Radio 4
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About John Peel
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Overload
Nicola Harrison has been overdoing it a bit lately...
"It always starts the same way. You take on a bit more than you can cope with...then a bit more. And suddenly, before you know it, you're on overload.
My life's busy - two sons, two dogs, two jobs, two homes and two entirely separate lives. But I manage just fine. Focused, organised, my finger firmly on the pulse. Life is in balance and everything gets done.
But I remember a time, not that long ago, when the balance got disrupted. When, in addition to all my usual commitments, I took on a big new project that I didn't have time for. Within days my carefully constructed world had fallen into chaos.
I thought I was doing fine. Well, you do, don't you? Too busy doing four things simultaneously to realise that you can only hold the threads together for so long. But slowly, imperceptibly, the pressure starts to build, and then one day, quite without warning, you start to leak. Only a trickle to begin with - little things like forgetting where you've parked the car or left the kids. Then one morning you get halfway round the park with the dogs and find you're still wearing your nighty.
The trickle becomes a rush. You forget who you're speaking to, what you're saying, where you're going and why you're there. After that you start getting deja vus all over the place, as things you'd forgotten earlier come sliding back into memory with the freshness of the first time round.
Then comes a kind of watershed day. You take one of the dogs to the vet. When called into the consulting room, the vet asks you to put your pet on the table. You go to lift your dog onto the table and find you have forgotten the dog.
And so it was, as I drove home from the vet's a second time, that I vowed to get a grip. To regain control of my absent mind and bring it forth into present use.
So I put on a smart frock - like any normal mother would - and went to my sons' Speech Day. And there I sat, elegant and co-ordinated, looking around the school hall for my two sons. 'Oh' I thought, delighted, 'How smart and well turned out these nice young children are, what a credit they are to their...'
And then my eye lit upon a horrible scruffy boy in the third row. His matted wool jacket hung around him in long threads, while his school shirt was filthy and splashed with mud. Worst of all was his hair - a great bush of unruly brown curls - probably thronging with nits or something, the poor, neglected boy. I mean what shabby mother would let her son go forth in such a manner? Then the Horrible Scruffy Boy turned and gave me a dazzling smile - and I saw that he was my own.
Speechless on Speech Day, I scanned the rows for the Other Son and finally located him in Row 8, where he was merrily applauding a speech - with his shoe. For the sole of his shoe had so detached itself from the upper that he could flap it up and down with the authentic sound of applause. Afterwards - in some dismay - I howled;. "Boys! How can you shame me by looking so uncouth and raggy?"
I took my shambolic sons home and went into action, seizing my eldest son's shoes and super gluing them back together. Then I found a needle and thread in the wrong colour and sewed up all the holes in my younger son's jacket. It took four hours to sew the lining to the outside, the pockets up and across and over, and every loose end back into place. A real labour of love.
Gradually calm restored itself and I started to get the old focus back. Then, about two weeks later, there appeared a terrible smell in our house. It appeared to come from my younger son. How could I tell him without hurting his feelings?
"Michael," I said tactfully, "You stink."
We all told him. The word BATH was mentioned a lot. Every time the poor boy wafted past (and I mean wafted) I shrieked, SOMETHING'S OFF! or just plain PWAUGH!
Six weeks down the line, the truth of his disgusting smell was revealed. My fine sewing of his jacket came undone, the lining detached itself once more, and, from its murky depths fell two completely putrid dairyleas that I had, in my absent-mindedness, somehow managed to sew into his pockets. No wonder the poor boy smelt so cheesy.
So, to my youngest son, I offer my apologies. To my eldest son, a new pair of school shoes. To them both, a haircut. And to me, er...to me, something that for the moment, seems to have slipped my mind..."
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