Inside the Mind of an Insomniac

11.07pm, that’s good. That’s acceptable. If the kids wake me up at 7 that’s nearly 8 hours sleep. The recommended 8 hours. That’s good, except it’s usually more like 6am. That’s fine. We can deal with that. Mmm, nice comfy bed, so tired, drifting… Is the window open? I need the window open.

Ooh must remember to get that new baby card and gift tomorrow. How can I fit that into the day? I could pop to the shops on the way to the play date, so I’ll go to that little Tesco on the way. But… a card from Tesco? Surely I can do better than that. Maybe I could just pop into M&S, could get a gift there too… No, stop this. It’s time to sleep, not to play out tomorrow in your head. Think about it tomorrow.

Right, stop thinking, clear your mind, empty it, clear it out… see now you’re just thinking the words. Stop talking to yourself in your head woman. It’s the first sign of madness (there have been other signs, you’re skating close to the edge here) no, don’t think about that now.

OK back to clearing, and we’re clearing, we’re emptying, clear and empty, empty and clear, there’s those words again, try thinking in pictures. Right, pictures. A house (ooh that looks like a Mr Men house, maybe Mr Greedy, or is it Mr Messy, definitely Mr Messy, wonder if there is any significance about the fact that it was Mr Messy’s house that popped into my head?) No, we’re thinking pictures, PICTURES. A dog, a cat (did I remember to give Expensive Cat his medicine?)

You’re thinking again.

OK let’s try relaxing. Start with the top of your head, and relax your head, soft head, relax your face, soft face, no that’s forcing, you don’t need to look like you’ve had a stroke, just smooth out the muscles, now the neck, ow ow cramp, OK stop relaxing.

Maybe I should just get up and do something else, OK let’s get up. No, you need to sleep. Get up. Stay in bed. Get up. No, don’t. Aaaargh.

Just calm down and try something else. The beach thing. You’re on a beach, listening to the waves. I can hardly remember what it’s like, has it really been five years since our last holiday? Really must address that issue, we’ve just spend £500 on a darn cat for gods sake I’m sure we can find a few hundred for a week in Bognor next year. So the beach thing didn’t work.

Mum always used to tell me to think of black when I couldn’t sleep. Right, black. Black. BLACK! Isn’t black a weird word? Stop it. Just think black. Amy Winehouse Back to Black (god is she really dead? Still can’t get my head around it) stop, we’re thinking black. Little black dress, black sky, Black Sunday (What was that? I’m sure it’s something I should know at my age), oh for goodness sake woman this isn’t a word association game, it’s a getting to sleep exercise.

Look at the man over there, snoring away. How can he be sleeping like that while I’m going through this turmoil? It isn’t fair. Maybe if I just give him a little kick he’ll wake up and keep me company. Or maybe an elbow in the ribs… Jesus, he’s a deep sleeper. I’m so jealous. Now you’re just getting angry, that is not helping.

Right what time is it? 1.07. Oh god, I’ve been at this for 2 hours? I’m exhausted. If I go to sleep now that’s 4 hours and 53… now 52, minutes. Ok that’s doable. If you just sleep now, now, NOW! That didn’t work either.

You clearly can’t sleep because there’s too much going on in your mind, so write it all down:

-         buy card

-         cat medicine

-         holiday???

-         Practice serene relaxed facial expressions in mirror

-         What was Black Sunday?

-         Buy some herbal sleeping pills.

That’s better. OK time to sleep. Mmm comfy bed. What time is it now? 2am. OK I can live on 4 hours sleep. When the kids were babies I lived on much less sleep, I did eat more cake in those days however. Oooh, cake. If I get no sleep I can totally justify eating cake tomorrow. Stop it, we’ve already cleared the mind, don’t start adding new things to the list.

Just sleep. Soft things, cloudy, soft pillows, nice and relaxed, floating, it’s working! What was all that nonsense about not being able to sleep? Mmm, drifting…

“MUMMY? It’s morning!”

Oh bollocks.

It’s time… to face… the “MUSIC”

The X Factor started again this weekend. Oh joy.

