Spinning Plates with Sophie Ellis-Bextor - Episode 18: Sali Hughes

Episode Date: December 7, 2020

This week I meet Sali Hughes beauty writer and co-founder of the Beauty Bank which distributes toiletries, self care products and make up to people who can't afford them. She's also been vocal on the subject of trolling which she experienced herself recently. She's a mum of two teenage boys, who she is proud of and loves spending time with. We started by talking about how people get really hung up on the subject of having all sons - something we've both experienced... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello, I'm Sophia Lispector and welcome to Spinning Plates, the podcast where I speak to busy working women who also happen to be mothers about how they make it work. I'm a singer and I've released seven albums in between having my five sons aged 16 months to 16 years, so I spin a few plates myself. Being a mother can be the most amazing thing, but can also be hard to find time for yourself and your own ambitions. I want to be a bit nosy and see how other people balance everything. Welcome to Spinning Plates. Good afternoon or good morning. Sorry, it was very presumptuous of me to think you're listening in the afternoon just because it's afternoon now. morning so it was very presumptuous of me to think you're listening in the afternoon just because it's afternoon now. I am hiding in my bedroom. It's Sunday afternoon. We're about to eat a big roast dinner. I'm lying here with Ray who's staying impressively quiet. We're about to

have roast pork today and I have been wearing a Christmas hat most of today because we've just finished decorating the tree. And actually, it did actually really work. I wasn't feeling Christmassy at all this time yesterday. But now that there's tinsel and baubles and all that sort of stuff everywhere, my brain has gone, well, ho, ho, ho, hold on, it's flipping Christmas. And if you're into that kind of thing, we're going to do a kitchen disco on the 18th of December at half past six. So please, please do give me any Christmas song suggestions. There's loads of songs out there. There's a couple I'm like, definitely want to do that, but actually I'm open to anything. Because it's sort of the same thing

that happened when we did the Halloween one. I suddenly had like a complete brain freeze of trying to remember anything other than about three songs uh anyway this week's guest is sally hughes oh bless you ray this week's guest is sally hughes uh beauty writer editor author um but actually this particular conversation really really resonated with me sally spoke with such um intelligence and sensitivity about what it's like to be on the other side of divorce and raising kids uh in amongst an extended family her boys are now i think she said they're 12 and 14 she might well correct me at the beginning of our chat um and they have been raised she said by her and her husband dan but also by her her ex-partner,

who is their dad, and his new partner, too. So that's very familiar to my story, really. I've always felt like I have four parents because my mum and dad split up when I was four. So I know how that goes. But it sounds like they've done a really good job. And she's really smitten with her teenage sons. That really, really comes across that she's raising two lovely boys that she's very proud of. So that gives us all hope, doesn't it, when we're in the midst of raising small people? What else did I want to say to you? Oh, yeah. So Sally and I, we haven't met many times, but a couple of times. But when she came to talk to me, we immediately started talking about the judgments that people make on parents who have children of all one gender, obviously,

as the mother of five sons, that is a topic very close to my heart. So the conversation we had kind of jumped sort of straight into that. So apologies if it's a bit more of a kind of nought to 60 than my usual style, but we just got started and then I thought, hey, I better be recording this. Anyway, I will see you on the other side and thanks for very much for giving me your ears once more and uh yeah lovely to see you you know what time it is it's cup of tea there's always a cup of tea time even if it's just before my roast dinner first i'll probably have one alongside me and if i haven't told you before it's white and two and white one sugar oh my goodness i used to be white and two i've grown out of it i promise i promise okie dokie i still only have one and a half but it's still yeah white yeah, white with some sugar. Thanks very much. Hot and sweet. See you on the other side.

I think the comments about the boy-girl thing is really strange. And I feel like the thing that always used to make me quite sensitive to it, as a mother of sons, with this sort of inferred thing that I haven't experienced all aspects of motherhood because I haven't had a girl. Yes, because it assumes that your five boys are all exactly the same. Exactly. That if you have boys, they're one thing, and if you have girls, they're another thing.

But that's so absurd, because my kids are obviously completely different people. And I have more in common with one of my brothers than he has with one of my other brothers. You know, we're just kind of people and we have some things in common, some things not. Well, the thing is, when people have comments to say about their expectations of your children, it always says more about them than you anyway parenting I think yeah exactly because then I'd say well if I was let's say I wanted a girl I'd then have an expectation of what that meant and who she already is absolutely ditto if I say I want a boy I've got an expectation of who he is and I don't actually have that I've never had that

with any of the babies they come along and I meet them when they happen to be a baby and then they let me know what they need from me it's that thing that people do a lot where they kind of put a personality on an unborn child where they go oh you can tell she's going to be such a diva she's always kicking it's like no don't do that I know because she might be a really kind of nerdy bookish quiet child or she might be kind of strident and opinionated but kind and you know all of these things we impose on something that doesn't really exist other than as a part of your body I know but I do wonder as well sorry we sort of jump straight into a chat but I just I do find this kind of thing fascinating because I think that the more this is my own theory but I don't know so the more we've got better at discussing what gender means for adults

and the more we're trying to socially accept the spectrum of gender, the more binary I think it's got in what we impose on children. So the whole like boys play with blue things, girls play with pink things. You get horses, girls, and you get cats. Boys, you've got dogs and dinosaurs. Hope you're okay with that. It's sort of very split. You'll know from having boys that people assume

that they're really boisterous and mad and crazy. And so they say, oh, I bet it's a handful around your house, as though a girl will be really meek and quiet and docile and the boys will just be hell raisers. It's true, but then every once in a while when the kids are all kicking off and I'm like, this is what people think I go home to can you please stop it um and uh I think yeah it's it's I can see as well it's quite a nice feeling now but um when I've told people if I say oh I've got five kids and they kind of give me a oh like they have to like but then when I say it's five boys I

often get this like moment where they kind of have to reassess me like oh I didn't realize you're the mother of five sons like yeah yeah yeah no I'm trying to figure that out as well I quite like that like you're some mafia mama yeah exactly yeah yeah it's kind of cool though I'd go with that I think that's quite funny well I quite like that and it's quite funny as well having all these the moment small small children who one day will all be taller than me that's quite a funny idea and you, of course. And you're quite tall, but they will be. I sort of practice with the little one holding him above me like, I'm so small, can I go out? My eldest son is taller than me.

Oh, so how old is he? He's 15. 15, okay. And Arthur is 13. So you've got Marvin who's 15 and Arthur's 13. So you've got two teenagers. You made it through to that bit. Yeah, it's the best bit.

Yeah, I actually really love having a teenager. I hang out with Sonny a lot and we have a very balanced, calm relationship, actually. Yeah, so do we. It's nice. In fact, from my birthday this year, he gave me a card that said, lots of love from your counsellor

because I think he feels that's basically what I do. I kind of come in and I just like offload everything that's been annoying me, bothering me. It's lovely when they get to that then and you can have proper conversations. Definitely so we are talking today just fresh off your radio show going out last night oh yeah all about trolling and dragging sites which I found absolutely fascinating and there were so many parts of it that really made me think i think the two things that really stuck out for me one was when um a lady who'd been really badly trolled she'd had her father die and so her and her sister had set

about raising a lot of money and had all this horrible stuff online she said something like you expect it wasn't your run-of-the-mill trolling as if she said um her as you rightly say her father had died they were raising money, she'd had an utterly hideous time where people were accusing her of buying into a conspiracy of coronavirus, that coronavirus didn't exist and how she had killed her father to be part of this conspiracy. And as she was explaining it to me, as you say,

she said, well, it started off just, you know, you kind of bog standard trolling, as though a certain degree of trolling would be expected when your father just dies of coronavirus. Yeah, or even to anyone who's in, who all puts themselves into a public platform. Yeah, and she's just a normal girl. She's a trainee solicitor in Wigan.

