Everybody’s Free (to wear sunscreen): The ketchup remix

Mums of the class of 2010

If I could offer you only one tip for the future, ketchup would be it. The long term benefits of ketchup have been proved by scientists whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. I will dispense this advice now.

Enjoy the youth and exuberance of your children; oh never mind; you will not appreciate the youth and exuberance of your children until they have grown up. But trust me, in 20 years you’ll look back at photos of them and recall in a way you can’t grasp now how much possibility lay before them and how innocent they really were. You’re not as tired as you imagine.

Don’t worry about the state of the kitchen floor; or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubblegum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind; the kind that blindside you at 4pm on some idle Tuesday.

Do one thing everyday that annoys you. Laugh. Don’t let your children be reckless in other people’s homes, don’t put up with people whose children are reckless in yours. Clean the downstairs loo. Don’t waste your time on ironing; sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes you’re behind. The race is long, and in the end, it’s only with yourself.

Remember the compliments your children receive, forget the insults; if you succeed in doing this, tell me how.

Keep your children’s drawings, throw away your old socks. Lie down. Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what the hell to do with your children for the summer holidays. The most creative and energetic mothers I know didn’t know at first what the hell to do with their children for the summer holidays, most mothers I know still don’t.

Get plenty of tonic for your gin. Be kind to your parents, you’ll miss them when they’re gone.

Maybe you’ll resort to McDonald’s, maybe you won’t, maybe you’ll have an excessive number of toys in the house, maybe you won’t, maybe you’ll be completely grey by your child’s third birthday, maybe you’ll dance the entire routine to ‘All the Single Ladies’ on your 40th birthday …what ever you do, don’t congratulate yourself too much or berate yourself either – your choices are half chance, so are everybody else’s.

Enjoy your vacuum cleaner, use it every way you can. Don’t be afraid of it, or what other people think of it, it’s the greatest instrument you’ll ever own.

Strip naked, even if you have nowhere to do it but in your own living room.

Read the directions on the packaging of electronic toys, even if you don’t follow them. Do NOT read parenting magazines, they will only make you feel inadequate. Get to know your teeth, you never know when they’ll be gone for good.

Be nice to your hands; they are the best link to your past and the part of your body most likely to stick with you in the future. Understand that nights out come and go, but for the precious few you should make the most of them. Work hard to bridge the gaps in your make up bag because the older you get, the more you need the assistance of a good primer and foundation.

Live in a caravan once, but leave before it makes you go insane; live in a luxury hotel for two weeks, but leave before it makes you hate your own home.

Wipe up vomit.

Accept certain inalienable truths, children’s shoes are expensive, your sex life will dwindle, you too will get old, and when you do you’ll fantasize that before you had children you used to buy shoes for yourself, your sex life was quite exciting and other people were old.

Respect your bras. Don’t expect anything else to support you.

Maybe you have a pot of Crème de la Mer, maybe you have a loving husband; but you never know when either one might run out. Enjoy the lustre of your hair when you’re in the full bloom of pregnancy. By the time your kids are at school, it will be dull and lifeless.

Be careful whose second hand clothes you buy, but, be patient with those who supply them.

Advice is a form of nostalgia, dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the waste disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it’s worth. But trust me on the ketchup.

('Wear Sunscreen' or the 'Sunscreen Speech' are the common names of an essay titled "Advice, like youth, probably just wasted on the young" written by Mary Schmich and published in the Chicago Tribune as a column in 1997. Both its subject and tone are similar to the 1927 poem "Desiderata". The most popular and well-known form of the essay is the successful music single "Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen)", released in 1998, by Baz Luhrmann.)

Everybody’s Free (to wear sunscreen): The ketchup remix