The ‘audition stages’ used to be my favourite bit of any talent show. Misguided people of all shapes and sizes prefacing their performances with “I wanna be a legend”, before being shot down by Simon Cowell saying they sound like a creaky ironing board. Fantastic singers reduced to a sob story to the same old sad song. But these last few seasons I have to admit even I am getting a bit bored of it. They can’t fool me with their new panel, it’s nothing new.

Apart from it being the same old, same old, I’m sick and tired of these programmes taking over my life. It feels like The Apprentice just finished (great for pseudo intellectuals who think that the X Factor is beneath them) which took up one hour of a fairly innocuous Wednesday night. But the talent shows take up our entire Saturday nights, sometimes dragging over onto Sunday night like an ill-advised hangover. I remember the days when Saturdays were meant for going out clubbing, meeting friends in the pub or at least sitting at home chatting over a bottle of wine and some music, made by people who got their break the old fashioned way. And Big Brother started this week, that’s another hour a day. I can feel any spare time I had being inhaled by the telly. And use of the V+ box is futile in this instance, if you don't watch it within 24 hours you may as well not bother because before you know it you're behind.

I have purposely tried to avoid the last couple of seasons of the X Factor but inevitably I get sucked in and within a few weeks I am shouting at some poor deluded person on the telly who has the gall to get up there and murder the crap out of any Adele number. Barely a murmur of conversation passes between the man and me, except to sing along to the sad story song (What about now? What about todaaaaaay), and joining in with the phone mime whenever a contestant is desperate enough to use it.

I love telly, but I am really starting to appreciate having the 200+ channels that our cable package provides me with. I can forgive the fact that they dedicate 10 or so channels to crime drama throughout the ages (double bill of Morse, followed by Midsummer, followed by Taggart, followed by Lewis, followed by Rosemary and Thyme, that’s some seriously samey programming) someone must watch it, having that many channels I can spare a few. But the original 5 channels just seem to churn out the same old guff week after week. It’s not like I’m tuning into BBC 4 every day (only on occasions when I’m feeling particularly intellectual) but I do like being able to watch random American talk shows and documentaries about people being buried alive under piles of their own rubbish. Thank god for the digital age, it came at just the right time. Can you imagine only having the choice between Strictly or X Factor every week?

OK if I hate it so much why do I watch it? It’s kind of like fast food. We all profess to hate it but can’t help but be lured by the aroma of a Big Mac as we’re wandering past and before we know it we’re addicted. I suppose they aren’t going to be getting rid of MacDonald’s anytime soon, so we shouldn’t expect anything less with talent TV. But like MacDonald’s, one occasionally is a nice treat, but have it day in day out and it starts to get cloying, and makes you fat.

I suppose it’s just all part of our greedy nature as a whole. We find something we think we like and feast ourselves on it until we are busting out of our jeans and can’t seem to stop. And the television companies, like the fast food giants, know just how to play us so we keep on consuming. Ooh there’s going to be a “new twist” on X Factor this season (like MacDonald’s limited editions), better watch it to find out what it is.

I mean, come on, even Simon Cowell is bored of it. Going off to the States to churn out his Got Talent franchise, in a feeble attempt to branch out and do something different. Come on Simon, we all know it’s the same flipping thing with the addition of the odd performing blind dog and a kids dance troop or ten.

So it's the usual bizarre mix of creepy old men, gobby teenagers and slightly scary middle aged housewives to weed out, then we can get excited about the real talent, before they are devoured by the industry machine, churn out a couple of predictably pants tracks and eventually fade in obscurity. But that’s another rant entirely. I'm not even going to attempt to avoid it this year, I'm kind of curious as to how things will go in the absence of Simon's cutting remarks. Somehow I don't think Gary Barlow is going to think up as good a put downs, but I'll give him an audition.

Playing: Not just for kids?

I’ve been rereading The Happiness Project for my book club and I’m at the bit where Gretchen is trying to instigate more play in her life.

Playing? As serious, professional, grown up adults? Yep. And we should all be doing more of it in my opinion.

