Life in Pieces

Jane is a garden designer in Bristol (message me if you need one) and Louise runs a cinema in Melbourne (if you’re there, you must all go, it’s called the Thornbury Picture House – shameless best mate plug). Their common ground seems to be taking the piss out of me. This can range from the position I sleep in (face down with my arms by my side; LITERALLY the unsexiest position possible), or my obsession with my appearance (often centred around my eyebrows or hair straighteners), or my appetite (often centred around the sheer magnitude of it). I love it all. No one on this earth knows me better than Jane and Louise. I can be 100 per cent myself at all times. They are the only people I fart in front of. Unless it’s an accident.

Group Two

US LOT – on here we have Kelly, Michelle and Mel. These are my LA besties. We all have young kids, and we text all day every day about kids, family life and vaginas. The chat here is random and more about the day-to-day grind. It’s funny and supportive and a great place to bitch about the small stuff. Michelle works in business. Mel works for a start-up called Daily Karma, and she is also a doula (she watched Valentine come out of me) and a badass women’s rights activist. And Kelly is an ex popstar turned singer/songwriter with a voice like an angel who is currently learning how to perform sound baths. We all have two kids each. Workwise, I rarely have any idea what Mel and Michelle are talking about, and Kelly is all earthy and spiritual. They are all quite earthy and spiritual actually. Kelly lives a bit further away, but Mel and Michelle and I live streets away from each other, so it was really weird not seeing them as much in person in the early days of isolation. Even though we were socially distant, we still felt close. We’d hear the same helicopters circling the neighbourhood and bump into each other sometimes. These guys are very important to Chris and me. None of us live near our families, so we are all aunts and uncles to each other’s kids. Our kids have grown up together. And as soon as the restrictions began to lift a little, they were the first people we wanted the kids to see.

Group Three

DRUNKEN TURTLES – this one is a real breakthrough group from 2020. Art’s school year was called the ‘Sea turtles’. We had a ‘mum dinner’ that I was terrified about, but we all got on great and then set up a WhatsApp group, which is a real hoot. I’d been terrified about the dinner because I had thoughts like, ‘just because we have kids doesn’t mean we have anything in common’. Blah blah blah. I was still in total denial that I was a forty-year-old mother of two. I’d had years of negative ‘school gate’ chat drilled into me from other mums, TV shows, articles, etc., and I didn’t want to be a part of it. I wanted to be the kind of mum who dropped my kid off and picked him up, no more involvement. I didn’t want my life to become about PTAs and school fundraisers. BOOOORRRIIINNNGGGGG. I presumed ALL other mothers were the exact opposite of me and that all we would talk about at the dinner would be the kids and the teachers.

Turns out, I am the only asshole in the group, because all the mums are totally awesome, way cooler than I could ever be, and all interesting, hilarious and super smart. And I realised as I chomped down on the best chicken parmesan I have ever had in my life, that I was ready to be a forty-year-old mother of two, and that talking about the kids with like-minded people was actually fun. I love these women. I am delighted to be one of them. That night we all ate too much, drank too much and massively over-shared. My favourite kind of evening.

The WhatsApp chat is fun.

The chat ranges from parenting to gyno appointments, rants about Trump, recommendations for local stuff, TV shows and medical matters. We also have one paediatric doctor in the group, so she is amazing at answering any Covid-related questions we have. There’s a manager of some major pop stars and a sex therapist too, among many other interesting people. And that is what I have come to love about being a mum with a kid at school; you get thrust in with people you might never otherwise meet and, if you embrace it, it can be really, really fun. I have a lot to thank this group for. They kicked off my experience of being a ‘school mum’ with a blast. I’m finally really into it – it’s just a shame the bloody school has been shut down.

Group Four

BEST CREW EVER – this one consists of my friends Gemma, Ophelia and Josie. We were all close to Caroline and every now and then one of us pops up in this group to say, ‘Hey, I feel sad, how you guys doing?’ and it’s lovely. When you lose a friend, friendship becomes everything.

After the funeral, we knew we had to be there for each other. It’s obviously been hard, especially with me being in America, and the world being in lockdown. But we all loved her so much and this group is there when any of us need it. All my friends have been there for me this year, but the ones who knew Caroline like I did have been very important. This chat group is like a cushion of warm, cosy support; a massive comfort in very testing times.

