Easter Camps, Hip Hop Hell and 2011 Levels of Delusion

'After that afternoon in Siamsa Tíre I was one step away from joining the Black and Tans just as a coping mechanism.'

I discuss the confronting nature of Easter Camps - essentially the new nightclub of 2026, where all your ghosts of Christmas past will encounter you at your most vulnerable and misremember the name of your current husband. In a major moment for geopolitics I compare Trump's level of diplomatic delusion to my lowest emotional ebb circa 2011 and also recall the economic consequences that follow. 

Finally I discuss the PTSD I am still suffering following my afternoon of hip hop and overheating in Siamsa Tíre, and fret about how my lack of parental control may very well have cost my child a career in local politics and guaranteed my own status as the last woman you want to chaperone an extra-curricular activity. 

Finally we learn from Fred what to do when your Twitter gets hacked, and I look for a pen. Exciting! If you have enjoyed please rate and review wherever you get your pods! Thanks so much for being here - J x

Transcript

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It's Easter camp time, which can only mean one thing. You are once again confronted by all not even these ghosts of Christmas past. But we're talking sisters of ghosts of Christmas past. We're talking cousins of ghosts of Christmas past. We're talking about people who like realistically, you probably did cat you probably did crash their 21st back in the day. Because you wanted to be cool, but you never quite penetrated the group. And you also bump into just an endless litany of people who say things like, How's your husband? What's his name again? Ned? And you're like, it's Fred. And they're like, yeah, oh Sarah, I thought it was Ned. And what do you say to that? Because his name isn't Ned. It's a bit of a conversational culture. Like, where do you go with that? Like, do you say, well, now that you now that you say it, he he could be a Ned. He does look like a Ned. In fact, do you know what I'm gonna start calling him Ned? Because I think it suits him better. You're right. I'm wrong. I just I find living in Dingle endlessly confronting. Because the problem is, as much as we absolutely adore Dingle, everyone has known you forever. And I feel I don't know, it could be my own paranoia, but like sometimes I wonder, does anyone look at me and think I've evolved? You know, are are they still viewing me as the same Aegid? Because I was I was a pretty I was a bit of an idiot back in the day. Like, do they still think I'm that person? Now I know not every like obviously I'm not saying everyone I look, realistically, if I was being an Irish mother about it, an Irish mother in this situation would give you the very helpful advice, which is that nobody is probably thinking anything about you, which I'm fairly sure is not helpful advice because obviously, you know, what can we take from that? Okay, nobody gives a shit about me. But I think an Irish mother telling you that nobody gives a shit about you, it's coming from a good place. I mean, I understand international listeners of this podcast will be horrified, and what that won't make sense to them. It won't make sense to an American listener. How can your mother telling you, look, listen, just so you know, nobody thinks about you ever? How can that possibly be intended as a compliment? But it very much is. They mean that in a the best possible way. Like it goes back to those days and dunes where they would fling a tap at you and you'd say, Please, can I get changed in a changing room? And they'd be like, Come on, I mean who's looking at you? Just thrown on, just whip that tap off in the middle of Dunn stories. Like it It was always with the best of intentions. And you know what? I shouldn't presume So look, I'm commenting from let's just let's just give our mothers credit where credit is due. Let's presume nobody is thinking about us ever. Um and let's go from there. Let's be positive this Easter. Let's be positive. It is, I mean, it's the ultimate comeback story. I think if Easter can teach us anything, surely if Jesus can make such a comeback, we can. Like he was literally dead and he rose again, and the rest is history. So maybe that could be true for my both my career and my personal appearance, because I'll tell you this much now. I have never looked more dead in my whole life. I'm grey. I don't mean I'm grey in the follicle sense. I don't mean like I am now I'm loving all the women of my life. You're embracing the grey and the silver, they've never looked better, they're absolutely rocking it. I just mean I'm grey as in my pallor is grey. I look like I've never seen vitamin D. I I just I'm I'm like a wrinkled owl prune. Well, actually I suppose if you're a prune you'd probably be tanned. I'm