Oh here’s an idea: buy my book? linktr.ee/holdingthebaby
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Nell Frizzell
@NellFrizzell
My next book, Holding The Baby is out now. I also wrote Square One and The Panic Years. Vogue columnist. Journalist. A wholesome plank. #savetheNHS
Nell Frizzell’s posts
COUPLES: I am writing about the joy and mundanity of long term relationships. The shared socks, conversations through toilet doors, inherited cousins, shelves, potato bodies, sex scheduled like dental appointments and familiar meals. Tell me: what’s great about the long haul.
Hot take: I think it might be time we taught British people, in British schools and beyond, about what the British Empire did in Iraq, Palestine, Israel, Yemen and Afghanistan. Current conflict in the Middle East is hard to understand without knowing the colonial origins.
Well, I spent £4 on fabric, sewed a dress, dried all the flowers from my book launch, bought a pair of shoes for £1 from a car boot sale, made a veil from a £1 offcut and charity shop headband, borrowed some make up and got a second hand ring. The groom is extremely well worn.
That study showing half of British women do no regular exercise is just another skin pressed over the underlying issue: Britain has an unaffordable childcare system that disproportionately restricts the earning, health, careers and freedom of women. It always comes back to that.
I wish someone had told me at 21 that the student house I was living in at that moment was the largest house I was ever going to live in, for my entire life.
Shout out to whoever it was at this Holiday Inn who laid out my baby’s cot like he’s just another corporate sales guy passing through town for a conference on Waste Disposal And The Modern Marketplace
My mum is still drawing stories for my son during lockdown. I may be biased but I think they're amazing.
A quick word on the NHS, from someone who this week had a baby in a regular British hospital.
The NHS is the greatest thing we have ever achieved, as a society and a nation.
Replying to
Thank you all for your lovely, filthy, heartwarming replies to this. I have now written and submitted the piece but will leave this up for anyone who needs either a lift, reassurance or a nudge to separate.
Yesterday my son told his care worker at nursery that he had a perforated stomach ulcer. In so much detail, in fact, that she felt the need to check with me. He hasn’t, nor has ever, had a stomach ulcer. What he has is a book called ‘Inside Your Body’ and an overactive vocabulary
Honestly, people who break the hearts of writers: you fucking idiots. We're going to write about you. Of course we are. We might change your names, it might take decades, but we're going to get you in the end.
Let's all agree that cod fishfingers are entirely unnecessary? Cod is close to becoming endangered from overfishing. Fishfingers taste of fishfingers: often eaten by people who happily eat sand, fluff and crayons. Just make them all from pollock, coley, hake, whiting instead.
What actually are moths? They have the capacity to eat a stone of wool in one sitting and yet, if you touch one, they appear to be just a smear of dust?
I can't wait to take my son to the polling station on Thursday. I can't wait to vote. I love voting, I really do. The pencils, the quiet, the smiling people crossing your address out on their ledger with a ruler, the opportunity to make a better country. Love it
I'm voting Labour
I wrote a book! It’s out in May! It’s a memoir of how I went from single at 28 to a mum at 32. It’s about the politics of sex,contraception, childcare and work. It gives a name to that transformation between carelessness and commitment. My mum says it’s ‘the usual filth and lies’
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Vogue columnist @NellFrizzell’s debut goes to @TransworldBooks in 13-way auction: bit.ly/33u1S9B
I made this outfit from 6.45am to 8am today, while my son was in his highchair eating breakfast. The fabric cost £4.
Huge respect to the teenage boy I just passed, smoking a cigarette pushed between the prongs if a plastic fork so his fingers wouldn’t smell when he got home. Excellent work, young friend.
If you have time to queue in a coffee shop, you have time to make yourself a cup of coffee and a piece of toast at home.
My baby just gagged on his first ever mouthful of avocado, so I am happy to announce that he’ll be able to put down a deposit on a two-bedroom flat by the time he starts school.
Last night I had a moment, imagining what it would be like to wake up on 13th December with a government that would save the NHS, fund my son’s nursery and schools, tackle climate change. And just what that would all mean for his future, our future.