I’ve been thinking about play a lot lately, not least because I still have three weeks of summer holidays left and the kids are starting to get googly eyed with boredom. I want to find things that we all enjoy doing together, not grudgingly dragging them along to the park because I feel that’s what I should enjoy.

Having kids is a great excuse to play but so often it’s the only time adults allow themselves to do it. Grown-ups get so hung up on the idea of value; value for money, value for time. What we spend our precious free time on needs to be valuable, something that needs to be done or at the very least it should be a legitimate recreational activity, and if we actually enjoy it that is just a bonus. But maybe many of us have simply forgotten what we truly enjoy doing.

I said to the man this morning “I’m thinking of giving up my blog. I’m not getting many comments; people aren’t engaging in it, I don’t know if people are enjoying it.” “Hold up,” he said. “You started this blog for YOU, for fun, for an opportunity to write, why are you suddenly getting hung up on other people?” He is right of course. As the months have gone on, and in the process of trying to be a better writer, I had taken the joy out of something I was doing purely for the fun of it. I put a lot of hours into my blog and my grown-up brain was starting to look for some added value, totally forgetting that the value comes in the sheer fun of writing it, if one person reads it and enjoys it, it should be considered a bonus, not a reason to do it. 

The man says that he loved working with cars, until he became a mechanic. That’s probably true for many people and their jobs. But maybe that’s less about not enjoying the work, and more about forgetting why we chose to do something in the first place, because we enjoy it. We’re looking for that value again.

Anyway, back to playing. Watching my kids play totally unconcerned with value inspires me to play myself. They don’t care about getting money or recognition or “getting things done because they need to be”. They don’t even think about it.

As adults many of us play games consoles, do crosswords or Sudoku in our free time. All legitimate play options for adults, they encourage fine motor skills, keep the brains working, some console games could even be considered physical exercise. But one of the things I love is those mosaic sticker books. I haven’t had one since I was a child but recently I have begun to crave the quiet pleasure of neatly sticking little coloured squares into dedicated boxes to create a funky picture. I eventually found one online. My mouse has been hovering over “add to cart” for weeks now, I just can’t seem to justify spending £3 on something that is actually just a “toy” (and not even one for the kids). Why? There is nothing wrong with a 33 year old enjoying sticker mosaics, or colouring in for that matter (as long as it’s with nice pens and on good quality white paper, there is very little fun to be had with broken crayons and scratchy grey paper). What makes Sudoku, crosswords or Xbox any more “legitimate” than mosaic stickers? Why should I care anyway?

If someone had said to me 6 months ago that they were trying to play more I would have said how lucky they were to have time to spend on something so decadent. I think there is a certain amount of martyrdom that comes with being an adult, especially a parent. We all think we should be spending our time ‘working’. Childhood was time for fun, adulthood is time to get serious and stop wasting time.

But playing isn’t wasting time, it’s a serious business. Just ask son number one, he quite often tells me he has to get his playing done, it’s his ‘job’. I’m lucky enough to be working my way into a job that I also consider ‘playing’ and I hope I can retain this sense of fun as my career progresses. In the meantime, my mosaic sticker book has finally found its way into my shopping cart.

“Omnipotent. Oh, you are? I’m Sorry”

In one episode of Friends Ross asks Joey what he would do if he were omnipotent. “Probably kill myself” is Joey’s response, easy misunderstanding to confuse omnipotence with impotence. But I think if I were omnipotent, even though I may not kill myself, I don’t reckon I’d be too happy. Impotence would be a different issue entirely.

So much of life’s pleasure comes from the simple enjoyment of striving for something and getting it. Whether that is having money, a successful career or knitting a blanket for your baby (I started one when son number 2 was a few months old, he is now 2 and I have yet to experience the pleasure of finishing it, but still), I honestly don’t think there would be much pleasure left in life if you could have anything and everything you wanted.

We watched the remake of Arthur the other night (highly recommend if you’re thinking about it) and down on her luck Naomi tries to explain to Arthur the joy of earning success rather than buying it. Arthur has led an incredibly financially privileged life and has never experienced the pride of earning something. He has all the money he could hope for but if it wasn’t for his nanny Hobson, he would have been highly emotionally neglected, and it shows. Money can’t buy happiness, and I’m not sure that power can either.

