Why Mummy Drinks Page 4

‘Oh, I’m not allowed to be in their gang anyway. They are more bloody cliquey than schoolgirls, and I am deemed not suitable because I am not rich enough and I have to work for The Man, because we are too broke for me not to, due to foolishly deciding to marry my boyfriend from university instead of waiting until I had a suitably important job and snaring a nice rich City chap, then setting up my own business “designing” frou-frou fripperies to flog to other bored rich women. Oh, and also I don’t entirely manage to hide the fact I find them patronising bitches, which doesn’t help. They would quite like you to be in their gang, though; a hot, single daddy to flirt with and make their husbands jealous would be just the job.’

  I stopped abruptly, realising I had committed the ultimate British faux pas of oversharing. Sam was looking horrified, so I mumbled something about checking on the children.

  ‘They’re fine,’ said Sam. ‘They’re over there with my green-cake-rejecting starving urchins. Oh wait, hang on, I think there’s an incident unfolding.’

  I had never been so relieved to have to intervene in a Jane-related incident. There is a sort of spinny saucer thing in the park that children sit in while other children spin them round. Jane had persuaded Perfect Lucy Atkinson into this, and then proceeded to spin her as fast as possible while cackling slightly maniacally. The more Lucy Atkinson screamed at Jane to stop it and sobbed that she was going to be sick, the harder Jane spun. I got there just in time to rugby tackle Jane to the ground and stop the spinny thing with my foot. Unfortunately, it was now going at such speed that when I stopped it so abruptly, it made Lucy Atkinson catapult out to land in a pea-green, snotty sodden heap at her mother’s impeccably clad feet. By the grace of God she didn’t actually puke on her Perfect Mummy’s Perfect Shoes, but alas she did smear quite a lot of snot over them. They looked expensive.

  I hustled Jane away, trilling, ‘SO sorry, just a misunderstanding, Jane thought she was screaming because she was enjoying it and wanted to go faster! Kids, eh? Ha ha ha! PETER! TIME TO GO!’ and made a hasty exit. This also had the benefit of meaning I didn’t have to talk to Sam again, having just announced to him that he was a hot single dad and all the mummies wanted to shag him.

  Simon was in his shed when we got home, ostentatiously trying to sand down the shabby sideboard. It wasn’t working. He will see the funny side soon, I’m sure.

  Friday, 16 October

  Hurray once more for Fuck It All Friday! Simon was apparently ‘working from home’ today, which roughly translates as ‘reading the Daily Mail website and eating all my bloody biscuits’ (in fairness, I do the same when I manage to wangle a day ‘working from home’). This also meant that he was actually here to deal with the joy of dinner time while I got ready to go out with Hannah and Sam, as I had decided that the best way to get over my impure thoughts about Sam was to set him up with Hannah. I have, of course, claimed to them both that this is just a fun, casual drink; a chance for Sam to meet other people in the area, blah blah blah, as opposed to admitting to my hidden agenda of both nipping my thumping great crush in the bud AND giving me the opportunity to buy a lovely hat for the Wedding of the Century, where of course I would be able to take all the credit as it was all down to my amazing matchmaking skills. I would probably be asked to make a speech, too. Maybe I could help organise it? I do often think I would like to be a wedding planner – I feel I would be very good at it.

  Getting ready wasn’t quite the peaceful, relaxing time I had hoped it would be, because in addition to the interruptions from Peter and Jane, Simon was not coping particularly well with the whole dinner/bathtime/bedtime thing and kept trailing hopelessly into the bedroom to wail plaintively ‘What’s wrong with them? Why do they behave like this?’ as screams issued from the bathroom and waves of water lapped beneath the door.

  ‘They are behaving like this, Simon, because you let them have Haribo, which turns them into demented, hyperactive hell demons.’

  ‘Well, why did you let me give them Haribo then? Why didn’t you warn me?’

  ‘I have told you repeatedly not to give them Haribo, Simon. It’s just that you usually leave me to deal with the fallout afterwards while you tit about doing something else.’