Which is why I’m voting Labour
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My dad - who works in a hospital - has just been vaccinated and excuse me if I punch the air and roar like a beast.
I've said it before and today, on the 50th anniversary of legal abortion in England, Scotland and Wales I'll say it again: since getting pregnant and having a baby I am more pro-choice than ever.
If I am a bit slow replying to things at the moment, I apologise. It was a bit of a weekend.
As someone who wears pyjamas from 6pm and will sometimes forgo a 9pm wank because it’s ‘getting a bit late,’ may I put it on record that I will gladly get vaccinated at 3am, in a car park, wearing a haddock bikini and shoes made of nails if that’s what’s available.
I’ve been having periods for longer than I haven’t (18 years+) and yet, every month, I fart myself inside out, go for a massive run at dawn, eat for 12 hours solid and then - as a complete and genuine surprise - I start bleeding. Every time. Caught off guard every time.
Oh excellent. My son is now just good enough at pronunciation to point at The Fat Controller in a book, smile widely and shout ‘fat cunt!’ to everyone on this train carriage.
My column this week is about the loneliness of parenting. And if you’re on Twitter at 7.54am on a Sunday then you may well know what I’m talking about
HOOOORAY! Bookshops are open again TOOODAY! To celebrate, I made a frock, jumped on my bike and cycled around town, buying books and visiting my own book, out there in the big wide purchase-in-person world. First stop
That ‘tea’ as a rhyme is right there makes me unnecessarily and unreasonably irritated every single time I walk past this stupid cafe board
Here’s to the middle aged white man who just jogged past me, topless, and shouted ‘You’re too early, they’re not ripe!’ as my son and I picked and ate another handful of, well, perfectly ripe blackberries. You hairy-titted fool, you are not the arbiter of time or taste
He fucking did it! My baby just slept from 7pm-5.50am! I just got eight hours sleep for the first time in over a year!
THANK YOU my night weaning support crew.
Hooray!
Whoever ate a prawn cocktail while sitting on the actual toilet of this South Western train - you're my fucking hero
This morning I woke up at 4.30am, baked a loaf of bread and then cycled into the countryside to deliver it to my friend on a boat, had a swim and saw a heron
I just voted at the end of my old street, in the church hall where I briefly learned ballet as a round-faced, heavy-footed child. I voted for my son, for your kids, for everyone who needs a Labour government.
Himself sat in his buggy and ate a piece of toast.
Please vote today.
My mother is on a 10-day silent retreat and I've just realised she'll not even know who Scaramucci is.
Not only did I just take my baby to a work meeting; I ended up getting a tit out in front of three childless people in that meeting, called my son an ‘arsehole’ and then panic ate a miniature apple ricecake before he pushed it into a filing cabinet.
This is what you get when you vote Tory. You vote to have control over your own body taken away by men with inherited power and privilege. You vote to have choice about your own life threatened by the private interests of people who will never be effected by those decisions.
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Foreign Secretary and Conservative leadership candidate @Jeremy_Hunt says he would like to see the legal time limit on abortions reduced from 24 weeks to 12.
#Ridge
For more, head here: po.st/dMreGx
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Moving house is just staring at piles like this, for four minutes at a time, in every room, for a month.
I really hope this doesn’t sound condescending or trite but if you’re doing all this as a single parent, my god, you have my respect and admiration forever.
Replying to
Oh yes. See also 'rehanging the washing after they've hung it out'.
Nursery workers are heroes, and while their worth cannot possibly be measured in money, they should get all the money they need.
See also: every worker who has been previously dismissed as low paid, low skilled, low status and of low interest to companies and governments.
Replying to
Ha ha ha ha. Yes. Also, a new perfume or scent. ‘Oooooh well look who’s trying to impress Mike from number 43’.
For the first time since having a kid I'm doing a full day in the office at and I feel like I'm on a spa break. Free tea! Nobody standing beside the toilet asking me to read Thomas The Tank Engine! My own chair!
Hello! Want to know how a work email got me pregnant? Of course you do...
