31 March

Isolation Update – Sausages and dresses

Well, here we are again. Another update where I try to fill a page by making absolutely nothing sound interesting. We made it through the weekend. It was nice and felt different because neither of us tried to work. It was DIY, sorting shit out and childcare central around here for two whole days. You can imagine how much I drank.

Yesterday, I cooked our favourite dinner – corned beef and cabbage with a leek and potato gratin. It was LOADED with cheese and oozing with fat and we ate it all and loved every mouthful. Sundays HAVE to be about food, right?

I’d done a Lizzo Peloton class in the morning. It was thirty minutes of hard cycling JUST to Lizzo music. I tried to sing along but could hardly breathe, so afterwards I put on her album and had a kitchen disco while I grated cheese. I felt smug as hell and kept singing ‘Feeling smug as hell’ to the tune of ‘Feeling Good as Hell’. Perfect. It’s exactly what Lizzo would want.

I chatted to my dad on Sunday, and he told me a marvellous story about how he was on FaceTime with my sister and felt what he thought was a big mole on his face. He got very upset about it, and while on the phone to Jane looked in the mirror. ‘Oh no, I’ve got a … no, wait …’ He then realised it wasn’t a mole but a Coco Pop. Him and Jane then totally lost it and I was SO happy to hear that such laughter existed in this weird and unsociable time. He couldn’t wait to tell me about it. And I laughed for about an hour. Until Valentine wet his pants again. Urgh.

We ran out of eggs yesterday and I honestly felt like I was in the war and soldiers were going to come around with tickets that would get me dairy products.

That isn’t what happened. I just went to the shop and got some more eggs.

It did make me think what the perfect emergency supplies would be. Some obvious, some that you only realise you need when the chance of purchasing them is dramatically reduced.

When the pandemic hit, the shelves were so empty. Before I left for Caroline’s funeral, I had a small but genuine fear of not getting home. So I stocked up for Chris and the boys, because I needed to know that they would be alright if they weren’t able to buy food. I think this is what they call being a ‘Mumma Bear’. I went to Target, aiming to buy tins and dried food and loo roll, stuff like that, but the shelves were empty. It was frightening. Nothing had been announced at that point, the word ‘lockdown’ wasn’t yet a common term on everyone’s lips.

I managed to get some tinned vegetables, some weird-shaped pasta that no one else wanted, kitchen roll – the useless and totally unabsorbent kind – flour, long-life milk, jars of peaches and other random shit that I thought Chris could fathom some meals out of, if they got stuck. I told him he had enough to survive on for a week, if this ‘lockdown’ thing, whatever that was, actually did happen. (AND OF COURSE IT DID, IT HAPPENED WITH BLOODY BELLS ON.)

So I’ve been thinking, here is my ultimate list and what I will be putting in airtight containers in our basement when we move house. I reckon, with all of this, we could survive about ten days, no problem.

Loo roll, kitchen roll, cleaning supplies. Toothpaste, soap, shampoo and razors. Lots of sunscreen. Baby wipes, laundry detergent and dish soap.

Cooking oil AND olive oil, flour, baking soda, baking powder, yeast, sugar, coffee, teabags, long-life nut milk (always makes me laugh), dried fruit, egg substitute. Salt and pepper. Ketchup, mayonnaise, mustard, chocolate. A huge bag of rice and a whopping great bag of pasta. A few different shapes, because the shape DOES matter, depending on the sauce. (I still have standards in lockdown.) Japanese panko breadcrumbs (if the kids are refusing to eat the basic food, they might eat it if you cover it in breadcrumbs and fry it). Apple juice. Rice cakes. Honey, Marmite, huge jar of peanut butter, big box of Cheerios.

Tins of peaches, pineapple, coconut milk, tomatoes, tomato paste, ready-chopped garlic (hate it normally, but I cannot survive more than twenty-four hours without garlic), baked beans, chickpeas, peas and a few random kinds of beans for flavourless vegan stews if shit gets really bad.

For the freezer: pretentious beef hot-dog sausages (no butts and eyeballs). Bread. Tortilla wraps. Individually wrapped steaks. Chicken thighs. Bratwurst. Beef mince. Tilapia fillets. As many bags of frozen fruit and vegetables as you can get in. Butter, ready-made pastry and a few frozen pizzas. Packets of ham, turkey and sliced cheese. Frozen chopped onion.

For the kids – lollipops, so I can shut them up in a crisis. Fruit jerky. Loads of healthy-ish granola bars. Seaweed. Cartons of apple juice.

