Why Mummy Drinks Page 8
Obviously I didn’t tell Hannah how selfish she was being, because instead we had the now obligatory ‘Bastards, bastards, twatting bastards’ rant about Dan and Robin, where Sam revealed that Robin, having cancelled his last two weekends with the children, claiming ‘work commitments’ (‘I didn’t realise he’d taken to shagging for money,’ sniffed Sam) has casually announced he is now expecting to have the children for Christmas, because by his reckoning of when ‘his’ weekends are, he thinks that he gets Christmas. Sam is spitting feathers and snarling ‘Over my dead body!’
Hannah was also in a state because Dan is being a complete dick about money, being late with his share of the mortgage and his payments for the children, and generally being a wanker, pleading poverty and crippling overdrafts, but he has now announced that he won’t be able to see the children at all over Christmas, because he is going on holiday. To the Caribbean. With his perky-arsed bit of fluff from the gym.
‘We hadn’t been on holiday for two years before he left me, because he always claimed we couldn’t afford it,’ mumbled Hannah indignantly while necking Pinot Grigio and inhaling salt and vinegar crisps, which surely is a recipe for heartburn if ever there was one.
‘BASTARD!’ roared Sam. ‘Shall we have a lil’ tequila shot?’
‘NOOOOOO!’ I shouted. ‘No tequila, bad and wrong!’
The hideous memory of the last tequila hangover is still lingering with me. I swear to God I could taste tequila for at least three days afterwards. To my astonishment, Hannah, who had also sworn she was never drinking tequila again after the last time, and had insisted when she arrived that she was not getting shitfaced this time and would only be having a couple of glasses of wine (though she was now well into her second bottle) said, ‘Yes! Tequila! I need tequila, I have something to show you.’
Due to me having the self-control of a child the night before its birthday, I clamoured muchly for Hannah to do her show and tell NOW, but in the event, it took two tequila slammers before she pulled out her phone and found a photograph on it.
‘Look!’ she wailed, brandishing the phone at us. ‘Look at it!’
Sam squinted at the phone somewhat owlishly before pronouncing, ‘S’a dick, Hannah. S’definitely a dick.’ Although I hadn’t seen any penises but Simon’s in many years, I couldn’t disagree with Sam’s pronouncement that it was definitely a dick. It was most definitely a dick.
‘Not a ver’ big dick, though,’ added Sam.
‘I KNOW it’s a dick!’ shouted Hannah. ‘I can tell a fucking dick when I see one!’
‘Thass good,’ said Sam. ‘Good that you can tell a dick. But, babe, why you got a dick pic on your phone?’
‘A man sent it to me!’ said Hannah. ‘Why would a man send me a photograph of his knob? Why?’
It transpired that Hannah had decided to dip her toe into the world of online dating. Hannah has led a sheltered life. Even at school, when most of us could think about nothing but getting a boyfriend, Hannah wasn’t really that interested. She didn’t have a boyfriend until the last year of university, and then when he dumped her after a couple of years, she went into a decline, then she met and married Dan, who was literally the first person she went out with after Eddie, the boy from university. She has only ever seen two dicks in her life. Maybe I am not one to comment on getting married too soon, having married the boy from university, but I made up for it before I met Simon.
Anyway, somehow Hannah was entirely unaware of the joyous phenomenon that is dick pics, hence when a chap made contact through a dating site, Hannah assumed he was The One, had the wedding planned, and was more than slightly perturbed when he sent her a photograph of his penis, before she even knew his last name.
Sam, unhelpfully, fell about laughing at this.
‘HOW can you not have known about dick pics?’ he cackled, as Hannah sniffed tearfully, ‘Why should I know about dick pics? NOT EVERYONE’S OBSESSED WITH COCKS, YOU KNOW!’
‘Just because I’m gay, doesn’t mean I’m obsessed with cocks!’ said Sam indignantly. ‘Anyway, mine’s much bigger than his.’