Just a quick reminder that in their manifesto the Labour Party have pledged to reverse cuts to Sure Start, to increase mandated health visits, ensure new mothers can have access to breastfeeding support, extend paid maternity leave to 12 months...
I hate this government. I hate them for cutting council budgets, I hate them for closing libraries, I hate them for selling off parks, I hate them for closing children’s centres, I hate them hate them hate them #saveourchildrenscentres #nevervotetory #austeritypolitics
Oh good. My son has just coloured his penis entirely green with felt tip pen.
If you are upset, exhausted and scared today, if you’re trying to process everything while also looking after little children, if you are angry and sad and worried for their future, please know that, at the very least, you are not alone. I feel the same. Hug your kids. Keep going
The loneliness of being alone with a small child is such a strange and specific loneliness. I could write thousands of words on it. Because, a ha ha ha, there are so few people to talk to about it at the moment.
“It’s patriarchy, in one of its more subtle outfits, that makes child-rearing women worry that they have 'nothing interesting to say' when they are actually undertaking one of the most interesting processes and transformations known to humanity.” Here I go
Happy Hallowe’en from my very many years of very sexy fancy dress costumes
What does childbirth feel like?
Take a seat, and let me break it down...
Just once I would like Britain to have a female prime minister who doesn’t starve, punish, deport, ignore or contribute to the early death of poor and vulnerable people.
When nurses are telling you it’s dangerous for them to do their job, listen. We need more staff and we need wages in line with inflation. Pay nurses, fund the NHS, bring back training bursaries and make millionaires pay more tax #NursesStrike #openyourpursesandpayournurses
Sometimes I complain that my partner is just a bit half-arsed when it comes to housework. Not closing drawers, not hanging up towels, not putting things away. But I think he’s outdone himself here.
I’d cleaned the oven top. He wanted to cook an omelette. And so...
My boyfriend’s gone upstairs on the bus with our kid while I stay down here with the buggy.
Or, as I call it, I’m on a luxury mini break for one.
Couple of things, just plucked out of the air.
I’m pretty sure you can raise money without being heinous sexists
Hospitals shouldn’t need charity fundraising - they should get enough money from the treasury because rich people should pay taxes.
It is precisely TWO MONTHS until my book #ThePanicYears comes out in the UK. So the River Thames threw me a little pre-launch party on a sand bar. Sweet.
If you can, please preorder it using this link. You'll make a wet woman very happy. waterstones.com/book/the-panic Out Feb 11th
I just put my son to bed, cycled out of town, pitched up my tent in some woods, swam in the river and now am enjoying the contents of my thermos while watching the sky turn evening pink. All alone. My first night out, entirely alone, in four months.
Being human means holding several different and often contradictory feelings at once. So I simultaneously completely understand the need, am relieved action is being taken, am annoyed it took so long and am close to tears over the fact that my son’s nursery is closing again.
I’m always absolutely floored when I realise that the ‘hike’ North Americans are talking about was, in fact, a walk.
Since my mum left the house with my son, at 9am, I've written 4,501 words.
When I worked in an office there were days where I'd manage barely four emails.
Employers: give your staff access to free and flexible childcare and they will be more efficient than you dare imagine.
Replying to
YES. The outsourcing of memory is huge. My hairy, trouser-wearing hard drive.
I just looked over at my boyfriend scrolling through an online marketplace as this beauty rolled across the screen
I’m marching today from Whitehall Gardens to Oxford Circus with , my 69-year-old mother and toddler son. I mean, you’ve got to do something, haven’t you
Today my son is wearing a jumper I knitted for an entirely theoretical child at least a decade ago
I'm getting just a *little* sick of being told to 'prepare for Brexit' in podcast adverts, when the government seems to be doing nothing of the kind?
I’ve just been thinking about it and the Bournemouth Beach situation could be read as a crisis in public space; caused by the deeply unfair state of private land ownership and wealth inequality in this country.
Just sitting outside a museum with a howling child trying to explain that it and the library might open again in September, as people walk past a few metres away with shopping bags, near open pubs, cafes and hairdressers.
