Who IS Michael Faraday?

Paul (smugly) told me this morning that he’s figured out parenting. Yeah, that was my face, too. But seriously, he does. I went to F45 this morning at the exact time Ben was supposed to be getting ready for his football match. Paul reckons he said to Ben – “MATE. I’ve got no clue where you’re supposed to be and when you’re supposed to be there. So, y’know, it’s on you. Good luck.” And – according to Super-Dad (or Snoop Daddy Dad, as he’d now like to be referred to as) – Ben was READY and RARING to go a solid 20 minutes before the due departure time. If Paul/Snoop is to be believed, Ben had his SHOES on and BAG in hand, while saying, “C’mon Paul, we’d better go now if we want to get there in good time.”

He tried a similar trick on Frankie. Instead of asking him what he wants for breakfast – which I always do, religiously, for I am a fool – Paul just GAVE him breakfast. He GAVE him food without a discussion about food beforehand. And Frankie ate it. He fucking ate it. 

Snoop 2. Notorious nil. 

We are – collectively, as a family – obsessed with Childish Gambino’s This is America. All of us, from Alice upwards. I haven’t been this obsessed with a song and its accompanying video since Kylie Minogue’s I Should Be So Lucky, c1988. Frankie’s doing the same thing that I used to do as a kid, which is write down the lyrics as he plays and pauses, plays and pauses. (Poor kid hasn’t figured out Genius yet.) We were rocking out to it in the car on the way to the movies last night, Frankie and Alice giving it ALL the moves. After the film – which was, appropriately, Solo – Ben shook his head and said, “God, Frankie said the guy from This is America was going to be in the film. What an IDIOT.” And we were, like, “Dude. He was.” “He wasn’t.” “He categorically was.” “But his HAIR was different.” “You’re a dickhead.” Etc. 

Frankie says he wants a laborigine when he grows up. I believe that he means a Lamborghini. 

Alice asked Frankie what he’s going to buy her for her fifth birthday in one month. Frankie says he’s going to buy her two iPhones (one for her, one for him), and if he hasn’t got enough money in his wallet, she’ll have to settle for a FitBit instead. 

Paul went for a run this morning and collected up all the debris that’d washed up on to the beach in the great storm of 2018. He photographed his collection and posted it in our suburb’s Facebook group, because if it didn’t happen on social media, did it even happen, bro? A woman commented, saying: “You guys are awesome!” and now Paul’s all bummed because it wasn’t GUYS plural it was GUY singular and he think I’m getting the credit for sitting on my arse and not picking up debris. I am. 

Paul played the kids Getting Jiggy With It and they all hated it. Ben said, scornfully: “Is this one of those old-fashioned rappers, like Jay-Z?” I felt a million years’ old. 

Frankie (6) asked Ben (12) if he knew who Michael Faraday was. And Ben was, like, YEAH, of course, that’s Big Shaq’s real name. Frankie shook his head and goes, “No, dickhead. He’s the father of modern electrics.” 

I need to be at the airport in one hour. I already miss my normal life. 

I just needed a break from the crunch 'n' fucking sip

In retrospect, I was a little bit fucked up in the latter part of 2017. I didn’t realise at the time. I knew I was crying a lot, and spending a lot of time sitting in carparks (in the car, not just on my arse on the hot bitumen) telling myself to pull myself together, bi-atch, and making weird, stupid mistakes like forgetting to enrol my eldest son into high-school, and sending Alice to school without her lunch but with 32 badly-iced cupcakes, however I didn’t realise I was in the midst of some kind of mental-health – I wouldn’t call it a breakdown – some kind of mental-health overheating. To continue the automobile analogy, I just stalled at the traffic lights. Went right instead of left. Put the headlights on instead of the windscreen wipers. Sideswiped a Ford Territory. Filled up with diesel rather than unleaded. Parked in a disabled bay. Etc etc.

In retrospect, it’s easy to look back and realise precisely why I was in the midst of a mental-health overheating in the latter part of 2017. Quite simply, I was doing too much. The latter part of the year – that period after my birthday, which falls (like clockwork) at the beginning of November – tumbles into chaos, what with the end of the school year, many and varied birthdays, end-of-term bullshit, lost library books and Christmas – fucking Christmas! – lurching into view like some kind of drunk, unwelcome aunt. I crumbled.

Again, I didn’t realise this. Fortunately, the people around me did. I am extraordinarily lucky in that the people around me know and understand when I start to overheat. My boss, for instance. How fucking fortunate am I to have a boss who realises when my brain’s short-wiring, and acknowledges that my eyes have actually filled with tears when she’s asked me to make a phone call, so takes steps to diffuse the chaos? And friends who are, like, woo, lady, you’re short-wiring: here’s an $80 voucher for a one-hour session in a flotation tank; go forth and diffuse, you mad crazy bitch. A husband who’ll pick up the slack, parents who’ll round up small people (my small people, but small people nonetheless) to give me a break, and a gym – thank god for a gym – which lets me pummel the shit out of pads rather than people.  

In retrospect, I found it spectacularly difficult to cope in the latter part of 2017. The smallest challenges seemed like THE END OF THE FUCKING WORLD (which, if you haven’t watched on Netflix, you really must, if only for the cinematography and the superb soundtrack), when in reality they could be fixed with Google and a ball-point pen. Nothing was THAT BAD, but when you’re overwhelmed and under pressure, even an online canteen order feels like the fucking Spanish inquisition.

In retrospect, all I needed was a break; a period of clear-headed puerility. The 10-day break over Christmas wasn’t just welcome – it was a fucking lifesaver. I can’t really stress that enough. I wrote my book. I read books. I went to Ikea (more therapeutic than it sounds). I sat on the beach. I painted my living room. I drank to excess. I ran. I punched shit (pads, not people). I hung out. I didn’t sweat the small shit. And suddenly, come January the whatever, when we packed our lunchboxes and headed back to work and school, I was OKAY. I was okay! And I’ve been okay ever since!

ALL I NEEDED WAS A BIT OF A FUCKING BREAK.

I didn’t need a five-star holiday (although it would’ve been nice).

I didn’t need an au pair (although it would’ve been nice).

I didn’t need millions of dollars (although it would’ve been nice).

In retrospect, all I needed was a break from the grinding monotony of school lunches and library days and football training and sports day and school pick-up and school drop-off and P&Cs and fundraisers and excursions and incursions and assembly items and reading books.

I was reminded of this as we wound up term 1, and its accompanying burnout. Fuck the kids; I needed the school holidays more than they did. I needed to not concern myself with crunch ‘n’ sip for a whole two weeks. Fuck it, the kids could survive on Arnotts’ Shapes and CBeebies for a fortnight, just as long as I don’t have to fight a bitch for a parking space.

You can't save your booze tokens

Here’s something that happened recently: at around the same time that I cut down on my use of Facebook, I also – steady yourself now – cut down on my alcohol consumption. Stop, wait, come back.

IT’S NOT WHAT YOU THINK.

I haven’t stopped drinking, just as I haven’t stopped checking Facebook. Jesus, I’m ONLY HUMAN. I stopped drinking once before, with disastrous consequences (see also, that time Lisa got fat and angry), so I’m not going down that road again. Besides, I love drinking. Drinking is ace. Drinking really takes the edge off. To clarify: I have not stopped drinking; I have simply stopped drinking to excess.

Here’s what happened: my jeans got tighter, and I couldn’t figure out why, ‘cos I eat all healthy and shit, and exercise like a motherfucker. How I get so fat, yo? And I did a bit of research (see also: intensive googling) and made the startling revelation that BINGE DRINKING IS NOT THAT GOOD FOR YOU.  

Who knew, eh?

And that was the thing. I wasn’t drinking during the week. From Monday to Thursday I was stone-cold sober, collecting up all my booze tokens to use on the weekend. ‘Cos that’s how healthy drinking guidelines work, right? You can save your booze tokens just like you can save your sick days and use them in bulk when you actually, desperately need them, like after a week of ferrying small people around and trying to find matching socks. Fuck yeah!

This seemed strangely logical, at the time. Paul endorsed this logic. And therein lies another problem: Paul and I are likeminded idiots, and we have a habit of endorsing each other’s idiocy. Like, when we were both getting fat and shit, and figured out it was the booze, we spent a good, solid week discussing the merits of drinking rather than eating, as though this was a legitimate lifestyle choice (clue: it’s not). That’s the THING, you see: we have so much FUN when we’re drinking. Like, we dance with the kids, and don’t worry about the state-of-the-floors, and that weird stain on the toilet wall. We CHILL. As such, we told each other, nodding sagely, drinking is GOOD FOR US. It stops us stabbing things.

Unfortunately – or fortunately, as the case may be – we are vain motherfuckers, and as we continued to get fat, we continued to google. Turns out YOU CAN’T SAVE YOUR BOOZE TOKENS. TURNS OUT, when you’re drinking the booze, your body has to put all its effort into converting the booze (I dunno into what) and forgets to convert the fat and sugar and shit, and so that’s why you get fat. I’ll be honest, I’m not entirely sure that’s the scientific explanation, but I was drunk while googling, so whatever. POINT IS, binge drinking makes you fat, yo.

