Please note!

My next post will feature the packing lists for long haul trips and short haul trips, as well as the full list of optional extras.

Photo by Agnivesh Jayadeep on Unsplash

I saw a cute trend on Instagram recently that I thought I’d adapt and try for myself. Honestly, I had the idea and some conveniently placed time to kill while on an aeroplane, so creating the little text-over-image slides turned out to be well timed.

The title of the post was “Things I do that would send Type B people into a coma” – a tongue-in-cheek nudge to other ‘Type A’ people that these things might be relevant to them. Of course, the entire ‘Type A’ ‘Type B’ thing has so much nuance, and there are more grey areas than in Connemara on a November afternoon, but people on THE INTERNET tend to know off the bat what one means when one says ‘Type A’, so I went with it.

A full week, 561,000 views, 2,833 shares and 16,900 likes later, I’m STILL replying to comments every day. Most are asking, very politely, for more information on the calendar I use, the categories I employ and how I manage it all. Some, of course, are being intentionally and maliciously obtuse, saying I’m 'dumping’ on Type B people (I’m not) or asking me if I’m truly happy (is anyone?!), or if I’ve got a job to go to (affirmative).

The post has even sent some new people here (HELLO IF YOU’RE NEW!) and has encouraged me to maybe invest a little more in Instagram as a means of bringing new people to my favourite place – this Substack.

For those among you who are here because you’re interested to know in greater detail how I go about my slightly Type A life, the bad news (arguable) is that you’ll have to pay for it.

YOU SEE, I write for a living. I do other things too, but my favourite thing to do is write. And the only way I make money from that, is if YOU deem what I have to say to be worthy of your financial investment. I hope at least some of you decide that this piece will be of help – and there’s always more where this came from – but if you don’t, it was lovely to have your attention for a short few moments. Here comes the paywall!

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Did you ever have a day where your body and mind both just grind to a halt? Everything just seems to power down, like a data centre gradually losing power, flashing lights ceasing to blink as, row after row, the machines shut down?

I had one of those days this week. From the moment I woke up, I knew my body was going to fight me every step of the way, and my head was like a medicine ball, heavy and fit for nothing except slamming into a floor.

It was disconcerting. I wasn’t worried, per se, but it was odd. Normally, even if I’m tired/hungry/hormonal, I can power through instead of powering off. And everything in my logical brain was telling me to plough on as normal. But instead, I did something I never, ever do.

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I’ve been oscillating violently back and forth as to whether to even write this post, because I know it will bring up so many complex feelings for people (as it does for me). But then, I’ve never been one for shying away from a topic, particularly with my loyal and endlessly open-minded Substack readership (you) so I’m just going to do it.

I am so much happier now that I’m skinnier.

No, obviously, being in a smaller body hasn’t taken away my career worries, money concerns or made me suddenly impervious to life’s stresses, but in general… Yes, I am happier.

Before I get into why that feels so deeply uncomfortable to admit, let me present the evidence of my own happiness without bias:

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Gentle parenting? Sure, Jan.

Gentle parenting, I’d imagine, is super fun and chill for someone who had the good sense to give birth to a nice, gentle child.

I happened to birth a KGB double agent with a penchant for Mossad-style manipulation and the negotiation skills of a UN Special Envoy.

Gentle, she is not. Brilliant, clever, beautiful, hilarious, sensitive and kind, sure. But gentle? Not a defining feature, unfortunately for moi.

My child is so adept at arguing that she could take the Bar exam tomorrow and pass it. I can picture it now: She asks so many preternaturally clever and wilfully obtuse questions that the invigilator, exhausted, just gives up and lets her qualify as Ireland’s first five-year-old barrister.

Gentle parenting was never going to work in this particular situation. Giving a toddler-sized KGB agent unfettered autonomy in your own home? A fool’s errand.

I never really pictured what I might be like as a mother. Out of self preservation, maybe, or just plain old ignorance about what it might be like. When Lydia arrived, a little 7-pounder, looking like a marshmallow, I was too emotionally and physically traumatised to do anything but the bare minimum: Keep her alive, keep myself alive. And that, my friends, was the safe, horizontal, land-dwelling part of the rollercoaster I was about to embark on. I hadn’t even started the first steep climb.

