I can’t say I’ve been an avid fan of The Apprentice since day one. In fact, I distinctly remember thinking BORING! when I first became aware of it. I only started watching in series 4. But, once I got into it, I was hooked pretty quickly, despite having no interest in, aptitude for or knowledge of the business world. And here’s where I think the show has gone wrong: even back in 2008, it was doing enough to pull in viewers who weren’t particularly interested in the nuts and bolts of business or, indeed, Alan Sugar. There were, even then, dramas, spats, sharp outifts and comedy moments that made it such a revelation to a businessphobe like myself… and yet it still represented a genuine business ethos. The candidates were all actual business people or entrepreneurs. Yes, some of them looked more glamorous or acted more bizarrely than others but it was still, first and foremost, a cast of credible contenders.
And it carried on in that vein for a few years, until what I’ll call the Big Brotherfication set in. SIGH. You know how the first series of BB was meant to be a genuine social experiment, and that’s why the contestants were such a varied bunch? And then, after a decade or so, it descended into some horrible, sickly fusion of Love Island and The X Factor, where everyone was selected for looking sexy or being a circus-level weirdo? Yeah. That’s now happened to The Apprentice. It’s been creeping in for a while (the women got sexier, prettier, younger, better dressed and less actually businesslike, while the men were increasingly hampered by a token weirdo or three every series).
It’s bothered me for a while now and this series kind of cemented that annoyance in my mind, because… how many of them were actually credible from the start? We had a few weird (and obviously edited-to-look-useless) men, who got booted quite swiftly. And this feels like the time, by the way, to mention that I loved Aaron from the start, because he’s handsome and was in the RAF. Oh, and what a clown he turned out to be. JEEZ. We had a lot of mediocre women, and they all kept bobbing along on a wave of nothing. I really did not like Harpreet at first, simply because I’m an introvert, she’s an over-confident type who claps in people’s faces, and I’ve spent too long in my own industry seeing talentless people thrive for acting like that. But, a few episodes in, I realised that Harpreet (who I started calling ‘My girl Harpreet’, LOL) was not only the best candidate, but probably the only one I’d hire if I was The Sugar. I mean, the rest of them were awful. Yes, runner-up Kathryn was lovely, personable, funny, intelligent and all the rest… but never once during the series did I see anything to make me think she knew anything about business that I didn’t.
And that’s why this programme has lost its way. It’s now just a reality show, with no claim to its candidates being actual business people (we’ve seen too much!). So where now? I’d like it to carry on, but I’d like it to go back to its roots. Candidates shouldn’t have to look like Baywatch stars (women) or be comedy fools (men), or be super-wealthy idiots whose parents gave them gazillions. They should be normal people who have run businesses and know things, from their experience, that we, the viewers, don’t – but who still have things to learn from Lord Sugar and his aides. Just me?
Whilst the above is my mantra about getting out of bed, especially in these days of crawling from duvet to computer in your PJs, it’s also the subject of this blog entry, AKA things I like now, but only discovered (comparatively) late in life.
I remember once, when I was about 14, reading a teen novel that said something like, ‘opera and fish are things you’ll like when you’re older’. Well, pah. Not this oldie. In fact, you can stick both of those atrocities up your Figaro. But I do have a few previously loathed things that I adore…
1) CATS. Yes, I’ve written about this before, but it’s such a deep, fundamental, life-shifting change that I can’t help but mention it twice a week to my husband. ‘How did I become a cat person?’ I marvel, as I gaze lovingly into the eyes of a feline who would eat me as soon as look at me if he happened to be any bigger. Which wouldn’t be of any note if I hadn’t spent my youth terrified of cats. I’m not even joking. I thought they were evil. I would cross the road to avoid walking past one sitting on a wall. Now I will cross the road to pester the poor bugger. I can’t explain it, really. I’ve written before about the cat encounter that changed us, but I still can’t quite understand how five minutes with one nice cat was enough to cure my life-long terror. But here we are. And now I spend half my life putting photos of a fluffy moron on Facebook, and the other half wondering how the hell this happened to me.
2) HORROR FILMS. Again, I think I’ve mentioned this before, but until I was in my late 20s I was such a wuss. At 18, I’d worry about a 15-rated film being ‘too scary’. At 25, I’d think ‘well, if it’s an 18 then there must be something horrendous in it.’ I hated the very thought of horror films (even the camp Hammer Horror Dracula ones my dad let me watch were a bit much). I’ve only put this in my list because most of the time, when I tell people I love horror films, they seem aghast and reply that they can’t cope with that sort of thing and look at me as if I’m a bit wrong in the head. And I always think, ‘Yeah, you just wait until you get a good one. I was like that too. Until I wasn’t.’ CUE EVIL CACKLE.
3) WORK/LIFE BALANCE. Ha! The one thing I never had between the ages of 23 and 26, and then 30 and 38. So I’m making the most of it now! To be clear, I would have sold a kidney to get my first job in magazines, so to work til 2am or 3am wasn’t a problem to me. And I willingly did it again later. I’m a team player and I’d still do it now – if I hadn’t realised along the way that you can do that all you like and some people will still throw you under the first bus that comes down Piccadilly. So… I still go above and beyond for people I freelance for, and gladly, but I’ll never again sign on to do it for a decade and assume it’s appreciated and valued. I live a million miles away from the media world now and the joy of it, to me, is earning more than enough to live here… whilst not having to earn enough to live there.
4) HAIRY MEN. I’m going for the deep stuff here, LOLS! I never, ever thought I would want to go out with a man with long hair and earrings, but since I met my husband in 2006, that’s what I go for. We met because I told my mate I was DONE WITH MEN until I found ‘a hairy Geordie’ and what I meant by that, at the time, was a solidly built builder type. She introduced me to my slim, Jesus-haired husband and I was like, WHAT? Only because I was expecting Jimmy Nail. So after that slight surprise (and if you think I’m being rude about him, he was apparently thinking ‘she’s a pretty girl but I’m sure she’s got a nicer dress than that’), we got talking and the rest is history.
