Not Without My Sister | Episode 1 | Transcription

Rosemary: Hello and welcome to Not Without My Sister, a brand new podcast from, well, at least one of the geniuses who brought you How to be Sound, my other podcast [laughter].
Beatrice: You mean Liam, the editor?
Rosemary: No! I mean me, the genius! This is a podcast about life and culture and sisterhood, from two sisters who suddenly find themselves living together in the… middle of their lives?
Beatrice: In the middle of America.
Rosemary: In the middle of America but also in the middle of their lives. Move the mic closer to your head there.
Beatrice: I would say sibling non-rivalry, because I think that’s what’s so great about you and me, that there’s no rivalry, especially when we play things like Scrabble, Bananagrams…
Rosemary: So, Beatrice… Oh yeah. I’m Rosemary Mac Cabe.
Beatrice: I’m Beatrice Mac Cabe.
Rosemary: I’m a writer and journalist from Dublin, and…
Beatrice: I’m a currently working-from-home handbag designer –
Rosemary: – also from –
Beatrice: – from Kildare.
Rosemary: – oh no! We’re from Kildare. I remember I read something once that said, you know Kildare people because they always lie and say they’re from Dublin. I identified with that.
Beatrice: Totally. Now living in Indiana.
Rosemary: [adopts very convincing American twang] Fort Wayne, Indiana, which I always say like it’s in the middle of Texas, even though nobody talks like that here.
Beatrice: Correct.
Rosemary: Fort Wayne, Indiana.
Beatrice: Yeah. Rosemary’s been living with us now for, how long – a month?
Rosemary: About a month.
Beatrice: Since just around the peak of – well, the beginning of this travel ban in Ireland. Trump’s travel ban, Rosemary immediately got through –
Rosemary: – jumped ship.
Beatrice: – abandoned the cocooning old people.
Rosemary: – geriatrics.
Beatrice: – and headed over here, so now we’re all isolating togehter.
Rosemary: So now we’re basically like the Brady Bunch with an odd sister-in-law that doesn’t really seem to fit in. So now it’s me, Bea, Don, their four kids… four kids! Maybe we should do a whole episode about – what, four kids?!
Beatrice: We’ll do that. And a cat and a dog.
Rosemary: And a fish. A very neglected fish.
Beatrice: Oh yeah. The poor fish – that I never remember to feed. In fairness, he is down in the darkest dungeon.
Rosemary: That’s not making it sound any better.
Beatrice: I don’t even know what his name is! The poor fish.
Rosemary: What is he called?!
Beatrice: I genuinely don’t know. We decided to do a podcast so that we could talk about all the things we talk about all day, uninterrupted – lock ourselves away in here and actually have a chat. Because we try to have these chats, but most of them end up with us going, get away, stop, yes, yes I’ll change the nappy…
Rosemary: Put. That. Down.
Beatrice: Rosemary has become very disciplinarian. She’s like Mrs Trunchbull.
Rosemary: I prefer Mary Poppins?
Beatrice: [laughing]
Rosemary: Mary Poppins was very strict but then had her moments of, like, magic.
Beatrice: You’re absolutely nothing like her. Definitely Agatha Trunchbull.
Rosemary: Excuse me. I played football, twice!
Beatrice: I know, yeah, you’re actually very good.
Rosemary: …with Nash. That’s about it. I keep promising Beau I’ll have a bath with him and then just not doing it.
Beatrice: No, you’re very good. I was very impressed this week – I mean, very appreciative, obviously, and very lucky as well. I’m doing the old WFH and Don sprained his Achilles tendon, or whatever it’s called, and was laid up in the office – do not, do not slag my pronunciation, I can see you almost choking on that glass of wine–
Rosemary: –It wasn’t the pronunciation, it was how sympathetic you sounded towards his injury, like, his Achilles tendon, “or whatever it’s called”.
Beatrice: [laughing] I don’t know what it’s called! He sprained it, you rupture it or something. Anyway, he couldn’t walk around so, and the four kids to mind, so Rosemary is minding them. But, however, we digress. So back to – this podcast is called…
Rosemary: No sorry! Sorry sorry. You were just talking about how lucky you feel because of how great I am.
Beatrice: Oh yeah. I feel very lucky. I do feel very lucky! Seriously, I was actually shocked at just how organised you were. I came up a few times, because I’m working down in the basement. I came up a few times and found pure silence. Now, admittedly, they were all on various devices, but I mean, doing their e-learning, I think. Until we discovered, actually–
Rosemary: –Oh, God.
Beatrice: They weren’t! We got an email from Beau’s teacher, from the six-year-old’s teacher saying, you know, dear Mr and Mrs Kirkland, Beau has been submitting–
Rosemary: Mrs Kirkland!
Beatrice: Yeah. Beau has been submitting his… We’re in the midwest! I don’t even bother correcting them. I never put that name in myself, but I just go fine, right, whatever. Beau has been submitting his e-learning videos for math – for math – and English, and that’s great, but unfortunately none of them have had anything to do with math or English and have been nothing but videos of him playing with his three-inch-high Yoshi – that sounded almost bad – playing with his knitted, crocheted Yoshis*. So then Don goes off and watches one of the videos, it’s a 10-minute-long video of Beau just going, and here are my Yoshis, my Yoshi does this, and then my Yoshi… and then there’s Rosemary in the background, screaming at the other kids, going, “Stop twerking!”
Rosemary: That wasn’t the other kids. That was Beau – because he was twerking, in his video! So I was like, “stop twerking in your video!” But I mean, I was thinking about this today as well, I’m sure there are a lot of people who are, quote-unquote, home schooling, and having the same experience. We were fools to think the six-year-old could do it on his own.
Beatrice: I actually genuinely think that most people are having better experiences than us, because when I was sending out my various emails to the team this week and saying, “how are you getting on?” and “any tips for home schooling?” the amount of highly rigorous ideas that I got back were terrifying. I recommend using a flow chart like this one that I have here. I recommend a very scheduled day. We tend to do, 9 to 9:15, 9:15 to 9:30, and then by 6 o’clock, the child is tired. I was like, oh my God, I was exhausted at 10am.
Rosemary: I listened to an episode of Liadan Hynes’ podcast, How to Fall Apart, yesterday, and she was talking about how to help children cope with this whole new reality of being at home and stuff, and one of the things that everyone said was, like, to do a schedule so, we get up every day at 7:30 – lol – we have our breakfast, and then we start school at 9. And then at 10, we have a brain break and we do something creative – and then at 10:30…
Beatrice: Jesus, I hate schedules! But you know what I read yesterday, I think I was telling you, that Goldie Hawn is responsible for the term “brain break”, which I never would have put together.
Rosemary: Well, isn’t Dolly Parton also very involved in education for kids in America?
Beatrice: Yeah, Dolly Parton sends out, she has Dolly’s Library and, depending on where you live, you can sign up and get various books sent out to you, like… I think it’s called The Imagination Library or something. It’s very good. But I didn’t know that whatsherface, Goldie Hawn, had actually worked with, I don’t know I can never remember, psychologists and psychiatrists and… brainy people, and come up with this idea of how to relax and meditate and all that kind of stuff, and created the idea of brain breaks for kids, in school, which is really good because they do have them. You know, they stop and they do 10-minute stretching and five-minute jumping jacks or something, but the idea is to keep your stress levels low and keep your activity high, I think. I don’t want to over-simplify. I didn’t actually read the curriculum, but that’s my takeaway.
Rosemary: But it’s obviously – it’s so difficult for anyone to concentrate on one thing for longer than, like, I mean 15 minutes now, for me?
Beatrice: Well all I have to say is teachers are highly, grossly, underpaid.
Rosemary: Underpaid and under-respected.
