Firstly, can we take a moment to throw up a bit in our mouths at the expression ‘freedom day’? It’s tacky and gross, but more to the point it’s wrong.

Freedom day is all very well is you are fit and healthy and happy to be out and about amidst a virus, (which I am and I appreciate that), but the virus hasn’t gone away. If you are vulnerable, physically or emotionally, the idea of suddenly now not even having the protection of face masks in busy places must be terrifying. Not exactly freeing for sure.

But this post isn’t a call to arms of any kind, because this is a personal blog and so it’s All About Me, dur.

I’ve not been having a great week.

Okay, that’s not true, Monday was good – we had a few hours left of our motorhome break, (see my Goboony stories highlight on Instagram), and then after we’d dropped the van off Belle and I did a casual Egyptian themed escape room on the way home in 45 minutes – one of our best times in a while. I’m not saying we’re competitive, but there was a lot of high fiving and post room debriefing around how amazing we both are.

And then we got home and everything sort of collapsed in on itself. The thought of having to go back to ‘work’, and I admit I use this term as a freelancer in the loosest possible sense, felt appalling. Not only did I just NOT WANT TO, but I was sure that no one would ever want to give me any work ever again. I checked my blog traffic, I felt sad, my thighs felt vast, the house looked a mess – fair to say I was overwhelmed.

I was hot though, and tired, and I know that coming home from holidays can be tricky. A good night’s sleep I thought, then I’ll feel better.

I didn’t feel better.

I actually woke up on Tuesday with a slight but noticeable sense of dread – something that hasn’t happened in months. I eased myself into the day with coffee and a book in the garden, finally pulling myself together to start work at 10am. At 10.05am I shut my laptop and went upstairs to see Belle. On the way up the stairs I started crying and by the time I sat on her bed I was in full on toddler mode.

‘I don’t WANT to work,’ I sobbed. ‘It’s not fair. Why aren’t I rich? I just want to drive around in a van and have coffees and go on steam trains. I just want to be retired. I don’t want to have to DO things, I want someone ELSE to do them.’

I couldn’t have been much more dramatic about it if I’d actually stamped my feet, or perhaps peed my pants in protest.

After about ten minutes of me crying and Belle sympathetically patting me on the arm and asking if I was pre-menstrual, (maybe, who even knows anymore?), I realised that it didn’t matter how much I cried, the work would still be there in the end, so I set myself a 20 minute timer and got on with it.

It was hard though.

My mind wandered and if I let it go too far from the screen I would feel overwhelmed and make small, pathetic whimpering noises.

I’m boring myself now with this story.

The upshot is that I thought about it a bit and I began to wonder if it wasn’t entirely a coincidence that my anxiety had coincided with ‘freedom day’, so I did what all good influencers do and I posted on Instagram about it.

‘There is something about moving on that makes me sad,’ I said. ‘Amidst the horror and the fear there were moments that I grew to love – the empty roads, the nods in the park to other solitary walkers, the thrill of a takeaway coffee on another weekend walk because there’s nothing else to do but actually you don’t mind because you’ve grown to love the space and the solitude and the slowness.’

I really am sad to let that go.

What I think feels so sad and scary about it is that we will never be able to willingly recreate it. While we can learn lessons from it, try to give our own lives a slower pace, to hold on to the good parts about lockdown, we will only really be able to do it on a very small scale, and probably only by retreating into our own lives and homes, and that’s not the same.

It’s not the same as walking to the beach and it being deserted and being able to see a vast, quiet landscape in all directions. That’s the bit that scares me and makes me sad – that we have all rushed back in to fill the spaces and no matter how much we want individually to slow our lives, we can’t control everything around us.

(I know that this is the crux of it because when I wrote this bit I felt my breath catch and I cried a little bit. I find writing useful like that, as a way to help me figure out what’s bothering me. Bit awkward that I’m in Costa waiting for my car to be serviced next door, but I don’t think anyone noticed because, ironically, it’s too busy and loud.)

