The truth is, we're all suffering from a severe case of 'Jubilee-ation'

As any writer worth their salt is, I’m always very conscious of my audience when I write these articles. What is interesting to the people of Sussex? What do they care about? What do they spend their days doing? Sometimes it takes me hours of head-banging to bash through the writer’s block and think of something that I hope you may find vaguely interesting/amusing/surprising (delete as appropriate). Thankfully, this month there was only one thing I could really write about and you would had to have been in the deepest darkest corner of the thickest rainforest in the world to have missed the Jubilee celebrations.

I’m not the biggest royalist in the country. Don’t misunderstand me: I’m not anti-royalist but I don’t honestly give them much thought. I vaguely remember having the royal wedding on the TV in the background as I cleaned the house and I’ll admit to offering a cursory glance to the magazine pages covered in images of the Duchess of Cornwall. The insightful critiques into what she’s wearing and whether she’s too young for skin-coloured tights are vaguely engaging every now and again.

Despite my apathetic approach to our royal figureheads I couldn’t help but suffer from a surprisingly overwhelming feeling of national pride as the Jubilee weekend rattled on. While it wasn’t all down to the image of the Royal Family in their finery, that was certainly partly responsible. You’d have to be made of stone to not give massive kudos to an 86-year-old woman who spends three hours standing in the pouring rain on a boat while the wind blows about her only to find she still has energy to dance a small jig when the orchestra offers a rousing nautical piece at the end.

So yes, the Royal Family, and especially the Queen impressed me this weekend. I left the Jubilee holiday a little more pro-Royalist than I was when I arrived. Watching Camilla and Kate have a giggle while they compared how cold their hands were with the boys was nothing short of a heartwarmingly, natural moment that any family could have enjoyed.  It was clearly an event that every royal in attendance was very proud to be a part of. Even more clearly, they were very proud of their wife, mother, mother-in-law, grandmother and grandmother-in-law respectively.

And of course, we were proud of our Queen. So proud in fact that we came out in our hundreds and thousands to stand in the rain and we weren’t nearly as covered as the Queen. We didn’t have our own royal barge with a canopy to shield us from the worst of the weather. Oh no! We resorted to Union Jack umbrellas and anoraks and wellies in the way that only the British know how. 

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We kept on smiling as raindrops poured their way down our face and neck and into our socks and shoes. Drenched to the bone we lined the Mall and the Thames and laughed our way through it waving flags and cheering. For a nation that’s known for moaning and whinging we maintained stoic cheer in the face of weather that seemed intent on ruining the day. But let’s be honest, we wouldn’t have enjoyed it nearly as much if it had been sunny. It wouldn’t have felt like Britain and it wouldn't have given us a chance to show off our unfathomable ability to have even more fun in the face of adverse weather conditions.

We are a strange and confused nation; of that there is no doubt. If it had been gloriously warm, as it was the week before, we would have complained about the heat. Every single one of us would have suffered mild to severe sunburn because we simply don’t know how to deal with the sun.  We would have drunk ourselves into a stupor because that seems to be the rules when it’s warm enough to drink outside. And worst of all, British men would have taken their tops off and you know what? It’s never the men that you wouldn’t mind seeing with their tops off, it’s always the ones that should keep their torsos firmly under wraps.

We don’t like picnicking unless we have to dig holes to prop up five umbrellas and create makeshift waterproofs out of black bin liners. The beach isn’t nearly as much fun unless you spend half your time chasing beach balls as the British wind blows them away and on the same theme, sandwiches aren’t as tasty unless the aforementioned wind has blown a decent dose of sand into them – it’s worth noting that we are the only nation that insists on eating on the beach. Bank holiday weekends are always, without fail, preceded by a week of beautiful, sun-drenched weather that will inevitably break as we all leave work for the long weekend. We enjoy forging out fragments of fun despite the fact that the British environment never seems to play along.

And that’s not all. Us Brits as a nation have a variety of weird and wonderful traits that other nations find dumbfounding. For example, our national love of a queue is discussed the world over. We are the only nation in the world that will actively and happily wait in an ordered and measured queue without wondering why we’re doing it. While this is part of our British genteelism it doesn’t stand us in good stead when we travel to faraway lands. A friend of mine recently got back from China. It was only while she tried to queue for food that she realised her British upbringing had left her ill equipped for the regular wrestle that other nations revert to instead of a queue.