Beatrice: I mean, I’ve always thought that, I’ve always thought they were underpaid. But now, doing this, I’m like these are – I mean, I also think my kids… I genuinely think that teachers are undervalued and underpaid but I also think that my kids have an entirely different level of respect for anyone who isn’t me. I mean, literally tonight I found myself shrieking myself hoarse at my poor three-year-old, who–
Rosemary: –ah, you could say he’s four now. He’s four this week.
Beatrice: Yeah that’s grand, I was just screaming at the four-year-old. That’s grand.
Rosemary: You know what, though, speaking of Dolly Parton, you know that every single time our mother sees Dolly Parton on TV, she has a very long conversation about whether or not Dolly Parton’s boobs are real?
Beatrice: I was going to say… I was actually going to literally put part of… I was going to mention Mum’s commentary, very judgmental commentary on Dolly Parton. She says she watched Dolly Parton last night, and she goes, where is it, she goes, something like, “Dolly’s knees are desperate.” Where is it…
Rosemary: Oh my God, Mum has an obsession with people with bad knees.
Beatrice: Oh here it is. Here it is. “What are you all up to? Nice day here, out of the wind. Dolly Parton is on, she has the maddest outfit. It’s like white cotton shorts with lace legs stitched to them. Desperate.” Actually, that reminds me – I think you should tell the story about the time when Mum was mowing the grass, and how you… Mum is, I think, probably the maddest texter I’ve ever met. We’ll get around to the name of the podcast in a second.
Rosemary: Right. Well – we should say that this episode… What?!
Beatrice: You’ve got to keep eye contact with me, because when you don’t keep eye contact with me, you start having your presenter’s voice.
Rosemary: Ugggh. All I was gonna say is that we should clarify that this episode is about Mum.
Beatrice: Oh. Yeah, but yeah, we can get there in a minute. But I was going to say, you do need to, because when you start making eye contact with the ceiling, it’s when you start going into, like, this voice, and then you start doing this, and you need to keep eye contact with me so that you’re having a normal… But that’s the best part! When we’re out there having our normal conversations, that’s the authentic Not Without My Sister.
Rosemary: Let me tell you. Nobody above the age of 20 should live in such close quarters with one’s sister without the ability to fucking get away for a couple of hours every day. It is very difficult.
Beatrice: [laughing] Oh, my favourite part of this quarantine was yesterday, I mean, Don’s not going to listen to this, right? Don goes – Don has definitely had his moments of stress, and Rosemary goes…
Rosemary: Don’s Beatrice’s beloved husband.
Beatrice: Yeah, and Rosemary goes, “I think it would really benefit Don to have an hour, you know, by himself in the car every day”. So I said this to Don, you know, you should have a drive. So anyway, today Don goes off – I’m like, I wonder if Don’s on that drive? Rosemary goes, “Yeah, well he should have told us. Like, is he on that drive?”
Rosemary: Cos he went off to do one chore and came back, like, four hours later!
Beatrice: But anyway, the point is, yes, everybody’s being driven…
Rosemary: At least you know he’s not having an affair.
Beatrice: Ugh, we’re all too tired for that.
Rosemary: Love in a time of coronavirus.
Beatrice: We’re all fucking wrecked.
Rosemary: Anyway, sorry, Mum’s texting, right? So, Mum has created an acronym – coined an acronym, which I wouldn’t have credited her with, no offence. NNTR, which means, no need to reply.
Beatrice: I’m sorry, did Mum actually make that up?
Rosemary: I think so, yeah.
Beatrice: Are you actually joking?
Rosemary: I’ve never seen or heard it used, ever, and anyone I says it to – anyone I say it to – is like…
Beatrice: I’m actually horrified right now, are you joking? I write NNTR to everyone because I’d assumed this was part of lingo.
Rosemary:: Oh my God, so do I, no! You have to explain it to them! Nobody knows what it means.
Beatrice: If anybody’s wondering – do you think people can hear this banging around on the ceiling?
Rosemary: This herd of tiny elephants upstairs, yeah. That’s just your children, lulling themselves to sleep.
Beatrice: So I put the kids to bed and they’re being really good. They’re lying in their beds
Rosemary: peacefully
Beatrice: –reading books, like I told them to, so you can tell that’s great.
Rosemary: and singing songs to themselves. Yeah – so Mum has coined this acronym. I think. If anybody’s listening to this, and you have heard this acronym before, from someone who is not my mother Claire Mac Cabe, please do let us know.
Beatrice: Or at least know that, we know that we could be wrong.
Rosemary: Yeah. I mean, always. Disclaimer: I could be wrong about ninety-nine point nine per cent of things.
Beatrice: My God, I’ve literally never heard that disclaimer before from you in my life.
Rosemary: Shut. Up. Anyway… Basically, unless a text message has NNTR at the end of it, like, in Mum’s brain, the opposite of NNTR – or the absence of NNTR means, NTR, need to reply.
Beatrice: Oh yeah. It’s true.
Rosemary: So, like, every single message that Mum gets, she insists on replying to, if not immediately… or, like, will text you back and go, “Sorry, love, I was just driving to the hairdresser, I had to pull over.”
Beatrice: It’s so true!
Rosemary: You don’t have to pull over!
Beatrice: So many texts from her that go, “I’m sorry, I had to pull over to reply to this. ‘Weather’s great, thanks. NNTR.'”
Rosemary: [laughs] I think she has in her head, as well, that like, a text message could be urgent. Whereas, like, to me, if it’s urgent I’m going to call you. Do you know what I mean?
Beatrice: Repeatedly.
Rosemary: Yeah. But, like, she has to pull over to read the text she just received.
Beatrice: As, like, she called me the other night at 2.37am and then didn’t answer the phone when I called her back, and then the next day was like, “Oh, I accidentally called you.”
Rosemary: She did that to me one day, as well, called me at like 4am and then neither her nor Dad answered the phone when I called them back. And like, I was kind of at the point where I was like, do I start… do I ring hospitals? Do I ring the neighbours? What do I do? And the next morning, she was like, “Sorry, love, that must have been an accident. I was fast asleep.”
Beatrice: That’s alarming. What were they actually doing?! [laughter] [the sound of something being pulled across the wooden floors upstairs] What are they actually dragging across the floor now?
Rosemary: I’d say Chance, who’s three, almost four, is dragging the toy box across the floor because he’s decided he’s going to try and sleep in it again.
Beatrice: Well last night when I went up to tuck them in, or actually to scream at them, to be honest, Nash and Beau were in their respective beds, and Chance was in the tiny one point two foot toy box, with… full of duvet and blankets. “I’m trying to sleep, Mom, leave me alone!” Eh, get out of the toy box and into your bed. I can’t even cope with this… coronavirus has made everybody crazy.
Rosemary: They were crazy anyway.
Beatrice: But you’re right. Let’s talk about the title first, because that would give more context, and then you can talk about the lawnmower.
Rosemary: So, Not Without My Daughter is…
Beatrice: Not Without My Sister…
Rosemary: No, I’m saying, Not Without My Daughter is the film, right? And you would think – if you didn’t know better, because, like I’ve been to the cinema with her, that this is the only film my mum has ever seen. Because if you ask her to name a film, it’s the only film she can name. And if you ask her to tell you, like, what’s your favourite film? Not Without My Daughter.
Beatrice: [in Mum’s voice] “I’m not into films. I’m not into movies. What a waste of time. Who goes to the cinema? I don’t watch – I don’t watch movies. I mean, it’s all made up. What would I be watching people making stuff up for?”
Rosemary: “I went to the cinema once in 1974 and I fell asleep.”
Beatrice: “She did go to, em, Pride and Prejudice, and she loved it – but afterwards, all she talked about was what everybody else in the cinema had been doing. “I mean, people were crying…”
Rosemary: I mean, she’s very pass-remarkable.