And that’s my main reason for writing this. If you’d told me, when I was 28, even, that my future would involve a man who looked like Jesus, a bastard horrible cat, living in Lincolnshire and having a freelance role, rather than a senior one, I would have said NO THANK YOU, PLEASE STOP NOW, ME NO LIKE.
But hey, here we are and we bloody love it. I hope anyone reading this loves what they have too, or can see that change can always be a good thing x
I’m writing this the day after my husband asked a pertinent, albeit jokey, question (see below), so I thought it might be worth chronicling our experience with this strange new world. I should start by saying that I know how lucky we were, and are, to have the space to work from home. I know that many people have worse, terribly stressful situations. This is purely meant to be a take on our own experience.
For the first 15 months of lockdown, we were living in our little house in Bromley. My husband, who in the course of his job has always occasionally worked from home, had set up his office/man cave accordingly, with a Mac and a desk and a TV (he needs to know the news. And also play computer games, of course). Me, with my history of working strictly in offices? NOT A BIT OF IT. The only thing I’d put in ‘my’ room (aka the guest room) was a dressing table for the arduous task of daily blowdrying. So when lockdown hit, I was lucky that on the very first day, the company I was working for sent me home with a Mac. I pluckily set myself up on the dining table in our living room (to be fair, we are a pair of heathens and only ever eat at the table when we have guests. Don’t lie, you’re the same!). So far, so good.
Until… the Great Floor Divide of 2020. I soon realised, in the spring, that my husband’s man cave, at the back of the house, got all the sun. The table area of our tiny living/dining room, facing the front, was like the dark side of the moon. After a few weeks of me moaning (accurately) that our set-up was like the Titanic, with him up top on the posh decks and me below stairs in steerage, we dug out a heater from the loft. Did that stop me complaining? Hahaha, of course not! Because at that point we started with The Clanging Chimes Of Doom, as I had to answer the door six times a day to accommodate my husband’s new eBay habit of buying endless books and records for a pound. (He’s still at it now, only I ignore the doorbell and let him go, hahaha!)
Fast forward to yesterday. We’re in our new house in Lincolnshire. We both have office rooms. For the first four months here, we worked in our own offices, occasionally shouting down the landing to each other if we wanted to chat or make tea. He’d be in his office, listening to the news or some indie or hip-hop music, and I’d be in mine, pumping up the Pet Shop Boys or Gary Numan (it’s a miracle that we got married, I know).
Then, come January, we decided it was time to start painting my office. So we emptied it of all the furniture and moved my desk into his room. And it’s been a few weeks now and maybe working in the same room brought out our innate Steptoe And Son relationship. That or Lord Of The Flies. And here are our latest run-ins:
Me: I KNOW you don’t like jazz music, so why are you inflicting this on both of us?
Him: Can you stop talking? I’m on deadline. [Irony alert: I should know this]
Him: Can you stop rearranging my stormtroopers? Me: It’s not me, it’s the Force!
Me: Why do you have to keep the news on loop? You heard it all at 9am and it’s really annoying my head.
Me: I’m sorry, I’ve made a new Pig’s Corner in your office [looks shamefully at piles of paper and empty water bottles and dirty mugs].
Me: I love that I’m getting paid to test crosswords and read true crime and you’re explaining the Ukraine war to children.
Him: WHEN ARE YOU GOING BACK TO YOUR OWN OFFICE?
Me and my husband, yesterday
So here we are. My office is still in progress, he wants me out of his and I don’t want to be in it. Let me tell you, there will be a day (week? Month?) when he needs to get this carpet ripped out and he’ll need to shelter in my office, and when that day comes, I’ll make sure it’s a gruelling period of 70s synth pioneers and a Pet Shop Boys medley on loop. LOUD.
LOVE YOU, EDDY! (I really do, this is all tongue in cheek. I love that we can be so different and yet so simpatico) xx
Well, I say ‘leaving’. As an introverted creature of habit, I tend to stay in my comfort zone until it’s turning off the lights and sweeping up around me – which means that exiting from it often feels less like a conscious decision to leave and more like being evicted, kicked up the backside and sent flying into Something I’m Not Quite Sure About, Thanks All The Same.
For context: my childhood was very easy, after we got over my first-year teacher who told my parents that I was ‘unlikely to be educationally normal’ (translation: ‘Your daughter is terrified to come to school because I am a witch who terrorises tiny children’). What a peach she was – and, as my dad used to say, terrifying in a tracksuit. But from my second year, when I had an actual human being as a teacher, I was actually a pretty bold little girl.
Then puberty happened (cue The Omen music). And as a painfully shy, chubby teenager with hair like Brian May, a dodgy complexion and glasses (AMBASSADOR, YOU’RE SPOILING ME), I had to force myself out of my comfort zone pretty much every day I went to school. There’s nothing remotely comfortable about your peers telling you how ugly and fat you are and how hilarious your hair is five days a bloody week. And don’t get me started on speaking up in class or the horror of drama lessons (I would rather stick a rusty fork into each and every orifice than endure those again). Looking back, my teenage years were a bit like Total Wipeout: I got bruised and humiliated but I kept clambering back onto those fiendish obstacles because I knew it was the only way out.
At university, it was even more clear cut, as far as I could see: there simply wasn’t any other option but to pretend I was ballsy and get on with it – whether that meant introducing myself to new people or travelling on my own to study in Europe. I’m not sure how I pulled it all off after a decade of having my confidence ground into dust, but I did. It probably helped that I was a lot easier on the eye by then (I mean, it wasn’t a high bar).
Since those days, I’ve done all kinds of difficult and uncomfortable things to achieve goals or fulfil responsibilities, even if I’d rather have abandoned my station and run naked down the high street. After uni, I did work experience in an office full of Alsatians when I was terrified of dogs, just so I could qualify for my journalism course (the fact that I nearly wet myself before opening the gates every morning is neither here nor there). I spent a few years interviewing everyone from pop stars to teenage victims of crime, even though talking to strangers doesn’t come naturally to me, just so that I could do the bit that does come naturally: writing. I proved to myself that I can rise to a challenge like anyone else who has to ‘put themselves out there’ to find friends or romance or career success in a big city.