If you come from a country that isn’t part of the Commonwealth, cricket will be a complete mystery to you, as will cucumber sandwiches. It will make no sense that a roast dinner can only be eaten on a Sunday and there’s no reason for this, it just simply is. You’ll also, quite rightly, wonder at our need to sit and eat outside when the sun shows its pretty little face, even though it’s still only 14 degrees and we’re all shivering because we’re wearing shorts, t-shirts and flip-flops when we should be rugged up and inside watching Coronation Street or Eastenders. Oh, and while we’re talking about those shows, only the British can make long-running entertainment out of the most depressing storylines set in the two most poverty-stricken, fictional areas of England! Afternoon tea is an indulgence that only we can justify and don’t even get people started on fish and chips.

Please don’t make the mistake of taking this as criticism. It’s the complete opposite. This is a celebration of all that is British and all that the Jubilee weekend stood for. As a nation we talk a lot of grumpy rubbish and rabbit on about how lousy our country is, how useless the Royal Family are, how boring the endless rain is and how we wish we lived somewhere else but it’s all a big fat lie. The weekend showed how, in reality, we can’t help but be proud of our nation in all its rainy, windy, crickety, sandy-sandwiched, topless and hairy gloriousness. 

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First published in Sussex Local (July 2012 edition) www.sussexlocal.net

Is Your Summer Holiday Worth It?

I know the weather says otherwise but summer is finally here. It’s not given us much to work with though. Between droughts and dying gardens and floods and rain-drenched weekends, we’ve had little to inspire our summer groove. There is, of course, one thing that we can always rely on to inspire the happy vibes…the summer holiday.

Booking our summer holiday gives us that one moment of peace in our otherwise hectic lives. It doesn’t even matter where you go on holiday. Yes, we’d all like it to be a 5* retreat in Hawaii with a 24/7 kids club and an adult only pool, with personal waiters and on-tap cocktails, but honestly, a tent in Cornwall is often just as welcome. With statistics showing that more of us than ever will be opting for a ‘staycation’ this year there’s every chance that our holiday will be drenched in rain. It doesn’t matter. Lots of books, a good glass of wine, a roaring fire (and a great nanny) is just as much a holiday as bikinis, beaches and tan lines. Right?

Once your holiday is on the calendar you rest easy knowing that, no matter how bad things get, the summer holiday will make it all ok. You spend hours staring longingly at the week you’ve marked out as ‘HOLIDAY’ in your diary. You wish your life away hoping that every meeting and work day, every evening filled with kids and ironing and washing up will fly by. You would give a kidney if you could press the fast forward button to get to departure day more quickly. Instead, the powers that be make us work for our summer holiday. The stress involved in getting you and your family to the actual holiday means that by the time you get there, you’re not just tired and stressed on a normal level, you are so tired and stressed you can’t even remember your own name.

It starts about a week before departure day. You get your holiday clothes and your kids’ holiday clothes together and you wash them. You may even put them in a suitcase. It doesn’t matter. For reasons unknown to you, your kids will make sure those are the clothes they wear. It doesn’t matter how many times you tell them, they will wear them and you’ll have to rewash them...twice. It’s just a fact of life. Oh, and they’ll be bored of those clothes by the time they get there and they’ll officially ‘have nothing to wear.’

You assemble the passports and then forget where you’ve put them. When you find them you realise that your kids’ passports have expired. Nothing less than a last-minute trip to the passport office in London will solve this problem. Do you have time for this? No, of course not. You don’t even have time to book a wax, download a book on your kindle, or buy a new toothbrush mostly because you’re too busy washing clothes time and again.

Then come the travel arrangements. In your desire to book a value-for-money holiday you decided, in your infinite wisdom, to fly out of a London airport because the flight was cheaper. It doesn’t matter that you live two or more hours away. It made sense at the time. Now, you realise your flight is at 7am and all of a sudden, those two or more hours start to mean a hell of a lot. “It’s fine,” you think, “I’ll just book an early train.” Great idea, except that there isn’t a train early enough. You either need to book a hotel for the night before, pay for airport parking or sleep in the departure lounge. The cost of a hotel and the parking means that you save exactly nothing on your ‘cheaper’ flight and taking the kids to sleep on the floor of the airport is tantamount to sticking white-hot needles into your eyes so…you spend the money on a hotel.

Who cares? You don’t go on holiday to save money. You go on holiday to save your self and your soul. You cling on desperately to the optimism and decide that nothing is going to ruin this holiday. You laugh in the face of the early morning (aka middle of the night) get-up, even though your kids and your partner are in a mood as dark as the night you’re surrounded by. Despite the lack of sleep and the extortionate airport hotel bill (the kids found the chocolate and the soda in the mini-bar) you get to the check in area with a smile on your face and your whole family present and correct.

