What Does She Do All Day?

Gregg Wallace hasn't had it easy recently. Who would have thought sharing his typical Saturday¹ would subject him to such vitriolic judgment. It's not clear what irked Telegraph readers most. Was it the casual mention of his less than 18 percent body fat and a six-pack or that his fourth wife has his lunch on the table a mere 90 minutes after he enjoys bacon and eggs with his PA? Or that he schedules in time-bound pottering-in-the-garden with his non-verbal son and describes himself as an amateur historian because he spends the afternoon playing strategy games on his computer? Or maybe it’s because he gets up at 5am to check the sign-ups for his health programme and his gym lets him in half-an-hour before it opens to the public. Or it could have been all the journaling, manifesting and goal setting. Gregg has been shocked by the backlash, deeply hurt by the Alan Partridge comparisons, and saddened by the accusations that he doesn’t love his son even though he said having “another child isn’t something I would have chosen at my age”. Numerous opinion pieces have unpicked the outrage. Some said Gregg was just too honest, that he’d overshared, lacked self-awareness, was diva-esque and sanctimonious. Gregg isn’t the first ‘celebrity’ to be ridiculed for revelations about daily routines - there was Mark Wahlberg’s cryo chamber recovery, Barbra Streisand’s trading on the stock market, Orlando Bloom’s green powders mixed with brain octane oil². Whilst there's a voyeuristic appetite for seeing inside people’s fridges and handbags and downtime, we mainly don’t want them to make us feel bad. Gregg just wasn’t relatable.

“What does she do all day?” I asked my friend over coffee on a Thursday afternoon when we’d nothing better to do. We were discussing a 54-year-old who had recently retired. We weren’t sure what she might do? We reckoned she probably did a few classes and a bit of gardening. “I think she spends Mondays with her husband,” said my friend and I had visions of them strolling hand-in-hand by the sea and sitting in dark cinemas in daylight and no calls at 3.30pm saying it’s raining, can you come and pick me up. “Does she do voluntary stuff?” I said because obviously she should and the purgatory between retirement and death is helping in a charity shop. We deliberated at length until I remembered that’s exactly what people wonder about me. “What does she do all day?” my mother asks my father because I used to have a title and now I don’t and what was the point of all those qualifications, and they’ve no idea how to measure their investment in me. My Saturday wouldn’t even stretch to two paragraphs - water the plants, avoid hockey matches, run slowly, sofa, book, eat, watch something, fall asleep. My weeks, however, are surprisingly full.

“Does your mum work?” asked another mum with a full-time job and a start-up business on the side. “No,” said Ella. “Is she a stay-at-home mum?”. “No,” said Ella. Having spent a couple of decades doing the juggle, believing I could have it all, perfect children, perfect career, I am now limbo mum, nothing really. No one knows what I do. I am kind of mysterious. “I told her you write,” said Ella. “She asked me if you did a blog”.

“What are you going to write about this week?” asked my husband because he enjoys the big reveal and whether he’ll be in it and it’s Half-Term and the kids are under my feet and it will have to be finished by Thursday as I have a date with him, Agnetha, Anni-Frid, Benny and Bjorn on Friday³. “I need to figure out what I do all day,” I said. His day didn’t require any analysis - meetings, lunch (no time for lunch), meetings.

I guess there’s the Pilates and the weights and the tennis and the swimming and the occasional faster running and the yoga plans. Exercise is costing me a fortune. It fills whole mornings. Yet, I still look the same, possibly worse. No major midlife transformations going on here. Gregg admitted he has a belly that bloats. “I guess we all have our imperfections,” he said.

Unlike Gregg, I don't need to get up at dawn to squeeze anything in because I no longer have that breathless anxiety about not having enough hours in the day. I prefer to rise leisurely, rely on my body clock, wake to the sound of birds rather than alarms, tune into what I feel like doing rather than what someone is demanding I do. Instead of ingesting porridge at speed and fending off panic attacks, breaking records getting from A to B to C to D, I do a bit of reading, nothing too heavy like Gregg’s A Gentleman In Moscow. I do browsing. I go off on tangents. I discover that 2% of my wardrobe should be occasion wear rather than the 95% I am clinging on to. I find myself bookmarking escorted rail journeys from London to Marrakesh, googling pools at the Royal Victoria Hospital because Jamie Dornan said there was one. No need for typical Saturdays. My Internet search history tells you all you need to know about me – there’s a lot of Gregg Wallace and raincoats and Joanna Lumley’s necklace in Fool Me Once and elasticated barrel-leg trousers and is that Dervla Kirwan in True Detective? “I remember you saying it was amazing what you could fit into twenty minutes,” said someone recently. So, I used to give advice on multi-tasking. Now my multi-tasking is walking whilst listening to a podcast. I ration my socialising. I broker my time. I am unavailable except for those I want to be available for. Nothing gets me more excited than an empty diary. I limit my advice.

I guess my daily routine isn’t what I do, it’s mainly what I don’t do. “I am a very busy-busy-busy and interested-in-everything person,” said Viv Groskop⁴. “But I also guard my time really carefully, so I have the energy for the things I really want to do. I am never busy for the sake of it. And I say no to pretty much everything that I don’t want to do. And I will go to almost any lengths to root out things that make me feel resentful”. I concurred, especially the rooting out. For a while, I was confused. I thought what I did had to be virtuous if I was no longer using the excuse of a workplace. I did the volunteering. Then I stopped the volunteering. I did a course. I vowed I wouldn’t do another. I signed up for a six-week learning experience on Zoom. But six weeks was far too long and my mornings and my eyesight were far too precious. Instead of building in slack to my schedule, I build in schedule to my slack. I publish on a Friday because the hardest transition when you leave a 9 to 5 is differentiating the week from the weekend and so I celebrate my productivity with a glass of Bollinger⁵ every Friday at 5pm. I do the occasional bit of paid work but only if it fits with my conscience and only if it allows me to have the voice I want to have. I don’t follow other people’s rules. I don’t want a profile because being seen has consequences. I don’t wear my busyness as a symbol of my worthiness. “I’m not running around showing off to myself and others about how much I’m running around,” said Viv.

Does this make me sound diva-esque and sanctimonious? Totally unrelatable? I guess I will be to those who still think having a purpose and having a career are the same thing. I am haunted by the greying man, who baulked at my prioritisation of fitness and fresh air. “That’s the kind of thing you don’t have time for when you have a job,” he said. As I watched him striving, I watched him dying.

What does she do all day? Not a lot. I listen to the wind, to the wind of my soul⁶.  

1. The Telegraph

2. BBC News

3. We’re off to see Abba Voyage – maybe more on this next week…

4. Viv Groskop

5. Sorry, went a bit Gregg Wallace there.

6. The Wind by Cat Stevens