Little Chef

A fourteen year old  boy in America has launched a massive career as a chef.

Apparently he didn’t like the food his mother cooked, when he was eleven years old, and so he made his way to a bookshop, bought a huge book about French cooking, and proceeded to teach himself to cook.

After learning, he started a pop up restaurant.  I’m not even sure what a pop up restaurant is, I presume it’s a temporary type affair like those “pop up shops” that used to be called “stalls”?

How would that work in a restaurant environment?  Does he have pop up cookers and ovens and sinks?  Am I a complete moron? 

I think we can safely say that when it comes to cooking that yes, I am.

I don’t think I want to know what a pop up restaurant is.  It’ll just annoy and irritate me.

Anyway, he’s launching himself into the world in a Beverly Hills restaurant this Thursday night with a $160 a head twelve course dinner for forty people.  It’s sold out.

Fair play to him, seriously.  I couldn’t cook a two course dinner for six people without a fuss and drama and probably a fire. And possibly a little flood.

But I have a couple of questions.

This is a child.  He has been cooking for three years.  His signature food is described as “progressive American” and he will be serving sunchoke confit with dehydrated grapefruit, followed by smoked sturgeon and beef with wild mushrooms, celery root, coffee and black vinegar at Thursday’s shindig.

Can a child not just learn to cook without all this labelling and nonsense?  When did people stop having celery (something that couldn’t happen too soon for me, incidentally) and start eating celery root?  Why is coffee now a dinner ingredient?

Also, what happened to children?  This child was probably born in 1998, or 1999 if he’s had this year’s birthday already.

As a child who was born a full twenty five years before him, I’d like to give him some information.

If you were born in Ireland in 1973 and didn’t like your mother’s cooking, you:-

·         Kept your big mouth shut about it.  Those were the days when the wooden spoon was not used to confit your sunchoke. 

By the way,  having googled it, I can now confirm that a sunchoke is an archaic name for an artichoke. 

Go ahead lads, make the thing as complicated as possible.  “Artichoke jam with dried up grapefruit” just wouldn’t have the same ring, would it?

·         Ate your bloody dinner anyway.  These were before the days when children ruled the house with an iron fist.  Refusing to eat your dinner because you didn’t like it was tantamount, in our house, to slapping your mother in the face.  Which was never acceptable, even if she hit you first. 

·         Thought of the poor children in Africa “who wouldn’t be getting shepherd’s pie or stew for quite a while, let me tell you” as the grown ups chanted at us in the seventies and eighties.

 I don’t know why they put it like that.  It gave us the distinct impression that there was a simple delay on the delivery of stew and meat pies to Africa. 

I remember once having a discussion with my brother on the logistics of posting a box of roast chickens to Africa, when we were about six and seven.  I had, as I still do, a great fondness for roast chicken, and I thought it might be a treat for them, after all the stew and shepherd’s pie. 

Like most things in my life, I never actually got around to organising it.  I was me from a very young age.

·         Passed it to your brother or sister’s plate and gave them a swift stab of your fork in their leg if they tried to kick up a fuss about it.  That same brother still does this to me every Christmas day, actually, with his Brussels sprouts. Happily I’m a huge fan and stabbing is never necessary.

What you never ever did, if you were a child of the seventies, is announce that your mother was henceforth to be banished from the kitchen and that you’d do the bloody cooking yourself.  At the age of eleven.

Can you imagine?

This child is now selling out dinners at $160 dollars a head. At fourteen.  So there might be something to be said for letting the little pup take over, I suppose.

But guess what his family did, when he made his big decision? 

They put a test kitchen in his bedroom, consisting of a couple of tables, some gas burners, and all the utensils he needed to perfect his art.

Gas burners, knives and tables to lay it all out to eliminate delays in reaching your weapon, in other words.

There is absolutely no way this could have been done in our house without resulting in tears, and visits to both hospitals and juvenile detention centres.

I’m trying to imagine my parent’s faces if I’d asked for a personal kitchen in my room when I was a teenager.  I can actually hear my Dad’s voice

“You can have a kitchen wherever you like, when you pay for it, like we did.  Now feck off”

And that's if he was in a good mood.  I won't go into what he would have said in a bad mood.  In fairness, even I'm not thick enough to have asked him for a personal kitchen when he was in a bad mood.

After this child's sister moved out to go to college, the prodigy moved into her room and his room was transformed into a full working kitchen, from which he runs the mysterious pop up restaurant.

