Mama Malone

Malone thinks we should skip the pleasantries

Things that amuse me: men that drive vans with ‘Dog Walking Service’ written on the side. People telling you how hilarious something was but aren’t even cracking a smile, never mind laughing: “Honestly, it was hilarious, we were creasing up!”

It also amuses me when people ask how you are, and when you say “miserable”, they look uncomfortable. OK, I haven’t done that yet but I might. Instead, I reply “I’m fine, thanks, you?” And they answer: “Oh yeah, fine, fine,” when inside, they also want to curl into a ball and be put to bed for a few years… “Morrrrrning! Ah, good, the recession is over. Excellent! Mine’s a croissant and a latte!”

I knew I was feeling the credit crunch recently when I purchased Pound Shop toilet roll. It wasn’t a false economy, no… a whole roll lasted almost a day. The small child used it like an Andrex puppy trailing it around the house. (Hey, if it keeps her quiet for 20 minutes while I check my Facebook, update my Twitter, pluck my eyebrows…). Tissue paper offered in a pile of unraveled toilet roll is an attractive feature in any bathroom.

Other things that make me laugh:the irony of buying stuff in the Pound Shop that costs 70p elsewhere, like washing-up liquid or sugar.
And who the hell buys eggs from a Pound Shop? They do bacon now, too. Uncooked meats and dairy being sold in a discount store? This credit crunch is crazy times. What’s next? Pregnancy tests?! (Ahem, actually they already sell them…) I wonder if they sell discount condoms?

“It amuses me when people ask how you are, and when you say ‘miserable’, they look uncomfortable”

Anyway, back to manners: I wonder where the custom of asking how strangers are actually comes from. Surely a 100 years ago on meeting someone we’d say: “Hello, enchanted to meet you”, and not: “Hello, how are you?” Then going through the strained rigmarole of having to answer the same question back, while usually lying about how happy one’s life is. In some places in the world they don’t have this custom at all.

Pic: Lili Bé www.130cartons.com

Is it politeness gone mad? The only answer you can conceivably give without appearing unhinged is: “Fine thanks, you?”

It almost seems pointless asking. It is nice to be asked, but sometimes I want to say: “I’m absolutely on the edge. I’m lonely, misunderstood and unappreciated. I rely on Google to ask the questions that a 100 years ago I would have asked my grandmother. I’m fed up of this relentless hamster-wheel of life, and I want to escape the cage and scamp about in a yacht off the pacific ocean drinking strawberry daiquiris . How are you?” Maybe I’ll actually do that just to see their face, video it, and upload it onto YouTube. A middle class version of a ‘happy slapper’ video.

Mama Malone

Malone wants to live in the moment for a change

Friends suggest I look into the world of online dating. But I’m still in that post break up fog where you can’t imagine ever meeting anyone similar again… what’s the point? They think it will cheer me up, so I take a peek… what a world it is. A world where you can declare openly being ‘in a relationship’, and just there for ‘new friends’. Or even ‘casual sex’! A world where openly saying you’re looking for ‘marriage’ is something you may not click on, for fear of attracting no interest at all.

I’m in a funny place at the moment; my life dreams seem to be changing. I don’t know if I want marriage anymore. This feels nicely strange and freeing. As a traditional woman it was something that I always looked forward to, finding someone I wholly adored, to have a settled relationship with; that special someone to put the bins out for me… joke! (I know that a husband is more than that! They can also pick up milk on the way home.)

“Perhaps the Mama Malone single woman, single mum ‘brand’ must go on…”

Seriously, I have always looked forward to marriage: someone to look after, having a team to face life’s challenges with, a time to grow with someone and share laughter with. Suddenly I don’t know if I want that ‘story’ anymore. Sure I want the happy ending. I just don’t know if my dream is settling anymore. I don’t know why.

Pic: Lili Bé www.130cartons.com

It’s weird when your dreams change. It’s possibly exciting. I’ve changed direction on the path I was walking and I have no idea where this one is heading. It might lead to me alone on my deathbed in 50 years, but who cares! I just want to enjoy the walk along the path, walking as if the walk might only last another few miles and enjoy every bit of it.

I have, in the past, struggled to live in the moment. Now, the only place I want to be is in the moment. Both the past and future are places I have no brain-space for. I wonder if this is because I’m grieving a relationship break up.

I wonder and hope that life has an interesting path for me, that settling down just yet isn’t the plan. Perhaps the Mama Malone single woman, single mum ‘brand’ (ha ha) must go on… I don’t know what the hell I am doing on a dating website! The thought of a new relationship is repellant. Holding hands or having somebody’s arms around me would be nice. There’s nowhere to click on that as an option on this dating site, though.

