Oh how I absolutely loved this! Now after a busy day at work I love to go out and have a quick blast around with my running shoes on. The Trunce series is an annual group of trail runs, nine in total, through summer, every few weeks on a Monday evening. The series cumulates with race nine which is done in fancy dress.
Now I’ve often been asked to go and run it and always said ‘NO’, I like to keep my trainers clean! It might be only four miles but it involves wading through the river three times, squelching through mud and the most brutal un-runnable uphills and downhills. It’s usually raining and the river is freezing cold.
Anyway, I was asked this time and I said ‘YES’ and oh boy did I enjoy it. When I was little I used to love playing in the mud. I often got into trouble for digging up small sections of my Mum’s flower beds in order to make my mud pies which I used to decorate with and array of berries, twigs and leaves. Well this this was just like going back to my childhood. How often at 51 do you get chance to get dressed up in a silly costume, run through 3 rivers and roll about in the mud! Not very often. Then to top it all there was beer and crisps at the end!!
I’m sort of sad it was the last race for this year. I’m definitely on for the series next year, I wonder if they’ll let me wear fancy dress for all nine?!?!
Well the car is fully loaded and this post if for all those mums and dads out there at this time of year who are waving off their nearest and dearest as they head off back to university or wherever else they may be going, and a bit of advice on letting go if it’s your first time!
I can’t believe it’s come around to that weekend again! The weekend when university beckons and you are back to that empty house. The car is packed up with an equal ratio of alcoholic beverages and essentials, or are they the same thing?!? That big hug on the doorstep that never gets any easier, that emptiness you feel even though you’ve been silently muttering under your breath that you can’t wait for them to go back after a summer of picking up strewn clothes, wondering what time in the morning they will come in and what time in the afternoon they will get up. However, if like me you feel a little bereft, trust me, it wears off, you get used to them not being around and you will get over it.
Being a parent is one of the most rewarding but challenging unpaid jobs ever. They don’t come with instruction booklets do they when you get them and they are all different and unique. You spend all those years questioning whether you are doing and saying the right things, whether you are doing enough, wondering what sort of individual they will turn out to be. However they are all different and looking back now I wished I had spent less time worrying because despite the exact same upbringing my two are as different as chalk and cheese, both individual and both with their own strengths, but different strengths, and there’s a place in this world for everyone.
There was a social media post over the summer from our local village pub, thanking all the customers who continue to support them, it went on to say they had now got a few groups of university students that had frequented the pub a lot over the summer and, “what a lovely polite bunch they all are, a credit to their parents”. Now I took the positive from this! I could have read it as the fact that he’s spent all his student finance and almost all summer in the pub! However, I’m focusing on the ‘lovely polite bunch’ bit of the quote and thinking I must have done something right.
Then along came the Duke of Edinburgh’s Expedition report for the youngest which read, “Your team appreciated your entertainment value”. Now for anyone who writes reports on children or who works in a school that’s a polite way of saying your child has been the class clown and the joker all week! At Junior school I used to dread that, “Could we just have a word with you mum” at the end of the day as you went to pick them up, that pang of, “Oh no what have they done now”, usually fidgeting or chattering as sitting still and concentrating was not his thing. However the next line on this report went on to say “Your funny conversations kept morale high, a great success, well done!” And I actually thought do you know what, that’s lovely.
What I’m trying to say is if you have a class clown, one that has a social life larger than life or one that breaks the mould in any other way please let it go, do not worry or stress and try to make them fit the mould, they will find their way and you will only make them miserable and worry yourself to death trying to get them to fit the stereotype.
Here’s a bit of advice if you’ve got one leaving home for the first time and some of the mistakes I now see that I made in the first year which have not been repeated this weekend in year 2! I’m the first to admit that I found it very difficult to let them go. You give them wings so they can fly but when they went I so wanted to keep hold of that safety rope to make sure they did not fall, but if you hold too tightly onto the rope there’s actually a greater chance they’ll fall.
The first mistake I made was that I did absolutely everything in the first year. I took control and absolutely micro-managed the move from home to university 3 hours away and I found it so stressful. I bought everything he needed, I packed it, I drove him to university and I unpacked it all and set his room up. Why did I do this? Looking back now it was to make me feel better – so I could leave knowing I had provided him with everything he needed. While I unpacked his stuff he laid on his bed keeping up with his posse and his band of admirers on social media! He had more kitchen equipment that a Michelin starred chef, a First Aid kit that would have been the envy of most hospital A&E departments, and a full array of cleaning products. DO NOT DO THIS!
Firstly, most students do not clean, some do, and hats off to you if you have one that you’ve trained to clean. All the cleaning products came back unused. Do not buy them! Do yourself a favour and save some money, they will get them if they need them. If your child is a long way from home and you go to visit them just stop at the closest service station to use the toilet before you get there. Whatever you do, do not under any circumstances use the student toilet. If you must, just make sure you hover, do not sit, if you sit on the seat for any longer than 30 seconds you will stick and have to be surgically removed.
Secondly, make sure they unpack their own stuff, or even better go with you to get it and then they know what they’ve got, AND what to do with it! Not only did he have washing capsules, he had fabric softener and scent booster. However, it was only after four months when he returned home for a visit and the house was filled with a constant musty aroma and he was asked to demonstrate his use of a washing machine did it become apparent that washing products had not been used for the full four months! Then there was the week when he was very ill with tonsillitis and his flat mates rallied round him to donate their medication while his expedition First Aid Kit languished in the back of his cupboard.