Beatrice: The original – I mean, the original that I remember… Oh no, it wasn’t – it was Persuasion, the one with…
Rosemary: No, it was Sense and Sensibility!
Beatrice: Sense and Sensibility, exactly! With Kate Winslet and yer man…
Rosemary: Alan Rickman.
Beatrice: Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Rosemary: That’s Shakespeare, isn’t it?
Beatrice: Yeah – that was in… Yeah, thanks.
Rosemary: Oh my God, what’s his name? Willoughby.
Beatrice: Exactly. Willoughby. And Mum was in, like, “oh my God, when they kissed – all the women in the cinema went, ooooooh“. It was like, you should’ve been watching the movie, so that’s basically it, right?
Rosemary: She also went to see Titanic. I went to see Brooklyn with her. I think that was when you were living in New York… and the two of us bawled our little heads off for about… Well actually, I cried, I’m not sure about Mum.
Beatrice: That was where she sent me the book, Brooklyn, I was living in Brooklyn, I had left Ireland, and she sends me the book, and I called her up one day, I had gotten off the subway and I was literally hysterically crying, and I was like, “Why would you send me this?!” because it’s all about, like, she leaves and then her Mum is dying, and blah, blah blah…
Rosemary: Spoiler alert! Her sister dies!
Beatrice: I mean, I was obviously not giving a spoiler alert because I was giving a wrong recollection.
Rosemary: [laughing]
Beatrice: So you can feel free to read it after I tell you what happened. And, eh, Mum’s like, “What’s the problem?” And I’m like, [crying] “Why would you send me this?”
Rosemary: I genuinely don’t think she’d read it at that point, she was like, “This is meant to be great.”
Beatrice: She doesn’t think about things that way, she just was like, “What’s the problem?” and I was going, [crying] “It’s just so emotional, this one leaves and goes to Brooklyn, it reminds me of me.”
Rosemary: “Sure that’s not real!”
Beatrice: No, what she actually said was, “You made your choice. It’s your choice. You made your choice.”
Rosemary: You know what’s weird is, Mum is weirdly… When I was growing up, I think I always thought she was very sensitive because she’s such a warm, caring, loving person. But actually she’s not very in touch with her… or she just doesn’t, she doesn’t emote that much.
Beatrice: I don’t think she’s not in touch with her emotions. I read a book about Vietnam, about the Vietnamese war, and this guy – this writer was talking about how he watched his aunt and his uncle wait for the one bus that would take them out of town, or lead them to be killed, basically. And afterwards, they left and they moved to America, and afterwards, an interviewer said to him… he said to the uncle, afterwards, “Do you regret having left? Do you regret anything?” And he said, “What does that mean? Regret? It’s not a word we have in Vietnamese.” And I asked Kim, who is Vietnamese, like, is that a word? And she said, no, well it’s not… it’s not that it’s not an emotion that doesn’t register, but it’s not an accepted thought process, if you know what I mean. And I think Mum is a bit like that, the way she says, “when you’re up you’re up” or “if it’s done, it’s done”, it’s like there’s no point in wasting time thinking about things. She’s not very much for the hypothetical. That’s why, at night-time, and that’s why you’re annoying me right now with the jigsaw, when I go, “Mum, what do you think about…” and she’ll go, “Ugh, your sister and her… always getting too deep late at night, these questions about the universe, like, what’s she even talking about? It’s black or it’s white, you know?”
Rosemary: [laughing] You know what she loves to give out about? She loves to give out about, when you’re in the car and you call her and you try to have any kind of conversation that isn’t, like, the neighbour died, the neighbour got engaged, I saw this today, this is what I had for lunch. Like, if you go, “you know what I was just thinking about today?” “Oh no, you’re driving.” Like, what? “We’re talking anyway, I’m on my handsfree, you could be sitting in the seat beside me and we could be having this conversation.”
Beatrice: [Mum’s voice, sounding firm] “You wouldn’t.”
Rosemary: “Listen, you know I don’t like to have these serious conversations with you when you’re driving.”
Beatrice: “She never likes to have these serious conversations. Ever. EVER.”
Rosemary: You know, she said to me once, we were talking about depression and I was asking her, like, do you have any questions. It was after I got diagnosed, and she kind of said, “Do you know, I mean I don’t, do you wake up in the morning and think to yourself, what kind of mood am I in today? Do you wake up and ask yourself that, because I just wake up!”
Beatrice: But I mean, do you?
Rosemary: No! I just wake up sometimes and I’m like, oh I feel shit.
Beatrice: You just wake up and you’re in a mood, right? Like you’re in a good mood or you’re in a bad mood. But I honestly think Mum wakes up every day in a pretty good mod, like! She wakes up and she… what did I read, yet again about Goldie Hawn? Maybe Mum is like Goldie Hawn’s Irish sister. She said, “I have a very high level of happiness”, or whatever it is she said. I think Mum’s… She’s very, very positive. She’s very optimistic.
Rosemary: It was a high… a high set point for happiness, wasn’t it?
Beatrice: Yeah, a high set point for happiness. I think Mum’s the same, like. I mean, she puts up with Dad, in fairness. (Love you, Dad.)
Rosemary: She is really optimistic. And my other favourite thing that she says all the time is like, “When we were young, we didn’t get stressed.”
Beatrice: Well, she also likes to say, in America, “We don’t have this in Ireland. We don’t have this!” and when she was over here, she was – I mean, literally to the most ridiculous things, like cream. “We don’t have this in Ireland. It doesn’t whip the same, we don’t have this in Ireland.”
Rosemary: [laughing]
Beatrice: “And when she was over last time, she was messing around with the microwave. And Don was like, “Do you need a hand with that, Claire?” And she goes, “We don’t – we don’t have this – I’ve just never seen – it’s not like our one in Ireland.” And Dad goes, “It’s literally the same microwave. It’s the same model. It is literally the same.”
Rosemary: Yeah, but like, she also can’t use the microwave at home, to be fair to her. She has no ability to do that. But you know what? I blame her – well not really her, but people like her – when I met my boyfriend Brandin’s friend Kurt, and he was like, “do you have peanut butter in Ireland?” And I could kind of imagine Mum, looking at the little tubs of peanut butter, you know, you can get the individual packs of Jif peanut butter, I can imagine her looking at them and going, “We don’t have that in Ireland.”
Beatrice: Well – do we?
Rosemary: No, we don’t have the little packets, but then, extrapolating it to be like, we don’t have peanut butter, you know what I mean. “We don’t have that, at all, in Ireland.”
Beatrice: I honestly don’t… [exasperated] I mean, I understand that I make sweeping statements, like, “We don’t have that in Ireland” and then Rosemary goes, “yeah we do, like you haven’t lived there in 20 years.” But Mum’s literally – when she was saying these things, she was there a week ago. There’s no actual excuse.
Rosemary: You know what’s so funny? When Beau, who’s Beatrice’s six-year-old, when he was about two or three – he was home, not on his own, but you guys were in Ireland, and Mum took him to Smyths toy shop, or something, and she said basically that he walked around the whole shop saying hi to everyone, like “Hi! Hi! Hi! I’m Beau! Hi!” and then I think said to somebody, “I love your sweater!” or something, and then went over to the toys, and Mum said she was walking around after him going, “He’s American.”
Beatrice: [laughing] What was it he said to the one in Target, when you went shopping together?
Rosemary: Oh, no, no, no, we were in Ulta. I had bribed them to go into the makeup shop with me, going, I’ll buy you a bath bomb. I think we were going to the cinema or something, but we’d loads of time, and when I went to pay, the lady behind the counter, I said something like, “Beau, just stand there. Don’t go anywhere.” I think Nash was hanging out the door, going, “Ugh, are we going yet?” He’s like a teenager in a nine-year-old’s body.
