Image-conscious alpha mum Amanda, played by Lucy Punch, is back for the second series of the BBC sitcom Amandaland – the Motherland spin-off. She’s still living in “SoHa”, as she rebrands South Harlesden to make it sound more cool, having reluctantly downsized from the affluent Chiswick area.
But much to the embarrassment of her two teenagers, Georgie and Manus, Amanda has now reinvented herself as an influencer – and is busy pushing her aspirational lifestyle brand, “Senuous”, despite a small hitch that she doesn’t have any followers.
She’s clearly delusional. While asking for a £1m investment at her local bank, she accepts the smaller £3,000 offered, and brags to her SoHa mum friends that her company has attracted “major Chinese investors: a banking corporation based in Hong Kong and Shanghai” – otherwise known as HSBC. She’s investing in a laptop and some proper studio lights with the loan.
Having a clueless mum publishing content with a portable light and her phone is cringe-making, but her children are used to being embarrassed. They also have to deal with their “Gan Gan”, aka their granny Felicity, played by Joanna Lumley, being driven across the football pitch in a black taxi to join her daughter, Amanda, on the sideline. Worse is when Amanda volunteers her services to give a career talk as an influencer.
“Mum, please, please don’t do this. I’ll do anything,” her daughter, Georgie, pleads with her mum in the first episode, as Amanda sets up the lights on the stage in her daughter’s school hall at Haycroft Academy.
“Georgie, relax,” replies Amanda, trying to reassure her daughter. “I’m about to make you very popular. You’ll be like a nepo baby.”
Poor Georgie looks like she wants the floor to swallow her up as she sits in the audience with her school friends. By the time Amanda runs back onto the stage to interrupt a talk about a food bank, to talk about her own charity efforts, her daughter’s mortification is complete.
It’s the case of the totally embarrassing mum. And while I spend my life trying not to be an embarrassing parent like Amanda – it doesn’t always work.
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Amanda’s teens are navigating life in a state school in South Harlesden. Mine – Lola, 10 and Liberty, eight, are doing exactly the same thing, but in Kensington.
Luckily, I’ve got more self-awareness than Amanda, but it’s hard to always know what is considered embarrassing to your children – and learning what triggers them is a minefield.
Posting funny videos of them and commenting on posts never goes down well. Showing up with embarrassing outfits at the school gates, cheering too loudly at sports day, or packing on the PDA are also a no-go areas.
They can’t bear it when I arrive late to class performances and run up to the front, waving and “making a show of myself.” When I had a non-surgical facelift last month and arrived for school pick up covered in dried blood, my daughter’s friends looked at me, gobsmacked. “Mum, just turn around and head to the car,” Lola pleaded.
Even our golden retriever, Muggles, 11, is a source of embarassment. Usually I leave him in the car on the school run, but the other day he jumped out and grabbed an animal carcus wrapped in foil, which I tried to wrestle off him infront of the school entrance, with my kids shouting at me, “Just leave him. Please mum, it’s so embarrassing”.
I often tell Lola not to “stress out” – and she squirms as if I’m saying the worst thing in the world and looks around to see if anybody is listening. I try really hard to be a cool mum. I don’t get annoyed with them when they have friends over and I clean the car before I pick them all up for playdates, so it doesn’t look like we’re living in it with old packed lunch items, odd PE socks and toys strewn everywhere.
But nothing works. When Lola went off on a school trip, and I waved her off with tears in my eyes, she quickly distanced herself with that look of embarrassment, telling me, “Mum, you’re going to need a therapy dog to cope. If you call me more than four times, I’m going to block you, then call you once, then block you.”
I often feel I am being spoken to like I’m the child. The trouble is mums like me – and Amanda – often feel stuck mentally at around 28, regardless of our actual age. In Amanda’s case, she can’t come to terms with being called “middle-aged” and seeks reassurance from her co-dependent people-pleasing mum friend Anne, who allows her to continue to be more childish than her own children.
In my case, I forget that joining in with my children dancing to Kidz Bop’s “Can’t Stop the Feeling!” with their friends is not appropriate. They also hate it when I am making a point. Lola was mortified when I told off a friend of hers for being mean to her. Whenever I want to send the food back in a restaurant that I’m not happy with, my children run for the exit or find a menu to cringe behind.
A lot of the time, I have to remind myself that their being embarrassed is a normal part of growing up and will only get worse as they become teens. Some of it is my fault. But, while everybody knows an Amanda, that’s only half the story. The truth is, inside all of us mum there’s an Amanda just waiting to punch her way out.