Spinning Plates with Sophie Ellis-Bextor - Episode 10: Hadley Freeman

Episode Date: September 7, 2020

In the final episode of the series, Sophie chats to author and journalist Hadley Freeman. Hadley has twin four year old boys and a baby girl (and also a dog called Arthur who interrupted the chat when he thought sophie had had enough time!). Hadley has written many books and her latest, House of Glass, was released in March this year. During their conversation, Sophie and Hadley discuss catastrophic imaginings, covering the oscars with a 6 month old baby and the need for earplugs when working from home. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello, I'm Sophia Lispector and welcome to Spinning Plates, the podcast where I speak to busy working women who also happen to be mothers about how they make it work. I'm a singer and I've released seven albums in between having my five sons aged 16 months to 16 years, so I spin a few plates myself. Being a mother can be the most amazing thing, but can also be hard to find time for yourself and your own ambitions. I want to be a bit nosy and see how other people balance everything. Welcome to Spinning Plates. Hello. Oh my goodness. It's the final podcast. Not ever, but this is the last episode of the first series of Spin plates it's kind of flown by how crazy is that i suppose when you do something weekly it becomes a little marker

oh that's funny that reminded me like the kitchen discos that we did during lockdown were like that you kind of go oh it's friday again and now i've got this uh lovely podcast thing going on and it's like oh it's mond Monday again let's put another one um and listen thank you so much for joining me on this uh new adventure I've loved doing this podcast you know um it's been so uh something I've been very selfish about I've just been interviewing and talking to really lovely women and it's encouraged me to be a bit bolder about approaching people I don't know already um which you know I'm fundamentally fairly shy to be a bit bolder about approaching people I don't know already, which, you know, I'm fundamentally fairly shy, to be honest with you.

So initially, sending out little emails to people saying, would you like to talk to me, I was just cringing the whole way through it, but everybody's been so nice, and I've been so fascinated by everybody I've been speaking to, and I've learned so much that it's really, it's made me a bit bolder actually so if you think of anyone you think I should talk to for the next series will you please tell me in the comments because um I'm kind of keen to keep casting my net far and wide um I'm quite excited about it all really I keep thinking of new people and thinking oh and actually uh the guest this week is someone I didn't know before. Her name's Hadley Freeman, and I just loved her writing.

And so I was really keen to speak to Hadley because I think she's super bright and really funny and just, yeah, love the person she seems on paper. Always read, I've read her books and I've also read her when she writes for The Guardian. And yeah, so she was so lovely and open to talking to me and so brilliant. And actually I've thought about our chat a lot

since I met with her because there's so many things she said that really resonated with me. She talks, she's, you know, quite open about the fact she had anorexia when she was a teenager and how that she felt that kind of gave her a bit of a rest of development. And I think that really makes me think, you know, we're so in a hurry with ourselves to kind of feel like we're fully formed versions of ourselves really quite young, you know, in our 20s but really growing up takes a really long time I'm still doing it now and that's that's okay I mean obviously I'm an adult and I'm responsible but I'm definitely still you know

hopefully evolving I say hopefully it's not guaranteed guys it's not guaranteed um anyway I also really want to speak to hadley not just because i think she's bright and funny but also because she's a writer and i thought collie when i think of people who work from home and also have young kids hadley has uh twin boys who i think are four and a little girl who's um well she might be two by now but she was i think one and a half when we spoke back in March because I've been bouncing around with the chronology during the series I didn't want it all to be talking about blooming coronavirus all the time so yeah this was pre-lockdown actually but I thought how do people

work from home when they're writing anyway you can hear me talk to Hadley about that and about her Jewish heritage which features in a book she's just written called House of Glass, which is a beautiful book about her grandma. And we talk about her dog, Arthur, and we talk about kids. Of course, as you'd expect, a podcast about working mothers. Golly, sorry, my introductions are getting more ridiculous each week, aren't they? Yeah, I am one of those people that phone someone and then when I get to their voicemail, I leave a full voicemail message of the conversation

that I think we were going to have on the phone call only without their reply. So essentially, that's what I'm doing with you now. See, I can talk to you about everything and I don't even need you to respond. But I am going to stop talking now because I think what Hadley has to say is far more interesting than my rambling on. Anyway, thank you so much. My final guest of the first series of Spinning Plates, the wonderful Hadley Foo.

Hadley, I'm so excited to meet you, and thank you so much for letting me come to your house and talk to you today. Oh, thank you, Sophie. You're so sweet. Well, so I don't know how much of it I've explained, really. I've been basically starting this podcast, which is all about working mothers, because I have been working as a musician since I was a late teen, but I have also been raising a family since I was a late teen, but I have also been raising a family.

I now have five children, and I think I find there's a bit of a duality between half of me feeling, like, really empowered and feeling like I can do anything because I've got these sons and it's all going to be fine, but also feeling a little bit like there's a little mum's net forum in my head also, so just saying, like, you not probably not getting it all done right and I think no matter who you are what you're doing

if you're a working mother you've probably got similar sort of sides of your brain 100% and also when you have to go away for work which I do quite a lot and I have my boys so I've got four-year-old twin boys and an eight-month-old baby and I'll say to my boys I'm going to miss you so much while I'm away and one of them said to me the other day then why do you keep going away and an eight-month-old baby. And I'll say to my boys, I'm going to miss you so much while I'm away. And one of them said to me the other day, then why do you keep going away? It's so heartbreaking. Yeah, that's quite a good one, isn't it?

So totally. I mean, no matter what you're doing, you're thinking you're not doing it entirely right. But then I've got friends who are mothers who don't work, and they have feelings about that. And I've also got friends who work and don't have children, and they have feelings about that. So I also know there's who work and don't have children, and they have feelings about that. So I also know there's no one situation where you feel totally confident about what you're doing. No, that's true.

And the reason why I wanted to speak to you is because, firstly, I adore your writing. Oh, thank you. But also, to me, one of the most challenging ideas is being something like an author when you're also raising a family. And not only do you have three children, as you say, your daughter's really little. She was only born, was it july uh june so she's eight months okay so really little yeah you've also just released this incredible book yes i know this stupid book um i mean

obviously excellent book that everyone must buy immediately um so i i mean i should say i i did most of the research for long before the children born long before i knew my husband because i made such a meal of this research. It took me 18 years. And then I started writing the book 18 months ago. So I was pregnant with her for most of the writing. And I finished the writing the week before she was born. And I thought, wow, look at me, I'm so capable. But what I forgot was that I then have to edit all the proofs. And I took four months off from maternity leave. And I spent the entirety of my maternity leave on my bed bed editing proofs.

I had this whole planned idea. I'd be like, you know, wafting around the Tate Modern, going to the Wolseley with my baby, because last time I had twins and I couldn't leave the house. And this time I was like, whoa, with a single baby, I can go out and do things. But no, I was fully on my bed just reading proofs with the baby. So that was a bit of a drag. Well, we're kind of touching now on loads of things I want to talk to you about because i suppose firstly we should start what have you got going

on with your work at the moment tell us a little bit about your book house of glass uh so um my book's just come out and it's the true story of my grandmother and her three brothers who were in paris in the run-up to the war and it's what happened to each of them over the course of the 20th century um and it took me so long to do partly for practical reasons and I think also partly for emotional reasons if I'm honest because it was kind of painful asking some questions but just practical stuff I had to travel all around France and Poland and America going to archives and talking to historians and finding all this stuff because I wanted it all to be true I didn't want it just to be a collection of family anecdotes because no one needs that. So anyway, so that's now done and it came out last Thursday. So I'm having to do lots

of promotion for that. At the same time, I am full-time staff writer at The Guardian where I've been 20 years this June, which is the most tragic thing I've ever said in my life. Oh, congratulations. That's cool. Is that cool or is that actually kind of sad? No, I don't think it's sad. Same job for 20 years. So I'm trying to coordinate stuff around that. And, yeah, and the three kids. And I took four months maternity leave, which people think is a really short amount of time.

But I am very lucky in that I can work from home. So usually, like on a normal working day, you know, I take the boys to their little nursery around the corner. I come home. I have the baby for about half an hour. Then the childminder turns up. I go up to my study. And then I come down for lunch. and I have lunch with the baby. And then I go back upstairs, and the boys come home, and they come up and give me kisses.