And so – because we are vain motherfuckers, and for no other reason, apart from being old and less tolerant of hangovers and disturbed sleep – we cut down on the booze. And here’s a confession: WE FEEL BETTER. Like, we sleep better. And we’re not as groggy on a Monday. And we’re nicer people. And we fit back in our jeans. And I can crochet now (I can’t really).

There’s no real point to this story. I still drink, I just drink less, and I’m not for a second suggesting that you should continue drinking, drink less, or stop drinking entirely. I’m an idiot, remember, telling my idiot tales, of which this is one. On which note, go forth and do whatever it is that you want to do, unless it’s incest or line dancing.  

Haters, shakers and that time I thought a blind girl had it in for me

A weird thing happened to me the other day. Like, weirder than usual. Like, weirder than turning up to a birthday party a week early, or dressing up my daughter as a small French girl for school, when there was no celebration, French or otherwise. This was a different kind of weird. This was the kind of weird where I was actively disliked by someone I’d never met before. Not, like, a troll, or an online person hitting all the angry emojis on a Kidspot story that I’d written. No. This was a real person. I met them, and they disliked me instantly, and that was weird.

Here’s the thing: I’m well aware that I’m not for everyone. I have READ the Kidspot comments. Hellz, I’ve read the comments on my own blog (you know the one that still stings? It was the one in which a lady commented to another lady – her friend, presumably – that my stupidity hurt her. My stupidity hurt her! That one stopped me in my tracks. I am many, many things, but I am not stupid. Well okay, I’m a bit stupid. Like, the other morning, on the way to work in the car, I spilled coffee down my dress, because I was using a cheapo Target version of a Keep Cup. Faced with the coffee stainage, and without an alternative, I poured a bottle of water over myself. I poured a bottle of water over a white dress. Which was – yes, I’ll admit – a bit stupid. But hey! No coffee stain!), but online negativity aside, I know that I’m not for everyone. We all have different tastes. Like, some people love Coldplay. That’s fine lads. That’s grand. I do not like Coldplay, but I won’t think any less of you because you like Coldplay (well, I will a bit, but that’s okay, I’m only human).

MY POINT IS, I might not be for you, but give me a chance to rub you up the wrong way before you decide that I’m not for you, okay? Like, give me a CHANCE before you join the ever-growing gang of people who really dislike Lisa the human. Don’t just join the gang of people who hate The Notorious MUM and assume that gives you automatic membership into the human dislike-Lisa gang.

As an aside, the gang of people who really dislike Lisa the human is actually rather big. It’s weird. For someone who’s a proactive people pleaser (me), I have a lengthy list of enemies. I’ve been doing a bit of pop psychology on this subject, and here’s my hot take on why this is the case: I believe it’s because I am so keen to avoid confrontation and conflict that I would rather block, delete and ban you from my life – online and otherwise – than engage in confrontational peace talks. Yeah, we could meet up for a beer and a conciliatory cuddle, but I’d rather just delete you and pretend you never existed in the first place. I’m not proud of this aspect of my personality; I’m working on it, but it does explain why I spend a lot of my life hiding behind pillars and post boxes and pretending not to see people I used to quite love.

That’s beside the point. The point is, you shouldn’t judge someone you don’t really know, even if you might have read their blogs and think they sound a bit stupid. Give them a chance to be stupid in real life, first. 

It’s the equivalent of disliking someone because they look weird, or eat with their mouth open. That may be off-putting, but it doesn’t mean you should dislike them. You don’t know them! They might have sinus problems that mean they HAVE to eat with their mouth open, or they’ll die. You don’t know!

Which reminds of a situation I once found myself in. I worked on a magazine that shared its office space with two other magazines. On the other side of the office sat a girl – the editor of Easy Gardening, or some such esteemed publication – who glared at me every day I came to work. Every. Single. Day. I dubbed her “my enemy” and made plans to bring that bitch down. Then, one day, we found ourselves doing market research together, testing the chocolates in a Celebrations box (true fucking story). I said hello to her, because she was a familiar face, and she acted like she’d never seen me before in her LIFE. I was aghast! She’d been glaring at me for over a YEAR, while I’d plotted her demise. “Oh I’m so sorry,” she said, nicely, when I explained that we worked together. “I’m blind as a bat. I can’t see more than a metre in front of me at the best of times.” And then she turned out to be quite lovely, so how about that, eh? Don’t judge people just because they look like they’re glaring at you but in fact they’re just squinting at their computer screen.

There’s a lesson in that for all of us, I believe.  

It is not that easy to buy a fish

It was the point at which Alice took a cold, dead stick insect called Steve to the gym that I realised we needed a pet. It was also the point at which Frankie drew a family portrait and included a small millipede called John that I realised we needed a pet. And so, I declared, as Paul accidentally threw Steve away (on account of him being dead), and Alice sobbed her small heart out (despite it being her that had killed him, by over-enthusiastically tucking Steve into a Barbie bed), we shall get a pet!

We’ve been down this road before. The day Paul and I got married, seven years ago, my dad gave us a dog that he’d got from a man in the pub. And oh, what a dog it was – grey and tangled and surly and yappy, with a glorious, weeping tumour on the top of his head and a propensity to cock his leg and piss on the school mums. Barry the Frank, he was called, and BY GOD he was repulsive, prone to holding your gaze unblinkingly as he shat at your feet. I was not sorry to see Barry the Frank go.

Seven years is a long time between pets and so, this morning, we set out to get a PET. A fish, specifically. IN MY FAIRLY LIMITED EXPERIENCE, fish are quite easy to obtain. You pay, like, 50 cents, and you get a fish in a small plastic bag, which you then tip into a small round, glass bowl and BISH BASH BOSH, a pet you have.

Well, my friends, times have fucking changed since I last won (and killed) a goldfish. For starters, you can’t get a fucking BOWL. They’re all fucking TANKS, with pumps and bridges and chandeliers and shit, and they’re PRICEY. The cheapest tank we could find was, like, $67, which was approximately $57 more than we’d anticipated paying for a goldfish bowl. But, whatever, it was a small price to pay for our children’s happy little faces as they patted their small new fish. EXCEPT, the cheapest tank available could only accommodate ONE goldfish, and we have THREE children, and even then, the pet-shop lady warned us that our singular goldfish would quickly outgrow the tank, and would need to be rehomed within weeks.

“You could have a few of those,” she said, pointing at some sad bait-like creatures, which my children categorically refused to even LOOK AT, because they weren’t gold with big bobbly eyes. And suddenly, as I looked at the goldfish with big bobbly eyes, I realised that I probably wouldn’t be able to keep this thing alive, on account of not having the time or the inclination to change its filter and sweep up its small goldfish turds. I also realised it would be me who’d find it floating the wrong way up at 5.30 in the morning, and it would be me forced to scoop it out with my best sieve and flush it down the toilet.

I do not have time for that shit.

And so, we left without a goldfish. We left with tears, but no goldfish. We left with promises of as many Little Live Pets as our children could carry, but not goldfish. THANK FUCK THERE WERE NO GOLDFISH.

“We can have one of Callum’s DOGS!” Paul exclaimed, as he dragged our crying children out of the pet shop. The children stopped dead. A dog, you say? We can have a DOG?

We can’t have a dog. We have a son with allergies to anything with a pulse, so a dog is OUT.

“I’m pretty sure this dog is hypoallergenic!” Paul said, scrolling through his Facebook feed to find a picture of Callum’s currently pregnant shar-pei.

“Nawwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww,” we all melted, seeing the picture of Callum’s currently pregnant shar-pei.

“Can we have it today?” the children asked.

“We have to wait for Callum’s dog to have her babies.”

“WHEN WILL SHE LAY THEM? WILL SHE LAY THEM TODAY?”

“I WANT HER TO LAY THEM TODAY.”

And so on and so forth, until Paul said that yes! Yes! Callum’s dog would undoubtedly lay her baby dogs TODAY.

It’s now 4 in the afternoon. Paul told the kids about Callum’s dog at 9 this morning. They have been asking whether Callum’s dog has laid its babies for seven solid hours now. It’s becoming tiresome.

Also, I googled, and shar-pei’s are not hypoallergenic, and you have to spend time rinsing out their folds, which is grosser than scooping up a dead goldfish with a sieve, so fuck that.

Kids need pets, yes; you’ll have no argument from me on that front. But mumma has better things to do than rinsing out folds and administering epi-pens, so there’s that, too.

Come home, Steve! And you too, John! Your bed is ready! 

Facebook, I love you, but you're bringing me down

Hey! I’ve quit Facebook! Which is quite ironic, given that you were probably led here by Facebook. So yeah, I’ve quit Facebook, but that doesn’t mean you should. You should stay on Facebook, if only to follow my page, and maybe a select handful of others.

Also, when I say I’ve quit Facebook, I don’t exactly mean that I’ve QUIT FACEBOOK. Given that my job revolves around Facebook, and that my blog is also primarily Facebook based, and that my best friends in the WORLD exist in virtual Facebook groups, it’s probably fair to say that I have NOT quit Facebook. That’d be like saying that I’m a mother who’s quit kids (well actually…). Rather, I’ve dramatically cut down on my Facebook usage. By which I mean, I’ve stopped scrolling.