He remains in school, via the Internet.  Not even a private tutor, the poor little sod.  Must be a lonely way to be educated.

I think this story is one of the ones I’ve read recently that most shows the difference between children thirty years ago, and children today.

And I'm not criticising that.  I know it's great that kids have more confidence, and a better chance of making the best of themselves now.  I'm merely pointing out the changes that have occurred in one generation.

I wonder how many of our generation could have been hotshot chefs, or bakers, or whatever else, if only we’d had mothers who listened to “you’re hopeless, I’ll do it myself” nonsense from their offspring?

I’m telling you, there’s no way that childs mother is Irish.  No self respecting Irish Mammy would go along with that.

The Miracle of Birth

I’m a yellow bellied, lily livered twit.  I am not ashamed of it.

I’ve had my moments of bravery, I’ve escaped from a burning building (thanks entirely to His Nibs. I wanted to have a sit down, cry my eyes out, and wait for Death.  He was having none of it), and  I managed not to get hysterical when a certain pilot announced our plane was dropping from the sky and he was having trouble keeping it in the air, and like everyone I’ve got through some bad times without taking to the bed for weeks at a time.

But there is one thing I am not willing to do.  There’s a new trend, the online newspaper informs me, that some women are up to in the UK.  I’m not saying they don’t do it here, but I’ve only read it in the British papers, so I don’t know.

Wait for it. 

The new trend is home births in front of an audience.

The particular woman in today’s article gave birth in her marital bedroom, in front of her husband, the midwife, her four children, aged from 19 years old down to 20 months, her mother, her best friend, and a camera crew of two.  Oh, and apparently the couple next door dropped in to say hello during it as well.

She said it was great. There was a relaxed and happy atmosphere, she was on all fours in the corner of the room until it was time to get into the birthing pool, apparently the audience stood and sat around chatting quietly and drinking tea.  It was very relaxing for her, to be able to look up from her position and see the happy faces of all who love her.

It’s a good thing I don’t love her.  Because if I’d been summoned to this particular tea party, I would not be wearing a relaxed and happy face.  I’d be horrified. 

Call me a cowardly old fart, I don’t care.  I’m sure it’s all very trendy and new age and healthy, but I do not want to spend my time watching humans, or anything else for that matter, giving birth.

I was invited to be a birth partner once.  Happily, only as a spare.  The woman who asked me is not a fool.  She has a loving and supportive husband to help her through life's difficulties.  I was only  invited because she knew I would talk incessantly during the early part of the process, because I always talk too much when I’m nervous.  And she thought I might be able to take her mind off the pain.  It was her first baby.  She knew no better than I did.

I was bricking myself.  As the labour progressed, I fought back tears to think of word games, feed her made-up bits of gossip, and generally blather on incessantly rather than face the reality of what was happening in front of me. 

Every time a contraction started, the brave mother-to-be stayed calm, breathed deeply, and counted.  I, however, the worse the pain got for her, started running on the spot, shouting and gibbering.  I admit it.  I was hysterical.

When a medical professional finally said it was time to start pushing, I excused myself.  It was hard enough watching the epidural being administered, without this caper.

I excused myself by announcing that I felt that I had no place in the room.  The husband and wife were together, waiting to meet their tiny baby for the first time.  I felt like I was intruding, and that I would return at the appropriate time, after the baby was born and cleaned up.

Obviously nobody in the room could have cared less at that moment, where I was, so I went outside and paced up and down the footpath and smoked cigarettes, much like the fathers of yesteryear.

In my opinion I was called back into the room too quickly after the birth.  I was thrilled, obviously, to meet the new arrival, and to see the mother still living and breathing.  I was appalled to see a doctor between her legs, “popping in a few stitches”.  At least that’s what he told me he was doing when I started squawking at him.

I started to feel a bit wobbly in the knees, but carried on, obviously, to meet this tiny person , completely new in the world.

As I approached the bed, I saw a bowl of something. I actually staggered.  The placenta, apparently.  I won’t dwell on it.

I was thrown out of the room almost immediately, by a doctor.  I think we were all relieved.

I was not invited to the birth of their next baby.  I did not ask for an invitation.  The mother says that looking at it was probably was much worse than going through it.  I don’t believe that for one second.

My point is this.  The woman who appeared in the newspaper today invited her mother, who probably wanted to be there, in fairness, she’s obviously been through it herself, her best friend, who I assume had the choice of refusing, and her husband to the birth.