The physics of magnetism is such that as soon as you don’t push at something, and pull away, it pulls at you! So instead of repelling, I’ve attracted many dating messages in my inbox but no-one I want to hold hands with yet. My friends had good intentions, but I don’t think this has cheered me up yet…

Mama Malone

Malone wonders what school will mean for her

We visited the school today. She happily played with plastic food stuffs, pouring tea and eating pretend pizza. She was fine. I, on the other hand… sat by myself in the corner of the school hall whilst the other parents mingled. I felt like an outsider with my legs dangling off a blue plastic kid’s chair. I felt exactly like I did at school.

Funny isn’t it that after all these years, and experiences, and therapy… that returned to a school environment I’d just revert back to little alone pig-tailed Malone. I wonder perhaps if we don’t change that much at all deep inside! Sure, we throw on a few more coats of armour, add more layers to shield that soft inner child, but perhaps the inner child who will always be hurt by things, that should feel things, always remains inside – that tiny child.

The first time I speak, I ask the tea lady for a cup of tea and she can’t hear me. I have to repeat myself a few times, then I realise I am a tiny quiet child asking for tea! I am nervous. This is a woman who gets up on stage doing stand-up comedy! What is wrong with me?

“Will I have to start baking? Will I have to start wearing Crocs?”

Then I ask for a form for school uniform, the brash school-lady-person tells me firmly with a look of ‘you idiot!’ in her eye: “They were in your information pack.” Information pack? I was given that ages ago! I’m expected to know where that is? Be a grown-up?

Pic: Lili Bé www.130cartons.com

This school malarkey means I’ve got to get organised. I’ve probably got to become some sort of… mother. Will I have to start baking? My kitchen’s not big enough! There’s no room for a swing-bin never mind to swing a cat. Will I have to start wearing Crocs? Will I have to learn to drive so I can moan about parking issues with other mums at the school gates? Will I have to stop being so judgemental/opinionated/scared of other parents so I can actually get off this blue plastic kid’s chair and go and talk to the parents in my child’s new school…?

Probably. I think I will start off just buying an A4 file organiser though… (At this point, if this was an SMS, I would insert a smiley face implying cheeky self-awareness.) I didn’t buy the uniform as I figure she’ll grow loads in the next few months when school actually starts. My little baby is starting school in September! Four years have passed. Who’d have thought I’d still be single/creative/ laughing!

I honestly thought my life was going to end when I had a child, but in many ways I have achieved more. Anyone worrying that having a child means you losing yourself, needn’t. Parenting just makes you fight harder for yourself and who you are… And a new exciting chapter is about to begin: both mother and child have much to learn.

Mama Malone

Malone cohabits with some newborns

People often ask “why do we never see baby pigeons?” You should thank the Lord/your lucky stars/a new age higher power that you haven’t. They are the ugliest alien creatures I have ever had the misfortune of co-habiting with. Yes, co-habiting with.

They have set up home in my patio. In the laziest excuse for a ‘nest’: a plant pot! Mama Pidg laid two eggs in said plant pot; I thought they were the toddler’s toy eggs from her toy collection.

I was about to tell her off for leaving them outside, when I noticed three twigs and a shard of tile had been purposely laid next to the eggs in what seemed to be an extremely flippant attempt at ‘nesting’. It was play too sophisticated for a three and half year old child, but an amateur effort for a bird… A plant pot with a few twigs laid next to the eggs is not a nest!

I rang the council and the RSPB, and they told me that pigeons are famously bad at making nests. They told me anyone who moved or destroyed the nest would incur a £5000 fine.

“That’s nearly two months of them sub-letting my flat’s patio off of me without permission”

They also told me that the babies would take 18 days to incubate (with mama pidg sitting on the eggs) and then after hatching, another 34 days of maturing the babies enough to fly off with mum. That’s nearly two months of them sub-letting my flat’s patio off of me without permission, or indeed any rent!

One of the main reasons I rented this flat was so that when the weather got warm, we would have that ‘third room’, the outdoor space where I could put toys out and my small child could make a mess and get wet and dirty outside. I meant mud and water dirty. There is no way I would let her out there now. The patio is covered in filthy bird poo. Tons of it.

Pic: Lili Bé www.130cartons.com

Pigeon poo can apparently make you sneeze and vomit. I can’t let the small child out there (even if she wasn’t scared of the pigeon mayhem). Whenever we open the patio door they all go flappy-wing crazy. More poo results… The patio is probably about 10ft by 16ft – it was humble at best, but now it is revolting.

A swarm of flies swirl round in circles – I presume because of the pidg poo, but I rang the RSPB and they said flies suggest that one of the birds is not healthy. I wondered if one of them had died, but no, today I caught a glimpse of them both. They are less ugly than when first born, but to me still look like they’ve been run over.