It was the festive period that did it. The smug Christmas and New Year updates. The #blessed bullshit. Let me be the first to say that I’m as guilty of this as the next person, and I’m not #proud … but I’m not #blessed, either.

I’d started feeling an intense anxiety leading up to Christmas. I dunno why. Taking on too much, maybe, and setting my standards too high, and knowing that I was inevitably going to let people down. It all got a bit too much, if the truth be told, and I collapsed into a bit of a metaphorical heap.

At some point in the midst of this metaphorical breakdown, I realised that my anxiety intensified when I scrolled through my Facebook feed. I’m not exaggerating when I say that I felt, like, an actual sense of dread opening my Facebook newsfeed. WHAT WAS I DOING WRONG NOW? Which friends were having fun without me? Which mum had made a better yule log? Which toddlers were personally inscribing the family Christmas cards with heartfelt notes of peace and goodwill? Whose pre-teens were winning community spirit awards from school for helping the homeless and donating their Christmas presents to those less fortunate (not fucking mine). It was a curious mix of jealousy and regret and self-loathing and intense inferiority. Quite simply: I was shit, and everyone else was good.

And I mean, yeah, I have my faults, certainly, but I’m not THAT shit, and everyone else is not THAT good. RATIONALLY, I know this, but in a weakened, vulnerable and really fucking tired state I became quite, quite irrational and sad.

So, I stopped scrolling.

Here’s the thing: I still get pings of notification when I’m tagged in shit, or when someone posts in a group that I’m particularly partial to. That’s okay. Look at this way: even a crack head going cold turkey needs a little summin’ summin’ to soften the blow of sobriety.

And I’ll tell you what: I feel BETTER. I don’t mind that an entire mother’s group of which I was once the epicentre went out on the razz without me – for the simple reason that I didn’t know about it. (Okay, I did, ‘cos old habits die hard and I accidentally started scrolling when I woke up this morning, and got all sad, and Paul said WELL WOULD YOU HAVE GONE? And I was, like, FUCK NO! And he shook his head at me, but he’s MISSING THE POINT.) THAT ASIDE, I feel much better. I’m a bit worried that I’m going to miss out on important news like people having babies, but then I figure – if they’re people who I actually give a shit about, then it’s likely they’ll be sharing their breeding habits with me personally, am I right? Like, by text, or messenger, or even – WAIT FOR IT – in person.

There’s a lot to be said for real, human interactions. If I have to have a single new year’s resolution – apart from learning how to do eye-makeup – then it is to see more of the people who matter.

You know the American president? The good one, not the really shit, scary one? Yeah, that one. He was talking to Prince Harry the other day – as you do – and he was all, like, yeah, social media’s alright and shit, but you need to hang with your homies more, because it’s not fucking healthy to conduct all your relationships online. They may or may not have been his ACTUAL WORDS, I dunno, but it was definitely the gist of it.

I’m with Obama on this one, and I’m going to really, really try to exist more in the real world in 2018, and worry less about the fake lives online. Because I know, and you know, and you know that I know, but we’re all going to pretend that we don’t know that it’s all #bullshit, anyway, and you’re crying in the pantry just as much as me.

I am not a jar of Nutella, but I am enough

My little lady sobbed herself to sleep last night – not because she’d forgotten where she’d hidden her Shopkins, not even because we wouldn’t let her wear a tiara and tap shoes to bed, but because she didn’t want to sleep in Frankie’s room.

We didn’t want her to sleep in Frankie’s room. Alice didn’t want to sleep in Frankie’s room. But, Frankie wanted Alice to sleep in his room, and Alice wanted to keep her big brother sweet, even if it meant sleeping on the floor with Frankie’s arse in her face.

“I have to sweep in Fwankie’s woom,” she wept.

“You don’t have to sweep in Fwankie’s woom,” I wepwied.

“But he’ll be angwwwwwwyyyy,” she sobbed.

“Madame,” I said, firmly. “You must never, ever do something just to make someone else happy.”

Which is rich, coming from me.

Hypocritical, some might say.  

And it would be a fair and reasonable comment, because I am both hypocritical and a people-pleaser. A hypocritical people-pleaser, if you will. It’s all well and good for me to tell my daughter to be assertive, and know her own mind, but I’m setting a fucking awful example in the meantime.

The problem is this: I cannot bear the thought of letting people down. While I am VERY well aware that I’m not a jar of Nutella, I still like to think I can please all of the people all of the time. When I do let people down (which I do, continually and constantly), I weep in the fashion of a four-year-old girl who doesn’t want to sleep in her brother’s room.

When life gets busy, as it inevitably does at this time of year, with class parties and teachers’ presents and graduation concerts and high-school applications and imminent birthdays and ELVES ON SHELVES, I let down more people than I’d like to, with the result that I lose my fucking mind, and cry a lot.

Letting people down takes many different forms. In its most basic form, it’s not replying to messages. I fucking hate that I’m so shit at replying to messages. It wakes me up at 3am and fills me with self-hatred and loathing. Who the fuck doesn’t even reply to a text message? Who’s so self-important that they can’t just type a monosyllabic answer while they’re sitting on the toilet? (Me, that’s who. What a cunt.)

Then there are the invitations that I accept and don’t follow through on, because I forget when I accept the invitation that I fucking hate social engagements and leaving the house. This also causes me extreme anguish. Who the fuck thinks they’re so important that they can decline an invitation simply because they “don’t want to go”? I’m not Russell fucking Brand. Or the Queen.

This leads us neatly into the issue of the invitations that I accept and do follow through on. These are the occasions on which I’m a real let-down. There is an assumption, you see, that I’m going to be fun, and funny, and possibly even stay out past 9pm. There have even been expectations of dancing. I don’t dance. I don’t stay out past 9pm. I’m not fun. And I’m going to try so, so hard to be funny that it will stop being funny and you’ll wish I’d faked a migraine in the first place.

The “funny” thing is something I find very hard to switch off. It’s my please-like-me defence mechanism, and it’s called into action at the most inappropriate moments, like in intensive-care units, and job interviews. You know, places where jokes about chlamydia are kind of frowned upon.

So yeah, I let people down. I have it on good authority (because I’ve been told) that I’m a spectacularly shit friend. I don’t check in. I won’t return your calls. I’ll never, ever initiate catch-ups. I’ll forget to send you a birthday card, and probably a Facebook message, too. I will let you down.

I’ve struggled with this a little bit lately. I’m aware of my plentiful shortcomings, and I’m working on them. I realise that I have the most spectacular collection of friends, and if I want to keep this spectacular collection of friends, I’m gonna have to return messages and invite them over for tea and biscuits, occasionally. By the same token, that’s going to mean saying no to the people I don’t give a fuck about, simply because I want them to like me. It sounds obvious, but it’s something that really does require my prompt and immediate attention. Like, that girl in my circuit class, who got all pissed off and shit ‘cos I suggested she might like to box properly, and not like a dick. Who gives a FUCK if she likes me? Why did I get all sad and shit because she scowled at me? And that dick of a football club president, who got all uppity and shit because I didn’t say thank you after a protracted exchange about the name on the back of Ben’s shirt. Fuck you, football president dude! There are so many situations that cause me so much grief, for the simple reason that I feel I’m letting someone down. I do not have time for these situations! I am very busy!

But, no more! No more time will be spent on pointless exchanges, and idiots. My time will be spent on meaningful exchanges, and excellent friends.  

That means you. Hello!

I'm okay with being old, because I'm okay with being me.

On the occasion of one’s 40th birthday, one can’t help but reflect on birthdays of decades past. Like, for instance, one’s 30th birthday. And one’s 20th. And even one’s 10th, which was significant because I broke my arm and my friends made up a song about me having broken a limb on my 10th birthday, and shit like that stays with you (as do the friends, weirdly).

On my 20th birthday, I was living in Walthamstow, East London, with two members of a band whose name escapes me, and working at HMV on Bond Street, where my fingers would go intermittently numb because of the proximity of the cash registers to the main entrance.

That was a weird time – a time of being so ridiculously fucking lacking in self esteem and in such ridiculous fucking abundance of body fat and chins that I had no idea who I actually was; I only knew that I didn’t want to be me, and could I please be Justine Frischman out of Elastica instead, please? I don’t really care for 20-year-old me, in all her desperate, try-hard, double-chinned glory. She needed to sort her shit out, and cut down on the kebabs.

As it happened, it took a good decade to sort my shit out. On my 30th birthday, after returning to London for a holiday, I realised that I’d spectacularly failed my 20s. They were a fucking write-off, with only a delightfully pigeon-toed son to show for them. I’d had amazing jobs, yes, and wonderful – primarily homosexual – friends, but I didn’t appreciate them at the time, and instead squandered excellent opportunities on mediocre relationships and Coronation Street. And so, in what can only be described as a mid-life crisis, I turned my 30s upside down and inside out, and changed shit up. I REALLY changed shit up.

In all honesty, I don’t know where this uncharacteristic show of bravery came from – blissful ignorance, probably, and an inability to look more than three days in the future. I didn’t give these life changes a huge amount of consideration; I just made a decision, and stuck to it, kind of like jumping in the deep end and hoping that I’d resurface eventually.