At this point we realised the entire bar was listening in to our conversation, with several of them craning their necks to try to get a glimpse of the dick pic and see if it was really that tiny. (It was. Apart from the whole complete inappropriateness of sending strangers photographs of your penis, there must be something quite insulting about being sent a photo of such a very inadequate cock, as if ‘you must be so desperate, love, that you’ll even be impressed by my tiny chipolata willy’.)
I told Simon about Hannah’s horror when I got home, and he laughed nearly as hard as Sam. He has known Hannah for almost twenty years and said, ‘Oh my God. Poor Hannah, can you imagine her face, the first time she opened it?’
‘I know!’ I said. ‘Hannah wouldn’t even read the antiquated copy of The Joy of Sex that was inexplicably in our sixth-form common room.’
‘You had The Joy of Sex in your common room at your all-girls school?’ Simon exclaimed, laughing even harder at the (fairly accurate) image in his head of all those sexually frustrated schoolgirls poring over the pictures, as we realised we were not quite the liberated women of the world we thought we were from studying a couple of issues of More magazine’s ‘Position of the Fortnight’.
‘Yes.’ I said. ‘The old seventies’ one, with the drawings of the Beardy Man and all the pubes. I think one of the teachers may have planted it in there as a form of contraception, in the hope that we’d be so horrified that we would Never Ever Do It With Dirty Boys.’
‘Oh Christ, no wonder poor darling Hannah is so repressed! Is that why you have forbidden me to ever grow a beard?’ said Simon.
‘I don’t think school is to blame,’ I protested. ‘I went to the same school, and I am not repressed!’
‘No, my darling, you are not,’ purred Simon hopefully. ‘Maybe we should go upstairs and see just how unrepressed you are, eh?’
Simon was in luck, as I had managed to hit the Holy Grail of drunkenness where sex seems like a very good idea. This is a tiny drunken window, where even a few mouthfuls more booze can tip you over into just falling into bed mumbling, ‘Tired now. You get me shome toast, mmmm toast, ni ni’ before passing out with a slice of toast stuck to your face.
Afterwards, loath as I was to spoil Simon’s rosy glow, I decided that while he was in a good mood, and I was drunk enough to be brave, it was probably a fortuitous time to tell him that his sister and a camper van of children were descending for a week over Christmas, along with my sister and her family for Christmas Day. Oh, and that I might’ve invited Sam and Hannah and whatever children they have in tow for Christmas lunch, too. He took it quite well.
By which I mean he said, ‘Oh fucking hell’, and then, ‘Remind me again why I gave up bloody smoking?’
Sunday, 22 November
Simon has informed me that Boreas is in fact Louisa’s sixth child. I have somehow missed one out. I don’t think I have, because even Simon can only name three of them off the top of his head, but he is adamant that there are six. I also woke up to texts from Hannah and Sam asking me if I am sure about them coming for Christmas, because if I am really sure, then they would love to come. Obviously I cannot reply, ‘No, sorry, I was shitfaced, what on earth was I thinking?’, so instead I had to say that of course I was really sure and we would love to have them. There should be a law that says that any invitations issued while drunk are null and void in the cold light of day.
I love Hannah and Sam, and frankly they will be welcome voices of sanity as Persephone slams the lid on the piano because no one is listening to her, Peter and Jane give Gulliver a wedgy as he holds forth on the novel he is writing in French ‘just for fun’, various of Louisa’s children pee on the rug because she doesn’t want to stifle their creativity with potty training, both Louisa and Jessica bollock me for failing to cater for their many dietary requirements, and I hide in the larder with a bottle of gin. (I love my larder. We couldn’t
really afford this house, but we bought it anyway, because having seen the proper, north-facing larder I declared myself unable to live without it. No one has yet noticed that I have installed a lock on the inside of the door.) But this now means that I will be catering for somewhere between twenty and twenty-two people for Christmas dinner. I don’t have twenty-two plates. Or twenty-two chairs. Also, that number of people means that there is no way I can justify buying everything from M&S and just bunging it in the oven. I will be hitting the excellent value, cut-price German supermarkets for supplies for Christmas dinner, though I will have to lie and tell Jessica it is all from Waitrose, otherwise she will invent an allergy that prevents her from eating. Aldi probably do really nice pickled beetroot, though.