But by January 2016, when I was 38, it’s fair to say I wasn’t straining to explore new territories. I’d been working at the same magazine for almost a decade (albeit with a promotion to head of department after four years) and I’d been with my wonderful fiancé for about the same amount of time – we were getting married that June. There were very few surprises in my day-to-day life, and I was happy with that. I was working myself daft most weeks, with little time to consider much else. But I do remember once thinking to myself that if I ever had to leave that job (redundancy was the likely option, I thought, given the state of the magazine industry), I’d be absolutely stricken because it was so long since I’d worked anywhere else – I couldn’t even imagine turning on a computer in another office. Mad, right?
Well, that’s where life came up and walloped me between the eyes, because instead of being made redundant, I found myself quitting the job that I’d poured every bit of myself (and a gazillion late nights) into. It was a really grim episode. My job became unbearable, and I could see that it wasn’t going to change. So that June, after six months of being depressed every Sunday night, and having the distinct impression that I was collateral damage, I decided to go. It was a truly heartbreaking time… not least because it coincided with our ridiculous fluffy cat infesting the house with fleas that we never saw or felt until they were marching along the floorboards like a Roman legion. Let me tell you, crying in bed about being soft-elbowed out of your job is one thing; crying as you’re picking fleas off your pyjamas is just Mike Leigh bleak (I can laugh about it now).
But the unlikely upside of this debâcle (BTW, we got pest control in and were never again late with a flea treatment) is that without having chosen to make a career move, I was suddenly doing it. Days after leaving my job, I was nervously walking into another one, as a freelancer – and it was the proverbial baptism of fire. But it was also quite lovely. Everyone was friendly, I enjoyed the work, and I liked looking at the magazine world outside of the bubble I’d been in for so long. Instead of the things I could do in my sleep, I was writing and editing copy about a whole new set of themes. It challenged me, and I liked it.
And aside from the two years I later spent as chief sub of Brides (the most delightful job I’ve ever had, but one that ended in redundancy when they sold the mag), that’s the way my life has been ever since. Freelancing means you’re potentially in a new role every week – meeting new people, absorbing new systems, learning new things – and, yes, scrambling over new obstacles, jumping out of your comfort zone and proving yourself all over again. However experienced you are, there’s always something to learn, and I really enjoy soaking up the expertise of colleagues who know things I don’t – and being appreciated by the people who hire me. I would never have chosen it, had circumstances been different, yet I both enjoy it and know that it’s been extremely good for me. Interesting, no?
But my main reason for writing this isn’t work at all. It’s that my husband and I moved to Louth (Lincolnshire) in September and I have some things to say about it. We both love our new house and our new town. And we have settled into a pretty idyllic new life. We work from home, we no longer have the pressure of a mortgage, we go to our favourite pub for the quiz every fortnight, we have lovely Sunday lunches, we meet up with my mum who lives half an hour away. It’s all very, very nice. And whilst we miss our amazing London friends and don’t know anybody here, part of me was never overly worried about that side of things. As an only child, I’ve never had a problem with my own company. I’m never happier than when I’m at home, on the sofa, with my husband and The Fleabag (what can I say? The nickname stuck). I’m not a woman who wants to spend every weekend linking arms with three other women, pretending to be the cast of Sex And The City. It’s just not me. I’m an introvert, and we introverts recharge with alone time.
HOWEVER. It did not feel completely healthy to move to a town where we didn’t know a soul and had no friends – and we are actually nice people who like to go out with friends and have a laugh. So, we joined the Nextdoor app, to see if anything was going on socially in our area. It wasn’t. So, in a case of ‘What have you done with the real Laura?’ I gathered my balls (as it were) and made a post to ask if there were any other newbies who wanted to meet up for a drink. And… there were, egad! So I started a WhatsApp group, and a few of us met up for drinks last Friday night. It was a lot of fun, with lots of laughs, and a few of us have already planned to meet up again. At one point that night, one of the ladies joked to me, ‘You’re kind of our leader!’ and I just belly-laughed, saying, ‘Nooo, that’s not me at all!’ But you know what? I did it, I brought all these people together, whilst being light years out of my comfort zone, and I’m pleased with that.
As we consolidate our new life here, I expect there will be many more reasons for me to leap out of my comfort zone and risk plummeting off a cliff like Wile E. Coyote after one of his ACME mishaps. The difference is that I used to be scared of it, and now I’m really not. And if I can do it, so can anyone.
I wasn’t born in London. I was born in Sheffield and lived there until I was 18 and left to study in Norwich (then France, Germany and, er, Portsmouth), before landing my first job on a glossy teen mag just off Oxford Street. My life and my career, from 2000 onwards, were inextricably linked with the capital. I had lots of great jobs there, I met lots of friends there, I dated there, I met my husband there – and I grew into myself there. All good.
And if you’d asked me ten, five or even two years ago whether I could see myself leaving London before retirement age, you’d have had a few different answers. Ten years ago? ‘Hell, no.’ Five years ago? ‘Well, maybe one day.’ Two years ago? ‘I’d bloody love to, but our work is here, so that’s a pipe dream that will have to wait…’
And yet. Here we are – settling into our new house in Louth, a small market town in the Lincolnshire Wolds. How did this happen?!
Me and my husband, yesterday
Two words: the pandemic. Disclaimer: I often feel bad that this terrible world event that has caused so many people so much grief has actually, somehow, worked out for us. But facts are facts. At the start of the pandemic and lockdown, I had a few weeks of work cancelled as companies panicked and slashed budgets (I’m a freelancer), and I fell into quite a depression for a bit, thinking that my career, at least as I knew it, was over. That everything I’d worked for (and I’d really grafted) had turned to dust. Then, unexpectedly, after a few hairy weeks, it all picked up, and I’ve (touch wood) not been out of work for more than two weeks since, happily working from home. So whilst I know I’ve been lucky, I did have my moment of looking into the not-qualifying-for-furlough abyss, and I have endless sympathy for anyone who has lost their livelihood due to this pandemic and the ensuing regulations. I was about to say I can’t imagine how heartbreaking it must be, but actually I think I can.