I keep working until about 6, and then I come down, and then I take over. Okay, so you have a space in the house where you go, and they know that that's your working space. I mean, they know it. That doesn't necessarily keep them out of it, but they know it's next to their room as well. Right. But that's quite useful at night, especially when I was working on the book. I would put them to bed and then I could go into my study to work and I would hear if they were crying or if they needed me. So I quite like it.

I want to hear what they're doing. Yeah. No, I think, well, if that works for you, I suppose, you know, if you're someone that writes, especially with the stuff at The Guardian, it's so much about keeping your sort of clear voice. stuff at the Guardian it's so much about keeping your sort of clear voice if it's it's quite impressive to me actually that having the kids next door has actually helped you sort of keep that clarity of who you are in amongst it because it could it could actually sort of trigger the part of your brain that means you could suddenly all you can do is think about what they're doing I mean I say it helps that they're next door it helps when they're next door and sleeping I mean when they're playing they're downstairs in the kitchen, which is two floors below.

So that's fine. And, you know, there are these blessed silicone earplugs from Boots, which are always good at blocking out the world. So it's fine. And I actually haven't found that having kids has affected my work in a negative way. If anything, it's just kind of made me get on with things. I certainly dicked around over this book

for, like I say, 18 years. And I think it's sort of telling that I finally started to write it when the boys were three and then I got pregnant and that kind of yeah put the fire under me I just thought I've got to do this now I'll never I mean I don't know how you do things with five kids Sophie but I just thought once I have three I'm never going to be able to accomplish a book like this again well yeah it's interesting you say that because I wonder what it is about having the kids that did mean you suddenly felt like that sort of fire of like I've got to get this done now well i think it really wasn't until i had the twins that i sort

of began to take myself seriously as a grown-up which is terrible because i was 37 when they were born so i definitely still thought of myself as a teenager for way too long and just thought i'm a young person why expect things from me i'm having fun. I can write funny things in The Guardian and that's enough. And suddenly I had these kids and I thought, oh, actually, I'm a grown up. Maybe it's now time to do the things that I want to do as a grown up. So they definitely made me grow up. And I'm certainly not saying that people, you know, only grow up when they have kids. This is just a sign of me and my emotional immaturity that it took until having kids to grow up. Yeah, no, I think for me,'s I totally agree it's really important to me that the distinction is not saying if you're someone

that's working and you have kids boy do they really make things work better it's not that so it's actually more about reassuring you know yourself and other people that you can still get things done you can actually still achieve a lot at a time when you normally are quite worried that that's never going to happen again. And I know that when I first got pregnant with my first baby, I was really scared. Like, what happened if I can never write a song again? What happens if my voice sounds different?

What happens if I feel daft standing on stage? It just felt almost so abstract. I couldn't imagine having those two hats I'd be putting on all the time. But actually, you do gain confidence and you do get better with the focus, I think. Yeah, and also you appreciate the times away. Whereas before, it was just kind of working,

you're doing whatever. And it is hard. It's definitely hard going away. I went on my first big work trip in January. I was away for a week in Los Angeles. And leaving the house, leaving the baby behind, she was six months. Obviously, her father's here with her.

She left her on her own. But she's here with her father and the childminder. And you feel this wrench. But then as soon as I was in LA doing the interviews, I was covering the Oscars, you're just in the moment. And you can appreciate the times when you can work past the six o'clock deadline. You're not tied to the meal times in the schedule. And then you come back and you're back with them and you enjoy them. But it's also, I mean, I find it hard talking about motherhood and work and all that because, you know, we're all sensitive. And I think when people talk about their individual experiences, you know, it's easy to take that, you know, someone can hear that and think I'm saying that about all women and all mothers. No, no, this is very much your own thing.

And it's hard. I mean, because we all do. We all look to other women to see how to do it right. Absolutely. And when a woman is talking about her experience with motherhood and work, then you think, she's saying I'm doing it wrong. And it's, you know, all mothers are different, all women are different,

and everybody's experience is very individual. Absolutely. No, no, and actually I think, you know, possibly as well, the thing you said about feeling like you only really started to grow up in your sort of late 30s might actually be more to do with the fact that if you find your first real success in 2000 when you're writing at the guardian there's things tend to crystallize a little bit at the time when things take off and

it's actually quite hard to to evolve those things sometimes actually and i feel like i'm only just that's what i love about getting older actually is i am thinking starting to see myself in a different way and capable of different things. Whereas for a long time, particularly in the music world as well, you're allowed to just like, you could stay 18 forever if you want to. There's like literally loads of people out there doing that. Nothing's going to force your hand. And it's not even necessarily motherhood that does that.

I mean, obviously motherhood, it might be the first time you've felt like you've had to be responsible for someone else. But you can still be really quite selfish within that or be going to a day job and going back into that time warp of yourself. Totally. So there's lots of, we're way more complicated than that. No, and I mean, you were so successful when you, you were so young when you became so successful. And certainly when I interview people who've had that kind of success success it's funny how there's often this arrested development definitely I mean for me I don't feel like I was very successful in the 2000s if I'm honest I think what kind of you know stopped me from growing is

that I was anorexic as a teenager and that does kind of stop you in some ways like it is a way of stopping growing up in a lot of ways and I still feel sometimes like a decade behind like there's a part of me that feels kind of in my early 30s. I'm very much not. I'm in my early 40s. And I always feel slightly like a decade behind. When I went to university, I still felt barely like 13, really. I felt so young.

I still treated it like school. Then in my 20s, I kind of treated that time as university. I was suddenly like, you know, taking drugs or going out. Like that was my university time. And I feel like I'm always slightly behind. So when I say I didn't grow up till my late 30s with the kids, I mean, that's basically saying I didn't grow up till I was 28 in my mind, but actually I was 38.

Yes. But then I suppose, I mean, we're the same age pretty much. I think for our generation, maybe the big markers aren't the same anyway. I mean, you just touched there on anorexia as a teenager which um must be massively significant but even without something like that i have so many people and i know for me as well that didn't really they they reached all sorts of anxieties when they sort of came out the other side of uni or i mean for me it was like definitely my early 20s where i suddenly thought everything's kind of been planned up to now, and now I actually don't know what the plan is. Yeah.

But you probably know this already, but I actually only just recently learned this, but when you become pregnant and have a baby, the parts of your brain that control your anxiety, that actually enlarges. So it's social interaction and empathy and anxiety that are primarily affected with oxytocin, which I had no clue. Yeah, I didn't know either.

But it makes a lot of sense, and I kind of wish I'd known before. Yeah, right. But apparently when you have a baby, it's the first time you've really had to worry about things quite a lot that you can't actually control. It's so true. And if you're someone that's struggled with aspects of that before, that must be a really big deal to be changing.

So I think, I mean, from what I'm hearing, I know for you these are you feel like you're still growing up and all these things and you know a state of you know feeling like 10 years behind but I think you must be an incredibly strong person to have gone through all that and then had babies and had to go through that feeling of being out of control again I know and don't you feel like as well I mean I certainly had this when the twins were born I would just be up at night like full of anxiety imagining things happening to them and i didn't realize everybody was like that i thought i was just this lunatic and i'd have these awful fantasies in my head of like

well because i'm also epileptic which just kind of added a whole different level of anxiety and i'd have these whole imagined scenarios in my head of like me having a seizure on the street and like letting go of the pram and the pram rolling into the street like the and fully imagined stories and it was only eventually like after two or three years when i sort of started mentioning these to friends i thought oh actually this is everyone it's not me being this mental head case which is how i always think of myself no it is actually everybody who thinks this and worrying about this so much when you're on a work trip and then everyone's saying you see she was on a work trip and something happened to the kids and actually it's everybody it's not just me being definitely i mean i think of things almost like i imagine like the newspaper article what happened like

and and i think you know so one things are happening and would i be okay about this if this is how they summarized it and if i'm totally honest i quite often more often i'd like wake up in the morning think is this the day something really awful happens with the kids and it's like it's a i think you have everybody has those avenues, as you say, and part of its nature is doing it deliberately because, you know, we're supposed to be responsible for these small people who've got, you know, little to no common sense. And so, you know, you need to be thinking about that. But sometimes, I mean, I'll have it where I'll be lying in bed at night

and my brain will go through a series of these awful accidents. Oh, that's so terrible. You're like, oh, stop it. And we've all got things that our particular Achilles heel with that, I think. Like, for me, it's bodies of water. I always freak out about swimming pools and water. My saw, my, well, I think at the time he was four, my eldest, he'd gone, we were staying with friends,

I was a plastic thing, and he'd gone to find his dad and actually decided to go swimming. And he was lying starfish down in the pool, and I thought, that's it, he's dead. Oh, my God. dead so i ran as far as i could and he sort of popped up when i got within about 10 meters and went oh mommy i was just you know holding my breath oh my god and then the adrenaline kicked in and i was shaking like a leaf and i think that's yeah you must have had such post-traumatic stress disorder afterwards or whatever it is like yeah you must have been like how did you sleep that night afterwards yeah i don't i just remember being in a blur and just um yeah going over and over and

over oh my god oh my god i mean last weekend i went away for the weekend for a friend's 40th um abroad somewhere and this weekend had been planned for ages because when the baby was two months old my husband had to go away for two months for work so there's always this thing like when he got back i could have this week you know have some time away you know i could have some time of my own so i was like okay'm going to go to this 40th birthday. And then as the plane was taking off, I suddenly thought, what if something happens? And everyone's like, see, the mother was in this plane crash. She'd left her three children behind while she could go off and party.