Beatrice: Oh my God, he always has been, yeah.
Rosemary: So Beau was there going, “something, something” and I said, “Just stand there, Beau.” And she goes, “oh Beau! That’s such a cute name!” and Beau stood back, spread his arms wide and went, “I have a cute body, too!”
Beatrice: [laughing]
Rosemary: [laughing] And me and her – like – the two of us just laughed our heads off.
Beatrice: That’s definitely the American in him, in fairness.
Rosemary: Oh my God it was so funny.
Beatrice: Oh my God. Can you imagine? That’s Mum, “That would never happen in Ireland.” She’s probably right.
Rosemary: Oh she is probably right.
Beatrice: Go back to the lawnmower, though, because I actually love this. So we were living in Milan – so Rosemary came over, and there’ll be a whole episode on this later on, when Rosemary came to Milan and was just the most, like, I can’t even… so enraging, to both myself and Julie. She ate non-stop olive oil and baguettes, and managed to lose so much weight, it was literally…
Rosemary: I used to eat olive oil with, like, a smattering of focaccia, as a vessel to get it into my mouth.
Beatrice: It was so enraging. Anyway. And she – and I didn’t really text Mum very much at the time, because texting was pretty new. I had a cellphone and stuff, that amazing Duplo flip phone.
Rosemary: A cellphone?
Beatrice: Yeah, that mobile phone.
Rosemary: Oh, not a mobile phone? A cellphone? Very American of you.
B: [laughing] It didn’t have, obviously, any of the ol’ mod cons that we have now, but we probably could text, right, I assume?
Rosemary: We could text, but I think…
Beatrice: I think my phone was pretty crap though, I don’t know that it could really do very good texting. But anyway, I didn’t text Mum.
Rosemary: You could text but you got charged extra – you know, when you went over the one-text limit, you got charged extra. But also, you were working, like a regular day job and long hours.
Beatrice: Very long hours. But the fact was – you came and you opened my eyes to the fact that Mum was an able texter, a very able texter, and this is where the NNTR came into it, and you would be out on the balcony, we had a very nice balcony, before Rosemary killed all the plants, and again, part of another podcast. Rosemary would be out on the balcony, like, sunbathing all day, and I’d come home and she’d be like, “I had great chats with Mum”, but she always looked really mischievous. “I had great chats with Mum. She hated it – I talked to her for two hours and I drove her mad.”
Rosemary: [laughing] Yeah. So basically, you can text Mum, you can text our mother and say, “Hi Mum, how are you?” or actually, you can text her and say, “Hi – gorgeous weather here. We’re sitting by the pool.” Full stop, and not ask her any questions. So it’s basically the opposite of online dating. When I was online dating I used to always be like, you have to ask a question, and then you get a reply. D’you know what I mean? You don’t have to ask Mum a question. She will immediately reply – unless her phone’s inside and she’s outside, you know – but she will reply the minute she sees the message, and she will say, “Hi love. Terrible weather here too. I’m busy doing x. NNTR.” And, on this particular occasion, she was busy mowing the grass.
Beatrice: For a reminder, that’s “no need to reply”.
Rosemary: No need to reply.
Beatrice: i.e. get lost.
Rosemary: Fuck off. Yeah. So I decided I was just going to keep writing back, and see, at what point she would stop writing back to me. And I wrote back and said, “Oh, you’re mowing the grass. Has it not rained in the last few days?” And she wrote back and said, “No it’s been very dry. Perfect mowing weather. NNTR.”
Beatrice: [laughing]
Rosemary: And I wrote back and I said, “I hope Dad’s helping you bring the lawnmower –I hope Dad helped you bring the lawnmower from the front to the back garden.” Because our back garden is up a couple of steps, it’s up an incline. Frequently Dad would be like, “Yeah I’ll come down”, and then just wouldn’t. So I said, “I hope Dad’s helping you.” So she says, “He is. Very agreeable. NNTR.” And then I wrote back and I was like, “Are you looking forward to Wimbledon starting?” It was around that time. I said, “Who do you think is gonna win?” And she wrote back again and was like, she loves an underdog. So she hates a guaranteed winner so she was getting really sick, at this point, of like the Williams sisters, one or other of them winning. “Probably one of the Williams sisters. I am very busy. Need to mow the grass. NNTR” exclamation mark, exclamation mark. I think – was that the point at which you came home from work? I think you came home while I was in the middle of the stream.
Beatrice: It just would go on for so long and you would be in hysterics laughing. But she never, ever, ever realised that you were winding her up and that is the best part because she is adorable.
Rosemary: And she would never just not write back!
Beatrice: No no, she never stops writing back. You can imagine her, as well, super frustrated, all hot and bothered, like, stopping the lawnmower. And the problem is, as well, our lawnmower, when you turn it off, half of the time it doesn’t turn back on, so like I can only imagine how enraged she was.
Rosemary: You know they got a new lawnmower about three years ago, and it was one of these things – it kind of reminds me of Dad’s stories of Hector Grey’s. You’d go into Hector Grey’s and they would show you how this whistle would sound like a bird, and you’d bring it home and it would never work. So basically they went into the lawnmower shop, or the garden centre, got a demo of this lawnmower, brought it home and they couldn’t start it, or Mum couldn’t start it, and Dad kept going, “You just need to put a – it’s about the flick of the wrist.” Dad was very like, “oh Claire you’re being ridiculous, it’s about this.” And he managed to get it started once, and they could never start it again, either of them. And then Mum’s brother came and he managed to start it, once, and could never start it again. So they brought it back and they got another one, and then the exact same thing happened. But I think it’s literally like that the – the pull thing needs a certain velocity that neither of their feeble little arms can actually do. So they’re having great trouble with the new lawnmower.
Beatrice: Well I’d like to go back –
Rosemary: Once it starts up, it needs to stay started.
Beatrice: I’d like to go back, though, to the whole point of this. So Mum continues to reply to you, right? So I, meanwhile, am like, this is hilarious, I’m gonna write back to this. So I try the old NNTR trick and I get one response. “NNTR.” I write back and I get silence, which probably…
Rosemary: How did I not know this?
Beatrice: Which probably began the entire thing that was kind of a joke in my mind and actually one of the big things I wanted to talk about tonight, which is my conviction – which was a joke, you know, for so many years – that Rosemary’s the favourite, Rosemary’s the favourite, and now has become a reality. So I’d say, to anyone out there who makes jokes about being the non-favourite int he family, like, seriously be careful because, if you think you’re not, and you make jokes about it, you might end up like me and soon you are not the favourite. It is like a joke.
Rosemary: Hang on hang on. Can I just clarify – if you make jokes about not being the favourite, and you kind of have a little inkling in the back of your mind that maybe you’re not the favourite.
Beatrice: No, no. I didn’t have that inkling.
Rosemary: Oh.
Beatrice: It was just a joke because Mum used to say, all the time – like, no matter what, she would defend you. And I always thought it was because you were the baby of the family, so, like, there are only two of us. And there are six-and-a-half years between us. And I always thought it was a joke! Like, I would go, “oh my God, Rosemary’s busy tidying,” and Mum always goes, “Well, we’re very alike! Rosemary likes to tidy and I like to tidy.” It was always this weird–
Rosemary: “Rosemary’s very organised.”
Beatrice: Yeah.
Rosemary: But, you know what, Mum will defend anyone.
Beatrice: No, no Rosemary, don’t even bother going down that path, because we both know–
Rosemary: But she will!