At the same time that I was getting to grips with the ‘new normal’, my husband was sent home to do his job remotely, too, and we spent six months working at home together – him upstairs in his man cave, me at the dining-room table. Then, when the WFH culture seemed to have embedded itself into the national psyche and companies were announcing that staff wouldn’t go back to offices before 2022, if at all, we started to think.
If I was getting work as a casual that I could do in my pyjamas, and my husband could do his job at home, then didn’t that open up options that we’d always assumed we wouldn’t have at this point in our lives?
We’re both from the North and always planned to move out of London when we retired, most likely back northwards – not because we feel some special pull to the Motherland (there are other places we love equally), but because realistically, if we were ever going to leave the capital, we’d want to end up closer to our families, not further away.
I (an only child) lost my dad three years ago, so when we realised we weren’t tied to London any more, I suggested to my husband that we could move closer to my mum, who retired with my dad to Lincolnshire over a decade ago. And here’s the thing: we wouldn’t necessarily have relished the idea of moving to the small village where she lives, or any of the tourist spots on the Lincolnshire coast. But the gem that we’d discovered on our visits to my parents over the years was Louth.
Every time we’d visited this pretty little market town, I’d thought how lovely it would be to live here. I think I was kind of over London, without quite knowing it. And my husband always liked Louth too. But living in a small town 180 miles from the media industry just wasn’t an option, so I never dared to let it become a dream, either.
So, this time last year, when my husband was told he could work from home permanently, we very quickly decided that moving to Louth was GO. His parents live further north, and in an ideal world we’d be slap-bang in the middle, but my husband has a brother and his parents have grandkids, whereas my mum just has me. And we already knew that we both loved Louth and could see ourselves there, so we set about finding a house.
And now, a couple of months after moving in, we have no regrets.
I don’t think there’s much point in me singing Louth’s praises here – if you don’t like the idea of living in a small market town, you won’t like it no matter what I tell you, and if you Google it and it’s your sort of thing, you’ll see its charms straight away. My mission here isn’t to sell Louth. It’s to convey the idea that you can move out of London if you desire to, and that there is life outside the Home Counties, even if you work in the media.
Sure, my full-time career options might be limited if everyone in magazines goes back to offices in the future. But let me tell you: if I genuinely thought that was a deal breaker, I wouldn’t be sitting in the middle of Lincolnshire. That part of my career is done. I want to be here, and therefore I want to explore whatever work I can do here. So far, it’s exactly the same work as I’ve been doing since summer 2019, but if that all stops, then I’ll do something else. That’s not a lack of ambition; it’s a change of priority. I chief-subbed two issues of GQ Style from my living room, and I’m currently doing a six-week stint at Stylist. These things are possible, now: the world of work has changed, and my idea of how I want to spend my life has changed along with it.
Honestly, I don’t miss the shops, bars, museums, galleries, theatres etc that everyone tells you you’ll die without if you move outside the M25. And if I do suddenly develop a craving for the Tate Modern, it’s still there, a train ride away. I love going to the cinema; we’ve got one here. I love books; there’s a lovely second-hand bookshop five minutes from our house. Ditto Thai, Indian and Italian restaurants, two pub quizzes (joy!), beauty salons for my beloved head massages, a local theatre we’re yet to investigate and the tranquil beauty of the Wolds. I’m enjoying discovering it all.
I’m also enjoying being close to my mum, knowing that I’m here if she needs me; having her over for dinner; going shopping and sitting in cafés with her, the way we haven’t been able to do regularly since before I went to uni. It’s genuinely lovely. And I like to think my dad is watching, seeing that we’re together, and smiling from somewhere in the stars.
I’m enjoying that my husband and I sold our tiny London house, paid off our mortgage, bought a bigger, nicer house on a lovely estate and don’t have any financial pressures. I’m enjoying the peace and quiet. I’m enjoying a slower pace of life and the lack of crowds, noise and daily news stories of violence.
I wouldn’t have thanked you for any of this when I was 34, to be honest, but at 44 I wouldn’t change a thing.
So, it’s been a whole year, has it? In all honesty, lockdown hasn’t bothered me one bit. In that respect, I know I’m one of the lucky ones. I don’t mind not leaving the house, I don’t mind holing up with my husband and the cat, I don’t miss tubes and crowds and offices and London at all. But I know that for some people, this past year has been a terrible ordeal, and I can think of several periods in my own life when it would have been likewise. I’m lucky now that I live in a house I love, with a man I love, and I haven’t had a moment’s trouble with lockdown itself, but I can imagine only too well what a bleak situation it has been for anyone stuck in accommodation they hate, or with people they don’t get on with, or anywhere they don’t feel safe. So I’m hoping this all ends as soon as possible, for all of us.
But speaking from my own experience, I’ve only had two major problems in this pandemic. One, I lost around 10 weeks of work (so far), which of course cost me money; but more than that, it was the uncertainty that upset me. Regarding the first loss (five weeks of work cancelled in the summer), if I’d known it would only be a few weeks, I would have taken it on the chin. But at the time, I thought the whole house of cards was collapsing on me and my source of income had been turned off for the foreseeable future. It didn’t turn out like that, which is why the second time it happened, this January, I was more sanguine about it. You live and learn. The second problem I’ve had is not being able to see my mum (I’m an only child). I’m hugely glad that I did go and see her in September, in the brief window of non-lockdown life we had. But it was heartbreaking not to be with her at Christmas, especially since my dad passed away only a couple of years ago and this was the first Christmas in her entire life that she wouldn’t spend with family. So that’s been hard. But she’s a resilient, brave, strong woman and she took it on the chin too.
So here we are. I haven’t struggled with lockdown per se, but I’ve had my moments of mental turmoil, of doubt and depression, of feelings of loss and hopelessness. There have been days when I’ve had no work and no purpose and wondered how it came to this, after 20 years of grafting – even though I write this from a different point of view, coming off the back of a five-week booking and with plenty more in the barrel. But there would be no point writing this if I wasn’t going to focus on some positives too. So here are my top four.