And I could just imagine this horrible daily mail. I thought, obviously, everything's fine. I got back. Just, you know, spoiler alert there. But you do. You just picture all these stories just happening and it's a way of judging yourself as well you being slack you know how dare you take time off how dare you work so yeah but i mean how do we move on from that because that's quite tough that's

quite a tough voice it is it i mean for me like my sister and i both work um and we're both mothers of three and our mother was is and was wonderful but she gave up her job when we were born and i think we saw that she got quite bored a little bit when we were in our teens and didn't need her as much and we were going out of the house much more and i think that just really inspired us to want to work i mean my sister works way harder than me she's an a and e doctor at john radcliffe in oxford so she's got a proper job she's got a proper job where she has to leave the house at 6 a.m every day and there'll be like three days in a row when she doesn't see her kids whereas I just sit upstairs on my ass all day long.

But for both of us, that's always been the motivation of we don't want that. And it wasn't like my sister and I felt guilty about our mother, but we were always aware that she's so smart, my mom. She got like summa cum laude at university, that there was always more she could have done. And I think we both wanted to do that and to show our children that as well. Well, actually, I was going to ask you about, yeah, if you were raised by working parents, but presumably your dad was working. All the time.

Yeah, my dad. So he worked on Wall Street when we lived in New York. And then we came here and he became a diplomat. And he was away for like long stretches. He could be away for like 10 days at a time or whatever um and so our mom looked after us and it was wonderful it was you know it was wonderful coming home every day and our mom was there and she would have snacks ready for us like i you know i do i am aware of all that you know that it's the nanny who picks the kids up i do know that but i also know that was a job that had a limit for my mother, and then she didn't go on.

Well, actually, I say she didn't go on and do anything else. She did. She went to my school and got on Classics A level and then went to King's College and got a Classics degree. That's amazing. Yeah, so she did go off and find her own things, but my sister and I just knew we wanted to work, and that's what we did.

Well, I'm very impressed by your sister working those long hours because, like, as a musician, we tend to complain if we've got, like, three days in a row of any sort of work. that's what we did well i'm very impressed by your sister working this long hours because like as a musician we tend to complain if we've got like three days in a row of any sort of work i mean my sister went through medical school she went to imperial late she was a photographer at the guardian for a while and then she decided to be a doctor and she went through two pregnancies while at medical school i mean my sister's kind of insane wow and she's now an a&e doctor at john radcliffe i mean before that she she was working in HIV hospitals in Jamaica, and I would go visit her.

I mean, she works way harder than me, and she had kids younger than me, so she's been in this game a lot longer. And does she deal with the guilt and the judgment in the same way to you, or are you quite different like that, do you think? She does, and she also has less childcare, so she does a lot more juggling. She does, but she's also much more pragmatic in love I mean I'm quite pragmatic too I don't I don't have guilt about you know my kids having a child mind or a nanny or anything like that but I feel bad when when they miss me when

they when they want to be with me that's the thing yeah my sister but I suppose as well just to sort of play devil's advocate a little bit, if you're doing a job like literally saving people's lives, you can be quite pragmatic because you know that where you go, you're needed and you've trained and you've done all that work. So there's been a trajectory, there's a shape to it. Whereas if you're creative and you've always loved writing and presumably writing has always been somewhere you've gone to throughout your whole life as a place where you feel like this is somewhere where I kind of know where I'm at.

It's actually quite hard to always give yourself that rightful place. Yeah, that's true. So you've sort of had to carve it into all the other things you're doing and raising your family. But it's quite hard to shape that sometimes. Because if you don't go to your computer for a day, no one's going to die. I love your writing. No, no, no.

Exactly. I mean, no one cares of this. I mean, you know, I write a book, great, but the world's not going to collapse if I don't write a book. And it's also things like, you know, with The Guardian, I get to do fun stuff. I'm not one of their hard-hitting investigative reporters. And you think, I'm going away for a week to cover the Oscars,

like to interview Corey Feldman. Like, can I justify leaving my a week to cover the Oscars, like to interview Corey Feldman. Like, can I justify leaving my three children to do this stuff? And, of course, it is fun, and, you know, my editors want it, and I love doing it, but it's not a life or death situation. It's not, but the world still needs that thing because you can't have all the, it can't be all the serious stuff, you know? That's what I hope. You know, it's definitely true.

It's definitely true. You know, last week I was rereading your book, your book life moves pretty fast and it was making me laugh out loud and that's that is actually a really precious thing as well you know it's really important that stuff plus when you read a book like that and you know as i said the same generation as you that having that sort of nice warm feeling of what resonated with you when you were growing up helps you actually kind of remember the core of who you are that's actually it actually provides a proper job to your how you feel about yourself and you know it was really nice just to spend some time thinking like way longer about ghostbusters and about steve guttenberg i know i loved it when he said

something like his performance one of the films made you think he could maybe actually really be an actor one day. I know. Really break me up. I know. He's one of the few people who's refused to give me an interview. I feel very sad about Steve Guttenberg. He would only do it over the phone. He wouldn't do it face-to-face,

and I don't do phone interviews, which makes me think maybe there's something like with his face. I don't know. It was something very strange. But, yeah, I've always been sad not to interview one of my great acting heroes, Steve Binkberg. Who have you interviewed from Ghostbusters? I've interviewed almost all of them now, actually.

Yeah, the one I missed, well, that's actually totally untrue. I've just interviewed Bill Murray and Rick Moranis, another acting hero. Robert Zemeckis, who's the director, and Bob Gale. Not Bob Gale. Bob Gale is involved in Back to the Future. Oh, God. Zemeckis and Gale. Sorry.

Zemeckis and Gale were Back to the Future. Ivan Reitman is Ghostbusters. I've interviewed Ivan Reitman a couple of times. But Ackroyd, never. And I missed Harold Ramis, which is very sad to me. But the rest of them I have gotten. I've interviewed, I think, everybody now from Back to the Future. Really?

Which I take enormous pride in. That is really good. I think every single person, writer, director, producer, all the stars, like literally every single one of them now. It's a great movie, Back to the Future. It's like the best movie ever. It is. Have your boys seen it yet?

Not yet. They're still a bit too young, so they're four. I mean, their favourite movie at the moment is Muppet Christmas Carol. Oh, good one. Which is a classic. Are they watching it even now? Oh, yeah, yeah. We watched it the other night.

I mean, they've got no sense of like, it's winter. They're like, yes, fair enough. But I can't wait to start them on like Indiana Jones, Back to the Future, all that kind of stuff. I just love it so much. So many good movies. Actually, my four-year-old, Jesse, he started watching Little Bits and Bubs, so he's just seen

he hasn't seen Back to the Future but he's seen E.T. and The Wizard of Oz and he said oh yeah we love The Wizard of Oz oh really

and he said these are special films they are special films and I thought oh that's interesting there's something in there I mean I think E.T. as well

what an amazing bit of storytelling I know my boys were a bit scared by it I tried to show them over Christmas they found E.T. himself a. What an amazing bit of storytelling. I know. My boys were a bit scared by it. I tried to show them over Christmas. They found E.T. himself a little scary, especially when he's in the closet.

Literally how he looks. Yeah, how he looks. And when Drew Barrymore finds him in the closet, they found that slightly scary. I think they're probably a few months older now, so we'll try. But I've got to ask you, Sophie, I confuse my children's names 20 times a day.