something. What is a I'm a lychie? Are they are the lychee's they're kind of white? I don't know. I'm just I need to do something. Need to need to inject myself with something. I do have to laugh because not so long ago I nearly said to a female comedian, Can I ask you what's your skincare secret? And thankfully I stopped myself because then I listened to her set and realised her sit skincare secret is that she's still in her late 20s. So thank God I didn't make any of us uncomfortable by saying, Can I ask? Like, what are you putting on your face? And she just had to be like, It's collagen. I I'm just having it dirty yet. And I again, you know, that in terms of people evolving, I actually had the most gorgeous conversation with somebody yesterday, and we usedn to be friends. She's an example of somebody, so she would have been such oh she still is like she's such a cool cat, and she would have been such a cool cat back when we were teenagers. I think she's a little bit younger than me, but I always kind of had her on a pedestal of like what a coolie, like she just didn't know her that well with mutual friends, um, but she's just still a very cool person, and she is the pit epitome, she is the epitome of somebody who's like ever evolving in the best possible way. And I just came away after being in her company, and it was actually really heartening, and you see, you do have those moments in Dingle as well, like there's pros and cons to people knowing you forever, because the con is you are kind of I find that I do kind of veer towards the paranoia because I am obviously my natural my natural incantation is I'm very neurotic, that everyone hates me, I'm still there. But actually, what was lovely is even meeting this girl yesterday, and again, we wouldn't have been that friendly back in the day, but like it was just a natural hug when we met. We had a very brief but really lovely conversation, and then we ended up by saying, Oh, we have to do a play date, and I genuinely like sometimes you say this and you've no intention of following through, but I genuinely would love to meet this person for a play date. And I did have a moment when I was driving away, and I said, you know, isn't that just so that's one lovely thing about people knowing you forever. That then I think when people see you in I suppose when people see you and you've kind of stepped into a new chapter, and we were briefly talking about like reinvention and you know how we all have the capacity to reinvent ourselves all of the time, and there's just something really lovely when see people see you as the you that you've become rather than the new you that you were. Not that necessarily the the you that you were was all wrong either or all bad, but I just at this moment of driving away, God, isn't it so lovely? Like, you know, we would have known of each other back in the day, we definitely knew each other, but it's so nice to really see each other now. Mel Robbins is currently quaking in her boots because was that not was that do I feel a self-help book coming along? Quite possibly. Um, actually was just, and you know, the algorithm, it's it is a bit of an echo chamber because I've definitely watched these videos before, but I was just watching a video of some guy talking about how Mel Robbins ripped off his idea. You know, there was this whole thing about um this woman who wrote a poem, I think it was called Let Them, and she was like, I'm fairly sure Mel Robbins just took this and ran with it. Um, Mel Robbins obviously coming back saying, No, never read that poem before in my life. But this guy was saying, Yeah, she ripped me off too. And it did kind of get me thinking, I almost reshared it because I talked about in last week's episode, you know, people kind of quite overtly ripping you off, and it's tricky when you know the person, you quite like the person, and then you're like, What are you doing here? Because this is a bit mad, but then I said, Julie, please do not insert yourself into a Mel Robbins hit piece. Do we need to do that? This is me. Like, sometimes I really get embroiled in other people's battles, and you're like, Don't, please don't. This guy is doing fine. You really don't need to be. And to be honest, maybe he's the one ripping Mel Robbins off. I was actually trying to find out what he was talking about in that, like, what was his idea? And um I can't I couldn't work out what the idea was. I would have loved to have seen, like, well, what is it that she ripped off? Not disputing him at all, but I really it was something to do with admin. So God knows, geez, take all the help I can get. So didn't reach out because I said don't get embroiled in that nonsense. Speaking of socials, is anyone still on Twitter? I was only saying this to Fred. I can remember not so long ago. Well, it was to be fair, it was a good while