I also want to give a shout out to Nancy, Carrie, Cam, Shawnta, Kristen, Jo, Dee and many more … You know who you are. I have so many brilliant women that I call my friends. I know that makes me very lucky and I feel it deep in my bones. There is a good chance that none of them will read this book, but if you do, I LOVE YOU and thanks.

I believe female friendship makes the world a better place. Men operate more individually, striving for personal success. That is a huge generalisation, but I’m pretty certain it is true. A man’s mentality is to hunter-gather and provide for himself and his family. A woman’s mentality is to connect with others and build community. We spread ourselves further, we lean on each other more. When you share yourself with other women, and you allow them to do the same, you find your power. The women in my life are my backbone. I tell my friends everything, always, all of them. The second a thing happens, my thumbs get into action and tell them. The immediate inpouring of support is something I have come to rely on.

Here are the reasons why female friendship is so important:

 You can have honest feedback that doesn’t cause a fight. Honesty in romantic relationships can be hard because you have to live right on top of the emotional consequences. Personally, I tend to hold things back and let them fester, which is a disaster. I am much better at speaking up in my friendships than I am in marriage, which, as you can imagine, is really fun for my husband.

 I’d argue that my best friends know me better than anyone. No matter how close I am to Chris, there are things about me he will never understand because he isn’t female. The way I talk to him is different, the way I open up to him is different. The way I rely on him is different. I love the way he protects me and makes me feel so secure. But the relationship is different, even he wouldn’t deny that. I see it often in the depths of chats we have about certain things. For example (and this is a frivolous example, because I am not here to share my actual problems), I was telling him about a dream that I had and saw him, quite rightfully, glaze over. So I got on the chat with Mel, Michelle and Kelly and told them instead. I was immediately given a deep analysis of the dream and ideas and suggestions as to where it came from and what inspired it. THAT is what girlfriends do. It isn’t the husbands’ fault, it’s just that we are wired differently. I’m cool with it, because I have my girls. My female friends are my emotional support animals. Even when they only exist on text, I need them just the same.

 A great friendship is like having all the best boyfriends you ever had merged into one person, without the pressure of having to live with them or maintain a sex life when you’re tired. It’s why losing one is so awful. It’s not just one person, it’s a collection of memories, conversations and laughter that connect you to someone. A friendship is a link in a chain, but with this particular design, you can’t replace it if it breaks. I realised immediately that the gap Caroline left could not be filled. Our isolation texts would have been hilarious. I imagine them in my head all the time. Instead, I knew I had to make the absolute most of everyone else. Work harder at those relationships and do my best to keep them going.

In lockdown, it all happened on my phone. The WhatsApp groups were like unscrewing a bottle of something fizzy. Each message relieved a little bit of pressure, provided a moment of relief, a reassurance that the female energy in my life will always be there, even when one is gone. In such sadness there was solidarity. I felt very lucky to be a woman.

I feel sad for my two sons that they will never feel the power of female friendship for themselves. The least I can do is surround them with mine. As soon as this is over, regular ‘Ladies Nights’ will be a feature in our house. I want Art and Valentine to feel the energy of that solidarity. The laughter, the support, the warmth and maybe, most importantly, the incredible display of sensational vintage kaftans.

PIECE THREE

31 March

Isolation Update – Sausages and dresses

Well, here we are again. Another update where I try to fill a page by making absolutely nothing sound interesting. We made it through the weekend. It was nice and felt different because neither of us tried to work. It was DIY, sorting shit out and childcare central around here for two whole days. You can imagine how much I drank.

Yesterday, I cooked our favourite dinner – corned beef and cabbage with a leek and potato gratin. It was LOADED with cheese and oozing with fat and we ate it all and loved every mouthful. Sundays HAVE to be about food, right?

I’d done a Lizzo Peloton class in the morning. It was thirty minutes of hard cycling JUST to Lizzo music. I tried to sing along but could hardly breathe, so afterwards I put on her album and had a kitchen disco while I grated cheese. I felt smug as hell and kept singing ‘Feeling smug as hell’ to the tune of ‘Feeling Good as Hell’. Perfect. It’s exactly what Lizzo would want.

