the things not said

It was once suggested to me that I was a “through time” person.  What this means is that I tend to focus on what is ahead.  I’m a planner, somewhat of a dreamer (but not in the staring out of a window in a daze sort of a way), someone who is listening to you (no honestly) but sometimes I have been known to be also thinking about my reply and likely to interrupt (yes that is awful of me and I’m trying to change).

In contrast an “in time” person is someone who is totally involved in the here and now.  This person is unaware of time passing, they are fully invested in the conversation or activity they are in and they’ll worry about the next thing when it comes and slaps them across the face.

Like a wise young four year old son continually warns me, “I’ve got good news and I have got bad news for you Mummy”.  The good news is that being a “through time” person I have a large capacity to be involved in many things.  I’m the friend who if you ask her to help with something or be somewhere at a certain event/place I will deliver.  Because I plan, I know what my diary is looking like, I can juggle, I’m used to doing one thing whilst planning six other things.  The bad news is that I don’t fully experience what is happening now, because there is always a percentage of me thinking about what is next or even what is after the thing, that is after the next thing.

When I became a mother I think I became less extreme on the “through time” dial, you have to, because if that baby is going to take 40 minutes to have a full feed then you are just going to have to sit there and let them finish.  Or if you want your children to have any pleasant memory of their mother from their childhood, you are going to have to actually sit down and play with them for more than 20 minutes at a time.  I imagine the “in time” mothers have had to lean over to my side of the fence too, because you can’t just spend three hours celebrating the relationship your child has with food, you’re going to have to prepare some of it at some point.  And you can’t just get up in the morning and “wing” a day, toddlers need itineraries people!

I have battled with the concept of being “content in my circumstances”, because I really want to be, content.  I know I am privileged.  I know that my problems are ridiculous in terms of what people are facing all over the world right now.  I know that joy strengthens me and gives me health.  I want my children to remember laughter and have special memories of their childhood as they become adults and face the challenges of their journeys through life.

But often I let worry and fears about the future crowd my mind so that I’m far from content.  In fact I am sad, I am critical and judgmental, I compare what I have with what others have and moan.  Ugh it’s exhausting.

I hope that none of you feel that way and you skip through your days in a meadow of thankfulness and bliss, but in my research of chatting with friends, I think most of us feel something other than content from time to time.

Something that has become a mantra for me and if I’m disciplined about making it a way of life it really helps with the contentment thing is – to take each day as it comes.  I literally cannot add hours to my day.  Planning can perhaps make things go more smoothly and make the most of the hours in a day (unless you have toddlers, then you’re dreaming), but there is still only 24 hours in a day and ideally eight of them should be asleep.  So I have 16 hours in my day and that’s all I should concern myself with.

Most days, my 16 hours are going to be full, so I tell myself to just “be” in them.  Try and enjoy the bits that are good and not get stressed about the least appealing parts of the day, like dropping the children off at school or you know, work.  Some days, when I really need to, I can be telling myself to just concern myself with the hour I am in!

Like a wise old man by the name of Albert said, “The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once.” and he’s not wrong.  Time ensures everything doesn’t happen at once so why do I let everything happen at once in my head?  Time was designed to allow us to experience things in order, separately, in their rightful place.

I am at the end of the day now.  All I have left is to clean my teeth and kiss my children as they sleep.  I’ll try to do a thorough job on the first task and make the most of the second.  Tomorrow? I will think about it when it’s today.

In honour of the sixth series of The Great British Bake Off being aired back home at the moment, I have bought Series 1-5 on iTunes and am rather over-indulging on the highs and lows of this very wonderful BBC series.

During one of my GBBO marathon sessions (don’t tell Gareth I think I watched an entire series in under 48 hours!) it dawned on me that life is very much like the baking of a signature bake.  Bear with me here, I know after the above confession you will be assuming my mind is now addled by the obsessive pursuit of the “perfect bake” and the highly sought after ” original combination of flavours”, but I honestly think there is something to be learnt from the experiences of our harangued amateur bakers.

For any of you who don’t know what a ‘signature bake’ is (and frankly I’m saddened by your ignorance) this is the bake that each contestant in the GBBO is required to do at the beginning of each themed week.  So if it were “Cake Week” then all the contestants must first bake a cake that they have done many times before, which in theory should mean they will wow the judges with something surprisingly professional for one that juggles their baking hobby along with a job in a bank, three children under the age of five and a post-graduate degree in Theology.  I mean we’re expecting this:

However all too often something terrible, or in fact nothing in particular happens and they actually produce something like this:

You cringe with the poor wretches as nice-bit-of grandma, Mary Berry and master baker, Paul Hollywood save no punches on their critique of the pitiful lump of sugar and flour before them.  You will hear phrases like, ‘This has NEVER happened before, I don’t understand what went wrong’, ‘I did 500 practice profiteroles this week so it’s so unfair they look like this’ or ‘I put the oven on ‘defrost’ by accident’.  There will be tears and there’s even been, ‘I feel like I’ve let my family down’.  I mean it’s heartbreaking, and it’s all over a macaron!

