musingsponderingsandrants

Parenting, profundities and humour

Category: life

Echo Chamber — September 11, 2025

Echo Chamber

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I may have briefly mentioned that we recently dropped Youngest off at University.

Well, that is not strictly true as she actually flew on a 10 hour flight alone to her university, but we dropped her at the airport.

At that time Eldest was still in residence finishing off a summer job and Middlest was about, in between various trips and activities, so we returned to a fullish house.

Then we ourselves flew on the same 10 hour trip to settle Youngest in her permanent dorm after her month of a nomadic lifestyle half way across the world.

When we returned 10 days later Eldest and Middlest had decamped back to university, and our nest was finally empty.

It has been a week and a half. It has been OK. But the oddest thing to get used to is the silence.

We have had years of loosely contained chaos. Noise. Madness.

And that has stopped.

So I do find myself laughing out loud at podcasts and ‘turning on the TV for company’.

I spent a lot of their childhoods counting the hours until 7pm, when they were finally all asleep. Or when they were teenagers relishing those times everyone was out at various places and I was at home.

Now I have that luxury all the time. And I miss the chaos.

Compartmentalisation — April 3, 2025

Compartmentalisation

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Today I woke up at 3am in a bit of a sweat. This isn’t unusual for me, seeing as I am a woman of a certain age.

However this time the menopause had nothing to do with it.

My alarm was set for 6.30am, despite it being the school Easter holidays, giving me a break from the usual early wake ups. The alarm was set because Youngest and I had a 10am appointment in London to provide her biometrics (as it turned out all her finger prints and a photo, no swabs required…) at the Canadian Visa office.

The appointment was made by me a while back when I sent her Visa application in. I picked a Thursday because there is never football on a Thursday. There wasn’t supposed to be football this Wednesday either, but that doesn’t always work out. Friendlies materialise at short notice. So I always schedule stuff for Thursdays.

A few days earlier I realised that my weekly online shop, which is always delivered between 9 and 10 am on a, yes you guessed it, Thursday wasn’t going to work. What with us being in London. Thankfully I was able to move the slot to 4pm…

Then yesterday I planned our train times, factoring in early morning traffic, how full the station car park gets, and the walk from Farringdon to our destination, bought the tickets, argued with Youngest about the early start and went to bed.

At 3am I awoke and remembered that I work on Thursday mornings and hadn’t told my colleagues not to expect me. Which I probably should have.

And this is a classic example of how my brain operates. It compartmentalises. Sometimes with quite difficult consequences.

I think compartmentalising is a useful skill, especially when there is a lot going on and the bigger picture is too large to hold. For fear of ending up gibbering in a corner.

I was speaking to a friend earlier in the week, discussing how exhausting it is to always have to hold everyone else’s emotions. Mothering teens and young adults is like that. Yes, there are logistics (quite mind-blowing at times) and lots of practical assistance required (food, lifts, getting stuff, finding stuff etc etc). But the hardest part is holding all those emotions.

Youngest is going to Canada to study for her degree. At the end of July. It’s a massive and scary step for her. But also a truly amazing opportunity. I have to hold all her worry and concern. And also be relentlessly optimistic and excited for her. Oh, and also provide tons of assistance with the frankly overwhelming amount of admin for it.

When people ask me how I feel about her going, I answer honestly that I have no space for that. That emotion is in a compartment that I will open once she disappears through the security gates at Heathrow.

It won’t be pretty.

Small Things — February 17, 2024

Small Things

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I have reached that point in life when my nest is emptying. It still has one fledgling, and for her I am very grateful. And the other two migrate back to their home nest on a relatively regular basis (last week being a case in point), and are always very welcome. But those years of us as the four musketeers are over.

I haven’t found it as bad as I thought I might, mostly because Youngest’s sport takes up a lot of time. And also because I try to believe the perceived wisdom.

That perceived wisdom is that a mother should be glad when her offspring fly the nest, because their upbringing has all been leading up to this point. The years of love and care have produced young people equipped to make their own way in world. They were never yours to begin with, they were on loan. Etc.

And I agree with all of that. I am pleased Eldest and Middlest are off in the world smashing it. And that Youngest will soon follow. I am immensely proud of the people they have become. They are wonderful human beings, whom I adore.

But today I went to my hairdressers. I parked in a car park I haven’t really used for a couple of years, because for some reason my car feels wider than it used to and I prefer the overground one now. But I went there today.