ago, probably about a year ago now. Fred got notification that his um Twitter account had been hacked, so he couldn't get into his Twitter account, but people were retweeting and basically people were tweeting and retweeting absolutely awful, awful stuff from his account. Like we're talking pretty hardcore P O R N, like very hardcore explicit materials, and the worst part of that whole thing was well, there's a couple of bits. First of all, Fred was so desperate, he was trying to get this just taken down and stopped. And I really felt for him because he had he hadn't used Twitter a long time, but he had way more followers than me on Twitter. Um, because he's so much older than me. Um, no, he's not, but he was he was definitely like I could tell it will kill you if you have to delete your Twitter and like obviously all those people are gone. But realistically, as I said to him, Well, how many people let you know that this was happening your Twitter? And when he gave me those numbers, I said, Well, that tells you how many people in your life are actively on Twitter, not many. But the funniest part was so first of all, he was so desperate to stop this hacking situation that he actually went into the Twitter office in Dublin. You know the way your mom would do that, your mom would go into the physical office and say, Listen, I need to speak to the manager of Twitter and I need somebody to help me get it get my password back. So like he was just speaking to the receptionist too, let's face it. If she was anything like my when I used to be tempin' back in the day, I'd have one tab open for Irishjobs.e to see could I get a better job, another tab on my Bebo account, and I'd be um texting Stroke ringing my best friend, and I'd be asking him, could he keep clicking into my Bebo page? Because he knows when your hits went up the more times people clicked in. So that would be my other tab, and then I would also um be answering the phone, and then whenever I was temping anywhere, I could never work out how to use the phone. So people would ask to be put through to somebody, and I would say, yeah, no problem, and I would just hang up the phone. I wouldn't even attempt to put them on hold. I'd just hang up, but I'd also hang up the phone in such a way that the phone was still technically off the hook in case that person immediately rang back. Um, so that was the I mean I imagine the people working at reception Twitter are far more competent than I was back in the day. This is like peak July 2011. But well, no, way before, probably mid-nauties. But anyway, so we went in, he asked this poor receptionist for help, the equivalent of me back in the mid-nauties. She couldn't help him, but like what an L One move. But also can understand because he was motivated by pure desperation and you know, wanting this to stop. But the fun the second funniest part was that then when I said to one of my best friends who is on Twitter, because she has to be on Twitter for her work, I said, Oh my god, did you see that Fred's um Twitter was hacked? She's like, Oh my god, I did notice he was posting more than usual, but I didn't think it I didn't think it seemed any different from each usually, but I just I actually didn't even cop he was hacked. And I said to Fred, now that concerns me far more. Like he was like his whoever attacked his account was a re-posting explicit hardcore material. And one of my best friends is like, yeah, I mean it seem it seemed pretty on brand for Fred. I was like, What? Anyway, so are any of us on Twitter? Probably not. Um, speaking to socials, very hard to know. I saw there's a Scottish comedian by Connor Burns, and he made the point, you know, when people are talking about, oh, has World War Three started? He said, I think it already has started. Like, I don't think there is an official announcement um to say that World War III has started. I think he could be right. I don't know. Like, I saw then there was another TikTok and somebody was saying about all these, all um the strip clubs in America are super busy. So, like, apparently that's a sign that like the the Marines and stuff are gonna get deployed when they start hit hitting up the strip clubs and they're just like telling strippers, yeah, we're going to war. So I feel I I think any stripper I've ever met, like I feel is a really reliable source. And I remember again, myself and a friend of mine when we had no money in Australia, we used to go to strip clubs for the crack because the lad the guys there would buy us drinks because they're like, oh my god, women in strip clubs, this is crazy. Again, this is like kind of mid-nauties. And then you'd be talking to the strippers, and like so many of them were like doing PhDs. Like, I remember one and um she was doing medicine and she was like she was like specializing in pediatrics. Do you know