And yeah, I resurfaced. It took a couple of years, and a haircut, but I resurfaced, and motherfucker, my 30s were fucking brilliant as a result. Except for that one time I threw a pan of spaghetti across the garden, but in my defence, I hadn’t discovered happy pills yet, and I was real tired.

My 30s were brilliant because I finally – FINALLY – figured out me. I don’t want to get all “I’ve been to paradise but I’ve never to been to me” on your arse, but goddamn, “I’d been to paradise but I’d never been to me.” It wasn’t until I was 32, I reckon, that I finally figured out who I was, and became comfortable in my own (now slightly slimmer) skin and (now slightly shorter) hair. I figured out that I like running and swearing and cups of strong tea and not going out and writing silly words and reading clever words and glasses of wine and watching my kids be dicks and hanging out with my husband and wearing flat shoes and cool t-shirts and listening to podcasts and laughing. I really like laughing. I really like people who make me laugh. I really like making people laugh. I’m also okay with being a bit of a dick. I don’t look like the pretty girls, and I don’t act like the cool girls, and I say the wrong things at the wrong time – continually and constantly – but that’s okay. I’m okay with that. I’m okay with me.

And now I am 40. I’ve been 40 for two days, and so far it’s fucking ace. Granted, I’m alone with my husband in Bali, with ALL the cocktails and ALL the food and ALL the massages, so it was never gonna be a complete failure, but even so, I’m feeling pretty fucking chilled and not at all depressed about being really fucking old.

I’m okay with being old, because I’m okay with being me. 

#smugcunt

The fortnight during which I remembered how to cry

It seems like a fortnight that is well worth documenting, if only for the fact that it was the fortnight in which I was kicked in the ear by my son, head-butted by my daughter, and remembered how to cry. And told a man that I’d met only three minutes previously that the weather was as grey as his soul, and accepted an over-sized work shirt because I didn’t want to make the woman who offered it to me feel bad for assuming I was two sizes larger than I actually am, and spewed from the very depths of my soul for 12 hours straight. And did a total of 367 loads of washing, and exposed my undergarments to an entire primary school, and shat myself. And admitted to an audience of 350 good people that I’m an idiot blogger who’ll do anything for a free sandwich, and was told off for not being the mother of a charitable 11-year-old (long story), and slept (in the loosest sense of the word) in a faux-leather recliner that unreclined every time I inhaled.

It’s been quite the fortnight.

Before you alarm yourself, the crying thing is a GOOD thing (the shitting-myself and faux-leather recliner things, not so much). You see, I haven’t shed a tear for the best part of a year; not since I started on the happy pills. Which has been good, but also weird. Over the course of the past year, I’ve tested myself on the crying front, watching Long Lost Families and 24 Hours in Emergency – even One Born Every Minute – but nope, nothing, not even when that baby girl got kicked in the head by a horse and SURVIVED, and that man found a sister he didn’t even know EXISTED, and that woman squeezed a baby out of her VAGINA. It was perplexing (the crying thing, not the vagina thing).

And then, on the way to work one day, not three hours after my last soul-extracting spew, I was listening to James Acaster’s Classic Scrapes audiobook – in which the comedian James Acaster recounts his, yes, classic scrapes – and he told the story of accidentally going to a French porcelain exhibition, where a woman licked a French porcelain plate (you had to be there), and I laughed out loud. Lolled, if you will. But, I couldn’t stop laughing. I laughed so much that I actually started sobbing, which was weird, and also really, really bad given that I was driving down a main road at the time, but I couldn’t stop. I WAILED, tears blurring my vision (apologies to the oncoming traffic), while I kind of dog-howled. It was weird, yes, but also hugely cathartic. I felt good, in a dog-howling, blurry-vision, dangerous-driving kind of way.

Then, just three days later, Frankie kicked me in the ear as I attempted to manhandle him into school. This is an everyday occurrence. We pull up at the school, he undoes his seatbelt, and curls up in the footwell of the car. Is it called a footwell? Spellcheck says no. The floor bit. You know. Anyway, he curls up there, and I have to kind of drag him out, while he wails and weeps, and then I get him on to the pavement, put his bag on my back, my keys in pocket, and – as I do so – he runs off. I chase him, grab him, fireman lift him to school, he begs to be put down, promises to walk nicely, I believe him, put him down, he bolts, I grab him, fireman lift him, rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat. This particular day, all the school mums were watching. They watched the whole sorry episode, and I felt so SHIT, and so HOPELESS, that when Frankie booted me square in the ear, I started to cry. I sort of kept it together in front of the mums, as I threw Frankie at the teachers and wished them well, but as soon as I got back to the car, I sobbed. Head on the steering wheel, great gulps of despair, sobbing. Again, it felt curiously cathartic.

And then, finally, as Frankie went into surgery to have his kidney stone blasted – a kidney stone that’s been the likely cause of his school reluctance and general twat-headeness – I saw a kid walking – nay, skipping – towards the hospital with his mum, wearing a t-shirt that said, “Last day of chemo! Hooray,” and I fucking lost it.

Everyone has their shit to deal with. Yeah, I’ve had my shit, but it pales into comparison to other people’s shit, for which I am thankful. It’s maybe time I took a step back to acknowledge that. For the past few months we’ve been soldiering on through kidney stones and hospital stays and illness and injury and work – so much work – and high-school rejections and stern letters from the school and bills – so many bills – that we’ve forgotten to breathe.

I remembered to breathe today, taking Alice to the beach and getting ridiculously giddy in the waves and thinking, THIS! This is what it’s all about! And then Alice head-butted me in a moment of extreme giddiness and my sunglasses smacked into my cheekbone and it hurt so much that I cried so she cried and we all cried and, well, that’s life, eh? 

Mumma's comeback tour

The truth of the matter is, I missed my mad gang of bitches from the very moment I made my dramatic blogging exit. It was like – well – do you remember when you were a kid, right, and you’d stamp your feet and announce you were RUNNING AWAY FROM HOME, but you’d get to the end of the driveway – with your mum watching from the lounge-room window – and think, shit, what now? That was me, almost immediately after I’d stomped off.

That was exactly how I felt: WHAT NOW? I had, I think, underestimated just how much I need this blog. My blog is my sounding board and my therapy; my release and my platform to rant and rave. It’s the place where I share all the stupid shit that no one else cares about.

And so, minutes – if not seconds – after my determined and over-dramatic resignation, I started writing a list of the things I WOULD have told you if I’d had the forum to do so. I tried telling my husband, but he glazed shortly after I mentioned “wobbly pelvic floor”. I tried telling my work colleague, after she phoned to ask if I could reschedule a meeting, but she hung up the moment I said I’d been “suctioned to the toilet seat”. I started recounting tales of my children’s toileting and my husband’s unconventional rockmelon chopping to hapless checkout chicks in Coles, who looked on with a combination of fear and a steely determination to never, ever ask a shopper how their day was going ever, ever again.

This is where the list came in. It was my kind-of sort-of blog, in iPhone note form. I’ve still got it. This is what it says:

SHOUTING IN MY SLEEP. {This was shortly after Margaret-gate. I have reason to believe – because Paul told me, wearily – that I shouted, “Fuck off you bitch,” loudly and passionately.}

SUCTIONING TO THE TOILET. {Okay, this is a good one. I was forced to endure a three-hour children’s concert at the Crown Theatre, because Ben tooted on his trombone for eight minutes of it. With no disrespect to the performers, or to the coordinating teachers, it was fucking horrific. It was like the worst school assembly you’ve ever had the misfortune to sit through, multiplied by 63. It was never-ending. At one point, when my hip flask ran dry, I went and hid in the toilet. I sat in there for so long – inappropriately snapchatting my work colleagues about the woman apparently giving birth in the cubicle next to me – that my bottom suctioned to the toilet seat. No actual shit (literally).

BOOZE IN ALDI. {I went to the shops the day before they started selling booze in Perth’s Aldi stores. I saw the booze enclosure and I saw the booze signs, and I took photos, and got all excited and shit, but had no one to share it with, apart from Paul. I tried explaining my excitement to the school mums at pick-up time, but they just muttered about Dan Murphy specials, and tried not to catch my eye.}

BEN AND THE BMW. {I should take this opportunity to apologise to the owner of the BMW that Ben booted with his trombone on the way to the Crown Theatre. And the hapless parents who he unceremoniously kneecapped. Soz and that.}

HAIRDRESSERS. {I don’t know why I’ve written ‘hairdressers’. I went to the hairdressers. That was about it. It was as lovely an experience as usual.}

NUTELLA AND SUGAR. {One morning, I could find neither the Nutella nor the sugar. Turns out, they were both hidden under Alice’s bed, in case she got “hungwy in the night”.}

ALICE GIVING THAT GIRL THE FORK. {At the park one day, a little girl was being horrible to Alice. Alice responded – in what can only be described as one of my proudest moments – by giving the little girl the fork and saying YOU ARE NOT NICE.}

ALL THE VOMIT. {We’ve had a bad run, health wise. Frankie spewed for two weeks before we realised he had – and indeed still has – a kidney stone. Alice was way jealous of her brother, and spent two weeks spitting into a cereal bowl, saying she was also seriously ill.}

APPENDIX DAD. {This still makes me chuckle. The kid next to Frankie in the hospital ward had just had his appendix out. His dad, who was keeping a bedside vigil, threw him a sandwich one day, and it landed smack-bang on his kid’s wound. It was FUCKING funny listening to his dad beg forgiveness.}

Oh shit! I’ve just remembered what “hairdressers” refers to! It refers to me taking Frankie and Alice to get a haircut. I got them all hyped up for a haircut at a child-friendly hairdressing establishment – with rocket ships and iPads and shit – but I was disturbed by the hairdresser, who had bad hair. I dragged the kids away, crying (them, not me), and told them I’d seen the hairdresser chopping a child’s ear off, and we’d have to go elsewhere for a haircut. Except … there wasn’t an elsewhere, so I had to take them back. Shit got emotional.

