MARISSA CARTER

Marissa Carter, founder of Carter Beauty and Cocoa Brown tan, spent lockdown at home in Dublin with her husband Ronan and children, Charlie (eight) and Belle (five) PRACTICAL

I haven’t learnt anything new, but I have started teaching my kids how to play the piano. I played for years, and I always loved it, but after I had Charlie, I was just so busy with him and then Belle, and with work, that I stopped.

I rang my mum and said, ‘You know my old keyboard in your attic? Will you pull it down and put it in your garden and I’ll come and collect it?’ So she did and I put some batteries in it and off we went.

I love playing, it’s so therapeutic and meditative and I thought that would be good for the children. It’s a really nice, calming thing to do, and Belle has taken to it like a duck to water.

I just thought how sad it would be if I never took the time to share the piano with my children. I thought how awful it would be if they left home without ever knowing how. And when this is over, I want us to be able to say, ‘Look, we did that together’.

PERSONAL

Turing off the hustler button has been incredible. I feel so liberated. This is what it feels like to not really care about anything other than the health and safety of the people I love. I’m not pushing myself to do all the things I’d be pushing myself to do this time of year in work; stressing and worrying about travelling and forging ahead and now I’m like, all that matters is that we’re all grand.

The business is ticking over in online sales and I haven’t had to let anyone go, which is great. We’ll pick up again when we can. I don’t know when that will be and I’ve never been one to go with the flow, but I’m forced into it now and I can do it.

I’ve been self-employed from the age of 21. I never thought I’d be the type of person who’d sit around in pyjamas all day or put on make-up once a week. I would have said that’s not who I am, but it turns out that it is.