sloped off’ to the supermarket on the way home saying we needed leeks or courgettes but seeming to have been gone long enough to have fulfilled a probationary period in stacking shelves.

But if it weren’t for my husband’s slight addiction to supermarket foraging, I would probably have existed on coffee, air and some of those afore-mentioned pre-chewed sofa biscuits. That’s mostly still the case. So, sometimes, when I sit there stewing on when he is going to deign to come through the door, I need to be a bit more realistic about it.

WHAT I THINK HE IS DOING VERSUS THE REALITY:

THE DRIVE HOME/TO WORK

IN MY HEAD: My other half bombs along the motorway to a soundtrack of driving favourites including the Cardigans’ Favourite Game, window open if it’s a hot day, bobbing his head in the ‘car dance’. Everyone he meets along his journey is of a ‘Christian’ nature and lets him in where he needs to go. He arrives at the office and home again 80s movie style.

THE FAR MORE LIKELY SCENARIO: It’s the M62, not the California freeway. Most of the winter it’s freezing fog, the rest of the year it’s grey and when it’s sunny the last place he wants to be is inside a car on the way to work.

IN MY HEAD: Life’s a breeze. He saunters from a breakfast meeting with Danish Pastries and steaming hot coffee to a lunch meeting with platters of meats, treats and assorted exotic fruits. When meetings are over he sets his feet on his desk and ponders his fantasy football team.

THE FAR MORE LIKELY SCENARIO: After a negotiating his way through black ice and lorries on the M62 he pitches up at the office and seeks out a hot desk for the day. He has to source all his own coffee and sustenance, use his calculator a LOT and then get back on the open road, all the time knowing I’m at the door with a baby and a stopwatch.

LUNCH

IN MY HEAD: He strolls out into the sunshine, his jacket hung over his shoulder, whistling. He takes his pick from various delicious wares at local eateries then deliberates, cogitates and digests while reading Times online.

WHAT REALLY HAPPENS: He’s either on the road to another meeting so stops off for a pre-packed motorway sandwich with all the nutrition of a sock stuffed with lettuce, or it’s a Gregg’s pasty and a packet of crisps. He generally carries on working so he can’t remember what it was he ate anyway.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

STOPPING OFF AT THE SUPERMARKET

IN MY HEAD: He’s Gene Kelly with a shopping trolley. Not ready to face feeding time at the zoo home yet, my other half dreams up an ‘excuse buy’ so he can stop off at the haven of he local supermarket. He gleefully pulls off his tie at the door of the supermarket, whirls it round and skips through the supermarket whistling ‘it’s the most wonderful time of the year…’ occasionally stopping to sample what’s new in sun dried tomato paste, cheese or beer at one of those little pop up stalls they do. He saunters down aisle after aisle, overly perusing bacon, pickles, anything that offers him a few more minutes respite from home. Pure escapism.

MORE LIKELY: Driving home from a long day at the office he realises that if he doesn’t remember the key ingredient for tonight’s tea we may well be on a bowl of stale cereal. Though he needs a traipse through the wilting veg like he needs a hole in the head, he knows that’s not what two grown adults need to get through the winter, does the honourable thing and stops in for half a cucumber and a cabbage. Obviously he still stops off at the pop up freebie stall. He’s only human.

STAYING AWAY FOR A NIGHT

IN MY HEAD: He’s in a plush suite with a massive telly and a stonking jacuzzi bath. He either gets a steak and a good bottle of red in the hotel restaurant or orders up the best club sandwich he’s ever eaten then soaks in the tub, puts on a movie and reclines for the evening.

MORE LIKELY: He’s in a Premier Inn. Near an industrial unit. Miles from the town centre. They’ve only got minestrone soup left on the menu. The shower is tepid and he has a mountain of work to do.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

GOING FOR A HAIR CUT

IN MY HEAD: He strolls down to the barber’s, maybe stopping off for a sausage sandwich and opts for a cut with a bonus head massage. He takes the long route home.

REALITY: He has a hair cut. Then comes home.

FITTING IN A GYM SESSION

IN MY HEAD: He bangs his tunes on then does a few half-hearted minutes on the treadmill. He rows, because he is a man and that’s what they do. He takes a seat and reads the magazines cover to cover. He enjoys a Mars Bar from the vending machine – he’s worth it. He has a long, hot power shower then strolls home, invigorated.

REALITY:  He does what everyone does in the gym. He gets his sh*t done then gets out of there. He feels just as tired when he comes out as he did going in. He’s forgotten what invigoration is.

Ever embellish on how green the grass is for your other half?

* Gene Kelly and Greggs bag images originally from Youtube, Successful test drive image originally from Freedigitalphotos (stockimages), Afternoon tea image from The Ritz, Premier Inn photo from TripAdvisor