Beatrice: No. She’s a contrarian in her own way, but that’s not what this is about, okay, so… I mean, you’ve witnessed it yourself often enough now to know that it has become a grim reality for me. So, like, right now, I mean for example the other day, I said to Rosemary – I was Skyping Mum. And every single time we would Skype, I would go, “Hey Mum!” [Mum’s voice] “I can’t hear you. I can’t – I can’t. You’re frozen.” And then she would just randomly hang up, and I’m like, are you even gonna wait for this to unfreeze? Obviously not. And then I’d hear her on Skype with Rosemary. “You’re frozen. Pet! Pet, you’re frozen. Pet. Come back pet. I’ll just wait… I’m just waiting five more minutes, Philip, to see if Rosemary unfreezes.” Like, she’s so enraging. So then the other day, finally I get through to her. I go, “Hey Mum!” [Mum’s voice] “Oh you look tired. Is your sister there so I can chat to her?” I’m like, is this a joke? Literally, is this a joke.
Rosemary: [laughing] Oh, she also loves to say, she says, “Can Rosemary hear me?”
Beatrice: Oh yeah!
Rosemary: Like I’m the most important person in the room.
Beatrice: I’m like, I don’t know, can Rosemary hear you? I hope so. She’s got ears, I think they work – but like, have you got something important to say to her? And then, the other day, I finally was like, “Hey Mum, I’m calling you for a chat.” “That’s great. Tell Rosemary…” No, I actually won’t. You tell her yourself, in the full day that you have to chat to her. Anyway, so this entire favouritism is getting way, way out of control, in my opinion.
Rosemary: But like – does she never give out about me?
Beatrice: [sighing] No. I have coaxed her. I have given her many, many doorways to walk through – and she’s never walked through a single one, which is… Why, does she give out about me?!
Rosemary: [awkward pause] No.
Beatrice: [laughing] That’s not very convincing. Oh. My God.
Rosemary: [laughing] She would sometimes say things like – and she would say this to your face, as well – like, “Your sister’s unbelievable. She says, ‘we’re going to go out for breakfast’ at 10am, and we don’t end up leaving the house until 2. For example. Which – which, which she gives out about in person, when she’s here.
Beatrice: She says that about you, but I didn’t know that was a criticism. You’re the one who’s never on time to anything. I’ve got four fucking kids!
Rosemary: Well that’s what, like, she’s like, “Oh, when you’re in Beatrice’s and you’re going somewhere and they don’t get organised until the last minute and then you’re four hours later than you’d meant to be.”
Beatrice: I can’t even. I can’t. I literally – I can’t. I’m holding my eyeballs right now.
Rosemary: I thought you knew about this.
Beatrice: I have said so many things that were so valid, to her, Mum, seriously, just tell me that I’m not crazy. Agree with me, that that’s really annoying about Rosemary.” “Well, I mean, your sister probably has her reasons.”
Rosemary: [indignantly] Like what?!
Beatrice: I can’t even think right now.
Rosemary: What’s annoying about me?
Beatrice: I don’t know but just over the years I’ve been looking for, just maybe like agreement, do you know what I mean? In the moment you just want somebody to agree with you.
Rosemary: Right, so you’re basically doing the Reddit, Am I the Asshole, thing. So you’re like, “Mum, let me tell you what happened Rosemary. Am I in the wrong?”
Beatrice: Oh, no. No, no, no. I never thought I was in the wrong. I always knew you were in the wrong, I just wanted her to agree with me. But the fact that you’re such twinnies means she never, ever will. And, like, you know as well, no matter… Even on Scrabble, everything I do on Scrabble: “That’s not a real word.” Then you’ll put something down and I’ll go, “That’s not a real word. [Mum’s voice] “It seems like a real word to me! It rhymes with something I think is a real word.”
Rosemary: You know what she also loves doing with you and the Scrabble? Taking out the timer.
Beatrice: Oh my God, you’re right! She takes it out every single time I look at the Scrabble board, the timer… “This is ridiculous, you’re taking so long.” You’re actually right, she’s such a brat.
Rosemary: You do take a long time, but I think that’s because you’re a more strategic Scrabble player.
Beatrice: Don’t even try to butter me up, it’s not going to work.
Rosemary: But it’s true!
Beatrice: The other thing I wanted to talk about – oh yeah, the other thing she always does to me, she calls me up and she goes, “Oh, Beatrice. Susie down the road, she was definitely in your class. She’s dead.” And I’ll go–
Rosemary: She does that to me all the time!
Beatrice: No. And I’ll go, “What do you mean, she’s dead?” “Well, she was 62 so she’s dead.” And I go, “I’m not 62”, and she’s like, “Well you’re nearly 62.” And I’m like, “I’m not nearly 62. I’m 41.” “Oh. Oh, must have been the wrong class. And all those people in Rosemary’s class are only just turned 30, they’re all healthy as can be.” And I’m like, “Rosemary’s not 30, she’s 35.”
Rosemary: No. She definitely prematurely ages me, as well. She recently said to me, “I can’t believe you’ll be 40 soon.”
Beatrice: Yeah, you will be 40 soon.
Rosemary: I’ve just turned 35.
Beatrice: That is soon for her. She’s, like, 70. Five years is not very long. Four years. Sorry to disappoint you. But, no. she’s been doing this to me for years. And she didn’t do it to you.
Rosemary: My point was, you’ve always been an old soul. And a bitch, apparently.
Beatrice: Anyway, I would like to – no. I really feel like, no. She’s just always been very… Much more forgiving of you. It could be because you’re the youngest, I don’t think that’s it. I think it is literally because she sees herself in you and she empathises with you. Like, she bonds with you in a way. Even when I say, I can’t believe I got – I have four kids and I got a total of 11 months maternity leave. “That’s your choice!” Whereas when you were like, “Ohh I might move abroad…” “Rosemary’s such a homebody and she – she needs to be near her mom.” And I’m like, “I need to be near my mom!” “You chose not to be.” Okay. All right.
Rosemary: Do you think… I mean, I think you’re on to something in the sense that Beau, the one of your children who we all agree is most like her, is definitely the one that she would forgive the most easily. You know, like she forgives his bad behaviour more than the rest of them.
Beatrice: Oh my God. He came up… The last time she was here, he got given out to and he burst into tears. And she took one look at him, and she also burst into tears. And she was at the table just in floods of tears. And I was like, “What is wrong with you?” And she was just… “He looks… SO sad.”
Rosemary: This is basically the same Mum who… did not cry at Brooklyn, did not cry at Titanic…
Beatrice: Correct, actually!
Rosemary: Although, you know what I meant to say as well, speaking of the cinema… In the last six months, she’s gone to see the Pavarotti documentary three times, in the cinema.
Beatrice: Oh, she loves it! Says it’s great.
Rosemary: Loves it.
Beatrice: He eats two full chickens before a performance, apparently.
Rosemary: [laughing] She called last night to tell us that he had just eaten his assistant’s chicken!
Beatrice: No, what she actually said was, “he’s just eaten his assistant…’s chicken.” So that was quite alarming. But the other thing I’d like to talk about was… honestly, actually, honestly actually… Mum is so nice. And, I think, so funny. She gets terrible fits of the giggles. She’s a very positive person to be around. She really doesn’t… She’s not a dweller. She doesn’t get in bad moods, really. She’s always, all my life been positive and upbeat and, like, I think she’s a really nice person to be around. Genuinely. She’s never really in a bad mood. She’s always in a good mood. So when she’s in a bad mood it’s… weird. She’s got a tonne of friends, she’s super social and outgoing, but like she told me the story about how she was her sister’s… She comes from a family of six and she has two sisters and three brothers and she told me about how when she was her oldest sister’s bridesmaid, her new brother-in-law stood up, you know, and he made his toast, and he said, “I wanna thank the beautiful bridesmaids, Claire and…” She burst into tears because she was so mortified. But she’s still like that! She’s still that, exactly.