  ‘But why do we even have Haribo in the house, then, if it has that effect on the little bastards?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t know how the Haribo gets in the fucking house. It’s just there, and however much they eat, there’s always more. I assumed you bought it, but if it’s not you, maybe it’s just one of life’s mysteries that we will never be destined to find the answer to, like why there are always carrots in sick, even if you haven’t eaten carrots. And right now, I DON’T CARE, because I am going OUT.’

  Simon did at least tell me that I looked nice as I waltzed out of the house, swishing my hair, and he did so without even being asked, so I then felt rather bad about buggering off and abandoning him again and wondered if I should have asked him along too.

  When I got to the pub, though, I decided it was probably just as well that Simon hadn’t come, because if we were two couples then it would have been totally obvious that I was trying to set up Hannah and Sam, and one has to be subtle about these things.

  Sam seemed quite uncomfortable, and not at all the chilled-out hunk of gorgeousness who haunted my dreams. And, worse, his body language was showing no interest in Hannah (I could tell this because I used to obsessively pore over those ‘How To Tell If He Fancies You’ articles in my youth, so beloved by female magazines from Just 17 right through to Cosmopolitan). Clearly, I thought, they were going to need a bit of help if I was going to be the guest of honour/wedding planner extraordinaire at the Wedding of the Century.

  While Sam was at the bar I talked to Hannah at great lengths about how lovely he was – such a good father, such a nice man. I stopped short of saying ‘And just look at his amazing arse! I mean, LOOK AT IT!’ because I did not want Hannah to think I viewed her future husband as a mere sex object. Hannah, though, seemed unconvinced and claimed it was too soon after Dan for her to even think about such a thing.

  Nothing daunted, I waited for Hannah to go to the loo and then very casually remarked to Sam,

  ‘Isn’t Hannah lovely?’

  ‘Errr, yes, she seems very nice.’

  ‘She’s very pretty, don’t you think? And she has wonderful hair.’

  ‘Ummm, yes, yes, very nice hair.’

  I was wondering whether I should press the point by adding that she also has cracking tits, when Sam said, ‘The thing is, Ellen, if you’re trying to set me up with her, she’s, well, not exactly my type.’

  Oh. I was momentarily deflated as the Wedding of the Century and the glorious hat slipped from my grasp (I was thinking a stylish pillbox affair with a flirtatious little veil; it is probably okay to wear a veil to someone else’s wedding when you are the guest of honour and have orchestrated the whole thing), but then I perked up again at the thought that perhaps I was Sam’s type and that was why he didn’t fancy Hannah.

  I tried not to be too coquettish as I coyly asked, ‘What is your type then?’

  Sam looked a bit awkward, then replied, ‘Well. Not women.’

  Not women? OH! The penny finally dropping, I could only gabble, ‘Oh God, so sorry, didn’t realise, so rude of me, so sorry!’

  ‘You weren’t to know,’ said Sam. ‘It’s just not something I make a big fuss about. No one expects straight people to say “Hi, I’m so and so, and by the way, I’m heterosexual” so why should gay people be expected to introduce themselves by high-kicking to a Judy Garland number complete with jazz hands? Anyway,’ he brightened up, ‘you see, I shall be quite safe from the Yummy Mummies, since I may be a hot, single dad – thanks for that, by the way – but I am of no use to them.’

  I laughed for quite a long time at his optimism.

  ‘Ha! You will be more in demand than ever! They will all be clamouring to have you as their Gay Best Friend and imagining they are in an episode of Will & Grace. You will never e
scape them now. You are DOOOOOOOOOMED!’

  ‘Or,’ he suggested, ‘I could just keep hanging around with you and you can ward them off for me? Perhaps your unsuitability will rub off on me, and they will leave me alone?’

  Poor Sam. It will take more than using me as a human shield to ward off Perfect Lucy Atkinson’s Perfect Mummy once she realises his potential to be her essential must-have accessory, but he can try if he wants.

  Once it had been established that, alas, my matchmaking skills were not quite as honed as my body language skills (the magazines never said much about matchmaking your friends, I think, because we were all supposed to be in competition for The Boys and were to keep them to ourselves if we got one), we proceeded to get really very drunk. More relaxed now, Sam finally told us, with many shouts of ‘BASTARD’, how his dastardly ex, Robin (not Robyn) had buggered off and left him.

