Fire away

Need a little help getting over the Wednesday hump? Here’s Pat Benatar with Hit Me With Your Best Shot to give you the Wednesday Whoo!

This week is apparently the most depressing of all weeks. The break is over. It’s a long way to summer. The worst of the winter is probably right there before us. I lost all my chickens at the weekend to some kind of random hungry predator and there’s that much mud and muck chez moi that I feel permanently bogged down in the mire.

Can there be a better time then to break out the rock goddesses? From Lita to Doro, Joan Jett to Pat Benatar, break out the Barracuda and put your big girl pants on. If you’re a man, well, it can’t hurt. Even David Beckham puts on his wife’s underwear from time to time, so we’ve been led to believe.

Funnily enough, I was only having a conversation with my brother before Christmas in which he was absolutely and utterly convinced I have never really cried over a bad boyfriend. I put all this on Pat and her ilk. I have unfortunately met several bad boyfriends (including the weasel who disappeared at weekends, the toad with the shiny shoes and, worst of all, the bad billygoat – yes, it is the cast of Wind in the Willows...) but thanks to Madame Benatar, you’ll not catch me crying over these idiots. Miss Pesch and Miss Jett taught me to pick up the pieces, make my hair a little bigger and laugh it off to the world. So, my mid-week all hail goes to those feisty ladies who taught the young me to be a little ferocious and never show a chink in the old armour.

What else is there to be grateful for this midweek? Finding a stash of pictures of my Nana as a younger lady. In my previous (and a little off-track!) fervour of house cleaning and tidying, I opened up boxes that have been sitting around for a long while. Funnily, I had been discussing with a friend about how my Nana likes to take a travel iron on holiday, and a kettle and teabags. I’m pretty sure she took silver wine goblets with us on holiday when we were small. It all fitted into the back of whichever small car we were in at the time.

I jest of course.

My Nana has to be the most immaculately dressed person on the planet. She is never scruffy. I love the bag of toiletries hanging up in the back of the tent. Amazing to think all of this probably fitted in a Mini or something equally small. I’m wondering if it was Easter because she doesn’t look very warm. Perhaps she was ironing to keep her circulation going.

Anyway, may the inspiring women of your life give you a jolt to get you through the mid-week blues. As for me, I’ll be finishing tonight somewhere around 10pm. It’s a long hump day for me.