I recently had a conversation with my friend about what we would do if we won the lottery. We both agreed that winning hundreds of millions of pounds might be fun in the short term but after the initial buzz of buying whatever you wanted wore off what do you do with yourself? What do you do once you’ve given up work, paid off all your (and your families) debts? Wouldn’t life be a bit boring? No, we both agreed, enough to pay off the mortgage, help out friends and family and a bit to charity and we’d we happy.

Aside from having all the money you could dream of, being omnipotent would be far too much responsibility. Having unlimited power to solve all the problems in the world in one fell swoop is quite a hard task if you think about it. Every time I watch the news and wish I wasn’t seeing images of starving children in Africa or wars in the Middle East I wonder, what would I do? I really don’t know. I don’t think I’m clever enough to be omnipotent because I still haven’t come up with an answer. The root cause of all these problems is people, and unless you change people you will never truly change anything. People have the mixed blessing of free will, so they will always do what they want to do despite what I or any other power might do.

The London riots last week have sparked some quite powerful debates about the poverty of some of the people behind them. We are lucky enough to live in one of the most socially mobile nations in the world, if you are unhappy with your lot and are brave and determined you can make that change. Young children are born with the view that anything is possible, and I think it’s sad that most adults grow out of that. Whether or not the cause of the riots was desperation and poverty (yet to be seen in my opinion) no one can deny that some of the most successful people in the Western world came from the most humble or poverty stricken of backgrounds. Just look at Oprah and JK Rowling.

In this country, even if you have the most basic of your needs met you already are omnipotent to an extent. If you’re poor you have the power to make money, if you’re fat you have the power to be thin, if you’re sick many of us are lucky enough to have access to healthcare to get well. What more do we want?

What would you do if you were omnipotent? Would you want to be?

Riot Ranting

Apparently the riots were a protest against the cuts. The man said we have been overpaying for petrol for many years now and you don’t see scores of road users stealing massive tellies from Curries in protest. I am sceptical as to whether or not any of the ‘protesters’ knew what they were ‘protesting’ against, I mean, make your mind up kids, was it the shooting of Mark Duggan or having your youth club shut down? In my opinion, the answer is neither. The very fact that the riots spread to so many different areas of the country just goes to show how bored the ‘yoof’ of today are, pumped up full of pubescent hormones and looking for the next adrenalin hit. They are not content with what they have, because our society values possessions over principles and money over morals.

Maybe the police should have stamped it out the moment it started. But can you blame them after the death of Ian Tomlinson? We were all very quick to criticise them when an innocent man was hurt while they were protecting our country, how could they possibly guarantee that innocent bystanders would not be injured by rubber bullets or dry clean only trainers not ruined by water cannons (and lets face it, there were an awful lot of trainers on the street those nights)?

Being ‘poor’ is a delicate subject, it’s always easy to sit in a position of privilege and judge those who have less than you. But these people give those who are truly poor a bad name. I think it’s pretty strange that the ‘poor’ rioters were walking round in £100 jeans and expensive trainers, and come to think of it, how come they all had Blackberries to organise it in the first place? Are Blackberry’s even available on weekly payment options from Freemans catalogue?

 “There is nothing for young people these days”. Well the truth is, our current ‘yoof’ have more amenities and resources available to them than ever before.

Just take a look at your local library notice board. Groups, helplines, out reach projects, all for young people. I don’t see many “middle class out reach project” or even “wine appreciation society for mothers on the verge of alcoholism” (kind of describes my book club but still) notices, it’s all about the kids. Our parents, or even those of us in our thirties, didn’t have access to half the amenities there are today (the most exciting addition for my generation being the launch of Childline, a service I was fortunate enough not to need except in response to “you’re grounded” “I hate you. I’m gonna call Childline on you”) and you didn’t see us rioting in the streets, helping ourselves to anything we could lay our hands on.