PLUS, so many crisps that you can barely get into the basement. Like, all of the crisps. Build this collection over time. Every time you go to a shop, buy some, and add to the stock. DO NOT be complacent about the crisp supply, just keep plugging away at it. For your entire life.

AND THEN …

10 x Casamigos tequila (it’s the brand George Clooney created. He is my boyfriend.)

5 x fresh lime juice

3 x triple sec

12 x good quality Spanish red wine

12 x dry, crisp white wine

Plastic cups in case things get smashed in an earthquake

A shitload of weed gummies

OK, that’s it.

Reading that, it might actually be quite a fun week.

Right, I’m off for a margarita and I’ll make something FABULOUS in the kitchen. Or maybe I’ll just smash a bag of Kettle chips and whack some fish fingers in the oven.

IS IT TOMORROW YET?

Love Dawn x

1 April

Isolation update – SUCH a Good Mum

I got all ‘Instagram Mum’ on Saturday and we painted terracotta pots with leftover paint samples. They look amazing and the kids loved doing it. I will be proud of myself for the rest of my life for doing an hour of ‘crafts’ with my children. The pots are so cute and really brighten up the garden.

I’m taking the wins where I can get them.

I’ve never been someone to get annoyed by the ‘Smug Mum’ scene on Instagram that gets everyone so riled up. When women post those perfect family photos, where the mummy and daddy are laughing at the kid playing in a pile of mud but it’s in portrait mode and the mum is close by with a towel at the ready and a load of LOLS and the caption reads something ridiculous like ‘I love it when he gets all messy. He’s a kid, it’s what they do. Let them play with mud!’ I don’t get annoyed because we all know what happens next.

She goes in to retrieve the child from the mud. The child goes ballistic and smothers the mum’s pretty white dress in mud that she later discovers has tar in it and will never wash out. The child’s muddy hands go into the mother’s mouth, so the mother eats the mud. The father tries to help, to which the mother screams ‘YOU DON’T NEED TO FIX THIS’ because she harbours so much resentment towards him because he only took two weeks’ paternity and spent the whole time playing online poker. Eventually, the mother gets the child out of the mud, her dress and face soiled. The child then scratches its long, untrimmed nails down her face, leaving what will probably be a permanent scar. She drags the child kicking and screaming to the bath, where she showers it down while it thrashes around so badly that it smacks its head on the side of the bath, getting a golf-ball level bump that she has to disclaim on a form when she drops the child at day care the next day. She tries to dress the child as it kicks her in the tits and face until the mother is so despondent she puts the TV on and collapses on the sofa, only to be jumped on by the other kids that she had forgotten to feed. A few hours later, when she is exhausted, weepy and possibly quite hammered, she looks at her phone and sees the lovely photo her husband took before all of the above happened and she decided to divorce him. So she posts it on Instagram, and allows the lie of perfection to cloud her reality. The husband says ‘Shall we go to bed’ and she says yes and follows him. They don’t have sex, the baby wakes in the night and the mother is sick because there was norovirus in the mud she ate.

HAVE I PAINTED A GOOD PICTURE THERE??

We all know that is what parenting young kids looks like.

But still, I’m proud of the pots.

In darker news, I got really pissed off to hear how many people in America (California especially) have rushed out to buy guns. People who would usually be ‘anti-guns’. Everyone is terrified that they will be attacked by people who have lost everything. I HATE IT. I have a zero-gun tolerance rule, no matter who the fuck you are. Same rules for all. Also, nothing bad has happened yet. NO TO GUNS. The fear, the paranoia, it has to stop. I hate it. You’ve been asked to stay home so you don’t catch flu, you don’t need a fucking gun. What are you going to do, shoot the virus?

Makes me SO MAD.

(Imagine if, after writing that, I get murdered in my own home by a maniac that I could have shot with a gun.)

What will be will be. I will not have a gun in my house, ESPECIALLY because of my kids. Even though we had a shotgun when I was a kid, and I was amazing at hitting Coke cans at the bottom of the garden. Reason ONE I don’t want a gun in the house … KIDS LIKE PLAYING WITH THEM.

I hated everyone when I found out they were buying guns. EVERYONE.

We do have baseball bats around though – we’re not fucking stupid.

Remember when I painted those pots?

Love Dawn x

2 April

Isolation update – Licking the cheese

My cheese intake has more than quadrupled since isolation started. I have it in sandwiches, on forks, I lick it off knives, and sometimes I just stand next to the fridge and eat it directly from the door.