  Apparently Robin had claimed that his passionate interest in restoring antique French Provincial furniture for his business was the reason for his many trips away, but actually it turned out he was shagging a French bloke called ‘Jean Claude, or René or somethin’ stupid an’ French’, as Sam informed us after several cocktails. (He introduced us to Manhattans, which are very nice and taste of cherries even though they are just neat booze and get you extraordinarily pissed.) Apparently he then buggered off with the French chap, leaving Sam with the children. Only it didn’t work out with Jean Claude/René and so a few months ago he tried to get back together with Sam. ‘But I tol’ him, I said “Fuck off”. I tol’ him.’ So Sam decided that he and the children needed a fresh start and so here he is, only he has to be civil to Robin (‘Bastard’) for the children’s sake and can’t tell him to fuck off as much as he would like to. Sam talks quite a lot when he’s pissed.

  Hannah then told us that Dan (who also had ‘BASTARD’ shouted about him a lot) has announced that his floozy (I didn’t even realise people still said ‘floozy’ until Hannah spat the word across the table) will be staying with him this weekend and the children will be meeting her.

  ‘Bastard!’ said Sam. ‘Even Robin (bastard!) din’t introduce wasshisname, Henri Twat, to the kids.’

  ‘More cockingtails,’ I slurred.

  Astonishingly, Simon was still up when I got home, which was nice. Unfortunately, I was really quite pissed and unable to mumble anything other than ‘Toast. Need toast. Toast now. Mmmmm, toast. More toast. I love you, thingy.’

  Despite my frankly appalling drunkenness, instead of lecturing me for being a shameful lush Simon laughed and said, ‘Looks like you had fun, darling!’ and put me to bed. This is one of the many reasons why I love him, even though he gets on my tits sometimes. I think I shall keep him. I think he likes me too.

  Saturday, 17 October

  Today I have mostly been broken. So very broken. I think maybe Manhattans are not such clever things after all. When I got up there was Marmite all over the kitchen. I would very much like to blame Simon or the children for this, but as I am the only person in the house who eats Marmite, and everyone else retches at the smell alone, it appears I must take responsibility for Marmite-gate, though I have no idea how I managed to get it up the walls. The only consolation was texts from Hannah and Sam enquiring if I happened to know how they got home. I do at least remember getting a taxi home, so I might actually have been slightly less hammered than Hannah and Sam.

  Apart from the Marmite, the house was actually remarkably tidy, given it had been Simon’s watch last night. He had even taken off his revolting fleece in favour of a rather nice jumper, which, because I am shallow and vain despite my pretensions to be otherwise, and because he was so lovely about me being completely pissed up last night, led to me feeling rather kindly towards him, especially in view of the dastardly behaviour of the errant Dan and Robin, so I finally managed to apologise for wrecking his grandmother’s sideboard. He was remarkably nice about it in the end, and said not to worry, it was just a sideboard after all (THAT’S WHAT I SAID!).

  He did, however, suggest that maybe I might now finally accept that renovating furniture just isn’t my thing, reminding me of several other failed attempts at upcycling when we were students and I still believed it was acceptable to bring home things that you had found in a skip. I found an Australian in a skip once, shortly before Simon and I got together. I didn’t bring him home, though he was rather lush. I just gave him directions to the nearest youth hostel. I rather regretted letting him go, but at the back of my mind was the thought that if I took him home and he turned out to be The One, then for the rest of our lives, when people asked how we’d met, I’d have had to say ‘I found him in a skip’.

  Simon being so nice about the sideboard, and laughing together about back when we were young and carefree and even more broke than we are now, led to something of an amorous moment, and he suggested we took advantage of it while the children were catatonic in front of SpongeBob SquarePants. In all honesty, my ready agreement was mainly because the thought of lying down in a darkened room was quite attractive in my hideously hungover state, rather than from a mad desire to be ravished senseless. Nonetheless, off we sneaked, only to be interrupted by Peter bellowing in fury outside the (fortunately locked) bedroom door, just as Simon was removing my bra, because Jane had committed the unforgiveable act of changing the channel without asking him. And then there was something about Ninjago and unfairness, by which point the mood was spoilt.