I used to work with a woman who, when making a round of teas, and to remember who had which cup, would line everybody's mugs up from left to right according to how left or rightwing she thought we all were.
I think about this all the time.
Being in your thirties is largely just a series of ‘final’ wees before eventually falling asleep.
My son's nursery just uploaded a photo to Tapestry (if you know, you know) of all the toys having a tea party on their own in home corner, and wishing all the kids a nice Wednesday. So that's me done for the next 10 minutes I'm afraid.
It’s exactly three months until my book, The Panic Years, comes out AND a shiny new set of proofs just arrived. So my son threw me a little impromptu bottoms-off book pre-launch in his bedroom to celebrate. Please preorder the book if you can. Out 11th Feb waterstones.com/book/the-panic
Our local Hackney Children’s Centre runs a gardening club for kids of all ages. My son has being going since before he could walk. Today he brought home a lettuce.
The government has cut funding to children’s centres, they’re closing all over the country.
Please don’t vote Tory
I really don’t want to objectify anyone here but I have never met a tree surgeon who wasn’t incredibly good-looking.
Today a man with no teeth leaned over my child’s buggy, held up his phone’s West Ham screensaver and, in a voice that smelled of stale hoover bags and heavy ash trays, said “That’s who you’ll support for the rest of your life.”
I didn’t realise this was how teams were allocated.
I'm at that stage of political despair where, standing alone in my kitchen, wearing a thermal vest and pair of 10-year-old leggings, washing out my thermos and planning dinner, I think "Maybe *I'm* the person to reunite the left...?"
Last night my partner and I swam about 1.5km down river, past a kingfisher, bags for life, willows, Fanta bottles, cows and blackberries. At one point a man leant over the side of his houseboat and offered us a cup of tea. It was magic.
I'm reading an old interview with Angela Carter by John Mortimer and it is wonderful
Replying to
... then turned to my son, crouched down, and said, very gently ‘be good for your mother’, before walking about four paces, spinning round on his heel and shouting ‘OR I’LL EAT YOU!’ right into his tiny face. Made me absolutely howl with laughter.
Hello. I have some news. My publishers and I have taken the decision that The Panic Years will now be published in February 2021. As the world's least patient show off, this is obviously a big decision but hopefully the right one.
Today my partner went on a bike maintenance course. They taught him about ‘road hair’: hair from strangers that gets shed, blows into the road and then winds itself around all your bike’s bolts and joints.
This is, genuinely, one of the most disgusting things I’ve ever heard.
Make me a perfume that is the smell of a recently-touched tomato plant.
Has anybody - and I’m not volunteering - given birth in a pub yet, so they could have their mum and birth partner in the room?
A man just told me to ‘smile with your eyes’
Wish I’d had the speed to tell him to whistle with his arse
A fun thing about living in Oxford is that were I to, say, walk across the street crying and holding a cabbage, I will ruin approx 15 holiday photos without even trying.
God, I really am sad about coming to a finale. It has been such brilliant company in my ears over the last year and and are genuinely some of the most supportive, kind and thoughtful women. In their own work and in championing others. Sad!
Don’t vote this government back in. twitter.com/HouseofCommons
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Today would've been my book launch for #ThePanicYears. So this morning, instead of answering emails, I sewed myself this Non Book Launch Outfit. You can still preorder the book, I'd love it if you did waterstones.com/book/the-panic and it'll be out properly on 11th February 2021 Thanks!
Replying to
Got any good examples of silly names for things?
Refusing to help refugee children is about as clear a test of inhumanity as I can think of.
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Patel refuses to take children from Greek camps threatened by Covid-19 theguardian.com/world/2020/apr
A theory: The world could stop making baby things - especially toys and clothes - for five years before we came even close to running out.
In my role as Communications Officer at the Early Mornings Marketing Board, let me tell you that today’s was a smasher
Like a lot of parents I’m often quick to complain about the bad bits; out of solidarity, recognition of the labour involved and for a cheap laugh. But having someone say ‘Goodnight mummy. See you in the morning’ is genuinely wonderful.