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at burrow.com/ACAST. That's 15% off

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at burrow.com/ACAST. Hello,

1:31

my friend, and welcome to Catch Up With Louise

1:33

McSharry. And happy Friday to you if you're listening

1:35

on Friday. You can listen whenever you want, my

1:38

friend. It doesn't matter what day of the week

1:40

it is. I hope you're having a good one.

1:42

If not, don't worry about it. They can't all

1:44

be good, as regularly discussed on this podcast. Thank

1:46

you very much to all of you who joined

1:48

the Patreon this week. Maybe

1:51

I should start reading out names. I'm so

1:53

grateful to you. Literally, every single one of

1:55

you, you are making it possible

1:57

for me to continue this podcast to produce these three

1:59

episodes. episodes a week and obviously to produce the

2:01

two bonus episodes that I do every

2:04

second week for the Patreon. To be one of those

2:06

next week, we'll do the mailbag and I keep forgetting

2:08

to tell you to

2:11

send me your feedback, which is I

2:13

need that if I want to do the

2:15

mailbag episode. The mailbag episode for anybody who's

2:17

not familiar, it's the thing I do every

2:19

four weeks where I take your text messages

2:21

and your voice notes sent into the pod's

2:23

phone and then I respond to them and

2:25

often people respond to other people's messages. It's

2:28

a really nice thing. I love hearing from

2:30

you and a great community buzz there on

2:32

the Patreon. But the phone number, if you

2:34

have thoughts, opinions, suggestions,

2:36

feedback, anything you want really, the

2:38

number is 0892096423. It's

2:42

0892096423. You

2:46

can send a text, as I said, or ideally voice

2:48

notes to the WhatsApp there. The

2:50

number is in the show notes for every episode, but

2:52

I keep forgetting to say it in the episode. So

2:54

that's me ticking that box

2:57

now. I do not have a huge amount of

3:00

recommendations for you this week

3:03

because I've kind of given them to you across the week and

3:06

I was mainly reading the Kathy

3:08

Sweeney book Breakdown, which I'm about to discuss

3:11

with Kathy Sweeney now in a minute. Now I

3:13

regret to inform you that I've once again embarrassed

3:15

myself by crying during an interview. Turning

3:17

into Drew Barrymore or something, this book got me. As

3:24

I say, it's called Breakdown. The first

3:26

line on the back of the book is,

3:28

mothers are not supposed to go on road

3:30

trips. I found this book to be really

3:32

confronting and moving deeply relatable

3:34

in parts, almost scarily relatable at times, which

3:37

is a sentiment that lots of people have

3:39

shared with me in my Instagram

3:41

DMs as well. It's about

3:43

motherhood. It's about modern living. It's about getting to a

3:45

stage in your life and looking around and kind of questioning

3:47

how you got there in the first place. I

3:51

loved it, which you will hear in

3:53

this interview and unfortunately, yes, at the

3:55

end of the interview, I do absolutely

3:57

miss it. So

4:00

cool for me and good for my

4:02

professional reputation. Anyway, hopefully you

4:05

will enjoy this conversation Kathy

4:07

Sweeney is a brilliant writer as I

4:09

say I think that all women will

4:12

connect this book on some level I think if you're a

4:14

mother you will connect to it even more and aside

4:17

from anything else It's also brilliantly written not too

4:19

long Which is great because sometimes if you don't

4:21

have a lot of time it can feel like

4:23

you're never gonna finish a book and that Will

4:25

make you kind of demotivated to start but this

4:27

is 217 pages And

4:31

I think it is perfect. So

4:33

yeah highly recommend if you haven't listened or if

4:35

you haven't read it Excuse me, and you think

4:37

you're going to read it then maybe You

4:40

should pause this episode and come back to it after

4:43

you've read it because you'll definitely enjoy it more I think

4:45

if you have read it But you'll enjoy it either way

4:47

to be honest because Kathy's great and there's

4:49

lots of kind of universal themes Disgusts in

4:51

the conversation and in the book. Anyway, I'm gonna

4:54

stop babbling now Please enjoy this chat with Kathy

4:56

Sweeney Well Kathy I suppose a good place to

4:58

start is to just learn a little bit about

5:00

you and how you came to writing in the

5:02

first place Okay,

5:05

Louise. Thank you. I studied

5:08

English at University after school

5:11

because I just always

5:13

have done the only thing

5:15

that I wanted to do I don't have a huge

5:17

amount of imagination and I don't if I like something

5:20

I don't go thinking what are the other things I

5:22

just just do that thing So I studied English and

5:24

then again the same thing. What will I do? I'll

5:27

teach English and that

5:29

all went really like really well, and I

5:31

put a lot of my thoughts