I now phone my mum more
I’m not a phoner. I don’t like phones. I don’t like talking on phones. I don’t like listening on phones. I don’t like being phoned. I don’t like the sound of phones ringing. See a pattern here? Even when my husband and I are apart, and I miss him, I’m happy with a WhatsApp or a text. I think it’s an introvert thing – I’ve never been one to idolise or crave the phone chat. But at the start of lockdown, I started calling my mum regularly to make sure she was healthy and ok. And it’s become a thing, so now I call my mum every few days for a chat, whereas once I wouldn’t have – not because I don’t care, but because I don’t call ANYONE for a chat. But I’m glad now that I do. Having lost my dad, I’m glad for the extra connection I have with my mum now, even if it’s because of a pandemic. Sometimes good things come from crappy situations.
I appreciate what I have more
As I said, this pandemic has really brought home to me (no pun intended) how lucky I am that I love where I live and I love who I live with. In all honesty, I’ve never felt more grateful in my life. I love that my quirky little house is warm and cosy, and over the past year or so I have realised that when I am old and grey (ha! I’m grey now!), I’ll look back on this period as being one of utter happiness and comfort. My husband and I don’t live a trendy or rock and roll life, but when we settle down on the sofa of an evening to watch a horror film, and I get into my slanket, and I snuggle up with my man and our crazy little cat, I genuinely can’t think of anywhere I’d rather be or anything I’d rather be doing. It sounds like such a small thing, but as far as I’m concerned, it’s absolutely everything.
The Eddys, yesterday
It has, let’s be honest, been quite the boon for introverts
No small talk. No social events you get anxious about. No dealing with obnoxious people in offices who know less than you but talk a better, louder game. IT’S THE INTROVERT’S HOLY GRAIL! What’s that, you say? Spend my lunch hour lying on my bed reading a book? Spend my evenings watching films and playing Scrabble? Ambassador, you’re spoiling me. Again, I totally understand that social isolation has been awful for some people, and I also know that if I wasn’t living with my husband I would have found it very difficult – as much as I love my own company, it’s better when it’s a choice, rather than a necessity. So I can understand that sociable extroverts (my mum is one) are finding this hard. But there’s no getting around the fact that for some of us, a little bit of peace and quiet and seclusion and space has been good for the soul. We spend our whole lives trying to swim upstream in a culture that glorifies extroversion and showing off, so don’t begrudge us our 12 months of grace.
I appreciate my work/life balance
I’ve been in the magazine business for 20 years. I’ve worked hours no union would tolerate. I’ve sacrificed evenings and nights and weddings. I’ve sat on my living room floor counting layers of film at 3 in the morning (my first job at Sugar); I’ve come in at weekends for no praise and no glory and worked until midnight for ten days in a row (when I worked at Glamour). I used to happily do this because I was a team player and I thought I was valued. I see it differently now (for “valued”, read ignored and taken for granted). In the past year, I’ve been incredibly grateful for the work I’ve had, but I’ve also really enjoyed the freedom of freelance life. I’m not the type of freelancer who clocks off at 6 on the dot, regardless of what’s going on, or takes a lunch break even when I know the team are sweating, or doesn’t read the room and offer to do more. I’ve been a chief sub and I know what it’s like, so I always offer to go above and beyond, stay late, give more. That’s who I am. But when those people say thank you but you’re free to go home, it’s a kind of luxury that I didn’t have for the first 20 years of my career. So remembering the crazy hours I used to do, I have really, genuinely, begun to enjoy my freedom and my lack of stress. It’s quite lovely.
But of course, we all know that none of this is good for any of us, long term. Hang in there and let’s hope we’re back to normal soon.
So, in light of Mother’s Day yesterday, I just wanted to write a (short) post about not being a mother. I want it to be short because I’ve already said most of what I want to say about this, but I do think it’s always worth shining a light on us child-free-by-choice types whenever it’s timely, because so much is assumed about us that isn’t true (not that I want to hijack Mother’s Day with Not Mother’s Day, btw – but I do know that some people wonder if they should feel sorry for people like me at this time of year). I also know that women who want to be mothers and can’t be have a very different road to the one I’m talking about.
So I guess this is the update, because it’s a couple of years since I wrote on here (and in Condé Nast Brides magazine) about how I was in my early forties and had no desire to be a mother. Has anything changed in that time? Nope. To me, the idea of having a child is simply alien, and always has been. In my twenties, I absolutely, 100% assumed that I’d miraculously develop some maternal urge when I turned 30 or so (like everyone else, right?). And then suddenly all my friends were doing just that and I felt as if they were premature somehow – not realising I was the one who was streets behind. And now I’m YEARS into being a minority amongst my peers – and I still don’t want what they have. Now and again, yes, I still feel a little bit of the FOMO I’ve mentioned here before. I’m not an idiot, I see the love and the happiness in my friends’ faces when they hold their babies, and part of me regrets that I won’t ever know that level of intense emotion and love and bonding. But in truth, it’s a FOMO that’s as easily popped as a soap bubble.
Weird segue alert: about 15 years ago, I went through a phase of obsessively reading about mountaineering and climbing disasters (long story – I blame Touching The Void for getting me addicted). And I used to almost ache for a hobby that gave me the thrills and the camaraderie that these men and women got from risking life and limb on the world’s most treacherous peaks. It’s glorious. It’s life affirming. It’s exhilarating. I started to wonder if maybe, MAYBE, I could do it myself. And then… given that I have no coordination, no head for heights and no desire to die in an avalanche or bury my poop in the snow, I realised it was Not. For. Me.
That bizarre episode proves that it’s so easy to get dazzled by what you see in someone else’s happiness (and for happiness, you can substitute timeline these days). But it’s a trick, a fun-house mirror of a con. Half the time, you don’t even know for sure that someone else is happy in their own life (because they’re often hiding behind those distorted mirrors themselves; I’ve seen this a LOT), never mind that you’d be happy if you stepped into it. We’re all on our own path. Mine isn’t littered with tiny shoes and homework and toys. But it’s full of the things I like and have chosen, all the same. And I think that’s all any of us can ask for.