I chatted to my dad on Sunday, and he told me a marvellous story about how he was on FaceTime with my sister and felt what he thought was a big mole on his face. He got very upset about it, and while on the phone to Jane looked in the mirror. ‘Oh no, I’ve got a … no, wait …’ He then realised it wasn’t a mole but a Coco Pop. Him and Jane then totally lost it and I was SO happy to hear that such laughter existed in this weird and unsociable time. He couldn’t wait to tell me about it. And I laughed for about an hour. Until Valentine wet his pants again. Urgh.

We ran out of eggs yesterday and I honestly felt like I was in the war and soldiers were going to come around with tickets that would get me dairy products.

That isn’t what happened. I just went to the shop and got some more eggs.

It did make me think what the perfect emergency supplies would be. Some obvious, some that you only realise you need when the chance of purchasing them is dramatically reduced.

When the pandemic hit, the shelves were so empty. Before I left for Caroline’s funeral, I had a small but genuine fear of not getting home. So I stocked up for Chris and the boys, because I needed to know that they would be alright if they weren’t able to buy food. I think this is what they call being a ‘Mumma Bear’. I went to Target, aiming to buy tins and dried food and loo roll, stuff like that, but the shelves were empty. It was frightening. Nothing had been announced at that point, the word ‘lockdown’ wasn’t yet a common term on everyone’s lips.

I managed to get some tinned vegetables, some weird-shaped pasta that no one else wanted, kitchen roll – the useless and totally unabsorbent kind – flour, long-life milk, jars of peaches and other random shit that I thought Chris could fathom some meals out of, if they got stuck. I told him he had enough to survive on for a week, if this ‘lockdown’ thing, whatever that was, actually did happen. (AND OF COURSE IT DID, IT HAPPENED WITH BLOODY BELLS ON.)

So I’ve been thinking, here is my ultimate list and what I will be putting in airtight containers in our basement when we move house. I reckon, with all of this, we could survive about ten days, no problem.

Loo roll, kitchen roll, cleaning supplies. Toothpaste, soap, shampoo and razors. Lots of sunscreen. Baby wipes, laundry detergent and dish soap.

Cooking oil AND olive oil, flour, baking soda, baking powder, yeast, sugar, coffee, teabags, long-life nut milk (always makes me laugh), dried fruit, egg substitute. Salt and pepper. Ketchup, mayonnaise, mustard, chocolate. A huge bag of rice and a whopping great bag of pasta. A few different shapes, because the shape DOES matter, depending on the sauce. (I still have standards in lockdown.) Japanese panko breadcrumbs (if the kids are refusing to eat the basic food, they might eat it if you cover it in breadcrumbs and fry it). Apple juice. Rice cakes. Honey, Marmite, huge jar of peanut butter, big box of Cheerios.

Tins of peaches, pineapple, coconut milk, tomatoes, tomato paste, ready-chopped garlic (hate it normally, but I cannot survive more than twenty-four hours without garlic), baked beans, chickpeas, peas and a few random kinds of beans for flavourless vegan stews if shit gets really bad.

For the freezer: pretentious beef hot-dog sausages (no butts and eyeballs). Bread. Tortilla wraps. Individually wrapped steaks. Chicken thighs. Bratwurst. Beef mince. Tilapia fillets. As many bags of frozen fruit and vegetables as you can get in. Butter, ready-made pastry and a few frozen pizzas. Packets of ham, turkey and sliced cheese. Frozen chopped onion.

For the kids – lollipops, so I can shut them up in a crisis. Fruit jerky. Loads of healthy-ish granola bars. Seaweed. Cartons of apple juice.

PLUS, so many crisps that you can barely get into the basement. Like, all of the crisps. Build this collection over time. Every time you go to a shop, buy some, and add to the stock. DO NOT be complacent about the crisp supply, just keep plugging away at it. For your entire life.

AND THEN …

10 x Casamigos tequila (it’s the brand George Clooney created. He is my boyfriend.)

