Category: Stuff that just happens

According to research (shudder – don’t switch off) we would be happier, healthier and slimmer if we listened to our body clocks. (The Times, September 17th, 2016)

What an absolute crock of shite. Yes, two fingers up to spontaneity in life: that quick fuck, cheeky glass of wine at 5 or frothy cappuccino mid-morning. For Christ’s sake peoples, what the hell are you thinking?! Listen to your bodies’ natural daily cycle or you will be sad, unhealthy and fat. 

Shit, things don’t really get much better, do they?

The perfect time to wake up is 7.22am
Oh well, that’s it then. Sorry kids: get yourselves sorted because Mummy’s stress hormones dictate that she mustn’t wake up until 7.22. Don’t you DARE come into my bedroom at 7.20am BECAUSE I’LL GET FAT!

Only drink coffee at 3pm
This may help to get you through the afternoon school run, but it won’t help with the crap of the morning. Tea won’t cut it. Sorry bod, but you’re going to have to learn how to deal with cortisol. SUCK IT UP!

Do important tasks at 11am
When your brain is at peak function – bloody marvellous. So when the kids are showing me their maths homework at 8pm I have an excuse to tell them to google it. 

The best time to run or cycle is 5pm
Seriously…who is ever free to run at 5pm? 5pm is never an available slot. 5pm is slap bang in the middle of mayhem. Hey kids, today we’re running to football training, via ballet and the circuit will take us by the Brownie pick up. 

The least damaging time to have a glass of wine is 6.30pm
Fuck off. No, really. Just fuck off.

Go to bed before 11pm
In my dreams….

Most people these days have schedules that make them want to weep due to their complexity and they buckle under the sheer grind of life. But if there’s one thing that gets us all through, that keeps us going on the endless treadmill of life, it’s a morning coffee, a run or a bit of Zumba in that one luckily available slot we’ve spent days negotiating with our other half, a glass of wine at whatever fucking time we want it and we collapse into bed heaving for breath, praying it’s at least 1 minute before midnight. 

So those Canadian scientists have spent a shed load of money on research that means bollocks all to quite literally anyone. 

If I aligned my body clock with my daily schedule, I would piss off a lot of people. So I’ll risk being unhealthy, sad and fat. I’ll carefully monitor the situation and should I notice any of the above symptoms I will change my entire life to worship my circadian rhythms. Until then I will say to those researchers: so fucking what?

For those of you who don’t know, I am a Taekwon-do instructor – partner and I have our own club: Oaks Martial Arts. On a Wednesday morning we run our ladies’ only class. Partner is allowed in on the proviso that he doesn’t interrupt the female banter with any sort of ‘male’ angle and that he doesn’t pull a face when anything to do with women’s body parts are discussed – you know: pissing ourselves because of weak pelvic floors, that kind of thing.

Today was the first day back after the summer break and we had several new people trying it out. As they entered the dojang (training hall) they were met by me. Ordinarily, I don’t think that this in itself is necessarily a bad thing. I like to think that I am quite a cheery soul and unless it’s been a particularly bad morning with the teens, I generally greet our students with a smile. This morning, however, these nervous newbies were confronted by me in a sling, with bloodied sterie strips plastered in three places on my shoulder, a swollen finger, that hasn’t got a hope in hell of throwing a punch any time soon as it no longer bends and a broken foot, which makes me shuffle.

“You’re going to love Taekwon-do!” I chirped to them, as they opened the door. I could see their faces turn from a mild nervous state to outright panic, as they searched around desperately for an escape route. One of our regulars breezed in, seemingly unfazed by my new look. Thank god for that, I thought to myself. She’ll calm their nerves with her reassuring air.

“You’ve lost weight” she said.
“No, I’m sure I haven’t” I replied. “If anything I’ve put it on.”
“You’ve lost muscle then” came her reply.

I was crushed. Now it was partner’s turn to look nervous. Oh shit, he was probably thinking to himself. I’ve got to live with the fall out from that comment.

“I think she must like pain” piped up another regular. Now it was partner’s chance to relax the mood. “Oh, she’s always liked pain” he replied, with a cheeky smile, whilst stacking the paddle pads into the cupboard.

I glanced over at the new ladies, wondering how they were bearing up. They were smiling. Ah yes, I reassured myself, if there’s one thing that will unite a group of women, it’s a bit of sexual innuendo. I will allow partner that quip, I thought, but from now on in class, he must know his place.