While other mothers (friends, family, neighbours) scoured parenting forums for information about cot death and snot sucking devices, I stared into the middle distance and wondered when I’d ever feel normal again. She was alive, that was all I could manage.

When other parents around me discussed the books they read (The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read was popular around the time I was in the early stages of Mammy life) I was – you guessed it – really examining that middle distance like my life depended on it. I couldn’t READ?! Are you mad? I had taken leave of 90% of my executive function.

In my own childhood, I don’t ever remember being parented gently. I was surrounded by love, always, and fun and safety and comfort. But I don’t ever remember thinking ‘I have the run of this place and these people’. It was very much a case of falling in line, doing whatever the grown ups were doing, not objecting too much, saying please and thank you and not leaving my bedroom once bed time came. My parents might remember things differently (!!) but in general, the parenting I experienced was NOT permissive. It was boundary-heavy and ‘respect your elders’-driven. It was, to my mind, great parenting and turned me into a decent human being (if I do say so myself).

Back to my little KGB X Mossad collab. Lydia, as she grew, proved to be an overwhelmingly good baby and little girl. She was sassy, which I found endearing. She gave looks that would cut you like glass, aged 2, but everyone just found that funny. I envisaged a future that involved us reasoning with her, her being receptive to such reasoning, and us living harmoniously together, while maybe we added to our numbers. I pictured peaceful days at the playground featuring smiles and laughter, onlooking parents in awe at my parenting prowess.

Then, out of nowhere, something terrifying happened.

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I went to see The Odyssey last week. On launch day, *as Nolan intended* (but not in IMAX, so I may as well have watched it on an iPod Nano as far as Nolan is concerned).

During what was one of the most profound and intense scenes, which I paid good money to experience in a admittedly below-par cinema, a man got up from his seat and stood in the aisle directly beside me and took out his phone, and busied himself looking at it. He looked lost. I was confused. I was distracted, and so, I assume, were the other patrons of the cinema.

He stayed there a while, but eventually sat down. And not a moment too soon, I was poised and ready to fight him*. I missed some of what Telemachus said to Penelope, and now I can’t be sure if Anne Hathaway deserves the Oscar.

I also spend a decent amount of time in airports, and recently, I was very politely queueing for a lift in London Heathrow, when 15 or so grown adults descended upon the civilised system and just… ignored it? I uttered ‘what is WRONG with people?’ under my breath and a woman next to me shrugged, exasperated, and said ‘I wonder the same thing’.

At first, I thought it was a generational thing. KIDS THESE DAYS, I would lament, they just don’t have the same manners as we used to. But it’s not just the Gen Z-ers, or the Gen Alphas for that matter. Everyone, it seems, has lost their god damn mind when it comes to the basic rules of etiquette, manners and – crucially – cop on.

WHEN, I ask you, did we collectively decide that the rudest person in the room gets to dictate the atmosphere?

Lets look on a case by case basis how people are losing the absolute run of themselves in various situations and caused me to question the structural integrity of the social contract:

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If you’re new, WELCOME! So happy to have you. If you’re here ages – THANK YOU. Equally happy you’re still here and supporting my work. I’m just out here, saving you money by doing some un-influencing, trying to recreate the magic of magazines, writing about work, friendship, life, being in my 30s, failure, loses, wins and then encouraging spending with the occasional very in-depth beauty discussion. Sorry in advance. If it makes you feel better, I can’t afford to spend €195 on a vitamin C serum either.

If you’d like to be involved more and read everything in full, you can up your subscription to paid. I don’t drink coffee, but I’d imagine it’s about the price of a fancy coffee (in this economy) to support me for a month.

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As you will know if you’re here a while, I have spent most of my career working in beauty and communications, and while I’ve always resented what influencer marketing did to the revenue streams of my beloved magazines, I was always an advocate for great creators securing the bag through ads and sponsored content.

But here I am, ready to admit that I don’t believe in it in the same way anymore. Influencer marketing has officially stopped working on me.

Not because I think influencers are irrelevant or because I think creators don’t have value (they really do). And certainly not because I believe the people making content online are somehow responsible for the current state of the industry. Quite the opposite, actually. I think many creators are incredibly talented, and I think most are simply responding to a system that has changed around them.