How do you not confuse your children's names? No, I do. I literally have to run through them apparently there's a reason for that apparently it's to do with where in your brain you sort of it's almost like a file

in your head yeah right people that give you the same emotional feeling that's why it is always like a little bit of a revealing thing if you swap names

actually because you're sort of storing them potentially in the same sort of feeling about someone god I often I call them by the

dog's name sometimes yeah but that's because you love your love your dog you love your dog and you have to look after your dog i mean the dog was here before the husband so i call him the original gangster i mean he is the og of the house oh that's so sweet though that's arthur isn't it arthur named after b arthur who is oh really my golden girl yeah ultimate and actually, the baby. I probably shouldn't give away the baby's name, but she is named after another Golden Girls actress. I want to have the full collection of the Golden Girls at some point. It's my favourite TV show of all time. I've been to a Golden Girls-themed birthday party.

Oh, it's the greatest. It was written by the guy who wrote Arrested Development. So when he came over to promote the fourth series, or whatever it was, I begged to interview him just to talk about Golden Girls. And I arrived, and everybody else was talking to him, obviously, about, you know, Jason Bateman and, you know, the Bluth family and all that. And I just had a hundred questions about Golden Girls. Who is this lunatic? All I wanted to do was talk about Blanche and Dorothy and Rose and all the

rest of that. Well, those are all good names, actually. Great names. Yeah. So because I thought I was getting a girl dog. I got Arthur the dog when I lived in New York. So that was like 10 years ago. And I was supposed to get the girl dog. So I was going to call her Betty. And then in the end, the breeder decided to keep her to do something. And Arthur was the runt of the litter. And she was going to give him away.

And I said, actually, I could do a Bea Arthur situation. So Arthur came with me. He might have been the runt of the litter. But actually, I'd say a fairly dominant golden girl so you raised Arthur he is more dominant than Bea Arthur was as you found out

when you rang the doorbell and he scared the living crap out of you probably oh no no I was impressed not scared it's good

so with the book you've just written you've touched a little bit on how long it's taken you to write that that is quite it's so embarrassing well that's a real uh that must have been like a

labor of love yeah i know someone said that to me when i was working on it i really bristled because that made it sound like a hobby and now that i've done it i'm like yes it absolutely was a labor of love and also while i was doing it i wrote other books i did like life moves pretty fast because i just i found it so heavy going mean, there's only so much time you can spend in the Auschwitz archives before you're like, you know what, I need to write about Back to the Future for a bit. And the thing is, the book is actually not that depressing, and World War II is only a tiny bit of it,

but that just required so much research, and I gave up history when I was 15 years old, so I had to educate myself about so much. And it's quite heavy going. But the book itself is actually quite uplifting. I mean, there's about so much and it's quite heavy going um but the book itself is actually quite uplifting I mean there's only one death in it amazingly because it's Jewish family in the 20th century um but there were times when I thought you know what this is kind of too much I just want to do a fun book and in the end the family book I hope is quite fun but it just

required wading through a lot of depressing stuff before I could get to the story. But it's so vital that those stories are told, actually. I think I'd actually really like to go and visit Auschwitz. Because have you been? Yes. So my dad and I went. It was the last research trip I did for the book. So he came with me in March 2018. And it's really fascinating.

I mean, obviously, it's not, you know, it's not Disneyland. But it's very subject to historical interpretations. So whereas if you went five years ago, the focus was very much on, you know, the 1.1 million Jews who were killed and, you know, what was happening in Poland at the time, what was happening in Germany, you know, was there Polish collaboration, et cetera, et cetera. Now there's a very far right party called the Law and Justice Party in power, and it's totally different. You go to Auschwitz now, if you go on the official tour, the focus is entirely on the Polish dissidents who were killed. So 70,000 Polish dissidents were killed. And that's what you get. And a lot of the Polish ministers in charge at the moment will say things like, we don't want this focus on what they call foreign narratives, which is what they mean Jewish stories. And various people who work at Auschwitz have had swastikas painted on their house because some people in poland feel that there's too much

emphasis placed on the jews there's too much emphasis placed on polish collaboration polish culpability so it's now a focus really on poland this noble victim and the jews are kind of side dish and the weirdest thing about it when you go to Auschwitz is that there's a gift shop in the car park. A gift shop. Which is so hilarious. Because, like, obviously the thing you want when you go to Auschwitz is an I Heart Poland mug. I went to Auschwitz and all I got was this lousy T-shirt.

Exactly. I mean, it's basically that. And when I went in 2018, I then came back and wrote a column about it for the Guardian magazine. And Auschwitz got in touch with me on twitter reprimanding me about this gift shop and I sent them back the photos I was like here is the gift shop and they said it's run by the local municipality it's not run by us and I was like that's not any better guys it's not it's not good that the local government has set up a

gift shop in your car park um but I just thought honestly all the things that Auschwitz has done to my family over the years, now I'm getting reprimanded on Twitter by it. Like, give us a break, guys. I just thought this has to be some great Jewish joke being told off by Auschwitz on Twitter. Yeah, that's all pretty extraordinary. And I just came back from Israel.

I went to Israel the other day. And we did a day trip to Jerusalem oh yeah all of you did you all no we didn't I was supposed to be going for work

and we had two flights so I just went with Richard actually right right right and we there you can there's lots of street vendors there

in Jerusalem and you can buy a crown of thorns to take home if you wanted to great present for the kids exactly

I'll take five. It's so weird. We're at for World Book Day. Oh my God, that'd be incredible. I mean, the merging of these sites is always so fascinating.

I mean, whether it's Auschwitz or Israel or whatever and just, I mean, people need the money, sure, but selling crowns of thorns

is something else. I know, I suppose then when you're there you have to sort of find the bit of it that resonates, that means something to you, don't you?

You have to find your own little experience a bit off the beaten track I suppose it's probably always been the case For sure It's very uncomfortable Oh, it's so weird Bedfellows, but yeah, the gift shop in Auschwitz It's such a great Jewish joke

You know, Auschwitz has a gift shop But I mean, with the book I suppose your little boys being four, they're probably too little to really know what you do for a living. Yeah, well, they know that Mummy and Daddy work for a newspaper. I mean, Andy, my partner, is also at The Guardian because they see our photos in the paper occasionally. And they now know that Mummy's written a book about Grandpa Ron's mummy, is how they take it.

And there are photos, there's a few photos of me when i was a little girl at the end so they see those and they see photos of their grandfather in the book yeah but they have no sense really of what it is we do all day and i mean i had to explain it to them basically that work is like school and they're like why are you always working why is mommy always working i was like it's like being at school sweetie this is what grown-ups do um but no they have no idea they have no concept that other parents do different things that i mean andy is a sports writer so he's often working on the weekends you know he'll be away for a month this summer because the olympics if it's not cancelled he was away for two months earlier this year for the rugby world cup and to them this is just the norm as it must be for your kids that you know

mommy goes away to make music exactly yeah it does take a little while for them to get to the age where any of it outside world factor i mean for me with my mom when i was little she was presenting um a children's tv thing and so uh i think i was about seven six or seven when i realized oh hang on not everybody else's mom is going off and doing this it's on tv but the different thing about thing about what you do for a living that is quite unique, I think, is that you'll be able to share that book with them. I mean, obviously the other books too, but a book about their family and their history.

I know, but do you think they'll ever want to read it? I mean, do people want to read what their parents do? I sort of wonder if that's just like... Not when they're teenagers, but... Yeah. But definitely one day. I hope so. And it is their story, and it felt so important to do it because Andy's not Jewish,

and I want them to have a real sense of their Jewish heritage, their background. They're going to start Hebrew school in September, so they'll have that, although I'm the one who's going to have to schlep them there. There's no way Andy's going to take them on Sunday mornings to Hebrew school. But I want them to know their background, you know, what people went through in order to ensure their background, you know, what people went through in order to ensure their survival, as the cliche goes. Yeah.

So, yeah, maybe that was also another motivating factor in writing it once they came along, is I want my children to have a sense of their Jewish background. Yeah, no, definitely. Well, I think, you know, it's like so... Everybody is so influenced by their upbringing and their family, but if you have got history and religion and cultural things and tradition like that, it's like you're saying,

it's even like the thing with work, with what you do for a living. It'll be when they get a bit older, they'll think, oh, hang on a minute, not everybody goes to Hebrew school or whatever. They'll start being informed, and then they might think, oh, actually, that's really interesting because that's made me influence that aspect of my life. I think it's really good to have such a strong sense of where you come from, I think, and nobody has that. Do your kids listen to their parents' music?

