Tag: Ruth Leigh

Issy Smugge joins the Sandwich Generation

I am delighted to welcome Ruth Leigh to my blog today, to talk about the sandwich generation on the publication day of her latest Issy Smugge book: The Continued Times of Isabella M Smugge. (For Ruth’s previous guest blogs click here and here.)

Google the phrase ‘sandwich generation’ and a fairly dispiriting set of definitions comes up. Under the headline, ‘Sandwich generation moms feeling the squeeze’, the American Psychological Association has this to say: 

Mothers caring for both children and aging parents often feel overextended…the ‘sandwich generation,’ ages 35-54, feel more stress than any other age group as they balance the demanding, delicate acts of caring for growing children and their aging parents. Nearly 40 percent of those aged 35-54 report extreme levels of stress (compared to 29 percent of 18-34 years old and 25 percent of those older than 55). This stress takes a toll not only on personal relationships—83 percent say relationships with their spouse, children, and family is the top source of their stress—but also on their own well-being as they struggle to take better care of themselves.

The phrase was first used in the early 1980s as the baby boom generation began to retire, life expectancy increased and people were leaving it till later to start their families. These days, it’s a fully-fledged demographic, and even starry Instamum Isabella M Smugge, with her full complement of staff and plenty of money, is feeling the squeeze.

Issy’s experiences as part of the sandwich generation

At the end of my second book, The Trials of Isabella M Smugge, our heroine’s mother had a serious stroke. Poor Isabella had already had a rough year, what with an unplanned fourth baby, losing her right-hand woman and devoted au pair Sofija and becoming a single parent. She and her mother had always had a fractious relationship, but in spite of that, she didn’t hesitate when offering her a home at her gracious abode the Old Rectory. At the end of “Trials”, Mummy was ensconced in the best bedroom and her daughter was bracing herself for a challenging future.

The new book, The Continued Times of Isabella M Smugge, opens with Isabella struggling with her new daily routine. Not only is she being kept up at night by a teething baby, but also startled into wakefulness by her mother banging on the floor with a stick and demanding round the clock service:

In addition to my actual baby, my mother is behaving like a child. She refuses to use the walking frame I sourced and insists on having her stick by the side of the bed, not to aid mobility, but to attract my attention. I was jerked awake at 5.32 this morning by loud and repeated banging, having only just nodded off from my earlier wake-up call from Milo. Stumbling crossly into her room, I found her scowling at me and requesting more cucumber water. If she wants twenty-four-hour room service, she should check into The Savoy. I may have mentioned this. It didn’t go down well. Using bad language is very wrong and unladylike, but sometimes it must be done.

As in art, so in life

While writing this book, I found myself becoming the filling in a responsibility sandwich, with three teenagers in various stages of work, relationships and education, a household to run, a marriage to maintain, a burgeoning career to encourage and two very elderly and frail parents in need of increasing care. Unlike Isabella, I don’t have a gardener, housekeeper and manicurist between me and complete meltdown. There were many times when, head in hands, I felt that I was being pulled in a million different directions at once. 

There were doctor’s appointments to make, taxis to book and pay for, a weekly shop to do, hospital bookings to chase up, social lives other than my own to organise (oh no, hang on, I haven’t got one of those any more), medication to order, hair, chiropody and massage slots to book plus all the other things I have to do as a busy mother of three. OK, I started my family relatively late (36) but then so did my parents (36 and 40). The combination of a blamelessly healthy lifestyle and great genes (them) and a Type A over-achieving personality, pretty good genes and three lively teenagers (me) was always going to lead to a whole heap of responsibilities. 

Using humour to highlight the difficulties

I put in lots of jokes in Continued Times. Mummy is probably only in her late sixties and an unexpected twist of fate finds her recovering from her stroke at top speed. However, there was plenty of scope for writing about the difficulties of multi-generational living, especially when there are lots of unresolved issues in the relationship. Reader reviews so far have mentioned this particular storyline a lot – it seems to resonate.

Isabella’s connection with her community and church is helping her through some very difficult times in this third instalment of her life. Mummy makes an unlikely friend and there are plot threads left hanging for book four. In real life, away from the Smugge-i-verse, there are thousands of exhausted people trying to care for the generation above and below. It’s wearing, often thankless and goes largely unnoticed, but I do hope that by shining a light on it (albeit in a humorous way), it might help a few of my readers through what is undoubtedly a very challenging time of life.

#issysayskeepgoing #ohmummy #tired 

Ruth Leigh is a freelance writer, novelist and book reviewer. Married with three children, a cat, one husband and assorted poultry, she is a recovering over-achiever.

The Continued Times of Isabella M Smugge is published today. It can be found online at Waterstones, Eden and Amazon, on Kindle, at Woodbridge Books, Halesworth Bookshop and Dial Lane Books in Ipswich and from Ruth’s website.