Taekwon-do: the art of hand and foot…oh bollocks

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Jonnie Peacock wins 100m Gold in Rio

I’ve got to be honest with you – I’ve never been able to get ‘into’ the Paralympic Games. I love watching all kinds of sports on the TV. I love the Olympics, but try as I might, the Paralymics have just never fired me up…until now. Now, I am totally mesmerised and inspired by the disabled athletes I am watching perform at the top of their game in Rio.

So, what’s changed?

I have.

I am no longer an able-bodied athlete who is competing in her sport. My body is a little bit fucked at the moment. I know that my disabilities are not forever, so I am in no way equating myself with the long term disabled, for whom there will be no end to their pain and discomfort. But I can connect.

I can now fully empathise with these athletes in Rio. I watch them with awe. They don’t evoke my sympathy, they make me feel that anything is possible. I look at their strong, muscular bodies and I feel inspired by the work it has taken them to get into that shape. I see them as ambassadors for grabbing life by the balls and squeezing every last drop of pain out of it until they have reached their goal.

I see these men and women, and some still only children, as true warriors. The hurdles and barriers they have overcome to reach the pinnacle of their sport is astonishing and now, I can really feel it.

I can feel it because everything I do at the moment hurts. I am one handed and one legged. It hurts me to walk and even more to stand. I’ve temporarily lost use of my right shoulder and my right middle finger is currently out of action.

Every day these Paralympic athletes hurt, but on top of this hurt, they train. They are pushing through pain barriers that I can only begin to imagine, as I stand and teach on my broken foot, before collapsing in agony on the sofa. These guys are the nuts and am really enjoying watching them compete, with a newfound sense of awe.

Because of course, it’s not just the physical barriers that disabled athletes must overcome, it’s the constant discrimination that they have to face. I admit that I struggle with this too. I struggle to know how we should approach the subject of disability. What is acceptable? What will offend? I started thinking about what disabled people find offensive while I was reading a review in the Times yesterday for, David Brent: Life on the Road, in which he sings a song about disabled people and apparently the lyrics contain the line: ‘hold a disabled person’s hand, if they’ve got one.’ I was reading this with the Paralympic Games on in the background. It made me squirm, which I am sure is the reaction that Ricky Gervaise wants from us.

So it was with real interest that I watched Channel 4’s show: The Last Leg, which gives a light-hearted preview of the Games. It is presented by Adam Hills, who sums it up as, “three guys with four legs talking about the week” and it works – brilliantly. It works because the presenters, two of whom are disabled themselves, joke about disability, but they know what to say. David Brent they are not. It has me in stitches with comments like the one made on last night’s show about our national anthem: ‘a person with no arm and no leg singing to God to save a multi-millionaire…what’s all that about?’ Suddenly you realise that disability can be talked about with humour, it can be talked about openly without fear of offending and I find this extremely liberating. Far from distracting from the Paralympic athletes’ achievements, it embellishes them. It makes us realise that we don’t have to tip toe around their disabilities, because it is those very disabilities that have made them the people they are today.

At last I feel that I personally have far more freedom in my thoughts for people with disabilities – I have never been prejudiced, I just didn’t quite know what I could say. Finally, I feel that I can connect with these athletes, these inspirational forces of power and strength, who just refuse to lose.

Dame Sarah Story – 12 Paralympic Gold medals

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I stood on the top of that 6 foot wall in Spain and I felt on top of the world. I was high on nothing but sunshine and a couple of tins of San Miguel. I looked down at my daughters and partner, who were already safely on the concrete pavement below and I thought to myself: they think that I will be scared to jump. I saw partner’s outstretched hand, offering me a safety net that I just didn’t want. I wanted to show them all that I could do it and not only that, that I could do it better than them – that I could exceed all their expectations.

Three hospital visits later: one broken foot, a broken finger and a severely dented pride, I have learnt that lesson that you would have thought I may have grasped in my 20’s, perhaps even in my teens. That lesson that we teach our kids about not needing to prove anything to others. That the people who we want to impress, just want us to be ourselves. The day after I jumped onto the concrete pavement, daughter 2 said to me: you are acting like a teenager. It wasn’t a compliment. She wasn’t telling me that I looked young and vibrant. She wasn’t high fiving me for my energy and enthusiasm. She was saying that I was trying to be someone I wasn’t and that I should stop.

With the start of the new school year this message is a poignant one. One of our main concerns as parents when a child starts a new school, is not their grades, but more that they will make friends. We tell our children to be themselves. We talk to our older children about not changing so people will like you, but rather to be yourself and quickly the right people will love the real you. My kids and partner didn’t want to see me jumping confidently off that wall. They wanted to see my vulnerability, because that is the real me. I am not a teenager, I am not the person who I stood at the top of that wall and decided, in those few moments that I wanted to be. I am vulnerable and that is why my partner offered me his hand. That is why my daughters were looking up and gently encouraging me to get safely down.