And the only reason she was put in the public eye is she was trying to raise money for a charity. Yeah, that really struck me because I thought, actually, I think people do anticipate that some of this nastiness is going to come your way no matter who you are or what it is you're doing. And actually, that's fundamentally wrong. And the second thing was when you were saying about

the thing that's really terrifying is because of the anonymity, you get this fear because you don't know who it is or where it's coming from. And the fact that it can change the way you shape your life and how vulnerable you feel even when you're someone that's supported and loved and has a solid home life solid family and you said even for you you found that it was affecting your behavior and I think you went on a work trip and took your husband when you wouldn't normally I had to go to Paris to write something um an English thing for a company over there and it had been booked for ages i was

committed to it i had to go but this had all just happened about a year ago and um the night before i was just sitting in bed going i can't do it i can't go i can't go and so my husband said what about if i come and so i was on the eurostar website really late the night before i spent such a huge amount of money on the ticket because it was last minute. But I just literally couldn't get on the train without him. I was so scared. I think anybody who knows me knows that that is so off-brand for me. I'm a bold person.

You know, I don't, I don't, I'm not a fearful person by nature. I'm generally an optimistic type. And that was really uncharted territory for me and things like you know during Covid when we're wearing face masks I was talking to my husband the other day and I was saying that actually I have been more relaxed in public since Covid than I was in the year before it because people can't see my face and prior to that i just kept thinking people were watching me um that people were going to stop me and in fact they did uh several people stopped me nice people kind people stopped me in the aftermath of the the trolling

incident say how sorry they were and they were really sympathetic but of course you think well if they recognize me and they're saying sorry who who you know who else is seeing me and what are they saying and so actually having a face mask has made me relax a lot more than I had yeah I actually think I can totally see that I found when um when my stepdad died a couple of months ago being able to go out and about with a mask I found really helpful because it meant that I felt like I just could keep myself a bit tidied away I know exactly what you mean it's a sort of it's a privacy isn't it yeah you're afforded um anyway there might as well be one positive to this whole situation that's kind of the only one I can think of but um it has definitely um just that aspect of it has allowed me to feel a bit

more guarded a bit more private yeah um a bit less exposed yeah i mean i think i think we are allowed to look at what the positive aspects are about how the world has changed without any of the making the assumption that that means you actually wish it all just happened anyway yeah yeah of course of course you do anything to take it away yeah down with this sort of thing yeah for sure um yeah, no, there are very, very few redeeming features. But that's one aspect that at that particular time in my life, I have come to realise I needed to just be a bit hidden away. And how aware are your boys of what had been going on?

Well, they're teenagers, so they're totally aware. I must have been so hard for them. Yeah, and hard for me as well because it's kind of shaming isn't it so my youngest son uh his school teacher approached me at a school event to say she'd read it all and how sorry she was and I just wanted to die I wanted the ground to swallow me up um and then my eldest son is 15 so of course all his friends have heard because that's how teenagers work they will talk to each other on snapchat and that's incredibly humiliating I mean they've been great obviously and their parents have been great but you just feel as though you're kind of walking

through a market town with no clothes on basically oh yeah I suppose um it's so important to get it out there but it is a thing that yeah you have to say this made me feel really vulnerable and really sad but then it probably opens up the chat for so many people who've been affected in lots of ways by by gossip and things that have been put online and it's actually really important that people do stop and think before they put anything out there i mean i yeah sometimes i'll even read like friends of mine put things i just think what if that gets back to them you know, it's quite... You have to be so careful. Yeah, I am...

I mean, probably the same thing has happened to you. I've been asked many a time to go on a TV programme to kind of slag someone off, you know, slag someone off the telly, or, you know, oh, what does she look like? What's he doing? Whatever. And for years now, I just say no, because I think, well, how would I feel if somebody was talking about me like that or one of my friends or one of my kids and so I just don't

I don't get involved in that stuff at all anymore yeah I mean maybe I don't think your boys sound like they would ever have done anything like that anyway but it probably makes them very switched on with that sort of very sensitive to that just generally and across their social group as well because kids can be pretty unkind sometimes at that especially at that age um just like in their social group so yeah although I know what you're saying but the other thing that's been really interesting and life-affirming actually about the whole thing is that um so my house has always got teenagers in it so pre-covidVID, you know, there were just kids everywhere

eating too much food and leaving massive shoes in the hallway and all of that stuff. And I have never seen any behaviours that their parents couldn't be really proud of. Oh, that's lovely. And the behaviour I've seen from adults online is just unimaginable and inconceivable to the kids I know. You know, the kids I know are much nicer than the adults I've seen.

Yeah, actually, that's true. And I think that... I feel like my oldest and your boys' generation is actually pretty... They've got quite a good moral compass about things. I agree. And I think we've put so much more emphasis now on kindness, being tolerant, being open-minded, having difficult discussions, way, way more than I was when I was a teenager.

Totally. Yeah, it's quite funny actually to think back about some of the stuff that was really taboo and things that were sort of happening in the shadows. And now I think they're much more given a centre stage, you know, mental health issues, how you feel about your figure, how you feel about your friendships how you feel about your friendships you know starting relationships all these things have just come on so much more now still a long way to go but it's inspiring I think when you when you hear teenagers talk about some things I find it really inspiring I think well yeah I mean I hadn't thought of it like that or you seem really

switched on and it's really nice to hear their views on things yeah um so you were saying you're one of five but you're the only girl in here so you've got four brothers where are you in the lineup so i'm the baby of batch one so batch one had three kids in it so uh there were two boys then me for a long time and then there were two more boys so how old were you when the little ones were so i think i was 10 or 11 when the next batch started so when so when the second youngest boy was born I was about 10. So did you used to look after the little ones a bit? Completely completely because that's what happens you'll know that's what happens when you're in a big family you're just constantly like holding a baby or cooking something for somebody everybody just has to

muck in because it's too big. Yes definitely that is actually one thing you just give yourself over to and go go and ask someone else and it's actually really nice when someone else does sort of step in I think actually sometimes as a mum you first want to be sort of all things to all people and one of the benefits of having a bigger family is you realize it's literally not possible so you just kind of accept defeat with that it's not possible and also I sort of think that um however many children you have your job as a parent is to keep your children alive first and foremost alive and safe but secondly it's to prepare them for adulthood and I always felt when I became an adult I knew how to cook I knew how to do laundry I knew how to run a home basically I

knew how to be an adult and I think if you don't let other kids take over a bit or you don't delegate I think you kind of deny them the development that they need to kind of look after themselves when they leave home yeah that is it's true especially as I sort of I can sort of see it on the horizon now with my oldest and I think okay I've got my mum saying to me when I left home I suddenly realized I didn't teach you how to make a white sauce as if this was something like I absolutely had to know how to do I still don't really think I've ever used she did quickly show me like my mid-20s at some point but it's never really come into my cooking repertoire kind of embarrassment you would feel if your boys went into the outside world and couldn't cook a girl

a dinner you know put something on the table I would find that mortifying yeah I want them to be able to cook and I want to be able to dance that's like the two things I think fair enough you know a boy that can dance and cook that's yeah it's pretty good isn't it absolutely well and you know what it means good dance good everything else exactly yeah it means yeah rhythm and having fun are very important yes exactly for adulthood certainly and did you always want to be a mum? Did you always envisage yourself as a mum? No, I didn't.

I didn't. I was thinking about this on the way here because I always think of you as a really kind of instinctively maternal person. This is the vibe you give off. And I didn't have that. I never, for a really, really, really long time, I didn't think I wanted children at all.

And then one day, think I wanted children at all and then one day I so wanted children um partly because I had met the father of my children I really loved him and knew he would be a good dad and I think that really influences things of course um partly I think your hormones do kick in quite often and say it's time go go go and from the moment that happened I just really really really wanted kids and got pregnant really quickly and I was very fortunate in that way I've never had any difficulty getting pregnant and had them quite quickly I wanted a small gap between them as well because we were very much as one of five we were a gang and me and my two older brothers were all close in age and we were a real gang we

were best friends we were together all the time and I wanted that for my kids. So it sounds very very planned and into a very sort of stable stable home life and is that something were you working alongside that at the time and did you have any worries about how it would work out? So I would have done things so differently if I could go back. So when I had quite a difficult relationship with my mother, a very difficult relationship with my mother, and what that does, when you have children, you have very clear ideas on how you're going to do things. And very often they're the polar opposite to what your mother did.

