Quite

by Claudia Winkleman

I’m not sure when we equated ‘busy’ with success or doing nothing with wasting time. The implication is: you’re so sluggish, so idle, so slovenly.

She raised an eyebrow. ‘Girls,’ she said, ‘you’ll learn that, in life, high expectations are a killer.’

(any drink that needs cucumber to perk it up should be ashamed of itself).

But if you live in the UK then summer just won’t do. It should be illegal. Basically, it should be full-time Winter here.

Winter is twinkly lights and capes and roasted chestnuts and gravy and stews. Winter is skinny black jeans and dishevelled boots and chaotic hair and sex panda eye make-up. It is not shimmery gloss and flip flops. Winter is let’s huddle up at home at 4pm because it’s dark outside and why not, I’ll make mash and pour me a Baileys, babe. Summer is too much pressure, too much high pitched squeals, too much forced fun. It’s blockbusters that are too loud and too long and music festivals rammed with people off their heads eating candy floss and wearing ‘I’m mad, me’ hats.

She gets you, the real you, she understands the good and the bad and takes it all. She wants you to have a good time but can also say, ‘Be at mine early, hand round crisps, look after my uncle,’ and it’s no imposition. You have each other’s backs and when the kids leave (why do I keep mentioning this?) you know you’ll get through it, you’ll survive it if she’s right there with you. Your partner will have to understand it

On sports day I try to morph into Martha Stewart. I speak too loudly as I lay out the rug – ‘We have extra buckwheat salads if anyone wants one …’ I don’t even know what buckwheat is.

Picnics, then: a classic case of repeated behaviour that we should knock on the head. They are both a fantasy and a fallacy. We put too much pressure on ourselves to be the perfect unit on the perfect blanket eating the perfect food. Want me to tell you what’s perfect? A bag of crisps at home.

If you could help and didn’t then yes, feel guilty.

The lead up to Christmas is great, on account of everyone being badly behaved and raucous and a little bit end-of-the-world mad. We eat too much, we sing carols too loudly, we say yes to everything. If March is your polite great-aunt then December is the naughty cousin who sneaks vodka in your drink when you’re only thirteen. All bets are off. I missed the meeting/I was hungover at his nativity/I forgot to pay the bill as I haven’t opened a letter since mid-November. All the rules, all the stuff that usually fills our heads as we rush around, just for a bit has gone.

near. But it’s unfair to think your partner can fill you up to the brim. You need friends and family and laughs and great boots and everything else in between. It’s too much to think he alone will be enough – too much pressure on him, on you, on the relationship. The truth is, if he gets to near the 80 per cent mark then that’s excellent – but you’ll need to find the rest from somewhere else.

Be funny, be amusing, have all the one-liners but please, do it in dark colours. Life is about lowering expectations, so let them think ‘This one in her big black coat and her black boots and black jeans will be a bit down, a bit dull’ and then wallop – you can be light and airy and fizzy without the burden.

‘Actually, I don’t know. I haven’t made my mind up yet. I need to read more on the subject.’ I’m so pleased when I hear someone say this. It’s fine, admirable even, when people don’t know.

‘Babe, what are you doing?’ ‘Well, I felt like crying or having a shot of vodka and I’ve lost my phone and the keys and the kids are arguing and I forgot to cook the chicken yesterday so it’s gone off.’ (beat) ‘But everything is sort of fine now because the place suddenly smells of cinnamon and amber.’

Do you want everyone to love you so much you’ll do anything to make it all OK? Do you try to fit in a bit too readily, not getting in the way, because you don’t want to be ‘difficult’?

PEOPLE WHO DON’T APPROVE OF SWEARING Live a little (and stop being a cunt).

I don’t believe in yoga (it’s the combined odour of feet, avocado and smug that bothers me);

So skiing. Don’t understand it. Can’t understand it. Don’t want to. Some say it’s the best holiday around but I’m not sure those people have been to the Lake District or New York or anywhere in Italy or even their own beds.

Opinions can hurt, they can cause upset and I’m not convinced they’re entirely necessary.

There’s so much importance placed on honesty, or maybe it should be called fake honesty and it’s simply not useful. Appraisals, how-are-you-doing-meetings, 360s, people telling you what they really think. Here’s an idea – why not just swallow it down? The greatest people to be around are positive people. I think you look smashing; I think the job is fine; I bet he didn’t mean it when he got a bit twatty with the waiter. What they are really saying here is ‘I’m on your side’. Miles better. Encouraging, supportive, kind, less forthright, way less judgemental.

Help. You should, I should, we should always, always, ask for it.

It feels easier to say ‘Yeah, everything’s OK’ rather than trying to untangle the knots. But there are still so many different ways we can help others and they can help us.

Ask. Don’t sit there and seethe or feel unhappy as someone else is promoted/picked for the trip abroad/given a different-sized bonus. Find a person and ask for help.

It was a late lesson I’ll grant you, but this is the real biggie. Don’t compete. And here’s why. There are no medals. I know. It was a shock to me too. There just aren’t.