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This past weekend, I did something I’ve been avoiding like you might avoid your ex at a mutual friend’s wedding (ie: passionately and with ninja-like precision).

I emptied and reorganised my wardrobe. Not because it was particularly messy (although, yes, there were enough hangers jammed in there to stock a small branch of Zara), but because I’d finally reached the point where most of my clothes simply didn’t fit me anymore. And I mean that both literally and metaphorically.

I had never imagined this process would be akin to a victory lap after weight loss. In fact, I’d never imagined the process at all until it was upon me. I didn’t hate myself before, and so I wasn’t feeling jubilant about it at all. But I didn’t for a SECOND take into account the very deep feelings I *would* end up having.

First, I’ll talk about The Feelings, and then I’ll talk about the actual practicalities of how I reorganised everything (The Process).

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The above picture is of me this week, lying on my bed, wearing a pair of light blue denim jeans.

Had you asked me three months ago, I would’ve told you in no uncertain terms that I hate jeans. But what I actually hated, it seems, was that I couldn’t wear them.

Not because jeans were uncomfortable. Not because I disliked how they looked. But because somewhere along the way, I had stopped feeling like myself in my own body, and jeans became the symbol of that discomfort.

Until recently, I was really struggling with my body. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVED so much about it – it could finish a Hyrox in an hour and a half, it could do a mixed Tryka 500 in an hour, and it carried me through my days without illness or injury (save for the odd broken finger from footballing too passionately). I will always be grateful that my body is healthy, first and foremost.

But it had gotten to a point (after years of unhealthy relationships with food, reward-based eating, then two baby losses and much emotional eating afterwards) that I was the heaviest I’d ever been and I was getting increasingly uncomfortable in a body that I didn’t feel was ‘mine’ anymore. My weight was creeping up.

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Here’s the thing girlies (and guysies). I’ve been AROUND.

I know how this movie ends. I’ve read (and written) thousands of beauty press releases. Every day of my working life so far, I’ve gotten through releases from beauty brands about their latest BEST! PRODUCT! EVER! and I know instinctively when what I’m reading is bullsh*t. I can see the difference between a genuine innovation and a desperate attempt at being ‘different’ or being ‘first to market’. I know my clinical studies from my consumer studies, and I know my Leaping Bunnies from my Peta Approved. And I’m quite sick of the hoodwinking, actually, as you might gather from some previous posts.

I’ve been working as either a beauty writer, beauty editor or beauty marketing and comms consultant for the last 18 years, and have always tried to prioritise critical thinking, integrity and honesty in that time. As a result, there are some products, and product categories, that simply WILL NOT receive any of my money now or in the future. Let’s go.

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Before we get into the ‘review’ proper, a few poolside observations and thoughts.

I was queuing yesterday to buy ice cream and there was a woman in front of me with her two very small but independently walking children. She was Irish. She was mid-way through ordering and her mobile phone rang, and she picked up. By what she said to the caller, I could tell it was a work call, I got the sense that she ran or was heavily involved in her family business, and I could also tell this was an ENTIRELY unsolicited call. She politely told the caller (Vinny, of course he was called Vinny) that she was on holiday and that ‘Sean’ would be better placed to answer his query. But Vinny kept her talking.

She was doing that very, deeply recognisably Irish thing of humouring someone who just liked the sound of their own voice. She was repeatedly doing the other very Irish thing of trying her level best to end the call (‘look I’ll let you go…’) to no avail. While she was on the phone, humouring a man, she was also ordering ice cream for her kids, paying, being polite to the man at the ice cream bar and keeping both kids under watchful eye. Struggling to open her purse, struggling to manage her phone, bag and two ice cream cones and struggling with the caller, I was struck by many things.

First, how far we as women will go to maintain the politeness status quo. She should have and would’ve been WELL within her rights to say, listen Vinny, I’ve got to go here. Call me back in a fortnight. She didn’t. She could have lost patience with the children – she didn’t. She could have dropped one of the many balls she had in the air in that moment, but she didn’t. She stayed calm, collected, unfailingly polite, present as a parent, present as a professional and did it all while on bloody holiday.