And so when I got pregnant with my eldest child, I said, right, I'm going to give up work and I'm going to be home all the time and I'm going to have the washable nappies and I'm going to puree the organic vegetables and mix them with breast milk and stuff well it was just kind of chaotic and I had this very ordered idea that his childhood would be very ordered and structured and not chaotic and not kind of flying by the seat of your pants and it would be very affectionate and I just had all these rules for myself and one of them was giving up work which I did um and I went completely mad you know I had um I got postnatal depression partly because when my first baby was 11 weeks

old I think my father died. And so I became a parent and lost a parent for the first time in the space of three months and became really depressed. I also just, I was lonely. I was quite young, not young by the rest of the country standards, but young for London media standards. I was 29, I think, and 29, London media standards I was 29 I think and 29 30 and um I was really lonely I stopped getting invited to things I just kind of fell off the planet I felt and I remember I was at a wedding with my ex-husband a friend of his from university

and I had my 12 week old baby on my knee and we were in this country hotel and we were around this big round table of about 12 people and there was a woman on the table and she said um she turned to the man on her left and she said so what do you do all these strangers getting to know each other so what do you do and he said you know i'm an estate agent or something and she said what do you do so i said i sell insurance or whatever it was and she went around the table and I had the baby on my knee and she skipped past me and went to the person to my left she just jumped over me because I had a baby and I remember just feeling so obviously furious but so low about that I just felt like I dropped off the side of the planet I was really depressed and I feel really sad about that actually when I look back because there are things that I should have done I give myself a break um that would have made me a lot happier I was bereaved I was lonely I was depressed and when I had my second child just two and a half years later I decided that I was working again by then. I decided that I would

carry on working as much as was comfortable for me. Obviously, I'm very lucky I work from home and I decided I would carry on working as much as was comfortable and feasible and that I would just not really care about what kind of mother I looked to the outside world. And it was just bliss. I loved him so much. The moment he was put into my arms, I just adored him. He was so, it was just fun having him. And I didn't do any routine with him. And he slept in my bed and he treated me like a drinks dispenser in the bed. Like we didn't do any of the stuff you're supposed to do. It was so freewheeling. And I kept on working and it was just bliss.

And I experienced the thing that you're kind of meant to experience, which was the joy and the euphoria. Obviously by then I was madly in love with my other son too. But those first few months, first time, were incredibly difficult. I think I overcompensate for that a little bit with my eldest because I feel so bad that I was so sad um we're really really close me and him yeah well that's I mean I'm really I'm impressed that you managed to sort of give yourself this complete different experience the second time around because that's not a very long gap of time and

you know if you're dealing with things like depression and grief and feeling really isolated, they don't necessarily, you know, alleviate within two years. So you probably still had all those things in the concurrent, but you also have found a way to sort of give yourself this other way to do it. So what had happened was when my father died um I inherited a tiny amount of money and um so I decided to take this money I realized I was mad and to take this money and spend literally all of it on therapy which is what I did so I went to therapy for uh the next two years and the last therapy session I had in London or maybe the penultimate one I had um I had my second

newborn with me and she said you seem good so that was it yeah that's actually quite an amazing yeah it's really lovely I was sitting there feeding him and at the end she said I think you're good oh wow yeah that's really moving and um I mean I always think of babies like a sort of uh a happy thing that always brings happy stuff with it and that's probably because of for me I was on my own till I was eight after my parents separated so this new baby my brother was like oh this is great I'm not on my own and I've got this little person I can dedicate my life to but actually there's a lot of times when a new baby is actually brings about lots of other emotions you've never had before and even even, you know, for me, I was in a new relationship with Richard,

we were in love with each other, but I felt so isolated, actually. Yes, it's really isolating. Yeah, and I really didn't know who I really was or how to continue the life I had before as this new mum. So I really relate to that woman skipping you over at the event, the wedding. Was that a wedding, did you say?

Yeah, yeah. Because you do just sort of feel like you're kind of, you just exist as that baby's mum. woman part skipping you over at the at the event the wedding was that wedding yeah yeah because you do just sort of feel like you're kind of you just exist as that that baby's mum you've ceased to exist because you had a baby it's so weird and I thought you wait you wait till you have a baby you'll remember this I hope and think ah well the thing is I think people don't really tell you about that and they sort of assume you're kind of probably all fine thank you very much if you're especially if you have a quite a traditional setup and you've got you know a roof over your head and a loving partner and they think well you're probably fine and I think sometimes you don't really check in on people brilliantly when they've got a newborn because whoever has

their first baby and thinks yeah I've got this I don't think I've really met that person I mean obviously some of it comes a lot easier than other things, but I do remember feeling like, I felt like the experience of new motherhood is what I felt kind of homogenised. Like if I went to a place where there was lots of other toddlers, I felt there was nothing to distinguish me as anything different. Yeah, I get that. I'm just that person's chaperone and that's all I am.

And, you know, yeah, that's your, you know, used little like snack bar wrapper. Yep, I'll put that in the bin and clear up here and look after your shoes there i mean you're a carer aren't you and you can see why so many carers feel so excluded from society yeah because just the act of caring for somebody means that you are just a background artist yeah yeah yeah and you know i think um there's so much pressure on mums when you're pregnant like your plans all these plans i'm going to puree this and use it proper nappies and i'm going to do all this stuff because you're

ready to set it out in your head of this is the kind of mother i want to be and then you know your baby comes along and maybe that's not yeah and you know the thing the penny really dropped for me when i realized that you know the the best mother i could be was to be a happier mother and that is the thing that has an impact not the organic vegetables and the breast milk blended together in an ice cube tray which is why when I had my second child having done all of that with my first child when I had my youngest son he would like pick up what sits from a pub floor and I'd be like oh okay like I just couldn't really I didn't really have it in me to get worked up about it. No.

And that's what happens when you have your second. That's why second children are often the chilled ones, because you're chilled. Yeah, and I think also, you know, you start to realise, hang on a minute, I can't walk into a crowded room and say, that one, that one, that one, those people, they're the ones that were breastfed until they were one. No, of course not. It all kind of irons out. And and you know just as you say whatever makes you happy whatever makes you feel like you're kind of enjoying it and have got the the balance of

caring for your baby and giving yourself a little bit of yeah you know respite from it too yeah it's really hard though I definitely don't feel like I figured that out with my first at all no I know I didn't know what I was doing I was really competent with my first I was really competent everything was clean everything was done at the right time and I was I was on my game but of course I wasn't on my game I was deranged you know where a second time I just kind of let things fly and had a really lovely time so and I was talking to a friend of mine recently I said oh who who would you like me to speak to when I'm doing my podcast and she said is there anyone you can think of

that maybe doesn't have a mother that's a role model to them because so many people when they're talking about parenthood they reference their own mother as being there and I thought actually that's that's actually a weird

there must be so many people who feel like that and I sort of completely take it for granted that my mum is someone you've got a nice mum haven't you and also i lean on it really heavily you know i uh you know i sent her messages before you arrived i phone her most days um but not everybody's lucky she's a very engaged grandparent as well isn't she she's a very involved and engaged grandmother she is and in quite a smart way which i hope i can do I become a grandma, where she's actually definitely got her own life. And she's been so clever because she never takes more than one of my kids at once.

Nice. That's probably nice for them, though, isn't it? Lovely for them. They get this, you know, very sort of premier grandma experience. And her and my eldest are very, very close. Nice. And I'm glad he has that in his life because I think sometimes that grandparent role, it might be someone that could be one of your friends or someone, but another adult in their life that has this very non-judgmental exchange.

I think it's really lovely for kids to have a really close friend who's a different generation to them. I think it's really healthy. So healthy. So in your experience, did you have those people in your son's life? Did you have them from the get-go? Were there people you spoke to? Yeah, so I'm not at all religious, and yet I gave both of my children a full set of godparents because I wanted them to have close friends from an older generation who were not their parents, who they could go to if they

didn't want to speak to their parents. And so they have a full squad of godparents who are all different types of people and all people that I trust completely. And so that was very important to me. And also because of my relationship with my family and it was important to me that they had the support structure that they might not necessarily have from their um from my family basically and so I was very careful to kind of recruit them a squad and um I'm I still really love the people I chose do they have like two godmothers two godfathers four each well sort of there's a two-man gay couple in there so the numbers are slightly skewed um yeah so there's there's two men in australia who are um some of my oldest friends or one of them is one of my oldest friends

and then um yeah they've both got some girls and yeah no i think godparents is like a one of the hidden like brilliant things about bringing people that you feel are family, but making it official, like part of your family. Yeah, it's lovely. It's a really special thing. And in fact, even now, sometimes I'd be like, oh, that would be a really good godmother.