what I mean? Like she like they like I find like they're I feel like they're really getting like there's like that, I feel like they're getting the news unfiltered. I think that you know, forget asking CNN, MBC, MBC, ABC, whoever these American channels are news channels are, forget asking them what's going on, forget tuning into them. We need to be going to the strip clubs to find out what's really happening on the ground. And apparently these poor young men, and I really hope it's not true, you know. I really hope these fantastic and thank you so much for your service to all uh the the strippers out there. I hope that they've somehow got their wires crossed. I d I doubt, I feel, I feel they probably haven't, but like we're hoping they have. But I just think this whole thing, like you know the way Trump and I was talking about how he keeps saying, Oh, Iran, they're mad for a deal, they've lost the war, they're mad for compromise, you know, we've got a lot of messages, they're begging us for a compromise. We've got a lot of messages happening, they're begging us for a compromise, we've got real diplomacy going on. And Iran are coming back and saying, Listen, I don't know what you call diplomacy, but this what they what's happening here is most definitely not diplomacy, just so you know. I'll tell you what it reminds me of. It reminds me of back in, I would say, what were what was my worst single period, like most depressing? I would say probably from oh, I'd say probably from like 2012 to 2015 was a dark, dark time of my life. It was really grim. And I can remember at the time, like I would tell myself that I was texting a guy, and then I would look back and at texts after the fact and realize that was that what was actually happening was I was texting a guy, and every now and again he would reply with the thumbs up, and I convinced myself this was texting. Um, and then another guy around this same really dark, awful, plenty of fish, Tinder. It was just horrendous bumble, period. It was oh my god, it was awful. Um and I'm sure there's lovely people on it now, but I certainly wasn't attracting them. Let's put it that way, which says I think I think I had a lot of, I definitely had a lot of shit going on, and I think that my energy was just attracting the wrong guys because I think my energy was quite, I was just really down on myself at the time. So you're just never gonna attract a great person then, are you? Um, but I can remember another guy, I said to him, Listen, I don't think we should see each other anymore. And he was like, Yeah, but we're not okay, so we're not seeing each other anymore. And I was like, exactly, this is what I'm saying. And he said, But like he I said, I but I said so that like thank you for making this so easy for me. Um, I think we should break up. And he was like, Julie, we are broken up, we've been broken up for ages. And I was like, This is what I'm saying, thank you. We are broken up, thank you. This uh thank you for making this like so not hard and straightforward and taking it so well. Um, and I do think Trump is that level of Julie 2011, Julie 2011 pathetic delusion that he has honestly convinced himself that himself and Iran are texting. They're not texting, they're very much not texting. That much is clearer to any even semi-intelligent human being, um, it's very much not the case. Like, so he is kind of Julie 2000 level, well, it's 2011 pathetic delusion. Um, but I suppose the problem with Trump is A, you know, you have innocent people being killed, um, and B, you also have this massive economic work global economic consequence as a result of his pathetic delusion. Whereas with my pathetic delusion back in 2011, I well, I suppose to be fair, there probably was a lot of economic um well, I wouldn't say a lot, but there was definite an e there was definitely an economic impact to my pathetic delusion circa that time because I I kind of tried to fill the romantic void of my life with online shopping. Did a lot of online shopping. Um, so I definitely I think there was definitely an economic impact with my pathetic delusion as well. But I suppose with Trump, the only difference is it's a much glober sc it's a much more global scale, isn't it? Really? It is. Uh yeah, so Ted's at Easter Camp this week. I hope he's getting on okay. I just I do fret because sometimes people, and over the last few weeks, actually, a lot of people have said to me, Oh my god, he's so like you personality-wise. And can I just preface this by saying that honestly, like my kids are the best company. I just love hanging out with them. I love their personalities, like they amaze me every single day. Like, I genuinely cannot believe I get to be their mammy. But it also freaks me out when people say that one of them is like me personality-wise, because that does worry me a bit. I'm always