So there you go. That’s all the shit you missed. Groundbreaking, eh? While I was away, clever, clever ladies mused on the importance of blogging, which made me think, WOO, I can use this as an excuse to make a comeback, but the truth is, I just missed y’all. I need you. I love you. 

My minor Bunnings breakdown

It was all going so WELL, too. We’d been strawberry picking, on a day that was forecasting torrential downpours, but the sun had shone and the fruits were ripe and the children had been, well, normal. They ate so many strawberries that Frankie’s widdle turned pink, and Alice took a nibble out of each strawberry that went in the box, but for the most part, we were a nice, average family. We’ll come again next week, we said! Wholesome fun for all the family, we said!

And then we went to Bunnings.

Fucking Bunnings.

Now, I don’t mind Bunnings, for the most part. Mid-week Bunnings is FINE. Saturday-afternoon Bunnings is tolerable. Sunday-lunchtime Bunnings is, however, fucking horrific. All the Prozac in the world couldn’t have softened the blow of Sunday-lunchtime Bunnings.

“Can I have a sausage with custard?”

“Mustard?”

“No, custard.”

“Not custard.”

“What’s custard mustard?”

“It’s kind of hot, like pepper.”

“What’s pepper?”

“Pepper, like salt, you know?”

“I don’t know.”

“Oh for fucks sake. One sausage with custard, please.”

“We’ve run out of onions.”

“Well that’s fine, because we don’t want onions.”

“You can have raw onions.”

“We’d like neither raw nor cooked onions. Just one sausage with custard. Now Alice,” I said, turning to our small daughter, “you DEFINITELY don’t want a sausage, right?”

“Yuck. No doddage. I don’t want a doddage.”

“Definitely?”

“No doddage.”

We get Frankie’s doddage, we enter Bunnings. Right on cue: “I want a doddage!”

“Of course you fucking do.”

To Frankie, who’s holding his doddage at arm’s length, repulsed: “Can Alice have your doddage?”

Horrified: “No!”

“But you don’t want it.”

“She can’t have it.”

“I want a small trolley,” shouts my daughter, momentarily distracted from her doddage woes. Frankie – who up to this point had NOT wanted a small trolley – spots the one available small trolley in Bunnings, and makes a beeline for it, holding on to it with small, clenched fists, his doddage long-forgotten.

“I want a small trolley!” (Loud, this time. Piercing.)

“Are you looking for anything in particular?” a kind Bunnings assistant asks, as Frankie spins his small trolley in 360-degree circles, kneecapping casual Sunday shoppers.

“A small trolley please!”

“Oh, they’re in short supply on Sundays! You won’t have much luck!”

“Fuck you! I mean thank you!”

“I want to go to the playground!” (Frankie, this time.) Alice starts HOWLING, immediately. I feel similarly disturbed.

“Why are you crying?”

“I don’t like the faces on the swide?”

“What faces on the swide?”

“The big faces on the swide!”

Right. Paul and I begin negotiations. “You and Alice go and get the fluorescent strip light for the garage, which Ben’s mate smashed while playing keepy-uppies with a football, and Frankie and I will go to the playground, yes?”

Yes. Except the playground is the seventh level of hell, packed with parents affectionately calling their children “mongrels” (NOT EVEN JOKING) and a vague smell of poo and wee.

God, I hate small playgrounds. I hate big playgrounds. I hate playgrounds.

“Come on the slide with me mummy!”

“I’m not coming on the slide.”

Damian style: “Come on the slide with my mummy.”

I go on the slide. I feel soiled. I also feel IMMENSELY relieved that I’m coming to the end of the playground period of my life. There’s a mum on the playground with three children under the age of three. She’s wearing those terrible mum jeans that expose three-quarters of bum-crack, and repeating – over and over – “where are your shoes” to anyone who’ll listen, apparently. She looks like she’s lost the will to live. I lose the will to live on her behalf. I don’t ever – EVER – want to go back to the very-small-person period of parenthood. Remember that bit? Just standing aimlessly in piss-soaked playcentres, trying to find a reason to continue this meaningless existence? Walking up and down the driveway in your socks, while a small child practises riding a trike, over and over, and all you want to do is sit down and check Facebook?

“Mummy I need a POO.” Of course you fucking do. OF COURSE.

I drop the extremely delicate strip-light that’s Paul left in my care while he goes off to find plaster screws, or some shit, and then accidentally let a kid out of the play prison, who cackles and runs for freedom.

“Where are your shoes?” says the mum, to the back of the child making a run for it through the sacks of compost.

I’ve got to get out of here.

I’VE GOT TO GET OUT OF HERE.

And then there are balloons on sticks. BALLOONS ON FUCKING STICKS, and a little girl wailing because hers has blown out across the carpark. “WHY ARE YOU CRYING ABOUT A BALLOON,” her mother shouts. “IT’S JUST A BALLOON. DON’T CRY ABOUT THE BALLOON. THE BALLOON IS GONE. STOP CRYING. I TOLD YOU NOT TO GET A BALLOON. YOU SHOULD HAVE LISTENED TO ME. NO ONE LISTENS TO ME. FUCK THE BALLOON.”

I feel sympathy for the mother, despite her undeniably unsympathetic response to her daughter’s loss. But yeah, fuck the balloon.

“CAN I DO THE BEEPING,” says Frankie, holding the scanner aloft at the self-serve checkout.

“GIVE ME THE BEEPER.”

“I WANT TO DO THE BEEPING.”

I want to cry. I do cry, a little bit, and then collect myself because there are no fucking bags in Bunnings and I have to ferret around for a suitable box to carry strip lights and some stupid plaster screws plus an uneaten hot dog to the car.

“I will not be returning to Bunnings,” I tell my husband. “Not on a Sunday, not ever.”

“Fuck Bunnings,” Paul replies.

“Fuck Bunnings,” I agree.  

My dad: the skipping champion of Britain

You may not know my dad personally but, like, you KNOW my dad. Everyone knows my dad: red of head, big of belly, huge of heart. Yeah, you know him? My dad is every dad; every British dad, anyway. A GARLIC BREAD, talks-very-loudly-in-foreign-countries, asks for the bill by miming the act of writing on his hand. You’d like my dad. I like my dad. For the most part, however, I take my dad for granted. I assume that this astonishing human – an unparalleled grandad, who would wrap the moon in gold-leaf and present it to whichever of his grandchildren requested such a thing – will always be around, ready to take Ben to football, Frankie for a haircut, and Alice to the land of make-believe without a moment’s hesitation. He’s the king of all the grandads, my dad.

Did I mention that he’s invincible? Cos he is. My dad is sturdy and unbreakable, even when the universe tries to knock him from his feet, as it did in the early 1980s, when I was about six and he – god – he can’t have been much more than 30. He was a zookeeper, my dad, in charge of the birds, at a time when OH&S policies were scant, to the point that I was allowed to spend my school holidays in the aviaries at Perth Zoo. As dad jobs go, this was the coolest; there were always baby birds being hand-reared around our house, even – in my most popular week to date – a fairy penguin in the playroom.

And then, one afternoon, after he’d stayed late at work to catch a wombat, he was knocked off his motorbike. If you have to pinpoint the moment in my childhood when stability crumbled, this was it. He was in hospital for weeks – possibly months – and my only truly vivid memory is of the pliers he carried with him to cut the wire frame drilled into his face, on the occasion of a sneeze. (Come to think about it, he might have been taking the piss with regards to the pliers, just like when he used to tell my friends that “when he was a little girl, he was the skipping champion of all of England”, or the time he told me in a café that he’d forgotten his wallet, and we’d have to make a run for it, on the count of three …)

In the face of all that – his jaw being rebuilt, the nerves in his arm being reattached, his skipping career in tatters – he came back strong, sturdy and unshakeable, standing at my classroom door one afternoon after weeks away from home. That feeling – the disbelief, the profound relief – I can almost taste, now.

My dad was – as he is now – rock solid.

Last week, my dad (and my mum, for that matter) took us to Bali. Like, they actually TOOK us. I mean, they didn’t physically carry us, but they bought the tickets, booked the hotel, sorted all the insurance and even allocated the seats on the plane. As the perks of being an only child go, this was a doozy.

While we were there, my dad had a “funny turn”.

“Your dad had a bit of a funny turn,” mum muttered to me, when I asked why they hadn’t gone for dinner.

“Define funny turn,” I demanded.

“It was nothing,” dad chipped in.

“It was something,” mum added.

“DEFINE SOMETHING,” I said, Dr Google at the ready (thank you free hotel wi-fi).

