If, like me, you are extremely lucky enough to have a wonderful family, how much are you missing them, in this lockdown, on a scale of one to 10? Everything seems to remind me of them and link back to them in some way. Sitcoms, dramas, commercials of families having breakfast together before the dad pops a kiss on a toddler’s head before heading to work.
Even the sight of broadcasters’ bookshelves on their slightly awkward zoom interviews on This Morning makes me think of them. Although the bookcases in my mum and aunties’ homes are usually dusty and they’re stuffed into cupboards with old Furbies, Barbies and heated rollers .... Tolstoy’s War and Peace has a baby shoe on top of it and the occasional sticky bottle of Baileys in the utility room might have a book of TS Eliot poems leaning against it. Pages are glued together with balsamic vinegar. I think of my mum’s house and I want to cry.
I’m crying even as I write this because I’m thinking of all the times I have complained.
Complained there wasn’t enough food in the fridge, or complained that it was too cold: ‘It’s always bloody freezing in here mum.’ Moaning that there’s too much clutter everywhere – as if I can talk!
These weird and wonderful homes are my oxygen. They have shaped me into the messy and loving person I am today.
Stumbling in at 4am on Christmas Eve with my brother and sister and eating all the Christmas ham in the fridge after promising we wouldn’t be in too late so that we could sit up together and watch Christmas films.
I think of my aunty Amy’s house and my heart could burst. Her kitchen is the heart and soul of all of our lives. A place where we collectively sing, eat, laugh, and cry. A place where I dream one day of taking a partner, and I will proudly show him off to my beaming aunties who will wink at me and say ‘Love him.’ While doing chores and getting pissed in my garden at my own house, I think of these wonderful homes I have in my life...and realise just how lucky I am.
I often say when this whole thing is over, the first thing I will do is go to the pub. But I’ve changed my mind on that. I will go to my mum’s. And I will breathe in the smell of her oaky walls. I’ll look at the mountains of photos everywhere that she proudly shows off (she’s even got my FHM covers framed in the loo, bit weird…). I’ll sit in her garden and laugh at the potatoes she accidentally grew and had no idea why or how they got there. I will not complain that there is only half a bottle of vodka and a block of cheese in the fridge (to be honest, what more do you need?!)
And I’ll thank her. Thank her for a home she has provided for us. Even if the satsumas do have faces drawn on them in biro. I’ll go to my aunty Amy’s and run around and sit in the garden with Snowie, the family dog we’ve had for 13 years, and chat with my uncle Bob, who is also an actor, for hours on end about the industry and how it’s changed through the years, while drinking champagne and snacking on some old Mini Cheddars we found in the pantry. At least we think they’re Mini Cheddars. Sometimes it’s best not to wonder and just crack on.
These weird and wonderful homes are my oxygen. They have shaped me into the messy and loving person I am today. And I will never ever, ever take them for granted again.
There was a quote I once read – ‘family, we may not have it all together, but together we have it all’ – and I think that sums us up perfectly.
So, if like me, you are lucky enough to have these daydreams that aren’t too far off becoming real again – of going back home, unpacking your bag in your mum’s spare room, and then meeting in the kitchen for a lovely glass of something – give your mum a hug, hold her tightly and tell her how grateful you are of the life and the home she has given you, take a selfie together… THEN go to the pub.
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You’re Either A Baker Or A Boozer in Lockdown – And Emily Atack Is A Boozer