Check in goes OK. Sort of. You have to practically stand on your hands to stop yourself from slapping the silly grin off your husband’s face when he pretends he’s lost the passports. The kids start playing British bulldogs with the luggage trolley and it turns out – rather annoyingly – that your husband was right. You did pack too much stuff and you probably didn’t need that extra three pairs of shoes. Begrudgingly you pay the extortionate excess baggage payments while shooting a look at your smirking husband that says something along the lines of, “If you want to make it back from this holiday alive, don’t say a word.”

Next comes security. You’ve been smart. You’ve already put your liquid stuffs in plastic bags. Your kids haven’t and your husband hasn’t either but you’re still maintaining an unfailing sense of patience and optimism. Nothing is going to ruin your holiday mood. You’ve waited for it. You’ve worked long and hard for it. Even if you have to leave the rest of your family in a cell, you are going to enjoy this holiday. Then they take your very expensive eye cream. “But it’s in a plastic bag!” you declare desperately. “Yes madam, but it’s over 100ml. I’m afraid I’ll have to dispose of this.” You know they’re not going to dispose of it. You know that very expensive eye cream is going straight into their bag on a direct, non-stop trip to their bathroom cupboard. Damn them. But, who cares, right? You’re going on a fabulous sun-drenched holiday. Keep the eye cream!

It’s at this point that you may get a false sense of optimism. You’re on the home straight right? What can possibly go wrong? Well, let me tell you – a LOT can go wrong at this point. Don’t take your eyes off the kids. They’ll get lost, or arrested. Don’t let yourself, or your partner drink too much. You don’t want your kids to be the only one’s sober enough to get on the flight. Hold on tight to your boarding pass. They are slippery little suckers and very easily lost. Trust me. I know this. I also know that they don’t just reissue a boarding pass. They make you buy a new ticket. It doesn’t do much for harmonious family relations let me tell you.

You finally make it to the gate. You’re all on the plane. You may or may not have been delayed. At this point, it doesn’t matter. You’re so fried you could eat your own arm off with anxiety. You simply want to put your headphones on, crouch in the corner and rock backwards and forwards until it’s all over. It wouldn’t be so bad if you still didn’t have to negotiate the extortionate cost of the sandwiches and drinks that your kids will order on your budget airline, only to see them throw it all back up when they develop tandem air-sickness. You’ve still got to navigate a foreign transport system to get from the airport to your hotel; it was hard enough when you did it in your native language. You may be on the edge of a nervous breakdown and you may be wishing you’d booked a week at The Priory instead, but trust me, it will all fade away when you take that seat on your sun lounger, order a cocktail, open your book and relax.

That is, until your youngest slips on the side of the pool on the first morning and breaks his wrist.

Enjoy your holidays. It’s all worth it in the end.

Initially published in Sussex Local

New Year Re(solutions)

Let's not beat around the holly bush: 2011 has been a rough year. There isn't a person in the country who hasn't felt the squeeze in one way or another. More than ever, we are feeling the need to take control of 2012 and make sure that it's well, just a bit better. What quicker way to start than by grasping at that age-old tradition of New Year resolutions?

This wouldn't be a bad place to start if, of course, it was not widely understood that we very rarely manage to stick to our resolutions much into February (February? More like January 3rd.) In preparation for this article I did some research. Reading scientific psychology journals is not normally my thing, but it’s amazing how lost you can get reading about what pathetically weak creatures we really are.

Out of those who make resolutions 52% are confident of success and a whopping 78% of us fail. I don’t know about you but 78% seems like a lot to me. I’d hate to think that was representative of our willpower and personal strength as a nation. In fact, I’m so anxious for that not to be the case that I’m desperately seeking for some other reason to explain our apparent weak-willed fecklessness. The only thing I can think of is to lay the blame at the feet of the ritualised tradition itself.

Making New Year’s resolutions is a difficult game to negotiate successfully. You've spent the best part of December telling yourself that you're allowed to eat what you want and drink what you want and spend as much money as you want. You've basically gorged on self-indulgence. You've spent the whole month training in self-satisfaction and greed and come New Year’s Eve you're at the top of your game. Psychologically and physically, you've never been so good at denying yourself nothing. You can't remember a time when you were ever hungry, or without a headache. You've barely slept, you've done very little work and you may not be able to pay next month's bills but it's ok because December doesn't really count. You'll worry about it in January . After all, that’s what the New Year is for isn’t it?