I walked from there to the hairdressers through the carpark of the Lidl, and down the alley way to the street. And then it hit me that all those years of my taking them to that same salon for their half termly tag team of haircuts (always preceded by an animated discussion on who was going first), walking from that same car park, down that same alley, followed always by a pizza , were over.

They won’t ask me again what those strange boxes are in that Lidl alleyway. They asked me that every time we made that 6 weekly walk throughout their childhoods and adolescence. First as a genuine enquiry and then as a joke. Every damn time.

Today there’s that small thing that has floored me.

It’s a rat trap baby, and I’ve been caught.

Let Somebody Go… — May 18, 2022

Let Somebody Go…

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This Friday Eldest is leaving school.

I am just leaving that there.

For me that sentence takes a while to settle. Like a heavy stone on my chest.

I seem to have been preparing for the big day for a long time. Sourcing school shorts big enough for him to wear on the last day as if he were still in the junior school (it’s an upper 6th Leavers Day tradition). Helping him apply to university. Providing food and support during the endless rounds of revision. Attending and supporting the ‘lasts’ of everything. Last Christmas concert, last Spring Concert, last rugby match, last hockey match, last cello lesson, last Monday…..

Throughout this process I would like to say that my overriding feeling is pride at the amazing young man he has become, which of course I am. Because he is.

But what I feel the most is unbearably sad.

“I called the mathematicians and asked them to explain. They said love is only equal to the pain”.

Coldplay ‘Let Somebody Go’

The Change (Part 2- The Revenge…) — April 10, 2022

The Change (Part 2- The Revenge…)

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So regular readers may remember my post a while back about the menopause. I have just checked and I published it 4 years ago in 2018, when the world was a different place. The Change is still one of my most read blogs of all time. So I thought it time to revisit it.

So here is my first observation…. I wrote that blog 4 years ago. And here I still am waiting for the actual menopause to happen. For those not in the know to be classed as ‘through the menopause’ one has to stay period free for 12 months.

So in my case I have, a couple of times, reached the 9 or 10 month mark and then, well you guessed it, an emergency trip to the feminine hygiene aisle. Well actually that’s not true because a while back (about a month before my first nine month stint) I invested an horrendous amount of money in pairs of period pants. A relatively new invention which are truly life changing. And landfill saving. Well they would be if I had used them more than thrice.

Sorry I digress. So I still haven’t made it through. The clock restarted again for me last December. Its all rather annoying. If by annoying I mean fucking irritating.

I haven’t gone down the HRT route. Mainly because I can’t face trying to get a GP appointment. That’s a whole other blog but I have during the pandemic just rolled on ‘as nature intended’ or not…as I am redundant evolutionarily speaking and if nature was truly taking its course and doing what was intended I would be pushing up daisies. Well again not actually as I want to be cremated. Good cliche though.

Since the pandemic (or rather since we started ignoring the pandemic) primary care hasn’t got all that much easier to deal with so I have not yet summoned the requisite emotional energy to try to sort it out. That’s an ongoing symptom a lack of emotional energy. Or indeed energy.

Combine that with 3 teenagers, none of whom have yet learned to drive, and I just can’t seem to fit it in. And yes I know I should ‘prioritise my self care’. Prioritising self care is just another way to make people feel bad about their apathy… or maybe that’s just me.

Anyway what are my other new observations 4 years on?

In my last blog my main issues were cyclical. Not now. Now they are constant. Hot flushes, irritability, tiredness and yet also insomnia, cognitive decline (or ‘going upstairs to get something and standing at the top of the stairs at a complete loss after the 30 seconds it took you to get up the stairs’), lack of emotional energy, weepiness or extreme rage, much more swearing.

However the main change since last time has come as a quite horrific shock to me. For my entire life until about a year ago if I put on weight I did so on my hips and arse. In a reassuringly heart friendly way. And I was able to channel my inner Monroe until I could be bothered to reduce my kettle chip intake.

Over the last year, and due to a combination of pandemic, some tough issues we faced with Youngest, being peri menopausal and just generally not ‘prioritising my self care’ I have put on weight.

I am not alone in this… we are a nation slightly plumper as we dealt with all the deprivations of lockdown in that time honoured way of comfort eating. I guess some people got thinner, due to a combination of Joe Wicks and making the most of that one permitted walk a day, but my guess (and I have done absolutely no research here) is probably not many.