5:33

and passion and so on into the

5:36

classroom and in my 30s kind of

5:38

just Shifting

5:40

personal life. I found myself

5:44

feeling for the first time a Compulsion

5:47

to put things down

5:49

on paper and

5:51

once I started and I'm

5:53

nothing instantly But once I started

5:56

it kind of changed me

5:59

in that I kept writing and

6:04

I wanted after that

6:06

then just to develop the

6:09

craft because you have things you want to

6:11

say but then you're like reading in a

6:13

different way, looking at life in a different

6:15

way, looking at films in a different way

6:18

and it just kind of kept

6:20

going. I think I'm a little bit hyper focused or

6:22

you know there might be the other words about it.

6:26

So I was writing a short story and

6:29

for a while they did run alongside each

6:31

other sort of teaching during the week and

6:33

then sort of writing at the weekend. It

6:35

felt a little bit Jeff and Hyde but

6:38

then a lot of people have that

6:40

sort of front of stage, backstage life

6:42

anyway so yeah it went along like

6:44

that and then when I published the

6:46

short story collection in sort

6:49

of I knew I was publishing it

6:51

from 2019 and I kind of got

6:54

the sense of the novel. I was

6:57

teaching when I was inside and now

6:59

I'm writing full time with a little

7:01

bit of teaching but just creative writing

7:03

which is just a kind

7:05

of a nice pendant

7:08

rather than a career. Yeah that

7:10

sounds lovely and where did the

7:12

idea for this book come from do you

7:14

think? Did it just come to you? It

7:16

did just come to me but I think

7:18

when things just come to you, you've been

7:20

storing them for a long time and I

7:23

think a lot of the

7:25

sense of dissonance like what people

7:27

are saying and what you're seeing

7:30

and I found that sometimes I

7:33

just didn't know what to do with that. I didn't

7:35

know what to do with it because I felt like if

7:37

I don't do something with it it might actually, I felt

7:39

so intense about it at times I thought it might make

7:41

me ill. A level

7:44

of performative speech even

7:46

with people you've known for a long time compared

7:49

with the obvious

7:51

reality of the fact that

7:53

we're all humans and life

7:56

isn't that easy. I started storing it

7:58

up like storing up little objects of I

8:01

do remember somebody saying to me, oh, I

8:05

had a terrible day, I had to do Christmas

8:07

shopping and I had to buy something from my

8:09

husband to give to his mother and so on.

8:11

I just don't know what

8:13

to say to that. So I write

8:17

it. I don't have much

8:19

to say, it's right. It's

8:21

not all negative. There's a lot of positives as

8:23

well. And I think in some ways the character

8:26

in Breakdown is some sort

8:28

of alter ego that I

8:30

forge a lot of these

8:33

observations into. But at the end of the

8:35

day, I have to find her voice and

8:37

her story. But yes, I

8:39

did think to myself, this is the

8:41

kind of shocker, you know,

8:43

the idea that the woman goes in the

8:46

road, goes rogue and doesn't come back. But

8:48

I find this very plausible. And maybe I'm

8:50

just the only one who finds it plausible.

8:53

But I thought, I find it so plausible

8:55

that I'm going to write it. Yeah, well,

8:57

you're definitely not the only one. Like, I

9:00

think just for anyone who hasn't read

9:02

the book, I did recommend it last week. So I'm

9:04

hoping that lots of people who are listening have read

9:06

it. But it is about a woman who essentially gets

9:08

up one morning and leaves her lovely house and her

9:10

husband and her children and walks out the door and

9:12

kind of doesn't return. And the

9:17

abridged version, but there's, you know, you

9:19

follow her journey along the way. And

9:21

I find that deeply plausible. And in

9:23

fact, when I posted about this book

9:25

on Instagram, a response I got, which

9:27

I completely related to is that lots

9:29

of people were almost a little bit

9:31

scared by how much they connected to

9:34

the character in the book and and,

9:36

you know, really related. And I, when

9:39

I'm reading a book to interview someone, my

9:41

dad would merger me over this, by the way,

9:43

because he goes against everything he believes in terms

9:45

of respecting books. But I fold down the corner

9:48

of pages so that

9:50

I will come back to things just so it doesn't disrupt my

9:52

reading. But I'll come back to them when I'm preparing for an

9:54

interview. And like, when

9:56

I came back to this book, I was like, there's so

9:58

many pages folded down that it's actually futile

10:00

because I can't possibly ask about every

10:02

line that I've marked but there was

10:04

so much of it that connected to

10:06

me so you definitely are not the

10:08

only one who found this to be

10:10

a plausible situation. Well

10:14

I'm absolutely thrilled with that.

