The Awkward Girl's Guide to the Week | In which Saturday night is *not*, in fact, "all right for fighting"

... and other things that are disappointing

(Hi, it’s Amber, back again with The Awkward Girl’s Guide to the Week, which, in spite of the slightly ill-chosen name, is not a newsletter filled with biting social commentary, but just a run-down of MY week, including what I’ve been reading, watching, trying, and buying lately. Sorry about me. This newsletter is free to all subscribers, but, as always, if you’d like to make my day, and save me from having to get a job down t’pit or summat, you can upgrade your subscription using the button below, which will give you 20% off forever more, as long as you subscribe by July 5th.)

It’s been one of those weeks where you start the weekend thinking you’re going to have a nice, juicy coup to get stuck into, but end it with everyone obsessing over Elton John’s Glastonbury performance, as if nothing even happened. Which is disappointing, really.

(I didn’t even watch Elton, but social media was so dedicated to it I feel like I did, and will probably one day tell my grandkids about it, thinking I was actually there in the crowd, rather than just reading about it on Twitter.)

Other Things From This Week That Did Not Live Up to Their Early Promise:

Black Mirror, Season 6

It started off strong, with the “here is some new fuel for your nightmares” Joan Is Awful, upped the ante with the old-style murder mystery, Loch Henry (Scottish! Creepy!), then just kind of shrugged its shoulders and went, “Here’s a lot of extreme violence, served with a side-order of weird” for the final three episodes. (I thoroughly enjoyed the use of “Bright Eyes” in the final one, though, so there was that.)

The weather

After two weeks of glorious sunshine, this week Scotland reverted back to its usual summer climate of all rain, all the time, and Max had to wear his winter coat to school this morning. (It was his lightweight one, but still.) Although we really should be used to it by now, those two weeks gave us a tantalising glimpse of what summer could be like if we just lived somewhere completely different, and now I feel much the same way as when the coup was abruptly cancelled on Saturday night. Could we please just catch a break here?

The village Facebook group

There was a minor spat midweek, when it transpired a caravan had been parked inconsiderately, but I fear we’re never going to return to the heady days of arguing over music and knocking down dens. There was one post where someone politely asked that no sticks be allowed into the park in case dogs try to eat them, but I’m not sure the park trees are even on the Facebook group, so I suspect that warning will go unheeded.

The last week of term

As this newsletter goes out, Max will be about halfway through his last day of school before the summer holidays, which means I have approximately — checks watch — 2 hours to make enough money to sustain us through the rest of the summer, then 7 entire weeks to lie awake at night worrying about it.

I … don’t think I’m going to manage it, somehow. (Or not unless every single one of you takes out a paid subscription, in which case, happy days…)

I'll be honest: until I became a parent, the summer holidays weren't really something I ever thought I'd have to survive, like a contestant in The Hunger Games or something. In fact, before I had Max, I used to listen to other parents counting down the days until school started again, and feel comfortably smug in the knowledge that I would NEVER.

"Why did they even HAVE kids if they didn't want to spend time with them?" I thought, like someone who had never had kids and therefore had absolutely no idea what she was talking about. "Why, I'd LOVE the summer holidays as a parent! Just think of all the fun we would have!"

<hollow laugh>

Now that I’m a veteran of the Christmas, Easter and half-term holidays, however, I can see that it’s not spending time with your kids that’s the issue; it’s having to work while you’re doing it — which is a problem I regret to say we’ve been unable to solve, despite the fact that I’ve been worrying about it fairly obsessively since this time last year, when Max hadn’t even started school yet.

RELATED: My baby starts school at the end of the summer and I’m not ready

(No, there are no suitable summer camps we can send him to¹. And no, there are no parents we could do ‘childcare swaps’ with either.² Don’t even get me started on all of the “just pop along to the local museum with him” advice, either.³)

So, I’ve been lying awake worrying a lot this week, then. Because, like most people I know, I can’t afford to just not work for 7 weeks, but I also can’t take my eyes off my child for more than a few minutes without him pressing the emergency SOS button on his tracker watch, either, so it’s a conundrum, for sure. And now seems like a good — albeit painfully awkward — time to remind you all that hey, did you know you can upgrade to a paid subscription? With 20% off, for a limited time only?

