Slummy Single Mummy

Stop the press.

This week I have been outside without my coat.

It’s a small thing, but a blue sky and a warm breeze makes all the difference to how I feel on any particular day.

If you don’t take time out to focus on what makes you happy, it is all too easy to get caught up in the day-to-day tedium of parenting alone. Washing, cleaning, cooking – admittedly I don’t do a huge amount of any of those things, but the responsibility is still mine, should I choose to accept it.

Sometimes I worry that the things I enjoy are rather dull. I don’t do any kind of extreme sports, or have a secret part-time job as a lion tamer. I don’t drive fast cars or jet off every weekend on exotic city mini-breaks – my life is much more acoustic folk than rock and roll. I did once jump out of a plane, but to be honest I found the whole free-falling thing quite boring – you just hang there after all, and not much else happens.

But do we really need all this high-tech, extreme-impact entertainment to make us happy? Exactly when is it that we become such discerning thrill seekers? As children, we could entertain ourselves for hours in the garden with a few sticks (I don’t actually remember how this works, but I’ve heard it’s true), so how come we forget this and become so demanding, desperately looking for more and more extravagant ways to escape the boredom and reach that elusive state of flow?

As a single parent, with time and money in short supply, being able to enjoy simple stick-based pleasures is crucial. Especially if you can play them outside without a coat.

Have you ever wondered just exactly where you are heading in life? I am 35 next week, but still often thing about what I want to be when I grow up and when I will stop ricocheting madly from one project to the next and just settle down.

The trouble is I think that I have gone about my life in a bit of a muddle. The normal course of events is surely supposed to run something like this - be a child, build things out of lego, go to university, waste twenties in blur of drink and affairs, have a moment of dawning realisation at 32 and move out of London to start a family in a small Devon village with a handsome doctor.

I’m sure that’s how it works in books at least.

So what about if you have your first child at 17? What then for the traditional order of things? You can hardly do the drunken affairs thing with a toddler in tow can you? Believe me, I’ve tried, and it really cramps your style.

Lately then, I’ve been thinking a lot about goals for the future, given that I’ve got my life events a bit skewwhiff already, and have decided to come up with a list of 40 things to do before I’m 40. I’ve bought a new notebook and everything, and every good project addict knows that is the main attraction of any new enterprise.

I have also made a rather spur of the moment booking for a trip to Iceland, just to get into the swing of things.

Perhaps the first item though just needs to be something simple. Finish list might be a good place to start…

I had a moment last night, getting up from the sofa, where I realised I am not 19 any more. I know, shocking right? Who’d have thought it? I have a daughter off to university in a few months and yet still I’m scared of using the telephone and feel like a bit of an imposter in a grown-up job.

Anyway, the sofa.*

I tried to get up and sort of fell backwards. I tried again, but couldn’t quite do it without levering myself with one hand. As I got up, one of my hips cracked, and I made this involuntary grunting noise. It was not attractive. Suddenly it was like I was floating above my own body, watching my mum getting up from the sofa.

I didn’t like it one bit.

More and more lately I’ve been having these flashes of age, especially when it comes to technology. I quite often find myself handing over the TV remote control to one of the children because the idea of having to find a programme through the on demand service feels too complicated for me to even start thinking about.

It is my birthday in a couple of weeks, but I am only going to be 35. What has become of me?

Perhaps I need a little sit down.

Just don’t ask me to get up again.

*Another one of those getting old things is that you get distracted, and…oooh! A shiny stone!

Imagine if you will a small piece of string. Imagine that you cut the piece of string into two pieces and keep the shortest piece. Then cut this in half and in half again. Fray the ends.

This piece of string represents my patience, one day in to the Easter holidays.

It is quite pathetic really. It’s not even that Belle has done anything particularly annoying, or that work is terribly busy or anything – it is more of a gut reaction than that. The second the holidays start, I inexplicably want to punch somebody in the face.

It is a bit like going on a diet. Even if I’m not at all hungry, the minute I use the word ‘diet’ I immediately feel the urge to eat a pound of uncooked cake mixture and a tube of Pringles, and I don’t even really like Pringles. I really don’t like being told what do to, even by myself. It’s why I never diet. All it ever leads to is weight gain.