10:16

Genuinely it's not why

10:18

you write something, you have to

10:20

feel it and feel

10:23

that it's something that

10:26

you believe 100%. I did have to feel this from

10:29

all the way from the bones

10:33

out and I

10:36

did go very deep to write it

10:38

into the spaces that weren't always easy

10:40

to be in because it's

10:42

quite a profound reckoning and I

10:45

suppose what I wanted was that

10:47

the book would read like

10:49

a report from experience. It's

10:51

not obvious that she won't turn back, it's

10:54

not even obvious to her and I very

10:56

much wanted to write a woman who, she

11:00

still doesn't know everything at the

11:02

end. She hasn't had an epiphany,

11:04

there isn't redemption because life

11:07

doesn't feel like that to me. It

11:09

feels like a struggle where we know

11:11

things, forget things, know them again saying

11:13

my God, I've forgotten what I already

11:15

know and just kind of keep going

11:17

and I think a couple of points

11:19

I wanted to feel that she's in

11:21

different, like a little tweak of the

11:23

dial of circumstance, she might have actually

11:25

gone back but there's no going back

11:27

by the end. I suppose the 10 years between

11:36

40 and 50 which are like pretty, they're

11:39

all good years but they're pretty banging years

11:41

in terms of what you're learning about being

11:43

a woman, what you thought you

11:46

knew and so on and

11:49

yeah a lot of it just, I just

11:51

decided, once I had decided to write it

11:53

I am like that, I just thought well

11:55

I'm going to go all the way. I'm

11:58

going to go all the way with this

12:00

and there were times I

12:03

thought absolutely no one would want to read

12:05

it and I had to remind myself that's

12:07

not my business you know my business is

12:09

right and what happens after that is you

12:12

know it's not my thing. That's

12:14

really interesting I was just reading about the

12:16

music producer Rick Rubin and on one of

12:18

his big lines I'm not gonna

12:20

get this right but it's basically that the like

12:23

listener is the least important person in the creative

12:25

process that like you have to try and disconnect

12:27

from that completely and just make what you want

12:29

to make and so it sounds like that was

12:31

that was your ethos as well. Oh it

12:35

was my ethos and it's just

12:38

like on a personal level it's

12:40

not always easy to enter into

12:42

the zone where you've

12:45

been like whether it's a culture or

12:47

personality or gender all of these things

12:49

you know to be kind of like

12:51

nice and likable and to just say

12:55

there are people who really you know might

12:58

find this extremely unpalatable

13:00

but that's not my business. My

13:02

business is to put out there

13:04

as near as you

13:07

can get it to how you see

13:09

it in this particular work. Yeah

13:11

and you know you mentioned that there might be

13:13

some people who will find this unpalatable and I think

13:15

that that's true and because it

13:17

would be quite confronting I think

13:19

for lots of people you know

13:22

the main character is not particularly

13:24

likable she is judgmental and

13:26

she can be difficult at times

13:29

and she makes choices that lots of

13:31

people would struggle with and I

13:33

think that there will be people

13:35

who have a certain relationship with motherhood who

13:37

will find this very difficult to stomach but I

13:39

think that there are just as many if not

13:42

more people who will really connect. What I found

13:44

well there were lots of things that struck me

13:46

about this but and the

13:48

way that motherhood is portrayed in this

13:50

book I think is really important because

13:53

first of all you very

13:56

rightly identified the large amount of

13:58

admin and just shopping. that is

14:01

essential in your role as a child.

14:09

are the most important thing in your life.

14:12

You talk about that kind of

14:14

concept which you're

14:17

not really supposed to say is not your

14:20

experience are you? Well

14:23

I think there's so many things you're not supposed to say.