I think I should probably, I've probably got to have another baby so that I can make them a godmother. It matters though, doesn't it? Oh, I love it. It's really nice. I love it too. And my kids, one of my kids' godfather,

the one who lives in Australia with his husband, he witnessed our wedding and so on. So we just involve him in everything because he's our family. So this was, you didn't get married that long ago. How long ago was it? No, so I've been married twice. My existing permanent husband. I don't know how to put it.

You don't want to say current because it implies that it's a kind of transient ephemeral thing yeah um so my husband now um we've been married for three years uh together for much longer and then my former husband we were married for 10 years together for 13 oh wow okay and so how long were you a single mum in the middle um about 18 months so Dan's been part of your son's lives for a long time yes yes he's known them since they were little um which is really really lovely so my math is a bit so how old were they then when they met him I think they were something like seven and five or yes or something so a little um and he's brilliant he's absolutely brilliant it's been a learning experience for him for sure because he didn't have kids in his life

at all before no he didn't have kids and i said from the very beginning that i didn't want to have more kids um and so he just kind of had to catch up and get his head around it I said from the very start that I didn't want more kids because I thought well you should have the opportunity to go and have kids if you need to have kids I just I didn't want to false advertise so um but he said he said okay um and he just fell in love with mine gradually over time in a really organic unforced way that um that they made happen that he and my kids made happen of course I facilitated it as much as I could but I mainly let them find their way with it it's quite a difficult thing to do I suppose or it could be a difficult thing to do um but I think he was extremely respectful of their

boundaries when we first started seeing each other um he didn't sleep in my house for ages and ages so he would come to Brighton from London and stay in a hotel and then I would put the kids to bed and then I'd go and see him and we'd have dinner and whatever and um I just didn't want somebody in my house unless I was absolutely sure they were going to stick around I didn't want my kids to you know have a series of uncles that they met yeah um and he never ever ever pushed that he completely we were on the same page he knew how important that was I didn't have to convince him of that and so it happened kind of slowly and it it unraveled in a really nice way and they absolutely adore him and they also absolutely adore their father yeah well yeah and I think I think actually that thing you said about

letting them kind of find their place with it together and not kind of meddling too much I think that's exactly the right thing to do. And incredibly instinctive if you know that on both sides there's good people. Because then they will find their way to their relationship, which is what happened. Yeah. And there was respect there, you know. He never tried to take the place of their father. Yeah. And I think that's really important.

He always really respected their relationship with their father and and it it deserved respect you know my kids have a dad um and and gradually he became their other dad without ever stepping on the toes of of my ex and similarly my ex um is getting married again and she's lovely. His partner's lovely. And I think she's done the same thing, really. Everyone's fine. No, that's, well, I think that's really impressive. And, you know, hearing you talk about that really reminds me of how my relationship with my stepdad evolved.

Well, I was seven when I met him. And he, the big thing I always say, if only my girlfriends are in a position where they might become a stepmother, I'm always like never ever ever slag off oh my god it's the most important thing well it's the most important thing yeah it will it will completely you know paralyze the relationship if you do that so just you have to however hard it may be you have to kind of remain very impartial and respectful any any divorce involving kids is really difficult so even if you come from a place of mutual respect, it's still horrible.

It's still one of the worst things you can go through. And there were definitely difficult times and there were definitely times of conflict and times of high emotion and stress on both sides. However, whatever else happened, the one thing that neither of us ever, ever, ever did was speak ill of the other. That's very impressive. That's what your friends are for. Get your girlfriends around for

a bottle of wine when the kids are out and then go to town if that's what you need to do to feel better. But never, ever, ever speak badly of the other parent to the kids because you're slagging off them. You're not, you're not you're not criticizing your ex you're criticizing 50 of their dna and it's horrible i think it's abusive and i have lots of grown-up friends who were really traumatized by their mother always slating their father or their father or slating their mother and i think it's a real act of cruelty and i think you have to really really make a concerted effort not to do it i would never do it i think that's such a perceptive comment.

It's actually, you're not slagging off the other person, you're slagging off... What are they supposed to do with that? She hates half of me. She hates the person who made me. Yeah. It's horrible. I think as well, if you're a child of...

Especially if you witnessed conflict between your parents when they were breaking up, you do sometimes feel a bit like, that means I am the joined embodiment of two people. Yeah, I'm the reason these people have to know each other. Yeah, and also I'm now a physical embodiment of two people who didn't get on, which is quite a weird concept.

Like, how am I supposed to live with myself if my parents couldn't you know couldn't make the marriage work I mean obviously that's really oversimplistic when you're tiny I think you sometimes do kind of think about things that way because you spend a lot of your time working out you know I get this from my mum I get that from my dad I get this yeah and it's quite hard to sometimes find the third thing which is just the bit that's completely you um so I think your kids will benefit massively from that they love him they love his partner they love my husband they love me everyone is cool you know it doesn't happen

overnight but um but it did happen for us over a period of a few years and um you know it's comfortable and she also she has a daughter of her she has a teenage daughter they now have a baby together and so everything's a bit elastic and messy in a kind of nice way and and everyone's Also, she has a teenage daughter. They now have a baby together. And so everything's a bit elastic and messy in a kind of nice way. And everyone's happy and everyone gets on, so it's fine. Yeah, that's kind of what family can be. I mean, it's a bit like with the godparent thing too, but you can make family really whatever works for you, I think.

Yeah. It is an elastic term. I say this as someone who's got a tattoo literally that says family on my arm, but I think you can kind of decide what family is to you. Yeah. And also I really, really wanted my kids to understand that a relationship that ends is not a failed relationship. It's not a failure. I don't regret marrying my ex-husband. I don't regret choosing him as the father of my children. I don't regret that we have these kids together. I don't regret marrying my ex-husband. I don't regret choosing him as the father of my children. I don't regret that we have these kids together. I don't regret any of it.

Just because our relationship wasn't meant to last forever does not make it a mistake or a failure. It just means it's a relationship that wasn't going to last forever. And I don't want them to view the end of things as a disaster or a failure. That's a really lovely philosophy as well actually i think um that obviously shows that you and your ex sort of handled things in a way that still gives a lot of um credence to the relationship you had actually rather than kind of going well that didn't work out so the whole thing's rubbish you know they can actually still

extract the benefits we had a great time we really loved each other it was like yeah absolutely i wouldn't have changed that and do you have many memories of your bit as a single mum then because that's actually in in the sort of fullness time it's not a massive amount of time to be on your own it's not years and years as a so does it when you look back on it does it feel like you can really remember yeah just the three of you yeah yeah so I was on my own I think it's probably about 18 months maybe closer to two years um no I guess that is yeah it was I mean it yeah it was it was hard I felt guilty a lot I felt I mainly felt guilty about everything I felt guilty that I was getting divorced I felt guilty that um I had to go to work I felt guilty if I had to stay overnight somewhere for work.

Yeah, I sort of felt lonely and guilty. But I also wanted my kids to know that life goes on. And mum will always go to work and mum will always make things happen. And mum will do what she needs to do to pay the bills and pay for all the stuff and um I didn't want things to change too dramatically for them when something huge was already changing and so I tried to carry on also you know I was luckier than most in that I had some child care um of course I didn't have any relatives the way other people do but but I did definitely have a little bit of help um and so we got through it I said I would never ever ever marry again um and I'm sort of amazed that I did I was adamant that I wouldn't but then you also thought you wouldn't be a mum for some time exactly exactly and I am someone who kind of goes with the flow in life I try not to plan too much um I have to plan my diary, but I don't plan big events.