Needless to say, I’m a hundred per cent behind the father being at a birth.  It’s only right that he and the mother be the first people to meet their son or daughter.  There’s no way I’m suggesting that we go back to women being packed off to labour rooms while fathers stay out in the waiting room sympathising with each other.

I’ve never yet met a father who regretted being at the birth of their child.

I’m talking about the woman’s other children.  In the name of God, one of them is twenty months old.  The others are 19, ten and nine.

I’m not so old that I don’t remember being nine or ten.  Long hot summers and the recession of the eighties, so that there was never enough money for comics or toys or candy floss or whatever it was I wanted in any given week.

Not watching my mother on her hands and knees struggling to give birth.  God forbid.

This mother says that the whole experience was very life affirming.  For her, maybe.  Possibly not for the children in the room.

And as for inviting the neighbours in, words fail me.  The fact that they actually went is completely and utterly beyond me.  Just how close can someone be to their neighbour?

In case you’re wondering, the baby ended up being one of the great loves of my life.  I adore him.  He is indifferent to me.

The House that Jack Built

Didn’t there used to be a children's song about the House that Jack Built?

I thought that it would be a good metaphor for our house.  I thought the song was about a house where everything kept breaking down and falling apart and generally being painful and expensive to live in.

When I googled it, though, it turns out to be about a rat eating grain, a cat killing the rat, a dog killing the cat, and on and on until some miserable moo gets married to a raggedy man and the vicar is woken by a rooster.  Don’t ask me.

Not a good metaphor for our house after all.  Except for the part about the miserable moo marrying the raggedy man I suppose.  No matter.  The point I’m trying to make will become clear, I’m sure.

The moral of the story may as well come at the start as at the end, and it is this:

Never ever buy a house because you like the fact that the whole estate is painted sunshine yellow and looks like something out of Toytown.  Or because you’re just dying to live in the country, and at least you can afford this one – maybe.

Our house was brand new, and had never been lived in.  It was bought from the plans by an investor and sold on to us a few months later for about fifty thousand more than he’d paid for it, with absolutely nothing done to it in the meantime.

We’re such a pair of complete morons that we relied on this investor’s snag list and assumed there was no need for an engineer’s report.

And now, seven years later, our house is making my teeth hurt.

First of all it was the water, which was so hard that it ruined the electric shower, the washing machine and the fecking taps. 
The lime rotted the washers, and swiftly got to work on the brass parts inside. 
We’re on our third kitchen tap now.  Despite the fact that we spent quite a few hundred euro on a water softening yoke some time ago.

And the tap in the bathroom under the stairs is on at full flow at all times.  The efforts His Nibs and I made to cut off the water supply to it failed so utterly that we’re lucky to still be married and not living underwater, never mind to have fixed it as well.

The fridge freezer keeled over a few months ago.  The new one wasn’t delivered for two full pigging weeks, so that I had to keep the milk and wine in an ice bucket.  By ice bucket, obviously I mean the mop bucket, with bags of ice from Centra being thrown in at regular intervals.

Then, as my kind regular readers will know, the heating collapsed, just before Christmas.

Now it’s the washing machine.  It has taken a turn against us, and while it’s willing to wash the clothes, it is completely unwilling to drain at the end of the cycle, or to spin.

Last weekend the pair of us stood together, in front of the bathroom sink with the running tap, squeezing the water out of clothes that had just come out of the washing machine.

When we went to get the clothes out today (yes, we continued using it - I'm not going back to my days using a launderette), they were still sitting in a puddle of water.  So I set the machine to Drain, and waited patiently for it to do what it was originally asked to do.  It took off washing the clothes all over again.

I waited another hour and a half for that to complete, and then set it to spin.  It just took off washing for the third time.

Annoyed beyond reason, I dragged out the dripping clothes and put them in a wickery type laundry basket.  The water started running out of the bottom of the basket and across the kitchen floor.

It’s a good thing I have friends.  I had to put the dripping heavy clothes into a black plastic bag, and put them in the car.  His Nibs’ car, obviously, not mine.  I’m not a complete eejit.  I don’t believe a plastic bag is waterproof.  And with the amount of dust and dirt in my car, if there was any kind of escape of water I’d end up with a mud slick on the back seat.

Then I had to put a bag of dirty clothes on the passenger seat, go to my friends house, and put on my begging face so that she’d let me in and let me take full advantage of her hospitality, and her white goods.