What I’m saying is, freedom day hasn’t left me feeling free. During lockdown I felt freedom from decision overwhelm, from the pressure to socialise, to shop, to fill the space, and now I feel crowded, physically and emotionally.

While we may have gained some practical freedoms, it feels like so many others have been taken away.

Freedom day

Photo by Nicholas Sampson on Unsplash

 

Follow:

I’ve found myself spending a fair amount of time lately on Rightmove. It’s because a house identical to mine in the next street went on the market a couple of weeks ago – it’s exactly the same, but has been listed for £265,000, £85,000 more than I paid for mine four years ago. I don’t imagine it will sell for that, but it did get me thinking.

The more I look at other houses though, the more I remember the bits about my house that I love, the stuff I wouldn’t want to leave behind. This is the first house I’ve ever owned and I think that means I’ve invested way more in it, financially of course but emotionally too. I’ve done things like plants tiny honeysuckles in the garden, knowing that in five years time they will have grown to cover my pergolas. I’ve never had that attitude to a house before and I like it.

In fact my garden, despite being nothing but a square of gravel when I moved in, has become one of the things I would hate to leave behind. What is it about gardens? I guess you can’t take it with you in the same way that you can furniture.

small garden bench gardenbenches.com review

There are a couple of other things that it would be really tough to leave behind, one of them being my built in wardrobes. I had them made for my bedroom not long after we moved in, to fit the huge alcove on one side. Originally they were designed for two people, but then I dumped that loser, (hoorah!), and the wardrobes became ALL MINE. The happiness you get from a custom made wardrobe should never be underestimated. They bring me joy every day. If you get the chance, do consider fitted wardrobes London.

The final thing I like best about my house, and this may sound really cheesy, is my neighbours. This is one of the things that puts me off moving because although you can’t take your garden with you, you could plant another honeysuckle, but you can’t get your neighbours to move with you can you?

I love the area that we live in, and the people around us. There’s such a lovely, ‘friendly but not intrusive’ vibe, and I particular like my adjoining neighbour, who I’ve gotten to know a lot better during lockdown. She’s an absolute sweetheart and it’s so comforting knowing she’s just next door. We’ve been away this week for instance, and one of my cats wasn’t showing up for the sitter at breakfast time. Obviously I imagined the worse and was panicking horribly, so my neighbour took her key and popped in one evening and lo and behold, Camille was sat casually in an armchair, happy as anything. Without my neighbour my time away would have been ruined by cat worry.

So while Rightmove is still an interesting hobby – who doesn’t like a nose inside other people’s house? – I think for now it remain just that.

Follow:

We have this thing in our house. It goes like this…

Someone will get up to do something like go to the toilet or get a drink. Someone else, who has been waiting for just such an opportunity, will say ‘while you’re up…’ It is then the duty of the person who is up to do the bidding of the second person.

Sometimes it’s something simple like ‘while you’re up could you get me a drink of water please?’ Often though, it’s more complex. As it’s just me and Belle in the house and I’m a little more up and about than Belle normally, it’s often me who takes the brunt.

Picture the scene. I get up to have a wee. Belle, who has probably been secretly waiting for this moment for at least half an hour, stirs on the sofa.

‘While you’re up…’ she begins.

‘Yessss…’ I say, taking a slow intake of breath because she has a cheeky look on her face like she’s probably not going to be asking for a glass of water. ‘What?’

‘Can you get me some kind of pudding?’ She says.

‘What kind of pudding?’ I ask. (The worst requests are the non-specific ones.)

‘Something nice,’ she says.

‘We’ve got bananas?’ I suggest. She raises her eyebrows.

‘Could you get me,’ she begins, and she does a sort of wriggle in her seat, like she’s just thought of the perfect thing and she’s excited, ‘a bowl of ice cream, and could I have a spoonful of peanut butter on the top. And then could you grate a little bit of chocolate over it all? And could you get me my lip balm from upstairs please?’