Well, with Richard's music, it's a little bit harder for them to get away from it because Richard will suddenly decide he needs to listen to a mix of something and put it on really loud even if Mickey's just gone down for a nap and he's a lot more, I think maybe because he's the bass player, he's a lot more happy to be playing stuff and if people

come round he'll be like listen to this new thing I've just done, whereas for me I'm a lot shyer about playing my stuff so I'll do it sometimes but no I don't listen to myself just for the pleasure of it I'm writing a newyer about playing my stuff, so I'll do it sometimes, but no, I don't listen to myself just for the pleasure of it. I'm writing a new album at the moment, so sometimes I listen to demos

and just check things, but I'm just as happy to play things through my phone. I can't be bothered to rig it all up to proper speakers. And with my gigs, the last few gigs I've done in London, I'll say to them,

who wants to come? And last time, one person put their hand up so that was Ray, he's seven he's very sweet, I think he's realised that he, because children I think are very clever at finding I don't know what I've always thought of it as like the weakness

and the damn but I think they'll think well that character, that brother's doing that, that kid's doing that I'm going to do that one and so being a sort of someone nice enough to come to my gigs was a slot available for Ray so he'll probably grow out of it but um yeah he was sat there and it was really adorable but I think for the most part they get quite bored by my gigs and I know when I used to take them to festivals all the time when they were

little like sunny saying to me afterwards um you should have had a climbing frame for the people when they got bored watching so that's about the level of it really um and are your studios in the house so we have got a studio at home but i don't really use it that's what richard uses i like to go to work to be honest i think that's why i was asking you so much about working from home because i really struggle and plus i don't think i'm very i don't think i've been very smart at how i've set up my work in their eyes. And because I adore it and I've done the same thing since I was a teenager, pretty much. I don't think I've told them enough about how I actually do still need to work because I'm earning a living as well. And I think I've made them feel like it's sort of optional.

A bit like with your son saying, you know, but do you have to just don't go. They're a bit like that about me with pretty much everything. So I'm trying, trying to let you again let you again i feel like i'm only just now getting old enough to be like a bit more unapologetic yes about my my boundaries for what i'm doing and how important it is for me yeah i mean i just say to them now when they say why do you have to go to work why do you have to go away i say it so i can buy you snacks and books yeah i say because this is this is how it works you know i work they give me money i use the money then to buy you things.

Exactly. And then they sort of get it. Yeah. I mean, they're still little as well. They're still little. And I have to say, I don't know, this won't be too scary a prospect, but I find it gets harder when they get older. I'm sure.

No, everyone says that. Yeah. I mean, I'm totally terrified of the teenage years. Yeah. But once they're older and they understand more and they see other mothers not travelling so much or whatever, then that's when they're going to have some stuff to say. Exactly.

I mean, this time, particularly in January, I was so dreading leaving the baby, but actually, of course, it was the boys who were expressing more separation anxiety. I mean, they didn't even notice. You're going like, fine, bye, off you go. Whereas it was the boys who would like be saying on facetime every night when are you home why aren't you here i wanted you here last night and that that's the killer yeah it's terrible um and what was it like when you had your when you had the twin so we did

you said you took four months off yeah it was about four months four or five months yeah four months off and were you how did you feel about the prospect of having babies? Babies. So it wasn't IVF or anything, so it was completely unexpected. And I went in for the scan at six weeks or whatever it was, and the doctor said, so it's two. And I said, two arms? Two legs? And he said, it's two babies. And I burst into tears, and Andy started laughing.

And it was just so overwhelming. And then you just kind of put your head down and get on with it and don't think about it. And it was only since having the one baby this time that I realized it was really hard, actually. And I really didn't appreciate how much harder it was having twins. I mean, I couldn't leave the house for two and a half months because it took so long to feed them,

and then there'd be a nap, and the pram was so big, and it just was a nightmare. Whereas with Betty, oh, so sorry. I like being able to hear your cake, actually. It's making me feel like I'm at home. With Betty, I mean, aside from the fact I was doing all my edits, I could just put her in a sling and walk out and go to Southpaw Coffee Shop or whatever,

or even go to the Tate Modern or something. I could actually leave the house. And with the twins, it was really about managing. And with the baby, it's been about enjoying, which has been really nice. Yeah. Because I think, as well, there's a lot of people, I mean, I say this as I've got a brother and sister that are twins. I'm actually 19 years older than them. So this is my dad and my stepmom. And so I've seen, I know how people, when they hear you're having twins,

and they kind of go, oh, and they laugh. Like, oh, you're fine. Whoa, here we go. And for you, you're thinking, well, it's just still my first babies, and I'm really excited. And so you probably feel like, and then they come and you think,

actually, this is really hard. And everybody with their first baby, I'm pretty sure, finds it quite isolating. I know I did. And so, yeah, I think you probably now, yeah, can realize a bit more that actually having two babies, yes, it's really hard work, but then when they get older, how adorable is that?

Yeah, I mean, I think with twins, it's like the first two years is really hard and, you know, much, much harder than one baby. I can now see that. And then after two, it's actually become much easier because they play together. And if we hadn't had another baby, our lives would be actually super easy now. The twins will happily play in their bedroom until like 9 o'clock in the morning. We wouldn't be able to have a lion if I didn't have this eight-month-old screaming at 5 in the morning.

And when we go on holiday, like, you know, we've only really been on two holidays as a family, because as you know, it's quite hard traveling with multiple children. But now, like, I can, I mean, I see they play together, whereas I've got a lot of friends who have one child. And when they have one child, they're always on the ground playing with that child, because obviously the child needs entertainment. Whereas I feel like we now have it easy.

If we go to a friend's house for Sunday lunch, the twins will just go off in a corner and play together yeah like that they really do entertain each other um but the first two years it was definitely hellish and i remember like the first three months would be like one of them wouldn't go to sleep before two in the morning ever and then i would feed at three in the morning and then the other one wouldn't go back to sleep and it was just absolutely was this happening when you were writing your columns and no so this was when i was off work and then in the end we got a twin sleep trainer in who was the absolute savior and everyone's like oh my god that sounds so cruel or whatever it really wasn't like that it was she would just sit in the room with them and when one of them cried she would

just pat them slowly until they went back to sleep and it got them both sleeping it synced up their sleeping which is what i really needed and it's got them sleeping 12 hours a night which was an absolute miracle but the irony is i haven't really bothered with any of this sleep training stuff or anything with the baby because i'm like it's just one baby it's fine and as a result she still can't sleep through the night eight months so i'm actually getting less sleep than i did with the twins but it's fine i mean when she wakes up crying in the night it's not that panic i had with the twins right if one would wake up crying i'd be like don't wake up the other one don't wake up the other one whereas this one she wakes up crying in the night, it's not that panic I had with the twins. If one would wake up crying, I'd be like, don't wake up the other one, don't wake up the other one. Oh, God, I can't imagine.

Whereas this one, she wakes up, it's like, it's fine, it's fine, here's your dummy, here's some milk, here's whatever, it's fine. It's just much more contained. Yeah, and also I think you know that they will grow out of it probably quite quickly. Exactly. And if you're chilled about it, it happens. I mean, yeah, Mickey, my youngest, he only really started sleeping properly probably about a month ago. Right. It's really recent.

Yeah. And you forget how nice it is to, I say that, he woke up last night, but generally he's good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And how nice it is to go to bed and think, I probably won't see any small people until, you know, seven. That's actually like, whoa. Oh, my God. So exciting. There was this period when Andy was away in Japan

in October, November, and the baby was waking up like three times a night, and I was basically trying to, whatever it is, train the boys not to wet the bed during the night. And there would be like one night when it would be like she would cry three times a night. One of the boys would wet the bed, then the other one would wet the bed,

and it was just like absolute chaos at four o'clock in the morning. You do know once you're past the first baby, these are all just phases, and you can just take a much bigger perspective, whereas the first time around you're like, this is my life forever. It's definitely not.

Everything's a phase. Yeah, and actually it's very unusual to have a house where everybody just gets into bed at the same time every night. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's definitely in my lot as well. They're getting more and more into... They'll always start off kind of quite good, and then they get to about three or four, and they think,

hang on a minute, I don't have to stay here. I'm hungry, or my tummy hurts, or I'm hot, or whatever it might be. So, yeah, that's like an ongoing thing. And I guess it's a bit of extra time they can have with you as well. I know. It's experimenting with their power. It's true. I mean, to be honest, I didn't really want to sleep train the baby.