Unfortunately I can’t decide just to give up school holidays in the same way that I’ve given up dieting. Apparently it is frowned upon to just leave your children at school outside term time. One day into the Easter holidays then and I am already ranting and raging at the slightest thing. Belle is scampering around looking scared, and appears almost to flinch when I talk. It doesn’t bode well for the rest of the holidays.

Perhaps it’s time to whip up a batch of cake mixture…

I got back on Sunday from a week in Ethiopia, finding out more about development work and food initiatives as part of the Enough Food for Everyone IF campaign. The whole visit was amazing – the progress the country has made over the last 30 years is staggering. There was one thing though, unconnected to food or the environment that, as a parent of two daughters, really struck me.



It was nearly the end of the week, we’d visited so many inspiring women already, and it struck me how relaxed and at ease with themselves everyone seemed, despite whatever difficult situations they might be living in.

I asked our Ethiopian guide if in Ethiopia there was the same kind of beauty culture as in the UK, a pressure for women to look a certain way or be a particular size or shape. He looked at me blankly. He literally didn’t understand the question.

“In the UK,” I said, “there is a lot of pressure on women and young girls to be very thin, to look like models.”

He looked vaguely horrified.



“Is there a similar thing in Ethiopia where women try to look a certain way?” He shook his head, as though I was clearly bonkers. “No,” he said. “Nothing like that.”

Can you imagine bringing up girls in a culture where body image simply wasn’t an issue?

Ethiopia may still have a way to go development wise but I’m sincerely hoping there are some things that won’t change.

Read more about Jo's visit to Ethiopia here http://slummysinglemummy.com/category/ethiopia/

I’m not easily embarrassed.

At our netball Christmas party it took about 2 seconds to persuade me to stand on a table and make a speech, and if I’m in a cruel mummy frame of mind I’m not adverse to a bit of singing in the street. This morning though was different, this morning I feel over.

There is something horribly embarrassing about falling over. Even if I trip slightly in the street I tend to look behind me in a puzzled way, implying that something jumped up out of the pavement to catch me out on purpose and that it definitely wasn’t just me being clumsy and tripping over my own feet.

My tumble this morning wasn’t quite as horrible as landing flat on your face in the street, as I was at netball practice. (I’m pretty sure that makes it a sports injury). It would have been better though if there had been someone else involved and not just me stumbling about trying to catch the ball.

The fall could not by any stretch of the imagination be called graceful. The wobbly thud as I fell heavily to the floor reminded me a bit of a beached whale, flapping about helplessly, unable to right themselves. I lay on the floor for a little while, trying as hard as I could not to cry.

Despite a grazed knee and elbow and a twisted ankle, I did hold in the tears. In fact, I stood up, shook out my foot a bit, and resumed my position in goal attack, hobbling mildly. I waited until I caught home to admire my scuffed knee and hold a pack of Quorn mince against my ankle.

My injuries may have been more at home in the playground but I wasn’t going to let my reaction go the same way.

I had one of those moments yesterday where you remember what being a parent is about and why you love it.

It’s not that normally I don’t get all the kicks I need out of making packed lunches and hoovering, (oh no, hang on...), but sometimes it’s good to have a little reminder of why exactly you bother to do all those things that actually you find tedious, things like sitting through an hour and a half of Monopoly and pretending you’re having fun.

(To be honest, in the case of Monopoly, it’s normally the other members of my family who aren’t enjoying themselves. I can’t help it if I have a gift for property.)

Yesterday I took Belle to see Oliver. She played Nancy in a recent class rendition of the musical, so she knew all the words to all the songs. It was extra exciting as it was a last minute ‘we happened to be walking past the theatre on the last day of its run’ type of occasion, so what would normally be weeks of simmering nervous tension (‘only 16 more sleeps!’) had to be condensed into ten intense minutes of squealing and shopping for snacks. (Belle was pretty excited too.)

It was a great show, but two thirds of the way in, when I was beginning to wish Bill would hurry up and put Nancy out of her misery so we could do the same and get off the bench seats, I happened to glance over at Belle.

