Stiff Upper Lip

Yasmin le Bon has been in the press a lot this week talking about how the strains of juggling a career and motherhood led to her having a breakdown.

Yasmin admitted that, when it all got too much, she would often hide in the bathroom and cry.

Under the same circumstances I would have drunk a bottle of Chablis. It strikes me that Yasmin's reaction is altogether healthier.

But it's not very British. I'm sure it's no co-incidence that the land of the 'stiff upper lip' is also the home of heavy drinking.

The British see crying as a form of - at best - weakness, at worst - mental instability.

When I started work in the early nineties, it was perfectly okay for my boss to quiz me about my sex life, or to pat me on the arse. It was 'banter.'

Another senior director stroked my thigh under the table during one formal dinner. I discovered afterwards that he was doing the same to my friend on the other side. How did he manage to actually eat anything?

All that sort of behaviour was totally acceptable, but one thing I was warned about in no uncertain terms was crying.

I asked one of the (few) female directors for her advice when I first joined. "Never cry in the office," she said. "Your career would be over. If you feel like you're going to cry, go to the loos and whistle. It's physically impossible to cry and whistle simultaneously."

I whistled a fair bit, and drank an awful lot, during my twenty year advertising career, but I never cried. Not once.

Then, exactly a year ago, when I was diagnosed with breast cancer, I discovered the miraculous power of crying.

Weeping is nature's pressure valve.

You know those old pressure cookers your Mum used in the seventies? The steam builds up and up until you need to release it with the valve on the top and it makes a really satisfying whooshing sound? That's what crying does.

Last year, the children were on half term and I was getting to grips with the idea that I might not be around to see them grow up. I couldn't cry in front of them, so I would take the dog out for a walk and weep in parks.

One day I was standing alone on Eel Brook Common howling like a banshee when I was spotted by one of the mums from the school playground.

I didn't know this mum well. I didn't even know her name, but I'd always been rather in awe of her. She looks a bit like a rock chick, and at a school where everyone calls their children names like Octavia and Joshua, hers are called Spike and Buster.

Anyhow, she starts walking over to say hello, then realises that I'm falling apart in front of her. She freezes, not sure whether to come over or to escape as quickly as possible.

Understanding how terribly awkward this situation was (for a Brit), I went over to her.

"I'm so sorry," I said, through the howls (another British trait: always apologise for everything, especially if it's not your fault), "I've got breast cancer."

She was utterly lovely and we've been friends ever since (in that building up gradually to eventually meeting up for coffee way that the British make friends).

Anyhow, my point is: CRYING IS AWESOME. And it really works.

So, next time you're finding life just too overwhelming and you can't turn to booze to take the edge off, have a damn good weep instead. Much more effective.

Love SM x

P.S. Check out a fab new blogger I've come across: www.sobersphere.blogspot.com

Booze and Bereavement

Thank you so much for all your kind messages yesterday after the death of my friend, Q.

It has been a very hard couple of days.

I have never seen my old Etonian, stiff upper lipped husband cry before, even during the whole cancer thing, but several times I've caught him quietly sobbing.

Mr SM and Q first met when they were at boarding school together at the age of seven, and there's something about wrenching young boys from their families, and subjecting them to inedible food, cold showers and the public school 'fagging' system that forges incredibly strong ties.

#2 picked up Mr SM's iPad yesterday and it opened on a site named 'coping with bereavement.'

I'd always thought that if a close friend or family member died I would play my 'Get Out of Jail Free' card. Nobody can be expected to cope with grief without booze, right? Alcohol was practically invented for this - it's medicinal. It numbs the feelings and makes everything bearable.

But I figure that drinking now would be like closing the front door on a house fire. You might be able to forget, temporarily, that it's there, but at some point you have to open that door again, and the fire won't have gone away, it'll just be more out of control.

Instead I've discovered nature's way of dousing the flames: weeping.

I've been doing it a lot. Twenty or thirty times a day. Every time I pick up the 'phone to another friend, but also at random times. The fact that I might be out on the street or in a shop doesn't seem to stop me either.

And, you know what? It really helps.

It feels like a safety valve that clicks into action just when you think that all those feelings building up inside are going to make you explode, or spontaneously combust like a character in a Victorian novel.

The children, who are at home for the holidays, have got used to Mummy randomly weeping.

I've explained to them that grief is an entirely good thing, as it's a sign that you have properly loved, and a life without having properly loved is no life at all.

They get this. What they would not get, and not like is if Mummy were also drunk and incoherent.

Oddly, I don't really want to blur the edges. I feel it would be doing Q a disservice. I want to remember all the times we shared in glorious technicolour. I want to properly grieve for all the new memories I thought we would make in the future.

Plus, I want to be there for his wife and children, my friend and our Godchildren, not just by sharing a few bottles of vino late into the night (which I am sad I can't do), but by helping with the housework, the cooking, the childcare and so on, which I couldn't do drunk or hungover.

One thing I am terribly grateful for is that I don't have any regrets.

The thing about someone dying unexpectedly and suddenly is that you don't have time to prepare. To make time to see them, to tell them that you love them, to show them how much they mean to you.

Had this happened in the Drinking Days I have no doubt I would have been riddled with regret. I'd neglected my old friends for years.

But I'd seen Q a lot recently. He'd been to stay with us in London, we'd seen him up in Scotland. I'm pretty sure he knew how much he meant to us.

I'm weeping again.

SM x