A spontaneous trip to Paris? Oh oui!
ON THE PARADOX OF MODERN MOTHERHOOD AND FASHION FIXES THAT WORK HARD FOR EVERY DAY
Afantasy idea turned into a golden travel ticket that aligned perfectly with annual leave (the perks of having a sister who works in aviation) and so we spent a long weekend in Paris on a whim. Maybe it was the last-minute preparation/packing or an awards ceremony the evening before which transpired in a late night (and very little sleep) but I found myself unexpectably nervous on the morning of departure. The notion of taking a toddler to a busy city for four days felt like a step too far outside my comfort zone and then my husband reminded me how little I favour the prospect of a convenient all-inclusive holiday.
I quickly learned that no matter where you’re travelling, tired, impatient toddlers cannot be distracted by the beauty of fluffy clouds or passing scenery. There are a few things that make or break travelling with smallies. Negotiation is key to boarding your flght on time; soothers, snacks and squishy airport teddy bears take on a whole new level of importance; and a little screen time goes a very long way.
As for our luggage, ours was all packed into a soft shell carry-on, while our daughter’s precious cargo filled a whole 15kg check-in bag. Sleepsuits, tights, tops and trousers for every day of the week along with blankets, bibs and copius amounts of wipes. Mine consisted of a few luxe cotton T-shirts, white/blue jeans, a wafty waistbandfree dress and cushion-soled trainers and Mary Janes all rolled neatly into one side of the carry-on.
Beyond the everyday essentials, a lightweight quilted jacket, linen blazer or trenchcoat are all secret weapons, dressed up-or-down with any outfit you’re traveling with and wearing them on the plane (sometimes underneath each other) feels like the ultimate space-saving tip.
Years of getting caught out at the check-in desk have forced me to master the art of a clever capsule suitcase and, as it turns out, travelling with a tiny human and a lot more bells and whistles does make you more efficient.
We both tooks turns each day with a backpack and a super sturdy travel buggy bag flipped out for naptime on the run
Sitting on a sofa in the plush confines of Dublin’s Dean Hotel, Brooke Scullion is fizzing with energy, all dark curls and dungarees. Ireland’s 2022 Eurovision entry is preparing for her big moment in Turin in a couple of weeks when she gets to show the world just what she’s made of.
Brooke will be performing in the second semi-final before hopefully representing Ireland in the grand final on May 14 with her song That’s Rich. It’s no mean feat for a 23-yearold who has just graduated from drama school. ‘I get moments of sheer joy, moments of excitement, moments of passion and moments of fear,’ she says of her forthcoming Italian job. ‘It’s just like a rollercoaster. I am trying to just enjoy it and not think of the uncertainty of what happens after. It’s like the biggest show in the world and it is a monumental moment for me.’
That’s Rich, a quirky electro pop song, raced ahead of the pack during this year’s Eurosong on The Late Late Show, making Brooke – who had previously appeared on The Voice UK – a flag-bearer for her country in a competition where even some of our biggest pop stars like
Nicky Byrne have tried to conquer but ended up licking their wounds. But as a newcomer, Brooke is not afraid that a loss at Eurovision would spell disaster for her burgeoning music career, given what she has already been through coming third on The Voice UK.
‘People are saying: “Are you not worried it will harm your career?” But I didn’t have a career before this,’ she says. ‘Whatever I released, no one was going to listen, nobody cared and that was fine. But I have watched Eurovision since I was a child and there are moments I will never forget – Alexander Ryback, that was the moment when I fell in love with Eurovision,’ says Brooke of
the 2009 Norwegian winner who brought victory to his country with the track Fairytale. ‘That was the moment for me because I had a massive crush on him – massive!’
Watching the show every year as a child, Brooke often imagined herself on stage as part of the spectacular but never once imagined it would actually happen. Growing up in Bellaghy, Co Derry, Brooke always felt she was going to entertain in some way but always imagined herself as an actress or TV presenter. In secondary school at St Patrick’s, Maghera, she was keen not to stand out from the crowd and after joining the choir decided it was too much. ‘I was very aware of my surroundings, put it that way,’ says Brooke. ‘But my choir teacher Jolene Conway stopped me and said, “How dare you stop showing your gift? I don’t want to hear excuses, I’ll see you at choir on Tuesday.” So I went back out of pure fear initially and then once I was there, I just realised that it was where I wanted to be. I don’t know why I listened to anyone else in that moment.”
She was in second year when she entered a big talent competition in school and surprised even her parents, Tracy and Mark, when she won. ‘No one in my family thought I could sing, no one!’ she says, laughing. ‘It just wasn’t a thing. I always knew I was creative but I always thought I would be an actress or be on TV in some way.’
But being chosen as a lead in the school show at a young age brought its own pressures while a rather brutal audition for a teenage version of Les Miserables in Belfast left
‘NO ONE IN MY FAMILY THOUGHT I COULD SING. IT JUST WASN’T A THING’
Brooke upset and feeling like she wasn’t cut out for singing.