And this is the thing! That woman wasn’t an outlier. This happens ALL of the time. Women are amazing, and how we’re not running every business and government on earth astounds me daily. We are able to identify and regulate our emotions and yet express them when necessary. We’re able to multitask. We’re able to birth and raise children, reshaping our whole identity in the process, and for the most part take it in our stride.

In other news, I watched a German language ad for Always incontinence pants last night and immediately started doing pelvic floor exercises. I also unlocked three BRAND NEW icks yesterday:

• Men (specifically, not sure why) who can’t correctly use their knife and fork

• The phrase ‘Partner in crime’ in any context apart from someone a person actually partnered with to commit crimes

• Steven Bartlett. I’ve always known he was a knob-end but now that other people see it too I feel vindicated.

Now to the main event: Would I recommend Cala d’Or, and specifically Esmeralda Park, for a family holiday?

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The famous fruit man of Cala D’Or has arrived to the beach. I can hear him screeching from where I am – which, yes, overlooks the beach but is still a decent distance away. If I can hear him from here, what must his unintelligible yelps sound like from a couple of feet away, like those unsuspecting beach-goers I’m looking at?

Talk about disturbing the peace.

Apparently, this loud fruit-wielding gentleman is well known to those who come here often. He wheels a wheelbarrow onto the beach, filled with the freshest, most vibrant watermelons and pineapples you’ll ever see, and with an unreasonably large knife and the irreverence of a seasoned comedian, he erupts into life. It’s dinner and a show, except you didn’t buy a ticket, and you’re not getting dinner, and the show is offensively bad.

There’s something charming about him, to some. Not me, obviously. But some people on the beach do seem vaguely entertained. The abiding feeling, though, is something between confusion, intimidation and annoyance. I’m convinced many of his customers are buying their chunks of watermelon just to speed up the emptying of the wheelbarrow. The quicker he sells out the sooner the unnecessary yelling can cease.

SPEAKING of disturbing the peace, and this is something I mentioned yesterday on Instagram: People who use their personal speakers in public spaces should be banned. From everywhere. Permanently.

I was having a VERY relaxing poolside moment yesterday when suddenly, I found myself subjected to what I feel is among the worst holiday infringements: Someone else’s music taste being foisted upon me. A couple sitting about two metres away started playing their Sad, Bland Folk Music for People Who Need a Good Cry playlist (I may have made assumptions about the name of the playlist) featuring the mournful, depressing, uninspiring sounds of Zach Bryan, Noah Kahan, The Lumineers, Mumford and Sons, Tyler Childers and even a bit of Chris Stapleton just to add that very painful country slant to things.

Now, don’t get me wrong: Your taste is your taste. If you enjoy the above artists, that’s on you entirely. Enjoy them! Attend their concerts! Buy their merch! Knock yourself all the way OUT. But do not – I repeat – DO NOT bring them gently warbling into my backyard.

I go out of my way never to have to listen to Zach Bryan croon about small town life in America. I would pay big money NOT to have to attend a performance of his, were I otherwise obliged. And so by all means, Family With Speaker, enjoy Mr Bryan and his downtrodden pals. But leave the speaker at home next time, and may I suggest a good pair of earphones? Bose is my brand of choice.

And that’s before I even get into the family of eight British party seekers (who inexplicably brought four children on what they clearly consider to be a booze-filled, non-child focused holiday?) who then started BLARING non-descript unce-unce-unce dance music to COMPETE with Bryan, Kahan and co. It was deeply unpleasant, and before you ask, NO. I would not have enjoyed it were the playlists more to my taste. Personal speaker use in public, no matter what, should be outlawed.

On a somewhat related note, I suppose, is something I’ve realised about myself lately that wasn’t always so abundantly clear to me.

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OLA from a slightly overcast but still stiflingly warm edition of The Pool.

Yesterday was a non-pool day – we rented a car and drove 90 minutes north-west of where we are to meet up with my bestie and her husband and daughter. As such, my pool chronicling took a brief pause.

Today, however, we’re back at the nerve centre. And my nerves… they’re gone.