Talking of children peeing everywhere, I spent a full hour today trying to get the stench of stale piss out of the bathroom. I scrubbed, I bleached, I sloshed around bicarbonate of soda, as recommended by Google; I even added lemon juice, as I remembered something about it being good for cleaning. I also recoiled somewhat in horror from the frothing explosion I had created by combining lemon juice and bicarb (I should really have paid more attention in Chemistry at school, instead of trying to flick pieces of paper into the teacher’s hair when she was telling us for the eleventy billionth time about how esters smell like pear drops, even though it was the nineties not the fifties and so none of us had the slightest clue what pear drops smelt like). AFTER ALL THAT, when I went back into my sparkling shiny, gleaming 100 per cent piss-free bathroom half an hour later, the smell was back, and there was an unflushed turd lurking in the loo! FML. I am so thrilled I bothered to spend my day doing this. I may have muttered this rather a lot as I stomped around the house ostentatiously flinging countless loads of laundry into the gaping maw of the washing machine and picking up the trail of shoes that seems to endlessly snake through the house. No fucker noticed; not my tidying up, not the fact that they have an endless supply of clean clothes, not the spanking clean bathroom, and definitely not my irate muttering. I am going to run away to a desert island and live alone with my dog and see how they get on without me. I wonder how long it would take them to notice I had gone?
Wednesday, 25 November
It was my day off today, and I was determined I was going to spend it all working on this bloody app, because I really want to get it finished before Christmas. I have not yet told Simon what I am doing, or that it will cost me $100 to register it, because I have decided that, a) it is an investment, and b) the credit cards are now in such a perilous state that I am pursuing the theory that if you owe the bank £1,000 that is your problem, but if you owe the bank £1,000,000, that’s their problem. This is probably not very sound financial planning, but it’s currently all I have. $100 probably isn’t very much in pounds anyway.
The day was meant to go like this:
8.35 a.m. Leave to walk to school, chatting merrily with darling children, as adorable dog prances beside us.
8.50 a.m. Wave them off happily into the playground, with hugs and kisses as they cry, ‘You are the best Mummy in the world, we love you.’
9.45 a.m. Back home after taking the dog for a bracing walk.
10 a.m. Make self a delicious cup of coffee and start work on app.
1 p.m. Pause for a healthy and nutritious lunch, involving much salad and vegetables.
1.15 p.m. Resume work.
3 p.m. Leave to walk back to school to collect darling children, adorable dog walking obediently alongside.
3.15 p.m. Greeted with joy and love by moppets.
4 p.m. Serve up healthy and nutritious snack for children involving fruit.
4.30 p.m. Homework time, as I impart wisdom and knowledge to my offspring and feel a warm glow at the light of understanding that spreads across their innocent and childish faces.
5 p.m. Start cooking delicious tea for beloved munchkins.
5.30 p.m. Beam fondly as beloved munchkins gobble down delicious tea.
6 p.m. Pop a creative and innovative meal, involving interesting combinations of exotic spices, into the oven for Simon and myself.
6.30 p.m. Supervise bathtime.
7 p.m. Allow the children half an hour of screen time before bed, while I do some more work on my app.
7.30 p.m. Greet loving husband, then tuck the clean and sleepy children into bed, with many hugs and kisses all round.
7.40 p.m. Enjoy a civilised gin and tonic with my loving husband as we discuss each other’s days and make supportive remarks to each other.
8 p.m. Sit down to the delicious and creative meal. Husband is stunned by the taste explosion I have presented him with.
8.30 p.m. Do some more work on my app.
10 p.m. Have a glass of wine and watch Question Time. (Or is it Newsnight that’s on at that time? Anyway, some sort of grown-up, political, newsy programme.) Debate it maturely and intelligently with husband.
11 p.m. Go to bed. Possibly shag.