I am reluctant to open our bedroom windows (which back onto the patio) in case the flies venture inside. I can’t put any washing out in case it is pooped on. Be glad if you have never seen baby pigeons; I wish I never had…

Mama Malone

Malone slaps on the SPF but considers Botox too

I’m going on holiday! It’s been eight years since I’ve had a beach holiday. Going to Spain in March doesn’t count, as it was only hot enough to wear
a bikini for about 34 minutes, and that was on the day we were leaving.

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There was no sunbathing – that’s not a holiday, that’s a trip! This time it’s going to be scorchio! I need to buy sun cream. I know how much sun my skin can take in Brighton before it burns, but in peak Spanish summer temperatures? I have no idea. Do I buy SPF 15?

In right-on Brighton I feel perhaps I might get arrested at the checkout if
I buy anything lower than SPF 15, judged as some sort of trashy sun junkie, receiving looks of scorn from other shoppers: “Do you know what the sun does?” Er, it makes plants grow? I know I need to be aware of skin damage but I’d like a little tan… Maybe I’ll buy my sun cream on arrival where they’ll be loads of northerners calling me a pansy for not just slapping on olive oil.

To be fair I do use factor 50 on my face! But that’s a vanity and logic thing; I figure if ageing is 99 per cent due to sun damage then I may as well cover my face up now rather than inject Botox later.

“If ageing is 99 per cent due to sun damage then I may as well cover up now rather than inject Botox later”

Recently, while going out with a younger man, I did for the first time consider Botox. I have never thought I would want the stuff, but hanging out with his young mates with their glowing skin made me think that maybe I did need to keep preserved a bit longer… Googling ‘Botox’ was an eye opener, no pun intended – well, maybe a little one.

There are so many different anti-ageing treatments! It’s not just Botox you can have injected but also collagen and hyaluronic acid! Did you know that Botox, or Botulinum toxin as it’s known medically, is one of the most acutely toxic substances known?!

It’s derived from Clostridium botulinum, which you remember from Home Ec’ classes at school as something you didn’t want in your sausages. How vain am I going to get that I wouldn’t mind Botulinum injected millimetres from my brain? It says on t’interweb (so it must be right) that it’s only deadly if inhaled or taken intravenously.

Knowing my luck, I’d be allergic to Botox; I’d start off with a wrinkle and end up with a red rashy face or be the first person to die from it. I seem to be becoming vainer as I age, so I may succumb to the promises of this toxin’s eternal beauty. If I have it done, I will let you know if my face falls off.

My shopping basket contains SPF 50, 15, and some fake tan… which suggests ‘educated about sun damage but would like to look a little orange all the same.’

Mama Malone

Malone ponders living on the Isle of Wight

Now I’m weighing up the options of a move to the Isle of Wight. I know I know… People of a certain age say things like: “Ooh, lovely!” and people my age say: “What are you thinking? Are things that bad?” Yes, they are. Do you think I would consider it if they weren’t? You think I want to move from the most alternative town in the UK to an island that charges you £60 to get the car on it, has only one Argos store but 132,000 inhabitants and 2.6 million visitors a year! (How can they afford to get there? Are they counting the 30,000 people that attend Bestival?)

Bestival is where I met my child’s father. If you take one bit of advice from my situation, it’s don’t have a festival romance – they’re like holiday romances. They’re fuelled on atmosphere and not built on solid ground but a trodden tent-pegged one.

Hmm, what I mean to say is: don’t have a romance with anyone where a ferry is involved! What if it doesn’t work out and you become pregnant? (OK, if you’re a man reading this and you did become pregnant this is excellent, because small islands always have a thriving circus scene!)

“Festival romances are not built on solid ground but a trodden tent-pegged one”

My daughter has to get a ferry just to see her family for the rest of her life. Sounds fun for a holiday, doesn’t it? But every weekend is just a pain. It’s three hours, door to door – that’s six hours deducted from a 48-hour weekend just for traveling.

I wonder if my daughter will one day begin to resent it. I am wondering how the visits will work when she starts school. Her father is going abroad for two years and promises to return irregularly. Her school says even if he gets permission to take her away during term time (when he returns) it would be disruptive.

Say, for instance, she was learning the school play, she would miss a week and then not know what was going on. They suggested she goes to her dad’s in the school holidays, but I am wondering if that would be just as disruptive.

She’d make friends in class and then everyone would make plans for half term, and she’d be left out while everyone bonded in the holidays. I don’t want her to be the child who never builds friendships because she’s always away! She already misses her friends’ birthday parties as they often fall on weekends when she is at her dad’s.

