I’m going to stop pretending that I’ve found a happy balance between working and raising my children. There is no balance. Most times it’s like watching a ferret on a seesaw with a bison.
My four-year-old daughter was doing impersonations of us all recently. Her impersonation of me — her mother, her only parent — was wildly blowing kisses and singing out, “Bye, darlings, bye! Bye! I’m late! Gotta go! Love you! Byeeeee!”
Did you hear my heart crack as I wrote that? She’ll reminisce about me when she’s grown and I’m gone; she’ll say to her partner or perhaps her own children, “Ah! I love watching people dashing out of doors in a fluster, dragging a suitcase while patting their pockets to check they’ve got their phone and muttering ‘F**K! I’m LATE!’ under their breath — it reminds me of my old mum.”
I know I’m lucky — I wisecrack for a living. No one appreciates the ridiculousness of that more than me. I know I’m not a nurse or a teacher or a health and safety inspector or anyone else for whom having a glass of wine while working is a sackable offence.
But when we talk about the guilt of working parents (I avoided saying “working mum” there because I’m nothing if not achingly politically correct, but we all know I mean “working mum”), it’s assumed that it’s the “guilt” of leaving your children to be cared for by someone else. But it’s not that.
My children benefit from the SWAT team who look after them when I’m away. It’s more than guilt. It’s the awareness that soon I will no longer be their number one favourite person to hang out with.
I am reliably and consistently assured that once they hit their teens, there will appear monosyllabic shoe gazers who my children will find infinitely more fun than me.
At that moment, if I sweep into the room and announce, “Find your torches! We’re going camping!” I will be met with whoops of delight as they clamber up the stairs to find torches, wellies, socks and iPads (all the camping essentials).
Soon, though, their excitement will rise for different things — a text from someone they fancy, tickets to a festival, working out the PIN number of my credit card.
People often say to me, “You’re lucky your job fits so well around the family because you can just work at night when they are in bed.” I smile politely at this because, when all is said and done, you can’t make your living from making people laugh then whine about how hard it is, which, I am aware, is exactly what I’m doing now.
Comedy routines and books don’t write themselves and sadly some idiot scattered the comedy venues all over the country so people from Inverness don’t gather in the pub at the end of my road to see my shows — I have to go to them!
Of course it’s not as simple as skipping out of the door when the children are in bed. The harder you work at comedy, the easier you make it look. Comics have to be obsessed with what we do.
It whirls around in our minds all day as we make the packed lunches, clean faces, feed rabbits, play Lego or referee a squabble. The effect of this is that you’re often not “in the moment” with the most important people in your universe.
I’m writing this from a hotel room in Glasgow where I performed at the gorgeous Citizens Theatre and had a marvellous time. Today I’m off to entertain the good people of Whitehaven, then I’m off to Keswick on Saturday.
I’m home for a few hours on Sunday and have the luxury of doing my children’s bedtime before I run off to a gig that, for once, is close to my home.
I am the sole earner in my family. My daughter was sad when I left for my tour again yesterday and complained, “Why do mummies have to work? Why can’t I have a daddy who works so you can stay with me?” (There goes my heart again. I’ll have to get some gaffer tape.) She’s too young for the “because Mummy never worked out how to be in a relationship and remain autonomous” conversation so I said, as I often do, “Mummy does shows so I can make money to keep our house and to pay for food and ballet
classes.”
My teary child, in whose face I can still see a newborn, said, “So why can’t you get a different job so you don’t have to go away?”
And that’s when all the “food on the table” stuff falls flat and I have to be honest with her and myself, “Because Mummy loves her job and if I stopped doing it I wouldn’t be happy — so hang in there and the moment this tour finishes, we are going camping!”
The independent