I tend to just see how I feel about things, and you know if it's right. And with the works, you've been writing about beauty from the start? No, no. So when I left school, which was really young, I moved to London, and I was an assistant makeup artist because that was the only job I could get where I could get paid um on an invoice from a petty cash box on a video shoot or something because I was too young to have a job so how old were you then like 16

so I was 14 when I moved 14 so you left school at 14 I did leave school at 14 so um I think uh so I moved to London just before my 15th birthday. So maybe like a month or something before my 15th birthday. Did you feel young at the time or did you feel quite like, I'm just going to get on and do this? I remember in hindsight, I felt like I was totally on top of things and I couldn't wait to be an adult. I was one of those kids that couldn't wait to be an adult. on top of things and I couldn't wait to be an adult I was one of those kids that couldn't wait to be an adult always wanted to work always wanted to have a job and earn money and and be free and independent I always wanted that I always wanted to leave where I grew up and move to London and

all of that but obviously in hindsight I now have a child the same age as I was and it gives me horrors like horrors I cannot believe that nobody came to get me. Yeah. That's kind of crossed my mind too. It's mad, isn't it? Where did you have to come from? So I'm from South Wales, and I moved to London

and moved in with my then boyfriend, who was an adult. All roads lead back to a bad man, don't they? So I moved in with my boyfriend, who's an adult all roads all roads lead back to a bad man don't they but um so I moved in with my boyfriend who's an adult and um I lived with him in a housing association flat in Paddington and um his female flatmate who's actually one of my children's godparents ah that's nice yeah and um and so I ended up finishing with him when I was 16 and she turned to him and said, when are you moving out?

Because by then we were so close and he left and I stayed. So yeah, now having a 15-year-old, I'm absolutely appalled. I'm so glad she was on the scene. She sounds like a good person. Yeah, she's properly good. And now, yeah, I look at my eldest and I'm like you need me so much and I must have really really really needed people but then but then I did have a lot of support here I made lots of friends very quickly London was very different then to how it is now

I think if you were creative and curious and and interested in people um and accepting of people you could kind of get involved in quite interesting things quite quickly um and I did I just sort of met I met lots of gay men and I met lots of drag queen gay men and I met lots of record industry people and I had no interest in being in the record industry but they just happened to be the friends that I made and I they did look after me you know yeah unbelievably they they they did if you're the one who's always the young one in the social group it's quite funny isn't it when you're not anymore because I was a bit like that when I was a teenager always going out and about yeah and then I remember when I suddenly was like oh I'm not that like the young friend that they have there's other people coming in they're younger than me but yeah for a long time I mean if you were only like 14 15

when you start yeah you're obviously like and they were all my mates she's only 16 all my mates were kind of like uh late 20s early 30s maybe um and I was so so young. And we would go clubbing together and stuff. But, you know, nothing... You know, they were nice to me. It's not like the men tried to get off with me. You know, I was really lucky. But mostly I did hang around with gay men, I have to say. So I was nicely looked after by lots of gay men. Yeah.

And girls. Yeah, well, they're of um unchallenging for a teenage girl it's good it's a good choice i think yeah and um so presumably when you left this was with your with your family they weren't they were still in south wales and they weren't coming to london and so when you did start you know people realize you're having you know decided wanted a baby you know just because I think there probably are people that feel they haven't got it. Did that throw up a lot of things

about your childhood and your relationship with your mum or did you already know that those things were complicated and that's why you'd left it behind so long before anyway? It was definitely already complicated. We had very long periods of estrangement from the time I left home to the time she died so we would have periods of two years here five years there three years there and then the longest period was at the end which was a 13 year period where we

didn't speak until I found out she was terminally ill and then we got back in touch and so my whole life I knew it wasn't right and I knew that things were not normal and that that was not a relationship I wanted to have with my children so that was very clear from the very beginning I was adamant that my kids could rely on me I was adamant that I would be there when they needed me I was also very, I was obsessed with the idea that my kids should be able to tell me anything. That was the most important thing, that I wanted my kids to feel they could talk to me. And so whenever they talk to me about something,

I try really hard not to judge what they're saying to me because I don't want to close down the next conversation they feel like having with me. So I try to always listen and see it from their point of view. Because I don't think that kids, especially teenagers, ever think, I'm not going to do that because my mum told me not to. They're going to do what they're going to do. So I want to be part of the conversation. I want to be part of the interaction. And so that stemmed from my own childhood where I just didn't feel that I had that. So that was really, really

important to me. And yeah, I just wanted them, I always wanted them to know that the bills would be paid, that they would never come home to find a utility cut off, that there would always be food in the fridge, that I would turn up to the stuff. I would go to all the stuff. And I'm really lucky. You know, my job means that,

although it's a crazy job with silly hours often and unpredictable hours, I can always do the thing. I can always go to the thing because I will just work until 2am so I can go to the concert earlier on in the day. Whereas lots of women don't have that privilege because they have a boss breathing down their necks. And I haven't had that. I can always go to the swimming gala. next um and I haven't had that I can always go to the swimming gala I can always go to the Christmas concert even if I have to do something really crazy with my diary to make it happen I can always do it and that was really important to me and has your job been flexible like that since you've had kids yeah so um I I so my last staff job was at the face magazine um which closed in 2004 and i had my first child in

2005 and i've been freelance that entire time so i feel i feel very lucky you know there are downsides to being freelance you don't get sick pay you don't get paid holidays i always work on holidays even though i say i'm not going to and all of that but that degree of flexibility of saying I'm my boss so I'm going to prioritize the things that I know are important it's really invaluable and why do you think it's beauty that has sort of resonated with you so much that became so so yes so sorry I went off on a tangent so I moved to London I became a makeup artist assistant because that was the only thing that I really knew lots about that um I could do not legally but I could do by the seat of my pants but I always wanted to be a journalist so I did that for a couple of years then soon as I was old enough to get work experience

as a journalist that's what I did became a journalist and I was a features writer and then a features editor and then an editor editor. And then when I had children, so I was features director at The Face, I had a child. And then I went back to work freelance, writing about all sorts of things, mainly cover interviews, celebrity things, and columns. And then as I got older, a thing happens when you're a female journalist. If you hang around long enough, and you've had enough of a life life and you've got a good enough reputation, you start being asked to write in the first person. And I only ever now really write in the first person. And then the beauty column, it was really weird.

It was really weird. So I was a reader of the magazine and the current editor, the then editor of Guardian Weekend, had employed a YouTuber to do this column. And I sort of feel a bit sorry for her, actually, because I don't think the Guardian or any broadsheets really took beauty seriously at all as a subject and so they just kind of sent her a little bag of products and then she had to write one or two sentences on the products and you know she wasn't a writer it was just all a bit kind of half-assed and they buy them and then they gave it to her and um I was reading it one day back in the early days of Twitter and um as a beauty fan I was really cross about it and I said this this beauty coverage is terrible or whatever. And then the editor saw it and she called me in and she said, well, actually, that YouTuber, we really want video content.

She won't make it because she wants to make it for herself for YouTube, which is completely fair enough. She wanted to own her own content. It was the early days. And they said, she won't do videos. We really need somebody who's going to do videos. So we're replacing her. It's between a few journalists.

Can you go and write some sample columns? So I did. And then it was between me and another journalist who I latterly found out was writing a spoof beauty column. So they almost ran a spoof beauty column instead of a proper one. And me, and it could have gone to her or to me, but it went to me and so

yeah that was like 11 years ago something like that um and I've been doing that ever since and I had done some beauty for women's glossies before but mainly not mainly my um my writing was interviews and columns I think um your work like with because you've set up the beauty banks i think doing things like that really um shows the proper value of how important it is to have time for yourself and to look after yourself and to feel good about yourself as part of your all-round mental health and self-esteem i think you know it kind of emphasizes how important it is and how a lot of people if they don't have access to to beauty products they can go back to feeling that completely invisible

feeling just it's just about how you can another way you can nourish yourself really um so when did you set up the beauty banks so we set it up just after I got married so I got married in October 2017. I think we set up Beauty Banks at the very beginning of 2018. I had gone, I was making a film for the BBC about homelessness. And I went to a homeless shelter in Cardiff where I was filming. And there was like a couple of cardboard boxes under reception at the homeless shelter. And it just had bits of toiletries in it, you know, likeon a sanitary towel a mini toothbrush or whatever you know the kind of things you get in a premier in or whatever that you put into your suitcase bits like that and I spoke to the staff and they said that they just brought them in whenever they found some minis they would

just bring them in so that their clients could shave before a housing interview or their female clients were taken care of when they had their period or you know there was a bit of lipstick in there for if someone had a meeting with social services about her kids or whatever it was and joe my partner in beauty banks and i had been talking for a couple of months before about what we could do about the fact there's so much waste in the beauty industry there's so many products that go unused. And we'd been wondering what we could do. And I sent Jo a picture of this cardboard box and she said, that's it, that's it.