14:27

And at the back of my mind I took

14:29

a little bit of courage from, you know, like

14:33

you I don't know if you've ever heard of this

14:35

misquote so I'm going to try but generally Oscar Wilde's

14:37

vision of a work of art, if it doesn't stir

14:40

up controversy, if there aren't people who

14:43

both love it and hate it then you haven't done

14:45

your job. And

14:49

I think that that sort of like

14:51

just discussion is great. I don't think

14:53

we should like everything. When

14:55

I started a class with writers in

14:58

the Irish Writers Centre on the short

15:00

story bringing in work and I'm saying

15:02

please, please let's not all like it.

15:05

You know, let some of us hate it, some of us

15:07

feel nothing, some of us love it and let's chat about

15:10

that because it's so interesting. And

15:13

of course when I wanted

15:15

to write this

15:17

book I really felt

15:19

strongly about contextualizing a

15:22

character in the world

15:25

because that's where we live. And

15:28

I think sometimes I find with books that I

15:30

can't see around the character enough, I can't see

15:32

them actually negotiating

15:34

the realities of day to day

15:37

and also the extraordinary level of

15:39

messaging that kind of

15:41

keeps you, you know, in a lane. Even

15:45

invisibly, you know, if you don't interrogate

15:48

it you realize that some of your

15:50

talk has become like

15:52

someone else's talk and

15:54

that there's a sense of, you

15:57

know, picture postcards of what a good

15:59

life is. motherhood is and

16:01

so on. And I was just, I mean, like

16:03

you, you're great around all the time. And this

16:05

morning I was reading a review

16:08

about a book that Nancy Reagan and

16:10

Ronald Reagan's daughter has read. I was

16:12

just grazing through it. She doesn't seem

16:15

to have had a very good time

16:17

at all. And I'm thinking,

16:19

wow, because, you know, I was kind

16:22

of, you know, young, very young

16:24

person in the administration, but I

16:26

remember like the family, family, family.

16:29

And I think that it's like every

16:31

generation, we look back to the previous

16:33

one and we see the hypocrisy in

16:35

the dissonance of just not being real.

16:38

And I thought, well, what if we confronted

16:40

that now, right now, not

16:43

not 25 years ago, but

16:45

now. And there is great

16:48

love, I think, as

16:50

I felt it between the narrator

16:52

and the children. Yeah, but also

16:54

a sense of having parented very

16:56

much within the confines of

16:59

expectations, a lot of which were

17:01

around almost optimizing

17:03

children, seeing children as

17:05

something you put on the conveyor belt of

17:07

a baby and you pick off at 20.

17:10

And you know, they've got they've got certain accolades

17:13

that you are a good mother. And I

17:16

just I just I just really

17:18

feel how much, you know, without saying

17:20

the big capital is in words has

17:22

invaded our skin is

17:24

inside us as sort of progress models.

17:28

And yeah, I thought, well, if you're

17:31

going to go far, you

17:33

have to go too far and find out where it is. So

17:35

I kind of went, well, just put the pedal down on this.

17:38

And there's motherhood, there's

17:40

marriage, there's friendship. I thought, well,

17:42

let's not leave anything out. You

17:44

know, beauty, body, sex, let's get

17:46

into the whole thing. And

17:49

I just want to see this woman

17:51

who kind of just wants to extract

17:53

herself from a web of

17:56

ideas about life that aren't necessarily

17:58

hers. And maybe she

18:01

hasn't got any much left

18:03

to say at the end. Yeah. But she's

18:05

just trying to, you know, trying to be

18:08

a person, which is kind of hard thing to

18:10

be. Yeah. And that comes across, you

18:12

kind of get this feeling that she,

18:14

like many people, I think,

18:17

has been performing life according

18:19

to the kind of paint

18:21

by numbers expectation that

18:23

all of us are confronted with. And

18:25

that I think most people tend to play along

18:27

with, like, I don't think it's unusual to find

18:29

yourself in middle age and to kind of look

18:31

around and go, did I choose this? Did I

18:34

want this? Like, I've had these conversations with my

18:36

friends, you know, what did I

18:38

take an active role in? Like, what

18:40

was I thinking? Where was I going? Or was

18:42

I just on, as you said, a conveyor belt

18:44

of progress? And it's

18:47

kind of an uncomfortable thing to be

18:49

confronted with, but I think it's very

18:51

powerful. Did it feel powerful

18:53

when you were writing it? It

18:56

wasn't, you know, it wasn't

18:59

at times easy, like genuinely,

19:02

because like, I'm different people write

19:04

in different ways. I have to

19:06

feel it to write it. Like,

19:09

I am a sort of, like,

19:12

if I don't feel it, then there

19:14

will be feeling on the page, sort

19:16

of bit method. Yes.

