Behind the ‘gram with @Disastersofa30something

You’re the creator of the incredibly humbling #thepeakandpitcollective hashtag on Instagram, which currently features over 3,600 posts. Do you want to tell the High Life North readers what this is, and when you started it?

I’ll start by saying probably over 1000 of those are my own post, haha! I’ve been sharing a peak and pit almost every day for the last three years. The day it all started was at the beginning of a travel year with my husband Jonny. We’d saved and schemed, from our London flat throughout 2016, to do a travel year in 2017. This particular day was our first sleeping in a van we’d done up to drive around the north and south islands of New Zealand. We arrived at the first coastal campsite to discover it was…a nudist beach. When in Rome? Yeah, we stripped off and splashed around without a care, truly feeling we were on the other side of the world.

Late that night, waking up on our first night sleeping in the little van, I felt claustrophobic and had a panic attack, wondering if we’d made a huge mistake. Basically, a day of two halves. Documenting life on Instagram, I was really keen to show that travelling isn’t all cocktails and sunsets, nor is it all mayhem and exhaustion. I’d seen travel accounts that seemed to either be in the “everything is, like, amaaaazing!” camp or the “everything is bloody awful” camp, so I decided to do a ‘peak and pit’ to show the two extremes of that day. A fun, naked day. A scary, cramped night. Truth be told I nicked ‘peak and pit’ from a reality TV episode I saw. People sometimes ask if I made it up and I have to admit, no it was the Kardashians.

Anyway, I had some really encouraging feedback and decided to carry on doing a daily peak and pit every day of our travels. My mum-life is almost unrecognisable to those travelling days, but I still love writing them now. 

As a freelance writer, speaker as well as a mama to two gorgeous toddler twins, what does your daily routine look like?

Well as any parent of young children will know, you get into a routine (finally feel like you’re semi-nailing it), and suddenly your children will grow into a new age/stage and things have to change again. Nap times, mealtimes, activities…. whether they adore being in the buggy or COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY HATE BEING IN THE BUGGY. It feels like things can switch overnight.

For a good long time, it was baby groups and mum dates and soft play, but for a few reasons, that’s all stopped for now. Now, fully-fledged toddlers, my twins have outgrown many of the groups we used to go to, plus we’ve recently moved to a new house this month.

Obviously, there’s also that little thing of a global pandemic going on. Our daily routine at the moment is more of a lockdown one, where we mainly stay put…they play…and I try to work around them. Although, as we’re lucky enough to now live on the Northumbrian coast (having just moved from Jesmond), many of our days do involve the beach. Though we’ve yet to discover a nudist one.

As an honorary Geordie, why did you move here and what you favourite things about living here?

It’s to my shame that I didn’t know Newcastle well at all and had never been to Northumberland before I met my husband (raised in Craster). I was blown away when I first came up here. You can’t swing your proverbial cat without hitting a castle, deserted beach or cosy, country pub.

Truth be told, moving here was more about house prices than anything else – my family are in Brighton and London (both, obviously, ludicrously expensive) and Jonny’s are in Northumberland.

We weren’t sure where we’d settle on getting back from our travel year but once I found out I was having twins we knew we needed a family home – somewhere we could afford and preferably close to one side of the family.

Now that I’ve lived in the North East for a couple of years I’ve fallen completely in love with the place. It’s a strange shifting sense of identity to go from a born-and-bred Londoner to an honorary Geordie but, if anything, I feel lucky to know this area’s hidden secrets. When friends come from down south to visit, I’m always dying to show off everywhere from Tynemouth beach to Cragside, from Dunstanburgh castle to the Baltic. There’s so much history and culture up here. It’s proper mint, pet.