Marmite and cream cheese sandwiches though, mmmmmm.

I risked my life in the supermarket today and got loads of nice food. It’s literally all we have that changes each day, so I’m going for it with yummy meals. Also, I’ve introduced a 4 p.m. charcuterie board. My kids are gonna be such wankers.

Seriously though, my ‘thing’ in life is food. More so than dresses, it’s so important to me. I think I have a really emotional connection to it because I lived with my grandparents until I was ten, and all they ever cooked was ham, egg and chips type stuff (don’t get me wrong, I LOVE that food). So when I moved in with my aunty and uncle, and they were serving up fish with capers, whole crabs, oysters, steaks, full Sunday roasts, GODDAM avocado mousse starters, my taste buds got the kind of wake-up call that changes you forever. Food became my obsession, as cooking is now. My favourite part of every day is making the food we eat. I shop, I cook, I follow recipes and I make shit up. It makes me SO happy..

I don’t know if any of you ever listened to my podcast series ‘Get It On’. It was an interview show where I asked my guests why they wear what they wear. At the end of every episode, I asked them: If there was one photo that represented who you are the most, what would it be? For me, it was simple. The photo would be me, in my favourite vintage Ossie Clarke dress, getting a tray of sausages out of the oven. I picked this image (the photo doesn’t have to exist, you can make it up) because it’s about my love of vintage dresses, but also the big tray of sausages suggests I am cooking for a bunch of people. Which is me at my absolute happiest.

So, I ask you, what would you be doing in your photo?

Love Dawn x

3 April

Isolation Update – Stupid orange things: no!

It was Chris’s morning with the kids, so I lay in bed like a lush, drinking coffee until 8 a.m., then did the Lizzo Peloton class and ate bacon to make up for it. I think that is what they mean by a ‘balanced diet’?

Nailing it.

I took the kids to the park today. Our usual spot (the baseball pitch) was empty, which was great. Valentine had a meltdown within thirty seconds, and Art followed with an absolute belter a few minutes later. Both sat on the edge of the baseball pitch, next to a little plastic orange triangle, screaming with high emotion about God knows what. Little did I know, but two big men who wanted bigger muscles had put a row of those orange things in a line to create some sort of circuit for their exercises. They got really cross at me for bringing kids into their situation. They were grunting and sweating out of their foreheads at me. All ‘Urgh’ and ‘You’re in our spot.’ Please see my problem … I now have FOUR men being grumpy with me in the park. I asked mine to get up, but they wouldn’t. So the two workout freaks huffed and puffed some more. I tried to lift one of mine, saying loudly, so the men heard, hoping they’d cut me some slack, ‘Come on, we are in the way.’ But the men got madder at me and looked at me like I was totally ruining their life. I got upset. My kids get out the house for less than an hour a day and these men are pissed off that they are within a foot of their stupid orange cone? FUCK. OFF.

I suddenly felt rage. Real rage. The two men tried to stare me down. The park was practically empty, they could see my kids were being assholes and that I had a lot on my plate, but they didn’t care. MEN! They could have just moved their STUPID orange plastic thing five feet to the right, and all would have been well. But they didn’t. (I would have done it myself, but it could have had coronavirus on it.) They looked at me like vermin, because I dared to have children. So, I Mumma-beared the shit out of it.

‘OWN THE FUCKING PARK, DO YOU?’ I screeched to the men.

On that note, both of my children stood up and walked away. I was left, quivering, livid, determined. The two men pretended not to notice me, but I stood firm. ‘There is all that space over there,’ I continued. I then flicked my hand violently in the direction of grass. They came over, picked up the orange thing and moved it. Easy. I followed my children over to the nearby tree they were now hiding behind.

‘Are you cross, Mummy?’ Art said.

‘Not with you, baby,’ I told him. ‘But those men are ASSHOLES.’

Something tells me I won’t be Iceland’s #mumoftheyear this time round.

We found another corner of the park, and an old lady stood around twenty feet from us doing lunges. She had a lot of questions: ‘Are you a full-time stay-at-home mum?’ she asked. To which I said, ‘Yes.’ Because right now I am, and I couldn’t be bothered to explain otherwise. ‘What does your husband do?’ she asked. ‘He’s an actor,’ I replied. She then made all sorts of assumptions.

‘I’m an acting teacher,’ she said.

‘Oh nice,’ I replied.