I mean, this makes me sound so hippie and woo-woo and all the rest of it, and I'm really not like that. But when she wakes up at three or five in the morning, I think, well, that's the little time I get to have with her. And I bring her into bed with me, and she's so cute and warm and cuddly, and I actually don't mind, to be honest.

No, I just saw your baby. I would totally, yeah. She's someone I wouldn't mind seeing at three or five in the morning. She's very sweet. And what's it like if you're writing? What's it like when you haven't slept properly? Because my vocabulary sort of goes to about a quarter. It's not brilliant in the first place.

No, it's funny. I've done it actually. I did a column. I do a column in the Saturday magazine. I have to file it on Monday morning. So I actually just did it. And because I had a really bad night's sleep the night before, I've just done a column on sleeplessness for this week

oh someone's just come in to say hello there it's not small didn't look very interesting you know mom just talking just chatting away boring

no biscuits whatever exactly there's no snacks there I mean you know what it's like I mean you've got five I mean if you have to do it

you just do it I mean it's how I feel like when people would say twins how do you cope you're like what am I supposed to do leave them in the road I mean you just kind of do it and there mean, it's how I feel like when people would say, God, twins, how do you cope? You're like, well, what am I supposed to do, leave them in the road? I mean, you just kind of do it. And there have definitely been times when I've had to write an article or do an interview and I've had like three hours sleep and you just think, I'm never going to be able to do it, but you do it. You do. I mean, I'm sure I'm giving myself premature Alzheimer's

or whatever and destroying my brain, but you just kind of carry on. It sounds terrible, but you do. And I remember before I had kids, I thought if I have less than seven hours sleep, I'm basically a wreck. And now I just, like, laugh hilariously at myself with the past. I mean, I have done interviews on two hours sleep. And you just, you can. I mean, it's terrible. I'm sure it's not good for you, but you can. No, I know.

And also, I think if you have work like that, sometimes you think, okay, I can just get the focus for that period of time. Yes, exactly. And then die afterwards. Exactly. It's fine. Yes, exactly. And then die afterwards. It's fine. Yeah, exactly. No, very much so. I think it's very impressive.

And I've given House of Glass to my mum to read first, but she's going to give it to me next. Well, I have many, many spare copies in this house. No, no, I have my own. And that's lovely. But I'm also telling Richard he's got to read the Life Moves pretty fast because, honestly, I found it so heartwarming. I was thinking, actually, on the way here,

if there's much depiction of motherhood. I know there's parents in those movies, but there's not really many films, I feel like, that are about raising kids. I suppose maybe Three Men and a Little Lady is the only one I can think of. So it's often about dads raising kids. So you get movies like Mr. Mom with Michael Keaton and stuff. So it was the 80s, this really interesting period where there was this backlash against feminism.

So what you get a lot of is this fear of the feminization of men. Because also women were in the workplace then. So obviously a lot of women were going out to work, and then there was this fear of how is this going to affect the family, how is this going to affect men. And so what you get is repeatedly men being quite useless, having to raise kids and sort of screwing up. And you often get a lot of mothers being away and, therefore, the kids causing havoc in the house. So there's a lot of things like risky business or weird science and that whole kind of thing.

You know, the thing that was kind of riffed on in the Yellow Pages advert about needing the French polishers. So the parents go away, the kids trash the house. So there's a lot about that. There's a lot of ideas of absent mothers and feminized fathers. There's definitely nothing that praises mothers. And one of my favorite movies, well, probably my favorite movie, is Ferris Bueller's

Day Off. And the thing that's really interesting in that movie to me now as a mother is, so you have the two parents of Ferris, and they both work. The mother's an estate agent, the father works in some unexplained office in chicago but it's the mother who keeps getting rung up and told off by the headmaster for ferris being away meanwhile the dad's in chicago going out to these fancy lunches in french restaurants and like watching parades out the window and flirting with sexy women in taxi cabs but the mom is working too but she's still having to be a mom.

That's really the message. And it's also not an untrue message, but it's like, okay, mothers, you can work, but it's not going to be fun for you, whereas the dad still gets to have fancy business lunches. Yeah, that's really true, actually. I didn't think of it like that, but you're right. It is the mom that always gets the phone calls. Oh, yeah, always.

And it is still. I mean, if one of my boys is sick from the nursery, Andy and I, we both work from home. We are both Guardian columnists. But it's me who always gets called up about stuff, which is hilarious to me. It feels still so retrograde. No, I think there's a lot of stuff that has really stuck

in that sort of traditional roles. And I think that's partly why. Because when I first thought about the subject of working mothers, I was like, well, maybe it's not a thing anymore. Maybe there's not really that much to discuss and I thought no actually because for better or worse I think of myself as a very modern thinker but I have still got myself in really quite a traditional role at home and you know it's on the way here I messaged the school about something that I remembered about and you know Richard's gone

off to work and I just he wouldn't it wouldn't occur to him that he needs to phone the school to mention that one of the kids has got a play date after school you know that's and I've taken that on and that's fine I mean it's not to say he couldn't do it of course he could do it but I just removed that responsibility from him and thought no no it's fine I'll I do it keep all those things going no I'm definitely the one who does the play dates I know all the names of all the kids in their class. I know the parents. I organize the birthday parties. I mean, Andy is very hands-on.

He does all the cooking in the house. He does all the food shopping. I mean, he's very much a hands-on dad. His mom worked. His mom was a headmistress of a local school. But I still do all that stuff. I'm the one who gets their gym kit sorted and all that. And we have literally the same job.

And yet, it's still me who does all that kind of pastoral care. Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? And if, I don't know, the other day our nanny wasn't very well. And so it's, well, that's me. It's him there. Yeah, it falls on you. Yeah, it's funny. I sort of, I don't really know why I've ended up being quite so traditional.

I didn't really, I mean, it doesn't matter. Rich is a great dad. And actually, in some ways, I think I prefer knowing all those things't really, I mean, it doesn't matter. Rich is a great dad and actually in some ways I think I prefer knowing all those things. Yes, I agree. I'm quite a control freak so I don't think I'd be very good at handing over the reins

but then sometimes I'm like, this is actually really silly. I know. I mean, I kind of thought that with the nights with the baby. I mean, Andy hasn't really done that many nights.

It's normally me but at the same time I would feel terrible if I was downstairs and he was in the baby's nursery. Like, I want to be with her, to be honest. And I also do like knowing all the kids' friends. But at the same time, you can recognize that you partially chose this and at the same time still furiously resent it.

I mean, I would never go away for two months from the kids the way Andy did. I would, you know, when the twins were born, he then went away for a month for the Rio Olympics and stuff. And he doesn't have that same kind, I mean, he obviously misses them. And, you know, he makes sure to leave letters, he leaves letters for them and cards for them to read while he's away and all that kind of stuff. But it wouldn't occur to me to do that. Whereas it is different. It still is. I don't know if it's a biological thing or whatever, if that's just an excuse.

But, like, I was away for a week and it was really weird. It was really weird. Yeah. And also when I go to work, I'm the one who gets the questions about who's looking after, like, I was away for a week, and it was really weird. It was really weird. Yeah, and also when I go to work, I'm the one who gets the questions about who's looking after the kids while I'm away. Yeah, always. Yeah, exactly. And everyone's like, how did you write a book when you had kids?

I mean, Andy wrote a book that came out right after the twins were born. Not a single person asked him about that. No. No, I know. But then it's because also, especially with young children, it does seem to be still the mother's role is still that more, we're still expected to be the one that is always there and providing the really sort of basics of nurture.

And that's not to say you can't reverse those roles. You can't have it any which way you want. And in fact, I've got a really good friend of mine where she goes to work. Her husband does all the childcare. And she's brilliantly straight up about it. But it is in stark contrast to most stories I know. It just isn't the norm. And it's true.

I mean, my sister gave me this book when the twins were born. I don't know if you've read this dude called Raising Boys. Oh, I've heard. I think I've got it on a shelf somewhere. I think by an Australian family therapist or something. And there was a really interesting thing in the first chapter where he says, from ages zero to six, the boys' focus is all on the mum. And then from six to 12, it switches to the dad.

And then from 12 onwards, it's kind of about breaking away from the parents a little bit. I didn't want to read that bit. That was too upsetting. So they just go back to the mum again. Yeah, exactly. They don't want to live with me forever. And I thought, well, that kind of makes sense. Because it's true, the boys, like, if they wake up in the night,

if one of them has a bad dream or wets the bed, they do call out for me. Like, the instinct is still towards me. But I see as they get older, they're having more fun with Andy. You know, he can take them to sports matches. He takes them to, like, Imperial War museums and tank museums and all the boring heteronormative stuff. But at the same time, he'll take them, like, he teaches them how to cook how to cook and you know it's not like he's some weird chuck norris masculine figure but um they are now having more fun with their dad but it's still me they cling to for kind of

emotional stuff yeah yeah yeah i think i think that it's echoed in so many houses is that um hello arthur sorry you know what arthur's come to tell me he says you've been talking for too long this is another little creature you're right, you're right. I know. The endless small creatures in my house who demand attention. Well, also, I'm sort of aware of the irony of the fact I'm talking to you about being a working mum, which meant you've had to organise childcare for your three children. That says so you can talk to me.

But I have to say, Sophie, I feel like such an amateur next to you. I mean, I only have three. You have five kids. I don't know how you get dressed in the morning. Well, sometimes I go out in really weird outfits I did a bizarre school run the other day

I looked at myself and I was like whoa this is really pushing I'm quite relaxed I can't think it was like oh god

how do you do the school run with five I mean obviously you're not taking all five no I'm not well my eldest does it by himself now so it's

and if I the ideal is that someone's at home to have the baby because then he doesn't have to be carted around taking him in so cold so then there's two't have to be carted around because it's so cold. So then there's two at primary and then one at nursery.

And it's actually quite straightforward. They're pretty near us and everything like that. So that's not the tricky bit. It's more, actually, I find the hardest bit is probably having such diverse ages and making sure they all feel like they get time with me. I know. And I do all separate bedtimes.

So I start at about seven and I don't finish till well Kit's starting at about nine he's an eleven year old and then I'll go and tell Sonny at about ten but I need to spend

a bit of time with him as well and that's more so really like Richard's out tonight so that's me like that's three hours of my evening

I try and eat somewhere in the middle of it but you know it's not going to last forever I know and that's

I keep reminding myself this is such a short period like there's going to be a time when they don't really want to hang out with me and right now they're always saying i want mummy time i want mummy time and you want to have that time in the day i mean this is the thing i struggle with most probably as a working mother or maybe it's just as a mother is that you don't just want to be managing things and being like you know get up get dressed go to school you brush your teeth you want to be enjoying things you know and and having this one-on-one connection with them and that's the thing that's hard I agree and like sometimes when I go away to

work and people say the kids are fine I go I'm not worried about the kids it's me I'm the one who's feeling sad that I'm not there I know so no I think that's really true and um yeah you but sometimes you are just getting by and actually yeah you know I've spoken to my mum about this and you know she was saying about when I was small and she was a single mum for a while and she said, oh, I was really selfish, I was going out all the time, she'd just broken up with my dad and she was like, I was, you know, dating and, you know, she said, if I'm honest, it wasn't the best parenting I ever did

and I said, but you know, my memory is not that. My memory is that I always felt loved, I always felt safe and we're really close. So actually, we really have to remember that good enough is actually still good as well and not every day is going to be this rip-roaring you know we baked a cake and we've just done some painting and you know it's they're all tucked wiped out and they've just done some sport and you know some like we didn't even leave the house on saturday and you know it's not ideal i'd like

it if we all went out for like climbing and kinds of things. But we didn't. We just sort of sobbed around and played. Sometimes you just need Netflix. Exactly. Exactly. To watch some 80s movies. Which is what I'm going to do tonight while Rich is out. If you have time after your 7 to 10 stretch. I'll make time.

If I'm honest, the sexiest thing was when Rich is away is I get to maybe watch a movie and do a jigsaw puzzle. So that's my night. Oh, heaven. It is heaven. I get to maybe watch a movie and do a jigsaw puzzle. So that's my night. Oh, heaven. Oh, my God. It is heaven. I love women, love puzzles. And also just when you can just sit and be and not speak and not have anyone asking you questions.

Exactly. There are times after I've gotten all the kids into bed and I come down and Andy will ask, like, where's something? And I'm like, I am not answering anything anymore. I know, exactly. That'll be me tonight. And I might even get my Game Boy out for the future. Oh, your Game Boy.

Now I'm super jealous. A little bit Tetris. Oh, my God. Now I'm super jealous. A little bit Tetris. Oh, my God. I'm all rock and roll these days. So peaceful. Oh, my God. That sounds so good. Is it like an old school one?

Yeah. Oh, my God. Where did you get it? eBay. Okay, I need to get it. I want the Super Mario Brothers on Game Boy. Yeah, yeah. That'll probably come with it.

That's my favorite thing ever. But remember, you need batteries and an independent light source because it's not backlit. Yeah. It's probably the worst aspect of a Game Boy. That's fine. Oh, my God, that sounds so good. Better than a massage. There you go.

And when I take it, I'm like, I can't believe the amount of people that say to me, where did you get that? Oh, yeah. Oh, my God. Because I got attention in my Game Boy. More than the kids. Oh, my God. And when I take him out to the park with the kids it's actually the dog it's actually the dog that gets all the attention

everyone comes up and goes oh your dog's so cute and I'm like and these three children? no it's the dog that gets the focus well thank you so much Hadley oh thank you so much for coming Sophie it's been really lovely to speak to you and I'm so excited about your book thank you

and I'll continue to enjoy your stuff in The Guardian too. Oh, well, thank you. Everybody I've told that I'm speaking to is such a big fan. You've got a lot of people out there. Like Arthur's scoffing at that. No, no. It's true, Arthur. I have one more suggestion.

Oh, yes. I have a question about your pre-baby self. Oh, yes. Okay, yeah, that's a good idea. Should I get rid of him for continuity? Okay, yeah. Is that easier? Yeah, let me put him outside. Come here, mister. I bet he's gonna like it.

I know. I could go out and play with him. No, no, no. Definitely don't do that. It's a game that never ends. Oh, sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, you little ball. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, baby. Oh, no, no, I'm honest. He is a total ball fanatic is there anything else I did that? no because I wanted to I was wondering about the the roles

okay cool Hadley you mentioned when you were younger and you felt like you were sort of dicking around a lot and not, oh Arthur's back in it's fine we didn't mean to banish you you can be here when you mentioned about when you were younger and you felt like you were just sort of dicking around a lot and not oh arthur's back in it's fine we didn't mean to banish you you can be here um when you mentioned about when you were younger and you felt like you were just sort of had much more time to sort of prat about and and take your time to grow up yes what do you think that that version of you would think about you now and how how your mother

ring and also how your life has changed yeah that is well that is a good question i do think sometimes what would my 18 year old self think about my 40-year-old self? But perhaps a better question is what would my 29-year-old self think about my 40-year-old self? I think I'd be surprised at how together I am. I mean, for a while, I just felt like I needed, you know, my own space. I needed to go off and get off my face occasionally. I needed to go off to Glastonbury and Ibiza and just stay up for four days at a time and actually I've been okay and I can still go out and have fun I'm not like staying at home all the time I you know I do go out to festivals still I do go to parties but I'm not out getting smashed

every weekend by any stretch of the imagination and I think I'd be relieved I mean for a while it did feel like to be honest it's particularly my late 20s early 30s my life was beginning to feel a bit out of control. And it has come together, thank goodness. But isn't that amazing? Yeah, it's incredible. Yeah. And also to not be worrying about food all the time anymore.

I mean, I got out of hospital last time when I was 17, but I was still, like, terrified of sugar and carbohydrates and all that crap until I was probably about 31, 32. And I look at photos of myself then, and I still look pretty thin., now I, I look, you know, probably almost, you know, I probably look a bit overweight cause I haven't lost the baby weight and I actually really don't care. And that's a huge relief too, to like, for that not to be an issue at all. Well, yeah. I mean, I'm sort of trying to bite my tongue and say, well, no, of course you don't look overweight at all, but I also know it's not actually really about what I say and what I'm.

I mean, it's fine. I mean, I, you know, last time with the twins, I, you know, well, maybe it was still a bit with the twins. You know, I went back into exercising right away after they were born, like six weeks, you know, I was back at the gym. And this time I haven't done anything. I just kind of don't care anymore. It's fine. I feel like it's like a skin I've slipped off in a big way.