We can get all the beauty companies to give us loads of beauty products and we'll distribute them to people who can't afford them, who really need them. Let's call it Beauty Banks. It was her idea to call it Beauty Banks. And I said, yeah, great. So we launched it like 48 hours later with a column and it just went nuts. It went totally nuts.

So what was it like when it started? So where do you find these products? So around the country, homeless shelters, addiction centres, family centres, schools now, mental health trusts, you name it. Wherever there are people who are experiencing poverty and are having to make horrible decisions like whether to eat or stay clean, we then supply those charities with shower gel, deodorant, toothbrushes, toothpaste, shampoo, conditioner, all those sorts of things. Basically, people often ask me what they should donate.

Just think about yourself every morning. Think about everything that you use when you're in the shower cleaning your teeth. Just think about all the products you use. Line them up. That's what we need because everybody needs those things and they simply can't afford them so if you want to help and get involved where do you what would you so uh you can find us on our website if you just google beauty banks website you'll come to the website or you can contact me on twitter and there are lots of ways you can help you can set up a beauty bank in your shop or your office where people can drop in

donations and you can drop them in super drugs around the country. That's brilliant. It's really easy. Yeah, it's really, really easy. There are loads and loads of ways you can help. And it's sort of turned into quite a big charity. We avoided registering as a charity for a really long time because both of us have about eight jobs. And we were like, oh, we don't want this huge charity.

So we really avoided registering officially. We thought, oh, we don't need money huge charity. So we really avoided registering officially. We thought, oh, we don't need money. We can just distribute products. But actually, you do need money to distribute the product in the first place. But we were so naive. So eventually, under the US, we did register as a proper charity. And actually, we're now a medium-sized charity, people would probably say. And it's been a huge success.

would probably say and it's been a huge success so we we donate to um around 180 charities around britain and then very many more schools and at the beginning of the pandemic to key workers as well and so you sometimes meet the people that are the people who benefit from so we don't deal with end users so much we deal with charities so we supply to registered charities so if for argument's sake you are a youth homelessness charity in cardiff um we deal with them and then they distribute to their clients but we do we do get really lovely letters that they have given that clients have given to the charities that are then passed on to us really like beautiful touching letters so we do still get to see the end of the line we do still see the end of the process um but yeah we're not we're not at the cold face because we're dealing

with really big bulk donations yeah and then we kind of they they trickle down yeah but that's so impressive that's brilliant and actually you're a perfect conduit for that because you've already got those contacts and know those people and yeah and you can sort of say come on and you can also if you wanted to you could name and show them the brands that are rubbish at that but also really celebrate the brands that actually get really most people most people are good and some of the brands i mean we are talking about huge volumes if it's a global multinational but sometimes a small independent brand who gives you 500 bars of soap that means the same to them as 10 000 deodorants from a multinational does and it really it's really touching when people kind

of really muck in it's really lovely and your boys do they ever have they ever like got involved with the packaging yes so both of their schools collect for us that's great and um my eldest son is on the charity committee at his school oh that's so good and they've definitely had buckets out my friend adam k is a writer and he did um he did a show in brighton and my boys had buckets going through the um the aisle very cynically we sent the children with buckets because we thought people would give more money which they did um and yeah there were loads of times in the early days when we were really small and my house was full of this product and so was Jo's.

Jo's got two little girls, roughly the same age as your two eldest. And then I've got my two boys. And very often in the early days, they'd be sitting on the floor watching the telly, separating tan packs from sanitary towels or separating moisturiser from face wash. And they would just kind of do it on autopilot so it's good it's also good because when if people have anything sort of

glib to say about beauty it's like no no this is a real you don't think people realize quite how much all of that counts into the same thing and how it feeds into how you feel as you say it's keeping yourself clean making yourself presentable having i always tell people that um everybody i think can think of a time where the boiler's packed up or the hot water stopped for reasons that they didn't really understand or they woke up too late to have a shower or whatever it is and they're rushing around and they feel gross and that horrible gross feeling that you feel and you just think oh i'd do anything to just kind of get in the shower. There are lots of people who have to feel like that every single day

because they don't have access to hot running water. They don't have access to products. They live in a chaotic household. They live in chaotic circumstances. They don't live anywhere at all. You know, there are lots of people. I just don't think that people should have to feel dirty. That just seems so Dickensian to me.

The idea that you can't afford to be clean just seems really barbaric in a developed country at this time. It's just wrong. Yeah, no, I couldn't agree more. I think everything that we've done, I think the levels of poverty in the UK still is horrific. Well, we're in a poverty crisis officially, according to the UN. And just the idea of kids

being shamed at school because their clothes are dirty and they don't have access to water or toiletries i just i hate that i absolutely hate the idea of that i can't bear it and so uh we give teachers products to discreetly give to children in a private moment so that they have what they need oh that's brilliant that's actually a really i think you're right that those kids they must feel i mean actually there's a girl on um have you watched any of that it's really a silly program called selling sunset yes i've seen it all okay binged on it yeah me too yeah and a girl in it she said that that's how she felt at school do you remember the girl um i think chris shell yeah

um in fact actually that I've thought of you with that before now because I saw recently you wrote about um wearing flat shoes all the time now rather than heels and it made me think of all those estate agents on selling sunset and their ridiculous stilettos like wandering around building sites sad and tired when I see them they've've got those massive platforms on, like platform Louboutins, haven't they? And I just think, oh, you're so slow on your feet because it's such an effort. Sometimes they literally go to like a construction site and they've got a hard hat on. It's like stepping over with their wedges.

I mean, God, all power to them. I, you know, I would lie in the road for a woman to look like however she wanted to look but it just makes me feel old and tired I'm over it I think me too and actually I think another thing you know with this year I definitely felt like so much of that kind of feeling like you had to put on a certain face to be taken a certain way I kind of have I really enjoyed the fact that that's relaxed I feel that I have been too comfortable for too long now to go back. It's like we're pushing a year almost, you know what I mean? What are we, in our eighth month or something?

And I just think I've now been too comfy for too long. I can't ever imagine doing that again. No, and I think now that we've sort of let that... Sometimes I feel a bit like this year, with all the different roles we play and the norms of social interaction, so much of it has gone,'ve sort of let that, sometimes I feel a bit like this year with all the different roles we play and the norms of social interaction, so much of it has gone, but now we know that,

it was a bit when I went into the bank during the midst of lockdown and the guy was speaking to me, we just ended up chatting about how he was finding working in the bank and having his kids at home all the time and all this stuff. And it's just like all those sort of roles we play about how we normally interact.

It's like we can actually talk to each other in a totally different way now because we've all experienced something together that whoever you are your life has been altered yeah it's quite it's going to be very hard i think for people to justify why mums have to be in the office five days a week why people have to go to stupid meetings in stupid places why people have to spend so much money on petrol and on motorways going to work i think there's going to be a lot of stuff where people are going to have to accept that life has shifted yeah i know it's um well it has it just has and it won't it took me a long time to understand what it meant when people said it's not going to go back to how it was before because it doesn't mean that things won't come back that you're familiar but everything will

just have a slightly different emphasis probably were things mental in your house during lockdown the first a lot of children to be locked inside honestly when it first started happening i just thought i've been a complete mug i've had too many children and i went from feeling very clever about having you know it's five people and they're all from one to 16 thinking I'm I'm such a moron I can't actually do this I can't do it where they're all just here and we're all in the same room all the time but we kind of found our way through it I mean there was some I think probably I felt like what's happening here was happening in loads of family households and so sometimes things were quite nice actually you know we can have we've all had Sundays here together or bank holiday