My thinking is that if we move to the Isle of Wight for a while, at least she will have consistency. When her father returns from abroad I can just leave them to it for a week. And, in the meantime, I get a cottage hideaway where I can finally write my book! Or go mental in an isolated village…

Mama Malone

Malone is disillusioned at a summer wedding

Have you ever booked a holiday with a partner but then had to go on said holiday on your own? Have you ever had to holiday in exactly the same place where your lover said he wanted to marry you; said he would love you to the day you die, joking that on your death bed, he would cry “I told you so!”? Have you ever had to go on this holiday with your beloved for the purpose of attending your friend’s wedding?

It was the most romantic beach wedding ever… I was surrounded by happy couples – the only single people at the wedding were one bridesmaid, a toddler called Elijah, and me. The speeches were so touching, everyone was crying except the toddler. The groom cried, honoured to be her husband. The bride’s brother and father sang songs in the Spanish heat while we drank Cava after a swim in the sea.

The lunch was a homemade veggie buffet of pasta salads. The tables’ flower vases were tin cans, which just made the flowers look more beautiful. It was the best wedding!

“The best man tried to get off with me as his girlfriend wasn’t there”

My present to them was to deejay, so we danced to old school beats on the villa’s veranda; everyone had so much fun. Except me.
I felt like I was missing a limb. Heartbroken. Grieving the loss of my partner in crime – my boyfriend. Grieving the loss of our dreams and plans for the future.

Being the single woman at the wedding, nothing makes you feel more undervalued and worthless. Especially when the only people who want to give you loving are in relationships with other people… This is not flattering. It made me feel totally disillusioned.

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The best man – who was clearly more of the worst kind of man – tried to get off with me as his girlfriend wasn’t there… The bride seemed to think I should be flattered as he’d never cheated before. Hardly! In his best man speech he said how he could only hope for a relationship like theirs. I told him if he cheated on his girlfriend then he could never expect to have a relationship like theirs.

It was the equivalent of a verbal slap round the face: this man, who had only moments before been trying to drag me into a bedroom, now sat with his head in his hands, teary: “But I love my girlfriend!” I said: “Please don’t make me think that men are no good.” Then I proceeded to launch into how disillusioned I was, how I had been left seven months pregnant, then my recent boyfriend had broken my heart.

Honestly, he didn’t know what can of worms he opened when he pinched my bum! What had started off as his sordid seduction had ended up with him consoling me like a therapist. “Perhaps give it some time, perhaps your ex just needs some space.” The most romantic holiday wedding became sad disillusionment mingled with a three-course meal buffet.

Mama Malone

Malone makes a 10-year plan

I need some sort of job; I wonder what I will end up doing. I hope it will be ‘international jet-setter mum’. A job that involves getting on planes with expensive hand luggage wearing Gucci sunglasses calling the nanny and saying “Mummy misses you so much,” as I neck a gin in the departures lounge, filing my nails while scouring spreadsheets on my iPad.

In Brighton my job options are waitress, call centre agent or… commuting to London I think. I just want a job I like. Is that crazy? I want to enjoy my work and it show in whatever I do. I know, I’m crazy sometimes! A lot of people don’t seem to enjoy their work – mainly waiters and bus drivers I find. I imagine the job interview: “So applicant, do you like driving?” Applicant shakes head. “Do you like other humans?” Applicant says: “No”. The interviewer stands up: “Well done, you’ve got the job!” 

I can’t imagine going to a job interview. Last time I went for one, they asked me the dreaded: “Where do you see yourself in five years time?” I wish I had replied: “I expect I’ll be raising a child on my own, struggling to make ends meet.” Of course I didn’t say that. I said something else that was just as stupid and didn’t me get the job.

“I just want a job I like. Is that crazy?”

Illustration: Dan Evans

All I really want to do is write my book. I thought that would be happening in September with the sprog starting school then, but – horror – no, the school does not take them on full-time ‘til January! So from 11.30am ‘til 7.30pm I am expected to entertain my own child! That’s an eight-hour day of childcare even after she’s finished school for the day!

What am I going to do with her? Make her play marathon sessions with yoghurt pots while I try to bash out my best-selling book? Or on rainy cold winter days, turn on the TV for eight hours? Help! The school says they can provide care in the afternoons ‘til January but its a bit of a lottery who will get the limited places and also its costs hundreds a month!

Perhaps I will become a childminder so that my child has someone to play with and I can get paid to make them lunch and get the yoghurt pots out. That’s probably the one job interview where I could say that in five years time I expected to be raising a single parent family and struggling to make ends meet and still get the job… Where do I see myself in 10 years time?

Living off the money of my first few books, helping to edit a film script taken from my third book; definitely not struggling to make ends meet in a single parent family, but thanking my lucky stars for all the experiences that have helped me write my books.

Malone has a carefree day at the beach

It’s another beautiful day in paradise. In Brighton that is. I wonder how on earth I can be considering moving back to London. I’ve lived here for 10 years now and I still feel like I’m on holiday when the sun is out.

