It’s not ghosts and ghouls keeping Emma up at night, but price-hikes, terrible TV, and face-painting

THE times they are a-changing. Nope, I’m not getting in touch with my inner-philosopher and quoting Dylan, but am just doing my public service duty and reminding people to put their clocks back (or is it forward?) on Sunday morning. Regardless of how many public reminders there are, and there are loads, there’ll still be a few who will forget to do this entirely which I always find
pure gas.

I’m actually always secretly envious of this cohort as it means they’re living their lives completely off-grid, which sounds idyllic. Meanwhile, among the rest of us dutiful citizens who do the necessary, there’ll still be loads, myself included, who will be dazed and confused when they wake on Sunday morning wondering if their phones have automatically updated or not, and who will be looking quizzically at each other, or the timer on the oven, not sure if they’re an hour late for mass, or training, or any other Sunday-morning things.  Let’s just say Sunday will be a long, tough day, when no one will be sure of the time.

And if you’ve small children in your household, I pity you even more as they won’t really get the time change concept which, by the way, I thought the European Parliament voted to end?  All I can say is that after talking about changing the clock in my car for the entire year but not knowing how, it’s finally going to be reading correctly so let’s be grateful for small mercies and drive on.

Once our body clocks get over the upheaval of time change, I have to say I love this time of year. Not the dark mornings which make getting up torture, but I love the dark evenings. I know I’m in the minority but there’s something so nice about pulling the curtains and not feeling obliged to get out there and change the world, or even just cutting a hedge or doing a bit of gardening. It’s like you get the official go-ahead to put the feet up and take things down a gear for a little while, and I’m there for that. It’s also a time of year when it’s ok to get back into your PJs from 4.30pm, or as soon as you get home from work, which is life itself. You also get to eat nice hearty food like stews, and goulashes with lots of mashed potato, melted cheese toasties and fondu: sure it’s important to keep your strength up if you got caught in say, a bad snowstorm, or if you had to chop firewood. And there’s hot water bottles too, although I’ve switched to the rechargeable ones after a few-near misses with scalding water last year. They aren’t quite the same, but I’m good for burns and blisters, thanks all the same.

So, in keeping with leaning into the new season while keeping a grip on our energy bills, I only this week gave in and turned on the heating. Well, my husband did as you’d want a degree in quantum physics to figure out our system. If anything happens to my other half, we’ll not only starve to death but we’ll freeze too. Bring back the radiators, I say. Anyway, we put the heating on but haven’t yet lit the stove, as welcoming as it looks. The main reason is that temperatures have to be well into the single digits to make this a tolerable experience.

Way back when we were stove-shopping I fell for this particular insert stove and even though the very nice chap in the shop advised sizing down to suit the scale of our room, I would not be told. So now if you fire it up with even a few cipiní and it’s not below zero outside, you’ll pretty much have to strip to your undies in 15 minutes to survive. A slightly awkward experience if you’ve company over. And if the stove is on you have to dispense with all the other lovely seasonal things like hot chocolate, and forget anything like a hot port or you’d self-combust. Even a lighting candle can be too much. I should have listened to the man in the shop. Ah well, it looks well, even if we don’t, sitting around, stripped off!

Jumping ahead to Christmas, for there’s no avoiding it with shop shelves already heaving with pumpkins and Santas side-by-side, who has started their shopping? I’ve attempted to get a few things but there’s just been one unexpected bill after another every week, that’s making it impossible. When I say unexpected I’m exaggerating, as they’re unavoidable expenses like house insurance, local property tax, and other necessities like car tyres. Being an adult is so hard! And why is everything on my grocery shop receipt €4.99? Repeat after me: it will all be grand.

I took one for the team this week and watched The Woman in Cabin 10 on Netflix. In a word: atrocious. In two words: really atrocious. It was sort of like a modern-day Murder She Wrote but instead of the lovely Angela Lansbury, the lead was an annoying Keira Knightly. Take my word for it and give it a swerve. I’ve tried to watch the Victoria Beckham documentary and have failed to keep my eyes open for long enough. That could be because she’s a bit of a Boring Spice but also because I’ve been hit with insomnia and while I can nod off on the couch, as soon as I get into bed I’m wide awake. All hopes are pinned this week on kiwi fruit. I read that eating two of these hairy dudes an hour before bed is the panacea to a good night’s kip. I think you have to eat the skins as well, so it will either kill me or cure me. I’ll take another for the team, and trial it.

Anyway, well done to everyone with school-going children on making it to mid-term, that includes their teachers too of course. We’ve all earned ourselves a well-deserved few days off now I think, because if the weekly spelling tests hadn’t killed you, the annual Halloween dress-up day at school surely did. Along with World Book Day, it’s my least favourite day on the school calendar, as these are the two days my child thinks I’m a make-up artist with special expertise in creating wounds and scar tissue and it’s something that I’ve just never mentioned over dinner. The reality is that I can’t even master winged eyeliner, so it always ends badly. The scene in our kitchen those mornings is the scariest thing about Halloween entirely! World Book Day isn’t until March so let’s use Halloween as a practice run. We’ll get over the time change first. Remind me again, is it backwards or forward we’re going?