Mondays where you feel like we're normally at school or work but hey we're all here together yeah but um yeah sometimes we just find ourselves having these outbursts of anxiety and shouty things where you say because there's a tension and you know richard and i are constantly like trying to work out like what is this really oh look all our work's been cancelled okay that's that um what about next year well who knows yeah you know just the realization of like okay everything I thought I was going to be doing this year is gone yeah no same I felt totally paralyzed I felt very uncreative I felt like there's nothing I could do I felt like oh why didn't I learn to play piano better or play guitar better so at least I can accompany myself and write something like no I can't do that I don't know how anything works

in Richard's studio so I can't record a song just felt like I really should have got some more skills going here I know I'm obsessed with learning to sew at the moment I really want to learn to sew it's been one of those on the machine yeah yeah it's been one of those periods hasn't it where you're like what what is massively lacking in my skill set how are you getting on with the sewing no so I haven't started yet but it's my focus I've just decided that that's my project for next year I'm going to learn to sew because I cannot sew because I got I wanted to sew and I got um a sewing machine but then I got I got stuck on how to wind a bobbin right yeah yeah that was like this is actually something that happens quite early on in the sewing so yeah it's the end of that yeah I remember not being able to do that you

could take it home with you you can start now and just really get right when you've learned to wind the bobbin come back and tell me I'd love to be able to make my own clothes I'd just love to be able to like hem some jeans or something my own alterations that'd be incredible yeah because I buy a lot of secondhand stuff and then I've got a big pile of things like oh yeah I just need to make that shorter make that and you just don't get around to it for like a year oh a year would be good for me I've had some things probably from like before I moved house yeah yeah no I'm the same I buy loads of secondhand stuff and I and I do tell myself oh well that just needs shortening that just needs taking exactly yeah I know one one day well yeah I'd say teach me when you've learned the bobbin bit

um but yeah no lockdown was a very strange time. And I look back on it and I feel, sometimes I'll see something that was very much part of that time and it makes me feel kind of odd. It's just, I think it's just that hum of anxiety alongside sort of preoccupying yourself. You know, and some of it was quite, I'm not someone that likes, I don't get FOMO or anything like that.

So I quite liked, I didn't miss like pubs or any of that. I love being at home yeah I like that too and I like being around for bedtime every night and my work takes me away a lot like you're saying and about feeling guilty when you go away for work like that's something that I've had to deal with a lot and I I was about to be away a lot this year and I thought I'd be away for two birthdays in April so I was glad I was here for that although I have to say Ray had I think what's probably one of the saddest lockdown birthdays it was his eighth birthday and he literally lined up all his teddy bears and toys, soft toys in the garden

and did a sort of picnic, birthday picnic with his toys. Just equal parts sweet and really- Pathos. We sort of had to take pictures and think there's a Polaroid in the kitchen somewhere. It just looks very, it looks sort of very like 1950s sad.

Yeah, yeah. Poor Christopher Robin. Yeah, oh bless. kitchen somewhere it just looks very it looks sort of very fit like 1950s sad yeah yeah poor christopher robin yeah oh bless no we we had a birthday in lockdown as well yeah we had four in april actually suddenly had what he called his super sweet quarantine 16 because it was just like happy birthday you're 16 you can't go anywhere yeah to be fair my dad would have loved it if that had been me yeah i think a lockdown around my teenage years anywhere yeah yeah my dad would have loved it if that had been me yeah I think a lockdown around my teenage years would have suited my dad really well I know what you mean yeah I think it's been really hard for the teenagers because they're just all about the friends aren't they exactly when you were finally allowed to have people in your garden

uh the first thing we did was say to my eldest you know do you want to have isaac around you know yeah and he needed it i think teens really need it yeah they're made well actually for sunny weirdly he kind of copes with it quite well because he's he is quite he likes just being in his bedroom and listening to music and a lot of his friends are online so actually for him yeah they talk all day yeah he was actually kind of all right um yeah i think it was my younger, like Ray, I think, who found it the hardest at eight because he's so into his social life at school and then he couldn't self-perpetuate any of the social things. So he couldn't say, I'm just going to message my friends or whatever.

So it would all be down to me to organise. And I think he just felt a bit, yeah, a bit lost without it. Whereas the little two were fine and Kit was fine too. We were just, you know, making little videos on YouTube and stuff like that and started writing films and things that kind of kept them quite busy already but i think i found it hard just maybe with my headspace i just felt like i'd run off and hide but that's okay uh we got through it yeah yeah no we did and you know and people endured so much that that we didn't have to and it's just a weird time, isn't it? I think everyone's just allowed to find it weird without having to compare their experiences to others.

It's just bloody weird, isn't it? Bloody weird, yeah. And even now, sometimes I think, is this really happening? I know. Yeah, I sort of imagine I've just been like quantum leaped into now and I look around like everybody's in face masks,

like I'm trying to work out what's happening. What a crazy world. It's getting to the point where we've kind of been in it for so long that I'm slightly losing a grip on how it was before which i find quite surreal well it's like when you watch tv and you think like an old film and they're like they hug each other hello or something yeah yeah there's more than 50 people at that party what are they doing yeah that wedding's huge yeah it's so it's so weird to think that i've kind of lost a year of my life or in my kids case it's sort of almost 10%

of one of their lives has been spent with coronavirus which is is really bizarre considering we'd never even heard of it a year ago I know I know and like things that happened back in February I mean I remember doing like a DJ gig in February and now I'm like, why were we all out? Did we not think anything was about to happen? I know. I had a breast reduction in February. And it was like such a big thing for me to do. And I did it in February.

And I was looking at my diary in the run up to it thinking, OK, so I've blocked these two weeks out to recover. And then I've got to do this. Then I've got to go and do this event here. And I was kind of all over the country. But in fact, as I had the operation pretty much within a couple of weeks we were locking down and so I did you know I was just at home recovering the whole time and it was just really strange like my body had really changed and I was just in the house it just seemed like a very strange time all around and how do you feel now do you feel yeah great yeah it's the best decision i've ever made wow that's very cool yeah there's no and it's all fully you feel all yeah it's been fully

healed for ages um yeah so i had it done on february the 18th it was the night of the brit awards and um my husband came to my hospital room and we watched the brit Awards in bed, and I cannot remember a single thing about the Brit Awards. I was so high. I woke up, and I was just so high and so happy that I'd had the operation, but also, like, smacked out of my head on drugs from the doctor that I just, I can't remember anything about the Brit Awards other than my husband brought me an honest veggie burger,

which I love, and I sat there just sort of giggling in bed watching the Brits I don't I don't think um you'd be the first person to watch the Brits no exactly exactly it's like you were there it was very much on brand exactly oh well I mean the only other one other question I would I always quite like to ask about motherhood and if it and if you feel like it's influenced your work and your creativity. But for you, is the beauty thing your own thing? Do you feel like when you do that, you're quite selfish about it? Or does it feel like an extension of when you're a mum and needing to feel like you again?

That's a really interesting question. I think, so despite anything else about my mother, my maternal grandmother and my mother always looked nice. They did always look nice. My mum was really beautiful. And the two of them were always pulled together. And no matter how little money there was, you know, there was always lipstick on and hair done and so on.

And so I suppose I associate it with just getting on with life. And that is something that I have always done. So they were influential to me in that way. My kids are really kind of, you know, bemused by it. They'll ask me for a serum sometimes because they're teenagers. They're obviously concerned about their skin. So they'll say, mum, can I test a serum for you or whatever? So they're a little bit involved. But yeah, I suppose mainly it's for me. There are no girls in the house to really, really love what I do. But I don't care.

I love having boys. I love having boys. Of course, if I had two girls, I'd be sitting here saying I love having girls. But I really love having boys. I feel very comfortable having boys. I grew up with only boys in the house. My mother left when I was a baby, or a toddler rather. So there was just me my dad and

my two brothers for a really long time and so I feel very comfortable in a male household um it just kind of feels it feels right so I don't really need them to be interested in my pursuits and we share loads and my main passion in life is film my eldest son shares it with me so we have just like our thing together we watch loads of films just the two of us um and we all love music and my eldest son in particular is obsessed with fashion and i really love clothes so we talk about fashion a lot and films a lot so actually we have really sort of deep um connections in terms of our interests that I don't really need them to care about my work. What I do want though is I always wanted them to know that all of the things you have come from

mum working hard and that is a reality of life. I hate entitlement. I can't stand entitlement and the thought of having entitled children would really really really bother me and so I've always wanted them to know that um if you lose a jumper at school I have to work harder in order to replace the jumper you lost and so I want them engaged in my work insofar as I need them to understand it's important and consequently that whatever they do for a living will be important. And I don't care what they do, but I want them to be serious about what they do. Yeah.