However, this is in fact how the day actually went:
8.49 a.m. Leave house to walk to school; speed-march there, shouting at the children to hurry, hurry, we’re going to be late, while the over-excited dog hauls me along.
8.59 a.m. Shove the children unceremoniously through the gate, still shouting at them to run.
9 a.m. Marvel at the entire day stretching before me, a veritable ocean of productivity awaiting.
9.10 a.m. Decide to treat myself to a coffee from Costa while I’m walking the dog, because I’m worth it. Balk slightly at the price. Find the dog hoovering up mystery items of rubbish he has found in the street when I come out of the coffee shop.
10 a.m. Bastarding dog has rolled in something unspeakable. Bath him. He still stinks and now the smell is lingering on my hands. Remember tomato sauce is supposed to be good for removing fox poo smells, etc. Cover my hands and dog in tomato sauce. Dog shakes. Entire bathroom, including ceiling, is now splattered with tomato sauce, as am I. It looks like something out of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
11 a.m. Have cleaned bathroom and changed clothes. The smell is still lingering. Fuck it. App time. Will just have a very quick look on Facebook first. Oooooh, Susannah Ellison from school has got very fat! I will just message Hannah about this, it will make her happy. I might have a Mint Club, too.
12 p.m. How have I lost a whole hour messaging Hannah and googling other people from school to see if they are fat? How? Right. App time. Now. I should really have a look at Twitter to see what is happening in the world; I follow lots of journalists to make myself feel important, so really looking at Twitter is the same as reading the news and everyone knows it is important to keep abreast of current affairs. Hmmm, dull, dull, dull … Ah, look, Kirstie Allsopp is angry about something! What is she angry about now? Buggeration, Twitter is such a jumbled mess! There we go, having read back through twenty-seven tweets from Kirstie Allsopp, I have discovered that the source of her rage seems to be that there was a loud man on her train. Fair enough, that is quite annoying.
1 p.m. ARRRGHHHH! Well, no one can work on an empty stomach, I’d better have some lunch. Healthy salad. Except none of the three open bags of salad in the fridge are now edible. Cheese and ham toastie it is then.
1.30 p.m. Right. App.
2 p.m. Look at that squirrel on the bird feeder. I should video it and put it on Facebook. Maybe it will go viral.
2.30 p.m. No point trying to work now, will have a cup of tea and chocolate Hobnob. And maybe a quick look at Facebook again to see if my squirrel video has gone viral yet. How has it not? Maybe I should put it on Instagram, too?
3.10 p.m. Bollocks, it’s time to pick up the children! I will have to drive and be judged.
3.15 p.m. Children shout at me because I mixed up the sandwiches in their lunchboxes and gave Peter cheese and Jane ham. Apparently it was unthinkable that they should be either expected to eat the wrong sandwich or to swap with their sibling. They tell me I am the worst mummy in the world.
4 p.m. Feed children crisps.
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sp; 4.30 p.m. Shout at the children to do homework. Demand to know how they can have ‘forgotten’ to read? Argue with them about how to do long division when they tell me my way is stupid and wrong. Fight the urge to say ‘Oh fuck it, what does it matter, I’ve never done bloody long division since I left school! That’s what calculators are for, and that’s why I had to google it to help you tonight.’
5 p.m. Make pasta. Wonder if eating too much pasta can cause children health implications. Add broccoli to pasta in a fit of guilt about letting them eat pasta every night, except the nights they eat pizza.
5.30 p.m. Listen to the children having a complete screaming shit fit because there is broccoli in their pasta. Die a little inside.
6 p.m. Lob a chicken in the oven for dinner for Simon and me. Bung some wilted parsley and a lemon up its arse in a vague attempt to make it look like I’ve made an effort.
6.30 p.m. Start trying to get the children into the bath. Once they are finally in the bath, hide downstairs and look at Facebook on my phone, on the basis that as long as I can hear them screaming, they are not drowning. Decide I hate everyone on Facebook, as they are all having lovely dinners with their shiny children and ‘snuggles’ before bed. Peter and Jane bite if you try to snuggle with them. Have a gin.