like, oh my god, I hope for his sake he's not too like me. Because again, I felt like particularly in Dingle, but anywhere really that I was when I was younger, I feel like I never which is maybe a good thing. I never quite fit into one social group. I was always kind of flitting between a few social groups, which is nice in a way, but then also it's nice to feel part of something, isn't it? You know, it's nice to feel part of a team, and as previously discussed in this podcast, I was very into art and poetry as a child, and sadly, there are no art and poetry teams. So you're in a team of one, and that can be lonely. So as much as like I know, I'm sure I hope people mean it well when they say, Oh, he's so like you personality-wise, I just hope, you know, you're kind of like, oh my god, but I hope he's not in a way for his sake, because if he is, it's gonna be a lonely road. Did I give a shout out? I think I did last week. Oh, I did, because I was talking about the Multron. I did give a shout out to the lovely Miriam in Orenmore who kindly looked after my kids as I pulled my knickers up. And thank you so much for that. And I did have somebody getting in touch with me during the week who said that they talk about pain afford, they listen to the podcast, and then there was somebody in a change room who was struggling with their kids and they offered to mine the kids while she was also getting her knickers on. So, I mean, look at this women sporting women. P.S. You should have been doing that anyway. But listen, we'll take it. We will take it. Thank you. We're just all out here teaching other people how to be human. That's what we're doing. Speaking of how to be human, I think I've officially made it because this week didn't I have an actual troll account set up. Yes. There was this account on TikTok. Now originally I thought it was, dare I say, a fan account. Dare I say a Stan account, which I only realised recently. Apparently, the term Stan actually comes from the MM song Stan, which listeners to this podcast of a certain vintage will remember, of course, was the Eminem song that we all knew and loved, where he sampled Ido, who kind of let's face it, made the whole fucking song with her with her with her deadly beats. Um, this is also when people get in touch, and it is really disturbing when people get in touch with me and say, Oh my god, you were told by Eminem and my mom, you really remind me of my mum because my mum grew up listening to Eminem, and you're like, make it stop. So I thought this account was a Stan account, this one that was created on TikTok. It was called Juli Jay is insane. So I mean straight away you're like, no lie detected there. Could easily be any one of my family members setting up this TikTok account. And then when I went in, I realised I delved deeper. So the person had the same profile picture as me, which is always kind of a bit concerning because people could easily think it's you, um, and then just click in and be like, oh my god, only 50 followers, things aren't going as well for her as I thought. And then they had screenshots of my videos, and then they had kind of mad captions underneath the videos. And originally I was like, my immediate thought was, Oh, is this person having the crack? But then I realized they weren't having the crack, and this was kind of a trolley account. So, I mean, there was quite a few videos on this, and I did think to myself, other people might be disturbed. I was secretly thrilled because I was like, Oh my god, I've made it. And I said it to a friend that day who said, Oh, I had this troll account set up, and I reported them. Of course, he was straight away like, oh my god, can I find the account? And uh anyway, so I reported, I think it's gone, and he was like, But you must have been upset. I was like, I mean, maybe I'm just so tired that I'm no longer getting upset over this stupid shite. I didn't, I couldn't care less. I actually said I said, if anything, this is probably a sign that things are going well. And then he was like, Yeah, but I don't think I've ever heard of like the likes of Joanne having a trolley count set up for her. I was like, Well, let's not go there. I don't think there's any need to compare. Is there? Please don't test my hypothesis. Well, hello. Oh mister, mammy's just doing her podcast. How are you? I need a pen. You need a pen. Um, do you know what? I don't know. Do I have a pen? Hang on now, two seconds. Let me pause this. That child was not actually my child. He is a paid actor who I hire for podcast sessions just to hang around in the background. Just so you're like, okay, story checks out. Like she talks about having two kids. She must do. It's the only thing that makes sense. Um, so he's floating around looking for a pen. I sent him off for a pen. It's kind of like this little game we play, it's