No, I agree with so much of what you just said. And I think you're right. That entitled thing is just something that I can't. Awful. You get it in a lot of grown-ups as well. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. They're just expectant about what's supposed to happen next. And actually, I think, especially if you work in creative jobs you're sometimes well actually you know what it probably happens across the board but I just think from

the get-go in creative you're very encouraged to be quite competitive with your peers and you know you feel like you're especially with women actually they pit women up against each other of course there's only room for one yeah which is so tedious and um and then from that you're encouraged to sort of really feel quite um annoyed about opportunities that weren't open open to you whereas actually I'm always a bit like who's to say I'm even supposed to be still singing right for now like it's not a given you're not nothing you've done in the past is a given that you're going to keep be able to keep keep going absolutely you've really got to keep like don't complain and just get on and do the work yeah and kind of understand that people part of being alive is doing loads of things you don't want to

do yes and so my uh my sons sometimes they there are things they really don't want to do and my sympathy is limited because i'm like do you know what i have seen two people this week that i had to see that i didn't really want to see. I've done this, this, this and this that I didn't want to do. That's life. And actually the majority of my life, I do like and I do want to do. And that is just how the checks and balances work.

So you do need to play rugby because at the moment, that is your job. That is the thing you have to do. And I want them to understand that, that it's not all lovely, you know, and part of being a responsible person is to sometimes grit your teeth and be with people you don't really want to be with and do the stuff that doesn't really excite or interest you. And that's important. Yeah.

People are relying on you to do a thing. And there's certain responsibilities that come with the business of being you and getting on with the things you've got to do. Yeah. I find that an empowering part of motherhood, though. I find when they were little, I did the thing that I think kind of all parents do with real love and heart, which is my kids would say,

oh, I don't like it, I can't do it, whatever. And I'd say, of course you can do it. Of course you can do it. You can do anything. Of course you can. You're brilliant. And you do that thing with little children. But actually the greatest thing,

one of the greatest things about having teenagers is that moment where you go, do you know what? Yes, you are not very good at rugby. You're too short for it. Actually, you're not built for it. You're much better at other things. I can absolutely see why that's a ball ache for you.

Totally. However, you still have to do it. Just keep your head down, get through the lesson, criticize your teacher all you want when you're at home, but you be polite and you be well behaved. And I think it's just been really nice to just hear my kids and not go, no, no, and overrule them and tell them everything will be fine. It's actually been really lovely and interesting to hear what my kids are telling me and go, yeah, you're right. He does sound like a dick.

Yeah. You know, he does sound awful. I'm sure he doesn't not like you, darling, the way I used to do. Now I'm like, yeah, that teacher doesn't sound very nice. No, you're right. That's a really good thing, you know, trap not to fall into. And the other thing that I do, which I really am trying to stop, is trying to fix things for them. Yeah.

The things they don't like, the things they don't want to do and go, okay, I'll write an email to that. Yeah. And see if I can get you out of that and I'll try and change that for you and then I'm like I actually um you know so proud my uh my second eldest has got his first school detention today yeah and he was like mummy can you just tell them I can't do it and all this and I said you know what you just kind of got to suck it up yeah yeah and because that's life yeah and it's like it's not going to be that hard and he's like but I didn't do this that and then I'm like

yeah but there's obviously things they feel like rules, school rules. Yeah. And they're trying to teach you that this is a deterrent. So just do it. And also, nobody ever died from an extra hour at school. Just do it. And I find that a really refreshing part of having older kids of just going, yeah, that's life. I hear you.

It is rubbish. I can see why you're pissed off. I totally get it. However, part of life is getting on and doing it. And that's so much better than going, it'll be fine. It'll be fine the way I used to do when they were little. I've got to still stop doing that. I still tend to try and fix things.

Well, you have little ones than me, so it's slightly different. Yeah, but I think also sometimes it's like, oh, I don't like, I'm not very good at seeing them doing things where they feel uncomfortable or sad about something. So I tend to be a bit like, ah, what can I do to make that easier very good at seeing them doing things where they feel uncomfortable or sad about something, so I tend to be a bit like, ah, what can I do to make that easier? But actually sometimes they've just got to get through it. Yeah. But I think...

And it's empowering for them to know they can fix things themselves and make themselves feel better, I think. No, that's very true. And also, as you say, they get through it and it's not actually that bad. It's never that bad. Nah. I think there's so many things you've said that have really, I've just been nodding along and I really agree with, and I think, I just feel like I keep thinking it's so many things you've said that I've really been nodding along and I really agree with.

And I think I just feel like I keep thinking it's so impressive that you went from feeling like you didn't really want to have kids and you didn't really have maybe an example in your life of that's the kind of mother that through to actually having this very um balanced and grounded approach to raising your boys and I mean do you think what do you think you back back in your 20s would have thought of you as a mum if you met you now um I think I think I would say I'm a good mum because I, because my kids are really nice. They are really nice and they're not messed up. And I think that in years to come, if they end up in therapy, which is always a chance for everybody, we've all got stuff we want to iron out. But if they ended up sitting on a therapist couch, I think it would be wear and tear. They would be talking about, they would not be talking about anything major. And so I'm very pleased about that. I'm very impressed with them. I think they're really good dudes and they're good friends and they're good brothers to one another

and they're really good sons. And so, yeah, I think, I think I must've done all right. I think all of us, you know, I think that their father, their stepfather, their stepmother and me, I think I must have done all right. I think all of us, you know, I think their father, their stepfather, their stepmother and me, I think, you know. But yeah, I'm the constant in all of it. And yeah, I'm really grateful that it turned out okay. Yeah, me too. That's lovely. I'm impressed with that.

And also very impressed with the very grown up where you have your tea. Because when you said you hardly have any milk. I know, it's nearly black, isn't it? It's actually, yeah. Have you said you hardly have any milk that I know it's nearly black it's actually yeah like that's if you try just not having any milk yes I don't quite I don't quite like it but I've always known it's there somebody was saying recently that in all my um tutorial videos and review videos and stuff I always look like I'm I'm a heavy smoker because my tongue is stained it's because I'm always I've always got a cup of

tea on and I don't have milk in it. Yeah, mine's like baby tea in comparison. Like one and a half sugars of milk, but that's like proper grown-up tea. I know, it's really evil, isn't it? I'll never be that grown-up. Well, thank you. So that was Sally and I having a chat about raising our boys and about extended families and like i said there was a lot of stuff that really resonated with me um i think some of it my parents got really right with raising me as part of a divorced you know separated family and

some of it maybe was a bit trickier um i mean golly i don't have first-hand experience of what it's like to be a parent on that side of things, just to be the kid. But I would say that I thought what Sally said about never, ever, ever slagging off the other half because to the child, that's half of them. That really, that really stayed with me. And I think I will be passing that on to any of my friends that are going through similar situations.

You know, you're right, that is true. It is half of that kid. It feels like half of you. And you spend a lot of your childhood, don't you, working out what you get from your mum, what you get from your dad, and what's just you. And actually, now that I'm raising small people,

I can see that they're mainly just them. Ray's sitting very quietly by my side. Do you have any thoughts on anything I'm saying, Ray? Any thoughts at all? Okay, just shaking his head. You just want my phone? What, do you want to play with my phone when you get it? If you don't tell me, I'm not going to give it to you.

What? What are you going to play with it when you get it? TikTok. TikTok? Are you going to do some dances? No. No? Just watch watch stuff watch funny stuff okay can i watch it with you fine thank you why are you whispering i don't like it when people

whisper on audio anyway look i'm nearly finished do you want to say bye-bye and thank you for listening bye-bye and thank you for listening so with all the enthusiasm a boy waiting to play on his mom's phone can master um if you haven't put your decorations up have a good week with it if you fancy listening to christmas song come and join us at the kitchen disco in a week and a half in the meantime say stay safe stay sane stay festive we're nearly there nearly Nearly the end of 2020. We did it, folks. Anyway, rambling as ever. Lots of love. Race is nearly done. My tea's been drunk and my phone's about to go into the hands of my eight-year-old. Lots of love. See you soon. Oh, next week before I go, just going to tell you, next week I've got a really good one. An artist friend of mine called Kerry Reichardt lives down

the road. Her house is remarkable because it is covered and I do mean literally covered every aspect of it in tiny mosaic tiles so must be I don't know million tiles I don't know how many tiles it takes to cover a house front and back it's a literal work of art it's beautiful I spotted the house long before I knew Kerry and I was really uh struck by it but her story is a fascinating one. You're going to absolutely love it. So please do join me for that next week. And in the meantime, lots of love and festive cheer. Thank you.