  The children are good, I’ll give them that. They seem to have some sort of built-in radar to detect when we might be on the verge of a shag and work as a seamless tag team to ensure it doesn’t happen. I did tell Simon that just putting a lock on the bedroom door wouldn’t be enough to thwart them; we would need to build some sort of nuclear, underground, sound-proofed, lead-lined sex bunker if we actually wanted to do it without them barging in, and even then they would probably find some way to breach the defences.

  Tuesday, 20 October

  Poor Peter is sick. He was absolutely fine when he went to bed last night, but he appeared at 3 a.m. complaining he had a sore throat, which was not solved by drinks of water, or cuddles, or a story, so eventually I dosed him up with Calpol and he finally fell asleep. He shuffled through this morning with a general air of feeling very sorry for himself and groaning pitifully that his throat was still terribly sore. I had quite a lot to do today, and I was still hopeful that I might be able to get away with pouring another spoonful of Calpol down him and bundling him off to school anyway. However, when I applied my patented ‘Are You Really Sick Test?’ by informing him that he would have to stay in bed and read quietly if he was too ill to go to school, he needn’t think he could sit and play on his electronics all day, he just nodded feebly and said, ‘Bed sounds nice. I’m so cold, Mummy, can I go back to bed now? I just want to go to sleep.’

  Given that Peter would generally rather endure torture than voluntarily spend a single minute more in bed than he has to, I decided he must be actually properly ill, instead of faking it in the hope of spending the day achieving the next level on his wretched Pokémon game. I duly took his temperature like a loving and responsible mummy. It was 38.5°C – which I then, of course, had to google because I can never remember what temperature the human body is meant to be at anyway, and at what point a fever becomes ‘dangerous’ (39.4°C according to Dr Google), and because I was too tight to buy the special thermometer that flashes lights and sounds alarms when it deems your precious moppet’s temperature to be beyond the pale.

  I gave Peter another dose of Calpol – every parent’s best friend. (I wish I had bought shares in bloody Calpol when the children were born, nobody tells you how much of it you will go through, whether it is for genuine illnesses, or placebo doses for those mysterious aches and pains that only arise at bedtime.) Although despite now being six, Peter is strongly resisting going onto the 6+ strength and whimpered pathetically for ‘The pink Calpol, Mummy, please, I like the pink Calpol.’ I tucked him up on the sofa with a blanket and even
agreed he could have a cup of tea, as a special treat, since he was so ill, and he appeared enfeebled enough that even a combination of caffeine and Calpol seemed unlikely to rally him to his usual level of hyperactivity, let alone to the demonic Duracell Bunny state that any caffeine usually induces in both my children.

  Simon had already left for work this morning, so Sam kindly agreed to drop Jane at school and pick her up for me, which meant I didn’t have to take the ailing one out into the cold, harsh world. Jane was most unhappy at being sent to school when her brother was off, so she attempted to cough up a lung to demonstrate why she should also be allowed to stay at home and guzzle the Magic Pink Elixir of Life. However, she spectacularly failed the Test by immediately explaining to me why she should be allowed to watch TV all day, because even though she wasn’t that sick, there was a good chance she was contagious, and did I even know the incubation period for what Peter had, and what if it was something really serious like Ebola and I was sending her out there to infect the whole school? (Jane has obviously been watching the Discovery Channel behind my back again.) So she was duly waved off, still wailing pitifully about how unfair it all was.

  I rang the office and told them I would be working from home, as I had a very sick child (Peter obligingly coughed throughout the phone call, to add some realism to this claim) and then the sofa began to look awfully appealing, given I had been up half the night with Peter.

  I cunningly asked, ‘Would you like Mummy to come and give you a cuddle, darling?’

  To which Peter replied, ‘Yes please, Mummy, that would be lovely.’

  I duly curled up under the blanket with him and he snuggled in. It was actually rather lovely; there are not many opportunities for cuddles with my children these days, because we are always busy rushing here, dashing there, running around like headless chickens to after-school clubs and doing homework and trying to get some sort of meal on the table and the laundry done. There is never enough time for anything.