Rosemary: I was actually gonna say that, that like, when she… she used to run an Irish language play school, and when she went from that and she got a job in the Civil Service, and I remember, I think on her first day or something, they were like, “introduce yourself” and she was like, “oh my God, I couldn’t!” She hates speaking in public, she hates…
Beatrice: But, like, I think that’s an Irish thing, too, because like, I absolutely nearly died when I moved to New York and they were like, “okay, stand up and tell us a bit about yourself.” And I was like, WHAT?! Mortified. I think, though, that’s why she finds you and your openness so unbelievably shocking, because… to her, this idea of, you know, sharing your secrets… This modern idea of blogging, this modern notion, is so unfathomable. You have been pretty embarrassing to her multiple times, I just want to say that.
Rosemary: I’ve been pretty embarrassing to a lot of people in my life, I think.
Beatrice: Yeah, but I think when you’ve talked about her on TV and stuff, she just nearly dies every single time.
Rosemary: Yeah. So I used to be on, what’s now called Elaine and was then called Midday, which is this panel chat show – you never had the good fortune of seeing me on that live, now, cos you weren’t in Ireland.
Beatrice: I did see that really nice picture of you, though, with the double chin, that you’ve posted a few times.
Rosemary: Oh my God, that was gas. A gas photo. I’ll put a link to that in the show notes. And I’ll also try to get Beatrice to try to remember the name of that book, based on Vietnam.
Beatrice: Oh – I have it out there on the shelf somewhere.
Rosemary: But, like, I never… I was very aware that she was always embarrassed being spoken about, so it wasn’t like I went into it thinking, oh I’m going to talk about Mum.
Beatrice: You didn’t care! You’re like David Sedaris – you don’t care! That’s what comes with being part of Rosemary Sedaris’s family.
Rosemary: Sometimes I think about the things I could write about Mum and Dad, and like, I’m going to have to wait til they’re dead – and even then…
Beatrice: Oh. My. God. Well that’s an excellent segue into the next topic.
Rosemary: Mum’s funeral!
Beatrice: No. Mum’s morbidity. Is that a word?
Rosemary: Er… yes.
Beatrice: Her morbid bent. Her obsession with death.
Rosemary: The last time Mum and Dad visited Fort Wayne, I was here already I think – oh yeah, they weren’t meant to come, but they basically got jealous because I was posting all these pictures with the kids…
Beatrice: Exactly, exactly. Oh! There you go! There’s the favourite, they don’t come to visit… I mean, they do come to visit, I have to say, they’re great. But when Rosemary came to visit they planned an extra trip because they missed her so much.
Rosemary: No, I think they needed…
Beatrice: That they needed to look at her face.
Rosemary: They were jealous that we were all together.
Beatrice: No. They weren’t. They just missed you, the pet.
Rosemary: Anyway, they came over and Beatrice and I decided to place a bet on how long it would take Mum to start talking about their Wills.
Beatrice: Because usually the first thing she does is, no matter what time it is, even if you pick her up at 11 o’clock or 1am or whatever, by the time you are in having the first cup of tea, she’s like, “Listen, I just don’t want you guys fighting about the Will so I just want to let you know that the dresser has been left to Rosemary.” Or, “I just don’t want you guys fighting when we’re dead,” and like, “We don’t want you falling out, so the two engagement rings are going to… Rosemary.” Can you spot a common theme here, as well, apart from anything else? Yeah, well that was the last one, wasn’t it. “Beatrice. Just don’t want you being jealous. You got this, 20 years ago, and Rosemary’s gonna get”–
Rosemary: –“It’s just one engagement ring.”
Beatrice: “Rosemary’s gonna get… everything else.”
Rosemary: No. Mum is very adamant that we’re going to get everything half and half, except for, recently she told me that I could have her engagement ring. You know what the other thing is, though? I have the same size chubby fingers as Mum does, and yours are much slimmer.
Beatrice: You know what? That’s a really… You are so, you think you’re so manipulative. I have watched the clips of Masterclass Chris Voss, negotiator…
Rosemary: Watched the clips! Last of the big fucking spenders, Beatrice.
Beatrice: I know when I’m being had! [laughing] I asked you today if you wanted to go halves with me! I actually showed you Christina Aguilera, I thought that would have been amazing… Which also leads nicely on to the next part. That would have been amazing! And she was so amazing, [breaks into terrible Christina Aguilera speaking voice impression], “It’s not about technique, it’s about emotion.” I would have loved to do it with you!
Rosemary: So why don’t you do it?
Beatrice: With you?
Rosemary: No, I don’t want to do it.
Beatrice: No, because all that’s gonna happen is what you did when you read that Glennon whatever it’s called book, Untamed*.
Rosemary: Glennon Doyle.
Beatrice: Yes. You read that book, and all you did – like, we should have read it together because you just kept sitting beside me and reading out massive sections that I didn’t want to hear, and I’m going to be doing the same thing. Rosemary, come over here and let me rewind this section of Christina, and by the end of it you’ll have had to watch the whole thing with me.
Rosemary: How long is it?
Beatrice: I have no idea. I’ve no idea, but like, it really looks terrible so I’d love to watch it with you. But anyway. Glennon Doyle, “unleash your wild!”
Rosemary: Untamed, is the name…
Beatrice: Yeah yeah, but “Unleash your wild” is one of the sections you read out to me.
Rosemary: Oh yeah yeah, and also “recognise your knowing”.
Beatrice: I don’t even know what that means.
Rosemary: Capital K. I was going to say, capital N, then I was like, no wait…
Beatrice: [laughing] That would be better. You could say that to Chance, who’s three. Recognise your NO-ing, because he likes to say no all the time. You should send Mum sections from this book, I bet you she would love it. You should send this book to Mum and make her read it. It’d be brilliant.
Rosemary: I’d say she’d read it and… I mean, even, she read Michelle Obama’s autobiography and was very much like, “I just… I mean. I don’t get it. What’s the point?”
Beatrice: “What’s it all about?”
Rosemary: “What’s it all about?” She does like to ask that, for someone who’s not particularly philosophical.
Beatrice: Yeah, I remember one time, we were only at that big ball in Naas, and she was talking about her Dad, who had just died recently, and she was saying, “Sometimes I see faces in a crowd and I think, there’s my father, and he turns and it’s not him and Beatrice, I wonder, what’s it all about?” And I started crying and she’s like, “Why are you crying? What’s wrong with you?”
Rosemary: [laughing] Oh, God.
Beatrice: Anyway, what were we talking about before that?
Rosemary: Well, aside from talking about her Will, which she does love to talk about…
Beatrice: Oh, the Will! No you said, last time you picked her up at the airport… We had a bet.
Rosemary: Oh yeah.
Beatrice: Because she always talks about it, before you’ve even got the suitcase in out of the car.
Rosemary: Because, I think it’s kind of like, when you’re on Skype or something, she’s like, while I have you… She gets these ideas in her head that she’s like, I must say this right now or I’ll forget it.
Beatrice: But in fairness… herself and Dad must talk about it a lot. But in fairness, Dad has some maybe strange relations… and I think a lot of Dad’s friends have fallen out with their siblings over Wills.
Rosemary: I think a lot of people, in general, have historical family fallings-out over Wills.
Beatrice: Yeah, it’s true. So our parents are going to have a very specific Will in which every single toothpick will be accounted for, except what’s in the attic because, as we discovered recently when Rosemary went up to the attic and discovered… hairless Sindys and dolls with missing appendages that they don’t really know what’s up there. So that’ll be the only surprise.
Rosemary: Oh my God. I went up to the attic. I’d been threatening to go up for ages because YOU wanted these Sundays.
Beatrice: Yeah, I did.