19:20

So there's a

19:22

kind of like a profound,

19:24

you know, consideration of

19:27

those things, especially around like consumerism

19:29

and the consumerism of parenthood.

19:33

And how it just, I mean,

19:35

accelerated extremely fast. I,

19:39

you know, I talked to women a generation

19:41

after, from me, and

19:45

they have quite different experiences. Like, I'm not into like

19:47

better or worse, but I am into like, well, let's

19:49

put it all on the table and have a look

19:51

at it. But certainly,

19:54

it does, it does, did seem to me that every

19:57

single life event comes with it. quite

20:00

a long shopping list. And that somehow

20:02

the most terrifying

20:04

thing is that perhaps we're equating the

20:07

really good shopping with the really

20:10

good loving. That's,

20:12

you know, that's

20:14

tough stuff. Yeah. So yeah, I

20:16

lived just with the character and

20:18

like the hardest thing was to

20:21

find voice. And I

20:24

knew what I wanted to say, but to find the voice that

20:27

would articulate that. And yeah,

20:30

when I found her then I just said,

20:32

right, that's how I was

20:34

going to do it. Let's do it. Yeah.

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22:30

yet we don't see her

22:33

kind of grappling too much with shame in

22:35

the context of this. I'm interested to hear

22:37

a little bit about that. Yeah

22:40

I don't think that

22:42

she does. Well first

22:44

of all I think that she's star-typed the

22:47

novel. I mean what I wanted and I

22:49

hope people feel that is like she's

22:51

actually like raging. Yeah she's raging. She's

22:53

not even in touch with it but

22:55

she is and I think

22:58

she's been quite distanced from her own

23:00

emotional reality for quite a while.

23:02

So it's sort of like

23:04

coming out in weird bits. The way I've

23:06

seen that happen,

23:08

a strange moment in

23:11

a retail outlet etc.

23:15

And I think then I don't

23:17

like different versions of different views.

23:19

I don't see making a character

23:22

as you know kind of

23:24

jotting down everything like this person would make

23:27

this choice where this

23:29

color would drink this

23:31

wine because I

23:33

don't know myself that well.