I have huge respect for mothers, truly. My own mum is the very best, and I know exactly what sacrifice and hard work it takes to be a brilliant mum because I saw her do it. And I have never been blasé about the fact that when I clock off at work and go home, that’s my working day done, whilst my friends and colleagues with kids are just starting their second shift; they’re feeding and caring for little people and sorting out homework while I’m donning my pyjamas, pouring a glass of wine and putting my feet up on the pouffe for a Netflix binge or a few chapters of my book. But I didn’t choose not to have kids because I’m lazy. I simply didn’t pursue a path that didn’t call to me. We all have that right. And we all have the right to enjoy the life we’ve chosen, without being judged for it.
Happy (belated) Mother’s Day to all the mums. You rock.
I’m sure that I, as much as anyone else, joke about wanting to win the lottery and the allure of living the millionaire lifestyle. Whilst it’s undoubtedly true that money can’t buy happiness (I’ve seen enough wealthy women stalking down Bond Street with their arms full of designer shopping and their faces full of misery), it certainly can’t hurt, and it’s definitely easier to not be actively unhappy when you’re not worrying about paying the bills.
But with all that said, I’m not sure I’m that bothered about being wealthy. Which is probably fortunate, since as a freelance sub editor I’m as likely to get rich as I am to find Lord Lucan playing the bagpipes in our garden shed.
Whenever my husband and I discuss what we’d do if we won the lottery, he always has a long list of things he’d spend his new-found riches on: it starts with a Ferrari and goes on in that vein – until I think I’m living with the mogul of Middlesbrough. I, on the other hand, always mutter weakly about getting my hair blowdried every day and opening a cat sanctuary. You see the difference? My husband is by no means any more material than I am, in any bad way, but if a big old wedge of cash dropped in his lap he’d have no trouble spending like a Kardashian. I would obviously hope for a nice house and all the trappings of that, and to look after my mum, but after that there isn’t anything big or elaborate or lavish that I’d particularly want.
I love jewellery, but apart from my wedding and engagement rings I don’t own anything that isn’t fairly cheap, or very cheap, or ludicrously cheap – and I’m fine with that. I honestly don’t mind wearing earrings from Claire’s and bracelets from Silver By Mail, and I wouldn’t be any happier if they came in a Tiffany & Co box instead. I like fancy make-up brands and toiletries, sure, but I also like and buy cheap ones. And if you’ve ever seen me in a charity shop or TK Maxx, you’ll know that the smell of old books and the lure of end-of-line candles is like catnip to me.
I like going out for nice dinners, but since I have the eating habits of a toddler, my idea of a nice dinner could be a Wetherspoons burger. Years ago my husband and I had a seriously posh dinner at a fancy restaurant, so that I could review it for the mag I worked for. No doubt it was excellent food, but I swear I couldn’t willingly eat a thing they gave us, so it was an hour and a half of swallowing things practically whole and washing each wretched mouthful down with champers (the silver lining). So if I won the lottery, it wouldn’t be going on haute cuisine, and I’m not sure how much you can really spend on macaroni cheese and Monster Munch.
Me and my husband, yesterday
Travel is another thing people say they’d do if money was no object, yet I genuinely have no great wanderlust. There are a handful of places I’d love to visit, but I don’t crave travel for the sake of it. I never wanted to go backpacking around Asia or Australia (spiders and hostels do not a relaxing holiday make), and even though I KNOW I’m meant to coo and clap and feel giddy any time someone says they’re going to New York, I’m really not fussed (possibly because I never watched Sex And The City). Admittedly, my favourite ever trip abroad was a press trip to Swedish Lapland that my husband and I couldn’t have afforded ourselves, and we felt terribly lucky, and if I won the lottery tomorrow I’d definitely want to go back there and do it all again. But when it comes to lying around the pool and getting some sun, I have no desire to hang out with the beau monde. We have a favourite all-inclusive hotel in Gran Canaria that’s full of old people, and we’re always happy as clams when we go there. It’s nice without being flash, and I love that I can relax without worrying about whether I’m fancy enough or rich enough to be there. It’s great.
What else? Well, I’m not joking about the hair. When I first moved to London with my first job in magazines, I always promised myself that as soon as I earned enough money, I’d get a blowdry every week. That’s all well and good, until you start paying people in London to blowdry your hair and realise they can’t match the one person you trust to do it properly – and he’s in Sheffield. So I soon gave up on that idea. Foiled!
The life I live with my husband is pretty modest. We are lucky enough to own a nice home and we love spending time in it. We don’t need to go out and spend loads of money to be happy. We often say how much we love that we can just sit and do geeky things together, like pub quizzes or watching horror movies.
My only reason for wanting money, really, comes from the need to feel secure in my old age. I do worry about that, because I’m not going to have children to look out for me. So I do feel that I want to be secure and independent. But who knows what will happen? Even people with loads of kids end up on their own, so there’s no point fretting too much about it.
Ultimately, of course it would be nice to be rich. But it’s not everything. There’s always someone with more than you, but there are a lot more with less. I’m grateful for a warm, cosy home and enough cash to do the things I want (within reason) with the man I love. I wouldn’t swap that for Kim K’s life, or the life of anyone constantly striving for more wealth, more glamour, more clout, more prestige. Not for a second. And that’s the truth.
Many of us have taken a financial hit during this pandemic, and my husband and I, between us, have gotten off lightly. I feel for every single person who’s lost a job or a business. I had two periods without work, and whilst they were relatively short, I didn’t know that would be the case at the time. It was frightening and depressing, and I really didn’t know what to do. I can only begin to imagine that feeling times a billion for those who have suffered long-term financial damage and uncertainty.
So I’m not writing this to say ha ha, money doesn’t matter. It does matter, especially when you don’t have enough. I’m writing this because even in these tough times, we still see people flaunting their wealth and lavish lifestyles, and I think sometimes it’s all smoke and mirrors. There has been a lot of distasteful stuff in this pandemic. People flaunting their holidays on private islands. People demanding pay rises while others are watching their life’s work sink into the ground through no fault of their own. People gloating about being paid to sit in their gardens, yet complaining that they’re not paid enough to do it, while others get nothing at all. It seems to me that however much you have, or don’t have, it doesn’t affect what kind of person you are. For some, it will never be enough, because it’s a bottomless pit. I don’t want to be one of them. For me, “enough” will always mean just that.
We’ve all been there. Moping about in our teenage bedrooms, madly in love with someone famous and unattainable. Although, having said that, until I went to university, any crush I had on a real, non-famous person standing right in front of me was just as hopeless (teenage Laura was not fighting off the admirers), so why not spend all that emotional energy kissing posters of a gay man in my bedroom, eh? (More on that below.)
I had my first celebrity crush when I was 10 years old, which seems terribly young, looking back on it – but all my friends at the time were in the same boat, swooning over Rick Astley or Jason Donovan or Michael Jackson. And, as to be expected, I had loads of little obsessions throughout my teenage years. But the odd thing to me is that I developed a new celebrity crush in May last year, when I was 42 and very happily married, and it didn’t feel much different to my first, which took me by surprise. Anyway, here are the crushes that have loomed largest in my life…
Pet Shop Boy? Catnip to 10-year-old Laura, more like
Neil Tennant
My first love (technically, Leo from Howard’s Way might have pipped him to the post, but I can’t be sure). As soon as I saw the Pet Shop Boys’ video for Always On My Mind, I was smitten. This crush coincided with me getting obsessed with pop music, subscribing to Smash Hits and buying all the other pop mags, and it probably shaped my taste in music in quite a large way – I’ve often wondered whether I was always fated to like arch, synthy pop tunes full of overblown orchestral flourishes and cowbells, or whether, if my first crush had been someone else, I would have gone in a different direction. Hilariously (or maybe as a sign of a dangerous mind?!), I used to cut the other Pet Shop Boy, Chris Lowe, out of the posters before I put them on my wall – some sort of subconscious jealousy, I think, that he got to spend his time in such close proximity to ‘my’ Neil. And I once cried like a drama queen because my dad told me I’d missed the video for Heart on the TV (I got some closure when he walked me down the aisle to the song 28 years later!). It wasn’t too long before I realised Neil was gay, of course, but so what? It always used to make me laugh when I’d tell people I fancied him and they’d reply with that information about his sexuality, as if THAT was what was stopping us running off into the sunset together. Silly me! I’ll stop liking his face, then! My crush faded as I reached adulthood, but I’ll never forget the frisson I got when I was walking down a quiet side street in London one day in 2004 or 2005, returning to the More! magazine office after my lunch break. I saw a man in front of me on the pavement, looking in a guitar shop window. I thought, ‘Oh, I know him. Where do I know him from?’ I then realised it was Neil Tennant. And then I realised he wasn’t alone – he was with… Chris Lowe. And after that it was all I could do not to go into some sort of medical shock. There was nobody else around. I could have said something to them, but my shyness (and the fact that I knew they could be a bit spiky if they weren’t in the mood) put paid to that. Instead, I just scuttled past them, grinning to myself and trying not to pass out on the pavement. Does that count as a first date?
Probably the only time I’ve fancied a man wearing braces
Emilio Estevez
It was St Elmo’s Fire that introduced me to Emilio. I would have been about 14 at the time, watching it at a friend’s birthday party, and I’ve seen it several times since – it’s my guilty ’80s Brat Pack pleasure (The Breakfast Club leaves me cold, to be honest). Emilio’s role as Billy the Kid in the Young Guns films confirmed his place in my pantheon of crushes – to the point that I then paid actual money to see The Mighty Ducks at the cinema. Imagine. He might not be as famous as the Sheens in his family, but Emilio was one exceptionally handsome dude in his heyday. I took it ridiculously personally when he married Paula Abdul in 1992 and I read about it in Smash Hits (he could have at least told me in person, no?), but luckily I recovered enough to write this tongue-in-cheek love ode:
Oh, oh, oh. Emilio.
If he ever reads that, I expect he’ll call me.
Please take down all my particulars, officer
Jonathan Dow
Bit of an obscure one, this. I used to love watching The Bill when I was about 14 or 15, and I thought Jonathan, who played PC Stringer, was particularly arresting (sorry). I’d live in hope every Tuesday and Thursday that his character would feature heavily in that night’s episode, and (get this) I used to put on lipstick before watching it, because I wanted to look my best ‘for him’. UTTER MADNESS. My husband just read this over my shoulder and told me I was tragic. He has a point.
He’s reet canny, pet
Ray Stevenson
In all honesty, if Ray Stevenson turned up at my house tomorrow, my husband might have to staple my feet to the floorboards to stop me running off with him (it’s fine, he knows this, and he feels the same way about Christina Milian and Evangeline Lilly). I first saw this debonair Geordie in a Catherine Cookson adaptation on TV in 1994 (I’d have been 16 or 17). And, lord, was he handsome in his flouncy shirt and tight breeches. Plus, I have a real weakness for the Geordie accent, which is indirectly how I met my husband (you know, the one I’ll shove out of the way if Stevenson comes knocking). Ray was still gorgeous in At Home With The Braithwaites in the early 2000s, and I think that’s all I’ve seen him in. Maybe I need to buy a few DVDs… just to get me through the rest of lockdown.
Oakey-dokey then!
Phil Oakey
So this is my big anachronism. I was born in 1977, so I wasn’t old enough to appreciate the Human League at the height of their success in the early ’80s. But in my mid teens, following logically, I guess, from my love of the Pet Shop Boys, I discovered early-’80s synth pop and felt I’d found ‘my people’. Gary Numan, the League, Heaven 17… I was all over it, about a decade too late. Phil Oakey had obviously been a very handsome man in the early ’80s, and I’m sure half of Britain fancied him at the time. I was coming to the League late, in the early ’90s, when Phil had long, rock-god hair and wasn’t hugely famous any more (this was before the comeback with Tell Me When), but none of that mattered, because our worlds were about to collide. Kind of. Sheffield’s most famous synth stars still lived in the city (my home town), and just at the very moment when I was obsessed with them, I started seeing them pop up all over the place. I saw Joanne outside the loos in a department store. I saw Susan walking through the market in huge sunglasses, looking like the only person in a five-mile radius who could possibly be a pop star. But, more importantly to my teenage self, I saw Phil twice. Once, I saw him in WH Smiths, so I covertly followed him around the shop as if I was MI5. The second time, I was in the café of a department store with my mum. Phil walked in, looked around and walked out again. I was like, MUM! WE’VE GOT TO GO! IT’S PHIL OAKEY! So we then dashed out and followed him down the escalator. All for no real reason. I was never going to talk to him. But seeing him in the flesh, as an obsessed 15 year old, was very cool.
