I like a good Sunday as I rarely have any expectations for the day. Sunday is a calm and peaceful day in our family and I think that is useful. Harry is having his first day off for weeks as he works in horticultural and they have had a very busy summer. George and Max help Pete with the papers on a Sunday morning and I tell off my cat. How did she get so naughty? It has absolutely nothing to do with me. She just has so much attitude and absolutely no fear but I do love a cuddle on a Sunday morning.
A few weeks back Scottish island mum featured the wonderful work of Vicky Arlidge who is a mum who has found comedy. She went off to the Edinburgh Festival this year but I did want to find out a bit more about the woman behind the comedy. Vicky has shared this with us all -
In 2011, after a long summer holiday of full-time mumming I was beginning to go a bit spare. One more tantrum or pooey nappy could well have pushed me over the edge. A composer for film and TV before kids, I had written music for BAFTA and EMMY nominated television. But my music studio had been packed in the loft, along with (what felt like) my identity. I was craving some ‘creative’ time so I put the kids in front of the telly and sat down to write a best selling pop song – the sort of thing that would keep me and my family living in luxury until the day I died. Instead ‘Mum, can you wipe my bum?’ came out, a humorous little ditty about the frustrations of motherhood. When I later uploaded it to YouTube the response was amazing. Thousands of hits came rolling in from all over the world with parents as far away as Argentina, the USA, and Hong Kong posting comments. It seems that parenting is pretty much the same all over the globe. Inspired by this reaction I continued to write more songs about being a wife, a music teacher, about my post birth lack of libido and my hatred of Radio 5 Live. 26,000 hits later I find myself at the Edinburgh Festival to do a one-woman show. Its an unexpected journey that I never would have believed possible three years ago. Have the songs saved me from putting my children on ebay? Quite possibly. And they may well have saved me as well. After all, writing a tune after ‘bath, toilet, teeth, story and bed time’ (phew!) is much healthier than downing a bottle of wine. So off to Edinburgh I went with my ukulele and my piano....
I am quite sure it was a great success. Do visit Vicky's website to find out more about her work.
This starts a bit of a mum theme for the week as I have two more readers sharing their stories. One is a mother who took off to the US on her own for a trip of a lifetime and the other is our lovely Di who, as we know, is the mother of three boys. I will be featuring writing from them later in the week.
I was sent a photograph via email this morning of the flag at the University of Winchester flying at half mast as a tribute to my dear friend Paul. Paul lived and breathed the university and would be eternally proud of this very special tribute. I am doing better today as all the lovely memories are seeping through. I had quite forgotten how much we laughed together so that has been a great comfort to revisit.
May naughty cat has just arrived and put both paws on my keyboard so I am guessing that is all for today. Hoping you have all had a lovely weekend.
Until tomorrow. xx
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