23:36

Yeah. And it's

23:38

a struggle. It's a lifetime struggle to just

23:41

like sometimes you can't

23:43

believe the decision you made or something

23:45

you did when everything in you

23:47

pointed to the other way. So I'm

23:50

very interested in that in the in that

23:52

zone of discovery, of self discovery

23:54

and I think that's

23:57

important part of life I suppose

23:59

for me. and like back

24:01

to Ovid and life is change

24:03

and transformation and development and not

24:05

becoming static. And I

24:07

think that this particular moment

24:10

in this particular economic system

24:14

prefers static, you know, prefers kind of

24:16

like I made

24:18

this choice not choice and this kind of

24:20

person I do this thing because

24:23

ruptures aren't particularly great

24:25

for the economy and I

24:30

think that in previous times

24:32

people often have to like take time out,

24:34

go to a monastery, you know, go stare at a white

24:36

wall for a few years or all of those kind of

24:39

moments when you just need to like

24:41

take a break but there is a sense now

24:43

and you

24:46

know I worked in teaching

24:48

for like 30 years. I mean I know

24:50

in my core like

24:52

alarms up goes off, you know, how

24:55

over the years the routines become

24:58

very strong in order to manage,

25:01

you know, the strain of that

25:03

and that's fine, like jobs have

25:05

to be done but I did

25:07

notice over that period how just

25:09

the pressures and strains financially,

25:12

culturally, you know, with issues

25:14

in society which are quite

25:16

numerous to say the least,

25:19

it becomes more rigid,

25:22

the slight narrowing

25:24

of the self that

25:26

is required in order

25:28

to just like get

25:30

from Monday to Friday

25:32

in my opinion and

25:34

I suppose in some

25:36

ways like this book is

25:38

written as an extreme example of somebody

25:40

who's facing that down and one of

25:43

the things that was on my mind

25:45

or the back of my mind is

25:47

we've seen men do this over and

25:49

over again, like we've seen films, we

25:51

just haven't seen the middle-aged

25:54

woman do it. I thought well let's see

25:56

her do it. Well

25:58

yeah because I mean the top line on the the back

26:00

of the book is mothers are not supposed to

26:02

go on road trips. It's a line from the

26:04

book and I thought that was really interesting because

26:08

it's kind of true. I will say

26:10

in my relationship

26:14

neither of us really do

26:17

that but during Covid I got Covid

26:19

and I went to my parents house

26:21

in Wexford because there was nobody there

26:24

and I had like five or six

26:26

days on my own for the first

26:28

time since I've become a parent. Days

26:30

where I wasn't like away on a

26:32

work trip or on a holiday or

26:34

anything specifically. I didn't have anything specific

26:36

to do except exist and get better

26:38

and become not contagious anymore and then

26:41

I could go back to my family

26:43

and I couldn't get over

26:45

the feeling of not

26:48

having a schedule, not having

26:50

you know once you become a

26:52

parent spontaneity is gone and everything has

26:55

an end point because at some stage you're going

26:57

to have to collect the children or you'll have

26:59

to get up in the morning for the children

27:01

see ad-con safety labels and you know there's that

27:03

is in your brain at all times and I

27:05

had forgotten what it felt like to not have

27:07

that. So I think the

27:09

idea and I said to my husband I said you have

27:12

to do this. I was like you've got to come to

27:14

he still hasn't but I was like you've got to come

27:16

down here on your own and have a few

27:18

days because it felt so

27:20

strange, wrong, exciting,

27:24

free, restorative

27:27

and it felt amazing but it felt like

27:29

I was breaking a rule because there

27:32

is that idea that you're not supposed to take

27:34

yourself away from your children unless it's for some

27:37

vitally important reason and you know as

27:39

mothers in particular we feel we have

27:41

to justify any of that because

27:43

it's not in the rule book and

27:45

so it's it is wild that even

27:48

just the concept of a woman going on

27:50

a road trip away from her children you

27:52

know without any real purpose is

27:54

revolutionary but it kind of is. Yes

27:57

I agree because it doesn't have a

28:00

such destination or parameters.

28:04

I do know that I

28:06

have very good memories of

28:09

times of somebody coming

28:11

around to the house as a kid. I

28:14

mean, it's different times, different economic circumstances,

28:16

completely different worlds, but it's

28:18

all just like kids playing and

28:20

nobody calling you in and ending up going to

28:23

bed at 11 o'clock in a school night and

28:25

so on. I don't think

28:27

that that exists very much anymore because

28:31

of different stresses

28:33

and strains or different

28:35

way of life, the level of organization

28:38

needed. So I

28:40

wondered do mothers

28:42

now, especially connected at

28:45

all times to the clock, to the phone,

28:47

to the message, to the kids, I read

28:50

recently 52% of parents in

28:53

the UK actually have the app

28:56

on their phone to see where their children are at all

28:58

times. I don't have judgment on these things. That's

29:01

not my job. My

29:03

job is to observe it. But

29:06

I don't think that my mother sitting

29:08

in the kitchen chatting with her pal

29:10

over fags would

29:14

have really noticed whether

29:16

it was three or five. So

29:19

I think that while we

29:21

think now very much in sort of like

29:24

on with the kids and maybe escaping the

29:26

kids, I'm not sure that those lines were

29:28

as hard for

29:31

previous generations because

29:35

for so many reasons, it

29:37

has become just a much more

29:40

complex in every way role. Yeah,

29:43

I think you're right. And I think even when

29:45

you were saying there, talking about

29:47

your experience of being a kid, I was thinking about

29:49

my experience of being a kid. And I was thinking

29:51

about things like there was a

29:53

day recently where my children were playing outside

29:55

and it was during the day and my

29:58

husband and I were like, what do we do? Like

30:00

we hadn't been alone in

30:02

the house during the day ever because my kids are only just

30:04

old enough to kind of play outside on their

30:06

own. And I was like, will we watch Great British

30:08

Bake Off? And he was like, I think we will.

30:11

And we sat down and we started watching it. We

30:13

were like, this is amazing. This is revolutionary. But then

30:15

the kids came in a little while later and said,

30:17

could they bring their other friends in? And

30:19

I said, yes, I said, you can. I

30:21

said, but Dad and I are in the

30:23

sitting room watching TV. And my son just

30:25

looked like couldn't

30:28

understand what I was saying. And I was like, so you

30:30

won't be able to be in the sitting room. You'll have

30:32

to play somewhere else in the house. And

30:34

he was like, oh, what?

