Balls, burners, the slipperiness of time

And has anyone else watched Mea Culpa? I am dying of laughter

This week I learned that:

• A panel made up of only men is called a ‘manel’

• The first thing to form in the womb is the anus (ㅅ)

• ‘Podcast’ is a compound word of iPod and broadcast!!!!!

Naturally, these discoveries have enhanced my life immeasurably.

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I interviewed Gillian Anderson for Grazia (out now) and it was such a pleasure to talk to her about one of my favourite characters on TV, the devastatingly charismatic Dr Jean Milburn - and why Jean’s second experience of matrescence, in her late 40s, needed to be something she struggled with, rather than breezed through. Anderson also revealed that she went back to work on The X Files ten days after having a C-Section, in 1994. God bless… America?

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Whilst on a panel (not a manel) last year, I was asked the extremely Now question of how I maintain ‘balance’. Given that I was literally balancing on the edge of the sofa at that point, filled to the gills with 38 weeks of baby, I emitted a strangled laughed and then cited Laugh Kookaburra, a 2009 essay by David Sedaris for The New Yorker, which I first read 4 or 5 years ago, and have since thought about frequently.

“Pat was driving, and as we passed the turnoff for a shopping center she invited us to picture a four-burner stove.

“Gas or electric?” Hugh asked, and she said that it didn’t matter.

This was not a real stove but a symbolic one, used to prove a point at a management seminar she’d once attended. “One burner represents your family, one is your friends, the third is your health, and the fourth is your work.” The gist, she said, was that in order to be successful you have to cut off one of your burners. And in order to be really successful you have to cut off two.”

The burners aren’t fixed - you can switch one off, for another - but you can never have all 4 burning at the same time.

The reason that I have thought about this so much since I read it, is because it made me feel a little despairing. To illustrate her theory, Pat says she switched off Friends and Health. But, speaking from personal experience, turning off the Health stove is a terrible idea. And while turning down the Friends flame to a flicker is inevitable - groups shrinking with the onset of age, nights out becoming rare with the arrival of children or ageing parents - the thought of extinguishing it, is devastating. I’ve always envied a friend’s husband who is entirely self-sufficient. He doesn’t need - or want - friends. Imagine how much easier life would be? It’s not even a burner in the first place! But I couldn’t do it.

Pat wasn’t telling anyone else to do that, mind. But the theory didn’t feel hugely freeing. Without health and friendship, what the heck does old age look like?

I recently found a more cheering idea, from a 1991 speech given by Coca Cola CEO Brian Dyson, called The Five Balls of Life. Some of the balls of life are glass, some are rubber, and ‘balance’ is when you figure out which ones can be dropped and which ones can’t. The balls suggest more levity, I think, than the burners. They suggest that everything can be in motion, which can help when you feel static. (Depending on the day, this can feel like being rooted, or it can feel like being trapped.)

Dyson’s 5 balls are: Work, Friends, Family, Health and Spirit. The only rubber one, he says, is Work. If that’s surprising from one of the biggest CEOs in the world, in the late 80s (the hustle era!), it also suggests that you don’t need to turn off Friends. (This took me a bit of time to get my head round, btw - he’s not suggesting you drop work, literally, which is clearly not viable for most of us, so much as he is suggesting it bounces back whereas your health, or your marriage, might not.)

This brings me neatly to Kenneth Koch’s poem You Want A Social Life With Friends, which always makes me laugh.

Perhaps - and this feels most convincing - balance it just a myth? (I am deliberately keeping this more big-picture holistic, rather than drilling down into the nitty gritty of productivity/ anti-productivity/ workflow, because I OD’d on those books a few years ago and I suspect I’m not alone.) I have always loved reading the work of Oliver Burkeman when it comes to time management, because he essentially throws the whole thing out the window:

“The main problem of time management isn’t failing to prioritise what matters. It’s that there are too many things that matter.”

Yes I thought. I overstuffeth because j’adore it all!

“Maybe there’s no path in life that will make you feel you’re meeting your family’s expectations while simultaneously serving your soul. There’s no principle that says you must be able to fulfil all the roles you think you ought to fulfil. And when the rules of a game make it unwinnable, the only way to win is to change the rules.”

Burkeman, who wrote this particular piece in 2018 and has since expanded it into a book, Four Thousand Weeks, offers us a new layer: that it’s not just about dropping the balls, or switching off the burners, it’s about knowing that the game is rigged. And that’s of course, before you factor in your own set of privileges - for instance, I have an involved co-partner, a stable home and childcare for when I work. Whatever your load, suggests Burkeman, balance is a myth - things will burn and smash - and you need to find your peace with that.

Last night, I wanted to finish writing this newsletter and read a big chunk of The Bee Sting. Instead, in a highly unusual move, I was asleep by 9.30am. I sprung out of bed at 6.30am, but I’d also lost a whole evening in which to work, and read books. Gain (sleep) involves loss (work.) Ball in air, ball on floor.

