Bare bums, a digital detox and a man called Kevin

Plus - do you know what a 'DFL' is?

Me and my mother (or is it my mother and me?)

Hello! Merry new year, happy Christmas and I hope you’ve had a good few days of play/work/minimal rows and much chocolate.

I had a lovely Christmas day with my mum, sister, brother-in-law, and little nephews, who spent much of the time playing outside with their new super-soaker water pistols while I, in full waterproofs, cowered behind a dustbin while they sprayed me relentlessly.

We also lay on my bed squealing as they oinked like pigs in my ear as I pretended to sleep. It’s joyful to play with these boys who I love so much.

After Christmas, I drove to the Cotswolds with my mother (Ma) for a few days in a cottage near where she grew up. And today, dear reader, I’m experimenting with a diary entry of sorts.

I’ve just been reading a piece in the Guardian on 15 ways to change your life without trying all that hard, and number four is: “Don’t start writing a novel – keep a diary first,” advising wannabe writers to get into the habit of writing every day, “because you will start to notice the people and places around you. All of these fuel character and plot, and help with dialogue.”

In the spirit of this, here’s a little diary entry for you.

27 December, 2023

It pees down all the way along the motorway, and the traffic is awful. We stop for a rest up a hill near a town off the M40 where there might be a nice walk through some woods, but as we sit in the car contemplating under which piece of luggage we might find our waterproof trousers, we realise we’re in a break-in hotspot and don’t want to risk all our provisions being stolen.

“I need a wee,” Ma says.

I do too, so we open both doors on one side of the car and crouch beside them, our bums bare to the wind.

We’ve brought brussels sprouts, carrots, carrot and swede mash, red cabbage, potatoes, stuffing, a Nigella salted chocolate tart, a fruit salad, a pint of gravy, a large fish pie, a cheese board and half a roast duck with us, but as we approach the town of Charlbury, near where we’re staying, Ma says: “Let’s have a look around Co-op.”

As we park, the clouds lie low in the sky and there’s a glorious red glow streaking across the horizon. We buy apples and oatcakes and as we head back to the car the sky is grey again, the sunset gone.

“That was quick,” we say, both at the same time.

We get in the car. “I wonder if Kevin is in, or if he’s gone to Dublin,” Ma says, as we drive past a row of houses on the way to our cottage.

Kevin’s real name is Kieran (he is half Irish), but my grandmother used to call him Kevin because it was easier to remember, and he’s been a friend of my mum’s since she dated his brother as a teenager.

“I think he’s got a Tiguan,” Ma says, peering through the windscreen in the dark for his car.

We arrive at our cottage and unpack, light the fire and put our slippers on. We drink tea and eat home-made mince pies with spoonfuls of brandy butter. Ma reads the paper and I switch my phone off for the first time in about 24 years.

“Lucy’s doing a digital detox,” Ma texts my sister in our group chat.

Ma’s phone beeps. “She’s sent a face with tears,” she says.

With my phone switched off I decide to get on with my tax return.

I’m on the pension page of the online form and it’s asking how much I’ve contributed. I try to log in to my pension provider’s website.

It asks me to type in a verification code that’s been sent to my phone.

I skip forward to the page that asks about how much interest I’ve earned in a year. The answer is about 99p, but I log on to my bank account to check.

It asks me to type in a verification code that’s been sent to my phone.

I give up.

Then there’s the familiar ping of a tri-tone alert.

“It must be me,” Ma says. She holds her phone up. “Nothing’s on the screen?”

“Maybe it’s your iPad,” I say. She opens the cover.

“From Matthew Perry to Sin-ard O’Connor,” she reads a notification aloud. “Apple News? I didn’t set this up!” she says.

“It’s Sinead O’Connor. The Irish singer. People who’ve died this year?” I say.

“Oh yes. Shin-aid. Don’t tell Kevin,” Ma says.

Later, we watch University Challenge, where the journalist Amol Rajan has taken over from Jeremy Paxman as presenter.

“I’ve warmed to him because he has nice clothes on. But I still think he speaks too fast,” Ma says.

28 December, 2023

We walk into town, which takes about 20 minutes. “Shall I wear wellies?” I ask. “Probably,” Ma says, as she puts on her favourite knee-high Aldi boots, a knock off of a much more expensive brand.

We go back to the Co-op, where Ma buys a bottle of wine for her sister, who we’re meeting later for lunch in a café.

We head to the cemetery where my grandparents have a gravestone. We pass one of the town’s posh pubs on the way, as a couple with a Longchamp overnight bag stand outside.

“DFLs,” Ma says. “They’re Down From London.”

(So are we, I think, though I don’t say it.)

My grandparents’ is a dark grey stone, surrounded by larger, shinier ones with bright plastic flowers in vases. Tiny green daffodil shoots are coming up by their stone, and we stand looking at it for a moment.

I turn and see a stile into a field, and we decide there must be a footpath back to the cottage that way.

Spot the submerged Aldi boot

Ma strides ahead as the path heads down a hill. We get to a stream and she wades through. I go a different way that looks less boggy, but still the water goes two-thirds up my wellies as I slosh along with the bottle of wine hanging off my arm in a gift bag.

“I can’t get my boot out,” Ma shouts, standing knee-deep in the mud, leaning forwards on to a muddy ledge.

I head on to a steep bank where I prop the bottle of wine on to the grass, then slide down the hill towards her.

The boggy mud has become sticky clay, the kind that is easy to sink into but almost impossible to get out of.

(Later, I text Ma a story headlined: ’Woman airlifted to safety after getting stuck in sinking clay,’ when she insists the boot situation wasn’t dangerous.)

Ma’s back foot will not move, so I stand on the ledge and try to heave her out, my phone splatting into the clay as I do so.

Big skies near Charlbury

My mother and I are known for risk-taking on trips. Once we kayaked into the mangroves off an Australian island, managing to capsize in waist-high water.

Another time we followed a Google Maps ‘short cut’ in the world’s shittiest hire car down an unsealed road in Cyprus and ended up in a dry river bed at the bottom of a mountain as a man in a four wheel-drive leant out of his car laughing between puffs of his cigar.

“Ooh, a dead animal,” Ma says, still stuck. There is a calf lying on its side on the slope near us, still furry and plump.

She pulls her boot again, and eventually her foot comes out, leaving the boot where it is.

“They’re my favourite boots,” she says, balancing her socked foot on the ledge. “Can you get it?” I gingerly put one welly into the clay and reach for the boot with a stick. But it is stuck fast, and deep.

We scramble up the bank, rescuing the bottle of wine on the way, and climb over another stile into the cemetery.

“I know, let’s see if Kevin’s in,” Ma says, and we walk slowly towards his house. She stops to let some people past, one wearing white trainers, items I think she would like to see banned in the countryside.

“You ring the bell, I’ll hide behind the dustbin,” Ma says.

Kieran, a tall, slim man with white hair and a big smile comes to the door in shorts and a jumper. “Happy Christmas!” I say. “Remember me?”

Ma sticks her muddy sock out from behind the bin. “Can you help us?”

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So there you go… what did you get up to between Christmas and New Year? Do your family have their own quirks and sayings like mine?

I hope you have a wonderful 2024! See you next week.