And now, on with the show…

This week I’ve been…

READING

Fiction-wise, I’m still reading (and being traumatized by) The Four Winds, which makes me think including a “reading” section in this newsletter was possibly a bad idea. (Did Past Me seriously think she’d be able to read enough books to be able to talk about a different one every week? Because Past Me was clearly not thinking about the kazillionty-one other things she has to do every week, if so…)

Substack-wise, then, I deeply related to this fantastic post by Sara Petersen, in which she talks directly to my soul about that weird social-media phenomenon whereby extremely wealthy people lecture the rest of us on how to see the “beauty” in every day, conveniently ignoring the fact that when you’re extremely wealthy it’s actually very easy to see the beauty in every day, because you live in a freaking castle in Provence, and have all the time you need to go out gathering flowers and skipping through meadows, while dressed like a charming milkmaid:

Stop telling me to find the magic in the everyday

To this, I’d also like to add my very own pet peeve, which is when stunningly beautiful people pop up on Instagram to earnestly explain that everyone is beautiful, while the rest of us are just sitting there, thinking, “No, it’s actually just you, hun. Thanks, though.” Then they go on to tell us how we just have to learn to love ourselves, and, just a wild guess here, but I’m thinking that’s probably pretty easy when you look like a supermodel, no?

The Awkward Girl's Guide to The Ugly

WATCHING

I already talked about Black Mirror in my introduction (Really didn’t think this through, did I?), and the news season of Outlander’s on a pay-per-view channel, so I guess that just leaves me with TikTok videos about cleaning, then. Which, to be fair, I have watched quite a lot of this week.

Why am I sitting in my messy house watching videos of people cleaning their already-pristine houses, though? It’s a good question: if you figure it out, please let me know, because I feel like I’ve probably hit a new low with this one.

No, seriously: I find it strangely soothing watching people clean, in the same way I enjoy that game Max has where to get to squeeze pimples and tweeze stray hairs from a cartoon face. From time to time, I’ll also stumble across a video of someone cleaning a genuinely messy house, and then I’ll also get to feel smug in the knowledge that our house is not quite so bad, because most of our mess is crammed into random cupboards, or has been relegated to one of the two sheds that I don’t go into because the state of them makes me anxious. So it’s like the antidote to the “beauty in every day” people, really, and I am here for it.

TRYING

Last week I opened the door to the Amazon delivery man, who handed me a giant tub of apple cider vinegar. (This big.) It has amazing health benefits, according to my husband, who ordered it as part of his current health kick, and has been encouraging me to drink some of it every morning.

Unfortunately for me, it tastes like… well, vinegar, basically… so whatever health benefits it has remain to be seen, because I keep “forgetting” to take it. I will report back if any health benefits appear, however, and, if not, I guess I can always use it to clean the windows? Or something?

BUYING

I bought a bikini. (Well, a bikini top, anyway. I already had the bottoms, for some reason.) This felt like kind of a big deal to me, because the last time I wore a bikini was in the same year I went to the gym five times per week and did Insanity for fun, and let’s just say that times have changed since then.

Anyway, in a rare moment of body confidence, I bought a bikini, thinking I could wear it on my holiday next month. (A holiday which is c/o my extremely generous parents, by the way, just in case you think I was lying about the ‘no money’ thing earlier…)

“I don’t think I’m brave enough to wear it,” I told my husband, who just looked at me, bemused. Because men (or the ones I know, anyway), don’t really tend to view swimwear as an act of “bravery”, do they? It’s just what you wear to the beach. But women (including me) are encouraged (mostly by social media, I think) to believe they can’t post a photo of themselves in a swimsuit without accompanying it with a hand-wringing caption about how they had to “work up the courage” to wear it, and then be congratulated on how “brave” they are, and I think that’s quite sad, really.

It will not be “brave” of me to wear the bikini. Literally no one will care, or even notice. So it’s going in the case, and this is the last time I’ll mention it, I swear.

ON THE BLOG

This week on the blog I’ve documented A Day of My Life in Pictures, which is something I like to do every so often, so I can one day look back and remember the random minutiae of our lives at various stages.

Full disclosure: this one is a sponsored post, but there’s literally one sentence of “advertising” in an almost 2,000 word article, so it should be easy enough to just ignore that bit, if you object to it. (Also, it’s sponsored by one of my lovely, regular sponsors who actually pay me on time, and who I genuinely shop with even when I’m not being paid, so please don’t hate me too much for drawing your attention to it.)

Finally!

Remember that paid subscribers can request a post here, and I’ll do my best to oblige (unless it’s about nuclear physics or something else totally not in my wheelhouse…). And if you want even more to read, you’ll find my other newsletter below:

1. Because all the ones I’ve found are either, a) too expensive, b) too far away, c) too dedicated to sport, which Max hates, or, d) all three. Where are all the summer camps for kids who hate football and just want to read books all summer, like I did? Because they’re not in our village, that’s for sure.

2. Because all of Max’s friends are allowed out to play in the street unsupervised, so their parents don’t actually need childcare, and would basically just be doing us a giant favor in exchange for nothing at all really.

3. Because we live in a tiny village in the middle of nowhere. There’s a school, a chip shop, and that’s it. Also, if I’m at “the local museum” I’m not working, and if I’m not working, I’m not earning, and if I’m not earning, I’m on our way to the workhouse, basically, like a Victorian heiress who’s fallen on hard times.)