5 x fresh lime juice

3 x triple sec

12 x good quality Spanish red wine

12 x dry, crisp white wine

Plastic cups in case things get smashed in an earthquake

A shitload of weed gummies

OK, that’s it.

Reading that, it might actually be quite a fun week.

Right, I’m off for a margarita and I’ll make something FABULOUS in the kitchen. Or maybe I’ll just smash a bag of Kettle chips and whack some fish fingers in the oven.

IS IT TOMORROW YET?

Love Dawn x

1 April

Isolation update – SUCH a Good Mum

I got all ‘Instagram Mum’ on Saturday and we painted terracotta pots with leftover paint samples. They look amazing and the kids loved doing it. I will be proud of myself for the rest of my life for doing an hour of ‘crafts’ with my children. The pots are so cute and really brighten up the garden.

I’m taking the wins where I can get them.

I’ve never been someone to get annoyed by the ‘Smug Mum’ scene on Instagram that gets everyone so riled up. When women post those perfect family photos, where the mummy and daddy are laughing at the kid playing in a pile of mud but it’s in portrait mode and the mum is close by with a towel at the ready and a load of LOLS and the caption reads something ridiculous like ‘I love it when he gets all messy. He’s a kid, it’s what they do. Let them play with mud!’ I don’t get annoyed because we all know what happens next.

She goes in to retrieve the child from the mud. The child goes ballistic and smothers the mum’s pretty white dress in mud that she later discovers has tar in it and will never wash out. The child’s muddy hands go into the mother’s mouth, so the mother eats the mud. The father tries to help, to which the mother screams ‘YOU DON’T NEED TO FIX THIS’ because she harbours so much resentment towards him because he only took two weeks’ paternity and spent the whole time playing online poker. Eventually, the mother gets the child out of the mud, her dress and face soiled. The child then scratches its long, untrimmed nails down her face, leaving what will probably be a permanent scar. She drags the child kicking and screaming to the bath, where she showers it down while it thrashes around so badly that it smacks its head on the side of the bath, getting a golf-ball level bump that she has to disclaim on a form when she drops the child at day care the next day. She tries to dress the child as it kicks her in the tits and face until the mother is so despondent she puts the TV on and collapses on the sofa, only to be jumped on by the other kids that she had forgotten to feed. A few hours later, when she is exhausted, weepy and possibly quite hammered, she looks at her phone and sees the lovely photo her husband took before all of the above happened and she decided to divorce him. So she posts it on Instagram, and allows the lie of perfection to cloud her reality. The husband says ‘Shall we go to bed’ and she says yes and follows him. They don’t have sex, the baby wakes in the night and the mother is sick because there was norovirus in the mud she ate.

HAVE I PAINTED A GOOD PICTURE THERE??

We all know that is what parenting young kids looks like.

But still, I’m proud of the pots.

In darker news, I got really pissed off to hear how many people in America (California especially) have rushed out to buy guns. People who would usually be ‘anti-guns’. Everyone is terrified that they will be attacked by people who have lost everything. I HATE IT. I have a zero-gun tolerance rule, no matter who the fuck you are. Same rules for all. Also, nothing bad has happened yet. NO TO GUNS. The fear, the paranoia, it has to stop. I hate it. You’ve been asked to stay home so you don’t catch flu, you don’t need a fucking gun. What are you going to do, shoot the virus?

Makes me SO MAD.

(Imagine if, after writing that, I get murdered in my own home by a maniac that I could have shot with a gun.)

What will be will be. I will not have a gun in my house, ESPECIALLY because of my kids. Even though we had a shotgun when I was a kid, and I was amazing at hitting Coke cans at the bottom of the garden. Reason ONE I don’t want a gun in the house … KIDS LIKE PLAYING WITH THEM.

I hated everyone when I found out they were buying guns. EVERYONE.

We do have baseball bats around though – we’re not fucking stupid.

Remember when I painted those pots?

Love Dawn x

2 April

Isolation update – Licking the cheese

My cheese intake has more than quadrupled since isolation started. I have it in sandwiches, on forks, I lick it off knives, and sometimes I just stand next to the fridge and eat it directly from the door.

Marmite and cream cheese sandwiches though, mmmmmm.