She was very kind, and let me do my worst.  She did, however, suggest that if what I was trying to stuff into her washing machine counts as one load in our house, maybe that was the problem with our own machine.

The electric shower is acting the mick as well.  It’s now a matter of dancing around the shower cubicle, either burning or frozen as the shower springs its constant surprises.  And His Nibs, by his own admission, broke the holder for the shower head last week, so now a shower entails dancing around with the deadly shower head in your hand.

I wonder why it is that when we lived in little one bedroom rented apartments, I dreamt of living in a house, with a spare room, and a garden, and where we’d never get a letter saying that although we were completely up to date on our monthly payments, that we had to move out anyway, because they wanted to sell the flat or whatever.  And I wanted a dog.

Until we bought this house I knew absolutely nothing of how to buy a fridge.  Cubic capacity and energy ratings and frost free abilities were completely beyond me.  These days, I find myself calling plumbers and electricians and handymen more often than my own family. 

When I was much younger I thought that it would be lovely to buy an old house, that needed some work but would be full of character and personality.  But I thought better of it, on the basis that it would cost so much money to get it re-wired and re-roofed and re-plumbed that it wouldn’t be worth it.  So we bought a new house, and ended up never being finished fixing something in it anyway. 

Maybe my mother was right yet again.  Be careful what you wish for.

 

Bra Shopping for Beginners

Can you imagine if an alien or even some men (and His Nibs very much includes himself in this) – was sent to buy a bra?

His Nibs and I discussed this at some length just yesterday.  In fairness, the poor soul was pretty terrified.  At first I suspected that he thought that if he got the answers right, I’d send him off with the debit card, and that he’d end up like the poor clowns in Father Ted, when they got lost in Irelands biggest lingerie department. 

But I know him well, and I know that he was absolutely guessing the answers.  He hadn’t a clue.  And it’s not like he was afraid of being sent shopping.  He’s quite feisty when he wants to be.  It took me an hour to talk him into going out to buy bread the other day.

Anyway, I wouldn’t send him.  I wouldn’t dream of it. 

Let’s picture this alien we're imagining wandering around Marks and Spencers, having been sent for a simple black bra, to go under a new black dress.  The dress has been purchased for a rather special date its owner is going on.  Or it might even be a nice sensible interview dress.

It is not a nightclub dress. 

The dress is neither round necked, nor low cut. 

The aliens instructions are to purchase a normal bra, that would hold a lady together as necessary, without looking like she was auditioning for a pole dancers job, or like she was a downtrodden wife with sixteen children.  You wouldn’t think it would be that difficult, would you?

The lady I have decided is ordering the alien about, is of a reasonable size, chesty wise.  Let’s call her a C, not flat, but not enormous either. She just wants a nice bra, to wear under her nice dress.

Off goes our alien.

First of all, naturally, he has to get past the nursing and maternity bras.  Fair enough, they’re there for a reason, no problem with that.

Then he has to decide between underwired and no wire.  A dilemma as old as time, but one all us ladies have an opinion on.

Then it gets complicated.

He has to decide between balcony, plunge, push up, full cup, t-shirt, or sports bra.  Or he could try to look for the bra that tries to be all things to all women, a multiway.

Our alien, I’m afraid, cannot even pretend that to know the different purposes of all these different bras.  Some, yes, but not all. 

For research purposes, I asked His Nibs if he knew the differences.  I swear, he didn’t have a clue.  His actual response was “No idea.  How would I know?”

When I read the list above to him, he understood push up (of course he did) and sports bra.  He made a decent guess at full cup.  In fairness, the answer was in the question there.

In case any boys are reading, and confused, a balcony bra is basically a half cup, for wearing with low cut dresses or tops.  If you wear a balcony bra with a dress that isn’t low cut, things can get a bit messy looking, as the top half of the breast wobbles about, trying to look seductive, under cover of clothes.  Not suitable for this black dress at all.

It’s not low cut.  It’s not up to the neck, but there is definitely no need to wear half a bra.

A plunge bra, and I had to look this one up, is “a bra with a very low plunging front, angled cups and thin centre gore, this style is good for deep v-necklines”. 
I don’t know what a thin centre gore is.  I suppose it’s the bit of fabric that holds the two cups together. 

Again, because of the neckline of the dress, and the general cut of it, the bra was for something that would give our lady a lovely shape in her structured dress.  Not the plunging look. 