In times gone by (for instance in my first year at Uni, horribly home sick and with a bakery serving the best vanilla slice I have ever eaten on my route home to halls for lunch) any extra weight was easily dispatched by a double pronged attack of aerobics and sensible eating.

And even at my heaviest (that year at Uni is still it remarkably) my stomach was flat and my waist trim. A fortuitous accident of genes I imagine. I always dressed for my waist.

And now as I hover dangerously close to that weight again I can tell you people that I no longer have a flat stomach or a trim waist.

Fuck.

Recently I read that the NHS may change how they measure fatness from BMI to waist to height ratio. I can guarantee you that any woman through or approaching menopause will fail. Unless they are that ‘haggard thin’ some women keep into old age.

No worries, I thought, I’ll go back on the Weight Watchers app and lose the excess. (Other diet apps are available. If you can find one with a more complicated ‘points system’ I’ll be amazed. My depleted cognitive function struggles I can tell you). And I’ll also do some exercise DVDs and stop pretending that a bit of light housework daily ‘counts’.

So I have. And let me tell you that stuff does not want to shift. I have stuck religiously to the diet. And almost killed myself 4 times a week and lost 1lb. Over 3 weeks. One measly pound. And none of it as far as I can tell from my waist.

Fuck.

So it’s depressing. I’ll be eating plain chicken and salad forever. Or I’ll be unhealthy. Take your pick.

Anyway I am soldiering on against all the odds. Until my weight, wherever it lands on the old bod, is at least comfortably in ‘normal’ BMI range although my waist to height may never get there, unless I grow, which seem unlikely.

So I have bought boot cut jeans and loose shirts and floaty cardigans. For the first time ever.

Fuck.

Witness — February 11, 2022

Witness

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You small patch of uninspiring mud
And tangled shrubs and broken bricks and sporadic grass
Graveyard of deflated, lost spheres
from games long over
Revealed in winter’s barrenness
What witness you have borne

Zip wiring teddies hung by their ears,
Trebuchets of poles where once beans scrambled
Paint mixed from gravel, water daubed fences
Chalk emblazoned flag stones
And shelters of sheets.

Naked abandon in sprinkled water freezing
Tepid pools deserted after one day of sliding
(For bugs and grass and rain)
Sun hats (with flaps), sun suits (with reluctance)
Surprise cricket matches (with Grandmas)
Police cars, and red cars, and skateboards and diggers.

Hot wheels on hot days out of the window
Ping pong and croquet (wood worm still allowing)
Bouncing and flipping and screaming and laughing
Tap tap of sticks and off cuts of carpet
Records broken in ruined socks.

Snowflakes on sleeves in wonder and confusion
Food sprinkled for four hoofed sled pullers
Snowman delivered by hand to the door
Water in guns and frozen in balls
And countless battles amongst boulder strewn fields

Fights with the shiny hard orbs of autumn
Harvesting melons and raspberries and cucumbers
(And strawberries, yellow and black soldiers permitting)
Birds logged and counted and nest boxes mounted
Teaching and watering and digging and planting

Muddy circles on free flapping laundry
Lost spectacles found in peg bags
Stumps and posts and nets and bare patches
Paint on tables and dollies in baths
And photos and photos and photos and photos

You small patch of inspiring mud
And exciting shrubs and useful bricks and field of dreams
Collector of lost but now returned spheres
For games still to come
Rediscovered in winter’s barrenness
What witness you have borne

No news is good news… — January 12, 2022

No news is good news…

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For a long time once my kids were born I paid absolutely zero attention to world affairs.

I became one of those people living in my own little bubble. There were many reasons. It was mostly down to time, which was in short supply, exhaustion, see time, and apathy.

Becoming a mother can shrink the world. Down to its ability to harm or hinder one’s carefully grown and expelled off spring.

The day is taken up with the survival, development and ultimately the flourishing of these small people. Well at least it was for me.

I retreated to a world of toddler groups and coffee mornings. PTA meetings and NCT groups. Soft play, zoos, woods, the playground. Teaching my kids to walk, get dressed, use the toilet, ride a bike, make friends. Everyday had a pattern. As did every week. And year.

There didn’t seem room in this existence for the cold reality of the outside world. The country was enjoying the last throes of a Labour government I had voted for. We were unaware of the problems being stored up. I didn’t care. I could see a GP when I needed to. The schools had cash.