I remember very well how hard it was to be young. Everything is boring (I’d give my back teeth to be bored these days). Hormones are off the chart (I know how that feels, but for different reasons these days) making everyday life uninteresting and you are constantly searching for the next big adrenalin hit, whether a snog behind the bikesheds or pooling your dinner money to buy ten B&H and a bottle of White Lightning at lunch time. So much of the ‘fun’ I had as a child involved being naughty in some way. But I would never, ever have considered doing anything like what has happened this week, bored or not.

Can we blame a lack of discipline? This is the first generation of kids whose parents were not allowed to smack them, is that some kind of coincidence? We all use the naughty step, and hang on Supernanny’s every word, but would our kids be better behaved if they got a good smack every now and then? One father said on the news that he couldn’t control his kid because he wasn’t allowed to tie him to the bed or give him a smack. I kind of see where he’s coming from, what’s he going to do? Put his 16 year old on the naughty step? Ooh I’m scared.

The reason why me and my mates didn’t do anything that naughty was because we knew that repercussions would stretch further than taking a ball out of one jar and putting it in another, or moving one space down on a reward chart. My mum wasn’t a smacker but my Dad was (“just wait till your father gets home!”), in the pull your pants down and smack your bum in the middle of the shopping centre kind of way. And when we  were too old for that, he’d already done the ground work so we understood the look that said: “I WILL pound the crap out of you and if that means taking you to the shopping centre I bloody well will, don’t test me.”

Real Men?

I asked the man recently if he would ever consider a hair transplant. He looked at me as if I had asked him if he wanted to wear a dress; despite bemoaning the demise of his hairline for as long as I can remember it seems as if a hair transplant would be going too far. Most men don’t like to look as if they have tried too hard. The man is very much a blokey man. As a mechanic he comes home grubby and sweaty and frankly there is no vision I like to imagine more than that of him topless, overalls tied round his waist and carrying a tyre, a la Athena poster circa 1989.

The rise of the metrosexual man has been well documented and is now creeping into the lives of ‘normal’ men. Where previously it had been women who were bombarded with images of perfection in the media, men are now starting to get a taste of it and are feeling the pressure to buff, polish and beautify themselves to keep up with current trends. But should men be men? Should plastic surgery, beauty treatments and Botox remain women’s domains?

Men and women’s roles have become more interchangeable in society, so it is inevitable that other lines are becoming blurred. And why shouldn’t men make more of an effort? Us women have been using beauty products and primitive forms of makeup since time began, going so far as to use toxic ingredients to create makeshift face powder and mascara, the danger of blindness clearly outweighed by the thrill of having long eyelashes to bat at potential suitors.

In the last twenty years we have seen a massive growth in the male beauty industry, with male grooming products seeing a rise of 900% in less than 5 years. So many men are clearly jumping on board. But having a neatly trimmed beard and using moisturiser is one thing, wearing guyliner and manscara is a completely different animal.

Ollie from Made in Chelsea is a case in point. He has enviably shiny, swingy hair, fake tan and wears more than a hint of foundation. And he is, for want of a better word, beautiful. I think there is something intriguingly sexy about him but I’m not sure I could relax around a man who is prettier than me. In reality, I like my men to be men, including a satisfyingly rough face and chest rug long enough to twirl round my fingers. If I wanted a smooth chest to stroke and someone to borrow my makeup I would become a lesbian.

I see nothing wrong in men looking after themselves. Moisturiser, body lotion and aftershave show that you care about your skin and smelling nice, I would even go so far as to say a bit of concealer to cover the odd spot wouldn’t detract from a mans innate masculinity.

There is however, a limit, and I think for me that line is with obvious makeup and excess plastic surgery, a little nose job I could handle but shiny foreheads from Botox, implants to increase the size of random body parts or wind tunnel facelifts are out.

