How a year off gave birth to a new soundtrack of my life
‘Would you like the radio on?” asks the midwife. “The radio?” I panic, gripped by another wave of pain. “How did you know? What do you know?”
She studies me with that look of polite NHS concern that happens when they’re mulling over whether to decrease the dose of whatever you’re on, or to increase it significantly. Sensing danger, I cling to the gas and air nozzle.
“It’s part of her job,” my husband explains. “Listening to the radio.
So, maybe something else?”
“That must be nice,” says the midwife, a little disappointed. “People never want the radio on. But I like it.”
I understand the other women’s reluctance, and I share it. Putting the radio on during labour, tuned to a station chosen by a stranger, is audio roulette. It’s a Sunday, so I mentally calculate it could be Elaine Paige on Radio 2 throatily introducing a jazzy hit from a Broadway musical. If it’s Radio 4, it could be Gardeners’ Question Time, and I could meet my child for the first time while enjoying advice on when to use ericaceous compost. Or Classic FM, where the inevitable Lark Ascending may be relaxing, but is likely to be followed immediately by a blaring advert for insurance.
The midwife – an angel among mortals, incidentally – offers to put on some hypnobirthing music instead, which I suppose is music, even though it has no melody or rhythm and you would never listen to it voluntarily unless you were already experiencing the worst pain of your life.
I’ve had a year away from writing to you in these pages, and during this time I’ve been able to listen to the radio for nothing more than pleasure. And I find, in the hazy days soon after the birth of my second daughter, that music alone is not enough. I need voices, laughter, unpredictability, grown-ups talking – and a time-check every now and then.
Maternity leave can be lonely, but the radio becomes a consistent source of relative sanity. As spring turns to summer, I grow to think of Jeremy Vine on Radio 2 not as a friend, but as something more like a professional lunchtime enforcer appointed by the state. The sound of his voice, umpiring a discussion on pothole repair, means it’s time to make lunch, even if everyone has been awake for 24 hours.
Music has its place. Laundry (so much laundry) goes with a swing with the help of Absolute Radio 00s, the songs I used to listen to at parties and which now soundtrack my days spent in stained pyjamas and a body I don’t recognise. I’m careful not to leave Radio 3 playing too long into the night, because the wrong sort of percussion interlude on the experimental music programme Night Tracks can sometimes make it sound as though the house is falling down, which is not good for the sleep-deprived mind.
In September we listen to the coverage of Queen Elizabeth’s death on what feels like every station, and I try to explain the enormity of the national moment to my five-year-old when she asks to hear her favourite Taylor Swift song instead.
Trying to get on top of my life again in the autumn, I seek out podcasts about extreme productivity. The 5AM Miracle with Jeff Sanders helps me pretend I’m sleek and organised and American, instead of picking flecks of mashed potato out of my hair.
Scott Mills arriving to present afternoons on Radio 2 in October has a disturbing effect, because I remember listening to him on Radio 1 as a teenager, along with Sara Cox and Zoe Ball. Now all three of them are on the Radio 2 daily schedule, it feels as if they’re stalking me through life.
Christmas approaches and I recognise its arrival, like the first cuckoo of spring, by the first playing of Mariah Carey on commercial radio. I turn to Radio 4 for the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols on Christmas Eve while my eldest lays out, for the first time, an extra stocking by the fireplace, for her baby sister.
In the New Year I tune back into the Today programme, which I’d drifted away from when it felt as though the only part of it I could follow was the weather. Now it’s infuriating me again, which is a good sign. As I walk my eldest to school, she does her latest party trick: singing all the radio jingles she knows, plus her version of the robot voice that announces Popmaster. The baby thinks it’s hilarious.
I send my editor some thoughts about programmes I’ve heard recently that might be worth reviewing. He asks, gently, if I’d like to write about something else instead: not the week in radio, but a year of it. After all, someone new is listening. I boil the kettle, and put the radio on.