This is going to hurt!

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Tuesday 8 January 2019

It’s the first week back after the Christmas Holidays, what doesn’t hurt? My ears hurt as the alarm clock nags me into wakefulness, my eyes hurt as the bedroom light pierces through the heavy darkness of a 6am January morning and most of all my soul hurts. The lovely lazy days of the festive season, when its nationally acceptable to do little other than eat, drink and make merry, are gone and we are back to the military operation that is working parent life! It’s school, it’s dinner money, it’s bus passes, it’s PE kits, it’s trip letters, it’s work, it’s commuting, it’s presentatons, it’s meetings….it’s just exhausting.

However, for some reason simply surviving a first week back is not enough for me. Oh no, for some reason, long forgotten I have decided to throw into the mix a mid-week trip to the Theatre for me, my eldest and some friends. I duly dash in on Tuesday night, feed children, slap on a bit of make-up, dash out with daughter, pick up our friends and career through Manchester’s roadworks and diversions to the Lowry in Salford.

Finally parked and drinks bought we take our seats and I begin to relax. We are here for a night of comedy with the touring show ‘Adam Kay – This is Going to Hurt’. Adam was a Doctor who has produced a best seller based on his diary extracts from Junior Doctor days onwards. I haven’t read the book but my daughter and our friends have and have “loved it”. My daughter wants to go Medical School, I am sure it will all be very enlightening and educational. And I do like the Lowry. It’s usually my mum who organises our outings here and I wonder if we should have brought her along …

Ten minutes into the show I am thanking the Lord that we left 80 year old mum at home! Adam bawdily romps through diary extracts featuring every kind of bodily fluid and mishaps to our cheekiest body parts and his language is rather fruity! Glancing around the auditorium I now notice that it’s a very adult audience, in fact we are possibly accompanying the only 2 teenagers in the place! Adam moves onto performing some hilarious songs, again adult-humour edgy. Or are they? My daughter is certainly laughing along with the best of them at the chorus-punchline to a song about a colonic irrigation tube! I swig my diet coke, knock back a handful of M & Ms and soon I too am singing enthusiastically along to the ‘Medical Quiz Round’. It’s tons of fun!

In case you go to see the show I wont spoil the ending but this is suddenly and startlingly, shocking and sad and we walk back to the car buzzing and talking about it all. The others tell me that I must read the book and I promise that I will. Laughter is a great medicine and January certainly hurts a little less than it did 24 hours ago ….

No Man-uary!

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Saturday 5 January 2019

It’s the 5th January and time for me to re-connect with the world. Over a coffee, I catch up on my emails and find my inbox flooded with eye-catching discounts from online dating sites. I am technically “in the market for love” and I adore a good bargain, but even faced with a 75% saving, I find myself wavering.

I have been single for a few months now, having parted company with a pretty nice fella after a 7 year relationship. A hopeless and hapless romantic, I did stock up on gin and whisky in preparation for some dark weeks of devastation following our separation. However my drinks cabinet remains intact as I found, instead of despair, an energising boost of freedom as I stepped back into the world of the singleton.

For various reasons we had never lived together. The irony of this, for us, was this. Although my bloke was a committed runner (believe you me, what I dont know about heart rates, marathon pace, strengthening and conditioning and training schedules in general really isn’t worth knowing), our relationship stood still and eventually ground to a terminal halt. As we went out separate ways I feel as if I’ve come back to life, have enjoyed loads of new opportunities and have had real fun with friends….and my children?!

Yes, I discovered, children change a lot in 7 years. Back then they were all at primary school. I was expert as packing them off to bed and was beyond grateful to sink down with a glass of red and some adult conversation of an evening. But now they are young adults and they are really good company. At weekends, they are usually off in 3 different directions but when not, we’ve teamed up for some great family outings. During the week, now that my time isn’t divided between them and my fella, we’ve shared far more laughs, tears, popcorn and time together over films, “I’m a Celebrity” and just general silliness. It’s been wonderful.

And I know the clock is ticking for this precious time together as within 5 years they’ll all have spread their wings. I really need to make the most of it. So I think the dating sites can keep their offers for now. At the very least, I am resolved to make it to February and commit to a No-Manuary…

D Day !

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Wednesday 2 January 2019
This blog may be a New Years Resolution, but a notable D-Day for me actually came back in August, my first GCSE results day as a parent….

D-Day!

After very little sleep, my eldest and I set off to school. As she dived into the babbling crowd of teenagers heading inside, I was left in the carpark, with only anxiety and panic for company. I was unsettled and on edge, with scenarios to deal with delight or utter despair racing around my mind in frantic flashing images.

Children began to emerge; some waving results slips aloft and punching the air in triumph; others in tears hurrying to the anonymity of a parent’s car, results in brown envelopes, hidden from view. The contrast was shocking. I felt completely sick. Would I hold it together if my daughter, who had worked her socks off, was one of the inconsolable ones? I swiped and scrolled my phone like a lunatic. No messages. Did I dare to send one? No I did not! I turned the radio on, turned it off. I said a prayer. Then came a text


“Should be out soon, sorry for the delay!“

I bit my lip and risked a reply

“Any news? …….. “

“All good” flashed onto the screen, and I began to breathe again!

But it was moments later, as my daughter slipped back into the car, and handed me her results that I got my single-parent wake up call. A sea of top grade 9s and the occasional grade 8, swam across the page. Her results weren’t just good…they were phenomenal!! And I hadn’t expected that. I realised, with a jolt, that I really hadn’t expected it. I had assumed that the very top grades simply weren’t for us. They were for children from ‘other families’. Households, I’d probably invented in my head, where one parent seminared through Science revision, whilst the other dashed off a few French flashcards. Homes where a duo of parents balanced exam tuition with time for nutrition, nurture and well being. Simply put, children from families where day in day out, there was more adult time and input to share out than I could ever hope to manage. I had trapped myself into believing that, whilst we did ‘our best’, we would always fall a little short of where we might have been as a two-parent unit. 

Thankfully one person hadn’t done this, my amazing daughter. Determined, driven and totally focused upon her own goals, as opposed to worrying about anyone else, she had set about simply smashing those GCSEs. And she is my inspiration for 2019. No more worrying about everyone else for me. Hard work and focus, not family background, enable you aim high and chase your dreams. It’s more than time for me to forget seeing single parenthood, as the poor relation of the family unit, and start smashing it. Here goes ….