like an early Easter treasure hunt, except involving pens. Where do the pens go? I've no idea. Uh my actually, that little fellow just came in. It was so funny. He had a hip-hop thing the last week in Shim Satira, which is the theatre interlay, and I just had to laugh because he was doing hip-hop and he had two shows in there. I foolishly volunteered to chap around the first show. Never again. It was a wonderful show. They're a wonderful group of children. I completely misunderestimated, first of all, how many snacks are needed for one child for a two-hour period. So I really messed up there, and then I left half my little fella Ted, he's my eldest five, he's five. I left half his lunch in the other child's boogie, and then their dad, my husband, was out watching the show, so I couldn't get him to come backstage to give me half the lunch because I couldn't leave the children because I was chaperoning the children. I thought somebody else would be chaperoning with me, but it was actually just me, which is fine, which is fine, but it was intense because all we had were a few colouring books, and they get sick of colouring very quickly, especially because I don't want to make it gendered, but the majority were boys. Now, here's the thing, it was the hottest day of the year. We had the kitchen, and there's a lovely little kind of a I suppose it's like kind of a conservatory area. So we were in the conservatory area, which you'd imagine would be lovely on a normal temperature day. But it was very hot and it got hot very quickly. And before I could stop them, all these five-year-old boys had taken off all their tops because they were all overheating. They were dropping like flies. Of course, what happens when children overheat? They get a little bit narky. Who doesn't? says you. Then another child who had the best of intentions was an absolute angel sent from the hip-hop gods. He had a game boy and he was very kindly letting everyone have a go of the game boy. I don't even think he got a go of the game by himself. I then took my eye off the ball and I didn't realise because a lot of these kids I don't know that well. And you see, you can't really discipline or kind of enforce any rules when you don't know the kids. Maybe you should. Look, my management is terrible. I am probably the worst parent out there. That's not me being hard on myself, but I'm just saying, do you know what we people say, oh, as a mammy, just trust your gut. I listen to what my gut is telling me, and I do the opposite, and it rarely sends me wrong, it rarely puts me wrong. I uh my gut and my intuition, it could be the fact that forget the perimenopause. I am full-blown menopause now, mad for a bit of HRT. If you can hook me up with a bit of HRT, please get in touch. I'm willing to buy it off the dark web. My emotions and my temper is I I everything's all over the shop. I'm not thinking clearly, but on the best of times, but especially when we're all in the kitchen in Shim Satira, everyone's overheating, everyone's taking their tops off, a Game Boy is going around, I dropped the ball, I forgot how many people had already played with the Game Boy. My little guy then had the Game Boy, and I thought he was hogging the Game Boy, so I said, right, you have to give that now to the other child. He had a complete meltdown, as was warranted, because it then turned out the other one of the other kids told me after that he had literally just gotten the Game Boy. So, in other words, every other child had the Game Boy, and then I was like, now you've to give it away. Like, I was I was it was a complete parenting fail. I totally messed up. So my little guy had a total meltdown, which really upset me because the meltdown was my fault. I messed up, it was awful. Um, in the midst of this, there was this absolutely lovely young man called Cameron, who was dancing in the show. He came in again, another angel sent from this time the Shem Satira Gods. I think it was with the Gary Skinner music. He was a gorgeous young man. He told me afterwards that he um, I think he was saying that his mom likes my comedy, which again, like from anyone other than Cameron, I would take that as such an affront. But he was just such a lovely young man. Thankfully, one of the children was sick, and because I was on my own with them, he took them outside and I was watching them through the window, and I could just tell he was just being so lovely to him, and he just needed a bit of air, and I was like, oh my god, thanks be to Jesus for Cameron. So, why all of this is happening? So, basically, what happened was our gang had to go on and they had to do their hip-hop show at 10 past one, which sounds great, but then obviously it means that they're completely done and dusted for 20 past one, and then they had to stay in the room. This is where things went awry. They had