Behind the sparkle of Isabella M Smugge

I am delighted to welcome Ruth Leigh to my blog, to celebrate the publication of her second novel: The Trials of Isabella M Smugge. I was hooked within a few seconds when reading the first in the series, and this second one hasn’t disappointed. It is funny, heartwarming, honest, and doesn’t shy away from the difficulties life can throw at us. Here, Ruth lifts the lid on what life is like for her as a fiction writer and mum.

When I first invented my ludicrously successful ‘Instamum’ star, Isabella M Smugge, she was simply a comic device, a woman who couldn’t have been more different to me. I reside in a draughty semi-detached Victorian house, heated by an ancient Rayburn. This means lots of cobwebs and grime, although there are charming original features (windows that let in the wind, nice red tiles in the dining room, smoke-blackened fireplace). Isabella dwells in a Grade II listed Georgian house, clean and sparkling as you like (because someone else is paid to do it), heated via oil I would imagine and with more reception rooms than you can shake a stick at. 

My garden is very on-trend. I thought you might like to know that. It’s rewilded. So now! (As in it’s full of weeds, the hedge needs trimming, the bushes need cutting back and there are plants growing where no plant should be.) Isabella’s acreage is a delightful panorama of velvety green lawn, charming flowerbeds and a Victorian greenhouse full of produce. Oh, and she likes to have her coffee in the reclaimed Edwardian gazebo by the pond. 

The reality of this writer’s life

Even though I know perfectly well that success is 10 per cent inspiration and 90 per cent perspiration, before I was one, I thought that fiction writers were a different breed, ethereal, other-worldly, inhabiting a more gracious, beautiful universe.

If you are a fiction writer and this is your reality, do let me know. Feel free to share your secrets. Because I could really do with knowing. Let me open a little window into the insanity that is the Leigh household first thing in the morning. 

Unusually yesterday morning, all three children were in residence and required driving to various places of education. My normal routine is to fall out of bed, wander about a bit drinking tea and making packed lunches then drive the 13- and 15-year-old to school. Yesterday, the 18-year-old, slightly fragile after a night in the public house with a friend was part of the matrix. 

It was School Sponsored Walk Day. Standing in front of the mirror in the downstairs loo applying make-up ahead of Lovely Jason’s visit (it was book launch day and he shot a short video), I was joined by said children. One was dressed as a frog, complete with hat, the other was brandishing a large rubber horse’s head. As I tried to put on eyeliner in a straight line, my daughter stood behind my right shoulder, gurning at me in the mirror and flicking her tongue in and out while making frog noises (I suspect mimicking catching a fly) while my son nibbled at my elbow with the horse teeth. 

This would never happen to Isabella M Smugge.

“Can I just mention that your mother, the author, has a big day today,” I quavered, rubbing concealer on to my huge eye bags. “My new book is launched! It’s in the shops and everything.”

Neither of them seemed that bothered. “Well done you!” my son said kindly, patting me on the shoulder from a great height (he’s 6 foot 1”). Scrambling into the car to do the double run (high school in Woodbridge followed by college in Ipswich), we bounced off down the flooded lane, muddy water running off the fields and optimistic white clouds scudding across the rain-washed blue sky. I began to wonder what I would write about for the second half of this blog. Five minutes later, it had written itself.

Hands-on parenting

For years and years, no car journey was complete without at least one mild row or wrangle. Today, hearing their voices rise and fall in good-natured abuse, I smiled to myself. Once upon a time, the exhausted mother of three little children, I yearned to have peace and quiet, to be able to go to the loo alone, to drink a cup of tea that was somewhere between boiling and tepid. 

Now I can, but it’s the end of one season and the beginning of the next. They can still dish it out though.

Son #2: “Who were you talking to outside last night? I could hear you going on and on in my room! Do you know what time it was? [Impression of growly voice].”

Son #1: “I was talking to Evie! She wanted to know I’d got back all right. And what about you? All I could hear the other night was [second impression of growly voice].”

Son #2: “I was talking to Shay! We were saying goodnight! And anyway, what about Katie, FaceTiming her friends?”

Son #1 and Son#2: “Ooh, hello, how are you, giggle giggle, make-up, Netflix [impression of teenage girls].

Daughter: “Shut up! I haven’t talked to them at night for AGES! And I don’t talk like that.”

Son #1: “Ooh ooh!”

Me: “That sounds like that bit in Feelgood Inc by Gorillaz.”

Son #1: “So it does! Ooh ooh!”

Me: “Ooh ooh!”

And so it went on, everyone smiling and a general air of bonhomie in the car.

I dropped off the frog and the horse and continued to Ipswich. Thanks kids. The chaos, the rowing, the lost hoodie, the last-minute packed lunch – all grist to the mill. My heroine is new to the crazy world of actually parenting your children yourself, but she’s learning fast. 