Even once that hand cart started its slow trundle towards Hades I still didn’t much care. We had school events and parents evening and sports fixtures and the long school holidays full of adventures and trips. Life was mostly wonderful.

However it made me insular and woefully inadequate in any company where children were not the main focus. I was out of my depth at my husband’s work functions. I was uninformed.

But here is the thing. It helped me stay happy.

Since the start of the pandemic I have been reading a daily paper again. Looking at dashboards. Listening to round the clock news. Obsessing about the what ifs and what might have beens.

And whilst I am now very well informed I am also less happy.

For what started off as worry about the pandemic is now a worry about the environment, Russia, climate change, China, knife crime, Trumpism, the pandemic, the woeful state of our democracy, refugees, inequality etc etc.

The impotence I feel in nearly all these areas of world affairs is hard to live with. As is the indignation. The vitriol. The unfairness of mostly everything.

And although I am not advocating being wilfully uninformed about the world around us there is something to be said for the ‘head in the sand’ approach.

It’s tempting to retreat, ostrich like, to my bubble.

Dual control… — November 17, 2021

Dual control…

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Over the last 17 odd years of parenthood there have been quite a few times I have felt totally out of my depth.

As soon as Eldest popped out (and that’s a kind way of putting it he didn’t really ‘pop’ more sort of extruded in a long and anguished battle of wills that, I cannot lie, felt at times personal) I was out of my depth. We couldn’t work the car seat, I had no idea how to ‘latch him on’, he cried for hours and I was totally unable to work out why.

It slowly dawned on me through my sleep deprived haze that there is no handbook for parenting. I had read books. They all said totally contradictory things. Yes there was no one way to do things and certainly no ‘right way’.

As a natural rule follower, list maker, control freak and fine detailer this was intensely terrifying.

The longer motherhood goes on the more you realise that the roles it involves are myriad and diverse. Some of them fit easily into one’s natural psyche (I for instance never miss a school letter, return a form late or fail to have the right child at the right place at the right time) but others…don’t.

In this last week I have been:

  • chef
  • maths/ English/ biology teacher
  • taxi driver
  • therapist
  • logistics manager
  • gaoler
  • confidant
  • baker
  • cheer leader
  • repairer
  • finder of lost treasures
  • cleaner
  • team manager
  • boss
  • tester
  • entertainer
  • party planner
  • butt of jokes

and that probably only scratches the surface. But there is one recent role that I absolutely loath and that is ‘driving instructor’.

Firstly I want to say that the mere fact that that child I extruded the blink of an eye ago can sit behind the steering wheel is unfathomable to me.

But leaving that aside (which I really can’t but that is another blog) being a driving instructor to one’s offspring is frankly terrifying.

I am not a good car passenger. Over the last 17 odd years the amount of driving I have done has been astronomical. I am the main driver now (partially due to my ‘bad passenger’ vibes but also because I do not drink) and as such my ability to tolerate others’ (and here I mean Husband’s) driving is probably somewhere below zero. I am a terrible passenger. I squeak at late braking, I grab the handle above the door on corners, I get stressed and tense and I offer ‘advice’. All of which are intensely annoying.

So when Eldest asks to go out in his car with me to practise my heart literally sinks. Probably how he feels when he hears me say ‘lets have a family board game evening’.

When I learnt to drive my parents never took me out driving. It took me a year of lessons to finally pass. Eldest does not want to wait a year. Frankly neither do we. We need him to take up some of the logistics slack. Leaving aside the eye watering cost.

So although I agree that I should take him out to practise I still do not really want to. It’s scary. He is not a terrible driver. Just not me. So he does things when and how I would not. It takes all my will power not to let out little shrieks of distress when he pulls out into a gap I would not. I breathe in when he passes parked cars. We fall out. I undermine his confidence.

So this morning at 7.10am (I kid you not) we went to the local village car park to practise manoeuvers and I determined not to speak/ shriek/ offer advice/ breathe in.

It went quite well. I think.

I am not sure teenagers really understand what it is like to just have to assume these roles, for which there is no training, which you would never do as an actual job, and for which you are totally ill equipped. No I am absolutely sure they have no idea. And why should they?

Still a little understanding wouldn’t hurt. Or a dual control car.

Beautiful moments — May 22, 2021

Beautiful moments

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So life has been pretty shit over the last 6 months.

All the lockdown rubbish, the lack of Christmas, home schooling, the short dark cold days with unrelenting miserable weather, the uncertainty and anxiety of the slow re-opening, our new and wonderful fame as a virus hot spot.

