WOMAN ON THE VERGE: A week of holidays, H20 and Prince Harry

I’m pinning my hopes for a good month on a hydration station … yes, a water bottle. Snigger if you will but at least I didn’t succumb to one of those fancy journals that promise to change your life. Not yet anyway.

• THIS is the week where there’s meant to be no messing, none at all, it’s time to get back to business, no excuses. The sweet tins are empty, you’ve even eaten the hazelnut ones you’re not mad about, you’ve used up all your annual leave, and it’s no longer socially acceptable to suggest a drink at 3pm. We have our new diaries and new calendars, sure even Brendan O’Connor is back on the radio. The time is now apparently, so why is it that I don’t feel like I’m ‘in the zone’ yet? I’m not even circling around on the outskirts, in fact it would be more accurate to say that I’m in a different time-zone entirely – a disaster zone. To help kickstart a more positive mentality, I did what everyone on Instagram was telling me to do … I went and bought myself a motivational water bottle. You did what now? You know, those water bottles that have little messages written on the side to spur you on to take another slug. Things like: ‘You got this! Keep going! Nearly there! Don’t give up! Time to refill!’ Oh, nearly forgot my favourite one: ‘You’re awesome!’ As part of my research I also came across what’s known as the ‘manifest bottle.’ These come with little mantras written on the bottle, things like: ‘I am forever evolving. I am the leader of my life. I radiate health and happiness.’ These, I felt, would not help me with dry January (which, don’t judge me, has sort of become more like damp January) so I passed on that for the first option. I know it’s immature and non-sensical to outsource the potential success of January 2023 to a 2L water bottle (or as some people like to call it ‘a hydration station’), but that’s all I have in the tank right now. I’ll let you know how it goes … and if I’m knocking back that amount of H20, I’m sure to get some extra steps in with all those trips to the loo. Now, if only I could find my FitBit ….

• Staying with all things January-esque, we got talking about planning a holiday the other night … only once we established there was absolutely nothing on Netflix left to watch. In between trips to the loo, I suggested my husband look up this family-friendly yet very stylish resort in Portugal I had seen some influencer (morto for me I know) rave on about. She was right, it looked incredible, and for three whole minutes it looked like we were going there. In our haste we thought the quoted price of approx €600 was the grand total for a two-bed apartment for four nights. It wasn’t entirely inconceivable … was it? Anyway, it turned out that was the cost per night … per person. Sure, bless us, you’d have to love our innocence all the same. Are we even able for the real world? Once we picked ourselves off the floor from our hysterics, we abandoned planning and threw on The Menu on Disney, starring Ralph Fiennes, which was unexpectedly enjoyable (even if my husband got annoyed what with having to pause it so often for all my loo trips). Now, though, we’re determined to outsmart the system and come up with an even better ‘Plan B’ holiday. In fact it’s consuming us. We’re looking at things like going before high-season starts, maybe the end of February, we’ll take our chances with the weather, taking connecting flights through Amsterdam in the dead of the night, travelling only with the clothes on our backs, and with a week’s supply of sandwiches and teabags in our pockets … that sort of thing. So far Google is mainly throwing up things like ‘good luck with that lads!’ but I’m undeterred. I was reminded though of what my dad used to say about the spending habits of my sisters, mum and I – how we like champagne, but we can only afford stout. Too true unfortunately.  

• Anyway, at some point on my motivational water bottle journey, it occurred to me that there might be a market for a more Irish version. A bottle more along the lines of: ‘Take a sup would you? Just take a flipping drink. Your skin is awful, go on. You’re a pure pity – you were on the wine last night I can tell. Would you ever cop on! Give me strength, put a drop of MiWadi in and knock it back. One more drink and you can have a real drink!’ The idea probably needs some refining, but if there are any investors out there interested in taking a punt, get in touch. I’m sure if we got someone like TikTok star Tadhg Fleming on board we’d be away on a hack … and then I could holiday in the style I dream of!

• There’s probably not a whole lot left to say about Prince Harry’s latest interviews and revelations at this stage really is there? Just as well I suppose as words escape me completely. I mean … yeah, no words, none. Just a lot of images in my head that are hard to get past. My advice to him is to take a big drink of water, cool the jets and ‘Spare’ us all the rest.