“I just felt breathless and got a piercing headache,” dad said, in a curious and uncharacteristically honest admission.

“Has this happened before?”

“Oh,” he said, waving dismissively. “A couple of times.”

“Define a couple of times. HOW MANY TIMES HAS THIS HAPPENED? EXPLAIN THE SYMPTOMS TO ME.”

My dad – outnumbered by me and my mum – gave in, and explained that he’d been having one “funny turn” every couple of days, but that they were getting progressively worse.

“It’s just a virus,” he said, like a dickhead.

“Don’t be a dickhead,” I said.

I did, of course, google the shit out of dad’s symptoms, diagnosing angina and prescribing aspirin. The next morning, I scoured the hotel looking for a defibrillator, and lay on the sunbed (hard life) mentally going through the steps of CPR. I was ready.

I was also fucking relieved to get back on Perth soil.

We landed on Tuesday evening. On Wednesday afternoon, dad had another funny turn. On Wednesday evening, mum took him to hospital. By Thursday morning, he’d had one stent fitted in an artery that was as clogged as an artery could be. There remains a second, clogged artery that the incredible surgeon was reluctant to operate on, given that the first had nearly given up the ghost during the surgery. This artery will be treated with drugs and diet – the upside of this being that mum has donated all her sugary cereal to me. The kids – high on crunchy nut cornflakes and Alpen – think it’s fucking Christmas.

My dad is at home now – telling stories to Alice, taking the piss out of Frankie, adoring Ben –  but I feel like he’s made of glass. My unbreakable dad is slightly chipped, and suddenly as precious as my nan’s commemorative Lady Di mug. This, I think, is good. It means that I’m not taking him for granted. I look at him, and see the four decades of love he’s bestowed on me, unconditionally and unsparingly. He has always – ALWAYS – been there, on the periphery, ready to catch me when I fall, which I do, often, and gracelessly. He’s selfless and solid, and we’re so lucky to have him and his skipping accolades. Love you, dad x

Holidays: a really, really good idea

Girlfriend, you need a holiday. By which I mean, a HOLIDAY, in the true sense of the word. I don’t mean a week-long farm stay in a small cottage with no dishwasher, where you’ll still need to make dinner every day, and wash-up afterwards. I don’t even mean a month-long overseas trip to see dearly loved family, where – if you survive a long-haul flight with three children – you’ll still have to make dinner every day, and wash-up afterwards. And I certainly don’t mean camping. Fuck camping.

I mean, a HOLIDAY. A proper, cocktails-by-the-swimming-pool, buffet-breakfast, maid-please-make-up-my-room HOLIDAY. It’s been more than two years since we had a holiday like this, and if you’d asked me, I’d have said we were doing okay. If you’d asked me, I’d have said our extra pennies were much better spent on a new fridge, Kmart specials and two-for-one offers at Dan Murphys. We don’t need a HOLIDAY.

In an unusual turn of events, I was wrong. I was spectacularly, dramatically and categorically WRONG. I needed a holiday. We needed a holiday. Specifically, we needed a five-star, cocktails-by-the-swimming-pool, buffet-breakfast, maid-please-make-up-my-room holiday. We needed Bali.

I’m telling you this as though everyone can afford to pack up and fuck off to five-star Bali. I’m well aware that most of you can’t afford to do that. Fucking hell, WE can’t afford to do that. We’re only here because I have the best mum and dad in the whole entire world, who – while they may not have bought me a Hilux – did stump up for the five of us to have a holiday in Nusa Dua. I think they realised how much we needed a holiday more than we did.

We were knackered. Life, as you well know, can be fucking relentless. On a day-to-day basis, we don’t have a second to catch our breath. Five-am alarms, two loads of washing, breakfast, school uniforms, school lunches, school run, traffic chaos, work, school pick-up, sugar-dip tantrums, dinner, dinner rejected, exercise, clean up, baths, bedtime, disturbed sleep, lost dummies, rinse and repeat. That shit wears you down. You don’t realise, until you’re so tired that you don’t even notice you’re tired anymore, and the bags under your eyes take up permanent residence on your face, and you kind of forget what your kids look like, even though they’re always – ALWAYS – lurking about, asking you for shit.

And then, you go on holiday. You wake up and the days stretch ahead of you. There is this delightful concept called time – TIME – to throw the ball for hours on end with an 11-year-old who you feel like you haven’t even looked at for months. It helps if this 11-year-old belongs to you, otherwise it’s a bit weird. There’s TIME to teach your five-year-old to swim; a five-year-old whose had thousands upon thousands of dollars spent on swimming lessons in an attempt to teach him, but waited until he had his mum and dad to himself, in a lagoon pool overlooking the ocean, to say, fuck it, and swim a lap underwater. There’s TIME to count the freckles on your four-year-old’s nose – freckles that you didn’t even know she HAD, and you might never have noticed, if you hadn’t spent a vast chunk of your day catching her as she jumped into your arms from the side of the pool. There’s time to read books. Books! Motherfucker, I’ve nearly finished a book that I began on that wonderful day in 2015 when I had day surgery at Joondalup Hospital.

Yeah, this is the memory-making shit that the Instagram mothers are always harping on about. Except, it’s not the bought-and-paid-for shit that makes the memories. It’s the absurd shit, the catastrophic shit, the funny, unexpected shit that ONLY happens on holidays. We still talk about the time Ben stood on a monkey’s tail in Ubud 2010, and it snarled and turned on him like a wronged yummy mummy in a Myer stocktake sale. Or the time Ben walked through the market stalls of Seminyak bare-bollock naked, and the stall holders cheered and waggled their little fingers at him. That was funny. Or the last time we were in Bali, and Ben (always Ben!) fell (jumped) into the hotel pond ON THE WAY to the airport for our journey home. I’m almost certain we’ll laugh (one day) about Ben flooding the hotel bathroom last night, after he lost control of the hand-shower (dickhead).  

I love this stuff. I love Bali. I love the lovely people, and the way the kids think of all the staff – universally – as their friends. Their “brown friends” (sic), but their friends nonetheless. I love the buffet breakfast. I love the sunsets, and the sun rise, and the big fuck-off bath in the hotel suite. Most of all, I love the smiles on my kids’ faces. And the beer. Don't forget the beer. I really, really love the beer.

Listen up! I've got some advice for y'all!

Right, listen up. I’m gonna give y’all a piece of advice, and I need you to take heed. Here ‘tis: chill out, motherfuckers. Cool your jets, rest your laurels (not a thing), take a chill pill. Just – you know – lighten up a little bit.

I say this with your very, very best interests at heart. I worry about you guys. I worry that you’re forgetting how to laugh. I worry that you’re getting so bogged down with the relentless bullshit of parenthood (and the relentless bullshit of other parents) that you’re forgetting to have fun.

I’ve written about this before; there’s nothing new in my suggestion to appreciate the silly moments and the little things. What is new, perhaps, is my advice to stop acting so, I dunno, adult. Yes, that’s it. Stop being such a grown-up, grown-ups. Start being a dickhead, dickheads.

It’s fun being a dickhead. Trust me, I’m the world expert on being a dickhead. I swear, and I fuck up, and I make a spectacular arse of myself on an almost daily basis, but above all, I laugh. I laugh way more than I cry (thank you, Prozac!), and enjoy family life far more than I lament it (thank you, Prozac!). We’re a very chilled out family (thank you, Prozac!) and we don’t take ourselves particularly seriously.

We also swear a lot.

I have reason to believe that swearing and happiness go hand-in-hand. Honestly. I call my children dickheads, and dozy twats, and – just this morning, in a curious outburst – numpty bollocks. They, in turn, call each other dickheads, and dozy twats, and – come tomorrow, I’m almost certain – numpty bollocks. For anyone who takes issue with me calling my children dozy twats, come round here and try and play Guess Who with my daughter. You’ll see that “dozy twat” is actually a very forgiving description. We don’t actually call each other arseholes, but only because arsehole isn’t a word we use in our family, just as we don’t use fart, or moist. It’s not that we’re morally opposed to those words, we just don’t like them.

I understand that this is not for everyone. I understand that the thought of calling your child a dickhead – and they in turn calling their older brother a dickhead – is completely preposterous to some of you. “But it’s so derogatory! So degrading! So disrespectful!”

Yeah, nah.

In our house, these words are said with love, and a twinkle. The twinkle is important. We don’t snarl offensive terms such as: “You stupid, fat-arsed cunt.” Even I draw the line at, “You stupid, fat-arsed cunt.” We don’t hurt, and we don’t offend. We say the words that have been deemed acceptable in our strange, slightly dysfunctional family. Dickhead is a term of endearment in this gang. Twat, similarly. In fairness, I’ve only just learned that twat means fanny, so my apologies if this seems an odd way to refer to your only daughter. I thought twot meant fanny, so there you go.

We are – as you may have surmised by now – a fairly easy-going family. We’re not liberal – oh no, no, no – we have rules, and regulations, and rigid-as-fuck bedtimes, but we know how to take the piss out of each other. Perhaps this is a British thing, perhaps it’s a slack-arse parent thing, I don’t know, but gentle mockery is what we do. Like I say, we take the piss. When Alice has a “hangry” tantrum, we roar with laughter and tell her she’s adopted. When Frankie weeps over his forgotten library book, Paul threatens to Hulk-smash him.

