Modern life is rubbish – but it’s probably as good as it’s going to get

It’s a massive fact that I can’t be in two places at once – unless the quantum theory of the multiverse holds true. But at the moment, I feel increasingly pulled by the dual dimensions of work and home.

I begin this Monday morning still feeling the effects of a Thursday night on the tiles, a post-work drinks binge where I ended up being piled into a cab (Uber, natch) having choked up half my guts into the gutter. I know. The shame. It was only a couple of wines and a few G and Ts but that was more than enough for me – the others, in their twenties, or the head honchos with more than double my bulk  – were all downing shots, yet I ended up the worse for wear, partly because of my age (when it’s definitely inappropriate to chunder in public unless it’s morning sickness) and the fact I’d not eaten dinner. It made the weekend, spent mainly taking the kids to various scheduled activities, all the more exhausting. The lack of a lie-in on either day meant getting up at 6.30am to walk the dog this morning even more of a chore. Getting drunk even one night a week is both the symptom, and the cause of the fact I’m increasingly chasing my tail. And it was the climax of a crisis that had been threatening to erupt all week.

On Tuesday, it was with rising irritation that it became clear that Ava wouldn’t be having the ear test I’d spent nearly £30 getting to, the centre for special needs, the Hackney Ark, being both remote and inaccessible particularly now we live in Tower Hamlets, so as I could tube it across London to get to my desk before midday, due to a build up of wax so entrenched it couldn’t be dug out with force. She’d have to come back in two weeks after we’d sloshed half a gallon of olive oil down her canal morning and night, necessitating yet another morning off work.

And so it was that on Wednesday, knowing I couldn’t be there in person, that I took pains to arrange for a dear friend to view Ava’s Harvest Festival – although I fell short of actually dressing the kids as vegetables as requested by an all-parent email from the school that went out earlier this month – who’s got the time, or the energy – or even kids who would be willing – to do that?

Thursday was Jonah’s performance, conveniently on a whole other day – just to offer working parents an additional guilt trip – so yet again I went to the effort of ensuring another parent was there to film it, so he knew at least I’d be able to watch him deliver the longest line in his class: a ten part list about Mexican export goods that only an aspie could remember. He’d been practising with me all week, but in the event, the teacher forgot this whole section of the performance, so all my efforts – and his were in vain. But now I have the opportunity to hurry along to ‘International Food Evening’ next week to view a reprisal – if only I can get out of work, and from West to East London before 5.00pm – which short of a miracle, isn’t going to happen either.

But it was the necessary postponement of Friday’s scheduled meeting with Jonah’s CAMHS medical liaison officer and the school, to review the measures put in place to accommodate his particular needs, when it occurred to me that the fallout from all this parental firefighting is having real life consequences beyond raising my tension levels. As I wrote about issues for my proxies to flag up in my absence – Jonah’s increasing anxieties about death, homework, taxes and burglars, stuff that everyone worries about but which shouldn’t have even crossed his mind at eight, it felt like the answer to a question I hadn’t even dared ask myself was glaring me in the face.

Perhaps if I was generally a bit less stressed out – about work, my own health, my relationship with Tom (bit shouty of late if I’m honest – we’re both knackered) and the spate of thefts on our street that has seen us install a dummy security camera outside our house to stop the fucking bike thief who stole the chain off Tom’s bike – then Jonah wouldn’t be experiencing half of these worries. But the question, of course, is, as always, one of money. Until recently, finances were THE major source of all our troubles. And since we’re only just back on an even keel, why would I rock the boat financially by cutting back my hours – even if that were indeed a possibility?

Having shuffled Helorgi, the childminders, for the last two weeks, it now looks as through we may be losing the main one of the duo to her third year of uni and her increasingly successful band – and the other half has been grafting for nought at so-called work experience for the past six months. So even the chores I have been outsourcing to them on a regular basis – haircuts, homework, Monopoly, Ava’s postponed hearing appointment, inconveniently rescheduled at 9.15am on a holiday, may now be under threat. I’ve already begged and borrowed half an hour of a friend’s parent’s time on Monday nights to pick up the kids, who have reluctantly agreed to go into after school clubs, which just about covers us till we get home at the not even unreasonable hour of 6 ish. And I’m bribing both the kids to go to until recently below par Kool Krew in half term, coming up apace, just as we’ve finally settled into our back-to-school routine, as Helogi can only manage a day and a half. I think it may be time to call in some back up in the form of the recently returned to the UK Grandma Kat, but then, she’s probably too busy creating a tech company for silver surfers from scratch in Hampshire to babysit in the holidays. And who can really blame her?

So, in living a long way from grandparents, and offers of help thin on the ground, I don’t know what we’ll do if the childminders bail completely. Having them in loco parentis a lot of the time is mostly convenient, for all I may get frustrated with the inefficiencies of working life, at least it leaves our weekends free, now we’re a bit more flush, to do things we actually enjoy doing with the kids – horse riding, swimming, a trip to Harry Potter studios –  a gift from their grandmother to celebrate Jonah finishing reading the series in record time – the materialistic generosity of an asset rich older generation whose own parents were cash poor, if tea and cake rich.

Parenting – or grandparenting for that matter – shouldn’t necessarily be hard work and sacrifice, and sometimes it’s nice to be present for the good bits and access paid-for help some of the grind –  as well as the guilt inducing extras piled on the buckling shoulders of working parents by the state and the school.  That’s what having two parents in work is supposed to achieve, at least it was in the 80s. But when both parents are grafting and it still feels like you’re not quite managing to do either job particularly well, perhaps it’s time for a societal re-think. Especially now I seem to spend an increasing proportion of my working day making it possible for me to be there instead of at home. The holy grail of work-life balance seems, like it ever was, ever out of reach.

There might be much to be gained, as my grandparents taught me, from just being around to hear how one’s day was. But it’s not going to pay for the lifestyle this generation of young urbanites has grown to expect. But the freedoms our own parents’ parents fought for may come at the cost of their own children’s middle aged sanity – and their great grandchildren’s’ ultimate happiness.