‘Everyone was raging,’ she says of her musical role. ‘And there was no reason why my teachers would put me in for that because it wasn’t warranted. But they saw something in me that I couldn’t see. They actually stopped my parents one night and said, “She needs to do this, this is where she belongs and this is what she deserves to do.” But you can’t tell someone that, they have to find out for themselves. It took me until university to find that out and it was only because I got validation from other people.’
Brooke was pursuing her dream of becoming an actress, successfully
Brooke with her mentor Meghan Trainor on The Voice UK
getting a place on the drama course at the University of Ulster, Magee, when her talent for singing was resurrected, thanks to a friend and his banjo, and a pal who felt Brooke deserved to be heard.
‘My friend, he was a banjo player, and he said to me, “Let’s do a traditional version of All I Want For Christmas Is You”, and that’s the video my friend sent to The Voice. They came to my uni and I did an audition there.
‘I wasn’t going to go but it was in the same building as I had my class and they called me when I was lined up waiting for the class and my friend said, “Here she is!”’
Brooke was about to sing Adele before the judges stopped her as everyone had been singing the superstar’s songs. ‘So I sang my favourite song – Hotel California by The Eagles – a capella,’ she says. ‘They talked to me for 20 minutes after and that’s when I knew they had heard something they liked and I thought I am going to take this seriously from here on in.’
When she appeared on the show, four chairs turned and Brooke chose All About That Bass singer Meghan Trainor as her mentor. Despite Covid causing the show to stall and being the only contestant whose mentor was appearing virtually, as Meghan was in America and pregnant so couldn’t fly, Brooke still managed to come third in the show.
She thought then that the phone would be ringing, but instead the pandemic put paid to the chances doing so well on a television show might normally provide. ‘I have learned through Covid to stop having preconceptions,’ says Brooke. ‘I had this mad idea that everything was going to take off after The Voice but the phone did not ring.
‘There were other things to talk about and I get that, but it forced me into a really bad place and I had to decide if I wanted to do this. I knew I wouldn’t be happy in a normal job but I got an estate agent’s job and took a Wednesday off every week when I would go and write music.
‘In the winter it was hard. I was going to the studio in the dark and came out in the dark and it was such an unhealthy way of living but it really got me to write some cool stuff.’
Brooke met her manager Ronan while on The Voice UK and between them they mined every seam they could, which eventually led to her collaboration with Izzy Warner and Karl Zine for That’s Rich. It’s a spiky number which would appear to be about someone who loves themselves a little bit too much. ‘It’s a Eurovision fantasy,’ she says. ‘It’s a great three-minute detachment from everything that’s going on.’
The inspiration for the track initially came from her granny after a throwaway comment in the kitchen. ‘She said: “That’s rich coming from him,” and I wrote it down. I always write things down when I hear them, random stuff. I had this vision of recreating a Blondie-esque song that was timeless but also contemporary but I didn’t know how to create it and that’s where Karl and Izzy came in.’
Brooke has been working hard for two years – after The Voice she started to approach producers and songwriters to collaborate – and now has a bank of songs that will be released after Eurovision that she has written or co-written herself.
‘I had to bare my soul,’ Brooke says. ‘Songwriting wasn’t easy at the start and That’s Rich is not about anything specific other than independence and power.
‘Eurovision is such a massive thing for me especially because The Late Late Show – that Eurosong final – was the moment for me where I was thinking, this will make or break me as an artist.’
As the public voted to put her through, Brooke is hoping people will continue with their investment in her and That’s Rich for the Turin stages. ‘Doing The Voice UK, I learned how to put my spin on things even though it wasn’t my song. That was my beginning but I don’t think it shows me as an artist. That’s why Eurovision is so important to me because it’s the first time I will get to be the artist that I want to be and see people sing my music back to me. That’s such a spectacular feeling.’
Meghan Trainor was one of the first people she called when That’s Rich won the Eurosong public vote. ‘She told me, “This is incredible.” She is so lovely, I have never met anyone like her,’ says Brooke. ‘She is genuinely a friend now, there are no back doors or ulterior motives with her. I am going to go and see her after Eurovision and we are going to do some writing together so that will be really cool.’
Of course, being on the international stage has its own pressures too but since appearing on The Voice, Brooke has avoided searching for her own name on social media. ‘My manager Ronan will show me things on Twitter that are good and I will reply to them,’ she says. ‘Or I will put stuff up but I don’t go searching. It’s not a healthy thing to do.
‘It’s not something that I would ever think to do – to say something nasty underneath something about anything. I think that is the bad part of social media. You wouldn’t say it to someone’s face so where does that come from? I find that hard to understand.’
That’s Rich will be released as part of an EP with some of Brooke’s songs that she hopes will show who she is now. ‘I have learned to
‘I WAS THINKING, THIS WILL MAKE OR BREAK ME’