I think that standing on that wall was actually a metaphor for my life. So often I try to live up to my perception of other people’s expectations of me and then to try and exceed those perceived expectations. Yet what I am actually able to achieve is not what others think I am capable of, but what I choose to do: how I choose to use my time and energy. So I should stop worrying about what other people think and live for me.

What we should be telling our children is not to lose sight of themselves by just doing what they think other people want them to do. They must follow their own path and be their own person. Life is not a race: we grow on our journey, not by reaching the destination and there will be fuck ups along the way – that is ok. That is how we learn. We have nothing to prove and you know what? The older I get, the more I realise that you can never please everyone anyway and so the most important thing in life is to please yourself, to find your own happiness.

As Marc Chernoff says in his article: 7 Reasons to Stop Proving Yourself to Everyone Else, “Care less about who you are to others and more about who you are to yourself.  You will have less heartaches and disappointments the minute you stop seeking from others the validation only YOU can give yourself.”

Standing on the top of that wall, I didn’t need to prove that I was able to jump. I didn’t need to prove anything and you know what I have learnt – that life is a lot less painful when you embrace who you really are.

Feet and hand on ice, but toasting the real me!

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I’m going to share with you a text conversation number one friend and I had the other day:

U watching men’s diving?

Yes I am !!!! Those stomach muscles …..

U wanna jump in that hot tub with them!!

Ooh Tom …

Just completely jokey, harmless banter between two best mates.

Then I saw a video on Facebook about how sexist coverage of the Olympics has been. The video opens with a voice telling us that: Olympic sportscasters comment on women’s appearance twice as often as men’s…

errr…whoops…guilty

It goes on to say that female athletes everywhere are used to being judged for their looks…

ok…guilty again…I may have mentioned once or twice in the past, while watching a football match, that David Beckham has a good bod…oh, and when partner was trying to get me into cricket I may have said that cricketers seem to have quite nice bums…

According to the video, women are, ‘much likelier to be described as emotional, while men are described as courageous and strong.’

So, I am in a dilemma here…

Because the female coach, Taekwon-do instructor and mother to 5 girls in me wants to agree whole-hardheartedly with this video. In fact, I want to scream at the Olympic media and ask them how the hell they are able to justify this inequality? Here is yet another example of women being treated as objects…

erm…

Then I point out to myself that I am indeed guilty of all of the above with male athletes. In fact, if women are honest I think that they would agree that they too may have objectified one or two sportsmen in their lives.

It all started for me with Linford Christie’s lunchbox. According to Wikipedia: He is the only British man to have won gold medals in the 100 metres at all four major competitions open to British athletes: the Olympic Games, the World Championships, the European Championships and the Commonwealth Games. He was the first European to break the 10-second barrier in the 100 m and still holds the British record in the event. He is a former world indoor record holder over 200 metres, and a former European record holder in the 60 metres, 100 m and 4 × 100 metres relay. With 24 major championship medals including 10 gold medals, he is the most decorated British male athlete.

BUT STILL WE REMEMBER HIM PRIMARILY FOR HIS HUGE COCK!

So, if we are agreed on this, perhaps what we are saying is that if you are responsible for reporting on sports, you have to maintain absolute professionalism at all times and never allude to anything that could be interpreted as sexist. I would certainly say that this should be the case.

Then, when I am sitting on my sofa at home watching the diving, I will turn into an absolute hypocrite and merrily say that Tom Daley has a cute arse and those teeny weeny speedos do it fabulous justice. I’m pretty sure that it’s that hot tub they all jump athletically into, that sets me off. Oh, and don’t get me started on the post-dive shower.

If partner and I are then watching the women’s beach volleyball and he texts his bestie commenting on how their bikinis show off their assets beautifully, I will also hypocritically be annoyed. “These women have trained for four fucking years to be there and all you can talk about is their tits!”

Writing this post has been hugely cathartic. What I have learnt is that women are huge hypocrites. As one of the people who commented on the video post pointed out: ‘women are the most guilty of this anyway. You have entire magazines where women point out flaws in other women’s appearance. Everything sports games, male or female, that I have watched with women turns into them commenting on the looks of the players. I’ve never heard a guy watch a movie and be like “oh yeah Seth Rogan is funny but he really needs to work out” but I can’t count how many times I’ve watched a movie with a girl and they start tearing into the lead girl because they don’t like the way they look.’

Are you guilty of this?

He goes on to say that we should get a thicker skin because the world is judging you all the time – get used to it! ‘This is why so many people shun modern feminism. Because you could be fighting serious injustice like FGM or women in countries that still aren’t allowed to vote or have any access to tampons or sanitary towels. But no, you pin your flag to stupid shit…’

Do you think this guy has a point?