Rosemary: Which you haven’t done anything with.
Beatrice: Yeah, because there’s this amazing Instagram account that I think is called… Sindy? I actually don’t know what it’s called, so we’ll… We’ll put a link to that in whatever these notes are, as well.
Rosemary: The show notes.
Beatrice: [laughing]
Rosemary: You professional, you.
Beatrice: I’ll leave that bit up to you.
Rosemary: So what did you want? You thought you would photograph Sindy in the wild?
Beatrice: I thought I would do some amazing photographing of Sindy, but then… their Sindys vs my Sindys where their hair had been shorn by some little sister who shall remain nameless…
Rosemary: They’d been to the little barber shop of horrors.
Beatrice: Yes. They had hideous clothes that were filthy and there were stains all over them…
Rosemary: They’d basically been to the America’s Next Top Model school of makeovers.
Beatrice: They’d been to the Chucky school of makeovers. My childhood was much more glamorous in my memory than it actually obviously was. Right?
Rosemary: I mean… Let’s not talk this down. You did have about 35 Barbies and Sindys. You’d so many!
Beatrice: I know, yeah. I was obsessed with them.
Rosemary: And you had the Barbie Dream House!
Beatrice: Where is that Barbie Dream House, is the question.
Rosemary: I dunno, I couldn’t find that in the attic. But anyway what I was gonna say was that our mother has put in the attic… There were several bags that were marked “girls’ clothes aged 5-7” and we opened them up and it was literally like, some of them were stained. Not stained from the attic, but stained from the world! She put up clothes that somebody had puked on, it hadn’t come ou tin the wash and…
Beatrice: But this is the same woman who, when I put things in the charity bags, goes, “Nobody’s going to want that. Does that look brand new? Does that have a tiny rip in it?” And I go, “oh yeah, I hadn’t noticed that”. “Put that in the bin. You’re insulting people.” I mean, I agree with her actually, but what was she thinking? Maybe it was more… Maybe she was…
Rosemary: Do you think it was memoriab… Was she being nostalgic?
Beatrice: I don’t think so. I think she’s more like you, cos when you threw out every single letter that you ever had in your life, and every single piece of memorabilia, and burned them all, because you’d read Marie Kondo and were… brainwashed by her.
Rosemary: No. No, no, no, no, no.
Beatrice: And I said to Mum, “I am horrified!” And she said, “Why? It’s her stuff. It’s her right. That’s what I’m gonna do, I’m gonna throw out all my stuff and throw out the report cards.” And I’m like, “You’re gonna throw out absolutely nothing.” “Well, what are you going to do with it? Pick it up by next Tuesday or it’s going to be in the bin.” And I’m like, “I live in America, what is your problem?!”
Rosemary: Mum went through a phase of, every time she would come and visit me, when I was living in Dublin, she would bring a box of stuff, and be like, “I thought you’d like all of your… school report cards.” And I’d be like, “they’re going straight in the fire.” And she’d be like, “I kept them for you!”
Beatrice: I think this is a phase, though, that parents go through, like, with the empty nest. It’s a bit like, in the 80s how every single woman got the Princess Di haircut and then it was a bad look for most people. It’s a bit like, kids move out… Because, I mean, this isn’t just unique to us. A lot of my friends have their… mothers, basically, calling them up saying, “get over, or else on Friday the skip’s gonna be here and all your stuff’s gonna be gone.”
Rosemary: One of my friends came home… I think, a week after she’d moved out, and her room had been entirely redecorated as, like, the fancy guest bedroom, and all of her stuff was gone. And she was literally, like… I’ve just…
Beatrice: Where was it gone to?
Rosemary: I don’t know actually. I think maybe it had gone to charity and her Mum was like, “I was sure you didn’t want that.”
Beatrice: D’you know what, that reminds me – that happened Julie, too… Poor Julie is going to be mentioned many times in this podcast. Julie is my best friend who I lived with for a long time in Milan, and then in Paris and is now living in Dublin… and I remember she moved, she left home and her Mum was like… Or we had been at home for New Year’s Eve when Julie popped the Champagne cork in her eye, I’d forgotten about that it was hilarious.
Rosemary: Poor Julie.
Beatrice: It was bad for Julie. Sorry, Julie. She had to walk around with the ice patch on her eye for the rest of the night, it was really bad. But I gave her – I think I gave her a Michael Connelly novel, something that I gave her…
Rosemary: You’d lent her something you wanted back, a book, wasn’t it?
Beatrice: Yeah, and literally I said to her, a week later, can I have that book back, and she was like, “oh my God, my Mum went into my room” – and she was still there – “and hoovered up everything that was in the room that looked like it could be given away, and gave it all away!”
Rosemary: She was doing a charity shop run, right? And she just went, “This can go and this can go and this can go.”
Beatrice: I actually forgot about that. That was probably 15 years ago and I still obviously harbour resentment for that novel that went missing.
Rosemary: That wouldn’t be like you.
Beatrice: I know, right? I’m a very forgiving person. So! Back to Mum. I’m very forgiving of Mum who favourites you all the time. But I still love her, even though today I still found her enraging. I Skyped her just to chat to her by myself, and yet again, she wanted to known all about you, but that’s fine. So back to the morbidity of mother.
Rosemary: Oh yeah. She also likes to talk about planning her funeral, which–
Beatrice: –she talks about it all the time.
Rosemary: –which is interesting to me because–
Beatrice: –well she hasn’t recently. She talked about it all the time for a period of time.
Rosemary: No, she hasn’t recently. But it’s interesting to me because she’s assuming that, when she dies, we will have a… like, traditional, Catholic funeral for her, and I don’t know that anybody who is left would care.
Beatrice: Sure, what are you talking about? It’s not for you. You have it for them. Like, why wouldn’t I? Of course I will. Mum, if you’re listening, I’m going to do whatever you want.
Rosemary: I thought a funeral was for whoever’s left behind… Oh stop trying to suck up, it’s too late.
Beatrice: Mum, I’m going to honour you whatever way you want to be honoured.
Rosemary: Are you there, Mum? It’s me, Beatrice.
Beatrice: [doing her impression of Rosemary] Mum, if you’re listening, I’m just going to get all your ashes and chuck them over the back wall.
Rosemary: But she has very firm views on funerals. For example, she told me recently that she has discovered that, when you say, no flowers, donations only to Our Lady’s Hospice, very few people donate, so you might as well get the flowers.
Beatrice: What?!
Rosemary: So, you know when people die, and in the notice…
Beatrice: No, I understood that, but like what’s the point of that? Because, I mean, aren’t a few donations better than no donations? What good are the flowers, they’re all dead in a week!
Rosemary: I love flowers.
Beatrice: But… Who are they good for? You just said it’s for…
Rosemary: Me!
Beatrice: Oh it’s for you, you did just say that.
Rosemary: I did. At least I’m consistent.
Beatrice: But what about the hospice? Wouldn’t you be better to give money to the hospice?
Rosemary: Yeah. I suppose.
Beatrice: Right. Are you ready for the song?
Rosemary: No! No. We have to… Do we not have to fluff the song a bit? Why have you suddenly decided we’re singing the song right now?
Beatrice: [laughing] I don’t know, because I’m ready for it! My vocal chords…
Rosemary: I was wondering what you were doing with the phone.
Beatrice: My vocal chords… I got one of those… I have the lyrics pulled up but then when I went to pull them up again I got one of those stupid Google, you’ve won!
Rosemary: So this is interesting to me, as well, because this is not the song Mum wants at her funeral, but the song you want to sing at her funeral.
Beatrice: No, no, no. No no.
Rosemary: Mum wants us all to sing Good King Wenceslas!