And I have to do it because those are the rules of ‘while you’re up’. View Post

Follow:

Spoiler alert – I WILL give away the ending 

Toy Story has always had an uncanny way of mirroring my own life.

The first Toy Story film came out in 1995, the year Bee was born – an introduction to the world of parenting and children and toys when, let’s be honest, I was basically still a child myself. 1999 saw the release of Toy Story 2 when Bee was four years old and the prime age for imaginative play.

Then we had a break, and in 2010 Toy Story 3 swept in, just as Bee was gearing up to leave school and start college, with a film all about kids growing up and leaving home. Andy was a teenager now, moving on. He didn’t need Woody and the other toys anymore. They were being left behind, their job done, but what next for them? Who were they without Andy?

God. I saw that film THREE TIMES in the cinema and I cried every damn time.

And then Toy Story 4.

I didn’t know what to expect, and initially I was kind of disappointed.

‘I don’t buy it,’ I said dismissively to Belle as we left the cinema. ‘No way would Woody have left Bonnie and his friends, that’s just not his style.’

Nonplussed would have been a good word to describe me. I just didn’t get it. It seemed so out of character for Woody when his whole life until now had been about taking care of others. He lives for being someone’s toy. That’s his JAM.

It was only about an hour later, while I was doing the washing up and thinking about it some more, that it struck me – that was the POINT wasn’t it? Woody HAS spent his whole life looking after other people, leading people, taking care of them, and it wasn’t enough any more.

Woody has had his very own midlife unravelling.

Toy Story 4 midlife crisis

(Catch up with my own midlife unravelling here if you’ve not read it already.) View Post

Follow:

I had a phone call this week. It was annoying as I had a mouth full of pea shoots and had to munch them up and swallow them quickly. When I answered I discovered it TOTALLY wasn’t worth it.

‘Hello,’ said the voice on the other end, which sounded like a robot but wasn’t, ‘I’ve been informed you’ve been in a car accident that wasn’t your fault, is that correct?’

I gasped in horror, as though I was being told this news for the first time and had suddenly realised that my legs were trapped. ‘Who informed you?’ I asked.

‘When did the accident take place?’ asked the not robot.

‘That’s not really an answer is it?’ I said. ‘I asked who informed you?’

Silence, and then the dial tone.

I was quite disappointed as I was on my lunch break with time to kill and had been keen to string it out for a bit. Since the call I’ve been considering alternative responses, and have had a few suggestions from Twitter, so I’ve compiled a list for you of alternative things to say the next time someone calls to tell you that they’ve been informed that you’ve been in a car accident. You might want to print off this list and keep it by the phone so it’s handy.

You’re welcome.

View Post

Follow:

We had book group at my house last night. It’s my very favourite sort of book group because it goes like this:

  • 8pm: We choose our drinks
  • 8.05pm: We eat crisps
  • 8.10pm: We chat about children, work and random stuff we’ve seen on the TV
  • 9pm: We ate a selection of small cakes
  • 9.05pm: We talk some more about things that aren’t to do with books
  • 10.20pm: We give the book a mark out of ten and set the date for the next meeting
  • 10.30pm: Everyone goes home to bed

It’s ace.

Last night, conversation got onto avocado hand, which led to one book group member revealing that she was banned from using the mandolin at home. I told everyone that sometimes I accidentally grate my fingernails in with the cheese, but I don’t think that was quite the same, so then I was quiet again.

Anyway, it got me thinking about middle class injuries. You know the sort of thing I mean – you get a little scratch on your eyeball when your electric pepper grinder backfires? You iPad drops on your face when you’re watching House of Cards in bed?