30:37

Because we never watch adult TV when

30:39

they're awake. And it's not even about

30:41

adult, like, you know, inappropriate content. I

30:43

mean, we don't we don't watch the

30:45

TV. We don't watch things that we

30:47

want to watch because it's kid time.

30:49

Whereas when I was a kid, I

30:52

didn't get a look in on that TV, especially not if there

30:54

was a sporting event on or whatever. It was whatever my dad

30:56

wanted to watch. That was what was on all the time. But

30:59

we don't seem to give ourselves the permission to

31:01

do that anymore. Because there's this pressure

31:03

of like, when you're with the children, it has

31:06

to be quality time. And it has to be exactly

31:08

right. And you have to make memories. And, you know, my

31:10

friends and I would often say that that's the worst mistake

31:12

you can make is decide to make a memory because everything

31:14

always goes wrong when you decide that. And then, and

31:17

the kids probably won't even remember it anyway. But

31:19

I think, sorry, that's a very long-winded way of

31:22

saying I agree with you. And I think that

31:24

the pressures that are on us now as mothers

31:26

are different to the ones that were on previous

31:28

generations. And, you know, whether it's

31:30

better or worse, who knows? But I

31:33

think it is different. Yes,

31:36

I agree with that.

31:38

And that's like not

31:40

simply it. There's no like

31:42

the book is not intended as

31:44

any polemic. But it

31:46

is just, I just did feel

31:48

that I want to just go up close

31:51

with now, not

31:53

20 years ago or, you know, and

31:56

just look on

31:58

the inside of something that seems so day

32:00

to day. But there's just something that seems so day to

32:02

day. And lastness

32:05

and drift and daydream

32:07

and all of those places are so, I

32:10

think, elemental to

32:12

being human. And they're

32:15

definitely being put in the shadow. And

32:19

one thing for me that I do feel a little bit sad

32:21

about is when I think kids don't get enough of it. Sometimes

32:25

the sense of the parents being busy, like

32:27

the sound of the sports match coming out

32:29

of the TV room and someone

32:32

else just not interested in you. It's

32:34

actually a lovely place. That'd be

32:36

quite nice. Well, it was

32:38

my favorite thing. My favorite thing was

32:40

when adults are actually, they don't really

32:42

care about me now, so I can

32:45

sneak them off and hide away, read

32:47

a book, whatever. So

32:49

without any sense of time,

32:51

I suppose time is a

32:54

huge preoccupation of mine, writing

32:56

about just thinking about

32:58

the human connection to time, which is very,

33:00

very different through the ages. And

33:05

this is the very recent period

33:07

in human history when it

33:09

would barely happen

33:11

ever that you aren't within 15

33:13

minutes of the correct time. So

33:17

yeah, maybe

33:19

some of that is there certainly in

33:21

her experience at the end of the

33:23

novel. Oh, I think so. Yeah,

33:26

I did want it. I didn't

33:28

want to. There's no fairy tales here, though. Like there's

33:30

a lot of suffering, genuine,

33:33

and it's pretty rough going.

33:36

And I thought it was

33:39

only real, the sense

33:42

that sometimes we do change so

33:44

much that we

33:46

can't slip back into relationships because

33:48

the person that was isn't there.

33:51

Yeah. And I'm not sure that

33:53

in this society we

33:55

accept that as much, that sometimes at 20

33:57

you're not the same. Well,

34:00

maybe we accept a 20, but certainly from like

34:02

30 arms. You know, we

34:05

change profoundly. And it's

34:07

part of just the spiritual element that's

34:10

part of what we do. And I

34:12

suppose it's trying to make some sort of peace with

34:15

that. And also,

34:17

her reckoning is very powerful.

34:19

Like, she does feel that she failed

34:21

her daughter, even though the daughter

34:23

is kids. Those kids, you

34:26

know, they're really successful. The

34:29

contemporary sort of measurement, which we do

34:31

with everything, all that. But

34:34

that in allowing the

34:36

disconnect to become quite

34:39

profound. Yeah, and with her son as well, you

34:41

know, that he has his moment where he has

34:43

a hard time at school. And you know, she

34:45

doesn't respond maybe in the way that she later

34:47

feels would have been the right way. Yeah,

34:50

like, I mean, I think that's really what's,

34:52

for me, really powerful

34:54

about the book is that. So

34:59

much of her experience of motherhood is

35:01

relatable. The feeling that sometimes you might

35:03

feel a little bit trapped or you

35:06

might not feel like you're doing it

35:08

right. Or you might feel

35:10

like the expectations are simply too much or it's, you know,

35:12

the kids are being too horrible to you or you have

35:14

too many jobs and it can all get on top of

35:17

you. But then at the end of

35:19

the book, I started

35:21

crying reading this. She

35:24

is talking about seeing

35:26

two children on a train who

35:28

kind of become her children in her memory.