Beatrice: Mum would be very… [laughs] Mum would just be happy that we sang at her funeral because Mum’s impression of me, I have to say, is poor. You’re all gonna be surprised to hear that Mum’s impression of me is poor.
Rosemary: Mum’s impression of you is… glowing. There is no way you are going to be able to sing a single word… We’re not going to get through this song without you crying.
Beatrice: I am. I’m going to take a tonne of drugs that I’m going to take out of Don’s drug cabinet, and I’m going to pretend that Mum is still alive. Just like I said today, if she dies of coronavirus – touch wood, Mum!
Rosemary: Jesus.
Beatrice: I’m not even gonna think she’s dead, because there won’t even be a funeral, so I won’t have to deal with it. I’ll be on a podcast, singing.
Rosemary: Actually, for the amount of times she communicates with you, it’d probably be the same.
Beatrice: Actually fair play. Well said. So I had said to you, here, I’ve got the perfect song…
Rosemary: Speaking of people obsessed with death and funerals…
Beatrice: [laughing]
Rosemary: Beatrice, five years ago, started planning the song we would sing at Mum’s.
Beatrice: Well, I was more thinking, we should probably practise this, because one day she’ll drop dead and we won’t be ready… We won’t be prepared.
Rosemary: No, sorry. Sorry. “We should probably practise this” is several steps after, “We should sing this at Mum’s funeral. Here’s a good song to sing at Mum’s funeral.”
Beatrice: My point being, one is never prepared for a funeral. Therefore, one doesn’t have time to practise and in the throes of all of our grief are we going to want to get into a room together and practise, especially if we’ve four kids to manage, and me crying? No! So we should practise… the royal we. Me! So I was thinking, we should sing this song, we should get it perfect, which we don’t have yet, in case anybody’s listening and wants to criticise… We don’t have it perfect. But we should get it perfect so that in the throes of all the tears we can stand up and be pros.
Rosemary: Say, at least we’ve got that sorted.
Beatrice: We’ve got this? I’ve got you.
Rosemary: And actually speaking…
Beatrice: I’ve got you, Rosemary. And you’ve got me.
Rosemary: Yes, Beatrice. Speaking of which, this is one of the reasons that I am very enthusiastic about throwing out and burning and getting rid of stuff in Mum and Dad’s house, because I know… the minute… Excuse me, let me finish my sentence.
Beatrice: No. No. [the sound of wine pouring] No. I refuse… I refuse…
Rosemary: I think the word you’re looking for is “refute”.
Beatrice: No. I refuse to listen to this because you’re actually co-opting our – I can’t pour this for you, I’m sorry, you’re going to have to pour this for yourself, I can’t lean that far, and I can’t sit up cos the mic’s in my face, this is very complicated – you are actually co-opting our own mother’s thought because my mother, my mother… Now, with an extra glass of wine she’s just my mother. She’s not even our mother any more.
Rosemary: We’ve dropped the royal we. It’s just me, me, me now.
Beatrice: Go on. Tell them about the phonecall you had.
Rosemary: What phonecall?
Beatrice: The one where she called you up and just randomly said to you…
Rosemary: Oh yeah yeah yeah. Sorry. But like… I agree. Mum, if you’re listening, I agree with you, for a shock change. We’re so similar.
Beatrice: Because you’re the same person!
Rosemary: Mum called me, at one point, she called me to say… do you want these… random…
Beatrice: things that used to belong to Beatrice, because I don’t really care if she wants them.
Rosemary: No. Do you want these old Model Engineer magazines that your father and I, in the 70s, sat together, and hand-bound…
Beatrice: that are probably worth…
Rosemary: …10p.
Beatrice: Oh yeah. That’s the other story you should tell. Not only did they hand bind them together, but what about the one where Mum and Dad bought the house together–
Rosemary: –and Dad lived in it on his own?
Beatrice: –Dad lived in it, and Mum used to come over to deliver the cigarettes that she bought for him.
Rosemary: –yeah because she had a job… Did he not have a job at that point? They bought a house together, and because my mother was a chaste, young maiden… She stayed living at home with her parents while Dad got to enjoy the fruits of their labour in his free gaff in…
Beatrice: Yeah, sounds great!
Rosemary: In Clondalkin, to be fair. What?! In those days, like it was hardly Sin City! Clondalkin was miles away! Anyway, Mum called me one day to say, do you want these… it probably was those Model Engineers that are hand bound–
Beatrice: –hand bound!
Rosemary: She suddenly took a pause and she went, “I am glad now that, when you have to call her and tell her I’m dead, I won’t be here. I won’t have to deal with that.”
Beatrice: So loving!
Rosemary: –which is a good point, because I genuinely think that you are going to be inconsolable for… weeks.
Beatrice: I am. I’m gonna be like, now I’ll never be the favourite! Meanwhile, here’s me planning the funeral that you’re not planning, so who is actuallyis the best child, I have to wonder. Anyway.
Rosemary: Planning your parents’ funeral does not make you the best child.
Beatrice: It makes you the most considerate.
Rosemary: It makes you the most mercenary.
Beatrice: No. It absolutely doesn’t. You can have everything. [whispers] You can’t. Now.
Rosemary: This is recorded in perpetuity.
Beatrice: So anyway, I was preparing songs and it turns out that all Mum wants is Christmas songs for her funeral.
Rosemary: Yeah this is what she told me, she just wants carols. And I was like, what do you mean? And she was like, “I love Christmas songs. I just love Christmas songs.” But you know what? Mum just wants to fucking go to a Christmas carol night. She doesn’t want to be dead, she wouldn’t even get to hear them. But anyway she goes, “I just want Christmas carols!” And I said, “Well, what if you die in July?!” And she goes, “Well that will make it very unique.”
Beatrice: And now she denies that, though. Anyway we were so delighted with that, with our mother’s originality and unique spirit. And recently we said to her, it’s gonna be great at your funeral with these Christmas carols, it’s gonna be so – as you said, unique. “I never said that. I never asked for those.”
Rosemary: I know! And she was like, “Christmas carols would be corny.”
Beatrice: Luckily I have a song prepared but I can’t sing it now because I have a fit of the giggles.
Rosemary: Get a fucking grip. Just imagine Mum dead and you’ll soon sober up.
Beatrice: [uncontrollably laughing now] I can’t, you’re making me laugh more… She’s such an idiot! So corny, ha ha ha. It’s like you and your new favourite word, “dope”. You dope. Such a dope.
Rosemary: Because dope is a good… It’s not a curse word. I can say it to the kids and they don’t get really offended.
Beatrice: But it sounds like something Will Ferrell would say, so every time you say it, it just sounds really hilarious. What a dope. What. A. Dope.
Rosemary: They are dopes.
Beatrice: They’re total dopes.
Rosemary: I think that we should sing the podcast out with this song.
Beatrice: Oh, really?
Rosemary: Yeah. Otherwise it’s gonna be way too long.
Beatrice: Okay.
Rosemary: So, this has been Not Without My Sister. You can subscribe anywhere you get podcasts. We would really appreciate it if you would rate it on iTunes, but not if you thought it was shit, you need to give us at least three episodes if you thought it was shit, because we might redeem ourselves by the end. Tell a friend. Send a link to someone. If you know someone who lives with their sister or, whose sister is miles away and they just want to listen to some good old-fashioned sibling bickering, then this is the podcast for them. Thank you all for listening. You can find us on Instagram, I’m at rosemarymaccabe and Beatrice is at beatricemaccabe. And we’ll be back on a yet-to-be determined future date. It’ll be exciting, you won’t know when it’s coming.
Beatrice: What if we get this really wrong?
Rosemary: That’s the joy of not-live recording. But you have to cue me in like a conductor so I want, like…
Beatrice: [whispers] one, two…
Both: [laughter]

[singing]

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