I’ve spoken about my synaesthesia here previously (read this if you need a refresher) but I’m not sure I’ve ever clarified how exhausting it can feel at times, particularly in a crowded, loud or boisterous environment. It’s a very overwhelming thing – if I’m among groups of people I feel like I can hear every single person’s inner monologue in surround sound. I can’t, of course, but that’s how it feels. I can’t just tune out, because every sound and every glance at someone means a rush of information in the form of colour, followed by the requisite interpretation and ‘filing away’ or segmentation of that rush of information. It’s like I’m a human data processor who’s at use capacity. The very definition of over-stimulated, but not for a reason I have any control over. A very rare negative of having this particular neurological condition.

I’m a natural extrovert (which won’t surprise anyone who knows me) so I do enjoy being with people. I love it, in fact. But if I’m somewhere like a concert or festival (thousands of people to process one after another at lightning speed) it can get quite stressful, and sometimes I might appear to have zoned out. Not because I’m zoned out, but because I’m zoned SO FAR IN that my brain is almost malfunctioning. This pool – with the cacophony of children’s screams, parental instruction, splashing and sloshing water… well, the din is dinning and I find myself frozen, rocking back and forth and glaring into the middle distance more often than I’d like.

Yesterday, my husband noticed this and told me I could “tap out” whenever I needed to (much appreciated) but that feels like I’d be ‘tapping out’ of our holiday together, our precious ten days as a trio. So I’m trying to push through, tough and all as it is.

The other day, you might remember, added a subheading to one of my Substack pieces that alluded to ‘my first novel’.

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Thanks so much for being here and part of the gang. I love you!

Welcome to another installment of the Poolside Chronicles, coming live today from THE ADULTS ONLY POOL, aka the quietest and most relaxing place on the island of Mallorca.

This installment is brought to you by Mini Club, the blessed place where Lydia, my previously too-shy-for-that five-year-old is now happily trotting off to for at least a couple of hours a day, giving me the pleasure of two hours lounging with the grown ups.

To paint a picture: The regular pool is loud, chaotic, messy and frantic, the loungers are child-friendly (read: No fancy cushions, just your bare arse on mesh) and there’s a round-the-clock risk of being dramatically splashed by a water gun or a child dive-bombing into the pool. Yesterday, one of the dads shouted “stop trying to drown me!” at his child, who was indeed trying to drown him.

The Adults Only pool, meanwhile… A place where your entire being finds space to exhale. You could hear a pin drop. When someone cracks a fresh can of Fanta, it might as well be breaking the sound barrier. The pool is empty, save for one man in for a dip to cool off after a sunbathing marathon. The loungers have fancy cushions, the comfort is off the charts, and there are (key) exactly ZERO children within earshot.

As the parent of a five-year-old who hasn’t stopped speaking since her first words in 2022, I am THRIVING here. That’s not to say the regular pool isn’t a place of unbridled joy, because it totally is, and it provided me endless inspiration for the previous days’ writing, but my god am I enjoying the sound of silence right now. Everything feels very civilised, and the woman I was pre-child is creeping out from behind a pile of colourful plastic toys going ‘...hi! I’m still here!’

Onwards.

I can feel a huge internal shift happening for me. In many ways (oh hi, mid-life crisis) but mostly to do with my work. The (sad) fact is, for much of my working life, I’ve been paid, albeit indirectly, to make people want things.

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Good day to you from THE POOL.

This morning, if you’ll allow, I’m going to talk about my daughter for a bit. My child, the looper. See evidence above – demanded I call her ‘Angel’ and would ONLY miaow to me for two full hours this morning. Even with her backpack on her head.

Lydia is five (an end-of-April baby) who emerged from my womb like an imprint of her dad. Physically, she’s him all over. Her eyes, her complexion, her expressions – all him. She has some of my personality, and I’m reliably informed that she’s like me when I was small, but she’s very like her dad in that she’s not a huge fan of… well, people.

She’s quite shy and can be a little anxious in new environments, so last year although she qualified in age for the Mini Club kids’ club, she only toyed with the idea of going, never actually casting a shadow at the door. She’s naturally suspicious and doubting of all adults, mostly men (I guess that probably came from me, to be fair to her) and likes the safety of knowing where I am (or where her daddy is) all the time.

So today, on the second day of this ten day holiday, when she asked to go to the kids’ club, I didn’t jump up and down with excitement. It mightn’t pan out. She could spook at any time. I stayed calm. “Okay, let’s put sun cream on and then take a walk down?” She seemed into it.