I spend June to September wearing a bikini top just in case a sunbathing opportunity comes up. Visiting London, everyone asks if I’ve been on holiday. I say: “Nope, I live in Brighton by the beach.”

I don’t holiday abroad, so I don’t miss sandy beaches; I embrace the pebbles! Not literally. Well, literally if you lie down when you’ve forgotten your towel… Which is quite often. When you live next to a beach you don’t really make an event of a ‘beach day trip’ – you just pop down for a bit, and, if you do end up being mental enough to go in the freezing sea, you just dry off on your cardi and regret it on the way home!

“My little girl finds pebbles and shells and bits of seaweed, which she then puts in my pockets”

A pebbled beach is also great for kids, as they can find all sorts of stuff to collect which they then make you carry… My little girl finds pebbles and shells and bits of seaweed, which she then puts in my pockets without telling me. I wondered why it was so hard walking back up the hill on the way home… and it wasn’t just the heavy wet cardi.

I think this will be the first summer where I can actually enjoy the beach as a parent as now she is a bit older. When I was pregnant I walked every day to the beach, swimming and lolling about with the ocean supporting my massive bump.

It was pretty much the only place I felt comfortable by the end of pregnancy. After she was born, I couldn’t carry the shaded pram on the beach by myself. Then the next summer, she was toddling about, putting pebbles in her mouth, falling over a lot and had a beach-enjoyment capacity of about 17 minutes.

Today we sat and gazed at the sea, ate our lunch, my little girl played with pebbles and put them in her own bag. I just stared off into the distance, listening to the waves with the sun on my face, enjoying the hot breezy silence, pretending I was waiting for a Pimm’s to be brought to my imaginary table in the Rivera.

I was brought back to reality by being nagged and whined at: “Lolly? Lolly?! Can I have a lolly now, Mummy?” Not much has changed in lolly-world since I was a girl, they still make Fabs. I buy her one, still trying to weigh up the pros and cons of London vs Brighton. In London I will have more support with family being around, but here in Brighton I can get a better tan… Hmm, decisions decisions.

Mama Malone

                                           Malone has a bombshell dropped on her

My child’s father has dropped a bombshell: he is moving to Hong Kong. He will be working there for a few years, returning a couple of times a year. He has convinced himself that it’s only a ten-hour flight and that it’s the same as if he was working in Scotland! He is blaming it on Labour not getting back into government. (They were backing a project he was set to work on next…) Surely there are other jobs in the UK for civil engineering?

Image: Dan Evans www.idrawforfood.co.uk

He says he is in negative equity with his island country home and that he doesn’t want to lose his little flat, so he’s off to earn the money to try and keep it. I am shocked; I think the relationship he has with his daughter should come before bricks and mortar. I’m worried that him seeing her a few times a year is not enough to maintain the bond they have built up. In the last six months he has seen her three weekends a month, and before that he saw her once a month, and she really struggled with that. Only months ago he said that he’d never take jobs abroad. Only weeks ago he said he was moving to Brighton.

“He’s convinced himself that it’s only a 10-hour flight and that it’s the same as if he was working in Scotland”

This year she starts school; apparently it’s illegal for us to take her out of school for more than five days a year! This means when he proposes to see her, he’ll have to stay in Brighton for that week, seeing her for a few hours before bed. I couldn’t help but search online the effects of ‘absent father’, (I know I’m an idiot – this is the same search engine that tells me sore eyes means kidney failure rather than conjunctivitis…). It claims that girls with absent fathers are more likely to be promiscuous and do badly academically! This may dash his hopes of her growing up into a doctor in a monastery!

I am a firm believer that the more money you earn, the more money you spend… I really think that this carrot being chased will never be in his grasp. He’s still taking ‘him’ with him. It’s easy with money worries to think that a scheme will solve everything: “This time next year, Rodney, we’ll be millionaires!” If you ‘excel at spending money’, you need to change that, not just earn more money. He doesn’t count the pennies: he won’t walk 100 feet to the cash point, which doesn’t charge £1.70 per withdrawal.

He buys designer stuff on credit, never waiting or saving to buy things. I find it hard to believe that someone could be so ‘teenage’ with money, and I’ll be the one picking up the pieces when my daughter is missing her daddy, as he’ll be in a bar with work colleagues in Hong Kong. The moral of the story is walk 500 yards to the next cash point.

Malone realises she needs to invest in a torch

So I’d just put the little one down for bedtime and was about to enjoy mama-time when suddenly all the lights, phone, oven, fridge, TV and Wi-Fi went off! There was a power cut in my area. I couldn’t even light a tea-light as the stove igniter is electric! I had to go out into the street and ask a stranger to light my candle! It was like being in The Blitz except there was no team camaraderie as I seemed to be the only one in it. No-one else was in the street lighting candles!

