Greetings! I am back – from another land called maternity leave. It’s been nearly a year since I last wrote on these pages. I signed off this lovely column telling you of a letter I had written to myself before heading off, I hoped, with our baby to traverse a sleepless place filled with hot tears and kisses.
Thankfully, she came and our leg-thumping, beaming daughter has been keeping our beat ever since. And that insurance letter to remind me how to do my job and life before her arrival? Opened and consumed. I’ve been back at my day job on the radio just shy of two months now.
I am still finding my balance. There is a lot going on personally and politically (putting it mildly). But of all the things to talk about in my first column back with you, I choose joy.
Joy doesn’t always choose us. Nor is it always possible. Far from it. Let’s take that as a given.
But I am finding the flashes of it – the unexpected giggles and the things that give it to you – more and more vital.
As ever in my life, when in doubt, I find myself reaching for the words and wisdom of a powerful, talented and older woman. In this case, let us turn to Barbra Streisand, one of the three women we listened to on loop in my mum’s car throughout my childhood. (She was in great company in the cassette tape pile, with Diana Ross and Tina Turner.)
Last week, in a rare interview to mark the publishing of her memoir, our original Funny Girl made a poignant confession: “I haven’t had much fun in my life, to tell you the truth. And I want to have more fun.”
What? Barbra, she of the amazing films and music, hadn’t managed to have much fun? No. I was utterly miffed by this. Strangely so, even. Despite the incredible people in her life, happy loving relationships, her beloved dogs and fabulous homes, she didn’t feel she had achieved a good level of fun? Even with Marlon Brando, who she fancied the pants off (and he, her) kissing her back and making her heart stop with the sheer sexiness of it…
Really, Babs? You allowed yourself to get to 81 and didn’t sort this fun deficit sooner?
But the tell is in what she thinks are the solutions: “I want to live life. I want to get in my husband’s truck and just wander, hopefully with the children somewhere near us.
“Life is fun for me when they come over. They love playing with the dogs and we have fun.”
That’s it – she is prescribing for herself the simple things with the people she can be silly with. Being silly is not commonplace enough. Many of us are too tired, broken by the cycle of work and also kids, if that’s where you are at, to prioritise it. But when you do, it’s like the whole world lifts into full technicolour.
Like the other evening: a huge box arrived of various bits I had ordered. Sighing as I thought of why the box had to be so large and then at the thought of the work involved to get the scissors to slice the taped-up bits to flatten it in time for the recycling bins collection, I then had a revelation through my son’s eyes.
He had climbed inside the box with a black marker and suddenly this piece of work had become a car. With indicators, headlights and a smiley face. I got inside too and we barked our heads off laughing as he impersonated all of my tendencies when driving – including singing our favourite tunes.
For a full 15 minutes, maximum mind-cleansing fun was had during that window of the evening with children post-school, which normally involves tears, foot-stamping and floor hugging as the great ascent to bed begins.
Earlier this week, I had Laura Howell, the illustrator of Minnie the Minx, on Woman’s Hour as the mischievous character turned 70. Minnie definitely cannot report a paucity of fun in her drawn existence, but I was intrigued to know if, like certain actors, the illustrator had found her creation influencing her decisions and making her day-to-day life cheekier and wilder.
I am still laughing at her answer: “I wish I could say I was more wild and rebellious but I think anybody that has to fill in a tax return has lost the right to call themselves wild.”
Amen, sister! Having just prepared my own financial documents, I can confirm that there is nothing more joy-sapping than financial admin of an evening. Nothing.
Howell did then go on to add: “I do own a beret with a pom-pom on the top that I wear at comic cons and I do own a striped top [like Minnie the Minx], so if I am not living the life, I am living the visuals.”
I do hope that she is living more than the visuals and occasionally looks at a sofa in her home and just bounces on it Minnie-style and suddenly finds herself standing atop a chair – well, because Minnie would – before collapsing in laughter.
My mission is now to actively find the fun and laugh where I can. Laughter erupted in abundance during the first pub quiz I have done in years the other evening. And on the back of my bike whizzing through the park down a hill with my feet off the pedals. I am noting it down when it happens, because it’s not enough for it to happen, I think you have to notice it and own it.
And in one of my more random choices, made while watching the very mixed Barbie film, I have decided to learn to roller skate again. I am going to start local classes (there are such things, who knew) in a bid to be ready for my 40th birthday in a couple of years’ time to skate down an amazing boulevard, 1980s-style, with headphones on and amazing music blaring and I hope, giggling my head off. What better way than to honour the decade of my birth?
Now I have stated such an ambition publicly, there is some potential accountability. And, I hope, a lot of fun. Until then, you can join me in actively scavenging the joy in your life and singing Barbra Streisand songs in the car at the top of your lungs. Obviously.
Emma Barnett presents BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour