Why Mummy Drinks Read online

  COPYRIGHT

  HarperCollinsPublishers

  1 London Bridge Street

  London SE1 9GF

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

  First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2017

  FIRST EDITION

  © Gill Sims 2017

  Cover illustration © Tom Gauld 2017

  Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2017

  A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

  Gill Sims asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

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  Source ISBN: 9780008237493

  Ebook Edition © October 2017 ISBN: 9780008237509

  Version: 2017-08-18

  DEDICATION

  To D

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  SEPTEMBER

  OCTOBER

  NOVEMBER

  DECEMBER

  JANUARY

  FEBRUARY

  MARCH

  APRIL

  MAY

  JUNE

  JULY

  AUGUST

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  About the Publisher

  SEPTEMBER

  Tuesday, 8 September

  First day back at school. I am going to 100 per cent nail being a school mummy this year. I can absolutely do this. This year my school runs will go like this:

  6 a.m. Wake up, have a shower, put on the stylish and elegant outfit from my minimalist capsule wardrobe that I laid out last night, before applying some light but sophisticated makeup, as suggested by Pinterest, complete with chic, flicky eyeliner. Dry hair, then style into an ‘easy’ chignon – again according to the diktats of Pinterest – thus creating an overall ‘look’ that is modern yet classic, with an individual edge. Now looking perfect, I’ll tidy up the house so that we have a calm and welcoming environment to return to at the end of the day.

  7 a.m. Wake up my precious moppets and offer them a choice of wholesome homemade breakfasts. Happily agree that of course they can help me make the pancakes/waffles/scrambled eggs. Smile with maternal love at the concentration etched on their glowing little faces as they work together to create their delicious concoctions while I pop something yummy into the slow cooker for dinner.

  7.45 a.m Send my adorable children to get washed and dressed, which is of course a quick and simple activity because their uniform was laid out the night before.

  While they are getting dressed I can quickly pop the breakfast dishes into the dishwasher, then simply remove the bento boxes from the fridge filled with their nutritious packed lunches, complete with sandwiches fashioned into amusing characters and a wide variety of fresh fruit chopped into quirky shapes.

  8 a.m. Brush Jane’s hair and style it into French plaits or something similar. Run a comb through Peter’s hair and then have ten minutes to read them a lovely story before a final, quick five-minute tidy up and the shoes and coats go on.

  8.25 a.m. Leave to walk to school, possibly singing rousing songs, with a detour via the park for the dog to have a run on the way. Watch my darling cherubs tumbling amongst the falling leaves and frolicking with each other and my lovely dog. Feel smug at how the fresh air and exercise before school will have stimulated their youthful brains so that they are now ready to absorb information like sponges.

  8.50 a.m. Fondly wave my beautiful children off into the playground with many hugs and kisses, before briskly marching home again with the dog. Then, once the dog is settled in his basket to quietly await the dogsitter coming to let him out at lunchtime, I jump into my freshly valeted car and go to work.

  3.15 p.m. Pick up the delightful poppets from school. Chat pleasantly with the other mums in the playground about safe and neutral topics.

  3.30 p.m. Give children a nutritious snack, possibly involving homemade granola. While they are eating this, go through each child’s schoolbag and carefully read each letter and make a note of all events/trips/requests. Possibly have colour-coded files for each child to keep such letters in, so they can be easily located whenever required. Check homework diaries and draw up a balanced timetable so various homework tasks can be accomplished each night.

  3.45 p.m. Send children to get changed for obligatory middle-class extra-curricular activities.

  4 p.m. Take children to swimming/music/tennis/dance/jiu jitsu, as appropriate. If only one child is at an activity, spend the time bonding with remaining child and discussing their day/hopes/dreams/ambitions. If both children are doing an activity, catch up on work emails like proper twenty-first-century efficient career woman.

  5 p.m. Supervise homework tasks chosen from the carefully planned timetable.

  5.30 p.m. Serve up mouthwatering yet effortlessly produced homemade dinner from the slow cooker. Have brief smug moment about what an excellent mother I am and feel sorry for those who lack my razor-sharp organisational skills and unparalleled maternal instincts.

  6 p.m. Oversee piano practice and run through spellings/times tables.

  6.45 p.m. Permit a half hour of screen time.

  7.15 p.m. Bathtime.

  7.45 p.m. Bedtime. Read another chapter of the educational book the children have chosen.

  8 p.m. Reward myself for my productive day with a nice cup of green tea.

  This year we will absolutely have no repeats of last year, where the days all too often went more like this:

  5 a.m. Wake up to hear a small child thundering down the stairs. Stumble down after them to discover said small child hunched on sofa and glued to iPad. Snarl at beastly brat monster to get back to bloody bed this instant. Crawl back into bed and seethe with rage. Finally fall back asleep just before alarm goes off.

  6 a.m. Hit snooze button.

  6.10 a.m. Hit snooze button again.

  7.10 a.m. Wake up in panic. Jump in shower. Throw on first clothes that come to hand. Have mild meltdown because arse has expanded to full width so can’t get knickers past knees. Realise in my haste to get dressed I’d not noticed there was a pair of Jane’s knickers in my drawer and am trying to haul them on. Sob in relief that while my arse may not be the tiniest or perkiest, I defy any grown woman to manage to shoehorn her arse into an eight-year-old’s pants. Turn head upside down and blast with hairdryer. Survey mad porcupine hair in dismay and tie back with a Hello Kitty bobble. Try to look as though I want to be wearing a Hello Kitty hair bobble, as an expression of my unique and quirky individuality. Fail.

  7.30 a.m. Go downstairs and shout at precious moppets to disengage themselves from bastarding electronic devices and come and have some breakfast.

  7.37 a.m. Snatch bastarding electronic devices from children’s hands and howl that they are now confiscated forever and demand once more that they come and have breakfast. Children look up in surprise, having failed to notice my demented banshee-esque presence for the last seven fucking minutes.

  7.40 a.m. Hurl Coco Pops at children. Break up fight over the stupid plastic toy in the cereal box. Answer eleventy billion inane questions on subjects such as, ‘Who would win in a fight – a vampire squirr
el or a weasel cat?’ and, ‘Can you eat warthogs?’ Shout: ‘I don’t know, I don’t know, I will google later, stop playing with your food and just eat it, please, come on, hurry up, it’s only a bowl of cereal, how long does it take to eat, no, please don’t do that, you will spill it, yes, yes, well done, I told you that you would spill it if you did that, no, LEAVE IT, I’ll clear it up, come on, HURRY UP!’

  8 a.m. Send the children to get washed and dressed. Despite laying out their uniform the night before, now must deal with them insisting they can’t find it and claiming it is not there. Stomp upstairs to point out uniform sitting in plain sight on their chairs where it is every sodding morning. At the same time try to make packed lunches and throw something in the slow cooker that the children might actually eat – spag bol. Feed dog. Watch dog inhale food and choke, then vomit. Mop up dog sick.

  8.20 a.m. Attempt to untangle the Gordian Knot that is Jane’s hair. Explain again that I CAN’T DO FRENCH PLAITS and put in pigtails instead. Listen to Jane telling me that I am a rubbish mummy because everybody else’s mummy can do French plaits and actually even Tilly Barker’s daddy can do French plaits. Endure a lengthy diatribe from Jane over her ruined life and the utter futility of her entire existence due to her French-plait-less hair while chasing Peter around the house attempting to flatten down the strange tufts that have appeared in his hair overnight, while he squeals and dodges like I am attempting to catch him and stick pins in him.

  8.35 a.m. Start bellowing at the children to put on their shoes and coats and get their school bags now, now, now, NOW! Try not to actually foam at the mouth with rage when met with blank stares and complete denial of any knowledge of the existence of shoes, coats or schoolbags. Child informs me of very important permission slip that must be returned today. Search futilely through many piles of paper, eventually find the letter, try to dredge up the £5 the letter is also demanding from down the back of the sofa, as I only have a £20 note.

  8.47 a.m. Finally leave the house, hustle the children to school while dragging the dog behind me as he attempts to pee on every lamp-post.

  8.57 a.m. Push children into playground, smile weakly at dragon headmistress standing at the gate to judge parents under the pretence of greeting them. Stop dog lifting leg on her American tan tights. Scuttle home as fast as possible, mumbling apologies to the poor dog for his lack of a proper walk.

  9.07 a.m. Leave a note for the dogsitter asking if she could take dog out for an extra five minutes if she has time, hurtle into car, wonder vaguely what that smell is and drive to work while attempting to put on makeup as I try to convince myself that applying lip gloss when driving is neither dangerous nor illegal. Try not to think about pit of hell bombsite of house left behind.

  3.15 p.m. Pick up children. Make half-hearted conversation with other parents while trying to avoid the Coven of Bloody Perfect Mummies, led by the Most Perfect of All, Perfect Lucy Atkinson’s Perfect Mummy. Attempt to refrain from making any more social faux pas, such as remarking that a certain much-beloved children’s TV presenter looks to me like a sexual deviant.

  3.30 p.m. Feed children crisps while attempting to tackle the chaos.

  3.45 p.m. Send children to get changed for middle-class extra-curricular activities. Argue with them about why they have to go and why swimming/music/tennis/dance/jiu jitsu lessons are not a stupid waste of time. Get told once again that I am a stupid mummy who is ruining their lives. Swear that if I hear the words ‘But it’s not fair!’ one more time I will not be responsible for my actions. Tell Peter that I do not want to come upstairs and smell his fart. Go upstairs and find the clothes they once again claim have vanished. Try to go to the loo, find large turd staring up at me, shout a lot about the Phantom Shitter while the children wander about in only their pants. Scream ‘We are leaving in FIVE MINUTES!’ for at least ten minutes. Get told again that it is not fair. Snap back that life is not fair. Wonder how soon I can have wine.

  4.05 p.m. Take children to pointless and ridiculous middle-class activities that they don’t even want to go to in futile attempt to turn them into well-rounded members of society. If only one child is in activity, allow the other to play on an electronic device despite this morning’s hollow and empty threats about eternal confiscation while I stalk people on Facebook on my phone. If both children are in activity, open up work emails, stare at them despondently, then stalk people on Facebook.

  5 p.m. Give in to the clamour and permit more electronics time.

  5.30 p.m. Realise I didn’t turn the bloody, bastarding piece-of-shit slow cooker on this morning. Give children cheesy pasta instead. Force them to eat a piece of fruit afterwards in a feeble attempt at nutrition. Google scurvy and show them photos when they object. Get told they don’t even care if they get scurvy.

  6 p.m. Ask if they have any homework. Receive staunch denials. Agree children can have just five more minutes on their electronics. Open wine. Attempt to tidy up the bombsite that was once my tastefully decorated, elegant home.

  6.30 p.m. Tell children to turn off electronics and do piano practice/spellings/times tables while I hoover and throw eleventy billion loads of laundry into the washing machine.

  6.45 p.m. Realise the children are suspiciously quiet and there is no sound of piano practice or anything else. Discover children have merely swapped one electronic device for another, claiming that I only said they were to put down their iPods, I did not mention any other things.

  7 p.m. Tell children it’s bathtime. Children announce they have very important homework to do that must be handed in tomorrow. Mutter every single swear word I know under my breath. Do homework with children while trying to refrain from asking them if they are really that stupid as they claim to have forgotten what number comes after three and are suggesting that C-A-T spells ‘dog’.

  8.30 p.m. Finally have children bathed and in bed. Slump on sofa and glug the same glass of wine I poured at 6 p.m. and am only now getting to drink. Mutter ‘FML!’ repeatedly, as my soul dies a little more.

  Yes, this year is definitely going to be much better, I will be far more organised. Unfortunately, I have not actually managed to buy the bento boxes or the tasteful capsule wardrobe yet, and I will have to learn to like green tea, as it is foul, and I also have not yet mastered the flicky eyeliner or French plaits, but I am quietly confident that these are mere details in my grand master plan.

  Friday, 11 September

  FML. I am thirty-nine today. I don’t want to be thirty-nine. How did that happen? When did that happen? I wasn’t meant to get any older than twenty-eight at the most – and even that seemed impossibly ancient – and now I am staring down the barrel at forty and a future that will probably consist of quirkily patterned skirts from catalogue companies and perhaps a ‘statement scarf’ if I am feeling really daring.

  A future where my social life dwindles to people asking me if I want to come to their advanced yoga classes, or their polite book clubs where they only read earnest and improving books and everyone wears their ‘statement scarves’ tied over polo-neck jumpers and they are all ‘tiddly’ after a glass of indifferent Pinot Grigio. Then they say things like, ‘Oooh, gosh, are you having another glass? Aren’t you brave?’ while I fight the urge to reply that actually I am not brave, I am not brave at all; a brave person would be able to endure their wittering inanities without the aid of anaesthesia, and actually it’s not another glass of this cheap wine I need to make them bearable, it’s an entire bottle of vodka, and possibly some crack. And, oh, for the love of God, WHY ARE YOU ALL SO BORING?

  Perhaps if I refrain from shouting that at the Other Mummies I may have the book club tedium broken up by the occasional invite to jewellery parties, where at least the drink will flow more readily to induce you to buy, buy, buy. But I will then wake up the next day with the sinking realisation that I have spent £150 that I do not have on an array of poorly made tat that I do not need.

  I had always assumed that in the unlikely event of me reaching forty I w
ould by then be an elegant and sophisticated woman of the world, fluent in French, pursuing a lucrative, yet humanitarian career, knowledgeable about art and literature and politics – the sort of person that people seek out at highbrow parties to ask their opinion on the situation in the Middle East. Then we would have an informed and illuminating discussion during which it would be obvious that I am much cleverer than them.

  Instead, people seek me out at parties because someone told them I had fags, and the reality is that I work part-time in a really boring IT job because it fits in around the children and thus saves on childcare, rendering my lengthy and expensive education redundant. Sometimes, in the more dysfunctional periods of my twenties, I actually wanted to be older and more grown up. Twentysomething me was stupid.

  Now, being a grown up sounds like hell. I do not want to go quietly into that good night of women with sensible haircuts who ‘live for their children’ and stand in the playground trying to trump each other by relating their revolting offspring’s many extra-curricular activities and ‘achievements’, competing about their husbands’ high-powered jobs and boasting about their most recent exotic holidays.

  I want to drink too much whisky in smoky jazz clubs wearing an inappropriate skirt while an unsuitable man whispers in my ear.

  I want an interesting career that makes use of my wit and intelligence (I’m sure I must still have some somewhere …).

  I want excitement and romance and danger again.

  I want to run away to Paris and fall in love in a garret (though without the poverty and starvation aspect, obviously).

  I suspect Simon and the children might find some flaws in my plan, though, quite apart from the fact that I hate jazz.