But don’t we know how they feel?  Maybe not about a beloved ginger snap biscuit with a hint of lavender and a chilli chip, but isn’t it true we can quite regularly feel that “winter of discontent” ourselves?  I know I do.

Like when you start a health kick and you’re going to “be” Gwyneth Paltrow.  You’re planning this:

But by Tuesday night you’re barely taking a breath as you devour this:

Or when you thought a family dog would be so cute and joyful for the family.  You picture something like this:

When in actual fact, more often than not, you come home to this:

And of course there is that day in, day out test of your character, experience, intelligence, patience and willingness to put others ahead of yourself – parenting.  Before the babies arrive and every day after, when you get up in the morning you imagine endless hours of sandcastle building on the beach, dancing and laughing with your children in the kitchen and afternoons playing poo-sticks with boats made out of long grass you collected together.

This does actually happen and you know that we’re going to take pictures and blog about these moments but what every parent will admit if given a sympathetic smile, is that most days you will turn to your significant other and say, ‘We’ve come to this play ground a thousand times before and they always love it, I don’t know why they won’t get out of the car?’ or ‘I just thought it would be fun if we all went for a walk together, what’s so terrible about that?’.  And you witness the kind of misery from your children that make you question if you deserved to have them at all.

I think we can all put our hands up and say, at least four days out of seven, this is our favourite time of the day.

So what can we learn from a GBBO signature bake, apart from there’s nothing worse than a soggy bottom and you should never stir caramelising sugar?

That life is unpredictable.  That you’re not in control of what happens a lot of the time.  That even the simplest of tasks can be the toughest to do when you’re stressing out, so just relax.  That life is not only like a box of chocolates; it’s also like a soufflé or a lemon meringue pie – never the same, unlikely to turn out exactly how you planned it but you must keep on trying, because it has every potential of getting so much better and there will be moments when you feel oh so proud of yourself.

I love coming home to this.

Because I like to run.  I love being out in the open air, feeling physically strong and mentally free, having time to myself, seeing the world at my pace.  And all of that feels even better when I am wearing Sweaty Betty clothing.

Since my first purchase from Sweaty Betty, this brand became a Lovemark for me.  They have my lifelong commitment.  I literally don’t wear any other brand of sportswear.  I can tell you all the reasons why, but this is not a sponsored blog. Oh go on then, it’s because they make sportswear pretty and feminine, their stuff always fits well, it’s 97% perfect quality and their customer service on the 3% that isn’t, makes up for it perfectly.  Put a different way, ‘they had me at hello’.

The book, ‘Lovemarks – the future beyond brands’ by Kevin Roberts, CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi, goes into lots of depth on the subject and I’ll be honest I’ve only skim read it, but from what I gather his essential point is that love is the most powerful emotion in the world so for a brand to succeed it needs customers to make its product a ‘lovemark’ in their lives, an emotional commitment that goes beyond reason.  Well that’s ridiculous I hear you say, if I am spending money on something, I make a reasoned choice.  And that is perhaps true for many things you spend your money on.  But if you stop and think about it, emotion plays a huge part in our consumer activity and it’s branding that gets our money.

My job for the last few years has been to win sponsorship for events in the city I live in, so I think about branding a lot for work.  But since my birthday in July, when I was given some “love mark” presents, I’ve been thinking about the power brands have in my personal life.

I remember when I was a teenager, I worked in the local pub as a waitress.  And my sister worked in a tea shop.  Every few months our parents would take us to Newcastle upon Tyne, so we could spend the money we had saved from our hard work.  We were allowed to go off round the shops on our own and we loved it!  At the end of the day we would travel back home and review all that we had bought.  I don’t remember the exact amounts but let’s say we both had £100 each (it felt like a million!).  Rosie would have about 18 items to show for it, I would have three.  Why?  Because already, I was in love with brands.  At the time it was Levi’s, Doc Martens and Calvin Klein Eternity perfume.  Mercifully the clothing has changed, but I still wear the same perfume – 25 years later!!

Who else has my heart now?  Jack Wills, because they’re “Fabulously British”, and when you live away from home you get a little patriotic.  Kitchen Aid, because they’re so pretty and that’s what they use on the Great British Bake Off.  Marks & Spencers, because for cotton under garments (and Percy Pigs) there is no other.  A Mini Cooper, because of the Italian Job, both of them.  Mac Makeup, because the black casing looks good in a box on my dresser, oh and the make up is pretty effective too.  Liz Earle ‘Cleanse & Polish’, because I’m almost certain my skin became so much better when I started using it and I’m too scared to put the theory to the test!  I could go on…

One thing that I was struck by as I started that list, is that so many of my Lovemarks are British brands, and whilst there are some brands from NZ and Australia that I like, if I had the choice I would probably go back to my first-love brands.  So maybe there is an age for finding your Lovemarks?  Some from your youth you will grow out of, but perhaps from our mid-twenties (or when you get a proper salary?) brands start to become lifers?  And once you have your true love for a certain something, will you exchange it for another?  Will I ever wear Adidas or Nike again?  Should I buy a Kenwood mixer instead because I’ll get more for my money?  Was it in fact a change in my hormones that changed my skin and could I use Olay instead?