I don’t like that term actually.  A plunge bra.  As if, when wearing one, you’re inviting someone to plunge right in.  A nasty thought.

A push up, we all understand.  Some gentlemen might be surprised to know that lovely and all as the Wonderbra looks, it’s not the most comfortable of items to wear.  In order to push the puppies upward, the push up bra sort of grips them by the side, squeezes in, pushes up, and holds.  Sort of like having a vice worn around the boobs all day.  Most ladies of my acquaintance, although in fairness I’m nearly forty, and as I say, married, only wear them when we have to. 

A full cup bra might sound like the perfect solution, but to be honest that’s where the more sensible, matronly look comes in. And the full cup tends to be so full that unless you’re wearing a complete round neck, there’s no point in putting it on, because it might peep out over the top of your clothes.

A Sports bra is a no with a black dress, obviously.

That just leaves the t-shirt bra.  Arguably the most practical choice.  The only problem is that they’re made to be completely smooth under quite a tight t-shirt.  There will be no lines, or frills or bows.  So although practical, not especially pretty.

If we asked the poor alien to bring back a matching knickers, he’d probably give up and go back to his own planet.   The choice between briefs, bikini briefs, high leg, low rise, midi, thongs, French knickers, and shorts would surely kill him.

Some evangelical talk show host on American TV has caused uproar this week by stating that if a husband is not paying enough attention to his wife, it’s probably her fault, for not looking good, and making the effort.  For letting herself go, in other words. 

Can you blame us?  Who are the women who always wear lovely, appropriate and matching undies?

He also says that stubborn women cause men to lose interest in the marriage.

We’re fecked then, in our house.  Because I’m definitely too stubborn to make the effort.

Things I wish my mother had never told me

Having recently listed a number of things that I wish my mother had told me in years gone by, I've now got to thinking about the other things. 

The things that she told me that I wish I'd closed my ears for, that have left me sorry I ever listened.

Some things, I wish I didn't hear because she was often right, and I don't like being wrong.

Others, again because she was generally right, and I can't help thinking of what I messed up by not taking her seriously.

You can be anything you like.

Although I’m grateful to my Mam and Dad for always telling us to believe we could be anything we wanted to be, and for actually believing it themselves, there’s one little problem with it. 

I feel a bit guilty that I didn’t become a doctor, or a writer, or one of the other professions that I allegedly could have achieved with my hands tied behind my back.  If I could be anything I liked, why didn’t I make the most of it and become an explorer, or an astronaut, or something else exciting?

Why did I drift along like a gom, never quite finishing anything and letting things happen to me, when I was supposed to be being all Gray's Anatomy, and flying through medical exams?

Or was it just my parents who thought we could do anything we liked? 

A woman’s work is never done.

The reason I wish my Mother hadn’t told me this is not because of any exhaustion or bitterness I feel for all the work I do every day.  Quite the opposite, in fact. 

It’s more of the guilt (God, it’s exhausting, all this guilt.  I wonder if it’s because I’m supposed to be an Irish Catholic?). 

I know that my mother and grandmother did a lot more work than I do.  For a start, they both know (or knew, in Gran’s case) how to make bread from scratch, with bread soda and buttermilk and the whole nine yards.  These are women who made casseroles without using a stock cube or a packet of powder, and actually wash their hand wash only clothes, rather than leave them in the bottom of the laundry basket until they’ve been there for so long that they’ve gone out of fashion.

They also washed their floors with alarming regularity, and raised their children, through the terry cloth nappies years, without needing to go on a spa break every few months.

Whereas I work a seven hour day, make His Nibs do his share of the housework, and pay a lovely woman to do my share. And I still need a spa break every now and then.

Then I have a lovely big sit down and watch a boxset or write little stories on my laptop.  Invariably accompanied by a cup of coffee or, on a good day, a glass of wine.

This woman’s work is quite often done.  And I’m quite pleased about that.  Feck it, I’ll live with the guilt.

Always look after your teeth.

More excellent advice from Mother, and Dad, who never had a filling.  They were completely right.  Having spent a considerable amount of time with the dentist in her much younger years, my mother spoke from experience and wisdom.  She told me often enough, that I didn’t want to be spending too much time with the dentist, that it’s all very unpleasant there.  And I’ve always brushed my teeth. I floss, but it would be a big lie to say that I do it three times a day, like I’m supposed to.

And yet I’ve ended up with more fillings than average.