I risked my life in the supermarket today and got loads of nice food. It’s literally all we have that changes each day, so I’m going for it with yummy meals. Also, I’ve introduced a 4 p.m. charcuterie board. My kids are gonna be such wankers.

Seriously though, my ‘thing’ in life is food. More so than dresses, it’s so important to me. I think I have a really emotional connection to it because I lived with my grandparents until I was ten, and all they ever cooked was ham, egg and chips type stuff (don’t get me wrong, I LOVE that food). So when I moved in with my aunty and uncle, and they were serving up fish with capers, whole crabs, oysters, steaks, full Sunday roasts, GODDAM avocado mousse starters, my taste buds got the kind of wake-up call that changes you forever. Food became my obsession, as cooking is now. My favourite part of every day is making the food we eat. I shop, I cook, I follow recipes and I make shit up. It makes me SO happy..

I don’t know if any of you ever listened to my podcast series ‘Get It On’. It was an interview show where I asked my guests why they wear what they wear. At the end of every episode, I asked them: If there was one photo that represented who you are the most, what would it be? For me, it was simple. The photo would be me, in my favourite vintage Ossie Clarke dress, getting a tray of sausages out of the oven. I picked this image (the photo doesn’t have to exist, you can make it up) because it’s about my love of vintage dresses, but also the big tray of sausages suggests I am cooking for a bunch of people. Which is me at my absolute happiest.

So, I ask you, what would you be doing in your photo?

Love Dawn x

3 April

Isolation Update – Stupid orange things: no!

It was Chris’s morning with the kids, so I lay in bed like a lush, drinking coffee until 8 a.m., then did the Lizzo Peloton class and ate bacon to make up for it. I think that is what they mean by a ‘balanced diet’?

Nailing it.

I took the kids to the park today. Our usual spot (the baseball pitch) was empty, which was great. Valentine had a meltdown within thirty seconds, and Art followed with an absolute belter a few minutes later. Both sat on the edge of the baseball pitch, next to a little plastic orange triangle, screaming with high emotion about God knows what. Little did I know, but two big men who wanted bigger muscles had put a row of those orange things in a line to create some sort of circuit for their exercises. They got really cross at me for bringing kids into their situation. They were grunting and sweating out of their foreheads at me. All ‘Urgh’ and ‘You’re in our spot.’ Please see my problem … I now have FOUR men being grumpy with me in the park. I asked mine to get up, but they wouldn’t. So the two workout freaks huffed and puffed some more. I tried to lift one of mine, saying loudly, so the men heard, hoping they’d cut me some slack, ‘Come on, we are in the way.’ But the men got madder at me and looked at me like I was totally ruining their life. I got upset. My kids get out the house for less than an hour a day and these men are pissed off that they are within a foot of their stupid orange cone? FUCK. OFF.

I suddenly felt rage. Real rage. The two men tried to stare me down. The park was practically empty, they could see my kids were being assholes and that I had a lot on my plate, but they didn’t care. MEN! They could have just moved their STUPID orange plastic thing five feet to the right, and all would have been well. But they didn’t. (I would have done it myself, but it could have had coronavirus on it.) They looked at me like vermin, because I dared to have children. So, I Mumma-beared the shit out of it.

‘OWN THE FUCKING PARK, DO YOU?’ I screeched to the men.

On that note, both of my children stood up and walked away. I was left, quivering, livid, determined. The two men pretended not to notice me, but I stood firm. ‘There is all that space over there,’ I continued. I then flicked my hand violently in the direction of grass. They came over, picked up the orange thing and moved it. Easy. I followed my children over to the nearby tree they were now hiding behind.

‘Are you cross, Mummy?’ Art said.

‘Not with you, baby,’ I told him. ‘But those men are ASSHOLES.’

Something tells me I won’t be Iceland’s #mumoftheyear this time round.

We found another corner of the park, and an old lady stood around twenty feet from us doing lunges. She had a lot of questions: ‘Are you a full-time stay-at-home mum?’ she asked. To which I said, ‘Yes.’ Because right now I am, and I couldn’t be bothered to explain otherwise. ‘What does your husband do?’ she asked. ‘He’s an actor,’ I replied. She then made all sorts of assumptions.

‘I’m an acting teacher,’ she said.