But two areas of metrosexuality that I fully support are pedicures and man bags. In my experience a man with nice feet is as rare as the proverbial flying pig. Horny, yellowy toenails and random tufts of hair sprouting from misshapen toes, even my sons have gross feet and they’re only 2 and 4. But it’s nothing that a nice pedicure wouldn’t fix (if only the sons would allow me). And man bags are just good sense. How nice would it be to go out and not hear the dreaded words “can you put this in your bag?”, your tiny beautiful clutch only designed to carry a lipstick, a twenty pound note and a Tampax is now bulging with car keys, an extra mobile and a mans wallet. A man bag would solve all this. They could carry our lipstick and Tampax instead, and of course, their concealer. 

The Camera Always Lies

Years ago, before Venture and the more contemporary “make over” portrait companies became popular the man and me spent an enjoyable evening doing a photo shoot. We took thousands of photographs, even using fans to make it look more professional, and then spent time picking out the best ones and changing contrast, making them black and white and manipulating them until we looked, well, great (yes we had rather a lot of time on our hands in those days). I got a 9.9 on HotorNot with my best shot. But the truth is, the person in that picture wasn’t me, and I’m not stupid enough to believe that I actually look like that.

Many advertising campaigns have been criticised and even banned recently for using too much airbrushing. But do people really believe the pictures reflect reality?

Make up ads aren’t pretending to be snapshots. The idea is that they are glamorous and flawless and I think the people who pulled the ads are being pretty condescending to a public that has more brains than to compare them to real life.

The camera always lies, whether you use airbrushing or not. You pose, you make sure you’re showing your best side, and everyone looks better in black and white don’t they?

But we all lie to ourselves everyday about how we actually look. Hands up who has a mirror face? Those of you that don’t have your hands up now are lying. Eyes wide, lips pursed, abs tensed, you do whatever you have learned over the years that makes you look good. How many times in the day do you actually look like that? The answer is pretty much never (unless you very self aware and/or vain). One of my friends has a particularly distinct mirror face, and she never ever looks like that in real life (she is far more beautiful). But I am always interested to see peoples mirror face, it’s the look we would all want to freeze if we could. Like when your parents said if the wind changes you’ll stay like that, if the wind would only blow while we’re putting on our mirror faces eh?

I heard somewhere that many parents have started airbrushing their kid’s school photographs. I am torn on this debate. On the one hand as a parent I am outraged that anyone could deface photographs of their perfect angels and rewrite history, all kids are beautiful right? Well, no. I wasn’t. Airbrushing would not have been enough for my school photos, cutting me out entirely and replacing me with a picture of Kelly Kapowski from Saved By The Bell would have been the only modification that would have made me happy with those hideous portraits. Although had I grown up in a time when airbrushing school photographs was even an option I know my mother would have been annoyingly uncooperative.

Unless you are one of those lucky photogenic few, for us to consider a photograph flattering a certain amount of manipulation must be present, digitally through airbrushing or in flattering lighting or a certain angle. Whether these things are intended or simply a lucky shot, a photograph represents how someone looks in a microsecond. Not how they look all the time. Take a look through your Facebook friends profile pictures, some people have used their “modelling shots”, others have theirs in black and white, many have used a lucky shot and many more use pictures of their kids. But do any of these photographs really accurately represent the person you know?

Videos are far less forgiving, no hiding behind mirror faces or lucky angles. Maybe the still camera lies but a video is much harder to fool. For this reason I despise seeing myself on video, unless I’m shrouded in darkness and happen to sitting very, very still.

Surely airbrushing is just another way of making the best of a picture, like doing your hair and makeup, or a load of press ups or bicep curls just before the ‘click’ to make those guns and pecs really pop. I understand that some companies are taking airbrushing to an extreme level but what’s the alternative? Airbrushing is still a fairly new technology and like all new things it will be over used until it eventually finds a balance.

I’m sure one day they will find a way of airbrushing videos, or even real life airbrushing, and I’ll be first in the queue, mirror face at the ready. Now if only I could have a fan constantly following me around to blow my hair out I’d be good to go.

There's an app for that

Is there an app that shuts up screaming kids at 3am? Because I would really find that one useful and could imagine it getting a fair few downloads. I’m not sure what form it would take, possibly some kind of hypnosis that gets them to sleep through the night or at the very least settle themselves when they wake up and put their own frigging dummy back in.