There are some very funny middle class injuries out there, so I thought I would compile a selection of my favourites from Twitter for you. Be warned – I am not responsible for any accidents that happen whilst reading this list, so hold your phone tightly. View Post

Follow:

I drove past my Grandma and Grandad’s old house yesterday. You know, the one that my sister and her family lived in after my grandparents? The one where I cried when the kitchen door moved? (That was a bit embarrassing.)

This is it, just before they left:

Grandparents' house

I’ve not driven past it since my sister left because I was nervous about it having changed too much and it making me sad, but it turned out to be okay. The blinds were closed and the front lawn was very nice and neat, which my Grandad would have been pleased about, and apart from that everything looked the same.

Phew. View Post

Follow:

That’s a good question for a Monday morning isn’t it? How exactly do you know if you’ve made the right decision about something?

Well, maybe you don’t.

But maybe that’s okay.

I went and spent the night at the seaside last week, because I fancied a paddle. I did actually paddle too, even though it was really bloody freezing. I did a ten minute Twitter poll and surprise surprise, 95% of people were in favour of the February paddle. I feel a bit sad really for the 5% who said no because seriously, how can you go to the beach and not want to take your tights off and get your feet wet?

Making a decision isn’t always as easy though as conducting a Twitter poll, although we can take the paddling as a simple example of how you don’t always need to worry about whether you’ve made the right decision.

Twitter decided I should go for a paddle, so I did. It was fun – I felt like I was doing something exciting and exhilarating. I felt like I’d made the most of going to the beach. Let’s say though that I had decided not to paddle – I would have avoided having freezing cold feet and tiny bits of sand and stones in my boots for the rest of the day, which would have also been nice.

So this is my first point – it doesn’t normally matter what you decide, because in most cases there is no right or wrong answer.

I took this photo while I was at the beach to illustrate my point:

have I made the right decision? View Post

Follow:

Earlier this week I wrote about feeling a bit glum with a cold, and mentioned that to cheer myself up, I liked putting toys in funny positions around the house.

Well, Philippe and Bertie must have read that post, because since then, every time I come home, they’re up to mischief. I’ve sent pictures to Fiancé, and he says it all looks rather sexual, but I think they are just playing. This morning I came downstairs to the kitchen and they were trying to make tea. That’s not sexual – that’s just helpful. Except I was a little worried about them with the kettle.

It’s very hard to feel sad though when you come across a fox giving a bunny a pony ride.

rabbit making tea

rabbit in cute position

rabbit playing the piano

rabbit having a pony ride

Follow:

Did you ever do that thing at school where you were given a picture of something completely random and asked to write a story about it?

I have an awful memory generally, but I remember vividly being about eight years old and made to do this. The teacher had a pack of postcards and held each one up in turn. If you liked the look of it you could put your hand up. I waited and waited, not wanting to commit myself to anything too early, but before I knew it the pack was finished and I ended up with a picture of a sofa on a rubbish dump.

Not the most inspiring of images.

I was reminded of this today when I saw this picture on Unsplash. It’s basically the opposite of a sofa on a rubbish dump:

creative writing
It made me want to immediately sit down and write about it because it made me FEEL so much. (The sofa on the rubbish dump did not do this. I remember much sighing and chewing of my pencil.)

Smells came into my head first – the salty tang of the sea, wafts of damp wood from the boards under my feet. And then the sounds – the pulse of the water, the crash as it breaks against the deck, and that lone seagull, calling out as it circles the surf.

Can you feel yourself there? Are you standing on the edge of the picture? Can you feel the spray cold on your face?

It’s wonderful isn’t it?

What I especially love is that everyone’s imagining of this photo will be slightly different. We might all be there, gazing out to sea, but our eyes and ears will be drawn to different things. We will feel it in different ways.

It’s like life and it’s what makes things so interesting – millions and millions of us having the same experiences but in very different ways.

Follow:

A funny and unusual thing happened this morning. I accidentally sent Belle to her school cake sale with a batch of home made jam tarts. 