Added to that the trauma of a serious mental illness which has ruled over all our lives like an iron rod beating us relentlessly over the head, shrinking our lives to small pin pricks of their former albeit quite restricted glory. The claustrophobia of family life in a melting pot of mental ill health and all the knock on effects on everyone. The slow and painful clambering up the sides of a slippery near vertical shelf with many many slips, very little light and not a whole lot of hope.

Within and amongst all this is the grief of the events and people missing from our lives. The family and friends missed. The rites of passage forgone. The exams not taken. The trophies and cups not won, the concerts not attended, the birthdays not celebrated. The music not sung.

And on top, the natural but painful pulling away of ones offspring. The beginning of their emotional detachment. Their preparations for their physical removal.

In this dark time there are few fleeting moments when one feels joy. A brief period of shining light.

Today on the way to school to drop off Middlest he wanted to share a new song discovery with me. And so we spent the next few minutes belting out Careless Whisper. He was impressed that I knew all the words. We bonded over it’s soaring notes (too high for Middlest), the power of the bridge, the pain fuelled sax solo.

It’s a great song. By a great singer/ songwriter.

It also today gave me a beautiful moment. A small shining raindrop-like jewel of time glinting in the weak sunlight.

Thanks George.

Here we go again on our own… — November 1, 2020

Here we go again on our own…

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Perhaps my favourite Whitesnake track. I have slightly paraphrased.

Staring down the barrel of a new lockdown here are my thoughts so far.

It felt inevitable. And now it feels late.

It is slightly better than March as there seems to be a genuine desire to keep kids at school. Which is a good thing.

And yes I get that teachers are scared. Hopefully less community interaction for all, students and staff alike, will mean less incidence in the classroom. And safer classrooms. Whatever the pros and cons I am grateful to teachers and other staff. My kids cannot take another extended period of on line education.

It feels worse than last time. This won’t be a cure. Like we hoped the last time was. It’s a braking mechanism. And this shit will probably happen again.

It’s really quite simple. That helps the message. Stay at home. No really. Except for all the bits of life that aren’t fun; education, work, medical shit, exercise and caring. Otherwise stay at home. If something makes you want to leave the house it’s probably not allowed.

We need to give up on Christmas. Grieve it a bit. Not live in a false hope. Others have given up Eid and Diwali and other major festivals, Easter was locked down. We can and should give Christmas up too. Yes it’s shit. But hey what isn’t.

It’s winter. Enough said.

I need to start getting my head around all the stuff that will never be the same at least not whilst my kids remain at home. Things that probably won’t happen like their last school orchestral concerts, proms, first XV or first XI matches, ever seeing a teacher in the flesh again. So far I have been too chicken to face them. But I need to face this shit. Grieve and move on. Act like the adult I am supposed to be.

Being the adult is shit.

I am going to miss fireworks.

The tardiness of our inept Government at least means we got a 2 day caravan holiday and I got all my kids’ eyes and teeth checked, Middlest’s shoulder and neck osteo’d and all their hair cut.

By a strange co-incidence I have a haircut booked for Weds. I had a haircut booked the week before the last stay at home order. I may grow my hair. I seem to be tempting fate.

I don’t like having to have to console my weeping daughter who cannot conceive how she will get through the next four weeks without sport. She will of course. She has food and warmth and love. And is ok. Shifting down the Maslow hierarchy of needs is never fun though. In fact it’s shit.

Although I am glad school is open learning without any of the fun bits could be quite shit, especially with all the windows open. I pray for mild, unseasonable weather.

My second child looks increasingly likely to miss his GCSEs as well. And no, no one wants to not take them to avoid them. It’s stealing; the experience, the opportunity, the hard work to date, the sense of achievement, or failure.

I need to get my Christmas mojo on and actually order some gifts. It is going to be shit enough as it is I cannot give into despondency and not buy thoughtful and welcome gifts for my loved ones. Especially my kids, who need whatever magic we can wring from the festive season this year.

I am bit low on loo roll. Which would be literally shit.

I might read some of those books I meant to read last time; after I have finished re-reading Riders. Which is all my shit for brains brain seems able to cope with currently.

It could be worse. Could it?

It occurs to me that I have used the word shit a lot. Whatever your position in all this I think we can all agree that that is highly appropriate.

Stay safe folks.