Sussex columnist: Busy doing nothing – and quite enjoying it, for a change

Last week, you left me very much still in the midst of a one-woman campaign to defeat all the Christmas leftovers (and as I already shared – there were lots of them!). Maybe I needed a break, having consumed an alarming amount of festive food fodder in the past few weeks, or maybe it was the post-Christmas lack-of-funds, but I didn’t actually have anything planned at the weekend.

Embarrassingly, I barely even left the house, except to drop my daughter at a club, and to walk to the garage to go for a run on our treadmill as I couldn’t face running outside in the rain.

But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to write about, because time spent at home presents its own challenges…

For starters, it’s very hard to forget about all the Christmas presents still in piles on the living room floor when they’re staring you in the face all weekend.

The problem is, dealing with them is not as simple as just putting them away.

I don’t live in a mansion, and that means storage space is at a premium. There is no magical empty cupboard waiting to hold the gifts generously bestowed on my children at Christmas time.

Cupboards at Casa Hollisey-McLean are already bursting at the seams. Opening them is fraught with danger – you’ll likely start a waterfall of things falling on top of you, and after you’ve navigated this, you’ll face the very real probability you won’t get the cupboard closed again.

Basically, putting the presents away involves a 96-point process whereby pretty much every nook and cranny in my house will need to be decluttered, sorted, cleaned and restocked. Difficult decisions will need to be made about which old items of clothing, toys, and nick-nacks can be kept, and which should be sold or donated. Stealth visits to the charity shops will be a necessity (because as we all know, children have never loved a toy as much as when it’s been placed into a charity bag). In short, the whole thing requires a huge effort.

Unfortunately, such a gargantuan enterprise is not one best tackled by a woman still befuddled by cheese and making light work of mulled wine. Which is why, try as I might to summon up the will to tidy, our living room is still littered with the detritus of Christmas Past. But at least if I have a sudden desire to ‘grow my own snow’ as I plough through another packet of Cadbury’s Snowballs of an evening, it’ll be conveniently to hand.

In a weekend short on notoriety, I did manage to do something right. I spent Sunday afternoon making a lasagne big enough to feed a family of 12. For a week. And whipped up a batch of blueberry and lemon muffins to boot. Neither scream ‘healthy new year diet’, but I like to think things cooked from scratch are somehow afforded more credibility in the nutrition stakes – wishful thinking?!

I also perfected my driving on some of the new tracks in Mario Kart 8 on the Nintendo Switch. And if you need somebody to dance like a giant sausage-looking creature, à la Just Dance, then I’m your girl!

Throw in doing some homework with the kids, and spending eight years setting up Mousetrap, only to have clumsy players repeatedly knock down the cage and test the limits of my patience to breaking point, and the weekend kind of flew by in a cosy blur. Maybe I should spend time at home more often... Nah!

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One other quick thing to mention is the Sky TV show Hold the Front Page. It looks at local journalism through the eyes of comedians Josh Widdicombe and Nish Kumar, and features some of my colleagues from across the UK (including some from a little closer to home).

British TV often paints journalists as morally bankrupt, hellbent on getting the story at all costs. Meanwhile, Hollywood suggests we can spend a whole week writing just one column or story (we wish!). Neither are even close to the truth. Nish and Josh meet weird, wonderful and interesting people, and share their stories – exactly as we do on our papers across Sussex. It’s a job I’m proud to do, and it was nice to see that reflected in this funny series. Give it a watch – but without little ones, it’s a bit rude in places!