Trasharama

Life isn’t as lovely as it should be. Yesterday the man I adored as a teenager made a game out of spotting the grey hairs on my head and  taking an irrational amount of pleasure  in yanking them out like a flea-picking monkey.   (It was probably the defining moment of my romantic life but don’t tell him that…). Then this morning I found myself super-glueing the bedroom curtain pole to the wall so the fright that is  hearing things that go crash in the night and finding myself staring at the moon where there should be only cream chenille never has to be suffered again.

When one finds oneself doing battle with life on a daily basis one has to seek respite. Respite for me come in the form  of Piers Morgan and a fish finger buttie. It can be found too in Heat magazine. In Scooby Doo and red liqorice laces sucked in spectacular fashion into my mouth. It is ketchup with everything and Britney Spears latest disaster.  It is spending hours playing silly games of  "Would ya?" with Kath (Ok, so to save the planet you’ve got to sleep with either David Hasselhoff  or Gordon Brown. Which one are you having?) and stringing a truly awful set of pink fluffy heart shaped fairy lights across my bed because they make me smile. It is wasting away whole evenings gossiping on the phone and taking baths in Power Rangers bubblegum scented bubble bath. It is watching the car crash that is Kerry Katona open mouthed, eating micro-chips,  really and truly caring about my fake tan (I’m from Liverpool!), and letting Finn eat half an easter egg after his breakfast because it is the first day of his holidays and I want it to be fun…

In other words it is trash.

Virtue has never been my middle name. Try as I might I can’t be the kind of woman who lies in bed at night worrying about the amount of salt my son has consumed that day. Much as I adore housework I  will happily abandon the ironing for  an hour with the Loose Women.  I scandalise myself on a regular basis, feel mildly confused by my ability to switch oh so very easily between great literature  and The National Enquirer and occasionally, and  I can’t believe I  am about to  admit this, occasionally feel almost orgasmically happy on a Sunday afternoon with a plate of black  pudding and The News of the World…

From the very beginning of BrocanteHome I have banned the word guilt.  It is, I think, an emotion that doesn’t become us.   We can’t be good all the time. We don’t have to be the green living, organic consuming, low carb munching angels we feel obliged to be all day everyday. We can instead spend blissful, whole mornings in bed, reading something that will improve neither mind, nor soul, drinking a can of Tizer, and letting a Flake bar crumble all over our decollatage. We can entertain fantasies about Piers Morgan (Have you got it yet? He’s my latest celebrity crush… this too will pass!), chuck the odd tin into the bin, buy something sparkly for a  pound in Asda, and  drown smile shaped potatoes in salt and vinegar and feel… proud.

There is no shame in trash occasionally.  Consider me your mentor in a life less perfect. Perfection you see, is exhausting. Trash is life affirming, energising, thrilling, and a teeny bit naughty. So all hail the naughty girl in the pretty pinny! The yummy mummies at the school gate may not quite approve of her silly shoes  and maybe her mum worries about her a bit more than she needs too… but the naughty, trashy girl knows what it is to be alive…

Oh bless me. I’ve got no shame have I? But there is a time and a place for virtue and today isn’t it.