In the half darkness, you could see her wide eyes sparkling, glued to the stage. She was sat forward a little bit on her seat, her neck long, and her hands held in her lap. She was mouthing the words as Nancy sang, and smiling. As the song finished, she clapped as loud and as fast as she could, bouncing a little bit on the red velvet covered bench.

I watched her.

As the clapping died down, I leaned over and whispered “she wasn’t as good as you.” “I know,” she whispered back, her smile broader than ever, and turned back to the stage.

This time in three weeks I’m going to be in Ethiopia. Yep, that’s right, THE Ethiopia. The hot one with all the famine.

I’m going with World Vision to raise awareness of the IF campaign and it’s a fantastic honour, but to be honest, I scared. I’ve never been further than Spain in my whole life before, and that was too hot. I just had to lie around on the beach like a big sweaty whale.

Also, I get hungry a lot, and worry about getting hungry too. I’m guessing it’s not OK just to whip out a Mars Bar when you’re visiting an Ethiopian food initiative.

Mostly though, I’m nervous about meeting other mums. On one level, we’ll have this massive, basic thing in common, and yet how can our lives ever really compare? When I tell people that I was pregnant at 16, and that I went to university with a toddler, they tend to look impressed, as though I have somehow battled against the odds, but really, how much of a challenge was it?

Having my daughter was ultimately a choice. Carrying on with my A-levels was something I didn’t think twice about. Being able to go to university at all should be considered a privilege, not a challenge.

I am wondering how I will look these women in the eye, who at 16 may be struggling to feed two children already, and not feel like a fraud – a fraud for ever feeling like I’ve struggled, like I’ve had ‘a bad day’.

But then perhaps that will be something else we have in common. What’s motherhood after all without a good dollop of guilt?

“You do know it’s half term next week don’t you?” Boyfriend asked me last week, not at all helpfully.

“Yes,” I replied, “I do.”

“It’s just that you don’t seem very prepared. I don’t think you’ve thought about exactly how much work you have to do with Belle around,” he says.

Jeez, can’t a girl just be in denial in peace?

He was right of course. I wasn’t very prepared. I didn’t want to think about it, didn’t want to have the ‘Noooo, I hate holiday club!’ battle, and so now here we are, the week stretching ahead of us, and the only glint of an oasis on the bleak horizon is a two and a half hour sewing class on Thursday morning.

That’s OK though, I’ll have a good two and a half hours there to get some work done. Less of course the time it takes me to drive her there and pick her up again.

*screams quietly inside head*

As well as the actual work/childcare dilemma, there is also the question of how my patience is going to cope. By Sunday afternoon it was already threadbare, and I had to have a little glass of raspberry liqueur while I cooked dinner. The week is not looking bright.

I need to buy in supplies to see us through.

Perhaps I’ll send Belle down to Blockbusters to buy up all their liquidation stock and a few kilos of popcorn.

And maybe a little bottle or two of some sort of fruit based liqueur…

My eldest daughter Bee has had two offers from universities this week.

There must be some sort of mistake. Bee is only about six years old. I’m pretty sure she has only been in school for a couple of years, and when I hold my hand up next to me to try and guess how tall she is, my hand hovers just above my hip. She can’t even properly tell the time yet without thinking carefully about which is the big hand and which is the little hand.

She can’t be 17.

We did some sums at the weekend to work out how much money she was going to need every month. We factored in everything from books to food shopping. Food shopping? Bee can’t do her own food shopping. She only knows how to buy large bottles of Pepsi Max and smoothies from Starbucks. How will she know what to do? Will they even let her go into Sainsbury’s on her own when she is so small?

She can’t be 17.

We’ve had a look at the different accommodation options too. It all looks fine, she is used to sitting in her bedroom, that won’t be weird, but what happens at tea time? How will she remember to eat tea? Who will she talk to? How will she even reach the cooker?

She can’t be 17.

I will have to go with her. She will need someone to show her how to do shopping and open tins and remind her to clean her teeth. I will just help out a little bit. Maybe cook her meals and run her a bath.

She can’t be 17.