According to Kevin Roberts “[In an average day] you can expect to have contact with around 1,500 trademarked products.” which could make for an emotional roller coaster if every product’s branding was appealing.  But that shows just how surrounded (could I say hemmed in?) we are by branding and why it’s a gigantic and powerful industry.

I think the question I have been asking myself over the last few days and the one I wanted to share with you is, how can you tell the difference between you owning a branded product and it owning you?  We may think it’s a reasoned decision we make when we buy a pair of socks or a bar of chocolate, but does branding put up a good fight to win our love beyond reason?

I have a dream.

And I think now is the right time to share it.  To make it official.  To put it out there.

I’m quite sure it’s been there since I was born.  Because so many of our dreams are.  They just can take half a lifetime to be known.  Like it’s crazy to think that I was born with the eggs in my uterus that would one day be Minnie and Jackson but it’s true, I was born to have those two people.

And I think I’m made to bake.  I have the Winney gene in me so I like sweetness.  My mother is a gifted ‘foody’ so I was raised on good puddings.  Ever since I had a kitchen I have baked. Once I have my Kitchen Aid I will begin my training for the Great British Bake Off and maybe one day I too will drop a soggy pie on the floor of that marquee.

This dream though.  This is a big one.  It will change my world and I hope, somehow, it will change others.  Not Martin Luther King change the world, this is not one of those dreams, but it is one of those dreams that if you go after it, if you make the leap, if you work hard, if you take the risk, it will move you from who you are now, to future you.  It will change who you are, for the better.

Before I build this up to something bigger than is helpful, I should say it’s not the only dream of my life.  I’ve had dreams before, some have been realised, some turned out to be nightmares, some perhaps are still sleeping and will be awakened after I’ve worked on this one.  But this is my dream now and I know it’s an important one because it’s been coming for a few years now.

That is sometimes the way isn’t it?  It starts with a thought.  Or you hear someone say something and it ignites in your mind.  But you don’t pay much attention and carry on as normal.

Then you make room for the dream.  You allow random pictures to develop in your mind.  Or you may dare to share a thought of it to one trusted person, but you do it lightly and quietly, so you can retract if you need to.

You start testing it out.  Trying out things that are in the same arena as your dream. You research.  You pay attention when you hear of someone living your dream.  You consider if you’re up to the task.  You ask, why not me?

When you feel sure it is a dream, and you know you want it to be your dream, you voice it.  You speak it out, because you know there is power in words, that when you speak it out, something changes.

I started sharing my dream, owning it as mine, about six months ago.

About a month ago I made a plan in my mind about how I would seriously go for it.  I talked to Gareth about it and together we made a two year plan.  Operation ‘Claire Goes After Her Dream’.  This dream will not take only two years, it will take a lifetime or if I find that I’m not actually that good at it then it may take less than two years!  But I am going to go after it, I am going to invest, I’m going to train, I’m going to learn, I’m going to do it!

It’s funny when you identify something in your life to be real, to be happening, like the birth of a dream, that very often you find encouragement in the most unexpected places.

Last week Jimmy Fallon shared about his injured finger and told his Tonight Show audience that whilst he was in hospital convalescing, he realised that he’s doing exactly what he’s meant to do, to be on television, entertaining people and making their lives more fun.  And no one can deny that guy is living the dream.

On the weekend, Gareth and I watched a Cuba Gooding Jnr film called ‘Life of a King’ which is based on the true story of an ex-con that gets out of prison and starts a chess club in his old neighbourhood to help young people get out of the cycle of drugs and violence – classic Cowlsy film, see also; Finding Forestor, Coach Carter and Good Will Hunting.  All the way through this film the main character talks about the ‘end game’.  Don’t just look at where you are now and respond to the immediate, see the bigger picture of your life and make decisions that will get you to the end game, to your dreams.

Then on Sunday, the preach at church was ‘Dream Walker’.  It felt like the whole thing was aimed at me.  As the speaker challenged us to think about who we are I wrote – encourager, communicator, influencer, connector.  Later she said, don’t delay, don’t put it off, let your life be what it has always been intended to be.  And I understood that this is the season of my life when I go after this dream.  Now.

Who knows what the reality of my dream will look like.  It might be bigger than I could ever imagine or it may just be the link to another thing.  The thing is, I don’t really care about what happens next, I just care about going for it.  I trust the details to my Dream Giver.

Have you ever felt that way?  Like there is something for you to say yes to.  Something for you to do, that’s bigger than you.  You don’t have all the answers but you know you have to go for it.

That’s me right now.

I want to be a writer.