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There’s a solid irony to the fact that I write this first post in WEEKS to you from the first day of my summer holiday.

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One day last week, from the minute I was conscious, I was aware that it was going to be a weird day. I had woken up deeply and very physically anxious, in a way that hadn’t happened to me in literal years.

Not the vague, existential kind that hums quietly in the background while you scroll your phone and ignore your responsibilities. Not the “I have a lot on this week” kind that can be solved with a good list-making session and a bowl of Crunchy Nut. This was physical, in my chest, in my throat, in my head, in my upper back. Immediate, undeniable, as though when my eyes opened my body was already in the middle of something absolutely bananas like skydiving, or something Red Bull might want to film for their social media. MY GUMS were anxious. I mean, they felt fizzy, which typically they do not. It was all going on.

It felt like I had been dropped into the middle of a crisis that I had somehow missed the beginning of. Like everyone else had been briefed and I had slept through the meeting and had accidentally signed up to move to Tulsa. The strange part was, nothing had actually happened that day yet. I was still in bed, albeit with a banging headache and Haribo Tangfastics for gums.

There was no horrifically bad news. No looming disaster. No very obvious trigger. Life isn’t perfect, ofc, but the day ahead was, on paper, completely manageable. And yet my body was acting like we were about to be chased through a forest by a pack of wild boars. This is the thing about anxiety that people don’t always talk about. Sometimes it is not a ‘thoughts’ problem. It is occasionally an inescapable body problem. You cannot reason your way out of something your nervous system has already decided is a total goer.

I lay there for a minute and (LOL) tried to reason it away. “You’re GRAND” “Get UP and stop being so dramatic” etc. It didn’t help. If anything, the anxiety seemed mildly offended by my tone. It dug its heels in. My heart kept racing. My chest stayed tight. The sense of dread remained, stubborn and uninterested in logic.

So I did what I always do when something feels overwhelming.

I made it worse! By spiralling!

In rushed The War, the jobs market, the economy, Big School in September, my health, the health of those I love, The War again, social media trolls, The War take three, and a little dollop of “WHAT ABOUT HOMELESS DOGS?!” for good measure.

Within minutes, I had constructed a full narrative in which everything in my life was either about to collapse or already quietly collapsing behind the scenes. It would have been impressive if it wasn’t so exhausting. At some point, still lying there, I had a slightly more useful thought. What if this isn’t about my life at all? What if this is just my body being a total contrarian for no good reason?

So, instead of asking, “what is wrong with my life?” I tried reframing it as, “what is happening in my body?” It is a subtle difference, but I thought, okay – if this was a body problem, then maybe it needed a body-based solution first?

First thing’s first: I got up. This felt, at the time, like a Herculean feat. Disney would surely be tracking this and animating me in full colour within weeks. In reality, it was just me standing in my bedroom in a hoodie, staring at the wall. But it broke the seal.

I made my breakfast. I drank some water. I opened a window. I petted my (not homeless) dog. I (KEY) ignored my phone for a bit. None of these things fixed me immediately. There was no cinematic moment where I took a deep breath and everything dissolved, akin to an American Trad Wife called Breelyn whose Instagram Reel about her 5am-9am shift before the children wake up makes you want to have a candlelit bath in f*cking petrol.

Then I did what I used to do for myself back when this happened more frequently. Something at which I am almost literally a professional by now: I made some lists.

I wrote down, in my demented Notes app, which fights for its life daily with my fully unhinged fragments of thought, the following:

• What is making me anxious: Here, I wrote down big, medium and small things that might be causing my body to start acting like it’s being hunted for sport

• What have I done in the past that has helped: And here, I wrote down a list of anything, from a seconds-long endeavour to things that might not even be feasible (‘go lie on a beach in the Maldives’ was somewhat unlikely to pan out on a weekday in April, I feel?)

And then, I started DOING the list.

The list, as you will see below, is as unhinged as the person writing it was at the time:

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I took a notion recently to count how many Whatsapp groups I’m in. I got tired and stopped counting when I reached the late 90s, but I know there were more. No one, I repeat, NO ONE needs to be in that many groups of any kind, let alone groups whose very existence punctuates your every waking moment with pinging notifications, pulling you away from your day-to-day with terrifying ease.