I’ll leave you with a few more of his thoughts, because I think they are pretty interesting:

‘Women see it more when it happens to them than they do when it happens to men…Arguably one of the best English soccer players, Wayne Rooney, was constantly ridiculed for being ugly. Men like Johnny Depp and Brad Pitt are held up as “heart throbs” even in movies that suck…It’s just an unfortunate fact of life that we as humans judge each other all the time on looks, intelligence, everything. We are socially evolved to scruitinise each other…’

I do think that he has a point…But I’m really annoyed about it!

 

 

 

I’m 45 years old and I honestly don’t know whether that is bloody old or fairly young. It’s that weird in between age, where some would consider you ancient (your children) and others would say you were that dreadful word: middle aged. This would mean that I will live until I’m 90, so I’m kind of happy with that. Apparently, the age you started your periods has a bearing on how long you will live. Well let’s put it this way, the school nurse said to me, aged 15: we’ll give it a few months and then we’ll worry. No worries, I’m going to live forever.

So at my ripe old age, I feel that I’ve seen and learnt a few things. You see, I have gone through a fair few changes. I have had 4 kids, breastfed, trained in sport at International level, both before and after having children. I have dieted to get to fighting weights and I have eaten what the fuck I want. I have been tee total and I have drunk like a fish. You could say that I have experienced quite a few different states.

And you know what? The one thing that I have realised from all of this is firstly that you should absolutely and completely shut out the media from your advice line. They are all over the place with their advice. In fact, you will get better advice from the person you sit next to on the train…on any subject.

Secondly, whatever your goals are at a particular stage of your life are just fine. In fact, they are quite possibly bloody awesome. It may be that you have just signed up to your first 10k run after giving birth, or you have managed to get your baby to settle in the creche at your local leisure centre and so can sneak 45 minutes at the gym (15 minutes for a baby free coffee, of course).

Perhaps you enjoy walking your dog for half an hour a day and enjoy a couple of glasses of wine every evening, or maybe you put butter on your toast every day.

You see, what I have learnt in my 45 years, is that what actually matters is what makes you happy. It’s not what the Daily Mail says you should be doing, or what your partner is doing (unless you want to join them), or what your best friend is up to right now. BE SELFISH! Life is actually about YOU!

You have to care for people every day: children, parents, a partner, people at work and so the best way that we can care for ourselves, is what feels right at the time… FOR OURSELVES!

If the time is right to fulfill an ambition, then go for it! If now is your time to kick back and chill out then feckin’ do it. Because you know what? It actually doesn’t matter what other people think, or what some twat in a newspaper or magazine says should be happening. This is about YOU!

To be honest, the truth is that if you don’t really want something, then you won’t succeed at it anyway. Running a marathon, dieting, giving up smoking. So you know what? Don’t bother until you know that you are doing it for yourself.

You do what feels right for you RIGHT NOW, because at the end of the day, that’s actually all that counts.

 

When I went in to labour with daughter 3 and my ex rang the hospital to say we were coming in, they told him they were shut. Daughter 1 woke up and wandered in to the sitting room at the same time as he was replying to them: well what the fuck are we supposed to do? By now, I was sitting on the floor about to give birth. Things weren’t exactly going to plan, but then again, so many people had told me that number 3’s are always tricky, I wasn’t that surprised.

My ex put on the TV for daughter 1, who was 3 years old and she settled herself down on the sofa to watch Teletubbies – seemingly oblivious to the teletubbie who was panting on the floor in front of her.

The ambulance arrived before my sister, who was on call to look after daughters 1 and 2. The paramedics flew into action with me on the floor and all daughter 1 could say was: Daddy, can you ask them to move because I can’t see the telly.

Thankfully, a few minutes later my sister arrived and took her niece in to another room to play with her. When daughter 3 arrived a few minutes later, she wasn’t breathing. If the paramedics hadn’t have been there we were told she would have died. As it was they gave her oxygen, slapped her about a bit, she cried and was absolutely fine. My sister who was in the room next door, on the other hand, told us how awful it was for her and daughter 1, who had heard that she was born and then just silence, for what seemed, she said, forever.

For such a natural event, birth can be and so often is, traumatic. Every single person I know has a traumatic birth story. Why, oh why would you want to expose your other children to this event? Has the world gone mad? Have we seriously become so ridiculously child-centred that we actually think it would be ‘nice’ for a child, other than the one who is being born, to be a part of the birth story?