The upshot of my mother’s excellent advice is that when I go to the dentist, I’m shaking as I walk up the stairs, and clammy by the time I’m told to relax in the chair.  I was once having a filling when the dentist ceased his work very suddenly.

“Christ, we’ll have to stop” he yelped at his nurse, who had refused to hold my hand through the procedure, on the grounds that I was about thirty six, and I wasn’t in labour.

“She’s hyperventilating.”

It was true, I was actually hyperventilating.  As I lay there, trying to breathe, they had a discussion about whether they should call a doctor, or even an ambulance.  Then they had a chat about whether they should knock me out (I assume they intended to use an anaesthetic, rather than a blunt object), since they couldn’t carry on with the filling while I was in that state, and it was at a rather delicate stage.  Not the time to abandon the project apparently.  That threat helped me to cop onto myself, I can assure you.

I combat my terror by avoiding the dentist at all costs.  And, if I’m honest, only going there when I can’t stand the pain of toothache anymore.

I might have been better off just being told to brush my teeth, and leaving it at that.

You’ll be gorgeous in a veil.

This is the greatest lie my mother ever told me in my life.  It was when I was six, and was making my First Communion. 

For some reason best known to herself, she had had my hair shorn to an inch in length, all around.  In fairness, it was the seventies.
There’s a reason why little boys don’t wear veils.  Because veils don’t go work on the shorn locks of a small child.

In the seventies, some of my younger friends might be surprised to know, Communion veils were made of a ring of wire, with what looked like a piece of my Granny’s net curtain hanging off it.  None of the tiara and crown efforts you see these days.  It was a simpler time by any standards. 

It didn’t suit me for the four seconds it sat on top of my head.
After that, it pitched violently to the right.  Happily, the wire ring caught on my right ear and prevented the veil from falling off entirely. 
I don’t know if the decade that style forgot is an excuse for this either, but we used white hairgrips to attempt to hold the veil onto my inch long hair.  So I was left with a veil hanging off my right ear, and about five bright white clips in my dark brown hair.

Not a happy sight.

I didn’t have a veil when I got married.  I had hair that was at least two feet long, and a sort of feathery fascinatory type effort that didn’t have a wire ring, or any sort of netty fabric.

Finish what’s on your plate.

This one has led to a lifetime of trouble for me.  I think it would have been much kinder in the long run to allow me to eat half my dinner if that’s what I wanted.

Because years of being told that eating everything on my plate is the right thing to do has caused endless tears (usually in clothes shop changing rooms) and torment.   I still do it to this day.  It’s so ingrained in me at this stage that it’s quite frightening. 

I was out recently, among friends and colleagues, when we were provided with platters of treats.  You know the sort of thing, mini spring rolls, chicken goujons, onion rings (God, I love onion rings) and even though there was a platter for each table, I seem to have taken it upon myself to finish the plate.  But it wasn’t a plate.  It was supposed to serve about ten people.

The following morning, when I arrived to work, I started shouting at some of my friends

“Why didn’t you stop me last night?  I can’t believe you let me do it!”

They were very surprised.  They assumed that I’d mugged someone or gone home with the barman or something.  Which would be good going, since I left, sober-ish, at twenty past eight.

I was talking about the platter.  They were kind about it, but I suspect they pitied me. 

I’m helpless in the face of fried batter.

It’s all my mother’s fault.  But I love her anyway.

Things I wish my mother had told me

That making dinners is far less fun than it looks.

When I was a child I thought my mother was the luckiest person on earth, because she got to decide what we had for dinner every day.

I used to think that if I was in charge of the menu we would have chips and burgers, or Christmas dinner with all the trimmings every day.  And some days we would just have cake or chocolate.  Maybe I’m a bit psychic.

Not about the Christmas dinners obviously, but about the having cake for dinner sometimes.

I was quite committed to dinner making when His Nibs and I first lived together.  I was always home first and sometimes had his dinner ready and on the table as he walked in the door. 

But then we moved to the country and I got heartily stick of having to cook after my long commute.  So I gave it up.

It’s a very boring carry on.  Even deciding what we’re going to eat gets boring after a while.  There’s only so many times you can ask yourself whether chicken fillets would be nice, or if you should be heart healthy and have fish, before you start hating your own cooker, in my experience.

It all turned out to be a bit of a disappointment, to be honest.

One way or the other, everybody should tell their children that once you leave home, no matter what age you are, no roast dinner will ever taste the same as your Mammy’s.