Now, I absolutely love him to bits and none of this was his fault, it was mine!! So don’t make the same mistake as me, let go of the safety rope and let them fly, there’s much less chance of them coming crashing down if you do.
This year I’ve done the absolute opposite! My only contribution has been the offer to pay for, but not do, the first food shop. My only mistake is that I omitted to say that it was not to include the beer for the housewarming party! He’s packed all his own stuff and to make sure I did not interfere I didn’t even go to take him back, I stayed at home. I got a video call late afternoon for my virtual tour of the house and was quite pleased to see that everything looked in order and he doesn’t actually need me. Now, I can foresee a few problems that would irritate me but I’m keeping my mouth shut. Think 6 teenage boys, at least 8 pairs of trainers each and a hallway the size of a postage stamp with no shoe storage. It did look a bit akin to a scene of destruction and the sports shop shoe sale rolled into one but hey ho, it’s not me that’s going to trip up over them every day, I’m sure they’ll work it out. Then there’s the fact that teenagers don’t sit up, they sort of slouch and drape themselves over anything they come into contact with, I’ll leave it up to them to work out how all 6 of them are going to get on the two small sofas. I’ve been advised by a very reliable source that after only two hours they have already acquainted themselves with the house of girls next door and agreed joint usage of their garden and Pryzm nightclub had already been agreed as Saturday night’s venue!
So with that all sorted I’ve well and truly let go of the safety rope to let them fly. I can’t wait to see how high they soar this year but as always, I’ll still be here to catch any crash landings, but hopefully we’ll get to after Christmas this year!
So if it’s your first year, be brave, let go, you will have done enough and you’ll be giving them the greatest gift, their independence and freedom.
Here is me – Friday night climbing session at the climbing wall – facing one of my fears …….heights……….and doing some adventuring instead of my housework. Absolutely loved it, my return to climbing since before the pandemic.
Now, two of the lessons I took from my travels this summer were the importance of adventure and the fact that fear is good, it’s ok to be scared. What is important is that you do the thing you fear, yes in small steps at a time if you have to, be brave and the fear will subside. The only thing you have to fear is fear itself as it will stop you doing things you want to do. People look at me and think I’m fearless, I’m not, there are a lot of things I’m fearful of and became much more fearful of after having children which happens to 1 in 10 of us mums. I would say I am brave, not fearless (my mother might say irresponsible) as I face my fears, because the things I want to do and achieve are more important than the fear itself.
I said in my introduction to the blog that Nelson Mandela said that ‘Courage was not the absence of fear but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid but he who conquers that fear’.
The important thing is to rationalise that fear and work out exactly what it is you are scared of, convince yourself it’s not rational, as quite often it isn’t, and to ask yourself what is the worst thing that can happen, because I bet it’s not half as bad as the worst consequence you have going on in your head, believe me I’ve been there. I’ve been in that cable car going up the side of Mount Etna, quite merrily chugging along, whilst in my head is playing a scene akin to a James Bond movie with a broken cable car and me clinging onto the cable with one finger dangling from a great height!
I faced quite a few fears on a long walk through France and Spain this summer. They’ll seem quite small and irrational to some but if you are the one that’s scared it’s a big deal. The dark! Now I’ve been scared of being out alone outside in the dark since I was small and I know where this comes from and it is the most irrational fear. Often when you say you are scared of something you are not scared of what you say you are scared of but of a consequence of that thing, what will happen. I am not scared of the dark, I am scared of being abducted in the dark not the dark itself. When I was small in Yorkshire 1975 to 1980 to be precise when I was 4 to 9 years old there was a prolific serial killer on the loose, the Yorkshire Ripper. He murdered 13 women and attempted to murder 7 more in this 5 year period, all within a 25 mile radius of my home, usually in the evening and in the dark. I can remember the adult hysteria as he eluded capture every time and more importantly I can remember not being allowed out on my own in the dark throughout that period. When you are that age, between 4 and 9 years old, you are quite impressionable and ever since then I’ve been a little scared of the dark, but apparently so are almost 10% of the adult population. I’ve overcome this now as I understand where that fear comes from and why it is irrational, the night is no different to the day, it’s just there’s no light. So when I had to set off walking early in the morning a couple of times on my own in the dark this summer on my walk, sometimes though wooded areas I’m not going to say I enjoyed it, I was slightly nervous, but I rationalised that fear and the more I did it, it gradually became normal.
So my adventure this weekend, climbing! I say I’m scared of heights, I’m not, I’m scared of falling, and those walls at 15 metres are pretty high. But I can rationalise it. I have a harness on. The carabiner that attaches to my harness I put on and then double check. Yes, I’m reliant on the mechanical auto belay which is checked regularly or the person belaying me not to give me too much slack but why would they? Now you might look at the photos and think I went straight up there. I didn’t. I haven’t been for a while so I went up gradually, throwing myself off a little higher each time until the fear subsides and it becomes normal, then that’s another fear conquered.
So if you are scared of something, don’t fear the fear. Ask yourself what is it exactly you are scared of, is it rational, what’s the worst that can happen, is the thing that you desire more important and approach it slowly one step at a time. Trust me, you’ll feel so proud of yourself when you’ve done it.