I would also be ever grateful for one that stops me from saying the wrong thing to the man when he’s already in a bad mood. This one could be a real relationship saver. They could even call it call it that, it’s quite catchy. It could calculate the number of hours sleep the man has had and offset that with the number of calories he’s consumed, if the number is too low an alarm would go off and suggest that I either just keep my mouth shut or not attempt a conversation without handing over KFC first.

Next on my list would be an auto placator, type in something that I have said and get it to explain to me that I haven’t actually offended anyone. This would save the man absolutely hours and possibly dispense entirely with the need for the Relationship Saver.

There are an estimated 500,000 apps available in the Appstore and 400,000 in Android Market. That’s an awful lot of life sorting, mapping, organising and helping software. How did we manage before?

I have only had my android phone for two weeks and despite being adamant that I wouldn’t start relying on apps, I have become a bona fide app junkie and downloaded over 25 apps already. I am now reliant on my phone to count my calories (is that last KitKat chunky wise?), what the weather is like (no longer content with just looking out the window, I also need to know whether it’s raining in Tokyo or windy in Taipei) and to entertain me while sitting in the kids room waiting for them to go to sleep. I’m then awake half the night trying to kill pigs by catapulting birds into the air, or release a mouse from a maze of Lego. But it’s ok because I’ve also got a sleep hypnosis app to get me off to peaceful slumber afterwards.

Years ago we all presumed we’d be walking around in silver jumpsuits and have robots that would do everything for us by now. But I don’t think anyone could have predicted that we would be relying on our phones so much. Is it really such a bad thing?

The old fashioned gal in me wants to say what’s wrong with a pencil and paper? What’s wrong with the old landline? And you can see the weather on the telly. We have all become so reliant on technology that if we were stranded on a dessert island without being able to Google “how to dig a latrine” and “what species of exotic fruit are poisonous” we would perish fairly quickly.

But on the other hand the man and me have a saying: “use all your tools” which means that you should use everything available to you to make your life easier. As a mechanic he uses time and labour saving devices everyday so he can get a job done in the allotted time frame, and sometimes after a bad day when I’m wondering whether or not to take the kids to Asda coffee shop for their tea to save me cooking and to get us all out of the house before insanity sets in, he will text me and say “use all your tools”. Why make life harder when there are things available to make it easier?

I am addicted to apps. I have just downloaded a shopping list app, and next on my wish list is a to do list. I have become a serial app searcher, any time I find a problem I am straight into the market to see if there is an app to help me fix it.

Some things however will never be solved by an app, dirty nappies and housework for example. You never know though, that robot could be just around the corner. But they can keep the silver jumpsuits until my calorie counting and fitness app gives me a firmer butt to put in it.

How do you eat an elephant?

Stop press, read all about it and all that, my first ever paid piece of writing appeared in a national newspaper today. It’s not going to win me any prizes but it just goes to show how far you can come in a short time.

Six months ago I hadn’t swiped a keyboard for anything other than Facebook updates and emailing for over ten years, since then I have written 54 blog posts (an estimated 40,000 words, that’s a book!), signed up for a freelance journalism course and now had a (very small) piece commissioned by a national newspaper. Mighty oaks from little acorns grow. Well I hope so anyway, because that piece is not going to pay my mortgage.

No one ever got anywhere without a few old fashioned baby steps. One foot in front of the other, one step at a time is how you reach your destination. I always thought I could run before I could walk, I thought maybe one day I would just wake up and I would be a big shot writer, but things don’t just fall into your lap like that. We all have to suffer the journey to get to our destination. And if we’re lucky the journey will be even more fun than the destination itself.

But in which direction do you take your first baby step? One of the best ways of deciding is to map out the journey backwards. If you want to be somewhere in ten years time, where do you need to be in five years, two years, next year and next month to get there? Just break it down. A plan needs to be flexible, and with each baby step it may take a different direction, but if you have a plan and start moving more possibilities will present themselves, opening more and more routes to chose from.

