Monday
The child returns home today from his first ever school trip away (which is also, because we are useless, at the age of 12 his first trip abroad). He has been away for five nights, which is five times more nights than he has ever been away from us before (see uselessness above) and I have coped extremely well. Yes, I could periodically be found lying prostrate on the sofa or staring white-faced at a wall, praying to a god not to let him be kidnapped, lost or killed while my husband futilely attempted to console me with the thought that school trips are not like they were in our day. “They chip them and rope them to a teacher at all times now. They probably don’t even go on the trip. They’re probably just in a room on a Luton industrial estate with some convincing holographics on the wall all week. He’ll be fine.”
But otherwise – it was great. Once you learn to live with the all-encompassing dread, being child-free for the first time in 12 years is … quite the buzz. No truncated work day. No interrupted thoughts. Life admin reduces by 90%. There are so few depredations on my personal resources that I don’t even have to fight the urge for a four-hour nap every afternoon. I don’t feel empty or unfulfilled because I find motherhood largely a process of uncovering large, hitherto unknown areas in which to fail rather than a glorious process of exploring new depths to my soul.
And then he comes home, happy, full of new experiences and enthusiasms and, above all, not dead. I hide in a cupboard and cry for day with relief. So, overall, a win.
Tuesday
Aardman Animations, the makers of – most famously – the Wallace and Gromit films have been forced to put out a statement reassuring fans (and, I don’t know, maybe clay cheese and trouser markets?) after reports in the news suggested that they only had enough of their favourite modelling material to last for one more film, since its manufacturers retired earlier this year. Aardman promises that everything is in hand for a smooth transition to a new product and that its film plans have not been affected. I hope this is not quite true. I hope that in addition to all the original plans there is now at least a short in the works about a claymation studio that nearly runs out of clay and has to embark on all sorts of whimsical but moving adventures to save itself.
Wednesday
I have assembled documents, bank statements, my own calculations according to the figures provided, mustered my emotional reserves and looked to my troops. Ringing British Gas to deliver my firm opinion that they have been massively overcharging me for fuel for the last several quarters (didn’t get to it for a while because Dad died, sorry) shouldn’t require this much preparation, but the reality is what it is. Consumers are basically at war with all providers of goods and services. I am no economist, but when the core cost of everything is going up and various companies and industries (including oil and gas) are gleefully reporting record profits too, even I can see that something is off. The free hand of the market more often has us in an unyielding, vice-like grip than anything else.
So, faced with a set of personal figures exiting my bank account in a manner I find incommensurate with either common sense or evidenced usage, I must draw up my plan of attack, arrange the figures in my sandbox, rehearse my tactics and pick up the phone. Wish me luck as you wave me goodbye.
Thursday
I don’t understand how people can watch I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here this year, given that Nigel Farage is in it. I don’t mean out of any principled moral stand against the attempt to launder his reputation and reposition him as Just That Fun Guy Who Makes a Lot of Good Points Actually, or the payment of a rumoured £1.5m to him for the privilege, or the further glorification of dead-eyed bullies on national television – though, you know, those are things. I mean in a more simple, visceral sense of how you can watch a programme in which not only are you presented with that strange batrachoidal face (thank you, Alan Bennett, for introducing us to this perfect word in your diary description of the man, his morals and – specifically – his froglike mien), but there exists the possibility at any moment of seeing more. One such moment has already been delivered – a gluteal shot in the shower that, to put it at its best, made you marvel at the historically unposited but now clear existence of a phenomenon that can only be called the batrachoidal bum. Yet, though the pursuit of knowledge and the banishment of ignorance is a worthy goal of humanity, I still suspect this was one fact before whose advent into our lives we were all better off.
Friday
There are now, I am here to warn you, only 10 effective minutes till Christmas. Take out work, childcare, dealing with all the unavoidable shite of daily life that is no respecter of the season and insists on getting in the way of both goodwill and preparation and yeah – 10 minutes max.
But! I am not just here to warn you but to save you, at least in part. I’m going to solve your gifting problems at least. Buy everyone you know a heated throw. That’s it. That’s all. I’ve just acquired one and am officially an evangelist. It is not mere physical warmth that it provides but, via its gentle, encompassing folds a temporary cocooning from all the bleakness of the world. To crawl under it is to be comforted at a visceral level. The gentle warmth bypasses your rational mind and delivers what I imagine to be an almost religious experience. It is like part of you that you never knew was missing has been found. It offers profound succour and retreat. It is needed by anyone who has read more than a single headline since 2016 and who is not permanently in the middle of a hot flush. Spend that 10 minutes on Lakeland’s website and Christmas is done. You’re welcome.
A year in Westminster: John Crace and Marina Hyde live in London and online
On Monday 11 December 8pm–9.30pm GMT, join John Crace, Marina Hyde and Pippa Crerar for a livestream discussion on another year of anarchy in British politics. Book tickets here or at theguardian.live
#Digested #week #Avoid #froglike #Farage #buy #heated #throw #Lucy #Mangan