I couldn’t even make a phone call to friends as my landline handset is powered by electricity. Even my mobile phone stopped working at the same time as the power cut! (Apparently the power cut had blown the fuse on the mast that my basement flat needs to work.) I have never felt so cut off in my life. (And I lived in a hut in rural Thailand once. At least there were people there! And I could leave the hut!)

“Eventually an old man who looked like a sailor lit my candle with shaky hands, whispering in my ear: ‘Bill’s the name’”

Image: Dan Evans www.idrawforfood.co.uk

I began to wonder if it was OK to leave my child sleeping while I popped out to find neighbours or shop for candles. Would that be neglecting my child or protecting my child? Single parenting is rubbish. I wanted my man to come home for dinner, find none made, and go out for fish ’n’ chips like a modern caveman telling me: “there’s candles in the drawer, of course, silly!” The only use my mobile phone had was to light the under-sink cupboard so I could look for candles.

Why don’t I own a torch? What kind of adult am I? You should be given a golden torch at age 18 to define your adulthood. For ‘emergencies.’ I think I did buy one once from my beloved Poundland, therefore its life expectancy wasn’t long, and the batteries cost seven times the price of the torch. I bought it for a festival; I didn’t buy it for emergencies. What is wrong with me? I’m a parent for God’s sake! I should own a torch! I scrabbled under the sink looking for a candle.

I found nothing but plastic bags and boot polish. Fortunately I found a Christmas gift containing a tea-light, (that I had forgotten had a use apart from collecting dust). No-one in the street had a lighter… come on, I know we’re Green now, but it’s OK to use a lighter isn’t it?! Why don’t I have matches? Eventually an old man who looked like a sailor lit the candle with shaky hands, whispering in my ear: “Bill’s the name!”

As I crept down my basement steps trying to protect my flame from dying, I couldn’t help wonder if he had said “m’lady”, and had to check I wasn’t wearing a white nightdress. Without electricity I felt I transported to 1810. 2010 rocks. I’m off to buy a torch.

Malone on the demise of customer service

Is it me or has customer service become ridiculously bad? You’d think because of the recession, keeping customers or making new ones would be pretty important… You’d think that companies would be bending over backwards for people.

Instead, staff in shops and cafés seem worse than ever. Call centre staff are more polite! I guess call centre staff are trained on how to empathise with customers. Of course, I still get the odd annoying call from overseas: “We’re not selling anything.” Really? Good. And I slam the phone down. I hope they’re not long lost relatives calling to inform me that Uncle Harry has left me millions in a Hawaiian bank account. (As well as a small dog called Chi-Chi). Harry would definitely have put it in his Will that Chi-Chi was part of the inheritance, and what would I do with it? I hate dogs. Thank God I don’t have an Uncle called Harry. My Uncle is a Liverpudlian scally. All he’ll leave me is some parking fines and stuff from the back of a lorry that I’ll have to dispose of discreetly.

“I’m like a ruined Carrie Bradshaw on my Play-Doh-splattered Macbook, wearing Primark pumps instead of Manolo Blahniks”

Sales calls always happen just as I am putting my child to bed! It must be karma (I have actually done their job; calling families at kiddy bedtime to sell them insurance for potato peelers or something equally pointless). It’s best not to listen to the rep, as after the sales pitch you wonder if you actually do need insurance, after all, you do get through a few potato peelers… I wonder if these sales staff would be so friendly if they had to deal with customers face to face. Right now, I’m sat writing in a café like a ruined Carrie Bradshaw on my Play-Doh-splattered Macbook, wearing Primark pumps instead of Manolo Blahniks. And the service is terrible. They can’t make tea. Yes, tea! They use the hot water from the coffee machine instead of boiling it, so the tea always tastes awful. There’s only one rule in tea making and that’s boil the blummin’ kettle. I asked once if they could boil the water and they treated it like a special request, and microwaved it for me… um, thanks. They made me feel like I was being a pain asking for a drink that actually had taste rather than just drinking brown water.

Then there’s the eatery claiming to be ‘very child friendly’ but refuses to do a child portion of chips. What else do kids eat? Please don’t call yourself ‘very child friendly’ unless you literally cartwheel over in a clown outfit and offer to babysit while I go lick the windows of Kurt Geiger for a few hours.
I wonder if it’s because there’s less jobs during a recession, so over-qualified people are taking jobs they really don’t want to be in. Hence the resentful attitude that seems to be the norm in modern customer service.

Malone there’s no harm in wearing odd socks

I was going out with an amazing 25 year old. People said it wouldn’t last. And a couple of months later it’s all changed. Now I have a 26-year-old boyfriend. That’s space-time continuum for you. And birthdays. It doesn’t actually matter how old he is, but it seems to matter to everyone else. Are people smirking? I wonder if I detect a certain look in people’s eyes which says: “This won’t last”.