We are so obsessed these days with celebrity and financial gain, and often consider people who have made it as those who have millions to spend on flash cars and posh houses, or who can’t go to Tesco’s without being mobbed. But the truth is success shouldn’t be measured in money or fame, but in growth. To me the most successful people are those that have come out of hardship, pain or suffering, or overcome obstacles to achieve a long desired goal. They didn’t just wake up one day and find success; they took baby steps to get to their destination. And if all this sounds like too much hard work, it’s worth considering that with each step forward, even if we fail, we are still ahead, have made progress, grown. Doing something is better than doing nothing at all. We don’t all need to make millions or be celebrities (I can’t actually imagine anything worse) to make a success of our lives, us normal people can be successful too, just by moving forward.

I know I’ve said it before but anything is possible, you just have to believe in yourself. And do something. Put your foot forward and take a baby step. I may never reach the dizzying heights of making a living from writing, but I’m sure as hell going to try. I implore anyone who has any kind of dream to start taking the steps to make that dream a reality. What has happened to me today might not seem huge but it’s one small step for me, one giant leap for my career and my confidence.

There is a saying, how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. Take small bites and one day, you will have put away the whole thing. I’m only about an elephant’s eyelid in so far but I reckon I’m hungry enough to munch away at it until it’s gone. Bon appétit to everyone. And thank you as always for all your kind support.

Man's Best Friend?

We have had an anxious weekend waiting for news from the vets. Not just anxious about whether our cat would be OK, but anxious wondering whether or not we would have to remortgage our house to pay the vets bill.

Charlie spent the early part of the week licking his bits and making strange noises while doing it. We kept telling him to “get a room” but as the week progressed we realised he wasn’t doing it for fun. By Friday day time he was squatting in random places, with me chasing after him with a mop and bucket of disinfectant, but Friday night we realised his bladder was completely blocked so took him to the emergency vets. We picked him up on Sunday morning, at a cost of nearly £300. We haven’t had a holiday in 5 years, yet we have had to shell out nearly the cost of one on a flipping cat. Are pets really worth the hassle and the cost? And how far should we go to keep them well?

Charlie and Lola thought their luck was in when we brought them home a few months ago. A nice house to sleep in, a huge garden to play in, 2 small boys who keep sneakily feeding them (even when they’ve been told not to) and an exclusively Iams diet (when us humans have to eat reduced and Tesco Value stuff, sometimes even reduced Tesco Value, that’s what I call cheap).

The kids love the cats, I’m not sure how much this feeling is reciprocated but they do seem to put up with a lot particularly from Son Number 2 who just loves to get in their face and grab at their tails. You’d think they would scarper when they see him coming but they just lie down and purr. They must either really love him or are really stupid.

Despite my love of animals, cats are about my limit. And maybe fish. Small animals are just not worth the hassle. They seem like a good idea at the time, particularly for kids who are begging for a small pet to call their own, but in the end the kids do none of the cleaning out and the feeding and you’re stuck with this little thing that is solely reliant on you to keep it alive. And they smell.

That’s why I love cats. They are pretty independent; they don’t need walking or training and ordinarily don’t smell. Just chuck a bit of food at them a few times a day. Or so were the cats of my childhood. These days we have litter trays, complicated feeding routines, and I’ve just shelled out yet another £30 on a water fountain for Charlie, to try and make sure he drinks enough. But he just keeps looking at it as if to say “and what do you expect me to do with THAT?” Not forgetting that 2 cats equal an awful lot of mouse, bird and baby rabbit carcasses. It’s lucky I have a strong stomach.

Most people see pets as part of the family but are they not just another drain on not only finances, but also time and energy? Our kids and our partners require enough of our attention, and contribute enough stress. With two small kids to look after there comes a point in the day when I start to suffer cuddle fatigue and could really do without a cat climbing all over me, sticking their arse in my face demanding affection.

While Charlie was languishing at the vets office I was seriously considering letting the cats go, sending them back to the Cats Protection where they came from, to give another family the joy of having them (and the cost and stress) but as soon as I saw that little furry face looking out at me from the cat box I knew I couldn’t do it, and I just wanted him back home where he belongs, stinking of wee or not.