to stay in the room until 10 to 3 because then they were going out for the finale. So it was keeping them entertained for that period of time. I was underprepared, I hadn't brought enough snacks. I never, I never do the lunch properly. I'm always looking at the fella beside Ted in school and I'm like, that's a pack lunch. I I still have not mastered the pack lunches, and even for a long time, because I'm a huge fan of Sophie White, I remember she was talking about how like she didn't have like proper lunchboxes for her kids, and she used to use Chinese, like you know, the old containers used to use those as lunchboxes, and I used to do that for a long time because I was like, if it's good enough for Sophie White, it's good enough for me. And then I discovered that like he was the only child without a lunchbox, and I was practically calling Tucson myself. I was like, this is madness. This is like Sophie is the queen of quirk quirk, she is the queen of cool, like her kids. I'm sure, yes, it's a Chinese lunchbox, but like she probably has like homemade sushi rolls in there. Like you need to, you can't you can't just be rocking up with a ham sandwich in a in a Chinese uh container. Like, you need to be you're gonna be like she's a trained chef, she's up and like she's up in the lunchbox game. Like, who am I to be like, oh, I'll just do a Chinese container? Like Sophie, yeah, but am I baking? No. So therefore you need to buy, invest in the Spider-Man lunchbox. Come on, Sophie White, you were not. As any publisher keeps I keep emailing them and they keep telling me this. Sophie White, you are not, and they're not wrong. So I completely messed up on the lunchbox. Half the lunchbox was gone with the other baby, so it was a total disaster. Ted didn't have enough snacks. Uh, thank god they all had water because it was like a furnace in there, and then at about half past two, so the whole time there was this other group of little girls, and they were, I'd say there was about the same, there was probably seven or eight of them. They were ranging in ages, again, from I'd say maybe seven or eight down to about three. And then one of the little girls said to me, Can you bring me to the toilet? This is like half past two. And I said to them, There had been this other woman sitting on the couch with three kids, and I said to this other woman on the couch, I said, Oh, she wants to go to the toilet there. And then this woman said to me, Oh, those girls aren't with me at all. I said, What? So I hadn't realised I felt terrible because I was supposed to be chaperoning these kids as well. So I brought them down to another dressing room. So they went in as a little group to use the toilet, and then they came out and we came back, and I was all apologies to them because I was like, Oh my god, are you okay? Which it's a bit late now because they only have 20 minutes left and they must have been looking at me like, oh my god, have you done a shit job of this? Like this has been really badly handled by you because you've been supposed to be chaperoning us for the last two hours, and a quarter to three before we go out for a finale, you're asking, Are we okay? Bit late now, missus. So, yeah, it was it was tricky, but then I'd laugh because then one of the other mums, and like they're so nice, you know. Like, again, I don't know a lot of the mums that well, but you know, just a couple of them that I have spoken to just seem absolutely fab. And then for the second show, like I was completely traumatized after the first show, and I was really upset because Ted's meltdown was 100% not a reflection on him, it was absolutely a reflection of me. My absolute, like, I mean, my appalling lack of control and lack of management. I think I honestly like disassociated and even because I'm usually not good in parental situations, in that, as I say, not great at disciplining, I'm not great at keeping control, I'm not great at things running smoothly, but I think with the stress and the intensity of the situation, I think I just disassociated from my own body, and I was almost so very aware of the couple of kids in the group who were being very quiet, and I felt that they were probably having like internal meltdowns, but they were they were off, they were probably upset, but uh they were keeping an inside, which made me feel worse. It was just terrible, and then the second show, because I'd met one of the mums in the middle, and I just said, Look, I feel like I've survived Dunkirk, I completely let the kids down. It was complete shit show, it was awful. Like, I honestly felt like I had just emerged with trench foot from Shem Satira, like I was shell shocked. Um, I was not the same, like I was, you know, I was like those World War One soldiers who came back and ended up in the black and tans, and they were just lunatics running around