I know, I know, it’s about the least slummy thing I have ever done, but in my defence, I didn’t mean to.

Let me set the scene.

I’ve not been feeling very well this week. Belle has been a bit poorly too, so was off school on Wednesday, and yesterday I was feeling particularly rough, in that self-absorbed, ‘I’m so ill’ sort of way. I went to Sainsbury’s in the morning and a friend from book group had to literally stand in front of me and shout boo, and it still took about two seconds for the world to swim into focus from behind the fog of self-pity.

Anyway, you know how sometimes when you’re feeling a bit yukky, so just want something nice to comfort you? I decided that the something nice I wanted was jam. Fiance actually made some jam a couple of months ago, but I felt a bit bad just eating jam out of the jar with a spoon, so I decided to make jam tarts.

Let’s face it, what exactly is a jam tart if not just a socially acceptable way to eat big blobs of jam? Plus you don’t even have a spoon to wash up at the end. 

So I made some.

The pastry was a bit iffy, and I had a few problems when it came to making the cases. I only had a small cutter or a large cutter, when clearly what I needed was a medium cutter. I did my best though. I cut out 12 small circles, an then individually rolled each one out a bit more to make it bigger. I pictured myself on the Bake Off. Paul’s eyebrows were raised.

jam tarts

(This is a stock image, but fairly representative of the scene, although I was probably a little more generous with the jam. I didn’t want you to think though that I went about life doing ordinary things like feeling a bit crap and making jam tarts, pausing every few minutes to style a photo, just in case.) View Post

Follow:

I’ve always had really vivid dreams. Often they have a feature film quality to them – big long adventures that feel like they go on for hours and that leave me feeling exhausted when I wake up in the morning.

In the last couple of weeks though, I’ve had some really weird dreams, dreams that have left me feeling a bit awkward with myself.

‘Er… dude, did you just dream that? Are you okay?’

Like the dream about the extra arms. They had grown out of either side of me, from my waist, and were the same size and shape as my regular arms. I looked it up afterwards, and dreaming of having extra arms is a classic apparently when you feel like you have a lot going on, and literally could do with an extra pair of hands, but in all the interpretations I read, the extra arms were helpful.

Not so mine.

My extra arms were intent on making life as difficult for me as possible, and were totally outside my control. Their favourite thing to interfere with was me going to the toilet. In the dream I was desperate for a wee, but every time I tried to go, the extra arms would wrestle with me to pull my trousers back up. It was really not cool. There I was, shouting at them, and trying to wrench them off my pants, and they were just looking evil and chuckling to themselves. (They probably weren’t actually chuckling, because they were arms, but it felt like it.)

And then there was the dream where I discovered I had a magical power. If I looked at someone that had made me feel angry or anxious, and stared hard, they would go kind of fuzzy, and then turn into a can of tuna.

can of tuna, dreams

I mean, that’s weird isn’t it?

This magical ability was a novelty to start with, but then it went a bit mad, and I couldn’t control it any more, and suddenly there was a lot of tuna. I won’t go into the plot, but let’s just say it was very complex and went on for a long time. I got really scared, and couldn’t look at anyone directly – what if I accidentally turned someone I loved into a can of tuna? What if someone realised it was me, and locked me up in some sort of… well… I don’t know what. Where do you put a crazy lady who can’t help but turn people into tuna with her eyes?!

I looked up what it means to dream of a can of tuna, but there wasn’t a lot of specific information to be honest. One website said ‘To see tuna in your dream symbolizes stamina and agility. Through your life experiences, you will build character and become stronger.’ That sounded okay to me. There was a lot about fishing, catching fish, holding fish, but very little about the ability to turn people into canned fish with the power of your mind, funnily enough.

It’s exhausting.

I’d say I could do with a sleep, but well, I don’t really think that would help, do you?

What are your weirdest dreams?

Image – ooddysmile stocker/shutterstock

Follow: