All the random things I carry around

When did toasters get so big? Plus - my new adventures in disco

Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash

Hello and thank you for reading The Honesty Box. Last week, I wrote about how I found joy in not having had children - when I always hoped I would become a mother - and quite a few people messaged me, so thank you.

I’m happy it struck a chord, and I hope writing about how I feel can help others.

I’m also aware that some people will be in the middle of what I call the ‘fertility headfuck’ and I really acknowledge how hard that is, and that my thoughts and experiences will be different to those of others.

If this is you, I hope you can find ways to feel seen and heard.

I used to find it really difficult to express my feelings about not having children – and hoping to – especially around people who are parents.

But if you can find a way to do that, it can make your friendships closer and create more understanding.

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This week, I’m writing about the random stuff I sometimes carry around with me.

I don’t mean emotional baggage (I write enough about that in this newsletter), I mean the random physical things I sometimes find myself heaving about: the other week, I ended up taking a packet of watercress and a toaster to a hospital appointment in central London.

Let me explain. I’ve never owned a car, have always lived in a city and am self-employed, and as a result I get public transport all the time, walk a lot and work from different locations.

I nearly took a kingsize duvet cover to tea at a palace this week

This means I often find myself clicking and collecting on the hoof, grabbing dinner from a supermarket on the switch from one train line to another and meeting with friends on the way back from staying with my mother, who lives in a different part of town and often kindly gives me food/darned jumpers/myriad memorabilia to take home.

As a result, I often find myself carrying various parts of my life with me to places that aren’t always appropriate venues for them.

And sometimes I also forget to take relevant items with me while trying to keep up with said parts of life.

This combination of baggage fail meant I nearly took a kingsize duvet cover to tea at a palace this week, while wearing jeans and a jumper - completely inappropriate for such an occasion.

And it was right off the back of the watercress/toaster scenario, which went something like this:

“Messed up timing. Toaster broken,” my mum’s text reads.

I have agreed to meet my mother by the back entrance to John Lewis on Oxford Street, as she has something to return to the store before a minor hospital procedure not far away.

I have been wearing the green tartan PJ top that I’ve had since I started university in 1997

We meet, and she says she needs to do food shopping and buy a new toaster, as you do just before an operation. As we’re running late I suggest we divide and conquer.

On her priority list are John Hurd’s watercress – which you can only find in some shops – and a newspaper. I get these from the food department, and she heads off to kitchen appliances, returning with a large box in a plastic bag.

When did toasters get so big, we wonder, as I slip the packet of watercress and the paper down the side of the box. And off we go to the hospital.

When we get to my mum’s home later, I go to the supermarket to pick up the click and collect shopping I’ve ordered: a kingsize duvet cover and some pyjamas.

I stay at mum’s quite regularly and at hers, I have been wearing the green tartan PJ top that I’ve had since I started university in 1997, paired with whatever bottoms are lying around.

After 26 years, I think it’s finally time to upgrade my sleepwear.

A policeman approaches me. “Have you got a padlock in your bag?” he asks.

I try the new PJs on, fold them, and put them under the pillow in my childhood bedroom.

I need to take the duvet set back to my flat, but then I realise I am due to meet a friend for a posh tea the next day straight from mum’s, which means the new bed linen will have to stay at hers for a bit longer.

Then I realise my baggage fail: I don’t have anything to wear to the afternoon tea, having not packed properly, and I text the friend I’m meeting to see if jeans and a jumper are appropriate.

I don’t know what I’m thinking, because the tea is at at a palace. The Palace of Westminster to be precise, so of course I need to look decent.

So I try on a long, dark purple polo-neck dress of my mum’s and find some matching tights and a belt. It works.

Me in my mum’s dress.

The next problem is trainers, the only footwear I have. So I stuff three and a half innersoles into some flat ballet shoes of my mum’s as she’s 1.5 sizes bigger than me, and now I think I look respectable.

The shoes still flap off my ankles a bit, but they will do. I’m set.  

The next day, confident that I am arriving at the seat of the British government in an appropriate fashion – both in terms of my clothing and the fact I have not attempted to smuggle a kingsize duvet cover and two pillowcases into the building – I place my coat, backpack and bag containing my mum’s shoes into the security scanner.

Even without the bedlinen I manage to take up three security trays. At the end of the conveyor belt, I wait for my belongings, and I can see that one of the trays is hovering inside the scanner.

A policeman approaches me. “Have you got a padlock in your bag?” he asks.

I do – it’s for a locker at the gym – and I hand it over for safekeeping. (I don’t have any gym stuff with me, just the padlock, of course.)

When I collect it, I ask why it was confiscated. “In case you try to lock yourself to something,” the policeman says.

I nearly laugh out loud until I realise this is quite serious, and he doesn’t hand the padlock back to me until I’m nearly out of the door and on to the street.

(In)appropriate baggage

Schlepping stuff around in this way made me so frustrated a few years ago that I thought about designing a bag that could carry everything in a practical but stylish way.

I was so fed up with using free cotton tote bags to lug various shoes/gloves/umbrellas/tupperwares/drinking vessels around with me, bags that would topple over on the floor of a rush hour tube, spilling the contents of my life around strangers’ feet, that I thought I’d make a bag with a flat bottom and long handles to contain it all.

Friends found themselves in similar situations, with one saying she needed a suitcase for all the stuff she needs to carry.

Then the pandemic happened and nobody took anything anywhere for a while, but now I’m back on the move I might resurface this thought.

I don’t quite know the moral of this story, or whether there is a solution, but in the meantime, I have my mum’s purple dress, shoes and tights to give back - and a duvet set to collect…

What kinds of things do you find yourself carrying around?

Things I like

Adventures in disco

I love to dance, especially to disco, house and salsa, and like many people, I have a kind of soundtrack to my life.

Last Sunday, night I went to a dance party in an east London community centre (above) where vinyl records were played in full and the crowd clapped at the end of each track.

The host - Colleen Cosmo Murphy - was kind enough to tell me what some of the music was and now I have two new favourite tunes - ‘I don’t need no music’ by the 1970s producer Tom Moulton - and ‘Mi Congo te llama’ (Sacred rhythm dance version) by Joaquin Claussell and Eddie Palmieri. Both guaranteed to get me dancing.

“I give big, so I have to restore big”

The brilliant actor Tracee Ellis Ross, who starred in ABC series Black-ish, is excellent at knowing her limits and advocating for herself.

I was inspired by a post on Instagram this week where she explained her self-care routine, saying “I give big, so I have to restore big,” meaning she will go for dinner but doesn’t party afterwards.

I’m someone who loves to try and do it all, but, as Tracee says, “‘No’ is a complete sentence.”