causing havoc. Like, I I could actually, I was one step away from signing myself up to the black and tans just to have some kind of coping mechanism. It was awful, and I felt so bad. And then that same mum sent me a picture of them all happy out in during the second show, and they were all sitting around like super chilled, they were colouring, and I felt absolutely terrible because like the common denominator was me, like the missing, they was they were they were the same children, it was just the person chaperoning them was doing such a better job. Now she did say, I was like, Oh my god, I feel terrible, and she did say, Well, there's four of us now. So the maths isn't mathing, because there was four chaperoning the second show, there was one chaperoning the first show, and out of all the parents, and I think the kids would back me up in this, the one parent who shouldn't have been chaperoning the first show was me. Like, I'm definitely someone who needs to be working as a group. I mean, anyone who was at the transition year play this year will testify to that. Nobody was coming to me um looking for answers. I think people were just coming to me looking for uh water, and that's where my responsibilities should start and end. Water. I'm the water girl, I'm happy to be the water girl, but never again. I'll tell you this much now next year. I mean, first of all, with the hip-hop, I signed uh I signed Ted up for the hip-hop before I watched the PDD documentary. So, like, I mean, should they even be doing hip-hop? Who knows? Who's just saying I like it's I who knows? But uh, if I am asked to do it this year, I'm telling you this much now. There is not a hope in hell. I'm gonna chaperone here, Bob. Um, no, because to be quite honest, like, because I have started I think like did I mention this before that I am going to counselling again, and like she's so lovely, she really is so nice. Um, but like I actually ended up talking about the day in Shim Satira to her, and that's just when you know, like, this is ridiculous, Julie, because for God's sake, like, I mean, you know, you're paying 70 quid an hour to talk about like chaperoning a hip-hop class. Like, her next client is probably coming in, and God forbid, like this client maybe fled the war. Has okay, this client maybe fled the war in Ukraine and is coming in talking about like the stress she feels because like I don't know, like her brother's in the RB and she can't get hold of her brother and her mother's world worried sick. And I'm sitting in front of this woman saying, Yes, so I found the day in Shim Satira last week really hard. Like, I mean, how does this woman keep a straight face? She's so lovely. I'm mad about her. I will say the one funny thing was um myself and Fred were both saying we've done many shows in Shim Satira, but it was the first time we'd ever seen a crowd in Shim Satira. And I was asking Ted, I said, Oh my god, how did it feel to have an audience in Shim Satira? How did it what did it look like from the stage? He said it felt great. So it's good to know, you know, something to work towards, and like just seeing a crowd in that room for the first time ever, despite probably doing that show, I'd say we've both gauge in Shim Satira seven or eight times. So just to see bums on seats, I felt like David Odharty. I honestly said this is how David Odharty feels, truly. Um, thanks so much for listening, guys. I'm gonna wrap it up again. You know, I'm doing this whole like one take Sally because the editing is where we fall down, okay? This is where with the ADHD and everything, we can't go down this rabbit hole of editing because it's just like gonna be thankless, it's gonna get us all in a tizzy. That's when this sound gets messed up. So we're one take Sally. I'm just gonna whack this up now and we'll never speak this podcast again. Please remember that is the rule. Um, now you can message me, of course, but like please don't stop me outside Easter Camp and say, listen, I heard what you said about how you feel like you've never fit in in Dingle, and it's so confronting when you're standing outside Easter Camp because you think you never will fit in. And I'm so sorry you feel like that. No, you can think that, but please don't come up to me outside Easter Camp. Thank you so much. Big shout out to all our new and older listeners. Uh, that's badly phrased, but you know what I mean. You've been here a while. Thanks so much for buttoning up with me. Our listeners, I want to give a shout out to Louise, Paula, John, Danny, Susan, and Annie. Thank you so much for getting in touch. If you have enjoyed the podcast, I have been told it makes a big difference when people rate in reviews. So please, if you could rate and review. Oh, the baby's here. Hi, Baba. We're just finishing up. Thanks so much for listening, guys. Say bye, bye bye.