There’s no room for sensitive little flowers in this family. We’re fierce, and we’re funny, and we’re foul-mouthed, but above all, we’re family. None of us are in any doubt as to how much each other is loved. Love is the overriding emotion in this family. We love and we are loved, fiercely. We are confident in our love, and sure of our devotion. I believe that this will, in turn, build resilience in my children. Resilience is a bit of a buzzword, no? A bit Maggie Dent? It’s a thing though. It’s an important thing. But honestly, I believe that if my kids aren’t cushioned at home – if they’re not wrapped up in clean-spoken cotton wool – then they’ll be better, more resilient adults, with a wicked sense of humour. On that you have my fucking word.

So: if you don’t like our swearing, then so be it, but frankly? I don’t give a flying fuck. 

I'll let you into a little secret about parenthood ...

Whenever I write a post that in any way criticises the holy sanctity of motherhood, I ready myself for the onslaught. Thanks to the wonders of the Facebook block-and-ban function, most of the onslaught now occurs in my own head, but it happens nonetheless.

I know – you see – that it is largely frowned upon to complain about parenting, because – you see – there are people out there in the world who have lost children. There are also people who wanted children, but couldn’t have them. There are even people whose lives – apparently – were wholeheartedly incomplete until they were hashtag blessed by hashtag little darlings. As such, to complain about healthy, living, life-affirming children is JUST NOT ON. It’s inconsiderate and disrespectful and, well, I’m not sure if you knew this or not, but those little children of which you scorn? THEY WON’T ALWAYS BE LITTLE. This is my favourite of all the arguments. “One day you’ll wake up and your little kids will be all grown up.” NO ACTUAL SHIT. People announce this as though they have a dramatic insight into the future. YOUR KIDS WILL GET BIGGER. Fuck off! No one told me this! I was unaware! You mean they won’t always be knee-high dribblers leaving brown fingerprints on my white trousers? Get out of TOWN.

Guys? I know this, on account of not being an actual fuckwit. I know that my kids will get older, and not need me as much. I know that these are the wonder years. I know I’m hashtag blessed. There are moments when the wonder of my children takes my fucking breath away – moments when I would give anything to press pause and freeze frame this precious moment in time – but they are not in playcentres. They are not at birthday parties. They are not at birthday parties in playcentres. Don’t tell me that one day I’ll miss taking my children to playcentres, and birthday parties, and birthday parties in playcentres, because I can assure you – by swearing on my Coronation Street teapot, no less – that I will never, ever miss that shit. You have my expletive-laden word.

I’m in no doubt as to my blessed nature. I spent Wednesday afternoon with two women from the Kids Cancer Support Group – one of whom had spent more than three years holding her son’s hand through leukaemia, the other of whom had lost her small son to brain cancer. Two weeks ago, I stood at a memorial for a 12-year-old school mate of my son’s. I KNOW how lucky I am. Don’t ever question that. I hold my children close and I breathe in their magic. I do this daily. I adore those little fuckers with an intensity that folds me double, sometimes. I know they are precious, and I know I am blessed, but I also know that they have the potential to be proper little arseholes who drive me to weep in the pantry. I know that for every memory-making moment, there are 20 others that I’m going to have to pay a psychiatrist many dollars to try and repress. Guys, yesterday I picked up a human turd, thinking it was a sultana. I will never miss picking up human turds disguising themselves as sultanas.

Here’s what I need you to know: it’s okay to admit this. It’s okay to confess to not adoring parenthood ALL of the time. It’s okay to call your children arseholes. Not to their face, I grant you, but behind their back? Yeah, that’s fine. It’s healthy. What’s not healthy is pretending that you’ve got this parenting gig completely sussed, and that it completes you totally. NO ONE HAS THIS PARENTING GIG COMPLETELY SUSSED, AND NO ONE IS TOTALLY COMPLETED BY PARENTHOOD. If anyone suggests this to you, they’re fucking lying. They’re also going home to cry in the pantry, and stick their head in a jar of Nutella.

Take a moment to imagine a world in which we were honest about motherhood. “How you doing today, Sally?” “Yeah, my daughter’s cute, but this morning I pissed myself when I sneezed.” “Oh Daphne, isn’t your son the sweetest little thing?” “No. He has a blank-eyed stare that follows me around the room and he robbed me of my freedom. Help me.”

Like, you might have a great job, but no one would blink an eye if you said, “I love my boss, but my desk overlooks a wasteland of broken files that makes me want to cut myself. And the coffee’s shit. And also my chair’s a bit wobbly, and doesn’t provide adequate back support. And I have a letter of resignation saved in the drafts folder of my emails, but I’ll never send it, because I love my boss.” That’s reasonable, am I right?   

There’s a moment in the new series of Catastrophe where a sanctimonious school mum cracks and declares of her small son: “HE’S FERAL AND I HATE HIM.” I laughed far too loudly and for far too long at this line, replaying it over and over. Because of course she doesn’t hate her son – not on a long-term basis, anyway – but in that moment, that wonderful, life-affirming moment, she said what we all think, from time to time.

I swear to god, we’d all feel a lot better about ourselves if we didn’t feel we had to live up to the mythical benchmark of perfect parenting; if we could just TELL THE TRUTH without fear of being judged or condemned or considered anything less than top-notch. Cos yeah, we’re all hashtag blessed, but our kids are still (on occasion) hashtag little twats. That’s parenthood. 

Sucks to be me

My mum rang in the ten-minute window between one birthday party finishing and the next one starting.

“What you up to?” she asked.

“Just about to leave for our third birthday party of the weekend,” I replied.

“Ooo,” she said, with a sharp intake of breath. “Sucks to be you.”

She may not have ACTUALLY said sucks to be you, but she definitely MEANT sucks to be you. Because, yes, on this occasion it sucked to be me.

“Do you know,” my mum added, helpfully, “I was only 42 when you left home. Forty-two! Your dad was 44! Early 40s and we had our lives back! Can you imagine?!”

“No mother, I can’t imagine.”

“Your dad was the same age as Paul is now,” she added, just in case I’d missed her initial point. “And look at Paul! Chasing after small children! Poor Paul.”

“Poor Paul indeed,” I said, through gritted teeth.

“There’s certainly a lot to be said for having children young! You should probably have had children when you were younger.”

“Thank you mother. I’ll remember this for my next life.”

“Anyway, enjoy the party! I’m off for a nap.”

She has a point, of course. I was 18 when my mum turned 40. When I turn 40 in November, I’ll have a 4, 5 and 11-year-old, all of whom are still fairly high maintenance, and a long way off getting their P-plates and wiping their own bottoms.

There are times when I resent this. I don’t resent parenthood, and I don’t resent my children, I just resent all the BULLSHIT that goes along with parenthood and children. I resent birthday parties and school discos and Sunday-morning soccer and any demands made outside of the regular parenting hours of 7am to 7pm. Perhaps resent is too extreme a word. I don’t resent extra-curricular parental duties; I just fucking hate them. I’m jokkkkkking. I neither resent nor hate my extra-curricular parental duties – I just, I dunno, BEGRUDGE them.

I understand that there are parents out there in the world who do not begrudge extra-curricular parental duties. I understand that there are parents who not only accept Friday-night school discos, but actually participate in them! Like, they distribute tickets and sell Redskins and break up canoodling. I applaud those parents, but I do not understand them.

This, of course, is unrelated to my age. I’d hate school discos just as much if I was a young, 21-year-old mother; possibly more, because at 21 I should be the one canoodling on a dance-floor, not my primary-school-aged son. In that regard, it helps that I’m old and doddery; my clubbing days are long since over, and the only reason I resent school discos is because they mean precious time away from my sofa, television and wine rack.   

I’ve felt recently as though extra-curricular parental duties are taking over my life. This is starting to piss me off. I like my kids and all, but I like being a grown-up, too. I like not going to children’s parties. I like not watching Calilou. I like not going to the movies to see Blinky Bill (one-star, such absolute shit). I like not being kicked in the head while I sleep. I like not going to playcentres, and peeling children who aren’t my own from my leg. I like not going to playcentres full stop (I hate playcentres). I like not having to stay sober so I can ferry an older child between friends’ homes. I like not having to wipe snot off my iPhone so I can check Instagram.

That has nothing to do with age, and everything to do with being a selfish fucker. I want the kisses and the cuddles and the heart-bursting pride that comes with a small child getting a principal’s award for using the correctly-spelled word “unfortunately” in a pre-primary narrative, but – sometimes, occasionally, and every so often – I could do without all the added bullshit.

You know what really winds me up? When my kids have a tantrum or a whinge while we’re partaking in an extra-curricular parental activity that I wholeheartedly begrudge. Like, when we’re trying to get all the kids in the car to go to – I dunno – trampoline land, or somewhere equally bouncy and shit, and they’re climbing on the roof-rack (Frankie) and misplacing their shoes (Ben) and protesting that they’d rather stay at home and play on the iPad. And it’s, like, what the FUCK, dudes? You think I WANT to be doing this shit? You think I want to drive 45 minutes with you whingeing feckers only to sit for another 90 minutes watching you whingeing feckers demand Pop Tops and chips, while other little feckers touch me? Feckers, I do not. I want to sip wine and watch the sun set, bra-less and slippered. Or, failing that, climb on the roof-rack and cry that I’d rather stay at home and play on the iPad.