On paper I guess it does sound ridiculous, a 20-something with a 37-year-old single mother of a small child. Do people think I’m having some sort of mid-life crisis? One friend even said: “You know this is just the beginning stage?” As if I am stupid. As if I have never been in a relationship before.

“You can never know what a couple has. It’s impossible to judge, but very easy to”

It feels like not everyone is happy for us, which is upsetting when one is so happy. Most people have been hurt in love, and I wonder if it’s hard for everyone to truly believe in real love even though they want to. You can never know what a couple has, only they know what they feel between them. It’s impossible to judge, but very easy to. It’s normal to want to protect loved ones from making mistakes you’ve made yourself, giving advice, hoping that they will take heed, but life isn’t like that, is it? We have to live life to learn. In parenting, this is the hardest part, watching our children make what we consider mistakes. Currently for me, it’s just watching the toddler putting on ‘odd’ socks “No! I like them like this. They perfwect”. Then I, the parent, learn something. It works! The red matches her shirt and the blue her jeans. It shouldn’t work, but crazily it does. It suits her needs. Conventions don’t always suit everyone’s needs.

I guess people’s intentions are good, they’re just worried we may get hurt. His family have been understandably concerned. I guess an older woman with a child is not what every parent hopes their son will fall in love with. This thought makes me feel sad, like I’m some sort of tainted woman. After my child’s father left me when I was seven months pregnant, it was always my fear that no one would want me, that I’d been marked. How old fashioned am I in 2010! 37… I’m more like 87! It’s taken me years to realise that this is an outdated view, that if someone really loves you, they just love you, no matter what.

What we have is not a love affair built on lust, but on a foundation of appreciation, understanding and honesty. The age gap works in our favour; we share our feelings effortlessly. It’s like having a best friend you really fancy, er, without that being weird. And when he’s 49 and I’m 60 pottering about putting on some odd socks, a best friend will be just what’s needed.

Malone on accidents and attention seeking

I expect there’s not many mums who, at the end of a long day with the toddler, run off to perform a stand up comedy gig. Hmm. Probably for a reason!  Motherhood and careers battle at the best of times but keeping the creative career going can be a real struggle as a mum.

One tends to be one’s own boss in creative careers, which isn’t ideal when the boss is being bossed about by a three year old (usually to find the pink glitter pen that she lost months ago, or to put CBeebies on, or, as my child says: ‘stop working mummy!’ as she closes down the lid of my ‘pooter’ and smiles the sweetest toothy grin). 

Every time I try to send an email or note down ideas – or just write – the child starts flicking Blu-Tack around, treading rice cakes into the carpet or the best attention seeking act – the head bang.

“I know she’s three, but no-one – not even a toddler – can be that klutzy, can they?”

Image: Dan Evans www.idrawforfood.co.uk

“Mummmmy! I banged my head on the door,” she yells as she runs in wailing for attention. It must be for attention, right? Without exaggeration, she falls over or bangs her head about twice an hour. That’s like 20 times a day! I know she’s three but no-one – not even a toddler – can be that klutzy, can they?!

She’s not wobbly from an ear infection. She’s not ill. She’s just got in the habit of enjoying the rewards of the attention. In her head she’s thinking ‘hmm, Mummy puts down the computer when I say I’ve banged my foot/knee/tongue’.

The other day she made me kiss her bum ‘cos she reckoned she’d hurt that! How many bosses have to kiss their people’s bums? Oh, actually probably a few… It sounds like I’m being unsympathetic, but when you know someone well you can tell when they are putting it on a bit… I’ve seen anti-tantrum parenting DVDs advising to ‘keep putting coins in the meter’, i.e. regularly giving attention so, while cleaning the kitchen, you’re supposed to stop every ten minutes to play for one minute.

Sounds easy, doesn’t it? In reality, you think ‘I won’t be long’ and ‘if it’s not broke don’t fix it’, so you continue, and before you know it the child is running in wailing for attention. 

After finishing hoovering rice cakes out of carpets, washing up, making dinner, bribing the child into pyjamas with taunts of ‘come on, if you don’t do this, you won’t be getting a bedtime story’, you finally put them to bed, almost falling asleep with them, suddenly remembering you have to go to a pub and perform some stand up comedy.

It’s probably only to three old men sat at the bar, whose wives are all called Jone, and who wish the comedy would stop as ‘it’s rather loud when you’re trying to discuss the darts league’. Seems Mummy will do anything for attention too.

