The Women’s Podcast does Christmas: Anne Enright, Maeve Higgins, Louise O’Neill and more

In this week’s episode of The Women’s Podcast, seven talented Irish writers read offer their festive reflections. Novelist Anne Enright read an excerpt from The Green Road, recently named best novel of the year at the Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Awards 2015. The extract is about that frenzied trolley loading during the big Christmas supermarket shop.

“It was 10 a.m. on Christmas Eve and the supermarket was like the Apocalypse, people grabbing without looking, and things fallen in the aisles. But there was no good time to do this, you just had to get through it. Constance pushed her trolley to the vegetable section: celery, carrots, parsnips for Dessie, who liked them. Sausage and sage for the stuffing, an experimental bag of chestnuts, vacuum packed. Constance bought a case of Prosecco on special offer to wrap and leave on various doorsteps and threw in eight frozen pizzas in case the kids rolled up with friends. Frozen berries. Different ice creams. She got wine, sherry, whiskey, fresh nuts, salted nuts, crisps, bags and bags of apples, two mangoes, a melon, dark cherries for the fruit salad, root ginger, fresh mint, a wooden crate of satsumas, the fruit cold and promising sweet, each one with its own sprig of green, dark leaves…”

In her essay Irish Book Award-winning author Louise O’Neill explained how Christmas was an especially difficult time in her struggle with an eating disorder.

“I love Christmas. Christmas is my favourite time of year. I hate Christmas. Christmas is the hardest time of year ... And now, here I am, at 30. And it is Christmas again. And I know that it will be difficult, that it will still feel anxiety-provoking to be surrounded by so much food, and be urged to eat as much of it as possible. Maybe that feels scary. Maybe it will always feel a little scary. .”

Comedian Pauline McLynn talked about feeling unashamedly hormonal this Christmas while going through the menopause.

“No one warns you of the full horrors of ‘the change’…Why did no one ever warn of hair sprouting from random and unwelcome parts? This is the furry part of my merry little Christmas.

I refer to the moustache that is trying to gain purchase on my upper lip. Too often during Movember, I was congratulated for my charitable efforts. Now we are in December, and everyone wants to know why I haven’t shaved the blasted thing off. Well, I have.”

The episode also features an essay about spending Christmas away from home from comedian Tara Flynn; a story about epiphanies by series producer Roisin Ingle, from her latest collection of columns Public Displays of Emotion; and festive reflections on how to achieve Christmas perfection from playwright Hilary Fannin, whose memoir Hopscotch was published earlier this year. Comedian Maeve Higgins read an extract about being a Good Samaritan at Christmas from her book Off You Go.

Next week, The Women’s Podcast looks back on 2015 and asks, ‘How was it for women?’