Is that a sword in your pocket or are you just pleased to see me?
Sean Bean
Another local legend (sorry this is a bit Sheffield-centric – we’re heading over to Hollywood soon, I promise). In truth, I haven’t really seen that much of Sean’s work. But I’ve seen him in that uniform in Sharpe, and that’s really all I need to know. He tickles my Sheffield sensibilities. He’s rough and ready and I love that he never changed his accent – and took Hollywood by storm anyway. He sounds like home, to me, and I very much like that he looks as if he could defend my honour, be it with a sword or an artfully thrown bag of chips. I have been known to stand up and salute when his Yorkshire Tea advert comes on the telly, and I’m not ashamed.
If you want a chick with big hair, James, I can do that
James Spader
Before May this year, I was aware of James Spader but had only seen him in a couple of things (Secretary, Less Than Zero) and hadn’t given him much thought beyond that. Then, in lockdown last summer, on a day when I didn’t have any work, I was scrolling through Netflix for something to watch. My husband and I had watched most of the thrillers on there, but there was an early-’90s film I’d always semi fancied but worried might be rubbish – Dream Lover. So, feeling that I was very much scraping the bottom of the barrel, I went for it. And oh, oh, JAMES (to quote The Bangles). What a beautiful man – and, of course, a damn fine actor. I finished the film in shock that at the age of 42, I could have a new teenage crush on someone. But there we were. Whether it was lockdown fever or some sort of mid-life crisis, I went on a Google Images binge and got a bit giddy. And that led me to watch the first episode of The Blacklist (Spader’s TV crime drama that started in 2013), which me and my husband swiftly got addicted to. James might be 60 now, with the physique of a man who laughs in the face of Pilates classes as he orders pizza and cracks open a bottle of good wine, but he’s still incredibly sexy. He could talk me into anything with that delicious voice, the way he plays ‘concierge of crime’ Raymond Reddington is captivating and charismatic and funny and nuanced, and when he smiles he looks just like he did at 30. But I really want to go back and watch all the films he did in the ’90s. I’ve seen screen shots from his ’80s stuff, and he’s too pretty for me, but by the ’90s, he was DIVINE. On my birthday this year, we watched Supernova. It’s a shockingly bad film (even for those of us who love sci-fi and horror), but 2000 James was ridiculously buff, so the birthday girl was happy. Next on my to-watch list: Wolf (hairy James), Crash (pervy James), Keys To Tulsa (dangerous James). And in a strange way, things have come full circle. I started with posters of Neil Tennant on my wall, and now, thanks to a jokey birthday gift from my husband, we now have framed black and white photos of Spader for me to enjoy as I walk up the stairs. And I don’t feel guilty about it, because I bought him a life-sized cut-out of Christina Milian for his birthday, so we’re even. If you’re not flaunting your crushes on other, better-looking people, are you even happily married?
We all know that when we were at secondary school, the worst thing anyone could call us was a geek (or a nerd, or a swot). I was all of the above, and I was also incredibly unfortunate looking once I hit puberty, so you can imagine what a pleasant time I had of it.
Fast forward 30 years and I couldn’t be more thrilled to be a geek. I revel in it. I roll around in my geekiness like a pig in mud. This is mostly because I really don’t care about being thought of as cool, but also because I’ve realised that the only way to be happy is to do the things you like, and not the things you think you should like. It’s not rocket science, is it?
I suspect I might have been slightly more equivocal in my twenties, when I was trying to balance my innate geekiness with the ‘magazine journalist about town’ image I thought I should have (and probably wanted a little bit), but not much more – being cool was simply never a priority for me (and some observers might say, ‘Well, that’s lucky, because you never got anywhere near it, love!’). And as soon as I hit my thirties, I went hell for leather into my natural geekdom. It didn’t hurt that I’d met the love of my life when I was 29, and that he is also a geek (more on him later). I didn’t have to pretend, or impress anyone any more. And, naturally, age makes you more accepting of who you really are. The floodgates were open.
There are, of course, many different ways to be a geek. The obvious tropes involve science and maths and things that are, ultimately, clever. That’s not my geeky vibe at all. I’m an idiot at maths and science. I was in the bottom class for GCSE physics and I was still the only person in the room who couldn’t wire a plug for the practical exam. For shame. No, I’m not a clever geek. I’m a geek because I enjoy things that Just. Aren’t. Sexy.
Here’s a list: horror films (I genuinely get giddy at the thought of a new one); reading about true crime, history and obscure non-fiction topics; doing cryptic crosswords; rummaging around in charity shops; playing Scrabble; doing jigsaws (particularly the murder-mystery ones, where the solution to the crime is in the completed puzzle – double geekery alert!); watching documentaries; doing pub quizzes (both in actual pubs and with our at-home games); listening to the kind of robotic synth music that hasn’t been in fashion for 40 years, or ‘the clanging chimes of doom’, as my husband calls it.
None of the above would make you want to have sex with me or follow me on Instagram, would it? Well, I’m not going to lose sleep over that at all. Because life is too short to waste time doing things for show, and I’m living out my own personal geekdom with the man I love. My husband is simultaneously pretty damn cool, in terms of his wardrobe and the music he likes and the fact that he’s just a lovely, smart, funny person who everyone loves; and an old-school geek who has a master’s degree in physics and astronomy, plays computer games and reads about science on the internet.
Our happiest moments together are when we’re sat on our sofa watching a horror film (or The Blacklist, or Bottom, or The IT Crowd, or The Office), with our cat on one of our laps. It’s not cool, it’s not trendy, it won’t make us influencers. But that’s OK. I think it’s good that our happiness doesn’t rely on a current trend, or chasing the next trend, or plotting how to look fabulous to other people. I can’t imagine how exhausting it must be to live like that. I might not be cool, but I’m cool with who I am. And that’s a trade-off I can live with.
Laura Eddy writes 