The WhatsApp group genres

Anyone who Whatsapps will know – there are groups for absolutely f*cking everything.

There are friend groups. Grand. Friend subgroups, where one friend was excluded because the group was set up to plan something as a surprise. Friend subgroups that splintered off during one particular hen weekend in 2019 and never seemed to die off. Friend groups for school friends, college friends, mam friends, sport friends, teammates, friends you play padel with, friends you are going on holiday with…

There are family groups. There are extended family groups whose purpose seems to be just the weekly “happy birthday X person!” 42 times, followed by a “thanks everyone!”.

There are groups with colleagues. Former colleagues. Work groups that existed solely to organise the Christmas lunch in 2015 but are still active because Janice from accounts updates it with pictures of her cats.

There are groups created to organise literally ONE event, which then haunt the living shite out of everyone until someone has the balls to leave first. There are groups where no one has spoken since 2022 but leaving them would somehow feel too much like a… statement.

BUT THEN.

Then there are the high-volume groups. You know the ones.

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WON THE OSCAR!

I’m thrilled for her, thrilled for us as a nation, and thrilled that she FINALLY wore an outfit and glam that was worthy of her. Her stylist, thank the sweet infant jesus, pulled it out of the bag on the big night after a few false starts at BAFTA, IFTA and WHATHAVYA.

But not for the Academy Awards, oh no. The red and pink Grace Kelly-inspired combination wrap and gown was spot on, and with her complexion, hair colour and the dreamy makeup that Nina Park created for her, everything just *worked*.

I got a lovely email from Chanel this morning, very helpfully supplying this information about her makeup look.

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That’s me, aged 3.

Thirty-five years on and…

It’s my 38th birthday today! And I’m coming to you live from the Speed Queen launderette, because I am ALL glamour ALL the time. I’m waiting for an 18kg load of washing to dry… Did you ever just get to a point where your own 9kg dryer wasn’t cutting it? I did. And it happened today! Happy birthday to me.

MOVING ON.

I thought by 38 I’d feel… assembled.

I feel grateful to have the privilege of ageing and I feel INCENSED that I am 38 and not 28 as I feel I should be. Twenty-eight-year-old me can come back, please, but with my current setup (I’d keep the child, the house, the DGAF attitude etc but just welcome the body back, and maybe the buzz of being freshly engaged).

Anyway, I turn 38 on a significant day if you are (a) Chinese, or (b) very involved with pancakes and/or the pancake industry.

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I’m not sure if it’s just my algorithm or what, but I have had Chinese New Year content shoved down my throat (via my own choices and Instagram feed, to be clear) for weeks now, ushering out the year of the snake and its propensity for shedding, and welcoming in this fire horse character who – frankly – sounds more dangerous and aggressive than a force for good. But as I’m not Chinese, who am I to comment?

These endless reels about prosperity and wealth and peace and what have you have made me assess what exactly I’d like this Chinese New Year to bring. Which is decidedly odd given – and I will repeat it because it bears repeating – I am not Chinese therefore (typically) do not celebrate their traditions.

It’s like, I suppose, if a Muslim woman suddenly wondered if Jesus’ birthday would be a good moment for dramatic personal reinvention. Technically allowed. Slightly rogue. Confusing for everyone involved, especially Jesus, I would guess.

But there is something about a communal turning point that’s juicy and irresistible. A mass agreement that now is the time to sweep out the old, repaint the door, forgive your enemies, settle your debts and make plans for exotic travel.

And I lovvvvve a good turning point.

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Not the creativity, necessarily, but the urge to write. But! Like the theme tune to Love & Marriage, you can’t have one without the other. So this writing, once again, is unresearched, written on the go and potentially laden with spelling errors, for which I cannot be held responsible.

I’VE BEEN ROBBED!

Of a tooth.

A partial tooth.

OKAY an entirely untenable demolished tooth which was hiding under a loose crown, which became a cracked crown (I told you I clench), which became a removed crown earlier today.

I went to get the crown fixed, and alas, the tooth underneath wasn’t strong enough to support it, so I had to get the tooth extracted and will need a dental implant in a few months time. A totally vomit-inducing sentence, and that’s before the dentist told me the cost. Credit Union, you’ll be hearing from me soon.

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