35:30

And she says, I would like to sit with one

35:32

of them, either side of me, read to them, color

35:35

in pictures with them, treat them to hot chocolate. I'm

35:37

going to cry then. Treat them to hot

35:39

chocolate when the girl comes around with the trolley. I would like

35:41

to stay on the train with them forever. The

35:44

reason it gets me is

35:47

that I think when you're in the thick of it,

35:50

the weight of parenting can be so intense

35:53

that sometimes you worry that you're missing it,

35:56

that you're missing the good bits. And

35:58

I think that comes across. Sorry, I'm

36:01

losing it now. I knew this was

36:03

going to happen. No, I'm

36:07

really touched by the profound

36:09

connection there. That was extremely

36:11

painful to write. I

36:19

do think that it's, yeah,

36:22

I think with a sort of

36:24

programmed extremely, like I'm talking

36:27

about just a household where

36:30

everything is on the calendar and

36:32

it has to be managed and

36:34

can feel like a small second

36:37

job. But

36:39

yes, those moments when you're not

36:41

trying to do anything, you're

36:44

just there because

36:46

we don't know, like memories are

36:48

extremely complex things. There's absolutely no

36:50

way of shaping that. You have

36:52

no idea what our children will remember

36:54

or not remember. All

36:57

we have is, I

37:00

think we do remember the moments when we were

37:02

like actually there. So,

37:04

yeah, there's quite

37:07

a painful loss here.

37:12

She just faces

37:14

that down. Whether

37:17

the rights and wrongs and all that, I'm

37:19

not really interested. I'm just interested in showing

37:21

that's my job. Seeing and showing. But

37:26

yes, that

37:28

moment when she doesn't want anything

37:31

from the kid, she doesn't want the kid to

37:33

look like be clever or teach them something or

37:36

turn it into a learning moment. There's

37:39

no sense

37:42

of that transactional

37:45

behavior. If you do this and be

37:47

good, I'll give you this sense. There's

37:49

nothing. The kids want nothing. She wants nothing. They're

37:53

just sitting there and it's a kind

37:55

of slightly imaginary moment, which is the saddest thing about

37:57

it. But there are other things that we can do.

38:00

the one that she remembers. I think in the car with the

38:02

son, what I found so upsetting

38:04

was that the character roots

38:07

around your head for what is

38:09

the right thing to do, rather

38:11

than just giving the bloody

38:13

kid a hug and pulling in the car. And

38:17

it's harsh because moments come out to

38:19

you in parenting. You

38:22

don't get like three days' notice. You

38:24

don't know where it's coming from. And you can

38:26

be thinking right in that moment, I

38:29

have that presentation to do

38:31

tomorrow, and a sort of fucking

38:34

period, and I need to get home. And

38:38

that's the reality of the way it is.

38:40

And I think the

38:42

messaging of the right way is

38:45

actually not always tremendously helpful. And I'm going

38:48

back to Winnicott there. And if we could

38:50

be good enough, mothers, it would be more

38:52

than enough. Yeah. Well,

38:54

Kathy, I think it's

38:57

clear that I love this book. I

39:00

have recommended it to so many people in my life. I

39:02

hope that anyone who's listening who hasn't read it will

39:04

pick it up and read it. And I

39:06

think you are a brilliant writer, and I can't wait

39:08

to read more of your work. And I really appreciate

39:10

you giving me the time to chat about it today.

39:13

Louise, I'm honored to be reading. Thank you so much.

39:24

There you go, my friends. Thank you so much for being

39:26

with me this week. You've been here for all

39:29

three episodes. Extra doubly special, super duper thanks to

39:31

you. I really, really appreciate

39:33

it. I love you. You

39:35

make my life possible, and I would be

39:37

lost without you. I hope you

39:39

have a great weekend. If you didn't, no worries.

39:41

They can't tell me grace. I will

39:43

be back with you on Monday with the news, touch

39:46

up with Carl. In the meantime, thank

39:48

you so much to ACAST, and thank you to all my

39:50

brilliant contributors across the week. And I will talk to you

39:52

all. Bye-bye. Bye.

40:00

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