A journalist I know sent me a message this week saying she always sees me out and about, looking purposeful - and I thought, if only you knew that I was probably looking for my car, because I’d forgotten where I’ve parked it (on one memorable occasion last year, I reported it stolen and almost accepted an insurance claim, before finding it a week later), or trying to remember who I’m meant to be meeting because I still have a paper diary but often don’t write things in it, or walking rapidly because I forgot to put underwear on that day and it’s getting breezy. (This, Burkeman suggests, is the goal. Not forgetting the underwear - wouldn’t recommend that in a skirt actually - but the existence and the acceptance of the overstuffing of life.)

I feel like a piñata with indigestion, stippled with scorch marks, and yet this woman saw another woman striding into battle with the world, confident that she would win.

I didn’t intend to write this today. I meant to write about my favourite vintage celebrity interviews (which I still intend to write). But I’m feeling particularly mushy about the passage of time - the day before my 37th birthday, a few weeks before my last baby turns 1 - and it feels good to keep thinking about it all: the balls, the rubber, the glass, the motion. I’m desperate to harness and halt time, to stretch my hours thin as taffy, to keep all those burners on! But sometimes, maybe, it’s best to go to bed early and remember your knickers.

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BITS

A riot of an interview with one of my faves Armistead Maupin on why Clapham is his new San Fran and why he always says his most recent book is his last. Will I be reading Mona of the Manor? You bet I will!

I wept reading this blog post by Wendy Mitchell, posted by her daughter after she died. Mitchell was a former NHS worker turned advocate for living with dementia, who published several books and who did so much to help us understand the nuances of a disease which will affect 152 million people by 2050. I was honoured to interview her for Doing It Right in 2022, and I really recommend the episode to anyone who wants to learn more about this cruel disease, from someone who has it (rather than just those observing it). She was both gentle and fierce and I think about her often.

Heart strings well and truly twanged by this piece in The Guardian about a man who runs a support group for men called Trevor (membership size: 11.)

“I’m basically creating a way for people to meet. Ultimately, the aim is for TrevorsTogether.com to help anyone, regardless of their name. But for now, to keep it manageable, it’s all about Trevors.”

Simon Hattenstone is one of the best celebrity profilers out there and his fourth interview with Pete Docherty and Carl Barât, in 19 years - with musings on past interviews, addiction and the pair’s oscillating fragility - is moving and masterful.

Ph. by Perou for The Guardian

I was immersed in this episode of Why Do You Hate Me? a podcast by the BBC’s Disinformation Reporter, Marianna Spring, where she meets the young Polish woman who received death threats after publicly revealing that she thought she was Madeleine McCann.

I have had my fill of Tradwife dissections - if you’re new to the phenomenon, I suggest reading this, this, or this - but this piece by my friend Monica de la Villadière on living like a tradwife for a week, made me laugh.

“As soon as I fold an item they grab it and unfold it, but I try to keep my cool and remember what @TradWivesClub says: “Mamas, as you’re folding laundry today, pray for the child whose clothes you are folding.” I try to pray for my children, rather than praying they will stop bloody unfolding things.”

If you’re a fan of Tortoise media’s output (Sweet Bobby, Hoaxed), I recommend Who Trolled Amber, which I’m a few eps into. I’ve deliberately avoided the many re-tellings of the dreaded Heard vs. Depp trial - a melting pot of misogyny and fecal detail - but this offers a riveting new angle, as investigative reporter Alexi Mostrous, with the help of data analysts, reveals that more than half of the millions of anti-Heard posts across social media were created by bots. What if this was an organised campaign? Could it have affected the trial? And what are the ripple effects of this, for society? Terrifying and fascinating.

I only learned about Earth Mama, the debut from Olympian-turned-director (and all before the age 30!) Savannah Leaf, when I read the film had won a BAFTA and as soon as I did, I watched it. A sort of modern interpretation of Ken Loach’s Ladybird Ladybird (which is based on a true story), it’s an immensely moving film about a young mother, Gia, pregnant with her third child and trying to get her first two kids out of the foster system. I particularly like the videography, which instead of being grey-scale and gritty is candy-hued and soft focus.

I’m including Mea Culpa here only because it was so bafflingly awful that I need to know if anyone else has watched it. Why did Tyler Perry make this? Why did Kelly Rowland star in it? Why would anyone have sex in paint? To quote The Guardian: it is “hilariously messy” in every sense of the word. If you’re looking for a laugh, I don’t not recommend it.

Lastly, this piece by Virginia Sole-Smith, You Have Permission To Stop Breast-Feeding, will be a balm to anyone who needs it. Related reading: Sirin Kale’s piece, ‘I felt rage. I had traded my sanity for milk’.

See you on Friday, for a letter on books to share with your teenagers.