You've spent a month spiralling out of control in so many ways that the opportunity to wipe the slate clean is a very seductive one. I think we genuinely believe that there is some sort of magic attached to the New Year. The prospect of January apparently imbues us with a super-hero complex. We suddenly believe that all the things we’ve spend the last year doing badly and, in fact, the last month doing spectacularly badly (no exercise, drinking, smoking, overeating) are suddnely within our resolute control. The problem is that we are so overwhelmed by indulgence at the end of December that we have an almost psychotic need to get back in control.

The problem is, it's a little like going cold turkey. The success rate is dire and there’s a sense that we’re not really doing it for ourselves. Like addicts, we are being forced into rehab before we’re ready. We’re doing it because we think we should and we all know how well that works out. We even make the same resolutions! There’s no personality in our resolutions. None of really make achievable resolutions. We don’t sit there and say to ourselves, “This year, I’m going to stop picking my toenails and leaving them on the coffee-table,” although I’d be eternally grateful if my husband did. No, we all make these resolutions that are about a)changing whole facets of your personality b) overcoming an addiction of some sort or c) something we don’t really care about but think we should e.g. vegetarianism for example.
In fact, we are so uniform in our resolutions that none of the top ten resolutions came as any surprise at all. In fact, play a little game with yourself. Before you read on, get a pen and paper and write down what you think the ten most popular resolutions are. I guarantee you’ll get at least eight of them and you’ll probably get all ten. That in itself is a little depressing...right?

So, you’ve got your list...read on.

1. Spend more time with family and friends
Now, I don’t know about you but after the Christmas period resolving to spend more time with my family is not top of my list. I love them but I also like to remain sober some of the time, avoid arguments and flatulence from the oldest/youngest and exist in harmony with my kin. This generally requires that our relationships are conducted from a safe distance. Say, 200 miles?

2. Fit in Fitness
While the alliteration is certainly appealing, the reality is that January is the worst time to start exercising. It’s always nut-crunchingly cold which rules out cycling/running/walking, at least with any sense of enjoyment and while gyms are sure to have very alluring deals in place to exploit our unfounded sense of optimism they are generally money-grabbing companies that offer you nothing in return except sore muscles and maybe a verruca or two.

3. Tame the Bulge
Good luck with that. Your fridge will be stuffed full of left over Christmas cake until at least March and those Cadbury’s Roses tins take a remarkable amount of time to get through. Let’s not even mention the Terry’s chocolate oranges and Ferrero Rocher that are inevitably lying around. Yes, you can tell yourself that you’ll put them away until next year. If it makes you feel better.

4. Quit Smoking
As a on-off smoker myself, I can tell you with absolute certainty that there isn’t a smoker in the world that wishes they didn’t smoke. They may not admit it to you, or even to themselves but trust me, in one way or another, this is a resolution that every smoker makes every day of the year. January 1st is no different.

5. Enjoy life more
What’s the alternative? Be bloody grumpy about everything and make a concerted effort to hate life? This is what we call a no brainer and probably something that everyone should resolve to do EVERYDAY.

6. Quit drinking
Yes. You’re right. You should. But you won’t.

7. Get out debt
I will when you do, Cameron.

8. Learn something new
Here’s something: New Year’s resolutions don’t work. Start yours in February. January resolutions are so 2011.

9. Help others
A very worthy resolution and one I find hard to mock without incurring all your wrath but still...let’s get the absence from family, the lack of exercise, the ever-expanding waistlines, the smoking, the misery, the drinking and the debt out of the way first. Once that’s done, I’ll be more than happy to help little old ladies across the street.

10. Get organised
How many diaries/journals have you got lying around that you haven’t touched since January? I rest my case.

How many did you get right? Depressing isn’t it? On that note, I shall leave you with some totally unfounded and unscientific advice to help you be successful in your resolutions.

1.Don’t make them...at least not on January. Wait till the Spring. If you’re looking for new beginnings they don’t come much better than ones that promise sunshine, warmth and the cricket seasons.

2.Make them small...instead of saying I will never eat anything but salad and fruit again try, I will try not to have fish and chips unless it’s a Friday. Or unless I’m really sad.

3.Don’t tell anyone. This is good for two reasons. Firstly, it takes the pressure off. People won’t be constantly asking you how you’re doing or worse, trying to sabotage your efforts. Secondly, when you fail no one needs to know about it.

Good luck people and Happy New Year.

Originally published: www.sussexlocal.net