‘Tell him to call me, I’ll teach him how to act.’

‘You know, he’s doing OK, actually. But thanks so much.’

‘He needs lessons,’ she said.

‘He’s doing fine, really,’ I said.

But she wouldn’t let it go. So I ended up yelling – because she was quite far away – ‘It’s FINE, he is CHRIS O’DOWD.’ Joggers stopped jogging. Dogs stopped barking. Trees stopped swaying. She yelled back ‘WHO?’ And then jogged off.

SO awkward.

I had tequila at 4 p.m. and I think it saved my life. I also smoked some pot then smashed half a saucisson and a massive lump of brie. BEFORE dinner. That’s where I’m at.

LA announced that school is out until September. It is full-on news. Awful, in a way. Wonderful, in another. I am trying to be good at this. Trying to imagine the story I tell of the PANDEMIC in ten years.

‘It was a weird and scary time, but we got through it. It was months of family time that we’ve never had since. It was special. We barbecued, sat naked in the paddling pool, watched movies, ate chips. We painted each other’s nails, played with the dog, put the kids to bed then watched loads of great movies. We played backgammon and had lots of sex, made up games, taught the kids how to read. I tried new recipes, we ate some amazing food, I took care of the old lady next door, FaceTimed my family loads, did as much as we could for people who were struggling and tried to write some really funny things. It was a weird time, but we did it, and we had a lot of fun.’

My reality is NOT THAT, but I am going to try to aim for it, even a little.

What would you like your PANDEMIC story to be, and how likely is it that you think it will happen?

Love Dawn x

3 April

Isolation Update – Let me squeeze your finger

I don’t mean to go on about this, but do you remember that time I painted those terracotta pots with my kids?

An absolute triumph.

Such a good mum.

I literally ran out of ideas thirty seconds after that, and can’t be bothered to do anything right now, but nothing takes away from the fact that I did it.

Is it 2023 yet? Because maybe this will be over by then.

Isn’t it funny that all those people who get Botox won’t be able to get it while this is happening? I wonder if Instagram will just go really, really quiet. I hope we get to see their real faces. I hope they get to see them too, and realise that actually they’re alright without it.

I had a nice day. Nothing happened, nothing didn’t happen. It was just a fine day. We baked a terrible apple pie. For some reason I’m not getting my squishy, sugary, gooey bit right. I put chocolate in it, which was a storming success. Then I warmed it up, shoved on a dollop of ice cream and it was YUM. I don’t enjoy baking, but the kids LOVE it, so I am going to get better at it. I’ll be the next Mary Berry by the end of this. As in, I’ll be eighty-five. WHEN WILL THIS END?

I had halloumi for lunch, because now I just fry my cheese.

And here’s a really simple salad recipe that I’m thinking of making for dinner, so nice as a side on a hot day:

Peel and cut an apple into small slices, then halve them

Chop a shallot (why does that always make me think of Jilly Cooper novels?)

Chop some celery

Add some raisins (optional)

Spoon in a big blob of mayonnaise

Sprinkle with paprika

It’s REALLY yummy. My Aunty Jane used to make it a lot and it reminds me of home. She does the most brilliant BBQs. A variety of meats, lamb steaks, sausages, even some salted mackerel. Her selection of salads was always the best. The one above, with another that always took guests by surprise: garlic, mint and salt mixed into Greek yogurt, poured lavishly over sliced cucumber. Another would be the freshest Guernsey tomatoes with basil, and then a big bowl of Jersey Royals. We’d sit at the table outside, my uncle in charge of the BBQ, and eat it all up while our tortoise, Daisy, ambled around under the table nibbling our toes. The perfect Sunday, and I miss it so much. It’s comforting to imagine them there, carrying on as though things are normal, but without anyone else with them. Daisy will miss my toes, they were always her favourite.

Anyway, any of the salads above go brilliantly with BBQ or ribs. Do you ever do ribs? It’s quite American. Ask your butcher for a baby back of ribs. Put the ribs into a shallow baking tray with about half an inch of water. Season the ribs. Wrap them very tight in tin foil and put them in the oven on whatever 200 degrees Celsius is where you live. Cook them for two hours. When done, get them out, SLATHER them in BBQ sauce and put them back in on a higher heat for about fifteen minutes. Until the sauce is all hot and sticky. DONE. BOOSH. BACK OF THE NET – 400 FOOT JIZZ.

Over and out in a storm of food and jizz. How was your day?

Love Dawn x