When The Going Gets Tough

When the going gets tough...do the tough really get going? If so, where are they heading?

The Christmas/New Year holidays have come and gone. I’m on the last of the chocolates, a wonderful box of Thorntons Continentals slipping between the lips one impulse at a time. Our tree is backed into a corner and will probably get taken down, but, because of my lack of superstition, not yet. The house is a mess, but it isn’t spring, so...

It has been a difficult time on the home front. Each member of the family has had a bad time, except me, but in the way of being the ‘mum’ in the family, I’ve gobbled up their emotions and made them my own. I haven’t had flu (thanks for that vaccine Dr Val),  a broken heart, or teenage angst and yet I have all of the symptoms. There is a new year and a need to get things done. There’s an essay due, and a work placement. Nick needs to find a new job before his disappears in the spring. I need to be grounded, focussed, active.

Wondering around Leamington, I noticed lots of the Cath Kidston 1950’s type housewife-wear in the sales. There’s a part of me that hungers for that kind of perkiness and orderly living. Oh to be the kind of woman who sees a role in her life for a cake-stand, a doily, even perchance a gay ruffled apron. Perhaps the women of Leamington have given up trying for it (as I did a long time ago), there were a lot of pale blue milk-jugs with white spots with 50% off stickers. I suspect that the going is getting tough and the tough, as we all know, don’t take afternoon tea.

Are you humming the tune?