Pick Your Battles

I wish she’d told me that living with a man sometimes involves knowing how to pick your battles.  I could have saved many shouting sessions, and His Nibs wouldn’t have worn himself out running up and down the stairs of our building with his bags on his back, if I’d known that. 

Every cross word used to end up with one of us shouting that we were fed up of this, and that we should split up.  I couldn’t drive at the time, so I expected him to go.  I’d look a right clown walking around town with my bags hanging off me, wouldn’t I?  At least he could hide our shame in the boot of his car. 

At one stage he gave up unpacking and just wore his clothes straight out of his packed bags until the next fight.  It was dead handy.  No packing, just out the door, twenty minutes sulking time, and home. 

I think my mother is a bit of a secret feminist, and thinks that we should treat our husbands mean, and keep them keen.  Or maybe she doesn’t like her sons in law, and likes to see us giving them hell. 
One way or the other, please inform your daughters, ladies, that sometimes there’s no need to break up with her one true love because he won’t make her coffee every time she demands it or he dares to say the dinner is disgusting, even if that’s true.

We gave up all the running away from home when we bought the house.  I don’t know why.  I suppose neither of us want to go.  But the house brings its own problems, and something else I wish my mother had told me.
 

Owning a house isn’t that much fun either.

My mother was so proud when we bought the house that she forgot to tell me that once you buy a house your work is never done.  In our renting days, we used to moan and whinge if the landlord didn’t deal with our complaints within 24 hours. 

Once we bought the house we found out that it’s never ending.  If it’s not the heating breaking down, it’s the fridge, or the leaky tap that’s driving us mental, or the sofa needs replacing, or the whole place needs re-painting.  In fairness, that last one is pretty much a constant.  Between our cigarettes, our dogs, and our general scruffiness, I’d say if we repainted the whole place today it would need redoing again tomorrow.

Having rented one bedroom flats for years, we were delighted to finally have a bit of space to run around, and avoid each other in.  I even got to change the box room into what my sister would call a sulking room.  We call it the writing room, and it contains a desk, a laptop rest, a fancy leather chair and hundreds of notebooks, all just waiting for me to be struck by inspiration and write the great Irish novel.

I thought we’d never fight again. What was there to fight about, when we could just go to separate floors and avoid each other?  The house had never been lived in, it was brand new, and I was stupid enough to think it wouldn’t start giving trouble for at least ten years.

The first thing to go, if I remember rightly, was drinkable water.  There was so much lime in the water that we had to buy a water softening yoke that lives in the garden.  Too late, though, the lime had already destroyed the washing machine and the electric shower.  That was just the start of it.

You have to stop buying the clothes you want when you leave home

My mother should have given me this information as I walked out her front door, with my binbags full of possessions in my hands.  Although in fairness, the advice she was trying to get through to me at the time was probably more important.

When I lived with my parents, I would buy whatever was in fashion, and what I liked.  There were two reasons for this.  One, I was only a wee slip of a thing at the time, and two, my mother did all my ironing.  These days, I have to check the labels of everything, to check that they’re not dry clean only, and that, preferably, they don’t need to be ironed.  Or that they don’t need much ironing.  One thing I’ve learned over the last fifteen years, is that the hotter the iron needs to be, the less I want to buy the clothes.  Linen is not my friend.
 

High Heels aren’t worth it

It would have saved me years of torment if I’d known this from the time I was about fifteen.  I ended up marrying a man the same height as me.  So the four inch heel is not an option.  If I’d known, I would never have bothered.  Poor His Nibs looks like one of Santy’s elves when I wear heels. 

When I think of all the blisters, the pain, the teetering, the time I fell off my heels and broke my leg, I wonder why I bothered.  These days I wear flats all the time, or at most a pair of wedges.  In my heart I sort of think that every woman should know how to walk in heels, but what’s the point, if you’re never going to wear them?


I suppose the thing about having children is that you're probably never finished trying to tell them things, before they start thinking they know everything and stop listening.
 
I'd imagine that it's hard enough to keep them fed and warm and out of the Garda station without finding time to give them every little piece of advice that they could ever use.

I still wish I'd known this stuff though.

New Year Resolutions

It’s that time of year again. Time to consider whether to commit myself to self-improvement and worthy things for the coming twelve months.

I’m not great at commitment. Neither of us are, in this house. We were engaged for eight years. Tying ourselves down is by no means our strong point.  They say that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.  Well, that road must go right by our house.