Daughter 4 was a straightforward home birth. No drugs, in the same sitting room – new carpet (insurance claim after the last birth), lots of plastic sheeting…we were prepared. It was wonderful. It was bloody painful, in fact both. It was beautiful for my other 3 daughters to come down to breakfast and to see their baby sister lying cuddled up with mummy on the sofa. Idyllic. They have such fond memories of this magical moment. Now, I can tell you for absolute bloody sure that their memories of their mother grunting and panting on all fours with her arse in their faces and a bloodied, mucus covered alien coming out of the place she normally pisses would not have provided them with the same thoughts to remember.

Every so often my daughters ask me whether giving birth is painful. I don’t even want to tell them that it is. I don’t want them to fear something that is hopefully inevitable. I don’t want them to have images that they can’t erase. I would not want them to experience being told for 9 months that they are going to witness a wonderful birth, only for it to go wrong and them having to be hurried into another room, with all the fear and unknowing that would bring. Like my sister told me: that was terrifying. She is an adult. We are talking about children.

So when I heard about Jools Oliver allowing her teenage children in to the birth of their baby number 5, I asked: why? Really? What are the gains? Why is this so important, when they would almost certainly not be asking to be a part of the experience. It would inevitably be the parents’ idea. People who are advocating this are seeing birth through rose-tinted specs. Whilst this is, of course, a lovely way to see it, if we are involving children in an event, then as parents we also have to account for less positive outcomes and evaluate their impact on the child. Without the luxury of hindsight, I would certainly be erring on the side of protecting them from potential trauma. Nowadays it seems that it is: children access all areas. I say that there are some areas that we should allow them not to access, for their own good, as well as ours.

Daughter 3 and her baby sister. No trauma. No blood. Mummy’s had a hair wash. All’s well.

A few years ago, in a previous life in fact, I began to ask myself: what is happiness and why didn’t I feel happy? On paper I had everything you could wish for: a devoted husband and father to 4 gorgeous girls, a beautiful house… and yet I still felt the need to question. It really bugged me. I would look for answers in newspaper articles and in snatched conversations with people, but the more I delved, the more I realised that the question of: what is happiness, is like the elixir that many are searching for.

Now in my new life, so many things have changed and I would say that I feel incredibly happy. So what exactly is it that gives us the happy vibe? I know for certain that it isn’t having more money, or a bigger house. I also know that happiness is helped by good mental and physical health and that although less money doesn’t make you unhappy, money worries certainly do.

This is all very obvious.

What I am thinking about is the distinct states of happiness, in the same way that there are distinct states of love.

Do you remember the Love Is…comic strip? It was created by New Zealand cartoonist Kim Casali in the 1960’s. According to Wikipedia, the cartoons originated from a series of love notes that she drew for her future husband. In 1970, they appeared in strip form in a newspaper.

Each picture depicts a man and a woman with a caption of what love is. The most famous one says: “Love Is…being able to say you are sorry”

The cartoon breaks love down into single, tangible, reconnecting moments.

When you first meet someone who you are attracted to there are fireworks: the endorphins go haywire and you are basically drugged up with love. It is tangible, you can feel it, smell it and so can others: just by looking at you, they can see that you are in love. I equate this to that rush of happiness you feel when you are going on holiday: the anticipation and when you arrive at your destination and are heady with excitement. You can literally embrace your happiness.

Yet this euphoric state simply cannot last. At some point this crazy feeling of happiness or love settles in to a series of moments and feelings, such as are depicted in the Love Is… cartoon. A series of moments where each one makes you feel a rush of love, or indeed happiness, that may feel fleeting.

Yet it is these transient moments, I believe, that are subconsciously creating our overall state. It is often these moments that we capture in a photo and share with the world. Posting photos on Facebook of moments that capture our love or happiness and often both, somehow cements them. It catches them and makes them last longer than they really do.

This is why we say: live for the moment! Inhale those moments of happiness, take a photo, share the photo. Look at those photos again when you aren’t feeling so happy. Because those moments you captured are still within you. They have created something inside you that you cannot now touch or feel, but they are there having an effect on your well-being. Then, in moments of doubt, reconnect by finding time to make those feelings you can touch:

Happiness is…feeling the sun on your face for five minutes

Happiness is…a glass of wine and a weekend paper

Happiness is…a view

Happiness is…sitting and looking at the sea

Happiness is…time

Happiness and love don’t have to cost the earth and they are highly personal: this is the elixir. We don’t have to constantly be experiencing these feelings either, because being busy and being sad, for example, embellish our feelings of happiness. We must find time for these transient moments and then, even when we aren’t necessarily feeling the vibe, we know that it is somewhere under the surface, ready to be tapped in to.