My house is messy and dusty, my garden is wild. But heck, authenticity is what it’s all about and here’s my truth. Behind the sparkle lies inspiration, exhaustion, innovation and a bit more exhaustion. 

And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Ruth Leigh is a novelist and freelance writer based in beautiful rural Suffolk where she lives with three children,one husband, a kitten and assorted poultry. She is a book reviewer for Reading Between the Lines and loves nothing more than losing herself in a good book. You can find out more about her and the world of Isabella M Smugge at ruthleighwrites

She wears her mask well…or does she?

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It is my great pleasure to welcome Ruth Leigh to my blog today, as part of her blog tour. She has written a fantastic novel, which I couldn’t put down. It is a sort of Bridget Jones for a new generation!

Almost as soon as I had written the first few paragraphs of my novel, The Diary of Isabella M Smugge, I realised that I had created a woman who was a past master at pretence. Having endowed her with a gigantic Georgian house, an immaculate garden, a thriving career and happy lute-playing children in the original blog back in April last year, I had the foundations on which to build a story.

THE ART OF MASK WEARING

I knew my heroine would be extremely good at talking the talk, and so indeed she proved to be. However, it was the little asides that started to betray Isabella. Quoting her mother’s advice about marriage, she comments, ‘Not that it worked out for her and Daddy, but that’s another story.’

Isabella has learned to accentuate the positive, to shine a light on the successful and push anything which might detract from that under the beautifully vacuumed carpet. ‘Naturally’ she’d thought about going for private education, ‘Of course’ her son has been down for a place at her husband’s old school since before he was born. She peppers her diary entries with hashtags, drawing us into her perfect world. 

Sharp-eyed readers will have noted that her parents’ marriage came to grief, and very nearly at the end of the first chapter, she reveals another sadness, triggered by her youngest child’s first day in Reception. Sent away to boarding school at seven, she recalls her mother’s advice to be a brave girl. However, seeing her little sister running down the drive after the car sobbing helplessly is still a painfully vivid memory. ‘Funny,’ she muses, ‘I haven’t thought of that for years.’

THE NEED FOR ‘PERFECTION’

You could say that life as a successful influencer and aspirational lifestyle blogger comes with the need to construct and wear masks. Isabella’s followers are complicit, clicking on perfect images of smiling children, beautiful interiors, parties which never go Pete Tong and wholesome family holidays on sparkling snow-covered slopes. There’s no place for nits, verrucas, sickness bugs, dandruff, ingrowing toenails or anxiety in this blissful world. 

And yet Ms Smugge is as human as her followers, as flawed as we all are, just much, much more practiced in covering it up. It really matters to her that her readers are on the right path, the one which leads to a tidy, sparkling kitchen, a playroom with beautifully arranged toys and a garden with a trampoline, a swimming pool and elegant flower beds, plus a Victorian greenhouse. Isabella has got everything our consumer society tells us we should have, and yet, and yet…

Gin plays a significant part in our heroine’s life, mostly consumed by her mother, ‘Mummy’. Musing about her childhood, presided over by a loving, non-judgemental figure paid by her parents to look after her, Isabella remembers bad days when her father came home to find a gin-soaked and angry mother waiting, ready to have a row. On goes the mask. ‘I wouldn’t want to give you the impression that we had a bad childhood. We had lots of toys, a treehouse, lovely parties and our ponies in the paddock. Nanny would whisk us off upstairs if Mummy and Daddy had one of their arguments, but often, when we were supposed to be asleep, Suze and I would creep out of bed and sit at the top of the stairs, listening to the voices shouting and the doors banging.’

Painting sad little vignettes like this one – two frightened little girls listening to a huge domestic kicking off downstairs – helped me to understand Isabella. She’s worked so hard to get to where she is. All the boxes are ticked, but underneath the shiny veneer, something isn’t right. As the novel goes on, her perfect life begins to unravel and the people who stand by her aren’t the ones she would have expected.

LETTING MY OWN MASK SLIP

When I joined the Association of Christian Writers and went along to my first writers’ day, one of the books I bought was one of Claire’s, Taking Off The Mask. As I read it, I found myself nodding in agreement, saying, ‘Yes. That’s exactly how it is.’ It spoke to me and I read it at a time in my life when I was ready to start allowing my mask to slip. I’m so glad I did, because without that frightening step (and it is scary, no doubt about it), Isabella would never have sprung into life and I wouldn’t be sitting here now, surrounded by tubes of Love Hearts and book wraps, rejoicing that I finally have my heart’s desire.

Isabella certainly learns some lessons as her life progresses and I have too. We all wear masks, to a certain extent, but the joy and the empowerment which comes with taking them off is hard to better. Here’s to a life lived honestly, or, as Isabella might say, #takingoffthemask.

Ruth Leigh is a novelist, blogger and freelance writer based in beautiful East Suffolk. This is her first novel.