 I suppose the more fastidious and efficient among you will think it’s a bit late, two days of the New Year are gone already. But in fairness who actually gives anything up at midnight on New Year’s Eve? And I want to have a good think before I make any decisions. Which I couldn’t do over Christmas, with all the Quality Street fugging up my brain.

I have the usual list.

1          Give up smoking.

This is always top of the list, and in fairness I’ve followed through a number of times.

Unfortunately, I also follow through with going back on the damn things. I can’t decide whether I should blame His Nibs for this one or not, even though it’s clearly not his fault.

I like to think that if he was an ex-smoker or a non-smoker, I would have given up years ago. Every time I’ve ever gone back on the cigarettes, it’s been one of his that I’ve smoked first. Could it be that we’re stopping each other from stopping?

I know this one is up to me though. I live in hope…

2          Lose weight.

Like every other year, I’ve decided that I’ll finish this year three dress sizes smaller than I am now.

I just have to finish my selection box, the Quality Street and the Celebrations first. And also the biscuits. And the Christmas pudding, which I like to eat with cream.

Then I’ll get started, eating lettuce and Special K every day.

 

3          Exercise more.

Obviously, this will go along with the weight loss.
I’m tempted, as I have done many times before, to go out and buy a tracksuit and new runners in preparation.
I often treat myself to some mad little exercise machine as well.
The year of the gym ball was a good one, I’d hoped the weight would fall off me just by sitting on it, and rolling around a bit, but no luck of course. Apparently all it’s any good for is strengthening core muscles.
Who needs strong core muscles if you can’t find them under the fat?

I still have the little machine that’s just two plates of plastic, like a tiny see saw, you just stand on it and lean on first one step then the other. It’s handy as a stepping stone if I have to reach the top shelf. As long as I remember to only stand on one side of it.

I suppose I could just walk the dog. After all, that’s what I got him for. But we always end up fighting. Not against another dog and owner, but between ourselves. He thinks we should walk down the middle of the road like free range chickens in a cornfield, and I think we should stay on the footpath and he shouldn’t try to pull my arm out of its socket.

 4          Spend less, save more.


Or indeed, save anything.  I haven't so far, after many, many years of good intentions.  But you never know, this could be the year.

Even if I don't start saving, I think it's probably a good idea to get the credit card balance back to zero.  (Christ, I hope His Nibs doesn't read this.  He thinks our balance is actually zero now.  The poor innocent.)

Or stop going into overdraft. It would be good for my pocket, and my sense of personal security, and my marriage.

There’s always the chance that I’ll win a few thousand I suppose. But I don’t do the lotto. I never enter raffles where the prize amounts to a good sum, because the tickets are usually something bonkers like €20. And I could get a new Clinique Chubby Stick with €20.

So I’ll just have to stop buying stuff. Including Chubby Sticks.

5                    Enjoy life to the fullest.

This is one I suppose is always supposed to be on every list of resolutions. I know that this means I’ll do loads of worthy things, like maybe learn a language, or climb Macchu Picchu.

The trouble is, I don’t want to climb Macchu Picchu. It sounds like a lot of hard work to me. I just want to relax and enjoy myself. Especially if I cop on and stick to resolution three.

I’ll be getting a bit of exercise without having to climb eight thousand feet into the sky in the heat.

6                    Stop watching rubbish television and read some more intelligent books.

This is a constant thing with me. It’s a sort of guilty pleasure, watching bad television and reading nonsense like Heat magazine when I should be reading the classics and smartening up my act.

The trouble is that every time I try to read a really intelligent book, I fall asleep after about a page. And then the next night I’ve forgotten the page I read the night before, so I have to start again. After weeks of effort, I only get ten pages into the book, at most. Then I give up and try a different book.

And how will I know if Kat and Alfie from Eastenders ever get back together if I stop watching bad telly?

 

7                    Complete all skincare routines correctly and carefully.

I don’t just mean washing myself and moisturising, I’m fairly good at that. I’m talking about all the other stuff, the exfoliating and body butter and all that nonsense.

Or at least, if I’m not going to do it, I might resolve to stop buying the products. The cleaner is fed up moving them around and blowing the dust off them, and His Nibs just gets excited about how much they cost. Maybe I’ll just accept my limitations.


Of course, I could just accept my limitations in all things, and not make any resolutions. That sounds much better. Yes, feck it, that’s what I’ll do.  And now I can stop thinking about it and watch Eastenders.