Malone’s tries to spread the love

The sweet irony of it. Relationships produce children yet trying to actually have a relationship when you have children is something else altogether! It requires effort to find balance, making sure that everyone gets enough attention, especially new boyfriends. This is the ‘single’ mum’s conundrum. In order to run to the bedroom and snog my new boyfriend, I have to plonk my three year old in front of Shauny The Sheep in the lounge. Bad mummy or smart girlfriend? I should probably feel more guilty but, hey, Mummy deserves some downtime, doesn’t she? It’s a modern problem: in the majority of the last century, mothers were, of course, mostly married to their child’s father. They’d been together long enough that catching time to snog certainly wasn’t an issue. In fact, once kids come along, it’s grabbing some sleep or time to go to the bog with the Sunday supplements that parents crave.

New relationships and dating do not go with parenting! I’m pretty sure it’s not the way nature intended! I can’t help but think that nature designed the sparkly bit of the new relationship to have worn off for a reason (remember when you wanted to snog each other’s faces off the whole time?) so that by the time you have kids, you can both give your attention to the children and love-bonding grows through that, rather than vodka and breathy goodbye kisses on the doorstep.

“New relationships and dating do not go with parenting!”

As a single mum, I am constantly trying to juggle my needs and my child’s needs. I tell myself I am allowed to be loved again, that I deserve to be loved too (even though her father stopped loving me), but the mother’s guilt kicks in. Now I’m being loved, is she being loved as much? Of course this is silly, as now she is actually being loved more! She not only has my boyfriend adoring her, but I am a better, more loving and patient mum. I believe having a long-term partner in our life is beneficial to us both, not just me. It’s important to me that my daughter grows up with a male role model around. It’s important she sees Mummy interacting with another person, sees Mummy laugh, discuss stuff in adult ways (I think these are referred to as conversations), and sometimes even see Mummy verbally battle with someone else, apart from her.

I grew up learning from my parents’ relationship; it taught me about human interaction. When it’s just me and her, I worry that she will think she is the only person that upsets me, the only person that makes me happy, the only person that makes mess… I tell myself this, reassure myself that my boyfriend isn’t just for my benefit… Then I consider how long I’ve been holding my boyfriend’s hand for? Should I now hold hers? Is everyone getting enough attention?

And how many hours ‘til her bedtime so I can snog my boyfriend now?

Malone’s has a noisy UFO in the garden

Owlidgeon is half pigeon, half owl. In the eve of my four-walled patio is where he lives. Little light filters down to the basement patio where my bedroom is, but it is from here I hear him hoot. His hoot is loud and laboured like an angry asthmatic walking up stairs that never end. In the sanctuary of my bedroom, lying in my lover’s arms, away from the world, we stare into each other’s eyes, stroking arms with finger print strokes. “I love you so much” “No, I love you so much!” Then it starts: “HUU HUU HOOHOUMPH.” The strange hooting. The strangest noise you will ever hear.

Absorbed in our mutual found adoration for each other, days pass and still we are lolling in our magic. (Until my daughter is delivered back to me on the Sunday and I remember I am a 37-year-old mother of a small child and not the 26 year old lying next to me.) There is magic diving into the pool of his eyes, watching him dive into mine, see his eyes lock, and know in my heart he has thrown away the key to his. There is beauty lying in his arms in a timeless bliss of love magic; nothing can break the spell. Nothing… except the loud laboured hooting of an owlidgeon! Is it an owl? Is it a pigeon? Is it a bloody yak? Where/what the hell is it?

“Alas, the noise stops. No mammal or bird of any kind can be seen”

Image: Dan Evans

Maybe it’s sitting at my bedroom window celebrating new found love, or perhaps clawed onto the window ledge shouting: “This is sickening! No one can be that in love!” Sometimes Owlidgeon wakes us up from our magical love slumber. (Very annoying when Toddler is at her dad’s, and I am actually allowed to sleep in! I want to wring its mysterious neck.) Finally, my daughter is not waking me for toast, but an unidentified flying object is! It’s not a seagull. I have lived among their kind. They squawk. This does not squawk. This is a loud and deep breathy hoot. The old man who lives above me has a long beard. I wonder if it is him… Sometimes in-between hoots I hear wings flapping so it can’t be…

“Right, what the hell is that?” Jumping up, my beloved runs outside to find this creature. Is it a six-foot owl sitting up on the ledge, filing its claws? Alas, the noise stops. No mammal or bird of any kind can be seen. When the hooting starts again my beloved runs outside, and, finally, there it sits, in front of an old mirror I’d bunged outside to die a slow, damp, rotting-wood death in the rain. Staring into the mirror, whooping hooting and making love to its own reflection, is… it! It is doing all it can to woo the gorgeous suitor in front of him. (His own reflection in the mirror!) One pigeon. Wooing. One little in love pigeon making all that noise. I wasn’t disappointed.