I dunno, IS love enough?

Twenty years ago – pretty much to the day, if I’m not very much mistaken – I moved from Perth to London. I was 19, recently dumped, and quite the dickhead, but that’s beside the point. I dropped out of university, packed a suitcase full of my best slim-fit Britpop t-shirts, and joined a group of friends on a 36-hour, three-stopover, mega-budget flight to Gatwick.

For the next nine years, London was my home. I didn’t take to it at first; I was overwhelmed by the hustle and the bustle and the black bogies. But – London worked its (black) magic, and, I dunno, I started to hustle and bustle with the best of them, dodging the Sunday morning puddles of sick like a pro, and establishing – over the course of a decade – an ingenious system whereby I knew exactly which part of the underground platform to stand on to align myself with the most convenient tube-station exit. It was a skill mate, a fucking skill.

London, for all its faults, is the finest city on this earth. I say this having never been to New York, and having only spent mini-breaks in Paris, Rome and Barcelona, and actually quite liking Melbourne, too, but all that aside, London fucking rocks. It has this moody charm, a bit like Alex Turner, or Amy Winehouse (past tense) – you know, immense coolness with a dark undercurrent of SOMETHING ABOUT TO HAPPEN. I miss it, my London.

I miss it not because I now live on the other side of the world, in possibly the least-London-like suburb of northern Perth. I miss it because my London doesn’t really exist anymore. My London is under attack, and my Londoners – my friends, and my family – are being attacked. I’m well aware that there are many cities across the world that are under attack. The rest of England is under attack. The rest of the WORLD is under attack. I know this. I understand this. But it’s this attack – this latest attack in MY London, MY London Bridge, MY Borough Markets – that’s tipped me over the edge.

I was angry after the Manchester attacks, don’t get me wrong. You targeted little girls, you fuckers, LITTLE GIRLS at a pop concert on a Monday night. Fuck YOU. I’ll be honest, I haven’t managed to read much associated with those attacks. I can’t go there. I know the number killed, and I know the Queen visited the hospital, and I know that a homeless man helped the injured. I know those sparse facts, but beyond that, nothing. I can’t bring myself to find out more, to let my mind wander into those lost families, those lost little girls. I just can’t.

This attack – THIS one – I can’t seem to accumulate enough information about. I’m refreshing newsfeeds, immersing myself in eye-witness accounts, so that I can walk the routes that the terrorist murdering cunts walked, and imagine myself and my friends in the wrong bar, on the wrong bridge, at the wrong time. That is my London, you fuckers, those are my people, and they could’ve been my friends, my family.

London’s been under attack before, of course. In the nine years that I lived there, I experienced bombings and threats. There was the Soho nail bombing in 1999, when a neo-Nazi walked into a gay bar and blew the fucker up. My flatmates were in town that night; I’d been on an early shift at HMV the next morning and had stayed at home. No one I knew was hurt, but it still hit us hard. Still, it felt like a one-off. It had happened, it was horrific, it was over.

Then, in July 2005, while I was pregnant with Ben, the underground was blown up. I was running late for work, and got to Mile End tube station to find it closed. Something to do with an electrical fault, they said, so I wandered up to Bow. That was closed, too. Get the bus, my boss said when I phoned to say I was gonna be late. Then the fuckers blew up a bus. It was the day after we’d won the bid for the Olympics, I remember that, and I couldn’t believe how we’d gone from elation to despair in fewer than 24 hours. But still, it felt like a one off. Yeah, they could try, but we were stronger than that. We’d get back on the tubes, we’d get back on the buses, and we would never, ever live in fear. Fuck that.

But now, I dunno. I’m not there, of course, so I can’t speak for the people of London, but I get the sense that people are nervous. They’re angry, of course, but they’re scared, too. There’s no humanity in these fuckers. They mowed down people on London Bridge, and then got out of their van to kick them and stab them and ensure their last moments on this earth were torturous and horrific. But that wasn’t enough, was it? No, because then they went running through the bars and restaurants of Borough Market, cutting the throats of people out for dinner and drinks on a Saturday night in London. They came from behind, pulled heads back by the hair, and cut throats. Merciless, fucking merciless.

And we’ll stand strong, of course we will. We’ll hold charity concerts and remembrance marches and Coldplay will sing Oasis and Miley Cyrus will sing Crowded House and we’ll cry and we’ll hold hands and we’ll say THEY WON’T BEAT US and LOVE CONQUERS ALL and we’ll hope and we’ll pray – but is that enough? IS love all we need?

I dunno; I need to do more. I can donate money and I can send love and I can say that OF COURSE I’ll still travel to London and I WILL NOT live in fear, but in my heart? In my heart, I’m scared. I’m scared for my dear friends who live in big cities. I’m scared that love isn’t enough.

But if love isn’t enough, then what is? 

Selfish mother

I’ve been wrestling with something recently. By which I mean, I’ve been wrestling with a concept, not a child, although obviously I’ve been wrestling with my fair share of those, too (wriggly little fuckers they are, as well). I’ve been wrestling – metaphorically – with the concept of “me time”.

Hear me out here. I’m a mother, right? But I’m a lowercase mother. I’m not a Capital-M Mother. By which I mean, I’m not defined by motherhood. A spangled-celebrity-with-a-book-to-sell once levelled a barbed attack in my direction, accusing me of being a Capital-M Mother, who had no identity outside of my children. Not only that, but she suggested that I thought badly of mothers (lower-case) who weren’t defined by motherhood. You know, the mothers who do loads of things other than mothering. She thought I was AGAINST those mothers, when in fact I AM one of those mothers. Not only that, but I feel passionately about our need to be lower-case mothers. DO ALL THE SHIT! And don’t feel bad about it, okay?  

I’ve lost you, haven’t I? Understandable; I’m talking a spectacular amount of ranty nonsense, right here.

To recap: I am a mother who does lots of different things other than mothering. I don’t feel guilty about doing lots of different things other than mothering. I am possibly what is referred to as a “selfish mother”, a tag I’ll wear with pride, because – yes – I look after myself first and everyone else can form an orderly queue.

It doesn’t feel like that at times. There are days that are so consumed with school drop-offs and clean uniforms and packed lunches and lost reading books and supermarket tantrums and forgotten birthday party invitations and missed cross-country carnivals and school pick-ups and plummeting blood sugar levels and ALL THE OTHER KID SHIT, that I forget about me.

But then I go for a run, or watch Come Dine with Me, or have a glass of wine out the front, or write this silly blog, or stare blankly at Facebook for an hour, and I’m back to my old self. Hello! I’m still here! I exist!

There is a tendency – when we mothers take five minutes to collect ourselves and our thoughts – to refer to this as “me time”. You’ll have seen it on Facebook, I’m sure: mothers taking a picture of themselves at the hairdresser’s, saying something along the lines of, “having some well-deserved me time”, which is FINE, obviously, and hardly a hangable offence, but think about it for a second.  

Before you had kids, did you “earn” a haircut? Did you need permission to go for a run? Did you need a note from your mum to go and get your legs waxed? Was it a guilty pleasure to grab a coffee when you should be doing a big shop? If you wanted to watch Judge Rinder and eat crisps in the middle of the day, were you required to obtain prior approval?

No, of course you fucking weren’t. You had to behave like a proper grown-up human, and do your job, and participate in civilised society, and not piss in plantpots, etc, but beyond that, your time was your own.

And yes, admittedly, you have a responsibility to other (smaller) humans now. That’s fine. That’s rewarding. That can even be fun. But as long as they’re LOVED and CARED FOR and FED and WASHED, then the rest of your time is your own. Go and get a fucking haircut! I mean, don’t leave the kids home alone with a box of matches and a scalpel, but beyond that, go get a trim! A perm, if you want to! And don’t you dare feel like this is a luxury, or a privilege, or something that you’re not deserving of. Mate, it’s a HAIRCUT. It’s a necessity! The same goes for all the other things that make you feel like yourself. You like exercise? Go nuts! Chuck those kids in the crèche and exercise yourself fucking senseless. Me? I love F45. My children are more often than not to be found on a cushion in the corner of the studio, in their pyjamas, on various electronic devices, while I work out. And you know what? They fucking love it! I fucking love it! We all fucking love it!

It helps to have a cool life-partner of course. My own personal life-partner never blinks in the face of my selfish pastimes. I have reason to believe that there are life-partners out there in the world who make their baby-mamas feel really guilty about doing their own thing. I have a message for those misguided humans: go fuck yourselves, please and thank you.

We’re humans first, and mothers second, maybe third, possibly fourth. We love our children deeply and profoundly, but we love ourselves, too, and if we want to spend half a day getting our underarms bedazzled, then so we bloody well will, because one day – a day that will come around quicker than we think – we’ll be lowercase mothers, whether we like it or not. Our kids will be up and gone, and while they’ll still love us, they won’t need us. If you’ve spent the last two decades doing nothing other than uppercase Mothering, this could come as a shock. Who even are you, without a child on your hip? Do you even Mother, mumma?

All I’m saying is, be you. Do you. Go you. The rest will follow.