But isn't that a powerful thing? Because I think so many people go through, I mean, a lot of people go through various issues with their mental health when they're young, teenage or in their 20s. But I think, I mean, you know, you've touched on it a little bit, but, you know, you were actually out of school for a long time. And probably the idea that you would turn into such a highly functioning, adult probably actually at that age probably seemed completely insurmountable and also you know you can't really imagine yourself you know without that part of you it feels so it feels like such a strong part of your identity you might be scared of losing it and it just feels unimaginable to be able to i mean if you're

anorexic in the way i was you know this idea that you could eat spontaneously to think i feel hungry therefore i'll have a scone and i won't then skip dinner for three nights or whatever. Like to be able just to eat without thinking is kind of incredible. I think there is a reason that it happens mainly in adolescent years. I do think it is something that people grow out of to a certain extent. But, you know, if it's as ingrained as it was in me, you do think this could be my life i could just go through my life like never eating certain things and you know fearfully looking up the menus of a restaurant before going to meet a friend there and all that yeah to not

have to do that anymore it's just like oh you free free up so much real estate in your brain yeah it's wonderful also for the people that were worried about you and love you that must be the thing they were always hoping for you and you'd get to that point and you know it's it's it's a long journey but it happens yeah and also i think like i mean i don't know i didn't think about it so much with the twins which is maybe stupid because obviously boys can get eating disorders too but especially once i had a daughter i was very conscious of i do not want to pass on bad habits i do not want her to think this is what women are like. This is how women should measure themselves and women judge themselves.

So I am very conscious of not eating like that around her, not thinking like that around her, even though she's eight months old. But, you know, you don't want to get into that pattern. And, you know, I do stress, I do know men get eating disorders. There were men in hospital with me. But it wasn't something I thought about as much, and now I am very conscious of it. No, I know. i can totally understand that and i think also um you know people are really complicated so whilst that's how it manifested whatever you might i don't know if you ever really

do untangle exactly what it is that kicks those things off but actually i think when we always worry don't we about what our children inherit from us that's not the size of us we're as proud of that's natural yeah but from where I'm sitting I think your kids hopefully will inherit your strength because that's actually an incredible thing to go through and to get the other side of and to be able to reflect on because all those things I bet just didn't seem like that day would come when you're in free fall I mean it was just yeah the idea that I'd one day have three kids and a job just feels you know that that would have been totally foreign but I think every family has learned ways of coping you know people talk about is alcoholism genetic or any of this stuff and maybe in some

cases it is but I think there's also people pick up ways of coping and in my family it was definitely always eating disorders. I've got cousins with eating disorders. My grandmother was always really, you know, had difficult relationships with food. So I don't think it was genetic. I think we just saw how other adults coped with feelings of anxiety and feelings of, you know, wanting to express unhappiness. And the way was always through food. And that is what you don't want your children to pick up. You don't want your children to think, okay, I'm feeling really anxious, therefore I'm going to drink a lot.

Or, you know, I want to have fun, therefore I need to take a lot of drugs. Or, you know, I want to say I'm unhappy, therefore I'm going to not eat dinner. Like, you just need to teach them that you can just say things directly. Yes, well, golly, that's a massive topic in itself, isn't it, about how we deal with things.

And I think, actually, we are getting a lot better at, these things aren't nearly as taboo and they're a lot more open um and i think what i didn't really realize i think is your relationship with so many things is sort of formed pretty much by the time you're probably only about eight to ten actually you know love money food all these things and your emotions um but you know when when kids get to being a teenager, firstly, you've laid a lot of the groundwork if you've given them a loving, secure home, but also they are their own people.

And to a certain extent, you know, we're only the mums. You know, there's so many other influences in their lives. And, you know, if you're there and always open and communicative and loving, I don't think there's really much more you can offer and after a while people are going to be responsible for themselves yeah yeah and just as you got yourself into such a pickle with all of that you got yourself out of it too yeah i mean you know and i have a sister who's only 14 months younger than me and she

didn't go through any of that so you know as parents we think everything is nurture but there's a hell of a lot of nature. Absolutely. And as much as we think if I do everything right, then my kids will be fine or anything goes wrong with my kids is my fault. But they are, like you say, their own people. Yeah, it doesn't really exist. No, I don't think actually. No. Because what's the extreme of that?

What keeping them in a sort of, you know, that's going to that's probably going to result in the most. I mean, you know, my my partner and I, you know, debate this all the time. I mean, I'm all about protecting and cosseting, and he's all about, you know, experience and letting them feel this, you know, it's not like he's beating them, but, you know, things like, you know, how much independence do we give them in sense of, like, can they go down to the kitchen on their own? I mean, that's the level we're at at the moment because they're four. Yeah, well, they're only four, yeah.

And I'm like, no, you need to be with them all the time. And he's like, they need to feel like they're independent people, like we trust them, that we're to be with them all the time and he's like they need to feel like they're independent people like we trust them that we're not hovering over them all the time and that I know is going to be a debate throughout our parenting all these things come out, they really do Richard and I, we're quite similar on loads of things but there's definitely things

probably our biggest debate is about how much we encourage them either encourage or are a bit more firm about insisting on things like music lessons because i'm actually very chilled i'm like you can have the lessons but i'm not going to stand over you saying you should practice because i'm like the piano's there you're either going to want to do it or you're not but he thinks no it should be a bit more like pushing you do five minutes of practice every day and we feel really quite

differently about it and i don't i don't actually think i'm right it's just i can't make myself into a person that stands over them so it's really more more that but every every household it's amazing what comes out um and i would say it's funny hearing you say about the kids the four-year-olds going to the kitchen their own because my four-year-old is the fourth one down uh so i probably don't really know where he is half the time that's the beauty of a big family. You can really go under the radar. Your daughter will experience it.

You'll be somewhere with your twins and then your daughter will be off like... I know, juggling knives. Partying. Exactly. That's what happens. That's the benefit. She's fine.

That's the beauty. So that was my chat with the lovely Hadley Freeman thank you so much for having me over to yours Hadley love talking to you um and also the book that she's written House of Glass is wonderful I really recommend it um and not only was that the end of my chat but the end of my series my first series of spinning plates thank you so much for being part of all this with me i've um i've really enjoyed myself i've really enjoyed having time i can put aside just to have these incredible conversations with so many amazing women and now i look to you to tell me who else i should be speaking to please um i do read all the comments so please put a comment and let me know who else

you think i should would be a good guest I'm keen to cast my net far and wide and it's been so nice for me to to approach people I've never met before but I just think sound kind of cool and I have time to speak to them so thank you to all my guests

thank you to you for listening thank you to my amazing producer and friend Claire Jones Claire Jones has been part of this whole thing with me she is someone I've known since I was a teenager when she was a lodger at my mum's house um she's a good friend of my mum's too but Claire is an amazing radio producer and also has been incredibly supportive and encouraging with me with all of this so thank you Claire you've been wonderful uh I want to thank Richard who my husband, who has unwittingly, especially with everything that's been going on with lockdown and all that stuff, he has unwittingly become my editor. So I know that wasn't what you intended, darling, but thank you so much. He's given me loads of his time and support, so I really appreciate him doing that too.

And that's kind of us for the team really got the lovely Ella May who's done all the amazing artwork and lucky for me all of us will be back for the next series which starts again in a month and yeah send me your suggestions I've already recorded a few and I'm very excited about the people I've been speaking to and I've got an amazing wish list of course but keep keep me adding to it keep pushing me to talk to new folk um so thank you thank you thank you it's been lovely i've adored it and uh for something that i wasn't sure what kind of shape it was going to be i think spinning plates has become actually a very important part of my life because apart from anything else um it's probably the longest uh

conversations i've had uh that don't get interrupted by small people or, you know, other stuff probably all year. It's the time when I press record on the little, little dictaphone. And then I'm just allowed to just be nosy and curious. Isn't that great fun? And I hope I've been asking the sort of questions you want me to ask of people. But the feedback's been lovely. And thank you. It really means a lot to me. So, yeah. I'm basically just sat here feeling very, very happy about things.

That's a nice way to end, isn't it? See you in a month. Lots of love. Look after yourselves. Thank you. I'm going to go. embrace it. Journey starts when you say so. If you've got five minutes or 50, Peloton Tread has workouts you can work in or bring your classes with you for outdoor runs, walks, and hikes led by expert instructors on the Peloton app. Call yourself a runner. Peloton all-access membership separate. Learn more at onepeloton.ca slash running.